Resumen Workshop
Resumen Workshop
Sources of texts
Four possible sources of texts:
Authentic sources Authentic texts offer learners examples of real language use,
(newspapers, songs) undistorted by the heavy hand of the grammarian.
Problems: the linguistic load of unfamiliar vocabulary and
syntactic complexity can make such texts impenetrable, and
ultimately very demotivating. Because of this, it is often
necessary to simplify authentic texts in ways which retain their
genuine flavour.
The teacher The teacher’s story, the teacher’s travel plans, etc. are likely
to be of much more interest to the sts than those of a
character in a coursebook.
Example: (a dictogloss)
The teacher wants to teach would to talk about past habits.
So, through a text, she tells the sts what she used to do
during her summer holidays when she was a child.
“When I was a child we used to go camping every summer.
We’d choose a different place each year, …
Then, the sts have to capture the meaning of the text and try
to reproduce it, although they may not be able to recall the
exact words. They understand the T’s account of his holidays,
but they don’t have a word-for-word memory of the text, and
so they tend to draw on forms with which they are already
familiar (we drove rather than we’d drive).
The next step is to compare both texts (the teacher writes her
text and the version the kids made). It is important for the
learners to notice the differences for themselves, in order for
them to make the necessary adjustments to their mental
grammar.
The students themselves These could be the most effective, since evidence shows that
the topics that learners raise in the classroom are more likely
to be remembered than those introduced by either teacher or
coursebooks.
(Community Language Learning: method first promoted in the
1970s. CLL aims at centring the lang. learning experience as
much as possible on the learners, giving them the
responsibility for the content of the lesson. The teacher is a
consultant that provides the lang. learners need in order to
express their meanings effectively. There’s no coursebook,
not even a syllabus: the topics are initiated by the sts and the
teacher decides which language forms to focus on from what
emerges in the conversation and taking into account the level
and needs of the class. The fact that the language emerges
out of the learner’s conversation means there’s a high level of
relevance and therefore memorability.)
Example: (recorded dialogue)
A st: Ana, what will you do the next Easter holiday?
T: Listen: Ana, what are you going to do this Easter.
S: Ana, what are you going to do this Easter? (The T records)
Ana:...
(teacher focuses on will vs. going to)
Conclusions:
- Language is context-sensitive
- There are at least three levels or layers of context: co-text (the surrounded text),
context (the situation in which the text is used), and cultural text (the culturally
significant features of the situation. Each of these types of context can contribute to
the meaning of the text.
- Grammar is best taught and practised in context. This means using whole texts as
contexts for grammar teaching. Why?
● texts provide co-textual information, allowing learners to deduce the meaning
of unfamiliar grammatical items.
● if the texts are authentic they can show how the item is used in real
communication.
● as well, as grammar input, texts provide vocabulary input, skills practice, and
exposure to features of text organisation.
SUMMARY: Careful planning can help the elementary or middle school language teacher to
make the most of the limited time available for instruction in the target language. Effective
planning takes into account the educational development of the sts and builds on factors
such as story form and affective engagement to make learning more meaningful and more
memorable. Each plan should be organized around the needs and development of the whole
child and take into account the child’s need for both variety and routine.
CONTROLLED PRACTICE
In controlled practice there is very little chance that the pupils can make a mistake. In the
Teddy example the pupils ask Teddy “Do you like….?”. They can then go on to ask each
other in pairs “Do you like….?”, with the other pupil answering Yes or No. Once the pattern is
established with the class, they can do it in pairs.
Examples of controlled practice activities:
● TELLING THE TIME
St A asks: “What’s the time?” Pupil B answers “It’s ………..”
Activities like this provide the basis for oral work, but do not always produce real language at
once. Their purpose is to train pupils to use correct, simple, useful language within a
situation or context. Pupils may have to repeat sentences, be corrected and go through the
same thing several times. Familiarity and safety are necessary to help build up security in
the language.
GUIDED PRACTICE
Guided practice follows on directly from controlled practice and will often be done either in
pairs on in small groups. Guided practice usually gives the pupils some sort of choice, but
the choice of language is limited.
Examples:
● WHAT’S THE TIME?: This exercise would follow on from the controlled practice
above. Both pupils have clocks with hands that move. The situation could be that
pupil A’s watch has stopped and he or she wants to ask pupil B the time. This puts
language into context and the guided practice can become a mini-dialogue.
Pupil A: What’s the time, please?
Pupil B: It’s five past ten.
Pupil A: Thank you (Puts his or her clock to the same time and compares
The language remains the same than in the controlled activity, but pupil A never
knows what the time is going to be. Since Pupil A has to do something with the
information he or she gets, it also makes the exercise just a bit more meaningful.
FREE ACTIVITIES
Using controlled and guided activities provides a good background for activities where
children say what they WANT to say.
Some characteristics of free activities:
● They focus attention on the MESSAGE/CONTENT and not on the language as such
● There is GENUINE COMMUNICATION even though the situations are sometimes
artificial
● Free activities will really SHOW THAT PUPILS CAN OR CANNOT USE THE
LANGUAGE
● Free activities CONCENTRATE ON MEANING MORE THAN ON CORRECTNESS.
