130 Hour Advanced TEFL PDF
130 Hour Advanced TEFL PDF
130 Hour Advanced TEFL PDF
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CHAPTER 1 Page 5
Grammar is the study and use of rules by which words change their forms and are
combined into sentences.
Language Analysis: Building Blocks (Parts of Speech):
Nouns:
The names of living, non-living things and concepts.
They are classified into several categories.
E.g.: Eve…
Pronouns:
They replace a noun. Hence, they also fall into several categories.
E.g.: She…
Adjectives:
They describe a noun's size, quality, quantity, material, nationality, shape, colour…
etc.
E.g.: Eve, a strong young lady,…
Articles:
Indefinite: A (preceding a consonant)
An (preceding a vowel)[meaning: one]
E.g.: Eve, a strong young lady,…
Definite: The [meaning: the one and only…]
E.g.: Eve, the head of the Sales Department,…
Verbs:
Action words. They are classified into different tenses.
E.g.: Eve, the head of the Sales Department, punched Adam…
Adverbs:
They describe the quality of the verb (how did it happen?).
E.g.: Eve, the head of the Sales Department, punched Adam hard…
Prepositions:
They describe the time and place. They also combine with verbs in order to form
phrasal verbs, or with nouns and adjectives to form collocations.
E.g.: Eve, the head of the Sales Department, punched Adam hard in the nose at
noon,…
Conjunctions:
Linking words used to combine or merge two or more long sentences into one.
E.g.: Eve, the head of the Sales Department, punched Adam hard in the nose at
noon and he fell unconscious.
Interjections:
Sounds rather than words used to express emotions.
E.g.: Oops! Eve, a strong woman, punched Adam hard in the nose at noon and he
fell unconscious. Ouch!
Types of Nouns:
Common Proper Abstract Collective Compound
Definition A general The name It names an It refers to a It is made up
name for a of a intangible group of of two or
person, a particular idea, people or more words.
place or a person, quality or things. It may be
thing. place, state rather written as
thing or than a one word,
idea. tangible separate
object that words or
can be seen, hyphenated
heard, smelt, words.
tasted or
touched.
Order of Adjectives:
No. IN- OPIN- SIZE SHAPE WIDTH PARTICI- AGE COL- ORI- MATE-
TENSI ION/ PLE OUR GIN RIAL
FIER Qual-
The Very Boring Tiny Round Thin Worn An- Dark Western Wooden
first tique
Three Quite Rare Min- Rectan- Thick Tattered Cur- Light Irish Plastic
ute gular rent
A Rather Useful Gi- Hexago- Narrow Underlying Mod- Blue Oriental Woolen
dozen ganti nal ern
c
A Some- Friendl me- Box– Wide Shut Con- Red- Arab Cloth
cou- what y dium Shaped tempor dish
ple of ary
Comparison of Adjectives:
In order to show intensity of the adjective used, the comparative form is used when
comparing two nouns, and the superlative one is used when comparing more than
two nouns according to the following rules:
Mono-Syllabic Adjectives:
Comparative form: Adj. + er + than
Superlative form: The + Adj. + est
Adjectives of Two or More Syllables:
Comparative form: More + Adj. + than
Superlative form: The+ Most + Adj.
Articles:
Indefinite Articles
/ \
A An
-“A” is used before singular unspecified common nouns beginning with a
consonant letter such as: a glass, a doctor, a boy, a hospital, a hotel.
-“A” is also used before common nouns starting by the sound “you” such as:
a university, a European.
- “A” must also be used before “little” and “few” to determine quantity.
- “An” is used before singular unspecified common nouns beginning with a vowel
(a, e, i, o, u) such as: an egg, an engineer, an eye, an accountant.
-“An” is also used before singular common nouns beginning with a silent letter
followed by a vowel such as: an hour.
-“A” and “An” are used to mean “per” as in: This car runs at 180 km. an hour;
I visit my uncle once/twice/three times…etc. a week/year/month...etc;
It is one pound a kilo.
- “A” and “An” are used in exclamations as in:
What a strong man!
What an ugly woman!
What a fast car!
What a big dog!
The Definite Article (The)
It is used before:
1-Specific common nouns:
E.g.: I met an old man yesterday. The old man was riding a bike.
2-Unique objects:
E.g.: The: sun, sky, moon, stars, clouds, earth, North Pole
3-Names of seas, rivers, canals and oceans:
E.g.: The Mediterranean Sea, the Mississippi, the Suez Canal and the Atlantic
Ocean.
4-Names of mountains and hills:
E.g.: The Alps, The Himalayas.
Exceptions: Mount Everest, Mount Rushmore.
5-Names of republics or kingdoms or states:
E.g.: The United States of America, The United Kingdom
(N.B. “The” must not be added before the names of countries except: The Sudan
and The Netherlands. But we do NOT say “The America” for example.)
6-Historical places and works of art:
E.g.: The Pyramids, The Mona Lisa.
7-An adjective that denotes a certain class of people:
E.g.: The poor, the rich, the Italians.
8-Nouns that denote different times of the day:
E.g.: In the morning, afternoon, evening.
Adverbs:
Basically adverbs are formed by adding the suffix "ly" to the adjective. However,
irregularities occur due to spelling rules or special syntactic cases such as the
following:
If the adjective ends in: "y" preceded by a consonant, the adverb is formed by
crossing out the "y" and adding the suffix "ily" to the adjective.
If the adjective ends in: "ly", the adverb is formed by using the phrase: "in a …
way" where the ellipses are substituted by the adjective.
Some adverbs keep the same form as the adjective without any change.
Conditionals:
TYPE FORM USE EXAMPLE
2– To give advice.
WH-Words:
Function Question Word Relative Pronouns
- People
↓ Who is the boy in the blue jeans? The boy who is wearing blue jeans,
Who was punched.
- Place
↓ Where are my blue jeans? Macy's is where I bought my jeans.
Where
- Time
↓ When did you buy that pair of blue Last autumn is when I bought my
When jeans? blue jeans.
- Reason
↓ Why aren’t you wearing your jeans? The coffee stain is why I can’t wear
Why my blue jeans.
- The way
(of doing
something) How did you clean the coffee stain Baggy is how I like my jeans.
↓ on your jeans?
How
Task 1:
Language Analysis: Form & Function
Read the sentences below. Reflect on how the function of each utterance changes
due to the change in structure.
Answers:
- How about knocking / Why don’t you knock before you enter?
↓ ↓
Suggestion
The phonetic chart is an extremely useful tool to have when teaching/ learning a
language. It is very common for learners to be familiar with the chart.
There are 44 sounds in English; 24 consonant, 12 vowels and 8 diphthongs. (See
figure 1). Sounds are written between slashes such as /m/, /k/ or /t/. Each of these
symbols represents a sound and not a letter.
Figure 1:English phonetic chart
Place of Articulation:
It is the place of obstruction of air at some points in the vocal cords. It is used to
classify consonants. Each place of articulation has an adjective applied to a
consonant.
Nouns Adjectives
Teeth Dental
Uvula Uvular
Pharynx Pharyngeal
Tip Apical
Blade Laminal
Front Dorsal
Back Dorsal
Manner of Articulation:
In the above section, you were introduced to the places of articulation. These are
the points in the vocal tract at which the articulators alter the shape of the vocal
tract to produce distinct consonant sounds.
However, consonants are further distinguished on the basis of how the articulators
alter the shape of the vocal tract. That is, how the airflow is regulated by the
tongue or lips. This is called manner of articulation.
Plosives:
A plosive is formed by the complete obstruction of the vocal tract by the
articulators. This obstruction is then released, allowing the air to "explode" out of the
mouth. When the air is blocked by the articulator, it begins to rise in pressure. Then,
when the air is released, the high pressure air rushes out into the lower pressure area
beyond the blockage. This results in a burst of air, signifying a plosive. Examples of
plosives in English are / p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, and /g/.
Fricatives:
A fricative is formed by a s the vocal tract by the articulators, such as the tongue or
the lips. However, unlike stops, the occlusion (blockage) in the vocal tract is not
complete. Some of the air is allowed to come through a very narrow opening. This
air becomes turbulent, because of the friction between the airflow and the narrow
passage. Examples of fricatives in English are /f/, /v/, /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, and /ʒ/.
Affricates:
An affricate combines the manners of articulation for the plosive and the fricative.
Like a stop, the articulation of the affricate begins with a complete closure of the
vocal tract by an articulator. However, when the closure is released, the release is
somewhat gradual, providing a narrow space between the articulator and the
mouth for the airflow to move through. This narrow space creates an environment
similar to a fricative, in that the airflow moving out becomes turbulent for a brief
period until full release of the closure. Examples of affricates in English are /tʃ/,
and /dʒ/.
Nasals:
A nasal is formed by the obstruction of the vocal tract and the lowering of the
velum. This lowering of the velum allows the airflow to flow out through the nasal
cavity, rather than through the oral cavity. Examples of nasals in English are /m/,
/n/, and /ŋ/.
Approximants:
An approximant is formed by the constriction of the vocal tract, but with no
obstruction in the vocal tract. Therefore, there is no turbulent airflow, as in a
fricative. Instead, the air is allowed to flow freely through the vocal tract. Examples
of approximants in English are /l/, /r/, /j/, and / w/.
The sound /l/ is also known as a lateral approximant, since the articulators do touch
at a central point, but the air is allowed to flow through one or both sides of the
contact point.
Other Articulations:
There are two other articulations in varieties of English that should be noted here:
the tap and the trill. A tap is formed by a quick contact between an articulator and
the vocal tract. In Standard American English, for example, there is the tap /r/,
which can be found in the middle of words such as ladder, and butter.
A trill is formed by the rapid vibration of the tongue tip against the roof of the
mouth. This vibration is caused by the motion of a current of air. This sound,
represented by /r/ , is found, for example, in varieties of British and Scots English. It is
also known as a "rolled r".
Summary:
In this lesson, you have been introduced to several manners of articulation. They
are listed below:
Plosive: Formed by a blockage of the vocal tract, followed by an explosive
release of air.
Fricative: Formed by slight contact between articulators, allowing turbulent
airflow.
Affricate: Formed by a blockage of the vocal tract, like a plosive, followed by a
gradual release of turbulent air, like a fricative.
Nasal: Formed by the lowering of the velum, allowing air to flow through the nasal
cavity.
Approximant: Formed by the constriction of the vocal tract, but with no blockage
of the airflow.
Voiced Voiceless
/b/ /p/
/d/ /t/
/g/ /k/
/v/ /f/
/z/ /s/
/ð/ /θ/
/dʒ/ /tʃ/
/ʒ/ /ʃ/
/r/,/n/,/m/,/l/,/ŋ/,/w/,/j/
Description of Consonants:
Description of Vowels:
A vowel is a speech sound, such as /ē/ or /ĭ/, created by the relatively free passage
of air stream through the larynx and oral cavity, usually forming the most prominent
and central sound of a syllable.
The Vowel-Chart:
A. Heat
B. Hero
A. Hit
B. Mirror
A. Hate
B. Day-rate [between compound members only]
A. Hair
B. Mary
A. Set
B. Merry
A. Hat
B. Marry
A. Sight
B. Pirate
A. House
B. Cowrie
A. Father
B. Starry
A. Hot
B. Forest
A. Fought
B. Warring
A. Coin
B. Moira [dubious]
A. Mourn
B. Boring
A. Hope
B. Low-road [between compound members only]
A. Put
B. ----- [none]
A. Hoot
B. Fury
A. Hurt
B. Furry
A. Hut
B. Hurry
A. About
ə B. Again
Schwa:
The schwa is the vowel sound in many lightly pronounced, unaccented syllables in
English words of more than one syllable. It is sometimes signified by the
pronunciation "uh" or symbolised by the symbol ‘ə’ (an upside-down rotated e). It is
the commonest vowel sound in English language. Its sound depends on the
adjacent consonants and it is a very short, neutral vowel sound.
Understanding Syllables:
To understand word stress, it helps to understand syllables.
Every word is made from syllables.
Each word has one, two, three or more syllables.
dog dog 1
green green 1
quite quite 1
quiet qui-et 2
orange or-ange 2
table ta-ble 2
expensive ex-pen-sive 3
interesting in-ter-est-ing 4
realistic re-al-is-tic 4
unexceptional un-ex-cep-tion-al 5
Notice that (with a few rare exceptions) every syllable contains at least one vowel
(a, e, i, o or u) or vowel sound.
What is Word Stress?
In English, we do not say each syllable with the same force or strength. In one word,
we accentuate ONE syllable. We say one syllable very loudly (big, strong,
important) and all the other syllables very quietly.
Let's take 3 words: photograph, photographer and photographic. Do they sound
the same when spoken? No. Because we accentuate (stress) ONE syllable in each
word. And it is not always the same syllable. So the shape of each word is different.
Total Stressed
Word Shape
Syllables Syllable
PHO TO GRAPH 3 #1
PHO TO GRAPH ER 4 #2
PHO TO GRAPH IC 4 #3
This happens in ALL words with 2 or more syllables: TEACHer, JaPAN, CHINa, aBOVE,
converSAtion, INteresting, imPORtant, deMAND, etCETera, etCETera, and etCETera.
The syllables that are not stressed are ‘weak’ or ‘small’ or ‘quiet’. Native speakers of
English listen for the STRESSED syllables, not the weak syllables. If you use word stress
in your speech, you will instantly and automatically improve your pronunciation
and your comprehension. Try to hear the stress in individual words each time you
listen to English, on the radio, or in films for example. Your first step is to HEAR and
recognise it. After that, you can USE it!
Word stress is not an optional, extra feature that you can add to the English
language if you want. It is part of the language! English speakers use word stress to
communicate rapidly and accurately, even in difficult conditions. If, for example,
you do not hear a word clearly, you can still understand the word because of the
position of the stress. Think again about the two words photograph and
photographer. Now imagine that you are speaking to somebody by telephone
over a very bad line. You cannot hear clearly. In fact, you hear only the first two
syllables of one of these words, photo... Which word is it, photograph or
photographer? Of course, with word stress you will know immediately which word it
is, because in reality, you will hear either PHOto... or phoTO... So without hearing the
whole word, you probably know what the word is (PHOto...graph or
phoTO...grapher). It is magic! (Of course, you also have the 'context' of your
conversation to help you.)
This is a simple example of how word stress helps us understand English. There are
many, many other examples, because we use word stress all the time, without
thinking about it.
Rules of Word Stress in English:
There are two very simple rules about word stress:
1. One word has only one stress. (One word cannot have two stresses. If you hear
two stresses, you hear two words. Two stresses cannot be in one word. It is true
that there can be a "secondary" stress in some words. But a secondary stress is
much smaller than the main [primary] stress, and is only used in long words.)
2. We can only stress vowels, not consonants.
Here are some more rules that can help you understand where to put the stress.
But do not rely on them too much, because there are many exceptions. It is
better to try to "feel" the music of the language and to add the stress naturally.
1. Stress on First Syllable:
Rule Example
Rule Example
Rule Example
For compound nouns, the stress is on the first part BLACKbird, GREENhouse
For compound verbs, the stress is on the second part to underSTAND, to overFLOW
Tonic Stress:
An intonation unit almost always has one peak of stress, which is called 'tonic stress',
or 'nucleus'. Because stress applies to syllables, the syllable that receives the tonic
stress is called 'tonic syllable'. The term tonic stress is usually preferred to point to this
kind of stress in referring, proclaiming, and reporting utterances. Tonic stress is
almost always found in a content word in the utterance’s final position. Consider
the following examples, in which the tonic syllable is underlined:
I'm going.
I'm going to London.
I'm going to London for a holiday.
A question does arise as to what happens to the previously tonic assigned syllables.
They still get stressed, however, not as much as the tonic syllable, producing a three
level stress for utterances. Then, the following is arrived at, where the tonic syllable is
further capitalised;
I'm going to London for a HOliday.
Emphatic Stress:
One reason to move the tonic stress from its utterance final position is to assign an
emphasis to a content word, which is usually a modal auxiliary, an intensifier, an
adverb, etc. Compare the following examples. The first two examples are adapted
from. Roach (1983:144).
i. It was very BOring. (unmarked)
ii. It was VEry boring. (emphatic)
i. You mustn't talk so LOUDly. (unmarked)
ii. You MUSTN'T talk so loudly. (emphatic)
Some intensifying adverbs and modifiers (or their derivatives) that are emphatic by
nature are “indeed, utterly, absolute, terrific, tremendous, awfully, terribly, great,
grand, really, definitely, truly, literally, extremely, surely, completely, barely,
entirely, very (adverb), very (adjective), quite, too, enough, pretty, far, especially,
alone, only and own. (Leech & Svartvik, 1.975:135)
Contrastive Stress:
In contrastive contexts, the stress pattern is quite different from the emphatic and
non-emphatic stresses. In that, any lexical item in an utterance can receive the
tonic stress provided that the contrastively stressed item can be contrastable in that
universe of speech. No distinction exists between content and function words
regarding this. The contrasted item receives the tonic stress provided that it is
contrastive with some lexical element (notion) in the stimulus utterance. Syllables
that are normally stressed in the utterance almost always get the same treatment
they do in non-emphatic contexts. Consider the following examples:
a) Do you like this one or THAT one?
b) I like THIS one.
Many other larger contrastive contexts (dialogues) can be found or worked out, or
even selected from literary works for a study of contrastive stress. Consider the
following:
She played the piano yesterday. (It was her who...)
She played the piano yesterday. (She only played (not. harmed) ...)
She played the piano yesterday. (It was the piano that...)
She played the piano yesterday. (It was yesterday...)
Sentence stress can also be illustrated and practised by writing a long sentence on
the board, which can be made to carry many different meanings or points of
emphasis.
For example: Janet's going to Brighton tomorrow afternoon to buy herself a pair of
red, leather shoes.
Practice of sentence stress is achieved by cueing the learners with questions while
requiring them to use the whole sentence in reply. The second time this is done, the
learners can discard the parts of the sentence which do not contain the important
element of the answer in order to form a more natural response.
Intonation:
Tone: A unit of speech bounded by pauses has movement, of music and rhythm,
associated with the pitch of voice (Roach, 1983:113). This certain pattern of voice
movement is called 'tone'. A tone is a certain pattern, not an arbitrary one,
because it is meaningful in discourse. By means of tones, speakers signal whether to
refer, proclaim, agree, disagree, question or hesitate, or indicate completion and
continuation of turn-taking, in speech.
There are four types of tones that can be efficiently taught to non-native speakers
of English:
fall
low-rise
high-rise
fall-rise
Compare the above example with the following example, which is uttered with a
falling tone, and which can only have one appropriate answer in the context:
a) Isn't he NICE ?
b) YES.
Other examples which are uttered with a rising tone are:
Do you want some COFfee?
Do you take CREAM in your coffee?
High Rise (A Rising Tone):
If the tonic stress is uttered with extra pitch height, as in the following intonation
units, we may think that the speaker is asking for a repetition or clarification, or
indicating disbelief.
a) I'm taking up TAxidermy this autumn.
b) Taking up WHAT? (clarification)
a) She passed her DRIving test.
b) She PASSED? (disbelief)
Fall Rise (Followed by Fall):
While the three tones explicated so far can be used in independent, single
intonation units, the fourth tone, fail-rise, appears to be generally used in what may
be called 'dependent' intonation units, such as; those involving sentential adverbs,
subordinate clauses, compound sentences, and so on. Fall-rise signals
dependency, continuity, and non-finality (Cruttenden, 1986:102). It generally
occurs in sentence non-final intonation units. Consider the following in which the
former of the intonation units are uttered with a fall-rise tone (the slash indicates a
pause):
Private enterPRISE / is always EFficient.
A quick tour of the CIty / would be NICE.
PreSUmably / he thinks he CAN. (Leech & Svartvik, 1.975:135)
Usually / he comes on SUNday.
One of the most frequent complex clause types in English is one that has
dependent (adverbial or subordinate) clause followed by an independent (main)
clause. When such a clause has two intonation units, the first, non-final, normally
has a fall-rise while the second, final, has falling tone:
Examples:
When I passed my REAding test / I was VEry happy.
If you SEE him / give my MESsage.
When the order of complex clause is reversed, we may still observe the pattern
fall-rise and fall respectively, as in:
I WON'T deliver the goods / unless I receive the PAYment.
The moon revolves around the EARTH / as we ALL know.
Private enterprise is always EFficient / whereas public ownership means
INefficient.
All in all, final intonation units have a falling tone while non-final ones have fall-rise.
Consider further complex clauses:
He joined the ARmy / and spent all his time in ALdershot.
My sister who is a NURSE / has ONE child.
This completes the four major tones selected for the framework: < http://iteslj.org/
Techniques/Celik-Intonation.html>
Teaching Pronunciation:
When teaching pronunciation, the following criteria should be put into account:
1. Comprehensible: are learners able to identify the sounds and are their
articulations understood by native speakers?
2. Social Acceptability: are learners producing sounds that are aesthetically
acceptable to the ears of native speakers?
3. Ease of Production: do learners have a good chance of successfully learning to
produce the sounds?
4. Number of Familiar Words (Functional Load): do the sounds occur frequently in
essential and/ or very useful words?
5. Likely to Be a Bad Habit Affecting Other Sounds: are errors getting in the way of
other important targets?
Phonology Lessons Will Centre on:
1. Hearing: physical demonstration. Discrimination exercises e.g. ship or sheep?
/i/ or /i:/? Which vowel sounds occur in: "it", "bit", "eat", "fit", "feet", "seat", "sit"?
2. Production: physically making sounds.
3. Expanded Contexts: Phrases and sentences as well as phonemes between
closed consonant.
Tips for Teaching Pronunciation:
a. Distinguish between production and comprehension in your teaching.
B. Teach intonation in context. Use model dialogues to represent particular
functions of the voice. Some practice on linking intonation patterns to attitude
will probably help in clearer communication of meaning in spite of the findings
of the Scottish Intonation Project.
C. Use of "dialogues" as English pronunciation teaching materials.
D. Link intonation practice to practice on grammatical accuracy. Provide learners
with the phonological rehearsal and memory training needed to achieve
accuracy in oral English.
Conclusion:
Differences in sound systems have a phonological basis: they depend on
variation in speech, organ, positions, or breath control. Teachers must
understand the physical aspects of sound production.
Teachers will not necessarily teach these to students, but this knowledge will
provide a basis for teachers to identify the physical reasons for inaccurate
approximations of foreign language sounds, enabling them to give precise
instructions which will help students' correct faulty pronunciation.
