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Reading Comprehension Question Types for English Language Learners

24th June 2021 by Robert Mcbain

While compiling reading comprehension questions seems pretty straightforward, they do need to be authentic and provide an accurate evaluation of what they are supposed to test. For example, multiple-choice questions provide weak feedback about whether students comprehend the text to which they refer. A more authentic task might be to use literal comprehension questions that require students to write their answers, demonstrating an understanding of the straightforward meaning of the text.

The basics of questioning

One of the most important things is that students must always have to read the text and find the answer within it; so that the questions test their reading comprehension, not memory skills. All the questions should use unambiguous language, avoiding vague, trick or negative wording (for example, a truthful clause followed by a false one). Furthermore, if a question requires an explanation or a discussion, students need specific instructions to do it. Don’t forget that the main idea of testing reading comprehension is to create the kinds of questions where students have to explain in writing what it is they understand, which at the same time builds cognitive skills of automatically using correct word forms and grammar. Students should also have rehearsed the question types and the vocabulary in them in class before the test. Lastly, some students may be reluctant to criticize or disagree with some questions for cultural reasons.

Factual specific or closed questions 

These are excellent in helping students understand the literal meaning of the text, especially in making basic evaluations, personal responses, predictions and follow-ups to other questions forms, such as yes/no and alternative styles. These types are characterized by wh-question words that have simple, concrete, straightforward answers based on obvious facts in the text. They are usually at the lowest level of thinking processes, and their answers are frequently either right or wrong. However, some are easier to answer than others. Where, what, who, when, whose and which questions are more straightforward and therefore easier to answer than why or how questions because the latter two need deeper explanations.

Often questions beginning with wh are of the short answer type, which requires students to focus on a narrow and precise response. Further to this, it’s often a good idea to employ different methods for the responses, either requiring a certain number of words or allowing students to use their own words but controlling the length of the line or box used for the answer.

Examples: 

Instructions: Use only 4 to 8 words for your answer to number 1.
What is the location of the shop? ___________________________________ 

Instructions: Write your answer below and don’t write past the line.
What was the color of the car? ________________________

Relate style questions

In this kind of question, students need to explain the relationship between two or more concepts, objects or even people in the text.

Examples: 

  1.   Explain how the two shops are similar.
  2.   Explain how the two boys are the same.

Multiple-part questions 

As the name suggests, multiple-part questions require students to write a multiple-part answer, usually in 2 or 3 parts. For this type, students need to have practice joining clauses together using the appropriate conjunction.

Questions related to describing things

Any question that requires students to describe things also allows them to analyze the text and look for specific facts and to use their opinion. Included in this is describing objects, information, dates, times when something happened, locations, events, or directions. For this type, it’s always best to rehearse the three forms of adjectives namely: positive, comparative and superlative.

Recalling style questions

Recalling the main idea in a sentence, paragraph, or even whole passages is a common question type. This type of question could ask students to confirm facts, ideas, themes, a character, events, actions, time details, reasons or the moral of an individual paragraph or the entire story.

Inferring style questions 

Inference questions test a student’s abilities to interpret information that is not explicitly stated in the text and combine literal understanding with knowledge, intuition and powers of deduction. These types of questions usually revolve around the idea of prediction, and the possibility of something happening.

Examples: 

  • Prediction type responses.
  • What do you think might have happened?
  • Suggesting additional details to a piece of text.
  • Questions relating to possible locations of where the story might have taken place.
  • Questions that relate to who else could be involved in a particular part of the text.

Yes/no & multiple-choice questions

These are common question types, but they don’t allow students to demonstrate their reading comprehension since the correct answer can often be guessed. To avoid this, students should complete a follow-up question to ensure that they do understand and have provided an authentic response.

Example: 1. Which city is he describing in line 4? Rome / Paris / Berlin
Follow up question: What information does the author state that tells you this?

Alternative style questions are similar, but again, they need explaining.

Example: 1. Does the story focus on garden plants or farm crops? 
Follow up question: Explain your answer.

