How To Keep Your TEFL Lessons Interesting!

Posted on April 11, 2013 by admin

How to keep your TEFL lessons interesting!

Now you’ve taken your TEFL course and are out there on your teaching adventure! But, what’s that? You seem to have lost inspiration. Well here are the i-to-i TEFL team ready to offer some advice on how to keep your classes interesting!

Use the three key learning styles. Students, like all humans, tend to use three key learning styles – listening, seeing and doing. Try and ensure that you have at least one activity for each style in every class. Let’s say you’re teaching adjectives and pets. You could get the class to act out a presentation about their pet’s behaviour (do), draw a picture of their cat and describe it (see) and listen to a story about a pet and then summarize (listen).

Keep lecturing to a bare minimum. Once you’ve explained the lesson objectives and how to achieve them, be quiet! Your students should be spending at least 70% of the class talking; after all you don’t need the English practice!

Run a warm up activity. Review the previous week’s learning with a brief and light-hearted review at the beginning of class. This will motivate your students with a sense of accomplishment before you bring in new materials.

Find out what your students know. Imagine being stuck in a lesson learning ABC’s as a near fluent English speaker. Not only would it be patronizing, it’s also boring! You can avoid this by assessing your students carefully at the beginning of term and then asking them if they know before explaining any new concepts. For instance, in South Korea many words have been loaned from the English language. Try to explain to a Korean student what love, style and fashion is and they’ll give you a funny look, as these are all words they use every day!

Switch from structured to creative. When planning a lesson try to get a combination of structured tasks and more creative projects. For instance, you could get students to learn newspaper vocabulary and then split them in to groups to write a news article of their choice.

Have some fun. Once you’ve been teaching a class for a while and they’re used to your teaching style, throw in a wildcard to keep things interesting. How about ‘musical Monday’ where students can bring their favourite English song to play during the writing task?

Laugh at yourself. No one is expecting you to be the class clown; in fact one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a TEFL teacher is trying to be a friend. Having said that, knowing when to laugh at yourself is one of the most important skills a teacher can have. Nobody is perfect and if you can show that even you’re not, your students will be much more comfortable making mistakes.

‘Five Fun Ways To Teach New Vocabulary!’

Posted on March 6, 2013 by admin

Here at i-to-i towers we’ve got a new addition to the team, Kat our Korea expert! Having just returned from a year of TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) in South Korea, she’s ready to impart her teaching wisdom, you lucky things you!

Here are her five favourite ways to teach new vocabulary:

“Teaching vocabulary can sometimes feel like a dull task, but as long as you remember to engage the class and keep it lighthearted you can’t go wrong.”

Get a game going! For many students, just hearing the word ‘game’ can make the task seem more fun. To practice new vocabulary, a great idea is to set up ‘noughts and crosses’ on the whiteboard. Then, every time a student uses a new word erase their word and allow them to put a ‘nought or a cross’ in the space. This helps a new class to start working together and is a great (and non-intimidating) activity for upper school students too.
Mix it up. Your students will probably have different learning styles, especially in large classes! Use your voice, props and some actions to keep your class dynamic. Younger classes will often be especially active so mixing it up will keep their excitement and energy focused on learning.
Tell a Story. Get your students to tell you a story using their new English vocab. The story can be as silly as they like as long as it makes grammatical sense! You can combine this with a spelling activity as you rewrite the key words on the board.
Bring a dice. Before class number the vocabulary words on the board in rows of six. Try and get a good mix of easier and more challenging words. Now get each student to roll the dice and create a sentence with their correlating word. If your class is well behaved change number 6 to ‘nominate’. This will allow your students to nominate a friend to make a sentence. If you have a large TEFL class, getting the students to repeat the sentences keeps everyone on their toes.
Review, review, review! Run a quick revision activity at the start of every class. Keep it lighthearted and see if you can incorporate some relevant pop culture. For instance, if reviewing adjectives get the students to make sentences about their favourite singer or cartoon character! This also multitasks as a warmer activity to get your students talking.

*Teacher’s tip: When running any activity set up some ground rules before you start. This will let your students know that whilst you’re having fun you still expect good behaviour. Happy TEFLing!

Oh My God! What Am I Supposed to Do in My First Lesson?

Posted on January 14, 2013 by admin

It’s one of the unwritten fears of teaching English abroad; stepping into your first lesson scares everyone silly.

If someone tells you they weren’t scared before their first lesson, they’re lying through their teeth. If they insist that they weren’t remotely nervous, they’re probably a lunatic, and you should walk slowly away, avoiding eye contact and making soothing noises. Anyway, back to the matter in hand, you can keep those ‘Oh my god, it’s my first English lesson’ nerves to a minimum by following these five simple bits of advice.

1: Prepare an Appropriate Lesson Plan in Advance

Doesn’t get more obvious than that does it? If you’ve got a good lesson plan nailed, the rest should come pretty easily. Just make sure you know the age of the students and their level of English before you start planning the lesson. It’s also worth checking out what type of classroom you’ll be teaching in and what facilities it has. As a rule of thumb, when your teaching kids in a school environment they’ll be happy to have a pretty informal first lesson where you introduce yourself to them and get them to introduce themselves to you (either through a written or oral task).

When you’re teaching adults who are actually paying for your time, it is usually a good idea to find out beforehand whereabouts they are with their studies and whether they have been working through a curriculum: if they have, you’ll just need to do a quick introduction and then get back into the serious study. For many adult students learning English is a huge investment and they take it very seriously and they won’t appreciate a full hour of information about you, your home town and your childhood pets.

2: Make The Classroom Your Domain

Remember, it is your classroom. So arrange it how you want it before your students come in. Then when they start arriving for the lesson, greet them as they enter the classroom. A simple ‘Hello, I’m Mr Smith’ is fine. It sets you up as the teacher and establishes a rapport between you and your students. And it beats the hell out of standing in front of a rowdy class desperately trying to get their attention.

3: Stop Talking!

Photo by Clover Autrey

Cast your mind back to when you were at school. Remember those teachers who just stood at the front of the class and talked at you. They seemed to love the sound of their own voice and all you ever did in their lessons was take notes and clock watch. Well, you don’t want to be one of those teachers for two very good reasons. Talking for a whole lesson is really hard work and takes hours of planning and writing. And the students don’t learn much, they get bored silly and they disrupt the class.
Make sure the lesson plan for your first TEFL lesson has some group activities and ice-breakers so that your students spend some time working together and talking amongst themselves. That way both you and your students will be enjoying yourself in no time.

4: Be In Control

Remember the old saying ‘First impressions count’. That’s what makes it so important to take control of your first lesson. You don’t want to set yourself up as a hard, harsh teacher that scares the bejesus out of their students, but you don’t want to be a pushover either. So it’s a good idea to set out what you expect from your students in the first lesson and what will happen if they don’t stick to a few basic rules.

You may feel a little awkward standing in front of the class and laying down the law, but it’ll make things loads easier in the future. Ensure that your body language is relaxed and confident and that you talk in a clear and authoritative tone of voice, if you can manage that everything else will fall into place and being ‘teacher’ will become second nature.

5: Relax And Enjoy It.

When you’re walking to that first lesson in a foreign classroom remember three things.

1: Deep down you do want to be there.
2: Your students want you there.
3: The school decided you had everything they wanted from a teacher.

So just relax and enjoy it. This is what all the study, long haul flights, vaccinations, visa forms and course fees was about. You’ll be a great teacher and this is just the start of your big TEFL adventure. It’s exciting, not scary. Honest!

Are you a TEFL teacher? Can you remember what you did in your first lesson?

How Do I Write a Winning CV?

Posted on December 11, 2012 by admin

Ahhh the CV, those two dreaded letters are known for bringing on symptoms such as cold sweats, a strong desire to run out of the house or even panic cleaning…
Why dread it? Writing a CV is your chance to show off to your future employer about how amazing you are and gets you that one step closer to landing your TEFL dream job. So if you’re TEFL qualified you’re over halfway there!
To help you along your way here are a few tips and tricks to ease your CV-writing pain!

1) Keep It Relevant
Your CV should back-up everything you say in your application letter so don’t even think about sending out a stock CV to every employer. They’ll know! Make sure your CV is modified for the specific TEFL job advertisement you’re going for. Try and make your application and CV succinct and make sure it all screams ‘I can do this job!’

