 Hello everyone, in this episode of Addie Bites, I'll be talking about how to give effective instructions, especially when you're not available face-to-face to explain to your students. I've been hearing a lot of lectures or teachers who are complaining that whatever they give to their students, they don't seem to understand or did the opposite of what was required. Now, it happens a lot in face-to-face, but the benefit of having it done in face-to-face mode is that we get a chance to clarify in front of them and give necessary further explanation. However, in the online setting, it's very hard for you to monitor everyone. Fortunately, there are several ways that you can do to overcome this problem or to reduce the chances of student misunderstanding instructions. The first way is to change your written instruction into verbal format. A good way is to record a video like this, a short one, just to explain what you expect your student to achieve or to complete. Or it's good enough to have an audio version. You can actually share it on WhatsApp, on Telegram, you know, at least they can listen to you explaining the instruction. Or if you have students who may have difficulty understanding certain languages, then you can also have a translated version as well. So like in our context, I would explain certain things in Malay as well. So put it in video format or in audio format so they can actually refer to it. Sometimes when you ask them to read the instruction, they may misunderstand what you actually put in. The second way is to of course re-look at your instruction. Sometimes what I noticed was lectures tend to be overwhelmed with the way they use the sentences or the syntax or the structure of the language. And you know, even after multiple reading, it causes confusion. So revise the way you write your instruction. It would be good if you want it to be more specific. You can actually list them down in set by set mode, like, you know, number one, number two, number three, and focus of the verb. Focus more on the verb like number one, you know, do this and do that. If it's a problem-based kind of task, then you might want to structure it nicely like this is the problem. And your job is to find out solutions. So the way you write the instruction is also critical. I would also advise you to have your instruction written with a personal voice rather than sounding like it was lifted from a textbook. So you can say, like, in this task, you are required to... I expect you to... So using this kind of personal voice actually increases the readability of your instruction. And the third way, of course, is to make use of visuals. And apart from video and audio, you could also make use of visuals like infographic or even a simple illustration of what you want them to do. Sometimes if you draw it on a piece of paper and then share it with a group, it would be also useful for them to visualize what you want them to complete. The fourth way is to make use of real-time collaborative tools like Google Docs. Because as they are doing, you can actually monitor them and then explain to them what went wrong and what should be improved rather than wait until the end to see the final product. So this is another way to monitor your instruction. Another way to improve the way you give instruction to your students is to always accompany it with examples. You can make use of the examples that you have from the previous semesters or previous tasks or previous group of learners or even a rough example of draft outline that you can use as an example. Because example actually helps the student to understand what you want them to achieve. Also, I would like to advise you to keep track on the way the student react to your instruction. Sometimes we shouldn't be too fast to judge them because the way we give the instruction could be misleading. Or we are having a different level of thinking and they couldn't get what we actually visualize in our mind. So if you notice something wrong with the responses that you have obtained, let's say majority of students do not understand what you wanted. Then somehow you might want to talk to them and try to uncover what are the things that confuse them. That would be better rather than quickly saying that oh, they don't understand my instruction. I don't know how many times I have to tell this blah blah blah because sometimes when we do the instruction, we are basing it on what we know. And what we know may not be the same as what the students are having. So these are quite critical because as educators, I think we shouldn't jump quickly into conclusion and there's no point for you to be angry anyway. After all, what matters more is for you to achieve the intended learning outcome and to help them to achieve this as well. I hope it could be useful for you in improving. I would love to hear from you as well. So please share and if there are any things that I could assist you in this process, please let me know. So that's all for this video. Don't forget to like this video and also to subscribe to my channel for more videos. Thank you.