English Language Teaching Theory and Practice[1] (1) (1)

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DIDACTICALIMBII ENGLEZE

ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHINGTHEORY AND PRACTICE

Suport de curs

ANA-MARIA TRANTESCUUniversitatea din Craiova

2013

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CONTENTS

UNIT 1. APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE TEACHING……………………….3

UNIT 2. TEACHING COMPONENTS OF LANGUAGE…………………… 17

UNIT 3. TEACHING DEVELOPING LANGUAGE SKILLS………………. 43

UNIT4. CLASS MANAGEMENT....................................................................... 76.

UNIT 5. PLANNING................................................................................ 81

UNIT 6. EVALUATION........................................................................................87

REFERENCES........................................................................................................94

ANNEXES................................................................................................................97

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UNIT 1

APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE TEACHING

1.1. Introduction Where there was once consensus on the ‘right’ way to teach foreign languages, many teachers now share the belief that a single right way does not exist. Language teaching methods include several approaches to language teaching that will be

briefly presented in this course such as, the Communicative Approach, the Grammar-Translation Method, the Audio-Lingual Method, etc. Of course, the methods described in this course of lectures represent only an abstraction. How a method is manifest in the classroom will depend heavily on the individual teacher’s interpretation of its principles. Some teachers prefer to practise one of the methods to the exclusion of others. Other teachers prefer to pick and choose in a principled way among the methodological options that exist, creating their own unique blend.

According to St. Krashen (Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition, 1982), each method will be evaluated using the following criteria:i. requirements for optimal inputii. comprehensibleiii. interesting/relevantiv. not grammatically sequencedv. quantityvi. low filter level: researchers believe that language learners all possess an affective filter which affects language acquisition. If a student possesses a high filter they are less likely to engage in language learning because of shyness, concern for grammar or other factors. Students possessing a lower affective filter will be more likely to engage in language learning because they are less likely to be impeded by other factors. The affective filter is an important component of second language learning.vii. provides tools for conversational management. It is considered that language acquisition/learning contexts should be shaped by 12 principles (Richards & Renandya, 2002: 11ff): i. Automaticity - control of a relatively infinite number of language forms. ii. Meaningful learning, as opposed to rote learning, grounded in long-term learning strategies. iii. The anticipation of reward – tangible or intangible, short- or long-term. Extrinsic motivation is more likely to create short-term rewards, whereas the intrinsic one envisages long-term satisfaction. iv. Intrinsic motivation – not dependent on the present of the teacher or tutor, potentially more rewarding. v. Strategic investment - the learner perceives his or her efforts to be directed to the attainment of some future goal. vi. Language ego contributing to the fully-rounding of the learner’s personality. vii. Self-confidence: – the learning of a foreign language boosts self-esteem and self-confidence. Besides, it is commonly believed that success engenders success. viii. Risk taking: successful language learners are tolerant to ambiguity, beyond absolute certainty. ix. The language - culture connection: language and culture are inextricably related. Teaching the cultural load becomes a must as most communication breakdowns are caused by cultural, not by linguistic misunderstandings.

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x. The native language effect: the learner’s mother tongue will serve as a reference point to predict the foreign language system. In this respect, literature speaks of positive transfers and negative ones (interference). xi. Interlanguage: the learner passes through several developmental stages until mastering the foreign language. xii. Communicative competence as the end goal of language learning, understood as the ability to apply knowledge in unrehearsed real-life situations (a question of use rather than usage).

1.2. Approaches to language teaching This unit provides a brief listing of the salient features of the methods used in language teaching, grouped in four sections: The humanistic approach (Grammar Translation, The Silent Way, Community Language Learning, Total Physical Response, Suggestopedia); Behaviourism (The Audio-Lingual Method); Cognitivism (The structural situational approach); The socio-cultural turn (Communicative language teaching)

1.2.1. Humanistic approaches A humanistic approach to language learning allows for personal growth orientation and for the development of learners’ responsibility; the learners are encouraged to use discovery techniques, being no longer spoon-fed by the teacher. 1.2.1.1. Grammar translation This approach said to have a humanistic grounding (Grenfell and Harris, 1999), although other scholars claim that it is not based on any approach (notably Morgan and Neil, 2001). Furthermore, it can be said to emphasize knowledge for knowledge’s sake. It is heavily indebted to the teaching of classical languages and it prevailed from the end of the 19 th century to the 1940s. Richards and Rogers (1986) list several tenets of the Grammar Translation, as follows: i. The main goal of learning the language is to read the literature of the foreign language and refine intellectually; secondly, learners are expected to develop a greater understanding of L1; thirdly, students will be able to cope with difficult learning materials and situations; ii. Reading and writing are taught to the detriment of listening and speaking; iii. Teaching vocabulary is reduced to the words encountered in the literary texts; vocabulary items are listed and students are asked to learn their translations; iv. Translation skills, alongside reading and writing, are taught using the literary texts; v. Grammar is taught deductively, the presentation stage, consisting of long explanations or rules and exceptions to the rules, is followed by practice; learners follow the prescribed route to the technicalities of syntax. The structures to be translated are presented in a disconnected way, the learners being asked to identify the grammar items used in the text and state the rule(s); vi. English language teaching is done through English. The Grammar-Translation Method focuses on developing students’ appreciation of the target language’s literature as well as teaching the language. Students are presented with target language reading passages and answer questions that follow. Other activities include translating literary passages from one language into the other, memorizing grammar rules, and memorizing native language equivalents of target language vocabulary. Class work is highly structured, with the teacher controlling all activities. Features of the Grammar-Translation Method:Goals: to be able to read literature in target language; learn grammar rules and vocabulary; develop mental acuity.Roles: Teacher has authority; students follow instructions to learn what teacher knows.

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Teaching/learning process: Students learn by translating from one language to the other, often translating reading passages in the target language from the native language. Grammar is usually learned deductively on the basis of grammar rules and examples. Students memorize the rules, and then apply them to other examples. They learn paradigms such as verb conjugations, and they learn the native language equivalents of vocabulary words.Interaction: Student-Teacher & Student-Student: most interaction is teacher to student; student-initiated interaction and student-student interaction is minimal.Dealing with Feelings: n/a (not available, not applicable)Aspects of Language the Grammar-Translation Approach Emphasizes:Vocabulary; grammar; reading, writing are primary skills; pronunciation and other speaking/listening skills not emphasizedRole of Students’ Native Language: native language provides key to meanings in the target language; native language is used freely in class.Means for Evaluation: tests require translation from native to target and target to native language; applying grammar rules, answering questions about foreign culture.Response to Students’ Errors: heavy emphasis placed on correct answers; Teacher supplies correct answers when students cannot. According to St. Krashen (1981), Grammar-translation usually consists of an explanation of a grammatical rule, with some example sentences, a bilingual vocabulary list, a reading section exemplifying the grammatical rule and incorporating the vocabulary, and exercises to practice using the grammar and vocabulary. Most of these classes are taught in the student’s first language. The grammar-translation method provides little opportunity for acquisition and relies too heavily on learning. St. Krashen (1982) also made a distinction between acquiring a language and learning a language: the acquisition of a language is a natural process, whereas learning a language is a conscious one. In the former (acquisition of a language) the student needs to participate in natural communicative situations. Children acquire language through a subconscious process during which they are unaware of grammatical rules. This is similar to the way they acquire their first language. In order to acquire language, the learner needs a source of natural communication. In the latter (learning a language), on the other hand, language learning is not communicative. It is the result of direct instruction in the grammatical rules of language - the study of grammatical rules is isolated from natural language; error correct is also present. 1.2.1.2. The silent way The teacher keeps his/her talking time at a minimum (keeps silent), yet, directing and controlling the learners. The input provided by the teacher is reduced to model sentences that the teacher utters only once and the learners are asked to repeat. Information transmission and feedback are given through visual aids. A well known technique includes Cuisenaire Rods, enabling the learners to deduce meanings or forms: a set of coloured rods, wall charts and a pointer. The teacher takes a rod and says “a rod” to the students. Next, by using mime the teacher induces the students to repeat the name of the object. The teacher combines the names of colours to the object saying “a red rod”, “a blue rod”, etc. The students are eventually expected to say “a red rod”, “a blue rod”, etc. without the teacher’s model. With reference to the wall charts, the students are made to form strings of words using the words they have learnt orally by pointing to a series of words that then they read in the order indicated. The theoretical basis of Gattegno’s Silent Way (1972) is the idea that teaching must be subordinated to learning and thus students must develop their own inner criteria for correctness. All four skills – reading, writing, speaking and listening – are taught from the beginning. Students’

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errors are expected as a normal part of learning: the teacher’s silence helps foster self-reliance and student initiative. The teacher is active in setting up situations, while the students do most of the talking and interacting. Goals: to use language for self-expression: to develop independence from the teacher, to develop inner criteria for correctness.Roles: Teaching should be subordinated to learning. Teachers should give students only what they absolutely need to promote their learning. Learners are responsible for their own learning. Teaching/learning process: Students begin with sounds, introduced through association of sounds in native language to a sound-colour chart. Teacher then sets up situations, often using Cuisenaire rods, to focus students’ attention on structures. Students interact as the situation requires. Teachers see students’ errors as clues to where the target language is unclear, and they adjust instruction accordingly. Students are urged to take responsibility for their learning. Additional learning is thought to take place during sleep. Interaction: Student-Teacher & Student-Student: The teacher is silent much of the time, but very active setting up situations, listening to students, speaking only to give clues, not to mode speech. Student-student interaction is encouraged. Dealing with Feelings: Teachers monitor students’ feelings and actively try to prevent their feelings from interfering with their learning. Students express their feelings during feedback sessions after class. View of Language, Culture: Language and culture are inseparable, and each language is seen to be unique despite similarities in structure with other languages.Aspects of Language the Approach Emphasizes:All four skills areas worked on from beginning (reading, writing, speaking, listening); pronunciation especially, because sounds are basic and carry the melody of the language. Structural patterns are practiced in meaningful interactions. Reading and writing exercises reinforce oral learning. Role of Students’ Native Language: Although translation is not used at all, the native language is considered a resource because of the overlap that is bound to exist between the two languages. The teacher should take into account what the students already know.Means for Evaluation: Assessment is continual; but only to determine continually changing learning needs. Teachers observe students’ ability to transfer what they have learned to new contexts. To encourage the development of inner criteria, neither praise nor criticism is offered. Students are expected to learn at different rates, and to make progress, not necessarily speak perfectly in the beginning. Response to Students’ Errors: Errors are inevitable, a natural, indispensable part of learning.

1.2.1.3. Community language learning/ counseling learningTeaching languages is paralleled to psychotherapeutic counseling, where there is concern

with removing tension and negative feelings. Admittedly, the teacher is the counsellor/knower and the learner is the client. They gradually build a trusting or maximum security relationship compared to the growth of the individual from childhood dependence through adolescent rebellion and self-assertion to adult independence. There is a high degree of flexibility in the syllabus design, which virtually develops as the teaching unfolds (Murar, 2012)

1.2.1.4. Total physical response (TPR) Physical action and learning are linked in language teaching. Production is delayed until learners feel confident (comprehension skills are developed first). J. Roberts (1998: 35) states that “learners execute teacher’s commands for about 120 hours before conversation is encouraged”.

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Imperative forms (commands) are used by the teacher to elicit learners’ action. The teacher plays a traditional role (controller) and the syllabus is grammar-based. TPR is a method developed by James Asher, professor of psychology, to aid learning second languages. Asher’s approach begins by placing primary importance on listening comprehension, emulating the early stage of mother tongue acquisition, and then moving to speaking, reading, and writing. Students demonstrate their comprehension by acting out commands issued by the teacher; teachers provide novel and often humorous variations of the commands. Activities are designed to be fun and to allow students to assume active learning roles. Activities eventually include games and skits (= short performances). Features of the Total Physical Response: Goals: to provide an enjoyable learning experience, having a minimum of the stress that typically accompanies learning a foreign language.Roles: at first the teacher gives commands and students follow them. Once students are “ready to speak”, they take on directing roles.Teaching/learning process: Lessons begin with commands by the teacher; students demonstrate their understanding by acting these out; teacher recombines their instructions in novel and often humorous ways; eventually students follow suit. Activities later include games and skits.Interaction: Student-Teacher & Student-Student: Teacher interacts with individual students and with the group, starting with the teacher speaking and the students responding nonverbally. Later this is reversed; students issue commands to teacher as well as to each other. Dealing with Feelings: The method was developed principally to reduce the stress associated with language learning; students are not forced to speak before they are ready and learning is made as enjoyable as possible, stimulating feelings of success and low anxiety.View of Language, Culture: Oral modality is primary; Culture is the lifestyle of native speakers of the target language. Aspects of Language the Approach Emphasizes: Grammatical structures and vocabulary are emphasized, embedded in imperatives. Understanding precedes production; spoken language precedes the written word. Role of Students’ Native Language: method is introduced in students’ native language, but rarely used later in course. Meaning is made clear through actions.Means for Evaluation: Teachers can evaluate students through simple observation of their actions. Formal evaluation is achieved by commanding a student to perform a series of actions. Response to Students’ Errors: Students are expected to make errors once they begin speaking. Teachers only correct major errors, and do this unobtrusively. ”Fine tuning” occurs later. According to St. Krashen (1981), Total Physical Response involves the students listening and responding to commands given by the teacher such as “sit down” and “walk”, with the complexity of the commands growing over time as the class acquires more language. Student speech is delayed, and once students indicate a willingness to talk, they initially give commands to other students. Theory predicts that TPR should result in substantial language acquisition. Its content may not be always interesting and relevant for the students, but should produce better results than the audio-lingual and grammar-translation methods.

1. 2.1.5. Suggestopedia Learning takes place in a tension-free atmosphere, special attention being paid to furniture and surroundings. Music is played (Baroque instrumental music) to enhance learning. The typical scenario (“the concert”) runs as follows: students sit comfortably while the teacher reads a lengthy dialogue. Students are provided with the text and the L1 translation. Slow movement music is played. After the interval (no smoking and no drinking), the teacher re-reads the dialogue while

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students listen without reading the text this time. Thus, learners are supposed to remember best from the teacher playing an authoritative role. Lozanov’s method seeks to help learners eliminate psychological barriers to learning. The learning environment is relaxed and subdued, with low lighting and soft music in the background. Students choose a name and character in the target language and culture, and imagine that person. Dialogues are presented to the accompaniment of music. Students just relax and listen to them being read and later playfully practice the language during an “activation” phase. Features of the method (cf. Murar, 2012):Goals: to learn, at accelerated pace, a foreign language for everyday communication by tapping mental powers, overcoming psychological barriers.Roles: Teacher has authority, commands trust and respect of students; teacher “desuggests” negative feelings and limits to learning; if teacher succeeds in assuming this role, students assume childlike role, spontaneous and uninhibited. Teaching/learning process: Students learn in a relaxing environment. They choose a new identity (name, occupation) in the target language and culture. They use texts of dialogues accompanied by translations and notes in their native language. Each dialogue is presented during two musical concerts; once with the teacher matching his or her voice to the rhythm and pitch of the music while students follow along. The second time, the teacher reads normally and students relax and listen. At night and on waking, the students read it over. Then students gain facility with the new material through activities such as dramatizations, games, songs, and question-to-answer sessions.Interaction: Student-Teacher & Student-Student: At first, teacher initiates all interaction and students respond only nonverbally or with a few words in target language that they have practiced. Eventually students initiate interaction. Students interact with each other throughout, as directed by teacher.Dealing with Feelings: Great importance is placed on students’ feelings, in making them feel confident and relaxed, in “desuggesting” their psychological barriers. View of Language, Culture: Language is one plane; nonverbal parts of messages are another. Culture includes everyday life and fine arts. Aspects of Language the Approach Emphasizes: Vocabulary emphasized, some explicit grammar. Students focus on communicative use rather than form; reading, writing also have place. Role of Students’ Native Language: Translation clarifies dialogue’s meaning; Teacher uses native language, more at first than later, when necessary.Means for Evaluation: Students’ normal in-class performance is evaluated. There are no tests, which would threaten relaxed environment. Response to Students’ Errors: Errors are not immediately corrected; teacher models correct forms later during class. According to St. Krashen (1981), Suggestopedia classes are small and intensive, and focus on providing a very low-stress, attractive environment (partly involving active and passive “séances” complete with music and meditation) in which acquisition can occur. Some of the students’ first language is used at the beginning, but most in the target language. The role of the teacher is very important in creating the right atmosphere and in acting out the dialogues that form the core of the content. Suggestopedia seems to provide close to optimal input while not giving too much emphasis on grammar.

1.2.2. Behaviourism The audio-lingual method/the aural-oral method

The approach is based on stimulus (eliciting behaviour) and Response (triggered by a stimulus), endorsing habit formation through frequent exposure (reinforcement, marking the

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response as appropriate or inappropriate). In linguistics, it emerged in the 1930s: language acquisition (mechanical nature) is another form of human behaviour. The corresponding method is AUDIOLINGUALISM /THE AURAL- ORAL METHOD (highly popular in the 1960s), being complemented by the AUDIO-VISUAL METHOD. In relation to linguistic developments, the Audio-Lingual method is said to be fed by phonetics. i. Language learners are exposed to stock phrases presented in the hierarchical order of difficulty (on tape or read by the teacher). The principle is called incrementalism; ii. Learners have to assimilate the language items (dialogues) via imitation or repetition drills (individually and in chorus), with the teacher modeling the learners (habit formation through repetition); iii. The teacher provides immediate feedback on pronunciation, intonation and fluency; iv. Primacy is given to the spoken language over the written form, yet spoken language samples do not draw on colloquial language in authentic situations. v. The degree of creativity allowed for students is reduced to the changes of certain key words / phrases. vi. There is separation of the four language skills – reading and writing are developed in follow-up activities. vii. Grammar is taught inductively after the selection of grammar structures and the provision of minimal grammatical explanation. viii. Error occurrence is eliminated through further controlled practice. ix. It contains, in embryo, many techniques later developed by the Communicative Approach. In psychology, behaviourism is a theory that presents behaviour as the product of heredity and environment, and in particular of a process of conditioning in which certain stimuli promote certain responses. I. Pavlov, was a forerunner, and F. Skinner was a major proponent of the theory. It influenced ESL teaching from the mid-1950s to the late 1980s, especially in the US, part of an association of structural linguistics, behavioural psychology, and language teaching promoted by L. Bloomfield. This led in the 1950s to the audio-lingual method, in which human learning was compared to that of rats in laboratory mazes and pigeons taught to play table tennis. Language learning was seen as a process of habit formation. In 1959, Noam Chomsky challenged both behaviourism and structuralism in a critique of Skinner’s work, as a result of which the use of teaching techniques and materials based on behaviourism had by 1980 greatly declined. The audio-lingual method is based on the behaviourist belief that language learning is the acquisition of a set of correct language habits. The learner repeats patterns until able to produce them spontaneously. Once a given pattern, for example, subject – verb – prepositional phrase – is learned, the speaker can substitute to make novel sentences. The teacher directs and controls students’ behaviour, provides a model, and reinforces correct responses.Features of the audio-lingual method:Goals: uses the target language communicatively, overlearn it, so as to be able to use it automatically by forming new habits in the target language and overcoming native language habits.Roles: Teacher directs, controls students’ language behaviour, provides good model for imitation; students repeat, respond as quickly and accurately as possible. Teaching/learning process: new vocabulary, structures presented through dialogues, which are learned through imitation, repetition. The drills are based on patterns in dialogue. Students’ correct responses are positively reinforced; grammar is induced from models. Cultural information is contextualized in the dialogues or presented by the teacher. Reading, writing tasks are based on oral work.

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Interaction: Student-Teacher & Student-Student: Students interact during chain drills or when taking roles in dialogues, all at teacher’s direction. Most interaction is between teacher and student, initiated by the teacher.Dealing with Feelings: not available, not applicableView of Language, Culture: descriptive linguistics influence: every language seen as having its own unique system of phonological, morphological and syntactic patterns. The method emphasizes speech and uses a graded syllabus from simple to difficult linguistic structures. Culture comprises everyday language and behaviour.Aspects of language the approach emphasizes (Murar, 2012): language structures emphasized; vocabulary contextualized in dialogues but is limited because syntactic patterns are foremost; natural priority of skills – listening, speaking, reading, writing with emphasis on the first two; pronunciation taught from beginning, often with language lab work and minimal pair drills. Role of Students’ Native Language: Students’ native language habits are considered as interfering, thus native language is not used in classroom. Contrastive analysis is considered helpful for determining points of interference. Means for Evaluation: Discrete-point tests in which students distinguish between words or provide an appropriate verb for a sentence, etc. Response to Students’ Errors: Teachers strive to prevent student errors by predicting trouble spots and tightly controlling what they teach students to say. According to St. Krashen (1981), an audio-lingual lesson usually begins with a dialogue which contains the grammar and vocabulary to be focused on the lesson. The students mimic the dialogue and eventually memorize it. After the dialogue comes pattern drills, in which the grammatical structure introduced in the dialogue is reinforced, with these drills focusing on simple repetition, substitution, transformation and translation. While the audio-lingual method provides opportunity for some acquisition to occur, it cannot measure up to newer methods which provide much more comprehensible input in a low-filter environment. 1. 2.3. Cognitivism/Mentalism The structural situational approach The Chomskyan revolution discredits the development of linguistic competence via the stimulus-response-reinforcement cycle as creativity is part of this process: speakers are able to generate an infinite number of novel sentences (performance, i.e. actual use of the language) starting from a finite number of rules that they have internalized (competence, i.e. knowledge about the language system). He advocates the existence of universal grammar, i.e. of mental blueprints or a mindset specific to human beings (innate competence as opposed to skill-based behaviorism). Language competence is somehow idealized, being linked to nativeness and perfect knowledge of the language. Chomsky presents the ideal speaker-hearer in a completely homogenous speech community, who knows his language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention or interests, or errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of the language in actual performance (Chomsky, 1965: 48). Chomsky’s ideal speaker-hearer is unaffected by limitations of memory, distractions, shifts of attention, etc. Chomsky’s notion of competence refers to language as a merely abstract entity. Every speaker is believed to be able to generate language through the absorption of examples (Language Acquisition Device – LAD). What Chomsky does not put into this equation is the socializing function of language, i.e. there is no reference to socio-cultural embeddedness.

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The Structural-Situational Approach/ Situational Language Teaching has the following features: i. It is a far-reaching 3-stage lesson template, labelled the P-P-P cycle, consisting of presentation, practice and production. ii. Grammar is central to language teaching (grammar-based methodology). iii. During the presentation stage, the teacher presents the new grammar items, based on conversation or a short text. The identification of the grammar structures is followed by the teacher’s explanation and checking of students’ comprehension. iv. The practice stage involves the use of drills (controlled or mechanical practice). v. There is smooth progress from semi-controlled/meaningful practice to free/communicative practice. The P-P-P cycle was seriously criticized as “fundamentally disabling, not enabling” (Scrivener, 1994: 15). Johnson (1982) had already suggested the deep-end strategy as an alternative: students are pushed into immediate production (the deep end) and the teacher decides to return to presentation or practice according to the students’ performance. Harmer (2007: 65 ff) endorses the ESA sequence: Engage → Study → Activate. During the Engage stage, learners are engaged emotionally in the process. The second stage corresponds to Presentation and Practice, while Activation overlaps with Production. The model is flexible enough to allow for the re-ordering of stages: E → A → S (a “boomerang” procedure”), E → A → S → A → E → S (“patchwork lesson”). The author concludes that the approach is “extremely useful in focus-on-form lessons” with beginners, and “irrelevant in a skills lesson”.

1.2.4. The socio-cultural turn: the Communicative Approach/ Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)1.2.4.1. The positivist view in social sciences is replaced by an ethnographia mundi

concern in the 1960s. There is a shift of emphasis from language per se to its instrumentalization (language as a means of communication in social contexts) and to a more naturalistic view. From a linguistic perspective, CLT draws on the Speech Acts Theory (J. Searle, 1969), shifting attention to the relationship between language and its users, from habit formation to the real intended meaning. R. Mitchell (1994: 38-39) points out some of the best features of the CLT: i. Classroom activities should maximize opportunities for learners to use the target language for meaningful purposes, with their attention on the messages they are creating and the tasks they are completing, rather than on the correctness of language and language structure. ii. Learners trying their best to use the target language creatively and unpredictably are bound to make errors; this is a normal part of language learning, and constant correction is unnecessary, and even counterproductive. iii. Language analysis and grammar explanation may help some learners, but extensive experience of target language use helps everyone. iv. Effective language teaching is responsive to the needs and interests of the individual learner. v. Effective language learning is an active process, in which the learner takes increasing responsibility for his or her progress. vi. The effective teacher aims to facilitate, not control, the language learning process. According to Grenfell and Harris (1999: 21), the popularity of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) lies in: i. the status of the foreign language in the classroom, i.e. the extent to which it is used in the instruction process.

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ii. attitude to error: what, when and how to correct? In the traditional model, error was seen as a heavy impairment, being sanctioned immediately and error correction was the teacher’s central pedagogic tool. In CLT, there is tolerance to error, which is understood as a natural stage in the learner’s linguistic development. iii. authenticity of language: a wide range of authentic or real life materials (realia) is used in the classroom. Besides exposing learners to real life situational language, these materials also immerse them in the foreign language culture and raise the learners’ motivation for learning the language of the other speech community. iv. spoken and written language are treated as separate entities, requiring different teaching techniques. v. practice vs. real language: even if, to some extent, the learners still perceive theclassroom environment as not genuine, there is meaningful interaction in and through the foreign language, relating back to the intention to mean and legitimacy of tasks. The Post-Communicative Turn Jacobs and Farrell (2003) advocate a paradigm shift, which led to 8 major changes in ELT: i. Learner autonomy: learners are given a higher degree of autonomy with respect to the learning content and process. Thus, they are encouraged to develop self-assessment skills and the ability to prioritize their language learning. ii. The social nature of learning: there is no value-free knowledge, but only knowledge serving individual and collective needs or goals. iii. Curricular integration: English is given a place in a coherent whole, being connected to other subjects in the curriculum. For instance, project work in English classes requires knowledge acquisition from other subjects or from the real world (encyclopedic knowledge). iv. Focus on meaning: meaningful content is of paramount importance, being the driving force of learning. v. Diversity: the teachers should be aware of the learners’ profile (age, personality, type of motivation, learning styles, linguistic proficiency, etc.) and try to cater to this diversity of needs and interests. vi. Thinking skills: language learning should foster critical and creative thinking skills (cognitive development). For example, learners should be able to select relevant information from a text. vii. Alternative assessment: there is need for complementing traditional forms of assessment (M/C, Reading comprehension questions, Error correction exercises, etc.) by forms that assess higher-order skills (e.g. portfolios, observation sheets, interviews, etc). viii. Teachers as co-learners: teachers accrue experience (learning by doing) and capitalize expertise, while also pursuing professional development. 1.2.4.2. Communicative language teaching is an approach to the teaching of second and foreign languages that emphasizes interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of learning a language. Communicative language teaching began in Britain in the 1960s as a replacement to the earlier structural method(s). This was partly in response to Chomsky’s criticisms of structural theories of language and partly based on the theories of British functional linguists, such as J.R. Firth and M.A.K. Halliday, as well as American sociologists, such as D. Hymes, J. Gumperz and W. Labov, and the writings of J. Austin and J. Searle on speech acts. Some of the areas of linguistic research in this view of language are: functional grammar, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, semantics. Functional grammar: describes any approach in which the notion of ‘function’ is central. Functional grammar (M.A.K. Halliday, An Introduction to Functional Grammar, 1994) was devised as an alternative to the abstract view of language presented by transformational grammar.

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Based on the pragmatic view of language as social interaction, it focuses on the rules governing the linguistic expressions that are used as instruments of this activity. In foreign language teaching, a functional syllabus is one where the syllabus content is organized in terms of language functions, such as requesting, persuading, inviting, etc. Sociolinguistics: is a branch of linguistics which studies all aspects of the relationship between language and society. Sociolinguists study such matters as the linguistic identity of social groups, social attitudes to language, standard and non-standard forms of language, social varieties and levels of language, and so on. Pragmatics: this term is applied to the study of language from the point of view of the users, especially the choices they make, the constraints they encounter in using language in social interaction, and the effects their use of language has on other participants in an act of communication. Pragmatics includes aspects of deixis, speech acts and discourse structure. Speech act theory is associated with two linguistic philosophers, J. L. Austin and J. R. Searle (J. L. Austin, How to do Things with Words, 1965; J. R. Searle, Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts, 1979). They developed a functional view of language based on the notion that the social use of language is primarily concerned with the performance of certain communicative acts. There are a variety of reasons which may prompt the act of communication. We use language for requesting, informing, ordering, promising, reprimanding, to mention just a few. In all these cases we could say that language is being used to perform certain speech acts. Semantics refers to the study of meaning in language. Structural semantics applies the principles of structural linguistics to the study of meaning through the notion of semantic relations (also called sense relations), such as synonymy and antonymy. The theory of semantic fields views vocabulary as organized into areas within which words (lexical items) interrelate and define each other. Approach: Theory of language: The functional view of language is the primary one behind the communicative method. The communicative or functional view of language is the view that language is a vehicle for the expression of functional meaning. The semantic and communicative dimensions of language are more emphasized than the grammatical characteristics, although these are also included. Theory of learning: The learning theories behind the communicative approaches are based on some principles:- activities that involve real communication promote learning; - activities in which language is used for carrying out meaningful tasks promote learning;- language that is meaningful to the learner promotes learning; Types of learning techniques and activities: Communicative language teaching uses almost any activity that engages learners in authentic communication. W. Littlewood (1981), however, has distinguished two major activity types: i. functional communication activities: those aimed at developing certain language skills and functions, but which involve communication; ii. social interaction activities, such as conversation and discussion sessions, dialogues and role plays Procedure: it is difficult to summarize the procedure in communicative classes because of the wide variety of activities used. Nevertheless, there are some classroom activities frequently used in CLT. Classroom should provide opportunities for rehearsal of real-life situations and provide opportunity for real communication. There is emphasis on creative role-plays, simulations, projects, interviews, games, language exchange, surveys, pair work, plays, etc., - all produce spontaneity and improvisation, not just repetition and drills.

