UNIVERSITY OF CRAIOVA
FACULTY OF LETTERS
ROMANIAN – A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
DISTANCE LEARNING
ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY
ROMANIAN – ENGLISH
YEAR 3
SEMESTER 2
COURSE LEADER:
Senior lecturer GRIGOROIU GABRIELA, PhD
The methodology course has been designed with a view to train the third-year students who
minor in English. The learning and training events are structured in lectures, discussion
questions and workshops, in order to develop the students' critical thinking about ELT,
which may help them explore how lessons work and develop their own teaching strategies.
I. OBJECTIVES
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to make students understand and be aware of class management and teacher roles
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to guide them in planning lessons, taking into account the need for variety and
flexibility, learner particularities of age and level
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to get acquainted with different techniques and strategies for teaching and practising
vocabulary, grammar, literature and language skills, testing and error correction
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to develop their critical/reflective thinking, in order to enable them to cope with the
unpredictable classroom events.
II. TOPICS
1. Classroom management: motivation strategies ,discipline..
2. Methods and approaches in language teaching.
3. Lesson planning. Visual materials.
4. Strategies/techniques for teaching and practising vocabulary.
5. Strategies/techniques for teaching and practising grammar.
6. Productive skills (speaking, writing).
7. Receptive skills (reading, listening).
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8. Communication activities.
9. Teaching literature; developing creative writing.
10. Testing, error correction and evaluation.
EVALUATION
Examination (written) – 80%; Portfolio (oral presentation) – 20%.
The portfolio will contain:
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25 activities for practising vocabulary, grammar and language skills at different levels:
elementary, intermediate & advanced
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6 lesson plans (two plans for each level)
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10 reflection task-sheets (see end of course)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Byrne, D. (1987). Teaching Oral English, Longman
2. Grigoroiu, G. (1999). Try One of My Activities, Universitaria
3. Grigoroiu, G. (2000/2002). An English Language Teaching Reader, Tipografia
Universitatii din Craiova
4. Grigoroiu, G. (2004). Tales of a teacher trainer, Editura Else
5. Harmer, J. (1991). The Practice of English Language Teaching, Longman
6. Maley, A. (1993). Short and Sweet, Penguin Books
7. Richards, J.K. & Rodgers, T.S. (1991). Approaches and methods in language teaching,
Cambridge University Press
8. Ur, P. (1992). Five minutes activities, Cambridge University Press
9. Ur, P. (1996). A course in language teaching. Cambridge University Press
10. Wallace, M. J. (1982) Teaching vocabulary, Oxford University Press
11. Wright, T. (1987). Roles of teachers and learners, Oxford University Press
12. Journals: Modern English Teacher; ELT Journal; Forum; Romance, The Teacher
Trainer
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UNIVERSITY OF CRAIOVA
FACULTY OF LETTERS
ROMANIAN – A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
DISTANCE LEARNING
ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY
ROMANIAN – ENGLISH
YEAR 3
SEMESTER 2
COURSE LEADER:
Senior lecturer GRIGOROIU GABRIELA, PhD
CONTENTS
11. Classroom management: motivation strategies, discipline……………………… 4
12. Methods and approaches in language teaching………………………………… 8
13. Lesson planning …………………………………………………………………15
14. Strategies/techniques for teaching and practising vocabulary………………….. 22
15. Strategies/techniques for teaching and practising grammar……………………. 25
16. Productive skills (speaking, writing). ………………………………………….. 33
17. Receptive skills (reading, listening)……………………………………………. 43
18. Communication activities. …………………………………………………….. 51
19. Teaching literature; developing creative writing ………………………………. 54
20. Testing, error correction and evaluation………………………………………… 57
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1. CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT
1. Motivation
It is said that students who really want to learn will succeed whatever the circumstances
in which they study. There are situations in which certain ‘motivated’ students do
significantly better than their peers. They frequently succeed in what appear to be
unfavourable conditions or unsatisfactory methods. It seems that the motivation that
students bring to class is the most important factor affecting their success.
Motivation is some kind of internal drive that encourages somebody to pursue a course
of action. If we perceive a goal (that is, something we wish to achieve) and if that goal is
sufficiently attractive, we will be strongly motivated to do whatever is necessary to reach
that goal. Goals can be of different types; for example if we are determined to own a new
computer, a bike or a car we may work overtime in order to earn the necessary money. If we
want to win a TV general knowledge quiz we may put in incredibly long hours of factlearning activity. Language learners who are motivated perceive goals of various kinds. We
can make a useful distinction between short-term goals and long-term goals. In general
strongly motivated students with long-term goals are probably easier to teach than those
who have no such goals, and therefore no real drive. For such students short-term goals will
often provide the only motivation they feel.
2. Types of motivation
A. Extrinsic motivation - concerned with factors outside the classroom. There are two
main types of such motivation, integrative motivation and instrumental motivation.
Integrative motivation – in this case students feel attracted by the culture of the target
language community; in the strong form of integrative motivation they wish to integrate
themselves into that culture. A weaker form of such motivation would be the desire to know
as much as possible about the culture of the target language culture. Instrumental motivation
- describes a situation in which students believe that mastery of the target language will be
instrumental in getting them a better job, position or status. The language is an instrument in
their attainment of such a goal.
Many other factors have an impact upon a student’s level of extrinsic motivation and
most of these have to do with his or her attitude to the language. This will be affected by the
attitude of those who have influence with that student; if the parents are very much in
favour of the language this will probably affect his or her motivation in a positive way, and
vice versa. The students’ peers will also be in a powerful position to affect their attitude as
will other members of the students’ community. Another factor affecting the students’
attitude is their previous experiences as language learners. If they were successful then they
may be pre-disposed to success now. Failure then may mean that they expect failure now.
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But students have to be prepared to take some responsibility for their own learning.
Teachers cannot create it since it comes into the classroom from outside. But they should do
their best to ensure that students view the language and the learning experience in a positive
light. They can do this by creating a positive attitude to the language and its speakers, by
being supportive and encouraging to students rather than critical and destructive.
B. Intrinsic motivation - concerned with what takes place inside the classroom. It
plays a vital part in most students’ success or failure as language learners. Many students
bring no extrinsic motivation to the classroom. They may even have negative feelings about
language learning. For them what happens in the classroom will be of vital importance in
determining their attitude to the language. The following factors affect intrinsic motivation:
physical conditions, the method by which students are taught, and the teacher. Success or
lack of it plays a vital part in the motivational drive of a student. Both complete failure and
complete success may be de-motivating. It will be the teacher’s job to set goals and tasks at
which most of his or her students can be successful. Much of the teacher’s work in the
classroom concerns getting the level of challenge right: this involves the type of tasks set,
the speed expected from the student, etc. Ultimately the students’ success or failure is in
their own hands, but the teacher can influence the course of events in the students’ favour.
Motivational differences. To know exactly how or why your students are motivated
will mean finding out how they feel about learning English at the beginning of a course. Yet
it is possible to make some general statements about motivational factors for different age
groups and different levels, e.g. children, adolescents, adult beginners, adult intermediate
students and adult advanced students. Many different factors may affect a student’s
motivation, stressing that a strongly motivated student is in a far better position as a learner
than a student who is not motivated. Moreover both positively motivated students and those
who do not have this motivation can be strongly affected by what happens in the classroom.
The teacher’s personality and the rapport he/she is able to establish with the students are of
vital importance. So too is the ability to provide motivating and interesting classes that are
based both on knowledge of techniques and activities, and upon the ability to inspire
confidence in our students and have answers to their questions.
3. Discipline
Discipline refers specifically to those rules and measures that promote and maintain
“learning-appropriate behaviour” in the classroom and generally to those rules and
measures that promote and maintain appropriate behaviour in society. Ideally, this
behaviour is self-directed. Whenever self-control is lacking, however, external measures
and regulations must be imposed. An internal approach to discipline results in inner growth
and self-discipline, but inappropriate use of external measures results in dependency on
authority, coercion, restraint, and punishment.
The acquisition of disciplined behaviour is an absolute essential in the educational
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process both in and out of the classroom. First, discipline is necessary if the individual is to
learn the social group’s cultural standards of conduct. Second, without discipline the
individual cannot develop such adult personality characteristics as dependability, selfreliance, self-control, persistence, and the ability to tolerate frustration. Third, discipline is
the basis for the development of conscience. Fourth, it is an important factor in promoting
children’s emotional security. Fifth, social order is dependent upon mutually accepted rules
of social relationships. And sixth, intellectual growth cannot rise to its maximum potential
in the absence of mental discipline
Discipline in the classroom A productive learning atmosphere in the classroom
requires a disciplined, responsive class. Good discipline is not synonymous with absolute
quiet. Although he or she may not be interfering with the progress of the class, a quiet
student may not be learning anything. Any study behaviour that disrupts the learning
process can be considered a discipline problem. This behaviour may be quiet or noisy; it
may be malicious and sly or open and unintentional. In any case, the teacher’s job is to reestablish and maintain the learning situation. Much undisciplined behaviour is simply a
matter of bad manners, and the teacher should emphasize respect for the rights and feelings
of others. The students may forget all the language they learn, but they should remember the
importance of courtesy, self-discipline, and sincere effort to do one’s best.
It is necessary to make the rules clear to everyone in the class. However, stating the
rule is only the beginning. Next comes the process of establishing the validity and
applicability of the rules. The classroom is a social situation, and the students must
determine in practice the limits of behaviour. The first few weeks of the school year are
especially important in establishing the classroom atmosphere that the teacher desires.
During this period, the teacher should eliminate all possible discipline problems before they
become established habits.
If discipline problems do occur, teachers should first ask themselves if their teaching
merits the attention they expect. Second, they should try to find out more about the student
causing the problem. Misconduct may have nothing to do with the class itself. Economic
and social status, physical health and development, mental ability, problems at home,
community conditions, group influence, emotional stability, and so on - all influence class
conduct. If the student does not respond to a personal chat, the teacher may be forced to
discipline him in front of the class. The teacher should attempt to do so in a dignified
manner that will preserve the respect the students have for him. At the same time, he should
be ever conscious of the student’s own worth as a person and never do anything that may
cause the student to lose his self-respect. When correcting inappropriate behaviour, the
teacher should be conscious of the “ripple effect” her actions may have.
4. Disruptive behaviour
All teachers encounter disruptive behaviour - students whose behaviour gets in the way
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of the class. Such outbursts are hostile to the teacher or the other students and they can be
difficult to deal with. Disruptive behaviour is not confined to one age group. One way of
avoiding most disruptive behaviour is by making sure that all your students of whatever age
know ‘where you stand’. Somehow you and they have to agree upon a code of conduct.
With many adult classes this is an unspoken arrangement: with younger students it may
need to be spelled out. A code of conduct involves the teacher and students in forms of
behaviour in the classroom. Certain things do not comply with such forms of behaviour —
for example arriving late, interrupting other students when they speak, bringing drinks and
food into the room, forgetting to do homework, not paying attention, etc. Where a code of
conduct is established both teacher and students will recognise these acts as outside the
code.
Causes of discipline problems. There seem to be three possible reasons for discipline
problems: the teacher, the students and the institution.
The teacher. The behaviour and the attitude of the teacher are perhaps the single most
important factor in a classroom, and thus can have a major effect on discipline. There are
things that teachers should not do if they want to avoid problems, e.g. going to class
unprepared or teaching boring classes, being inconsistent in actions or decisions,
threatening students with terrible punishments, shouting, being unfair, having a negative
attitude to learning or breaking the code.
The students. A teacher who does everything to avoid trouble may still have problems
because of the students. There are reasons why students behave badly, e.g. time of day, the
students’ attitude, and their desire to be noticed, two troublemakers sitting very close. They
cannot always be easily controlled and much will depend on the particular group and the
particular teacher.
The institution. A lot depends on the attitude of the institution to disruptive student
behaviour. Ideally there will be a recognised system for dealing with problem classes and
students. It is to be hoped that the teacher can consult co-ordinators or department heads
when in trouble and that cases of extremely bad behaviour can be acted upon by such
people.
Action in case of indiscipline. There are a number of things a teacher can do when
students behave badly, but in general two points can be made. Any ‘punishment’ that hurts
a student physically or emotionally is probably dangerous and harmful in many ways. Its
effect cannot be measured and it probably encourages in the student behaviour and
psychology that we would want to avoid as educators.
The ability to control a group of students when things get out of hand depends to a
large extent on the personality of the teacher, and some teachers certainly appear to find it
easier than others do. There are a number of measures that can be taken, e.g. acting
immediately, stopping the class, re-seating students, changing the activity, talking after the
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class, using the institution or talking to parents. There are, of course, other possible courses
of action where indiscipline takes place; the options we have looked at avoid the possibility
of either physical assault or humiliation: both are seriously wrong particularly for children
and adolescents.
(After Harmer, 1991)
Discussion questions
1. How motivated are you in learning English and becoming a teacher?
2. Which of the different types of students would you like to teach? Why?
3. Choose one of the levels/age groups mentioned above and make a list of things you
could do with them which would not be suitable for the other ages/levels mentioned.
4. Decide on ten qualities a teacher needs and comment on them.
5. What items would you include in a ‘code of conduct’ for a class of thirteen-year-olds?
Make a list and then decide how you would present the code to the class.
6. Comment on the teacher’s roles (see J. Harmer).
2. METHODS AND APPROACHES IN LANGUAGE TEACHING
An approach to language teaching is something that reflects a certain model or research
paradigm - a theory, if you like. This term is the broadest of the three. A method, on the
other hand, is a set of procedures, i.e. a system that spells out rather precisely how to teach a
language. Methods are more specific than approaches but less specific than techniques.
Methods are typically compatible with one (or sometimes two) approaches. A technique is a
classroom device or activity and thus represents the narrowest term of the three concepts.
Some techniques are widely used and found in many methods (e.g., imitation and
repetition); however, some techniques are specific to or characteristic of a given method
(e.g., using cuisinnaire rods - the Silent Way).
Most of the approaches have used, implicitly or explicitly, a structural syllabus, which
consists of a list of grammatical inflections and constructions that the teacher is expected to
teach and the learner is expected to master. The Grammar-Translation Approach, the Direct
Approach, the Audio-lingual Approach, the Cognitive Approach, and even some methods
following the Comprehension Approach have all employed a structural syllabus. In other
words, teachers and textbook writers following these approaches have organized their
language courses and language-teaching materials around grammar points. In contrast to the
structural syllabus, the Reading Approach is text based, and this kind of language course is
organized around texts and vocabulary items with only minor consideration given to
grammar.
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In the Communicative Approach, one type of syllabus is organized around notions a
(meanings such as spatial location, age, degree) and functions (social transactions and
interactions such as asking for information or complimenting someone). In this syllabus
format grammar and vocabulary are quite secondary. The Affective-Humanistic Approach
has produced the most radical syllabus type—the learner-generated syllabus. Thus, in
methods like Community Language Learning and Project Work the learners decide what
they want to learn in, and do with, the target language.
1. Grammar-Translation Approach (an extension of the approach used to teach classical
languages to the teaching of modern languages).
a. Instruction is given in the native language of the students.
b. There is little use of the target language.
c. Focus is on grammatical parsing, i.e., the form and inflection of words.
d. There is early reading of difficult classical texts.
e. A typical exercise is to translate sentences from the target language into the mother
tongue.
f. The result of this approach is usually an inability on the part of the student to use the
language for communication.
g. The teacher does not have to be able to speak the target language.
2. Direct Approach (a reaction to the grammar-translation approach and its failure to
produce learners who could use the foreign language they had been studying).
a. No use of the mother tongue is permitted (i.e., teacher does not need to know the
students' native language).
b. Lessons begin with dialogs and anecdotes in modern conversational style.
c. Actions and pictures are used to make meanings clear.
d. Grammar is learned inductively.
e. Literary texts are read for pleasure and are not analyzed grammatically.
f. The target culture is also taught inductively.
g. The teacher must be a native speaker or have native like proficiency in the target
language.
3. Audio-lingualism (a reaction to the reading approach and its lack of emphasis on oralaural skills; this approach became dominant in the United States during the 1940s, 1950s,
and 1960s; it takes much from the direct approach but adds features from structural
linguistics and behavioural psychology).
a. Lessons begin with dialogues.
b. Mimicry and memorization are used, based on the assumption that language is
habit formation.
c. Grammatical structures are sequenced and rules are taught inductively.
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d.
e.
f.
g.
h.
i.
Skills are sequenced: listening, speaking, reading, writing.
Pronunciation is stressed from the beginning.
Vocabulary is severely limited in initial stages.
A great effort is made to prevent learner errors.
Language is often manipulated without regard to meaning or context.
