20110628 105811 day 3 - videos - elements of class preparation

14

Click here to load reader

Upload: tgdzbspikiocom

Post on 03-May-2017

212 views

Category:

Documents


0 download

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: 20110628 105811 Day 3 - Videos - Elements of Class Preparation

WISE UP DISTANCE TRAINING PROGRAMDAY THREE: Elements of Class Preparation

Teacher’s Guide

The aim of the Wise Up series is to turn students into competent communicators in English. Therefore, they

will be able to manipulate the system, selecting forms that not only make for the coherent text but also

meet goals and fit the ritual constraints of communication.

Communicative competence could be divided into other competences, such as:

Linguistic Competence: control of grammar and lexis

Phonological Competence: control of phonological patterns

Socio-linguistic Competence : control of social constraints in communication according to each

society

Intercultural Competence: control of cultural aspects of a certain language regarding beliefs,

concepts, and mentality

Discursive Competence: control of discursive practices both in written and spoken discourse

Strategic Competence: control of strategies to deal with unexpected situations or information

within communication

Most talks in everyday life use all these competences. Therefore, any method must analyze these aspects of

communication in order to enable learners to create coherent discourse—written or spoken—that is

appropriate for any given situation within any given settings.

In order to achieve such a goal, The Research & Development Department came up with a method based

on the recent studies and beliefs of Discourse Analysis. We understand that Discourse Analysis represents

an insightful area to the analysis of language in use—linguistically and non-linguistically—in any given

situation within any given setting, which we believe to be necessary to promote learners’ communicative

competence. To accomplish that, we have chosen to use real data in an attempt to provide students with

pedagogic material that is as lifelike as possible. Choosing to use authentic texts, we believe that we will be

putting learners in contact with those features of communication mentioned earlier (socio-linguistic,

intercultural, linguistic, and others) and preparing them for their future academic and professional life.

1

Page 2: 20110628 105811 Day 3 - Videos - Elements of Class Preparation

WISE UP DISTANCE TRAINING PROGRAMDAY THREE: Elements of Class Preparation

The method is based on the understanding that both written and spoken discourse must be analyzed

through mode and medium. Mode is an overall analysis of the features of the text and tends to be

understood as a continuum. Medium is the actual system through which a message is conveyed (radio,

newspapers, lectures, journals, and others). Through a combination of mode and medium, discourse will

take place.

It was based on those beliefs that the content of each book was designed to ensure that all topics are

revisited several times from different perspectives and at deeper levels. This is only possible if it is looked at

through a layered perspective, which claims that the relationship between data and discourse analysis

should vary according to the goal of the researcher and the data itself. Different approaches must be used

at times in order to provide different insights into the same data as they examine the same issue from

different angles. A layered view enables us to establish a dialogue between the various analyses, to share

insights, to bridge gaps between concepts, and, above all, to promote understanding.

TG Content

The TG is comprised of four books and three CDs containing the listening activities that take place in the

classroom. Books 1, 2, and 3 are divided into Lessons. Each lesson is comprised of two parts: Unit Class and

Complementary Class.

TG 1: Basic 1, 2, 3 – Lessons 1 to 18

TG 2: Intermediate 1, 2, 3 – Lessons 19 to 36

TG 3: Advanced 1 and 2 – Lessons 37 to 48

Book 4 contains ten modules. Each module contains: ten classes in the book, one Review Class, one Movie

Class, one Song Class, two exams (Oral and Written), and one Feedback Class day.

TG 4: CAL (Classes for Advanced Learners)

The Teacher’s Guide contains the same information you find in the students’ book plus:

A key to all activities: teachers should analyze and compare their keys with students’ answers, taking

the main objective of the each activity into account

Instructions on how to manage classes: teachers are to follow the steps given in order to follow the

patterns established according to the method

2

Page 3: 20110628 105811 Day 3 - Videos - Elements of Class Preparation

WISE UP DISTANCE TRAINING PROGRAMDAY THREE: Elements of Class Preparation

Settings & Problem Solving

Problem Solving is seen as guidance on how to solve problems that may arise while the activity is being

carried out. Teachers should be aware that there is always a gap between the preparation of a class and the

real class. Therefore, not only do teachers need to provide solutions to solve these problems but also make

sure that the method is followed properly even when something unexpected comes up. For example: you

prepare a class for twelve people, but only six show up. One of the absent students is your best student,

the one you always count on to answer the most difficult questions. What do you do? Did you think about

that before running this class?

Obviously, it is impossible to predict all the problems teachers may face in the classroom. However, we

need to develop a sense of reasoning in our practice and make sure we have a plan to solve questions such

as the one mentioned. This is a skill we develop as we prepare and teach more and more different classes,

to different levels and audiences.

