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joyce L

The language syllabus: building language study into a task-based approach by ... - 1 views

ihjournal.com/ased-approach-by-dave-willis-2

task-based grammarteaching

shared by joyce L on 30 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • One of the basic principles of a task-based approach is that the task phase, or skills work if you like, comes before language study. There are two very good reasons for this: If you begin by presenting the grammar and then go on to a task, learners will be concerned primarily with producing the language that has been highlighted rather than using all the language they can. If this lesson were to be about the going to future, for example, it would begin with a very sharp focus on going to, probably with lots of controlled repetition. When the class moved on to identify questions to do with the future they would not be thinking about meaning, about doing things with language, they would simply be trying to produce samples of a particular form.
  • So a task-based lesson can and should focus on specific language forms, but that focus should come at the end of a teaching cycle. And a series of task-based lessons can and should provide systematic exposure to the language, both grammar and lexis. But meaning always comes before form in sequencing activities.
  • At the next stage, the planning phase, the teacher asks learners to work in groups to prepare a spokesperson who will represent the group in the final (report) phase of the task cycle and present their questions to the class. They have already prepared their ideas and they are preparing to present them in a more formal setting speaking to the class as a whole. They will recycle their questions with a greater focus on accuracy. Of course this does not mean that they will be 100% accurate, but they will be focusing on accuracy within a meaningful context.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Work in groups and think of four questions you might ask Janet to find out more about her holiday. Try to think of one question which none of the other groups will ask.
  • They will say things like How you will travel? You going in plane? and so on. They will not be too concerned with formal accuracy at this stage, they will be working at getting their ideas together in a small informal group. The last part of the task is designed to stretch them in terms of both their language and their imagination. In the past we have had suggestions like Will you take your cat? and Is your grandmother going with you?
  • Once the class has given a list of questions the teacher might encourage more discussion Which questions are most likely to be answered in the conversation? List the five most likely questions in order.
  • Yes that’s a good question: Are you going by plane? Are you going by plane?’ treating the question as a useful contribution to the discourse rather than as a sample of English to be corrected.
  • This provides an opportunity for repetition in a natural context. It also gives learners a reason to listen at the next stage when they listen to the conversation to see how many of their predicted questions have been answered. Here is a transcript:
  • he text is now familiar to learners. They have listened to it and understood it and are ready to use it for language study. The text is incredibly rich. Look at it for yourself and identify: phrases containing part of the verb GO phrases containing the word TO phrases with words ending in -ing ways of referring to the future expressions of time expressions of place
  • In some cases there are a large number of phrases so you might split the text and ask different groups to work with different parts. Once they have made a list of phrases you can work with them to show how these phrases exemplify features of the grammar.
  • As learners experience text we can draw their attention to phrases containing the most frequent words in the language – determiners, prepositions, pronouns and so on – and so begin to tease out their grammar. The text above provides a number of useful insights into the word to. These can be enlarged and recycled as learners experience the same word in future text
  • We have also shown how to draw attention to the basic grammar. The function of articles and pronouns is to provide cohesion in a text. We can draw
  • ow can you begin to apply the principles I have outlined in this paper? Perhaps the first thing to notice is that this kind of lesson is familiar to you as what is often called a skills lesson. There is a lot of speaking and listening as learners work out their questions. Some of the discussion is in groups and some of it is teacher led. Learners then go on to listen to a conversation or read a transcript to check whether or not their questions have been answered. This is followed by another teacher led discussion. Secondly there is a systematic focus on language. I have offered a number of possible language items. You would probably choose no more than two of these for a given lesson. Language focus requires learners to focus on the text for themselves. You can enable them to do this by asking them to identify phrases built round a particular word (TO; GO), part of a word (-ing) or a concept (the future; time; place). Once phrases have been identified this leads into a discussion or explanation of the grammar involved. This could be followed by a look at the grammar book to provide a summary of what has been covered.
  • joyce L on 30 Aug 11
     
    i encourage you to read this ..very useful deconstruction of various phases of the TBL approach to teaching grammar.
joyce L

R is for Rules « An A-Z of ELT - 0 views

scottthornbury.wordpress.com/...r-is-for-rules

Thornbury ELT rules

shared by joyce L on 06 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • A passive knowledge affects learners’ competence more than performance and befits accuracy more than fluency. So putting a big emphasis on rules is a back-to-front approach; placing form before meaning, knowledge before skills and study before learning.
  • This story suggests to me that conscious learning of rules is likely to be effective only under certain conditions, e.g. when the learner is motivated (as in Isherwood’s case by having a ‘gap’ in his competence pointed out to him) and, even more important perhaps, when the learner is ready — i.e. at the right stage in his/her interlanguage development. I
  • “When we use language in real communication, grammar manisfests itself in ways that seem to have little to do with the conscious application of these linguistic facts (=rules). Grammar seems to be more like a process” (p. 1).
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  • the central misunderstanding of language of language teaching to assume that grammar (rules and terminology) is the basis of language and that the mastery of the grammatical system is a prerequisite for effective communication” (Michael Lewis, 1997, p. 133).
  • I think using consciousness-raising activities with learners to prime their minds for noticing grammar works in the same vein. We want them to be conscious, with a great deal of logical precision, of the rule-based patterns we are showing them so that they can work it out for themselves (thus promoting autonomy!) However, when a CR task is finished, it only makes sense that we check to make sure that learners have gone through the process in the intended way, a sort of confirmation that yes, indeed, they have got the rule right – and this IS the rule. In the end, where do we draw the line? We either start with the rule or end with i
  • . In fact, I’m not even that bothered if their rules are ‘wrong’, so long as that they are ‘heuristic’ — that is that they provide a learning ‘hook’ – or the kind of self-scaffolding materials that I mentioned in my post. Dick Schmidt’s ‘rule-of-thumb’ for the imperfect in Portuguese probably worked better for him than the dozen or so grammar book rules his teacher was trying to teach him.
  • CRITICISM, YESTERDAY, “ne nado bylo”. That’s it. Nothing really new. The keywords are labels, can we call them rules? I think we can. Have I explained it? Yes, since they understood and used it appropriately.
  • I would say that your ‘shorthand’ rules do qualify as rules, in the sense of being rules-of-thumb, reminders, or mnemonics, rather than fully descriptive rules, and are all the more effective for being so
  • Diane Larsen-Freeman distinguishes between rules and reasons: “It is important for learners not only to know the rules, but also to know why they exist. I’m not referring to how the language came to be; I am referring to what I call the ‘reasons’ underlying the rules”. As an example she gives the rule that prohibits using the progressive with stative verbs (as in *I am owning a car). “The reason for the rule is due to the semantic incompatibility between processes depicted by the progressive, which typically involve change, and unchanging states embodied in stative verbs… Knowing the reason for a rule… gives language students an understanding of the logic that speakers of another language use” (pp. 50-51).
  • ules about language are seldom watertight, and are often fuzzy at the edges — not least because there is so much variability in language, due to factors such as geography, register and style, and mode (e.g. speaking versus writing)
  • A quick corpus search reveals many so-called exceptions (all from the British National Corpus):
  • “rules of production”, as opposed to rules of accuracy. E.g. if expressing future meaning, when in doubt, use ‘will’ (you have a statistcally very favorable chance of being right). Or, use ‘Really?’ or ‘…no?’ instead of short questions and question tags – they’ll save you a lot of bother!
  • is that it conflates both prescriptive rules (what you should say) and descriptive ones, (what people in fact do say) without making a distinction. As language teachers, the assumption is that we are more interested in the latter, but the distinction is not always that clear cut
  • So, if we’re going to use rules, maybe we should raise learners’ consciousness about language in general, including their own language, before we even start.
  • teaching using very simplified, one-word rules (I call them “keyword rules”) introduced through situations and contexts and immediately practiced in situations, with subsequent abundant exposure to the structures within broader contexts (reading, listening) – so the rule is there to provide a sense of security, yet it is so minimal that it does not in any way dominate the teaching/learning.
  • teaching the students to notice, process, verify and acquire language odds and ends independently
  • letting go of them and not teaching anything, but simply immersing them in the language
  • It’s not the rules as such that are to blame for the learner’s struggle – it’s the abstract and obscure meta-language used to formulate the rules, along with the lack of situation-based practice
  • Teaching rules as part of a process of acquisition has always seemed pointless to me, and as Mr Lewis points out in The English Verb, most of the rules we have to describe grammar (where grammar means the verb phrase) are inadequate and just plain wrong.
  • learners uncovering rules allows learners the chance to notice regularities and patterns in the language
  • They also allow learners to reflect on their own language. It helps them notice. They’ll take the language they said/wrote and compare it to the rules they know. Without a knowledge of rules, this self-reflection may not happen for some students. In effect, it encourages a second look and even a reformulation. There is also the point made above of students noticing the rules when seeing/hearing the language used.
  • As far as acquisition goes, rules have little direct impact. However, in their ability to instill comfort in many students and their aid in allowing students to notice language (their own and others) they can have a indirect impact on acquisition.
joyce L

newlits - Integrating viewing across the curriculum - 0 views

newlits.wikispaces.com/+viewing+across+the+curriculum

visualit_lesson picturebooks shauntan viewing curriculum integrating newlits multiliteracies multimodality

shared by joyce L on 23 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • As a viewer, we are positioned as quite dominant here. This high angle shot, looking down on the sea of people, most of who are looking up to us, portrays them as much less powerful than we, the viewers, are. While the ropes and masts take some of our attention, it is the sheer number of passengers staring upwards that is a salient feature of this photo. Historically we know that most have given all they have to travel to the land of opportunity, often leaving family and friends behind in their birth country. How might an individual feel in the midst of this? Can one historical photo give insight into the emotional experiences of these people? How does this photo suggest we "should" feel about immigrants in general? By explicitly combining knowledge of the photo’s composition and its implied power relations, teachers can help students understand how some images can create empathy, while some can suggest superiority or dominance. It is here that reading a graphic novel such as The Arrival can provide another "account" of the immigrant experience. Compare the historic photo here to the images on Shaun Tan’s website, taken from The Arrival. The images of the harbor entry are particularly poignant, when compared to similar historical photos of the Statue of Liberty who greeted ships coming to Ellis Island. Tan studied many photos and documents from that period and students can find many points of connection when viewing the graphic novel with other historical photos.
  • but for teachers to clearly understand how to guide students in reading visual elements. Making meaning, extracting relevant information, developing relevant, shared metalinguistic terms to describe what is seen, and understanding how images and multimodal texts position viewers are key skills. T
  • joyce L on 23 Sep 11
     
    Teaching viewing
  • joyce L on 23 Sep 11
     
    a wonderful resource
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