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Making homework count

By Stephanie Hirschman

October 8, 2024

Homework and independent study can make a massive contribution to students’ progress, particularly when classes don’t meet daily, or students aren’t living, working or studying in anglophone environments. There are several issues to consider when setting homework.

Why students are doing homework is a fundamental question which can cover a wide spectrum of reasons. The most obvious is that it offers both teachers and students a chance to check on learning and identify areas for further review and consolidation. Exam preparation courses make use of homework to consolidate and accelerate learning and deliver results. Finally, some institutions require teachers to set homework and some clients, for example parents, believe that a course with homework offers better value for money.

Whatever the reason behind setting homework, be clear with students about how they’ll benefit from the assignment, how to do it effectively, how long they should spend on it and how it will be marked.

The homework that many people expect from a language course is “more of the same” exercises, that is, those that offer extra opportunities to practice grammar or vocabulary from the lesson.

It is also possible to bring in practice from other online or print sources, but this can sometimes be problematic, especially for lower levels. Make sure that the resource you choose maps onto the lesson content without placing extra demands on students, for example, by introducing a completely different context or topic with unfamiliar vocabulary to practice a grammar point. You also need to make sure that terminology is consistent – students who are expecting to practice present continuous may not recognize that it is also called present progressive. With lower levels, go over the instructions and/or demonstrate one of the exercises so they know how to get started.

It's worth mentioning here that flipped learning may also be a useful approach to homework. This is where students preview part of the lesson plan (like a reading or listening task) or research a general topic independently before class in order to maximize opportunities for communicative activities during the lesson.

Other types of homework include semi-controlled practice of target language. Students could write personal sentences including vocabulary items or grammatical structures from the class – note that they may need training to do this. A sentence like, “The milk went off,” is not as effective for learning as, “We had no milk for the coffee this morning – it went off because we didn’t put it in the fridge last night.” You may wish to provide some question or example prompts as support.

An unusual and motivating type of speaking homework is a personalized bingo game. Students create their own bingo card, which might be a 4x4 grid. In each cell, they write a key word or structure from the lesson that they wish to practice during the next few days. They carry the card around in their pocket, and every time they use an item of target language, they can tick it off, aiming to complete a line. This is especially suitable for students who are living, working or studying in anglophone environments. Teachers can monitor progress regularly and even offer small prizes.

The question of what teachers actually do with homework also has multiple possible responses, which will depend on the teaching context. At one end of the spectrum, if there is good buy-in from the students, teachers may only need to point them towards a selected set of “more of the same” exercises and make sure the answers are accessible for self-checking. Make it clear that you welcome questions if anything isn’t clear and test regularly to check understanding.

Whatever choices you make about homework, here’s one final tip. It’s best to complete assignments the day after receiving them and not on the same day. Research on spaced repetition shows that reviewing information after around 24 hours, “just before you forget it,” is the most effective way to boost retention.

Adapted from: https://www.linguahouse.com/blog/post/makinghomework-count

Acesso em 25/10/2024

Reading skill will help you to improve your understanding of the language and build your vocabulary.

Social Media Across Generations

Today’s grandparents are joining their grandchildren on social media, but the different generations’ online habits couldn’t be more different. In the UK the over-55s are joining Facebook in increasing numbers, meaning that they will soon be the site’s second biggest user group, with 3.5 million users aged 55-64 and 2.9 million over-65s.

Sheila, aged 59, says, I joined to see what my grandchildren are doing, as my daughter posts videos and photos of them. It’s a much better way to see what they’re doing than waiting for letters and photos in the post. That’s how we did it when I was a child, but I think I’m lucky I get to see so much more of their lives than my grandparents did.

Ironically, Sheila’s grandchildren are less likely to use Facebook themselves. Children under 17 in the UK are leaving the site – only 2.2 million users are under 17 – but they’re not going far from their smartphones. Chloe, aged 15, even sleeps with her phone. It’s my alarm clock so I have to she says. I look at it before I go to sleep and as soon as I wake up.

Unlike her grandmother’s generation, Chloe’s age group is spending so much time.......... their phones.......... home that they are missing out on spending time with their friends in real life. Sheila, on the other hand, has made contact with old friends from school she hasn’t heard...................40 years. We use Facebook to arrange to meet all over the country, she says. It’s changed my social life completely.

Teenagers might have their parents to thank for their smartphone and social media addiction as their parents were the early adopters of the smartphone. Peter, 38 and father of two teenagers, reports that he used to be on his phone or laptop constantly. I was always connected and I felt like I was always working, he says. How could I tell my kids to get off their phones if I was always in front of a screen myself? So, in the evenings and at weekends, he takes his SIM card out of his smartphone and puts it into an old-style mobile phone that can only make calls and send text messages. I’m not completely cut off from the world in case of emergencies, but the important thing is I’m setting a better example to my kids and spending more quality time with them.

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Reading skill will help you to improve your understanding of the language and build your vocabulary.

Read the text below carefully.

Social media, magazines and shop windows bombard people daily with things to buy, and British consumers are buying more clothes and shoes than ever before. Online shopping means it is easy for customers to buy without thinking, while major brands offer such cheap clothes that they can be treated like disposable items – worn two or three times and then thrown away

In Britain, the average person spends more than £1,000 on new clothes a year, which is around four per cent of their income. That might not sound like much, but that figure hides two far more worrying trends for society and for the environment. First, a lot of that consumer spending is via credit cards. British people currently owe approximately £670 per adult to credit card companies. That’s 66 per cent of the average wardrobe budget. Also, not only are people spending money they don’t have, they’re using it to buy things they don’t need. Britain throws away 300,000 tons of clothing a year, most of which goes into landfill sites.

People might not realize they are part of the disposable clothing problem because they donate their unwanted clothes to charities. But charity shops can’t sell all those unwanted clothes. Fast fashion goes out of fashion as quickly as it came in and is often too poor quality to recycle; people don’t want to buy it second-hand. Huge quantities end up being thrown away, and a lot of clothes that charities can’t sell are sent abroad, causing even more economic and environmental problems.

However, a different trend is springing up in opposition to consumerism – the ‘buy nothing’ trend. The idea originated in Canada in the early 1990s and then moved to the US, where it became a rejection of the overspending and overconsumption of Black Friday and Cyber Monday during Thanksgiving weekend. On Buy Nothing Day people organize various types of protests and cut up their credit cards. Throughout the year, Buy Nothing groups organize the exchange and repair of items they already own.

The trend has now reached influencers on social media who usually share posts of clothing and make- -up that they recommend for people to buy. Some YouTube stars now encourage their viewers not to buy anything at all for periods as long as a year. Two friends in Canada spent a year working towards buying only food. For the first three months they learned how to live without buying electrical goods, clothes or things for the house. For the next stage, they gave up services, for example haircuts, eating out at restaurants or buying petrol for their cars. In one year, they’d saved $55,000. 

The changes they made meant two fewer cars on the roads, a reduction in plastic and paper packaging and a positive impact on the environment from all the energy saved. If everyone followed a similar plan, the results would be impressive. But even if you can’t manage a full year without going shopping, you can participate in the anti-consumerist movement by refusing to buy things you don’t need. Buy Nothing groups send a clear message to companies that people are no longer willing to accept the environmental and human cost of overconsumption.

source: learnenglish.britishcouncil.org