Teaching English as a Foreign Language for Dummies (18 page)

Doing class surveys and reports

Find out from the class about topics they’re all interested in. From this starting point you can determine a good topic for a survey and have the students prepare survey questions based on the topic.

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The answers to questionnaires like these are usually limited, so they provide excellent controlled practice of the tenses.

A survey on musical tastes may incorporate questions in various tenses:

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Past tenses:
What was the first CD you bought? Had you heard all the tracks before you bought it?

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Present tenses:
What are you listening to these days? Do you use CDs, MP3 or a different format?

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Future tenses:
Will you be going to any concerts this year? In your opinion which artist will be ‘the next big thing’?

Students can distribute the questions and mingle to conduct short interviews with each other.

Mingling
(as though at a dinner party) is a great way to incorporate group work and create a buzz.

After that they can collate the information and prepare graphs and charts to demonstrate the results. As a freer writing activity the students can now prepare reports on their findings. They could also have a final discussion analysing the reasons for any surprising results.

Playing Mastermind

You’ve probably seen this game on television. It‘s the one where a contestant prepares to answer questions on a specialist subject. Well, in the classroom you can organise a similar game that allows groups of students to research a particular topic (maybe an area of vocabulary) and answer questions about it. They can ask each other questions you’ve prepared and later write questions themselves.

Apart from the revision of particular topics, a sub-aim is to get students using questions with and without auxiliary verbs, as in the following examples: When
did
this happen?

What happened?

Which film
did
Brando make in 1978?

Who directed
Jurassic Park?

So that you can reduce TTT (teacher talking time), hand the questions over to another group. For example, if Team A prepared Hobbies as their specialist subject and Team B prepared Occupations, each team can have a quizmaster 100
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who asks the other team questions. They can have a spokesperson each to answer. A question and answer session may run something like this: Quizmaster A: What is the name of the person who has the job of organising funerals?

Spokesperson B: Undertaker.

Quizmaster A: Correct.

Quizmaster B: Which pub sport has small metal arrows and a target?

Spokesperson A: Darts.

After the specialist knowledge round, which is practice, do another short presentation to remind students of the grammar of questions. Then students can come up with questions for the general knowledge round themselves.

If a piece of language is needed later in the lesson, instead of expecting the students to learn it at the beginning and remember it throughout, you can do another mini presentation when it’s needed.

Producing predictions

Several ways can be used to render the future in English so here’s a suggestion for using the various future constructions:

In 1979 Margaret Thatcher famously predicted that there would never be a woman Prime Minister in her lifetime and in 1916 Charlie Chaplin said that cinema was little more than a fad.

1. In the Presentation stage, analyse the different expressions and tenses
used.

2. Have students respond to a set of predictions for the year 2050, saying
whether they’re likely to come true or not and comparing their ideas
with a partner.

3. Come up with your own or find out what the scientists say.

4. Ask the students to make their own predictions on various areas of life.

Chapter 7

Giving Correction and Feedback

In This Chapter

▶ Sorting out which errors matter

▶ Using gestures to correct

▶ Having students correct themselves

▶ Using students to correct other students

▶ Giving your class feedback

▶ Correcting written work

▶ Giving tests

All language learners make mistakes. It’s part of the learning process.

But what should you do about them? In this chapter I tell you about the different kinds of error students make and various techniques for handling them.

Knowing What to Correct and When

There seems to be little disagreement that students ought to receive correction in the classroom. They expect it, and teachers rightly feel the need to take action when students get it wrong.

Of course, in the real world outside the classroom, people make errors all the time and still communicate effectively. And even though you teach English, you generally don’t interrupt them, especially as this may come across as rude and actually put them off speaking. Taking the person to one side afterwards and pointing out an error, is more polite but maybe a little picky. After all, the moment has passed. And in any case, it does no harm to let some things slide – you don’t need to be a staunch defender of the Queen’s English on all occasions.

But the classroom isn’t the real world. It’s a safe environment where your students can try language out. And as the teacher, you’re no ordinary listener; you’re paid to point students in the right direction.

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That being said, the issues for TEFL teachers when it comes to correction, boil down to these:

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Striking the right balance between accuracy and fluency.

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When to correct: immediately or later?

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The particular errors to correct.

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The techniques you use for giving correction.

The guidelines for dealing with the first three points all boil down to a set of definitive rules:

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Accuracy and fluency:
These should combine to make for good communication. If lack of accuracy hinders communication, the speaker doesn’t achieve anything by carrying on.

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Good communication:
When this takes place, correction can usually wait. When communication is poor or non-existent, step in more quickly.

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Correcting errors:
Errors related to the topic of the lesson and which stop communication should receive the most attention.

I talk about correction techniques later in the chapter.

Judging accuracy, timing and value

On the subject of accuracy, most students want to get it right. This is one of the key differences between people who just pick up a language as they go along and those who actually study it. The fact that the student is in the classroom at all means that accuracy is important to him to some degree. It should therefore be important to you too.

