A great way to practice Past Simple (beginners)

I spontaneously came up with a great way to practice Past Simple with a group of beginners.I already had a board game that I used to practice adverbs of frequency. The fields on the board have different verbs in the infinitive form, so students have to say the Past Simple form of the verb they land on. It was fun and very repetitive, which makes for great practice of regular and irregular verbs in Past Simple.

 

 

source of board game: isl.collective.com

Activation of Existing Knowledge

Three months ago I started learning French on my own. I bought two books by PONS (see previous post), I watch Youtube videos (I recommend the channel "Learn French with Alexa") and I found a French tandem partner, who I talk to via Zoom. I guess what I mean by self-studying is that I am not planning to take any courses in French. I am simply going to use the above mentioned resources.

Yesterday I got an idea about what could be a good way to start studying a foreign language.

At the very beginning, why not activate everything that we might already know from a target language and analyze it a bit (with the help of a teacher or an advanced speaker).

Being born in Croatia, and therefore coming from a European culture, I already had knowledge of a few phrases and expressions in French. Maybe even more than I was aware.
In Croatia I studied art so some expressions I already knew come from this field.

Here are some examples of phrases that I already knew: Bonjour, Bon soir, en-face, enfant terrible, Notre Dame, raison d'etre, Ceci n'est pas un pipe, and of course the unforgettable "Voulez vous coucher avec moi...); something that we as kids in Croatia somehow knew and giggled while saying it...

There is so much grammar to extract from these few phrases, for which one would admittedly have to recruit a little help from a teacher.

I think this would be an interesting approach, because this knowledge is already "embedded" in our minds, it has already been "memorized" and therefore could be used well as a starting point for learning. It would "activate" and harness knowledge that is already there, similar to the activation of knowledge before teaching a topic in class. At the beginning of each class teachers often use the activation technique by inviting student to brainstorm ideas and associations connected to a certain topic. This is usually done on the whiteboard, in the form of mind-maps. It prepares the students for the topic of the day and is also used as a warm-up.

Why not use this approach to activate all the possible phrases from a target language that might already be part of students' general knowledge in their own culture? Followed by a short analysis on the whiteboard.

In the examples of my own previous knowledge of French, that I mentioned above, the following knowledge could be extracted or activated:

From "Notre Dame" teacher can extract the possessive pronoun before a singular feminine noun, with "Ceci n'est pas un pipe" teacher can easily show two parts of a French negation (supported by a reproduction of the Magritte's painting), and in "Voules vous we already have the ending of the conjugated second person in plural, and the personal pronoun "Vous")...

I am sure this technique would be a lot of fun in class, would also be very encouraging for the students because they would realise that they already have some knowledge of the language that they want to learn even before they start learning it. 

Learning a new language on my own with PONS

About two months ago I started to learn French on my own.

Already a year ago out of curiosity I listened to the Michel Thomas' audio course for French and found this method interesting but not as efficient as what I am doing right now. Michel Tomas' method requires you to just relax and listen. I found the approach interesting, but more from the point of participating in a kind of a linguistic experiment that isn't very practical. I found the method very slow as well. It's sort of an imitation of how a child would learn its mother tongue, just by absorbing.

But two months ago I bought two books for French learning by PONS. The first one is an intensive course with a CD and transcripts ( A1-A2) and the second one is called "Grammar practice through translation method". Its concept is that on one page you have sentences in German that you need to translate into French, and on the opposite page you can find the French translations. The book is organized into different grammatical themes (modals, question words, different verbs, imperative, functional phrases etc.) and the sentences are connected thematically, there is an inkling of a story behind them, which I find very useful. It wouldn't be as good if you just had random sentences without any contextual connection.

At first I was suspicious about this concept because translation method isn't used in language schools anymore. Just like teaching grammar in general it is considered archaic and is generally avoided in favor of a more communicative method based on speaking, role-playing and complete absence of the L1 (mother tongue).

