module 21 tefl notes

Unit 13: Listening Games

A Few Enjoyable Listening Games Here are a number of points to remember when getting them involved in games: Don't make the tasks too complicated or difficult. Prepare the learners properly so that they know what to do. Let them work in pairs or groups rather than having to perform in front of the class. Ensure they have fun. Give out a small prize to the winning pair or group. Employing whatever strategy you choose to, ensure every pair or group wins throughout the term. What's my name? Before you finally pack your case before heading off to your new and exciting life, throw a couple of puppets into your case. Young learners love puppets and the personas that can be created around them. And you can hold puppet shows to embed learning or just to have a bit of fun. There will be great excitement when you show your puppet for the very first time. Make a big issue of what's in your box. Draw it out slowly, till it appears fully. In pairs, ask them to guess what the name of the puppet is. Give them lots of chances. If it's not chosen, start to give them clues - it's a boy, it begins within a 'g' sound etc. Eventually, they will get it. Whichever pair gets it first can hold the puppet first. The puppet will become the class mascot and The Voice of Experience. As opposed to you always being this, you can ask, for example, 'Ellie the Elephant' or 'Gruffy the Gruffalo' what she/he thinks about some idea/decision/learning point): Do you think that's right, Gruffy? Oh, you think it should be 'cats', not 'cat'. Will I give the class homework, Ellie? Oh, you think they've been so good and they should not get homework. OK, no homework. Who should get a little prize today, Ellie? Tell the learners that Gruffy likes to change his name each week - that's just the way he is. The pair of learners who do a really good job during the week can choose Gruffy's new name for next week and they can take him home over the weekend. Ensure all pairs get a chance to name the puppet as time goes by. What's the Word? You spell out short words quickly, and the learners have to shout out the word. Hands Up! You write up 5-10 words relating to what the learners have been currently studying. You then incorporate these words into a passage. Read out the passage. Learners put their hands up as soon as they hear each of the words. Missing Word You write up 5 words relating to what the learners have been currently studying. Read out a short passage - incorporating 4 of the words. After the passage has been read out, learners suggest the missing word. That's Not Right You read out an incorrect sentence-nothing too difficult, e.g. An elephant big is. Learners have to decide what the correct version should be. Yes and No A well known game A Learner has to respond to questions from the group or class without saying yes or no and without undue hesitation. She should answer the questions fully, but if she says either yes or notion someone else will take her place and have a turn fully, but if she says either yes or no then someone else will take her place and have a turn. Let's now explore speaking.

