ELTWeekly Issue#25, Article: Top tips for getting an EFL book published
By Tarun Patel
Top tips for getting an EFL book published
By Alex Case
- Do not bother sending book proposals. The traditional “send a book proposal, wait for review, proposal accepted if you are lucky, negotiate and then start writing” process to work anymore. It is dead. If you send a book proposal in, you might be very lucky if there is a new member of staff looking for writers and it makes them think you can work on their latest book idea. More likely, it will sit under another pile of proposals until it turns into mulch. Publishers now work under 5 year plans with the titles of almost all books in those 5 years decided. The next step is they send those details to people they think might be able to write it, and then you send a proposal showing you can write precisely the book they want.
- Specialize. If you only teach TOEIC and there is a TOEIC project coming up, you will fit together in naturally with no time wasted in the publishing office of whether you are the right person, and time is the essence. It also means that your details will go to the right person in the right department of the publishers. Don’t worry that being too limited might stop you writing more books, once you are proven to be a reliable, low maintainance writer who meets deadlines you will be allowed to drift outside your speciality. I have it on good information that one well known exam book author who went on to write an IELTS book had actually never taught IELTS!
Read the complete article is at http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/articles/elt-publishing/publishing-tips/
Alex Case has been a teacher, teacher trainer, Director of Studies, ELT writer and editor in Turkey, Thailand, Spain, Greece, Italy, Japan, UK and now Korea, and writes TEFLtastic blog (www.tefl.net/alexcase)
July 11th, 2009
ELTWeekly Issue#22, Article: Developing Good Speaking Skills
By Tarun Patel
Developing Good Speaking Skills
By Prof (Dr) Shefali Bakshi
The aim of spoken English is to enable students to communicate in the target language. It is important to: (i) expose the learners to maximum use of language. (ii) help them to see how language functions in different situations.(iii) help them to internalize the rules of grammar. Speech like writing, being a productive skill must follow enough receptive experience through listening or reading. There are four basic types of activity, which can be organized by teachers: 1- Controlled activities: To give students confidence and support. 2- Awareness activities: To increase sensitivity in students to what they at are aiming. 3- Fluency activities: To give students the practice they need to use English for Communication. 4- Feedback tasks: To allow students to reflect on their own performance so that they become aware of areas in which they have to improve. Art of Speaking, that is, Ability to talk is a social advantage and a step towards advancement.
Success favours those who can speak and write well. Oral and Written communication should be considered essential in every field of activity. Speaking should offer numerous opportunities such as: Questions & Answers, Discussions, Dialogues, Role Plays, Language Games, etc. Being able to speak English well is becoming an increasingly important part of everyday living. Fluency in speech demands a great deal of practice, which is best done in life-like situations. Materials of teaching Speaking skills could be Speech Drills for Vowel & Consonant sound, Pronunciation Exercises, Role Play, Speech Practice Tasks, Functions, Different Actual Situations for usage etc. Learning how to speak takes time and effort. It is best done as part of a course, as well as paying specific attention to the skills and strategies of oral interaction, along with pronunciation on the one hand and on listening on the other. Lets take an example from ACE series of Orient Blackswan.
An activity of daily day-to-day life is taken, where students enact the following first in a controlled way as the dialogues are given and then a semi controlled activity where the situation is described and then the situation 3, where the students themselves decide the appropriacy of the dialogue. This can be followed by a home assignment where different groups give different situations to each other and ask them to weave the conversation around it. The teacher guides and facilitates the discourse to a suitable end.
Prof (Dr) Shefali Bakshi is the Deputy Director at Amity School of Languages. She has done a Project on “A Study of Verbal Interaction in Waiting for Godot” for the M.A. degree and has ompleted her PhD thesis on “A Study of Verbal Interaction in the plays of Samuel Beckett” for the Degree of Ph.D. at University of Lucknow, India. She has conducted over 75 workshops on ELT in various parts of India for school teachers and principals.
