An ELT Notebook

IATEFL On-line - Don't Miss It !

2009-03-21T09:49:00.004+01:00

IATEFL CARDIFF CONFERENCE: CARDIFF ONLINE WEBSITE NOW LIVE!Online conference coverage of the 43rd IATEFL Conference

The Cardiff Online website is now live at:
http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2009

The British Council and IATEFL have launched the Cardiff Online website which offers web coverage of this year's 43rd IATEFL Annual Conference in Cardiff.

The Cardiff Online website allows remote participants to take part in one of the world's biggest ELT conferences through a variety of resources including:

- Video recordings of selected sessions
- Audio recordings of selected sessions
- Live streamed plenaries and events
- Moderated special interest discussion forums
- Chat sessions
- Blogs and photo albums

To visit the Cardiff Online website, go to:
http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2009

This initiative builds on the earlier collaboration between the British Council and IATEFL.
Last year, 1,600 teachers and trainers attended the Exeter IATEFL Conference, and over 5,000 participated online.

This year we expect a much larger audience, and this is a real opportunity to take part in the biggest online ELT training community.

The Cardiff Online website gives you an opportunity to share ideas with teachers all around the world. There will be interactive coverage with video presentations, reports and interviews 'almost live' from Cardiff.

We look forward to meeting you online, and hope that you will share this information with your colleagues worldwide.

Gavin Dudeney - Honorary Secretary, IATEFL
Julian Wing - British Council Cardiff Online Project Manager
Nik Peachey - IATEFL Online Editor

English Consonant Sounds

2007-07-23T16:25:00.003+02:00

In the last article on Teaching Pronunciation, we looked at how individual sounds are made, and in particular talked about the way consonant sounds can be classified as voiced or unvoiced, by place of articulation and by manner of articulation. If you haven’t read the article, or don’t remember what the terms mean, it would be useful to have a look at it now, before going on.

There wasn’t time, however, to discuss all of the consonant sounds in that article. So here is a full rundown. I suggest you try making the sounds as you read, so that you get a feel for where and how they are made. We’ll start this time with place of articulation.

The diagram shows the names of the various parts of the mouth involved in the production of English consonants :

A = nasal cavity
B = alveolar ridge
C = hard palate
D = soft palate or velum
E = lips and teeth
F = tongue 1 – tip 2 – blade 3 – body
G = uvula
H = larynx and vocal cords

For each consonant, two parts of the mouth are involved, and the name given to it reflects this. Starting from the front, some consonants are made using both lips – try saying /p/ /b/ /w/ and /m/ - and these are called bilabial consonants (bilabial = two lips)

Now try /f/ and /v/. This time it’s the bottom lip and top teeth which are involved. These are labiodental consonants (labio = lip, dental = teeth).

For nearly all the other consonants, the tongue will interact with another part of the mouth. The name of the consonant doesn’t include a reference to the tongue however, just the point of the mouth which it meets. So for instance, sounds made by an interaction between the tongue and the teeth are just called dental sounds. These are /t/, /d/ and the voiced and unvoiced “th” sounds: / ð/ as in this and /θ/ as in thick .

If you run your tongue back behind your teeth, you come to a bony ridge called the alveolar ridge. Several sounds are made on or just behind the ridge - /s/ /z/ /t/ /d/ /n/ /r/ and /l/

Moving back from the alveolar ridge you come to a similarly hard but smoother zone – the hard palate. /j/ as in yellow is a palatal sound, are as the highlighted consonants in the words sheep, measure, cheap and jeep. There is also a palatal version of the /r/ consonant. If you found it strange that it was classed before as alveolar, you may have been saying the palatal version.

Notice that there is now a difference in the way the tongue is used. For the dental and alveolar sounds, it was the tip of the tongue which was involved. For palatal sounds, however, it’s the blade of the tongue, and as we move further back to the velum (the soft part of the palate, closest to the throat) it’s the back, or body, of the tongue. The velar sounds are /g/ and /k/ and the final consonants in sing and in bottle – often called the “dark” l.

This leaves only the consonant /h/ which is produced by air passing from the windpipe through the vocal cords, or glottis. It's therefore a glottal sound.

Place of Articulation tells us where the consonants are produced, but we also need to consider Manner of Articulation – how they are produced. The most important categories are :

Plosives : Plosive sounds (also called stop sounds) are formed by the air being completely blocked in the mouth and then suddenly released. For example, /k/ and /g/ are formed when the back of the tongue rises to the velum and momentarily blocks the air. These are therefore velar plosives. The other plosive consonants of English are the bilabial plosives /p/ and /b/ and the alveolar plosives /t/ and /d/. Some varieties of English – London English for example – also include a glottal stop which substitutes for the /t/ consonant between vowels. Imagine a London pronunciation of butter, for example.

Fricatives : Fricatives are formed when the two parts of the mouth approach each other closely, not completely blocking the passage of the air, but forcing it through a confined space. The air molecules start to bump against each other causing audible friction. Try the palatal fricative – the sh sound. You can feel your tongue up close to the alveolar ridge and the air passing through the small space left. The full list of English fricatives is : labiodental fricatives - /f/ and /v/; dental fricatives – the two "th" sounds; alveolar fricatives – /s/ and /z/; palatal fricatives - /ʃ/ as in in sheep and /ʒ/ as in measure; and the glottal fricative /h/.

Affricates : Affricates are really a plosive and a fricative combined. The air is initially blocked, and then released through a narrow passageway like a fricative. English has two affricates, the initial sounds in cheap and jeep - / ʧ / and /ʤ/. These are usually classed as palato-alveolar affricates, as they’re made in a position half way between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate.

Nasals : when a nasal sound is produced, the air is prevented from going out through the mouth and is instead released through the nose. There are three English nasals – the bilabial nasals /m/ and /n/ and the velar nasal /ŋ/ – the final consonant in sing.

Approximant : Approximants are a bit of a hotch-potch category, and contain some of the most problematic sounds in English. We’ll look at them in detail another time, but for now will classify them together as sounds produced when the airstream moves around the tongue and out of the mouth with almost no obstruction. The English approximants are the alveolar approximants /l/ and /r/, the palatal approximant /j/, as in yes, and the dark l – the velar approximant - as in bottle. Keep in mind, however, that this is a simplification.

This leaves the third distinguishing category which we discussed in the last article – voicing. If the vocal cords are vibrated when the sound is made, the sound is voiced. If the are not, it is unvoiced. Several of the English consonants come in pairs. They have the same place and manner of articulation and are distinguished only by voicing (1). For example /t/ and /d/ are both alveolar plosives, but /t/ is unvoiced while /d/ is voiced. In the summarising chart below, where pairs occur the unvoiced sound is always given first.

If you know where and how the sounds are made, you are in a better position to help your students (2). In the next article in this series we'll look at some teaching techniques to improve students' command of these sounds.

Notes

1. This is another simplification, and again something we’ll look at in detail another time.

2. For diagrams of the exact tongue position for each sound see this chapter from Philip Carr, English Phonetics and Phonology, Blackwell Publishing.

Further Reading

Teaching Pronunciation (M. Celce-Murcia et al, CUP) is one of the most useful books I've come across on teaching pronunciation. It manages to combine a thorough analysis of the phonology of English with a wealth of practical activities for use in the classroom. It focuses on the analysis of North American English, so teachers with a British accent need to be on the lookout for differences. But it's a book I wouldn't want to be without for its clarity and practical usefulness.

Using YouTube for Vocabulary Development

2007-07-06T11:12:00.000+02:00

YouTube now contains an enormous amount of material, some of which is highly exploitable in the classroom. One such category of videos are promotional videos. These have the advantage that they are professionally produced, and therefore the visual and sound quality is good, but you’re less likely to run into copyright problems. They’re on YouTube because the makers want people to publicise them – it’s known as viral marketing.

This lesson is based around two promotional videos – one on Australia, and the other on Newquay in Cornwall. It is aimed at mid intermediate level or above and aims to extend students knowledge of the language of tourism. It would be suitable for an ESP class of tourist operators, but could also be used with a general purpose class.You can find the videos at : Australia Holiday Guide and Newquay An Introduction

1. Warm Up - Activation of Language and Schemata

a. Divide students into pairs or groups. Allocate each pair or group a category of sports – water sports, athletics, mountain sports, equestrian sports etc – depending on their interests. Have pictures ready to give the students to push them on to less obvious sports if they dry up. Sports might include :

Water sports – swimming, diving, snorkelling, scuba diving, surfing, windsurfing, kitesurfing, water polo, synchronised swimming, sailing, powerboat racing, water skiing
Athletics –sprints, middle distance and long distance running hurdling, shot put, javelin, hammer throw, discus throw, high jump, long jump, triple jump, pole vault, steeplechase, relays, road running (including the marathon).
Equestrian – dressage, show jumping, eventing, carriage driving, endurance riding, steeplechasing, flat racing , harness racing, showing

NB. The real focus is on water sports. The others are included as a “distractor” so that this stage is not too much of a “giveaway” for stage c.

b. Ask Ss to tell each other if they’ve ever been to Australia. If so, when, how long for, did they like it, what did they see etc. If not, would they like to go, where exactly, what would they like to see. Group or pair discussion, followed by full-class content and language follow-up.

c. Tell students that they are responsible for creating a two-minute promotional video of Australia. What would they show on the video, and what image of Australia would they try and create? Group or pair discussion, followed by T-class content and language follow-up.

2. Viewing

a. First Viewing : Ss watch the video and compare what it shows and the image of Australia created with their predictions. With lower level students, this first viewing might be done with the sound turned off, in order that the high percentage of text which they won’t understand doesn’t distract them. In any case, tell students not to worry if they don’t understand everything, they can make the comparison just by viewing the images. T-Class follow up.

b. Second Viewing : Ask Ss to watch and listen again. Set gist comprehension questions -

- What sports are mentioned by the speaker (not shown in the images) ?
- Can you go surfing if you’ve never tried before?
- Why might you need your walking boots on an Australian holiday?

c. Third Viewing : What you do next may differ depending on the level of the students. Here are some options :

Intermediate students : Give out the complete transcript with any expressions you predict will be a problem underlined and a scrambled glossary below (as in the worksheet illustrated). Ask students to listen again to the video, following the text, and then to match the underlined expressions with their meanings.

Text : If it’s action and adventure you’re after, then a holiday to Australia will be just up your street. But don’t take my word for it—take a look for yourself. The waves are massive off the coast of Australia, making surfing the nation’s favourite pastime. If you’ve never tried it before, don’t worry — most resorts offer courses for beginners. Diving is immensely popular here too. With the Great Barrier Reef stretching all the way down Queensland’s coast, it’s the perfect place for an underwater adventure. If you’d rather stay above sea level, then try a sailing tour around the Whit Sunday Islands, home of the famous Whitehaven Beach. This is an experience not to be missed.

There’s loads to do on dry land too. The thrill of four-wheel driving across the dunes of Frazer Island or the barren outback is unforgettable. And for the view of a lifetime, get your walking boots on for the Sydney Harbour Bridge climb.

And if you need a drink to calm your nerves after all that excitement, head to any of Australia’s city centres for an action-packed evening.

Wherever you see Australia from, it’s a breathtaking experience.

Scrambled glossary : a lot / you want / you would prefer to / Australian countryside / port / go / exciting / excitement / exactly right for you / extending / leisure activity / don’t believe me / infertile / holiday town

Upper Intermediate + : Give out a gapped transcript of the text. Ask students first to predict the missing words, and then to listen in order to confirm or complete their answers.

3. Language Focus

a. Point out that this is a promotional video, and that therefore the text uses words and expressions with a superlative meaning or which create an emotional impact. Ask students to identify the first of these (action and adventure) and then to highlight any others (adventure, massive, favourite, immensely popular, the perfect place, adventure, an experience not to be missed, loads to do, thrill, barren, unforgettable, the view of a lifetime, excitement, action-packed, a breathtaking experience.) T-class follow-up - list the vocabulary on the board.

b. Show students the following web pages on London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Dublin and ask them to identify similar expressions – they may need to use dictionaries while they do so. Follow up : add the expressions to the board list.

c. Explain to students where Newquay is and what sort of place it is. Give out the gapped text, explain that it’s from a promotional video for tourism in Newquay, and ask them, in pairs to decide on a suitable word for each space.

Text : Welcome to the Newquay CD Rom where you can discover all that this ………………… on the Cornish coast has to offer. Whether it’s trying one of the many ……………………… water sports, experiencing the ………………………… countryside, relaxing on the seven miles of …………………… sands and …………………………… beaches, or simply enjoying the ………………………… array of facilities, it’s …………………… to see why Newquay has become the ……………………… destination for a family holiday.

d. T-class follow up : Elicit the students’ suggestions and eliminate any that are not grammatically or collocationally possible. Then play the video so that they can identify which words were actually used.

4. Application

a. Ask students, in pairs or groups, to decide the content (not, at the moment the text) for a two-minute promotional video on their home town or the town in which they are currently studying. They should decide what image they want to project of the town, and what they want to show in the video. T-class follow up : elicit ideas, and give language feedback as necessary.

b. Students write the text for the video. This stage can be done individually or collaboratively.

If time on the course allows, and if digital cameras are available, this could of course be turned into a real project, with the students making the film and recording it.

Further Reading

For more ideas on how to use YouTube, click here ....

and for ideas on the Internet in the EFL classroom in general ...

Teaching in Bucharest, Romania

2007-06-19T19:30:00.000+02:00

In this article from our occasional series Another Day in the Life… guest writer Michael Tate describes a day teaching in Romania, where he's been for the last three years.

