Preview Activities Dialog Reading Drills Exercises
View Activities Dialog Reading Drills Exercises
Review Activities Dialog Reading Drills Exercises
The purpose of this chapter is to outline the various types of classroom activities that the teacher may use. The teachers need to understand that the types of teaching-learning activities used at each stage of second-language acquisition are different from those used at other stages. They should also understand that audio-lingual and cognitive activities are different at the understanding and production and manipulation stages, but that they become somewhat similar at the real language stage.
Naturally, many procedures are not presented here, since the realm of possibilities is limited only by the teacher's inventiveness. Starting always with the formulation of specific objectives, he can begin to initiate a continual process of self-discovery of appropriate techniques that he has never seen used by other teachers, but that are suggested by the goals themselves. This process becomes the primary basis of an ever-expanding repertoire of classroom procedures, and the resultant techniques become the basic core of the teaching-learning situations employed in class. Thus, summarizing all the activities that may be used in class is impossible, but it is possible to focus, attention on the separate categories and the basic principles in each.
The following discussion focuses on the types of activities usually employed in the three basic parts of the class hour. Since textbooks usually present new material either in dialogs or readings followed by conditioning drills or cognitive exercises, the procedures discussed in each part are further subdivided into activities related to structure lessons and those related to dialog or reading lessons.
During the preview part of the class hour the teacher prepares the students to do the work for the next class period. If one of the objectives of the next class is to do transformation drills orally, she gives the students practice with pattern drills of low-level difficulty, i.e., repetition or substitution drills. (The objectives of this audio-lingual presentation are behavioral.) If one of the objectives is to do cognitive exercises as homework, she prepares a presentation of the concepts needed to do the exercises, either inductive or deductive, which the students can comprehend. (The objectives of this presentation are cognitive.) Neither in the audio-lingual nor in the cognitive approach are the students expected to do more than repeat new sentence patterns or comprehend new concepts. Demonstration of conditioned responses, ability to complete cognitive exercises, or use of the forms being presented to communicate are objectives for subsequent stages of the sequence being initiated.
The objectives during the preview of the dialog are to establish the meaning of the lines being presented and to develop the ability to hear the sounds and to repeat parts of the lines correctly. Without additional practice, most students are unable to repeat entire lines rapidly, and they cannot be expected during the initial presentation to remember the sequential arrangement of the lines. The meaning is made clear to the students by summarizing in the first language the lines to be learned, by using visual aids, by acting out the lines, or in later lessons by paraphrasing in the language being learned. It is important in teaching the meaning of the dialog that the students know both the whole and the parts. Therefore, attention must be given to the meanings of words and phrases as well as entire sentences. Nor is a single presentation sufficient. Meaning should be kept before the students as they drill the lines.
After communicating the meaning of the selected portion of the dialog to be learned, the teacher breaks the dialog into manageable lengths to be drilled. He again brings the meaning to the students' attention as he models the phrase or line to be repeated. Then he drills the same phrase or line going from choral repetition by the entire class to smaller groups to individuals.
The dialog sample that is being used as the basis for the discussion in this chapter comes from unit 9 of Modern Spanish , Second Edition. Due to the limits of space, only a Spanish example is being given, but the English translation is presented too, so that teachers of other languages may understand the concept involved.
In a Cafe
r
A. Alvaro F. Felipe C. Chalo A. This is a first rate cafe! (What a good cafe this is!)
F. You're right. For good coffee there's no place like this one. Hey, pst, pst! Two black coffees, good and hot.
A. There comes Carlos Francisco. What a glum look he has (bad face he brings)! What's new, Chalo? Sit down. F. Why didn't you go to school yesterday? We had an exam in philosophy.
