HCMC UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH – ELT SECTION
English Language Teaching
Methodology
v
üClear-cut teaching steps
üUseful sample lessons
üInteresting games and
supplementary activities
For Internal Use Only
Teaching Language Components
TEACHING PRONUNCIATION
I. INTRODUCTION
 The importance of pronunciation
• Pronunciation is of paramount importance, since successful communication
cannot take place without correct pronunciation.
• Pronunciation is necessary for both comprehensible and effective speech and for
the learning of new forms in an L2.
 The aspects
The concept of pronunciation includes:
1) sounds: In British English 44 phonemes are generally recognized (20 vowels and
24 consonants). According to these symbols, words can be transcribed.
2) stress
3) intonation
Good pronunciation = accurate reproduction of phonemes, correct stress and intonation.
 General issues on teaching pronunciation
 The teaching of pronunciation should focus on the students’ ability to identify
and produce English sounds themselves. Students should NOT be led to focus
on reading and writing phonetic transcripts of words, especially young students,
because phonetic transcripts are more abstract and less meaningful.
 Stress and intonation should be taught from the very beginning.
 Teacher’s responsibilities: understanding phonetics theoretically and pedagogically.
 Common pronunciation problems that are likely to occur:
Pronunciation problems will of course vary greatly from one country to another.
Common problems that are likely to occur:
- Difficulty in pronouncing sounds which do not exist in the Vietnamese language, e.g.
for many students, the consonants //, / and the vowel //;
- Confusion of similar sounds in L2, e.g. /i:/ and /i/, or /b/ and /p/;
- Confusion of similar sounds in L1 /t/;
- Use of simple vowels instead of diphthongs, e.g. /i:/ instead of //;
- Difficulty in pronouncing consonant clusters, e.g. /desks/, /fif/;
- Tendency to give all syllables equal stress, and a 'flat’ intonation.
II. TEACHING INDIVIDUAL SOUNDS
a. Focussing on a difficult sound: There is normally no need to teach the sounds of
English individually; students are able to 'pick up' the sound system of the language by
listening to the teacher (or other voices on cassette) and by practising words and
structures. However, there may be particular sounds or sound combinations which
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students find difficult, or students may simply make mistakes in pronunciation without
being aware of it. In such cases, it is useful to focus on the sound or group of sounds
which is causing the difficulty.
b. When is pronunciation taught?
• Whole lesson: spending the whole lesson on pronunciation
• Discrete slots: spending some portion of the lesson on pronunciation
• Integrated phases: teaching as an integral part of the teaching of skills
• Opportunistic teaching: teaching when pronunciation becomes a problem to
learning
c. Teaching a sound
1. Presenting: The basic steps:
-
-
Say the sound clearly in isolation (so that students can focus on it).
Say it in one or two words.
Students repeat the sound, in chorus and individually.
If students have difficulty in producing a particular sound (usually because it does
not exist in the native language), it is often very useful to describe how it is
pronounced, as long as this can be done in a way that students understand (using
simple English or their own language).
If students confuse two similar sounds, it is obviously useful to contrast them so
that students can hear the difference clearly.
Writing words on the board is not necessary, and could confuse the students - the focus
should be on pronunciation, not on spelling.
2. Practising:
 Minimal pairs
Minimal pairs are pairs of words which only differ in one feature, e.g. sing, song; park,
bark; loose, lose; ship, sheep. They can be used to focus on differences in vowel or
consonant sounds.
A) Aural drill (practice identifying the sound)
1) One/Two drill: Listen to the word, if you hear it has sound //, say one; if you
hear it has sound /i:/, say two.
Board:
(1)

T: sheep
T: ship
(2)

Ss: two
Ss: one
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2) Same/Different Drill: Listen to two words. Say same if they have the same sound; say
different if they have different sounds.
e.g.:
T: bit/beat
T: beat/beat
T: bit/bit
Ss: different
Ss: same
Ss: same
3) One/Two/Three Drill: Listen to three words. Say the numbers of two words that are
the same.
e.g.: T: bit – bit – beat
bit – beat – bit
Ss: one – two
Ss: one – three
4) Odd one out Drill: Which one is different from the other three? Say the number.
e.g.: T: bit – bit – bit – beat
Ss: Number four
B) Oral practice: (chorally & individually)
- say the sound alone.
- say the sound in words of different positions.
- say the sound in phrases.
- say the sound in sentences.
e.g.:
Sound alone: / /
Sound in words: ship, washing, wash
Sound in phrases:
a big ship, washing the dishes
Sound in sentences:
She saw a big ship.
She’s washing the dishes.
(Combination of two similar sounds:
She sells the seashells on the seashore.
Please, sit in this seat.
Her skirt caught on the cot.)
Other exercises:
1) Missing words
Say a word to complete the sentences.
Children love to ……………. games.
Black and white together make …………
After April comes ……………
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2) Making sentences
Make three sentences. In each sentence, use one word from group 1and one word from
group 2:
Group 1
Group 2
last
fast
calm
farm part
rabbit
dark black glad
party jam
marvelous
bad
car
hat
man
e.g. She drives a black car.
III. STRESS
 Stress refers to the amount of force with which a sound or syllable is uttered.
 Weak forms
Most words with two or more syllables have one stressed (or 'strong') syllable and two or
more unstressed (or 'weak') syllables.
Certain unstressed words change their pronunciation from the way they are said when
they are in isolation, and have a different phonetic form in the sentence or phrase. These
are prepositions, auxiliary and model verbs, pronouns, others – who, that (as a
relative pronoun), a, an, the, some, and, but, as, than, there, not, unless the word is being
specially stressed (e.g. 'John and Mary - both of them'). Reducing vowels in this way is a
feature of normal spoken English - it is not 'uneducated' or 'substandard' usage.
Most of these words, when they are not in a stressed position, which is always at the end
of a sentence and sometimes at the beginning, are said weakly and the vowel sound is
usually reduced to schwa //.
In connected speech (when we say sentences rather than single words), many more
vowels become reduced because complete words are unstressed. Look at these examples:
I ate bread and cheese. /a 'et 'bred n 'i:z/
Look at us. /'lk t 's/
 Word stress
1. a syllable can carry primary stress, that is to say strong stress. The syllable is
longer, louder and said with more breath effort.
2. A syllable can be unstressed. In other words, it is said very quickly, lightly and
with very little breath effort.
3. A syllable can carry secondary stress. This syllable is said with more breath effort
than 2 but less than 1.
 Sentence stress
In a normal English sentence certain words are stressed and certain words are unstressed.
Normally stressed are content words – the words that are essential for conveying a
message. These are nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and demonstratives.
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Normally unstressed are form words - the grammatical or structure words. These
words are not essential to the communication of a message.
E.g.: I ‘saw your ‘brother ‘yesterday.
Would you ‘like a ‘glass of ’beer?
Can I ’carry your ‘suitcase?
I must be ‘going.
My ‘wife’s ‘waiting for me at the ‘corner of the ‘street.
 Techniques to teach stress
1. Using your voice:
Saying the sentence, exaggerating the difference between stressed and unstressed
syllables.
2. Using gestures:
- Thump the air when saying the stressed syllable.
- Punch the palm of his other hand.
- Clap your hands.
- Bang your hand against something.
3. Using blackboard:
- Using circles or squares: e.g.:


a kilo of sugar


- Underlining the stressed syllables: a kilo of sugar
- Writing the stressed syllable in heavier letters: a KIlo of SUgar. (This technique is
often used in textbooks, and would be suitable for wallcharts.)
- Using different colours: a kilo of sugar
- Using upper stroke like in the dictionary: a ‘kilo of ‘sugar
IV. INTONATION
 Functions of intonation
Basically, there are two functions of intonation:
1. It indicates grammatical meaning.
He lives in London. Do you come from London?
He lives in London? You come from London?
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2. It indicates functions.
Sorry! (Apology)
Sorry? (please repeat.)
3. It can change meaning.
I want to see your son ‘Harry. (the son is called Harry)
I want to see your ‘son, Harry. (the speaker is talking to Harry, who has a
son, whose name we do not know.)
4. It indicates the speaker’s attitude.
Really? may be an expression of great surprise or merely a polite conversation
oilier, depending on the intonation pattern.
In some cases, both grammatical meaning and attitude are conveyed by the
intonation pattern alone.
A: I’d like a drink.
B: - You ‘would? (simply a conversation oiler - asking for confirmation of
the statement.)
- You ‘would. (here annoyance and criticism is conveyed. The
implication is: ‘Well, that’s typical of you. You always want a drink.’)
It is clear that the attitudinal function of intonation is a complex area, as it is connected to
the individual personality and it reflects the culturally-bound factor, e.g. it is nearly
impossible to make an introverted student produce an exclamation of great surprise when
maybe he would not do such thing in his mother tongue. Therefore teacher should
concentrate on the use of intonation to convey grammatical meaning and limit the
attitudinal function to listening and recognizing at low levels and include only a limited
amount of production at more advanced levels.

Intonation patterns
For teaching oral English at a fairly low level, teachers need to be aware of two basic
intonation patterns:
- Rising tone: used in asking Yes/No questions, and to express surprise, disbelief, etc.
The voice rises sharply on the stressed syllable.
Really? 
-
Is he your friend?  Do you want some tea?
Falling tone: used for normal statements, commands, and for WH-questions. The
voice rises slightly earlier in the sentence, and then falls on the key word being
stressed.
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Open your book, please. 
How long have you been learning English? 
 Practising stress and intonation
Mood and attitude
The teaching of intonation in the early stages should concentrate on the grammatical
and not the attitudinal function. We do not accept a dull, monotonous disinterested tone.
We do want the learners to sound polite, friendly, and interested. However, students are
often shy and embarrassed rather than unable to produce the required pattern. The
teacher needs to create the right atmosphere in the classroom to overcome the students’
reticence.
Mood cards: one indicating a bored, uninterested mood. The other a bright, lively,
enthusiastic mood. These act as aids to correction whenever the dull intonation pattern
is produced.
Mr. Grumpy
Mr. Happy
The easiest way for students to practise stress and intonation is by repetition. If the
focus is on pronunciation, traditional 'repetition drills', which are often boring for
students to do, can be made interesting and challenging; students are not asked simply to
repeat a sentence, but to repeat it using a 'particular stress and intonation pattern’. For
this to be effective, it is important for teachers to:
- give a good model of the sentence themselves; saying it at normal speed, making a
clear difference between stressed and unstressed syllables, and using natural intonation;
- indicate the stress and intonation clearly, using gestures;
- make sure that the students pay attention to stress and intonation when they repeat the
sentence.
 Back-chaining technique
One way to help students use natural intonation is to practise saying the sentence in
sections, starting with the end of the sentence and gradually working backwards to the
beginning, e.g.: living here / been /living here / have you been /living here / How long
have you been living here? This technique is known as back-chaining.
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Back-chaining can be used as part of a repetition drill.
i) Say the whole sentence. Show the stress and intonation using gestures. Students
listen.
T: Listen. How long have you been living here? How long have you been living
here? How long have you been living here?
ii) Students repeat, starting from the end.
T:
Ss:
T:
Ss:
T:
Ss:
T:
Ss:
Living here. Living here. Everybody.
Living here.
Been living here.
Been living here.
Have you been living here.
Have you been living here.
How long have you been living here?
How long have you been living here?
iii) Groups of students repeat the whole sentence, then individual students.
T: (gesture to indicate a group)
G: How long have you been living here? (and so on)
V. POINTS TO BEAR IN MIND WHEN TEACHING SPEECH WORK
1. Do not distort when giving a model.
Teachers frequently try too hard to help students with pronunciation – they slow
down to such an extent when giving the model for the students to imitate that it is
distorted. While few teachers would pronounce the last part of comfortable as if it
were table, it is very common in other words to give the neutral vowel its full value
instead of reducing its value.
In the stressed patterns of normal speech weak forms and contractions occur
frequently. The danger in slowing down is that weak forms will be stressed and
contractions lengthened. If students have difficulty, for example, with a phrase like
they mustn’t’ve it is not helpful to slow this down to the point where it becomes they
must not have which is totally unnatural.
Distortion usually results from speaking in a slow, exaggerated fashion. It is better
to give students a model at natural speed, using natural pronunciation and if,
necessary, repeat it several times, rather than slow down.
2. The model must remain the same.
Exact repetition (the same words, the same structures, the same stress patterns,
and the same pronunciation) is extremely rare. The very act of repeating usually
means that an alternative stress pattern is appropriate. When repeating a model for a
student two or three times it is important for the teacher to maintain absolute
consistency. This is particularly difficult in giving examples of stress or intonation.
The best way to acquire the skill of being able to repeat the same sentence is practice
but if you find it difficult to repeat the same sentence identically several times in
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quick succession, it is useful to remember that if you say something else between – a
simple comment will do, (I’ll say that again) – it is easier to produce an identical
repeat. The interpolated comment should be short enough to distract you, but not long
enough to distract the students.
3.
Use choral pronunciation.
The technique of choral pronunciation is much under- used. Teachers feel they can
not do pronunciation with students who are not beginners, or that they can not use it
with particular classes because of the type of students involved. The technique is
useful with all students, at all levels, and save for classes containing only two or three
students, for all class sizes.
It is true that it is of particular use with larger classes, with younger students,
and with student at lower levels. This does not mean, however, that it should not be
used with other classes. It can also be a useful classroom technique even if its main
objective is not always only improved pronunciation.
Choral pronunciation serves to bring the class together and to re-focus
students’ attention on the teacher after some activity where their attention has been
elsewhere – perhaps private study of a text, or pair work. The manner in which the
choral pronunciation is done can ensure that the students’ attention is focused on the
teacher.
The technique is useful not only in bringing a class together, but in taking the
pressure off the individuals.
4 . Move around the room when doing choral pronunciation.
Advantages:
- possible to note which individual Ss are not speaking or need helps with a
particular problem.
- keeps the Ss’ concentration on the teacher.
- keeps everyone involved.
- helps to ensure that the individuals you ask after the choral repetition change
from one practice to another as you inevitably tend to ask Ss near you.
5.
Keep your language to a minimum in pronunciation practices.
- To comment on the standard of pronunciation: a smile or slight shake of the head is
sufficient.
- To invite Ss to speak: again a gesture is sufficient.
- To saying Good or something longer: a smile and a nod, or a slight shake of the head
followed by an immediate new model from the teacher to be repeated immediately by
the student who made the mistake, is quick, sufficient, amusing and avoids inhibiting
Ss.
6. Vary your criterion of ‘good’ in pronunciation practices.
While it is true that a consistent accent is easier to listen to, it is certainly neither
necessary nor desirable that many learners should achieve native speaker
pronunciation. Some students find pronunciation particularly difficult, e.g. to hear
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distinction clearly or to mimic accurately. This does not mean that they will not
reasonably successful in other areas of language learning. It is psychologically
important not to discourage those who find pronunciation difficult in the early stages
of learning. As different students progress at different rates, it is wise to accept
different degrees of variation from the ‘ideal’ target. It will help nobody if particular
students have their confidence undermined and are constantly being asked to repeat
because their pronunciation is less good than the rest of the class. A positive
atmosphere, an encouraging teacher, and time, will probably do more than overinsistent teacher correction.
The implication is that Good is to be used differently to different students; and
differently at different stages of each student’s learning.
7. Articulation is an important first step in practice.
Presenting language to the students does not guarantee that they will be able to use it
and, of course, what they are unable to pronounce is useless to them. Students will
frequently need to practice the articulation of new language before moving to more
meaningful practices. To practice if I were you I’d…., for example, begin with choral
and individual pronunciation of a number of sentences using the structure:
If I were you I’d wait / phone her/ ask him/ do it/ try
Time spent here will be more than saved in later practices which will not need to be
interrupted so often to correct pronunciation.
8. It is helpful to do articulation practices more than once.
You can not communicate anything unless you can say the words in a way which the
hearer can understand. The ability to articulate particular sounds or groups of sounds
will frequently more effective if the students do them more than once. They need to
repeat articulation practices several times in order to gain control over their
pronunciation. If you explain why you are doing such practices again and if they are
done briskly, no one will mind. Students never resent and are never bored by practices
which they see are helping them.
9. Bring variety to ‘say after me’.
Pronunciation is much more than ‘Say after me’. In real life we use language in a
wide variety of ways on different occasions – sometimes we shout, sometimes we
whisper. This can be introduced to the classroom. There are many techniques for
bringing variety to the simple ‘Say after me’: teacher- model followed by CIP. (choral
and individual pronunciation) The class can be divided into halves and speak
alternately; into lines or rows which speak consecutively. With some more
complicated pronunciation work pairs can ask and respond simultaneously, or
consecutively.
10. Don’t explain intonation, demonstrate.
Although students may find intonation difficult, the teaching of intonation is usually
most effective when the teacher uses the simplest methods of presentation. These
involve giving an exaggerated model and indicating the pitch movements of the hand,
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or by simple arrow drawings on the blackboard. The principle is clear from the two
different intonations of the single word ‘sorry’:
Sorry! (Apology)
Sorry? (please repeat)
11. Refer to stress and intonation even when not specifically teaching it.
If students do not have reasonable control of pronunciation, stress and intonation, they
will be both difficult to listen to, and easily misunderstood. For this reason, it is
important that the teacher bears in mind that stress and intonation are important, even
if doing comprehension questions after a text or the example from a grammar
practice. If students deliver the answer to the questions in a dull, monotonous or
mechanical way, that is as much a ‘mistake’ as a pronunciation or grammatical error
and should come under consideration as one of the mistakes worth correcting. If
students are to use the spoken language effectively, stress and intonation need to be
given their real place in the teaching at all times.
The impression people form of each other is frequently more dependent on intonation
than grammar, and this should be a constant reminder of the important role it should
play in teaching.
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TEACHING VOCABULARY
I. INTRODUCTION
1) What is vocabulary?
A new item of vocabulary may be more than a single word: for example, post office and
mother- in- law, which are made up of two or three words but express a single idea, so a
useful convention is to cover all such cases by talking about ‘vocabulary/lexical items’
rather than ‘words’.
2) What’s the T’s job?
Knowing:
what (select words that need presenting)
how to teach (present them in a memorable way so that students can
understand and remember them)
II. WHAT TO TEACH
II.1. Identifying lexical items
1.1 Concrete & abstract vocabulary
1.2 Passive & Active vocabulary
 Active & Passive vocabulary
We do not need to spend the same amount of time and care on presenting all new
vocabulary; some vocabulary will be more important to students than others. In general,
we can distinguish two types of vocabulary:
- Words which students will need to understand and also use themselves. We call
this active vocabulary. In teaching active vocabulary, it is usually worth spending
time giving examples and asking questions, so that students can really see how the
word is used.
- Words which we want students to understand (e.g. when reading a text), but which
they will not need to use themselves. We call this passive vocabulary. To save
time, it is often best to present it quite quickly, with a simple example. If it appears
as part of a text or dialogue, we can often leave students to guess the word from the
context.
Note that students should understand far more words than they can produce - so we
should not try to treat all new words as active vocabulary.
III. HOW TO TEACH
1. Discovered by the ss: Words are rather learnt than taught.
Advanced learners study new words in conjunction with English-English
dictionary.
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2. Presented by the teacher: Words have to be presented to the ss. so that they can
learn them.

Concrete vocab. : The meaning can be shown visually.
1. How could the meaning of these words shown?
watch
window
elbow
Answer: By simply pointing at them and saying 'Look - this is a watch', etc.
This is one way of showing the meaning of new words by showing a real object.
2. What kinds of words can be presented in this way?
Possible answers:
Anything that is already in the classroom: furniture, clothes, parts of the body. Also
many objects that can be brought into the classroom: other items of clothing (hats,
ties, handkerchiefs); food (oranges, rice); small objects from the home (soap, cups,
keys), etc.
A presentation of the word 'watch':
T: Look — this is a watch [pointing to his or her watch]. A watch. A
watch.
Ss: A watch.
T: (gesture) What is it?
Ss: A watch. (and so on)
3. How could the meaning of these words shown?
tree tractor
cow
Answer: By showing a picture. This can be done in two ways:
- By drawing a picture on the board.
- By showing a picture prepared before the lesson (a drawing or photograph)
4. How could the meaning of these words shown?
sneeze
dig
stumble
Answer: By miming, using actions and facial expressions.
5. What other words could be taught using mime?
Possible answers: Most action verbs (sit, stand, open, write); some adjectives (happy,
worried, ill).
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A presentation of the word 'sneeze':
T: Look - (mime someone sneezing) Atchoo! I've just sneezed.
Sneeze. Sneeze. Can you say it?
Ss: Sneeze.
T: Again.
Ss: Sneeze.
General points about presenting vocabulary visually (using real objects, pictures, or
mime):
- For suitable vocabulary, it is a very effective method: it is direct, it is interesting,
and it makes an impression on the class.
- Of course, not all words can be presented in this way. Vocabulary should only be
presented visually if it can be done quickly, easily and clearly.

Abstract vocabulary: The meaning can be shown by examples or situations.
Another way to show what words mean is by giving an example, using the word in a
context.
Demonstration one
Houses are buildings. This school is also a building. In big cities, there are many large
buildings' - there are hotels, and offices, and cinemas. They are all buildings of
different kinds.
Demonstration two
Some people work hard. Other people don't work hard - they are lazy. For example, I
have a brother. He is very lazy. He gets up late and then he does nothing all day. I say
to him, 'Don't be so lazy! Do some work!'
Remember:
- It is not necessary to give a complicated explanation; the meaning can be shown by
simple sentences. This can be done by making statements using the word (e.g. 'Houses
are buildings. This school is also a building.’), or by imagining an example (e.g. 'I have
a brother - He is very lazy. He gets up late, and then be does nothing all day').
- A good example should clearly show the meaning of the word to someone who does
not know it already.' So it is not enough just to say 'My brother is lazy' - it doesn't show
what 'lazy' means. We need to add, e.g. 'He gets up late, and then does nothing all day'.
- Examples are especially useful for showing the meaning of abstract words, e.g.
love, happiness, imagine, quality, impossible.
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 Some other common techniques to show the meaning of lexical items
• Concise definition (as in a dictionary, often super ordinate with
qualifications, for example: a cat is an animal which …)
• Detail description (of appearance, qualities)
• Examples (hyponyms)
• Illustration (pictures, objects)
• Demonstration (acting, mime)
• Context (story or sentence in which the item occurs).
• Synonyms
• Opposites/antonyms
• Translation
• Associated ideas
•
Collocations
• A combination of techniques can be used to show the meaning of a word.
e.g: Presenting the word 'smile':
- first drawing a picture on the board.
T: Look - he's smiling. Now look at me. I'm smiling
(show by facial expression). Smile. We smile when we are
happy. Smile. (gesture)
Ss: Smile.
T: Good. What does it mean? (students give
translation)
Discuss the different techniques used in the demonstration, and why each one is used:
- Picture on board (interesting, students remember it).
- Facial expression (gives meaning clearly).
- Examples (show how 'smile' is used as a verb).
- Translation (to make sure everyone understands).
Each technique is very quick (a few seconds), and they all reinforce each other.
Procedure:
- select new word
- choose appro. technique to show Meaning
- say the word aloud & write it on BB
- [conduct repetition if necessary]
- show Form (key transcription + stress + word class)
- write meaning: an expl. + e.g.
- (passive item: present it quickly with an example; active items: expand it with family
words, collocation and ask a question for Ss to use it.)
- [conduct repetition of all words presented]
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E.g.:
Teaching the item weather: [pictures + e.g. + L1 + collocation + Q]
-
Show 3 pictures of hot, cold & rainy weather & elicit answers from Ss.
Say word “weather” aloud two times and ask class to repeat it.
Write it on BB, give Form & ex.
-
‘weather (n)
- hot/cold/rainy weather
- The weather in Britain is varied.
Give meaning by asking 1 st to translate whole ex. sentence into L1.
Show a picture of the chart of weather forecast & write it on BB.
‘weather ‘forecast (n)
-
Ask one Q:
Do you like cold or hot weather?
What kind of weather do you like most?
- [Conduct repetition of new words, example sentences, collocations in chorus &
individually, using back-chaining technique].
Another e.g.: [real thing + expl. + e.g.+ contrast + Q]
- point to a picture/real object of a laptop & say:: This is a kind of a small computer.
We can take it here & there easily. It’s a laptop. A laptop.
- Say ‘a laptop” aloud once/twice.
- Write it on BB: laptop
- Give key phonetic symbols, stress, word class & write an explanation on BB:
laptop (n) = a kind of a small computer
- Contrast it with a desktop: (show a picture of a desktop)
- Ask a Q: Is a laptop more or less expensive than a desktop?
- Conduct repetition of new words, example sentences, collocations in chorus &
individually, using back-chaining technique.
Some points to bear in mind:
 present the words in spoken form first, otherwise your ss will try to pronounce
the words as they are written.
 Teaching Form & Gram. of word (regular/irregular verbs; Vi/Vt, noun plurals,
etc.)
 Teaching Meaning:
Passive vocab: present them quickly, with a simple example.
Active vocab.: Showing how words are used in context. (giving examples)
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
Teaching Collocation (words can be used together/ word partnership) &
family words.
e.g.:
make a cake
do exercises
listen to music
be fond of
to compete  competition  competitor  competitive

Asking a Q
IV. ASKING A QUESTION
A. The teacher has just presented the word 'market'. Now she is asking questions using the
new word. What is the purpose of this?
The purpose of questions of this kind:
- They help the teacher to be sure that students really understand the word.
- They give the students more examples of how the word is used, in a way that
involves the class.
- They give a chance to practise other language (big, small, present simple tense,
cook, etc.).
Questions using a new word should be simple and require only short answers.
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B. Another example:
The teacher has just taught the word shoplift, and given the example sentence:
The kids were caught shoplifting sweets.
Possible Qs:
T: Can people shoplift a watch or a washing machine?
T: Is shoplifting used about very big things or about very valuable things?
T: What things can people shoplift in a supermarket?
V. REVISION ACTIVITIES
As with teaching anything else, revision is essential; otherwise the new words you have
taught will easily be forgotten.
Below are some common activities that can help students review vocabulary:
1. a) Matching/ Association
Match the word in column A with the meaning in column B.
1. schedule
a. opposite of “polite”
2. rude
b. without words
3. non-verbal
c. program of work to do
b) From the parallel lists of words given, select pairs which have a natural association.
e.g.:
garden
coach
students
flowers
holiday
uniform
resorts
grass
classrooms
c) Write down as many words as you can think of which have a natural association with: e.g.
house; sea; fruits
2. Odd man out
Which one is different from the other three?
see
smell
windy
sunny
century
decade
cooker
repairer
feel
tidy
daytime
worker
3. Word dominoes: Language 
Homework  Key
English 
say
cloudy
fortnight
painter
4. Word bingo: (several word cards given with words in different positions. T reads
words at random, Ss cross them out. The one who can cross out all the words calls out
“Bingo”. He is the winner.)
