Who’s afraid of the Skills Wolf?

Hot tips for students of different ages and levels and their worried teachers

Who has not been afraid of not delivering interactive classes? Who has not been frightened of not providing the appropriate practice for the four skills? Who has not observed problems with the development of the different skills? Do not panic since you will get some advice.

The development of the four macro skills has been the focus of attention of many worried teachers who may feel exhausted at trying not to fall and be caught inside a one skill hole.

Regrettably, it is common to hear teachers arguing that they ask students to do written exercises due to the fact they can control their large classes and ensure they are all working. This undesirable situation can be reverted with serious reflection and careful planning, thus, some practical ideas will be rendered in order to challenge that fearsome Skills Wolf!

Spoken Interaction: Dos and Don’ts

How to help your higher level students focus on communication and not die trying

If you teach students of 20+, who have reached an intermediate or advanced level, it is not an uncommon scenario to see your technologically state-of-the-art problem-solving task flop because your students cannot interact. How come, you wonder, as you watch the kids’ blank faces as they gaze in silence at colourful words jumping and photos fading on the slide that took you hours to put together. Trust me, CALL, visual impact and clear rubrics are not enough when it comes to spoken interaction. Here is a short list of key concepts and practical tips to raise your and your students’ awareness on the rules that govern it.

Linguistic knowledge is not enough

Our students need to be competent both in linguistic and communicative terms. Hymes’ (1972) communicative competence, an extension of Chomsky’s (1966) linguistic competence, reflects the belief that language is always used in a social context, with the aim of communicating (in other words, knowing what to say, when, where and how in order to achieve your aim). Click here to watch a video of a well-known Argentinian speaking English to reflect on the importance of communicative competence when all else fails!!

So…

Do ensure your students develop and apply both their communicative and linguistic competences

Don’t let them rely on their knowledge of the language or communicative ability alone

Speaking Vs. the other skills

Speaking (and listening) involve real time processing, understanding gestures, sounds, intonation, role and status of speakers… It is also the skill which usually involves the most personalised and meaningful communication. It is so unlike writing (and reading), with all the time in the world to edit, no interlocutor physically present, and only our written word to be a slave to…

So…

DO remember these differences

DON’T speak as you write (or listen as your read)

Cooperation and Turn-taking

These are two key concepts. Grice’s Maxims (be true, be brief, be clear, be relevant) summarise this concept pretty well. Speakers take turns, cooperate, and show they are listening attentively through gesture or sounds. Reminding our students to keep eye contact, respect turns, show interest, provide the word their partner can’t produce, and of course, devising activities to do this, will do the trick.

So…

DO help your students become cooperative participants and active listeners and tell them about the importance of respecting turns

DON’T allow speakers to compete as they interact for speaking longer or louder, or ignore other participants’ contribution (and obviously make sure you never do that)

Activities and procedures

1. During class discussion, define and explain stage fright using specific examples: vocal pauses, shaking limbs, dry mouth, voice volume too soft or loud, rate of speaking too fast or slow, shifty eye contact, monotone delivery, slouched poise, awkward gestures, body swaying etc.

2. Have the students recall and list their own experiences with stage fright.

3. Share these written experiences verbally with the entire class.

4. A. Divide the class into groups with a combination of advanced and novice debaters in each group.

B. Give them each a list of 3 groups of impromptu topics.

Examples – Concrete words: Xmas tree, plane, skates

Abstract words: sorrow, joy, hope Quotations

C. The students will pick a word and take turns speaking about that word in front of their small group.

D. They will do this 3 times with one concrete word, abstract word and quotation.

E. The advanced speakers in each group will give a helpful and kind verbal critique of each novice speaker. The advanced speakers will congratulate them on their speaking strengths and give suggestions to improve their stage fright weaknesses.

F. The beginning speakers should list on paper their speaker strengths and weaknesses and suggestions for improvement.

5. On a follow-up day, activity 4 could be repeated in front of the entire class.

6. On a follow-up day, activity 4 could be implemented with tape player or video camera.

Tying it all together

Your class, teacher and debate judges want you to do well. Every debater, novice or advanced, is nervous and must constantly deal with stage fright. Emphasize your strengths and work on needed improvements.

Practice, practice, practice! Success will follow!

