|
|
Êóðñîâàÿ: Oxford's teachhing methods of english language
With this last question, we are prompting the students to note down other
information, not limiting them only to what the chart asks for. Not all the
students will be able to take further notes, but the most skilled will not
get bored while their classmates are engaged at a more elementary level.
Another instance that calls for note-taking is reporting on medical cases. To
do this, the class may be divided into teams of three or four students. Each
team prepares a case for the others to analyze. One variant would be having
each team first brainstorm, then prepare a skeleton outline with the sort of
information they need the other team to provide in order to write a full case
report. Once ready, they exchange skeletons, brainstorm again, and note down
the information the skeleton forms ask for. The teams should give neither the
diagnosis nor the treatment. As soon as they finish, they swap these
"problem-cases," analyze them, and confer on the diagnosis, treatment, and
prognosis of the patient. Next, they write a full case report that everyone
reads and discusses. The class then moves around, reads, and comments on
them. Finally, they decide which of the skeleton forms are better and which
reports are the most coherent and faithful to the information provided.
A simpler variant would be having each team ask for the information orally
from one another, take notes on it and then report on the case orally or in
writing.
In teaching Medically Speaking , I suggest taking notes while listening
to the dialogues or reading the case studies given in the text. Instead of
having the students take down all the information, teams are formed to take
notes on specific parts.
Appendix
| Instructions for preparing and presenting a case report | | First think of an interesting case you would like to report on and discuss with your classmates. Consult your professors, look for information about your case and associated diseases or cases in magazines, books, journals, etc. Note down this information. Then make an outline of the elements you need in order to report on a case | 1. Patient's characteristics: | Age: | Sex: Race: | | Weight: | Height: | | 2. Main symptom: | 8. Physical findings | | 3. Other symptoms: | 9. Diagnostic procedure: | | 4. Past history: | 10. Differential and definitive diagnosis: | | 5. Family history: | 11. Therapeutic procedures: | 6. (Toxic) habits: | 12. Possible complications | | 7. Medications: | 13. Prognosis |
Before presenting your case orally, copy the outline on the board, ask your
classmates to also copy it in their notebooks. You will all follow this order
for the presentation and discussion of your case. Your classmates will ask
you for the data they need to complete their outlines and discuss the case.
Once the discussion is over, they will use their notes to write a report on
the case you presented.
Patient's characteristics: Age: 22 | Race: white Sex: M | Weight: 70 kg. | | Height: 1.70m. | | Main symptom: | pain in the right lower quadrant (sporadic and colicky in nature) | | *began in epigastrium two days ago | | *moved to periumbilical region and right lower quadrant | | Other symptoms: | fever, vomits (3), anorexia, constipation for two days (no bowel movement). No diarrhea | | Past history: | -none | | Family history: | -none | | Toxic habits: | -none | | Medications: | -none | | Physical findings: | -patient well oriented as to time, place and person | | -well nourished | | -extreme tenderness to palpation mainly over McBurney's point | | -guarding, muscle rigidity, rebound tenderness | | -difference: axillary & rectal temperature | | -bowel sounds: absent | Definitive diagnosis: acute appendicitis | Therapeutic procedures: appendectomy Possible complications: perforation, necrosis, peritonitis Prognosis: Anceps | | | |
Report
Today we discussed the case of a 22-year-old white man who was in good health
prior to two days ago, when he began to have an abdominal pain. This pain was
sporadic and colicky in nature. It began in the epigastrium and has since
migrated to the right lower quadrant. The patient has had three episodes of
vomiting associated with the pain. He has been anorectic and feverish. He has
had no bowel movements for two days. He reported no diarrhea, coughing with
expectoration or shortness of breath. He has no past history or family history
of abdominal pain or any other disease. The pertinent physical findings are
related to the abdomen. There is extreme tenderness to palpation, especially
over McBurney's point. Guarding, muscle rigidity and rebound tenderness are all
present. Bowel sounds are absent. There is a difference between the axillary
and the rectal temperature. His urinalysis, hemoglobin and hematocrit are
within normal limits. Nevertheless, both white blood count and red rate are
elevated. His chest film is clear, but in the abdominal film we observed the
psoas line is absent.
Finally, we decided the definitive diagnosis is acute appendicitis. Among the
possible complications to consider are perforation, necrosis and peritonitis.
Therefore, the prognosis is anceps. The only possible treatment is surgical:
appendectomy.
Conclusion
As we have seen, there are numerous opportunities to help students develop
the skill of note-taking. Note-taking assists the listener, reader, or
observer in achieving a better understanding of what is presented, and it
facilitates recall of facts as well as oral and written expression. The
student's language level and the purpose which the notes are to serve will
determine the type of guidance the teacher must provide to help them to take
notes in class and later on the job.
Grammar games Competitive games Speed
Grammar: | Collocations with wide, narrow, and broad. | Level: | Intermediate to advanced | Time: | 15-20 minutes | Materials: | Three cards, with wide on one, narrow on the second and broad on the third |
Preparation
Prepare three large cards with wide on one, narrow on the second
and broad on the third.
In class
1. Clear as much space as you can in your classroom so that
students have access to all the walls and ask two students to act as
secretaries at the board. Steak each of your card on one of the other three
walls of the room. Ask the rest of the students to gather in the middle of
the space.
2. Tell the students that you’re going to read out sentences with a
word missing. If they think that the right word for that sentence is
wide they should rush over and touch the wide card. If
they think the word should be narrow or broad
they touch the respective card instead. Tell them that in some cases there are
two right answers (they choose either).
3. Tell the secretaries at the board to write down the correct
versions of the sentences in full as the game progresses.
4. Read out the first gapped sentence and have the students rush to
what they think is the appropriate wall. Give the correct versions and make
sure it goes up in the board. Continue with the second sentence etc.
5. At the end of the strenuous part ask the students to tale down
the sentences in their books. A relief from running! ( If the students want a
challenge they should get a partner and together write down as many sentences
as they remember with their backs to the board before turning round to
complete their notes. Or else have their partner to dictate the sentences
with a gap for them to try to complete.)
