Following are a number of statements extracted from What Research Has To Say About Reading Instruction Read the rest of this entry »
You are currently browsing the monthly archive for February 2008.
automatic
- largely or wholly involuntary, especially as with a reflex
- acting or done spontaneously or unconsciously
automatize
- to make automatic [noun derivations: automatization the process of making automatic; automaticity the state or condition of being automatic]
This is an activity that requires no setting up and can be done at the drop of a hat just the kind of activity that I love to have in my toolbox! Essentially, the idea is to promote automatization through quick responses, under moderately stressful conditions.
Aim: learners will recycle vocabulary and/or create short sentences under moderately stressful conditions.
Materials: none - don’t you just love it 
… Read the rest of this entry »
Having published several posts on individual skills, I felt that they needed better organisation and something to “hang onto” as it were. To that end, here are some short thoughts on syllabus and curriculum. Read the rest of this entry »
1. Manipulating the script of the language: handwriting, spelling and punctuation.
2. Expressing grammatical [syntactic and morphological] relationships at the sentence level.
3. Expressing relationships between parts of a written text through cohesive devices [especially through grammatical devices such as noun-pronoun reference]. Read the rest of this entry »
1. Deducing meaning and use of unfamiliar lexical items through understanding word formation and contextual clues in utterances and spoken text
2. Recognising and understanding phonological features of speech [especially those forms associated with supra-segmental features] Read the rest of this entry »
1. Basic reference and information-finding skills [e.g. title, using contents page, index. footnotes, bibliography, chapter headings and sub-headings, chapter summaries]
2. Deducing meaning and use of unfamiliar lexical items through understanding word formation and contextual clues Read the rest of this entry »
- Reading narrative texts
- Reading factual texts [such as descriptions, announcements, memoranda, advertisements, notices, reports, menus, and agendas]
- Approaching writing as a process accomplished in stages
- Scrutinizing work more critically
- Revising work to make it intelligible by adding, removing, substituting, and/or recombining material
- Keeping a portfolio of work to chart progress
- Raising awareness of different types of written texts with different purposes
- Filling out typical forms
- Writing short factual texts explaining reasons for an action and [or] making simple recommendations
- Writing statements using principles of coordination and subordination
- Listening to types of speech in different authentic contexts
- Listening to everyday speech and interactions
- Listening to and identifying single or multiple speakers
- Listening to both planned and unplanned speech
- Developing ability to describe objects and processes
- Responding to various forms of questions and sustained questioning in appropriate contexts
- Interacting in real world speaking activities
- Performing one way and two-way information tasks
- Raising awareness of conversational structure [opening, turn-taking, sustaining a turn, negotiating meaning, nominating a topic, repairing a mistake, linking ideas, adjusting the message by rephrasing, or using circumlocutions, changing topics, & closing a conversation]
Anderson J R [1982] Acquisition of Cognitive Skill [Psychological Review 89.4]
- Alderson J C & Hughes A [Eds] [1991] Language Testing in the 1990s [Basingstoke: Macmillan]
Easier said than done. A test writer has very few friends and often finds that it is impossible to do the job to everyone’s satisfaction.
But it is clear that it is imperative for test writers to be very clear in their own minds what it is that they want to test and what the purpose of the test is. Too often, teachers decide that they will write a test for their learners, so they sit down and begin writing it, stopping when they feel the test is sufficiently long. Read the rest of this entry »
It is useful to view testing from a historical perspective for two reasons:
Two questıons to ponder:
1. The effect of a test on teaching or learning is known as washback [or backwash in testing in the USA]. [Alderson and Wall, 1993: 17]
The backwash hypothesis seems to assume that teachers and learners do things they would not necessarily otherwise do because of the test.
In their article [Does Backwash Exist], Alderson and Wall question whether testing does have as powerful an effect on teaching as has previously been assumed.
What is your view on this?
2. Baker [1989] has a section in his book entitled The Pass Mark Problem: Is Norm-Referencing Wicked?
When you set a class a test, how do you decide what the pass mark is going to be?
These are crucial aspects of testing. There is perhaps a constant dynamic tension and balance between validity and reliability. Validity is perhaps the central quality. Reliability is a necessary but not sufficient condition for validity: valid tests are necessarily reliable, but reliable tests are not necessarily valid.
Having established the purpose of a test (see the post: Types of test - why are we testing?), other factors will then affect the general approach. Whereas in the past the focus was almost exclusively on the techniques of testing, how to test, the main issues and concerns in testing today are much more to do with what we want to test. Read the rest of this entry »
Fundamental to any discussion of testing is the purpose of the test. If you don’t know why you are testing, then you probably shouldn’t be testing in the first place. The appropriateness of a test in any given context will depend to a large extent on the reason the test is being given and the uses to which the test results may be put.
Traditionally, we recognize five types of test [although the precise labels may vary from one tester to another]. Read the rest of this entry »
Think back to your own experience as a language learner and ponder these questions: Read the rest of this entry »
To complement the posts on speaking, especially regarding curriculum design, I have included a list of speaking sub-skills. Read the rest of this entry »
In this post the classroom ideas are marked with a:
Whatever type of approach you intend to use for a particular activity in the classroom, making the differentiation between fluency and accuracy is a very important one.
However, here are some things to think about. From Brumfit…
- Just because we are talking about fluency, it does not mean that accuracy cannot be present. Accuracy is a focus on issues of appropriacy and other formal factors.
- Overuse of accuracy monitoring can cripple language development, making the students lose confidence through the teacher’s over correction.
- Any language activity that involves the learners not working like native speakers cannot be called a fluency activity.
- The “quality” of the language is irrelevant.