I’ve always been an early bird and I’ve always appreciated free time in the mornings. I’ve never been one to fall out of bed ten minutes before a lesson, drag a comb through my hair, pull on last night’s t-shirt and stumble through the door toast in one hand, lesson plans in the other. I’ve known teachers like this and I’m not one of them. I’ve had students who’ve had teachers like this and I know the effect coffee breath and stale sweat have on your student attendance level. Being self-employed I like to be fresh, smart and well-presented. It’s true what they say – you are only as good as your last lesson. So, today, like every other day, I wake up naturally at about half six.

Kettle on, PC on, balcony door open and a little look outside. It’s a lovely June morning in Bucharest, the sky is blue and the air is yet to be overcome with the sounds of traffic, construction dust and car fumes. The kettle whistles and I pour a coffee and settle down to prepare my files for the day. I travel to my students’ offices so I rarely have time to come home during the day. It takes me about an hour today. I have almost a decade of exercises, lessons, reading comprehensions and handouts on the PC so mostly it’s a case of thinking, choosing and pressing ‘print’. The only lesson I have to prepare from scratch is for a complete beginner.

After finishing my lesson planning I make a decent breakfast (might not have time for lunch), a cup of tea and mail the day’s students to remind them they have a lesson and ask them to phone me if there’s a problem. Then I browse a few sites, read a paper online, and maybe catch the morning news on the box. Finally I head for the shower, shave, spruce myself up and put on my suit. As I visit people in their offices I find that a professional appearance makes a big difference. I try to portray myself as a ‘professional linguistic trainer’. It makes no difference. I do what we all do. It just sounds better and I can justify the higher fees!

I leave the house at about 9.15 and jump on the tram for the centre of town. I’m lucky today and I get a seat. There’s a bus that goes in that direction too but it’s always hot and crowded so I prefer to spend an extra ten minutes on the tram but have the luxury of a pew. I flip open my book and do my best to ignore the group of cretins behind me playing ‘manele’ (an abominable variety of music normally involving overweight short dark guys in shades singing songs like ‘I love my money’ and ‘Cash cash cash’ whilst surrounded by semi-naked 18-year old dancers) on their mobile phones.

I arrive at the office at 10 and start my first one-hour private. My student is an economist. She’s very dedicated, always does her homework, and almost never cancels a lesson and only then with good cause. If only they were all like her!

After her lesson I jump on the bus for two stations and arrive at another office. Two lessons here – the first a husband and wife team from IBM preparing for the FCE exam in June. Easy lesson and a little different to the normal slog through the grammar as it’s more skills-based. She has completed lots of exercises and prepared a list of questions, he has done nothing.

In the same location, after them, is a small group of three intermediate students. Absolutely lovely people and this time they have come laden with chocolates from their weekend trip to Barcelona. At the end of the lesson I get a call from the HR manager from the next client, a fashion company with whom I have 18 hours a week all contracted and paid for regardless of cancellations (excellent work if you can get it), to tell me that my student can’t attend. Fair enough as she had a baby only three weeks previously and despite this still makes at least half of her lessons!. That’s determination for you. Another accountant. I decide that I want more female accountants as students.

Now I have a minor problem. The time is two o’clock and the next lesson is at five in the north of the city. I could go home and potter about for an hour and then leave again but it’s hardly worth it. Luckily the group I’ve just finished with overhear my phone conversation and ask me if my next class is cancelled, and upon finding out it is they invite me to lunch. We all head out to a lovely local restaurant with a beautifully planted-up garden. I have a bowl of soup followed by a spicy grilled chicken. They have soup and pizza. They are very pleased to have the opportunity to spend another two hours practicing their English and I’m very pleased for the relaxing and free lunch. Everyone’s a winner!

After lunch I jump on the metro and arrive at my last student’s house. She’s a lawyer, married to the MD of one of my other clients (all my students have come through recommendations so in some obscure way I can connect any student to any other student). She’s the complete beginner. She’s making good progress after only a few months. She knows a lot of the theory now and is very clever and works hard on the exercises. The problem is that we knew each other before she became a student and so she knows that my Romanian is pretty good. I have to frequently turn stupid in the lessons to force her to try things out in English. She’s very smart…but needs a lot more confidence. Another reliable student though.

The lesson lasts an hour and a half and I get home about eight. It’s been a long day but I feel satisfied and nicely worn out. After the big and unexpected lunch I just make myself a salad (need to lose weight anyway), pour myself a cold beer (yes, ok, don’t say it!) and put my feet up for a while.

Today was a good day – busy and with the good students. Not all days are like this. Other days I get lazy reluctant students who rarely do any work and have be forced to attend by their superiors, I get bundled around on the buses and trams, sweating like a pig in my suit because the locals are afraid to open the windows because they believe draughts kills, even though it’s 40 degrees inside the tram. I get all the rude cashiers in the shops and I come home hating my job, the city, the transport and the weather!

At least every day is different. Monotony would kill me.

The Teaching Knowledge Test

2007-06-17T11:20:00.000+02:00

Want to improve your knowledge of teaching but don’t have the time or the money to take the CELTA? Consider the Teaching Knowledge Test!

Introduced by Cambridge ESOL (the CELTA people) in 2005, the Teaching Knowledge Test (1) was a response to requests by governments around the world (2) for an easily accessible way of training and certifying English Language teachers, including those who have previously taught other subjects and need to requalify. It is now offered by centres in 21 countries around the world.

A test of knowledge rather than competence (there is no teaching practice component), the test is divided into three modules :

Module 1 - Language and background to language learning and teaching

Describing language and language skills.
Background to language learning.
Background to language teaching.

Module 2 - Planning lessons and use of resources for language teaching

Planning and preparing a lesson or sequence of lessons.
Selection and use of resources and materials.

Module 3 - Managing the teaching and learning process

Teachers' and learners' language in the classroom.
Classroom management

Each module involves an 80 minute test consisting of 80 objective questions. The modules can be taken together in one exam session or separately, over three exam sessions, so that you can prepare yourself as intensively or non-intensively as you wish. You can’t fail the test – it’s graded from Band 1 (lowest) to Band 4 (highest) to show the level of your knowledge in each area. The sort of questions you’ll be answering are:

Module 1

Scanning is :
a. reading a text quickly to get general information.
b. reading a text quickly to find specific information.
c. reading a text quickly to discover the writer’s attitude.

Module 2

Which of the following is a lesson aim :
a. students will complete a role play.
b. reduce teacher talking time.
c. give students practise in listening for gist.

Module 3

What type of mistake is involved in the following sentence : I live here since 1999.
a. wrong preposition
b. wrong tense
c. missing article

Not all the questions are multiple choice – others include matching, sequencing and odd-one-out. Multiple choice are simply the easiest to demonstrate here. (3)

There are no formal entrance requirements for the test, although candidates are advised to have a language proficiency of at least B1 on the Council of Europe scale (pre-intermediate). Similarly, it is not necessary to follow a course before taking the exam (4), though many preparatory courses are available worldwide, often as short as 20 hours per module or less.

Notes

1. The Cambridge ESOL website gives full details of the test, lists centres where it can be taken and answers some FAQs.

2. For information on which governments have adopted the test see here.

3. You can see the full range of question types in the sample papers for each of the three modules.

4. If you're interested in preparing yourself for the test, try The TKT Course by Mary Spratt, Alan Pulverness and Melanie Williams. Suitable for self-access study, it provides approximately 60-90 hours preparation, including practice tasks and tests.

Teaching Individual Sounds : Part Two

2007-06-11T13:54:00.000+02:00

In the final part of this article, I shall be talking about activities which you can use to help students pronounce individual sounds which are a problem for them. However, all the practice activities in the world will be useless if the students don’t understand how to produce the sound in the first place. It’s therefore essential that the teacher knows and can explain this.

A list of the phonemes of English was given at the beginning of the first part of the article. They divide into consonants and vowels. What’s the difference?

A consonant sound is produced by blocking or obstructing the path of the air in some way as it passes out from the lungs. Try any of the consonant sounds – for example /p/ /f/ /t/ /g/ - and you’ll feel that in each case two parts of the mouth are brought close together to prevent air passing straight out. Now try any of the vowel sounds and you’ll see that this doesn’t happen – the air flows straight through, unobstructed.

Vowel Sounds

Which vowel sound is produced depends on the exact size and shape of the mouth when it’s produced. The mouth acts as a resonance chamber. To understand this imagine having several different shaped glasses partially filled with different amounts of water. If you tapped them with a spoon or rubbed your finger around the rim, as in the photo, you’d get a range of different sounds. In each case the sound produced is dependent on the size and shape of the cavity within the glass. With vowels the size and shape of the cavity is formed by the position of the mouth organs.

There may be several variables involved in vowel production, but the most important are :

Is the jaw open or closed – or somewhere in between? This is sometimes described in terms of tongue height : is the tongue high in the mouth, close to the roof of the mouth or low - or somewhere in between?
Is the tongue positioned in the front or back of the mouth - or somewhere in between?
Are the lips spread or rounded – or somewhere in between?

Using these categories we can describe /i:/ as in meet as a close front spread vowel, while /u/ as in boot is close, back, rounded.

Consonant Sounds

Consonant sounds are also described using three variables – a) the use (or not) of voicing, b) the place of articulation, and c) the manner of articulation. What do these terms mean? In this article we’ll give a brief definition, and in the next a more detailed account.

Voicing

Half way down your larynx, behind your Adam’s apple, are the vocal cords – two bands of elastic muscle tissue which can vibrate as air from the lungs passes through them. Some sounds, known as voiced sounds involve vocal cord vibration whilst others, known as unvoiced sounds don’t. For example, place your fingers over your Adam’s apple and make a buzzing sound /zzzzzzzz/. You should feel the vocal cords vibrating. Now do the same with a hissing sound /sssssssss/ - the voicing disappears.

All vowels are voiced, and over half the consonants. Try for yourself with some of the other sounds from the chart. Be careful though. If you add a vowel sound to an unvoiced consonant – for example if you say something like “ker” rather than just /k/, you’ll feel the voicing from the vowel.
Place of Articulation

The shape of the mouth, and the position of its different parts (mainly the tongue and lips) are also crucial to pronouncing the sound, and the second way of describing sounds reflects this. If you say the sounds /p/ and /b/ for example, you can easily feel that they are made using both lips. They are therefore called bilabial sounds. Or what about /f/ and /v/ ? They involve the use of one lip (the lower lip) and the teeth. They are therefore known as labio-dental sounds.

Add to this what we’ve already said about voicing, and we can distinguish between the sounds in each pair : /p/ is an unvoiced bilabial, /b/ a voiced bilabial; /f/ is an unvoiced labio-dental and /v/ a voiced labio-dental.
Manner of Articulation

We’ve seen that /b/ is a voiced bilabial. Based on what we’ve seen so far, how would you classify /m/ ? try saying it in an extended form /mmmmm/.

/m/ is also a voiced bilabial – it’s made by vibrating the vocal cords and with both lips. To distinguish it from /b/ we therefore need a third category – a description of what happens to the air as it passes out from the lungs.

Try /b/ again. You should feel that the air is “stopped” – it builds up behind the closed lips for a moment, and then explodes out on release. Place your fingers in front of your mouth as you say it and you’ll feel it. The sound occurs on the moment of release. Because of this, /b/ is described as a plosive sound.

/m/, on the other hand, doesn’t release the air through the mouth at all, but through the nose. Say /mmmmmm/ again and put your fingers under your nostrils. Again, you’ll feel the air passing out. /m/ is therefore known as a nasal sound.

The three categories now allow us to distinguish between the two sounds : /b/ is a voiced bilabial plosive while /m/ is a voiced bilabial nasal.

In the next part of the article we’ll look again at the final two categories – place and manner of articulation – to see how the other consonants of English are formed.

Acknowledgement

Photo provided under Creative Commons Licence by Stareja via flickr

The Final Five Minutes

2007-06-03T16:52:00.001+02:00

How do you close your lessons? In this article guest writer Chris Cotter suggests some useful activities for the last five minutes of any class.

A lot of experts have written about structuring a lesson, from the initial warm-up stage, through drills and practice, and on to an end activity that allows students to use the target language naturally. There's pace to consider, the type of drills to best make the language automatic, and how an early activity will tie into later portions of the lesson. But not enough attention has been given to ending a class effectively.

Many teachers simply ask: "Does anyone have any questions?" Even more teachers use the time to assign homework, collect assignments, and chat with students while everyone cleans up. But correction, review, and feedback offer a better use of the final five minutes.

Correction: In the perfect class, students don't make any mistakes after applying the language. But, of course, a perfect lesson simply doesn't exist. Correction offers a practical way to remind the class as a whole of the language. This is in preference to interrupting a group's flow in a role play, interview, or presentation with on-the-spot correction, which then won't even benefit other groups.

For example, one of my recent classes covered "going to" to talk about planned events. The end activity consisted of classmates interviewing as many people as possible about their real plans for the weekend. I observed, took notes, and wrote some mistakes on the board during the activity. Here was one that recurred several times: "I'm going to go to shopping." I wrapped up the activity with about five minutes of class time remaining, and asked the class to correct the sentence. I then drilled a few, similar examples orally, as in:

Me: "I bowl."
Class: "I'm going to go bowling."
Me: "He skis."
Class: "He's going to go skiing."
Me: "She drinks."
Class: "She is going to go drinking."

But correction isn't merely limited to today's target language. I can cover any previously studied words or grammar points, for example. I can also draw the class's attention to words which they know, but perhaps used or pronounced incorrectly. I can even teach a more natural phrase or expression than one which popped up in the final activity.

Review: Review focuses specifically on the material studied that day. I may reuse flashcards to choral drill vocabulary, particularly words that were troublesome for students early on. I may reread some questions from an earlier worksheet, in order to call for answers. I may reread answers from a worksheet, and call for appropriate questions. I may even ask for a response from part of the dialogue we studied. In other words, I can go pretty much anywhere as long as it reviews today's material. Whereas correction focuses on mistakes both with the target language and other points, review lets everyone take a final look at today's material. From a teacher's point of view, it's my final chance to make sure as many students as possible leave the class able to understand if not use the language correctly.

