Classroom Skills
and Techniques
1-Gestures
Keeping your energy high and being creative
with your lessons will make your students
more attentive. Outside of role play activities,
you can use gestures and mime in many
different ways. These aid your students in
communicating,
understanding,
and
participating during your lessons.
Gesture is a facial or body movement that
communicates meaning; examples include a
smile, a frown, a shrug, a shake or nod of the
head. Gestures often accompany verbal
communication.
Giving Directions
Using particular gestures or expressions in the
classroom will lead students to associate them
with a particular thing. For example, if you always
use the same gesture when you say “Please stand
up”, students will become accustomed to it
and stand up when you use that gesture even
if you occasionally leave out the oral
instruction. You can have gestures for when
you want students to repeat something after
you, make groups, or sit down too. This can
be especially handy when you want to
communicate something to your students in a
noisy setting.
Vocabulary
Using gestures and mime is important when it
comes to vocabulary too. You can use them to
elicit certain words and phrases from students.
If you teach very young students, it is also
common to associate gestures with words to
help students remember vocabulary better.
Using the same gesture every time you say a
particular word or phrase will help these
students associate the two.
practice
In practising dialogues, you can incorporate gestures
and mime. If you are teaching a conversation where
a customer is complaining about something to a
store clerk, for instance, you can tell students that
the store clerk should act completely shocked at
hearing the news, look apologetic, or whatever else
you can think of to make the scenario more realistic.
In a conversation where two people are meeting for
the first time, have students shake hands as they
would do in a real life situation. These details make
practising dialogues more fun and interesting.
Production
Activities and games which use gestures and mime
can be fun for the whole class. If you have just
finished a section on feelings, make a list of feelings
on the board and have students choose a slip of
paper from a hat. Each slip of paper should contain
a sentence such as “You are happy.” Students
should keep their sentences a secret. Have one
volunteer at a time mime his/her sentence while
the rest of the class tries to guess it. This would be
a good review activity.
To check individual comprehension, you can
use the same basic idea but instead turn it into
an interview activity where students have a
sheet of paper with all the emotions listed as
well as their secret emotion. The idea is that
students go around the classroom miming and
guessing emotions in pairs and getting a
student signature for each emotion.
Gestures and mime can be really helpful in
numerous classroom situations and using
them often can assist both you and your
students.
2-Eliciting
The communicative approach has forced us to
reexamine not only how we elicit student-talk,
but also how we respond to it. Now that we are
interested in the content of the message, at least
as much as the form, we need to respond
genuinely to student-talk with the same natural
emotions that we inject into everyday
conversation. Only by doing this we can really
convince students that we are interested in what
they are saying.
Eliciting (elicitation) is a term which describes a
range of techniques which enable the teacher to
get learners to provide information rather than
giving it to them. Commonly, eliciting is used to ask
learners to come up with vocabulary and language
forms and rules, and to brainstorm a topic at the
start of a skills lesson.
Techniques or procedures which a teacher uses
to get learners to actively produce speech or
writing‘,.
Eliciting means getting information from people
as opposed to giving it to them - asking, throwing
questions back at the students, in a nutshell .
the best way to teach is often to shut up. Give
the students the opportunity to teach. This is best
achieved through elicitation, or eliciting.
What is it?
 Answers, words and ideas are elicited from the
students to provide necessary information. It
basically means that instead of providing
information yourself, you draw it out from the
learners. This is best achieved through a kind of
question and answer dialogue.
How :
 Instead of giving information, ask if anyone in the
class can provide it. When a student asks "What does
this mean?" or "What's the past of this verb?" etc. say
something like "That's a good question - what do you
think?" Can you guess? Can anyone help Maria here”?
Take a simple expression like ”How about you?” Ask
your student a simple question, and then [with
gestures] encourage them to ask you. Most will either
repeat the question or say “and you?” Now, ask them
again and this time tell them to ask you in a different
way. Repeat until they say “How about you?” If not,
write _____ you?” and have them fill in the blanks.
When I take the register, I always elicit today's
date from the students ("What's the date today?")
because I find that even at high levels students are
shockingly bad on dates .
Tips for eliciting
Eliciting is a basic technique and should be used
regularly, not only at the beginning of a lesson
but whenever it is necessary and appropriate.
Why is it used?
The teaching of new knowledge is often based
on what the learners already know. Eliciting draws
out that knowledge and helps students to put
new words and ideas in context.