Sentences to read out
| They used a . angled lens | Wide | | He looked at her with a . smile | Broad | | The socialists won by a .. Margin | Narrow/broad | | She is very . minded | Broad/narrow | | He speaks the language with a . London accent | Broad | | You were wrong what you said was . of the mark | Wide | | You had a . escape | Narrow | | Of course they’re . open to criticism | Wide | | They went down the canal in a . boat | Narrow | | She opened her eyes . | Wide | | The news was broadcast nation . | Wide | | The path was three meters . | Wide | | The light was so bright that she . her eyes | Narrowed |
Variation
You can play this game with many sets of grammar exponents:
§ Forms of the article; a, the and zero article
§ Prepositions
Etc.
Cognitive games Spot the differences
Grammar: | Common mistakes | Level: | Elementary | Time: | 20-30 minutes | | This activity can be adapted for use with all levels |
|
Materials: | One copy of Late-comer A and Late-comer B for each student |
In class
1. Pair the students and give them the two texts. Ask them to spot
all the differences they can between them. Tell them that there may be more
than one pair of differences per pair of parallel sentences. Tell them one
item in each pair of alternatives is correct.
2. They are to choose the correct form from each pair.
Late-comer A | Late-comer B | | This women was often very late | This woman was often very late | | She was late for meetings | She was late for meeting | | She were late for dinners | She was late for dinners | | She was late when she went to the cinema | She was late as she went to the cinema | | One day she arrive for a meeting half an hour early | One day she arrived for meeting half ah hour early | | Nobody could understand because she was early | Nobody couldn’t understand why she was early | | ‘Of course,’ someone said, ‘clocks put back last night.’ | ‘Of course,’ someone say, ‘the clocks were put back last night.’ |
3. Ask them to dictate the correct text to you at the board. Write down
exactly what they say so students have a chance to correct each other both in
terms of grammar and in terms of their pronunciation. If a student pronounces
‘dis voman’ for ‘this woman’ then write up the wrong version. Only write it
correctly when the student pronounces it right. Your task in this exercise is
to allow the students to try out their hypotheses about sound and grammar
without putting them right too soon and so reducing their energy and blocking
their learning. Being too kind can be cognitively unkind.
Variation
To make this exercise more oral, pair the students and ask them to sit facing
each other. Give Later-comer A to one student and Late-comer B to the other
in each pair. They then have to do very detailed listening to each other’s
texts.
Feeling and grammar Typical questions
Grammar: | Question formation-varied interrogatives | Level: | Beginner to elementary | Time: | 20-30 minutes | Materials: | None |
In class
1. 
Ask the students to draw a quick sketch of a four-year-old they know well. Give
them these typical questions such a person may ask, e.g. ‘Mummy, does the moon
go for a wee-wee?’ ‘Where did I come from?’. Ask each student to write half a
dozen questions such a person might ask, writing them in speech bubbles on the
drawing. Go round and help with the grammar.
2. Get the students to fill the board with their most interesting
four-year-old questions.
Variations
This can be used with various question situations. The following examples
work well:
- Ask the students to imagine a court room-the prosecution barrister
is questioning a defense witness. Tell the students to write a dozen
questions the prosecution might ask.
- What kind of questions might a woman going to a foreign country
want to ask a woman friend living in this country about the man or the woman
in the country? And what might a man want to ask a man?
- What kind of questions are you shocked to be asked in an English-
speaking country and what questions are you surprised not to be asked?
Achievements
Grammar: | By+time-phrases Past perfect | This activity also works well with: present perfect+yet, like doing, like having done, and modals |
|
Level: | Lower intermediate | Time: | 20-30 minutes | Materials: | Set of prepared sentences |
Preparation
1. Think of your achievements in the period of your life that
corresponds to the average age of your class. If you’re teaching seventeen-
year-olds, pick your first seventeen years. Also think of a few of the times
when you were slow to achieve. Write the sentences about yourself like these:
By the age of six I had learnt to read.
I still hadn’t learnt to ride a bike by then.
I had got over my fear of water by the time I was eight.
By the time I was nine I had got the hang of riding a bike.
By thirteen I had read a mass of books.
I’d got over my fear of the dark by around ten.
2. Write ten to twelve sentences using the patterns above. If you’re
working in a culture that is anti-boasting then pick achievements that do not
make you stand out.
3. Your class will relate well to sentences that tell them something
new about you, as much as you feel comfortable telling them. Communication
works best when it’s for real.
In class
1. Ask the students to have two different colored pens ready. Tell
them you’re going to dictate sentences about yourself. They’re to take down
the sentences that are also true for them in one color and the sentences that
are not true about them in another color.
2. Put the students in fours to explain to each other which of your
sentences were also true of their lives.
3. Run a quick question and answer session round the groups e.g. ‘
At what age had you learnt to ski/dance/sing/ play table tennis etc by?’ ‘I’d
learnt to ski by seven.’
4. Ask each students to write a couple of fresh sentences about things
achieved by a certain date/time and come up and write them on a board. Wait
till the board is full, without correcting what they’re putting up. Now point
silently at problem sentences and get the students to correct them.
Variation
You can use the above activity for any area of grammar you want ti
personalize. You might write sentences about:
- Things you haven’t got round to doing (present perfect + yet)
- Things you like having done for you versus things you like doing
for yourself
- Things you ought to do and feel you can’t do (the whole modal
area is easily treated within this frame)
Reported advice
Grammar: | Modals and modals reported | Level: | Elementary to intermadiate | Time: | 15-20 minutes | Materials: | None |
In class
1. Divide your class into two groups: ‘problem people’ and ‘advice-
givers’.
2. Ask the ‘problem people’ to each think up a minor problem they have
and are willing to talk about.
3. Arm the ‘advice-givers’ with these suggestion forms:
You could. | You should. | You might as well. | You might. | You ought to. | You might try.ing. |
4. Get the class moving round the room. Tell each ‘problem person’ to
pair off with an ‘advice-giver’. The ‘problem person’ explains her problem
and the other person gives two bits of advice using the grammar suggested.