One of the most common problems teachers need to solve is the lack of interaction among students, which

affects aspects such as time, class development, and students’ production. In order to help solve this issue,

our method provides teachers with the most suitable Setting for each activity.

Settings are types of classroom spatial organization and grouping patterns designed to facilitate the

interaction among students and teachers. We understand that settings:

increase interaction in the classroom;

expose students to different roles in communication;

change the teacher’s role in the classroom;

motivate students;

increase student talking time (STT).

Here are some hints for class preparation regarding Settings:

Make sure all the settings are planned before your class, according to the number of students you

have.

Draw the pictures of Settings on post-its and stick them next to the activity you are running so you

don’t get confused and don’t damage your TG.

3

Page 4: 20110628 105811 Day 3 - Videos - Elements of Class Preparation

WISE UP DISTANCE TRAINING PROGRAMDAY THREE: Elements of Class Preparation

Ask yourself what you should do if some students are absent or if students from other groups are

making up for a class they have missed. Have a “Plan B” for when that happens.

In case your students are reluctant to participate in group activities or perform individual

presentations, explain that we try to perform lifelike situations such as interviews, presentations,

and interactions. Therefore, they are activities students already perform on a daily basis. We are

also working on their interpersonal skills and increasing motivation.

Chat

Any class becomes alive once students talk and participate in it. Therefore, chats play an important role in

our method. As we work based on output, we expect students to make mistakes not only when they write

but also when they talk. These mistakes are expected in order to shape their language production. For that

reason, we can see chats as moments selected by the teacher to engage students in unplanned talks. While

preparing their classes, teachers should identify the questions that will naturally lead students to a chat.

Most chats are suggested in the TG according to the topic being studied. Teachers can plan questions and

talks before running their classes. It is important to have the topic of the activity in mind when chatting.

That way, the group will not spend time talking without a purpose. There are two types of chat:

Controlled Chat: Mostly yes-no questions. Students are not expected to expand their answers. It is

commonly used in Basic levels.

Open Chat: Mostly content questions. Teachers are supposed to encourage students to expand their

answers. It is commonly used in more Advanced levels.

In order to avoid misunderstandings and wasting time, try to do the following:

Get to know your students’ routines and occupations. Depending on what they do, some subjects

are simply uninteresting.

Avoid expressing personal opinions related to politics and religion, for example.

Be aware of the subject. If you don’t know much about it, do some research.

Stay focused, especially when you teach Advanced students. As they produce more information

than Basic students, it is easy to lose focus of the main topic.

4

Page 5: 20110628 105811 Day 3 - Videos - Elements of Class Preparation

WISE UP DISTANCE TRAINING PROGRAMDAY THREE: Elements of Class Preparation

Links

Links are supposed to provide methodological and emotional flow for the class. For that reason, they must

make students perceive the goal of the activities and the relationship of that goal with the class and the

module.

In view of that, teachers should:

a) Start their class by presenting the lesson goals previously written on the board. These goals can be

found on the top of the first page of the unit or in the discourse section, in the contents pages. They

should always be presented as tasks to be performed in the target language rather than as a list of

grammar or lexical topics. It’s important to emphasize at this point that all the activities in the

Grammar Awareness, Lexical Awareness, Phonological Awareness, Research and Cultural Awareness

sections are linked to the Discourse Focus.

b) Highlight the goal of each activity before starting them and link them to the purpose of the module and

the lesson. Students are used to activities that clearly contain a grammar purpose, so they usually

think:

“Now I’m practicing the Simple Present.” (e.g., Students filling in the blanks with either the Simple

Present or the Present Continuous.)

“Now I’m learning everything about prepositions.” (e.g., Students doing a long multiple-choice

activity.)

They are not used to doing activities that are aimed at developing the perception of implied meaning,

promoting intercultural awareness, exploring transactional talks and conversational constraints,

perceiving elisions and assimilations, analyzing formality in narratives, argumentative strategies, and

others. Links must serve to show them how important these concepts are for their development.

As we deal with real data, students might ask you, “Why am I reading a text about horoscopes?” or “Why

am I moving from horoscopes to relationships?” These questions are easily answered if they understand

why they are doing that. That’s why linking the activities by showing students their main objective helps not

only to promote understanding but also to keep the flow of the class. Most links are already suggested in

5

Page 6: 20110628 105811 Day 3 - Videos - Elements of Class Preparation

WISE UP DISTANCE TRAINING PROGRAMDAY THREE: Elements of Class Preparation

the TG, but in some activities you may not find them. In this case, you should create a link related to the

activity main goal.

