Practicing English is a thing that ideally needs to be kept up with regularly, and when school breaks up for the holidays, it's easy for what’s been learnt to be forgotten. This phenomenon is called summer learning loss, and it’s something that affects students of every age and stage.
So, how can you encourage your students or children to keep practicing their language skills over the holidays? There are apps and online activities –but the school holidays are a good opportunity for young learners to disconnect and enjoy some time offline. So here are some activities to suggest to them. There are no screens in sight, and the whole family can enjoy practicing English together:
Get them out into the fresh air with nature spotting. Make a list of things for your students/children to find in their garden or local park. You can keep the list simple for younger learners, with things like trees, grass or flowers, linking them to colors or numbers. For older learners, you can make the search a bit more challenging by including specific species of tree, flower or insect.
This offline activity reinforces the links between English and the natural world. It helps to build children’s observational skills and builds their natural vocabulary along with their gross motor skills. What’s more, multiple studies have shown that spending time in nature is enormously beneficial for children, restoring their attention, reducing their stress and helping them to become more creative and engaged in learning.
For this activity, choose a recipe that you think your students/children will enjoy making.
Cakes or cookies are popular choices – most young learners have a sweet tooth! Then, with their parents or caregiver, they can make a shopping list of the ingredients they need, buy them from the supermarket, and then follow the recipe steps.
This type of offline activity helps young learners use their English in a practical way. It will develop their vocabulary and link their English language skills to other skills like math and science. Following a recipe from start to finish teaches children how to follow instructions and problem solve. It also builds their fine motor skills as they pour, stir and chop. They’ll get a considerable boost to their confidence when they take their cake out of the oven – and they’ll be able to share that success with their family and friends. After all, nearly everyone likes cake!
Reading has numerous benefits for children (and adults too). It is good for building vocabulary, developing creativity and promoting empathy. What’s more, reading has been shown to reduce stress levels dramatically. It’s the perfect antidote to too much screen time and a good way for learners to maintain their English level over the holidays. But it’s essential to ensure the text's level is correct. If it’s too difficult, they will be frustrated and put off. It’s crucial for reading to be enjoyable!
Older learners can read independently, but you can also suggest some books to read with parents/caregivers. Reading aloud together is a really positive way for adults and children to spend time together. It positively impacts children’s self-esteem and builds good associations with reading, hopefully encouraging them to become independent readers.
This activity involves a little bit of preparation– but it’s a fun activity and gets children outdoors and away from screens! Open up local maps, and have children select somewhere they’d like to visit. Then, they can create a navigation guide in English, building on their vocabulary of directions and surroundings to describe the route.
Learning how to read a map and follow directions is an excellent cognitive and physical exercise. It helps young learners to solve problems and builds their decision-making and observational skills.
Suggest some DIY science experiments to do at home. Just like the recipe challenge, learners will need to make a list of the materials they’ll need and gather all the experiment components before setting everything up. Then, they will follow the instructions in English and see how their experiments turn out!
Science experiments are a great way to nurture children’s intellectual curiosity and develop critical thinking skills. It also encourages learners to solve problems and analyze results. Who knows, you could even be planting the seed of a STEM career in future years!
Companies constantly seek methods to optimize workforce productivity and effectiveness. A powerful approach to achieving this goal is through strategic workforce planning bolstered by English language testing. This tactic not only identifies and addresses skills gaps but also reduces attrition and strengthens your workforce for both short-term and long-term success.
With language learning, assessing both the quality and the quantity of language use is crucial for accurate proficiency evaluation. While evaluating quantity (for example the number of words written or the duration of spoken production) can provide insights into a learner's fluency and engagement in a task, it doesn’t show a full picture of a learner’s language competence. For this, they would also need to be evaluated on the quality of what they produce (such as the appropriateness, accuracy and complexity of language use). The quality also considers factors such as grammatical accuracy, lexical choice, coherence and the ability to convey meaning effectively.
In order to measure the quality of different language skills, you can use the Global Scale of English (GSE) assessment frameworks.
Developed in collaboration with assessment experts, the GSE Assessment Frameworks are intended to be used alongside the GSE Learning Objectives to help you assess the proficiency of your learners.
There are two GSE Assessment Frameworks: one for adults and one for young learners.
This example is from the Adult Assessment Framework for speaking.
As you can see, there are sub-skills within speaking (and for the other three main overarching skills – writing, listening and reading). Within speaking, these are production and fluency, spoken interaction, language range and accuracy.
The GSE range (and corresponding CEFR level) is shown at the top of each column, and there are descriptors that students should ideally demonstrate at that level.
However, it is important to note that students may sit across different ranges, depending on the sub-skill. For example, your student may show evidence of GSE 43-50 production and fluency and spoken interaction, but they may need to improve their language range and accuracy, and therefore sit in a range of GSE 36-42 for these sub-skills.
Teachers shape every aspect of our learning experience, especially when it comes to language learning. Great teachers give learners not only the skills but the confidence to go out in the world, start speaking up and discovering new opportunities.
We’re celebrating those exceptional educators with the Pearson English Teacher Awards 2024.
With five different categories and a Gold, Silver and Bronze winner in each, there are 15 chances to take home thousands of pounds worth of top prizes for the winning teachers and their schools.
Find out more about who can enter and the different categories in this article.
