GOING OFF-ROADHumanising your coursebook – Matt Vesty October 2014

WHY SHOULD WE GO ‘OFF-ROAD’What are the cons of using a coursebook in the EFL classroom?

WHY SHOULD WE ‘GO OFF-ROAD’? Mass-produced – culturally ‘bland’. Many coursebooks offer a"sanitised

world which is bland and dull and in which there is very little excitement or disturbance to stimulate the emotions of the learner" (Tomlinson 1998, 20).

Repetitive – similar tasks, unblended methodology

Is the focus relevant to your students?

Often grammar and vocabulary points are not adequately recycled

Texts can be boring and/or outdated

Allows you to focus on what you know the students actually need, not what the coursebook says they need.

WHAT IS HUMANISING? What are the key principles?

WHAT IS HUMANISING? Students relate the language to experiences and attitudes they have. Not

just a linguistic ‘robot’

Stimulating students to think or feel – Annoyance, Agreement, Critical Analysis

DO something with the text, rather than study it

Focus on meaning

Articulation of responses (thoughts and feelings)

Language discovery – not just ‘teaching’.

Mental imaging, role-playing etc.

HUMANISING ACTIVITIESSome practical applications

GRAMMAR: INTERRUPTING A STORY Have one or more students prepare to tell a narrative story from one of the

texts you have already focused on in class.

Tell the other students that their job is to interrupt the person by asking as many questions about the text as they can. For example:

A:Well, this man went into a restaurant…

B: Where was it?

A: In France and he sat down and ordered

B: Where did he sit?

Write up any incorrect forms on the board and auction them as a correction exercise.

HAVE YOU EVER BEEN TO?

Students stand or sit in a circle. Make sure there is an empty space next to you. Ask them a question using the “Have you ever” question stem, e.g: “If anyone has ever been to Lake Baikal, sit next to me”.

The person that comes and sits next to you is then asked a couple of more questions such as: “When did you go?”, “How long were you there?”

This activity should be run reasonably quickly so that the students do not lose interest.

GRAMMAR: ADD A WORD Write a short sentence on the board: e.g: He is at a meeting.

Divide the class into small groups or teams

Students should add one or two words to the sentence to make it longer, however, it must always be grammatically correct. Award points for each word. Speak as little as possible to give students the opportunity to think.

He is at a very boring work meeting with his senior colleagues all morning, unfortunately for him

GRAMMAR: 7-6-5-4-3-2-1 Take a topic that you have been studying and create the first line of a

dialogue relating to it. Make sure that this line has 7 words in it:

Have you seen that new French film?

Students then work in pairs and create the second line to the dialogue using only six words:

No, I haven’t. Is it good?

Students continue this until they reach the final line of one word. Ask students to perform their dialogues to others in the class

Alternatively, give all student As a 7 word line and student Bs another. They then exchange pieces of paper, writing responses to each line simultaneously.

GRAMMAR: DICTOGLOSS Read students a relatively long sentence from the coursebook.

Tell students their job is to listen without writing, but they will only hear the sentence once.

Immediately after you have finished speaking they write down the key words they remember. With a partner, they then try to reconstruct the sentence with complete accuracy.

GRAMMAR: SKELETONISING A TEXT Give students a text that you have already covered.

Dictate the following to students:

Delete all the adjectives

Delete all the adverbs

Delete all the conjunctions and change the punctuation

Put a line through subordinate clauses.

Students then dictate the text they have to their partner who writes it down.

They then try to reconstruct the text as it was before.

Alternatively, you can select a number of words that the students will delete and give them to the pairs to assist them with collocation and syntax recognition.

VOCABULARY: ADVERB MIMING/DRILLING When drilling or miming some words that you have already covered, bring

along a set of cards with adverbs written on them: Angrily, sadly, annoyingly, happily, shly, stupidly, confidently, frustratingly etc.

