Theory

Professor Nikolov, kids’ motivation to learn English and classroom research

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Autum in Wallonia

When I look back at the two and a half years of the MA programme at the University of Leicester, I am thinking of a marathon (a prolonged period of strict routine, extensive emotional and physical expenditure and obligatory one-track-mindedness). Actually, five marathons in a row. But when I look back, it is also the time when one could revel in reading and research, having access to the treasures to the university libraries of the world.

Apart from going through piles of studies and articles to find out data for my assignments and thesis, I also started to make up a list of pieces to share with my teachers and my trainees. Jerome Bruner’s (et al) and the study of the role of tutoring aka scaffolding is already on the blog here and, I am happy to say, for a very long time, it was one of the most popular posts. It still stays somewhere in the top 15…

Today, part 2 of the same series. Enter: professor Marianne Nikolov.

A personal role model

There is something very touching about the career of professor Nikolov (PhD, Professor Emerita at the University of Pécs, Hungary), who after years and years of regular and everyday school teaching started to work as a researcher and, who, eventually, switched into the academia. This very research which is described in the article was her first long-term research, as she says herself, it is in many ways imperfect mainly due to the fact that it was carried out by someone who was, back then, an inexperienced researcher. So much more precious because of that and so much more inspiring for all of us, teachers and trainers, to get our own classroom projects started.

The presentation on the recent research into early years that professor Nikolov gave at the 1st Hellenic Conference on Early Language Learning in Greece, in 2013 is, in my humble opinion, a must for all the VYL teachers, as a crash course into the early years EFL.

‘Why do you learn English?’ ‘Because my teacher is short’

This gem, unique and unforgettable, is the title of the study that I would like to introduce you to and encourage you to read today. And, frankly, could there be a better title to an article devoted to early years and young EFL learners? I seriously doubt it.

It was published in 1999 and it is an account of a long-term study of a group of Hungarian children, aged 6 – 14 and analysing their motivation to learn English at school. Professor Nikolov gave out the questionnaire to her students, which the kids filled in (in their L1) and which was followed by a feedback session with the kids.

Without risking that I would deprive anyone of the pleasures of reading the article, I would like to share here my own main take-outs:

  • all the reasons to learn English have been divided into four groups: the classroom experience (aka the activities), the teacher (‘my teacher is short’), the external reasons (aka the parents and the grades) and the utilitarian reasons (aka the future) (p. 42)
  • all these were present in the answers given by different ages but it was possible to distinguish three sub-groups: grades 1 – 2, grades 3 – 5 and grades 6 – 8
  • the attitude to English (one of everyone’s favourite subjects) was compared with the attitude to the other subjects
  • a whole range of favourite classroom activities was revealed and a range of nobody’s favourite activities such as tests, acting out and (this one made me laugh) boring stories
  • in response to the final question (‘If you were a teacher, what would you do differently?), some kids suggested abandoning tests, some felt that the teacher should be stricter while dealing with different classroom management issues but many didn’t want to change anything at all.
  • the connection between the school grades and the motivation. On the one hand they are the extrinsic motives, on the other hand, as professor Nikolov says, ‘achievements represented by good grades, rewards and language knowledge all serve as motivating forces: children feel successful and this feeling generates the need for further success‘ (p. 46).

A source of inspiration, no metaphors

When I first found the article, I wanted to read it precisely because of the title. It made me smile because this quote is perfect and it reveals a lot of how the kids see the world. Plus it is a fantastic way of drawing the attention of the readers-researchers whose passion are YL. Then, I started to read, curious what I would find them. Finally, it struck me that I did not know what my students would say and that is because I had never asked them.

I was mortified that, in a way, I had taken my kids for granted. Yes, we had been studying together for years, their parents had been bringing them, year after year and there had been no issues, we had fun and we had made progress. But I had never actually asked them.

Naturally, I decided to change it and professor Nikolov’s research was my inspiration and my guidance.