Each ‘problem person’ now moves to another ‘advice-giver’. The ‘problem
people’ get advice from five or six ‘advice-givers’
5. Call class back into the plenary. Ask some of the ‘problem people’
to state their problem and report to the whole group the best and the worst
piece of advice they were offered, naming the advice-giver e.g. ‘Juan was
telling me I should give her up.’ ‘ Jane suggested I ought to get a
girlfriend of hers to talk to her for me.’
Variation
If you have a classroom with space that allows it, form the students into two
concentric circles, the outer one facing in and the inner one facing out. All
the inner circle students are ‘advice-givers’ and all the outer circle
students are ‘problem people’. After each round, the outer circle people move
round three places. This is much more cohesive than the above.
Picture the past
Grammar: | Past simple, past perfect, future in the past | Level: | Lower intermediate | Time: | 20-40 minutes | Materials: | None |
Class
1. Ask three students to come out and help you demonstrate the
exercise. Draw a picture on the board of something interesting you have done.
Do not speak about it. Student A then writes a past simple sentence about it.
Student B write about what had already happened before the picture action and
student C about something that was going to happen, using the appropriate
grammar.
I got up at eight a.m.
I’ve just got off the bus
I’m going to work today
2. Put the students in fours. Each draws a picture of a real past action
of theirs. They pass their picture silently to a neighbor in the foursome who
adds a past tense sentence. Pass the picture again and each adds a past perfect
sentence. They pass again and each adds a was going to sentence. All
this is done in silence with you going round helping and correcting.
Impersonating members of a set
Grammar: | Present and past simple-active and passive | Level: | Elementary to intermediate | Time: | 20-30 minutes | Materials: | None |
In class
1. Ask people to brainstorm all the things they can think of that give
off light
2. Choose one of this yourself and become the thing chosen. Describe
yourself in around five to six sentences, e.g.:
I am a candle
I start very big and end up as nothig
My head is lit and I produce a flame
I burn down slowly
In some countries I am put on Christmas tree
I am old-fashioned and very fashionable
3. Ask a couple of other students to choose other light sourses and do
the same as you have just done. Help them with language. It could be ‘I am a
light bulb-I was invented by Edison.’
4. Group the students in sixes. Give them a new category. Ask them to
work silently, writing four or six forst-person sentences in role. Go round
and help especially with the formation of the present simple passive (when
this help is needed).
5. In their groups the students read out their sentences.
6. Ask each group to choose their six interesting sentences and then
read out to the whole group.
Variation
The exercise is sometimes more excitingif done with fairly abstract sets,
e.g. numbers between 50 and 149, musical notes, distances, weights. The
abstract nature of the set makes people concretise interestingly, e.g.:
I am a kilometre.
My son is a metre and my baby is centimetre.
On the motorway I am driven in 30 seconds. (120 kms. per hour)
We have also used these sets: types of stone/countries/items of clothing
(e.g.socks, skirts, jackets/times of day/smells/family roles (e.g.son, mother
etc.)/types of weather.
Rationale
The sentences students produce in this exercise are nor repeat runs of things
they have already thought and said in mother tongue. New standpoints, new
thoughts, new language. The English is fresh because the thought is.
Listening to people No backshift
Grammar: | Reported speech after past reporting verb | Level: | Elementary to lower intermediate | Time: | 15-20 minutes | Material: | None |
In class
1. Pair the students. Ask one person in each pair to prepare to speak
for two minutes about a pleasurable future event. Give them a minute to
prepare.
2. Ask the listener in each pair to prepare to give their whole
attention to the speaker. They are not to take notes. Ask the speaker in each
pair to get going. You time two minutes.
3. Pair the pairs. The two listeners now report on what they heard
using this kind of form:
She was telling me she’s going to Thailand for her holiday and
she added that she’ll be going by plane.
The speakers have the right to fill in things the listeners have left out but
only after the listeners have finished speaking.
4. The students go back into their original pairs and repeat the above
but this time with the other one as speaker, so everybody has been able to
share their future event thoughts.
Incomparable
Grammar: | Comparative structures | Level: | Elementary | Time: | 15-20 minutes | Materials: | None |
In class
1. Tell the students a bit about yourself by comparing yourself to
some people you know:
I’m more . than my husband.
I’m not as.as my eldest boy.
I reckon my uncle is . than me
Write six or seven of these sentences up on the board as a grammar pattern
input.
2. Tell the students to work in threes. Two of the three listen very
closely while the third compares herself to people she knows. The speakers
speak without interruption for 90 seconds and you time them.
3. The two listeners in each group feedback to the speaker exactly
what they had heard. If they miss things the speaker will want to prompt
them.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 so that everybody in the group has had a go at
producing a comparative self-portrait.
One question behind
Grammar: | Assorted interrogative forms | | You can adapt this by preparing your own question sets for different interrogative structures |
|
Level: | Beginner to intermediate | Time: | 5-10 minutes | Materials: | One question set for each pair of students |
In class
1. Demonstrate the exercise to your students. Get one of them to ask
you the question of a set. You answer ‘Mmmm’, with closed lips. The student
asks you the second question – you give the answer that would have been right
for the first question. The student asks the third question and you reply
with the answer to the second question, and so on. The wrong combination of
question and answer can be quite funny.
2. Pair the students and give each pair a question set. One student
fires the questions and the other gives delayed-by-one replies. The activity
is competitive. The first pair to finish a question set is the winner.
Question set A
Where do you sleep? (the other says nothing)
Where do you eat? (the other answers the first question)
Where do you go swimming?
Where do you wash your clothes?
Where do you read?
Where do you cook?
Where do you listen to music?
Where do you get angry?
Where do you do your shopping?
Where do you sometimes drive to?
Question set B
What do you eat your soup with?
What do you cut your meat with?
What do you write on?
What do you wipe your mouth with?
What do you blow your nose with?
What do you brush your hair with?
