Sagaing University of Education Department of English BEd Correspondence Course Second year ELT-2001 (CE) English Language Teaching Scanned with CamScannerTeaching of Listening Skills The Listening Lesson from Richards (2015) Key Issues in Language Teaching. CUP. pp.304-397. The Listening Lesson A typical sequence in a listening lesson involves a three-part lesson sequence consisting of pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening activities. The pre-listening phase ‘The purpose of pre-listening activities is to prepare the student for a listening activity by providing essential background information, by presenting any unknown vocabulary that is central to the listening task, and which cannot be guessed from context, and by helping the student select a suitable purpose and strategy for listening. Pre-listening activities normally take no more than a few minutes to complete and should not become a lesson in themselves. Here are some examples: + Choosing a strategy: The teacher introduces the kind of text the students will listen to and ask them to think about how they will listen to the text. What kind of information do they think it will contain? Should they listen for main ideas or for details? + Brainstorming: Before listening to a text about a traffic accident, students try to come up with as many words as they can related to the topic. Predicting: Before listening to an account of a singing competition, students predict some of the things they may hear based on the topic of the story, e.g. “The competition where everything went wrong.” + Picture description: Students generate a list of questions they think might be discussed in a text they will listen to. * Questioning: Students generate a list of questions they think might be discussed ina text they will listen to. * Story building: To prepare students for key words, students are given a list of eight to ten action verbs from a text and try to put them in the form of a story. The while-listening phase This is the main focus of a listening lesson. It is the period during which students process texts for meaning and respond in different ways, according to the type of text they are listening to and their purpose in listening. It’ provides an opportunity for intensive listening practice and also helps students develop strategies they can use to improve their listening, such as focusing on key parts of a text and guessing words from the context. It is important that the activities teachers choose help the students Scanned with CamScannerprocess the meaning of the text, rather than distracting them because of the nature of the task — for example, by giving them a task that requires too much reading or writing. Often students complete a series of tasks at the while-listening phase, perhaps listening first with one focus (e.g. identifying main ideas), followed by a follow-up task with a different focus (such as listening for details). In developing tasks for use during the while-listening phase, it is important to keep In mind the purpose of such tasks. Their primary purpose is to guide students through the listening process and to help them improve their understanding and use of listening skills and strategies. Tasks that have this aim should be ones that can be completed during the process of listening. The following are examples of tasks of this kind: + Predicting: Students listen to the first part of a story and predict what happens next. They then listen to the next part of the text to compare their predictions. + Sequencing: Students number, in sequence, a series of events that occur in a text. + True-false: While they listen, students tick if statements are true or false. * Matching: Students match pictures to things that are described. + Key words: The teacher stops the audio just before a key word occurs and asks students what word they think they will hear. They then listen to compare. + Gap-fill (loze) dialogue: Students receive a dialogue with one speaker's part deleted. They try to guess the missing parts and then listen and compare. + Check predictions: Students listen and check to see if predictions they made about a text are correct. + Chart filling: Students complete a chart as they listen, based on information in a text, Listening classes sometimes contain learners of mixed ability levels. In these situations it may be useful to develop tasks of different difficulty levels that can be used with the same listening text. The vignette below describes how a while-listening task can be used when students may be of different ability levels: [An effective while: ening task: lOn a purely practical note, it's useful to got students to compare theit| answers to tasks between listening, but often loss oxperionced teachors gloss lover this stage. Imagine a detailed listening task with cight comprehension questions. The| learners listen once and get a fow answors right. The teacher says, ‘Do you| Scanned with CamScanner|want to listen again?’ Naturally, they say ‘yes’, so the teacher plays the tape| again, and the learners aren't much further on. |A more effective method is to play the tape once; then ask learners to check lwith their partners. As they discuss, the teacher monitors carefully and Idecides, based on the number of answers the learners have got right, to play the tape again. By allowing the learners to pair-check, you are giving them the opportunity to eliminate the answers they both have. This allows them| to focus on the ones they disagreed on or both missed first time around, lwhich moves them forward. After the next listening, students pair-check| again and feed back Peter Nicoll, teacher and teacher educator, Auckland, New Zealand| The post-listening phase The post-listening phase is an opportunity to check students’ understanding of a text, and where errors in understanding occurred, to explore what caused them and what follow-up is appropriate. This may involve a'microanalysis of sections of the text, to enable students to recognize such features as blends, reduced words, ellipsis, etc., and other features of spoken discourse that they were unable to process or recognize. It is also an opportunity for students to respond to the content of the text in different ways and to make links to other skills, such as writing or discussion. And it can also be used to return to the text and examine some of its structure, grammar and vocabulary, and to expand students’ language awareness, using activities based on some of the features of the texts (Richards, 2005). Here are examples: + Analyze problems: The teacher checks comprehension problems with a text and replays the part of the text that caused difficulty, to identify the problem. + Extension activities: Students carry out an activity as a response to what they heard. For example, they may prepare a letter to a newspaper after listening to a discussion of a problem in their city. + Language study: The students examine a transcript of a text and review some of the language that occurred in the text. There may be follow-up written activities to practise new language. + Read and compare: Students read a text on the same topic they listened to and compare information in the two texts. * Vocabulary development: Students use some of the words that occurred in a text to complete a gap-fil (cloze) passage. + Summary: Students prepare a summary of a text they heard and compare summaries in groups + Answering questions: Open-ended questions can be asked. Some types might lend themselves nicely to discussion in small groups. The answers to some Scanned with CamScannerquestions can be found in the passage, but other types of questions might be asking about the attitude of the speaker. Was the person angry, upset, happy, excited? Another type of question is an inference question, where the answer {s not stated explicitly, but can only be inferred from the text. Dictogloss is a recently discovered listening activity, which requires the use off [comprehensive listening skills. It can be planned as a post-listening activity. It has four stages: 11. Preparation. The teacher prepares the students by briefly talking about the topic and Ikey words or asking general questions about the text they are going to hear. The teacher) should also make sure students know what to do exactly. 12, Dictation, The teacher dictates the text twice. For the first time, students just listen and} focus on the meaning, For the second time, the students take extensive notes. The teacher |should make sure that the dictation speed is almost at the speed of normal speech. 13, Reconstruction. Based on their notes, the students work in pairs or groups and} reconstruct the text they have heard, l4. Analysis and correction. The students compare their version of the text with the original, Isentence by sentence. lWork in groups of five. One person dictates the text below and the other four people take notes, ‘They should close the book. When everyone has finished, the four students work in pairs and reconstruct the text. [Text for dictogloss In 1985 there was an earthquake in Mexico City. Many thousands of people died in the disaster. People searched the city for missing relatives and friends, Rescuers worked without rest for many days. There was a great deal of suffering and enormous destruction. (Taken from Nunan, 1995:29) Scanned with CamScannerTeaching of Speaking Skills i ing skill i i 1. But the Gaining control of the speaking skill involves practising that control t notion of practised control need not rule out the value of some ea ace and repetitive practice activities of the type traditionally seee ee diilling. Drilling - that is imitating and repeating words, phrases, and even whole utterances ~ may in fact be a useful noticing technique, since it draws attention to material that learners might not otherwise have registered. Thus, after learners have listened to a taped dialogue, and studied the transcript, the teacher can isolate specific phrases or utterances and ask learners to repeat them. The effect of repeating them is bound to make them more salient. However, if ail the dialogue were drilled, this benefit would be lost. Drilling may also function to move new items from working memory into Jong-term memory, just as we tend to memorize new pin codes or telephone numbers by repeating them a number of times. 