ELTWeekly » ELT Tips

#48, Tip of the week: Using videos to teach English

Tarun Patel — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 16:24:07 +0000

Most of our learners enjoy watching movies.

Here are some ways to make use of their interest and knowledge to create some unusual activities.

- Ask your learners if they can think of any spoken sentences that typically occur again and again in films – things such as “OK everybody. Put your hands up”.

- Give them some thinking time to discuss possible answers in pairs then write all their sentences on the board until you have a good number, taking the chance to correct mistakes and practise some exaggerated intonation.

- Now make groups with four or five students in them. Each group must now select some lines from the board and put them in an appropriate order to create a complete mini film scene. They cannot add extra words!

- Each group should write down their dialogue, rehearse it and later perform their scene in front of the class.

I hope this works

Tarun

ELTWeekly Issue#38 Contents

Tarun Patel — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 16:43:46 +0000

ELTWeekly Issue#36 Contents

Tarun Patel — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 07:51:12 +0000

- Word of the Week: plumply • \PLUMP-lee\

- Video: The London School of English

- Interview with Dr. Atanu Bhattacharya

- Research Article: ‘Language and Culture’ by Mahsa Kia

- Research Article: ‘The Use of L1 in Teaching English’ by Daisy N.

- Free eBook: ELA Manual

- Book of the week: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language

- Blog of the Week: huffenglish.com

- Spread a word about ELTWeekly

- GUIDELINES FOR CONTRIBUTORS

- ELTWeekly Privacy Policy

- Feedback.

#35, Article: Developing Communicative Language Skills

Tarun Patel — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:32:18 +0000

Developing Communicative Language Skills

by Prof (Dr) Shefali Bakshi

Developing communication skills is not only the responsibility of language teachers but also subject teachers. Classrooms are set up for the purpose of communicating ideas and not to impose our ideas on young and growing minds. Teaching has to be innovative, dynamic, and most of all interactive. Teachers plan academic/language games to develop communicative skills in their Learners. These language activities are organised with the help of Course books so that they are well integrated with the Reading texts.

Therefore, these language activities must:

Impart knowledge
Develop skills
Produce healthy competitive spirit
Promote team spirit
Activate group Dynamics
Provide fun and interest

For instance: In “Achiever’s Course in English” an English text book by Orient Blackswan, a project is given in form of a Language Game. The learners use their creativity and the knowledge of Grammar to frame such kind of sentences, which require the construction of a sentence with nouns and adjectives. We observe an integration of many skills in form of Writing, Grammar, Creativity, Team Work, etc. Such kind of activities not only encourages communication but develops confidence in the learners. Moreover, it being a part of a text course can be completed within the syllabus framework and the stipulated curriculum. The teacher can also frame questions of such kind for her tests and evaluation. Projects and other activities can be assessed to make them more meaningful and purposeful. Moreover, these activities add variety to the classroom teaching and are more close to the learner’s environment. A concept takes the form of concrete representation, rather than remaining an abstract form. This adds to the meaning of the activity and becomes self-motivating. The learners learn to see the theory part from a different angle. It is more interesting and stimulating.

Thus these activities instill a spirit of competitiveness among the learners. Some other kinds of activities are:

INFORMATION GAP ACTIVITIES – An information gap in a situation where one person knows something, which the other does not. This cultivates curiosity/inquisitiveness, inventive nature, confidence, problem solving, phrasing questions, discovering questions, and above all communication.

Information Gap Activities

Why is information gap important?

Requires free responses
Creates interest
Challenges learners to think independently

GIVING INSTRUCTIONS: Activities where learners learn to conduct experiments follow instructions and facilitate learning. It develops:

1. Coherence and Cohesion

2. Proper sequencing

3. Methodical working

4. Scientific approach

LOGIC PUZZLES – Logic puzzles develop language comprehension which can be correlated with logical skills.

REACHING CONSENSUS: – Consensus activities promote free and spontaneous use of oral communication which leads to the writing exercises. They develop:

Discussion
Argument
Communication
Interaction

Take for example, an activity from “Achiever’s Course in English”

In the above example, the students are guided by the teacher, who is their facilitator and then they plant the questions that are to be asked to the interviewee. A lot of discussion goes on and then the group reaches a consensus which is then concluded as an interview. This kind of an activity prepares the students to tackle a problem and then go about it in an organized way. It develops initiative taking habit, planning, confidence, team spirit, taking a decision, organizing and then conducting an activity.

Thus Communication skills can be developed by numerous activities, tasks, language games etc. inculcated in school subjects, which make our classes more creative and exciting to sustain the interest of the students. All subjects’ teachers have to be versatile and divergent enough to develop the communication skills among students.

