English teaching professional 90 jan 2014

James Pengelley reveals why repetition rulesChaz Pugliese interviews Adrian Underhill PREPARING STUDENTS FOR EXAMS 2 13 Eva Modrá paves the way for the C & G ISESOL YOUR COURSEBOOK 3 Rac

Issue 90

January 2014

The Leading Practical Magazine For English Language Teachers Worldwide

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For young learners aged 7-12 years

James Pengelley reveals why repetition rules

Chaz Pugliese interviews Adrian Underhill

PREPARING STUDENTS FOR EXAMS 2 13

Eva Modrá paves the way for the C & G ISESOL

YOUR COURSEBOOK 3

Rachael Roberts considers comprehension exercises

Valerie Sartor demonstrates creative use of texts

from different genres

Alan Maley warns of impending doom

Lesley Lanir mixes music and language

Olga Makinina prompts her students to plan a trip

Nick Dall points out practical ideas for

teaching texting

Emilia Siravo appreciates the authenticity of

corpus language

TEACHING YOUNG LEARNERS

Merve Oflaz delights in the diversity of her students

EAP

David Heathfield pays homage to Mario Rinvolucri

by adapting his ideas for academic writing

FIVE THINGS YOU ALWAYS WANTED 61

TO KNOW ABOUT: IWBs

Nicky Hockly weighs up the worth

of the interactive whiteboardWEBWATCHER 63

Russell Stannard embraces e-portfolios

Contents

Includes materials designed to photocopy

Iwould like to thank all those readers who took part in

our recent survey Your replies to the questions made

fascinating and instructive reading, and I have compiled

quite a long list of the topics that you would like to see

addressed in future issues of ETp I’m pleased to say that I

have articles waiting in the wings on many of these topics,

and these will appear in the year ahead Pronunciation

came high on many people’s wish-lists, so they will no

doubt be pleased to see a new series on the subject by

Robin Walker, beginning in this issue with our main feature

‘Pronunciation matters’

In our poll of favourite sections of ETp, It Works in Practice

came out top yet again I am often short of items to put on

this spread, and it is clear that readers really do appreciate

quick ideas which they can implement immediately – and

which they know will work because they have been

submitted by fellow professionals So why not get in touch

with something that has worked for you?

I will also be trying to increase the number of photocopiable

materials that we provide, as the survey revealed that these

are particularly valued Beginning in this issue, we have a

photocopiable worksheet based on the Scrapbook, and we

have plans for a new series of articles with worksheets to

begin in March

Elsewhere in the magazine, you will find that numbers

feature quite prominently Chaz Pugliese starts a new series

Editorial

in which he asks five questions to people in different areas

of ELT, beginning with Adrian Underhill James Pengelley believes everything should be done twice; Louise Guyett has devised three interactive pronunciation activities; Douglas Williams has ten mantras to keep teachers motivated; and Olga Makinina develops a series of lessons

to appeal to seven different types of learners

Finally, Alan Maley thinks our days are numbered and gives his choice of books to read to help us as we rush headlong towards disaster

Don’t forget that as a subscriber to ETp, you

have access to the full content of our website

at www.etprofessional.com, where you can find

videos, blogs, a bookshop with discount deals and a complete archive of articles from previous issues of the magazine.

Helena Gomm Editor

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Pronunciation matters

M A I N F E A T U R E

Pronunciation

matters

If you ask students which areas of

learning English matter most, they’ll inevitably include pronunciation If you ask teachers, you get much the same response But if you look more carefully at what actually happens in the classroom, you’ll discover that all too often pronunciation

is usually done on an ad-hoc basis, that

it is not usually programmed in the way that grammar or vocabulary are, and that it is quite often relegated to an

‘add-on’ activity for when there is time

in the class, or dropped altogether when there isn’t

This is a sad state of affairs because pronunciation matters, and it matters a lot In fact, rather than being peripheral

to learning English, it is absolutely central to the learning process Indeed, poor pronunciation can have a very serious effect on everything else we try

to do in the English language classroom,

as we shall now see

1 The impact

on speaking

The first and most obvious impact of poor pronunciation is on speaking

Saying a word or a name, only to be met

by the blank stare of the listener’s incomprehension is immensely frustrating for learners

We know this, of course We’re teachers But it is easy for us to forget just how serious the impact of poor pronunciation is on our learners’ fluency and confidence, which is why we need something to jog our memories from time to time This happened to me recently when I was travelling in Poland

My lack of confidence in my pronunciation left me hopelessly dumb

on many occasions And the more I struggled to get words out of my mouth, the less willing I was to try to do so

In general, when learners find a word difficult to pronounce they avoid using it As teachers, we frequently interpret this as limited vocabulary rather than poor pronunciation I spent over 20 years teaching English for tourism, and always asked my final-year students to give a short presentation on tourism management as part of their

Robin Walker argues

for more emphasis on a

neglected area.

Poor pronunciation can have a very serious effect

on everything else

we try to do in the English language classroom

oral assessment At their level, the word

infrastructure is hard to avoid in a

presentation like this, but for Spanish speakers of English it is also very hard

to pronounce Some of my students would go to considerable lengths to avoid the word in their presentations, and initially I would complain of their limited vocabulary Similarly, the word

usually is hard for many learners

because of the / / sound The more adept students wisely avoid usually

altogether, preferring to say normally

instead But once again, they are avoiding a word because of pronunciation problems

Many learners also avoid grammar structures that they find hard to

pronounce A classic example of this is

third conditionals These are not

conceptually difficult for most learners,

and they don’t cause too many problems

with written practice exercises But they

are noticeably absent from most

intermediate learners’ spoken English

This is usually because the contractions,

vowel reductions and consonant clusters

in a sentence like If I’d know about

English consonants, I’d’ve learned

Chinese instead are actually very difficult

to articulate Faced with the significant

pronunciation difficulties of English

third conditionals, learners either avoid

the structure altogether, or simplify it to

things like If I know, I learn Chinese

Can we blame them? No Can we help

them? Yes Do they need more grammar

exercises? No Do they need help with

pronunciation? Yes

2 The impact

on listening

The second obvious problem of poor

pronunciation is its impact on listening

The most immediately tangible issue

here is that learners either fail to identify

the sounds, words or phrases of English,

or they confuse them with others At the

level of individual sounds, for example,

poor recognition leads to confusion

between words that differ by only one

sound (minimal pairs) Classic examples

heart, but there are countless more.

In the 80s and 90s, of course, we were

told that learners would use context to

solve any ambiguities between minimal

pairs More recently, however, research

has supported the need for learners to

be able to distinguish clearly between

individual phonemes, either because, as

Jennifer Jenkins asserts, lower-level

learners fail to make appropriate use of

contextual clues, or because, as John

Field points out, automatic recognition

of individual sounds and whole words

frees the brain’s processing power for other aspects of listening

At the level of full phrases, poor pronunciation skills can mean that listeners do not capture the significance

of specific patterns of sentence stress

For example, if we asked a group of students working on an exercise Who’s finished? (with the stress on finished) we

would expect the students who had completed the exercise to raise their hands In contrast, if we were to ask

Who hasn’t finished? with the stress on hasn’t, we would hope that the students

who were still working on the exercise would raise their hands

process new data that arrives, which means that they lose the thread of the text as a whole

On identifying a student as having problems with listening, we often prescribe additional extended listening work for that student But unless the underlying pronunciation problems are dealt with first, this additional listening work will only create further failure, and will confirm the learner’s view that they don’t understand spoken English

3 The impact

on writing

If the impact of poor pronunciation on speaking and listening feels familiar to most English teachers, the idea that pronunciation can impact negatively on writing will probably come as a surprise However, one of the major headaches for learners of English is the absence of any clear, simple relationship between how words are spelt in English and how

they sound in speech

In another of my Polish adventures,

I had to travel to a city that was called

Wooch, or at least that is the way it

seemed to my inexpert ears Try as I might, I couldn’t see the name of that city on the indicator board at the station

in Warsaw This was hardly surprising in retrospect, since the name I was looking for was Łód ´z

My invented spelling (Wooch) was the

product of my poor understanding of the sound–spelling relationships in Polish That is to say, it was a problem of poor pronunciation skills The same thing happens with students learning English, and apart from the issue of missing trains, ‘invented’ spellings make it impossible for learners to check new words in a dictionary Try looking up a word like photograph, for example, if you

think it begins with an f Find the word city, if you think it begins with an s.

In addition, invented spellings find their way into students’ written work although, as teachers, we seldom see pronunciation as the origin Some of these invented spellings can create real words that have a totally different meaning from the intended word My Year 2 tourism students regularly described one of their region’s most prized fish dishes as ‘Hake in crap sauce’ The most significant difference between crab and crap is the longer

vowel in crab Spanish, however, does

not have the vowel length distinctions of

Faced with the

significant pronunciation

difficulties of English

third conditionals,

learners either avoid

the structure altogether,

or simplify it

Perhaps the most significant impact of poor pronunciation

finished the exercise This would suggest that these students don’t perceive the stress on hasn’t, or that they perceive the

stress but fail to give it any communicative value Either way, their raised hands tell me that they are wrongly constructing meaning around the main verb finished That is to say,

their poor pronunciation skills have impacted badly on their understanding

of meaning at sentence level

However, perhaps the most significant impact of poor pronunciation

on listening occurs at the level of

extended rather than micro-listening

Faced with a long recording – of one or even two minutes, say – many learners seem to switch off As their teachers, we become aware of this when we see their eyes glaze over or their faces go blank

What is happening here is that because

of poor pronunciation skills, these learners are having to use too much of the processing power of their short-term memories in the recognition of

individual sounds or complete words in the flow of speech As a result, their short-term memories simply ‘overload’, and this in turn leaves them unable to

Pronunciation

matters

robin@englishglobalcom.com

Robin Walker is a teacher, trainer and materials writer He is

editor of Speak Out! the

newsletter of the IATEFL Pronunciation SIG, and

is the author of Teaching

the Pronunciation of English as a Lingua Franca, an OUP

Walter, C ‘Teaching phonology for reading

comprehension’ Speak Out! 40 2009

English and so, although I was saying

crab correctly in class, my students were

perceiving crap, and this was carrying

through into their written work

Less embarrassing, perhaps, was the

regular appearance of festival at the

beginning of a series of points in the

‘for-and-against’ type essays my Year 3

students were required to produce:

Festival, I want to talk about the

advantages of tourism Festival, we need

to look at the history of tourism Try as I

might, I couldn’t work out where they

had got this use of the word from

Eventually, I asked a group of students

about it, only to be told that it was a

phrase I used constantly at the

beginning of my classes The light went

on – I was saying first of all, and they

were hearing festival.

