And your chosen subject is....

In the last few weeks, I've been trying out a slightly different way of teaching features of academic writing. I've enjoyed it a lot + nice response from students = so I thought I might share here (and also give props to Richard Ingold, Kallia Crete and Julie Moore).

Basically, it hinges on subjects (as in subject verb object; not Maths, Chemistry, Bio) and three ideas (each one ripped off from the three people named above).

Image taken from bbc.co.uk

What I was trying to do...

Many of my students have good English. But they tend to write like they speak which doesn't sound too academic. I wanted them to see the gap between their writing and more academic writing (for themselves rather than me pointing it out) - but more than that, I wanted them to understand why that gap was there so they'd be able to write in a more conventionally academic way.

Who I stole from...

Richard Ingold - in a recent post I did on abstraction, Richard gave a very detailed explanation in the comments section about how he helps his students improve their writing and understanding of academic conventions. He talked about nouns - this idea that noun groups in academic writing tend to work much harder - they carry a lot more of the sentence's meaning (e.g. (1) Research on exposure to television and movie violence suggests that playing violent video games will increase aggressive behavior). In this example, the subject of the sentence is working hard - a lot of meaning has been conveyed before you get to the verb suggests. 

Kallia Crete - in an excellent post on teaching English for Chemistry, Kallia described a lesson in which she used a magazine article on a scientific topic and the relevant journal article on the same topic to allow students to compare differences in the writing style. She also got her students to come up with rules for academic writing based on their observations of the differences between the two texts. 

At BALEAP 2015, Julie Moore talked about how useful abstracts were as resources. They are shorter than full articles but they display most of the features of academic writing. As well, if you're on the wrong side of pay walls, they're completely free. It also reminded me of something I read recently by Scott Thornbury (I think in Discourse Analysis) in which he talked about how any piece of language, even if very short, can be opened up to display many of the features of the language. 

What I did...

I took an abstract - we'd been talking about video games so this one seemed appropriate (I snipped it and stuck the image at the bottom of this post). So in class, I asked the students to:

• Find the subject in each sentence. 
• Say what they noticed about these subjects. They came up with stuff like:

• The subject tends to be the research (e.g. Experimental and nonexperimental studies with males and females in laboratory and field settings support this conclusion.)
• The subject is long
• The subject is difficult to understand
• The subject is a thing or an idea, not so much a person
• The subject is really really specific
• The subject is working hard (they didn't really say that - but I love that way of thinking about it from Richard Ingold - so I said it, and they agreed with me)

•  Then we had a look at a writing that they had done. They noticed things like:

• In their writing, the subject tended to be a person or 'people' (Many people think....)
• The subject tended to be short.
• If they mentioned research it tended to be just the word "research" - didn't really say where, when, who etc.
• They could understand their subjects
• The subject wasn't working too hard (in response to my leading question..)

• I then asked them to come up with some rules. They came up with stuff like:
• Make ideas/things/research the subject, not so much people
• Make the subject work a bit harder
• So then we took some sample sentences from their work and tried to "academicise" them

• (Student version) If young people play video games, they are more likely to act aggresively

•  (A bit more academic sounding version) Playing violent video games may increase aggressive behaviour in young people

Is that it.....?

Pretty much. 

Getting technical

A few months ago on Twitter, I asked for recommendations for interesting EAP related articles as I had just gotten access to a university library and had plans to do a ton of reading. Good intentions being what they are, I read very few. Fortunately, Richard Ingold, sensing my idleness, sent me a very enthusiastic recommendation recently. Not only was it an interesting article, in tracking it down I also discovered that I have access to a physical library that I had been completely unaware of. Buoyed by all this serendipity, I thought it might be interesting to do a write up of the article.

Reference
Martin, J.R., 1993. Technicality and abstraction: Language for the creation of specialized texts. In A. Burns and C. Coffin, eds. 2001. Analysing English in a global context: a reader. London: Routledge. Ch.13.

Who is it by?
The author is J.R. Martin - I'd not heard of him before but that says more about my ignorance than his renown. He is a professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney, is known for his work on systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and has a Wikipedia page. I've only done a tiny bit of reading on SFL - the idea (I think) is to look at language from a social perspective; that language is shaped by (and shapes) how we see and experience the world and that by analysing the language a person uses, you can better understand their beliefs or world views. (Richard has a fascinating article here where he uses SFL to analyse a sermon by a religious group called Hillsong).

