ESL Activities With Little Preparation

You can never have too many fillers, warmers or ice-breakers up your sleeve - activities which you can slot into a lesson if you finish five minutes earlier than expected, or use if you see pace has dropped and students need an energising activity. In this article, Keith Taylor describes some of his favourites.

How often do you find yourself preparing a class, racking your brain for something different - a new activity to liven up a group of tired students, or just to bring something fresh to the classroom? If you are like most teachers, thinking of something new and exciting every day is not easy, and often we simply don't have the time (or energy!) So we revert to our tried and tested (and sometimes a little worn) ideas, or to following page after page of a textbook.

Well, it doesn't have to be that difficult. A lot of ideas can be adapted to many different language points, giving you something that can be used again and again. If the activity has a clear focus, motivation (students need to know why they are doing something - adding an element of competition to an activity is one way to achieve this) and, of course, clear instructions, then you're on to a winner.

There are many good resource books available with hundreds of quick and easy activities requiring little or no preparation. Have a hunt around your school's resources for books such as "Five Minute Activities" by Penny Ur and Andrew Wright, or "Keep Talking" by Friederike Kippel. Don't forget that your fellow teachers are good resources too - use them!

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

1 You may know Backs to the Board, where a representative from each of two teams faces away from the board, while his/her teammates try to explain the word that you have written on the board to him/her, without saying the word or any variations of it. Well, why not extend this to whole sentences? The teams have a minute to explain the sentence to their teammate, without using any of the words, or spelling them, or using gestures. You can adapt this to any tense or structure that you want to practise.

2 Sentence reduction: Write a long sentence or a short paragraph on the board, rich in vocabulary. In teams, students take it in turns to erase either one, two or three consecutive words. The sentence must still make sense, gramatically, afterwards. If it doesn't, replace the words and move to the next team. Carry on until no further reduction is possible (your students will be amazed at how short the sentence can become, while retaining its grammatical sense!) The winning team is the one who removes the most words. (Variation: Do the opposite - start with one word and have students replace it with two or three, expanding the sentence).

3 For spelling and vocabulary practice, try this: Start with one letter on the board, say "S". The first student then thinks of a word beginning with "S" and adds the next letter, for example "ST". The next student then thinks of a word starting with "ST" and adds another letter, and so on. If someone in the group thinks there is no such word, he can challenge the writer to name his/her word. If there is no such word, the writer is out, but if he/she was thinking of a real word, then the challenger is out. The winner is the last student remaining.

4 If your students are imaginative, give each group four or five pictures cut out from magazines, and get them to create a picture story - you can keep the context very open, or have them focus on a particular tense or function. If you want to focus on oral communication, don't let them write their story down! If you also want to evaluate their writing, have them write it down as they go along. When they've finished, have each group tell their story to the rest of the class.

5 As a Getting to know you exercise, ask students to write three things which are true about themselves, and two which are not true (but believable). Students take turns to read their sentences to the rest of the group, who must discuss, and ask questions to the reader, and try to find out which of his/her sentences are true. A good ice-breaker is to do this yourself first so that they get the idea - write the five things about you on the board. (Variation: Write five one-word facts about yourself on the board, for example "32", "Liverpool", "Three", "Bloggs", and have students, in pairs, try to guess the questions which will give them these answers.)

6 Another one for imaginative students: Dictate the first line of a different story to each of several groups. They have a few minutes to continue the story, and then pass their piece of paper to the next group, who read the story so far and add the next part. Carry on until the stories reach their original groups, who then conclude and read out the stories. To focus on a particular language point or item of vocabulary, you can do this orally as a chain story: Give the first sentence, then have the first student continue the story. They must at some point use the tense, or structure, or word (allocated beforehand), that you want to work on. Carry on until all the students have contributed.

7 For some energetic writing practice, divide the board into three columns, and give each column a header with three structures that you want to practise (for example "first, second, third conditional", "yes/no questions, indirect questions, tag questions", "present perfect simple, present perfect continuous, past simple"). Split students into pairs. One from each pair is the writer, the other is the runner. Give each pair many small slips of paper and some blu-tac, and tell them that they must construct as many gramatically correct sentences as they can, in each of the three categories, and stick them on the board (with their initials to identify them). Set a five or ten minute time limit. The writer writes a sentence, then the runner takes the slip of paper and sticks it on the board. Shout "CHANGE" every so often for them to swap roles. At the end, have all the pairs look at the sentences and evaluate them. If they find an incorrect one, they tell you, and that sentence is not counted towards that pair's score. (Variation: You can make this activity more difficult by saying that each sentence must contain a minimum of 10 words, for example.)

8 Another favourite is to give each student a secret famous identity, which they stick to their back or forehead. They go around the class, asking yes/no questions to establish their identity. You could make sure they practise the past simple by making all the famous people dead (Did I live in the USA?), or present perfect, by making them alive (Have I acted in many films?), or future, by imagining that these famous people have not yet been born (Will I be an actor?).

9 Stand students up, and shout out two opposing ideas, or people, or concepts, or adjectives, or places. For example, "beach or mountains", "Spielberg or Hitchcock", "red or blue", "Playstation or Nintendo" depending on the age/interests of your students. Point to one side of the room for one idea, the other side for the other. Students move to the side of the room they choose - pick a few students each time to explain the reasons for their choices. If you like, you can let it develop into a debate between the two groups.

10 Do a grammar auction or gap fill auction with mistakes that students have made (and that you've made a note of) or with a language area that you want to work on. Split students into teams, and allocate each team $100, or 10,000 yen or any amount you like. If you can photcopy some real money, so much the better. For the grammar auction, give each team a worksheet with 10 (or more) sentences (based on the mistakes they've made or the language area you're working on). Some should be grammatically correct, others incorrect. Give teams some time to discuss whether they think the sentences are correct or not, and then have them gamble on that decision for each sentence. Then give them the answer - if their decision was right, they double the amount they gambled - if not, they lose their stake. For the gap fill, give them 10 or more gap fill sentences (again based on the area you're practising or their mistakes) and this time they choose the correct word to go in the gap and gamble on it.

You can find variations on these activities, and many, many others in the books mentioned at the beginning of this article, among others. Try one of them today for something different in your ESL classes!

Keith Taylor is the founder of esl base, providing resources, information and advice for TEFL teachers, as well as a directory of TEFL courses and TEFL jobs worldwide. He also maintains the eslbase language exchange, an easy way to practise any language online.

Acknowledgements

Article Source: EzineArticles

Photo provided by Matthew Weston under Creative Commons Licence by via flickr

An ELT Notebook Recommends...

Community Language Learning : Part Two

I’ve never trained as a CLL teacher, and I’ve never taught an entire course through CLL. However, I have sometimes used it as a component of a course.

