No Homework

This semester, I'm doing no homework as an experiment for the following reasons:

1. The students will just generally copy the one or two best students anyway.

2. I've read a few studies that show homework, just for the sake of homework really doesn't increase true learning.

3. It's annoying to police, especially the copying thing. Like I know they've copied and then if I don't call the students on it, they just think I'm kind of stupid and they're pulling one over on me, which is an unenviable position for any teacher to be in. But they all copy, so I'd literally spend an entire class sorting out who copied what if I tried to enforce it.

4. Students who want to actually learn English, will, and probably not through little homework exercises in their workbook. They're going to find foreign friends, watch movies, take extra classes, or read English books.

So, I'm just doing 2 big projects, each worth 10%. My first one is to introduce yourself, on a single A4 paper using pictures and writing 10-15 sentences about family, hobbies, etc. I hope my students will like it, because who doesn't like showing off pics and talking about themselves? And I'm hoping they will actually learn/reinforce what they know in a way that is relevant and interesting to them. We'll see I guess. I'll get the first ones coming in next week. I'll take some pics and put up the best ones on the blog.

Project #2 will be a speech/show and tell sort of thing. Still thinking about it.