All posts by Raimo J

I am a 66-year-old retired teacher of English who wishes to share some of the key ideas on communicative teaching of languages with you. I taught English in a teacher training school in Finland over 40 years, 30 years of it as an IB coordinator.
Assessment, Speaking, Yleinen

HOW TO USE SPEAKING CRITERIA

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Criteria are hard to write and understand and that is why teachers have to practise using them with their colleagues.

There are three reasons why oral exam criteria are used:

  1. we need them in order to justify our evaluation and the grades we give
  2. the students need to know their strengths and weaknesses
  3. they make self- and peer-evaluation possible

If we tell our students that their speaking is 7 out of 10 or B-, A being the highest grade, it actually tells very little about the student’s performance and what needs to be done next. That is why more detailed criteria are used.

In many countries speaking is unfortunately not part of language evaluation and that is why teachers need to get it right from the very beginning following their national criteria.

The criteria below is a sample to demonstrate how we can use any criteria effectively. Of course, depending on the age of the students we would have to modify the criteria to match the true competence of the students.

Criteria typically follow a pattern of decreasing scale  (excellent–very bad / always–never / very clear–uncomprehensible)

How to use the sample criteria above

1 Start with the yellow column Flow of ideas to get a holistic ideas of the performance.

Having listened to the speaker use this yellow column to decide what your first impression is like.

Go down from grade 10 until you arrive at the grade (1 – 10) that corresponds to your evaluation. You can of course use grades 3, 5, 7, 9 and even half points if you feel ilke it.

Fluent / mostly fluent / some fluent moments / hesitant with only a few ideas / next to nothing said. You can naturally change your opinion at the end of the evaluation.                                                                  

2 Do the same thing with the blue columns Content / Language / Interaction / Pronunciation to get a more detailed picture of the speaker’s skills in these areas

Language: How rich is the vocabulary? How demanding and accurate are the structures? Type of mistakes?

10 No serious mistakes/ 8 some mistakes/ 6 many mistakes/ 4 very many mistakes/ 2 no proof of any structures 

N.B. Some mistakes are more serious than others: Mistakes in basic vocabulary and structures are serious. Mistakes that cause misunderstandings are serious ones.

Content: How clear and how well argued are simple and complex ideas?  

Message/Content: basic and simple ideas max 6, simple & complex ideas / opinions but no proof 7-8, complex ideas: arguments and opinions with proof /reasons 9-10 elaboration techniques: plan and expand ideas with examples, proof and reasons, back up the ideas convincingly

Scale: Clear justified complex ideas/ Clear simple ideas and some complex ones/ Simple ideas/ Very simple ideas/ Only unclear ideas                           

How active, quick and sensitive is the speaker in responding to what another speaker says or asks?

Interaction: Excellent/ very good/ rather good/ satisfactory, very limited

N.B. None of the speakers in a group is supposed to dominate or be silent. The best students draw the quiet ones into the discussion by asking them questions?

Pronunciation: How close to a native speaker pronunciation does the speaker get? How much do mistakes in pronunciation affect understanding?

Often pronunciation and interaction are part of the same evaluation column.

3 Mark your grading in each appropriate column with any symbol.

You can also write your additional comments on the same page.

The same evaluation form below shows the student clearly the level of his/her performance in various skill areas. As a result the student knows which areas need the most improvement.

By studying the requirements for a higher grade in the form the students can set another goals for themselves. Finally they need to figure out the means and strategies that will lead to improvement. All these things increase motivation even in ordinary lessons.

The symbols in the evaluation form reveal immediately how well the student did in the exam.

We have to aim at being objective in giving grades even if there is always an element of subjectivity in evaluating speaking skills.

How to practise the use of the criteria with students

No matter what the criteria is like it makes a lot of sense to open it up to your students.

  • Go through the criteria with your students and explain how it is to be understood and used.
  • Listen to a short recorded speaking test twice as an example with your students, first all through and the second time in sections.
  • Analyse the section aloud so that the students follow your analysis looking at the criteria.
  • In advanced classes the students themselves might be willing to express their opinion about the section. Some teachers write down everything that is said in the interview, for example, to make the analysis even clearer. It takes a while to write it but you can use it over and over again.
  • Finally you can either verify the advanced students’ grading or present your own with justifications.

Spending 30 to 40 minutes on dealing with the criteria like I recommend above makes it possible for the students to evaluate their own and their peers’ performances.

Knowing the criteria well is the path to success if the student is willing to take the next steps and practise hard having the aims in mind.

Speaking, Yleinen

SPEAKING, teaching beginners

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The real test for the students’ speaking skills takes place in real-life situations. They are moments when the teacher or the textbook is not available. Every lesson is preparation for these moments.

Speaking is an extremely delicate matter to myself since I did not learn to speak English at school at all. That was back in the 1960s and early 1970s. I had a lot of passive knowledge and learnt to speak English at the age of 19 at the university. I swore to myself I would not let that happen to my students.

CLT principle: Mistakes do not matter if the message gets through. We all make mistakes, even in our mother tongue!

Language learning should be fun and enjoyable. In the old days everything was spoilt by focussing on mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. They do not really matter if the message gets through. So let the students keep on talking! And asking questions.

I will answer the following two questions in this article:

  • What steps are needed for beginners in learning to speak English?
  • Where does the learning of a foreign language take place?

Many of the ideas related to teaching speaking have already briefly been discussed under heading ‘The structure of a chapter-based lesson’, ‘Pronunciation’ and ‘CLT group work methods’. Still, Latin ‘Repetition est mater studiorum’ = ‘Repetition is the mother of studies’.

What steps are needed for complete beginners in learning to speak English?

N.B. At the beginning the pupils need a massive amount of help from the teacher. Still, it is the students that the teacher needs to make talk. Little by little the teacher speaks less and less and becomes the organizer and facilitator of learning.