But surprisingly I find this method very practical, fun and quick for myself. It requires you to write so there is an additional benefit of practicing your writing. You can do it on the train, at work or at home. It is a great supplement to the Intensive Course book, which has a CD and transcript to practice your reading and listening.

 

HOW TO BE A GREAT TEACHER (even if you're not one just yet)

I hope that everybody in the TEFL business understands that speaking a language perfectly does not automatically mean that you are a great teacher. By analogy, there are genius self taught musicians, but since they have never learned music theory, they will probably not be able to transfer that knowledge to other people. They are wonderful to listen to, but as teachers they might be absolutely useless. A person who knows ten chords but possesses the right attitude might be more useful to a student than a genius musician. In this post I'd like to talk about the kind of attitude that will get you far in this business even if you're not a perfect teacher just yet.


1. ALWAYS BE POLITE AND RESPECTFUL


When a student enters the classroom, say hello, smile and ask them how they are. If this is a problem for you, you're not cut out for this job. This is a basic human interaction which is a prerequisite for this job.
Furthermore, do not ask direct questions about your student's marital status, age, sexuality or whether they have children. If this kind of questions come up in a pair work exercise, monitor and ask for feedback in front of the whole class only if you see the person feels comfortable speaking about this. In general, I stay as far as possible from this kind of questions and will never ask these questions directly.

2.  FORGET ABOUT THE AUTHORITATIVE APPROACH TO TEACHING THAT YOU MIGHT HAVE EXPERIENCED YOURSELF

You are not a lecturer, you are a language teacher of (mostly) adults! There's a big difference. You do not give lectures, you give lessons. Moreover, do not call your students anything that they would be uncomfortable calling you back. I recently joined a German class where the teacher calls everyone "mein Lieber", "meine Liebe". What would happen if we called him that? It would be completely inappropriate. He's (probably unwittingly) demonstrating his power or compensating for his lack of ability by calling us that. It sounds condescending and patronizing.


3. THE CLIENT IS ALWAYS RIGHT (EVEN WHEN THEY'RE WRONG?)

Assuming that you are not working in primary school, your learners are probably clients of your employer and in this case you should remember the saying: "The client is always right".  Well, of course they're not, but you have to make them feel they are, as often as possible. If you're asking for an opinion and the learner gives you one, you should almost always find something valid about it. Therefore you should never contradict them in relation to the content of what they are saying. If they are saying something that is not in keeping with your personal views or something that might offend other students, try to change the subject, but as much you can, sustain from giving strong personal opinions on subjects like religion, politics, nationalities and sexuality. Remember, that you are a language teacher and not a philosophy teacher. Your job is working on their language, not the content of what they are saying. So let them speak, do not interrupt (unless it becomes offensive for anyone in the room) and listen.  Even when it comes to language mistakes, try not to interrupt and rely on delayed error correction as much as possible. Keep in mind that "fluency comes before accuracy" and the you should never discourage a learner from speaking. Your own opinions on different topics are not important. Retain a neutral stance whenever possible. It's about language, not politics.

4. PAIR WORK, PAIR WORK, PAIR WORK

I cannot stress enough how important pair work is in a language class. It will not only make your life as a teacher easier but it will also help to create a friendly and relaxed atmosphere in the classroom. While doing the CELTA course I first got acquainted with using pair work in a classroom but didn't really believed or understood its importance until I have spent some time working under the mentorship of a DELTA certified Director of Studies who kept reiterating the importance of it and demanding it in basically every class. I think the reason why a lot of teachers keep avoiding pair work is somewhat based on egotism. We think that every student deserves to talk only with us (the teacher) and that they wouldn't find any gratification in talking to a student who is on the similar level. But this couldn't be further from the truth, as pair work activities have the inherent ability to create an incredible sense of community in a classroom. It enables the students to get to know each other more personally and even become friends. This is a hugely important factor that will also become an important motive for students to keep coming to your class. And the real beauty of it is that a teacher actually has to do less and not more to make this happen. So, assign pairs, step back and watch the magic happen.
Don't forget to take notes and to give and ask for feedback after a pair work activity.

