DIDACTICS I

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 Newsletter 11                                               16th  November 2001

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Universidad Tecnológica Nacional

Instituto Nacional Superior del Profesorado Técnico

Cátedra de Didáctica Especial del Primer y Segundo Ciclo de la EGB

 

Profesores:  Omar Villarreal, Fernando Armesto, Claudia Alvarez.

                    &  Adriana Lauri.

Instituto Superior de Formación Docente Nro 41 – Adrogué.

Profesor : Omar Villarreal

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 "Start by doing what's necessary, then what's possible and suddenly you are doing the impossible."
Saint Francis of Assisi


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Dear All,

 

Parting is such a sweet sorrow…This may be our last issue this year.

We know you must be terribly busy getting ready for our PARCIAL next Monday.

(from 9:00 to 10:30) .

Adriana Lauri has sent a comprehensive questionnaire on Ficha de Cátedra 3 and some (very few !) of your classmates have sent the summaries of their presentations. We thought you might want to have them with you as soon as possible as they will surely help you with your revision for the PARCIAL (and eventually for the final exam).

Tomorrow is census day so you will have to stay at home. What a great opportunity to consolidate your reading!


Have a wonderful weekend 

 

A big hug to you all

 

Omar Villarreal

 

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Questions for Reflexion and Study

Ficha de Cátedra n.3

 

These questions are meant to be a useful guide to help you better organize your studies.

 

Ministerio de Cultura de la Nación. Consejo Federal de Cultura y Educación. 1988. Lenguas Extranjeras: Contenidos Básicos Comunes para la EGB con especificaciones para el nivel inicial.

 

I . Introduction

 

1.       What are the processes that the learning of a foreign language helps to foster?(p.1)

2.       What does a unit of learning acquisition imply?(p.2)

3.       How is contents divided? Why is the CBC called a three-dimensional model?(p.2)

4.       What is understood by "nivel"? (p.2)

5.       Define briefly the objectives for each of the "niveles" of the CBC.(p.2)

6.       What is meant by a 'linear propositional development' or 'escritura de desarrollo lineal'?(p.2)

7.       Define English as a language for International Communication.(p.4)

8.       What do you understand by General Intelligibility?(p.4& p.10)

9.       What are the different features of mother tongue, second language and foreign language?(p.4)

10.     What is Interlanguage?(p.5)

 

II. Organization

 

1.       In how many Blocks is English (as an area in EGB)  divided?(p.6)

 

III. Caracterization of Blocks

 

Block I

Oral Discourse

 

1.       What are the objectives for the first level of Oral Discourse?(p.8)

2.       What is a 'routine'? (p.8&9)

3.       What are the objectives  for the second level of Oral Discourse? (p.8)

4.       What is 'complex propositional development'?(p.8)

5.       What are the objectives for the third level of Oral Discourse?

 

Listening

 

6.       State the differences between linguistic ability and communicative ability.(p.9)

7.       Specify the two modes of listening.(p.9)

 

Speaking

 

8.       Discuss: A lineal structural approach does not foster communicative production. (p.10)

9.       What is meant by  instrumental fluency.(p.10)

10.     Discuss the importance of real time for the speaking mode.(p.10)

11.      What do you understand by significant or meaningful correction?(p.10)

 

IV.   Block 2

Written Discourse

 

Discuss: "Written discourse is not a representation of oral discourse." (p.15)

 What  does reading as communicative ability imply?(p.16)

Discuss: "Cognitive strategies are transferable from language to language."(p.16)

 

Writing

 

1.       Why is writing a communicative process? What does this imply?(p.16)

2.       Discuss: "Writing is a process of confrontation, analysis and correction." (p.17)

 

V.    Block 3

Literary Discourse

What are the objectives when introducing a text  for interpretation?(p.21)

 

VI.   Block 4

Procedures

 

 

Discuss the importance of oral global comprehension and discourse inserted in the 'here and now' for the development of a linguistic communicative platform which is previous from any production. (p.24)

Discuss: "Learning is not instantaneous." (p.25)

Compare and discuss: "Speaking implies the processing of interpretation in real time." "Writing implies structuring skills." (p.25)

What do the processes of information structure require?(p.25)

What are the general procedures for English as a language for international communication in the CBC?(p.25)

 

VII.

