ICQ:
Mia F. Agustina & Indah Puspawati
Introduction
Jennifer does not know what she must do, so she asks her friend. Unfortunately, her friends also do not know what they must do. Some other students face the same problem and some others even start losing their interest in doing the activity because of their confusions. Instead of trying to understand what they must do, those students prefer to do nothing and just sit or chat with their friends. This happens since those students do not get their teacher’s instructions. Does this situation also happen in your class? When you ask your student to do some activities in your class, your students do not get what you want from them. It is because giving instructions to students is not as easy as asking them to come on time to your class. It can create a very huge problem, even it may hamper you achieving you lesson objectives. If this happen again and again, it is not impossible that the goal of the lesson will not be achieved. To avoid this problem, we need some knowledge. The knowledge that we need to know includes the knowledge on how to give effective and efficient instructions in the class. That is why ICQ (Instruction Checking Questions) comes up as one of the good ways to assure the effectiveness and the efficiency of instruction given by the instructors. ICQ becomes an effective and efficient way to assure whether the students really understand the teacher’s instructions or not. By doing so, the confusion problems that may be faced by the students can be minimized or even eliminated. Besides, it is also a good language input for the students since they will practice answering questions during the ICQ. Because of those reasons, this paper is going to talk about how to give effective and efficient instructions to the students by formulating and implementing ICQ. But before talking about how to give effective and efficient instructions to the student, we need to know what instruction is and to make the readers understand more about ICQ in the end of this paper the writers give some examples on how to apply ICQ in the real situation.
Instruction
Giving instruction in adult class is not that different as giving instruction in young children’s class. Being adults do not mean that adults have ability in getting long and complicated instruction since understanding instruction provides an opportunity for adults to acquire language naturally in an authentic, purposeful context, and at the same time it gives them the satisfaction on being able to show understanding through their responses. That is why learning on how giving an effective and efficient instruction is worth well to be learned.
According to Coralyn Bradshaw, there two types of instructions in the classroom:
1. Instructions between activities
The first type basically forms part of everyday teacher classroom language. Here are some examples: Take out your books! Write it in your notebooks. Give this out. Stop talking now, please!
2. Instructions to organize an activity
The second type is used to set up and prepare the students to carry out a specific activity, such as pair - or group work, a team game, a board or card game.
These two types of instruction are also used in adults’ class and these types of instruction also cause problems in adults’ class (these problems will be discussed in the next part). That is why Coralyn Bradshaw mentioned some tips to be considered when teachers want to give an effective instruction. These tips are divided into planning and delivering tips.
Planning:
1. Only include essential information that the students need to carry out the activity.
Students already have a lot of information to process when listening to this type of instruction. Therefore it´s important to make sure that the instructions contain only the essential information required for them to be able to do the task. Telling the students the linguistic aim of the activity or what they will do after it has finished, for example, will only serve to distract them.
2. Use simple vocabulary and structures that the students will be familiar with.
Your aim is to give simple instructions which the students can carry out. Therefore the level of the languages in which the instructions are given should match that which they have already been exposed to. Using complicated structures will confuse the students and you will lose their attention.
3. Break the instructions into short sentences, each containing a key step.
As students mature, they are developing their attention span so that they can concentrate for increasingly longer periods of time. It is important to keep sentences short. The instructions should be broken down into easily manageable steps, and each sentence should contain a “bite sized” step for the students to work with.
4. Make sure that the steps are in a logical order, and that no steps are missing.
Perhaps one of the most essential aspects of planning is to list the instructions in a logical order for the students to carry out. Think about when you want them to move their chairs, get into groups or teams, etc. When do you want them to look after their worksheets? Remember that once the students are asked to move places or look at materials, their attention will no longer be on you! As a rule of thumb, organize the students into the seating or grouping positions you require early in the instructions. Only hand out materials at the moment you want the students to look at them. If you forget one step in the instructions and have to go back, they will get confused. Make a note of the steps to refer to until you get used to instruction giving.
5. Don´t include information about what you are doing.
It is important to control your classroom language. For example, if you are handing out materials, it isn´t necessary to tell the students what you are doing – it will be clear from your actions. While it´s good to have natural exposure to English, when giving a series of instructions, teachers should keep to the essentials of what the students need to do. This helps to focus their attention.
6. Plan which gestures you can use to accompany steps.
Teachers of young learners are used to being good actors! The art of giving effective instructions relies heavily on the use of clear gestures to accompany the steps. Language is always more easily understood in context. Holding up and showing students the materials with which they will work, or demonstrating how they must do something, will always produce good results. Make sure that you always exaggerate your gestures and make them larger than life!
7. Plan the actions you want the students to perform.
One of the problems with delivering a series of instructions is maintaining the attention span of the students. The age of the students will determine how many steps of the instructions they will be able to hold in their memory. The best solution is to organize the steps as far as possible in lock-steps so that you can demonstrate and the students can carry out that part of the instruction.
Delivering
After discussing the tips for planning an effective and efficient instruction, belows are the tips for delivering an effective instruction:
1. When you are ready to begin the activity, make it obvious that you are about to give instructions. You need to make sure that the students are listening before you start. Establish silence, make eye contact with as many students as possible and speak loudly and clearly.
