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.
Being a military commander in class does not work. Neither does being the students’ buddy. Where is the balance?
In the previous article we considered the importance of a healthy, respectful teacher-student relationship. Now I will move on to discuss the balance between the teacher being too tolerant or too strict .
What are the consequences of the teacher being too tolerant and understanding?
Every teacher has experiences of situations where being too understanding and tolerant has led to an uncomfortable incident with a student. Some students immediately take advantage of a situation if they see that we do not consistently insist on the students observing class rules.
If the teacher is too tolerant and
pretends to approve of things he/she actually condemns deep inside,
his/her inner self will suffer
since he/she has to give in all the time against his/her own will.
So, being too tolerant may lead to a disaster with students and a stressful feeling and situation for the teacher. But the same thing may happen if we are too strict. How come?
What are the two ways students usually react to an unpleasant order given by a strict or negative teacher?
1) they silently obey because they have learnt to do so BUT the pressure and negative feelings start building up inside them
OR
2) they disobey or challenge the teacher AND the pressure is building up either in the students’ minds or in the teacher’s mind or both
Neither of these options is what we want. We want to have peace and harmony!
What is the underlying belief of a strict teacher on how to control students’ behavior?
A strict teacher believes that a change in the student’s behavior can be reached by an order which cannot be questioned. If the student is disobedient, threats and punishments make the situation even worse since they will spoil the atmosphere and joy in learning. Punishments and harsh discipline will not work in the long run.
The best teachers seem to keep a very low profile with class management and insist on the students doing what they are supposed to do. Saying the student’s name or a glance at them does the trick.
So, how do we find the balance between the two extremes?
Wise teachers …
take control of the classes from the very beginning and have clear class rules, which are carefully explained to them.
are willing to change some class rules and their style of teaching and testing if the students make suggestions constructively with justifications.
make sure the students know the consequences of breaking class rules, treat every student the same way but do not base their class management on warnings and punishments.
realize they have to be the boss in the class giving instructions, ordering and making sure there is order and peaceful atmosphere in the class, they have the right and duty to it, determination is reflected in their personality.
do not try to be buddies with the students but maintain a professional distance to them, this may be a pitfall for young inexperienced teachers.
approve of most things the students do if class rules are not violated.
admit their mistakes, do not pretend in any way and do not try to have a super teacher mask on them.
do not shout at or get in conflict situations with the students or their parents, patience is a virtue in life.
use their emotional intelligence; interpret both verbal and non-verbal communication as well as the students’ feelings.
are very strict and firm when dealing with the whole class but in more friendly terms when talking to individuals while others are working.
keep the students busy with student-centered activities and have a hidden agenda in teaching social skills too as a side-product.
are truly present all the time .
Respect has to be earned. Care and be reliable, fair and consistent and you will be respected.
This is a quick reference list of all the articles on my web site. A kind of one-glance copy of all the articles. The horizontal menu articles are presented first and then the vertical menu.
They say 7 is a lucky, godly number. I am not supertitious but I have 7 reasons that speak in favour of the CLT approach to teaching grammar.
Benefits of teaching grammar in CLT style
The use of pre-tasks reduces anxiety around the new structure.
After the pre-task the structure feels familiar and easier to learn.
Using the inductive method activates the brains and enhances learning.
Practice is not limited to mechanical written exercises but taken further with versatile oral exercises.
Working and checking the tasks together in groups the students teach and help each other in a relaxed atmosphere.
The final aim is to have truly communicative activities such as role plays.
Grammar is seen as a tool, not as an aim of its own.
Grammar in the old days
CLT ideas on Grammar
PRE-TASK, very rarely used
PRE-TASK, commonly used
Frequent oral tasks before the rules of a new structure are introduced, Students use the structure 15 -30 times in a few minutes. They get a feeling they already know the structure. No great possibility to make mistakes thanks to models or ready-made sentences.
INTRODUCING THE RULESDeductive method Rules voiced by the teacher Little student involvement Comparison with mother tongue Lexical approach with beginners
INTRODUCING THE RULESInductive method Teacher-guided process A lot of student involvement Comparison with mother tongue Lexical approach with beginners
PRACTICE OF THE STRUCTURE Mostly written exercises which get systematically more and more demanding. Mechanical exercises, very seldom even semi-communicative Everybody is doing the same exercises, no differentiation. Oral exercises are limited to mechanical drills in class or language labs. Exercises are mostly done alone or supervised by teacher, checked with the teacher too.
PRACTICE OF THE STRUCTURE Both written and oral exercises which get systematically more and more demanding. Written exercises which start from mechanical ones, turn semi-communicative and finally fully communicative. Students can often decide which difficulty level they prefer. Oral exercises follow the same logic, differentiation is used Exercises are mostly done and checked in pairs or groups.
One has to be realistic and admit that in many classes this would be as far as many students are able to go. If they understand the rule and can apply it both in written and oral exercises of various kind, you as their teacher can be proud of them. Most importantly the students recognize the structurein all situations and can use it in speech as well.
Let’s think about the previous article and the way I used to teach the present tense passive voice once again. I will show you now how to turn the mechanical exercise to a communicative one. The example below combines written and oral communication and would be one way to end the teaching of the structure.
How can we turn the practice of the present tense passive voice more communicative?
First of all, the inductive formulation of the rule is best done slowly with the teacher in charge to give everyone time to think about the matters.
Secondly, exercises such as 1 – 4 in the previous article can be done in groups with a star student as the leader of the group and the others give the answers.