Output Awareness

Have you thought about how to deal with your students’ silence in the classroom? How do you overcome

silence when you teach Basic levels, for example? And how do you deal with students who don’t seem

interested in a certain subject?

Output Awareness refers to the teachers’ capacity to help students overcome silence, which may have

many reasons, such as: fear of mistakes, shyness, time they need to think about what to say, and others. In

the discourse approach landscape, the goal is to lead students from sentence level to discourse level. How

can teachers do that?

Some ground rules have been established to help teachers in this task.

Make room for production: that refers to the relationship between teacher talking time (TTT) and

student talking time (STT). Teachers should respect their students’ natural flow of speech (quantity

and quality), giving preference to student talking time (in pairs, in groups, talking to the teacher).

Give ground to production: questions and tasks must be discourse-oriented. This can be achieved

by answering this question: which of the following will lead students to produce discourse instead

of sentences?

• What did you use to do twenty years ago?

• Tell us what your life was like…let’s say…twenty years ago.

Teachers tend to use grammar-oriented using questions that lead students to sentence production.

However, these questions don’t guarantee students are going to produce exactly what we expect them to.

Therefore, teachers need to focus on shaping language production, aiming at discourse investigation, as the

following extract explains.

6

Page 7: 20110628 105811 Day 3 - Videos - Elements of Class Preparation

WISE UP DISTANCE TRAINING PROGRAMDAY THREE: Elements of Class Preparation

Shaping Language Production (Discourse Investigation)

By making discourse-oriented questions, teachers will hear a wide range of language constructions and

choices. It is clear that teachers should intervene and correct the mistakes using the suggested correction

techniques, but is that all? Aren’t teachers also supposed to interact with correct utterances to encourage

students’ discourse production? To shape discourse is to provide students with new tools apart from the

ones they already have. It has nothing to do with correct or incorrect sentences. It refers to constant

improvement. Make comments such as, “Come on, make your statement more formal.” or “What are other

possibilities to make it sound more polite?” or “Can you think of other ways to state your point of view?” or

“Okay…Let’s say you are supposed to give me a definition of that same thing without using the verb to be.”

or “Apart from the Simple Past, can you use other verb forms to describe your life twenty years ago?” or

“You know…what you said might be interpreted in two different ways… How can you avoid this

misunderstanding?” or “All right, your sentence is absolutely correct, but it sounds out of place…You don’t

address a waiter that way…Can you guys think of other possible sentences?”

Correction Techniques

Correction Techniques are used by the teacher as a means of making mistakes a positive part of the

learning process. All mistakes should be used to help students deepen their understanding of the target

language. Because of that, we do not use correction-on-the-spot. We understand correction-on-the-spot as

the technique in which the teacher does not only spot the mistake at the moment it is made, but also

provides the correct answer straight away.

Types of Correction Techniques:

Self-correction: The teacher makes the student think about what he has just said and correct

himself/herself. The teacher should repeat the sentence up to the point at which the mistake was made so

as to help the student perceive the problem. It is the technique of choice for previously taught items.

Teachers should use Self-correction as a way to avoid fossilized mistakes as well, which are common in

Advanced levels.

Group-correction: The teacher involves the whole group in the process of correction. It’s usually more

appropriate for recently taught items in which most of the group shares the same doubts.

7

Page 8: 20110628 105811 Day 3 - Videos - Elements of Class Preparation

WISE UP DISTANCE TRAINING PROGRAMDAY THREE: Elements of Class Preparation

Rephrasing: The teacher reacts to a mistake without direct correction. He interacts with what the student is

saying without interrupting or breaking the flow of the conversation.

Student – And we was all there waiting for the theater to open...

Teacher – You were waiting for the theater to open? Did you get there too early?

Student – Yes, we were waiting because it was too early.

It should be used in two situations:

When the teacher doesn’t want to break the flow of the conversation, probably because the

activity focuses on a more communicative aspect.

When the student makes a mistake regarding a topic that hasn’t been studied yet and the teacher

believes it’s not the right time to explain it to them.

Playing the Fool: It should be used to deal with misunderstandings in which the error the student has made

is mostly a semantic issue. It resembles what happens in real life when we don’t understand something

somebody else says.

Student – My sister went on holiday with your husband.

Teacher – My husband?

Student – Oh, no, her husband.

Besides the four techniques mentioned, it is important to highlight some hints and analyses regarding the

correction of Task-based Activities and Written Assignments.

Correction of Task-based Activities: (individual, pair, or group work) While students are working in pairs,

groups, or individually for a presentation, what does the Teacher’s Guide mean when it says, “visit the pairs

and help students?”

