AN EXTRAORDINARY ACTIVITY
We have been
involved over the last three years in an exciting project set up by the
Instituto de Ciencias de la Educación (Education Science Institute), a centre
of the University of Seville whose mission is to offer extended academic and
professional training to the university staff. This specific project aims at
providing English language teaching to a group of university professors and
researchers whose purpose is to get the ECFRL C1 accreditation in English by
taking the Trinity College London’s ISE III exams. This academic year 2014-15
is the third edition of the course at the University of Seville, the first two
editions having been highly satisfactory as far as teaching/learning experience
and exam results are concerned.
The ECFRL C1
Trinity College London’s ISE III exam is a thorough evaluation/accreditation
tool applied to assessing the candidates’ command of the four communicative
skills of the language: reading, writing, listening and speaking. In fact, the
acronym ISE stands for Integrated Skills
in English, attempting to consider the different skills as linked and
interdependent. Besides, the examination assesses their ability to use
different conversational functions in a variety of topics, mainly educational.
We have organised
the material accordingly. A set of files have been produced, each one dealing
with a subject matter from the official Trinity College London syllabus, i.e. The media, Lifestyles, Advertising, The
arts, The school curriculum, among others. With the general subject matter
as a consistent framework, each file provides students with direct four-skill
practice of the tasks in the final exam, which is divided into two broad
sections: reading/writing and speaking/listening, adapting so to the official ECFRL
requirements for the C1 level.
One important
section in the exam under discussion is the so-called Extended Writing, which consists of a 250-word-long writing task in
which the candidate responds to a prompt. The output genre in this task can be
one of the following: a descriptive essay, a discursive essay, an argument
essay, an article (magazine or online), an informal email, an informal letter,
a formal letter or email, a review and a report. As pointed out above, the
different theme files offer the students in our groups a wide range of
exercises proposing different written tasks that follow the format and
requirements of the exam so that the potential candidates will be familiarised
with the type of writing exercises and trained accordingly. In fact, it is
usual to receive a written task every other week from the students who are
given the corresponding feedback.
There is a
period, however, coinciding with the month of February, in which the number of
these written tasks submitted for practice decreases, the reason for this being
found in the exam period that the members of the groups are involved in. And
this has happened all the three years. We should not forget that the components
of the groups are mostly university professors and exams are administered (and
marked) for the students of the University of Seville during February.
Knowing that
English is not likely to be the priority for these groups, but wanting it to be
one of the first three priorities for them in their academic sphere this year,
we tried an idea to motivate them to write at least an essay or any other text
type during that period. The idea was to encourage them not to stop writing in
English at advanced C1 level for a long time. It had to be something attractive
enough to make them think that it was necessary for them to comply with it.
After
studying the profile of the students and adapting the teaching/learning
principles to this, we customised an exercise that would be in line with the
competitive nature of the group members. The idea of a ‘prize’ was essential,
even if it was an immaterial one. Once the motivation was achieved, we had to
take advantage of it by setting a series of rules to comply with. These rules
arose from the requirements of the real exam, namely:
- the official word length should be
taken into account (although we were flexible in this as it ultimately was a
class exercise);
- text organisation is of paramount
importance: number of paragraphs (3-5), paragraph organisation (topic sentences
and supporting sentences), introduction, development, conclusion;
- signposting devices must be used to
give coherence and cohesion to the text;
- proper vocabulary of the level must
be used depending on the chosen topic;
- use of phrasal verbs and collocations
of the level;
- use of the set of grammar points as
suggested in the ISE III syllabus: 2nd, 3rd and mixed
conditionals, should/must/might/could
+ perfect infinitive, verb patterns after hope
and wish, verbs followed by gerund
and or infinitive, complex forms of passive with modals, structures to convey
emphasis (inversion, fronting, cleft sentences).
With all
those considerations, we explained the activity and our intention with it in
class and presented our Creative Writer
Extraordinaire contest. First, students had to write a text (any genre or
text type) showing creativity to be submitted in class the following week. All
texts had to begin with the sentence It
had been raining all morning (or finish with the sentence I had never been so surprised in all my life,
for the first two years). After that, the teacher would check all of them and
make the corrections on the expression mistakes, but respecting style and
approach. So the following week, all the texts would be read out loud in class
and all students would vote for the three best creative texts in an involving
voting session. The winner would be appointed Creative Writer Extraordinaire of the group/year.
We then sent
an email to all the members of each group reminding them of the contest and
especially informing those students who could not attend the class in which the
contest had been presented. The email was aimed at reinforcing motivation to
participate and it read as follows:
Dear group.
In class today, we have called for a
writing competition in which all of you can (will, should) participate due to
its interest and its benefits for our purposes.
The winner of this writing competition
will be awarded the title of Creative Writer Extraordinaire, a
unique distinction which will be the pride of the whole class.
The topic to write about is:
(Creative writing task)
Write a story (approximately 250 words)
for a writing competition beginning with the words ‘It had been raining all morning.’
Papers will be handed in on Tuesday,
March 10 by 18:00 in the classroom. Depending on the number of assignments,
these will be read out in class either on Tuesday 17 or Thursday 19 and then
the jury will decide on the best one according to the following criteria:
accuracy, vocabulary and structures of the level, and task completion.
This information has been given in class
and is especially addressed to those of you who didn't turn up.
Should you require any further
information, it'll be a pleasure to provide it.
Have a good week.
The outcome
was just extraordinary, with more than 90% participation rate and a really
enjoyable class, not less enjoyable was the process of creating the text, most
of the times a short story. We are proud to present those texts for the
reader’s enjoyment.
Andrés Sánchez Ortega
Philologist. English teacher
Autumn 2015