Thirdly, the teacher has to think in advance of a situation where natives would use the present tense passive voice structure. The most obvious situation is describing a process or a series of events where things happen but we do not need to know who does it.
Fourthly, the groups do an oral practice by taking turns in explaining a process:What happens to cars in their life time? How to make fashion clothes? How to make your greenhouse plants grow well? How to drive a car or plan a journey?
Fifth, the group decides on the process to be described in writing:
A couples of examples of the kind of sentences required are needed as models.
What is done in a local McDonald’s during an ordinary day to serve the customers well?
What is done before my day in the riding stable is done?
What is done?
Other topics: playing football or icehockey / at home or school
…
The place is cleaned between 5 and 7 a.m. Kitchen preparations for the meals are done before opening. The doors are opened at 9.00.
I am taken to the stables by my dad round four p.m and the horses are groomed before the lesson. We are given other chores too to do before we are allowed to saddle the horses. etc.
Models like above are needed to stir the students’ imagination and to give them an idea of what they are supposed to do.
Sixth, the descriptions are checked by the teacher while the writing process is going on. Finally the descriptions are read aloud in front of the class, each student reading at least one sentence. The ideas can be challenged by the other groups if they think something essential was ignored.
Make coming in front of the class a habit. Yes, it is scary at first but not so much any more after twenty trials. After two and a half years a very shy IB-student of mine took all of us by surprise when she wanted to give a presentation on ballet. No-one knew she was a ballet dancer but when she got in the front and made us copy her movements explaining what is done in a ballet practice and why, she became a shining star in the very last lesson we had together. She finally found her confidence in doing what none of us was able to do. I will never forget the smile on her face and the courageous memory she left on all of us. And the brilliant example of using the present tense in the passive voice. Yes, I feel like a wet blanket now. Mixing grammar with brilliance. But grammar is important, right?
Dictation is a bit controversial activity in CLT because it is not very creative but it has some advantages, too.
Pedagogical ideas on the use of dictation in class
Dictation is considered to be a demanding type of language exercise since it presupposes
not only listening and writing skills
but also knowledge of vocabulary (how the words are pronounced and written),
and knowledge of grammatical structures (how and in which order they appear in a sentence)
Research shows that dictation is a fairly reliable way to test a student’s proficiency level. I have personally found this to be true and therefore I always have a couple of sentences dictated in my comprehensive school exams. Dictation also trains the ear for the target language and is a natural stepping stone for real creative writing skills.
Dictation is a good way to get the skill of writing going with words, phrases or full sentences. But it is not a very common activity in real-life situations. It is maybe most commonly used on the phone when someone calls us and we have to write down addresses, shopping lists, directions to a place or names (spelled to us letter by letter,) for example.
Thus pair work on the phone might be more recommendable and motivating than teacher-run dictations. In other words, it does not have to be the teacher who dictates the sentences but it can be a student too.
Nevertheless, I think the most compelling reason to keep up dictation is that it is practice for ‘note taking’ which is most useful in lessons, university lectures, meetings or conferences. Therefore I recommend ordinary dictation in the elementary and comprehensive classes only. In the senior high note-taking while watching a documentary video or listening to some recording is much more useful.
How to overcome the disadvantages of dictation?
There is no denying that there are some issues to think about when we deal with dictation. Teachers often give up dictation altogether for three reasons:
Firstly, dictation may be very time-consuming if the sentences are long and everything is read at least twice.
Secondly, checking and correcting the answers is often desperately slow.
Thirdly, weaker students easily get frustrated with dictation because their inability to cope with the task becomes so visible and obvious.
Solution to problems 1 and 2: The teacher reads the (short) sentence once and after a minor pause reads the sentence again (in shorter parts) and at the same time starts to reveal the correct answer on the blackboard or screen allowing the weaker ones to copy the sentence in their notebooks. Encourage the good students not to ‘peek the answers’.
So, the good pupils write without looking at the screen and the weak ones are allowed to copy the sentences from the screen. By the end of the dictation everyone will have checked their own work and no time is wasted on strenuous checking. There is no need to check the success at this stage but it can be part of the pupils’ self-evaluation. I just walk through the class to see the writing was done. The whole activity is over in less than 5 minutes .
Solution to problem 3:Being permitted to ‘copy’ from the screen is a big relief for weaker students. Another way is to give them a version of the dictation sentences where only some words are missing. Naturally, the dictation has to be based on vocabulary and structures that have been gone through in class. If the students are working in pairs, they can dictate their pair words or sentences from the previous chapter and check them while the other one is writing.
It is perfectly justifiable to use dictation every now and then due to pedagogical reasons but also to bring some variation to the lessons.
My favourite dictation tasks
In elementary classes
bank a park work near she drive in a lorry because to works morning doctors my mum they to hospital this drives my the new dad work often week
All the words needed in the dictation are on the screen. There are some extra words in the box. ‘My dad drives a new lorry this week.’ etc
Black hole dictation
This is an interesting version of a gap exercise. The simplest way is to take a copy of the textbook page and blacken some words or phrases and then show the blackened text to the students who have to write the missing parts in their note books. The task is easier if you give the first letter/s. The task gets more demanding if the students have to fill in other words than the ones in the original text.
‘Phone’ dictation
The students sit back to back, so that they don’t look the other one in the eye. The students are given a shopping list or a list of tasks/chores to be done at home, school or in the town. They ‘call’ the partner and ask them to do the things for them. They have to use real telephone phrases and the partner has to write the chores down.
