Here’s an activity for some early lesson in a course of study that can help members of the class to define their roles and responsibilities.
Step 1
Show your students a job description. It could be one of a job that they have met recently in class or even your own if you were given one. A suitable reading task might be: guess the job; or you could ask them to rank the responsibilities in different ways – from most to leastimportant, for example.There’s a job description on this blog that defines a learner coach’s responsibilities which you could use.
Step 2
Explain that they are going to write a job description for their ‘job’ here in class; namely ‘English Learner’. Start by brainstorming a few immediate ideas to get the ideas flowing. Use this whole-class moment to ask questions to guide them to think about autonomy. So for example, if they say they have to do the homework the teacher sets them, you could ask: “Should it be the teacher wh sets homework? Why? What kind of homework do you expect? How much homework should you do? Are there activities you could do at home that would help you improve that don’t need a teacher to set them?” Put them in pairs and let them write some responsibilities.
Step 3
Put the pairs into larger groups to share and expand their ideas. Ask them to write the finished document. You could introduce some useful language such as:
(for lower levels) Learners must / should…
(for higher levels) Learners are expected to…
When the groups have finished, they can read each other’s and compare them.
Step 4
Students now write a letter of application for the post of ‘English Learner’ as if it were a real job. The purpose is to help them identify their strengths and intentions.
Learner Coaching ELT 