5. Listing:
Cutlery, Vehicles, Furniture, Buildings (Ss list as many words as poss.
within a very short time.)
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6. Classification/ grouping:
Put the words under the right headings:
family
fruits
jobs
office facilities
son-in-law, pear, receptionist, peach, cook, grandparents, keyboard, clips, cousin,
architect, grapes, highlighter, corrector, kiwi, niece, mouse, …
7. Crosswords
8. Games: word network, word square, slap the BB, rub and remember, remember and
add, jumbled words, etc.
VI. POINTS TO BEAR IN MIND WHEN TEACHING VOCABULARY
1. A vocabulary item can be more than one word.
Two speakers of English meeting for the first time will both say: How do you do.
How do you do is a complete phrase with a single meaning – linguists would call it a
lexical item. The meaning of this group of words can not be deduced from the
meaning of the individual words from the phrase – how, for example, at first suggests
that the phrase will be a question but since both speakers use the same phrase, it is
quite clear that neither is a question, each is a greeting. Such groups of words are
common and, rather than keeping a list of ‘words’ in a ‘vocabulary book’, students
need to be encouraged to keep list of words and phrases (i.e. lexical items) with, in
some cases, direct equivalents in their own language but in other cases simply a
description of how the phrase is used – in the case above a definition such as ‘a
greeting used by both speakers when meeting for the first time in fairly formal
circumstances‘.
Such phrases are of great importance in both the written and spoken language and
students should be encouraged to see them as whole items. Further examples are
phrases such as
Cheer up!
if you like
put up with,
I’m afraid not.
Look out for (some one)
Some phrases may be seen as part of the structure of the language, and phrases which
can be learned as single units. An example of such a phrase would be: as soon as
possible.
In many cases students can be helped to achieve greater fluency by learning certain
phrases as complete items at a relatively early stage in their learning program, while
perhaps, only seeing or understanding their structure at a later stage.
The important thing is to develop in the students an understanding that languages do
not consist of ‘words’ with equivalents from one language to the other.
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2. Do not discuss the structure of the lexical items.
Some years ago teaching was almost entirely based on structural progression.
Students learn do you want … ? relatively early in their course, because it was an
example of a question made in the present simple, which comes early in most
structural courses. It was only relatively late in their course that they learn would you
like….? because this was ‘a conditional’ which, in turn, came relatively late in
structurally oriented courses.
One of positive results of the notional functional approach to language teaching has
been to point out that students frequently need certain language items for practical
communication relatively early in their course even if these items may seem
structurally quite complex. It is now quite common for phrases such as would you like
to appear in Book 1 under a functional heading. There is no difficulty about this
providing teachers explain the phrase by explaining its function - ‘We use this when
we want to offer somebody something - would you like a cup of tea? or when we want
to invite them to do something – would you like to go to the cinema this evening?’
Such explanation is sufficient, and teachers must resist the temptation to draw
attention to the structural features of the phrase which is being taught as a lexical
item at that stage of the course.
3. There is a difference between active and passive vocabulary.
Well- educated native speakers ‘know’ many thousands of words in the sense that
when they hear or read them they cause no difficulty in understanding. At the same
time the people probably use only about 2,000 words in normal daily conversations.
Somewhat surprisingly, native speakers command of as small a vocabulary as 2,000
words means that you can function quite happily within an English speaking
community - providing the command is comprehensive, and the 2,000 items are the
right 2,000!
‘Learning’ more and more vocabulary items does not necessarily increase a person’s
fluency. By definition, the extra items are less and less useful. Despite this obvious
fact, teachers, and even more students, feel that increasing their vocabulary will
increase their fluency – either in speech or in writing. This is very far from the truth.
Knowing a vocabulary item is not a simple process – it means much more than simply
memorizing the word. From the receptive (passive) point of view, it means
recognizing its meaning when it occurs in context – a relatively simple process. For
students to add the word to their active vocabularies they need to know the contexts in
which it can occur, the possible and impossible collocations of the word (words it can,
or can not co – occur with) as well as more details of the connotational meaning of the
word. In a very simple sense, little and small ‘mean the same thing’ – most students
of English have no difficulty understanding the sentence: which would you like – the
big one or the small / little one? Even such ‘simple’ words, however, present
difficulties for active use – it is possible to say what a pretty little dress, but not what
a pretty small dress
The message for the teacher is that in dealing with ‘new words’, it is helpful to guide
students towards those words which will help them to add to their active vocabularies,
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and to distinguish those for students from the much larger number of passive items.
At the beginning of most conventional language courses, all the words which are
taught are intended to be acquired for active use; later, at intermediate and advanced
levels, most of the words students meet will only be needed for passive use. This
change in the nature of the vocabulary they are learning is rarely made clear to
students.
In more modern courses, particularly those which emphasize listening skills based on
authentic material even early in courses, a distinction between active and passive
language must be made at a much earlier stage. It is an important part of the listening
process that students learn to understand items which they do not need to add to their
active vocabulary.
3. Explain difference of meaning, not meaning.
Understanding or explaining ‘what something means’ is more complicated than
teachers or students sometimes recognize. There is a temptation, for example, for
teachers to ‘explain’ a word by a direct translation. It is exceptionally rare for a word
in one language to have a direct equivalent in another. Much translation –based
teaching ignores this, and encourages the idea of simple equivalents.
Language is a system and each word has its meaning defined in relation to other
words. This insight leads to an easier, more effective and theoretically sounder way of
explaining. It is always more helpful to explain difference of meaning rather than
meaning itself. If the reader is in any doubt then try to explain the meaning of bush. It
is easy if done visually and contrastively.
tree
bush
The principle is that contrastive explanation is easier, more efficient, and most
importantly of all, reflects the real nature of language.
4. Words are often best taught in groups.
An individual word in a language frequently acquires a meaning because of the
relationship between it and other words. Awareness of certain kinds of relationship
makes explaining vocabulary easier for the teacher, and learning it simpler for the
students. Here are some important relationships:
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a. synonyms
Though words may have similar denotative meaning (they represent the same
concept) their connotational meanings often differ. Sometimes, however, it is possible
for the teacher simply to say ‘enormous’ means the same as ‘very large’.
b. antonyms: these are often thought of as ‘opposites’ such as hot/ cold. It is
important for teachers to remember that not hot, does not always mean cold;
sometimes it is a question of degree. In these cases students usually start by learning
the extremes and later learn the intermediate words: hot – warm- cool – cold.
c. complements: Here two words exist and one automatically excludes the other
– single/ married. In this case, it is possible to explain by saying ‘single’ means ‘not
married’.
This idea maybe extended to groups of incomplete words – each is defined by being
‘not the others’: morning/ afternoon / evening / night. Obviously it is best to teach
such words in groups, as the meaning of one depends directly on the meaning of the
others.
d. converses: Each of the pair of words implies the other: parent/ child,
employer/ employee. Again, such words are best explained together.
e. hyponyms: car, van, bus, lorry are hyponyms of vehicle. Often, such words
are difficult to handle without translating. It is not much help to be told a carnation is
a kind of flower. If you want to know the meaning of the word, you want to know
what kind of flower. In such cases translation is often necessary.
These theoretical ideas may often be usefully extended by the idea of an Area of
Vocabulary. If, for example, students are to do some work on traffic, does it make
sense to pre – teach the vocabulary and lexis associated with the topic? Because many
words are defined by their relationship to other words, it is easier to teach vocabulary
in ‘area’ than through lists of isolated items.
5. Vary the way you explain.
a. Demonstrate: There is something ridiculous about providing a translation or
explanation of words such as stagger, chuckle. If the teacher does give a verbal
explanation, it should at least be accompanied by a physical demonstration. The
demonstration both helps to make the meaning clearer, and helps to fix the word in
the students’ minds. If every word is ‘explained’ in the same way – either by
translation or verbal explanation, they merge into a sea of language in which it is
difficult to distinguish individual items. Demonstration highlights a particular word
and helps associate it in the students’ mind with both visual and aural memories.
b. Use the real thing: Teachers become so pre- occupied with teaching that
sometimes they explain, or even draw on the blackboard things which are
immediately available in the room. Sometimes the explanation is no more
complicated than pointing!
c. Draw or sketch: Teachers do not need to be artists to make simple sketches
which illustrate meaning.
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d. Use the blackboard to show scales or grade: Words like cool, orange
(color), or probably may be explained by presenting them with groups of related
words.
hot - warm- cool – cold
red- orange – yellow
certainly - definitely
probably - possibly
e. Antonyms: There are two problems for using a synonym to explain a new
word – firstly there are very few exact synonyms within the language and, as
mentioned above, it is easy to give the wrong impression by, for example, equating
little and small. Secondly, in most cases it is extremely difficult to find a synonym
which is simple enough to help the student – there is little point in simply providing
another new word to explain the one the student does not understand.
It is usually much easier to offer explanation of the kind Rude means not polite.
It is worth mentioning that the explanation given here are not exact definition of the
word – the level of the explanation must be suitable to the students’ level of English
at the time so that dictionary – like accuracy can often be counter – productive.
f. Synonyms: It is still helpful if teachers remember to say it is similar in
meaning to …, rather than it means the same as …, the former phrase helps to build in
the student’s mind the idea that language consists of choice, that words do not mean
the same as each other, the second undermines this important attitude.
g. The dictionary: too often teachers forget that it is the students who are
learning and, in general, the more the students are involved in the process the more
successful that is likely to be. Texts should not contain very large number of new
words so there should not be a great number of new words at any one time. One
technique for explaining which teachers too frequently overlook is asking the class
whether anybody knows the word – individual students do learn things outside the
classroom – and if not, asking one or more students to look the word up in a
dictionary (at lower levels a bi- lingual dictionary; at higher levels a mono –lingual
dictionary) In this way the process of ‘ learning a new word’ also provide practice in
important learning skills – dictionary using – and, for those using a good mono –
lingual dictionary – ensures that they do have other examples for words used in
context, a note on its stress, etc.
h. Verbal explanations: some language items are best explained by being used
in a variety of contexts, with the teacher commenting on the use. It is important with
such explanations to use more than one context to avoid any incidental features of that
particular context.
This kind of explanation is particularly useful in dealing with the lexical items
common within functional teaching. Most ‘functional phrases’ are best explained by
two or three examples and a description of the function performed. It is not usually
necessary to add further explanation.
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i. Translation: although some teachers over- use this technique, it is equally true
that others under –use it. To some it is seen as boring and traditional. For some words,
however, the only sensible way to explain is by translation. – this is often the case
with certain types of technical words – measles – and for words which are ‘a kind
of…’ e.g. oak.
6. Allocate specific class time to vocabulary learning.
In the hustle and bustle of our interactive classroom, sometimes we get so caught up
in lively group work and meaningful communication that we don’t pause to devote
some attention to words. After all, words are the basic building blocks of language; in
fact, survival level communication can take place quite intelligibly when people
simply string words together – without any grammatical rules applying at all. So if we
are interested in being communicative, words are among the first orders of business.
7. Help students learn vocabulary in context.
The best internalization of vocabulary comes from encounters (comprehension or
production) with words within the context of surrounding discourse. Rather than
isolating words and / or focusing on dictionary definitions, attend to vocabulary
within a communicative framework in which items appear. Students will then
associate new words with a meaningful context to which they apply.
7. Play down the role of bilingual dictionaries.
A corollary to the above is to help students to resist the temptation to overuse their
bilingual dictionaries. In recent years, with the common availability of electronic
pocket dictionaries, students are even more easily tempted to punch in a word they
don’t know and get an instant response. Unfortunately, such practices rarely help
students to internalize the word for later recall and use.
8. Engaged in ‘unplanned’ vocabulary teaching.
In all likelihood, most of the attention given to vocabulary learning will be unplanned:
those moments when a student asks about a word or a word has appeared that the
teacher feels deserves some attention. These impromptu moments are very important.
Sometimes, they are simply brief little pointers; for example, the word ‘clumsy’ once
appeared in a paragraph students were reading and the teacher volunteered:
T: Okay, ‘clumsy’. Does any one know what that means? [writes the word on the
board]
Ss [silence]
T: No one? Okay, well, take a look at the sentence it’s in ‘His clumsy efforts to
imitate a dancer were almost amusing.’ Now, was Bernard a good dancer?
[Mona raises her hand] Okay, Mona?
S1: Well, no. He was a very bad dancer, as we see in the next sentence.
T: Excellent! So, what do you think ‘clumsy ‘might mean?
S2: Not graceful.
T. Good, what else? Anyone?
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S3: Uncoordinated?
T: Great! Okay, so ‘clumsy’ means awkward, ungraceful, uncoordinated [writes
synonyms on the board] Is that clear now?
Ss: [most students nod in agreement]
Sometimes, such impromptu moment may be extended: the teacher gives several
examples, and/or encourages students to use the word in other sentences. Make sure
that such unplanned teaching, however, does not detract from the central focus of
activity by going on and on, ad nauseam.
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TEACHING GRAMMAR
I. INTRODUCTION
1.1 What is grammar?
Grammar describes how we combine, organize and change words and parts of words to
make meaning. We use rules for this description.
Grammar rules also describe grammatical structures, i.e. the arrangement of words into
patterns which have meaning. The rules for grammatical structures use grammatical
terms to describe forms and uses. ‘Form’ refers to the specific grammatical parts that
make up the structure and the order they occur in. ‘Use’ refers to the meaning that the
structure is used to express.
1.2 The importance of structures: We can use one structure to make
many different sentences; so if students learn the main structures of English, it will help
them greatly to speak and to write the language.
1.3 Structures and examples
Look at this sentence on the board:
I'd like to visit Paris.
Identify the structure in the sentence, and underline it.
This is one example of a structure. Other examples are written in the form of a table.
I'd like to
climb Mount Everest.
earn more money.
go home.
II. WAYS OF SHOWING THE MEANING OF NEW STRUCTURES
When we present a structure, it is important to:
- show what the structure means and how it is used, by giving examples;
- show clearly how the structure is formed, so that students can use it to make sentences
of their own.
II.1 Showing meaning visually
The simplest and clearest way to present a structure is often to show it directly, using
things the students can see: objects, the classroom, yourself, the students themselves,
pictures.
Now look at a technique for presenting the structure 'too … (adjective) ... to …'
T: [point to the ceiling] What's that?
Ss: The ceiling.
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T: [reach up and try to touch it] Look – I’m trying to touch it. Can I touch it?
Ss: No.
T: No, I can't. Because it's too high. It's too high to touch. Too high. The ceiling's too high to touch.
(say this sentence again in the students' own language)
Here is the second demonstration, to show how you could present the same structure
using a blackboard drawing. Draw this on the board:
T: Look at this. Is it light or heavy?
Ss: Heavy.
T: Yes, it's heavy. How heavy is it?
Ss: A hundred kilos.
T: That's right. It's very heavy. Could you lift it?
Ss: No.
T: No. of course you couldn't. It's too heavy. It's too heavy to lift.
II. 2 Showing meaning through a situation
It is not always possible to show the meaning of a structure visually, using what is in
the class. Another way of showing meaning is to think of a situation from outside the
class, in which the structure could naturally be used. The situation can be real or
imaginary.
1. This is a demonstration of how to use an imaginary situation to present a more
advanced structure: 'There's no point in . . .-ing':
T: Listen. Imagine you are with a friend. You're going to visit your uncle, who
lives quite near. Your friend says, 'Let's go by bus'. What will you say? Yes or
no?
Ss: No.
T: Why?
Ss: Because he lives near. Yes, he lives nearby. So you might say, 'We can walk
there in 15 minutes. There's no point in going by bus'. There's no point in doing
it. No point, (say this again in the students' own language) There's no point in going
by bus.
2. Continue your demonstration by giving other examples:
T: Here's another example. You want to read a book. But I know it isn't a good
book. I might say to you, ‘Don’t read that book. There's no point in reading it it isn’t at all interesting'. Another example: You have a bicycle, and you are
going to clean it. But I know the weather is going to turn bad, so it would get
dirty again. What could I say? There's . .. Yes?
Ss: There's no point in cleaning the bicycle.
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T: Very good.
3. Comments on the demonstrations:
- By giving several different examples, the teacher helps the class to build up a clear idea
of what the structure means and how it is used.
- After giving a few examples, the teacher can just give the situation and try to get the
students to give the example. This checks how well the students have understood, and
also helps to involve the class more.
II. 3 Showing form
As well as making it clear how a structure is used and what it means, it is also important
to show clearly how it is formed. There are two basic ways of doing this:
- By giving a clear model and asking students to listen and repeat two or three times, for
example
T: Listen. It's too heavy to lift. It's too heavy to lift. (gesture for repetition)
Ss: It's too heavy to lift.
The aim of doing this is just to give students the 'feel' of the structure, and especially to
make them familiar with the way it sounds. It should not be continued for too long - a
few repetitions by the whole class, perhaps followed by one or two repetitions by
individual students.
- By writing the structure clearly on the board. Say the words as you write them, and
underline the 'fixed' part of the structure:
It's too heavy to lift.
An alternative technique is to get the students to tell you what to write. Get students to
‘dictate' it to you and write it . (Prompt them with questions: 'What's the first word? And
then?'). This has the advantage of involving the class and focusing their attention on the
structure.
II. 4 Steps for presenting a structure
i) Draw the pictures and give the example.
ii) Give a model and ask the class to repeat.
iii) Ask individual students to repeat the sentence.
iv) Write the-sentence on the board.
v) Explain how the structure is formed.
vi) Ask the class to copy the sentence.
vii) Give other situations and examples.
Note: Many variations are possible, e.g. the teacher could give several different
examples at the beginning, or could write the structure on the board before asking the
class to say it. Many of the stages could be left out. It would be important to give the
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situation and example (which could be done without pictures), and to give a clear model
(although the class could just listen instead of repeating). Writing the sentence on the
board would also be important, but it might not be necessary to explain the structure or
ask students to copy it - this would of course depend on the type of class.
Here is a demonstration of how the main stages might appear in practice.
Situation and example to show meaning
T: (drawing picture) Look, see this woman. What's she doing?
Ss: Waiting for a bus.
T: Yes. Look, it's four o'clock. She's just started waiting.
(drawing second picture) What's the time now?
Ss: Five o'clock.
T: Yes - and look, the bus is coming. But the woman's been waiting for a long time. How long?
Can you tell me?
Ss: One hour.
T: That's right. She's been waiting for an hour.
Model the structure
T: Listen. She's been waiting for an hour. Let's say it together. For an hour.
Ss: For an hour.
T: She's been waiting for an hour.
Ss: She's been waiting for an hour.
Model the example on the board
T: Now, let's write it. Who can tell me? (write 'She's) She's .. . What comes next?
Ss: Waiting.
T: Not yet - before that.
Ss: Been.
T: Good, (write 'been') Now - what next?
Ss: Waiting.
T: That's right, (write 'waiting') And then?
Ss: For an hour.
T: Good. (write 'for an hour', and underline the structure)
Other examples
T: (draw another person, a man and a clock) Look - here's another person. He arrived at
three o'clock. What can we say about him? He's been . . .?
Ss: He's been waiting for two hours.
(and so on)
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Often, examples and situations given in textbooks are not clear enough or sufficiently
close to the students' interests. It is easy for teachers to find their own examples which
will mean more to the class and be more interesting.
- Teachers can use the situations and examples given in the textbook, but present them
in their own way, before asking students to read them in their books. The class will be
far more involved if they are watching and listening to the teacher, looking at the
blackboard, and answering questions, than if they have their 'heads down' in the
textbook.
III. PRACTISING STRUCTURES
Controlled practice
1. Mechanical Practice
- A drill where there is complete control of the response; students produce the correct
form, not using the structure to express meaning.
- MD should be drilled at a rapid pace with books closed; purpose: memorise the pattern.
- Drills like these are useful only if done for a short time (a few minutes) as the first
stage of practice, just to help students to 'get their tongue round' a new structure. This
kind of practice is of limited value for three reasons:
- It is completely mechanical. Students can easily do the practice with their minds
'switched off - in other words thinking about something completely different while they
are doing it. Because it is so easy to do, it is also easy to forget.
- The teacher cannot be sure that the students understand what the words mean. It is
quite possible to do drills like these without knowing what you are saying.
- Some commonly-used kinds of mechanical drills:
Repetition
T: Let's play football.
Ss: Let's play football.
T: Let’ s go swimming.
Ss: Let's go swimming, etc.
Substitution
T: You want to play football.
Ss: Let's play football.
T: You want to go swimming
Ss: Let’s go swimming.
Single word prompts
T: cinema
Ss: Let's go to the cinema.
T: football
Ss: Let's play football.
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Picture Prompts
Free substitution
Students make up their own sentences, e.g.: Let’s go fishing.
Comments:
- The easiest way to practise the structure would be to do a repetition drill: the teacher
gives other examples and gets the class to repeat them. This might be useful as a first step
only, just to make students familiar with the structure (although this has already been
done in the presentation). It is a very limited form of practice - the students have to do
almost nothing.
- It would be more useful to use one of the other techniques, which are all different kinds
of substitution practice: the teacher gives prompts, and gets the students to give the
examples. This would keep the class more active, and give students practice in forming
the structure themselves. (Point out that the prompts can be a whole sentence, a phrase or
word, or a picture.)
- The aim at this stage of the lesson is simply to give students practice in forming or
'manipulating' the structure. All the techniques shown are very controlled kinds of
practice which would be done very quickly.
All the techniques would not of course be used together, but a teacher might use a
combination of them. Give a demonstration to show how this might be done. (Teachers
should imagine that you have just presented the structure.)
T: Now, can you make some more sentences? Listen. You want to watch television, so you say,
‘Let's watch television. Now - you want to listen to the radio. Let's ...
S: Let's listen to the radio.
T: Good. Again.
S: Let's listen to the radio.
T: You want to go to the river:
S: Let's go to the river.
T: Good. (Indicating another student) Can you say it?
S: Let's go to the river.
(and so on)
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T: Now, I'll just say a word, and you say the sentence. OK? Television.
S: Let's watch television.
T: Radio.
S: Let's listen to the radio.
(and so on)
T: Now - who can make another suggestion? Make your own sentence.
S: Let's go to the cinema.
T: Good. Another one.
S: Let's go for a walk.
(and so on)
With a large class (more than 30 students) there are two main ways to involve the whole
class in the practice and give as many students as possible a chance to respond:
- By getting responses from individual students (to be sure that the response is correct)
and then getting the whole class to repeat in chorus.
- By getting two or three students to respond in turn to each prompt (by saying 'Again'
or simply pointing). This is a good way of giving weaker students a chance to say
something.
With smaller classes there would be less need to do chorus drilling, and students could
respond individually. Note that chorus repetition is not an ideal way of involving the
class - the more chorus repetition there is, the more mechanical the practice becomes.
2. Meaningful Practice
There is still control of response although it may be correctly expressed in more than
one way and less suitable for choral drilling. Students cannot complete these drills
without fully understanding structurally & semantically what is being said. They express
meaning. Students are now concentrating on meaning rather on form, on an answer
which is true rather than correct. Teacher, therefore, should insist on both form &
content.
There are three possible ways of making practice more meaningful:
- By getting students to say real things about themselves.
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1a. Anne likes tea but she doesn't like
1b. Say true sentences about yourself:
coffee.
I like tea. or
a) folk music / pop music
What about:
I don't like tea.
a) coffee?
b) walking/swimming
b) pop music?
c) cats/dogs
c) cats?
Exercise 1a procedure: Students make sentences from the prompts, e.g. Anne likes folk
music but she doesn't like pop music.
Exercise 1b procedure: Students make true sentences, using either 'I like' or 'I don't like'.
*Comment: 1a is completely mechanical — it can be done without thinking or
understanding, e.g. what pop music is. It is also quite meaningless, and so very
uninteresting to do.
- By giving situations which imply the structure, but leave the students to decide
exactly what to say.
2a. You are a stranger. Ask about
places in the town.
2b. You are a stranger. Ask about
places in the town.
a cafe:
You want to see a film:
Is there a cafe near here?
Is there a cinema near here?
a) a grocer's shop
a) You want to buy some fruit.
b) a cinema
b) You want to post a letter
c) a fruit stall
c) You want to spend the night here.
…
…
Exercise 2a procedure: Give the prompts orally - students respond with a question.
Exercise 2b procedure: Read out each situation; students give responses. More than
one response is possible, so encourage students to think of different responses, e.g.:
a) Is there a fruit stall / a shop / a market near here?
b) Is there a post office / a post box near here?
c) Is there a hotel / a youth hostel near here?
Comment: 2a sounds natural and gives useful basic practice of the structure. But it is
mechanical - students could ask the questions correctly without any idea what they were
asking. In 2b, students must understand the situations and must think about what to ask.
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So it is more meaningful, but also more difficult than 2a as students have to provide the
names of places themselves.
- By letting students add something of their own.
3a. ‘Where are you going?’ ‘I'm going
to the station’
a) cinema
b) zoo
3b. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I'm going to the station.’
‘Why?’
c) river
'Because (I want to buy a train
ticket).'
…
a) cinema
b) zoo
c) river
…
Exercise 3a procedure: Ask the question and give a different prompt word each time,
e.g.:
T: Where are you going? cinema
S: I'm going to the cinema.
Exercise 3b procedure: Ask the questions, students answer and give a reason. They can
give any reason they like that makes sense (e.g. cinema: Because there's a good film on;
Because I want to see a film; Because I've got nothing else to do).
Comment: 3a is mechanical; the question is always the same and to answer the student
merely fits the prompt into the sentence. In 3b, the exercise becomes meaningful because
students have to add a reason, so they must understand what they are saying. It is also of
course a freer exercise, so it could be done after 3a.
IV. FREE PRACTICE (Communicative Drills)
Normal speech for communication, free transfer of learnt language patterns to
appropriate situations. Main difference between a meaningful drill and free practice is in
the latter, speaker adds new information as the real world.
Free practice gives students the chance to use the structure to express their own ideas or
to talk about their own experiences. Two kinds of topics are useful for free oral practice:
- We can get students to talk about real life (themselves, their friends, things in the
world).
- We can ask students to imagine a situation which is not real.
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e.g.
Look at the following topics. They could all be used for free practice using the
structure 'going to': in the first, students talk about real life; in the second, they
imagine a situation; and in the third, they imagine events based on a picture.
-
Talk about one of these topics.
What are you going to do at the weekend? What about your family and friends?
Choose one person in the class. Imagine it is his/her birthday soon. Everyone is going to give a
present. Say what present you are going to give, and why.
Look at the picture shown by your teacher. Imagine what each of the people in the picture is going to do
when they arrive home.
Comments
i) Activities like these can be done with quite a low level class - students only have to
make simple sentences with 'going to'. It would be important to introduce the
activity very carefully, giving instructions in the students' own language and
giving a few examples.
ii) With a large class, it may be necessary to make the activity more highly
organised, rather than done freely in groups. For example:
— The teacher could ask students in turn to give sentences, and then get students to
ask each other.
— The teacher could give a few minutes preparation time - students work alone or in
pairs and think of sentences they could say. Then the teacher asks students to give
their sentences.
iii) The aim of the activity is to get students to talk as much as possible. So the
teacher should try to 'prompt' rather than ask full questions (e.g. 'What about
you?', 'And you?', 'Lucie, ask Francoise'): the less the teacher says, the more
chance students have to speak. Let’s demonstrate this, e.g.:
T: Marie, what are you going to give?
S: I'm going to give her a book - because she likes reading.
T: Christina, what about you?
S: I'm going to give her flowers.
T: Why?
S: Because it's spring.
T: Lucie, ask Francoise.
S: Francoise, what are you going to give?
T: I’m going to give her some money - then she can buy a present for herself.
[and so on]
V. ISSUES ABOUT HOW TO TEACH GRAMMAR
1. Should grammar be presented inductively or deductively?
Generally, an inductive approach (the method of logical reasoning that obtains or
discovers general laws from particular facts or examples) is currently more in favor
because:
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•
it is more in keeping with natural language acquisition (where rule is absorbed
subconsciously with little or no conscious focus.)
•
it conforms more easily to the concept of interlanguage development in which
learners progress through possible stages of rule acquisition.
•
it allows students to get a communicative feel for some aspects of language
before getting overwhelmed by grammatical explanation.
•
it builds more extrinsic motivation by allowing students to discover rules rather
being told them.
There may be occasional moments, of course, when a deductive approach is indeed
more appropriate. In practice, the distinction is not always apparent.
2. Should we use grammatical explanation and technical terminology
in CLT classroom?
In CLT classroom now, the use of grammatical explanation and terminology
must be approached with care. We teachers are sometimes so eager to display our
hard –earned metalinguistic knowledge that we forget that our students are busy
enough just getting the language itself that the added load of complex rules and terms
is too much to bear. But clearly, adults can benefit from a bit of explaining from time
to time. So:
a. keep your explanations brief and simple. Use L1 if students can not follow an
explanation in L2.
b. use charts and other visual aids whenever possible to graphically depict
grammatical relationship.
c. illustrate with clear, unambiguous examples.
d. try to account for varying cognitive styles among your students.
e. do not get yourself tied up in “exception” to rules.
f. if you don’t know how to explain something, go not risk giving false
information. Rather, tell students you will research that point and bring an
answer back the next day.
3. Should teachers correct grammatical errors?
We have no research evidence that specifically shows that overt grammatical
correction by teachers in classroom is of any consequence in improving learner’s
language.
But we do have evidence that various other forms of attention to and treatment
of grammatical errors have an impact on learners. Therefore, it is prudent for you to
engage in such treatment as long as you adhere to principles of maintaining
communicative flow, of maximizing student self- correction and sensitively
considering the affective and linguistic place the learner is in.
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VI. TECHNIQUES FOR TEACHING GRAMMAR
1. Encourage students to see patterns.
Whenever the teacher can guide students to the perception of a pattern, the learning
load will be lighter. On the other hand, if the student is taught that something is the
pattern which in fact is not so, he is likely to be unnecessarily confused. It is the job
of textbook writers and teachers to try to draw attention to helpful patterns and, in the
modern classroom in which the student is involved in his own learning, to help the
student to discover the pattern for himself. Here are some simple examples:
Arrange the irregular verbs alphabetically:
Feel
Felt
Felt
Find
Found
Found
Fly
Flew
Flown
Forget
Forgot
Forgotten
Group the verbs according to the phonological patterns:
Free
Froze
Frozen
Speak
Spoke
Spoken
Steal
Stole
Stolen
Weave
Wove
Woven
The ability to recognize items which are similar in some way will make it easier for
the student to learn. Part of the teacher’s job is to construct and draw attention to
groups which make such similarities clear to students.
2. Good rules can help students.
An understanding of the nature of language rules helps teachers and students. A few
teachers still believe in prescriptive rules – rules which tell us what ‘should’ and’
should not ‘be possible in the language. This is a mistake. All linguists believe rules
should be descriptive – they should say how the language is used, not how it should
be used.
In a similar way all linguists are agreed that it is not sufficient to divide
language into ‘ right’ and ‘wrong’; language is more complicated than that. Full,
accurate descriptive rules will need to describe language as standard / non standard,
appropriate / inappropriate, spoken / written, formal / informal, etc. for many students
some of these distinctions are too complicated and too subtle, but for language
teachers, all are always important. For the language teacher a compromise need to be
made between the accuracy of the rule, and its accessibility. In short, a rule which is
perfectly accurate but which students cannot understand is no help to them. Equally
important, however, is that a rule which is inaccurate, even if students can understand
it, will often at a later stage in learning lead to confusion.
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Very often language teachers are so anxious that the student will understand the
‘rule’ that they lean towards accessibility at the expense of accuracy. Many teachers,
for example, teach the ‘rule’: Some in positives
Any in negatives and questions
Such a rule is nonsense as the following examples show:
I like some pop music.
I don’t like some pop music.
I like any pop music
I don’t like any pop music.
What is the clue to the use of good rules? It is first important to understand that the
rule is not just a brief verbal description. The rule is a combination of a wide range of
natural examples and verbal description. Natural examples help students to see how
the language is used; good verbal descriptions help students to understand the
significance of particular points of usage. The examples support the explanation, the
explanation supports the examples. Understanding rules is a process, in which
understanding is deepened through re – cycling examples and explanation.
3. Understanding involves examples, explanation, and practice.
Sometimes a pattern quickly emerges from examples:
A. Have you…?
A. Can you …?
B. No, I haven’t.
B. No, I can’t.
The examples reveal the structure of B’s response. Little explanation is necessary.
Sometimes, partly because of the language itself, and partly perhaps because of
mistaken ideas introduced in the student’s early learning, explicit explanation may be
much more important. Many students believe, for example, that there are two quite
different kinds of questions in English – questions with (do) and questions without
(do). If the former are taught first, the latter are ‘exceptions’. In fact, all questions
follow the same pattern and the explicit statement of a rule may help students to see
this:
To make a question invert the order of the subject and first auxiliary; if there is
no auxiliary introduce (do) as a ‘dummy’ auxiliary, and follow the basic rule.
The example illustrates the problem – the rule alone does not help the student, and
examples alone make it difficult for student to find the rule.
Understanding is a cycle which involves each of explicit explanation, example,
and practice. Each part of the cycle contributes in its own way to understanding. It is
not sufficient for students to understand intellectually; what students ‘understand’
should directly influence their language performance. This is best achieved if teachers
constantly bear in mind the important link between explanation, example, and
practice.
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4. Terminology can help or hinder.
This is a complicated idea for students because terminology can confuse as much as
help – particularly if it is not introduced as a deliberate part of the teaching program.
As already discussed, understanding involves a statement of the rule, examples and
practice. If the normal terms are used, teachers must be aware of the potential
confusion introduced by the terminology. Teachers need to approach the problem
stage by stage. First, give examples of the grammar category, and then introduce the
name. Check that students understand the name by asking students to sort examples
into those which belong to the category and those which do not. Then ask students to
divide words into category. All of this has nothing to do with students producing
language, or doing exercises. It is only ensuring that students understand, and can use
the terminology the teacher is going to use and which the students will themselves
need.
After this initial introduction of the term, the teacher should draw attention to the
difficulties. In the case of countable and uncountable nouns, this means pointing out
that a noun is not always countable or uncountable. The same noun may have a
countable meaning and an uncountable meaning. Until students have grasped this,
they do not have a clear idea of the meaning of the term.
No terminology should be taught for its own sake. It should provide teachers and
students with a convenient shorthand. It can only do that if the terminology is taught
and understood before students are expected to use it. Teachers should bear two rules
in mind:
a. if a term is introduced, time needs to be taken to ensure that students really
understand it the terminology needs to be taught as part of the lesson.
b. a term should only be introduced if it is going to help the students.
Terminology introduced to show off the teacher’s knowledge, or simply because it
sounds impressive, is dishonest and counter- productive.
5. Filling in a fill- in exercise is not enough.
Fill – in exercises assume that the sentence which is given contains sufficient context
to reveal the ‘correct’ choice to be filled in. this means that elsewhere in the sentence
there are clues to the correct answer - the part to be filled in in some way collocates
with other words in the sentence. In such circumstances, it must be necessary for the
student to say the whole sentence aloud, thereby increasing the chance of the item
being memorized correctly.
It is incorrect for the teacher to give the number of the question, and the student
simply to say the fill- in part, it is even worse for the teacher to read a sentence from
the book and pause at the gap while the student says one or two words (the fill- in)
before the teacher finishes the sentence.
Teachers may care to consider whether fill- in practices will be more effective if
exploited three times – orally in class, as written homework, and finally checked
again orally in class.
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The students need the practice. The teacher should say the number; the students
should say the complete sentence.
Students need to practise form as well use.
Language teaching based entirely on getting the forms correct becomes meaningless
and boring, and has little to do with the real nature of language. At the same time it is
difficult to be communicative if your hearer can not understand what you say!
The teaching should maintain a balance between practices which concentrate on
fluency, and those which concentrate on accuracy. On the whole, fluency practices
concentrate on why a person is speaking (function) and accuracy practices on how a
message is conveyed (structural form). A good language teaching program involves
both. Students have little difficulty in understanding that some verbs have irregular
past tense forms, or how certain questions forms are made in English. Practicing the
forms – sometimes very uncommunicatively – is a legitimate part of a well- balanced
teaching program.
6. There is place for oral and written practices.
Oral practice is natural, and ensures that a wide range of structures co –occur,
develops the ability to understand and respond quickly, and the ability to articulate –
but it is not the whole of language teaching. Written practices, where students have
time to pause, think, and consciously construct, also have an important place. As usual
in language learning, a policy of doing both activities rather than one or other, is best.
In general, it would usually best to for students first to do oral practice, then use
written practice for reinforcement and, finally, further oral free practices.
It is worth emphasizing that oral and written practices are both useful even if the
students’ main objective places the emphasis strongly on oral or written English.
Clearly, the student who needs a high level in written skills requires more written
practice than the general student, but in such a case, oral practice provides a valuable
alternative and supportive learning strategy. Similarly, for a student who requires a
high level of oral skills, some written practice provides useful support which can not
be gained through a purely oral approach.
7. Use ‘gimmicks’ to combat popular mistakes.
Some mistakes are always ‘popular’ – the third person –s, making questions, and,
for each language group, certain interference mistakes, as students carryover too
directly the patterns or vocabulary of their own language.
Such mistakes are rarely ‘important’ from a communicative point of view, but
may make the students sound odd, or may be mistakes which are heavily penalized in
tests. In these cases it is usually better to combat the mistakes by some kind of
gimmicks, rather than constantly explaining or taking a stern attitude.
Many teachers find it useful to prepare a large card containing nothing but a very
large letter S. This is kept flat on their desk and each time a student makes a third
person – s mistake, the teacher, without speaking, simply raises the card; other
teachers have a large S on the wall of their classroom and simply point to it.
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‘Popular’ mistakes can de-motivate students – ‘they know’ it is a mistake, but
continue to make it. A light – hearted method of correction of such mistakes ensures
that the mistake is drawn to the students’ attention, without depressing students
unnecessarily.
8. Use beehives with large classes.
One of the most effective techniques for large classes is the beehive drill. Such
practices work best in classes who are sitting in rows. A clear model is presented either orally or on the blackboard:
How old are you?
I’m….
The model consists of a simple two line- dialogue. Then, simultaneously, all the
people sitting in a particular line, for example, next to the windows, ask the question
to their neighbors; their neighbors answer and, without pausing, turn to their
neighbors and ask the questions; these students answer and, without pausing, pass the
question on.
In this way six or seven pairs are involved at any one time and the whole class is
involved in saying something (two sentences each) in a practice which lasts less than
half a minute.
On the other occasions the practice starts from the opposite side of the room or
from the front or back of the classroom with the question being passed on to the
student immediately behind or in front.
Such practices are only effective if the two – line dialogue is simple, and the
model clear. The first time they are done they are often chaotic but as soon as the
class has the idea of how such practice works it is sufficient for the teacher to present
the model and then say simply: beehive practice starting, here (pointing)
The name of such practices is, of course, based on the fact that all the bees in the
hive work at the same time. It is a model which is very appropriate for the language
classroom!
9. Most of language games are structure practices.
It is characteristic of language games that the same formula is constantly
repeated. That is precisely the same characteristic that is shown by structure practices.
A simple game like hangman is easily converted into a useful structure practice.
A T H E
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Each dash represents a letter; as letters are guessed, successful guesses are filled
in, and for each unsuccessful guess part of the hanging scene is drawn. If the scene is
completed before the word, the game is lost. The game is often used to help teach the
alphabet. It can, however, be simply adapted to a very useful practice of there. Students
use this formula:
Is there a (p) in it?
There’s a (p) here.
No, there isn’t / yes, there is
there are two - , here and here.
Instead of just calling out letters, the game has the extra rule that students must
use the Is there…? formula in their questions.
Teachers working with school classes often think that ‘games’ can only be used
for a few minutes at the end of a lesson, or occasionally on Friday afternoons. Almost
all language games, with very little preparation from the teacher, can be turned into
lively and effective structure practices. Needless to say, most students, particularly in
schools, would rather play a game than do a grammar practice. Teachers should
remember that if the students are enjoying what they are doing, and it has an
underlying serious language teaching purpose, it is more likely to be effective than a
more conventional practice.
10. Free situations are important.
Most language lessons develop from controlled to free practice. Teachers like to be in
control of their lessons and therefore like controlled practice. The lesson moves
smoothly, can be timed carefully, and gives an impression of efficiency. Unfortunately,
there is a big gap between controlled practice and natural language use. Natural
language use involves not only knowledge of the language, but social skills, selfconfidence, the ability to improvise, etc. controlled practice is nothing more than a first
step in the teaching sequence. The free practice part of the lesson is, by definition, the
part over which the teacher has least control. The students have more chance to make
mistakes, to show that they have not learned, and to show that even if they can do
controlled practice, they have not yet developed the ability to use the language. Such
practices – situations, dialogue building, information gap – based pair work, discussion,
or writing about the student’s own interests, are an essential part of the learning process.
Such practices develop the whole range of skills which are required for effective natural
language use. In doing them, teachers must encourage such skills, and not concentrate
only on accurate structural knowledge. At the same time teachers should remember that
these are still classroom practices. Neither the teacher nor the student should expect too
much. They are an important step in the complex process which leads from structural
accuracy to spontaneous fluency.
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USING TEACHING AIDS
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.
I. WHY SHOULD TEACHERS USE TEACHING AIDS?
-
Showing visuals focuses attention on meaning, and helps to make the
language used in the class more real and alive.
Having something to look at keeps the students' attention, and makes the class
more interesting.
Visuals can be used at any stage of the lesson - to help in presenting new
language or introducing a topic, as part of language practice, and when
reviewing language that has been presented earlier. Good visual aids are not
just used once, but again and again, and can be shared by different teachers.
II. TYPES OF VISUAL AIDS
a) The teachers themselves: The teacher can use gestures, facial, expressions, and
actions to help show the meaning of words and to illustrate situations.
b) The blackboard: The teacher or students can use it to draw pictures, diagrams,
maps, etc.
c) Real objects (sometimes called 'realia'): The teacher can use things in the
classroom and bring things into the class - food, clothes, containers, household
objects, etc.
d) Flashcards: cards with single pictures which can be held up by the teacher. They
can be used for presenting and practising new words and structures, and for revision.
The teacher can draw a picture on the flashcard, or stick on a picture from a
magazine; flashcards can also be used to show words or numbers.
e) Charts: larger sheets of card or paper with writing, pictures or diagrams, used for
more extended presentation or practice. They would usually be displayed on the wall
or blackboard.
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Classroom equipment
blackboard/whiteboard
overhead projector (OHP)
cassette recorder/CD player
video recorder
computer
language laboratory
(i.e. a room where learners can listen
to recordings and record themselves)
Main teaching purpose
writing up planned vocabulary, grammar examples
and explanations
displaying prepared exercises on transparencies
(plastic sheets)
listening practice
listening practice with added visual information
grammar exercises
»
grammar drills
Blackboard/whiteboard
• writing words and ideas that come up
during ihe lesson
• drawing or displaying pictures
• building up ideas in diagrams, word maps,
etc.
• for learners to write answers
• for whole-class compositions
Video recorder
• for information gap tasks (with one learner
viewing and one just listening)
• viewing without sound and guessing the
language
• pausing and predicting the language (i.e.
saying what you think is coming next)
• with a camera, filming learners'
performance
Overhead projector
• displaying results of group work
• building up information by putting one
transparency on top of another
• covering up or gradually uncovering parts
of the transparency
• displaying pictures and diagrams on
photocopiable transparencies
Computer
• narrative building with a word processor
• supplementary materials for coursebooks
• online language tests
• using online dictionaries
• using CD-ROMs
• email exchanges
• online communication (chatting)
• online newspapers and magazines
• project work using the Internet
Cassette recorder /CD player
• presenting new language in dialogues
and stories
• giving models for pronunciation practice
• recording learners' oral performance
• listening for pleasure
Language laboratory
• pronunciation practice
• extensive listening
• monitoring and giving feedback to
individual learners
• developing speaking skills
III. USING THE BLACKBOARD
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The blackboard is one of the most useful of all visual aids - it is always available
and can be used for various purposes without special preparation. Some of the purposes
for which the blackboard can be used: presenting new words, showing spelling, giving a
model for handwriting, writing prompts for practice. Our aim in using the blackboard
should be to make things clearer to the class and help to focus their attention. So in
order to use the blackboard effectively, it is important, to develop good basic techniques
of writing on the blackboard and organising the layout of what we write.
1. Basic principles of writing on the blackboard:
- Write clearly. The writing should be large enough to read from the back of the class.
- Write in a straight line. This is easy if teachers only write across-a section of the
board, not across the whole board.
- Stand in a way that does not hide the board. Show teachers how to stand sideways,
half facing the board and half facing the class, with their arm fully extended. In this
way, the students can see what the teacher is writing, and the teacher can see the
students.
- Talk as you write. Teachers should say aloud what they are writing, phrase by phrase.
To involve the class even more, they could sometimes ask students to suggest what to
write (e.g. 'What's the next word?' 'How do I spell that?').
2. Using the blackboard in presenting and practising structures
An important use of the blackboard is to show clearly how structures are formed, and to
show differences between structures. E.g.
He played football.
Did he play football?
We can make the structures clearer in these ways:
• By underlining the important features
He played football.
Did he play football?
•
By using different coloured chalk (red, yellow and green stand out
most clearly).
•
By drawing arrows or writing numbers to show the change
in word order.
A good way of showing the different forms of a structure together is by means of a table
(sometimes called a 'substitution table').
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I’m
You’re
He’s
She’s
We’re
They’re
eating
preparing
breakfast
lunch
dinner
Keeping the attention of the class
- A. good way to involve the class would be to get students to suggest what to write
in each column (e.g. by writing 'I'm' and then getting students to give the other
forms).
- Students could be asked to copy the table as the teacher writes it.
- If the table is too long or too complex to write quickly, it would be better to write it
on the board before the lesson and cover it with cloth or paper until it is needed; or
to draw it in advance on a large piece of card.
Using the table for practice
There are many ways of using the table. For example:
- Students could read out sentences from it.
- Students could write sentences from the table in their books.
- The teacher could give situations, and ask students to make an appropriate
sentence, e.g.:
It's seven o'clock in the morning. What's Mrs Smith doing? (She's
eating breakfast.)
It's one o'clock. What are Mona and Lisa doing? (They're
preparing lunch.)
How to use simple prompts on the blackboard as a basis for practice.
Write this table on the board, line by line. As you write, talk and ask
questions, to make it clear what the table is supposed to show, e.g.:
Look, this is Eva's day. (write first line) OK - at half past six - what
does she do? {She wakes up and washes.)
(and so on)
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Different kinds of practice the prompts could be used for.
- Students make sentences from the table.
- Students ask and answer questions based on the table.
- Students make similar sentences about themselves.
Blackboard drawings
- Many teachers use the blackboard only for writing. But simple pictures drawn on the
blackboard can help to increase the interest of a lesson, and are often a good way of
showing meaning and conveying situations to the class.
- Blackboard drawings should be as simple as possible, showing only the most
important details. It is not necessary to be a good artist to draw successfully on the
blackboard — a lot of information can be conveyed by means of very simple line
drawings and 'stick figures', which are easy to draw.
- It is important to draw quickly, so as to keep the interest of the class. It also helps for
teachers to talk as they draw: in this way the class will be more involved, and will
understand the picture on the board both from seeing it and from listening to the
teacher.
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Simple blackboard drawings
How to show other expressions (e.g. surprise by raised eyebrows, anger by a frown):
How to indicate which way the speaker is facing by changing the nose (this is useful if
you want to show two people having a conversation):
How to indicate sex or age by drawing hair:
How to draw basic male and female stick figures: The body should be about twice
as long as the head; the arms are the same length as the body; the legs are slightly
longer:
How to indicate actions by bending the legs and arms:
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Places
How to indicate buildings, towns, and directions by a combination
of pictures and words:
Vehicles
How to draw vehicles and how to indicate movement:
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IV. USING REAL OBJECTS
Real objects are in many ways the easiest kind of visual aid to use in class, as they need
no special preparation or materials. Simple objects can be used not only for teaching
vocabulary but also as prompts to practise structures and develop situations.
For example, a packet of tea can be used …
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- To teach the words 'tea' and 'packet' (contrasted with other containers, e.g. a bag of
sugar, a tin of orange juice).
- To develop a description of the process of making tea: 'First you open the packet,
then you put some tea in the pot. . .' (The teacher could also bring a pot, a spoon,
etc.)
- As part of a shopping dialogue, asking about price: 'How much is a packet of tea?'
'5 cents', etc.
- To develop an imaginative dialogue, practising 'lend', e.g.:
S1: Could you lend me some tea?
S2: Yes, of course. What do you want it for?
S1: My relatives have come to visit me.
V. USING FLASHCARDS
They can be used not only to practise words, but also as prompts for practising structures.
When you use a picture, students see what meaning to express but have to find the words
themselves; this focuses their attention on meaning and prevents the activity from being
completely mechanical.
How to make good flashcards:
- They should be large enough – at least 20 x 14 cm (half a piece of typing paper).
- Pictures can be drawn, using a thick pen so that they are clear, or they can be cut
from a magazine; pictures from magazine are often more interesting to look at, but
it is difficult to find pictures which are the right size and which are simple enough.
- If possible, flashcards should be made on pieces of white card – then they can be
kept and used again.
VI. USING CHARTS
A chart (sometimes called a ‘wallchart’ or a ‘wall picture’) – a large sheet of paper or
card which the teacher can either hold up for the class to see or display on the wall or the
blackboard – can display more complex visual information, e.g. a series of pictures
telling a story, a table of different verb forms, or a diagram showing how a machine
works.
The advantages of showing the pictures on a chart, rather than drawing them on the
blackboard:
- The teacher does not have to spend time in the lesson drawing on the blackboard.
- As the chart is prepared in advance, it is possible to draw the pictures more carefully,
and also to make them more attractive (e.g. by using colour).
- The chart can be kept and used again with the same class (e.g. for review, or to
practise a different tense), or used with other classes and by other teachers.
Using charts with a reading text
With a text about how to make a kite, the teacher can have a chart showing tools needed
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and steps to follow.
- It could be shown before students read the text, as a way of
presenting the main ideas and language.
- It could be on display, while the students read, to help them
understand the text.
- It could be used for practice after reading the text, or for review
in a later lesson, e.g. the teacher could cover the words on the
chart and ask students to explain how to make a kite.
With a text about a balanced diet, the teacher can have a chart showing a table with food
groups and examples mentioned in the text.
It could be used before students read the text, in order to check the class’s
knowledge (they should of course already know the facts in their own language). The
teacher could cover the right-hand column, leaving only the names of the groups visible,
and ask students to think of examples in each group.
The teacher could give students a blank table (on pieces of paper) to complete as
they read the text. Then he/ she could show the chart afterwards as the correct answer.
It could be used later for review – the teacher could cover the chart, uncovering it
line by line as students give the information.
Displaying charts
The teacher can hold the chart up.
Two students can come out to the front and hold the chart.
The teacher can pin the chart to a wall or to the blackboard.
The teacher can hang the chart from a piece of string tied across the blackboard, using 2
nails, string and clothes pegs.
VII. USING WORKSHEETS
Worksheets are exercises written or typed on sheets of paper, which are given out to the
class and then collected at the end of the lesson so that they can be used again. The
exercises can be stuck onto or written directly on pieces of card so that they last longer
and can be stored more easily; in that case they are usually called workcards. Worksheets
and workcards can be used for oral practice in pairs or groups, or for reading and writing
practice, with students working in pairs or on their own.
Why worksheets can be useful:
- The textbook may not give enough practice, so teachers may feel it useful to add
exercises of their own.
- The exercises in the textbook may not be very interesting or may be unsuitable for
the class, so teachers may wish to adapt them to make them suit the needs of the
class better.
- Teachers may need to create special exercises because they want to organise the
class in a particular way. For example, they may want students to spend some time
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working alone at their own speed, and this will be easier to organise if students are
given individual worksheets.
- In some classes, there may not be enough textbooks for all the students, or the
teacher may have the only copy; in this case worksheets will be the main material
used by the class.
- The teacher may use worksheets simply for variety, to make a change from the
textbook and to give the students something different to look at.
Worksheets for oral practice
i) Divide the class into pairs or groups of three. Give each pair a copy of the
demonstration sheet, which gives an example of a worksheet exercise. Quickly ask
the first two questions round the class to get a range of answers. ii) Students take it in
turns to ask their partner the questions, and note down the answers on a separate sheet
of paper. When most pairs have finished, stop the activity, and take back all the
worksheets.
iii) As a round-up to the activity, ask different students what they found out from
their partner.
The advantages of using a worksheet for this activity, rather than just writing prompts on
the blackboard:
- Using a worksheet encourages students to work in pairs; their attention is
focused on the activity, not on the teacher or the rest of the class. If the
information were on the blackboard, the students would keep having to turn
round to look at it.
- Using a worksheet saves time in the lesson - the teacher does not have to
spend time writing or drawing on the blackboard- Although it takes time to
produce the worksheet, it can then be used again in different classes and
by different teachers.
- Giving out a worksheet makes a change of activity. It gives the students
something new to look at, which they have not seen before.
To be used successfully for oral practice, a worksheet must:
- Provide enough practice. The activity should continue for at least a few
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minutes, or it is not worthwhile.
- Practise language which is already fairly well known. So worksheets are most
useful as an extension to the practice in the textbook, ox for review.
- Have very simple instructions, if necessary in the students' own language.
Students must be able to do the activity without having to ask the teacher for
help.