An even more communicative task: The speaker decides where the partner goes and what the chores are. No teacher’s guidance needed.
Go to the grocery store and buy milk, cheese and dark bread.
Go to the sport store: buy size 5 foorball, new socks for yourself and a birthday present for grandad
Go the the library and bring a book on gardening, feed the cats
An interactive A/B dictation
The dictation takes place after a chapter has been studied in class. Pupil A does not see the part of Pupil B until the whole dictation is over. Checking is done without the teacher’s help.
Read the full sentence to your partner who will write the missing words on the line. Take turns. (The original paper is folded and cut in two in the middle)
Pupil A
Pupil B
Jim does __________________ ________________ things every day.
Jim does many different things every day.
He sleeps for nine hours at night.
He _________________________ ___________________ at night.
He _________________________________ for six hours.
He goes to school by bus for six hours.
He does his homework for two hours after school.
He _____________________________ for two hours ______________ school.
He ____________________________ for about an hour.
He plays video games for about an hour.
He watches TV for an hour.
He ______________ TV _____________ hour.
He eats dinner for __________ _________________________________.
He eats dinner for one and a half hours.
He plays football until seven o’clock.
He ______________________________ ____________________.
For more advanced pupils and students one can move to longer sentences and use interactive forms of dictation where the students take care of reading the sentences for each other or other members of the group. And take care of checking as well.
It is a good idea to combine dictation with other types of activities such as listening and taking notes, for example.
Other types of writing tasks
Symbol
Meaning of the evaluation symbol
_______
underlining any kind of mistake
_ _ _ _
underlined part is ok, but not good language
>
wrong word order, move to the direction of the arrow
?
the meaning is very unclear ( ? in the margin)
+ or ++
good ( + in the margin or text), ++ excellent
/\
an arrow pointing upwards = something is missing (an article, preposition, word etc.) With some classes at least it might be a good idea for the teacher not correct all mistakes but make the students try to correct them so that the students are forced to think about the mistakes and the same mistakes will not be repeated.
With some classes at least it might be a good idea for the teacher not correct all mistakes but make the students try to correct them so that the students are forced to think about the mistakes and the same mistakes will not be repeated.
Is there a method that allows the teacher to use the mother tongue in teaching English without feeling guilty? Yes, there is.The Dodson bilingual method.
Slow learners and beginners share one disadvantage: they do not understand the exact meanings of sentences unless they are explained in the mother tongue. Most teachers probably try to speak as much English as they can but sometimes they have no other choice than resort to their mother tongue.
The only time when I have been using the Dodson bilingual method in teaching languages was in the mid-1980s when I taught Swedish to complete beginners. The method itself was developed by Professor J. Dodson, a Welshman, and even if it was not widely used and accepted I think it is worth introducing here. For slow learners this method is excellent in getting them to use the new language from the very beginning.
The Dodson method is sometimes linked with the oldfashioned translation method but that is unfair because the students do not actually do a translation but they learn the phrases by heart after repeating them after the teacher and making changes in the phrases. It is actually very close to the lexical approach.
The time phrases in Example 1 below may seem simple and even childish but if you could do these exercises in Japanese, Arabic or Persian, would you not be proud of yourself! A lot of input and repetition at the right level with the help the mother tongue helps the students tremendously.
Example 1, learning to tell the time:It’s eleven o’clock. / It ‘s two thirty / It’s fifteen past four / It’s twenty to ten(4 basic phrases visible on the screen)
Stage 1: Pre-task: BINGO numbers 1 – 30
Stage 2: The students read the 4 basic phrases above aloud after the teacher who gives the meaning in the mother tongue.
Stage 3: Then the teacher says one of the same phrases in the mother tongue BUT changes one or two underlined words in it and the class says the phrase in English in chorus. I’ll repeat: The teacher uses the mother tongue but the students don’t!
Model visible: It’s eleven o’clock. Teacher says the phrase in the mother tongue: Kello on 10. Kello on 7. Kello on 12.
Students say in English in chorus: It’s ten o’clock. It’s seven o’clock. It’s twelve o’clock.
Model: It’s two thirty. Kello on 5.30. Kello on 10.30. … etc.
It’s five thirty. It’s ten thirty.
Model: It’s fifteen past four. Kello on 13 yli 7. Kello on 25 yli 3. … etc.
It’s thirteen past seven. It’s twenty-five past three.
Model: It’s twenty to ten. Kello on 5 vaille 8. Kello on 25 vaille 11. … etc.
It’s five to eight. It’s twenty-five to eleven.
Finally all four patterns in a random order Kello on 10 vaille 7. Kello on 6. Kello on 11.30. Kello on 7 yli 9.
It’s ten to seven. It’s six o’clock. It’s eleven thirty. It’s seven past nine.
Stage 4: The students work in pairs either doing what the teacher just did or writing times on a paper and the pair responds to it.
The next stage would, of course, be going through additional time phrases such as It’s eleven o’clock. /It ‘s two thirty = It’s half past two / It’s fifteen to four = It’s a quarter to four etc.
The main points in me using Dodson’s method ran as follows:
Decide if you need to have a pre-task to do some revision (numbers, days of the week, months, verbs, adjectives etc.)
Choose the key phrases you want to teach in advance, decide which word(s) you wish to change and write down the other words you wish to use in the phrases.
The Dodson method is rather hectic for the teacher who has to bang in the mother tongue phrases rather quickly.
Short utterances and sentences serve as units of teaching.
Grammar is not emphasized and structures are learnt as lexical items, pretty much like in the lexical approach.