4 The impact

on reading

Although we expect poor pronunciation

to impact negatively on speaking and

listening, and we can soon see how it

might impact on writing, many of

teachers I’ve worked with initially find it

hard to see any relationship between

pronunciation and reading However,

recent research shows that poor

pronunciation has a very serious impact

on reading, especially for learners from

beginner to intermediate level

When we read a text, we process the

words on the page or screen in our

brain’s short-term memory (sometimes

also called the working memory) This

processing is controlled by the ‘central

executive’ of the short-term memory,

which sends the words around a

‘phonological loop’ in order to prepare

them for their storage in the long-term

memory As the words go around the

phonological loop, we say them ‘aloud’

inside our heads This is known as

‘sub-vocalisation’

As you read this article, you are

actually ‘saying’ the words to yourself

inside your head as part of the process of

storing them Because you are an expert

user of English, this process is automatic

and completely efficient However,

research has shown that if we don’t know

the correct pronunciation of a word, the

‘sound trace’ of that word as it is being sent around the phonological loop can suffer decay Words that are subject to decay are not sufficiently well-processed

to be dealt with by the central executive when they get back there (if they get back there at all), and so they cannot be sent off to the long-term memory for permanent storage

The overall outcome of these events

in the short-term memory is that after a short while, the reader has no recollection

of what they have just read Too many words were lost in the phonological loop and failed to reach the long-term memory Because of this, the reader has

to go back to the beginning of the text and start again As with listening, it is all

Pronunciation: the heart

of the matter

It should be obvious by now that I firmly believe that pronunciation is not just another aspect of learning English Rather, it lies at the very heart of what

we do, and neglecting it can have very serious implications for our learners’ chances of making adequate progress in all other areas We’ve seen in detail how this is true for each of the four language skills, but similar arguments can be made for the impact of poor pronunciation on the teaching/learning

of grammar and vocabulary One recent grammar book, for example, includes a

CD of pronunciation exercises directly related to each of the grammar areas covered in it Similarly, good coursebooks and good ELT teaching materials tie vocabulary work into pronunciation practise

In future issues of ETp I will consider a

number of different aspects of teaching pronunciation, beginning with

pronunciation for young learners, and going on to pronunciation for teenagers

I will then discuss what we can do with the learner’s mother-tongue

pronunciation in the English class, and finally take a critical look at some of the technology that is now available to help learners with their pronunciation Hopefully, through these five articles – but most importantly, through your application of their contents – we can put pronunciation back into ELT classrooms in a principled, meaningful way

Pronunciation

matters

Recent research shows that poor pronunciation has a very serious impact on reading, especially for learners from beginner

to intermediate level

too easy for us, as teachers, to spot ‘poor readers’ and to try to help them by giving them additional reading activities But these won’t be effective if we don’t get to the root of the problem, which is poor pronunciation

ELT author and Oxford University applied linguistics researcher, Catherine Walter, has worked on the problems of L2 reading for some time now She surprised a lot of experienced teachers with the conclusion to her talk on L2 reading at the 2008 IATEFL conference

Later, in an article published in Speak Out! (the newsletter of the IATEFL

Pronunciation Special Interest Group) she repeated her argument that everything we currently know about the way we read in a second language

‘suggests strongly that teaching phonology will help L2 learners to read better’ In

the same article, she went on to say that

‘the sorts of activities that conscious teachers have been using for decades will be useful for developing L2 reading comprehension skills: activities like minimal pair recognition activities, activities for recognising stress patterns and dictations of sentences containing confusable words’.

pronunciation-Are you looking to get noticed at

IATEFL?

We will, once again, be giving out the ever popular ETp teacher resource bag from our stand at IATEFL.

We can include an item for your business or

organisation into this years bag.

As there are a limited number of items allowed in the bag, please book early to avoid dissapointment.

For more information, or to book one of the

available slots, please call

Helena hughes on 01536 747333

Task-based Learning (TBL) has

become the main player in recent methodological strategies It has formed the basis of the current trend away from form-driven approaches to teaching, as

it gives primary importance to the use

of language to achieve the communicative goals of a task, rather than merely to the production of a discrete number of ‘correct forms’

Since its rise in popularity, there has been much comment on the importance

of task cycle repetition, in which an initial task is followed by a ‘noticing’

stage, or perhaps a more explicit language analysis stage, and then the students are encouraged to perform an identical, similar or parallel task – giving them an opportunity to implement, improve and practise the same language The argument here, as proposed by Peter Skehan, Scott Thornbury and Jane Willis, is that completion of the first task leads to familiarity with meaning, which means that when the students move on to the second, similar or identical task, they have more cognitive resources available

to devote to form manipulation and self-monitoring, and a greater long-term awareness of the linguistic forms needed

to convey appropriate meaning more precisely

The fundamental features of this procedure may be summarised as follows:

1 An authentic communicative task is chosen

2 The teacher takes a back-seat role in the first attempt at the task, allowing

the students to negotiate meaning with their own resources

3 The language needed to do the task is analysed, discussed and improved

4 The task is repeated, to allow an opportunity for the students to develop monitoring skills

Provided the task itself is well-defined, this is arguably a very good framework, not just for TBL, but for an array of teaching approaches that promote fluency ahead of accuracy and, in fact, may have significantly wider-reaching applications in the development of a more generalised framework that promotes the development of communicative competency

Doing it again

I have been developing a accuracy’ routine using Community Language Learning (CLL) with my current group of students CLL is a student-centred approach based on psychotherapy principles, with the primary aim of reducing the anxiety associated with language learning, and ultimately developing communicative fluency A typical CLL lesson follows a

‘fluency-then-choose–record–reflect cycle.

The students work in small groups and decide on a topic they would like to discuss The conversation is recorded, utterance by utterance, with the students putting any questions they have to the teacher, who immediately reformulates, models, drills and encourages them throughout the process The class then reflects on the strengths and weaknesses

of their completion of the task; the

James Pengelley

explores the benefits of

task repetition.

Recording a

conversation again after

the language analysis

stage, so that the

second attempt can be

compared with the first,

may have huge benefits

conversation is transcribed and

analysed, where appropriate

This is where the traditional CLL

lesson stops – the transcript and/or

context being the focus for more

production or explicit form practice in

subsequent lessons However, some

people, including Scott Thornbury, have

suggested that recording the conversation

again after the language analysis stage,

so that the second attempt can be

compared with the first, may have huge

benefits for the students’ confidence and

the development of desirable features of

language production (particularly features

of effective discourse management)

If the essence of the communicative

task is considered to be a stage in which

students are able to negotiate and create

formed the basis of my experimental practice for my DELTA Module 2 assignment

Method

The experiment was conducted with a group of Colombian adult elementary students (in week six of a twelve-week course) who were joined by the school receptionist to make the numbers up to six They were invited to choose a topic they wished to discuss, which was then recorded utterance by utterance The dialogue was transcribed at the end of

the first task as a dictation, and then reflected on, with relevant language highlighted This language included use

of coordinating conjunctions and effective intonation across sentences The conversation was then re-recorded, and compared to the first task according

to the grid above

It was predicted that, due to the nature of CLL and the use of immediate reformulation, structural complexity would not be a true reflection of the benefits of task repetition in CLL, as Martin Bygate has shown it to be in TBL

their own hypotheses about meaning –

whether or not reformulation and input

from the teacher comes immediately and

in the midst of, or following completion

of, the task – it is plausible to

hypothesise that in order to maximise

the benefit of a fluency-then-accuracy

approach, a repetition of the task cycle

is necessary and conducive to improving

both fluency and accuracy

Catherine Doughty and Elizabeth

Varela note that the use of reformulation

or ‘recasting’ in CLL may only influence

the lesson in as far as providing a shift

of emphasis on the importance of

accuracy However, I would argue that it

may instil a stronger sense of ownership

of errors in individual learners and

develop monitoring skills if it occurs as

a part of the first task (as opposed to

post-task) – provided it is done in a

supportive and sensitive way

An experiment

To test the effect of task repetition in a

fluency-first approach and to explore its

potential benefits beyond the realm of

TBL, I designed a CLL lesson, which

Rather, elements of discourse and

phonological management would be

improved in the second task cycle, as

negotiation of meaning had been

effectively dealt with in the first

Results

The transcripts and recordings of both

tasks were analysed, using raw data and

basic ratios based on Bygate’s

investigation of the benefits of task

repetition in TBL Because of the nature

of the conversation that the students

produced, it was not possible to

establish the benefits of a full range of

discourse management strategies (asking

follow-up questions, for example) and

these figures are intended only to serve

as indicators of the broader potential

that task repetition may have, and to

encourage further investigation

Analysis

These results suggest that task repetition

may be a powerful tool for improving

the following elements of performance,

all of which produce a better effect on

the listener:

Effective management of

communication strategies

Smoother, more continuous delivery,

and developing familiarisation with

natural pace of speech

Development of an awareness of

sentence complexity

Greater grammatical accuracy

Phonological accuracy, especially over

longer phrases and sentence structures

(Crucially, it is these suprasegmental

features which are considered by

Adrian Underhill to be primary in the

phonological management of spoken

discourse.They are notoriously

difficult for learners of English to

manage and, as Chia Suan Chong

points out, are often neglected by

mainstream materials.)

Improvements in the accuracy of

language use have been demonstrated by

Bygate in TBL task cycle repetition The

idea is that in the first task, negotiation

of meaning is the primary focus, and in the second, the students have more cognitive resources available to self-monitor and to attend to and incorporate highlighted language from a language analysis stage Importantly, these benefits actually extend beyond simple measures of linguistic accuracy and include essential (yet too often neglected) features of communication such as communicative and

phonological competency

The results of this experiment are intended only as an exploratory suggestion to highlight the extent of the potential benefits of extending the concept

of the communicative task and the benefits of task repetition beyond those established by proponents of TBL to all fluency-then-accuracy approaches

thehairychef@gmail.com

James Pengelley is currently a teacher at the British Council in Hong Kong, having previously worked in Australia, Thailand and Colombia He is an avid swimmer, baker and consumer of vast amounts of dark chocolate, and loves the occasional discussion on dealing with phonology in the classroom.