1 Learning to speak English starts with words and simple phrases: The pupils say the words and phrases after the teacher and he/she shows them pictures and uses mother tongue translations if needed. The pictures and phrases with their written forms can then be left on the noticeboard for subconscious learning. Learning to write starts later on.

2 Two things are vital at this stage: the pupils learn the correct pronunciation of the words and phrases by repeating them often enough AND understand the meanings of the words and phrases. Teachers have to be aware of the snowball effect: if we pronounce words and phrases wrong, the mistakes will be made by all our students as well.

3 Learning simple phrases like ‘Good morning’ or ‘Hi, my name is …’ ‘I like apples/oranges/bananas …’ can then be practised in mini role-plays the pupils moving around the class using them in their own sentences (The aim is to move from a closed system to an open one; i.e, from a book-based system to an open one where the pupils use the words and phrases creatively in their own talk). In weak groups the Dodson method where the mother tongue is made use of might be useful.

4 When you start using a textbook, I recommend you follow my advice on how to go through the chapter in a systematic way: vocabulary, listening, checking understanding, reading the text aloud in breath groups, answering questions, moving on the pupils using sentences and ideas of their own.

5 In brief, the aim in CLT is to move from a book-based teaching to an open learning environment where the pupils/students use language produced by themselves without any worries of making mistakes. Nevertheless, it is hard for me to imagine teaching without textbooks in elementary and junior high classes due to the extra work of finding suitable materials. In senior high it is possible in many advanced groups. Additional exercises and oral tasks offer us a change to bring in authentic materials easily.

Before testing speaking skills you have to teach and allow the students to practice the skill! Therefore use pair and group work in class as much as you can.


In Finland all student teachers have to observe and train teaching for a full year in a teacher training school which are linked with universities. This is one of the secrets behind the high quality of Finnish schools and teaching.

The students start learning to speak English when the teacher shuts up – and gets them working in pairs or groups in English.

The motto introduced by Rogers sounds provocative but once you agree that it is actually true, you truly have entered the CLT realm!

Where does the learning of a foreign language take place?

I already touched upon this question in my previous article but there are some additional comments to be made. Learning a foreign language mostly takes place at school in lessons. On the other hand, it can happen at home if the student is voluntarily exposed to the language. (computer games, songs, reading books, watching films/videos/Youtube or TV programmes). Or the learner visits or stays in a country where the language is spoken.

The logic is simple: We learn to speak by speaking the new language in all possible situations. The unfortunate truth is that most students do not speak English anywhere else than at school. Sometimes not even there. As a result, they do not learn speaking unless the teacher makes it possible.

The whole process of learning to speak a foreign language starts with the idea of the students

  • speaking it without being afraid of somebody pointing out every mistake they make.
  • speaking with no fear of making a fool of yourself!
  • finding the courage to speak the target language in class or in public

We teachers need to realize that in learning English in particular, there are many other sources available than our lessons. We do it in a systematic way following our beliefs and principles but if the learners find their motivation somewhere else the learning process can actually be very fast and enjoyable. Whatever the source of motivation is encourage the students to keep it up and respond to the idea positively.

How can the students learn to speak English if the teacher talks most of the time or makes them work silently on written tasks? NO WAY, MOST TASKS HAVE TO BE ORAL!

My next article deals with testing speaking and practising for the tests. Luckily the importance of speaking skills has been recognized in most countries and official speaking tests or exams with clear criteria are becoming part of the final examinations.

Yleinen

Getting students to design vocab tasks, Points 11 – 22

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Throughout my career I have been taken by surprise how creative my students are and how much effort they have sometimes put on the tasks they have created.

In the previous article I argued that we teachers need to give space for the creativity of our students. Letting the students design exercises for others is an excellent opportunity for the students’ creativity to bloom provided we give them some ideas how to do it. That is why I am continuing with the vocab learning strategy list with some more ideas and justifications for using the ideas. Points 11 – 22.

It takes some time at first to introduce this possibility of producing vocab tasks but in the long run it is rewarding and the work done is so intensive that the students will remember it for the rest of their lives.

Maximized focus on something leads to learning. I remember every orienteering route, hill and ditch in competitions by looking at the map since I had to be so focused not to get lost. I can even remember why I got lost. Poor me!

Take your time to teach any of these techniques to your students. It gives them great variation for the lessons and home practice too.