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1.2.4.3. Some Features of the Communicative Approach (Murar, 2012):Goals: - to become communicatively competent, - to use language appropriate for a given social context; the approach focuses on language as a medium of communication. Recognizes that all communication has a social purpose: the learner has something to say or find out;- to manage the process of negotiating meaning with interlocutors.Roles: The teacher facilitates students’ learning by managing classroom activities, setting up communicative situations. Students are communicators, actively engaged in negotiating meaning.Teaching/ Learning Process: - Activities are communicative – they represent an information gap that needs to be filled; speakers have a choice of what to say and how to say it; they receive feedback from the listener that will verify that a purpose has been achieved. . Communication embraces a whole spectrum of functions (e.g. seeking information, apologizing, expressing likes and dislikes, etc.) and notions, topics and situations (e.g. asking one’s way: where the nearest post office is; shopping, hobbies, etc.) The teacher should make use of topical items with which pupils are already familiar in their own language. This motivates pupils, arouses their interest and leads to more active participation. - Authentic materials are used: The communicative approach seeks to use authentic resources because they are more interesting and motivating. In foreign language classroom authentic texts serve as partial substitute for community of native speaker. Newspaper and magazine articles, poems, recipes, videos, news bulletins discussion programmes, etc., all can be exploited in a variety of ways. The teacher should avoid age-old texts: the materials must relate to pupils’ own lives, they must be fresh and real. That is why, changing texts and materials regularly keeps the teacher on toes and pupils interested. It is important not to be restricted to the textbook. The teacher should never feel that the textbook must be used from cover to cover, the textbook being only a tool or a starting point. With a little inspiration and imagination, the textbook can be manipulated and rendered more communicative. The teacher must free himself from it, and rely more on his own command of language and his professional expertise as to what linguistic items, idioms, phrases, words need to be drilled, exploited or extended.- Grammar can still be taught, but less systematically, in traditional ways alongside more innovative approaches. Communication depends on grammar, and disregard of grammatical form will virtually guarantee breakdown of communication.- The use of visual stimuli, such as overhead projectors (OHP), flashcards, etc., is important to provoke practical communicative language, represented in 3 stages: presentation, assimilation and reproducing language in creative and spontaneous way. Interaction: Student-Teacher & Student-Student: The teacher initiates interactions between students and participates sometimes. Students interact a great deal with each other in many configurations. Students usually work in small groups. More emphasis on active modes of learning, including pair-work and group-work, are often not exploited enough by teachers fearful of noisy class.Dealing with Feelings: emphasis is on developing motivation to learn through establishing meaningful, purposeful things to do with the target language. Individuality is encouraged, as well as

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cooperation with peers, which both contribute to a sense of emotional security with the target language.View of Language, Culture: language is for communication. Linguistic competence must be coupled with an ability to convey intended meaning appropriately in different social contexts. Culture is the everyday lifestyle of native speakers of the target language.Aspects of Language the Communicative Approach Emphasizes: Functions are emphasized over forms, with simple forms learned for each function at first, then more complex forms. Students work at discourse level: they work on speaking, listening, reading and writing from the beginning. The communicative approach is not just limited to oral skills. Reading and writing skills need to be developed to promote pupils’ confidence in all four skill areas. By using elements encountered in a variety of ways (reading, summarizing, translating, discussion, debates, etc), pupils’ manipulation of language becomes more fluent. Role of Students’ Native Language: students’ native language usually plays no roleMeans for Evaluation: - informal evaluation takes place when teacher advises or communicates;- formal evaluation is by means of an integrative test with a real communicative function.Response to Students’ Errors: errors of form are considered a natural part of learning language: learners trying to use the language creatively and spontaneously are bound to make errors. Constant correction is unnecessary and even counter-productive. Correction should be discreet, noted by the teacher who should let them talk and express themselves. Students with incomplete knowledge can still succeed as communicators. The Direct Method The Direct Method allows students to perceive meaning directly through the language because no translation is allowed. Visual aids and pantomime are used to clarify the meaning of vocabulary items and concepts. Students speak a great deal in the target language and communicate as if in real situations. Reading and writing are taught from the beginning, though speaking and listening skills are emphasized. Grammar is learned inductively. Features of the Direct Method:Goals: to communicate in the target language, to think in the target language. Roles: Teacher directs class activities, but students and teacher are partners in the teaching/learning process.Teaching/learning process: Students are taught to associate meaning and the target language directly. New target language words or phrases are introduced through the use of realia, pictures or pantomime, never the native language. Students speak a great deal in the target language a great deal and communicate as if in real situations.Grammar rules are learned inductively – by generalizing from examples. Students practice new vocabulary using words in sentences. Interaction: Student-Teacher & Student-Student: Both teacher and students initiate interaction, though student-initiated interaction with teacher or among each other, is usually teacher-directed. Dealing with Feelings: n/a (not available, not applicable)View of Language, Culture: Language is primarily spoken, not written. Students study common, everyday speech in the target language. Aspects of foreign culture are studied such as history, geography, daily life.Aspects of Language the Approach Emphasizes:Vocabulary emphasized over grammar; oral communication considered basic, with reading, writing based on oral practice; pronunciation emphasized from outset. Role of Students’ Native Language: Students’ native language is not used in the classroom.

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Means for Evaluation: Students tested through actual use, such as oral interviews and assigned written paragraphs. Response to Students’ Errors: Self-correction encouraged whenever possible. According to St. Krashen (1981), using the “Direct Method”, the teacher uses examples of language in order to inductively teach grammar; Students are to try to guess the rules of the language by the examples provided. Teachers interact with the students a lot, asking them questions about relevant topics and trying to use the grammatical structure of the day in the conversation. Accuracy is sought and errors are corrected. This method provides more comprehensible input than grammar-translation and audio-lingual method, but unlike the communicative method, it still focuses too much on grammar.

Topics for discussion and exercises:

1. Discuss the main characteristics of the Grammar-Translation Method.2. Enlarge upon the advantages of the Communicative Approach.

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UNIT 2

TEACHING COMPONENTS OF LANGUAGE

This unit briefly describes the components of language and presents the main trends in these areas that have potential for language teaching.

2.1. Teaching pronunciation When we teach a foreign language we have to be sure that our students can be understood when they speak, i.e. their pronunciation should be at least adequate for that purpose. Thus, we will help them to pronounce the sounds specific for English, to differentiate between these sounds, especially where such distinctions change meaning, and we will also help them to understand and use certain sound rules- for example the different pronunciations of the –ed past tense endings. Students have to use rhythm and stress correctly and to recognize intonation. One problem that confronts us in the teaching of pronunciation is that of accent. In other words, how important is it for our students to sound like native speakers? Some teachers think that students should aim for this ideal. But we must be aware that some learners seem more inclined to native-speaker-like pronunciation than others and that much depends on their contact with native speakers.

Much more important is the goal of intelligibility and efficiency. In other words the teacher’s aim should be to make sure that students can always be understood to say what they want to say. They will need good pronunciation for this, although they may not need a perfect accent. The teaching of pronunciation should, therefore, aim to give students communicative efficiency (Harmer, 1997: 22). Learners need to hear the language used so that they can both imitate the pronunciation and acquire the sounds and patterns. One source of language they can listen to is the teacher, this having a vital role, being a model for the students. But it is also very important for them to be exposed to authentic native- speaker speech through tapes, videos, television, radio and, whenever it is possible through personal contact. 2.2. Teaching vocabulary

2.2.1. OverviewHarmer (1997: 153) metaphorically says that if grammatical structures are the skeleton of a

language, then it is vocabulary that provides the vital organs and flesh. In the traditional model, however, vocabulary was seen as incidental to the main purpose of language teaching- namely the acquisition of grammar. Thus, vocabulary was not the main focus for learning itself. Teaching vocabulary used to be reduced to learners’ having to look words up in the dictionary, write definitions, and use words in more or less conventionalized sentences. Word lists, teacher explanation, discussion, memorization, vocabulary books, and quizzes were often used with a view to facilitating students to learn new words. As a rule, the teaching of vocabulary above elementary levels was limited to presenting new items encountered in reading or sometimes listening texts. This indirect teaching of vocabulary was premised by the idea that vocabulary expansion would happen through the practice of other language components, which has been proved not enough to ensure vocabulary expansion.

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Recently, methodologists and linguists have increasingly been turning their attention to the vocabulary, emphasizing the importance of lexis in language teaching and reconsidering some of the means in ehich is taught and learnt. It is unanimously accepted that the acquisition of vocabulary is equally important as the aquisition of grammar- thoug the two are interdependent- and teachers should have the same kind of expertise in the teaching of vocabulary as they do in the teaching of language structure (idem :154) In the current ELT methodology, it is widely accepted that vocabulary teaching should be part of the syllabus and taught in a well-planned and on a regular basis. Vocabulary is a principle contributor to comprehension, fluency, and achievement. Vocabulary development is both an outcome of comprehension and an input to it, with word meanings making up as much as 70–80% of comprehension. Grammar provides the overall patterns, while vocabulary provides the material to put in the patterns. To understand a sentence such as “Tom sat on the floor” properly the listener needs to know not only that “sat” refers to a physical state, but also that it is usually preceded by a grammatical subject that is animate; “sat” is related to other words such as “lie” and “stand”. All of these are part of the speaker’s knowledge of the English vocabulary. Using “sat” properly means not just knowing how it is defined in the dictionary, but how it relates to all the other words in the language, and how and when it may be used in sentences. Dictionaries can give a false idea that vocabulary is a mere list of words, each with one or more meanings attached to them. Instead, words are related to each other in many ways, and this is how they are remembered and stored (Murar, 2012). Some students still learn vocabulary lists in which each L1 word has a one-word L2 translation; English book is ‘carte’ in Romanian and so on. Some teachers try to get the students to associate each word with an image or an object; they hold up a picture of a book or even show one and say “This is a book”. Both these teaching techniques imply that learning vocabulary means learning individual words one at a time. But the relationships between words are as important as the meaning of the word in isolation – how words contrast with other words is as important as the meaning of the word itself. Learning the vocabulary of a second language is not just memorizing equivalent words between languages (“red” means “roşu”), or learning the definition of the word (“red” is “a colour typically seen in blood”) or putting it in context (“Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer”), but learning the meaning relationships between “red” and all the other words in English within the full context of cultural life. Selecting vocabulary One of the problems in teaching vocabulary consists in the fact that while there is a general agreement on what grammatical structures should be thought at what levels the same is hardly true of vocabulary. A general principle in the past was to teach more concrete words at the elementary level and gradually become more abstract. Other criteria are frequency (we should first teach the words which are most commonly used) and coverage(a word is more useful if it covers more things than if it only has a single specific meaning). Harmer (1997: 156) considers that the decision about what vocabulary to teach and learn will be heavily influenced by information we can get about frequency and use, but this information will be assessed in the light of other considerations such as topic, function , structure, teachability, needs and wants. When we come across a word and try to decipher its meaning we still have to understand the context in which is used. Students need to acquire words in context and they need to know sense relations (opposition of meaning, hyponymy, homonymy, synonymy, etc.

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Students need to recognize metaphorical and idiomatic language and they need to know how the words collocate. They also need knowledge about style and register. Learners have to understand problems concerning word formation (derivation, compounding, conversion and other means of word formation), since they can easily notice that there is a certain connection between words like: happy, unhappy, happiness, unhappiness, happily. Students have to know the grammatical value of a word and consequently its grammatical behaviour (Knowledge concerning verb complementation, complex verbs, the position of adjectives and adverbs, etc). Active and passive vocabulary: A distinction is frequently made between ‘active’ and ‘passive’ vocabulary. The former refers to vocabulary that students have been taught or learnt – and which they are expected to be able to use – whilst the latter refers to words which the students will recognise when they meet them but which they will probably not be able to produce. This distinction becomes blurred, however, when we consider what ‘knowing a word’ means and when we consider the way students seem to acquire their store of words. It is true that students ‘know’ some words better than others, but it has not been demonstrated that these are necessarily the words which teachers have taught them, especially at higher levels. They might be words that are often used in the classroom or words that have appeared in the reading texts which students have been exposed to. According to language acquisition theories, many words which students know do come through that route rather than through learning. Other words may be those that students have looked up because they wanted to use them. Or they may be words that students have met and somehow ‘liked’. At beginner and elementary levels teachers provide sets of vocabulary which students can learn. Most of these early words will be constantly practised and so can, presumably, be considered as ‘active’. But at intermediate levels the situation is rather more complicated. We can assume that students have a store of words but it would be difficult to say which are active and which are passive. A word that has been ‘active’ through constant use may slip back into the ‘passive’ state if it is not used. A word that students have in their ‘passive’ store may suddenly become active if the situation or the context provokes its use. In other words, the status of a vocabulary item does not seem to be a permanent state of affairs. The students who remembered the word ‘cuddle’ because they liked the experience of learning it and because they liked the word seem to provide another example of how students learn and retain words (the example is offered by Harmer, 1997). We could predict that ‘cuddle’ is a word they are going to remember for a long time - though it may eventually fade through lack of use. This word touched them in some way, it was a word that had personal meaning for them. Not all vocabulary items have the warmth of a word like ‘cuddle’, however. But it would be nice if we could provoke some kind of relationship with the words that we teach as those students seemed to have had with their word.

2.2.2. Theories of teaching vocabulary 2.2.2.1. Components of meaning One way of analyzing vocabulary is to break up the meaning of a word into smaller, separate components. Thus the meaning of “girl” is made up of “female”, “human”, and “non-adult” (or “young”); the word “boy” has components “human”, “male” and “young”; the meaning of “apple” is made up of “fruit”, “edible”, “round” and so on. A version of this component approach can be found in textbooks such as The Words You Need (B. Rudzka, J. Channell, Y. Putseys and P. Ostyn, 1981, London: Macmillan). Students look at a series of ‘Word Study’ charts displaying the different components of meaning of words. For example a chart gives words that share the meaning ‘look at/over’ such as “check”, “examine”,

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“inspect”, “scan”, and “scrutinize”. It shows which of them have the component of meaning ‘detect errors’, which ‘determine that rules are observed’, and so on. Students are encouraged to build up the idea of the vocabulary as consisting of such components while reading texts. 2.2.2.2. The prototype theory of vocabulary In the Prototype theory, words have whole meanings divided into basic level (“table”), superordinate (“furniture”) and subordinate (“coffee table”). Many aspects of meaning cannot be split up into components but are appreciated as wholes. An influential approach of this type is Elinor Rosch’s ‘prototype’ theory (E. Rosch, Human categorization, 1977, London: Ac.). English or a Romanian person who is asked to give an example of a typical bird is more likely to say “sparrow” than “penguin” or “ostrich”; sparrows are closer to the prototype for “birds” than penguins and ostriches. Rosch’s theory suggests that, rather than components of meaning, there is an ideal of meaning in our minds - “birdiness” in this case – from which other things depart. Speakers have a central form of a concept in their minds and the things they see and talk about correspond better or worse with this prototype. Prototype theory also claims that children first learn words that are ‘basic’ because they reflect aspects of the world, prototypes that stand out automatically from the rest of what they see. “Sparrow” is a ‘basic level’ term compared to a ‘superordinate level’ term like “bird”, or a ‘subordinate level’ term like “house sparrow”. The basic level of vocabulary is easier to use and to learn. On this foundation children build higher and lower levels of vocabulary. Some examples of the three levels of vocabulary in different areas are seen in the diagram at the end of this section. L1 children learn the basic level terms like “dog” before they learn the superordinate term “animal”, or the subordinate term “labrador”. They start with the most basic level as it is easiest for the mind to perceive. Only after this has been learnt do they go on to words that are more general or more specific. L2 learners first acquired basic terms such as “table”, second more general terms like “furniture”, and finally more specific terms like “coffee table”. Rosch’s levels are therefore important to L2 learning as well as to first language acquisition. This sequence, however, is different from the usual order of presentation in language teaching in which the teacher or the textbook introduces or practices a whole group of words simultaneously: “You have just moved house. Decide which pieces of furniture are to go in which room: armchair, television, bed…” Here all three levels of vocabulary are being taught at once - superordinate “furniture”, basic “bed”, and subordinate “armchair”. According to prototype theory, this method is misguided. The most important early words are basic level terms. The human mind automatically starts from this concrete level rather than from a more abstract level or a more specific one. Starting by teaching vocabulary items, that can be easily shown in pictures, fits in with Rosch’s theory. A drawing can be readily recognized as a chair but it is less easy to see as furniture. Hence prototype theory ties in with the audiovisual method of language teaching that introduces new vocabulary with a picture of what it represents, in an appropriate cultural setting. This theory has particular implications for teaching vocabulary at the beginning stages.superordinate terms furniture bird fruitbasic level terms table chair sparrow apple strawberry subordinate terms coffee table armchair field sparrow Golden wild strawberry

Delicious 2.2.2.3. The lexical approach: The Lexical Approach puts vocabulary acquisition in a central role in language acquisition. During the 1990s interest in vocabulary teaching and research increased, with Paul Nation’s book Teaching and Learning Vocabulary (1990) as well as J. Sinclair’s book Corpus, Concordance, Collocation (1991): these two books proved influential in

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their review of research on vocabulary, providing at the same time pedagogical guidance through interpreting the research in terms of classroom applications. During this same time, Michael Lewis began describing an approach to language teaching, the Lexical Approach, which moved vocabulary to the forefront of language teaching in his two books, The Lexical Approach (1993) and Implementing the Lexical Approach (Hove: Language Teaching Publications, 1997). The collection of articles compiled by M. Lewis (Ed.) in the volume Teaching Collocation: Further Developments in the Lexical Approach (2000) continues the development of this approach by focusing on a key element in the approach, collocations. Murar (2012) briefly discusses some theories of language which form the foundation of the Lexical Approach to teaching English. i. The principle of Grammaticalised Lexis In recent years it has been recognised that native speakers have a vast stock of lexical chunks which are vital for fluent production. There are two types of lexical chunks:- lexical chunks that are not collocations: if I were you, by the way, upside down, up to now; - lexical chunks that are collocations: totally convinced, terrible accident, sense of humour; Fluency does not depend so much on having a set of generative grammar rules and a separate stock of words – the ‘slot and filter’ or open choice principle – as on having rapid access to a stock of chunks: “It is our ability to use lexical phrases that help us to speak with fluency. This prefabricated speech has both the advantages of more efficient retrieval and of permitting speakers (and learners) to direct their attention to the larger structure of the discourse, rather than keeping it narrowly focused on individual words as they are produced” (Nattinger and DeCarrico, Lexical Phrases and Language Teaching, Oxford: OUP, 1992). According to M. Lewis, the basic principle of the Lexical Approach is “Language is grammaticalised lexis, not lexicalised grammar” (Lewis, 1993). In other words, lexis is central in creating meaning, grammar plays a subservient managerial role. If one accepts this principle then the logical implication is that we should spend more time helping learners develop their stock of phrases, and less time on grammatical structures. ii. Collocation in action Collocations might be described as the words that are placed or found together in a predictable pattern. Examples of collocations range from two word combinations such as problem child to extended combinations such as He’s recovering from a major operation. M. Lewis’s volume Teaching Collocation: Further Developments in the Lexical Approach (2000), presents ways of integrating collocation into a reading and writing course, and numerous classroom strategies, activities, and exercises. Another important aspect of the Lexical Approach is that lexis and grammar are closely related. Consider the sentences below where several words can be completed: (a) The theory has had a strong ..….on me. (b) They…….to try out the theory. If we look at the examples above, we will see in (a) that 3 semantically related words – impact, influence, effect – behave the same way grammatically: have a/an impact, influence, effect on somebody/something. In (b) verbs connected with initiating action – encourage, persuade, urge, advise, etc. all follow the pattern verb + object + infinitive. This kind of ‘pattern grammar’ is considered to be important in the Lexical Approach. Indeed, an aspect of vocabulary that has become quite important in recent years is the position of the word in the structure of the sentence, putting words in structures. For example, the verb “faint” can only occur with a grammatical subject such as “Mary” in “Mary fainted”, never

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with an object “*Mary fainted Ann”. The verb “meet” on the other hand has to have an object “He met John”, not “*He met”. Some verbs are followed by subordinate clauses – “I hoped Mary would go” rather than grammatical objects “*I hoped Mary”. A speaker of English knows not just what a word means and how it is pronounced but also how it fits into sentences.

2.2.3. Techniques used in teaching vocabulary In this section we will look at some of the techniques used in teaching vocabulary, namely, Presentation techniques, Interaction with words, Discovery techniques. 2.2.3.1. Presentation techniques Not all vocabulary can be learnt through interaction and discovery techniques. There are many occasions when some form of presentation and/or of explanation is the best way to bring new words into the classroom. There are several types of presentation techniques: realia; pictures; mime, action and gesture; contrast; enumeration; explanation; translation Realia is a term used to refer to certain real-life objects. One way of presenting words is to bring the things they represent into the classroom. Words like ‘pen’, ‘ruler’, ‘postcard’, etc. can obviously be presented in this way. The teacher holds up the object (or points to it), says the word and then gets students to repeat it. Pictures: Bringing a pen into the classroom is not a problem. Bringing in a car, however, is. One solution is the use of pictures. Pictures can be board drawings, wall pictures and charts, flashcards, magazine pictures and any other non-technical visual representation. Such pictures can be used to explain the meaning of vocabulary items, even of more abstract concepts such as ‘above’, ‘opposite’, ‘smiles’, ‘frowns’, etc. Mime, action and gesture: it is sometimes impossible to explain the meaning of words either through the use of realia or in pictures. Actions, in particular, are probably better explained by mime. Concepts like ‘running’, ‘walking’ or ‘smoking’ are easy to present in this way; so are prepositions (‘to’, ‘towards’, ‘on’). Contrast: Words exist because of their sense relations and this can be used to teach meaning. We can present the meaning of ‘empty’ by contrasting it with ‘full’, or ‘cold’ by contrasting it with ‘hot’, ‘big’ by contrasting it with ‘small’. We may present these concepts with pictures or mime, and by drawing attention to the contrasts in meaning we ensure our students’ understanding Enumeration: Another important sense relation is represented by hyponymy: grouping words into general and specific. We can give a superordinate word (or hypernym – the general word) such as ‘clothes’ and explain this by enumerating or listing various items (hyponyms - specific) included in it. Thus, one can introduce the item ‘appliances’ (superordinate or hypernym) and then illustrate by enumerating items such as refrigerator, microwave oven, dishwasher, and such. The same is true of other hypernyms such as ‘vegetable’ or ‘furniture’. Explanation: one of the most common presentation techniques is explanation. Explaining the meaning of vocabulary items can be very difficult, especially at beginner and elementary levels. But such a technique can be used with more intermediate or advanced students, who are able to grasp the explanation. We should remember that when we explain the meaning of a word we also have to explain aspects of use which are relevant for that word. Thus, if we are explaining the meaning of ‘mate’ (= friend) we have to point out that it is a colloquial word used in informal contexts and that it is more often used for males than for females.

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Translation: translation is a commonly used presentation technique. It is a quick and easy way to present the meaning of words but it is not without problems. In the first place, it is not always easy to translate words (culturally complex concepts are often difficult to accurately translate), and, in the second place, even where translation is possible, it may make it a bit too easy for students by discouraging them from interacting with the words. Where translation can quickly solve a presentation problem it may be a good idea, but we should bear in mind that using the mother tongue as little as possible is helpful for both teacher and students. Pronunciation: All of these presentation techniques, either singly or in combination, are useful ways of introducing new words. What must be remembered with vocabulary presentation, too, is that pronunciation is just as important here as it is for structural material. We should not introduce words without making sure that students know how they are pronounced. Not only will this mean that they can use the words in speech, it will also help them to remember the words. There are a number of ways of presenting the sounds of words: i. Through modelling: Just as with structures, the teacher can model the word and then get both choral and individual repetition. When the teacher is modelling the word s/he can use gesture, etc. to indicate the main stress in the word. ii. Through visual representation: When teachers write up new words on the board they should always indicate where the stress in the word is. Teachers can do this in several ways:- they can underline the stressed syllable, e.g. photograph - they can use a stress mark before the stressed syllable, e.g. ‘photograph, photo’graphic iii. Through phonetic symbols: some teachers get their students to learn the phonetic symbols, at least for recognition purposes. e.g. photograph [‘fəutəgra:f], photographic [fəutə’græfik] Certainly for more advanced students a basic knowledge of the symbols will help them to access pronunciation information from their dictionaries. There are several stages of presenting vocabulary i. setting up a context, which is relevant to learners’ interest and age, builds on or incorporates learners’ experience. ii. elicitation of the target vocabulary item (i.e. trying to get the target item from the learners first) in order to enhance their involvement as well as to help them fit the new item in their existing vocabulary knowledge. iii. choral and/or individual repetition (this may be optional at higher levels) in order to standardise pronunciation. iv. consolidation/concept check questions, which are aimed to check whether meaning has been properly understood and to provide further meaningful opportunities for learners to use the item in context. v. board record for later reference 2.2.3.2. Interaction with words: Experiments on vocabulary seem to suggest that students remember best when they have interacted with the words they are learning. There is a definite advantage in getting students to do more than just repeat them. Tasks such as changing the words to mean their opposites, changing a noun into an adjective, putting words together, etc., help to fix the words in the learners’ minds. Somehow or other, then, it seems that we should get students to interact with words. We should get them to ‘adopt’ words that they like and that they want to use, so that they may become properly acquainted with them. Vocabulary learning needs the ‘deep experience’. Learning and remembering vocabulary: As we previously mentioned, the problem lies not just in learning L2 words, but also in remembering them. How well people remember

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something depends on how deeply they process it. Repeating words as strings of sounds is low-level processing and badly remembered; working out how words fit in the grammatical structure of the sentence is deeper and leads to better memory; using the meanings of words together within the whole meaning of the sentence is the deepest level of processing and ensures the best memory. Research conducted by Harry Bahrick (Semantic memory content, 1984) suggested that a word is remembered best if it is practiced every 30 days rather than at more frequent intervals. This contradicts the belief common among teachers that every word should be practiced as often as possible within a short time span. It is how the word is practiced that is important rather than how often. . 2.2.3.3. Discovery techniques go beyond simple modelling, explanation, mime and translation. Especially at intermediate levels and above, as an appropriate alternative to standard presentation techniques, discovery techniques “aim to give students a chance to take charge” (Harmer, 1997: 71) and ask students to discover how language works, instead of simply furnishing meaning. Students will often be asked to ‘discover for themselves’ what a word means and how and why it is being used, they will have to work out rules and meanings for themselves rather than being given everything by the teacher. At intermediate levels we can assume that students already have a considerable store of vocabulary. Rather than teach them new words we can show them examples of words in action (in texts, etc.) and ask them to use their previous knowledge to work out what words can go with others, when they should be used and what connotations they have. Even at beginner levels, however, we may want to ask students to work out what words mean, rather than just handing them the meanings: when students have ‘had a go’ with the words we can lead feedback sessions to see if they have understood the words correctly. Discovery techniques display from simple matching tasks to more complex understandings of connotation and context. Discovery techniques used with vocabulary materials allow students to activate their previous knowledge and to share what they know (if they are working with others). They also provoke the kind of interaction with words. Discovery techniques shift the emphasis from the teacher to students and invites them to use their reasoning processes and problem solving skills to learn the subtle nuances of the language and, hence, to mimic the psycholinguistic approach utilized by native language learners. The conclusions we can draw from this discussion are best summed up by a quote from Adrian Underhill: “engaging the learner is essential to any activity that is to have a high learning yield” (Underhill, 1985: 107) 2.2.4. Stages in teaching vocabulary 1st step: Encountering new words: if learners are motivated to learn certain words out of interest or need, they are likely to be learnt more easily. The way or context in which a word is presented as well as the number of times a word is encountered will affect whether it is learnt or not. Learners seem to need various encounters with the same word in multiple resources rather than in just one source. 2nd step: Getting a clear image of the form of the vocabulary item: this image may be visual or auditory or both. Very often learners tend to associate new words with words that sound / look similar in their language. Problems for learners arising from words similar in form have been found as a major problem for language learners, especially in such cases where native language and the language they study both use the Roman alphabet and the two languages are closely related historically.

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3rd step: Getting the word meaning: The level of distinctions that must be made in word definitions vary across situations and learner levels. Low level learners may be satisfied to grasp quite general meanings while advanced learners need more specific definitions in order to be able to see differences between near synonyms. 4th step: Consolidation of form and meaning in memory: various memory strategies are available that help consolidate the connection between word form and meaning. 5th step: Using the words: this ensures that learners gain confidence as autonomous language users, but at the same time they can refine their language knowledge in general. 2.2.5. Practising vocabulary Having used any of the vocabulary presentation techniques in class, we cannot really say that learners have learnt the new items. Encountering a new vocabulary item once will not guarantee that it will be remembered. Learners need plenty of opportunities in order to acquire a new vocabulary item. In a vocabulary presentation lesson, the teacher should provide meaningful controlled practice for learners so that they could recognise, manipulate and use the new vocabulary items. Vocabulary practice should be regular, carefully planned and should not involve too many words at one time. Many simple vocabulary practice activities are based around the following ideas (J. Scrivener, Learning Teaching, 1994: 83):- discussions, communicative activities and role-play requiring use of the words- making use of the vocabulary in written tasks. More specific exercise types:- matching pictures to words- matching parts of words to other parts, e.g. beginnings and endings - matching words to other words, e.g. collocations, synonyms, opposites, sets of related words, etc.- using prefixes and suffixes to build new words from given words- classifying items into lists- using given words to complete a specific task- filling in crosswords, grids or diagrams- filling in gaps in sentences- memory games The importance of recycling previously presented vocabulary is obvious. Revision activities can easily be incorporated into the lesson by way of five-minute activities or warmers. These activities can successfully aid students’ recall of the new words and develop their retrieval systems. Vocabulary revision activities: listing or categorising items, vocabulary quizzes, crosses, brainstorming round an idea, guessing games, etc. Control factors in teaching vocabulary Murar ( 2012) synthetizes the following control factors: i.. Rely on students’ prior knowledge and related experiences before teaching new words to introduce a thematic area. For example, before reading a text on Communication Cyberspace, teach the word blog, define it (an online journal), specify that the word is a blend (blog comes from web log), and show a picture of someone seated at a computer composing an essay or report to post on their personal website. Then, show students an actual blog . ii. Show form and content as well as aspects of the nature of meaning and vocabulary networking/ word relations:- pronunciation and spelling: ability to recognise and reproduce items in the spoken and written forms.

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· denotation and connotation: e.g. rose – denotative meaning: reference to the flower; connotative meaning: passion (universal symbol), the Royal House (as in The Wars of the Roses).· Polysemy: distinguishing between the various meaning of a single word form with several but closely related meanings (foot: of a person, of a mountain, of a page).· Homonymy: distinguishing between the various meaning of a single word form which has several meanings which are not closely related (e.g. file: used to put papers in or a tool).· Homophony: understanding words that have the same pronunciation but different spellings and meanings (e.g. wait-weight).· Synonymy: distinguishing between the different shades of meaning that synonymous words have (e.g. small-little).· Style, register, dialect: Being able to distinguish between different levels of formality, the effect of different contexts and topics, as well as differences in geographical variation.· Translation: awareness of differences (especially at the connotational level) and similarities between the native and the foreign language (e.g. false cognates).· Chunks of language: set phrases (red-handed), collocations (headache, pain in the back, sore throat), idioms (to carry coal to Newcastle).· Grammar of vocabulary: learning the rules that enable students to build up different forms of the word or even different words from that word (e.g. sleep, slept, slept; able, unable; disability). iii. Irrespective of the learners’ level of proficiency, discovery, guided discovery, contextual guesswork (inferencing skills) and dictionary-building skills should be encouraged. iv. Vocabulary selection should meet the following criteria: - coverage: information should be provided about the various meanings and uses of a word form (multiple meaning words prevail over monosemantic items);- frequency: the more the number of the word occurrences, the more likely to be selected.Estimates go that the list includes 2,000 words with semantic and frequency information drawn from a corpus of 2 to 5 million words. It is claimed that knowing these words gives access to about 80 per cent of the words in any written text and thus stimulates motivation since the words acquired can be seen by learners to have a demonstrably quick return.- universality: words useful in all English-speaking countries;- utility: enabling discussion on as wide a subject range as possible.

ConclusionsConsidering the role of lexis in the clasroom , Scrivener (1994:229) draws the following

conclusions:1. Lexis is important and needs to be dealt with systematically in its own righ ; it is not

simply an add-on to grammar lessons.2. Our job consists in helping students to practise, store,recall and use the items of the new

lexis.3. Training in the use of English-English dictionaries provides students with a vital tool for

self-study.Without words, it is possible to know every thing about the grammatical structure of a

language, but,yet to be unable to make a single meaningful utterance. Our role as teachers is to help, to motivate and encourage (applying different techniques and media for presenting vocabulary, making vocabulary memorable), and even to inspire by encouraging in learners an appreciation of the origin, sound and beauty of words (Bowen and Marks,1994: 106).


