Hand it in or Email it in?

We've gone all Google at my place of work. I'm still not quite sure if this necessarily a good idea.
On the one hand, it does mean that things are incredibly easy to share - colleagues can work simultaneously on worksheets, photos and resources can be sent with the click of a button, and it's child's play to create communities and websites, AND there's even the new Google Classroom app to play with.
On the other, it's incredibly easy for well-meaning people with all the spatial conceptualisation of a loaf of wet bread to create huge, arcane and functionally useless hierarchies of folders and subfolders that take one down a dizzying maze of technological befuddlement. Google Classroom is a nice idea, but it's even less feature-rich than Edmodo at present. And, perhaps more importantly, do I really want to be at the beck and call of my students at the ping of a button?
One of the problems if technology in class is that it can make it all too easy, in a way, and what can end up happening is that the technology becomes the object of the lesson rather than a resource to deliver lesson content and the learning objectives. I've had scheduled IT classes in the past where the learners may well be writing something on a blog or wiki, but the reason for writing is obscured by the act of typing and negotiating menus and buttons on a word interface.
Now, don't get me wrong - I love it when students email me their homework. I find that I can mark it and give feedback faster (and, I think, better) when I have a nice pristine electronic sheet in front of me than a sadly tattered piece of A4 torn from a notebook. The question is this: should we insist that all homework is mailed in rather than handed in?

I think that it very much depends of several factors. The first is the language level of the learner. In my Advanced groups, emailing work in is pretty much the norm, and in fact I think that it's appropriate. A lot of these learners are working full time and using English in professional correspondence electronically, so the medium of communication and practice is appropriate. But for lower level learners, it can be a more complex picture. As a rough rule of thumb, I'd say that the lower the level of English, the more handwritten work should be done. Quite apart from avoiding the temptations of spellchecking, it also helps the teacher analyse issues with the way learners engage with the language as they write - all kinds of errors and mistakes are apparent in handwritten work.

The next thing to consider is the learner's native writing system. Clearly, if someone has Arabic as their L1, writing in latin script provides its own challenges - not merely the formation of the individual letters, but also writing in the other direction, ensuring the text is left margin justified, and so on. I also wonder what the act of writing in an unfamiliar direction has on a learner's thought processes.

Two further factors are the age of the learner and their exposure (and attitude) to IT. Younger learners are far more likely to either be proficient users of tech, or adapt quickly to using it. Adult learners, on the other hand, may present challenges in the way they approach computers. for some, it's quite clear that they have a motivational issue with many kinds of technology - very similar, in fact, to the affective filter that some people have ramped up to high levels, leading them to be ineffectual language learners.

So, for example, broadly speaking, if I had a 40-year-old Georgian student in a pre-intermediate class, I'd probably want him or her to hand in a handwritten piece, while a 20-year-old German in an FCE class would be better off emailing their work.

Of course, we could compromise and ask students to write out their work, then scan it and email it.

One more point to consider though: Language is not merely an act of mind and ear and tongue: It it an act of the whole body. I feel that learners who make notes, who write things out, who copy things down off the board, are more likely to be better users of English. Put simply, the act of writing actually consolidates the language in the learner's mind - using the hand confers, as it were, a shape to the words and the grammar. Words and syntax are given tangibility and (literally) made palpable by the application of pen to paper, by the subtle movements and pressures of fingers grasping the instrument. And that is a skill that may be in danger of being lost by solely relying on technology.

'Fail again. Fail better.'

