Humanising Language Teaching
Year 4; Issue 2; March 02

CHAPTER 1 from THE CONFIDENCE BOOK

by Paul Davis et al.

MOUTHING

1.6 Language focus : Pronunciation
Level : Beginner - lower intermediate
Time : 15-30 minutes
Materials : None
Preparation : Previous exposure to everyday situational dialogues, probably from the coursebook

In class

1. Remind the students of dialogues they have worked on. Ask someone to come out and mime such a dialogue with you. No language should be used.

2. Replay the scene. This time you speak and the student mouths their part.

3. Have everybody work on the dialogue in pairs. Both sides mouth. The room should be full of language and virtually silent.

4. Ask the students if there are any bits of language they couldn't find, and give help.

RATIONALE

For some people, the jump from listening to a language to actually articulating things in it is a breathtaking one. This exercise builds confidence by allowing people to speak but without making tell-tale sounds.

VARIATIONS

Have one pair mime a scene of their own creation. No words should be spoken. All the others then role play the same scene but with words spoken out loud. They practise their roleplays and then each pair performs the role play for the class group.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We learnt the variation from Andre Fonck, who works for l'Office de l'Emploi in Belgium.

INDEPENDENT DATES

1.7
Language focus : Pronunciation
Level : Beginner - elementary
Time : 15-30 minutes
Materials : A pointer or a stick
Preparation : None

In class

1. Copy the chart on the next page onto the blackboard. It represents all you need to elicit the dates in English from your students.

2. Suppose you want to get the students to produce 'the tenth of December'. Simply tap the square at the bottom of the left hand column and then the circle at the bottom of the right hand column. A sensible date to start with is today's. Use the pointer to tap out stress and rhythm. Don't speak - allow the students to find the words. Without speech, guide them to produce the right words and sounds. There will be a lot of peer-teaching, with students hypothesising and helping each other. You may occasionally have to give a spoken model. Do this clearly and once only. Students soon get used to listening for the few things you do say when you say little or nothing.

3. You make the exercise more human if you work on significant dates like feasts, birthdays, etc.

4. After some practice with you in control, get students to come out and use the chart and pointer to give each other 'date dictations'.

RATIONALE

With your voice no longer spoonfeeding them, low level students soon start listening more actively and taking responsibility. When you drastically reduce the amount of vocal modelling you offer them, you also reduce their dependence on you. From a feeling of responsibility and independence comes a sense of well-being and confidence.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This exercise derives from the Silent Way approach of Caleb Gattegno. You will find more exercises of this sort in Dictation (Davis and Rinvolucri 1988).

FORGETTING WORDS AND REMEMBERING THEM

1.8 Language focus : Vocabulary
Level : Beginner +
Time : 15-30 minutes to explain
10-15 minutes in later classes
Materials : A set of cards and a card index box for each student
Preparation : None

In class

1. First, set up the system. Ask the students to work individually and write down three words each in each of these categories:
   Words I firmly know
   Words I have forgotten
   Less recent words I know
   Recent words I know
   (To find these, ask them to go back over the earlier units of their coursebook or over recent reading materials.)

2. Ask the students to compare the words in their four categories.

3. They now copy their four sets of three words onto cards, one word per card. These cards are then arranged in four sections in the card index boxes as shown in Fig 2. Invite them to experiment with the way they put the words on the cards. There are a number of ways shown in Fig 3 on the opposite page.

4. A regular homework task would be to get the students to put new words learnt in a previous lesson or lessons on cards and file them in their boxes.

REVISION

Ask the students to work through a given section to check if the words should currently be in that section. If a student finds a word in Words firmly known that they don't know, then it goes into Words forgotten. If they know a word on looking through Words forgotten then maybe it should go in Words firmly known. Words need to migrate from Recent words to Less recent words. Sometimes a student can confidently move a word from Recent words to Words firmly known. This work can be done individually or in small groups.

RATIONALE

Remembering, forgetting and re-remembering are normal learning events and this kind of storage system accepts this. It takes the guilt out of forgetting. Students have the right to forget what you 'taught' them since, if they forget, you never really taught them it. You sent out but they did not significantly take in. The sub-text here is 'forgetting is fine- we all do it'. The Words forgotten category is a complex one and students come to different understandings of what should go in there.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Dierk Andresen taught us this procedure. You will find plenty more word retention techniques in Vocabulary (Morgan and Rinvolucri 1986).