Practical vocab task hints for the students and the teacher

  1. Points………Photos, pictures
  2. 1 – 10 ……….Mother tongue hints
  3. were ………..Word lists and mindmaps
  4. dealt ………. Association technique
  5. with ……….. Recording word lists
  6. in ……………..Covering up word lists
  7. the …………..Self-made tests
  8. previous …Use the word in sentence
  9. article ……..Make a story
  10. ………………….Two-sided cards in a game
  11. Learn words in groups (linked with a topic, nouns, adjectives etc.). Write them down in a grid or an excel file. Fruit: banana, orange, apple, pear … Traffic: vehicle, pedestrian, cycle path, lane, speeding … Combined with the use of dictionary this is a great exercise.
  12. Use word formation technique. One word leads to a family of words. My favourite example is Latin word ‘volvare’ meaning ‘to go around’: car trade mark ‘Volvo’ means I go around‘, a revolver: the cartridge chamber goes around, a revolution: society goes around in a way, adj., revolutionary: turning around or overthrowing old ideas; revolutionize, revolutionist, counter-revolution, post-revolutionary etc. Word formation technique is an extremely powerful tool in expanding knowledge of words.
  13. Find synonyms or opposites for the word. This can be done at any levels and practised in pairs. It actually means finding near synonyms or opposites. Pleased – content, contended, satisfied, happy, glad …)
  14. Make a gap exercise of the lyrics of a song. In grammar school at the age of 12 I started to write down the lyrics of songs and learnt thousands of words and phrases, and nearly all grammar subconsciously.
  15. Consult a dictionary (online or hard copy). Allow the students to use online dictionaries in the lessons. That’s something we all do in normal life. Teach how dictionaries work!
  16. By doing various exercises (crossword puzzles, gap filling, hidden grid or a maze etc.) Finnish students love crossword puzzles and so do I. Just make sure the hints are not too difficult. I will have another article on crossword puzzle options. Gap fillings and hiding words in a maze appeals to weaker students in particular.
  17. Guess the meaning of new words on the basis of the context. Rationalized guessing is to be encouraged in language learning. My ‘horrible’ example puzzles the minds of my students for a while: ‘The Queen was beheaded in the Tower.’ The students need to know something about the history of London, the Tower and laws in the Middle Ages. Secondly the need to notice that the word ‘head’ is hidden in the unknown word. So, what happens to ‘head’ in the Tower? Sorry, they were cut off, the Queen was executed with an axe.
  18. Make use of free computer vocab exercises. Seach the internet for free programmes and encourage your students to make use of them in their free time too.
  19. Give a definition of a word and your pair has to guess which it is (e.g. it is an adjective which means the same as ‘adequate’ – ‘enough’ or ‘sufficient’). The students need a few phrases to do this well. Pantomime or acting out without words is also great fun.
  20. Your say a word and your pair has to give a definition for it or explain it in another way (a vaccination – well, it is a shot given with a needle so that you do not get a disease) This technique is also needed if you do not know the word and try to explain it.
  21. Make use of the free vocab learning computer programmes in the internet. What you need to do is to google the internet (vocabulary learning programme) and find programmes that work at your school or in students’ homes. Many of them are free and commercial ones are also available.
  22. When reading extra English materials such as magazines or books, take out your notebook and write down new words and phrases that you find interesting and useful. Surprisingly many students find this way of learning very effective. It is even more motivating if you let the students compare their lists, phrases and sentences at school and explain others how they utilize them. After all my advice to my students when they write essays is to use 10 fancy words (rare words that suit the text fine) and a few phrases to show they master some authentic language and vary their sentence structure to avoid monotonous flow of sentences.

Yleinen

Getting students to design vocab tasks, Points 1 – 10

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Activate your students to design vocab tasks at home or at school. You will be amazed how enthusiastic and creative the students get in doing so.

We teachers need to give space for the creativity of our students. letting the students design exercises for others is an excellent opportunity for that. Let me move on to give practical tips what you can do in class to get the students more involved in learning new words.

Of course we need to check the tasks before they are published not to embarrass the designer. Of course there will be a lot of variation in the quality of the tasks and of course there will be mistakes in the tasks.

Nevertheless, the benefits are undeniable. All we teachers need to do is to check the tasks, maybe suggest some improvements and above all find a way how the answers can be checked: the task designer provides the correct answers or the pair or group does not even need one.

The whole point in this is that the students will learn at least the words they are working on. Besides, they become more curious and motivated to solve problems designed by others than doing workbook exercise.

“Good for you but I do not have time for any of this”, I hear you thinking. That is exactly what I thought before I started teaching my students how to design vocab tasks. It takes some time at first but in the long run it is rewarding.

Besides, who says I can’t skip chapters in our textbook and exercises in the workbook. No-one. I know best what my students need and appreciate doing.

Practical vocab task hints for the students and the teacher

  1. Link the new word with a picture or photo. At the beginning of the year decide on the vocab themes of the year (fruit, housing, traffic etc.) Give each pair a topic for which they find 10 – 15 pictures in the internet, get them on one page and write the words at the bottom of the page. Then they send the file to you to be used later with a certain chapter.
  2. Link the new word to your mother tongue. Using mother tongue in exercises is perfectly ok if the class cannot cope tasks in English only . Still, teachers should maximize the use of English in lessons.
  3. Write the unknown words of the chapter on a paper and make up a mindmap or a story. The mindmap may consist of key words of the chapter or anything else as long as it makes the student think hard. The story may be oral only and done in group by each one taking turns sentence by sentence. The leader of the group helps the slower ones patiently. There will be a lot of laughter, believe me!
  4. Associate the new word with another (funny) word, story or setting. Explain to your pair how the association works for you. My sample associations/images: ‘Rainbow trout’ a fish has rainbow colours on its back when it surfaces from water. ‘Roundabout’ it is round and may be found in the middle of nowhere in Britain. The reasons for the associations are very interesting to listen to and visualize. You will be surprised!
  5. Record a word list on your phone ( word in mother tongue – 1 sec pause – word in English. Listen to the list many times. My wife’s favourite way to learn and remember words. She used to listen to the recording while cycling to evening classes. Excellent for auditive learners.
  6. Make word lists on paper (mother tongue – English), cover up the other side and say the words aloud or write them down before checking. Many textbooks have these lists ready-made. I myself used this method and mumbled the words at the same time.
  7. Make or have a look at a word list (mother tongue – English). Then make an exam for yourself or others. The students are very surprised when you suggest this kind of exam. They think it is too easy which is not the case. They seldom get full points but they learn many words when writing the exam. My grading: one letter wrong >> half a point, two letters wrong >> zero points.
  8. Say or write a sentence where you use the new word. Words learnt in isolation is not ideal and that is why I use this technique before we even listen to the chapters.
  9. Tell a story where you use the new words. (Humour is the best medicine!) This is one of my students’ favourites since they always come up with fascinating stories in a couple of minutes. Every now and then we record the stories, I get them on Whatsapp and then later on we listen to them. For example, 30 students, 1 min / group, 8 groups >> 10 – 12 min
  10. Make two-sided word cards and use them in a self-made game. This one requires an article of its own. I often combine it with cultural knowledge on the English -speaking words.
Colour photos are excellent sources for vocabulary learning and story telling because they stir imagination in a positive manner. This photo is from Central Park, New York City. I finally visited the city in 2016 having talked about it for 40 years. I actually thought I would not like the city but I was wrong. I’m looking forward to another visit.