Past Perfect Simple - discovery without freer practice

The main goal of today's lesson was the discovery of the Past Perfect Tense and the controlled and freer practice with it.

I started with the pronunciation exercise on p. 71, which was a spontaneous follow-up on an exercise that was set for homework.

I decided to board and elicit the differences in pronunciation when "the" comes before a word beginning with a vowel and a word beginning with a consonant.

I boarded, elicited pronunciation and wrote phonetic transcription for the following words appearing in the exercise:

the Pacific /ðə 'pəsifik/

the Amazon /ði: 'æməzon/

the Andes /ði: 'ændi:z/

I successfully elicited the rules for using /ðə '/ before consonants and /ði: '/ before vowels.

Next we moved on to the text that served as the starting point for the grammar discovery.

I pre-taught vocabulary by writing a few words, expressions on the board and eliciting the meaning (set off, second-hand, run out of luck, steam).

Then there was reading for gist followed by reading for details.

We moved on to the vocabulary task, followed by a similar task in the workbook. The students practiced using phrases like "sooner or later", "give or take", "all or nothing" in two gap fill exercises. After that they had to tick the sentences that were true for them and compare them and discuss with their partners. This always works well, they were discussing for at least ten minutes and I had to stop them and ask for feedback.

Next was the discovery of past perfect based on the timeline on p. 73, which turned out to be a little complicated.

I boarded two sentences from ex. 2 on p. 141. and drew two timelines. The students had to complete the timelines with initials representing actions from the sentences.

This wasn't very easy to grasp for the students especially because some were convinced that "when" always means that two actions are simultaneous. That's why the timeline representing first sentences has the two demarcations drawn closer to each other than in the second timeline. I had to do a few more similar sentences with the timelines for students to understand this. Then I drew the first timeline on the board alongside the example sentence representing it. I erased the two demarcations in the past and drew them even closer to each other, erased "when" and elicited "as soon as" in its place. When they get the concept of these timelines it's very easy to play with them further and elicit other adverbs such as "before","after".

Controlled practise was done with exercises on p. 141 of the student's book. ( ex. 1, 2).

Controlled speaking practise was done with pairwork exercise on p. 118 and 123. This wasn't very successful because for some reason the creators of the exercise decided to throw in Past Continuous alongside Past Simple and Past Perfect in a jigsaw gap-fill. I overlooked this in my planning and unfortunately this was overwhelming for the students. I wouldn't recommend using this exercise for freer practice.

I am still looking for a good freer speaking exercise for Past Perfect and Past Simple. I also sometimes find it necessary to reduce the importance of the Past Perfect Tense based on it's low representation in the spoken language. I find it a bit disheartening when after introducing Past Perfect at intermediate level students become somewhat obsessed with this tense and start using it over-abundantly even when it's not necessary. That's why I like to preface or conclude these lessons by saying that it isn't a tense that is used very often. But I am curious to hear other teacher's thoughts on this so please share your experiences.