The teacher must be proficient only in the structures, vocabulary, etc. that s/he is
teaching since learning activities and materials are carefully controlled.
4. Situational Approach (a reaction to the reading approach and its lack of emphasis on
oral-aural skills; this approach was dominant in Britain during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s;
it draws much from the direct approach).
a.
b.
c.
d.
The spoken language is primary.
Only the target language should be used in the classroom.
Grammatical structures are graded from simple to complex.
Efforts are made to ensure that the most general and useful lexical items are
presented.
e. All language material is practised orally before being presented in written form
(reading and writing are taught only after an oral base in lexical and grammatical
forms has been established).
f.
New items (lexical and grammatical) are introduced and practised situationally
(e.g., at the post office, at the bank, at the dinner table).
5. Cognitive Approach (a reaction to the behaviourist features of the audio-lingual
approach).
a. Language learning is viewed as rule acquisition, not habit formation.
b. Instruction is often individualized; learners are responsible for their own learning.
c. Grammar must be taught but it can be taught deductively (rules first, practice later)
and/or inductively (rules can either be stated after practice or left as implicit
information for the learners to process on their own).
d. Pronunciation is de-emphasized; perfection is viewed as unrealistic.
e. Reading and writing are once again as important as listening and speaking.
f.
Vocabulary instruction is important, especially at intermediate and advanced levels.
g. Errors are viewed as inevitable, something that should be used constructively in the
learning process.
h. The teacher is expected to have good general proficiency in the target language as
well as an ability to analyze the target language.
6. Affective-Humanistic Approach - a reaction to the general lack of affective
considerations in both audio-lingualism and cognitivism.
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a. Respect is emphasized for the individual (student or teacher) and for his/her
feelings.
b. Communication that is meaningful to the learner is emphasized.
c. Instruction involves much work in pairs and small groups.
d. Class atmosphere is viewed as more important than materials or methods.
e. Peer support and interaction is needed for learning.
f. Learning a foreign language is viewed as a self-realization experience.
g. The teacher is viewed as a counsellor or facilitator.
h. The teacher should be proficient in the target language and the student's native
language since translation may be used heavily in the initial stages to help students
feel at ease; later it is gradually phased out.
7. Communicative Approach (grew out of the work of anthropological linguists, who
view language first and foremost as a system for communication.
a. It is assumed that the goal of language teaching is learner ability to communicate in
the target language.
b. It is assumed that the content of a language course will include semantic notions
and social functions, not just linguistic structures.
c. Students regularly work in groups or pairs to transfer (and, if necessary, negotiate)
meaning in situations where one person has information that the other(s) lack.
d. Students often engage in role-play or dramatization to adjust their use of the target
language to different social contexts.
e. Classroom materials and activities are often authentic to reflect real-life situations
and demands.
f. Skills are integrated from the beginning; a given activity might involve reading,
speaking, listening, and perhaps also writing (this assumes the learners are educated
and literate).
g. The teacher's role is primarily to facilitate communication and only secondarily to
correct errors.
h. The teacher should be able to use the target language fluently and appropriately.
8. Total Physical Response
During the pre-production period children apparently learn to understand a great deal
long before they try to say much. The door of understanding is first opened as children
respond meaningfully to a particular type of input - namely, directives in context-clear
situations that invite an action response rather than a verbal response. The mechanism is
short and simple: (1) the directive, (2) the hearing and interpretation of the directive, (3) the
overt action, and then immediately (4) the visible confirmation or disconfirmation of
comprehension.
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At the start of TPR training a teacher plays "Follow the leader" or "Do what I do,"
modelling a couple of actions (e.g., Stand up! Sit down!) the first time or two in calling for
those actions. This enables the learners to infer (and "perform") the tie between the
command and the desired action. Commands for single actions quickly give way to
commands for two or three actions in sequence (Stand up, walk to the sofa, and sit down),
and then to yet more complicated actions, sometimes involving imaginary scenarios (John,
sit in the car, turn the key, look around, and honk the horn twice). For certain effect, some
teachers occasionally turn TPR into the game "Simon says..." The simplicity, logic, and
power of TPR has stimulated the development of syllabuses for teaching various languages.
9. The Natural Approach (T. Terrell)
Perhaps the most fully developed of the comprehension-based approaches is Tracy D.
Terrell's Natural Approach (Krashen & Terrell, 1983). A fundamental assumption
underlying it is that learners of any age are able to take in speech input—if most of it is
comprehensible—and discover its system without having it arbitrarily broken down for
them and spoon-fed. The approach therefore supplies a high amount of input made
comprehensible through pictures, actions, and situational, grammatical, and lexical
transparency. It respects the initial pre-production period, expecting speech to emerge not
from artificial practice but from motivated language use, progressing from early singleword responses up to more and more coherent discourse. Interpersonal and personal
negotiation of meaning rather than attention to grammatical correctness is fostered for an
extended period and the learning activities are designed for learner comfort and enjoyment.
10. Silent Way Learning (SWL) (C. Gattegno)
This method does not begin, as one might assume from its name, with the learners
sifting silently while the teacher provides verbal input; rather it begins with the teacher
being silent or at least holding verbal input to a bare minimum while eliciting and subtly
reinforcing verbal output from the learners. Production is typically elicited at first with the
aid of "scatter charts" of words and affixes, cuisinnaire rods (small wooden or plastic blocks
of various sizes and colours, called "rods" for short), language-specific 'Fidel charts," which
colour-code all pronunciation possibilities uniformly, regardless of spelling, and gestural
cues and other kinds of hints. All of these unusual features of SWL are used to make
pronunciation, vocabulary, and structures available for the learners to discover and test in
use.
The cardinal principle the teacher must follow is phrased in four words: Subordinate
teaching to learning. Knowing that even the most efficient learning takes time, the teacher
attends only to the measures of progress, not of perfection. The teacher must use each
learner's production to determine what language or guidance inputs to make. S/he corrects
and guides by means of gestures and silent lip movements, focusing the learner's attention
on just the portion of a word or phrase needing improvement. Always the instructor respects
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the learners' capacity to learn and to be patient in learning how to make meaning come from
their own lips in acceptable form. The instructor invites the learners to assume
responsibility for their learning, to take the active role - in short, to become robust, selfreliant, creative learners, independent of the teacher and patient in working out the
structural principles of the language on their own.
11. Suggestopedia (Giorgi Lozanov 1978)
A Bulgarian physician and psychotherapist, Lozanov first used the rapid memorization
of foreign vocabulary as the test vehicle of his experimentation with suggestology,
concluding that the experimental techniques used, aimed at relaxing the subjects and
fostering hope and trust in their own powers of learning massive amounts quickly and
easily, made possible a phenomenal rate of learning - up to a thousand words in an hour,
reportedly, or (as advertised) "from five to fifty times the normal rate!" Then he
experimented with higher-order language learning, producing, it was claimed, equally
dramatic results.
Suggestopedia, as he called his pedagogical application of "the science of
suggestology" (of which hypnosis is one branch), aims specifically at neutralizing learning
inhibitions and de-suggesting false limitations that cultural norms impose on learning. He
rejected the paradoxical but increasingly popular solution to instructional impotence:
"Less is more, slow is fast." He would demonstrate that by artfully enhancing learner
receptivity, "much more can be much more, and much faster can be much faster!" The only
way to see for oneself how this marvellous new way of teaching and learning actually
worked was to take an expensive workshop. So in the language teaching profession
generally, suggestopedia was looked at as a sensationalized, mysterious, costly, and highly
questionable new gimmick, something not sanctioned, not legitimate, and imagined to be as
far removed from American-style language teaching as yoga, hypnosis, sleep learning and
the like. By the late 1980s, in its various international transformations, it had been given
new dimensions and new names: Accelerated Learning, Super Learning, Power Learning,
Integrated Learning, Right Brain Learning, Psychopedia, Language in New Dimensions,
and others.
The most important product of Lozanov's research was an increased realization (1) that
language instruction research must look beyond manipulating the external dimensions of the
learning environment, (2) that extremely important psychological and cultural variables in
the learning environment which had not been understood or addressed previously are open
to experimentation, and (3) that suggestology and perhaps other ways of dealing with the
psyche of learners provide fresh ideas and tools. The increased readiness of the community
of language teaching specialists to consider such alternatives as these today is due, I think,
to the growing acceptance of the filters hypothesis and an increased readiness to believe that
there may be more effective ways to deal with the filters than we had supposed.
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There is not space here to adequately describe the procedures of "classical"
suggestopedia or of any of its later versions or transformations, but a hint of what one part
of one form of it entails will suggest how extraordinary some of its procedures are. The
instructional selling suggests a living room more than a classroom. The learners sit in easy
chairs. The teacher is lively, dynamic, confident, yet sensitive, and speaks only the target
language, which suggests that the learners do the same. In the first three-hour meeting, all
learners choose a new name and nationality, after which they are given a fictional
autobiography. By means of song, imitation, and play, the learners are enabled to introduce
themselves to each other and assume their new roles. Then over the next two days, the
teacher twice presents a script that is many pages long, each time with a different aim and a
different learning set-up; these script performances, called "concert sessions," are
accompanied by music. In the first of these, the "active concert session," the music is
emotional, and the tone of the artistic presentation reflects the character of the music, as if
the reader were part of the orchestra.
The use of musical, dramatic and visual art are marked characteristics of Lozanov's
teaching. The learners have the script in two languages arranged in short phrases on
opposite sides of the page. After the concert session come various kinds of elaboration
activities, including group or choral reading of parts of the script, singing and playing
games as a group, and such. The second day the script is performed again, this time in a
"pseudo-passive concert session," where a state of wakeful relaxation is artfully stimulated.
This reading is accompanied by music of a different tone and mood, generally baroquestyle. Following that, the learners (in their new identities) are aided again in elaborating the
script in various ways. This may include narrating an event or anecdote, or creating an
original story, using the language in the script.
12.Counseling-Learning Community Language Learning (Charles A. Curran)
Interestingly, as was the case of almost all the other innovative approaches mentioned
above, C-L CLL was developed by someone who had no training as a language teacher but
chose language as a vehicle for experimentation with learning and the promotion of
learning. Charles A. Curran wrote and conducted research on the application of principles
of clinical psychology to education. Trained by Carl Rogers in clinical psychology, he saw
in traditional educational philosophy and practice the cause of many learner discomforts and
learning pathologies. He theorized that inept learning and consequent negative feelings and
behaviours may be brought about by depersonalized ways of teaching which split head from
heart and individual from community – i.e. ways which address the individual learner's
intellect alone to the neglect of other dimensions of the self-in-community. He felt that
teachers are unaware of what depersonalized instruction does to resistant learners. His main
concern was the deep-level interpersonal dynamics of the teacher-learner relationship and
the teaching-learning process and concluded that the kind of healthy growth which learning
12
can represent must involve the whole, integrated person of the learner: intellect, emotions,
values, and personality - all related to the same integrated features in the teacher and in
every other person taking part in the community of learners.
In his philosophy of holistic learning and education as well as in his blaming the
traditional, depersonalized methods of instruction for causing learning pathologies, Curran
is at one with other proponents of humanistic education, but in his prescriptions of what to
do to promote optimal, joyful, therapeutic learning, he is unique.
There is no visible textbook, prepared lesson plan, or even defined objectives. Rather,
there is a group of learners, sitting in a circle, who themselves initiate conversation (in the
native or the target language), the proper target language form of which they are aided in
producing by one or more fluent speakers outside the circle ("angels on the shoulder" I call
them). Observers will note that in a short time the learners generate a massive amount of
unrestricted, self-motivated target-language data, some or all of which is recorded as it
comes from their lips. A post-session debriefing may involve instruction dealing with the
form and substance of the material generated in the session.
(after Celce-Murcia and Blair, 1988)
Discussion questions
1. Of what value have these innovative approaches been? Have they enlarged our vision?
Increased our understanding? Do you see them as contributing to the emergence of a
new and better model of learning?
2. Select one of the approaches discussed in this chapter and debate its assumptions and
their application to language teaching in our country.
3. What changes have occurred regarding the position of spoken language and written
language in the various approaches? Why?
4. What has been the attitude toward the teaching of pronunciation, grammar and
vocabulary in the nine approaches discussed in this chapter? Has there been a swinging
of the pendulum? Why or why not?
5. Which of these approaches have you personally experienced as a language learner?
What were your impressions and what is your assessment of the effectiveness of the
approach or method?
6. Describe a particular group of beginning-level language learners that you are familiar
with. What are their age, educational level, and cultural background? For what purpose
do they have to learn the new language? How much do they need to learn? How urgent
are their needs? Now decide which method or combination of methods described in this
chapter might be effective with this group of learners.
3. LESSON PLANNING
13
Before reading this chapter think of the guidelines and principles you would like to
consider in planning your lessons as a teacher. Write down at least ten guidelines and five
principles. Then compare to what is written below.
1. Guidelines
1) Consider the whole person.
The goal of teaching is to help everyone become a
successful learner. Each teacher is different, and each student and each class is different.
Given the quantity of individuality present in any class, the teacher should be alert to
student needs and flexible as to measures to take to meet them.
2) Provide input before expecting output. Teachers must satisfy at least three crucial
criteria: students must comprehend the material they are hearing or reading, they must
incorporate the material into their cognitive network, and the material must involve
communication.
3) Use classroom activities requiring conversion. The use of language to communicate
involves a process of conversion. While listening or reading the person receiving the
message converts language to thoughts. While speaking or writing the person producing the
message converts thoughts to language. Teachers should seek to maximize the amount of
class time in which students are actively converting language to thoughts or thoughts to
language.
4) Provide needed vocabulary. Vocabulary usually plays a greater role in communication
than the other components of language: plan to introduce relevant vocabulary prior to
undertaking any communication activity and to encourage students to look the word up in a
dictionary or ask the teacher how to say it.
5) Have students do what you want them to learn to do. There is no magical transfer from
one language skill to another.
6) Teach all four language skills. Language is made up of the four skills. To teach students
to communicate, the teacher must provide training in all the skills necessary for
communication, which often involves various combinations of the four skills.
7) Sequence the learning tasks in order of difficulty. Be aware that progress is by means of
minimal steps. Language learning should be viewed as a continuous process following a
hierarchy of steps of increasing difficulty. After the initial presentation, follow-up activities
should become progressively more difficult until the students have achieved the ability to
use the material in context to communicate.
8) Realize that learning involves much repetition of material. Once one has achieved some
degree of mastery of a subject, it is common to forget the time and energy that was
expended to attain that mastery. It is the teacher’s responsibility to remember the
importance of repetition in learning, but not to over-emphasize it in class.
9) Provide a variety of activities. The important point to keep in mind is that variety is a
necessity within the class hour. The students’ attention span is not very long. Teachers
14
should provide as much variety of activities as possible. No activity should last more than
ten to fifteen minutes, and drills should last three to five minutes each. Variety implies a
change of focus as well as a change of activity. In general, the teacher should provide
approximately seven or eight activities during the class hour.
10) Resist the tendency to correct each mistake. More important than error-free speech is
the creation of an atmosphere in which the students want to talk. Teachers may stifle the
development of any enthusiasm for language simply by correcting the students each and
every time some incorrect form slips past their lips.
11) Keep the students involved. During the class period the teacher should constantly seek
to involve as many students as possible in what is happening. Each student should be able to
leave the class knowing that she not only got something out of the class but that she also
made a contribution to it.
12) Keep the pace lively. Teachers should begin class promptly and vigorously, avoid dead
moments and they should have something in reserve in case the momentum disappears. The
movement of the class will vary, but always the direction should be toward the attainment
of the selected objectives.
13) Teach from the known to the unknown. Structure the difficulty level of the questions.
More students will understand if teachers arrange course content so as to move continually
from the known to the unknown, the known being knowledge and/or skills in the native
language with which the students are already familiar. This will help them to relate and
organize what they are learning.
14) Teach with examples. Make meaning, function, and context clear. An example in
language teaching must be worth quite a few explanations. Teachers should strive to create
classroom activities in which context, meaning, and function are evident.
2. Planning principles
The two overriding principles behind good lesson planning are variety and flexibility.
Variety means involving students in a number of different types of activity and where
possible introducing them to a wide selection of materials; it means planning so that
learning is interesting and never monotonous for the students. Flexibility comes into play
when dealing with the plan in the classroom; for any number of reasons what the teacher
has planned may not be appropriate for that class on that particular day. The flexible teacher
will be able to change the plan in such a situation. Flexibility is the characteristic we would
expect from the genuinely adaptable teacher. The teacher who believes in variety will have
to be flexible since the only way to provide variety is to use a number of different
techniques.
