English teaching professional 95 nov 2014

2 18 Alex Case offers activities for more advanced language Alan Maley celebrates the past in the natural scenery of the present TECHNOLOGY FOR PRONUNCIATION 29 Robin Walker examines the

Issue 95

November

2014

The Leading Practical Magazine For English Language Teachers Worldwide

Heads up, heads down, heads together

detection  bandwidth No more than 10% of the signal

strength is lost in the connection to the amplifierinput.

signalled the end of the old USSR.proposal for a new, looser union of sovereign sth exists or is likely to happen ·nal2 ˈsɪɡnəl / verb ( -ll- , US -l-  ) 1 [ INDICATE (2) T ] to be a sign that :states sig-~ sthThe

 ~ that… The crisis nalled that some important changes were takingplace in

sig-English political culture 2 [ T ] to show sth such as a

feel-ing or opinion through your actions or attitude:~ sthHis

government signalled a willingness to abandonthe UK's

national veto  ~ that… The company raised its prices

significantly, signalling that it did not wanta prolonged

costly price war 3 [ I , T ] to make a movement or sound to

give sb a message, an instruction or a warning: The other

ship signalled back  ~ to sb He was waving his arm,

signalling to his wife  ~ (to) sb to do sth The emperor

signalled his chamberlain to show in anotherdelegation.

~ sth The charge was signalled by trumpets  ~ that… As

the driver could not see the road behindhim, it was the

duty of the conductor to signal that the roadwas clear.

sigusually write it, for example at the end of a ·na·ture/ ˈsɪɡnətʃə(r) / noun 1 [ C ] your name as youletter: Two

weeks later, the newspaper delivered a petitionto the

Prime Minister containing 1.5 million signatures. sb's ~

The artist's signature appears on the picture 2 [ U ] the act

of signing sth: Under the terms of the Treaty,this

agree-ment should have been concluded within 18months of

signature  for ~ (by sb/sth) The Convention is open for

signature by countries which are not membersof the

Coun-cil of Europe  ~ of sth Stalin achieved the signature of the

Japanese-Soviet Neutrality Pact in April 1941 3 [ C ] a

par-ticular quality that makes sth differentfrom other similar

things and makes it easy to recognize:sb's ~Over a group

of films, a director must exhibit certain recurrent

charac-teristics of style, which serve as his signature. ~ (of sth)

The vast assemblages of different moleculesmaking up a

living organism can give a form of molecularsignature of

that life for the fossil record  + noun Vollin also recalls

Lugosi's signature role, Count Dracula.

sigwhat happens in the future:importance of sth, especially when this has ·nifi·cance  / s ɪɡˈnɪfɪkəns / noun an effect on[U,C] 1 the

~ (of sth) (for sb/sth)Thesignificance of these findings has yet to be fullydetermined.

 This legislation has particular significance for older

workers 

In the Berlin of the early 20th century, this form

of architecture had acquired a special significance.of…

~ Two developments in the 1990s were of major

signifi-cance  INSIGNIFICANCE 2 ~ (of sth) the meaning of

sth: There are several scenes in the novelin which Nick

ponders the significance of a word  Like so many

scien-tific terms, it has taken on a more precisesignificance 3

( also staˌtistical sigˈnificance) (statistics) the extent to which

a result is different from what would be expected from

RANDOM

variation or errors: However, no tests were made

for statistical significance, and no comparisonwith other

schools was included  reach ~ Among 18–64 year-old

respondents, however, this discrepancy did not reach

significance.

d increased particular ADJECTIVE + SIGNIFICANCE The important contributions to astronomy  special  real  great relative  major  full   considerable increasingby 

Kuiper were also of great significance for the geological

sciences.practical  functional  symbolic  political 

social  historical  cultural  economic  moral  religious

 legal  biological  clinical This finding has practical

significance, in that empathy can be learnedand applied

in real-life situations.

dsignificance of a notice warning that parkedIt must be established that the car owner understood VERB + SIGNIFICANCE have  understand  explain  discussthe

cars would be clamped.assume  acquire  attach  recognize,see,

acknowledge  appreciate  consider,examineassess,

evaluate  determine  emphasize,highlighttest



demonstrate,show,indicate

 lose  give It is a disease

that will assume increasing significance as the population ages.

sigadj.·nifi·cant / s ɪɡˈnɪfɪkənt /

1 large or important enough to have an effect or to be noticed:

These voters could have a significant effect on the outcome of the election.

 Although population ageing is a global phenomenon, there are sig- nificant regional differences.~ forsb/sth The contributions of Islamic civilization proved to be as signifi- cant for the West  it is ~ that… It was significant that its nearest rival only hada 5.5 per centshare of the market  INSIGNIFICANT  thesaurus note at

IMPORTANT 2 having a particular meaning: The lightingof

a candle may be symbolically significantif it denotes thebringing of light, that is, enlightenment  it is ~ that…It isparticularly significant that Branagh selected Belfast forthe play's United Kingdom debut 3 ( statistics ) having stat- istical significancesee alsoSIGNIFICANCE (3)

: After 3 years, results for breast cancer were no longer statisticallysignifi-cant  Munafo et al (2003) found significantassociationsbetween personality and polymorphismsin three genes.

of the world.association,relationship,correlation



interaction  predictor The percentage of managers and professionals in a neighbourhood is a significantpredictor

of educational outcomes for children (Crane,2008).

d potentially ADVERB + SIGNIFICANT highly , extremely  particularly 

Their choice of the word ‘degrade’ is highly significant.especially  increasingly  equally 

politically  socially  historically  culturally 

economically  morally Three technological changes are especially significant.stronglyconsistently

signi-2 [ T ] to show or state sth such as a feeling or intention:~sth The most widespread of gestures signifyingan agree-ment is the handshake  ~ that… The court will look for some conduct by the defendant signifyingthat he assumesresponsibility 3 [ I ] ( usually used in questions or negative sen- tences

) to be important or to matter: The fact that the

WORD FAMILY significant adj.

significantly adv.

signify verb significance noun signification noun insignificant adj.

whatever subject they are studying at

Alan Maley, Hitomi Masuhara and

Chaz Pugliese add the final creative contributions

to this extended article

KEEP MOVING ON! 2 18

Alex Case offers activities for more advanced language

Alan Maley celebrates the past in the natural scenery

of the present

TECHNOLOGY FOR PRONUNCIATION 29

Robin Walker examines the options

DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT WITH 34

YOUR COURSEBOOK 8

Rachael Roberts adapts writing tasks

SUGGESTIONS FROM THE STAFFROOM 5 36

Sasha Wajnryb compiles tested tips on dictogloss

Magda Tebbutt and Tim Strike recommend some

winning language games

Ken Milgate shows how photos can be exploited

SWIMMING, NOT SINKING 50

Tim Thompson revitalises his classroom with

real-world projects

Kayvon Havaei-Ahary questions why questions are too often neglected

TEACHING YOUNG LEARNERS

EFFECTIVE CLASS DESIGN 22

Chris Roland applies micromechanics to activities with children

TEACHER DEVELOPMENT

Ming E Wong voices her opinion on vocal health

TECHNOLOGY

FLIP, FOLLOW AND FEEDBACK 57

Laura Nanna describes a successful three-stage project

FIVE THINGS YOU ALWAYS WANTED 61

TO KNOW ABOUT: E-SAFETY

Nicky Hockly looks at staying safe online

When I returned to the UK from six years in

Japan, a friend of my parents looked at my

photos of lavishly decorated temples, colourful

festivals, steaming volcanoes and lush tropical landscapes

and sighed ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘there’s nothing new under the

sun!’ I’ve never really understood why she said this – or

what exotic parts of the UK were familiar to her but

unknown to me However, her comment came to mind

when I was editing the articles for this issue of ETp Despite

the staggering amount of new technology that is being

developed on a daily basis to help language teachers and

their students, it is clear that some of the basics still hold

true, and much that is new is building on the foundations

of what has been around for a very long time

Magda Tebbutt and Tim Strike remind us of a number of

fun language learning games Some of these will already

be known to many readers but, as Madga and Tim point

out, it does no harm to be reminded of old favourites from

time to time

Sasha Wajnryb bases his article on the dictogloss

technique, popularised by his own mother in the late

1980s And in celebration of this, we have a photocopiable

dictogloss activity in the Scrapbook, which combines the

technique with an intriguing brainteaser

Editorial

David Heathfield’s article centres on what must be the oldest teaching technique of all – storytelling – and it comes with a charming old folktale for you to tell to your students and then encourage them to retell it

Alan Maley looks at books about landscape, many of which link the past to the present by drawing the reader’s attention to those features of the landscape that give us a glimpse of past lives and the historical events that took place there

Finally, in our main feature, Lindsay Clandfield offers some new labels for the old practice of labelling lesson plans

He gets to the heart of what the students are actually doing at each phase of the lesson – so perhaps ‘plus ça change’ isn’t quite ‘la même chose’, after all

Helena Gomm Editor

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In English language teaching, we

love labelling lesson plans I remember my first assignment to prepare a lesson plan in my pre-service teacher training The lesson plan document was a table, full of different columns I had to divide my lesson into stages, and outline what I was doing at each of those stages

But that alone would have been too straightforward

I remember there being several other columns that I had to assign a label to for each stage of the lesson For novice teachers, preparing a lesson plan almost always takes longer than the lesson itself!

of that stage? This is often phrased as:

‘by the end of this stage, the learners will have …’

What teaching material will the students be using at each stage (eg what worksheet or what coursebook page)?

More labels

In addition to the above labels, we can label different stages of the lesson according to pedagogical principles of how a lesson should be organised Here are some of the ways this has been done in language teaching Some may be very familiar to you all, others may be new:

PPP (Present, Practise, Produce)

Perhaps one of the most famous acronyms in lesson labelling, these labels refer to the main stages of a class Although it has been much maligned, it is still a standard lesson procedure and very easy to explain to novice teachers The problem with PPP is that it is too prescriptive for many teachers (you have to label the stages in that order)

TTT (Test, Teach, Test)

This is another well-known way of organising a lesson into three stages The first stage involves activities that attempt to find out what the students

Lindsay Clandfield

proposes a practical new

perspective for planning

lessons.