What is the main argument?
For the guts of the article, Martin analyses examples of technical writing (for example, in science but also in the humanities). He starts by talking about how we classify things - for example, children would group a cow, a horse and a dog as animals; if they come across a new creature (he gives the example of a platypus) they might then question whether they can classify that as an animal. If their parent says yes, platypus is now an animal for the child. Similarly, in science, things are classified according to a system but the logic for that system might not be obvious or intuitive to a non-expert.

He then talks about definitions of technical terms. A technical term might be defined using simple language (e.g. A chromecast is a thing you plug into your telly so you can project your phone screen on to the big screen and watch netflix). Alternatively, a technical term might be explained by placing it in a category (e.g. a chromecast is a type of media streaming device). The former takes a bit more time to write but most people should get the idea from it. The latter is obviously easier for me to write and should be easier to understand if the person knows what a media streaming device is - but it would be incomprehensible if they didn't.

In my first chromecast example above there were lots of verbs (plug, project, watch). In my second chromecast example, the only verb was "is". This leads on to the idea that technical writing features lots of nominalisation or noun phrases as opposed to verbs. For instance, science studies processes but looks at these processes as things. Respiration refers to a process but "respiration" is a noun - the process (respiring) is nominalised (respiration) to make it easier to classify and talk about. So in scientific writing, you end up with lots and lots of nouns/noun phrases. Similarly, in the humanities, you have a lot of nominalisation - when we talk about abstract ideas/concepts (e.g. beauty, environmental damage, a vast increase in taxation). As a result, technical writing can often be accused of being jargon heavy. I get the sense that he thinks this either unfair or unhelpful although he does discuss the way some writing leans heavily on nominalisation as a sign of status.

What I took from it
To be honest, the first time I read through it, I wasn't quite sure if it had relevance to my teaching. I read it again and one particular line jumped out at me - "The main point as far as education is concerned is that students need to learn to read abstract discourse if they are to be functionally literate in our culture and write abstract discourse if they are to interpret their world in a critical way". From what I understand, all this technical laguage in academic writing can be extremely challenging for students - they may understand the concept but not the terms or they may recognise the terms but not understand what they mean or how they relate to other terms. So clearly, there is a lot of work to be done there.

Also, because this aspect of academic writing (the nominalisation heaviness) is never really unpacked for them (by unpack, I mean to look at the key nouns/abstract ideas in a sentence and think about what they mean, how they relate to other concepts in the text), Martin also points out how students often end up writing as they speak. This is something I've noticed a lot with students - their writing tends to be full of personal pronouns and lots of "if" sentences; the focus of the sentence tends to be either a person (often "I") or a thing (often the government) that acts like a person.

My advice to students on this tends to be very lame - "don't use I, it's not academic". I think I've been guilty of teaching academic writing in a do/don't approach - "this is a feature of academic writing - this is not; use obtain, not get; contractions are bad, etc.". In other words, a very micro level type approach. On p.221, Martin looks at a students' writing which is very 'spoken' in style and then suggests how it can be improved - his point being that if the student frames their writing within a thesis, argument, summation model, they will need abstract language. I think I might try more of this kind of thing - take a short essay written in a spoken style and then create a more "academic" article; unpacking it for the students to highlight the abstract language, the frequent focus on ideas/nouns and their relationship to other ideas/nouns in the text.

I might also try to get more down and dirty with technical language - I often see skimming and scanning as learning goals in EAP books; perhaps unpacking as a reading skill might be of equal value?

Disclaimer: I may have completely misunderstood this article so please check comments below in the hope that some kind soul offers corrections if needed.

What do you recommend?

At various points throughout my teaching life, I've been asked by students for recommendations. As I'm a Dubliner working in Dublin, many of the things I am asked about relate to the practicalities of living in a relatively expensive city. For instance, if a student asks me where to go for a bit of food, I'll direct them towards Govindas (cheap, veggie lunches) or the student canteen in Trinity. If they're looking for nice coffee, I recommend Marks and Spencers on Grafton Street - it's not very hipster but it's got roof-space in the centre of the city with nice views and the coffee's grand. For a pint, I'd usually say The Library Bar just off George's Street and being a prematurely old fart, I'd tell them to avoid Temple Bar like the plague. And given the removal/privatisation of public facilities in our city, I always recommend the top floor of the largest department store on Grafton street for a far more serene ablution than the alternative of forking out for the privilege or sneaking into a fast food jacks.