N.B. Look at Points 11 – 22 in my next article.

Vocabulary, Yleinen

KNOWING A WORD

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Linguists argue that on average students have to do something with a new word 20 times before they ‘know’ the word.

‘Knowing a word’ is actually a complicated matter and it is not as simple as one might think. This article deals with the following questions.

  • What does passive and active vocabulary mean?
  • What does knowing a word really mean?
  • What is the Finnish way to introduce new words?
  • What can you do if you do not remember the right word?

Words are more important than grammar. Why? Because true communication is possible without grammar, but not without words.

A: ” I yesterday eat park hotdog.” B: Hyde Park, was it? Tasty?

Words are the building blocks of communication and we can communicate by using words only, with no knowledge of grammar. If someone says to you : “I yesterday eat park hotdog.” we can understand it with just a little thought even if the grammar is all wrong. “Yesterday I ate a hotdog in the park.”

Passive and active vocabulary

Our vocabulary can be divided in two:

  • Passive vocabulary – means that you recognize the word from English into your mother tongue – and it is much bigger than active vocabulary.                                              
  • Active vocabulary – means that you can use the word both in writing and orally (you remember the word from mother tongue to English, too).

So, as a teacher do not hesitate to spend a lot of time in practising and repeating the use of new words in various kinds of exercises.

No-one knows how many words there are in English but it is estimated to be close to a million now. The best students at the age of 15 know about 6000 words and at A-level about 15 000 words. An ordinary person gets by daily with 3000 words.

Of course, sometimes we ‘learn’ new words instantly because we use a nearly similar word in our mother tongue or we make a funny association link to the word.

Speaking English on the Spanish stairs in Rome!

Knowing a word

You know a word …

  • if you know its meaning; i.e. know the meaning of the word in your mother tongue, you can link the new word with a picture or the sentence helps you to guess the meaning
  • if you know how it is pronounced; i.e. you can recognize the word in isolation or within a sentence and can pronounce it yourself
  • if you know how the word is written; i.e. you know the spelling of the word in isolation and recognize it in a text
  • if you know how it is used in speech and writing; i.e. you know its grammatical function and where to place it in the sentence
  • if you know words that mean nearly the same; i.e. if you know its synonyms (and opposites)
  • if you can recognize its secondary meanings, connotations; i.e. in poetry, for example, ‘sea’ can imply ‘freedom’ or ‘danger’ or ‘desire to go away’

The Finnish way to introduce new words

In the Finnish system the students study the new chapter in advance at home translating the text into their mother tongue if needed with the help of ‘English – mother tongue’ word lists of the chapter (or with the help of a dictionary).

This system means that the students have already done something with the new words maybe 5 times even before they come to the lesson. They have also seen how the words are used in a sentence context. This idea of flipped learning (studying the content in advance at home) has been a standard in the Finnish style of teaching languages for decades.

This system combined with new methods, styles, strategies, assessment and modern technology has made it possible for our students to learn and master several foreign languages instead of studying reluctantly only one.

I strongly recommend that when teaching a new chapter, teachers first make the students repeat the new words in isolation after them because it will remind the students of the content of the chapter and they will learn how the words are pronounced. Then the new words are used in an oral pre-task.

N.B. I discussed my vocab learning philosophy in the previous article.

A: This is the place in New York where businessmen buy and sell … you know companies, banks, … the centre of the business world. B: Ah, you mean Stock Exchange. I was expecting a more elegant building with a massive entrance. (Compensation strategies are most useful!)

What if you do not know or remember a word?

There are sometimes situations where you do not come up with a word. What can you do? Use one of the Compensation strategies below and hope for the best.

  • Use pantomime, acting out a word
  • Use hands and body or show a picture or point at the target
  • Explain and describe the word
  • Give a home-made definition
  • Draw a picture of the word / idea
  • Use a synonym or opposite                             
  • Use a word from another language

We are all different and learn words in a different way. Visual learners prefer photos and videos, auditive learners need to hear the words spoken and kinesthetic learners like to get active with their hands. That is why all of us need to experiment and find our own style or strategy of learning new words.

  • What strategies and learning styles are best in learning new words?
  • What kind of exercises and activities are best in learning words?
  • How can we activate students to make vocabulary exercises themselves?

I will present 22 strategies in the next vocab article and you can try to identify them in an exercise. In the next two posts after that I will clarify the strategies in Points 1 – 10 and Points 11 – 22 in more detail, what to do in class.

All in all, in addition to the traditional workbook exercises I have three main arguments in teaching new words:

  1. There should be a lot of oral activities, not only written ones, and the new words should be used in discussions.
  2. We should teach various techniques or strategies to our students how to learn new words. As a result, they can start using the ones that appeal to them.
  3. The students should be taught how to make exercises of their own; while making them they will learn the words subconsciously.
Assessment, Communicative teaching (CLT), Pronunciation, Speaking

TESTING SPEAKING SKILLS

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Every lesson means rehearsing for the real-life ‘test’ far in the future. Eliminate FEAR in talking!

How to get started in testing

  • It is wise to practice speaking a lot in pairs and groups before you even think about testing.
  • Practise pronunciation and reading aloud in every lesson so that the students feel confident about their pronunciation.
  • Never correct the pupils/students when they are speaking in pairs or groups unless they ask you to. If you do, they will stop talking due to fear of making mistakes and, even worse, may feel humiliated.
  • Give general feedback and comments to the whole class after the practice sessions. Use assessment for learning to find the strengths and weaknesses of the class.
  • Make progress with students with small, enjoyable, even humorous and relaxing steps. Rely on results emerging after a few months.
  • Make the students come in front of the class: in pairs or groups – each one saying something for 5 seconds at least, later on 10 – 30 seconds, a minute, five minutes – just to use English and allow them to have a note with key words or ideas. Make it always a positive experience!
  • Remember that coming in front of the whole class may be scary and it needs to be a positive experience from the very beginning.
  • Practice listening skills too since the pupils are supposed to respond to what the others say. Teach appropriate phrases of response, too.

