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B: Lord of the Rings (Respond)
Have you been yet? (Initiate)
A: No, it's difficult with the kids (Respond)
B: Yeah of course (follow-up)
Understanding spoken English after a listening exercise give students the
typescript.
Using part of it, students mark the stressed words, and put them into
groups (tone units). You can use phone numbers to introduce the concept of tone
units. The length of a tone unit depends on the type of spoken text. Compare a
speech with an informal conversation. In the same lesson or subsequent listening
lessons, you can focus on reductions in spoken speech, for example, linking, elision
and assimilation. Preparation and rehearsal before a spoken task,
give students
some preparation and rehearsal time. Students will need guidance on how to use it.
A sheet with simple guidelines is effective. Real-life tasks try to use real-life tasks
as part of your teaching. What language should I teach?[5]
Spoken language is both interactional and transactional, but what should
teachers focus on in class? Brown and Yule (1983) suggest the following:
When teaching spoken language, focus on teaching longer transactional turns.
This is because native speakers have difficulty with them and because students
need to be able to communicate information efficiently whether in their country or in
a native-speaker country.
Teach interactional language by using an awareness-raising approach. For
example, with monolingual classes by listening to a recorded L1conversation before
a similar L2 recording.
For recordings of native-speaker interactional and transactional conversations,
have a look at 'Exploring Spoken English' by McCarthy and Carter (1997). It not
only contains a variety of text types, but each recording comes with analysis.
How do I get students to use new language?
Research by Peter Sekihan on Task-based
Learning shows that giving
students preparation time significantly increases the range of language used in the
performance of the task, whereas the accuracy of the language is not as
influenced. If this is so, then it seems sensible to give students preparation time
when encouraging them to use new language. Imagine you have been working on
the language that would be useful for the following task: 'Having a conversation with
a stranger on public transport'. You have now reached the stage where you wish
students to perform the task. Rather than just give students 10 minutes to prepare
and rehearse the task, give students guided preparation time.[4]
A simple preparation guide for the task could be a few key questions like:
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How will you start the conversation?
What topics are you going to talk about?
How are you going to move from one topic to another?
How are you going to end the conversation?
After the preparation stage, students give a 'live performance'. This can be in
front of the class or group to group in a large class. This increases motivation and
adds an element of real-life stress. Another way of
encouraging students to use
new language in a communication activity is to make a game out of it. Give
students a situation and several key phrases to include. They get points for using
the language. Similarly, when working on the language of discussion, you can
produce a set of cards with the key phrases/exponents on. The cards are laid out in
front of each group of 2/3/4 students. If a student uses the language on a particular
card appropriately during the discussion, he/she keeps the card. The student with
the most cards wins. If he/she uses the language inappropriately, then he / she can
be challenged and has to leave the card on the table.[3] 'Noticing the gap‘ happens
when learners focus on the gaps in their own linguistic knowledge. This may
happen when
students do a dictogloss
– sometimes referred to as grammar
dictation. The following is an example of how it works.
What happens if learners do not notice grammar?
Without the chance to 'notice' grammar, learners might make errors despite
significant experience with the target language. Learners could also correctly infer
rules and patterns about new language based on what they have learned, but avoid
using these structures in real-life situations.The transition from not knowing to
knowing and using spontaneously is not instant. The transition may take moments,
hours, or even days. Sometimes, it doesn't happen. However, it is the teacher‘s job
to train learners to discover how grammar works in real-world contexts.
In one of my A2 (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages)
adult classes, I put the present passive simple in context using a text about the
olive harvest. After creating interest in the theme of the lesson, I read at a natural
speed:
There are an estimated nine million olive trees in Palestine, which can produce
tons of oil. Green ripe olives are picked in October
by thousands of Palestinian
farmers who work daily for over a month. More than half of the Palestinian
population participate in the olive harvest. Once the harvest is completed, fresh
olives are sent to the press. Olive oil is then extracted from the olives and packaged
in yellow gallons. The product is not only sold in Palestine but also shipped around
the world. (Text created by We'am Hamdan)
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I checked learners‘ general understanding of the text, then I re-read it. This
time learners wrote down key words. In groups, they tried
to reconstruct the text
from memory, as close to the original as possible. Then they compared their
version with another group, and worked together to agree on one version. Finally, I
showed the original version on an interactive whiteboard.
During the activity, the learners used their linguistic knowledge and worked out
the meaning and form of the em
erging target language. This is how they ‗notice‘ the
gaps in their current version of English. The process can lead to a restructure in
their mental picture of the language system.