Formal mistakes don’t really matter too much unless it means your pupils cannot be
understood. In free activities we are trying to get the pupils to use the language with
a natural flow. FLUENCY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN ACCURACY at this stage.
● Teacher control is minimal during the activity, but the teacher must be sure that the
pupils have enough language to do the task.
● The atmosphere should be informal and non-competitive.
● There is often a game element in the activity.
Most of these activities are based on the INFORMATION GAP PRINCIPLE -that A knows
something B does not know, and B wants that information.
Pairwork:
- With older children working in pairs, give one pupil map A and the other map B. Pupil
B (whose map does not have the location of the places) asks student A where some
of the places are. This is a restricted free exercise, but that’s how it should be. Do not
give pupils exercises which are so free that they do not know where to start or cannot
cope linguistically.
- Student A has a picture of a boy and student B has a picture of a girl. The students
paint the picture. Then, student B gets the picture of the boy (and vice versa) and
student A describes how he has painted it. Student B paints it accordingly and when
he finishes the two pictures have to be identical.
Groupwork:
- Take any picture story from your textbook or workbook, copy it, cut it up and give one
picture to each member of the group. Each pupil then has to describe to the others
what is in his or her picture without showing it to the others. When the pupils have
heard what is in each picture, the group decides on the correct order of the activities.
- Another story telling exercise that needs a bit more imagination and is more suitable
for 8-10 year-old children: everyone in the group has two objects or pictures of
objects which have to be woven into a story. You start off the story (“I met a family
yesterday…”). The story then continues with one pupil adding to the story using his or
her object, which might be a packet of tea, or a toy car, or whatever (“Of course, they
had tea with me”). As the story continues, it gets funnier and more ridiculous. This
can also be done as a whole class story.
Whole class activities:
- A matching activity: make cards that are similar but a little bit different. Give each
student a card. The students look at their card and then they leave it face down on
their desks. Then, the students go asking the other sts about their pictures so as to
find the student with the same picture (it is challenging because the pictures are all
very similar).
- Another activity that is useful is using questionnaires. Ask sts to find out about
favourite food, favourite books, favourite tv programmes, or whatever is relevant to
what you are working on at that time. With the five to seven year olds you will have to
provide the questionnaire.
- Activities for introducing learners to all the components of English pronunciation and
persuading learners that pronunciation is important. Awareness building activities:
1- WORD STRESS: If a - Names of class members: The teacher can demonstrate the
non-native speaker produces a importance of stress pattern in the Eng language by showing
word with the wrong stress concern for the correct pronunciation of the names of the
pattern, an English listener may members of the class.
have great difficulty in Ask each sts his or her name, or call out the names from the class
understanding the word, even if list. Using rising intonation in your voice and a questioning facial
most of the individual sounds have expression, show that you are checking the names. When the sts
been well pronounced has identifies himself, show your concern for accuracy by shifting
the stress to the wrong syllable.
T: CARlos DoMECO?
C: raises hand or nods
T: Not CarLOS, but CARlos?
C: CARlos
T: CARlos
This can also be done with place names and names of well-known
people.
In the early stages, we can use the word LOUD to refer to the
stressed syllable.
- Follow up activities: you can make the learners choose a random
collection of words which they have to enter in the correct column
depending on their stress pattern.
Oo oO Ooo
2- RHYTHM: Having been - Introductory activities: a set of activities can be built around
introduced to word stress, learners strongly metrical material, such as rhymes, verse, and children’s
will be ready to move on to the games.
rhythm of English, which is D is for DUCK, with SPOTS on his BACK, who LIVES in the
characterized by the alternation of WAter, and ALways says, QUACK.
strong and weak syllables. (Your selection should depend on the age and interests of the
Rhythm is a product of word learners. Adults may prefer more sophisticated material such as
stress and the way in which famous lines from literature, or proverbs)
important items are foregrounded Procedure:
through their occurrence on a If you decide to present the material in written form, the first task
strong beat, and unimportant should be to identify the stress patterns of the content words. (use
items are backgrounded by their whatever notation you have introduced). After the stress has been
occurence on a weak beat marked, the teacher can read aloud entire lines. The learners can
then fill in the other items as stressed or unstressed.
If you decide to work on that orally, then tape recordings of rhymes
or short verse can be used and their rhythm can be beaten out.
§ The main point that you have to establish through these
activities is the alternation in English of stronger and weaker
beats.
- Follow up activities: you can devise some activities in which the
learners must provide words or phrases which fit into an already
established patter, a kind of rhythmic fill-in-the-blank exercise .
O o O o (apple crumble)
If you have been using verse and metrical material in the activities,
it is a good idea to include more natural utterances, just to make
sure that the learners do not get the idea that only Eng verse is
rhythmical.