2 | : ‘Anothe? argument often used in favour of drilling is that it provides a | means of gaining articulatory control over language — of ‘getting your tongue round it’. This is probably more useful when learners are already familiar with an item — when they have already ‘got their minds round it’ — but are still having trouble producing the item fiuidly. That is to say, drilling acts as a kind of fine tuning for articulation, rather than as a learning technique in itself. This is likely to be particularly useful in gaining control of short, functional chunks and their associated intonation patterns, such as these discourse marke: by the way [that reminds me as Iwas saying while | remember before | forget talking of which. Or these sentence starters: [P° youmindifl...? | The thing is, Do you happen to know. wn? Do you think you could | Would it be OK if! Or social formulas and useful expressions: How do you do? [See you tater. [es looking, thanks. Can itake a message? | How do you spell that? Or catchphrases and idiomatic pheases: Better late than never. | Long time no see. Look who's taking. It’s on the tip of my The sooner the better. tongue. By both memorizing these chunks and gaining control over their Auent articulation, learners are increasing their fluency store. As we saw in Chapter 1, fluency is the capacity to string long runs together, with appropriately placed pausing, This in turn is partly a fanction of having a store of memorized phrases, or chunks, that act as islands of reliability’, on which the speaker can momentarily rest while planning the next run. Drilling may help in the storing and retrieving of these chunks as whole units. In this sense, drilling, in effect, is a fluency-enhancing technique. This contrasts with the traditional view that drilling is aimed primarily at developing accuracy. Asa general rule of thumb, drilling involves quick choral (ie. all the class) n of the teachers model (or a recorded model on tape), followed 5 Scanned with CamScannerby individuals randomly nominated by the teacher. It’s important that the Iearners mimic the stress and intonation of the model: there's a world of difference benween How do you SPELL that? and How do you spell THAT?, for example. For the phrases with ‘empty slots’, such as sentence starters, the teacher can provide prompts to fill the slot. For example: Do you mind iff sit here? Do you mind if | sit here? smoke : D0 you mind if I smoke? Teacher: open the window Student 3: Do you mind if ! open the window? ete, Here, then, are some techniques that involve cither individual or choral repetition: Drilling ~ the Iearnersare played a recording ofan interaction, in which 7\ are embedded a number of useful chunk-type items, such as formulaic ways of expressing specific speech acts (as in the dialogue in Chapter 4, page 51). After working on their understanding of the dialogue, they are given the transcript. The recording is played again, but the teacher Pauses it at strategic points, and the leamers repeat the immediately preceding utterance in unison, and then individually. Only key phrascs are repeated, not the whole dialogue. Here, for example, is how part of the above mentioned dialogue might be used: : Recording jey, Barry, what a great tie! Thanks, Actual had It for ages, but | never wear A: it suits you. [pause] (Chorus) It suits you. (Individual 1) It suits you. (individual 2) It suits you. (individgal 3) It suits you. Listen, Barry, | was thinking, do you fancy lunch together some time this week? B: That’d be nice. [pause] (Chorus) That’d be nice. (Individual 1) That'd be nice. (individual 2) That'd be nice. (individual 3) That'd be nice. What about Friday? A: Perfect. Do you mind if | ask Jackie? B: Well, actually, I'm sorry Al, Scanned with CamScannera i " idn’t. Vd rather you didn't. [pause] __ | (Chorus) I'd rather you di | = (individual 1) I'd rather you didn't. (individual 2) I'd rather you didn’t. (individual 3) I'd rather you didn't, 3 j As further reinforcement, learners could be asked to underline the drilled segments on the transcript and to mark the main stressed ey in each segment. They can then read the dialogues aloud, paying speci: attention ¢o the underlined sections. Chants — a more playful form of practice that replicates the repeating and chunking nature of drilling is the usc of chants. And, because they are contextualized, the chunks in chants may in fact be more memorable than in standard drills. After all, many learners are familiar with catchphrases and idiomatic one-liners from having picked them up listening to pop songs or playing computer games. To work best, the chants should incorporate repeated examples of short, multi-word sequences, and should have a consiscent rhythm. It helps if the chants have been prerecorded. Here, for example, is a chant that embeds a number of narrating expressions: A funny thing happencd ... What happened? A funny thing happened to Lee. It’s funny how things like that happen. The same thing happened to me. An awful thing happened What happened? An awful thing happened to Jim. {It’s awful how things like that happen. {The same thing happened to him. Having heard it a few times, [earners can attempt to reconstruct it in written form, before chanting it in unison. If there is a dialogic clement, as in the above chant, the class can be divided in two, each half taking alternate lines, The chanting should be relatively fast, regulas, and rhythmic. (Asking learners to mark the main stressed words helps.) Then they can try substituting elements to produce new ‘verses’, using, Prompts, such as: [scary... Gus us creepy... Fleur... her [crazy .... Clem... them ] Milling activities ~ one way of providing repetitive practice of formulaic Janguage in a more communicative framework is to set up a milling activity. This involves learners (space permitting) walking around, asking all the other learners questions with a view to completing survey or finding a closc match. For example, in order to find out 7 Scanned with CamScannerhow adventurous the class is, cach learner first prepares three or four questions that fit this frame: For example, Would you ever go hang-gliding? Would | you ever eat snake? etc. They then survey the rest of the class, making a note of the number of affirmative answers. This will involve the repeated asking of the question, butina context thatrequires re-allocating some attention away Be ae eC Aaya and on to other mental | and physical tasks, such as | egistering and noting the answers. Itis this requirement, the enforced redistribution | of attentional resources, that helps the chunking process. | 1. on te question, belanng Hove you According to cognitive skill } eer... ?Stnd up, and ask everyone inthe theory, diverting attention | 4s | away from a repetitive task | Ask guesionst find out more. | 2 Your teacher will give you a card which begins | Find someone wh forces the streamlining of the | separate components of the task into one fluid procedure, Reporting to the class the results of the milling activity (c.g. Maxim said he would | never dive off the high beard; Olga said ...) is also another way of providing repetitive practice where attention is on meaning as much as on form, Hereontherightisasimilar sequence ftom a coursebook, which involves the repetition of formulaic language related to experience and travel: Scanned with CamScannerTeaching of Reading Skills Approaches to reading Reading to oneself (as opposed to reading aloud) is, like listening, a ‘receptive’ skill, and similar teaching procedures can be used to help learners. The task~feedback circle works equally well with reading texts, and many of the guidelines given in Section 2 are also easily adaptable. ‘The most obvious differences arc to do with the fact that people read at different speeds and in different ways. Whereas a recording takes a definite length of time to play through, in a reading activity, individuals can control the speed they work at and what they are looking at, Task 113: Difficulties when reading a foreign language What are your own main problems when trying to read a text in a language that you don’t know very well? Commentary a 8 Maybe: Idon’t know enough vocabulary. Ineed the dictionary all the time. Tt’s very slow — it takes ages just to get through a few sentences. Toften get to the stage where I understand all the individual words, but the whole thing eludes me completely. Because it’s slow, the pleasure or interest in the subject matter is soon lost. & Many learners approach reading texts expecting to read them thoroughly andto stop only when they have understood every word. Clearly, there is value in thisas a way of improving their vocabulary and their understanding of grammar, but, 3s with listening, this kind of approach does not necessarily make them into better teaders, because this plodding, word-by-word approach is not the way that we most often do our reading in real life, In order to make students better readers, we need first of all to raise their awareness that it’s not always essential to understand every word, and that practising some different reading techniques in English may be very useful to them. And if their basic strategy is to read slowly and ponderously, then a good first strategy could be to help them learn to read fast; not worrying about understanding every word; not, perhaps, even understanding most words, but still achieving a specific and useful goal. 9 Scanned with CamScannerTask 114: Selecting an appropriate reading task tmagine that you have given students a copy of a tourist leaflet publicising a nearby town and advertising local attractions, museums, special events and with information on prices, opening times, etc. What would be a suitable task to get students to read this quickly (rather than read every word)? Commentary & mm You probably want tasks that encourage students to search for specific small sections of text which they then read more carefully to find a required piece of information. These might be factual, information questions such as ‘When does the Military Museum close?’ ‘Can I take my dog into Chapultepec Park?’ ‘What is a good souvenir to take back from this region?” ‘How much would it cost fora family of four to go swimming at the lido?” ‘What are the newest animals in the z00?” Students doing this will be reading the material in a similar way one to how People might read itin everyday life. & Skimming and scanning Many activities designed to increase reading speeds are variations on the following two idea: + Read quickly and get the gist of a passage. + Read quickly and find a specific piece of information. ‘The first of these is also known as skimming. A typical skimming task would be a general question from the teacher, such as ‘Is this passage about Jill’s memories of summer or winter?’ or ‘Is this story set in a school or a restaurant?” The learners would attempt to find the answer quickly, without reading every word of the Passage, by ‘speed-reading” through some portions of the text. Skimming is mainly concerned with finding key topics, main ideas, overall theme, basic structure, etc. ‘The second of the ideas is also known as scanning. A common scanning activity is searching for information in a leaflet or directory, and a typical scanning task would be “What time does the Birmingham train leave?’ or “What does Cathy take with her to the meeting?” Skimming and scanning are both ‘top-down’ skills (see Chapter 8 Section 3). Although scanning is involved with details of the text, the way thata reader finds those details involves processing the whole text, moving her eyes, quickly over the whole page, searching for key words or clues from the textual layout and the content that will enable her to focus in on smaller sections. of text that she are likely to get answers from. Skimming and scanning can be summarised as follows: Skimming Fast reading for: key topics, main ideas, overall theme, basic structure, etc, Scanning Past reading for: specific individual pieces of information (e.g. names, addresses, facts, prices, numbers, dates, ete.) 10 Scanned with CamScannerTask 115: ChoosIng useful reading activities Which of the following seem to be useful reading activities and which not? Why? Briefly work out an alternative procedure for the less satisfactory ones. 1 The class reads a whole page of classified advertisements in the newspaper, using thelr dictlonaries to check up alt unknown words. 2 Students each have a copy of the Guardian Weakly newspaper. Ask them to find the word over somewhere on the front page. 3 Place a pile of tocal tourist leaflets on the table and explain that students, In groups of four, can plan a day out tomorrow. 4 Students read a short extract from a novel and answer five multiple-choice comprehension questions about fine points of detail, Commentary mI One test for useful reading (or listening work) might be to check how far tasks reflect real-life uses of the same text. Ifa text is used in class in ways that are reasonably similar to real life, it is likely that the task will be effective. Procedure I seems unsatisfactory because it is an unrealistic use of the advertisements; in real life, no one would read them in such a way. A more realistic task would require them to scan the ads for specific items (as we do when we want, say, to buy a second-hand TV). So ‘Whatis the best TV I could buy?” would be a far more realistic task. Procedure 2 is similarly strange. This is a scanning exercise, but an entirely unrealistic one. We might well scan the front page of a newspaper looking for names of people or countries that we wanted to read about or headings that directed us to information we needed (such as weather), but it seems unlikely that we would search for a single word like over (though as a game, it could be fun). For a more useful scanning task, students could be asked to find where specific articles are or find certain factual information. Skimming tasks would also be useful, to get the gist of an article for example. Procedure 3, although it perhaps appears a litde strange initially, is in facta very interesting reading activity. The students will be using the leaflets for precisely the purpose for which they were written, and will be reading them in order to obtaina whole range of appropriate ideas and information: sceing what's available, checking opening times, prices, etc. As a bonus, there will be a lot of speaking as well as reading. Procedure 4 describes an exercise commonly found in exams. It is clearly useful as a demanding way of testing comprehension, and is useful for studying the fine shades of meaning a writer conveys. It is, however, important to ensure that this kind of activity is not the only reading work done, partly because it scems to be confirming to students that this is the normal (or only) way to read a novel. Students also need to be shown approaches to a novel that allow them to read fluently, at speed, without worrying about catching every nuance. it Real-life purposes are not the only way of measuring the usefulness of classroom reading work. Often we might want to train students in specific reading: techniques or strategies, things that will help their furure reading, even if the immediate classroom work doesn’t itself reflect a real-life purpose. u Scanned with CamScannerTop-down reading th listeni i 4 ‘small, ‘As with listening lessons, many reading lessons move from to ‘small’, ite. ‘top-down’ H from overview to details. Using the task-feedback circle as astarting point, we can plan a route map fora basic reading lesson (Figure 8.5). Introduction and lead-In, e.g. get the learners Interested In the topic, Initial discussion of key themes, make an explicit link between the topic of the text and students’ own lives and experlences, focus on Important language that will come In the text 2 | First task (pre-reading), e.g. predict from some extracted information (illustration, key words, headlines, etc.), read questions about the text, students compose thelr own H questions H T Pre-text | 1 Text 3 | Tasks to focus on fast reading for gist (skimming), e.g. ‘ check text against predictions made beforehand, guess the | title from a choice of three options, put events (or | illustrations) in the correct order 4 | Tasks to focus on fast reading for specific details (scanning), e.g. find single items of information in the text 5 | Tasks to focus on meaning (general points), e.g. answer questions about meaning, make use of Information In the text to do something (make a sketch, fill out a form, find out which picture is being described, etc.), discuss Issues, summarise arguments, compare viewpoints Tasks to focus on meaning (finer points, more intensive comprehensive understanding) ‘ Sia 7 | Tasks to focus on individual language items, e.g. vocabulary or grammar exercises, use of dictionaries, work out meaning | of words from context ‘ Post-text Follow-on task, e.g. role-play, debate, writing task (e.g. write a letter in reply), personalisation (e.g. ‘Have you ever had an experience like this one?") Closing, e.g. draw the lesson to a conclusion, tie up loose ends, review what has been studied and what has been learned $$ $$$ _________. Figure 8.5 Possible route map for a reading lesson 2 Scanned with CamScannerHere are some specific ideas for reading tasks Put these illustrations of the text in the correct order. Putthese cut-up paragraphs in the correctorder. Find words in the text thut mean the same as the words in this list. Read the text and find the mistakes in this illustration (or draw your own). Read the text and make a list of particular items (c.g. jobs that need doing, the author's proposals, advantages and disadvantages, etc.). > + Give aheadline to each section ofthe article Cor match given headlines with the sections). + Find appropriate places in the text to reinsert some sentences that have previously been separated from the text. + Writea reply. Lock atthe title and theilustraions (but not the text). Predict which of the following list of words you will find in the Solve the problem. Discuss (or write) the missing last paragraph of the text. Discuss interpretations of, reactions to, feelings about the text. ‘Make notes under the following headings: .. Before you read this text, make notes about what you already know about the subject. + Act out the dialogue, story, episode, etc. * Put this list of events in the correct order. For ideas on using reading to help teach grammar, see Chapter 12. Extensive reading A lot of classroom work (with courscbooks, exercises, texts) involves intensive reading, i.e. reading texts closely and carefully with the intention of gaining an understanding of as much detail as possible. This is often a stop/start kind of reading, involving going back over the same (usually short) text a number of times to find more and more in it, making sure that the words have been correctly interpreted. This is how a competent language user might read an instruction manual for a piece of flat-pack furniture or a leaflet with guidelines on whether they have to pay income tax or not. I's not the way she would typically read a chapter from a novel or a magazine article, although, in classrooms, it is often how students are asked to process such material (with true/false and other comprehension questions to check if they can pick up specific points). In everyday life, we tend to do much more extensive reading, i.e, fluent, faster reading, often of longer texts, for pleasure, entertainment and general understanding, but without such careful attention to the details, When we don't understand words or small sections, we usually just keep going, maybe only coming back when there has been a major breakdown in our understanding. ‘There is a great deal of evidence that extensive reading has a powerful impact on language learning. ‘Ihe more someone reads, the more they pick up items of Vocabulary and grammar from the texts, often without realising it, and this widening language knowledge seems to increase their overall linguistic confidence, which then influences and improves their skills in other language areas, too (though this is probably only true in cases where the material they read is self-chosen and is genuinely relevant and interesting to them), 2B Scanned with CamScannerSo, there