Equally important, though, review serves to boost confidence. If students entered my class completely unable to use the new structure, the review session demonstrates that they have studied, learned, and can now apply it. Because there's usually only one correct response, it's oftentimes easier for students to measure learning via review, than it is through an open-ended speaking activity.

Feedback: Whereas correction and review have a place in any lesson, feedback is a little more particular. Class size must be considered, because a group of twelve or more students makes individual feedback impossible. We must also think about how students will handle advice in front of their peers.

In large classes, a general comment on performance can effectively close the lesson. For example, from my "going to" lesson: "Everyone used today's grammar and vocabulary well--we can use 'going to' for any planned event. Remember to ask follow-up questions, because this makes conversation more interesting! Kenji said, 'I'm going to visit some friends in Kyoto.' Can you think of a good follow-up question?" I only commented on today's lesson, but I could just as easily have added: "Don't forget our long term goal. We want to have a conversation with a partner for five minutes without stopping."

I make the same general comments in small classes, too. However, I also add a very brief comment for each individual student. During the final activity, in addition to noting mistakes, I write down the strengths and weaknesses of each student. I only focus on one skill (e.g., fluency, grammar, listening, pronunciation, or vocabulary) to offer a positive statement, and one skill to offer a "needs work on" statement. My notes may look something like this: "V+ P- (th-sound)," which translates as good use of vocabulary, but poor pronunciation, especially with "th-." I can then spend fifteen or twenty seconds on each student, offering some personal attention to help them with their studies.

By closing a lesson with correction, review, and feedback, I'm giving the students a means to measure their progress. They measure today's learning with a quick review of the key lesson points. They also gauge their retention with previously studied material when we go over correction. Lastly, in order to fine tune individual needs, feedback allows the teacher to give some positive and negative comments, as well as tips or remedies for each student.

If you’re looking for lesson plans and materials to use with your upper-intermediate and advanced students, don’t miss Chris’ website Heads Up English!

Acknowledgement

Photo provided under Creative Commons licence by tata_aka_T via flickr

Teaching Mixed Ability Groups : A Solution

2007-05-22T09:13:00.000+02:00

One of the hardest types of course to deal with is one where the students are of mixed levels, of mixed learning ability, or even both. The teacher has to find a balance between boring the faster, or higher level students, and losing the rest.

One solution to this problem is to abandon lockstep teaching (1) for at least parts of the lesson, so that the teacher can work intensively with a sub-group of the class while the others work autonomously. This, of course means that suitable materials for autonomous study need to be available. These can be in any format, but if computers are available in the classroom, the easiest solution is undoubtedly the use of on-line materials.

The most radical way of using the materials would be to make them the sole basis of the lessons. Each student would spend the lesson working through a course at his/her own level while the teacher circulated – monitoring and giving individual help , explanation and practice as necessary. With some groups, containing students of widely differing levels, this may well be the best solution. But with others, where the difference is not too extreme, it’s also possible to incorporate the autonomous work into the regular class lessons.

Let’s take the example of a mixed level group containing students from upper-elementary to mid-intermediate levels. The next area to be covered in the syllabus is the present perfect for past to present events – for example, I’ve lived here for ten years. For the upper-elementary students this is completely new. They’re going to need not only a full presentation but also a lot of controlled practice before they can go on to using the structure. For the mid-intermediate students however, the lesson is only revision and consolidation.

Here is a possible outline for the lesson :

Stage One

The lesson starts with a warm-up activity consolidating the simple past, which all students have met previously.
Stage Two

The class then divides. The elementary and weaker intermediate students, who the teacher thinks need a full structured presentation, remain with the teacher while the stronger intermediate students work autonomously on a second simple past consolidation activity – maybe a short listening or reading activity.
Stage Three

After the teacher has completed the presentation, the class comes back together and completes a receptive practice activity which asks them to distinguish between the two verb forms – for instance the first activity mentioned in the article Receptive Practice Activities. This has the aim of checking whether all the students understand the use of the form. If the teacher finds that any of the higher level students in fact don’t, s/he can ask the lower level students to explain. This a) checks that the students who heard the presentation really understand, and b) aids motivation : one of the problems of a mixed ability group is that it is always the same, weaker or lower level students who “don’t know/can’t do”. This activity gives them the chance to be the ones who do know.

Stage Four

The class then splits again. This stronger students go back to the computer (or other materials) and work on consolidation activities for the present perfect at their own level. These may be grammar practice activities, a listening consolidation, or whatever the teacher thinks the students need. Meanwhile the lower level students remain with the teacher for some controlled practice work.

Stage Five

The groups then swap. The stronger students meet the teacher for some semi-controlled or freer practice, while the weaker ones work autonomously at their own level – which may or may not mean working on the same activities that the stronger students did in stage four.
Stage Six

The group comes back into lockstep and works on a final activity in which either a) students are paired high/low level with the stronger student having a more demanding role, b) students are again paired high/low and work on an activity in which the strong students help the weaker students or c) students are paired high/high, low/low and work on an activity at their own level.

This constant switching between lockstep and ability group work has various advantages :

a) Most importantly, the lockstep allows the students to develop a single group identity and collaborative working dynamic. However, this will only happen if the lockstep stages are productive and non-threatening for everyone. The split group stages ensure that when the students do come together they are all able to work on an activity which is the correct level of challenge for all members of the group. No-one needs to feel they’re wasting time waiting for the others or that they are “out of their depth” in comparison to other members of the group.
b) The lesson format also has the practical advantage, if you are using on-line courses, that you don’t need an enormous number of computers. Only half the group will be at the computers at any one time. If they work in pairs that means that three computers would be sufficient for a group of twelve.

Why though should you choose on-line materials over any other type of materials? They have two practical advantages:

a) firstly, they are specifically designed for autonomous study and staged accordingly, whilst “ordinary” materials tend to be designed for teacher-led classes and may not be suitable for students working alone.
b) putting together a sequence of activities taken from various sources, plus supplementing them with answers, explanations etc to make them suitable for autonomous study means a considerable amount of preparation for the teacher and can be very time consuming. A coherent on-line course will already have done most of the work for you – preparation is confined to familiarising yourself with the materials and choosing which activities you want each group to do at which point of the lesson.

Notes

1. If a class is working “in lockstep”, all the students are doing the same thing at the same time.

Further Reading ...

Teaching Individual Sounds : Part One

2007-05-20T10:40:00.001+02:00

Why do language learners have difficulty pronouncing specific sounds in the language they are learning? The answer lies, not surprisingly, in the contrast between their own language and the new language. We are born with the ability to recognise and to learn to pronounce every sound, but as we come to realise that some are meaningful and others aren’t, we filter out the non-meaningful sounds to the point where we may not even be able to “hear” them any more, let alone know how to form them.

The sound may not exist in the L1

No language uses every single sound that the human voice can make in order to express meaning. You can probably think of sounds which occur in other languages which don’t occur in English – like the double-l sound found in many Welsh words such as Llan (church).

A sound is meaningful for a language if substituting it for another word causes a change in meaning. In English /p/ is a meaningful sound – if I say peat you understand something very different from if I say beat or meat or heat. In Arabic however, the sound has no meaning – in terms of Arabic, it doesn’t exist. A sound like this which creates a meaning distinction is known as a phoneme (1) of the language. /p/ is a phoneme of English but not of Arabic. (2)

English uses a relatively high number of phonemes in comparison with many other languages, so there’s a good chance that our learners will come across sounds they’ve never used before.

The sound may exist in the L1, but be used differently

Alternatively the difficulty may lie in the position of the sound. Sounds may not occur in every position in a syllable in a specific language, or may never be combined with other sounds. For example, in English the “dark” /l/ found in words like bottle never occurs at the beginning of a syllable whereas in Turkish it may. English allows certain combinations of up to three consonants at the beginnings of words /spr / /str/ /spl/ but not others /sdn/ or /ksb/. Other languages will differ. They may allow fewer consonants to cluster together like this, or more. And they may be quite different consonants. Japanese allows only the possibility of consonant + /j/ as in Tokyo, whereas Croatian allows many more – try opskrbljivanje (supplying) for instance.

The sound may exist in the L1, but not be perceived

And finally, two sounds which native speakers consider to be “the same” sound, may actually be phonetically quite different. Take the words cat and cool. If you wrote them phonologically, the symbol used for the first consonant in both would be the same - /k/. But now try saying them. Put your tongue in the /k/ position as if you wanted to say cat, and leave it there a moment. Now put it in the position to say cool. You should feel that it moves back significantly. That means that the two /k/ sounds (I’ll call them /k1/ and /k2/) are phonetically quite different.

So why don’t we think of them as different? In English the difference never signals a change in meaning. If I say /k1u:l/ instead of /k2u:l/, it may sound a bit odd, but it doesn’t mean something different – as it does if I say /bi:t/ instead of /pi:t/. /k1/ and /k2/ are phonetically different, but in English are allophones (2) (or variants) of the same phoneme, whereas, in English /p/ and /b/ are two different phonemes. Another example is /p/ itself. /p/ may be aspirated, as in pill, or not – as in spill. But the difference between the two allophones never creates a meaning difference and, as such is not consciously recognised by native speakers. In Cantonese, on the other hand, the difference does cause a change of meaning. In Cantonese aspirated and non-aspirated /p/ are two different phonemes.

This is what lies behind the problem which Korean learners have, for example, with the /r/, /l/ distinction. Korean does have a version of the /r/ consonant (though not identical to the English /r/), but it only occurs between vowels. It also has an /l/ sound which occurs in other phonetic contexts. The two Korean sounds /l/ /r/ are therefore allophones of the same phoneme – they never occur in the same phonetic context and therefore never distinguish meaning. And therefore they are perceived by Korean speakers as the “same” sound, in the same way that for English speakers /k1/ and /k2/ or aspirated and non-aspirated /p/ are.

This means that in teaching the pronunciation of individual sounds we have to deal first not with production but perception. Learners have to learn to recognise the new sounds – and, even more difficult, to notice the difference between sounds that they previously considered “the same” –and then learn how to pronounce them. In the follow-up to this article we’ll look at strategies to achieve both these aims

Notes

1. For a good explanation of phonemes and allophones, see Wikipedia

2. The best source on the web for finding out which English sounds are liable to cause problems for learners from specific language groups is probably Ted Power's site English Language Learning and Teaching

Idiomatic English : Geographical Features

2007-05-08T11:16:00.000+02:00

Here’s another activity in our series on Teaching Idioms. This time it focuses on idioms referring to geographical features.

Quite often, idioms are fairly transparent in meaning. They involve a metaphorical use of language which it’s not difficult to understand in context as long as you know the literal meaning of the words. And this is often the main problem for learners – they have to cope at one and the same time with learning both the words contained in the idioms, and their idiomatic meaning.

When teaching idioms then, you often need to divide the activity into two stages and look at lexical meaning before presenting the idioms themselves. This activity, which looks at idioms referring to geographical features, does just that. The students have a handout similar to the one in the photo and are asked to match the objects in the pictures with the words in the centre.

Of course, given that you would probably be using this activity at an upper intermediate level or higher, some of the words in the idiom would already be known – they shouldn’t have much difficulty with mountains, ocean or wood for example. These are included in the preparatory exercises mainly to ensure that they will get at least fifty per cent of the answers right, and secondly to help them work out logically the meaning of some of the others : if they know hills they are halfway to recognising molehill.

Once the words have been checked, they can then be asked to infer the meaning of the idioms from contextualised sentences. This is made easier if they are given a set of synonymous expressions to match to the idioms, as below, or they can simply be asked to try and guess what the idioms mean.

Look at the nine underlined idioms in sentences 1-8 and match them with the correct meaning a-i.

1. I don’t know why you let David be so rude to you. If I were you, I’d tell him to go jump in the lake.
2. The company is on the rocks and will probably go bankrupt.
3. I’ve been offered two jobs and I don’t know which to take. One’s for a multinational – I’d only be an assistant manager, but the money is good and so are the career prospects. In the other one I’d be the boss! But there are only six employees - I’d be a big fish in a small pond. I’m not sure if it would lead anywhere.
4. I get really annoyed when I see my staff sending E-mails with spelling mistakes. They think I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, but I’m convinced it’s bad for our company’s image.
5. Although the country receives a certain amount of foreign aid, it’s only a drop in the ocean.
6. Trying to convince Geena that the proposal was a good idea was an uphill job! She was so focused on the cost that she couldn’t see the wood for the trees.
7. He invested all his money in one company and then of course, when its shares crashed, he found himself up the creek without a paddle.
8. Linda thinks she’s indispensable and that we couldn’t cope without her. But she’s wrong. If she goes on like this I shall fire her and get someone else. She’s not the only pebble on the beach.

a. the only person available
b. a small amount in comparison to what’s necessary
c. to go away and stop being unpleasant
d. in trouble
e. in trouble and liable to end soon.
f. an apparently important person in an unimportant situation
g. really difficult
h. to exaggerate the importance of something
i. to lose sight of the overall situation because you are concentrating on the details

Teaching British Culture

2007-04-26T16:21:00.001+02:00

If you teach teenagers, some of them may be planning on going to Britain this year for a summer course. Especially if they stay with a host family, they’ll be learning far more than the language – they’ll also be experiencing, possibly for the first time, what it’s like to live in a different culture.

What can you do to help prepare them for what they’ll find? One way is through a quiz. Here’s one that’s based on mistakes and incomprehensions that my own previous students have reported. They were predominantly Italian. The quiz obviously needs to focus on the differences between British culture and that of the students who you are teaching, so if you want to use the quiz with another nationality you may find that some of these questions are irrelevant and others need to be added.