4- WEAK FORMS: weak forms - The English chanting game The house that Jack built has definite
should be introduced after the potential as a focus for the introduction of the notion of weak
basic points about word stress, forms.
rhythm and sentence stress have This is the house that Jack built.
been covered. It’s probably wise This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack built….
to choose one or two common After you’ve built up a few stanzas, draw the learners’ attention to
weak forms and construct an the word THAT, asking them first to give its pronunciation alone.
awareness-building exercise Now draw their attention to the pronunciation of that in the chant.
around them. One also needs an Possible prompts are: is it an important word? does it have a
activity or example which will meaning like rat, house, cat, killed?
clearly demonstrate the reasons The chant is good for this purpose because the first word can
behind the use of weak forms. easily be changed to “that”, thus drawing sts’ attention to the use
of that as a demonstrative and that as relative clause marker.
(Without using terminology, you can say that the first is a pointing
word and is always pronounced with the vowel as in cat, and that
the second always links parts of a sentence and is always
pronounced with a schwa).
- You can also concentrate on the word AND, exploiting written
forms such as “fish ‘n chips”
Ask the learners why they think “n” is used.
5- INTONATION: all languages - Select a tape recording of a short exchange. Ask the learners to
have intonation and a translate the dialogue into their native languages. Have the
characteristic rhythmic pattern learners rehearse and tape-record their dialogues. Now play the
English and other-language recordings in turn and begin to
question the learners about similarities and differences in how the
speakers use their voices. Do the voices have the same melody?
Does the English voice go up or down in the first question?
A follow-up activity can be developed around the dialogues by
asking some of the learners if they can hum (tararear) the dialogue
instead of actually saying the words. Start by doing this yourself
and then ask for volunteers. If the humming attempts are
successful, have the sts record two or three hummed dialogues.
Play the dialogues to the class and have them guess which
language they correspond to.
- Using fillers: another way to develop awareness of the role of
intonation is to exploit the use of various sounds used in spoken
language which are not words, but convey meaning through
non-lexical means, principally through intonation patterns.
Procedure → For example: A and B are flatmates. A wants to
redecorate the flat, and puts various ideas to B, who reacts with
enthusiasm to some suggestions, but not all. Ask the pairs to act
out the situations, but introduce the restriction that B must react
without using any words, only sounds.Give the possible Eng
noises to the sts if they aren’t aware of them already.
Learners should be intrigued by just how much information can be
conveyed without words.
- Other activities: Getting warmer! (game) Drama (it is good
because the sts can see how we can make use of intonation,
accompanied by facial expressions and gestures).
6- THE SOUNDS: many of the As we are learning to speak our first language, we learn what the
learners’ problems will be significant sounds are and how to deal with any variations of them
perceptual -they will be completely that we come across. Young babies, before they even say their
unaware that a sound they hear, first word, experiment with making a variety of sounds in which the
or are making, is not the same as air flows through the nose. But after a period of experimentation,
the sound English people use. children in an English speaking environment seem to notice that
PEOPLE TEND TO HEAR THE there are only three important nasal sounds in English. This leads
SOUNDS OF A NEW LANGUAGE to a three-way classification system being set up in the sound
IN TERMS OF THE SOUNDS OF centres of the brain and, once it has been established, all nasal
THEIR MOTHER TONGUE. sounds which are heard are examined and sorted according to the
three categories.
Each language has its own distinctive set of categories, and part
of the process of learning a new language is learning what the
significant sounds are. This may involve setting up a system and
getting used to recognizing the new sound instead of ignoring it,
treating it as a trivial variant, or “counting” it as a member or
example of one of the mother tongue’s three-term system.
Examples of activities:
- Which sound? (Minimal pairs) example: the sts have bat
and pat, the teacher produces a word and the child has to
circle the one he/she mentions.
- Same or different? The learners hear two sounds in
succession and have to say whether they heard the same
word twice or two different words. This type of perception
exercise is well-suited to situations where learners cannot
distinguish two English sounds because in their native
language there two sounds are simply variants of one
another.
- Odd one out?
- How many times did you hear it(a particular sound)?
7- LINKAGE AND SPEECH: - Identical neighbouring sounds:write on the board a few short
Ancient Greek and Latin phrases in which two identical sounds abut (I want to). Ask the
inscriptions on stone, runic class to count the number of sounds in each word, and write the
inscriptions on wood, and old numbers above the words. Now play a tape recording of the
Anglo-Saxon inscriptions were all phrase or pronounce it yourself, being careful to merge the final t
written without spaces between of want with the initial t of to. The question now should arise: are
words or sentences. But more there two Ts or only one? Emphasize that the one t pronunciation
recently all literate members of is the way English people speak.
most societies have used the A brief activity like this on a simple point of pronunciation will make
convention of putting a space learners aware that they should be on the look-out for ways in
between words. Influenced by this which Eng people actually speak and not rely too heavily on
convention, most people assume written forms.
that there is an equivalent to this
boundary in the spoken language,
that a period of silence separates
spoken words.
All children, whether first or second language readers, go through the same five initial
literacy steps:
1- Awareness and exploration
2- Experimenting with reading and writing
3- Early reading and writing
4- Transitional reading and writing
5- Conventional reading and writing.