Procedures related to the comprehension of oral and written texts

 

1.       What are the intellectual operations implied in the process of written and oral texts?(p.26)

2.       What is the process of reading comprehension like? (p.26)

 

Procedures related to the production of oral and written texts

 

1.       What are the variables implied in the process of knowing a foreign language?(p.26)

2.       What are the actions implied in the production of oral and written texts?(p.26)

 

Procedures related to the reflection about language acts

1.       What is functional correction of mistakes?(p.27)

 

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Villarreal,Omar. 1988. Let´sGo for  EGB! Programaciones 1&2. Buenos Aires:Longman.

 

1.       English is divided into two 'Ejes'or Axes . Which are they?

2.       What do you think is the importance of a general theme or topic as in 'Eje globalizador?

3.       Objectives: What do you think is the importance of stating performance objectives and not grammatical objectives?

4.       In how many different systems are conceptual contents organized within Axis : English as a means of categorization of the world' ?

5.       What are the two types of discourse considered in the conceptual contents in Axis 2 for English as an instrument for communication?

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Villarreal, Omar.1997. A Necessary Definiton of terms. Buenos Aires:Longman.

 

Cycle,Area &Block

 

-Cycle

1.       In how many cycles is the EGB divided? How many years does each cycle comprise? (p.3)

 

-Area

1.       In how many areas is the CBC for the EGB divided?

 

-Block

1.       In how many blocks is English in EGB  divided?

 

National Curriculum Guidelines: CBC

 

1.       What are the three kinds of contents that the CBC comprises?

   

The three-dimensional model of organization of contents

 

Conceptual contents

The organization of contents is divided into three parts. Which are they?

Provide some synonyms for the term 'event'. (p.3) Events are subdivided into  four parts. Name them briefly.

 

Concepts

1.What do concepts do?

2.       How are concepts organized hierarchically?(p.4)

 

Principles

 

State the main four principles to application to any teaching-learning situation. (p.5)

 

Procedural Contents

1-       What is understood by procedural contents?(p.6)

2.       Define Procedure and Activity. State the differences.(p.6)

3.       How many procedures are considered? Which are they? Take into account the sub-divisions of each procedure.

 

Attitudinal Contents

Personal Attitudes

1.       What are the personal attitudes that the class should foster? Name the three main divisions.

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Lewis,Gordon &Bedson ,Günther.1999. Games for Children.Oxford:Oxford University Press.

Introduction

 

1.  Why are games a vital part of the EFL classroom?

2.   Name some essential features of games.

3.   Discuss: The importance of rules and strategy, an essential element in games.

1.       What is the key for a successful language game?

2.     Different types of games: 'Rousers' and 'Settlers' Discuss. (p.7)

3.     Game types. How many types do the authors find?

 

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Kennedy, Chris and Jarvis Jennifer (eds.)1991. Ideas and Issues in Primary ELT. Walton-on-Thames, Surrey: Nelson.

 

 Mardsen,Bob. Using Video in the primary classroom

 

1.       What is the difference between presenting language through video and presenting it  in dialogue form?(p.51)

2.       How should we use video?

3.       What are the tasks that can be used for comprehension?(p.52)

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Bloor,Meriel.Communication in the primary classroom.

 

1.       What are the differences between 'real' questions and 'pseudo' or  testing questions? Which do you think are more used in the ELT classroom?

2.       Communication:An observational framework (Fanslow:1977) Try to apply this framework to your lessons by answering the questions. Discuss. (p.140)

1.       The 'pedagogical purpose' of the communicative act: What are Fanslow's four main purposes?(p.141)

3.       State some of the possible reasons of learner's silence as stated by the authors.(p.145)

4.       What are the different resources teachers use as maintainers of communication? (p.146 & 147)

 

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Brumfit, Christopher.Moon, Jayne &Tongue, Ray (eds.)1991. Teaching English to Children. Hammersmith, London: Harper Collins ELT.

 

Brewster,Jean. What is good primary practice? 

