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GENERAL PROBLEMS OF SCUOLA SUPERIORE.
In our experience of doing intensive courses at Superiore the chief problem is this. Often by the time students get to Superiore they have done 3 + years and yet often know very little English. They have DONE the basics countless times - enough to get bored but not well enough to actually learn much! This is the very worst kind of audience!
When we have tried to do less formal teaching, often the students are so negative after their formal experience that they almost seem to WANT to sit in front of a text book. How do we get them to act and speak: that is the problem. I have found that to get over the first apathy, you have to be extremely lively!
As for material - certainly they have had enough of text books. The material has to be produced according to their needs. The basic material has to go back to the beginning. The fault of most Italian education is that it is directed at the top 20% (if you are lucky) and is not suitable for the rest. There has to be such an explanation for the really surprisingly low level of competence at Superiore level. The material we use is what I might call "micro plays", (A and B "conversations of 1 line each) which contain a very single focus on a grammar problem.(LINK 3.2 and 4.3.) These plays are backed up by my grammar explanations (perhaps using a simplified version of our grammar book). It is indicative that at Bulgarini while writing our grammar book for Superiore, we were unable to convince the editors that most adolescents are incapable (or uninterested!) in understanding grammar rules unless they are severely abbreviated. At least in our case we were able to convince them to put the "bla bla" on the right where at least the teachers can read it happily and the students ignore it!
The plays we use are recycled into as many activities as possible. This way the students learn by heart painlessly. What is important is that the students should at last be able to CARRY IN THEIR HEADS whole bits of English and that, in order not to "waste" the limited space available in their heads(!) all the material must be grammar focused (see our examples).
The accepted wisdom is that we get students talking by "pair work". Yes, and no. Most pair work in text books depends on there being firstly a creative disposition to "far finta" and also on students conceding a suspension of boredom in front of material which leaves street wise modern kids cold!
It’s better to make pair work into an aspect of game and competition and to have the content once again severely "grammar focused". The main criticism of text books is that (for reasons of educational correctness, (ie. conventional beliefs similar to "political correctness") they are so (supposedly) full of "natural language situations" as to be confusing to the very LIMITED attention span of most shell shocked adolescents.
Rather than worry about respecting "programs" which in the end when we test the students, seem to have brought very little learning, it would be better to concentrate on the basics and through plays and games get the students talking.
For more details and observations read our 25 page "diary" of the 5 week Sperimentazione in the Bolzano area. (LINK 1.2.) www.middlesmoor.com
We have written a 25 page report on out experience at the 9 schools in Bolzano between November 2002 and May 2003. if you would like to read the details (see page 13 on Teachers index) or get in touch with us at gobbettbamb@tiscali.it mail@middlesmoor.com We are visiting a further 5 schools in March and April.
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