Teaching English Language

How to use lexical games for introducing new vocabulary

noreply@blogger.com (teachingenglishlanguage.blogspot.com) — Sat, 20 Oct 2012 10:40:00 -0700

Vocabulary learning is often perceived as boring by learners, especially for those who grew up in the digital age. In the next text we are going to read interesting ways that experts say we can use in order students learn new vocabulary.

Vocabulary versus Lexis

The reason for this is that lexis is increasingly seen as a playing a pivotal or central role in language. Before begin with this it is necessary first to introduce the concept of lexis and see how it differs from that of vocabulary. When we think of the term vocabulary we think of the words that people know (are able to use) or recognize. In the scale of language was can already see that vocabulary occupies a central position.

Sounds – Words – Sentences

But the term vocabulary refers to words alone. Lexis relates to not just words but element both above and below the word level, smaller elements such as particles (up in the phrasal verb step up) including bound morphemes (un as in unconscious) in addition to larger elements such as fixed expressions (raise your hands, on the fence about). In addition to differences in size lexis also relates to linguistic units which tend to co-occur but are not necessarily fixed such as collocations (black coffee, hot day, wonderful time). Looking at this more closely we can see that while vocabulary items are seen as being prey to grammatical rules, lexis sees grammar as being achieved (at least in part) by the words themselves.

“Knowing a word involves knowing its spoken and written context of use; its patterns with words of related meaning as well as with its collocation partners; its syntactic, pragmatic and discourse patterns; its syntactic, pragmatic and discourse patterns. It means knowing it actively and productively as well as receptively.” (Carter – McCarthy 1991: 43).

Teacher can choose from several ways how to present vocabulary. He/she can either show the meaning in some way or he/she can use the language that students already know in order to clarify the meaning of a new lexical item. The third way is the least used technique when presenting vocabulary. Teacher can present meaning through sounds. It offers another approach to the problem of introducing difficult words. There are words, which are very easy to introduce, but there are also ones that are more difficult because they denote abstract notions. Many theoreticians attempted to exemplify what it means to know a word (see for example Harmer 1991). I am of the view that the following aspects need to be taken into account:

What it means
It is inevitable to get across the meaning of the item clearly. Comprehension questions might be used in order to check students´ understanding of new vocabulary.
The form
Students need to identify the word class of a word and they need to be aware of potential conversion (e.g. ´water´ as a noun and ´water´ as a verb).
How it is pronounced
This can be particularly problematic for learners of English as there is no one-to-one correspondence between the form of a word and its phonetic representation. In many cases the distribution of stress can change the meaning of a word as well (the so-called suprasegmental features).
How it is spelt
Spelling needs to be carefully mastered form the very beginning. Remember to clarify the pronunciation before showing the written form.
If it follows any unpredictable grammatical patterns
For example, irregular plural form ´man-men´ / ´information´ (uncountable); prepositional phrases e.g. depend on.
The connotations that the item may have
´Bachelor´ is a neutral/positive word whereas ´spinster´ conjures a more negative image.

The situation when the word is or is not used

Is it formal/neutral/informal? For example, die, pass away, kick the bucket.

How the word is related to others
For example, synonyms, antonyms, lexical sets.

Collocations
In English we speak about ´heavy rain´, not ´strong rain´ and in order to ask a question you 'raise your hand' you don't 'lift your hand'.
What the affixes (the prefixes and suffixes) may indicate about the meaning

For example, prefix ´-re´ indicates repeated action (rewrite, re-evaluate, etc.).

Which of these areas you choose to highlight will depend on the item you are teaching and the proficiency level of your students. Now it is useful to analyse the ways in which we can get the intended meaning across.

However, before I start to present a new vocabulary, it is useful to implement some recommendations:

1. Spoken language precedes written mode. When our students can pronounce words, we can introduce their written form. This can prevent them from trying to pronounce English words as if they were written in their own language.

2. Try to present new words in context.

3. Revision is essential. We can blend new words into later practice.

Teacher can choose from several ways of presenting vocabulary and making clear its meaning. He can use these separately or in combination with each other. The way to present the meaning of many abstract words is through the creation of a context or a situation that is helpful when deducing the meaning of a word. When we want to present person’s feature as “innocent” it is very useful to create a character who is innocent (e.g. a figure taken from the history). If it is necessary we can accompany example by mime or drawing. Ur, in this connection, offers the following ways of presenting the meaning of new vocabulary items:

concise definition (taken from dictionary, or invented by the teacher him/herself)
detailed description (appearance, qualities)
examples (hyponyms)
illustration (picture, object)
demonstration (acting, mime)
context (story or sentence in which the item occurs)
synonyms
opposites (antonyms)
translation
associated ideas, collocations

Practical recommendations for vocabulary teaching

Apart from the above mentioned recommendations concerning vocabulary teaching, I would like to add more observations that can enhance the success of vocabulary learning.

Give your students a few vocabulary items. Tell them to find their meaning, pronunciation and ask them to write a sample sentence with the word in.

Prepare worksheets and ask your students to match words to definitions.

Ask students to classify a group of words into different categories (so-called semantic fields).

Ask students to find new vocabulary from reading their homework. They can teach each other in the class.

Review the vocabulary you teach through a game or activity and encourage your students to do the same at home.

Encourage autonomy in your learners. Tell them to read, watch films, listen to songs, etc. and point out useful words.

It is a good idea to teach/learn words with similar meanings together, but only in case of more advanced students.

Encourage your students to buy a good dictionary and use class time to highlight its benefits.

Teach your students grammatical names for the parts of speech and the phonemic script of words.

Always keep a good dictionary by your side in case a student asks a word you are not sure about.

If you have never heard of the word, tell the student you will check and get back to them. Do get back to them.

Bingo! (with irregular verbs)

The teacher prepares a 5x5 grid with 25 irregular verbs in the past tense in each square. Make enough variations of these grids so each student has one that is slightly (or very) different.
The teacher then calls out the verbs in their present tense form until a student gets five in a diagonal or horizontal row. Bingo!
While it may seem time-consuming to make the grids, they can be used over and over. This game is received very enthusiastically because often, students are already familiar with it. It is great as a warmup activity and can have many variations (past-participle, time of day, vocabulary)

Adverbial Charades

Each student is given a card with a familiar adverb on it--i.e. quickly, angrily, loudly, happily. Then the class tells the student to do something so they can guess what adverb is on the card. They can tell the student to do things in pantomime, like drink a bowl of soup, or really do it in class, like open a door or take a book from the teacher. (Can't recall where I read this idea, but it is fun and can be played in teams.).

Who am I?

You can use use this with any subject. Write the names of famous people (mixed nationalities) on small pieces of paper. Tape a name on the forehead of each student. The individual student should not see his or her paper, but the others should. Then, like with 20 questions, only yes or no questions should be asked. Perhaps start with yourself and ask "Am I am man?" If the answer is yes, I can ask again, but if the answer is no, it's the next person's turn. Play until everyone has guessed who he or she is! This can be played with nationalities, countries, household objects, anything and it's a gas, especially for adult students!

What's the Word?

On an index card, write a word (example: school) and write 4 or 5 key words that cannot be used to describe that particular word. (Example: teachers, blackboards, students, desks, tests) Any other words can be used except for the words written on the index card. A sample card would look like this:

SCHOOL

teachers
blackboards
students
desks
tests

Mystery Box.

Place items that match key vocabulary in a mystery box. The student reads the vocabulary from a card, for example I am a …, then pulls an item out of the mystery box without looking. Items may be selected to bring humor and fun to reading. For example, a toothbrush might be one of the items. The student reads the vocabulary adding the name of the item, as in I am a toothbrush! Instead of objects, pictures may be placed in the mystery box. For the vocabulary I am and I like, pictures of famous people may be used. For example, Iam Queen Elizabeth, I like football, and so forth.

Lexis involves more than only words; it changes all the time, so we should teach vocabulary that involves function, different meanings in real context, and so on. In this way students will learn a lot of new words.

Why to use music in the classroom

noreply@blogger.com (teachingenglishlanguage.blogspot.com) — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 15:54:00 -0700

Music is a language that really the world knows and “talks” (I mean sings), so why don’t we use it for teaching purposes, especially when we want to teach a new language, in this case our lovely English Language takes part in the whole next text. Nowadays, most students have an iPod, Mp3 player or, at least, speakers for the computer to listen to their favorite music despite the fact that they don’t necessarily know the songs’ lyrics. If they know or don’t know the lyrics of their favorite songs, this group of students have in common that they like some songs that are popular, so we can use it to introduce any target language or teaching point. I know that the whole class doesn’t like popular songs. However, we would tell them the importance of grammar, pronunciation, lexis, and so on that the songs have, I’m sure they will respond so willing to work, as teachers we always have to keep in mind what there is behind it, of course multiple intelligences should be considered all the time at a classroom (“It's also good for learners who are musically smart” Safaa Mohamed – A friend from a webinar). Let’s back to music, the million dollars question is Why is very important to use music in classroom. There are many reasons; we are going to mention some of them here.

First, students know a lot of songs in their mother tongue, and in English language too, so they are familiar with rhythm, rhymes, pronunciation, etc. As teachers we can use it as a strong resource to work in target language.

Students will feel comfortable singing songs in pairs or groups. They will notice that it’s not absolutely important to sing perfect. In this way, they will say the teaching points it out loud. Likewise, we can encourage them to repeat the lyrics like the song or music sounds or is being pronounced, so there is no teacher participation telling them the pronunciation was good or bad, the song will “open” the eyes of the students.

Music lets students practice a lot pronunciation. In class, when there is a difficult sound that students cannot pronounce well, teachers can look for a song that has this particular sound and make them practice it a lot.

Talking about the four language skills speaking, writing, listening and reading (productive and receptive respectively), music can fit in any activity we want to do in order students improve these skills. For instance, teacher can make students write what they listen and read the lyrics they got, then to speak what the song is about.

Finally, Music is always flexible. Teachers can use it when the class starts, finishes, consolidates or reviews any lesson we teach. Thus, we should not rule out music in class.

By way of conclusion, we could say a thousand reasons why music is very important for teaching English language. Nonetheless, it’s a good idea if we decide a song they like and we like, too. In this way, the whole class will enjoy it. Additionally, even though we could think differently, music helps concentration because of the fact that music makes people (students as well) focus on the meaning of the song, what the song wants to tell them, so it is a good reason to consider music for concentration among others reasons we mentioned.

Here we have an example about how to use music in the classroom. In this opportunity, we are going to work with an English group called Coldplay. They provide us a great song Yellow.

Lesson plan: Procedures for the class:

Stage	Procedure		Tasks	Interaction		Aims	Time
1	Ask a simple question about singers. English Singers they know: Adele, Queen, The Beatles, Editors		Sts only mention English singers they know	T & Sts		Sts will talk about singers.	3’
2	Sts will see the pictures & try to name who the singer is.		Sts see the pictures and try to recognize the artist	T & Sts		Sts say and share what they know about the singer: Chris Martin – Coldplay	3’
3	Sts will quickly read the lyrics and cut them in the form they are before they listen to the song.		Sts have to read the lyrics in their own, then they cut the lyrics in the form they are	T->Sts Small Groups		Sts will see the vocabulary use on the Coldplay’s song.	2´
4	Sts listen to the song and work out in the correct order		Sts listen to the song and try to work out in the correct order	Sts ->Sts		Sts will recognize the lyrics of the song.	3’
5		Sts listen to the song and follow the lyrics	Sts listen carefully the lyrics and sing together with the correct pronunciation		Individual	Sts will be able to pronounce the vocabulary they have in the lyrics		5’

Elicit information about Coldplay: What Students know about Chris Martin an his band Coldplay.

Chris Martin and his wife Gwyneth Paltrow

Yellow by Coldplay

Song Jumble: Cut the lyrics in the form they are. Then, make smalls groups work out the correct order, according to the lyrics.

Here you can listen to the song and order the song jumble

Yellow by Coldplay

Look at the stars

Look how they shine for you

And everything you do

Yeah, they were all yellow
I came along I wrote a song for you

And all the things you do

And it was called 'Yellow'
So then I took my time

Oh what a thing you've done

And it was all yellow
Your skin, oh yeah, your skin and bones

Turn into something beautiful Do you know?

You know I love you so

You know I love you so
I swam across I jumped across for you

Oh what a thing to do 'Cause you were all yellow
I drew a line I drew a line for you

Oh what a thing to do And it was all yellow
Your skin, oh yeah, your skin and bones

Turn into something beautiful Do you know?

For you I bleed myself dry For you I bleed myself dry
It's true Look how they shine for you

Look how they shine for you

Look how they shine for
Look how they shine for you

Look how they shine for you

Look how they shine

What to do when students commit mistakes.

noreply@blogger.com (teachingenglishlanguage.blogspot.com) — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 17:57:00 -0700

Most people have different experiences of how they were corrected by teachers when they made mistakes. I think that it depends on the generation they grew up. For example, in 1950s, students used to be punished for committing the repeated mistakes, though they were re-teaching no to commit the same mistake. It was because teachers had the idea that mistakes were caused by the failure of their teaching. Thus, they felt frustrated and released the angry against the students. I think that it continued through the next decades (the 1970s, 1980s). Obviously, things changed a lot nowadays. Well, in this opportunity we are going to see how to react when students commit mistakes, keeping in mind that too much mistake correction could frustrate students or overwhelm students’ motivation and interest of learning the new language. These are some suggestions we could use in the classroom.

Different Generations, different Experiences

There is an interesting technique called gentle-correction. For instance, certain symbols are always used to indicate what kind of mistakes learners make. The purpose of marking in this way is to help students to realize their mistakes consciously. Likewise, when teacher uses red marks between lines and on margins, I think it's a good idea to use other colors of pens. As you can see it brings you to the next technique.

Students realize their mistakes consciously.

Try not to use red pens when you correct students' texts

Here is where self-correction appears. Self-correction is the ability to correct oneself when a mistake has been pointed out by teachers or peers. For instance, when students get their homework, after they were corrected, teacher asks to do self-correction basing on the indications in a given time. It’s very helpful if the teacher sorts and registers the common mistakes that students commit in a kind of correcting process.

Self-correction basing on the indications in a given time.

Now we have peer-correction. It’s when teacher indicates something is wrong and elicits from another learner a model of the acceptable version.

Peer-correction helps students to interact each other.

By way of conclusion, these techniques can help us a lot when students commit mistakes. In some way, we do not indicate the students’ mistakes directly. I think it will let students to be willing to learning process.

Chants

noreply@blogger.com (teachingenglishlanguage.blogspot.com) — Sat, 8 Sep 2012 13:14:00 -0700

Who doesn’t like to listen to music or make a loud noise in the stadium shouting: “Go! Go! Go!”

What about a simple text spoken over a background of rhythm or music. Actually, it’s a definition of a chant. I do not have the opportunity to use it in class, but it can be really useful, why?

A class with rhythm or music makes fun!

According to PS Morgan (Dreaminenglish.wordpress.com), music always energizes students, and students have to pronounce the words in a rhythm. Furthermore, chants could help a lot to students when they have to remember some teaching points that are difficult, longer, etc. Besides, I think that all of us can teach what we want using chants. Why don’t we see one chant to exemplify these points of views:

Color Chant (By Dr. Jean Feldman)

If you're wearing RED
Put your hands on your head.

If you're wearing BLACK,
Then touch your back.

If you're wearing BROWN,
Touch the ground.

If you're wearing GREEN,
Wash your hands real clean.

If you're wearing BLUE,
Put your hands on your shoe.

If you're wearing PINK,
Then think and think.

If you're wearing GRAY,
Have a nice day.

If ORANGE is what you wear,
Then touch your hair.

If you're wearing WHITE,
Squeeze your hands real tight.

If you're wearing PURPLE,
Say, "Murple gurple."

If you're wearing YELLOW,
Wave to your fellow.

You're all looking mighty fine,
And that's the end of the color rhyme!

Students love music & rhythm

I think you notice what I mean, chants help a lot, and in this case there are a lot of colors, parts of body, verbs, nouns, etc. that students will use all the time. So depending on what the teaching points are, chants would be really useful tools. Of course, they take time to create them, but the results will be great. I hope you could find this post useful.

Teaching Vocabulary

noreply@blogger.com (teachingenglishlanguage.blogspot.com) — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 21:57:00 -0700

I cannot imagine how many words there are in English. Furthermore, everyday there is a new list which appears in the language. Personally, I would count how many of them I know; one day I will do it. I hope so. Ok, let’s stop beating around the bush. How to teach vocabulary? In my humble opinion, I think we ought to teach students how to ask for words they don’t know or how to ask for the meaning of words they don’t understand. So, the next questions can take part in these situations:

How do you say _____ in English? What’s the word for____ in English? What does ____ mean?

As you can see these questions appear in special context where the words are used. Thus, students can remember them better and see how they (words) are used.

Other strategy to make students memorize or remember vocabulary is playing games. Here are two examples:

Art Gallery: This is a great activity for reviewing vocabulary. Draw enough squares on the board for each Student to be able to draw in. Have the Students write their names above their squares. Teacher calls out a word and the Ss draw it (could be simple nouns e.g. "dog, bookcase, train", verb structures e.g. "draw a man running, eating cake, sleeping") or adjectives ("draw a big elephant, an angry lion, an expensive diamond ring"). For each Student give a score for his/her picture, and then move on to the next picture. The Student with the highest score at the end is the winner.

Pictionary: Good for reviewing vocabulary. Pick a Student and show him/her a picture or whisper a word into his/her ear. The Student draws the picture on the board and the first Student to guess the picture gets to draw the next picture. This can also be played in teams with a point system.

To sum up, these are two important strategies we can use to teach vocabulary in a classroom (with questions and games). Students will learn a lot when we use the new vocabulary in the right context. Additionally, we should use different ways to present vocabulary including pictures, sounds, and different text types with which students can identify: stories, conversations, new reports, etc.

It's a very interesting video where the guy teach us how to teach new vocabulary.

A Grammar Activity

noreply@blogger.com (teachingenglishlanguage.blogspot.com) — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 14:44:00 -0700

Before we see our grammar activity I think we ought to check, at least, one concept about grammar. I found an interesting meaning of Grammar, here is it: “The set of rules that describe the structure of a language and control the way that sentences are formed” (McMillan Dictionary). Well, many students of English language shock when they hear the word “grammar”. It happened to me and my friends when we had to deal with rules, structures, exceptions, etc. There were a lot of teachers who made a great job teaching this relevant part of English when I was a beginner student of English, but let’s face it there were some who only fill the board with tables, structures, etc which made students get bored. I think most students do not want to know all the rules; they’d like only to speak, write, listen and read. So, we should teach grammar in simple and fun ways. That’s why we have a grammar activity in order students enjoy grammar in class. In this case we are going to see an activity which helps us to teach PAST PERFECT TENSE.

Here are the steps:

Tell students one day before they have to bring biographies of authors, inventors, and famous people who passed away.

Make students create a timeline so they can use the past perfect tense; for example, when Steve Jobs didn’t invent the iPod, he had kept the idea for 20 years earlier.

Give a lot of examples so that they can familiarize with the structure, not telling them directly. Besides, make sure they understand you are talking about two events that took place in the past, but one before the other, then, have students produce examples of their own biographies using the timeline.

Once they are comfortable with past perfect in affirmative and negative sentences, move on to examples with questions; then make them ask each other questions that personalize the student with the person they are talking about: When Steve Jobs invented the iPad, had you heard about its inventor?

A Biography

Okay, we saw a grammar activity that can help us to teach Past Perfect Tense. One consideration we should keep in mind: Have everything ready before students enter the classroom. As always, not every student will bring the material we asked them before so we should be prepared for them bringing extra material.

I think this is a great activity for teaching Past Perfect tense. According to the purpose of the lesson we should identify what it is, then prepare an activity which help us to arrange it.

Reading Activities

noreply@blogger.com (teachingenglishlanguage.blogspot.com) — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 14:05:00 -0700

In this opportunity we will see an activity we could use to help students to better reading. As we know reading is a receptive skill, every skill needs a lot of practice to master them, but it should be step by step or one step at a time. Thus, as teachers (or prospects of) we should use every tool we know to make students be familiar with, and then they will read with less problems, I mean they will be able to guess the meaning of the word because of the context they have in the text. I entirely agree with the comment Mr. Michael Hoey made about reading “What I did not realize was that it is often possible to guess the meaning of rare words from their context…” Here is the reading activity:

First of all, teacher should talk about headlines he or she just saw or read on the newspaper before coming to class. Then, show worry or surprise because of one of the headlines impacted him/her. After that, ask students if they remember headlines that impacted them as well.

Second, find some headlines in old newspaper or on the Internet and bring them to the class. There should be at least two headlines per student. For example:

Difficult Times Ahead
Forgotten Brother Appears
James Wood to Visit Portland
Landscaping Company Disturbance Regulations
Man Killed in Accident
Mayor to Open Shopping Mall
Mustang Referral Customer Complaint
Overwhelming Response of Voters
Passerby Sees Woman Jump
President Declares Celebration
Professors Protest Pay Cuts
Tommy the Dog Named Hero
Under Pressure from Boss
Unexpected Visit
Widow Pension Pay Committee

Once, students have headlines in their hands. Teacher should give them two minutes to think about the meaning of each headline (they are, at least, two headlines). When students finish, teacher ask them to read their headlines aloud and give an explanation of what they think about the article would be. After it, teacher should brainstorm on possible meanings behind the weird words or grammars points found in headlines.

Next, students interchange their headlines. After, they should take two minutes to think about the meaning of each new headline they have. Teacher gets in pairs the students to talk about the headline they just got. Finally, students should give an explanation about the meaning of the headlines.

Students will love reading!

In conclusion, I think this reading activity will help students to be familiar with the newspaper topic before they read any paragraph. Furthermore, they will improve the ability to guess or infer the meaning of words in newspapers, and give opinions about what the headlines want to say.

LISTENING ACTIVITIES

noreply@blogger.com (teachingenglishlanguage.blogspot.com) — Sun, 8 Jul 2012 09:07:00 -0700

Searching the net I found many listening activities which are very helpful to help students in their listening abilities. It’s important to consider that there are many activities for different students’ levels therefore “teacher should organize by approximate level of difficulty based on rate of speed, vocabulary, content, ambient noise, idiomatic expressions, and other factors”. Depending on the organization of the Listening activity it will be successful. Now, we have an example of a listening activity which is very interesting to use when we want students listen facts, numbers, places, days of week, times of day, actions, people, famous people, etc.

News Quips and Questions

First, we have to look for “right news”, I mean for appropriate newspaper story that is pertinent to the life skill, or subject matter currently being studied. Then, prepare a set of 4-6 comprehension questions, of course, based on the article. After that, we have to read the story aloud at natural speed while learners listen to get the gist (twice). Next, give learners the set of comprehension questions. Finally, we have to read aloud a third time the text for learners to write their answers and a final time for learners to check their answers. If we want the students practice understanding non-face to face speech, we could record the article on a CD, or an mp3 archive and play it rather than reading the article aloud. (Also we could send the archive by Bluetooth if it’s possible in groups)

Please don't do this with your students. You should read aloud!

Name and Drink

Students should sit in a circle. One student starts introducing himself and name a drink he likes. For instance, my name is Rusell and I like Cappuccino. The student sitting next to him will say Rusell likes Cappuccino, my name is Angelina and I like Soda. Students are forbidden to take notes on a paper. Moreover, we should ensure the first student doesn’t get away from the group. I think it’s appropriate for beginner students. However, if students are in a higher level of English, they would add more information about themselves.

Sitting in a circle

As we see these listening activities make students listen actively while we take part in ensuring this activity works for them. Students will enjoy the activity if we create a good atmosphere, it implies that we care what they listen and say.

By way of conclusion, listening activities will help to better the students’ receptive skills. Furthermore, listening activities activate the imagination of students, but we should give some clues to make them have ideas about what they are going to listen. Likewise, we have to keep in mind that the objectives and outcomes are important for students to be able to maximize their potential.

SOME ALTERNATIVES FOR SPEAKING ACTIVITIES

noreply@blogger.com (teachingenglishlanguage.blogspot.com) — Sun, 24 Jun 2012 07:11:00 -0700

I read an article related to speaking activities which is named “Teaching Speaking” by M. Enamul Hoque where the author says many interesting things about Teaching Speaking; for example, “teaching speaking should produce the English speech sounds and sounds patterns, select appropriate words and sentences according to the proper social setting, audience, situation and subject matter, use the language quickly and confidently with few unnatural pauses, which is called as fluency”, etc. Learners (we) should have these concepts in the use of the English language, and consider them as goals if they do not master it. One of the most important stuff that we should not forget is that we always have something to say about what people share with us. Even though, when we do not know what is it about. For these reasons, there are a lot of alternatives for speaking activities which let us organize, imagine and share our thoughts; for instance, discussions, debates, story completion, find the difference, simulations and so on. Now, we are going to look at some alternatives which we would use if they are necessary.