About Prof (Dr) Shefali Bakshi

: Dr. Shefali Bakshi

Prof Shefali Bakshi is at present Dy Director & Professor at Amity School of Languages, Amity University, Lucknow Campus. She has done all her education from Bombay. She has done her PhD in Beckett Studies from Lucknow University. She had been teaching at Yemen University and University of Hodiedah, Republic of Yemen. She has to her credit more than 23 years of teaching experience. She is also an ELT Consultant and has conducted more than 75 ELT workshops. Dr Shefalihttp://eltailko.blogspot.com/ is the President of Uttar Pradesh, Lucknow Chapter of elt@i, with more than 30 members. She is also a member of the Advisory Board of Lucid Colloids since last two years and member on the Advisory Board of ELTWeekly - INDIA’S FIRST WEEKLY ELT eNEWSLETTER.

by Prof (Dr) Shefali Bakshi

Therefore, these language activities must:

Impart knowledge
Develop skills
Produce healthy competitive spirit
Promote team spirit
Activate group Dynamics
Provide fun and interest

Thus these activities instill a spirit of competitiveness among the learners. Some other kinds of activities are:

Information Gap Activities

Why is information gap important?

Requires free responses
Creates interest
Challenges learners to think independently

GIVING INSTRUCTIONS: Activities where learners learn to conduct experiments follow instructions and facilitate learning. It develops:

1. Coherence and Cohesion

2. Proper sequencing

3. Methodical working

4. Scientific approach

LOGIC PUZZLES – Logic puzzles develop language comprehension which can be correlated with logical skills.

REACHING CONSENSUS: – Consensus activities promote free and spontaneous use of oral communication which leads to the writing exercises. They develop:

Discussion
Argument
Communication
Interaction

Take for example, an activity from “Achiever’s Course in English”

About Prof (Dr) Shefali Bakshi

: Dr. Shefali Bakshi

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ELTWeekly Issue#17, Article: I dislike the word homework

Tarun Patel — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 04:27:30 +0000

I dislike the word homework

By Karenne Sylvester

This article first appeared on Kalinago English (http://kalinago.blogspot.com/)

I was just about to turn off the Kalinago and go on over to write in How-to-Learn-English, about idioms and ballparks but just before I do that I just gotta get something off my chest.

I hate the word homework.

I teach mainly adults these days and you know what happens to their faces when you say ‘…and your homework is…! Ya, you know. But think about the little ones, the kids, if you’ve ever taught these. They like homework. It’s fun.Remember when you were a kid?

It was fun! Always something cool to do, drawing or making stuff. Sticking and gluing, putting together projects and talking to Mummy and Daddy. And getting praised by the teacher the next day.Even math was enjoyable because with a little bit of work, erasing, more work, you could easily get to the solution.

Remember?

Somewhere along the way from childhood to early teens the word homework went and got itself distorted and it just began to signify pain: hard annoying tasks with no tangible value. Your students were teens once too so…

Newsflash: they still feel the same way.

It’s not that learning English isn’t fun – it really is – it’s the word that’s the problem. Yuck. Homework.What am I doing about this? You don’t really expect me to twitter on without a suggestion, do you? LOL. You know me, I’ve been experimenting for over a year now. I’ve some alternative phrases so don’t laugh, they work:

Pre task activity & Post task activity

Today, in class, I asked my little group of students at an investment bank “So, guys, what would you like to do for your post-task?“

V told me he is going to watch part 3 of the Taleb interview on CNBC because he didn’t get around to doing this yet and M is going to continue developing his map of collocations from our dissection of a Nokia investor relations speech (er, a future blog post, coming soon)

No grumbling. No fuss.

‘So what’s the plan for this week’s PTA?’ I ask.

MA at the other bank is going to make a poster of linking words – she’s having a bit of trouble keeping them straight and P is going to write up a short email about Chinese investments; G is very busy this week but she might listen to the Business Spotlight podcast while running. H is going to learn about RFID technology via slideshare as he’s got a client in this field.

They choose. They do. It’s really as simple as that.

Best,
Karenne

p.s – What do you think? Want to give it a go? (You’ll feel a bit strange at first, getting that yucky word out of your active vocabulary – actually I still smirk when I’ve got a brand new group and I have to explain to them that we’re not using the word homework – they do look at me like I’m nuts - but it’s working!) Or perhaps you’ve got an alternative phrase to PTA/ post and pre-task activity?

Or do you just think I’ve been teaching way too long and finally flipped out? Whichever it is, do let me know your thoughts as I love sharing and learning from you guys too… xK

**Reprinted with kind permission, Karenne Sylvester of Kalinago English (http://kalinago.blogspot.com/).

http://kalinago.blogspot.com/)