It’s also a positive and constructive way to use
the language that students have in store. Using
what language they already know also helps to
increase confidence and fluency.
Use elicitation to motivate and encourage your
class, not to test their knowledge.
Eliciting helps to develop a learner-centred
classroom and a stimulating environment, while
making learning memorable by linking new and
old information.
The teacher can elicit ideas, feelings, meaning,
situations, associations and memories. For the
teacher, eliciting is a powerful diagnostic tool,
providing key information about what the learners
know or don't know, and therefore a starting point
for lesson planning. Eliciting also encourages
teachers to be flexible and to move on rather than
dwell on information which is already known.
Once students learn that they can do it
themselves, their confidence increases tenfold.
Teaching new things is difficult, but eliciting
language is fun and it allows students to feel
good about themselves. Most people claim to
be poor at remembering new things, but it’s
not about memory at all. Learning how to
figure out what to say allows you to never have
to remember, but rather develop your skills at
problem solving in the form of stringing words
together to make sentences, expressions,
idioms and questions.
Eliciting helps students learn how to guess.
Eliciting is based on several premises:
Collectively, students have a great deal of
knowledge, both of the language and of the real
world. This knowledge needs to be activated and
used constructively. The teaching of new
knowledge is often based on what the learners
already know. Questioning assists in selfdiscovery, which makes information more
memorable.
Tools for eliciting
Often, the teacher provides stimulus using
visuals or the board.
A situational dialogue, example sentences or a
listening/reading text may provide the context
from which the target language is elicited. In this
case, the teacher is asking the learners to notice
how a particular function is expressed, and
eliciting is combined with concept questions.
Eliciting ideas and background information also
requires input. This may come from a teacher's
anecdote or story, a text, pictures, or a video, and
involves the sharing of knowledge between
teacher and learners. Information is often elicited
onto a mind-map on the board, but it is important
that all the students have a record of collective
knowledge, and may find one of the many kinds
of graphic organizer useful. Reading lessons often
begin with a photo or headline from the text
which serves a dual purpose in providing a
stimulus for eliciting and a prompt for predicting
content.
By using pictures, the teacher is able to elicit
predictable responses in a more interesting way
and with less teacher-talk.
learners should be encouraged to use their
imagination and make guesses or predictions
about stories or dialogues .
When is it used?
Eliciting can be used for many purposes: One
way it is used to define the meaning of words, or
get synonyms for new words from the class.
You can also elicit new sentence structures. By
modeling the structure first yourself, you can
elicit further examples from your students in a
controlled way.
A third purpose of elicitation is the definition of
rules and grammar. This can be done simply by
asking about the tense, condition and meaning of
a piece of language which will draw students to a
logical conclusion.
Learners can elicit from each other, particularly
during brainstorming activities. This helps to build
confidence and group cohesion as well as shifting
the focus away from the teacher.
Encourage rather than correct
Try not to correct when learners are volunteering
background information about a topic confidence-building, not accuracy is important
here .
If we are engaged in activities aimed at
improving accuracy, we may consider it important
to respond to incorrect forms. A simple nod, facial
expression, gesture, or repeat of a mistake with
rising intonation is often sufficient indication of an
incorrect form, which the student is capable of
correcting him/herself.
3-Giving instruction
Penny Ur (1991) defines instruction as "the
directions that are given to introduce a learning
task which entails more measure of independent
student activity" (p.16).
Its Procedures
1) Plan how you're going to give the instructions
before you go into the classroom, and make
sure that you can explain them within the limits
of the language which the students can
understand. For example, the following
instruction would be fine for an intermediate
class, but would lose a group of beginners: "You're
going to hear a description of a famous person
and you have to guess who it is." For beginners,
"Listen to my description of a famous person. Who
is it?" would be far more comprehensible.
2) Think too about the speed of your speech slow down slightly if necessary - and insert
pauses to allow students to take in each piece
of information before you go on to the next.
3) Make sure that your instructions are fully
explicit.
4) Also think about how much you're going to explain
at a time. If you have a long, complicated, or two
part activity, don't explain everything at once.
Explain the first stage, and check that students
have understood before you go on to the
explanation of the next part.
5) Don't start the explanation until you have the
students' full attention. Make sure they have
stopped whatever they are doing, are turned
towards you and are listening.