Natural situations and dialogues in them serve as a starting point and then we proceed the narrative texts on the same topic.
Example 2: A situation in a shop.
Stage 1: The whole dialogue and all options are repeated aloud after the teacher.
Stage 2: The teacher says the phrases in the mother tongue and the students say them in English, about 40 phrases. In a good class you can skip this stage.
A: Good morning /afternoon. I’m looking for a silver ring / a colour TV / a blanket / jeans / running shoes. How much is it / are they?
B: Well, it depends on the size and quality. 50 dollars / 600 euros / 45 pounds / 38 dollars the cheapest ones / 80 pounds for the best ones.
A: Ah, this one looks/ these ones lookvery nice / beautiful / very warm / modern / wonderful.
B: Yes, you are right. It comes from Britain / India / China / from a nearby factory / from abroad.
A: Fine. I’ll take this one / these ones / the black model.
B: Okey, how do you want to pay? 50 dollars / 600 euros / 45 pounds / 38 dollars / 80 pounds. In cash or by credit card?
A:In cash, here’s the money / By credit card. Here you are.
B: Thank you sir / madam. And welcome back again.
Stage 3: The students read the dialogue in pairs picking up any green items they want or replace them with their own words and ideas ( = the last idea is the simple automatic way to differentiate the learning situation)
Stage 4: The students work in pairs and write a similar dialogue but make a lot of changes in it and the dialogues are later on circulating in the class and read by the others.
There is not much ready-made material like this available but in some classes this technique may be worth the extra trouble it causes in planning. My memories from these classes are still pleasant and the response from students was very favourable.
Quite often if we do not understand a text, it is the writer’s fault, not ours. Still there are strategies how we can become good readersand learn to understand much more than we ever thought was possible.
The teaching of learning strategies is one of the latest innovations in CLT philosophy and an essential part of increasing the students’ motivation.
The use of the word ‘strategy’ implies that there are ways and techniques that will make us better readers; approaches that should be taught and can be learnt in a short period of time.
Discuss the strategies presented in these articles with your students at some point, in advance or afterwards. They will see that you really care!
Practise the strategies little by little and let the students pick up the ones that work for them. Many of the ideas will enhance writing as well.
Sample text on how you can teach reading strategies 1 – 6 below
The text below is in Finnish, a languge you probably do not know. But don’t panic! I’m sure you can handle the text.
I want teachers and students to have an experience on how powerful a tool reading strategies can be even if you do not master the language at all.
An example on how you can teach some reading strategies even if the task seems impossible
Instructions to the students
Look at the photo, headline and the layout of the text to give you clues what the text in Finnish is about. Don’t use phones or other sources of information!
Underline words that resemble words in your mother tongue or some other language and try to guess what they mean.
Make two assumptions what you think the text is about.
Make two questions you think the text might give an answer to.
Use common sense, general knowledge, logic and guessing to figure out what the hard sentences are about.
Read the text on your own first and then discuss it with your pair or in your group.
If needed your teacher will solve the mystery for you. See how close you can get!
N.B. Teachers! Don’t cheat. Try the exercise out yourself first and after that let your students apply the first 5 tips/strategies above. They will internalize them without teaching, first reading alone and even more in groups afterwards.
You are wrong if you think you are not able to understand written Finnish! Tackle the text now!
Salalah, hedelmäparatiisi
Tämä valokuva on otettu Salalahissa, joka on noin 900 kilometriä Omanin pääkaupungista Muscatista etelään. Banaanit, mangot ja vesimeloonit alueen päätuotteita.
Hedelmät poimitaan hieman raakoina ja siksi ne ovat myytäessä vihreitä. Muualla Omanissa kasvaa melkeinpä ainoastaan taatelipalmuja. Mutta jos vuokraatte auton, varokaa kameleita, koska niitä voi olla jopa moottoriteillä.
Instructions to the teacher
When the students have studied the text on their own, let them discuss it in pairs or groups. This is the moment they will learn most, explaining others about their strategies.
Start going through the text with the whole class using points 1 – 5. First, look at the photo: What can we learn from it? Some students have never ‘analysed’ a photo before! It is a skill of its own.
Then look at the title: What does it probably mean?
Students assumptions, guesses about the content?
Which questions might be answered in the text?
The importance of background knowledge and common sense and logic?
Take turns and get the answers from many pairs/groups. Most likely you will get most of the answers from the students.
The suggested answers with the text both in Finnish and in English can be found below under the photos.
Salalah, fruit paradise / Salalah, hedelmäparatiisi
The key to solving the meaning of the title is to connect ‘paratiisi‘ with ‘paradise’. The photo should imply that ‘hedelmä’ means ‘fruit’.
This photo was taken in Salalah, which is about 900 kilometres south of Muscat, the capital of Oman. Bananas, mangos and watermelons are the main products of the region. / Tämä valokuva on otettu Salalahissa, joka on noin 900 kilometriä Omanin pääkaupungista Muscatista etelään. Banaanit, mangot ja vesimeloonit alueen päätuotteita.
Green words are nearly the same in Finnish and English, loan words, and they reveal the topic, ‘fruit’.
Common sense and logic: Oman is a country, Muscat is probably the capital. Salalah must be a fruit production area 900 kilometres from Muscat. Which direction? It does not really matter. To the south, but you can know it only if you know the map of Oman.