are strong arguments for actively encouraging students to read a lot in the target language, both in and outside the classroom. We can help by: + providing.a library of readers (see below), magazines, newspapers, leaflets, ete. training learners how to sclect suitable reading material and in ways to read it; + creating a ‘book club’ environment that encourages learners to choose what books to purchase, talk about favourite books, share them with each other, write brief recommendations, ete.; + allowing sections of classroom time purely for students to read; some teachers who have five or six lessons a week set aside one of these lessons as quiet reading time. A library doesn’t need to be large. It can be something as simple as a small box of books and magazines, However, it’s important to include items that are relevant and suitable for your class. Unabridged old copies of worthy classics are probably not a good choice. Better to have a few recent magazines on themes that students like (e.g. films, pop stars, computer games, etc. for a teen class) and a small set of graded readers. Readers ‘Readers’ are books of stories (or other content) published specifically for learners to get extended exposure to English. ‘They often have their grammar and vocabulary ‘graded’ to named levels (¢.g. Elementary) so that learners at that level should stand a reasonable chance of successfully reading them. Many state the size of vocabulary used and have footnotes or glossaries of words outside their stated word limit. The main aim of readers is to provide opportunities for extensive reading for pleasure. For this reason, be careful about integrating comprehension checks, tests and exercises into your teaching. As far as possible, let students read, enjoy and move on, rather than read and then have to do lots of exercises afterwards. There are ideas for some creative extensive reading activities at the end of this section. Task 116: Reading round the class Readers can be read outside class or can be used in ‘quiet reading’ class time. ‘Some teachers use them in class for reading aloud, with different students reading short sections one after the other. This reading aloud ‘round the class’ is something many of us recalt from our schooldays. Why might this popular technique not be effective? Commentary a mm + Tread faster than he speaks. * Isso boring. + Shemakes mistakes. + Pvealready read to page 37 myself. + He can't pronounce it and he gets embarrassed, + I'mso nervous about reading, I miss the story. + Tcan’t follow the story with all these different people speaking. + Iprefer to read to mysell. “4 Scanned with CamScanner+ I's going to be 35 minutes till my go. + Icgets in the way of me hearing the voices of the characters. T's not good practice for speaking —I'd never talk like that! Obviously a Nuent reader with the ability to inject life and feeling into the reading is a wonderfut bonus. Most students, however, do not fit this description, and round-the-class reading tends to be a slow, tedious turn-off rather than a rouser of enthusiasm. Some alternatives to reading aloud round the class Here are some alternatives to try: You reading; You reading narrative, but students reading character dialogue; ‘You (having read the chapter yourself before class) telling the story in your own words, without notes, in the most spell-binding way you can; later, you get students to do the same with other bits; Students reading to each other in small groups or pairs, stopping, changing, discussing and helping each other whenever they want to Students reading silently, then, without discussion, acting out/improvising a scene based on what happened; Students silently speed-reading a chapter (say in two minutes) then reporting back, discussing, comparing, etc. before silently reading it more carefully. Extensive reading activities ‘The following ideas are some slightly more unusual a interpreting and enjoying readers in class: + Don’talways start at the beginning! Try jumping in at the middle and reading ‘one page. Predict what happened before, who the people are, where they are, etc. Or use a contents page similarly. ‘Use a key section of the story as a dictation. Create a situation quite separate from the story of the book and allow students to improvise to see how the characters would behave in a totally different environment or time. ‘The Forsytes watching TV together? Jane Eyre applying to get a temporary secretarial job? Not quite as silly as it sounds —this is a very exciting way to investigate character. Students draw the picture of the scene. When finished, they compare and discuss their different interpretations. Interviews: one student is a chat-show host or a newspaper reporter and interviews another student in the role of a character. ‘So why did you do that” “What do you really think about Joseph?’ etc. Or get all the characters together and interview them. Similarly, put the characters ‘on tial’ ina courtroom: “Whose fault was it?” Map the story (or one chapter), Draw lines on it to show different characters movements. Or map out the relationships between characters. A good classroom poster? Keep a character’s diary. Review the book fora TV programme. Meet the author. Phone-in callers can ask questions. Would it make a good film? The students are the board of directors for a film jes based around Discuss, argue. company. ‘They need to decide whether the book is film material or not. How does the story need to be changed? How can they make it more exciting? Who should direct it? Who should play the parts? Make an advertisement poster for the film. What did the front page of the local newspaper look like on the day when ...? Choose a page or paragraph from the next chapter in the book and blank out Some words. Students necd to guess what is going to happen by trying to find the missing words. Redesign the cover of the book. Write the ‘blurb' on the back cover. 15 Scanned with CamScannerTeaching of Writing Skills Process and Genre Given that writing is a process and that what we write is often heavily influenced by the constraints of genres, then these clements have to be present in learning activities. Building the writing habit (with activities such as those we looked at in the previous chapter) is extremely important, but without looking at examples of different genres to see how they are constructed, and without becoming used to drafting and re-drafting, students are unlikely to become effective writers. In past discussions of process and genre, writers tended to think that these ovo ways of looking at writing were mutually exclusive - that is, teachers either got students to look at written genres or had them concentrate on the writing process itself. Yet there is no good reason why this should be the case. We may feel, for example, that analysing a certain written genre in order to be able to write within that genre is an integral part of the planning stage in a process approach — even if that analysis encourages students and other writers to ‘disobey’ some of the genre conventions, In the same way we may well get students to concentrate on the writing process ~ drafting and re-drafting for example ~ when they are writing within a genre, The activities in this chapter, therefore, are most often a blend of genre study and process sequences. Sometimes they are more heavily weighted towards the one, sometimes to the other. But what they have in common is that students are asked to think carefully about what they are writing, and then think about and evaluate what they have written. If, over a period of time, these activities are incorporated in a programme that also includes sentence and paragraph writing (see Chapter 4) and ‘habit-building’ writing (Chapter 5), there is a good chance that students will emerge as competent writers. They will be able to operate in a variety of genres and to address a number of different audiences, producing written work of a high standard, Furthermore, these activities frequently stimulate genuinely purposeful spoken communication, Three key first stages in ‘process + genre’ writing lessons are the generation of ideas, the study of individual genres, and the planning of texts. 16 Scanned with CamScannerGenerating Ideas Often, even the most fluent writers in their own language need time to generate ideas and to plan what they are going to write. Students are no different. If we are going to ask them to write anything more substantial than instant writing (see page 63), we have to give them opportunities to think. This is especially true of more formal writing tasks such as narrative writing, discursive writing (offering opposing views on a topic before stating a considered opinion), report writing, formal letter writing, or the design of publicity material such as advertisements and posters. The following examples show ways of generating ideas (these mostly use collaboration, to make generating ideas more enjoyable and productive) and of noting down ideas: Y\ ‘The buzz group — by far the most common collaborative model is the buzz group. This is where students ‘buzz’ or generate ideas, reactions, cues, or opinions quickly and informally. We might ask students to get into groups and quickly come up with five reasons why people prefer cars to public transport. We might ask students to make quick notes about what to put in a composition describing a picture. If they are going to design an advertisement, students can talk and make notes about what they are going to advertise, what main points they want to get over, etc. They could talk about what information needs to go into a biography, or what a good first line (for 4 novel) should contain. Buzz groups can be created instantly and they frequently lead to successfull idea generation which the individual student can then carry forward into their own planning. }\ Individuals, pairs, and groups ~ a more claborare version of the buzz group is called ‘pyramid planning’ by Tricia Hedge. Here students think about a topic individually and then discuss it in pairs and then in groups. Imagine that students are going to write a composition about how to cope with phobias (or about the bravest person they have ever met). They first read a