Good lesson planning is the art of mixing techniques, activities and materials in such a
way that an ideal balance is created for the class. First we will look at what the teacher
15
should know before starting to plan. These do not necessarily appear in the written plan.
There are three main areas: the job of teaching, the institution and the students.
What teachers should know
The job of teaching
The institution
- the language for the level
they are to teach
- the skills for the level
- the learning aids available
for the level
- stages and techniques in
teaching
- a repertoire of activities
- classroom management
skills
- time, length and frequency of
classes
- physical conditions
- syllabus for the levels that are
being taught
- type of exams the students
will have to take and when.
- any restrictions imposed by
the institution upon their
teaching:
The students
-
knowing who they are,
what they bring to class and
what their needs are:
- social background
- motivation and attitude
- educational background
- knowledge
- interests
- needs
A detailed knowledge of the students is essential when planning what activities to use
and what subject matter to teach. It is important for the students to be interested in the
subject, but it is also important that they should be able to cope with its level of difficulty
(not just of the language, but also the content): where there are clearly definable student
needs it is important for the students to see that the teacher has taken account of these needs
and is organizing classes accordingly -although we should bear in mind our comments
about needs and wants and the importance of general planning principles. Knowing the
students will give the teacher a good idea of how to provide a programme of balanced
activities that will be most motivating and most beneficial to the students.
3. The plan
The plans should not be very detailed as it takes more time to write than actual
teaching. It should be understood that most experienced teachers do not write down what
they are going to do in a complicated way. There is one particular situation in which a
detailed plan is beneficial and that is when a teacher is to be observed: by providing a plan
such a teacher clearly shows why he or she is doing things in the classroom, and where an
activity is not totally successful, the observer can see how it would have gone if it had been
performed or organised more efficiently.
The plan has five major components: description of the class, recent work, objectives,
contents and additional possibilities.
a. Description of the class. Teachers may well carry this part of the plan in their heads.
It includes a description of the students, a statement of time, frequency and duration
of the class, and comments about physical conditions and/or restrictions.
16
b. Recent work. Teachers need to have in their heads, or on paper, details of recent
work the students have done. This helps them to make reasonable planning
decisions about future classes.
c. Objectives for the class. Objectives are the aims that teachers have for the students
and are written in terms of what the students will do or achieve. They may refer to
activities, skills, language type or a combination of all of these. They are written in
general terms (e.g. 'The objective is to relax the students'), in terms of skills (e.g. 'to
give students practice in extracting specific information from a text') and in terms
of language (e.g. 'to give students practice in the use of the past simple tense using
regular and irregular verbs, questions and answers').
d. Contents. This section has five headings:
- Context: it means 'what the situation is and what the subject of the learning is'; (e.g. the
context for introducing new language might be a flight timetable; the context for an oral
composition might be a story about a man going to the zoo.
- Activity and class organisation
- Aids: indicate whether you will be using the blackboard or a wall picture, the tape
recorder or the textbook, etc.
- Language to be used.
- Possible problems: anticipate the problems that may appear in teaching the new lesson,
- Additional possibilities: write down other activities that could be used if it becomes
necessary (e.g. if you finish the lesson quicker than you thought
(After Chastain, 1988 & Harmer, 1991)
Note. Specimen plans will be given in the next chapters.
Discussion questions
1. How important is it for teachers to know about their students’ personality and abilities?
2. What do you think about the specimen plan above? Would you make any changes to it/
or do you have variants to the activities presented?
3. After teaching a class think of the following: if the aims were achieved and in what way,
variety of activities, organization of class and activities, if you made any changes during
class, how flexible you were.
4. Look at a unit in a textbook you are using/ or are familiar with. What activities are there
in the unit? What language skills and language type are included in the unit: is the
language for presentation or controlled practice, is there any communicative interaction?
5. Look at the plan formats below and decide which is simpler, takes you less time to write
and helps you more in the classroom.
6. After teaching or observing a class think of the following: if the activities stimulated the
pupils' interest, if you could have approached the activities in a different way. Give
alternatives.
17
7. Comment on different aspects related to writing lesson plans in detail and the
difficulties you encountered as a novice teacher.
8. There are different formats of plans, as you can see below. Which would you use in
daily planning? Which seems less time-consuming?
LESSON PLAN: Format 1
Date:
Title of the lesson:
Class/Level:
Type of lesson:
Aims:
Materials:
Anticipated problems:
Stages
Procedure
Time
2-5 mins
Introduction
Presentation/
Elicitation
Class work
18
Fillers
(e.g. games,
songs, puzzles
or stories)
19
LESSON PLAN: Format 2
Level/class ______________________ Time____________ Date __________
Topic/lesson _____________________________________________________
Objectives
_______________________________________________________
Vocabulary:
Language structure:
Skills in focus:
Materials, techniques:
Anticipated problems:
Procedure:
Presentation/ Elicitation
Practice
20
Production
Feed-back and evaluation
LESSON PLAN: Format 3
Date:
Title of the lesson:
Class/Level:
Type of lesson:
Objectives: O1
O2
O3
Contents:
Objective 1: (estimated time)
a. Context
b. Activity/class organization:
c. Aids:
a.
Language - structures to be practised:
- instructions:
e. Anticipated problems:
Objective 2: (estimated time)
a. Context
b. Activity/class organization:
b.
c. Aids:
Language - structures to be practised:
- instructions:
e. Anticipated problems:
Objective 3: (estimated time)
a. Context
b. Activity/class organization:
c. Aids:
c.
Language - structures to be practised:
- instructions:
21
e. Anticipated problems:
Fillers/Additional possibilities
4. STRATEGIES/TECHNIQUES FOR TEACHING
TEACHING AND PRACTISING VOCABULARY
Teaching vocabulary is more than just presenting new words. Not all vocabulary can be
learnt through interaction and discovery techniques. Even if such techniques are possible,
however, they are not always the most effective. There are many occasions when some form
of presentation and/or explanation is the best way to bring new words into the classroom.
Here are some techniques:
1. Realia – using or bringing things into the classroom - by bringing 'realia' into the room.
Words like 'postcard', 'ruler', 'pen', 'ball', etc. can be presented in this way. The teacher
holds up the object (or points to it), says the word and then gets students to repeat it.
2. Pictures – they can be board drawings, wall pictures and charts, flashcards, magazine
pictures and any other non-technical visual representation.
3. Mime, action and gesture – actions are probably better explained by mime. Concepts
like running or smoking are easy to present in this way; so are ways of walking,
4.
5.
6.
7.
expressions, prepositions and time.
Contrast – words exist because of their sense relations and this can be used to teach
meaning, e.g. present the meaning of 'empty' by contrasting it with 'full'. These concepts
could be presented with pictures or mime.
Enumeration. Another sense relation is that of general and specific words, e.g.
'clothes'- explain the term by enumerating or listing various items. The same is true of
'vegetable' or 'furniture', for example.
Explanation. Explaining the meaning of vocabulary items can be very difficult,
especially at beginner and elementary levels. But with more intermediate students such
a technique can be used. It is worth remembering that explaining the meaning of a word
must include explaining any facts of word use which are relevant. If we are explaining
the meaning of 'mate' (= friend) we have to point out that it is a colloquial word used in
informal contexts and that it is more often used for males than for females.
Translation. It is a quick and easy way to present the meaning of words, but it is
problematic. In the first place it is not always easy to translate words, and in the second
place, even where translation is possible, it may make it a bit too easy for students by
discouraging them from interacting with the words. Where translation can quickly solve
a presentation problem it may be a good idea, but we should bear in mind that a
22
consistent policy towards the use of the mother tongue is helpful for both teacher and
students.
All of these presentation techniques either single or in combination are useful ways of
introducing new words. What must be remembered with vocabulary presentation is that
pronunciation is just as important here as it is for structural material. Words should not be
introduced without making sure that students know how they are said. Not only will this
mean that they can use the words in speech, it will also help them to remember the words.
A distinction is frequently made between 'active' and 'passive' vocabulary. The former
refers to vocabulary that students have been taught or learnt - and which they are expected
to be able to use - whilst the latter refers to words which the students will recognise when
they meet them but which they will probably not be able to produce.
At beginner and elementary levels it certainly seems a good idea to provide sets of
vocabulary which students can learn. Most of these early words will be constantly practised
and so can, presumably, be considered as 'active'. But at intermediate levels and above the
situation is rather more complicated. We can assume that students have a store of words but
it would be difficult to say which are active and which are passive. A word that has been
'active' through constant use may slip back into the passive store if it is not used. A word
that students have in their passive store may suddenly become active if the situation or the
context provokes its use. In other words, the status of a vocabulary item does not seem to be
a permanent state of affairs.
Experiments on vocabulary seem to suggest that students remember best when they
have actually done something with the words they are learning. Somehow it seems that
teachers should get students to interact with words, get them to do things with words so that
they become acquainted with them. Especially at intermediate levels and above, discovery
techniques - where students have to work out rules and meanings for themselves rather than
being given everything by the teacher - are appropriate alternatives to standard presentation
techniques. This is certainly true of vocabulary learning where students will often be asked
to 'discover for themselves' what a word means and how and why it is being used.
Discovery techniques display from simple matching tasks to more complex
understandings of connotation and context. Discovery techniques used with vocabulary
materials allow students to activate their previous knowledge, to share with others what they
know and interact with words. Learners will select the words they want to learn. The words
they have acquired seem to move between active and passive status. Involvement with
words is likely to help students to learn and remember them. If teachers provide the right
kind of exposure to words for the students and opportunities for them to practise these
words then there is a good chance that students will learn and remember some or all of
them.
(After Harmer, 1991)
23
Discussion questions
1. A student in your low-intermediate-level class interrupts you in the middle of the lesson
and asks you to explain the following words (for each word explain what you would
do):
a. turkey; b. opaque; c. fastidious; d. exaggerate; e. expert; f. status quo; g. cure (v);
2, What advantages can you see in teaching a group of related vocabulary items in a
vocabulary lesson (a lexical set or topic-related vocabulary) as opposed to a group of
unrelated items? What disadvantages might there be also?
3. What factors might affect a student's ability to guess vocabulary from context? What sort
of teaching activities would you have students do to improve their ability to guess
vocabulary from context?
4. What problems can you see if a learner relies heavily on a bilingual dictionary? What
advantages do you see in learners using a good learner's monolingual dictionary?
5. You have decided that it is important for your advanced level class to study the following
lexical sets:
• ways of looking (gaze, glance)
• types of building (house, castle)
• bodies of water (lake, river)
• adjectives denoting largeness (huge, vast)
• adjectives denoting price (cheap, expensive)
• kinship terms (brother, sister)
Which items in the sets would you choose to teach? How would you present them? What
checking exercises would you create? Create a problem-solving activity, a role-play, or
a discussion that you think might get the students to produce the items in these sets.
6. Write down the differences between active and passive vocabulary.
7. Note down any ideas for activating pupils' vocabulary that you are to use as a teacher.
8. Suggest any techniques that may help pupils learn and remember words when
necessary.
9. Select two reading texts at two different levels of difficulty. Anticipate which lexical
items might give students problems; describe how you would teach the vocabulary in
these texts.
10. Observe a vocabulary class and write down your observations using the following
model:
OBSERVATION TASK – TEACHING VOCABULARY
Level/class ______________________ Time____________ Date __________
Topic/lesson _____________________________________________________
Objectives
24
1. Warm-up/drawing pupils' attention:
2. Introducing vocabulary:
Note down:
- what vocabulary is being taught
- what techniques are being used by the teacher
- ways of highlighting pronunciation/stress/spelling
- checking pupils' understanding
3. Note down any lexical difficulties/misuses and how the teacher deals with these.
4. Activities/exercises for practising/activating pupils’ vocabulary.
5. STRATEGIES/TECHNIQUES FOR TEACHING
AND PRACTISING GRAMMAR
Grammar teaching is not so much knowledge transmission, as it is skill development.
By recognizing this, several insights will be considered from foreign language acquisition
(FLA) research concerning how students naturally develop their ability to interpret and
produce grammatical utterances:
1. Learners do not learn structures one at a time. It is not the case that a learner masters the
definite article, and when that is mastered, moves on to the simple past. Learning is a
gradual process involving the mapping of form, meaning, and pragmatics; structures do
not emerge in learners' inter-language fully developed and error-free. To expect that
they will do so in an instructional setting is therefore unrealistic
2. Even when learners appear to have mastered a particular structure, it is not uncommon
to find backsliding occurring with the introduction of new forms to the learners’ interlanguage. For example, the learner who has finally mastered the third person singular
marker on present-tense verbs is likely to over-generalize the rule and apply it to modal
verbs, too.
3. Foreign language learners rely on the knowledge and the experience they have. If they
are beginners, they will rely on their L1 as a source of hypotheses about how the L2
works; when they are more advanced, they will rely increasingly on the L2.
25
4. Different learning processes are responsible for different aspects of language Indeed,
given that language is as complicate as it is, one would not expect the learning process
to be any simpler.
1 Designing activities to practice grammar structures
Grammar lessons are usually composed of three phases: presentation, practice, and
communication (although all three may not be conducted within one class period). Rather
than illustrating a single lesson plan from start to finish, it seemed more beneficial to
concentrate on characterizing and exemplifying activities that could be used during the
practice phase.
Form. Once a particular grammar structure has been analyzed, a challenging teaching
point for the particular class of students should be chosen. The learning process associated
with the teaching point should also be identified, to the extent possible. Both the nature of
the learning process and of the learning challenge give important clues as to activity
characteristics. For example, when dealing with the formal dimension of grammar, it would
appear that the major learning processes involved would be stimulus-response learning for
phonemic patterns and verbal chaining or principle learning for morphemes or syntactic
patterns. Chaining and principle learning seem the applicable learning processes for
morphology and syntax since what we are attempting to have our students learn is to
comprehend and produce either verbal student chains between morphemes/words or rulepattern governed syntactic patterns.
Identifying the type of learning involved helps us to think about the desirable
characteristics of any practice activity. Students would have to be restricted to using just the
particular target form; in other words, structural diversity would not be permitted.
Example: If we were to teach yes-no question formation, we might determine the
immediate challenge to be linguistic form, based on our analysis of the three dimensions
and what our students know how to do. The first step in the lesson is the presentation of the
linguistic rule. We have several options regarding the presentation phase: The rule could be
presented inductively or deductively. Also, the rule could be made explicit or not.
We next will need to select an activity that encourages meaningful repetition of the
pattern, not verbatim repetition. We want the students to concentrate on producing only
yes-no questions. A game like Twenty Questions would appear to meet the criteria. Students
get to ask 20 yes-no questions about an object or person in an attempt to guess the identity;
hence, they receive abundant practice in forming the questions, and the questions they
produce are meaningful. The teacher would work with each student to enable the student to
produce the pattern accurately. The game can be repeated as long as students remain
interested.
26
Questions can also be used to elicit other structures when it is the formal dimension
with which the lesson is dealing. For example, a variation on the same game might be to
have students guess "Whose ______ is it?'' Their responses (e.g., It's Maria's, It's Grace’s)
would provide an opportunity to practice the three allomorphs of the possessive. Then, too,
the responses to the guesses would offer a good deal of practice with short forms (e.g., No,
it isn't/Yes, it is).
Another example of a game, which appears to meet the above criteria, is the Telephone
Game, which can be used to practice the forms of reported speech. One student would
whisper something to another student (e.g., "I'm happy it's Friday). The second student
would whisper to a third student what he or she heard from the first student (Tom said that
he was happy it was Friday), a.s.o. What usually happens, of course, is that the original
message has changed considerably during its passage along the telephone. In sum, certain
games are good devices for practising grammar points where the identified challenge
resides in the formal dimension.
Meaning. If the teacher has decided that the challenge of a particular structure lies in
the semantic dimension for the class, then a different sort of practice activity should be
needed. It would seem that verbal association, multiple discrimination, and concept learning
would all come into play when working on the meaning of a particular grammar structure.
The major procedures would be for the students to learn to bond the form to its meaning and
to distinguish the meaning of one particular form from another. Sometimes a single pairing
of form and meaning suffices for a student to make the bond. Due to memory constraints, it
seems prudent to restrict the number of new items being practised at any one time to
between two and six. The students would receive feedback on their ability to demonstrate
that they had acquired the form-meaning bond.
2 Related pedagogical issues
Sequencing. Different aspects of form, meaning, and pragmatics of a given structure
may be acquired at different stages of inter-language development. The usual advice is to
begin with the simple structures and work up to the more complex.
Inductive versus deductive presentation. An additional choice teachers face is whether
to work inductively or deductively during the presentation phase. An inductive activity is
one in which the students infer the rule or generalization from a set of examples. For
instance, students might induce the subject-auxiliary inversion rule in forming yes-no
questions, after having been exposed to a number of such questions. In a deductive activity,
on the other hand, the students are given the rule and they apply it to examples.