Bygate, M ‘Effects of task repetition:

appraising the developing language of learners’ In Willis, J and Willis, D (Eds)

Challenge and Change in Language Teaching Macmillan Heinemann 1996

Doughty, C and Varela, E ‘Communicative focus on form’ In Doughty, C and

Williams, J (Eds) Focus on Form in Classroom Second Language Acquisition

CUP 1998 Skehan, P ‘Second language acquisition research and task-based instruction’ In

Willis, J and Willis, D (Eds) Challenge and Change in Language Teaching Macmillan

Heinemann 1996 Suan Chong, C ‘Dogme’ Presentation given at the IATEFL conference, Harrogate

2010 Thornbury, S ‘Awareness, appropriation

and autonomy’ English Teaching Professional 40 2005

Thornbury, S ‘Reformulation and restructuring: tasks that promote noticing’

ELT Journal 51 (4) 1997 Underhill, A Sound Foundations: Learning and Teaching Pronunciation Macmillan

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1Adrian, perhaps not many people

know that, in addition to being a

teacher, you’re also an accomplished

jazz guitarist The first question I’d

like to ask you is: What have you

learnt as a teacher from being a jazz

musician?

I think I have learnt something about

listening to what other people are saying

and doing There’s a big link between

music and language, and I think that in

listening carefully to music, and to

individual notes inside fast phrases, I’ve

been helped to listen to how people

articulate speech: things like sounds

within a cluster, pitch, rhythm, emphasis

The second thing is that I think jazz, and

perhaps all music, gives you the skill of

boldness, of confidence to jump in, even

if you’re not quite ready When playing

jazz, you can’t just lean the ladder and

climb up it when you are ready

Sometimes you have to climb the ladder

before knowing where to lean it Part of

this is knowing that you will make

so-called mistakes – and that’s another

thing, mistakes are part of performance

and, in language, they are part of both

creativity and learning Caleb Gattegno

used to say that mistakes are a gift to the

syllabus Jazz has taught me to love

mistakes – and to encourage them, not to

be dismayed by them

2 Jazz great Miles Davis famously

said ‘Music is the silence

between the notes’ Is silence

important in the ELT classroom?

Of course The trouble with language is

that it’s associated with speaking, filling

the airspace Yet silence is the most

underused resource in the classroom, so

no one gets respite from the clamour – to

look inside, to reflect for a few seconds,

to touch base with their learning Lack of

silence is exhausting, and can take the

shape and meaning out of a lesson With

music, it’s the space and timing between the notes that makes melodies what they are, as much as the notes themselves

Silence is free, it allows us teachers to wait, reflect, before leaping in, and it allows students to rehearse, reformulate, listen to their inner voice Silence offers the working structure to the lesson, and reminds us to search for the least that is enough in all class interventions One intervention, plus holding a certain space, can be more powerful and effective than two interventions – and quicker, and less exhausting

There’s another type of silence which is

‘loaded’, not comfortable, impatient, somehow judgemental rather than watching and waiting Everyone has experience of that and even brings it to class, and we have to rediscover the first kind, which is part of creativity

3Could teaching without a coursebook be compared to playing jazz, in that jazz musicians don’t normally follow sheet music?

They may not follow the sheet music, but there is still the effect of that sheet music there in the background, providing the key, tempo, number of bars, feel, etc And this provides the structure within which the musician improvises And I think this may

be similar to teaching a lesson, in that you have a lesson plan but, hopefully, you do not follow the plan too closely because,

as the lesson unfolds, it becomes a living/

learning interaction, not a pre-scripted exchange Thus the teacher departs from the plan just as a jazz player does from the sheet music, but both plan and sheet music are needed to provide a framework

to contain the improvisation This is what makes games so attractive and creative

Take football: there are very few rules, just

‘Get the ball down there and don’t touch

it with your hands And try to do this more often than the other side’ And what a

magnificent game! I don’t teach very often these days, but if I did, I wouldn’t use a book, I would use games If I had to use a book, it would be only as a route map I think spontaneity is more meaningful for the students Spontaneity doesn’t mean

‘no structure, anything goes’ It means allowing the students the right space, without providing too many rules, knowing how to adjust the structure Facilitators have a nice phrase for this, it is called

‘holding open the space’

4 Your definition of teacher development is ‘Being the best teacher I can be’ Would that also apply to yourself as a musician?

Yes, we’re all learning beings; we’re all hard-wired for learning If you put a toddler down in the middle of the room, you’ll see how they’ll head for the thing that offers the right amount of challenge They won’t go for something too easy or too difficult; they know what they have to

do to get ‘in the zone’ Personally, I love the act of finding myself a learner, experiencing myself as a learner I think it

is synonymous with living

5 What are you working on right now?

I’m interested in the notion of systems and system thinking, which is a way of looking at things to help us to ‘make sense’ of things that seem too messy and complex to make sense of! It steers us towards different kinds of solutions, characteristically involving less control and more connection So, yes, I’m interested in participatory yet control-free ways of getting things done And this is relevant to teaching, staffroom, schools, management, and leadership And jazz playing, too!

TAKE

In a new series, Chaz Pugliese poses five questions

to people involved in the world of ELT In this issue,

he talks to Adrian Underhill.

Adrian Underhill is a teacher, trainer and consultant; he is a past president of IATEFL

and author of Sound Foundations, published

by Macmillan.

chazpugliese@gmail.com

Chaz Pugliese is an independent trainer and author, living in Paris, France.

Preparing

students for exams

T E S T I N G & E V A L U A T I O N

Preparing

students for

City & Guilds (CG) exams

require fewer ‘exam skills’ than

some other language tests

Students who possess balanced

speaking skills at any level from A1 to C2,

as defined by the Common European

Framework, stand a very good chance of

passing the CG ISESOL (International

Spoken English for Speakers of Other

Languages) exam at that equivalent

level The main enemies are usually fear

– stemming from a lack of familiarity

with the exam format – and insufficient

practice

So, how can you prepare students to

feel comfortable in the exam situation?

How can you incorporate exam practice

into a ‘textbook course’? Glossa, a

leading language school in Prague,

Czech Republic, has been a

CG-approved testing centre since 2004

Hundreds of learners have been

successfully prepared for CG exams

there, and this article aims to share the

Glossa teachers’ know-how with other

teachers who hope to get their students

through the CG exams

1 Do your homework.

Naturally, you will have to start by

familiarising yourself with the exam Go

through the website information on the

CG website (http://www.cityandguilds.gr/

en/ESOLqualifications/oraltestsISESOL),

including the sample videos of the spoken exam Check that you know what the criteria for your target level are (and for comparison, also the criteria for one level above and one below) Find out what is assessed in each part of the exam

While some language schools will be able to offer a lot of know-how in the form of books, seminars and tutors, in others you may at least find a colleague or two with some experience of the exams who can help you You should also locate your nearest City & Guilds centre, who will be able to answer your questions

2 Swallow the syllabus.

Study a sample exam (practice paper) and the level descriptors from the City

& Guilds ISESOL Qualifications Handbook which are relevant to your

students’ target level The handbook is available from the CG website

Highlighting the interlocutor’s parts and reading them out loud are strongly recommended Imagine you are performing the exam with one of your students, pausing to let the imaginary candidate speak Make sure to time the parts This will help you to get

accustomed to the situation, so that you can help your students do the same You will develop a feel for how long, or rather how short, each part is You will

be better able to predict potential

banana skins: areas of language that your students don’t know yet, possible misunderstandings, etc Think about the expected outcome What vocabulary, grammar and phrases do your students need to learn before they can complete this part successfully?

3 Study the syllabus with the students.

Next, introduce the practice papers to your students Make sure they have their own copies to work with Encourage them to add notes and to underline or highlight successfully accomplished parts, as well as any questions deserving further attention A working copy of the practice papers helps the students to

‘own’ the exam On the big day, they will know exactly what words the stranger in front of them will use to give the task instructions Nevertheless, don’t forget

to tell your students that the topics and questions will be different

First, give your students a ‘tour’ of the practice paper, explaining or letting them find out who says what, and what each part looks like Practise the first two questions (‘Spell your surname’ and

‘Where are you from?’) After that, let them answer a few further questions in pairs, and then have them mark all the questions with smileys and frownies or points, according to their individual

Eva Modrá gets her students ready for the City & Guilds ISESOL exam.

preference or preparedness Discuss

which parts they find easiest and

hardest, and why These first impressions

often reflect your students’ needs very

accurately, both in terms of language

learning and psychological training, so

do listen carefully

4 Do it in small doses.

Working on exam preparation little by

little, part by part, is definitely better

than trying to cover it all in one or two

lessons Over time, the students will get

more used to the exam format, and will

actually remember what they are

expected to do in each section

It is easy to incorporate a bit of

exam preparation into each lesson You

can do so by assigning part of your

lesson time for ISESOL, using the

practice papers and parts of the

ISESOL Qualifications Handbook

However, if you are using a regular

coursebook, you will probably find that

there are many speaking activities which

closely resemble the CG exam format

All you have to do is tell your students,

or later elicit from them, which part of

the exam any given task corresponds to

Sometimes an activity may require only

a small change (setting a time limit,

creating the first line for a conversation,

etc) in order to make it match the exam

more closely

5 Extend the practice

opportunities.

Even if there are few ISESOL-like

activities in your coursebook, practically

any topic introduced by any coursebook

offers immense possibilities for exam

practice

You can create exam-format

questions yourself, and/or involve your

students in creating them Afterwards,

they can swap their questions between

pairs, answer them and share feedback

As a small illustration, let’s look at

some possible questions for the topic of

‘animals’ at B1 level

For a higher level, the topics could

involve conservation, drug testing on

animals, even reincarnation!

6 Proceed part by part.

You will find exam tips in the ISESOL Qualifications Handbook Below are

some of the most important ones

In each part, the candidate may be stopped by the interlocutor once the time assigned for this part is up Assure your students that this does not reflect the quality of their performance

Tell them not to worry about time Keeping track of the duration of the parts is not their problem Explain that while they are speaking, the interlocutor

is probably scribbling down the minutes and seconds as part of the role of timekeeper, not making a record of their mistakes

ISESOL part Possible questions/topics

1 * What is your favourite animal? Why?