We need to remind ourselves that, while the projector and computer are very useful tools, they are only part of what goes on in the language classroom

already know about a language point

This is followed by explicit teaching to

fill in any gaps in the students’

knowledge, and then a final testing

stage determines whether the students

can now put this language to use

ESA (Engage, Study, Activate)

Coined by Jeremy Harmer in The

Practice of English Language Teaching

as an alternative to PPP, these are also

labels for lesson stages These stages

can be moved around, as long as the

first stage is Engage; individual stages

can be repeated as well (so you can

have EAS, ESA, ESEA)

ARC (Authentic, Restricted,

Clarification)

This method of labelling is more about

the kind of language being produced

in the classroom, be it restricted,

unrestricted and authentic, or the

teacher clarifying and explaining

language Originally coined by Jim

Scrivener, the ARC model stages are

similar to ESA in that they can also be

moved around and repeated (so you

can have ARC, CRA, ACRA, etc)

OHE (Observe, Hypothesise,

Experiment)

This form of labelling a lesson’s stages

comes from Michael Lewis’s lexical

approach Here, the emphasis is

placed on getting the students actively

taking part in each stage of the

process, and appears to favour a more

inductive approach to language (ie the

students figure things out on their

own to some extent)

Many teachers will tell you that, after

their initial training, and barring

exceptions like an observed lesson, they

don’t produce anything like such detailed

lesson plans One could, therefore, ask:

Is it useful?

I believe the answer is yes Going

through the process of labelling a lesson

plan as we are learning to teach – or

doing it every once in a while as we are

teaching – makes us reflect on what we

are doing and the different elements that

we consciously think of which go into a

lesson

A new label

Over the past 20 years, I would venture

to say that there has been relatively little

change in what elements go into lesson

plans from the ones I have outlined

above

There has, however, been a slight change in the physical layout of many classrooms around the world, and the way that teachers are using it: that is, the presence of a computer, a projector and

an internet connection

Screens and projectors have actually been around for a long time Televisions and overhead projectors were being used

in schools from the 1960s onwards But their use was often limited, either because there were not enough of them

to go round (Does anyone else remember ‘signing out’ an overhead projector or TV for a class? I do!) or there was a lack of accessible materials

to use with them

getting too wrapped up in the ‘bells and whistles’ of projecting interesting things, and then running out of time for the rest

of my lesson

We need to remind ourselves that, while the projector and computer are

very useful tools, they are only part of

what goes on in the language classroom

A new perspective

I would like to propose another way of thinking about the stages of a lesson, and labelling them, taking the reality of the projector in the classroom into account

I call it Heads up, Heads down,

Each part of a lesson can be identified with one of these labels, and a good language lesson should have all three elements

Let’s look at them in turn

Heads up

These stages of the lesson are primarily for teacher-led, lockstep work This usually means using a projector or whiteboard The kinds of activities that can be used in a heads up stage are: Lead-in activities using images or video on the topic of the lesson to engage and motivate the students Language explanation work (grammar and vocabulary teaching)

or clarification of complicated tasks Live listening activities (for example,

a lecture on a topic, accompanied by

a slideshow)

Feedback on answers to exercises Student presentations, especially if they are at the front of the class and showing/sharing something they have created

Modern projectors (or beamers) that connect to a computer are now

becoming increasingly ubiquitous The fact that these computers can connect to the internet means that teachers have a huge wealth of material to draw on to supplement their classes In addition, interactive whiteboards provide various other ways of sharing and displaying information

The result has been an increase in what could be labelled ‘heads up’ work

This is seen by many proponents of education technology as a good thing

Interactive whiteboards, for example, are hailed for making classrooms what Pete Sharma and Barney Barrett call

‘a “heads up” learning environment instead of each student being bent over their book’.

However, I believe that the presence

of this technology has made it tempting

to teach in a far more ‘heads up’ manner than perhaps we should

PowerPoint presentations to explain

language points, videos and slideshows

to engage students with the lesson content are all great, but they can sometimes take away much needed time for other important things

Personally, I have found myself

Heads up, therefore, is any part of the lesson where the students’ attention is focused on the screen or on a particular individual (usually the teacher, but it could also be another student)

of English language teaching He has written coursebooks and methodology books You can find out more about

him at his website www.

lindsayclandfield.com.

Sharma P and Barrett, B ‘Blended Learning: using technology in and beyond the language classroom’

www.macmillanenglish.com/methodology/ blended-learning/updates/Update%20 10%20Blended%20Learning.pdf

Heads down

These stages of the lesson are the quiet

moments They involve focused

individual work The students are either

using their coursebooks, or are writing

something The kinds of activities that

can be used in a heads down stage are:

Completing written language

exercises

Individual writing exercises

Silent intensive reading in class, for

example a coursebook text

Silent extensive reading time in class

Individual web searching or

Taking written tests or exams in class

Other information-gap type activities

Finally, it provides a simple and memorable way of looking at our class and lesson organisation

Why not give it a try?

Suggested answer key for the lesson plan on page 7

in groups, it could be heads together then heads up)

7 Heads down, then heads up (although if the students did the exercises in pairs, it might be heads together then heads up)

8 Heads together

9 Heads together (although if the instructions for this were complicated, it might be heads up, then heads together)

10 Heads up

Heads together is any part of the lesson where the students are explicitly working together In modern communicative classrooms, this will usually involve some kind of speaking

Heads together sections of a lesson are the noisiest parts!

Heads down is any part of the lesson

where the students are working

individually They will usually be focused

on something in their coursebook, a

personal computer or tablet or a piece

of paper

Heads together

These stages of the lesson are the

communicative ones They involve the

students working together, with the

teacher as a facilitator or moderator

The students are speaking together, or

are working in pairs or groups on a task

of some kind The kinds of activities

that can be used in a heads together

stage are:

Speaking tasks in pairs or small

groups

Mingle speaking activities

Collaborative work on language

be hard to say if it’s heads up, heads down or heads together The three labels may very well overlap:

If students are all quietly reading the same text, but on the whiteboard rather than in their books or tablets, is

this heads up or heads down? (I would

argue it is ‘heads down’ work, even though everyone is looking up at the screen.)

If two students are working together

on the same exercise, but not speaking

to each other, is this heads together or

heads down?

I’m sure you could find other examples

of grey areas, but I believe that, for many parts of a lesson, a teacher can easily visualise which of the three perspectives is going on However, any new approach to lesson planning should

be informed by a desire to be effective and practical

In the cases where there is an

overlap, this therefore should not necessarily be a problem – these labels are not designed to limit, but rather to inform and orient us

Take a look at the sample lesson plan on page 7 to see what I mean

In short, I would argue that this new perspective is useful for helping us reflect on the way we organise our classes, especially with the presence of a projector and screen:

It takes into account the fact that our

‘heads up’ work has become a lot more interesting and visual than before

Heads up,

heads down,

heads together

Lesson plan

Here is a sample lesson plan, with various labels Can you

complete the final column? Remember that there may be

more than one possibility, and for some stages you could

have two labels (eg Heads up, heads down) See the key

on page 6 for suggested answers.

Teacher shows clips from

various trailers for last

summer’s blockbuster

films

Teacher uses pictures and

model sentences to elicit

meaning of key words

about films

Students ask and answer

questions that include

key words from Stage 2

Students read a text

about the key marketing

decisions made behind

movie releases

Students answer

questions about various

details in the text;

teacher checks back

Teacher gives a short

presentation of a

grammar point, using

examples from the text

Students do a series of

short written exercises

to practise the grammar

point; teacher checks

Teacher gives feedback

on activity, reviews lesson

aims, assigns homework

To engage students’

interest in the topic

To pre-teach potentially difficult vocabulary from text

To activate new vocabulary and involve students in the topic

Reading for general understanding

Reading for specific details and comprehension of key points

To understand and/or review key language point

To consolidate understanding of language point

To consolidate understanding of language point

To provide fluency practice relating to the topic

To wrap up the lesson

Compilation of clips from movie trailers website

Sample sentences, images

Questions for discussion

Reading text, gist questions

Reading text, comprehension questions

PowerPoint

presentation, example sentences

What is ‘fluency’? I have

heard this question

discussed in teachers’

rooms in London,

Shanghai, Amsterdam and Prague In all

these locations, ‘fluency’, ‘communication’

and ‘conversation’ classes are consistently

popular with students, so there is

evidently a demand for them and a

perceived need to develop spoken fluency

It is important, therefore, to pin down

what it means and how we can help our

students achieve it

Speaking is often used as a means to

practise grammar or lexis and is rarely

taught in coursebooks as a skill for its

own sake Discussing an alternative

model for teaching speaking with my

colleagues elicited a range of comments

on what a fluency class should include,

such as ‘providing students with the

opportunity to speak’, ‘giving correction

and feedback’ and ‘pronunciation’

When I suggested that there was also a

need to focus on speaking sub-skills

such as turn-taking, a few of my

colleagues brushed this aside, saying

that the art of turn-taking is the same in

all languages, so it isn’t really necessary

to teach it

However, an Italian student

prompted me to look into the matter

further when he complained that he had

plenty to say – and in Italian he had no

problems – but in English the

conversation always moved on before he

had a chance to contribute In short, he

failed to take up his turn Evidently,

then, a confident and outgoing person

Problems Culture

I tend to reject the assertion that turn-taking is a skill which is the same in all languages and cultures I believe that many of the problems students have with turn-taking can be traced to cultural differences which create a lack

of confidence or a lack of awareness of the social norms connected with the cooperative principle described above.Japanese students, for example, often have difficulty interrupting other speakers or showing disagreement, as this is frowned upon in their L1 It is also culturally acceptable for Japanese speakers to leave a period of silence before taking up a turn When participating in discussions with people from Western cultures, this may result in them losing their turn

Similarly, students may lack awareness of what constitutes an inappropriately long turn and may overly dominate the conversation This can be due to stress, anxiety and the feeling that they must speak in order to

be successful It can also result from a lack of cultural awareness – they may be dominating the conversation in a way that is perfectly acceptable in their L1

In English, we use non-verbal signals

to help show our turn-taking intentions Thornbury identifies ‘a sharp intake of breath and the raising of the shoulders’

as a signal of the wish to take a turn, while head nods from listeners encourage the speaker to continue Body

Jenny Wilde insists on the importance of turn-taking for developing spoken fluency.

perfectly capable of taking up their turns

in L1 can’t necessarily do so in English

What does turn-taking involve?