powerful description of someone coping with a phobia (or about someone who is/was really brave). The teacher then sees if anyone wants to tell the class about how they or someone they know deals with phobias (or about someone really brave). Students are then asked to work individually to think about what they might include in a composition on this topic. The teacher might go round helping them with suggestions about, for example, what phobias are, why they happen, and what can be done about them. Students are now put in pairs to discuss what they think needs to be included in their composition. When they have had time to talk, groups are formed with each member of the group coming from a different pair. The result is that ideas and possibilities are shared among the greatest number of students. By the time the teacher asks uv Scanned with CamScannera the students to report back on their ideas, everyone has had the opportunity not only to make suggestions but also to have their imaginations stimulated by the suggestions of others. Whole group discuss etimes students need help not only with having ideas and thinking ofa topic they might want to write about, but also with thinking of appropriate vocabulary. Tn Aosta, Italy, Francesca Acanfora wanted her students to write Haiku and other kinds of poctry. To get them to do this she first allowed them to suggest themes that they wanted to write about, thus ensuring their engagement and co-operation. She then asked students to give her any words they knew which could be used in that topic area, These were transferred to the board according to their grammatical classes (verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, etc.). The students now had the raw material for their poctry: Say a word Had I one night without you ‘And my heart thunders Fd touch empryness ... T'm completely confused. I refuse that thought (Stefania, 18) (Alessandra, 20) From Haiku ed altre peesie edited by Francesca Atbarosa Acanfora This kind of whole-group preparation ~ discussing issues, eliciting and sharing useful words and grammar, getting students engaged in the activity — need not be confined to poctry, of course. The same procedure could be followed when preparing to design advertisements (eliciting topic words and phrases, looking at advertisements and commenting on them, etc.) or stories (how should a story start, what kind of a resolution should it have, etc.). Note making ~ students benefit greatly from thinking about how best to note down the ideas they come up with. Indeed the effective making of notes can contribute to the generation of ideas themselves. Often, when we start to generate ideas we write down words and. phrases in a random way, Then, by making connections between them, We start (o see patterns emerging and we can then organise our thoughts into sub-topics and categories. This is a classic note-making sequence, A mistake some teachers have made in the past is to try to impose, in the most helpful way, a method of making notes. Yer just as each person may have different preferenc or visual stimuli, for example), $0 the way we make notes is an extremely personal altair, It is much better, therefore, to expose students to a variety of note- making options and then let them choose the one they find most useful or indeed some other system that suits them. 18 Scanned with CamScannerSome people, for example, prefer a spaghetti approach: People need to relax Helps people understand eazh otver Provides jctrs Good idea to get avy from werk Good for local economics People eperience different cultures Spaghetti note making for Why tourism isso poplar Another very visual way of making preparation notes is often referred to as a spidergram or mind map, In this idea-generating model students start with a topic at the centre and then generate a web of ideas from that. If the students are generating ideas on the subject of holidays, for example, they might produce a spidergram like this (either individually of in small or large groups) Spuclengeam fr Avislays 19 Scanned with CamScannerSpidergrams work (for some students) because their visual desis nm lows students to eas their ideas in any direction they want ‘while, at the same time, encouraging them to group themes and sub-themes together as they proceed, Spidergrams work especially well when students create spidergrams in groups since the discussion this engenders together with its visual representation helps to stimulate creativity, But it is also interesting for individual students to show each other their own spidergrams and sec how similar they are (or not). Some students, however, may prefer to make a list of ordered points: Are hokdays good For you? i Introduction a Mare and mere people go on holiday b Holidays are cheaper than ever c People think they have a tight to holidays R Why we ike heldays aA chance to get away from it all b A chance to gct to know other people/aultures c 3 Heiday problems a People often surbathe, eat, € dirk too much b Traveling can be stressful ‘Ordered points for dre Solidays good for you? For and against ~ another way of generating ideas, especially where the writing is to be discursive or will consider different arguments, is to generate for and against notes. Suppose, for example, that our students were going to write a composition entitled ‘Is tourism good for us?’, we might separate the class into two buzz. groups. The first group has five minutes to think of as many ideas as they can about why tourism is a good thing; the second group has to think of as many ideas as they can about why tourism is a bad thing. The teacher can then divide the board into two columns, a for’ and an against’ column, and representatives from each group come up and write their points on the correct side of the board. ‘The students (and board) do not have to be divided in this way, of course. ‘They can work individually or in pairs to genenite their own ‘for' and ‘against’ lists of points ~ which they can then share with the class. We might start by giving the same kind of table about tourism as we did for mobile phones (see page 53), only this time they have to generate four more ideas for each side of the table once we have started them off with some possibilities, 20 Scanned with CamScannerWe could, alternatively, start the for-and-against board filling with the whole class; any student can come up to the board and write something in the ‘for’ or ‘against’ column as soon as an idea occurs to them, We can set up flip charts around the room and have students ‘write up points under different headings, and so on. ‘The important thing with all these kinds of activities is that they make students think, and provide ther with the ideas and words they will need to complete their written tasks. genre, they will benefit Analysing — Where students are writing within a recognised igh we do not genres from first analysing that genre before writing within it~ althou want them to be straitjacketed by it, of course, Tf students are looking at newspaper, for example, we will want them to analysean article ora review to find out what the write is trying to achieve, What functions are the different paragraphs performing? (The first paragraph in a current affurs news aticl, for example, generally sums up re hele of what is to follow.) What noticeable language features can the students identif? Is there anything special about the vocabulary being used, ‘or about the punctuation, or the layout? If students are looking at advertisements, they can analyse some examples of written advertisements, using a list of questions like ‘these ANALYSING ADVERTISEMENTS Answer the following questions about the advertisement you are reading: MEANING What is being advertised? Who do you think the advertisement is aimed at? What's the main message about the product or service? ‘What captions are included in the advertisement? How effective are they? What visual material does the advertisement use? How effective is it? Is this a good advertisement? Why? (LANGUAGE) CONSTRUCTION What vocabulary describes the product or service? ‘What form do the captions take? What verb tenses are used? Why? What words or phrases are new to you? Whar is the structure of the advertisement (e.g. caption, description, story, background, ete,)? Gence analyse for adeertiementr Scanned with CamScanner‘crucial question within the gente analyser is who the advertisements for, this concern with audience is vital when looking at examples of writing, It means we understand why a writer used formal or informal language, or why some words were chosen rather than others (see page 25). When we know who a text is written for, the way in which the information is resented (and the language which is used) makes more sense. Cadertnding the relationship between the intended audience and the layout and language choice of the writer will help students when they come to write their own picees. . “Teachers can ask students to analyse example texts cither before, during, or after an idea-generation phase. The important thing is for them to gain insights into how tet is constructed and how language is typically used. Making a plan Generating ideas and analysing genres are all part of the planning process Jae but they ay of course, tiferent fom the act of making a plan itself. It is here that students decide what order to put their ideas in, and how best to present their information, ‘One of the first decisions that students have to make is who they are \writing for however real or invented their purpose is. This will help them with the overall design of the text they are preparing. Then they can move on to considering how to organise their ideas. Although this is a personal business, nevertheless we can help them think about how ideas group round themes in the following ways: For and against ~ we have scen how students can group opinions in ‘for’ and ‘against’ columns when they are planning a discursive essay. Once they have done this, we can ask them how they wish to order the ‘for’ points and how to order the ‘against’ points. Do they think the most powerful argument should come first? Which is the most erful argument in their opinion? Having decided the order of