100 VERBS

1.9 Language focus : Vocabulary
Level : Beginner
Time : Lesson 1: 5 minutes
Lesson 2: 30-50 minutes
Lesson 3: 30-40 minutes
Lesson 4: 50 minutes
Materials : None
Preparation : None

In class

LESSON 1

At the end of a lesson ask each person in the group: How many verbs do you know in English? Don't comment on the answers, and ask them to think about the question for homework.

LESSON 2

1. At the start of the next lesson ask them the same question again. (In some of our classes they have revised their estimates downwards.)

2. Mime a simple verb. Have the students say it and designate one of them as class secretary, who will write down all the verbs found by the class on a single sheet of paper. Ask each student in turn to mime a verb which the group then tries to say. If no one knows the verb in English, refrain from teaching it. The worse the mimes the more verbs they generate. Keep the activity going until you reach a good round figure like 50, 100 or 150. Take in the secretary's verb list.

LESSON 3

1. Give everybody a copy of the verb list and ask the students to work individually to categorise the verbs in any way they wish. They must establish at least two categories, and fewer categories than the number of words on the list. The students are to give their categories headings.

2. Ask them to explain their categorisations to each other in pairs or small groups.

LESSON 4

(This may come a lot later in the course.)

1. When the students start work on past tense forms, ask them to refer to the group verb list. Divide them into four teams. Each team, working with reference books, pulls out verbs belonging to their designated category:
   Team A: verbs that form the past with /d/ e.g. listened
   Team B: verbs that form the past with /t/ e.g. worked
   Team C: verbs that form the past with /Id/ e.g. landed
   Team D: irregular verbs e.g. went

2. When the teams have finished ask them to regroup in fours with one person from each team in each foursome. They compare categories.

RATIONALE

Some students wildly underestimate what they know in the language they are learning. The idea in this exercise is to have it dawn on them how much they already know, both individually and collectively. In one class where they finally came up with 135 verbs, they initially thought they knew between ten and twenty. Of course we beg lots of questions by referring to 'knowing words'; the exercise above is simplistic but a real morale booster all the same.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The categorisation exercise suggested for the third lesson above comes from the work of Caleb Gattegno. For further ideas in this area of vocabulary teaching see Vocabulary (Morgan and Rinvolucri 1986, Sections D and G).

THE POWER OF THE MOTHER TONGUE

1.10

Language focus : Vocabulary; for use with monolingual classes
Level : Beginner
Time : 20-30 minutes
Materials : None
Preparation : Think of a suitable story to tell bilingually

Before class

Choose a story you know well to tell bilingually. In this example we are assuming English as the learners' mother tongue and Greek as the target language.
Once upon a time there was an 'ikoyenia',a father, a mother and a three year old
'pethi'. They all lived together in a little 'spiti' that stood on the main street of the village. In your case the story will be mostly in the students' mother tongue with a few words of English introduced in such a way that they are understandable from context, or glossed with a translation.

IN CLASS

1. Tell the bilingual story right through.

2. If you are teaching teenagers or adults, ask the student to write down any words or parts of words that they remember. A 'part of a word' might be a single sound, a syllable, an intonation pattern without a clear memory of the sounds involved, etc. Stress to the group that you are very interested in the bits of words they remember as well as in the whole words or phrases.

3. Using the students' mother tongue, ask them to read out what they have written. Encourage them to share partly remembered words as well as full ones. (If you are teaching young children, move straight to the oral recall of the words - omit the writing stage.)

RATIONALE

Beginners frequently underestimate the complexity of what they are doing when they first approach a new language. As a result, they fail to give themselves credit for real achievements like remembering and reproducing an intonation pattern just because they can't remember the individual sounds. They end up blaming themselves for not retaining the sounds rather than feeling good about what they have achieved.

The same goes for words the remember eighty percent right. Most learners will focus on the twenty percent that is wrong and give themselves little credit for the eighty percent. This exercise aims to create a better, more balanced, more realistic self-awareness in beginners. You learn more if you value your achievements than if you focus on failings.