The process of participating fully in discussions is very complex, involving juggling the skills of listening to others, judging how others feel, contributing opinions and agreeing/disagreeing in real time According to Scott Thornbury, a series of linguistic and cultural norms govern spoken interaction, including the fact that speakers should take turns to hold the floor, long silences should be avoided (this is culturally specific) and speakers must listen when others are speaking

Rob Nolasco and Lois Arthur describe the ‘cooperative principle’, which enables native speakers to engage in a discussion appropriately, saying neither too much nor too little According to this principle, turn-taking involves certain skills:

recognising the appropriate moment

yielding the turn

Students need to be able to do these things in order to join an ongoing discussion, and they need to do them without undue hesitation

Originally from the UK, Jenny Wilde is the Corporate Courses Coordinator at the British Council in Prague, Czech Republic She has previously taught in the

UK, China and the Netherlands Her main teaching interests are exam preparation and effective business communication techniques.

jenny.wilde@gmail.com

language is inherently culturally specific,

and our students may neither recognise

the use of such gestures, nor be able to

use them appropriately themselves

Language

Linguistic resources also come into play

For example, the under-use of discourse

markers such as well or right to indicate

a shift in topic could result in a speaker

being prematurely interrupted and

losing their turn Stress and intonation

are also important tools for topic

management: a falling tone on words

like OK or So often shows that the

speaker is about to change the topic

Students may also speak with a

narrow intonation range which does not

engage the listeners or hold their

attention, thus exposing the speaker to

the likelihood that people will talk over

them, forcing them to give up their turn

This is particularly true of students

whose L1 does not have as wide an

intonation range as English, such as

speakers of Slavic languages or Dutch

speakers In addition, students may not

have been exposed to a sufficient range

of ‘adjacency pairs’, where the first turn

determines the second – eg A: May I

come in here? B: Sure, go ahead –

meaning that they do not signal or

respond to agreement, disagreement or

interruption appropriately

Solutions

It’s evident that if we are to help our

students to participate successfully in

discussions, we need to raise their

awareness of culturally specific norms

and ensure they have sufficient language

resources, including lexis, phonology

and discourse We also need to help

them recognise that English speakers

may use non-verbal signals which are

different from the ones they use in their

own cultures, and that these are key to

indicating intentions during discussions

I have used the following methods to

help develop my students’ awareness of

the features of turn-taking:

Watch without sound

Watching a recorded discussion without

sound and having the students guess the

content helps to raise their awareness of

paralinguistic features such as body

language and gesture It enables the

students to recognise the extent to which

these signal the feelings, attitudes and

turn-taking intentions of the speakers

While watching, the students could complete a questionnaire, answering questions relating to certain speakers’

behaviour For example:

How does Sue stop the others from

interrupting?

Do you think Joe is interested in or

bored by the discussion?

We can ask the students how they know this, in order to highlight the use of certain signals They can then watch with the sound on to check if they are right

Provide an aural model

The same recorded discussion could then be used to raise awareness of the linguistic features of turn-taking For example, you can give the students a transcript of the discussion with key lexical phrases used for inviting people

to speak and allowing someone to interrupt, etc blacked out They have to listen for these phrases, which are then modelled and drilled

The students can be asked to categorise the phrases according to their function and then brainstorm other phrases that may fulfil the same role

Concept questions can be used to raise awareness of intonation features For

example: Do we use a wide or narrow

intonation range when allowing someone

to interrupt?

The students can then go on to practise this language in their own discussions

Increase self-awareness

The students’ own discussions can be recorded – most phones have the capacity to make video or audio recordings These can provide a fun and interesting tool for helping students analyse their own interactions and judge their success Questions could be set as the students play their recordings back, for example:

too little / just right?

Were your contributions: relevant /

The aim is to develop the students’

sub-skills for participation in future discussions and help them realise the

things they are doing well and those they could improve

Use a ‘talking stick’

When my students either hold their turns too long or have a tendency to stay quiet in group discussions, I often use a

‘talking stick’, which is passed around the group members Only the holder of the stick can talk at any one time, and all group members have to hold the stick

at least once This forces more dominant students to relinquish their turns and less confident students to take them up

I find the anticipation of receiving the stick helps the students to focus on the discussion and also encourages them to use body language and facial signals when they want the stick I also usually encourage the use of adjacency pairs during the passing of the stick – eg

Marek, sorry to interrupt, but can I add something? Of course The stick can then

be taken away, with the students encouraged to continue the discussion with the same emphasis on shared roles

I believe that participating in discussions

is incredibly challenging for students because it involves a multitude of skills and processes The sub-skill of turn-taking is crucial to the success or failure

of this participation It is a skill which doesn’t necessarily transfer across languages and cultures, but is one that needs to be encouraged and developed Activities that both raise awareness of these skills and provide opportunities for practice and feedback need to be incorporated into our lessons if we want

to help our students communicate and discuss effectively

Nolasco, R and Arthur, L Conversation

OUP 1987

Thornbury, S How to Teach Speaking

Pearson 2005

If you regularly tell stories in class,

your students will soon want to become English language storytellers, too You can invite them to bring in short folk tales to tell

However, it is a good idea to help them develop their fluency and confidence first by getting them to retell a story that

you have told them

Providing them with a simple framework, some effective strategies and

a short folk tale to retell is an important step on the way to helping them become autonomous student storytellers

Students want to hear stories and sometimes want to tell them … there is no better way

of developing fluency than storying

Andrew Wright

When students are first invited to retell stories, they naturally tend to imitate the

way you have told them They will try to

use the same structures, vocabulary and voice patterns However, retelling the story in another person’s words is limiting Every one of us has our own individual storytelling voice When we tell a story, we are not reciting a script,

so it is useful to establish the fact that clear communication is more important

in storytelling than accuracy Every time

a student retells the same story, it will increasingly become his or her own

When they are retelling a story,

students already know what they want to

say, so they can focus their attention on

how to get the listeners to understand and

enjoy the story; but language learners are unlikely to be fluent storytellers in English straight away They may struggle to communicate, and hesitate when striving

to get the story across However, in their desire to convey the story, students often manage to make up for limited

vocabulary by expressing emotion, using mime, gesture, facial expression and, importantly, their imagination

The soul never thinks without

an image

Aristotle

Mental imagery is given free rein when

we create a safe and comfortable atmosphere in which students can listen

to stories openly and retell them freely.When different students in the same class retell the same story, each student’s experience of that story will be different This is in part because of mental imagery: how the students see the story.What my students have said about retelling a story I have told them is revealing:

Some students describe what they see

in their imagination as being like a series of still images; others say it is like a film

Some see vivid colours, while others see it in black and white

Some see true-to-life scenes and others see fantastic animation

Some students talk about remembering the rhythms and cadences of their teacher’s voice, while others do not recall the voice at all

David Heathfield

recommends retelling a tale

using different techniques.

Some imagine hearing distinct sounds

as they retell the story, such as

trickling water or birdsong; others

hear no sounds at all

Some students are physically involved in

the action of the story and imagine they

are in the shoes of the central character:

running, hiding, fighting, and so on

Others feel they are outside the story,

watching the events happening

People’s sensory experience is different

at different moments in the story, too,

and is determined by a multitude of

factors, such as their emotional state

and whether the events in the story

remind them of personal experiences

So when you tell the story to your

students at the outset, be aware of your

body language, your voice and the

sensory descriptions you give, and allow for the fact that the students will all find their own way of imagining and retelling the story

How potent is the fancy!

When retelling a story, students will revisit the imagined world of the story they created when they were listening

They will go inside that world, imagining the characters’ appearance,

their ways of moving and speaking, as well as other sensations in that story world, such as sound, smell, taste, movement and temperature

A useful technique involves getting the students to map a story they have just been told by doing a short sequence of sketches This map then acts as a visual prompt for the retelling The students themselves choose what to draw and do not need to show anyone else There are instructions for a story mapping activity

on page 12; these can be used with any short folk tale The example above is

The Snake’s Tale, which was told to me

by Nafeesa Hajir, a Kurdish woman I taught at INTO University of Exeter You can find a video of me telling this tale to international learners of English

on YouTube.

A poor shepherd led his sheep into the countryside to

graze There he took out his flute and began to play

Within moments, a snake appeared and the shepherd

became afraid, but the snake raised its head high off the

ground and began dancing to the beautiful tune he

played on the flute When the shepherd finished playing,

the snake disappeared into its hole in the rocks

and returned with a gold coin for the shepherd

The poor man picked up the coin and returned home,

but he told no one about the dancing snake

The next day, he returned to the same place to graze his

sheep and played the same tune on his flute Again, the

snake danced and, when the shepherd finished playing,

the snake left and came back from its hole with a gold

coin Day after day, the shepherd played for the dancing

snake and kept the secret from everyone However, one

day the shepherd had to travel to the city, so he called

his son to him and told him what he must do

That day, the shepherd’s son took the sheep to graze in

that same place and began to play the same tune on his

father’s flute The snake came and danced and, when

the shepherd boy finished playing, he was rewarded

with a gold coin

The next day, the boy returned with the sheep and

played upon the flute As he played, the shepherd’s son

thought: ‘Why should I get just one gold coin when the

snake has so many hidden away? If I kill the snake I can

take all its gold.’

The Snake’s Tale

When the snake danced close to him, he picked up a stone and threw it hard at the snake He wanted to kill the snake, but the snake was too quick and only lost the end of its tail The snake quickly turned and bit the shepherd’s son, killing him with its poison

When the shepherd returned from the city he learnt that his son had been killed by the snake and was full

of sadness At the same time, he knew that his son had not done as he should

The next day, he returned to that place with his flock of sheep and began to play on his flute Soon the snake

appeared, but it did not dance ‘Why do you not

dance?’ asked the shepherd.

‘No longer will I dance I will never dance again until man has learnt to be true You can no longer play as before and I can no longer dance as before, because when you see me, you will remember your son, and when I hear your flute, I will remember my tail.’

Student

storytellers

David Heathfield is a freelance storyteller and teacher trainer

He is the author of

Storytelling With Our Students: Techniques for Telling Tales from Around the World

(DELTA Publishing).

www.davidheathfield.co.uk

Students often comment that, when

they retell a story, it is the longest piece of

uninterrupted English speaking they have

ever done Naturally, when their teacher

and the students themselves acknowledge

this achievement, student confidence rises

A potent technique indeed!

To cut a long story short …

Retelling a tale is an effective language

learning activity at all levels, provided a

‘can do’ atmosphere is created Students

will soon realise that the more times they

retell the same tale to different people,

the better their storytelling becomes

Students need opportunities to practise if

they are to become confident classroom

storytellers, and they will succeed if you

put both teacher and student storytelling

at the heart of your teaching

no one else need to see what they draw

Then invite them to talk in pairs about the snake they imagined They can choose whether or not to show each other their drawings

Point out that most people see clear pictures in their imagination when they are being told stories Explain that one way of remembering the events of a story

is to do a story map by drawing a limited number of images as a sequence of very quick sketches linked by arrows Let the students know that you drew six sketches

when learning The Snake’s Tale, and only

show them the back of your sheet of paper at this stage so you don’t influence what they draw Tell them that they can learn to retell the story by each doing their own six-sketch story map, which

no one else will see Tell the story again and suggest that the students close their eyes and notice images while they listen

Before, the students had one minute

to draw the snake; now, they need to do six images in three minutes on the other side of their sheet of paper Some students will probably finish with time

to spare, while others will need to be encouraged to draw more quickly

4 Get the students to tell the story in pairs.

Next, put the students in pairs, sitting face to face, and get them to take turns

to tell their version of The Snake’s Tale,

glancing for reference at their own story map, but without letting their partner see it It’s a good idea for the student

feeling more confident in each pair to go first The listeners give full attention to their storytelling partners and prompt them only if they request it

After all the students have told the story for the first time, show them your own story map, making it clear that there

is no single correct way of mapping a story Ask the pairs to talk about how useful story mapping is for remembering the story If they want to at this stage, they could show and talk about their own story maps and compare them with yours.Some students may benefit from hearing the story from you again before you ask them to tell it a second time to a different partner This time, they put away their story maps and imagine seeing the pictures they drew as they retell the story

5 Extension activity

Encourage your students to retell the story to people they know outside the class – and to be prepared to report back in the next class on what those people say about the story itself and about the way it was told

Student

storytellers

A story mapping activity

1 Learn the story yourself.

When you have read the story for the

first time, take a blank sheet of A4

paper and quickly sketch a sequence of

about six images that will help you to

retell it The first image might show a

stick figure man who is playing a pipe

while a snake dances There may or may

not be sheep nearby Put arrows between

the images to make a simple ‘story map’

Only spend three minutes doing this: it

should be rough, just like the sketches

your students will do The first time you

rehearse telling the story, hold the map

in your hand as a prompt Then put it

away and tell the story again

2 Tell the story to your students.

Explain to your students that they are

going to retell the Kurdish story you are

about to tell them As you tell the story,

imagine following your story map but

don’t have it in your hand

3 Help the students learn the

story.

Give out sheets of plain A4 paper and

ask the students to spend a minute

drawing the dancing snake while they

think about the story Make it clear that

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This is an extended article on

‘creativity for change’, which was

started by Brian Tomlinson in Issue

92 The article has been written by a

group of language educators who are all

part of The ‘C’ Group: Creativity for

Change in Language Education, whose

aim is to facilitate creative change in

language education Each author wrote a

part and then passed the article on to the

next author, and so on until the article

was complete In this final instalment, we

hear from Alan Maley, Hitomi Masuhara

and Chaz Pugliese Brian Tomlinson then

sums up

Factors in implementing

creativity

Alan Maley

There are five points I should like to make,

before examining some of the factors that

might be involved in implementing

creativity

1 Like Rod Bolitho in ETp Issue 93, I think

creativity is readily recognisable but

difficult to define The word is so widely

used that it can mean almost anything

2 I believe that creativity is at the heart of

learning, but it is not usually at the heart

of education Institutionalised education

depends on control, measurement and

conformity Creativity (rather like its

cousin, critical thinking) is anathema to

systems based on control However

much they claim to be promoting

creativity, institutions are dependent on a

control paradigm, and thus resistant to

anything which threatens that control As

a result, creativity will always have a hard

time of it

3 Foreign language teaching, on the

whole, rates rather low on creativity

Teaching is, by its very nature, a

conservative profession The

institutionalisation of teaching into regular

classroom hours encourages the

development of relatively comfortable

routines Examinations further encourage

conformity And, in the present global economy, market forces tend to discourage ELT publishers from taking creative risks

4 The current obsession with smart technology risks confusing novelty with creativity We need to remind ourselves constantly that technology should be a tool in the service of creativity and not a substitute for it – to think how to use the new technological advances in creative ways, rather then being used by them

5 Both Jane Arnold and Peter Lutzker have referred in this extended article to the need for teachers to ‘create a space for others to be creative’ I heartily concur

The need for ‘perceptive openness’ is also key, especially in responding creatively, in the moment, to the unpredictable unfolding of the classroom event But I would argue that teachers themselves need to be creative, partly to offer a role model Creativity is a mind-set which is constantly scanning for

opportunities to do things differently

Creativity theory

Some of the findings from creativity theory (such as those from Teresa Amabile and Margaret Boden) suggest the importance of the following:

Playing around – with words, with ideas, with techniques … The playful element is key to creative learning and has been mentioned by other

contributors to this article

Leaving room for ‘chaos’ to operate by offering rich, varied inputs and challenging, open-ended activities

Trying out new ways of adapting old practices

Using heuristics and analogy to stimulate new thinking (See 2 below.) Building in constraints which scaffold creative activity As Stephen

Nachmanovitch puts it: ‘structure ignites spontaneity’ (See 1 below.)

Using minimal inputs for maximum outputs

Allowing time and silence for ideas to incubate This, too, contrasts with the current drive for speed and immediate returns on investment

Making unusual juxtapositions using the random-combination principle (See 3 below.)

Drawing on other domains, outside language pedagogy, for inspiration Being aware that novelty is not enough

In order for an innovation to be accepted and implemented, the context into which it is introduced has

to be ‘ready’ – or made ready for it – and has to perceive its relevance Convincing learners that everyone has the capacity for creativity

Ensuring that we give due attention to the preparation and verification stages

of the creative process Not everything

is ‘fun and games’

Keeping in mind, however, that delight and pleasure are an integral part of the process

2 Using heuristics

The most famous heuristic is John Fanselow’s ‘Do the opposite’ Others would include ‘expand’, ‘transfer to another medium’, ‘reverse the order’, etc Heuristics may not always lead to positive outcomes, but they help get us out of the rut of routine – and unless we try them,

we will never know

Alan Maley, Hitomi Masuhara and Chaz Pugliese discuss promoting creativity.

3 Using the random-combination

principle

This involves putting things together

which have no apparent connection – and

finding a connection Jane Spiro suggests

making new metaphors by combining

words from two lists at random, and using

this as a basis for creative writing

4 Using improvisation activities

Here we put people into a situation which

they then have to work out together,

simply by interacting with others in the

moment, with no preparation

Here are some closing thoughts:

‘The teacher’s art is to connect, in real

time, the living bodies of the students with

the living body of the knowledge.’

(Stephen Nachmanovitch)

‘It would be a simple enough thing to do,

if only simplicity were not the most

difficult of all things.’

(Carl Jung)

‘It is difficult

to get the news from poems;

yet men die miserably every day

for lack

of what is found there.’

(William Carlos Williams)

General creativity

Hitomi Masuhara

So far in this article we have focused on

creativity in education, language learning

and teaching I would like to seek

implications from the literature on general

creativity, supported by insights from

cognitive psychology, neuroscience,

evolution and animal behaviour studies

Creativity and correlates

For me, creativity is an inherent

mechanism that the brain has cultivated

in its evolution in order to ensure survival

and development The neural networks

are constantly established, renewed and

reconfigured, according to external and

internal environmental changes In this

sense, the brain itself is fundamentally

creative This seems to explain the

irrepressible manifestation of creativity

Creativity can be non-linguistic as well as

linguistic, but having language and conscious awareness enables humans to articulate, record and substantiate transient and ephemeral creativity in concrete forms The implication of this neural view of creativity is that, regardless

of individual or cultural differences, as Xiuqin Zhang and Katie Head assert, anyone is potentially capable of creativity, though there are evidently different kinds and levels of accomplishment

Creativity and play

Studies of ‘play’ have attracted a lot of attention in recent years as a vital source for work on creativity and brain

development Stuart Brown, for example, argues how ‘free play’ is a rich breeding ground for creativity in animals, children and adults Teresa Narey points out that play goes beyond mud play in a nursery

prior to the evolution of the mammal Animals in the wild must be alert and watchful so as to protect themselves from predators Play also activates the crucial areas of the midbrain that control emotional association and memory formation and retention Researchers argue that play has evolved and persists because it encourages physical and mental agility and creativity – which is a preparation for unexpected situations and new environments Studies indicate that deprivation of play results in a lack of divergent thinking and flexible social adjustment

Melinda Wenner argues that free play should not be confused with structured play with predetermined rules, such as games of Scrabble, sports and pre-school activities Structured play may foster cognitive, physical and social skills, but free play provides more opportunities

to try out unconventional behaviours in response to environmental novelty Wenner notes worrying recent reports of free play being replaced by structured play and pre-school lessons, which may

be taking away developmental opportunities for creativity

to development and innovative use of technology ‘Free play’ means child-like, curiosity-driven, imaginative,

spontaneous, open and unstructured fun activities using the mind, the body, objects, language and social interaction

There are no set goals or rules, apart from the inclination towards enjoyment There

is no right or wrong Free play may include ‘world play’ in which participants play roles, living in stories and fantasies

Michele and Robert Root-Bernstein report

a high correlation between world play and creative endeavour among successful scientists as well as artists

Creativity must come from somewhere in evolution Some clues can

be found in the studies of play According

to research (such as that by Gordon Burghardt and Brian Sutton-Smith), play behaviours seem to be controlled by ancient regions of the brain that existed

Play has evolved and persists because it encourages physical and mental agility and creativity – which

is a preparation for unexpected situations

Successful cases from various parts

of the world demonstrate that developing

creativity can be resource/cost-friendly

and doable in curriculum design, testing,

teacher training, methodology, materials,

teacher training and in classrooms,

without drastic changes or demanding

preparation In fact, from a ‘free play’

point of view, providing more resources

may be taking away the space and

opportunities for creativity What we need

is freedom and encouragement to try

something different and fun

What do we need to

know?

Chaz Pugliese

My vision calls for schools, educators and

policy-makers to stop just paying lip

service to creativity and start ‘walking the

talk’ For teachers, creative, imaginative

thinking and teaching is not an option, it’s

not an add-on to the curriculum, and it’s

not something to try out for kicks on a

Friday afternoon It’s a way of looking at

education, it’s a state of mind, a

declaration of war on conformity, a

reflection on how we go about the

business of educating people Teaching

creatively and promoting creativity in our

schools requires a major shift; it entails a

big, fundamental change in education

The questions I’m interested in exploring

here are these: How do we go about

implementing the changes that are

needed? In other words: How do we

teach creativity? And can creativity

actually be taught? Before we attempt to

answer these questions, we need to tear

down a few myths:

Myth 1: Creativity – the cluster of

skills needed to produce an idea or

manufacture a product that is original

and valuable, as Robert Sternberg

defines it – is for just a few lucky gifted

individuals

This may be true for the type of creativity

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls ‘C-type’

creativity, displayed by eminent people

But luckily, there’s another type of

creativity that is much more accessible, and that is the everyday ‘c-type’ creativity

As it turns out, this latter form of creativity

Myth 4: Creativity is just thinking outside the box (ie divergent thinking)

Researchers talk about creativity being a cocktail of various skills, of which divergent thinking is only one

entails a blend of your own creativity with someone else’s So, devising an original idea around, say, a dictation exercise would be an example of combinational creativity Risk-taking is about getting out

of your comfort zone and stepping into the learning zone It’s a necessity, rather than

an option Playfulness is the ability to play

To quote Csikszentmihalyi: ‘there’s no question that a playful attitude is typical

of creative individuals, coupled with perseverance and endurance.’

What could go wrong?

What has just been outlined above, whilst

it may facilitate the creative process, is no guarantee that creativity will indeed happen, for the road is paved with all sorts

of obstacles The most formidable of these

is fear of changes As teachers, we may

be reluctant to embrace changes because

we become what we teach, and our techniques, our methods, are inextricably linked with our own persona and become

‘us’ Teaching differently entails a temporary loss of identity, which would outweigh the advantages of using more creative approaches to teaching In addition to fear of changes, there are other nasty stumbling blocks: fear of other people’s reactions, fear of failure, fear of

accepting failure, fear of disappointing,

fear of ‘rocking the boat’, fear of uncertainty Clearly, there can’t be any magic wand to make all these negative feelings disappear, but perhaps these thoughts might help us deal with them: Create a climate for creativity Create a sense of urgency, talk about changes, embed them in a vision, and then get other people to understand and accept this vision

Find your tribe Being part of a like-minded community is invaluable in helping you find your creative voice Find a mentor Fostering your creative spirit often requires a guide, someone who believes in you, trusts and encourages you to take a creative leap and jump off the cliff

A school that fosters a spirit of discovery and is not driven by grades, scores and

tests can be created Creativity can’t be

the only answer but it would certainly constitute a step in the right direction

As teachers,

we may be reluctant

to embrace changes because our techniques are inextricably linked with our own persona

We also need to remind ourselves that creativity is a process, and that the journey

is easier if we take into account three elements The first is the creator’s motivation: the great Federico Fellini used

to say that he needed an excuse for being creative A very useful starting point, then,

is: What do I need to be creative for? Once

we’ve established that, we need to ask ourselves whether we have enough experience in our field to come up with something truly innovative If I haven’t spent a considerable amount of time in a given field, I risk reinventing the wheel The third element worth remembering is that

we acquire creativity if we use strategies E Paul Torrance has listed as many as 135

Creativity strategies

Four strategies that seem to work for me are: simplicity, combination, risk-taking and playfulness Simplicity means working with minimal or no materials, using people

as your main resource Combination

Amabile, M T Creativity in Context

Westfield Press 1996

Boden, M The Creative Mind Abacus

1990

Brown, S with Vaughan, C Play: How It

Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination,

and Invigorates the Soul Penguin 2010

Burghardt, G M and Sutton-Smith, B

Genesis of Animal Play: Testing the Limits

Johnstone, K Impro: Improvisation and

the Theatre Methuen 1981

Johnstone, K Impro for Storytellers Faber

and Faber 1999

Jung, C and Wilhelm, R The Secret of the

Golden Flower Mariner Books 1962

Mourão, S ‘Taking play seriously in the

pre-primary English classroom’ ELT

Journal 68 (3) 2014

Hitomi Masuhara is Deputy Director of MA Applied Linguistics and

MA TESOL in the University of Liverpool,

UK, and Secretary of

MATSDA (www.matsda.

org) While banging her

head against brick walls

in research, teaching, teacher and materials development, she has been fascinated by what creative brains can do in Japan, the UK, Singapore, Oman and many other parts of the world.

Alan Maley, after over

50 years in the field, now has no job but occasionally has work

He lived and worked in ten countries, including China, India, Singapore and Thailand He helps run a creative writing group for Asian teachers

book, Being Creative,

was published by DELTA

in 2010 A second title, with Jane Arnold and Zoltán Dörnyei, will be published by Helbling.

When he is not working,

he likes to indulge in long distance running and jazz guitar, though not both at the same time.

hitomi.masuhara@gmail.com

yelamoo@yahoo.co.uk

chazpugliese@gmail.com

Nachmanovitch, S Free Play: Improvisation in

Life and Art Tarker/Putnam 1990

Narey, T ‘One thing leads to another:

Evolution, play, and technology’ ERIC

ED521381 2010 Read, C ‘Seven ways to promote creativity in

the classroom’ IATEFL Voices 234 (3) 2013

Root-Bernstein, M and Root-Bernstein, R

‘Imaginary world play in childhood and maturity and its impact on adult creativity’

Creativity Research Journal 18 (4) 2006

Spiro, J Creative Poetry Writing OUP 2004

Sternberg, R ‘Creativity as a decision’

reticence in the speaking class’ ELT Journal

64 (1) 2010

Conclusion

by Brian Tomlinson

We hope that in our article we’ve

stimulated thought about creativity,

provided useful sources for further

investigation and suggested practical

ways of making the language class a more

creative experience Carol Read suggests

seven ideas for promoting creativity in the

classroom, including the teacher modelling

brianjohntomlinson@googlemail.com

Brian Tomlinson has been

a teacher, teacher trainer, curriculum developer, university academic and football coach in many different countries He is now a TESOL Professor

at Anaheim University, USA, and the President

of MATSDA, the Materials Development Association His numerous publications focus mainly on materials development.

creativity herself in the way she teaches

This, I think, is the most important point

I’ve found that just by giving a little thought

to how I can be creative prior to each lesson, I can help my learners to be creative, too The fact that it’s not that difficult or time-consuming for all of us to

be a little more creative seems to be one

of the points linking together all the contributions to our ‘collage’

We hope you enjoy being creative

Do you have ideas you’d like to share with colleagues around the world? Tips, techniques and activities; simple or sophisticated; well-tried

or innovative; something that has worked well for you? All published contributions receive a prize! Write to us or email:

helena.gomm@pavpub.com

IT WORKS IN PRACTICE

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This is your magazine and we would really like to hear from you Write to us or email:

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

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It really worked

for me!

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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

E nglish T Eaching professional

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Given the likelihood that your

students often talk to people who have a lower level of English than they do, there

is much to be said for even level students getting some practice in simplifying their language in order to accommodate the people they are speaking to However, even in the

intermediate-‘English as a lingua franca’ world in

which we live, I still think our main emphasis should be on persuading our students to move quickly on from language they know well in order to try out something new, especially while they are in the perfect place in which to do so – our classrooms For one thing, even students who usually communicate with other non-native speakers often say that interacting with native speakers is their main challenge – and trying to use the kinds of ‘tricky’ language that native speakers do is the best way of remembering it and making sure you really understand it The same is also true for understanding authentic material such as newspaper articles and radio programmes produced by and for native speakers, which still make up a majority of the English materials that a student is likely to come across

More sophisticated language is also vital for exams like Cambridge English

Advanced and the higher grades in IELTS Using more complex language is

a good way of making up the marks that students will inevitably lose by making errors Acquiring a set of impressively advanced-sounding phrases

is a lot easier than it is to stop making these errors, even when the language that the students habitually use is relatively simple Studying more advanced language is also a lot more motivating than trying to eliminate all mistakes with more basic words and phrases; and, in fact, a philosophy of always moving upwards and onwards is the best way of retaining motivation to learn English

As freer communication in the classroom will usually involve the opposite skill of simplifying language to match the person who is listening, if you want your students to concentrate on boosting the level of language that they use, you’ll probably need some more controlled speaking games My article in

Issue 94 of ETp provided some general

techniques for getting students to be more ambitious and experimental with their language use in class, finishing with

a card game in which the students try to

use phrases with key words like sorry and afraid as they take part in a

communicative activity such as a roleplay

Alex Case has more

games to encourage

more ambitious use of

functional language.

TEFL by him at http://

tefltastic.wordpress com/publications/.

Functional language:

card game

The game that I described in Issue 94

can also be played with cards that have

descriptions of the things that you want

the students to do during the

communication, such as the names of

functions, rather than the words and

phrases they must use For example, to

practise turn-taking, you could use cards

with one of these functions on each one:

Interrupting

Refusing interruption

Taking the turn back / Getting back

on track

Offering others the chance to speak

Keeping others speaking

Signalling the end of your turn

Turning down the chance to speak

Ending your interruption

The full set would contain three or four

cards with each function As with the

game with key words on the cards (see

Issue 94), the students work in small

groups and all the cards are dealt out

The students look at their own cards,

but don’t show them to the other

players During a speaking activity that

you assign, such as a roleplay

teleconference, the students must

successfully do the thing that is written

on one of their cards, using a phrase

that no one else has said during the

game, in order to be able to discard that

card The person with the fewest cards

left in their hand when the game finishes

is the winner The students can then

work together to brainstorm further

suitable phrases for each function (both

those that they used during the game

and others that they can think of)

This game can also be used for many

other kinds of language For example,

you could have cards saying ‘Opening

greeting’, ‘Opening line’, ‘Friendly

language’, ‘Explaining reasons’, ‘Closing

line’ and ‘Closing greeting’ for emailing

(roleplaying by saying what they would

write in response to each other)

Functional language:

board game

I have recently found that this game

works even better with a board to move

round than it does with cards to discard

Each student talks about a topic written

in the square that their counter lands on, perhaps in response to a question on the topic from someone else in their group

While they are speaking, they try to use phrases which haven’t been said so far and which fulfil the functions written in the middle of the board The other students act as monitors, listening out for new phrases which fulfil those functions and putting a tick if they hear one, awarding one point for each when the person stops speaking That person can then move that many squares forward on the board The person who is furthest round the board when the teacher stops the game wins The students can then brainstorm more good high-level phrases for those functions, including things they didn’t say in the game

There is a version of this game, suitable for the Cambridge English: First speaking exam, on page 20

Meeting criteria:

board game

As well as monitoring each other for appropriate and original language, as in the game above, students can listen out for how well their partners match other criteria for successful communication, such as:

successfully doing the thing that they are asked to

giving a good impression being polite

being friendly starting well ending well using language that has been studied during the course

avoiding silence (speaking fluently, filling silence, etc)

This can easily be turned into a board game similar to that above by having a game board with a series of challenges, one in each square When a player lands

on a square and performs a challenge (perhaps a roleplay), the other students

in the group monitor and tick any of the criteria in the list above that they think have been achieved That player can then move forward a number of squares, according to how many ticks they got

There is a version of this game to review common business skills and

situations on page 21 As each situation

is a roleplay, it is best if the students work in groups of at least three people, with the people who aren’t speaking working as the monitors, ticking the criteria and giving points

Monitoring for more ambitious language

The idea of having a monitor in each group can also be used during the card games described in this and my last article The simplest variation is to have one person, who is not taking an active part in the game, giving cards back to people if they try to discard them without successfully doing the thing written on them, or if they use phrases that other players have used before A bigger change involves the monitor holding all the cards (rather than dealing them out to the other players), and giving cards to people as they successfully perform the function or use the words and phrases on them, checking that these haven’t already been used in the game In this case, the person with most cards at the end of the game wins Having monitors can also be very useful even when the activity doesn’t have a game element For example, one person can sit out during speaking activities such as roleplays, monitoring for a list of criteria that they have been given, such as ‘smoothly starting and ending the conversation’, ‘speaking about half the time each’ or ‘politely interrupting’ After the activity has finished, the monitor gives feedback and suggestions on how the participants could improve next time those things that weren’t so strong The participants can add their own ideas if they like They can then try the same activity again If you want to add more of a game element, the monitor can also declare a ‘winner’ of each exchange, based on the criteria that they have been given, with the prize, perhaps, being able

to sit out the next round and take the monitor role

Where do you like …?

What do you like (most) about …?

How much time do you spend …?

in the future / next

How would you describe …?

Has … changed over the years?

Do you spend a lot of time …?

Tell us about the last time you …

hometown

foreign languages

the area where you live

Do / Would you prefer …?

Would you say that …?

You move around the board by using phrases with the functions listed below while you answer You get one point for each correct phrase that hasn’t been used by anyone before (no points for repeating phrases someone has already said)

1 Checking what the question means

2 Commenting on the (possible) mismatch between the question and the answer

3 Commenting on the question

4 Dealing with difficult questions / Filling silence while thinking

5 Vague language / Saying you aren’t sure (eg can’t remember exactly)

6 Changing your mind / Correcting wrong information

7 Explaining things the questioner might not know / understand (eg things specific to your country)

After you finish the game, brainstorm useful language for doing each of the things above

You will get one point for each correct expression which no one else thought of

Do you have a favourite …?

Do you find it easy to …?

friends

free time / leisure

Do you think you will …?

the place where you are living

home / at home

Is there anything …?

the most interesting thing

learn new things / study

You get one point for each of these things:

1 Successfully doing the thing on the square

2 Being polite

3 Starting well/smoothly/in the proper way

4 Ending well/ smoothly/ in the proper way

5 Using language you studied during your course

6 Using language no one else has used during this game

7 Avoiding silence (speaking fluently, filling all silence, thinking aloud, not pausing too much, etc)

The person who lands on the square should do the thing written there, with someone else taking the other role (including saying what they would write in email replies and/or emails which should be replied

to) Only the person on the square gets points,

and then moves one square for each point that their partners give them

The person who has gone furthest around the board when the teacher stops the game is the winner

Quit your job face-to-face

Give information

on the phone

Explain a new rule to everyone

by email

Ask for information

Make first contact with someone

Complain about something face-to-face

Ask for information face-to-face

class design

Effective

class design

The biggest concern of the young

learner teachers I talk to in my

training sessions and workshops

is not normally a lack of

activities but, rather, how to get the

activities they do choose to work well

I mentioned the idea of micromechanics

for teaching teens in ETp Issue 79 Here,

I shall revisit it with regard to task design

for young and very young learners,

ranging from five to ten years

Micromechanics

Micromechanics is a branch of science

and engineering It involves studying the

behaviour (the flexibility or breaking

point) of a composite material by

examining its component parts For

teaching, I use the idea as an analogy

Our composite material is whatever

classroom activity is in progress, and its

component parts are the individual

behaviour of each child and whatever

influences that behaviour: the teacher’s

directions, staging and interventions as

well as the learners’ understandings,

mindsets, relationships, intentions and

impulses

Real micromechanics researchers

use electron microscopes to examine

their materials I recommend that we

use the focus question: What is each

child doing at each moment of the activity?

the first place? Task design and structure

is the means through which we fine-tune and balance these elements

An anecdote may help illustrate my understanding of task design:

Going down to our village square recently, I saw that a circuit of straw bales had been laid down for a coming festival The bales were later to be covered in plastic and the circuit filled with sand for go-karting, but in this rudimentary and unmonitored phase they were still attracting attention

Chris Roland uses micromechanics to tighten up

the nuts and bolts of activities.

Freeze-framing the moment like this helps us to figure out what is, was or will be going on at an individual level, and from there to a collective level

Task design

Let us simplify YL activities into three basic elements: language content, order (plus control) and fun These translate respectively into these teacher concerns:

What will the students learn? How do I keep it going? Why will they want to do it in

This straw bale circuit transformed previously open space into something much more interesting.

While I drank my coffee, a little girl on a

bicycle rode round the track again and

again and again, and when she was too

tired to keep pedalling, she got off and

continued to push her bike round it

Now if somebody had said to her

‘Have a cycle You’ve got the whole square

You can go where you want’, she never

would have ridden till she was ready to

drop Inside the track, she had less space

and fewer options, yet she enjoyed it

more The containment and guidance

that the bales provided gave her

pedalling a sense of depth or journey

and made it more convincing Structure

at the same time restricts, but provides

this sense of purpose and direction

This is one way to think about task

design: as constructing a clear route that

marks out direction for our students

When they ask What do we have to do? it

is a call for their teacher to use the very

powerful tool of adult imagination and

foresight to construct a course for them

We find task design in several places

It is how we initially conceive of an

activity It is how we set things up in

terms of staging, in terms of our

instructions, the roles we assign (of

teams, monitors, captains, helpers and

turns) and the supporting frames of

reference we provide as language on

the board It is also direction during an

activity to both individuals and the

whole class and, finally, it is our materials

themselves, including how

self-explanatory and logical our paper-based

exercises are and whether an exercise

contains linguistic support or

non-linguistic clues to help the children solve

the puzzle that the exercise has posed

Let me demonstrate various aspects

of task design, using as an example two

activities that have the potential to

result in loss of control or of language

focus I have chosen more challenging

activities, from a classroom management

perspective, to highlight the importance

of design in getting things to work

1 Sticky sentences

The first activity involves the use of

sticky grabber toys, being used in the

photo by a group of five and six year

olds The students use their sticky toys

to grab two halves of a sentence The sentences use everyday language, such

as Who’s the//monitor today? or Can I

borrow//some scissors, please? There is

also colour-coded support, as the two parts of each sentence are on card of the same colour

One option is to have one pair of students at a time grab designated sentence halves and then reconstruct them on the board using BluTac

Deciding which part of the sentence goes first encourages meaningful engagement with the language itself

Bottlenecking

However, with only a couple of students

up at the front at a time, we run into a classic tension which arises whenever activity on the part of the one or the few requires relative inactivity on the part of the many We encounter this tension when the students have to sit quietly and listen to the teacher, for example A similar imbalance occurs here when the demand for action felt

by most of the class depends on the completion of the action by just one or two students I call this ‘bottlenecking’

The Venus flytrap

Younger children struggle to sit as mere spectators, waiting their turn, while others do something really cool Their

impatience also increases pressure on the actors Students start to come out

of their chairs, advancing slowly, if unchecked, towards the locus of action until they surround the table, and the children whose turn it actually is get swallowed up, along with whatever it was they were doing; the task in progress is derailed by the little helping hands of their classmates

To avoid the ‘Venus flytrap’

phenomenon just described, we might set the whole class up with workbook exercises as the main activity and have the grabber game as a secondary task going on at the same time This does, however, entail teachers splitting their attention between requests for help with the exercises and overseeing the game

Free for all

Another option is to have the whole class playing at once Each child tries to grab one matching pair of cards Whilst answering the issue of bottlenecking, the downside is reduced language engagement as each child collects only one sentence and can rely on the colour coding, thereby leapfrogging the linguistic content

Again, we can compensate in various ways We can have the sentences written on the board with a student’s name next to each, but not the colour,

Performing this task together cuts out the pressure of waiting, but reduces the number of sentences each student engages with.

he teaches and trains

He also tutors on Trinity Certificate and Diploma courses for Active Language, Cádiz, and OxfordTEFL, Barcelona

He is particularly interested in the area

of task micromechanics, rules, the workings of fun and the way that teachers and students talk to each other

so they have to read and then find their

sentence We can also ask the children

to collect their two cards and sit back

down Afterwards, each reads out their

sentence in turn and we time them to

see how long it takes them as a class

Another way to increase interaction

with the English is to remove the colour

coding and have everything on white

card The students identify their

sentences on the board, and then have

to locate the correct sentence halves

on the table more carefully before

launching their grabbers These small

considerations and tweaking of

microsettings are the very stuff of

increasingly effective task design

2 Octopus hurling

This second activity is one I have used

extensively with seven and eight year

olds Inspired by anecdotes of early

twentieth-century progressive educators

in Catalonia, it involves interaction

between language and symbols projected

onto the board using PowerPoint and

students with projectiles standing some

way back In response to a sentence at

the top of each slide, such as She’s got

fair hair or He’s got dark curly hair, the

students throw a sticky octopus at the

correct picture

The idea of throwing things in class

may not sit well, intuitively, at first The

students certainly enjoy it, though, and

in terms of demonstrating their

understanding of sentences, it is a valid

alternative to matching, ticking or putting

up hands and answering questions If

they are going to be throwing, however,

students do need clear guidance

To avoid bottlenecking pressure or

Venus flytrap crowding, we return to

our focus question: What is each child

doing at each moment of the activity? The

students belong to one of two teams

(mirrored in the colour of the

projectiles – here, orange and green

sticky octopuses) and the answer to

our focus question is that, most of the time, they will be observing how many

of their teammate’s three throws hit the correct picture and recording that on their individual copy of the team’s score sheet This means there is always some language to pay attention to and some reason for watching the action

With chairs arranged against the walls, the nearest student to the board

on each side of the class stands up to throw, while the others move round by one seat, taking their score sheets with them After throwing, each player joins

students needing to distinguish between

she, he and even it, characteristics of

appearance, clothes, position or verbs

To increase processing, the throwers have to read out the sentence together first (they cannot throw until the teacher counts them in) What happens, though, if a student does not

understand the sentence? To help here,

we introduce an additional microsetting

As they prepare to throw, the players may turn to the next player on their

team and ask Can you help me? That

team member can then come out of their seat and explain, using L1 if necessary Conversely, if their teammates are trying to lend unneeded support, we can arm the players with an

emphatic I know!

Introducing these scripts is consistent with the philosophy that our English classes are places where students interact in English, they don’t just have English as an object under study

With five different classes over the last two years, I have not yet had a student throw anything at a classmate, and I have run the activity for over 30 minutes without it breaking down – with the students, just like the little girl

on the bicycle, going round and round and round

As teachers, there are often things we might like to do but don’t dare Thinking about where we can tighten up task design and structure on a nuts-and-bolts level can make everyday activities more effective, and help take us to new places when it comes to getting more adventurous ones to work

Each pair of students gets three throws at the same slide, then the next pair gets a different sentence and images.

the back of their team’s seated queue

This rotation avoids a standing queue, which can become disorderly, and also means that even when it is not a child’s turn, there is still constant movement

The students soon realise that the slicker the rotation, the sooner and more often they get to have another throw

Another rule to regulate the action

is that the teacher, not the students, re-collects the projectiles Therefore, there is no possibility of a student holding onto their octopus and refusing to hand

it over at the end of their throws

An activity like this can be used to practise a range of language, with the

Effective

class design

Over

the

wall

Alan Maley goes back to nature.

The three books I discuss here are

all about some aspect of the

power of landscape to affect the

way we are Most of us live in

towns nowadays, far from the natural

world, and are assailed by such a barrage

of visual and auditory stimuli that we have

almost lost the capacity to look at

anything really carefully – to notice it and

observe it If nothing else, these books

may stir an interest in the world around

us, and make us think about our place in

it They may also provide some ideas for

incorporating our relationship with nature

into our teaching

of its past history: ‘The cultural humus of

60 generations or more lies upon it But most of England is 1,000 years old, and in

a walk of a few miles one can touch every century in that long stretch of time.’

These things are there for us to see, if only we can learn to read the signs left by history on the landscape In fact, the landscapes we see are a compound of geology, topography, soil-types, vegetation and the long history of human intervention Hoskins takes us through this palimpsest, stripping it back, layer by layer, starting with the most ancient signs

of habitation in the Iron Age and Bronze Age, still visible in stone walls, burial mounds, earthen forts, stone megaliths like Stonehenge, and Celtic field patterns

He moves on to the imprint left by the Romans, in the form of their roads, canals and dykes, like the Foss Dyke, and certain field patterns around former Roman villas The Saxon occupation of Britain (450–1066) sees the development

of the large open-field systems with their strip farming – still visible in some areas

as patterns of ridge and furrow on the pastures – the settlement of villages following forest clearance and the earliest churches and bridges The villages of the Scandinavian invasions are easily discernable from Saxon settlements by

place names ending in -by, -wick and -thwaite Following the Norman Conquest

in 1066, the colonisation of the forests continued apace; marshland was reclaimed; watermills appeared on the rivers; new bridges, churches and cathedrals like Durham and Canterbury were built; the great monastic foundations controlled large tracts of the country, leaving their mark in the stone walls that march across the moors of the north of England; and towns like Norwich and Exeter began to thrive The Black Death, which decimated the population, left in its wake hundreds of deserted villages, still traceable from the patterns they have left

on the ground Yet the 14th and 15th centuries were also a great period of castle building, and many churches and bridges date from this time During the period from the Tudors to the Georgians, much of the remaining forest cover was cleared and many of the open fields started to be enclosed by the hedges which are now so much a part of the English landscape Rich landowners began to build magnificent country houses, like Audley End in Essex, and these were often surrounded by parks and specially landscaped gardens The final great transformation of the landscape was brought about by the

The Making of the

English Landscape

This book was first published in 1955 and

was out of print for a time, so this

handsome re-issue as part of a series of

nature classics is most welcome William

George Hoskins was the father of modern

landscape history He makes us realise

that what we see as we look at a

landscape is composed of the many layers

26 • Issue 95 November 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •

Gooley, T How to Connect with Nature (The School of Life series) Macmillan 2014 Hoskins, W G The Making of the English

Landscape Little Toller Books 2013

Macfarlane, R The Old Ways: A Journey

on Foot Hamish Hamilton 2012

yelamoo@yahoo.co.uk

Alan Maley has worked in the area of ELT for over

40 years in Yugoslavia, Ghana, Italy, France, China, India, the UK, Singapore and Thailand

Since 2003 he has been a freelance writer and consultant He has published over 30 books and numerous articles, and was, until recently, Series Editor of the

Oxford Resource Books for Teachers.

Over

the

wall

Parliamentary Enclosures of the 19th

century, in which virtually all the open

fields disappeared, to be replaced by

smaller, hedged fields The Industrial

Revolution brought its own radical

transformation to the landscape in the

form of canals, turnpike roads and, above

all, the railways Millions of tons of earth

were shifted to construct the tunnels,

cuttings and viaducts, and coal mining,

steel smelting, chemicals, pottery and

glass disfigured the landscape with tips

and the blight of spreading towns and

their slums

So, next time you go to the countryside,

in the UK or elsewhere, maybe you will

see more than before And there are some

wonderful projects that you can do with

students on local landscape history

The Old Ways: A Journey

on Foot

This is the third of Robert Macfarlane’s

nature books In it, he celebrates the

complex relationship between the

landscape and those who walk through it

He speaks of walking as ‘a reconnoitre

inwards’ and ‘the subtle ways in which we

are shaped by the landscapes through

which we move’ In other words, we do

not walk just to get somewhere, but to

facilitate reflection, ‘walking as enabling

sight and thought … paths as offering not

only means of traversing space but also

ways of feeling, being and knowing’ So

this is a book both about the landscapes

he encounters through his feet and also

about a kind of metaphysical walking – an

inward journey

It is divided into four main parts:

Tracking (England), Following (Scotland),

Roaming (Abroad), Homing (England) The

foreign walks are highly evocative of place:

old pathways through the Left Bank in

Palestine, the high forests of the Sierra de

Guadarrama in Spain, the sacred mountain

Minya Konka in the Himalayas But the

essence of the book is the journeys within

Britain, with the detailed descriptions of

walks in different kinds of landscape –

chalk, granite, limestone, etc – all

described in a lyrical style which brings them alive For example:

‘In a canopy of long, thin beech wood, rooks yabbered and called, tossed up into the air and then settled back as if the wood itself were boiling.’

‘Rain-filled hoof marks and footprints flashed gold, coined by the sun.’

‘… a tractor ploughing a distant field to corduroy.’

‘… a big field mushroom lying upside down on its cap, its black gills like the charred pages of a book.’

One of the most hauntingly beautiful descriptions is of the Broomway, which crosses the mudflats at low tide in Essex, where sky and land and mist merge into a single silvery substance This is writing at its best

But the chapters also weave a discursive pattern of interaction between Macfarlane, the landscapes he traverses with their plant, animal and bird life brilliantly described, the many strong personalities he encounters on the way, the stories and the history associated with the landscapes, and the literary figures and travel writers who have also passed there In particular, there is a thread of association with the poet Edward Thomas, who was killed in 1917 at the Battle of Arras and was one of the best English nature poets of the 20th century

Macfarlane ends by walking alongside prehistoric footprints fossilised on the

shoreline at Formby in Lancashire: ‘I stop

by the last footprint, 5,000 years after setting out, my track ceasing where his does I look back along the track-line to

my south The light tilts again and suddenly the water-filled footprints are mirrors reflecting the sky, the shuddering clouds and whoever looks into them.’

How to Connect with Nature

Tristran Gooley’s book is a practical guide for the layperson, to help them re-connect with the natural world It is one of the titles in a new series of small, compact,

practical handbooks produced by The School of Life Gooley’s aim is to

re-awaken awareness of the world around us: the way time is structured, the way we read the sky, the nature of water …

Chapter 2, The Senses, has a rich array of

exercises for developing sensitivity to what we see, hear, smell, taste and touch

Many of these exercises could usefully be

adapted for language teaching He also deals with landscape types and their typical vegetation There is a chapter on

Hidden Calendars – all the natural signs

available for reading the time of year

Again, much of this would also form good language teaching input, suitably

adapted In the penultimate chapter, he details the benefits from greater contact with nature and awareness of it In

particular, he mentions: ‘Time spent in nature has been shown to improve self-esteem and conflict-resolution one hour spent in nature can improve memory and attention span by 20 percent Nature can calm us, it can help us focus and for many it works as an anti-depressant.’

So what are we all waiting for?

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

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

Saturday 20 June 2015 Holiday Inn, Brighton

In conjunction with

A one-day conference packed full

of practical ideas to improve your teaching practice

Delegates at ET p Live! in 2014 said…

“The speakers were inspirational and varied – couldn’t have asked for better.”

“I felt engaged and challenged.”

“interesting, thought provoking sessions”

ET p Live! brings the practical approach of English

Teaching professional magazine to this one-day event,

focusing on the practical aspects of English language teaching, with:

For more details and to see the programme, visit the

Attending this counts towards your continuing professional development

is back

Saturday 20 June 2015 Holiday Inn, Brighton

In conjunction with

A one-day conference packed full

of practical ideas to improve your

teaching practice

Delegates at ET p Live! in 2014 said…

“The speakers were inspirational and varied –

couldn’t have asked for better.”

“I felt engaged and challenged.”

“interesting, thought provoking sessions”

ET p Live! brings the practical approach of English

Teaching professional magazine to this one-day event,

focusing on the practical aspects of English language

For more details and to see the programme, visit the

Attending this counts towards your continuing professional development

is back

Technology for pronunciation

P R O N U N C I A T I O N

Technology for pronunciation

There is no escaping the

presence of technology in ELT

today However, despite the

scientific foundations of

pronunciation, programs for computers

and apps for mobile devices are

currently a relatively small part of what

is on offer for language teaching, with

grammar and vocabulary dominating

here, just as in the traditional classroom

Why this should be is hard to say, but it

could be to do with the fact that

learning pronunciation is very different

from learning grammar or vocabulary

Learning to pronounce

The critical thing about learning second

language pronunciation is that it is more

a process of skills acquisition than of

cognitive knowledge – pronunciation is

what you can do, not what you know

Because of this skills component,

pronunciation teaching can learn a lot

from the skills acquisition processes

found in sports or in playing a musical

instrument At its simplest, skills

acquisition can be seen as a three-stage

process, with a cognitive stage being

followed by associative and autonomous

stages

When I was first learning Spanish,

for example, the simple /r/ was a source

of great difficulty to me In an attempt

to help me, a friend explained that I had

to imitate the American way of

producing the t in water In this first

stage, the cognitive stage, I was receiving

explicit instructions of how to produce

the target feature, together with a model

to aim at Production in this first stage is

conscious, deliberate, slow and requires the learner’s full attention We’ve all witnessed this in class!

In the associative stage, learners

slowly convert what they know into what they can do At this intermediary stage,

they need to be offered opportunities for abundant repetition of the target feature within a narrow context Games and tongue twisters are two activity types that can provide this abundant repetition

In the autonomous stage, the

production of the target feature has to become more and more automated and rapid With pronunciation, much more than with grammar and vocabulary, production has to come about without speakers having to think consciously about what’s happening inside their mouths

Choosing apps and programs

If skills are learnt by a three-stage acquisition process, to what extent does technology come to the learner’s aid? In order to answer this question, and to be able to decide for ourselves the real value

of a new program or app, we need to think about a number of different issues

Suitability, choice and sequence Not all learners have the same pronunciation problems, especially when they don’t share the same first language Programs and apps need to adapt to each learner – what is vital for

a French speaker of English could be irrelevant to a Chinese speaker Even

when learners share a first language,

the chance to choose what the learner

personally considers is important

(choice) and when the learner thinks

it’s important (sequence) is essential for the motivation needed to maintain interest during drills, games and other repetitive pronunciation tasks

Place and pace Good programs/apps need to pay attention to where the learning will

happen (place – at school, in the

classroom, at home, on the bus, etc)

and at what speed (pace – different

learners need to progress from one part of an activity to another at different speeds because of the muscle-training involved in skills acquisition)

Explicit instructions Because learners will usually be working on their own, programs and apps will need to give an explicit introduction as to what is being practised and why, as well as clear guidance as to what is going to happen

in the activity, and how to do it

Abundant repetition

As we saw earlier, abundant repetition

is essential in skills work, and one of the joys of machines is that, unlike teachers, they never lose their patience Good programs and apps will, therefore, contain multiple opportunities for the repetition of a target feature in order to bring about automation

Feedback and correction

Feedback and correction are essential

Robin Walker looks at the present and looks to the future.

Technology for

pronunciation

in order to overcome the use of

existing first-language psychomotor

habits for specific pronunciation

features This is a critical issue In the

absence of meaningful feedback, the

first-language pronunciation habit will

actually become reinforced, and with

each failed attempt to produce the

target feature correctly, the incorrect

neuronal pathway will be further

reinforced This means that repeated

‘off-target’ attempts of a merely ‘listen

and repeat’ type not only do not

generate improved pronunciation but,

in fact, actually make it increasingly

hard to modify the incorrect

(first-language-influenced) habit

Assessment and progress

Learning pronunciation on your own

can be a cruel business, and if

students don’t perceive that they are

making progress, they can get very

depressed Clear indications of

progress promote increased and better

quality learning In addition, tangible

progress helps to justify the cost of

taking on the learning, both in terms

of any financial outlay, and in terms

of time and effort

So how do current programs and apps

fare against these criteria? Given the

impossibility of discussing a significant

number of these, I am going to limit my

comments to websites, programs and

apps that I am familiar with and that are

free I have organised these around the

three areas where I have turned to

technology for help in my own teaching

– tuition, listening and recording

Technology and tuition

Technology is often championed as the

solution for students learning English

on their own But is this true with

pronunciation? It is impossible even to

begin to review the countless free sites

that claim to teach pronunciation, but

here are two that give us some insight

into what is currently available

BBC Learning English

(www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/

learningenglish/grammar/pron/)

The BBC Learning English website

offers ‘tips on pronunciation’ This covers individual sounds, includes a brief section on connected speech, and has three radio programmes by a pronunciation expert

There is a short video for each of the sounds of English In each, the speaker models the target sound, draws attention

to the shape of her mouth, and then tells the viewer to listen and repeat Sadly, the videos fail to solve the basic problems of computer/online tuition with respect to two important issues

The first is that for most of the sounds of English, focusing on the shape

of the mouth gives learners little meaningful information Try learning how to pronounce /dú/ as in judge from looking at a person’s face, and you’ll soon see what I mean Secondly, as we saw earlier, the more we listen and repeat without being corrected, the harder it becomes ever to pronounce well

The BBC site is not alone here In fact, none of the sites I have seen so far offer this critical corrective feedback At best, they allow you to record yourself and compare what you have done with the model, but this is still a long way from what is needed by learners working

on their own

The Sounds of American English

(www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/

about.html#)

This University of Iowa website focuses

on the sounds of US English It may not

be the most attractive homepage on the internet, but the site provides learners with valuable information about what they are trying to do, especially with regard to the articulation of consonants

It does this through a very effective combination of sound bites, videos and animated illustrations However, once again, there is no corrective feedback

Technology for listening

There is a huge overlap between good pronunciation and good listening skills Good pronunciation teaching involves exposing learners to a range of accents These accents could be regional native-speaker accents, but in today’s globalised world, they are more likely to

be non-native-speaker accents A number of sites allow learners to get this much-needed exposure

The Speech Accent Archive

(http://accent.gmu.edu)

You can use the Speech Accent Archive

to get your students interested in different accents, and there are hundreds available

on this valuable site My learners really enjoy listening to speakers from their own first-language background to get started After that, it’s a question of each learner’s most likely needs The only thing that bothers me about this site is the artificial-sounding elicitation paragraph that all of the speakers use When was the last time you had to buy

‘six spoons of fresh snow peas’?

Mouth diagram for /dú / from The Sounds of

American English

Map of Asia from The Speech Accent Archive

The International Dialects of English Archive

(www.dialectsarchive.com)

This site was created to provide actors with real-life models for learning different accents, so it lacks specific guidance or instructions for EFL students But there are over 1,000 recordings of native and non-native speakers of English reading a scripted paragraph and then talking freely about

a topic of their choice The transcript of the unscripted texts is available, allowing learners to match what they thought they heard against what was said, and then to focus on the pronunciation issues that often lie behind any differences

Technology for

pronunciation

Technology for recording

Making recordings is where I first began

to look seriously at using technology to

teach pronunciation Even if I can’t

listen to every student in class, I can

listen to the recordings they make and

give them a mark, as I suggested in ETp

Issue 93

Recorder Pro

(www.davaconsulting.com/products/

recorder-pro/)

Computer programs like Audacity or

WavePad allow users not only to make

recordings, but also to edit them But for

classroom use, it’s enough for students

to use the recording facility on their

mobile phones or, in the absence of this,

to use an app like Recorder Pro.

The advantage of such apps is that

they can be used anywhere (place), with

the learners working at their own speed

(pace), and with no limits as to how

many times a student repeats a task

(abundant repetition) They also

encourage the learners to be critical of

what they record My own students, for

example, admit to asking friends to listen

to their different attempts at a target

feature before choosing the one to send

to me for marking This process goes

some way to providing that essential

corrective feedback I insisted on earlier

Dragon Dictate

(www.nuance.com/dragon/index.htm)

For more immediate feedback, you can let your learners loose on speech recognition software This can be computer-based,

or as an app on a smartphone or tablet

One example is Dragon Dictate

As you speak, the app transcribes what you say Users need to be online to get this particular app to work, so that doesn’t entirely satisfy ‘the place’

criterion Nor are there any instructions, though the app is intuitive to use

Another limiting factor is that the speech recognition software behind the app has problems dealing with connected speech and different speakers’ accents, but it does provide immediate feedback, and many learners generally find this highly motivating, if a little frustrating at times

Modern technologies have the potential

to bring a lot to pronunciation They can allow learners to:

work at their own speed in a time and place that suits them;

practise as often (repetitively) as they want;

access a huge range of accents to improve listening skills;

make their own recordings and send

Rogerson Revell, P ‘Can or should we

teach pronunciation?’ Speak Out! 47 (20)

2012

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 teacher’s

handbook His website is

Today’s technologies also allow teachers

to give individualised feedback This is especially meaningful if the teacher includes advice on how to correct problems But for the moment, as stand-alone learning devices, especially

in terms of self-directed tuition, current technologies do not do everything a trained teacher does

Pamela Rogerson Revell sums the situation up nicely when she suggests

that ‘technology-based pronunciation

materials complement rather than replace the teacher and need to be used and evaluated carefully’ But who knows

what tomorrow will bring?

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