6) Even in the first lesson, use English wherever
possible. "Get into pairs" won't be understood, but
"You two, you two and you two" plus a gesture
pushing the students together will be.
7) at the beginning of the course, give the
instructions in the L1, and then repeat them
immediately, as simply as possible, in English.
Later on reverse the order: give the instructions
in English first, and in the L1 second. As soon as
possible, give the instructions in English only,
but check comprehension by asking the
students to repeat them back in their L1.
8) Avoid using the imperative in your instructions.
Instead, use request forms - for example "Can
you repeat that?" - which provide a good model
for the students' own use of the language.
9) Always check that students have understood
your instructions before starting the activity.
Students may be too shy to admit that they
don't understand, or may think they
understand when they actually don't. Make
sure they demonstrate their understanding.
10)As soon as the students start the activity, go
around quickly to each pair or group just to
check they are on task. Don't stop to help or
monitor one group until you have checked
them all.
Some Guidelines for Giving
Effectives Instructions
• Think ahead what words and illustrations to use.
• Make sure to have all the students’ attention
before giving instructions and before dividing
them into groups or handing out materials.
• Use repetition or paraphrase as well as the
presentation of the instruction in different
modes.
• Be brief in explanations especially if these
contain a string of directives.
•Make an actual demonstration of the activity
either with the full class or with one student.
•Check understanding but not just by asking
students if they understand but by requesting
them to do something that well show their
understanding.
•Avoid long explanations and at the same time
give students a reasonable amount of time to
comply with the command.
•The formulations should be short, easy to
understand and precise.
•attract the attention of a group, try clapping
your hands or knocking on a desk. Make sure that
students understand that by doing this you want
them to put everything down, stop talking, look at
you and listen.
•Instructions must be kept as simple as possible
and they must be logical.
4-personalization
To personalize language means to use it to refer
to subjects that feel personal.
Personalization is the process of tailoring a
particular service to meet the needs of the user.
Within the context of a personalized education
service, personalized learning equates to learning
that respects the individual needs, aptitude,
learning preferences and interests of learners –
with the key aim of ensuring that every learner
achieves the highest standards possible.
Personalized instruction is the effort on the
part of a school to take into account individual
student characteristics & needs, and flexible
instructional practices in organizing the student
learning environment.
Personalization happens when activities allow
students to use language to express their own
ideas, feelings, preferences and opinions.
Personalization is an important part of the
communicative approach, since it involves true
communication, as learners communicate real
information about themselves .
The goal of personalized learning is to ensure
learners achieve their potential by working in a
collaborative learning environment.
Personalization is important for several reasons. It
makes language relevant to learners, makes
communication activities meaningful, and also helps
memorization. Personalization can take place at any
stage of a lesson.
There are many other ways of making sentences
feel meaningful to a child, such as when they look at
attractive pictures and say or write sentences about
them, or when they look out the window and say or
write about what they see.
Personalization allows students to convey
meaningful information while talking about
themselves. So, instead of talking about the
characters in the textbook, they can talk about
themselves, their friends, and their own families.
Likewise, the places in the textbook can be
replaced by the names of local places. By
personalizing the information or situations in the
textbook, students can adapt and expand written
texts or dialogues in useful, meaningful,
interesting, and beneficial speaking practice.
5-Language games
Interest is a key to success in the teaching
process. Teaching can be made attractive and
pleasant by introducing learning games.
Why using games in language teaching?
There are many advantages of using games in the
classroom :
1. Games are a welcome break from the usual
routine of the language class .
2. Games add interest to what students might not
find very interesting.
3. Games provide a context for meaningful
communication. This meaningful communication
provides the basis for comprehensible input.
4. The emotions aroused when playing games add
variety to the sometimes dry, serious process of
language instruction.
5. The variety and intensity that games offer may
lower anxiety, thus making the acquisition of
input more likely.
6. Games can involve all the basic language skills,
i.e., listening, speaking, reading, and writing, and
a number of skills are often involved in the same
game.
7. Games also help the teacher to create
contexts in which the language is useful and
meaningful.
8. Games are highly motivating, entertaining
and challenging because they are amusing
and interesting.
9. They encourage students to interact and
communicate.
10.Games help students to make and sustain the
effort of learning.
11.They can give shy students more opportunity
to express their opinions and feelings.