My research took two directions:

a) I prepared a questionnaire for kids and I used exactly the same questions that professor Nikolov used with her students. I wrote them in English and in Russian and the kids were told that they were able to use whichever language they wanted. The funny and the most amazing thing is that some of my A1+ kids tried to express some of their thoughts in the target language.

b) I prepared a questionnaire for the parents, too, partially because some of my students were 4 y.o. and beginners and, partially, because I wanted to find out what kind of an impact the home environment has on the kids’ motivation. The parents were asked to answer the following questions: Do you do anything in English at home? Does anyone else speak English? Before starting to learn English, did you have a conversation with your child about it? What did you talk about? Do you know what your child likes and doesn’t like about our classes and about their English classes at school.

‘How come I never asked before?‘

…is something that I still keep asking myself. Apart from an opportunity to exercise my almost non-existant researcher skills, this questionnaire and this adventure gave me a fascinating opportunity to see the bigger picture and to become more aware of everything that might have an impact on how my students see the language learning process.

Here are are few insights:

  • most of my educational parents admitted to chatting to their kids about the reason to learn English, although sometimes the kids, due to their age, were not quite interested.
  • some of the preparation was done in a rather informal way as English as a means of communication entered their lives anyway since they had an opportunity to travel abroad, they were visited by parents’ friends from abroad. They could also see their relatives use English at work or at school.
  • some of my younger kids already expressed some of the utalitarian reasons (‘he wants to work for Lego or Hot Wheels’), this was a lot more common among the older students
  • the most interesting fact was that for many of my students English was not only a subject, something that belongs strictly in the school. Rather than that, it was a family thing, something you do with mum or dad or with the siblings, younger or older, although, none of the kids came from bilingual families.
  • as for the kids, their reasons could be divided into the four groups highlighted by professor Nikolov: the external (‘My mum told me to’), the utilitarian (‘I will travel to different countries and cities’), the teacher (‘Because of Anka’) (insert a million hearts here) and the classroom (‘Because I like it’)

The follow-up?

Raising the awareness and finding out is only the first step and it highlights the importance of a few processes. Naturally, the teacher has no influence on the background of the students or on the family social status and their ability to travel abroad for example. However, the teacher can make sure that the parents are involved in the classroom activities and classroom life, to the extent in which it is possible and, at least, those parents that wish to be involved. This can be done through helping to take English out of the classroom and extending the exposure by sharing songs, games, activities and keeping the parents informed.

There are also some opportunities to bring the world into the classroom, especially nowadays, in the post-covid, zoom world by using the real life materials, traditional stories, guests, virtual guests, pen pals etc. This way, even without travelling, kids will see the connection between the coursebooks on their desks and the world out there.

There is a lot that the teacher can do as regards including the age-appropriate activities, finding out what the favourite activities are and working on building the community even if only by learning the kids’ names, celebrating birthdays and creating the new, group-specific traditions and ‘traditions’.

The first step can be reading about professor Nikolov’s study and running your own research and finding out why your students like to learn English…

Happy teaching!

P.S.

Fun fact? This blog was created as my reward for completing the MA programme. I submitted the final version of my dissertation around midnight on the night of the 1st and 2nd of March 2020 and, on the 2nd of March, during the day, when I did catch my breath a bit, I got my funky socks and my dragons in line…

Bibliography

Marianne Nikolov, ‘Why do you learn English?’ ‘Because my teacher is short’. A study of Hungarian children’s foreign language learning motivation. Language Teaching Research, 1999:3:33, p. 33 – 56

Dear Mr Bruner aka Exercises in scaffolding

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Dear Mr Bruner,

I am happy to inform you that, inspired by your article, I have decided to follow your example and to start experimenting in the area of scaffolding…

Oh, how I wish I could write a letter of that kind. Since I first read the article by Bruner, Woods and Ross on the original research and how the term ‘scaffolding’ started to mean what it does to us, teachers and educators, it has become a kind of a life mission to spread the word about it among my teachers and trainees, conference attendees and, of course, the readers of my blog. This is also the area that I choose to invesitage in my first classroom research project as part of my MA programme.

