Humanising Language Teaching
Year 2; Issue 4; July 2000

* Lesson 1 * Lesson 2 * Lesson 3 * Lesson 4 *
* Lesson 5 * Lesson 6 * Lesson 7 * Lesson 8 *

LESSON 1 - Proverb Melting Pot - Primary

By Henk van Oort

Procedure:

One pupil leaves the room and waits outside.

If your proverb consists of seven words, assign each word to 1/7th of your class, if it consists of eight words , assign each proverb to 1/8th of your class, etc….

Send for the pupil who is outside to come and stand at the front of the room.

Everybody starts calling out their word at the same moment, while the person in the front tries to pick the right proverb out of the hotch-potch of noises.

Procedure:

All the children cup their hands.

The left hand is a box- the right hand is the lid.

Pupils each whisper a particular word containing the target sound you have given them into their boxes.

The fairy/magician you have programmed walks through the classroom and touches a box with their wand. Any pupil whose box has been touched, opens the box and says the escaping word.

Get the rest of the class to check that this word contains the target sound.

When the fairy has released everybody's word, elicit all the words one by one and write them up on the board, so you can check everyone knows what all mean.

Procedure:

Tell your pupils to listen carefully.

You read them the jumbled story twice. Nobody writes during the listening phase.

Now the pupils write the story down as they think it should be.

A couple of pupils read out their versions.

Then all pupils write a correct version of the tale in their notebooks.

Use the story as a dictation next lesson.

Level:	zero beginner
Time:	30-40 minutes
Type of class :	shared L1. 5-12 year olds or adults
Purpose:	Getting used to the sound of English. Making blobs of English sound meaningful Using a few English words in a meaningful context.
Preparation:	choose and prepare to tell a story that everybody in the class will know the outline of. Prepare to tell it, rather than read it,in English.

In class:

1. Write the title of the tale you are going to tell on the board in English and in mother tongue. Ask each student to write down l0-l5 keywords from the story in MT - ask them to draw one scene from the story .
   
   
2. Students compare their drawings and words in small groups.
   
   
3. Have the students put their keywords on the board- tell them to write very small and and in white or a gentle colour.
   
   
4. Ask them if they can render any of the keywords into English. With their help write in the English translations of all the key words. Use a bright colour for this and write large.
   
   
5. Tell the whole story to the group in English, lightly stressing the key words and pointing to them on the board. As you go through the story replace the single keywords with phrases , so that wolf becomes big bad wolf, for example.
   
   
6. Pair the students. Student A tells the first half of the story to student B. S/he does this in MT but using the key words in English. Student B does the same with the second part of the story.
   

Upper-elementary to advanced level

Introduction and rationale

This activity is one of the simplest ever yet it has always worked well in classes of mine. It is a 'thread' activity, which is to say that you can use it again and again with the same class sometimes in exactly the same way, sometimes varied, in order to achieve long term aims.

There is only a bit of one-time preparation, and that is optional (see Variation 1). The time needed ranges from 5 to 25 minutes depending on class size and the variation you choose. 'Timed Talking' has good potential to figure constructively in any campaigns you might be waging to—

• Encourage your students to take an interest in what each other say
• Prepare them for giving short talks to larger and larger groups
• Help them see the potential for interesting talk in small, everyday topics
• Prepare them for the oral component of certain standardized exams
• Broaden their knowledge in miscellaneous directions

The basic procedure

1. If you have an even number of students, divide them into A:B pairs. If you have an odd number, in each pair one student is both 'A' and 'C' while the other is 'B'. You will be left with one trio, in which there is an A, a B and a C. (If a class is divisible by three, put everyone in ABC groups.
2. Suppose you have A:B pairs. Name a topic such one of those listed further below. Tell your class that…
   (a) when you say "Go!", A's will have, say, 90 seconds (vary the time with level) to talk about the topic;
   (b) when you say "Stop!", B's must repeat to the A's what the B's remember hearing;
   (c) roles will be reversed and steps (a) and (b) will be repeated.
3. Bring the class together. Ask some, or all, students to say one thing they remember their partner saying. (People seem generally to report the most interesting thing, which is all to the good.)