2) Include Previous Jobs Which Demonstrate Any Transferable Skills
For example, this might include a position of responsibility, delegation, public speaking or anything to do with language and writing. A summer spent waitressing should not be overlooked – dealing with customers of different nationalities etc. are all worthy attributes to show off for a TEFL teacher in the making.

3) Don’t Save The Best Until Last
If you’re prone to saving all the meat on your plate until last because ‘it’s the best bit,’ do NOT do that on your CV. It’s a horrible fact but most employers will skim over your CV in a matter of seconds so if you left the fact that you’ve had 4 years teaching experience until the very end – you’ll have a very slim chance of expecting a reply. So if you don’t have a degree but you have loads of experience – put this first!

4) Avoid ‘Personal Goals’ or ‘Career Development’ Section
Although this might be a popular section to include in Western countries it is important to bear in mind that in some countries it can come across as strange or egotistical. It is better to stick to subjects such as ‘Key Skills’ and why exactly YOU can do this job perfectly.

5) Consistency
Times New Roman CV and an Ariel Cover Letter? Rejected!
Ok. That was a lie; you’re not going to get rejected for having a different font! However, it is nice to try and stay stylistically consistent when you’re submitting your application as this proves that you are both professional and have a keen eye for detail.

Looking for a job abroad? Check out i-to-i’s Jobs Board

Teaching 2-6 Year Olds – An Impossible Task?

Posted on October 25, 2012 by admin

Fact: English learners, all over the world, are getting younger and younger, with many parents sending their child for lessons as young as two! So how do you teach English to these young learners – often aged between 2 and 6? It’s a tricky one.

Keep the class active!

Remember your target audience! These are children, so go ahead and tear up that board-based grammar lesson plan…

Your students should be up and about a few times a lesson in order to keep them engaged, so make sure to have lots of activities and games up your sleeve. These don’t have to involve lots of running around; it can be different kinds of movement such as passing things round, moving different parts of the body and interacting with one another.

Varying seating is also another way to keep the room from falling into a deathly silence. Rather than just rows of chairs, pair your students up, move chairs into a circle or get them into groups. It will create a nice buzz in the classroom too!

Encourage your students:

Ok, hand’s up! Who was put off languages by their dreaded French/German/Spanish teacher during high school? Scarring wasn’t it?

For many really young students this will be their first taste of the English language (they won’t have been exposed to enough film, music etc. to understand it) so make sure it is a positive one. By encouraging your students regularly you will make a long-lasting impression. You also want to make your students feel good about themselves; a great way to do this is to display their work on the walls/corridor.

Top TEFL tip: Make sure to award praise where praise is due but don’t overdo it and only provide rewards on a special occasion.

Make learning vocabulary fun

Once again, remember your target audience. Giving your students endless lists of vocabulary to learn will not go down very well. Make it interactive!

For example, when learning about food rather than hold up a flash card or describe types of food to them (where’s the fun in that?!) bring in food for your students to see, smell, touch and taste.

Be patient!

All students develop at different rates and this is even more obvious in younger children. So make sure to arm yourself with a dazzling colgate smile and firmly hide your frustration.

Instruct clearly

Unclear instructions are one of the biggest causes of chaos in a classroom. The last thing you want is for children to start darting off in all sorts of directions, chatting shouting to one another and thinking it is playtime.

To avoid this TEFL teacher’s nightmare here are a couple of ideas:

1) Stand in a particular spot each time you give instructions. This way, children will know when the next activity is about to be announced.

2) Think of a symbol/action to do when you want your student’s attention

3) Show students what to do rather than telling them.

Keep Reviewing

You will need to keep practicing newly learnt language/vocabulary with your students. Rather than plain repetition, recycle language in a variety of different ways such as games, singing, drawing, reading and writing.

For more advice/lesson plans and activities for your students make sure to pick up your copy of Essential TEFL.

How Do I Teach Someone Who Does Not Speak English?

Posted on September 27, 2012 by admin

So you think you’ve got it all figured out. You’ve got your TEFL certificate, you’re off on an adventure, you’re going to meet loads of people, teach English – nooo problem, piece of cake. Now I’m not trying to put the fear into you/sound like your mother but have you thought about how you’re actually going to communicate with your students when:

a) You don’t speak their language

b) They don’t speak yours?

Ahhh, well, now that I’ve got you slightly unhinged I’m going to reassure you once more – I’m nice like that.

Here at i-to-i towers we’ve got a pretty awesome team who all know their stuff. So, I thought I would tap into this wealth of knowledge and get the facts right from the source! Here we have Ryan and Nick, our China experts, who have both recently returned from their TEFL adventures and are keen to give their advice on how to teach someone that doesn’t speak English:

Here’s Ryan with his students whilst he was on the China Internship:

His advice is aimed at really young learners with extremely limited English.
1) Don’t be afraid to look silly. For example if you are teaching emotions you should really exaggerate your facial expressions and body language. When I taught words such as happy I would jump up and down, wave my arms in the air and have the biggest smile on my face. My students thought it was hilarious Emotions such as happy, sad, angry, nervous and tired are really easy to communicate. From this, you can easily move onto sentences. For example point to yourself – ‘I am happy.’ Point to a girl – ‘She is happy.’ Point to a boy – ‘he is angry.’ There are plenty of opportunities for drama based games with this style of teaching.

2) Flashcards are a fantastic aid when teaching English. Everything you say is visually reinforced. For example if you are teaching occupations make sure you have plenty of cool pictures the students will be familiar with. Again sentence build up comes quite naturally. Point to yourself – ‘I am a teacher.’ Point to a flashcard- ‘He is a doctor.’ It’s a case of plenty of repetition and drilling.

3) One of the most important things to remember is to speak clearly. Try to set aside any accent you may have and speak as loudly (not shouting though!) and clearly as possible. Props such as puppets are a fantastic way to communicate basic dialogue. I used Sooty and Sweep. I had to put on silly voices but it really communicated the question ‘Hello, how are you?’ and the responses. It’s also good for ‘What is your name?’ Follow this activity by encouraging students to act out the same dialogue in pairs.

4) Use your resources. Teach classroom items by simply pointing – ‘This is a blackboard/ there are three seats, there are six students, it is raining, it is sunny.’

5) For young students most lessons will be short and sweet and you are usually encouraged to spend most of the lesson playing English based games. When students in most foreign countries reach about 10 years old they will have a great basic knowledge of English and the teachers’ main role is to immerse them in a complete English speaking environment. They value native pronunciation and flow of speech. I taught 15 year olds in China and they understood more than 80% of what I said in natural conversation.

Up next is Nick posing on the Great Wall of China (should have taken an umbrella maybe?) you’ll probably speak to him on the phone if you call – he likes to talk about China…a lot:

1) Usually whoever you’ll be teaching (and no matter of what age – from 2 years old to 40) they will have a basic grasp of English – so PLEASE don’t worry, it just kind of works.

2) Normally you’ll have teaching assistants in your class who are there to help and support you throughout your time teaching and especially in your first lessons. So don’t worry, you’ll be eased into the process gently.

3) Lesson plans!! You’ll usually be given lesson plans by the school for the first few days –these will be a BIG help – taking a lot of pressure off you.

4) Have lots of things to fall back on (just in case your first lesson doesn’t go exactly to plan) such as activities and games.

5) Most importantly – just enjoy it – if you walk into a classroom for the first time smiling and look like you are a lot of fun – then the students are going to feel good and will enjoy whatever kind of lesson you give them – believe me – I was standing outside of the classroom shaking, but as soon as I walked in and saw all the children’s smiling faces, I felt much more at ease.

After I shook you up a bit I hope you’re now feeling a bit more relaxed about heading out to your new home and teaching English

Just remember, if you can SPEAK English, You can TEACH English – we wouldn’t plaster it all over our website if not…

Tips to learn New English Words

Posted on March 19, 2012 by admin

I think there is the need to share some tips that I believe will be very helpful for our Midwest Education Group TOEFL and IELTS students and teachers to learn how to teach new vocabulary and memorize them successfully.

How to learn foreign language vocabulary

Learning vocabulary is the most time-intensive part of learning a foreign language. I have prepared a section about how to study new vocabulary and how to memorize it. An article explains also how many words do you need to learn.

Learning vocabulary is the biggest part of learning a foreign language.

