How many times have you walked across the hall between or after classes hearing students speaking all languages you can imagine but English? How many times have you turned to them and said: “English only, please!” knowing that the minute you turn around the corner, they would switch back to the language they were speaking? And how many times have you experienced frustration from not knowing what to do?

The truth is that we, teachers, cannot tell our students what language they ought to use outside the classroom—they deserve the right to take a break and relax. In fact, forcing students to speak English in their free time can aggravate the situation. However, we can provide an environment in our programs that will encourage students to use English in a motivating and meaningful way, even when the classes are over. In other words, intensive English programs (IEPs) can and should create an environment that is conducive to learning (Rivers, 2011). A few practical ideas described below may be helpful to IEP administrators as they try to develop this kind of environment.

A Student Study-Buddy Program

A study-buddy program provides a great opportunity for students to practice their English outside the classroom. Through this program, students of lower levels would have the opportunity to learn from the experience of higher level students, and higher level students would improve their English communication skills by teaching students of lower levels. Some of the benefits of this program are that it:

1. Provides students with the opportunity to help each other with English, including homework and class assignments. In addition, students of advanced levels may feel motivated to help lower level students with grammar, vocabulary, or pronunciation.

2. Provides students with the opportunity to interact with peers who don’t speak the same language. As students make new friends from other countries, they will more frequently use English because they won’t share the same native language.

Organizing a Student Council

A student council can empower students and give them a certain degree of authority. Through participating in the council, students may feel more unified, proactive, and motivated. Such a council could be in charge of organizing and running academic and extracurricular student activities and facilitating communication between the student body and the school administration.

Speech Contests

Students can also practice their communication skills in English by participating in fun and interactive speech contests. In these contests, students would prepare speeches on various topics and present them in front of an audience (their peers and teachers). Teachers could take a supervising role in these contests; however, these speech contests can also be organized and led by students of advanced levels.

Cultural Activities

It is possible that some students know little about other cultures, which can keep them from making friends from other countries and even cause the perpetuation of certain stereotypes. By organizing cultural activities, IEP administrators would help students to take advantage of the multicultural and multilingual environment at school. Along with practicing their English, students would also be able to enrich their knowledge about their peers’ cultures and traditions and develop their intercultural communication skills.

Interest Clubs

Organizing interest clubs could add a tremendous variety to the out-of-class learning environment in an English program. They could give students the opportunity to exchange their ideas and interests, make friends with similar hobbies, learn from each other, and enjoy time spent practicing English.

For example, the administration of the IEP could organize a book club, during which students would get together to discuss an interesting book and share their ideas with one another. Other ideas could be a cooking club, a speaking and communication club, a service club, or a dance club. These clubs could help students find others with similar interests and engage them in meaningful communication in the target language.

The purpose of the suggestions outlined above is to improve language-learning environments in IEPs and enhance students’ learning experiences and their interaction in the target language. It is important to note here that programs’ funding can vary from case to case, and it’s up to the administration to decide what resources should be used to put these extracurricular activities into practice. For example, for programs with primarily full-time instructors, implementing these suggestions could fulfill the faculty service requirements or come under the auspices of the student activities committee. In IEPs with mainly adjuncts, a budget could be allocated to pay part-time instructors for organizing such activities. In a word, given the uniqueness of an individual English program, these suggestions can be altered and adjusted according to particular circumstances, needs, and resources. I hope, though, that these recommendations can give IEP administrators and faculty more ideas for further exploration.

Reference

Rivers, D. J. (2011). Strategies and struggles in the ELT classroom: Language policy, learner autonomy and innovative practice. Language Awareness, 20, 31–43.

Elena Shvidko is a doctoral candidate in the Department of English at Purdue University. Her research interests include second language writing, multimodal interaction, and TESOL.