I do occasionally get asked for recommendations of a more academic hue. Sometimes, these are very general - "How can I improve my English?"; sometimes, more specific - "Which is the best newspaper for phrasal verbs?". In each case, the student wants to do something more outside of the classroom to learn English and very kindly values my opinion on the matter. Although I'm more than happy to proffer unsolicited recommendations on TV shows, movies, music and podcasts, it is generally books that I find myself being asked to recommend.

Image taken from https://travelmilk.wordpress.com/2012/09/21/the-most-beautiful-book-shop-in-the-world/

I find this a bit tricky. For a start, many of the students who've asked me for a book recommendation tell me they don't have strong reading habits (that sounds a bit vague - what I mean is that they say they don't really read books for pleasure in their own language although I'm sure they do tons of online reading). Also, many of them are around the B2 level and I'm conscious that an overly challenging book might put them off reading in English. The more significant challenge is that during the academic year, I tend to read crime thrillers and very little else so I don't have a very wide range of books to choose from.

All that being said, here are some of the books that I have recommended and a short description as to why the recommendation was successful (I judge success by whether or not the student read it). In each case, the recommendation was made in the modest hope that the book would be enjoyable and lead to further book reading down the line.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
I'll start with this one as I've recommended it the most and it's had the best response. The story is engaging, the narrator uses relatively simple language, the chapters are short and mix between narrative and interesting diversions, and it is heart-warming. I recommended it (and loaned a copy, in fact) to one student - she enthused about it and the book made its way around the class. So far, nobody who has started it has given up on it (to my knowledge).

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne
This one was written by an Irish author so I'm guilty of a bit of nationalism there. I'm also guilty of never having actually read it. But a good few students have read it and multiple copies have moved around the class. Again, it is relatively simple, being told from a child's perspective but there is a bit of substance to it. And there's a film for follow up (or pre-reading).

Any Autobiography by Any Sportsperson
These tend to be good as the reader knows a lot about the person before they start reading which should make it a bit easier to read. Preferable to biographies which are often a bit denser and more demanding. I've seen the Pele book bouncing around a few times; Nadal and Pirlo both made appearances; Agassi's book is good for those of a certain age with an interest in tennis/overbearing parents.

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
When brimming with the enthusiasm to read in English, I've seen a lot of students go for the classics. Far be it from me to discourage someone from reading James Joyce whilst living in Dublin, but I've seen a lot of students' attempts at reading in English dashed against the rocks of a €1 second hand copy of Dubliners. Hemingway's stripped down style of writing (particularly in this novel) makes it an easier read for those at the B2/C1 level, it's obviously a gorgeous story and a lot of people have already read it in their own language.

Panic by Jeff Abbot
About six years ago, I had a notion to try a book club with a class I had that were studying for the IELTS exam. The idea was that we'd all read the same book, at the same pace and there would be spin off speaking/writing activities in class. I'm not sure exactly how we landed on this book - I think it was because it was very dialogue heavy, fairly simple and had short chapters (it was also going cheap as well at the time). Anyway, the majority of students liked it, they all finished it (some read ahead) and several got the follow up - Fear (unfortunately, the author doesn't seem to have stuck to the negative noun formula and has started messing around with verbs!).

If asked, what books do you (would you) recommend to your students?

Reflections on not going to IATEFL

Taken from http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2016

If you remember the movie Forrest Gump,  you'll recall that Tom Hanks managed to gormlessly turn up at key moments in US history. Unlike Forrest, I have somehow contrived throughout my career to miss out on key moments in ELT's recent history (though I am frequently gormless at the standard moments that I manage to turn up for). For instance, despite going to a lot of ELT talks in Dublin at the start of my career, I managed not to go when Scott Thornbury rocked up with his Grammar McNuggets. I arrived in Trinity College to do my masters shortly after David Little of Learner Autonomy fame had moved on and I became outraged about learning styles ages after Russ Mayne's IATEFL talk.

Continuing the pattern, I missed out on IATEFL this year. Judging from the reaction on Twitter, it looks like I missed out on a good one. Silvana Richardson's talk seems to have been the standout (Marek has a good overview of the online reaction to the talk). But as well as that, I'm raging to have missed out on talks by colleagues or the chance to chat in real life to people whose height I can only guess at. Fortunately, IATEFL have a really good website where you can watch loads of the talks (and then claim it as CPD). If you squint at your monitor and spend the whole talk trying to think of a smart question, you could almost be there.