When children learn literacy skills in the first language, they develop several broad areas of
knowledge that they can access in English:
● VISUAL KNOWLEDGE: about print and text direction
● PHONOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE: about sounds represented by symbols
● LEXICAL KNOWLEDGE: about words and collocations
● SYNTACTIC KNOWLEDGE: about meaning construction and making sense of
words.
● SEMANTIC KNOWLEDGE: about social use of language as discourse.
They have learned that reading and writing can be used for different purposes, and they
have likely developed a number of strategies for understanding reading and making
themselves understood through writing.
One challenge facing all children is to learn the different ways in which English represents
sounds. There are 26 letters in the Roman alphabet, but they represent the 44 sounds in
English. For example, Spanish and German are much more regular and predictable
languages to read, since one letter usually represents one sound. So Spanish and German
students will have to learn that in English, there are many ways the same sound can be
represented.
Why include reading and writing in young learner classes?
Although reading and writing are very demanding and take time and patience to learn, they
are extremely important for the child’s growing awareness of language and their own growth
in the language. EYL teachers need to include reading and writing wherever and as early as
possible, for a number of reasons:
● Reading and writing can reinforce what is being learnt orally
● Reading expands the sources of input, and writing helps in remembering that input
● Writing provides a way to consolidate learning from the other skills, and reading helps
sts to see the conventions of writing
● Children enjoy reading and writing if the texts are meaningful and related to their
experiences
● Reading and writing help link the EYL class with home, as children bring home
writing they have done to share with their families or do homework requiring reading
and writing
● Writing provides another means of self-expression and, when read by others, a
sense of confidence and pride
For young learners to become effective and engaged readers and writers, they must have
multiple opportunities to explore, read, and write a variety of texts and to talk about what
they are going to read or write or what they have read or written.
2- A WHOLE LANGUAGE approach begins with meaning and then uses language in context
for further word or language study. It involves top-down processing, in which children bring
their knowledge of the world, their experiences with oral language and texts, and their
knowledge of the written language to constructing comprehension of written texts, using four
types of clues:
● Grapho-phonemic clues: expected sound-symbol correspondences
● Semantic clues: what words would be expected, based on the meaning thus far
● Syntactic clues: the part of speech that would be expected in a given place in the
sentence
● Pragmatic clues: what would be expected given the purpose of the text.
In early literacy, the whole language approach might begin with a focus on common words
(sight words: commonly used words that young children are encouraged to memorize as a
whole by sight). Learning sight vocabulary helps children to see the connection between
meaning and visual representation. One early sight-word activity may involve helping
children to recognize their own names. Their names can provide the context for meaningful
phonics activities in which children focus on the initial letter-sounds in their names.
Teachers using a whole language approach to reading may take their learners through the
following sequence of reading activities:
● READING ALOUD (presentation) beginning readers need multiple opportunities to
hear stories, poems, songs, chants, and other texts read aloud. With songs, where
both repetition and rhyme are present, it is easy for children to learn parts and to
participate after the teacher has sung the song, pointing to the words written on the
bb or as they are projected.
Another way for children to participate is through echo reading, in which children
repeat key lines after the teacher.
● SHARED READING (controlled practice) is the next step after reading aloud. In
shared reading, the T involves the students in reading together, using something as a
pointer, with a big book/Powerpoint. Pointing to the words while reading them helps
to establish the relationship between spoken and written language. Often the text is
one that has been read aloud before, so that when you read and point to the words,
the children are already familiar with the story or song.
● GUIDED READING (guided practice) the teacher works with small groups of children
who are at the same reading level, providing support or scaffolding while they read.
The goal is to let the children read, noting problems they have with specific words or
punctuation, and providing support and modeling reading strategies for the children
to practise. This is also a time when children can have extra practice in decoding,
word recognition, or grammatical structures that affect their understanding of a text
(for ex. a child may have some difficulties sounding out the consonant clusters ch
and sh). Predictable books, with repeated patterns, can be very helpful in building
children’s decoding skills and fluency, and also help them to develop confidence in
their reading.
● INDEPENDENT READING (independent activity) a major goal of any reading
program for YL is to encourage and enable them to read independently and to
motivate them to want to read a variety of texts. Children need time to read and to
choose materials from a class library or reading centre which contains a variety of
print and digital texts to read alone or with a partner. You can encourage
independent reading by giving each child a reading log to fill in when they have read
something (they write the name of the book, they rate it, etc.). Children can also be
given time to share their reactions to books or other texts with the class, encouraging
other children to read what they have enjoyed (you can divide the class into small
literature circles, have each group reading a book and then ask them to create a
poster to share with the class).
3- LANGUAGE EXPERIENCE is an approach that uses learners’ oral language as the basis
of a written story. The learners dictate their story to someone who is a more competent
writer, who writes what the learners dictate. The language experience story can be a
summary, an e-mail to the author of a story they’ve read, an invitation to parents to come to
a school event, or anything that is meaningful to the learners.
STEPS for young learners to follow.