If one has chosen an inductive approach in a given lesson, a further option exists whether or not to have students explicitly state the rule. The use of explicit rules may be
irrelevant. One can teach grammar without stating any explicit rules. What teachers are
27
trying to bring about in learners is linguistic behaviour that conforms to the rules, not
knowledge of the rules themselves. Usually students request rules and report that they find
them helpful. Moreover, stating a rule explicitly can often bring about linguistic insights
more efficiently.
There are many times when an inductive approach in presenting a grammar point is
desirable because by using such an approach one is nurturing within the students a learning
process through which they can arrive at their own generalizations. Other times, it may be
more suitable to present a grammar structure deductively.
Presenting a structure
Options for presenting a structure during the initial phase of a lesson: a necessary
ingredient for this phase is having some language sample/examples that illustrate the
teaching point. In the audio-lingual method, grammar points are introduced via a dialogue
which students listen to, and subsequently memorize. While dialogues are useful for
introducing points of grammar, there are a variety of other formats that can be used:
•
•
•
•
songs and poems
authentic texts (e.g., newspaper articles)
realia (e.g., clothes)
segments of taped radio/television broadcasts
Moreover, who selects these samples can be varied, too. For example, if the grammar
point had to do with the distinction between mass and count nouns.

The teacher could bring in an advertising circular from a local supermarket. Or

The students might be invited to bring in their favourite recipes. Or

The teacher and students might generate a language sample together which contained
count and mass nouns (e.g., "I went to the supermarket" game).
When practising an inductive approach, students would be presented with the language
sample, let's say the advertising circular. They then would be encouraged to make their own
observations about the form of mass and count nouns. The teacher would listen to their
observations, and then might summarize by generalizing about the two categories of nouns
in English. If using a deductive approach, the teacher would present the generalization and
then ask students to apply it to the language sample. This approach would be suitable for an
example of teacher-student-generated language since students might be aided in playing the
game by having knowledge of the mass/count distinction.
One advantage of using an inductive approach during the presentation phase is that it
allows teachers to assess what the students already know about a particular structure and to
make any necessary modifications in their lesson plan. Assessment during this phase and
28
throughout the lesson is crucial to determining what needs to be taught and to what extent
learning has taken place, respectively.
Error correction. Error correction is a necessary element of pedagogical practice.
Some might believe that error correction inhibits students from freely expressing
themselves. While there are clearly times when error correction can be intrusive and
therefore unwarranted (e.g., during communicative phase activities), at other times focused
error correction is highly desirable. It provides the negative evidence students often need to
reject or modify their hypotheses about how the target language is formed or functions.
Students understand this and deliberately seek error correction to assist them with their
language learning task.
1. Introducing new language structure
- present the students with clear information about the language they are learning
- show them what the language means and how it is used
- show them what the grammatical form of the new language is, and how it is said/written
- show students what language means and how it is used.
Example:
As we all know, the present continuous tense (is doing) is used to describe actions that
are taking place now. However, native speakers do not use this tense to describe people's
actions all the time, saying 'Look. I'm opening the door, I'm drinking a cup of tea ... etc.'
That's not how they use the present continuous. It is actually used when there is some point,
some value in commenting on people's actions, So we might ring home and say 'Oh, what's
John doing at the moment?' It's a reasonable question since we can't see 'him and don't know
the answer to our question. If we are demonstrating a recipe to a TV audience we might
then describe what we are doing, e.g. '... So now I'm mixing the butter and the flour…”
Students need to get an idea of how the new language is used by native speakers and
the best way of doing this is to present language in context. The context for introducing new
language should have a number of characteristics:
1. It should show what the new language means and how it is used (e.g. in a written text or
a dialogue).
2. It should be interesting for the students, allowing them to see or hear the information.
3. It should provide the background for a lot of language use so that students can use the
information not only for the repetition of model sentences but also for making their own
sentences.
The textbooks will often have all the characteristics mentioned here and the teacher can
confidently rely on the material for the presentation. But the textbook is not always so
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appropriate, for some reasons the information in the book may not be right for our students.
In such cases we can create our own contexts for language use. Context means the situation
or body of information that causes language to be used. There are several different context
types, e.g. the students' world, the outside world and formulated information.
The students' world can be a major source of contexts for language presentation. There
are two kinds of students' world. We can use the physical surroundings that the students are
in, the classroom, school or institution. But classrooms and their physical properties (tables,
chairs, windows, etc.) are limited. The students' lives are not constrained in the same way
and we can use facts about them, their families, friends and experiences.
We can ask students to look at examples of language which show the new language in
operation, though this last category can sometimes have no context. These three categories,
story, situation or language, can be simulated or real.
Formulated information refers to all that information which is presented in the form of
timetables, notes, charts etc. We can use real charts and timetables, growth statistics, etc. or
we can design our own which will be just right for our students.
It is difficult to generalise, and teachers should be sensitive to the varying degrees of
motivation that different contexts provide. Language can be presented in one context (e.g. a
dialogue) but then the context may change for accurate reproduction or immediate
creativity. One of the teacher's jobs is to show how the new language is formed - how the
grammar works and how it is put together. One way of doing this is to explain the grammar
in detail, using grammatical terminology and giving a mini-lecture on the subject. This
seems problematical, though, for two reasons; firstly many students may find grammatical
concepts difficult, and secondly it will only be possible in a monolingual group at lower
levels if the teacher conducts the explanation in the students' mother tongue. In multilingual groups such as those found in Britain, America, etc. such explanations for beginners
will be almost impossible.
A more effective - and less frightening - way of presenting form is to let the students
see and/or hear the new language, drawing their attention in a number of different ways to
the grammatical elements of which it is made. For whilst advanced students may profit from
grammatical explanations to a certain extent, at lower levels we must usually find simpler
and more transparent ways of giving students grammatical information.
It is undoubtedly important for the students to understand the meaning of the new
language they are learning. This is conveyed during the lead-in stage where key concepts
clearly demonstrate what is going on. We also need to know whether the students have
understood the new language so that we can organise our teaching accordingly. Not only is
the lead-in stage vital, therefore, but it will also be necessary for the teacher to check
frequently that the students have understood. If they have not we will have to re-present the
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key concepts. Checking meaning can be done in three ways, information checking,
immediate creativity and translation.
1. Information checking. The teacher will often need to find out if students have
understood the information in the lead-in, or whether students understand what a model
means. We can do this in a number of ways. We might, for example, ask a question.
Another way of checking is to say sentences that are incorrect, The students will then, if
they have understood, correct the error. The same effect can be created by reading students'
models and asking them to say whether they are true or false.
2. Immediate creativity and different settings. The immediate creativity stage is a
good indicator of whether or not students have understood the meaning and use of the new
language. We may ask students to produce sentences of their own even before we get to this
stage in order to check that they have understood the new language.
3. Translation. Where the teacher is teaching a monolingual class, translation is
obviously an excellent technique. The main advantages are that it is quick and efficient.
There are, however, two disadvantages to the use of translation: the first is that it is not
really possible with groups of different nationalities, and secondly it is not always possible
to translate exactly.
In this model for introducing new language, we saw how the teacher creates a context
(or uses one from some materials) and elicits language that is then given as models for the
students to repeat. The whole procedure is basically teacher-led since it is the teacher's job
to explain the language and conduct a cue-response drill before moving quickly to
immediate creativity and pair-work (where the students start to take over control a bit).
Discovery techniques, aim to give students a chance to take charge earlier. The idea is
simple: give students a listening or reading text - or some examples of English sentences and ask them to discover how the language works. Give students a text which is a story, for
example, and then ask them to look at it again to see how many ways they could find in it
for referring to the past. They could listen to a tape and write down any sentences that had
'if' in them. Then they could see if there was any pattern to those sentences.
Thus there is a range of techniques where the teacher gets the students to do most of the
work. There are good pedagogical and methodological reasons for this since the students
will be more involved and since this kind of activity invites them to use their reasoning
processes.
The use of discovery activities does not mean that the model above should be changed.
In general we can still say that we should give students a lead-in to the topic, text or context.
But the elicitation stage will be different. Instead of saying 'Can anyone tell me... Lou…
yesterday... New Zealand go...' to get the sentence ' Lou went to New Zealand yesterday' we
get students to look at the material and, working individually or in pairs, they find examples
of the grammar we are interested in. When the teacher asks them what they have found and
discusses the language with them we have reached an explanation stage, but because the
31
teacher is talking with the students (rather than to them) the process appears to be more
egalitarian, less dictatorial.
Discovery techniques are not suitable for all students on all occasions. This problemsolving approach takes more time than a more controlled presentation. And although
students may be very involved there is not the kind of dynamic tension that makes wholeclass presentations such fun (when they go well). It is also true that designing material for
discovery activities - or finding a text that will suit this approach - is far easier at
intermediate and advanced levels than it is when teaching beginners.
In this chapter a primarily oral approach has been advocated, since the first thing
students do with the language is to say it. At any stage, however, the teacher may ask the
students to write the new language. Often the teacher will use the writing as reinforcement
for an oral presentation. Thus either immediately before or after the immediate creativity
stage the teacher asks students to write sentences using the new language. The sentences
may be the original models the teacher used during the accurate reproduction stage, and the
students might be asked to copy these sentences from the blackboard. They might see the
same sentences, but the teacher might leave out certain words (e.g. a fill-in exercise).
The students might be shown model sentences and then be asked to write similar
sentences of their own. This is a written version of the immediate creativity stage. The
students might see a short piece of connected writing using the new language and then be
asked to write a similar piece. This is often called parallel writing.
All these techniques have their merits, although copying is often unchallenging and
boring. The main object, though, is to relate the spoken and written forms of the new
language, and to enable the students to write the new pattern as well as say it.
Where students write in class as part of the introduction of new language it is often
advantageous to 'correct' the written work in front of the whole class. One useful way of
doing this is to ask the students to do written work in their books. When we see that a
student has finished (before the others) we ask him or her to write the first sentence on the
blackboard. The second student writes the second sentence, and so on. When all the
sentences are on the board we go through them one by one, asking the class if they are
correct. If they are not we can ask another student to write the correct sentence or correct
the sentence ourselves. This technique is particularly useful since it gives the students
feedback, and allows the teacher and the whole class to focus on grammar points if such
focus is necessary.
(after Harmer, 1991)
Discussion questions
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1. The effect of the mother tongue on foreign language learning has traditionally been seen
to be one of interference. Give several examples.
2. Why is it important for grammar exercises to be (a) a text based rather than a series of
unrelated sentences, (b) developed from authentic discourse, and (c) presented in a
communicative context rather than only a practice in grammatical structures?
3. Why was it stressed that the repetition in a practice activity working on form should be
meaningful?
4. What are some differences between the practice and communicative phases of a lesson
when teaching a grammar structure?
5. When would a teacher want to present a grammar structure deductively? Inductively?
6. Complete the following plan and note down the approximate time length for each stage:
TEACHING GRAMMAR: PRESENT PERFECT
Level/class ______________________ Time____________ Date __________
Topic/lesson _____________________________________________________
Objectives:
1. Techniques used in presenting the new structure:
2. Checking understanding:
3. Controlled practice - types of exercises/activities used:
4. Production (free practice) - types of activities used:
5. Feedback and evaluation.
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6. PRODUCTIVE SKILLS: SPEAKING, WRITING
SPEAKING
It has become apparent in recent years that there have been marked changes in the goals
of language education programmes. Nowadays language students are considered successful
if they can communicate effectively in their foreign language, whereas two decades ago the
accuracy of the language produced would most likely be the major criterion contributing to
the judgement of a student’s success or lack of success. There is little doubt now that these
developments in language teaching have moved us away from the goal of accurate form
toward a focus on fluency and communicative effectiveness. Thus, the teaching of the
speaking skill has become increasingly important.
Accordingly, rather than implementing activities and exercises which focus strictly on
accuracy (such as those using memorization, repetition, and uncontextualized drills), many
classroom teachers have concentrated on promoting communicative competence in
language learners by using “communicative activities” - those which rely more on the
students’ ability to understand and communicate real information. The aim of such “fluency
activities”, as Brumfit (1984: 69) calls them, is to “develop a pattern of language interaction
with the classroom which is as close as possible to that used by competent performers in
normal life.” Informal, unrehearsed use of language is encouraged, along with a relaxed
classroom environment, the natural negotiation of turns, and the exchange of “new”
information - all of which occur in ordinary conversation. In other words, some believe that
communication in the classroom should mirror the authentic communication that occurs in
the real world.
However, this does not mean that a focus on accuracy has no place in the communicative classroom. Since a linguistic or grammatical base may be necessary before fluency can
be attained, some instructors and researchers believe that grammar should be explicitly
taught, and that this is possible through communicative means (e.g., Celce-Murcia & Hilles,
1988). When using communicative activities, it is important to strive for a classroom in
which students feel comfortable and confident, feel free to take risks, and have sufficient
opportunities to speak.
Simply put, the goal of a speaking component in a language class should be to
encourage the acquisition of communication skills and to foster real communication out of
the classroom. It follows then that the objectives for developing oral fluency will be setting
forth specific content, activities and methods which foster communication. There are as
many speaking activities and materials available as there are creative teachers. Oral skill
activities are organized into four distinct types:
1. drills, or linguistically structured activities
2. performance activities
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3. participation activities
4. observation activities.
Evaluation techniques, which allow students to focus on the structures that occur in their
utterances and to analyze their own and their classmates’ performances, will also be discussed in conjunction with other activities. Each kind of activity will be described, and
examples will be given of some of the more successful and interesting choices available to
the teacher from each type.
Linguistically structured activities. Such activities need not be void of meaning, as
were some of the more classic manipulative techniques associated with the audio-lingual
approach, with its repetition drills and pattern practices. Rather, it is possible to contextualize such activities to meet some of the requirements of a communicatively oriented
design.
In controlled practice the teacher can model the forms to be produced, providing
necessary linguistically correct input. The students are then allowed to practice the material,
and the teacher follows up by reinforcing the forms practised. What is important is that
students are allowed to speak about what is true, real, and interesting. The structured
interview is an example of this, where students question each other and answer factually,
thus exchanging “real” information, while at the same time repeating and reinforcing
specific structures (e.g., yes-no, or wh-questions). A variation on this requires students to
take on assigned roles while asking and answering questions, prompted, perhaps, through
the use of pictures.
Some language games can also provide opportunities for controlled practice. Again, it
is important to model the structures for beginning students, either verbally or by writing the
forms on the board. Picture games which require students to match texts with pictures are
ideal for beginning students who need to practice manipulating certain structures (e.g., the
word “cup” with a picture of a cup; or, for more advanced students, a sentence which
describes one step in a process, with its corresponding diagram).
Performance activities - are those in which the student prepares beforehand and
delivers a message to a group. A good example of such an activity is the student speech,
which could be made as specific in content as necessary (e.g. ask students to explain a
process or experiment; or to simply tell a story from their own experience in a casual, social
setting). Peer evaluation can be a useful component of oral performance activities since:
1. the “audience” becomes involved in such a way that students, as members of the
audience, become more than simply passive listeners
2. the evaluation process helps students to gain confidence in their own ability to evaluate
language
3. the evaluation activity itself becomes an opportunity for real, spontaneous interaction
since the “message” (the evaluation) is important to the student performer.
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The evaluation sheet, drawn up by the teacher beforehand, can be the same as the
teacher’s. Its purpose is to structure the evaluation so that it meets the goals of the activity,
with categories for such criteria as content (Is it focused? clear? original? Has enough detail
been provided?), organization (Is it logical? Are there appropriate transitions?), and delivery
(Is eye contact maintained? Are notes relied on too much? Is the volume adequate?). Other
comments would relate to the focus of the particular assignment, and could include specific
grammar or vocabulary points.
Another follow-up activity involves audiotaping or videotaping students during their
initial performances and allowing them to evaluate themselves. With self-evaluation,
students listen to or watch their recorded speeches and evaluate themselves according to the
same criteria that the teacher and peer evaluators use. A useful option for this follow-up task
would be for students to look at their transcription and rewrite it, correcting the grammar
and vocabulary errors.
A variation on the speech given by one person is assigning two or more people to
deliver a talk. It gives students practice in negotiating tasks, sharing information, and
providing assistance when needed. An additional benefit is that students are less likely to
feel nervous or pressured when the responsibility for giving a good speech is shared among
a group.