Fruits are picked a little raw and therefore they are green when they are sold. Elsewhere in Oman date palm trees are just about the only trees growing. But if you hire a car, mind the camels because you might see them even on motorways. / Hedelmät poimitaan hieman raakoina ja siksi ne ovat myytäessä vihreitä. Muualla Omanissa kasvaa melkeinpä ainoastaan taatelipalmuja. Mutta jos vuokraatte auton, varokaa kameleita, koska niitä voi olla jopa moottoriteillä.
Green words are nearly the same in Finnish and English, loan words, and they reveal how the text goes on.
The 1st sentence of the 2nd paragraph really tests the readers ability to guess what the sentence may mean. The title >>‘ hedelmät’ =’ fruit’.
What happens to fruit before they are eaten? They are picked up ‘raakana’=’raw’ when they are ‘vihreä’ = green like in the photo. This is general knowledge: fruit ripen up on their way to the shops.
‘Omanissa taatelipalmuja’ = ‘In Oman date palm trees’ is the essence of the sentence. Not the full meaning but close enough.
If you go abroad, you probably do not take your car with you but you hire it. So ‘vuokraatte auton’ = hire an ‘automobile’/’auto’/’car’
If camels are mentioned with motorways, it must mean they are the ones causing accidents on motorways. Not deer or elks, like in Finland.
The complexity of the reading process above in our heads is astonishing. But listening to others explaining how they processed the text is one of the keys in becoming a better reader.
N.B. It is quite amazing how much you can actually understand Finnish just cracking your brains a little and using various strategies. I bet Paragraph 1 was a piece of cake for you and you even guessed the meanings of the new words. The last sentence too.
If your students can crack this Finnish puzzle at least partially, they will not give up very easily if they come a cross a problem in an English text.
The next article is about how to use the same strategies in solving a reading comprehension test in English.
One of the keys to the students’ success and improvement in reading comprehension exams is to devote a couple of lessons to the strategies when you get a new group.
Throwing the students one exam after another and assuming that massive input will automatically improve the reading skills for an exam, does not necessarily hold true.
In the previous articles I hopefully gave a lot of food for thought about preparing the students for exams.
All language skills are intertwined. Thus many of the tips given on listening comprehension, writing tasks and learning vocabulary apply in taking reading comprehension exams too.
The text below is a sample exam for those who are about 15 years of age. The idea is to let them take the exam either before or after the strategies lessons. The exam hasA) True/False-questions, B) multiple choice questions and C) a task combining reading with writing and justifying opinions.
The next article after this one is an example on how a mature 16-year-old might be able to process this exam.I will also give the ‘correct answers’ there with some recommendations on how to organize the return of the ‘test’.
I believe that if the students are allowed to use and apply the strategies handout in doing this exam they will internalize the ideas more profoundly. I am talking about the handout and articles in the previous article. And the student may become better writers too since they will learn to anticipate the reactions of their readers better.
Still, learning to apply the strategies does not take place over night. It also requires a lot of practice.
Up to 113 million children worldwide do not have access to school books. What a waste it is that old school text books are binned or pulped. Books written in Arabic will, of course, be of no use in most of Africa but English is an official language in Tanzania, for example. Moreover, all secondary education is done in English there and children are taught following the old British O- and A-Level curricula. Due to the way syllabi in Tanzania mirror the old English system, second-hand course books are perfect to help bridge the gap between rich and poor nations.
In Tanzania educational resources are scarce but children have the will to learn. An organisation based in Liverpool is working hard to see that school text books and other equipment are collected and re-distributed. The Tanzanian Book Appeal would be nothing without the help and support of schools, many of which have been involved in fund raising activities as well as donating old books. John, one of the students involved in the project, says that before the fund raising he didn’t really know or even care about Tanzania. Now he understands that Tanzania is the fourth poorest country in the world, and that there may be up to 40 pupils sharing one text book.
Once the books have been donated they are collected in a truck and taken to a holding warehouse – which was donated by a local business – sorted through and stored. They will be packed up and shipped off to Tanzania in a big container. The students who have worked on the project will then fly out to meet the books over there. The government in Tanzania have loaned government vehicles to sort out the distribution. The group of English students and teachers will then tour the schools in the Kagera region near Lake Victoria.
A Decide whether the statement is true (T) or false (F). Correct the false statements.
In Tanzania there are 113 million children without school books.
In Tanzania all education starting from the first school years is done in English .
The curricula in Tanzania follow the old English model to a great extent.
In Tanzania there is not a lot of money to organize teaching.
An organization in Liverpool gathers secondhand school books and forwards them to Tanzania.
The aid organization does not need the help of school children in its work.
In Tanzania there may be as many as 40 pupils in one classroom.
B Answer the multiple choice questions. Choose a) b) or c)
8. What happens to the school books once they leave the donating schools?
a) They remain in an old lorry until a storage warehouse is found.
b) They are sent to Tanzania in small units with goods from local businesses.
c) The books that have been given away are taken into storage and sorted in Britain.
9. What happens to the books when they reach Tanzania?
a) A group of students from England will go and distribute the books in Tanzania.
b) The schools have to pay for the transportation of the books.
c) The British students travel on the trucks to the schools.
C 1 Why are British secondhand school books ideal for Tanzanian schools? (Give 3 reasons and answer in your own words in a full sentence or two.)
2 What do you think about the procedures of getting the books to schools after they have arrived in Tanzania? (Mention 3 opinions and why you think so.)
The ‘correct’ answers with detailed analysis are to be found in the next article.
Africa at its best. Karin Blixen’s home near Nairobi. Blixen wrote famous books about her life in Africa.
Before you look at my next article about returning this sample exam, please ponder on the questions below.