Examples of oral exercises:
A. Practises questions with 'How much?', prices, vocabulary for clothes. Elementary
level. Preparation: Identify the articles of clothing, and ask one or two questions
round the class.
B. Practises present continuous tense (sentences and questions) with 'action' verbs.
Elementary level. Preparation: Whole exercise could be done round the class,"
with pairwork as the final stage.
C. Practises 'category' words, e.g. building, tool, reptile, crop, and the structure
'They are all . . .', and leads to freer discussion Intermediate—advanced level
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(but could be used at a lower level with simpler items,. Preparation: Could be
attempted in pairs first, then discussed with the whole class.
Worksheets for reading and writing
How the worksheets could be used in class:
- The simplest way to use them is to make enough copies of each worksheet for
every student (or for every pair of students). All the students do the activity at the
same time, working individually or in pairs. After the activity, the teacher goes
through the answers or students exchange books and check each other's work.
- Another way is to build up a set of different worksheets, with several copies of
each (they can also be written on cards so that they last longer). Different students
can then use different worksheets in the same lesson. This means that fewer
copies have to be made, and it allows students to work at their own level and their
own speed -good students can be given more difficult tasks, or can finish several
tasks in one lesson. The teacher can correct a student's work when he or she
finishes a task.
- However fne worksheets are used, students should always write on a separate
sheet of paper, not on the worksheet itself; one of the main advantages of
worksheets is that they can be collected at the end of the lesson and used again.
- Because students are working alone without much supervision by the teacher, it is
important that worksheet exercises should be simple and fairly controlled, so that
students do not make many mistakes. The instructions should be clear and easy to
understand, and if necessary should be in the student's own language.
Examples of worksheets for reading and writing:
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Building up a set of worksheets:
Materials
- The simplest way to make a worksheet is to write it on a piece of paper (a full sheet
or half sheet of typing paper), using a black pen so that it can be photocopied - or of
course to type it. This is a good method if you want to make many copies of one
worksheet to give out to the whole class {e.g. for oral practice).
- If you want to build up a set of different activities, with a few copies of each (e.g. for reading and writing practice), it is better to make workcards by writing or sticking
exercises on pieces of card - these will last longer,
- Another method is to fold a piece of card to make a 'booklet', and write the exercise
on the inside:
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- Paper worksheets can be protected by polythene bags (these can often be bought very
cheaply). The exercise is written on one half of a sheet of typing paper, the paper
folded in half and put in a polythene bag, and the opening of the bag stapled together:
Storage
- If the worksheets are single sheets of paper, they can be stored in labelled envelopes
or in folders; if they are on card, they can be stored in boxes.
- Each worksheet can be given a reference number so that it can be found easily: a
reference to a unit in the textbook (e.g. I/12/1 = Book I Unit 12, Worksheet 1); letters
A, B, C to indicate level; or a letter to indicate type of activity (e.g. O = oral practice).
Sharing the work
Producing large numbers of worksheets is very time-consuming, and would be too much
work for one teacher. There are many ways of sharing the work so that it becomes quite
easy and also allows the worksheets to be used in more classes:
- Teachers in one school can share the work of producing worksheets, and build up a
set which they can all use.
- Neighbouring schools can meet to exchange copies of worksheets (this could be
organised by inspectors or supervisors).
- Training sessions can be devoted to producing and trying out worksheets, with paper
and copying facilities provided.
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CLASS MANAGEMENT
Class management - the ability to control and inspire a class - is one of the
fundamental skills of teaching. Teachers find it much easier if their students
believe that they are genuinely interested in them and available for them.
HOW SHOULD TEACHERS TALK TO STUDENTS?
The way that teachers talk to students - the manner in which they interact with
them - is one of the crucial teacher skills, but it does not demand technical expertise. It
does, however, require teachers to empathise with the people they are talking to.
One group of people who seem to find it fairly natural to adapt their language to
their audience are parents when they talk to their young children. Studies show that they
use more exaggerated tones of voice, and speak with less complex grammatical structures
than they would if they were talking to adults. Their vocabulary is generally more
restricted too and the attempt to make eye contact (and other forms of physical contact) is
greater. They generally do these things unconsciously.
Though teachers and students arc not the same as parents and children, this
subconscious ability to 'rough-tune' the language is a skill they have in common. Roughtuning is that unconscious simplification which both parents and teachers make. Neither
group sets out to get the level of language exactly correct for their audience. They rely,
instead, on a general perception of what is being understood by the people listening to
them. Their empathy allows them to almost feel whether the level of language they are
using is appropriate for the audience they are addressing.
Experienced teachers rough-tune the way they speak to students as a matter of
course. Newer teachers need to concentrate their focus on their students' comprehension
as the yardstick by which to measure their own speaking style in the classroom.
Apart from adapting their language, experienced teachers also use physical
movement: gestures, expressions, mime. It becomes almost second nature to show
happiness and sadness, movement and time sequences, concepts (e.g. 'heavy' and 'drunk')
using these techniques. They become part of the language teachers use, especially with
students at lower levels.
HOW SHOULD TEACHERS GIVE INSTRUCTIONS?
This issue of how to talk to students becomes crucial when teachers are giving
their students instructions. The best activity in the world is a waste of time if the students
don't understand what it is they are supposed to do.
There are two general rules for giving instructions: they must be kept as simple as
possible, and they must be logical. Before giving instructions, therefore, teachers must
ask themselves the following questions: What is the important information I am trying to
convey? What must the students know if they are to complete this activity successfully?
Which information do they need first? Which should come next?
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When teachers give instructions, it is important for them to check that the students
have understood what they are being asked to do. This can be achieved either by asking a
student to explain the activity after the teacher has given the instruction or by getting
someone to show the other people in the class how the exercise works. Where students all
share the same mother tongue (which the teacher also understands), a member of the
class can be asked to translate the instructions as a check that they have understood them.
WHO SHOULD TALK IN CLASS?
There is a continuing debate about the amount of time teachers should spend
talking in class. Trainees' classes are sometimes criticised because there is too much TTT
(Teacher Talking Time) and not enough STT (Student Talking Time).
Getting students to speak - to use the language they arc learning - is a vital part of
a teacher's job. Students are the people who need the practice, in other words, not the
teacher. In general terms, therefore, a good teacher maximises STT and minimises TTT.
Good TTT may have beneficial qualities, however. If teachers know how to talk
to students - if they know how to rough-tune their language to the students' level, as we
have discussed above - then the students get a chance to hear language which is certainly
above their own productive level, but which they can more or less understand. Such
'comprehensible input' (a term coined by the American methodologist Stephen Krashen)
— where students receive rough-tuned input in a relaxed and unthreatening way - is an
important feature in language acquisition. TTT works!
A classroom where the teacher's voice drones on and on day after day and where
you hardly ever hear the students say anything is not one that most teachers and students
would approve of, however. TTT can be terribly over-used. Conversely, a class where the
teacher seems reluctant to speak is not very attractive either.
The best lessons are ones where STT is maximised, but where at appropriate
moments during the lesson the teacher is not afraid to summarise what is happening, tell a
story, enter into discussion etc. Good teachers use their common sense and experience to
get the balance right.
WHAT ARE THE BEST KINDS OF LESSON?
One of the greatest enemies of successful teaching is student boredom. This is
often caused by the deadening predictabiHty of much classroom time. Students
frequently know what is going to happen in class and they know this because it will be
the same as what happened in the last class — and a whole string of classes before that.
Something has to be done to break the chain.
In his monumental book, Breaking Rules, John Fanselow suggests that, both for
the teachers sanity and the students' continuing involvement, teachers need to violate
their own behaviour patterns. If a teacher normally teaches in casual clothes, he should
turn up one day wearing a suit. If a teacher normally sits down, she should stand up. If he
or she is normally noisy and energetic as a teacher, he or she should spend a class
behaving calmly and slowly. Each time teachers break one of their own rules, in other
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words, they send a ripple through the class. That ripple is a mixture of surprise and
curiosity and it is a perfect starting point for student involvement.
The need for surprise and variety within a fifty-minute lesson is also
overwhelming. If, for example, students spend all of that time writing sentences, they will
probably get bored. But if, in that fifty minutes, there are a number of different tasks with
a selection of different topics, the students are much more likely to remain interested.
This can be seen most clearly with children at primary and secondary levels, but even
adults need a varied diet to keep them stimulated.
However, variety is not the same as anarchy. Despite what we have said, students
tend to like a certain amount of predictability: they appreciate a safe structure which they
can rely on. And too much chopping and changing - too much variety in a fifty-minute
lesson — can be destabilising. Good teachers find a balance between predictable safety
and unexpected variety.
HOW SHOULD TEACHERS USE THEIR PHYSICAL PRESENCE IN CLASS?
The teacher's physical presence plays a large part in his or her management of
the classroom environment. And it's not just appearance either. The way the teacher
moves, how he or she stands, how physically demonstrative he or she is - all these play
their part in the effective management of a class.
All teachers, like all people, have their own physical characteristics and habits,
and they will take these into the classroom with them. But there are a number of issues
to consider which are not just idiosyncratic and which have a direct bearing on the
students' perception of us.
Proximity: teachers should consider how close they want to be to the students
they are working with. Some students resent it if the distance between them and the
teacher is too small. For others, on the other hand, distance is a sign of coldness.
Teachers should be conscious of their proximity and, in assessing their students'
reactions to what is happening in the classroom, they should take this into account.
Appropriacy: deciding how closely you should work with students is a matter of
appropriacy. So is the general way in which teachers sit or stand in classrooms. Many
teachers create an extremely friendly atmosphere by crouching down when they work
with students in pairs. In this way, they are at the same level as their seated students.
However, some students find this informality worrying. Some teachers are even happy
to sit on the floor, and in certain situations this may be appropriate. But in others it may
well lead to a situation where students are put oft from concentrating.
All the positions teachers take - sitting on the edge of tables, standing behind a
lectern, standing on a raised dais etc. — make strong statements about the kind of
person the teacher is. It is important, therefore, to consider what kind of effect such
physical behaviour has so that we can behave in a way which is appropriate to the
students we have and the relationship we wish to create with them. If we want to
manage a class effectively, such a relationship is crucial.
Movement: some teachers tend to spend most of their class time in one place —
at the front of the class, for example, or to the side, or in the middle. Others spend a
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great deal of time walking from side to side, or striding up and down the aisles between
the chairs. Although this, again, is to some extent a matter of personal preference, it is
worth remembering that motionless teachers can bore students, whilst teachers who are
constantly in motion can turn their students into tennis-match spectators, their heads
moving from side to side until they become exhausted.
Most successful teachers move around the classroom to some extent. That way
they can retain their students' interest (if they are leading an activity) or work more
closely with smaller groups (when they go to help a pair or group).
How much a teacher moves around in the classroom, then, will depend on his or
her personal style, where he or she feels most comfortable for the management of the
class, how she or he feels it easiest to manage the classroom effectively, and whether or
not he or she wants to work with smaller groups.
Contact: much of what we have said is about the issue of contact. How can
teachers make contact with students? How close should that contact be?
In order to manage a class successfully, the teacher has to be aware of what
students are doing and, where possible, how they are feeling. This means watching and
listening just as carefully as teaching. It means being able to move around the class,
getting the level of proximity right. It means making eye contact with students (provided
that this is not culturally inappropriate), listening to what they have said and responding
appropriately.
It is almost impossible to help students to learn a language in a classroom setting
without making contact with them. The exact nature of this contact will vary from
teacher to teacher and from class to class.
The teacher's physical approach and personality in the class is one aspect of class
management to consider. Another is one of the teacher’s chief tools: the voice.
HOW SHOULD TEACHERS USE THEIR VOICES IN CLASS?
Perhaps the teacher's most important instrument is the voice. How we speak and
what our voice sounds like have a crucial impact on classes. When considering the use
of the voice in the management of teaching there are three issues to think about.
Audibility: clearly, teachers need to be audible. They must be sure that the
students at the back of the class can hear them just as well as those at the front. But
audibility cannot be divorced from voice quality: a rasping shout is always unpleasant.
Teachers do not have to shout to be audible. In fact, in most classrooms, there is a
danger of the teacher's voice being too loud. Good teachers try to get this balance
between audibility and volume just right.
Variety: it is important for teachers to vary the quality of their voices - and the
volume they speak at - depending on the type of lesson and the type of activity. So the
kind of voice you use to give instructions or introduce a new activity will be different
from the voice which is most appropriate for conversation or an informal exchange of
views or information.
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In one particular situation, teachers often use very loud voices, and that is when
they want students to be quiet or stop doing something (see the next section). But it is
worth pointing out that speaking quietly is often just as effective a way of getting the
students' attention since, when they realise that you are talking, they will want to stop
and listen in case you are saying something important or interesting. However, for
teachers who almost never raise their voices, the occasional shouted interjection may
have an extremely dramatic effect, and this can sometimes be beneficial.
Conservation: just like opera singers, teachers have to take great care of their
voices. It is important that they breathe correctly from the diaphragm so that they don't
strain their larynxes. It is important that they vary their voices throughout a day,
avoiding shouting wherever possible, so that they can conserve their vocal energy.
Conserving the voice is one thing teachers will want to take into account when planning
a day's or a weeks work.
HOW SHOULD TEACHERS MARK THE STAGES OF A LESSON?
If the teacher needs to provide variety, then clearly he or she will have to include
different stages in his or her lessons.
When he or she arrives in the classroom, the teacher needs to start the lesson off.
Where possible and appropriate, he or she needs to tell the students what they will be
doing or, in a different kind of lesson, needs to discuss with them what they are hoping
to achieve.
Teachers do not always explain exactly what they are going to do, however,
since they sometimes want to maintain an element of surprise. But even in such cases, a
clear start to the lesson is necessary just as a play often starts with the rise of a curtain,
or a visit to the doctor starts when he or she asks you, 'Now then, what seems to be the
problem?' or 'How can I help you?'
When an activity has finished and/or another one is about to start, it helps if
teachers make this clear through the way they behave and the things they say. It helps
students if they are made clearly aware of the end of something and the beginning of
what is coming next. Frequently, teachers need to re-focus the students' attention, or
point it in some new direction.
In order for such changes of direction to be effective, the teacher first needs to
get the students' attention. This can sometimes be difficult, especially when teachers try
to draw a speaking activity to a conclusion, or when students are working in groups.
Some teachers clap their hands to get students' attention. Some speak loudly, saying
things like, 'Thank you ... now can I have your attention please?' or 'OK ... thanks ... let s
all face the front shall we?' Another method is for the teacher to raise his or her hand.
When individual students see this, they raise their hands briefly in reply to indicate that
they are now going to be quiet and wait for the next stage.
Finally, when an activity or a lesson has finished, it helps if the teacher is able to
provide some kind of closure — a summary of what has happened, perhaps, or a
prediction of what will take place in the next lesson. Sometimes, teachers find
themselves in the middle of something when the bell goes, but this is unfortunate,
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because it leaves unfinished business behind, and a sense of incompleteness. It is much
better to round the lesson off successfully.
WHAT'S THE BEST SEATING ARRANGEMENT FOR A CLASS?
In many classrooms around the world students sit in orderly rows. Sometimes,
their chairs have little wooden palettes on one of the arms as surfaces to write on.
Sometimes, the students will have desks in front of them. It is not unknown to find the
chairs bolted to the floor. At the front of such classrooms, frequently on a raised platform
(so that all the students can see them), stand the teachers. In contrast, there are other
institutions where you can find students sitting in a large circle around the walls of the
classroom. Or you may see small groups of them working in different parts of the room.
Sometimes, they are arranged in a horseshoe shape around the teacher. Sometimes, it is
not immediately obvious who the teacher is.
Clearly, we are seeing a number of different approaches in the different
arrangements of chairs and tables and this raises a number of questions. Are schools
which use a variety of seating plans progressive or merely modish, for example? Is there
something intrinsically superior about rigid seating arrangements - or are such classrooms
the product of traditional orthodoxy? Is one kind of seating arrangement better than
another? What are the advantages of each? The following discusses these various
arrangements.
Orderly rows: when the students sit in rows in classrooms, there are obvious
advantages. It means that the teacher has a clear view of all the students and the students
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can all see the teacher - in whose direction they are facing. It makes lecturing easy,
enabling the teacher to maintain eye contact with the people he or she is talking to. It also
makes discipline easier since it is more difficult to be disruptive when you are sitting in a
row. If there are aisles in the classroom, the teacher can easily walk up and down making
more personal contact with individual students and watching what they are doing.
Orderly rows imply teachers working with the whole class. Some activities are
especially suited to this kind of organisation: explaining a grammar point, watching a
video, using the board, demonstrating text organisation on an overhead transparency
which shows a paragraph, for example. It is also useful when students are involved in
certain kinds of language practice. If all the students are focused on a task, the whole
class gets the same messages.
When teachers arc working with the whole class sitting in orderly rows, it is
vitally important to make sure that they remain in contact with the students and that they
keep everyone involved. So, if they are asking questions to the class, they must remember
to ask students at the back, the quiet ones perhaps, rather than just the ones nearest them.
They must move round so that they can see all the students to gauge their reactions to
what's going on.
One trick that many teachers use is to keep their students guessing. Especially
where teachers need to ask individual students questions, it is important that they should
not do so in order, student after student, line by line. That way, the procedure becomes
very tedious and the students know when they are going to be asked and, once this has
happened, that they are not going to be asked again. It is much better to ask students from
all parts of the room in apparently random order. It keeps everyone on their toes!
In many classrooms of the world, teachers are faced with classes of anywhere
between 40 and 200 students at a time. In such circumstances, orderly rows may well be
the best or only solution.
Circles and horseshoes: in smaller classes, many teachers and students prefer
circles or horseshoes. In a horseshoe, the teacher will probably be at the open end of the
arrangement since that may well be where the board, overhead projector and/or tape
recorder are situated. In a circle, the teacher's position - where the board is situated — is
less dominating.
Classes which are arranged in a circle make quite a strong statement about what
the teacher and the students believe in. The Round Table in the legends about King
Arthur was designed by him specially so that there would not be arguments about who
was more important than who — and that included the King himself when they were in a
meeting. So it is in classrooms. With all the people in the room sitting in a circle, there is
a far greater feeling of equality than when the teacher stays out at the front. This may not
be quite so true of the horseshoe shape where the teacher is often located in a central
position, but even here the teacher has a much greater opportunity to get close to the
students.
If, therefore, teachers believe in lowering the barriers between themselves and
their students, this kind of seating arrangement will help. There are other advantages too,
chief among which is the fact that all the students can see each other. In an 'orderly row'
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classroom, you have to turn round - that is, away from the teacher — if you want to make
eye contact with someone behind you. In a circle or a horseshoe, no such disruption is
necessary. The classroom is thus a more intimate place and the potential for students to
share feelings and information through talking, eye contact or expressive body
movements (eyebrow-raising, shoulder-shrugging etc.) is far greater.
Separate tables: Even circles and horseshoes seem rather formal compared to
classes where students are seated in small groups at individual tables. In such classrooms,
you might see the teacher walking around checking the students' work and helping out if
they are having difficulties - prompting the students at this table, or explaining something
to the students at the table in the corner.
When students sit in small groups at individual tables, the atmosphere in the class
is much less hierarchical than in other arrangements. It is much easier for the teacher to
work at one table while the others get on with their own work. It feels less like teacher
and students and more like responsible adults getting on with the business of learning.
However, this arrangement is not without its own problems. In the first place,
students may not always want to be with the same colleagues: indeed, their preferences
may change over time. Secondly, it makes 'whole-class' teaching more difficult, since the
students are more diffuse and separated.
The way students sit says a lot about the style of the teacher or the institution
where the lessons take place. Many teachers would like to rearrange their classes so that
they are not always faced with rows and rows of bored faces. Even where this is
physically impossible - in terms of furniture, for example - there are things they can do to
achieve this.
WHAT DIFFERENT STUDENT GROUPINGS CAN TEACHERS USE?
Whatever the seating arrangements in a classroom, students can be organised in
different ways: they can work as a whole class, in groups, in pairs, or individually.
Whole class: as we have seen, there are many occasions when a teacher working
with the class as a whole is the best type of classroom organisation. However, this does
not always mean the class sitting in orderly rows; whatever the seating arrangement, the
teacher can have the students focus on him or her and the task in hand.
Groupwork and pairwork: these have become increasingly popular in language
teaching since they are seen to have many advantages. Groupwork is a cooperative
activity: five students, perhaps, discussing a topic, doing a role-play or solving a problem.
In groups, students tend to participate more equally, and they are also more able to
experiment and use the language than they are in a whole-class arrangement.
Pairwork has many of the same advantages. It is mathematically attractive if
nothing else; the moment students get into pairs and start working on a problem or
talking about something, many more of them will be doing the activity than if the teacher
was working with the whole class, where only one student talks at a time.
Both pairwork and groupwork give the students chances for greater independence.
Because they are working together without the teacher controlling every move, they take
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some of their own learning decisions, they decide what language to use to complete a
certain task, and they can work without the pressure of the whole class listening to what
they are doing. Decisions are cooperatively arrived at, responsibilities are shared.
The other great advantage of groupwork and pairwork (but especially groupwork)
is that they give the teacher the opportunity to work with individual students. While
groups A and C are doing one task, the teacher can spend some time with Group B who
need special attention.
Neither groupwork nor pairwork are without their problems. As with 'separate
table' seating, students may not like the people they arc grouped or paired with. In any
one group or pair, one student may dominate while the others stay silent. In difficult
classes, groupwork may encourage students to be more disruptive than they would be in a
whole-class setting, and, especially in a class where students share the same first
language, they may revert to their first language, rather than English, when the teacher is
not working with them.
Apart from groupwork and pairwork, the other alternative to whole-class teaching
is solowork.
Solowork: this can have many advantages: it allows students to work at their own
speed, allows them thinking time, allows them, in short, to be individuals. It often
provides welcome relief from the group-centred nature of much language teaching. For
the time that solowork takes place, students can relax their public faces and go back to
considering their own individual needs and progress.
How much teachers use groupwork, pairwork or solowork depends to a large
extent on teacher style and student preferences. Do the students actually enjoy pairwork?
What do they get out of it? Do the advantages of groupwork — cooperation,
involvement, autonomy - outweigh the advantages of whole-class grouping - clarity,
dramatic potential, teacher control? Do the students work conscientiously during
solowork sessions?
Good teachers are able to use different class groupings for different activities.
While they do this, they will monitor which is more successful and for what, so that they
can always seek to be more effective.
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SAMPLE LESSONS
SOME COMMON GAMES & ACTIVITIES
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A SAMPLE PRONUNCIATION LESSON:
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AURAL PRACTICE:
ORAL PRACTICE:
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STRESS AND INTONATION:
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HOW TO MAKE SOME COMMON VOWELS AND CONSONANTS:
A. VOWELS:
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B. CONSONANTS:
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PRONUNCIATION PRACTICE:
A. Choose the word
the others.
1. A. scream
2. A. traveled
3. A. chat
4. A. frightening
5. A. technology
that has the underlined (letters) pronounced differently from
B. death
B. stared
B. panic
B. brigade
B. teaching
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C. ready
C. landed
C. park
C. pilot
C. purchase
D. peasant
D. seemed
D. passenger
D. fire
D. lunch
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B. Choose the word whose main stress is placed differently from the others.
1. A. tobacco
2. A. passenger
3. A. technology
4. A. repair
5. A. interested
B. contented
B. purchase
B. comfortable
B. harrow
B. serious
C. buffalo
C. district
C. activity
C. arrive
C. wonderful
D. transplanting
D. routine
D. experience
D. announce
D. immediate
Choose the word whose underlined part has a different pronunciation from the others
in each group:
1/ A. school
B. charge
C. much
D. children
2/ A. sport
B. work
C. for
D. nor
3/ A. very
B. many
C. my
D. early
4/ A. weather
B. headmaster
C. health
D. teach
5/ A. study
B. student
C. but
D. Sunday
6/ A. often
B. fifty
C. partner
D. thirsty
7/ A. how
B. know
C. follow
D. tomorrow
8/ A. which
B. quite
C. five
D. high
9/ A. best
B. centre
C. because
D. hello
10/ A. where
B. there
C. here
D. square
Choose the word whose main stress is placed differently from the others in each group:
1/ A. holiday
B. headmaster
C. important
D. interest
2/ A. problem
B. worry
C. learning
D. above
3/ A. complain
B. member
C. listen
D. happen
4/ A. hobby
B. because
C. language
D. father
5/ A. sixteen
B. forty
C. lesson
D. classmate
6/ A. student
B. biggest
C. enjoy
D. centre
7/ A. subject
B. hello
C. teacher
D. thousand
8/ A. study
B. women
C. prepare
D. children
9/ A. about
B. corner
C. narrow
D. many
10/ A. traffic
B. question
C. follow
D. below
Write the word so that /I/ becomes /i:/ and vice versA.
/I /
1. rich
2...................
3 hit
4 ..............
5 rid
6. ............
7. live
8...............
9. sin
10. chip
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/i:/
reach
peak
...................
beat
.........................
sheep
....................
seek
.....................
......................
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SOME PRONUNCIATION GAMES:
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A SAMPLE VOCABULARY LESSON
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SOME WAYS TO HELP STUDENTS REVISE VOCABULARY:
Select the synonym of the following bold and underlined word in each sentence in the
unit:
1/ Everyone has a number of acquaintances, but no one has many friends.
A. several
B. a little of
C. a great deal of D. much
2/ For true intimate friendship is not common; and there are many people who seem to be
incapable of it.
A. pure
B. real
C. correct
D. straight
3/ The first quality, which is the very essence of friendship, is unselfishness.
A. certain
B. strict
C. total
D. absolute
4/ Some people seem not to be constant.
A. quick
B. sure
C. steady
D. strong
5/ Loyalty is the third important quality.
A. weighty
B. serious
C. significant
D. powerful
6/ Two friends must be loyal to each other, and they must know each other so well that
there can be no suspicions between them.
A. true
B. faithful
C. constant
D. firm
7/ We do not think much of people who readily believe rumor and gossip against their
friends.
A. tale
B. dirt
C. gossip
D. saying
8/ Those who are easily influenced by whispers can never make good friends.
A. inclined
B. impelled
C. prompted
D. swayed
9/ There must be mutual trust between friends, so that each can feel safe when telling the
other his or her most intimate secrets.
A. close
B. near
C. fast
D. thick
10/ And where such mutual sympathy does not exist, friendship is impossible.
A. similar
B. true
C. common
D. interdependent
Select the antonym of the following bold and underlined word in each sentence in the
unit:
1/ For true intimate friendship is not common; and there are many people who seem to be
incapable of it.
A. able
B. capable
C. known
D. important
2/ For friendship to be intimate and lasting, both the friends must have some very special
qualities.
A. aloof
B. shallow
C. formal
D. slight
3/ A selfish person is incapable of true friendship.