* Is there an animal which you are afraid of? Why?

* When you were a child, did you have a pet? What? Why not?

* How often do you go to the zoo?

* Do you think you will have a pet in the future? What?

2 * I am a vet You have brought your pet to me I start:

‘So, what seems to be the problem?’

* I am your neighbour I start:

‘Your dog is barking all the time! Could you do something about it?’

* I am your neighbour You have found a stray cat in front of the house You start

3 We have to choose the best present for our friend’s birthday

(The options in the pictures involve some of the animals the

4 Animals in your town

Part 1 Candidates should answer the questions in a natural way They

shouldn’t give a pre-prepared speech One or two sentences will do

Part 2 The conversations are not supposed to be longer than two to four

turns (You may like to draw a simple picture with six bubbles to help your students realise how short the expected outcome is.)

Part 3 A frequent mistake is that the candidate dominates the discussion and

pushes their own solution to a task (Teach your students to ask for the interlocutor’s opinion and to listen and react to it.) The assigned time may not be enough to reach agreement, but that doesn’t matter, as long as the candidate has done what they can while demonstrating rich and appropriate language

Part 4 Candidates should make the most of the 30 seconds before speaking,

whether they prefer jotting down key words, outlining a rough mind-map, or playing the beginning of their speech in their head

Students who fear a lack of ideas need to learn the magic word

‘because’, eg I don’t know what to say about animals in my town,

because animals are not very important for me Many people have dogs and cats, but I have never had a pet because my parents don’t

like animals I often see people walk their dogs in the street, and I don’t

like that because

Topic: Animals Level: CEF B1 – Achiever

Eva Modrá has taught English in Prague, Czech Republic, since 1997 She has introduced many colleagues to ESL through seminars and personal tutition

at Glossa language school An experienced interlocutor, she has helped over 100 candidates to prepare for the ISESOL exam.

7 Teach the students to

disagree and improvise.

In parts 2 and 3 of the exam, the student

will have to interact with the interlocutor

The conversations may easily die away if

the two parties agree on everything too

easily This will lead the candidate to

display insufficient speaking skills How

can the interlocutor know that the

candidate speaks brilliantly, if all they

hear is Sure, no problem, Yes, I agree, Of

course, go ahead, etc? Promoting

negativity can be facilitating Here is an

example:

‘Excuse me, could I use your phone for

a moment?’

Version A: ‘Of course, no problem.’

Version B: ‘Actually, I’m not sure about

that How long are you

planning to speak?’

The second version obviously creates the

necessity to explain, negotiate and

stipulate, which means that the student

has more opportunities to impress

The most important tip of all is:

Speak! Don’t pause for 20 seconds

trying to remember a word Say it

simply Say something different, even if

it is not true Or just skip it and keep

talking To put it cynically, what you say

is not important; what matters is the fact

that you say it, and the way you say it.

8 Keep feeding back on

the format.

As with any speaking practice, your

students will profit from your close

monitoring and feedback – both

immediate and delayed, individual as well

as mixed (you write up on the board what

good and bad chunks of language you

have heard, without saying who said

what; then elicit what is correct and how

the incorrect chunks should be corrected)

The key is to use the exam format in

class over and over again, while referring

back constantly to the exam structure:

Which part of the exam is this? How

many questions will they ask you?

Referring your students to the sample

tests helps them absorb the format and

understand the requirements and

possible pitfalls of each part

Encourage them to start an exam

portfolio and collect additional sample

papers, topics and questions, as well as

useful functional language – marked 1, 2,

etc for the respective parts of the exam

9 Let the students do the work.

You don’t always have to be the one who prepares the exam format tasks After your students have seen some examples, you can ask them to prepare questions

on a new topic They can also work in pairs and assess each other, guided by your questions: Did your partner speak for the whole minute? Did he stop a lot, or did he keep talking? Did he use the past tense correctly? This way, the students

will get used to the actual assessment criteria, all of which should be shared with them

In class or at home, the students can say or write exam-shaped monologues

or dialogues, practise them alone or in pairs, or even memorise them – as long

as it sounds natural in the end

10 Raise the tension.

As the exam approaches, the students get more nervous but also more open to taking the practice seriously Now is the best time to practise the whole exam in pairs under the teacher’s supervision, using other sample papers It is important

at this stage to give your students some detailed individual feedback If you cannot cover the whole exam with every student, make sure you hear at least one part from each candidate, giving thorough feedback, both written and oral

How do you do that? Simply take a lot of notes while each student is speaking Pay attention to both the good language (rich, natural-sounding, elegant, correct) and the relevant errors (eg pre-intermediate students may not

be able to use the future perfect, but they need to be able to distinguish

between present, past and future) Afterwards, go through the notes with each student, praising them,

encouraging them to identify the mistakes on their own, helping them to enrich their vocabulary where suitable Tell the student whether they would pass this part or not, and why, and assign areas for improvement

Having taken advantage of the tension, you can always lower it If time allows, let your students make fun of the exam

at least a couple of times This will help

to dissolve fears and boost confidence You can achieve this by changing the framework The otherwise innocent conversation starting, ‘I’m your neighbour I start “I’ve run out of coffee Could you lend me some, please?”’ can bring some laughs if you first show them a picture of the ‘neighbour’ who is

a scary-looking man, a gorilla, the Prime Minister, or perhaps a little baby Assign an absurd topic for Part 4, such

importance of wearing green.

Hopefully, the smiles your students wear while preparing will appear again when they receive their certificates

The City & Guilds tests in General English are made up of International ESOL (IESOL) and International Spoken ESOL (ISESOL) tests IESOL, the written examination, covers the three skills of reading, writing and listening, while ISESOL tests speaking only The spoken and written examinations can be taken independently of each other and at different times, which allows for specific preparation of the different skills Both the IESOL and ISESOL tests can be timed flexibly

C & G ISESOL: Test Overview

throughout the year, with test dates being decided by the approved examination centres

The ISESOL test can be taken at six levels: A1 to C2 (known as Preliminary, Access, Achiever, Communicator, Expert and Mastery) The task types and number of tasks differ from level to level, but there are four basic parts:

1 Personal information, 2 Social situations, 3 Exchange of information,

4 Topic presentation Candidates are assessed on accuracy, range, pronunciation and fluency.

Do something different

with your

coursebook

R E S O U R C E S

Do something different

with your

coursebook

Rachael Roberts continues her series on adapting your coursebook to suit your classes

In this issue, she does something different with comprehension questions.

3

Over the last few years, people

have been starting to ask, as

Catherine Walter did in her

presentation at IATEFL in

2008: Is teaching reading skills mainly a

waste of time? Walter suggested that most

learners already have perfectly adequate

reading skills, which they can quite easily

transfer across to L2 Do we, in fact, need

to teach learners to skim and scan, or is

it patronising and unnecessary?

In my experience, many learners do

not actually have very good reading skills

in their first language and, equally, many

do not seem able to transfer them

automatically So I would still be in

favour of activities which help learners to

develop, or at least transfer, these skills

I also believe that learners need to

have a task or a reason to read, and that

comprehension questions can, at least

partially, provide this And good

comprehension questions can guide the

learner through the text, helping them to

make sense of it

Having said this, it cannot be denied

that coursebook readings tend to follow

a fairly established formula:

1 Use a warm-up activity to introduce the topic

2 Present a set of comprehension questions, using true/false, multiple choice or something else that isn’t too open-ended

3 Get the students to read the text and answer the questions

4 Conduct a follow-up discussion and/or

do some language work

Let me say now, I think that this is a perfectly good formula It works, and I use it myself However, while I understand why coursebooks want to present clear, unambiguous activities, which follow a set pattern, I think we can enliven our classes and engage students more by trying to do something

a little bit different from time to time

Alternatives to comprehension questions

One of the problems with comprehension questions is that they obviously only focus on specific parts of the text, chosen

by the materials writer Real-life reading,

on the other hand, is highly personalised

No two people will understand a text in exactly the same way, because we all bring our own experience, knowledge, attitudes, and so on to everything we read

So, what could we do with a text in the classroom that might reflect real-life reading more accurately?

Collaborative reading

Another possibility is to get your students to read collaboratively, in small groups I’m not suggesting reading aloud (though there are some arguments for this), but reading one paragraph at a time and then discussing with the rest of

Rachael Roberts is an ELT teacher, teacher trainer and materials writer, and has published

a number of coursebooks She is particularly interested in ways of exploiting published material, and has a blog,

www.elt-resourceful.com,

with more practical ideas and downloadable material.

Cotterall, S ‘Developing reading strategies

through small-group interaction’ RELC Journal 21 (2) 1990

Lynch, T Communication in the Language Classroom OUP 1996

the group what they think they have

understood so far This is known as a

‘think aloud’ task because we are getting

the students to articulate the reading

process to each other

Tony Lynch says of this process:

‘My experience is that think aloud tasks

make some learners aware of textual

clues which other learners in the group

have recognised, which would pass

unnoticed in individual reading.’