How often have you heard a student say 'I don't get it!', or 'I will never understand this language'? How often have you seen them do that puffy thing with the cheeks and shrug* their shoulders before going slumping in their seats?
There's always a point where it feels easier to give up rather than plod on, as in life as it is in English language learning. How many times have you felt as if you have reached the end of the line with something?
As you may have noticed, I'm on a bit of a Student Motivation streak in my writing at present, as it's been nagging at me as to why some learners persist and why others, well, don't. In part, it is derived from the fact that I'm trying to write consistently for a hundred days, and so I'm aware of the apices and nadirs within my own motivation from day to day - and hour to hour, in fact. And because I'm aware of it in myself, I observe it in others. Currently, I have a new student, who joined the class late and has quite a complex background. This person has had some severe difficulties in life, and has only just got back into some kind of routine, but has been out of mainstream education for a very long time (they are in their forties). Doing an exercise today, I noticed that while other students were getting on with the task, this person (let's call them 'A.X.') was sitting still. A.X. then shook their head, threw the pencil down, and said 'no understand'.
I intervened at this point, as A.X. really needed guidance. After a few minutes' work, A.X. got it, and carried on with the exercises with a considerable look of relief on their face.
A.X. is an example from the more extreme end of the 'I don't get it' spectrum, and one that will take a lot of coaching and coaxing over the months to come. If we're in a class with 30 students, however, how on earth can we give just that kind of support to each and every learner?
I think a  lot of what helps or hinders the English learner is not only their expectation of the experience of learning the language, but also how they react to problems in general. Put simply, the more 'rigidly' they view a problem, the more likely it is that they will fail to crack it. To give a simple example, some learners spend years trying to get their heads round the present perfect while others just dive in merrily, splashing examples of the tense all over the language pool, if you don't mind me extending my metaphor. Another issue is, of course, speaking: some students are so concerned with speaking without mistakes that they never open their mouths at all.

It seems to me that the learners most likely to get a block with language are those who, as it were, seek perfectibility - that is, they want the language to pop out fully-formed, rather than something that needs to be whelped into shape. At this point, we should actually look at what really confident language learners do. It is generally noticeable that these kind of students are more likely to be not afraid of making mistakes; that they do more reading; and that they are more likely to talk with people outside the classroom, to have better jobs, and to generally seem better-adjusted to living in a native speaker environment. In short, learners who are more resilient to problems and and for whom failure is just a step towards success are more likely to be better language learners and become more fluent.

It does give rise to an alternative idea, however: Should that statement be the other way around? Are better users of a language more likely to be more resilient in the face of problems?

In a way, this would make sense - the greater your fluency, the greater your capacity to verbalise an issue and find a way to deal with it. But of course, when it comes to adult language learning, it is probably a case of six of one, half a dozen of the other.

What I think is most effective, at least in the classroom, is to emphasise the fact that mistakes will be made - and in fact, that making mistakes is the  best way to experiment with and perfect the target language. As I say to my learners, 'You're here because you don't speak perfect English. If you did, you wouldn't be here, and I would be out of a job'.

Students should be aware that they are allowed to fail, and fail again, and 'fail' once more if necessary, because it isn't failing. It's learning.

*There's a whole book waiting to be written about the meaning of shoulder shrugs and to what extent different people indulge in them, from the cool Parisian mere wisp of a rise of one shoulder to the full on comical both-shoulders-hands-raised-lower-lip-pout found in Central Anatolia.

More on depression and speaking

Yesterday's post, and the ideas behind it, has prompted quite a bit of interest among my colleagues and over on one of the discussion boards I frequent, and got me thinking further too. This morning, I did a bit of thoroughly unscientific research with my L1 (that's an intermediate-upper-intermediate level) and E3 (pre-int - int level) classes. I asked them, first 'does speaking in English ever make you feel depressed?'
The answer was almost unanimously 'yes', except for one student who just giggled. Mind you, she does tend to giggle at pictures of kittens, handbags, passing clouds and occasionally while staring blankly into space, so...
I then asked 'why?'
You can probably guess the types of answer - embarrassment, fear of mistakes, frustration, etc.
I then asked, 'are there any situations which make you feel particularly embarrassed?'
Here the answers were varied. For a significant portion, it was talking on the phone: others mentioned more formal social situations such as going to the bank or talking with their children's teachers. A few of the more confident students said that they couldn't answer colleagues back in more formal meetings.
I then asked 'What situations/things would you like to talk about, but feel you can't?'
Here the answers were varied, ranging from talking to the council about housing benfits, to discussing schoolwork with a teacher, up to talking about politics, environmental issues, dance and music.
Lastly, I asked 'do you sometimes feel as though you are disabled?'
A unanimous 'yes'.
and 1 giggle.
The finding that most interested me was the one about which things people would like to be able to talk about. It shows, I think, that the level at which students would consider a conversation 'deep' and 'satisfying' vary enormously. It's no wonder that language learners do get so demotivated.
It's also set me off on what may turn out to be a rather exciting tangent of thought, but I'm going to have to put in a bit of research first. More later.