A. phony
B. unlawful
C. imaginary
D. slippery
4/ Some people seem not to be constant.
A. unable
B. weak
C. wrong
D. uncertain
5/ They take up an interest with enthusiasm, but they are soon tired of it and feel the
attraction of some new object.
A. start
B. fill
C. discuss
D. get
6/ Loyalty is the third important quality.
A. Faithlessness B. Badness
C. Absence
D. Madness
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7/ Two friends must be loyal to each other, and they must know each other so well that
there can be no suspicions between them.
A. proof
B. connection
C. similarity
D. trust
8/ But there are talkative people who cannot keep a secret.
A. untruthful
B. silent
C. quiet
D. calm
9/ Lastly, there must be a perfect sympathy between friends, sympathy with each other’s
aims, likes, joys, sorrows, pursuits and pleasures.
A. difference
B. badness
C. sadness
D. conflict
Match the words in column A with their synonyms in column B:
A
1/ film
3/ many
5/ early
7/ kind
9/ small
B
2/ study
4/ like
6/ headmaster
8/ profession
10/ false
A/ learn
C/ enjoy
E/ tiny
G/ career
I/ soon
B/ principal
D/ nice
F/ wrong
H/ movie
J/ a lot of
Match the words in column A with their antonyms in column B:
1/ healthy
3/ like
5/ kind
7/ small
9/ early
A
2/ study
4/ well
6/ interested
8/ crowded
10/ above
B
A/ unkind
C/ badly
E/ below
G/ sick
I/ big
B/ teach
D/ empty
F/ bored
H/ late
J/ hate
Fill each gap with a word from the list below:
friendships, meanings, passage, character, intimate, acquainted, essence, enthusiastic,
whispered, loyalty
1/ The _______ of his argument was that education should continue throughout life.
2/ Politeness is traditionally part of the British _______.
3/ She leaned over and _______ something in his ear.
4/ Did you form any close _______ while you were at college?
5/ You don't seem very _______ about the party - don't you want to go tonight?
6/ The word 'flight' has two different _______: a plane journey, and the act of running
away.
7/ Her _______ to the cause is impressive.
8/ Police said the thieves were obviously well _______ with the alarm system at the
department store.
9/ A narrow _______ led directly through the house into the garden.
10/ He's become very _______ with an actress.
Complete the sentences with an appropriate word:
1/ We all know that the sun always _______ in the west.
2/ To _______ you the truth, I didn't understand a word of what he was saying.
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3/ _______ your eyes - I've got a surprise for you.
4/ She's so thin yet she _______ like a horse.
5/ I wonder if you could _______ me - I'd like some information about flights to New
Zealand.
6/ The accident _______ me a lesson I’ll never forget.
7/ The company ought to _______ something about the poor service.
8/ The house was _______ of wood with an iron roof.
9/ Carrying heavy loads around all day is hard _______.
10/ Ben never forgets to _______ "Please" and "Thank you".
SOME VOCABULARY GAMES
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A SAMPLE GRAMMAR LESSON
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(From New Cutting Edge Pre-Intermediate, 2008)
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SOME COMMON GRAMMAR EXERCISES
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SOME GRAMMAR GAMES
Find someone who…
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BROKEN SENTENCES:
In this activity students have to put together sentences which have been broken up
into two halves.
Grammar points: Adverb clause
Method
1 Copy, cut up and shuffle the broken sentences, Make enough sets for the class
working in pairs or groups of three or four.
2 Give each group a set of cards and tell them they have to arrange them into
sentences.
3 Set a definite time limit and stop the students at the end of it, whether they
have finished or not
4 Check by going round the class from group to group. Each group reads out one
sentence. The teacher says whether it is right or wrong. If right, it can be removed
from the table (or turned over). The group gets 1 point for each correct answer. If
wrong, the group gets no points and, without giving the correct answer, the teacher
moves on to the next group.
5 Continue until all the sentences have been correctly read out.
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REFERENCES
Baker, A. & Goldstein, S. Pronunciation Pairs: An Introduction to the Sounds of
English. Cambridge, 2006
Cunningham, S. , Moor , P & Comyns Carr , J. New Cutting Edge – Pre-Intermediate.
Longman, 2005
Doff, A. Teach English. Cambridge, 1984
Harmer, J. How to Teach English. Longman,1991
Harmer, J. The Practice of the English Language Teaching. Longman,1991
Hubbard et all. A Training Course for TEFL. OUP, 1984
ELT Section. Teaching Language Components and Language Skills. Department of
English, HCMC University of Education, 2009
Wright, A. (1984). 1000 pictures for Teachers to Copy. Collins ELT
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TEACHING READING
I. Introduction
Reading is one of the four language skills. It is a receptive skill which involves
responding to texts, rather than producing it. Very simply, we can say that reading
involves making sense of text. To do this, we need to understand the language of 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.
In short, reading means ‘reading and understanding’. A foreign language learner who
says ‘I can read the words but I don’t know what they mean’ is not, therefore, reading in
this sense. He or she is merely decoding – translating written symbols into
corresponding sounds.
II. Ways of reading
v In real life
Reasons for reading influence how we read, i.e. which reading sub-skill (a skill that
is part of a main skill) we use. For example, if we read a text just to find a specific
piece or pieces of information in it, we usually use a sub-skill called reading for
specific information or scanning. When we scan, we don’t read the whole text.
We hurry over most of it until we find the information we are interested in, e.g.
when we look for a number in a telephone directory.
Another reading sub-skill is reading for gist or skimming, i.e. reading quickly
through a text to get a general idea of what it is about. For example, you skim when
you look quickly through a book in a bookshop to decide if you want to buy it, or
when you go quickly through a reference book to decide which part will help you
write an essay.
A third reading sub-skill is reading for detail. If you read a letter from someone
you love who you haven’t 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.
v In class
There are three possible ways of reading a text in class:
§ The teacher reads aloud while the students follow in their books.
§ Students read aloud in turn.
§ The students all read silently to themselves, at their own speed.
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Demonstration one
Question: Only very few animal remains become fossils. Why?
The teacher reads the first part of the text aloud, and then individual students take
turns to read the text aloud, sentence by sentence.
How to get preserved as a fossil
Unfortunately the chances of any animal becoming a fossil are not very great, and the
chances of a fossil then being discovered many thousands of years later are even less. It is not
surprising that of all the millions of animals that have lived in the past, we actually have
fossils of only a very few.
There are several ways in which animals and plants may become fossilised. First it is
essential that the remains are buried, as dead animals and plants are quickly destroyed if
they remain exposed to the air. Plants rot, while scavengers, such as insects and hyenas, eat the
flesh and bones of animals. Finally, the few remaining bones soon disintegrate in the hot sun
and pouring rain. If buried in suitable conditions, however, animal and plant remains will
be preserved. The same chemicals which change sand and silt into hard rock will also enter
the animal and plant remains and make them hard too. When this happens we say that
they have become fossilised. Usually only the bones of an animal and the toughest part of a
plant are preserved.
Demonstration two
Question: How can soft parts of animals become fossilised? What kinds of fossils are
often found in caves?
All the students read the second part of the text silently.
The soft body parts of an animal or the fine fibres of a leaf may occasionally become fossilised,
but they must be buried quickly for this to happen. This may sometimes occur with river and
lake sediments but is much more likely to happen with volcanic ash. One site near Lake Victoria,
where my parents worked, contained many thousands of beautifully preserved insects,
spiders, seeds, twigs, roots and leaves. A nearby volcano must have erupted very suddenly,
burying everything in a layer of ash. The insects had no time to escape before they were
smothered.
Caves are another site where fossils are easily formed, and luckily our ancestors left many
clues in caves which made convenient shelters and homes. Things that people brought in as
food or tools were left on the cave floor, and they were buried by mud, sand and other debris
washed in by rivers and rain.
(from Human Origins: R. Leakey)
Which technique:
- makes it easier to understand the text?
- is more helpful in developing reading ability?
1. Compare the two ways of reading a text: reading silently and reading aloud:
- Understanding the text: Teachers may intend to help students by reading the text
aloud to them, but it can in fact make reading more difficult. In silent reading,
students can all read at their own speed, and if they do not understand a sentence
they can go back and read it again. If the teacher is reading the text aloud, this is
impossible - everyone must follow at the speed set by the teacher.
- Developing reading ability: When students read English - in the future (e.g. for
studying, reading instructions, reading magazines), they will need to do so
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silently and without help, so this is the skill they need to develop. We need to
give them practice in looking at a text and trying to understand it, without always
hearing it at the same time.
- Control of the class: Teachers often prefer to read the text themselves because it
seems to give them more control over the activity; but of course they cannot be
sure that the students are actually following the text at all. In silent reading,
nothing seems to be happening, but students are in fact concentrating on the text
and thinking about meaning.
2. Individual students read aloud in turn:
i) Reading aloud can be useful at the earliest stages of reading (recognising letters
and words); it can help students to make the connection between sound and
spelling.
ii) For reading a text, it is not a very useful technique, because:
- Only one student is active at a time; the others are either not listening at all
or are listening to a bad model.
- Students' attention is focused on pronunciation, not on understanding the
text.
- It is an unnatural activity - most people do not read aloud in real life.
- Because students usually read slowly, it takes up a lot of time in class.
iii) Reading aloud is very difficult - many people find it hard to read aloud in their
own language. So if a teacher wants students to read aloud, it should be the final
activity at the end of a reading lesson.
III. Stages of a reading lesson
III. 1 PRE- READING
There are various things we can do before reading a text which will make it easier for
students to understand the text and help them focus attention on it as they read. They
include:
- giving a brief introduction to the text;
- presenting some of the new words which will appear in the text;
- giving one or two 'guiding' questions (orally or on the board) for students to think
about as they read.
a. Introducing the text
It is important to introduce the theme of the text before we ask students to read it. This
serves two purposes:
- To help students in their reading, by giving them some idea what to expect.
- To increase their interest and so make them want to read the text.
One way to introduce the text is just to give a simple sentence (e.g. in the above text:
"We are going to read about fossils. The text tells us how animals and plants become
fossils.”) This could be in English or in L1.
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A more interesting way would be to have a short discussion, to start students thinking
about the topic (e.g. in the above text: 'Do you know how fossils are formed? Where do they
come from? Have you ever seen a fossil? What was it like?').
Note that teachers should not say too much when introducing a text, or they will 'give
away' what it has to say, and kill the students’ interest instead of arousing it.
This is an example of a bad introduction which gives too much away: 'You are going to
read a text about fossils. The text tells us that very few animals become fossils. When
they die, most animals are eaten by insects or by other animals. To become a fossil, the
animal must be buried soon after it dies.'
Other possible types of pre-reading activity, e.g.:
- Students are given sentences which refer to the text, and they guess whether they
are true or false.
- Students are given a summary of the text with gaps; they try to guess what words
should go in the gaps.
- Students are given the topic of the text; they write a list of things they know and
things they do not know about the topic.
- If the text puts forward an opinion, students discuss the topic beforehand and give
their own point of view.
b. Presenting new vocabulary
We do not need to present all the new words in a text before the students read it;
they can guess the meaning of many words from the context. An important part
of reading is being able to guess the meaning of unknown words, and we can
help students to develop their reading skills by giving them practice in this.
Only the words which would make it very difficult to understand the text need
to be presented beforehand; other words can be dealt with after reading the text.
Look at this example:
The children were bleebing all over the playground.
Students guess what the nonsense word 'bleebing' means. It should be possible to
guess that:
- it is a verb (from the form);
- it involves movement (because of 'all over');
- it is something children do, e.g. playing or running.
Note:
- It is quite possible to understand a text without understanding every
word, and it is possible to guess many unknown words from their context.
- Asking students to try to guess the meaning of new words helps to focus attention
on them, and makes them want to know what the words mean. (see the text about
the doctor and his patient in the workbook – Task 3)
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c. Guiding questions
Before the students read the text, the teacher can give one or two guiding questions
(either orally or written on the board), for students to think about as they read.
Look again at the guiding questions for the text above: ('Only very few animal remains
become fossils. Why?' 'How can the soft parts of animals become fossilised?' 'What
kinds of fossils are often found in caves?')
The purpose of these questions:
- To give the students a reason to read, by giving them something to look for as they
read the text.
- To lead (or 'guide') the students towards the main points of the text, so that after the
first reading they should have a good general idea of what it is about.
To achieve their purpose, guiding questions should be concerned with the general
meaning or with the most important points of a text, and not focus on minor details;
they should be fairly easy to answer and not too long.
Here are a few examples of good and bad guiding questions for text 1 above:
Good: Very few animal remains become fossils. Why? What kind of fossils are found in caves?
How do animals become fossils?
Bad: What is a fossil? (we already know the answer)
What are hyenas? (focuses on a single difficult word)
Where did the volcano erupt? (a detail)
Why did the site near Lake Victoria contain such well-preserved fossils? (question too
long and difficult to understand)
III. 2 WHILE- READING
Texts are usually used in English classes for two main purposes:
- As a way of developing reading comprehension - by looking at the text and
trying to understand its 'message' (what it has to say).
- As a way of learning new language - by looking at the text and focusing on
particular words and expressions.
Often, these two aims are combined in a single lesson. First, students read the text
and try to understand it. After they have understood its general meaning, the teacher
goes through the text again, checking detailed comprehension and also focusing on
important new vocabulary.
2.1 Checking comprehension
While-reading activities
Different reading comprehension tasks and exercises focus on different reading
sub-skills. Teachers need to recognize which sub-skill a task focuses on.
Teachers need to choose comprehension tasks very carefully. They need to be of
an appropriate level of difficulty and practice relevant reading sub-skills.
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a. Completing a table
Good questions should help the students to read by leading them towards the main
ideas of the text. But answering questions is not the only way of doing this; we can
also give students a task to do as they are reading: for example, they might read a
text and label a diagram; read and choose a picture chat fits the meaning of the text;
read sentences which are not in the correct order and rearrange them; read and draw
a picture, etc. One of the simplest kinds of reading task is for students to read a text
and note down the main information in the form of a table or chart; this helps
students to organise the information in a text in a clear and logical way. (This kind
of task is sometimes called 'information transfer'.)
- The main purpose of completing the table is to help focus students' attention on
the main points of the text, and make it easier for them to organise the
information in their minds.
- Completing the table does not replace asking questions. Questions are still
necessary to check detailed comprehension, as students could fill the table in
without fully understanding the text. Trying to complete the table should make
the students more interested in answering the questions and finding out the
meaning of unfamiliar words.
This type of task can be used with most texts which give factual information, and
also with many texts which tell a story. It is easy for the teacher to prepare and
organise, and requires no special aids or materials except the blackboard and the
students' own exercise books.
Alternatively, the teacher may decide which paragraph to use this task and which
other paragraphs to ask and answer the questions or other appropriate tasks. (Refer
to the text of the earthquake above and also the types of task suggested in part c
below.)
b. Comprehension questions
Look at text 1 again. Here are a series of comprehension questions and they require
short answers. (Possible answers are given in brackets.)
How old are most fossils? (very old, thousands of vents old)
Do most animals become fossilised? (no, very few)
Do most fossils get discovered? (no, very few)
An animal or a plant dies. What's left? (the remains)
Will the remains become a fossil? (not always)
What has to happen? (it has to be buried)
And if it isn't buried, what happens? (it's destroyed)
What is it destroyed by? (animals, insects, scavengers, the sun, rain, etc.)
What do insects do? (they, eat the flesh of animals)
What are hyenas? (a kind of wild dog)
What do they do? (eat the flesh and bones)
Can you guess what 'scavengers' are? What other animals are scavengers? (rats,
jackals, vultures, crows)
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Note that the main purpose of asking comprehension questions should be to lead
students to look closely at the main points of the text, and to help them understand
it. To achieve this:
- It is best to ask a series of short, simple questions which help to 'break down' the
meaning of the text and make it easier to understand.
- Students should only be required to give short answers (the aim is to check
comprehension, not to get students to reproduce the text).
- Students should keep their books open, so that they can refer to the text to answer
the questions.
- Even if the textbook contains good comprehension questions, it is often a good
idea for the teacher to ask his or her own questions first; the teacher can be more
flexible and modify questions if the students do not understand. The 'set' questions
in the book could be answered afterwards in pairs, or the answers written in class
or
for
homework.
c. Using questions on a text
Here are some of the questions which followed the text on the earthquake in Japan.
1. What time did the earthquake start? What time did it finish?
2. Did it start:
a) in the mountains?
in the sea?
in the city?
3. Beside each sentence, write T (= true), F (= false) or DK (= we don't know from
the text).
a)
b)
c)
d)
e)
Parts of the sea became deeper.
A hillside slid down onto the city.
Most people died by drowning.
The Grand Hotel survived the earthquake.
The woman in the bath survived the earthquake.
Note that there are two main aims in asking questions on a text:
- To check comprehension - to show how well the students have understood the
text, and what needs to be more fully explained.
- To help the students read the text. If the questions are good ones, they should
focus students' attention on the main points and lead them to think about the
meaning of the text.
To achieve these aims, the teacher must make sure that the whole class is involved in
answering the questions and that students know why answers are right or wrong; the
questions should not be used simply to 'test' the students, but to lead them towards
an understanding of the text.
These three teachers used the questions in different ways:
Teacher A:
My students sat in groups to answer the questions. Then, we went through the answers
together.
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Teacher B:
I asked my students to write the answers to the questions. Then we went through the answers
together.
Teacher C:
I asked the questions round the class, and got different students to answer.
Which approach do you think is the most effective? Why?
- Getting students to work in groups and getting them to write the answers
(teachers A and B) are, both good ways of involving the whole class. When the
teacher goes through the answers afterwards, all the students are likely to be
interested in the answers and to want to discuss them.
- Or these two techniques (A and B), group work encourages more discussion, and
so makes students think more carefully about the meaning of the text; it also
gives a chance for good students to help those who are weaker. However, getting
students to write the answers is easier to organise and control, and so may be
more
suitable for a large class. (Students should of course only be asked to
write short answers - the aim is to check comprehension, not to practise writing.)
- Answering questions orally round the class (teacher C) is a very common
technique, but not usually a very successful one for large classes. As only one
student answers each question, most of the class do not need to pay attention, and
it is difficult for the teacher to see whether students have really understood the
text.
v Comprehension text and questions
Read the text and answer the following questions:
Yesterday I saw the palgish flester gollining begrunt the bruck. He seemed very
chanderbil, so I did not jorter him, just deapled to him quistly. Perhaps later he will
bestand cander, and I will be able to rangel to him.
1.
2.
3.
4.
What was the flester doing and where?
What sort of a flester was he?
Why did the writer decide not to jorter him?
How did she deaple?
5. What did she hope would happen later?
Cambridge University Press, 1996
You probably had no difficulty in answering the questions; however, this obviously
did not show that you had understood the passage!
The conclusion has to be that answering ‘comprehension questions’, as such, may
not encourage, or provide proof of, successful reading.
What is it about these questions which make them answerable in spite of the
incomprehensibility of the source text?
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That is because their vocabulary simply echoes the text, while the grammar of both
text and questions is fairly obvious and corresponds neatly, so that if you recognize
the grammar context, you can simply slot in the appropriate vocabulary.
v Read the text and answer the following questions:
Yesterday, I saw the new patient hurrying along the corridor. He seemed very upset,
so I did not follow him, just called to him gently. Perhaps later he will feel better,
and I will be able to talk to him.
1. What is the problem described here?
2. Is this event taking place indoors or outside?
3. Did the writer try to get near the patient?
4. What do you think she said when she called to him?
5. What might the job of the writer be?
6. Why do you think she wants to talk to the patient?
Cambridge University Press, 1996
Here, the reader would have to understand the content of the passage in order to
answer these questions.
The questions here are different in that they do not quote verbatim from the text but
paraphrase it, or request paraphrases, or invite some measure of interpretation and
application of the reader’s background knowledge. They thus demand real
comprehension, and encourage an interactive, personal ‘engaging’ with the text, as
well as being more interesting to do. Interpretative questions often have more than
one possible answer and can be used as a basis for discussion.
However, one disadvantage of the conventional text-plus-questions remains: the
reader has no particular motive to read the text in the first place.
v Types of Reading comprehension questions
• Questions for literal comprehension. (Answers directly and explicitly
available in the text)
• Questions involving reorganization or reinterpretation. (Require Ss to obtain
literal information from various parts of the text and put it together or reinterpret
it)
• Questions for inferences. (what is not explicitly stated but implied)
• Questions for evaluation or appreciation. (making a judgement about the text
in terms of what the writer is trying to convey)
• Questions for personal responses. (reader’s reaction to the content of the text)
v Making inferences
Making inferences means “reading between the lines”, which requires the
reader to use background knowledge in order to infer the implied meaning of the
author.
e.g. What can you infer from the following?
•
•
•
Blandida is a country which has every climatic condition known
to man.
When she came into the room, the large crowd grew silent.
The painting had been in the family for years, but sadly Bill
realised he would have to sell it.
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2.2 Learning new language
While checking comprehension, the teacher may refer to some new language that
hasn’t been dealt with in the pre-reading stage by using definition questions, do not
ask What does ..... mean?
Many teachers, including native speakers, find explaining new items difficult. It is
a skill which students will not need outside the classroom, and something they will
find extremely difficult. There is, therefore, no point in asking students What does
……. mean? Experience shows that if they are asked this question they normally
respond with a simple translation. Providing that is all the teacher expects, the
question occasionally has a limited use.
In doing word study, however, the ‘definition question’ is much more valuable –
the teacher provides the definition, and invites the student to use a new word.
T
S1
T
S2
T
Ss.
What word in the text means very very big?
Enormous.
Good yes, and what word means worried and upset?
Anxious
That’s right, can we all say that, please – anxious.
Anxious.
As this short transcript shows, definition questions have two important advantages –
the teacher does the difficult work of verbalizing a definition, and the students have
to locate and say the new word or phrase.
The same technique can be used for functional phrases where the teacher asks a
question such as:
What phrase does John use when he wants to tell Mary the best thing to do next? (Why
don’t you …. )?
Definition questions are an important part of the teacher’s strategy in following up the
presentation of new language in a text, and also from a tape recording.
III. 3 FOLLOW-UP ACTIVITIES
If texts are fairly short and simple; and contain language which is useful for students
to produce as well as understand, they can be used as a basis for language practice.
This practice should of course only be done after the students have understood the
text completely.
v
Note that some of the activities (discussion questions, role play) use the theme of the
text as a basis for free language practice; others (gap-filling, reproducing the text)
give practice in the language contained in the text.
IV. Questioning strategies
As well as knowing what questions to ask, teachers also need to know how to
organise question and answer work in class. There are many different ways of
asking questions: teachers can ask each student in turn round the class; they can let
any student call out the answer; they can choose a student to answer; they can get
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the class to answer in chorus, and so on. These are called questioning strategies (or
'nomination strategies').
Look at the pictures of four different strategies for asking questions in class in the Workbook,
and recognize what questioning strategies they show:
A) The teacher asks questions and simply lets students call out answers. If
students call out different answers at the same time, the teacher chooses one
student to give the answer again.
B) The teacher asks a question, then pauses to give the whole class a chance to
think of the answer. Then the teacher chooses one student to answer. Students
are not allowed to call out the answer or to raise their hand.
C) The teacher first chooses a student (by pointing or saying the student's name),
and then asks the student a question. If the student cannot answer it, the teacher
passes it on to the next student.
D) The teacher asks a question and lets students raise their hand if they think they
know the answer. The teacher chooses one of the students with their hands
raised to answer.
Note that there is no single 'best' strategy - it is important for teachers to be aware of
different possible strategies and to be flexible. Pay attention to these points:
- With a large class, strategy A can be effective for simple questions with Yes/No
answers. Otherwise, it is likely to be too noisy and uncontrolled - It would, of
course, be suitable for a small class where there are no discipline problems (e.g. a
group of adults).
- Strategy B keeps the class involved but still under control. It enables the teacher
to give a chance to weaker students as well as more confident ones, although if
the questions are too difficult it may make students feel threatened. In general, it
is a good strategy for routine, fairly easy questions.
- Strategy C is highly controlled, but is not a good way of keeping the attention of
the class, as all the students except the one answering the question can 'switch
off. In general, it is better to ask the question first and then choose who is to
answer it.
- Strategy D encourages bright students and makes the class seem to be successful
because students are volunteering answers. But if it is the only strategy used, it
allows the class to be dominated by the best students while weaker and shy
students tend to be excluded; it also makes it easy for students to avoid answering
questions. In general, it is a good strategy to use for difficult questions that only
some students will be able to answer.
V. Points to bear in mind when teaching reading
1. Too many new words make a text impossible.
Most language teachers have, as students, had the experience of using a dictionary
with a text containing a high density of new items and, after checking all the new
words, still having little or no idea of the meaning of the text as a whole. Although it
may be a good idea to leave students to guess the meaning of a few words from
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context, in order to do this they have first to be able to understand the majority of the
text. If there are more than about 6 new words per 100 ‘running words’ (i.e. all the
words of the text) it is too difficult. Difficulty does not increase with the number of
new words as in figure 1, but more rapidly, as in figure 2.
Fig 1
Fig 2
No matter how much preparation is done on a passage containing too many items, it
will not help significantly. Too much new material simply can not be mastered at
one time.
2. Nothing is “interesting” if you can’t do it.
Teachers are often keen, particularly when looking for texts for students, to find
something ‘interesting’. Although the aim is a good one, there is a serious difficulty
attached to it. The teacher who finds an article in a newspaper or magazine is
frequently tempted to use it with a class. It is important to remember before you do
this that your vocabulary is probably at least twice that of even the best foreign
learners below university level.
The criterion for choosing a text must be ‘will these students find this interesting?
‘the answer to that questions can not possibly be “Yes” unless those students can
understand it without great difficulty. Nothing is more depressing than struggling
word- by- word at snail’s pace through a piece of material so that you can do
something with it or talk about it only to find that understanding the material has
taken so long that the interesting follow up activity lasts only a moment or two or
disappears altogether.
3. Distinguish between intensive and extensive reading.
Intensive reading means students are expected to understand everything they read
and to be able to answer detailed vocabulary and comprehension questions.
Extensive reading means students have a general understanding of the text without
necessarily understanding every word. Intensive reading helps to improve extensive
reading, but the latter also needs to be practiced, principally to give students
confidence in dealing with authentic materials.
Too often teachers plough through the text in a uniform fashion, dealing with all the
material intensively, thereby ensuring it takes too long, interest is lost, and an
important language skill which needs to be practiced is ignored.
Even if a text is to be dealt with largely intensively, it helps to encourage students to
get a general understanding first by using pre- questions. In the early stages of
students’ learning programs it is helpful to introduced texts containing some
unknown language, but where students will know enough to understand the gist.
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Having taken such a text into class, however, it is then essential that the teacher is
not tempted to explain all the words, or to ask too many questions. All that needs to
be done is to encourage students to pick out particular information, and equally
important, to encourage students not to worry at ignoring other, perhaps quite large,
sections of the text which are not relevant to the task they have been given.