Tourism Vocabulary/Modals of Deduction

The goal of today's lesson was to get the students familiar with a more sophisticated language of travel advertisements. They had to read a short advertisement on p. 69 (New Inside Out intermediate) and do the following exercises as their homework. I often try to set exercises from the student's book as homework because I prefer my students to read at home, especially longer texts. I prefer to assign the reading tasks from the student's book to the ones in the workbook because there isn't a key for them so they really have to make an effort. Also, as my Russian DOS taught me, reading longer texts is not very communicative and should be set as homework. This was a short text but since the language is quite sophisticated I thought it was apt for homework. The text did prove challenging for them. It contains words like: trawling nets, canopy (of trees), coral gardens, select community of travellers. To check the understanding of this vocabulary I created the worksheets where they have to match pictures and vocabulary. The link to the worksheet is attached at the end of this post.
Later the students had to write a few sentences themselves as if they were meant for a travel ad. It had to be about the place they visited. They were encouraged to use the boarded vocabulary and constructions from the ads on p. 69. Finally they were asked to read their ads to their partners.
In the second part of the class the students did the grammar discovery for the modals of deduction and a lot of controlled as well as some freer practice.. I used additional exercises from the book English File intermediate. The students didn't have problems with the discovery nor with the controlled practice exercises, which was a valuable reminder for me that this is a  grammar point that goes very smoothly and therefore doesn't take up a lot of time. Luckily I had overplanned for this lesson and had a lot of controlled practice exercises that enabled me to keep them busy for the rest of these three 60-minute academic hours, but I would advise everyone to be aware that this grammar point doesn't need too much explaining and it's all pretty straightforward and not very time-consuming.
Freer practice was very successful with the exercise 2 on p 71 (New Inside Out) (pairwork) and ex. 5 on p. 60 of English File.
I used L1 in explaining that Modals of deductions are used to express "Vermutung" in German. Many students can't grasp the concept of deduction. I sometimes give an example of a logical syllogism to explain what it is. Something like: "All cows are animals; all animals breathe; therefore all cows breathe".
Something that I forgot to do during the pretaching of the vocabulary is to compare and juxtapose "overlook" and "oversee". One of the students found the meaning for "overlook" as "to manage/supervise". I told her that the usage was archaic but it was a good opportunity to introduce "oversee", which I did the next day during the vocabulary revision.
https://en.islcollective.com/resources/printables/worksheets_doc_docx/pre-teaching_vocab_inside_out_p_69/tourism/102631

Anyway/Apparently/Actually

Recently I have posted my first worksheet on ISLCollective. For those who don't now it's an excellent site with TEFL resources where you can freely download but also share your original material.
The worksheet that I created deals with differences between "anyway", "apparently" and "actually".
I felt the urge to create this worksheet because these words appeared (among others) in a gap fill exercise in the book New Inside Out intermediate( SB, p. 65, informal email). As a way of preteaching I decided to focus on these three adverbs which all begin with the same letter and are of similar length, which might make them difficult to differentiate for students at this level.
I had found the sentences used in the exercise on the Internet and in some cases I have slightly altered them to make the gap-fill as unambiguous as possible.
The worksheet has proved successful and the students didn't have problems doing the exercise after I had put a few similar example sentences on the board and elicited rules summarized at the top of the worksheet: "anyway" (used to change the subject), "apparently" ("obviously", "a rumour I heard"), and "actually" (used for emphasis).

The example sentence for "actually" went something like this:
"A: Are you sad that you failed the test?  B: Actually, I am relieved."

After boarding this exchange it was elicited that "actually" is used for emphasis but also to express contrast. Since this was a class of primarily German speakers I also elicited the translation of this word ("eigentlich") which has a similar usage in German.


The example sentence for "apparently" went something like this:
"Did you hear about Sarah? Apparently she got divorced."

I elicited the function of "apparently" for mentioning something that you're not 100 % sure of but you might have heard in the form of a rumour or a gossip. Then I also elicited the translation ("offensichtlich"), which is the second meaning of this word and is clearly presented with the example sentence 6. of the gap-fill exercise.


I focused on the function of "anyway" as a colloquial word for changing the subject of a conversation.
At this point I didn't want to confuse the students with other possible functions of "anyway" like the one presented in this example sentence: "I didn't like you anyway." I just thought it would be too much for them and this function wasn't needed for doing the exercise in the New Inside Out book. When creating original worksheets like this I tend to focus only on what is needed to do the exercise successfully. I find it very useful to model the pre-teaching part precisely on the exercise that comes after. That way there are no surprises and the students can completely rely on the rules.


This is a link to the worksheet published on the ISL Collective site. I was glad to discover that in only four days the worksheet has been downloaded 16 times so apparently there is a need to differentiate and practice the usage of these three adverbs.
https://en.islcollective.com/resources/printables/worksheets_doc_docx/actuallyapparentlyanyway/adverbs/102517