My main new challenge this term was teaching a TOEFL iBT preparation class.
I had taught TOEFL Prep for the paper-based TOEFL many years ago, but teaching the iBT involved becoming familiar with quite a different combination of tasks. In addition, the course titled 'Advanced English: TOEFL" had no method of screening what level of student could take the class and that led to having a mix of different types of students with different expectations among the 20 who enrolled. Most were first year students finished with Program C, which meant their TOEFL was already over 550, many close to 600, and good enough to study abroad almost anywhere with just a few things to polish up--mostly in terms of academic language, logic and vocabulary. Mixed in with them were some juniors and seniors who had lower proficiency and less confidence especially in their speaking and listening skills; and paradoxically, the lower level older students were more in need of TOEFL score improvement for going to graduate school while the first year students, who were at a higher level (many as returnees) had enrolled for...it seemed just a vague sense that they wanted to keep studying English. It was a strange situation made worse by the fact that it was a once-a-week, two-hour evening class and energy levels were notably low after attending classes all day, and it was difficult to communicate with each other because I chose to use a computer classroom to do iBT activities on the computer. And we only met once a week, often interrupted by holidays, and it was even hard to learn names. Weird situation.
As it turned out, it was one of the weirdest courses I ever taught, and one of the least satisfying. It is an interesting one to analyze in retrospect, with hopefully some lessons for avoiding similar difficulties in the future.
So...to cut to the chase, what made it strange and how can I change or avoid that in the future?
1) Filter out students who are too high or too low, or a least define what kind of test prep will be done in the course description in advance so that those students can avoid enrolling. This was my first year, so I had no way to control the content of course description given to students in advance of registration. But for future years, I think a new description is needed. With test prep, a class with mixed levels and varying need-profiles really does not work well. In the case of AE: TOEFL, my preference would be that the "returnee type" students be filtered out and moved to College Composition or Presentation Skills or some other content-based class somehow.
2) Set up a better cycle of weekly homework to identify weaknesses and needs, and then in class addressing those needs with explanations and strategies. Lacking experience with the iBT format and how students should do homework to practice the skills, I wasn't able to take control of the homework cycle and assign work that would lead to active discussion in the next class. This time, I used one week per skill -- Speaking, Writing, Listening, Reading, and then Speaking, Writing again -- because I wasn't sure what students would benefit from the most. Next time, it would be ideal to spend the first two weeks flushing out levels and needs in each area before setting up the schedule. I need a clear profile of the students' weaknesses and expectations and motivations before deciding how much time to spend on what. Also, the first two weeks should be used to get some kind of score indication for all students that can be used as a benchmark of improvement to compare with in the final weeks. Doing a full TOEFL iBT takes 4 hours, so that is not realistic, but in retrospect even doing a two hour "half test" in the first or second week would help me see where they are with taking the test under time pressure. For writing, a 30 minute typed timed writing, with submission by email would be good for starting off. For speaking, one or two 1 minute recordings to see whether they are. For listening and reading, 30 minutes each or so to see how well they can get through the questions and formats. Then, possibly require them to self-score by working through that question and model answers step by step.
3) Set up a running TED based journal as well. TED is ideal for all skills - listen / read transcript / pick up new vocab / write a summary and reaction / and finally record an audio summary reaction of 1 minute or so. This can be easily posted on Moodle as a record of week to week effort to improve English, and can be done on top of practicing the textbook exercises and preparing questions for class.
