giving homework

Giving Homework | Pinkie | February 10th, 2001

Dear All...

Long may the Cultural Imperialism thread bubble away: but meanwhile, can I attempt a little straw poll? This arises from my MET assignment, which related to homework. I did a search for the word "homework" in ERIC, but got VERY few hits in TESOL contexts, which surprised me. [Perhaps it's just that the word has gone out of fashion? Maybe if I'd tried "teacher-specified out-of-class activities"?! And is it called homework in the States and Canada?].

Anyway, my little straw poll...

Do you regularly give "homework"? If so, in what contexts? And do you present it as pretty much obligatory, or as an optional extra for students who want to do it?

That's it, thanks. I'm taking my shoes and socks off ready to count all the replies!

Best,

Pinkie Spain

Re: Giving homework | Rita Balbi | February 10th, 2001

Dear Pinkie,

This is to answer you poll on homework. My experience refers to the years 72/84 and 96/98. These periods cover the time when I taught at a nautical school mainly attended by boys between 14 and 19.

When I arrived I used to assign some homework as I had done in the previous schools but I noticed that less than half of the students did it and there was no way to convince the others. For various reasons most of the students were not accustomed to work for school outside school (some spent 8/10 hours considering school time and traveling time, some worked in the afternoon, some were just lazy...). Besides the students who had done the homework wanted to have it corrected; this activity would take about fifteen minutes and was scarcely productive as many students were unable to follow a collective correction. In this context I decided to stop assigning any compulsory homework. The reasons were to use class time more productively and to avoid to "lose face". I didn't want to commit myself to a struggle in which I would be a loser. I limited myself to encourage the students to revise what we had done in class, to go through their notes and similar things. In some periods of the school year students would take turns in preparing something at home such as presenting a text of their choice to the class as a song or whatever they wanted. (in this way the first 5 minutes of each lesson were conducted by a different student each time.

The results of no compulsory homework were:

•  Students felt their needs were taken into account

•  Attention and involvement during class time increased as English became the subject you learn in class

•  A small percentage of students would anyway try to "be in touch" with English through songs, films, Internet, texts considered relevant ranging from magazines about motorcycles to newspaper articles about football.

For sake of honesty I should also say that other teachers in the same school have a different approach to this issue and continue to struggle...

I hope this is what you were looking for..

All the best

Rita Balbi

Re: Giving homework | Francesca | February 12th, 2001

Dear Pinkie,

Yes, I give homework. I'm not sure what you mean by ' in what context?' though, could you be more specific? It's obligatory, but if students don't do it I never get upset (my students are all adult learners) and if the entire group doesn't want to have homework, I don't give it. I once let each student decide what he / she wanted to do for homework and had individual tutorials to give guidance and monitor what was happening. It worked well, but was time consuming and only possible because the school had an excellent resource centre / library etc for students to get materials from.

Short and sweet,

Francesca

Re: Giving homework | Pinkie | February 12th, 2001

Hi Francesca!

You wrote

I'm not sure what you mean by 'in what context?' though, could you be more specific?

Just meant what classroom context: e.g. Age group? Public school in Harlem, or private classes for the Sultan of Brunei? "General" English or English for Telephone Hygienists? That sort of thing.

Anyway, your reply is quite clear in this respect. Very many thanks!

Pinkie
Spain

Re: Giving homework | James Hobbs | February 12th, 2001

Pinkie,

PS Very many thanks for the fascinating reply on homework. Why don't you post it to the list?

'Cos it was a real 'off the top of my head' answer that I thought was far from fascinating, and it was also a feeble attempt to hide my main motive of getting you to send me some "challenges"!! But as you now have everyone losing sleep under the misconception that they're missing out on a revolutionary theory of homework, here goes....

I have private students write optional diaries, with no rules about length of entries, and correct the English at regular intervals, and also provide tapes for listening practice for those eager to practice. For those not interested, fair enough. As for university classes, I usually give an early written homework (obligatory) to get an initial idea of English level/ motivation and spot the students who are likely to need help. Thereafter I sometimes give obligatory homework to write-up the results of speaking activities (a variety of Willis's "reporting stage" of the task cycle, I suppose). I just feel I should avoid having prolonged periods of silent writing during a "conversation" class. I hope it gets the students to focus on vocabulary and structures that were intended to be the focus of the speaking activity, but which they probably weren't able to use entirely smoothly. I do tend to feel that the word "homework" has some stigma attached to it, and I don't consciously use the word; instead I might just say something like "Do this before the next lesson" without formally announcing "This is homework."