We can include the following actions.

Give them ideas and support regarding the task content and organization.

Identify mistakes and misuses and use Group Correction (do not give them the answer).

8

Page 9: 20110628 105811 Day 3 - Videos - Elements of Class Preparation

WISE UP DISTANCE TRAINING PROGRAMDAY THREE: Elements of Class Preparation

As they present their work, you will spot new mistakes and misuses that you will have to

interact with as well. But correction within the group is a must to help class flow and students’

development.

Feedback on the Correction of Written Assignments:

In order to properly understand the importance of this issue, it is appropriate to share Sérgio Barreto’s

experience with his Advanced 1 group:

I had two wonderful, extremely dedicated students in my Advanced 1 group. They always did all their

assignments. In the middle of the module, something called my attention: their discourse production

improved concerning their Written Assignments’ length and quality. Nonetheless, the number of mistakes

increased. As I took a first glance at their production, I was amazed at their capacity to encode and organize

ideas. When I took a second, more careful look to spot mistakes and correct them, I was surprised by the

quantity of mistakes that I hadn’t noticed during my first reading. Their discourse power distracted me from

their mistakes…but I needed to mark them, all of them. That was the moment when I realized the

importance of the “Teacher’s Notes”. I needed to tell them that the mistakes were part of the process. I

didn’t want them to stop taking risks, but I knew the effect that the quantity of marks would have on their

confidence. The “Teacher’s Notes” is the space you must use to make your students aware of your opinion

about their production. It gives the whole correction a new meaning. I’ve already mentioned at some

meetings that I’ve noticed that the Discourse Approach and the use of real data lead students to make more

mistakes. That happens because we cannot control the input students have in the classroom, so they

internalize structures, words, constructions, in their own specific fashion. I believe that’s much better, much

more real than controlling every single word they learn. We need to deal with the side effects. Teachers

must decide between being a mistake catcher or a discourse analyst.

Speech

Speech concerns the language used by the teacher during class, taking the level of the students into

account. Speech is made of linguistic and non-linguistic features (body language, visual language—

drawings, pictures—and others). In addition to that, teachers must carefully analyze the language they use

in order to promote real-life communication in the classroom (which means avoiding the use of “sanitized”

9

Page 10: 20110628 105811 Day 3 - Videos - Elements of Class Preparation

WISE UP DISTANCE TRAINING PROGRAMDAY THREE: Elements of Class Preparation

language in order to make themselves clear or understood). Speech should be looked at as a tool to avoid

misunderstandings. Teachers should not be eager to make themselves understood at any cost.

Elements of Speech:

Body Language: It helps personification of actions and things in general, being very important for students

at Basic levels.

Eye Contact: It is of great importance for students at all levels because it keeps them emotionally linked to

the class.

Stress and Intonation: They set patterns of native-like talk, and give color and shades to words and

phrases.

Articulation: It is extremely important when dealing with students at Basic levels, but it should not be

confused with speaking unnaturally slowly.

Teacher Talking Time (TTT): In order to understand the nature and role of TTT, we should ask the following

question, “Why do English teachers speak and what is their purpose while using language in the

classroom?”

Here are some answers:

To instruct: teachers guide students as to what they have to do and how they have to do it, as

well as help them in case of misunderstandings.

To explain: teachers explain language through examples, questions, role-plays, narratives, and

board record.

To motivate: teachers motivate students. But motivating is not only saying, “Go, student A!”

and “Great, student B!” We motivate our students every time we turn our classroom into a

place for a get-together. Motivation is much more related to the pleasure of meeting each

other than to an explicit motto.

Taking these elements into account, how much (and “how necessarily”) do you speak? Teachers’ use of

language in the classroom should always respect these three elements: instruct, explain, and motivate. And

10

Page 11: 20110628 105811 Day 3 - Videos - Elements of Class Preparation

WISE UP DISTANCE TRAINING PROGRAMDAY THREE: Elements of Class Preparation

it should be based on two maxims: naturalness and conciseness. Do not use other assumptions such as

“teachers should speak less” or “teachers must not speak all the time.” These rules will guide you to

unnaturalness (or, in other words, artificiality).

Real-life Language: Teachers should not invent a language to make themselves understood. To use real-life

language in the classroom is to respect students’ trust. They believe that teachers will help them learn, so

they shouldn’t be misguided with the excuse of avoiding suffering and difficulty. With this attitude,

teachers will be in fact just postponing an inevitable realization and making learning more painful.

We believe that real-life language must respect two main aspects that establish a rich dialogue:

Appropriateness of language selection: determining which lexical items, grammar structures,

pronunciation patterns, sentence constructions are, in fact, used in real-life situations and are not

“sanitized classroom language.”

