"I teach many very advanced students of English who are French speaking lawyers. A problem often encountered is how to help them measure their progress. Also what kinds of exercises can be recommended for this level? Thank you for your suggestions."
Any advice or ideas for Wendy? How can advanced students get a sense of progress and improvement? Any great activities to recommend for very advanced levels? Any tips, suggestions or comments? Contact us
This question is from Wendy Johnson, France
Comments
rebecca1
In reply to Wendy Johnson's query about measuring progress of advanced students I would suggest inviting them to keep a detailed diary of their learning experiences. Not just what happened in the class, but how they felt about it. This is an excellent way to get students to reflect on their learning. Periodically you could invite students to share ideas from their diary, although as diaries should be confidential students could be given the choice of re-writing certain parts for public use. Most importantly, to be of benefit diaries should
-be kept in a disciplined fashion i.e. after every class
-be absolutely candid,
-be reflected on at some later stage
The reflection stage is important because tendencies and patterns can emerge that the student was previously unaware of. They could perhaps do a piece of written work based on their diary, summarising the previous 3 months' classes. Another idea is getting them to set up their own written work portfolio which both you and they can have access to in class time to discuss and evaluate progress. They should keep it in a very organised fashion i.e. dating and stating aims of every piece of work they do.
Also, they could keep detailed records of new vocabulary, describing the example of how they came across the word\expression, and other possible examples of them.
Concerning good ideas for high level students, one activity I have had a lot of success with is getting them to debate who is the greatest French person ever. They should get a shortlist (5,10?) and then you could structure it however you want to get them to narrow it down. One advantage is that you can't even take part in the debate not being French yourself, so all the onus is on them to thrash it out with each other.
Philip Duerdoth, Singapore
For advanced learners of English the C test is a very significant contribution to the bank of materials. It is a type of cloze exercise. A cloze exercise involves a passage of English which is missing certain words, there are gaps in the text. The students have to try to fill the gaps with an appropriate word. A cloze is notoriously difficult even for native speakers The C test is a modified version of the cloze test in which it is relatively easy for a native speaker to achieve close to 100%, and is therefore a good exercise for advanced learners. Take a business or other advanced text from a reputable website - BBC, Guardian, Financial Times or wherever - and delete half of every second word. For example,
'T__ British gover_____ has dec____ to chan___ the la__ concerning dri___ driving'
'The British government has decided to change the laws concerning drink driving'
Leave the first sentence or two complete so that the reader can get a good idea of the topic. About 80-100 gaps to fill gives a substantial exercise, and the results give a very consistent indication of the student's ability. 96% suggests native speaker standard. It correlates very well with a whole bank of other testing schemes and raises the question why a 3-hour examination cannot be replaced by a 20 minute C test.
Of course, you can vary the number of words the students have to work on.
LarissaDear Wendy,
A very nice way to measure improvement with advanced students is to record them and after two or three months do it again. Ask them to listen to the tape and check their improvement.