How would you organize immediate student-oriented feedback after a reading comprehension test?Background info: The test was 30 min long, 6 multiple choice questions and 4 open-ended ones. A mixed-ability class, 16-year-olds and onwards.
What would you say to the students about the purpose of the exam-returning session?
How do you organize the feedback session right after the test?
Grouping the students? Making it a student-centred learning situation?
How to provide a model how to approach the questions?
How to deal with multiple choices?
How to answer open-ended questions?
When do you give the correct answers and to whom?
Various options to deal with low-achievers, i.e. How do you deal with differentiation?
In the previous article I pointed out that reading takes place in the heads of the students and we have no physical evidence on the quality of understanding. Besides, in general people are reluctant to admit that they did not understand what was said or written.
For this reason I have always tried to make sure all my students know how to study a new text beforehand at home. Once the students start to think in English, there is no need for any translations. If the students come to classes unprepared there simply is not enough time for most of them to understand the text well enough to learn from it. I have found the teaching of study skills and strategies more and more important over the years.It is a wonderful asset in CLT classes.
In the mid-1980s I had a rather weak new senior high class and I discovered that seven out of 30 of those 16-year-olds did not understand the texts in our textbook at all. So I made them sit down and translate texts with me once a week while the others were working independently. I felt embarrassed and so did my students. I simply told them what I expected them to do at home and demonstrated how to do it.
In addition, I told them that they could leave the group and study with the others the minute they could prove they have no difficulties any more in translating a text into Finnish. It took five lessons and all seven students learnt how to get prepared for my lessons. After that we did not have to translate any of the texts. It was taken for granted that everybody has to understand the new texts at the beginning of the lesson.
Reading strategies to be applied in class
Provided the students have done their homework and studied the next chapter beforehand, we can quite quickly move on to the stage in the lesson where the understanding of the text is checked.
The change that CLT brought along was that I started to use the textbook chapters as a stepping stone to free speaking. Understanding the text and doing written exercises was not enough. I started to differentiate the activities in class which lead to the students checking understanding ORALLY in many ways in pairs and groups.
At its best reading comprehension is linked seamlessly to speaking freely in pairs or groups. There are many ways to do it. I have already discussed these matter in ‘Deepening understanding, Part 1’ but I will rephrase the main points here. Many of the strategies I discuss under deep-level reading in exams can be applied in reading ordinary texts too.
‘Question-answer’ technique (QA): if you use ready-made questions, have them on the screen and let the students answer them in pairs. After all we teachers.already know the answers so the only reason for asking these questions is to get the students talking; this is an intermediate stage on our way to free speaking. N.B. If we ask the students’ opinion about a text, it leads to free talking: To what extent do you agree with the ideas in the text? / What is the most interesting and boring part of the story and why?
Replacing one-student-answering-the question-at-a-time with pair work means the activity level soaring towards 100 %. But CLT teachers are not pleased with this situation. Why not? Because the answers can simply be read from the text, which means the QA is ‘mechanical’ and our aim is to move via semi-communicative tasks to free speaking.
However, there are other ways than questions to test reading comprehension and have the focus on free talking. I have discussed True-False tasks, Multiple Choice tasks, Explaining the story with the help of pictures or mind maps (= my favourites) and especially differentiation in reading skill in article Deepening understanding, Part 1.
My way of realizing differentiation is very simple. For example, if the topic of a chapter is ‘Sports’ and we are on the verge of checking understanding of the text, every student chooses one of the 3 tasks and works with others who took the same level task. The tasks are: A) Answer the questions on the screen and work in pairs B) Explain about the content of the chapter in your own words , use the key words on the screen if needed. C) Have a discussion in pairs or in groups about your sport experiences and what sports means to you.
Some students insist on doing A, B and C. Others A and C or B and C. It is all the same for me. All I demand is that they work actively all through the lesson. Not for me, but for themselves.
As you can see I have minimized the extra work for the teacher in this A, B, C style of invisible differentiation. Invisible in the sense of no stigma on any student. Now the students work at a level that suits and pleases them.
I can sense some of you are wondering ‘How can I be sure my students understand the text correctly?‘. A justified question. My answer is. You can never be sure of it since you can observe it only from outside. Your students will ask each other or you if they do not grasp part of the text. Mostly they simply rely on each other’s help.
Intensive and extensive reading
Intensive reading
In a narrow sense ’intensive reading’ is what we normally do with textbook texts: study them in detail trying to understand the content properly. Sometimes we may look at the vocabulary and the structures more carefully too. I suspect many teachers have never really stopped to think about the various stages and strategies that take place in reading.
at first reading is based on translating the text into the mother tongue, aloud, silently in the head orlike I do with weak readers: force them to write the translation in their notebooks or the translation of new words between the lines in the text, this goes on for a few weeks or months until the students realize they simply have to do it
beginners’ reading pace varies a lot while they are reading a text and they tend to stop and go back and forth in the text, which is quite normal
beginners are mostly provided with simplified texts in their books to avoid frustration due to the language being too difficult, still they shouldbe encouraged to read authentic texts at least in their free time
at an advanced level the students start to think in English, no translations are needed any more and authentic texts can be used as a source of information at least in projects
advanced students should be taught how to make use of various strategies while reading texts, many of the strategies can be taught to younger students too
however, there are always a number of students in all age groups who work through translation, which slows down the reading process a lot so teaching effective reading strategies is of vital importance for them in particular
In a wider sense ’intensive reading’ covers the study of many types of texts and genres often followed by a set of tasks to be done. There are two types of reading tactics depending on what kind of information we are looking for. Both ‘scanning’ and ‘skimming’ a text are very useful skills later on in working life too.
