Termez state university foreign philology faculty the department of methodolgy of teaching english language

What the practical activities are

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  Create an 'English Corner' by providing materials in English at class such as comics and books, cable TV and Internet (with parental guidance!)
  
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  Play language-based games in English such as Scrabble and bingo, I-spy, 20 questions, Memory, Simon says etc.
  
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  Use sticky labels or 'post-it' notes to label objects at class in English. For example, using a picture or a poster you can label table, chairs, refrigerator, etc.
  
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  Collect music in English, get the lyrics from the Internet and sing along!
  
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  Do craft activities in English. Make puppets and invent a little show in English. Make posters (about their favourite star, sport, etc.); make picture dictionaries with drawings and cut-outs.
  
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  Take an 'English adventure outing'. Take children to a park vertually. Using English only they have to say what they see such as, «The children are riding their bikes», «The man is selling fruit», «There are some boats on the lake» and so on. Other locations where you can do this are: the supermarket, an office, a shopping centre.
  
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  Make reading a habit
  
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  Read to children in English. A short story or a few pages of a book daily creates a life-long habit.
  
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  You do not have to buy the books, you can join a library or download text from the Internet.
  
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  If you are concerned with your own pronunciation, there are plenty of materials on the Internet that have the text read to the viewer. Also, there are books that come with cassettes or CDs, so that children can read and listen at the same time. You could do this together.
  

While it is a bit of an exaggeration, students clearly feel that classroom-based speaking practice does not prepare them for the real world. Why do students so often highlight listening and speaking as their biggest problems? Partly because of the demands of listening and speaking and partly because of the way speaking is often taught. It usually consists of language practice activities (discussions, information-gap activities etc.) or is used to practise a specific grammar point. Neither teaches patterns of real interaction. So what can we do in the classroom to prepare students for real interaction?

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  What do students need?
  

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  Practical suggestions
  

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  What language should I teach?
  

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  How do I get students to use new language
  

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  Further reading
  

What do students need?

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  Practice at using L1 (mother tongue) strategies, which they don't automatically transfer.
  

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  An awareness of formal / informal language and practice at choosing appropriate language for different situations.
  

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  The awareness that informal spoken language is less complex than written language. It uses shorter sentences, is less organised and uses more 'vague' or non-specific language.
  

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  Exposure to a variety of spoken text types.
  

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  The ability to cope with different listening situations. Many listening exercises involve students as 'overhearers' even though most communication is face-to-face.
  

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  To be competent at both 'message-oriented' or transactional language and interactional language, language for maintaining social relationships.
  

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  To be taught patterns of real interaction.
  

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  To have intelligible pronunciation and be able to cope with streams of speech.
  

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  Rehearsal time. By giving students guided preparation / rehearsal time they are more likely to use a wider range of language in a spoken task.
  

Practical suggestions

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  Transferring L1 strategies
  When preparing for a spoken task, make students aware of any relevant L1 strategies that might help them to perform the task successfully. For example, 'rephrasing' if someone does not understand what they mean.
  

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  Formal / informal language
  Give students one or more short dialogues where one speaker is either too formal or informal. Students first identify the inappropriate language, then try to change it. Also show students how disorganised informal speech is.
  

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  Vague language
  Using tapescripts of informal speech, focus on examples of vague language.
  

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  Different spoken text types
  Draw up a list of spoken text types relevant to the level of your class. Teach the language appropriate for each text type.
  

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  Interactive listening
  Develop interactive listening exercises. Face-to-face listening is the most common and the least practised by course books. Any form of 'Live listening' (the teacher speaking to the students) is suitable. 
  

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  Transactional and interactional language
  Raise students' awareness by using a dialogue that contains both. It could be two friends chatting to each other (interactional) and ordering a meal (transactional).
  

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  Real interaction patterns
  Teach real interaction patterns. Introduce the following basic interactional pattern: Initiate, Respond, Follow-up. This is a simplification of Amy Tsui's work. See Tsui (1994)
  The following interaction could be analysed as follows:
  A: What did you do last night? (Initiate)
  B: Went to the cinema (Respond)
  A: Oh really? (Follow-up)
  What did you see? (Initiate)
  B: Lord of the Rings (Respond)
  Have you been yet? (Initiate)
  A: No it's difficult with the kids (Respond)
  B: Yeah of course (follow-up)
  

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  Understanding spoken English
  After a listening exercise give students the tapescript. Using part of it, students mark the stressed words, and put them into groups (tone units). You can use phone numbers to introduce the concept of tone units. The length of a tone unit depends on the type of spoken text. Compare a speech with an informal conversation. In the same lesson or subsequent listening lessons you can focus on reductions in spoken speech, for example, linking, elision and assimilation.
  

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  Preparation and rehearsal
  Before a spoken task, give students some preparation and rehearsal time. Students will need guidance on how to use it. A sheet with simple guidelines is effective.
  