Unless teachers understand how students are using their speech organs in
producing a native language sound and what they should be doing to
reproduce the foreign language sound acceptably, teachers will not be able to
help students beyond a certain stage of earnest but inaccurate imitation.
Incorrectly articulated consonants will affect the production of vowels, as vowels
will affect consonants. Students, therefore, require steady practice and muscle
training. Pronunciation is a motor skill that needs practice.
Approach:
An Approach is the theoretical positions and beliefs about the nature of language,
the nature of language learning, and the applicability of both to pedagogical
settings.
Method:
A Method is a generalised set of classroom specifications for accomplishing
linguistic objectives. Methods tend to be primarily concerned with teacher and
student's roles and behaviours, and secondarily with such features as linguistic and
subject-matter objectives, sequencing, and materials. They are almost always
thought of as being broadly applicable to a variety of audiences in a variety of
contexts.
Curriculum/Syllabus:
A syllabus is designed for carrying out a particular language programme. Features
include a primary concern with the specification of linguistic and subject-matter
objectives, sequencing, and materials to meet the needs of a designated group of
learners in a defined context.
Technique:
A Technique is any of a wide variety of exercises, activities, or devices used in the
language classroom for realising lesson objectives.
Task:
What are the techniques you deem effective in teaching a foreign language?
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Grammar Translation:
Latin has been studied for centuries, with the prime objectives of learning how to
read classical Latin texts, understanding the fundamentals of grammar and
translation, and gaining insights into some important foreign influences Latin has
had on the development of other European languages. The method used to
teach it overwhelmingly bore those objectives in mind, and came to be known
(appropriately!) as the Classical Method. It is now more commonly known in
Foreign Language Teaching circles as the Grammar Translation Method.
It is hard to decide which is more surprising - the fact that this method has survived
right up until today (alongside a host of more modern and more "enlightened"
methods), or the fact that what was essentially a method developed for the study
of "dead" languages involving little or no spoken communication or listening
comprehension is still used for the study of languages that are very much alive and
require competence not only in terms of reading, writing and structure, but also
speaking, listening and interactive communication. How has such an archaic
method, "remembered with distaste by thousands of school learners" persevered?
(Richards and Rodgers, 1986:4)
It is worth looking at the objectives, features and typical techniques commonly
associated with the Grammar Translation Method, in order to both understand how
it works and why it has shown such tenacity as an acceptable (even
recommended or respected) language teaching philosophy in many countries
and institutions around the world.
Objectives:
Most teachers who employ the Grammar Translation Method to teach English
would probably tell you that (for their students at least) the most fundamental
reason for learning the language is to give learners access to English literature,
develop their minds "mentally" through foreign language learning, and to build their
grammar, reading, vocabulary and translation skills.
Some teachers who use the method might also tell you that it is the most effective
way to prepare students for "global communication" by beginning with the key skills
of reading and grammar. Others may even say it is the "least stressful" for students
because almost all the teaching occurs in L1 and students are rarely called upon to
speak the language in any communication fashion.
More conservative teachers from many conservative countries are even likely to be
put out by anyone merely questioning the method, and a typical response could
be "because that's the way it's always been done - it's the way I learned and look,
now I'm a professor". The point being, the method is institutionalised and
considered fundamental. Such teachers are probably even unaware that the
method has a name and can be compared alongside other methods.
Key Features:
According to Prator and Celce-Murcia (1979:3), the key features of the Grammar
Translation Method are as follows:
1. Classes are taught in the mother tongue, with little active use of the target
language.
2. Much vocabulary is taught in the form of lists of isolated words.
3. Long elaborate explanations of the intricacies of grammar are given.
4. Grammar provides the rules for putting words together, and instruction often
focuses on the form and inflection of words.
5. Reading of difficult classical texts is begun early.
6. Little attention is paid to the content of texts, which are treated as exercises in
grammatical analysis.
7. Often the only drills are exercises in translating disconnected sentences from the
target language into the mother tongue.
8. Little or no attention is given to pronunciation.
Typical Techniques:
Diane Larsen-Freeman, in her book Techniques and Principles in Language
Teaching (1986:13) provides expanded descriptions of some common/typical
techniques closely associated with the Grammar Translation Method. The listing
here is in summary form only.
1. Translation of a Literary Passage:
Translating target language to native language.
2. Reading Comprehension Questions:
Finding information in a passage, making inferences and relating to personal
experience.
3. Antonyms/Synonyms:
Finding antonyms and synonyms for words or sets of words.
4. Cognates:
Learning spelling/sound patterns that correspond between L1 and the target
language.
5. Deductive Application of Rule:
Understanding grammar rules and their exceptions, then applying them to new
examples.
6. Fill-in-the-Blanks:
Filling in gaps in sentences with new words or items of a particular grammar
type.
7. Memorisation:
Memorisinsg vocabulary lists, grammatical rules and grammatical paradigms.
8. Use of New Words in Sentences:
Students create sentences to reflect their knowledge of the meaning and use of
new words.
9. Composition:
Students write about a topic using the target language.
Then, the teacher asks them to write the answers to the comprehension questions
which appear at the end of the excerpt. The questions are in English, and the
students are instructed to write the answers in English as well. They do the first one
together as an example. A student reads out loud, "When did Mark Twain live?"
Another student replies, "Mark Twain lived from 1835 to 1910." "Bueno," says the
teacher, and the students begin working quietly by themselves.
After one hour, the teacher, speaking in Spanish, asks the students to stop and
check their work. One by one each student reads a question and then reads his
response. If he is correct, the teacher calls on another student to read the next
question. If the student is incorrect, the teacher selects a different student to supply
the correct answer, or the teacher herself gives the right answer.
In the next activity, the teacher asks the students to turn the page in their text.
There is a list of words there. The students see the words “ambition," "career,"
"wharf," "tranquil," "gorgeous," "loathe," and "envy,". They are instructed to give the
Spanish equivalent for each word.
The next section of the chapter deals with grammar. Students follow in their books
as the teacher reads a description of two-word (phrasal) verbs. Then they are given
the rule for use of a direct object with two-word verbs:
If the two-word verb is separable, the direct object may come: between the
verb and its particle. However, separation is necessary when the direct
object is a pronoun. If the verb, is inseparable, then there is no separation of
the verb and particle by the object. For example:
John put away his book.
Or
John put his book away/John put it away.
But not
John put away it.
(Because "put away" is a separable two-word verb.)
The teacher went over the homework.
But not
The teacher went the homework over.
(Because "put away" is an in separable two-word verb.)
After that students are given a list of verbs and are asked to tell which of them is
separable and which is inseparable. They refer to the passage for clues. If they
cannot tell from the passage, they use their dictionaries or ask their teacher.
At the end of the chapter there is a list of vocabulary items that appeared in the
passage. The list is divided into two parts: the first contains words, and the second,
idioms like "to give someone a cold shoulder." Next to each is a Spanish word or
phrase. For homework, the teacher asks the students to memorise the Spanish
translation for the first twenty new words and to write a sentence in English using
each word.
The Direct Method:
Origin:
Towards the end of the late 1800s, a revolution in language teaching philosophy
took place that is seen by many as the dawn of modern foreign language
teaching. Teachers, frustrated by the limits of the Grammar Translation Method in
terms of its inability to create communicative competence in students, began to
experiment with new ways of teaching language. Basically, teachers began
attempting to teach foreign languages in a way that was more similar to first
language acquisition. It incorporated techniques designed to address all the areas
that the Grammar Translation did not. The method also moved as far away as
possible from various techniques typical of the Grammar Translation Method - for
instance using L1 as the language of instruction, memorising grammatical rules and
lots of translation between L1 and the target language.
Objectives:
The basic premise of the Direct Method is that students will learn to communicate in
the target language, partly by learning how to think in that language and by not
involving L1 in the language learning process whatsoever. Objectives include
teaching the students how to use the language spontaneously and orally, linking
meaning with the target language through the use of realia, pictures or pantomime
(Larsen-Freeman 1986:24). There is to be a direct connection between concepts
and the language to be learned.
Key Features:
Richards and Rodgers (1986:9-10) summarise the key features of the Direct Method
thus:
1. Classroom instruction is conducted exclusively in the target language.
2. Only everyday vocabulary and sentences are taught.
3. Oral communication skills are built up in a carefully-traded progression
organised around question-and-answer exchanges between teachers and
students in small, intensive classes.
4. Grammar is taught inductively.
5. New teaching points are taught through modeling and practice.
6. Concrete vocabulary is taught through demonstration, objects, and pictures;
abstract vocabulary is taught by association of ideas.
7. Both speech and listening comprehension are taught.
8. Correct pronunciation and grammar are emphasised.
Typical Techniques:
Diane Larsen-Freeman, in her book Techniques and Principles in Language
Teaching (1986:26-27) provides expanded descriptions of some common/typical
techniques closely associated with the Direct Method. The listing here is in summary
form only.
1. Reading Aloud:
Reading sections of passages, plays or dialogues out loud.
2. Question and Answer Exercise:
Asking questions in the target language and having students answer in full
sentences.
3. Student Self-Correction:
Teacher facilitates opportunities for students to self correct using follow-up
questions, tone, etc.
4. Conversation Practice:
Teacher asks students and students ask students questions using the target
language.
5. Fill-in-the-Blank Exercise:
Items use target language only and inductive rather than explicit grammar rules.
6. Dictation:
Teacher reads passage aloud various amounts of times at various tempos,
students write down what they hear.
7. Paragraph Writing:
Students write paragraphs in their own words using the target language and
various models.
Weaknesses:
Still, the Direct Method was not without problems. "(It) did not take well in public
education where the constraints of budget, classroom size, time, and teacher
background made such a method difficult to use." By the late 1920s, the method
was starting to go into decline and there was even a return to the Grammar
Translation Method, which guaranteed more in the way of scholastic language
learning orientated around reading and grammar skills. But the Direct Method
continues to enjoy a popular following in private language school circles, and it
was one of the foundations upon which the well-known "Audio-lingual Method"
expanded from starting half way through the 20th century.
Example from a Classroom:
The teacher is calling the class to order as we find seats toward the back of the
room. He has placed a big map of the United States in the front of the classroom.
He asks the students to open their books to a certain page number. The lesson is
entitled "Looking at a Map." As the students are called on they read a sentence
from the reading passage at the beginning of the lesson. The teacher points to the
part of the map the sentence describes after each student has read his sentence.
The passage begins:
We are looking at a map of the United States. Canada is the country to the north of the
United States, and Mexico is the country to the south of the United States. Between
Canada and the United States are the Great Lakes. Between Mexico and the United
States is the Rio Grande River. On the East Coast is the Atlantic Ocean, and on the West
Coast is the Pacific Ocean. In the East is a mountain range called the Appalachian
Mountains. In the West are Rocky Mountains.
After the students finish reading the passage, they are asked if they have any
questions. A student asks what a mountain range is. The teacher turns to the
blackboard and draws a series of inverted cones to illustrate a mountain range.
The student nods and says, “I understand." After all of the questions have been
answered, the teacher asks some of his own.
Finally, the teacher invites the students to ask questions. Hands go up, and the
teacher calls on students to pose questions one at a time, to which the class replies.
A student asks, "What is the ocean in the West Coast?" The teacher interrupts
before the class has a chance to reply, saying, "What is the ocean in the West
Coast? ... or on the West Coast?" The student hesitates, and then says, "On the West
Coast." "Correct," says the teacher. "Now, repeat your question." "What is the ocean
on the West Coast?"
The class replies in 'chorus, “The Ocean on the West Coast is the Pacific." The
teacher begins asking questions and making statements again. This time, however,
the questions and statements are about the students in the classroom and contain
one of the prepositions "on," "at," "to," "in," or "between,"
Finally, the teacher asks the students to take out their notebooks, and he gives
them a dictation. The passage he dictates is one paragraph long and is about
the geography of the United States.
Objectives:
Just as with the Direct Method that preceded it, the overall goal of the Audio-
lingual Method was to create communicative competence in learners. However, it
was thought that the most effective way to do this was for students to "over learn"
the language being studied through extensive repetition and a variety of elaborate
drills. The idea was to project the linguistic patterns of the language (based on the
studies of structural linguists) into the minds of the learners in a way that made
responses automatic and "habitual". To this end it was held that the language
"habits" of the first language would constantly interfere, and the only way to
overcome this problem was to facilitate the learning of a new set of "habits"
appropriate linguistically to the language being studied.
Key Features:
Here is a summary of the key features of the Audio-lingual Method, taken from
Brown (1994:57) and adapted from Prator and Celce-Murcia (1979).
1. New material is presented in dialogue form.
2. There is dependence on mimicry, memorisation of set of phrases, and over
learning.
3. Structures are sequenced by means of contrastive analysis and taught one at
a time.
4. Structural patterns are taught using repetitive drills.
5. There is little or no grammatical explanation. Grammar is taught by inductive
analogy rather than deductive explanation.
6. Vocabulary is strictly limited and learned in context.
7. There is much use of tapes, language labs, and visual aids.
8. Great importance is attached to pronunciation.
9. Very little use of the mother tongue by teachers is permitted.
10. Successful responses are immediately reinforced.
11. There is great effort to get students to produce error-free utterances.
12. There is a tendency to manipulate language and disregard content.
Typical Techniques:
Larsen-Freeman, in her book Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching
(1986:45-47) provides expanded descriptions of some common/typical techniques
closely associated with the Audio-lingual Method. The listing here is in summary
form only.
1. Dialogue Memorisation:
Students memorise an opening dialogue using mimicry and applied role-
playing.
2. Backward Build-Up (Expansion Drill):
Teacher breaks a line into several parts; students repeat each part starting at
the end of the sentence and "expanding" backwards through the sentence,
adding each part in sequence.
3. Repetition Drill:
Students repeat teacher's model as quickly and accurately as possible.
4. Chain Drill:
Students ask and answer each other one-by-one in a circular chain around the
classroom.
5. Single Slot Substitution Drill:
Teacher states a line from the dialogue, then uses a word or a phrase as a "cue"
that students, when repeating the line, must substitute into the sentence in the
correct place.
6. Multiple-Sot Substitution Drill:
Same as the Single Slot drill, except that there are multiple cues to be substituted
into the line.
7. Transformation Drill:
Teacher provides a sentence that must be turned into something else, for
example a question to be turned into a statement, an active sentence to be
turned into a negative statement, etc.
8. Question-and-Answer Drill:
Students should answer or ask questions very quickly.
9. Use of Minimal Pairs:
Using contrastive analysis, teacher selects a pair of words that sound identical
except for a single sound that typically poses difficulty for the learners - students
are to pronounce and differentiate the two words.
10. Complete the Dialogue:
Selected words are erased from a line in the dialogue - students must find and
insert.
11. Grammar Games:
Various games designed to practise a grammar point in context, using lots of
repetition.
Weaknesses:
Through extensive mimicry, memorisation and over-learning of language patterns
and forms, students and teachers were often able to see immediate results. This
was both its strength and its failure in the long run, as critics began to point out that
the method did not deliver in terms of producing long-term communicative ability.
After the students have repeated the dialogue several times, the teacher gives
them a chance to adopt one of the roles in the dialogue while she says the other.
Before the class actually says each line, the teacher models it. In effect, the class is
experiencing a repetition drill where the task is to listen carefully and attempt to
mimic the teacher's model as accurately as possible. For further practice, the class
and the teacher switch roles, then the class is divided into two groups and each
take a role of the dialogue. Finally, the teacher selects two students to perform the
entire dialogue for the rest of the class. When they are finished, two others do the
same.
The teacher moves next to the second major phase of the lesson. She continues to
drill the students with language from the dialogue. The first is a single-slot substitution
drill in which the students repeat a sentence from the dialogue and replace a word
or phrase in the sentence with the word or phrase the teacher gives them. This
word or phrase is called the cue.
E.g. the teacher begins by reciting a line from the dialogue, "I am going to the post
office." Following this she shows the students a picture of a bank and says the
phrase, "The bank." She pauses, and then says, "I am going to the bank."
Finally, the teacher increases the complexity of the task by leading the students in a
multi-slot substitution drill. This is essentially the same type of drill as the single-slot the
teacher just used. However with this drill, students must recognise what part of
speech the cue word is and where it fits into the sentence.
The substitution drills are followed by a transformation drill. This type of drill asks
students to change one type of sentence into another; an affirmative sentence
into a negative or an active sentence into a passive. In this class, the teacher uses
a substitution drill that requires the students to change a statement into a yes/no
question. The teacher offers an example, "I say, 'She is going to the post office.”You
make a question by saying, 'Is she going to the post office?”. The teacher models
another sentence with a student.
Then she selects students to answer her cue questions and give immediate
feedback. She sometimes provides her students with situations that require a
negative answer and sometimes with situations that require a positive one. She calls
on individuals now, smiling encouragement to each student. She holds up pictures
and poses questions. The students seem to be comfortable answering the
questions. The only time she changes the rhythm is when a student seriously
mispronounces a word. When this occurs, she restates the word and works briefly
with the student until his pronunciation is closer to her own. Finally, she recaps on
the dialogue for the last time and dismisses the class.
Objectives:
"Beyond grammatical discourse elements in communication, we are probing the
nature of social, cultural, and pragmatic features of language. CLT explores
pedagogical means for 'real-life' communication in the classroom. It tries to get our
learners to develop linguistic fluency, not just the accuracy that has so consumed
our historical journey. CLT teachers equip their students with tools for generating
unrehearsed language performance 'out there' when they leave the womb of our
classrooms. They are concerned with how to facilitate lifelong language learning
among their students, not just with the immediate classroom task. Learners are
partners in a cooperative venture. And classroom practices seek to draw on
whatever intrinsically sparks learners to reach their fullest potential."
Features of (CLT):
David Nunan (1991:279) lists five basic characteristics of Communicative Language
Teaching:
1. An emphasis on learning to communicate through interaction in the target
language.
2. The introduction of authentic texts into the learning situation.
3. The provision of opportunities for learners to focus, not only on the language
but also on the learning process itself.
4. An enhancement of the learner's own personal experiences as important
contributing elements to classroom learning.
5. An attempt to link classroom language learning with language activation
outside the classroom.
6. Meaning is paramount.
7. Dialogues, if used, centre on communicative functions and are not normally
memorised.
8. Contextualisation is a basic premise.
9. Effective communication is sought.
10. Drilling may occur, but peripherally.
11. Comprehensible pronunciation is sought.
12. Any device which helps the learners is accepted - varying according to their
age, interest, etc.
13. Attempts to communicate may be encouraged from the very beginning.
14. Reading and writing can start from the first day, if desired.
15. The target linguistic system will be learned best through the process of
struggling to communicate.
16. Communicative competence is the desired goal.
17. Linguistic variation is a central concept in materials and methods.
18. Sequencing is determined by any consideration of content function, or
meaning which maintains interest.
19. Teachers help learners in any way that motivates them to work with the
language.
20. Language is created by the individual often through trial and error.
21. Fluency and acceptable language is the primary goal, accuracy is judged not
in the abstract but in context.
22. Students are expected to interact with other people, either in the flesh,
through pair and group work, or in their writings.
23. Intrinsic motivation will spring from an interest in what is being communicated
by the language.
Weaknesses:
CLT is a generic approach, and can seem non-specific at times in terms of how to
actually go about using practices in the classroom in any sort of systematic
way. There are many interpretations of what CLT actually means and involves.
Next, the teacher asks students to turn to the other side of the handout, where they
find the already discussed sentences jumbled. The teacher tells the students to
unscramble the sentences, to put them in their proper order once again. When
they finish, the students compare what they have done with the original on the
other side of the handout.
The teacher next announces that the students will be playing a game. He divides
the class into small groups of fives. He hands each group a deck of thirteen cards.
Each card has a picture of a piece of sports equipment. As the students identify the
items, the teacher writes each name on the blackboard; e.g. basketball, soccer
ball, volleyball, tennis racket, skis, ice skates …etc.
The cards are shuffled, and for every four of the students in a group are three cards.
They do not show their cards to anyone else. The extra card is placed face down in
the middle of the group. The fifth person in the group receives no cards. She is told
that she should try to predict what it is that Mary-Ann (one of the students in the
class) will be doing the following weekend. The fifth student is to make statements
like, “Mary-Ann may go skiing this weekend."
If one of the members of this group has a card showing skis, the group member
would reply, for example, “Mary-Ann can't go skiing, because I have her skis." If, on
the other hand, no one has the picture of the skis, then the fifth student can make
a strong statement about the likelihood of Mary-Ann going skiing. She says, for
example, "Mary-Ann will go skiing." She can check her prediction by turning over
the face-down card. If it is the picture of the skis, then she knows she is correct. The
students seem to really enjoy playing the game. They start taking turns so that they
all participate.
The students are told to make statements about how probable they think the
predictions are and why they believe so. They are also asked how they feel about
the prediction. During the discussion, one of the students says, “I don't think that it's
like that a world government will be in place by the twenty-second century”. The
teacher and students ignore the mistake and the discussion continues.
Next, the teacher has the students divided into groups of three. One member of
each group is given a picture strip story. There are six pictures in a row on a piece of
paper. The student with the story shows the first picture only to the other members
of his group. The other students try to predict what they think will happen in the
second picture. The student in charge corrects his colleagues and moves to the
next picture. This process is repeated until all pictures are revealed.
For the final activity, the students are told that they will do a role-play. The teacher
tells them that they are to be divided into groups of four. They are to imagine that
they are all employees of the same company. One of them is the others' boss. They
are having a meeting to discuss what will possibly occur as a result of their
company merging with another company. Before they begin, they discuss some
possibilities together. They decide that they can talk about topics such as changing
polices, reducing labour force, increasing salaries. The teacher stresses that they
need to address their boss more formally. The teacher provides some examples of
formal ways of agreement and disagreement.
For fifteen minutes the students perform their role-play. The teacher moves from
group to group to answer questions and offer any advice on what the groups can
discuss. After it is over, the students have an opportunity to pose any questions. In
this way, they elicit some relevant vocabulary words.
The teacher uses the last few minutes to give the homework assignment. The
students are to watch a debate between two political candidates on television
that night. They are then asked to write their prediction of who they think will win
the election and why. They will read their reports to their classmates at the start of
the next class.
Online Resources:
Second Language Teaching Methodologies - Eric Clearinghouse on
Languages and Linguistics.
Teaching Techniques - From <www.eslabout.com>
Whole Language, Whole Person - A Handbook of Language Teaching
Methodology
<http://www.englishraven.com>
Task:
Define Classroom Management.