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Activity 1. (Source: Thornbury, S. 2002: 67)Activity type: Teaching vocabulary Level of proficiency: intermediateTiming: 10 minutesStudents’ grouping: pairworkInstructions: Students are asked to use a dictionary and look up the words in the list below and group them into neutral items and words having negative connotations: notorious vs. famouspublicity vs. propagandaskinny vs. slimchat vs. gossipchildish vs. childlikequeer vs. gayofficious vs. officialcollaborator vs. allybachelor vs. spinster Follow-up: students are raised awareness that connotation is rendered by both grammatical means (suffixes such as – like and - ish) and lexical means (different lexical items) and they are asked to think of other pairs of neutral vs. words which are negatively or positively connoted.

Activity 2 (Source: Harmer, 1997:171):

At the restaurant Level: intermediateWorking with your partner, put the following events into the correct order:Lok at the menuGive the waiter a tipHave dessertPay the billBook a tableDecide to go ot for a meal leave the restaurantHave the starterGo to the restaurantHave the main courseSit downOrder the mealAsk for the bill

Activity 3:Level:upper intermediateWhat vocabulary features are exemplified in the following groups of words?

a. stride, walk, saunter, stroll, amble, stagger, trudge;car, vane, ambulance, bus, taxi, vehicle, jeep.

b. blew/blue;bare/bear;peer/pier; plane/plainc. difficult, hard, tough, demanding;

cross, irritated, furious, angry, apoplectic;

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d. drunk/sober; hot/cold; alive/dead; buy/selle. sense, nonsense, senseless, sensible, sensitivity, sensorf. bookshop, teapot, forget-me-notg. ship, anchor, sailor, bridge,navigate,deck, cargo.

4. What kind of vocabulary teacher will you be? How will you as future teachers help your learners to learn and remember items of vocabulary? Where do you fit into the vocabulary –learning process? Tim Bowen and Jonathan Marks (1994: 92) talked to a number of teachers about vocabulary teaching and these are some of the comments they made. Make a note of those you identify with and those you disagree with:

a. I always try to present new words in every lesson. I think my learners expect it.b. I give my students a translation of every new word. They need it for their notebooks.c. I present vocabulary in context wherever possible.d. I often present words with their collocations.e. I often show my learners the relationships between particular items of vocabulary like

opposites or synonyms.f. I think texts are an excellent vehicle for introducing and recycling vocabulary.g. I try to encourage my students to become more independent by making them guess the

meaning of unknown words.h. I encourage my learners to use dictionaries as much as possible. I think it really helps in

vocabulary development and it can also make them much more autonomous.i. I give students advice on how they can work on expanding their vocabulary in their own time.

2.3. Teaching grammar 2.3.1. In the traditional model of ELT, grammar played a central role to the detriment of the other language components. The overriding importance attached to grammar was based on the assumption that accuracy (grammatical correctness) secured successful communication. The belief was challenged in the early 1970s with the realization that grammar knowledge was only one component of the communicative competence (alongside discourse competence, sociolinguistic competence and strategic competence). Consequently, grammar teaching was almost abandoned; it is only recently that grammar has regained its rightful place in an integrated approach to language teaching. Grammar is defined as the study and practice of the rules by which words change their forms and are combined into sentences.

Food for thought ( Source:T. Bowen and J. Marks, Inside Teaching, 1994: 82):How do you see grammar, and its significance to the language learners? What do the

metaphors proposed here suggest about the nature of grammar? Grammar is:

an algebraic system; a scaffolding; a skeleton; a blueprint. The question is WHAT to teach (what grammar items) and HOW to teach grammar in an

effective and efficient way.

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The answer to the first question - WHAT to teach - (selection of grammar structures to be taught) points out to compliance with two criteria: i. Comprehensibility – teachers should teach the functional load of grammar, i.e. structures which enable meaning understanding in a communicative situation: basic verb forms; affirmative, interrogative and negative patterns, tenses and modals, etc. ii. Acceptability – it is equated to an adequate level of correctness and naturalness of the linguistic output. With reference to HOW to teach grammar, there are two lines of approach: i. form-focused instruction (highly valued in the traditional model) – learners’ needs are pre-defined in the grammatical syllabus. Admittedly, grammar teaching reflects the typical classroom use of language, out of context in a rather non-authentic way; focuses on well-formed sentences (which are not lengthy), on language output as evidence of language learning; relies heavily on explicit knowledge and on controlled practice. ii. “fluency-first” pedagogy/ meaning-focused interaction (contemporary approach) – learners’ needs are assessed based on their performance during fluency activities. It underlies the natural use of language in real-like communication settings; relies on implicit knowledge and on automaticity (internalization of rules); activates learners’ strategic competence (situation management by paraphrasing, reorganization, remedial work), etc. 2.3.2. The typology of grammar activities falls into three broad types (Murar, 2012): i. controlled/mechanical practice (for example, repetition and substitution drills). ii. semi-controlled/contextualized/ meaningful practice: students are encouraged to relate form to meaning by showing how the grammar structures are used in real-life communication. For example, in order to practice the use of prepositions to describe locations of places, students are given a street map with various buildings identified in different locations. They are also given a list of prepositions such as across from, on the corner of, near, on, next to. They then have to answer questions such as “Where is the book shop? Where is the café?, etc. The practice is now meaningful because they have to respond according to the location of places on the map. iii. free/communicative practice (learners use the structures in authentic communication while paying attention to this rule-governed behaviour). For example, students are asked to draw a map of their neighborhood and answer questions about the location of different places, such as the nearest bus stop, the nearest café, etc. Globally, grammar activities display the following features: i. specific grammar structures are in focus and learners are provided with explicit information about the rule; ii. learners are asked to use the structures in sentences of their own; iii. learners have the opportunity to use the structures repeatedly during the English classes (there is need for reinforcement and for building up on prior knowledge); iv. learners are expected to understand the rule (via consciousness-raising) use of the grammatical structures in a successful way; v. there is feedback on the learners’ performance (they get a sense of their performance) 2.3.3. Control factors in teaching grammar i. constant exposure to language at an appropriate level of difficulty (roughly-tuned input – the input is slightly above the learners’ level of proficiency). ii. building of meaning-focused interaction. iii. opportunities for learners to identify and direct attention to grammar structure form, semantics or meaning and pragmatic conditions of their use before and while actually using the language. For example, phrasal verbs: a) form of phrasal verbs: they are two-part verbs comprising a verb and a

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particle (e.g. to look up) or a verb, a particle and a preposition (e.g. to keep up with). Phrasal verbs are transitive or intransitive. A distinctive feature of phrasal verbs is that in many cases the particle can be separated from the verb by an object (e.g. He looked the word up in the dictionary); b) meaning of phrasal verbs: many of them are multiple meaning structures – e.g. to put up: literal meaning and figurative meaning – to stay at a hotel, etc; c) pragmatic use of phrasal verbs: they mostly characterize the informal style To sum up, communication cannot take place in the absence of structure, or grammar, a set of shared assumptions about how language works, along with a willingness of participants to cooperate in the negotiation of meaning. Hence, the goal of grammar teaching is to enable learners to internalize rules so as to become efficient in communication. Furthermore, communicative fluency does not imply loss of grammatical accuracy, instead they are interrelated. 2.3.4. Learning different types of grammar Language has patterns and regularities which are used to convey meaning, some of which make up its grammar. Knowledge of grammar is thought by many to be the central area of the language system. In some ways grammar is easy to study in L2 learners, because it is highly systematic. For these reasons much of L2 learning research of the 1980s concentrated on grammar. The term ‘grammar’ refers to a systematic analysis of the structure of a language, a set of rules and examples dealing with the syntax and morphology of a standard language, usually intended as an aid to the learning and teaching of that language. Prescriptive grammar attempts to establish rules for the correct use of language in society. A prescriptive grammar is an account of a language that sets out rules (prescriptions) for how it should be used and for what should not be used (proscriptions) based on norms derived from a particular model of grammar. For English, such a grammar may prescribe I as in It is I (I should be used after the verb be), and proscribe me as in It’s me. It may proscribe like used as a conjunction, as in He behaved like he was in charge, prescribing instead He behaved as if he were in charge; or ‘Whom should be used as the relative pronoun in objective function’, e.g. The man whom I saw, and so on. Prescriptive grammars have been criticized for not taking account of language change and stylistic variation, and for imposing the norms of some groups on all users of a language. Descriptive grammar provides a precise account of actual usage, a description of linguistic structures, usually based on utterances elicited from native-speaking informants. In a descriptive grammar the author attempts to build a model of language which represents his theory of language, i.e. he seeks to provide other linguists with a specification of his insights into the nature of language. Such a model must satisfy, or at least attempt to satisfy, three criteria of adequacy: observational, descriptive and explanatory (as outlined by Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, 1965: 24-27). It must, in simple terms, a) provide an analysis which is minimally consistent with observed primary data; b) correspond in its analysis to the innate knowledge of the ideal speaker-hearer; and c) provide a means of selecting between rival models and theories so as to choose the one which best explains the phenomenon of human language. Traditional grammar books have often, however, combined description and prescription. A traditional grammar concerns the parts of speech, e.g. “a noun is the name of a person, place or thing”. Analyzing sentences means labeling the parts with their names and giving rules that explain verbally how they may be combined. While many grammarians today do not reject this type of grammar outright, they again feel it is unscientific. While the concept of ‘the parts of speech’ is indeed part of grammar, there are many other powerful concepts that also need to be taken into account.

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Since the late 1950s, it has become common in linguistics to contrast descriptive grammars with generative grammars. Generative grammar, introduced by N. Chomsky, concentrated on providing an explicit account of an ideal native speaker’s knowledge of language (competence) rather than a description of samples (performance). Chomsky argued that generative grammars are more valuable, since they capture the creative aspect of human linguistic ability. Most linguists generally regard both approaches as complementary. Structural grammar: Language teaching has also made use of structural grammar based on the concept of phrase structure, which shows how some words go together into the sentence and some do not. In a sentence such as “The man fed the dog”, the word “the” goes with “man”: if we put “the” with “man”, we get one structure “(the man)”, if we put “the” with “dog”, we get another structure “(the dog)”. “Fed” belongs with “(the dog)” to get a new structure “(fed the dog)”. Now the two structures “(the man)” and “(fed the dog)” go together to assemble the whole sentence. A typical way of representing this phrase structure is through tree diagrams that show how the words build up into phrases and the phrases build up into the whole sentence, such as:

the man fed the dog Teachers have been using this directly in substitution tables: a typical example can be seen in the course book English for the fifth class (1990, Nelson):

They IYou

can draw a blackwhitered

dogcatrose

Students form sentences by choosing a word from each column: “I …can… draw… a… white… rose”. They are substituting words within a constant grammatical structure. Such exercises have long been a staple of language teaching in one guise or another. Structure drills and pattern practice are based on the same idea. Unlike a descriptive grammar, a pedagogical grammar, seeks to present an existing model in a form which provides the teacher or syllabus designer with access to the theoretical insights of the descriptive grammar in order to form the basis of language teaching syllabuses and materials. The three criteria for adequacy which apply to the descriptive grammar are not ignored by the writer of the pedagogical grammar – they are of interest to him as criteria for selecting which descriptive grammar he will present – but are, so to speak, subordinated to the need to express the findings of the linguistic theory in a practical way. In addition, the descriptive grammar must be consistent in its choice of theory – one model–one theory – but a pedagogical grammar can be eclectic and draw on more than one theory. A clear example of a non-eclectic pedagogical grammar would be Owen Thomas (Transformational Grammar and the Teacher of English, 1965) which is based exclusively on Transformational-Generative Grammar, while R. Quirk and S. Greenbaum (A University Grammar of English, 1977) can be taken as representative of an eclectic model drawing on both systemic grammar and TG. Grammatical (linguistic) competence: There is another meaning of “grammar”, namely the knowledge of language that the speaker possesses in the mind, known as linguistic or grammatical competence. All speakers know the grammar of their language in this sense without benefit of study. A native speaker knows the system of the language, even if s/he may not be able to

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verbalize this knowledge clearly: it is ‘implicit’ knowledge. Nevertheless a single sentence of English could not be produced without knowing English grammar in this sense. A man who spontaneously says “The man fed the dog” shows that he knows the word order typical of English, in which the Subject “The man” comes before the Verb “fed”. He knows the ways of making irregular past tenses in English - “fed” rather than the regular “-ed” (“*feeded”); he knows that “dog” requires an article “the” or “a”; and he knows that “the” is used to talk about a dog that the listener already knows about. This is a very different type of knowledge from the ability to describe the sentence he has produced in terms of grammar, something only people who have been taught explicit ‘grammar’ can do. As well as grammatical competence, native speakers also possess knowledge of how language is used. This is often called communicative competence (i.e., the speaker’s ability to put language to communicative use): it is not just knowledge of the language that is important, it is how to use it appropriately for the activities in which speakers want to take part – complaining, arguing, persuading, and so on. Hence the more general term pragmatic competence reflects all the possible uses of language rather than restricting them to communication. Therefore, pragmatic competence refers to the speaker’s ability to use language for a range of public and private functions, including communication (N. Chomsky, Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin and Use: 1986). 2. 3.5. Grammatical morphemes Language teaching has often distinguished ‘content’ words from ‘structure’ words. Content words (alternative terms ‘lexical’ or ‘full’ words) are words which have definable lexical meaning (e.g. book, boy, red, run); that is, they have the kind of meaning that can refer to definable things, concepts and can be looked up in a dictionary. Content words represent an open class: they allow the unlimited addition of new items. Structure words consist of articles, pronouns, prepositions or conjunctions (e.g. words like the, to). They represent closed-system or closed class items: their membership is fixed or limited (they are limited in number). A computer programme for teaching English needs about 220 structure words. It is easier to look up structure words in a grammar book than in a dictionary. The meaning of structure words such as “the” or “to” depends on the grammatical rules of the language, not on dictionary definitions. It is virtually impossible to invent a new structure word because it means changing the rules of the language rather than adding an item to the stock of words of the language. The smallest unit of grammar is the ‘morpheme’: the morpheme consists either of a word (“boy”) or part of a word (“’s” in “the boy’s”). Morphemes are studied in a branch of grammar called ‘morphology’. Some words consist of a single morpheme - “to” or “book” or “great”. Some can have morphemes added to show their grammatical role in the sentence, say “tables” or “bigger”. In the first language young children use content words more easily than grammatical morphemes. Children commonly produce sentences such as “Mummy go shop”, meaning something like “Mummy is going to the shops”, where the adult sentence includes the ‘missing’ grammatical morphemes: “is”, “-ing”, “to”, “the”, and “-s”. It is as if the children know the structure for the sentence and the content words, but either do not know the grammatical morphemes or are incapable of using them. In the early 1970s it was discovered that English children learn these grammatical morphemes in a definite sequence of acquisition (R. Brown, A First Language: The Early Stages, 1973). Two researchers (H. Dulay and M. Burt, Should we teach children syntax, 1973) decided to see what this meant for L2 learning. They made Spanish-speaking children learning English

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describe pictures and checked how often the children supplied eight grammatical morphemes in the appropriate places in the sentence. Suppose that at a rudimentary level L2 learners say “Girl go”. How do they progress from this? The order of difficulty for the L2 learners is the following sequence from (i) to (viii):(i) plural “-s”: the easiest morpheme for the learners was the plural “-s”, getting “Girls go”.(ii) progressive “-ing”: next easiest for the learners was the word ending “-ing” in present tense forms like “going”.(iii) copula forms of “be”: next came the use of be as a copula, i.e. as a main verb in the sentence (“John is happy”) rather than as an auxiliary used with another verb (“John is going”). Changing the sentence slightly gets “Girls are here”.(iv) auxiliary form of “be”: after this came the auxiliary form of “be” with “-ing”, yielding: “Girls are going”.(v) definite and indefinite articles “the” and “a”: next in difficulty came the definite and indefinite articles “the” and “a”, enabling the learners to produce “The girls go” or “A girl go”.(vi) irregular past tense: ”: the next morphemes were the irregular English past tenses, (those that do not have a form of “d” ending pronounced in the usual three ways /d/, /t/, or /id/) such as “came” and “went”, as in “The girls went”.(vii) third person “-s”: the next in order of difficulty was the third person “-s” used with verbs, as in: “The girl goes”.(viii) possessive “-s”: Most difficult was the ending used with nouns to show possession, as in “The girl’s book”. L2 learners have least difficulty with plural “-s”, most difficulty with possessive “-s”. It was not just Spanish-speaking children had a sequence of difficulty for the eight grammatical morphemes. Similar orders have been found for Japanese or Korean children; the first language does not seem to make a crucial difference: all L2 learners have much the same order. Nor does it matter if the learners are children or adults: adults have roughly the same order as children. 2.3.6. Learning grammar and L2 teaching Teachers are often surprised by what grammar means in L2 learning research and how much importance is given to it. Above all, grammar is competence in the mind rather than rules in a book; one crucial end-product of teaching is that students should be able to ‘know’ language in an unconscious sense, so that they can put it to good use. Teaching has to pay attention to the internal processes and knowledge the students are building up in their minds. Grammar is also relevant to the sequence in which elements of language are taught. Of necessity language teaching has to present the various aspects of language in order rather than introducing them all simultaneously. The conventional solution used to be a sequence of increasing grammatical complexity, teaching the present simple first, and the past perfect continuous last, because the former is much ‘simpler’ than the latter. When language use became more important to teaching, the choice of a teaching sequence was no longer straightforward since it was aspects of communication that now had to be sequenced. For example, the textbook Opening Strategies (Abbs & Freebairn, 1982) uses an order based on language functions: Lesson 1 “Ask for and say numbers”, Lesson 2 “Ask about people’s nationality”, Lesson 4 “Say what you want”, Lesson 11 “Give permission”, and so on. Any function-based order runs into problems in arriving at a logical sequence: is ‘requesting’ simpler or more complex than ‘complaining’? Hence grammar began to creep back in to textbooks because it was easier to arrange in order. Opening Strategies in addition to its functional order, has a

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grammatical order, starting with the present simple tense of “be”, going on to the present tense of full verbs, then past simple of “be”, followed by present continuous, and so on. L2 learning research has often claimed that there are definite orders of difficulty for learning language, such as the order for grammatical morphemes. An application to teaching is proposed by M. Pienemann and M. Johnston (Factors influencing the development of language proficiency, 1987) who suggest there are two types of acquisition sequence: developmental and variational. (i) A developmental sequence is caused by the learner’s problems with processing language, particularly with sorting out strings of words into sentences. According to Pienemann and Johnston, developmental sequence is a consistent order in which learners acquire the L2, based on difficulty of language processing. The early sequence for English has five stages: a. the learner produces single words or formulas: “I don’t know” b. the learner then produces strings of elements, that is to say ‘simple sequences of words’ c. the learner can identify different types of element in the string, and produces questions in which the verb is moved to the beginning such as “Can you tell me?” d. the learner can identify and move elements in the string, as in questions with wh-words: “What are you studying?” e. the learner next acquires the ability to break a string into smaller strings and recombine them in different ways, shown by complex sentences such as “He asked me to go” (ii) A variational sequence incorporates factors which differ from one situation to another. One example is the omission of items from the sentence as in “I go station”. The converse example is the oversupply of items such as the frequent use of the present continuous “I am living in London” when “I live in London” is intended. This separation between two types of sequence is important for language teaching as the implications of the two types can be rather different:

- With developmental sequences the teacher has to fall in with the sequence in some way; Pienemann (Psychological constraints on the teachability of language, 1986) puts this as the Teachability Hypothesis: ‘the course of second language development cannot be altered by factors external to the learner’.

- variational sequences are much more under the learner’s control and so can be changed by the teacher. The application of sequences to teaching depends upon what kind of sequence we are looking at, whether the developmental and variational sequences, orders of difficulty or of acquisition, or others. Fuller discussion of the implications of L2 order of learning or difficulty depends on the rest of teaching. It must balance grammar against language functions, vocabulary, classroom interaction, etc. Teachers do not necessarily have to choose between these alternatives once and for all. A different decision may have to be made for each area of grammar or language and each stage of acquisition. 2.3.7. Making grammar conscious The question of whether grammar should be explained to the students has been frequently raised: the use of explicit explanation implies that L2 learning can be quite different from L1 learning. The fact that children learn their first language without resort to conscious understanding does not mean that adults cannot learn a second language in this way. Justifying conscious understanding in L2 learning involves separating L2 learning from L1 learning with respect to whether the learners get explanations. The belief that L2 learning can potentially make use of explicit explanation underlies distinctions such as those made by St. Krashen (Second Language

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Acquisition and Second Language Learning, 1981) between ‘acquisition’ and ‘learning’ (the latter being conscious and available only to older learners). Mostly grammatical explanation has relied on the assumption that rules that are learnt consciously can be converted into processes that are known unconsciously. Thus, according to Vivian Cook (Second Language Learning and Language Teaching, 1994: 28), the French subjunctive was explained to students at school not just to give them academic knowledge of the facts of French, but to help them to write French. After a period of absorption, this conscious rule would become part of their unconscious ability to use the language. William Rutherford (Second Language Grammar: Learning and Teaching, 1987) and others have been advocating ‘consciousness raising’ in teaching – the drawing of the learner’s attention to features of the target language. Stephen Krashen (1981), however, has persistently denied that consciously acquired rules change into normal speech processes in the same way as grammar acquired unconsciously. More indirect uses for grammar have also been put forward in recent years. One suggestion by Eric Hawkins (Awareness of Language, 1984) is for language awareness: the learners’ general awareness of language should be raised as a preliminary to L2 teaching, partly through grammar. If the students know the kind of thing to expect, they are more receptive to it. Hawkins suggests ‘an exploratory approach’ where the pupils investigate grammar by, for example, deciding where to insert an adjective such as “see-through (i.e. transparent)” in the sentence “She put on her cosy, old, blue, nylon blouse”. Pupils invent their own labels for grammar, rather than being taught a pre-established system. As Hawkins puts it, ‘grammar approached as a voyage of discovery into the patterns of the language rather than the learning of prescriptive rules, is no longer a bogey word’. It is not the teaching of particular points of grammar that matters but the overall increase in the pupil’s language sensitivity. The textbook Learning to Learn English (R. Ellis & J. Sinclair, 1989) provides some exercises to make EFL learners more conscious of their own predilections, for instance suggesting ways for the students to discover grammatical rules themselves. Another researcher, Philip Riley (Discourse and Learning, 1985) has suggested ‘sensitization’ of the students by using features of the L1 to help them understand the L2. Increasing awareness of language may have many educational advantages and indeed help L2 learning in a broad sense. 2.3.8. Teaching techniques 2.3.8.1. General principles: Methodologists emphasize the fact that although it is important to develop the students’ understanding of the grammatical facts of the language we are teaching, it is not these facts that we wish our students to learn. We are not interested in filling our students with grammatical paradigms and syntactic rules. What we do hope to do is to cultivate linguistic performance in our students which is consistent with the facts. In other words, grammar teaching is not so much knowledge transmission as it is skill development. By recognising this, we can take advantage of several insights from second/foreign language acquisition research concerning how students naturally develop their ability to interpret and produce grammatical utterances. Some insights are related to our topic (Murar, 2012): i. Learners do not learn structures one at a time. It is not the case that a learner masters the definite article, and when that is mastered, moves on to the simple past. From their first encounter with the definite article, learners might master one of its pragmatic functions – e.g. to signal the uniqueness of the following noun phrase. But even if they are able to do this pragmatically appropriately, it is not likely that learners will always produce the definite article when needed, because learners typically take a long time before they are able to do this consistently. Thus, learning is a gradual process involving the mapping of form, meaning, and pragmatics; structures

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do not emerge in learners’ interlanguage fully developed and error-free. Recycling various aspects of structures over time seems a much more reasonable alternative. ii. Even when learners appear to have mastered a particular structure, it is not uncommon to find backsliding occurring with the introduction of new forms to the learners’ interlanguage. For example, the learner who has finally mastered the third person singular marker on present tense verbs is likely to overgeneralise the rule and apply it to newly emerging modal verbs. Thus, teachers should not despair at similar regressive behaviour on the part of their students. Well formed structures are usually restored once the new additions have been incorporated and the system reanalysed. 2.3.8.2. Inductive versus deductive presentation. An additional choice teachers face is whether to work inductively or deductively during the presentation phase. An inductive activity is one in which the students infer the rule or generalisation from a set of examples. For instance, students might infer the subject-auxiliary inversion rule in forming yes-no questions, after having been exposed to a number of such questions. In a deductive activity, on the other hand, the students are given the rule and they apply it to examples. If one has chosen an inductive approach in a given lesson, a further option exists – whether or not to have students explicitly state the rule. Some specialists consider that the use of explicit rules is irrelevant, because, in their opinion, one certainly can teach grammar without stating any explicit rules. They further argue that what we are trying to bring about in the learner is linguistic behaviour that conforms to the rules, not knowledge of the rules themselves. On the other hand, there are other specialists who consider that there is no reason to avoid giving explicit rules, except perhaps if one is working with young children. Usually students request rules and report that they find the rules helpful. Moreover, stating a rule explicitly can often bring about linguistic insights in a more efficacious manner, as long as the rule is not oversimplified or so metalinguistically abstruse that students must struggle harder to understand the rule than to apply it implicitly. Returning now to the inductive versus deductive question, we find that the choice is not one resolvable with an either/or approach. There are many times when an inductive approach in presenting a grammar point is desirable because by using such an approach one is nurturing within the students a learning process through which they can arrive at their own generalisations. Other times, when one’s students have a particular cognitive style that is not well suited for language analysis or when a particular linguistic rule is rather convoluted, it may make more sense to present a grammar structure deductively. Indeed, one takes comfort from P. Corder’s sensible observations: “What little we know about the psychological process of second language learning, either from theory or from practical experience, suggests that a combination of induction and deduction produces the best result… Learning is seen as fundamentally an inductive process but one which can be controlled and facilitated by descriptions and explanations given at the appropriate moment and formulated in a way which is appropriate to the maturity, knowledge, and sophistication of the learner. In a sense, teaching is a matter of providing the learner with the right data at the right time and teaching him how to learn, that is, developing in him appropriate learning strategies and means of testing his hypotheses. The old controversy about whether one should provide the rule first and then the examples, or vice versa, is now seen to be merely a matter of tactics to which no categorical answer can be given”. (Corder, Error Analysis and Interlanguage, 1981: 133). 2.3.8.3. Grammar lessons are usually composed of three phases: presentation, practice and communication (although all three may not be conducted within one class period). Rather than illustrating a single lesson plan from start to finish, it seemed more beneficial to concentrate on

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characterising and exemplifying activities that could be used during the practice phase. It used to be that the practice phase of a lesson was devoted almost exclusively to grammar drills. Ever since the ineffectiveness of using drills (which do not engage students’ attention) was acknowledged, there has been little by way of guidance offered on what to do during the practice phase of a lesson. Form: Once a particular grammar structure has been analysed, a challenging teaching point for the particular class of students should be chosen. The learning process associated with the teaching point should also be identified. The nature of the learning process and of the learning challenge gives important clues as to activity characteristics. For example, when dealing with the formal dimension of grammar, it would appear that the major learning processes involved would be stimulus-response learning for phonemic patterns and verbal chaining or principle learning for morphemes or syntactic patterns. Stimulus-response learning would be the type of learning required for learning to pronounce an unfamiliar word. Chaining and principle learning seem the applicable learning processes for morphology and syntax since what we are attempting to have our students learn is to comprehend and produce either verbal chains between morphemes/words or rule-pattern governed syntactic patterns. Identifying the type of learning involved helps us to think about the desirable characteristics of any practice activity. Students would have to be restricted to using just the particular target form; in other words, structural diversity would not be permitted. Let us take an example and see how these characteristics are applied. If we were to teach yes-no question formation, we might determine the immediate challenge to be linguistic form, based on our analysis of the three dimensions. The first step in the lesson is the presentation of the linguistic rule. We have several options regarding the presentation phase: the rule could be presented inductively or deductively. Also, the rule could be made explicit or not. We next will need to select an activity that encourages meaningful repetition of the pattern, no verbatim repetition. We want the students to concentrate on producing only yes-no questions. A game like Twenty questions would appear to meet the criteria: students get to ask 20 yes-no questions about an object or person in an attempt to guess the identity; hence, they receive abundant practice in forming questions, and the questions they produce are meaningful. The game can be repeated as long as the students remain interested. Questions can also be used to elicit other structures. For example, a variation on the same game might be to have students guess “Whose_____________ is it?” Their responses (e.g., It’s Maria’s, It’s Nike’s, It’s Grace’s) would provide an opportunity to practise the 3 allomorphs of the possessive. Then, too, the responses to the guesses would offer a good deal of practice with short forms (e.g., No, it isn’t/Yes, it is). Another example of a game which appears to meet the above criteria is the Telephone game, which can be used to practise the forms of reported speech. One student would whisper something to another student (e.g. “I’m happy it’s Friday”). The second student would whisper to a third student what s/he has heard from the first student (Tom said that he was happy it was Friday). In sum, certain games are good devices for practising grammar points where the identified challenge resides in the formal dimension. Meaning: If the teacher has decided that the challenge of a particular structure lies in the semantic dimension for the class, then a different sort of practice activity should be needed. It would seem that verbal association, multiple discrimination, and concept learning would all come into play when working on the meaning of a particular grammar structure. The major procedures would be for the student to learn to bond the form to its meaning and also to distinguish the meaning of one particular form from another.

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Sometimes a single pairing of form and meaning suffices for a student to make the bond. Due to memory constraints, it seems prudent to restrict the number of new items being practiced at any one time to between 2 and 6. Sequencing: Grammar structures are not acquired one at a time through a process of “agglutination” (W. Rutherford, 1987). Rather, different aspects of form, meaning and pragmatics of a given structure may be acquired at different stages of interlanguage development. Many teachers have little control over where they start a grammar sequence. They must adhere to a prescribed syllabus or textbook. But for those who have a choice, there are a few clear-cut answers. The usual advice is to begin with the simple structure and work up to the more complex. Presenting a structure: Now we can briefly illustrate options for presenting a structure during the initial phase of a lesson. A necessary ingredient for this phase is having some language sample/examples that illustrate the teaching point. In the audiolingual method, grammar points are introduced via a dialogue which students listen to, and subsequently memorize. While dialogues are useful for introducing points of grammar, there are a variety of other formats that can be used: songs and poems; authentic texts (e.g. newspaper articles); segments of taped radio/television broadcasts Moreover, the person who selects these samples can be varied, too. For example, if the grammar point has to do with the distinction between mass and count nouns:- the teacher could bring in an advertising circular from a local supermarket. Or - the students might be invited to bring in their favourite recipes. Or - the teacher and students might generate a language sample together which contained count and mass nouns (e.g. “I went to the supermarket” game). When practising an inductive approach, students would be presented with the language sample, let’s say the advertising circular. They then would be encouraged to make their own observations about the form of mass and co Now we can briefly illustrate options for presenting a structure during the initial phase of a lesson. A necessary ingredient for this phase is having some language sample/examples that illustrate the teaching point. If practising a deductive approach, the teacher would present the generalisation and then ask students to apply it to the language sample. This approach would be suitable for our example of teacher-students generated language since students might be aided in playing the game by having knowledge of the mass/count distinction. One advantage of using an inductive approach during the presentation phase is that it allows teachers to assess what the students already know about a particular structure and to make any necessary modifications in their lesson plan. 2.3.8.4. Context. What we are suggesting here is that students need to get an idea of how the new language is used by native speakers and the best way of doing this is to present language in context. The context for introducing new language should have a number of characteristics (Murar, 2012):- It should show what the new language means and how it is used. That is why many useful contexts have the new language being used in a written text or a dialogue. - a good context should be interesting for the students. This doesn’t mean that all the subject matter we use for presentation should be wildly funny or inventive all the time. But the students should at least want to see or hear the information - a good context should provide the background for a lot of language use so that students can use the information not only for the repetition of model sentences but also for making their own sentences.

