Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Retention??!!
Okay, tonight we are going to diverge purposefully from the syllabus to discuss several issues with service learning. One of these will be about RETENTION - how can we keep our students coming back? Obviously in many school settings, attendance is mandatory, so that is not an issue. However, there is also a business aspect to the ESL industry - if students finish a level, the program wants them to enroll in another. In addition, the case for many of us in our service learning is that our students have nothing invested in their participation; some have internal motivation, but that is not always enough to motivate them to attend class. So, let's talk about how we might encourage retention in ESL classes. This might be from either a business perspective (how would we get them to enroll in the next level) or from a volunteer perspective (how could we encourage them to attend our FREE sessions). What do you think?
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In speaking with another teacher at the volunteer service learning I am doing, he noted that in another class he is teaching, the students were given their own books. However, in this one, the students had to buy their own books. He said the class with the free books didn’t seem as involved or committed to attending routinely. He noted that this kind of personal investment in the class (even though it is only a minimal monetary investment) was beneficial to both retention and student motivation.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I think it is important to meet the contractual obligations you have with the student whether those are implied or explicitly stated. For example, if you are under contract to provide an English Only environment, then it is best not to speak the student's language since it might increase the effective filter of the student (ie, the student is distracted by the teacher’s failure to supply the immersion environment the student paid for) or cause retention problems if the student doesn’t know you have pedagogical reasons for it.
Likewise, there might be implicit contractual obligations you have with the class because of what they have become accustomed to if you are taking over a class or joining one in progress. I think it is important not to make drastic changes too fast or create a distraction.
It is also important that the student be improving and is aware of that improvement. Again, this is a part of an implicit contractual obligation you have with the student. The student wouldn’t be there in the first place if the student didn’t have language goals to attain.
As far as business retention goes, you can do as NOVA in Japan did and sell tickets in $3,000 bundles so then the students have already bought several levels at a time and therefore it wouldn't make sense not to come.
In my mind that if teachers can present a roadmap to the students, so they can envision the end result and the associated benefits, that may increase their intrinsic motivation to stay on in the class. The smaller-sized class has the advantage here, since it is much easier to mentor the students in knowing the needs and what they want to gain from attending the class. Keeping student's interest level high is directly related to teacher's performance -- to certain degree. The typical business model which focuses on driving profits and results would push the teacher think hard about how to satisfy the needs of the students and, most importantly, ROI (return on investment) -- this is a two-way street!
ReplyDeleteAccording to my teaching experience, if students like you, they will come back. If they don't like you, you lose them forever. Therefore, how to make students like you becomes a very important issue (although it sounds stupid). Teaching skills, of course, are the most important thing (and what we are studying for). Humor helps a lot all the time. A language teacher who can tell jokes and make the jokes comprehensible to students with very limited English proficiency can win students' hearts easily. If students make great progress whenever they attend our classes regularly, they definitely will come back. (Otherwise, their parents will force them to come back.) However, in addition to the expertise, I think a professional teacher has to pay attention to what he/she wears and how he/she speaks/behaves all the time. If a teacher dresses too casually or even looks dirty and ugly all the time, people don't feel he/she is professional. If a teacher doesn't have a good manner, no one will like him/her.
ReplyDeleteIn China and Taiwan, teachers must be role models for students. A teacher's role is much beyond just teaching academic knowledge. People use very high morality standard to evaluate and examine teachers' behaviors.
Finally, but most importantly, teachers must CARE about their students. Why? Because people can easily tell whether you care about them or not. Teaching is not only just a job; teaching is all about relationships. No matter how great your teaching can be, if you don't care about your students, their progresses, their difficulities and their individual situations, believe it or not, they know it very well. You don't care about them; they don't care about you (and you say Good-bye to your money). It is very fair. Although ESL is a wonderful business and career, we cannot treat students only as our customers. Even if they are only customers, we have to show our enthusiasm and respect, right?