Task:
What does Classroom Management entail?
It is an effective discipline.
It is prepared for a class.
It motivates your students.
It provides a safe, comfortable learning environment.
It builds your students’ self esteem.
1. The Room:
Stress-Free Environment:
1. The creation of stress in a learning set up should be avoided in order to ensure
the achievement of aims in the set time limit in a smooth, sailing process.
2. The teacher may welcome the class in a friendly way and make interpersonal
connections in order to relax pupils. (Establish rapport.)
3. The physical environment of the classroom should give appropriate messages,
suggesting that active pursuit of challenge is encouraged.
4. Pupils can be given a degree of choice and a sense of control over what and
how they learn.
5. Questioning of pupils should be carefully gauged to avoid causing individuals
stress.
6. The atmosphere in the classroom should be one of respect between all learners
and teachers.
Desks in Clusters:
Clusters consist of four or five desks pushed together so every desk is facing another
one. The fifth desk, if needed, would be put on the end of the group of four. The
classroom would have clusters scattered around, so each cluster would be far
enough apart that the students’ chairs would not hit each other. In this situation,
the teacher is free to walk around the room without bumping into students’ desks or
chairs and can work with the groups. The groups of students need to be thought
about before setting up. The students need to be able to work together. There will
have to be different levels of students at each group so that they can help each
other learn and grow. Clusters are very common in situations where there is a lot of
group learning and work. The desks together make it easy for all students in the
cluster to see each other and to hold discussions. In this situation, the philosophy of
the teacher is more collaborative learning. This lets students have hands-on
activities and learn by practising. The teacher shares and gives guidance and help
to students. This arrangement also, allows for students to do individual work at their
desk.
Desks in Rows:
Rows indicate a no-nonsense, academic focus. It immediately draws attention to
the teacher. If you have had problems keeping students focused on you, perhaps
arranging the desks formally will change their perception of your class. If you are
constantly moving desks into groups for activities, perhaps it is time to move into
rows.
Table Rows:
Table rows consist of long tables that are placed in rows that are perpendicular to
the front and back of the room. The students sit next and across from each other.
This set-up is typically found in science labs and writing workshops. It is a good
arrangement for group work and large group projects. The philosophy of the
teacher who would set up their classroom with table rows is probably collaborative
learning. They motivate their students by letting them work together, and it helps
students learn how to learn. During writing workshops, it is easy for students to turn to
a person and do a peer editing and share their work. In science labs, it is sensible to
have a large table where everyone can see the item and participate.
The problem with this set-up is that there are students that are at the end of the
tables at the back of the room that will not be able to see during the direct
instruction time. Also, it is hard for the teacher to see all the students and watch
their faces and behaviour. It allows the student for a lot of socialising and it is very
bad in a test situation. None of the students are facing the front of the room when
sitting at the table. It is hard to have class discussions because the students will not
hear each other without moving and looking around to see who is talking. Table
rows are good for situations where there is hardly any direct instruction and students
work together to figure out problems and activities. Usually this is found in the
middle grades in science classes.
Desks in Semi-Circles:
Semi-circle seating arrangement is when all the desks touch each other facing the
front of the room in a semi-circle shape. The teacher can easily see each student
and they can see him/ her and the instructional aids. The philosophies of the
teacher using this arrangement can be direct instruction, child-run or collaborative.
Each philosophy could be implemented into this classroom setting. Because all the
students can see each other; they can have debates and discussions amongst
themselves. The students can give ideas on how they want to do an activity and
the seating arrangement could probably accommodate the activity. Also,
because students all have clear vision to the board, direct instruction from the
teacher could be very common. The teacher would have full control over the
students. The teacher could easily walk around the room and monitor everybody's
work. The students would also be able to work together doing projects and
activities.
The semi-circle seating arrangement would not be recommended because the
teacher would have a hard time meeting with the students one-on-one. This is
because the seats are very close to each other. Also, the semi-circle would take up
almost the entire classroom so there is not much room for activities or conferencing
outside the desk area. Semi-circle desk arrangement can be used in all grade
classrooms and for all educational philosophies. This is because the teacher can
have classroom discussions and all the students can see and hear each other well.
The teacher can take a passive role and listen to the students and let them run the
class.
Also, in this arrangement the teacher can run the class giving the students step by
step instructions. All the students are facing the front of the room and have their
own space to work. Students can work easily together without much movement
because they are sitting directly next to each other which make hands-on-activities
and collaborative learning possible.
Desks in Circles:
Circles and/or squares indicate an open, sharing classroom. Students must face
one another and cannot hide. This can be nurturing to some students, terrifying to
others. If you are having trouble getting a smaller group to share and interact with
one another, a circle or square might help.
Desks in U-Shape:
U-shaped arranged desks indicate a stage. It allows for more students to sit in the
“front,” and can accommodate doubling or tripling the U-rows. It creates a
presentation-centred classroom, where the teacher or students present lessons to
the rest of the class. If you are focusing on presentations, this model works well. A
passageway at the vertex of the U is often helpful so you will not have to travel
around the perimeter of the classroom. Note that a U-shaped arrangement
requires a large space; if you have a small classroom with many students to
accommodate, forget it.
Desks in Pairs:
Pairs are tricky. They seem great from a teacher’s standpoint since students have
instant partners for activities, and the primary focus is still on the teacher. Students
are paired up with either students with similar abilities, or students with opposite
abilities, to complement and help one another. This theory, however, is often
detrimental to many students. Would you like to be paired up for the year with a
lazy co-worker? Or a co-worker who constantly outperforms you? Let’s face it;
schools must teach students to have tolerance and work together with many types
of people, but in the real world, you are rarely forced to work continuously one-on-
one with someone who makes you feel uncomfortable or inferior. Putting students
in this stressful one-on-one situation may not be as kind as it seems.
Desks in Groups:
Groups of three or four, however, work wonders. Adding more students to the mix
alleviate the tension that pairing creates. It creates both an atmosphere for
teacher-centred and student-centred activities. Students can be expected to be
silent for a short period, but realise that they will naturally want to interact with the
students in their small groups. You can also encourage competition between
groups by having them name their group and post group progress on specific
activities
2. Teacher
Attention Spread:
A class is made up of individuals who want to be listened to and/or addressed by
the teacher. Make sure that attention is equally distributed to the whole class. This
can be established through eye contact, voice projection, meta-language and
teacher’s movement around the classroom.
Eye Contact:
Teacher needs to establish eye contact with all students in order to:
- Notice their reactions.
- Establish rapport.
- Indicate the student that is being addressed or required to perform a task.
- Hold attention of students not addressed and encourage them to listen to those
talking.
- Indicate to inattentive students that you are taking notice.
- Replace naming students for example during a fast drill.
Voice Projection:
Voice alters naturally according to the activity, the size of the class, the room and
the other similar variables. Intonation also helps teacher in delivering messages to
students.
Teacher’s voice is an aid to:
- Gain attention.
- Announce changes in the lesson stages.
- Sustain students’ interest.
- Give gentle correction.
- Reprimand.
Monitoring:
Monitoring what students are doing is as important as teaching. Teacher’s aim at
that stage would be to assess how well your students are performing the task and
evaluate particular language strengths and weaknesses. While performing a task;
whether individual, pair or group work, teacher passes by and checks on how
students are progressing without correcting any mistakes or lends a guiding hand to
faltering ones.
Correction Techniques:
Teachers are often afraid that students might "learn their mistakes". This idea derives
from views of language learning which were popular in the 1950s and 1960s; that
languages were learnt by repetition of correct forms until they become automatic.
Hence, repeating incorrect forms would be harmful as they would become
fossilised mistakes.
Nowadays, it is widely agreed that language is rather a system of rules that the
learner has to acquire, and that "trying out" language and making errors are
accepted as a natural part of the learning process such as when mastering chess,
learning a musical instrument or to cook, or when a baby learns to walk or talk.
Errors are a useful way of students showing what they have and have not learnt.
Therefore, instead of seeing errors negatively; as a sign of failure (by the student or
the teacher), they can be seen positively as an indication of what still needs to be
taught. Obviously, if we try to prevent students from making errors, we can never
find out what they do not know. The correct methods of correction help inform the
teacher about the class's general level.
Most teachers would agree that we need to correct some errors, to help students
learn the correct forms of the language. It also helps hold the class attention and
encourage the idea that students can learn from each other. However, this does
not mean that we have to correct students all the time. If we do, it might make
them unwilling or unable to say anything at all. We also need to make sure that we
do not inhibit students.; if we hurt their feelings or humiliate them, we lose rapport.
Thus, one of the techniques could be giving a chance for self-correction. In order
to achieve that the teachers might;
Use facial expressions to show that there is a mistake.
Use gestures to elicit correction.
Repeat the sentence up to the mistake and stop to show where the mistake is.
E.g.: Student: Pavarotti is the singer who I like him.
Teacher: "Pavarotti is the singer I…like…?"
• Repeat the mistake in such a way as to highlight it.
E.g.: Teacher: "him?"
Echoing.
E.g.: Teacher: Yes, he's got a good voice. Phil Collins is the singer I like best.
Pair Work:
It seems sensible to be selective about pairing if you are planning an activity which
is long and perhaps difficult for some students. However, random pairing which
occurs as a result of some seating is fine and has the advantage of not interrupting
the flow of the lesson.
Group Work:
Group work is more dynamic than pair work as there are more people to react with
and against in a group and therefore a greater demand on the students' ability to
cooperate closely with only one other person. It has the advantage of allowing
different groups of students to be doing different things at the same time in class.
Starting a Lesson:
When starting a lesson, it is important to consider the following strategies:
a. Punctuality is important and if possible be in the classroom before the students.
b. Before the start of a lesson is an ideal opportunity to socialise, give back
homework, discuss individual problems, and the way a student is approaching
his / her learning.
c. You need to supply a signal for the start of the lesson.
Establish lesson objectives whenever this is possible either orally or in writing on the
board.
Finishing a Lesson:
When finishing a lesson, it is important to consider the following strategies:
a. Timing is essential if the students are not to leave the class with the impression
that the lesson ended badly.
b. Allow time for homework and announcements before it is time for the students
to leave.
c. Clarify the finishing point, e.g. Close you books, Good, Well done etc. maintain
class attention through eye contact.
d. You can summarise and evaluate your lesson by asking the students what they
have learnt from today's lesson.
e. Make sure you say good bye naturally, it is a good opportunity for the students
to learn how to do it.
Remember that although you influence what happens in the class, it is often more
a case of 'managing learning' than teaching.
When considering writing a lesson plan there are certain elements which need to
be considered. Most lesson plan formats will have some or all of the following:
Name of the teacher
Name of the class
Date
Level of learners
Number of learners
Time of lesson
Aims of lesson - structural and skills areas
Assumptions made - relevant pre-knowledge of learners
Anticipated problem areas: e.g. pronunciation/concept/mother-tongue
interference, etc.
Materials needed
Stages
Classroom management: seating arrangements/ pairing/grouping, etc.
Approximate timing for each stage
Board plans
Interaction
Number of Students:
Aim (structural):
Classroom Management:
Materials / Aids:
Stage:
Board Work:
Interaction:
Time:
Comments:
The lesson plan is a dreaded part of instruction that most teachers detest. It
nevertheless provides a guide for managing the learning environment and is
essential if a substitute teacher is to be effective and efficient. Three stages of
lesson planning follow:
Stage 1: Pre-Lesson Preparation:
1. Goals
2. Content
3. Student entry level
Stage 2: Lesson Planning and Implementation:
1. Unit title
2. Instructional goals
3. Objectives
4. Rationale
5. Content
6. Instructional procedures
7. Evaluation procedures
8. Materials
Stage 3: Post-Lesson Activities: lesson evaluation and revision
Lesson planning involves much more than making arbitrary decisions about "what
I'm going to teach today." Many activities precede the process of designing and
implementing a lesson plan. Similarly, the job of systematic lesson planning is not
complete until after the instructor has assessed both the learner's attainment of the
anticipated outcomes and effectiveness of the lesson in leading learners to these
outcomes.
There are many approaches to lesson planning. However, there are basic elements
that should be included when planning any lesson. Finally, even teachers who
develop highly structured and detailed plans rarely adhere to them in lock-step
fashion. Such rigidity would probably hinder, rather than help, the teaching-
learning process. The elements of your lesson plan should be thought of as guiding
principles to be applied as aids, but not blueprints, to systematic instruction. Precise
preparation must allow for flexible delivery. During actual classroom interaction, the
instructor needs to make adaptations and to add artistry to each lesson plan and
classroom delivery.
Generic Form:
This open form includes the above framework. It does have a suggested sequence
of instructional procedures which corresponds more closely to direct instruction:
1. Focusing event (something to get the students' attention)
2. Teaching procedures (methods you will use)
3. Formative check (progress checks throughout the lesson)
4. Student Participation (how you will get the students to participate)
5. Closure (how you will end the lesson)
Instructional Goal:
(outcome that students would be able to demonstrate upon completion of the entire
unit)
Rationale: (brief justification – why you feel the student need to learn this topic)
Instructional Procedures:
Focusing event (something to get the students' attention)
Teaching procedures (method you will use)
Formative check (progress checks throughout the lesson)
Student participation (how you will get the students to participate)
Closure (how you will end the lesson)
Evaluation Procedures: (how you will measure outcomes to determine if the material
has been learned)
Materials and Aids: (what you will need in order to teach this lesson)
Honolulu Community College:
<http://edweb.sdsu.edu/Courses/EDTEC470/sections/F02-10/lesson_planning.htm>
Practice: Students begin to use what the teacher presented in the first part by using drills
that go from controlled to less controlled. These can be written or oral drills.
Production: Teacher allows students to use what they learned in an uncontrolled way
through role-plays, discussions, language games, etc. Teacher monitors students from a
distance so that students can feel free to try out what they have learned. After the activity,
the teacher gives feedback to the students about common errors and also on the correct
language that was used.
CRRA lessons emphasise the deduction or generation of new sentences from a pattern
sentence. Students are given a pattern sentence (1) and they deduce new sentences from
it (2, 3). It has been referred to as a "Teach-Test" type of lesson plan. It is very similar to the
PPP model (Present-Practice-Produce).
An RCR type of lesson has more of an inductive pattern to it. It would consist of the following
sequence of activity types: 1. Restricted Use; 2. Clarification and Focus; 3. Restricted Use.
Such a lesson might begin with a series of tape recorded polite requests, the students
having to identify which are appropriate and which are inappropriate (1). The teacher then
goes around the class noting down which mistakes were common and offers an
explanation as to why those choices are wrong (2). A second set of similar tape recorded
polite requests are played and the students are asked to identify which are appropriate (3).
This time they are equipped with the explanation given in step (2) which should help them
avoid mistakes. This type of lesson has a sort of feedback or review cycle built into it and has
been referred to as a "Test-Teach-Test" type of lesson.
The same type of lesson might be done with an even more inductive, more open ended,
communicative activity (an Authentic use type activity) where the student has more
opportunity to experiment with language of his own creation. The lesson pattern would then
be ACA consisting of the following sequence of activity types: 1. Authentic Use; 2.
Clarification and Focus; 3. Authentic Use. This lesson type also has a feedback or review
cycle built into it.
The ARC model also has potential for helping teachers design "component"-like lessons that
address particular teaching points (grammatical, lexical, functional/pragmatic) that can be
"plugged into" appropriate places in the syllabus. The ARC model could help teachers
isolate exactly what goes into a successful lesson and incorporate an already existing lesson
into a new lesson that addresses new teaching points. This idea is basically just an extension
of what teachers already do in their everyday lesson preparation, cutting, pasting,
adapting, and extending activities and authentic texts from various sources into their own
new (but highly derivative) material.
Following is a list which categorises activity types into three main sections;
Authentic Use, Restricted Use and Clarification and Focus:
1. Authentic use for:
- meaning
- communications
- fluency
- real-life
- pleasure
Example Activities:
Listening
- conversations
- radio, TV
- narratives
Speaking
- communicative activities
- discussions
- conversations
- role plays
Reading
- newspaper or magazine articles
- short stories, novels
- leaflets, notices, ads
Writing
- stories
- poems
- essays
2. Restricted use for:
- form
- practice
- accuracy
- testing
- display
Example Activities:
Listening
- discrete sounds
- words
- sentences
- course-book tasks
- examples from course-books
Speaking
- drills
- language practice activities
- elicited dialogues
- jazz chants, poems, texts
Reading
- examples
- course-book texts
- exercises
- stories
Writing
- copying
- exercises
- guided writing
3. Clarification and Focus
What Happens?
- I tell you
- I show you
- I help you find out for yourself
- You find out for yourself
Tools and Techniques:
rules
examples
reference information
diagrams, timelines
substitution tables
translation
questions about meaning
questions about form
questions about use
problems and puzzles
error analysis
sentence analysis
explanations, lectures
demonstrations
gestures, mime
pictures, flashcards, visual aids
contexts and situations
repetition
elicitation
voice, intonation, silence
discussion
personalisation
models, toys, realia
Getting Feedback:
To sum up this chapter, we need to stress the fact that there is no fixed lesson plan.
A good teacher will look back at their lessons and try to improve constantly. All
teachers need to do this, no matter whether they have taught for one week or
twenty years. After the lesson, things to think about in general are whether the
learners achieved the aim, were they all actively involved, was the teacher talk
time appropriate and what could the teacher learn that can be used to improve
the next lesson. Many teachers have personal aims such as how they can
encourage learner autonomy or better correcting. By reflecting on the taught
lessen, teachers would be able to amend their activities and ultimately produce a
more effective lesson plan.
References:
The material in this section is based on "Learning Teaching: A Guidebook for English
Language Teachers" by Jim Scrivener (Heinemann, 1994), pp 133-138 and ESL
lesson plans <http://www.esl-lesson-plan.com/archives/2007/05/
teacher_development>
Task:
Mention some problems associated with grammar teaching in general.
Task:
How could we present grammar in a communicative way?
The post-grammar stage should provide an opportunity to put grammar to use, and
relate grammar instruction to real life situations. The main distinction between the
while- and post-stages is that the while-stage involves the clarification of
the meaning, whereas the post-stage focuses on the productive aspects of the
new structure.
Task:
Compare between a traditional grammar lesson and an integrated grammar lesson
Traditional grammar lesson Integrated grammar lesson
- The teacher asks the students to formulate the rule on the board for the given
sentence providing help if needed.
- She used to play the guitar.
(S + Used to + V 1)
Note:
The while-stage may involve production of the new structure through some
questions about the pictures. In this case, however, the purpose is to confirm
whether the meaning has been clarified.
3. Post-Grammar:
Brainstorming:
The teacher asks students to think back to when they were children. Then he/she
asks the following questions: "What are the differences and similarities between your
life then and now? Think about where you lived, your likes/dislikes, your holidays
and your family, and fill in the following lines with appropriate sentences".
Your life as a child...
________________________________________
________________________________________
________________________________________
Your present life…
________________________________________
________________________________________
________________________________________
Role-Play:
The teacher forms pairs of students and gives a role play to each student. The role
playing students are supposed to be old friends meeting after a long time. They are
supposed to communicate and note the differences in each using either their
imagination or the role-play cues.
Writing:
The teacher asks students to write a story about the following topic for the school
magazine.
Imagine that you have been asleep from 2007 till 2050. You have just woken up to
be shocked about everything around you. Compare your old and new lives and
write your story using "used to".
Sample Grammar Lesson 2: The Present Perfect Passive Voice
Pre-Grammar Stage:
First, the teacher has a discussion on burglaries. Following this discussion, the
teacher shows a picture of a living room and says: "Today, a burglar has broken into
this room. What do you think he has taken?" (The teacher tries to elicit responses
such as he has taken the lap-top; he has stolen the jewellery, etc.)
While-Grammar Stage:
The teacher shows a different picture of the same living room and turns attention to
the missing items and says the following:
"The lap-top computer has been taken from the room.
The jewellery has been stolen.
The small TV has been taken as well.
The picture on the wall has been taken, too".
The teacher asks questions to elicit the passive voice structure. Following this,
the teacher asks clarification check questions such as:
What is the difference between "the burglar has stolen the jewellery", and "the
jewellery has been stolen"? When do you think we need the second structure?
The teacher asks the students to formulate the rule on the board.
Alternatively, or additionally, the context can be created through a reading text
written in the present perfect passive voice.
Post-Grammar Stage:
The teacher gives the following hand-out to be filled out and asks students to walk
around and ask questions to the class members.
Find Someone Class Members Name
Who has been blamed for something he/she hasn't
done?
Role-Play:
1. The teacher forms pairs of students and gives a role play to each student. One
of the pairs holds the names of the cities and their weather reports, the other
holds information about some football matches and the name of the cities
where they are being held. They will exchange the information and find out
which football matches have been cancelled.
The teacher assigns an incomplete writing task and asks them to complete it
using some cue words and the present perfect passive tense.
2. Your wedding is very soon, but most of the arrangements have not been made
yet. Write a complaint letter to the wedding specialist using these clues:
wedding invitations, wedding dress, wedding party, wedding cake, wedding
photographer, honeymoon, limousine cars.
I visited your office today but you were out. I have seen that
most of the wedding arrangements have not yet been made.
To begin with, ….…
Conclusion:
During grammar instruction, teachers should provide meaningful input through
context and provide an opportunity to put grammar to use, and relate grammar
instruction to real life situations. This is best achieved if grammar instruction is treated
in the same way as the teaching of the four skills which involves smooth and
organised transitions of pre-, while- and post- grammar stages.
References:
Brown, H. D. (2001). Teaching by principles. An interactive approach to
language teaching pedagogy. Newyork: Longman
Clandfield, L. (n.d). Task-based grammar teaching. Retrieved 15th July 2007,
from <http://onestopenglish.com/english_grammar/grammar_task_based.htm>
Mora, J. K. (2003). Major components of the study of grammar and
syntax: Teaching grammar in context. Retrieved 15th July 2007, <from http://
coe.sdsu.edu/people/jmora/grammar.htm>
Tennant, A. (n.d). Using the discovery technique for teaching grammar.
Retrieved 15th July 2007, from <http://onestopenglish.com/english_grammar/
grammar_discovery_technique.htm>
Weaver, C. (1996). Teaching grammar in context. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/
Cook Publishers, Inc.
Task:
What words should we teach?
We do not have time to teach all the words, nor do we have time to look at many
more than a few words in each class. This is extremely important because it means
that EVERYTHING we do as vocabulary teachers has to be focused on:
a. Building the learner's 'start up' or initial vocabulary.
b. Developing the learner's understanding of what learning words means.
c. Showing the learner how to learn the words most effectively.
