Humanising Language Teaching
Year 4; Issue 2; March 02

CHAPTER 1 from THE CONFIDENCE BOOK

by Paul Davis et al.

CONFIDENCE WITH PHRASES

1.11 Language focus : Vocabulary
Level : Post-beginner +
Time : 20-30 minutes
Materials : Reading materials
Preparation : Choose the phrases

Before class

Choose words and phrases from reading material your class is currently dealing with. Be ready to tell your own anecdotes and experiences around the phrases with a view to stimulating similar reactions from the students.

In class

1. Ask the students to underline in the reading material the words/phrases you want to work on.

2. Tell them an anecdote of your own about the first one. Elicit similar stories from them.

3. Continue in the same way with the other words/phrases. For example, Mario had a text with these two phrases in it: polluted air, fumes from cars.

First he told his group a story about a chip-pan fire in his house: the kitchen was full of heavily polluted air. Others then spoke of 'polluted air' in their experience.

Then he told the group how he likes fumes from cars when cycling in London in winter. The fumes provide a form of outdoor central heating. Others in the group told their 'fumes from cars' experiences.

RATIONALE

It is common to hear a colleague complain that they taught the students all the words they needed for a role play and then they simply did not use any of them in the event. They fell back on simpler ways of expressing themselves, used old words or got by without using verbal language at all.

It would seem that a student needs to get over the shock of meeting a new word or phrase. The person needs to domesticate it, tame it, make it their own before venturing to use it. The exercise proposed here is a personalising of new words and an initial group owning of them. Somehow it seems that something has to happen between first meeting new vocabulary and using it.

TRUST YOUR MEMORY

1.12
Language focus : Grammar; adjective + gerund
Level : Post-beginner +
Time : 10-15 minutes
Materials : None
Preparation : None

In class

1. Divide the students into circles of ten to fifteen people.

2. Ask each person to being to mind something they are good at doing or happy doing. The first student in each group gives their name and mentions an activity they are good at: I'm Heidi, I'm good at gardening. The second student in that group repeats the Heidi information and also mentions something they are confident about: Heidi's happy gardening. I'm Tonia and I'm good at shooting… The third student runs through what the first two have said and adds what they are good at. The activity continues until the last student in the circle repeats all the informa- tion about everybody else before saying what they themselves are good at. Do not allow writing!

3. Ask the groups how many ideas the last person in each circle had to remember.

NOTE

One of our students panicked at the thought of saying she was confident about anything. Her sister was a famous model in her country and good at everything. One of her friends in the group finally helped her decide that she was good at two things: keeping secrets, and dressing young to get half-price tickets!

STUDENTS PRESENT GRAMMAR

1.13
Language focus : Grammar
Level : Elementary +
Time : One 45 minute period
Several 15-30 minute slots in subsequent lessons
Materials : Copies of a learner's grammar
Preparation : Pick one area of grammar per five students

In class

1. Give out copies of the chosen grammar book and group the students in teams of five. Ask each team to concentrate on one grammar area and to produce a cohe- rent presentation of it. Tell them they will later have to present this area to the whole class. Leave the room so they don't have you hovering and 'helping'.

2. In subsequent lessons the teams teach the areas of grammar they have been assigned. Do not intervene during the student-led lessons. Only troubleshoot at the end.

3. Follow up with the whole group doing an exercise or two from the grammar book.

RATIONALE

This is a powerfully useful exercise as it encourages student independence and allows the students to interact in a frame you have set, but without you. You find out a lot about their real understanding of grammar and the students become more realistic in their expectations

A Basic English Grammar (Eastwood and Mackin OUP 1982) is suitable at elementary level but the exercise is clearly cross-level and other books would be suitable at other levels, for example: intermediate: Practical English Usage (Michael Swan OUP 1980); advanced: Talking of Grammar (Roger Bowers Longman 1987).

THE ONES I GET RIGHT

1.14
Language focus : Grammar
Level : Beginner - lower intermediate
Time : 30-40 minutes
Materials : None
Preparation : None

In class

1. Ask the students to work in pairs. They are to write:

   1. five four-word sentences in English

   2. four six-word sentences in English
   3. three nine-word sentences in English
   Tell them to go for what they know and are sure of.

2. Ask the pairs to compare their sentences with each other. There may be dis- agreements as to whether a sentence is correct. Get them to write any doubtful sentences up on the board. Do not give your verdict at this stage, though they may demand it.

3. Get the whole class to have a look at the dubious sentences picked by the students themselves. In the end they may come to voting on the correctness or not of a sen- tence. Only when this has happened give your verdict. Do not deal with wrong sentences none of the students have spotted as being wrong. Work on these problems in a later lesson.

RATIONALE

This exercise allows low-level students to compare the criteria they have in their heads with the way the target language is. It allows them to examine their basic grammatical notions and see which of these are still inter-language and which properly belong to the target language. For you it is a gift of a diagnostic exercise.

NOTE

Stand back and enjoy watching students discuss, write, think and argue. Keep out of the process. If you join in you will guillotine the whole thing. They will often try and draw you in to swing authority behind their particular contention. Stay out.

CORRECTING NATIVE SPEAKERS

1.15
Language focus : Grammar
Level : Post-beginner - lower intermediate
Time : 15-20 minutes
Materials : One copy of the 'Two year-olds' story sheet' for each student
Preparation : None

In class

1. Ask the students what kind of mistakes small children make in their mother tongue(s). Things like regularising past tenses, reversing sound sequences (e.g. in French, masagin for magasin) and inventing new words are likely to come up.

2. Explain that small English-speaking children do exactly the same. Give out the 'Two-year-olds' story sheet' and ask them to correct the childrens' grammar.

RATIONALE

Advanced students of English sometimes mention the 'tyranny of the native speaker'. They are continually called upon to notice and imitate the linguistic antics of this fre-quently idealised being.

Young native speakers use an inter-language not dissimilar to foreign learners of the language. Chinese and Turkish learners feel quite in tune with article omission! When you are an adolescent or adult learner of English there is an element of playful revenge in correcting a two-year-old's grammar, especially when it resembles your own!

Two-year-olds' story sheet

Cass G. (2 years, 8 months)
Boy fell out of car. He went in car again. He fell in water.

Daniel W. (2 years, 10 months)
Little boy played. He cried. He's all right. He went home. He went to bed. When he wakes up you're gonna say goodnight to him.

Daniel W. (2 years, 11 months)
He broke it. He's OK. He didn't broke it. It's all right. The little boy fixed it.

Donna R. (2 years, 8 months)
Girl swimmed. Got all wet. She cried. Her feets got in water. Her mommy got there. She picked her up. She stopped crying. She fell in the water again. She fell in the water again. Her mommy picked her up again. She said, 'Don't cry'.

Bernard H. (3 years, 6 months).
Once there was a lion. He eat people. A fish come. The fish swimmed. The lion ate the fish. The lion ate another fish. Then he went to sleep. He woke up.

C Longman Group UK Ltd 1990

(These narratives are taken from Children tell stories Pitcher and Prelinger 1969).