I. How to study new vocabulary

There are several ways to study new vocabulary and this section will present you the most effective and time-tested ways. They can be used in combination and you will not use the same at all stages of learning. Remembering vocabulary you studied is treated in this section.

Flash cards
Reading Bilingual Texts

When you are a moderately advanced student, you can learn new vocabulary with bilingual texts. These texts take several shapes. The most ubiquitous, at least for important languages, are books where a novel or short story is presented in the target language on the left and in your mother tongue on the right.

With careful comparison of both the original text and the translation, you can learn a lot about the language”s structure and vocabulary. Remembering words requires re-reading many times the text but can bring good results. For many languages you can now find audio books so that you can both read the original text and hear it pronounced by a native at the same time.

There are other ways to get bilingual texts. You can buy a regular novel in your target language, then buy a regular translation in another language you speak. For instance, you buy ”Harry Potter” in Portuguese and buy another copy of a regular English language edition. This is less convenient to use than the bilingual editions and you will not have cultural and philological footnotes, but it gives you a much bigger choice of books at reasonable prices. And you don”t have to choose a novel.

Another way is to find one of these newspaper websites that either translate foreign language articles into your target language (for Russian you can use www.inopressa.ru) or a regular newspaper that has English translations of some articles (for Serbo-Croatian you can use www.nacional.hr). Newspaper articles are easier and more appealing as they are shorter, use less vocabulary and offer a larger choice of topics renewed on a daily basis.

Reading regular texts with a dictionary

You are likely to learn most of your target language by reading texts written in that language. The most direct way to do so is to use a dictionary. The big problem of reading with a dictionary is that the number of unknown words will soon exhaust you if you look every one up. There are several strategies to deal with that problem:

Look up every single word for the first page, then try to understand the rest by context only. This works fine for technical articles, where all of the important words of the article are usually used in the first page of the text and then come again and again.

Look up only the most important words. This is a actually a mix of the context-only reading and the dictionary-reading. You are bound to do that if you read for any length of time. Unless you are very advanced, you will not be able to figure out each new word by its context only, and you will not have enough energy to look up every single word either. There are just too many, and if you do that you would read only a couple paragraphs a day instead of reading several pages.

Use an electronic dictionary. If you don”t mind reading texts online, this is a great tool and reduces very much the burden of looking each word up. Consequently, you will be able to look up many more words than if you use a paper dictionary. In addition, you will also be able to make flash cards using your computer with very little effort. Electronic dictionaries come in various shapes. Some are handheld, some are just websites where you need to type the word to look it up. The best ones become integrated with your operating system so that all you need to do to look up a word is right click on it.

Reading regular texts with no dictionary

Reading a text in a foreign language with no dictionary at all is a thrilling but demanding endeavor. It is not so easy to figure out unknown words by their context only unless you are quite advanced in the language. Apart from a sharp mind and undivided attention, the key success factors are:

A low percentage of unknown words. Even if you are a Da Vinci Code genius, you will succeed in deciphering a new word more often when the number of new words is low. For instance if I hide the really rare words in the phrase ”Reading a text in a foreign language with no dictionary at all is a XXXXX but demanding XXXXX. ”, you can still figure out the general sense of the phrase. But if I hide more word, ”Reading a text in a foreign language with no dictionary at all is a XXXXX but XXXX XXXXX. ”, it becomes more obscure. You will be able to read on, but you will be missing part of the text.

A strong context helps very much. For instance, if you are reading a technical article about spiral staircases, you can reasonably expect unknown words to fall within a fairly short list. The phrase itself will usually let you know which one it is.

A good knowledge of word roots and cognates will help you guess the meaning of unknown words. These would not be enough in itself, but with additional clues from the context, a root can be all you need to find out what a word means.

Seasoned polyglots are often very enthusiastic about this way of developing their knowledge of a language. I think the reason is their extensive knowledge of cognates in other languages that help them figure out more easily what words mean.

Language tapes

You can now buy many different commercial tapes to learn languages. Some even focus on the vocabulary itself. The advantage of learning vocabulary with tapes is that you hear them pronounce and you can use them while driving, jogging, cooking or other activities where reading is impossible. The disadvantage is that you cannot choose which words you wish to learn and have to deal with a rythm that is not set by you. Nothing, of course, prevents you from studying vocabulary with another technique as a complement.

CD-ROMS

There are many CD-ROM software available now for important languages. They usually offer various tools to help you learn vocabulary. I find them moderately useful but are quite good for learning how to pronounce a word correctly, as you can click a hundred times on the same word and hear it pronounced. Some software let you record your own voice for comparison. The games I have seen on such software are usually quite silly. The most important representative is Rosetta Stone, which contains a lot of material.

II. How to memorize new words

The biggest challenge when studying vocabulary is to actually remember the words you just learned. Some words seem to stick to your memory immediately whereas you seem to always forget others.

There are several ways to improve your memory when learning foreign language vocabulary. None is foolproof and all require some work, but with those tips you will be able to learn more efficiently:

When meeting a new word, you need to make it stick to its meaning in your mind. You can picture your memory as a giant Christmas trees, with many branches representing each a part of your memory. To remember a new word, you need to hang it on a branch, existing or newly created. It is extremely difficult to remember more than a few new words when they are totally out of the blue and not tied in any way to something else that is already in your memory. Fortunately, there are many ways to tie a new word to something in your memory:

Using cognates and false friends

Many words in a foreign language will be similar to words in a language you already know. Sure, some of these will be ”false friends”, such as French ”éventuellement” (meaning ”maybe”) and English ”eventually” who look very similar but have different meanings. But most cognates – words that look similar in two different languages – are real friends. That means that to remember them all you need is see the similarity with the other word you already know. You will do this without having to think for most words (French ”le restaurant” is English ”the restaurant”). Other similarities will come to some people earlier than others (cat/chat, to flirt/computer fleurette, etc…).

With some basic etymological knowledge, but you can also investigate a little closer words that at first do not seem to be similar in any way, but are. For instance, French and English have many shared words who only differ by one letter. Where French uses ”G”, English puts a ”W”. To learn that French for ”warren” is ”garenne”, all you need is replace the ”g” by a ”w”. The same goes for William/Guillaume, war/guerre, warranty/guarantie, ward/guarde, wasp/guêpe, wage/gage, etc…

The more you study languages, the more attractive it will be to notice these hidden similarities and to use them to recall new foreign language words.

Word roots

Foreign language vocabulary is not made of random combinations of letters. Many words in a language are derived from other words in the same language. These words can often be grouped around a common root. If you learn the root and recognize it in new words, it will considerably help you to remember the new word.

For instance, with the old Latin word root ”pater” – father, you can learn many words in Romance languages. In French you could learn patrimoine (estate of the father), patrie (fatherland), patronyme (name of the father), etc… These words roots work in different ways in each language. For important languages, you can often find a book that presents the most common word roots and lists examples of words that use these roots.

Mental hooks

One of the most efficient tricks to learn a new word in a foreign language that you can relate to nothing you know, is to use a mental hook. These ”mental hooks” are vivid mental images made up to tie a new word to something you will remember. For instance, to remember Russian for big – ”bolshoi”, you can think of watching a show of gigantic balls, BALL-SHOW.

The more incongruous, the better. They don”t need to make sense or be perfect as they will only be used by you. If the hook is good enough for you to remember the word, that”s all that counts. The good thing about mental hooks is that they are environmentally friendly. After a few months, they will rot away and you will remember only the word and its meaning but forget the mental image you created to remember them.

Context

Using words in context enhances greatly the chance you will remember them. This can be as simple as reading a text where the words are used, memorizing a dialog from a film or a language program or learning a song. You can also be exposed to the word in a memorable context.

For instance you travel to Russia and see shop signs with ”obuv” with shoes in the shop windows. You will probably recall the Russian word for ”shoes”. If you have a conversation with somebody in your target language, the thrill of speaking in that language will probably help you recall a few words that were repeated several times during that conversation. Here the context serves as a strong mental branch on which you can hang the memory of the word.

It is always a good idea to learn words with a phrase as an example. For instance, if you learn that French for ”to eat” is ”manger”, it is better to learn ”He already ate”/”Il a déjà mangé” or ”She is eating an apple”/”Elle mange une pomme” than just learning the word alone. The phrase will help you recall the word better and improve your chances of using it correctly when speaking. Depending on how you work on vocabulary learning, you can either find example phrases in dictionaries, or cut and paste a phrase you found in a real text you were reading.

