Social Skills

1. Social Skills ESL Students Engaging in Class

2. Many of our ESL students lack the confidence necessary to ask for information or to contribute to class discussions.WE know that this is a major concern for teachers

3. Help! Kit • “One way to help students acquiring English is to teach gambits that support the prosocial skills being emphasized. Gambits are formulas used in conversation to convey certain communicative purposes. Special gambits might be introduced or reviewed before students begin working with a particular cooperative learning task; they could be integrated into student worksheets as reminders of ways to ask for information and could be emphasized with “process sheets.” Teaching ELLs to utilize “gambits” will provide them with language structures they can use to both obtain information and learn colloquial uses of English.” The Help! Kit: A Resource Guide for Secondary Teachers of Migrant English Language Learners

4. Shout Out Your Own! • What follows are lists of gambits for social interactions in class discussions and in cooperative learning tasks. You could create a student-generated list of gambits or discuss the levels of appropriateness of these gambits in various situations. For our purposes today let’s shout out whether we think these gambits are more appropriate for teacher student interactions or peer interactions.

5. Asking for Information • I’d like to know… • I’m interested in… • Would you tell me…? • Do you know…? • Could you find out…? • What is…? • Could I ask (May I ask)…?

6. Requesting Clarification • Help! • I don’t understand… • Sorry, I didn’t get the last part. • You’ve lost me. • I don’t follow you. • What was that?

7. Requesting Explanations • Can you explain why…? • Please explain… • Do you mean to say…? • I don’t understand why… • Why is it that…? • How come…?

8. Requesting Elaboration • Would you expand on that? • Tell me more about… • Build up that idea more. • I need to hear more about…

9. Requesting Confirmation • So what you’re saying is… • What you’re really saying is… • In other words… • If I understand you correctly… • So you mean that… • Does this mean…?

10. Requesting Restarting • Please say that again. • Please restate that. • Come again? • What?

11. Expressing Disbelief • I’m afraid… • I don’t see how

12. Obtaining Information • But the problem is… • Yes, but… • But don’t forget… • That’s good, but… • I doubt… • Possibly, but… • What bothers me is…

13. Verifying Communication • Would you mind repeating that? • Would you spell that, please? • What did you say?

14. Interrupting • Excuse me. • Well... • Can I ask a question? • I’d like to add…

15. Returning to the Topic • Anyway,… • In any case,… • As you were saying,… • Where was I?

16. Guessing • I’d say… • Could it be…? • Perhaps it’s…? • I think it’s… • It looks like… • It’s hard to say, but I think…

17. Giving Information • The following gambits are “language structures that are meant to build confidence when an ESL student needs to contribute to a conversation.

18. Restating • Another way to say that is… • Or, in other words,… • Using this graph,… • From another perspective,…

19. Illustrating • For example… • For instance… • Take for example… • For one thing… • To give you an idea… • Look at the way… • Consider that…

20. Generalizing • As a rule,… • Generally,… • In general,… • By and large,… • In most cases,… • Usually,… • Most of the time,… • Again and again,… • Time and again,… • Every so often,… • From time to time,… • Every now and then,…

21. Exceptions • One exception is… • But what about…? • Don’t forget…

22. Presenting Opinion or Interpretation • I’m convinced that… • Without a doubt,… • I’m positive… • I’m certain… • In my opinion,… • I personally feel… • I personally believe… • In my experience,… • From what I’ve read,…

23. Making Suggestions • What don’t you…? • Why not…? • Perhaps you could… • Have you thought about…? • Here’s an idea… • Let’s…

24. Adding Thoughts • To start with… • And another thing… • What’s more,… • Just a small point… • Maybe I should mention… • Oh, I almost forgot…

25. Giving Reasons • And besides,… • In addition,… • What’s more,… • Another thing is that… • Plus the fact that… • Because of that,… • That’s why… • That’s the reason why… • For this reason,…

26. Adding Considerations • Bearing in mind… • Considering… • If you recall… • When you consider that…

27. Thinking Ahead • If… • When… • Whenever… • After… • As soon as… • By the time… • Unless…

28. Correcting Yourself • What I mean is… • What I meant was… • Let me put it another way… • What I’m saying is… • Don’t misunderstand me… • If I said that, I didn’t mean to…

29. Summarizing • To cut it short… • To make a long story short… • So,… • To sum up,… • In sum,… • All in all,… • In a nutshell,…

30. Checking Comprehension • Are you with me? • Do you understand? • Got that? • Have you got that? • Is that clear? • Okay so far?