Unit 1: Lesson Planning

Critical Point 1 1. Lesson planning Before we explore these skills, it's important to remind you that all your skills lessons need to be planned. If you try to wing any lesson without proper planning, things will fall apart. So always plan ahead. Lesson planning is not at all difficult. The vital key is to have a set route to follow. By having a set route to follow, your lesson planning will get quicker and more efficient. And you'll look forward to delivering well-planned, effective lessons. TEFL Fullcircle recommends that you use the Presentation-Practice-Production (PPP) model for designing your lesson plan and putting your teaching into action in the classroom. A complete lesson plan using the PPP Technique will contain the following stages/elements: 1. Introduction: In this part of the lesson you will introduce yourself and explain the objective of the lesson to your learners. 2. Warmer: A quick warm up activity to get your learners acclimatised to English. 3. Presentation: You teach the new item. 4. Practice: Controlled practice where learners practise using the new items. 5. Production: Free practice which lets your learners become more creative. 6. Review/Summary and Reflection: This is a chance to reflect on the lesson and find out what the learners enjoyed. 7. Cooler: This is a chance to end the lesson with a short fun activity and say goodbye. Using this model, here is the route to follow when planning your lessons. TEFL Fullcircle Lesson Plan Teacher's Name: Date: Time of lesson and length: Learning Aims/Objectives: To know / To understand Level of Students: Age of Students: Nationalities: Learning Outcomes /Success Criteria: Resources to be used: Potential Problems: Strategies to deal with problems: Introduction / Warmer Lesson Activities: Timing Stage Interaction Reason for activity Detail: Activity 1: Activity 2: Activity 3: Reflect and Cooler: Extension Strategies: Homework: Cross Curricular Link and use of IT Some of the headings above are self-explanatory, so we will skip these ones. Scenario: Let's imagine you are introducing your young learners to prepositions of place (in, behind, under) for the first time. Here are suggestions for the key elements of your lesson plan: 1. Your Learning Aims/Objectives are likely to be: Introduce prepositions of place for first time; introduce 3 prepositions of place (in, behind, under) 2. Your Learning Outcomes / Success Criteria are likely to be: Learners will know and understand these elements and will able to utilise these in speech and writing. 3. Resources to be used: This is to remind you about the resources you will need to have to hand, e.g. flashcards, whiteboard, box, toy rabbit, table, gap-fill exercises, written responses materials etc. 4. Potential problems: This could be that some learners may need a review of recently required vocabulary. For example, the previous classes focused on Wh- structures (Where is the...?) and the response structure (The ... X ... is...), utilising 'here' and 'there'. 5. Strategies to deal with problems: Review the structures in the point above. 6. Introduction: Explain the objective of the lesson to your learners, in simple terms 7. Warmer: This could be a Crisscross game. All learners stand. Learners raise their hand when they wish to answer. If correct, the learner chooses where he wishes to sit. Repeat until all learners are seated. Ask what we say when we are looking for something (Where is the...) and what is said in response (The...is). Then show flashcards-ask what these are, pointing to box, rabbit, and table (previously acquired language). Timing:This will depend on how much time is allotted to each lesson by the school authorities. Let's assume it is 55 minutes. Here is a general guide to the different stages: Introduction: 5 minutes Warmer: 5 minutes Presentation: 10 minutes Practice: 10 minutes Production: 15 minutes Review/Summary and Reflection: 5 minutes Cooler: 5 minutes If the time allotted is less than 55 minutes, reduce each section proportionately 9. Stage: Insert the seven stages listed in the point above. 10. Interaction:This is to remind you who will be doing the talking, and with whom, during the various stages. It is a constant reminder for you that the learners should be doing most of the talking-not you. 11. Reason for activity:Insert the explanations given for each stage at the top of this section, i.e. beside 'Presentation', put 'Teach new item'. 12. Detail:Here you will write in what will take place during the various stages. For example, in our scenario: Activity 1 (Presentation stage): This could be: Write the target preps on board - in, behind, under. Demonstrate pronunciation. Learners repeat on own then as group then round-robin till OK. Demonstrate meaning and usage-say: Where am I/is the rabbit, Anna? Intended response: In front of the table/desk. Write these on the board. Do this for all preps, changing position accordingly. Then choose singles and pairs and groups to repeat Q/A structure using the Flashcards. Activity 2 (Practice stage): This could be :Test comprehension - tell them to put hands in their pockets, under theirtable, behind their heads' etc. and ask other learners using the Q/A model. Gap-fill exercise in pairs, written responses to Qs using the model. Answers corrected as a class. Activity 3 (Production stage): This could be: In pairs, practise the model, using any object or flashcard. Some pairs to demonstrate their conversations using any objects. 13. Reflect and Cooler: Ask them what they enjoyed and didn't enjoy, and why. Finish with a Cooler: This could be a 'Where is it? and Scrambled game -check answers as a class. Small prize to first pair with correct answers and sweets for the rest. The reflection element is critical. Many teachers, experienced and inexperienced, often omit this very important element. First you need to guide your learners on how to self-reflect and its purposes. From then on, build a reflection element into every lesson plan. Reflection can be promoted simply by asking these kinds of self-assessment questions: What went well? What did you enjoy about the lesson? What did you not enjoy? Could you have done something differently? Could I have done something differently? By asking such questions you are triggering metacognition processes and practices within the learners. Why do this? The benefits are great: These metacognition elements encourage deeper learning. The more they apply their metacognitive skills, the better they will reflect and the deeper their learning will become. Young though they are, they will often provide succinct comments which will help you when you are reflecting on teaching future lessons. 14. Extension strategies: This could be other activities you have planned to add to the lesson if the learners finish quicker than you anticipated. Or it could be utilised to state activities that you have planned specifically for more gifted learners if they finish before the bulk of the other learners. 15. Homework: Note homework practice exercise. Issue this before the Cooler, otherwise you'll find it difficult to get their whole attention. Re homework, find out first what the school's policy is on homework and adhere to this if there is one. Assuming there are no restrictions,give them homework for around 75% of your class time with them. That is, if you 4 lessons per week, give them homework for three out of the four classes. It's always good to have one lesson, often the class before the weekend, where there's no homework - as a treat. Ensure it's a short and meaningful piece of homework. Also, try your best to involve parents in the homework, even if they do not speak English. Native-speaking teachers and admin staff will be very happy to make you a list of sentences addressed to parents in the native language, to encourage involvement. For example: Dear Parent/Guardian For today's homework, the children need to find these three words in the attached story: cherry, cheese, chocolate When your child finds them, please ask them to underline each word. Then ask your child to repeat each word to you six times, slowly. Next, please ask your child to write each word three times underneath the story. Please check that your child does this. Please ensure your child brings the sheet back to me at the next lesson. Thank you very much for your help. Signed: This homework piece is short and meaningful (focusing on the particular sound at the beginning of these words [t ʃ ]). It involves scanning, producing speech and writing - and it involves the parent or guardian. 16. Cross-curricular link or IT: Mention any cross-curricular links or IT work. Re any cross-curricular link, it's important to get to know what your learners are learning in other classes at that time. Perhaps your learners are learning numbers in their L1 maths class whilst you are helping them with numbers in your English class, whilst they are reading 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'. Reflect on such links and how they can help your approach in your classroom. It's as easy as that!