One of the courses which I remember best was a mixed ability course with a group of six students ranging from complete beginners to upper intermediate level. It was impossible to teach them as a “normal” lockstep class, and I decided to get them working on self-access materials each at their own level while I circulated, helping and guiding as necessary. But to do that for the whole course would have meant an incredible amount of preparation – I needed to prepare materials for four different levels at each lesson. So I decided to spend half of the time using a CLL approach, sometimes letting the most advanced student work as the knower to increase the challenge for her, while I just confirmed her input and handled the analysis and reflection stages. It worked well, as even when the lower level students heard more complex language than they were ready for, they had already heard the sentence in their own language, and therefore didn’t have to panic about meaning. The reflection stage also usefully allowed the students to express their feelings about being in such a mixed ability course (which had been imposed on all of us) – the lower level students discussing their insecurity and fear of looking stupid, while the higher level students talked about their fear that they would not learn anything. Together they reached the understanding that the method would allow them each to use and to ask for analysis at their own level. The higher level students would be able to confirm their own understanding of more basic structures, while the beginners realised that it would often be more sensible to focus on general understanding of the higher level language, without worrying too much about the details.

However, the group which I want to describe in most detail was a group of three complete beginners. They were managers from a company, ranging in age from early forties to late fifties, and were sent by their company to do an intensive course – six hours a day for two weeks. I was in charge of designing the course and teaching most of it, but I had the help of another teacher for an hour and a half each day.

My first concern when I heard about the course was its intensity – I was sure that the students would not be able to cope with six hours a day “straight” group teaching. My first concern was therefore to build in a variety of approaches, and above all, a change of pace at different points in the day. I didn’t think there’d be too much problem in the mornings, but I was worried about the “post-lunch dip” and tiredness in the later afternoon. I therefore decided that the two sessions in the morning would be “normal” teacher led lessons, but that after lunch we’d change approach. The first session would be self-access based. The school had a good self-access library which the other teacher was familiar with, and he therefore took charge of this session. The final session of the day was CLL.

On the first day, I explained the method to the students and they got started. Each of them in turn started a monologue – My name is … I come from … and so on. They stayed within a fairly basic range of language, but even so, there were things which I was dying to point out in the analysis stage. But they didn’t ask. In the reflection stage, they expressed general satisfaction with the method and welcomed it as a change of focus at the end of a long day, but said it had been a bit boring because they already knew everything which each person had said about himself. They therefore decided that they would each think of a more interesting topic to talk about the following day.

On the second day, the first student again started a monologue on his chosen topic – but this time did not stop. In the end, each of the other students had a chance to say something, but very soon the allotted twenty minutes ran out. Stevick (in A Way and Ways, cited in the first part of this article) says that he indicates to each student when they’ve had their turn, but I wanted this to be one of the things the students worked out for themselves. In the reflection period, they were clearly dissatisfied with how things had gone, and I started by asking the student who had talked the most for his feelings. He said at once that he realised that he had dominated and that it had been unintentional – what he’d planned to say had just taken longer than he’d thought. I then asked if they had any suggestions as to how they could do things differently so as to make things more useful. Almost immediately they suggested that they should stop monologuing, and start having a more natural conversation. They also came up with the idea of repeating some of the situational dialogues, roleplays etc that they’d studied in the morning in order to consolidate the language they’d been learning.

From that time on, there was no problem with the content of the discussions or the turn-taking. They came up with different ideas for conversations each day, but it was always something interesting and useful. On the other hand, I was never entirely happy with the analysis phase, which was the aspect of this particular course which most tempted me to revert to a “teaching” role. I felt at first that they were simply not “noticing” some of the language that was coming up, rather than that they truly did not want to take an analytical approach, as Stevick reported with some of his learners. But in retrospect, this may have reflected my own preferences rather than theirs, and probably had a lot to do with the time. By the time they got to the analysis stage they’d been going for nearly six hours.

This course, however, illustrates what I suggested in Part One of the article : CLL is not something which will work most effectively the first time you do it, and in my experience there are generally one or two sessions which the students are dissatisfied with before they truly make the method their own. If you want to use CLL, you therefore need to allot a sizeable portion of the course to the method, and to possess the skills necessary to “counsel” the students through any negative patches – in particular active listening skills, and the ability to support students while they work through their own reactions to the method, without imposing your own ideas about how they “should” be doing it, but helping them to find out for themselves.

Acknowledgement

Photo provided under Creative Commons License by ExtraOrdinary people via flickr

Community Language Learning : Part One

Community Language Learning (also called Counseling Language Learning) was created by Charles A Curran, a Jesuit priest and professor of psychology, and Paul La Forge. Inspired by the humanistic psychology of Carl Rogers, it aimed to remove the anxiety from learning by changing the relationship between the teacher and student. In CLL, that relationship the “teacher” – who is known not as the teacher but as the “knower”, the one who knows the language – is seen as being in the same relationship to the student as the counsellor is to a client : the client has a “problem” (in this case not knowing the language) which is currently creating confusion and causing problems. The counsellor’s role is not to tell the client what to do, but to help him or her explore and resolve the problem while retaining personal autonomy.

In CLL, it is therefore the learner who to a great extent decides what is happening. The approach (at least in the beginning stages) is based around a set technique, within which the students are free to determine content. A typical CLL lesson using this technique would have the following stages :

Stage One – Investment : The students sit in a circle with a tape recorder in the middle. The knower is outside the circle. The first student who wants to say something calls the knower over, and quietly says what she wants to say in his or her own language. The knower repeats this in English, using a non-threatening and encouraging tone of voice. The student has the chance to repeat and practise the utterance, with help if necessary from the knower, before finally recording it on the tape. Another student who wishes to reply then repeats the process. This continues until a full conversation has been recorded – when I’ve used the approach we’ve probably spent about twenty to thirty minutes on this phase, though Earl Stevick (1) suggests that it should be limited to ten. He however was using it with a much larger group than I was - he describes a class of twelve whereas I only had three. In his situation each individual would obviously have been involved in the conversation relatively infrequently and a longer session could have led to a demotivating drop in pace.

Stage Two – Analysis : Between one session and the next (or possibly immediately, on the board) the knower transcribes the complete conversation, and the students then listen again to the tape while following the transcript. They then have the chance to ask for any explanation they want, and if they wish, to ask for practice activities on specific points.

Stage Three – Reflection : The students then have the chance to reflect on the whole experience, and to decide how useful it was, if they could have done things differently and so on. Again, the knower’s job is not to “tell them where they went wrong” but to help them discover for themselves how they could have made the session maximally useful.

The learner is seen as passing through five psychological stages as learning progresses, which Curran likens to progressing from childhood to adulthood :

1. Birth : the learners know nothing of the target language, and are completely dependent on the knower for everything they want to say.
2. Self : the learners start to get an idea of how the language works and to use it for themselves, but still seek the knower’s help. They may, for instance tell the knower what they want to say directly in the target language, looking to the knower only for confirmation or correction.
3. Separate Existence : they start to use the language without referring to the knower, and may even be resentful of his/her attempts to help.
4. Adolescence : learners continue to express themselves independently, but may be aware of gaps in their knowledge, and start to turn back to the knower.
5. Independence : learners can continue their learning independently. They no longer need the knower, and may start to act as counsellors for less advanced students.