C. I meant to go, but I couldn't. I had a bad day. I was sick.
En un Cafe
A. Alvaro F. Felipe C. Chalo
A. iQue buen cafe es este!
F. Tienes razon. Para cafe bueno no hay como este lugar. Mire, pst, pst! Dos cafes negros bien calientes.
A. Ahi viene Carlos Francisco. iQue mala cara trae! dQue hay, Chalo? Sientate.
F. ^Por que no fuiste al colegio ayer? Tuvimos examen en filo- sofia.
C. Quise ir, pero no pude. Tuve un mal dia. Estuve enfermo. 1
In addition to focusing on sounds, vocabulary, and structure in the dialog lines as a means of developing language skills, the teacher should also take advantage of each possible opportunity to foster cultural insights. The example dialog above offers several points for discussion: (1) the cafe in Spanish society, its appearance and its important cultural role; (2) coffee in Spanishspeaking countries; (3) the method used to attract the waiter's attention; (4) the school system in Spanish-speaking countries; and (5) such vocabulary points as the fact that in Spanish one says "you have reason" rather than "you are right," the difference between ahf and aqu\ f which can both mean "here," and the nickname Chalo. The explanation of cultural topics throughout the course helps the students to relate the often abstract sounds and forms of a foreign language to real people and places.
After the dialog lines have been drilled, they are assigned as part of the homework for the following class period. Preferably, the students have take-home records with their books or have access to tapes with which to
’Copyright © I960, 1966 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. and reproduced with their permission from Modern Spanish, Second Edition, by D. L. Bolinger, J.E. Ciruti, and H. H. Montero.
practice. If not, the assigned lines should be drilled with the books open, after being drilled first orally, before they are studied outside of class.
The students should know exactly what their homework task is. The approach being taken here is that the benefits of actual memorization of the dialog do not justify the necessary expenditure of time. Therefore, the students are asked to be able to do three things by the next class period: (1) to have the ability to repeat any and all lines with appropriate speed, pronunciation, and intonation immediately after a model (this objective includes the development of auditory memory as well as proper habits of pronunciation and intonation); (2) to have the ability to give the first-language meaning of any sentence as soon as they hear the second-language equivalent; and (3) the reverse of number 2.
The objectives during the preview of the reading are to (1) anticipate any semantic or syntactical difficulties that the students may have reading for content, (2) form the necessary sound-symbol associations, and (3) develop the ability to read aloud with acceptable pronunciation and intonation. Any of the methods used to establish meaning in a dialog can be used with a reading, although typically the teacher uses first- or second-language definitions, the latter being preferable.
In introducing the reading, the teacher first reads through the entire reading assignment, pointing out and clarifying difficulties as she proceeds. (Once the students learn the necessary sound-symbol associations, the model and group repetition may be omitted except for occasional practice. At this point the stress turns to silent, rapid reading for comprehension.) Next, she asks the students to repeat the model while looking at the words. And last, individuals read without a model.
The reading sample given here is taken from lesson 7 of Beginning Spanish: A Cultural Approach , Third Edition. Again only a Spanish example is being used along with an English translation of the passage.
The Language of Mexico
La Lengua de Mexico
The national language of Mexico is Spanish, since the great majority of the Mexicans speak this language. They speak and pronounce well, but the Mexican does not pronounce Spanish exactly like the Spaniards: he speaks with a different
La lengua nacional de Mexico es el espahol, pues la inmensa mayoria de los mexica- nos hablan esta lengua. Hablan y pronuncian bien, pero el mexi- cano no pronuncia el espahol exactamente como los espan- oles; habla con otro acento
accent and uses some words which the Spanish do not use.
However, the differences in pronunciation and vocabulary are few.
The majority of the Mexicans have a mixture of Spanish and Indian blood, and they are called mestizos. There is a minority of pure Spanish blood and another minority of pure Indian blood.
The Indian who lives in the city speaks Spanish like the other Mexicans, but in the mountains and in the forests live some Indians isolated from the rest of the country due to a lack of communication. These Indians do not speak Spanish; they speak Indian dialects completely different from Spanish. There are almost a hundred different dialects.
However, in the regions where there are schools the Indian children learn the national language, and naturally, when they speak and read this language, they learn something about Mexico and the rest of the world.
During the preview, the teacher should stress reading for comprehension and mention examples of all the aids to reading comprehension that are discussed in chapter 11. Since the two basic structures to be learned in this reading are the use of the definite article before the names of languages and the third person singular and plural verb forms, examples of each should be pointed out. Also, as the students read, the teacher must pay careful attention to their pronunciation of such words as nacional and espanol, because the tendency is to give an English pronunciation to the vowel a. In addition, all suggested cultural bits of information should be expanded upon. For example,
y emplea algunas palabras que no usan los espaholes. Sin embargo, las diferencias de pronunciacion y vocabulario no son muchas.