Appropriateness to the audience: while selecting the language to be used in the classroom, one

must also think, “To whom am I talking?” If these issues are overlooked, teachers may fall into one

or both of these traps:

• Using appropriate language but not perceiving the nature of the audience (Basic,

Intermediate or Advanced?).

• “Sanitizing” or inventing structures that follow mother-tongue patterns in order to make it

accessible to learners (Basic, Intermediate or Advanced).

Vocabulary Investigation & Explanation

Vocabulary investigation is a procedure for the teaching of words and expressions and the use of

appropriate techniques, such as lexical groups, strong collocations, fixed expressions, and language chunks

to investigate (to use) the vocabulary. It is very important to understand the difference between explaining

and investigating words and expressions.

11

Page 12: 20110628 105811 Day 3 - Videos - Elements of Class Preparation

WISE UP DISTANCE TRAINING PROGRAMDAY THREE: Elements of Class Preparation

Why do we investigate words?

Whenever a word or expression is explained, students automatically search for a correspondent in their

mother tongue. When words are investigated, we “break that mirror” and open up a range of possibilities

of different uses of these words. This helps not only to expand vocabulary but also to change a student’s

mindset towards learning a second language.

Which words should we investigate?

We should investigate the simple and common words. The more difficult, more complex ones should be

explained (see notes below about explanation techniques).

Simple and common words play a bigger role in expressions, collocations, and chunks. Think about it: which

word is richer in meaning and application, thing or trustworthy? Take a look at the dictionary.

You will detect that investigating thing will be much more profitable for your students. On the other hand,

if you select trustworthy you will find: a trustworthy person or a trustworthy company… So what? Is it

really precious information to promote students fluency? Or will a simple explanation of its meaning do?

What techniques do we use to explain vocabulary?

Body language

Visual aids

Examples

Contextualization

Definition

Word games

What techniques do we use to investigate vocabulary?

Let’s use the words time and thing as examples to understand how we investigate vocabulary and use the

following techniques.

Strong Collocations: words that frequently co-occur

12

Page 13: 20110628 105811 Day 3 - Videos - Elements of Class Preparation

WISE UP DISTANCE TRAINING PROGRAMDAY THREE: Elements of Class Preparation

time: local time / prime time / time bomb / time-consuming

thing: nice thing / lovely thing / good thing

Lexical Groups: words that share a community of meaning

time: time / hour / minute / seconds

thing: thing / stuff

Fixed Expressions: short phrases that allow no variation

time: time’s up / we’re out of time / take your time / time will tell

thing: the real thing / there’s no such thing / a thing or two

Semi-fixed Expressions: short phrases with slots that allow variation

time: Have a (good/great/lovely) time.

thing: The (interesting/important/main/best) thing is… / make things (easy/difficult/hard)

Language Chunks/Topic Shifters: bits of language that help speakers link ideas or prepare the

listener for what’s coming next

time: At the same time...

thing: The things is… / Among other things...

Why do we use Board Record for Vocabulary Investigation?

The use of Board Record indicates that the teacher wants to draw attention to the topic. Board Record

helps students use the words and expressions during class. Bear in mind that when we don’t write on the

board, students tend to ignore the information explained or investigated, because they think it is not

important.

13

Page 14: 20110628 105811 Day 3 - Videos - Elements of Class Preparation

WISE UP DISTANCE TRAINING PROGRAMDAY THREE: Elements of Class Preparation

Closing

The Closing is directly related to the feedback the teacher gives at the end of a class to talk about his

students’ learning process. Closings have a motivational goal: to help students relate to the process.

Teachers are expected to warn students when they are not doing their best, to congratulate them, to guide

them on how to study, to remind them of tasks, and others. Up to Basic 3, the Closing is to be done in

Portuguese. Therefore, every time a teacher closes a class, students need to be aware of how far they can

go and how they are doing so far. For that reason, never close a class by saying only, “Have a great

weekend.” As teachers, it is part of our responsibility to guide our students through their learning process.

There are four types of messages to be transmitted at the Closing.

Praising: make your students aware of the fact that they are doing well.

Telling off: make students aware that they are doing less than they could. Help them organize their

studies.

Cooling down: make students aware that some difficulties are part of the process.

Cheering up: make students aware that they are almost there.

All these elements are very important and should not be overlooked. Closings should also be about

discourse awareness. As teachers are supposed to open their class showing students what they are learning

and the relevance of that topic to the process, they are supposed to close their class telling them what they

have seen, reinforcing the main goal of the class.

14