Even though students may not achieve total accuracy, try for it at least in the language area you’re practising in that particular lesson. This gives the student something to aim for. It’s a bit like target practice. You need to identify the target and actually aim for it. You hit it sometimes and miss at other times but it’s clear to you when you miss and that you need to practise. When the arrow misses the target you can still applaud the effort. Likewise, you need to encourage effort but make sure that the student knows when he has to work harder.

So, suppose that the lesson is about the present simple tense and your student, John, says, ‘I am go to the shopping.’ You may want to interrupt him to make the error, ‘ I am go’, the focus of attention because it indicates that the he may not have grasped the information you just presented on the present simple tense. However the meaning is fairly clear, especially if it occurs within a more extended dialogue. So if you don’t stop him, John continues, ‘. . . and there I buy vegetables because I don’t want meat.’ The benefit of allowing
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him to continue, or to be fluent, is that you discover the extent to which he understands the tense. He may have just slipped up initially because of nerves or distraction. His next two attempts at the present simple, ‘I buy’ and ‘I don’t want’ are very good.
So, by allowing John to continue the conversation, it also becomes clear that he really wants to say the present simple ‘I go’ – not ‘I am going’, which was the other likely option. Also, if John continues to use the present simple very well, you can handle his first error very quickly, leaving time for a mention of the second error ‘to the shopping’.

To encourage fluency then, you should allow students to keep talking. You can make a note of the errors and deal with them later.

Try not to put words in your student’s mouths when you offer correction. Find out what they actually want to say before wading in.

In a lesson about health, Paola makes a different kind of error: Tano: Do you have a cough?

Paola: Yes I have one cup in the morning and one with lunch.

Tano: Not cup, cough!

Paola: Yes, every day.

This time communication is actually breaking down and very soon the two students are likely to become exasperated. Knowing her Brazilian Portuguese background, I detect that Paola is talking about coffee, not a cough. This is an occasion when it would be wise to step in immediately as fluency has no benefit without true communication. By the way, inaccurate pronunciation is the usual culprit when this happens.

Exploring the nature of the error

Students get things wrong for different reasons. Sometimes they just slip up although they really know it. Even native speakers do that. At other times they make mistakes because they really are confused or they’ve missed the point.

If a student just slips up, you can tell because he gets it right most of the time. In that case he only needs a reminder instead of a full explanation. As long as the student is aware that he’s got something wrong, he stands a good chance of putting it right. Having said that, students find it most useful if you point out what kind of slip up it is.

If the atmosphere in your classroom is generally relaxed and friendly, students won’t feel too self conscious about making mistakes. You can even laugh along with them when the result of a mistake is rather amusing.

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If the problem is more than a minor slip, the student needs an explanation that shows that he’s made an error and exactly why it’s wrong.

Letting Your Fingers Do the Talking

Students have their eyes glued on their teacher quite a lot of the time, so they get to know your gestures and mannerisms quite well. For that reason alone, it makes sense to use your body language effectively instead of just waving your arms around for emphasis.

Don’t worry about whether or not the students understand your gestures. Just go ahead and they very quickly get used to them.

Using your hands

You can use your hands to indicate where a student has made errors in a spoken sentence. These ideas may come in handy, if you’ll excuse the pun.

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Using fingers as words or syllables:
One way to indicate where the error is in a sentence is by using your fingers to represent words.

A student has come up with this sentence:
She have been to France.

You can highlight the problem by holding out your left hand (right if you’re left handed) and pointing to a finger as you say each word:

• she = the thumb

• have= the index finger

• been = the middle finger

• to = the ring finger

• France = the little finger

When you say ‘have’ waggle the index finger and use a questioning tone, then carry on to the next finger/word.

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Pointing for time reference:
To remind a student that he should refer to the past, the present or the future, you can point back over your shoulder for the past, to the floor in front of you for the present and straight ahead for the future.

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Extending:
If the student has used only the base of a word (‘go’ instead of ‘going’ or ‘inform’ instead of ‘information’), say the word using your thumb and index finger: Start with them pressed together and separate them as you say the word. Draw out the word as you say it too.

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If the student needs to extend the whole sentence, you can use both hands, pulling them apart from a ‘praying’ position. At the same time, draw out the last word of the student’s sentence as you say it.

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Reducing a word:
Sometimes students attach endings to words unnecessarily. They say, for example: I might watching a film.

You may not need to speak at all if you can quickly make a gesture like a pair of scissors cutting while the student is saying the word. If you miss your chance, say the word again yourself along with the gesture.

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Re-ordering:
When students get their words in the wrong order, try to get them to do a reshuffle without interrupting by using a quick mime of shuffling little boxes around in a straight line on a table in front of you.

Teaching with body language

You can give a lot away with your body language, but it isn’t necessarily just an unconscious form of communication. In the classroom you can use it like this:

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Smiling and frowning:
Your face is a strong indicator of approval, or not, as the case may be. When you smile a lot, students feel encouraged and comfortable. On the other hand, you can use a frown to show that something is not quite right. Hopefully the student then starts to tread more carefully and possibly self-correct.