Vol 09 No 3 TESL Reporter

              teaching english as a second language
vol
9

no

3

jaic i al lme hawaii

spring 1976

THE PANEL OF EXPERTS A TEACHING DEVICE
by
C
F

springstead
in courses involving extensive second language reading particularly in literature classes the system first functioned well on the high school level and later on the university level

in order to augment oral class participation ESL instructors might consider using a device 1 have named the panel of experts I although its attractiveness to students stems from its similarity to many popular profess ional panel television programs only students comprise the panel and participant groups it has been found to stimulate or even revive oral participation and learning

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the panel of experts
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teaching device page by C F springstead english for international communication page by larry smith guidelines for and by immigrant students by ruth crymes ke soon lee page and wilma oksendahl distinguishing two types of sentences by retrieval page by yao shen Groundbrreakiing ceremonies for gr ound b e ak ng new BYU HC learning center YU HC page d by curtis fawson the use of the preposition ki in tongan page by tavita lui culture and content decoding i traffic signs page by karen E czarnecki

basically it consists of students grading of their classmates oral answers in operation one day the class elects a new panel of four student experts for later in the same week no student can serve as a panelist a second time until all the other students have served the reserving of this special activity until late in the week influences the students to study well during the entire week during the first part of the special class the four panel members ask the other students questions covering the entire range of subject

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springstead is assistant professor of TESL and TESL methodology at the university of texas at el paso he was head of the english department of the university of sinaloa mexico and founder director of the english institute of that university
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matter studied since the beginning of the semester all students have to answer with books closed only the panel of experts have theirs open in order to keep all students attentive during the questioning the panelists first direct each question to the entire class and then immediately name one student to answer As each student answers his question the four student panel determines and records his grade in order to bring more students into in

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TESL reporter
s entire activity consi ats of questioning and stating in a fifty minute class period might not the students thus practice the question to statement transform some thirty or forty times at least moreover presumably each question statement transform will include notably different terminology as well as a changed sentence pattern in other words the question and answer forms will not i consist only of endless drills involving just slight vocabulary changes using only one basic sentence pattern thus the student i participants will be making practical use of a variety of their previously learned routinely drilled sentence patterns in spite of the abundant advantages of the system the instructor should always be ready to correct certain unsatisfactory situations which may arise in its operation the most apparent one is extremely low revengeful grading even though one hundred per cent student speaking is the TESL ideal the instruc tor should intervene if the panel assigns a grade of only six points for an almost perfect answer for example

tensive action particularly in a large class of thirty or more the instructor can double the number of student officials by having his class elect a second board the board of judges then the panel of four experts will determine the technical accuracy of a student answer while the board of four judges will determine the exact grade so that the panelists questioning will proceed at a steady pace the instructor may ask them to bring written questions which he may wish to edit before the questioning session begins he may also declare that only panelists questions will appear in upcoming tests naturally the entire group will generally heed such questions more than impromptu ques tons to be used only at a single session es ni essentially then this teaching device consists of official students grading other students on their oral answering its principal virtue is the students drive to please their peers even more than their instructor moreover inasmuch as the students always enthusiastically agree to use this entertaining system and elect each panel they are generally perfectly willing to accept the panelists grades at the same time the experts of the panel must know the subject matter exceptionally well in order to produce fast reasonable judgements about the accuracy of the participants answers an additional major appeal for the ESL instructor coincidentally is that the students do most of the speaking using the target language the most extensive gain sustained study interest throughout the semester results from the inclusion of all the previous subject matter for the semester in the second part of each session A still more powerful psycholo cial benefit lies however in each students expert constantly honing himself to sharpness for his accuracy as a fast deciding nor should we overlook the panelist advantages student of traditional either the experience committee outstanding benefit of the system then is that it generates motivation then again a major linguistic benefit accrues from the students constant question to statement transform practice in fact the

another situation requiring special care
might develop in a very large class particularly one with several unusually slow foreign students of ESL when only a few students are not of the predominant native language background most of those of the predominant language background sometimes do not readily understand questions addressed to them in the different english pronunciation of those of the minority language background in such situations at university level there has been considerable delay in communication between those of the several language backgrounds in such situations the instructor should limit the minority language background students to answering questions or determining grades but should prevent their asking questions in other words those few should be participants or judges but not panelists accordingly many pariticpants will be spared the embarrassment of having to say 1 I didnt understand the question or please repeat the question furthermore as always the instructor should try to anticipate and prevent major pronunncitaoinanl and syntactical errors by l ronu cia i t o a certain deficient students in these cases by his hearing the beginning of a question or continued on page 14

in order to make known their intensive
efforts and good grades students in one class voted to have their names and grades posted on a hall bulletin board