arguments on either side they then need to decide which order ‘for’ and ‘against’ will be presented in, and> how the composition can start, and how it will end, Board fill when students have worked together to generate ideas, we can ask them to write them on the board (or to dictate them so that we write the ideas for them). The ideas are written up in no particular order, until the board is covered with words, phrases, and sentences. Students then agree with the teacher about which ideas go together by drawing lines to connect them, We end up with something like a spidergram but, because we started with ideas which had already been generated, we can focus all our attention on how they group together. JA Main idea magnets ~ when students have had a chance to think of ideas, they can decide on four main points which are then written up on the board. They then have to come up to the board and write all the other ideas next to the ‘main idea magnets’ ~ unless they don't fit, in which case they can be put into a special extras’ category at one side 22 Scanned with CamScannerof the board. Once again we are drawing attention to how ideas group ther, . "At the end of the activity students can decide what to do with any ideas that end up in the ‘extra’ column, Perhaps they need a fifth or sixth ‘magnet’. Perhaps some of the ideas can be jettisoned without having too great an impact on the whole. VA. Papers ina hat - students can be given atopic and asked, individually to think of one idea and write it on a piece of paper. All the pieces of paper are then put into box and mixed up. The pieces of paper are then removed, and the students have to work out how they are connected and how they might be made into a composition, Apart from Papers ina hat’ all the above activities are teacher- and board- focused. There is a good reason for this: i allows all the students to get a clear understanding of this aspect of making a plan. However, such activities can also be done by students working in pairs or groups, using paper and (marker) pens. AAs with all plans, however, things can change during the drafting and editing process, Points may be reordered, or they may attach themselves to different headings. Having seen what the results of 2 plan look like, the student might well start the piece of writing completely differently. The end might look better at the beginning! The ‘for’ and ‘against’ arguments might be reversed, That is all part of the writing process. Examples of The following examples show a range of ‘genre + process activities. In some ‘worked-on' of them students think carefully about what they are going to write before writing they start. In others they study the genre that they are going to write in, and ea i others opportunities ae provided for rewriting, re-planning, re-diting, Sequences rc, Some of the activities here include all of these clements. Others concentrate on specific aspects of the writing process, One element of the writing process that does not receive much attention here is editing (or self-evaluating), a crucial factor of the process cycle (see the process wheel on page 6). This will be discussed in detail in the next apter, Example 1: Writing within a genre ~ ‘guidebooks’ (elementary, pre-intermediate) Imitation guidebooks are extremely useful for worked-on writing particularly because thy encompass a range of functions: description, information, advice, and recommendation, They can be worked on at various levels, including at elementary and pre-intermediate levels, as in this example, ‘The activity begins when the teacher holds up a number of guidebooks and establishes that the students know what they are. The teacher then elicits from the class what a guidebook contains, and ends up with a list which might look something like this: 23 Scanned with CamScannerPlaces ~ buildings, parks, rivers, bridges, museums, etc. History — history of a place, history of buildings Food = typical food Culture — music, dances, festivals Things to buy leather, silver, pottery, etc, Entertainment ~ restaurants, night clubs, theatre, music, etc. Climate —hot, cold, windy, etc, ‘The class then decides where they are going to write a guidebook for. It might be the place where the class is taking place; if students have access to the Internet, on the other hand, they can decide on other plices they want to write a guidebook for. In groups, students now decide on one or two facts for each of the categories mentioned above. All they have to do is write a sentence or two about it, using as much language as they can muster, eg, The Hermitage Museum Ls an imporkank building in Sk Pakersbug, a or The Miramor Reskawank is a geod restawonk for Fish in Pork DiAtcudia. ‘The teacher then shows students models of guidebooks, either in the students own language, in English, o in simplified form so thatthe layout is easy to explain. Students understand that guidebook entries often ctor with a general introduction about a place (eg. Fortaleza is on 1Be north ewe toast of Brazil inthe state of Ceara). They then go on to discuss different aspects ofthe place (e.g, places to vist, places to eat, etc). Students start to onganise their own ‘guidebooks’ eg Places to visit: Buckingham Palace (the Queen lives thers) he Suth Bork (concert hall, art galleries, and vestaurants) Hyde Park, etc. Scanned with CamScannerthen go on to write their own books or sections of books (eg, local food' only) about the place they have chosen. : e “There are a number of points that we need to consider about this sequence. In the first place, it includes planning, genre analysis, etc Secondly, the sequence can last for varying amounts of time; it ean, for ‘example, be extended into a full-blown project (see pages 103-104) which cean last over two or three lessons (or even seeks). Thirdly, tasks can be shared berween groups so that one group, for example, can write about places to visit while another group can write about entertainment. Finally, what the students produce will depend upon their level but, as we have shown, itis perfectly possible for students at even very low levels to produce meaningful worked-on' writing. i Tn writing tasks such as this, the teacher's support is vitally important. Students will need help with vocabulary, they will need advice about layout, and they will need encouragement to keep going. Example 2: Writing for different audiences (intermediate and above) One of the aspects of writing appropriately within a genre is to know who itis you are writing for. For example, students might be asked to study the following newspaper photograph and article about a snowstorm that created chaos one night in Britain: Big freeze brings travel chaos Drivers trapped in gridlock overnight as temperatures drop below 2°C Drivers in pats ofthe county bit bby snow and ice were toxlay warmed only to drive ifabsolutely necessary after the big freeze caused gridlocks ‘and travel chaos, Some commuters reported still being stuck in a horrendous traffic jam on the MIL in Essex. and Cambridgeshire this moming. having set off to travel home from work yesterday evening, Forecasters said that snow was sill falling in Norfolk, Sutfotk, and parts of north Yorkshire this morning. London and the southeast are eto clea but, with temperatures expected to remain below 2°C (356°F), roads are Uikely to remain dangerously iy, PA Weather Centre warned. ‘The MII remained elosed this moming between junction eight northbound and junction nine southbound, Essex police suid. ‘The motorway was blocked last 25 tight by a series of accidents, jack-knifed lorries nd abandoned cars, and police are advising motorists not to use the MIL or Als as both remain “impassable”, ‘A spokesman for Cambvidge police said that the MII is ly a car park", adding: “Roads are completely congested and extremely dangerous this ‘moming.” From Gaudion Unlimited at wwe guandian.cowuk Scanned with CamScanneri in parti ink about the discuss the news item and in particular thinl beh a econte aks yee teapped in their cars all night. The teacher then Efe them to look at the following written tasks: Write an e-mail from a truck driver who has only just got home after being stranded for 24 hours. He is e-mailing his aa : Girte‘an e-mail from the same driver co his exmplayer explaining why he has not been able to make a scheduled delivery. Write a text message from a driver to his girlfriend/wife when he became stuck in the storm. _ Write a report by the transport authority about the extent of the problem and what needs to be done to prevent it happening in the future. Ideally, before this session, the students have looked at examples of text messages and discussed how they are ‘written’. They can then write appropriately in that genre for task ¢. They have looked at e-mail writing fore too, noting its various characteristics. As a result, in task a they will probably include short verbless phrases, use exclamation marks, and perhaps even emoticons. They will know that his e-mail to his employer, on the other hand, will be significantly more formal in tone. And they will know that the report (in task d) will need to follow a conventional report structure. This activity emphasises the genre aspect of writing. Itcan form the basis for more than one lesson. Different students can write different versions of the story in the different genres, and they can build up a whole ‘blizzard? project focusing on the different ways it can be written about. Example 3: Research and writing ~ ‘biography’ (intermediate and above) ‘This activity sequence shows how a mix of genre and process work can enable students to write short biographies of people who interest them, It shows, too, how writing can fit into a wider learning sequence. At one stage it uses Internet access, but the sequence can work just as well with more traditional reference tools, such as encyclopiedias. Before this readingwriting Sequence starts, students are (re-)exposed to the vocabulary of history and biography (e.g. guilty, prizon, sentence (verb), disguise, excape, pirate, soldier, capture, die, excente, inberit. Students then each read one of three biography texts about someone famous (or infamous!). They fill in this table about the