Repetition

Repetition is essential to remember words over the long run. This is not easy to implement, but with a little discipline and organization you can make it work. If you are using flash cards, make it a rule to go over the flash cards you mastered for example after one week, then one month, then six months. It is not a big job to repeat flash cards you are supposed to know, and you should know have the fear that you are opening a can of worms that will undermine your confidence in your existing knowledge of the language. The only thing you will achieve is to reinforce your vocabulary skills. It is not uncommon for people to master perfectly a list of words for a school exam, then forget most of them after a few days. That is not problem is all you want is pass a school exam on a specific day, but if what you want is learn a foreign language, you need more.

If you learn new vocabulary with a newspaper and dictionary, it is a good idea to go back to last month”s articles with no dictionary and see how much you understand.

If you are learning with Pimsleur, the tape will take care of the repetion as it is a basic principle of their system, called timed interval repetition. Words learned with Pimsleur usually stick to your memory, provided you do one tape a day.

III. How many words do I need to learn?

One of the most common questions I get asked is ”How many words do I need to learn?”. The answer is of course to learn any many as you can, but I can be more precise.

Some words are very common while others are rarely ever seen. This means that you can understand a large part of most texts with only a limited number of words. How many exactly is a question that you can answer with a lexemic frequency dictionary. These dictionaries are made by taking an extremely large corpus of texts (books, newspapers, etc…), grouping each words by lexemes and listing how many times they came up in the corpus. A lexeme is a ”unique” word that does not depend on conjugation or plurals or declensions. For instance the lexeme ”to be” would cover ”am, is, are, were” etc…

These lexemic frequency dictionaries were made during the Cold War for the purpose of computerized automatic surveillance of other countries – especially Russia.

I have one such dictionary in digital format for Russian. With the files I was able to create a graph of frequency versus rank:

The result is that:
the    75 most common words make up 40% of occurrences
the   200 most common words make up 50% of occurrences
the   524 most common words make up 60% of occurrences
the 1257 most common words make up 70% of occurrences
the 2925 most common words make up 80% of occurrences
the 7444 most common words make up 90% of occurrences
the 13374 most common words make up 95% of occurrences
the 25508 most common words make up 99% of occurrences

This shows clearly that vocabulary frequency follows both the law of Pareto (80% of occurrences by only 20% of words) and the law of diminishing returns.

So yes you can probably read any text with only 3000 or 5000 words, but you will always miss some key words. You can”t really say that all you need is 3000 words although this certainly gets you to a more or less autonomous stage in your learning, from which you can learn many words by their context.

Lexemic dictionaries also exist for other languages but are hard to find. Non-lexemic frequency dictionaries are useless as they would list you every single variation of words. They are not usable by a language learner.

You can use such a dictionary (with the words and the frequency) to discover new, frequent words which you can learn, or to estimate the size of your vocabulary.

How can you provide effective differentiation teaching in your classrooms?

Posted on March 17, 2012 by admin

Yesterday, in our module 5 TESOL discussion topic: Classroom Management, Joe brought up an interesting topic: How can you provide effective differentiation teaching in your classrooms? Dr. Tien Chau asked the TESOL students, first of all,-how do we define differentiation?Because we must first determine the specific needs of the students with fresh data and then determine which areas of differentiation we want to use. Joe narrowed his definition to group students according to their strengths and how to help them out to understand instructions effectively.

According to Dr. Tracey Hall, Senior Research Scientist, NCAC,

To differentiate instruction is to recognize students varying background knowledge, readiness, language, preferences in learning, interests, and to react responsively. Differentiated instruction is a process to approach teaching and learning for students of differing abilities in the same class. The intent of differentiating instruction is to maximize each student’s growth and individual success by meeting each student where he or she is, and assisting in the learning process.
Identifying Components/Features
According to the authors, several key elements guide differentiation in the education environment. Tomlinson (2001) identifies three elements of the curriculum that can be differentiated: Content, Process, and Products. Additionally, several guidelines are noted to help educators form an understanding and develop ideas around differentiating instruction.
Content
• Several elements and materials are used to support instructional content. These include acts, concepts, generalizations or principles, attitudes, and skills. The variation seen in a differentiated classroom is most frequently the manner in which students gain access to important learning. Access to the content is seen as key.
• Align tasks and objectives to learning goals. Designers of differentiated instruction determine as essential the alignment of tasks with instructional goals and objectives. Goals are most frequently assessed by many high-stakes tests at the state level and frequently administered standardized measures. Objectives are frequently written in incremental steps resulting in a continuum of skills-building tasks. An objectives-driven menu makes it easier to find the next instructional step for learners entering at varying levels.
• Instruction is concept-focused and principle-driven. The instructional concepts should be broad based and not focused on minute details or unlimited facts. Teachers must focus on the concepts, principles and skills that students should learn. The content of instruction should address the same concepts with all students but be adjusted by degree of complexity for the diversity of learners in the classroom.
Process
• Flexible grouping is consistently used. Strategies for flexible grouping are essential. Learners are expected to interact and work together as they develop knowledge of new content. Teachers may conduct whole-class introductory discussions of content big ideas followed by small group or pair work. Student groups may be coached from within or by the teacher to complete assigned tasks. Grouping of students is not fixed. Based on the content, project, and on-going evaluations, grouping and regrouping must be a dynamic process as one of the foundations of differentiated instruction.
• Classroom management benefits students and teachers. Teachers must consider organization and instructional delivery strategies to effectively operate a classroom using differentiated instruction. Carol Tomlinson (2001) identifies 17 key strategies for teachers to successfully meet the challenge of designing and managing differentiated instruction in her text How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixed-Ability Classrooms, Chapter 7.

Products
• Initial and on-going assessment of student readiness and growth are essential. Meaningful pre-assessment naturally leads to functional and successful differentiation. Assessments may be formal or informal, including interviews, surveys, performance assessments, and more formal evaluation procedures. Incorporating pre and on-going assessment informs teachers to better provide a menu of approaches, choices, and scaffolds for the varying needs, interests and abilities that exist in classrooms of diverse students.
• Students are active and responsible explorers. Teacher’s respect that each task put before the learner will be interesting, engaging, and accessible to essential understanding and skills. Each child should feel challenged most of the time.
• Vary expectations and requirements for student responses. Items to which students respond may be differentiated for students to demonstrate or express their knowledge and understanding. A well-designed student product allows varied means of expression, alternative procedures, and provides varying degrees of difficulty, types of evaluation, and scoring.
Guidelines that make differentiation possible for teachers to attain:
• Clarify key concepts and generalizations to ensure that all learners gain powerful understandings that serve as the foundation for future learning. Teachers are encouraged to identify essential concepts and instructional foci to ensure all learners comprehend.
• Use assessment as a teaching tool to extend versus merely measure instruction. Assessment should occur before, during, and following the instructional episode, and help to pose questions regarding student needs and optimal learning.
• Emphasize critical and creative thinking as a goal in lesson design. The tasks, activities, and procedures for students should require that students understand and apply meaning. Instruction may require supports, additional motivation, varied tasks, materials, or equipment for different students in the classroom.
• Engaging all learners is essential. Teachers are encouraged to strive for development of lessons that are engaging and motivating for a diverse class of students. Vary tasks within instruction as well as across students. In other words, and entire session for students should not consist of all drill and practice, or any single structure or activity.
• Provide a balance between teacher-assigned and student-selected tasks. A balanced working structure is optimal in a differentiated classroom. Based on pre-assessment information, the balance will vary from class-to-class as well as lesson-to-lesson. Teachers should assure that students have choices in their learning.