What do you sleep on?
What do you write with?
What do you wear in bed?
What do you wear in restaurant?
Question set C
Can you tell me something you ate last week?
Tell me something you saw last week?
Is there something you have come to appreciate recently?
What about something you really want to do next week?
Where have you spent most of this last week?
Where would you have you liked to spend this last week?
Where are you thinking of going on holiday?
Which is the best holiday place you have ever been to?
Variation 1
Have students devise their own sets of questions to then be used as above.
Variation 2
Group the students in fours: one acts as a ‘time-keeper’, one as a ‘question
master’ and person 3 and 4 are the ‘players’.
The ‘question master’ fires five rapid questions at player A which she has to
answer falsely. The ‘time-keeper’ notes the time questioning takes. The
‘question master’ fires five similar questions at B, who answers truthfully.
The quickest answerer wins. (The problem lies in choosing the right wrong
answer fast enough.)
Possible questions:
How old are you?
Where do you live?
Which color do you like best?
What time is it?
How did you get here?
What time did you get up today?
What did you have for breakfast?
Where does your best friend live?
What sort of music do you dislike?
How many brothers and sisters do you have?
Movement and grammar Sit down then
Grammar: | Who + simple past interrogative/Telling the time | Level: | Beginner to elementary | Time: | 10-20 minutes | Materials: | None |
In class
1. Ask everybody to stand up. Tell them you’re going to shout out
bedtimes. When they hear the time they went to bed yesterday, they shout ‘I
did’ and sit down. You start like this:
Who went to bed at two a.m.? | Who went to bed at quarter to two? | Who went to bed at ten to two? | Who went to bed at half past one? |
2. Continue until all the students have sat down.
3. Get people back on their feet. Ask one of the better students to
come out and run the same exercise but this time about when people got up,
e.g.
Who woke up at four thirty this morning?
Who woke up at twenty to five?
4. Repeat with a new question master but asking about shopping, e.g.:
Who went shopping yesterday?
Who went shopping on.(day of the week)
Only if
Grammar: | Polite requests, -ing participleOnly if + target verb structure of your choice | Level: | Elementary + | | This activity is particularly suitable for young learners |
|
Time: | 15-20 minutes | Materials: | None |
In class
1. Make or find as much space in your room as possible and ask the
class to stand at one end of it.
2. Explain that their end is one river bank and the opposite end of
the room is the other bank. Between is the ‘golden river’ and you’re the
‘keeper’ of the golden river. Before crossing the river the students have to
say the following sentence:
Can we cross your golden river sitting on your golden boat?
3. They need to be able to say this sentence reasonably fluently.
4. Get the students to say the sentence. You answer:
Only if you’re wearing.
Only if you’ve got.
Only if you’ve got . on you
5. Supposing you say ‘Only if you’re wearing trousers’. All the
students who wear trousers can ‘boat’ across the river without hindrance. The
others have to try to sneak across without being tagged by you. The first
person who is tagged, changes places with you and becomes ‘it’ (the keeper
who tags the others in the next round).
6. Continue with students saying ‘Can we cross your golden river,
sitting on your golden boat?’ ‘It’ might say, ‘Only if you’re wearing ear-
rings.’ etc.
Variation 1
To make this game more lively, instead of having just one keeper, everyone is
tagged becomes keeper. Repeat until everyone has been tagged.
Meaning and translation Two-word verbs
Grammar: | Compound verbs | Level: | Upper intermediate to advanced | Time: | 40-50 minutes | Materials: | One Mixed-up verb sheet per pair of students. The Jumbled sentences on a large separate piece of card |
In class
1. Pair the students and ask them to match the verbs on the mixed-up
verb sheet you give them. Tell them to use dictionaries and to call you over.
Be everywhere at once.
| Mixed-up verb sheet | Please match words from column 1 with words from column 2to form correct compound verbs. | | Column 1 | Column 2 | | back- | dry | | cross- | soap | | ghost- | treat | | soft- | write | | blow- | reference | | double- | cross | | ill- | dry | | spin- | comb | | | | cold- | manage | | double- | feed | | pooh- | read | | spoon- | pooh | | court- | glaze | | dry- | clean | | proof- | shoulder | | stage- | martial | | | | frog- | march | | wrong- | record | | toilet- | foot | | tape- | train | | short- | change | | rubber- | feed | | force- | stamp | | field- | test | | cross- | question | | cross- | examine | | cross- | check |
Key to first group of verbs:
To back-comb/to cross-reference/to ghost-write/to soft-soap/to blow-dry/to
double-cross/to ill-treat/to spin-dry
Key to the second group of verbs:
To cold-shoulder/to double-glaze/to pooh-pooh/to spoon-feed/to court-
martial/to dry-clean/to proof-read/to stage-manage
Key to third group of verbs
To frog-match/to wrong-foot/to toilet-train/to tape-record/to short-change/to
rubber-stamp/to force-feed/to field-test/to cross-question/to cross-
examine/to cross-check
2. Ask them to take a clean sheet of paper and a pen or pencil
suitable for drawing. Tell them you’re going to give them a few phrases to
illustrate. They’re to draw a situation that brings out the meaning of the
phrases. Here are the phrases – do not give them more than 30 seconds per
drawing (they will groan):
To toilet-train a child
To soft-soap a superior
To force-feed an anorexic
To court-martial a soldier
To back-comb a person’s hair
To cross-examine a witness
To spin-dry your clothes
To cold-shoulder a friend
3. Give them time to compare their drawings. The drawings often make
misunderstanding manifest.
4. Split the class into teams of four. Tell them you’re going to show
them Jumbled sentences (see below) and their task will be to shout out
the unjumbled sentence. The first team to shout out a correct sentence gets a
point.
Jumbled sentences
Will still can you and it it dry retain its spin shape
You can spin-dry it and it will still retain its shape
Cold him we shouldered first at
At first we cold-shouldered him
Our ill ancestors treated they
They ill-treated our ancestors
Clean it don’t dry
Don’t dry-clean it
Black frog they Maria to the marched him
They frog-marched him to the Black Maria
Double your windows glaze to like we’d
We’d like to double-glaze your windows
Pooh just his poohed offer they
They just pooh-poohed his offer
Don’t soap me you soft dare
Don’t you dare soft-soap me!