ELTWeekly Issue#22, Article: ELT Jargon June 2009
By Tarun Patel
ELT Jargon June 2009
By Alex Case
behaviourism- the idea that the kids not being naughty is about all you can expect from a kindergarten English lesson
Communication Accommodation Theory- the discredited idea that host families in the UK actually speak to the students who are staying with them
communicative strategies- ways students can avoid having to communicate in the classroom, e.g. by complaining about pairwork because “I never know when I am making mistakes”
contrastive analysis- comparing yourself to your partner’s ex boyfriends and/ or girlfriends
Read the rest of article at http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/teaching/tefl/elt-jargon-june-2009/
Alex Case has been a teacher, teacher trainer, Director of Studies, ELT writer and editor in Turkey, Thailand, Spain, Greece, Italy, Japan, UK and now Korea, and writes TEFLtastic blog (www.tefl.net/alexcase)
*ELTWeekly would like to thankAlex Case for contributing this article.
ELTWeekly Issue#20, Article: An i on podcasts
By Tarun Patel
An i on podcasts
By Karenne Sylvester
This article first appeared on Kalinago English (http://how2learnenglish.blogspot.com/)
A great way to learn English is by listening to English.
There are many podcasts (short files of audio regularly delivered to your computer) available on i-tunes.
i-tunes is free of charge, you can download it from here.
Once you have an i-tunes account, you can go over to the directory, type in Learn English and you will find many options to stick on your mp3 player.
Here’s a list of some of my favorite podcasts for learning English:
- English Pod= business topics and more – divided into levels
- Business English pod= only business – focus on vocabulary, very good
- Business Spotlight= only business – various skills based recordings. Excellent.
- Grammar challenge= by the BBC, focus on grammar issues
- 6 minute English= authentic vocab, casual recordings, also by the BBC. Lively.
- English through stories= by ESL pod, learning by listening to dramatic stories with video
- EF podEnglish= 5 minute situational videos
- CNN student news= designed for teens in America, see my posting on this here to find these within i-tunes:
- go to ~podcast directory, bottom right-hand side of the page.
- type “name” of one of the above in the search bar, top right-hand side of the page.
Karenne Sylvester is a certified TESOL trainer, working as a freelancer in Stuttgart, Germany and she specialize in teaching adult learners in the financial/ banking, energy, engineering and IT sectors.
She has lived and worked all over the world: from the Caribbean to the US, UK, Australia, Hong Kong and Ecuador.
She is the sole proprietor and webmaster of Kalinago English and author of SimplyConversationsTM, a pedagogically sound speaking skills system, designed to activate language learners’ fluency.
**Reprinted with kind permission, Karenne Sylvester of Kalinago English (http://kalinago.blogspot.com/).
*** ELTWeekly would like to thank Karenne Sylvester for contributing this article.
ELTWeekly Issue#20, Article: English through Personal Development
By Tarun Patel
English through Personal Development
By Michael Berman
Mike Solly in the April 2008 edition of the EL Gazette wrote “It is my belief that global issues and questions of identity start from “I” and “who I am”, and what I have called English through Personal Development or ETPD is very much about these questions – making them the starting point of our approach to teaching rather than something that might get dealt with by accident in class.
For many of us life is spent searching for something that we never seem able to find. The reason for this can perhaps be found in the following Sufi tale. It can be used for teaching ETPD with a pre-intermediate level class:
The Key
A drunk is searching for something on the ground under a street lamp. A friend sees him there and asks him what he is doing. “I’m looking for my key,” the drunk says. The friend helps him search but half an hour later they still have not found the key. The friend asks, “Are you sure you lost it here?” “No,” replies the drunk, “I lost it inside my house.” “Then why are you looking here?” – “Because the light is here” was his answer.
Choose a suitable moral for the tale. If none of the suggestions below appeal to you, then find one of your own:
- Many hands make light work (English)
- One dog barks because it sees something; a hundred dogs bark because they heard the first dog bark. (Chinese)
- Eyes can see everything except themselves. (Serbo-Croatian)
- A candle lights others but consumes itself. (English)
- Do not look for apples under a poplar tree. (Slovakian)
- A needle wrapped in a rag will be found in the end. (Vietnamese)
Now work with a partner and tell each other what you are looking for in life and what you are doing to make sure you find it:
***
“The ultimate goal of the educational process is to give learners autonomy and help the become independent and creative while using their second language, by improving and bettering themselves and thus adding value to the communities they live in. Therefore, striking a balance between the business-oriented approach and the humane one is essential, to my mind, in our knowledge driven society in the twenty-first century” Pascariu, R. (2009) ‘Personalisation in teaching – from think big to think small’. In IATEFL Voices January-February 2009 Issue 206
What Roxana does here is to help to explain just why it is that ETPD is so important. For by working on improving and bettering ourselves, we not only add value to the communities we live in, but also to society as a whole.