 

1.       What do you understand by the concept of 'learning readiness'?(p.2)

2.     What are the three stages that children pass through?(p.2)

3.     According to Piaget does language exert any effect on the structure of thinking?(p.3)

4.     What is the role of speech for Vygotsky?(p.3)

5.     How are the higher mental processes formed?

6.     What is ZDP? What are the roles of adults or more capable peers?(p.3)

7.     What does the acronym LASS stand for?

8.     According to Bruner what is the nature of Active Social Interaction in children?(p.3)

9.     What are the features of good primary practice?(p.4)

10.    Discuss:"Fluency  is more likely to lead to to accuracy than viceversa." (p.5)

11.   According to Ellis(1984) what are the eight features of discourse that are important in SLD?(p.6)

12.  Discuss: "Control over language is one of the main features of children's FLD."(p.7)

13.  'Self-regulation' is developed through social interaction according to Vygotsky. Discuss the role of instruction in connection to this. (p.8)

14.  What does mainstream primary practice embody?(p.9) Contrast to classical EFL practice.

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Holderness, Jackie.Activity-based teaching: Approaches to topic-centered work

 

1.       What are the characteristics of topic-centered learning?(p.18)

2.       What is the role of play for children?(p.19&20)

3.       What are the factors to take into account when devising activities?(p.23)

4.       What are open-ended activities?(p.24)

5.       What are closed activities?(p.24)

6       What should be the characteristics of teacher-to-child feedback?(p.29)

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Rixon,Shelagh.The role of fun and games activities in teaching young learners

 

1.       What are the four main objectives for foreign  language learning at the primary stage?(p.35)

2.       What is 'language pay-off'?(p.35)

3.       Rixon distinguishes three types of activities through which language can be actively encouraged. Which are they? (p.35,36,37)

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Slaven,Anne& Gordon. "Ali, are you a boy or a monster?" Drama as an English teaching aid

1.       What is the importance or roleplay?(p.49)

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Frölich-Ward,Leonora. Two lessons: five-year-olds and seven-year-old.

 

1.       When are children 'ready' to start learning a foreign language?(p.97)

2.       What is the operative word for foreign language learning for young children?(p.97)

3.       What do you think is the importance of small talk in the classroom?(p.107)

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Tongue ,Ray. English as a foreign language at primary level: the search for content

 

1.       What is the unit of instruction  for both the audio-lingual and structural-situational methods?(p.109)

2.     What important dimension was missing in both the traditional and the structural approaches?(p.110)

3.     'You can't speak speaking.' Why? Why is so much teaching circular? (p.110)

4.     Discuss:"The medium is not the message."

5.     What do you think is the importance of performance objectives? (p.111)

6.     What are the three approaches sketched by Tongue to help set performance objectives more clearly?(p.113)

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Garvie, Edie. An integrative approach with young learners

 

1.       What is MEM (Most Effective Methodology) in ELT?(p.115)

2.     What are the two ways of looking at language?(p.115)

3.     Learning: Why is the link Language, Thought and Experience so important?(p.116)

4.     Discuss the concept of 'progression' of learning.(p.116)

5.     Discuss the following progression suggested by Garvie: Identification, Qualification, Relation, Classification and Manipulation.(p.116)

6.     What do you understand by an integrative approach?(p.119)

7.     Methodology:The Theme should be a stimulus and motivator. Organization, language, integration must be worked around a theme. Discuss. (p.122,123)

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Bloor,Meriel. The role of informal interaction in teaching English  to young learners

 

1.       What is meant by 'informal interaction'?(p.127)

2.     What are for Fanselow (1977), the four main content areas in most lessons?(p.128)

3.     State the four arguments given for encouraging informal interaction. (p.129)

4.     What is the 'Interaction Hypothesis'?(p.129)

5.     Why should learning opportunities be multiple and varied?(p.130)

6.     How can the teacher encourage informal interaction?(p.130,131)

7.     State briefly the principles of informal interaction.(p.131)

Interaction between children

8.     Why is children's talk significant?(p.134)

9.     Should teachers curtail children interaction in class?

10.  Discuss the importance of what is known as 'structured play'  and of play in general to encourage interaction.(p.136)

Teacher-children interaction

11.   Discuss the four ways a teacher can make use of to re-establish communication.(p.138)

12.  Why does not 'simple English' necessarily consist of few words and short sentences?(p.139)

13.  State the difference between 'classroom' questions and 'real' questions. (p.140)

14.  If interaction is managed only by  the teacher  it is not real interaction. Discuss. (p.140)

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Brewster,Jean. Listening and the young learner

 

Preparing pupils for listening

1. How must teachers develop in their pupils a  greater listening awareness?(p.159)

2.     What are the three approaches to foreign language learning mentioned by Brewster?(160)

3.     What are the three main dimensions of interaction?(p.160)

4.     What does the process of coherent interpretation involve?(p.161)

5.     Discuss the six types of strategy mentioned by Brewster. (p.162,163)

6.     What should a task involve?(p.163)

7.     Mention the four main listening purposes. (p.165)

8.     Mention the three phases of the teaching of comprehension.

The role of the teacher in supporting listening with understanding

9.     The teacher's role is fourfold. Discuss the four dimensions(p-172,173,174)

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Ellis,Gail. Learning to learn

 

1.       How can learning  to learn strategies be introduced effectively?(p.193)

2.     What are the factors to be considered when introducing L to L strategies?(p.192)

3.     What are the procedures the teacher can use for helping pupils  learn to learn?(p.196,197). Discuss.

 

Adriana Valeria Lauri.