Of course, the most important things keep happening in the classroom, in the everyday when you observe and adapt your instructions, gestures, voice and actions to better suit the young or very young learners as regards demonstration, marking critical features, reduction in degrees of freedom, recruitment, direction maintenance and frustration control (the six orignal features outlined in the article).

This time, the starting point was the lazy teacher…

I started to plan the final lesson with my three pre-school groups that also happened to be our Christmas lesson. And it was out of this tiredness and the madness of the end of the year that made me wake up one day and decide: ‘I am going to repeat the lesson!’

Three lessons in a row, three different levels, three different age groups and the same lesson plan. Well, to a point, of course. We would all study the same vocabulary set and sing the same songs, but the activities would vary, depending on what the children are capable of.

Topic, vocabulary and structure

There were eight words in the set (Santa, a reindeer, a stocking, a Christmas tree, a present, a start, a snowflake, a snowman) and I wanted to combine them with the question that we all had been practising before: ‘What is it?’ ‘It’s a…’.

The level 1 kids (and the youngest group) have got as far recognising the words and pointing at the right flashcards and participating in the ‘What’s missing?’ game although most of the time they would guess the missing word in Russian and they actively produced only some of them in English, such as ‘a star’, ‘a snowman’ and Santa. We also watched the ‘Guess the word video‘ and it was a chance for us to drill the vocabulary in a different way. We also introduced ‘What do you want for Christmas‘ and it was a nice opportunity for us to revise toys which we covered in the previous unit. But only that. In the end of the lesson we also had time for storytelling and we used Rod Campbell ‘My presents’, again as a way of revising the key vocabulary.

With the level 2 kids, we did pretty much the same but the kids were able to remember and to reproduce all eight words really quickly. We played the same game (What’s missing) but they were all actively involved and producing. We watched the video and guessed the words, pretty much just the way the younger group did, although it was interesting that I did not need to encourage them to repeat the words and, as soon as the full picture and the correct answer was revealed, the kids said the word without any cues from me. It seems that due to their age and to the fact that they have been in class for longer, they are much better used to that kind of reaction to the content. We seem to have developed that habit already.

As for the song, we even managed to personalise the song and talk about whether each of the presents featuring in the song are a good idea (or not? ‘Not’, according to some students:-) and we sang a verse for each of the kids:

‘What do you want for Christmas, Christmas, Christmas? What do you want for Christmas? Santa is on his way…’

‘I want a…’

I did not use the storybook with the older children. I had planned it only for the little ones. For the older ones, we had a back-up of an episode of Christmas Peppa, but, in the end, there was no time for that.

The oldest group, level 3 kids, need only a quick revision of all the words and then we could play a variety of games. We did not even play ‘What’s missing?’ as they are too ‘adult’ and this particular game is not challeging for them anymore. Instead, we played a team game, ‘Tell me about it’, in which the players choose a box, open it and say something about the picture hidden in the box. And they collect the points.

We did use the video mentioned above but in this lesson it was not just a simple guessing game, we also managed to talk about whether each round is going to be easy or difficult and then to comment on what it really was. And, of course, the song was also personalised and followed-up by a proper chat. There was also another song, ‘Who took the cookie from the cookie jar?‘, in its life acquatic version (nothing to do with Christmas, but the kids were curious and this is the game we are playing right now). This group are already quite good at personalising songs (aka ‘The original version is good but let’s see what we can do with it and how can we make it better?’) so it was the kids to suggest that we start singing it when we pick up our surprise at the end of the lesson from the reception. If I rememeber correctly, the final version of it (as shaped up by the kids) went along the lines of: ‘Who took the surprise from the surprise jar?‘

I was teaching, having fun and keeping my eyes and ears open and trying to remember what was happening. It was already very interesting but I was really waiting for the most important part, the cherry on the cake.

The cherry on the cake

Surprisingly enough, this time round, it did take a long while to choose the craft activity but finally I settled on the snowman. I found something that I liked among the 25 Easy Snowman Crafts For Kids on countryliving.com. I planned the lesson, spent an hour cutting out the circles, the noses, the hats, the arms and the Christmas trees and orgnising the room. And then we took off.