VITAL: Eliminate fear from practice and test situations – first evaluate the pupils/students in lessons and in other situations. Then give them individual feedback to encourage them to improve in speaking. Speaking skills should be part of the evaluation and noted in giving grades.

Agree on the criteria to be used in assessment. In elementary classes it has to be very simple but in senior high/sixth form you can you the official final exam criteria. Each country has its own criteria but the European Framework is widely accepted. It has skill levels from A1, A2 B1, B2, C1 to the highest native level C2. Many employers use this scaling.

Start with self and peer evaluation in class and encourage the students to use their phones for recording at home too. Allow them to listen to themselves while evaluating themselves. The same if they are assessing other students. Evaluating oneself and others is highly motivating.

Personal teacher–pupil feedback sessions before or after a test are most valuable: ask for the student’s self-evaluation first and then give positive feedback. Encourage, look at the criteria and have gentle reference to challenges. Learning to speak a foreign language is a long process and everybody wants to improve their skills in speaking.

The time for official oral tests/evaluation comes later on. When that time comes, use good and bad examples to give the students an idea of what is required of them. The evaluation criteria has to be explained and opened up at the same time.

The real test in speaking takes place abroad. In Venice, Italy, for example.

Testing individuals

Depending on the age of the pupils (6 – 15), they

  • can send me a 30-second or a minute-long phone-recorded speech or
  • I can have a two-to-five minute face to face discussion with them (I ask them one of the 5 – 10 questions given in advance and they can practise their answers at home and finally I ask them a ‘surprise’ question on a topic we had earlier in class)
  • for senior high students I use modified final exams

Testing groups

Groups can easily be evaluated while they are discussing in class. It makes sense to tell the groups in advance that they will be evaluated in order to encourage them to practise at home to get the best possible result. However, the students need to be given some advice.

  • Do not try to dominate the discussion. Show your excellence in drawing the quiet ones into the discussion by asking them questions or comments.
  • Use phrases that indicate you agree, disagree with the speaker. Or maybe you did not get the point or want to have justifications for an argument. So: ‘I disagree with you because …’. I fully agree with you but …’ ‘I’m sorry I missed your point.’ ‘Sorry, I did not get that’ ‘I’m not sure what you mean. Can you give us an example.’ etc.
  • Fight for your space and indicate you want to say your opinion.
  • Be ready to take the group feedback constructively and the feedback your teacher gives to you personally.

Modelling a group oral for an advanced class

In this activity we model the assessment of different types of speaking activities.

  • The class is divided into groups of four. Preparation time (10 min).
  • Each group is given a task of their own.
  • Each group member will receive a number (1-4).
  • One group at a time will discuss fro 10 min (total time 40 min all groups)
  • The others will observe and assess the performance of the given number using the given criteria. Write the number of the student you observe on the handout.
  • Feedback is given in groups (1s, 2s, 3s, 4s).
  • In brief, each group carries out a different speaking activity.The other groups observe and assess the activities.

Choose your topic. The order of presentations is random.

Group 1 Problem solving: You work for the Ministry of Tourism planning a holiday resort. You need to decide which facilities to have there. You can choose the place for the resort yourselves.

Group 2 Debate on the effect of tourism in your country. The argument: Tourism is good for our economy. Two of you are for the idea and two against (no matter what you really think about the matter).

Group 3 One of you is the tourist guide with his/her tourist group in a place of your choice. The guide describes the place and the tourists are making questions and comments. They also compare the place and habits to their own country/region.

Group 4 A magazine reporter is interviewing participants of the ‘Tour of Central Europe’ and their experiences in different countries. Each one of you has to say their opinion about the countries in question.

Group 5 A group of teachers are deciding where to go on a class trip with a class that all of them teach. They are also discussing what things need to be taken account of in the planning.

The criteria for group discussions are similar to the criteria we had for writing but now we have also interaction and pronunciation to be assessed.

Class management, Listening, Pronunciation

Phrases for intermediate beginners to use during a lesson

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One of the things mentioned under ‘Pronunciation’ heading was intonation. It is something we should also bear in mind when we use classroom phrases or in general when we speak to the class.

Pronunciation is mostly based on models and so is intonation. Make it a natural thing in class, something not to be ashamed of, even if it is very different from the mother tongue.

By intonation we mean the changes in speaking melody produced by the rise and fall of the voice. The wrong kind of intonation may change the meaning completely.

Having made your students repeat the phrases below after the recording, let them improvise an oral dialogue with their pair where they have a teacher – student role play using the phrases below with an appropriate intonation. They can, of course, use other phrases too.

The idea is, of course, that when picking up the phrases the students will think hard what the phrases mean and remember them better. Learning by doing!

Classroom phrases for beginners

Stand up, please!. Good morning, everyone! / Good morning, boys and girls! / Good afternoon, everybody!   My name is Mike Jones. I am your new teacher in English.

Good morning, Mr Jones! / Good afternoon, Miss Johnson! / Good evening, Mrs Jackson!

Sit down, please!  Please take out your textbooks, workbooks and pencil cases. It is so nice to see you again. How are you today? 

Fine, thanks. / Very well, thank you.

Is everybody here today? / Is anyone absent? / Where’s Henry this morning? 

Sorry, we don’t know. / He is ill.  Down with a flu.

Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.  It’s time to start.  Are you ready? Now, say these words after me.  Well done! / Very good, thank you! Open your books at page 5. Unit 1. Look at me, a page like this.

Please, what was the page again? Is it this page?

Let’s listen to the text. Sara, can you translate the first sentence, please.  

Yes, sure. It is an easy sentence.

Err, Susan/Sammy, the next sentence, please.  Any questions?

Not really. This is an easy sentence, too.

Let’s read the text aloud. Read after me, please. / Read after the CD.