A slightly more structured way of

doing this is something called ‘reciprocal

teaching’ In this version (taken from

Sara Cotterall), a different person is

chosen to lead the discussion after each

paragraph, using four main points:

Clarifying any problems

Stating the main idea

Summarising the content of the

paragraph

Predicting the likely content of the

next paragraph

The great thing about getting students to

read as a discussion task is that you are

given an insight into the workings of their

minds – how they are approaching

reading tasks This can then help you

decide where they might need further help

or guidance with developing their skills

Summarising

Summarising seems to have fallen

somewhat out of fashion, but it is

actually one of the very best ways of

seeing whether students have really

understood the key points of a text

Students can start to learn to summarise

by carrying out reading tasks where they

match summaries or headings to

paragraphs This is, in fact, already quite

a popular form of comprehension task

Once they are familiar with this task,

ask them to write their own heading or

sentence for each paragraph,

summarising the main idea Finally, they

can select the most important ideas and

use these to write a paragraph

summarising the whole text

As they become more proficient, the

students could be asked to summarise a

text for different audiences For example,

to make it suitable for a child, someone

from a very different culture, and so on

This means that they have to think

about what background knowledge the

reader would need to understand the

text – which is a good way into thinking

about how they themselves use their

background knowledge to build

meaning as they read

Using visuals

Depending on the kind of text the students are reading, you could also ask them to respond in a more visual way For any kind of narrative, a good approach is

to ask the students to highlight the main events and then work together to produce

a time-line Generally, they won’t entirely agree on the time-line – which is even better, as this means they will be forced

to negotiate their answers, thus thinking more deeply about what they have read

For a descriptive text, you could ask the students to draw a picture or diagram

of what is being described: a scene, for example, or one of the characters They can then explain their pictures to a partner, revealing how the picture relates

to what they read in the text

Alternatively, the students could draw a picture which has a deliberate mistake, such as making a character tall when the text describes them as short

The pictures can then be put on the wall and the students can go around identifying the deliberate mistakes

Students sometimes feel embarrassed about displaying their drawings, and you could, of course, use pictures from the internet or magazines instead However,

it is nearly always much easier to produce

a picture than to find one, and I find that, so long as I am relaxed about my own (very) amateur drawings, my students usually are too

Using comprehension questions differently

As well as swapping the comprehension questions for a different kind of activity, you could still use the questions given, but do something different with them

Predicting

Comprehension questions should always follow the order of the text and, as they are supposed to check comprehension

of the main points, they usually provide

a kind of summary of what the students are going to read You can take

advantage of this by asking the students

to read the comprehension questions first and then use them to predict the content of the text You could even ask them to write their own version of the text from these questions, before reading the original to compare with their ideas

questions before they read This will have the benefit of encouraging them to think more carefully about the information they need to find, and the added bonus of working on question formation, which many students find tricky Less confident students could write closed yes/no

questions; more confident students could write open-ended wh-questions.

Alternatively, once the students have finished reading a text and answering a set

to rewrite the text so that the opposite is true For example, imagine the true/false

statement is Delilah was very happy about her present and the text says Delilah was absolutely delighted with her new car

The answer would obviously be true

But as a follow-up, the students could then change the text so it reads, for example, Delilah was bitterly disappointed with her cheap second-hand car This activity leaves lots of room for

creativity, and also acts as a further check on comprehension of the text You could limit it to rewriting a few sentences, or you could get the students

to rewrite the whole text, which should then tell a very different story

Whatever coursebook you use, there are likely to be a lot of comprehension questions I don’t think you’re wasting time with them, but any activity done in the same way every time can become a

little tired and shabby Maybe it’s time to reboot your comprehension activities, rather than booting them out!

Starting

a critical dialogue

I N T H E C L A S S R O O M

Starting

a critical dialogue

The learning environment should allow the students to pursue solutions to the problems that matter

in their daily lives

From kindergarten to college,

teachers use texts from a range

of genres, from classical literature to hip-hop lyrics, to instil much more than literacy in their English language students English texts

of different genres can encourage aesthetic appreciation, while at the same time casting light on the cultural and aesthetic norms embedded within them

Moreover, by comparing and contrasting the way texts from various genres are constructed, both structurally and stylistically – and by a critical reading of the texts – our students can also validate their own cultural identities, while gaining an insight into those of others

This, in turn, encourages both creativity and a sense of social justice

In this article, I will discuss a multi-genre research project used as part

of an ESL reading course as a way to support and amplify the students’ critical

engagement with texts from a variety of cultures The project helps the students to interact creatively with texts in different genres, and contributes significantly to

an appreciation of registers, particularly the academic register

Establishing a dialogue

My philosophical framework as a teacher

is underpinned by the work of Paulo Freire, whose main objective was to promote a classroom culture characterised by liberation and authentic dialogue As a teacher, I strive to create

a learning environment that allows for multicultural identity development amongst culturally and linguistically diverse students I believe this learning environment must not be oppressive, but should allow the students to pursue solutions to the problems that matter in their daily lives, to question the status quo and to feel empowered to play a role in social responsibility

When Freire talks of dialogue, he does not simply mean talking passively with others; the word refers to active engagement For example, he would argue that we need to analyse what we are being told by the media and engage in

a dialogue with it, rather than accepting uncritically the message that is being broadcast He sees such dialogue as key

to positive social change Teachers, too,

Valerie Sartor

teaches her students

more than literacy.

must strive to find ways to promote

authentic dialogue to help their students

to develop their global identities

Freire argues that dialogue has many

benefits: it allows for true cooperation

between both individuals and groups,

which is helpful for tackling the

problems of society; it can create unity

among both individuals and groups,

which can eventually lead to liberation

from oppression; it allows individuals

and groups to become organised and to

stay organised; and it allows for

differing cultural groups to synthesise

their own unique characteristics into

something new, such as new ideologies

or discourses that make social equality

attainable for more people Getting

individuals and groups together is only

possible through authentic dialogue, for

dialogue allows people to come together

of their own free will and not through

deceit or force

genres – and ultimately represent those perspectives in their own writing by the employment of different genres within a portfolio of work

Offering students the chance to engage with diverse genres, such as poems, job applications, letters to a friend, postcards, etc encourages them to become more culturally aware, as well as more competent in English Students are able to interact with forms of writing that are found in daily life, which differ greatly from traditional educational texts, such

as essays or research reports They draw upon their own cultural funds of knowledge to produce a portfolio of work that demonstrates their ability to produce writing in differing modes and genres

The multi-genre research project also gives students choices In the course of their studies, they can discover what is important to them, as a step towards understanding who they are Giving students choice also has the advantage of being a powerful motivator As Camille Allen and Laurie Swistack point out, those who have more choice over what they can write and research tend to think more deeply about the topic they have chosen, produce richer writing and produce more creative final products, all because they have more motivation

A final significant benefit is that the multi-genre research project demonstrates to the students that conducting research and presenting the findings can be highly empowering and rewarding Our students are the people who will make vital decisions about the future of society, so they need to be well-informed about global issues Giving them the opportunity to do research and gain knowledge of global issues gives them a feeling of empowerment and enhances their sense of cultural identity

Most students find typical, traditional research papers uninteresting and unmotivating However, a multi-genre research project creates a change in their

feelings towards research because the content is immediately relevant to their lives and interests

Setting it up

It was important from the beginning to present texts in a variety of genres to serve as models for culturally diverse, socially aware and technically sound writing We searched for excerpts from world literature, international

newspapers, poetry journals, songs and various online sources We asked our students to conduct searches as well In class, we read and discussed the texts together; at times, I would divide the class into small groups and ask them to evaluate the texts and then present their mini-analysis to the class in a series of short talks I did not formally test the students on the texts, but I did create vocabulary cards, and we played some matching games to help them learn new words We also played with short pieces

of text in the form of scrambled sentences, and we changed story endings, rewrote obituaries, and added

or edited songs and poems

After three weeks, I explained that they now had to begin to research their chosen topics and produce a portfolio of work based on this research I began what Donald Graves calls ‘writers’ consultations’: meeting with students individually regarding their research

By moving away from a ‘banking’

model of education – where the teacher

‘deposits’ information into passive

student recipients – and moving toward a

dialogical style of education, we can help

our students to create and strengthen

their own voices The banking model

creates the misconception that the

teacher has all the information and

power and that the students are ignorant

and powerless But with a dialogical style

of education, both teachers and students

learn from one another

A multi-genre research

project

The multi-genre research project allows

teachers and students to work

interdependently within the concepts of

Freirean critical pedagogy, all the while

engaging in an in-depth study of texts

from a variety of cultures and genres

The students research a particular topic,

as in a traditional research paper, but

consider multiple perspectives on the

topic by studying texts in different

topics and giving them a checklist of things they had to include in their portfolio and details of how it should be presented (see page 21) I then scheduled

a weekly class session in the library, to give them time to do their research In the middle of the semester, I checked the students’ progress, offered comments, and asked each of them to make sure that a peer had also signed their checklist and commented on their work As they worked on their projects, we also worked

as a class through texts in various genres: short stories, book reviews, poems

In the course of their studies, the students can discover what

is important to them,

as a step towards understanding who they are

The banking

model creates the

misconception that

the teacher has

all the information

and power

It was important to present texts in a variety

of genres as models for culturally diverse, socially aware and technically sound writing

in Inner Mongolia, China She has been a US State Department Fellow and a Castetter Fellow Her interests include the ESL classroom and policies concerning international bilingual education.

Allen, C and Swistak, L ‘Multigenre research: the power of choice and

interpretation’ Language Arts 81 (3) 2004 Freire, P Pedagogy of the Oppressed The

Continuum Publishing Company 1990

Graves, D Writing: Teachers and Children

at Work Heinemann 2003

(sonnet, haiku, free verse and couplet),

songs, argument essays, newspaper

articles (editorial, news, features,

complaints and obituaries), cartoon

captions and academic essay abstracts

Our work on abstracts also included a

brief examination of the structure of a

formal academic essay During the final

week of class, the students made

individual presentations on their topics:

they could choose to explain their process

and what it meant to them personally,

using any type of media, or they could

present their project in PowerPoint

format, taking a more academic stance

On the final day, the projects were placed

around the class, and students from

other classes came to view them and

listen to the authors’ presentations This

last class was a festive event, offering

public validation to the students, as well

as snacks and cold drinks to everyone

Evaluation

The multi-genre research project was a

great success: my students not only

gained higher levels of English literacy,

but also learnt to take responsibility for

their own learning and to explore a

variety of texts and media Moreover,

they were actively engaged in helping

and teaching each other and were highly

motivated I found that I was serving as

a guide rather than as an authority

dispensing information

I learnt that giving students choices

is crucial to authentic learning Allowing

the students to choose their topics and

genres motivated them and meant that

their interest was sustained to the end of

the projects Giving them a choice gave

everyone in class the freedom to reflect

upon what they felt passionate about,

and this freedom helped everyone to feel

that their chosen topic was of value

Allowing a choice of genres was also

crucial I was amazed by the creativity

and the scope of the genres used by

several students One student not only

chose traditional text genres such as

poetry, journalism and narrative, but also

made a video that caught the attention of

his classmates and our school director;

his project addressed the legality of euthanasia Another student with an artistic background chose to portray her topic (the life of Frida Kahlo) in images

as well as text She drew sketches, imported graphics and PhotoShopped her images with a keen, artistic eye

Another student used hip-hop lyrics, which she modified, together with an embedded music track, to express the racism of US Homeland Security toward Arab visitors after 9/11 Allowing students the choice to engage with many genres demonstrated that opinions can

be voiced in many different modes It also revealed the keen political and personal interests of the students

Using a portfolio format helped everyone to discipline themselves by offering a broad structure to frame their work One student presented her entire project digitally, creating in effect an e-book Another created a book in traditional Chinese format, with the script and imagery running vertically rather than horizontally Some students used digital software to create both an online as well as a paper project

If I do this project again, I might also ask my students to keep a reflective journal to record their progress I believe this would result in higher-quality work

on subsequent projects, as the students would be able to analyse their past failures and successes and see how they could improve next time

Running this project was challenging and took careful planning I needed to find ways to support in-depth research among the students and to source example texts in many different genres

In the end, however, I found the process extremely rewarding The project engaged the students in critical and reflective thinking; their English proficiency increased significantly; they collaborated both in class and outside; and everyone produced a portfolio that exceeded my expectations What more could a teacher ask for?