La mayori'a de los mexicanos tienen una mezcla de sangre espahola y sangre india. Hay una minoria de origen espanol y otra minoria de origen indio.
El indio que vive en la ciudad habla espanol como los otros mexicanos, pero en las montahas y en las selvas viven algunos indios aislados del resto del pais por falta de comunicaciones, y estos indios no hablan espanol; hablan dialectos indios complet- amente diferentes del espanol. Existen casi cien dialectos diferentes.
Sin embargo, en las regiones donde hay escuelas, los ninos indios aprenden la lengua nacional y, naturalmente, cuando hablan y leen esta lengua, aprenden algo de Mexico y del resto del mundo. 2
in this reading the teacher can (1) distinguish between Spanish and Spanish- American pronunciations, (2) discuss the mestizo in Spanish America, (3) describe and explain the difference between the cultural life of the cities and the rural areas, (4) explain the importance of communication and transportation in a country's cultural development, (5) note the tendency in the Spanish-speaking world for the lifeblood of the country to gravitate toward the larger cities, (6) compare the dialectal differences in pronunciation with regionalisms in their own country, and (7) point out the difficulty Spanish speakers have pronouncing a word which has an initial s followed by a consonant.
The students should practice reading aloud outside of class, so that they are able to read in class the following day with acceptable pronunciation and intonation. They should write out the answers to the accompanying questions about the story and answer them orally in class without looking at their papers. In addition, they should be sufficiently familiar with the content, the vocabulary, and the structures to be able to give an oral or a written summary of the reading by the time they arrive in class.
The purposes during the preview of the drills to be assigned are to get the students to understand the meaning of the sentences and to be able to pronounce the forms. Normally, in the audio-lingual approach, conditioning of structure is accomplished in stages. First, the important structures occur in the dialogs. They are then recalled before the same forms are drilled and manipulated in pattern practice. Any explanation or generalization is given after the forms have been drilled thoroughly.
The forms to be used as a basis for this example are the irregular verbs in the past tense that are introduced in the dialog of unit 9 of Modern Spanish, Second Edition. In the dialog, the students learn a past tense form of the irregular verbs to go, to have, to want, to be able, and to be. In presenting this new structure, the teacher can assume that the students already know the regular past tense forms and that they understand the concept of past tense in their own language. Also, they should know the subject pronouns, the meanings of the verbs to be studied, and be familiar with the concept of verb endings. Therefore, the main problem in this case is one of establishing the meaning of the verb and of conditioning the relationship between the person and the corresponding verb ending. Since the students have only recently studied the dialog, the teacher can simply ask them to recall the meanings of these sentences and proceed to drill all the person endings by means of a repetition drill for each verb. Another approach is to begin with the same verbs in the present tense and to introduce the past tense forms by changing a time indicator word such as now or today to yesterday or last night.
The assignment is for the students to practice person-number substitution drills. For example, in the sentence, / was sick, substitute the following subjects, they, he, we, you, etc. and the corresponding forms of the verb to be. Then the students can practice a tense substitution drill. For example, change the tense of the following sentences from present to past: lam sick. He has a date. You can eat. The students should do these drills until they can respond orally and quickly in class the following day. The best way to practice these drills, of course, is with a tape recorder. In most high schools this type of practice is not available; therefore, the students must recite orally from the book or write the sentences as they practice.
Exercises
The purpose of the preview of exercises to be assigned is to establish a cognitive awareness of the concepts involved, and completing the exercises involves a conscious application of conceptual knowledge.
Two grammar points are to be learned in the sample lesson, chosen from lesson 7 of Beginning Spanish: A Cultural Approach. The students are to learn when to use, and when not to use, the definite article with the names of languages and the third person singular and plural verb forms for each of the three classes of verbs in Spanish.
