Vocabulary acquisition is
increasingly viewed as crucial to language acquisition. However, there is
much disagreement as to the effectiveness of different approaches for
presenting vocabulary items. Moreover, learning vocabulary is often perceived
as a tedious and laborious process.
In this article I would like to examine some traditional techniques and
compare them with the use of language games for vocabulary presentation and
revision, in order to determine whether they are more successful in
presenting and revising vocabulary than other methods.
From my teaching experience I have
noticed how enthusiastic students are about practising language by means of
games. I believe games are not only fun but help students learn without a
conscious analysis or understanding of the learning process while they
acquire communicative competence as second language users.
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Vocabulary teaching
techniques
There are numerous techniques concerned
with vocabulary presentation. However, there are a few things that have to be
remembered irrespective of the way new lexical items are presented. If teachers
want students to remember new vocabulary, it needs to be learnt in context,
practised, and then revised to prevent students from forgetting. We can tell
the same about grammar.Teachers must make sure students have understood the new
words, which will be remembered better if introduced in a "memorable
way". Bearing all this in mind, teachers have to remember to employ a
variety of techniques for new vocabulary presentation and revision.
Gairns and Redman (1986) suggest the
following types of vocabulary presentation techniques:
- Visual
techniques. These pertain to visual
memory, which is considered especially helpful with vocabulary retention.
Learners remember better the material that has been presented by means of
visual aids. Visual techniques lend themselves well to presenting concrete
items of vocabulary-nouns; many are also helpful in conveying meanings of
verbs and adjectives. They help students associate presented material in a
meaningful way and incorporate it into their system of language values.
- Verbal
explanation. This pertains to the use of
illustrative situations, synonymy, opposites, scales (Gairns and Redman ),
definition (Nation) and categories (Allen and Valette ).
- Use of
dictionaries. Using a dictionary is
another technique of finding out meanings of unfamiliar words and
expressions. Students can make use of a variety of dictionaries:
bilingual, monolingual, pictorial, thesauri, and the like. As French Allen
perceives them, dictionaries are "passports to independence,"
and using them is one of the student-centered learning activities.
Using games
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The
advantages of using games. Many experienced
textbook and methodology manuals writers have argued that games are not just
time-filling activities but have a great educational value. W. R. Lee holds
that most language games make learners use the language instead of thinking
about learning the correct forms. He also says that games should be treated as
central not peripheral to the foreign language teaching programme. A similar
opinion is expressed by Richard-Amato, who believes games to be fun but warns
against overlooking their pedagogical value, particularly in foreign language
teaching. There are many advantages of using games. "Games can lower
anxiety, thus making the acquisition of input more likely" (Richard-Amato).
They are highly motivating and entertaining, and they can give shy students
more opportunity to express their opinions and feelings (Hansen). They also
enable learners to acquire new experiences within a foreign language which are
not always possible during a typical lesson. Furthermore, to quote
Richard-Amato, they, "add diversion to the regular classroom
activities," break the ice, "[but also] they are used to introduce
new ideas". In the easy, relaxed atmosphere which is created by using
games, students remember things faster and better (Wierus and Wierus ). Further
support comes from Zdybiewska, who believes games to be a good way of
practising language, for they provide a model of what learners will use the
language for in real life in the future.
Games encourage,
entertain, teach, and promote fluency. If not for any of these reasons, they
should be used just because they help students see beauty in a foreign language
and not just problems .
Choosing
appropriate games. There are many factors to
consider while discussing games, one of which is appropriacy. Teachers should
be very careful about choosing games if they want to make them profitable for
the learning process. If games are to bring desired results, they must
correspond to either the student's level, or age, or to the material that is to
be introduced or practised. Not all games are appropriate for all students
irrespective of their age. Different age groups require various topics,
materials, and modes of games. For example, children benefit most from games
which require moving around, imitating a model, competing between groups and
the like. Furthermore, structural games that practise or reinforce a certain
grammatical aspect of language have to relate to students' abilities and prior
knowledge. Games become difficult when the task or the topic is unsuitable or
outside the student'sexperience.
Another factor influencing the choice of a game is its length and the time
necessary for its completion. Many games have a time limit, but according to
Siek-Piskozub, the teacher can either allocate more or less time depending on
the students' level, the number of people in a group, or the knowledge of the
rules of a game etc.
When to
use games. Games are often used as short
warm-up activities or when there is some time left at the end of a lesson. Yet,
as Lee observes, a game "should not be regarded as a marginal activity
filling in odd moments when the teacher and class have nothing better to
do". Games ought to be at the heart of teaching foreign languages. Rixon
suggests that games be used at all stages of the lesson, provided that they are
suitable and carefully chosen. At different stages of the lesson, the teacher's
aims connected with a game may vary:
- Presentation. Provide a good model making
its meaning clear;
- Controlled practise. Elicit good
imitation of new language and appropriate responses;
- Communicative prastice. Give students a
chance to use the language .
Games also lend themselves well to revision
exercises helping learners recall material in a pleasant, entertaining way. All
authors referred to in this article agree that even if games resulted only in
noise and entertained students, they are still worth paying attention to and
implementing in the classroom since they motivate learners, promote
communicative competence, and generate fluency. However, can they be more
successful for presentation and revision than other techniques? The following
part of this article is an attempt at finding the answer to this question.
The use of games for
presenting and revising vocabulary
Vocabulary
presentation. After the teacher chooses what
items to teach, Haycraft suggests following certain guidelines. These include
teaching the vocabulary "in spoken form first" to prevent students
from pronouncing the words in the form they are written, placing the new items
in context, and revising them..I shall now proceed to
present practical examples of games I have used for vocabulary introduction and
revision.
Description
of the groups. For the purpose of vocabulary
presentation, I chose two groups of third form students. With one of them I
used a presentation game and with the other translation and context guessing.
In both groups, students' abilities varied-ranging from those whose command of
English was very good, able to communicate easily using a wide range of
vocabulary and grammatical structures, and those who found it difficult to
communicate.
After covering
the first conditional and time clauses in the textbook, I decided to present
students with a set of idioms relating to bodily parts-mainly those connected
with the head (taken from The Penguin Dictionary of English Idioms ).
The choice of these expressions was determined by students' requests to learn
colloquial expressions to describe people's moods, behavior, etc. Moreover, in
one of the exercises the authors of the textbook called for examples of
expressions which contain parts of the body. For the purpose of the lesson I
adapted Gear and Gear's "Vocabulary Picture-Puzzle" from the
English Teaching Forum (1988). Students were to work out the meanings of
sixteen idiomatic expressions. All of them have Polish equivalents, which made
it easier for students to remember them.
Description of
vocabulary picture-puzzle
To prepare the
puzzle, I cut two equal-sized pieces of cardboard paper into rectangles. The
selected idioms were written onto the rectangles in the puzzle-pieces board and
their definitions on the game board. On the reverse side of the puzzle-pieces
board, I glued colorful photographs of landscapes and then cut the
puzzle-pieces board into individual pieces, each with an idiom on it. The
important thing was the distribution of the idioms and their definitions on the
boards. The definitions were placed in the same horizontal row opposite to the
idioms so that when put together face to face each idiom faced its definition.
Puzzle Pieces Board
The idioms and their definitions were the
following (all taken from The Penguin Dictionary of English Idioms p.77):
- to be soft in the head: foolish, not
very intelligent;
- to have one's hair stand on end: to be
terrified;
- to be two-faced: to agree with a
person to his face but disagree with him behind his back;
- to make a face: to make a grimace
which may express disgust, anger;
- to be all eyes: to be very attentive;
- to be an eye-opener: to be a
revelation;
- to be nosy: to be inquisitive, to ask
too many questions;
- to be led by the nose: to be
completely dominated by, totally influenced by;
- long ears: an inquisitive person who
is always asking too many questions;
- to be all ears: to listen very
attentively;
- to be wet behind the ears: to be
naive, inexperienced;
- a loose mouth: an indiscrete person;
- one's lips are sealed: to be obliged
to keep a secret;
- to have a sweet tooth: to have a
liking for sweet food, sugar, honey, ice cream, etc.;
- to grind one's teeth: to express one's
fury;
- to hold one's tongue: to say nothing,
to be discrete;
The
task for students. Work out the puzzle by matching the idioms and their
definitions. First, put puzzle-pieces on the desk with the word facing up. Take
one and match the idiom to the definition. Having done that, place the
puzzle-piece, word-side-up, in the chosen rectangle. When you have used up all
the pieces, turn them over. If they form a picture of a landscape, the choices
are correct. If not, rearrange the picture and check the idiom-definition
correspondences.
The
game objectives. To work out the puzzle, students had to match idioms
with their definitions. The objective of the game was for each pair to
cooperate in completing the activity successfully in order to expand their
vocabulary with, in this case, colloquial expressions.
