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Tips and strategies to encourage students to speak English confidently, incorporating group work, minimizing L1 use, and using various engaging activities for language learning.
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RAANANA EFL TEACHERS SPEAKING SESSION 2 13/1/19 FRAN LEVIN Ra’anana
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uozGujfdS0 • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxUm-2x-2dM&t=22s • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUXkj6j6Ezw
How often should one do oral fluency activities in class? What about when they start using their L1? Do I have to do group work? What about when they make mistakes? http://meyda.education.gov.il/files/Mazkirut_Pedagogit/English/guidetotalking.pdf
About two or three times a week. The activities don’t have to be very long: in elementary classes, five to ten minutes is enough; in higher classes they can take longer. • Yes, in many classes they will, some of the time. We’ll do all we can to help them stay in English (see below), but even if students in the class described above are spending even half the time speaking in L1, they’re still speaking three times as much English as they would have done in the full class. • Yes, at least sometime of the time. In full-class interactions there isn’t time to give all the students opportunities to talk. If you have a ten minute activity and have 30 students in your class, then even if every student speaks, each one will only get about 20 seconds to speak. What happens is that some students speak more and others don’t speak at all, and much of the time goes on teacher-talk or pauses when none of them are speaking at all. If you divide your 30 students into six groups of five, then each student will get about six times as much time to talk. • Yes, probably. Don’t worry about it. The goal of the activity is to get the students to communicate ideas in English. It doesn’t matter if they make grammatical or other mistakes, as long as they get their ideas across. You’ll have opportunities in other parts of the lesson to work on accuracy.
Recycle language to ensure its learning. • Chants • Carolyn Graham for more ideas and varied rhythms, • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sotUp32mpOI • Speak Up (inspectorate Site) • Raps • Songs • Dialogues. • Choral Questions and answers
SOME TIPS FOR ENCOURAGING CHILDREN TO USE SPOKEN ENGLISH • Create an environment where learners feel secure and are prepared to take risks. • Use pair and group work and peer tutoring to maximize language interaction in a low stress environment and to encourage risk taking.
Support and value learners’ languages and cultures. • Build on the knowledge, skills and understandings that students bring to the learning context .
Make Use of L1 • Build on the linguistic understandings students have of their own language :give the parallel examples in Hebrew. (the) (pronouns etc) • Encourage the use of the learners’ first language if the learner is literate in that language: • Tell a struggling child tell me in Hebrew and then we’ll say it together in English. • Cognates are wonderful for making a child feel more confident.
Use themes and topics which are relevant to learners’ particular needs • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ_waypiyOQ Focus on purposeful communicative activities which are comprehensible and appropriate to the learner’s age and needs.
Focus on developing learners’ oral language skills for oral language development and to support writing. • Support the learners’ language skills development through scaffolding the learners’ language. • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MKmbyfhkkE
Explicitly teach new language (vocabulary, text types, grammar, sound knowledge, pronunciation, intonation) in the context of a theme or topic. • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWer7DVhh2E
Use an experiential approach to provide meaningful contexts. • Use visual cues wherever necessary to clarify and reinforce concepts.
Recycle language to ensure its learning. • Chants Carolyn Graham for more ideas and varied rhythms, • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sotUp32mpOI • Raps • Songs • Dialogues. • Choral Questions and answers
DIALOGUES. • Short exchanges, to be learnt by heart and performed fluently. They can be standard exchanges like: ‘What’s the time? It’s … o’clock.’ Or: ‘What’s that? It’s a …’ Or more dramatic ones like this, adapted from the original version by Hana Raz: • A: Come here at once! • B: Who, me? A: Yes, you. Come here at once! • B: What’s the matter? • A: Be quiet! • Use dialogues from your textbook (or ones you invent yourself). VARIATIONS • Students can perform these in chorus at first, then individually. • • Later, suggest they perform them fast, slowly, happily, sadly, fearfully, angrily etc.