Evidence of Effectiveness
Differentiation is recognized to be a compilation of many theories and practices. Based on this review of the literature of differentiated instruction, the “package” itself is lacking empirical validation. There is an acknowledged and decided gap in the literature in this area and future research is warranted.
According to the proponents of differentiation, the principles and guidelines are rooted in years of educational theory and research. For example, differentiated instruction adopts the concept of “readiness”. That is the difficulty of skills taught should be slightly in advance of the child’s current level of mastery. This is grounded in the work of Lev Vygotsky (1978), and the zone of proximal development (ZPD), the range at which learning takes place. The classroom research by Fisher at al.(1980), strongly supports the ZPD concept. The researchers found that in classrooms where individuals were performing at a level of about 80% accuracy, students learned more and felt better about themselves and the subject area under study (Fisher, 1980 in Tomlinson, 2000).
Other practices noted as central to differentiation have been validated in the effective teaching research conduced from the mid 1980’s to the present. These practices include effective management procedures, grouping students for instruction, and engaging learners (Ellis and Worthington, 1994).
While no empirical validation of differentiated instruction as a package was found for this review, there are a generous number of testimonials and classroom examples authors of several publications and Web sites provide while describing differentiated instruction. Tomlinson reports individual cases of settings in which the full model of differentiation was very promising. Teachers using differentiation have written about improvements in their classrooms. (See the links to learn more about differentiated instruction).
Applications to General Education Classroom Settings
The design and development of differentiated instruction as a model began in the general education classroom. The initial application came to practice for students considered gifted who perhaps were not sufficiently challenged by the content provided in the general classroom setting. As classrooms have become more diverse with the introduction of inclusion of students with disabilities, and the reality of diversity in public schools, differentiated instruction has been applied at all levels for students of all abilities.
Many authors of publications about differentiated instruction strongly recommend that teachers adapt the practices slowly, perhaps one content area at a time. Additionally, these experts agree that teachers should work together to develop ideas and menus of options for students together to share the creative load. As noted previously, studies on the package of differentiated instruction are lacking. However, proponents note that reports of the full model of differentiation are promising.

To read more about this discussion, please consider the followings:

Guild, P.B., and Garger, S (1998). What Is Differentiated Instruction? Marching to Different Drummers 2nd Ed. (ASCD, p.2)

http://www.ascd.org/pdi/demo/diffinstr/differentiated1.html

Initially published in 1985, Marching to Different Drummers was one of the first sources to pull together information on what was a newly-flourishing topic in education. Part I defines style and looks at the history of style research; Part II describes applications of style in seven areas; Part III identifies common questions and discusses implementation and staff development.
Tomlinson, C.A., (2000). Differentiation of instruction in the elementary grades. ERIC Digest. ERIC_NO: ED443572.

http://ericir.syr.edu/plweb-cgi/obtain.pl

To meet the needs of diverse student populations, many teachers differentiate instruction. This digest describes differentiated instruction, discusses the reasons for differentiated instruction, what makes it successful, and suggests how teachers may begin implementation.
Tomlinson, C.A., (1995). Differentiating instruction for advanced learners in the mixed-ability middle school classroom. ERIC Digest E536.

http://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed389141.html

The ability to differentiate instruction for middle school aged learners is a challenge. Responding to the diverse students needs found in inclusive, mixed-ability classrooms is particularly difficult. This digest provides an overview of some key principles for differentiating instruction, with an emphasis on the learning needs of academically advanced students.
Tomlinson, C.A., & Allan, S. D., (2000). Leadership for differentiating schools and classrooms. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

http://www.ascd.org/readingroom/books/tonlinson00book.html

This Web site contains two chapters from Tomlinson’s recent publication: Leadership for differentiating schools and classrooms, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. This book is designed for those in leadership positions to learn about differentiated instruction.
Web Article: Mapping a route toward differentiated instruction.

http://www.ascd.org/pdi/demo/diffinstr/tomlinson2.html

Carol Ann Tomlinson, an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership, Foundations and Policy at the Curry School of Education, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA provides an article entitled; Mapping a route toward differentiated instruction. Educational Leadership, 57,1.

Teaching Pronunciation Lesson Plan

Posted on March 17, 2012 by admin

TEACHING PRONUNCIATION

Objectives:

To get you recognize the different aspects of pronunciation and use of techniques for teaching pronunciation in your real context.

Group 1: Using Pronunciation Techniques

Dictation List:

Procedure:

- Draw two columns on the board with the headings: first syllable stress and second or third syllable stress.

- Explain that you will read aloud a list of words from previous lessons. The students have to put the words they hear into the appropriate column. Give the first one as an example to the class.

- Read the words slowly and check that students are putting them into the correct columns.

Student, engineer, fifty, window, ruler, pencil, a classroom, eraser, fifteen, thirty-five, eleven, basket.

- In pairs students compare their lists of words

- If necessary, the teacher can read the word again for students to check.

- To check the answer, get students to read the words back to you from each list.

Materials for microteaching

1^st syllable stress	2^nd or 3^rd syllable stress
Ruler, student, window, basket, pencil, a classroom, fifty	Eraser, fifteen engineer, fifty-five, eleven.

Group 2:

PEOPLE PAIRS

Procedure:

- Choose two real names of people representing the two sounds: /f/ and /p/ (Phong and Penny)

- Elicit the following list of nouns from previous units and write them on the board.

Phong

Penny

e.g.

phone, friends, four, forty, five/fifteen/fifty, father, family, factory, floors, flowers

Pencils, pen, people, picture, paddy, parks, police station, planes, pacer

- Get students to make simple sentences from the list. E.g. “Phong likes flower.” “Penny likes pictures” “Phong likes flowers but he does not like the police.”

- Student practice making sentence in pairs.

- E.g. S1: Phong likes phones. But Penny likes pencils.

Group3:

Pairs (using minimal)

Procedure:

- Draw two columns for the two sound / / and /t/

- Elicit the following list of ordinal number with the / / sound from previous lessons and write them on the board.

- Elicit the following list of nouns with the /t/ sound from previous units and write them on the board.

- Get students to make phrases by putting one of the numbers with one of the nouns, e.g., “The third teacher”, “the forth table”

- Students practice in pairs.

Materials for microteaching:

	/ /	/t/
The	Third, fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth, ninth, tenth	Teacher, telephone, television, table, time, temple, town, tree

Group4: BACKCHAINING

Procedure:

Break the sentence from the back (not the front) to maintain proper sentence stress. Break words in half for linking consonant endings to words beginning with a vwel. On your lesson plan, mark with slashes (/) where you will break the sentence.

Backchaining can be done with single words too. Break the word up into syllables.

Backchaining a sentence	Backchanining a word
On the lesson plan: Would you like a/cu/p of/tea?	On the lesson plan: Vege/ta/ble
Tea?	/buil/
p_oftea?	Ble
Cup_of tea?	/buil/
Ke-acup-of tea?	tab-ble
Like-acup-of tea?	/buil/
Would –you like-a cup-of tea?	vege/ta-ble

Group5: Finger Correction

Procedure:

Use your fingers to show contractions. Elicit the contraction from the students.

S1. I going to visit Hanoi

T: No [Show little finger to represent [I] what is this word?

S1: I

T: good! What’s next [Show the next finger.

S1: going.

T: No. This is “going” [show the middle finger] (points to the finger before) What is this word?

S1. Am

T: Good [squeezes little finger and next finger together to show I’m] “I am going” or “I’m going.

S1. I’m going.

T. Good. Now say the whole sentence.

S1: I’s going to visit Hanoi

Group 6: SYMBOLS

When student copy down vocabulary or model sentence into their books, get them to copy your pronunciation annotations too – in a different color. Use these symbols:

Symbol	Meanings	Examples
	Stress Mark the vowel of the syllable that is stressed.	Stadium
‘	Stress letters or syllables	‘vegetable
	Linking	It’s a small school.
	Intonation	Is that your teacher?
/ /	Pronetics	/eit/ or “ate”

Procedure:

- The teacher reads out a short dialogue – not more than 6 lines.

- The teacher then goes back and repeats each line. Students listen. The teacher backchians each line, get choral and individual repetition from the students.

- As the teacher reads, he or she writes a few key words/symbols on the board to help students remember what the two speakers in the dialogue say to each other.

- The students build the dialogue from these blackboard ‘cues.’

- Students practice in open pairs.

- The teacher or students write the missing words on the card or in their notebooks.

Material for microteaching:

Phuong: What is for lunch?

Thu: There is some meat and rice.

Phuong: Are there any noodle?

Thu: No, there aren’t.

Phuong: Is there any fruit?

Thu: Yes, there is.

Teaching Grammar Lesson Plan (Presentation, Practice, and Production Format).

Posted on March 17, 2012 by admin

TEACHING GRAMMAR: THE PRESENTATION STAGE
Goal: to get you to recognize some techniques to present a grammar point.

Presenting New Grammar

Instructions:

Complete the “steps” and “activities” while yo are observing. Complete the “Goal” afterwards with a partner.