Teachers used to a traditional, structural approach expect the texts of their textbooks
to be carefully structurally graded. The implicit assumption is that all the material in
the textbook will be dealt with intensively. It is particularly important for these
teachers to realize that when authentic material is presented at an early stage in
modern textbooks, its objectives are different and, if they approach such material
intensively, they will de - motivate their students, and create problems for their
students and themselves. On the other hand, if they approach such material
extensively they will see that it can have a very positive effect on their students, who
realize that, even with the little English at their disposal, they can actually use ‘real’
English language materials.
4. Do not ask students to read aloud unseen.
Reading aloud is a very difficult skill. Unseen texts probably contain new
vocabulary items which students will not know how to pronounce; dialogues may
require particular intonation patterns unfamiliar to students. Unprepared reading will
be hesitant, unnatural and difficult for other students to follow.
Asking a student to read aloud unseen also means that he may concentrate so hard
on pronouncing the word that he will be unable to concentrate adequately on their
meaning too. He may read correctly but afterwards will not be able to tell you what
he has read!
The first reading is best done by the teacher or on tape. Alternatively the class may
prepare silently, with the teacher helping individuals with difficulties. Prepared
reading will always be more effective than unseen and preparation time is certainly
not wasted.
5. Vary the method of reading.
The simplest method of reading, frequently forgotten by language teachers, is silent
reading. It is the method we normally use with our native language, and on the
whole, the quickest and most efficient. It is the only method which is appropriate for
extensive reading. Silent reading must, of course, be followed by questions to ensure
that all the class did read and understand the appropriate section
Silent reading is often ignored because teachers see reading aloud as a way of
teaching pronunciation. This is most unsatisfactory. Teachers must understand that
text should only be read aloud which have been written to be read aloud – poetry,
rhymes and dialogues. Very few prose texts are intended to be read aloud and asking
students to do so is to ask them to do something completely unnatural.
If teachers insist on reading aloud, there are two golden rules – it must be prepared;
it must be done in a variety of ways.
a. at very low level: the teacher reads, followed by the class reading chorally
sentence by sentence.
b. also for low level: the class repeat chorally after the tape (more difficult than
after the teacher)
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c. the teacher reads a paragraph, then the class reads the paragraph chorally,
possibly followed by an individual reading the same paragraph
d. an individual reads sentence by sentence after the teacher.
e. the class is divided into groups and each group prepares a paragraph, the one
representative from each group reads so that the whole text is read aloud.
f. with dialogues, students prepare in pairs and then all students read aloud in
pairs simultaneously before one pair reads aloud for the whole class.
Texts are a part of the lesson which can easily drag and, as they so frequently come
at the beginning of the lesson, they can create a dead and deadening atmosphere.
Varying the method of reading minimizes the possibility of the text killing the
lesson.
6. Students cannot use what they cannot say.
Teachers sometimes ask after the text has been read Is there any thing you don’t
understand? and, even more foolishly, Is there anything you can’t say? It is not
completely clear how the student is supposed to answer this second question!
The wise teacher, before going on to comprehension questions, or other material
which exploits the text, does brief choral and individual pronunciation (CIP) of all
the items students may find it difficult to say. Using the technique CIP as many as a
dozen items can be practiced in this way in a matter of three or four minutes. This
time is far from wasted as it increases students’ confidence before going on to the
principal work of exploiting the new material of the text.
7. ‘Difficult’ words are not the same as long words.
A word has an appearance, a sound and a meaning. A word will be “difficult” for
students if any one of those factors confuse.
a. if the pronunciation is not reflected by the spelling, teachers should ensure that
they give a model pronunciation and follow with choral and individual repetition.
b. If the word looks similar in the students’ own language but is different in
meaning, particular attention should be drawn to it.
c. If the word looks similar, and has a similar meaning, teachers tend to ignore it;
because students can understand it, teachers do not see that it can still be ‘difficult’
In examining, explaining and practicing “the difficult words”, teachers need to think
of each of spelling, pronunciation, and meaning and not concentrate only on the last.
8. Not all comprehension questions check understanding.
Notice what happens with the following text and ‘comprehension’ questions:
The sharve thrang up the hill.
T
S1
T
S2
T
S3
T
S4
What did the sharve do?
Thrang up the hill.
Good. Where did it thring?
Up the hill.
Good. What thrang up the hill?
The sharve.
That’s right. And how did it get there?
It thrang.
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T
S5
T
Ss
That’s right. can you give me the principal part?
Thring, thrang, thrung.
Good. Now, do you think it was tired when it got to the top?
???
It is possible to produce a nonsense text, and ask questions which are all correctly
answered but none of which exhibit any kind of understanding – how can they when
the text is nonsense!
There are three types of ‘comprehension questions’:
a. Those where the answer may be read directly from the text.
b. Those where the answer is a simple structural manipulation of the grammar
of the text.
c. External questions – it is necessary to understand how the words of the text
relate to something outside the text. In the example it was only the last question
which was a genuine comprehension question in this way.
The first kind of question – where the answer can be read – is almost useless except
perhaps for checking that students know where you are in the text. The second kind
is useful only for intensive language practice – if the teacher wishes students to say a
particular word or phrase. To check understanding, it is only the third kind of
question which is effective.
The easiest way to construct questions of this kind is to ask questions which expect
the answer No; the question is in some way based on a false assumption. A short
example illustrates this:
Mr. Smith hates getting up early. He loves to stay in bed late. During the week he
gets up at 8 o’clock but at weekends he sometimes stays in bed until 10.
Does Mr. Smith like get up early?
Does he get up at the same time every day?
He gets up at 9 o’clock on Saturdays, doesn’t he?
These questions, because they introduce external ideas, do test comprehension. An
understanding of hate, for example, involves understanding that is ‘not liking’. An
understanding of weekend, means identifying it with Saturday.
In general, comprehension questions which require the responder to ‘correct’ the
questioner, do test comprehension.
9. Use comprehension questions and conversation questions together.
Comprehension questions are about the text; conversation questions about the
students. Conversation questions involve the students individually and personally
responding to what they are studying.
Comprehension questions used alone make the text remote, and unless it is of
exceptional interest, rather boring. Conversation questions involve individuals but
do not keep the class moving forward together. Combined, the lesson develops with
every one involved, and individuals personally involved.
Here is a simple example:
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When she opened the envelope and read the letter, she found she had won the first
prize: £ 5,000! She wondered whether to spend it or save it.
What did she find out from the letter?
How do you think she felt? How would you feel?
Did she know what to do with it?
What would you do with £ 5,000?
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TEACHING LISTENING
I. INTRODUCTION
1. Why is listening so difficult for students?
Both listening and reading are receptive skills, but listening can be more difficult than
reading because:
• Different speakers produce the same sounds in different ways, e.g. dialects
and accents, stress, rhythms, intonations, mispronunciations, etc.
• The listener has little/no control over the speed of the input of the spoken
material;
• The spoken material is often heard only once (unlike the reading material).
• The listener cannot pause to work out the meaning;
• Speech is more likely to be distorted by background noise (e.g. round the
classroom) or the media that transmit sounds;
• The listener sometimes has to deal simultaneously with another task while
listening, e.g. note-taking, etc.
2. Differences b/w R&L:
Written language in English
Stays on the page and doesn't disappear.
Spoken language in English
Uses punctuation and capital letters to show
sentences.
Disappears as soon as it is spoken. Sometimes it
is spoken fast and sometimes slowly, with or
without pauses.
Shows sentences and meaningful groups of
words through stress and intonation.
Consists of letters, words, sentences and
punctuation joined together into text.
Consists of connected speech, sentences,
incomplete sentences or single words.
Has no visual support - except photos or
pictures sometimes.
Is usually quite well-organised: sentences
follow one another in logical sequences and
are joined to previous or following sentences.
The speaker uses body language to support
his/her communication; for example, gestures
(movements of hands or arms to help people
understand us), and facial expressions (the looks
on our face). This helps the listener to
understand what the speaker is saying.
Is not so well organised; e.g. it contains
interruptions, hesitations, repetitions and
frequent changes of topic.
Usually uses quite exact vocabulary and
more complex grammar.
Often uses rather general vocabulary and simple
grammar.
In other words:
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- A written text static, consumed at speed of reader, can read again and again; in
form of good writing
- A spoken text: on audio or video tape, repeated but still happens at its speed, not
the listener's, ss have to follow the "speech flow"; contains hesitation, reformulation,
redundancy, topic change.
3. What do we listen to in everyday life?
In real life, there are two ways in which we often listen:
- 'Casual' listening: Sometimes we listen with no particular purpose in mind, and
often without much concentration. Examples of this kind of listening are: listening to
the radio while doing some housework; chatting to a friend. Usually we do not listen
very closely, unless we hear something that particularly interests us, and afterwards we
may not remember much of what we heard.
- 'Focussed' listening: At other times we listen for a particular purpose, to find our
information we need to know. Examples of this kind of listening are: listening to a piece
of important news on the radio; listening to someone explaining how to operate a
machine. In these situations, we listen much more closely; but we do not listen to
everything we hear with equal concentration – we listen for the most important points or
for particular information. Usually, we know beforehand what we are listening for (the
things we want to know), and this helps us to listen.
4. Use of the cassette player
Using a cassette recorder for listening activities does have some advantages and
problems:
* Advantages
-
The cassette recorder gives a chance for students to listen to a variety of voices
apart from the teacher's, and it is a way of bringing native speakers' voices into
the classroom. Students who have only heard English spoken by their teacher
often have difficult understanding other people.
-
Recorded material is useful for listening to dialogues, interviews, discussions,
etc. where there is more than one person speaking. Otherwise the teacher has to
act the part of more than one person.
* Disadvantages
-
Listening to a cassette recording is much more difficult than listening to the
teacher. When we listen to someone 'face to face', there are many visual clues
(e.g. gestures, lip movements) which help us to listen. When we listen to a
cassette these clues are missing.
-
In a large class with bad acoustics, listening to a cassette may be very difficult
indeed. Up to a point, trying to listen to something that is not clear can provide
good listening practice, but if it is too difficult it will just be frustrating.
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2. An important part of listening is being able to 'catch' words and phrases that we hear;
students who have not had much chance to listen to English often fail to recognise
words that they already know. The cassette recorder is very useful for giving practice in
this, because the cassette can be stopped and a phrase played over and over again. This
kind of listening practice is often called 'intensive listening'.
Below is a possible procedure for teaching a spoken text using a cassette recorder:
i) Introduce the listening, and give one or two guiding questions.
ii) Play the cassette once without stopping, and discuss the guiding questions.
iii) Play the cassette again. This time, focus on important points, pausing and asking
what the person said each rime. If teachers are unable to 'catch' the remark, rewind the
cassette a little way and play it again.
FNote that the aim is to focus on the most important remarks only, but not of course to
go through the whole of a listening text phrase by phrase!
II. TEACHING or TESTING?
TEACHING includes:
§ Adequate preparation
§ Adequate support
§ Provision of appropriate tasks
§ Diagnosing error patterns
§ Positive feedback
§ Remedial actions
III. STAGES OF A LISTENING LESSON
1. Pre-Listening
1.a. Introducing the text: (Lead-in + introduction)
Purposes:
1- Teacher prepares students for the task & familiarises themselves with topic.
2- Teacher creates expectation & arouses students' interests with the subject
matter.
How:
- Introducing general content of the listening passage
- Using pictures + eliciting
- Asking students to predict content of the listening from title / vocabulary /part
of the story / illustrations in book
- Setting the scene: providing culture notes, etc.
1.b Presenting vocabulary
(paying attention to words having difficult sounds, active items, proper names)
1.c Giving guiding question: students listen to tape once or twice, focussing on
gist.
Playing the tape once (non-stop) for students to grasp general content of the
listening
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Pre-Listening Activities:
Teacher may need to give background information or necessary cultural
information
• Students can predict content from title.
• Students can see a relevant object ox piece of realia.
• Students can predict content from an illustration.
• Students can predict content from the Teacher’s description of the
situation.
• Students can discuss the topic or situation.
• Students can contribute their own relevant experiences.
• Teacher can give a pre listening question which directs students to main
points.
• Teacher can give a pre listening question which directs students to
specific detail.
2. While-Listening
- Appropriate tasks given to check major details, clear instructions from
Teacher.
- Teacher plays tape, students listen for task
- Avoid spoiling meaning of text if playing same parts many times more than
needed
- Teacher directs feedback: Teacher plays relevant parts when checking for ss to
confirm the answers.
Teacher should bear these points in mind:
ü divide long scripts into short chunks to facilitate listening
ü Set clear instructions for each task: what to do (cross/circle/tick/give short
answers, etc. (rephrasing textbook instructions if necessary) + how many
times
ü design varied tasks (T/F, MC, Gap-fill, Comprehension Qs, Complete a
table, ...)
Ø Moving from simpler tasks to more complicated ones
Ø less difficult activities for slower classes
ü let students swap info, before checking.
ü when checking, rewind tape/CD to relevant parts for confirmation (non-stop
or with pauses if ss need help).
v WHILE LISTENING ACTIVITIES
No overt response
The learners do not have to do anything in response to the listening; however, facial
expression and body language often show if they are following or not.
•
Stories. Tell a joke or real-life anecdote, retell a well-known story, read a story
from a book; or play a recording of a story. If the story is well-chosen, learners are
likely to be motivated to attend and understand in order to enjoy it.
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•
Songs: Sing a song yourself; or play a recording of one. Note, however that, if
no response is required learners may simply enjoy the music without understanding the
words.
•
Entertainment; films, theater, video. As with stories, if the content is really
entertaining (interesting, stimulating, humorous, dramatic) learners will be motivated
to make the effort to understand without the need for any further task.
Short responses
•
Obeying instructions. Learners perform actions, or draw shapes or pictures,
in response to instruction.
•
Tick off items. A list, text or picture is provided: listeners mark or tick off
words/ components as they hear them within a spoken description, story or simple list
of items.
•
True / false. The listening passage consists of a number of statements, some
of which are true and some false (possibly based on material the class has just learnt.)
learners write ticks or crosses to indicate whether the statements are right or wrong; or
make brief responses.
•
Detecting mistakes
The teacher tells a story or describe something the class know, but with a number of
deliberate mistakes or inconsistencies. Listeners raise their hands or call out when
they hear something wrong.
•
Cloze
The listening text has occasional brief gaps, represented by silence or some kind of
buzz. Learners write down what they think might be the missing word. Note that if the
text is recorded, the gaps have to be much more widely spaced than in a reading one;
otherwise there is not enough time to listen, understand, think of the answer, and
write. If you are speaking the text yourself, then you can more easily adapt the pace of
your speech to the speed of learner responses.
•
Guessing definitions
The teacher provides brief oral descriptions of a person, place, action or whatever;
learners write down what they think it is.
•
Skimming and scanning
A not-too-long listening text is given, improvised or recorded; learners are asked to
identify some general topic or information (skimming), or certain limited information
(scanning) and note the answer (s).
Written questions inviting brief answers may be provided in advance; or a grid, with
certain entries missing; or a picture or diagram to be altered or completed.
Longer responses
• Answering questions. One or more questions demanding fairly full responses
are given in advance, to which the listening text provides the answer(s). Because of the
relative length of the answers demanded, they are most conveniently given in writing.
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•
Note-taking. Learners take brief notes from a short lecture or talk.
• Paraphrasing and translating. Learners rewrite the listening text in different
words; either in the same language (paraphrase) or in another (translation)
•
Summarizing
Learners write a brief summary of the content of the listening passage.
•
Long gap-filling.
A long gap is left, at the beginning, middle or end of a text; learners guess and write
down, or say, what they think might be missing.
Extended responses
Here the listening is only a ‘jump-off point’ for extended reading, writing or speaking;
in other words, these are ‘combined skills’ activities.
• Problem-solving. A problem is described orally; learners discuss how to
deal with it, and/ or write down suggested solution.
• Interpretation
An extract from a piece of dialogue or monologue is provided ,with no previous
information; the listeners try to guess from the words, kinds of voices, tone and any
other evidence what is going on. At a more sophisticated level. A piece of literature that
is suitable for reading aloud (some poetry, for example) can be discussed and analyzed.
3. Post-Listening
T. directs text-related tasks
- for lang. practice (not much time left)
- for developing other skills (S/W) (20 - 40')
POST LISTENING ACTIVITIES
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
do focused exercises on grammar or vocabulary à model another
conversation on one just heard
in groups reconstruct story sequences à pool information, to solve a
problem (after jigsaw listening)
discussion
role-play
paraphrasing
write a summary of the whole
write a criticism of what was heard
IV. PRINCIPLES BEHIND THE TEACHING OF LISTENING
1. The tape recorder is just as important as the tape.
However good the tape is, it will be useless if the tape recorder has a poor speaker or if
the motor speed keeps changing and the tape goes faster or slower. Make sure that the
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tape recorder can be heard all round the classroom. Remember too that if you want to
use your tape recorder for music as well as speech you may need a better machine.
2. Preparation is vital.
Teachers and students need to be prepared for listening because of the special features
of listening.
Teachers need to listen to the tape all the way through before they take it into class.
That way, they will be prepared for any problems, noise, accents, etc., that come up.
That way they can judge whether students will be able to cope with the tape and the
tasks that go with it.
Students need to be made ready to listen. This means that they wick need to look at
pictures, discuss the topic, or read the questions first, for example, to be in a position to
predict what is coming. Teachers will do their best to get students engaged with the
topic and the task so that they really want to listen.
3. Once will not be enough.
There are almost no occasions when the teacher will play a tape only once. Students
will want to hear it again to pick up things they missed the first time. You may well
want them to have a chance to study some of the language features on the tape.
The first listening is often used just to give students an idea of what the listening
material sounds like so that subsequent listenings are easier for students. Once students
have listened to a tape two or three times, however, they will probably not want to hear
it too many times more.
4. Students should be encouraged to respond to the content of a
listening, not just to the language.
As with reading, the most important part of listening practice is to draw out the
meaning, what is intended, what impression it makes on the students. Questions like:
‘do you agree?’ are just as important as questions like:’ what language did she use to
invite him?’
5. Different listening stages demand different listening tasks.
Because there are different things we want to do with a listening text, we need to set
different tasks for different listening stages. This means that, for a first listening, the
task needs to be fairly straightforward and general. That way, the students’ general
understanding and response can be successful – and the stress associated with listening
can be neutralized.
Later listening, however, may focus on detail – of information, language use,
pronunciation etc.
6. Good teachers exploit listening texts to the full.
If teachers ask students to invest time and emotional energy in a listening task – and if
they have spent time choosing and preparing the listening – then it makes sense to use
the tape for as many different applications as possible. Thus, after an initial play of a
tape, the teacher can play it again for various kinds of study before using the subject
matter, situation or tape script for a new activity. The listening then becomes an
important event in a teaching sequence than just an exercise by itself.
7. What if students do NOT understand the listening tape?
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Introduce interview questions: Questions can be given first and students
are encouraged to role-play the interview before listening. This will increase
their predictive power.
• Use ‘jigsaw listening’:
Different groups are given different bits of the tapescript. When the groups hear
about each other’s pieces of tapescript, they can get the whole picture.
• One task only:
Non-demanding tasks can be assigned such as listening and deciding on the sex,
age, status of the speaker or the setting of the listening.
• Use the tapescript:
- It can be cut into bits for students to put in the right order as they listen.
- Students can look at the tapescript to gain more confidence and ensure what
the tape is about.
- Students can look at the tapescript before, during, or after they listen. The
tapescript can also have words or phrases blanked out.
•
8. Include both bottom- up and top- down listening techniques.
Bottom- up processing proceeds from sounds to words to grammatical relationships to
lexical meanings, etc, to a final message. Top-down processing is evoked from ‘a bank
of prior knowledge and global expectations’ and other background information that the
listener brings to the text. Bottom-up techniques typically focus on sounds, words,
intonation, grammatical structures, and other components of spoken language. Top
down techniques are more concerned with the activation of schemata, with deriving
meaning, with global understanding, and with the interpretation of a text. It is important
for learners to operate from both directions since both can offer keys to determining the
meaning of spoken discourse. However, in a communicative, interactive context, you
don’t want to dwell too heavily on the bottom – up, for to do so may hamper the
development of a learner’s all – important automaticity in processing speech.
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TEACHING SPEAKING
I. INTRODUCTION
Speaking is a productive skill. It involves using speech to express meanings to other
people. Speaking covers a lot of categories like grammar and vocabulary; functions,
features of connected speech, appropriacy, body language and interaction.
Interaction is two-way communication that involves using language and body language
to keep our listener involved in what we are saying and to check that they understand
our meaning. Examples of these interactive strategies are: making eye contact, using
facial expressions, asking check questions (e.g. Do you understand?), clarifying your
meaning (e.g. I mean …, What I’m trying to say is …), confirming understanding (e.g.
mm, right).
We speak with fluency and accuracy. Fluency is speaking at a normal speed without
hesitation, repetition or self-correction, and with smooth use of connected speech.
Accuracy in speaking is the use of correct forms of grammar, vocabulary and
pronunciation.
When we speak, we use different aspects of speaking depending on the type of speaking
we are involved in. If you go to a shop to buy some sweets and ask the shopkeeper “How
much?”, then leave after s/he replies, you don’t use many of them. If you go to the bank
to ask the bank manager to lend you £50 000, you will probably need to use many more.
If you eat a meal with all your relatives, you will also use many in conversation with
them. Therefore, speaking is a complex activity.
II. TEACHING SPEAKING IN CLASS
II.1 CONTROLLED SPEAKING
v Definition
In many classes, learners do controlled practice activities. They are
intended to establish some correctness in the production of new items
immediately after they are presented. These are a very limited kind of
speaking because they just focus on accuracy in speaking and not on
communication, interaction or fluency. Learners are usually very aware that
they are repeating the new item or items over and over again. They also know
they are expected to avoid errors. Controlled practice activities can provide
useful, if limited, preparation for speaking. The following activities can be
used for the practice of pronouncing new words and expressions, necessary
vocabulary, organizing ideas …. to help learners before they speak freely.
v Controlled speaking activities
§
Repetition Drill (Students repeat teacher's model as quickly and
accurately as possible.)
§
Chain Drill (Students ask and answer each other one-by-one in a circular
chain around the classroom.)
§
Single Slot Substitution Drill (Teacher states a line from the dialog, 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.)
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§
Multiple-slot Substitution Drill (Same as the Single Slot drill, except that
there are multiple cues to be substituted into the line.)
§
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.)
§
Question-and-answer Drill (Students should answer or ask questions very
quickly.)
§
Pattern practice (This can be done in pairs. Any controlled oral practice
can be done first with the whole class, and then in pairs.)
§
Complete the Dialog (Selected words are erased from a line in the dialog
- students must find and insert.)
§
Practising short dialogues (Acting out short dialogues can very easily be
done in pairs, with little chance of students making mistakes. It can be
done first with pairs of students in front of the class, and then with all the
students working in pairs at the same time.)
§
Reading a text and answering questions (Students can discuss questions in
pairs or groups and then read the text; or they can read the text silently,
and then ask and answer questions in pairs or groups. This is a good way
of involving the whole class in answering questions. )
§
Grammar exercises (Students can do grammar exercises orally in pairs;
the teacher goes through the answers afterwards with the whole class,
and students write the exercise for homework. This is more interesting
and productive than students doing exercises alone, in silence.)
§
Grammar Games (Various games designed to practice a grammar point in
context, using lots of repetition.)
v Feedback and correction in accuracy work
It is the common assumption that that it is the teacher’s job to correct learners,
and the learners can not correct themselves. Neither assumption is true. But
learners will be passive and not correct themselves if you continually do it for
them. Learners must learn to correct themselves if they are really to learn the
language.
v Techniques for helping learner’s self- correct
§
§
§
§
§
Repeating the incorrect form with a questioning intonation (‘Cheap’)
Giving the correct form or the beginning of it, but not the whole sentence.
(‘Is the test…’)
Repeating the sentence up to the error (‘My TV…’)
Simply indicate an error with a questioning facial expression, or say
‘Sorry’?
Move one hand over the other for wrong word order.
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§
§
§
Point backwards and forwards for past or future tense.
Give the learner a choice – ‘cheap, cheaper, more cheap?’
Draw an S in the air with a finger for errors like ‘He live in Rome.’
In accuracy practice most errors in key features should be corrected immediately
but:
§ You should first give learners the opportunity to correct themselves,
helping as necessary (self- correction).
§ If a learner can not self- correct, you should invite other learners to make
the correction (peer correction).
§ If no other learner can make the correction, you should make the
correction yourself (teacher correction).
II.2 GUIDED SPEAKING
v Definition
These activities aim at developing both accuracy and fluency, i.e. the ability to
communicate with little hesitation , even if they make mistakes . They are intended
to promote the use of language for real communication. The attention should be more
on the information learners are communication than on language. These activities
usually combine new items with other language and also the language used may be
guided by dialogue scripts or materials such as pictures and forms but information gap
and some freedom for the learners to decide exactly what they say are essential in these
activities.
v Steps for a guided speaking activity
1. Pre- speaking
ü Introducing the topic and stating the objectives of the activity
The introduction may simply be a brief explanation of how to do the activity.
ü Suggesting language and ideas to help learners with the activity by using reading/
listening texts, pictures, eliciting from learners followed by more ideas,
vocabulary, structures from the teacher. If learners are going to play a game, a
model of how to do it must be given, making sure students know what they are
supposed to do. The modeling must be done first by the teacher and an individual
or a group, then two other individuals or groups will do it again for sure.
ü Controlled practice of suggested language materials, using different types of drills:
repetition ( for pronunciation) single slot substitution ( vocabulary & structures)
multiple slot substitution (language and idea.), transformation (function: formal –
informal …)
ü Divide class into pairs/ groups, assign roles and establish a time frame. Take into
account one or two of the following:
§ Proficiency levels
§ Age or gender differences
§ Personality types
§ Cognitive style preferences
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§
§
§
Interests
Prior learning experiences
Target language goal
2. While speaking
Set the task in motion and monitor the task.
The teacher now becomes a Facilitator and Resource. Guided speaking is about
effective communication without much hesitation. Therefore teachers should not
interrupt activities too often. Do so only when learners are making the same basic
error, or when errors interfere with communication. Instead, monitor the activity,
note common errors, and deal with them after the activity has finished. It is very
important to circulate among the groups so that, even if the teacher has nothing to
say to the group, s/he can listen to the students and get a sense of individuals’
language production.
A few don’ts
a. Do not sit at your desk and grade papers.
b. Do not leave the room and take a break.
c. Do not spend an undue amount of time with one group at the expense of
others.
d. Do not correct students’ errors unless asked to do so.
e. Do not assume a dominating or disruptive role while monitoring groups.