A final word

We are all competent speakers in our L1. A little cultural awareness of the differences between our first language and culture and the English one and a lot of practice will turn us and our students into confident communicators.

So…

DO trust your and your students’ capacity to develop the speaking skill

DON’T say they can’t (or I can’t)!

Development of the Reading Skill: Dos and Don’ts

How to help your learners approach a text with ease

First and foremost, it is of uttermost importance to relate our daily activities and methodology to our students´ needs and contexts. Therefore, for the development of the Reading skill, it is necessary to relate texts to learners´ schema and “conceptual worlds”.

The aim of this section is to give some advice on how to develop the Reading skill when you have a beginner class where students from many different social and cultural contexts mingle. Besides, the tips below aim at promoting understanding when reading and favour language acquisition with all your students; as teachers we should take stock of a learning-centred approach (Jolly and Bolitho, 1998).
DO:

Relate English reading texts to students´ own context, be it local or rural.
Provide meaningful, contextualised reading texts. This will show that English is a tool that will serve a great use in students´ lives and may well allow them to share knowledge with other people.
Provide opportunities to activate learners´ schema by means of predictions, discussions of possible issues dealt with, etc; this is to be done before plunging into any text.
Support texts with aids such as pictures that really contribute to understanding.
Remind learners and yourself that in our L1 we do not understand every single aspect or idea at first. In English, the same holds: reading should firstly be extensive and then texts may be fully exploited intensively to practise the language or reach further understanding.
Encourage pre-, while- and post-reading activities.

DON´T:

Burden your students with a great deal of tasks that seek information rather than pleasure and encourage “to read accurately and efficiently” and be able to “understand as much of a passage as you need in order to achieve your purpose” (Greenall and Swan 1986: 2).
Overlook the importance of extensive reading. Exploit the use of content lists and indexes, the ability to discern relationships between the various parts of a longer text, their contribution to plot, argument and identification of the writer’s point of view, and so on (Nutall: 2005).
View the reading comprehension process as receptive. Make it interactive, with activities that try to encourage prediction, confirmation of hypotheses, guessing from context and personal involvement.

Listen, Listen, Listen!

Hints and tips on how to handle listening more effectively

In general terms, the listening skill has not been given much coverage by second language researchers. If we compare it to reading, for example, the skill falls far behind the four-macro-skill ranking. This does not imply that teachers should overshadow its importance when it comes to teaching a language. As a matter of fact, there are many good reasons to foster its realization: when students engage into a listening activity, they engage into social rituals, they exchange information, share information, exert control and can certainly amuse themselves.

According to Rost (1994:141-142), listening is vital in the language classroom for two main reasons: it provides input for the students and it boosts their learning experience since they have to interact to achieve understanding. In this sense, authentic spoken language constitutes an impetuous challenge for the learner and it provides teachers with a way for drawing learners’ attention to new forms (vocabulary, grammar, news interaction patterns) in the language.

Practical ideas for listening

At this point, it is relevant to first wonder what makes a great listening task. And for that sake it is good to plan our listening exercises taking into account the following variables:

DO:

Give students a specific, clear, well-defined goal for each listening text. It is no good that “many classroom listening exercises demand no response until the end of fairly long stretches of speech” (Ur, 1984).
Keep listening texts short. Short audios are easy to prepare, keep students focused, can be played many times, fit easily into the class hour, don’t need handouts, allow students to succeed at the task more readily. “The task itself should be relatively easy and the focus remaining on the listening itself” (Ur, 1984).

DON´T:

Depend on long texts; these can prove a disaster during a lesson. It is advisable to take into account that some authors “recommend 30 to 120 seconds” (Lewis & Hill, 1985).

Measure progress at the end of the listening tasks. It is important to design specific tasks so that one can see the progress of ALL students during the entire course of the task. Progress should be discernible and comprehension measurable.