Can we read in pairs this time? I think it would be nice.

That’s a good idea. Let’s try it. Read with your partner. Raise your hands if you like the idea. OK, let’s do it. Then look at my questions and answer them in pairs.

We are ready. What do we do next?

Let’s do an exercise. Workbook page 7, Exercise A    Write the two sentences in English, please!  OK, everyone. Err, two minutes more. / A couple of minutes more and then we stop for today.

Thank you. This was an interesting lesson.

You’re welcome. Your homework is on the blackboard / on the screen. / Goodbye, everyone. / Have a nice weekend!

The same to you.

Finishing a lesson with more advanced students

Do you have the right time on you? Hold your horses, we are not done yet. This lesson is supposed to finish at a quarter to two. We have five minutes to spare.

One more exercise and we can call it a day. There’s no use starting exercise 4 today. Your homework for the next lesson is on the board. Revise the text and the vocabulary. The deadline for the essay is next Tuesday. Make sure you hand it in then.

Hold on a minute! I have one more thing to say to you. We’ll have no lesson next Monday. Put everything back in its right place. Take all your things with you.

Central Park, New York

Yleinen

TASK-BASED LEARNING (TBL)

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Task-based learning (TBL) is typically a group or pair activity where the target language is used in roleplay type of ‘real-life’ situations to achieve some communicative purpose.

N.B. Click the little triangle in the menu to access the two sample articles how to use TBL in everyday situations and in teaching grammar.

TBL is a simple but marvellous way to introduce situations where the students are in ‘real-life’ roles, the aim being a rehearsal for the same actual situation later on in their lives. Still, we should not rush into a TBL task just like that since the TBL task has to be based on things already learnt in class. We can simplify the whole process as follows: 1 Careful planning, 2 Pre-task, 3 Main task and 4 Feedback session

1 Careful planning: The success of the task is based on the teacher being able to foresee where the problems may emerge:

  • a) explain to the students what they will be doing and why you think this kind of practice is important;, even in our mother tongue once you get them to agree they are more willing to try it out, spend enough time on the preparatory work, the pre-task.
  • b) many students feel shy about talking to others in a foreign language, which is perfectly natural, so encourage them, tell them not to worry about mistakes (everybody makes them anyway, even in our mother tongue)
  • c) differentation is also vital: the weaker students have to be given prompts (vocabulary and phrases on paper or on the screen) to be used, they will learn at least some of the phrases by repeating them during the practice, most importantly they will have the guts to use the target language
  • d) the advanced students should be encouraged to use utterances of their own as well as help and challenge the others to talk
  • e) get hold of ‘authentic materials‘ (airport: electronic tickets – boarding passes, restaurant: a real menu – a white towel for the waiters etc.) to direct the focus off from the pressure of making mistakes and to create a more ‘authentic’ situation

2 Pre-task: Study the content, chapter, vocabulary or grammatical point in a normal way in class. Use google to find free videos on various situations in the internet. Teachers often stop at this point and the students do not get a chance to try out what they have learnt.

3 Main task: In its simpliest form once the pre-work has been done the idea is taken one step further in a roleplay where the students can use and develop their fluency. The teachers, in their CLT role, just have to organize and facilitate the oral learning situation.

4 Feedback session: The students give feedback to the teacher and the teacher gives general constructive feedback to the whole class. The teacher can ‘secretly’ pay attention to the level of fluency of the students while the acting is on. However, if there is any kind of assessment going on the students should know about it. I would recommend self-assessment.

In this article I am introducing two most common TBL task types that I have been using over the years: 1 Coping with everyday situations or 2 Using a particular grammatical structure in these situations. I am by-passing the extra theory and jargon on purpose in this context.

SITUATION-BASED or GRAMMAR-BASED TASKS

The most typical TBL tasks are either mimicking real-life situations such as ‘at the zoo’, ‘in hospital’ , ‘at the police station’ , ‘at a hotel’.

I hear you say ‘at the zoo’? What can you practise in that situation? Honestly, the sky is the limit: Making hundreds of questions about the life of the animals at the zoo and in nature, giving answers ‘as an expert worker at the zoo’, comparing the animals with each other using comparative forms of adjectives. TBL tasks boil down to imaginative roleplays that are as close to real life as they can ever be in schools.

At its best TBL tasks are an oral extension of a text or dialogue which was dealt with in the class.

TBL examples

After the pre-task the students are given phrases in a handout or on the screen which they can use while speaking and the advanced students can use utterances of their own. For example: At a hotel

A: Good afternoon madam/sir? How can I help you?

B: I’d like a double room for two nights with a shower, please. / We have booked a room with a bath for one night. Mr and Mrs Perks. …

A: That’s perfectly ok. We have some beautiful rooms facing the sea/the mountains/ the beach if that is ok with you.

B: Wonderful! How much is it for a night? …

 OR grammar oriented tasks / situations where a some grammatical structure is practised in an ‘authentic’ situation. For example, the passive voice in the present tense to describe making food following a recipe. For example:

A: What is done first when mutton meatballs are made?  

B: Well, of course the incredients are bought well in advance. The mutton is put in a bowl, half a kilo, and two eggs are mixed with the meat. Some bread crumps are added with mustard into the bowl.

A: What would you do in the following situations?

A questionnaire is given to the students and they move about in class asking a response from others. After 5 minutes they get in groups and explain others what kind of responses they got (using their notes).

Model: you see a child struggling in water >> If I saw a child struggling in water, I would run and save him. Then I would …

you see a traffic accident If I saw … , I would …
you hear an old lady scream If I heard … , I would …
you forget you phone at homeIf I forgot …, I would …
…

OR using comparative and superlative forms of adjectives: A jury is deciding which of the three plans for a new recreational centre is the best one. (The plans were made by the students themselves in the previous lesson.)