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Starting a critical dialigue • Portfolio checklist

Please submit six complete compositions, each in a different genre

The genres we have studied include: short stories, book reviews,

poems (sonnet, haiku, free verse and couplet), songs, argument essays,

newspaper articles (editorial, news, features, complaints and obituaries),

cartoon captions and essay abstracts You may also expand on these

genres

The portfolio must have a table of contents in APA style, generated

in Word.

Each composition should have a title, with a subhead noting the

genre For example: Georgia O’Keefe: A narrative feature from a

newspaper about her art show (journalism)

The portfolio must be typed, unless the teacher agrees to an

alternative script

The target audience and tone should be varied For example, one

essay may be in the first person addressed to a friend (eg a letter

about the death of your dog); another will be formal (eg an obituary

of a famous person)

You may experiment with structure and content, but you may not

use offensive or pornographic text and/or imagery

One piece should be reflective and should discuss why you chose

this subject, and what you learnt from it In the reflective essay,

answer these questions: What is the big picture concerning the

essays you selected? What was the process of writing and revising?

How do the essays collected in the portfolio demonstrate your

creativity and your writing strengths? What areas of your writing and

creativity will you continue working on?

One composition must be a narrative of 1,000 to 3,000 words

One composition may be poetry, lyrics or a form of multi-media that

is approved by the teacher after a writer’s conference

One piece should offer a logical and well-supported argument, or it

can be a persuasive piece in which you, as author, take a stand on a

topic or issue or propose a solution to a problem

You should include one piece of your own choosing; feel free to

show us your best, your most experimental, your most impressive,

your most creative writing

You may incorporate as many images as you wish, as long as they

are placed in the text with aesthetics in mind

The portfolio should be bound in some way

The portfolio will be offered at the end of the semester for public

scrutiny and praise

Please include a sheet at the front

of the whole portfolio to show the date that this portfolio was presented to a peer for evaluation, and the dates (minimum of two) that

it was presented to the teacher for editorial consultation during the semester

The peer and the teacher will write comments beside the dates, concerning the strengths of the portfolio

Put your initials next to the following items before handing in your completed portfolio:

_ All submissions have been revised at least once, after someone has seen them and commented

_ I have used the Word

spellcheck facility

_ I certify that the writing is my own, unless it is cited or quoted

_ I have thought carefully about this project and tried

to be creative in organising and compiling it

_ The length of my portfolio

is 12 double-spaced typewritten/printed pages (or equivalent, approximately 4,500 words), distributed among the six pieces

Howdoesyour gardengrow?

Howdoesyour gardengrow?

Once upon a time, in a land of

great gardens, there were countless numbers of flowers with different colours and shapes Sunflower, Bellflower and Snapdragon were three of these beautiful flowers They used to bloom and grow under the bright light of their teacher, Mrs Sun Every morning, they used to wash their petals with the drops

of dew and, dancing in the morning breeze, they headed to school

Sunflower always enjoyed the beauty around her while she was walking along, and Bellflower accompanied her by murmuring sweet melodies Snapdragon was always in a rush and he usually ran

to school Let’s learn more about these three little flowers once they got to the classroom

Sunflower

Sunflower always wanted to see what was going on around her She turned her head towards her teacher Mrs Sun

as she moved When she could see Mrs Sun, she used to flip her beautiful blonde hair proudly Anything that reflected light was a work of art for her She thought that each colour in the rainbow gave a different meaning to the objects it painted

Whenever Mrs Sun wrote something on the board, Sunflower wanted to copy it all down, neatly and legibly She used to get quite confused when Mrs Sun asked her to repeat something after her If there was a word card she could read from, repeating was much easier If not, she used to try her best to visualise the words in her mind Then she could pronounce them easily.Sunflower loved reading Because she read very fast, she could finish many stories in a short time She could remember every little thing she had read, even its position on the page When her friends asked where an

Merve Oflaz exhorts us

to cherish our flowers.

activity was, she could find it in the

book immediately There was one thing

she was not happy with If Mrs Sun

explained something orally, she would

often miss some parts of it and she

would soon completely forget what she

had heard

Bellflower

Bellflower was Sunflower’s best friend

They always used to play together in

the schoolyard Whenever there was a

group game, Sunflower and Bellflower

were always the champions

Bellflower loved music and often

murmured and hummed Whenever

Mrs Sun turned to face the class, she

would see Bellflower moving his lips

She sometimes scolded him for this

Bellflower loved speaking and he was

very talkative, but he never wanted to

make Mrs Sun unhappy, so he always

listened very carefully to his teacher He

was all ears when Mrs Sun explained

something new This was his favourite way of learning While studying at home, he would read things aloud and imitate Mrs Sun

Bellflower always took a very active part in class discussions, and

he managed to get good grades for most of his work Unfortunately, he did not like writing and maths lessons at all

Even a little sound could cause him to lose concentration

These classes were not as exciting for him as music lessons

Snapdragon

Snapdragon wriggled all the time and he couldn’t sit still without fidgeting He used to play with his hair

or swing his legs while listening to Mrs Sun When he was reading, he always followed the lines of the text with his finger He also kept moving his hands and arms when he was speaking He loved raising his hand to answer Mrs Sun’s questions and he never cared about whether or not he had the correct answer He knew that Mrs Sun would never get angry, even if his answer wasn’t right

Snapdragon would jump up immediately to volunteer for drama activities and he found roleplays great fun He also loved the card games Mrs Sun prepared for them Once, Mrs Sun made them practise the multiplication table by using some cards, and Snapdragon loved this activity

The only problem he had was with his writing His handwriting was very untidy: too thick and scratchy He was good at learning through the experience

of doing an activity Although he always found it difficult to remember small details, Snapdragon’s instincts were strong

Helping our flowers to grow

I hope you enjoyed reading about these sweet flowers Do you think you know any of them? You may even think that you or your students share some of their features As you will have realised, the flowers in the story represent young learners with different learning styles Sunflower is a visual learner, Bellflower an auditory learner and Snapdragon a kinaesthetic learner Just like these flowers, our students all have different features, likes, dislikes, weaknesses and strengths What we should do as teachers is to get to know the flowers growing in our classrooms well, so that we can take the best possible care of them We should strive not to let them fade, and give them the chance

to bloom and grow in their own way Here are some ways we can nurture our own crop of flowers:

Remember that not all flowers are red:

We should always bear in mind that our students have different

personalities, skills and abilities As

Rebecca Oxford explains: ‘While many

language learners benefit from visual imagery, others have aural (sound- oriented), kinaesthetic (motion-oriented)

or tactile (touch-oriented) learning style

www.merveoflaz.net

She has an MA in TEFL and holds the ICELT.

preferences and therefore benefit from

linking verbal material with sound,

motion or touch.’ This should be taken

into consideration in all stages of

learning, evaluating and assessing

Allow each type of flower to find

its own path:

Natalie Hess acknowledges that ‘it is

difficult to provide for individual learning

styles’ This is especially true in very

large classes and those where the

students are at different levels To

ensure that all our students participate

in classroom activities, we need to

encourage and motivate them

Making them believe in what they can

do will open a new path in front of

them Instead of forcing them to do

mechanical activities with no purpose,

allowing them to discover their hidden

talents will change the atmosphere of

our classrooms All this may take

some time, but the results will be great

Enjoy the beauty of your

flowers:

As teachers, we may sometimes be

tempted to skip activities which are

based on different learning styles

However, if we can spend some time

on selecting a range of the right

activities to give each and every

student a chance to shine, this will

make our lives easier The best thing

to do is to let the students express

themselves and share their ideas

with their peers This will help them

gradually improve their critical

thinking skills Students can be more

active in language classrooms when

teachers are aware of the impact of

learning styles and design their

lessons accordingly Not only will the

teacher improve the quality of their

own teaching but, by implementing a

range of activities involving all types

of learners, they will also help the

learners to develop their

less-dominant preferred learning styles

Don’t be afraid of re-arranging your flowers:

You cannot learn a language without communicating When our students

do not have the chance to use and practise the target language outside the school, our job is made more difficult To compensate, it is important that we should provide them with many pair- and groupwork activities which focus on communication

Heather McKay and Abigail Tom state that the use of different groupings (eg whole class, small groups, pairs and individuals) is one of the features

of a properly balanced lesson

Support your flowers in each phase of their growth:

Never forget that age matters

According to Robert DeKeyser:

‘young children are characterized as haptic and manual They do better if they respond to verbal stimuli with body movements As they age, learners develop a preference for a visual and/or auditory learning style.’ Gaining an

understanding of the nature and abilities of different age groups will definitely have a positive effect on the lessons we design

Let your flowers enjoy their growth:

Learning a language is not possible if the students feel nervous or anxious

We should help our students to cope with their fears and to believe

in themselves As Griff Griffiths and

Katy Keohane point out: ‘If learners

feel that what they are asked to do is relevant to their own lives, and that their feelings, thoughts, opinions and

knowledge are valued, and crucial to the success of the activities, then they will

be fully engaged in the tasks and more likely to be motivated to learn the target language.’ This way, they will be

enjoying their journey

Love your flowers and treat them well:

Developing a good rapport with the students is extremely important It affects each step of the lesson and has an impact on classroom management as well According to

DeKeyser, R M (Ed) Practice in a Second Language: Perspectives from Applied Linguistics and Cognitive Psychology CUP 2007 Dörnyei, Z and Murphey, T Group Dynamics

in the Language Classroom CUP 2003 Griffiths, G and Keohane, K Personalizing Language Learning CUP 2000

Hess, N Teaching Large Multilevel Classes

CUP 2007

McKay, H and Tom, A Teaching Adult Second Language Learners CUP 299

Oxford, R L Language Learning Strategies:

What Every Teacher Should Know Heinle &

Heinle 1990

Zoltán Dörnyei and Tim Murphey:

‘Teachers who share warm, personal interactions with their students, who respond to their concerns in an empathic manner and who succeed to establish relationships of mutual trust and respect with the learners, are more likely to inspire them in academic matters than those who have no personal ties with the learners.’