All students
were active and enjoyed the activity. Some of their comments were as follows:
"Very interesting and motivating" "Learning can be a lot of
fun" etc.
Students also
had to find the appropriate matches in the shortest time possible to beat other
participating groups. The element of competition among the groups made them concentrate
and think intensively.
Translation
activity. The other group of students had to work out the meanings of
the idioms by means of translation. Unlike the previously described group, they
did not know the definitions. The expressions were listed on the board, and
students tried to guess their proper meanings giving different options. My role
was to direct them to those that were appropriate. Students translated the
idioms into Polish and endeavored to find similar or corresponding expressions
in their mother tongue. Unlike the game used for the purpose of idiom
introduction, this activity did not require the preparation of any aids. Fewer
learners participated actively or enthusiastically in this lesson and most did
not show great interest in the activity.
Administering the test. In
order to find out which group acquired new vocabulary better, I designed a
short test, for both groups containing a translation into English and a game.
This allowed learners to activate their memory with the type of activity they
had been exposed to in the presentation.
The test checking the
acquisition of newly-introduced reading vocabulary
I. Match the definitions of the idioms
with the pictures and write which idiom is depicted and described:
- to be inexperienced
- to listen very attentively
- to be terrified
- to be dominated by someone
- to be attentive
- to be insincere, dishonest
The proper answers are the following:
- d ., to be
wet behind the ears
- a ., to be
all ears
- e ., to
have one's hair stand on end
- f ., to be
led by the nose
- b ., to be
all eyes
- c ., to be
two-faced.
II. Translate into English (the
translated sentences should be the following):
- He is soft in the head.
- She is two-faced, always criticizes me
behind my back.
- Mark has a sweet tooth, so he is not too
slim.
- Will you hold your tongue if I tell you
something?
- Why are you such a loose mouth?
- Don't be nosy! This is none of your
business.
Analysis
of the results. Group I received an average mark of 3.9 as compared to
3.4 obtained by group II. In other words, the group which had learned
vocabulary through games performed significantly better. However, it is
especially interesting and surprising that group II also received high scores
for the game. Even though learners in group I had the material presented by
means of translation, most students got better marks for the game.
Summing
up. Even though the results of one activity can
hardly lead to informative conclusions, I believe that the results suggest that
the use of games for presentation of new vocabulary is very effective and
enjoyable for students. Despite the fact that the preparation of a game may be
time-consuming and suitable material may be hard to find, teachers should try
to use them to add diversion to presentational techniques.
Revising vocabulary
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Many sources
referred to in this article emphasise the importance of vocabulary revision.
This process aims at helping students acquire active, productive vocabularies.
Students need to practise regularly what they have learnt; otherwise, the
material will fade away. Teachers can resort to many techniques for vocabulary
consolidation and revision. To begin with, a choice of graphs and grids can be
used. Students may give a definition of a given item to be found by other
students. Multiple choice and gap filling exercises will activate the
vocabulary while students select the appropriate response. Teachers can use
lists of synonyms or antonyms to be matched, sentences to be paraphrased, or
just some words or expressions in context to be substituted by synonymous
expressions. Doing cloze tests will show students' understanding of a passage,
its organisation, and determine the choice of lexical items. Visual aids can be
of great help with revision. Pictures, photographs, or drawings can facilitate
the consolidation of both individual words as well as idioms, phrases and
structures. There is also a large variety of word games that are "useful
for practising and revising vocabulary after it has been introduced"
(Haycraft). Numerous puzzles, word squares, crosswords, etc., are useful
especially for pair or group work.
I shall now present the games I have used
for vocabulary revision.
Description
of the group. I gave teachers a questionnaire
to determine their view of using games for vocabulary teaching. In response to
the questionnaire, many teachers said they often used games for vocabulary
revision. Some claimed they were successful and usually more effective than
other methods. To see if this is really true, I decided to use a crossword
puzzle with a group of first year students.
The
crossword puzzle. After completing a unit about
Van Gogh, students wanted to expand their vocabulary with words connected with
art. The students compiled lists of words, which they had learnt. In order to
revise the vocabulary, one of the groups had to work out the crossword puzzle.
Students worked
in pairs. One person in each pair was provided with part A of the crossword
puzzle and the other with part B. The students' task was to fill in their part
of the puzzle with the missing words known to their partner. To complete the
activity, learners had to ask each other for the explanations, definitions, or
examples to arrive at the appropriate answers. Only after getting the answer
right could they put it down in the suitable place of their part of the
crossword. Having completed the puzzle, students were supposed to find out what
word was formed from the letters found in the shaded squares.
Students
enjoyed the activity very much and did not resort to translation at any point.
They used various strategies to successfully convey the meanings of the words
in question-e.g., definitions, association techniques, and examples. When
everyone was ready, the answers were checked and students were asked to give
examples of definitions, explanations, etc., they had used to get the missing
words.
The other group performed a similar task.
Students were to define as follows:
I. Define the following words: shade,
icon, marker, fresco, perspective, hue, daub, sculptor, still life, watercolor,
palette, background.
II. Find the words these definitions
describe:
- a public show of objects
- a variety of a colour
- a wooden frame to hold a picture while it
is being painted
- a pale or a delicate shade of a colour
- a picture of a wide view of country
scenery
- an instrument for painting made of
sticks, stiff hair, nylon
- a painting, drawing, or a photograph of a
real person
- a piece of work, especially art which is
the best of its type or the best a person has made
- painting, music, sculpture, and others
chiefly concerned with producing beautiful rather than useful things
- a line showing the shape (of something)
- a person who is painted, drawn,
photographed by an artist
- a picture made with a pen, pencil, etc.
Analysis of results. The results show that the crossword puzzle, though seemingly more
difficult since it required the knowledge of words and their definitions and
not mere recognition and matching, was easier for 27.4% of the learners and granted
them more points for this part of the test. For the majority of the students
(nearly 60%) both activities proved equally easy and out of the group of
thirteen, eleven students had the highest possible score.
Summing up
These numbers suggest that games are
effective activities as a technique for vocabulary revision. Students also
prefer games and puzzles to other activities. Games motivate and entertain
students but also help them learn in a way which aids the retention and
retrieval of the material (This is what the learners stated themselves).
However, the numbers also show that not everyone feels comfortable with games
and puzzles and not everyone obtains better results.
Although one
cannot overgeneralise from one game, student feedback indicates that many
students may benefit from games in revision of vocabulary.
Conclusions
Recently, using
games has become a popular technique exercised by many educators in the
classrooms and recommended by methodologists. Many sources, including the ones
quoted in this work, list the advantages of the use of games in foreign
language classrooms. Yet, nowhere have I found any empirical evidence for their
usefulness in vocabulary presentation and consolidation.
Though the main
objectives of the games were to acquaint students with new words or phrases and
help them consolidate lexical items, they also helped develop the students'
communicative competence.
From the
observations, I noticed that those groups of students who practised vocabulary
activity with games felt more motivated and interested in what they were doing.
However, the time they spent working on the words was usually slightly longer
than when other techniques were used with different groups. This may suggest
that more time devoted to activities leads to better results. The marks
students received suggested that the fun and relaxed atmosphere accompanying
the activities facilitated students' learning. But this is not the only
possible explanation of such an outcome. The use of games during the lessons
might have motivated students to work more on the vocabulary items on their
own, so the game might have only been a good stimulus for extra work.
Although, it
cannot be said that games are always better and easier to cope with for
everyone, an overwhelming majority of pupils find games relaxing and
motivating. Games should be an integral part of a lesson, providing the
possibility of intensive practise while at the same time immensely enjoyable
for both students and teachers. My research has produced some evidence which
shows that games are useful and more successful than other methods of
vocabulary presentation and revision. Having such evidence at hand, I wish to
recommend the wide use of games with vocabulary work as a successful way of acquiring
language competence.
Note-taking
A Useful Device
by Clara Perez Fajardo
Has it ever happened that
you read or listen to something, and shortly afterwards when you want to recall
it, you can only remember a small part? Have you ever thought of how many
interesting ideas you have missed, just because you have not taken a few
seconds to note them down as they occurred to you? Everyday happenings pass
through time and can never be recalled again if they are not recorded either on
a tape or with a video camera. But, not many of us have these devices always
handy. What we do have available is a simple sheet of paper, a pencil, and our
five senses. Taking notes on what takes place not only permits us to remember
but also facilitates our oral and written communication.
Regardless of their age or
level, students tend to rely too much on their memory, instead of taking notes.
For this reason, I began devising different tasks which demand the recall of
facts that the students would have only if they had taken notes. The results
have motivated me to do further research on the topic through interviews,
reading, and analysis-all the time noting down the information I was obtaining.
The note-taking process
In order to reconstruct
a complete account of what one perceives through listening, reading, observing,
discussing, or thinking, it is necessary to take notes either simultaneously
with the act of perception or after an interval of just a few seconds. We
cannot expect to remember everything we perceive, and despite the advantages of
training our memory, it is better to have notes taken at the moment things
happen.
Language educators have approached
note-taking from different perspectives. McKeating (1981) sees note-taking as a
complex activity which combines reading and listening with selecting,
summarizing, and writing.
Grellet (1986) advises helping students to establish the structure of a text so
they can pull out the key ideas and leave out nonessential information.
Nwokoreze (1990) believes that "it is during the note-taking stage that
students reach the highest level of comprehension."
Two main aspects concerning note-taking:
- It involves the combination of different
skills, i.e.; listening or reading, selecting, summarizing, and writing.
- It requires the selection of relevant
information from the nonessential.
Moreover, most authors see note-taking as a
complex activity which must be approached gradually. When teaching the skill,
Raimes suggests that elementary-level students can be given a skeleton outline
to work with when they take notes, so that their listening is more directed.
Advanced students can listen to longer passages and make notes as they listen.
Murray refers to a "rehearsal for
writing," which begins as an unwritten dialogue within the writer's mind:
what the writer hears in his/her head evolves into notes. This may be simple
brainstorming-the jotting down of random bits of information which may connect
themselves into a pattern later on.
Note-taking involves putting onto paper the
data received through any of our senses. These data could range from simple
figures, letters, symbols, isolated words, or brief phrases to complete
sentences and whole ideas.
Most teachers instruct students to take
notes while perceiving . However, Nwokoreze insists on the need for first
listening long enough to make sure the essence of the information is perceived
before taking notes. The decision on whether the notes are to be taken at the
moment of perception or shortly afterwards depends on the complexity of the
task and the ability of the note-taker. Consequently, if we are to take notes
with figures, letters, or single words to fill in a pre-designed skeleton, we
can do it at the same time we receive the information; whereas notes which
require selection, summarizing, and organization ought to be taken later.
Guided
note-taking
As teachers, we
must decide what sort of help our students need for every task we assign. The
guidance we give for taking notes will depend on various aspects. One of them
is language level. Raimes suggests providing beginners with a skeleton outline
to fill in or expand to make their listening more directed. She also proposes
letting the advanced students listen to longer passages and make notes as they
listen.
Guidance
provided will depend on the degree of difficulty of the task involved. The
reasons for taking notes and the follow-up activities are also important. If
the students only take notes of simple figures, letters, or single words as the
basis for a discussion to take place immediately, they will not need much
guidance. But if they are supposed to take notes of a higher complexity to use
in writing a report for homework, they will need more preparation.
Using note-taking in our
classes
Assuming an
extreme position when defining the concept of note-taking, we can say that even
checking or ticking items on a list is a form of note-taking, as long as what
students have to "tick" represents the content of the reading or
listening passage. If we give students a multiple-choice exercise, a list, or
Yes/No questions, and ask them only to tick the correct answer, they will be
taking notes. This could be considered the most basic form of note-taking.
Nevertheless, if we analyze the task in detail, we find it is not as simple as
it seems. To answer accurately, the students will first have to understand the
statements and determine whether their choices are correct or not. Furthermore,
they have to predict and speculate about what they are going to perceive.
When revising any topic we may practice it
and use this technique giving students a skeleton to fill in while listening.
Example:
Hypertension
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Instructions:
Listen to the interview with the patient and tick (v) the correct answer:
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Patient's name:
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Mrs. Kelly.
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Main Symptoms:
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high blood pressure headache
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dizziness
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Other Symptoms:
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obesity
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blurred vision
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trouble breathing
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swollen ankles
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urinary problems
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pain in the back
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chills and fever
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Past History:
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heart disease
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chest pain
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kidney infection
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Family History
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hypertension
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diabetes
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kidney disease
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stroke
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heart attack
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Any other information?
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With this last question, we are prompting the students to note down other information,
not limiting them only to what the chart asks for. Not all the students will be
able to take further notes, but the most skilled will not get bored while their
classmates are engaged at a more elementary level.
Another instance
that calls for note-taking is reporting on medical cases. To do this, the class
may be divided into teams of three or four students. Each team prepares a case
for the others to analyze. One variant would be having each team first
brainstorm, then prepare a skeleton outline with the sort of information they
need the other team to provide in order to write a full case report. Once
ready, they exchange skeletons, brainstorm again, and note down the information
the skeleton forms ask for. The teams should give neither the diagnosis nor the
treatment. As soon as they finish, they swap these "problem-cases,"
analyze them, and confer on the diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of the
patient. Next, they write a full case report that everyone reads and discusses.
The class then moves around, reads, and comments on them. Finally, they decide
which of the skeleton forms are better and which reports are the most coherent
and faithful to the information provided.
A simpler
variant would be having each team ask for the information orally from one
another, take notes on it and then report on the case orally or in writing.
In teaching Medically
Speaking , I suggest taking notes while listening to the dialogues or
reading the case studies given in the text. Instead of having the students take
down all the information, teams are formed to take notes on specific parts.
Appendix
Instructions
for preparing and presenting a case report
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First think of an interesting case you
would like to report on and discuss with your classmates. Consult your
professors, look for information about your case and associated diseases or
cases in magazines, books, journals, etc. Note down this information. Then
make an outline of the elements you need in order to report on a case
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1. Patient's
characteristics:
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Age:
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Sex: Race:
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Weight:
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Height:
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2. Main symptom:
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8. Physical findings
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3. Other symptoms:
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9. Diagnostic procedure:
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4. Past history:
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10. Differential and definitive
diagnosis:
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5. Family history:
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11. Therapeutic procedures:
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6. (Toxic) habits:
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12. Possible complications
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7. Medications:
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13. Prognosis
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Before presenting your case orally, copy
the outline on the board, ask your classmates to also copy it in their
notebooks. You will all follow this order for the presentation and discussion
of your case. Your classmates will ask you for the data they need to complete
their outlines and discuss the case. Once the discussion is over, they will use
their notes to write a report on the case you presented.
Patient's characteristics: Age: 22
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Race: white Sex: M
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Weight:
70 kg.
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Height: 1.70m.
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Main symptom:
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pain in the right lower quadrant
(sporadic and colicky in nature)
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*began in epigastrium two days ago
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*moved to periumbilical region and
right lower quadrant
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Other symptoms:
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fever, vomits (3), anorexia,
constipation for two days (no bowel movement). No diarrhea
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Past history:
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-none
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Family history:
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-none
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Toxic habits:
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-none
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Medications:
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-none
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Physical findings:
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-patient well oriented as to time,
place and
person
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-well nourished
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-extreme tenderness to palpation
mainly
over McBurney's point
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-guarding, muscle rigidity, rebound
tenderness
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-difference: axillary & rectal
temperature
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-bowel sounds: absent
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Definitive diagnosis: acute
appendicitis
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Therapeutic procedures: appendectomy
Possible complications: perforation, necrosis, peritonitis
Prognosis: Anceps
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Report
Today we
discussed the case of a 22-year-old white man who was in good health prior to
two days ago, when he began to have an abdominal pain. This pain was sporadic
and colicky in nature. It began in the epigastrium and has since migrated to
the right lower quadrant. The patient has had three episodes of vomiting
associated with the pain. He has been anorectic and feverish. He has had no
bowel movements for two days. He reported no diarrhea, coughing with
expectoration or shortness of breath. He has no past history or family history
of abdominal pain or any other disease. The pertinent physical findings are
related to the abdomen. There is extreme tenderness to palpation, especially
over McBurney's point. Guarding, muscle rigidity and rebound tenderness are all
present. Bowel sounds are absent. There is a difference between the axillary
and the rectal temperature. His urinalysis, hemoglobin and hematocrit are
within normal limits. Nevertheless, both white blood count and red rate are
elevated. His chest film is clear, but in the abdominal film we observed the
psoas line is absent.
Finally, we decided the definitive diagnosis is acute appendicitis. Among the
possible complications to consider are perforation, necrosis and peritonitis.
Therefore, the prognosis is anceps. The only possible treatment is surgical:
appendectomy.
Conclusion
As we have seen,
there are numerous opportunities to help students develop the skill of
note-taking. Note-taking assists the listener, reader, or observer in achieving
a better understanding of what is presented, and it facilitates recall of facts
as well as oral and written expression. The student's language level and the
purpose which the notes are to serve will determine the type of guidance the
teacher must provide to help them to take notes in class and later on the job.
Grammar
games
Competitive games
Speed
Grammar:
|
Collocations with wide, narrow, and broad.
|
Level:
|
Intermediate to advanced
|
Time:
|
15-20 minutes
|
Materials:
|
Three cards, with wide on one, narrow on
the second and broad on the third
|
Preparation
Prepare three large cards with wide
on one, narrow on the second and broad on the third.
In class
1.
Clear as much space as you can in your classroom
so that students have access to all the walls and ask two students to act as
secretaries at the board. Steak each of your card on one of the other three
walls of the room. Ask the rest of the students to gather in the middle of the
space.
2.
Tell the students that you’re going to read out
sentences with a word missing. If they think that the right word for that
sentence is wide they should rush over and touch the wide
card. If they think the word should be narrow or broad
they touch the respective card instead. Tell them that in some cases
there are two right answers (they choose either).
3.
Tell the secretaries at the board to write down
the correct versions of the sentences in full as the game progresses.
4.
Read out the first gapped sentence and have the students
rush to what they think is the appropriate wall. Give the correct versions and
make sure it goes up in the board. Continue with the second sentence etc.
5.
At the end of the strenuous part ask the
students to tale down the sentences in their books. A relief from running! ( If
the students want a challenge they should get a partner and together write down
as many sentences as they remember with their backs to the board before turning
round to complete their notes. Or else have their partner to dictate the
sentences with a gap for them to try to complete.)
Sentences to read out
They
used a … angled lens
|
Wide
|
He
looked at her with a … smile
|
Broad
|
The
socialists won by a …. Margin
|
Narrow/broad
|
She
is very … minded
|
Broad/narrow
|
He
speaks the language with a … London accent
|
Broad
|
You
were wrong what you said was … of the mark
|
Wide
|
You
had a … escape
|
Narrow
|
Of
course they’re … open to criticism
|
Wide
|
They
went down the canal in a … boat
|
Narrow
|
She
opened her eyes …
|
Wide
|
The
news was broadcast nation …
|
Wide
|
The
path was three meters …
|
Wide
|
The
light was so bright that she … her eyes
|
Narrowed
|
Variation
You can play this game with many sets of
grammar exponents:
§
Forms of the article; a, the and zero
article
§
Prepositions
Etc.
Cognitive games
Spot the differences
Grammar:
|
Common mistakes
|
Level:
|
Elementary
|
Time:
|
20-30 minutes
|
This activity can be adapted for use with all
levels
|
|
Materials:
|
One copy of Late-comer A and Late-comer B
for each student
|
In class
1.
Pair the students and give them the two texts.
Ask them to spot all the differences they can between them. Tell them that
there may be more than one pair of differences per pair of parallel sentences.
Tell them one item in each pair of alternatives is correct.
2.
They are to choose the correct form from each
pair.
Late-comer A
|
Late-comer B
|
This
women was often very late
|
This
woman was often very late
|
She
was late for meetings
|
She
was late for meeting
|
She
were late for dinners
|
She
was late for dinners
|
She
was late when she went to the cinema
|
She
was late as she went to the cinema
|
One
day she arrive for a meeting half an hour early
|
One
day she arrived for meeting half ah hour early
|
Nobody
could understand because she was early
|
Nobody
couldn’t understand why she was early
|
‘Of
course,’ someone said, ‘clocks put back last night.’
|
‘Of
course,’ someone say, ‘the clocks were put back last night.’
|
3. Ask
them to dictate the correct text to you at the board. Write down exactly what
they say so students have a chance to correct each other both in terms of
grammar and in terms of their pronunciation. If a student pronounces ‘dis
voman’ for ‘this woman’ then write up the wrong version. Only write it
correctly when the student pronounces it right. Your task in this exercise is
to allow the students to try out their hypotheses about sound and grammar
without putting them right too soon and so reducing their energy and blocking
their learning. Being too kind can be cognitively unkind.
Variation
To make this exercise more oral, pair the
students and ask them to sit facing each other. Give Later-comer A to one
student and Late-comer B to the other in each pair. They then have to do very
detailed listening to each other’s texts.
Feeling and grammar
Typical questions
Grammar:
|
Question formation-varied interrogatives
|
Level:
|
Beginner to elementary
|
Time:
|
20-30 minutes
|
Materials:
|
None
|
In class
1.
Ask
the students to draw a quick sketch of a four-year-old they know well. Give
them these typical questions such a person may ask, e.g. ‘Mummy, does the moon
go for a wee-wee?’ ‘Where did I come from?’. Ask each student to write half a
dozen questions such a person might ask, writing them in speech bubbles on the
drawing. Go round and help with the grammar.
2.
Get the students to fill the board with their
most interesting four-year-old questions.
Variations
This can be used with various question situations. The following
examples work well:
-
Ask the students to imagine a court room-the
prosecution barrister is questioning a defense witness. Tell the students to
write a dozen questions the prosecution might ask.
-
What kind of questions might a woman going to a
foreign country want to ask a woman friend living in this country about the man
or the woman in the country? And what might a man want to ask a man?
-
What kind of questions are you shocked to be
asked in an English-speaking country and what questions are you surprised not
to be asked?
Achievements
Grammar:
|
By+time-phrases Past
perfect
|
This activity also works well with: present
perfect+yet, like doing, like having done, and modals
|
|
Level:
|
Lower intermediate
|
Time:
|
20-30 minutes
|
Materials:
|
Set of prepared sentences
|
Preparation
1.
Think of your achievements in the period of your
life that corresponds to the average age of your class. If you’re teaching
seventeen-year-olds, pick your first seventeen years. Also think of a few of
the times when you were slow to achieve. Write the sentences about yourself like
these:
By the age of six I
had learnt to read.
I still hadn’t learnt
to ride a bike by then.
I had got over my fear
of water by the time I was eight.
By the time I was nine
I had got the hang of riding a bike.
By thirteen I had read
a mass of books.
I’d got over my fear
of the dark by around ten.
2.
Write ten to twelve sentences using the patterns
above. If you’re working in a culture that is anti-boasting then pick
achievements that do not make you stand out.
3.
Your class will relate well to sentences that
tell them something new about you, as much as you feel comfortable telling
them. Communication works best when it’s for real.
In class
1.
Ask the students to have two different colored
pens ready. Tell them you’re going to dictate sentences about yourself. They’re
to take down the sentences that are also true for them in one color and the
sentences that are not true about them in another color.
2.
Put the students in fours to explain to each
other which of your sentences were also true of their lives.
3.
Run a quick question and answer session
round the groups e.g. ‘At what age had you learnt to ski/dance/sing/ play
table tennis etc by?’ ‘I’d learnt to ski by seven.’
4.
Ask each students to write a couple of fresh
sentences about things achieved by a certain date/time and come up and write
them on a board. Wait till the board is full, without correcting what they’re
putting up. Now point silently at problem sentences and get the students to
correct them.
Variation
You can use the above activity for any area
of grammar you want ti personalize. You might write sentences about:
-
Things you haven’t got round to doing (present
perfect + yet)
-
Things you like having done for you versus
things you like doing for yourself
-
Things you ought to do and feel you can’t do
(the whole modal area is easily treated within this frame)
Reported advice
Grammar:
|
Modals and modals reported
|
Level:
|
Elementary to intermadiate
|
Time:
|
15-20 minutes
|
Materials:
|
None
|
In class
1.
Divide your class into two groups: ‘problem
people’ and ‘advice-givers’.
2.
Ask the ‘problem people’ to each think up a
minor problem they have and are willing to talk about.
3.
Arm the ‘advice-givers’ with these suggestion
forms:
You
could…
|
You
should…
|
You
might as well…
|
You
might…
|
You
ought to…
|
You
might try…ing…
|
4.
Get the class moving round the room. Tell each
‘problem person’ to pair off with an ‘advice-giver’. The ‘problem person’
explains her problem and the other person gives two bits of advice using the
grammar suggested. Each ‘problem person’ now moves to another ‘advice-giver’.
The ‘problem people’ get advice from five or six ‘advice-givers’
5.
Call class back into the plenary. Ask some of
the ‘problem people’ to state their problem and report to the whole group the
best and the worst piece of advice they were offered, naming the advice-giver
e.g. ‘Juan was telling me I should give her up.’ ‘ Jane suggested I ought to
get a girlfriend of hers to talk to her for me.’
Variation
If you have a classroom with space that
allows it, form the students into two concentric circles, the outer one facing
in and the inner one facing out. All the inner circle students are
‘advice-givers’ and all the outer circle students are ‘problem people’. After
each round, the outer circle people move round three places. This is much more
cohesive than the above.
Picture the past
Grammar:
|
Past simple, past perfect,
future in the past
|
Level:
|
Lower intermediate
|
Time:
|
20-40 minutes
|
Materials:
|
None
|
Class
1.
Ask three students to come out and help you
demonstrate the exercise. Draw a picture on the board of something interesting
you have done. Do not speak about it. Student A then writes a past simple
sentence about it. Student B write about what had already happened before the
picture action and student C about something that was going to happen, using
the appropriate grammar.
I
got up at eight a.m.
I’ve
just got off the bus
I’m
going to work today
2.
Put the students in fours. Each draws a picture
of a real past action of theirs. They pass their picture silently to a neighbor
in the foursome who adds a past tense sentence. Pass the picture again and each
adds a past perfect sentence. They pass again and each adds a was going to
sentence. All this is done in silence with you going round helping and
correcting.
Impersonating members of a set
Grammar:
|
Present and past simple-active and passive
|
Level:
|
Elementary to intermediate
|
Time:
|
20-30 minutes
|
Materials:
|
None
|
In class
1.
Ask people to brainstorm all the things they can
think of that give off light
2.
Choose one of this yourself and become the thing
chosen. Describe yourself in around five to six sentences, e.g.:
I start very big
and end up as nothig
My head is lit
and I produce a flame
I burn down
slowly
In some countries
I am put on Christmas tree
I am
old-fashioned and very fashionable
3.
Ask a couple of other students to choose other
light sourses and do the same as you have just done. Help them with language.
It could be ‘I am a light bulb-I was invented by Edison.’
4.
Group the students in sixes. Give them a new
category. Ask them to work silently, writing four or six forst-person sentences
in role. Go round and help especially with the formation of the present simple
passive (when this help is needed).
5.
In their groups the students read out their
sentences.
6.
Ask each group to choose their six interesting
sentences and then read out to the whole group.
Variation
The exercise is sometimes more excitingif
done with fairly abstract sets, e.g. numbers between 50 and 149, musical notes,
distances, weights. The abstract nature of the set makes people concretise
interestingly, e.g.:
I am a kilometre.
My son is a metre and my baby is
centimetre.
On the motorway I am driven in 30 seconds.
(120 kms. per hour)
We have also used these sets: types of
stone/countries/items of clothing (e.g.socks, skirts, jackets/times of
day/smells/family roles (e.g.son, mother etc.)/types of weather.
Rationale
The sentences students produce in this
exercise are nor repeat runs of things they have already thought and said in
mother tongue. New standpoints, new thoughts, new language. The English is
fresh because the thought is.
Listening to people
No backshift
Grammar:
|
Reported speech after past reporting verb
|
Level:
|
Elementary to lower intermediate
|
Time:
|
15-20 minutes
|
Material:
|
None
|
In class
1.
Pair the students. Ask one person in each pair
to prepare to speak for two minutes about a pleasurable future event. Give them
a minute to prepare.
2.
Ask the listener in each pair to prepare to give
their whole attention to the speaker. They are not to take notes. Ask the
speaker in each pair to get going. You time two minutes.
3.
Pair the pairs. The two listeners now report on
what they heard using this kind of form:
She was telling me she’s
going to Thailand for her holiday and she added that she’ll be going
by plane.
The speakers
have the right to fill in things the listeners have left out but only after the
listeners have finished speaking.
4.
The students go back into their original pairs
and repeat the above but this time with the other one as speaker, so everybody
has been able to share their future event thoughts.
Incomparable
Grammar:
|
Comparative structures
|
Level:
|
Elementary
|
Time:
|
15-20 minutes
|
Materials:
|
None
|
In class
1.
Tell the students a bit about yourself by
comparing yourself to some people you know:
I’m more … than my husband.
I’m not as…as my eldest boy.
I reckon my uncle is … than
me
Write six or
seven of these sentences up on the board as a grammar pattern input.
2.
Tell the students to work in threes. Two of the
three listen very closely while the third compares herself to people she knows.
The speakers speak without interruption for 90 seconds and you time them.
3.
The two listeners in each group feedback to the
speaker exactly what they had heard. If they miss things the speaker will want
to prompt them.
4.
Repeat steps 2 and 3 so that everybody in the
group has had a go at producing a comparative self-portrait.
One question behind
Grammar:
|
Assorted interrogative forms
|
You can adapt this by preparing your own question
sets for different interrogative structures
|
|
Level:
|
Beginner to intermediate
|
Time:
|
5-10 minutes
|
Materials:
|
One question set for each pair of students
|
In class
1.
Demonstrate the exercise to your students. Get
one of them to ask you the question of a set. You answer ‘Mmmm’, with closed
lips. The student asks you the second question – you give the answer that would
have been right for the first question. The student asks the third question and
you reply with the answer to the second question, and so on. The wrong
combination of question and answer can be quite funny.
2.
Pair the students and give each pair a question
set. One student fires the questions and the other gives delayed-by-one
replies. The activity is competitive. The first pair to finish a question set
is the winner.
Question
set A
Where do you sleep? (the other says nothing)
Where do you eat? (the other answers the first
question)
Where do you go swimming?
Where do you wash your clothes?
Where do you read?
Where do you cook?
Where do you listen to music?
Where do you get angry?
Where do you do your shopping?
Where do you sometimes drive to?
Question
set B
What do you eat your soup with?
What do you cut your meat with?
What do you write on?
What do you wipe your mouth with?
What do you blow your nose with?
What do you brush your hair with?
What do you sleep on?
What do you write with?
What do you wear in bed?
What do you wear in restaurant?
Question
set C
Can you tell me something you ate last week?
Tell me something you saw last week?
Is there something you have come to appreciate
recently?
What about something you really want to do next
week?
Where have you spent most of this last week?
Where would you have you liked to spend this last
week?
Where are you thinking of going on holiday?
Which is the best holiday place you have ever been
to?
Variation 1
Have students devise their own sets of
questions to then be used as above.
Variation 2
Group the students in fours: one acts as a
‘time-keeper’, one as a ‘question master’ and person 3 and 4 are the ‘players’.
The ‘question master’ fires five rapid
questions at player A which she has to answer falsely. The ‘time-keeper’ notes
the time questioning takes. The ‘question master’ fires five similar questions
at B, who answers truthfully. The quickest answerer wins. (The problem lies in
choosing the right wrong answer fast enough.)
Possible questions:
How old are you?
Where do you live?
Which color do you like best?
What time is it?
How did you get here?
What time did you get up today?
What did you have for breakfast?
Where does your best friend live?
What sort of music do you dislike?
How many brothers and sisters do you
have?
Movement and grammar
Sit down then
Grammar:
|
Who + simple past
interrogative/Telling the time
|
Level:
|
Beginner to elementary
|
Time:
|
10-20 minutes
|
Materials:
|
None
|
In class
1.
Ask everybody to stand up. Tell them you’re
going to shout out bedtimes. When they hear the time they went to bed
yesterday, they shout ‘I did’ and sit down. You start like this:
Who went to bed at two a.m.?
|
Who went to bed at quarter to two?
|
Who went to bed at ten to two?
|
Who went to bed at half past one?
|
2.
Continue until all the students have sat down.
3.
Get people back on their feet. Ask one of the
better students to come out and run the same exercise but this time about when
people got up, e.g.
Who woke up at four thirty this morning?
Who woke up at twenty to five?
4.
Repeat with a new question master but asking
about shopping, e.g.:
Who went shopping yesterday?
Who went shopping on…(day of
the week)
Only if
Grammar:
|
Polite requests, -ing participle
Only if + target verb
structure of your choice
|
Level:
|
Elementary +
|
Time:
|
15-20 minutes
|
Materials:
|
None
|
In class
1.
Make or find as much space in your room as
possible and ask the class to stand at one end of it.
2.
Explain that their end is one river bank and the
opposite end of the room is the other bank. Between is the ‘golden river’ and
you’re the ‘keeper’ of the golden river. Before crossing the river the students
have to say the following sentence:
Can we cross your
golden river sitting on your golden boat?
3.
They need to be able to say this sentence
reasonably fluently.
4.
Get the students to say the sentence. You
answer:
Only if you’re
wearing…
Only if you’ve
got…
Only if you’ve
got … on you
5.
Supposing you say ‘Only if you’re wearing
trousers’. All the students who wear trousers can ‘boat’ across the river
without hindrance. The others have to try to sneak across without being tagged
by you. The first person who is tagged, changes places with you and becomes
‘it’ (the keeper who tags the others in the next round).
6.
Continue with students saying ‘Can we cross your
golden river, sitting on your golden boat?’ ‘It’ might say, ‘Only if you’re
wearing ear-rings.’ etc.
Variation 1
To make this game more lively, instead of
having just one keeper, everyone is tagged becomes keeper. Repeat until
everyone has been tagged.
Meaning and translation
Two-word verbs
Grammar:
|
Compound verbs
|
Level:
|
Upper intermediate to advanced
|
Time:
|
40-50 minutes
|
Materials:
|
One Mixed-up verb sheet per pair of students. The
Jumbled sentences on a large separate piece of card
|
In class
1.
Pair the students and ask them to match the
verbs on the mixed-up verb sheet you give them. Tell them to use dictionaries
and to call you over. Be everywhere at once.
Mixed-up verb sheet
|
Please match words from column 1 with
words from column 2to form correct compound verbs.
|
Column 1
|
Column 2
|
back-
|
dry
|
cross-
|
soap
|
ghost-
|
treat
|
soft-
|
write
|
blow-
|
reference
|
double-
|
cross
|
ill-
|
dry
|
spin-
|
comb
|
|
|
cold-
|
manage
|
double-
|
feed
|
pooh-
|
read
|
spoon-
|
pooh
|
court-
|
glaze
|
dry-
|
clean
|
proof-
|
shoulder
|
stage-
|
martial
|
|
|
frog-
|
march
|
wrong-
|
record
|
toilet-
|
foot
|
tape-
|
train
|
short-
|
change
|
rubber-
|
feed
|
force-
|
stamp
|
field-
|
test
|
cross-
|
question
|
cross-
|
examine
|
cross-
|
check
|
Key to first group of
verbs:
To back-comb/to cross-reference/to
ghost-write/to soft-soap/to blow-dry/to double-cross/to ill-treat/to spin-dry
Key to the second
group of verbs:
To cold-shoulder/to double-glaze/to
pooh-pooh/to spoon-feed/to court-martial/to dry-clean/to proof-read/to
stage-manage
Key to third group of
verbs
To frog-match/to wrong-foot/to toilet-train/to
tape-record/to short-change/to rubber-stamp/to force-feed/to field-test/to
cross-question/to cross-examine/to cross-check
2.
Ask them to take a clean sheet of paper and a
pen or pencil suitable for drawing. Tell them you’re going to give them a few
phrases to illustrate. They’re to draw a situation that brings out the meaning
of the phrases. Here are the phrases – do not give them more than 30 seconds
per drawing (they will groan):
To toilet-train
a child
To soft-soap a
superior
To force-feed
an anorexic
To
court-martial a soldier
To back-comb a
person’s hair
To
cross-examine a witness
To spin-dry
your clothes
To
cold-shoulder a friend
3.
Give them time to compare their drawings. The
drawings often make misunderstanding manifest.
4.
Split the class into teams of four. Tell them
you’re going to show them Jumbled sentences (see below) and their task
will be to shout out the unjumbled sentence. The first team to shout out a
correct sentence gets a point.
Jumbled sentences
Will
still can you and it it dry retain its spin shape
You
can spin-dry it and it will still retain its shape
Cold
him we shouldered first at
At
first we cold-shouldered him
Our
ill ancestors treated they
They
ill-treated our ancestors
Clean
it don’t dry
Don’t
dry-clean it
Black
frog they Maria to the marched him
They
frog-marched him to the Black Maria
Double
your windows glaze to like we’d
We’d
like to double-glaze your windows
Pooh
just his poohed offer they
They
just pooh-poohed his offer
Don’t
soap me you soft dare
Don’t
you dare soft-soap me!
The world of take
Grammar:
|
Some basic meanings of the verb take
|
Level:
|
Intermediate to advanced
|
Time:
|
40-50 minutes
|
Materials:
|
Set of sentences below (for dictation)
|
In class
1.
Put the students in small groups to brainstorm all
the uses of the verb take they can think of.
2.
Ask each group to send a messenger to the next
group to pass on their ideas.
3.
Dictate the sentences below which they are to
write down in their mother tongue. Tell them only to write in mother tongue,
not English. Be ready to help explain any sentences that students do not
understand.
The new president took over in
January.
The man took the woman’s anger
seriously.
‘You haven’t done the washing up, I
take it,’ his wife said to him.
The little boy took the old watch
apart to see how it worked.
‘I think we ought to take the car,’ he
said to her.
This bloke always takes his problems
to his mother.
‘We took the village without a shot
being fired,’ she told him.
‘Take care’ the woman said, as she
left home that morning.
He took charge of the planning team.
The woman asked what size shoes he
took.
‘Yes I really take your point’ he told
her.
‘If we go to a movie,’ she told her
boyfriend, ‘it’ll really take you out of yourself.’
The news the boy brought really took
the woman aback.
The chair asked him to take the
minutes of the meeting.
‘You can take it from me, it’s worse
than you think’
4.
Ask the students to work in threes and compare
their translations. Go round helping and checking.
5.
Check that they’re clear about the usual direct
translation of take into their language. Now ask them to mark all the
translations where take is not rendered by its direct equivalent.
Problem Solving
A dictionary game
Grammar:
|
Comparatives, it (referring back)
|
Level:
|
Elementary (or as a review at higher levels)
|
This activity provides good skills practice in scan reading a dictionary
|
|
Time:
|
45 minutes
|
Materials:
|
One dictionary per two students
|
Preparation
On the board write the following:
Abcdifghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
It’s
got more letters than…
It’s
got fewer letters than…
It’s
the same length as….
It’s
earlier in the dictionary than…
It’s
later in the dictionary than…
It’s
further on…
Back
a bit.
The
first letter’s right
The
first two/three/four letters are right
(or you could dictate this to the students
if you want a quiet settling in period at the start of the class)
In class
1.
Explain to the students that you’re going out of
the room for a short time and they’re to select one word for you to guess when
you come back. They find the word in their dictionaries.
2.
Go back in and have a first wild guess at the
class’s word. The students should tell you whether their word is longer,
shorter or the same length as your guess and whether it’s earlier or later in
the dictionary. Here is an example (teachers can correct pronunciation as they
go along ):
teacher:
|
Middle
|
students:
|
It’s shorter. And it’s later in the
dictionary.
|
teacher:
|
Train.
|
students:
|
It’s Earlier. It’s Got The Same Number Of
Letters.
|
teacher:
|
Plane.
|
students:
|
It’s Later.
|
teacher:
|
Rains.
|
students:
|
It’s Later. It’s Got The Same Number Of Letters.
|
teacher:
|
Seat.
|
students:
|
It’s Longer.The First Letter Is Right.
It’s Later In The Dictionary.
|
teacher:
|
Stops.
|
students:
|
It’s Earlier.
|
teacher:
|
Skirt.
|
students:
|
It’s Later
|
teacher:
|
Spend.
|
students:
|
The First Two Letters Are Right. It’s
Later.
|
teacher:
|
Spine.
|
students:
|
It’s Later.
|
teacher:
|
Spore.
|
students:
|
The First Four Letters Are Right. You’re
Really Warm Now. It’s A Bit Further On.
|
teacher:
|
Sport.
|
students:
|
Yes.
|
3.
You can write the words you guess and notes of
the students’ answers on the board as you go along, to help you to remember
where you are. At the beginning, you can prompt the students by asking
questions such as ‘Is it shorter, longer or the same length as my word? Is
it earlier or later in the dictionary?’ etc.
4.
When the students have got the idea of the game,
reverse the process; you think of a word (one from a recent lesson works well)
and students guess. You give them information as to length, place in dictionary
and any letters they’ve guessed right.
5.
Now hand over the exercise to the students. They
should scan their notes, textbooks and /or minds (but not dictionaries) and
create a short wordlist. Then in pairs or small groups they can repeat the
activity.
Rationale
This is a good
game for teaching scan reading and alphabetical order when using dictionaries.
The revision or introduction of the grammatical structures in a meaningful
context is disguised since the students usually see this is vocabulary game.
Because it has a pretty tight structure and build-up, it’s a good exercise for
establishing the principle of group/pairwork with a class that does not take
readily to working in different formats.
Note
With some
classes we have asked the students to analyze their own guessing processes.
Some students have written interesting short compositions on the best guessing
strategies.
Eyes
Grammar:
|
‘Second’ conditional
|
Level:
|
Lower to upper intermediate
|
Time:
|
30-45 minutes
|
Materials:
|
None
|
In class
1.
Ask a student to draw a head in profile on the
board. Ask the student to add eyes in the back of his head.
2.
Give the students this sentence beginning on the
board and ask them to complete it using a grammar suggested:
If people had eyes in the back of
their heads, then they … would/might/could/would have to … (+
infinitive)
For example:
‘If people had eyes on the back of
their heads they could read two books at once’ (so two pairs of eyes).
3.
Tell the students to write the above sentence
stem at the top of their paper and then complete it with fifteen separate
ideas. Encourage the use of dictionaries. Help students all you can with
vocabulary and go round checking and correcting.
4.
Once students have all written a good number of
sentences (at least ten) ask them to form teams of four. In the fours they read
each other’s sentences and pick the four most interesting ones.
5.
Each team puts their four best sentences on the
board.
6.
The students come up to the board and tick the
two sentences they find the most interesting. The team that gets the most ticks
wins.
Note
Students come up with a good range of
social, medical and other hypotheses. Here are some examples:
…
then they would not need driving mirrors.
…
they would make really good traffic wardens.
…
then you could kiss someone while looking away!
Umbrella
Grammar:
|
Modals and present simple
|
Level:
|
Elementary to intermediate
|
Time:
|
30-40 minutes
|
Materials:
|
One large sheet of paper per student
|
In class
1.
Ask a student
to draw a picture on the board of a person holding an umbrella. The umbrella
looks like this.
2.
Explain to the class that this ‘tulip-like’
umbrella design is a new, experimental one.
3.
Ask the students to work in small groups and
brainstorm all the advantages and disadvantages of a new design. Ask them to
use these sentence stems:
It/you can/can’t…
It/you + present simple…
It/you will/won’t…
It/you may/may not…
4.