Lesson goal	Steps	Activities
To set a scene for the lesson To help students practice the new structure and to check new vocabulary To increase students’ vocabulary Pre-teaching vocabulary		- Elicit new vocabulary techniques - Rub out and Remember - Student copy
To help students “discover” new language in context To make the language real To motivate students Present the target structure		- Elicit target language or new structure - Say the module sentence 3 times - Ask students to repeat chorally and individually - Check forms, uses, pronunciation, meaning - Ask students to copy
To know the students’ knowledge To help students discover the new language by themselves To get students to prove they understand To make learning active, not passive learning To get students to learn grammar communicatively through understanding meaning and use, not just form.	Concept check	- Ask a lot of questions. - Get student to copy

B. In groups, discuss the following questions.
1. What did the teacher do to check students’ comprehension of new language? Why?
2. How many things did the teacher check about the new language? What are they?
3. Did the teacher check one thing at a time? Why?
4. What kinds of questions did the teacher ask
5. When teacher is sure the students understand the new language should he or she ask the checking questions again? Why and why not?
6. Can the teacher use checking techniques throughout the lesson?
7. Does checking take more time or less time in the long run?

Presentation of a New Structure

Dialogue build

- The teacher reads out short dialogues – not more than six or eight lines (if eight they should be short sentences).

- As the teacher reads, he or she writes a few key words/symbol on the blackboard to help students remember what the two speakers in the dialogue say to each other.

- The students reproduce the dialogue from these blackboard ‘cures’

- The students build the dialogue until it is memorized.

- Students practice in pairs.

- The teacher or students write the missing words on the blackboard or in their books.

- The teacher highlights the new structure by writing model sentences from the dialogues on the blackboard.

- The teacher checks meaning, from, use, and pronunciation.

e.g. set the scene with Lan and Jill. Teacher says, pointing to Tan and John in turn.

Jill: What’s the title of that novel?

Lan: Oliver Twist

Jill: Who’s it written by?

Lan: Charles Dickens

Jill: what is the title of that song?

Lan: Happy New Year

Jill: Who’s it written by?

Lan: Abba

Teacher write on the blackboard

J. What’s the __________ ___________ ____________?

Lan: Oliver Twist

Jill: Who’s __________ ___________ ______?

Lan: Charles Dickens

Jill: what is the title _________ ___________ _______?

Lan: Happy New Year

Jill: Who’s it _________ _________?

Lan: Abba

Rub Out and Remember

Follow your trainer’s instructions

- The teacher puts a short dialogue on the blackboard – not more than six lines.

- The students practice saying it

- The teacher rubs out some of the words

- The students have to remember the rubbed-out words and keep practicing the dialogue

- The teacher eventually rubs out all the words

- If the students are weak, leave some key words or letters.

- The students repeat the subbed-out dialogue from memory

- The teacher then elicits the target structure and writes model sentences on the blackboard.

- The teacher checks meaning, form, use, and pronunciation.

e.g.

Alice: I”d say that Samsung is the most reliable brand.

Interviewer: Which brand is the most expensive?
Alice: Well, Samsung is also the most expensive brand. I guess that”s why it”s the best.

Interviewer: Which brand do you think is the worst?
Alice: I think LG is the worst. I really can”t remember using any of their products that I liked.

Interviewer: And which brand is the most popular with young people?
Alice: That”s a difficult one to answer for me. I think that Sony is probably the most popular with young people.

Interviewer: One last question, Have you tried using any HP products?
Alice: No, I haven”t. Are they good?

Teacher writes this dialogue on the blackboard and rubs out more and more

Picture Story (Storytelling)

Follow your trainer’s instructions. Look at the checklist on the next page. Make sure you understand the statements to check while you are observing. What the demo and check your check list.

Discuss the steps with a partner.

Teacher:

- Tells a story containing the target language in at least half of the pictures

- Uses six to eight pictures, or blackboard drawing with mime.

- Elicits from the students as they tell the story

- Repeats the story, making the target language clear

- Elicits the target language from the students

- Checks meaning, use, from and pronunciation

- Can ask students to recall the whole story or parts of the story, but this is then practice and not presentation.

- Tries to elicit examples of the present perfect tense using. You have moved e.g. you have moved the blue book.

- Write the example sentences that the students have provided on the blackboard

- Checks meaning, form, use, and pronunciation

Another way of using realia is like this:

The teacher:

- Comes into the classroom with a briefcase of bag and asks students to guess what is in it

- Takes things out of the bag and presents the target language e.g. possessive pronouns: These are my glasses. They are mine (use contractions). These are my keys. They’re mine. This is his pen. It’s his.

- This is her book. It’s hers. This is our classroom. It’s ours. (point to another classroom). That is their classroom. It’s theirs.

- Elicit the target language from students by repeating and prompting e.g. You say: These are my glasses. Students say: They’re yours.

- Write the target language only on the blackboard.

- Checks meaning, form, use, and pronunciation.

PICTURES

Watch the demo using Pictures

Observers answer these questions.

Why does the “teacher” use pictures to present this target language?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

What are the advantages of using pictures as a presentation for new language?

The teacher:

- Uses a picture that shows a situation e.g. a magazine picture, poster, a picture in a book or in Tiếng Anh.

- Elicits the target language from the students looking at the picture

- Uses the picture for both presentation and practice

Unit Five: TEACHING GRAMMAR: THE PRACTICE STAGE

Goals: to help you teach the Practice Stage, including 4 techniques for drilling and 4 techniques for further controlled practice.

The purpose of the Practice Stage

Instructions:

Read the following text

The first part of the practice stage is controlled practice. This is usually a drill. The teacher stand at the front of the class, work with the whole class, and controls what they say.

The second part of the practice stage is less controlled. It is usually pair work or group work. The students work on their own with the cures that the teacher gives them. The teacher moves from group to group helping them.

During the practice stage, students work in pairs or groups for 3 reasons.

Participation: to give everyone in the class a lot more practice time.
Independence: to teach students to learn from each other without the teacher always being there.
Confidence: to encourage quieter students who don’t usually like speaking in front of the whole class.

Practice is not only repetition. In the practice stage, students don’t just repeat what the teacher says because repetition thinking is not real learning. Instead students use cues to make sentences for themselves.

Cures are used for two reasons.

To help MEMORY: to get students to think for themselves and therefore remember better.
To build CONFIDENCE: to get students to formulate as many sentences as they want from a basic pattern with confidence.

The teacher does a lot of correction in the practice stage. If the target language is new, students will make a lot of mistakes with it. If the students don’t make any mistakes, then they haven’t learned anything new. Mistakes are a positive thing because they are a sign of progress.

The aim of the practice stage is to get the students to say the new language accurately through a process of controlled to less controlled activities.

Answer the questions:
1. What is the aim of the practice stage?
2. Give three reasons for working in groups or pairs.
3. Why does the teacher need to do a lot of correction in the practice stage?
4. Is repetition the same as practice? Why and why not?

Statements	The 1 part	The 2 part
The teacher moves around to help students
Students can make sentences for themselves using cues
The teacher stands in front of the class to work with the students
The teacher controls what students say
Students learn from each other without the teacher
Drill can be done at this stage
Students work in groups or pairs

What is a Good Drill?

Instructions: Look up any of the following words you don’t know in a dictionary.

An utterance random (adj) (to) formulate an exchange (to) be consistent a cue

Read each pair of sentences about drills and tick the one that you think is better.

__ a drill is for accuracy practice so ‘meaning’ is not important.

__a drill should be meaningful something people in the real world would say.

__a drill should be consistent and use the same grammatical pattern for all the utterances

__a drill should change the grammatical pattern of the utterances as much as possible so students don’t get bored.

__A drill should have a topic (e.g. Places in Huế; The Weather, etc) so that all cues and utterances belong together.

__A drill should have random cues to produce as many different utterances for as many different situations as possible.

__ A drill should have between 6-8 cues.

__A drill should have one cue for every students in the class.

__ An exchange can only be a question and an answer.

__An exchange isn’t only a question and an answer, it can be any type of statement and a response.

__ By the end of the drills, students should formulate the utterance for themselves from a cue.

__in a drill students should repeat every model sentences after the teacher.

__ A drill should move from Teacher/Whole Class, to open pairs, to close pairs.

__ A drill should be Teacher/Whole Class “controlled” activity throughout.

Step of a Drill

Instructions:

Watch the demo and tick the steps. After watching, fill in the aims of each step.