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Often the textbook will have all the characteristics mentioned here and the teacher can confidently rely on the material for the presentation. But the textbook is not always so appropriate: for a number of reasons the information in the textbook may not be right for our students. In such cases we will want to create our own contexts for language use. Context means the situation or body of information that causes language to be used. There are a number of different context types, but for our purposes we will concentrate on three: the students’ world, the outside world and formulated information. The students’ world can be a major source of contexts for language presentation. There are two kinds of students’ world. Clearly we can use the physical surroundings that the students are in, the classroom, school or institution. But classrooms and their physical properties (desks, tables, blackboards, chairs, etc.) are limited. The students’ lives are not constrained in the same way, however, and we can use facts about them, their families, friends and experiences. The outside world provides us with rich contexts for language presentation. For example, there is an almost infinite number of stories we can use to present different tenses. We can also create situations where people speak because they are in those situations. This is especially useful for the practice of functional language, for example. These categories - story or situation - can be simulated or real. Most teachers are familiar with ‘made up’ stories that are often useful for class-work. Formulated information refers to all that information which is presented in the form of timetables, notes, charts, etc. The context we choose will depend on the type of language being introduced. One of the teacher’s jobs is to show how the new language is formed – how the grammar works and how it is put together. One way of doing this is to explain the grammar in detail, using grammatical terminology and giving a mini-lecture on the subject. This seems problematic, though, because many students may find grammatical concepts difficult. A more effective way of presenting form is to let students see and/or hear the new language, drawing their attention in a number of different ways to the grammatical elements of which it is made. For, whilst advanced students may profit from grammatical explanations to a certain extent, at lower levels we must usually find simpler and more transparent ways of giving students grammatical information. It is undoubtedly important for the students to understand the meaning of the new language they are learning. This is conveyed during the lead-in stage where key concepts clearly demonstrate what is going on. We also need to know whether the students have understood the new language so that we can organise our teaching accordingly. Not only is the lead-in stage vital, but it will also be necessary for the teacher to check frequently that the students have understood. 2.3.8.5. Checking meaning can be done in three ways: information checking, immediate creativity and translation. Information checking. The teacher will often need to find out if students have understood the information in the lead-in, or whether students understand what a model means. Immediate creativity and different settings: We may ask students to produce sentences of their own in order to check that they have understood the new language Translation: The main advantages of translation are that it is quick and efficient. There is, however, a disadvantage to the use of translation: it is not always possible to translate exactly. 2.3.8.6. Discovery techniques: In our model for introducing new language, we saw how the teacher creates a context (or uses one from some materials) and elicits language which is then given as models for the students to repeat. The whole procedure is basically teacher-led since it is the teacher’s job to explain the

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language and conduct a cue-response drill before moving to immediate creativity and pair-work (where the students start to take over control a bit). Discovery techniques, on the other hand, aim to give students a chance to take charge earlier. The idea is simple: give students a listening or reading text – or some examples of English sentences – and ask them to discover how the language works. We might give students a text which is a story, for example, and we could ask them to look at it again to see how many ways they could find in it for referring to the past tense. Or, they could listen to a tape and write down any sentences which had the conjunction ‘if’ in them. Then they could see if there was any pattern to those sentences. What is being suggested is that there is a range of techniques where the teacher gets the students to do most of the work. There are good pedagogical and methodological reasons for this since the students will be more involved and since this kind of activity invites them to use their reasoning processes. Of course, discovery techniques are not suitable for all students on all occasions. Frequently, this problem-solving approach takes more time than a more controlled presentation. It is also true that designing material for discovery activities – or finding a text that will suit this approach – is far easier at intermediate and advanced levels than it is when teaching beginners. In this chapter we have been advocating a primarily oral approach in which the first thing students do with the language is to say it. At any stage, however, the teacher may ask the students to write the new language. Often the teacher will use the writing as reinforcement for an oral presentation such as the type we have so far described. Thus either immediately before or after the immediate creativity stage the teacher asks students to write sentences using the new language. The sentences may be the original models the teacher used during the accurate reproduction stage, and the students might be asked to copy these sentences from the blackboard. They might see the same sentences, but the teacher might leave out certain words (this is commonly called a fill-in exercise). The students might be shown model sentences and then be asked to write similar sentences of their own. This is a written version of the immediate creativity stage. The students might see a short piece of connected writing using the new language and then be asked to write a similar piece. This is often called parallel writing. All of these techniques have their merits, although copying is often unchallenging and boring. The main object, though, is to relate the spoken and written forms of the new language and to enable the students to write the new pattern as well as say it. Encouraging students to discover grammar for themselves is one valuable way of helping them to get to grips with the language. The use of discovery techniques can be highly motivating and extremely beneficial for the students, involving them in a fairly analytical study of language (Harmer, 1995: 41). 2.3.8.7. Practice techniques Harmer (idem) includes here four different types of oral practice: drills ; interaction activities; involving the personality; games and written practice. Students need to practise the grammar a lot. Drills are useful, but we must always remember that they are only a means to an end. As soon as possible they should be abandoned in favour of creative activities. 2.3.8.8. Error correction In his delineation of the function of a language teacher, P. Corder (1981: 134). writes, “the function of the teacher is to provide data and examples and where necessary, to offer explanations and descriptions and, more important, verification of the learner’s hypotheses (i.e. corrections)”.

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Thus, Corder considers error correction a necessary element of pedagogical practice, and we would certainly concur. There are, however, those who would proscribe it, believing that error correction will inhibit students from freely expressing themselves. While there are clearly times that error correction can be intrusive and therefore unwarranted (e.g. during communicative phase activities), at other times focused error correction is highly desirable. It provides the negative evidence students often need to reject or modify their hypotheses about how the target language is formed or functions. Students understand this, which explains why they often deliberately seek error correction to assist them with their language learning task.

2.4. Teaching discourse What we say depends on a number of factors such as where we are, what we want to say and who we are talking to. It also involves our ability to structure discourse, to organize it into a coherent whole.

Clearly students need to be aware of the different way language is used in different situation. They need to know the difference between formal and informal language use, they have to learn language functions.

One of the variables which governs appropriary is purpose. People decide what they want to say on the basis of what purpose they wish to achieve.

In deciding what language to teach when working with functions we need to bear in mind the level of difficulty, the level of transparency ( if the meaning is clear) and the level of formality (Harmer, 1997:25)

At the same time as students are studying grammar, vocabulary and language functions we can encourage them to work on the way they structure their discourse, i.e on the way they organize what they want to say and write. We should bring them authentic materials so that they can see how other speakers and writers structure their discourse.

For students organizing written discourse is extremely important and a special forms should be placed on cohesion. We will deal with more aspects regarding discourse in the next unit.


1. Grammatical metalanguage: i. Write a sentence that illustrates each of the following concepts: a. embedding; b. genre; c. register; d. given-new; ii. Illustrate the fact that a pragmatic function, such as a request, doesn't always correspond to a particular sentence type; iii. Indicate ways of achieving cohesion in discourse.

2. How would you answer a student who asks you what the difference is: i. among the following verbs: see, look, watch, stare, peer, glance? ii. between owing to and due to?

3. Why are the following sentences ungrammatical? If your students make these errors how would you make them aware of the errors, and what activities would you provide to help students avoid these errors?

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i. Tom has bought it last Saturday. ii. I'm believing you.

4. Students have made the following errors. In each case explain the nature of the error and state what activities you would provide to correct it: i. * You will can go there. ii.* May you cash this check (cheque), please? iii.*Wu should study a lot for that class last term. iv. ?Excuse me, Mr. Smith, you gotta give us our homework back. v. Would you please close the window? *Of course I would.

5. If your students produce the following sentences, what errors have they made? How would you make them aware of the errors and what exercises will you prepare to correct the errors? i.*We discussed about our plan. ii.*Explain me that rule again, please. iii.*The newspapers in Los Angeles have better international coverage than in San Diego. iv.*What happens if I pushed this button? v. *Only if you help me I will study for this quiz.

6. One ESL teacher said he had his students memorize the verbs that take gerund complements and told them to use infinitives everywhere else. Do you think that this is a good teaching strategy? Why or why not?

7. If your students produce sentences like this, what error(s) have they made? How will you make them aware of the errors and what activities will you provide to correct these errors? i. *Tom can play sometimes handball after work. ii. *Rarely we can eat outside in the garden. iii. *I speak fluently French.

8. Grammaticality of sentences: i. A student tells you that he has been told that any is always used in place of some in a negative sentence, but that he heard another teacher say the following: I can't recall some of their names. The student ask you if this is grammatical. What would you say? ii. One of your students asks you why a certain grammar text claims that English has no future tense. This student feels that English has a future tense. How would you answer this question?

9. Design a context and presentation sequence for introducing one of the uses of the Present Perfect Tense Simple.

10. Design a communicative activity for presenting the Present Perfect Tense Simple and the Past Tense Simple in contrast.

11. Design a context for teaching the degrees of comparison.

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UNIT 3

TEACHING DEVELOPING LANGUAGE SKILLS

3.1. Teaching listening 3.1.1. Elements of listening Most introductions to the comprehension of speech stress three elements: (i) access to vocabulary, (ii) parsing, and (iii) memory processes. (i) Access to vocabulary / words At one level, in order to comprehend a sentence you have to work out what the words mean. The mind has to relate the words that are heard to the information that is stored about them in the mind – their meanings, etc. For example, a native speaker can answer the question “Is the word ‘blish’ English?” almost instantaneously, somehow working through many thousands of words in a few moments. Such feats show the human mind is extraordinarily efficient at organizing the storage of words and their interconnections. The context automatically makes particular meanings of words available to us. For example, to a person reading a research article, the word “table” means a layout of figures. To someone reading about antiques it means a piece of furniture. To someone reading a surveyor’s report on a house it means the depth at which water appears in the ground, and so on. Somehow the context limits the amount of mental space that has to be searched to get the right meaning. (ii) Parsing Parsing refers to how the mind works out the grammatical structure and meaning of the sentences it hears. Take a sentence such as “The man ate breakfast”. To understand the sentence fully means being able to tell who is carrying out the action and what is affected by the action and also to realize that “ate breakfast” goes together as a phrase while “man ate” does not. Even if our minds are not consciously aware of the grammatical technicalities, nevertheless they are working out the structure of the sentence automatically. Grammar is not just in the back of or minds but is active while we are listening. The process of parsing can be either ‘bottom-up’ or ‘top-down’. ‘Bottom-up’ parsing means building the sentence up in our minds bit by bit, putting the sounds into words, the words into phrases, the phrases into a whole sentence. So “the” is put with “man” to get a noun phrase “the man”; “ate” goes with “breakfast” to get a verb phrase ““ate breakfast”; and the noun phrase “the man” and the verb phrase ““ate breakfast” go together to yield the structure of the whole sentence. ‘Top-down’ parsing on the other hand means starting from the whole sentence and breaking it down into smaller and smaller bits. Given a sentence like “The man ate breakfast”, the top-down process tries to find a noun phrase, which in turn means trying to find first an article “the” and then a noun “man”. If it succeeds, it next tries to find a verb phrase, which means trying to find a verb “ate” and a noun phrase “breakfast”. If the quest to find a noun phrase and a verb phrase succeeds, it has found a sentence, complete with its structure. In principle, the mind could parse the sentence in either the bottom-up or the top-down direction. In practice listeners get the best of both worlds by using both types of process. Features such as the intonation pattern allow them to fit words and phrases within an overall structure, a top-down process. Particular words indicate the start of a phrase and allow them to build it up word by word, a bottom-up process. (iii) Memory processes

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The memory processes in listening are closely connected to those discussed earlier. All comprehension depends on the storing and processing of information by the minds. 3.1.2. Approaches, methods and techniques of teaching listening (receptive language skill) i. Behaviorism – Audiolingualism

Listening is a “taken for granted” passive process, a mechanical process based on the stimulus (hearing spoken chunks of language) - response pattern (identification and organization of these into sentences, i.e recognition and discrimination of sounds and words, recognition of intonation patterns, rhythm, rather than understanding of meaningful language stretches). The techniques used mainly consist in repeating, imitating and memorizing of prefabricated language, while totally disregarding cognitive processes. ii. Cognitivism – Total Physical Response, The Natural Approach

Listening is considered a more dynamical process of cognitive nature. Therefore the development of Listening skills focus on comprehension (as a cognitive process) premised by the idea that understanding language facilitates learning (rather than acquisition). In point of techniques, learners are exposed to large amounts of listening material while asked to decode meaning and perform simple selection tasks (Audiolingualism); listening is immediately followed by production (The Natural Approach). iii. The Interactionist Approach (The Socio-Cultural Turn): CLT, The Post-Communicative Turn The interactive, social and contextualized perspective of language learning focuses on connected speech (discourse) rather than on isolated pieces. There is also a shift from centering on formal aspects of language to content and meaning, to communicative intent (purposeful listening). Information processing while listening (sequential order of input, perception, recognition, and understanding stages) is coupled with a constructivist stance: listeners actively construct meaning according to their own purposes for listening as well as their own prior knowledge and experience. Prior knowledge is identified to schemata, further subdivided into content schemata (topic familiarity, cultural knowledge and previous experience with a particular field) and formal schemata (knowledge about text types - stylistic conventions as well as the structural organization/variety of formats). The socio-cultural context has gained ever increased importance in language learning as the process does not take place in a social vacuum. Admittedly, special attention is paid to the effects that status relationship between participants had on language behaviour (level of formality). In fact, it is pointed out that listeners engaged in face-to- face interaction must pay attention to this variable in order to determine which type of verbal behavior should be appropriate when delivering a response. Non-verbal language is equally part of the social context in which listening occurs: body postures, body movements, facial expressions, facial gestures, eye contact the use of space by the communicators) as well as non-verbal paralinguistic elements: tone, pitch of voice, etc. Consequently, an understanding of all these aspects would provide important clues for interpreting what is being listened to and, in turn, facilitate the whole process of listening comprehension. Besides, there is the question of the cultural load (intercultural pragmatics) – different interpretation of non-verbal language, formulation of different speech acts and politeness issues, such as the directness-indirectness continuum. To sum up, listening is considered as a primary vehicle for language learning, achieving a status of significant and central importance in both language learning and language teaching fields. 3.1.3. Listening skills and intercultural communicative competence

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Uso´-Juan, Martınez-Flor (Current Trends in the Development and Teaching of the Four Language Skills, 2006: 41-42) provides a sample of intercultural communicative activity:

Activity Select a representative scene from a film, brought in by the learners, which shows a given

cultural topic. Prepare a series of questions divided into three phases (i.e., pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening) with the aim of activating, developing and reflecting on their cultural knowledge of such a topic while practising their listening skills.

Visual listeningPre-listening phase

- Do you think the topic of (…) is representative of the target culture and of your own culture? Why or why not?- Which ideas come to your mind when thinking about such a topic?

While-listening phase- Can you identify elements such as pauses, changes of intonation, tone of voice or periods of silence that involve cultural meaning?- Which is the setting of the scene? Does it involve particular implications for the development of the situation?- What is the participants’ relationship in terms of social status and power? Does such a relationship affect their communicative interaction? Would such interaction be different in your own culture?- Which non-verbal means of communication can be identified (i.e., body movement, facial expression, eye contact, etc.)? Are they different in your own culture?

Post-listening phaseReflect on the scene you have just watched and in small groups discuss the cultural differences that would arise if the same situation were to take place in your own culture. 3.1.4. Control factors in teaching listening skills i. Accessibility of input: listening provides primary exposure to L2, fostering language acquisition/learning. The quality of the input is determined by relevance (fitness of purpose) translated into sustainable effort to understand, roughly-tuned informational complexity (measurable in point of length, speed, familiarity, information density, and text organization); authenticity of listening materials (Murar, 2012). ii. Fostering top down processing (deductive reasoning): activating background knowledge and expectations (schemata) in detecting the speakers’ intended meaning. Nation and Waring (1997) claim that a recognition vocabulary of 3000 word families is necessary for comprehension of everyday conversations, if we assume that a listener needs to be familiar with – and able to recognize about 90% of content words to understand a conversation satisfactorily. iii. Fostering bottom up processing (inductive reasoning): phonetic feature detection, metrical segmentation of the L input into words and word recognition in meaning decoding/construction. iv. Listener status: listener’s active engagement in the process engenders successful development of the Listening skills while experiencing lower uncertainty and anxiety and higher self-confidence and tolerance of ambiguity. 3.1.5. Some methods of teaching listening Mary Underwood (Teaching Listening 1989) recognizes three stages of teaching: pre-listening where the students activate their vocabulary and their background knowledge; while-

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listening where they develop the skill of eliciting messages; and post-listening which consists of extensions and developments of the listening task. A development in the last few decades has been task-based teaching of listening. The students carry out a task in which they have to listen for information in a short piece of discourse and then have to fill in a diagram, check a route on a map or correct mistakes in a text. The COBUILD English Course I (J. Willis & D. Willis, 1987), for example, asks the students to listen to tapes of people speaking spontaneously and to work out information from them. Lesson 9 has a recording of Chris telling Philip how to get to his house in Birmingham. The students listen for factual information, such as which buses could be taken; they make a rough map of the route, and they check its accuracy against the A-Z map of Birmingham. A teaching motivation for task-based listening activities is that information is being transferred for a communicative purpose. In the COBUILD example the student is practicing something that resembles real world communication. As Vivian Cook points out (Second Language Learning and Language Teaching, 1994: 61), it is sad, however, that the information that is transferred in such activities is usually about trivial topics or irrelevant to the students’ lives. The factual information the students learn in the COBUILD exercise is how to get around in Birmingham, somewhere only a few of them are ever likely to go. Often such exercises deal with imaginary towns, or even treasure islands. On the one hand, task-based exercises often neglect the educational value of the content that can be used in language teaching. On the other hand, much psychological research shows that, the more important the information is to the listener, the more likely it is to be retained. Listening-based methods of teaching: So far listening has been taken as a process of decoding speech – working out the message from the sentence you hear. However the main focus in recent discussions of teaching methodology has been on listening as a way of learning language rather than as a way of processing language. This process is called codebreaking: listening means working out the language code from the ‘message’. Therefore a distinction is made between (i) decoding speech and (ii) codebreaking speech: (i) Decoding speech has the aim of discovering the message using processes that are already known (i.e. processing language to get the ‘message’). (ii) Codebreaking speech has the aim of discovering the processes themselves from a message (i.e. processing language to get the ‘rules’). One of the first to interpret listening as codebreaking was James Asher’s Total Physical Response Method (TPR) (Learning another Language through Actions, 1986), which claimed that listening to commands and carrying them out was an effective way of learning a second language. A specimen TPR lesson reported by Asher consists of the teacher getting the students to respond to the commands: Walk to the window; Touch the window; Walk to the table. Touch the table; Juan, stand up and walk to the door. Jaime, walk to the table and sit on the table. The students follow the directions the teacher gives. TPR came from psychological theories of language learning, its unique feature being the emphasis on learning through physical actions. Other listening-based methods have also been successful. According to J. Gary and N. Gary (Comprehension-based language instruction: practice, 1981) the benefits of concentrating on listening are that students do not feel so embarrassed if they do not have to speak, the memory loss is less if they listen without speaking, classroom equipment such as tape recorders can be used more effectively for listening than for speaking, and so on.

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One of the major schisms in contemporary teaching methodology is between those who require students to practice communication by both listening and speaking and those who prefer students to listen for information without speaking. Stephen Krashen (1981) brings these listening-based methods together through the notion of ‘comprehensible input’. He claims that acquisition can take place only when people understand messages in the target language. Listening is motivated by the need to get messages out of what is heard. L2 learners acquire a new language by hearing it in contexts where the meaning is made plain to them. Ideally the speech they hear has enough ‘old’ language that the student already knows and makes enough sense in the context for the ‘new’ language to be understood and absorbed. Krashen claims that all teaching methods that work utilize the same fundamental pedagogical principle of providing comprehensible input: ‘if x is shown to be “good” for acquiring a second language, x helps to provide CI [comprehensible input], either directly or indirectly. Krashen’s codebreaking approach to listening became a strong influence on language teachers in the 1980s. It is saying essentially that L2 acquisition depends on listening – decoding is codebreaking. 3.1.6. Principles for listening comprehension in the classroom The research activities suggest a set of principles for conducting listening activities in the second/foreign language classroom (Murar, 2012) i.. Increase the amount of listening time in the second language class. Make listening the primary channel for learning new material. Input must be interesting, comprehensible, supported by extralingustic materials, and keyed to the language lesson. ii. Use listening before other activities. Have students listen to the material before they are required to speak, read, or write about it. iii. Include both global and selective listening. Global listening encourages students to get the gist, the main idea, the topic, situation, or setting. Selective listening points student attention to details of form and encourages accuracy in generating the language system. iv. Activate top-level skills. Give advance organizers or discussions which call up students’ background knowledge. Do this before students listen. Encourage top-down processing at every proficiency level. v. Work towards automaticity in processing. Include exercises which build both recognition and retention of the material. Use familiar material in recombinations. Encourage over learning through focus on selected formal features. Practise bottom-up processing at every proficiency level. vi. Develop conscious listening strategies. Practise interactive listening, so that they can use their bottom-up and top-down processes to check one against the other. 3.1.7. Some dimensions of language and the listening act 3.1.7.1. Listening – a dynamic process, not a passive one Listening along with reading has had a traditional label of “passive skill”. Nothing could be further from the truth. A. Anderson and T. Lynch (Listening, 1968) reject a conceptualization of listening as a “passive act”. They argue that such a perspective on listening fails to account for the interpretations listeners make as they “hear” the spoken text according to their own purposes for listening, their expectations and their own store of background knowledge. Implications for instruction: One of the obvious implications for instruction is to bring students to an understanding that listening is not a passive skill, but one that not only is active but very demanding. This can be done gradually as part of listening activity work, especially activities that are in the communicative modes. Learners can come to realize that just as it is “work” to become better readers, writers, and speakers in a second language, listening skill, too, doesn’t happen magically or as an overnight phenomenon.

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3.1.7.2. Listening in two active communicative modes: i. Two-way communication: Every day we engage in communicative listening in one way or another most of our waking hours. Probably the first mode that comes to mind is listening in two-way communication, or “interactive” listening. Here the reciprocal “speech chain” of speaker/listener is obvious to us. Here there are two (or more) active participants who take turns in speaker-role and listener-role as the face-to-face (or telephone) interaction moves along. ii. One-way communication: A second mode is listening in one-way communication. Auditory input seems to surround us as we move through the day. The input comes from a variety of sources: the media (e.g. radio, television, films); instructional situations of all kinds; public performances (e.g. lectures, religious services, plays) Implications for instruction: Second/foreign language learners need to have instructional opportunities in both two-way and one-way communicative modes. 3.1.7.3. Listening and language processing, bottom-up and top-down In accounting for the complex nature of processing spoken language it has been hypothesized that “bottom-up” and “top-down” modes work together in a combined cooperative process. Bottom-up processing: Bottom-up comprehension of speech refers to the part of the process in which the “understanding” of incoming language is worked out proceeding from sounds, into words, into grammatical relationship and lexical meaning, and so on. Top-down processing: here the processing of language comes from an internal source. Learners understand the incoming speech from the context: the preceding linguistic context, the situational context. 3.1.8. A developmental view of listening skills 3.1.8.1 Profile of the beginning-level student in listening True beginners in a second/foreign language are lacking in bottom-up processing skills because they have not yet developed the cognitive categories against which the language must be heard. They are not yet able to segment the speech stream into word units, to tell where one word begins and another ends. The new phonemic system is an unbroken code: Sounds which native speakers consider similar may be perceived and classified as different; sounds which native speakers consider different may be perceived and classified as the same. Learners have no idea about phonological rules which change sounds in certain environments, or cause reductions of sound. The structural competence of beginners also places limitations on their bottom-up processing skills. They are not familiar with rules for word formation, inflections, or word-order rules. Their vocabulary store is nonexistent and there is no area of grammatical understanding that they could use to unlock the meaning of the whole. The true novice stage is of very short duration. After a few hours of instruction, most learners can use their understanding of linguistic categories to decode new utterances. Despite its brevity, the novice stage is important for the development of positive attitudes towards listening. Learners should be encouraged to tolerate uncertainty, to use their real-world knowledge and analytical skills, and to enjoy their success in comprehension. i. Techniques for global listening: one important usage of global listening is the presentation of new material. Until the students are skilled readers, it is best to present new material aurally. Teachers may select any part of the lesson for a global listening experience, or may write their own short text based on the lesson. Texts for global listening should be short and preceded by a pre-listening activity. Wherever possible, the theme and situation of the story should be presented visually by drawing on the

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blackboard, overhead projector, or a large poster. New vocabulary can be used in short, illustrative sentences before learners hear it as part of the lesson. The pre-listening stage should develop learners’ curiosity about how all the phrases and words they have heard will fit together in a context. ii. Selective listening techniques: The teacher can bring some patterns or structures into conscious awareness through selective listening exercises. Listening goals for beginners are listed below, with exercise types to promote them. The classification of exercises as bottom-up or top-down does not indicate that only one kind of cognitive activity can occur during each exercise, but rather that some exercises promote predominantly bottom-up responses, and some exercises promote predominantly top-down activity. - An exercise is classified as bottom-up if focus is on the form and the exercise deals with one of the structural systems of English. - An exercise is classified as top-down if the focus is on meaning and the listener uses global listening strategies. - An exercise is classified as interactive if the listeners must use information gained by processing at one level to check the accuracy of their processing on another level. Exercise types for beginning level listeners Bottom-up processing goals and exercise types Goal: Discriminating between intonation contours in sentences Listen to a sequence of sentence patterns with either rising or falling intonation. Place a check in column 1 (rising) or column 2 (falling), depending on the pattern you hear.Goal: Discriminating between phonemes Listen to pairs of words. Some pairs differ in their final consonant (stay/steak), and some pairs are the same (laid/laid). Circle the word “same” or “different” depending on what you hear.Goal: Selecting details from the text (word recognition) Match a word that you hear with its picture Top-down processing goals and exercise types Goal: Discriminating between emotional reactions Listen to a sequence of utterances. Place a check in the column which describes the emotional reaction that you hear: interested, happy, surprised, or unhappy Goal: Getting the gist of a sentence Listen to a sentence describing a picture and select the correct picture. Goal: Recognize the topic Listen to a conversation and decide what the people are talking about. Choose the picture that shows the topic. Interactive processing goals and exercise types Goal: Build a semantic network of word associations Listen to a word and associate all the related words that come to mind. Goal: Following directions Listen to a description of a route and trace it on the map 3.1.8.2. Profile of the intermediate-level learner Intermediate-level learners continue to use listening as an important source of language input to increase their vocabulary and structural understanding. Although they may have internalised the phonemic system of the language fairly well, they may have little understanding of the complexities of phonological rules which govern fast speech: reductions, elisions, etc. They need practice in word recognition and in discriminating fine differences in word order and

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grammatical form, registers of speaking, etc. Intermediate-level learners have moved beyond the limits of words and phrases, their memory can retain longer phrases and sentences. They can listen to short conversations or narratives that are one or two paragraphs in length. They are able to get the gist or to find the main idea. i. Techniques for global listening: At the intermediate level, it is no longer necessary to provide learners with simplified codes and modified speech. Indeed, intermediate-level learners need to hear authentic texts with reduced forms, fast speech features, hesitations, some non-standard dialects, and a variety of different voices. There are several definitions of authenticity in materials. D. Porter and J. Roberts (Authentic Listening Activities, in ELT Journal, 1987, 36:1, pp. 37-47) state that authentic texts are those “instances of spoken language which were not initiated for the purpose of teaching…not intended for non-native learners”. In contrast, teacher-made texts are easily identified by limited vocabulary, complete sentences, repetition of target structures, exaggerated intonation, clear enunciation. The need to introduce authentic material into students’ listening repertoire by the end of beginning level is supported by the fact that most listening in the world outside the classroom does not conform to simplified codes. ii. Techniques for selective listening: Intermediate level students who were trained with simplified codes and with clearly pronounced models may not recognize the same words and phrases in normal fast speech. At the intermediate level, accuracy in discriminating grammatical features is very important, e.g. certain unstressed endings, articles, inflections, function words. Exercise types for intermediate level listeners Bottom-up processing goals and exercise types Goal: Recognizing fast speech forms Listen to a series of sentences that contain unstressed function words. Circle your choice among three words on the answer sheet – for example: “up”, “a”, “of” Goal: Recognizing pertinent details in the speech stream Listen to a short dialogue between a boss and a secretary regarding changes in the daily schedule. Use an appointment calendar. Cross out appointments that are being changed and write in new ones. Top-down processing goals and exercise types Goal: Listen to identify the speaker or the topic Listen to a series of radio commercials. On your answer sheet, choose among 4 types of products and identify the picture which goes with the commercial.Goal: Discriminating between registers of speech and tones of voice Listen to a series of sentences. On your answer sheet, mark whether the sentence is polite or impolite Interactive processing goals and exercise types Goal: Recognize missing grammar markers in colloquial speech Listen to a series of short questions in which the auxiliary verb and subject have been deleted, e.g. Got a match? (have you…) Goal: use cultural background information to construct a more complete understanding of a text: Listen to one side of a telephone conversation. Decide what the topic of the conversation might be. 3.1.8.3. Profile of the advanced-level learner Advanced students are no longer simply learning to listen, or listening to learn the language. They are listening in the language to learn about the content of other areas. Advanced learners can listen to longer texts, such as radio and television programmes. Their vocabulary includes topics in

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current events, history and culture. However, their understanding of the language remains on a fairly literal plane, so that they may miss jokes, slang, and cultural references. Exercise types for advanced-level listeners Bottom-up processing goals and exercise types Goal: Become aware of sentence level features in lecture text Listen to a segment of a lecture while reading a transcript of the material. Notice the incomplete sentences, pauses, and verbal fillers Top-down processing goals and exercise types Goal: Use the introduction to the lecture to predict its focus and direction Listen to the introductory section of a lecture. Then rea a number of topics on your answer sheet and choose the topic that best expresses what the lecture will discuss.

