Teaching English as a Foreign Language for Dummies (13 page)

A good practice activity is one which:

✓

The students can do together without the teacher.
You can step back and make notes on any errors or teaching points that come up during the activity.

✓

Makes the new language point vital to completing the task
. This ensures that the students concentrate on using it.

✓

Is communicative in whole or in part.
This means that the students should not work individually throughout the lesson. They need to interact with each other. So, for example, even if the students are working on a written exercise, they should be able to compare and discuss the answers with other students in pairs or groups. This may happen while they complete it, or afterwards.

✓

Is structured so that students must actually understand the new point
in order to use it properly.
If the students are simply following a pattern they may not put much thought into it and end up not being able to use it later. Take a look at two examples in Figure 4-4.

The bad exercise is poor because the students only needs to work out that they need to add ‘s’ to the verb. The next example requires more thought because the learner has to work out which pronoun to use as well as how to change the form of the verb.

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Bad exercise

Example: He/like/cats – He likes cats

1) She/drink/coffee – She .....................................................

2) It/eat/fish – It .....................................................

Good exercise

Example: What is Peter’s favourite animal? (like)

He likes cats

1) What does Mrs Smith do in the morning? (drink/coffee)

............................................................................................

Figure 4-4:

2) What does the cat have for dinner? (eat/fish)

Bad and

............................................................................................

good

exercises.

Giving your students free practice

By the time you reach the production stage of the lesson, the students should be fairly comfortable with the new language point. After all, they’ve heard what you had to say about it and practised it for themselves. Now, in this stage they get to practise in a freer way. In the production stage the aim is for the students to be fluent and use the language in a natural way rather than just an accurate way.

When students engage in free production activities, they have a chance to express themselves and show off all they know that’s relevant to the topic.

They have the opportunity to use the new language point but they can decide when to use it and when to opt for something else.

Storytelling is a typical activity for production exercises. There’s a theme but not a sentence by sentence structure. Other activities include debates and 64
Part II: Putting Your Lesson Together

report writing. In Chapter 6 I talk about ideas for practice and production activities and how to use them.

Stepping Out of the Spotlight

to Let Your Students Shine

In the TEFL industry,
TTT
, or Teacher Talking Time, is seen as something to be minimised. Unlike the traditional image most people have of what a teacher does, in TEFL, it isn’t a good thing to be standing at the board talking for the majority of the lesson for several reasons:

✓

Students need time to practise speaking in the lesson and if the
teacher hogs the limelight this becomes difficult.
Bearing in mind that the lesson is sometimes the only opportunity the student has to speak English, it would be tragic if the only person speaking is the one who already knows the language perfectly.

✓

Students get bored when they have to sit listening
. Much better to have them actively involved in a task or interaction.

✓

Lectures leave no room for progress checks
. Students need to demonstrate understanding throughout the lesson, which means they need to speak and write. Even if they smile and nod while you’re speaking, it doesn’t guarantee understanding.

You can employ a variety of techniques to avoid talking too much to the detriment of your students:

✓

Encourage students to solve problems.
Whenever possible, get students to work things out for themselves. Eliciting means asking students questions that lead them where you want them to be. So ask focused questions instead of making statements.

✓

Promote learner independence.
Encourage your students to develop strategies that allow them to cope without you. For example, show them how to organise information in their notebooks in a logical fashion so that they end up with a sound reference book, instead of asking you all the time.

✓

Make dictionaries available.
If there’s a class set of English-English dictionaries (with the key word and the definition both in English instead of translated from language into another) in the classroom, you won’t have to define every difficult word.

Chapter 4: Starting from the Beginning: Planning the Lesson
65

Lesson planning checklist

Use this checklist to make sure that you’re pre-

❑ I anticipated problems and have thought of

pared for each lesson.

ways to prevent them from occurring.

❑ I know what level my students are at.

❑ I have a planned activity or exercise for

providing controlled practice.

❑ I know who my students are – their nation-

ality, language, background and so on.

❑ I have a planned activity for providing free

practice.

❑ I know how long the lesson is.

❑ I have any materials I need.

❑ I set aims and objectives.

❑ My activities are communicative, which

❑ What I want to teach fits in with the course

means the students spend some time inter-

syllabus.

acting with each other to complete a task.

❑ I know what my students need to know ❑ My teacher talking time is 30 per cent or about this piece of language – its rules,

under.

patterns and so on.

You can find lesson planning templates in

❑ I have an appropriate context for this lan-

Appendix A.

guage point.

✓

Write your interaction patterns into your plans.
On your lesson plan, indicate who is speaking to whom and for how long. Plan TTT (teacher talking time) for no more than 30 per cent of the lesson time. This helps maintain a good balance.

✓

Simplify your classroom language.
Avoid rambling and overly polite language. I’m not suggesting that you be rude but it’s far easier for students to cope with ‘Open your books to exercise F on page 10 please’, than ‘If you’re all finished then, we’ll just take a little look at an exercise; the one on page 10. Yes that’s right, it’s exercise F I think’.

