Challenging higher level learners

Annie Thomson

Being faced with a high level class can be a daunting prospect - what do they actually need? Annie has some ideas to help you...

One of the biggest challenges I have faced in my teaching was when my Director of Studies announced to me that I was going to teach a two-month long C1/C2 level course with no coursebook materials. ‘What?!!’ was my first response (and second and third…) but actually it turned out to be some of the best and most productive months of my teaching career.

For me the challenge was twofold; first, it was the challenge of teaching such high-level learners and second, it was having to source, create and design my own materials. In this post, I want to outline the three things I learned about teaching learners of this level.


1. Give them lexis, lexis and more lexis
I found that at this level, learners have ‘covered’ pretty much all the grammar structures and can use these well, if not very well. It felt like a waste of time getting them to look at grammar and so we only looked at grammar if it came up as an incidental question, for instance if they spotted something in a reading or listening text, but aside from that, the focus was all lexis.

This was where the main gap was in terms of moving them from a C1 level to a C2 level. Whenever we looked at a reading or listening text, we would mine it for useful fixed and semi-fixed expressions, collocations and idioms. I worked hard to use lots of authentic material, including newspaper feature articles, magazines, novels and poetry so that the range of language would be wider.
After getting learners to notice the lexis, e.g. through identifying and underlining collocations or blanking out particles of multi-word verbs, I based these on Lewis’s different lexical exercises to ensure there was a range of practice activities. These activities were:
• Unjumbling
• Sequencing
• Categorising
• Matching
• Completing
• Deleting
(Lewis, 2008)
2. Get them producing
I discovered pretty quickly that at this level, they can deal very well with reading and listening texts, even if they may not understand everything. By this level they have developed enough strategies to deal with unknown items, e.g. ignoring unnecessary ones or deducing approximate meaning of ones that are important. So, the way to challenge them was to get them producing texts, either speaking or writing. This is where I could give them lots of feedback on what they were saying and more importantly what they weren’t saying, i.e. their gaps.

I used a lot of reformulation and recasting to offer them more natural or more sophisticated ways of expressing what they wanted to say.
Here are some of the ways I gave them feedback on their speaking and writing to help them notice the gap between their output and my output as a more proficient user.
Rewriting their homework
Although it took a little bit of time, when students had given me written work, I would type out their answers and reformulate them so that the language was closer to how I would write it.  For example, I'd add in more natural expressions or more sophisticated language. It wasn’t about correcting their errors although that sometimes happened.

Then, I would give them back their version and my version and of course a comment at the end of their work that would respond to the content of their work (e.g. a great story, I can’t wait to see what happens next!). I would give learners 10-15 minutes of the lesson to compare the two versions, underline any new phrases or expressions and ask any questions about the upgraded version of their work. They really appreciated the time I had spent on their homework and also it made them see where they could push themselves further.
Recording their speaking
I often encouraged them to record their speaking in class, whether it was a discussion, a monologue, a dramatic performance. Then I would get learners to transcribe what they had said. This was a really useful way of getting learners to notice their output and where they could improve, e.g. if they were making lots of pauses but didn’t have any fillers to use to buy themselves time, or any minor persistent errors (it’s only at this level that learners were finally able to implement third person singular -s!).

It also meant that we could look at improving pronunciation too, e.g., intonation patterns which might be easier for the listener, and many of them in this group wanted to imitate my accent so we would have lots of really focused practice of particular sounds and features of connected speech. I would get them annotating their transcription with where to pause, where to place stress, where to use linking sounds etc and they would record it again and again until they were happy with it. So, sometimes lessons would get learners producing a lot (quantity) to challenge them, but other times, the focus would be on producing a much smaller amount and exploiting this a lot more (quality).
3. Broaden the genres
I found that my learners were really good at conversation and discussion. They had spent so much of their previous English classes and exam preparation courses (B2 First or C1 Advanced) talking to each other and the teacher in informal discussions and pair/group work that they were really comfortable and competent with these genres.

The challenge was with more unusual genres, both written and spoken, and particularly the ones that they hadn’t used much in their own language too. So, I designed lessons that get learners to produce other genres, sometimes they would have some exposure to examples of the genre first but other times, I would let learners have a go without a model and see what they could produce.
Here are some of the more unusual genres learners produced:
poems
Arguments
obituaries
Mini sagas
Manifestos
Radio show
Jokes
Songs
film pitch
Although learners weren’t necessarily going to need to produce these genres in future – only a few of us will ever write obituaries, I hope! – it did help to push them further and they were much more aware of choices in register and language which meant they were developing as users rather than just practising the genres again and again.

For me, these three areas were key in ensuring that learners both felt challenged and actually were challenged in their learning, but what I would also recommend is including regular ‘check-ins’ with learners. At this level, they can usually articulate clearly what they want to learn, how they want to learn and what they enjoy or not. This means that ongoing needs analysis is as important as doing a needs analysis at the start of the course. Sometimes it would take the form of an informal chat at the end of the lesson or week or a short questionnaire or exit ticket. By getting learner feedback, I learned what learners found useful or not, whether they wanted more of a particular genre, activity or skill.

This really helped to inform the upcoming lessons I was designing to make sure the challenge was right.
Bibliography
Lewis M. & Gough C. (2008). Implementing the lexical approach : putting theory into practice (Repr). Thomson Heinle.