George Alex, Bulgaria
I totally agree that homework is necessary and extremely useful, especially when assigned properly. I have found out, however, that it can be a real demotivator, too. What do I mean? Well, I have been doing corporate teaching for almost 10 years and at the beginning I used to treat my student like real students. I mean I expected them to find the time to study at home, too. They are very ambitious and they are performance-oriented. However, they work real much and they have no time to study at home, even if the desire is there. They come to class with no homework - once, twice, 4 times and then they say they would like to quit classes since they have no time to study. They get demotivated since they can't perform as expected. Then I discovered that I need to redesign my whole methodology and make sure they learn everything on the spot, even the vocabulary. Then what's left for homework is some fun stuff - let's say a quiz or some short reading we use for discussion, some Internet project to google a name or two and find some more information about a person we study about. They love that since it is not time-consuming and different every time. Then they know that if they don't have the time to do it at home, we do it together in class the next session. Thus stress is reduced and the effect is achieved. Slower, sure, but who says you can learn English overnight?

Yet the best thing is if your students are not so busy and have the time to study at home. I always do my best to motivate them and tell them that they benefit from it - time-wise and money-wise. But then you need to be very sensitive to their real situation and not get frustrated when they can't do the homework you assign.

And a proven tip, be as creative as possible! Do not let patterns to settle in - giving the same kind(s) of assignments all the time. It is more than boring, it kills!

Éva Gibicsár, Hungary
I think it's quite important. At my school an average group consists of 18-20 students and we have only three 45-minute lessons a week, so it's sometimes a tough work to make good progress. Therefore I am out to set always an enjoyable and useful homework. I never set ONLY an oral homework, because then the kids won't even open their books at home.

The second question depends on lots of things. My younger children love copying texts, doing crosswords, learning short rhymes by heart, working with stickers and of course colouring and drawing are their favourites. At the age of 11-12 they prefer fill in the gaps excercises to practise the learnt words or grammar structures but when they have to write compositions once in a month at home they seem to be lazy and also they hate learning anything by heart.

Their favourite tasks are short tasks or easy tasks (e.g. underline the correct word) and they are crazy about tasks that have to be done via the Internet. They don't mind copying and doing grammar drills.At the age of 13-14 there are two groups. One consists of students who really want to deal with English. They have aims with this language and they have wonderful dreams about England, the English and of course the USA, Canada, Australia. Thus they are crazy about reading about these countries, they are interested in their culture, traditions and the every day life there. They are able to surf in the Internet and often do longer tasks. They love collecting information and write short lovely letters and compositions with the help of their search results. Certainly they need much help and much time but it's worth working with them. They love grammar drills because they can understand and practise tenses. They hate learning new words so I need to do lots of crosswords and wordsearchers. They prefer learning new words from pop-songs, so that they love translating lyrics.

To tell you the truth It can be very difficult to find the most appropriate homework for the whole class. One of my biggest problems is that, there are always some students who forgot to, or didn't want to do their homework. My point of view is that the most important thing in this question is the book and workbook. You should find the most exciting and the most interesting ones for them. All in all my experience shows that if they like their English book and workbook, they will be happy to work in it.

Tabinda Urooj Samdani, Pakistan
Home work should be such as not to burden the student .Most of the private schools in Pakistan feel it compulsory to overload the students with lengthy homeworks as an effort to impress the naive parents. I have personally witnessed students literally crying out when they feel helpless after falling short of homeworks on the submission dates. Majority of parents are uneducated and fail to guide their children thereby giving rise to expensive but worthless private tuition culture. I believe that homework should be strictly of a creative nature, totally dependent on the students own effort and research. Technology no doubt is indispensable in the education field but we should try to bring forward a generation that is not dependent on facilities but on their own brains. Encourage them to go to libraries read books, write criticisms, collect data, do comparisons, invent, create, solve and so on.

Gordon, England
Yes, homework is a useful revision exercise for the day's lesson. But it is not always easy to deliver a variety of homework activities and they invariably end up as just more gap-fill or matching exercises. More importantly though, reviewing homework is a marvellous opener for the following day's lesson, providing a useful continuity link and yet not requiring too much effort by the teacher at the start of the day!

Jose Angel Castillo Bonilla, Panama
Homework is good way to verify if our teaching session was good enough. I usually request 'Written Reactions' or 'Oral Reactions'. With written reactions I can reinforce their grammar knowledge and using oral reactions I can work their pronunciation and increase their confidence, and this is the goal that I look for most of the time. The lack of confidence affects most students, so if we can work out this problem, teaching will become something a lot easier.

Charanjit Singh, India
'Homework' has an allergic ring to it so I try to label it as revision. The normal language class being about 90 minutes, the best revision I have realised is using the structures learnt during the day and making an article of their own. For example if you were teaching them question structures and you had given enough examples for them to copy during the class, set a small question for them to revise at home. For example; their sister has just returned from a party or a school trip. How would they get information from her...and so on. You just need to use your imagination. And of course...don't give homework everyday!!!!

Jayanthi Narasimhan, India
When setting homework, I ask the students to pick up words and things they come across at home related to the topic taught. This gives them freedom to do their own work and any doubt can be clarified the next day in class. The response is very encouraging and students show their innovation also. It is important to set homework, because it is the feedback we get from the students whether they have understood the subject or not. Homework need not be an elaborate one. It can be small assignments also.

Abdelillah Ouarest, Algeria
Basically homework is meant to give opportunities to learners to review what has been learnt in class. It's also a very important phase in the learning process. It helps learners self assess their learning with a view to reinforcing their strengths and to remedying their weaknesses. It is, however, up to the teacher to bear in mind that if only one activity is given to the whole class, this may prove counter productive. Slow learners may resort to plagiarism, therefore, the teacher couldn't really assess her / his students learning. I suggest that each group of learners, according to various levels within the same class, will be given different task(s).This procedure suits best multilevel classes.

Llyr Joshua, Japan
I find setting homework to be exceptionally useful in maintaining student's motivation. Studying a language can be very difficult, especially if it has no real practical or immediate application. So you always struggle with keeping students motivated, especially if you work in the commercial sector. I work for a big eikaiwa in Japan and am always under pressure to retain students, this means I have to maintain their motivation to study. This is not always easy as I am in a rural location. I find that giving my students homework is a good opportunity to help them revise what they have been learning and to prepare for their next class, hence giving memore successful lessons. Also it is a great chance to give them personalised tips and advice as well as personalised encouragement. From a motivational point of view I would never underestimate the benefit of giving this kind of encouragement. We all have some kind of memory of teachers who might have read our homework as students and responded personally, indicating that they had actually read our work and were responding to it accordingly.

To put it simply, it shows our teachercares. On the down side, it means more work for the teacher and often unacknowledged.

Farid, Iran
Well, definitely what students do at home, having time and peace of mind, can efficiently activate what they have learnt in the class work; therefore, it is of crucial importance, I can say.

To assign homework, the teacher may preferably refer to the "workbook" of the course book they're working on, the materials of which are practically designed based on the objectives of every unit. Handouts may also be used, but again, they should be carefully designed, taking care of the objectives of the lesson. Thus, the students can exactly 'activate' what they have studied in the class.

Setting homework, I believe, the most important part is to follow and ask for feedback. The teacher needs to be strict and check whether or not students - not only children but also adults - have done what they were supposed to.

Every now and then, the teacher should ask the students to check their answers as a pair-work or group-work, while the teacher himself, observing the students, is always "a guide on the side" and helps them with their problems.