Editorial
This article was first published in Modern English Teacher Volume 17/ 1 January 2009
Simultaneous Skills and Activities
Simon Mumford, Turkey
Simon Mumford teaches EAP at Izmir University of Economics, Turkey. He has written on using stories, visuals, drilling, reading aloud, and is especially interested in the creative teaching of grammar. E-mail: simon.mumford@ieu.edu.tr
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Introduction
Simultaneous skills practice
Combined skills practice
Conclusion
Reference
In the information age, more demand is made on our time and attention than ever before; we read and listen more, and speak to more people through more media. In addition, we increasingly tend to perform skills simultaneously, such as reading and having a conversation at the same time, or listening to more than one speaker. While students will be able to deal with this in L1, they may need practice to transfer this ability into L2.
This theme of combining skills can be extended to a more general linking of activity themes such as playing two different games simultaneously. Carefully selected combinations may create activities that are both more efficient and more challenging, helping students to focus on different aspects of language and providing an opportunity for students to connect and combine knowledge and skills. Therefore, I would like to propose two types of hybrid activity, firstly, simultaneous skills practice, and second, combinations of well-known classroom activities.
Simultaneous jigsaw reading
Take a text, divide it into two parts and give one half to each student in a pair. Students read their parts aloud simultaneously, i.e. they listen to the other while reading their own text. Let them pause a few seconds at the end of every sentence, to ensure some ‘pure’ listening time. At the end, students put their papers down and without further reference to the text, decide on the order of the two parts of text and summarise the part they were listening to.
Written and spoken conversations
Students sit around tables in groups of four. In pairs, students A and B, and students C and D have a written ‘conversation’, and A and C, and B and D have a spoken conversation. Thus, each student is simultaneously engaging in written and spoken communication, for example, A writes to B while speaking to C. The written conversations are similar to ‘chat’, but done on a piece of paper passed between students. Encourage short turns, and as far as possible, writing and speaking at the same time.
Remembering messages
This gives students practice in holding information in the short term memory while speaking on a different topic. Each student is given a piece of paper with sentence to memorise. Put students in pairs for a short (one minute) conversation on an unrelated topic. Encourage them to repeat the sentence silently to themselves while listening and responding to their partner. At the end of the minute, they swap papers and test each other on the sentences. They then change partners and repeat the process with their new sentence. To reflect real life, the sentence can be a message which needs to be passed on, e.g. Tell Jane to meet Peter at the station at 9.30 tomorrow evening.
Dealing with distraction
Put students in pairs, and give student A a short reading text and a time limit to read it silently. During this time, student B asks simple yes/no questions unrelated to the reading, simply as a distraction. These can be personal questions about family, studies and interests. Encourage A to minimise disruption with short answers: mmm, uh-huh, yeah, or nod of head for yes and uh-uh, mm-mm or shake of head for no. When A has finished, B asks some simple comprehension questions, prepared by the teacher in advance, to see how much A has remembered. They reverse roles using a different text.
Hangman and Twenty Questions.
Both games have the same objective, to find a single word, therefore they can be combined as follows: the teacher chooses a concrete noun, writes a blank for each letter on the board and divides the class into two teams. One team plays hangman, the other team twenty questions with the same word, with the teacher alternately writing letters and answering questions. Each team benefits from information gained by the other, and all students are involved in identifying an object through both its spelling and its characteristics.
Repeat or answer
Students listen and repeat the teacher’s statements but answer questions, for example:
T: Where do you live?
Ss: In Turkey.
T: Turkey’s a beautiful country.
Ss: Turkey’s a beautiful country.
T: Have you ever been to Istanbul.
Ss: Yes, I have/No, I haven’t.
T: Istanbul is wonderful, isn’t it?
Ss: Istanbul is wonderful isn’t it? or Yes, it is/No isn’t.
T: You don’t like Istanbul (?)
Ss: You don’t like Istanbul or Yes, I do/No, I don’t.
Istanbul is wonderful, isn’t it? and You don’t like Istanbul(?)could either be questions or statements, depending on intonation, and students must decide which it is. Practice in listening to intonation can help students decipher messages and respond appropriately.
Spelling Simon says
In this version, all actions have an f sound, but students should only perform them if the instruction actually contains the letter f. Anyone who does an action where the sound is represented by ph or other combination is out. Actions: take a photo/touch your feet/face/ say ‘enough’ /say ‘enough’ fast/ spell philosophy/ geography /French/ look at a friend/ draw a calf/graph/ leaf/ put on a scarf/ laugh/ find a coin/ cover your face/ look at the floor/ make a photocopy/ imitate a phantom/fish/ photographer/ eat a French fry/ have a coffee/ cough! /Look at the fox/ pheasant/ farmer/ open the phone-book/ phrase-book/ facebook
Vocabulary Chain and a memory game
In Vocabulary Chain, one player says a word and subsequent players say words that begins with the last letter of the previous word e.g. horse, egg, goal, light, toy, yacht and so on. This game can be combined with a memory game in which students build up a list by adding one word each turn, preferably a concrete noun: I went shopping and I bought a horse, an egg, a goal etc. Students have to repeat the whole list before adding their word, and the vocabulary chain will help them remember the order because each word contains a clue to the next.
Reporting lies
This is a combination of Guessing Lies and reporting speech. In groups of three, students take turns to make present tense statements about themselves which may or may not be true. The others report the statements to each other, for example:
S1: I have three cats
S2: (to S3) (believing) He said he has three cats.
S3: (to S2) (disbelieving) He said he had three cats.
S1: Actually, I have two cats.
Present tense in the reporting verb is the prefered form, since the statement is still true as it is being reported. If students use Past tense in the main verb of the reported clause (He said he had three cats), this suggests that they doubt the truth of the statement (Hewings, 1999:90), so students can show their attitude with tenses.
Offers Bingo
Bingo is usually a passive listening activity, but it can be used as the basis for practising offers. Write a list of offers on the board: Would you like...? a cup of tea/a piece of cake/an ice cream/some orange juice/a sweet/a tissue/ to read my newspaper/ to borrow a pen/ to listen to my MP3 player/ to play tennis. Put students in groups of four. Three of them each copy any five words or phrases from the list. The other student, the caller, makes offers with them in a random order. The three students answer: Yes, please/Yes, I’d love one/some/to, or No, thank you + reason, according to whether the word is on their list or not. The first to cross all words off their list is the winner. In the following example, S1 and S2 have cup of tea on their lists but S3 does not.
Caller: Would you like a cup of tea?
S1: Yes, please. (crosses cup of tea off list)
S2: Yes, I’d love one. (crosses cup of tea off list)
S3: No thanks, I’m not thirsty.
The purpose behind this range of activities is to show the potential for the simultaneous combination of skills and activities. Often, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and combinations of elements that are already familiar to students can create more effective learning activities. We live in a world where ever increasing demand is being made on our time and attention, we need, therefore, both to prepare students for this demand, and use our own of classroom time effectively. Next time you are doing a familiar activity, why not add an extra activity, skill, or challenge?
Hewings, M. 1999 Advanced Grammar in Use, Cambridge University Press
Please check the Methodology and Language for Secondary Teachers course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.
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