We often ’scan’ texts to find a particular answer or a detail.
On other occasions we ’skim’ the whole passage or text through to get an overall idea about the text.
Extensive reading
’Extensive reading’ means reading for fun,reading because we enjoy the content or the story as such. Present-day media offers everybody a massive number of sources for extensive reading: in addition to library books we can make use of the internet which is full of interesting texts. It does not really matter what the students read as long as they are interested in the articles or texts. This kind of internal motivation guaratees learning and takes place in a relaxing atmosphere. In brief, the more there is INPUT, the more the students learn.
It is a good idea to let the students sometimes read whatever they want in class and then tell others what they find interesting in the texts. Some read only short newpaper articles, others may leaf through a thick novel. Encourage all of them to keep on reading no matter what.
I hate to admit it but during my time at school song lyrics were the only extra thing I read on top of textbook chapters. The first book I read in English was the university entrance exam novel ‘Brigton Rock’ by Graham Greene.
These days one of my most popular sources for reading is ‘onlinenewspapers.com’ where you can find hundreds of newspapers in English and other languages from all over the world. And I let the students read whatever articles they want, take notes and then summarize the content orally to their group or occasionally for the whole class.
The more there is INPUT, the more the students learn. The main thing is that they enjoy the texts and the content. Internal motivation to read is best!
After a lot of input and oral practice, the final stage is writing. It usually develops in three stages: 1) copying words and sentences, 2)modifying and changing model sentences and texts, and 3) students producing sentences and texts of their own.
Learning to write in a foreign language is a long process. It starts with copying words, phrases and sentences from textbooks. Beginners can copy texts from their textbook or make changes in them while copying.
If the texts are first modified orally, the transition to writing is relatively smooth. The first pieces of writing are mostly short and based on models, such as postcards, short notes, e-mails or stories.
Teachers should not be worried about giving models because it reduces anxiety among weak students and the good ones tend to be creative in writing.
For many students it is far more important to speak and read a text in English than write it well.
At intermediate level teachers are advised to use differentiation in their writing tasks because the students’ skills in writing vary a lot. If the students cannot write stories yet, they can start by answering questions in exams, for example, to demonstrate their level of writing. In practice situations I let my students even use dictionaries or they can consult me if they are facing a problem.
I strongly recommend the ‘invisible’ kind of differentiation presented in my earlier article ‘Teaching beginners writing, differentiation’. ‘Invisible’ differentiation’ in a sense of letting the students choose which of the choices they would like to work on. Personally I avoid using the term ‘differentiation’ but talk about choices instead.
Advanced students can write argumentative essays, blog posts, narrative stories, descriptions, newspaper or magazine articles, various kinds of letters etc. once their structure has been taught. These demanding types of tasks will be dealt with separately. They are a great practical addition to simply focusing on essay writing.
Learning to use criteria and to give feedback, writing in pairs
Writing in pairs, for the others in the class, not for the teacher, may change the students’ whole perpective to writing; how to plan, proceed and assess pieces of writing against criteria.
In most cases we teachers ask our students to write a story or essays on their own but it is worth while trying out writing in pairs too . Writing in a group is another option but harder to control because the best writers may take the lead over the weaker ones. So let’s see how you could organize a writing task in pairs, introduce assessment criteria and give feedback to others
First, design a student-centred writing task for a mixed-ability class. In addition, this time include an element of assessment in it as well. This task might take a full lesson or even more depending on the level of the students and how much you want them to write.
There are two goals in this task: 1) To get an experience on how the pair proceeds with and thinks about writing compared with his/her own ways. 2) To internize the ideas behind the assessment of the writing task, in other words, how to use the criteria and understand the components in it.
Use the 3-stage model where you first design a task for the average students and then use differentiation by making it easier for the low-achievers and finally make it a little more demanding for the high-achievers. See my model plan for such a lesson!
You need to use your national criteria in evaluation or develop a rubric yourself or with your students, something that is simple enough for them to understand and use. If you are not pleased with your national criteria, use the one in my next article. It is valid maybe from age 12 onwards if you are aware of what can be expected from your students. Tell the students that you will evaluate the writings as well later on and give them feedback on how well their did in the assessment. Peer-assessent may seem inadequate for the students at first and the teacher needs to verify it.
Instead of the normal way of each student writing an essay of his/her own ask the students to choose a pair and write the essay in pairs. Now they have to co-operate and negotiate how to proceed in writing. Tell them not to write any names on the paper but to draw a picture or a code word on it. When reading the essays and giving feedback of the work of others, the students should not know who originally wrote the text.
Remind your students that even if evaluation does not take place the normal way, they still have to take things seriously. In the end, learning is what matters, not the grades. Get the students down to work and tell them how much time they have.
Once the short writing task is done, ask the students to bring their pieces of writing to you and you will give them randomly to another pair. They will assess the writing the best they canby writing their comments on the papers. This can be done as many times as you have time for. The written assessment is based on the criteria/rubrics and it is done within your time limit. Don’t expect too much if the students have not done this before. Opening up the criteria may be hard for the students. See how I prefer doing it in the next article.
The young ones may be capable of giving their feedback with smileys whereas the junior and senior high students can comment at least on how pleasant the text is to read, how clear the ideas are, how good the vocabulary is and which mistakes they spotted. Positive, constructive feedback! Ideally the comments should be based on the criteria.
