How do we convince students to put their notes away and stop trying to script and memorize
absolutely everything they're going to say and make them actually engage with other students
in discussions?
I teach English for academic purposes in a Hong Kong university.
The literature suggests that because of their educational and cultural backgrounds, many
students dislike real-time discussions.
In fact, one-to-one, my own students generally speak very good English, but they won't believe
me.
Instead, many memorize scripts to overcome this lack of confidence.
And things have got worse since the pandemic and other disruptions to education.
Many first-year undergraduates have been arriving with extremely poor interpersonal and groupwork
skills.
These videos help by showing students the effect of these bad habits to make them see
the need for change.
The first video shows students the negative impacts and the second video models are more
natural, spontaneous and respectful classroom discussion.
And of course we've used humour and exaggeration to make the videos engaging.