The first one I watched was Silvana's talk on discrimination against 'Non-Native' teachers and found it really moving. A lot has been said on it already but what really struck me was the description of how teachers react to this discrimination. Some pretend to be 'native' while others avoid any mention of their background. I've expressed my outrage about this topic before but watching this talk alongside a 'non-native' teacher who is far more qualified than I am (and who has endured this kind of thing), I just felt really, really sad. A good chunk of people in our industry are either treated like shit or made to feel shit. We can do better.

Last year, in one of my writing classes, we were working on a group writing project. As it was a formative assignment, the topic for the writing project was fairly arbitrary (the year before, we did something on social media in education). I decided to take this native/non-native issue and set that as the topic. I thought it would be interesting for the students and also interesting to hear their perspective. The aim of the project was to write a short essay about which type of teacher was better suited to teaching English. I took a fairly hands off approach and simply guided them in terms of coherence and developing ideas. As it was a group writing project, I got to listen to them discussing their ideas as well as reading their final essay. I expected that from the start, they'd say 'natives' were preferable but that as they read a bit more, they might adapt their position. In fact, from the start, they disagreed with the idea that a 'native' teacher was always best and continued to do so until the end. Their views were far more nuanced than I had expected.

Not a very scientific bit of research, I'll admit, but it does make me question the notion that students are as in thrall to the 'native' tag as parts of our industry are (an interesting game to play - go to the 'About' sections on the homepages of these language schools in Dublin and see how far you get before depression at how many trumpet the nativeness of their teachers sets in - I managed 4 before I gave up).

I feel a bit bad about that last bit - it's a bit sarcastic and sneery. But I've decided to leave it in because I think that here in Dublin (and elsewhere) we do need to question the casual acceptance that 'native' is best. It exists. Before I got into blogging and tweeting and reading up on this a bit, I would have been just as guilty of trumpeting my 'nativeness'. That is why a talk like this is good. But I worry that here in Dublin, I'm not the only one missing out.

Oh, absTRACT!

I went to a fabulous workshop/talk by Julie Moore at BALEAP last year in which she talked about the potential uses of abstracts in the EAP classroom. Since then, I've tried to use them more but haven't really developed a coherent pattern of use. What I've done so far is not very exciting and has primarily been 'writing' focused. The students have to write a dissertation as part of the course so we do some lessons on writing abstracts. This involves looking at sample abstracts, looking at the features common to abstracts and then trying to produce their own.

Composition A XXI by László Moholy-Nagy
taken from WikiArt

But when I think about the amount of abstracts there are out there, I feel like I'm leaving money on the table - that as reading texts in and of themselves, they have tons to offer: they're free to those of us on the other side of pay walls; they're authentic; you can pick and choose depending on students' disciplines (or they can pick and choose).

As they are short in nature, I think they lend themselves to short, but hopefully rewarding reading activities.

1. Give students a hypothetical topic and three somewhat relevant abstracts. They can only choose one and so must justify their decision.

2. Give students a social sciences type abstract (ELT type ones are good for this) - remove the methodology and ask students to figure out how they would fulfil the research aim.

3. Choose a topic for a future lecture (we did antibiotic resistance recently). Ask students to find 2 or 3 abstracts related to the topic for the next class. They can discuss their choices with others under headings like background/context, research aim, methodology, conclusion. After discussing their abstracts they could then predict what they expect to be covered in the lecture. The follow up then is the lecture itself.

I realise now after writing that these suggestions are very teacher centred. With abstracts, the students have great scope to select and explore areas that they are interested in. The teacher can provide some structure to that but whenever I think about getting more student selected reading material into the classroom, I default to that wonderful suggestion from a while back about everyone (teacher included) bringing in something to read for 15 minutes in the class (wish I could remember who suggested it!). After that, everyone simply talks about what they have been reading and why they chose it. An abstract or two would seem to fit nicely into that loose structure.

The other thing about abstracts is the frustration they can lead to - how they can tantalise and then disappoint. If your students are working without full journal access then, if nothing else, abstracts can be a way to initiate a discussion open access and knowledge.

Would be nice to hear how others use abstracts in class.