1. Participate in a common experience (a field trip, a story, a celebration, a picture that
evokes feelings)
2. Have a discussion
3. Decide what to write, using a brainstorming web or other graphic organizer
4. Dictate the story to the teacher, who writes it so all can see.
5. Read back what the T has written
6. Decide if you want to edit sth
7. Copy what is written on the board into their notebooks
One question that always emerges is whether we should write exactly what the children
dictate or correct what they say into ‘good’ English
EXACT WORDS:
- Validate the children’s language
- Make a clear relationship between speech (sound) and print
- Will not likely lead to other errors or fossilization
A TEACHER-EDITED TEXT:
- Provides a good model
- Reflects the differences between spoken and written texts
- May be viewed more positively by parents and administrators
Some Ts write exactly what the children say. Then they ask the children to read and asks if
anyone wants to make any changes. The teacher suggests some changes to make, editing
the most serious errors.
READING STRATEGIES
Children differ in their reading strategies, largely based on where they are in their literacy
development. Some are ‘code-breakers’, focusing on decoding each symbol; some are
‘meaning-makers’, trying to construct meaning from the text; some are ‘text-users’, who
understand that different texts have different purposes and vary their reading strategies
accordingly; and some are ‘text-analysts’, who understand that authors of texts have a
particular perspective that needs to be critically analyzed. We will need to help our learners,
especially the older ones, to vary their reading strategies based on their purposes for
reading and the nature of the text. Some reading strategies include:
● PREDICTING: finding clues to what might come next in a text (from the cover, the
title, pictures, headings, or prior knowledge of the content)
● MONITORING: determining whether one’s reading makes sense, and if not,
re-reading to understand
● CONFIRMING: finding evidence of an accurate prediction
● CONNECTING: making connections to prior readings, information, or experiences
● QUESTIONING: asking questions about a text while reading, which may include
predicting
● SKIMMING: reading to get the gral topic or main points of a text
● SCANNING: reading to find specific info such as dates or names or answer to
questions
● DISTINGUISHING between important and less important information
● USING CONTEXT CLUES: looking at the context (the pictures, other words, the
place in the sentence, punctuation) for better comprehension
● PARAPHRASING OR SUMMARIZING: while reading and after reading a text
● VISUALIZING: forming images about what has been read in order to facilitate
comprehension.
2- A PROCESS BASED APPROACH: the primary goal is for children to express their
ideas, to construct meaning, and to explore their linguistic and other resources.
Process-based approaches take children through a series of steps to help them
construct and communicate their ideas, focusing on expression in the early stages,
and only being concerned with accurate grammar or mechanics in the final stages.
The most common approach to process writing is Writing Workshop:
WRITING WORKSHOP is a series of activities that help children to become authors,
beginning with free writing, and then moving through a series of writing steps or
stages until they have produced a work that they want to share, by publishing it in a
classbook, for example.
Through a series of stages, WW helps learners become both more fluent and
accurate writers.
The stages of WW are:
● BRAINSTORMING AND DISCUSSING: identifying possible topics to write
about individually, with a partner, and as a class, and talking about them with
others to activate background knowledge and obtain ideas for the first draft,
using a brainstorming web to capture ideas
● DRAFTING: writing a rough draft, focusing on getting ideas on paper, and not
worrying about spelling, grammar, or even word choice; fluency is the goal of
this stage.
● PEER REVIEWING AND CONFERENCING: sharing the draft with another st
with a focus on the content, helping the writer to see what his or her audience
likes, understands, or needs to make the writing clearer. (We can give them a
form to help them in providing appropriate comments for their partners:
PRAISE-QUESTION-POLISH)
● REVISING: taking the suggestions of others and also one’s own thoughts and
improving the content and organisation of the paper.
● REVIEWING AND CONFERENCING: sharing the revised text with the T
● EDITING: checking spelling, punctuation, and grammar, and improving the
final version of the paper. Accuracy is the focus here. (We can give them a
checklist: did I revise my spelling? does my story have a beg, a middle, and
an end?)
● PUBLISHING: sharing the writing with a real audience by posting it on a
bulletin board or online, including it in a class book, creating an individual
book, or putting it into an e-mail. It is also possible to invite children to read or
share their writing with the class.
DIALOG JOURNALS: a written conversation between a st and teacher that involves both
free and guided writing. The st writes about sth that interests him/her and the T responds. In
the beginning, children may just draw in their journals. A teacher’s response may be labeling
what they have drawn and asking a simple question to encourage the st to continue
responding. There is no overt correction, though a teacher may provide a model in the next
entry. With this regular and positive feedback, sts become more confident of themselves as
writers. They also improve their writing over time as they engage in meaningful
communication at their own language level and have a private conversation with the T.
Through process writing and dialog journals, YLs develop a better sense of audience, voice,
and the power of language. Teachers benefit by getting to know individual students and their
writing strengths and needs and by being able to offer individualized support.
READING AND WRITING DIGITAL TEXTS: Young learners may find that they do increasing
amounts of their reading and writing online. At least some of the texts older young learners
write, as well as read, should be those that communicate information to others through
e-mails, blogs, texts, or paired class assignments. If actual Internet access is not available,
assessments can model internet communication with documents that resemble e-mail and
other online communication.