INSPT/UTN

Nov. 2001

 

 

AMELIA MAURONI-

THE ROLE OF FUN AND GAMES ACTIVITIES IN TEACHING
YOUNG LEARNERS

                                      PLAY
FUN AND GAMES
                                      ENJOYMENT

PITFALLS:

a) Activity absorbing in itself but is of negligible pay-off in terms of language acquisition or else takes too long for too little return.
b) That our best endeavours to provide a game or fun activity that is good for English are being distorted
by the ingenuity of children themselves.
c) That adults are too snooty about humble-seeming activities and deny them a place in language lessons.

              MESSAGES TO THE TEACHER

MONITORING                                    
DEVELOPING A CLEAR 
                                                       
     UNDERSTANDING OF THE
                                                       
     MECHANICS AND EFFECTS OF
                                                       
     DIFFERENT ACTIVITY TYPES.

OBJECTIVES

1) Encouraging the conceptual development of a child.
2) Forming part of the skills/conceptual and cultural/social development of the child.
3) Promoting the formation of a positive attitude to language learning in general.
4) Acquisition of some appropriate elements of the actual language studied.

LANGUAGE PAY-OFF

 Language learned by heart as part of an activity.
 Language picked up as a result of an enjoyable activity.
 Creative use of language in an activity.
 Language pay-off from conceptual engagement.
 Informal language analysis through puzzles and making activity.


CULTURAL DIMENSIONS

Overlaid on language pay-off and conceptual considerations, we need to consider the cultural dimensions, Most of the activities mentioned exist in real life as something that British children enjoy.
Make sure that your students know this because they are not confined to English-speaking cultures, but exist under other names in the native culture. It is an example of culture teaching at primary level.

CHOOSING OR ADAPTING YOUR ACTIVITIES FOR YOUR SITUATION

Games convenient to the classroom tend to be static and word-based, for example "I went to the market", and there is a case for looking outside to playground games such as "Mr Wolf" or "Simon says" that may also exist
in the native culture and at least introducing them in class and encouraging the children to try them in break time.

SONGS AND RHYMES

The choice here is tricky because many traditional songs and rhymes contain weird or archaic locutions that mystify even native-speaking children at first,
but the range is large and from it can be recovered many real items that are simple in structure and vocabulary.

CONCLUSION

Provided you have established firmly in your own mind what you want to achieve (one eye on your course book or syllabus) and the different ways in which you might achieve it, there is a whole universe of resources open to you.
Do not forget the value of extending pupils' experience in the fields of concept, culture and pure fun.

 

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Mariela G. Mercado

 

 LISTENING AND THE YOUNG LEARNER

 

 

 

Listening in the primary EFL classroom

 

Listening in a foreign language is hard work. Our work as teachers of young children is much easier if the learners are motivated and enjoy what they are doing. We also have to be clear about how much we want our children to listen in English and whether we expect them to understand everything they hear. We should provide purposeful and carefully directed listening activities where learners are asked to focus on specific points. Learners will also of course sometimes listen just for fun, without having to do anything with what they hear.

Children spend a large time listening – listening to the teacher, to each other or to the pre-recorded material. Problems are likely to arise if teachers do not teach children how to listen, so that they can cope effectively with these demands. All too often listening task ask children to demonstrate their understanding in questions and answering sessions. This kind of activity simply encourages children to remember and tests recall rather than understanding.

 

 

Preparing pupils for listening

 

To prepare pupils for the kinds of listening that are demanded in the classroom, teachers must develop a greater awareness of the kinds of listening demand they make on their pupils and set up a learning environment which makes easier the children’s task of meeting these demands. This can be achieved in several ways:

 

a)     By making explicit the reasons for listening to something, so that children can focus on the most important part of the message or simply listen for gist. This will normally be achieved by setting a specific task which may contain written or visual support and which allows the children to show their understanding by producing a ‘product’.

b)    Teachers can equip their pupils with specific strategies for different listening purposes, such as listening to follow instructions, explanations or descriptions.

c)     By emphasizing that children are not expected to understand or remember every word of spoken message, teachers can build up their pupils’confidence in listening.

d)     By encouraging pupils to exercise ‘intelligent work’, using their background or context clues, such as pictures, to make sense of what they hear.

 

 

Listening as part of the teaching programme

 

Teachers tend to take one of two approaches to the place of listening in the teaching programme:

 

-        Listening as part of a set of activities which is integrated with other skills work. Anderson and Lynch (1988) refer to this type of material as ‘ancillary’ listening, since it is normally linked structurally, functionally or thematically to the panned language learning focus of the lesson.

-        Listening as a part of a set of activities which may not necessarily be closely integrated with the children’s other language learning. This is referred to as ‘autonomous’ listening practice and may take the form of specially produced listening exercises, such as those in Scott (1980)

 

Listening as part of language acquisition

 

The importance given to listening derives from the teacher’s view of how children learn a foreign language. We can look at three approaches:

 

a)     One view springs from the idea that language is a linear process and that listening provides the learner with confidence in speaking. Listening and speaking together provide a backdrop for the sequent teaching of reading and writing.

b)    The second view sees language learning as a comprehension-focused process where listening may be regarded as the primary source of language experiences. The first exposure to the L2 thus aims to provide learners with success in understanding the spoken language but not in producing it.

c)     The third approach regards language learning as an integrative process where from the outset all four skills are developed in parallel, so that practice in one can reinforce another.

 

 

The first two approaches appear limited; (a) implies that listening can only be linked to speaking, while (b) implies that listening is linked only to the performance of certain actions.

 

 

What is effective listening?

 

 

Language comprehension is generally seen as part of an interactive process arising from the complex interplay of three main dimensions of interaction:

 

·        Social dimension: takes account of the fact that interaction between people is the chief means of maintaining relationships and exchanging information.

·        Cognitive dimension: refers to the relationship between interaction and ideas; children hear ideas, suggest their own ideas and develop new ideas through talking and listening to others.

·        Linguistic dimension: refers to the ways in which participants interpret, predict and summarize components of the spoken message.

 

 

How feasible is it for children to develop strategies for listening to foreign language which might draw upon what they know about their mother tongue?

 

It is felt that children, who already have experience of drawing upon different kinds of information source in understanding their first language, have the ability to transfer some of these skills and strategies to second language learning. The kinds of information source used in comprehension can be summarized under two main headings:

 

a)     Knowledge about the content of the spoken message

b)    Knowledge about the language used in the spoken message

 

While they are drawing upon these kinds of knowledge listeners are engaging in the process of constructing coherent interpretation of the spoken word. This process, which involves selecting, interpreting and summarizing input, emphasizes the active and personal nature of successful listening. These links between listening and reading are crucial in understanding comprehension processes. Another important link is between talk and listening. In order to be an effective participant in interaction, the L2 has to develop skills in both speaking and listening.

The role of the teacher, therefore, is to encourage children to draw upon different information sources, skills and strategies in order to learn how to help themselves to understand. Six types of strategy are given below, described in the context of listening to a story.

 

1-  Getting the general picture

Children are being encouraged to listen to a story simply for pleasure. They listen for gist to get a general idea of what the story is about.

 

2-  Predicting

This strategy is useful when children are trying to follow a sequence of events in a story. If the children are motivated and have some support for their understanding, they can be encouraged first to predict and then to check whether what they hear matches their expectations.

 

3-  Extracting specific information

The focus here is on recognizing specific components of the language system, such as selecting relevant adjectives to describe particular characters in a story to fill in a tick-chart or recognizing specific verbs and nouns when matching pictures with events in a story.

 

4-  Inferring opinion or attitude

An awareness of stress and intonation, combined with knowledge of lexical items and grammatical patterns, enables the learner to determine whether a character is happy, angry or sad and therefore to work out some of the context of the story.

 

5-  Working out meaning from context

It must be made clear to children that they will not be able or expected to understand every word in a story. Thus the teacher needs to develop their confidence in facing texts with new vocabulary.

 

6-  Recognizing discourse patterns and markers

Every story will have certain story-telling conventions, for example an introduction beginning, ‘Many years ago there was a wicked witch ...’.The recognition of discourse markers used in a logical relationship, as well as the use of appropriate intonation, will help learners to work out some of the storylines. Examples are the use of ‘but’ and the fall-rise intonation to express contrast.

 

 

Developing a task-based methodology with children

 

The notion of ‘task-based’ learning in which there is a current growing interest is based on the learner-centred view of education. It is seen by many teachers as a means of creating purposeful contexts for learning which provide children with a more varied learning environment. It is also thought to be more motivating than traditional teacher-centred classroom.

 

In examining the notion of ‘task’ many authors emphasize the requirement that it should involve some kind of cognitive process and should lead to very definite ‘products’. This is neatly described by Ur (1981).

This view is echoed and taken to its logical conclusion by practitioners such as Prabhu  (1983) who is best known for his development of the ‘procedural syllabus’ for language teaching. He takes the view that language teaching syllabus should not contain a specification of language items, but rather the kinds of classroom activity which will cause ‘genuine deployment’ of language.

It is important to make a distinction between the teaching and testing of listening. The practice of asking children to listen to something with no support other than question to answer after listening has many drawbacks. It concentrates too much on the testing of comprehension or memory rather than encouraging children to develop strategies for coping with the spoken message. This kind of methodology tends to overload the child’s capacity for processing and retaining information.

It is only when teachers direct the children’s attention to the purpose of the listening task beforehand and provide a suitable framework (pictures, charts, or questions which aim to create interest and supply motivation and support for the successful completion of the task) for providing access to the spoken message that they can be said to be teaching listening. This kind of methodology reflects the view that the listening process is a form of interaction between the listener and the text.

 

 

Creating a listening purpose

 

The role of the teacher in planning and setting up listening activities is thus to draw upon the linguistic, social and cognitive dimension to allow for the kind of interaction between the listener and text referred to earlier. Such interaction is generally achieved by thinking of the teaching of comprehension as having three phases:

 

 

PRE- : is an introduction or orientation to the text during which the teachers may elicit  what the children know about a topic by asking them questions, or create interest by relating aspects of the content to the children’s experience.

 

WHILE: involves explanation of the purpose of the listening so that the children are quite clear what their role is and whether they need to focus on specific aspects of the text. The purpose may be simply to listen and enjoy a story, song or rhyme  in which case they can participate if the teacher wishes.

 

POST: is concern with checking information by asking question (oral or written) or by asking for feedback on any other outcomes the learner may have produced, such as completing a game, finding the correct sequence of events or drawing  and labeling a picture.

Four types of listening purpose:

 

 

Listening and language awareness

 

This kind of ‘language awareness’(metalinguistic awareness) is thought to have an important relationship with children’s development cognitive abilities.(Pratt and Grieve (1984) argue that).

In relation to listening comprehension it may be useful to encourage children to reflect on the skill of listening itself, including the kinds of things they listen to and different listening purposes. Children could be encouraged for example to reflect on the listening they do in their L1 and draw parallels with the listening they carry out in L2.

The children might like to carry out a survey (in their L1) on what television programmes their friends and family watch  and listen to. This would be a suitable homework task. The children could then write the questions in English and report back in English. This could be followed up by making charts and graphs to illustrate their findings.

This is an especially useful set of activities if the teacher views language learning as an integrative process. The general aim of carrying out this type of work would also be to improve children’s attitude to listening work.

 

Listening to reinforce conceptual development

 

Stories are a rich source of listening practice and for very young learners especially often involve the reinforcement of concepts of time, number, colour, size or shape. In addition, the repeated patterns of stories frequently provide an opportunity for children to listen carefully and predict the next part of the story.

 

Listening to develop specific language points and interactional skills

 

LANGUAGE AND PRONUNCIATION

 

This kind of focus is appropriate if the teacher sees pronunciation as a separate skill. It could also be integrated into activities where songs, rhymes and stories are being used. The kinds of while-listening exercise used here are based on the skill of discriminating between sounds and patterns.

The use of stories which contain a lot of direct speech helps the learner develop a sense of how intonation is used to express attitude and feelings.

 

 

Listening to develop knowledge of vocabulary, grammar

language functions and interactional skills

 

Games provide a rich source in recognizing and selecting specific vocabulary items or grammatical patterns. They can be played with the whole class, in pairs or in groups. Guessing games can be used to practice different kinds of question form, while memory games where the children repeat sentences and add extra items or modify them are useful for practising new vocabulary items.

Games and other activities can provide examples of eight kinds of while-listening task. These can be labeled in the following way:

 

1.       Performing actions

 

This is likely to take the form of listening to actions songs, rhymes and games in which the children are required to follow instructions. ‘Heads, Shoulders, knees and toes’, for example, invites the children to listen carefully and while singing or listening to touch the appropriate part of the body as it is named. This clearly provides a meaningful context for reinforcing lexical items to describe the body.

 

2.     Drawing

 

Activities which encourage children to draw while listening to a description. A simply task is ‘Dot-to-dot’ where the children listen to the instructions to joins up dots to form a picture. In this case the numbers or letters do not occur in sequence so that the children have to listen carefully.

Another while-listening activity involves the children listening to a description and drawing a picture of what they hear. For instance the children could draw shapes in the correct position and colour them in according to instructions given by the teacher.

 

3.     Guessing

 

Games which encourage learners to listen for clues in order to work something out. An example for use with the whole class is ‘Guess the animal’ where the teacher gives one child a picture and the other children have to ask questions to find out which animal it is. Only yes/no answers can be given.

 

4.     Matching

 

Another game where the children must listen carefully to match items is the ‘Bingo’. The bingo cards can take the traditional form of numbers (in numerals or words) or can use pictures or words for other vocabulary development The words can either be matched directly or can be words which have the same meaning or even an opposite meaning.

Other matching activities connected to stories or descriptions, include selecting pictures of the items described. For example, a spoken text describing a visit to the zoo. In this case the

 

Children are asked to select the appropriate picture of the animal and put it in the correct cage on the zoo plan while they listen.

A more difficult task for slightly older children is to match items expressing relationship of cause and effect in a story or description of a process. This is more easily done if the text is pre-recorded so that the children can start and stop the tape as they wish.

 

5.     Sequencing

 

Stories or short descriptions have so far proved a rich source of listening activities. An obvious activity for this section is sequencing the events of a story, either pictorial form or by listening to and reading sections of the story to order the events.

 

6.     Transferring information

 

In this case the children listen to a set of information, for example descriptions of people, animals and places, and either complete a tick-chart or matrix, fill in details on a graph or fill in boxes on a flow-chart. This can be done in an interactive way, with pairs of children asking each other questions and listening for the answer or as a whole class or group activity with pre-recorded material.

A tick-chart can provide practice in using and understanding ‘yes/no’ questions with different tenses.

 

 

 

Manuel

Jean

Mohammed

Luigi

Can you swim?

Can you ride?

Can you skate?

ü

ü

û

û

ü

û

ü

ü

û

û

ü

ü

 

Figure1 An example of tick-chart

 

 

4 legs

2 legs

No legs

Striped

Zebra

 

 

Spotted

 

 

 

With a long neck

 

ostrich

 

With a long tail

 

 

 

 

Figure 2 An example matrix: describing animals.

 

7.     Problem-solving

 

Problem-solving is the best done in pairs or groups of four, either with pre-recorded material of after the teacher has read out a short story or description:

 

·        Listening to a story and choosing the written statement from a set of four which summarizes the story most accurately.

·        Etc.

 

 

The role of the teacher in supporting

listening with understanding

 

It requires patience, imagination and skill to create an interesting environment for young learners to develop confidence in listening. The teacher’s role in this respect is fourfold:

 

 

Planning for listening and choosing appropriate texts and tasks

 

Listening provides a wealth of practice in specific language points, for instance pronunciation, vocabulary, grammatical patterns and discourse. The activities chosen may also enhance thinking skills and concept development.

To promote effective listening the teacher needs to develop an awareness of the listening demands and purposes of different texts types and tasks. At the same time the teacher needs to widen his/her repertoire of the types of spoken texts used to develop listening as well as the type of listening skills practised. Some text types such as stories provide a rich vein of language learning material and can provide a focus for all of the strategies. Others such as tightly controlled language games or songs and rhymes have a more limited focus. The teacher’s choice of text will, therefore, be influenced by the children’s age, language level and interests, etc.

Some of the skills involved in the tasks described so far include listening for gist, listening for specific information, predicting, inferring attitude, working out meaning from context and recognizing features of discourse.

It is equally important to be aware of the level of difficulty of task types.

 

 

Providing support and varying the learning context

 

Support can be given simply by telling the learners what their listening focus should be before they listen to the text and by other pre-listening orientation activities which arouse interest and introduce key language items or concepts. In addition, it is important that teachers provide young learners with as much visual support as necessary.

