Personalise to maximise engagement

In a week or so I will be delivering a session to teachers across Asia on the topic of personalization. For me this is a key are in any form of learning and provides learners with a chance to use language or skills in a meaningful way that is memorable and therefore will help to aid retention of not only the skills and language but the task as well. If a personalised task has a positive effect on the learner it should stay with them for a long time. Below are the bullet points of what we will cover. Let me start by providing an example of when my learning was personalised and the effect it had on me. 

·      Introduction

·      Shallow personalisation

·      Deep personalisation

·      A bad example

·      Needs analysis 

·      A framework for personalisation

·      Examples in practice 

Introduction: Junior school – Back in the day 

When I was around 9 or 10 years old we had a teacher (who to this day remains my favourite teacher) that strived to make lessons interesting and relevant to his students. Mr. Cove taught at my junior school which is located in a small town called Millom in the North of England. One of the projects he had us complete was to make a map of the local town. This map focused on commerce and we were instructed to select streets in the town and find out what shops were there in the past. We went into the town and asked local shopkeepers, citizens and looked in the public library. In addition, we had to use our detective skills to see if there were any clues in the shops such as old mosaic tiled floors with the names of previous businesses. It was great as we got to engage more deeply with the history of our town and it meant that any future trip to the shops would carry more significance. Even to this day when I go 'back home' I am drawn back to the days of this project and am adding to the project by examining shops that have changed or closed since the last time I was there. Also, when I look back I can see even in the 1980's I had a teacher who was providing me with the 21st century skills of citizenship, collaboration, communication and critical thinking. The personalisation of this project was deep, so deep that I remember it vividly to this day, almost 38 years later. 

I could go on and give more examples of lesson personalisation by Mr. Cove and his impact on my education but we don’t have enough space. He was a great teacher.    

The lesson I mentioned above was a social studies or history project. In our ELT lessons and coursebooks we can also see lots of personalisation or attempts as personalisation happening. Some of this is good and 'deep'. However, I have noticed in my career that just putting the word 'you' in a question or task doesn't necessarily mean the task is personalised. If it is, it’s likely very 'shallow' and work needs to be done to make this more meaningful and relevant. Let me give you some examples from our classroom and coursebooks and look at what I mean by 'deep' and 'shallow' in an ELT context.  

Shallow

Shallow personalisation is using questions that are personal but require very little from the student to answer. Questions such as What’s your favourite .....? Have you ever been to ..... ? and so on. These questions require a short answer and while they have you and your in them do not really engage or provide any meaningful response. They are useful for warm ups and drilling of language or to introduce a topic. They are the starting point of personalisation.    

Deep  

To engage students and deepen the personalisation we need to ask better and more questions. If we look at the examples above, I might reframe the questions like so. Tell me about a food you like to eat. Why do you like it? What does it taste like? When did you eat it last? Who made it for you? Can you make it yourself? How would you go about making this? Is this food healthy? These questions not only help you find out more about your learners but they also help develop language and build rapport. By asking deeper questions you also show that you are interested in the students and you in return have more data in which to make lessons more interesting. It’s a win win.   

A bad example

To show the impact and usefulness of personalisation I am going to provide an example from my own teaching career. We will start with a bad example and for the purposes of this blog and to avoid any libel I am going to paraphrase a piece of personalisation I encountered when using a published coursebook. I am not going to say which coursebook as I can't quote verbatim the actual task but it was something like this. 

I was teaching a group in a boy’s secondary school in Thailand. We had been studying a language point (could have been 2nd conditional or food vocabulary) and to 'personalise' the task students were asked to 

'Imagine the Queen of England was coming to your house for tea. What would you serve her?'

What kind of engagement do you think I had from my learners? If you said very little, you would have been right. As an inexperienced teacher I tried it once and then ditched it. When it came round to teach it again, it provided some entertainment and scorn from members of the staffroom. We ended up using this as an example of bad personalisation, which I am continuing to do today. Can you recognize the issues I have with this task? Let me tell you. 

As I said my learners were boys in a Thai school. They have very little desire to provide tea for anyone. Their interests in food was consumption only. The task was imaginary so was irrelevant and lacked context that the boys could relate to. The Queen, although a worldwide known personality is of little interest to the boys in Thailand, so again, they have no real desire to complete the task except to meet the requirement from the teacher. For these reasons my colleagues and I ditched the task for something rather more meaningful. But, I hear you ask, ‘how could you adapt this and make it deeper?’ 