STEP	The demo	AIM
Run though the vocabulary	Show the picture Ask the new words Say the whole sentences All of the cues	To introduce new words/ideas of the drill To be sure students know the words
Show the first cue and say utterance three times		To give a model
Get students to repeat what you’re said CHORALLY, 2 or 3 times		To get students familiar with the sentences
Call on 2 or 3 students to repeat it INDIVIDUALLY, correct		Give a chance for students to work together
Repeat steps 2-4 for the second cue (if necessary)
Work though the rest of the cue: new cue, new students		Give a chance for the individual practice
Repeat step 2-6 for the second part of the exchange (if necessary)		Give model for responses
Demonstrate how to put the exchange together using a good student. T(says the utterance) S1: respond.
Get 3 or 4 pairs to demonstrate the exchange in OPEN PAIRS S1-S2-corect		To show how students works in pairs
Stick all the cues on the board		Everyone can see the cues and practice
Get students to practice all the exchanges in CLOSED PAIRS		To give the students opportunities to practice
Monitor and correct	Go around the class	To help students say the sentences correctly.

Further Controlled Practice Techniques

Group1: Chain Game

Teacher Instructions:

- Get into groups of 8. You join by the number fourth, turn around, work with the four behind you.

- In this group, you’re number 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8. What’s your number (5) and yours (2).

- Listen to my sentence “there is a hotel near my house.”

- Who’s number 1 in this group? Number 1 says my sentence. (S1: there’s hotel near my house)

- Who’s number 2? Number 2, repeat what students 1 has said and add to it like this: There is a hotel near my house and a school. (S2: There’s a hotel near my house and a school).

- Student 3, repeat what students 1 and 3 have said and then ad to it (S3: there is a hotel near my house, and a school, and a river).

- Continue around the circle, each student repeating then adding something new.

- Go around the circle twice. How many things will you have to remember in the end (16).

Group 2: Guessing Game

Teacher’s Instructions:

Look at the sentence on the board

I am going to the …………………………

- Take a piece of paper. Show me your paper. Copy the sentence but fill in the fap with a place. Tell me some places. (Ss: temple, movie theater, lake, park, etc.)

- [The teacher also copies the sentence onto a piece of paper and fills in ‘restaurant’].

- Ask me another question (S2: Are you going to the park? T: No, I am not).

- [The teacher elicits yes/no questions from the class until someone ask Are you going to a restaurant? T: Yes, I am.]

- To the students who guesses correctly. Come to the front. Guess his or her sentences. Can you ask “Where are you going? (No) How must your questions begin? Are you going to…?

- [After the student’s sentence has been guessed] Now get into group of 4 or 8. You four, turn round. Work with the students behind you. You start [chooses a student to start in each group]. Guess his/her sentence. Begin.

Group 3: Find Someone Who

Teacher’s Instructions:

Start a clean page in your exercise books. Copy this.

Find someone who is going to….	Name
….stay at home
….visit an aunt or an uncle
….visit a new city
…..stay in a hotel
….camp in the mountains
….stay in a tent

- Think about the summer holidays. Are you going to stay at home? (S1: Yes….S2: No)

- Make me a question with “stay at home’ (Ss: Are you going to stay at home?)

- And the next question (S1: are you going to visit a new city?)

- You, stay in a hotel (S2: Are you going to stay in a hotel?)

- [the teacher goes through all the cues in the same way]

- What’s your name? (S2: Hung) [the teacher fills in Hung’s name on the board in the Nme column next to ‘stay at home’

- You have to find someone who is going to do each of these things. How many names are you going to find all together? (6)

- You cannot fill someone’s name more than once. So, can I put Hung’s name again here? [points to visit a new city] (No)

- The first one with all the names is the winner.

- Work in group of 8. You four turn around. Work with the four behind you.

- [when most of them have finished] good. Stop there. Tell me about some of the people you have found. (S1: Dao’s going to go camping…etc.)

Group 4: Noughts and Crosses

Teachers’ Instructions:

- Do you remember this game? [The teacher draw a ca-ro board on the board]

- The English version is called Nought and Crosses. It looks like this.

- How can you win? (Ss: three in a row) Across? (Ss: Yes) Down (Ss: Yes) Like this? [The teacher draws a diagonal line] (Ss: Yes) Like this [The teacher draws a diagonal line] (Ss: Yes)

- We’re going to play it with these words.

Walk to school	Drive a bus	Travel by bus
Wait fro a train	Ride a bicycle	Play a game
Go by plan	Drive a car	Ride motorbike

- [the teacher point to ‘walk to school’] make a sentence using “I’m walking…” (Ss: I’m walking to school)

- Practice making sentences with your partner. Take it in turns.

- Now, two teams. You’re noughts and you’re crosses. Who are you (S1: noughts) And you? (S2: crosses).

- Noughts begin. Choose a word, make a sentence. (S1: I am riding a bicycle)

- Good [the teacher puts an o in the ‘ride a bicycle’s square] crosses, your turn. (S2: I am riding a motorbike) good! [the teacher puts a x in the ride a motorbike’s square]

- [the two teams continue to make sentences until one team wins]

- [the teacher puts the class into pairs]. Noughts, crosses: noughts crosses,….(etc). Hands up noughts? Copy the table in your books. Hand up crosses? Don’t coy! Crosses begin. Play the game again with your paper.

Group 5: Napped Dialogue:

Teacher’s Instructions:

- Look at this [the teacher puts the Mapped Dialogue on the board]

Cantho

Hanoi

…Hanoi

….Cold

….Cantho

…hot

…cold

….like

…like?

….Hanoi

…Cantho

….hot…

- Where is he (in Cân Thơ) where’s she (Hà Nội)

- He asks a question about the weather in Hà Nội. what does he ask? (what’s the weather like in Hà Nội) what des she reply? (It’s cold). Now she asks the weather in Cần thơ. What does she ask? (what’s the weather like in Cần thơ) Anhd what does he reply? (It’s hot!). Good! Practice that with your partner.

- What does he then ask her? (What kind of weather do you like?) What does she reply? (I like hot weather) so what does he say? (Come to Cantho!)

- Who can do the whole thing [the teacher chooses 2 students to model the whole dialogue]

- Now practice in pairs again.

TEACHING GRAMMAER: THE PRODUCTION STAGE

Objective: to get you to recognize the differences and similarities between practice and production. To help you use three techniques for production in your real context.

To help you anticipate possible problems with production and find solutions to these problems.

Practice and Production

Instructions:

Brainstorm the differences and similarity between practice and production and fill in the table below:

Differences
	Practice	Production
Control (control what students say, how they say the idea
Correction
Cues
Accuracy/fluency
Role of the teacher
Language items students should use
Similarities:

Instructions: Read the following text and check your answer

Practice and Production:

Differences:

The practice stage is more controlled than the production stage. Sometimes the productions stage is called ‘free practice’
The teacher uses direct correction during practice and indirect (or delayed) corrections during production.
The teacher gives more cues in the practice stage than in the production stage. Students have to make their sentences and think for themselves more in the production.
During practice, students concentrate on accuracy. During production, students concentrate on fluency.
During practice, the teacher’s role is to elicit accurate language form the students and give them lots of exercises so they can memorize the language or the new language patterns. During the production the teacher has two roles: ‘facilitator’, helping and encouraging students to do it by themselves, ‘analyzer’, seeing how well the objective has been achieved and what further practice the students needs.
During practice, the target items are isolated and practiced on their own. During production, the target items are added to other structures, functions and vocabulary the students already know so the students don’t just speak in model sentences but in more natural conversation.

What is important is that the teacher constructs these activities in such as way that they promote communication and yet ensure that the new language occurs unprompted, naturally, and frequently in the context of other previously leaned language. The unguided manner in which the new language occurs is what distinguishes a production stage activity from a practice stage activity. In other word, the degree of linguistics guidance the students are given makes these stages different.

Similarities:

The teacher has to set up activities carefully in both stage. Instructions must be clear, demonstrations or example provided and there should be a whole class run-through before group work or pair work begins.
The teacher must consider mixed ability in the work arrangements.
Practice in both stages happens simultaneously, students don’t wait until the teacher is standing by their table before they start talking. Everyone is talking at once.
Practice and production are more important than presentation.

