Teach English in Wangyao Zhen - Tianshui Shi

Productive Skills = Speaking & Writing = Used for communicating. Writing often relegated to homework. When speaking most misunderstandings are cleared up immediately. Speaking requires greater degree of fluency. Communication is very complex & ever hanging. People communicate for following reasons: ?Have some communicative purpose. ?They want to say something. ?They want to listen to something. ?They are interested in what is being said. If teacher introduces communicative activity they should us e few of above factors. Teacher must create need/desire in students to communicate. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ACCURACY AND FLUENCY ACTIVITIES: ?Accuracy activities (part of study phase) are concentrated on producing correct language & are usually controlled to ensure reproduction of language. ?Fluency activities (part of activate phase) are concentrated on allowing students to experiment/be creative with language. We are less concerned with accuracy and more concerned with effectiveness/flow of the communication. WHICH IS MORE IMPORTANT? Accuracy & fluency of equal importance. As noted both come into different stages of lesson. Accuracy activities check that students can understand & use the language in controlled way before being expected to try to use it creatively in a fluency activity. SPEAKING ACTIVITIES IN THE CLASSROOM: Controlled Activities: Accuracy based activities. Language is controlled by teacher. ?Drilling (choral & individual listening to & repetition of teachers modal of pronunciation) Always try to use a ?3x3? drill i.e. say word/phrase 7 ask whole group to repeat. This is safe environment for students to practice pronunciation & mistakes made will not be noticeable to each other. Do this 3x. Follow this by calling on 3 individual students by name, in turn. ?Prompting (pre-planned question/answer is good example) Guided Activities: Accuracy based but a bit more creative & productive. ?Modal Dialogues ?Guided Role-Play Creative Communication: Fluency based activities. The scenario is usually created by teacher but content of language isn?t. ?Free role-play ?Discussions ?Information gap (where the students have different pieces of information & have to share this information to get the complete picture/solve the task etc.) ?Debates ?Simulations ?Communication games ENCOURAGING STUDENTS TO SPEAK: Many students may seem reluctant to speak in class. This can be for many reasons including: ?Lack of confidence ?Fear of making mistakes ?Peer intimidation ?Lack of interest in topic ?Previous learning experiences ?Cultural reasons The teacher must try to overcome these 7 encourage students interaction. The aim is to create a comfortable atmosphere where students are not afraid to speak/make mistakes & enjoy communicating with teacher & fellow students. TECHNIQUES to ENCOURAGE INTERACTION: ?Pair-work/ Group-work ?Plenty of controlled & guided practice before fluency activities ?Make speaking activities purposeful i.e. create a desire & need to communicate) ?Change classroom dynamics ?Careful planning ?With certain activities you may need to allow students time to think about what they are going to say. A TYPICAL FREE/CREATIVE SPEAKING ACTIVITY LESSON: The learner objective is for the students to be able to us the language involved with weather & weather forecasts. ENGAGE: Ask students about the weather in their countries & discuss how it changes throughout the year. Discuss weather changes in other countries. Ask them if they know what a weather forecast is & where can they find them. STUDY: Elicit weather forecast vocabulary & complete various matching & gap-fill exercises. ACTIAVTE: Students write a country (not their own) & a month on a card in pairs. This is collected by the teacher to b redistributed to another pair. They then have to prepare a typical weather forecast for the country on the card that they have, at that time of the year. GUIDELINES FOR A FREE/CREATIVE SPEAKING ACTIVITY: Before The Lesson: ?Decide on your aims i.e. what you want to do & why. ?Try to predict what the students will bring to the activity & any problems they might have Will they have something to speak about? Are they capable of doing the activity effectively? Do they have the necessary language? Will students find activity interesting/useful/fun? ?Work out how long the activity will take & adapt it to the time available ?Prepare any necessary materials ?Work out your instructions During The Activity: ?Arouse the students interest through visuals, a short lead ? in talk, a newspaper headline etc. Try to relate the topic to the students own interests & experiences. ?Remind students of any structures/vocabulary that might be useful ? maybe leave them on the board for reference. ?Set up the activity so that students know what the aim of the activity is & what they need do. This means giving clear instructions & making sure that they understand. ?Make sure students have enough time to prepare, perhaps in pairs/groups before asking them to tackle the main activity. Do not be tempted to cut down on the time needed for this. Do not forget the students are probably getting useful speaking practice at this stage too. ?Make activity even more ?process? rather than ?product? ? based by encouraging rehearsal if appropriate especially with role-plays. ?Monitor activity: Do not interrupt aside from to provide help/encouragement if necessary. Try to keep a low profile. Watch the pace ? do not let the activity drag on & remember to leave time for feedback. ?Assess the activity & the students? performance in order to provide feedback later. Don?t jump in with instant corrections?. Wait until after the activity has finished. Don?t over-correct. Free speaking activities are more concerned with fluency than accuracy. After The Activity: Provide feedback: ?Indicate how well the class has communicated ? comment on how fluent each was ? how well they argued as a group etc. Focus on what they were able to do and not on what they couldn?t do. ?Sometimes you might want to record the activity on audio/video so as to play it back