Jigsaw activities: It is a kind of information gap activity which needs several participants to be done. In this activity, people, who take part of it, have a piece of a “puzzle” that needs to be fit with all the pieces into the whole picture. Also, this puzzle would be a tape recording conversation or a story which is separated in several parts. Learners would find it fun because they would encounter different versions of the “puzzle”; finally, they should agree in one.

One kind of a speaking activity, which is well known as Communicative Output Activity as well, is role play. In this activity, participants are assigned to be characters that they may encounter outside of the classroom. After, this activity is done; participants would have practiced what they needed to make “a real conversation”.

To conclude, it is believed that speaking activities break the traditional classroom where students have prepared questions and answers. In speaking activities, students should manage themselves to express what they think or believe as in real communication. I think that it is advisable that each teacher have to use these activities in order to increase the use of the English language in uncertain situations.

HOW TO DEAL WITH DISRUPTIVE BEHAVIOR

noreply@blogger.com (teachingenglishlanguage.blogspot.com) — Sun, 10 Jun 2012 17:50:00 -0700

By and large, we all were kids that in some way could disrupt normal operations at home, a classroom, reunions, meetings, etc. I mean, we could interrupt the normal things that people do in those places or reunions, but it was not a regular behavior for us. Plus, all kids like to do things that they normally do; for instance, to play, run, laugh, etc. it would be better if they do in the right place and the right time. However, some of them find funny disrupt others. I remember when a classmate who didn’t like to spend all the time seating in a chair, practically, “doing nothing” used to leave the classroom in the middle of an “interesting teaching” for going to the restroom, but he took a lot of time. Once, a teacher told me that I had to go to the place where he was, supposedly, to tell him that he must return to the class. But I found him playing soccer with other boys who usually did the same. I talk about him because it is not normal to consider this kind of behavior as normal in students. We will talk about two cases that we usually see at a classroom.

First of all, students in every level have to talk with partners to share or give opinions, ideas, point of views, etc. This practice is very helpful if teachers want that their students talk and talk the lessons they taught. Obviously, it should take place after a lesson. However, there are students who use to talk (or giggle) about whatever while the teacher teaches to the class. It could be difficult to stop the lesson because teachers do not like to cut the lessons in order that students can get the gist. How can a teacher act in that situation? I recommend that teachers should give some rules before the (school) year or lesson stars. For example, we may say in an assertive way that it’s forbidden to talk, eat, or drink in class. In addition, make sure that the rules are clear and understood, plus, it’s a good idea to enforce those rules with some signs on the wall of the classroom where students can see them.

Additionally, nowadays we all have a gadget or an electronic device to be communicated or connected with our contacts (familiar, friends, partners, classmates, etc). It becomes normal in our society for different reasons. It’s the same in a classroom with students. I remember a chapter in the TV shows The Simpsons when a teacher was teaching, suddenly, three or four cell phones started to sound at the same time, two were texting; teacher saw it and said that they had to turn off their cell phones. After some seconds ten cell phones started to vibrate on their respective desks, at the same time. It made me laugh a lot. Even though it is a part of a chapter that is not real life, but it seems any classroom that needs to be managed. In this case, some would think that a student who receives calls at a classroom could not be considerate a disruptive behavior. Others would think it is disruptive behavior. However, this case needs to be controlled because of the “peace” of the rest of the students who want to be focused on the lesson. As a teacher who wants a good environment without interruptions or interrupters, he or she should talk, rationally and clearly, with the students about the use of cell phones. As a general rule, students know that it is not letting to talk with cell phones in the middle of the class. Thus, it is a good idea to enforce it from the beginning of the year or a month, teachers should tell them that they cannot use the cell phone for superficial reasons (texting, mailing, chatting, taking pictures, etc).

In conclusion, we would find many ways of disruptive behavior in the classroom; however, teachers should be prepared to face them (as the examples we talked) no matter what situation is this, keeping in mind that every student’s disruptive behavior is manageable if we react quickly and correctly, it will be possible with practice. In addition to this, teachers have to know all the procedures of extreme cases in order to keep the class in order. In some cases, there will be bad consequences for students who persist in their conduct. Therefore, we must tell them the rules of the institution in a firm and direct way.