The world of take
Grammar: | Some basic meanings of the verb take | Level: | Intermediate to advanced | Time: | 40-50 minutes | Materials: | Set of sentences below (for dictation) |
In class
1. Put the students in small groups to brainstorm all the uses of the
verb take they can think of.
2. Ask each group to send a messenger to the next group to pass on
their ideas.
3. Dictate the sentences below which they are to write down in their
mother tongue. Tell them only to write in mother tongue, not English. Be
ready to help explain any sentences that students do not understand.
The new president took over in January.
The man took the woman’s anger seriously.
‘You haven’t done the washing up, I take it,’ his wife said to him.
The little boy took the old watch apart to see how it worked.
‘I think we ought to take the car,’ he said to her.
This bloke always takes his problems to his mother.
‘We took the village without a shot being fired,’ she told him.
‘Take care’ the woman said, as she left home that morning.
He took charge of the planning team.
The woman asked what size shoes he took.
‘Yes I really take your point’ he told her.
‘If we go to a movie,’ she told her boyfriend, ‘it’ll really take you out of
yourself.’
The news the boy brought really took the woman aback.
The chair asked him to take the minutes of the meeting.
‘You can take it from me, it’s worse than you think’
4. Ask the students to work in threes and compare their translations.
Go round helping and checking.
5. Check that they’re clear about the usual direct translation of take
into their language. Now ask them to mark all the translations where take is
not rendered by its direct equivalent.
Problem Solving A dictionary game
Grammar: | Comparatives, it (referring back) | Level: | Elementary (or as a review at higher levels) | | This activity provides good skills practice in scan reading a dictionary |
|
Time: | 45 minutes | Materials: | One dictionary per two students |
Preparation
On the board write the following:
Abcdifghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
It’s got more letters than.
It’s got fewer letters than.
It’s the same length as..
It’s earlier in the dictionary than.
It’s later in the dictionary than.
It’s further on.
Back a bit.
The first letter’s right
The first two/three/four letters are right
(or you could dictate this to the students if you want a quiet settling in
period at the start of the class)
In class
1. Explain to the students that you’re going out of the room for a
short time and they’re to select one word for you to guess when you come
back. They find the word in their dictionaries.
2. Go back in and have a first wild guess at the class’s word. The
students should tell you whether their word is longer, shorter or the same
length as your guess and whether it’s earlier or later in the dictionary.
Here is an example (teachers can correct pronunciation as they go along ):
| teacher: | Middle | | students: | It’s shorter. And it’s later in the dictionary. | | teacher: | Train. | | students: | It’s Earlier. It’s Got The Same Number Of Letters. | | teacher: | Plane. | | students: | It’s Later. | | teacher: | Rains. | | students: | It’s Later. It’s Got The Same Number Of Letters. | | teacher: | Seat. | | students: | It’s Longer.The First Letter Is Right. It’s Later In The Dictionary. | | teacher: | Stops. | | students: | It’s Earlier. | | teacher: | Skirt. | | students: | It’s Later | | teacher: | Spend. | | students: | The First Two Letters Are Right. It’s Later. | | teacher: | Spine. | | students: | It’s Later. | | teacher: | Spore. | | students: | The First Four Letters Are Right. You’re Really Warm Now. It’s A Bit Further On. | | teacher: | Sport. | | students: | Yes. |
3. You can write the words you guess and notes of the students’ answers
on the board as you go along, to help you to remember where you are. At the
beginning, you can prompt the students by asking questions such as ‘Is it
shorter, longer or the same length as my word? Is it earlier or later in the
dictionary?’ etc.
4. When the students have got the idea of the game, reverse the
process; you think of a word (one from a recent lesson works well) and
students guess. You give them information as to length, place in dictionary
and any letters they’ve guessed right.
5. Now hand over the exercise to the students. They should scan their
notes, textbooks and /or minds (but not dictionaries) and create a short
wordlist. Then in pairs or small groups they can repeat the activity.
Rationale
This is a good game for teaching scan reading and alphabetical order when using
dictionaries. The revision or introduction of the grammatical structures in a
meaningful context is disguised since the students usually see this is
vocabulary game. Because it has a pretty tight structure and build-up, it’s
a good exercise for establishing the principle of group/pairwork with a class
that does not take readily to working in different formats.
Note
With some classes we have asked the students to analyze their own guessing
processes. Some students have written interesting short compositions on the
best guessing strategies.
Eyes
Grammar: | ‘Second’ conditional | Level: | Lower to upper intermediate | Time: | 30-45 minutes | Materials: | None |
In class
1. Ask a student to draw a head in profile on the board. Ask the
student to add eyes in the back of his head.
2. Give the students this sentence beginning on the board and ask them
to complete it using a grammar suggested:
If people had eyes in the back of their heads, then they .
would/might/could/would have to . (+ infinitive)
For example:
‘If people had eyes on the back of their heads they could read two books at
once’ (so two pairs of eyes).
3. Tell the students to write the above sentence stem at the top of
their paper and then complete it with fifteen separate ideas. Encourage the
use of dictionaries. Help students all you can with vocabulary and go round
checking and correcting.
4. Once students have all written a good number of sentences (at least
ten) ask them to form teams of four. In the fours they read each other’s
sentences and pick the four most interesting ones.
5. Each team puts their four best sentences on the board.
6. The students come up to the board and tick the two sentences they
find the most interesting. The team that gets the most ticks wins.
Note
Students come up with a good range of social, medical and other hypotheses.
Here are some examples:
. then they would not need driving mirrors.
. they would make really good traffic wardens.
. then you could kiss someone while looking away!
Umbrella
Grammar: | Modals and present simple | Level: | Elementary to intermediate | Time: | 30-40 minutes | Materials: | One large sheet of paper per student |
In class
1.  Ask a
student to draw a picture on the board of a person holding an umbrella. The
umbrella looks like this.
