Using Balloons in the EFL Classroom

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

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.

So what are the advantages of using them?

• They can be used to simulate situations that learners will encounter in real life. For example, in a Business English class, learners who have to negotiate contracts with clients can simulate the situation, and therefore "rehearse" for what they will need to do in reality.

• In the general purpose class, they are useful for practising functional language. For example, if the lesson has been focusing on making offers, in the freer practice stage a situation can be set where learners have to arrange a party, decide what needs to be done to prepare, and then each offer to do certain of those things.

• If each learner has a rolecard with information that must be communicated in order to complete the roleplay, it means that everyone must participate. This solves problems sometimes encountered with other types of discussion activity where stronger/more confident learners dominate and weaker or shyer ones take a backseat.

• Like all other pair and group work activities, they allow the learner to practise the language in relative anonymity, rather than having to speak out immediately in front of the class - which s/he may feel to be stressful and embarassing.

However, roleplays are not always fully successful. So why don’t they 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.

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 :

• Learners feel uncomfortable with their role and don't want to participate.

• 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.

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


• 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.


• They 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 activity – 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 :

• Don't use roleplays which have any potentially embarassing roles or push learners into expressing opinions etc that they may oppose in real life.

• 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 applying for holiday job in Britain (or wherever) to help them improve their English and earn some money art the same time..


• 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.

• Let them do the activity more than once. After the preparation stages above, the learners should be ready to change partners - ie be grouped with learners with the other role(s) - and have a "first go" at 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, focusing on these areas, and after they have had a chance to check any information that they weren’t sure about, they repeat the roleplay with different partners. And by now the students should be confident enough of what they’re doing to perform the roleplay realistically and well.

For a distinction between roleplay and simulation, see here.

Developing Bottom-Up Decoding Skills for Listening

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 or the intrusive consonant /w/ is used before "is" to link two vowels. Sentences like ……………… in Rome for three days; Jo ………………… 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 a 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


Recommended Further Reading

Field, J. Listening in the Language Classroom, Cambridge

Planning A Listening Lesson

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 true-false 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.

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Getting Started in TEFL: Finding Your First TEFL Job

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

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 ...

100 Today!

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

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



For some great teaching ideas...

Gerngross, Puchta and Thornbury, Teaching Grammar Creatively, CUP

Teaching Parts of the Body

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 ...