In the previous article I suggested some alternative ways of making questions about a text. I also gave an example how to use differentiation in ‘question – answer technique’ so that the ambitious CLT principles are applied at least among some of the students.

UNDERLINING WORDS AND PHRASES IN THE TEXT

In the ‘old’ days I used a technique ‘Find me another way of saying’ to hammer in phrases like this:

T: Look at the text and find me another way of saying:”two weeks”.

S: “A fortnight”

T: “And then another ways of saying: “I did not have enough money in my wallet.”

S: “I was short of funds on me.”

This process is very slow and could be replaced by giving the students a ready-made list of para-phrases s that would be worth remembering. These stage I have relaced the whole thing in two ways: 1) The students underline anything they find worth underlining or I give a list like in example 3 below and the students say sentences where they use the phrases.

Now we have a look at some alternative ways to enhance talking in class and check understanding of a text. For the sake of motivation it is advisable to replace ‘question -answers’ with something else every now and then.

In short, the examples below demonstrate a way how to combine reading comprehension with speaking freely on the basis of the chapter.

TRUE – FALSE -tasks

The best thing about ‘True – False’ exercises is that it makes the students think and even better if they have to justify their choice in groups orally: argue convincingly why their choice is correct.

Here are some variations for ‘True – False’ -tasks

1. Make all statements false, one word makes it false
2. Make all statements false, part of the statement is wrong
3. More statements are false than true and the students have to identify the false ones and justify why they are false
4. Add a third choice ‘Not mentioned’, this choice is really demanding, both for the students and for the writer of the statements, this version can actually be considered to be ‘Multiple-choice’

MULTIPLE CHOICE EXERCISES

‘Multiple choice’ is an excellent way to check if a text has been understood properly. It is a very common exam task which gives reliable information of the students’ reading (and listening) skills.

If time allows, just like in ‘True – False’ tasks we can

• give students individual time to make their choices and
• then let them discuss the choices in pairs or groups; in English of course
• This process will teach them a lot and they will learn from each other.
• The discussion with others is in fact more important than the correct answers.

USING MIND MAPS

Sample 1

From CLT point of view mind maps are excellent because they give hints to the students what to talk about but offer no ready-made sentences to be used. The mind map above is a real communicative task for advanced students after they have studied a chapter with similar content.

Semi-communicative mind map would have additional key words like ‘classical, pop, rock, instrumental; guitar, piano, organ, flute, saxophone; painting, theatre, films, sculpture, poetry’ etc. to get the discussion going more smoothly. The best groups would probably realize how music is used in films to arouse feelings and that song lyrics are often poems.

A mechanical version of the mind map would have both words and guiding questions on the screen. Very often I have the mechanical version visible for everybody and tell the students to ignore my guiding if they feel like it. I call it invisible differentiation since the others do not actually know how much you use the guidance given.

SAMPLE 2

In reality it does not matter how much the students consult the original text. We allow them to do it if they need the support. The main thing is that differentiation takes place unnoticed at the level of their choice.

SAMPLE 3

In nearly all cases where we wish the students to discuss matters in groups it is advisable to have some ideas, pictures or lists or words/phrases that stirs imagination sufficiently. It is only natutal that some students work at a mechanical level and the best ones fully communicatively. Differentiation in action without any stigma on anyone.

USING PLOT PICTURES

This is an example of how to replace questions made by the teacher with students explaining about the chapter. The topis is hobbies but in my opinion the CLT trick is not to ask the students to memorize and reproduce the content of the chapter, which is what the weakest students do by looking at the text since they are not at the level of making sentences of their own yet.

The trick is to ask the students to make up stories of their own on the basis of the pictures. And the ideas can be completely imaginary and different from the chapter content.

Once the students are allowed to produce stories of their own they really seem to enjoy the freedom and become very motivated to talk in class.

USING PICTURES TO ENHANCE SPEAKING

USING PHOTOS RELATED TO THE CHAPTER STUDIED

Assuming the textbook chapter was about New York and Manhattan, the student make up a story of their own on the basis of these pictures.

ADDITIONAL TYPES OF ORAL EXERCISES

Now we have finally reached the last part of our text-based lesson: oral exercises which can be the ones in the study books or modified versions of them or any exercises that the teacher has found in other sources.

The types of tasks below are the juicy bits of our lessons. They bring joy and excitement into the class and are related to real life situations.

Having done with a chapter of two in the textbook these exercises hammer in orally what we were trying to learn. They work even with weak students if we provide them with supportive materials. And you can link them to any of the language skill areas we have in mind.

These exercises can be linked to

• some new or old grammatical point, such as ‘explaining a process using the present passive voice’, ‘looking at photos and doing comparisons’ or interviewing others (Have you ever …? Has your mum often …?
• a pre-task for the next lesson, such as ‘Find someone who’ -game where the answer is Yes or No and a certain grammatical point is repeated in a variety of ways
• functions of language, such as ‘asking for directions’, ‘requesting politely’ or ‘giving a speech’
• real-life situations, such as ‘at a hotel’, ‘at the airport’, ‘at a restaurant’ or ‘at the doctor’s’
• a role play, such as ‘reporter – film star’, ‘politicians making a decision’ or ‘travel guide – tourists’
• co-operative learning, an elaborative group work where the students move on to another group teaching others what they learnt in the previous group
• work stations – technique, group work where the students move from one table to another and each table has a different task for them
• task-based and inquiry-based learning, both are student-centered approaches where to focus is directed to finding information or answers to a problematic question, students use the foreign language in a natural way and it does not feel like a language lesson at all

These oral exercise types will be dealt with in other articles.