Dichotomous questions are generally a “yes or no” close-ended question used for basic validation.

Example: 1. Does the garage service all kinds of vehicles? yes/no?
Follow up question: Explain below, how the passage tells us this. 

Rank order and sequencing questions

For this type of question, the answers require the test taker to write them in a specific order or sequence of events. To do this, they must read the passage in its entirety to select or figure out their particular order. Sometimes events that appeared in the first paragraph may not have happened first.

What Every IELTS Teacher Needs To Know About Writing

10th June 2021 by Robert Mcbain

Why writing skills are important

With the world becoming more interconnected through electronic messaging, writing has taken on a new prominence. So a communicative language approach is essential for English language students who want to be successful. For students who wish to study business, English need these essential communication skills for instance, in a business that may need to persuade clients of potential investments who may be in another part of the world.

IELTS writing

Writing an IELTS essay is a challenging task for any EFL student who achieves it, as well as for the teachers who teach it. To be a successful IELTS teacher, as with all lessons preparation and planning is the key that includes everything from the rise and fall vocabulary to the grammar used to glue it all together. However, from that point forward, the essay development starts. But how is this accomplished? Better still, what, we may ask, are the most economical ways to do this? Of course, every teacher will have their methods, but, whatever methods they use, some theories related to educational psychology and instructional modelling are often essential factors.

The zone of proximal development

To be a skilled teacher in any subject, one must understand the basics of the zone of proximal development of a class or a particular student. The ZPD is a classic theory in education and is related to the idea of a conceptual zone between what the student cannot do and what they can do with some help from the teacher. It is a judgement made by the teacher as to what to do next. It relies on two ideas: firstly, the students’ potential next step in their development and secondly, the quality of the teachers’ instruction to get them there.

The gradual release of responsibility

This instructional model begins with a stage where the teacher takes all of the responsibility for teaching. Then over several lessons that may take a week or more creates a situation where the students take on more responsibility for their learning and become more competent, independent learners. Another way to look at it is this: I do it first, you watch me; then we do it together as I guide you; now you do it by yourself as I watch you.

The shared writing model 

If you are teaching writing skills in any program and don’t use this method you cannot teach writing effectively. Shared writing is the soul of teaching writing skills, and it is the method used for teaching writing directly to students as they watch. This method is similar to the gradual release of responsibility because students will eventually do it by themselves. The model uses two integrated phases, the demonstration phase and the joint composition phase. But for shared writing to be effective, the teacher should choose a task that is just above the students’ ZPD so that they are constantly engaged in the process.

The demonstration phase

Every good teacher models what they want their students to do, so the teacher demonstrates how to do it. The teacher is doing most of the work at this stage, writing the essay on the board and giving a running commentary on the choice of words, grammar and punctuation as the students watch. Students should copy what the teacher is writing to use this copy as a model for their next essay. Use coloured pens to highlight different parts of the text or individual words and make a deliberate mistake now and then for entertainment. As the teacher writes, the students can comment and make suggestions to keep them fully engaged and not just passive observers.

Joint composition

This phase is similar, except the students are encouraged to contribute more to the writing. Firstly, the teacher asks the students to write a similar essay to the one they copied during the demonstration phase. However, this second essay has slightly different data from the first one. Additionally, this encourages students to take a little more control of their writing and makes it their own. Because the data is slightly different, the vocabulary and grammar will also have to be adjusted. However, the teacher is there to guide students through this and students are encouraged to offer their ideas of how to write the data, then it becomes a two-way challenge; students suggest then the teacher corrects and guides them as they write. The shift from teacher to students has begun.

IELTS as a way to develop critical thinking

IELTS requires students to produce two essays, and many of the advantages students receive while doing this are hidden in the details. For instance, during the essays students, are constantly having to use their skills in deduction, at the same time comprehending and organising data, but also using their powers of logical analysis. Other thinking skills are comparing and contrasting data and ideas. Furthermore, having to decide between what is or is not essential information, and at the same time making judgements and writing about their opinions, also writing about two sides of an argument or writing about a problem and, in some cases, even being asked to propose a solution. All these are valuable critical thinking skills often gained by experience.