About Michael Berman
Michael Berman BA, MPhil, PhD, works as a teacher and a writer. Publications include A Multiple Intelligences Road to an ELT Classroom and The Power of Metaphor for Crown House, and The Nature of Shamanism and the Shamanic Story for Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Shamanic Journeys through Daghestan and Shamanic Journeys through the Caucasus are both due to be published in paperback by O-Books in 2009. A long-awaited resource book for teachers on storytelling, In a Faraway Land, will be coming out in 2010. Michael has been involved in teaching and teacher training for over thirty years, has given presentations at Conferences in more than twenty countries, and hopes to have the opportunity to visit many more yet. For more information please visit www.Thestoryteller.org.uk.
*ELTWeekly would like to thank Michael Berman for contributing this article.
ELTWeekly Issue#20, Research Article: Is Information Technology the Right Way to Teach Business Studies?
By Tarun Patel
Is Information Technology the Right Way to Teach Business Studies? – A project Undertaken in the Private Business Schools
Dr. Bhavna Mashru(Ph.D,)
The objective was to prepare and present reports, examining the use of Information Technologies in Business Studies. Along with the major objective there were some minor ones related to the development of communication and language skills of the students by becoming familiar with the partner country and its specificities in the sphere of history, the social and geographical development, its lifestyle and culture.
The first stage of the project included:
Explaining the aims and tasks of the project to the students, teachers and parents. Discussions among the teacher staff and organization of a parents’ meeting, dedicated to the project.
Preparation staff meeting under the project at the beginning of November, 2004 in the colleges of the Porbandar District. The representatives of the two parties specified the parameters of the exchange of students from the two countries.
Elaborating the criteria of assessment and selection of the students who would participate in the exchange. A most democratic principle was applied , that everybody had the right to apply, but the commission would choose those 20 students who would show the best results at the English examination( the topics had been given in advance) ,and Informatics (on the basis of an assignment elaborated).Added to this was the average mark in the Business subjects studies and the teachers’ appraisal of the applicant’s behaviour.
Preliminary language preparation of all students with an emphasis on the vocabulary connected with the problems of IT and business. This preparation was carried out mainly in the Business English lessons as well as in all classes of the subjects taught in English, namely Business Communications.
Establishing contacts with the English partner institution and collecting information about it and the subject chosen to be the topic of the project.. All students, by using Internet, had the opportunity to learn a lot about Colleges of the Porbandar District, organization of the teaching process there. Furthermore, some English classes were spared for the translation of the most interesting brochures, leaflets and folders about the college and the landmarks of Porbandar.
The exchange of students was carried out in two stages:
The first stage was the visit of the English students and teachers. Seventeen students and two teachers from V.R. Godhaniya College paid a visit to T.N. Rao Private Business School from 9th February to 22nd February, 2005. There was a provisional schedule made, which was approved by the English party and later on fully implemented. It included attendance at some classes, collaborative work in the computer lab, visits to Indian business establishments, doing sports, entertainments and excursions together. The Director of T.N. Rao Private Business School gave a talk on the educational system of India. A number of educational and social events took place, enabling not only the educational aspect of the exchange to be fulfilled but also that cultural similarities and differences be ascertained. There was excellent participation by students and staff throughout the visit. The students from 1st year B.Com class made a presentation of their training firm, . A presentation entitled Computer Models and Business Games, and the film on the real use of this method in the Finance Management classes, aroused great interest. A representative of Socrates Programme, attended some of the project activities and witnessed the interaction of the students and their participation when discussing specific topics. The linguistic aim of the project was successfully fulfilled at this first stage – the students from V.R. Godhania college learnt words and conversational phrases from the Rajkot students, and their peers had the opportunity to practice and extend their English vocabulary. One of the business visits was paid to the Rajkot United Bank. There a representative of the bank delivered a lecture on the use of Information technologies in the bank system of India. Then the students were shown round the bank, they talked to the experts and were given some advertising souvenirs. The English students collected a bulk of material for their reports under the project.