In deciding how to introduce the use of the definite article with names of languages, the teacher needs to consider what the students already know in their own language and in the second language. By the time this topic is presented, they should already know the definite articles, and, of course, they know that they do not use the article with languages in English. In fact, a good place to start would be with the similarities between the two languages. In English one says, "He speaks Spanish," "They are talking in French," and "This is a book of Italian." Starting with these sentences, the teacher can simply give direct translations to let the students see that in these sentences the two languages use identical forms of expression. From this relationship, the teacher can lead to the dissimilar forms, "Spanish is an important language," and "The national language of Mexico is Spanish." In both these sentences, a definite article is required before the name of the language in Spanish.
The teacher asks himself the same questions before undertaking a preview of the verb endings to be learned. Given the students' background in languages at this point, the teacher may have to build mostly from the students' knowledge of their own language. Since the examples in the book are to work, to read, and to exist, it is a good idea for the teacher to select other verbs for his presentation. Taking the verbs to talk, to learn, and to live, he can begin by writing the three infinitives on the chalkboard. His next step is to get the students to understand that these are names of actions just as desk is the name of a thing. Following this point, he asks the students to use each of
these verbs with two different subjects, the teacher and the teachers. Thus, the phrases the teacher talks , the teachers talk , the teacher learns , the teachers learn , the teacher lives , and the teachers live are written on the chalkboard. Now the teacher points out to them what they already know in a functional sense but what they may not have thought about, i.e., the form of the verb used with a singular subject and the form corresponding to plural subjects. (And he may do so without using the traditional grammatical terms such as verb, subject , singular , and plural , which were used here.) At this point the students are ready to consider these same structures in the second language. First, the teacher gives the three equivalent infinitives in Spanish, explaining that hablar, aprender, and vivir belong to different groups of verbs and that the letter before the last r indicates to which group each belongs. Then the teacher gives the forms of the first conjugation verb, pointing out the letter a used in the endings of an a verb and contrasting the singular and plural endings with the singular and plural forms in English. Also, in comparing the two, he should be careful to distinguish between the infinitive sign of a verb and the stem that names the action. With this information the students know enough to participate in completing the other Spanish equivalents. They should be able to give the third person singular and plural of an everb using an e instead of an a. The fact that they will miss the / verb by putting an / in the endings only serves to emphasize that / verbs do not follow the pattern of the first two conjugations. (Since i verbs are the most irregular of the three, permitting the students to fall into a trap may help them to be more aware of these differences. At times, students can learn more by making an error.)
Next, the teacher asks the students to open their books and gives the assignment for the next class period. Together, he and the class complete two or three of the sentences in each exercise. This cooperative effort enables him to determine whether or not the explanation has really been understood and insures that the students know exactly what they are to do. Three exercises are to be assigned in this lesson: (1) (This boy speaks Spanish. These boys ....), (2) (The boys live here. The boy ....), and (3) (The Mexicans speak Spanish. The national language of Mexico is . . . .). These exercises are to be written, and the students should study them to the point that they are able to give the correct answers orally without looking at their papers.
VIEW ACTIVITIES
One of the three basic differences between the audio-lingual and cognitive approaches relates to the type of classroom activities employed during the view part of the class hour. Since audio-lingual proponents believe that language is conditioned behavior and that it can be learned only by a great deal of repetition, they spend most of this part of the class hour repeating dialog lines or practicing pattern drills, either written or oral. Since the cognitive
advocates believe that language is creative, rule-governed behavior and that the students must acquire an underlying conceptual knowledge of what they are doing, they spend most of the view portion of the class covering cognitive-type exercises that have been prepared as homework or discussing material that has been read. With both types of texts, the latter portion of the view activities should include "real" language practice over the content of the dialog or reading.
The objectives were stated in the preview. The teacher's purpose at this stage is to check on the attainment of the stated objectives. First, she models all the lines again. Next, she asks the students to repeat the lines together. Given this brief warm-up, the students should be ready to display the abilities they were supposed to acquire during the homework assignment. The teacher first calls on individuals to repeat the lines after her. While they are doing so, she should take note of the speed, pronunciation, and intonation. All weaknesses should be pointed out to the students and drilled. (The teacher may want to give grades for these repetitions.) Next, she gives the lines in the second language and asks the students for the first-language meanings. Following this exercise, the class proceeds to the more difficult task of giving the second-language sentence when cued by the first-language version.