That's all. It's just an honest account of what I do, and certainly not in any way intended as a comment on the "correct" approach to homework.

You ask for transcripts of FTAs. D'you mean transcripts strictly speaking, or will you accept more or less hazy recollections?

Transcripts strictly speaking would be best (e.g. Francesca's example (Jan 19)), but beggars can't be choosers, so I'll take whatever anybody's offering; the worst that can happen is that I don't actually use them. In my case, recording every class I teach simply isn't feasible, so instead I've been keeping my ears open and jotting down exchanges from memory as soon as I get the chance during the lesson, or immediately after it. I think that sort of thing would be fine; beyond that it depends on just how hazy the recollections are ... and on how hard up for data I am!

Best,

James Hobbs

Re: Giving homework | Murray | February 12th, 2001

Hello Pinkie,

I teach mostly technical people in the oil industry, most of them working shifts and some working away from Baku for 2 weeks at a time.

I give all my students homework on a regular basis as a means of reinforcing and extending what we've done in class. This might be things like workbook activities, short pieces of writing, extended reading activities with graded readers, the usual. Homework is compulsory and students know that I expect them to do it, although I don't make too much of a fuss when they don't, just try to point out why I feel they should do it.

I don't always give the same amounts of homework. The shift workers get less than those working away from Baku as they work six 12 hour shifts and then have three days off to see the family- I only give them homework at the end of the shift as they are in no state to do it in the middle. The ones who work on rotation get a lot more homework because they can't attend class for two or three weeks at a time and then attend for one or two weeks intensively or semi-intensively and I feel that if they don't do a fair bit of work while they are away they will make very slow progress indeed.

Students in regular classes also get regular homework but more at the weekend.

I call it homework even though some of the students don't do it at home but at work.

Best,

Murray
Azerbaijan

Re: homework | Rita Balbi | February 12th, 2001

Basically my teaching is divided into two main areas, business schools and in house company lessons.

For the business schools: this is very traditional. I am expected to set homework, this is marked and all the marks are given to the head of the school. Failure to set homework is a "capital offence" and failure to set homework would result in an invitation to leave the school in double quick time. Regular tests etc are also a must if one wants to give the impression of being a "serious" teacher.

For the in house adult lessons, I tend to use the workbooks with the answers and then get the students to correct the homework themselves and get back to me if there is a problem. Otherwise I find (like Rita) that half the class has done the work and the others haven't so that going through the work collectively becomes a mess because the ones that haven't done the work are trying to do it as we progress.

I have often noted that students will complain if I give no homework but if I start giving them regular work to do the good intention lasts a couple of weeks and then after a few weeks the homework isn't done anyway. I try to encourage the students to listen to the BBC or read in English or basically to foster their interest in English outside the classroom.

Best,

Jonathan Clifton

Re: homework | John Bartrick | February 13th, 2001

I work with young learners 8 - 16.

Sample class 8 - 10 year olds. (They are grouped by years of English study rather than age).

Learners are expected to learn meaning and spelling of words for the next lesson. I count this as pre-teaching vocab although it's more like an introduction to pre-teaching vocab. (we have to explain them again in class). Some teachers set "copy" where learners copy a part of a text from the coursebook. I gave this up after asking learners to read or translate the copied text and finding they had semi-accurately reproduced a piece of writing which meant absolutely nothing to them.

Workbooks supply reinforcement of the main points of the lesson in written form.

There is plenty of project-style work where learners make a drawing or poster to complement the work of the lesson. We then display this work on the wall or in scrapbooks. I find these activities more useful in terms of encouraging enthusiasm for the lesson and making the aim of a particular lesson more memorable.

What I find interesting though is the strong expectation by learners and parents for homework to be set, with the lack of it suggesting that the lesson wasn't that important.

I'm not sure how valuable the work they do at home is at this stage. For example, if I ask learners about words from the previous week's wordlist, they often explain they could not be expected to know them as they were from a previous lesson.

However, there is something about the establishment of regular study routines that appeals. Learners who shy away from homework are almost always those who later have problems with the lesson.

Must dash.

John Bartrick

PS Congrats to Pinkie for producing a task that encourages participants to explain their personal teaching contexts more fully.

Re: Giving homework | Danyal | February 13th, 2001

Context? I teach IELTS classes and general English to adults, pre intermediate and up. Groups of 6 - 10, single nationality, bi-weekly classes.

For IELTS, Reading/Writing homework is a must. I tell STS I can only assure a band improvement if they do this as its an inherent part of my course. The homework is band marked and corrected with symbols allowing self-correction with the matching correction guide. STS will then often rewrite it and resubmit.