Tips for Instructional Design for CLIL in the EFL Classroom

5th June 2021 by Robert Mcbain

Content Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is the idea of teaching a content subject, for example, science or social studies, in a foreign language—mainly English: that is a challenging task for any teacher. To do this effectively teachers need to plan lessons carefully to integrate the second language with the content. And at the same time use the various components and structure of (in our case) English, namely phonemes, morphemes, lexemes, context and syntax. Along with these is the integration of vocabulary, grammar, semantics, and pragmatics. It is clear that content and language are inseparable parts of the same lesson. Because if the content subject is taught without sufficient language support, content lessons often unfold into a situation where the language and content advance in parallel and rarely meet, creating cognitive overload where students get lost in a sea of words and become distracted.

CLIL instructional design

To aid learning may require teachers to organize their instructions so that essential vocabulary and parts of speech are pre-taught to students before any reading or writing is studied; but this vocabulary and parts of speech are used continuously and reviewed throughout the periods of instruction.

In more detail, students need to know which word forms and tenses to use in a particular answer so that communication is accurate. Additionally, new vocabulary also needs to be integrated with good reading comprehension questions, of which there are many different kinds, and to be used effectively. So it seems that instruction in basic content literacy, as an aid to learning content, should be an integral part of the materials design.

CLIL materials design

EFL content unit designers may want to consider integrating study units employing the idea most often used in questioning: funnelling. Funnelling begins with a broad subject and gradually becomes detailed and more specific. For example, Biology units designed by funnelling could be thus:

Unit 1: The cardiovascular system

Unit 2: The heart

Unit 3: Blood cells

An essential point here is how academic exercises are designed and presented to students within each of these units. Each unit would begin with a vocabulary study from that particular unit text, integrating the parts of speech used for specific word forms. For the next part, students could complete reading comprehension questions where the answers require students to recycle the new words in different forms. Further integration could be achieved by incorporating the vocabulary from previously completed units to reuse them in various forms.

Esoteric vocabulary instruction

The term esoteric vocabulary relates to a collection of words used in a specific subject. For example, words like imports and exports are usually only used by people who study economics, and are not often used outside of that subject. The same goes for blood cells in biology and gravitational force in physics.

However, learning the meaning of these specialist words is not a difficult task. The difficulty comes when students have to use the various word forms specifically in writing and speaking, which is one of the most complicated subjects that EFL students have to deal with. For example, when writing about cells, students need to know which form should be used to be grammatically correct. Should it be the singular word cell or the plural, cells? But, things get more complex when the choice of word forms increases. The root word import, for example, can be used as noun, adjective and verb producing a number of different forms and spelling.

Teaching vocabulary

When students see a new word, they often study it in short steps; and often in quick succession. Teaching these steps directly to students may also form part of a lesson. First, they look the word up in a dictionary and then learn its pronunciation and whether it’s a noun, verb or adjective and then transfer it into their native language for safe keeping. The next step is when they study its various synonyms and antonyms. Finally, they must learn its various forms. But to do this, they need to understand any prefixes and suffixes used for changing the meaning. After that, the word should be used frequently in class in different forms and becomes an established part of their everyday vocabulary.

Blocked and random practice

Blocked practice entails a single repetitive skill, the variance of which is minimized, which, for some students, can be an advantage when learning new words combined with specific parts of speech as it offers low levels of cognitive interference. They can see patterns forming when using various word forms.

Examples

__________ (car) are exported every week.

__________ (bike) are exported every week.

__________ (computer) are exported every week.

By contrast, random practice exercises characterize higher levels of cognitive interference. In this activity, learners have to recall several different writing skills. To this end, it sets up challenges to students’ thinking processes to deal with the interference of each task that helps keep them on their toes and allows for higher skill transfer because of the various tenses and contexts.

