Teach English in Xincheng XiAng - Tianshui Shi

Learners of English who live in an English-speaking environment are surrounded by the language and are able to practise learning in realistic situation. Learners whose native language is English simply absorb the language around them which is impossible to replicate in the classroom where students learn English as the second language. The most common methodologies used in the classroom are as follows: 1. Grammar-Translation: Students learn a language by finding an equivalent of their native language by translation. This methodology prevents the natural language acquisition. Therefore, the learner learns more about the language rather than the language itself. It also requires the teacher to be proficient in the students? native language. 2. Audio-lingualism: This methodology concentrates on long repetition-drills and the student is conditioned into using the language correctly. Since language learning consists of more than merely forming habits, this method is not so popular. 3. Presentation, Practice and production: The teacher first presents the context and situation of the language. Then the student is made to practise the language in a controlled manner. In the production stage students actually uses the language and be more creative. 4. Task-based: In this methodology, the student is given a task to complete. The teacher then provides some language study to clear some of the problems they had while completing the task if only necessary. This method mostly focuses on the activity rather than learning the language. 5. Communicative language learning: This method stresses more on language functions (such as agreeing, suggesting etc.) than on relying only on grammar and vocabulary. The activities require the students to use the language in real life situations. This method focuses more on completion of activity more than the accuracy of the language. 6. Community language learning: This methodology allows students to pick the topics of their choice to talk about. The teacher then helps the students with the language problems that arise during the discussion. 7. The silent way: The teacher says as little as possible while students learn and discover the language themselves. Learning in this method is better facilitated rather than just remembering and repeating. This method makes use of coloured rods (Cuisenaire rods), each colour representing an aspect in English language. 8. Suggestopaedia: The students and teachers exist in a parent-child relationship. The student needs to be comfortable, confident and relaxed to learn more effectively. In this method, students learn in three stages: Stage1: Oral review of the previous lesson Stage2: Presentation and discussion of the language Stage3: Listening to relaxing music while the teacher reads the next dialogues. 9. The Lexical approach: This method suggest that words and phrases form better building blocks for language acquisition than grammatical structure. It is difficult to decide which method is the beat to use. The decision as to which method should be used depends upon the culture of the student and their need. Engage, Study and activate: Elicitation: Elicitation is an important component of ESA method where the teacher asks thought provoking questions to get the students to respond. The teacher uses this technique to know what the student already knows and what needs to be taught. This allows less teacher talk time and more of ?student discovering the language?. Engage: In this stage, the teacher tries to arouse the students? interest. The students find the lesson more interesting and fun which is required to learn a language efficiently. The student is made to think and speak in English as much as possible. There is no teaching involved in this phase as the main aim is to engage the students as much as possible. Few activities that a teacher can use in engage phase are as follows: a. Partner information share: The students are made to sit in pairs and interact with each other and get information about each other in English. b. Fizz buzz: Students say numbers starting from one. For every multiple of a number say ?3?, the student says fizz. For every multiple of another number say ?5? , the student says buzz. For multiples of both 3 and 5 like at 15, the student says fizz buzz. The student will be eliminated if they say a wrong number, or a wrong fizz or buzz. c. Memory games: The teacher writes a sentence on the board like ?I went to the market and bought____? then the next student says a pair of socks, The next student says a pair of socks and a kerchief and so on. The items must be repeated in the same order correctly and a new item should be added. Study: In this stage, the student focus on language and how it is constructed. This phase starts with elicitation. The teacher forms boardwork based on the information gathered through elicitation. This is followed by presentation of the language point and drilling exercises. Worksheets are given to the students to check their understanding and to reinforce the material. Few activities that can be used in study stage are as follows: a. Tongue twisters: She sells sea shells on a sea shore b. Word searches: this word game consists of letters arranged in a grid. The student has to find out all the words from the given list and mark them. c. Gap fill: Students fill the missing words in sentences. The missing words are usually provided. Activate: In this stage students are encouraged to use all the language they know. The focus is more on fluency than on accuracy. Few activities that can be used in this phase are as follows: a. Role-plays: Students act their part in different situations. b. Debate/discussion: Students discuss on a particular topic. c. Story building: student narrates a story from a picture or from a headline. The three phases can be included in the lesson in any order. The only rule is that the lesson must begin with an engage phase and end with an activate phase. Straight arrow ESA Lesson: The teacher takes a lesson in the ESA order. First the teacher engages a class, then they study the language and then they go to the activate stage where students use the language. Boomerang ESA lesson: This lesson starts with an engage stage followed by activate stage where the student use the language in an activity like a role play. This is again followed by the study phase The teacher then works with the students on the language that caused difficulty in the activate stage. The teacher and the student would then do some controlled practice of the language. The student then use the language learnt in study phase in the next activate stage. Patchwork ESA lesson: This lesson starts with an engage phase and ends with an activate phase with many engage, study and activate phases in any order in between. This allows greater flexibility and provides nice balance between study and activation. Giving feedback: At the end of the lesson, teacher must give feedback to the students to encourage self-awareness and improvement. Students can evaluate their success and progress. The type and extent of feedback depends on the following factors. - Individual student - Culture and expected role of the teacher - The stage of the lesson - The type of activity Correction techniques: The teacher must have an idea of how much to correct. Too much correction may demotivate the student. Also praising a student is as important as correcting the student. It is important to distinguish between errors and mistakes. A mistake can be a slip of tongue which the student is able to correct himself. An error is something which is deeply ingrained because the student thinks it is correct or the student doesn?t know the correct form. Corrections can be made by the student himself, or the teacher or a friend. The teacher should correct in the following three cases: 1. The mistake is with the language point being taught 2. The mistake is made repeatedly by the student 3. The mistake impedes understanding While giving a speech, the teacher should never interrupt to correct a mistake. The corrections can be made at the end of the session.