for discussion. Focus on possible improvements rather than mistakes - if it is taped they can be asked to do a rough version first & then discuss improvements & then re-record. ?Note down repeated errors in grammar, pronunciation & use of vocabulary. Individual mistakes can be discussed in private with student concerned & you can recommend suitable remedial work to do at home. Mistakes that are common to the class can be pointed out & then practised on another day when you have had a chance to prepare an appropriate remedial lesson. WRITING SKILLS: Written texts have a number of differences which separates it from speaking. Not only are there differences in grammar i.e. usages of contracted forms in speaking are often not applied in writing & vocabulary which is more formal in written English but also spelling, handwriting, layout & punctuation. Despite these differences most of the same factors as for a speaking lesson need to be considered 7 included. HANDWRITING: For many students whose native language uses a different alphabetical system from the English language ? forming English letters can be challenging. These students may need special training in formation of individual letters. Handwriting is a personal issue & we don?t try to make students all write the same way. But poor handwriting may impact the reader in a adverse way therefore teachers should inspire students to improve. SPELLING: Incorrect spelling not only creates misunderstandings but is often perceived by the reader to reflect a lack of education. English spelling is made very difficult by the fact that many words that are pronounced the same are written differently i.e. waste/waist etc. 7 some words are written the same but pronounced differently i.e. read/read. One single sound in English may be written in many different ways. This is because English is not a phonetic language. Teachers need to draw student?s attention to the different ways of pronouncing the same letters/combination of letters & give them exercises to discover spelling rules. Spelling differences between British English & American English don?t help i.e. colour/color! Also a new ?slang? spelling has appeared via internet & email. The best way to help students with spelling is through extensive reading. LAYOUT AND PRONOUNCIATION: This can present students with huge problems if rules of their first language are considerably different from those of English. Many languages have totally different punctuation & some have none at all. Some languages write from right to left while some are not even separated by spaces. In reality punctuation is often a matter of personal style but remember entirely incorrect usage can lead to difficult pieces of writing. To help students learn different layouts of writing i.e. business letters from emails etc. they need to be exposed to it & be given the chance to practice with different styles. After students have completed a piece of written work we should get them to check it over for grammar, vocabulary usage and also punctuation, spelling, layout & style of writing i.e. too formal or informal? As with speaking activities students will require different planning time for written work. CREATIVE WRITING: Same principles need to be applied to writing activities as to speaking activities. If there is no yearning /need to write the result will be less than remarkable. Creative writing should be urged as it engages the students & the finished work usually provides them with a sense of delight. Standard creative writing includes poetry, stories & plays. Writing is done separately but teachers may pair/group students particularly for creative writing where the input of ideas from different students may be necessary & helpful. A TYPICAL CREATIVE WRITING ACTIVITY LESSON: Learner objective would be for students to be able to use appropriate language for completing speech bubbles in cartoons & produce a story themselves. ENGAGE: Show students a picture from newspaper/magazine without any text. Ask students to come up with some ideas to say what is happening in the picture along with what happened before & after etc. STUDY: Show students example of cartoon strip with bubbles for dialogue & rectangular boxes for description/action etc. and elicit the difference. Give them a cartoon strip in pairs (real or prepared) with either the speech text or descriptions removed. Discuss ideas from students for the situation, what people might be talking about etc. have them fill in the missing material with their own ideas. ACTIVATE: Get together enough cartoon strips with a minimum of 5 boxes to give to each pair of students. Remove both the dialogue & descriptions. Cut & paste the strips into a vertical sequence of 5 pictures. Draw a dotted line between each set of pictures. Demonstrate with the students that they will fill in the missing information for picture ONE only. They then fold the paper over along dotted line so that it is not visible. Pass the paper to the next pair & repeat for picture two. Repeat this process until the sheet is complete. Get each pair to read out its sheet to the rest of the group. GAMES IN THE CLASSROOM: A game is an activity with rules, a goal & an element of fun. Both conventional & unconventional game scan be adapted to language teaching. Two kinds of games: Competitive with players or teams who race to be first to reach a goal Co-Operative games in which players or teams work together towards a common goal. These activities can be broken down further i.e. Communicative ? with a non ?linguistic goal/aim & Linguistic games. Games are popular with teachers/children/adults/teenagers etc. Must be regarded as a integral part of the syllabus. Can provide useful controlled practice & free practice materials. Many games we played as children can be incorporated into the classroom. List of games: ?Twenty Questions ?Hangman ?Cluedo ?Connect 4 ?Crosswords ?Tongue-twisters ?Pictionary ?Tic-tac-toe ?Noughts & crosses ?Snakes & ladders etc. There are many different applications ranging from spelling ? pronunciation ? grammar ? vocabulary. Use these as warmers or activate stage activities.