Unit 9: Structuring Listening Lessons

Here are some practical tips on how to structure an effective listening lesson. In this section, we will use a new story as the example for the lesson. A listening lesson is best structured in three stages: Pre-listening While-listening Post-listening 1. Pre-listening Set expectations: Learners should have, in advance, a good idea about the kind of text they are going to hear. Stimulate the learners' interest in the topic, to raise motivation. Personalise the context and create anticipation. Pre-listening activities include: Highlighting key background information by showing the cover or pictures Asking learners to predict what they think the story is about based on the cover and illustrations Encouraging questions to personalise the topic and build their anticipation. You can return to these at the end and ask the learners if they have been answered. Using illustrations or mime to elicit ideas or key vocabulary 2.While-listening In this stage, you should ensure that the children have something to do as they listen. This will help them focus their attention and stop them becoming restless or distracted. In addition, though, these activities will enhance other skills. Here is an example of a listening for specific information task: For example, in two stories we mention throughout this course you could do the following: 'The Gruffalo' In 'The Gruffalo' the mouse meets several animals who would like to eat him. The learners could be given a sheet with a list of these animals plus some other ones that are not in the story. When they hear an animal mentioned, they put a tick beside the animal on their sheet. Also, as mentioned previously, the Gruffalo is described several times as having:Terrible tusks, and terrible claws, and terrible teeth in his terrible jaws. Again, on a sheet they could be asked to place a tick every time this description is mentioned. In 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar', the caterpillar eats all different kinds of food on different days. The learners could be given a list of food the Caterpillar eats, along with others he doesn't eat. They have to put a tick against the ones that are mentioned. Also, in this story, he eats particular types of food on different days. So this challenge could be to note down what he ate on a particular day of the week. There are lots of other while-listening activities you could use. Here are some examples: 1. Listen and repeat This is very useful where a story has a lot of repetition. 2. Listen and differentiate In this type of activity you can get them to focus on specific features of pronunciation in a text, e.g. listening out for rhyming words or repeated rhythmic patterns. Or it could be listening out for a specific new word or chunk you have just covered before the activity. 3. Listen and perform actions/follow instructions Here you give them simple instructions and they follow these, e.g. performing a specific action when they hear specific words. 4. Post-listening In this stage you would check their comprehension in more detail. The learners then practise the new language they have learned with their peers. And then they can move on to a freer activity, e.g. doing a role play, writing a short story etc.

Unit 6: Strategies

Key Strategies for Developing Young Learners' Listening Skills If your learners are going to be able to operate effectively, they need to be exposed to a wide variety of different listening activities. This section will outline some of the most common approaches. Questions and answers Very short exchanges can be used to provide elementary or lower intermediate learners with practice in listening and understanding. Exchanges like this can later be practised by the learners themselves, and preferably recorded. Recording the learners on tape is almost always universally enjoyed by learners even when they laughingly protest a little at the beginning because they are shy about hearing their own voice on tape. Then they want to do it again and again! Short dialogues The way in which the dialogue is recorded will affect its authenticity; traffic noise or café noise in the background adds a further degree of authenticity. Short passages Unlike dialogues, it's not so easy to make the language authentic in a short passage; however, a story with a touch of humour always appeals to learners. A wide range of factual questions could be prepared together with one or two deductive questions. Reordering information The learners are given a number of items on paper, written out in the wrong order: actions, description, events and so on. They are also given one or more specific tasks, and then they listen to the text. The task(s) may involve categorising information, reordering actions in the correct order, classifying events and so on. Information transfer Information transfer activities involve learners translating part of the spoken message into a new format, such as a table, chart, picture, map and so on. They may then use this new format to carry out a further activity, such as working in pairs with a friend to solve a related problem. More generally, note that information transfer activities involve any transfer of any information in a text or utterance to a new format: a listening passage to a table; a reading text to a dialogue; a telephone conversation to a map and so on. Dictation Dictation went out of fashion in language teaching for a long time, but it can be a valuable form of listening practice and it has now returned in revised forms. The important thing is that the dictation passage should normally be one which the learners have met already. It would normally be inappropriate to give them a dictation passage that they have never seen before. This would be tantamount to a test, which is very different from practice. Jigsaw listening This involves learners listening to different parts of a passage or a conversation (or different passages and different conversations), and then coming together in pairs to try to complete a particular task. Each person has different information. The task might, for example, involve completing another dialogue or filling in a table or drawing a map. With a large class, the learners can first be divided into two different groups so that they listen to two different tapes. Then they get together in pairs with one person from each group. It is possible to prepare such materials yourself, but you will occasionally find that jigsaw listening and reading tasks are provided in your coursebook.

Unit 2: Projects

Think 'projects' When you are teaching young learners, don't just think about one-off events. Think about how you can extend a particular event into a longer, more substantial project, with the initial particular event providing a springboard into other interesting areas of learning. The storybook, 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' is a good example of this. Younger learners will love this story and will want you to read this and will want to read bits themselves, over and over again. So, this story will serve as a good catalyst for many learning activities. Here are just some of the activities that you could carry out. There are many more: Speaking activities: asking and answering questions; rhyme; repetition of key bits of vocabulary and phrases (on Monday, on Tuesday; but he was still hungry) Writing activities: labelling; vocabulary sets. e.g. pertaining to different types of food;mini surveys of their classmates' favourite foods; food diary of what the learners eat and compare this to each other and the Very Hungry Caterpillar Grammar activities: noticing small grammar points raised by you (one apple, two pears); learning some functions and structures (How many? and There is/are) Word classes activities, e.g. adjectives:tiny, big, fat, beautiful Pronunciation activities: rising and falling intonation in lists; individual sounds: [t ʃ ] as in cherry, cheese, chocolate Singing and learning songs about butterflies Similar word beginnings activities:cherry, cheese, chocolate Theme of growth and change - a good opportunity for getting the learners to think about and talk about this in relation to humans The life-cycle of a butterfly - mapping the stages, making drawings, making wire butterflies to hang up in the room, raising butterflies from caterpillars in the classroom, observing and noting their growth, identifying differences in the butterflies Learning strategies such as predicting, guessing, hypothesising , sequencing (putting the days of the week in order or the life cycle steps in order), memorising (what he ate on Tuesday), researching (what caterpillars actually eat and drink), etc. Cross-curricular links (as in our lesson plan above): Science: the life cycle of a butterfly Maths: numbers, counting, sizes (e.g. wing spans), symmetry and shape (wings are symmetrical) Geography - where butterflies live and migrate to Environment and the planet-benefits (e.g. pollination) and drawbacks ( e.g. larvae eating vegetables); some in danger of extinction ( learners gain awareness of values and citizenship) Art and design: making cardboard or cloth models of caterpillars, and making patterns and colouring Music, drama and movement: singing songs and rhymes, reciting poetry and taking part in performances for an audience, and moving like a caterpillar and butterfly During cross-curricular activities, learners will be involved in a number of learner strategies, e.g. comparing, contrasting, classifying, sequencing, problem solving, and researching. So, from this very short story of just over 200 words, there's more than enough materials to run a project for a whole term.

Unit 12: Listening Activities for Older Learners

For older listeners, it will be much of the same, but with these modifications: 1. Make the activities more challenging You could start to introduce riddles into some of the rhymes. In addition, you should use rhymes that can take them further out of their immediate context and environment, in line with their developing knowledge of the world. The labelling, guessing and matching activities can be made a bit more complex in line with their increased knowledge of the language and its words and chunks of language and their increasing cognitive ability. As can sequencing and classifying. The simple ticking exercises can gradually be replaced with challenges that require more than a true/false approach, e.g. more answer choices with, perhaps, some distractors they need to think about. 2. Make the activities longer and a bit deeper. For example, we mentioned an activity above: listen and guess/identify. For older learners, you could use a longer text which contains a group of people and from listening to a passage and listening to their descriptions, the learners have to identify a specific person, e.g. the policeman. 3. Introduce more challenging stories, and storytelling Older learners also love listening to stories. The stories you choose will be more in-depth, e.g. include more character development. But you can also introduce them to storytelling, where you're unlikely to have any props apart from a drawing of the main character. These could be folk tales from their own country and the world outside. Or they could just be abbreviated versions of some outstanding tales such as Moby Dick or Treasure Island. Or again, they could be based on a film with an excellent story such as Braveheart. 4. It's time to give them other voices to listen to. It's time for them to listen to language from different sources on tape, CD or the TV. By listening to these other voices, they'll notice differences in: The rate of speech Different tones More formal language Different accents

Unit 8: Supporting Listening

It's critical that you give the learners support with their listening as much as you can. Here's what to do: 1. Use appropriate material Always choose material that is appropriate for the level of your learners, and the culture that they come from. It should not place any additional burdens on the learners. Aim for some quick wins to build their confidence. Ensure they understand (perhaps by you using snippets of their own language) that they will not understand every word. Start with getting them to listen for specific words that they have already learned, e.g. names of objects in the classroom, animals or insects in their environment, colours, small numbers etc. Make a big issue of it when they get the words right. Praise them. Start their listening learning with easier activities such as a listen and do activity, e.g. Put the red card in the red box. 2. Explain the purpose Tell them what they have to do. Are they to listen just for pleasure? Or is there some other purpose, for example: To improve their concentration span To develop their memories To improve pronunciation To become familiar with new words or patterns To reinforce concepts, e.g. size To interact with others 3. Use different situations and styles Ensure your learners experience a wide range of situations. This is very important because of their need to interpret different situations correctly and to be able to respond appropriately. Ensure they experience, through time, a range of speaking styles that they listen to. 4. Aim for responses, through time Depending on age and level, the listening materialsshould also aim to let the learners respond to the speaker, or the tape, in a direct way so that listening is one part of an interactive programme of learning. In other words, the learners will not merely listen, but will also respond with answers, questions, actions, group discussion, form filling, drawings and so on. 5. Adjust the length of material Ensure that the length of the material is appropriate for your learners. This might take the form of three short lines of dialoguefor elementary learners, or as much as three or four minutes of listening for more proficient learners. 6. Ensure an appropriate rate of speech The listening material may be taped, or perhaps you will read it to the learners yourself. It is important that the material is presented at a speed that is appropriate for your learners. Although some teachers are often keen on authentic language that reflects all of the elements of real speech such as sound interference, hesitation, repetition and so on, this might not be suitable for more elementary learners.

Unit 3: Key Points

Listening is the most neglected of the four language skills. Listening is often seen as the easiest of the four skills and hence requiring less practice - but this is untrue. Listening difficulties can arise for a number of reasons; for example, through L2 learners being unable to distinguish different sounds or being unable to make out what a fast speaker is saying. Listening must be integrated with the other three skills (speaking, reading and writing). Early work must be based on the sounds of the language. This is more difficult for Chinese and South Korean learners than, say, Italian and Spanish learners. So, learners are not all the same. A key objective, through time, will be to let the learners experience a wide range of styles, e.g. formal and informal. The listening materials must also aim to let the learners respond to the speaker, so that listening is one part of an interactive programme of learning.

Unit 7: Active Listening

Maximising Active Listening Young learners are easily distracted and thus it's easy for them to lose focus. And for them, listening can be hard work as they try to concentrate for lengthy periods. It can all become a bit tiring and stressful for them. It's easy to assume that when we're reading a very interesting and exciting story such as 'The Gruffalo' to young learners that they're taking in every word. It's not quite like that. Even where they look as if they're listening (just as adults do) their mind can easily be in another world, a world far away from 'The Gruffalo'. We should never expect young learners to take in every word we say or read to them. That would be impossible. But we should always aim to maximise their learning attention. So what can we do to try and maximise their listening attention as much as possible and help them to be reasonably good and active listeners? Here's what to do to maximise their active listening: 1. Choose engaging tasks Choose engaging listening tasks, e.g. stories, songs, little poems etc. These are the tasks that young learners love. So, you'll get their immediate attention. Ensure that the input is comprehensible input in the first place. The language needs to be at their level. Otherwise they will switch off. So adapt the text as necessary. Ensure the material is familiar as much as possible. It's true that lots of stories are not familiar. However, spending plenty time beforehand, explaining what they are about to hear and building up anticipation, will make up for the lack of familiarity. 2. Encouraging them to actively listen Explain why they have to listen. Make sure the learners are clear about why they are listening, what the main point or purpose of the activity is. Set specific tasks. For example, in 'The Gruffalo': Keep sentences short and grammatically simple. The first task could be to listen out for the first animal the mouse meets and put their hand up when they can say which animal it is. Another task could be to listen in for what the Gruffalo has in his mouth - 'terrible teeth' - and put their hand up as soon as they hear this. Use exaggerated intonation and gestures to hold the learners' attention. Emphasise key words: in 'The Gruffalo' these could be Terrible tusks, and terrible claws, and terrible teeth in his terrible jaws. Limit the topics talked about to what is familiar to the learners. For example: Have you ever seen a mouse? Where was that? I wonder if the Gruffalo is bigger than your mum/dad/ Mr. Chan, the Head of School. Keep repeating and paraphrasing frequently. Do several types of reading with different types of tasks on each occasion. For example: Listening and repeating Listening and miming Listening and predicting or guessing what will happen next Listening and replying to your question (which you've already briefed them on) Listening for words that rhyme Listening for words that are about to be repeated in the text: terrible tusks, and terrible claws, and terrible teeth in his terrible jaws Follow this advice and you'll help your young learners to become active listeners.

Unit 11: Listening Activities for Younger Learners

There's a wide range of activities you can use for enhancing the listening skills of younger learners. Here are some examples: 1. Non-verbal response activities such as TPR - in song or chant form 2. Rhymes Don't just choose rhymes that you like. Think: Is it right for their level of listening in English? Does it fit with their overall development to date, e.g. do they like physical action rhymes? Can some of the language be transferred into useful conversation (later)? Does the rhyme offer the opportunity to personalise it with other learners' or siblings' names? 3. Mimes based on action stories, rhymes and songs A good example of this is 'The Gruffalo'; for example, in 'The Gruffalo', the look on the mouse's face when he first meets the animals that want to eat him. And especially when he meets a real Gruffalo after it being a figment of his imagination for so long. 4. 'Listen and do' activities There are lots of these activities where the learners listen to your simple and concise explanation and carry out the action: Listen and draw, or listen and colour. This is often used to help children focus on key nouns and on adjectives that describe colour, size, shape and so on: e.g. draw one more leg on the spider; colour the empty square green etc. Listen and label.The learners are given a drawing or diagram. For example, they are given a stick-type drawing of a person and they have to put little sticky labels provided beside, say, the person's arm, foot, ear etc. Listen and guess/identify. This is lots of fun. You read out a description of 'something' and the learners have to guess/identify what it is. They can say what it is or draw it. Listen and match.This is matching pictures to your spoken words. 5. Simple ticking exercises, e.g. true/false There are lots of opportunities to check listening comprehension with simple tick-box or true/false exercises. For example, after reading 'The Gruffalo' several times, these simple but enlightening true/false questions could be asked: The mousemet a fish The mouse met a snake. The mouse first met a fox. The Gruffalo is called John. At the end of the story, the Gruffalo is afraid of the mouse. 6. Listening to stories Young learners love listening to stories, often the same story on many, many occasions. So it's an area rich of possibilities for enhancing their listening ability. We will explore stories in depth in Module 25. Remember this: These activities not only offer excellent listening practice. They also offer opportunities for ensuring that multiple intelligences are catered for, e.g. colouring, sticking labels, making things, organising items into sets and so on.

Unit 10: Total Physical Response

Total Physical Response (TPR) activities are some of the very best for giving listening practice to younger learners. Initially you can use them for listening practice and later for speaking practice. They are simple but effective and they involve a lot of teacher talk or teacher singing. What's important in TPR activities for listening is that the learners don't need to give verbal responses. They only require to give non-verbal responses. (Through time this will lead to giving verbal responses.) Their non-verbal actions help them to make sense of the content. Learners listen to rhymes songs or stories, and mime to them without having to produce the language. TPR links language learning to physical actions and ensures that learners hear lots of English in meaningful contexts without having to say any words. The key principle of TPR is that learners have lots of opportunities to absorb the language before they have to say anything. Here are a couple of classic examples. If you're not familiar with all the lyrics, you can get these easily from the Internet. Example 1 1. This is the way you wash your face wash your face, wash your face. This is the way you wash your face All on a Saturday morning... etc. 2. Head and shoulders knees and toes Knees and toes Head and shoulders knees and toes Knees and toes... etc. These will give you lots of opportunities to sing and talk and will give the learners lots of opportunities to listen to new words, using familiar contexts , e.g. parts of the body. First you can model them on your own, then with a couple of learners and then the whole class can join in miming the actions. Remember there's no obligation for them to speak at this time. Gradually, though, through repetition of the activities, you'll start to see the learners speaking some of the words or chunks of language. Be more adventurous: You could make up your own songs or rhymes. For example, to the tune and rhythm of the 'This is the way you wash your face', you could change it to something like this: This is the way we line up quietly (+chorus) This is the way we enter our class (+chorus) This is where we put our bags (+ chorus) This is the way we sit at our desk (+chorus) This is the way we open our book (+chorus) This is the way we read our book (+chorus) This is the way we return our book (+chorus) This is the way we leave the room (+chorus) This is the way we say 'Bye' to Miss Brown (+chorus) And so on. At each step they would mime the action. TPR is also associated with games like 'Simon Says' which adds the challenge of listening and understanding, so you can eventually move on to these types of games where they practise their listening and decision-making skills. Lots of listening practice in the early years can be built around the TPR approach.

Unit 4: Build a Strong Foundation

When teaching young learners, the main emphasis at first should be on listening and speaking. Reading and writing skills can be developed later in the programme. Listening is of huge importance. Through listening, learners are preparing to replicate the sounds they will make when they speak. When learners receive lots of listening input and lots of listening practice, speaking will naturally follow (to different degrees) from this and both skills will become integrated. In addition to supporting the onset of their speaking skills, listening skills can also prepare the way for reading skills: 1. Listening provides preparation for comprehending stories: Ability to grasp the concept of a sequence of events, e.g. He closed the door and went out Ability to actively listen to stories Ability to comprehend a story that has been read or told to them 2. Listening provides preparation for the decoding of words and phonics instruction: Ability to discriminate between sounds they have heard, e.g. /b/ and /p/ Ability to identify rhyming sounds Ability to separate the sounds of words into syllables By developing listening skills that focus on phonological awareness, children will be better prepared to participate in phonics instruction which, in turn, will make it easier for them to later decode and read words. For example, in English there are lots of single syllable words that rhyme. Rhyme is a core component of many songs, poems and chants. When learners recognise the rhyming words and their patterns, they will be better placed to decode and read words that follow a similar pattern.

Unit 5: Listening and its Sub-Skills

Your job is to provide the learners with particular tasks that target specific sub-skills - not simply listening for information but also targeting sub-skills such as listening to instructions, predicting etc. Here are the key sub-skills that you will help the learners to develop, depending on their ability, age and level: General listening General listening tasks can be provided for learners at any level. They can be quite brief for beginners or considerably longer for older learners. The text may take the form of a short dialogue, or a description, and a number of general questions may arise from the text. The questions will often be given to the learners after they have listened to the dialogue or the passage. Listening for specific information Some listening practice tasks can also require the learners to listen out for particular pieces of information, just as we do at the airport departure lounge or in the train station. In this case, the learners have to be aware of the task before they listen to the passage or the dialogue. Listening for the message With some listening tasks, the learners may listen for a complete message rather than for specific pieces of information. The question, or questions, can be given to the learners either before or after the listening task. Following instructions Following instructions, or directions, can provide an excellent form of listening practice. These activities are commonly designed around charts, tables, diagrams, maps, drawings and so on. The learners may not be required to say anything immediately in response, but may transfer information received from the speaker (or tape) onto a table, map and so forth. In this way they demonstrate their understanding. Predicting The skill of predicting what comes next can be effectively used to focus the listening taskand provide a clear guide to a learner's level of understanding. Listening for gist The learner will listen to a text and try to formulate the main idea(s) of the text. A variation of this activity would be to have learners listen to a text and then have them assign a title that best reflects the main idea or theme. Discerning attitude (older learners) Learners will listen to a text and infer a speaker's attitude or general tone, which can be either implicit or explicit.