Introduction To Teaching Practice

These is the final Essay I wrote for my Introduction to Teaching Practice Class.



It's about the Eliciting technique used in the classrooms.




Eliciting

When we think of traditional teaching, we’re probably thinking about a teacher standing in front of the class talking and talking and writing down important information on the blackboard, perhaps even dictating a whole lesson while the students are writing everything down. Some students may learn with these old methods, but a lot of them stay behind because they probably get bored or they have questions they’re afraid to ask and they just keep them for themselves. Obviously this old fashioned teaching technique is not very helpful to the students’ learning. Through the last decades, education has evolved in a positive way; claiming that the students need to get involved in the class by asking questions and sharing comments related to it. Now-a-days, teachers are working to balance their interference with the students’ involvement in the class, and the results have turned out to be positive for both sides. The teacher shouldn’t just stand in front of the class and explain the whole lesson while students just sit there and listen, and it cannot be the other way around, were the students are left on their own and figure out everything for themselves. Students need the guidance of someone who knows a little bit more than they do. If students are doing things wrong the teacher must lead them into the right path in order for them to be successful learners, and if they are doing a good job with their learning this must certainly be acknowledged by the teacher so they can feel motivated to keep working hard, and hopefully learn all they need to learn. The roles in the classroom have changed, students need to participate actively while the teacher provides the information but also induces the students to think a little bit more on their own and share what they’re thinking with the rest of a class. When students get involved in the class, they don’t get bored and hopefully they will really learn what needs to be learned, therefore they will feel encouraged and important to the class. An excellent teaching technique in which the students get involved in the class while the teacher monitors their learning is eliciting, and there are certainly many benefits for both the students and the teacher when this technique is applied in a class.

Eliciting is defined as the process of drawing out information, ideas, language, etc from the students. This means that when the teacher is giving a class, he/she asks questions (or uses gestures) related to the lesson and students will answer that question by sharing their opinion, comments, and possible answers to that question. When a teacher elicitates he/she is guiding and inducing students to make a discovery, applying what they have previously learned. Students are really involved in the class and the knowledge acquired through elicitation is more memorable thanks to such involvement.

The teacher’s role in elicitation is of a “guide” that encourages students to speak up, but before they give an answer students think and reflect. The teacher presents an idea and students develop that idea. Then, the teacher takes advantage of the students’ answers in order to lead them to the lesson’s objective. We can elicit language, ideas, feelings, meanings, contexts, memories. The only thing we cannot elicit is a concept or idea that students do not know (something they haven’t experienced, something they cannot relate to previous knowledge).

There are several ways in which eliciting can be presented in a class; this depends on the teacher’s creativity. One of them is pictures or realia. This alternative consists on showing a picture or a real object to the class; the students will answer questions related to what they see. Another way of eliciting is by making students guess by mimicking or making gestures. They will elicit what the teacher is doing. And last but not least, a very interesting way to elicit is to make students imagine situation or with a picture. Students can create stories by looking at those pictures, and they can also predict what will happen in the story and what happened before.

A very good example of eliciting I can think is called “Magic Box.” In this game, the teacher remains silent and uses signs and gestures to elicit words. The teacher does gestures as if he/she were taking out something from a box, then he/she uses his/her body to describe the object that is taken out of the box. Students try to guess what the teacher is modeling through mimic. This game is really fun and it attracts students’ attention.

According to Jim Scrivener, (Learning Teaching: A guidebook for English language teachers) elicitation is based on three principles. The first principle says that students might know more than we give them credit for. This means that students come to school with previous knowledge they get in school or at home, it’s not like they go to school with their heads in blank and the teachers are supposed to fill their heads with information. Students need to think and connect their previous knowledge with new knowledge. The Second principle states that “Starting with what they know is a productive way to begin new work” Eliciting is a good way to review previous lessons because it helps the teacher explain the new content better by making a relationship with the previous content, and students will be encouraged to think on their own and make the connection. The third principle says that involving people in a question-answer movement towards new discoveries is often more effective than simply giving lectures. It’s true that students get bored when the teacher is talking and talking, some students might fall asleep and others may appear as if they were really listening to the class but the truth is that their minds drift away into thinking about something else that has nothing to do with the class. Students need to feel part of the class, they need to be engaged in it and the way we can catch their attention is through elicitation. Teachers who practice elicitation in their classes rarely have problems with their students’ attention and they also have less discipline problems than those who don’t engage their students in the class. We may wonder why and the answer is the following: when the students are being asked to participate they need to be paying attention to what the teacher and the classmates say in case he/she gets a turn to talk otherwise if the student is not paying attention he will not be able to give a decent answer. The teacher should design creative activities that will catch the student’s attention so they can feel interested and feel the desire to participate.

When we are eliciting, we need to provide enough information so the students can participate. To elicit the teacher should plan an activity previewing what vocabulary they will need and maybe the grammar structure that will be used. Hand gestures may be employed to ask students to speak (single student or the whole group). Whenever students contribute with a good response or answer they must be acknowledged by saying correct, very good, thank you. If a good answer is given the teacher must remark that it is correct, perhaps even write in on the blackboard and ask the whole class to repeat it. When students make a mistake they should be corrected. Teachers shouldn’t point out the mistakes; they should only ask for another answer and emphasize which is the correct answer. If students can’t get to the point nor give the right answer the teacher must assume that there are things that need to be reinforced or explained from the beginning. When this happens, the teacher must stop eliciting.

Eliciting provides benefits for the students but also for the teachers. The students get more involved in the class and therefore the information is best stored in their memory. Another thing is that students don’t get bored because these kinds of activities are directed to the whole class and they are all “alert” trying to keep up with the class. Eliciting builds the students’ confidence because they are encouraged to use the language in the classroom, and their opinion is appreciated by the teacher. Like I mentioned before, the benefits are not exclusively for the students, through eliciting, teachers find out what he/she should work on with the students (reinforce or teach from the beginning). Eliciting reduces unnecessary teacher talk and increases student talk.

As a conclusion, we can state that eliciting engages students with the contents of a course through experience. By experience I mean to say that students are participating and reviewing previous lessons, and the teacher is able to introduce new information by connecting it with the previous knowledge acquired. Eliciting is certainly about making connections. Students have to think and figure out things with the aid of the teacher who leads or guides them into discovery. Research and practice prove that eliciting is a very effective technique which enables student-teacher interaction within the classroom. In my personal experience as a student I really enjoy classes when my teachers do eliciting. I pay attention to what’s being said, and at the same time I’m reviewing things I’ve seen before and connecting them with the new information. When my teachers elicit I feel part of the class. Even if I make a mistake when I’m answering to the questions the teacher asks, I know I’ll learn something from it. When my time comes to become a teacher I will keep in mind to elicit with my students, and hopefully this will help them become better thinkers and learn; but also it will help me as a teacher realize what needs to be reinforced and what knowledge is as clear as water.