We need to keep up with our learners!
Some digital writing activities include:
- E-pals and paired classes: e-pals are a modern adaptation of pen friends. Instead of
writing to each other and sending the message through the postal service, pairs of
English learners (in other schools or even other countries) write to each other
regularly. The topics usually begin with introductions, then move to likes and dislikes,
and even to descriptions of favourite games, sports, or foods. Children discuss what
they want to know about the other class as well as what they want to communicate,
and through online discussion, the children and teachers decide on a series of brief
topics to write about. Older learners can serve as tourist guides, introducing their
communities to each other
- Photo-autobiographies: older children can take pictures of family and friends, or of
things that are important to them to develop small digital or print books. Children can
create their own book, with each picture serving as a page in the book and,
depending on their level of literacy, provide a brief caption. A smaller version of this
would be to have each child contribute one picture for an online class newsletter or to
send to their e-pals in another class.
READING Chapter 5
APPROACHES TO READING:
Many five to ten year olds are in the process of learning to read in their own language.
Whether or not they have mastered the skill in their own language, and whether or not their
own language is written in the Roman alphabet, will have an effect on the initial stages of
teaching reading in English.
There are a number of different ways to approach the introduction of reading in a foreign
language:
1- PHONICS. This approach is based on letters and sounds. We teach the pupils the letters
of the alphabet, and the combination of letters, phonically (a→ae/ b→b). It is best to start
with 3 or four letters that can make up a number of words (c a n t, so you have can, cat,
etc.). It can be very useful to teach children who are not familiar with the Roman alphabet.
However, IT SHOULD NOT BE TAUGHT TO PUPILS WHO ARE LEARNING TO READ
USING PHONICS IN THEIR OWN LANGUAGE -this could lead to great CONFUSION in
pronunciation.
2- LOOK AND SAY: This approach is based on words and phrases, and makes a lot of use
of flashcards. It is usual to start by teaching everyday words which are already familiar to the
children. The T shows the children the word and says it while pointing to the object. The
children repeat the word. This happens several times with each word.There are a lot of word
recognition games that can be done at this stage - matching words and pictures, pointing to
the object on the card, guessing which card Teddy has picked out of the hat - and so this
approach encourages recognition of a range of words and phrases before “reading” a text.
3- WHOLE SENTENCE READING:The t teaches recognition of whole phrases and
sentences which have meaning in themselves. This often means a story which the children
read for the first time themselves after the whole story is familiar to them. The words are not
presented in isolation, but as whole phrases or sentences.
4- LANGUAGE EXPERIENCE APPROACH: the t writes down a sentence for the child to
read which is based on what the child has said. “This is me. My sister is nine. She is in class
3F”. This is a good pupil-centred approach to reading.
Reading aloud
Traditionally, reading aloud is often thought of as reading round the class one by one. But
this type of reading aloud is not to be recommended because:
● it gives little pleasure and is of little interest to the listeners
● it encourages mistakes in tone, emphasis and expression
● it may be harmful to the silent reading techniques of the other pupils
● it is a very inefficient way to use your lesson time
● If sts are going to read aloud for the rest of the class, they must be well prepared and
the others should want to hear what is going to be read.
However, reading aloud is a useful technique when used slightly differently. Reading aloud
to the t should be done individually or in small groups. The teacher can use it as a means of
training and checking rhythm and pronunciation. Reading dialogues aloud in pairs or groups
in an efficient way of checking work. The pupils can help each other with words they find
difficult to pronounce, and you should try to get them to be a little critical about what they
sound like.
WRITING
Writing has certain characteristics that seem to make it difficult for pupils to get to grips with:
● you cannot make the same use of body language, intonation, tone, eye contact, and
all the other features which help you to convey meaning when you talk.
● very little of what you write is concerned with the here and now. Exercises which
reflect the pupil’s world help to bridge this gap.
● many children take a long time to master the skill of writing (mechanicals too)
● writing in a foreign language is all too often associated with “correcting errors”.
Handwriting, grammar, spelling and punctuation are often given priority over content.
If we try to make children’s writing meaningful from the start, with the emphasis on
content, then errors can be gently corrected and re-written in cooperation with the
teachers.
Even if there are difficulties in writing in the foreign language, it is still a useful, essential,
integral, and enjoyable part of the foreign language lesson.
● It adds another physical dimension to the learning process. Hands are added to eyes
and ears.
● It lets pupils express their personalities. Even guided activities can include choices
for the pupils.
● Writing activities help to consolidate learning in the other skill areas.
● Particularly as pupils progress in the lang, writing activities allow for conscious
development of language. When we speak, we do not always need to use a large
vocabulary because our meaning is often conveyed with the help of the situation.
Lots of structures in the language appear more frequently in writing, and when we
write we have the time to go back and think about what we’ve written.
● Writing is valuable in itself. There is a special feeling about seeing your work in print,
and enormous satisfaction in having written something which you wanna say.