2. Explain to the class that this ‘tulip-like’ umbrella design is a
new, experimental one.
3. Ask the students to work in small groups and brainstorm all the
advantages and disadvantages of a new design. Ask them to use these sentence
stems:
It/you can/can’t.
It/you + present simple.
It/you will/won’t.
It/you may/may not.
4. For example: ‘It is easy to control in a high wind’, ‘You can see
where you’re going with this umbrella’
5. Give the students large sheets of paper and ask them to list the
advantages and disadvantages in two columns.
6. Ask the students to move around the room and read each other’s
papers. Individually they mark each idea as ‘good’, ‘bad’ or ‘intriguing’.
7. Ask the student how many advantages they came up with and how many
disadvantages. Ask the students to divide up into three groups according to
which statement applies to them:
I thought mainly of advantages.
I thought of some of both.
I thought mainly of disadvantages.
8. Ask the three groups to come up with five to ten adjectives to
describe their group state of mind and put these up n the board.
9. Round off the exercise by telling the class that when de Bono asked
different groups of people to do this kind of exercise, it turned out that
primary school children mostly saw advantages, business people had plenty of
both while groups of teachers were the most negative.
Note
Advantages the students offered:
In a hot country you can collect rain water.
It won’t drip round the edges.
You can use it for carrying shopping.
It’s not dangerous in a crowd.
It’s an optimistic umbrella.
It’s easy to hold if two people are walking together.
With this umbrella you’ll look special.
It’ll take less floor space to dry.
This umbrella makes people communicate. They can see each other.
You can paint this umbrella to look like a flower.
You’ll get a free supply of ice if it hails.
Presentation Listening to time
Grammar: | Time phrases | | You can use this idea to practice a variety of different structures-see variations bellow for some examples |
|
Level: | Upper intermediate to very advanced | Time: | 40-50 minutes | Materials | None |
Preparation
Invite a native speaker to your class, preferably not a language teacher as
they sometimes distort their speech. Ask the person to speak about a topic
that has them move through time. This could be his country history. The talk
should last around twenty minutes. Explain to the speaker that the students
will be paying close attention not only to the content but to the language
form, too.
In class
1. Before the speaker arrives, explain to the students that they are
to jot down all the words and phrases they hear that express time. They don't
need to note all the words!
2. Welcome the speaker and introduce the topic.
3. The speaker takes the floor for fifteen to twenty minutes and you
join the students in taking language notes. If there are questions from the
students, make sure people continue to take notes during the questioning.
4. Put the students in threes to compare their time-phrase notes.
Suggest the speaker joins one of the groups. Some natives are delighted to
look in a ‘speech mirror’.
5. Share your own notes with the class. Round off the lesson by
picking out other useful and normal bits of language the speaker used that
are not yet part of your student’s idiolects.
Example
One speaker mentioned above produced these time words: only about ten
years/there was a gap of nine years/ at roughly the same time/over the next
few hundred years/from 1910 until the present day/it’s been way back/ within
eighteen month there will be/until three years ago/when I was back in September
Variations
Choose the speaker who is about to go off on an important trip. In speaking
about this, some of the verbs used will be in a variety of forms used to talk
about the future.
Invite someone to speak about the life and habits of someone significant to
them, but two lives separately from them, say a grandparent. This topic is
likely to evoke a rich mixture of present simple, present continuos, will
used to describe habitual events, ‘ll be –ing etc.
Note
To invite the learners to pick specific grammar features out of a stream of
live speech is a powerful form of grammar presentation. In this technique the
students ‘present’ the grammar to themselves. They go through a process of
realization which is lot stronger than what often happens in their minds
during the type of ‘grammar presentation’ required of trainees on many
teacher training courses. During the realization process, they are usually
not asleep.
Guess my grammar
Grammar: | Varied+question form | Level: | Elementary to intermediate | Time: | 55 minutes | Materials | None |
In class
1. Choose a grammar area the students need to review. In the example
below there are adjectives, adverbs and relative pronouns.
2. Ask each student to work alone and write a sentence of 12-16 words
(the exact length is not too important). Each sentence should contain an
adjective, and adverb and a relative pronoun, or whatever grammar you’ve
chosen to practise. For example: ‘She sat quietly by the golden river that
stretched to the sea’.
3. Now ask the students to rewrite their sentences on a separate piece
of paper, leaving in the target grammar and any punctuation, but leaving the
rest as blanks, one dash for each letter. The sentence above would look like
this:
--- --- quietly -- --- golden ----- that --------- -- --- ---.
While they are doing this ask any students who are not sure of the
correctness of their sentence to check with you.
4. Now ask the students to draw a picture or pictures which illustrate
as much of the meaning of the sentence as possible.
5. As students finish drawing, put them into groups of three. One person
shows the blanked sentence and the drawing, reserving their original sentence
for their own reference. The other should guess: ‘ Is the first word the
?’ or ask questions ‘Is the second word a verb?’ etc. The student should only
answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’. As they guess the words, they fill in the blanks.
6. They continue until all the blanks are filled and then they do the
other two person’s sentences.
Note
Groups tend to finish this activity at widely different speeds. If a couple
of groups finish early, pair them across the groups, ask them to rub out the
completed blanked out sentences and try them on a new partner.
Acknowledgement
Ian Jasper originated this exercise. He’s a co-author of Teacher
Development: One group’s experience, edited by Janie Rees Miller.
Puzzle stories
Grammar: | Simple present and simple past interrogative forms | Level: | Beginners | Time: | 30 minutes | Materials: | Puzzle story(to be written on the board) |
Preparation
Ask a couple of students from an advanced class to come to your beginners
group. Explain that they will have some interesting interpreting to do.
In class
1. Introduce the interpreters to your class and welcome them.
2. Write this puzzle story on the board in English. Leave good spaces
between the lines :
There were three people in the room.
A man spoke.
There was a short pause.
The second man spoke.
