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Humanising Language Teaching
Year 4; Issue 2; March 02
CHAPTER 1 from THE CONFIDENCE BOOK
by Paul Davis et al.
THE FIRST VOCABULARY LESSON
1.1
Language focus : Pronunciation
Level : Beginner +
Time : 10-15 minutes
Materials : None
Preparation : None
In class
This confidence-building idea is relevant in classes where people's names come from different cultures and/or languages, e.g. an adult education class learning English in Sweden that has a lot of refugees in it, or a mixed nationality EFL class in the USA.
Ask one student to face the group and pronounce their name loudly and clearly three times. Others round the group repeat and the student acts as teacher until most people can say the name properly. Then the student writes it on the board.
Continue round the group until each student has had a chance to teach the rest of the class to say their name. In each case the student writes the name on the board.
In the next class get people to revise the names. Insist that you and they pronounce each name to the satisfaction of its owner.
RATIONALE
To say and spell another person's name correctly is not only a mark of respect to them but also an act of self-respect. To start a course with this exercise also introduces peer-teaching in an area where each of us is naturally a teacher: how our name should be said and written.
SOUNDS AS GIFTS
1.2
Language focus : Pronunciation
Level : Beginner +
Time : 10-20 minutes
Materials : None
Preparation : None
In class
Stand your class in a large circle. Miming very carefully, 'hand' your neighbour in the circle an imaginary object. They take it, aware of its size and weight. They can either hand the same object to their neighbour or change the object and hand that on. (At the end of this round you can ask each person to name the object they received and the object they gave - a hilarious vocabulary exercise.)
The object-handling serves as a lead-in to word-handling. Choose a sound the group has problems with, cup your hands and 'hand' the sound to your neighbour, saying it loudly and clearly at the same time. Cupping their hands, your neighbour takes the sound, turns to the next person in the circle, hands it to them and says the sound clearly. The handling and the saying are simultaneous. In this way the sound goes round the circle.
If a student gets the sound wrong, step out of your place in the circle and go over to the person who has just received the sound. Take it back from them and give it to the person before the one who got it wrong, saying it yourself loudly and clearly. They then give it to the mispronouncer who again hands it on, trying to say it correctly. If they are successful, return to your place in the circle. If they still say it wrong, repeat the procedure above.
RATIONALE
Students offer each other sounds, words and phrases in the target language as gifts. At first students smile or giggle but it does not take long for the positive symbolism to become clear.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We learnt the circle exercise from Joan Agosta (See Bibliography for details of published work).
GETTING SOUNDS RIGHT
1.3
Language focus : Pronunciation
Level : Beginner +
Time : 20-30 minutes
Materials : None
Preparation : None
In class
Model an easy English sound to the group. See who can repeat it almost perfectly. Model it again in a word. Again have some students repeat the word.
Tell the students there are many English sounds they produce almost perfectly. Ask them to work in pairs, to choose ten such sounds and write them down in the context of a word or phrase. They should choose sounds they think they get right, not sounds they find hard to produce.
Go round the class eliciting two words from each pair. Put the words up on the board, underlining the target sound. Tick all the sounds which the pair presenting them got reasonably right.
RATIONALE
We spend too much time in class picking up dropped stitches. There should be times when students are congratulated on what they get right.
THE HARDEST WORD
1.4
Language focus : Pronunciation
Level : Beginner +
Time : 10-20 minutes
Materials : A text at the right level for the students
Preparation : None
In class
Ask the students, working on their own, to scan through the text and pick out the word or phrase they find hardest to pronounce.
Ask each student to dictate their word to you, which you write on the board, with your back to the class. If the student pronounces reasonably well, simply write the word up without comment.
If the student gets the word or phrase importantly wrong and those round the speaker do not usefully correct them, turn round, make eye contact and say: (student's name), make it more English! The student tries again. If it is still wrong, repeat your exhortation, giving the student the feeling they can get it right without technical help.
If the student is still unable to get the pronunciation right, give them the opposite command: Make it more Italian/German/Portuguese! (depending on the student's mother tongue). Sometimes, paradoxically, this command helps the student to get the sound right. If this does not happen and the student has literally obeyed your instruction, simply say Now do the opposite!
RATIONALE
Your initial position is with your back to the group. You are refusing to mother them - you are throwing them onto their own resources. When they get things right you do not praise or comment.
By asking students to 'make it more English', you are telling them they have the resources to get it right. If you have to repeat this instruction, the group may see you as bullying/persecuting one of them and will offer plenty of support, including useful peer-correction.
By asking the students to 'make it more foreign' you are paradoxically changing frame, and this sometimes unlocks the right answer. The process outlined above is one version of what Caleb Gattegno called 'forcing awareness'.
SELF-CORRECTION
1.5
Language focus : Pronunciation
Level : Beginner +
Time : 10-15 minutes
Materials : A short text - it can be from the coursebook
Preparation : None
In class
Ask the students to go through the text and each choose a favourite sentence. Have one of the students read their sentence aloud. Listen carefully to the whole sentence and if it has not been said near perfectly, ask the student to repeat it. Continue to ask for repetition until it is near perfect. Do not model the correct forms yourself. If the student in question, and the rest of the group, are unable to hear a particular problem then write the sentence on the board and indicate where- abouts the difficulty lies. Do not model the correct form.
Repeat this process with half-a-dozen members of the class.
For this correction technique to work well, a number of things are necessary:
- You should be neutral and unaggressive.
- You should treat all the students equally (don't accept a shoddy performance from a student you perceive to be poor).
- You need to persevere - if you give up on a student before they get it right they can get extremely discouraged.
- There needs to be some trust in the group - the students need to realise that by not spoonfeeding, you are helping, not just being perverse.
RATIONALE
The only real and lasting form of correction is self-correction. If you model the correct form, students imitate the modelling and feel cosy doing this. This does not mean that they can now monitor the difference between their mistake and the correct form, nor that they will get it right next time. The above procedure can, initially, feel frustrating to some students. In the longer term it makes self-evident sense.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
'Every student knows more than they think they know.'
'Every student knows much more than the teacher thinks they know.'
These axioms and the self-correction technique come from Teaching foreign languages in schools (Gattegno 1972).