It so does happen that although my children are divided into groups by the level and by the age, there are exceptions and special cases in all three groups.

The actitivity, the materials, the staging and the instructions were exactly the same in all three groups but the outcomes (visible in the photographs below) and the scaffolding necessary (not visible in the photographs:-) heavily depended on the age of the students.

The youngest students produced these beauties:

This was interesting, especially because this lesson came first and after a very short moment, I realised that, while preparing and planning, I gauged myself for a slightly older audience and I had to adapt on the go, especially for the almost 3 y.o. girl for whom it was the trial lesson and the first 45 minutes in our classroom.

It turned out pretty quickly that it is quite a challenge to glue the ribbon, to turn the circle over and to tie it and that the orange ‘carrot’ nose is actually very small. But we managed, with the pace really, really slow and the teacher keeping an eye and demonstrating everything twice. Plus, yes, the teacher had no other choice but to help with the ribbon.

The age of the students shows most obviously in the way that all the small parts were glued and how the eyes, the smile and the buttons were drawn, with a different level of accuracy and precision. Almost where they should be:-)

And it was because it took longer to produce the snowman that I decided to skip the little sticky arms. They were too thin, too fiddly and too risky. And the snowmen still look pretty without them.

The snowman created by the 5 y.o. hands looks like that

First of all, the five-year-old snowmen did not take as much time to produce and the little fingers were much more agile and ready. As a result, the teacher did not need to help with the ribbons, the noses were handles with much more efficiency and we did have time to add the arms.

It is interesting to see that at this age, the students did observe the teacher (the mentor / the expert) to do exactly what she was doing but they were observing to figure out what had to be done and to interpret it in their own way. Some snowmen were happy but not all. Some had the scarf tied on the neck aka above the arms and the others had it more where their snowman-y waist would be. Some had the buttons and some did not. Some snowman mouths were a string of dots, some were drawn with a line. Some of the Christmas trees were glued on the snowman’s chest (like in the teacher’s model) but then again, some were holding them in their hands (although this obviously involves even a higher level of precision).

The 6 y.o. snowmen look like that:

The older snowmen are even ‘neater’ (in inverted commas here because I adore all of these snowmen, even the ones that look as if they were created by Pablo Picasso) and the evidence of precision and accuracy as well as even a more detailed and a more personalised version, which were the students’ own additions as they were not modelled by the teacher such as the eyebrows, the hat decorations (not featured in the photos) or a bigger number of buttons.

And the oldest of them all, the almost 7 y.o.

This snowman was made by our oldest student, a girl who is actually in school but who is finishing the level with us. As regards the level of English, the development of the literacy skills, she is like the other students in the group, but her motor skills are more developed and for that reason she usually is the fast-finisher. That is not an issue and while she is waiting for the group to finish, she usually continues working on her craft or handout, adding details and decorations.

This time round, she decided that her snowman is going to be a snowgirl, with her and a bow, which was her own original idea.

Reflections of a small scale Jerome Bruner…

This was an absolutely fascinating experience and I would really recommend it to teachers who work with different levels within the same age group, especially within primary and pre-primary where scaffolding seems to be one of the most important factors deciding about the task completion and success.

  • It can be a great source of information, about the students’ skills and abilities…
  • …as well as an opportunity to trial something new, be it a song, a video, a game or a craft activity and to learn more about this type of a task.
  • It is a chance for the teacher to practise and to develp their scaffolding brain…
  • …and a great opportunity for a freer practice in the area of differentiated learning, not only within the group of learners (something that happens in every class) but on the level of different age groups and levels

Like in the original experiment, the design or the choice of the task and the material is crucial but the holiday lessons, not really closely connected to the coursebook curriculum, seem to be a perfect way out.

What else? Not much? Some curiosity on the part of the teacher, some willingness to experiment and some flexibility in order to be able to adapt on the go. Plus, the eyes wide open to notice all the little changes and proceedings.

