ADVANCED LANGUAGE AND METHODOLOGY
Hello! My name´s Rosa and I´m an English teacher at IES Astrabudua BHI high school. Last summer, two colleagues and I attended three different courses as part of the ERASMUS + PROJECT (KA1) to improve our teaching practice.
We joined the British Study Centre School of English in Oxford, during the first fortnight in July 2017. If you are interested in learning more about the syllabus of the course, you can search for information in the link below:
https://www.british-study.com/teacher-training/courses/advanced-language-and-methodology.php
Which were the OBJECTIVES of the course
This two week programme was aimed at non-native English speaking teachers. The aim of the course was to raise and consolidate our awareness of the principles and practice of teaching English to secondary school students and to increase our knowledge and awareness of English language teaching and methodology. Above all, it iwas an essentially practical course designed to equip us the teachers with the ideas and materials which we can use in the classroom once we return to our school.
Interesting ACTIVITIES proposed and practised there:
-Getting to know each other:
Each student thinks of an adjective that can describe himself and starts with the same first letter of his name. He says his name and the adjective and thinks of a body movement that can help understand the meaning. e.g. Religious Rosa, and put your hands together as if you were praying. Sitting in a circle you sthrow the ball and say some else´s name etc.
-Informal talking for 5 minutes:
Family Tree, Famous people, describe your weekend ...Teacher goes around listening to what students are telling each other and writes down extracts they used on the board.. Group correction of mistakes.
Then they can write a summary of what they talked.
-Project:
Make a recording in the street or market, or a picture of anything in English
one question a situation of real life.. e.g. Plan a day in Oxford: places to visit, lunch and dinner, leisure, rest time, accommodation, transport...).Listen to the recording in groups of 3 or 4. Write down the interview. Look up new words in the dictionary. Do research on the internet and bring new ideas.
*Follow this script:
- plan
- research
- create
- solving problems
- outcome
- presentation
- feed back- extension
- follow up
- Story of Mr SHOULD´VE and Mrs SHOULDN´T HAVE
- Creative activities:
What´s happened? by Penny Ur.
Teacher shouts very loudly or says "Oh, no" showing a shocking face. Students must tell what has happened (Present Perfect) or write the whole story.
One word at a time. Hang two different pieces of paper on different walls. Students write a story but each one writes only a word. After a time they swap and go and read the other group students and write a question. Then they a continue.
Variations: Groups exchange and continue writing the other story, Give a time limit, correct mistakes, underline past tenses, regular/irregular verbs in different colours. Punctuation marks also count as words and contraction 2 words.
-Desert island discs-BBC:
Students have to choose the 10 songs they would take to a desert island
-Dictagloss:
-Sounds of Silence:
Teacher gives a post it to each one of the students and they have one of the students and they have to leave the classroom and write any sound they hear and what that sound reminds you of.
Then you put it on the wall in the classroom and stand next to the one that you feel identified with.
Good to work with verbs that have to do with senses. The topics introduced are much deeper.
Thwen when everybody is back in the classroom, they explain why they chose certain sound.çVariation: In the class, close your eyes and hear all the noises. or think about all the places wherebyou can find water in the world. in yiour imagination.
-Speaking activities:
50p activity.
Two students standing opposite one to the other with a coin in their hands and they start talking about anything and they have to steal the coin from the other
Tell me about...noun/adjective
One starts saying then you stop and add another word that comes up in the conversation ans so on...
Buy a bell to be uded when you want to interrupt the activity. It´s good not to be shouting all day long.
Back to the board:
The teacher writes a word on the board . Students explain describe it but they cacnnot say the word itself. When the student guesses the word he cries it out. You cannot mime or point only describe. This is good for revising vocabulary or anything you have done but it shouldn´t last a long time.Just 5 or 10 minutes at the end of a class for example.
- Listening activities:
-Listening for gist: for general information.
-Listening for specific information, getting just details.
-Prediction: from the title predict what it is about
-or get all the information they already have before we do the listening
-or they can write questions whose answers they may find out in the listening they are doing afterwards , then they listen to the text and check whether they have the answers and then write their peers questions and li´sten to it again and see what they have got.