Alan Maley (2) criticises CLL as being one of several humanistic approaches to emerge in the 70s which evolved separately from mainstream language teaching and which all imposed their own “fairly rigidly-prescriptive” method. Not everyone agrees - Earl Stevick (3) suggests that while there may have been a certain resistance to adaptation of the method at the outset "the followers of Curran were never inhibited from devising their own techniques withing the Counseling-Learning Approach." Stevick himself (1) talks of incorporating Suggestopaedic concert readings (4) into his CLL lessons, and virtually any writer on the method will describe a "typical" lesson as including features which are slightly different from the outline I've given here.

If a certain amount of flexibility is possible, is it also possible to incorporate CLL into your courses as just one technique amongst many which you use ? The answer to this will probably depend on your teaching situation :

• At complete beginner level, the group needs to be fairly small or the students spend the whole time just waiting for others to record their utterances. Jo Bertrand (5) discusses the possibility of dividing large classes into groups and having them work simultaneously, but it is hard to see how this would be possible (without the presence of a second or third knower in the class) until the students have reached at least the “separate existence” stage.
• If you teach students whose language you don’t understand, again the method will not be possible at beginner level.
• How much time do you have to spend? CLL isn’t something that can be fitted into a lesson as a “filler”. Each session will involve at least an hour’s work, though this might be split between two lessons. And in my experience, it’s not something that works well the first time you do it – or for that matter the second or the third. It’s a method which involves the students in making their own choices about how to learn, evaluating their success, trying out something different, reflecting on that … and so on. It’s not until they’ve been through several sessions that things really start to work.

And obviously, if you want to use the method as it was intended to be used, you will need some knowledge of counselling. While there is nothing in the conversation stage of the lesson that precludes it being used as a technique in a far more teacher-guided class, bear in mind that if you intervene in a more "authoritative" way without being asked for help – for instance, by deciding who will speak and what they’ll talk about in stage one, or by giving unsolicited explanations and deciding what to practice in stage two – you are no longer using CLL.

In Part Two of this article, I’ll describe how I used CLL as a component of one particular course, what it meant to adopt a counselling rather than a teaching role, and the stages the learners went through as they “learnt how to learn”


Notes

1. Earl Stevick, A Way and Ways, Heinle and Heinle 1980. (Probably the best introduction to CLL, it contains two sections describing in detail a CLL course and the role of the teacher.)

2. Alan Maley : Community Language Learning

3. Earl Stevick, Humanism in Language Teaching, OUP 1990

4. You can hear Sue talking about both CLL and Suggestopaedia, as well as TPR, in the podcast interview Integrating Various Methodologies into the Classroom on ESL Teacher Talk

5. Jo Bertrand : Community Language Learning

Photo provided under Creative Commons Licence by SusanNYC via flickr

Teaching Young Learners : What Makes for Good Practice?

Do you have trouble keeping your younger learners concentrated? Do they seem to get bored in your lessons? In this article Mark looks at what children enjoy and suggests some ways of making the lessons more fun and involving.

Mark lives and teaches in Japan, and also runs the site Mes-English.com where you'll find free flashcards, worksheets, lesson plans, games - and a host of other resources.


Aside from teaching have you ever played with children? I'm sure you have. We all have horsed around with nieces, nephews, your own children, friends children, etc. When you've made them laugh, what's the next thing the child says?

"Do it again."

This is an extremely powerful tool. When children are having fun or if they find something amusing, they will do whatever it is again and again and again. It's amazing. Not only will they want you to do it again then, but the next time you see them, they'll ask you, "Do that thing again." (Problem is you have to remember what it was.) In designing lessons plans this can be a key point for game/activity selection and/or creation, as well as presentation. If the students find something amusing they will want to do it over and over again (just ask Nintendo.)

The problem is other than tossing them around, tickling them, physically harming yourself, what do they like?

• Funny sounds: If you are drilling, try raising your voice 7 octaves at the end and have the students model, sing the word, whisper the word, shout the word, dance to the word, what ever sells.
• Funny words: Don't be afraid to make up words or combine words to make non-sense. Children do this and love it. Tell them you want an elephant-pencil. "An elephant-pencil? No, no a monkey-pencil! No, no. A ROCKET-pencil." "A pocket-pencil? What's that?" Children will jump in and start talking!
• Physical comedy: Unfortunately this could mean physically harming yourself, but the pros just pretend. I do a lot of street side performance type material that really gets kids laughing and on my side. For example when I meet a child for the first time I may go to shake their hand, miss and run right into them. Then, do it again. And again. And again, until eventually I just deem that there must be something wrong with the childs hand and make him/her shake hands with another child just to verify that his hand actually works and repeat.

So, what makes for good practice? Is it clown type humor? Physical humor? Goofing off? I think the fun needs to be structural and can be any, all, or none of those. If you can plan a lesson that is structurally fun, not necessarily contextually fun, you'll find the lesson successful. That applies to the attitude of the teacher, the presentation of the material, and the execution. Interestingly enough, not necessarily the child or the material. When the activities are interesting in and of themselves, then the class is structurally fun. In that case the content doesn't necessarily have to be.

The answer is have fun on the way - or charm. Don't be afraid to digress a bit. Listen to Ken's story about his beetle in the middle of class. Don't be afraid to run into a wall (pretend to run into a wall) when Ken won't stop. Break into song. Pretend you're a bus driver swerving away from a deer if you're teaching them "I want to be a bus driver." Children (people for that matter) want to be led, not dragged.

When I design a game or activity the bulk of the burden lies in "how am I going to sell this activity?" How am I going to get the students to say the target language 100 times and come back and do it again next class? Usually, the answer is keep it simple. Some of the best and most popular games are the most simple; Checkers, Scrabble, Tic-Tac-Toe, Tag, Hang-man, Dodge-ball, Chutes and Ladders... When you are choosing or designing an activity or game please keep that in mind. You can always go back and add more later. But, not if it fails the first time. Also, ask yourself if the activity is interesting. It doesn't have to be a circus all the time but if it's not interesting, it's... boring. Is the information students are gathering / discussing/ learning about interesting to them? There is a time for learning for learning's sake but if it's always merely constructive for learning, you're going to have a hard time motivating some of the students.

Each teacher is different and teaching styles need to match the teacher. I can go on and on with endless examples of things that work for me, but those are things that work for me. You need to find some things that work for you. If you have the resources, spend time with children. Don't try to teach them, try to learn from them. See what things children like to do with you or what things you do they find interesting. Then apply those to your teaching methodology to make learning fun and effective.

Watch other teachers, parents, anyone and see what things work for them when they are around children. If you simply try to copy someone else you'll generally find yourself flat on your face. Don't try to mimic, but think about how you can incorporate similar things that will work for you. If you can learn from others and build yourself, you'll find yourself in a very powerful position.

Above all, have fun yourself and teach hard!

Happy teaching,
Mark

Notes

Photo provided under Creative Commons Licence by Genki David via flickr

Further Reading ...

Colloquial English : Body Idioms

This next article in our Language Snippets section looks at another group of English idioms. Like the previous articles in the series, it outlines an activity which you could use as a filler with more advanced classes.


A lot of English idioms are based on parts of the body. Here are some examples :

It cost an arm and a leg : It was very expensive.
They don’t see eye to eye : They don’t agree with each other
She’s got a nose for a bargain : She’s very good at finding ......
I was on my knees by the end of the day : I was very tired

There's no elbow-room : There isn't enough space

We did it by the skin of our teeth : We only just succeeded, we almost failed
He doesn’t have a leg to stand on : There’s no justification for what he did or says
I really put my foot in it : I said something by mistake that I shouldn’t have said
She gave him the cold shoulder : She rejected him; she ignored him.
He’s pulling your leg : He’s pretending something is true when it isn’t, as a joke
The car is on its last legs : It’s old and will soon be unusable
He welcomed us with open arms : He was very pleased to accept our help.
We soon lost heart: We became demotivated

.... and there are many more. Here’s one way you might present these in the classroom with a group of upper intermediate or advanced students.

• Create a worksheet with a diagram of the human body (or a photo of a person) in the middle. Choose eight or nine idioms you want to teach and type them around it, but with the body words gapped. Make sure the context makes the meaning fairly clear. A line connects each idiom with the relevant part of the body in the diagram. If you think extra clarification is necessary, add the first letter of each word – this will help students distinguish between mouth and teeth, for example.
• The students read the idioms, look at the diagram and try and work out the missing words. While they work, put a list of the meanings of the idioms on the board. Students then match them, and write the meanings in the spaces under the sentences. They could then highlight the idioms themselves to make them stand out.

Another Day in the Life of ...: Teaching in Bangkok, Thailand

Barry O’Leary taught in Bangkok for seven months. Despite slaving away for the ‘Sister from Hell’, he will always remember the joys of teaching Thai kids.

6. 45 am. Where am I? Bangkok. What day is it? Tuesday, better get up. After breakfast in my flat provided by the school, I walk in. It’s only two minutes away.

As I turn the corner of my road I see the familiar traffic jam of parents dropping the kids off. I stop at the front gate to greet a fellow teacher. I place my hands together under my chin and bow.
‘Saawat dee Krap’ I’m finally comfortable with the ‘wai’ used to greet people. I sign in and then wait in the playground with the kids.
‘Do we have swimming today Mr Barry?’
‘Yes Nam, don’t worry.’ The rest of the kids cheer. Swimming is the highlight of their week. I catch up with the other teachers and we wait for the kids to sing the national anthem and then walk to class, ensuring the kids are well behaved for when they walk past the head sister. She stands at the top of the stairs, dressed in white like an angel, but she’s far from that. The kids bow as they go past her, more in fear than anything else.

I am free for one hour so I prepare my day. Sister is keen on everyone being up to date with lesson plans, which are vital for student development. Today I’m only teaching three hours, but during the week I have 22 contact hours which includes swimming and dance lessons. Today is Maths, Swimming and Art. I’m teaching English through subjects rather than direct English.

As I enter the class the students stand up to greet me. Now normally two things happen - if the Thai teacher is in the room they sit down and listen to me, if not then a riot can start. Luckily Miss Nitaya is there so they behave moderately and my lesson goes to plan.

Everyday I take the kids down to the dining hall with the other 3,000 students and make sure they finish their lunch before they head out to sweat their food away in the playground. You can imagine the noise in there with so many kids. Luckily there is a separate room for the teachers where I eat my meal, provided by the school. Today is phad thai, my favourite. To take away the spice I have an ice-cream whilst keeping an eye on the kids and stopping the occasional ninja fight amongst the boys. Now it’s back up for the afternoon.

Swimming as usual starts well. I co-ordinate the kids with another teacher and they practise various styles. Now games. This normally results in me dragging round ten kids on my back as they try to drown me. All good fun though.

At 4.45pm I’m free to go, a long day. In the evening I play football with the locals in a sports centre and then eat with other teachers in one of the many local restaurants. After chilling in my flat playing my guitar or reading, I’m asleep under my mosquito net at 11pm ready for another early start the next day.

Learning Students' Names

At the beginning of the course you need to learn students’ names as soon as possible. Using names to call on students creates a more personal and involving atmosphere in the class, and also allows you to monitor progress much more effectively. The students should know each others’ names too. How can you achieve this quickly and easily? If you have very small classes there’s no problem, but with average to large numbers it becomes more difficult. Here are some ideas for average size classes (5-15 students) :

• Before the first lesson, familiarise yourself with the names on the register. That way you don’t have to learn the names when you go into the class – you just have to connect them with the faces. If you’re a new teacher in a country where you don’t know the language, ask a colleague to explain the correct pronunciation to you before the class, and write it in phonemic script. The evening after the lesson, and every day before the next, go through the names again and try to remember the faces.
• At the beginning of the first lesson, as all the students to write their names in large letters and felt tip pen on a “name tent” – piece of A4 paper folded in three - and to put it in front of them for the first few lessons. Each time you call on a student, make a point of using their name. Keep the name tents and redistribute them at the beginning of every lesson until you're sure you know students' names.
• With beginners, teach Hello, my name’s …. immediately and in the first lesson play a circle game with a bean bag or sponge ball – student A says My name’s Michelle and throws the ball to another student who says Hello Michelle, my name’s Sergei.
• In later lessons with beginners’ classes, the name tents can be used to present the interrogative and practise the negative of the verb BE.
  a) For the interrogative, collect in the name tents and then redistribute them asking (wrongly) Is your name Michelle? The student replies No, my name’s Sergei. After four or five questions ask the students what you said (if you can’t or don’t want to use the L1, put on the board ---------- ----------- ---------- Michelle? And use gesture to show that you want them to tell you the missing words.) Once they’ve understood the SV inversion in the question, set up a chain drill. Give student A a name tent. S/he asks student B Is your name XXX? Student B replies No, my name’s YYY, then takes the name tent and asks student C. This continues until student G says Yes, my name’s XXX. The teacher then gives student G the next name tent and the chain drill continues.
  b) To practise the negative, the lesson after it has been presented, start by distributing the name tents incorrectly. Each student corrects you saying Sorry, my name isn’t XXX. It’s YYY. and gets the correct name tent.
• With intermediate + classes you can use more complex activities. For example :
  a) right at the beginning of the class, introduce yourself and then ask the students to stand up and arrange themselves in alphabetical order (of first name if that’s what they’re going to be using in the class). To do this they obviously have to ask each other their names. The line then forms into a circle so that the first and last people in the line are next to each other. Ask the students to memorise the names of the people on each side of them. Later on in the lesson, in a break between activities, ask each student to indicate the two students who were next to them and to say their names.
  b) ask the students to sit in a circle. Each student introduces her/himself and gives one interesting piece of information about himself. The next student repeats the name of the first, and the interesting fact, and then adds their own introduction : You’re Sergei and you once rode a camel in the desert. I’m Michelle and I have ten cats. Student three repeats the names and information of the first two before adding his/her own, and so on. The last person in the chain is the teacher, who repeats the names and information for the whole class.
• For more advanced students, ask them their names and then list vertically on the board the initial of each name – S, M etc. Give students five minutes in pairs to brainstorm every adjective they can think of beginning with those letters – if possible give each pair a dictionary to consult. While they’re working think of a few positive ones yourself. Elicit their suggestions, and add your own if necessary. At the end, ask each student to choose one adjective beginning with the same letter as their name to describe themselves : Stupendous Sergei, Magnetic Michelle and so on. They can then write this on their name tents.

One to One : Content and Methodology

Teachers are often justifiably nervous about taking on a one-to-one lesson. There is the feeling that it should be somehow “different” from a group lesson, and the fear that it will be much more demanding. So, how does the course content and methodology that you use in a one-to-one course differ from that of a group course? Should it differ at all?

At elementary and intermediate levels I think students need to follow a set programme, in order to provide a complete syllabus and a coherent course. If you are a beginner, it doesn’t matter how specific your needs are – you still need to learn the verb to be and then the other basic structures of the language, and you still need to do lots of practice exercises. This may be an ordinary coursebook, and/or an on-line course, presuming that there is a computer in the room where you are teaching. Including an on-line course in the programme gives you the chance to provide a change of focus during the lesson – particularly useful if you are with the student for any length of time, as you might be for example on an intensive one-to-one course. One which I’ve built into several intermediate level courses as supplementary material is Ten Days in Manchester from the BBC’s Learning English site.

Beginners also need to do all the things that they would do if they were working in a group. Teachers are often frightened, for example, of asking students to repeat phrases, to read or do written exercises in a private lesson. Don't be – they need repetition work as much as any other student and, especially if they're not doing homework, they also need written consolidation. Sometimes they benefit from working on an exercise with the teacher watching them as they write the answers and confirming or helping as they go along. At other times, however, they need to work independently. I always take an article to read or some marking to do while they work – so that they don’t feel I’m hovering and observing all the time. But they also need to know that they are my priority – as soon as they finish (or if they get stuck) they tell me and my attention switches back to them.

What about other aspects of methodology ? One commonly expressed misconception about one-to-one teaching is that “You can’t do pairwork!”. You can, and you should. Otherwise, the student will never have the chance to try out the language she needs to use in the real situation in roleplay and simulation activities. It's just that you have to be the other member of the pair! This obviously means that you can't monitor at the same time, but try taping the activity. You can then play back the conversation, the student can try to correct his/her own mistakes or reformulate the things s/he had difficulty with. Some pairwork activities can also be adapted to become individual activities in the one to one situation. For example a spot the difference activity with pictures, intended to be done with one student having each picture and describing it to his/her partner, can be done by letting the student see the first picture for ten seconds, then turning it over and showing him/her the second. The student then has to list, from memory, the differences. As the student is monologuing, the teacher is free to take notes as s/he listens.

Although I said above that I would generally want to follow a set course, the advantage of 1-to-1 is that you can also focus on things which are particularly relevant to the student. For example, with one beginner, I taught the simple past form of verbs (affirmative only) very early on. We then started each lesson with her telling me the things she had done in the preceding days. Because she was saying things like I went to a meeting about ... I had a problem with... the specific vocabulary she needed for her work came up almost from the beginning - which it wouldn't have done if we'd just ploughed through a standard beginners’ course. At this level, this often means using reformulation to help the student express his/her ideas. S/he tells the teacher what s/he wants to say (either in inaccurate English or in the L1), and the teacher restates it in correct English. If you do this keep two things in mind :

• Firstly, simplify the phrase so that it can be expressed within the student’s current competence – for example. If the student wants to say I’ve known him since 1978 but hasn’t yet met the present perfect, rephrase the sentence as I met him in 1978.
• Secondly, remember that if you say the correct form and the student just says “yes!”, she won’t learn anything. Always get him/her to repeat it. I also write it down in the L1 or in abbreviated form I - meet - my husband - 1978 and at the end of the lesson ask him/her to remember what they wanted to say and to say it again.At higher levels the course can be made far more specific by working on authentic materials based on the student's own interests - which may be professional or personal. One good source of listening material for example is Words in the News from the BBC Learning English site mentioned above. This covers a range of topics and comes complete with lesson plans. However, bear in mind that developing tailor-made materials is much more time consuming in terms of preparation than working on a coursebook, and if you’re setting your own fees, you need to factor this into the course price. You need not only to develop a unit around the material, but also to find it in the first place.

If you want to provide tailor made courses, where can you get your materials? At the moment, for example, I have one person responsible for energy issues - we're working on EU and other documents concerning initiatives on pollution (provided by the student or from the Net), as well as documentaries and news items from the BBC. Another, who I have been working with for about ten years now, has had two jobs in that time – both in local government but one concerned with vocational training and another with social services. Over the years we’ve worked on documents from British local government bodies, and documentaries and news items from the media.

Tailor-made courses don’t always have to focus on a student’s professional interests however. At the moment I am working with one person who is suffering from professional burn out and has asked to drop the job-oriented texts. He’s currently taking a high level sailing licence, so we're working on a diary of a round-the-world race, again from the net. In each case I divide the text into sections, and then turn it into a "unit" with pre-text discussion activities, general and detailed comprehension tasks, vocabulary study etc. As he wants to improve his listening skills, I again use short clips of video from BBC World which I work on in much the same way (we’ve just looked at a news item on the London Boat show).

Of course, you don’t always have to provide such detailed materials to personalise a one-to one course, and if you’re not being paid enough to make it worthwhile, you might decide mainly to follow a published course but occasionally to personalise without developing too many materials. For example, as Keith Taylor pointed out in his article on using DVD and video, you don’t always have to exploit the text in video material. Had my student been at a lower level, I might simply have asked him to watch the video without sound and to say what he thought it was about, before asking him to describe the last boat show he attended in his own country. Preparation time in this case would have been limited solely to the time necessary to find the material.


Acknowledgement

Photo provided under Creative Commons Licence by septuagesima via flickr

Practising Questions : Lateral Thinking Problems

Lateral Thinking puzzles were first invented by the psychologist Dr Edward de Bono (1). They consist of a simple situation which at first sight seems strange, but actually has a very simple explanation, and were intended to encourage creative (or “lateral”) thinking. You tell the students the situation and they can then ask Yes/No questions about it until they understand what happened. In particular, it’s a great way of practising simple past and past continuous questions, but at a higher level students also have the chance to incorporate and practise the past perfect and other structures. Here are two such situations :

1. A man was lying dead in a field with a bag beside him. How did he die?
2. A woman walked into a bar and asked for a glass of water. The barman pulled out a gun and pointed it at her. The woman said “Thank you” and left. Why?

(Answers later!)

The sort of questions that the students might ask include (for the first situation) : Was there anything in the bag? (Yes) Did the thing in the bag kill him? (No, but it didn't save him either) Was it a snake? (No) Was the man carrying the bag when he came into the field? (Yes) Did he walk into the field? (No) Did he arrive by car? (No) Was there anyone else in the field? (No) Did somebody shoot him? (No) Was he alive when he first came into the field? (Only for a fraction of a second) and so on. As you can see, it’s not always necessary (or possible) to answer only Yes or No. Students do sometimes need a bit more help if the activity is to stay pacy. The important thing is that you don’t answer “give-away” questions like What was in the bag?

The problem with this activity is that after asking a few “obvious” questions, the students tend to dry up, and the whole point of these puzzles is that they don’t have obvious answers. The activity therefore has to be set up carefully so that students understand what they have to do.

Here’s the activity sequence which I use in the classroom.

• Stage A : Explain the first situation above and the activity, and let students ask whatever questions they come up with.
• Stage B : Tell them they’re going to hear a tape of two native speakers playing the same game- you can script this yourself and record it with a colleague. They should listen and find out what the answer is.
• Stage C : In pairs, they try and remember and write down some of the questions that were asked on the tape. When they’ve done all they remember, replay the tape pausing after each question to ask and write on the board what the speaker said.
• Stage D : Explain the second situation above. In pairs they have a few minutes to plan four or five questions to ask. While they work, the teacher circulates, correcting and helping as necessary but not answering the questions.
• Stage E : The students ask the questions. If you have a large class, they can be divided into groups and one student in each group given the answer. With smaller classes it can be done in teacher/class format.
• Stage F : When they run out of questions, ask them to recap on everything they’ve learnt so far before putting them back into pairs and asking them to write some more questions. If they seem really stuck, give them a clue – for instance, the woman wanted the water because she had a problem. This immediately gives them a new direction for their questions.

The activity goes on until either they guess the answer, or they seem to have had enough. If that happens, the teacher can give one or two more obvious clues so that within a couple of questions, they’ve solved it.

Oh yes – the answers. In the first situation, the man jumped out of a plane but his parachute didn’t open, and in the second, the woman had hiccups.


Notes

1. Dr de Bono’s personal website can be found here : http://www.edwarddebono.com/Default.php

2. For some more examples of lateral thinking problems (and their answers!), try here : http://www.increasebrainpower.com/brainteasersriddles.html

Photo provided under Creative Commons Licence by Material Girl via flickr

Teaching Listening : Top Down or Bottom Up?

In a previous article, I made a distinction between teaching listening and practising listening. Practising listening is just a matter of giving students constant and frequent exposure to the language, and presumes that this will gradually increase their familiarity with its sounds, rhythm, intonation etc, allowing easier decoding. An approach aimed at teaching listening, on the other hand, starts from the premise that the students’ comprehension is blocked by specific features of the language or listening process, and that in our lessons we can focus on those features one at a time and improve the students’ ability to deal with them. We looked in detail at what some of those features might be in the article Why Don’t They Understand? If we are teaching, rather than just practising listening, the focus on these features will form the objectives of our listening lesson.

In recent years there have been two major approaches to explaining the listening process – rather unfortunately called the top-down and bottom-up approaches. The bottom-up approach sees comprehension as a matter of listeners first decoding (or understanding) the smallest elements of what they hear – the sounds. /p/ is recognised as being /p/ and not /b/, /i:/ as being /i:/ and not /i/ or /e/ and so on. These sounds are then combined and the individual words are decoded – the listener recognises that s/he has heard /pi:t/ and not /pit/ /bit/ /bi:t/ /bi:d/ or some other word. The words are then combined into sentences and the listener works out the meaning of /pi:t/ : as in I saw Pete yesterday or I bought some peat for the garden. To this will be added recognition of features such as intonation and so on, until we finally reach the non-linguistic context.

The top-down approach starts from the opposite end : it sees understanding as starting from the listener’s background knowledge of the non-linguistic context and of working down towards the individual sounds. Listeners will actively interpret what they hear in terms of their understanding of the situation and the world in general. For example, imagine I tell you :

McKenzy brought me another present today. It was too late to save it so I buried it in the garden. I think I’m going to have to put a bell round his neck.

You will certainly understand all the words in this passage, but do you understand the meaning? Think back to what happened as you read. The first sentence probably went quite smoothly. But there was more than just decoding of words going on. Without your even being aware of it, subconscious expectations were forming in your mind based on your knowledge of the world – McKenzy is probably a friend, probably a man as only the surname is used, the present will be something nice etc. The existence of these presuppositions is shown by the fact that you probably did a double-take when you got to the second sentence – buried it? Eh?? And at that point you will have started to search quite consciously for the meaning.

Maybe by the end you’d worked it out. If so, then notice that it was your knowledge of the world which helped you understand – not what’s in the text. Or maybe you’re still in the dark. I can help you by giving you some contextual or situational knowledge : McKenzy is the name of my cat. Combine that with your knowledge of the world (the habit cats have of bringing their owners “presents” of half dead birds and mice which they’ve caught, and the fact that the noise of a bell will prevent the cat from creeping up on them unheard) and you have the meaning of the passage.

However much help you did or didn’t need, you can see that in understanding the passage a lot more was going on than just passively decoding the sounds (or in this case letters, as you were reading it - but the principle is the same) then the words, then the sentences. Your mind was working actively to interpret the passage, and using a large amount of non-textual information to do so. And how easy it was will depend on how close to the forefront of your mind that information was. If, as you read the passage, your cat was sitting on your lap, you probably tuned in immediately. If you have never owned a cat, it may have taken longer.

In recent years it has been the chief approach to listening comprehension in the EFL classroom, and has led to teachers telling students things such as You don’t need to understand every word, What would you expect him to say? or Try and identify the main ideas and guess the rest.

I’m not trying to suggest that this is not a valid approach. It is. The switch to a top-down approach was a necessary change from the exaggerated bottom-up approach which in some cases remained current in foreign language teaching as late as the 1960s. In this approach, the learner’s listening ability was seen as being evidenced by his or her ability to take down a dictated paragraph in exactly the same form as it was read out, or to answer detailed comprehension questions on a written passage read by the teacher. With no exposure to the natural features of spoken language, and with no training in the type of listening strategies emphasised in the top-down approach, it was little wonder that even supposedly advanced level students returned from their first trip to Britain, the States etc saying I didn’t understand a word anyone said!

Since the mid-20th century, things have changed. The advent of the tape recorder meant that recorded dialogues could be used in the classroom for the first time. Research into the spoken language and the invention of video as well as audio tape led to the use of authentic and semi-authentic materials which incorporated the type of features of the spoken language which I focused on in Why Don’t They Understand? And finally, research into the listening process itself led to our recognition of the importance of top-down processing.

But have we gone too far? Students still come back from their trips saying I didn’t understand a word and still frequently hate doing listening comprehension in the classroom. However often the teacher says If you’ve been able to answer the questions then you’ve understood the text, they don’t really believe it. They know there were chunks that they were unable to decode, and feel insecure – in the worst case scenario losing confidence in the teacher or the course.

Why is this happening? I would suggest that for a while we went too far over to the other extreme, and have often forgotten that, even if they start from the top, students still need to get to the bottom. Listening lessons have tended to stop half-way. We help students apply knowledge of the world and contextual knowledge to the text. We encourage them to focus on what they do understand rather than what they don’t by teaching them to focus on key words and infer connections. All this is valid and necessary. But what about the rest? I would argue that if we are going to help students improve their comprehension, we do need to focus on what they don’t understand. For example, if the item that blocked comprehension was a weak form we need to help them analyse the pronunciation features so that they will be more ready for it the next time. For while it is true that native speakers don’t “hear” every word either, there’s a difference. If, as a native speaker I hear a sequence of sounds something like umgernaseeyimlader or eelerbinsurprised, I have no trouble decoding those sentences as I’m going to see him later and He’ll have been surprised, even though I can’t be said, for example, to have heard the words to, will or have – they simply weren’t there. But as a native speaker I have a non-conscious knowledge of both the phonological features and the grammar of the language. The first, for example, means that I expect him to be pronounced /im/, and know that if /im/ is preceeded by a vowel, the linking consonant /j/ will be inserted. So when I hear what is apparently “yim”, I have no problem decoding it as him. Decoding “er” (the schwa sound) as have is also a matter of knowing that have is often pronounced like this in a unstressed position, but it is also helped by my knowledge of grammar : I know that if I’ve decoded will and been, then have must be in the middle, whether I hear it or not.

Non-consciously then, my native-speaker brain is working actively to interpret the sounds and to give them a meaning. It’s a bit like the picture above. What do you see? A face? Rubbish – it’s just two circles, a straight line and a curved line. Totally unconnected. But your brain puts them together and tries to make sense of them. Because it’s seen a lot of faces and knows that they have to have those elements, that’s what it sees. It’s the same with listening - the words don't have to "be there" for the competent listener to "hear" them.

The problem for our learners of course is that they don’t have native speaker competence and therefore their brains can’t “fill in the gaps” like this. Which is why, using the top-down approach, we need to help them develop other listening strategies to the full, to help them to compensate. However, by also taking a bottom-up approach, I think we can help them improve their ability to decode sounds , words and phrases

I’ll exemplify this in the next article in this series by looking at a possible structure for a listening lesson which incorporates both approaches. It starts with a top-down approach, but then moves on to activities aimed at improving students ability to decode sounds, words and phrases “bottom-up”.

Further Reading ....

ESL Exams: A Teacher's Guide

If they intend to study or work using English, or sometimes just for their own personal satisfaction, students often want to take some sort of internationally accredited exam. But which one? Keith Taylor takes a look at some of the exams on offer.

It's the end of another class, and one student has stayed behind. No problem, you think, maybe an easy grammar question, or a comment on how they enjoyed the class (or not!)... or maybe it's a question about an ESL exam. "What's the difference between TOEFL and TOEIC?" "Should I take the FCE?" "Who recognizes IELTS?" So if you don’t know your BEC from your KET, or your CAE from your CELS, here's a brief guide to the most popular ESL exams.

ESL exams fall broadly into three main categories: General English, Business English and Academic English.

General English

Probably the most popular in this category are the Cambridge ESOL exams. One and a half million people in 135 countries take Cambridge exams every year. There are five General English exams, sometimes referred to as the "Cambridge Main Suite."

The first two levels are the KET (Key English Test) and the PET (Preliminary English Test). The KET and PET have reading and writing, listening, and speaking components, and are most often used to assess progress or to prepare for the next exam in the series. The PET is also recognized by some employers and universities. KET and PET have two pass grades, Pass with merit and Pass.

Next up from the PET is the FCE (First Certificate in English). The FCE has five sections, reading, writing, use of English, listening and speaking. It is widely recognized by employers and educational institutions and so is very popular with students who want to study or work abroad.

Many universities and employers, however, prefer the CAE (Certificate in Advanced English), which is the next level up. This exam shows that a student is capable of following a university course or can function in a range of business contexts.

After the CAE comes the CPE (Certificate of Proficiency in English), the highest level in the series. Students who pass this exam have the ability to function effectively in almost every English speaking context. The CPE is also a typical requirement for non-native speakers who want to train as English teachers. Students typically need 3 years of study after passing the FCE to reach this level (depending, of course, on how often they study and other factors).

FCE, CAE and CPE have five grades, A-E, of which A-C are passes.

Cambridge also has a series of General English exams for Young Learners aged between 7 and 12 (YLE). There are three exams in the series, Starters, Movers and Flyers. They are taken mainly as a means of measuring progress, and also as preparation for the KET and PET. There is no pass or fail - students are awarded up to five "shields" for each component (reading and writing, listening, speaking).

Other General English exams

Cambridge also offers CELS (Certificates in English Language Skills). These are individual exams in each of the four skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking). Students can choose which of the exams they want to take, according to their strengths and requirements.

Pitman, part of the British City and Guilds Group, is another examining body with a series of General English exams. The International ESOL covers listening, reading and writing, and the International Spoken ESOL is a one to one structured interview. Both have six levels, from basic to advanced.

Business English

Every year four and a half million people take the TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication), run by the Educational Testing Service (ETS). The TOEIC is a multiple choice exam in two sections, listening and reading, each scored out of 445, giving a total of 990. Many companies and government agencies use TOEIC as a criterion for recruiting or promoting staff, or for sending staff abroad. Some universities also use TOEIC, requiring their business school students to achieve a particular score prior to graduation, for example.

Cambridge also has a series of business exams called the BEC (Business English Certificate). BEC comes in three levels, Preliminary, Vantage and Higher. The types of exam task are similar to those in the Cambridge Main Suite, but test language ability in a business context. They are recognized by many employers worldwide, and students take them to demonstrate language skills required for international business. There are two pass grades for BEC, Pass with merit and Pass.

Other Business English exams

Cambridge offers BULATS (The Business Language Testing Service). BULATS is designed specifically for companies and organizations to test the language ability of employees who need English in their work, and for students and employees on language and business courses.

Pitman has a three-level series of exams called English for Business Communications, which tests business writing ability, and English for Office Skills, a two-level series designed to test the ability to carry out office-related tasks where accuracy in writing and following instructions is important.