These two, in the photo below, are my own interpretation of the original craft and a more complex version of it, here in the form of a card, made by an adult (myself). Perhaps this is what I am going to make with my oldest primary group in our Christmas lesson. If we do, I will let you know how it goes. That would be, indeed, a nice follow-up and an extension of our experiments. We’ll see. In the meantime:

Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!

Happy teaching!

Jerome et al or how the EFL world started to scaffold

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https://ru.freepik.com/free-photo/construction-site-silhouettes_1243080.htm#page=1&query=scaffolding&position=7

This is the first post in the series of ‘Reading and Research’ in which I would like to at least try to bring forward the great thinkers and researchers that stand behind everything that we do in the classroom, in the hope that in the worst case scenario it will be a tiny contribution to spreading the word and in the best case scenario, someone is going to reach out and read the original article and look at the procedures in the classroom from a different angle. Today: Jerome. Then Leo, Lily and all the other ones. And yes, I am using their first names as a sign of my utmost respect because over the years, we have grown really close.

Let me introduce my first superhero, Jerome S. Bruner.

However, before we get to scaffolding and the EFL classroom, please start with watching one of the last interviews that Jerome S. Bruner gave, in 2013, three years before his death. Why? Just to find out more about the life of a great scholar who cheated in order to be able to be enlisted to fight in WWW II, served under general Dwight Eisenhower and who, upon moving to England to start teaching at the University of Oxford in 1972, wanted to take his boat with him so badly that he basically organised an across-the-ocean sailing do with a bunch of his friends…

Now, scaffolding.

It is probably one of the very few methodology terms that made it into the everyday vernacular of teachers, used not only by trainers and resource book writers but also teachers. Such a concept! So much potential!

That is one single reason why digging deep (and deeper), it is worthwhile to be inquisitive about the beginnings of all of these concepts that are so familiar and yet so unknown and which, initially, had nothing or, indeed, very little to do with learning language.

Jerome S. Bruner and his two colleagues David Wood (University of Nottigham) and Gail Ross (Harvard University) carried out an experiment on a group of children, aged 3, 4 and 5 in order to find out how these childrenfor the first time introduced this term in relation of learning and, funnily enough, initially it had nothing, or very little, to do with learning languages.

The article was the report of the research that the three psychologists conduced on a group of children, aged 3, 4 and 5 to find out how these learners behave in a specific learning situation and how the tutor’s support, its amount and quality, varies in relation to the child’s age. This research was carried out in the light of the socio-cultural theory of learning which assumes that adults (teachers, parents, older siblings also known as ‘experts’) help children (or not adults, not experts but novices) to learn. Based on what they observed, they defined scaffolding as the ‘process that enables a child or novice to solve a problem, carry out a task or achieve a goal which would be beyond his unassisted efforts’ (Woods et al, 1976: 90).

The research

The experiment itself is a fascinating piece of reading and I would recommend having a look at it to every teacher working with young or very young learners.

Let’s take the task, first of all. The three gentlemen designed the task (and ‘the toy’) themselves with a few objectives in mind, namely it had to be interesting enough for the children to be willing to get involved or as they call it ‘feature rich’. It had to be complex to challenge the kids but at the same time achievable, both for 3 y.o. and 5 y.o. and for example it could not be very complex as regards fine motor skills of physical strength as the younger children would not be able to participate in it. What is more, it had to be repetitive to enable the children to learn while dealing with the task and to apply the developed skills in later stages of the activity.

The final result was a set of interlocking blocks, that, if used properly, come together as a pyramid. The children were allowed to play with the blocks alone, under the supervision of an experienced tutor, who would apply what techniques she found most suitable to help each child complete the task as independently as it was only possible in each case. Then, the quality of this support was analysed and conclusions drawn.

The findings

The most fascinating part of this research are the differences in they way in which children of different age groups of preschoolers reacted to the task.

During the interaction with the tutor, the youngest children needed most help but also, that, because of their age, they were not quite interested in observing the demonstration and instructions. The other children, most likely already familiar with the school set-up and the roles of the learner and the teacher, were indeed ready to listen, ready to be taught.