Sample Tasks

Arrange pictures/words in the order they are heard.
Cross out the extra words in the text.
Have the students make checks to confirm what they hear (true/false, multiple choice).
Have students follow instructions, directions. Appeal to the TPR approach to language learning.
Apply rotation dictation techniques (involving movement, teamwork).
Think of different ways for students to respond to listening tasks: manipulate pictures, write, orally respond, draw, use maps, gap-fills, mark wrong/extra words in texts, checklists, true-false, move, follow instructions, raise hands, etc.
Apply translation dictation. Read a passage in the students’ native language. They should write ENGLISH, translating as they hear.
Challenge them through song dictation. If you can find a short, simple, or repetitive song, play it as a dictation.
Use list dictations. Ask each student to write a list. For example, “8 Foods You Like”. Tell them not to show their list to anyone. Next, group the students in pairs. Have each partner dictate his/her list to the other.

Why Write?

Hints and Tips to start writing.

Writing is the 4th of the four language skills, and usually the one we learn last. It is a process, not merely a product. How can we teachers teach writing to ESL students?

Students develop as writers when they carry out activities that are meaningful to them. Therefore, it’s extremely important that teachers engage in explicit instruction guiding students through the different aspects of the writing process and provide time for writing on a regular basis by incorporating it into everyday tasks: encouraging students to write, having students make lists of things they want to write about, making them label things so as to tune up, giving them short tasks so they can begin practicing writing, making it more profitable for them instead of assigning students large writing projects.Teachers need to promote writing by responding to the content of the text rather than to the form. Moreover, they need to provide multiple opportunities for writers to engage in writing for reasons that are real and important to the individual writer. There are three important steps students should follow: pre-writing, drafting, revising/editing.

Students progress in English at different rates depending on a number of variables including educational background, native language spoken, literacy skills in their native language, and previous contact with English. In any case, students generally have the greatest difficulty becoming proficient English writers.

For a second language learner, writing is an extension of listening and speaking. Therefore, the student must be provided opportunities to build, extend, and refine oral language in order to improve written output.
The writing process and English Language Learners
The process approach to writing is ideally suited to the second language learner since listening, speaking and reading can be so naturally integrated with it.

Pre-writing

Pre-writing is essential for the writer whose first language is not English. Especially at the lower levels of proficiency, students have a limited lexicon and therefore often have difficulty expressing their ideas. Therefore, teachers or other students may need to assist second language students to generate vocabulary and grammatical structures relevant to the topic. Models and samples are often helpful.

Brainstorming — depending on the students’ level of language, the writing down of ideas can be done by the teacher or by native English speaking students; the teacher may need to provide some guidance by asking questions to elicit vocabulary and structures associated with the selected topic.
Word banks generated by the students or as assigned by the teacher.
Drawing and sketching — enable students to illustrate ideas for which they do not have the language.
Discussion with native English-speaking peers or with the teacher.
Note-taking (often with the use of charts).
Graphic organizers for eliciting, organizing and developing background knowledge.
Dictations — give learners some alternative models for addressing a writing task.
Researching and gathering of data by viewing videos, reading, talking, interviewing, and searching reference books or Internet.

Drafting

At the drafting stage students write their ideas down using some of the notes, language, and structures generated during the pre-writing activities. Second language students especially need to be aware that their first draft does not have to be perfect and that the purpose of this activity is to get words on paper. Spelling will often not be accurate and there may be many grammatical errors. Some students may also insert words in their native language.

Using notes taken during pre-writing activities — provides students with a starting point and a skeleton of ideas; this is especially useful for second language learners whose ideas are restricted by their limited vocabulary.
Sentence completions — may address the different ways to begin or end a paragraph or a story or may focus on vocabulary needed to describe or narrate a story.
Journal writing — allows students to take risks and experiment with language; it can provide a starting point for a longer writing assignment.

Revising/editing

Second language learners will also need assistance during the revising/editing stage from teachers and from other students. Changes in writing will need to address word usage and clarification of ideas, as well as grammatical accuracy, punctuation, spelling and capitalization. It is important to remember that second language students may have difficulty recognizing their own errors or the errors of their peers. A self-assessment checklist may help them monitor their own writing. However, care should be taken with peer editing groups. In addition, it is important that correction be done in a comfortable environment.

Peer or group reviews of mixed ELLs and native English speakers.
Language expansion and sentence combining activities — enable students to move beyond subject/verb/object format by encouraging students to combine two or three different statements in various ways to make their sentences more complex.
Rearranging words within sentences.
Using dictionaries, including personal dictionaries, and other resource materials such as grammar books and textbooks.