3.2. Teaching speaking3.2.1. Approaches, methods and techniques of teaching speaking skills (productive

language skill) i. Behaviorism - AudiolingualismWithin behaviorism, language is mainly spoken in nature. Thus, developing Speaking skills is similar to any other type of learning, based on a stimulus-response-reinforcement pattern which involves constant practice and the formation of good habits. Therefore, speakers are first exposed to linguistic input as a type of external stimulus and their response consists of imitating and repeating such input. If this is performed correctly, they received a positive reinforcement by other language users within their same environment. The techniques used refer to learners’ carrying out repetition and substitution drills, practising grammatical structures and patterns (pronunciation in focus) through intense aural-oral practice. ii. Cognitivism In this type of approach, learners are provided with opportunities to use the language more creatively and innovatively after having been taught the relevant grammatical rules. There is recognition of the dynamic nature of learning: speakers mentally construct the language system in order to use it, yet speaking still occurs in isolation, it is not part of a communicative event. iii. The Interactionist Approach (The Socio-Cultural Turn): CLT, The Post-Communicative TurnSpeech production is context-embedded and presupposes interaction as well as the capacity to integrate different interpersonal and psychomotor aspects. Levelt (1989) endorses an automatic 4-stage model of speech production: 1) conceptualization, i.e. selection of the message content on the basis of the situational context and the particular purpose to be achieved; 2) formulation, i.e. accessing, sequencing and choosing words and phrases to express the intended message appropriately; 3) articulation, which concerns the motor control of the articulatory organs to execute the planned message; and 4) monitoring, which allows speakers to actively identify and correct mistakes if necessary. In the CLT, speaking ranks topmost and learners are trained so as to cope with real life situations. They are concerned with form, i.e. how to produce linguistically acceptable utterances in point of pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary, and with accommodation / appropriacy, i.e. selection of content and form given particular socio-cultural settings and norms. Additionally, they need to be strategically competent so that they can make adjustments during the ongoing process of speaking (since in most cases there is immediate feedback) and carry the message across.The interactive, social and contextualized perspective of language learning focuses on connected speech (discourse) rather than on isolated pieces. There is also a shift from centering on formal

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aspects of language to content and meaning, to communicative intent (purposeful speaking). Speaking development underpins constructivism: they actively use language according to their own purposes for speaking as well as their own prior knowledge (linguistic knowledge and extra-linguistic / encyclopaedic knowledge) and protocol of experience. Prior knowledge is identified to schemata, further subdivided into content schemata (topic familiarity, cultural knowledge and previous experience with a particular field) and formal schemata (features of the oral mode of communication: discourse, structures, and phonological and prosodic systems of speaking). 3.2.2. Speaking skills and intercultural communicative competence

Uso´-Juan, Martınez-Flor (Current Trends in the Development and Teaching of the Four Language Skills, 2006: 152-153) provides an example of such an activity

Activity Classify all culture-related materials brought in by all learners (i.e., written passages, audio

extracts, video scenes) according to the particular cultural topic covered (e.g., family, law and order, power and politics, etc.) and use them as resources for further prasticing the speaking skill. Arrange learners in groups of three or four members and ask them to select the materials that deal with a given cultural topic they are interested in. After reading or listening to the material they have chosen, they are asked to discuss the topic by giving their own personal point of view and to record their discussion.

The transcripts from these oral discussions can then be used in the classroom as a starting point to deal with the cultural topic with the rest of the class, as well as to analyze the oral features employed by each particular group of learners (i.e., pauses, repetition, pronunciation, turn-taking mechanisms, etc.).

3.2.3. Control factors in teaching speaking skills The following factors are involved (Murar,2012): i. Features of oral discourse: the recurrence of speech events brings with it the repetition of words and phrases (the feature is called regularity); connections between context and utterance - for example, opening and closing utterances tend to be standardized (the feature is known as patterning). ii. Sociolinguistic dimensions of talk: linguistic markers of in-group membership, distance. iii. Psycholinguistics of speech processing and language development: the triad conceptualization - formulation – output. Spoken vs. Written Discourse Oral production is characterized by exclamations (geez), repetitions (and…and), false starts (he’d…he came), fillers (hmm, uh, yeah), etc. The sentences in the written text are longer and more complex than in the spoken text. The clauses making up the sentences tend to be in an embedded (hypotactic) relationship (complex sentences), whereas in the spoken text the speakers string complete clauses together using simple conjunctions such as and and but (paratactic relationship) (compound sentences). The contracted forms (you’ve, he’d, didn’t) and elliptical forms (if necessary) are rare if ever in written texts, where they are fully spelled out. Also, the references to people and things in spoken discourse rely on the immediate context and are implied or assumed to be understood (what happened here). They are explicitly named as referents in the written text, which must stand apart from the physical context and be understood in contexts distant in time and place from the actual events. The spoken text is highly interactive and thus the participants make personal references to each other (I, you, he), features which are less prominent in the written text. There are also direct

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questions and responses, which do not feature in the written text because of its general rather than specific purpose and audience. Similarly, the spoken text is much more interpersonally focused, with speakers making direct references to their thoughts, emotions and judgments relating to the events. The tone of the written text is impersonal and factual with no evaluations concerning the rights or wrongs of the situation. Grammatically, this is displayed by the use of the Active Voice in the spoken production whereas the Passive Voice is preferred in written production. Furthermore, the Present Perfect Tense is said to typify spoken texts and the Present Simple Tense occurs frequently in written texts. There is heavy use of modals and phrasal verbs in speech while these are less intensively used in the written mode. With respect to lexical choices, words of Anglo-Saxon origin are encountered in speaking much more often than in writing, where words of Latin and French origin prevail – for example, help vs. assistance, way vs. manner, together with vs. in conjunction with, etc. 3.2.4. Within the communicative framework of language teaching, the skill of speaking enjoys special status. It has become apparent in recent years that there have been marked changes in the goals of language education programmes. Today, language students are considered successful if they can communicate effectively in a second/foreign language, whereas several decades ago the accuracy of the language produced was the major criterion of a student’s success or lack of success. These developments in language teaching – called the ‘proficiency movement’ by some researchers and the promotion of ‘functional’ or ‘communicative’ ability by others – have moved us away from the goal of accurate form towards a focus on fluency and communicative effectiveness (Th. Higgs, Teaching for Proficiency, 1984).Thus, the teaching of the speaking skill has become increasingly important. Accordingly, rather than implementing activities and exercises which focus strictly on accuracy (such as those using memorization, repetition, and uncontextualized drills) many teachers have concentrated on promoting communicative competence in language learners by using “communicative activities” – those which rely more on the students’ ability to understand and communicate real information. The aim of such “fluency activities”, as C. Brumfit (Communicative Methodology in Language Teaching, 1984: 69) calls them, is “to develop a pattern of language interaction with the classroom which is as close as possible to that used by competent performers in normal life.” Informal, unrehearsed use of language is encouraged, along with a relaxed classroom environment. However, this does not mean that a focus on accuracy has no place in the communicative classroom. Some research, for example, that carried out by Th. Higgs & R. Clifford, (Curriculum, Competence and the Second Language Teacher, 1982) suggests that forcing communication too early without any regard for accuracy can result in early fossilisation. Since a linguistic or grammatical base may be necessary before fluency can be attained, some researchers believe that grammar should be explicitly taught and that this is possible through communicative means. 3.2.5. Speaking activities (activities used for promoting the skill of speaking) The goal of a speaking component in a language class should encourage the acquisition of communication skills which can foster/ promote real communication out of the classroom. For use in the ESL/EFL classroom, there are as many speaking activities and materials available as there are creative teachers. For the purpose of this discussion, we have organised oral skill activities into four distinct types: drills, or linguistically structured activities, performance activities, participation activities, and observation activities.

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3.2.5.1. Drills (linguistically structured activities): Such activities need not be void of meaning, as were some of the more classic manipulative techniques associated with the audio-lingual approach, with its repetition drills and pattern practices. Rather, it is possible to contextualise such activities and thus meet some of the requirements of a communicatively oriented design. In controlled practice the teacher can model the forms to be produced, providing linguistically correct input. The students are then allowed to practice the material, and the teacher follows up by reinforcing the forms practiced. What is important is that the students are allowed to speak about what is true, real, and interesting. The structured interview is an example of this, where students question each other and answer factually, thus exchanging ‘real’ information, while at the same time repeating and reinforcing specific structures (e.g. yes-no, or wh- questions). Some language games can also provide opportunities for controlled practice. Again, it is important to model the structures for beginning students, either verbally or by writing the forms on the blackboard. Picture games which require students to match texts with pictures are ideal for beginning students who need to practice manipulating certain structures (e.g., the word ‘cup’ with a picture of a cup; or, for more advanced students, a sentence which describes one step in a process with its corresponding diagram). 3.2.5.2. Performance activities: ‘Performance’ activities are those in which the student prepares beforehand and delivers a message to a group. A good example of such an activity is the student speech, which could be made as specific in content as necessary: a course in conversational or social English might assign students to simply tell a story from their own experience, in a casual, social setting. Peer evaluation can be a useful component of oral performance activities since:i. the “audience” becomes involved in such a way that students, as members of the audience, become more than simply passive listeners;ii. the evaluation process helps students to gain confidence in their own ability to evaluate language; iii. the evaluation activity itself becomes an opportunity for real, spontaneous interaction since the “message” (the evaluation) is important to the student performer. The evaluation sheet, drawn up by the teacher beforehand, has the purpose to structure the evaluation so that it meets the goals of the activity, with such criteria as:- content: is it focused? clear? original? has enough detail been provided?- organisation: is it logical? are there appropriate transitions?- delivery: is the volume adequate? are notes relied on too much?- other comments could include specific points on grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation Self-evaluation: another follow-up activity involves audiotaping or videotaping students during their initial performances and allowing them to evaluate themselves. With self- evaluation, students listen to or watch their recorded speeches and evaluate themselves according to the same criteria the teacher uses. A useful option for this follow-up task would be for students to look at their transcription and rewrite it, correcting the grammar and vocabulary errors. A variation on the speech given by one person is assigning two or more people to deliver a talk. This variation has certain advantages: Not only does this allow more content to be conveyed, but also it gives students needed practice in negotiating tasks and sharing information. An additional benefit is that students are less likely to feel nervous or pressured when the responsibility for giving a good speech is shared among a group. Role-plays and dramas, if performed in front of the class, can also function as “performance activities”. In some cases, students could write the role-plays or dramas themselves:

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this would be appropriate in a course that is organised around speech functions or conversational strategies (.g. complimenting or thanking behaviour, greetings and closings). Finally, debates can serve as an opportunity for a classroom performance activity for intermediate and advanced learners. Students can select a topic, plan their research and information gathering strategies, pool the results of this research, and plan their presentations, making sure to anticipate questions from the other team. 3.2.5.3. Participation activities: “Participation” activities can be some of the most diverse and interesting in the oral communication repertoire. These are activities where the student participates in some communicative activity in a natural “setting”. The guided discussion: one of the most commonly used participation activities is the guided discussion, where the instructor provides a brief orientation to some problem or controversial topic, usually by means of a short reading. Students in small groups discuss the topic, suggesting possible solutions, or resolutions. Discussion-leading activity: alternatively, students themselves can be assigned the responsibility of a discussion-leading activity in more advanced classes. In this situation, they:- select a topic- find a short background article or write a summary of the topic- draw up a list of questions for consideration by the rest of the class Some of the same evaluation techniques discussed above can be used for this activity (peer evaluation, audiotaping or videotaping) Recording a conversation: Another more innovative participation activity requires students to audiotape/record a spontaneous conversation that they have with a native speaker of their choice. If this is difficult, students can converse with the most advanced language students. The goal of these conversations is for the student to obtain ‘data’ that are natural and spontaneous. After the conversation is recorded, the students transcribe, on their own, an excerpt of the conversation that they find interesting. After the initial conversation data are audiotaped, transcribed, and checked by the teacher for faithfulness to the tape, there are many options for activities based on them. One use of the material is for vocabulary-building: the students note down unfamiliar words or idioms in the native or fluent speaker’s language. This procedure can be used as an exercise in discovering regularities of conversation strategies (how to disagree, how to register surprise or sympathy). The interview: Another participation activity that elicits enthusiastic student response is the interview. In it, the students interview their native speaker acquaintances about some meaningful or memorable aspect of their lives. Another variation is to have students interview native speakers for their opinions on a given subject. After the interviews have taken place, the students organise their information and present it to the rest of the class. This can be particularly interesting when native speakers express conflicting views when responding to the topic. 3.2.5.4. Observation activities. These are activities in which a student observes and/or records verbal interactions between two or more native or fluent speakers of the target language. This technique is useful for building student awareness of language as it actually used in the real world, and since the student is taking the role of non-participant observer, s/he is free to concentrate on the subject without fear of performance errors, a problem for beginners, whose productive skills usually lag behind their receptive capabilities. There are many possibilities which can serve as the focus for this assignment: how and when people greet each other, make requests, thank each other, compliment one another, disagree, etc. 3.2.6. Acquisition of conversational discourse 3.2.6.1.. Interaction in discourse

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Normally sentences are not said in isolation but spoken in a particular situation. They do not mean much without knowing how the successive sentences are linked together, and how they relate to the situation. In one sense ‘discourse’ concerns how the participants influence each other while talking. They interrupt, they ask for more information; they adapt what they are saying, etc. This is called ‘interactive discourse’ as there is a give-and-take between the participants. Hence interactive discourse, which is spontaneous language with give-and-take, usually occurs in speech rather than writing. But language can also consist of connected speech or writing that has been prepared and gone over: usually this is written language, for instance a set of instructions on how to work a video-recorder, but sometimes it may be prepared speech such as talks or lectures. This is ‘non-interactive discourse’ in that the reader or listener cannot affect what happens. A related distinction made by Gillian Brown and her colleagues (Brown, G., Anderson, A., Shillcock, R., and Yule, G., Teaching Talk: Strategies for Production and Assessment, 1984) is between listener-related talk and information-related talk. Listener-related talk - ‘chat’ – forms the basis of social life. People talk to each other to maintain social relationships. Information-related talk however has the purpose of transferring information from speaker to listener. It might be a doctor directing a nurse how to treat a patient, or a teacher imparting information in a classroom. Only information-related talk can be non-interactive. 3.2.6..2. Discourse moves in conversation If two people are talking, each of them has a choice of what to say and how to say it. There are certain opening moves for the conversation that can be chosen, then a choice of follow-up moves, a further choice of conversational moves linked to these, and so on until the final exchange that ends the conversation. So a conversation might start with ritualistic greetings: Hello, John. Hello, Mary. Then one speaker broaches a topic of conversation, which continues for a while: Have you heard about Brian? No. What’s happened? Oh he’s gone off to Australia. How amazing! The conversation continues till the speakers signal a close: Well I’d better be off now. Goodbye. Cheerio. Some of these exchanges are predictable: if one person says a greeting – “Hello” – the other has to say a greeting in return – “Hello”. Other exchanges come in ‘adjacency pairs’ with straightforward linguistic connections between the moves [Adjacency pair: a pair of discourse moves that often go together, e.g. question and answer]. A question “What’s happened?” has to be followed by an answer such as “He’s gone off to Australia”. Other connections are less obvious: a move that gives information “He’s gone off to Australia” – calls for a polite reaction “How amazing!” Much of conversation is made up of such pairs of moves – greeting and reply, question and answer, statement and reaction. Some psychologists such as J. Bruner (Child’s Talk, 1983) have suggested that a child learns the first language through such routines. Conversational interaction is vital for children, not just for the moves themselves that they are learning, but for the grammatical rules and lexical items they are using in the moves. The components of language are learnt through the moves of conversation.

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Much of this knowledge of interaction is transferred from the first language to the second: knowing how to construct a conversation in one language means it can be done in another, to some extent. Languages do not differ over the moves themselves so much as over what makes up the moves. We all greet each other; we all ask questions and provide answers; but we do so differently in different languages. For example, the main difficulty in going from one language to another is represented by conventions over politeness. In this respect, the Germans prefer more direct ways of making a request than such indirect English forms as “Could you tell me the way to the station please?” Or, the Japanese consider it polite not to disagree with the speaker. 3.2.6.3. Teaching conversational discourse Evelyn Hatch (Discourse Analysis and Second Language Acquisition, 1978) has advocated an approach to L2 learning based on conversation analysis – the analysis of conversations between native and non-native speakers. In native to non-native conversations the native speaker uses more topic clarification moves than usual because of the increased unintelligibility of L2 speech. The non-native needs particular moves for stating topics unambiguously and for making certain they are continuing to be understood. While all these indeed occur from time to time in native-to-native speech, the proportions of each move inevitably change in conversations involving non-native speakers. Vivian Cook (Language functions, social factors and second language teaching, 1985) found for instance that non-native speakers are more formal and polite than native speakers when making requests from strangers and when thanking them. They tend to say “Thank you very much” rather than “Thanks” for example, regardless of who they are speaking to. Similarly, another researcher, P. Porter (Talking to Learn: Conversation in Second Language Acquisition, 1986) compared natives and non-natives on the same discussion talks. The non-natives had a smaller repertoire of ways of expressing themselves, for example, not using the past tense for giving their opinions, and expressing disagreement directly rather than through face-saving ‘hedges’. The fact that conversation consists of moves and the idea that learning takes place through conversational moves can come together in teaching. V. Cook’s beginners book (People and Places, 1980) uses a teaching exercise called a ‘conversational exchange’. The students, for example, are shown pictures of various clothes; they hear model conversations showing two conversational moves, stating opinion and reacting: Jenny: Joe’s suit is very nice. Edna: Is it? Jenny: Peter’s jeans are horrible. Edna: Are they? Then they have to supply Edna’s side of the conversation for a few exchanges, working out the appropriate answer according to their opinion of the clothes. Finally the students supply both sides of the conversation. The basic concept is indeed that learning takes place through interaction in limited exchanges: conversation is taught as linked conversational moves. As soon as possible in each exercise, the students have to choose which expression to use and have to fit it into the situation meaningfully. Conversational Analysis comes close to some communicative teaching through its belief that second languages are learnt under the pressure of conversation. Interacting with other people through a series of conversational moves is not just what the learners are aiming at: it is the actual means of learning. But the concept of a ‘move’ outlined here is not quite the same as the idea of ‘function’ in most communicative teaching, which is usually concerned with functions such as

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‘arguing’ or ‘apologising’ that might occur in several different conversational moves. A teacher using a communicative method should remember that functions never occur by themselves but always in a sequence of conversational moves. 3.2.7. Language and input in the L2 classroom 3.2.7.1. Second language learning inside the classroom: Let us start with the language interaction that occurs in all classrooms: most face-to-face conversation is interactive and listener-related. Some situations give one participant a more directive role than the others: one person can be called the ‘leader’ who takes the initiative, the others are ‘followers’ who respond to it. Let us take a short classroom exchange: Teacher: Can you tell me why you eat all that food? Pupil: To keep you strong. Teacher: To keep you strong. Yes. Why do you want to be strong? This exchange has three main moves: i. Initiation (the opening move by the teacher): The teacher takes the initiative by requiring something of the student, say through a question such as “Can you tell me why you eat all that food?” The move starts off the exchange; the teacher acts as leader. ii. Response (the student’s response to the teacher’s opening move): the student does whatever is required, here answering the question by saying “To keep you strong” iii. Feedback (teacher evaluation of the student response): the teacher evaluates the student’s response This three-move structure of initiation, response and feedback is very frequent in teaching. 3.2.7.2. Language in the language teaching classroom Several teaching methods have tried to maximize the amount of speaking by the student ( Murar, 2012):- the audio-lingual method approved of the language laboratory precisely because it increased each student’s share of speaking time.- communicative methods support pair-work and group-work partly because they give each student the chance to talk as much as possible Other methods do not share the opinion that teacher talk should be minimized (teacher-talk: the amount of speech supplied by the teacher rather than the students)- conventional academic teaching emphasizes factual information coming from the teacher.- listening-based teaching sees most value in the students extracting information from what they hear rather than in speaking themselves. One argument for less speech by the students is that at least the sentences that the students hear will be correct examples of the target language, not samples of the interlanguages of their fellow students. 3.2.7.3. Authentic and non-authentic language A further distinction is between authentic and non-authentic language. Here is a typical textbook dialogue taken from Flying Colours I (Garton-Sprenger & Greenall, 1990): Nicola: Do you like this music? Roger: Not very much. I don’t like jazz. Nicola: What kind of music do you like? Roger: I like classical music. This is non-authentic language specially constructed for its teaching potential. People in real-life conversations do not answer questions so explicitly, do not speak in full grammatical sentences, and do not keep to a clear sequence of turns. Instead they speak like these two people who were recorded while talking about ghosts for the course-book English Topics (Cook, 1975):

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Mrs. Bagg: Oh, how extraordinary. Jenny Drew: So…’cos quite a lot of things like that. Mrs. Bagg: I mean were they frightened? ’Cos I think if I actually… Jenny Drew: No. Mrs. Bagg: … saw a ghost because I don’t believe in them really, I would be frightened, you know… This is an example of authentic language, defined by D. Little et al. (Authentic Texts in Foreign Language Teaching: Theory and Practice, 1988) as “created to fulfil some social purpose in the language community in which it was produced”. Until recently, teaching provided the students with specially adapted language, not only simplified in terms of syntax and confined in vocabulary but also tidied up in terms of discourse structure. With the advent of methods that looked at the communicative situation the students were going to encounter, it began to seem that the students were being handicapped by never hearing authentic speech in all its richness and diversity. Hence courses have proliferated that turn away from specially constructed classroom language to any pieces of language that have been really used by native speakers, whether tapes of conversations, advertisements from magazines, or a thousand and one other sources. Two justifications for the use of authentic text in communicative teaching are put forward by D. Little et al (1988): i. Motivation and interest: students will be better motivated by texts that have served a real communicative purpose; ii. Filling in gaps: designers of course-books may miss some of the aspects of language used in real-life situations.

3.3 Teaching reading3.3.1. Approaches, methods and techniques of teaching reading skills (receptive language

skill). Perhaps more than the other language skills, reading is said to pave the way to independent learning. i. Behaviorism Reading is conceptualized as a passive process: words acting as stimulus and triggering response as word recognition, i.e. recognition and discrimination of letters (graphic symbols) and words. Frequently, reading was done by sounding out (reading aloud). Similarly to teaching Listening skills, the techniques used mainly consist in repeating, imitating and memorizing of prefabricated language (for instance, word lists), while totally disregarding cognitive processes. ii. Cognitivism Readers become active agents rather than passive recipients, they guess or predict the meaning on the basis of textual data/cues and activation mechanisms of background knowledge, then confirm or correct their guesses, and thereby reconstruct the message with respect to both morpho-syntactic and semantic levels. R is considered a dynamical process of cognitive nature. Admittedly, comprehension is of paramount importance based on the idea that understanding language facilitates learning (rather than acquisition) and that learners develop reading skills by reading intensively and extensively (free voluntary reading). iii. The Interactionist Approach (The Socio-Cultural Turn): CLT, The Post-Communicative TurnThe interactive, social and contextualized perspective of language learning focuses on connected speech (discourse) rather than on isolated pieces. There is also a shift from centering on formal aspects of language to content and meaning, to communicative intent (purposeful reading). Information processing while listening (sequential order of input, perception, recognition, and

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understanding stages) is coupled with a constructivist stance: readers actively construct meaning according to their own purposes for reading as well as their own prior knowledge (linguistic knowledge and extra-linguistic / encyclopaedic knowledge) and protocol of experience. Prior knowledge is identified to schemata, further subdivided into content schemata (topic familiarity, cultural knowledge and previous experience with a particular field) and formal schemata (knowledge about text types - stylistic conventions as well as the structural organization/variety of formats). The socio-cultural context has gained ever increased importance in language learning as the process does not take place in a social vacuum. Admittedly, special attention is paid to the author – reader relationship in meaning construction while readers read in a dynamic way (selectively). Reading is also coupled with detecting and interpreting the cultural To put it in a nutshell, reading, on a par with listening, provides the input for language learning, acting as reference framework in language production (Murar, 2012). 3.3.2. Reading skills and intercultural communicative competence Uso´-Juan, Martınez-Flor provides an illustration of reading activity (Current Trends in the Development and Teaching of the Four Language Skills, 2006: 272-273):

Activity Select a representative passage on a particular cultural topic that has been brought in by the

learners. Carry out critical reading with your learners by encouraging them to answer the questions presented below, which are grouped into the three phases of pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading.

Critical readingPre-reading questions Do you think the topic of (…) is representative of the target culture and of your

own culture? Why or why not? What content do you think the text entitled (…) is going to cover?

While-reading question How is content presented to deal with that particular topic?

Post-reading questions What other aspects should be incorporated within the passage to deal with this

topic in a more comprehensive way? How could the content of the text vary if it was written by another writer or read

by another reader in a different context? 3.3.3. Control factors in teaching reading skills i. Ensure word recognition fluency or automaticity, particularly in the early developmental stages of reading skills, via extendend exposure to high frequency (printed) words ii. Emphasize vocabulary learning and create a vocabulary-rich environment: reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge are inextricably linked. At this point, pre-teaching key vocabulary items proves to be crucial. iii. Activate background knowledge in appropriate ways (top-down processing): familiarity with topic enables inferencing skills and meaning disambiguisation (detection of the intended contextual meaning). Text previewing secures the activation of specific knowledge relevant to the reading of the text in question instead of general background knowledge. iv. Ensure effective language knowledge and general comprehension skills: vocabulary items, grammar items, word integration processes (from word units to the sentence level meaningful units). v. Teach text structures and discourse organization: familiarity with text type, text layout, coherence and cohesive devices and other textual parametres.

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vi. Promote the strategic reader rather than teach individual strategies: coordinated use of multiple strategies while students actively seek to comprehend texts, i.e. teacher modelling, teacher scaffolding and support, and gradual independent use of strategies to increased text comprehension. The range of strategies includes summarizing, clarifying, predicting, imaging, forming questions, using prior knowledge, monitoring, and evaluating. vii. Build reading fluency and rate: it means efficiency in reading - training for a rapid speed of processing across extended text. viii. Promote extensive reading: there is a strong relationship between reading comprehension abilities and extensive reading over a long period of time. ix. Develop intrinsic motivation for reading: motivation and engagement with reading were significantly related to amount of reading. The goal in learning to read should be meaning. Whether the teacher favours a skills-oriented approach (which advocates form over meaning) or a communication approach (which stresses function over form) is a personal decision, since experts disagree on the merits of each. However, language teachers should remember that the communication approach is of more recent theoretical formulation, and this holistic, top-down approach may constitute the wave of the future. 3.3.4. Developing reading skills In the past language teachers typically gave students very little assistance with reading other than to teach them grammar and vocabulary. Conceiving of reading as an active mental process greatly expands the reader’s role since primary responsibility for meaning shifts from the text itself to the reader. Thus, language teachers now have a much greater range of possible procedures to follow prior to, during, and after the reading assignment to assist students to read more effectively. Viewing reading as a communicative process rather than as a language learning process leads to several important conclusions. Students do not need to know all the words/vocabulary and grammar to comprehend a major portion of the text and to recreate the author’s meaning. They can learn to read at a much higher level of proficiency than in the past when the preoccupation with grammar deprived them of the opportunity to read for meaning. They can learn reading strategies that enable them to read at much higher levels of proficiency. Also, teachers can initiate activities that heighten students’ motivation and increase their level of comprehension. H. Loew (Developing Strategies Reading Skills, 1984) offers practical advice for teaching reading skills. Thus, the researcher urges language teachers to encourage students to guess, to tolerate ambiguity, to link ideas, to paraphrase and to summarize, to stop worrying when then come across isolated, unknown words, which are sometimes not vital to comprehension. Teachers can also help students by discussing the title, theme, and cultural background before reading. Prior to the first reading assignment teachers should teach students how to skim, find the main idea, and modify their hypotheses. Teachers should give them practice using the dictionary, taking notes, underlining, skimming and rereading. And before making any reading assignment, teachers should be sure that the reading task is clear to the students. J.V. Aspatore (“But I don’t Know all the Words”, in J. C. Alderson and A. H. Urguhart Reading in a Foreign Language, 1984) describes a method of teaching reading skills in a second/foreign language that focuses on:i. eliminating the student’s fear of giving a “wrong answer”: an important problem that students have with reading is that they are afraid. They are more concerned with getting the correct answer that than with the more important process of how to get the answer ii. discouraging overuse of a dictionary: they depend too much on the dictionary, and have problems making the transition from short readings to log ones.

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iii. teaching recognition of cognates, roots and the use of certain prefixes and suffixes: to help students overcome these problems, she suggests that teachers ask them to read and underline unknown words without looking up the meaning in the dictionary; to use contextual clues to guess the general meaning; to skip unknown words and to focus on cognates, roots, prefixes and suffixes. iv. using a variety of textsv. utilizing skimming, scanning and decoding processes F. Grellet (Developing Reading Skills: A Practical Guide to Reading Comprehension Exercises 1981) discuses useful reading practice techniques:i. One technique is to have students work their way through comprehension problems by inferring the meaning through word formation and context. They should also learn to pick out the important words that form the core of each sentence, and they need to be aware of the use of referent and connecting words to establish relationships in and among sentences and paragraphs.ii. Another technique is to practise timed readings to improve reading speed. iii. A third technique is to learn to use scanning and skimming techniques to preview reading material, predict what the selection is about, and develop expectations about the content of the text. St. Krashen and T. Terrell (The Natural Approach: Language Acquisition in the Classroom, 1983) outline the following communicative reading strategies:i. read for meaningii. don’t look up every wordiii. predict meaningiv. use context 3.3.5. Reading activities 3.3.5.1. Pre-reading: The purpose of pre-reading (as with pre-listening) activities is to motivate the students to want to read the assignment and to prepare them to be able to read it. Prepared students can complete the assignment better with less effort, and they are able to participate more fully and with greater satisfaction. Prepared students rapidly gain confidence in their ability to learn a second language, and they tend to be more highly motivated and more enthusiastic than students who struggle to complete their homework assignments. L. Ringler and C. Weber (A Language-Thinking Approach to Reading, 1984: 70) call pre-reading activities enabling activities because “they provide a reader with the necessary background to organize activity and to comprehend the material… These experiences involve understanding the purpose(s) for reading and building a knowledge base necessary for dealing with the content and the structure of the material.” The two authors say that pre-reading activities elicit prior knowledge, build background, and focus attention. 3.3.5.2. Reading the assignment. Students may read the assignment in or out of class. Initially, the teacher may have them read the assignment or at least begin to read it in class so that s/he can help those who need assistance to develop productive strategies for recreating the author’s meaning. Normally, however, students read assigned material as part of their homework because class time is more valuable for communication practice that students cannot get out of class. When students read out of class, the teacher has no opportunity to provide immediate assistance. However, s/he can help students to read by giving them specific guidelines for what to do while they are reading. During the preview, the teacher has introduced the students to the topic and the related vocabulary. They have made predictions about what might happen, and they have created their own expectations about how the reading may develop. Based on these predictions and expectations, they proceed through the reading either confirming or rejecting their hypotheses. In case of errors they make new predictions based on the new knowledge they have gained from the

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reading. This process of guessing, confirming or rejecting, reformulation and comprehension continues until they gain understanding. The authors recommend that the teacher ask students to underline the main ideas and supporting facts. They suggest that the teacher implement this idea by first giving them a reading that has already been underlined. The students read the underlined parts and predict the rest of the reading based on this skeleton of information. In subsequent readings the students themselves do the underlining. Another practice is to teach students to make a story map as they read. Following this technique, they learn to show important relationships in the reading by putting main ideas, events, and characters in adjoining circles. The map may consist of main ideas and sequential details, comparisons and contrasts, or causes and effects. 3.3.5.3. Post-reading: The first step in post-reading activities is to clarify the meaning of any unclear passages and their relationship to the author’s overall message. The teacher should encourage students to ask any questions that they may have about the reading at this point in the class. The teacher’s task is to clarify problem passages by focusing on meaning whenever possible without calling the students’ attention to grammar and vocabulary except as a last resort. Russell Stauffer (The Language Experience Approach to the Teaching of Reading, 1980) advocates three types of teacher’s questions:i. What do you think? (to make the students think)ii. Why do you think so? (to cause them to think about their opinions)iii. Prove it! (to force them to present evidence for their conclusions) L. Ringler and C. Weber (A Language-Thinking Approach to Reading, 1984) divide post-reading activities into two basic categories:i. those in which students recall information from or react to the text;ii. those designed to develop greater communicative fluency in the four language skills. These activities may include dramatizations, role-plays, simulations, reports, and debates. Teachers should avoid fact questions that can be answered directly from the text. It is preferable that students prepare a summary or paraphrase of the content because these activities require a global recall of relevant information. Further activities can focus on the students’ ability to draw conclusions, or give opinions. An effective post-reading activity requires students to reprocess the material from the reading. They suggest identifying key ideas, pointing out rhetorical devices describing the author’s biases, comparing cultural differences, debating both sides of an issue presented in the reading, and developing skits or plays based on the reading. During post-reading activities students have the chance to have some fun participating in communication activities while increasing their facility to use the reading to communicate their own thoughts and feelings. The teacher should not move on to other readings until the students have had sufficient time to explore the topic from several perspectives and to use the language and ideas in different communicative contexts. He should not permit students to leave a reading until they have expressed their personal reaction to the content. He should not feel obligated to rush from one story to another in a prescribed period of time regardless of the students’ abilities and interests. The goal should be to use language to express meaning in creative and stimulating ways, not to cover a preselected quantity of material (Murar, 2012). 3.3.6. Discourse: script and schema theory Reading is a cognitive process that is rather restricted in the L2. Reading, like speaking, occurs in a context rather than in isolation. The meaning of a text is not found just in the sentences themselves, but is derived from the previous knowledge stored in the reader’s mind and the processes through which the reader tackles it.