3. Post speaking
Reporting on findings
Make sure that there is enough time for the groups to report their findings and the
teacher may entertain some brief discussion but be sure not to let that discussion
steal time from other groups. This whole – class process gives each group a
chance to perceive differences and similarities in their work.
Recording mistakes
Teachers must observe, watch and listen to students when they are reporting so
that they can give feedback on how well students have performed. However, it
easy to forget what students have said after the event. Most teachers, therefore,
write down points they want to refer to later, and some like to use charts or other
forms of categorization to help them to do this, as in the following example.
Feedback and correction
One way of doing this is to write sentences with significant errors in them on the
board – without saying who made the errors. Then get the learners to identify and
correct them.
III. CHARACTERISTICS OF A SUCCESSFUL SPEAKING ACTIVITY
1. Learners talk a lot
As much as possible of the period of time allotted to the activity is in fact occupied
by learner talk. This may seem obvious, but often most time is taken up with teacher
talk or pauses.
2. Participation is even
Classroom discussion is not dominated by a minority of talkative participants: all
gets a chance to speak, and contribution is fairly even distributed.
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3. Motivation is high
Learners are eager to speak: because they are interested in the topic and have
something new to say about it, or because they want to contribute to achieving a task
objective.
4. Language is of an acceptable level
Learners express themselves in utterances that are relevant, easily comprehensible to
each other, and of an acceptable level of language accuracy.
IV. PROBLEMS WITH SPEAKING ACTIVITES
1. Inhibition
Unlike reading, writing and listening, speaking requires some degree of real- time
exposure to an audience. Learners are often inhibited about trying to say things in a
foreign language in the classroom: worried about making mistakes, fearful of
criticism or losing face, or simply shy of the attention that their speech attracts.
2. Nothing to say
Even if they are not inhibited, teachers often hear learners complain that they can not
think of any thing to say: they have no motive to express themselves beyond the
guilty feeling that they should be speaking.
3. Low or uneven participation
Only one participant can talk at a time if he or she is to be heard; and in a large
group this means that each one will have only very little talking time. This problem
is compounded by the tendency of some learners to dominate, while others speak
very little or not at all.
4. Mother-tongue use
In classes where all, or a number of, the learners share the same mother- tongue, they
may tend to use it: because it is easier, because it feels unnatural to speak to one
another in a foreign language, and because they feel less ‘exposed’ if they are
speaking their mother- tongue. If they are talking in small groups it can be quite
difficult to get some classes – particularly the less disciplined or motivated ones – to
keep to the target language.
V. SOLUTIONS TO SPEAKING PROBLEMS
1. Use group work.
This increases the sheer amount of learner talk going on in a limited period of time
and also lowers the inhibitions of learners who are unwilling to speak in front of the
full class. It is true that group work means the teacher can not supervise all leaner
speech, so that not all utterances will be correct, and learners may occasionally slip
into their native language; nevertheless, even taking into consideration occasional
mistakes and mother- tongue use, the amount of time remaining for positive, useful
oral practice is still likely to be far more than the full – class set –up.
2. Base the activity on easy language.
In general, the level of language for a discussion should be lower than that used in
intensive language – learning activities in the same class: it should be easily recalled
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and produced by the participants, so that they can speak fluently with the minimum
of hesitation. It is a good idea to teach or review essential vocabulary before the
activity starts.
3. Make a careful choice of topic and task to stimulate interest.
On the whole, the clearer the purpose of the discussion, the more motivated
participants will be.
4. Give some instruction or training in discussion skills.
If the task is based on group discussion then include instructions about participation
when introducing it. For example tell learners to make sure that every one in the
group contributes to the discussion; appoint a chairperson to each group who will
regulate participation.
5. Keep students speaking the target language.
The teacher might appoint one of the group as monitor, whose job it is to remind
participants to use the target language, and perhaps report later to the teacher how
well the group managed to keep to it. Even if there is no actual penalty attached, the
very awareness that someone is monitoring such lapses helps participants to be more
careful.
However, when all is said and done, the best way to keep students speaking the
target language is simply to be there yourself as much as possible, reminding them
and modeling the language use yourself: there is no substitute nagging.
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TEACHING WRITING
I. INTRODUCTION
I.1. What is writing?
-
Writing is one of the four language skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking.
Writing and speaking are productive skills.
I.2. Key concepts about writing
-
All written text types have two things in common. Firstly, they are written to
communicate a particular message, and secondly, they are written to communicate
to somebody.
-
Writing involves several sub-skills.
-
Writing isn’t just about accuracy. It is also having a message and communicating
it successfully to other people. To do this, we need to have enough ideas, organize
them well and express them in an appropriate style.
I.3. Why do students write in class?
-
If we think only of long-term needs, writing is probably the least important of the
four skills for many students; they are more likely to need to listen to, read and
speak English than to write it. Their need for writing is most likely to be for study
purposes and also as an examination skill.
-
The main importance of writing in the classroom is to help students to learn. Writing
new words and structures helps students to remember them; and as writing is done
more slowly and carefully than speaking, written practice helps to focus students'
attention on what they are learning.
II. WRITING ACTIVTIES
There are 3 main types of writing activities: controlled, guided and free writing.
II.1 CONTROLLED WRITING
There are 2 types of controlled writing activities: mechanical and meaningful writing
activities.
2. 1.1 Mechanical writing – teaching handwriting
If the students' own language uses a different writing system to English, the first task
will be to master English handwriting. So the earliest activities will be copying letters,
letter combinations, words, and simple sentences.
a. Teaching individual letters
b. Writing words
c. Copying words
- Once students have learned enough letters, they can start writing words and simple
sentences. The simplest and most controlled form of practice is copying. Simply
copying words or sentences from the board can be a very MECHANICAL activity.
Students can easily do it without really thinking and it soon becomes very boring.
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-
One way to make copying more challenging is to use “DELAYED COPYING”. The
teacher writes a word on the board or shows it on a card, and the students read it;
then the teacher erases the word, and the students write it. In this way, students have
to think what they are writing, and they have to think of the word as a whole, not
just as a series of letters.
2.1.2. Meaningful writing – moving beyond copying
As soon as possible, we should encourage students to go beyond mechanical copying
and give them exercises which require them to think and add something of their own;
but exercises at this level should still be controlled, so that students do not make too
many mistakes.
Below are some examples of controlled writing activities. As they are very short, they
could easily be written on the blackboard.
•
-
Gap-filling
Leave out part of the sentence for the students to write themselves,
e.g. 'Sahiba .................................. by bus.' or 'Sahiba goes to school ………..’.
- Either let students decide for themselves what to write in the gap, or say the whole
sentence and ask them to write what they heard.
A. Gap-filling
Listen to the teacher, and then write out the complete sentences.
Paper……………wood. It…………… the Chinese in…………………
i) Teacher reads out these sentences: ‘Paper is usually made from wood. It was
invented by the Chinese in the first century AD.’ Teacher asks students to copy
them, filling in the gaps.
ii) Teacher asks students to read back the complete sentences, and write them on
the board.
•
•
Say the sentence, but write only the outline on the board, e.g. 'Sahiba - school bus'. Students write out the whole sentence.
Draw a picture to replace part of the sentence, e.g.:
Ask students to write the whole sentence in words.
•
Reordering words
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B. Re-ordering words
Write the sentences correctly.
We/six o'clock/and/tea/drink/get up/at. Then/the patients/wake/go/and/the
wards/we/round. Sometimes/medicines/injections/them/we/or/give.
i) Note that the sentences describe the start of a nurse's working day. Ask students
to write out the sentences correctly.
ii) Ask students to read out the sentences, and write them on the board.
• Substitution: Write the sentence on the board, and ask students to write a similar
true sentence about themselves.
C. Substitution
Write a true sentence like this about yourself.
Samir enjoys playing football and reading adventure stories.
i) Ask students to write a similar sentence about themselves.
ii) Correct the sentences orally, e.g.:
T: What do you enjoy doing, Juan?
S: I enjoy sleeping.
T: OK. (write 'sleeping' on the board) Who else enjoys sleeping? (and so on,
building up a list of words on the board)
•
Correcting the facts
D. Correct the facts
Re-write the sentences so that they match the picture.
At the market, I saw an old woman sitting in a chair.
She was selling eggs. It was raining.
i) Ask students to write the sentences, correcting the facts.
ii) Ask students to read out the correct sentences, and write them on the board.
[Note: This activity could be used with any picture in the textbook, and the 'untrue'
sentences written on the board.]
•
•
•
•
Sentence building: key words are given, and students write complete sentences.
Sentence completion
Write a summary based on prompts
Sentence transformation
In all these techniques, students have to add something of their own. The activities are
still very controlled, with little chance of students making mistakes, but they have to
think about what they are writing.
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II.2 GUIDED WRITING
2.1. Problems of free writing
-
Many students would probably make many mistakes. If so, they would find the task
frustrating and probably not learn very much from it.
Students would probably approach the task in different ways, and produce a wide
variety of different paragraphs. So the only way to correct their work would be
individually, book by book; this would be very time-consuming for the teacher.
As soon as they have mastered basic skills of sentence writing, students need to
progress beyond very controlled writing exercises to freer paragraph writing.
However, students will make this transition more easily and learn more if we can
guide their writing. There are two main ways of doing this:
o By giving a short text as a model.
o By doing oral preparation for the writing.
2.2. Writing based on a text
How a text can be used as a model for writing:
- Students read a short text, and perhaps study particular features of it (e.g. the way
sentences are joined, the use of verb tenses, the use of the passive). They then write a
paragraph which is similar, but involves some changes.
- Examples of texts that could be used: Students read a paragraph about a student's
day, then write about their own day; students read a description of a car, then write
descriptions of other cars from notes; students read a description of a room, then
write a description of another room shown in a picture
Jopley is a small town in the north of England. It is on the River Ouse, not far from Leeds.
The town has a wide main street, with a stone church, the town hall and a cinema. There is
a large supermarket in the town centre, and many smaller shops and cafés. Most people in
Jopley work in the local factory, which produces farm machinery.
1. Write a similar paragraph about Bexham. Use these notes:
Bexham — small village — south coast.
Harrow street — two shops — church.
Most people - farmers. Grow vegetables, wheat.
2. Now write about your own town or village.
Note these points:
- The model text might be too limiting, especially if the students' own town or village
has quite different features. This may lead students either to follow the text too
closely (and so write something which sounds unnatural) or to move away from it
too much (and so make many mistakes). If all the students are writing about the
same town, it would help to go through the exercise orally with the class first, and
ask students to suggest what to include in the description.
- The main problem with this kind of exercise is finding a suitable text. It is
sometimes possible to adapt a text from the textbook - this can be written on the
board before the lesson, or copied onto worksheets.
2.3. Oral preparation
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1. Another way of guiding paragraph writing is to do oral preparation beforehand with
the whole class; the students make suggestions, and the teacher builds up an outline
or a list of key expressions on the board. The students then use this as a basis for
their writing. This approach has several advantages:
- It is flexible: it can be done in different ways according to the interests and ability of
the class.
- Ideas about what to write come from the students themselves; this makes the activity
much more interesting and involves the class more.
- It does not require specially-prepared texts or other materials
2. Look at the picture above, and make sure that you understand what is happening: it is
an Egyptian class, and the students are going to write a description of Cairo; to
prepare for this, the teacher is asking questions about the city and writing notes on
the board.
1. This teacher is building up notes on the board for a description of Cairo in Egypt.
2. The teacher wants to elicit these other facts about Cairo, and write them on the board.
Important business centre
- International hotels
Tourists:
- The Pyramids (2500BC)
- many famous mosques
- market area (gold copper – leather)
Very crowded-traffic problems
- new underground railway
Teacher asks:
What is Cairo? How is it special? (the capital of Egypt)
Where is it? In the south? (in the north)
And it's on . . .which river? (the Nile)
He might write next:
Very large city.
Population: 10 million.
Other possible questions:
- What kind of city is it? What happens there?
- Where do people on business stay?
- What about tourists? What can they do in Cairo? What can they see?
- When were the Pyramids built?
- What other buildings are there?
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- Where can tourists go to buy things? What are the best things to buy?
- What are the streets like? What's the biggest problem?
- What are they building now? Will this solve the problem?
III. STAGES IN TEACHING WRITING
III.1 Stages of a forty five-minute lesson
-
PRE-WRITING:
O Teacher leads into the lesson.
O Teacher introduces the topic and gives clear instructions.
O Teacher presents language input (vocab./structures/ ideas) for the task by
giving cues, helping students brainstorm for ideas, giving a model text or
doing oral preparation.
-
WHILE- WRITING:
O Students write in groups in class or individually at home.
-
POST-WRITING:
O Teacher marks students’ papers and gives comments (Paying attention to
errors of competence and performance and techniques of correction.)
O Teacher gives feedback: pointing out good points and common mistakes for
the whole class to learn from peers.
III.2 Stages of a writing task
Short writing tasks are usually controlled writing activities and done after a
grammatical structure has been taught or writing sentences following oral practice.
-
PRE-TASK:
O Teacher introduces the task and gives clear instructions.
O Teacher presents language input (vocab./structures) for the task.
-
WHILE- TASK:
O Students write in groups or individually in class.
-
POST-TASK:
O Teacher gives feedback to the class (orally or by writing key on the board,
pointing out good points and common mistakes for the whole class.)
IV. SOME POINTS TO BEAR IN MIND
-
The sub-skills of writing that we teach will vary a lot, depending on the age and
needs of our learners. At primary level we may spend a lot of time teaching learners
how to form letters and words and write short texts of a few words or sentences,
often by copying models. At secondary level, we may need to focus more on the
skills required to write longer texts such as letters, emails or compositions.
-
When we teach writing, we need to focus on both accuracy and on building up and
communicating a message.
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-
Sometimes in the classroom, learners write by, for example, completing gaps in
sentences with the correct word, taking notes for listening comprehension, writing
one-word answers to reading comprehension questions. These activities are very
useful for teaching grammar, and checking listening and reading, but they do not
teach the skills of writing. To teach the writing sub-skills, we need to focus on
accuracy in writing, on communicating a message and on the writing process.
-
By encouraging learners to use the writing process in the classroom, we help them
to be creative and to develop their message, i.e. what they want to say.
V. CORRECTING WRITTEN WORK
V.1 CONTROLLED WRITING
1.1. Correcting written work is very time-consuming for the teacher, and often
seems to have very little effect on students' progress. So, especially with large classes
and at lower levels, it is a good idea to give writing tasks which:
- are easy and limited, so that students will not make too many mistakes;
- can easily be corrected in class.
1.2. A basic procedure for correcting simple written work in class:
i) The teacher writes the correct answers on the board, or gets students to come out and
write them. If spelling is not important, he or she can go through the answers orally.
ii) As the teacher gives the answers, students correct their own work and the teacher
moves around the class to supervise what they are doing; or students can exchange
books and correct each other's work.
iii) When the teacher notices errors made by a number of students, he or she can draw
attention to these for the benefit of the whole class.
1.3. Advantages and disadvantages of various correction
techniques:
-
-
Correcting work orally in class is a good idea for a large class, as it greatly
reduces the teacher's workload. As he or she corrects, the teacher can move around
the class to check that students are correcting their own work.
Correcting work immediately in class (rather than returning it the next day) means
that the teacher can draw students' attention to problems while they are still fresh in
their minds.
Getting students to correct either their own or each other's work (before the
teacher gives the correct answer) takes time in the lesson; but it gives students useful
practice in reading through what they have written and noticing mistakes'. It is also a
good way of keeping the class involved.
Correcting in class works best with fairly controlled writing activities, where there
are not too many possible answers.
1.4. Techniques for correcting written work
With more advanced classes it is more important for the teacher to correct students'
work individually, and even with lower level classes this will sometimes be necessary.
As with oral work, the teacher's corrections should have a positive effect on the
student's work rather than a discouraging one.
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Discussion: Imagine an exercise in which students write sentences about what they
and other people enjoy doing. Below is an example of a student's sentence on the
board. Discuss what corrections the teacher should make:
my bruther injoye to play football.
Note these points:
- The student has made many mistakes, but the sentence is not as bad as it looks the student has managed to write something that makes sense. Most of the
mistakes are very minor ones.
- The purpose of the exercise was to practise 'enjoy + -ing', so this part needs to be
corrected, and the ‘-s’ ending is also important; the teacher can correct both these
errors together by writing ''enjoys playing” above the line.
- It might be better to ignore the spelling mistakes; correcting them will distract
attention from the main point. The teacher could make a note of them and include
them in a later lesson.
V.2 GUIDED WRITING
The effect of so many corrections in a piece of written work would probably be to
discourage the student concerned – they make it appear that s/he has written almost
nothing correctly.
2.1. Ways of correcting the student’s work more positively and
effectively:
The teacher could correct only the errors that seem most important, or only
errors of a certain kind (e.g. items that were taught recently, or just problems with
verbs)
The teacher could reduce the amount of underlining and write the corrections in
the margin; this would make the page look less heavily corrected.
The teacher could simply indicate where the student has made important errors,
and ask her to try to correct them herself. This would encourage the student to look
again at what she has written and think about possible errors:
Deaf-and-dumb people cannot hear the noise even if the accident happens in their back.
-
For more advanced classes, some teachers develop systems of abbreviations which
they regularly write in the margin to indicate different kinds of error, e.g. sp =
spelling mistake, g = grammar mistake, WO = word order. This leaves the students
to correct all their own mistakes, and gives good training in reading through and
checking what they have written.
Below are some more examples of symbols that have been found useful in
correcting written work:
- S – spelling
- c - concord (agreement: subject and verb)
- s /p – singular, plural
- w/o – word order
- T – tense
- V – vocabulary, wrong word or usage
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-
- App – appropriacy ( inappropriate style or register)
- p- punctuation ( including capital letters)
- Ir – irrelevant information
- ?M - meaning not clear
- word missing
- //-separate words
- H -wrong hyphenation
Teachers can withdraw their help in stages throughout the course to help students
self-correct:
o Stage 1 - (elementary) underline the mistake and write the symbol in the
margin.
o Stage 2 – underline the whole word / phrase and write the symbols in the
margin.
o Stage 3 – do not underline the word or the mistake; only write the symbol in
the margin.
o Stage 4 – (exam classes) put a dot or x in the margin for each mistake.
2.2. Awarding marks or grades for composition
There are two main ways of grading a piece of writing: ‘impression’ marking and
‘split’ or (analytic) marking.
-
Impression marking: you read the written work through quickly and give it an
‘impression’ mark. In an exam, at least two, preferably three, people independently
should give an impression mark for each essay, keeping a record on a separate mark
sheet, not writing the grade on the essay itself.
-
Split marking: you ‘split’ total marks, and give a proportion for each of the
following: organization (i.e. plan, paragraphing, etc.) accuracy (grammar and
spelling), appropriacy (style, register) and content (relevance). Depending on what
form of writing it is you adjust the proportion of total marks given for each
category. For example, out of 20, a business letter would need a low proportion of
marks for content, say 3 , and higher than usual for appropriacy and accuracy, say
7 and 6 respectively, leaving 4 for organization of ideas (in the case of a letter
layout would be included here). You could also add or subtract a few marks for
neatness, layout etc.
This method is still subjective but easier to grade. In an exam it would still be
preferable to have three or so markers.
The marks are recorded on the student’s work thus:
org. 3/4
acc. 3/6
appr. 2/7
content 3/3
11/2
0
VI. THE ROLES OF TEACHERS IN WRITING
Although the teacher needs to deploy some or all of the usual roles, when students are
asked to write, the ones that are especially important are as follows:
- Motivator: One of our principal roles in writing tasks will be to motivate the
students, creating the right conditions for the generation of ideas, persuading
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them of the usefulness of the activity, and encouraging them to make as much
effort as possible for maximum benefit. This may require special and prolonged
effort on our part for longer process- writing sequences.
Where student are involved in a creative writing activity it is usually the case that
some find it easier to generate ideas than others. During poem- writing activities,
for example, we may need to suggest lines to those who cannot think of anything,
or at least prompt them with our own ideas.
- Resource: especially during more extended writing tasks, we should be ready to
supply information and language where necessary. We need to tell students that
we are available and be prepared to look at their work as it progresses, offering
advice and suggestions in a constructive and tactful way. Because writing takes
longer than conversation, for example, there is usually time for discussion with
individual students, or students working in pairs or groups.
- Feedback provider
Giving feedback on writing tasks demands special care. Teachers should respond
positively and encouragingly to the content of what students have written. When
offering correction teachers should choose what and how much to focus on based
on what students need at this particular stage of their studies, and on the tasks they
have undertaken.
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CLASS MANAGEMENT
Class management - the ability to control and inspire a class - is one of the
fundamental skills of teaching. Teachers find it much easier if their
students believe that they are genuinely interested in them and available
for them.
HOW SHOULD TEACHERS TALK TO STUDENTS?
The way that teachers talk to students - the manner in which they interact with
them - is one of the crucial teacher skills, but it does not demand technical expertise. It
does, however, require teachers to empathise with the people they are talking to.
One group of people who seem to find it fairly natural to adapt their language to
their audience are parents when they talk to their young children. Studies show that they
use more exaggerated tones of voice, and speak with less complex grammatical
structures than they would if they were talking to adults. Their vocabulary is generally
more restricted too and the attempt to make eye contact (and other forms of physical
contact) is greater. They generally do these things unconsciously.
Though teachers and students arc not the same as parents and children, this
subconscious ability to 'rough-tune' the language is a skill they have in common.
Rough-tuning is that unconscious simplification which both parents and teachers make.
Neither group sets out to get the level of language exactly correct for their audience.
They rely, instead, on a general perception of what is being understood by the people
listening to them. Their empathy allows them to almost feel whether the level of
language they are using is appropriate for the audience they are addressing.
Experienced teachers rough-tune the way they speak to students as a matter of
course. Newer teachers need to concentrate their focus on their students' comprehension
as the yardstick by which to measure their own speaking style in the classroom.
Apart from adapting their language, experienced teachers also use physical
movement: gestures, expressions, mime. It becomes almost second nature to show
happiness and sadness, movement and time sequences, concepts (e.g. 'heavy' and
'drunk') using these techniques. They become part of the language teachers use,
especially with students at lower levels.
HOW SHOULD TEACHERS GIVE INSTRUCTIONS?
This issue of how to talk to students becomes crucial when teachers are giving
their students instructions. The best activity in the world is a waste of time if the
students don't understand what it is they are supposed to do.
There are two general rules for giving instructions: they must be kept as simple
as possible, and they must be logical. Before giving instructions, therefore, teachers
must ask themselves the following questions: What is the important information I am
trying to convey? What must the students know if they are to complete this activity
successfully? Which information do they need first? Which should come next?
When teachers give instructions, it is important for them to check that the
students have understood what they are being asked to do. This can be achieved either
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by asking a student to explain the activity after the teacher has given the instruction or
by getting someone to show the other people in the class how the exercise works. Where
students all share the same mother tongue (which the teacher also understands), a
member of the class can be asked to translate the instructions as a check that they have
understood them.
WHO SHOULD TALK IN CLASS?
There is a continuing debate about the amount of time teachers should spend
talking in class. Trainees' classes are sometimes criticised because there is too much
TTT (Teacher Talking Time) and not enough STT (Student Talking Time).
Getting students to speak - to use the language they arc learning - is a vital part
of a teacher's job. Students are the people who need the practice, in other words, not the
teacher. In general terms, therefore, a good teacher maximises STT and minimises TTT.
Good TTT may have beneficial qualities, however. If teachers know how to talk
to students - if they know how to rough-tune their language to the students' level, as we
have discussed above - then the students get a chance to hear language which is
certainly above their own productive level, but which they can more or less understand.
Such 'comprehensible input' (a term coined by the American methodologist Stephen
Krashen) — where students receive rough-tuned input in a relaxed and unthreatening
way - is an important feature in language acquisition. TTT works!
A classroom where the teacher's voice drones on and on day after day and where
you hardly ever hear the students say anything is not one that most teachers and students
would approve of, however. TTT can be terribly over-used. Conversely, a class where
the teacher seems reluctant to speak is not very attractive either.
The best lessons are ones where STT is maximised, but where at appropriate
moments during the lesson the teacher is not afraid to summarise what is happening, tell
a story, enter into discussion etc. Good teachers use their common sense and experience
to get the balance right.
WHAT ARE THE BEST KINDS OF LESSON?
One of the greatest enemies of successful teaching is student boredom. This is
often caused by the deadening predictabiHty of much classroom time. Students
frequently know what is going to happen in class and they know this because it will be
the same as what happened in the last class — and a whole string of classes before that.
Something has to be done to break the chain.
In his monumental book, Breaking Rules, John Fanselow suggests that, both for
the teachers sanity and the students' continuing involvement, teachers need to violate
their own behaviour patterns. If a teacher normally teaches in casual clothes, he should
turn up one day wearing a suit. If a teacher normally sits down, she should stand up. If
he or she is normally noisy and energetic as a teacher, he or she should spend a class
behaving calmly and slowly. Each time teachers break one of their own rules, in other
words, they send a ripple through the class. That ripple is a mixture of surprise and
curiosity and it is a perfect starting point for student involvement.
The need for surprise and variety within a fifty-minute lesson is also
overwhelming. If, for example, students spend all of that time writing sentences, they
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will probably get bored. But if, in that fifty minutes, there are a number of different
tasks with a selection of different topics, the students are much more likely to remain
interested. This can be seen most clearly with children at primary and secondary levels,
but even adults need a varied diet to keep them stimulated.
However, variety is not the same as anarchy. Despite what we have said,
students tend to like a certain amount of predictability: they appreciate a safe structure
which they can rely on. And too much chopping and changing - too much variety in a
fifty-minute lesson — can be destabilising. Good teachers find a balance between
predictable safety and unexpected variety.
HOW SHOULD TEACHERS USE THEIR PHYSICAL PRESENCE IN CLASS?
The teacher's physical presence plays a large part in his or her management of
the classroom environment. And it's not just appearance either. The way the teacher
moves, how he or she stands, how physically demonstrative he or she is - all these play
their part in the effective management of a class.
All teachers, like all people, have their own physical characteristics and habits,
and they will take these into the classroom with them. But there are a number of issues
to consider which are not just idiosyncratic and which have a direct bearing on the
students' perception of us.
Proximity: teachers should consider how close they want to be to the students
they are working with. Some students resent it if the distance between them and the
teacher is too small. For others, on the other hand, distance is a sign of coldness.
Teachers should be conscious of their proximity and, in assessing their students'
reactions to what is happening in the classroom, they should take this into account.
Appropriacy: deciding how closely you should work with students is a matter
of appropriacy. So is the general way in which teachers sit or stand in classrooms.
Many teachers create an extremely friendly atmosphere by crouching down when they
work with students in pairs. In this way, they are at the same level as their seated
students. However, some students find this informality worrying. Some teachers are
even happy to sit on the floor, and in certain situations this may be appropriate. But in
others it may well lead to a situation where students are put oft from concentrating.