Word processing

Second language learners should be encouraged to use word processing programs throughout the writing process. The programs facilitate the process and are especially helpful with the composing, revising, and editing stages because they do not require students to rewrite their work. They help students format their work and produce copies which are clearly legible and professional-looking. These programs are especially helpful for students who are accustomed to a different alphabet (i.e. Chinese, Russian) and are only beginning to learn to write using the romanized alphabet for English.

Translating

Translating is the least useful strategy for writing in a second language. There is often a wide discrepancy between what students can express in their first language and what their limited foreign language lexicon enables them to do. They frequently resort to using a dictionary to look up every word and end up with a literal translation that may be completely incomprehensible and even embarrassing.

Relating strategies to proficiency

How well English Language Learners can write is directly related to their level of English language proficiency in writing. It is important to note that language learners often make mistakes in vocabulary and grammar. As they take risks and experiment, their accuracy level may be negatively affected. It is important to realize that this is a normal part of the language development process. If too much attention is placed on accuracy, students will not progress.

DO:

Keep in mind that Writing involves risk-taking and it is important for students to feel comfortable taking those risks.

Utilize the process approach which is ideally suited for second language learners and spend some time working out exactly what they are going to do.
Make them think carefully about the topic. Outline some pertinent points. This can be done through the pre-writing stage.
Ensure that ideas are arranged logically.by addressing the different ways to begin or end a paragraph or story.
Make sure students´ writing has an introductory sentence, body paragraphs 1-3, and a concluding sentence. This can be accomplished by providing assistance from teacher or from other students.
After following the previous steps you should make sure that they have written what they intended and that no important ideas are missing through revising and editing.

DON´T:

Forget to assure your students that their efforts are appreciated and that the message they are trying to convey is valued over the form.
Overemphasize error correction as this may inhibit production.
Expect progress to be linear without setbacks.
Neglect to encourage your learners to use word processing programs as they are especially helpful with the composing, revising and editing stages.
Forget that word processing programs are especially helpful to students who are accustomed to a different alphabet and are just beginning to write using the romanized alphabet for English.

Suggestions for specific classroom activities include the following

Use diaries or journals to promote fluency in writing and to help students see writing as one means of self-expression (Kreeft et al., 1984).
Utilize personal narratives and writing workshop techniques to help learners become comfortable with the craft or drafting, sharing and revising their pieces (Samway, 1987; Urzua, 1987)
Make the reading-writing connection by exposing ESL learners to a wide variety of literary forms in reading and then provide opportunities for learners to construct their own forms to share with others (Allen, 1986; Flores et al., 1985).
Incorporate various writing activities into content-area units so that ESL learners will experience different kinds of writing.

In conclusion, writing has become a process of natural generation of ideas with focus on meaning and communication that precedes concerns about form and grammar. Consequently, ESL writing instruction has become focused on the literacy beliefs of experimentation and emergent fluency rather than mechanical accuracy and fidelity to form. Thus, ESL students are encouraged to manage their writing acts by proceeding somewhat independently in a discovery mode in order to determine and solve the problem of their composing. Then we can say that the process -oriented pedagogy could improve instruction, if implemented properly. Therefore, writing activities should be structured in ways that help students learn to produce cohesive and coherent discourse on their way to become self-sponsors of their own writings.

Finally, the primary focus of writing should not be the word, the phrase or the sentence, but the larger elements and processes that must be integrated for effective written communication.

Useful websites

http://www.123listening.com/

http://www.1-language.com/esllistening/index.htm

http://www.etseverywhere.com/category/action-listening-games

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/

http://www.eslhome.com/esl/listen/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/

http://www.esltapes.com/

http://www.scenarioproductions.com/

http://eolf.univ-fcomte.fr/

http://www.efl.net/

http://www.elllo.org/

http://sounds.bl.uk/BrowseCategory.aspx?category=Accents-and-dialects

http://www.english-listening-world.com/

http://esl.about.com/library/quiz/bllisteningquiz.htm

http://www.eslvideo.com/

http://www.archive.org/

http://www.esl-lab.com/

http://real-english.com/

http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/listen-and-watch

http://www.america.gov/multimedia/podcast.html

http://www.shortstoryradio.com/

http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/672

http://www.colorincolorado.org/educators/teaching/writing

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