Life Skills – that’s the
latest buzz word/phrase you are probably hearing now. But what are life skills
and how are English teachers expected to teach them?
More students than ever are going to University in the UK (over a third
of 18 year olds), so we could assume that we are creating a very able work
force equipped to deal with the challenges of life in the 21st
Century. Yet we read about companies complaining that graduates come for job
interviews without the basic skills needed to succeed in challenging and
fast-changing work environments where team work and creativity are prized more
highly than exam results and the acquisition of knowledge. This is not new. In 1990, Robert Fisher said the
following in his book: Teaching Children to Think.
Skills that were
appropriate 20 years ago no longer prepare children for the world beyond
school. Changes in society are accelerating so rapidly that
it is difficult to assess what factual knowledge will be needed for the future.
We need to be teaching children and young
people knowledge and skills that become part of the way they grow, learn and
create relationships with people throughout their lives.
These life
skills have been mapped out with corresponding competencies and clearly aligned
to the different age groups by Cambridge University Press. I won’t repeat it
all here but have a look at their website, where they are clearly laid out and
explained:
The life skills
delineated by CUP are:
1. Creativity and innovation
2. Critical thinking and problem solving
3. Computer literacy
4. Learning to learn
5. Communication
6. Collaboration
7. Emotional skills
8. Social responsibilities
The Big Question I get from teachers is ‘How can we add this to
our teaching as we don’t have enough time to cover the syllabus anyway?’
The good thing is
there are two answers to this:
a. Teachers already include life skills in ELT
and b. by focussing on them more directly could get even more done more
efficiently.
How do we already
focus on life skills? And how can that be improved? Here are a few examples.
(1)
reading
comprehension
It encourages Critical Thinking & Problem solving. We lead
students to
•
Understand key points
•
Evaluate texts
•
Evaluate opinions
•
And, hopefully, ask effective questions
A really effective reading (or listening) task I use with all ages is the KWL approach. Which stands for:
What do you know?
What do you want to know?
What have you learnt?
Step K
So, before reading
a text, for example, about The Destruction of the Amazon Forest, students share
everything they already know about the Amazon and what they have learnt/picked
up about deforestation in the news or in other school subjects etc.
Step W
Then the teacher asks
students to think about what they would like to learn from the text and write
up questions either individually, in groups or as a class. They then read the text, looking for the answers
to their own questions and underline any parts of the text which answer them.
Step L
Students share information
from the text which has answered their questions, collating what they have
learnt.
If there are still
outstanding unanswered questions, they can research the topic online or by
asking others like family members and bring those answers to the next class.
This simple
technique (there is NO teacher preparation involved) not only puts information
into context by activating schemata and previous knowledge, but also helps them
see connections (ie what we learn from the TV can be applied and helpful in
other contexts like the classroom – avoiding compartmentalisation of knowledge),
personalises the process and encourages students to approach reading critically
and authentically. This is how I read (and listen to) newspapers and articles
and talks on subjects that interest me. It’s a real-life skill.
(2)
Reading stories
with our young learners is a great way to develop emotional skills.
These are two of
the competencies for Emotional Skills:
·
Identifying and
talking about own emotions
·
Empathy &
relationship skills: recognising & responding appropriately to other’s
emotional state
Any teacher of children,
reading stories with them will be asking their students questions like: Is the
forest scary? Do you like bears? Why is the little girl scared? Are you scared
in the dark?
If the children
then act out the stories, they can do so with the appropriate emotions, too.
(3)
Project work
Have you tried
doing project work with students and it’s all gone horribly wrong? Students
arguing? Some students doing all the work and some little or none? Time running
out and nothing concrete achieved? All the work done in L1 and little English
practised? That has certainly happened with some of my classes in the past.
Now here is a
perfect opportunity for putting the development of Collaboration Skills into
practice.
Collaboration
includes: sharing, listening to others, team work, and competing in teams. In order
to ensure that project work is successful for all involved and that English and
Collaboration skills are practised and developed the following guidelines need
to be followed, teachers should:
- Ensure that the language, collaboration and other goals* and steps of the project are clearly set up and agreed by students
- Pre-teach the English that is needed to communicate during the project, beginning with such simple language as ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ with pre-primary students
- Explain and discuss the need for collaboration with their students
- Set out clearly how the success of the task is the responsibility of each member of the group
- Closely monitor group work and give timely feedback
- Encourage the teams to celebrate work well done
*If students are
aware that one of the aims of the project is to develop their collaboration
skills and how that is important for them in the future, they will appreciate the
value of the task and not feel that group work is a waste of time and not of
any help in passing exams, as is unfortunately often the case with teen classes.
We really cannot just say: ‘Now work together.’
(4)
Learning to learn
Finally, a skill that is not necessarily focussed on
in all lessons, particularly with young leaners: learning to learn.
The competencies for this skill include
·
Practical skills
for participating in learning
·
Reflecting on and
evaluating own learning success
·
Identifying &
articulating learning goals
·
Identifying &
using effective learning techniques
Nyar Ibrahim at the British Council in Paris
has done some excellent research with children as young as 6 or 7, asking them
at the end of lessons to reflect on and explain what they learnt and how in
today’s lesson, proving it’s never too young to start this reflective process.
Spending just 4 or 5 minutes at the end of each lesson to allow students to
consider what and how they have learnt seems to be time well spent if they can
account for their own language development and understand the teaching/learning
methods that work best for them as well as seeing beneath the ‘smoke screen’ of
the lesson at the methodology that lies beneath.
Why not ask students to consider some key
questions like:
·
What do I want to
learn this week and why?
·
What techniques
help me understand and remember English words?
·
How can I help
myself improve my English at home?
Or allow them to
·
choose their own homework task after a
lesson
·
set their own
learning goals for a term
·
tell you what
kind of activities they prefer to do in lessons and why
So, Life Skills in the English Language classroom?
We already help develop life skills to certain extents, but we can be more
systematic. By being more aware of which skills we are developing and why and allowing
students to recognise this we can do a lot more to help our students develop
not only their English proficiency but also skills that will help them
throughout their lives.
