Humanising Language Teaching
Year 4; Issue 6; November 02

by Christiane Van Opdenbosch, Dutch teacher, I.E.P.S.C.F. – Uccle, Belgium
E-mail: christiane.vanopdenbosch@skynet.be      

Have you ever wondered how to help the students correct themselves? The following technique enables you to do so without stopping or interrupting your students in their verbal production.  

Level:  beginners
Language focus:  aural discrimination and pronunciation
Time: 10 minutes
Materials: cards to draw on, blackboard, large board
Preparation:selection of words containing a few sounds, sounds that the students tend to get wrong
Technique:classification
Aim: reach gradual auto correction and acquire more self- confidence in the language

Procedure:

[ In the instruction below I offer you English versions of these Dutch words ( I teach Dutch)
vier boek fiets huis deur oor pijp  

 I draw on cards and ask the students to name the objects drawn:
- one card with a drawing of  the word "book"
- one drawing for the word "boat"

I fix the illustrations on the blackboard, the one on the left, the other on the right.  I show a few more to the students, the students name them as well. Together we decide where to put them, either under "book" or under "boat", according to the sound. The students may suggest other words they know. I draw them as well, each on separate cards, and put the cards in the right category. 

To conclude the activity, we remove the cards from the blackboard and select the most illustrative ones to put on a large board that we hang on the wall. 

Later on the same day or another day we can do the same with two other contrasting sounds.

The idea is to make a visual representation of all the sounds students are commonly mistaken with.

The teacher can at this point already take the spelling into account, even though he has not yet introduced reading or writing with the students as such, e.g. two illustrations for one sound because the sound can be written in two different ways depending on the words (the letters "ee" or "ea" corresponding to the sound /i:/)

Each time the students make a mistake with the pronunciation of a sound which we have already illustrated, I ask the class to show its illustration. If the illustration has been properly chosen every student in the class is able to pronounce it correctly, and can correct himself quite quickly.