Which Words?
Research shows that learners need about 3000 'word families' to be good at English.
(A 'word family' is a group of words that share the same meaning such as 'help',
'helping' 'helped 'helpless' etc.). Teachers should concentrate on the most frequent
and useful words first, as it is these words the learners will meet very often. Many
teachers focus on rarer words assuming that the basic words like 'get', 'make' and
'bring' are known. But it is these words which are among the most troublesome, with
their multiple meanings and idiomatic uses. Therefore, teachers and learners should
work very hard on the highly frequent words.
How Should Learners Learn Vocabulary?
The most fundamental idea that should underlie any method is that 'the most
important vocabulary to work on is that the learners learned yesterday'. The nature
of human memory dictates that vocabulary will probably be forgotten, especially if
the word has just been met. Vocabulary loss happens because it is at the initial
stage of word learning that word knowledge is so fragile. This means that words and
phrases need to be recycled often to cement them in memory. Introducing a word
and not recycling or revisiting it, means that it is highly likely that it will be forgotten.
Course-books are usually very bad at recycling, so the teacher must work out ways
to recycle the vocabulary that is introduced in the course book.
How to Teach Vocabulary?
Effective learning of a foreign or a second language involves to a great extent
learning new vocabulary words. Adults and adolescents need between ten and
sixteen encounters with a new word before they can put it in their long term
memories. This has implications for vocabulary practice. Words, chunks and
grammatical structures need to be spread out and built up from noticing, to
recognition to production.
Task:
Which of the two following techniques is more effective? Why?
Teacher A:
a. Wrote “grumble” on the blackboard.
b. Said “grumble means to complain about someone or something in an
annoyed way”.
c. Translated the word into the students’ native language.
d. Gave more examples (sentences) for the students to translate into their
native language.
Teacher B:
Teacher B said “some people grumble about everything. For example, they
grumbled about the weather. If it is sunny, they say it is too hot. If it is cool, they
say it is too cold. They are never happy with the weather. They always grumble
about the weather”.
Then set out to check the students’ understanding by asking “So what does
‘grumble’ mean?”
Task:
Can you think of other ways to present new words?
You need to choose your presentation technique according to the words you
teach, since not every new word can be presented using each technique. For
example, if the word is a small house hold object, like a needle, you can bring a
needle into class; if the word is a concept, such as cruelty, you can not use realia
to teach the word and so using a situation or a story would be more appropriate.
Task:
What are the different instructional methods used in presenting vocabulary?
Semantic Mapping:
Semantic Mapping involves a web-like graphic display. To begin instruction,
students are presented with a concept that is central to understanding a selection
or subject. They then brainstorm or freely associate words that are related to that
concept. As students brainstorm, the teacher writes their suggestions on the board,
adding words they need to learn.
Consolidating Vocabulary:
Since learning is subject to forgetting, it is normal that we hear students complain
that they keep learning and forgetting, especially when they do not understand
the meaning of the vocabulary item.
When students study vocabulary individually, very often it is rote learning.
Group learning through various activities and under the teacher’s supervision can
be more fun and effective.
Now make a table of nine blocks. Write nine words of shopping in the table,
then listen to me. When you hear the word that you have written, cross it out in
your table. e.g.:
If you have crossed out all the nine words in your table, say “Bingo!” If you are
the first one to say “Bingo!” in your group, you are the winner.
Look at the following task and decide which vocabulary consolidation activity is it?
A. ____________
Transport: , , ________ _
Vehicles: , , _______ _
Furniture: , , _________
Buildings: , , ______ ___
B. _____________
C. ____________
D. ___________
Put the word in the suitable place.
toothpaste, TV, alarm clock, stove, video, towel, cupboard, sofa, dressing table,
wash-basin, slippers, mirror, shower.
E. ______________
Answers:
a. Using word series
b. Using word thermometers
c. Synonyms and antonyms
d. Using word net-work
e. Using word categories
References:
Tasks for teacher education: a reflective approach, Rosie Tanner and Catherine
Green, Longman, 2000
<http://www1.harenet.ne.jp/~waring/papers/eltnews.html>
<sfs.scnu.edu.cn/chendm1/PPT/Unit%207.ppt>
Aids are the resources and equipment available to us in the classroom, as well as
the resources we can bring into the classroom. They include cassette recorders,
CD players, video recorders and overhead projectors (i.e. equipment with a light in
it that can make images appear larger on a screen), visual aids (pictures that can
help learners understand), realia and the teacher himself/herself. We select and
use aids by thinking carefully about the main aims and the subsidiary aims of a
lesson, and then choosing the most appropriate ones.
Task:
Look at the following list of classroom equipment. What other teaching purposes
can you think of for each item?
blackboard/Whiteboard
overhead projectors OHP
cassette recorders/CD players
video recorders
computer
language laboratory
All these aids can be used for many different purposes. Some examples of these
purposes are;
Other aids are realia, flashcards (cards small enough to hold up one after another
with simple drawings or single words or phrases on them), puppets (models of
people or animals that you can move by putting your hand inside them), charts
(diagrams that show information) and the teacher.
Task:
What different uses can you think of for these aids?
5. Periodically check your blackboard work by walking to the back of the room
after class. Can you reconstruct the points you were making easily from what is
left on the board? Is the writing large and heavy enough to read easily?
6. Do not erase new material until they have been displayed for several minutes.
7. If you naturally have very small handwriting or if your handwriting is difficult to
read, try printing when you write on the board.
8. After you have put new material on the board, underline or put boxes around
important points to emphasise them.
Supplementary materials are books and other materials we can use in addition to
the course-book. They include skills development materials; grammar, vocabulary
and phonology practice materials, collections of communicative activities and
teacher's resource materials. Supplementary materials may also come from
authentic sources (e.g. newspaper and magazine articles, video, etc.). Some
course-book packages include supplementary materials and activities specially
designed to fit the course book syllabus, and there are also many websites where
you can download supplementary materials. We select supplementary materials
and activities first by recognising that we need something more than (or different
from) the material in the course-book, and then by knowing where to find the most
appropriate kinds of material.
Task:
What are the features of authentic communication tasks?
Task:
Make a list of all the reasons you can think of for using supplementary materials
and activities. What are the advantages and the disadvantages of using the
supplementary materials in the box below?
There are various reasons why we might want to use supplementary materials and
activities. Some of the main reasons are as follows:
To replace unsuitable material in the course-book.
To fill gaps in the course-book.
To provide suitable material for learners' particular needs and interests.
To give learners extra language or skills practice.
To add variety to our teaching.
Course-books are organised according to a syllabus and they are often carefully
graded (i.e. grammatical structures, vocabulary, skills, etc., are presented in a
helpful sequence for learning; so that learners' knowledge of the language builds
up step by step through the book.) Supplementary materials and activities that can
provide variety in lessons and useful extra practice, but it is important to make sure
that they fit into the learners' programme, are suitable for the class and match the
aims for particular lessons. Here are some of the possible advantages and
disadvantages of different kinds of supplementary materials:
a class library of graded readers (storybooks that use simple language)
skills practice books
teacher's resource books
websites
videos
language practice books (grammar/vocabulary/phonology)
electronic materials (CD-ROMs, computer programs)
games
Tips for Selection of Supplementary Materials and Activities:
Supplementary Materials Possible Advantages Possible Disadvantages
Class Library of Readers. Encourage extensive reading Language sometimes too simple
Gives learners confidence May not be challenging
Skill-Practice Books Focus on individual skills May not suit lesson aims
Teacher’s Resource Books New ideas for lessons May not suit lesson aims
Get to know what supplementary materials are available in your school. At the
beginning of the course try to find out what you will want to add to the
course-book when you are planning your scheme of work.
Supplementary language practice materials are not always accompanied by
teacher's books, and the aims of activities may not be clear when selecting
material. Therefore, you need to think about exactly how it will replace or
improve the material in your course-book.
It may be useful to use authentic material (which is not designed for a
particular level), in order to give learners the experience of working with more
challenging texts and tasks.
The activities in materials designed to develop individual skills often include the
use of other skills, e.g. learners need to read a text before they carry out a
listening task, or to do some writing as a follow-up activity after a speaking
activity. When selecting materials and activities, think carefully about all the
skills that are required.
Many publishers produce materials for practising separate language skills at
different levels. Teacher's resource books, too, usually list tasks and activities
according to the level. Before deciding to use these materials, however, you
should check how appropriate the level is for your learners. Think about the
language they will need to understand or to produce.
Learners get used to the methodology in their course-book. If you are using
supplementary materials with very different procedures, you may need to give
special attention to instructions.
You can adapt many supplementary materials for use with classes at different
levels. The texts used in these materials may not be graded, but you can grade
the activities by making the learners' tasks more or less challenging.
Games and extra communicative activities can provide variety and make
learning fun. But you need to think about your reasons for using them so that
your lesson still has a clear purpose. Older learners may want to know why they
are doing these activities.
In recent years, language researchers and practitioners have shifted their focus
from developing individual linguistic skills to the use of language to achieve the
speaker's objectives. This new area of focus, known as communicative
competence, leads language teachers to seek task-oriented activities that
engage their students in creative language use. Games, which are task-based and
have a purpose beyond the production of correct speech, serve as excellent
communicative activities.
On the surface, the aim of all language games is for students to "use the language";
however, during game play learners also use the target language to persuade and
negotiate their way to desired results. This process involves the productive and
receptive skills simultaneously.
Games offer students a fun-filled and relaxing learning atmosphere. After learning
and practising new vocabulary, students have the opportunity to use language in
a non-stressful way (Uberman 1998). While playing games, the learners' attention is
on the message, not on the language. Rather than pay attention to the
correctness of linguistic forms, most participants will do all they can to win. This
eases the fear of negative evaluation, the concern of being negatively judged in
public, and which is one of the main factors inhibiting language learners from using
the target language in front of other people (Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope 1986). In a
game-oriented context, anxiety is reduced and speech fluency is generated--thus
communicative competence is achieved.
Are learner-centred.
Promote communicative competence.
Create a meaningful context for language use.
Increase learning motivation.
Reduce learning anxiety.
Integrate various linguistic skills.
V. What is Cooking?
1. Participants read a recipe and make the dish.
2. The amount of ingredients and assembly process must follow exactly the
instructions laid out in the recipe.
3. The participants eat the dish they have prepared, all together and as fast as
possible, because whoever finishes the five tasks first wins the entire competition.
This game not only reinforces food vocabulary, but it also tests the ability of
students to comprehend written instructions. This is also good for introducing cross-
culture topics. Recipes may vary depending on what food terms and cultures the
teachers wishes to cover. Salads and sandwiches are easy-to-prepare recipes. The
eating part adds an additional element of fun to the game.
Sample Verbs:
VII. I Spy with /my Little Eye - Something Beginning with + Letter ABC:
The objects sighted must be in view of all the students in the classroom.
X. Hangman:
This is a popular game. It is very useful at low levels and the words which students
have to guess can be restricted to areas of vocabulary (i.e. themes or semantic
sets) or new words introduced in a particular lesson.
These games are suitable for reinforcement of language skills and easily applied in
the classroom. One feature of these games is that students with lower language
ability in a team can still contribute if they are good at skills other than languages,
such as putting together jigsaw puzzles, calculating numbers, drawing, or eating
fast.
How to Choose Games (Tyson, 2000):
A game must be more than just fun.
A game should involve "friendly" competition.
A game should keep all of the students involved and interested.
A game should encourage students to focus on the use of language rather
than on the language itself.
A game should give students a chance to learn, practise, or review specific
language material.
Useful Tips for Using Games in Classrooms:
Be Involved Yourself:
When playing games, be involved yourself. Keep an eye on things and "cheering"
at the appropriate places. If you put too much distance between yourself and the
game the students will feel that you are bored and uninterested and will therefore
become bored and uninterested themselves. The amount of teacher involvement
should also depend on what you are trying to achieve. If you are practising a new
language item you may want to take a more participative role then if you are
reviewing old material.
Time Limits:
Time limits are very important. They are what makes the game interesting or boring.
If a student is taking forever to answer a question then the other students become
bored and lose focus. There are no hard and fast rules to setting time limits. They
depend on the ability of the student and the difficulty of what you are trying to
teach. There are different ways of setting time limits.
Some teachers like to use an "egg timer" or similar device and other teachers just
'count to three' in their heads. Use what is called countdown: Hold your hand up
with your fingers splayed so the whole class can see it. Then count down from five
closing off your fingers as you do so. You should only have as many fingers showing
as the last number you said. e.g.
5 (showing five fingers)
4 (showing four fingers)
3 (showing three fingers)
2 (showing two fingers)
1 (showing one finger)
The huge advantage in this system is that it gives the teacher a lot of flexibility in the
amount of time actually given. The quicker students can have the challenge of a
quick countdown and the slower students can get a bit of extra time to answer the
question. This may seem a little unfair at first glance, but the students seem to
understand and appreciate the idea. If the game gets really exciting, you do not
have to count, the students will do it for you all you have to do is show the fingers.
Pace the Games:
Start off with a quite game and slowly build the excitement with each new
segment of the class. Always end the class with an exciting game. If the students
enjoy the last ten minutes they will forget about any boring bits that came before it.
There is also 'parent politics' to think of. If they see their children walk out of your
class happy and animated, they are happy. But if they see their children come out
of your class bored and listless they will start to question your abilities as a teacher.
Vary the Games:
You have your favourite games, but occasionally you like to play something new or
different. Your students are the same. You will have your mainstay games, the ever-
changing shortlist of games the students are always asking for. But it is always nice
to have a couple of extra games in your bag of tricks.
Name the Game:
You should always name the game. How can the students ask for a game if it does
not have a name? Make the names short and easy to remember. The game itself is
not the language lesson; it is what you are using to teach the language. For
example, if you want to play 'Snakes and Ladders' just call it “Snakes”.
Scoring:
Make a game of the scoring process itself. The more ways you can find of making
the game depend on the students themselves the better. It makes the game far
more interesting to know that the score depends solely on yourself.
Add a way to get zero in the scoring process. To know that you have won this
particular round and can still fail to score adds lots of suspense to the proceedings.
There are many different ways to score points for games. Here are a few ways that I
have used. This list is by no means exhaustive. The ways of scoring are limited only
by your own imagination.
The simplest way is to give a point for each correct answer the student gives. It is
sometimes useful when you want to quiet things down after a particularly rowdy
session.
Have the student throw a dice to get the score. It is easy to make your own dice. A
sheet of A4 sized light cardboard will give you a dice of 6cm to a side. This is a
good size. It is big enough to be seen easily by the whole class yet not too big to be
held in little hands. You can either use the traditional method of numbering by
using the numbers one to six consecutively, or you can add one or two zeros to
make it more exciting.
Have the student cut a deck of cards and chose a card to get the score. The
number cards give the score and the picture cards are zero. This is a good scoring
system when you want to practise numbers. Have the students add the total up, in
English, to find out the score.
Make up you own set of score cards. These can be as simple as cards with numbers
on them to as complex as you want to make them. You may even want to add
some negative numbers so that it is possible to end up with a negative total.
Games help students to be more engaged in and committed to using English than
they would be in a conventional task. They are attentive to instructions, which they
usually are not in regular class. In games, students find their own ways to express
themselves. Participants will go all out with their English to win the game. Thus,
motivation and desire to know more than just linguistic knowledge will be
inevitable.
Usage of Songs:
Songs have always been part of the human experience. They have become an
integral part of our language experience, and if used in coordination with a
language lesson they can be of great value. Fortunately, with the expanding
prevalence of the Internet and specifically the World Wide Web into both the
classrooms and lives of students, access to music and lyrics has been made easier.
Song-based tasks can be tailored for the two listening approaches the bottom-up
and the top-down. These are two processes involved in listening, and both can be
utilised when songs are used in the classroom. The activity which is selected for a
particular song will determine which of these processes is active. Cullen (1999)
states that the first is bottom-up processing where the listener builds up the sounds
into words, sentences and meaning. The second is top-down processing where the
listener uses background knowledge to understand the meaning of a message.
Practising both of these processes is essential for developing listening
comprehension. The affective, cognitive, and linguistic reasons for using songs
which follow, are all grounded in learning theory, and provide insights into the
benefits of songs in the classroom.
Affective Reasons:
The Affective Filter Hypothesis is one of five proposed hypotheses developed by
Steven Krashen. Basically, it is an explanation of how the affective factors relate to
language learning. It is particularly appealing to teachers because it provides an
explanation to why some learners learn and others do not.
Teachers have long recognised the need for students to have a positive attitude
with regard to learning. Krashen (1982) explains that for optimal learning to occur
the affective filter must be weak. A weak affective filter means that a positive
attitude towards learning is present. If the affective filter is strong the learner will not
seek language input, and in turn, not be open for language acquisition. The
practical application of the Affective Filter Hypothesis is that teachers must provide
a positive atmosphere conducive to language learning. Songs are one method for
achieving a weak affective filter and promoting language learning.
With the affective filter weak, Saricoban and Metin (2000) have found that songs
can develop the four skill areas of reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Eken
(1996, p.46) states that songs can be used:
Linguistic Reasons:
Besides automatisation, there is also a linguistic reason for using songs in the
classroom. Some songs are excellent examples of colloquial English, that is, the
language of informal conversation. A song such as "My Best Was Never Good
Enough" by Bruce Springsteen is a prime example of a song that demonstrates
colloquial language use. This song is full of phrases like "Every cloud has a silver
lining." and "Every dog has his day." Of course, the majority of language most ESL
students will encounter is in fact informal. In this way using songs can prepare
students for the genuine language they will be faced with. Songs could also be
used to present and/or practise various grammar points. Those Were the Days, My
Friend by Mary Hopkins or Because You Love Me by Celine Dion could be perfect
lead-in to the Simple Past.
Finally, two studies, Domoney and Harris (1993) and Little (1983) investigated the
prevalence of pop music in the lives of EFL students. Both studies found that music is
often the major source of English outside of the classroom. The exposure to
authentic English is an important factor in promoting language learning. It relates
directly to both the affective filter and automaticity. If students are exposed to
songs which they enjoy, more learning is likely to occur since they may seek out the
music outside of the classroom. The repetitive style of songs then helps to promote
automatisation of colloquial language.
References:
Playing Games in the EFL Classroom!
<http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/1979/games/articles/
eflgames.html?200717#playinggames#playinggames>
Reasons for Using Songs in the ESL/EFL Classroom, Kevin Schoepp schoepp
sabanciuniv.edu Sabanci University, <http://iteslj.org/Articles/Schoepp-
Songs.html>
<http://members.aol.com/randywoo/bsahis/r-k.htm>
Task:
Define Reading.
Reading is one of the four language skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking.
Being a receptive skill, it involves responding to text or making sense of it rather than
producing to the text. To attain this, we need to understand the language of the
text at word level, sentence level and whole-text level. We also need to connect
the message of the text to our knowledge of the world (schemata).
For example: “The boy was surprised because the girl was much faster at running
than he was.”
To understand this sentence, we need to understand what the letters are, how the
letters join together to make words, what the words mean and the grammar of the
words and the sentence. But we also make sense of this sentence by knowing that,
generally speaking, girls do not run as fast as boys. Our knowledge of the world
helps us understand why the boy was surprised.
Reading Sub Skills:
1. Basic reference and information finding skills [e.g. title, using contents page,
index, footnotes, bibliography, chapter headings and sub-headings, and
chapter summaries].
2. Deducing meaning and use of unfamiliar lexical items through understanding
word formation and contextual clues.
3. Understanding grammatical [syntactic and morphological] relationships at the
sentence level.
4. Understanding relationships between parts of text through cohesive devices
[especially grammatical cohesion such as noun-pronoun reference].
5. Understanding relationships between parts of text through discourse markers
[especially for introduction, development, transition and conclusion of ideas].
6. Understanding communicative functions of sentences with and without
specific markers [e.g. definition and exemplification].
7. Understanding conceptual meaning in text [e.g. comparison, cause & effect,
audience & purpose].
8. Understanding explicitly stated ideas and information in text.
9. Understanding ideas and information in a text which are not explicitly stated.
10.Separating essential and non-essential content in text: distinguishing main idea
from supporting detail [e.g. fact & opinion, statement & example, proposition
& argument].
11. Transferring information or knowledge from one context to another [e.g. from
science to engineering].
Good Scanners:
• Repeat the required word or phrase verbally or non-verbally to themselves
whilst they are searching the text.
• Look for key information or indications, e.g.
- Capital letters to indicate names, etc.
- Look for numbers if they are searching for a date.
- Check sub-headings for clues.
• Recognise keywords in the task and look for where they are repeated.
• Colour match symbols, e.g. map reading where roads are red, rivers are blue.
Strategies:
Pupils only become good scanners if they are given regular or frequent practice.
A good ten-minute exercise for the start or end of a lesson might be to give the
pupils a text of approximately 250 words containing a mixture of statistics, facts
and opinions based on a given theme (it could be the theme of the lesson). Allow
them no more than two minutes reading time for pupils to highlight or underline in
colour:
All the statistics (e.g. dates)
All the keywords related to your chosen theme, e.g. Victorian London
The answer to one specific question, e.g. what is photosynthesis?
Strategies:
Give pupils a simple but respectable page of a tabloid newspaper. The page
should contain a variety of different articles. Ask pupils to find a specific topic
contained on the page. Point out that they can check headlines, sub-headings
and photos in order to help this process.
This could be followed up by giving them an unfamiliar book, and without reading
it, get pupils to find facts by:
Checking the contents page for specific chapters which should contain the
information they are looking for.
Reading the blurb on the inside flap/or the back cover summaries.
Checking if a summary is given at the beginning or end of each chapter.
Most of us have and use skimming skills without realising it. However, it does need to
be pointed out to students.
Understanding Reference:
Understanding reference is relevant to reader's understanding of the text which are
anaphoric reference and cataphoric reference.
Anaphoric Reference:
This term is used to refer back in a stretch of language, as with 'it' in: ‘Although the
aircraft had been damaged, it could still fly.’ Here, the pronoun 'it' substitutes for its
antecedent 'the aircraft'. In the next example, the definite article 'the' in 'the
conference' is anaphoric, referring back to a conference: ‘The EC leaders agreed
to hold a conference on economic and monetary union, and have now fixed a
date for the conference.’
Cataphoric Reference:
It is a forward reference in a text. the pronoun she is cataphoric reference in ‘If she
wants to, Nora can be charming.’ Here, 'she' substitutes for its antecedent 'Nora'.