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3.3.6.1. Schema theory Schema (pl. schemas or schemata) refers to the background knowledge on which the interpretation of a text depends. A well-known experiment carried out by J. Bransford and M. Johnson (Contextual prerequisites for understanding, 1982) asked people to read texts such as the following: The procedure is actually simple. First you arrange things into different groups depending on their makeup. Of course, one pile may be sufficient depending on how much there is to do. If you have to go somewhere else due to lack of facilities that is the next step, otherwise you are pretty well set. It is important not to overdo any particular endeavour. That is, it is better to do too few things at once than too many… To make sense of this text a particular piece of information is required: the passage is about washing clothes. A person who doesn’t have this information does not get much out of the text. If the topic is known, the passage is straightforward and the comprehension level is much higher. The sentences themselves do not change when we know the topic, but the interpretation they have in our minds does. The background knowledge into which a text fits, sometimes called the schema, plays a large role in how it is read. Lack of context affected readers’ comprehension; also, the use of vague words (‘things’ or ‘facilities’ instead of ‘clothes’ or ‘washing machine’) was a hindrance. 3.3.6.2. Scripts and discourse A crucial element in the understanding of discourse was given the name of ‘script’ by R. Schank in the 1970s (R. Schank and R. Abelson, Scripts, Plans, Goals and Understanding, 1977). A script is according to Schank and Abelson “a predetermined stereotyped sequence of actions that defines a well-known situation”. While in recent years Schank has developed his ideas beyond this, nevertheless the script has been a very influential view of how memory is organised. Some scripts are virtually the same for speakers of different languages; others differ from one country to another. Thus, the script for eating-out may require all restaurants to have waitress-service, or to be takeaway, or to have cash desks by the exit or other variations. Many of the stereotyped problems of foreign travel that people recount show conflicts between scripts – eating sheep’s eyes, loos for mixed sexes, asking if food tastes good, all are absent from the scripts in particular cultures. Or indeed the script may be totally absent: most people have no script for a Finnish sauna. 3.3.6.3. Scripts and schema theory in teaching Patricia Carrell (Three components of background knowledge in reading comprehension, 1983) has produced a set of recommendations for language teachers: in addition to vocabulary, Carrell sees teaching as building up the learner’s background knowledge. Thus she stresses pre-reading activities that build up background knowledge, partly through providing them with appropriate vocabulary through activities such as word association practice. The techniques she suggests develop processing strategies for the text such as flow-charting or diagramming activities. Materials should not only be interesting, but also be conceptually complete; a longer passage or an in-depth set of passages on a single topic is better than short unconnected passages. Perhaps none of these ideas will be completely new to the practicing teacher. Reading materials have after all been stressing content background for some time. Pre-reading exercises are now standard. The benefit for the teacher is an increased awareness of the difficulties that L2 learners face with texts. These are not just a product of the processing of the text itself but of the background information that natives automatically read into it. L2 learners have ‘cognitive deficits’ with reading that are not caused by lack of language ability but by difficulties with processing information in an

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L2. Even at advanced levels, L2 learners still cannot get as much out of a text as in their first language, even if on paper they know all the grammar and vocabulary. Cambridge university students tested by J. Long and E. Harding-Esch (Summary and recall of text in first and second languages: some factors contributing to performance difficulties, 1977) for example remembered less information from political speeches in French than in English. Furthermore, advanced L2 learners still read their second language much more slowly than they read their first. The problem with reading is not just the language but the whole process of getting meaning from texts.

SCANNING = extracting specific information Very often we read something or listen to it because we want to extract specific bits of information - to find out a fact or two. We may quickly kook through a film review just to find the name of the star. We may listen to the news bulletin, only concentrating when the particular item that interests us comes up. In both cases we may largely disregard the other information in the review or the news bulletin. We will be aware of this information and may even at some level take it in, but we do so at speed as we focus in on the specific information we are searching for. This skill when applied to reading is often called scanning. (J. Harmer, 1997: 183).

SKIMMING = getting the general picture We often read or listen to things because we want to ‘get the general picture’. We want to

have an idea of the main points of the text – an overview – without being too concerned with the details. When applied to reading this skill is often called skimming and entails the reader’s ability to pick out main points rapidly, discarding what is not essential or relevant to the general picture. Listeners often need the same skill too – listening for the main message and disregarding repetition, false starts and irrelevances that are often features of spoken language. (Harmer, 1997: 183).

3.4. Teaching writing3.4.1. Approaches, methods and techniques of teaching writing skills (productive

language skills) i. Behaviorism Within this theory of language learning, writing is considered of secondary importance, being regarded as just its orthographic representation. It is assumed that mastery of spoken language and its orthographic conventions has to precede the learning of written language because discrepancy between speech sounds and orthography could cause interferences with the proper learning of speech. Therefore, writing becomes a language skill which serves as reinforcement of learning grammatical and vocabulary knowledge, which in turn is meant to achieve overall oral correctness. Furthermore, accuracy is overemphasized - writing is tightly controlled to prevent errors caused by L1 interference. ii. Cognitivism It is assumed that the stages of writing are not lockstep or sequential but rather recursive and creative. Scholars design a 3-stage model of writing: 1. the planning stage, further subdivided into smaller processes such as generating ideas, organizing these ideas and setting the goals for writing; 2. the translating stage, in which learners articulate and write down their thoughts generated in the first stage; and 3. the reviewing stage, in which learners evaluate and revise/edit the text. Admittedly, the focus is placed on writing as a process (grammatical accuracy is no longer at the core and error correction is delayed until the final stage of the process of writing) rather than as a product, learners’ creativity being encouraged. iii. The Interactionist Approach (The Socio-Cultural Turn): CLT, The Post-Communicative Turn

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Similarly to the other language skills, writing does not occur in a vacuum, learners draw on their conventionalized knowledge of text patterns to infer the recognizable connectedness of text. What makes writing coherent is not in the text but in the readers’ prior knowledge of the formal and linguistic structure of different types of texts or formal schemata alongside content schemata (familiarity with the topic). Written production is context-embedded and presupposes interaction as well as the capacity to integrate different interpersonal and psychomotor aspects. It has been recommended that three main phases should be followed in teaching writing skills: 1) modeling, in which the teachers provides an explicit explanation of the genre to be dealt with; 2) negotiating, in which the teacher guides the class composition by means of questions; and 3) construction, in which the students construct the genre by working through several drafts in consultation with the teacher.Within the CLT framework, writing plays a crucial role in the development of communicative competence. Consequently, during the process of producing a coherent written text, learners are expected to be actively engaged, selecting appropriate knowledge of how to produce linguistically and pragmatically accurate sentences given particular socio-cultural norms together with their ability to marshal resources (grammar competence, discourse competence, sociolinguistic competence) and use strategies to allow for effective communication, i.e. activation of strategic competence (Murar, 2012). 3.4.2. Writing skills and intercultural communicative competence (Uso´-Juan, Martınez-Flor, Current Trends in the Development and Teaching of the Four Language Skills, 2006: 411)Activity

Select representative passages with cultural incidents, that is, passages in which someone from a particular culture feels odd in a situation interacting with someone from a different culture or with intercultural misunderstandings, that is, passages that report an intercultural misunderstanding given the beliefs and attitudes in different cultures. Ideally, they should be narrative texts with different paragraphs each leading toward the cultural incident or intercultural misunderstanding. Cover all but the first introductory chapter in which the situation is presented and then ask learners to read this first paragraph and continue the story in the way they think is most likely, bearing in mind the particular cultural context in which the situation takes place. Encourage learners to plan, draft and revise their versions in order to promote their writing proficiency. 3.4.3. Control factors in teaching writing skills i. Topic selection: writing is not just an invitation to write, topics should be relevant to learners’ needs and interests no matter if teaching is process-oriented (focus on the developmental stages of writing) or genre-oriented (there is the underlying assumption that learning to write involves learning the characteristics of different types of writing which serve particular purposes in specific contexts). ii. Close up on assignments: it seems reasonable to claim that there are broad-based and generic guidelines for approaching the task of creating any and all assignments. Teachersshould pay attention to purpose, structure, audience, and sources of information when they design writing tasks. iii. Patterns, models and genre approaches: need to ensure that students become familiar with standard organizational patterns common to English writing and the specific genres, and that writing patterns are flexible allowing for learners’ creativity incorporation. iv. Content-focused reading to write tasks: the primary function of the source text(s) here is not to serve as an example of a particular type of writing (as in iii.) but rather to yield raw material derived from the content of the reading(s).

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v. “Student to world” tasks: students will learn best if they can engage with the material in some way (personally) that allows them to develop a high level of investment in their writing. vi. A natural “life cycle”: writing occurs during the language class in a life cycle including six steps: the teacher’s setting of an assignment, students’ engagement in the preparatory work, students’ drafting the complete text, feedback provision, students’ revision of the text, students’ submission of the final version of the text. 3.4.4. Within the communicative framework of language teaching, the skill of writing enjoys special status: it is via writing that a person can communicate a variety of messages to a close or distant, known or unknown reader. Such communication is extremely important in the modern world, whether the interaction takes the form of traditional paper-and-pencil writing or the most advanced electronic mail. Writing as a communicative activity needs to be encouraged and nurtured during the language learner’s course of study. The view of writing as an act of communication suggests an interactive process which takes place between the writer and the reader via the text. Such an approach places value on the goal of writing as well as on the perceived reader audience. Even if we are concerned with writing at the beginning level, these two aspects of the act of writing are of vital importance, in setting writing tasks the teacher should encourage students to define, for themselves, the message they want to send and the audience who will receive it. The present sections focus on the gradual development of the mechanics of writing, which is a necessary instrumental skill without which meaningful writing cannot take place, then move on to early functional writing, which can be carried out with a limited level of proficiency in the target language. It is important to remember that in the ESL/EFL context, writing, like the other language skills, needs to be dealt with at the particular level of linguistic and discourse proficiency which the intended students have reached. The proposed sequence of activities will start with focus on the mechanical aspects of writing, as the basic instrumental skill, and gradually move on to a combination of “purpose for writing” and language focus. 3.4.5. Early writing tasks 3.4.5.1. What do we teach? The first steps in teaching reading and writing skills in a second or foreign language classroom centre around the mechanics of these two skills. By “mechanics” we usually refer to letter recognition, letter discrimination, word recognition, basic rules of spelling, punctuation, capitalisation, as well as recognition of whole sentences. The interaction between reading and writing has often been a focus in the methodology of language teaching, yet it deserves even stronger emphasis at the early stages in the acquisition of the various component mechanics: in order to learn how to discriminate one letter from another while reading, learners need to practice writing these letters; in order to facilitate their perception of words and sentences during the reading process, they might need to practice writing them first. It is therefore the case that writing plays an important role in early reading, facilitating the development of both the reading and the writing skills (Murar, 2012). Sound – spelling correspondences: English presents the learner with a number of problems related to its orthographic rules; it is important for learners of English as a second or foreign language to realise that English orthography is by no means a one-to-one letter-sound correspondence system; it has its own consistency embedded in the combination of letters with their immediate environments, resulting in what we tend to call sound – spelling correspondences. By practising the proper pronunciation of sounds in relation to given spelling patterns, we can provide learners with a good basis for pronunciation as well as for the skills of reading and writing.

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3.4.5.2. How do we teach them? The stage devoted to the teaching of the mechanics of reading and writing aims at three different goals:i. to enhance letter recognitionii. to practise sound – spelling correspondences via all four language skillsiii. to help the learner move from letters and words to meaningful sentences and larger units of discourse. Recognition and writing drills constitute the first steps in the development of effective reading and writing habits. However, in order to acquire active mastery of the sound – spelling correspondences, it is necessary for the learners to arrive at relevant generalisations concerning these correspondences. Such generalisations will lead to a better understanding of the systematic representation of sounds in English orthography. Three major types of recognition tasks are used at this early stage of reading and writing, each type incorporating a great variety of drills:a. matching tasksb. writing tasksc. meaningful sound – spelling correspondence practice These tasks enable the learners to develop effective recognition habits based on distinctive graphic features. Many of these have the form of games, puzzles, and other ‘fun’ activities. While practicing sound – spelling correspondences, students can be writing meaningful sentences, such as the following: There is a cat on the mat and a cake on the plate. The ball is near the tall boy next to the wall. These sentences contain words which exemplify sound – spelling correspondences, and, at the same time, they are words that students have probably learned. 3.4.6. More advanced writing tasks 3.4.6.1. More advanced writing activities which start shifting their goal from the focus on the mechanics of writing to basic process-oriented tasks will need to incorporate some language work at the morphological and discourse level. Thus, these activities will enable a combination of focus on accuracy and content of the message. In this section, since we are concerned with the beginning level, we will work with categories of practical writing tasks, emotive writing tasks, and school-oriented tasks. In order to develop and use these more demanding writing activities in the ESL/EFL classroom, we need to develop a detailed set of specifications which will enable both teachers and students to cope successfully with these tasks. Such a set of specifications should include the following: Task description: to present students with the goal of the task and its importanceContent description: to present students with possible content areas that might be relevant to the task Audience description: to guide students in developing and understanding the intended audience, their background, needs and expectationsFormat cues: to help students in planning the overall organisational structure of the written product Linguistic cues: to help students make use of certain grammatical structures and vocabulary selectionsSpelling and Punctuation cues: to help students focus their attention on spelling rules which they have learned. 3.4.6.2. Practical writing tasks. These are writing tasks which are procedural in nature and therefore have a predictable format. This makes them particularly suitable for writing activities that

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focus primarily on spelling and morphology. Lists of various types, notes, short messages, simple instructions, and other such writing tasks are particularly useful for reinforcing classroom work. Lists can be of various types: “things to do” lists, “things completed” lists, shopping lists. Each of these list types provides us with an opportunity to combine spelling rules with morphological rules and with the logical creation of a meaningful message. “Things to do” lists are useful for practising verb bases. When assigning such an activity, the teacher will have to indicate whether the list is personal or intended for a team. The content specification will have to indicate whether this is a list of things to do in preparation for some event or more of a plan for someone’s daily routine. For example, a list for a group of students who are preparing a surprise birthday party might look like this:

Things to do1. Buy a present for Ann (Sharon)2. Call Ann’s friends (Mary)3. Write invitations (Tom) etc. Following up this type of list, we can easily move on to the “things completed” list, which specifies the things that have already been taken care of and is therefore useful for practising past forms of verbs. As part of this activity students will need to review the regular past formation of verbs where –ed is added and its exceptions in spelling are taught, such as deletion of a final e before adding –ed, as in lived; the doubling of the last consonant in monosyllabic bases of the form CVC, as in planned, and the same doubling rule when the final syllable of a polysyllabic verb is stressed, such as in occurred but not in opened; the replacement of y with i when the base ends in C + y, as in tried. Such an activity also enables students to practise the spelling of irregular past-tense formations. For example, the above list might look like this when partially completed:

Things completed1. Planned the games for the party 2. Wrote the invitations 3. Bought the present4. Called the friends Shopping lists provide us with a very good opportunity to practise the spelling of the plural ending of countable nouns and the use of quantifiers. The sound – spelling correspondences here consist of the plural inflection with two of its three phonetic variants - /s/, /z/ - which can be combined with the spelling pattern s as in pens, pencils, whereas in words like brushes or oranges the plural takes the phonetic form /iz/, an additional syllable, with such words ending in the spelling pattern –es. Another type of practical writing task is notes and short messages that are left for another person. These allow students to practise brief and simple sentences with a meaningful message. To make the activity more interesting, students can design their own message headings and then fill them in. Here is an example: Messages for my little sister: Wash the dishes in the sink Feed the dog Watch your favourite programme on TV and have a good time Other types of practical writing activities might include the filling-in of forms and the preparation of invitations, “greetings” and “thank you” notes, and other such written communications.

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3.4.6.3. Emotive writing tasks. Emotive writing tasks are concerned with personal writing.Such personal writing includes primarily letters to friends and narratives describing personal experiences, as well as personal journals and diaries. When dealing with letter writing, emphasis can be placed on format, punctuation and spelling of appropriate phrases and expressions. When writing about personal experiences – usually done in a narrative format - spelling of past-tense forms can be reviewed and practiced. It seems that emotive writing, in order to serve the personal needs of the learners, has to be quite fluent. The question is: How can this be done in the early stages of the ESL/EFL course of study? The different emotive types of writing activities are, of course, suitable for the more advanced stages of the course, but they can be carried out, in a more limited manner, even at the initial stages. Thus, letters can be limited to the level of structural and vocabulary knowledge of the students at each point in time. Similarly, journals, diaries and personal writing activities can reflect the learners’ proficiency level. 3.4.6.4. School-oriented tasks. One of the most important functions of writing in a student’s life is the function it plays in school. It is still the case that much individual learning goes on while students are writing assignments, summaries, answers to questions, or a variety of essay-type passages. In most cases, the audience for these writing tasks is the teacher, but gradually students must learn to write to an unknown audience who needs to get the information being imparted exclusively via writing. Here again, at the early stages of ESL/EFL learning, the assignments might be short and limited. Answers might be single phrases or sentences, summaries might be a listing of main ideas. However, all of these writing activities should be given attention both at the linguistic-accuracy level and at the message-transmission level. It is the combination of content and organisation with accepted formal features that will lead learners to better utilisation of the writing skill in their future use of English. 3.4.7. The pre-writing stage: Techniques for getting started Regardless of the type of writing tasks that a teacher might assign, a good place to begin class-work is to explore the prewriting stage. The goal of the teacher should be to expose students to a variety of strategies for getting started with a writing task and to encourage each student to try to discover which strategies work best for him or her. Several heuristic devices (or invention strategies) which can be explored in class for the purpose of providing students with a repertoire of techniques for generating ideas are the following (Murar, 2012): i. Brainstorming [Brainstorming = a way of developing new ideas, through a discussion in which several people make lots of suggestions] This is often a group exercise in which all of the students in the class are encouraged to participate by sharing their collective knowledge about a particular subject. One way to structure this is for the teacher to suggest a broad topic, such as reasons for choosing a particular career/job, and have students call out as many associations as possible which the teacher can then write on the board. The result would be far more material generated than any one student is likely to think of on his/her own, and then all students can utilise any or all of the information when turning to the preparation of their first drafts. ii. Listing: Unlike brainstorming, listing can be a quiet and individual activity. As a first step in finding an approach to a particular subject area (such as ‘the use and abuse of power’, to cite an example), the students are encouraged to produce as lengthy a list as possible of all the subcategories that come to mind as they think about the topic at hand. iii. Free writing: This technique was suggested by P. Elbow (Writing without Teachers, 1973) for helping native speakers break through the difficulty of getting started. The main idea of this technique is for students to write for a specified period of time (usually about 5 minutes) without

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taking their pen from the page. As Elbow puts it, “Don’t stop for anything…Never stop to look back, to cross something out, to wonder what word to use…If you get stuck it’s fine to write ‘I can’t think what to say’ as many times as you like” (1973: 3) Freed from the necessity of worrying about grammar and format, students can often generate a great deal of prose which provides useful raw material to use in addressing the writing assignment at hand. For ESL/EFL students, this technique often works best if the teacher provides an opening clause or sentence for the students to start with. So, for example, if the next assignment is to write a paper about one’s personal philosophy of life, a short free writing session can begin with the words “Life is difficult but it is also worthwhile.” The free writing generated after the students copy this sentence and continue to write down whatever comes into their heads can be kept private or shared with other students. iv. Clustering: Another technique for getting many ideas down quickly, clustering begins with a key word or central idea placed in the centre of a page (or on the blackboard) around which the student (or teacher using student-generated suggestions) jots down all of the free associations triggered by the subject matter – using simple words or short phrases. Unlike listing, the words or phrases generated are put on the page or blackboard in a pattern which takes shape from the connections the writer sees as each new thought emerges. Completed clusters can look like spokes on a wheel or any other pattern of connected lines, depending on how the individual associations are drawn to relate to each other. By having students share their cluster patterns with other students in the class, teachers allow students to be exposed to a wide variety of approaches to the subject matter, which might further generate material for writing. It is very important that students experiment with each of these techniques in order to see how each one works to help generate text and shape a possible approach to a topic. The purpose, after all, of acquiring invention strategies is for students to feel that they have a variety of ways to begin an assigned writing task.

Topics for discussion and exercises: 1. Here are some examples of different types of drills. Match them with the names and explanations you think describe them best. Examples of drills: Drill i. T: I went to the cinema. SCHOOL S: I went to school. Drill ii. T: You went to the cinema. QUESTION S: Did you go to the cinema? Drill iii. T: I went to the seaside in my childhood. OFTEN S: I often went to the seaside in my childhood. Drill iv. T: I went to the market yesterday. THERE S: I went there yesterday. Drill v. T: I read a book. It was amusing. S: I read an amusing book. Drill vi. T: Helen, ask Tom if he has a pen. S: Do you have a pen? Types of drills: a) Substitution: Students are encouraged to use another word of the same class in the place of a word in the sentence (a verb is replaced by a verb etc.) b) Directed Practice: A student is directed to ask another student a question;

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c) Transformation: Students have to change from affirmative to negative or interrogative, from present to past; d) Integration: Students are asked to join two short sentences to make one; e) Reduction: Students have to reduce the sentence by changing a phrase/part of a sentence to a word; f) Expansion: Students have to add a word/phrase to the given sentence.

2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using drills to teach speaking?

3. What situations would you set up for the should structure (function: giving advice)?

4. We have to expose our students to linguistic material in sequences so that they can link forms with functions and meanings. When we speak we have a purpose in mind: ask for advice, accept, refuse an invitation, etc. We call the purposes the functions of a language. Match the lines of the following dialogue with the function each of them expresses.

A: Why don’t we have a barbecue this Saturday?

Refusing + giving a reason for his refusal

B: Thank you, but I’m working on Saturday AcceptingA: Let’s have it on Sunday. Making a suggestionB: Yes, all right. Making another suggestion

5. If the pictures show a room, what would be the stages of this activity, the vocabularyand structures your students need to be equipped with?

6. As forms of communicative interaction in the classroom, simulation and role-play activities have increasingly become the most frequently used techniques. What is the difference between role-play and simulation?

7. Place the following activities on the continuum line in terms of teacher control and learner creativity: role-playing, drills, guided dialogues, contextualized dialogues, memorized dialogues, information gap activities.

8. Consider what you might do in order to cope with speaking problems.

9. Considering the script of the following listening material, what question would you ask your students to make them have their predictions about the text? Reflect on its effect on the students: Journalists should act as the eyes and ears of the society. They should see and inform the people as accurately and impartially as possible, without any political bias. In an open society they also have to raise people’s awareness about what is happening in order to satisfy people’s appetite for information. Basically, it is a journalist’s duty to be alert and vigilant. He needs curiosity and an inquiring mind. A journalist is someone

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who acts quickly and is a good listener.

10. Read the following text and write down the speech phenomena you come across. A: By the way, why did you take up karate? B: Why did I take up karate? Well, that’s a difficult question. You know, a friend of mine…erm, invited me to go to his club. I watched him and kind of liked what I saw and I asked him if I could come again.

11. Read the following text: “A: Where are you going? B: I am going to school. A: Are you going by car? B: No, I am not going by car. I am walking. A: What animals do you like? B: I like dogs.” Now tick the statements which indicate that the text uses artificial language. i. Both speakers use full sentences all the time. ii. Speakers repeat certain structures. iii. Students do not know all the words. iv. The language presents speech phenomena (interruption, hesitation, rephrasing) v. Students change the topic in a sudden and artificial way.

12. Can you think of activities that link reading and speaking? Give a few examples.

13. Written discourse has a variety of text types. These can be grouped into the following categories: i. Literary texts; ii. Specialised or technical texts; iii. Correspondence; iv. Journalistic literature; v. Informational texts; v. Miscellaneous. These are known as different genres. Group the text types listed below according to the categories given above: accounts, advertisements, biographies, business letters, cartoons, catalogues, charts, comic strips, diagrams, diaries, dictionary entries, directions, editorials, essays, flow charts, forms (e.g. application forms), graffiti, guidebooks, instructions, legends (of maps),letters, maps, menus, notes, notices, novels, postcards, posters, précis, price lists, puzzles, recipes, reports, reviews, rhymes, signs (e.g. road signs),statistics, stop press, summaries, tales, telegrammes, telephone directories, tickets, timetables, etc.

14.What is usually meant by authentic texts?

15. Could you identify some of the cohesion markers in the following extract from Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods?

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Consider this: Half of all the offices and malls standing in America today have been built since 1980. Half of them. Eighty percent of all the housing stock in the country dates from 1945. Of all the motel rooms in America, 230,000 have been built in the last fifteen years. Just up the road from Gatlinburg is the town of Pigeon Forge, which twenty years ago was a sleepy hamlet – nay, which aspired to be a sleepy hamlet – famous only as the hometown of Dolly Parton. Then the estimable Ms. Parton built an amusement park called Dollywood. Now Pigeon Forge has 200 outlet shops stretched along three miles of highway. It is bigger and uglier than Gatlinburg and has better parking, and so of course gets more visitors.

16. Here is a short paragraph made up of seven well-formed, temporally accurate and meaningful sentences: I don’t know what to do for my holiday. It will start at the beginning of October. I saved enough money for a really nice trip. Last year I went to the Black Sea coast. It will be too late to go to the mountains. I worked hard all year. I really need a break. i. Comment on its authenticity, cohesion and coherence. ii. What point(s) do you think the teacher wants to make starting from it?

17. Each of the following four descriptions refers to one kind of reading (intensive, extensive, scanning, skimming). Write down the name of the kind of reading in the space provided: a) You read a poem that you like and enjoy paying close attention to the poet’s use of language. You do……. reading; b) You need bibliography for a research assignment and you look quickly through the books and articles that you find in the library to see whether they contain information about your research topic. You do……. reading; c) You are on holiday and you read an adventure story. There is no pressure on you to finish the book quickly. You do……. reading; d) While waiting for an appointment with your dentist, you pick up a magazine and discover an article that interests you. You know you do not have enough time to read the article in detail but you try to extract as much information from it as you can in the time you have. You do……. reading.

18. Can you list the criteria you might employ in either selecting supplementary materials for developing and practising reading skills or assessing the materials presented in the textbooks in use.

19. Let us look at this short newspaper note from The Observer, 25 March, 2001. Blair rejects Marbles plea Tony Blair yesterday rejected long-standing demands by Greece for the return of the sculptures removed from the Parthenon200 years ago. In an interview with the Athens daily “To Vima” he said the Elgin Marbles “belong to the British Museum…, which does not intend to return any part of the collection to its country of origin”. Greece had hoped to have the pieces returned by 2004, when it will host the Olympics. What kind of knowledge is necessary to understand this?

20. Could you work out the advantages of the top-down approach to reading, which starts from the global understanding of a text?

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21. In which of the three phases, pre-reading, while-reading or post-reading, would you use the following activities: i. Do-it-yourself questions. The pupils compose and answer their own questions; ii. Responding. The text is a letter or a provocative article; the pupils discuss how they would respond, or write an answer; iii. Signpost questions. A general question is given before reading, asking the pupils to find out information central to the understanding of the text; iv. Continue. If the text is a story, the pupils are asked to suggest what might happen next; v. Provide a title. The pupils suggest a title or an alternative title; vi. Summarise. The pupils summarise the content in a sentence or two; vii. Preface. If the text is a story, the pupils are asked to suggest what might have happened before; viii. Comparison. There are two texts on a similar topic; the pupils note points of similarity or difference of content; ix. Gapped text. Towards the end of the text, 4-5 gaps are left that can only be filled in if the text has been understood.

22. Point out some of the reasons why you ask your pupils to write in English.

23. What are, in your opinion, the disadvantages of dictation?

24. In writing English, which appears to create more difficulties to pupils, cohesion or coherence?

25. Before asking your pupils to write an example of a particular text type, you might want to go with them through some stages. Put the stages suggested below into an appropriate order and justify your decision: a) practising guided writing which follows prompts (e.g. pictures or sentences that summarise paragraphs); b) doing exercises that practice characteristic features of text type (e.g. passive voice); c) reading examples of text type; d) analyzing a sample text to isolate typical features.

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UNIT 4.CLASS MANAGEMENT

This chapter is focused on various aspects of class management: student groupings, the roles of the teacher and disruptive behavior.

By Class Management we mean a collection of techniques and organizational practices that the teacher can use to organize the classroom and the classroom activities to maximize the effectiveness of the teaching process.

Food for thought What elements besides the activities in the lesson are important for a successful class ?

4.1. Classroom OrganizationA shelf or bookcase with English books, reference books and dictionaries would mean a

great advantage for students.In many classroom the student’s desks are bolted to the floor and cannot be moved. In

others this mobility exists and it can be used to create different interactional activities and better studying conditions.

Food for thought Imagine you could move the desks in your classroom. What sort of desk arrangements

would you use for the following activities ?- pairwork- groupwork- roleplay- individual writing- a testThen imagine that the desks are fixed in your classroom. How would you organize your

students for the above activities ?(Source: Ciută, C., In- service Distance Training Course for Teachers of English, p.46)

4.2. Classroom InteractionWhen we consider interaction in the classroom we have to take into account two basic types

of relationship: Teacher – Student and Student-Student .The variety of interaction in the language lesson is important. It ensures that students are

involved actively, it allows for different learning styles and it helps to keep student’s attention by varying the pace of the lesson.

The following patterns of interaction are possible (Ciuta, 2003:46-47):T whole classT individual student (in whole class activity)T individual student (pair or groupwork)Student student (open pairs)Student student (closed pairs)Students working individuallyStudents working in groupsStudent whole class

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4.2.1. LockstepLockstep is the class grouping where the whole class is working with the teacher. All the

students are “locked into” the same rhythm, pace, or the same activity (Harmer, 1997:243). This means the traditional way of teaching, where the teacher is the controller. These types of activities present certain advantages: there is less noise, the teacher can usually be sure that everyone hears what he/she is saying, the teacher, usually offers a good language model to his/her students.

However, lockstep has some disadvantages: the students cannot practise much; the lesson goes at the wrong speed for everyone, as either the teacher is not fast enough for the good students, or he/she is too speedy for some students, in which case they may not learn what they are being taught. We can conclude that lockstep involves too much teaching and too little learning (Ciuta, 2003:48).

4.2.2. Student GroupingsIn Student – Student interaction, pairwork and groupwork are basic interaction patterns.4.2.2.1. PairworkFor question and answer practice, information gap exercises, simulations, students can be

placed in pairs for a variety of work, including practising writing and reading skills.Ciuta (2003:49) presents the advantages and disadvantages of pairwork:Advantages :- Immediate increasing of the amount of student practice;- Communicative efficiency is encouraged;- Student cooperation is encouraged this is important for :

- the atmosphere of the class;- the motivation it gives to learning with others;

- Students feel secure as the teacher does not criticize them.Disadvantages :- Student can make mistakes;- They may use their native language during the activity;- There can be a lot of noise, as everybody is talking at the same time;possible lack of

discipline4.2.2.2. GroupworkGroupwork proves to be more dynamic than pairwork; there are more students involved and

there are more opportunities for discussion. This is a more relaxing activity as compared with the previous one.