One of the qualities a teacher needs is creativity. If there is little published material available or simply to provide variety, the teacher can record material onto a cassette him/herself. Another advantage of teacher-made listening material is that it can be tailored to the children’s experiences or interests. They will always enjoy stories written about them, especially if the tape is accompanied by a written version with the children’s own drawings or even photographs. When the children is working more independently in this way it is worth scripting careful instructions on the tape, either in L1 or L2, which ensure that the children have all the materials they need and clear about what they have to do.

 

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Elba Lopez Carrizo

 

AN INTEGRATIVE APPROACH WITH YOUNG LEARNERS

 

The most effective methodology in English Language Teaching is that which is based on the awareness of the important issues in:

Language

Learning

Teaching

 

Important issues in Language

 

1st ISSUE:

 

Two ways of looking at language:

in terms of structure (linguistic picture)

in terms of use (communicative picture)

 

2nd ISSUE:

 

It is the matter of language skills:

They are four (sometimes called modes): Listening, reading, speaking and writing.

The handling of these modes shows the learner´s competence.

 

Important issues in learning

 

1st ISSUE:

 

The important link between language, thought and experience in reference to young children and the challenge which represent for the teacher to accommodate concepts from a new culture.

 

2nd ISSUE:

 

It is related to different kinds of learning and acquisition.

 

3rd ISSUE:

 

Progression of learning

 

The baby developing his/her 1st language goes through stages which the author has labelled with five key words. He uses these five key words when he considers teaching programme. They are:

 

Identification: Naming of objects, etc.

Qualification: The ability to describe attributes.

Relation: Notion of samenesses and differences.

Classification: Construction of sets and categories.

Manipulation: Refers to the use of the previous Key words.

 

Important issues in Teaching

 

1st ISSUE:

 

In teaching language the teacher must cater for both the linguistic and communicative, the form and the use.

2nd ISSUE:

 

Notion of focusing within a recognized field:

 

Initially children should be faced with a limited field, which would be widened when some learning may have been acquired. This knowledge should be focused in order to make firm.

 

3rd ISSUE:

 

Moving from the known to the unknown.

 

The children´s competence in their L 1  has to be taken into acount.

The teacher should make full use of his/her own experience in helping the children to use theirs.

 

 

The Approach

Focus on integration

 

 

Teachers of young children are child orientated rather than subject oriented. This means that they are concerned with the development of the whole child rather than with the learning of a particular subject.

Another kind of integration is the linking of language work with all the other work. The English teacher should be use of the children´s growing awareness in other subjects. She must be able to work with other teachers in order to make integration possible.

 

 

The methodology

 

 

1st Catch the theme (from the children´s “news” or from sth. Interesting for the community)

 

2nd There should be activities which concentrate on the form of English and on its use: promoting listening, speaking, reading and writing.

 

The teachers must make sure about the progression in the learning with each activity. She has to know the field in which she will work to give the learners an effective guidance.

The last point concerns teachers working together. Teachers who can work as a team all stand to benefit.

 

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Andrea Cárdenas                                

 

LEARNING TO LEARN

 

PROCEDURES THAT CAN BE USED FOR HELPING STUDENTS LEARN TO LEARN:

 

ELICITATION: The teacher ask her pupils what kind of methods they use to help themselves to learn.

 

SUGGESTION: The teacher can suggest learning strategies by other learners. This can

Add a humanising element to learning to learn, take the focus off the teacher and shows

Pupils that they too play an important role in the teaching and learning process.

 

DEMOSTRATION: The teacher explain why a particular strategy can be effective and she demonstrate how it can be applied.

 

MODELLING: The teacher can question the learner´s basic assumptions and premises about learning and probe weak areas.

 

DISCUSSION: In the class pupils and teacher can exchange points of view about languages learning and reflect on their  own performance.

 

To do this in a way that encourages transfer to other tasks and subjects assumes that teachers themselves know how to speculate on their own cognition , and examine their own strategies for tackling tasks and reflect on their own performance.

Teachers may like to ask themselves the following example questions about what they do in the classroom and why:

 

-Why do I use gap-filling exercises?

-What is my objective?

-How do I present the exercise ? Why?

-Could I do this differently? How?

-How did the pupils react? Why?

-Shall I do it the same way again? Why/Why not?    

 

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