PRE-TASK: THE CHAPTER VOCABULARY

So far I have argued in favour of the students getting to know the chapter content at home and checking the written homework in a time-saving manner. Checking homework should preferrably take place in groups the right answers being on the screen or on a handout. This way the students can help each other with their explanations.

Many teachers are in the habit of having ‘warmers’ or ‘icebreakers’ when the homework has been checked. It is a good idea if there is a real language learning point in doing so.

As a language teacher I am extremely jealous of time. I tend to measure the outcome in my mind compared with the time we spend on the warmer. Therefore I often allow my students to work on the new vocabulary for a few minutes.

We have dealt with 1 and 2 already and now we will have a look at stages 3, 4 and 5.

• 1 Studying the chapter at home in advance
• 2 Checking written or oral homework exercises
• 3 Working orally on the new words of the next chapter
• 4 Listening to the chapter on a CD, DVD, via the internet or read by the teacher
• 5 Checking if the content was understood, clarifications
• 6 Reading the text aloud
• 7 Questions on the text, or multiple choice, true-false, black hole tasks
• 8 Doing oral activities or written exercises in class

Having dealt with 1 and 2 the next stage in my lessons is to work on the vocabulary of the next text even before we do anything else. Why?

1. First, working on the vocabulary of the chapter reminds the students of the content of the text.
2. Secondly, the pronunciation of the new words is learnt if the words are repeated after the teacher. Looking at the words in the list helps students to memorize how the words are written.
3. Linguists argue that on average something must be done with a new word 20 times before it is learnt. The students have seen and done things with the words maybe 5 times at home and now we must intensify the learning more in class.
4. After repeating the words after the teacher, student pairs have options: a) ask each other the words (mother tongue – English OR vice versa), b) give definitions or descriptions of the words and the pair finds the words in the lists, c) orally, students use the words in sentences of their own, d) the best students take turns in making up a story where they use as many of the words from the word list as possible.
5. This stage of the lesson usually takes only 5 – 6 minutes and those minutes are certainly not the worst minutes of the lesson.
6. When students start forming their own sentences, the others automatically practise listening skills and give feedback if the sentences do not make sense. After one minute you can see smiles on the faces of the students who tend to make up humorous and mysterious stories.
7. When feelings are involved in learning, things are learnt more effectively. Humour and laughter are good medicines!

LISTENING TO THE CHAPTER RECORDING

Great listening skills are a result of a lot of input during the lessons: teacher talking, playing recordings or students talking and listening to others.

The next step is to listen to the recorded version of the Chapter. Why? Firstly, because it gives the students a chance to check one more time if there is something in the text they do not understand. Secondly, listening provides a model for pronounciation and intonation of the text. Thirdly, ears need to be trained for the characteristics of the foreign language.

Why listening at this point? Why before reading aloud? Simply because there is no point in reading a text that you do not fully understand. In addition a model is needed for pronunciation. Neither is there a point in doing exercises on a chapter if it is not understood. The text is in almost every case listened to everyone together.

1. Listening is an important skill and it does not develop unless we keep on practising it at school as well. That is why listening should be part of nearly all lessons.
2. In most countries we are lucky to have native speakers who speak authentic English for us to listen to in the textbook recordings. Sometimes the recordings are even produced abroad. It does not really matter which accent is used since students need to get used to different versions of English anyway.
3. Difficulties in listening may be due to a variety of reasons but I will deal with them in more detail under title ‘Listening’.
4. If there is a lot of speaking in class, it means a lot of listening. Even if the speakers are students still learning the language, one should not underestimate the importance of the practice between students.
5. Under title ‘Pronunciation’ I argue that good pronunciation is best learnt by mimicking / copying what the students hear. Still, some sounds, weak forms and intonation may require explaining and special training. Listening to native speakers as a model for speaking is a must.
6. Beginners need a lot of support from the teacher who may be the most significant source of English they hear and listen to.
7. Publishers recordings are mostly excellent in quality and they should be made use of in lessons. Junior high texts are usually rather short and can be listened to as a whole. Senior high chapters may be up to two pages long and my advice is to divide them into at least two parts.
8. In my junior high lessons we listen to the text, check if we understand it and then listen to it again sentence by sentence and repeat the sentence mimicking the recording.
9. Senior high students listen to the text in parts only once and read some part, usually about 20 lines anywhere in the text, without a model.
10. Having listened to the text the student have a good understanding of the text and they can move on to talk about the text.

CHECKING UNDERSTANDING OF THE TEXT AND ASKING FOR CLARIFICATIONS

In short, at this stage of the lesson it should be quite clear to the students how well they understand the text. They have studied the text at home, done oral vocab exercises on it and listened to the text.

Still, we need to give the students one more time to ask us to explain any unclear parts of the text or let them present something they wonder about the text.

Teacher: “Is there anything in the text you still do not understand or wonder about? Words, phrases, grammar, anything?“

Usually we people are unwilling to admit that we do not understand something and therefore it is vital that we present the idea of asking for clarifications in a positive light not to embarrass the students. No-one is to be humiliated no matter what they ask. Sometimes the teachers have to keep up a real poker-face: “Thank you, Jim. That was an interesting question.”

When I try to ‘sell’ the idea above to my students I say:

There are no stupid questions. If you are wondering about something, there are certainly others who are wondering about the same thing. And it is my job to give you an answer. If I don’t have one, I will find out.

In fact there are three options how to deal with clarifications / translations. This is the moment differentiation steps in during the lesson.

1. Ask the students to translate the whole text into their mother tongue, with the teacher or in groups where a good student is checking the work. This is advisable with beginners no matter what age they are.
2. Only the difficult parts are translated with the teacher or in groups. The rest of the text is supposed to be a piece of cake as for understanding. This is the case with intermediate students whose level the teacher knows well.
3. No translation at all, unless the students ask some part of the text to be clarified.

The principle: The final aim is to have as little translation into the mother tongue as possible since it tends to eat up too much time.