Flexible groups represent a great possibility for groupwork. Students start in set groups and as activity goes on, the groups split up and re-form.

4.2.3. Individual workOur student must also be allowed to work on their own at their own pace. Individual work is

a good idea because students can work in a relaxed way and they can rely on themselves rather than the others. Reading, writing and speaking activities can be the focus for individual work.

4.2.4. Types of Interaction Involved in Error CorrectionThe following stages should be used when correcting mistakes:- the teacher indicates the error;- the student has the chance to self-correct;- if she/he cannot do this, other students try to correct;- if necessary, the teacher corrects the error;

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- the student repeat the corrected answer.There are mainly three types of correction: self-correction, peer correction and teacher-

correction.

4.3. Teacher’s ResourcesTeachers use a variety of teaching aid to explain language meaning and structures. These

resources are textbooks, reference books, as well as audio and visual aids. Pictures can be: flashcards, wall pictures, cue cards, photos, projected slides etc.

In the light of the new curriculum, the teaching of a textbook is not necessarily rigid. The syllabus has to be taught by everybody, but we can adapt, replace or even omit some units, in order to comply with the requirements of the syllabus according to the grade, types of classes or number of lessons we teach a week and to our objectives. (Ciuta, 2003:52)

Other resources are: time, space and human resources (the influence of the community, the students and the teachers).

4.3.1. Teacher’s Rolesa) The teacher as controllerTeachers as controllers are in complete charge of the class.Certain stages of a lesson lend themselves to this role very well. The introduction of new

language, where it makes use of accurate reproduction and drilling techniques, needs to be carefully organized. The instruct – cue - nominate cycle in the perfect example of the teacher acting as controller (Harmer, 1977; 236).

Where teachers are addicted to being the center of attention they tend to find it difficult not to perform the controlling role and this has both advantages and disadvantages, since the students are to be allowed a chance to learn rather than be taught.

b) The teacher as assessorIn the teaching process, all control must have finality, which is usually the assessment.

There are two types of assessment: correction and organizing feedback.The teacher gives feedback to let the students know how well they have performed the

activity. A distinction between two different kinds of feedback should be made: content feedback and form feedback. The first one concerns an assessment of how well the students performed the activity as an activity rather than as a language exercise. Form feedback tells the students how well they have performed linguistically. The focus is on accuracy (Ciuta, 2003: 53-54).

c) The teacher as organizer.Perhaps the most important and difficult role the teacher has to play is that of organizer, as

the success of many activities depends on good organization.It is essential you plan exactly what you are going to teach, what information the students

will need, then give the instruction clearly.It is also extremely important for the teacher to be well organized in using different teaching

aids. The blackboard is considered to be the most important, always available for several purposes.d) The teacher as prompter

As a prompter, the teacher suggests to the students how to continue their activities. This role has to be performed with discretion, as the teacher should help only when it is necessary.

e) The teacher as participantTeacher’s participation in the activity will probably improve the atmosphere in the class and

will also give the students a chance to practise English with someone who speaks it better than they do.

f) The teacher as a resource

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The teacher should always be ready to offer help if it is needed. After all, we have the language that the students may be missing, so why not make ourselves available so that they can consult us when they need us (Harmer, 1997:242)?

g) The teacher as tutorThe students may want to prepare a contest, a festival, edit an English magazine or do same

project work. They ask the teacher for advice. He or she is their tutor in the sense of someone acting as a coach and as a resource where the students are involved in their own work.

The tutorial role (quite close to a counseling position) is often appropriate at intermediate and advanced levels and it is a broader role than the others.

h) The teacher as investigatorThis role relates to the teacher themselves and to teacher development.If the teachers do not investigate the efficiency of new methods, if they do not seek

continually their personal and professional development, their job will become boring, monotonous. i) The teacher as motivatorThere are several ways we can increase the students’ motivation in learning a foreign

language (Ciuta, 2003:58):- being motivated and interested yourself;- involving as many students as possible in classroom activities;- giving students interesting, relevant, necessary tasks;- giving prompt feedback;- positive attention to students;- maintain discipline and a reasonable working atmosphere.

4.5. Disruptive behaviour At some stage of their lives all teachers encounter disruptive behaviour, that is a student or

students frequently hostile to either the teacher or to other students. These troubles can be difficult to deal with.

One may of avoiding most disruptive behaviour is by agreeing on a code of conduct, which means establishing some ground rules that both teachers and students must obey. We do not accept (Harmer, 1997:249):

- arriving late;- interrupting other people when they speak;- bringing drink and food in the classroom;- using cell phones;- forgetting to do homework on time;- not paying attention.Causes of discipline problems:According to Harmer (idem: 249-252), it seems that there are three factors involved in these

problems :a) The teacher :Do’s and don’ts:- Don’t go to class unprepared;- Do plan a range of activities suitable for everybody;- Don’t threaten; - Don’t raise your voice;- Do keep an eye on the time; - Don’t give boring classes;

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- Don’t be unfair;- Don’t have a negative attitude to learning;- Don’t break the code;- Don’t give the homework in the last few seconds of the lesson;- Do conclude the lesson;- Do leave the classroom in good order;- Do ask for help when you need to;- Do evaluate your lessons;b) The students:Harmer also defines the reasons for students disruptive behaviour :- Time of the day (the students may be tired);- Two’s company. Teacher must separate the disruptive students;- The students’ opinion of the teacher, the subjects being studied and of the class- Intimidating attitude;- Students playing truant; - The desire to be noticed.c) The school.A lot depends on the attitude of the school to disruptive student behaviour. If there is no

recognized policy for dealing with discipline problems, the teacher should insist on such a system, as in the end a student causing a severe problem has to be handled by the school authority rather than by the teacher.


1. One of the problems students might cause while working in pairs and groups is the possible use of Romanian. This makes the communicative activity rather pointless. What can you do in order to discourage this?

2. What types of interaction can there be in a class?3. What are the basic uses of the blackboard?4. Give suggestions for an encouraging atmosphere in the class.5. Design a groupwork activity.6. Present the advantages and disadvantages of the teacher as controller.

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UNIT 5PLANNING

In this chapter we shall consider some issues concerning lesson planning and present the main principles governing this activity.

Even the best techniques and activities will be pointless if they are not integrated into a program of studies and few teachers would take an activity or piece of material into class without first having a reason for doing so. The best teachers are those who think carefully about what they are going to do in their classes and who plan how they are going to organize the teaching and learning (Harmer, 1997:256).

5.1. Textbooks and the syllabus Many institutions present the syllabus in terms of the main textbook to be used: by a certain date teachers are supposed to have covered a certain number of units/lessons in the textbook. At the same time teachers are often provided with a list of supplementary material and activities that are available. If a textbook is involved there are obvious advantages for both teachers and students. Reliable textbooks contain authentic and interesting material; they present the language items in a logical progression, clearly showing what has to be learn and in some cases summarizing what has been studied so that the students can revise the essential items. Textbooks can be systematic about the amount of vocabulary presented to the students and allow students to study of their own. Good textbooks also relieve the teacher from the pressure of heaving to think of original materials for every class. Nowadays there is a great variety of published material for teaching and learning English.

Yet, textbooks can also have a negative impact on teaching. They tend to concentrate on the introduction of new language and controlled work: a teacher relying to heavily on the textbook will often not be encouraged to provide enough input or output practice. The similarity of their format generally involves a rigid sequence.

Most teachers are under considerable pressure both because they are obliged to complete the syllabus and because they teach a number of classes. They are also influenced by the attitude of the institution, their colleagues and the students who sometimes see the textbook as a programme of study and activities that has to be strictly followed.

There are two major reasons why such an attitude may not be in the best interests of either students or teachers. In the first place teachers who over-use a textbook and strictly follow the sequence in each unit may became boring since they teach the same type of activities. Thus, the study of English is becoming routine and the students are becoming less and less motivated. The other main reason for worrying about textbooks is that they are not written for your class. Each class is different and most published textbooks are written with a prototypical student audience in mind.

Considering all these, Harmer (idem; 258) does not suggest the textbooks are destructive since the better ones are written by teachers with considerable knowledge and experience. But he emphasizes that the textbook is an aid (often the most important one there is) and not a sacred text. Teachers will have to think of the best ways to use their textbooks and not to let the textbook use them, or dictate all the decisions.

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N. Grant (1998) shows how teachers can adapt the textbook material to the needs of their students and S. Duller (1930) gives a graphic example of how stages of a unit in a textbook can be adapted and added onto with extra and more student centered activities.

5.2. Why planning? Lesson planning is essential both for the teacher and for the students. For the teacher

planning ensures efficient language teaching, helps the teacher to avoid inadequate, improvised activities and also gives a real picture of how much the teacher has done and how much remains to be taught. Lesson planning tells the teacher what changes he/she should make when teaching again the lesson and enriches the students to progress gradually, avoids boredom, lack of interest and motivation. It also avoids wasting time and effort, contributes significantly to students’ systematic knowledge and linguistic ability, ensuring maximum development in the time available.

Designing the lesson and outlining its plan means anticipatory teaching because the learning situation is lived through mentally in advance. You will have clear in mind what you will be doing every minute in the class, how and why, what you will ask your students to do, on what content, with what sources, in what order and with what purpose. In order to be able to design a good lesson plan, the teacher needs to have a good command of methodology and content, to know the students very well and to have creative imaginative (Olaru, 2003:81).

First you have to study the material to be taught from scientific and methodological points of view. Then set up clear-cut objectives, having in view the knowledge and skills essential for understanding the lesson. The following step is to think of the means which will help you attain them: select adequate teaching aids; chose the lust suited procedures and techniques of teaching; prepare adequate examples; decide evaluation procedures; assign the students homework; last but not least, write down all these in a lesson plan.

The ingredients of a good lesson are: clear appropriate objectives; a wide and adequate range of activities; variety of pace; involvement of students in many student-centred activities; motivated students through the sense of achievement.

The lesson plan should give a real picture of what teacher intends to do in the lesson.The introductory page should contain:

facts about the class; aims and objectives; teaching aids; assumption about the students; anticipated problems.

5.3. Main principles of lesson planningThe main principles of lesson planning are variety and flexibility (Harmer, 1997:258). Variety means involving the students in a number of different types of activities and using a

wide selection of materials. Thus, learning will become interesting and never monotonous, since the learning experience should be stimulating and interesting.

Flexibility is the characteristic we should expect from the genuinely adaptable teacher. Good teachers are focusing on the students and on what they need and thus, they are able to react quickly to an unplanned event. A flexible teacher will be able to adapt the plan.

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5.4. Aims and objectives Two main questions are generally asked at the begriming of the lesson planning:1) The aims: “What will the students learn in the lesson? What topic, grammar, vocabulary,

function, etc?”2) The objectives: “What is it that my students will know or be able to do at the end of the

class? In order to get better results by means of clearly defined aims and objectives, you should tell the class or write on board what these are at the begriming of the lesson, what kind of activities they will be asked to perform and by what means they and the teacher will know in the end whether the goal has been attained.

In conclusion, we way say that the careful thinking out of detailed and well-defined objectives is a fruitful aid to better teaching. It leads (Olaru, 2003;86) :

- for the students, to:- more concentration;- better understanding and awareness; - a stronger feeling of accomplishment; - success in learning; - increased motivation;

- for the teacher, to: - precision in planning; - good organization of the activity; - success in teaching.

5.5. Selecting activitiesEach lesson consists of a series of activities that make up the stages of a lesson. These

activities may appear in the plan in another order than that in which they appear in the textbook. It is teacher's task to decide the suitable order and which activities to select. The teacher has to take into account :

- What is the learning value of each activity ?- What skills does it develop ?- What stages of the lesson is it suitable for ?- How much time is worth spending on it ?

5.6. Sequencing the stages of a lessonActivities are generally organised into stages, according to what their role is in the teaching

- learning process (Olaru, 2003:89-90) :- Presentation of new language (functions, grammar, vocabulary, phonology, discourse

features);- Controlled pre-communication practice-usually focused on accuracy; - Free practice (Production) - focused on fluency and content of ideas;- Checking and discussing outcomes(s) after doing a communicative task;- Systematization/Globalization of linguistic content or content of ideas.5.6.1. Teaching Models5.6.1.1. Presentation, Practice, ProductionIn PPP sequences the teacher presents the context and situation, explains and demonstrates

the meaning and form of the new language structure. The students practise making sentences and then the production stage follows in which they talk more freely about themselves.

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The PPP model is very effective for elementary level and beginners.5.6.1.2. Task - based learning (TBL)In TBL model the focus is on the task rather than on the language. It is tasks that generate

the language, not vice-versa.TBL syllabus: organized on the basis of tasks to be done.Basic point of organization TASK, e.g. students will talk about their last vocation.Main language point necessary to do TASK: Past Tense SimpleAfter final tasks have been decided on, and objectives have settled, the next question

is :"What do students need to learn/revise in order to carry out the final tasks ?"5.6.1.3. Engage, Study, Activate (ESA)ESA (Harmer, 1997) is a model based on surveys which have proved that the factors for a

successful language learning are: motivation, exposure to language and chances to use it.In the Engage stage, the teacher tries to arouse the students' interest by involving their

emotions. This can be done by using games, music, discussions, pictures, jokes, etc.Study is the stage of a lesson in which students are asked to focus on language structure.

Successful language learning in a classroom depends on a judicious blend of subconscious language acquisition (through listening and reading) and "study" activities organized by the teacher.

Activate is the stage where the students are led to use the language as freely and communicatively as they can.

Ur (1996) offers some guidelines for sequencing the components of a lesson :1. Put the harder tasks earlier (when the students are fresher and energetic);2. Have quieter activities before lively ones (it can be quite difficult to calm down a class

after a lively, exciting activity);3. Think about transitions (i.e. the link between two activities or two stages);4. Pull the class together at the beginning and at the end (this contributes to a sense of

structure);5. End on a positive tone (summary of what you have achieved, a positive induction, a joke).

5.7. Transition/ContinuityThe lesson should be coherent and should have a logical pattern. The activities should be

linked by transitions.Transition does not mean only to signal the beginning or the end of an activity. It also means

connecting the activities of a lesson in a whole which should be like the scenario of a film. For this, the teacher should prove his/her mastery in smoothly leading the students into the exciting world of the lesson (Olaru, 2003:93).

5.8. Teaching AidsVisual aids such as objects (realia), pictures, charts, word charts, maps, books, magazines

etc, and audio aids, such as a tape recorder can be used during all the stages.The board is maybe the most precious teaching aid of all, as it is always available and it

does not require much special preparation.The teacher is actually the most important factor in achieving effectiveness.

5.9. Timing Thinking about how long an activity will take is essential for planning.

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During the class the teacher should keep a watch or clock visible. Use your experience to plan better if your discover that the time allocated to an activity was not realistic.

5.10. Revision and recyclingTeachers have to include in their lesson plan short revision activities based on problems

which have been already studied and which are essential for students to understand the new material.

Recycle grammatical structures and vocabulary as much as possible in different activities, using different skills. Thus, your students will be able to integrate new knowledge into their already existing knowledge and they will reinforce their skills through practice.

5.11. HomeworkThe main purpose of assigning homework is to give the students additional practice in

developing their skills, their language competence. That is why, homework has to be centred on the objectives of the lesson.

As homework should be clearly explained, sometimes followed by some examples do not leave the assigning of it to the last minute! At the end of the class students' attention is at a low level.

5.12. Evaluation Evaluation as an information gathering procedure which offers feedback about a process, applies to planning as well.

If the teaching process is a student - centred one, the teacher will have much more opportunity to monitor students’ work. In this way he/she will have a clearer idea of what extent the objectives have been attained.

Feedback on the effectiveness of your lesson can also be obtained by reflection. After teaching the lesson it is important that you stop and think whether it was good or not, and why , in order to learn from reflection, from experience and make the necessary changes.

ConclusionsPlan your classes carefully and responsibly if you want to be successful as a teacher and

reflect on the following questions before teaching a lesson (Olaru, 2003:99):- Does my lesson have clear objectives? Can they be attained ?- Are the methods and techniques adapted to the objectives, to the students and to the type

of lesson ?- Have I chosen appropriate teaching aids ? How am I going to make the content interesting, understood and practised by all the

students in the class ?- Have I designed activities which will involve the students in different ways ?- Have I included activities to evaluate the students' performance ?- Do I know how long, approximately, each activity of the lesson will take ?- Have I planned evaluation activities that will help me to check whether by the end of the

lesson, the students will be able to attain the objectives of the lesson ?


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1. Make a list of reasons why it is advisable to do lesson planning 2. Write down a checklist of questions you will ask yourself while planning a lesson. 3. Have a look at the following possible stages of a lesson. Try to label them (Presentation,

Practice, Production) and put them in the order in which you would teach them. Write numbers showing the order in the boxes. a) ……. Students use language they have learnt to express themselves more freely, e.g. talk or write about their own lives and interests, express opinions, imagine themselves in different situation. b) ……. Teacher presents new words or structures, gives examples, writes them on board, etc. c) ……. Students use words and structures in a controlled way, e.g. making sentences from prompts, asking and answering questions, giving sentences based on picture (oral or written). 4. Suppose the theme of the lesson is “Our Town”. What could the final task be? What stages would you plan for this lesson and in what order? 5. Why do we use teaching aids during the lesson? 6. Write down some of the benefits of pair- and groupwork. 7. Think of and write down how you are going to prepare students to write a composition as a homework assignment.

UNIT 6

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EVALUATION

6.1. TerminologyDascalu (2003:215) defines the three concepts of evaluation, assessment and testing as they

can cause some confusion in their use. Testing is generally understood as giving a test, while the other two are sometimes used interchangeably .

Evaluation expresses a final judgment about a student's level of performance which has been measured by using different "tools". Evaluation refers to the extent to which the teaching/ learning objectives stated at the beginning of a school year, term or lesson have been achieved. This judgment is formally expressed in numbers or marks (from 1 to 10, in the Romanian system), grades (e.g "excellent", "very good", "poor", etc or letters such as "A","B", "C" etc) or, informally in scores or points, which eventually can be converted into marks.

Assessment is referred to in terms of the process which will eventually lead to evaluation. This process of assessing students performance is done by using a variety of techniques, among which testing is just one of them.

6.2. Why and what do we evaluate ?The main purpose of this activity is to gather information about our students’ language

skills. This should be made in an appropriate, consistent and encouraging to learning manner.After assessing, we will know if we have been successful as teachers and what remedial

measures should be taken, and our students will find out if they are progressing, and what areas of language they need to focus their attention on.

It is necessary for us to evaluate each language component and skill.

6.3. How do we evaluate ?There are various techniques of assessing students language and abilities, their performance.

No matter what technique we use, the main principle which must govern our choice, is to assess our students’ knowledge in such a way that it enhances further learning and motivation, or, briefly, this assessment must have a positive washforward effect (idem, 218).

6.3.1. TestingA test is a sample of behavior. In order to make inferences about students’ competence, two important assumptions must first be made regarding the test itself (Savignon, 1983; 232)

1. The test score is an accurate and stable measure of individual performance. The same test given to the same person on another day, in another sitting, or scored by different rater is likely to yield the same similar results. In other words, the test is reliable.

2. The test is a real reflection of the underlying competence the test is designed to evaluate. For example, performance on a reading test requires reading ability. This refers to the validity of the test.

Reliability can be defined in terms of accuracy, stability and error of measurement. The validity of a test is the extent to which a test measures what it is supposed to measure and nothing else. To be valid, a test must first be reliable. However, a reliable test is not necessarily a valid one for a given purpose. Savignon (1983:236) quotes Davies(1968), Cronbach(1971), Palmer and Groot (1981) describing five different kinds of validity : Face validity. The test looks as though it measures what it is supposed to measure. It is

perceived as a reasonable, fair, or appropriate test by those who take it, as well as, by those who interpret the results.

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Content validity. The tasks included are representative of the larger set of tasks of which the test is supposed to be a sample. For example, the test faithfully reflects the syllabus or instructional programme on which it is based.

Predictive validity. The test predicts performance in some subsequent situation, such as job success, performance on another test, or grade in a course.

Concurrent validity. The test gives results similar to those obtained from another measure taken concurrently – for example, job success, performance on another test, grade in a course.

Construct validity. The test in an accurate reflection of an underlying theory of what it is supposed to measure. The question in this case is “What do scores on this test mean?”.

Bell (1981:200) adds another quality of a good test: practicality.When we write a test we have to be realistic. What aids do we need? Are they available? Do

we need a special arrangement in the classroom? How long will it take to mark the test? How long will it take the students to complete it? How much will it cost? These are only same of the questions we shall have to ask ourselves if we want to prepare useful and appropriate tests. Taking into account that there are four reasons for having a test: to indicate future ability, to discover what is already known, to discover what has been learned and to discover what is still to be learned, Bell considers that there are four test types which seek to answer these questions (1981:192-193):

a) Prognostic (or aptitude) tests: these attempt to discover an individual’s potential for acquiring a particular skill;

b) Proficiency tests: these attempt to discover what the testee already knows. Language tests of this type are not based on the content of any particular course or skill, but aim to assess global activity. Typically, proficiency tests are much used in the placing of individuals in learning groups appropriate to their level of knowledge: beginner, intermediate, advanced, etc.

c) Attainment (or achievement) tests: these, in contrast with the aptitude and proficiency tests, seek to determine the extent to which a learner has mastered the contents of a particular course. Many textbooks contain tests of this kind.

d) Diagnostic tests: these may be thought of as the converse of the proficiency test since their aim is to discover not what is known by the testee, but what he does not know. Indeed, a proficiency test might be used as a diagnostic test if the intention of the tester was to discover what needed to be learned and should therefore be included in future teaching.

6.3.1.1. Traditional vs Communicative Testing Testing is the most widely spread technique used for assessing students in the classroom.

Many teachers use tests just to mark their students. These tests usually take the shape of isolated, context-free gapped sentences which students have to complete with the right verb form, or some sentences to translate from Romanian into English, or change a text from Direct Speech into Indirect Speech, etc. How many of these test items show us that our students can really use English in real world?

The evolution of language testing is inevitably linked with the evolution of language teaching. As we have already mentioned in a previous chapter, there have been three main stages in the teaching of foreign languages:

Stage 1 (traditional) – Grammar – translation approach; Stage 2 (modern) – Audio – structural approach; Stage 3 (post-modern) – Communicative approach.Tests of grammar, vocabulary, listening and reading are objective in their scoring, while

tests of speaking and writing are scored more subjectively.Tests associated with translation tend to be subjective in their scoring. Translation is an

integrative type of test, where knowledge of the language as a whole is being tested (knowledge of

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grammar, vocabulary, reading, skills, writing skills and knowledge of culture). Audio lingual era is associated with discrete point tests. This type of test consists in a large number of separate disconnected items, each testing a different aspect of language (e.g : battey tests). These tests language are scored objectively.

Communicative language tests combine the two techniques in the following way (Dascalu, 2003:220):

a) integrative + objective (e.g. dictation, cloze, etc)b) integrative +improved subjective (e.g. role play, letter writing, following instructions,

problem- solving, oral interview). If we teach communicatively, we should test communicatively.A communicative test is a test which approximates to real language use in a real situation, in

the real world. Thus, dictation and cloze tests are considered non-communicative types of tests, while role-play, letter writing, following instructions, problem-solving, oral interview are communicative tests. Keith Morrow (quoted by Richard West, 1993) lists seven features of communicative tests which follow communicative teaching:

1. interaction – based; 2. unpredictability; 3. content;4. purpose; 5. performance; 6. authenticity; 7. behavior – based .6.3.1.2.. Testing Language and SkillsA. Testing Grammar and Vocabularya) Testing Grammar The separate testing of grammar has been a controversial problem since it may seem that testing the students’ mastery of grammatical elements contradicts the main principles of communicative testing.Still, there are reasons why a grammatical component should be kept in any proficiency tests. Grammar tests have the advantage of practicality and the issue of content validity is as important in that if we test the writing ability directly, we are limited by the topic, style and format which cannot include all possible grammatical elements which we have taught.b) Testing vocabularyThere are two main ways of testing vocabulary: recognition and productionB. Testing skillsTraditionally, language skills have been thought of, taught and consequently, tested as

fourfold:a) Productive skills: speaking and writing b) Receptive skills: listening and reading The four-way division has been recognized as a convenient fiction not only because actual language use necessarily involves the ability to integrate several skills at once, but also because within each gross skill there are several subskills which are called upon simultaneously (Bell, 1981:194).6.3.2 Alternative Means of Evaluationa) The portfolio is a systematic collection of the students’ work and other information

about the students in order to determine whether they have maintained progress.

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b) Projects, either individual or group ones, help bridge the gap between language study and language use at all levels of student language proficiency. The teacher works with the students during each stage, acting as a counsellor and consultant, not as a provider of in formation or controller (Dascalu, 2003:248) c) Self – evaluation is a complex mental process useful in any learning event. Students who

perform self – evaluation understand their goals, monitor their success in achieving these goals. Consequently, self – evaluation leads students to analyze their progress and plan the improvement of their performance.


1. Enlarge upon: “Assessment is an integral part of teaching and learning, but it should be subordinated to both” (K. Bailey, 1998)

2. There are seven features of communicative tests which follow communicative teaching: i. interaction-based; ii. unpredictability; iii. content; iv. purpose; v. performance; vi. authenticity; vii. behaviour-based. Here are the above seven features defined. Write the number of the feature corresponding to the definition in the spaces provided: a) the language used in the test should replicate the language used in real world because what we need to measure is our students’ ability to perform in realistic language situations; b) the success or failure in a communicative test should be judged on the basis of outcomes, i.e. students should genuinely produce language or (physically) react to it…….; c) students’ performance should also be measured in terms of appropriateness to the topic, register and the roles they assume during interaction which simulates real situations.…; d) a test item, especially of speaking or writing, should have in view the expectations of a known/unknown addressee………; e) the test should measure the students’ ability to use both their knowledge of language and strategies for dealing with real life conditions such as lapses, misunderstandings caused by distractions, shift of attention/interest and errors……; f) any communicative situation as a test item has to have a reason and the students should demonstrate their ability to recognize and use it…….; g) the test items should be designed in such a way as to offer students the opportunity to give appropriate responses to unexpected input under time pressure…..;

3. Here are some techniques for testing structures which are most widely-used by teachers and testers: i. multiple-choice; ii. modified-cloze; iii. test completion; iv. paraphrase. Match each technique with the following test samples: A. ……………. Complete the following story with was, were, wasn’t or weren’t:

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He (1)…..at the Science Museum and (2) ….late for dinner again. Howard and Sally (3)….happy. Peter (4) …sure he (5) ….in a crash etc. B. ……………… Choose one word that correctly completes the following text: The modern Olympic Games (1).….nearly 100 years old. The first modern Olympic Games (2)……in 1896 in Athens. There (3) ….any prize-money and there (4) …any women competitors etc. (1) A are B were C was D aren’t (2) A was B were C are D weren’t (3) A was B wasn’t C were D weren’t (4) A was B wasn’t C were D weren’t C. …………… Complete each sentence so that it means the same as the preceding one: i. His sound system isn’t as good as mine. My……………… ii. Haven’t you got any larger sweaters? Is this…………… iii. Jill plays the piano better than Simon. Simon is not……….. D. Complete the following interview with the missing questions: Man: (i) …………………..? Jan: Jan. Man: (ii) …………………..? Jan: I’m seventeen years old. Man: (iii) …………………..? Jan: I’m from York.

4. There are two main ways of testing vocabulary; recognition and production. Here are five examples of test items. Group them under: recognition test items production test items A. Synonyms Choose the alternative A, B, C, or D, which is closest in meaning to the word on the left: gleam A. gather B. shine C. welcome D. clean B. Definitions (multiple choice) Choose the right definition A, B, C, or D for the words on the left: loathe means A. become seriously ill B. search carefully C. dislike intensely D. look very angry C. Definitions A……….is a person who flies a plane. ……….is frozen water. D. Gap-filling Fill in the gaps with one word: Because of the rain we had to ….….the picnic. E. Gap-filling (multiple choice)

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He …….a match to see in the dark. A. lit B. stroke C. burnt D. hit

5. Which of the following techniques can you use to test the students’ listening comprehension skills?

a) summarizing informationb) filling in a gridc) information transferd) True/False/NM (not mentioned)e) multiple choicef) matching (speakers and topic)g) fill-in gaps in the texth) answering specific questions (NOT open-ended questions)i) recognizing /ordering picturesj) focused dictationk) structured note-taking (one, two or three words to be used or numbers)

6. Testing reading comprehension implies testing macro skills and micro skills. Macro skills: - skimming to obtain the general idea (gist) of a text; - scanning to locate specific information in a text; - identifying the stages of an argument; - identifying examples in support of the argument in the topic sentence. Micro skills: - identifying referents of pronouns; - infer the meaning of words using the text as context; - understanding text structure. Here are some test items described. Write the macro skill or micro skill each item tests in the space provided. a) Multiple-choice (a complete text followed by a series of 6 to 10 questions each with 4 different answers from which only one is correct, and the other 3 are distractors). …………………………………. b) Cloze or modified-cloze ( short text with 1or 2 paragraphs which contain gaps that students are requested to fill in with one word that grammatically or/and logically completes it; generally the missing words are pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, rarely verbs, nouns or adjectives). …………………………………. c) Summary cloze (the students are given a full text and a summary of that text which contains gaps; students are asked to fill in the gaps of the summary with a word or a short phrase from the original text; the words chosen to complete the gaps refer to the relevant information in the text). …………………………………. d) Information transfer (this is one test item that minimizes the students’ writing in a reading text; the text to be used for such a test item has to be descriptive of a person, place, process, route, picture, statistics, etc.; students are required to label a drawing/ picture/map/graph etc. or fill in a grid). …………………………………. e) Identifying order of events/topics/arguments (the text for this item should contain a larger number of paragraphs which are numbered; the text is followed by a number of main ideas/

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arguments in random order, labelled a), b), etc. which are to be found in each paragraph plus an extra one; students are required to match the number of the paragraph with the main idea a), b), etc. and write N/A for the extra one). …………………………………. f) Matching titles with paragraphs or short texts (this test item consists of a number of 5 or 6 short texts labelled A, B, etc. followed by a number of titles, usuallyoutnumbering the texts by one labelled 1, 2, etc.; students should match the paragraphs with the titles). …………………………………. g) Identifying referents (the given text is followed by a series of questions such as : “What does the word “it” – line 22 – refer to?”). …………………………………. h) Guessing meaning of unfamiliar words from the context (this is a variant of the previous test item, but this time the questions will be “What word in the paragraph 3 means ‘lawyer’?”). …………………………………. i) Gapped text (the text given contains gaps numbered 1, 2, etc. to be filled in with whole sentences; the missing sentences and an extra one are given in a jumbled order after the text and are labelled A, B, etc.; students are required to match the number of the gaps with the letters corresponding to the sentences; there will be a letter which will not be used). …………………………………. j) Find information (this test item contains a number of very short texts labelled A, B, etc., generally grouped around a main topic, e.g. holiday places, and a number of questions such as “Which text refers to winter sports?”; students must answer the questions by writing the letter corresponding to the text in the spaces provided). ………………………………….

7. Dictation is a test of integrative language skills. What elements of language competence (skills and subskills) does it involve?

