Modules on skills and materials Essay

Well prep ard teachers contribute a large repertoire of activities for their course of actiones. They cornerstone organise preparation and controlled come onput work emerge they burn d give birth direct pupils in the acquiring of receptive skills and organise sure-enough(prenominal)ly communicative activities. This repertoire of activities enables them to have varied plans and achieve an activities balance.The Practice of slope Language Teaching HarmerWhich of the techniques turn uplined in this module, and elsewhere in the modules on skills and materials, would you employ in order to achieve veridical colloquy in the trendroom?This task should refer to other atomic number 18as of the course. You should aim to write just well-nighwhat 750 words.The ultimate aim of teaching English to speakers of other languages is to achieve genuine chat by limiting teacher talking clipping and maximizing schoolchild participation. Simply standing in front of a severalise an d telling things to the assimilators does not guarantee they go expose learn them. Students need to be actively involved in the lessons. A vital step in raiseing a partition of active learners is varianceroom management. There are legion(predicate) an(prenominal) techniques which dope be implemented in order to achieve genuine communication within the classroom. Communication should tax return place the minute the class begins. acquire into the habit of chatting to the students at the start of a lesson gives them the chance to take part in natural discourse. This tummy be achieved by salutation the students and offering five minutes to go around asking what people did at the weekend, for example. This gets students intercommunicate before they have had a chance to worry more than or less getting involved. In order to throw an open learning purlieu and aid the flow of communication, the furniture in the classroom should be place appropriately.Ideally, the furnit ure should be arranged in a circle as it allows all the students to be involved and creates a sense of equality. However, if this is not possible, a semi-circle or some form of group arrangement is best. A semi-circle ensures the students are able to see any visual aids clearly and as many students as possible have eye contact with the teacher. A group arrangement allows for a huge degree of interaction and squeeze out be utilizeful in pranceed- index classes, where groups of students can concentrate on assorted communication tasks according to their ability. another(prenominal) great government agency of rousing communication is to show interest in the students by getting to know about their interests and backgrounds. This allows teachers to make conversation before and after class using person-to-person information. How is your new cat? Is your husband feeling better? It is encouraging for the students and they are more apt(predicate) to want to speak about themselves, their families, etc.Getting to know the students also allows teachers to personalise lessons and set up relevant discussions. This ontogenys student involvement by allowing them to express opinions about their environment and personal experiences. A similar technique is to talk about current affairs or news stories. These are subjects that the students are likely to have knowledge of and will be able to discuss amongst themselves. This will supercharge students to find enkindle stories or anecdotes they can share with the class or to keep themselves cognizant so they can have meaningful input in class activities. Current newspaper and magazine articles can be cut out and used to prompt discussions. These techniques can allow the students to take control of the conversation, trim back teacher talk time and consequently further their learning. Relevant and down-to-earth practise of language is classic in spurring meaningful communication from students.Teachers should focus on e lements of language and communication that are necessary for the students goals or are of personal interest. The types of activities expendd in a lesson can give more or less opportunities for communication. The most obvious way to get someone talking is to ask them questions, but teachers should authentically think about the kinds of questions they ask. Closed questions are simple direct questions that can be useful for checking understanding or reviewing language, whereas open questions do not always have a single or right solving and get the students thinking. Both types of questions are useful in the classroom and teachers should establish a good balance between the two. Furthermore, questions should be directed to the social unit class initially, rather than a named individual, as this ensures all students are zippy and thinking about the answer should they be chosen to respond. Another technique to keep students focused is avoiding asking questions in a fixed order. Teachers should mix it up by darting around the classroom, keeping the students on their toes.Asking questions can be rather limiting in the degree of communication it fosters and it involves a lot of initial input by the teacher. In order to encourage genuine communication between students so they get the most out of the experience, teacher talking time needs to be limited. Group or pair-work activities are a great way to do this. They generate conversation and communication flows more naturally. Well prepared group or pair-work activities should wait students to maintain communication in order to complete the task. They dramatically increase the amount of speaking time each student gets in the class and allow students to interact independently without guidance of the teacher. This promotes learner independence and more spontaneous communication. region-plays, dialogues, sketches, etc. can be a great way to reduce anxiety about speaking. Students may be embarrassed at first, but b ecome less self-conscious as they concentrate on the character or situation they are required to carry out, indeed produce more natural language. In addition, prompts, such as role cards and realia can be provided as an aid for the students to use during their performance. It is important for the teacher to continue monitoring groups during fluency tasks to ensure English is creation spoken.It is imperative that the use of the mother tongue language is limited in the class. If the class are of differing nationalities, this aids communication as the students have no choice but to use English to communicate. Thus, there are many techniques that can be adopted to ensure genuine communication is achieved in every lesson. It is important for teachers to really think about all aspects of the lesson, including the introduction, seats arrangement, the delivery of activities, materials used, etc. prior to teaching in order to tap student talk time so that each individual gains the most o ut of their experience within the classroom. depute FOR SUBMISSION TO YOUR TUTORTASK 2You are working in an ESOL school with class sizes of 14-18.Your emboss does not like your schools current way of exam spoken English. At the moment it is riseed in a one-on-one, 2 minute speaking test at the end of course with a mark from 0-10. It does not seem to be working well and takes up a whole lesson from the course. He has asked for suggestions as to how to mixed bag the system.With reference to what you have studied in this and other modules, and to your own experience and reading, make some suggestions to your boss as to how the school could assess the spoken English of the students in a more accurate and less pressurized way.You should write about four hundred 500 words to send as an email setting out your ideas.Dear ______,In light of your recent request for ideas as to how to change the current way of examination spoken English, I would like to constitute the following suggestio ns. Rather than a one-on-one end of year speaking test, we could adopt a task undertake and assess the students speaking ability in a variety of ways throughout the duration of the course. We could create tasks that require the students to use the language in real-life communicative performances. This type of testing is advantageous as it can be conducted with more than one student at a time, reducing the amount of time dedicated to the testing. It allows the students to use their language knowledge and competence in real-life communications with their peers. It is a more realistic and accurate measure of their abilities. Not only do these tasks test accuracy and fluency, they also test how creatively the students are able to use language and whether they are able to communicate effectively with each other.It is likely to reduce the pressure they feel about a single query with the teacher, particularly if they get to perform the tasks with other students so the focus isnt sole ly on them. Adopting this kind of testing approach will allow us to carry out a image of different ad-lib tests throughout the course, assessing a variety of skills. There are a number of different tasks that could be used such as role plays, reckons and presentations. Role Plays We can give them a particularised situation and roles to play that utilise the language they have learnt. Role plays can be used colloquially throughout the course so the students get lots of time to course session for a schematic assessment. Debates We could tell apart the classes into groups and have each group debate an argument relating to different topics they have studied.Each group would be split into two smaller groups, one to represent each side of the argument. The students can be given time in or out of class to prepare their side of the debate. Each side could be allocated a specific time for giving their initial argument in which each student has to contribute the same amount of time. A gain, debates can be used conversationally throughout the course to practice language, allowing students ample of practice before the formal assessment. Class Presentation We could assign group projects for the students to carry out in or out of class. The students will have a deadline to complete the project, at the end of which they will be asked to give a group presentation. We can provide them with guidelines of what to include and what skills they will be individually tested on.Another way to test students individually that takes away the pressure of performing in front of the class is to ask them to make a recording. In a previous school, we had students read a short story and then asked them to theorize they were one of the characters. They had to record themselves giving an account of what happened according to their the characters personal experience. The students were allowed time to think about what they wanted to say before making the recording. afterward assessment, th e students listened to each others recordings and gave constructive feedback to their classmates. This type of assessment was carried out a number of times throughout the course, with notable improvements across the board. Although this approach is less realistic, it gives the students a chance to hear themselves speaking and pinpoint their own mistakes which they can work on in the future.I hope these suggestions are of use and we are able to implement a more booming way of testing the oral skills of the students.