In giving feedback the the ladder of feedback developed by David Perkins of Harvard University can be made use of. This model focuses on asking for clarifications and giving constructive feedback. There are also a lot of positive phrases in my earlier article that the students can use. LINK
1 Questions for clarifications: Am I reading this correctly when …I don’t get the idea in the second paragraph. Could you clarify what you mean!
2 Positive comments on value: What I think works very well is … What makes me admire you text is that … The way you present your arguments is … The best thing in your text is …
3 Comments for concernand revision: What I worry about is … If I was you I would …. The thing that what would make the essay even better is that …Maybe you could improve the ideas and grammar by …
Finally you take all the writings back to be taken home and evaluated by you. Then it is time for the students to give you feedback on the activity / lesson. It can be done orally or in writing.
At home you will check what kind of feedback was given on the pieces of writing and write a few comments of your own. Give a graded evaluation if you think your students are expecting it.
If this was the first time the students gave feedback on each other’s work, you need to give general feedback on the process and how well you think the students succeeded.
I know. You may think what I suggest above may seem troublesome, but I can assure you it makes much more sense for the students than writing someting for the teacher and getting a grade for it.
Most of the things done in the old style in teaching grammar were perfectly ok and are valid even today. We simply made a mistake by stopping half way through: unfortunately we were pleased with mechanical written exercises and ignored creative tasks and oral practice.
Up to the times of the introduction and first applications of CLT principles in the early 1980s grammar was mostly taught using the deductive method. The all-knowing teacher revealed the secret rules one by one and they were applied right away but only in writing. (Sorry, I am being sarcastic.) The grammar exams were also only in writing.
The good thing about the teaching of grammar was that at its best it was done very systematically.Hunting down my treasures from the 1980s I found the following example on teaching the present tense of the passive voice. Part of the text is in Finnish since mother tongue was often made use of in those days. But I still think you can get my point when you look at the original exercises taken from SIIE series published by an excellent educational publisher WSOY, Finland.
N.B. I’d like to point out that there was or is nothing wrong in teaching the present tense passive voice the way it is presented below. The only problem is that 1) we used to stop too early and 2) were pleased with mechanical exercises and 3) we had no real communicative tasks.
How the present tense in the passive voice was taught in the ‘good old days’
There were three things done before the students were given the exercises below.
We made sure the three forms of irregular verbs were mastered. It they are not, the whole thing collapses. It is still the same today.
We studied a chapter in the textbook which had plenty of these structures and the word list had a translation of them to make understanding of the chapter easier. This is still often the case in CLT lessons.
The teacher explained the rule to be applied and told that in the passive voice we do not know exactly who does the action. These days we start with an oral pre-task and prefer the inductive method to get the students more involved and to enhance memorization of the rule.
ENGLISH
FINNISH
AM IS + 3rd form of verb ARE
-taan, -tään -daan, -dään ostetaan, syödään
2 words
1 word
Negation with the word ‘not’
An example of a well-structured exercise from the 1980s
The rule could easily be formed on the basis of the first 5 sentences.
Exercise 1 above intensifies the memorization of the mother tongue structure and checks if the student recognizes the corresponding structure in the English sentence.
Exercise 2 is excellent in demonstrating the difference in meaning of the corresponding active and passive structure. It will keep the students on their toes with this structure. Once again we are on the level of recognizing the structure.
Exercise 3 is another excellent task. The writer of the task has anticipated one of the main problems weak students are going to face: choice between ‘am, is, are’. It is hard for some students to grasp that ‘tea’ is 3rd person singular, the same as ‘it’ or ‘tins’ is the same as ‘they’.
Exercise 4 is a very typical gap exercise used in testing the knowledge of just about any grammatical structure. If you have read my previous articles, you realize that stopping here is a mistake because we are still at the level of mechanical application of the rule. Why? Because there is no relevat context, the sentences are not logically connected and there is no chance for the students to produce creative sentences of their own with this structure.
Drills seem to be out of fashion but I think they could often be used orally to give another perspective to the new structure.Besides they do not take a lot of time.
One thing that I have barely mentioned in my articles are drills. They used to be very popular in the 1970s and 1980s but somehow they have disappeared. I think textbook writes started to think that they themselves sound oldfashioned if they recommend or include drills in their books and left them out altogether.
I think this was a mistake and anyone who looks at the exercise below where one has to covert an active voice sentence into the passive voice realizes that a learner has to master a lot of things before he/she can apply the rules in a realistic exercise/conversation.
Yes, it is not what we normally do when we talk but it enforces the application of the passive voice rules and can be done orally in pairs in just a few minutes. In brief, an oral drill can be a very effective intermediate task before a real communicative exercise.
This kind of drills were often practised and recorded in language laboratories in 4 stages. Yes, it looks boring and was boring and therefore probably dropped out of fashion.
Teacher: Tom speaks English.
Student: English is spoken by Tom.
Teacher giving the correct answer: English is spoken by Tom.
Student repeats it: English is spoken by Tom.
Still, I think we could use drills more than we actually do today.
Drills do not take a lot of time if done orally and checked in pairs or in a group.
What I like about them is that the students can visualize the changes that they have to make.
If needed the teacher can work on simple drills with the low-achievers while others are doing more demanding exercises.
The model at the top of the slide shows what needs to be done: start with the underlined object, keep the tense the same and express the agent with a ‘by’ structure.Model-based drills from the early 1980s. They were the only kind of oral exercises we used to do in lessons or in the language lab.
