Hi Henrik,

thank you for your very focused blog, and to Kim for his comment and questions.

I think your idea of combining the fun, imaginative aspect ( fiction) with the more mundane (grammar) sounds very good as a teaching idea.You have a very nice quoatation from Drew and Sørheim, indicating the main areas where problems are likely to occur (word order, concord, verb tenses). I would like to know more details about your teaching approach in relation to these problem areas, and want to ask you the following questions:

1. Did you do much pre-teaching in relation to the competence aim (grammar and text structure) before starting the work, or as you went aloing? . If so, what did you do ?
2. What did you do with the pupils’ written work once they had handed it in? Did you correct it or did you mark places which needed correction, indicating what kind of correction was needed? Did they re-write?
3. Did you keep a record of pupils’ errors, or ask them to keep a record so that their progress could be assessed?
4. How could you systematically test if your method was having the desired effect?
5. Is this something you could try out as a basis for your term paper in the next practice period?

James

It was very interesting to read your reflection and thoughts on your special task! I am impressed by the way you were able to include all three aims in one task and the way you carried it out.  I am excited to hear how it all went and what your thoughts are  now. Did it turn out the way you thought and did you find an interesting ”connection between listening comprehension, writing and grammatical competence”?

I beileve the motivation part is of great importance here, and I think you have managed to do so by the fact that you engaged yourself to find something that was of interest for the pupils. You mention that you had a gift for the winner, nevertheless you also say that you ”read outloud sentences that you found particularly good”. I think this is a good way to motivate your pupils. Even if the names were not revealed, I believe this encouraged the ones who did a good job and gave inspiration to the ones that needed it. It is so important to give good credit back to the pupils. I am courious though as to how many sentences you read outloud?

I think this is a task that could be used with success in both elementary, middle school and high school. I am sure that I will try this out myself!

You say “To use a material that many children and youngsters believe is fun when one also has to touch upon grammatical structures and work with language proficiency, which many pupils believe is less fun, is paramount I think.” You claim that this is paramount, I am curious on how you integrated this to the “weaker” pupils if you had the experience of teaching a class where there are some who have a lower understanding of English language, then how would you integrate the grammatical structures and language proficiency? I believe that it to some extent could work depending on the class situation and which pupils you have. You write that the majority of the people have developed a fondness of the story, but what about the minority, how did motivate them?
That being said, I really like the idea of being able to “help” or integrate grammar or word order through reading books, I believe that just by reading a lot one can get an expansion of the vocabulary to some extent English language understanding. But I am curious on how you would motivate or assess the pupils on the expansion on the media, social media, TV, Radio, Computer and misc IKT accessories where they feel they feel they can rather watch the movie then read the book (if it has been made into a movie that is). By reading your text I assume that it is giving them a reward (the movie of Mathilda) wouldn’t that rather to some extent help the problem then solve it (if it is a problem in your class that is…).

Kim

Can readings in class of a children’s book that a majority of children and youngsters love form the basis of a series of writing exercises that together help to improve as well the pupils’ understanding of grammar as their general language proficiency? According to the competence aims in the English subject curriculum Norwegian pupils are expected to “read /…/ a representative selection of literary texts from the genres /…/ novels /…/from the English-speaking world” (Culture, society and literature), to “use basic grammatical and text structures of English /…/ in writing” (Communication) as well as to “use basic terminology to describe grammar and text structure” (Language learning). Can these three different aims be focused on simultaneously?

Experiences from my own teaching practice in the past four weeks, when I actively and frequently have engaged Roald Dahl’s children’s book”Mathilda” challenge the notion that the aims necessarily have to be incorporated in separate learning activities. The pupils that I teach are 15 years old and when I first met them I asked them what relationship they had to “Mathilda”. A majority of the pupils either had read the book or watched the filmatisation from 1997 and developed a fondness with the story. This familiarity was the foremost reason why I chose this particular piece of story writing for this classroom activity. To use a material that many children and youngsters believe is fun when one also has to touch upon grammatical structures and work with language proficiency, which many pupils believe is less fun, is paramount I think.

In every teaching session I have read out two pages from the book and asked the pupils to either summarise or make a personal comment upon this short extract. I asked the pupils to limit their writing to one sentence only and make the most possible use of subjunctions and conjunctions in their sentences. When I first read something the pupils had written (prior to my own project began) I detected lots of common mistakes in their writing. “Common problems for Norwegian learners are word order and mistakes connected to the verb system, especially concord, the use of the continous tenses and irregular verb forms” (Drew & Sorheim 2010:98). This description holds very true for my student body as well.

My question is:can long term exposure to the content of a popular children’s book help to change any of these patterns (especially word order), if the pupils are asked to respond in writing at the end of each reading session? A substantial part of my lessons have been devoted to a practical experiment in order to find out more about this question.

So far (at the end of week five) I can not tell with certainty whether there is a connection between listening comprehension, writing and grammatical competence in the sense that my lection plans are beneficial for all the competence aims mentioned above. There are nevertheless some important preliminary findings that I would like to share with you. The pupils have cooperated very well in this small research project, which of course is very important. It has to be mentioned that I have promised a small gift for the winner in this competition (a DVD-copy of the filmatisation from 1997). I have also tried to stimulate the students by reading out loud sentences in class that I find particularly good (without revealing the identity of the author to the class). So far I am convinced this practice has made the pupils more willing to participate in my experiment. In most students’ writing it is also easy to detect a progression when it comes to word order in complex sentences.