After having drilled the lines in the fashion described in the preceding paragraph, the students should be able to discuss the content of those lines. The teacher now asks questions about what happened. For example, over the dialog lines studied the following questions can be asked:
1. (Where are the boys?)
2. (Who is in the cafe?)
3. (What are their names?)
4. (Is it a good cafe?)
5. (How's the coffee?)
6. (Do they order Cokes?)
7. (What do they order?)
8. (Who comes in?)
9. (Is he happy?)
10. (How does he look?)
11. (Why didn't he go to school yesterday?)
12. (What did they have at school?)
13. (Did he want to go?)
14. (Why didn't he?)
15. (How was his day?)
16. (How was he?)
Questions of this type are often not included in the text itself. If such is the case, the teacher should put these questions on cards and save them for future use.
At the point in the sequence where the students begin to talk about content of a dialog or a reading, they are beginning "real" language practice in the sense that they are using answers to communicate some information that they have rather than to answer questions merely to practice structural forms without regard to meaning.
The teacher's purpose is to check on the objectives stated in the preview. He checks the ability to read aloud from the printed page by asking randomly picked students to read a paragraph until he is satisfied with their pronunciation. Next, he asks if there are any phrases or sentences in the reading that are not clear. If there are none, he gives the correct answers to the questions while the students check their papers. While they are doing this, he encourages them to ask questions about any answers they do not understand. He then checks the objective of being able to answer the questions orally by asking them to answer the questions without looking at their papers. Once they can answer the questions, the students should be able to give an oral or written summary of the content of the reading. Since they have just answered the questions orally, he may ask them to spend five minutes writing a resume of the reading.
The teacher spends this portion of the class hour doing the assigned pattern drills, first chorally and then individually. For maximum efficiency and effect, the pace must be brisk. Otherwise, the whole purpose of acquiring automatic responses is lost, and boredom quickly sets in. If the students cannot perform as desired, the teacher may do the person-number substitution drills as repetition drills. Then she can do the same drill again at a more difficult level. The important thing is that she should not hesitate to repeat the same drill until the students can perform at a satisfactory level. From time to time, she checks the meaning to be sure the students know what they are saying. If the students can do the drills well, the teacher at the end of the drill session can begin to insert some questions from a choice-question response drill. For example, "Did you do the lesson or didn't you want to?" Although this is still a drill in the sense that the purpose is to practice structural forms, this type of drill approaches very closely the format of "real" language questions. It is an important step toward being able to answer personalized questions. Students
who can answer such questions well should be ready to take the step to attach meaning to structure.
To terminate the drill phase of the sequence leading toward a functional knowledge of the use of these irregular verb forms in the past tense, most audio-linguists describe briefly the grammar of what has just been drilled. The generalization is merely a summary rather than a complete explanation as given in a cognitive class. Here, it is sufficient to point out, with examples, that the endings are unstressed as opposed to the stressed endings of regular verbs, that the verb to go is completely irregular and must be learned separately, and that the other verbs have a systematized set of endings even though the stems are irregular.
The objectives were to be able to choose the correct form of the verb to correspond to a third-person singular or plural subject and to be able to do the exercises orally without the use of their papers. Prior to asking the students to give the proper forms without referring to their papers, the teacher reads the correct answers. While he is reading, the students correct their mistakes and ask any questions pertaining to their errors. The teacher then goes over the same exercises again, asking the students to do them this time without looking at their papers. (This type of activity prevents the students from writing down answers without really learning the material.) If there is time remaining, the teacher can ask some structured questions similar to the following:
Answer the following questions with a yes answer:
1. (Does John work here?) a verbs, third-person singular (Does Mary speak Spanish?) etc.
2. (Does joe live here?) e and / verbs, third-person singular (Is Carl learning a lot?) etc.
Answer the following questions with a no answer:
1. (Do they work a lot?) a verbs, third-person plural, etc.
2. (Are they learning well?) e and / verbs, third-person plural, etc.
