Humanising Language Teaching
Year 4; Issue 1; January 2002
Teacher Resource Books Preview
Using the Mother Tongue
The Mother Tongue as a Resource in the Foreign Language Classroom
By Sheelagh Deller and Mario Rinvolucri
( Forthcoming with ETp Delta in late 2002 )
( these are Sheelagh exercises ) - Secondary and adult
Keyword Dialogues
Type of class : mono-lingual
Teacher : needs a limited knowledge of the students' mother tongue
Level : elementary
Purpose : activating new vocabulary
- Choose a situation e.g. Enquiring about the cheapest times to travel by train.
- In pairs students identify three keywords relevant to the situation that they don't know in TL. They write these on the board in MT.
- As a class they try to translate all the words into TL
- Each pair is then responsible for finding a TL translation for any of their words remaining untranslated.
- In pairs they write a dialogue for the situation incorporating at least five of the new words
- The teacher checks the dialogues
Note
This could be followed up a number of ways depending on space, time, and the size of the class.
- Each pair reads out their dialogue to the class
- Each pair dictates their dialogue to the class
- Pairs mill around reading their dialogues to other pairs
- The dialogues are displayed on the wall and pairs vote for the one they like best.
Variation
This process could also be used to lead into a dialogue in the coursebook.
