Humanising Language Teaching
Year 4; Issue 5; September 02

Wow she's brilliant -God that's bad

Time: 30-40 minutes

Purpose: to allow the students to hear their own speech echoing off the wall of the speech of another person.

Preparation: Get a 5-10 minute recording of an L2 speaker of English of roughly the same level as your students. Good if they are a public figure. If your students are all same MT, then it is best to get a speaker who shares your students' MT.

Lesson outline:

1. Explain to the students that they are going to listen an advanced L2 speaker of English talking for about 5-10 minutes.
   Ask them to take notes of her brilliance on one piece of paper and of her weaknesses on a second piece of paper.

   Before they listen ask them to brain storm all the language features they will be listening out for eg:

   Positive features such as rich, wide ranging vocabulary, pronunciation and a general impression of confidence and comfort in English.

   Negative features, such as avoidance tactics / boring word repetition/ wrong pitch / linguistic preening / etc……

2. They listen and take notes. Do the same yourself.

3. Whole class feedback from people's notes.

4. General discussion about how people internally cope with the problem of the unspoken " language pecking order" involving them and other members of their group. ( avoid this last step if the group has not yet jelled).

Note: Maybe annoyance at the shortcomings of other advanced speakers has to do with projection, that is to say disliking my own negative language behaviours so clearly mirrored in the other person's.
There can also be jealousy of another person's brilliant command of the language. This can half shut some people down in terms of wanting to speak in front of a group.