Paul Dummett is a writer and teacher based in Oxford, UK with wide experience of designing and teaching courses for both adults and children. His main pedagogical interests are in storytelling, the use of images and critical thinking. With these interests he found a natural home at National Geographic Learning, authoring titles such as LIFE (2012, 2017 and 2025) and Keynote (2016). He is also a long time volunteer with Handsupproject, promoting English learning through storytelling and drama.   

 

Introduction

This article is about thoughtful and memorable productive activities. As a teacher and ELT materials writer, I have always been interested in what makes learning memorable, what makes it stick. Initially, I paid a lot of attention to how we can make learning more resonant for learners by use of  engaging materials: personal stories, stories about new discoveries, impactful images and short films. Subsequently, I turned my attention to how memorisation can be aided in the way we recycle language: by the use of repetition and variation techniques, distributed practice, traditional testing and also with peer teaching or collaborative tests. In this short article, I would like to turn that focus onto productive or output activities and put a finger on what type of activities best aid longer-term retention of language.

As teachers, we are always looking for good productive activities. They are the “pay-off” part of a lesson, the stage where we get to see our students express themselves more freely and where we are often better able to assess their communicative abilities. On a human level, productive activities are usually the most stimulating part of a lesson, because they are the time when both teacher and students learn more about each other as individuals. For many teachers writing lesson plans, these activities may be the starting rather than end-point. But what are we actually hoping to achieve with a given productive activity? And what criteria do we apply to determine both its viability and its potential success?

Generally, we consider three areas: practical issues such as the resources needed, grouping, timing etc.; motivational factors like engagement, fun and relevance to learners’ lives; and finally, learning outcomes, notably the assimilation of specific target language or specific skills. While there is no set hierarchy to these different considerations, many teachers, especially those with a more humanistic outlook, tend to prioritise motivational factors. Getting learners to ‘lose themselves’ in an activity and forget, at least momentarily, that they are doing it in a foreign language is a goal many of us prize; rather like when you let go of your child’s bicycle saddle when they are learning to ride and they continue not realising you are no longer supporting them.  

In teaching syllabuses and coursebooks, on the other hand, it is outcomes-based considerations that dominate. For better or worse, ‘free’ practice of a specific grammar point, i.e. the final stage of the traditional PPP sequence (presentation, practice and production), is still the model most coursebooks follow. I say ‘for worse’ because while some structures lend themselves to free ranging discussion e.g. Have you ever .. ?, with others, e.g. verb patterns, finding a ‘free practice’ activity that guarantees the learner will use the target structure is nigh impossible and attempts generally lead to very contrived tasks or scenarios.

Over time though, my concern for a given activity, though, has become less about what type of language is being learnt - target language, emergent language or language that students have half a grasp on already – and more about whether that productive activity will help language be memorised in the longer term. This is where the concept of deeper learning comes in.

Deeper learning is a term that refers to an improved quality of learning experience for the student, one which offers a reflective and contextualized understanding, as opposed to a superficial focus (McConachy, 2023)¹. It is a goal that is now promoted in many areas of education and there are schools, such as those in the DLD (Deeper Learning Dozen) community in the USA ², which have based their whole approach on it. Pinning down a precise definition or a specific set of practices attached to the idea of deeper learning it is difficult; there is often a “lack of conceptual clarity in defining the concept” (Dinsmore & Alexander, 2012) ³. Having said that, between the various definitions there are key elements that we can draw out and usefully apply to productive language learning activities. I have listed these below. At their heart is a more holistic and meaningful approach to learning and, critically, the implication that knowledge acquired through deeper learning is both memorable and intrinsically motivating. Just one note of caution: while considering these elements, we must acknowledge, as any pedagogical approach, that the emotional well-being of each learner, key to effective learning and retention, will vary from day to day.

These then are the deeper learning criteria that I propose applying to what I call ‘thoughtful’ productive activities.

Does the activity …..

a) have a student-centred approach?

b) involve collaboration with peers?

c)  contain an element of challenge: e.g. problem solving or performance?   

d) incorporate playfulness and fun?

e) seem relatable and meaningful?

f) have wider usefulness to the learner (i.e. beyond language learning)?

Here are four examples of activities that contain all or most of these elements.

 

Swapping data

This activity is based on a short film curated by National Geographic called Penpal Experiment ⁴. In it two women, one in the UK and one in the USA, decide to share information about their daily lives in a rather unusual way. They gather data on different things that they notice each day – how many times they look at the time, how many doors they pass through, what urban wildlife they see – and then represent this in graphic form on postcards which they send to one another. In this way they slowly build a picture of each other’s lives. The follow-up productive activity to watching the film is a great variation on the normal ‘talk about each other’s daily routines’ tasks we find in so many coursebooks. Students are asked to think of three areas of daily life that they would like to measure and to decide how they will represent this data graphically. Examples I have had in class are: how many times I smiled at someone and they smiled back; how many times I changed or took off my shoes, how many times I swore, how many times I said I love you, how far I walked. Students exchange their ideas and talk about the deeper significance or each area they want to measure. The wider usefulness or application of the activity is practice in the skill of data interpretation and data representation, both vital in today’s world.

 

Thoughtful questions

One of the keys to classroom discussion is choosing the right questions to ask. The Proust questionnaire ⁵ written originally in 1890, on which the long-running Guardian Questionnaire is based, is a great example of generative questions. Another I find particularly rich is ‘How family shapes you’ from Life, Upper Intermediate (NGL, 2025) ⁶. Here is an extract:

1. How much time do you spend with family a) out of a sense of duty?  b)  because you choose to?
2. Is family a consideration for you in choosing where to live?
3. How conscious are you of your family’s history?
4. Is there a strong family characteristic or quality? Have you inherited it?
5. How important is it to have your family’s approval when you make a decision?

