A review of week 2 of FutureLearn's Teaching English Online course.

As promised, here is my review of  week two of FutureLearn's Teaching English Online course. In the second week the main focus is on how teaching the four skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening differs from the methods and techniques a teacher would employ in a face-to face situation and then the course goes on to demonstrate how to adapt resources so that they are suitable for use in a virtual classroom. Each of the four skills are addressed and participants learn how to approach teaching each of them in a virtual environment and suggestions are made by the course as to which tools and resources might be used, depending on the specific learning needs of the individual or group.

The lead educators quite rightly point out that when teaching speaking lessons online it is imperative to have a clear purpose and learning outcomes to aim for. Furthermore, they also warn teachers of the dangers of just chatting and wrongly convincing themselves that they are teaching. In discussing how to manage speaking activities a great suggestion was made regarding giving feedback in an online session. The strategy involves flashcards that the teacher holds up which the student then uses to help themselves self-correct. Cards can be colour-coded or labelled according to the error made, such as vocabulary, tense, article, pronoun, singular/plural.  I agree that this would be an effective way of giving feedback as it reduces interruptions on the part of the teacher and encourages learners to try to recognise their own mistakes. One of the great benefits of teaching online, which the lead educators encourage teachers to take advantage of, is the ability to record speaking lessons so that the teacher can evaluate the speaking more thoroughly outside of the lesson and so that the student can listen to their own speaking and thus gain insight into areas of speech which they might improve. In fact, the new desktop version of Skype now has this feature built-in and so teachers who use Skype as their primary teaching platform can implement this. In addition, Zoom is another platform that is mentioned that has the ability to record audio and video.

When teaching reading online, the course leaders emphasise that it is important to plan in advance whether or not the reading material should be read in the lesson or before the class. Course participants can explore different reading tools that can be integrated into online teaching lessons and are also asked to complete a task to help them to evaluate when it is appropriate to choose to have the student complete the reading in class or outside of class. I think this exercise helps teachers to realise that reading a large amount of text in the lesson is not always an effective use of class time. Careful evaluation of reading goals and the context can help educators to determine when reading texts in class is appropriate as part of managing the learning process. One aspect of reading to be aware of is that the teacher is not able to know exactly what the student views on their own screen when resources are shared via screen-share. A font size or screen share that we teachers can see very easily on our own monitor can be small and overwhelming to students when viewed on their own monitors. It's always important to ask students if what they see is clear and comfortable for them. Some platforms such as Zoom, which seems to be a favourite amongst online educators, allow you to share a window rather a whole screen. The teacher may then be able to zoom the window size. Another valuable aspect of this module is that course participants can complete a task whereby they plan a reading lesson and then have it reviewed by their peers.

Listening is an important skill to develop and this is also discussed. The lead educators do emphasise that it is essential that the student uses a good pair of headphones when participating in listening activities as external noise can seriously impair the student's ability to hear the audio.  I would take this a step further and request that students use a headset, preferably with noise cancelling, for the duration of the lesson and not just for listening activities. Lessons may take place in a variety of environments and reducing background noise makes the lesson much more enjoyable and beneficial.  When preparing students for exams such as the Cambridge English exams I have found it invaluable to play the audio and share it with the student as it allows them to experience what it will be like to undertake a listening task in a controlled environment. By controlling the audio the teacher can then make sure that the audio is only played the required number of times and is listened to without pauses. This will benefit both the teacher and the learner. The teacher will have a better indication of how ready a student is for an exam and the learner would be able to identify if they are able to complete the listening tasks without replaying the audio multiple times or pausing the recording periodically. Of course, if the listening activity is not exam based then the teacher can replay and pause the audio track as is appropriate to the needs of the learner or group.

In addressing the topic of writing, the lead educators draw attention to the fact that this skill is often neglected in online teaching sessions. They do stress however, that teaching via the Internet need not be a barrier to developing this important aspect of language learning.  A number of task types are suggested, such as writing simple sentences for lower-level students and proofreading and editing longer essays and tasks that may have been completed for homework. The utilisation of tools such as Google Docs for collaborative writing are discussed and if a teacher is working with a group of learners then this would be a way of working together to produce one piece of text. Again, various digital tools are mentioned and participants are asked to explore the tools and then match them to the correct learning goal of a student or learning group.

As I mentioned in my review of the first week of the course, a participant really needs to keep a list of the all of the resources suggested and then designate time to explore them more thoroughly to see how they would work for them in their teaching sessions. It's also worth taking the time to look through the comments at the bottom of the web pages and learning from what other participants have shared about their own experiences and the advice they give. I myself have made notes of tools and resources suggested. There is much an experienced online teacher can gain from this course and I would heartily recommend it to any person who either currently works in this sector or who is considering online teaching as a career move. Take this great training opportunity while it is available! Watch out for my review of the third and final week.