person they have read about and then, by asking people who have read abeut thy . a ¢ other tw People, they complete the other columns about those two aswell 26 Scanned with CamScannerName Date of birth Nationality What was or is special about her/him? Who (if anyone) was or is she/he associated with? What were or have been the main events in herhhis life? Has her/his career ended, and if yes, how? Are they still alive, and if not, when did she/he die? Biography table Once the teacher has led feedback on the task — getting students to talk about the information in their tables, and checking they have understood the texts they have read and what their fellow students have told them — they are asked to make a new (empty) version of the table, They then take their table with them to a computer room where they log onto a biography site on the Internet, such as the one at www.biography.com. Once there, they can type in the name of anyone they want to find out about, cither living or dead. When they find the person they are looking for, they fill in their table about them. They should be told not to try and write down the whole text but, by using the table, to make notes only. While they are doing this, the teacher can go from computer to computer helping students with vocabulary they do not understand. Once the students have finished taking notes, they leave the computer screens and go back to the classroom where they use their notes to write short biographies. When they have completed their first draft, they can show what they have done to their teacher, In one use of this activity, one student wrote {about the singer Ricky Martin), His career. Aaven't finished. I think bis career is starting now. Hei very young, het still alive. The teacher asked her to check the verb in the first sentence, and to think about the second sentence (because his career had already started), Another student (still fascinated by Princess Diana) wrote, She attended the clusive West Heath boarding sebool, and the teacher was able to ask that student to go back to the computer room to see if that’s what she had found there, Still another student wrote the following, about the British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Between 1967-1983 he specialized in empleyment and industrial law and joined the labour party in 1976, main courte ~ nationalisation of industry and increased powiler of trade union ~ ru Scanned with CamScannerJames Callaghan, She could not remember, from her notes, exactly what she meant and so she, too, went back to the computer room to che . Tt should not be assumed that all the teacher's comments were negative. On the contrary, there was much to be impressed by and many other suggestions to be made. But these few examples show how, in the right, circumstances, teacher advice can point students in the direction of.” successful re-drafting. “The final versione of the biographies were much better, About Ricky Martin the student now wrote, /is carcer has not yet, finished. Ut has only just started. Het very young, be' still very much alive. Princess Diana now bad attended an exclusive school, and Tony Blair Aad been worried, when he joined the Labour Party in 1976, about nationalisation and the power of the trade union movement, ‘The final biographies that the students produce may not be perfect, but in one or two class periods they have investigated a particular genre (‘short encyclopaedic biographies’) and have been able to put what they have learnt into practice. As well as this they have been able to work on their own writing, drafting and re-drafting, so that their final versions, which they show to their classmates and which are discussed by the whole group, should be of a high standard for their level. Of course, biography.com is not ‘the only website for such an activity. There are Various other encyclopacdia-type places to go to, such as wwwbritannica.com. Higher-level students can make use of a search engine such as Google (www.google.com); by typing in the name of the person they want to research, they will get a long list of sites where they can find relevant information. Or can they? A potential risk with search engines is that if the searcher is not careful, he or she will be inundated with ‘hits’, some or many of which may not be directly relevant to the research topic. This can be a problem for everybody, of course, not just students of English. For example, if the student who is interested in Ricky Martin just types the singer’s name into asearch engine, she is likely to get a list of well over a million separate items, including record store sites, fan pages, official sites, gossip magazines, MTV listings, and so on. As a result, she will find it almast impossible to choose between sites with such variable relevance to her specific research topic. However, if she were to type life facts Ricky Martin’ (words like and and of are not worth putting in) and to hit ‘return’, a search engine would offer her a much smaller list of sites and pages. Almost all of them would now offer potted biographies or articles about the singer's life. Searching is an art, in other words, and before we get students to do this kind of task we need to make sure that they will search skilfully so that they get maximum benefit from the activity. Example 4: Extended writing ~ ‘personal narrative’ (upper Intermediate and above) Many of the ideas we have discussed so far come together in the following writing procedure described by Linda Pearce from the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, When students first arrive at the university, 28 Scanned with CamScannershe and her colleagues need to get them accustomed to writing essays. The genre they start with is the ‘narrative essay’ which is a useful stage towards the writing of discursive essays, although for the students she describes it was, for some time, quite sensitive given the history of apartheid which they had all lived through. However, staff at the university thought that story telling. expecially about dificult events in the students: past, had a cathartic effect, What follows is a description of how attention to genre norms and constraints is mixed seamlessly with aspects of the process wheel discussed in Chapter 1. The whole procedure (which takes place over two sessions) has seven distinct stages: * Stage 1 ~in pairs or groups, students talk about any vivid memories from their childhood. While they are doing this, the teacher writes sentences on the board such as: I remember when the dog had ten puppies under my bed. I remember the night of the great storm when the house was flooded, I remember when the police ralded the school and my brother was arrested, Students are then asked to look at the board examples and then write their own similar J remember sentences. Stage 2 ~ students talk about nwo types of freewriting (something they have had a go at before). ‘Free’ freewriting is just that, Students have to start writing about anything for a fixed period of time (if they can’t think of anything to write, they just keep writing J can't think of anything to write until they dol). ‘Guided’ freewriting is the same thing, only this time students think of « topic before they start. In this case, for example, students can take the J remember sentences they have written and extend them as much and as far as they can. Stage 3 - the teacher puts a cluster diagram, very like a spidergram, on the board which suggests certain aspects of childhood memory (see 1 on page 100). ‘The students now read finished ‘childhood memories essays written by students in previous years. Taking one particular one of these, they and the teacher use this diagram to identify different parts of the story (see 2 on page 100). Stage 4 ~ the students now make their own diagrams about their own childhood memories, They then use their previous freewriting and their cluster diagrams to write the first draft of their essay. Stage 5 ~ the students now read three more finished essays written by former students ~ ones that the teachers consider to be good examples of the genre, 29 Scanned with CamScannerChildhood Memory Hoth feom ‘Introducing the narrative essay: 4 painless way to start an academnic writing programme’, in Modern English ‘Teacher [2] taste Wwe probably ate twice as much" emotions or feelings “the bushes were sparkling green smell ‘everything smelt sight, emotions or feelings ‘I felt safe’ * Stage 6 — the students work through a handout which asks them to look back at their first draft and asks them questions such as these: Is the beginning interesting? Does it make you want to read on? Does it prepare you for what is going to come next? There are other questions and suggestions, too, all designed to get students looking at their first drafts carefully to see how they might improved. They also look at the be ings of two of the former students’ stories to see how they wrote their narratives, Stage 7 — the class then discuss everything they have been doing and that they have seen, clearing up any questions about narrative construction and style, Now they are ready to go away and write the next — and perhaps final ~ draft of the narrative. 