When it comes to the oldest children in the group, because of their cognitive development, they were ready to deal with the task, almost from the word ‘go’, with a minimal tutor support. It can be assumed that for slightly older children, the presence of the tutor would be completely redundant.

What do we, the YL teachers, get from this?

A better understandig of how the same task may or may not work with students from different age groups.

This is especially important for the teachers of very young learners. It might happen (and it often does) that, for whatever the reason, children of different ages end up studying in the same group, for example a 3 year-old with a 5 year-old, since they are both pre-school beginners. Or, even more frequently, the same coursebook is used with a group of 3 year-old beginners and with a group of 5 year-old beginners, although they are miles away in terms of social, cognitive, linguistic development.

No need to panic, however, here is the good news from Jerome et al: we can make it work. In most cases there is a leeway and the same resource, activity, handout, craft, game can be used with the younger and with the older preschoolers and the things to change will be the instructions, staging and the amoung of the teacher’s inolvement and support. A post with more examples and practical solutions soon to come!

A better understanding of what a VYL or YL activity should be, from the perspective of child development

For language teachers the most important factor to take into consideration while assessing materials and activities is their potential contribution to a meaningful language production. However, teachers working with early years, primary or pre-primary, are aware of the fact that they cannot open the book or bring a handout and hope that their students will get involved in completing the activities just because this is something that the teacher wants them to do. The criteria that Bruner et al outlined while designing their ‘toy’ are a good starting point for the teachers who can be asking the following questions while lesson planning

  • Is the task going to be ‘interesting’ for the students? Why would they want to do it? Is it a game? Is it fun? Is it colourful? Does it involve their favourite characters? It does not mean that all these criteria need to be met every single time but is it a little bit more than ‘exercise 2 on page 11’?
  • Will they be able to do it? Is it achievable for the students whose hands, brains and social skills are only 4 years old? Is it challenging enough (in terms of the congitive skills, the linguistic skills, the motor skills)?
  • Is there any point in investing the teacher’s and the students’ time and energy in it? Can it be recycled later, in any way? The game which might be possibly time-consuming to set up the first time but that can be played again and again, with different sets of vocabulary…Learning a song that, intially, might be too long and to complex but which will become the group’s feel-good anthem…Making the puppet of a favourite character that perhaps will not generate too much language in the first three months but that will be your students’ safely blanet and will make them feel safer in class…I don’t think there is one one definite answer here that would work for all the children, all the teachers and all the groups but, nonetheless, it is a good question to bear in mind.

A better understanding of how we can support our students in class

Before the concept of ‘scaffolding’ became one of the key words in EFL and before it got watered down a bit, Wood, Bruner and Ross, based on all their observations of children, managed to highlight six ways in which a tutor (or a teacher) can actually scaffold an activity. Among them (only) three are directly related to teaching:

  • demonstration (or modelling and instructions appropriate for the students’ age, level and cognitive skills),
  • marking critical features (or monitoring and feedback)
  • reduction in degrees of freedom (which stands for what is most frequently associated with scaffolding – task simplification by providing more support for the student).

The other three are more related to the fact that the group were preschool children and involve

  • getting the kids interested in the task (recruitment),
  • making sure they stay interested (direction maintenance)
  • dealing with tantrums and demotivation (frustration control) in order to enable them to complete the task.

So every single time you are demonstrating, getting your kids’ attention, calling their name to get them back or every time you praise them because you can see they are struggling and are about to burst into tears…Every time you are colour-coding the handout or manipulating it in any way to make it doable…Anytime you are putting on your silly voice to turn it into magic or counting down to signal that they should be settling down, you are, in fact, scaffolding! And that is the way to go!

References

Wood, D., J.S. Bruner and G.Ross (1976), The Role of Tutoring in Problem Solving, Journal of Child Psychology, 17, pp 89 – 100.

Inside the Psychologist’s Studio with Jeremy Harmer (2013), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxn6IpAJEz8