31. Verifying Understanding • That’s right. • Correct. • Right.

32. Explaining • What it is…

33. Bloom's Taxonomy Verbs Just as students need to understand how to gain access to the class, they need to understand what teachers are asking of them in tests.

34. Bloom's Taxonomy refers to a classification of the different objectives that educators set for students (learning objectives). The following slides will illustrate the categories you may see.

35. Knowledge • Count, Define, Describe, Draw, Enumerate, Find, Identify, Label, List, Match, Name, • Read, Recall, Recite, Record, Reproduce, Select, Sequence, State, Tell, View, Write, • Quote.

36. Comprehension • Classify, Cite, Conclude, Convert, Describe, Discuss, Estimate, Explain, Generalize, Give examples, illustrate, • Interpret, Locate, Make sense of, Paraphrase, Predict, Report, Restate, Review, Summarize, Trace.

37. Application • Act, Administer, Articulate, Assess, Change, Chart, Choose, Collect, Compute, Construct, Contribute, Control, Demonstrate, Determine, Develop, Discover, Dramatize, Draw, Establish, Extend, • Imitate, Implement, Interview, Include, Inform, Instruct, Paint, Participate, Predict, Prepare, Produce, Provide, Relate, Report, Select, Show, Solve, Transfer, Use, Utilize.

38. Analysis • Break down, Characterize, Classify, Compare, Contrast, Correlate, Debate, Deduce, Diagram, Differentiate, Discriminate, Distinguish, Examine, • Focus, Illustrate, Infer, Limit, Outline, Point out, Prioritize, Recognize, Research, Relate, Separate, Subdivide.

39. Synthesis • Adapt, Anticipate, Categorize, Collaborate, Combine, Communicate, Compare, Compile, Compose, Construct, Contrast, Create, Design, Develop, Devise, Express, Facilitate, Formulate, Generate, Incorporate ,Individualize, Initiate, Integrate, • Intervene, Invent, Make up, Model, Modify, Negotiate, Organize, Perform, Plan, Pretend, Produce, Progress, Propose, Rearrange, Reconstruct, Reinforce, Reorganize, Revise, Rewrite, Structure, Substitute, Validate.

40. Evaluation • Appraise, Argue, Assess, Choose, Compare & Contrast, Conclude, Criticize, Critique, Decide, Defend, Evaluate, • Interpret, Judge, Justify, Predict, Prioritize, Prove, Rank, Rate, Reframe, Select, Support.

41. The EQAO Lit Test • http://www.eqao.com/Students/Secondary/10/10.aspx?Lang=E&gr=10 • Go to the “Getting Ready Guide, 2009” available online. You will find the following instructions:

42. Test Instructions • There are two Test Booklets and one Student Answer Sheet. The following instructions will appear on the • OSSLT. Make sure that you understand these instructions before you write the test.

44. Reading Skills • The test has multiple-choice and open-response questions that focus on the reading skills required in school and daily life: • • understanding explicitly (directly) stated ideas and information; • • understanding implicitly (indirectly) stated ideas and information and • • making connections between information and ideas in a reading selection and personal knowledge and experience.

45. Reading Selections • The reading selections include the following: information paragraph, news report, dialogue, real-life narrative and graphic text (e.g., schedule). They vary in length from a single paragraph to two pages.

46. Tips for ReadingGeneral Strategies • • Manage your time so that you complete all sections of the test. • • Read the questions first. This will help you predict what the reading selection is going to be about. • • Skim the selection and then read it closely. • • Underline or highlight important information and ideas as you read.

47. Tips for ReadingGeneral Strategies • • As you read, think about what you are reading and ask yourself questions about it. • • Try to “see” what you are reading; some readers say this is like running a video or movie in their heads. • • Look for links between what you are reading and experiences you have had.

48. Tips for ReadingGeneral Strategies • • If you read a word you don’t understand, look for a root word that you know inside the larger word; look for prefixes and suffixes. • • If you still don’t understand the word, read to the end of the sentence and look for clues to its meaning. • Try reading the sentences before and after the sentence to see if you can find the meaning from the context.

49. Tips for ReadingGeneral Strategies • • If a long sentence has you confused, reread it and try to put it into your own words. • • If you are having trouble understanding an idea, either read on until the meaning becomes clearer, or stop and reread.

50. Strategies for Multiple-Choice ReadingQuestions • • Read and reread the question carefully. • • Read the four answers and rule out any answers that are obviously incorrect. • • If necessary, reread the relevant parts of the selection to choose the best or most correct answer.