You’re in Cambridge for a summer course, and you’re staying with a British family. Do you know enough about British culture to cope?

1. You’ve just arrived. What do you say and do?

a) Say Hello to every one in the family.
b) Say Hello and shake hands with everyone.
c) Say Hello and shake hands with the mother and father of the family.

2. Your landlady asks you if you’re hungry and if you like Welsh Rabbit. What is it?

a) The animal in the picture, cooked in tomato sauce.
b) Grilled cheese on toast.
c) A type of cake.

3. The next morning you come down and see your landlady in the kitchen. What do you say?

a) Good morning
b) Good morning Mrs.
c) Good morning madam.

4. You have to catch a bus to the language school. You arrive at the bus stop and wait next to the stop. Suddenly you see that all the other people there are looking at you angrily. Why?

a) You’re listening to your walkman and walkmans are not allowed in the street in Britain.
b) British people queue at the bus stop. The first person to arrive stands next to the stop, the second person stands behind the first person, the third behind the second and so on. And they get on the bus in that order. You went straight to the front of the queue. In Britain this is called “pushing in” and is very impolite.
c) Your mobile phone is ringing. British people always turn their mobile phones off when they’re in public.

5. Your lessons are from 9.30-1.00 and the school organises sports from 2.30-5.00 every afternoon. You need to get to the shops. When is the best time to go?

a) Before lessons – British shops are open from 8-12.30 and 1.30-5.30.
b) In the evening – shops in Britain stay open till 8pm.
c) At lunchtime. Shops in Britain are usually open from about 9.30-5.30

6. You notice that a lot of people seem to call you “love”. Your landlady said it, a shop assistant said it, and a person you asked for directions in the street said it. Why?

a) It’s quite usual in Britain to call people who you don’t know “love”.
b) They like you a lot.
c) You didn’t understand correctly. They really said something different.

7. After school, some other students invite you to go for a walk. But you don’t want to be late for dinner with your host family. Do you have enough time?

a) Yes, for an hour or so. Dinner will probably be at about 7.
b) No problem. British people rarely eat before 8.30.
c) No. Dinner will probably be at about 6pm. You have to go straight home.

8. It’s Sunday lunchtime – the most important meal of the week. You're having roast lamb, potatoes and carrots, a mixed salad and strawberries. On the table there’s a little pot of mint sauce – vinegar containing chopped mint leaves. What do you do with it?

a) Put a small spoonful on the roast lamb.
b) Put it on the mixed salad.
c) Put it on the strawberries.

What are the uses and limitations of a quiz like this? It obviously can’t prepare the students for every difference they’re going to meet. But some are more important than others. The questions include areas where there is a real possibility of creating hostility or offence – like the example of queuing – and here the quiz does aim to give information.

With some of the other situations, the aim is different. Take the questions on food – they may never meet either Welsh rabbit or mint sauce while they’re in Britain. But it is quite likely that the food in general, and the way it is presented, will be different. The specific questions are important only as examples and as a springboard for discussion : What would happen if you got something like this wrong, and what could you do to make sure you don’t. If they poured the mint sauce on their strawberries, it would be unlikely to offend anyone – but a reaction of amusement on the part of the host family could be horribly embarrassing. So the question leads on to a discussion of : What would you do if you saw something on the table which you didn’t recognise? What would be best – to keep quiet, guess and pour the mint sauce on your salad (how do you think the family would react and how would you feel?) or to say immediately “We don’t have this in my country. What is it?”

The quiz also risks making generalisations that may not be true in specific instances. Maybe the student will stay with a family that doesn’t eat until 8.30 – not everyone is typical. And what’s the answer to (1) ? In some families it might be (a), in others (c). Again, awareness of the dangers of stereotyping can be raised by asking them to think about stereotypes of their own culture – Italians eat pasta every day. True for many but not for all.

The aim of the quiz is therefore firstly to make the students aware that there will be cultural differences, secondly to forewarn them about some of the major areas where there is the danger of causing offence, and thirdly to lead into a discussion of how they can avoid misunderstandings and what to do if they arise.

Quiz Answers

1 c (or possibly a); 2 b; 3b; 4 b; 5 c (b on some days in large towns); 6 a, 7 c (possibly a); 8 a.

Notes

For a great discussion of the British use of the address form love, see this article from The Guardian

Teaching Intensive Courses : The Role of On-Line Materials

2007-04-19T17:43:00.000+02:00

For some students, learning a language gradually over an extended period is not an option. They need the language now – or even better, yesterday. This may be the case for instance with a student who has just changed jobs and needs a far higher language competence for the new job than s/he currently has. Or then there is the student who knows s/he needs to improve in English, but can’t or doesn’t want to commit to an extended period of regular lessons. These are the types of student who often end up on an intensive course. This type of course however presents two specific problems :

Overload : “Intensive” has different definitions, but may mean anything up to six contact hours a day – or even more on courses which include lunch and dinner with the teacher. Unless the course includes constant changes of activity and approach, such intensity can often lead to overload and fatigue - especially if students are at a low level and or perhaps in a one-to-one situation. The morning sessions may go well, but if the course then continues with yet more new material, and the same approach the “after-lunch dip” and late afternoon tiredness may make the intensity ultimately counter-productive.

Lack of Follow-Up : Another problem of these courses is the potential lack of follow-up. The students may end the course feeling that they’ve progressed a lot, but what has been learnt is then just as quickly forgotten. This is again especially crucial for lower level students, who may obtain no long-term benefit at all from the course if they do not have some way of consolidating what has been learnt. If they are not later going to follow an on-going course, they need to develop the ability to study autonomously as part of the intensive programme –so that they can then go on doing so afterwards.

One way of dealing with both these problems is to use an on-line course as part of the intensive programme – I usually use them in the hour immediately after lunch. On-line courses have the advantages that :

They provide a variety of approach and a completely different focus from the morning session.

They allow the student to work on material that recycles what s/he has been doing previously on the course, helping to reduce overload and ensuring immediate consolidation.

If it is a group course, they insert at least one personalised element into the programme – each student can work on activities which correspond to his/her individual linguistic or communicative needs.

They allow the students to work at their own pace for at least one section of the course.

They allow the students to continue studying after the intensive programme finishes, using an approach which they are familiar with and have already learnt how to use. The Netlanguages courses for example, which we use on intensive courses, allow the students access for at least six months after the initial enrolment. They can therefore continue working through the activities, completing those which they didn’t have time for on the course and taking advantage of the opportunity for contact with an on-line tutor for spoken tutorials (via Skype) and written work (corrected by E-mail).

I wrote about the problems of intensive courses previously, in Parts One and Two of the article Community Language Learning, where I suggested that two ways to inject variety into the course were to devote the afternoon firstly to self-access work and secondly to a session using a completely different methodological approach, such as CLL. The on-line work described here is of course just one way of organising the self-access period – but with the advantage that it does not have to end with the course.

Deciding What and When to Correct

2007-04-14T13:43:00.000+02:00

I live here for five years.

On hearing an incorrect form like this, you have to decide what to do about it. Should it be corrected immediately? Left to form the basis of a remedial lesson? Offered to the student for self-correction? Corrected “surreptitiously”? Or ignored completely?

What you decide to do may depend on any one or more of a number of factors :

First of all, what do you believe to be the nature of the language learning process? Will the incorrect form be reinforced if it is not corrected, with the risk that it becomes “fossilised” – that is, irremediably fixed in the learner’s interlanguage – his or her personal version of the language. Or is there a “natural order” of language acquisition for language items which cannot be changed or hurried along by correction or any other form of formal teaching (1)?

Secondly, what is the objective of the activity and what’s the relationship of the incorrect form to that objective? If the form above occurred during a controlled practice activity on the present perfect, it would be counterproductive not to correct it immediately. The objective of the activity is to ensure students understand the form and use of the structure, and can produce it accurately.

On the other hand, in a fluency activity instant correction would distract the students and might well work against the objective – communicating effectively with whatever language students have at their disposal, regardless of how imperfect it is. There may still be a place for correction at the end of the activity, but unless communication has broken down entirely, you probably won’t want to interrupt.

And a third example, if it occurred as a passing comment during a reading activity – The text says x about this town but I live here for 5 years and didn’t know – there would be no relationship between the error and the aim of the activity, and your decision would likely be based on one of the other considerations listed here. For example …..

What will be the effect on the student(s) of correcting or not correcting? If the student who made the comment in the reading lesson was a shy, weak person who rarely offered any contribution to the lesson, you might decide that correcting the error is less important than boosting the student’s confidence by reacting positively to the communicative value of the utterance. There is, however, always the possibility that by leaving the error you may confuse other students, who identified it as wrong but then, when you didn’t correct, weren’t sure. In this case, “surreptitious” correction can be useful – the teacher simply reacts to the student by parroting back the correct form . "Oh really? You’ve lived here for five years? I didn’t know that.” The student who used the incorrect form may not “notice” it, but those who are focusing on it, will.

There are also students who want constant correction and others who don’t want it at all. Correct too much and you annoy the second group, don’t correct enough and you lose the confidence of the first, who feel that you are not “teaching” them.

Is the incorrect form a “one-off” problem, or is it something you’ve heard recurring frequently – either from that individual or the group as a whole. If so, remedial work may be necessary.

And finally, is it an error or a mistake. In ELT, these are not synonyms but have a precise technical meaning. If the incorrect form is due to a lack of knowledge on the student’s part – for example, if the student is a beginner who has never met the present perfect – it is an error. In this case, simple correction is unlikely to be helpful and is in fact more likely to confuse the student. The form needs to be taught, and until the students arrive at that point in the syllabus, it can generally be safely ignored. The same may be true if students are at intermediate level and the teacher assumes that they have met the form. If correction draws a response of blank looks, then even if it has been taught, it has not been learnt. It may have been misunderstood, or simply forgotten, and needs re-teaching. (2)

On the other hand, an intermediate or advanced student might say the same thing but then, when the teacher indicated a problem, could self-correct. In this case, the correct form is a mistake – caused by the pressure of the communicative situation. A common example of this is the way students often understand a new form or use when it is first presented, use it accurately throughout the controlled and semi-controlled practice phases, but then become inaccurate in freer practice activities. In controlled and semi-controlled practice, students have little to do except concentrate on producing the form itself. In free practice (and fluency activities) this changes. They now have to understand what someone else has said, decide what they want to say in reply, and formulate their response in English – all in real time. This puts far greater stress on the brain, which responds by “simplifying” – and the result is a mistake.

Mistakes then are a sign, not that the students do not “know” the form, but that they have not yet fully acquired or assimilated it - not at least enough for it to be produced in spontaneous communication. If your students expect correction, or if your view of language learning is that constant “noticing” will aid acquisition, then you might ask them to self-correct. If they don’t, or if you believe that only time and further “authentic” exposure to the form can lead to natural acquisition, you might let it go.

Your decision of what and when to correct will therefore depend on a number of variables, and your decisions may differ from group to group, or student to student. This is also true of how you correct – something that we’ll look at in detail in a future article.

NOTES

1. For a view of error based on the idea of a natural acquisition order see James Trotta's article Understanding Learner Errors

2. In their book Correction, Bartram and Walton suggest that it is often impossible to distinguish between an error and a mistake and that it is therefore not a useful distinction. This is one of the very few things in the book that I don’t agree with. If you define, as I do, a mistake as something which the students can produce accurately under controlled conditions and can therefore self-correct, I find the distinction between an error and a mistake to be a criterion which I frequently apply when I’m deciding what, when and how to correct. Their own definition, which is vaguer, does however lead to more grey areas and I understand why they feel it to be less useful.

Making ESL Learning Fun for Preschool Children

2007-04-05T13:10:00.000+02:00

Preschoolers are cute and funny but they certainly have a minute attention span, and that can give pre-K teachers a headache if they do not have enough good ideas ready to hand. This article by Shelley Vernon will give you access to a wealth of great ideas, games and stories to make your preschool ESL classes more fun and effective.

The right ESL pre-k teaching tools can make learning easier and more fun. Take, for example, the research work of Dr. Howard Gardner who came up with the theory of multiple intelligences. This essentially rules out the idea that the best way for children to learn is by sitting at a table doing "desk work". Instead, Gardner pinpoints different "intelligences" which are essentially learning styles. Everyone has a specific intelligence (or a few specific intelligences) that defines how he or she learns best. This means that in order to reach all the children in a classroom, different learning methods must be made available to them. The multiple intelligences are :

Linguistic intelligence: Learning and using spoken and written language
Logical-mathematical intelligence: Logically analysing problems, detecting patterns, reasoning.
Musical intelligence: Performing, composing, and appreciating musical patterns.
Bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence: Using the whole body or parts of the body to solve problems.
Spatial intelligence: Recognizing patterns of wide space and confined areas.
Interpersonal intelligence: Effectively working with others.
Intrapersonal intelligence: Understanding self and feelings.

By using games and other activities in your classroom, you'll be able to create a class period that explores various intelligences and reaches a variety of children instead of just the linguistic learners.

Additionally, it's important to remember that preschoolers simply learn best through play. Just think about how preschoolers learn to count. They may count how many cars they have lined up or how many blocks they've stacked.

Here is an example of how to transform a mundane activity into an exciting game that stimulates the children's imagination and encourages better retention of vocabulary. Imagine you are teaching colours. Tell your children they are pirates who have lost their treasure overboard and they must dive down and retrieve it. Spread coloured objects or cards around the floor. Demonstrate by taking in a big breath, hold your breath and dive down and pick up one of the coloured objects, then come up for air and ask the children to name the colour, or you name it, depending on whether you are doing a speaking or listening activity. Then tell the children which colours to dive down and collect. You could make it even more dramatic by dimming the lights when the children dive down and turning them up when they surface. The children can then sort the different coloured treasure by stowing it safely in treasure chests (boxes or bags - one for each colour).