Postscript: Mura also wrote on abstracts with the added benefit of linking to genre (bio/medicine) specific examples here

I don't think I'm a neoliberal but I'm not sure...

Alex Ding has an excellent blog here - both scholarly and passionate. Recently, he posted on neoliberalism in EAP, questionning why this topic doesn't seem to be covered much in discussions of EAP. Rather than try to summarise, I'd recommend you check out the post. However, I'll take the liberty here of quoting a few points which I found of particular interest:

"The nefarious and pernicious effects of neoliberal ideology on universities are damming and vast. One pernicious effect (among many) of this is the positioning of students as consumers and teachers as sellers of educational products."

"Employability and student satisfaction are now key metrics in determining how desirable a university is."

"In an important sense EAP is a product of neoliberal policies and our existence (apart from perhaps as a somewhat esoteric discipline) depends on capturing international students."

Obviously, Alex is here talking specifically about the situation in the UK. Here in Ireland, I am not sure if the situation matches completely but the view of students as consumers would not be alien. And students are frequently asked to evaluate their teachers/lecturers and course content, perhaps not as regularly or systematically as in the UK, but it happens. So, although my teaching situation may differ to that described in Alex's post, there are sufficient similarities for the post to strike a chord. 

Since reading the post a few weeks back, I've been reflecting a lot on the challenging nature of the topic. In reading up on the subject, I came across another interesting article by Chun (2009) which looked at the way in which neoliberal ideologies influence the marketing of EAP courses and the materials used on such courses. Again, the picture painted was disconcertingly familiar. 

As someone who works in EAP, I think there is a challenge here. The challenge, as I see it, is to consider your role as an EAP practitioner, both in how you interact with your students and as an employee of an educational institute. In writing this post, I am hoping to tease out my own understanding of my role in light of the ideas explored in Alex's post. There is much that I agree with in Alex's post, but I find myself disagreeing with one particular point. 

The point would be thus: as a consequence of neoliberal policies, the student is now viewed as a consumer and the teacher as providing a service. In the post, this concept is seen as a negative, and the idea is taken up and supported in the comments section. 

How does this concept affect me as an EAP teacher? If I am quite honest, I do not have a great deal of trouble reconciling myself with the idea of student as customer/consumer. Obviously, like all teachers, I would first see the student as a human being and there are many aspects to the relationship. But I think there are positives if one were to include the 'student as customer' perspective as one aspect of the student as a whole. I should stress that I am speaking in terms of positives for the relationship between student and teacher as opposed to positives on a wider, institutional level. 

For a start, if someone pays to be at university, then in a very real sense it would be wrong not to consider them a customer or consumer. If the problem is the very fact of paying in the first place, if you believe that university should be free, I would still see no problem in viewing a student as a customer. If university were free, if books and materials were free, there would still be a cost to the student or their family (lost earnings for instance). Viewing them as a customer acknowledges the sacrifice that they have made to be there. 

It seems to me that the problem with viewing students as customers only arises if the position is taken that as customers they must be kept happy at all costs (with the concerns about attendant consequences like grade inflation etc.). I don't see why this has to be the case. If I go to a French restaurant and demand Italian food, then I will not get what I want. The French restaurant has made it clear what they provide via their menu - within that, they can make every effort to accommodate me, but if I go outside that, they can legitimately disappoint me. Similarly, by clearly defining the role of the teacher and what is expected of the student, the perception of the student as customer does not necessarily entail academic compromise. Within these roles, the student can legitimately expect certain things (e.g. that the teacher generally arrive on time and prepare their lessons), just as the teacher can (e.g. complete your work on time, take ownership of your work, etc.). Regardless of the label - customer, empty vessel, co-learner - this is what the student has signed up for. But anything beyond those roles (e.g. give me an A because I paid so much money to be here) is not legitimate. It is not what the university is offering. 

* Since I started writing this post, Alex posted again on the topic here and he expands further on the issue by raising the objective of EAP. Again, it is a fascinating discussion and has caused me to reflect more on the objective of EAP from my perspective as a teacher. I think I've waffled enough as I try to get to grips with my reactions to these two posts but I would be curious to hear from other teachers of EAP - what they see as their purpose and whether they find the perspective of student as consumer/customer problematic. 

** I've conflated the terms consumer/customer - not sure that people posting on Alex's original post (or Alex himself) view these as synonymous. I did so because I think the "customer is always right" slogan is part of the reason why people object to the view of students as customers - despite the fact that in many businesses, the customer is often deemed to be mistaken. 