The classroom activities of the review part of the class hour should all involve using "real" language activities to go beyond the content of the text. During this portion of the class the activities should resemble true language contexts as far as possible in the classroom. Before initiating any of the procedures in the review, the teacher should ask herself two questions: "Could such
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presentations, exchanges, interchanges, etc. occur in the second-language situation?" "Are the students combining structure and meaning to express their own ideas, opinions, information, and intentions?" The activities during this part of the class hour are at the highest level of skill development and approach quite closely to the true communicative situation. This level of language usage is the goal toward which the teacher and the students have been working. Now the goal is almost within their grasp. All that remains is to provide opportunities for practice. At this level the teacher should assume only a minor role as she urges the students to carry the major burden of maintaining the tempo of the class. As the students' skill increases, the teacher's active participation in the classroom activities should decrease in direct proportion to their abilities.
The long-range objectives and short-range objectives specify the ability to communicate in all four language skills. Therefore, all four must be practiced in the review. The review is more than just a warm-up. It is more than just a series of personalized questions. It is certainly more than a restatement of all the rules that the students should know, and it is more than one final repetition of the entire dialog before the test. The review is the time to use the language, i.e., to listen to it, to speak it, to read it, and to write it, in situations in which the object is not to practice sounds nor to learn vocabulary nor to focus on structures, but to communicate ideas, to focus on the message rather than on its form, to see whether the students can express themselves within the limits of their language experience.
During the review session the teacher should concentrate on establishing an atmosphere in which the students feel free to participate and use the language. Such an atmosphere cannot be maintained along with the almost constant criticism and correction that are common to many language classes. There should be continuous encouragement toward self-expression. As long as the teacher and the other students can understand, there should be no reference to correct pronunciation, words, or forms because the object is to concentrate on the message. Naturally, there is some overload on the students' mental processes when they begin to combine form and meaning. This may cause many additional mistakes to creep into their use of the second language, but this stage of faltering, hesitation, and committing errors is unavoidable in the language-learning sequence. There can be no automatization of language usage apart from the true-speech situation, i.e., speech production with meaning in a communicative context. Even students who have memorized dialogs at native speed slow down considerably when using the same vocabulary and structures in a real give-and-take language situation. The teacher should expect this period of language weakness, and she should warn the students to expect it. By concentrating on the fact that they are learning to communicate in the language, the teacher can make this a period of satisfac-
tion and enthusiasm as opposed to a period of frustration, embarrassment, and deflated egos. No parent scolds a child learning to walk for being unable to run. Neither should the teacher scold students as they stumble taking their first halting, even clumsy steps in the language. Periods of uncertainty and insecurity are times for encouragement and praise, not criticism and correction.
In order to avoid impeding student progress in the review period, the teacher should discipline herself to refrain from the constant and almost overwhelming urge to correct immediately every single error. If the teacher demands perfect language prior to usage, she may just as well "close up shop." The students are not expected to be perfect in any other subject, but often they are expected to be in a second-language class. They did not learn their own language without making any errors, but they are expected to learn a second language in such a fashion. Thousands, even millions, of non-native speakers around the world can communicate very well even though their pronunciation and syntactical arrangements may not resemble in many aspects that of a native speaker.
Many students sincerely want to learn to use a language, but they are discouraged in their efforts by continuous criticism. To learn to use a language, the students must reach a point at which they can concentrate on what they are saying instead of how they are saying it. They often cannot reach this point, however, because the teacher places grammatical and phonological interruptions and stumbling blocks in their way. The language teacher tends to have an unwarranted obsession with perfection in the classroom. She should remember that the goal is not native speech, but the ability to communicate with a native. The time to correct is during the view portion of the class hour. During the review, the students must be permitted to focus on what they are saying. Significant errors that may hinder communication may be mentioned at the end of the review, but even then the stress should be placed on what the students were able to say rather than the weaknesses—on the positive rather than the negative.
Prior preparation is most important in the application phase of language learning. Creating effective classroom activities that indeed foster true language practice, as opposed to skill development activities, requires much anticipatory planning. The amount of "real" language materials varies from book to book, but with any text the teacher needs to supplement and expand these materials.
As a follow-up to the content questions over the dialog, the teacher should personalize the material to the students' own lives. In succeeding days, he
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should provide listening comprehension practice, speaking practice, reading practice, and writing practice over this same material. For example, to practice the speaking skill he can ask the students the following questions:
1. (Do you know where there is a good cafe in town?)