Writing activities go from being tightly controlled to being completely free.You will usually do
more guided activities with beginners, but you should not exclude very simple free activities.
In general, controlled and guided activities are being done to practise the language and
concentration is on the language itself. Free activities should allow for self expression at
however low a level, and content is what matters most.
BEGINNING READING
It is generally preferable to begin reading only after the learners have some basic knowledge
of the spoken language, so that reading becomes as quickly as possible a matter of
recognizing meanings rather than deciphering symbols
We can use the conventional phonic method (beginning with single letters, starting with the
most common and useful)
It is more useful for reading purposes if the learner knows the most common sounds of the
letter, its name can be left until later.
Alphabetical order can be learnt later when the learners need to know it for dictionary use.
However, the disadvantage of this approach (reading + answering questions) is that THE
READER HAS NO PARTICULAR MOTIVE TO READ THE TEXT IN THE FIRST PLACE: No
purpose for reading.
You can ask the sts to guess, ask some questions such as “Where was Jane walking?”, they
answer them and then they have to check their predictions
Having a purpose for reading, the sts will feel more motivated to read, and the reading itself
will be more purposeful, because of the challenge of finding out whether you had got your
answers right or wrong. The sts will have to base on the info given within the questions
themselves, and on their own schemata (previous knowledge, for example, of what a thief
can steal)
Through this questions, the passage will probably be easier to read because of the
preparation of topic and vocabulary which was provided through the questions. You might
tell them what the topic of the text will be and ask them to think about words that might
appear in the text.
EFFICIENT INEFFICIENT
2. Content The content of the text is The text is too difficult in the
accessible to the learner; sense that the content is too
they know enough about it far removed from the
to be able to apply their knowledge and experience
background knowledge of the learners
RECOMMENDATIONS:
1. Make sure your sts get lots of successful reading experience
2. Make sure that most of the voc in reading texts is familiar to them, and that words
that are unknown can be either easily guessed or safely ignored
3. Give interesting tasks before asking learners to read
4. Make sure that the tasks encourage selective, intelligent reading for the main
meaning, and not just understanding of trivial details
5. Allow, and even encourage, sts to manage without understanding every word
6. Provide as wide a variety of texts and tasks as you can
ADVANCED READING
Act for advanced readers are more sophisticated in various ways: the texts and tasks
probably approximate more closely to the kind of texts and tasks that people tackle in their
mother-tongue reading; the tasks tend to involve more complex thinking than mere
comprehension of info; and the activities more often involve expended speaking, listening
and writing as well as reading.
As sts become more advances, it would seem sensible to start basing their reading practice
on a wide variety of authentic texts, and on tasks that represent the kinds of things a reader
would do with them in real life (answering multiple-choice questions on a poem is not
something we do in real life; instead, discussing the interpretation of the poem or writing an
answer to a letter would be more appropriate)
We should make some attempt to select tasks that approximate to those we might do in real
life
Beyond understanding
Our aims in real life reading usually go beyond mere understanding. We may wish to
understand something in order to learn from it, to find out how to act, to express an opinion
about it, or for many other purposes. Other pieces of writing (literature, for example) demand
a personal response from the reader to the ideas in the text (such as interpretation,
application to other contexts, criticism or evaluation). Advanced activities should therefore
see the understanding of a text only as a PRELIMINARY step on the way to further learning
or other personal purposes.
WRITING INSTRUCTION IN THE INTERMEDIATE GRADES Robin Bright
Students come to understand writing quite differently depending on how writing instruction is
approaches and what is communicated to them about it.
EFFECTIVE ELEMENTS
Teachers are being encouraged to organize their instruction in ways that provide for the sts’
development of abilities in writing over time. Writers’ workshops, teacher-student writing
conferences, and writing portfolios are examples of particular strategies and structures that
are effective in accomplishing this goal.
Suhor developed a writing process model in which he selected what he considered to be the
most effective elements in writer’s repertoire - purpose, audience, ownership, and value. He
said that emphasizing such effective elements provides a less confining way of examining
the writing process than does looking solely at the steps the process involves
● Purpose: research documented the functions inherent in the writing tasks assigned to
a particular secondary school population. Three types of writing, each with a distinct
purpose, were identified: transactional writing (intended to inform or persuade),
expressive writing (that relates to personal experience), and poetic writing (to create
an imaginative form). Transactional writing was the most common.
For writing to be studied effective, situations would have to be viewed in relation to
the purposes writers adopt as they compose. But while the importance of purpose is
clearly documented in writing research, evidence exists that sts may differ in their
interpretations of what the actual purpose of a particular writing task is.
● Audience: a second effective element of writing is the audience for whom the writing
is intended. An audience is obviously necessary if the writer hopes to communicate
something. The notion of intended audience (See) also affects the nature of writing.
Britton et al. observed that audience is a powerful motivator of student writing. They
found that sts in their research sample generally wrote only for the teacher,
particularly for the teacher in his/her role of examiner.
Four audiences for school writing: self, teacher as part of an instructional dialogue,
teacher as examiner, and others.