Examples

The __________ (export) goods were sold.

These were __________ (export) last month.

France __________ (export) wine to Canada every month.

Tips for Presenting Yourself to a School in Thailand, the EFL CV

28th May 2021 by Robert Mcbain

When you want to move on, your CV is usually the first thing that gets an update. It doesn’t matter if you have been teaching for a few years or many years; a well-constructed CV should say everything a potential employer needs to know about what you can do, and the sooner they read that, the better. So this article contains some tips about what to write in a successful teacher’s CV.

Formatting

Try and avoid writing the words curriculum vitae at the top of the page, which is a classic mistake because it should be clear to the reader that they are reading a CV. The only information that should be at the top is your title(s), name, email and phone number, and any other social contact details you want to include. As for photographs, a formal picture of yourself is quite sufficient, as no credible recruiter is interested in looking at scores of pictures of EFL teachers receiving certificates of any kind, no matter how big the smile. Another thing to avoid is using fancy writing fonts because the simple fact is that they do not add any more value to your CV.

Your history & accomplishments

Write a list of the schools you have worked at, starting with the latest school and work backwards to your first school. Any potential employer needs to see where you have been and what you have been doing. It is also essential to highlight the values, standards and achievements that you created in your present and previous positions and how you achieved them. For example, you might mention that you carried out some classroom research that improved students’ test scores. If you did, then you need to state the data values to show your successes. You should also include any academic papers you have written and published because this is a significant accomplishment. Furthermore, refrain from writing about your job description because that does not say what you achieved. Finally, don’t exaggerate your achievements because the strengths of your talents are always found out either during the interview or during probation, so adopting a simplistic, down-to-earth approach is invariably the best way.

Certifications

You should also state your qualifications because any future employer needs to know what you are qualified in and capable of doing; these should include the dates when you qualified. Your formal qualifications also need to match the qualifications for the job. That means you will need to highlight different aspects of your experience that relate to the position available.

Overusing common clichés

There are some general statements that you should try and avoid in a professional CV. However, if you include them, they need to be backed up with substantiating evidence or well-founded examples that give your CV credibility. The most common clichés to avoid are:

  • I am an excellent communicator.
  • I am very good at problem-solving.
  • I am a very hard hard-working individual.
  • I have a very can-do attitude.
  • I am a great team player and goal-orientated person.
  • I am a motivated person to work in school.
  • I have a proven track record of…
  • At my last school, I was responsible for…
  • I have a great passion and synergy for teaching.

Hobbies, interests and dates

Hobbies and interests are controversial issues in a CV. The general rule is that you should only mention them if related to the job you are applying for. If not, then there is no justification in telling anyone about your love of boxing if you are applying for a position as a grade 4 teacher. Ensure that all the timelines are logical and if you have any gaps in your CV, make sure that you can explain them or it looks odd.

Job-hopping

There may be good reasons why a teacher has been job-hopping over several years. Despite this, you demonstrate a much stronger character when you stay long enough in a school to help solve any problems than running away because of a minor issue or complaint.

References

Not many schools in Thailand use or ask for references, so most recruiters focus on what they read in your CV. That’s why it needs to contain concise information about what you have done in your previous roles. Any sensible employer would assume you have suitable references or can get them. Your head of department should provide the references, not a personal friend.

The interview

Most school recruiters in Thailand use a semi-formal interview style that is, in my view, quite acceptable. However, the most essential issue with foreign teachers in Thailand is that they have to look smartly dressed. For men, a long-sleeved shirt and tie are ideal; for women, a formal dress that covers the knees is adequate.

Writing the CV

Your CV is a reflection of the strengths you have as an EFL teacher. So you need to pay particular attention to how it is written, including grammar, spelling, punctuation and spacing. Also, make sure the formatting is consistent by using a formal font and consistent bullet points throughout, especially if you are a non-native speaker. Employers are looking for well-presented and polished resumes, so if you’re unsure how to write a good CV, there are some excellent examples of professional templates on the Internet.