2. (What's it called?)
3. (Where is it?)
4. (Is the food good?)
5. (How's the coffee?)
6. (Do you like coffee?)
7. (Do you like it black or with milk and sugar?)
8. (Do you like it hot?)
9. (Do you drink coffee for breakfast? At other times?)
10. (What do you drink with your meals if you do not drink coffee?)
11. (You look glum today. Are you sad?)
12. (Did you have a test yesterday?)
13. (Did you go to school yesterday?)
14. (Did you have a bad day?)
15. (Were you sick?)
As the teacher asks these questions, he should take advantage of every opportunity to turn each question into a conversational exchange, if possible. For example, when the questioned student answers that she did have a test yesterday, ask her what class it was in, whether it was easy or difficult, how well she did, etc. Thus, the teacher can find out whether the students are really communicating or merely manipulating structural forms, and he can also move away from the stilted activity that question-and-answer practice can become in the absence of true communication. Also, the possibility for conversational exchange and the normality of the situation are enhanced by grouping the questions around topics.
After asking these questions to the point at which the students can answer them fairly easily, the teacher can begin to provide practice in which the students carry more of the responsibility. He can divide the class into small groups with one of the better students to lead a discussion of the same topic. At the end of five or ten minutes, the discussion leaders can summarize what was said in their group for the rest of the class. On another day, the students can, if time permits, be asked to prepare short oral reports in which they tell about their favorite restaurant or discuss the refreshments they drink or discuss something that happened in the past. Or they may be asked to prepare questions based on the content of the dialog and then ask them of each other in class.
Listening comprehension practice can be provided very easily by the teacher himself. By answering questions similar to those listed above, he can
prepare a short oral presentation that provides him with practice speaking for a sustained number of sentences. (The teacher often needs this practice also.) While he is talking, the students gain valuable listening practice. Comprehension can be checked in follow-up questions or by some type of self-checked quiz. For example, without too much difficulty, the teacher can prepare a short oral presentation similar to this:
(Say, I know where there is a good cafe. Some of the other teachers and I go there often after school to rest a few minutes. It's called Smitty's and it's over on Tenth Street. I don't like coffee myself, but I have a Coke. Yesterday I didn't go. I wanted to, but I couldn't. I gave a test in class, and I had to go home to grade it.)
If the teacher does not have time to prepare listening comprehension materials, he can ask the students to prepare short oral reports. This gives them practice in doing more than simply answering or asking questions and provides listening practice for the other students, if the teacher provides a follow-up activity to check comprehension and to encourage them to listen.
Reading and writing practice can be prepared in the same way as the oral activities. By altering slightly the questions, the teacher can write short, original paragraphs that the students should be able to read and comprehend. Comprehension can be stressed with self-checked written quizzes such as true-false or multiple-choice, or with oral or written questions. Again if the teacher does not have the free time necessary to prepare materials for reading comprehension, he can assign written reports based on guiding questions similar to those used in the oral question-and-answer session and use the best ones for reading practice. There is a great deal of talent and originality in most language classes, and with a slight amount of editing here and there the teacher can take advantage of that talent to assist in the preparation of supplementary materials.
In addition to these structured materials related specifically to the content of the text, the students need to have related but unstructured materials available for further practice. The collection of such materials requires much time and patience, perhaps more than any teacher has. By being always on the look-out and by sharing with other teachers, however, he can gradually build a very respectable file.
In the subsequent considerations of reading, drills, and activities, the same principles apply and the same possibilities exist. Therefore, the discussion of the following topics is limited to examples of personalized questions that may be used. The art of asking personalized questions is one that the language teacher should practice diligently. Even a modern language can be a so-called dead language unless the teacher helps to keep it alive. He can do this by relating it to the students and showing them that learning a language involves much more than memorizing a never-ending series of dialogs or lists
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of words. Too often, means become ends in themselves. Personalization of content is extremely important because many students never even get this far in the language development sequence. The teacher should attempt always to take his students beyond this stage to practice in connected discourse and with nonstructured contexts.