In other words, TBL means student-centred learning, ‘learning by doing’ tasks, roleplays that help the students to cope with authentic communicative situations in the future. The aim is to increase the self-confidence and fluency of the students in speaking.

The motivational trick in TBL is to direct the focus away from language learning as such towards using the target language without the fear of making mistakes.

If the listener understands what is going on and can respond accordingly, we have a winner. This is also the way we can measure success in TBL: how well the task was completed rather than looking at the accuracy of the language. Assessment is primarily based on the task outcome (in other words, the appropriate completion of real-life tasks) rather than on the language being accurate. This makes TBL especially effective in developing target language fluency and student confidence.

Other examples of TBL tasks:

  • Real-life situations such as ‘at a restaurant’, ‘at the doctor’s’, ‘at a railway station’, ‘at the airport’
  • Showing a friend the sights in the home community
  • Being in a job interview
  • Introducing oneself at a summer camp
  • Interviewing a film star: What have you been doing this week? What did you do last week? What will you do next month? etc.

As you have probably now realized nearly any material you are using in class can be turned into a TBL task after the pre-activity. However, this is not the whole story. There are certain logical steps we must take to achieve the communicative goals we have in TBL tasks.

I will give a couple of more practical and even more detailed examples of communicative task-based activities in my next article: ‘At the airport’ ‘Using comparative forms in explaining about a long holiday trip’

I am using ‘at the airport’ as an example of a TBL lesson. For many students this may be the only time in their lives someone gives them practical information on airports.

If this is the first time the students are facing situations at an airport, there are very many new things to be learnt at the same time when they are coping with English. Many students cannot even explain the things in their mother tongue, which makes the situation very challenging but rewarding at the same time.

Model text-based lesson, Reading

HOMEWORK AS FLIPPED LEARNING, and CHECKING HOMEWORK

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‘Flipped learning’ means getting to know the content of the next lesson at home in advance. This is what Finnish student do at home. We have found it an excellent thing for 50 years now.

So, one thing in foreign language teaching in Finland that has never changed even if new methods and ideas such as CLT have been introduced is what the students do at home:

Finnish students have always had to ‘translate’ or ‘study’ the textbook chapter of the next lesson in advance at home. It is a MUST. Much more important than having written exercises done.

The idea above may sound old-fashioned but the benefits are undeniable. There is no point in such a thing as working on a new chapter understanding half or even less of the content.

I have always first taught my students, especially if they are young, how the translation must take place in their minds . It is certainly worth a lesson or two. Usually there are always some students among 12 – 13-year-olds who learn this skill in groups for the first time in their lives. A good student is an ideal the ‘teacher’ in the group showing the others how the translation is done.

On some occasions doing a partial translation of the text into mother tongue can reveal massive gaps in the students’ reading comprehension. Even in some senior high classes some students have no idea how to translate the text. Remedial teaching for two weeks and they will get a hang of it. And then the foundation for learning is established. The final aim is to skip translation part at school altogether.

Reasons why advance home study / translations are vital

  1. First, there is no point in spending much time in the lesson checking the understanding of a text by translation into one’s mother tongue. Nevertheless, in the early stages of learning a new language translating the texts into the mother tongue is a must.
  2. Secondly, when we insist on the students doing the translation at home in peace and quiet at their own pace, precious time in lessons is saved for oral practices.
  3. Thirdly, as for the translation itself, the skill itself must not be taken for granted. It has to be taught separately since some students do not know how it should take place.
  4. To get started with translating a text the students have to know the meanings of the words in the chapter. In Finland we have always been lucky to have Finnish – English vocabulary lists for every chapter in the students’ workbooks. New words are introduced there and a lot of time is saved compared to using a dictionary every time a new word emerges in the text.
  5. What if the word is not in the word list or there is no such list available? We advise the students to consult a dictionary, a free one in the internet is the best option these days. The use of Google translator is an option too but it requires very little thought from the student’s part and deep-level learning suffers. Some modern electronic textbooks have an inbuilt dictionary as a quick tool.
  6. The best part in forcing the students to consult the wordlists is that by the time they have finished the ‘translation’ homework they will have done something with the new words half a dozen times learning them subconsciously. At least from English into their mother tongue.
  7. For the teacher it should not matter whether the translation is written in the notebook, translation of new words on top of the text lines or the student has the translation only in his/her head. As long as the student can promply give the translation in lesson, using a source or not, everything is ok.
  8. Once the translation skill has been learnt and the habit established less and less time in the lesson is spent on checking the understanding this way. It is taken for granted that the students have studied/translated the new chapter at home before the lesson.
  9. When the students come to class having studied the new text at home, they feel safe and confident. It is a long and boring lesson if they understand nothing of what is going on.

The foundation of every language lesson is studying or translating the new text beforehand at home (in the flipped learning style). It saves time and the students feel more confident in class.

CHECKING WRITTEN OR ORAL HOMEWORK

“Nothing new under the sun.” Not quite since my favourite, Number 2 Student-oriented checking of homework is very different from what I used at the beginning of my career.

When the lesson starts we tend to check the written and oral tasks that were part of the homework. This checking should not eat up too much of our time since the learning took place while the students were doing the exercises. Still, they need to know if their answers are correct or not and ideally this should also be a learning situation.

There are some ways to speed up the checking process and make it more efficient from the students’ point of view.

1 Teacher-oriented checking: The teacher does not get the answers at all from the students but correct answers are revealed little by little on the screen and the students quietly correct their mistakes. The teacher scrolls the text on the screen or he/she uses Power Point animations to hide the answers. Thus the teacher controls the time spent on each exercise. At the end the students are, of course, allowed to ask questions.

Of course, the old style ‘Checking written homework so that the teacher asks and one student at a time answers’ is also possible but it is more time-consuming.

2 Student-oriented checking: Each pair or group is given the correct answers on paper or on the screen and they do the checking themselves within the time given. What is good about this way of checking is that the students advise each other and checking becomes a learning situation too.