The second stage of the exchange was the visit of the Rajkot T.N. Rao students to V.R.Godhania College. The group to take part in the exchange was composed according to the requirements of the programme – 20 students including 10 boys and 10 girls, 4 teachers from the school – 2 women and 2 men. The duration of the stay was 14 day (13 nights) covering the period of time from 2nd to14th April, 2005. During the exchange time the student groups kept on collecting materials on the topic of the use of Information technologies in Business Studies. The subject of investigation was mainly the teaching process in Business Schools as an organization, active methods and forms of training. The learning environment in the college as a totality of modern teaching facilities, efficient methods of training, and numerous staff and financial capacity, was the source of rich impressions and a good basis to make analysis and conclusions on the topic .The students enhanced not only their knowledge but also initiated propositions to carry over the positive experience to the T.N. Rao Business school. An example proposition was to work out a communication portal of teachers and students in Private Business Schools. The everyday communication in English further extended the language knowledge and skills of the Rajkot students, they even learnt some local dialect. Divided into groups of four, the students were collecting facts and information necessary for their reports on concrete topics: similarities and differences in the educational systems in Rajkot. Information technologies in Business Studies in Rajkot Colleges and culture of IIMS , They used a diversity of methods such as observation, examination of literature sources and Internet information, inquiry, interview, modelling. The programme envisaging cultural events and excursions to the nearby towns in the region, a friendly dinner together and discotheque, was fulfilled with great enthusiasm.
As a result a DVD containing students’ elaborations under the project was made. Rajkot Based Private Business School was upgraded on which was made a separate link for the project where one could see in detail the exchange of students and the presentations under the project. There are also many photographs from the visit to Rajkot.
The students presented the process and the results of their work under the project on a special student conference. It took place on 16th of June, 2005.
Working on the project contributed to the development of the students’ professional skills in the field of Information technologies and the presentation of the products, designing the website; skills to communicate in English, to work in a team and make decisions, to assume responsibility; an ambition for better performance; tolerance and respect to the individual. The students learnt a lot of new things in the field of Information technologies, Business Studies and the different computer programmes used in the process of teaching. They extended their knowledge in the English language, especially their vocabulary, and learnt a bit about the specific way of speaking in some regions of England.
The experience gained under the project will contribin Physics, Geoute to the updating of the teaching methods used. There are already proposals by the teachers, Accounting, and even in Business Language and Literature to have their classes in the computer lab in order to make use of the technical means there. The participation in the project and especially the realization of the exchange of students is definitely a step forward for our school in respect to the higher level of training and coming up to the European standards. When comparing with their English peers, our students felt a justified confidence both with respect to their preparedness and work on the assignments they had, and their already shaped culture of conduct. The benefit from the contacts is really significant, but still more encouraging is the ambition to put into practice everything new and useful that was learnt during the work together. This will inevitably have an impact on the formation of the personality of the young Students of IIMs, the future full member of the Indian Community.
The project was highly evaluated by the people involved in it, and who became aware of the benefits from it. First, these are the students who gained confidence and accumulated knowledge and skills. Second, the teachers, who had the opportunity to learn some new modern methods of teaching and to see the effect of the work on the project in the results shown by the students, especially in the sphere of Informatics, Business Studies and the English language. A representative of theirs was present at two of the most important stages and expressed a very high evaluation. Very high, too, was the evaluation of the parents who witnessed the professional development of their children and the formation of exceptionally important personable qualities in hem such as a sense of responsibility, the skill to work in a team, the ambition to manifest and perfect themselves. We received a very high assessment by many university lecturers who are members of the State Examination Commission in Theory and Practice of the Speciality.
Project Coordinator: Dr. Bhavna Mashru
Commerce & IT College, Porbandar
Address: 1, Bhojeshwar Plot, Porbandar
Telephone: 9428438118
Fax: 931 18 99
e-mail: bctd@mail.orbitel.bg.
* ELTWeekly would like to thank Dr. Bhavna Mashru for contributing this research article.