Role-plays and dramas, if performed in front of the class, can also function as “performance activities.” In some cases, students could write the role-plays or dramas themselves;
this would be especially appropriate in a course that is organized around speech functions or
conversational strategies (e.g., complimenting and thanking behaviour, greetings and
closings). More guidance can be provided for beginning learners if they are allowed to
perform their role-plays from scripts they have at hand. While reading from the script is not
encouraged, as long as the teacher ensures that the content of the role-play is authentic, the
activity can be approached as another variation on the contextualized drill. All such
structured performance activities can use the techniques of peer evaluation, audiotaping,
transcription, and self-evaluation. Debates can serve as an opportunity for a classroom
performance activity for intermediate and advanced learners.
Participation activities - can be some of the most diverse and interesting in the oral
communication repertoire. Students participate in some communicative activity in a
“natural setting.” One commonly used activity is the guided discussion, where the teacher
provides a brief orientation to some problem or controversial topic, usually by means of a
short reading. Students - in groups - discuss the topic, suggesting possible solutions or
complications.
Alternatively, students themselves can be assigned the responsibility of a discussionleading activity in more advanced classes. In this situation, they (1) select a topic, (2) find a
short background article or write a summary of the topic, (3) draw up a list of questions for
consideration by the rest of the class, and finally, (4) lead a semiformal class discussion on
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the topic, with a prepared introduction and a spontaneous summing-up conclusion. Some of
the same evaluation techniques can be used for this activity (peer evaluation, audiotaping or
videotaping, and detailed self-evaluation with the aid of the student transcription).
Another activity requires students to audiotape a spontaneous conversation that they
have with a native speaker/or a good speaker of their choice. The goal of these
conversations is for the student to obtain “data” that are as natural and spontaneous as
possible given the constraints of the recording procedure. Once the conversation is
recorded, the students transcribe an excerpt of the conversation that they find interesting.
Transcription, an important element of many student-generated materials and activities, allows the transcriber to focus on details - a valuable exercise in listening comprehension, as
well as an opportunity to heighten awareness of the students’ own difficulties of expression.
In the process of transcribing, students discover much about natural language that is
difficult to teach - that native speakers also make “mistakes”: They hesitate, rephrase,
pause, mispronounce words. Finally, the transcription process makes materials available in
a written form for the class to use as a basis for many further activities.
After the initial conversation data are audiotaped, transcribed and checked by the
teacher for faithfulness to the tape. there are many options for activities based on them. One
use of the material is for vocabulary-building: the students note down unfamiliar words or
idioms in the native or fluent speaker’s language, and also target areas in their own speech
where there was some difficulty in achieving clear communication. Another possibility is
for the students to concentrate on the native speaker’s speech and to note effective or
interesting usage. With the aid of a transcript and the heightened awareness of detail
brought about by the transcription process, students can focus on details which are difficult
or impossible to catch during the actual conversation itself. Finally, this procedure can be
used as an exercise in discovering regularities of conversation strategies, such as topic
control, feedback markers (interactive listening), or specific “gambits” (such as how to
appropriately disagree, register surprise or sympathy). For some students it is also useful to
look at the accuracy of what they have produced (in terms of grammar and vocabulary) and
to edit the transcript to render it more accurate.
Another participation activity is the interview. In it, the students become their own oral
historians, interviewing their acquaintances about some meaningful or memorable aspect of
their lives. The most successful project involves subjects whose experiences are different
from the students’ (e.g.. interview the oldest person you know, interview someone you
know who has had unusual experiences or ask for their opinions on a given subject). First
students can generate questions relating to the topic and practise interviewing techniques.
After having taken the interviews, they organize their information and present it to the
others in class.
In the interview exercise, follow-up activities can be: retelling or reporting the story or
opinions in their own words, or use the activity as a basis for a writing assignment. If the
37
interview is summed up orally and in writing, students can begin thinking about the
difference between spoken and written discourse, and offers another opportunity for the
teacher to merge concerns of fluency with accuracy.
Another activity is the oral dialogue journal, where students speak spontaneously on an
audiotape on a given topic, such as a response to an assigned article or essay, or on anything
of interest, much like a written journal. With this activity it is the teacher who is the other
“participant,” and who responds to the student orally, via audiotape. This teacher response
would primarily focus on content, thus creating a real dialogue, but it could also touch on
linguistic factors of the student’s speech, such as fluency, pronunciation, and grammar.
Observation activities. Students observe/record verbal and non-verbal interactions
between two or more native or fluent speakers of the target language. This technique is
useful for building student appreciation and awareness of language as it is actually used in
the real world, and since the student is taking the role of non-participant observer, he or she
is free to concentrate on the subject without fear of performance errors.
A typical observation assignment might be to assign two students, as a team, the
responsibility for exploring how native/any speakers negotiate a certain social situation, e.g.
how or when people greet each other, make requests, interrupt each other, thank each other,
compliment one another, disagree, or receive compliments. After observing a certain
number of cases, the students write a brief summary and present these findings to the class.
Alternatively, a follow-up activity could be a performance, in which the students create a
role-play that demonstrates the non-verbal and verbal behaviour appropriate to the
particular conversational strategy under analysis.
The observation activities have the drawback of assuming access to a pool of native
speakers. For purposes of observation, this problem may be partially alleviated by making
use of native English speakers on radio and television, especially in “natural” settings, such
as unrehearsed interviews. Also, if native speakers are not available in large numbers, some
of the same results may be achieved through the use of elicitation techniques, in which
students ask native or fluent speakers to draw upon their intuitions about acceptable nativelike behaviour in a given circumstance.
2. Methods of evaluation
Some of the methods for evaluating specific speaking activities in the language
classroom include self-evaluation and peer-evaluation. Some teachers might be required to
test students in terms of general oral proficiency, in addition to or in place of rating
performance on specific tasks. Considering the changes in language learning theory and
language teaching practice, it is interesting to note that many established tests of oral
proficiency continue to evaluate a student’s performance primarily in terms of accuracy or
grammatical competence.
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These and many other tests look at orally produced language as something which can
be broken down into separate categories, such as grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and
fluency. Although certainly these discrete components contribute to what is called “oral
proficiency,” it is questionable whether the elusive quality called “communicative ability”
can be evaluated in this manner. Again, it is necessary for the teacher to think in terms of
the goals for a particular course or activity, and to gear methods of evaluation to these aims.
Once the appropriate tasks for evaluation have been chosen, suitable rating scales can be
designed or selected. Specific linguistic ‘skills’ such as grammar and vocabulary are
measured as discrete components.
(after Harmer, 1991)
Discussion questions
1. How would you teach requests in English? Develop a number of activities to teach
requests with an age of your choice.
2. To what extent is it important to include speech acts such as complaints and
compliments in (a) an EFL course for beginners, (b) any course of your choice?
3. Write five short dialogues or brief exchanges that incorporate apologies in natural
interaction. Try to incorporate all five strategies in your dialogues. (More than one
strategy is often used in the same interchange).
4. Set up a sequence of speaking activities of your choice specifying goals for (a)
beginners, (b) intermediate-level students, and (c) advanced learners.
WRITING
Within the communicative framework of language teaching, the skill of writing enjoys
special status - it is via writing that a person can communicate a variety of messages to a
close or distant, known or unknown reader or readers. Such communication is extremely
important in the modern world, whether the interaction takes the form of traditional paperand-pencil writing or the most advanced electronic mail. Writing as a communicative
activity needs to be encouraged and nurtured during the language learner’s course of study.
The view of writing as an act of communication suggests an interactive process that takes
place between the writer and the reader via the text. Such an approach places value on the
goal of writing as well as on the perceived reader audience.
1. Early writing tasks: coping with the mechanics
The first steps in teaching reading and writing skills in a foreign language classroom
centre on the mechanics of these two skills. By “mechanics” we usually refer to letter
recognition, letter discrimination, word recognition, basic rules of spelling, punctuation, and
capitalization, as well as recognition of whole sentences and paragraphs. The interaction
between reading and writing has often been a focus in the methodology of language
teaching, yet it deserves even stronger emphasis at the early stages in the acquisition of the
various component mechanics. In order to learn how to discriminate one letter from another
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while reading, learners need to practise writing these letters; in order to facilitate their
perception of word and sentences during the reading process, they need to practice writing
them first. Thus writing plays an important role in early reading - facilitating the
development of both the reading and the writing skills.
Sound-spelling correspondences. English presents the learner with a number of
unique problems related to its orthographic rules – it is difficult to find reliable rules for
English orthography; yet the English writing system is much more rule-governed than many
realize. In teaching the basic sound-spelling correspondences in English, it is important to
emphasize the rules which provide the learners with useful generalizations and which therefore help them become effective readers. It is important for learners of English as a foreign
language to realize from the start that English orthography is by no means a one-to-one
letter-sound correspondence system; it has its own consistency embedded in the
combination of letters with their immediate environments. By practising the proper
pronunciation of sounds relation to given spelling patterns, we can provide learners with a
good basis for pronunciation as well as for the skills of reading and writing.
The stage devoted to the teaching of the mechanics of reading and writing aims at three
different goals: (a) to enhance letter recognition - especially when learners come from a
different writing system, (b) to practice sound-spelling correspondences via all four
language skills, and (c) to help the learner move from letters and words to meaningful
sentences and larger units of discourse. Three major types of recognition tasks are used at
this early stage of reading and writing, each type incorporating a great variety of drills: a.
matching tasks;
b. writing tasks; c. meaningful sound-spelling correspondence
practice. These tasks enable the learners to develop effective recognition habits based on
distinctive graphic features. Many of these have the form of games, puzzles, and other “fun”
activities.
2. More advanced writing tasks
More advanced writing activities will need to incorporate some language work at the
morphological and discourse level. Thus, these activities will enable a combination of focus
on accuracy and content of the message.
Practical writing tasks. These are writing tasks that are procedural in nature and
therefore have a predictable format. This makes them particularly suitable for writing
activities that focus primarily on spelling and morphology. Lists of various types, notes,
short messages, simple instructions, and other such writing tasks are particularly useful in
reinforcing classroom work.
Lists can be of many types: “things to do” lists, “things completed” lists, shopping lists.
Each of these list types provides us with an opportunity to combine some spelling rules with
morphological rules and with the logical creation of a meaningful message. When assigning
such an activity, the teacher will have to indicate whether the list is personal or intended for
a team. The content specification will have to indicate whether this is a list of things to do in
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preparation for some event or more a plan for someone’s daily routine. For example, a list
for a group of students who are preparing a surprise birthday party might look like this:
Things to Do
1. Buy a present for Dan (Sharon).
2. Call Dan’s friends (Gail).
3. Write invitations (Doris) ... etc.
Following up this type of list, we can easily move on to the “things completed” list,
which specifies the things that have already been taken care of and is therefore useful for
practising past forms of verbs. As part of this activity students will need to review certain
grammar structures, etc. Such an activity also enables students to practise the spelling of
irregular past-tense formations. For example, the above list might look like this when
partially completed:
Things Completed
1. Planned the games for the party.
2. Wrote the invitations.
3. Bought the present.
4. Called the friends.
5. Tried to call mother.
Shopping lists provide us with a very good opportunity to practise the spelling of the
plural ending of countable nouns and the use of quantifiers. Another type of practical
writing task is notes and messages that are left for another person. These allow students to
practice brief and simple sentences with proper punctuation and a meaningful message. To
make the activity more interesting, students can design their own message headings and
then fill them in. Here is an example:
Messages for My Little Sister
Wash the dishes in the sink.
Feed the dog.
Watch your favourite programme on TV and have a good time.
Other types of practical writing activities might include the filling-in of forms and the
preparation of invitations, “greetings” and “thank you” notes, and other such written
communications.
Emotive writing tasks - are concerned with personal writing, which includes primarily
letters to friends and narratives describing personal experiences, as well as personal journals
and diaries. When dealing with letter writing, emphasis can be placed on format,
punctuation, and spelling of appropriate phrases and expressions. When writing about
personal experiences - usually done in a narrative format - spelling of past-tense forms can
be reviewed and practised. Diaries and journals can take the form of personal letters and
serve as a review of letter writing in general.
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School-oriented tasks. One of the most important functions of writing in a student’s
life is the function it plays in school. It is still the case that much individual learning goes on
while students are writing assignments, summaries, answers to questions, or a variety of
essay-type passages. In most cases, the audience for these writing tasks is the teacher, but
gradually students must learn to write to an unknown audience who needs to get the
information being imparted exclusively via writing. At the early stages of EFL learning, the
assignments might be short and limited. Answers might be single phrases or sentences,
summaries/main ideas. However, all of these writing activities should be given attention
both at the linguistic-accuracy level and at the message-transmission level. It is the combination of content and organization with accepted formal features that will lead learners to
better utilization of the writing skill in their future use of English.
3. Techniques for getting started
The goal of the teacher should be to expose students to a variety of strategies for
getting started with a writing task and to encourage each student to try to discover which
strategies (in which circumstances) work best for him or her. Here are some techniques for
generating ideas:
Brainstorming: it is a group exercise in which all of the students in the class are
encouraged to participate by sharing their collective knowledge about a particular subject or
a broad topic.
Listing: Unlike brainstorming, as described above, listing can be a quiet and essentially
individual activity. Again, as a first step in finding an approach to a particular subject area,
the students are encouraged to produce as lengthy a list as possible of all the subcategories
that come to mind as they think about the topic at hand.
Free writing: the main idea of this technique is for students to write for a specified
period of time (usually about 5 minutes) without taking their pen from the page. Freed from
the necessity of worrying about grammar and format, students can often generate a great
deal of prose that provides useful raw material for a writing assignment.
Clustering: it begins with a key word or central idea placed in the centre of a page (or
on the blackboard) around which the student (or teacher using student-generated
suggestions) jots down in a few minutes all of the free associations triggered by the subject
matter - using simply words or short phrases. Completed clusters can look like spokes on a
wheel or any other pattern of connected lines.
It is very important that students experiment with each of these techniques in order to
see how each one works to help generate text and shape a possible approach to a topic. The
aim is for students to feel that they have a variety of ways to begin an assigned writing task.
(After Celce-Murcia,1988 & Harmer, 1991)
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Discussion questions
1. Write lesson plans for a speaking class based on one of Aesop’s fables.
2. Write lesson plans for a writing class based on interpreting proverbs.
3. Find pictures that can be used for simple descriptions. Develop a number of activities
that will enable pairs and small groups to answer a set of questions about each picture.
The questions should lead to a concise description of what can be seen in the picture.
4. Discuss an important sound-spelling correspondence in English how you might teach it.
5. If one of your students expressed disappointment that you did not correct all of the
errors in her final drafts, how would you respond?
6. Try out the following lesson plan or choose another song/topic and draw a similar one.
YELLOW SUBMARINE
LEVEL: Upper-intermediate + (adaptable to any level)
AIMS: - using songs creatively
- students will practise integrated skills, creative writing
- they will be prepared to start project work (e.g. travelling by sea)
SKILL FOCUS: integrated skills
TIME: 90 minutes
CLASS SIZE: 15/20-30
MATERIALS: cassette with “Yellow Submarine”, cassette player, and role cards.
A. PROCEDURE
TASK 1
a) Brainstorming: “LIFE IN A SUBMARINE” Students: discuss what they know/don’t
know about submarines.
b) Teacher/or a pupil: pretend you are from a travel agency that organizes one-week trips
by submarine, and present some of the attractions: a mini-disco, bowling, fresh seafood,
observing life in the sea through a large window.
Students: in groups, discuss advantages/disadvantages of going on such a trip
Group 1: think positive and make a list of advantages and be ready to convince the others
to go on the trip.
Group 2: pretend you are reluctant travellers who see a lot of disadvantages; make a list
and be prepared to defend your point of view, yet listen to what the others have to say, and
decide if you like to give it a try.
c) You are not allowed to take a lot of luggage. Decide on ten things that you must take on
the trip (whole class)
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B. TASK 2
Role-play: work in groups and write about the following:
You are the Captain. Write in
your diary about the events of a
very busy day. Relate a funny
incident (about 150 words).
You are a Scientist. Write down
some of your observations about
sea life (about 150 words).
Gossip in the beauty
parlour: you are
Hairdressers gossiping
about clients. Write a
dialogue (about 150 words).
You are a Reporter. Write an
article to your newspaper about the
trip. Relate a funny incident (about
150 words).
You are the Fish. Write a dialogue in
your ‘special language’ about the
creatures you observe inside that
‘funny thing’ (about 150 words).
Gossip in the kitchen: you are Cooks
and you enjoy gossiping about the
travellers’ manners at table. Write a
dialogue (about 150 words).
You are a Traveller. Write a
letter to your friend about your
trip. Relate a funny incident
(about 150 words).
You are a Traveller, Write a
letter of complaint to the
agency that you do not enjoy
the trip (about 150 words).