The sentence exhibits cataphoric ellipsis, since 'she wants to' is understood as 'she
wants to be charming'. Cataphoric reference is less common than the anaphoric
one.
Strategies:
Whenever you find a pronoun in your writing, underline it and then draw an
arrow back to the specific one word that it renames.
If you can not find the word or there seem to be two or more words that it could
refer to, you have a problem with reference.
Remember: the antecedent must be in the preceding clause or phrase (the
one right before the pronoun) if you want to make sure the reference is clear.
A third reading sub-skill is Reading for Detail. If you read a letter from someone you
love who you have not heard from for a long time, you probably read like this,
getting the meaning out of every word.
Another way of reading is Extensive Reading. Extensive reading involves reading
long pieces of text, for example a story or an article. As you read, your attention
and interest vary, you may read some parts of the text in detail while you may skim
through others.
Sometimes, especially in language classrooms, we use texts to examine language.
For example, we might ask learners to look for all the words in a text related to a
particular topic, or work out the grammar of a particular sentence. The aim of
these activities is to make learners more aware of how language is used. These
activities are sometimes called intensive reading. They are not a reading skill, but a
language learning activity.
Task:
In what way is reading aloud relevant to students' reading abilities?
Reading Aloud:
A student's performance when reading aloud is not a reliable indicator of that
student's reading ability. A student who is perfectly capable of understanding a
given text when reading it silently may stumble when asked to combine
comprehension with word recognition and speaking ability in the way that reading
aloud requires.
In addition, reading aloud is a task that students will rarely, if ever, need to do
outside the classroom. As a method of assessment, therefore, it is not authentic; it
does not test a student's ability to use reading to accomplish a purpose or goal.
However, reading aloud can help a teacher assess whether a student is "seeing"
word endings and other grammatical features when reading. To use reading aloud
for this purpose, adopt the "read and look up" approach. Ask the student to read a
sentence silently one or more times, until comfortable with the content, then look
up and tell you what it says. This procedure allows the student to process the text,
and lets you see the results of that processing and know what elements, if any, the
student is missing.
Task:
How is applying the traditional approach in Teaching Reading different from
applying the communicative approach?
Traditional Approach Communicative Approach
Task:
Mention the characteristics of a good reader.
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
Reading research shows that good readers:
1. Read extensively.
2. Integrate information in the text with existing knowledge.
3. Have a flexible reading style, depending on what they are reading.
4. Are motivated.
5. Rely on different skills interacting: perceptual processing, phonemic processing,
recall.
6. Read for a purpose; reading serves a function.
Instructors can help students learn when and how to use reading strategies in
several ways:
By modeling the strategies aloud, talking through the processes of previewing,
predicting, skimming and scanning, and paraphrasing. This shows students how
the strategies work and how much they can know about a text before they
begin to read word by word.
By allowing time in class for group and individual previewing and predicting
activities as preparation for in-class or out-of-class reading. Allocating class time
to these activities indicates their importance and value.
By using cloze (fill in the blank) exercises to review vocabulary items. This helps
students learn to guess meaning from context.
By encouraging students to talk about what strategies they think will help them
approach a reading assignment, and then talking after reading about what
strategies they actually used. This helps students develop flexibility in their
choice of strategies.
When language learners use reading strategies, they find that they can control the
reading experience, and they gain confidence in their ability to read the
language.
Task:
Why is teaching reading generally considered a main goal for educational
programmes?
Reading to Learn:
Reading is an essential part of language instruction at every level because it
supports learning in multiple ways.
Reading to Learn the Language: Reading material is language input. By giving
students a variety of materials to read, instructors provide multiple
opportunities for students to absorb vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure,
and discourse structure as they occur in authentic contexts. Students thus gain
a more complete picture of the ways in which the elements of the language
work together to convey meaning.
Reading for Content Information: Students' purpose for reading in their native
language is often to obtain information about a subject they are studying, and
this purpose can be useful in the language learning classroom as well. Reading
for content information in the language classroom gives students both
authentic reading material and an authentic purpose for reading.
Reading for Cultural Knowledge and Awareness: Reading everyday materials
that are designed for native speakers can give students insight into the
lifestyles and worldviews of the people who use the language they are
studying. When students have access to newspapers, magazines, and Web
sites, they are exposed to culture in all its variety, and monolithic cultural
stereotypes begin to break down.
When Reading to Learn, Students Need to Follow Four Basic Steps:
1. Figure out the purpose for reading. Activate background knowledge of the
topic in order to predict or anticipate content and identify appropriate
reading strategies.
2. Attend to the parts of the text that are relevant to the identified purpose and
ignore the rest. This selectivity enables students to focus on specific items in the
input and reduces the amount of information they have to hold in short-term
memory.
3. Select strategies that are appropriate to the reading task and use them flexibly
and interactively. Students' comprehension improves and their confidence
increases when they use top-down and bottom-up skills simultaneously to
construct meaning.
4. Check comprehension while reading and when the reading task is completed.
Monitoring comprehension helps students detect inconsistencies and
comprehension failures, helping them learn to use alternate strategies.
Developing reading activities involves more than identifying a text that is "at the
right level," writing a set of comprehension questions for students to answer after
reading, handing out the assignment and sending students away to do it. A fully-
developed reading lesson supports students as readers through pre-reading, while-
reading, and post-reading activities.
As you design reading tasks, keep in mind that complete recall of all the
information in a text is an unrealistic expectation even for native speakers. Reading
activities that are meant to increase communicative competence should be
success-oriented and build up students' confidence in their reading ability.
Remember that the level of difficulty of a text is not the same as the level of
difficulty of a reading task. Students who lack the vocabulary to identify all of the
items on a menu can still determine whether the restaurant serves steak and
whether they can afford to order one.
Task:
Why do you think the following elements are important in designing any reading
activity?
Construct the reading activity around a purpose that has significance for the
students.
Define the activity's instructional goal and the appropriate type of response.
Construct the Reading Activity around a Purpose that has Significance for the
Students:
Make sure students understand what the purpose for reading is, to get the main
idea, obtain specific information, understand most or all-of-the message, enjoy a
story, or decide whether or not to read more. Recognising the purpose for reading
will help students select appropriate reading strategies.
Define the Activity's Instructional Goal and the Appropriate Type of Response:
In addition to the main purpose for reading, an activity can also have one or more
instructional purposes, such as practising or reviewing specific grammatical
constructions, introducing new vocabulary, or familiarising students with the typical
structure of a certain type of text.
PLAN - Predict/Locate/Add/Note:
This study-reading strategy consists of four steps that students use before, during,
and after reading. It was first developed for college students, but has been
modified to be used with younger students as well. Middle school students find this
strategy helpful as they transition from learning to read to reading for information.
Here are the steps:
Post-Activities: activities which ask learners to talk about how a topic in the text
relates to their own lives or give their opinions on parts of the text. These activities
also require learners to use some of the language they have met in the text.
Task:
How to make better use of the text book reading activities?
You can use the guidelines for developing reading activities given here as starting
points for evaluating and adapting textbook reading activities:
Use existing, or add your own, pre-reading activities and reading strategy
practice.
Do not make students do exercises simply because they are in the book; this
destroys motivation.
Another problem with textbook reading selections is that they have been adapted
to a predetermined reading level through adjustment of vocabulary, grammar,
and sentence length. This makes them more approachable, but it also means that
they are less authentic and do not encourage students to apply the reading
strategies they will need to use outside the class. When this is the case, use the
textbook reading selection as a starting point to introduce a writer or topic, and
then give students choices of more challenging authentic texts to read as a
follow-up.
Comprehension Questions:
Instructors often use comprehension questions to test whether students have
understood what they have read. In order to test comprehension appropriately,
these questions need to be coordinated with the purpose for reading. If the
purpose is to find specific information, comprehension questions should focus on
that information. If the purpose is to understand an opinion and the arguments that
support it, comprehension questions should ask about those points.
In everyday reading situations, readers have a purpose for reading before they
start. That is, they know what comprehension questions they are going to need to
answer before they begin reading. To make reading assessment in the language
classroom more like reading outside of the classroom, therefore, allow students to
review the comprehension questions before they begin to read the test passage.
Finally, when the purpose for reading is enjoyment, comprehension questions are
beside the point. As a more authentic form of assessment, have students talk or
write about why they found the text enjoyable and interesting (or not).
Authentic Assessment:
In order to provide authentic assessment of students' reading proficiency, a post-
reading activity must reflect the real-life uses to which students might put the
information they have gained through reading.
It must have a purpose other than assessment. It must require students to
demonstrate their level of reading comprehension by completing some tasks.
To develop authentic assessment activities, consider the type of response that
reading a particular selection would elicit in a non-classroom situation. For
example, after reading a weather report, one might decide what to wear the next
day; after reading a set of instructions, one might repeat them to someone else;
after reading a short story, one might discuss the story line with friends.
Use this response type as a base for selecting appropriate post-reading tasks. You
can then develop a checklist or rubric that will allow you to evaluate each
student's comprehension of specific parts of the text.
Reading Activities:
Teachers can use different text types in the classroom and provide a wide range of
activities which use different reading skills. Grading the task to suit learners’ levels is
the most important element teachers should care about while manipulating the
text. As a result the one text could be used at different levels according to the task
difficulty.
Task:
Define listening.
Listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying. This
involves understanding a speaker's accent or pronunciation, his grammar and
vocabulary, and grasping his meaning (Howatt and Dakin). An able listener is
capable of doing these four things simultaneously.
Task:
What are the micro skills of listening?
There are many micro-skills of listening, which are also called enabling skills. They
are:
Predicting the gist; what people are going to talk about.
Gathering specific information; identifying relevant points; rejecting irrelevant
information.
Guessing the unknown words or phrases.
Using one's own knowledge of the subject to help one understand schemata.
Retaining relevant points and/ or details (note-taking, summarising).
Recognising discourse markers, e. g., well, Oh, another thing is; now, finally; etc.
Recognising cohesive devices, e. g., such as and which, including linking
words, pronouns, references, etc.
Understanding different intonation patterns and uses of stress, etc. , which give
clues to meaning and social setting.
Understanding inferred information, e. g., recognising the speaker’s attitude or
intentions.
Listening is one of the fundamental language skills. It is a medium through which
children, young people and adults gain a large portion of their education their
information, their understanding of the world and of human affairs, their ideals,
sense of values, and their appreciation. Thus, it is of vital importance that our
learners be taught to listen effectively and critically.
Task:
What problems do learners face in class with listening activities? Suggest possible
solutions to overcome the problems..
Problems Solutions
In order to teach listening skills, a teacher should firstly state the difficulties. For a
student of a foreign language, accurate and intelligent listening is a necessity, and
the teacher is responsible for helping his / her learners to acquire this skill which
provides the very foundation for learning and functioning in a language. That the
teacher can observe and isolate the errors in speaking but could not in listening is a
difficulty. In listening, the learner can exercise no controls over the structural and
lexical range of the speaker to whom he is listening. Nevertheless, any listener can
learn to focus on significant content items, to explain in another way he can learn
to listen selectively.
Helping the learners to distinguish sounds, teaching to isolate significant content
and informational items for concentration may be provided by controlled listening
exercises. One exercise is to give him certain performance objectives to give him
general informational questions that he should be able to answer after he listens to
the material for the first time. These questions should require only the isolation of
facts clearly revealed in the material. Questions that require application or
inference from the information contained in the listening exercise are best used at
later stages or more advanced students.
More controls are necessary at lower levels. Sheets containing sequentially
organised and significant questions on context and content, questions that call for
one-word answers serve as useful guides for the student. Such questions help him
filter out and listen for significant information. The questions themselves suggest the
content and provide the student with an organisational frame for selective
listening.
For listening comprehension exercises, we tend to read passages, record news or
broadcasts, or prepare lectures. All of them have value, but they are extremely
difficult sources for early practice in selective listening. This type of listening
exercises does not present the redundancies, the colloquialisms, the hesitations, the
gestures and the facial expressions that are an inseparable part of the spoken
language. They emphasise informational content and fail to provide the signals
used to communicate information and meaning.
Listening to and understanding speech involves a number of basic processes, some
depending upon linguistic competence, some depending upon previous
knowledge that is not necessarily of a purely linguistic nature, and some depending
upon psychological variables that affect the mobilization of these competence
and knowledge in the particular task situation.
The listener must have a continuous set to listen and understand, and as he hears
the utterance, he may be helped by some kind of set to process and remember
the information transmitted. His linguistic competence enables him, presumably, to
recognise the formatives of the heard utterance, i. e. , to dissect out of the wave
form of the morphemes, words, and other meaning-bearing elements of the
utterance.
Task:
Why should teachers integrate language skills?
Listening is a receptive skill, and receptive skills give way to productive skills. If we
have our students produce something, the teaching will be more communicative.
This brings us to the must of integrating language skills. There are two reasons for
using integrating activities in language classrooms:
1. To practise and extend the learners' use of a certain language structure or
function.
2. To develop the learners' ability in the use of two or more of the skills within real
contexts and communicative frame work.
Integrated activities, on the other hand, provide a variety in the classroom and thus
maintain motivation and allow the recycling and revision of language which has
already been taught separately in each skill.
Task:
How can the teacher be certain that listening experiences will become more
productive?
Level 4. This is the stage of analytical and critical listening. The listener not only
seeks a serious answer to a serious question but evaluates the quality of
the answer. Round-table discussions, serious listening to talks, spirited
conversation and symphonic music are at the fourth level. At this stage,
listening to music is in the foreground of attention not in the background
as on previous levels (Wittich and Schuller, 1962).
It is listening on the fourth level that primarily concerns us in our teaching. Such
listening may add an emotional and dramatic quality. Radio and recordings
highlight the importance of listening. Listening is as active as speaking, and in some
ways even more difficult. It requires attention, thought, interpretation, and
imagination.
Task:
How to improve our learners' listening skills?
To improve our learners' listening skills we should let them (Austin Shrope, 1970):
1. Adopt a positive attitude.
2. Be responsive.
3. Shut out distractions.
4. Listen for the speaker's purpose.
5. Look for the signals of what is to come.
6. Look for summaries of what has gone before.
7. Evaluate the supporting materials.
8. Look for non-verbal clues.
We can call listening a decoding-making sense of the message process. Each short
stretch of meaningful material which is read or heard has to be;
Recognised as meaningful and understood on perception.
Held in the short-term memory long enough to be decoded.
Related to what has gone before and /or what follows.
Out of this process come pieces of information which can be stored in the long
term memory for recall later. We can show the whole process in the form of a
model perception of sounds, letter shapes, etc.
1. Initial recognition of meaning of short stretches.
2. Material held in short-term memory.
3. Related to material already held in short-term memory.
4. Related to material arriving in short-term memory.
5. Meaning extracted from message and retained in long-term memory
6. Gist recalled later.
Task:
Why should teachers give a purpose to listening activities?
This brings us to the thought that, while planning exercises, listening materials, task
and visual materials should be taken into consideration. The teacher should
produce a suitable discourse while using recordings. A preset purpose, ongoing
learner response, motivation, success, simplicity, and feedback should be the things
considered while preparing the task. Visual materials are useful for
contextualisation. We can also categorise the goals of listening as listening for
enjoyment, for information, for persuasion, for perception for comprehension and
lastly for solving problems.
1. Pre-Listening Activities:
The teacher hangs the pictures on the board and tries to make the students talk
about the subjects.
T: Do you think that they are beautiful?
S: . . .
T: Can you guess the name of the first competitor?
S: . . .
T: Can you guess the height of the second competitor?
S: . . .
T: What nationality does the third girl belong to? What is your opinion?
S: . . .
2. During-Listening Activities:
The teacher asks the students to listen to the tape very carefully. And he gives
information lists to the students. While they are listening to the tape they try to fill the
blanks with appropriate information. If no information appears for any blank on the
list, students are asked to put a cross on the blank provided for the required
information.
4. Assignment:
At home listen to the information about the people whose names are in the chart
below and complete the missing information.
Transcript:
“I'm Elizabeth Mccornick. I'm participating from Canada. I'm 21 years old and I
weigh 53 kilos. I am a girl of 90-60-90. I am a bilingual person; that means I can
speak two languages fluently and accurately: English and French. I prefer going
to movies than enjoying theatrical acts. My favourite film star is Leonardo Di
Caprio. My friends say that I am a good cook as well. I admit I like cooking
traditional dishes in my spare time. I wish my best wishes to the other
contestants. Thanks.”
“Good evening! I would like to greet all the people watching and participating
in this contest. My name is Alexandra Bellomonti and I'm from Italy. I am 20 years
old and 51 kilos I weigh. I like going out with my friends at the weekends. I can
also say that I'm studying really hard and I am expecting to be accepted to the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I really have a great desire for being a
genetic engineer in the future. Thank you!”
“Hello everybody! I am Suzanne Kerrigan from the USA. I was born in 1976, in LA,
California. I confess I weigh 56 kilos but I'm 1. 73 cm tall and that subdues my
weight I think. I like skating on ice and I'm an amateur figure skater. I also like
foreign and strange meals if they prove to be delicious, of course. Finally, I hope
the political situation of my country will not effect this kind of a contest.”
References:
1. Abbott, G. & P. Wingard. (1985). The Teaching of English as an International
Language: A Practical Guide. Great Britain.
2. Austin S. (1970). Speaking & Listening: A Contemporary Approach. Harcourt,
Brace & World, Inc. USA
3. Carroll E. R. (1969). The Learning of Language. National Council of Teachers of
English Publication. New York.
4. Celce ÅMurcia, M. & L. mcIntosh. (1979). Teaching English as a Second or
Foreign Language. Newbury House Publishers, Inc. Massachusetts.
5. Fox J. W. (1974). Teaching Listening Skills. English Teaching Forum. October -
December, 12, pp. 42-45
6. Joiner, E. (1977). Communicative Activities for Beginning Language Students.
English Teaching Forum, April, 15, pp. 8-9.
7. Yagang, F. (1993). Listening: Problems and Solutions, English Teaching Forum,
January 31, pp. 16-19.
8. Arif Saricoban, Hacettepe University (Beytepe-Ankara, Turkey), arifs [at] hun.
edu. tr
Task:
Define Speaking.
Speaking is "the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal
and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts" (Chaney, 1998, p. 13).
Task:
What is meant by “Teaching Speaking"? Mention at least four points.
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
What is "Teaching Speaking"?
"Teaching speaking" is to teach ESL learners to:
Produce the English speech sounds and sound patterns.
Use words and sentence stress, intonation patterns and the rhythm of the
second language.
Select appropriate words and sentences according to the proper social
setting, audience, situation and subject matter.
Organise their thoughts in a meaningful and logical sequence.
Use language as a means of expressing values and judgments.
Use the language quickly and confidently with few unnatural pauses, which
is called fluency. (Nunan, 2003)
Task:
Mention the following:
Role and characteristics of the teacher during the activity.
Elements of a successful speaking activity.
The characteristics and roles of the teacher in the speaking skill are:
Motivator
Friendly (establisher of a good rapport)
Humorous
Active
Communicator
Facilitator
Prompter
Types of Activities:
Fluency-based
Accuracy-based
Communicative-based
According to William Littlewood, there is a continuum of classroom activities to
promote communicative competence:
Fluency-based Activities:
They focus on information and conveying the message, whether it is a simple
weather report or an extended lecture on an academic topic.
2. Recognisng Scripts:
Some communication situations are associated with a predictable set of spoken
exchanges, a script. Greetings, apologies, compliments, invitations, and other
functions that are influenced by social and cultural norms often follow patterns or
scripts. So do the transactional exchanges involved in activities such as obtaining
information and making a purchase. In these scripts, the relationship between a
speaker's turn and the one that follows it can often be anticipated.
Instructors can help students develop speaking ability by making them aware of the
scripts for different situations so that they can predict what they will hear and what
they will need to say in response. Through interactive activities, instructors can give
students practice in managing and varying the language that different scripts
contain.
Sample Scripts
Scripted Transactional Exchange:
A: May I help you?
B: I'd like to buy two movie tickets, please.
A: Which film? "Attack of the Nightmare Monsters" or "World's Stupidest Love
Story"?
B: Nightmare Monsters.
A: That will be $20.
B: Here you go. Thanks.
Gambits:
In the early stages of conversational development, students can be taught to take
part by responding to what somebody else has said, by producing an appropriate
response or "gambit".
Here's a list of what we might teach:
1. Language to Indicate the Speaker's Agreement with What Has Been Said:
- Yes, it is.
- Yes, that's right.
- Of course, it is.
- Quite, absolutely true.
- Yes, I do / Yes, he was / Yes, they were….
Task:
Write a list of activities that could be used to promote fluency.
Jigsaw Activities:
Jigsaw activities are more elaborate information gap activities that can be done
with several partners. In a jigsaw activity, each partner has one or a few pieces of
the "puzzle," and the partners must cooperate to fit all the pieces into a whole
picture. The puzzle piece may take one of several forms. It may be one panel from,
a comic strip or one photo from a set that tells a story. It may be one sentence from
a written narrative. It may be a tape recording of a conversation, in which case no
two partners hear exactly the same conversation.
In one fairly simple jigsaw activity, students work in groups of four. Each student in
the group receives one panel from a comic strip. Partners may not show each
other their panels. Together the four panels present this narrative: a man takes a
container of ice cream from the freezer; he serves himself several scoops of ice
cream; he sits in front of the TV eating his ice cream; he returns with the empty bowl
to the kitchen and finds that he left the container of ice cream, now melting, on
the kitchen counter. These pictures have a clear narrative line and the partners are
not likely to disagree about the appropriate sequencing. You can make the task
more demanding, however, by using pictures that lend themselves to alternative
sequences, so that partners have to negotiate among themselves to agree on a
satisfactory sequence.
More elaborate jigsaws may proceed in two stages. Students first work in input
groups (groups A, B, C, and D) to receive information. Each group receives a
different part of the total information for the task. Students then reorganise into
groups of four with one student each from A, B, C, and D, and use the information
they received to complete the task. Such an organisation could be used, for
example, when the input is given in the form of a tape recording. Groups A, B, C,
and D each hear a different recording of a short news bulletin. The four recordings
all contain the same general information, but each has one or more details that
the others do not. In the second stage, students reconstruct the complete story by
comparing the four versions.
Find the Difference:
For this activity students can work in pairs and each couple is given two different
pictures, for example, picture of boys playing football and another picture of girls
playing tennis. Students in pairs discuss the similarities and/or differences in the
pictures.