All the positions teachers take - sitting on the edge of tables, standing behind a
lectern, standing on a raised dais etc. — make strong statements about the kind of
person the teacher is. It is important, therefore, to consider what kind of effect such
physical behaviour has so that we can behave in a way which is appropriate to the
students we have and the relationship we wish to create with them. If we want to
manage a class effectively, such a relationship is crucial.
Movement: some teachers tend to spend most of their class time in one place
— at the front of the class, for example, or to the side, or in the middle. Others spend a
great deal of time walking from side to side, or striding up and down the aisles
between the chairs. Although this, again, is to some extent a matter of personal
preference, it is worth remembering that motionless teachers can bore students, whilst
teachers who are constantly in motion can turn their students into tennis-match
spectators, their heads moving from side to side until they become exhausted.
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Most successful teachers move around the classroom to some extent. That way
they can retain their students' interest (if they are leading an activity) or work more
closely with smaller groups (when they go to help a pair or group).
How much a teacher moves around in the classroom, then, will depend on his
or her personal style, where he or she feels most comfortable for the management of
the class, how she or he feels it easiest to manage the classroom effectively, and
whether or not he or she wants to work with smaller groups.
Contact: much of what we have said is about the issue of contact. How can
teachers make contact with students? How close should that contact be?
In order to manage a class successfully, the teacher has to be aware of what
students are doing and, where possible, how they are feeling. This means watching and
listening just as carefully as teaching. It means being able to move around the class,
getting the level of proximity right. It means making eye contact with students
(provided that this is not culturally inappropriate), listening to what they have said and
responding appropriately.
It is almost impossible to help students to learn a language in a classroom
setting without making contact with them. The exact nature of this contact will vary
from teacher to teacher and from class to class.
The teacher's physical approach and personality in the class is one aspect of
class management to consider. Another is one of the teacher’s chief tools: the voice.
HOW SHOULD TEACHERS USE THEIR VOICES IN CLASS?
Perhaps the teacher's most important instrument is the voice. How we speak
and what our voice sounds like have a crucial impact on classes. When considering the
use of the voice in the management of teaching there are three issues to think about.
Audibility: clearly, teachers need to be audible. They must be sure that the
students at the back of the class can hear them just as well as those at the front. But
audibility cannot be divorced from voice quality: a rasping shout is always unpleasant.
Teachers do not have to shout to be audible. In fact, in most classrooms, there is a
danger of the teacher's voice being too loud. Good teachers try to get this balance
between audibility and volume just right.
Variety: it is important for teachers to vary the quality of their voices - and the
volume they speak at - depending on the type of lesson and the type of activity. So the
kind of voice you use to give instructions or introduce a new activity will be different
from the voice which is most appropriate for conversation or an informal exchange of
views or information.
In one particular situation, teachers often use very loud voices, and that is when
they want students to be quiet or stop doing something (see the next section). But it is
worth pointing out that speaking quietly is often just as effective a way of getting the
students' attention since, when they realise that you are talking, they will want to stop
and listen in case you are saying something important or interesting. However, for
teachers who almost never raise their voices, the occasional shouted interjection may
have an extremely dramatic effect, and this can sometimes be beneficial.
Conservation: just like opera singers, teachers have to take great care of their
voices. It is important that they breathe correctly from the diaphragm so that they don't
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strain their larynxes. It is important that they vary their voices throughout a day,
avoiding shouting wherever possible, so that they can conserve their vocal energy.
Conserving the voice is one thing teachers will want to take into account when
planning a day's or a weeks work.
HOW SHOULD TEACHERS MARK THE STAGES OF A LESSON?
If the teacher needs to provide variety, then clearly he or she will have to
include different stages in his or her lessons.
When he or she arrives in the classroom, the teacher needs to start the lesson
off. Where possible and appropriate, he or she needs to tell the students what they will
be doing or, in a different kind of lesson, needs to discuss with them what they are
hoping to achieve.
Teachers do not always explain exactly what they are going to do, however,
since they sometimes want to maintain an element of surprise. But even in such cases,
a clear start to the lesson is necessary just as a play often starts with the rise of a
curtain, or a visit to the doctor starts when he or she asks you, 'Now then, what seems
to be the problem?' or 'How can I help you?'
When an activity has finished and/or another one is about to start, it helps if
teachers make this clear through the way they behave and the things they say. It helps
students if they are made clearly aware of the end of something and the beginning of
what is coming next. Frequently, teachers need to re-focus the students' attention, or
point it in some new direction.
In order for such changes of direction to be effective, the teacher first needs to
get the students' attention. This can sometimes be difficult, especially when teachers
try to draw a speaking activity to a conclusion, or when students are working in
groups. Some teachers clap their hands to get students' attention. Some speak loudly,
saying things like, 'Thank you ... now can I have your attention please?' or 'OK ...
thanks ... let s all face the front shall we?' Another method is for the teacher to raise his
or her hand. When individual students see this, they raise their hands briefly in reply to
indicate that they are now going to be quiet and wait for the next stage.
Finally, when an activity or a lesson has finished, it helps if the teacher is able
to provide some kind of closure — a summary of what has happened, perhaps, or a
prediction of what will take place in the next lesson. Sometimes, teachers find
themselves in the middle of something when the bell goes, but this is unfortunate,
because it leaves unfinished business behind, and a sense of incompleteness. It is much
better to round the lesson off successfully.
WHAT'S THE BEST SEATING ARRANGEMENT FOR A CLASS?
In many classrooms around the world students sit in orderly rows. Sometimes,
their chairs have little wooden palettes on one of the arms as surfaces to write on.
Sometimes, the students will have desks in front of them. It is not unknown to find the
chairs bolted to the floor. At the front of such classrooms, frequently on a raised
platform (so that all the students can see them), stand the teachers. In contrast, there are
other institutions where you can find students sitting in a large circle around the walls of
the classroom. Or you may see small groups of them working in different parts of the
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room. Sometimes, they are arranged in a horseshoe shape around the teacher.
Sometimes, it is not immediately obvious who the teacher is.
Clearly, we are seeing a number of different approaches in the different
arrangements of chairs and tables and this raises a number of questions. Are schools
which use a variety of seating plans progressive or merely modish, for example? Is there
something intrinsically superior about rigid seating arrangements - or are such
classrooms the product of traditional orthodoxy? Is one kind of seating arrangement
better than another? What are the advantages of each? The following discusses these
various arrangements.
Orderly rows: when the students sit in rows in classrooms, there are obvious
advantages. It means that the teacher has a clear view of all the students and the students
can all see the teacher - in whose direction they are facing. It makes lecturing easy,
enabling the teacher to maintain eye contact with the people he or she is talking to. It
also makes discipline easier since it is more difficult to be disruptive when you are
sitting in a row. If there are aisles in the classroom, the teacher can easily walk up and
down making more personal contact with individual students and watching what they
are doing.
Orderly rows imply teachers working with the whole class. Some activities are
especially suited to this kind of organisation: explaining a grammar point, watching a
video, using the board, demonstrating text organisation on an overhead transparency
which shows a paragraph, for example. It is also useful when students are involved in
certain kinds of language practice. If all the students are focused on a task, the whole
class gets the same messages.
When teachers arc working with the whole class sitting in orderly rows, it is
vitally important to make sure that they remain in contact with the students and that they
keep everyone involved. So, if they are asking questions to the class, they must
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remember to ask students at the back, the quiet ones perhaps, rather than just the ones
nearest them. They must move round so that they can see all the students to gauge their
reactions to what's going on.
One trick that many teachers use is to keep their students guessing. Especially
where teachers need to ask individual students questions, it is important that they should
not do so in order, student after student, line by line. That way, the procedure becomes
very tedious and the students know when they are going to be asked and, once this has
happened, that they are not going to be asked again. It is much better to ask students
from all parts of the room in apparently random order. It keeps everyone on their toes!
In many classrooms of the world, teachers are faced with classes of anywhere
between 40 and 200 students at a time. In such circumstances, orderly rows may well be
the best or only solution.
Circles and horseshoes: in smaller classes, many teachers and students prefer
circles or horseshoes. In a horseshoe, the teacher will probably be at the open end of the
arrangement since that may well be where the board, overhead projector and/or tape
recorder are situated. In a circle, the teacher's position - where the board is situated — is
less dominating.
Classes which are arranged in a circle make quite a strong statement about what
the teacher and the students believe in. The Round Table in the legends about King
Arthur was designed by him specially so that there would not be arguments about who
was more important than who — and that included the King himself when they were in
a meeting. So it is in classrooms. With all the people in the room sitting in a circle, there
is a far greater feeling of equality than when the teacher stays out at the front. This may
not be quite so true of the horseshoe shape where the teacher is often located in a central
position, but even here the teacher has a much greater opportunity to get close to the
students.
If, therefore, teachers believe in lowering the barriers between themselves and
their students, this kind of seating arrangement will help. There are other advantages
too, chief among which is the fact that all the students can see each other. In an 'orderly
row' classroom, you have to turn round - that is, away from the teacher — if you want to
make eye contact with someone behind you. In a circle or a horseshoe, no such
disruption is necessary. The classroom is thus a more intimate place and the potential
for students to share feelings and information through talking, eye contact or expressive
body movements (eyebrow-raising, shoulder-shrugging etc.) is far greater.
Separate tables: Even circles and horseshoes seem rather formal compared to
classes where students are seated in small groups at individual tables. In such
classrooms, you might see the teacher walking around checking the students' work and
helping out if they are having difficulties - prompting the students at this table, or
explaining something to the students at the table in the corner.
When students sit in small groups at individual tables, the atmosphere in the
class is much less hierarchical than in other arrangements. It is much easier for the
teacher to work at one table while the others get on with their own work. It feels less
like teacher and students and more like responsible adults getting on with the business
of learning.
However, this arrangement is not without its own problems. In the first place,
students may not always want to be with the same colleagues: indeed, their preferences
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may change over time. Secondly, it makes 'whole-class' teaching more difficult, since
the students are more diffuse and separated.
The way students sit says a lot about the style of the teacher or the institution
where the lessons take place. Many teachers would like to rearrange their classes so that
they are not always faced with rows and rows of bored faces. Even where this is
physically impossible - in terms of furniture, for example - there are things they can do
to achieve this.
WHAT DIFFERENT STUDENT GROUPINGS CAN TEACHERS USE?
Whatever the seating arrangements in a classroom, students can be organised in
different ways: they can work as a whole class, in groups, in pairs, or individually.
Whole class: as we have seen, there are many occasions when a teacher working
with the class as a whole is the best type of classroom organisation. However, this does
not always mean the class sitting in orderly rows; whatever the seating arrangement, the
teacher can have the students focus on him or her and the task in hand.
Groupwork and pairwork: these have become increasingly popular in
language teaching since they are seen to have many advantages. Groupwork is a
cooperative activity: five students, perhaps, discussing a topic, doing a role-play or
solving a problem. In groups, students tend to participate more equally, and they are
also more able to experiment and use the language than they are in a whole-class
arrangement.
Pairwork has many of the same advantages. It is mathematically attractive if
nothing else; the moment students get into pairs and start working on a problem or
talking about something, many more of them will be doing the activity than if the
teacher was working with the whole class, where only one student talks at a time.
Both pairwork and groupwork give the students chances for greater
independence. Because they are working together without the teacher controlling every
move, they take some of their own learning decisions, they decide what language to use
to complete a certain task, and they can work without the pressure of the whole class
listening to what they are doing. Decisions are cooperatively arrived at, responsibilities
are shared.
The other great advantage of groupwork and pairwork (but especially
groupwork) is that they give the teacher the opportunity to work with individual
students. While groups A and C are doing one task, the teacher can spend some time
with Group B who need special attention.
Neither groupwork nor pairwork are without their problems. As with 'separate
table' seating, students may not like the people they arc grouped or paired with. In any
one group or pair, one student may dominate while the others stay silent. In difficult
classes, groupwork may encourage students to be more disruptive than they would be in
a whole-class setting, and, especially in a class where students share the same first
language, they may revert to their first language, rather than English, when the teacher
is not working with them.
Apart from groupwork and pairwork, the other alternative to whole-class
teaching is solowork.
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Solowork: this can have many advantages: it allows students to work at their
own speed, allows them thinking time, allows them, in short, to be individuals. It often
provides welcome relief from the group-centred nature of much language teaching. For
the time that solowork takes place, students can relax their public faces and go back to
considering their own individual needs and progress.
How much teachers use groupwork, pairwork or solowork depends to a large
extent on teacher style and student preferences. Do the students actually enjoy
pairwork? What do they get out of it? Do the advantages of groupwork — cooperation,
involvement, autonomy - outweigh the advantages of whole-class grouping - clarity,
dramatic potential, teacher control? Do the students work conscientiously during
solowork sessions?
Good teachers are able to use different class groupings for different activities. While
they do this, they will monitor which is more successful and for what, so that they can
always seek to be more effective.
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PLANNING A LESSON
I. INTRODUCTION
A good lesson is like …
a. a film - has a structure of beginning, middle and end. The beginning has to
create interest and the end give a sense of closure. Parts may be predictable, but
other pans may provide twists and surprises.
b. a football match - has pace (although this will vary at different stages of the
match) and energy. Trainees may compare the roles of teachers and coaches, or
teachers and referees.
c. a meal - (in three courses) again has a beginning, middle and end structure and
closure at the end. A meal is a combination of ingredients that complement each
other.
d. a symphony - has a predictable structure, a variety of pace and a theme or
themes that run through it
Four main things that a teacher needs to know before going into a class to teach a
lesson:
- The aim of the lesson.
- What new language the lesson contains.
- The main stages of the lesson (i.e. how it divides into different activities).
- What to do at each stage.
If there is a teacher’s book, it may give information about some or all of these things.
- If the teacher's book does not give enough information, it is important for teachers to
decide the answers to these questions themselves -in other words, to make their own
plan for the lesson.
- If the teacher’+s book does give adequate information, teachers should still decide
for themselves how best to teach the lesson. They should use the teacher's book as a
guide and a source of good ideas, not as a set of instructions that must be followed
precisely.
II. AIMS AND CONTENT OF THE LESSON
Aims of the lesson
Aims are what we want learners to learn or be able to do at the end of a lesson, a
sequence of lessons or a whole course.
Lesson aims are important because...
a trainers (and directors of studies) require them
b they make planning easier
c they make lesson plans look more professional
d they frame the criteria by which the lesson will be judged
e learners need to know the focus of the lesson
f they set a goal that can be used to test the learners' achievement.
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A lesson may focus on:
- A particular topic - so the aim of the lesson may be 'To learn the names of
colours' or 'To practise language for buying clothes'.
- A particular structure - so the aim of the lesson may be 'To describe actions
using the present continuous tense' or 'To practise "going to" for talking about
future plans'.
- A skill - so the aim of the lesson may be 'To understand instructions for using a
machine' or 'To express opinions freely in English about marriage".
Language
It is important for the teacher to know exactly what language will be taught in the
lesson. Most lessons introduce either new vocabulary or a new structure, or both.
- New vocabulary: Not all new words in a lesson are equally important. As part of the
preparation for the lesson, the teacher should decide which words need to be
practised, and which only need to be briefly mentioned.
- Structures: If a new structure is introduced in the lesson, it will need to be presented
carefully and practised. The teacher should also be aware of any structures which are
practised in the lesson, but which were introduced in earlier lessons.
Skills
The teacher needs to be aware of what skills will be developed in the lesson: speaking,
listening, reading or writing. If possible, the lesson should include practice of more than
one skill - this will increase the variety and interest of the lesson.
Different kinds of aims
Main aim
Subsidiary aims
Personal aims
To practise making polite requests in Grammar: to revise modal auxiliary verbs.
To improve my
the context of making holiday
Functional exponents: Could/Would you...?
organisation of the
arrangements.
Vocabulary: to consolidate lexis for travel,
whiteboard; to give
Example exponent: Could you
accommodation.
clearer examples.
give me some information about
Phonology: to focus on intonation.
hotels?
Speaking: to give controlled oral practice.
A main aim, like the one above, describes the most important thing we want to achieve
in a lesson or sequence of lessons. For example, we may want learners to understand
and practise using new language; to reinforce or consolidate (i.e. to make stronger) the
use of language they already know by giving them further practice; or lo revise
language they have recently learnt. On a lesson plan the main aim should also include
an example of the target language we are planning to teach.
As well as a main aim, a lesson may also have subsidiary aims. Subsidiary aims show
the language or skills learners must be able to use well in order to achieve the main aim
of the lesson. In the example on page 86, the main aim is to practise making polite
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requests; the subsidiary aims describe the language and skill that learners will need to
make these requests. Stating both main and subsidiary aims is a good way of making
sure that our lesson plan focuses on what we want our learners to learn, or to be able to
do. It enables us to see how the lesson should develop, from one stage (or part) to the
next, building up our learners' knowledge or skills in the best possible order.
In addition to learning aims for the learners, we may also want to think about our own
personal aims as teachers. Personal aims show what we would like to improve or focus
on in our own teaching. Like the ones in the table on page 86, these might be about
improving the way that we handle aids and materials or particular teaching techniques,
or they might be about our relationship with the learners. Here are some more
examples:
• to try different correction techniques
• to remember to check instructions
• to write more clearly on the blackboard/whiteboard
• to make more use of the phonemic chart (a poster with phonemic symbols)
• to get learners to work with different partners
• to get quieter learners to answer questions.
III. STAGES OF THE LESSON
Any lesson we teach naturally divides into different stages of activity: for example, at
one stage in the lesson, the class may be listening to a dialogue; at another stage, the
teacher may be explaining new words and writing them on the board; at another stage
students may be doing some oral practice. It is much easier to plan the details of a
lesson if we think in terms of separate stages rather than trying to think of the lesson as
a whole.
Some important stages of a lesson:
§ Presentation: The teacher presents new words or structures, gives
examples, writes them on the board, etc.
§ Practice: Students practise using words or structures in a controlled way, e.g.
making sentences from prompts, asking and answering questions, giving
sentences based on a picture. Practice can be oral or written.
§ Production: Students use language they have learnt to express themselves more
freely, e.g. to talk or write about their own lives and interests, to express
opinions, to imagine themselves in different situations. Like practice, production
can be oral or written.
§ Reading: Students read a text and answer questions or do a simple
'task' (e.g. complete a table).
§ Listening: The teacher reads a text or dialogue while students listen
and answer questions, or the students listen to a cassette.
§ Review: The teacher reviews language learnt in an earlier lesson, to refresh
students' memories, or as a preparation for a new presentation.
- A single lesson would not, of course, normally include all these stages.
- The stages are in no fixed order. Usually teachers present new language, then do some
practice, then get students to use language more freely. But a teacher might:, for
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example, present a structure, practise it quickly, then present and practise something
else before going on to a final production activity - each stage could occur several times
in a single lesson.
- The stages overlap. For example, reading a text might be part of the presentation or it
might be a quite separate activity; answering questions on a text is part of reading but
also gives students oral practice. When we talk about "stages' of a lesson, we are
thinking of the main focus of the activity.
Example of various stages in a specific 45-minute lesson:
Level: Intermediate
Task: Writing a story to practise past simple and past continuous
Stage Time
Procedure
1
c The teacher asks learners about their favourite stories when they were young.
0-5
Learners volunteer stories.
2
6-10
f The teacher gives out a short story and asks learners to underline examples of
the past simple in blue and underline examples of the past continuous in red.
3
11-18
d The teacher clarifies the form with examples on the board and then gives out a
series of rules of use of the verb forms. Learners decide which rules go with which
verb form and pick out examples from the text.
4
19-20
b The teacher asks questions to check understanding.
5
21-28
e Learners complete sentences, deciding whether the past simple or continuous is
more appropriate.
6
29-35
a The teacher divides the class into three groups. Each group makes up a story.
7
36-45
g The teacher forms new groups, comprising one person from each of the other
groups. The learners tell each other their stories.
Good lessons tend to have a variety of activities and pace. Part of achieving this
depends on having different interaction patterns:
Activity
Procedure
Interaction
Speaking
The learners talk about their hobbles and Interests In groups Ss-Ss
Task checking/
The teacher asks the learners what they talked about
SS-T
The learners read a text quickly to understand the gist of it
Ss-text
report back
Reading for gist
(questions 1-3 on handout)
Checking answers Learners compare answers to reading
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The students, as well as the teacher, need to know the aim of the lesson as a whole and
the purpose of each stage. So it is important for the teacher to introduce each stage of
the lesson.
Introducing the whole lesson: 'Today we're going to talk about clothes. We're going to
say what clothes people are wearing. Then you're going to write about your own
clothes. And if there's time, we’ll read something about clothes as well.'
Introducing each stage:
1. Do you remember last week's lesson? We learnt some words for clothes. Can
you remember them?
2. Now, let's learn some new words. Here are some clothes. What are they made
of? ...
3. Let's practise talking about clothes. Look at the picture on page 93.
4. Now, I want you to write about yourselves, about your clothes. What were you
wearing last weekend? Do you remember?
5. Now, we're going to read about other countries. First, look – here are three
countries (writing on board). Where are they? . . .
IV. WRITING A LESSON PLAN
A lesson plan’s main purpose should be to help the teacher.
Writing a lesson plan helps teachers to prepare the lesson; it helps them
decide exactly what they will do and how they will do it.
Teachers can look at the lesson plan again after the lesson, and use it to
evaluate what happened. (Did they do what they planned to do? Was each stage
successful?)
They can keep the lesson plan and use it again next year.
The main components of a lesson plan show us what the lesson is for (the aims) and
what the teacher and the learners will do during the lesson and how they will do it (the
procedures). Other components help us to think about possible problems and remind us
of things we need to remember about the learners.
Here are some ways a lesson plan helps the teacher.
Before the lesson
Writing down the aims and the procedures for each stage of
the lesson helps us to make sure that we have planned the
best possible sequence to enable us to achieve those aims.
During the lesson
The plan can also help the teacher to check timing-the
amount of time we plan for each stage-and to check that
the lesson is following the sequence we decided on.
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After the lesson
We can keep the plan as a record of what happened,
making any changes necessary to show how the lesson
was different from the plan. We can then use the plan
and notes to help plan the next lesson. (At this stage,
the plan may be more like a photograph, a story or a
summary, giving us a record of the lesson.)
There is no ‘correct’ way to write a lesson plan, although a good lesson plan should
give a clear picture of what the teacher intends to do in the lesson.
A lesson plan can include the following headings:
Lesson plan headings
Level & number of Ss
Timetable fit
Sslearners
Main
aim(s)
Subsidiary aims
Personal aims
Assumptions
Anticipated language
problems
Possible solutions
Teaching aids,
materials, equipment
Procedures + Timing
Interaction patterns
who we are planning the lesson for
how the lesson is connected to the last lesson and/or the next one
what we want learners to learn or to be able to do by the end of the lesson
other things we want learners to be able to do during the lesson
because they lead to the main aim
aspects of our own teaching we want to develop or improve
what we think learners already know or can already do related to the aims
things that learners may find difficult
action we will take to deal with the anticipated problems
useful reminders of things to take to the lesson
tasks and activities for each stage length of
time needed for each stage
ways in which learners work at different stages, i.e. individually, in pairs,
in groups, as a whole class
Homework
It is usually a good idea to anticipate possible problems and solutions, but in a revision
lesson we may not need these headings. Also, we may not have personal aims for
every lesson, and we may not always give learners homework!
•
When we make a lesson plan, we need to ask ourselves how the
procedures we have planned will help to achieve our aims and to make sure there
are strong connections between the different stages.
•
We also need to consider variety, i.e. how we can use different activity
types, language skills and interaction patterns. Learners of all ages need different
activities in a lesson, but this is especially important for younger learners.
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•
During the lesson we should teach the learners, not the lesson plan! We
must be prepared, if necessary, to change our plan while we are teaching. If we have a
clear plan, we will be more aware of what we are changing and why. We can include
some different possibilities in a lesson plan, e.g. an extra activity to use if learners
take less time than expected to complete a task, and this can help if we are not sure
how well parts of the plan will work.
Things to remember
§
When we plan an individual lesson, we have to ask ourselves a number of
questions:
-
Will the topic be interesting and motivating for my learners?
-
Are the activities and teaching materials at the right level for all the learners?
-
Have I planned enough for the time available? Do I need any extra material?
-
Have I planned too much for the time available? Are there any stages I can cut
if necessary?
-
Have I thought about exactly how to start and end the lesson?
-
Does each step in the lesson help to achieve the aim?
’
§
It s a good idea to make lesson plans look as simple as possible, so notes are better
than full sentences, and there's no need to describe every step in great detail.
However, we may want to write down some important things in a complete form for example, prompts for drilling, questions to check learners' understanding,
instructions, etc.
§
A lesson plan should be clear and easy to read during the lesson. Different colours,
boxes, underlining, etc. are useful. It is often helpful to include drawings of the way
the blackboard (or whiteboard) will look at different stages.
§
Variety is very important both in a sequence of lessons and in a single lesson. We
should avoid always doing the same kinds of things in the same order, e.g. always
beginning the lesson with a conversation or always ending with a role-play. There
are several different ways of introducing variety into lessons. Here is a list of things
we can vary:
Pace
-+q
interaction pattern
--+
skill
-)
level of difficulty
-content
à
à
à
à
à
à
mood
exciting
or calming
à
activities
quick and fast-moving or slow and reflective
individual, pairs, groups, whole class
productive or receptive
non-demanding or requiring effort and concentration
changing from one language point to another; from one
subject to another
light or serious; happy or sad; tense or relaxed
'stirring'(lively and active) or 'settling'(quietening down)
(adapted from A Course in Language Teaching by Penny Ur, Cambridge University Press
1996)
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§
Learners may well require more frequent revision than the coursebook provides. A
scheme of work is a good way to make sure that we recycle language (i.e. use it
again) and include regular revision activities during a sequence of lessons.
§
Coursebook units are often arranged around a specific topic (such as sport or
relationships), which may be a useful way of linking together a sequence of lessons.
This kind of sequence gives us the chance to develop particular areas of
vocabulary, but learners may feel that the lessons are repetitive, so we need plenty
of variety of texts and tasks.
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APPENDIX
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JIGSAW READING
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A SPEAKING LESSON
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A LISTENING LESSON
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A WRITING LESSON
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REFERENCES
Cunningham, S. , Moor , P & Comyns Carr , J. New Cutting Edge – PreIntermediate. Longman, 2005
Doff, A. Teach English. Cambridge, 1984
Harmer, J. How to Teach English. Longman,1991
Harmer, J. The Practice of the English Language Teaching. Longman,1991
Hubbard et all. A Training Course for TEFL. OUP, 1984
ELT Section. Teaching Language Components and Language Skills. Department of
English, HCMC University of Education, 2009
Taylor, L. International Express Pre-Intermediate. Oxford: OUP, 2005
Taylor, L. International Express Intermediate. Oxford: OUP, 2005
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