Any paediatrician will tell you that the best way to encourage a large vocabulary in your children is to read to them everyday. For young children learning English you need super simple stories, and in an ideal world, stories that reinforce the language and vocabulary you are teaching in class. You can access a free ESL preschool story with games in the resource box below the article.

As well as using games and stories you'll need to take into consideration a few other things:

Preschool children have small attention spans so change your activities every five minutes or so because if they go longer than that, they'll start getting restless and you'll spend more time trying to keep their attention than actually doing the activity.

Teach a small amount of language in any given session. For this age group, try to introduce three words at a time and then add to the list as you see the children understand the meaning of the words you've already introduced.

Engage the children on multiple levels. This includes using fine and large motor movement, singing, talking, listening and looking. For example, you could have a game where the children need to move around the room to stand next to a picture or object of the word they heard you say.

Competition in the preschool classroom causes undo stress on the children. Avoid playing games or doing activities that have winners and losers. Either have the class work together to "win" as a group or do not distinguish between winning and losing. On the same note, be sure to be supportive and encouraging to all of the learners in your class.

Preschool children can get very excitable so vary excitable games with quiet ones to balance out the energy level in the classroom.

Preschoolers are very visual. Bring in real objects whenever possible. When it is not possible, find colourful and vivid pictures.

Preschooler children usually are not yet reading and writing (at least not to large extent) in their own language, so don't expect them to do it in a second language. At this age, you can expect them to listen and understand first. After a while, they will begin speaking individual words and short phrases.

Themes work well in the preschool classroom. Focus your vocabulary learning on groups of similar types of words such as foods, colours, numbers, animals, families and body parts. You can work in short phrases that are relevant to your theme.

Be well prepared, plan more than you think you will use and move seamlessly from one game or activity to another. Use colouring or similar quiet activities when the children need some downtime.

Repeat, review and revise. You need to frequently review the vocabulary that you've previously taught them or they will quickly forget it.

If you have a particularly naughty or rough student in the class, keep him or her close to you. Ask him or her to be your special helper and be sure to give a lot of praise when you see him or her behaving appropriately.

Above all, just remember what you liked to do in school. If you were bored, you probably didn't get much out of the class and the same is true for preschool and pre-k children. For free games and an illustrated story written for ESL preschoolers, visit the link in the box below the article. Help them have fun and before they know it, they'll be learning!

Shelley Vernon has helped 1000s of teachers be an inspiration to their pupils Improve the effectiveness of your lessons and enjoy yourself more. Receive free preschool ESL games and stories now on http://www.teachingenglishgames.com/3-5.htm

Acknowledgements

Article Source : Ezine Articles
Photo provided under Creative Commons Licence by Elton Lin via flickr

Further Reading ...

Using Balloons in the EFL Classroom

2007-03-31T12:29:00.000+02:00

One of the facilities on the hit counter that I use to keep track of the number of visitors to the ELT Notebook is the possibility to see what people have typed into the various search engines to bring them to this site. One search yesterday was for Using balloons in ESL.

The searcher ended up on this site because in the post Warm-Up Your Classroom! I’d mentioned the idea of using balloons to create a more fun environment in the classroom. But it got me thinking – how else could balloons be used?

Here are a few ideas I’ve come up with. If you’ve got any more, leave a comment.

Use them to present emotions : Draw different faces on each balloon to introduce She’s happy, he’s angry etc.

Dialogue presentation : There are occasions when you haven’t got, or don’t want to use, a recording of a dialogue you want to use, but students can sometimes get lost and lose track of who’s speaking if the teacher just reads it out. Use a different colour balloon with a face drawn on it for each character. Introduce the characters before you start, and then hold up the relevant balloon as each character speaks.

For practising numbers and colours with children : Take a large number of different coloured balloons into the classroom and put them in the middle of the room. Divide the class into three teams. They have three minutes to make as many balloons stick on the wall as they can, by rubbing them on their hair or clothes to create static electricity. At the end of the three minutes get them to count their balloons – the team with the most wins. And then take it on to other questions – How many red balloons are there? How many yellow balloons are there? How many balloons are there all together?

A general knowledge quiz for teens or adults (1), possibly as receptive practice for subject-object oriented questions : Write a series of general knowledge questions on slips of paper, fold them up and tuck one inside each balloon before you blow it up. Put all the balloons at the front of the room, and divide the class into teams of three or four. One person from each team runs to the front grabs a balloon and takes it back to the team who then have to burst it in any way they like. The team then tries to answer the question, writing down either the answer or We give up on the back of the slip of paper. Another member of the team then takes the slip of paper to the teacher, and goes to get another balloon. When all the balloons have been used up, the teacher reads out the questions which each team got, the other teams suggest what their answers would have been, and then the teacher reads out the original team’s answer. If it’s correct, they get a point. The team which answered the most questions correctly wins. (2)

A present perfect/simple past practice game: Before the game starts everyone thinks of a few questions they want to ask the group, starting Has anyone ever …… (for example, Has anyone ever climbed a mountain? Has anyone ever seen a UFO? Has anyone ever ridden an elephant ?) The students stand in a circle and the first person hits a balloon into the air and asks their question. Anyone who wants to answer steps forward into the circle and catches the balloon as it comes down. While they answer, explaining when, where etc they did whatever it was, they must keep the balloon bouncing gently in the air. When they finish they ask their own question, an if someone steps forward to answer, sit down. If no-one wants to answer, they must ask another question. The game ends when everyone has asked and answered a question and is sitting down.

To practise a particular lexical field – for example, fruit and vegetables, animals, clothes etc. The students are in pairs, and each pair has an inflated balloon and a marker. They write one word connected with the field on the balloon, and then at a signal from the teacher, everyone sends their balloons into the air and catches a new one as they come down. They write a new word and the balloons go up again. Each time they get a new balloon they must, of course, write a word which is different from those already written there. The game goes on till there are nine or ten words written on the balloon, at which point the teacher gives each pair a second, plain balloon. They then have to draw on the new balloon all the items that were written on the old one, and the picture balloons are then sent into the air and redistributed. At that point there are two possibilities : each pair looks at the pictures and writes a list of all the objects it shows. The first pair to take a correct list to the teacher wins. And/Or : the pairs then have to go and find the balloon with words written on it which matches the balloon they now have with pictures. (3)

OK, balloons aren’t strictly necessary for all of these games – you could do them just using pen and paper. But if you want to get your students moving around a bit, to add a kinaesthetic element to the lesson, then balloons can be a useful aid.

Notes

1. Games involving bursting balloons are not recommended for children’s classes.

2. An article describing another game along similar lines can be found on One Stop English

3. Another balloon game practising lexical fields can be found on Genki English

Preparing for Roleplays

2007-03-25T14:06:00.000+02:00

Why don’t roleplays always work as well as they might? Here I’d like to suggest that it’s sometimes because students are thrown into the activity without sufficient preparation.

What is a roleplay? It’s a label which can be applied to a lot of classroom activities from short What would you say? situations to much more complex activities which involve understanding a lot of background information. In a roleplay, the students may act as themselves, responding as they would genuinely respond in a similar activity, or they may have to take on a persona which is not their own.

Inevitably, the more complex the roleplay – the more information there is to absorb, and the further it is from the student’s real experience – the more difficult it becomes and the more problems are liable to arise. Some of the most common are :

Students can’t think of anything to say and “dry up” in the middle

They can’t remember the situation or the information which they have to convey, grab the rolecard and just read out what was written there.

Because they can’t think of anything else, they start saying things which are totally unrealistic for the situation and deflect the roleplay into a comedy sketch - which may be fun, but doesn’t provide the opportunity to practise the language you were expecting they would use.

Students are so focused on remembering what they have to do that they have no chance to think about how they want to express themselves, and as well as causing a natural drop in accuracy, any linguistic focus which you expected to come out of the roleplay is lost – unless in the follow-up stage you bombard students with their “mistakes”.

This last point is of course a normal consequence of any fluency accuracy – the more students are concentrating on what they want to say, the less they can concentrate on how they say it – and will happen in a genuine communication situation as well as in the classroom. But roleplays, which ask students to remember unfamiliar information or even to invent information on the spot, often present an even higher communicative challenge than the real situation would.

To reduce this level of challenge and avoid the problems listed above :

Ensure that the roleplay is not entirely outside the students’ experience. For example, if roleplaying a job interview, choose a job which the students know something about or might be liable to apply for – not usually a problem with adults, while with teenagers you might use the context of a holiday job in Britain (or wherever) to help them improve their English.

Make sure the language they will need is at the forefront of their minds. If the roleplay is being used as the final stage of a unit focusing on a particular language area ( for example, job interviews often crop up in textbooks linked to the present perfect), then the language preparation will take care of itself. However, if you are using it as just a general fluency activity – for instance in a conversation class – you will need to predict and revise the language that the students will need before starting.

Ensure that they have “learnt” the role and all the background information before they start. Give out the rolecards with the necessary information and pair each student with another with the same role. Once the students have had a chance to read the information through, student A turns his card face down while student B continues looking at hers and asks factual questions to test her partners knowledge of the facts. If A can’t remember, she tells him. At the end they swap, and A asks the questions.

As far as possible let them decide what they want to say. In a job interview roleplay, for instance, the interviewers might plan what questions they wanted to ask the candidate, and the candidates might plan what questions they want to ask about the job and the organisation. Both groups could also try and predict the questions that the other side might ask, and decide how they would answer them.

At this point the students should be ready to enact the roleplay. However, there is no reason that they should do it only once, and the first enactment can be seen as a sort of “dress rehearsal”, during which you monitor noting mistakes, and they find out just how well they have assimilated all the information. After the follow-up, and after they have had a chance to check any information that they weren’t sure about, they repeat the roleplay with a different partner. And by now the students should be confident enough of what they’re doing to perform the roleplay realistically and well.

Further Reading ...

Developing Bottom-Up Decoding Skills for Listening

2007-03-18T14:17:00.000+01:00

In the article Planning a Listening Lesson, I argued that listening involved both top-down and bottom-up (1) processing working simultaneously, and that we needed to focus on both when teaching listening. But given that, the lesson illustrated in the article remained decidedly top-heavy on the top-down side. Is there a place for greater focus on bottom-down processing skills?

First of all, what are bottom-up decoding skills? In the previous article I glossed bottom-up decoding as meaning moving from recognition of individual sounds to recognition of the meaning of whole utterances. Here’s a more detailed (though by no means complete) list.

· Recognising individual phonemes
· Recognising phoneme sequences which form words
· Recognising word boundaries
· Recognising stressed syllables
· Recognising intonation contours
· Recognising syllable reduction due to weak forms and/or elision
· Recognising catenation
· Recognising assimilation (2)

and so on. As you can see, they tend to be phonological (3), and I would argue that it is in focusing systematically on phonology during the course that we can best teach bottom-up processing skills. In Planning a Listening Lesson I suggested that a focus can, and should, be built into the listening lesson – but it will inevitably remain non-systematic, dependent on what “comes up” in the listening texts chosen.

We also need a more systematic approach, based on our knowledge of the difficulties our learners have, which will be largely dependent on the differences between the phonological system of English and that of their first language (L1). For example, Arabic speakers will need to work on the distinction between /p/ and /b/, Finns will have difficulty with /g/ and /k/, Germans will tend to pronounce a final /d/ as /t/ or /v/ as /w/ and so on. Problems will also arise with stress and intonation – e.g. Italians will have difficulty recognising the meaning of contrastive stress. (4)

In teaching phonology, we need of course to deal with both receptive and productive aspects. Students need to reach a productive phonological level of at least intelligibility. But I am here concerned only with receptive aspects – whether they are able to recognise these features when listening, and therefore fully understand what is being said.

Once we know what our learners problems are liable to be, we can then look at our syllabus and analyse which items which we are teaching will bring up those problems. And a phonological focus can then be built into the lessons presenting, practising and recycling those items, or in some cases planned as an independent section of the lesson.

How might you integrate a receptive phonological focus into the lesson? Here’s one example, based on a problem encountered by Italian beginner students – distinguishing between numbers such as thirteen – thirty - fourteen – forty etc. The problem occurs firstly because of difficulty distinguishing between the –teen and –ty pairs and, at beginners level is often due to a failure to recognise differing stress patterns- thirTEEN versus THIRty, differing vowel length and the final consonant in the “teens”.

However, the problem is made worse by the fact that there is also confusion between thirteen/fourteen and thirty/forty. Italians tend to hear both initial consonants as /f/ and do not distinguish between the two vowel sounds. Therefore, an Italian hearing thirteen may equally well interpret it as thirty, fourteen or forty.

While numbers are being taught we therefore need to focus on these problems. For individual sounds, one technique that can be used is minimal pairs : students are asked to distinguish between two words which differ only in the target sounds – for instance, free and three. The words are listed in two columns on the board : column A has all the words with one sound - free, Finn, Fred, fort, roof – and column B those with the others – three, thin, thread, thought, Ruth. The teacher then says one word and the students have to decide if it comes from column A or B. If you want to take the activity on to the productive level, the roles are then reversed – a student says a word and the teacher identifies it.

The problem with minimal pair work is that it is often difficult to find pairs which are known to beginners, or even useful to them, and if less common words are used the lesson tends to degenerate into a long explanation of the meanings of fug and thug and so on. An alternative is therefore to use a list of words which contain the problem sound, and which the students already know or which are easily illustrated: think – thing – three – thin – thank – bath – thumb etc. The teacher says each word in turn, sometimes pronouncing them correctly and at other times substituting the problem sound - “fank”, for example. The students listen and say if each word is correct or incorrect.

To go back to our number problem, the minimal pair technique can also be used to focus on the stress difference in the complete number. The –teen numbers are put in column A and the –ty numbers in column B. The teacher again reads out one of each pair and the students identify the correct column. This can later be extended to four columns, A – thirteen B - thirty C – fourteen D – forty, asking the students to make the full distinctions using stress and phonemic cues simultaneously.