(Adapted from Hubbard, P, Jones, H, Thorton, B, & r Wheeler. 1983 A training Course for TEFL. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 191-192)

Techniques for Production

Objectives:

- To show you 4 techniques for production

- To get you to start thinking about how the activities are set up in class.

- Instructions:

- Study the production techniques here

- Watch your trainer demonstrate the techniques.

- At the end of each demo, fill in the table. Write down the example that was demonstrated and what the teacher did to set up the activity.

Brainstorming

The teacher gets the students to discuss and write down their ideas about a certain topic or situation. The teacher gives them a couple of example to get them going. Students get into groups. A secretary is chosen. The students dictate their ideas to the secretary. The students make a poster or the teacher finds some other way of ‘displaying’ their ideas. At the end of the lesson, students go and examine, correct or admire the work of other groups. This is called ‘exhibition’.

e.g. Target item: Simple Present Tense

The teacher asks the students to brainstorm their ideas on “A good Student” and what a good student does. The teacher gives them the beginning of a list. The students have to add their ideas to it. Students make posters and stick them on the walls of the classroom. Other groups read and correct any mistakes. When the teacher claps, the students move on to another poster.

A good Student…

….always does his homework

….never comes to school late.

…..

……

Interview of Questionnaire:

This is usually a pair work activity but I can also be done in a cocktail or onion work arrangement.

In pairs students interview each other on a topic given by the teacher. They can fill in a form or they can write their partner’s answers in their books. The students must make up their own questions to ask, but this can be more or less controlled depending on how the questionnaire is designed. Students only write notes, not fill answers in the questionnaire so that the emphasis is on speaking.

Feedback can be speaking or writing: making sentences about the people they have interviewed.

e.g. Target item: Past Continuous Tense Questions and Statements

A: What were you doing yesterday at….?

B: I was….ing.

Name	6:00	9:00	12:00	3:00	6:00	10:30
	Getting up	At school	Having lunch	Football	Watching TV	Sleeping

e.g. Target Item: Like [do]ing

A: What do you like doing at ….?

B: I like …ing.

Name	At home	At school	On holiday
	Reading	Nothing	Nha Trang

Roleplay:

Pairs are given role cards which describe the charater or role they have to assume. Details of a situation they have to act out or a problem the character they are playing Perform it for other pairs, groups or the whole class. For the teacher to manage a role-play successfully, he or she must think carefully about the preparation stages and get students to brainstorm, plan and rehearse what they will say before the role play is performed in front of others. The role play must be designed in such as way that the students can’t avoid using the target item.

e.g. Target item: Simple Past Questions and Answer

House owner

Policeman

Your house has been bugled. You have lost all your valuables. You have no receipts or proof of the value of house contents. You have to get a police report in order to make an insurance claim.

Prepare a list of lost valuables and our estimate of their value. Add 2 or 3 items which you did not own but which will increase the value of your claim.
Prepare in detail the story you will tell the police of how you discovered you had been burgled. Use these questions to help you:

- Where were you when the house was burgled?

- What time do you think it happened?

- How did the thieves get in?

- What did the house look like after the burglary?

- How did you feel?

- What did you lose?

- Who do you think did it?

- What do you want the police to do now?

A house has been burgled. You have to go and interview the house owner to find out exactly what happened. Many people in this neighborhood make false claims to get the insurance money. You must be sure the house owner is telling the truth.

Prepare a list of questions to find out from the house owner.

- When/where/how the burglary took place?

- What was stolen and what was the value of the items

- Why the house owner didn’t stop the burglars

Prepare typical list of valuables that house owners usually make up in order to increase the value of their claim.
Interview the house owner and question him or her closely so that you get the truth. Write up the report after the interview.
Keep Talking Fluency Games

This type of fluency game is usually a topic-based board game which keeps students talking as long as possible. The teacher puts students into groups of 4 or 5, give them a dice and the game board, which is usually prepare in advance. Students throw the dice, move their counter the appropriate number of spaces on the board and then talk about the topic in the square they have landed on. The teacher can include rules such as “you have to talk about the topic you land on for a least one minute.” Or “alter talking about the topic, each member of the group must take it and turns to ask you a relevant questions.” These rules get students to keep talking longer.

e.g. Target Item: Simple Present Questions and Answer for Routines.

Start here	At the weekend	For fun	On work day
What do you usually do?			When you can’t Sleep
What do you usually do?			In the evenings
To relax	In the early mornings	For anniversaries at your house	For meal/at Tet

Overcoming Problems with Production

Instructions:

Read the problem that you have been assigned

Problem
You set up the production activity and tell the students to begin. Nothing happens. They sit in silence	You make the best student in the group secretary for the brainstorming activity. He or she doesn’t listen or ask the others but continues to write his or her own ideas.
All the strong students are on one table and can do the activity well. All the weak students are one another table and sit and do nothing.	In an ‘exhibition’ of poster after a brainstorming activity you stick all the posters on the board. When you ask the students to come up and correct them, there is no room at the front for every to see or work.
All the student are excited about doing the activity so they forgot about English and only speak Vietnamese.	During an information gap activity
It is the end of the lesson but the activity isn’t finished. You tell everyone to go. The students are disappointed because there has been no proper conclusion.

Discuss the solutions to the problem you have read and write them as notes.
Read the following text.

Production: Some problems and Solutions

Mix the group up

Remember to mix the group up so that not all the weak ones are on once table and all the strong ones on another table.

Students do not like to change groups – they want to stay with their friends. The first time you mix them up, they will be reluctant to move. They will complain and make faces. They will not cooperate and they may be rude to the students in the group who they think are not clever. It is your job to make them work together. The more you mix them up, the easier it will become. Students are creatures of habit. Once it becomes normal to work in different groups, they will accept it. So every lesson, put them into different groups. Look at the topic on Work Arrangements and get some ideas from there.

Don’t make the best students the secretary

If you make the best student a secretary, he or she will do all the writing for the group without listening to their ideas. The others will sit back and let him or her do it. Make someone who is not too good and not too week the secretary. This way to others have to talk and give their ideas to the secretary. If the secretary cannot spell a word, then the others must tell him or her how to spell it. This way you are encouraging student-to-student correction. (Note: If the secretary is too week, the others will get frustrated and give up).

Use all 4 Walls:

If you are having a poster exhibition at the end of the production, don’t stick all the posters on the same wall. With 50 students in the class there just isn’t enough room for everyone to stand up and go and look at the posters tat their friends have done. However, if you remember to use 4 walls to stick up the posters, the students will have enough room. You can give them a signal (clap your hands) which means “Everyone moves around onto the next poster.”

Bring thins to a conclusion

Don’t just let the students go home without three being a proper end to the production. Tell them to all sit down again. Have a moment of silence. Then ask them a question, take a vote, make a comment deal with corrections (e.g. vocabulary that they all need it) – something which brings the lesson to a conclusion.

Examples:

“Which is the best poster? Hands up for poster number one 1…etc.”

“Who’s the winner? “Who’s finished first? “Who has the most points? Etc.”

“How many sentences do you have? What are they?”

“Here are some new words that you all wanted…”

Compare the ideas in the text with your solutions/
Make a poster with all the solutions.
Copy the best solutions in your own table below.

Problems	Solutions
You set up the production activity and tell the students to begin. Nothing happens. They sit in silence.	-check questions and instructions. -Give more cues -Give examples and models
All the strong students are on one table and can do the activities well. All the week students are on another table and sit and do nothing.	-Mix strong students and weal students together.
All the students are excited about doing the activity so they forget about English and only speak in Vietnamese.	-Move around and reminds students to use English. -Explain why teacher wants students to use English. -Give some cues -Teacher speaks English to the students.
It is the end of the lesson but the activity is not finished. You tell everyone to go. The students are disappointed because there has been no proper conclusion.	-Give indirect correction. -Bring things to a conclusion. -Take a vote: “who agrees with this ideas?”
You make the best student in the group the secretary for a brainstorming activity. He or she doesn’t listen or ask the others but continues to write his or her own ideas.	-Never choose a very good student. Do the task by herself.
In an ‘exhibition’ of posters after a brainstorming activity, you stick all the posters on the board. When you ask the students to come up and correct them, there is no room at the front for everyone to se or work.	Use all 4 walls to stick all posters.
During an information gap activity, none of the pairs are talking or asking questions they’re copying each other’s information. Onto their paper in silence.	-Move around to remind students to work in pairs, to speak up… -Explain the purpose of this activity.

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