The woman jumped up and slapped the first man in the face.
3. Ask one of the beginners to come to the board and underline the
words they know. Ask others to come and underline the ones they know. Tell
the group the words none of them know. Ask one of the interpreters to write a
translation into mother tongue. The translation should come under the
respective line of English.
4. Tell the students their task is to find out why the woman slapped
the first man. They are to ask questions that you can answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
Tell them they can try and make questions directly in English, or they can
call the interpreter and ask the questions in their mother tongue. The
interpreter will whisper the English in their ear and they then ask you in
English.
5. Erase the mother tongue translation of the story from the board.
6. One of the interpreters moves round the room interpreting questions
while the other stays at the board and writes up the questions in both
English and mother tongue.
7. You should aim to let the class ask about 15-25 questions, more
will overload them linguistically. To speed the process up you should give
them clues.
8. Finally, have the students copy all the questions written on the
board into their books. You now have a presentation of the main interrogative
forms of the simple present and past.
9. After the lesson go through any problems the interpreters had-offer
them plenty of parallel translation.
The solution
The second man was an interpreter.
Further material
Do you know the one about the seven-year-old who went to the baker’s? His Mum
had told him to get three loaves. He went in, bought two and came home. He put
them on the kitchen table. He ran back to the backer’s and bought a third. He
rushed in and put the third one on the kitchen table. The question: Why?
Solution: he had a speech defect and couldn’t say ‘th’.
Word order dictation
Grammar: | Word order at sentence levelThe grammar you decide to input in this example: reflexive phrases, e.g. to myself/by myself/in myself | Level: | Intermediate | Time: | 20-30 minutes | Materials: | Jumbled extracts (for dictation) One copy of Extract from Sarah’s letter per pair of students |
In class
1. Pair the students and ask one person in each pair to prepare to
write on a loose sheet of paper.
2. Dictate the first sentence from the Jumbled extracts. One
person in each pair takes it down.
3. Ask the pairs to rewrite the jumbled words into a meaningful
sentence, using all the words and putting in necessary punctuation.
4. Tell the pairs to pass their papers to the right. The pairs
receiving their neighbours’ sentences check out grammar and spelling,
correcting where necessary.
5. Dictate the second jumbled sentence.
6. Repeat steps 3 and 4.
7. When you’ve dictated all the sentences this way give out the original,
unjumbled Extract from Sarah’s letter and ask the students to compare
with the sentences they’ve got in front of them. They may sometimes have
created excellent, viable alternative sentences.
Jumbled extracts
1. Myself in absorbed more and more becoming am I find I
2. When mix I do other people me inside a confusion have I I find
3. David John and Nick as though I am me I do not feel when I walk
through the park with
4. Strange seems it and a role acting am I like feel I
5. Walk park myself talk aloud myself to I by the through I when
6. Completely feel content I
Extract from Sarah’s letter
I find I am becoming more and more absorbed in myself.
When I do mix with other people I find I have a confusion inside me.
When I walk through the park with David, John and Nick, I do not feel as
though I am me.
I feel like I am acting a role and it seems strange.
When I walk through the park by myself I talk aloud to myself.
I feel completely content.
Grammar lessons Taking notes
 Passive voice
During the lecture ask the students to note cases when we use passive:
1. In more formal contexts than active sentences.
For example: Your attention is drawn to Paragraph 6. (But note that using
got, usually makes the sentence less formal, for example: We got beaten.They
got married.)
2. when the agent is not clear.
For example: Their office was burgled.
3. or not important
For example: This cake was made from carrots.
4. or obvious
For example: They were all arrested.
5. to give emphasis to the passive subject and add weight to the message.
For example: A state of emergency has been declared.
6. to make our message more impersonal.
For example, as in a letter saying: No police action will be taken.
Read the following newspaper article and ask the students to:
§ note down the six verbs that are in the passive
§ suggest a possible reason for the use of the passive in this article.
ORCHESTRA'S SCHOOLS BOOST Schools and community groups will be the winners if the world famous Philharmonia comes to town. Negotiations are still under way to make Bedford the orchestra's first British residency outside London beginning in 1995, it has been confirmed. What is being talked about is a strong educational emphasis on the deal, which would see members of the orchestra travelling into the community doing workshops with school and other local groups in the borough. School children will be invited in to the Corn Exchange for afternoon rehearsals of the main concerts to be staged. Massive alterations to the Corn Exchange are being planned in tandem so that the orchestra, which was formed in 1945, and the audiences watching them, will enjoy superior back and frontstage facilities including new sloped seating going from the stage to the present balcony and a new auditorium. |
Comment
1. The six verbs in the passive are:
a. it has been confirmed
b. What is being talked about
c. School children will be invited
d. the main concerts to be staged
e. Massive alterations to the Corn Exchange are being planned
f. which was formed.
(Notice that there are five different forms of the verb be in these sentences.)
2. The reason for so much use of the passive here could be that the events
which have occurred and those which are planned are more important than the
people behind them. It is also an informative article in a newspaper so that
some formality is more appropriate than it would be in a friendly letter or
in conversation.
Context and meaning
Lecture We'll turn now from context and grammar to the importance
of context for meaning. One aspect of meaning is the extent of meaning that a
word has. Imagine you are asked the meaning of the word chair. What do you say?
'It's something you sit on', perhaps.What we need to know are the boundaries of
its use. Can you say chair for what you sit on in a train? In a car? When
milking? On a bike? In church? Suddenly all sorts of judgements have to be made
about whether you are going to introduce related words like bench, stool, pew,
seat, armchair.
So a simple question about a simple object leads into questions about its
use, and also what it must look like. Must a chair have a back? Legs? Arms?
This is important because although you may be able to translate chair, its
full range of meaning will never overlap 100% with its equivalent in another
language.
Now close your eyes and think white. If that's all I say, you are likely to
think of the colour white, perhaps on a wall or a shirt or paper. But if I
say white wine, you'll think of a yellow colour, or white people, a pinkish
colour, or a white lie, no colour at all. Clearly then, the meaning of words
often depends on the context.