You are Travellers who enjoy
sending short messages to friends:
write a postcard, a telegram, and a
message in a bottle, an E-mail.
TASK 3
Acting the dialogues and reading: students will pay attention to any similarities that might
appear in what the captain, the reporter and one traveller might have in their stories;
compare different views on the same aspect.
C. FEDBACK
a. Write down the first ten words that come to your mind related to the activities you just
did. Write them on the blackboard and discuss how you felt.
b. Variant: Work in pairs, A & B; for three minutes all the “As” will speak to the “Bs”,
while the latter listen, then they change roles. Then they report what they found out.
c. Assignment: Find the answer to your queries and write a short report (about 100
words).
7. RECEPTIVE SKILLS: LISTENING & READING
LISTENING
Learners should be encouraged to tolerate uncertainty, to venture informed guesses, to
use their real-world knowledge and analytical skills, and to enjoy their success in
comprehension. Teachers should provide students with the kind of global listening
experiences they need, e.g.
1. Global listening selections can be short, one to three minutes in duration.
2. Don’t speak too formally. Teachers’ monologues are most effective at beginning levels
if they are delivered in a simplified code, e.g. short, basic sentences, clear
pronunciation, repetition of ideas, limited vocabulary, and visual or situational support
for new words.
3. It is best to add new material (vocabulary and structures) gradually. Experience with
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recombinations of familiar material builds learners’ confidence.
4. Global listening exercises such as short teacher monologues can be given to large
classes, which are often found in the EFL setting, whereas speaking activities for the
same number of students are more difficult to manage. Students can be kept active with
a task to perform while listening, so you can be sure that you are using class time
wisely.
5. Selective listening exercises, which focus on structures or sounds in contrast, are
relatively easy to prepare. Most EFL teachers have come through educational systems
where grammar was emphasized, and are quite comfortable with this kind of task. There
are many possibilities: listening discrimination tasks can focus on tenses, singular/plural
differences, word order, or new vocabulary.
Techniques for global listening. One important usage of global listening is the
presentation of new material. Until the students are skilled readers, it is best to present new
material orally and aurally. Teachers may select any part of the lesson for a global listening
experience, or they may write their own short text based on the lesson. Introduction of new
material through global listening is common to many of the newer comprehension
approaches, yet the technique is not given in language textbooks.
Once teachers have mastered a few simple principles and routines, they can use the
technique daily. Texts for global listening should be short, and preceded by a pre-listening
activity. Wherever possible, the theme and situation of the story should be presented
visually by drawing on the chalkboard, overhead projector, or a large poster. If the new
material is a dialogue, draw the participants and tell their ages and relationships to each
other. Setting the scene in this way arouses the learners’ background knowledge and encourages them to make predictions about the text. New vocabulary can be used in short,
illustrative sentences before learners hear it as part of the lesson. If possible, use new vocabulary in a personal way, supported by the context of the classroom, so its meaning is clear.
Descriptive words, colours, numbers, sizes, shapes, action verbs, and spatial relations are
easy to model and to support with a tangible example.
The pre-listening stage should develop learners’ curiosity about how all the phrases
and words they have heard will fit together in a context. The new text should be modelled at
normal speed, but with pauses between natural phrase groups. The teachers should not slow
their speech, because this impedes the students’ capacity to remember sentences when they
are extended by slow speech.
1. Principles for listening comprehension in the classroom
1. Increase the amount of listening time in the second language class. Make listening the
primary channel for learning new material. Input must be interesting, comprehensible,
supported by other materials, and related to the language lesson.
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2. Listening should precede other activities - speaking, reading, or writing.
3. Include both global and selective listening. Global listening encourages students to get
the gist, the main idea, the topic, situation, or setting. Selective listening points student
attention to details of form and encourages accuracy in generating the language system.
4. Activate top-level skills. Give script activators or discussions calling up students’
background knowledge, before students listen.
5. Work towards automaticity in processing. Include exercises that build both recognition
and retention of the material. Use familiar material in recombinations.
6. Develop conscious listening strategies. Raise students’ awareness of text features and of
their own comprehension processes. Encourage them to notice how their processing
operations interact with the text. Promote flexibility in the many ways that they can use
to understand the language.
2. Listening a dynamic process, not a passive state
Listening along with reading has had a traditional label of “passive skill.” Such a
perspective on listening overlooks the interpretations listeners make as they “hear” the
spoken text according to their own purposes for listening, their expectations, and their own
store of background knowledge.
Implications for teaching. One implication is to bring students to an understanding that
listening is not a passive skill, but one that not only is active but very demanding. This can
be done gradually as a part of listening activity work, especially activities that are in the
task-based and communicative mode, where the “work” can be rather enjoyable in a
problem-solving and discovery-process format. Learners can come to realize that just as
there is “work” to become better readers, writers, and speakers in a foreign language, the
listening skill, too, is no overnight magic.
3. Level 1: Beginners
True beginners in a foreign language lack in bottom-up processing skills because they
have not yet developed the cognitive categories against which the language must be heard.
They perceive the new language as undifferentiated noise. They are not yet able to segment
the speech stream into word units, to tell where one word begins and another ends. The new
phonemic system is an unbroken code: Sounds which native speakers consider similar may
be perceived and classified as different; sounds which native speakers consider different
may be perceived and classified as the same. Learners have no idea about phonological
rules that change sounds in certain environments, or cause reductions of sound. They are not
familiar with rules for word formation, inflections, or word-order rules. Their vocabulary
store is non-existent. The redundancy that is built into a language is lost on them, since
there is no area of grammatical understanding that they could use to unlock the meaning of
46
the whole.
The true novice stage is of very short duration. Despite its brevity, the novice stage is
important for the development of a positive attitude to language. Almost immediately upon
hearing the new language, learners begin to sift and sort the acoustic information, to form
categories, and to build a representation of the L2 system. If teachers follow principles of
comprehension training, learners will have plenty of opportunity to work with a limited
amount of language that is focused on clearly illustrated subjects. The simplified code that
is used in the classroom at this point helps learners direct their attention to the important
features of the message. After a few hours of instruction, most learners know a tiny bit of
the language very well, and can use their emerging understanding of linguistic categories to
decode new utterances. Students on the first day of class can understand some words of the
story through use of these techniques. They will not remember the words or be able to use
them, but they will quite likely recognize the words when they hear them again in a familiar
context. At the least, they have been exposed to three to five minutes of the new language
with its own distinctive sound system, intonation patterns, pause system, and word order.
Selective listening techniques – e.g. selection of specific discrete items from the
listening text, such as listening for details. All listening is to some degree interactive, due to
the nature of the processing mechanism. An exercise is classified as interactive if the
listeners must use information gained by processing at one level to check the accuracy of
their processing on another level.
Exercise types for beginning-level listeners
1. Discriminating between intonation contours in sentences – e.g. rising or falling
intonation
2. Discriminating between phonemes – e.g. listen to pairs of words (hair-hare; ship-sheep)
3. Selective listening for morphological endings – e.g. listen to a series of sentences, circle
if the verb has an -ed ending, and “no” if it does not.
4. Listen to a series of sentences. On your answer sheets are three verb forms. Circle verb
form that is contained in the sentence that you hear.
5. Selecting details from the text (word recognition) – e.g. match a word that you hear with
its picture; listen to a weather report - look at a list of words and circle the words that
you hear; listen to a sentence that contains clock time - circle the clock time that you
hear, among three choices (7:30, 7:45, 7:15).
6. Listening for normal sentence word order – e.g. listen to a short dialogue and fill in the
missing words that have been deleted in a partial transcript.
7. Discriminating between emotional reactions – e.g. listen to a sequence of utterances and
write ‘yes’ in the column which describes the emotional reaction that you hear: interested, happy, surprised, etc.
8. Getting the gist of a sentence – e.g. listen to a sentence describing a picture and select
the correct picture.
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9. Recognize the topic – e.g. listen to a dialogue and decide where the conversation
occurred; or listen to a conversation and decide what the people are talking about.
10. Following directions – e.g. listen to a description of a route and trace in on a map.
4. Level 2: intermediate-level learners
Intermediate-level learners continue to use listening as an important source of language
input to increase their vocabulary and structural understanding. Although they have
internalized the phonemic system of the language fairly well, they may have little understanding of the complexities of phonological rules which govern fast speech: reductions,
elisions, and so forth. They need practice in word recognition and in discriminating fine
differences in word order and grammatical form, registers of speaking and emotional
overtones. Intermediate-level learners have moved beyond the limits of words and phrases;
their memory can retain longer phrases and sentences. They are able to get the gist, finding
the main idea and some supporting detail. They are ready to practice more discourse level
skills: predicting what will happen next, and explaining relations between events and ideas.
The need to introduce authentic material into students’ listening repertoire by the end of
the beginning level is supported by the fact that most listening in the world outside the
classroom does not conform to simplified codes. At every level, students are able to
understand much more than they can produce, and that principle also holds for the practice
of listening to authentic texts. With some practice, learners can cope quite well with
authentic material, given the following features of authentic texts:
1. The background noise, interruptions and overlapping in turn taking, the non-verbal
gestures and tone of voice in authentic speech actually provide clues to understanding
the setting, the relationship of the participants, their motivations and speaking.
2. Authentic texts are actually more redundant and repetitious than many scripted texts,
and so are easier to understand.
3. Authentic texts bear an informational structure that conforms to their communicative
purpose. The proper use of these texts is to identify the key points of information and to
let the rest of the information go.
Techniques for selective listening. At the intermediate level, students need a wellorganized program of selective listening to focus their attention on the systematic features
of the language code. At this level, accuracy in discriminating grammatical features is very
important. If learners can’t hear certain unstressed endings, articles, inflections, and
function words, they are less likely to incorporate them into their grammatical competence.
Intermediate-level students who were trained with simplified codes and with clearly
pronounced models may not recognize the same words and phrases in normal fast speech.
Finally, the intermediate level is an appropriate time to teach explicitly some strategies of
interactive listening: how to use one’s knowledge of formal grammar to check the general
48
meaning of a speaker’s statement. Listeners can be presented with sentences which vary
slightly in structure and wording, and they can be asked to identify whether the meanings
are the same or different.
Exercise types for intermediate-level listeners
1. Recognizing fast speech forms
2. Recognizing pertinent details in the speech stream – e.g. listen to announcements of
airline arrivals and departures. With a model of an airline information board in front of
you, fill in the flight numbers, destinations, gate numbers, and departure times.
3. Recognizing words with reduced syllables
4. Recognize words as they are linked in the speech stream
5. Listen to identify the speaker or the topic
6. Finding main ideas and supporting details
7. Making inferences – e.g. listen to a series of sentences. After each sentence, suggest a
possible context for the sentence (place, situation, time, and participants).
8. Discriminating between registers of speech and tones of voice – e.g. listen to a series of
sentences. On your answer sheet, mark whether the sentence is polite or impolite.
9. Recognize missing grammar markers in colloquial speech
10. Use context to build listening expectations – e.g. read a short want-ad describing job
qualifications in the employment section of a newspaper. Brainstorm additional qualifications which would be important for that type of job.
11. Listen to confirm your expectations – e.g. listen to short radio advertisements for jobs
that are available. Check the job qualifications against your expectations.
12. Use incomplete sensory data and cultural background information to construct a more
complete understanding of a text – e.g. listen to one side of a telephone conversation.
Decide what the topic of the conversation might be, and create a title for it.
5. Level 3: the advanced-level learners
Advanced learners can listen to longer texts, such as radio and television programs, and
academic lectures. Their vocabulary includes topics in current events, history, and culture;
they can deal with a certain degree of abstraction. Listeners fill in gaps and can make
inferences when the text is incomplete or their background knowledge is lacking. However,
their understanding of the language remains on a fairly literal plane, so that they may miss
jokes, slang, and cultural references.
Many advanced learners are more skilled at reading by this time than they are at listening. This is particularly true of students who have learned their English in a foreign language context and whose training has emphasized grammar, vocabulary, and reading. Such
students may comprehend spoken discourse better if they can activate their knowledge first
with a related reading selection.
Listening classes at the advanced level may need to include a systematic program of
listening to reduced speech as well as a strategic listening component to distinguish
49
important from unimportant discourse features. A review of stress, pause, pitch, and
intonation patterns can serve to unlock mysteries of discourse structure, and point students
toward recognition of organizational markers, cohesive devices, and definitions in context.
Exercise types for advanced-level learners
1. Use features of sentence stress and volume to identify important information for note
taking.
2. Become aware of sentence level features in a text – e.g. listen to a fragment of a
lecture/story while reading a transcript of it, notice the incomplete sentences, pauses,
and verbal fillers.
3. Identify specific points of information
4. Use the introduction to the text to predict its focus and direction
5. Find the main idea of a lecture/text/story segment
6. Use incoming details to determine the accuracy of predictions about content – e.g. listen
to the introductory sentences to predict some of the main ideas you expect to hear in the
lecture/text. Then listen to the text as it is played. Note whether or not the points you
predicted appear in the text.
7. Listen to a statement and take notes on the important words. Indicate what further
meaning can be inferred from the statement. Indicate the words in the original statement
that serve to cue the inference.
8. Use knowledge of the text and the lecture content to fill in missing information – e.g.
listen to a lecture/text segment to get the gist. Then listen to a statement from which
words have been omitted. Using your knowledge of the text and of the general content,
fill in the missing information. Check your understanding by listening to the entire
segment.
(After Celce-Murcia,1988 & Harmer, 1991)
Discussion questions
1. Listening has been the “neglected” skill area of language teaching. Give some reasons
for this curious circumstance.
2. In your own experience how much time do you feel you spend in each of the four areas
of listening, speaking, reading, writing? Compare your estimates with other members of
the class.
3. Observe and note the amount of time in which there is “teacher-listen” and the amount
of time there is “student-listen” in two or three language classes. Observe the
teacher/student roles in these same classes.
4. Record one or two minutes of authentic text from the radio or television. Develop a
framework of language support for the text and show how you could use it in an
intermediate-level class.
50
READING
The goal in learning to read should be meaning. Whether the teacher favours a skillsoriented approach (advocating form over function) or a communication approach (stressing
function over form) is a personal decision, for each has its shortcomings. However,
language teachers should remember that the communication approach is of more recent
theoretical formulation, and this holistic, top-down approach may constitute the wave of the
future.
1. Developing reading skills
Conceiving reading as an active mental process greatly expands the reader’s role since
primary responsibility for meaning shifts from the text itself to the reader. Language
teachers have a great range of possible procedures to follow prior to, during, and after the
reading assignment to assist students to read more effectively.
Viewing reading as a communicative process rather than as a language learning process
leads to several important issues. Students do not need to know all vocabulary and grammar
to comprehend a major portion of the text and to recreate the author’s meaning. They can
learn to read at a much higher level of proficiency than in the past, when the preoccupation
with grammar deprived them of the opportunity to read for meaning. They can learn reading
strategies that enable them to read at much higher levels of proficiency. Thus teachers can
initiate activities that heighten students’ motivation and increase their level of
comprehension. They should encourage students to guess, to tolerate ambiguity, to link
ideas, to paraphrase, and to summarize. They can also help students by discussing the title,
theme, and cultural background before reading. During the course they should cultivate
positive attitudes toward reading and the students’ ability to read. Prior to the first reading
assignment they should teach students how to skim, find the main idea, develop and modify
their hypotheses, and correct and learn from errors. They should give them practice using
the dictionary, taking notes, underlining, skimming, and rereading. And before making any
reading assignment, they should be sure that the reading task is clear to the students.
Pre-reading. The purpose of pre-reading (as with pre-listening) activities is to motivate
the students to want to read the assignment and to prepare them to be able to read it. They
can gain confidence in their ability to learn a foreign language and tend to be more highly
motivated and more enthusiastic to read. Any combination of other language skills can be
used as a medium for input or exchange of information. Students can work individually, in
small groups, or as an entire class.
Reading the assignment. Students may read the assignment in or out of class. Initially,
the teacher may have them read the assignment or at least begin to read it in class so that
she can help those who need assistance to develop productive strategies for recreating the
author’s meaning. Normally, however, students read assigned material as part of their
homework because class time is more valuable for communication practice that students
51
cannot get out of class.
When students read out of class, the teacher can help students to read by describing the
reading process for them and by giving them specific guidelines for what to do while they
are reading. Based on predictions and expectations, they proceed through the reading either
confirming or rejecting their hypotheses. This process of guessing, confirming or rejecting,
reformulation, and comprehension continues until they gain understanding. Students need to
be aware of their level of comprehension as they read, and they need to learn to create
meaning by asking the proper questions or initiating needed compensatory strategies.
