Effective Communication in the Classroom EJ 417

Year End Review

Part 1: Word Skills

• Language teachers should be comfortable talking about words with their students.

• We looked at words in a variety of ways and considered ways to discuss them

. . . begins with . . . . . . ends in . . .

. . . rhymes with. . . . . . is another word for . . .

. . . is the opposite . . . . . . means . . .

. . . is spelled . . .

• Words skills are also important for our students.

• So our students should also be comfortable discussing words.

• Words skills help our students to become independent learners since it gives them the ability to get the information they need when they don’t understand something without having to rely on their native language.

• Word skills are an important step towards conducting your English class in English instead of talking about English in your students’ native language.

• When can we start teaching word skills?

Answer: The earlier the better.

• The kids in the video you are about to see learned their word skills while going through a six month phonics course. They are in grade one and grade two and could not read CVC words at the beginning of the course.

Part II: Communication Strategies

• We also looked at communication strategies and ways to negotiate meaning.

• Negotiating meaning included things like:

asking for clarificationclarifying

rephrasingchecking comprehension

• Again, these are valuable skills for language teachers AND language students.

• Communication strategies, like word skills, help to foster learner independence.

• When teachers use these skills in class, they are providing valuable language input for their students.

Part III: Vocabulary Presentation

• We also looked at ways to present vocabulary to our students.

• We discussed the advantages of defining vocabulary for our students in English instead of using their native language.

• These advantages included:(1) Increased input for our students especially input

with complex grammatical structure such as adjective clauses and adverbial clauses.

(2) Increased learner independence as students learn how to understand definitions given to them in a foreign language.

(3) Teachers can include commonly occurring collocations in their definitions.

• We also looked at putting vocabulary in context.

• We discussed several strategies for putting vocabulary in context.

• Again, being able to understand a vocabulary item based on context is a valuable skill that helps foster learner independence in our students.

Part IV: Hypothetical questions

As teachers, we constantly challenge our students’ imagination, asking them to put themselves in situation that they haven’t been in.

In order to do this, teachers must be comfortable using hypothetical modes of speaking.

• So we looked at different ways to pose a hypothetical question using marker, the past tense, and subjunctive mood.

Part V: Elements of a Story

• Teachers should also be comfortable discussing stories with their students (especially since more and more programs are becoming literature based).

• We looked at the elements of a story and ways to discuss these elements in English.

Part VI: Balancing Our Instruction

• We also considered the inherent problem of providing clear instruction versus providing rich input.

• We looked at ways to balance these two goals using rich varied language such as noun clauses to provide initial instruction followed by rephrasing in the simple, clear imperative mood.

Part VII: Clear Explanation

• We also looked at using logic puzzles and riddles to help us produce clear explanations using a variety of logical arguments such as:

• (a) the contra positive argument• (b) the argument of elimination

• Unfortunately, this was where we ran out of time so we were not able to spend nearly enough time to do this properly.

• We also did not looked at:

Part VIII: Correcting errors. Part IX: Giving Feedback