12.They also enable learners to acquire new
experiences within a foreign language.
13.Games encourage, entertain, teach, and
promote fluency.
14.Games help learners recall material in a
pleasant, entertaining way.
15.Games bring in relaxation and fun for students,
thus help them learn and retain new words
more easily.
16.Games usually involve friendly competition and
they keep learners interested.
17.Games encourages creative and spontaneous
use of language.
18.The emotions aroused when playing games add
variety to the sometimes dry, serious process of
language
instruction
and
promotes
communicative competence.
19.Games builds class cohesion, fosters whole class
participation and promotes healthy competition.
20.Many games can be played in small groups,
thereby providing a venue for students to
develop their skills in working with others.
21.The team aspect of many games can encourage
cooperation and build team spirit.
When to Use Games?
Games are often used as short warm-up activities
or when there is some time left at the end of a
lesson.
Elicitation
Techniques
Questioning
• Questioning is the most effective activation
technique used in teaching, mainly within
initiation-Response- feedback pattern. In
many situations, the teacher uses different
types of utterance (a statement, an
incomplete sentence or an order) to elicit an
oral response from the student(s). In other
words, the teacher’s questions are not always
realized by interrogatives.
The teacher asks questions for many reasons:
― To check the students’ understanding.
― To encourage them to be more active.
― To elicit some information from the
students(facts, ideas, opinions………etc).
― To stimulate thinking.
― To involve them in teaching (make them
participate in the presentation of new items).
― To review and practice previously known
items.
― To encourage self-expression.
― To draw their attention to a certain topic.
― To provide a certain input via a good student
( the teacher should not always be the source of
information in the class).
What kinds of questions can you ask your
students?
Questions have been classified according to
various criteria or variables: whether they are”
thinking level the teacher tries to develop,
whether they are closed or open-ended.
Display and genuine questions:
Display questions
Display questions: are those, which the teacher
asks. Yet, he knows their answers in advance.
Display questions have other objectives; e.g.
pointing out that the student has done something
wrong:
—What are you doing, Nadein?
The student, here, feels that she is about to
be in trouble for doing ‘nothing’.
—Are you a student?
The teacher directs the student’s attention
that her behavior is not accepted from a
student.
Genuine questions
Genuine questions: the teacher really wants to
know a certain answer; he elicits information from
the student(s):
―Have you been to Alex, before?
―What did you see there?
―What can you see in this picture?
Closed and open-ended questions
Closed questions
Closed questions require a single right answer.
The student is usually involved in convergent
thinking collecting previously-learned information
or reorganizing it in order to reach to one correct
answer. In so doing, he recalls prior knowledge. In
some cases, the students are required to analyze
this information or apply it to solve a certain
problem; some problems need convergent
thinking leading them to any one solution.
Open-ended questions
Open-ended questions, on the other
hand, have different right answers. Many
answers are possible. They lead to
divergent thinking. Divergent thinking
includes evaluative questions and other
questions that require imagination and
creativity , e.g.,
—What might have happened if the world
is one country?
Question forms
Linguistically, questions are classified into:
1-Yes / No questions:
Is this a picture?
2-Or questions:
Was he born in London or Egypt?
3-Wh- questions: They begin with Who, What,
Whom, Whose, Which, Where, When, Why,
How….etc.
4-Question-tags or tag questions:
You are a student, aren’t you?
Guidelines for effective questioning:
Your questions should be clear, in the sense that
the learners can immediately grasp what the
question means and what kind of answer is
required. Therefore, when the teacher asks a
question and has no response, he should use
alternative question; simpler. He can simplify the
question by putting in into other words or
breaking it into simpler questions.
If your students provide inappropriate
responses, avoid passive reactions; the
students should be sure that their responses
will be dealt with respect and will not be put
down even if they say something
inappropriate.
―Don’t ignore partly correct answers. You
should refer to the correct part and identify
the incorrect part in a positive way; you can
say:
That’s almost right. Can you now listen to
another answer?
— Don’t be ridiculous when a student provides
incorrect response. Help him to save face
without accusing him of being lazy or stupid.
You can reply in different ways:
•No, that’s not correct, but I’m glad you
mentioned it.
•No, that’s not what I want, but it is an
important point.
― Direct your questions to the whole class
instead of individual pupils. After asking a
question, pause briefly and then name a pupil.
In this way, everyone has a chance to think in
the question.