Communication Skills across the Curriculum

Day 4: Monday, 13th October 2014
Session 3: 2.00 p.m. - 4.30 p.m.
Slot: Communication Skills across the Curriculum
Tutor: Katie

Classroom Learning Outcomes

By the end of the session, lecturers should be:

• able to encourage communication in the classrooms
• able to inspire confidence to learn English in a no stress environment
• able to use facilitating communication methods to give reasons for students to learn English
• aware of the different types of communication skills.

Suggested Activities

Food Preservation Methods

Task: Information gathering, transfer and sharing

Instructions:

1. Lecturer / trainer divides class into several groups.
2. Then, he / she gives each group a brief written article about a specific food preservation method. Every group gets different methods. Examples of food preservation methods – canning, dehydrating, freezing, salting and etc.
3. Each student gets a piece of A4 paper and folds it to create three sections. 

The first section – Things I knew

Second section – Thing I didn’t know

Third section – Examples to remember

4. In their groups, students then fill those three sections with information from the written texts on their respective methods.
5. A ‘reporter’ takes notes of the data gathered by using starting phrases like;

One of us didn’t know that ...........................

Most of us knew about .................................

All of us knew about ....................................

6. Each group then shares the information (at least 5 phrases) with other groups.
7. Other groups must take notes of the information presented because the presenting group will ask at least one person to repeat the information given. 

Outcome

Instead of just passively reading texts, by doing this task, students actively gather and retain information using a variety of communication and learning skills – reading, writing, classifying, presenting and sharing, listening, repeating information and etc. Therefore, this activity applies both LOTS and HOTS.


Suggestion

Instead of just focusing on the starting phrases (Only one of us..., most of us..., All of us...), lecturer could also focus on the sharing of information such as details of canning process.

Before the task, lecturer / trainer must create stimulus (pictures, videos, music and etc) to generate interest. Instructions must be given clearly and in chunks (Toblerone) – students must know why they are doing the task and what the expected outcomes should be. Set some rules for the students to follow during the activity.

After the task, lecturer / trainer should give constructive feedbacks on what aspects can be improved. Students are also encouraged to do a reflection at the end of every lesson. Reflection can cover the question of “How did I do?” and “How to make it better?”.

Teaching Tips

Make sure to create information / knowledge gaps so that the students have the need of finding out. Make sure they do each activity or task with the mentality of “I want to find out more” instead of “I am doing this just because the lecturer asks me to.”

Assign group roles. In each group, members can take the role of Task Manager (Leader), Reporter, Time Keeper and Motivator. 

Task manager: keeps the group ‘on task’ and makes sure other members use the target language.
Reporter: the one who makes notes and report back to the lecturer.
Time keeper: manages time so that the group finish the task on time.
Motivators: motivate quiet members to speak.

Reflection

Katie talked about motivating / encouraging students to communicate. The part when she said that we could ask students to ask each other questions instead of lecturer asking students one by one was interesting for me because I have been having trouble motivating my students to communicate more in class. It appears that I have got it wrong all this while. I thought it’s bad for students to talk to me and each other using Malay in class but Katie proved me wrong. Students respond to you in Malay? No problem. At least they respond. That means they’re listening. I have been focusing too much on speaking skills that I forgot that communication is not just about that. Communication skills cover listening, writing, gathering information, classifying and etc. Therefore, I now know that speaking skills is not the only one I must put focus on because each student has his / her own learning style or skill they prefer.

Besides that, I must give out tasks that cover both LOTS and HOTS to cater for students of all levels. Differentiation!

Prepared by:
Mohd Zulfahmi bin Ab Salam
Politeknik Sultan Mizan Zainal Abidin