1. Before Step One, give a short ad lib talk about, for example, coffee. Include information under such notional headings as 'what' (a brown liquid, should be hot), 'where found' (in a cup, box or bag, cafι, supermarket, thermos), 'where grown' (in tropical countries at altitude), 'from' (a small tree, beans), 'processing' (grinding, blending, packing), 'varieties' (arabica, robusta), 'preparation', 'types', 'economical importance', 'history' (originally from Arabia), 'personal' ("I never drank it till I was 30, now I drink it often. I have a friend who is an addict"), 'lore' ("Someone sued MacDonalds because their coffee was too hot and…"; "Italian coffee has a good reputation"), 'how you prepare it', 'when you drink it', 'how you drink it' (sniff, sip, add, stir), 'cost', etc. Be chatty. Range widely. Do not be dauntingly systematic or even particularly prepared. Afterwards, ask about a dozen participants if they can each remember one thing you said. The aim of all this is to indicate to a less voluble class how many aspects there may be to a seemingly simple topic.
2. If you have A/C:B pairs plus one A,B,C trio, the individuals who are both A and C speak twice. Thus, you might say that A's must speak for 90 seconds, B's for 80 seconds and A's for 60 seconds. Thus, the A/C people would speak for 150 seconds all together. In the single threesome, however, each person would speak just once.
3. With some topics, it may help to quickly pre-teach a bit of vocabulary. For example, if your topic is 'teeth in general or yours in particular', at lower levels especially it may be helpful to draw a tooth set in gums and add such labels as—crown, root, gum, cavity and filling. But going to far here can vitiate interest in the activity itself.
4. Leave out the 'tell your partner what s/he said' phase.
5. Leave out Step 3.
6. Put groups in threes such that A and B speak while C is a listener who later tells the class something interesting that each said. If your class is not divisible by three, create one or two groups of four with two listeners each.
7. Become more and more flexible about time limits, eventually abandoning them altogether.
8. Move towards short talks by asking students to give themselves a 'talkativeness number', 10 high, 0 low. Form larger groups with a self-nominated talkative person in each group. Call out a topic and the speakers begin. When you call time, call the class together. Ask listeners to tell the rest of the class the most interesting things they remember.

Example topics (all of these seem to work well)

potatoes - bananas - cockroaches - bees - mosquitoes - mobile phones - eggs - chickens - socks in general and/or a favourite pair - chocolate - apples - a favourite pair of shoes - someone you know who had/has a bad habit - teeth in general or yours in particular - beggars

The features of a good topic for this framework

An ideal topic is one which virtually everyone has some experience of and about which there is little risk in expressing an opinion. There must also be a good deal of common ground. It is probably for this reason that topics like 'a favourite place' tend not to work so well, nor do big topics (such as 'the next 100 years') and controversial ones (such as 'abortion'). For these, other frameworks work better, e.g., (for controversial topics, the debate framework). 'Beggars' and 'mobile phones' are the nearest things to controversial topics which I have found to work.

Acknowledgement I learned the idea of telling back to your partner what your partner said to you from Mario Rinvolucri. See Planning Lessons and Courses (Tessa Woodward, 2000, Cambridge University Press) for a shorter version of this activity. Seth Lindstromberg

In class:

1. Ask the students, working on their own, to bring to mind three staircases, flights of steps or stairways they know well. Ask them to draw each set of steps on a different A4 sheet of paper. Tell them to draw the steps carefully. ( spatial intelligence )
   
   
2. Ask the students, still working alone, to jot down any words or phrases that spring to mind when they say the words step or stairs. ( language intelligence)
   
   
3. Ask them to write a paragraph for each set of steps/stairs about how they would represent them in music. What kind of music to convey the mood of each set of steps. What kinds of instruments and musical feelings? (musical intelligence)
   
   
4. They look carefully at the height of the steps in each of their three drawings and also how long and how wide they are. They estimate the figures and write them in. They then estimate the gradient of each flight of steps, 1 in 2 , 1in 3, 1in 4 ( 1 perpendicularly in 4 horizontally ). The other way to do this is in percentages or the degrees of the angle. ( logical mathematical )
   
   
5. Ask the students to compare these flights of steps to their inner thinking and feeling processes. They write a couple of paragraphs about the similarities and differences between these steps and their inner processes. (intrapersonal intellignece )
   
   
6. Ask the participants to write two or three paragraphs about how a person feels physically when going up or down these steps. How do one's muscles relate to these steps? (kinaesthetic intelligence)
   
   
7. Ask the students to work in groups of three and tell their partners about both what they have written and the process they went through while writing. ( interpersonal intelligence )
   
   
8. End with a general discussion on multiple intelligences.

LESSON 7 - A Tantalising Story (7)

Level:	elementary to intermediate
Time:	10-20 minutes

In class: