CHAPTER 12 - Focusing on language 2021.pdf

FOREIGN LANGUAGE
TEACHING
METHODOLOGY 2

CHAPTER 12
FOCUSING ON LANGUAGE
FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING
METHODOLOGY 2

Teacher: Make a question with “What”….,
Student (Andy): What’s the boy do?
Teacher: …?
SITUATION

1.“slips”: students can correct themselves once
the mistake has been pointed out to them
2.“errors”: students can’t correct themselves and
therefore need explanation
3.“attempts”: students want to say something but
they don’t know the correct way of saying it
Three categories of mistakes:

- Humans learn by trial and error, experimenting to
see what works and what doesn’t.
- Student errors are evidence that progress is being
made.
- Errors show us that a student is experimenting
with language, trying out ideas, taking risks,
attempting to communicate, making progress.
Error and Correction

- T should try many correction techniques,
not simply giving Sts the answers.
- “What you tell me, I forget; what I
discover for myself, I remember”
Error and Correction

Different kinds of errors
Errors can be of many kinds. Match the errors in the following list with their descriptions.
Errors
1 Alice like this school.
2 Where you did go yesterday?
3 The secretary is in the office.
4 Give me one butter bread!
5 After three years they made
a divorce.
6 I am here sinceTuesday.

• Sometimes language can be grammatically
correct but completely inappropriate in the
context in which it is used.
• Errors can also be made in intonation and
rhythm; in fact, wrong intonation seems to
cause more unintended offence to native
speakers than almost any other kind of error.

1. What kind of error has been made (grammatical?
pronunciation? etc).
2. Whether to deal with it (is it useful to correct it?).
3. When to deal with it (now? end of activity? later?).
4. Who will correct (teacher? student self-correction? other
students?).
5. Which technique to use to indicate that an error has
occurred or to enable correction.
5 teacher WH-decisions have to be made
when working with oral errors in class

- An important consideration here is the aim
of the activity: ACCURACY or FLUENCY
Step 2: Whether to deal with it?
- Will it help or hinder learning?
- Am I correcting some thing they don’t
know?
- How will the students take the correction?
- What is my intention in correcting? …

- If the objective is accuracy, then immediate
correction is likely to be useful
- If the aim is fluency, save the correction for
after the activity has finished or later
Step 3: When to correct?

Main objective of speaking
activity
When to correct
Accuracy focused immediate correction or later
or not at all
Fluency later or brief, unobtrusive, immediate
correction (scaffolding) or not at all
One strategy used by many teachers during fluency activities is to listen in
discreetly and collect a list of overheard errors. Later on, you can use this list
to provide sentences to discuss, to set an exercise, to plan the next lesson,
etc.

Note:
Should the teacher correct every mistake
students make ?Why/Why not?

 Don’t react to every mistake that
will demotivate students
 Think carefully when to intervene
students’ speech.
Note:

Two steps can be used to encourage student
self-correction or student-student correction
A. Indicate that the error has been made
(indicate what kind of error it is, where in a
sentence the error is, etc.)
B. invite correction or help the students
towards a correction
Step 5: Which technique?

CHAPTER 12 - Focusing on language 2021.pdf

Commentary
Some ideas for indicating / correcting errors:
• Tell students that there is an error (e.g 'There's an
error in that sentence’).
• Use facial expression: surprise, frown, raised eyebrows,
interest, etc.
• Use a gesture combined with a facial expression (e.g
worried look and hand outstretched to 'hold' the
sentence — you won't let the class move on until they
deal with the sentence you are 'holding’).

Commentary
Some ideas for indicating / correcting errors:
• Use finger correction (hold on to the 'error' finger, e.g
the third word)
• Repeat sentence up to error
• Echo sentence with changed intonation or stress (eg
'You go to a disco yesterday?' or 'He wanted to eat a
kitchen?').

A useful correction
technique: fingers
• a simple but effective basic
technique for clarifying the
structure of sentences and for
instant error correction.

Basic technique
1 Put down any pens, paper, etc. you have and hold up one hand
in front of you.
2 Each finger represents one word. Use your other hand to
indicate each word/ finger in turn as you say the sentence (or
you elicit the sentence from the students).
3 The learner gets a clear visual indication of the shape of the
sentence.
(NB The word order for your students must read left to right,
so from your position 'behind' your fingers, the sentence will
appear to be right to left.)

Variations and ideas
• These two words are in the wrong order (draw a
small circle above the two appropriate fingers).
•You don't need this word (fold down the finger
corresponding to the extra word).
• There should be an extra word here (point to the
gap between the appropriate fingers).

Variations and ideas
• Say it quickly (hold out
spread fingers, and with the
other hand close them
together).
• Third syllable is wrong (use
the joints of your finger to
represent the syllables).
• Contraction (eg I am > I'm)
(hold the appropriate fingers
apart and then move them
together).

Task 12.5: Using finger sentences
Practice this with a classmate facing you (or a mirror, if there
are no volunteers around). Think of a nonsense sentence, e.g
Pop tee tipple on ug. Say the sentence quickly and get your
classmate to repeat it. Then use the techniques above to get
them to:
1. improve their pronunciation of individual words and the
whole sentence;
2. learn a question form with two of the words in a different
order.

A. Indicating that an error has been made
1.Tell students that there is an error
2.Use facial expressions (surprise, frown, raised
eyebrows, interest, etc.)
3.Use gestures combined with a facial expression
4.Use finger correction
5.Repeat sentence up to error
6.Echo sentence with change intonation or stress (rather
differ from the unaware echo)

Indicating that an error has been made
7. Ask a question
8. Ask a one-word question
9. Draw a timeline on the board
10. Draw spaces or boxes on the board to show the number of
words in a sentence, indicate which word is the problem
11. Write the problem sentence on the board for discussion
12. Exploit the humour in the error
13. Use the phonemic chart to point at an incorrect phoneme

B. Invite correction
The “CHAIN”: If student A makes an error,
elicit a correction from student B, if student
B also fails to get it right, ask student C, ...

• The effect of this is to involve many people in thinking about the
problem and finding a solution; done effectively, the errors and their
corrections can be passed around the class like a ball of string
unwinding, tying together a network of enquiry and support.

Task 12.4: Responding to errors
Read the following examples of learner errors and decide on
an efficient way of indicating what is wrong or correcting it.
1 I am exciting with this assignment!
2 I enjoy to swim.
3 He broken the car.
4 I go to the party last Saturday.
5 I'd like some informations about the course syllabus.

2. TESTING
 Three criteria of a good test
- fair and appropriate to the students (and to anyone who
needs to know the results, e.g. headteacher, other
teachers, employers, parents, etc.).
- not be too troublesome to mark
- provide clear results that serve the purpose for which it
was set

Task 12.6:A good test
Decide if the following examples fulfil the three criteria for a good test
mentioned above.
1. It is the day when new students arrive at your school.When you chat to
them, they seem to be very different in level.You give them a placement test
to decide which level class they should go into. Everyone gets a mark
between 63 and 67 out of 100,
2.You set a test for your class using material from the next three units of the
book that they will be studying over the next month.
3.Your students have been studying a balanced course of skills and language
improvement work for the last ten weeks. For the end-of-term test, you have
asked each student to write you five essays. It is now midnight and you have
the pile of essays in front of you.

1. A test like this is virtually useless.A placement test needs to give a broad
range of marks (e.g. between 10 and 90 out of 100) so that you can
easily see who is stronger and who weaker.
2. Do your class know why they are doing the test?You may have a very
good reason for doing it, but if they don't know what that is, then it's
going to seem a very unfair trick to play on them to test them on work
they haven't done. However, if they are informed, then setting a test in
advance like this could be very useful as a diagnostic tool to help you
plan the course and allow them and you to see what they already know
and what they need to work on. It would probably also be a good idea
to do exactly the same test again at the end of the next part of the
course in order to see (and let them see) what improvement they have
made.

3 Not really what you want to plough through late at night. It
doesn't sound as if it fulfils the `markability' criteria. Obviously
there are going to be many occasions when it is essential to
mark a great deal of written work, but there is no sense in
creating unnecessary drudgery for yourself.The amount of
writing hardly seems fair to students either. Finally, it doesn't
serve its purpose if it's intended to check on their progress
(how can you measure progress in speaking, listening and
reading with a purely written exam?).

Traditional 'pen-and-paper' tests are usually made up of two types of questions:
• discrete item tasks (i.e testing specific individual language points);
• integrative tasks (i.e a number of items or skills tested in the same question).
These can be marked in two ways:
• objectively (i.e there is a clear correct answer, and every marker would give
the same marks to the same question);
• subjectively (i.e the marking depends largely on the personal decision of the
marker; different markers might give different marks for the same question).
Discrete items are likely to be marked objectively; integrative tests are more
likely to be marked subjectively. Some questions may involve elements of both.
Language systems are easier to test objectively; language skills tend to be tested
subjectively.

Task 12.7: Categorising test questions
Categorise the following questions. Are they discrete? Integrative? Will the
marking be objective or subjective? (The answer may not always be clear-cut!)
1 Talk about this picture with your teacher. (Students are given a picture of
people doing various things.)
2 Choose the word or phrase which best completes each sentence. John
always_________ to the cinema on Saturday.
A. go B. goes C. going D. gone
3 (In the language laboratory)
Voice on recording: Reply to these comments in a natural way.
Excuse me. Do you know where the nearest bus stop is? (ten-second pause)
Would you mind lending me your car, just for tonight? (ten-second pause)
I've lost my watch. You don't have the time on you, do you? (ten-second pause)

Task 12.7: Categorising test questions
4 Fill in the gaps.
a Have you been to Moscow?
b How long have you that new car?
5You want to sell a digital music player that you were given for Christmas
(you already have one).Write a short notice to out on your school
noticeboard. (Not more than 30 words.)
6 (In a private interview with a teacher)
Read this aloud:
“The advertisement states that the new design measures 20 m x 35 m. If
you are interested in receiving more information, please contact Ms H. J.
Jones of PORTILLO Warehouses, that's P-O-R-T-I-L-L-0 Warehouses, on
071 489 2222, ext. 97.”

Criteria rather than marks?
A criteria-based assessment scheme could perhaps measure each 'can do' on
a scale of four:
1 The candidate meets and surpasses the criteria.
2 The candidate meets all main aspects of the criteria.
3 The candidate meets the criteria in some respects, but with significant
problems.
4 The candidate is unable to meet the criteria in any respect.

Some common discrete-item testing techniques
Gap-fill
• Single sentence
Fill in the blanks. Use only one word in each space.
I’d _____ go to the café than the pub.
Answer: rather
(If answers of more than one word are allowed, then other answers are
possible; instructions need to be clear!)
• Cloze
A cloze test is a gap-fill exercise using a longer text and with a consistent
number of words between gaps (e.g. every ninth word).The word ‘cloze' is
often incorrectly used to describe any gap-filling task.

Gap-fill
• Multiple choice
Choose the word or phrase which best completes each sentence.
If I went to Jakarta, ______ buy some jewellry.
a. I’ll b.I c.will d. I’d
Answer: d
(Multiple choice is, of course, a very widely used testing technique and can be used
for more than simple gap-filling tests.)
• Using given words
Put one word from the list below in each gap.
thought switched unlocked arrived
He (1)____ home late that night. As he (2)____ the front door, he (3)____ he
heard a noise in the sitting room. He tiptoed carefully into the room and
(4)_____ on the light.
Answers: 1. arrived 2. unlocked 3. thought 4. switched

• Using other clues (e.g pictures, anagrams, first letters, lines indicating how many
letters in word, etc.)
He looked through the _______ and was amazed to see that she had finally
come ______
Answers: window, home
• Transformation of a given word
He could produce no _____ evidence to support his argument. (photograph)
Answer: photographic

Sentence transformation
Starting with (or making use of) a given word or words; changing the form, but
keeping the meaning
He liked the theatre but hated the play.
Although ...
Answer: Although he liked the theatre, he hated the play.
• Following a given instruction
Change this sentence so that it describes the past.
She's looking closely at the sculpture, trying to decide if she likes it.
Possible answer: She looked closely at the sculpture, trying to decide if she
liked it.

Sentence construction and reconstruction
• Rearranging words
brother / much / he's / than / his / taller
Answer: He's much taller than his brother.
Although / 1 / had headache / go I concert
Possible answer: Although I have a bad headache, still go to the concert.

Sentence construction and reconstruction
• Finding and correcting mistakes
1. Cross out the incorrect word.
When I will visit you, I'll see your new baby.
Answer: When I will visit you, see your new baby.
2. Rewrite this sentence in correct English.
I am enjoy swimming at the swimming pool of the sports centre.
Possible answer: I enjoy swimming in the sports centre swimming pool.
• Situational
You want to borrow ten dollars from a colleague.What question would you ask?
I wonder________ borrow_______ ?
Possible answer: I wonder if I could borrow ten dollars?

Two-option answers
• True or false
Often used after a reading passage, eg Paul wanted to visit the castle. True or false?
• Correct or incorrect
Write √ if the following sentence is in correct English. If it is incorrect put a X.
They always play football on Sundays.
Answer: √
• Defined options
Jill is a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl. Marta is a one-year-old baby.Write J next to the
things that belong to Jill.Write M next to the things that belong to Marta. (List of
words: teddy, mobile phone, calculator, cot.)
Answers: Mobile phone, calculator = J; teddy, cot = M.

Matching (pictures, words, sentence pieces, labels, etc.)
• Pictures and words
LT Figure 12.5
Matching pictures
and words

Matching (pictures, words, sentence pieces, labels, etc)
• Placing words in correct sets, lists, etc.
Put the following words in the correct list:
water, cheese, wine, lemonade, lunch, bread, butter, supper
Food Drinks Meals
Potatoes Milk Breakfast
Rice Tea Dinner

Matching (pictures, words, sentence pieces, labels, etc)
• Grammatical labelling
Mark each sentence a, b or c depending on the tense used.
a = present perfect; b = past simple; c = present progressive
I. He's just come back.
2. I've never been to the Andes.
3.When did you go there?
4. I'm living inVienna at the moment.
Answers: l.a 2.a 3.b 4.c

Matching (pictures, words, sentence pieces, labels, etc.)
• Putting jigsaw pieces together
Which beginning goes with which ending?
1 He planted a. the stones and weeds.
2 She picked b. some beautiful red apples.
3 She dug up c. the seeds in three separate rows.
Probable answers: 1 c 2 b 3 a
Note that some other answers are linguistically possible (eg 3 h) , though they
make less sense or seem more unlikely.

Common discrete-item testing
technique
Gap-fill
Sentence transformation
Sentence construction and reconstruction
Two-option answers
Matching
...

Task 12.8: Designing discrete and integrative questions
Design three discrete item questions and one integrative question
to test your understanding of this section of the book.

Assessing speaking
Many teachers feel more comfortable with testing grammar or lexis with
pen-and-paper tests than with testing skills. Speaking can seem a particular
problem, as it is intrinsically transient and hard to assess objectively.Any
assessment is potentially demanding on teacher time, but if our students'
work includes speaking, then it is necessary to assess it. Here are some ideas.
Prepare criteria
Think of about ten kinds of speaking that students have worked on over the
course and turn them into a criteria List (eg can take part in a discussion
and explain my point of view clearly and politely', 'I can tell a visitor to the
company how to get to my office') then assess students against them.

Too many students!
A frequent problem for teachers is when there are so many learners in one
class that it seems to make it unrealistic to assess speaking. However, with a
list of criteria (such as those above), it becomes considerably more
straightforward to assess even a large group. Explain to your class what you
will be doing, then, the next three or four times you set speaking tasks (ie
where learners work in pairs or groups), walk around class with a list of
names, listening in to various groups and noting successes, keeping track of
individual 'can dos'. Extend your assessment over a few lessons; keep
listening and adjusting your evaluation over a variety of tasks.

Speaking tasks
What are possible speaking tasks for assessment?Well, almost anything you do in
normal class work, eg narrating a picture story, role plays, pairwork information-
gap exchanges, discussions, etc. If you have a smaller class and enough time, then a
'three learners with one teacher' activity is a very good way to assess, ie setting a
task that gets the three learners to interact together while you watch and
evaluate.
Self-assessment
Although fear of bad marks can sometimes be motivating, it's surprising to find the
amount of power that students feel when assessing themselves. It can be a real
awareness-raising activity. Distribute a list of criteria and ask students to first write
a short line comparing themselves against each criterion (in English or in their
own language) — a reflective view rather than just a yes or no. Encourage 'guilt-
free' honest reflection.After the writing stage, learners can meet up in small
groups and talk through their thoughts, explaining why they wrote what they did.

Students using their own language (Vietnamese)-WHY?
3. Using the learners' first language

They always talk in
their own language. I
can't get them to use
English.

What might the reasons be?
• Because it's easier to speak my own language.
• Because the teacher always corrects me if I speak English.
• Because I don't want to get it wrong in front of others.
• Because it's not 'in' to speak in English.
• Because the teacher is only pretending not to understand my own
language.
• I need to use my own language because I can't say what I want in
English.
• Because the teacher can't hear me — so why should I bother?
• Because it's silly to speak English. It's much easier to communicate in
the language we all understand.
• Just because ...

Using English in class
 How much English should be used by the learners in the class?
 What should we as teachers do to encourage our students to use
English ?
• Use lots of listening material to surround them with the sound of
English.
• Put English-language posters on the walls.
• Have short, clearly demarcated sections of the lesson when English is
the first language; at other times, other languages are possible.
• Negotiate the ground rules with the students or— better— let them
set rules completely by themselves.
3 Using the learners' first language

• Discuss (as opposed to 'Tell') the point of the activity, lesson, course.
Agree how it will be done, why using English is important.
• Respond positively to every effort at using English.
• Don't tell learners off for not using English, but keep operating in
English yourself.
• Only 'hear' English.
• Spend a lot of time on fluency work without correction.
• Establish that you are delighted for them to speak anything at all;
communication is your priority, rather than accuracy.

• Create lots of pair and small group activities that require them to do
something with English without the loss of face of getting it wrong in a
bigger group.
• When it becomes a big problem, stop the activity and negotiate again:
‘notice that many of you are usingVietnamese. Is this OK?’
• Be prepared for English use to grow gradually, rather than be
established for a whole lesson at the start of the course.

Activities that make use of L1
• When learners read an article or
short story, sometimes ask them to
summarize it orally in L1 .This
can reveal interesting insights
about what learners have
understood or misunderstood.

• When a new grammatical item is learned, encourage learners to think how they
would say the same things in their own language. Don't just ask for a
translation, but encourage learners to consider if there is a direct one-to-one
correlation with their L1 and to notice differences between the two languages.

• When working on pronunciation, explicitly focus on contrasts between how a
sound is formed in L1 and English. Get learners to work like laboratory
scientists, trying out experiments to see if they can notice and characterize
important differences.

• When watching
a DVD film, the
availability of
switchable
subtitles in Ll
and English can
be very helpful.

• Compare
layout and
style
between L1
and English
conventions
, e.g. for
letters,
formal
notices, etc.

• If you feel that the best, most effective way to explain something is in L1,
go for it
• A little teacher translation (in instructions or explanations) can bring things
to light that would otherwise remain hidden. As the general main aim of
your lessons is to get students using English, avoid the temptation to
conduct the rest of the lesson in Li just because it's easier!

Using English in class
 Competition and Bribery are techniques that get
results???
 Creating a climate where using English was
normal and natural and not special or frightening
 MEDIATION PRACTICE TASKS (English
whisper, Diplomatic affairs, Diplomatic incident,
Translation role plays)

 Many students find themselves in situations where they have to help a
friend or colleague who doesn't speak the local language. This is
mediation. It refers to the skills we use in real life when we have to
help others to communicate by conveying a message from one party
to another.
 For example, imagine that you are in a British railway station, waiting
to buy a ticket. The person in front of you is a foreign visitor who is
failing to communicate with the clerk but you realize that you know
his Ll.You can now help as a mediator, translating the customer's
messages to the clerk and vice versa.
Mediation

Give students mediation practice tasks in class, for example:
• Help a friend who doesn't speak any English. He wants to send a
letter to an English friend. Translate his letter for him.
• Help the conference-programme writer by providing summaries of
the English text in your own language.
Even if you don't speak your learners' Ll, there are many ways to practise
this skill in class. Here are four interesting mediation games.
Mediation

Prepare about fifteen cards, each with a short everyday phrase (e.g. 'Could
you spare a moment, please?’). Ask seven students to stand in a line at the
front of the class.Take the first card and give it to the student at one end of
the line; he looks at the card and then whispers — once only the message to
student 2. No one else should hear the sentence. Student 2 now passes the
message on in Ll to student 3, who must whisper it to student 4 in English
— and so on, the message going from language to language, back and forth,
down the line. When the message reaches the end of the line, the first and
last student say their messages out loud so they can be compared. Often the
confusions will be interesting and funny, and you can discuss if they are
translation or listening errors. It may also be useful to hear what people said
all along the line.When finished, play the game again with the next card and
so on. Make new lines to give more students a chance to take part.
English whispers

 Students stand in groups of four: two 'ambassadors' and two
'interpreters’.
 One `ambassador' only speaks and understands English; the other only
understands Ll.
 The 'interpreters' (one working for each ambassador) understand both
languages.
 The ambassadors now meet at a 'party' and must have a conversation
with each other (about anything!).
 The ambassadors whisper their communication to their interpreter, and
the interpreter must then communicate aloud (in translation) what their
ambassador said to the other ambassador.
 (If you have a group of three, then only have one interpreter who does all
the mediation.)
Diplomatic affairs

 Play the game as above, but each interpreter must completely
mistranslate one communication.
 At the end, ambassadors should guess which messages came through
wrongly.
Diplomatic incident

 Prepare a pack of cards with everyday situations on them, especially ones
in which a foreign tourist needs to do something in an English-speaking
country, eg `Buying a ticket at the train station', 'Asking what time the film
starts', 'Booking into a hotel', etc.
 In groups of three, one student is a foreign tourist who doesn't speak
English (and speaks only L1 ).The other people are the person they are
talking to (e.g. a ticket seller who only speaks English) and their friend
who speaks both languages.
 Each group picks one situation card from the pack.They read it together,
decide exactly what the role play will be, then do is.The friend translates
in both directions to help the tourist and the native speaker
communicate.
Translation role plays

4. Cuisenaire
rods
• Cuisenaire rods are small coloured blocks of
wood (or plastic) .They come in different lengths,
each of which is a multiple of the smallest rod. Each
length is a different colour: 1 is white, 2 (twice as
long as white) is red, 10 is orange, etc (see Figure
12.6).

4. Cuisenaire
rods
• There is no essential
technique to learn; simply get
hold of a box and set them
free occasionally. Once you
start thinking of possibilities,
it's hard to stop.There isn't any
'right' methodology to use
with them. Use them in any
way that seems appropriate.

Some starting points:
 The rods can be themselves (i.e rods) or they can represent other things
(e.g trees, houses, people, syllables, diagrams, phonemes, words, intonation
patterns, abstract ideas, money, graphs, etc.).Their lack of decorative detail
is, in fact, a great help in enabling them to turn instantly into almost
anything else.
 The 'magic' comes when people really start to 'see' the objects that the
rods represent — suddenly they come 'alive', and you start to get whole
little epic films, adventures.
4. Cuisenaire rods

Some starting points:
 The rods alone won't do the trick.You can use them as an unambiguous,
tangible, visible point of reference, but you still need to find ways to
extract language from them.You need to ask questions, elicit ideas, make
sure people agree, etc.
 Rods help students to 'focus in' on meanings, ideas, stories, language
items, etc.They seem to ask for more concentration and a narrowing of
attention. For this reason, activities involving rods tend to be quieter and
more focused rather than noisy and on a range of subjects.
4. Cuisenaire rods

If you're nervous of trying them, remember ...
• you don't have to be incredibly imaginative to use them; the students have
to do the imaginative work in order to 'see' what you say is there.
• they are great for teachers who think that they are 'bad drawers' —
instead of drawing a hopelessly mixed-up car on the board or drawing a dog
and students thinking that it's an elephant, you can just put one rod on the
table and say 'This is a dog' (or a car, etc.).
4. Cuisenaire rods

 Focusing on grammar by restricting the lexis By using only a single noun (rod),
we can focus more clearly on the form or meaning of grammar, without
distraction from other words. For example, if your lesson is on Have you got?
with short answers, you and the students conceal rods in your hands.Then ask
and answer around the class: Have you got a red rod? No, I haven't. /Yes, I have.
 The same exercise could be done without rods, using personal possessions, but
confusion with the meaning and pronunciation of new or half-known items of
lexis (e.g comb, chewing gum, calculator) interferes with and often dominates
the essentially grammatical aim of the activity.
 This use of rods is not restricted to simple forms; it works equally well with
sentences like If I hadn't already given the red rod to Jo, I could've given it to you.
4. Cuisenaire rods: Some approaches and some examples

Imagine that some students are having problems with the meaning of some
language. You and the students sit around a table and together attempt to
create arrangements of the rods that show the meaning. Here is an example
lesson sequence:
1 Place rods on one side of the table. Leave a working space in the middle of
the table.
2 Introduce the rods to learners by explaining that the two areas are the
'bank' and the 'working area'.
Making meaning tangible and being precise about meaning

3 Ask learners 'Show me X' (where X is a lexical item, a grammatical item, a
phonological item or a functional exponent), for example: Show me 'opposite'.
Show me 'architect'. Show me 'He managed to start the car’.
4 Learners come to the table and make a picture (taking rods from the bank
and placing them in the working area). (Ensure that they leave a clear view for
the other learners, ie not blocking the table.)When their picture is ready, they
should stand aside and say the original word or sentence clearly and naturally.

5 The other learners must decide together if the picture is accurate for the
sentence, It should be as close as possible; encourage the learners to think
about this — 'approximately' isn't good enough!Watch out for learners who
want to jump up and immediately make alternative pictures; in this activity, you
need to ensure that they agree on the existing picture first before they offer a
new picture. (This may sound a little finicky, but it ensures that things are really
thought about and you don't just get a chaotic stream of alternative ideas.)
6 If they agree that the picture is good, that's the end of that stage; you can
move on. If they think it's not right for some reason, you can ask a new learner
to try a new picture or adjust the existing one.

The tangibility of the rods helps you and the students to be extremely precise
about meaning.The following detailed transcript is from a lesson on prepositions.
TEACHER: Show me 'opposite'. (Student A places a red rod near a white rod.)
STUDENT A:The red rod is opposite the white rod.
TEACHER: (to class) What do you think?
STUDENT B: It's not clear. It could mean 'near'.
TEACHER: Can anyone make it clearer?
(Student C moves the red rod further away from the white rod.)
TEACHER: Is that clearer?
STUDENT B: Not really. It must have a road or something.
(Student D uses some long orange rods to make a road and other rods
to make two square 'house' shapes, one on each side of the road.)
STUDENT D: This is Maria's house.And this is Hiroko's house. Maria's house is opposite
Hiroko's house .

By dividing a word up into syllables or a sentence up into words, we can help
clarify how they are constructed (or at least how many words / syllables there
are).The rods are helpful in making such structure visible and can help highlight
problems with incorrect stress (Figure 12.7) or wrong word order (Figure 12.8).
Clarifying structure

• Because the rods can move and quickly 'become' other things, it is possible to
create remarkably absorbing little story situations, almost cinematic in scope
and detail, despite the fact that the only actors are small blocks of wood (helped
a bit by your own gestures and facial expressions). I quite often combine using
the rods with storytelling to make a visual accompaniment to the tale.
• The rods are also very effective for eliciting (eg for grammar work).They show
the students what happens and provide the words. For example, when teaching
the present simple tense, place a red rod on the table. Say This is Fred. Add a
green rod and show 'Fred' lying down on it (and make snoring noises if you like!).
Ask What's this? and elicit 'his bed'. Say Every day at six o'clock he ... and move
'Fred' to show him rising from the bed. Elicit 'gets up'. Continue in a similar way,
adding rods and eliciting ideas, eg 'He has breakfast and then he catches a bus to
work'.
Contextualizing

• Contextualizing is equally appropriate for lexis work.When combined with
concept questions, it helps clarify meanings when two words are often confused.
For example, library and bookshop are commonly mixed up. Here is a short
lesson sequence to clarify them:
• Tell and show a story of a woman (green rod) who wants to read a book.The
book (white rod) is in a small building (made of various rods) where there is an
assistant (green rod). She collects the book, takes it home, reads it, then returns
it to the building. (Rods are great for these meanings that are best defined with
some `movement%) Ask a range of concept questions — Did she read the book?
Did she take it home? Did she give money to the assistant?Why not?What did she do
when she had finished reading the book? Did she keep it? etc — leading up to the
question `So what is the name of this place?' and confirm that it is a library. Having
done this, you can contrast it with a second, very similar story, based on the
concept of bookshop.
Contextualizing

The best way to learn to use the rods is to play with them, to try out ideas
and see if they work. Here are some exercises to start with.
1 Choose five or six words related to a particular location (eg 'kitchen'
words, 'street' words, 'station' words, 'office' words) and build a
complete rod picture that includes them.
2 How could you use rods to help you clarify or teach the meaning of
some of the following words? motorway, castle, discount, cricket,
annually, reliable, south, engineer
3 Make a short rod story to exemplify one use of going to.
4 Use rods to compare / contrast some of the following: wages / salary;
wood / forest / jungle; comfortable / comfortable; steal / rob; must be /
might be
Task 12.9: Cuisenaire rod exercises

5. DICTIONARIES
 A bilingual dictionary can be very useful at lower levels
 A monolingual dictionary helps students work more
independently

Printed dictionaries: Monolingual versus bilingual
+ A bilingual dictionary can be very useful at lower levels, offering a swift way
of getting an idea of the meaning of some of the flood of new words that
they meet.
-They usually have significant limitations though:
• It can be hard to work out which of a number of different translations is
the correct one; little or no information is given to help you distinguish
between entries.
• Grammatical information rarely tells you more than the part of speech.
• There are usually no examples of items being used in sentences.
• Important collocations are not mentioned.
• Pronunciation information, if given at all, tends to be idiosyncratic.
5. Dictionaries

Printed dictionaries: Monolingual versus bilingual
• Thus, while helpful for simple receptive problems (e.g a student in the
street sees chemist's on a shop sign and can quickly find out what it
means), they are less useful when faced with productive challenges For
such 'fine tuning', a monolingual (i.e English—English) dictionary
specifically designed for learners will offer significantly more relevant
information. If learners can use it, they have a skill that allows them to
work more independently.
5. Dictionaries

Training students to use a monolingual printed dictionary
You can actively help students by including systematic training in dictionary
use.Two key general skills to work on are:
• knowing alphabetical order;
• knowing phonemic script.
5. Dictionaries

Some activities to train students to use a monolingual printed
dictionary
• Order: Give students a list of words and ask them to put them in
alphabetical order then afterwards check in the dictionary.
Example : Put the following words in the correct alphabetical order:
5. Dictionaries

dictionary
• Sounds to spelling: Write up a number of phonemic transcriptions of words.
Students have to find the correct spellings for each.
Example:
ˈtiːʧɪŋ ˈɪŋglɪʃ əz ə ˈfɒrɪn ˈlæŋgwɪʤ kən bi ə greɪt weɪ tə ˈtrævl ðə wɜːld ənd
ɜːn ˈmʌni ət ðə seɪm taɪm.
5. Dictionaries
Teaching English as a foreign language can be a great way to travel the world and earn money at the same
time.

dictionary
• Same sounds: Write up a list of words and a vowel phoneme (eg /æ/).
Students have to guess which words contain this sound then afterwards
check in the dictionary.
5. Dictionaries

Pictionaries: dictionaries with words illustrated by pictures- they are extremely
useful and interesting for visual learners to remember new words.

Printed vs. digital dictionaries
5. Dictionaries

Multiple definitions along with example sentences are also shown:

A type of dictionary to help students find out synonyms and antonyms
of words is called thesaurus. A few online thesaurus dictionaries
suggested are as follows:
https://www.thesaurus.com/

https://www.visualthesaurus.com/

https://visuwords.com/

Dictionary work with all kinds of dictionary
There are many other dictionary-using skills that apply no
matter what kind of dictionary — printed or digital — you
are using:
• Checking whether your spelling of a word is correct.
• Finding how many syllables a word has.
• Learning where a word is stressed.
• Interpreting definitions.
• Selecting the word that best expresses the meaning you
want.
5. Dictionaries

There are many other dictionary-using skills that apply no matter what kind of
dictionary — printed or digital — you are using:
• Selecting between different meanings of the same word.
• Selecting the correct grammatical form of a word.
• Finding the plural of a word.
• Extrapolating from example sentences.
• Making use of collocations.
• Finding idiomatic expressions.
5. Dictionaries
Rather than take up classroom time with random fillers and games,
consider adding a regular thread of activities on dictionary use, say for
seven minutes every two or three lessons.

The following activities work on different dictionary skills. Many of them
follow the pattern of students using their current knowledge to predict an
answer, then using the dictionary to confirm / correct this.
• Guessing spelling:Write out some words with missing letters.Ask
students to recall or guess the missing letters ...
Examples:
a. w_ird
b. ap_ear_nce
c. F_ _d f_r th_ught
d. Bit_ off mor_ than you can ch_w
5. Dictionaries

• Which word?: Give gapped sentences and a choice of two or more
possible words (probably unknown to the learners) for each space.
Students first guess the answers, then use their dictionaries to decide
the best choices.This game is perhaps most useful and most difficult if
the word choices are close in meaning and high in confusability, eg
'Could you pass me the ***, please. I need to make sure that all
these documents are kept together'. (stapler, spanner, scissors)
5. Dictionaries
Examples:
1. Gillian decided it was time to turn over a new _______ and forget her
past mistakes.
2. Why don’t you take a _______ out of Simon’s book and start helping.
3. Autumn came suddenly and the first _______ had fallen before August had
even ended.
leaf

• Anagrams: Give a list of anagrammed words that have come up in
class. Students work out the probable answers ...
Examples:
1. Cheater – teacher
2. United--- untied
3. Flow ---?
4. Rebuild ---?
5. thicken---?
5. Dictionaries

• Where's the stress?: Write up words. Students predict which syllable
has the main stress ...
a. o o 0 computer 0 o o computer o 0 o computer
b.You are the suspect!“
c. I suspect you."
5. Dictionaries

• Dictionary race: Set a number of different challenges (such as the
ideas above), perhaps on a worksheet. Students need to work through
them quickly within a relatively tight time limit.They aim to work
accurately and quickly.At the end, students compare with each other to
see how they did.
5. Dictionaries

Longer-term and less game-like work would actively encourage students to
see their dictionaries as a resource when writing, speaking, reading and
listening. Here are some suggestions:
• Upgrading:When students have written a draft of a story / article /
letter, etc. go through and suggest three words that they could 'upgrade'
(ie find a better way of saying) by using the dictionary. NB These are not
'mistakes' — they are things that could be said better.
5. Dictionaries

 These are a tool for clarifying the 'time' of various verb tenses.A timeline
attempts to make the flow of time visible, and thus enable learners to see
more clearly exactly how one tense differs from another, or how a single
tense can refer to different 'times’.
 The starting point is a line representing time. On this line, we need to
mark now —the precise present moment. From the left, time flows from
the past towards now.To the right of this, time flows into the future.
6.Timelines

6. TIMELINES
A tool for clarifying the 'time' of
various verb tense

6. TIMELINES
So, for example, I'm drinking a glass of lemonade refers to something
happening now, that started just before now, and finishes just after now
We can mark it:

6. TIMELINES
In contrast, I drank a glass of lemonade last night might be shown:

6. TIMELINES
And I'm going to drink a glass of lemonade:

6. TIMELINES
Unfortunately, the appealing clarity of diagrams like these may be an
oversimplification. English verb forms tell us about more than just the
time something happened.The timeline above shows a decision made
before the present about something that will happen in the future. I'm
going to drink a glass of lemonade suggests a decision to drink made
before now, which we can show as:

6. TIMELINES
It also includes a sense of the speaker speaking now and looking forward
to the future:

6. TIMELINES
Which timeline is the most truthful? Which most helpful to learners?
You'll have to decide for yourself. Some tenses are quite difficult to
diagrammatise: the present perfect progressive (I've been waiting since
7.00), for example:

6. TIMELINES
The diagram shows that we are looking back into the past to the time
the waiting started. It shows us that the waiting has continued up to
now. It also shows that there is a possibility it could continue into the
future.
We can also show the relationship between two or more different
tenses (waiting since 7.00, for example):

 I was cooking supper when the cooker exploded.
One action (that might have continued) has been interrupted by another
(past progressive interrupted by past simple).
Timelines are one way of making English grammar more accessible. But do
remember that their meaning and use may not be transparently clear to
everyone. Some learners may be as much confused or puzzled by them as
enlightened.
6.Timelines

Use them to help clarify the meaning of tenses for yourself and then to help
your learners.When you are asked for an explanation of the meaning of a
verb tense, try putting a timeline on the board as a visual aid.Ask questions;
invite ideas. Use timelines as a cue for elicitation. Get students to draw
timelines for themselves to help check understanding. Invite students to the
board to work out timelines together.Adapt timelines and personalise them
to suit your own approach (some people use colours; some draw little
people all over them). As we have seen, there is not necessarily one right
answer.
Timelines are one way of becoming clearer about meaning.
6.Timelines

Tenses and timelines
Using a grammar book to help you if you want, name
the tenses and make timelines for:
1 I used to smoke cigars.
2 I live in Nairobi.
3 I'm living in Nairobi.
4 I was walking past the station.
5 I heard the explosion.
6 I was walking past the station when I heard the
explosion.
7 Bob cooked lunch while they were sleeping.
8 While they were sleeping, Bob was cooking the lunch.
9 Have you been to Thailand?
10 He's just walked in the door.
11 I'd hidden the money before she came in.
6.
Timelines

Tenses and timelines: Sketches of answers

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