As Mrs (or Mr) Sun, I’m sure you are touching the lives of your flowers and helping them to gain new skills so that they can improve themselves With the encouragement and confidence they gain in your lessons, finding the path to follow will be much easier I hope the flowers blooming in your gardens will

be as colourful as the rainbow, so that they will make a difference to other young lives in the future I know that the process of growing is challenging and stressful – but remember: April showers bring May flowers!

Howdoesyour

gardengrow?

Over

the

wall

Alan Maley sees the writing

on the wall.

It is 50 years since Rachel Carson’s

landmark book Silent Spring appeared

– the first major wake-up call for

environmental action on a global scale

Since then, awareness of humanity’s

negative effect on the environment has

been regularly raised There have been 18

international summits, the International

Panel on Climate Change has published

five reports, and the Club of Rome has

generated enough publications to fill a

library, yet no substantial coordinated

action has been taken to rein in the

headlong gallop toward planetary

disaster

It is also just 50 years since the first

Chinese atomic bomb was detonated,

marking the beginning of nuclear

proliferation Some progress was made in

1970 when the Nuclear Non-proliferation

Treaty was signed, and the USA and

USSR began to scale back their nuclear

arsenals However, since then, the

number of states with nuclear weapons

has continued to expand, increasing the

likelihood of nuclear war, whether by

design or accident

One way or another, then, the

prospects for the future of humankind

look pretty bleak It seems appropriate,

therefore, to review just a few recent

publications touching on these issues

10 Billion

Stephen Emmott takes as the starting point for his book the fact that by 2050 the Earth will be supporting a population

of about 10 billion, maybe more He then

explores the implications: ‘As our numbers continue to grow, we continue to increase our need for far more water, far more food, far more land, far more transport and far more energy.’ He then leads us through the

consequences of this in pressure on land and water resources, species extinction, loss of forest, etc, with some interesting

facts: ‘It takes around 3,000 litres of water

to produce a burger.’ He moves on to our

addiction to fossil fuels Contrary to popular belief, there is no immediate danger of our running out of them The danger lies in our continuing to use them

One result is that climate change is accelerating The global carbon cycle, on which the fragile and complex balance of the world’s eco-systems depend, is being destroyed, and at an accelerating pace

Quite apart from the increase in extreme weather, this will lead to degradation of soils, depletion of water resources and widespread famine and disease Emmott examines two possible ways out of our predicament: technology and radical behavioural change In his view, none of the main technical solutions is feasible

Green energy, nuclear power, desalination, geo-engineering and a second green revolution are all either unfeasible or cures which are worse than the disease Radical behavioural change would need

radical government action, yet ‘politicians are currently part of the problem, not part

of the solution despite 20 years of pledges to tackle carbon emissions, we just keep on emitting more carbon’ The

book is short and devastatingly simple The charts are chilling: almost all show an exponential increase round about now, whether of rates of species extinction, ocean warming, growth of cars, floods in Asia, fires in America or global carbon emissions By the way, Emmott is not some kind of eccentric: he is a professor

of computational science and heads a Cambridge research lab

The Burning Question

The Burning Question by Mike Berners-Lee

and Duncan Clark offers a more detailed and nuanced take on the same issues The foreword, by Bill McKibben, emphasises that two degrees is the maximum temperature increase the Earth can support, which means we can only safely burn another 565 gigatonnes of carbon Yet there are 2,795 gigatonnes left in the

ground! ‘We have five times as much oil

Berners-Lee, M and Clark, D The Burning Question Profile Books 2013

Briggs, R When the Wind Blows Penguin

Oxford Resource Books for Teachers.

Over

the

wall

Writing for ETp

Would you like to write for ETp? We are

always interested in new writers and fresh ideas For guidelines and advice,

write to us or email:

helena.gomm@pavpub.com

It really worked

for me!

Did you get inspired by something

you read in ETp? Did you do

something similiar with your students? Did it really work in practice?

Do share it with us

helena.gomm@pavpub.com

and coal and gas … as climate scientists

think is safe to burn.’ The rest of the book

expands on this uncomfortable fact In

Part 1, The problem of abundance, it

shows how carbon extraction is increasing

exponentially, with no internationally

agreed limitations in prospect In Part 2,

Squeezing the balloon, it shows how fuel

economies get absorbed in the upward

curve of consumption Governments

pursue contradictory policies of minimising

the demand for fossil fuels while

simultaneously maximising the supply

And this is exacerbated by the growth of

population and of affluence In Part 3,

What’s stopping us? it examines the

reluctance of those owning carbon assets

to write them off, the failure so far to

implement carbon capture and storage,

and the problem of a continuing belief in

growth at all costs The great global

slumber, is a key chapter Awareness of

the magnitude of the problem is still

insufficient And humans are good at

refusing to think about the unthinkable,

especially when there is massive

sabotage by vested interests Part 4, Not

just fossil fuels, looks at other major

sources of global warming, especially

agriculture and deforestation Part 5, What

now? offers six possible strategies to

counteract the crisis But none of them is

convincing, since all depend on everyone

taking responsibility and acting Unless

we do, the book’s cautious optimism that

things might somehow turn out well is no

more than whistling in the dark to keep

our spirits up It ends on a question: ‘…

we could keep on as we are, ignoring or

playing down the risks and putting

responsibility for action elsewhere … that

would mean taking a monumental gamble

with our children’s future, and a species as

intelligent as ours surely wouldn’t do that.

Would it?’

words in Gone with the Wind: ‘I can’t think about that right now If I do, I’ll go crazy I’ll think about that tomorrow’ and

‘I don’t believe it You can’t prove it Anyway, what can I do about it?’

I believe we should not short-change our students by pretending that things are other than the way they are Remember the fate of the frog in Charles Handy’s

book The Age of Unreason: ‘If you put a frog in water and slowly heat it, the frog will eventually let itself be boiled to death

We too will not survive if we don’t respond to the radical way in which the world is changing.’

Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe

The first half of this book consists of Noam Chomsky’s interviews with Laray Polk on a range of issues, including the environment and nuclear weapons Chomsky has long been a radical critic of the US government,

so it is not surprising to find some trenchant views expressed here Whether

he is discussing the role of the US Chamber of Commerce in lobbying against environmental controls, or that of the President in condoning nuclear weapons development in some countries while condemning it in others, or that of the Pentagon in funding university research,

he is unremittingly damning In some ways, this weakens his case, since he sometimes comes across as carping and repetitive This does not lessen the force

of his argument, though

The second half of the book comprises a number of documents relating to the issues in the first half

These include the top secret transcript of

a telephone conversation between two ranking US officers in 1945, where a general is trying to cover up the radiation effects in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by

ascribing them to thermal burns: ‘they just got a good thermal burn, that’s all.’

Perhaps the most poignant document is a letter from a leader of the Marshall islanders affected by US nuclear testing

It reads: ‘I realize now that your entire career is based on our illness We are far more valuable to you than you are to us

… For me and the other people on Rongelap, it is life which matters most

For you it is facts and figures.’

As a postscript to the nuclear issue,

you could do worse than read When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs This

cartoon-strip story of a nạve, gormless old couple attempting to continue their normal life in the aftermath of a nuclear strike is both very funny and utterly terrifying

As teachers focusing exclusively on language, we may find ourselves trivially correcting Bush Junior’s pronunciation of

‘nukelar’ As educators, we are up against the power of denial, apathy and wilful distortion of the facts by powerful vested

interests Reactions range from ‘Oh, not that again! How many more times do we have to do pollution?’ to Scarlett O’Hara’s

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Editor.

Making the most

of melody

I N T H E C L A S S R O O M

Making the most

of melody

Music plays a significant

part in all our lives, and

research shows we are

attracted to musical

sounds from birth István Winkler and

his colleagues found that babies as

young as two or three days old can

detect musical beats, and Marcel

Zentner and Tuomas Eerola discovered

that infants are, in fact, more reactive to

the rhythm and tempo of music than

they are to speech Considering this

innate attraction, perhaps teachers

should view songs as a valuable teaching

resource and incorporate selected pieces

regularly in their lesson planning

Why is music so

attractive to humans?