- Because:
- work that focuses on language alone = accuracy work
- and work that focuses on the language of the native speaker = fluency work.
Some courses fail the learners in that they fail to distinguish between spoken and written language. The litmus test for this assertion is to ask whether the syllabus/curriculum treats spoken language as something distinct from written language with its own grammar, syntax and lexicon. If productive skills work is a vehicle for the teaching of structures rather than training for skill and sub-skill acquisition then the course would probably have to be described as a grammar based course, no matter how communicative it is hyped up to be.
Here then, are some of the features of spoken language as I have identified them. Read the rest of this entry »
One thinker that has had huge effect on the educational world, especially regarding the education of children, is the Swiss Psychologist Jean Piaget (1896 - 1980). His specialty was child development and he described a series of stages that he believed children go through as they cognitively develop.
Sensori-motor Stage: from birth to Read the rest of this entry »
The Vocabox
Activities for developing and activating vocabulary in the English classroom (the original idea came from Joanna Stirling July 2000 Bell Teacher Training Summerfest)
Introduction
One constantly hears of presenting this that and the other. In fact in some institutions, the word “present” seems to be repeated one hundred and one times more than the word “recycle”… Read the rest of this entry »
Striking the perfect balance between the extremes of ultra- discipline and a lassez-fiare “anything goes” approach is not easy. This post begins by asking various questions and along the way provides some home-spun answers. None of the ideas here are intended to be prescriptive, rather they are intended to be a starting point, working towards a better understanding of what is happening in the classroom.
Before starting, why not take this test:
- In a study conducted by Denis Girad (1970), 1000 students between 12-17 were asked to list teacher qualities in order of preference, 1 being the most important to them and 10 the least important.
- What do think the results were?
- Scroll to the end of the post to see if you
- guessed the qualities identified by the students
- correctly guessed their order…
Keys ideas:
- a teacher must insist and expect responsible behaviour from the students
- maintain adequate classroom discipline
- both students and teachers have rights
This approach, put forward by Glasser, is a mixture of interactionist, humanist and behaviourist approaches.
The original and fundamental assumption behind this approach was that parents and teacher’s control children’s behaviour and this can have a very negative effect on child development. There is a long tradition in psychology that supports this type of classroom approach. A student centred approach intends to encourage independence and to allow children to choose their own behaviour.
This milling activity is very simple. Each student has a different sequential series written on a strip of paper. Their task is to find the participant wıith the exactly the same sequence as them self. For this to be a speaking and listening task, monitor the learners carefully to ensure they don’t show their sequences to people. Read the rest of this entry »
The circle game: You say and I listen
This type of activity lends itself to ımproving group cohesion through a cooperative or collaborative task involving listening and speaking.
At best, all teachers have some form of behaviour management system in place which will enable them to not only control their class, but will also allow for a healthy and productive learning environment. At worst, teachers and learners adopt strategies simply to get them through the day.
I have been obliged to revisit and analise my own approach to behaviour management and in order to do so, I have unearthed some of my own notes which I am sharing with you now.
A teacher’s personality will have a direct bearing on the strategy adopted and its effectiveness. What may work for one person, may not work for another. It is possible that a school’s ethos or policy statement may not allow for a teacher’s particular behaviour management style…
In this series of posts, there are listed three possible approaches to behaviour management:
- a humanist approach
- Glasser’s Control Theory (William Glasser: Control theory (1986)) and,
- assertive discipline approach
There are many more and in a post modernist world (if you live in that kind of society) it is often the case that they are not exclusive to one another and there is some degree of overlap.
‘Cooperative learning is group learning activity organised in such a way that learning is dependent on the socially structured exchange of information between learners in groups. Each leaner is held accountable for his or her own learning, and is motivated to increase the learning of others.’
Perhaps you are very limited in terms of resources for teaching, or you find your resources are inadequete to your learners’ needs. Here are some ideas that you can use with texts. I developed this list while working in Azerbaijan where we only used authentic material - for every level, including beginners… Read the rest of this entry »
Drawing dictation is an activity adapted from Christopher Sion’s excellent: Recipes for Tired Teachers.
Download the plan here
Download the key here.
Aim: To introduce and recycle simple lexis related to geometry in a project.
Level: Pre-int and higher.
Materials: The plan and key.
Time: For all stages, allow 180 minutes depending on how you exploit opportunities for recycling.
In dictogloss, learners work in cooperative groups to recreate a text that has either been read aloud to the class by the teacher or presented as an audio recording.
What is the purpose of dictogloss? Read the rest of this entry »
There are many sources of vocabulary in the classroom. This article looks at three: the course book, specialized vocabulary books, the teacher and other learners.
In order for learners to achieve the target 2000 words as quickly as possible, they will need a rich and nourishing vocabulary. Some words will be taught by the teacher and other words will be learnt incidentally in extensive reading and listening activities. Many learners prefer a list of target words to learn. How can these word lists be used to maximize learning? Read the rest of this entry »
I am happy to offer, as an Open Source project, the Babel Placement Test. You may use the test for whatever you like, you may alter it, edit it and even burn it if you like, see: creativecommons.org -Attribution-Share Alike 3.0.
The Babel English Language Placement Test was closely based on the Nelson Quickcheck Placement Tests. These have generally been used for base-line language assessment of company employees in order to benchmark their language level against an established external reference [the ALTE and CEF levels]. They have been used at Liverpool City Council, A4E Language and Basic Skills Training, Kuwait Petroleum Corporation and subsidiaries, Chevron Texaco, Liverpool and Everton Football Teams, IdioMaster (Spain), and Liverpool Language Academy. The testing cycle should require no more than 70 minutes of trainee time and does not require any specialist testers to administer it. Read the rest of this entry »
Recent Comments