References:

Chun, C.W., 2009. Contesting neoliberal discourses in EAP: Critical praxis in an IEP classroom. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 8(2), pp.111-120.

Ding, A., 2016. Neoliberal EAP: are we all neoliberals now? Teaching EAP, [blog] 25 January. Available at: https://teachingeap.wordpress.com/2016/01/25/neo-liberal-eap-are-we-all-neoliberals-now/ [Accessed 22 February 2016].

Exam conditions

I wrote a little bit recently about getting students to do more homework. As my students have to do examinations, they specifically requested exam practice that they could do at home. So I have slightly amended the work that I give them. I still send them articles to read, questions to research and audio to listen to (all around a certain theme), but I also send them an exam style reading/listening/writing text which we follow up on in class.

The reading exam texts that they do are very like IELTS ones. A longish text with various question types. To make this a bit more interesting in the follow up class, I take the text and I underline the sentence/paragraph that relates to each question (and then write the number for the question it relates to). I then give out a copy of this to each pair. They then have to work together to figure out if their original answer was correct. Doing it this way feels a little less teacher-centred and gives them repeated exposure to the language of the text; hopefully, it also encourages them to be a bit more reflective about their reasons for choosing certain answers.

After a few weeks of doing this I noticed a couple of trends:

1. Many students did not know really key vocabulary that either featured in the text or the article. It didn't seem to me that they had forgotten it - rather that it was completely unknown to them.

2. Many students were getting the same number of questions correct. There didn't seem to be any improvement over the course of a few weeks. The number of correct answers was approximately the same as they would get in formative tests.

3. Written essays that were completed as homework were littered with spelling errors and problems that even a very cursory check over would pick up.

4. There were some students who displayed none of these patterns: their work was improving, they had better scores than in the test and they had eliminated more basic errors from their writing (gosh, eliminated sounds quite militaristic!)

So, as you do, I had a chat with the classes and tried to dig into it a little bit. It didn't take very long for a pattern to emerge. Some students were doing their homework very carefully - they were using dictionaries, they were looking stuff up, they were reviewing notes, they were double checking, they were asking classmates for feedback on their writing. In short, they were giving it a good bit of their time. Other students were doing none of this.

Horrible cynic that I am, I immediately thought this was symptomatic of laziness, lack of focus, blah blah, blah...but as we continued to chat, it became clear that these students were not being blasé about their homework. As it was homework specifically related to their exams, they were imposing exam conditions upon themselves when they did it. They gave themselves specific times to complete each exercise and when that time was up, that was it. In the exams they would only have 40 minutes so at home they should only have 40 minutes. Hard to fault the logic, really.

If this blogpost were a TV show, the image would start to blur and wobble about now as I slip into a five year old memory of when I was teaching IELTS. Back then I used to spout an awful lot of guff:

• "You've only 20 minutes in the exam for each reading. So you need to get your speed up."
• "You won't have a dictionary in the exam so you need to start guessing from context."
• "Hmmm, you didn't do so well in that section. Tell me about your exam technique."
• "You used subtitles!?! Are you mad? You won't have subtitles in the exam!"

I had one student, CW, who steadfastly ignored all of my advice. Every day, when we checked our homework, she would get every answer correct. Embarrassingly, I remember feeling dismay when she told me that she had spent hours on it and warned her that in the exam, she would not have dictionaries or the luxury of so much time. Thankfully, she continued with her approach and in her IELTS exam, scored an 8.5 in reading (I think 7.5 overall, but am not sure - it was the reading score that really burned itself onto my consciousness). What I missed in all my focus on exam strategies was what she was doing - learning the language. 

Now, five years later, the roles are reversed. I'm pleading with my students to spend more time on their homework. Yes, they won't have a dictionary in the exam but they have one now so why not use it to learn words that might help them when the exam does come around. Yes, they will only have a certain amount of time, but why not focus on getting it right first and then speeding up rather than the other way around. And of course, in a writing exam, they may not have time to proofread their work. But if they do it now, they are perhaps less likely to make those mistakes in the exam.  

I am sure this must sound blindingly obvious but considering how blinkered I was by an "exam training" approach to teaching and also, how many of my students were adopting this "exam conditions", I think it is perhaps worthwhile asking students how they go about doing their homework.