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  Real-life tasks
  Try to use real-life tasks as part of your teaching.
  

What language should I teach?
Spoken language is both interactional and transactional, but what should teachers focus on in class? Brown and Yule (1983) suggest the following:

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  When teaching spoken language, focus on teaching longer transactional turns. This is because native speakers have difficulty with them and because students need to be able to communicate information efficiently whether in their country or in a native-speaker country.
  

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  Teach interactional language by using an awareness-raising approach. For example, with monolingual classes by listening to a recorded L1conversation before a similar L2 recording.For recordings of native-speaker interactional and transactional conversations, have a look at 'Exploring Spoken English' by McCarthy and Carter (1997). It not only contains a variety of text types, but each recording comes with analysis.
  

How do I get students to use new language?

Research by Peter Skehan on Task-based Learning shows that giving students preparation time significantly increases the range of language used in the performance of the task, whereas the accuracy of the language is not as influenced. If this is so, then it seems sensible to give students preparation time when encouraging them to use new language.

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  Imagine you have been working on the language that would be useful for the following task: 'Having a conversation with a stranger on public transport'. You have now reached the stage where you wish students to perform the task. Rather than just give students 10 minutes to prepare and rehearse the task, give students guided preparation time.
  

A simple preparation guide for the task could be a few key questions like:How will you start the conversation?What topics are you going to talk about?
How are you going to move from one topic to another?
How are you going to end the conversation?

After the preparation stage, students give a 'live performance'. This can be in front of the class or group to group in a large class. This increases motivation and adds an element of real-life stress.

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  Another way of encouraging students to use new language in a communication activity is to make a game out of it. Give students a situation and several key phrases to include. They get points for using the language.
  

Similarly, when working on the language of discussion, you can produce a set of cards with the key phrases/exponents on. The cards are laid out in front of each group of 2/3/4 students. If a student uses the language on a particular card appropriately during the discussion, he/she keeps the card. The student with the most cards wins. If he/she uses the language inappropriately, then he / she can be challenged and has to leave the card on the table.
learning language child adult

2.2. The main factor has to do with the age of the learners studying English as a foreign language throughout to B1 levels.

What is most important, when dealing with such cases, is to overcome the misconception that the only way to tackle with, and subsequently, resolve a specific speaking impediment is to focus exclusively on the organization and implementation of our teaching methods.

We are dealing, in reality, with a multidimensional issue, characterized by gravity pertaining to its characteristics and evaluation that needs to be assessed and examined in depth.

Firstly, we should not disregard the social and situational factors in terms of the actual process and parameters pertaining to the actualization of the lesson itself, but rather, realize that there are unique and individualized circumstances under which the lesson takes place.

This goes to say, in other words, that if a student is influenced by predominant factors linked to family dynamics, such as health challenges and financial problems, the student will tend to be absent-minded or exhibit difficulty in forming correct sentences in speaking activities, because their attention can be often diverted to the above-mentioned entanglements. The inability to focus on the task at hand may present as a regular occurrence, which persists, even if the topics are familiar to the students, or of particular importance with regards to aspects of their everyday life (general interests and preferences, hobbies, technology).

The second factor has to do with the age of the learners studying English as a foreign language throughout to B1 levels.

It would be counter-productive to have high demands and expectations placed on students who have reached the first and second class of Junior High school, and presume that they will be adequately equipped to fully respond to complex speaking topics required for the B1 exams, which the majority of coursebooks include in their corpus. Such topics might include unemployment, substance abuse, environmental pollution, societal structures, and others.

It is essential to keep in mind, when designing such speaking activities, that the activation of specific vocabulary and grammar schemata, which we, as teachers consider rather easy to navigate through, is not a realistic or feasible goal implementation, given the fact that our students may not yet be biologically ready or intellectually mature to produce the desired results.

The third factor that should not be overlooked is the kind of instructional methodology and techniques applied in the English language learning process, meaning, educational tools and guidelines used in previous classes the students have attended, and the level of competency they were asked to exhibit. This signifies, that quite often, when we are assigned new students, we, as educators, have to place particular emphasis on the specific methodology we will choose to follow, and the frequency of application of those methods, to have the desired results in the speaking tasks.

The fourth factor has to do with defining who we are as teachers, by being alert, examining / reevaluating our strengths and weaknesses, acknowledging our skills and limitations, so as to make a valid estimation regarding the proportionate group of students/speaking class that we will focus on and engage with on a regular basis.

The most recent teaching trends suggest that we analyse the personality and the learning type of the student, for example, visual, kinesthetic, etc.), to create lessons that successfully reach their aim.

It is crucial that, apart from this process, we consciously strive to observe ourselves and our teaching skills, to realise in which areas we lack and which specific aspects should be modified or altered in our teaching methods. A daily diary, where we can gather and organize our thoughts and ideas would be a fruitful means for a better understanding and critical evaluation of our purpose.