30 Scanned with CamScannerExample 5: Writing within a genre - ‘advertising leaflets’ (upper intermediate and above) When students design advertisements, posters, and Icaflets, they need tobe well-informed about the best ways of doing this. In the following leaflet activity, therefore, students look at an example of a typical leaflet such as the one shown on the next page. To start with, students study the leaflet shown on page 102 and say what ‘Aroma’ is and what it does. They discuss whether any of the courses on offer interest them a lot, a little, not much, or not at all. They are then asked to look at the design of the leaflet and complete the following tasks: a Do you think it is effective? b What is the purpose of the front cover? Would you design a cover like that? ¢ Do you like the use of ‘bullet’ points? Are they easy to read and notice? d How important are the photographs on the back? On the basis of this leaflet — and any others which the students or the teacher bring into the class ~ students can discuss what a good leaflet should contain, and what they think it needs to look like in order to attract people's attention. They are then told to choose between a number of alternatives (e.g. a centre for music tuition, a new gym, a new school cafeteria, etc.) and to start to think about content and design by completing a table like this one: Questions/topics to be decided Notes/decisions What kind of a place is it? The name of the place (think up something interesting) What services the place offers (and brief explanations of what these services are) Names of the staff An address, phone number, website address, etc, Preparation table They then write the text for the leaflet based on their notes in the table. ‘They discuss what they have written and maybe show it to other students for their suggestions and/or corrections. Finally they fold a piece of Ad Paper in half (or in three), and decide what text goes where, and what pictures and designs to include. Once again they continually edit and modify the text and the design until they are happy with the result. 31 Scanned with CamScannerets 01672 482057 mat egress aateeginteemy Wet we: wramatengedt.com Courses in: Aromatherapy How different smells affect our mood * Designing aroma zones. ¢ Judging the best aromas on the market Feng Shul* © The theory of Feng Shui explained * Putting Feng Shiti t0 work at home © Putting Feng Shui to work at work Relaxing colour * How colour affects our mood * Colour combinations © Designing rooms with colour in mind “Feng Shul by the ancient Chinese scence bits tells | ‘people the best place to put funiture im 2 toon oF hone for | maximum comfort, (food hack and success Based on an a ty from Just Right: Upper Intermediate by Jeremy Harmer and Carol Lethaby 32 Scanned with CamScannerProject Work We use the word project to describe pieces of work which extend over a period of time, and where the final product may be the result of considerable research, Project work has long been popular in English language teaching and Icarning, although its use is naturally constrained by the amount of time available for its implementation. Onc of the most widely discussed examples of project work took place in the city of Bath, UK. There, students at the Bell School compiled, over a periad of time, a ‘wheelchair user's guide’ to the city based on visits to public buildings and spaces, on interviews, and on research about the needs of wheelchair-bound citizens. The guide that was produced was a genuinely useful document, and it is this fact that made the students’ work particularly valuable for the students themselves and for people in Bath. ‘There are many possible areas for project work, such as producing a class newspaper, guides to a town, or books on historical or cultural topics. Some Projects look at people's attitudes to current issues, while in others students are asked to produce brochures for a public service or a new company. What these examples demonstrate is that the difference between a full- blown project and the kind of examples that we have been looking at in this chapter so far is chiefly one of time and scale. The production of the leaflet (pages 101-102) was a kind of mini-projeet, as were the biography sequence {pages 96-98) and the ‘childhood memories’ essays (pages 98-100). The finished result of « full-blown project is more substantial than an essay or a story of a few hundred words. But being more extensive, they need careful planning and implementation. Project procedures However projects are organised, they all share the same basic sequence: The choice/the briefing — students may choose what they want to do a project on, or the teacher may offer one or more project topics. Once the choice has been made, a briefing takes place in which teacher and students define the aims of the project and discuss how they can gather data, what the timescale of the project is, what stages it will go through, and what support the students will get as the work progresses. Idea/language generation ~ once a briefing has taken place, students start on the process of idea generation. What is going to go into their project? What do they nccd to find out? What words or language are particularly useful for the topic area they are working in? Data gathering — students can gather data from a number of sources. They can consult encyclopacdias or yo to the Internet to find what they are looking for. They can design questionnaires so that they can interview people. They can look at texts for genre programmes, especially documentaries, information that is given there. lysis or watch television nd take notes about the 33 Scanned with CamScannerPlanning ~ when students have got their ideas, generated some topic~ Specific guage, and gathered the data they require che ean stare £0 make a plan of how the final project will be set out. Drafting ant! editing - the project is now drafted out, with cither sections or the whole thing produced so that they can be looked at by flow students or by the teacher ~ as well as being self-edited by the project writers. Final version ~ when the final version ha ff class projects can be gathered together and displayed in the school library or in some part of the ‘classroom, They can be shown to other classes. The important thing is for them to be displayed and read by as many people as possible, There must be some payoff for so much work. Consultation/tutorial - throughout the lifetime of a project teachers will need to be available as tutors, advising, helping, and ‘prodding’ Students to help them progress. Such consultations will, of course, focus fon drafts and how to edit them successfully, but they may also help students to come up with ideas when they get stuck. A frequent problem ecurs when students try to do too much in a project, so teachers may need to help them narrow down the focus of their work. Although not always feasible (prindipally, perhaps, because of limitations of time), projects are an excellent way to combine genre study with work on the writing process. They involve detailed planning and idea generation. They encourage students to gather data and they. provoke significant anning, drafting, and editing too. And at the end of everything, students ve work they can show proudly to others. been produced, the different Writing for Most public exams for students of English include a written clement. A exams student's writing will often allow the examiner to geta better picture of their ove language aiiy than ats Of specie linguage points does, fot example, One of the teacher’s most important roles will be to prepare students for the writing they will have to do in exams. In order to do this, however, we need to be absolutely clear about what those tasks are likely to be, and what will be expected of the examinee, ‘Types of exam writing Among the many different kinds of exam tasks that are currently in use, the following arc some of the most common: + Application letters and CVs * Articles, reports, and reviews * Descriptions of pictures, paintings, or events + Discursive compositions + Leafles + Letters (informal and formal) * Narratives (often the first or last line is given) 34 Scanned with CamScanner* Transactional letters (where candidates have to respond to specific information in the question, or give specific details as requested) Preparing students for exam writing However good an exam is at testing general language ability, the tasks that students are asked to do may still come as a surprise if those students have not been prepared for the cxam. Most tests have their own special features, and if we want our students to do as well as they are capable of, they need to have a familiarity with those specialities. They also need to be prompted to use their best planning and editing skills in an exam situation. Among the things we need to offer students, therefore, are the following: + Model answers — students necd to sce what is expected of them. Onc way of doing this is to show them model answers ~ oncs that would satisfy the examiners of the papers they are aiming to sit. These model answers should not be thought of as straitjackets, but rather as frameworks which students can lean on to help them. As with all the examples in this chapter which asked students to analyse a genre, the teacher will want to draw out aspects of the model — such as what kind of information is included in the first paragraph, or what kind of language is used to introduce a topic, sign off from a letter, or add contrasting opinions. * Reading instructions — a crucial issue for all exam candidates is to understand what they are being asked to do. This sounds obvious and yet many candidates fail because they do not read instruction rubrics carefully enough. Sometimes, as we have seen, they are asked to include information in their answers or to mention certain specific topics. They will obviously be penalised if they fail to do these things. Teachers need to stress the importance of reading instructions carefully and should, therefore, give students considerable practice in reading and interpreting instruction rubrics both on their own (the teacher can get them to say exactly what it is they are being asked to do) and as part of exam-practice writing. Generating ideas and plans ~ although it is easier to generate ideas and plans when working in pairs or groups, students need to be encouraged to do their own ‘internal’ brainstorming, note making, and planning. Just because they are on their own in an cxam room, this does not mean that they cannot use the skills they have acquired in idea generation and in planning. One way of helping students to get used to the planning phase in exams is to give them, repeatedly, tasks which they have to plan for individually. This can be done in any free five minutes, say at the beginning or end of the lesson. Students can be asked to compare their different ideas and see who has come up with what sounds the best plan. Alll the idea-generating ideas at the beginning of this chapter can be used with exam tasks. ‘Writing — when students write in exams they need to be able to do so quickly but not carelessly. One way of encouraging this ability is to set 35 Scanned with CamScanner