Remedial & Enrichment Activities

Designing
Remedial & Enrichment Activities

Balkeese Binti V. KunhiMohamed (PhD.)

Week 8: 17 February 2014

Reflection
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In second language learning as in every other

field of human learning, motivation is a crucial factor that determines whether a learner embarks on a task at all, how much energy he

devotes to it and how long he perseveres?

(Littlewood, 1998)

Enrichment Activities
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Activities that are done to enrich or improve the

quality or knowledge of the students What are the basic assumptions made when designing enrichment activities?

Assumptions
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Students have grasped the basic concept of what is

being taught
Students have mastered some basic skills

Students are able to use the present knowledge as

a base to acquire or learn more skills or concepts.

Example
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Situation : Greeting a person Basic level: Lina: Chin: Hello, how are you? Im fine, thank you.

Enrichment: Lina: Chin: Hello, Chin. Surprised to see you here. Its been a long time. How are you? Hello, Lina. Im fine. Thank you. Youre looking good.

Students should be encouraged to take risks in

language learning; try new things and generally work

harder than they want to!

How?

- Create the interest of the students - Think about the situations where the language would be used by the learners (authenticity,

relevancy)
- Student based, personalized

Selection of Activities, Tasks, and Materials

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Provide a stimulus for students to talk

about or get clues from when they are listening using dictionaries, pictures
Create opportunities by manipulating

physical arrangements to promote listening and speaking

Create opportunities to interact

Combine fluency and accuracy

Selection of Activities, Tasks, and MaterialsCont.

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Enable students to practice their language

(especially for speaking skills) by providing them more individual talking time and perform a wider range of speech acts (Long, Adams, McLean and Castanos, 1976 in Bailey, 2005)

Types of Enrichment Activities

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Information gap where students have

different sets of information (words or pictures) on the same topic

Surveys and questionnaires provoke

conversation and opinion exchange between students

Interviews Discussion

Types of Enrichment ActivitiesCont.

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Role-Play or Simulations Show and tell Projects discussed and created with

the involvement of the students

During L&S Activities, Avoid

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Doing correction when discussion is going on, such as pronunciation error Helping and providing too much clues verbally while a listening exercise is on

Remedial Activities
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What are remedial activities?

Activities which are intended as a remedy for a problem in a classroom

When is it done?

When there are slow learners in the classroom

When the class is not able to meet the

objectives of the lesson

To correct the errors made in the classroom

Common Reasons For Errors

Littlewood (1998)
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- Overgeneralization of rules: e.g. I like to eat rice. I can to eat mee.

I am fat but she is beautifuller.

Mother tongue interference

Simplification by omission some verb,

articles or prepositions get omitted

Factors Considered for Selection of materials, Tasks and Activities

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Tasks should be contextualized Activities and materials chosen must have a

purpose

Allow room for feedback by the teacher /

students / peers
Authenticity tends to lend relevancy to the

subject matter
Number of speakers for task Accents and the length of the listening text

TUTORIAL TASK
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In groups of 4, design learning activities for a lesson in a Year 3 class. Design

1. an enrichment activity for the high proficiency students. 2. a remedial activity for the low proficiency students.

REFERENCES
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Bailey, K.M. (2005). Practical English Language Teaching: Speaking. New York: McGraw-Hill. Harmer, J. (2007) The practice of English language Teaching (4th ed.). Harlow, United Kingdom: Longman. Littlewood, W. T. (1998). Foreign and second language learning: language-acquisition research and its implications for the classroom. New York: Cambridge University Press. Long, M. H., Adams, L., McLean, M., & Castanos, F. (1976). Doing things with words: verbal interaction in lockstep and small group classroom situations. In J. Fanselow and R. Crymes (Eds.), On TESOL 76 [137-153]. Washington D.C.: TESOL.

Extra reading:
The Government of Hong Kong Education Bureau website has an extensive section on remedial learning needs, strategies and materials. http://www.edb.gov.hk/index.aspx?nodeID=2607&langno=1

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THANK YOU