Counselling tools are another fertile area to mine. In the Core Values Wheel exercise, students are given a longlist (maybe 30-40 items) of different values e.g. adventure, humour, physical challenge, nature, openness, money, friendship, time freedom, work, status etc. (a suggested list can be found here ⁷ for you to adapt to the level of your students). They choose the 15 most important. They then sort these into five categories and select one value in each category that best represents that group. They put these in a five spoked wheel or pie (see below for an example). Then they draw a line in each segment to show how well they feel they are currently living this value. The nearer the centre the line, is the further they are from achieving their goal. They then discuss their wheel with their partner.

Reading - perspectives

The third example is a thoughtful activity you can use with any story that involves multiple characters; human interest news stories are best for this. Give students the text of a story and ask them to follow as you read it aloud. An example of such a news story (adapted) from 2011 is given below. Then put them into groups and ask them to re-tell the story from the perspective of one of the characters in it. The other students can ask follow-up questions.

Five years ago John Byrne was a homeless man living on the streets of Dublin. He was 38 years old. He had no job, no money and very few friends. In fact, his best friend was his pet rabbit, Barney. For 22 years John had roamed the streets of Dublin. He begged for money and food. His favourite place to sit was on the bridge over the river in the centre of Dublin. Many people crossed the bridge every day, coming to and from work. So John used to sit there and beg.  And always next to him was his rabbit friend, Barney.

One day, as he sat there, a young man, about 18-years old passed by. “Do you have any spare change?” asked John. The man looked down angrily at John and Barney.  Then he picked up the rabbit and threw it over the bridge into the river below. Without stopping to think, John got up and jumped into the freezing cold water. He managed to swim to the rabbit, hold him in his hand and then swim to a part of the bridge where he could stand. Other people on the bridge had seen all this happen and they telephoned the fire brigade and the ambulance service to come quickly. But it was 40 minutes before anyone arrived. All this time John held Barney in his arms to keep him warm and he saved the rabbit from dying. At last the firemen and the ambulance arrived and they rescued John and took him to hospital.

In the case of this article, I put learners in groups of three and assign them the roles of John, the youth passing by and a member of the emergency services. (You could also assign Barney as a role!) The activity practices the skill of recalling and summarizing events. It involves a (hopefully fun) element of performance when students assume a different character. And most importantly it encourages the learner to withhold judgement until they have heard different sides of a story. This is a fundamental aspect of critical thinking in today’s world where conflicts of opinion often quickly become angry and divisive.

 

Brainstorming techniques

We often put students in pairs or groups to brainstorm ideas before having a wider class discussion or before embarking on some kind of project work. It encourages reflection and allows students to try out language and ideas in a safer environment. But there are many versions of brainstorming and I’d like to mention two techniques that can add an element of fun and performance to a task: ‘Reverse Brainstorming’ and ‘Rolestorming’.

In Reverse Brainstorming participants try to think of actions that will produce the opposite outcome to the one they actually want. So, instead of brainstorming ‘How can I manage my time better to achieve more?’ they would brainstorm ‘How can I manage my time badly to achieve less?’. As well as being more fun this approach tends to be easier and more relatable, because people generally see problems more easily than solutions. We become aware of obstacles to our actual goal and think of positive steps to avoid them that we may not otherwise have thought of. Reverse brainstorming is great for planning speaking and writing tasks. For example, instead of asking ‘When writing a letter of a complaint, how can I get the other party to respond positively?’, we ask ‘When writing a letter of a complaint, what will most annoy or alienate the other party?’.

In Rolestorming, we assume the role of another person. This could be someone famous, one of the other participants (if the students know each other well) or simply a person affected by the thing being proposed. For example, if an exam question asks the learner to prepare an itinerary for a visitor to their hometown, ask the students to assume the role of the visitor and make an itinerary for themselves.

 

Summing up

I have just given four examples but I expect you will see in these thoughtful activities aspects that bear similarities to other recent approaches: 21^st century skills, project-based learning and critical thinking. This is no coincidence. The concept of deeper learning is part of an appeal to a more reflective and creative approach to learning (Fullan, Quinn, & McEachen, 2013) ⁸  which harks back to the humanist approach to learning advocated by Earl Stevick and others in the 1970s and 1980s. It is  well summarized in this description.  “At its core, deeper learning is about developing curiosity, creativity, resilience and the ability to collaborate, alongside knowledge and understanding. It transcends the confines of the classroom. It invites students to see the relevance of education to their lives, interests, and aspirations, fostering a sense of purpose and meaning … and leading to a more meaningful and authentic experience for students.” ⁹

 

References

1 McConachy, 2023 https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/173740/1/WRAP-Introduction-enacting-deep-learning-in-foreign-language-pedagogy-McConachy-2023.pdf

2 ‘https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/news/21/11/how-deeper-learning-can-transform-schools

3 Dinsmore, D. L., & Alexander, P. A. (2012). A critical discussion of deep and surface processing: What it means, how it is measured, the role of context, and model specification. Educational Psychology Review, 24(4), 499–567. doi:10.1007/s10648-012-9198-7

4 Penpal Experiment, National Geographic Short Film Showcase (2016) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOQMT6t_Jbs

5 https://www.openculture.com/2014/06/the-manuscript-of-the-proust-questionnaire.html

6 Life Upper Intermediate 3^rd Edition p.15, National Geographic Learning (2025)

7  https://reflection.ed.ac.uk/reflectors-toolkit/self-awareness/values

8 Fullan, M., & Langworthy, M. (2013). Towards a new end: New pedagogies for deep learning.Seattle, WA: Collaborative Impact.

9 https://www.edge.co.uk/news-and-events/blogs/cultivating-deeper-learning-a-recipe-for-an-authentic-education/

 

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