ELTWeekly Issue#20, Article: Making writing interactive
By Tarun Patel
Making writing interactive
By Alex Case
1. Collaborative writing
Getting students to write together automatically means there is interaction between them. Possible problems when doing this include: the stronger or more dominant student having the pen and the others doing nothing, students doing all their speaking in L1 and only writing in English, students and groups who concentrate too much on accuracy, and some groups taking much longer than others. Solutions include giving the pen to any students not taking part, telling them to switch who is physically writing it every paragraph or every 3 to 5 minutes, giving them an English language plan or sentence cues that the writing will be based on, and giving them a strict time limit for each stage of the writing process. Students might also complain that writing together is slower and more difficult than writing on their own. Two possible responses are to tell them that the language they learn from each other will make the extra time and effort worthwhile, or allowing them to split the work up once they have planned what they are going to write, e.g. writing alternate paragraphs.
2. Being read afterwards
Another general tip for making writing interactive is to make sure someone is reading it afterwards -and of course things that we write in real life are usually read by someone else. Telling students that their writing will be read by other students should instantly raise their motivation to write and write well, and getting them used to this will raise their interest in writing and help them to learn from reading other people’s work. Basic techniques include passing the writing to the next person or group (e.g. clockwise around the class), swapping with another person or group, picking randomly from a stack of pieces of writing, reading writing that is pinned up on the walls, or selecting from texts spread across the table. Things people can do as they read include deciding if they agree with the opinions stated, thinking about what their reaction would be if they received that letter etc, or looking for similarities and differences with their own piece of writing.
Read the remaining 13 ways here http://edition.tefl.net/ideas/writing-ideas/making-writing-interactive/
Alex Case has been a teacher, teacher trainer, Director of Studies, ELT writer and editor in Turkey, Thailand, Spain, Greece, Italy, Japan, UK and now Korea, and writes TEFLtastic blog (www.tefl.net/alexcase)
*ELTWeekly would like to thankAlex Case for contributing this article.
ELTWeekly Issue#19, Article: Communicative Language Teaching in India By Prof (Dr) Shefali Bakshi
By Tarun Patel
Communicative Language Teaching in India
By Prof (Dr) Shefali Bakshi
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) developed some two decades ago as a response against the diverse approaches to second/foreign language teaching practiced in the last forty to fifty years, especially in the Structural (Grammatical) Approach. CLT is a language teaching programme focusing on learners’ ability to communicate – to facilitate them to use the language for communication. Communication is thus seen as the major concern in learning a language.
Dell Hymes who developed the concept of Ethnography of Communication, emphasized that the study of language involves knowing not only the language structure but also what to say to whom and how to say it appropriately in any situation. He thus developed the concept of communication competence. Communication Competence in simple words means that it is not enough to be able to produce grammatically correct sentences but it is important that the speaker is able to produce appropriate sentences, understanding the social context, the role of the participants, the information they share, and the function of the interaction.
The prominent features of the CLT along with a few examples are discussed below:-
1. CLT is learner-centered: it focuses on the learner and learning is based on an exploration of the needs and levels of the learner. In level 5, a poem “My parents kept me from children who were rough” by Stephen Spender has been taught and the learner of that level can identify themselves with the boy and the situation faced by them in their daily day-to-day life.
2. CLT emphasizes on learning the rules of ‘use’ (communication), rather than the rules of ‘usage’ (grammar). Oral Communication in form of role plays either with two participants or more are included in the task activity followed after every unit.
3. CLT has as its objective, the development of communicative competence (that is, the ability to communicate through language), and not; merely ‘linguistic competence’ (that is, the ability to construct grammatically correct sentences). A situation which deals with a problem is put forward and the learners are asked to construct a dialogue and then role play the whole event.
4. CLT encourages ‘fluency and appropriacy’ rather than ‘accuracy’; it brings accuracy only in so far as it is essential for the successful completion of an activity. The learners can participate in discussions, debates, projects and involve themselves in meaningful participation.
5. CLT syllabuses are specified in terms of language functions (such as making a proposition, apologizing, thanking) rather in terms of language forms. (such as the Direct-Indirect, the Active-Passive). Exercises such as Match the following, Put in the right sequence, etc using functions such as; “disagree politely”, “refuse politely”, “Agree amicably”, and so on.
6. CLT concentrates on the message (meaning); it pays less attention to the language ‘forms’ employed to convey meaning. Writing an article for a school magazine, Writing an ending/beginning to a story etc.
7. CLT tolerates grammatical errors and accepts them as a natural part of language acquisition at an early stage of the learner but expects them to master the language at a later stage and produce correct sentences. Too many marks are not deducted for spelling/grammatical errors during evaluation of exercises.