B. Communicative Output Activities:
Interviews:
Students can conduct interviews on selected topics with various people. It is a
good idea that the teacher provides a rubric to students so that they know what
type of questions they can ask or what path to follow, but students should prepare
their own interview questions. Conducting interviews with people gives students a
chance to practise their speaking ability not only in class but also outside and helps
them becoming socialised. After interviews, each student can present his or her
study to the class. Moreover, students can interview each other and "introduce" his
or her partner to the class.
Reporting:
Before coming to class, students are asked to read a newspaper or magazine and,
in class, they report to their friends what they find as the most interesting news.
Students can also talk about whether they have experienced anything worth telling
their friends in their daily lives before class.
Discussions:
After a content-based lesson, a discussion can be held for various reasons. The
students may aim to arrive at a conclusion, share ideas about an event, or find
solutions in their discussion groups. Before the discussion, it is essential that the
purpose of the discussion activity is set by the teacher. In this way, the discussion
points are relevant to this purpose, so that students do not spend their time chatting
with each other about irrelevant things. For example, students can become
involved in agree/disagree discussions. In this type of discussions, the teacher can
form groups of students, preferably four or five in each group, and provide
controversial sentences like “people learn best when they read vs. people learn
best when they travel”. Then each group works on their topic for a given time
period, and presents their opinions to the class. It is essential that the speaking
should be equally divided among group members. At the end, the class decides
on the winning group who defended the idea in the best way. This activity fosters
critical thinking and quick decision making, and students learn how to express and
justify themselves in polite ways while disagreeing with the others. For efficient
group discussions, it is always better not to form large groups, because quiet
students may avoid contributing in large groups. The group members can be either
assigned by the teacher or the students may determine it by themselves, but
groups should be rearranged in every discussion activity so that students can work
with various people and learn to be open to different ideas. Lastly, in class or group
discussions, whatever the aim is, the students should always be encouraged to ask
questions, paraphrase ideas, express support, check for clarification, and so on.
Discussions, interviews and reporting succeed when the instructor prepares students
first, and then gets out of the way. To succeed with discussions:
Prepare the Students: Give them input (both topical information and language
forms) so that they will have something to say and the language with which to
say it.
Offer Choices: Let students suggest the topic for discussion or choose from
several options. Discussion does not always have to be about serious issues.
Students are likely to be more motivated to participate if the topic is television
programmes, plans for a vacation, or news about mutual friends. Weighty
topics like how to combat pollution are not as engaging and place heavy
demands on students' linguistic competence.
Set a Goal or Outcome: This can be a group product, such as a letter to the
editor, or individual reports on the views of others in the group.
Use Small Groups Instead of Whole-Class Discussion: Large groups can make
participation difficult.
Keep it Short: Give students a defined period of time, not more than 8-10
minutes, for discussion. Allow them to stop sooner if they run out of things to say.
Allow Students to Participate in Their Own Way: Not every student will feel
comfortable talking about every topic. Do not expect all of them to contribute
equally to the conversation.
Do Topical Follow-Up: Have students report to the class on the results of their
discussion.
Do Linguistic Follow-Up: After the discussion is over, give feedback on grammar
or pronunciation problems you have heard. This can wait until another class
period when you plan to review pronunciation or grammar anyway.
Storytelling:
Students can briefly summarise a tale or story they heard from somebody
beforehand, or they may create their own stories to tell their classmates. Story
telling fosters creative thinking. It also helps students express ideas in the format of
beginning, development, and ending, including the characters and setting a story
has to have. Students also can tell riddles or jokes. For instance, at the very
beginning of each class session, the teacher may call few students to tell short
riddles or jokes as an opening. In this way, not only will the teacher address
students’ speaking ability, but also get the attention of the class.
Story Completion:
This is a very enjoyable, whole-class, free-speaking activity for which students sits in
a circle. For this activity, a teacher starts to tell a story, but after a few sentences he
or she stops narrating. Then, each student starts to narrate from the point where the
previous one stopped. Each student is supposed to add from four to ten sentences.
Students can add new characters, events, descriptions and so on.
Picture Narrating:
This activity is based on several sequential pictures. Students are asked to tell the
story taking place in the sequential pictures by paying attention to the criteria
provided by the teacher as a rubric. Rubrics can include the vocabulary or
structures they need to use while narrating.
Picture Describing:
Another way to make use of pictures in a speaking activity is to give students just
one picture and having them describe what it is in the picture. For this activity
students can form groups and each group is given a different picture. Students
discuss the picture with their groups, then a spokesperson for each group describes
the picture to the whole class. This activity fosters the creativity and imagination of
the learners as well as their public speaking skills.
Simulations:
Simulations are very similar to role-plays but what makes simulations different than
role plays is that they are more elaborate. In simulations, students can bring items to
the class to create a realistic environment. For instance, if a student is acting as a
singer, she brings a microphone to sing and so on.
Role-plays and simulations have many advantages. First, since they are
entertaining, they motivate the students. Second, as Harmer (1984) suggests, they
increase the self-confidence of hesitant students, because in role-play and
simulation activities, they will have a different role and do not have to speak for
themselves, which means they do not have to take the same responsibility.
Role-Play:
One other way of getting students to speak is role-playing. Students pretend they
are in various social contexts and have a variety of social roles. In role-play
activities, the teacher gives information to the learners such as who they are and
what they think or feel. Thus, the teacher can tell the student that "You are David,
you go to the doctor and tell him what happened last night, and…" (Harmer, 1984)
Students usually find role playing and simulation enjoyable, but students who lack
self-confidence or have lower proficiency levels may find them intimidating at first.
To succeed with role-plays:
Prepare Carefully: introduce the activity by describing the situation and
making sure that all of the students understand it.
Set a Goal or Outcome: be sure that students understand what the product of
the role-play should be, whether a plan, a schedule, a group opinion, or
some other product.
Use Role Cards: give each student a card that describes the person or role to
be played. For lower-level students, the cards can include words or
expressions that that person might use.
Brainstorm: before you start the role-play, have students brainstorm as a class
to predict what vocabulary, grammar, and idiomatic expressions they might
use.
Keep Groups Small: less-confident students will feel more able to participate if
they do not have to compete with many voices.
Give Students Time to Prepare: let them work individually to outline their ideas
and the language they will need to express them.
Be Present As a Resource, Not a Monitor: stay in communicative mode to
answer students' questions. Do not correct their pronunciation or grammar
unless they specifically ask you about it.
Allow Students to Work at Their Own Levels: each student has individual
language skills, an individual approach to working in groups, and a specific
role to play in the activity. Do not expect all students to contribute equally to
the discussion, or to use every grammar point you have taught.
Brainstorming:
On a given topic, students can produce ideas in a limited time. Depending on the
context, either individual or group brainstorming is effective and learners generate
ideas quickly and freely. The good characteristics of brainstorming are that the
students are not criticised for their ideas so students will be open to sharing new
ideas.
Dialogue Building:
The use of cues or prompts to build up dialogues is a commonly-used technique.
Cues or prompts determine the content of what is said, and dialogue building
activities can range from being highly controlled to very free. Dialogue building is
not a substitute for fluency work, but used sparingly to allow the possibility of giving
weaker students a chance to say something.
Playing Cards:
In this game, students should form groups of four. Each suit will represent a topic. For
instance:
Diamonds: Earning money
Hearts: Love and relationships
Spades: An unforgettable memory
Clubs: Best teacher
Each student in a group will choose a card. Then, each student will write 4-5
questions about that topic to ask the other people in the group. For example:
If the topic "Diamonds: Earning Money" is selected, here are some possible
questions:
Is money important in your life? Why?
What is the easiest way of earning money?
What do you think about lottery? Etc.
However, the teacher should state at the very beginning of the activity that
students are not allowed to prepare yes-no questions, because by saying yes or no
students get little practice in spoken language production. Rather, students ask
open-ended questions to each other so that they reply in complete sentences.
Through well-prepared communicative output activities, such as role plays and
discussions, you can encourage students to experiment and innovate with the
language, and create a supportive atmosphere that allows them to make mistakes
without fear of embarrassment. This will contribute to their self-confidence as
speakers and to their motivation to learn more.
Feedback:
Evaluation of the success or failure of conversational performance is not an easy
job. In conversation, a variety of factors, including the speaker's accent, control of
grammar and vocabulary, as well as overall fluency, all contribute to any
impression of the performance. The objective of feedback is to give students the
information they need to improve on their performance. Areas for feedback in
activities aiming at the development of communicative skills include:
- Grammar
- Appropriacy of vocabulary and expressions
- Fluency
- Pronunciation
- Non-linguistic factors affecting communication
Feedback needs to be staged and selective if it is to avoid demoralising the
students. To achieve this, teachers need to decide on the areas of communicative
performance most relevant to their students. Once the decision is made, it is a
question of focusing on the chosen areas in turn until students reach the required
performance level. To assist this process, teachers need to be continually aware of
students' performance and progress. One way of doing this might be keeping a
record card for each student similar to the one below:
Another way might be to use a tape recorder during speaking activities. In this way,
it gets easier for the teacher to identify areas of weakness which can form the basis
of subsequent lessons focusing on accuracy, the presentation of new language,
etc. Other advantages of using tape recordings of students at work include:
The opportunity for students to hear again their own performance
The opportunity to look objectively at how students develop over a period of time
Appendix A:
Suggestions for Teachers in Teaching Speaking:
Here are some suggestions for English language teachers while teaching oral
language:
Provide maximum opportunity to students to speak the target language by
providing a rich environment that contains collaborative work, authentic
materials and tasks, and shared knowledge.
Try to involve each student in every speaking activity; for this aim, practise
different ways of student participation.
Reduce teacher speaking time in class while increasing student speaking time.
Step back and observe students.
Indicate positive signs when commenting on a student's response.
Ask eliciting questions such as "What do you mean? How did you reach that
conclusion?" in order to prompt students to speak more.
Provide written feedback like "Your presentation was really great. It was a good
job. I really appreciated your efforts in preparing the materials and efficient use
of your voice…"
Do not correct students' pronunciation mistakes very often while they are
speaking. Correction should not distract student from his or her speech.
Involve speaking activities not only in class but also out of class; contact
parents and other people who can help.
Circulate around classroom to ensure that students are on the right track and
see whether they need your help while they work in groups or pairs.
Provide the vocabulary beforehand that students need in speaking activities.
Diagnose problems faced by students who have difficulty in expressing
themselves in the target language and provide more opportunities to practise
the spoken language.
To achieve this you need to ask yourself the following questions;
Empathise with Your Students: if you were one of them, how would you feel? Why
would you rather sit quietly in the back row hoping your teacher takes no notice
of you than engage in a passionate attack against ethnic cleansing?
Pause and Consider: when you were a student, did you take part in any lesson
which dealt with discussing a specific issue? Did you talk a lot? Who talked the
most?
As a teacher, have you ever favoured discussion in class (obviously using L2)?
Were your lessons successful or were you not satisfied with them? In either case,
which were the issues you discussed?
Some Simple Techniques Which Can Be Used to Prepare Students for a Particular
Topic are the Following:
- The use of audio/visual aids to arouse interest.
- A general orientation to the topic; a short text, questionnaire, a video extract.
(This pre-speaking task must never be too long but it is recommended)
- Exercises focusing on key words needed for a task.
Appendix B:
Following are sample lesson plans that build up personal security through the use of
getting-to-know-you activities which promote trust as well as articulation activities
which give the opportunity to use English sounds in a safe environment.
Following are samples of getting-to-know-you activities. They are meant to build a
positive atmosphere of trust within a group.
Chain Names
5 – 10 minutes
Time
Preparation None
Procedure 1. Ask the students to sit in a semi-circle and nominate one student to
introduce himself / herself.
2. The person next to him/her must then repeat his/her name, and then
introduce himself/herself.
3. Ask your students to repeat this procedure around the semi-circle,
each one repeating the name of the person before them and
then saying their own name. for example:
a. I'm Roberto.
b. Roberto, I'm Paola.
c. Roberto, Paola. I'm Francesco.
d. Roberto, Paola, Francesco. I'm Giulia.
More advanced students might tackle the following:
a. I'm Francesco. I'm from Mestre.
b. He's Francesco. Hje's from Mestre. I'm Bianca, and I'm from
Marcon.
c. He's Francesco. He's from Mestre. She's Bianca. She's from
Marcon. I'm Piero, and I'm from Mirano.
1. Twelve represents a maximum number for this activity. (Split the class
Remarks
into semi-circles if the students are more.)
2. You should always take a turn to show you are learning too.
The names for the different kinds of activities within communicative competence
and the examples are taken from Rob Nolasco, Lois Arthur, Conversation, Oxford
University Press, 1987, which has offered plenty of ideas for the writing of this
module.
Guess who
Time 15 – 20 minutes
Preparation Have available enough small pieces of paper for the whole class.
Articulation Activities:
When students come to speak in a foreign language they often find themselves
inhibited by the prospects of having to make what to them are strange and even
comic sounds. One way to tackle this problem is to give students the opportunity to
experiment with sounds.
Time 15 – 20 minutes
Ask the students to listen to the tape and to repeat any of the utter-
Procedure ances they have heard, until they are ready to be recorded. The activ-
ity is self-directed, but you should be available for consultation. The fin-
ished product can be a subject of feedback and evaluation.
Remarks The activity is self-regulatory. This is important because students are not
to be threatened by having to repeat something they feel uncertain
about. This activity also fosters the notion of rehearsing what we are
about to say, something many people do in their own language, any-
way.
Encouraging Noises
Time 15 – 20 minutes
Preparation Select an audio or video tape that contains examples of this type of ex-
pressions. Hand out the task sheet below to the students.
Task Sheet Listen to the extract of people talking. Make a tick (√ ) next to each of the
expressions in the list whenever you hear one of the speakers using it:
- Ready? - Uh huh.
- Does he? - Is it?
- Is that right? - Yes.
- That’s nice. - I see.
- How interesting. - Mmmm.
Procedure 1. Introduce the task so that the students get some idea of what they are
looking for.
2. Give out a copy of the task sheet to each student.
3. Play the tape two or three times before focusing on the specific expres-
sions in context.
Cross-cultural awareness
If we accept the fact that language is embedded in culture, then some elements
of cross-cultural training are inevitable and the inclusion of some cross-cultural work
in the teaching of communicative skills would seem to offer the following
advantages:
- Cross-cultural issue can generate discussion in their own right.
- Knowledge of why people in the English culture behave in certain ways should
make native speakers easier to interpret.
- Sensitivity to the ways social norms operate in other languages should make the
learning of certain areas of language (such as politeness formulae) easier.
- If students become aware of issues such as social taboos, they are less likely to
cause offence by breaking them. Besides, they would begin to fall into the
category of foreigner that native speakers find easy to talk to.
Culture Shock!
Time 25 – 30 minutes
Aim For students: discussing the problems people encounter when they have
to live in a new country for a period of time.
Procedure 1. Introduce the topic and give out a task sheet to each student.
2. Divide the students into small groups after they have had the chance
to complete the task individually.
3. Chair a feedback session to see what generalisations emerge.
Remain as neutral as possible throughout.
4. If students have not had experience of living in a foreign country, you
can ask them to imagine how strangers might feel.
Task Sheet Here are some difficulties people encounter when living in a new coun-
try. Please indicate with a tick (√ ) how important each one has been or
would be for you.
The activity that follows is a very simple one aimed at introducing students to
fluency activities.
Time 25 – 30 minutes
Preparation Prepare a task sheet along the following lines, and make photocopies.
Now go around the class and find out if anyone likes or dislikes the same
subjects as you. Find out the reasons people gave for liking or disliking a
subject and make a list under the headings below:
Procedure 1. Warm your students up for the task by getting them to list the subjects
they did in school. This will check that they know the name of the sub-
jects in English.
2. Give each student a task sheet and explain that they have a maximum
of 15 minutes to go round the class. When they have finished, run a
feedback session for the whole class and ask questions such as:
- Who likes / dislikes the same subjects?
- What are the most common reasons for liking / disliking particular sub-
jects?
3. Get the students to expand and comment on the reasons given.
Ranking Activities:
In ranking activities students are required to put the items from a given list into an
order of importance or preference. This rearranging phase is usually followed by a
period of discussion when students explain or defend their choice. One of the best
known of these activities is "Castaway" in which students have to choose the most
essential items to survive on a desert island for three months.
A standard procedure for ranking activities is as follows:
Familiarise the students with the task through oral presentation.
Arouse their interest and go through key words.
The students work individually and write down their solutions. Set a time limit.
Eureka!
Time 30 – 35 minutes
Preparation
Put the following list of inventions in random order on a handout or
OHT. Do not include the dates.
- Gunpowder 1000
- Atomic bomb 1945
- Wheel 3000 BC
- Screw 200 BC
- Paper 105
- Printing 1440
- Microscope 1608
- Telephone 1876
- Motor car 1885
- Aero plane 1903
Task:
What is writing?
Writing is one of the four language skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking.
Writing and speaking are productive skills. That means they involve producing
language rather than receiving it. Very simply, we can say that writing involves
communicating a message (something to say) by making signs on a page. To write
we need a message and someone to communicate it to. We also need to be able
to form letters and words, and to join these together to make words, sentences or a
series of sentences that link together to communicate that message.
Task:
What do we write in our real life?
The table below is from a writing syllabus for primary-school children. The column on
the left focuses on accuracy, and the column on the right focuses on
communication.
- Showing an understanding that - Completing simple poems and rhymes
letters can be combined to form with some language support and
words, and producing letter shapes, based on models.
including capital letters, correctly. - Expressing your own experience by
- Employing a range of connectives to supplying labels for your own drawings.
express sequence (e.g. next, then). - Making simple greetings cards and
invitations based on models.
- Responding to greetings and invitations
in short notes based on models.
(adapted from Syllabuses for primary Schools, English Language, Primary1-6 the Education Department Hong-Kong
1997)
Task:
What are the different stages that writers pass through?
Obviously, not all students of the same age or grade level write in the same way;
students pass through several developmental writing stages:
Stage 1:
Novice Writer (unskilled, unaware, teacher-dependent writer)
- Has little, if any, individual style.
- Has little awareness of writing process.
- Has undeveloped skills and techniques.
- Seeks approval from teacher.
- Is reluctant to revise any writing.
- Believes good writing comes easily.
Stage 2:
Transitional Writer (transitional, self-involved, self-delineating writer)
- Needs support and coaching in order to develop.
- Learns from modeled behaviours.
- Is developing a degree of comfort with the craft.
- Is anxious to stand alone, yet is uncomfortable with peer collaboration.
- Is developing an awareness of personal needs, interests, and preoccupations.
Stage 3:
Willing Writer (peer-involved, willing writer)
- Is able to collaborate well with others.
- Requires external feedback to shape progress.
- Is able to profit from criticism.
- Is developing objectivity concerning work.
- Enjoys practising craft.
- is developing a sensitivity to audience.
Stage 4:
Independent Writer (independent, autonomous writer)
- Makes highly objective self-assessments.
- Has developed a sophisticated personal style.
- Has developed a writer's voice.
- Takes risks and experiments.
- Is self-motivating and self-aware as a writer.
- Is a craftsperson.
The most popular approach in writing involves going through a number of stages.
When we write outside the classroom we often go through these stages:
Brainstorming (thinking of everything we can know about the topic)
Making notes
Planning (organising our ideas)
Writing a draft (a piece of writing that is not yet finished. and may be changed)
Editing (correcting and improving the text)
Producing another draft.
Proof-reading (checking for mistakes in accuracy) or editing again.
These are the stages of the Witting Process. However the writing process is not the
only writing approach.
Task:
Can you think of other writing approaches?
Model Activities:
Word Grammar/
Content Process Audience Organisation Mechanics
choice Syntax
Controlled-to
. . . . . . .
Free
Free-Writing . . . . . . .
Paragraph-
. . . . . . .
Pattern
Grammar-
Syntax- . . . . . . .
Organisation
Communicative . . . . . . .
3. Looking at Art:
Study paintings, photographs, drawings, or sculpture in magazines or art books. It
may even be useful to take a trip to a local museum or art gallery. Jot down notes
and questions about the artwork, the artist and the subject, and any topic ideas
that come to mind during the observation. It may help to talk over your information
and ideas with a partner or small group. Explain to a partner the stories in the art
works.
4. Listening to Music:
Listen to music you like best or a variety of new and unfamiliar music. Listen to tape
recordings or to the radio, closing your eyes and letting the music paint pictures in
your mind. Record these images as you listen, or turn off the music and quickly
record your ideas. It may be helpful to tell the story you have imagined to a partner
or group.
5. Role-Playing:
Pretend to be any character, ask peers to act as other characters, and dramatize
an event or incident, and what happened as a result of that incident or event.
6. Observing with All Senses:
Be aware of all that is happening around you, in the classroom, at home, in
restaurants, in malls, and wherever you go. Listen closely to conversations of the
people you observe, and try to capture the details of their manners and dress.
Observe for issues, problems, or achievements in your community. Jot down ideas
and notes as you observe them or as soon as possible after your observations.
7. Listing Ideas and Information:
List such things as the activities that interest you, the sports you play, the clubs that
you belong to, and the community and world issues that you know about from the
media.
8. Reading:
Read such things as non-fiction books, novels, magazines, stories, newspapers, and
poems. Jot down ideas that occur to you as you read and list questions you might
investigate further. Keep track of interesting vocabulary, story plots, and
characters.
9. Newspaper Searches:
Read the stories and captions that catch your interest. Jot down ideas for writing a
newspaper article or ideas that can be developed into other kinds of writing.
10. Author Visits:
As the authors share their writing and discuss the craft of writing, students gain
further understanding of the writing process and possibly get ideas for their own
writing.
- What other characteristics are revealed by the character's dress and stance?
- What might have happened before the picture was taken? What might
happen next?
- How are the other characters in the picture related to the main character?
- What evidence makes you think so?
- What is the attitude of the main character to the other characters?
- What is the attitude of the other characters to the main character?
- What are some possible reasons for these attitudes?
- What might it be like to be the main character or one of the other characters?
Instruct students to record ideas briefly, using phrases and words rather than
sentences. Students then may take the opportunity to develop their ideas further,
or save their notes and ideas for use at a later date.
Sample Pre-writing Activity 3:
Time allotment (5-8 minutes)
Prepare the students for free writing by explaining that they should write whatever
thoughts enter their head from the moment that the teacher says "go" to the
moment he/she says "stop", even if it means writing and rewriting, “I don’t know
what to write. I don’t know what to write”. When the pen or pencil hits the paper it
does not stop for pauses, erasures, or corrections. Eventually, most students begin
to focus and the writing flows. Students then have the opportunity to develop these
pre-writing ideas further or save them for another day.