Musician and neuroscientist Daniel

Levitin, professor of psychology at

McGill University, Montreal, Canada,

says that group sing-alongs release the

hormone oxytocin, which raises ‘feelings

of trust and social bonding’ His work

demonstrates our ability to recognise

melody, and how music stimulates the

pleasure areas of the brain, producing a

‘feel good’ neurotransmitter called

dopamine Levitin explains that musicians

instinctively exploit the way our hearing

systems and brains perceive music by

using a variety of ways to produce

surprising, rewarding and pleasurable

sounds These arrangements are not

necessarily composed, however, with any

conscious consideration of the effects

they may have on our cognitive processes

How do they do this? Musicians

create interest by using unvarying notes

and unexpected notes, by unpredictably

stopping the rhythm, repeating a melody

using a different instrument, mixing genres, using unconventional phrasing, changing the pattern of sound and unfolding chords one note at a time

This builds tension and forces our brains

to try to predict what will be played next Levitin asserts that these musical modifications surprise and tease us neurologically, keep us mentally alert and provide a neural work-out in many areas of our brain, thereby encouraging creative, flexible thinking

Music and language

Several studies demonstrate a link between music and language Both are arranged linearly, using syntactic rules

or definite sequences of notes, arranged with the purpose of expressing an intended message Both are processed neurologically, component by component, with specific neural circuits handling different elements, such as pitch, duration, loudness and timbre

With language, the brain first perceives its ‘notes’: the sounds – phonemes – which inherently contain a number of the aforementioned musical elements

Moreover, findings show that when a

musical arrangement is interrupted, the brain areas which process language structure become activated, confirming that musical and linguistic operations take place in similar areas of the brain.Besides similarities in structure, elements and brain-processing areas, both music and language require complex, higher-order thinking processes, including attention, organisation and short- and long-term memory retention

Music and language learning

Levitin’s assertion that the human mind acquires new knowledge more quickly when it is presented in the form of a song with a rhythm should alert our attention

as teachers Modern discoveries about the parallels between language and music could explain why early humans realised that setting words and stories to music made them easier to remember; the internal constraints of music, its structure and metre and the poetic elements of lyrics, such as alliteration and rhyme, all encourage memorisation This is an important point that Suzanne Medina demonstrated when she investigated the use of songs in language acquisition and memory retention The idea that learning

a language through music is automatic, easier and more enjoyable, because songs are repetitive and consistent, is also echoed by Elizabeth Gatbonton and Norman Segalowitz

So, using music to aid language learning may not be an original idea, but what is new these days is the availability of

an enormous musical database provided

by digital recording, technological advancements and internet accessibility

Lesley Lanir is moved by music and believes that students are too.

Musicians instinctively exploit the way our brains perceive music

by using a variety of ways to produce surprising, rewarding and pleasurable sounds

Making the most

of melody

Teachers and students essentially have a

huge and convenient song archive and

language resource at their fingertips It

shouldn’t be difficult for teachers to

encourage their students to get into the

habit of using this ready-made teaching

and self-learning tool Kevin Schoepp,

Director of Educational Effectiveness at

Zayed University, UAE, refers to studies

by Jim Little in 1983 and Liz Domoney

and Simon Harris ten years later, which,

decades before the digital explosion, found

that popular music was a major source

of exposure to English for students

outside the classroom environment

Songs in the classroom

Improving attitudes towards

learning

In addition to the benefits of using songs

in language learning detailed above,

there is the necessity, often mentioned

by Steven Krashen, of creating a relaxed

classroom atmosphere which will lower

the students’ affective filters Once their

affective filters are lowered, students can

adopt a positive attitude towards learning

which will increase their

information-processing capabilities

By using appropriate songs on

suitable topics, teachers can both create

a comfortable classroom atmosphere

and use the songs to teach language

structures and vocabulary

In addition, music can be used as a

socio-emotional aid to encourage

students to share and discover songs

with their peers Songs can introduce

students to their classmates’ likes and

preferences and provide a common

ground for discussion They can also

encourage quieter students to join in a

discussion Taking time to discover their

students’ musical tastes shows interest in

the students’ needs and, by doing so,

teachers can begin to create a classroom

climate that encourages learning

Choosing the music to use

Students should be involved in the choice

of songs, but there has to be a modicum

of control Teachers can post a list of

classic and popular songs, chosen

according to the age, language level and

mind-set of their students, and ask the

students to vote for those they would like

to have in their lessons This is preferable

to asking for free suggestions from the students, which may be rejected, leaving the students feeling disappointed

However, they can be given the task of finding favourite songs which include examples of a particular structure or topic that is being studied in class

The song list does not necessarily have

to be limited to current popular artists

Many students still listen to The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Bruce Springsteen and Michael Jackson, for example

At all language levels, teachers should consider providing linguistic and extralinguistic support Linguistic help can include pointing out cognates, familiar words, how intonation conveys meaning, and giving native language support in the form of translations Extralinguistic help can be given through gestures, illustrations and photographs, and by relating lyric content to the students’ prior knowledge

The melody must be easy, so as not

to tax the children’s memories and to allow them to focus on the lyrics The song should encourage activity but not

be over-energetic; movement, gestures, dancing or acting are all recommended,

as long as the activities allow the focus

to be on language learning Illustrations and photos add interest and help memory retention

Research shows that learners respond differently, depending upon whether the music they hear is familiar

or unfamiliar Introducing the melody first makes pedagogical sense because, when humans are concurrently exposed

to several new stimuli, they experience

‘secondary task overloading’; such cognitive overstimulation may prevent language learners from focusing on the point of the exercise

To avoid this, consider preparing the children beforehand The song can be introduced covertly weeks before you intend to use it in class For example, it can be played at the beginning of a lesson while the children are entering the classroom and getting ready for the lesson

In the couple of weeks after a song has been used as teaching material, it

can be played again several times to provide reinforcement To add variety, the students can be asked to create illustrations of key vocabulary or scenes, bring costumes or make masks for homework, all of which can be used to playact the story of the song

Preparation is an important part of song use The following techniques will increase the children’s understanding of the lyrics and aid vocabulary acquisition: Familiarise the children with the content of the lyrics before they hear the song

Share experiences on the topic of the song in order to activate their prior knowledge

Explain the main idea without summarising the lyrics completely Read the lyrics while pointing to relevant pictures

Use contextual clues and images to explain new vocabulary

Teenagers and adults

Older students have wider vocabularies, better listening abilities, advanced thinking skills and more life experience, enabling them to understand a wide variety of songs As a result, songs which cover a range of topics can be used, not only to review or introduce vocabulary and grammar points, but also to provoke discussion on culture, relationship issues and topics related to family and society

In general, songs used in language classes should be clear and not too fast; they should be memorable, with subjects and word choices that take the interests and backgrounds of the language learners into consideration

Activities

Songs provide good material for a wide variety of language activities, not just listening A song can be taught by first handing out the lyrics, looking at the grammar and the sentence structure, noting particular vocabulary items and going on to analyse the theme and content Some of these exercises can be assigned for homework, so the students arrive ready for the listening activity Once they have listened to the song and gained an understanding of the meaning, class or small-group discussions can take place on the topic of the song, perhaps focusing on prepared questions

Making the most

of melody

Lesley Lanir is a freelance writer, lecturer and teacher trainer who has been involved in teaching English for over

20 years She specialises

in learning disabilities and foreign language learning She has a BA in English and Education, the CTEFLA/RSA and an

MA in Learning Disabilities Her website

is www.foreignlanguage

learningdifficulties.com.

Gatbonton, E and Segalowitz, N ‘Creative automatization: principles for promoting fluency within a communicative

framework’ TESOL Quarterly 22 1988 Krashen, S Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition Pergamon

Press 1983 Levitin, D J ‘The music of my mind: a neuroscientist examines the recipes for

listening ecstasy’ Paste Magazine 2006

Levitin, D J ‘Do you hear what I hear?’

The Wall Street Journal 2008 Levitin, D J ‘Why music moves us’ Nature

464 2010

Medina, S The Effect of Music on Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition

Longman 1993 Medina, S ‘Acquiring vocabulary through

story-songs’ MEXTESOL Journal 26 (1)

2003 Schoepp, K ‘Reasons for using songs in

the ESL/EFL classroom’ The Internet TESL Journal 7 (2) 2001

Winkler, I, Haden, G P, Ladinig, O, Sziller, I and Honing, H ‘Newborn infants detect

the beat in music’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2009

Zentner, M and Eerola, T ‘Rhythmic engagement with music in infancy’

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2010

Here are some other types of

exercises you can use with songs:

Gap-fill or cloze

True/false questions

Ordering activities, where lines have to

be put in the correct sequence

Dictation

Adding a final verse

Changing pronouns from he/she to

Finding repetitive words

Circling adjectives, connectors and

other relevant vocabulary

Authentic teaching

Authentic language is dynamic and

ever-evolving It is composed of many

contractions, and in natural speech, words

are seldom pronounced individually For

this reason, many students have difficulty

deciphering spoken language Song

lyrics exemplify contractions in context

In addition, new words and phrases are

continually being added to the language;

some teachers may not be familiar with

these and may not, therefore, include

them in spoken exercises Songs can plug

this gap, by allowing the students to

listen to and see many examples of

popular colloquial expressions, which

they may meet outside of the classroom

Not all popular songs follow

accepted language conventions Those

whose lyrical structure does not follow

the normal grammatical rules and

language patterns can be compared with

the appropriate structures – or matched

with songs that offer the correct version

of the structure Language learning can

happen through noticing the differences

and changes taking place in language

Such comparative exercises are

attention-grabbing and provide anchors

which allow the teacher to point out to

the students the differences in language

registers, correct grammatical structures,

various synonyms and unusual phrasing

Focused teaching

Songs can be used specifically to build

up phonological skills by drawing

attention to the rhythm and rhyme of

the lyrics, word stress, particular

phonemes and syllables

Here are some activity ideas for improving phonologcial awareness skills:

Substitute some of the rhyming words with a gap The students listen and fill the gaps

Highlight the rhyme; show how changing one sound can alter the meaning

Add more rhyming words to the common sound family in the song

Provide word cards that students have

to match to the correct sound family

Count word syllables to show how the rhythm of the song is created

Produce a list of what rhymes and what doesn’t, and discover why

In summary, the use of music in class:

offers a change from routine classroom activities;

encourages a positive attitude towards language learning;

allows the discussion of attitudes and feelings about topics;

promotes creativity and imagination;

generates a relaxed atmosphere;

adds diversity and pleasure to learning;

increases the students’ interest in language;

unites student interests by way of mutual song choices and musical interests

In addition, music can add value to language learning by:

providing authentic, memorable and rhythmic language;

allowing exposure to informal and colloquial language;

advancing language appreciation through exposure to sentence patterns;

presenting an interesting way to focus

on sounds, specific words and connected speech;

exemplifying automaticity and fluency;

supplying a memorable context

Music is an art form to which many students can relate Research shows that music stimulates many regions of the brain and especially activates our reward and pleasure circuits It is widely known that our memory for music and our

melody detection skills are strong Using music in English teaching entertains and relaxes

Songs can motivate students to practise specific language structures or learn targeted vocabulary items If chosen carefully, they provide a platform for representing authentic language in context and make selected grammar points more accessible and understandable Teachers can take advantage of the students’ common interest in music by incorporating songs of all kinds into lessons in order to encourage language learning If students sense that classroom material is relevant to their lives and interests, and that teachers have taken notice of their specific interests, they will enjoy their English classes more

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