Further practice can be given with the target words incorporated into sentences. The students have a worksheet with multiple choice answers :

A : What’s the time? B : It’s ten 13 / 30 / 14 / 40
A : What’s your address ? B : It’s 13 / 30 / 14 / 40 London Road.

Or alternatively a gap :

A : How much is this CD? B : It’s ………………………… Euro.
A : How old are you David? B : I’m ………………………….

The teacher then reads out the sentences with the missing numbers (40, 13, 30, 14 respectively) and the students listen and tick or write them down.

This last activity is, to all extents and purposes a targeted dictation. Traditional dictation went out of vogue for some time after the development of the communicative approach, and when it was brought back (5) tended to be top-down rather than bottom-up as in the traditional variety. However, bottom-up dictations can be useful when they are targeted to help students with one specific decoding problem – as here.

Minimal pair work and targeted dictations can be used with other phonological decoding problems – for example weak forms. Just two examples :

a) again at beginner level, students may have difficulty recognising the the difference between is and was, especially if the preceding pronoun is also weakened. Sentences like ……………… in Rome for three days; ………………… my best friend ; ……………………… very tired can be used, with the teacher saying at random he is or he was.

b) at a higher level, the same thing can be done to help students hear the weak form of have in sentences like She should have put it away. The activity uses various sentences which may be either she modal + infinitive or she modal + have done :

She should / should have put it away; It must /must have hurt a lot; She should /should have let me know; You should/ should have run home; They couldn’t /couldn’t have cut it up smaller; They can’t /can’t have shut the gate; They should/should have split the profits; It must /must have upset you.

For other features, different techniques are necessary. For contrastive stress, students can be asked to listen to a sentence and then choose the implied meaning. The sentence might be John can’t do it now and the choices a) … but he can do it later b) but Mary can. The correct answer will depend on whether the stressed word was John or now.

But what about traditional dictations where the teacher reads a passage and the students write it down? This can be useful as an occasional activity, if it’s used to revise some of the features which have previously been targeted individually. I generally use a short paragraph or dialogue which the students have already worked on earlier in the course and use a technique very similar to the one I described in Planning the Listening Lesson :

Start by reading the whole text all while the students simply listen.
Read the text phrase by phrase keeping to a natural speed, rhythm etc. Continue reading each phrase while the students write, until you see everyone has finished. If there are clearly problems, slow the phrase down and clarify the pronunciation until they get it, and then speed up again so that they have the chance to hear the naturally pronounced phrase again.
By the end they should have an accurate version of the text (disregarding spelling problems, which are not a primary objective here). However, if you have a very large class it may be difficult to be sure of this. In this case let them compare their version with a partner, asking them to underline anything which is different. Then reread the passage so they can check which was the correct version.
At the end, let them look back at the original text in their books and make any final corrections, including spelling.

Some textbooks, for example Intermediate Express (6), do attempt to build in a systematic phonological focus into the course. However, textbooks have the disadvantage of being aimed at a very wide target audience. They will inevitably focus on the most widely experienced problems, but will tend to ignore those which are specific to only one or two language groups. They also only have time to focus on something once – whereas if it is a particular problem for the learners, it will need to be recycled regularly. It is only the teacher who can decide what the specific problems of his/her students are and ensure that activities are built in systematically to deal with them.

Notes

1. For an explanation of both these terms, see the article Teaching Listening : Top Down or Bottom Up?

2. For an explanation of all these terms, see the article Why Don't They Understand?

3. For an alternative list and references to follow up, see the site of the publishing company Abax

4. The site English Language Learning and Teaching contains an excellent summary of the phonological problems of many major language groups.

5. Davis and Rinvolucri Dictation : New Methods New Possibilities (CUP)

6. International Express (various levels) OUP

Acknowledgement

Photo provided under Creative Commons Licence by tilman via flickr

Planning A Listening Lesson

2007-03-17T17:36:00.000+01:00

In two previous articles I looked firstly at the problems students have when listening to spoken English, and secondly at two approaches to processing the spoken word : top-down and bottom up listening. Briefly, bottom-up processing involves decoding sounds to understand words, words to understand phrases and so on, while top-down processing means interpreting the text in the light of background knowledge – whether of the world or of the language – in order to decide meaning, but if these terms are new to you I suggest reading both previous articles before going on with this.

In the last article, I suggested that focusing exclusively on either a top-down or bottom-up approach was insufficient when teaching listening, and that listening lessons need to develop the students’ competence in both areas. Apart from anything else, listening generally involves using both approaches simultaneously, with each one compensating for the deficiencies of the other.

How might we do this in the classroom? In this article, I want to look at a possible structure for a listening lesson which draws on both approaches. To illustrate it I shall use a listening text which is available on the web and which you can, if you wish, use with your own classes. The text comes from ESL Podcards (1). It is a scripted monologue talking about the life of the actor, Sean Connery and would be suitable for a class from about FCE level up. I suggest you listen to it, without looking at the transcript, before reading on. As soon as you finish, note down a) anything which was going on in your mind, relative to understanding the text, as you listened, and b) what you remember of the information given.

Listening to the text without the transcript is an essential part of planning a listening lesson. Unless the text in question is on a topic which they know more about and understand better than you, students are unlikely to be able to retain any more of the text than you are. You therefore need to identify what and how much this is. Similarly, if something causes a comprehension problem for you, it is unrealistic to expect the students to understand it without help. If possible listen to the recording in the same room and using the same equipment as you will during the lesson – acoustics and equipment quality can seriously affect the intelligibility of any recording.

As I listened to the text, I found myself first of all focusing on particular facts which either I hadn’t known and which surprised me, or which I had known but had forgotten. These were the details that I remembered after the first listening. Even these however were hazy. Immediately after listening I told my son that Connery had won the Mr Universe competition, convinced that that was what I had heard.

As I listened, I also found myself consciously recognising that I hadn’t understood certain words immediately, but that when I heard the following words I was backtracking to fill in the gap. This happened for example with the phrase And like in the first paragraph, which I initially decoded as unlike but then corrected as I heard the rest of the sentence. It happened again with the phrase he has been vociferous, where he has was an “acoustic blur” which I only actually decoded after hearing been vociferous. This is the type of item which you will only pick up if you listen to the recording before reading the tapescript, as once you "know" what is there, you will automatically "hear" it.

Once you’ve listened to the text and analysed it in this way, you can then listen again while you look at the transcript. This time you’re looking for items that may not have been a problem for you, but which you know might be for the students. This might be vocabulary items or structures which they don’t know, pronunciation features or any of the features of spoken English which were discussed in the first article.

As with any lesson, the activities you actually use will be determined by your objectives. Having listened to the text I decided that my skills objectives (2) for this text would be:

The students will :

a) use prediction of content to aid their gist understanding of the text.
b) practise extracting detailed information from the text.
c) improve their ability to understand various features of pronunciation such as weak forms, elision and assimilation.

The first part of my lesson would focus would be Listening for Gist and would focus on the first aim. During the Gist Listening stage the student is encouraged to listen for overall understanding of the message of the text without necessarily retaining all the minor details, or being able to repeat back the exact words the speaker used.

Warm-Up : This stage aims to activate the students knowledge of the topic. Show the class two pictures of Sean Connery, one from the Bond days and one more recent. Check the students recognise him, then divide them into groups of about three and ask them to tell each other everything they know about him. When they finish, elicit their ideas and write everything they say on the board without commenting on its accuracy. If they have contradictory ideas, both ideas go up.

Listening for Gist : Play the recording while the students listen to find out :

a) which of the facts on the board are confirmed by the text
b) which are contradicted
c) if the text gives any other information

The students may need to hear the tape more than once to complete the task - ask them after the first play if they'd like a repetition. Be careful however not to accept a 'No' answer just from the stronger students. Check with the weaker, less confident ones too and allow the listening phase to run at their pace.

Follow Up : After listening, the students discuss these questions in pairs before their answers are elicited at full class level. If there is any difference of opinion, the teacher again does not confirm the correct answer, but writes both ideas up. S/he then replays the tape pausing after it mentions each piece of information listed on the board. At this stage, the teacher’s focus is (surreptitiously) on the students who got it wrong or didn’t hear the information at all the first time. Often, once students know what they are listening for, they are able to hear the answer accurately. If not, the teacher puts a question mark next to the different ideas and tells the students they’ll find out later.

At this point the students would seem to be at the same stage as I was after my initial listening to the recording. However, there is a difference. Whilst I may not have retained all the facts in the text, and while my memory may even have distorted those which I focused on, as a native speaker I certainly heard and understood all the other information which the tape contained at the moment of listening. Understanding and retention are two different processes, and need to be treated as such in the classroom. The next part of the lesson therefore aims to check if the students can actually understand the information given without asking them to retain it :

Listening for detailed information : the teacher gives out a worksheet with questions such as : Connery is English; He wasn’t highly educated; Acting was his first job; He won the Mr Universe competition; His first job as an actor was in the theatre; and so on. Notice that the questions, although calling for more detailed comprehension than in the first stage, don’t call for understanding of any words, structures or pronunciation features which I suspect the students won’t recognise – for example the word undertaker, or the pronunciation features which I earlier identified as liable to be problematic.

Students first discuss the questions in pairs, marking off any that have already been answered and any that they think they remember the answer to. The tape is then replayed once or twice and the students confirm, change or complete their answers as they listen. The follow up is the same as for the gist stage.

So far the lesson has focused on what the students can understand. In order to improve their listening ability, however, I would argue that we also need to focus on what they don’t understand, and improve their ability to recognise it the next time. I’m not here talking about structure or vocabulary which they’ve never met and therefore are unlikely to understand unless the text contains clear contextual clues as to the meaning (in which case inferring meaning from context would be a useful objective for a lesson using that text). But rather about words or structures which they have met, but simply failed to decode.

The text contains a number of examples of pronunciation features of connected speech such as weak forms and assimilation. Some of these, as a native speaker, I was able to decode immediately using a purely bottom-down approach because I expected them to be pronounced that way – in the case of most native speakers this is, of course, a non-conscious expectation. Two examples of this are the pronunciation of would have been with the weakening of both have and been and the assimilation in had to which changes the /d/ to a /t/ sound. For others, like the examples of and like and has been mentioned above, bottom-up decoding was insufficient even for me and I had to use a top-down approach – deciding what must have been there based on my recognition of what came next and my knowledge of the language.

Students need to be encouraged to use this top-down approach, but we can also help by ensuring that they recognise these pronunciation features so that they too are expecting them. The final part of the lesson focuses on this aim :

Listening for language : the teacher gives out a worksheet which contains examples of the pronunciation features which s/he has predicted will cause the students problems. In addition, if any of the answers to the tasks in the first two stages are still unconfirmed (those with question marks still against them) the teacher writes that section of text on the board gapping the words which appear to be causing problems. Here is an example of the items I might gap from the final paragraph of this text :

Throughout ………….. career ……………. been vociferous in his support …………….independent Scotland …………. ambassador ………………. country. He received a knighthood ……………. Queen Elizabeth in July 2000 ……….. so now we …………………….. Sir Sean Connery.

The students look at the gapped sentences and, in pairs, predict what they think will be the missing words, leaving any which they can’t think of. The teacher then replays the recording, this time pausing after each gap. The students should have the chance to hear each phrase several times – repeat it yourself two or three times keeping the same intonation, speed and pronunciation features while they correct or complete the transcript. Elicit what they think and write it on the board. If everyone has understood, go straight to the next phrase. However, if some haven’t, put up alternative versions without confirming or correcting and then repeat the phrase again a few times – this time gradually slowing down and progressively clarifying the pronunciation. Then once every student has understood, progressively speed up again adding in the reduction. Add the sentence to the board and ask students how each element is pronounced. You can also model alternative versions with greater or lesser reductionsWrite the words in phonological script to give them a written model of the pronunciation. In this way, they are more likely to “expect” those words to be pronounced in that way the next time they encounter them, and their bottom-up processing abilities should gradually improve. (3)

What about other features of the text that might cause problems, such as unknown vocabulary and structure? There are various items in this text which I wouldn’t necessarily expect students to know - undertaker, reservations, suave, tight, tall order, tuxedo, suggested that he audition etc. But none of them really blocks comprehension of the text and I have chosen here not to focus on them – indeed my tasks were designed so as to avoid them. Keep in mind that you can’t do everything every single time. Select the objectives which seem most important and design activities to focus on those.

However, by the end of the lesson many students want to have understood everything, and I would always finish by handing out the transcript and letting students listen again while they follow it. They would then have the chance to ask about the meaning of any words or expressions which they did not fully understand.

Notes

1. A note about the choice of the text. I was not, in this instance looking for authentic material – I’ll write another time about using authentic material in the classroom. My first reason for choosing this text was that it is freely available on the web and can be accessed by everyone – had I chosen a text from a coursebook, it would have been harder for those people not using that book to check what I was talking about. I also discarded anything from the web which is video-based as not everyone has a computer in the classroom – podcasts can either be listened to straight from the computer or downloaded – and which did not provide a transcript. For the purposes of this article, I would have preferred to use a dialogue than a monologue, but couldn’t find anything which met all those criteria. If you know of anything suitable, please leave a comment with the web address.

Notice also that this text has a primarily transactional purpose – its main aim is to convey information. The features which it contains are therefore different from those which would be contained in a text which was primarily interactional in intent – ie which focused mainly on establishing or promoting the relationship between the speakers.

The lesson described is therefore one which is suitable for a primarily transactional, audio-only, monologue. Change any of those parameters and both the objectives of the lesson and, consequently the activities used, might change.