-Live listening
-Vocabulary:
Students sit in two rows sitting opposite to each other. They speak about how they memorize words, in a small paper write words they have learnt, classify them into groups, they decide the criteria of grouping them, choose the word and describe it considering it is a : cocktail, film or parfum!!! They must give lots of details.
-Technology:
*Duolingo for self assessment
*Quizlet for learning and recycling vocabulary. Different tasks with the same vocabulary, practising the four skills. It´s important the social aspect of sharing and hanging over their responsibility t students autonomous learmning. they create and are involved in the process..
*Spark video: up to 10 minutes/& slides. They tell us abiut top 10/how to/find your way/recipe...
*Spark page : for writing
-Games:
We hand out small rectangular cardboard papers with idioms. Each student chooses one that has to explain to the rest of them.
-Wordcloud: choose one word and write abut it for 2 minutes. This is a creative activity where they need to organize their ideas.
-Posty-Posty:
They need a real person for doing it. The teacher is the postman or we could name 2 students totake the messages from one to the other. T hands out 2 post its to each student.You tell them who they have to write to(each pair could have a different colour paper). It generates spaontaneous linguistics.Once you have finished writing you say, "posty-posty to Arantza" and the postman delivers it to the person.
-Running dictation:
You laminate sentences(you number them)They are outside the room on the wall(different places maybe)-they work in pairs.
-Shouting dictations or whispering dictations:
Dictating across the room, managing to get it through.
-A big piece of paper:
They hold a conversation but a written one ( no speaking at all)
Drama:
-A piece of wood or any other object: every student has to imagine what it is for him (A BRUSH, A HAMMER, A PEN, A KNIFE...)
-Mirror activity
-Blind trust activity- one student with eyes closed they move around silently,Then one leads and describes a situation they are living together. We foster a good atmosphere relationship :we are taking a bus to Oxford, it is very busy, to get of we go down 3 stairs, we are in the middle of a field and have to go through high bushes...
-Phonemic chart- a body movement you associate to a particular sound. Every student performs his movement while he pronounces the sound.
-Trust the other student activity- one student with eye´s closed. They move around silently , then one leads and describes a situation they are living together
Other activities:
-Number 1 -Idiomatic collocations:
Blue cards(beginning of the expression)
Red cards (ending of it)
Ss try to match them first. Then we help them correct it.
Later this becomes a memory game (like when playing cards )
-Number 2- Agreeing and disagreeing:
In a pile the agreeing expression cards in another pile the disagreeing ones. The teacher says sth and they must respond accordingly using the expressions they have in their cards giving their opinion. Each time a different form.
Number 3- At the end of the class T gives a little card to every student and they have to write sth they liked in that day class and sth bad. from thir point of view.
***T. must always double check after giving instructions whether ss have a crystal clear idea of what they have to do by making questions such as:
Activities proposed by attendant teachers:
-"Real World" by Iva
The floor of the class is the map of the world. We establish some basic references: where the north,south, east and west are and T. stands on a city or country that everybody knows as a reference. Each student will choose one part of the world and will stand up there. Each student describes the place where he is(noise, smell, countryside, hot/cold, what she can see/ touch/feel there...etc. The the rest will ask yes/no questions until we come up with yhe name of the place.
-"Interview" by María
T. interviews a student . The rest just listen. Then the whole group brainstorms the answers the student has given if they remember them and writes them on the board. Ss have to remember the questions the teacher made for those answers.
Follow up: with the answers on the board , ss do a writing.
-"Hands up"by Renata
Draw your both hands:
Then in groups . One group list od adjectives for a perfect teacher, another group, list of adjectives for a perfect friend...etc
- "Slang" by Celine
T. dictates 5 sentences with some slang in them. Next, gets feedback from what ss understood and writes on them on the board. After that, T.puts post-its on the walls of the classroom and ss have to find out the meaning of those expressions. Finally, correction.