2. Remember to use silent pauses and gestures to punctuate and clarify the meaning. As you deliver the steps, look around at the students to see how they are doing. Repeat the instruction, if necessary, until you see that everyone is following you.
3. Always use a demonstration wherever possible. The following options are available:
a. the teacher demonstrates with a child
b. the teacher uses a pair/group of students to demonstrate
c. the teacher demonstrates alone (in lock-step with the class if possible)
4. Don´t forget to check that the students have understood the instructions. Don´t assume everyone has understood! Questions such as “Do you understand?” or “Has everyone understood?” are not sufficient. Students who have not understood are unlikely to let you know for fear of appearing foolish. Get concrete evidence from the students that they know what to do. One way of doing this is to ask one or two of them to tell you quickly, in their mother tongue, what they are going to do.
ICQs (Instruction Checking Questions)
After seeing the important role of giving instruction and the problem that may arise from giving instruction, now let’s discuss about what we can do to avoid confusion when students are given instruction. Bradsaw points out that the last step that needs to be done in giving instruction is to check the students’ understanding of the instruction. She highlights that the teachers cannot take it for granted that the students understand the instructions, but the teachers need to take evidence from them that they really understand the instruction. The most common way that the teachers do to take the evidence is by asking questions like “do you understand?”, “do you know what you have to do?” These kinds of questions are not enough because the answer to the question does not really reflect the students’ understanding because most of the time students will answer “yes” to those questions. A more detailed questions need to be used so that the teacher can get real evidence whether or not the students understand the instruction.
ICQs or Instruction Checking Question is a technique that the teachers can use to find out whether or not the students understand the instruction. For example when the teacher gives this kind of instruction:
“Ok students, I want everybody to work in pairs, and discuss whether the statement 1 – 10 is true or false. You have 10 minutes to do the activity”
The teacher can ask numbers of questions to find out if the students have understood the instructions. The teacher can ask questions like:
- Are you working in pairs or in groups?
- What you have to do with statements 1 – 10?
- Do you have to answer statement 1 – 10?
- How much time do you have to finish the activity?
Those are simple questions that will definitely be effective to check the students’ understanding on the instructions. If the students give the wrong answer, it means that the students misunderstood the instruction, and the teacher can correct them right away. These are some tips to use the ICQs in the class:
1. Vary the questions
The Questions used in the ICQs can be varied in the form of yes/no questions, WH questions, and choice questions. The purpose to include various questions in ICQs is to really elicit the students’ understanding. One type of question tends to cause boredom and students tend to make up the answers to one type of questions. For example, if the teacher asked yes/no questions then the students will answer “yes” all the time regardless they understand the instruction. Varied questions make the students unaware that they are being tested on their understanding of the instruction.
2. Plan the ICQs
Like the instructions, the ICQs are also need to be planned, the teacher need to see the instruction carefully and spot the key elements that might cause problems to the students. Then, teachers need to plan the ICQs that can effectively check the students’ understanding. Giving the spontaneous ICQs can be done if the teachers have had good experience in using these kinds of questions.
3. Limit the questions
Although ICQ is an effective way to check students’ understanding on the instructions, giving too many questions is not good idea. First, sometimes the students are keen in doing some activities; however, if they are given too many questions about the instruction, the students’ interest in doing the activity may reduce. The second effect if there are too many questions given to the students, they may feel underestimated by the teachers. The students will feel that the teachers seem to doubt their capability in understanding the instruction.
Although the questions for ICQs should be limited, there is no exact rule how many question is appropriate. It will all depend on how complicated is the instructions. The teachers may stop asking questions if the students have answered most of the important questions correctly.
By designing and administering the ICQs carefully, the teacher will not only save the students from confusion in doing particular activity, he/she will also give meaningful language exposure to the students. Many teachers will immediately switch to the students’ first language if the instructions seem too difficult for the students, and that is understandable. However, giving the instruction in English will give the students meaningful exposure to the target language, and the students will also get the opportunity to practice the target language by answering the ICQs.
Conclusion
Giving instruction is one important part of the classroom management and students’ understanding on the instruction is also important to make sure that the goal of activities prepared by the teacher can be achieved. To make sure that the instruction is understood correctly by the students, the teacher need to plan the instructions and deliver them in such a way that they will be easily understood by the students. The most important part of delivering instruction is getting evidence whether the students have understood the instruction correctly or not. One of the effective ways to do so is by giving the students ICQs (Instruction Checking Questions). ICQs can be done by giving different types of questions to the students so that the answer to those questions can reflect their understanding of the instructions. By doing so, teacher can avoid confusion among the students and, at the same time, the teacher will give opportunity to the students to practice the target language.
References
Bradshaw, Coralyn. 2005. Giving Great Instruction. http://www.scribd.com/doc/3177832/Giving-great-instructions. Access on April 18, 2009.
Brown, H. Douglas. 2001. Teaching by principle.
Harmer, Jeremy. 2007. The practice of English Language Teaching.
Harmer, Jeremy. 2001. How to Teach English.
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