8. CLT is task-based; it engages the learner: in a series of communicative tasks which focus on meaning and promote real communication, rather than in drilling grammar patterns. The exercise is in form of “Preparing to interview” and the groups of students brainstorm different types of questions that need to be asked during the interview.
9. CLT focuses on problem-solving so as to engage learners in cognitive effort and thus provoke meaningful interaction. A project work in form of Life Situation problem can be given, where an individual learner or a group of learners discuss and come out with various options for solutions, which can be later discussed in the class under the teacher who acts as a guide and a facilitator.
10. CLT encourages individualized learning, allowing the learner to follow his/her learning styles and proceed at his/her own pace. The exercises based on consulting the dictionary, Word treasury, etc.
Thus the process of adopting CLT methodology has today become extremely popular and practical in acquiring the Second Language. The question is that does it work? Can our learners speak the target language fluently and correctly? Can our learners communicate in the second language confidently? Can our learners interact in any situation appropriately? This is a big Question we need to ask ourselves. We could acquire the second language, during our times, because our peer group did not speak the same language, (as they belonged to Sindhi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Tamil etc background) so we had no other option but to converse in the target language. In my next article, I will discuss the shortcomings of using only the CLT methodology.
Prof (Dr) Shefali Bakshi is the Deputy Director at Amity School of Languages. She has done a Project on “A Study of Verbal Interaction in Waiting for Godot” for the M.A. degree and has ompleted her PhD thesis on “A Study of Verbal Interaction in the plays of Samuel Beckett” for the Degree of Ph.D. at University of Lucknow, India. She has conducted over 75 workshops on ELT with St. Edmunds College in Shillong, with Ratna Sagar in Lucknow, with University of Yemen in Republic of Yemen and with Orient Longman and Macmillan in various parts of India for school teachers and principals.
** ELTWeekly would like to thank Prof (Dr) Shefali Bakshi for contributing this article.
ELTWeekly Issue#18, Article: Integration of Skills in English Language Teaching By Prof (Dr) Shefali Bakshi
By Tarun Patel
Integration of Skills in English Language Teaching
By Prof (Dr) Shefali Bakshi
Integration of skills is a very important practice in the teaching of any language. No skill can be taught in isolation and segregation. There exists a deep, profound and inseparable connection between language use and the context in which it is entrenched and embedded. A kind of connectedness exists in the way we use the primary skills of language, identified as listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The teacher faced with a set of predetermined and prearranged curricula and prescribed textbooks, what most of them do, is to place additional and extra emphasis on a specific skill designated for a specific class, while helping learners freely to use all the skills necessary for successfully carrying out a classroom activity. Even if the class is supposed to focus on one specific skill at a time, teachers and learners do the inevitable, namely, follow an integrated approach. By designing and using micro strategies that integrate language skills, we will be assisting learners to engage in classroom activities that involve a meaningful and simultaneous engagement with language in use. A discussion with examples from text can be initiated and participants can individually work on them. Let us take an example of teaching a poem to class I students, which is an authentic literary piece. It has not been simplified for the suitability of learners of primary section.
The skills of Listening and Speaking are the primary skills to be taught in the poem ‘Frogs at School”. But without mentioning to the pupils, the teacher can integrate so many other skills, which would be useful at a later stage to the students. When we begin the poem, the number system can be explained with twenty being linked to the plural form of‘s’. Such as ‘froggies’, coats, vests. The singular form like ‘pool’ can be easily linked to the use of the article ‘a’. Thus more examples at this point can be mentioned in order to drill the number system. The direct speech can be brought to attention at how when we talk, it must be put in quote marks. Adjectives such as ‘rushy’ ‘green’ ‘white’ etc can also be compared and contrasted with their opposites. Thus in this way the teaching of grammar is integrated while teaching this poem. I encourage you to look into many other aspects of grammar.
New vocabulary words such as pet name ‘froggies’, and then ‘rushy’ ‘vests’ and so on can be explained and pupils can be encouraged to give such kind of words.