2. When teaching listening, which can so easily cause demotivation for students, I think it is important that the teacher also builds affective objectives into each sequence of activities. These will affect not only what is done but, even more importantly, how it is done. Discussion of this aspect would, however, make this article too long and detract from the other points. I will therefore come back and analyses this lesson again, from this point of view, in a future article Do they need to understand every word? For now, bear in mind that the rationale for how the various stages are carried out will often lie in this area.

3. This type of bottom-up work can also usefully be done in dedicated phonology lessons and I will look at this in detail in the next article.

An ELT Notebook Recommends ...

5 Classroom Management Tips To Silence A Noisy Class

2007-03-15T10:54:00.000+01:00

Every teacher has 'the class from hell' that just won't settle down. Rob Johanson suggests 5 tips to help you get silence from the worst kids in school...

1. The first thing to remember is that you are the boss.

Self belief is incredibly important in this job. You can’t expect pupils to respond positively to you unless you believe, really believe, that you fully deserve their respect and compliance. The thought that you are the leader in the classroom must be at the forefront of your mind.

If you give any sign at all that you are NOT in FULL CONTROL, children will sense this and exploit your weaknesses. You MUST project strength and the impression that you will not tolerate any disobedience.

All too often a teacher will enter a lesson filled with dread and give out the signal that they are beaten before the lesson even starts. Pupils sense this. If you’ve been having a hard time with a particular group they will come to expect that you will be a walk-over and get into the habit of talking freely with total disregard for your threats.

2. Have definite rules on noise

Once you’ve decided on your rules (preferably with input from the pupils) you need to ensure the pupils are totally clear what those rules are. There must be no ambiguity and therefore no room for argument.

We all know how important consistency is in terms of classroom management but unless you have a clear set of rules to work to in the first place, you can’t consistently apply them.

So, what is your rule on noise?

Mine is simple: If I say there is to be no talking, then there is to be no talking. I will not tolerate being interrupted without taking action. I seldom enforce this rule for longer than a few minutes – just at those key times when I am either explaining something, starting a new task or taking a register etc. - but if I tell a group that I want total silence, then I mean it. And any pupil who ignores this is dealt with straight away.

For example, never let a pupil shout out without reminding them to put up their hand. Never, allow pupils to continue talking at the start of a lesson when you’ve started explaining the objective. Never, let pupils interrupt you without reminding them that it is unacceptable to do so.

If you let them get away with it once, you have effectively trained them to try and get away with it again.

3. Control entry to the classroom

The ideal place to establish control over your pupils is outside the door - before you even let them in the room.You must start the lesson under your terms. And the lesson starts before they enter the room with you having them line up outside the door in an orderly manner.

This is the perfect time to gauge the mood of the group and indeed the individuals in the group. You can easily spot potential problems (unhappy pupils, cases of bullying, arguments etc.) and deal with them rather than letting them go unnoticed and having them escalate into serious disruptions during your lesson.

If the group won’t stand still and quiet don’t let them in the room. They must do EXACTLY as you say before you let them through the door. If they run to a chair bring them back again and make them walk. If you let them get away with anything at this important stage, you will set the tone as being one where they can get away with things. You don’t want that.

4. Have ‘settling work’ ready for them when they enter the room

If you have a group who just won’t settle try presenting them with some of the following ‘settling work’ as soon as they enter the room. But… make sure you add this little twist to ensure the pupils get stuck into it straight away…

On your board have the following written up…

“Complete the work detailed below. You have ten minutes. If you don’t finish it, you will return at break to complete it.”

Obviously you need to adjust individual work targets for less able pupils to make it fair. Once they’ve started you can go round the slow workers very quietly, out of earshot of the others, and tell them where to stop. i.e. give them a work target which requires less writing than the others –

“James, you can stop when you get to the end of this sentence”. (And put a pencil mark where you want them to get up to.)

The great advantage of this strategy is that it gives you a few minutes to get your resources sorted out. I do use this if I want to show a DVD clip and haven’t had time to set the AV equipment up for example.

On each desk you could have a quick topic-related puzzle, a review quiz of last lesson’s work, a cloze exercise or some text copying work. Nothing too difficult – you don’t want to confuse them because they’ll spend ten minutes asking questions instead of settling down. Choose something simple (and preferably light-hearted or fun) that requires no explanation or fuss.

As well as having the instructions written on the board, greet them at the door and say…

“Get started on the simple task on your desk – you have ten minutes to finish it.”

Once they’re in the room you can then add…

“Anyone not finishing this little task will finish it at break – there should be no talking. If you talk you’ll come back at break and do it in silence then.”

If you want them to copy notes from the board (or a book) make sure there isn’t a huge amount of text otherwise you will provoke complaints. You can ‘hide’ extra work by having five or ten lines of text for them to copy and then a note at the end saying “Now answer question 2 on page 46” which could be another five or ten lines of notes.

Comments like…

“It is entirely your choice as to whether or not you get break. If you want break, do the work. If you don’t want break, sit and chat.”

…can be used if they don’t settle straight away.

5. The Right Way To Ask For Silence

You may have been told that an alternative to shouting for silence is to simply wait for rowdy pupils to calm down.

And wait… And wait… And wait…

Teachers have mixed views as to the effectiveness of waiting for silence before continuing with the lesson because in many cases it just doesn’t work.

Some classes will respond positively to this strategy almost straight away but a hard class will test your mettle and try to push you way beyond 5 or 10 minutes.

They’ll enjoy watching your expression turn to desperation and laugh at the fact that your plan isn’t working.

At a time like this you need to bring in sanctions and make them see that their continuous disobedience will not be tolerated.

If you have a strong, commanding voice you can shout for quiet and explain what the sanctions will be if they continue talking. If you can’t be sure that your voice will cut through the noise sufficiently, you can communicate via the board by writing your instructions. Write up your instructions in bold, capital letters. You may need to give them slightly longer time to comply – allowing for the fact that they may not all read your instructions straight away.

This is what to say…

(You may think that these sanctions won’t work with your toughest class but they are phrased in a very specific manner as you’ll soon see. If you rigorously and consistently apply them you will win. Your class will settle. I’ve never known it fail).

“If you wish to continue talking during my lesson I will have to take time off you at break. By the time I‘ve written the title on the board you need to be sitting in silence. Anyone who is still talking after that will be kept behind for 5 minutes.”

Phrasing your instructions in this way when you want a class to be quiet is very powerful and almost always guarantees success.

Let’s examine why:

Firstly, you are being very fair and giving the pupils a warning…

“If you wish to continue talking during my lesson I will have to take time off you at break.”

When teachers try to issue a punishment without a warning…

“Right you’ve just lost your break!”

…they are often met with a torrent of abuse…

“No way, that’s not fair – we weren’t doing anything!!!”

I always find that giving pupils a fair warning about an impending sanction takes the sting out of a confrontational situation.

Secondly, you are telling them exactly what they are doing wrong, and exactly how to put it right…

“…you need to be sitting in silence.”

Thirdly, you are giving them a clear time by which you expect full compliance…

“By the time I‘ve written the title on the board you need to be sitting in silence.”

Fourthly, and very importantly, you are telling them exactly what will happen to them if they don’t do as you ask…

“Anyone who is still talking after that will be kept behind for 5 minutes.”

These key features are important if you want pupils to follow your instructions because they leave no room for questions, debates, arguments or confusion. The pupils know exactly what they’re doing wrong, what will happen if they continue and how to correct their behavior so as to evade a sanction.

N.B. I’m fully aware that timetable constraints do not allow teachers to keep pupils back after each and every lesson. For that reason you need to think about the sanctions you will issue. You could for example hit the class hard and tell them that any pupils still talking will receive a letter home but it may be better to start off with a small sanction (such as staying behind after school for 5 minutes) because you can then add to it if and when the behavior continues.

Rob Johnson is the author of Magic Classroom Management – How to get the most from the worst kids in school. He is Deputy Head Teacher at a special school in the UK and has been working with challenging young people for 15 years.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Article Source: Ezine Articles Reprinted with permission. Copyright 2007 Rob Johnson http://www.classroom-management.org
Photo provided under Creative commons Licence by TAudiophile via flickr

Getting Started in TEFL: Finding Your First TEFL Job

2007-03-12T12:44:00.000+01:00

In this second article on starting out in EFL, Keith Taylor considers how to find your first TEFL job.

Probably the most common way to find a TEFL job is through one of the many TEFL employment websites. For jobs abroad, the process normally goes something like this:

1. The application

When you find a job which you like the look of, you'll need to send your CV. You should emphasize points which are relevant to the position you are applying for – your TEFL qualification, and any relevant skills and experience, should feature strongly. Too many CVs cram all this into a couple of lines, and then list two pages of technical expertise developed during five years as a Software Engineer. Instead, briefly highlight a couple of skills that you developed in that job that could be relevant to language teaching – maybe you led training workshops which required self-confidence and enthusiasm, or worked on a project abroad for a year which meant adapting to a new culture.

If the school is interested, they will contact you to arrange an interview (possibly by telephone), usually with the School's Director of Studies, or in larger schools, a Recruitment Coordinator.

2. The interview

The interview can last anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour or more (possibly influenced by the school's budget for long-distance calls!) You will normally be asked the types of questions you would expect in any job interview, about your qualifications, experience, strengths and weaknesses, and so on. If the job is in a culture significantly different to your own, you may be asked why you are interested in that particular country, and how you would cope with the types of cultural differences you could expect to face.

Some interviewers ask teaching or grammar questions. "How would you introduce the past simple tense to a group of 12 adults?" for example, or "How would you explain the word 'proud'?" These are difficult to prepare for specifically, but this is where your training course will come in!

The interviewer should give you an opportunity to ask any questions you have about the school, the city, the salary and so on. This is a good point to ask if you can talk to/email a current teacher. Teachers working at the school are a good source of what it's really like. What are the working conditions like? The teaching resources? The nightlife? The boss? The accommodation? Do you get paid on time? Is there internet at the school? And so on. Make sure you are clear about things which are important to you. If the school works on Saturdays and you want your weekends free, for example, it's best to find out at this stage!

3. The contract

All going well, the school will offer you a contract. A typical contract is for one year, renewable thereafter. Read this very carefully and don't be afraid to ask if anything is not clear. A reputable employer will appreciate the fact that moving to another country to live and work is a big step (if you are dealing with the Director of Studies, he/she was in the same boat once) and should be forthcoming with help.

There is no set format for a contract, but it should at least be clear about several important points:

Working days and hours, including the number of contact teaching hours - between 20 and 25 a week is normal.
Holidays – how many days? Are they fixed?
Probationary period – if so, how long?
Start and end dates of the contract.
Salary, overtime and any bonus – when is it paid, and how?

For jobs outside the EU and North America, many schools offer return airfare as part of the deal, often paid on successful completion of the contract. Some offer free accommodation, others provide it but not for free. All should at the very least provide help with finding it. Schools should also sort out paperwork and legalities for you, or tell you exactly what you need to do.

In the EU and North America, things are often very different. You will more likely be expected to sort yourself out in terms of getting there, finding accommodation and sorting out paperwork. A job is often very much just that – a job, without such a network of support.

Other means of recruitment:

Many schools, especially in some EU countries, use other means of recruitment, including TEFL recruitment agencies, newspapers and local expat magazines, and just relying on people to contact them directly or walk in off the street in search of work.

Some teachers choose to travel to the country where they want to work first, and look for work when they arrive. There are some pros and cons to this approach. On the plus side, some schools are more likely to hire you if they have met you face to face, and you are already established in a place. But the risk is spending a lot of time and money with no guarantee of finding a job, particularly if you are newly qualified and the majority of schools in that country require several years of experience.

If you choose this route then, get to know the typical requirements of schools first by looking at job adverts, or contact some schools directly before you go. (There is a link to lists of language schools in many countries at the bottom of this article).

Things to look out for

The great majority of schools are reputable businesses and, except for the inevitable mishaps and inconveniences (broken photocopiers, cultural misunderstandings!) most contracts go without a hitch. But of course, as in any profession, there are some disreputable schools who seek to take advantage of unsuspecting teachers. So, make sure you research a school as thoroughly as you can. Get as much information from the school, other teachers, TEFL websites and forums that you need to feel comfortable in making a decision.

Here are a few things to look out for with every job that you apply for:

Are they offering you a job without speaking to you first?
Are they unprepared to put you in contact with current teachers?
Are they expecting you to accept a job without seeing a contract?
Are they asking you to send them money?

All going well, you've survived the interview and accepted your first job in a country where you've dreamed of living since embarking on your TEFL career. So now it's time to get on the plane, meet your new colleagues, and start your new life!

NOTES

Keith Taylor runs eslbase, a website providing free information, advice and resources for TEFL teachers, as well as a directory of TEFL courses worldwide. Contact language schools directly with the eslbase directory of English language schools.

Article Source: Ezine Articles

Further Reading ...

Getting Started In TEFL: Choosing A TEFL Course

2007-03-11T10:49:00.000+01:00

How do you get started in EFL? What sort of training do you need and how do you go about getting your first job? In this article and the next Keith Taylor has some advice. In this article he looks at TEFL training.

The demand for English teachers around the world today is very high, as English continues to be the preferred language in many areas of life, from study and work to entertainment and travel. For the foreseeable future at least, you will never be short of a job if you choose English teaching as a career.

So, if you've heard tales from a returning teacher of the wonders of living and working in Thailand, Brazil or Morocco and you think it might just be the career for you, how, exactly, do you get started?

Well, the first thing to confront you may well be the minefield of acronyms, so let's work through that first of all.

ESL stands for English as a Second Language. Add a T, giving TESL, and you have Teaching English as a Second Language.

EFL is English as a Foreign Language. Again, add a T, and you have TEFL, Teaching English as a Foreign Language.