Now, I will say I can’t exactly remember what we did to replace this task (it was a while ago) so I am going to tell you what I would do now. To make the task relevant and interesting, I need to replace the Queen, so I would ask students to think of someone they admire or would like to talk to. From this I would then give elicit the hypothetical structure by asking them to imagine they could have a conversation with this person what would you ask? I would ask them to come up with 5 questions to ask the person. The key here to make it personal is in the execution of the task. After checking the questions for language and content we would then actually send them to the people in question. As everyone is pretty much on social media they are easy to get hold of. Whether they respond is another question but this adds to the excitement of the task. The task is now real and meaningful and relevant. To keep the original task intact students could create a meal for their chosen person and then send it to them explaining this is what they would choose for them and ask for a response. This again provides a real audience and a deeper element of personalisation. 

Needs analysis

There are a few interesting things to consider here. One is how did I know that my students wouldn’t be interested in serving tea to the Queen of England? Maybe they would be. Maybe for some strange reason this would have been a task they could really get into. Well, I did my due diligence and this is a key area for personalisation. I conducted a needs analysis at the start of term to find out not only my students’ strengths and weaknesses but arguably more importantly, their interests, reasons for studying and the ways they like to learn. I learned what was important to them in their lives and from this, I was able to tailor lessons to make them interesting and relevant. A needs analysis is the basis of any personalisation and without this you are just guessing what students like without really knowing. 

A framework for personalisation

Another thing to consider is the systematic implementation of personalisation. We can employ a framework here to help with this.

As I said, personalisation starts from a needs analysis and then from this we can then select or start to adapt a task to make if fit with this analysis and the lesson aims at hand.  Communication takes place and importantly the output is personalised. To provide a reason to complete the task an audience for the output is selected and is relevant to the learners. You as a teacher will need to consider the elements of the framework in blue. If you are a native of the country you are teaching then this become easier as the cultural knowledge will be ingrained. If you are not, then you do as much as you can to find out more about the local culture and try to consider elements of this when you are planning and teaching. 

Examples in practice

Let's finish now by examining an excellent new young adult coursebook from Macmillan Education called Speak Your Mind. I've chosen this book as I think the area of personalisation is developed impressively and the book goes deeper than any I have seen in this area. Here is an example of a level one, unit opener.

Each unit opener starts with a question to activate schemata. 

This ‘What do you already know?’ question is great for students to show that they already know a lot of English. The question is personalised and gives them a chance to relate the topic to their own lives. This section can also be rereferred back to and as students progress they can add to the list showing a sense of progress. To make these lists or any lists of vocabulary more personal and memorable you could have students rank the words depending on their own opinions. For example, they could rank apps in terms of usefulness and time spent using the apps. Thanks to Fiona Mauchline for this idea.  

Follow up ‘Speak Your Mind’ questions are also personalised. A video provides a model answer and students are then asked to discuss and give their own opinions. 

Throughout a unit of Speak Your Mind you will see questions to stimulate discussion and personalised speaking tasks.

Each unit ends with a confident communicator speaking activity that practices language and personalises a task.

But, what makes Speak Your Mind unique and special in my eyes are the ‘Make It’ boxes. The ‘Make It’ features build vocabulary in a personalised and meaningful way as well as providing personalised tasks to expand knowledge and language abilities. There are 4 Make It boxes.

Make It Yours

Make It Yours boxes are designed to help students expand their vocabulary. Below you can see an activity that is highly personalised and uses technology to practice language. Real communication takes place making the activity memorable, fun and relevant.      

Make It Happen

Make It Happen boxes feature after every study skills lesson. This activity is designed to put into practice the skills students have previously learned in the lesson. 

Make It Real

Make It Real boxes give learners examples of language they may not have been formally taught but is commonly used by native speakers. This provides learners with a chance to sound authentic when communicating.

Make It Digital

Every unit in Speak Your Mind has a suggestion for online work that can be done outside of the class. Students are encouraged to research at home and can then present their results in the class.

So, my challenge to you now is to go away and find out more about your learners and what makes them tick. Use the Make It ideas to help you think of new ways to offer more personalised lessons that will keep students interested and motivated in the studies. Also, use the framework and see if this helps you have a more systematic approach to personalisation. 

References 

Speak Your Mind, Level One, Macmillan Education.

Modern English Teacher (Volume 28, Issue 2) '10 tips for memorising vocabulary' Fiona Mauchline

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/blogs/davedodgson/david-dodgson-defining-personalisation