For example: ‘It is easy to control in a high
wind’, ‘You can see where you’re going with this umbrella’
5.
Give the students large sheets of paper and ask
them to list the advantages and disadvantages in two columns.
6.
Ask the students to move around the room and
read each other’s papers. Individually they mark each idea as ‘good’, ‘bad’ or ‘intriguing’.
7.
Ask the student how many advantages they came up
with and how many disadvantages. Ask the students to divide up into three
groups according to which statement applies to them:
I thought mainly of advantages.
I thought of some of both.
I thought mainly of disadvantages.
8.
Ask the three groups to come up with five to ten
adjectives to describe their group state of mind and put these up n the board.
9.
Round off the exercise by telling the class that
when de Bono asked different groups of people to do this kind of exercise, it
turned out that primary school children mostly saw advantages, business people
had plenty of both while groups of teachers were the most negative.
Note
Advantages the students offered:
In a hot country
you can collect rain water.
It won’t drip
round the edges.
You can use it
for carrying shopping.
It’s not
dangerous in a crowd.
It’s an
optimistic umbrella.
It’s easy to hold
if two people are walking together.
With this
umbrella you’ll look special.
It’ll take less
floor space to dry.
This umbrella
makes people communicate. They can see each other.
You can paint
this umbrella to look like a flower.
You’ll get a free
supply of ice if it hails.
Presentation
Listening to time
Grammar:
|
Time phrases
|
You can use this idea to practice
a variety of different structures-see variations bellow for some examples
|
|
Level:
|
Upper intermediate to very advanced
|
Time:
|
40-50 minutes
|
Materials
|
None
|
Preparation
Invite a native
speaker to your class, preferably not a language teacher as they sometimes
distort their speech. Ask the person to speak about a topic that has them move
through time. This could be his country history. The talk should last around
twenty minutes. Explain to the speaker that the students will be paying close
attention not only to the content but to the language form, too.
In class
1.
Before the speaker arrives, explain to the
students that they are to jot down all the words and phrases they hear that
express time. They don't need to note all the words!
2.
Welcome the speaker and introduce the topic.
3.
The speaker takes the floor for fifteen to
twenty minutes and you join the students in taking language notes. If there are
questions from the students, make sure people continue to take notes during the
questioning.
4.
Put the students in threes to compare their
time-phrase notes. Suggest the speaker joins one of the groups. Some natives
are delighted to look in a ‘speech mirror’.
5.
Share your own notes with the class. Round off
the lesson by picking out other useful and normal bits of language the speaker
used that are not yet part of your student’s idiolects.
Example
One speaker
mentioned above produced these time words: only about ten years/there was a gap
of nine years/ at roughly the same time/over the next few hundred years/from
1910 until the present day/it’s been way back/ within eighteen month there will
be/until three years ago/when I was back in September
Variations
Choose the
speaker who is about to go off on an important trip. In speaking about this, some
of the verbs used will be in a variety of forms used to talk about the future.
Invite someone
to speak about the life and habits of someone significant to them, but two
lives separately from them, say a grandparent. This topic is likely to evoke a
rich mixture of present simple, present continuos, will used to describe
habitual events, ‘ll be –ing etc.
Note
To invite the
learners to pick specific grammar features out of a stream of live speech is a
powerful form of grammar presentation. In this technique the students ‘present’
the grammar to themselves. They go through a process of realization which is
lot stronger than what often happens in their minds during the type of
‘grammar presentation’ required of trainees on many teacher training courses. During
the realization process, they are usually not asleep.
Guess my grammar
Grammar:
|
Varied+question form
|
Level:
|
Elementary to intermediate
|
Time:
|
55 minutes
|
Materials
|
None
|
In class
1.
Choose a grammar area the students need to
review. In the example below there are adjectives, adverbs and relative
pronouns.
2.
Ask each student to work alone and write a
sentence of 12-16 words (the exact length is not too important). Each sentence
should contain an adjective, and adverb and a relative pronoun, or whatever grammar
you’ve chosen to practise. For example: ‘She sat quietly by the golden river
that stretched to the sea’.
3.
Now ask the students to rewrite their sentences
on a separate piece of paper, leaving in the target grammar and any
punctuation, but leaving the rest as blanks, one dash for each letter. The
sentence above would look like this:
--- --- quietly
-- --- golden ----- that --------- -- --- ---.
While they are doing this ask any students
who are not sure of the correctness of their sentence to check with you.
4.
Now ask the students to draw a picture or
pictures which illustrate as much of the meaning of the sentence as possible.
5.
As students finish drawing, put them into groups
of three. One person shows the blanked sentence and the drawing, reserving their
original sentence for their own reference. The other should guess: ‘ Is the
first word the?’ or ask questions ‘Is the second word a verb?’ etc. The
student should only answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’. As they guess the words, they fill in
the blanks.
6.
They continue until all the blanks are filled
and then they do the other two person’s sentences.
Note
Groups tend to finish this activity at
widely different speeds. If a couple of groups finish early, pair them across
the groups, ask them to rub out the completed blanked out sentences and try
them on a new partner.
Acknowledgement
Ian Jasper originated this exercise. He’s a
co-author of Teacher Development: One group’s experience, edited by
Janie Rees Miller.
Puzzle stories
Grammar:
|
Simple present and simple past interrogative forms
|
Level:
|
Beginners
|
Time:
|
30 minutes
|
Materials:
|
Puzzle story (to be
written on the board)
|
Preparation
Ask a couple of students from an advanced
class to come to your beginners group. Explain that they will have some
interesting interpreting to do.
In class
1.
Introduce the interpreters to your class and
welcome them.
2.
Write this puzzle story on the board in English.
Leave good spaces between the lines :
There were
three people in the room.
A man spoke.
There was a
short pause.
The woman
jumped up and slapped the first man in the face.
3.
Ask one of the beginners to come to the board
and underline the words they know. Ask others to come and underline the ones
they know. Tell the group the words none of them know. Ask one of the
interpreters to write a translation into mother tongue. The translation should
come under the respective line of English.
4.
Tell the students their task is to find out why
the woman slapped the first man. They are to ask questions that you can answer
‘yes’ or ‘no’. Tell them they can try and make questions directly in English,
or they can call the interpreter and ask the questions in their mother tongue.
The interpreter will whisper the English in their ear and they then ask you in
English.
5.
Erase the mother tongue translation of the story
from the board.
6.
One of the interpreters moves round the room
interpreting questions while the other stays at the board and writes up the
questions in both English and mother tongue.
7.
You should aim to let the class ask about 15-25
questions, more will overload them linguistically. To speed the process up you
should give them clues.
8.
Finally, have the students copy all the
questions written on the board into their books. You now have a presentation of
the main interrogative forms of the simple present and past.
9.
After the lesson go through any problems the
interpreters had-offer them plenty of parallel translation.
The
solution
The
second man was an interpreter.
Further material
Do you know the one about the seven-year-old
who went to the baker’s? His Mum had told him to get three loaves. He went in,
bought two and came home. He put them on the kitchen table. He ran back to the
backer’s and bought a third. He rushed in and put the third one on the kitchen
table. The question: Why? Solution: he had a speech defect and couldn’t
say ‘th’.
Word order dictation
Grammar:
|
Word order at sentence level
The grammar you decide to input in this example:
reflexive phrases, e.g. to myself/by myself/in myself
|
Level:
|
Intermediate
|
Time:
|
20-30 minutes
|
Materials:
|
Jumbled extracts (for
dictation) One copy of Extract from Sarah’s letter per pair of
students
|
In class
1.
Pair the students and ask one person in each
pair to prepare to write on a loose sheet of paper.
2.
Dictate the first sentence from the Jumbled
extracts. One person in each pair takes it down.
3.
Ask the pairs to rewrite the jumbled words into
a meaningful sentence, using all the words and putting in necessary
punctuation.
4.
Tell the pairs to pass their papers to the
right. The pairs receiving their neighbours’ sentences check out grammar and
spelling, correcting where necessary.
5.
Dictate the second jumbled sentence.
6.
Repeat steps 3 and 4.
7.
When you’ve dictated all the sentences this way
give out the original, unjumbled Extract from Sarah’s letter and ask the
students to compare with the sentences they’ve got in front of them. They may
sometimes have created excellent, viable alternative sentences.
Jumbled extracts
1. Myself in absorbed more and
more becoming am I find I
2. When mix I do other people
me inside a confusion have I I find
3. David John and Nick as
though I am me I do not feel when I walk through the park with
4. Strange seems it and a role
acting am I like feel I
5. Walk park myself talk aloud
myself to I by the through I when
6. Completely feel content I
Extract from Sarah’s letter
I find I am becoming more
and more absorbed in myself.
When I do mix with other
people I find I have a confusion inside me.
When I walk through the
park with David, John and Nick, I do not feel as though I am me.