If this style is adapted, the teacher should tell the students why you are doing it and what the responsibilities of the students are. While the checking is going on the teacher has to go around the class to observe if someone’s homework is not done.

3 Checking can also be part of station work: If there are, for example, 5 stations/sets of tables, one can be devoted to checking homework. Station work or Work stations are effective as a special kind of group work. See how you can arrange a lesson like it.

N.B. Some teacher use a Google form where the students mark which of the exercises they have done. It is a public file within the class and the students easily point out if someone is trying to cheat. This file is also a document for the teacher and it can be taken into account when grades are given for the course.

The most important piece of homework: studying/translating the textbook chapter of the next lesson in advance at home.

  • 1 Studying the chapter at home in advance
  • 2 Checkingwritten 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 holes …
  • 8 Doing oral (and written exercises/underlining the text) in class

Grammar

GRAMMAR

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My own road to master the English grammar was different.

Grammar – an oasis or a desert? For me it first was neither since I did not need it. I had learnt most of my English grammar from songs. Later on at the university I had to learn the rules as well to be able to teach them at school. While studying other languages I started to admire the beauty of grammar in other languages, too. So, these days grammar is an oasis for me. Move the arrows and make your choice!

In the early years of CLT many linguists and some teachers started to feel teaching grammar was not important and even ignored it. Fortunately, this attitude turned out to be impossible in practice and we kept on teaching grammar – but not exactly like we had done before.

There were three drastic and permanent changes in practising new grammatical structures thanks to comminicative language teaching:

  • Firstly, CLT teachers realized that we must make use of 3 kinds/levels of exercises in practising grammar: 1) mechanical, 2) semi-communicative and 3) communicative exercises and tasks. Up to that point exercises had nearly always been mechanical.
  • Secondly, having learnt the rules and having done a couple of written mechanical exercises, we moved on doing ‘authentic’ oral activities in pairs and groups. In brief, the focus was in doing oral grammatical exercises at 3 levels, instead of written ones. I will explain ‘how’ in the next articles.
  • Thirdly, CLT teachers realized that differentiation was needed in mixed-ability classes since some students did mainly only mechanical exercises while the best ones were able to move straight on to using the new structures in free speech or activities.

Three methods in teaching grammatical rules

Grammatical structures and rules can be taught using ‘the inductive or deductive method’ or they can be learnt without any rules just by being exposed to the new language a lot; pretty much the way mother tongues are learnt.

  • Most teachers know the term ‘inductive method’ of teaching grammar, which means the formulation of the rules on the basis on examples.
  • It is contrasted with the ‘deductive method’ which means the teacher explains the rules in detail and then lets the students practise and apply the rules. This is the easy way out in teaching grammar. The teacher thinks ‘I taught you the rules and it is up to you to learn them. Practise and we need to move on.’
  • The third ‘method’ is the lexical approach to teaching grammar which means learning grammatical structures as ‘chunks’ ; i.e. word combinations, words, set phrases or set structures. With minimum reference to any rules it is very similar to the learning of mother tongue. The Dodson method is based on chunks as well but it makes heavy use of the mother tongue.

I will deal with the communicative teaching of grammar, the inductive and deductive methods as well as the lexical approach and the Dodson method in much more detail in separate articles.

Few people like grammar. Grammar is just a tool, not the aim of language teaching. And it is not always a must. Like me, the English grammar can be learnt from games, songs or any other source without official teaching, without the learner realizing it!

My own history on learning and teaching the English grammar

Now I am going to have a look at my own experiences as the learner and teacher of grammar. My road to the English grammar was different.

A lot of input in a foreign language can lead to subconscious learning of grammar without knowledge of the rules.

I used to have an ambivalent attitude to grammar. When I went to the university in the early 1970s and had been accepted to study English, I knew very few rules of the English language. Still, even if I only wrote one essay in all my school years, I mastered the written language rather well. How come? It was at that time it dawned on me that I must have learnt the rules subconsciously while singing in English and spending a lot of my time listening to songs and writing down the lyrics. So I am a living example that one does not need to study any rules of a foreign language to learn it, provided we are exposed to the language for a long time, usually thanks to our hobby that involves the use of the foreign language.

So, I must have learnt the grammatical elements as chunks, lexical units of various length, and then generalized the models to cover different situations as well.

A teacher has to know the grammatical rules to be able to justify his/her marking of essays, exams and oral presentations.

Consequently, I was in deep trouble when I started teaching English before I had taken my official grammar tests at the university. For instance, I was amazed about the difficulty of making questions in English just three hours before I had to teach the rules to my evening class. When to use ‘do, does, did’ and when to leave them out and under what circumstances! What are auxuliaries and what is their roles in questions? It was all Hebrew to me! I was sweating like a little pig before the lesson. Luckily I did not know most of the adult students were teachers themselves and six of them were heads of their school.

Of course, I had to learn all the rules of English rather quickly and I actually enjoyed explaining the students why particular structures were considered wrong or inappropriate. Even more so, I enjoyed presenting grammar rules so that minimum number of grammatical terms needed to be used and the learning was logical, proceeded step by step and included a lot of oral practising.

However, I realized my road to mastering the English grammar is not a common one and therefore I have always used the inductive method in introducing most of the new grammatical points.

In some rare cases I have been applying the deductive method or the lexical approach to teaching grammar. They all work well but the success in using them depends on the proficiency level of the class. In other words, what kind of learners they are and how good their English is.

Let’s face it. If you go to the city centre and shout out ‘I know the English grammar in and out!’ no-one will be impressed.

But if you speak beautiful English with correct grammar in your utterances, some people might be impressed.

The following matters will be discussed in my next articles.

GrammarCommunicative grammar, tasks and differentiation
The inductive and deductive method in teaching grammar
Grammar in the ‘good old days’
Teaching grammar the old style and CLT style, comparison
Teaching young beginners grammar, the lexical approach
The Dodson bilingual method