Guest post- The Homework Conundrum
By Paula Swenson, regular TEFL.net reviewer, submitter of my only ever guest worksheets (so far!) and online purveyor of something too modern for me to understand at http://englishexcellence.wordpress.com/. Today though, she’d like to set you a homework conundrum or solve your homework conundrums, you’ll have to read on to find out which:
“Students need to practice, to do work outside of class, if they want to improve. I’d venture to say that you can find this statement in nearly every teaching textbook on the planet. I’m not here to argue the validity of the concept; however as a teacher of adult learners, I want to explore what I call the “Homework Conundrum.”
My Macmillan Online Dictionary defines conundrum as: a difficult problem that seems to have no solution and lists as synonyms of this meaning: task, burden, necessity, chore, struggle . . . and therein lies the conundrum. You recognize the necessity of homework, especially for those students you only see once a week for somewhere between 45 and 90 minutes. Therefore you assign some tasks each week. Your students, who are working adults, see it as a burden added to an already overfull schedule balancing work, family, friends and recreational activities. Those who do the work, see it more as a chore than a meaningful learning opportunity, dashing through it in order to check it off their list. At the next class you struggle through the apologies and excuses and maybe review work that has been done in bits and pieces, wasting precious interactive learning time each week.
So why bother? Good question. Sometimes, particularly with adult students, scrapping the whole idea of homework and concentrating on solid in-class learning is a much stronger strategy. One hidden danger of this approach is that for many students in many cultures a class without homework is not considered “serious” and a teacher who doesn’t give any homework is, by extension, not a good or serious teacher.
What to do? Another fine question, if your school and/or your students value the idea of homework more than the practice, skipping the homework will not be an option. However you DO have options.
Option A: discuss and negotiate
Many adult learners never really saw the value of homework back in their school days, and walking into a classroom may put them back into the schoolchild mindset. Some of the best teaching advice I ever got was from Business English Trainer, Julian Kenny, he told us that every class is an opportunity to practice the language of negotiation with your students. Whether or not you teach Business English, your adult students probably are, or have been, business people. Treating them like the adults they are and discussing their views on the values of homework can go a long way toward solving the homework conundrum. Negotiating as a class to find a set of expectations that everyone can live up to is a fabulous English activation exercise and could result in fewer homework hassles.
Option B: change the parameters
Do you primarily give homework from a workbook with a key in the back? If so, consider not going over it at all in class, but asking students to bring in questions they have after having done and checked the work on their own. This not only saves time (by my estimate a minimum of 15 minutes per lesson) but allows you to encourage students who ‘get it’ to answer the questions “Can anyone tell us why. . .” As an added bonus you can keep a list of recurring and/or more complex questions and work the points into future lesson plans.
Option C: make the HW more meaningful in a real way
This option is my personal favorite. I am lucky to work for a school that doesn’t micro-manage my teaching, if the students are happy the management is happy. They hired me for my skills and experience and trust me to do my job (I am blessed I know) so I have developed some very outside the box homework assignments to try to engage my students in the learning process. Of course not every student responds, I haven’t invented a magic homework wand, but I get far less excuses that I used to and far more completed homework.
One of the easiest ways I’ve found to get the individuals more engaged in the homework process is not that far outside the box –I simply find a way to personalize each assignment. Open question writing prompts make this easy, as the responses are automatically personal. Another way is to have a “read what you like” assignment with a grammar hunt imbedded. I‘ve asked students to do everything from simple highlighting parts of speech to hunting for indirect questions and reported speech. The secret here is that the grammar practice is actually a bonus—I am really tricking them into reading more in English, since chances are they had to read more than one article to find the one they bring to class. And then when they work with a partner to check and share, they have to read another one!
How do you handle the homework conundrum?”
Any answers? Any more guest posts? At least one more guest worksheet? Anyone else want to use TEFL.net book reviewing as the start of fame and fortune? Come on, let’s be ‘aving yer!
Tags: guest writers
December 3rd, 2009 at 3:12 pm
I tend not to give a lot of homework for the reasons you stated above. It’s just not worth the hassle. I am far from convinced on the value of homework as well.
If students engage with English in any way outside the class I think it’s enough. I try to do two things in my classes.
1) I provide extra materials for students about our current lessons through handouts or emails. This could be the mentioning of a good book or article, a link to grammar quizzes online, further reading about a topic, or a review site. Whether the students actually go and check the stuff out is entirely up to them. I tell them if they find something interesting they should come back and share it with the class.
2) I give interesting homework assigments like making a glog, commenting on a youtube video, following a stranger for 5 minutes outside and then writing a description of their life and character, or choosing a monologue from a favorite film and performing it for the class. If I keep the time it takes to do the homework down to 10 minutes or less and if it’s interesting I’d say on average about 70% of the class does it, which is much higher than the 10% I got when I just gave book exercises n whatnot.
At my last school homework was actually part of the students’ grade and I had to give 20 pieces per course, which is a lot in my opinion. Whenever I checked homework I made sure to actually correct it for them rather than just look at it, so they felt like they got something out of it. In addition, I very visually awarded points in my register and put their homework scores on their exams and then showed their total score after the homework grade was accounted for. For students interested in passing, it worked quite well.
I think all your tips are good as well.
I like the discuss and negotiate idea. I generally don’t discuss hw with the students. I dont know why. Ill start doing so.