I feel like I am acting a
role and it seems strange.
When I walk through the
park by myself I talk aloud to myself.
I feel completely content.
Grammar lessons
Taking notes
Passive voice
During the lecture ask the students to note
cases when we use passive:
- In more formal contexts than active
sentences.
For example: Your attention is drawn to Paragraph 6. (But note that using
got, usually makes the sentence less formal, for example: We got
beaten.They got married.)
- when the agent is not clear.
For example: Their office was burgled.
- or not important
For example: This cake was made from carrots.
- or obvious
For example: They were all arrested.
- to give emphasis to the passive subject
and add weight to the message.
For example: A state of emergency has been declared.
- to make our message more impersonal.
For example, as in a letter saying: No police action will be taken.
Read the following newspaper article and
ask the students to:
§
note down the six verbs that are in the passive
§
suggest a possible reason for the use of the
passive in this article.
ORCHESTRA'S
SCHOOLS BOOST
Schools and community groups will be the winners if the world
famous Philharmonia comes to town.
Negotiations are still under way to
make Bedford the orchestra's first British residency outside London beginning
in 1995, it has been confirmed.
What is being talked about is a strong
educational emphasis on the deal, which would see members of the orchestra travelling
into the community doing workshops with school and other local groups in the
borough. School children will be invited in to the Corn Exchange for
afternoon rehearsals of the main concerts to be staged.
Massive alterations to the Corn
Exchange are being planned in tandem so that the orchestra, which was formed
in 1945, and the audiences watching them, will enjoy superior back and
frontstage facilities including new sloped seating going from the stage to
the present balcony and a new auditorium.
|
Comment
1. The six verbs in the passive are:
a.
it has been confirmed
b.
What is being talked about
c.
School children will be invited
d.
the main concerts to be staged
e.
Massive alterations to the Corn Exchange are
being planned
f.
which was formed.
(Notice that there are five different forms
of the verb be in these sentences.)
2. The reason for so much use of the
passive here could be that the events which have occurred and those which are
planned are more important than the people behind them. It is also an informative
article in a newspaper so that some formality is more appropriate than it would
be in a friendly letter or in conversation.
Context and meaning
Lecture We'll turn now
from context and grammar to the importance of context for meaning. One aspect of
meaning is the extent of meaning that a word has. Imagine you are asked the
meaning of the word chair. What do you say? 'It's something you sit on',
perhaps.What we need to know are the boundaries of its use. Can you say chair
for what you sit on in a train? In a car? When milking? On a bike? In church?
Suddenly all sorts of judgements have to be made about whether you are going to
introduce related words like bench, stool, pew, seat, armchair.
So a simple
question about a simple object leads into questions about its use, and also
what it must look like. Must a chair have a back? Legs? Arms? This is important
because although you may be able to translate chair, its full range of meaning
will never overlap 100% with its equivalent in another language.
Now close your
eyes and think white. If that's all I say, you are likely to think of the
colour white, perhaps on a wall or a shirt or paper. But if I say white wine,
you'll think of a yellow colour, or white people, a pinkish colour, or a white
lie, no colour at all. Clearly then, the meaning of words often depends on the
context.
In what different contexts could the
speaker encountere these words? See if you can find at least two different
contexts for each.
wings right-winger
term rate
bar
|
Comment
Some of the possible contexts for these
words are:
wings: theatre, bird
or car
right-winger: football or politics
term: language, school or maths
rate: currency exchange, tax on housing, or speed of increase/decrease
bar: law, music or drinking.
You have just been thinking about different
areas of meaning for the same word. Sometimes these different areas depend on
shared cultural assumptions and usage. An example of this is a British Rail
poster advertising their Family Railcard, depicting a jungle with some monkeys
playing in the trees. The text under this poster reads:
Grown-ups get 25% off rail fares. Your little
monkeys go for only Ј1.00.
Don't drag your feet (or your
knuckles). A family Railcard only costs 20 for a year swing by and pick up a
leaflet from any main British Rail Station.
|
Note different meanings of the words used
here and their sense.
Comment
You would first
need to establish that the usual meaning of all the words was understood and
then explain that monkeys can be used to refer to children in English, that it
carries the idea of naughtiness but that it's used affectionately. To explain
knuckles, you would have to refer to (or demonstrate) how monkeys move, using
their knuckles, and explain that knuckles is substituting for the word feet in
the phrase 'drag your feet'. You would need to take the same approach to 'swing
by'. It might be wise to point out that the use of this sort of language can
change quite quickly and could become unfashionable in, say, ten years' time.
2. AAn advertisement for Remy Martin Champagne Cognac uses three
sentences suggesting that the consumers of the product are very special. I
have changed one word in each to produce unusual collocations. Identify the
word and replace it with a word that collocates better. Ask another person
and see if they agree with you.
HAVE YOU EVER CREWED A YACHT BEYOND THE
VISION OF LAND?
HAVE YOU EVER THROWN A BARBECUE THAT
FRIENDS STILL TALK ABOUT?
HAVE YOU EVER RECEIVED STANDING
APPLAUSE?
|
Comment
2. You should have suggested:
a.
vision: sight
(vision doesn't collocate with land)
b.
barbecue: party
(barbecue doesn't collocate with throw)
c.
applause: a
(standing) ovation (applause doesn't collocate with standing)
(Note that we need to add the indefinite article a, because ovation
is a count noun whereas applause is not.)
Bottom
of Form 1
Subject matter lessons Taking notes
ü
The learners are watching a recorded university
lecture on acid rain. They are taking notes and will write a summary of the
content, using dictionaries (bilingual and monolingual as appropriate). Earlier
the teacher had elicited from them some of the key words used in the lecture,
their meaning and usage, and listed them on the board.
ü
Small groups of learners are trying to match
some cut-out newspaper headlines with the relevant articles. The teacher is
going round monitoring each group. Earlier they listened to, discussed and
noted some news items on the radio which introduced some of the vocabulary they
are encountering.
ü
Individual learners are scattered about outside
the classroom asking people pre-prepared questions about their opinions on a
new sports centre that is proposed in the area. They are talking in the
interviewees' mother tongue, and will then report their findings to the rest of
the class in English with the rest of the students taking notes on the matter
they present.
ü
Half the class are reading about the early life
of a writer they have chosen to study. The other half are reading about the
same writer's later life. They make notes of what they had learnt about unknown
part of writer’s life.In pairs they'll tell each other what they have found out
and then they'll each write an obituary.
ü
In small groups, the learners are looking at
examples of different types of text. Their aim is to identify what they are and
note any differences in style, formality, length, print-size,
comprehensibility, grammar patterns, etc. The examples include: a recipe, a newspaper
article, computer instructions, diary entries, an extract from a novel, a
letter to some English friends.
Conclusion
Each of the two methods
has its own advantages and disadvantages and their aims are quite different,
that’s why I included them both in this single work. Games help students to
relax, entertain and encourage them and help to develop their communicative
competence, while note-taking is a very serious work demanding an amount of
concentration and developing and writing practice. Both of them are to be used
in a write time and in a write place. For some students games are a bit
unserious while the other part of students may find note-taking too fatiguing
so the teacher must take into account all these points. All in all with all
these spots to think over I find them necessary in teacher’s work. While some
of the methods are let be omitted by the teacher (like silent way, synthetic or
analytic (every teacher choose his own way to work with students)) the two of
these in my opinion must be included in the learning process. They act like
general concepts giving you a full lenth of technics to apply within one
method. They don’t give strict directions of how to apply them but a wide space
for creative work.
References
|
|
|
- French Allen, V. 1983. Techniques in teaching
vocabulary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Gear, J. and R. Gear. 1988. Incongruous visuals
for the EFL classroom. English Teaching Forum, 26, 2. pp.43.
- Vocabulary picture puzzle. English Teaching
Forum, 23, 4, pp. 41-42. Gulland, D. M. and D. Hinds-Howell. 1986. The
penguin dictionary of English idioms. London: Penguin Books Ltd.
- Haycraft, J. 1978. An introduction to English
language teaching. Harlow: Longman.
- Hubbard, P., H. Jones, B. Thornton, and R.
Wheeler. 1983. A training course for TEFL. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
- Lee, W. R. 1979. Language teaching games and
contests. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Rixon, S. 1981. How to use games in language
teaching. London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
- Mario Rinvolucri and Paul Davis.1992. More
grammar games. Cambridge University Press.
- Abbott, G., D. McKeating, J. Greenwood, and P.
Wingard. 1981. The teaching of English as an international language. A
practical guide. London: Collins.
- Raimes, A. 1983. Techniques in teaching writing.
New York: Oxford University Press.
- Games, Games, Games ( a Woodcraft Folk handbook
sold in Oxfam shops in UK)
- Berer, Marge and Frank, Christine and Rinvolucri,
Mario. Challenge to think. Oxford University Press, 1982.
Internet Key