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TEACHING
ADVANCED LEARNERS
4th July, 2005
TEACHING
ADVANCED LEARNERS
This meeting was a workshop-type
meeting where all participants contributed to a brainstorming session on
teaching advanced learners.
Our ideas came out of looking at
three examples of published material aimed at Upper-Intermediate and Advanced
level students:
Cutting
Edge Upper Intermediate by Cunningham and Moor -Longman pages 44 and 45. This material had
a grammar focus -passives but was multi-skilled in that it incorporated
reading, listening and speaking skills.
Business Vocabulary in Use Advanced by Bill Mascull -Cambridge page
54 and 55 This material, as the title suggests, is vocabulary based although
the longish texts render themselves as a useful source of reading training
and practice.
Focus on Advanced English C.A.E. by Sue O'Donnell -Longman page 69 and 70.
The material chosen here is reading training material aimed at students
training to take the CAE exam -it focuses on the core reading skills of
skimming and scanning.
We all looked at the different
material, each of which focussed on a different areas, the first being
grammar, the second vocabulary and the third reading.
Everybody thought that the Cutting
Edge material on grammar may turn off more students than it motivates because of the grammar
focus. If we proffer a grammar-focused lesson to advanced students we would
get the response we've done this a thousand times already!
It was acknowledged though that the material did have benefits as it provides
a natural context in which the passive is used and also provides alternatives
for spoken English as the passive is usually used in the written form. It
also provides advanced learners with guidance on when and why to use the
passive which is not normally explored in lower level materials. This will
need to be pointed out to the students to motivate them before embarking on
the activities.
The biggest fault with the material was that its focus was on general English
and most advanced students in Beijing are business English students.
The
Business Vocabulary in Use Advanced material (Unit 23 -Customer Satisfaction)
got a much more enthusiastic response as the content would be stimulating and
would motivate the average Chinese advanced learner. We all thought the way
vocabulary was presented, showing collocation and as part of fixed phrases,
was very appealing. The presentation of the material as part of a lexical set
would help extend the learners’ vocabulary beyond what was minimally needed
to express their thoughts and would also help them to be precise with
meaning.
It was noted how range of vocabulary and deep understanding of the nuances of
meaning affect all the four skills; listening, reading, writing and speaking.
The last piece of material was a
reading training activity from Sue O'Donell's book. We all thought this was a
very good example of thorough reading training and something which Chinese
students often badly need. We all agreed that a focus on teaching (and not
merely practising or testing) skills was something which many students needed
to bring them past the intermediate level. Something related to this was
teaching advanced students the strategies for deciding how to read which text
based on the genre of the text and the reason for reading. We all agreed that
teaching these skills and how and when to apply them would help learners
reach native speaker level proficiency in reading (vocabulary issues aside).
A similar note in relation to style and genre was touched on in relation to
writing. We need to teach advanced students how to write in a broad range of
genres beyond the usual story or academic composition. Indeed, whether it be
reading, writing, listening or speaking, the definition of an advanced
student is one who not only has a broad and accurate vocabulary and grammar
but is also one who posses a strong ability in the four skills and we need to
focus our attention on these.
Conclusions
The group came to several conclusions
about teaching advanced Chinese students:
Who
are they?
- Advanced learners in China
want to continue to learn English purely for practical reasons: business
-this is in contrast with Europe where cultural or personal
developmental reasons play a bigger role.
What
challenges do they offer us?
- We need to show the
students that we are not wasting their time by teaching them something
they already know or asking them to practise something they can already
do proficiently. We need to show then that we can help them make
progress.
- We need to make our
materials and lessons as interesting and motivating as possible to keep
their attention. Lower level learners are happy to work with almost
anything because they derive pleasure just from being able to use English.
Advanced students don't
What
do Chinese Advanced students generally need?
- How to be precise when
using language (vocabulary and grammar)
- An understanding in the
stylistic and genre-based choices of using grammar items (such as the
passive).
- A balance of abilities
across the four skills
- A focus on vocabulary to
bring them beyond saying "this is very
nice"
to "this is gorgeous" etc.
- Most important of all
-Advanced learners need to see progress in their ability to operate in
English.
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