Association of the poem and the picture must be developed by making the learners observe the following aspects. There are total 20 frogs in the picture too. It has been observed that the children actually count and they cannot be deceived, or made to doubt the teaching material as the base is being developed. There has to exist a kind of trust between the learner and the lesson. The ‘coats of green’ is not actually the coat but the outer skin of the frogs. Same goes with the inner white skin. Thus the aesthetic and creativity of the poet can be discussed with the pupils in a simple language and similie of such kind can be asked to vent the child’s imagination.
Last but not the least; we must draw the attention of the learner towards the good habits to be inculcated in them. Neatness of school uniform, punctuality, the rules to be followed, first the pupil studies and then only can play and so on. If the teacher gives moral lessons directly then they would not be so effective, but in this case the pupil would feel if froggies can do it then why can’t I??
The poem is of the same level of the child. It refers to a genuine problem faced by teachers, pupils and parents. It takes the learner outside the classroom and he can relate it to his own condition and situation. Thus this is a great opportunity of inculcating so many ideas and thoughts in the minds of the learners, beside tone, intonation, rhyming sounds, rhythm, and so on, which may be looked into while teaching the skills of Speaking and Listening. Reading will automatically come when the teacher and learner are reading and assimilating the whole poem. Later they can be asked to write too, if need be. Thus while teaching the feelings of the poet have to be transferred to the learners in order to gain maximum from the learning material.
[This has been practically practiced in the classrooms and with effective results. Do suggest any other ideas that come to your mind.].
Prof (Dr) Shefali Bakshi is the Deputy Director at Amity School of Languages. She has done a Project on “A Study of Verbal Interaction in Waiting for Godot” for the M.A. degree and has ompleted her PhD thesis on “A Study of Verbal Interaction in the plays of Samuel Beckett” for the Degree of Ph.D. at University of Lucknow, India. She has conducted over 75 workshops on ELT with St. Edmunds College in Shillong, with Ratna Sagar in Lucknow, with University of Yemen in Republic of Yemen and with Orient Longman and Macmillan in various parts of India for school teachers and principals.
** ELTWeekly would like to thank Prof (Dr) Shefali Bakshi for contributing this article.
ELTWeekly Issue#18, Article: 15 ways of combining listening and reading By Alex Case
By Tarun Patel
15 ways of combining listening and reading
By Alex Case
Copyright 2009 Alex Case/ TEFL.net, republished with permission.
1. Radio news
Many sites that offer streaming or downloadable radio news also have a short text summarizing the story. Reading this before listening will make comprehension easier, especially if students discuss what they read and/ or think about what they might hear before they listen. Reading first also allows students to look up some of the difficult vocabulary in their dictionaries. In class, tasks that combine the two include predicting what extra information will be given in the listening text, writing questions that they still want answered after reading the text and listening for the answers, and expanding the written text with the information in the listening text.
2. Graded reader plus CD
Most graded readers (= easy readers- simplified and shortened books of stories etc especially for language learners) nowadays have some kind of recording. I usually recommend that students read through the whole book without the CD, then read and listen at the same time to check the pronunciation, then just listen to the CD on their MP3 player as many times as they can bear. If the whole class has a set of one particular graded reader you could do more interesting things like playing the first part of the story before they start reading to get them interested in the whole story. With a range of different books, students could listen to a short extract of each book and decide from that which book they would like to take home.
3. Movie with subtitles
The advantages of having English subtitles include being able to easily look things up in a dictionary and learning the spelling and pronunciation at the same time. There is occasionally an argument for watching the film with subtitles in their own language, as understanding what is going on will make comprehension and so memorizing of the language easier the second time they watch it. The disadvantages with having any kind of subtitles are that students will come to rely on them and will get too used to being able to understand every word rather than pick out the message. In a similar way to the recommendation for graded readers above, I usually suggest watching the first time with English subtitles and the second time without. They will eventually need to work their way up to watching a film or episode of a TV series with no subtitles the first time too, and this can be made easier with careful selection of what they watch (e.g. the next episode of a series they know well or a film they already know the story of because they have read the book) or by turning the subtitles on every time they get completely lost and then back off when they know what is going on.
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Alex Case has been a teacher, teacher trainer, Director of Studies, ELT writer and editor in Turkey, Thailand, Spain, Greece, Italy, Japan, UK and now Korea, and writes TEFLtastic blog (www.tefl.net/alexcase)
*ELTWeekly would like to thank Alex Case for contributing this article.