For the general classes, there are those who want it, and those who don't. Since the courses are speaking centred, homework is always writing. I 'invite' STS to write to me e.g. diary entries, holidays, interests, basically anything of interest to them. Often it's a follow up to a task-based activity we've done in class. Submission rates are around 50% - 60%. I find the topics the STS choose often give rise to subsequent lessons and highlight the weak areas. The STS really appreciate this since it often effects student centred learning.

Echoing someone else: could you issue your main findings to the discussion group once you've processed them?

Danyal

Taipei

Re: Giving homework | Pinkie | February 13th, 2001

That was a whole lot of fascinating responses from everyone: very many thanks. I won't attempt any sort of comment: just to say that I find it extremely useful to learn about people's specific contexts and specific solutions.

As it turns out, I haven't had to use my toes for counting yet - though I live in hope, and still have my shoes and socks off!

To bring the count up to 8, here's my contribution...

I give short courses in scientific writing (e.g. "English for Biomedical Research") at a Spanish university. My students are practicing researchers (doctoral students and teaching staff). [Newcomers please note: I know enough about scientific writing, but I'm pretty much a novice teacher, so don't attach too much weight to what I say.].

I've recently been giving homework of two types. First, I ask each student to bring a photocopy of a research article from her field, and I have them doing little text-analysis tasks with their article: so for example I might ask them to identify all "reporting verbs" in the Introduction of their article. Second, I set little writing tasks allowing each student to write about their own field. The main aim of both types of activity is to enable students to do tasks more specifically related to their precise field of research than is feasible during class.

Difficulties?

1) I present the homework as obligatory, but on a given day perhaps 25% of students won't have done it, causing problems during classroom feedback activities (as mentioned by both Rita and Jonathan).

2) Often I find it difficult to devise "article homework" tasks that tie in well with that day's classroom focus.

3) Conscientious correction of writing-task homework often takes more time than I can afford to give (no prizes for guessing that!).

Again, thanks to everyone for these fascinating posts, and looking forward to more.

Best,

Pinkie

Re: Giving homework | Jay G. | February 14th, 2001

I teach a lot of Hotels here in Indonesia. I set HW often and almost everyone completes it. Even if the odd 1 or 2 people do not I allow for a 5 min "compare and check your answer session" also disguised as "hurry up and copy the answers down from a student who did their HW".

I find this is the greatest incentive for doing the HW itself, as most of my learners are very motivated and not doing or attempting the HW draws a few boos in the class (in good fun of course)! I never make it mandatory rather I try to give the HW meaning. By making it meaningful, (give the Ss a reason to do the HW i.e. to improve X ...etc) I find that Ss benefit and now expect a reasonable amount of HW. What's reasonable I sometimes negotiate with the Ss as they spend long hours at work.

Hope it helps ...run out of toes and fingers yet???

Jay G.

Re: Giving homework | Aleka | February 14th, 2001

Hi everybody!

Reading the e-mails about homework a possible connection of it to motivation came to my mind. For instance, if the student's motive is just to get a good mark or gain a sticker, homework itself isn't important and can be done without much thought or can be copied without any feeling of guilt. I think that Jay Graham's idea of giving HW meaning can motivate the students to do it thoroughly. I've noticed that most of my students do their homework willingly when they are convinced that, somehow, it helps them to overcome weaknesses. On the other hand, I agree with all of you who supported that there is some writing or projects which can be allocated as homework and arouse students' interest, like the diary that James mentioned. Perhaps, Leo Van Lier's ideas on motivation can help.

What about correcting homework? How do you mark homework so as not to discourage some students and tempt them to cheat and copy?- I've noticed that marking homework can be a kind of motivation for some students and discourage others. Do you have similar experiences?

Thank you all for your ideas on homework. In fact I'm going to try some.

Aleka

Re: Giving homework | Darin Bicknell | February 15th, 2001

Homework is a given 2 or 3 times a week in my Foundation II class. The product from the students varies greatly. Most of the past students have indicated they want homework but in reality they are often overloaded, as they do not make good use of their time.

Issues ranging from poor sleeping habits to outright loneliness seem to get in the way of effort. When I get their homework back and see it completed and the effort is there in the work I am happy. The work is often review or reinforcement of the lessons that day.

Some extended writing is called for as they are High School students now entering Secondary 4 or PU1 or PU2 and are taught completely in English for all subjects except 2 nd language Chinese. The homework often has to reflect the reality of work given by various teachers in the Academic Classes.

Hope that helps you some.

Darin

 

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