Listening comprehension in ordinary life does not consist of true-false statements or multiple choice alternatives. So the whole process of testing is a bit artificial. But these two exam types come in handy because the answers are so easy to check and mark. Checking can even be done by a special machine.
Open-ended questions are closer to real-life situations. If the teachers are provided with a set of sample answers, marking becomes much faster and reliable.
Tips for listening comprehension in exams
Listening comprehension exams can be very stressful. However, we can make the situation much more comfortable if we teach our students some strategies or give tips how to deal with the situation.
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Look at the photo above. Which one is better for learning? The teacher telling the secret of the mystery car OR the students studying the car and finding it out themselves?
The answer is at the very end of this article. Think carefully because it will reveal your attitude towards teaching grammar as well.
I know. Having studied English for many years at the university you are not supposed to lecture and shine with your knowledge in front of your class (= the deductive method). Let’s have a look at our options.
Why the inductive method? Because it forces the students to think hard. The more they crack their brains, the better they learn.
Earlier on we defined the two most common methods in teaching grammar:
“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 explaining the rules in detail and then letting 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. We need to move on.’ “
I will start by discussing ‘the inductive method’. In my opinion it is the one we can and should use in teaching nearly all grammatical points. The inductive method activates the students’ brains much better than the ‘deductive one’.
The advantages of using the inductive method
First of all, students remember the rule better if they themselves have worked it out from the sample sentences given to them.
Secondly, students become very motivated to solve the problem; it is a minor detective operation.
Thirdly, every student is given time to try to figure out the rule if the process is slow, and proceeds step by step.
The teacher can exercise his/her expertise in the matter by presenting the relevant questions when the rule is being formulated.
In most cases the process can be carried out in English but in some classes it may be better to use the mother tongue to make sure everyone understands the rule.
How does the process advance in using the inductive method?
For the method to be effective it is advisable to more or less follow the steps given below and allow differentiation in the exercise types at Stage 5 if necessary.
Stage 1:Pre-task 1 Play a board game where the students throw a dice (or roll a pencil with 1-6 dots on it) and can move onwards if they remember the 3 forms of about 20 verbs, regular and irregular ones. N.B. Always make sure the foundation for the next task is solid: Some irregular verbs must be mastered for Stage 2.
Stage 2: Pre-task 2 Have a ‘Find someone who …’ task in order to make the students use the structure to be learnt many times. The structure to be learnt is The 2nd conditional.
What would you have done, if the school had been closed today?
Action
Name if ‘YES’
I would have gone swimming.
I and my friend would have played computer games.
Peter
Me and my dad would have eaten lunch together.
Jill
I would have written our home essay.
I would have slept a couple of hours more at home.
Shirley
Stage 3: Look at the examples below and work out the rule for the main clause and for the if-clause.
The main clause
The if-clause
I would have gone downtown
if the boss had given me the task.
My mum would have takendad’s car
if ithad been in the garage,
What do these two clauses have in common? (= KEY QUESTION!!) (would have + verb) How would you translate the clauses? ‘olisin mennyt’ ‘olisi ottanut’
What do these two if-clause have in common? (the pluperfect tense) How would you translate the clauses? ‘olisi antanut’ ‘olisi ollut’
Stage 4: Let’s formulate the rule for the 2nd conditional
The road to the formulation of the rule is clear if the students spot which pattern the sample clauses have in common.
The main clause
The if-clause
would have + 3rd form of the verb
the pluperfect tense = had + 3rd form of the verb
‘olisi tehnyt’
‘olisi tehnyt’
Now the Finnish students would notice that the Finnish language does not make any difference between the main and if-clauses and for them that is the point to bear in mind. In addition to the rules, of course. In other languages the situation may be different. In any case, comparison with the mother tongue is often very useful.
Stage 5: The if-clause can be in front of or after the main clause but do not reveal it to the students. Let them fall into the ‘trap’ when they do the first exercises and they will remember the application of the rule better.
Practice session; just like we have learnt before there should be 3 kinds of tasks for the sake of differentiation. The students will do i), ii) or iii) or all of them. See the samples below as a reminder!
i) A mechanical task (a gap filling exercise, isolated sentences with no context)
I don’t understand why you said nothing. I ___________________________ (tell) him the truth, if he __________________________ (ask) me anything about it.
Why did they not let us know they were not coming? If they _____________________ (call) us, we _________________________ (leave) the party immediately.
ii) Semi-communicative exercise (a realistic context but no freedom to write creatively and use the 2nd conditional forms)
There was a robbery at a local grocery store last week and three students are discussing what they would have done if they had been in the shop at that time.
Malcolm: I ______________________________ (hide) behind the shelves and if it _____________________________ (be) possible, I _________________________(call) the police quietly.
Anne: If I __________________________ (see) the robber, I _______________________ (write down) what they looked like and how they spoke.
Cary: I ______________________________ (try) to be quiet and I ______________________________ (take) photos from my hiding place. It _____________________________ (be) very dangerous, if the robber _______________________ (see) me doing it.
iii) A real communicative task (a realistic situation/context and freedom to be creative about the content)
There was a boat accident on a lake near your school yesterday and you are talking about it with your class mates. Write at least four things you would have done if you had been there and had seen what was going on. Include at least two if-clauses in your story.
How does the process advance in the deductive method?
The decuctive method is very easy to use but in my opinion should not be used too much since the students do not need to crack their brains very much when the teacher is explaining the rules.
There are, however, a couple of cases when the use of the deductive method is justifiable:
The rules might be too complicated for the students to work out. (For example, changing ‘direct speech’ into ‘indirect speech’ includes far too many little details to be taken into account.
Working out the rules might take far too much time.
The class is not accustomed or able to formulate the rules, not even when it is done in the mother tongue.
If we look at the stages above, in the worst case a teacher in favour of the deductive method might skip Stages 1 – 3 altogether, explain the rules at Stage 4 and offer mere mechanical exercises in Stage 5.
All in all, hopefully you have now a better idea how modern CLT teachers deal with grammar and treat it as an essential part of foreign language learning.
The ‘car’ is not a real car at all but a piece of art in New York made mostly of recycled tyres.
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?
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.