After teaching Spanish to junior highers for 3 years, it was a refreshing and challenging change to begin teaching an adult learner English (through the Arlington Reads program). I found that she is much more motivated than my junior highers (duh)to use her time with me to learn what she wants to learn. While still working through the Laubach curriculum (as an aid to teaching pronunciation), I have had the freedom to create my own lessons based on what I notice she needs from week to week. She is much more excited about the lessons when she knows that I'm going to be focusing on some language problems she encountered at work or her problems with the past tense. She also goes away much happier because she will now be able to resolve an issue she's been facing in her day to day life. And she also comes to class with new questions every time because she knows that I'm looking to meet her individual needs.
ReplyDeleteSo, I believe that focusing our lessons on our learners goals and specific needs greatly encourages them to come back. In addition, there is a great need to make the lessons applicable to every day life (whatever that may be for the learner: work, academic life, etc.). However, these things cannot be done unless we come to know our learners, listen to our learners and pay close attention to patterns in their output.
Now, this is easy to do with one learner but I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to do this for a large group of learners without staying up late into the night planning lessons for individuals. I guess that in a larger class the teacher could make sure to individually meet with their learners and ask what their goals are for the class and find out their interests. Or have the learners fill out "get to know me" forms at the beginning of the class. Then, after finding those things out the teacher could change the topics of the lessons so that all students desires are met by the end (when possible). Or perhaps have the students homework or special projects let them focus on their needs and interests.
Retention becomes a serious issue for commercial language schools, many measures could be taken to keep students coming back. In my EFL teaching experience in Pakistan, I motivated students by making them realize the importance of the target language (English)being not only international but one of the official languages of Pakistan, medium of instruction in universities and higher professional education, a required language for most of the white color jobs, some people even learnt English there to impress others and of course going abroad.
ReplyDeleteThe second essential way I adopted was to make my classes as interesting and interactive as possible by using language based games, dialogues, short funny skits, quiz, debate, gossip, interviews, press conference, views on sports, television, current affairs, show biz, job interviews and so on but one thing to keep in mind while choosing an activity should be the level of student's proficiency and the lesson or grammar to be taught because one of the reason for drop outs is that they find the classes too easy or too difficult which bores them.
That much of interaction in class brings the students close and they become good friends which becomes another reason for them to come back as groups, There are many instances during my teaching tenure when the same students who join level one turn into a group of friends and that bond among them not only brings them back at their meeting place (language school ) and they continue till level six or advanced level, another advantage they get is the great opportunity to practice their target language even out of class e.g. canteen tea shop or even a picnic spot.
I have been thinking more about this topic since we discussed it in class, especially with regards to Kris's suggestion about having students make a financial investment. I work part-time at my church where we put on several events, many of which are free. I have personally found that when something is free, people don't have to make a true commitment to it, but they can make a last minute decision as to whether attending works for them or not. However, if they have to pay (even a small amount), or at least make a reservation, they are more likely to commit and attend. Furthermore, we had been advertising a financial seminar as free, but the guest speaker pointed out to me that when you do that, you actually signal to consumer that the product isn't worth paying for.
ReplyDeleteWhen we think about this in relation to the classroom, I see the correlation that because a conversation class is free & a group environment, there is less of a commitment from an individual. Likewise, while our students might be grateful for a free program, they may not think that they are getting as quality of instruction because they don't have to pay for it. (This is purely speculation.)
In addition to what we discussed in class, to improve retention in a larger conversation group, I think that you could ask the students who attend to sign up for the next week. The simple act of writing their name down can signal to them a commitment that they have made to be there. In a one-on-one situation, you could ask them to make a commitment for a period of time, after which you both could reevaluate. Even though we do provide them with free materials, maybe we could ask them to invest in a English dictionary with translations in their language or a journal to write down questions, new words, or practice their writing. Even if all they can afford is a $1 journal, they are still making an investment in the learning process, and where we invest our time & money shows what we view as valuable.