Traditionally, TEFL refers to teaching in non-English speaking countries, whereas TESL refers to teaching in English speaking countries, to non-native speakers living or working there. In practice, though, the two terms are often used interchangeably, and both are covered by the all-encompassing TESOL, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.

During your training or job search, you might come across a host of other acronyms, asking you if you have experience teaching ESP or EAP, FCE or IELTS! Don't be daunted by these - there is a link to the most common acronyms at the bottom of this article.

Now that you know a little about some of the jargon you'll be facing, the next step is usually a qualification of some kind. The days of being able to secure an English teaching job solely on the strength of being a native speaker, although not entirely gone, are fading fast. A quick search on the internet for "TEFL courses" (we'll stick with this acronym for now) will return a mind-boggling selection, of varying content, duration, and quality, and it can be difficult to know what to go for.

It might surprise you to discover that most TEFL courses are short. The most internationally recognised and accepted are the "CELTA" (there's yet another acronym for you), run by the University of Cambridge, and the "Trinity Cert TESOL", run by Trinity College, London. Both of these are 120 hour, classroom-based courses, and include several hours of observed teaching practice. In other words, they get you in front of students during the course so that you can put into practice what you learn. These courses are usually studied over a very intensive four week period, and involve a lot of work outside the classroom, preparing classes and writing assignments.

You'll learn a good deal about teaching theory and methodology, and have some chance to put it into practice. You will learn some English grammar, but don't expect to be an expert by the end of the course - this mostly comes in your first few years of teaching.

An increasing number of institutions offer courses of similar length and content to the CELTA and Trinity courses, and you will find that many employers will accept these.

Very generally speaking, the shorter and less classroom-based the course, the less accepted it will be by employers around the world. There are some high quality online courses available, for example, but by definition these do not allow for any actual teaching practice, and so are often viewed in a less favourable light by potential employers. Some courses compensate by teaching theory and methodology online, and including a short classroom-based component to put it into practice.

You can take a TEFL course in many different countries. Studying in Bangkok or Prague, for example, can give you the advantage of the centre's connections with local schools when it comes to finding employment, and some course providers offer help with finding a job as part of the deal.

Another option is an MA in TESOL. As with most Masters degrees, these take one year or longer, and consequently tend to cover theory and methodology in greater detail.

So, to keep your options as open as possible when it comes to finding employment, the CELTA and Trinity Cert TESOL and equivalent courses, or longer MA courses, are perhaps the best options. But there are, of course, other considerations. CELTA and Trinity courses can cost upwards of US$2000. This may seem a big investment if you are not sure yet if TEFL is the career for you.

So a good first step is to have a look at some of the jobs available in countries where you are interested in teaching, to get an idea of the typical requirements. You could choose a shorter, cheaper course, if these are generally accepted where you want to teach, and then study for a CELTA or equivalent after a year or two, if you decide to pursue the profession further.

The availability of short, quick courses often raises the question of unqualified or underqualified teachers let loose on unsuspecting students! Here, the argument runs both ways:

Some maintain that a qualified teacher doesn't necessarily mean a good teacher, and that communicative skills and enthusiasm are just as important in motivating students. Even the CELTA and Trinity courses are, after all, entry level courses, designed to start you off, with the idea that much of your learning will come from experience during your first couple of years of teaching.

Others argue that just as an unqualified teacher wouldn't be allowed to teach at a secondary school in the UK or the US, why should it be any different in the TEFL field – students are paying to be taught by someone with solid training in teaching theory and methodology. And after all, as a teacher, you'll feel better equipped and more confident when you step into the classroom in your new job.

It's up to you which side of the fence you choose to stand on this one! But whether you study for a week or a year, it will in some measure prepare you for the next step in your TEFL career, when you walk in to the classroom for the first time in your new TEFL job.

NOTES

Keith Taylor is the founder of eslbase.com, providing free resources, information and advice for TEFL teachers, as well as a directory of TEFL courses worldwide and the latest TESOL jobs. Read the eslbase guide to TEFL acronyms.

Article Source: Ezine Articles

Photo provided under Creative Commons Licences by Michoslaw via flickr

Further Reading ...

An Easter Game

2007-03-09T11:35:00.000+01:00

Looking for an Easter activity to do with your children’s classes? Try an Easter Egg Hunt and revise colours and numbers at the same time.

If necessary, check that the children remember the names of the colours they’ve learnt up to that point, then give out the outline of an Easter egg and ask the children to colour it. Make sure the children understand that the eggs must be coloured with one colour only. The choice of colour can be left up to the children, or you can call the name of each child and say a colour – Tamara, blue. Stefano, red. If you have a very small class, give each child more than one egg to colour, or add some of your own. You are aiming to finish with different numbers of each colour egg – three red, six yellow, four pink and so on.

As they finish colouring, get them to place their eggs somewhere around the room. The eggs mustn’t be hidden from sight, but can be in slightly non-obvious places – for example on the floor, or propped up on someone’s bag.

Divide them into groups with as many children in each group as there are colours and give each child a colour to search for. They have two minutes to count how many eggs of that colour there are in the room. They then report back to their groups.

Use a toy rabbit to introduce the chant :

I’m the Easter Bunny,
Come and play with me.
How many (red) eggs can you see?

In turns, each group answers while the others chant. For each colour egg that they’ve counted correctly they get a point (but don’t confirm the answers or reveal the points until the last group has answered).

If the children have already learnt how to record numerical information graphically, they can then record the results in the form of a bar chart or pie chart.

Acknowledgement

Photo provided under Creative Commons Licence by Cyclequark via flickr

100 Today!

2007-03-08T12:03:00.000+01:00

The last article meant that we have now reached a total of 100 articles on the site - not bad going given that we only started in September 2006. So today we're having a brief pause for a celebration.

First of all, I want to thank everyone who has made the success of the site a possibility. Above all, a big thank you to all the people who have contributed articles. They've all been great and were very much appreciated (especially on the days when I couldn't think of anything to write about!) If there is a topic which you would like to write on, please let me know - I'd love to hear from you. You'll find more details in the Write for Us section, which you can get to from the sidebar.

An equally big thank you to all the people at flickr who make their photos available for use under Creative Commons Licence. You've brightened up the site considerably, and I apologise if I haven't always got the links right first time.

Next, thank you to everyone who has given us a mention or linked to us on their own sites. Your links have brought us a lot of readers and are very much appreciated.

And last but decidedly not least, thanks to everyone who has been in to read the articles - without you there'd be no point. Special thanks to everyone who's left a comment. I always try to reply immediately, but I'm afraid sometimes I just haven't had time. I'm sorry. But please keep them coming. And keep coming in to read. Our daily number of visitors is climbing steadily and I hope will continue to do so. If you've found the site useful, please tell your friends about us.

Plans for the future ... There are a few changes in the pipeline, which you'll see if you keep coming back regularly. Two of the most important will be a change in the font used for the blog and a reorganisation of the Complete List of Contents. Someone pointed out to me (thank you - it was really helpful) that, viewed with Firefox rather than Internet Explorer, the font is painfully small. As about a third of visitors to the site do use Firefox, we're obviously going to have to change. I'll be experimenting over the next few days, using a different font and character size for each article, and would welcome feedback as to what you think of each.

And if you have any other suggestions for how the site could be improved, topics we might cover, and so on - please let us know.

But for now, sit back and pour yourself a glass of virtual champagne (strictly non-alcoholic, just in case you've got to go and teach afterwards) and welcome to the party....

There is and There are

2007-03-06T11:15:00.001+01:00

There is/are is one of those grammatical areas which at first sight looks simple – after all, it’s one of the first structures that we teach to beginner level students. But is it as straightforward as it seems? Look at the following sentences. Are they correct or incorrect? And how would you explain them to students?

a) There’s a squirrel in the tree.
b) There’s the squirrel in the tree.
c) There’s the man I was telling you about.
d) There’s John!
e) There’s John in the tree.
f) There’s a letter and two messages for you.
g) There are a letter and two messages for you.
h) There are two messages and a letter for you.
i) There are a load of messages for you.
j) There’s a load of messages for you.
k) There are a lot of messages for you.
l) There’s a lot of messages for you.
m) There’s two messages for you.

Confused? You can probably recognise some of the mistakes made by your students in these examples. Yet there is often another sentence which seems structurally parallel which is correct. What text books often forget to point out, is that there are actually two separate constructions which begin there is/are, each of which has it's own grammar and intonation. These constructions are :

Introductory There

In English it is unusual to use an indefinite expression as the subject of a sentence. Sentences like A squirrel is in the tree or A bus is coming are possible grammaticallly, but are generally avoided. Instead, the "empty" introductory subject There is inserted : There's a squirrel in the tree. There's someone coming. There must be some mistake. There can't have been enough time.

As these examples show There can be used like this with any verb pattern which would otherwise have an indefinite subject and which contains the verb Be. It can even be used in infinitive and -ing clauses : I don't want there to be any mistakes. He was surprised at there being so many possibilities.

Back to our much simpler examples. The indefinite subject requirement explains why There’s the squirrel in the tree, There’s John in the garden, and There are your keys on the table, sound strange – at least, if they’re said with the same intonation as There’s a squirrel in the garden. The, John and your are definite expressions – they tell us which particular object or person we are talking about. So it doesn’t work. Definite expressions can act as subject with no problems and I would need to say John is in the garden, Your keys are on the table etc.

In this use, as we said before there is an "empty subject. It has no real meaning, and is always unstressed in the sentence. It certainly tells us nothing about the position of the objects. This is why the clause often finishes with an adverbial of place (unless this is already known from the context) : There’s a squirrel in the tree There are some messages on your desk. If we want to indicate that the place is “over there”, we need to say so again : I went to the zoo and there were some people there feeding the monkeys …

Notice that with this use the verb generally agrees with the first part of the complement. So :
There’s a letter and two messages for you is correct, as is There are two messages and a letter for you. But There are a letter and two messages … is incorrect.

What about There’s two messages for you ? Grammatically of course this is illogical. But the use of the singular is preceding a plural complement is common in informal spoken English. It’s not restricted to There is … constructions. Compare for example the greeting How’s things?

And what about There is/are a load of messages for you? or There is /are a lot of messages for you Here the following complement is clearly singular - a lot / a load – and so the singular verb is would seem to be correct. But notionally these expressions indicate a plural quantity – we know there is more than one message. With a lot of the notional meaning has almost taken over from the literal meaning and the phrase has become lexicalised as an alternative expression to many. There are a lot of messages for you is thus standard English.

Demonstrative There

But what about Look! There’s John! or Look! There’s the squirrel. ?

In these examples, the speaker is pointing out someone or something. There is no longer an empty subject but an adverbial of place - it signifies an exact position. If that position was different I might have to use here rather than there : Here's John!

This means that There, far from acting as subject is actually the complement of the sentence - what I'm really saying is John is (over) there. "Fronting" the adverbial gives the sentence a more dramatic feeling - the adverbial is given prominence (it is always stressed) and, if the subject is a noun, the subject and verb are inverted : There's John = CVS. Notice that this doesn't happen when the subject is a pronoun : There he is! = CSV

This can also happen with other adverbials (we've already mentioned here) and with other verbs : There goes John! Up went the sails!

As this is a demonstrative use, in this case it might well be a specific person or thing which I'm talking about. So a definite expression - a name, the definite article and so on -is possible : There’s the man who I was telling you about.

What happens if I want to tag on a more precise description of where the person/thing is? There's nothing to stop me, but the important thing to note is that it is "tagged on". It's no longer part of the same idea : There’s John! In the tree! There are your keys! On the table! In spoken English the intonation makes this difference clear. Compare the one tone group of : // There’s a SQUIrrel in the 'tree // and the two tone groups of : // ' There’s the SQUIrrel // in the TREE //

These rules are fairly complex, and we won't necessarily want to rush straight into the classroom to present them. But contrasting them with the rules for equivalent expressions in other languages can help us both to understand students' mistakes and to decide if and when it might be helpful for them to know at least part of the rules. Knowing that introductory there is restricted to indefinite reference, for example, can help Italian students, whose own language often uses the equivalent structure (c'è/ci sono) with definite expressions.

It can also help to separate out the two uses of there. The demonstrative use is rarely taught explicitly in textbooks, but can be explained as it comes up in dialogues and then practised using flashcards. Distribute flashcards of various objects around the room, placing some in front of the students. Start asking : Where are my (glasses)? The students pick up or point to the correct flashcard and reply here/There are your glasses. Once they have the idea the activity can continue as pairwork.

NOTES

Photo provided under Creative Commons Licence by MissBeckles via flickr

Teaching Parts of the Body

2007-03-06T09:15:00.000+01:00

If you teach children, one of the vocabulary areas which you cover will almost certainly be Parts of the Body. Here’s a fun way to practise the vocabulary after it’s initially been taught.

Draw a friendly monster or alien on an A3 sized piece of light card. Give it three legs, six arms, four eyes, five ears or whatever. Cut it up into jigsaw type pieces with each part of the body that you want to focus on on a different piece. (The pieces don't have to be "traditional jigsaw shape)

In class, distribute the pieces amongst the kids. Point to one and ask "What's that?" - the child replies "It's an ear" or whatever, comes to the table and puts it down. In turn each child says what their piece is, comes up and puts it in position until the jigsaw is complete.

Divide the children into groups and give out sheets of A3 paper. Each group draws their own monster/alien and cuts it up as before. They then pass their jigsaw to the next group.

The pieces of the jigsaw are placed faced down on the table. In turn, each child in the group picks one up, says "It's an eye" etc and puts it in position on the table to create the jigsaw.

They can then exchange jigsaws again and repeat the game with the jigsaw of another group - or you can take in the jigsaws and give each group a new one in the next, or a later lesson, to revise.

If the children are too young to be able to draw the monsters effectively, or if you don't have enough time, then draw extra ones yourself. You could also just do the outline and get them to colour it.

Further Reading ...