The teacher should ask students to underline the main ideas and supporting facts.
Another practice is to teach students to make a story map as they read. Following this
technique, they learn to show important relationships in the reading by putting main ideas,
events, and characters in adjoining circles.
Post-reading. The first step in post-reading activities is to clarify the meaning of any
unclear passages and their relationship to the author’s overall message. The teacher should
encourage students to ask any questions that they may have about the reading at this point in
the class. They should realize that subsequent activities require a comprehension of the
reading and that the teacher wants them to understand the reading and participate in these
activities. The teacher’s task is to clarify problem passages by focusing on meaning
whenever possible without calling the students’ attention to grammar and vocabulary except
as a last resort.
Post-reading activities can be divided into two basic categories: those in which students
recall information from or react to the text, and those designed to develop communicative
fluency in all the four language skills. These activities may include dramatization, roleplays, simulations, reports, and debates.
Activities: prepare a summary or paraphrase of the content, consider implications, draw
conclusions, or give opinions; using cloze tests, identifying key ideas, pointing out details
and rhetorical devices; comparing cultural differences, debating both sides of an issue
presented in the reading, and developing dialogues or plays based on the reading, etc.
During post-reading activities students have the chance to have some fun participating
in communication activities while increasing their facility to use the reading to
communicate their own thoughts and feelings. They should not leave a reading until they
have expressed their personal reactions to the content. The goal of reading should be to use
language to express meaning in creative and stimulating ways, not just to cover a preselected quantity of material.
(After Celce-Murcia,1988
& Harmer, 1991)
Discussion questions
1. Find a reading passage that you feel is appropriate for an advanced EFL reading class.
Analyze the vocabulary in the passage: What are the key words students will need to
understand in order to comprehend the main ideas or themes?
52
2. Use the text you selected for question number 1. Prepare a pre-reading, while-reading,
and post-reading plan. Follow the model set out in the previous chapters.
3. What writing assignment could be introduced during the post reading stage that would
allow students to explore the content more thoroughly?
8. COMMUNICATION ACTIVITIES
Communication activities may be of several different types, but all share certain similar
features, and the teacher should structure them in specific ways to ensure that the students
will achieve the objectives of the activity. One feature is that the students' attention should
be focused on meaning rather than linguistic forms. Another is that the purpose is to express
oneself to communicate with someone else. The teacher should structure the order of the
activities so that enough time is spent preparing the students to participate successfully in
the activity, completing the activity, and reporting on the activity.
During the preparatory stage, the teacher should attempt to accomplish the following:
1. Encourage students to brainstorm about the topic so that they have something to say
during the activity.
2. Generate as many related words and phrases as possible.
3. Clarify the communicative purpose of the activity.
4. Arouse students' interest in the topic and in expressing their ideas about the topic.
5. Establish a context and sufficient background for the activity so that the students can
participate successfully.
Here are some examples chosen to stimulate readers to create additional classroom
communication activities on their own. Teachers are encouraged to create new variations as
the need arises in their classes. The most effective activities are those that deal specifically
with the students' own particular situation. Texts contain ideas and general guidelines for
classroom communication activities, but teachers are the only ones who have the knowledge
and the opportunity to personalize them.
Affective activities - expressing and finding out emotional attitudes. Students will need
to brainstorm about the broad range of possible categories and to gather the needed
vocabulary, either by means of recalling previously learned vocabulary, asking the teacher,
or consulting a dictionary. Any list created for such a purpose would contain relevant
vocabulary of personal interest that students are more likely to remember than any list of
vocabulary presented in the text. The teacher's role in this activity may range from central to
peripheral. She can lead the exploratory stage or can ask one of the better students to lead
the activity.
The teacher may choose from several possible follow-up activities. The students might
simply tabulate the results and discuss them. They might discuss their likes and dislikes
with a classmate. They might search for students in class with whom they share the most
likes and dislikes by comparing their answers on the scale with those of their classmates.
53
They might interview the teacher to determine his or her likes and dislikes. They might
prepare a short oral or written statement in which they compare their likes and dislikes with
someone else such as a friend or a family member. They might compare their likes and
dislikes now with those they had when they were younger. They might write a letter to a
pen pal asking about typical likes and dislikes of young people in that country so they can
make a cultural comparison later when they receive a reply.
Role-play - having students assume the role of someone else in a created real-language
situation. It brings real-language situations into the classroom. Students have different
reactions to role-play. Some students like to have the chance to speak under the guise of an
assumed personality. Others dislike any type of public performance in front of the class, and
role-playing requires them to do that. Aside from their basic dispositions, students are also
influenced by the class atmosphere, by the teacher's attitude toward role-plays, and by the
other students’ attitudes and reactions. The teacher should approach these activities with
careful preparation and seek to conduct each in such a way that the students develop
positive attitudes toward them.
After some time spent in preparation, in which the students discuss a number of
possibilities, assemble vocabulary related to the situation, and review the learned
expressions for agreeing and disagreeing, the students in small groups can begin to play
with the possible directions the resultant dialog can take. The fact that each group will
create roles that are different from those of the other groups demonstrates the variety of
language use and adds to the interest of other students during class presentations.
The students should present their roles in as natural a fashion as possible. Even if the
teacher requires them to prepare a written script to submit in class, he should never permit
them to refer to the script during their presentation. Nor should it be memorized. Students
should be thinking about their role and creating language while they are making the
presentation. One simple way to give students the opportunity to anticipate what they might
say is to prepare role cards with instructions.
Simulation. The difference between role-play and simulation is that the students play
themselves as they would behave in out-of-class, real-world situations. For example, instead
of playing the part of a travel agent, the student has to imagine that he works at a travel
agency and what he has to do to attract customers. The advantage of simulation is that a
student may be more comfortable playing himself or herself rather than that of some
assumed but unknown personality. It more is relevant and true to real life than role-play.
Interview Students may interview a classmate about any topic related to the course
content. For example, early in the course when students are learning to give personal
information, they can interview each other to become better acquainted. Students can ask a
classmate whom they do not know well, ten personal (but not embarrassing) questions and
take notes on the answers. Afterward, they can use the information from the answers to
introduce the classmate to the other members of the class, or they can expand on the
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information to write a brief personal profile for a class social newsletter introducing all
members of the class. The principal advantage of interviews is their flexibility. They may be
long or short. They may deal with superficial or profound topics. They may be used from
beginning levels to advanced levels, with high-aptitude and low-aptitude students. They
may be used as the basis for additional oral activities or for subsequent writing tasks.
Survey An expanded form of the interview is the survey. Students may prepare surveys
as a whole class activity, in small groups, or individually. They may conduct them orally in
or out of class, or they may prepare a sheet of written questions to which other students give
written answers. For example, the students might decide to gather information on how much
their classmates watch television, what programs they watch, when they watch, with whom
they watch, for what purposes they watch, and what they would like to watch if such
programs were on television. Afterward, they might write a letter to one of the major
television networks advising them of the results and suggesting indicated changes in their
programming.
Dramatization - includes all types of "let's pretend" activities. The students may play
themselves in an imaginary situation or an imaginary person in an imaginary situation.
Role-plays and simulations are also types of dramatizations, but the teacher can distinguish
between dramatizations such as mini-dramas or skits and role-plays or simulations by
requiring more serious preparation, more stress on props and costuming, greater attention to
acting, and more time scheduled for presentation.
The effectiveness of dramatization activities depends to a large extent on the interest of
the teacher in promoting them and the willingness of the students to perform them. Those
teachers and students who can use dramatizations productively have the potential to include
a wider range of communication activities and exciting events in the language class than
otherwise possible. With regard to communication, dramatizing enables the class to focus
much greater attention on non-verbal means of communication. Gestures, facial
expressions, tone of voice, and body language, which are so extremely important in reallanguage situations and which are largely ignored in language classes, take on special
importance in student dramatizations. With regard to communication activities,
communication occurs only when meaning is conveyed and meaning requires a context.
Dramatizations help the students to convert the abstract into the real, into a context they can
visualize and portray.
One potential problem that may arise during the classroom presentation of the
dramatization is that the other students may not view the activity as a language-learning
activity. The teacher should anticipate this reaction and require that they listen carefully and
attentively to the skit. She can ask prior to the presentation that they be prepared to do
something at the conclusion. For example, they may have to write a critique of the
performance, answer questions about what happened, or comment on the communication
strategies used by the characters. Recording, preferably videotaping, at least some of the
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dramatizations is desirable. The taping provides an incentive to do well and a reward for the
effort required to prepare the dramatization and to perform it in front of the class. In
addition, these tapes saved are excellent sources of listening comprehension material to be
used with other classes.
Television programmes. Many present and past TV programmes that require the
participants to communicate can be easily adapted to the classroom situation. Many
contestant shows can become effective classroom communication activities. The number of
possibilities is almost endless, the models are readily available and familiar to the students,
and insightful language teachers take advantage of them.
Communication games. Not all games require students to communicate with each
other in the foreign language. Some games are fun games. The objective of a fun game is to
have a good time, often by beating the other team. A fun game may get students involved in
the class and with their classmates, but it may not involve any type of communication
practice.
Discussions and debates Selecting the topics is easy because the students can generate
a number of topics related to the course content and choose the one they would like to
discuss or debate. Teaching the students the format for such activities is very simple
because students are already familiar with them.
Content activities - something new other than language can be learnt, e.g. through
panels, individual reports/presentations, music, films, news broadcasts, guest lecturers,
native speaker visitors, readings, and discussions about the target language and culture.
Problem solving – it is activity in which the students' attention is focused on finding a
solution to some question or problem. The teacher uses the foreign language to present the
problem/situation, and the students use the language to attempt to resolve it. However, their
attention is directed toward the task rather than the language being used to work out a
solution
Information gap. In the real world people normally communicate with each other
because some type of information gap exists between them. One knows something that the
other does not, and there is some reason to share that information with the other. The
speaker or writer may be motivated to share knowledge on some subject or to express his
feelings about that subject. The hearer or reader may be interested in either the information
or the other person's opinions.
9. TEACHING LITERATURE; DEVELOPING CREATIVE WRITING
The role of fiction in learning and teaching English
Some practical activities are presented, which prepare students for extensive reading
and provide them with interesting and meaningful input in the written mode. It gives
consideration to the following key issues:
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1. Literary texts represent valuable authentic material that provides for more subtle and
meaningful learning.
2. They can generate genuine discussions in the classroom. The ambiguity of a text furnishes
a stimulus for expressing different opinions.
3. Reading, talking and writing about literature imply both affective and cognitive processes.
Literature appeals to personal experience and triggers personal response. It also implies
analysis of words, structures, discourse patterns, content and interpretation.
4. Learners learn how literary effects are created through language.
5. Literature provides cultural knowledge. It enhances the learners’ understanding of the
cultural values of the English-speaking peoples.
The purpose here is to illustrate possible practical ways of using literature in class and
to show how students can be stimulated to enjoy reading works of literature. The activities
have been designed with an awareness of the impediments that may discourage learners in
their attempts to read pieces of literature. Thus the following aspects were considered:
 Learners need to learn how to live with uncertainty. Reading implies inferencing and
dealing with ambiguity.
 They should be given strategies that promote skills in deducing meaning from context.
 Activities should be structured to start off the students’ creativity in relation to a text.
 The active role of learners should be encouraged.
 Each student will meet the text in his/her own way. His/her understanding of the text is
based on past experiences and knowledge about literature and life.
 Students should be allowed to become personally involved with a work of literature.
 The interaction between reader and text is important. “A piece of literature does not exist
until it is being read” (Ibsen, 1990: 3).
(Ibsen, E. (1990). The double Role of Fiction in Foreign-Language Learning: Towards a
Creative Methodology, in Forum, Vol. 28, No 3)
Literary texts have always been part of our textbooks. If used properly, literature offers
materials for cultural knowledge and understanding. It can provide opportunities for the
students to express their personal opinions, reactions and feelings. Some of the texts in the
textbooks may seem irrelevant to the students' interests and concerns. Then teachers need to
devise materials and activities to increase students' interests and involvement.
Literature should be taught to provide students with the appropriate strategies needed
for reading and analysing a text. They might have acquired some literary competence in
Romanian and this makes the task of the English teachers easier, since they have to help
them only to transfer those skills. If not, then the teachers are to guide them in exploring a
text and unravelling the many meanings in it. Teachers should not aim at reaching definitive
interpretations of texts with their students. Texts should be rather used to generate
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discussions, argumentation and critical thinking in the classroom. Students should be
provided with the appropriate tools in order to become autonomous critical readers.
A range of activities are suggested to be used in analysing a literary text, be it from the
textbooks or one chosen by the teachers themselves. They help students understand the text
and facilitate the tasks they have to do after reading it, i.e. characterise the characters,
discuss point of view, style and devices of creating atmosphere, interpret/understand
symbols used by writers, a.s.o. Teachers should choose from the activities suggested for
each stage and combine or adapt them to the level and particularities of their classrooms, as
time always restricts the number of activities we can use for analysing texts in class.
Teachers also have to prepare the adequate materials and to offer the required information
when needed.
Warm-up activities: brainstorming
1. Things we know about the author/his time vs.
Things we don't know and would like to find
out.
2. What we know about the story/main character -- What we expect to find out in the text.
3. Give students the title or topic. Ask students (Ss) to suggest ideas related to them.
Pre-reading activities: making predictions
1.
2.
3.
4.
Give the title or the beginning of the story and ask Ss to write their own stories.
Give the end of the story and ask them to think of the events that may lead to that end.
Think of words or expressions they might meet in the text.
Present the characters. Give some details about their physical appearance. Give some
hints about the conflict or the difficult situation they have to experience and ask Ss to
imagine how those people are to react.
5. Present the conflict or a difficult situation in the text/story. Ask Ss to imagine what they
would do in that case.
6. Choose some key words from the text; ask Ss to build a story around them (in 200
words).
While-reading activities
Silent reading is best suited for these. If your aims are to get students acquainted to
reading new texts to infer the meaning of the new words from the text or to get the general
meaning, then you can skip over stage two and use the activities 1-3. These tasks can be
adapted as listening tasks as well.
1. Jigsaw reading. Photocopy the text and cut it into paragraphs. Ss have to work in
groups, summarize their paragraph in one sentence (or in 25 words) and then tell it to
the class; together they have to put them in the right order. Sentences can be written on
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2.
3.
4.
5.
the blackboard, which can make ordering easier. In this way they make the summary of
the text as well. Instead of summarising, Ss may read the paragraphs aloud and then
decide which is the right order.
True/false statements. Write ten sentences on the blackboard or on sheets of papers for
each group and ask Ss to check if the information in the text.
Think positive! Ask Ss to extract information from the text to analyse the situation:
advantages/disadvantages; good/bad aspects; pros and cons, to discuss behaviour of a
character; imagine what they would do in that situation.
Check your predictions. While reading Ss have to check if their earlier predictions
match the events/ideas/words in the text.
What comes next. Divide the text in three-four parts. Give Ss to read them one at a time.
Each time ask them comprehension question to check understanding and also ask them
to predict what will happen next. Thus they may develop an interest in the story as well
as ideas for creative writing.
Post-reading activities
1. Discuss significance of the title.
2. Characterize the characters. Discuss devices used by writers: presentation of physical
appearance, moral traits, situations and characters' reactions/behaviour/ language.
3. Find a moral to the story. Ask Ss to summarize it in one sentence or provide them with a
list of proverbs to choose from.
4. Draw/design suitable hats for the characters. Students have to wear them to present the
characters or interpret their parts.
5. Imagine a character is prosecuted. Ss can work in three groups: the jury, the prosecution
and the defence. The teacher or a group of Ss can be the ‘judge’. Then discuss issues
related to the society of those times and to the society we live in.
6. Ask students to write a page in the diary or a letter/postcard/telegram/message in a
bottle, if they were one of the characters.
7. Organize a press conference. One team are the reporters/readers who would like to find
out why the characters reacted in that way, the other team are the character(s) who have
to give the answers according to their interpretation.
8. Ss have to compare characters in the text/story or to other characters in texts they have
already studied.
9. Identify the character. Write names of characters on cards. Ss come in turns and draw
one card and present themselves as being that character. The others have to identify him.
(It may be an interesting revision lesson).
10. Identify figures of speech. Ask Ss to rewrite a paragraph using synonyms or antonyms
of those words. Would the effect or meaning be the same? Discuss style and the devices
used by the writer to create atmosphere and authentic characters.
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11. Change the end of the story or continue the story. Or present the story from another
character's perspective.