Personalizing is also a good tip as personal hw is easiest to do and meaningful to the student.
December 4th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Thanks for your input, Nick. I love the “follow a stranger for 5 minutes, then write their story” idea… wouldn’t work in my small town (not enough strangers) but it’s a fun idea!
December 6th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
A very interesting post Paula. Most students who’ve been doing English for a while already seem to know that if they don’t do their homework, there is little point in attending a course in terms of progressing with the language, yet still a large number of them come and still they don’t do it. They’re quite happy treading water or even going backwards, but my colleagues and I are obviously not. I wonder if we aren’t missing the point. Maybe we are too obsessed with a progress which is only suited to the minority of students.
December 7th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Very good advice, especially about making it a more meaningful exercise.
December 8th, 2009 at 8:53 am
I am anti-homework and pro self-study. Realistically, younger students do need directed and closely monitored self-study – which equates to homework. But after the age of about 13 we need to switch gradually to less directed tasks and not to monitor too much. If the student is only doing the work because you told them or because you will be angry if they don’t, then the benefit is very limited. Students will cheat, do the minimum and not engage with the task fully, defeating the purpose. Homework that means more work for you than for the students is not a good use of your time.
Beware accepting that giving homework is part of you job as an EFL teacher – a dangerous notion put about by some DOSses. We have plenty of other work to do without getting bogged down setting, marking, correcting and recording marks.
I prefer making the most of classroom time for investigation of language and practice activities. I think (know actually) students resent the 10-20 minute homework checking time that usually mars the start of the homework setters’ classes.
A HUGE difference between EFL teaching and school teaching is that we are more actively engaged in teaching during class time. School teachers are normally just presenting material in their classes and all the actual learning is taking place at home – often with the help of parents, older siblings or paid tutors. When students, teachers and DOS types bring these practices to EFL it rather destroys what is special and great about EFL.
When I do direct adult students’ self-study time, I stick up a completed example and let students check their answers on the way out or during the break. If anyone says how do you know who did the homework I ask them – ‘Why should I care?’ I can tell who is getting better at English from how they perform in class.
Thanks for a really intersting guest piece.
December 8th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
Thanks for all the comments.
I agree, Andy, that “self-study” is a far better thing to promote than “homework” – I also know that as a language learner myself, I am more motivated about my self-study when I know that I can get some feedback form my instructor and ask questions about the bits that elude me, so I guess that is what I am aiming for when I give assignments to be done outside of class: to engage them in self-study that then feeds back into the overall learning process.
Sputnik, I’ve been pondering that myself. I think that with adult learners sometimes they really ARE too busy and over-committed to go forward and are happy to tread water, because at least that means they are not losing ground (she said, gleefully mixing her metaphors). I used to teach 3-month intensive exam prep, where pushing students to meet a goal and a deadline was part of the process. Starting autumn 2008 I began teaching an FCE prep class that meets for 90 minutes once a week. Several students are in their second or third go round. Last year I was very frustrated, but the students were amazed at how much they could see they had improved. I realized that I was the one who needed to adjust my expectations. :-) I still push them quite a bit harder than, say, a conversation class, but I have learned to accept that writing assignments will come when they come, etc. and that real learning IS taking place.
I think as teachers we probably should remember to ask our students about their goals at regular intervals and really listen to their answers… we’d probably all be much happier.
December 9th, 2009 at 8:48 am
I should do this more often- this being nothing- getting others to write my posts and then not posting much after to give time for the discussion to develop. Any votes for me posting less often??
Some really good points there from everyone. Obviously with adult classes they should check their answers with the key and ask you any questions in the next class, although some classes might need training in how to do this and persuasion to actually ask questions, e.g. by you saying “I’m guessing everyone had problems with number two”, “Did anyone spot the deliberate mistake?”, “Please ask me things like ‘Is this also possible?’ and ‘Why is this wrong?’ and remember that the book is sometimes wrong” and “Don’t be shy, I’m sure everyone else has the same question” I then tend to follow that up with “Any (similar) questions about the English language, e.g. things you read this week?” I then go back to the language point or topic of the homework and tie that in with the first speaking activity of the class.
I basically do the same thing in young learner classes too, but giving them the key at the beginning of the class rather than to take home, making sure they use a different colour pen to correct, and double checking corrections when I can.
A point no one has made yet is that some learners come to class because they can’t motivate themselves and want to be forced to work hard, and the same is true of homework.
December 9th, 2009 at 8:51 am
PS. here was my attempt at writing about homework
http://www.usingenglish.com/teachers/articles/why-your-students-dont-do-their-homework.html
December 10th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Picking up on something you mention in your other article Alex, as well as what you say Paula concerning consulting your students about their goals, I asked one of my adult classes tonight about the motivation for homework, and they asked me to set up a chart where I give gold and silver stars for people who do the homework, similar to the stars given to kids. I thought they were joking but they seemed very keen to have some form of visual competition.
December 10th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Just to comment on your comment. Yes, I think you should post less often. It’d be less stress :) Really though, I post comments on your site and then forget to go back to them cause you’ve got another posts up and I end up reading that instead and then it’s bed time, lol. That or add one of those subscribe to comments plug-ins. I just found out that my didn’t have one and I quite like them on other people’s blogs..