● Ownership: the writer’s sense of ownership of his or her writing has been identified as
an aspect of an effective environment for teaching writing. In writing, opportunities for
ownership occur when topics call for sts to explore their own experiences and
opinions, or to elaborate upon a point of view. This suggests the need for sts to
select their own topics and thus become more motivated to engage on expressive
writing tasks at school.
● Value: based on their school experiences, many sts view writing as limited to
utilitarian ends: writing to please a teacher or to pass a composition course. They
often perceive little inherent value in their writing.
Some researchers have found that an emphasis on expressive writing provides an
implicit message to sts that they have sth worthwhile to say.
Whether the writing is expressive, transactional, or poetic, it seems clear that the
value children ascribe to their writing has a great deal to do with their motivation to
write. And if children are not motivated to write, they will not become capable or fluent
readers.
A writer’s understanding of the purpose, audience, ownership, and value of writing
influences the entire composition process. And how the teacher understands writing and the
implications of its instruction is certain to affect the process even further
TEACHING PROCEDURES
Writing as a means of as an end
1- AS A MEANS
For example, learners note down new vocabulary, copy out grammar rules, write out
answers to reading or listening comprehension questions, do written tests.
Writing is simply used either as a means of getting the sts to attend to and practise a
particular language point, or as a convenient method of testing it: providing info as to how
well sth has been learnt in a form which the teacher can then check at his or her leisure.
2- AS AN END
Other activities take as their main objective the writing itself. At the micro level they practise
specific written forms at the level of word or sentence (handwriting, spelling, punctuation); at
the macro level the emphasis is on content and organization: tasks invite learners to express
themselves using their own words, state a purpose for writing, and often specify an
audience. Examples: narrating a story, writing a letter.
3- AS BOTH MEANS AND END
A third kind of activity combines purposeful and original writing with the learning or practice
of some other skill or content. For example, a written response to the reading of a
controversial newspaper article (combines writing with reading) or the writing of anecdotes to
illustrate the meaning of idioms (combines writing with voc practice)
Top-down processing, on the other hand, starts with SCHEMATA or background knowledge
based on the context of the communication. It also includes the listener’s knowledge of the
text type within the context. Instead of focusing on linguistic parts of the utterance, learners
learn how to gain meaning from the context and might be able to predict what will be said.
In order to work on top-down techniques that focus on the activation of background
knowledge and the meaning of the text, teachers can do the following:
- Before sts listen to an announcement, they are shown the context of an airport and
predict what they might hear.
- Sts listen to some utterances and describe the emotional reaction they hear: happy,
sad, etc.
- Sts listen to a conversation between a doctor and a patient and choose a picture
showing the correct location of the dialogue with the correct people having the
conversation.
It is important to use both bottom-up and top-down techniques when teaching listening. With
YLs who are at the beginning stages, it could be easy to focus more on bottom-up
techniques that focus on isolated language structures, because they are learning the
building blocks of language from letter to word to sentence. Pinter points out that ‘in
comparison with adults, children have less developed schematic knowledge about many
topics; they know less about the world in gral and therefore guess and infer meaning with
more difficulty. The younger the children, the more this applies.’ Therefore, for YLs, teachers
need to also focus the listening activities on meaning and help them develop strategies for
top-down processing in the FL. Teacher of young learners should be sure to strike a good
balance between the two.
WHAT IS SPEAKING?
For most people, speaking is the language skill that represents the main mode of
communication. In the native language, the first skill parents work on teaching their babies is
speaking. YLs are still learning how to communicate effectively in their native lg, and when
they are VYL, they are still working on their ability to respond appropriately to questions and
explain their ideas. EYL teachers have to consider what kinds of oral communication are
appropriate activities for learners at certain ages, in addition to helping them communicate
orally in Eng.
It is important to check what kinds of listening and speaking skills are expected at different
ages.
In addition to listening how to listen and speak, to improve oral communication skills,
teachers also have to give sts skills to negotiate meaning and clarify any misunderstandings.
FLUENCY VS ACCURACY
Teachers are always concerned with both. We want our sts to speak accurately with respect
to grammar and pronunciation and to speak fluently with respect to speed and natural flow of
the lg. The fluency/accuracy issue often boils down to the extent to which our techniques
should be message oriented (use) as opposed to language oriented (usage). With YLs, our
approach is not focused on grammatical explanations, so the approach should be more
message-oriented. At the beginning levels, the lang being taught is in small chunks, so the
possibility of repetition and drilling for accuracy is just as possible while doing activities to
build vocabulary and practise meaningful expressions. Pinter says that the first building
blocks that allow children to move from listening to speaking and to begin to participate in
interactions with others are so-called UNANALYSED CHUNKS.
In terms or pronunciation, YLs have an advantage because they are excellent imitators.
Their ability to repeat after a model accurately is one aspect of speaking that should be easy
to develop with YLs. Providing them with plenty of models and chances to imitate is
important. Repetition is very important for them, but teachers have to make it fun, engaging,
and as meaningful as possible through activities like songs, chants, rhymes and games to
help them start to memorize new chunks and use them well.