12. Up in a balloon: Ss have to imagine that all the characters they have studied are in the
basket of a balloon. Something happened and the balloon is going down; all things have
been thrown off and the only chance to survive is to sacrifice one of the characters. The
arguments may be very subjective and students can justify why they like or dislike a
character. But they have to take into consideration how important to the plot/theme each
character is. Would the story change or would the events be different, if that is
eliminated? It would be more interesting if students were asked to find arguments in
favour of the survival of each character or imagine themselves as those characters and
try to find arguments to save their skin.
10. TESTING, ERROR CORRECTION AND EVALUATION.
In general, it seems that those who view testing as a distasteful activity associate it with
an older and more authoritarian classroom tradition. While teaching methods and language
materials have developed in new directions over the last decade, testing as an activity has
not been associated with these developments.
In the first place, testing is associated with competition rather than cooperation. Thus,
while classroom activities may involve pair work and group work, such cooperation during
a test is condemned. If we are concerned, as testers, to look at an individual learner’s
achievement in a given area, then we must accept that this will not admit of cooperation
between learners or between teacher and learner in carrying out the test task. A response to
the absence of such a cooperation is to introduce cooperation in the preparation for the test.
This might range from discussion over what is to be tested, how, when and why, to
production of a complete test by the learners. Obviously teachers can decide for themselves
how much responsibility for test preparation to hand over to learners.
The second reason for the lack of popularity of testing follows from the first: If testing
is viewed as a competitive activity rather than a cooperative one, then there will be a
‘winner’ and several ‘losers’. The solution to this problem lies in the way in which the tests
are marked and the outcome handled. A simple mark or grade may be of little value to the
learner. Learners will gain more from feedback of a more personal nature, which gives
credit for what they have got right, as well as help for what they have got wrong.
Types of tests. The most common classroom test is the quiz. It is a compromise
between short-term, subjective evaluation based on daily work and the longer-term
achievement test. It can be announced or unannounced. Both are intended to check shortterm learning and encourage daily preparation. The purpose is to check initial
comprehension of any segment of material, not final mastery.
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A good rule of thumb is to limit all testing to a maximum of 10 per cent of class time.
A formative test consists of items designed to test students’ achievement of
instructional objectives, to check if they have mastered the studied material. The purpose is
to assist students in learning, not to grade their performance. Summative tests are given
less often and they cover larger quantities of material.
Proficiency tests are not correlated with any particular textbook, and they would be
inappropriate for use as a final examination over the textual materials used in class.
Standardized tests are available.
Achievement tests - the means available to teacher and students alike of’ assessing
progress. If the scores are to be used to rank the students, the test is referred to as a normreferenced test, i.e. student achievement is related to some norm. In the case of standardised
tests, the results are compared to those of a nation-wide random sample of students. In the
case of a teacher-prepared classroom test, students’ scores are listed in rank order, and each
student’s score is compared to those of the other students. If the test is prepared on the basis
of the instructional objectives to determine to what degree the students have learned the
material presented and practised in class, the test is called a criterion-referenced test.
Whether a classroom achievement test is a good one or not is a judgement that the
classroom teacher is in the best position to make. The content of an achievement test is
indicated by its purpose: clearly, it must test what has been taught.
An achievement test is one of the means available to teacher and student alike of’
assessing progress. It is the aim and content of an achievement test that distinguishes it from
other kinds of’ tests. It aims to find out how much each student, and the class as a whole,
has learnt of’ what has been taught and therefore, by implication, to provide feedback on
students’ progress to both teacher and student, to show how effectively the teacher has
taught and to diagnose those areas which have not been well learnt. An achievement test is
well integrated into the learning cycle and into the class perspective on learning, it can also
provide an important stimulus for revision.
Some testing techniques. Many techniques are available for testing both language and
skills, most of which are already familiar to teachers as teaching techniques. What is
important is that they should also be familiar to students prior to being used in a test.
Otherwise, the student may make mistakes not so much because of difficulties with the
language or skills but because of a lack of understanding of what the task requires.
Below is a table outlining a range of techniques, some are better adapted to testing
certain aspects of language learning, some are more suitable to certain age groups/ways of
thinking.
Testing focus
Subjective methods
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Objective methods
Listening
Speaking
Reading
comprehension
- Open-ended question and answer
- Note taking
- Interviews
- Blank-filling
- Information transfer
- Role plays
- Sentence-repetition
- Sentence-responses to cues
- Interviews
- Group discussions
- Describing pictures
- Information gap activities
- Open-ended comprehension questions
and answers in the target language or
mother tongue
- Summary-writing
- Note taking
- Multiple choice questions
- True/ false questions
- Jumbled pictures
- Information-transfer
- Multiple choice questions
- True/ False questions
- Jumbled sentences
Jumbled paragraphs
- Cloze
Guided writing e.g. letter completion,
re-writing, information-transfer
Free writing e.g. compositions, essays
- Open-ended sentence completion
- Re-writing
- Blank-filling
- Sentence-joining
Functions
- Giving appropriate responses
- Discourse chains
- Split dialogues
Vocabulary
- Compositions and essays
- Paraphrasing
- Matching
- Multiple choice questions
- Odd-man-out
- Listen and match
- Crosswords
- Classification exercises
- Matching exercises
- Labelling
Writing
Grammar
- Expansion exercises
- Scrambled exercises
- Transformation exercises
- Multiple choice questions
Note that different methods of testing the same skill may well test different subskills.
Some of the above techniques test not only the skill or language component mentioned - for
example, summary work tests both reading comprehension and summarizing skills.
The techniques in the table above are divided into subjective and objective types, as
these two categories involve different kinds of language, language learning and methods of
marking. Subjective techniques tend to require students to produce longer stretches of
language, i.e. above the simple sentence level, in relatively open-ended situations, and they
make demands on the ability to cope with a variety of elements that compose
communication and fluency. Objective testing techniques, by contrast, usually require
students to recognise or produce a limited range of items in restricted linguistic and
situational contexts, thus focusing more on the mastery of receptive skills, accuracy and
certain discrete items that make up fluency.
As regards methods of marking, in an objective test there is only one or a limited
number of right answers and no doubt about what the answer is. The marker’s judgement,
tiredness, mood etc. therefore cannot play a role in the assessment. This lack of arbitrariness
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works in the students’ favour as it increases a test’s reliability and so guarantees fairness in
the assessment of’ what is tested. In the marking of a subjective test, such as a composition
or interview, the marker will often be unsure as to how right an answer is. In other words,
many factors such as grammatical accuracy, spelling, pronunciation, style, vocabulary
range, punctuation, or any combination of these may need to be assessed in subjective tests,
and there is a risk of’ the marker doing this inconsistently or even without realising that
some of these factors are influencing his judgement. It may also be difficult for a marker to
know whether he marked the twelfth composition in the same way as the first, whether he
would give the same mark to the same composition if he marked it again, or if another
person marking the same composition would give it the same mark. In the absence of preestablished marking guidelines, subjective tests can be significantly less reliable in their
results than objective tests.
Another way in which tests may be said to be subjective is in their compilation. If the
test content and testing techniques have been selected randomly, this may result in an
inaccurate or unrepresentative coverage of the target language or skills. To counter this, test
compilation should closely follow the subject matter, syllabus and teaching techniques
already employed in the class.
Which are better, subjective or objective tests? Both subjective and objective tests
present advantages and drawbacks. Objective tests produce reliable results and focus on
accuracy and discrete items, but they provide an assessment of only a limited range of the
students’ language abilities. Subjective tests can provide information about the students’
wider command of communication, but that information may he supplied somewhat
haphazardly and is not always easy to assess in a reliable way—though marking guides and/
or
One final point to consider is that the age, interests and background of students must
also influence the choice of test type in the same way as they influence all classroom
content and procedure. A student should be able to identify with a test as a measure of’
progress, and should feel as confident and at home with the test as with the class teaching.
An achievement test should never be far removed from the classroom.
(After Kenneth Chastain, 1988, Eddie Williams, Mary Spratt and Les Dangerfield,
1995)
REFERENCES
1. Celce-Murcia, M., ed. (1991). Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language,
New York: Newbury House.
2. Chastain, K. (1988). Developing Second Language Skills – Theory and Practice,
Florida: Harcourt Brace Javanovich Publishers.
3. Collie, J & Slater, S. (1987). Literature in the Language Classroom, Cambridge
4. Harmer, J. (1991). The Practice of English Language Teaching, London: Longman
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5. Matthews, A., Spratt, M., Dangerfield, L. (1991) At The Chalk Face, Hong Kong:
Nelson.
WORKSHEETS AND EXERCISES
The following worksheets present topics for your professional diary/journal. Write on
separate sheets of paper and give extensive comments on each aspect.
WORKSHEET 1
BECOMING A TEACHER
1. Do you want to be a teacher? Justify your answer.
2. Think of advantages and disadvantages of being a teacher and in what way they might
influence your decisions about going into teaching:
Advantages  Disadvantages
Your comments:
WORKSHEET 2
LEARNING THE SUBJECT MATTER
1. Write about yourself, how you learnt the subject matter and what made you choose it for
your academic studies.
2. Write about a special event in your life as a learner, which made you feel good and
cared for.
3. Write about an unhappy event in your life as a learner and how you managed to
overcome it.
WORKSHEET 3
MODEL TEACHERS
1. Make a list of ten characteristics a teacher should have. Start with the quality you
consider the most important and explain why you put them in that order.
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2. Think of teachers you liked and point out what you liked about them. Compare to the
list above.
3. Think of teachers you disliked and point out what you disliked about them. Compare to
the list above.
WORKSHEET 4
MY PLEDGE
1. Think of what you wrote in the previous worksheet and decide on what you would like
or would not like to do as a teacher.
What I would like to do
What I would not like to do
2. Decide on a number of principles that might underlie your teaching.
3. Are you preoccupied with gaining the learners’ respect? What do you intend to do about
it?
WORKSHEET 5
VIEWS ON PUPILS
1. Relate an incident in your school life in which you were involved. Comment on the
teacher’s reaction/solution and on your reaction and/or feelings.
2. Relate an incident in your school life in which some of your mates were involved.
Comment on the teacher’s reaction/solution and on their reaction and/or feelings.
3. If you were the teacher, what would you have done in those situations?
4. Is the teacher-pupil relationship different from your time? In what way?
WORKSHEET 6
EXPECTATIONS OF PUPILS
1. What kind of pupils do you expect to have?
2. Identify any professional prejudices, stereotypes and/or assumptions related to the way
you regard learners (e.g. assuming that some students are better than others) and how
they might influence your work.
3. To what extent are you aware of and will pay attention to individual diversity. Comment
on how you envisage your relationships with pupils.
WORKSHEET 7
COURSEWORK
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1. As a student you had to attend a course on methodology. Describe the course and
comment on the influence it might have on you.
2. What things did you do that you are pleased with and would like to try during your
teaching practice?
3. What range of feelings did you experience? Did you discover new things about
yourself?
WORKSHEET 8
TEACHING PRACTICE
1. Think of the period of teaching practice. What helped you most in re-accommodating
with school from a new position?
2. How was the first lesson you taught?
3. How did you feel before the class, while you were teaching and after you finished the
class?
WORKSHEET 9
FEEDBACK
1. Describe a difficult situation you had and how you coped with it.
2. What is the most difficult aspect of teaching?
3. What was the most and the least helpful in your training?
4. What questions do you have that are still unanswered?
WORKSHEET 10
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
1. When in your teaching did you enjoy yourself? When did you feel: "This is me at my
best?”
2. How could you get more enjoyment and feel at your best more often?
3. Think back of important events and/or persons that have influenced your professional
development. Mark them on a horizontal line using big or small circles as related to
their importance. Feel free to comment on some or all of them.
4. What puzzles you about teaching and learning to teach?
5. What kind of a teacher do you want to become? Write about the way you want to
develop in order to become the best teacher you can be.
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QUIZ
1. What is motivation? Choose the right answer:
a. It is some kind of internal drive that encourages somebody to pursue a course of action.
b. It is a kind of attractive goal for somebody to do whatever is necessary to reach it.
c. It is a kind of determination for somebody to spend quite few hours learning.
d. It means to perceive goals of various kinds, either short-term or long-term goals.
2. When somebody is learning a foreign language, it means he/she learns:
a. the official language; b. the language abroad; c. the target language; d. the mother tongue
3. Intrinsic motivation may be affected by (one answer is wrong):
a. physical conditions; b. method; c. teacher; d. moral conditions
4. Which of the following is not an age group:
a. adolescents; b. false beginners; c. adult beginners; d. adult advanced students
5. Native speakers know how to say a word, that is how to pronounce it. This
knowledge is made up of three areas: (one answer is wrong)
a. sounds;
b. stress
c. intonation d. rhythm
6. There are many different kinds of writing, thus we can identify a number of
categories. Which of the following is synonymous to category of writing:
a. tone
b. skill
c.. genre
d. note
7. Which of the following is not a category/genre of writing:
a. note-taking
b. dictating letters
c. travel brochures
d. informal letters
8. What do competent users of a language need in order to use language skills and to
process the language that they use?
a. a number of capacities
c. a large number of words
b. a number of sub-skills
d. major language skills
9. One of the following is not a sub-skill of reading.
a. reading for gist
b. scanning
c. skimming
d. translating
10. Knowing a language is not just a matter of having grammatical competence. What
else do we also need to add? One answer is wrong.
a. tactical performance
c. ability to structure discourse
b. communicative competence
d. strategic competence
11. Which should be the aim in teaching grammar? Our aim in teaching grammar
should be to ensure that students are:
a. communicatively performant;
c. grammatically advanced
b. grammatically correct
d. communicatively efficient
12. Which of the following words a teacher would not consider necessary to teach
beginners:
a. come off b. young
c. table-cloth
d. come in
13. Behaviourism led to designing a teaching method called:
a. The Silent Way
c. The task-Based Approach
b. The Audio Lingual Method
d. The Grammar-Translation Method
14. Which of the following methods proposes that students should be comfortably
relaxed?
a. The Silent Way;
c. Suggestopaedia;
b. Community Language Learning
d. Total Physical Response
15. The characteristics for communicative activities are: (one answer is not correct):
a. no teacher intervention or materials control
b. variety of language, and content not form
c. interest in form not content and focusing on one language item
d. having a communicative purpose and a desire to communicate.
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16. Context means the situation or body of information which causes language to be
used. There are different context types. Identify three of them- one answer is not
correct:
a. the outside world b. formulated information
c. information gap
d. the students’
world
17. Formulated information refers to all that information which is presented in the
form of: (one answer is not correct)
a. growth statistics
b. notes and charts
b. books and journals
d. timetables
18. Which of the following is not an explanation technique?
a. using flash cards
c. explaining question forms
b. explaining statements
d. using hands and gestures
19. Checking meaning can be done in three ways (one answer is not correct):
a. information checking
b. information gap
c. immediate creativity
d.
translation
20. Which of the following is not a way of getting students to practice oral English?
a. oral drills and games
c. personalisation and localisation
b. keeping a diary
d. information gap activities
21. Which of the following can be either an oral or a written communicative activity?
a. exchanging letters
b. discussion c. written journals
d. relaying instructions
22. One of the problems of vocabulary teaching is how to select what words to teach.
Identify which is not a general principle of vocabulary selection:
a. frequency
b. coverage
c. meaning
d. choice
23. Choose what is not true about the term lockstep:
a. it is the class grouping where all students are working with the teacher
b. It is the traditional teaching situation
c. It is the class where the students have a chance to practise or talk a lot
d. It is the class where a teacher-controlled session is taking place
24. Which of the following are factors that cause discipline problems? Choose/circle
the wrong answer:
a. friends
b. the students
c. the teacher
d. the institution
25. The plan has the following major components: - circle the wrong answer
a. description of the class and recent work
c. additional possibilities
b. objectives and contents
d. knowledge of the syllabus
26. What of the following is not interactive strategy of discussion:
a. turn taking b. using formal language
c. building on other pupil’s idea
d.
deferring
27. Which of the following is not a type of test validity?
a. construct validity b. content validity
c. congruity validity d. face validity
28. The teacher chooses the textbook that is to be used in the classroom out of the
textbooks:
a. to be found in bookshops
b. approved by the English Language Commission as auxiliary materials to be used in
schools
c. approved by the Ministry of Education and Research
d. published by educational printing houses
29. Learning through discovery aims to form and develop the spirit of investigation, of
exploring new situations. This type of learning takes into account:
a. learners’ age and the specific subject matter
b. the specific subject matter
c. learners’ age
d. methods of scientific research
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30. The school syllabus (centred on reference objectives/specific competencies and
emphasizing the adjusting role of learner acquisition at formative level) is:
a. the National Curriculum
b. the educational offer
c. the analytical planning/syllabus
d. a part of the National Curriculum
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