-"Game with cards" by Rosa
There are 3 decks of cards: one deals with spelling (yellow), another one with word categories (blue) and the fnal one synonyms & antonyms (red). One student will turn over a card in ecah deck everytime. Ss will work in groups and the group who meets all the three conditions (or maybe just two of them) will get a point.
-Trust the other student activity- one student with eye´s closed. They move around silently , then one leads and describes a situation they are living together
Other activities:
-Number 1 -Idiomatic collocations:
Blue cards(beginning of the expression)
Red cards (ending of it)
Ss try to match them first. Then we help them correct it.
Later this becomes a memory game (like when playing cards )
-Number 2- Agreeing and disagreeing:
In a pile the agreeing expression cards in another pile the disagreeing ones. The teacher says sth and they must respond accordingly using the expressions they have in their cards giving their opinion. Each time a different form.
Number 3- At the end of the class T gives a little card to every student and they have to write sth they liked in that day class and sth bad. from thir point of view.
***T. must always double check after giving instructions whether ss have a crystal clear idea of what they have to do by making questions such as:
- How many cards do you utrn over?
- Do you work in pairs or alone?
- Who is the winner? etc
Activities proposed by attendant teachers:
-"Real World" by Iva
The floor of the class is the map of the world. We establish some basic references: where the north,south, east and west are and T. stands on a city or country that everybody knows as a reference. Each student will choose one part of the world and will stand up there. Each student describes the place where he is(noise, smell, countryside, hot/cold, what she can see/ touch/feel there...etc. The the rest will ask yes/no questions until we come up with yhe name of the place.
-"Interview" by María
T. interviews a student . The rest just listen. Then the whole group brainstorms the answers the student has given if they remember them and writes them on the board. Ss have to remember the questions the teacher made for those answers.
Follow up: with the answers on the board , ss do a writing.
-"Hands up"by Renata
Draw your both hands:
- On your left hand´s fingers adjectives of people you don´t like
- On your right hand´s fingers adjectives of people you like.
- Check with partners. Name new vocabulary.
Then in groups . One group list od adjectives for a perfect teacher, another group, list of adjectives for a perfect friend...etc
- "Slang" by Celine
T. dictates 5 sentences with some slang in them. Next, gets feedback from what ss understood and writes on them on the board. After that, T.puts post-its on the walls of the classroom and ss have to find out the meaning of those expressions. Finally, correction.
-"Game with cards" by Rosa
There are 3 decks of cards: one deals with spelling (yellow), another one with word categories (blue) and the fnal one synonyms & antonyms (red). One student will turn over a card in ecah deck everytime. Ss will work in groups and the group who meets all the three conditions (or maybe just two of them) will get a point.
- Extension 1: Give 30 seconds to ss for them to make a list of words belonging to the same semantic field. The group that has more correct words wins.
- Extension 2: Make up a story with the 3 words
Speaking - subskills:
How to interrupt somebody
Startinbg a phone conversation
Back- channelling (Oh really! Oh! replying...)
Using filters (gives time to think)
Pause : meaning changes when the pause is sin the incorrect position
Turn- taking
Adjacency pairs thick expressions that take place together (I like your new hair & Oh thank you, see you & see you soon, hi & hi)
Opening & closing strategies: do you come here often?, I´ll let you go now - on the phone...
Hedging - generalizing (it could be said that everyone in Spain likes paella)
Assessment:
Criteria for assessing:
Fluency
Accuracy
Vocabulary
Pronunciation
- Let´s focus on sth each time, not everything once.
- Assessing ourselves is important as well.
- Tell ss what we are assessing for them to know.
Links:
-A-Z of ELT: an excellent blog!!
-ETP:. English Teaching Professional- Activities to do in class
-Ted talks: a book with activities to work with students.
-Sounds familiar: for different accents in the UK
-bl.uk: British library, regional voices, lots of street language (it changes all the time, different people speaking).
-Sounds familiar: for different accents in the UK
-bl.uk: British library, regional voices, lots of street language (it changes all the time, different people speaking).
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