Academic English

A common question from students is "What's the difference between TOEIC and TOEFL?" Well, both are run by ETS, but whereas TOEIC evaluates language skills for the workplace, TOEFL evaluates language skills in an academic context. It is therefore used primarily as a prerequisite for admission to universities and colleges. More than 5000 colleges and universities in 90 countries recognize the exam. During 2005 and 2006, TOEFL is phasing in a new internet-based test (iBT), which will replace the current computer-based and paper-based exams. The iBT has 4 sections, reading, listening, speaking and writing, each with a score of 30, giving a total score of 120. This is likely to cause some confusion for a while, as most students and universities are used to working with the paper-based total of 677, or the computer-based total of 300!

Cambridge also has an academic exam, the IELTS (International English Language Testing System), which they jointly manage with the British Council and IDP:IELTS Australia. IELTS is recognized by universities and colleges, as well as employers, immigration authorities and professional bodies. The exam has listening, reading, writing and speaking components. For the reading and writing, students can choose between an academic and a general option. IELTS is scored on a scale of 1-9.

Comparing levels

One of the most common questions from students is how exams in the different categories compare to each other. Is the FCE equivalent to one of the BEC exams? If I have the CAE, what TOEFL score can I expect? Luckily, we have a reference guide to help us here, called the "Common European Framework of Reference for Languages" (CEF). The CEF divides language learners into six levels, and enables us to compare all the ESL exams according to these levels.

The six levels are A1 (Breakthrough), A2 (Waystage), B1 (Threshold), B2 (Vantage), C1 (Effective Operational Proficiency), and C2 (Mastery).

Here's a quick comparison of exams at the different levels. Bear in mind that this is a general guide only -- students' scores in different exams will of course depend on many factors, such as preparation time and motivation!

• A1: YLE Movers, Pitman ESOL Basic, IELTS score 1-2.
• A2: KET, YLE Flyers, Pitman ESOL Elementary, TOEIC score 246-380, TOEFL iBT score 32-42, IELTS score 3.
• B1: PET, TOEIC score 381-540, BEC Preliminary, TOEFL iBT score 43-61, IELTS score 3.5-4.5.
• B2: FCE, Pitman ESOL Intermediate, TOEIC score 541-700, BEC Vantage, TOEFL iBT score 62-91, IELTS score 5-6.
• C1: CAE, Pitman ESOL Higher Intermediate, TOEIC score 701-910, BEC Higher, TOEFL iBT score 92-112, IELTS score 6.5-7.
• C2: CPE, Pitman ESOL Advanced, TOEIC score 911-990, TOEFL iBT score 113-120, IELTS score 7.5-9.

There is of course much more information about these exams on the Cambridge ESOL, TOEIC, TOEFL and Pitman websites -- you will find the links at this ESL exams resource.


Keith Taylor is the founder of http://www.eslbase.com, providing free resources, information and advice for TEFL teachers, as well as the latest job opportunities and a directory of TEFL courses worldwide. He also maintains the eslbase language exchange, an easy way to practise any language online.
TEFL jobs, TEFL courses and ESL resources from eslbase.com


Acknowledgements

• Article Source: EzineArticles.com
• Photo provided under Creative Commons Licence by sashamd via flickr

Further Reading ...

Practising Listening

There are two possible approaches to dealing with listening in the classroom. The first, which I’ll call practising listening, is based on the idea that if students are constantly exposed to the spoken language, their comprehension will naturally, though gradually, improve. The second – let’s call it teaching listening - suggests that we need to take a more active approach to improving listening abilities, by focusing on the specific problems that the students have and planning listening activities which will help to resolve them.

When we think about a “listening lesson” we are probably thinking of the second approach. What your objectives are for this type of lesson, how it should be staged and what activity types you should use, will be the topic of another article. Here, however, I’d like to look in detail at the first type of activity : practising listening.

Every time the teacher speaks in English in the classroom - whether to give instructions, to explain a grammar point, or just to chat as the class starts to arrive - the students are in effect practising listening. This opportunity for constant exposure to the spoken language is one of the main arguments for using English rather than the L1 in the classroom - although, as the article Teacher Talking Time : Part One discussed, there may also be arguments against it.

Teacher talk may also be built into the lesson in a more conscious attempt to provide listening practice, and the third part of the Teacher Talking Time series suggested a number of ways that this can be done. Notice however that in all these activities, the students’ task is simply to listen for the gist of the conversation and to respond in some way. The activities may teach strategies to cope with non-comprehension, such as asking for explanation, but do not attempt to improve the students’ comprehension itself. It is the exposure in its own right which is seen as valuable.

Teacher Talk Listenings tend to be quite short, and are often broken up into even shorter chunks – as in interactive story-telling (described in TTT3) or TPR - described in the article Receptive Practice Activities. What about using longer stretches of recorded material for listening practice?

One of the problems here is time – with course time limited and a full syllabus to get through, we often don’t have the space for this sort of unfocused practice. It can however be usefully done for homework. I ask my lower level students to buy a simplified reader with an accompanying tape, and my more advanced level students to choose a DVD with an English soundtrack and subtitles, to work on one section at a time as the course progresses. The sections, which may be a chapter or sub-section of the book or a scene from the film, shouldn’t last longer than about two minutes. The students first listen to the tape/soundtrack without reference to the text/subtitles, and try to understand as much as possible. They then repeat the section while at the same time following the text/subtitles to see if their understanding was correct . On the third listening, they pause to check any unknown words or to replay phrases which they found particularly unclear. They then listen to the same section a final time, this time without the text/subtitles, concentrating on “hearing” the words they know are there.

If they are using this technique students must realise that the text is only as an aid to hearing the words. If they understand simply because they have seen the written form, they are not practising listening at all, but reading. The written form is used to give them confidence and to help them relate the sounds they hear to the words they know must be there. They also need to realise that to be successful, this technique has to be used frequently – the whole premise behind the “practising listening” approach is that gradual improvement results from constant exposure.

If there is time, this technique can of course also be used in class. It is, in any case, useful to use it once at the beginning of the course to demonstrate the technique, but it can also be used regularly:

• In classes where for some reason you cannot ask students to buy extra material
• In classes where you are looking for a fairly relaxed activity to provide variety of focus – perhaps as the day’s final activity in an all-day intensive course, or in a one-to one-lesson where you and the student know each other inside out and are running out of things to talk about.
• In any class where listening is a prime objective – whether because of the students’ specific communicative needs, or because it is a major weakness – and you want to dedicate extra time to the skill.

Practising listening does not, however, replace the need to teach listening, which will probably take up most of the time dedicated to listening in the classroom. In the next two articles in this series we’ll look at what a "teaching listening" approach might involve, and the objectives, stages and activities that might be included in a lesson aiming to attack listening problems more explicitly and more actively.

Notes

Photo provided under Creative Commons Licence by Susan NYC via flickr