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QUESTION
AND ANSWER SESSION
Date:
23 May, 2005
1. How can we tackle the problem of
students who are making the same mistakes time and time again?
These kind of in-grained mistakes are often called
fossilised mistakes and can be caused by such things as strong mother tongue
interference, laziness or just bad teaching.
So how can we make students hear the error and internalise
the correct form?
One suggestion was to tell teenage or university students
that "this way of speaking is not cool, not hip! Yes, maybe you don't
think it's important, but a foreigner will definitely see you as sounding
uncool and old fashioned."
For business people you can tell them that such an error
sounds very uneducated, a bit like a country bumpkin!
The above can also be used when students are using formal
or stilted language they have learnt from their course book. It seems that
Chinese students consider the course book as the bible, following the written
word as the rule. In addition it maybe the case that their teachers world
knowledge is also limited, and the teacher may be reluctant to change their
old methods of teaching. In this case, one idea is for the teacher to change,
or supplement, the course book with more up-dated dialogues that are more
authentic........
2. Should we adapt to student's
learning method (often seen as traditional and ineffective for improving
speaking skills), or should we push students to adapt to our method of
teaching?
Foreign teachers are often frustrated in their attempts to
teach the communicative method to Chinese students and wonder if they should
just throw in the towel, and let them continue learning the way the always
have. The traditional approach is very much a grammar-translation approach or
audio-lingual (listen to a dialogue, write it out, analyse every word, then
learn it by heart from the written word! not the spoken word).
One suggestion is bring the students over slowly. Like a
door wedge, start with mainly familiar activities and a few new, maybe
uncomfortable, ones. Over the course, reduce familiar activities and
gradually increase the number of new ones.
Another idea is to get key, influential students on to
your side. If you can get them to follow your method, the others will follow
more easily. This can happen at a general level, or even in pair work by
putting the key players with weaker or more reticent students.
Or, how about just not letting students write, throw the
pens away!
Another way is to use the traditional schooling method to
our advantage. For example, students are exam oriented. One teacher first,
had students learn some key vocabulary from their course, actually a course
based on film studies. They then had to listen to and watch a documentary on
the same topic, film making (in this case, "Looking for Richard the
Third", by Al Pacino) and write down all the key vocabulary (that they
have learnt and should know) that they heard in the documentary. This was an
unconventional test to get students to stop reading and to start listening.
It had impressive results.
3. Is the test a good way to motivate
students?
If it works, yes, why not?
If you can ensure it has a positive backwash (i.e. a good
influence on their learning behaviour and attitude), yes.
4. I would like to know different ways
of using authentic texts in the classroom.
Some teachers have taken poems and scripts, even
Shakespeare, and re-written them to make them easier and more accessible for
students.
One group re- watched an extract form Romeo and Juliet,
read the simplified script, compared it with the original and then re-
enacted the scene.
Some teachers used travel articles as a platform for task
work.
Electronic articles can be compared to hard copy ones to
find out the differences, and focus on how reading from the Worldwide Web is
quite different from reading hard copies (e.g. newspapers or adverts).
Newspaper stories can be used, by asking students to read
them and put the events in chronological order. Also, the teacher can write
out some sentences that different people in the story may have said and
students guess who said what.
Read an authentic text aloud. Practice and drill
pronunciation with students. Then, ask one student to come out and read the
text simultaneously with you, the teacher. Everyone can hear student's
pronunciation alongside the teacher's. It has a tremendous ability to focus
students on the differences in pronunciation. Also, it can help student's
relate pauses to punctuation.
5. How can we teach definite and
indefinite articles?
Make a game out of it.
Show students the misunderstanding they may have communicated
by their mistake. E.g.
T: "Tell me something you don't like"
St: "I don't like the war!"
T: "Really, which one?"
Tell them, if in doubt, put an article. The chances are
you will be right a lot more often than not!
Compare 2 similar sentences and analyse the difference.
E.g. He's at university / He's at the university.
Students each have a sentence, some are about general
ideas (war, dogs) and others about specific ones (the war, the dogs) The
class is divided into 2 groups, one group accepts specific sentences and one
accepts general sentences. Students have to go to their corresponding group
(according to their sentence). Groups have to discuss the sentences and allow
appropriate students to join their group or not. The idea is for students to
become aware of grammar and argue about it!
Another popular game is the grammar auction (actually can
be used for any grammar point). The idea is for the teacher to prepare a list
of sentences, focussing on the grammar point in question, but some are
correct, some incorrect. Students are given the list of items and 1000 rmb to
spend.
In pairs, they discuss the "credibility" of each
sentence and decide which they'd like to bid for and try to buy. The idea is
to buy as many correct ones as possible. The teacher reveals which are correct
at the end of the game.
An interesting twist on this game is to say correct
sentences give a 50% return on investment (ROI). So if it cost you 200 yuan,
and it was correct, it rises in value to 400 yuan! Similarly, incorrect sentences
lose 50% of their value.
Following this game, students can then go mining for gold
by finding examples of correct structures in authentic reading materials
(newspaper articles, etc.). Each sentence they find raises their ROI.
Likewise they can write some sentences with this structure and each one
raises their ROI.
This analogy of grammar and growing wealth just may appeal
to some students. You could even push the boat out and extend the game to
future options!
6. How can we teach prepositions?
Following multiple intelligence theory, teachers can reach
more learners by calling on as many intelligences as possible. One idea here
is to use symbols to represent different prepositions. These can be used in
texts and help students make the connection.
For example, (X) is IN, X(X)X is AMONG, ^ is UNDER, >
is TO, < is FROM
.) is AT, and so on....use your own creativity, or get
students to make their own.
7. How can we present grammar visually?
The idea of symbols lead us on to the following idea.
One teacher presents grammar via symbols. For example,
subjects are represented by a triangle, verbs by an oval ( a 1 in the oval is
present tense, a 2 is past and +ing is a gerund, etc.), nouns by a square,
objects by an inverted triangle and so on. Sentences are analysed in this way
and then students make new sentences and do analysis with the same symbols.
Correction can be done by silently pointing at correct symbols, (the Silent
Way). This exercise raises awareness of sentence structure enormously and
improves accuracy.
8. I have a boss in my business class
who will only speak to me, how can I get him to interact with other students?
Get him to work as one of a pair, then have that pair work
with another pair.
Have him be the "Vocabulary expert" or
"Grammar expert" and have him monitor others and report back on
other students mistakes.
Use Mill Drills. This is similar to a mingle, but every
student has to ask just one question to every other student as the walk
around the class.
Reward pair work! (give good pairs a small gift)
Give praise and responsibility (make him an organiser of
project work)
If you use buzz groups, make him the mover, the one to
collect ideas from other groups. He can also report back and present these
ideas to the whole group.
Set pair homework, such as prepare a dialogue in pairs,
and have him and his partner be the first to present in the next class. If he
refuses to perform, you don't begin the class until the performance is done.
One teacher used to threaten students who didn't cooperate
by making them sing London Bridge aloud, whilst sitting in a silly pose! (The
song was pre-taught). If students refused, the teacher would refuse to
continue. The bizarre thing was that at the end of the class, all the
students wanted to sing the song together, sat in the silly posture!
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