Planning: Organising for Drafting:
After students have generated some ideas, they must decide what they will say
about their chosen topic. Students develop an initial plan for the product they will
compose. As they do so, they must consider the purpose, audience, point of view,
and format because these elements have implications for both the planning and
the drafting of the written product.
To develop an initial plan for drafting, students organise the information they have
generated during pre-writing by using such structures as outlines, story frames,
maps, diagrams, charts, and concept webs.
To Consider Purpose:
Students write to express ideas, feelings, emotions, and opinions, and they must ask
themselves, "What is my purpose for writing this piece?" Some purposes for students’
writings are:
1. To express personal feelings or viewpoints.
2. To imagine "What if ...?"
3. To narrate.
4. To entertain and/or amuse.
5. To describe.
6. To inform or explain.
7. To persuade or convince.
9. To inquire or question.
10. To explore and experiment with ideas and formats.
To Consider Audience, students must consider who they are writing for and students
must ask themselves, "Who is my intended audience?" Some possible audiences
are:
1.Familiar, known audiences: self, friends, peers, family and teachers.
2.Extended, known audiences: community, student body and local media.
3.Extended, unknown audiences: wider range of media and other publications.
To Consider Point of View, students must determine from which point of view their
ideas or story / describing the events? Some points of view for students’
consideration are:
1. Physical point of view: where is the narrator in relation to the action?
2. Objective and subjective point of view: what emotional involvement does the
narrator have in relation to the situation?
3. Personal point of view: who is the narrator of the story? (The narrator may take
a first person, third person, or an all-knowing omniscient point of view.)
To Decide What Information Will Be Gathered and How It Will Most Effectively Be
Gathered, students who decide that they need to conduct interviews or go on field
trips to gather information will need to brainstorm and construct a list of
questions. Students who require library research will need to decide the types of
resources and references to consult.
To Consider Format, students will use audience and purpose to determine format
and genre. They will have the opportunity to write in a variety of narrative,
descriptive, expository, and poetic formats. Their writings may include formats and
genres such as: advertisement, advice column, autobiography/biography, comic
strip, letter of complaint/request/inquiry, diary/journal, readers theater/role-play/
monologue, book review, report, fable/fairy tale, greeting card, game rules,
directions, interview, news story, poem/song, anecdote/personal experience story,
sports column, short story, etc.
Drafting: A Time to Indulge:
At this point in the process, the emphasis is on content and meaning rather than on
mechanics and conventions. This is the time for writers to get down their ideas and
thoughts, composing rough drafts based upon pre-writing and planning activities
and considerations. As they compose, writers begin to determine what to include
and exclude, and make initial decisions about how these ideas will be organised.
During the drafting stage of the writing process, meaning begins to evolve.
To Produce a First, Rough Draft, students record their ideas rapidly in order to
capture the essence of what they have to say. They do not have to make any
attempt to revise or edit at this point. They focus on talking to the reader and begin
to develop a personal style as their voices emerge.
To Write Subsequent Drafts, students often accomplish their work by crossing out,
adding, and rearranging ideas directly on the page. The students’ redrafting does
not necessarily require an entire rewrite at this time.
To Reflect upon Their Own Writing, students can conference with self, peers and the
teacher. Through conferencing, students can get constructive feedback and
support that may help them to shape their writings. A set of questions or a checklist
can be used to assist writers and conference partners as they strive to help the
writer make meaning clear.
Sample 1: Self-Conference Checklist:
As you write ... Ask yourself some of these questions:
- How do I feel about what I have written so far?
- What is good that I can enhance?
- Is there anything about it that concerns me, does not fit, or seems wrong?
- What am I discovering as I write this piece?
- What surprises me? Where is it leading?
- What is my purpose?
- What is the one most important thing that I am trying to convey?
- How can I build this idea? Are there places that I wander away from my key idea?
- Who is my audience?
Sample 2: Teacher-Student Checklist:
During the teacher-student conference the teacher may ask questions such as:
- What is the part that you like best?
- Does it say what you want it to say?
- What do you mean by...?
- Where/when does your story take place?
- Are you satisfied with the beginning/ending? Why or why not?
- Does this sentence/word/phrase make sense to you?
- What reaction do you want your reader to have?
- How do you see your ideas being rearranged or changed? Why?
Sample 3: Steps For A Peer Writing Conference:
When peers are conferencing:
1. The writer decides how the written work will be shared. Will it be:
- read silently by the conference partner(s)?
- read aloud by the writer?
- read aloud by the conference partner(s)?
- a combination of the above?
2. The writer identifies what aspects of the written work will be the focus of the
conference (e.g., the beginning paragraph, figurative language).
3. The conference partner states at least:
- one thing he/she considers that the writer has done well.
- one thing he/she especially likes.
- one suggestion which addresses the focus of the conference as identified by
the writer. (It is useful to have students complete a written conference sheet to
guide their responses, especially when the process is new to them.)
4. The writer retains the right to the written work and is responsible for making the
final decision about any changes.
To Revise the Draft for Content and Clarity of Meaning, students will reorganise and
sequence relevant ideas, and add or delete details as they strive to make their
meaning clear. Revisions can take place to words, sentences, paragraphs, or the
whole piece (e.g., the writer may decide that the ideas would have more impact
as poetry instead of prose).
To Edit the Draft for Mechanical and Conventional Concerns that detract from and
obscure meaning, students will proofread for accuracy and correctness in spelling,
punctuation, capitalisation, grammar, and usage. Peer editing and editing
partnerships or groups can be established to assist students who are at this stage in
the process. The use of self and peer-editing checklists can be useful tools.
To Focus Purpose, Audience, and Point of View, and Confirm Appropriateness of
Format, students have to reconsider and confirm the use of the variables, which
were pondered during the planning stage.
Sample 4: Revising Checklist of a Descriptive Paragraph (Self- & Peer-Assessment,
Primary Level)
Writer's Checklist Partner’s Checklist
Yes No Did I include an introduction, a body, and a conclusion? Yes No
Yes No Did I write a good topic sentence for each paragraph? Yes No
Yes No Did I include details that support each topic sentence? Yes No
Yes No Did I avoid repeating the same words over and over again? Yes No
Yes No Did I use my senses to describe my topic? Yes No
Yes No Did I use descriptive nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs? Yes No
Some Suggestions for Scaffolds at the Drafting Stage Include the Following:
- Post the major stages of a writing process (pre-writing, planning, drafting, post-
writing) and brief information about each so that students can determine where
they are at any time in the process.
- Help students develop criteria or tips for writing a particular genre or format (e.g.,
haiku, short story, and letter), then post these on a bulletin board or have
students record them in their notebooks for reference as they write.
Using a Portfolio:
To decide if the written work will be placed in the student's assessment portfolio,
teachers can negotiate with students to generate guidelines about the number
and variety of pieces that they are required to place in their portfolio for
assessment and evaluation purposes. Contracts may be useful to address individual
student needs and abilities. Students should be involved in making choices about
which of their written pieces will become part of their portfolios.
Some Suggestions for Post-Writing Scaffolds Include the Following:
Discuss or develop with students the criteria for polished pieces. Post these or
provide them as handouts for students to refer to as needed.
Provide opportunities for students to use computer word-processing
programmes to create final drafts.
Have students share their final compositions with classmates or with others in
the community, such as younger children or elderly people.
Post or publish students' work in the classroom and provide opportunities,
when appropriate, for students to submit to publishers outside the classroom.
Mini-Lessons:
At some point during most writing classes, in a 5-10 minute mini-lesson (length
depends upon the procedure, concept, skill, or convention to be taught), the
teacher provides students with information necessary for their writing. Mini-lessons
about language usage and conventions such as spelling, sentence structure, and
punctuation are necessary; however, they should emerge from the students' writing
or the curriculum objectives, rather than being arbitrarily determined by the
teacher. It is important to allow time for students to practise concepts introduced in
mini-lessons within the context of their own writing.
The decision about what to teach in a mini-lesson depends upon the selected
objectives as well as upon the students' needs and interests. The following lists
provide examples of topics that may require mini-lessons.
Writing Process Procedures:
1. Pre-writing activities
2. Writing rough drafts
3. Self-reflection
4. Participating in writing groups
5. Peer and teacher conferences
6. Writing folders and assessment portfolios
7. Revising and editing final drafts
8. Sharing and publishing.
Task:
Define the terms “Young Learners”.
The term 'young learners' covers a wide age range; 4-18 years of age, and most
problems encountered by teachers are due to a lack of understanding of the
developmental differences between children and teenagers, and of the
appropriate classroom management skills to deal with these. Differences include
conceptual and cognitive variations, variations in attention spans and motor skills
such as drawing and cutting, as well as social and emotional differences. An
understanding of these differences can help develop the flexibility that teachers of
young learners require.
If a Problem Occurs:
1. Know what you are going to do before the trouble really starts. This will give you
the confidence to deal effectively with difficult situations and will prevent them
from getting any worse. It will help you remain calm, because you know where
the situation is heading. React quickly and firmly.
2. Do not issue empty threats. If you threaten a student with disciplinary action,
you must follow through exactly what you promised. If not, you will lose their
respect and create more problems for later.
3. Remain calm and avoid personal confrontation. It is extremely difficult at times
to maintain calmness in the face of aggression or rudeness. Remember though
you need to take the heat out of the situation. Losing your temper or shouting
at a student will simply make you weaker. You cannot win a battle with a
student face-to-face in the class you will lose your authority in front of the
students. Talking to a student in one-to-one situation after the lesson will put you
in control again and will leave them with something to think about during the
lesson.
4. Be friendly but firm. Always start by being firm, you can relax later.
5. Establish the rules and stick to them. From the first lesson make it clear to the
students what is and is not permissible. This can be done either as a negotiated
classroom contract or as a list of rules laid down by you and the school. The
latter is more effective if you think a contract will not be taken seriously by the
students. Remember to treat the students consistently and fairly.
6. Know the disciplinary procedure. Find out what steps can be taken if you have
a problem and make it clear to the students as well. If you do not have a
discipline procedure at your school, suggest one. It will give you confidence to
deal with problems effectively.
7. Put in the time to prepare motivating, fun lessons. Take into account the
students' likes and dislikes. Ensure that you provide the right level of challenge.
Too easy and they will become bored and disruptive, too difficult and they will
feel de-motivated, switch off and become disruptive.
8. Keep a snappy pace in your lessons. Allowing activities to drag on for too long
will result in boredom. Change the focus and pace of the lesson regularly. Also,
be aware of what is happening in your classroom. Keep your eyes and your
ears open to all parts of the room. Personal contact will encourage the
students to participate in the lesson and will give you an idea of how the lesson
is going. Look out for signs of lost interest or distraction.
9. Treat them like adults (do not patronise them), but do not forget that they are
still children. Teenagers often respond well to being treated as older than they
are. It is often how they wish to be perceived. Remember though that they can
still get carried away very easily.
10. Do not forget to highlight good work and praise the positive things in your
students. All too often most of the attention is given to the students who
misbehave.
Project:
Ask trainees to draw a word net for the components of project on newspaper
sheets. It may include: the advantages, the teachers' role, the students' role.
Advantages:
A context is established which balances the need for fluency and accuracy.
Increases motivation (learners are personally involved).
The four skills are integrated.
Autonomous learning is promoted (Learners are responsible).
Learning outcome (Learners have an end product).
Authentic tasks and therefore language input is more authentic.
Development of interpersonal relations.
Learner-centred (Learners decide on the content and methodology).
Break from routine and a chance to do something different.
Focusing on Literature:
Language, both spoken and written, comes in a variety of discourse types and, as
teachers of language; we attempt to introduce our learners to as many of these as
possible. The variety and types of discourse are perhaps best represented by
Kinneavy’s communication triangle (1983). This classification of discourse types
includes expressive, which focuses on personal expression (letters, diaries, etc.);
transactional, which focuses on both the reader and the message (advertising,
business letters, editorials, instructions, etc.); and poetic, which focuses on form and
language (drama, poetry, novels, short stories, etc.). Indeed, all these discourse
types already play a significant role in teaching various aspects of language such
as vocabulary and structure, or testing learners’ comprehension.
However, there is often reluctance by teachers, course designers and examiners to
introduce unabridged and authentic texts to the EFL syllabus. There is a general
perception that literature is particularly complex and inaccessible for the foreign
language learner and can even be detrimental to the process of language
learning (Or, 1995). Indeed, it is difficult to imagine teaching the stylistic features of
literary discourse to learners who have a less than sophisticated grasp of the basic
mechanics of English language. This perception is also borne out by research (Akyel
and Yalçin, 1990) which shows that the desire to broaden learners’ horizons through
exposure to classic literature usually has disappointing results. The reasons why
teachers often consider literature inappropriate to the classroom language may
be found in the common beliefs held about literature and literary language. Firstly,
the creative use of language in poetry and prose often deviates from the
conventions and rules which govern standard, non-literary discourse, as in the case
of poetry where grammar and lexis may be manipulated to serve orthographic or
phonological features of the language. Secondly, the reader requires greater
effort to interpret literary texts since meaning is detached from the reader’s
immediate social context; one example is that the “I” in literary discourse may not
be the same person as the writer.
The result is that the reader’s “interpretative procedures” (Widdowson, 1975) may
become confused and overloaded. What this means is that the reader has to infer,
anticipate and negotiate meaning from within the text to a degree that is not
required in non-literary discourse. Thus, in our efforts to teach our learners’
communicative competence there is a tendency to make use of texts which focus
on the transactional and expressive forms of writing with the exclusion or restriction
of poetic forms of language – i.e. literature. There is a perception that the use of
literary discourse deflects from the straightforward business of language learning,
i.e. knowledge of language structure, functions and general communication.
Why Use Literature?
There are many good reasons for using literature in the classroom. Here are a few:
1. Literature is authentic material. It is good to expose learners to this source of
unmodified language in the classroom because the skills they acquire in dealing
with difficult or unknown language can be used outside the class.
2. Literature encourages interaction. Literary texts are often rich is multiple layers
of meaning, and can be effectively mined for discussions and sharing feelings
or opinions.
3.Literature expands language awareness. Asking learners to examine
sophisticated or non-standard examples of language (which can occur in
literary texts) makes them more aware of the norms of language use
(Widdowson, 1975 quoted by Lazar 1993).
4. Literature educates the whole person. By examining values in literary texts,
teachers encourage learners to develop attitudes towards them. These values
and attitudes relate to the world outside the classroom.
5. Literature is motivating. Literature holds high status in many cultures and
countries. For this reason, students can feel a real sense of achievement at
understanding a piece of highly respected literature. Also, literature is often
more interesting than the texts found in course-books.
Approaches to Teaching Literature:
Having decided that integrating literature into the EFL syllabus is beneficial to the
learners’ linguistic development, we need to select an approach which best serves
the needs of EFL learners and the syllabus. Carter and Long (1991) describe the
rationale for the use of the three main approaches to the teaching of literature:
The Cultural Model:
This model represents the traditional approach to teaching literature. Such a model
requires learners to explore and interpret the social, political, literary and historical
context of a specific text. By using such a model to teach literature we not only
reveal the universality of such thoughts and ideas but encourage learners to
understand different cultures and ideologies in relation to their own. This model is
largely rejected by those in TEFL since not only does it tend to be teacher-centred
but there is little opportunity for extended language work.
The Language Model:
The most common approach to literature in the EFL classroom is what Carter and
Long (1991) refer to as the ‘language-based approach’. Such an approach
enables learners to access a text in a systematic and methodical way in order to
exemplify specific linguistic features e.g. literal and figurative language, direct and
indirect speech. This approach lends itself well to the repertoire of strategies used in
language teaching - cloze procedure, prediction exercises, jumbled sentences,
summary writing, creative writing and role play - which all form part of the
repertoire of EFL activities used by teachers to deconstruct literary texts in order to
serve specific linguistic goals. Carter and McRae (1996) describe this model as
taking a ‘reductive’ approach to literature. These activities are disconnected from
the literary goals of the specific text in that they can be applied to any text. There is
little engagement of the learner with the text other than for purely linguistic
practice; literature is used in a rather purposeless and mechanistic way in order to
provide for a series of language activities orchestrated by the teacher.
- Predicting. Give students some words from the extract and ask them to predict
what happens next. If it is a play, give them a couple of lines of dialogue and
ask them to make predictions about the play.
- Giving students a “taste”. Read the first bit of the extract (with their books
closed, or papers turned over) at normal speed, even quickly. Ask students to
compare what they have understood in pairs. Then ask them to report back to
you. Repeat the first bit again. Then ask them to open the book (or turn over the
page) and read it for them.
Stage Three: Understanding the Text, General Comprehension
Often with extracts or poems, I like to read the whole thing to my students so that
they can get more of a “feel” for the text. With very evocative pieces of literature
or poetry this can be quite powerful. Then I let students read it to themselves. It is
important to let students approach a piece of literature the first time without giving
them any specific task other than to simply read it. One of the aims of teaching
literature is to evoke interest and pleasure from the language. If students have to
do a task at every stage of a literature lesson, the pleasure can be lost.
Once students have read it once, you can set comprehension questions or ask
them to explain the significance of certain key words of the text. Another way of
checking comprehension is to ask students to explain to each other (in pairs) what
they have understood. This could be followed up by more subjective questions (e.g.
Why do you think X said this? How do you think the woman feels? What made him
do this?)
Stage Four: Understanding the Language
At this stage, get to grip with the more difficult words in the text. See how many of
the unfamiliar words students can get from context. Give them clues.
You could also look at certain elements of style that the author has used.
Remember that there is some use in looking at non-standard forms of language to
understand the standard.
If appropriate to the text, look at the connotation of words which the author has
chosen. For example, if the text says “She had long skinny arms,” what does that
say about the author’s impression of the woman? Would it be different if the author
had written “She had long slender arms”?
Stage Five: Follow-Up Activities
Once you have read and worked with your piece of literature it might naturally
lead on to one or more follow-up activities. Here are some ideas:
Using Poems:
1. Have students read each other the poem aloud at the same time, checking for
each other’s pronunciation and rhythm. Do a whole class choral reading at the
end.
2. Ask students to rewrite the poem, changing the meaning but not the structure.
3. Ask students to write or discuss the possible story behind the poem. Who was it
for? What led to the writing of this poem?
4. Have a discussion on issues the poem raised and how they relate to the students’
lives.
Potential Problems:
While considering how you will allocate class time, do not underestimate the
students' enthusiasm for listening to a story again and again. In fact, according to
Anne Burns (2003, p. 22), a surprising result from her study of second-language
learner attitudes toward literacy learning included the insight that "students were
almost unanimous in their desire for teachers to read aloud to them." She credited
the value of hearing fluent reading in English, listening to the written words, hearing
correct stress and intonation patterns, as well as providing a model for imitation as
possible reasons.
Types of Activities:
Listen to the story on tape/as read by the teacher without looking at the text.
Listen to the story and read along.
Listen to the story and put illustrations depicting parts of the story in order.
Read the book silently.
Read the book to a partner, then switch.
Write your favourite words/new words starting with A from the story in your
notebook.
Write a portion of the story in the workbook.
Answer (or practise asking) simple who, what, when, where, and why
questions about the story.
Play pictionary. Divide students into teams. One member of the team draws a
picture on the board while team members try to guess what it is within a
limited time period.
Speed reading game. Call out a word from the text, then let students race to
find it. The first one to find it reads the sentence aloud. A word of caution: this
game is rather hard on books.
Have students display the flashcards they made, let them be the teacher and
ask the class, "What is this?"
Make up a dance or do actions to the words of the story. A good example of
this kind of story is The Foot Book. The text repeats, "Left Foot/Left Foot/Right
Foot/Right." Students can get out of their chairs and jump from left to right as
suggested by the text.
Do the opposite of dancing. Have students "freeze" a moment of the text by
acting out exactly what is described in the text at some specific moment,
and holding perfectly still. You could photograph these moments if you have
a digital camera.
Do a verbal fill-in-the-blank exercise. As you read, stop at random and have
students shout out what word comes next.
Check comprehension of key concepts by asking students to draw pictures.
For example, students could demonstrate understanding of the difference
between "I like kimchi."/"I don't like kimchi." by drawing two different pictures.
A note about memorisation. A lot of students really do enjoy memorising the
books. Allow them to recite what they've memorised in teams. Many students
love to show off their English, and feel very proud of being able to produce a
minute or so of non-stop English.
Task:
What is Cooperative learning?
Cooperative Learning:
Cooperative learning is a generic term for various small group interactive
instructional procedures. Students work together on academic tasks in small groups
to help themselves and their teammates learn together. In general, cooperative
learning methods share the following five characteristics.
Five Basic Elements of Cooperative Learning:
Positive Interdependence
Face-to-Face Interaction
Individual & Group Accountability
Interpersonal & Small-Group Skills
Group Processing
Task:
Write a list of what each element means or entails.
Positive Interdependence:
Each group member's efforts are required and indispensable for group
success.
Each group member has a unique contribution to make to the joint effort
because of his or her resources and/or role and task responsibilities.
Face-to-Face Interaction:
Orally explaining how to solve problems
Teaching one's knowledge to other
Checking for understanding
Discussing concepts being learned
Connecting present with past learning
Group Processing:
Group members discuss how well they are achieving their goals and
maintaining effective working relationships.
Describe what member actions are helpful and not helpful.
Make decisions about what behaviours to continue or change.
Benefits:
Cooperative Learning Enhances Student Learning by:
Providing a shared cognitive set of information between students.
Motivating students to learn the material.
Ensuring that students construct their own knowledge.
Providing formative feedback.
Developing social and group skills necessary for success outside the classroom.
Promoting positive interaction between members of different cultural and socio
-economic groups.
Students Should Share These Set of Values:
Gain from each other's efforts. (Your success benefits me and my success
benefits you.)
Recognise that all group members share a common fate. (We all sink or swim
together here.)
Know that one's performance is mutually caused by oneself and one's team
members. (We cannot do it without you.)
Feel proud and jointly celebrate when a group member is recognised for
achievement. (We all congratulate you on your accomplishment!).
Guidelines for Team Formation:
Each team should consist of one high student, two average students, and one
low-ability student.
Teams include both boys and girls. Each team should reflect the ethnic diversity
of your classroom.
Cooperative Learning teams generally stay together for about six weeks.