USING READER’S THEATER IN CLASSStudents don’t need to learn anything by heart, they read aloud from a written text – for example : a routine reading text taken from your textbook. This is the kind of text most available and I would like tp present it as an option for jazzing up your work on a unit. 1) After you’ve made sure that your students have read and understood the text, divide them into groups and give each group a paragraph from the text to prepare to read aloud. The same paragraph can be given to all the groups, but you could give different ones if the text is long. 2) The groups have five or ten minutes to prepare (you’ll need to keep an eye on them, see how they’re doing and how long they need). They are told that they have to prepare an artistic reading of their text that will make very clear to the audience what the text means and make maximum dramatic impact. So they can use: single or choral voices; variation in speed, volume and pitch; movement and gesture; pause. 3) They may not change the words of the text, but they can repeat things if they like. Everyone has to participate. 4) This is an oral activity because it results in fluent oral production of meaningful and correct text – and often students find they have learnt by heart useful ‘chunks’ from their texts which they can use later in their own production. However we are also working on reading fluency and accuracy.
ACTIVITIES FOR ENCOURAGING SPEAKINGINSTRUCTION: HOW MANY THINGS CAN YOU THINK OF AND SAY IN ENGLISH… (Remind them to use full sentences: ‘There’s a…’ ‘He’s …’ ‘An orange is round’ etc. • about this picture? • about a famous person? (or: a place they know? a television program they know?) • that are round? (or: square? hard? soft? electric? digital? white? made of paper? made of wood? made of metal? made of plastic? …) that move? (or: fly, jump, grow, can float in water…) • about this person? (show a picture of a person, they suggest a name, age, profession, nationality, interests, ambitions, character, abilities…)
GUESSING GAMES • I Spy with My Little Eye- good for reviewing alphabetic sounds as well.
GUESSING GAMES 20 Questions- Make sure students are familiar with the yes/no questions they’ll need to use, and encourage them to ask using full questions e.g. ‘Is it a pencil?’ rather than just ‘a pencil?’ You can prepare a photocopied list of YES/NO questions for them. GUESSING BASED ON QUESTIONS Instruction: Can you guess… What I’m thinking of? (any object they know how to say in English: possibly give a hint to start them off, e.g. ‘it’s small’) What I have in my bag? (prepare a bag containing simple objects, including miniature models of things they know how to say in English e.g. a toy dog, or a doll’s house chair. If you have small children, borrow some of their toys for this!) What’s in this picture? (hold or pin up a picture with its back to the class) What this is? (draw a basic shape or line on the board, gradually adding bits as they guess, until it becomes clear) Who I am? (choose a famous person to be) Where I’ve hidden a treasure? (choose a location you’ve hidden a ‘treasure’) What my job is? (choose a profession they know) What I’m doing? (mime something
Definition of Information Gap Activity • An information gap activity is an activity where learners are missing the information they need to complete a task and need to talk to each other to find it.” • The information gap activities involve a transfer of given information from one person to another— or from one form to another or from one place to another. The participants each have some knowledge or information not shared by any other one and can only solve the problem if they pool their information.
* Benefits of using information gap • More communication takes place • - Extending speaking practice. • - Make learners to concentrate on the communication for information. • - Learners talk a lot/ produce more speech. • - Learners help one another.
Motivation can be high. • - Give students a reason to talk. • - Keep them thinking. • - Represent real communication and factual learning • - Equal opportunities of learning for mixed ability classes.
Builds students’ confidence • - Less intimidating than presenting in front of the entire class. • - Comfortable, casual and non-threatened atmosphere • - Free interaction with peers
Develops other sub-skills. • - Clarifying meaning, • - Re-phrasing, • - Negotiating meaning, • - Solving problems, • - Gathering information, • - Making decision
SPOT THE DIFFERENCE Show the class two pictures that have ten or so differences between them and challenge them to tell you in English what the differences are. Supply new words as needed. They don’t need to get them all. If there are ten differences, it’s pretty good if they get seven – then reveal the rest. Put students into pairs or small groups and ask them to do the same with another pair of pictures. They can call you over to ask for words they need. They have succeeded if they find more than half of the actual differences; they don’t necessarily need to find them all. Groups who find more than half carry on and try to find all of them). FREE SOURCES http://www.puzzlesandriddles.com/SpotTheDifference.html Or in Google Images, choose ‘landscape’ or ‘room’ as the keyword, and ‘line drawing’ as the type of image, then make two copies of your chosen image and make changes using pencil or white-out liquid, making sure they are as far as possible things the students can describe in English. Make copies and laminate them.
Bank of Presentation Tasks http://cms.education.gov.il/EducationCMS/Units/Rama/maagaraimesimot/MaagreMesimot/MaagarMisimotYesodi.htm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAG39jKi0lI&list=RDSzeEq5MvNFg&index=2