✓

Write up instructions.
When you write up instructions on the board (perhaps while the students are busy doing something else) you don’t have to repeat yourself later on.

✓

Drawing and miming.
Use these techniques to get students describing what you’re doing so that you don’t have to engage in long explanations.

✓

Wait patiently for the student to answer.
Try not to jump in too soon.

Your students may just get there if you allow them a little more time to answer the question.

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Part II: Putting Your Lesson Together

✓

Avoid echoing.
Over enthusiasm may make you repeat everything the student says as though you’re egging them on, but this is unproductive and increases TTT.

✓

Ask open questions.
Open questions start with words like ‘why’ and

‘how’ so the student can’t just say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in response.

✓

Monitor quietly.
Once you get the students working in pairs and groups, try not to butt in. Just listen and make notes.

Chapter 5

Standing in the Spotlight:

Presenting to the Class

In This Chapter

▶ Asking for answers

▶ Using visual aids

▶ Making sure that your students understand

▶ Expanding vocabulary

▶ Using proper grammar

You generally divide a lesson into three distinct parts – Presentation, Practice and Production. This chapter concentrates on the Presentation stage of the lesson and I show you what to include.

The Presentation stage of the lesson is the shortest stage, and happens right at the beginning. The teacher explains the new words or grammar as thoroughly as possible using examples, definitions, pictures, tables and so on.

During this stage the students should get all the information they need to use the new piece of language well and complete the tasks that follow in the Practice and Production stages.

Eliciting Answers – Ask, Don’t Tell!

Eliciting
means getting your students to tell you what they know by using questions instead of simply giving them the information.

In your mind you need to be several steps ahead of the students throughout the lesson. So the questions you ask should keep them mentally active and move them along to the next step. Elicitation questions are generally short and snappy. For example, ask the class how to spell words, for the meaning, for examples, for similar words and opposites, what they remember about a previously taught point, and so on. You can use props and pictures if they help to clarify the meaning or add interest.

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Part II: Putting Your Lesson Together

The pros and cons of using this technique are set out in the following list, but most teachers find it very useful.

The pros first:

✓

Eliciting keeps your class on their toes.
They’re interested and involved because they have constant opportunities for interaction. Passively listening for extended periods is dull, so in EFL you rarely give lecture-style presentations.

✓

Eliciting gets the students guessing.
When you ask them questions they try to work things out spontaneously. This is a great skill because in the real world your students often have to take a stab at the meaning of words or sentences and may not have anyone there to explain. So, being prepared to have a go and guess is a good habit.

✓

Students really understand what’s going on.
When you elicit, you’re getting regular feedback from the students so you can gauge whether or not they’re with you, so to speak.

✓

You reduce Teacher Talking Time (TTT).
As the students should do most of the talking in a lesson, eliciting allows you to reduce TTT and instead, keep students interacting with you.

Eliciting has a few drawbacks, though:

✓

It can drag on.
If your students don’t get the point quickly (possibly because you’re asking the wrong questions) this stage of the lesson can be rather long and drawn out. It’s definitely quicker to just tell the students what’s what.

✓

It encourages dominant students.
Far be it from me to suggest that you may have a teacher’s pet in your class but it has been known to happen.

Sometimes you have one student who has their hand up permanently, or who you know is pretty smart, so that one student ends up answering all the elicitation questions. This is obviously annoying for everyone else.

✓

Poor or excessive eliciting may put students’ backs up.
If your questions are too easy the class may feel that you’re somewhat condescend-ing and refuse to answer. The class may also wonder whether you’re capable of uttering a simple statement if you seem to turn everything into a question.

With these points in mind, follow a few suggestions when eliciting to make it a positive experience for your students:

✓

Make sure that your questions have a definite answer that the class has a good chance of guessing or knowing – no vague questions.

Chapter 5: Standing in the Spotlight: Presenting to the Class
69

✓

Deal with learners according to their level; don’t try to elicit an intermediate level answer from an elementary level student.

✓

Once students are speaking, don’t cut them off mid-sentence. Remember that one of the aims of eliciting is to increase student talking time.

Creating Interest with Visual Aids

Visual images and aids add interest and often add meaning in a way that words can’t. This is especially true of EFL students who don’t have sufficient words to understand detailed spoken explanations.

Showing and telling – pictures and objects

People learn in different ways. For example, some people learn well by listening (
auditory learning
), some by movement and touch (
kinaesthetic learning
) and many people respond well to seeing things (
visual learning
). These are some of the different learning styles. So having variety in your presentations gives attention to these different styles and helps everyone succeed.

Bringing something of interest into the classroom gets students quite excited –

there’s a certain novelty value involved in pictures and objects you personally have chosen.

Things visual learners love to see in a presentation include:

✓

Flash cards:
Not just for primary school, flashcards are good fun for adults and children alike. The traditional flashcard has a picture on the front and the equivalent word in writing on the back or below. By holding up one side of the card you can elicit the information on the other side.