The fifth and last factor has to do with the use of the most suitable coursebook series and materials. Of course, these sources work interchangeably with the type of students we have. Our work as educators is made easier in the current moment, because there is a wide variety of coursebooks to select from, and language exams at our disposal.

As far as exams are concerned, it would be best to choose the ones that we consider our students to be suited for, without applying added pressure on them, or rushing them to reach their goal, but rather, consulting them to sit for the FCE or ECCE exam when they feel ready. It would be ideal if the teacher could, not only, discuss the coursebook’s speaking tasks with their students, but also, make them active participants in the dialogue, even create tasks for the school year together.

Ask your students’ opinion of the coursebook’s speaking material, and do not impose the viewpoint of the author. Slowly and steadily, with patience and persistence, make an effort to get them involved in the ideas and arguments they have to develop orally in the speaking questions of each topic in each unit of the coursebook. It is of major significance.

To pay special attention to the fact that teenagers, at this learning stage, tend, by nature, to be independent, strong-willed, even reactionary at times, and that they value their freedom of opinion and expression.

Practical Tips

One of the first techniques to apply, when dealing with speaking difficulties, is to help them draw inspiration from the reading comprehension activities included in the unit, by slightly amending them according to the learner’s needs.

I will provide you with two specific examples from a coursebook, of a specific book series for B1+ levels (Upper-intermediate).

Example A

The text deals with ghosts and unsolved mysteries.

A good beginning would be the brainstorming technique before the actual reading comprehension activity, where students are asked to comment on the existence of vampires, witches, werewolves, whether they consider them to be true/ most likely to exist in some shape, form or fashion, or merely an urban myth not to be taken seriously.

There are a lot of other adjustments that the teacher can make with regards to the content of the text, such as readjusting in random order the text’s paragraphs and asking them to find the correct order in which the text is put together. This serves as a way to actively introduce the information pertaining to the lead character of the story, a woman back in 1884, Sarah, who inherits the wealth of the Winchester family, after the deaths of her husband and child, and reinstates the family to California, with plans to build a huge house, as a way to start over and maintain the family balance.

This initial task aids the students to get better acquainted with the text, and also assists them to explore the function of certain vocabulary items, in order to understand the text to its full extent.

As far the activation of the vocabulary items is concerned, we can start by asking them some questions about expressions used in the second paragraph of the text, to establish the level of their understanding of the key terminology :”inherited”, ”fell into a deep depression”, “consult a medium”, “haunted by the ghosts of”, “spirits”, ‘victim”. These questions can take the following form:

What did Sarah’s husband left her in his will, and was her emotional state affected by the death of her family?

What is a medium? Do you think there is a specific reason why Sarah visited one?

What was the medium’s advice, and do you think a contemporary medium/psychic would make the same suggestions?

At this stage, the teacher can extend the activity further if the student faces extra difficulty answering the questions in a cohesive manner.

Also, try to personalise the task by asking if a distant relative of theirs, like an aunt or grandma, has inherited such fortune, under which circumstances, and if those relatives experienced similar fear of spirits. As the student is narrating their personal account of events, remind them to use the vocabulary that they have just been introduced to or other similar vocabulary.

An alternative way to do this is to ask them to reproduce a scene/dialogue, where they reenact the supposed meeting with their aunt and listen as she narrates her story, or to ask them to write the actual dialogue between their aunt and the medium.

If you are dealing with a larger group of students, you can ask them to create the dialogue in pairs and act it out aloud interchangeably, or pass their paper with the dialogue they have just written to a couple of students sitting next to them, to correct any possible errors and add ideas that ameliorate the produced text.

All of the above alternate ways to deal with the same activity can spark the interest of the students to participate in a productive manner.

Thus, as you proceed with the actual reading comprehension activity, it is much more likely that your students will participate more eagerly, and they will use the speaking skills required by the guidelines of the unit.

Usually, the coursebook consists of vocabulary and grammar pages and listening activities in a particular layout (after the brainstorming and the reading comprehension activity). Still, it would be beneficial if you chose not to stick exclusively to the construction of the textbook, even shift the focus when necessary and applicable, to better attend to the needs of the students that require additional help in their speaking skills. This would mean that you could move straight to the speaking activity, leaving the grammar, vocabulary, and listening pages for later on.

According to the book’s speaking task, the student is asked to compare and choose between five ways to uncover the truth that lies beneath local mysteries. At this stage, the book indeed offers some interesting ideas, like borrowing books from a library or doing research on the internet. The issue, though, with students that have difficulties in speaking, is that they cannot illustrate their tt’s easily by using the right grammatic forms, adjectives, verbs, or conjunctions, to name a few. In this case, the teacher can take on that task and see how the student gradually develops their strategy further down the line.
I will provide a specific example for this: Ask them about the films “Breaking Dawn,” a movie franchise involving vampires, that most teenagers have probably wa