In what different contexts could the speaker encountere these words? See if you can find at least two different contexts for each. wings right-winger term rate bar |
Comment
Some of the possible contexts for these words are:
wings: theatre, bird or car
right-winger: football or politics
term: language, school or maths
rate: currency exchange, tax on housing, or speed of increase/decrease
bar: law, music or drinking.
You have just been thinking about different areas of meaning for the same
word. Sometimes these different areas depend on shared cultural assumptions
and usage. An example of this is a British Rail poster advertising their
Family Railcard, depicting a jungle with some monkeys playing in the trees.
The text under this poster reads:
Grown-ups get 25% off rail fares. Your little monkeys go for only £1.00. Don't drag your feet (or your knuckles). A family Railcard only costs 20 for a year swing by and pick up a leaflet from any main British Rail Station. |
Note different meanings of the words used here and their sense.
Comment
You would first need to establish that the usual meaning of all the words was
understood and then explain that monkeys can be used to refer to children in
English, that it carries the idea of naughtiness but that it's used
affectionately. To explain knuckles, you would have to refer to (or
demonstrate) how monkeys move, using their knuckles, and explain that
knuckles is substituting for the word feet in the phrase 'drag your feet'.
You would need to take the same approach to 'swing by'. It might be wise to
point out that the use of this sort of language can change quite quickly and
could become unfashionable in, say, ten years' time.
2. AAn advertisement for Remy Martin Champagne Cognac uses three sentences suggesting that the consumers of the product are very special. I have changed one word in each to produce unusual collocations. Identify the word and replace it with a word that collocates better. Ask another person and see if they agree with you. HAVE YOU EVER CREWED A YACHT BEYOND THE VISION OF LAND? HAVE YOU EVER THROWN A BARBECUE THAT FRIENDS STILL TALK ABOUT? HAVE YOU EVER RECEIVED STANDING APPLAUSE? |
Comment
2. You should have suggested:
a. vision: sight (vision doesn't collocate with land)
b. barbecue: party (barbecue doesn't collocate with throw)
c. applause: a (standing) ovation (applause doesn't
collocate with standing)
(Note that we need to add the indefinite article a, because ovation is a
count noun whereas applause is not.)
Bottom of Form 1
Subject matter lessons Taking notes
ü The learners are watching a recorded university lecture on acid
rain. They are taking notes and will write a summary of the content, using
dictionaries (bilingual and monolingual as appropriate). Earlier the teacher
had elicited from them some of the key words used in the lecture, their meaning
and usage, and listed them on the board.
ü Small groups of learners are trying to match some cut-out newspaper
headlines with the relevant articles. The teacher is going round monitoring
each group. Earlier they listened to, discussed and noted some news items on
the radio which introduced some of the vocabulary they are encountering.
ü Individual learners are scattered about outside the classroom asking
people pre-prepared questions about their opinions on a new sports centre that
is proposed in the area. They are talking in the interviewees' mother tongue,
and will then report their findings to the rest of the class in English with
the rest of the students taking notes on the matter they present.
ü Half the class are reading about the early life of a writer they
have chosen to study. The other half are reading about the same writer's later
life. They make notes of what they had learnt about unknown part of writer’s
life.In pairs they'll tell each other what they have found out and then they'll
each write an obituary.
ü In small groups, the learners are looking at examples of different
types of text. Their aim is to identify what they are and note any differences
in style, formality, length, print-size, comprehensibility, grammar patterns,
etc. The examples include: a recipe, a newspaper article, computer
instructions, diary entries, an extract from a novel, a letter to some English
friends.
Conclusion
Each of the two methods has its own advantages and disadvantages and their
aims are quite different, that’s why I included them both in this single work.
Games help students to relax, entertain and encourage them and help to develop
their communicative competence, while note-taking is a very serious work
demanding an amount of concentration and developing and writing practice. Both
of them are to be used in a write time and in a write place. For some students
games are a bit unserious while the other part of students may find note-taking
too fatiguing so the teacher must take into account all these points. All in
all with all these spots to think over I find them necessary in teacher’s work.
While some of the methods are let be omitted by the teacher (like silent way,
synthetic or analytic (every teacher choose his own way to work with students))
the two of these in my opinion must be included in the learning process. They
act like general concepts giving you a full lenth of technics to apply within
one method. They don’t give strict directions of how to apply them but a wide
space for creative work.
References
· French Allen, V. 1983. Techniques in teaching vocabulary. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
· Gear, J. and R. Gear. 1988. Incongruous visuals for the EFL
classroom. English Teaching Forum, 26, 2. pp.43.
· Vocabulary picture puzzle. English Teaching Forum, 23, 4, pp. 41-42.
Gulland, D. M. and D. Hinds-Howell. 1986. The penguin dictionary of English
idioms. London: Penguin Books Ltd.
· Haycraft, J. 1978. An introduction to English language teaching.
Harlow: Longman.
· Hubbard, P., H. Jones, B. Thornton, and R. Wheeler. 1983. A training
course for TEFL. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
· Lee, W. R. 1979. Language teaching games and contests. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
· Rixon, S. 1981. How to use games in language teaching. London:
Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
· Mario Rinvolucri and Paul Davis.1992. More grammar games. Cambridge
University Press.
· Abbott, G., D. McKeating, J. Greenwood, and P. Wingard. 1981. The
teaching of English as an international language. A practical guide. London:
Collins.
· Raimes, A. 1983. Techniques in teaching writing. New York: Oxford
University Press.
· Games, Games, Games ( a Woodcraft Folk handbook sold in Oxfam shops
in UK)
· Berer, Marge and Frank, Christine and Rinvolucri, Mario. Challenge
to think. Oxford University Press, 1982.
Internet Key
· http://search.atomz.com/
· http://e.usia.gov/forum/vols/vol36/no1/p20.htm-games
· http://e.usia.gov/forum/vols/vol34/no2/p22.htm-note-taking
Ñòðàíèöû: 1, 2
|
|