After forming your teams, provide opportunities for them to get to know each
other.
Assign: a Recorder, a Timer, Organiser and a Checker.
Flip-Flop Book:
This is a great activity to use just before you create new cooperative learning
teams. The old teams need some type of closure activity to express appreciation to
each other. Give each student one Flip-Flop Book (figure 1) and have them fold it
in half the long way (like a hotdog). Ask them to write their name in the large
rectangle. Then have them cut on the solid lines between each of the four small
sections. They pass the Flip-Flop Book around the team and open a flap. Under the
flap they write an appreciation statement. Finally, they sign the top of the flap and
pass it to the next person. No one may read another team member's statement
except the person named on the Flip-Flop Book.
(Figure 1)
Being on your team I’ll always I just wanted to I thank you for…
was fun because… remember… say…
From: From: From: From:
Quiet Signal:
Be sure to have a signal for getting students’ attention during an activity. When
you use the signal, make sure everyone is quiet before you begin giving instructions.
Marble Jar:
Reward good behaviour by dropping marbles in a small jar each time the class (or
a team) behaves in a desired manner. Be sure to announce the specific behaviour
you are rewarding. (“Class, you did a super job of praising each other!”) When the
jar is full, let students vote on a simple reward.
3. Grammar Activities:
1. Daily Grammar Practice:
Daily Grammar Practice is a system similar to Daily Oral Language. One sentence
or quotation is written on the overhead, make sure that it includes a variety of
grammatical errors (depending on what you are studying at the moment). The
students attempt to write the sentence correctly on their Grammar Practice
Worksheet. Teacher circulates through the room holding a mini-stamper or sticker. If
a student finds all the errors in the sentence and corrects them without help, a
stamp is placed next to that sentence. This helps assigning a grade later. After all
papers are checked, call on one student to make the corrections on the overhead.
All students are expected to correct the errors on their paper at that time. At the
end of the week, collect the papers and assign a letter grade based on the
number they wrote correctly without help (as indicated by my stamp or sticker) and
the number they wrote correctly after seeing the sentence on the overhead.
Famous quotations could be used as the basis for my Daily Grammar Practice. After
discussing grammatical errors, have students put their heads together in teams to
discuss the meaning of the quotation. Then call on one student in each team to
explain their team's interpretation. Clarify the meaning for the class and discuss
examples in everyday life. This activity is suitable to start the day! Then at the end of
the week, choose one of the quotations and the kids have to write a short synopsis
of what the quotation means on the back of their Grammar Practice Worksheet.
(Figure 12)
Sample Famous Quotations Used for Grammar Practice:
Grammar Practice
Famous Quotations
1. Joseph addison said, Reading is too the mind what exersize is two the
bodie.
3. Theres a chinese proverb that says, Give a man a fish and you feed him
for a day. Teech a man to fish and you feeds him for a livetime.
4. If we were ment to talk more then listen, we wood have too mouths and
won ear. Said famous author Mark Twain.
(Figure 3)
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
(Figure 4)
1. Jigsaw - Groups with five students are set up. Each group member is assigned
some unique material to learn and then to teach to his group members. To
help in the learning students across the class working on the same sub-section
get together to decide what is important and how to teach it. After practice in
these "expert" groups the original groups reform and students teach each
other. (Wood, p. 17) Tests or assessment follows.
Cooperative Learning Structures and Techniques Used with Teenagers and Adults:
Focused Listing:
Focused listing can be used as a brainstorming technique or as a technique to
generate descriptions and definitions for concepts. Focused listing asks the students
to generate words to define or describe something. Once students have
completed this activity, you can use these lists to facilitate group and class
discussion.
Example: Ask students to list five to seven words or phrases that describe or define
what a motivated student does. From there, you might ask students to get together
in small groups to discuss the lists, or to select the one that they can all agree on.
Combine this technique with a number of the other techniques and you can have
a powerful cooperative learning structure.
Structured Problem-Solving:
Structured problem-solving can be used in conjunction with several other
cooperative learning structures.
Have the participants brainstorm or select a problem for them to consider.
Assign numbers to members of each group (or use playing cards). Have each
member of the group be a different number or suit.
Discuss task as group.
Each participant should be prepared to respond. Each member of the group
needs to understand the response well enough to give the response with no
help from the other members of the group.
Ask an individual from each group to respond. Call on the individual by
number (or suit).
One Minute Papers:
Ask students to comment on the following questions. Give them one minute and
time them. This activity focuses them on the content and can also provide
feedback to you as a teacher.
What was the most important or useful thing you learned today?
What two important questions do you still have; what remains unclear?
What would you like to know more about?
You can use these one-minute papers to begin the next day's discussion, to
facilitate discussion within a group, or to provide you with feedback on where the
student is in his or her understanding of the material.
Paired Annotations:
Students pair up to review/learn a specific article, chapter or content area and
exchange double-entry journals for reading and reflection.
Students discuss key points and look for divergent and convergent thinking and
ideas. Together students prepare a composite annotation that summarises the
article, chapter, or concept.
Send-A-Problem:
Send-A-Problem can be used as a way to get groups to discuss and review
material, or potential solutions to problems related to content information.
Each member of a group generates a problem and writes it down on a card.
Each member of the group then asks the question to other members.
If the question can be answered and all members of the group agree on the
answer, then that answer is written on the back of the card. If there is no
consensus on the answer, the question is revised so that an answer can be
agreed upon.
The group puts a Q on the side of the card with the question on it, and an A on
the side of the card with an answer on it.
Each group sends its question cards to another group.
Each group member takes question cards from the stack of questions and
reads one question at a time to the group. After reading the first question, the
group discusses it.
If the group agrees on the answer, they turn the card over to see if they agree
with the first group's answer.
If there is again consensus, they proceed to the next question.
If they do not agree with the first group's answer, the second group write their
answer on the back of the card as an alternative answer.
The second group reviews and answers each question in the stack of cards,
repeating the procedure outlined above.
The question cards can be sent to a third, fourth, or fifth group, if desired.
Stacks of cards are then sent back to the originating group. The sending group
can then discuss and clarify any question.
Variation: A variation on the Send-A-Problem is to use the process to get
groups to discuss a real problem for which there may be no one set answer.
Groups decide on one problem they will consider. It is best if each group
considers a different problem.
The same process is used, with the first group brainstorming solutions to a single
problem. The problem is written on a piece of paper and attached to the
outside of a folder. The solutions are listed and enclosed inside the folder.
The folder is then passed to the next group. Each group brainstorms for three
to five minutes on the problems they receive without reading the previous
group's work and then place their solutions inside the folders.
This process may continue to one or more groups. The last group reviews all the
solutions posed by all of the previous groups and develops a prioritised list of
possible solutions. This list is then presented to the group.
Value Line:
One way to form heterogeneous groups, is to use a value line.
Present an issue or topic to the group and ask each member to determine
how they feel about the issue (could use a 1-10 scale; 1 being strong
agreement, 10 being strong disagreement).
Form a rank-ordered line and number the participants from 1 up (from strong
agreement to strong disagreement, for example).
Form your groups of four by pulling one person from each end of the value line
and two people from the middle of the group (for example, if you had 20
people, one group might consist of persons 1, 10, 11, 20).
Uncommon Commonalities:
Uncommon Commonalities can be used to foster a more cohesive group.
(Figure 5)
Uncommon Commonalities
1 2 3 4
Team Name
Groups get together and first list individual things about themselves that define
them as people).
Groups then discussed each item, finding things that 1, 2, 3, or 4 of them have
in common.
When the group finds an item that all of them have in common, they list that
item under 4; when they find something that 3 of them have in common, the list
that item under 3, etc.
Team Expectations:
Some of the common fears about working with groups include student fears that
each member will not pull their weight as a part of the group. Students are scared
that their grade will be lower as a result of the group learning vs. learning they do
individually. One way to address this issue is to use a group activity to allow the
group to outline acceptable group behaviour. Put together a form and ask groups
to first list behaviours (expectations) they expect from each individual, each pair
and as a group as a whole. Groups then can use this as a way to monitor individual
contributions to the group and as a way to evaluate group participation.
Double Entry Journal:
The Double Entry Journal can be used as a way for students to take notes on
articles and other resources they read in preparation for class discussion.
Students read and reflect on the assigned reading(s).
Students prepare the double entry journal, listing critical points of the readings
(as they see them) and any responses to the readings, in general, or specific
critical points.
Students bring their journal notes to class.
Once in class, students may use their double entry journal to begin discussion, to do
a paired annotation, or for other classroom and group activity.
(Figure 6)
Students work individually to write their own questions based on the material
being covered.
Students do not have to be able to answer the questions they pose. This
activity is designed to force students to think about ideas relevant to the
content area.
Students should use as many question stems as possible.
Grouped into learning teams, each student offers a question for discussion,
using the different stems.
Sample Question Stems:
What is the main idea of...?
What if...?
How does...affect...?
What is a new example of...?
Explain why...?
Explain how...?
How does this relate to what I have learned before?
What conclusions can I draw about...?
What is the difference between... and...?
How are...and...similar?
How would I use...to...?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of...?
What is the best...and why?
<http://www.utc.edu/Administration/WalkerTeachingResourceCenter/
FacultyDevelopment/CooperativeLearning/>
Cooperative Learning Teaching Implication:
Vocabulary
Grammar
Reading
Writing
Speaking
Following are activities that could be applicable in classrooms. These activities
could be implemented using cooperative learning techniques.
A. Speaking Application:
1. Your group is to make a neat and clear chart that lists the ten most important
items you would need in your survival kit if you were to find yourself alone in the
following life and death situation. You must be able to explain how these items
are essential in helping you to secure food, fresh water and shelter for an
indefinite amount of time.
2. It is early spring and you are hiking with friends in the remote wilderness of the
Rocky Mountains. Suddenly there is an avalanche and you are swept far away
and separated from the group. Your clothes are torn, you are missing one of your
hiking boots and you do not have any means of electronically signaling for help.
Luckily, you still have your back pack attached to your back with the survival kit
you packed specially for a situation like this. Describe what is in your kit and how
you will use it.
3. You are on a cruise ship sailing through the South Pacific when a hurricane
suddenly engulfs the ship. The ship cannot withstand the fierceness of the storm
and it sinks. When the seas calm you miraculously find yourself alone in a small
rubber raft drifting towards a small island. Your clothes, t-shirt, shorts and sandals
are wet and torn. Luckily, there is a small survival pack in the raft. Describe what
is in your kit and how you will use it.
4. You are travelling across the Sahara Desert on foot with a group of local
villagers when suddenly a severe sand storm takes your troop by surprise. For
several hours it assaults you. When it finally subsides, you find you have been
separated from the group and the only thing in sight are huge sand dunes and
a small oasis with a few trees, shrubs and pool of fresh water about½ a kilometer
away. You are wearing light clothing with a veil and your survival kit around
your waist. Describe what is in your kit and how you will use it.
5. You are on a canoe trip in the remote wilderness of Northern Saskatchewan
with a friend when you happen upon a set of rapids that lead to a waterfall.
You try to navigate your canoe to shore but the current is too fast and strong
and you go over the falls. You are wearing your life jacket and you manage to
stay afloat but you are separated from your friend and the canoe. The river
takes you several kilometers downstream before you are able to swim ashore.
Within a few hours you see some remains of your canoe floating by and you
retrieve it from the river. There is no sign of your friend, nor of any of the
equipment you had packed, but luck is with you and you find your survival kit
still lashed to the broken thwart of what was once your canoe. Describe what is
in your kit and how you will use it.
6. Fast Food Analysis: obtain a nutrition chart from a local fast food restaurant. You
will need at least one chart per team. Before you let the students see the chart,
give them a copy of the Fast Food Analysis worksheet and ask them to write
down their favourite meal from that
restaurant. Then give each team one
chart and have them look up the
amount of salt, fat, and calories in their
Food Fat Salt Calories
favourite meal. Discuss the optimum
Item
amounts for their age group, and have
them compare their favourite meal to
those amounts. Then ask them to use
the nutrition chart to plan a nutritious
meal at the same restaurant. Allow Totals
them time to pair up with a partner and
A Nutritious Meal
discuss their meal choices.
(Figure 7) Food Fat Salt Calories
Item
Totals
B. Writing Applications:
1. Daily Nutrition Log and Evaluation:
After teaching students about the Food Pyramid, give each person a Daily Nutrition
Log and have them write down all the foods they eat in a day. In class the next
day, work with the students to help them classify their foods into the correct
categories. Have them figure the total number of servings in each group. Then give
each student a copy of the Nutrition Log Evaluation and ask them to compare the
number of servings they had in each group with the Recommended Daily Servings.
Ask them to write an evaluation of their diet for that day. An easy way to do this is
to have them write a topic sentence and one sentence explaining how they did in
each food group. For example, "I realise that I need to improve my diet. In the
Bread and Cereal group I was supposed to have six to eleven servings, but I only
had threes . . etc."
As an assessment of their understanding and awareness of good nutrition,
challenge your students to eat a balanced diet for one whole day. Have them
complete another Nutrition Log for that day and analyse it to see if they met their
goals.
(Figure 8)
Name: __________________________________
Parent Signature:
______________________________________
Meal Food MP BC F V MD FS
Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner
Snacks
Total Servings
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
2. Climate Comparisons:
When studying weather and climate, an easy way to integrate technology is to
have students research weather and climate data for two locations and create
comparison graphs. Use the Climate Comparison Charts as a place for recording
the data. This data is readily available at the World climate website located at
www.worldclimate.com. Students simply type in the name of almost any city in the
world, and they can easily find the temperature and precipitation data. After they
record the data, have them write a paragraph comparing the weather in two
different locations. Ask them to illustrate their writing by using a spreadsheet
programme (like Microsoft Excel) to create comparison graphs.
(Figure 9)
Climate Comparison Charts Climate Comparison Charts
May May
June June
July July
August August
September September
October October
November November
December December
Name: ____________________
Grammar Practice
Copy the sentences from the overhead and make your corrections. You may use a
dictionary or any other resource, When you discuss the sentences in class, be sure to
correct any errors that you did not find on your own.
_________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________
(Figure13)
3. Noun Showdown:
Showdown is a cooperative learning structure that directly involves all team
members in a structured learning situation. For this activity, you will need to print
one copy of the Plural or Possessive Showdown task cards. In the Plural Noun
Showdown, you will have to fix up the cards a bit since the apostrophes seem to
have been lost. Take a black pen and add the apostrophes to the nouns which
have a noticeable space before the "s". Then make one copy of the task cards per
team and have the students cut the cards apart. The cards are placed face down
in the centre of the team. Everyone needs a piece of paper or a small chalkboard
or whiteboard. One person becomes the first leader and picks up a card. Without
showing it to the others, he or she reads the sentence aloud. The others write the
underlined noun on their chalkboards in possessive or plural form (determined by
the clues in the sentence). As each person finishes, they place their chalkboards
face down. When all boards are down, the leader says "Showdown!" and everyone
shows their answer. The leader checks answers, according to the sentence card.
For the next round, a new student on the team becomes the leader. The teacher
moves about the room, monitoring the activity and making sure students are
getting the correct answers.
(Figure 14)
Reading Application:
1. Food Label Comparison Chart
Ask each student to bring to school one food label showing nutrition information.
You will also need one label to use as an example. Give each team member one
copy of the Food Label Comparison worksheet, and place a transparency of the
worksheet on the overhead projector. Demonstrate how to complete the chart
using information on the sample food label. Ask each person to complete the
information for their own food label in column 1. Then everyone passes their food
labels to the left and completes column 2. Continue until all columns are filled.
Finally, each person takes turns reading one column of answers on their chart. The
rest of the team checks to see that they have the same information, and they
resolve any discrepancies by referring to the food label in question.
(Figure15)
Comparison Example 1 2 3 4
1. What is the name of the product?
2. How large is one serving?
(Figure 16)
Task:
What is meant by course-book materials?
Course-book materials are all items related to the course-book package. These
materials are used to present and practise language, and to build on learners’ skills.
The course-book pack comprises; student’s book, workbook, teacher’s manual
and/or resources, audio cassettes and/ or CDs, Videos and/or DVDs related to the
units of the book, tests and photocopiable materials; some course-book even have
websites and interactive CD-ROMs.
In order to select the best course-book, the teacher needs to be familiar with
learners’ needs, language and interests. This is usually done by conducting
questionnaires, interviews or diagnostic tests.
In Alan Cunningsworth’s book, "Choosing Your Course-book" (Macmillan Publishers,
1995) there is a list of four main guidelines to help you evaluate your course-books.
They are as follows:
1. Course-books should correspond to the learners' needs. They should match the
aims and objectives of the language-learning programme.
Cunningsworth suggests that the goals of the course should be laid out first
and that a course-book which matches the goals of your course should come
second.
Another important point is that you should look to see if the content matches
the students' needs as well. For example, there is no use in teaching a group
of young children from China a book that is meant for adults in Europe.
2. Course-books should reflect the uses (present or future) which learners will make
of the language. Select course-books which will help to equip students to use
language effectively for their own purposes.
Will the book you choose motivate your students? Will it encourage your
students to become autonomous learners- to learn English in their own time?
Things to look for here include authentic materials, realistic situations, and
activities that will help develop communicative skills and strategies.
3. Course-books should take account of students' needs as learners and should
facilitate their learning processes, without dogmatically imposing a rigid 'method'.
Cunningsworth believes that students can benefit from being allowed to use
their own style to learn. For example, some students are visual learners, while
others are aural learners.
Students also need to be challenged- as it will help to motivate the students.
Things to look for in the book include: quizzes, variety of topic and activity,
lively and interesting presentation of the book, and self-check lists.
4. Course-books should have a clear role as a support for learning. Like teachers,
they mediate between the target language and the learner.
The activities should promote fluency and accuracy at a level that is
appropriate for your learners.
The course-book should also support the teachers by providing a teaching
methodology or an approach to learning, as well as suggestions on how to
use the material.
Task:
Do you have any further suggestions or recommendations?
Task:
What questions should we ask when selecting teaching materials?
To select the most appropriate materials that match the aims and objectives of the
language-learning programme, the teacher needs to gather data on the following
points;
Logistic Factors:
1. Cost-effect?
2. Supplementary components needed?
3. Fit schedule requirements?
Attractiveness and Clarity of the Materials:
1. Is the material visually attractive?
2. Is it visually clear (e.g. using different colours, different fonts, headings, etc.)?
3. Does the visual material help learners to understand context and meaning?
4. Are the materials user-friendly?
Organisation:
1. Is it well organised?
2. Can you and your learners follow the 'logic' of the material and find your way
around the page or the unit quickly and easily?
Appropriateness:
1. Is it culturally appropriate?
2. Will the context(s) be familiar to learners?
3. Is it suitable for your learners' age and their needs and interests?
Interest and Motivation:
1. Will the topics be motivating to suit the age, gender, experience and personal
interests of your learners"?
2. Will it encourage your students to become autonomous learners; to learn
English in their own time?
3. Does the book present various teaching styles?
4. Does the book address various learning styles?
5. Is it generally appealing to students?
Pedagogical:
1. What is the main methodology used in the Course-book?
2. Is the material mainly telling the information or is it based on elicitation?
3. Does it give enough input or it asks students to discover the required
elements?
4. Is it learner-centred or teacher-centred?
5. Is it fluency- or accuracy-oriented?
6. Is the practice communicatively or mechanically oriented?
7. Are there enough rules, support, explanation and guidelines?
8. What is the main syllabus (topics, functional, notional, combination?
9. Is it at the right level?
10. Are the aims suitable, relevant, challenging and interesting?
11. Does it provide a clear enough context and/or explanations for learners to
understand new language?
12. Does it give learners enough opportunities to use the language?
13. Do activities promote fluency and accuracy at a level that is appropriate for
your learners?
14. Are the texts, tasks and activities relevant, graded, and sequenced?
15. Do the materials explicitly state the rationale that goes with needs?
16. Do the various components of the book fit harmoniously?
17. Are the skills integrated?
18. Is there enough room for practice?
19. Do materials include Real-life tasks?
20. Is there enough recycling and recapping?
21. Are reading & listening texts authentic and relevant to the stated aims?
22. Does the course-book have supporting materials (visuals, workbook, resource
book, teacher's book, answer key, transcripts, website, other)?
23. Does the course-book material have testing approach and/or readymade
quizzes?
24. What to check in materials with a lexical focus?
25. What to check in materials with a grammar focus ?
Sometimes the materials do not typically match with all the requirements of the
learning programme. In this case, teachers would need to either replace the
course-book material with materials with the same focus/aim or tailor the course-
book material by changing some items to suit her/his learner. Although it is normal
to leave out part of a unit or even a whole unit, it is recommended not to do that
frequently. This is due to two main reasons
a. It might confuse learners
b. Course-book is one of the main sources of learning and revision for our learners.
So repetition of canceling might harm the global aim of the learning
programme.
Before adapting materials, teachers need to put in mind the following questions;
what can I adapt? How can I adapt it? And where do I find alternative materials?
Here are some ideas to adapt material that is not suitable for a particular teaching
situation.
When planning lessons, think about what the course-book gives you, and what you
need to add. For example:
Course-book provides: Teacher can provide additional:
References:
Gabrielatos,C. 2004, Session Plan: The Course-book as a Flexible
ToolPublished in: IATEFL Teacher Trainers and Educators SIG Newsletter
1/2004, 28-31. Cunningham, A. 1995. Choosing Your Course-book.
Heinemann.
Dendrinos, B. 1992. The EFL Course-book and Ideology. N.C. Grivas
Publications.
Gabrielatos, C. 2001. ‘Shopping at the ELT Supermarket: Principled decisions
and practices.’ ELT News 144 (February 2001). Revised version 2002 (March)
Developing Teachers, <http://www.developingteachers.com/
articles_tchtraining/eltshop1_costas.htm.>
Karavas-Doukas, E. 1996. ‘Using Attitude Scales to Investigate Teachers’
Attitudes to the Communicative Approach.’ ELT Journal 50/3.
Roberts, J. 1998. Language Teacher Education. Arnold.
Scrivener, J. 1996. ‘ARC: A Descriptive Model for Classroom Work on
Language.’ In Willis, J. & Willis, D. (eds.) Challenge and Change in
Language Teaching. Macmillan Heinemann.
Woods, D. 1996. Teacher Cognition in Language Teaching. Cambridge
University Press.
Chamot, A. U., Barnhardt, S., El-Dinary, P. B., Carbonaro, G., & Robbins, J. (1993).
Methods for teaching learning strategies in foreign language instruction and
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