REFERENCES

Alderson, J.C. and A. H. Urguhart (eds.) 1984. Reading in a Foreign Language. New York: Longman Anderson, A. and Lynch, T. 1988. Listening. OUPAsher, J. 1986. Learning another Language through Actions: The Complete Teacher’s

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Guidebook. Los Gatos.Balan,R. et al. 2003. In-service Distance Training Course for Teachers of English. Iasi: Polirom.Bailey, K.M.1988. Learning about Language Assessment. Heinle &Heinle Publishers.Bell, Roger, T. 1981. An Introduction to Applied Linguistics: Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching. London: Batsford Academic and Educational Ltd. Bowen, Tim and J. Marks. 2003. Inside Teaching. Options for English Language Teachers. Oxford: Macmillan HeinemannBialystok, E. 1990. Communication Strategies. Oxford: Blackwell.Brown, R. 1973. A First Language: The Early Stages. Cambridge: Harvard Press.Brown, H.D. 2007 (5th ed). Principles of Language learning and Teaching. New York: Pearson EducationBrown, G., Anderson, A., Shillcock, R., and Yule, G. 1984. Teaching Talk: Strategies for Production and Assessment. Cambridge: CUPBrumfit, C. 1984. Communicative Methodology in Language Teaching. Cambridge: C.U.P. Bruner, J. 1983. Child’s Talk. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Campbell, C., Kryszewska, H. 1995. Towards Teaching, Oxford: HeinemannCarter, R and M. McCarthy. 1997. (eds.) Vocabulary and Language Teaching. London: Longman.Celce-Murcia, M. (ed.). 1991. Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language, New York: Newbury HouseChastain, K. 1988. Developing Second Language Skills. Theory and Practice, Orlando, Florida: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.Chaudron, C. 1988. Second Language Classrooms: Research on Teaching and Learning, CUP.Chomsky, N. 1986. Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin and Use. New York: PraegerCook, Guy. 2003. Applied Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Cook, Vivian. 1991. Second Language Learning and Language Teaching. London: E. Arnold.Corder, S. Pit. 1981. Error Analysis and Interlanguage. OUPCorder, S. Pit. 1993. Introducing Applied Linguistics. London: Penguin. Curran, C. A. 1976. Counselling-Learning in Second Languages. Apple River.Davies, Alan. 1992. Principles of Language Testing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davies, Alan. 2007. An Introduction to Applied Linguistics. From Practice to Theory. EdinburghDeller, S. 1990. Lessons from the Learner. London: Longman. Duff, T. (ed.) 1989. Explorations in Teacher Training. London: Longman.Edge, J. 1989. Mistakes and Correction. London: Longman.Edinburgh. Davies, Alan & Elder, Catherine (eds.) 2004. Handbook of Applied Linguistics. Malden, Blackwell. Elbow, P. 1973. Writing without Teachers. New York: OUP.Ellis, R. 1985. Understanding Second Language Acquisition. OUP.Ellis, R. 1990. Instructed Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Blackwell.Ellis, R. 1997. Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Freeman, D., Cornwell, S. (eds)(1993). New Ways in Teacher Education, TESOL, Inc.Gairns, R., and Redman, S. 1986. Working with Words: A Guide to Teaching and Learning Vocabulary. CUP.Gattegno, C. 1963. Teaching Foreign Languages in Schools: the Silent Way. New York: Educational Solutions.

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Grabe, W. & Kaplan, R. 1992. Introduction to Applied Linguistics. Addison-Wesley P.C.Grant, N. 1987. Making the Most of Your Textbook, London: LongmanGreenberg, J. 1957. Essays in Linguistics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Grellet, F. 1981. Developing Reading Skills: A Practical Guide to Reading Comprehension Exercises. Cambridge: CUP.Grenfell, M. & Harris, V. 1999. Modern Languages and Learning Strategies. London: Routledge.Harmer, J. 1987. Teaching and Learning Grammar. London: Longman.Harmer, J. 2001. The Practice of English Language Teaching. London: Longman.Hatch, E. 1978. Discourse Analysis and Second Language Acquisition. Newbury House.Hawkins, Eric. 1984. Awareness of Language. An Introduction. Cambridge: CUP.Higgs, Th. (ed.) 1984. Teaching for Proficiency. Longman.Higgs, Th. and R. Clifford. 1982. Curriculum, Competence and the Second Language Teacher. Lincolnwood.Jacobs, G.M. and Farrell, T.S. 2003. Understanding and Implementing the CLT paradigm. RELC Journal 34:1. 5-30.Kaplan, RB. (ed.) 2002. Handbook of Applied Linguistics. New York: OUPKrashen, St. 1981. Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning, Pergamon.Krashen, St. 1982. Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Pergamon.Krashen, St and T. Terrell. 1983. The Natural Approach: Language Acquisition in the Classroom. Pergamon.Lado, R. 1964. Language Teaching: A Scientific Approach. McGraw-Hill.Little, D., Devitt, S., and Singleton, D. 1988. Authentic Texts in Foreign Language Teaching: Theory and Practice. Dublin: Authentik. Littlewood, W. 1981. Communicative language teaching, Cambridge, MA: CUPLittlewood, W. 1984. Foreign and Second Language Learning. CUP. Loew, H. 1984. Developing Strategies Reading Skills. Oxford.Mackay, R., Barkman, B. and Jordan, R. (eds) 1979. Reading in a Second Language – Hypotheses, Organisation and Practice. Newbury House. McCarthy, M. 1990. Vocabulary. Oxford. Malamah-Thomas, Ann. 1987. Classroom Interaction. London: OUP.Marton, W. 1988. Methods in English Language Teaching. Hempstead, Prentice Hall.McArthur, Tom. 1992. The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford: OUP. McCarthy, Michael. 1998. Spoken Language and Applied Linguistics. Cambridge: C.U.P. McCarthy, Michael. 2001. Issues in Applied Linguistics. Cambridge: C.U.P.McLaughin, B. 1987. Theories of Second Language Learning. London: E. Arnold.Mitchell, R. 1994. The Communicative Approach to Language Teaching. An Introduction. London: Routledge.Morgan, C. and Neil, P. 2001. Teaching Modern Foreign Languages: A Handbook for Teachers. London: Kogan Page.Murar, I. 2012. An Introduction to Applied Linguistics. Course of Lectures. Craiova. (unpublished course) Nation, Paul. 1990. Teaching and Learning Vocabulary, Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Nunan, D. 1989. Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom. Cambridge: CUPNuttall, C. 1994. Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language. Heinemann.O’Malley, J.M., and Chamot, A.U. 1990. Learning Strategies in Second Language Acquisition. CUP.

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Omaggio Hadley, A. 1993. Teaching Language in Context, Boston, Massachusetts: Heinle & Heinle Publishers Pienemann, M. and M. Johnston.1987. Factors influencing the development of language proficiency.Richards, J. (ed.) 1974. Error Analysis: Perspectives on Second Language Acquisition. London: Longman. Richards, J. and Rodgers, T.S. 1986. Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching. CUP. Richards, J. and Renandya, W. 2002. (eds.) Methodology in Language Teaching. An Anthology of Current Practice. CUP. Ringler, L. and C. Weber. 1984. A Language-Thinking Approach to Reading. San Diego. Roberts, J. 1998. Language Teacher Education. London: Arnold.Rutherford, W. 1987. Second Language Grammar: Learning and Teaching. Longman.Schank, R. and R. Abelson. 1977. Scripts, Plans, Goals and Understanding. New Jersey. Schmitt, Norbert. 2002. An Introduction to Applied Linguistics. London: Arnold.Scrivener, J. 1994. Learning Teaching. Oxford: Macmillan.Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2003. Controversies in Applied Linguistics. Oxford: O.U.P.Sinclair, J. 1991. Corpus, Concordance, Collocation. Oxford: OUP.Smith, F. 1978. Reading. London: CUP.Stauffer, R. 1980. The Language Experience Approach to the Teaching of Reading. New York: Harper& Row.Stern, H.H. 1983. Fundamental Principles of Language Teaching. Oxford: OUP.Stevick, E. 1976. Memory, Meaning and Method. Newbury House. Strevens, P. 1992. Applied Linguistics: An Overview. Oxford.Thornbury, S. 2002. How to Teach Vocabulary. Edinburgh: Pearson Education Ltd.Trudgill, P. 2000. Sociolinguistics. An introduction to language and society. London: Penguin Underwood, Mary. 1987. Teaching Listening. London: Longman. Ur, Penny. 1984. Teaching Listening Comprehension. Cambridge: C.U.P. Ur, P. 1991. A course in language teaching: practice and theory. Cambridge: CUPUso-Juan, Martinez-Flor, 2006. Current Trends in the Development and Teaching of the Four Language Skills. Cambridge: CUPWest, R.& and the University of Manchester.1989/1993. Assessment in Language Learning. Centre for English Language Studies in Education. Mancheter University.White, L 1989. Universal Grammar and Second Language Acquisition. John Benjamins. Widdowson, H.G. 1978. Teaching Language as Communication. Oxford: OU.P. Widdowson, H.G. 1984 Explorations in Applied Linguistics. Oxford: O.U.P. Widdowson, H.G. 1990. Aspects of Language Teaching. Oxford: OU.P. Williams, E. 1984. Reading in the Language Classroom. Oxford: Macmillan. Willis, J. 1993. Teaching English through English, London: Longman Wode, Henning. 1981. Learning a Second Language. Tübingen: Narr. Wright, T. 1987. Roles of teachers and learners, Oxford: OUP

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ANNEXES

LESSON PLAN

Date: the 5th of December 2012

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Teacher :Class: the 6 Form ASchool: Time: 50 minutesText Book: ENGLISH FACTFILE: Title: It's made of……Type of lesson: GrammarAims: By the end of the lesson, the students will have:

- practiced, the skills of listening, reading, speaking, and writing;- presented, practiced and produced some forms of Present Simple Passive and Past Simple Passive- checked certain vocabulary items;- created interest in the topic.

Skills covered: L., S., R., W.Aids: bb. Text book, photocopied worksheets photos, objects, drawings, coloured chalk.Methods: Conversations, Observation, Discovery

Assumptions: The Ss are familiar to the vocabulary related to music , filmsAnticipated problems: Some Ss may have difficulties in understanding the explanations or in doing the exercises / the activities.Classroom management: There will be posters, maps, pictures on the walls and on the blackboard.

There will be slips of paper, photocopied with parts of different activities for each student or pair of students.

The desk will be removed in order to from groups or pairs.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Harmer, Jeremy, The Practice of English Language Teaching, Longman, 2000 Vizental, Adriana: Metodica predarii limbii engleze - Strategies of Teaching and Testing English as a Foreign Language - Polirom, Iasi, 2007

ACTIVITY 1: WARM-UP AIMS:

to get Ss involved into the topic to use properly the vocabulary related to materials to present and practice the past simple

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PROCEDURE INTERACTION TIMING

T asks Ss several questions about weather and their mood.

Chatting in English at the beginning of the lesson, T creates an 'English language' atmosphere, establishing contact between her and SS, and helps SS to feel relax.Check up: SS read their homework.T ask Ss to take a look at a series of objects on the desk. The T write on the blackboard a series of words representing different items. She ask the Ss to pay attention as they are going to participate to a game named "What is it made of ?" (a pen, a book, a glass, etc)They are asked what they are made of?What they are used for?Ss try to answer what they think that the objects are used for. They give other examples. The teacher gives the Ss handouts containing a chart. There are four groups of materials. a) plastic b) metal c) glass d) paper/cottonT checks comprehension by asking some questions:What is the pencil made of?Who discovered America?Where was Coca Cola first produced?When was the Eiffel Tower built?, etc.

T-SsSs-Ss

FrontalSpeakingReading

Individual

10 min

ACTIVITY 2: PRESENTATIONAIMS:

to express their own opinions to practice the present simple passive to practice the listening and speaking skills


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T invites Ss to discuss about this topic starting from their own opinions. T reads a couple of sentences containing the Present Passive forms and then she asks the S to write the rule: "BE + Past participle"

-T makes appreciations and checks Ss' pronunciation-T supervises / supplies error correction T and Ss debate the topic, involving the whole class, somehow.

The teacher gives each pair of Ss an envelope with several unjumbled word.Bananas/ are/ grown / in / tropical areas.coffee/grown/Brazilglasses/make/plasticletters/deliver/postmanmilk/give/cows- T asks the Ss to reorder the words to form correct sentences.

T-SsSs-Ss

ListeningReadingFrontal

Group work

15 min

ACTIVITY 3: PRACTICE AIMS:

to practice the past simple passive to find the main ideas from the debate to identify the differences between Present and Past Simple Passive

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to express their opinions


T asks Ss to complete the chart on their notebooks. Ss find other examples of the past simple passive.

T gives S another worksheet with some activities related to the topic: Write sentences using the prompts. Match the Column A to the Column B and then

write sentences-T makes appreciations and checks Ss' pronunciation.

-T supervises / supplies error correctionSs debate the topic, read through the passage and then write it in their note books using the correct form involving the whole class, somehow.

T-SsIndividualSpeakingWritingSs-Ss

15 min

ACTIVITY 4: FEED-BACK AIMS:

to read a description of a story told in pictures The TITANIC Story to practice the present and the past simple passive to answer questions using the past simple passive and by agent

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T asks Ss to read the passages and write the correct form of the verbs. T gives Ss a short time and checks orally their answers.

HOMEWORK:Ss are asked to find a report in their local paper of a football match / film. They write a short description of it in English using the past simple passive.T explains the topic of the homework and gives examples.(2 min): The match was played….Goals were scored…etc. T makes remarks about the Ss' activity and marks pupils with grades.

Greetings

T-SsIndividualSpeakingWriting

10 min

LESSON PLAN

TEACHER: SCHOOLGRADE: 8th NO. OF HOURS PER WEEK: 2

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NO. OF STUDENTS: 24TEXTBOOK: SNAPSHOT - intermediateDATE: May, 20th 2013LESSON: “I don’t believe it” (4 hours - 1st hour)TYPE OF LESSON: aquisition of new knowledgeTOPIC: Verbs (modals) for drawing conclusions – “must/might/can’t” + perfect infinitiveVOCABULARY:

Verbs of speaking STRUCTURES:

“must/might/can’t” + perfect infinitive how much/many None and any specifically

FUNCTIONS/COMMUNICATION: Speculating about past Agreeing and disagreeing with speculations Giving reasons and expressing opinion

SKILLS: integratedAIMS:

students read the text and gist it for specific information; students listen to the tape and answer questions about the listened text; students practice the new language structures; students write the new grammar structure in their notebooks; students learn how to agree and disagree with speculations

OBJECTIVES COGNITIVE: by the end of the lesson students will be able to

understand and react adequately to complex questions and statements; express information explicitly; introduce a point of view; become aware and show understanding of the forms; understand, produce and use the stated information; skim to obtain a general impression of the text; scan to locate specifically required information; respond in different situations (agree and disagree); express themselves in free writing and speaking.

AFFECTIVE: making students confident in their ability to use the language; creating interest in the topic of the lesson; creating a relaxed atmosphere, proper for studying; foster learner independence and cooperative learning; stimulating students’ imagination and creativity; having fun.

TEACHING AIDS: SB/TB/Language boosters Worksheets, prompts Class CDs CD player Blackboard

TEACHING METHODS AND TECHNIQUES:

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Communicative approach Exercise; questions and answers; gap-filling exercise; drilling; sentence writing; conversation; dialogues;

dramatized situations and role-playORGANIZATION AND TIME:

Whole class Individual work Pair work 50’

ASSUMPTIONS:I assume that most of the vocabulary to be taught is already known to my students.

ANTICIPATED PROBLEMS:Students might not be very eager to participate as they have been mainly preoccupied by their written tests lately.

STAGES OF THE LESSON

Activity 1: WarmerAims:

to review the previously learnt material to motivate and involve students by means of personalisation

Procedure Interaction TimingT greets Ss and asks about their state of mind and how they feel. T checks attendance. Ss answer. T asks Ss to check their homeworkSs read their homework.

T-Ss T-SsT-Ss

T-Ss

3’

Activity 2: Lead-inAim:

to prepare the context of the lesson by means of picture exploitation

Procedure Interaction Timing

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T asks Ss to make guesses about the pictures in the textbook.(ex.1/page 104). Ss make assumptions about the pictures.

- Where is Miss Carr?- Who is she talking to?- What is she giving to Ian?- What do you think she is talking about?

T reads the title of the text and makes a brief survey with the class about what they think it happened.

T elicits ideas from the whole class and Ss advance ideas.

T-Ss T-Ss TT T-SsT-Ss

Ss-T

T-Ss

4’

Activity 3: Listening for specific information Aim:

to listen and grasp relevant information from the text

Procedure Interaction TimingT plays the tape (ex. 1/page 104).Ss listen and read the text in the SB.

T asks Ss questions about the read text and Ss answer giving their Opinion.

- What do you think it happened to Matt, Kelly and Zoë?- Where do you think they are now?- Do you think they’ll be in time for the rehearsal?

TT

3’

Activity 4: Reading comprehensionAim :

to check understanding of the text


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T asks Ss to read the text again if necessary and answer the questionsin ex.2/page 105. T checks the answers with the whole class.

T writes some prompts on the blackboard for the useful phrases Ss read in the text and asks Ss to fill in the gaps. T plays the tape again after Ss fill in the gaps.Ss fill in the gaps and check their answers with the tape and then they practice the mini dialogue across the class in open pairs.

T-Ss T-SsT-Ss IW

Ss-T

T-Ss Ss-Ss

8’

Activity 5: Presentation, isolation and exemplificationAim:

to introduce the new language structures

Procedure Interaction Timing T asks Ss to look at the examples in the book (Grammar flash) and checks understanding by asking questions. T encourages Ss to give reasons for their answers.

T writes examples on the blackboard and Ss copy them in their Notebooks.

T-Ss TT

T-Ss

T-Ss

12’

Activity 6: Practicing structures – semi controlled practiceAim:

to provide opportunity to use recently learnt material to produce and use explicitly the recently learnt material

Procedure Interaction TimingT T asks Ss to solve ex.4, page 105 after she first reads the example. Ss complete the sentences individually. T goes through the answers with the whole class.

T-Ss T-SsT-Ss

Ss-T

8’

Activity 7: Practicing structuresAim:

to produce and use explicitly the recently learnt material to show understanding of the new forms

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Procedure Interaction TimingT asks Ss to listen and read silently the structures used to agree and disagree with speculations. Across the class, in open pairs, Ss practicethe new structures.Using the clues given in the book Ss make short conversations in groups of three and one group acts out their conversation for the whole class.

T-Ss

Ss-Ss

10’

Activity 8: Assigning homeworkProcedure Interaction Timing

T explains homework. Ss write the assignment in their notebooks.(Exercise 2, page 76 in LB).T praise Ss for their work and gives grades.

T-Ss 2’

APPENDIX

BB map

1) Verbs “must/might/can’t” followed by Perfect Infinitive to draw conclusions about past

Must/might/can’t + have + verb3rd

- draw conclusions about the pastThey must have forgotten about the rehearsal.

Must/might/can’t + verb (be or another main verb in the base form)- draw conclusions about present

She must be Kate Winslet.

2) Useful expressions and structures to speculate about the past, to agree and disagree with speculations

Speculating about past- Must/might/can\t + perfect infinitive - Perhaps/Maybe/Probably

Agreeing with speculations- Maybe you’re right.- You could be right.- I suppose so.- I think you’re right.- Subject + must have.

Disagreeing with speculations

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- That can’t be the reason.- Surely not!- I don’t believe it.- Subject + can’t have.

LESSON PLAN

TEACHER:

SCHOOL:

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DATE: 24th of May 2013

CLASS: 3rd

NO.OF Ss: 21

LEVEL: beginners (1st year of study)

TEXTBOOK: Way Ahead, Macmillan

UNIT 18: She can run

TYPE OF LESSON: revision

FUNCTIONS:

To express ability

To identify and to locate

To describe things and places

To identify movements

AIMS OF LESSON: by the end of the lesson students will be able:

To talk about what animals can/can’t do

To identify animals

To locate animals

To describe animals and parts of the body

To describe locations and places

To identify activities

SKILLS: Integrated skills

GRAMMAR:

modal verb “can”

personal pronouns

have/has

there is there are

verbs of movement

VOCABULARY:

animals

colors

parts of the body

OBJECTIVES:

A. Cognitive objectives:109

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to check and improve vocabulary;

to encourage students to talk freely;

to help students talk about abilities;

to give students more practice on pronunciation, vocabulary and the

structures previously taught.

B. Affective objectives:

making students confident in their ability to use the language;

creating interest in the topic of the lesson;

creating a relaxed atmosphere, proper for studying;

foster learner independence and cooperative learning;

stimulating students’ imagination and creativity;

having fun.

DIDACTIC STRATEGIES:

methods and procedures: explanation, dialogues, conversation, pair work, independent

work, elicitation, game, brainstorming;

materials and equipment: pictures, flashcards, worksheets, textbook, workbooks, posters,

flipchart, a dice

organization: lockstep, individual work, pair work

LOCATION: the classroom

TIMING: 50 min

ASSUMPTIONS: I assume that most of the vocabulary and structures to be revised are

already known to my students.

ANTICIPATED PROBLEMS: Some students might need further help and extra

indications in solving the tasks and they may also need some of

these indications to be given in Romanian.

PROCEDURE

ACTIVITY 1: WARM-UP

AIMS:110

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to focus the Ss’ attention

to get Ss involved into the topic

PROCEDURE INTERACTION

ORGANIZATION

TIMING

- Introductory conversation

- Game: Ss throw a dice which has 6 animals drawn on it, they

have to name the animal and say what it can do.

-Ss write the sentences on the Bb

Parrots can fly. Hippos can swim. Monkeys can jump.

Rabbits can hop. Lions can run.

T-Ss

Ss- T

lockstep

5 min

SKILLS: speaking, writing

TEACHING TECHNIQUES: explanation, instructions, game

AIDS: pictures, a dice

ACTIVITY 2: Game - Guess the animal

AIMS:

to revise parts of the body

to revise animals and colors

to use the verbs of movement


ORGANIZATIO

N

TIMING

- T asks one student to come at her desk and to choose one

picture from there. The student describes what she/he sees using

colors and parts of the body and what they can/can’t do

- Ss guess the animals

T-Ss

Ss-Ss

lockstep

5 min

SKILLS: speaking

TEACHING TECHNIQUES: conversation, game

AIDS: pictures

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ACTIVITY 3: Game – Animal jigsaws (matching)

AIMS:

to revise parts of the body

to revise animals and colors

to use the verbs of movement


ORGANIZATIO

N

TIMING

- T gives students sheets of paper and some jigsawed pictures of

animals and asks pupils to stick them together on the sheets to

discover what animal it is

- Ss stick the parts on the sheet of paper and discover the animal

then they make statements about it using the model on the

previous activity

- T asks one of the pupil to write the description of his/her animal

on the blackboard

T-Ss

Ss-T

Whole class

10 min

SKILLS: listening, speaking

TEACHING TECHNIQUES: explanation, conversation, game

AIDS: worksheets, pictures

ACTIVITY 4: Revising verbs of movement - Riddles

AIMS:

to express ability, using can/can’t

to revise personal pronouns


ORGANIZATION

TIMING

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- Teacher sticks three written riddles on the flipchart and asks

Ss to read the riddles and to guess the animal

- Ss answer and stick on the poster the picture of the guessed

animal

- T give students a worksheet asking them to answer the

questions using the given cues

- Ss answer the questions and then read their answers

T-S

Ss-Ss

IW

10 min

SKILLS: reading, speaking, writing

TEACHING TECHNIQUES: explanation, conversation

AIDS: pictures, poster, flipchart, worksheets

ACTIVITY 5: Production - listening, reading, writing

AIMS:

to talk about things using the learnt structures

to differentiate between persons

to make negative statements


ORGANIZATION

TIMING

- T gives students a worksheet with some pictures and reads

them what Andy can see

- Ss listen and tick their answers on the worksheet

- T asks Ss to say what Andy cannot see

- Ss solve the task and writes the sentences on the Bb and ion

their worksheets

T-S

IW

Ss-Ss

10 min

SKIILS: listening, writing

TEACHING TECHNIQUES: exercise, conversation, questions and answers

AIDS: worksheets

ACTIVITY 6: FEED-BACK – speaking, writing

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AIMS:

to ask about what their classmates can do

to talk about what their classmates can/cannot do


ORGANIZATION

TIMING

- T gives the Ss worksheets with Tell me what you can do and

explains that they have to ask their deskmate if they can do one

or more of the things on the worksheet and write the answer

next to the action

-When they finish Ss report to the class what they have found

T-S

Ss-Ss

PW

10 min

SKILLS: writing, speaking

TEACHING TECHNIQUES: explanation, conversation, exercise, questions and answers

AIDS: worksheets

ASSIGNING HOMEWORK: to provide consolidation of language and grammar so far

Write 5 things that you can do and 5 things that you cannot do.

T. assigns the homework by giving clear instructions.

ASSESSMENT: T. praises all the Ss for their participation during the entire lesson. T gives a

“plus” to the most active Ss.

LESSON PLAN114

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TEACHER:GRADE: 8th

NO. OF HOURS PER WEEK: 2NO. OF STUDENTS: 24TEXTBOOK: SNAPSHOT - intermediateDATE: May, 24th

TYPE OF LESSON: revisionTOPIC: Modal verbs expressing probability and possibilityVOCABULARY: Natural environment vocabulary words having to do with possibility, and certainty

STRUCTURES: Modal verbs expressing possibility and probabilityFUNCTIONS/COMMUNICATION: Expressing possibility and probabilitySKILLS: integratedAIMS: students practice the recently studied language structures; Students become more familiar with these modal verbs that express varyingdegrees of certaintyOBJECTIVESCOGNITIVE: by the end of the lesson students will be able to : to generate their own sentences (at least two) using one or two modal verbs understand and react adequately to complex questions and statements; express information explicitly; become aware and show understanding of the forms; understand, produce and use the stated information; Students will gain greater understanding of the following vocabulary words having to do withpossibility, and certainty suggestion, certainty, conclusion, probability, capability, possibility, chance express themselves in free writing and speaking.AFFECTIVE: making students confident in their ability to use the language; creating interest in the topic of the lesson; creating a relaxed atmosphere, proper for studying; foster learner independence and cooperative learning; stimulating students’ imagination and creativity; having fun.TEACHING AIDS: Worksheets BlackboardTEACHING METHODS AND TECHNIQUES: Communicative approach Exercise; questions and answers; gap-filling exercise; drilling; sentence writing; conversation; dialogues;

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ORGANIZATION AND TIME: Whole class Individual work Pair work 50’

ASSUMPTIONS:I assume that most of the vocabulary to be taught is already known to my students.

ANTICIPATED PROBLEMS:Modals and modality entail a good deal of complexity. Therefore, modals are usually taught in groups of two or three in order to control complexity and not overwhelm the learner with with subtle shades, or tones, of meaning. But this lesson presents broader range of modals to considerSTAGES OF THE LESSON

Activity 1: WarmerAims: to review the previously learnt material to motivate and involve students by means of personalisation

Procedure Interaction TimingT greets Ss and asks about their state of mind and how they feel.

T checks attendance. Ss answer.

T asks Ss to check their homework

Ss read their homework.

T-Ss T-SsT-Ss

5’

Activity 2: Lead-inAim: to prepare the context of the lesson to activate awareness of modal context: degrees of possibility and certainty

Procedure Interaction TimingStart out with question and answer discussion about

following hypothetical situation:

T: “Do we all know what plutonium is?”

Ss: <various answers>

T: “Is it dangerous? Do you think it could cause cancer if you came into contact

with it? How certain are you that if a person eats plutonium, they will get cancer?

What about

if they just touch it? What about working in a nuclear power plant?

T-SsT-Ss

T-Ss

10’

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Write various student remarks about the possibility of plutonium causing

cancer. Ellicit an opinion from individual Ss.

“S—, what do you think? Is it possible for plutonium

to cause cancer if you handled it?”

Activity 3: Guided PracticeAim: To evaluate modal meanings

Procedure Interaction TimingPass out new cards to students (plutonium sentences) and ask them to sort them in

order of increasing or decreasing certainty with the sentence having the greatest

degree of

certainty at the top and the least amount of certainty at the bottom.

The cards (7):

· Plutonium will cause cancer (if it is ingested).

· Plutonium must cause cancer.

· Plutonium should cause cancer (if it is ingested).

· Plutonium can cause cancer.

· Plutonium may cause cancer.

· Plutonium could cause cancer.

· Plutonium might cause cancer.

Write the vocabulary list on the board to one side:

certainty

conclusion

probability

capability

possibility

chance

Ask three volunteers to write their lists on the board. Discuss each list as a class.

Notice where the order differs between lists. Discuss to invoke discovery,

awareness, and consensus of degree. Compare any differences. The important

point is to ask about what each modal verb means in terms of possibility and

T-Ss-SsT(facilitates)

10’

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certainty?

Activity 4: Controlled PracticeAim: to produce and use explicitly the recently learnt material


Distribute worksheet and have students fill in the blanks, choosing an appropriate

modal verb for each sentence. Go over answers with whole class.

T

Ss

10’

Activity 5: Practicing structures – semi controlled practiceAim: to provide opportunity to use recently learnt material


Step 1. Independent practice: write one sentence using one

chosen modal verb.

T-Ss Ss

T-Ss

T (facilitates)

15’

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Lay out 14 index cards on the front table—two for each modal verb

under discussion: will, must, should, can, may, could, might

Ask students to come up and pick a card, then write a sentence using

the modal verb that they selected. Instruct Ss that the sentence

should indicate some degree of possibility and certainty about doing

something in of the following

topics (write these on the board): science, engineering, the

environment, transportation, health and medicine

Step 2.

Ask Ss to write their sentences on the board. For each sentence, ask

class if they agree. Discuss any variation or disagreement. How

much obligation is implied? How much choice? What does the

modal verb mean in each sentence?

What other ways are there to say it?

LESSON PLAN

TEACHER:

SCHOOL:

DATE: 8th of May 2011119

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CLASS: 7

NO.OF Ss: 19

TEXTBOOK: English Scrapbook

LESSON: ENIGMAS

STRUCTURES: should have+past participle

Shouldn’t have+past participle

OBJECTIVES

By the end of the lesson, my students will be able to:

Talk about past events

Express criticism and regret about past situations

TEACHING AIDS:

textbook

Blackboard

Worksheets

Cd-player

ASSUMPTIONS:

I assume that students have already watched the film “Titanic”.

ANTICIPATED PROBLEMS:

Students might have some difficulties in understanding the listening part of the lesson.

Time: 50’

Activity 1: Warmer

Aims:

o to create a pleasant atmosphere for learning

o to involve sudents by means of personalisation

Procedure Interaction Timing ’

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T greets Ss

T asks questions: Who is absent today?

How are you today?

Are you ready for the lesson?

What is your lesson for today?

Ss answer.

T-Ss

T-Ss

2’

Activity 2: Checking homework

Aim:

o to check understanding of previous lesson


T asks ss to read their homework and after that

they will discuss about it.

T-Ss

Ss-T

10’

Activity 3: Reading

Aim:

o to talk about past events

o to discuss about Titanic and its story.


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T announces the students that they will read a text

about Titanic.

They are asked to translate the text and after that

they will talk about it, asking and answering

questions.

T-Ss

S – s

15’

Activity 4: Writing

Aim:

o to write down regrets using should have/shouldn’t have


The teacher asks the students to put themselves into

the Titanic’s captain shoes and write his regrets about

the situation.

Ex: I should have taken as many lifeboats as needed.

The students write on the blackboard their sentences

Individual

work

T-Ss

10’

Activity 5: Listening and speaking

Aim:

o to discuss and give reasons about the situation


The teacher asks the students to listen to a tape about

the premonitions before the

Accident and to solve ex 5/75.

After that the students are given some worksheets and

are asked to complete the

text of the song “My heart will go on” while they

listen to it.

T-Ss

5’

5’

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Activity 6: Assigning homework


The teacher asks the students to solve ex 6/75. T-Ss 2’

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Documents

English Language Teaching Theory and Practice[1] (1) (1)