When drilling or miming, hold up a card. The student(s) performing the drill or the mime must do so in the manner written on the card. E.g. “Jump” + “Stupidly”

To make the game more competitive, you could hide the adverb card from the class who have to guess not only the word for the action, but also the manner in which it is performed.

This is an excellent way of turning monotonous pronunciation drills into a more interesting activity.

VOCABULARY: COLLOCATION AUCTION Prepare a list of collocations and non-collocations:

Go on stage

Be nominated for an Oscar

Film gives an atmosphere*

Make a film a bad review*

A film comes out

Play to a full house

Give pairs of students an amount of money on which to bid on the correct collocations. They incorrect collocations can be described as “fake” and the aim is to buy as many ‘real’ collocations as possible.

VOCABULARY: RIDDLES Read students a riddle you have made yourself. For example:

What gets wetter and wetter the more it dries? (A towel)

What has a head and a tail but no body? (A coin)

I can fly but I have no wings. I can cry but I have no eyes. Wherever I go, darkness follows me. What am I? (A cloud)

Have students work in pairs to work out the answers.

Have students make riddles with words they have learnt from the unit of your coursebook.

READING: COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS Students read a passage from the coursebook.

Put them into small groups and have them write their own comprehension questions in writing for the other group.

Groups then pass their questions to each other and try to answer the ones they have been given.

READING: IF THERE’S THREE THINGS I KNOW Go to a reading passage a few units ahead in the coursebook. It should be

difficult.

Have students scan for the general idea first

Secondly have them scan again, but write down three things they understood. They compare these with a partner.

This is particularly useful in classes where there is a set book and a boring reading text cannot be avoided.

A GLASS HALF EMPTY, HALF FULL Give students 7 pieces of paper, long enough to write a sentence.

Assign the students as pessimists or optimists.

Read a factual sentence to the students. For example: The wedding is at the church on Saturday.

The optimists should write their sentences beginning with “Fortunately…”, and the pessimists, who write their sentence as a reaction to the optimist’s sentence, write theirs beginning with “unfortunately…”.

The restaurant serves French food

Fortunately, it’s not very expensive

Unfortunately, I forgot my wallet

Fortunately, I know the manager

Unfortunately, he isn’t very nice.

LISTENING: DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR? Type out the transcript from one of your listening texts in the coursebook.

Add a number of extra words to the text. It is particularly helpful if these words do not make sense.

Record the text before class and play it to the students.

Ask them for their reaction

Ask them to listen again and write down all the extra words.

Play the original listening to the students and have them add any other superfluous words.

Give the students the original transcript to check.

SPEAKING: 3-2-1 Give students a fairly long speaking task – for example, what they did at

the weekend.

The students now are put into pairs and have 3 seconds to tell someone this extended story.

Students are paired with another partner and must tell the same story in 2 seconds.

Finally, they are paired with another partner to whom they must tell their story in one second.

SPEAKING: WHAT IS X TO YOU? Give each student a blank piece of paper.

Dictate the following to the students:

The name of your oldest relative

An important number to you

The name of a childhood friend

An important date for you

Your mother/father’s birthday

A place you’d like to visit

The last place you went on holiday.

Students write these answers on another blank piece of paper in random order. They then exchange papers. They must try to guess which questions are addressed by each answer and continue a short conversation about each.

SPEAKING: WHOSE STORY? Have students prepare before class, or write in class a short personal story.

(You can choose a title if you wish)

Once students have finished their stories have them swap their stories in groups of 3 or 4.

In their groups of three or four, the students decide which story to read aloud. The other group listens and decides which person in the other group the story belongs to.

REFERENCES: Humanizing your coursebook. Rinvolucri, Mario. Delta Publishing

Hltmag.co.uk

http://kenlackman.com/files/LexicalActivitiesBook102.pdf

Many thanks to colleagues who have given inspiration and helped to create some of these activities: Aaron Burhoe, Tara Sherman, Dan Vesty, Stephen Beckmyer.