CHAPTER 2 LEARNING THROUGH TASKS AND ACTIVITIES

THE TASK AS AN ENVIRONMENT FOR LEARNING

Tasks are used as a tool to check how much a child has understood. Classroom tasks and activities are seen as the
environment or ecosystem in which the growth of skills in the FL takes places. Children are active learners they
construct meaning and purpose.
TASK DEMANDS
Activities should be carefully thought out and structured for the audience. They should have both structure and
demands.
Cognitive
Demands vary with the degree of contextualisation of language; difficulty of concepts that are needed to do the task
(e.g. use of graphics, colours, telling the rime).
Language
Demands vary with whether the language is spoken or written, understanding or production, extended talk or
conversation; with vocabulary and grammar needed; with the genre; with the amount of Li and Li.
Interactional (They are required to do the activity in pairs, and then each pupil needs to listen to his or her partner
paying attention to the particular box on the grid being talked about.)
Demands vary with the type of interaction required, e.g. pair work; with the participants in talk - adult / peers; with
the nature of the interaction, e.g. question + answer
Metalinguistic (require pupils to understand or use English to talk about the language, e.g. if pupils were instructed
use the past tense of the verbs.)
Demands may include the use of technical terms about language in production or comprehension e.g. in
instructions, in feedback.
Involvement (refers to the demand on the child to keep engaged with the task for as long as it takes to complete it;
involvement demands will vary with how interesting the task is to the child.)
Demands vary with the ease or difficulty the learner has in engaging with the task, e.g. length of task stages; links to
childs interest and concerns; novelty, humour, suspense.
Physical (using the fine-motor skills required to manipulate a pencil to write, draw or tick boxes)
Demands vary with how long the child must sit still for; with actions needed; with fine motor skills needed e.g. to
write or draw.
TASK SUPPORT (USED TO SUPPORT THE CHILDREN IN ACHIEVING THE GOALS OF THE TASK)
Using pictures provides support for meaning, contextualizing the language to be used.
Grid and its structure supports concepts, by using a graphical way of representing the concepts but avoiding
the need to do this through language.
Graphics can often concretize quite abstract ideas without requiring the use of language, and can support
understanding of ideas for second language learners.
Explanation and modeling of the task by the teacher will provide further support to pupils. They may also be
supported by working in pairs and listening to their partners.

Cognitive
Support can come from the contextualisation of language; from the use of concepts already developed; from familiar
formats of graphics or activity; from familiar topics and content.
Language
Support can come from re-use of language already mastered; from moving from easier domain to more difficult, e.g.
spoken to written; from using known vocabulary and grammar to help with the new; from use of L1 to support L2
development.
Interactional
Support can come from the type of interaction, e.g. pair work; from helpful co-participants; from the use of familiar
routine's.
Metalinguistic
Support can come from familiar technical terms to talk about new language; clear explanations.
Involvement
support can come from content and activity that is easy for the learner to engage with, e.g. links to childs interest
and concerns; from mixing physical movement and calm, seated activities,
Physical
Variation in sitting and moving; use of familiar actions; match to level of fine motor skills development, e.g. to write
or draw.
BALANCING DEMANDS AND SUPPORT
Whether learners can do the task and whether they learn anything by doing it, depends on the demands or the
relationship between demands and support. We can here recall the idea of the zone of proximal development, or
space for growth, that children need for their language and cognitive development. If the demands are too high,
learners will find the task too difficult; they are likely to switch off and not finish the task, or to finish it as well as
they can, using what they know to complete the task but not using the language intended.
In either case, learning goals are not achieved. Perhaps, most dangerously of all for future learning, children may
appear to the teacher to have completed the task, but may not have understood it or learnt from it. The teacher may
then try to build on the unlearnt language in future lessons, and for a time may appear to succeed.
In trying to strike a balance between demands and support, we can apply what cognitive scientists call:
The Goldilocks principle
A task that is going to help the learner learn more language is one that is demanding but not too demanding, that
provides support but not too much support. The difference between demands and support creates the space for
growth and produces opportunities for learning.
THE IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGE LEARNING GOALS
HOW CAN TEACHERS ENSURE THAT THE BALANCE OF DEMANDS AND SUPPORT PRODUCES LANGUAGE LEARNING?
Set clear and appropriate language learning goals (Careful selection and grading of goals is one of the key
tools to build success into learning).
Provide scaffolding for the tasks breaking down into manageable steps with sub goals

 Too many demands will make children anxious, too few demands will make language learning boring
DEFINING TASK FOR YOUNG LEARNERS
First, it is important to choose activities and content that is appropriate for the childrens age and socio-cultural
experience, and language that will grow with the children.
From this point of view, school activities are congruent with childrens lives, and using English to take the register or
sing songs is quite real enough. It seems appropriate that tasks can be defined as classroom activities. However, not
all activities that take place in a classroom will qualify as tasks; an activity can be any kind of event that children
participate in, but a task has further features.
There must be something unified and coherent, for learners, about a task. The focus is on how the goals and action
create a unified whole.
A classroom task will have a clear beginning and end; it may be quite short or it may last over several lessons. For the
child, a classroom task should have a clear purpose and meaning; for the teacher, the task should have clear
language learning goals.
To sum up, classroom tasks for children learning a foreign language:

have coherence and unity for learners (from topic, activity and / or outcome)
have meaning and purpose for learners
have clear language learning goals
have a beginning and end
involve the learners actively

STAGES IN CLASSROOM TASKS

PREPARATION it prepares learners to be able to complete core activities successfully and might include
pre-teaching of language items or activation of topic vocabulary.
CORE ACTIVITY it is set up through language learning goals
FOLLOW-UP it builds on successful completion of the core, perhaps with a public performance of work
done in the core or with written work based on oral language used in the core.

EXAMPLE

TASK-AS-PLAN: The task is in plan. Teacher may not know what will happen when the activity is used. It cannot be
fully evaluated until it is in action.
TASK -AS-ACTION:

The activity is used in action with a particular class.

Chapter 8: Theme-Based Teaching and Learning

ISSUES AROUND THEME -BASED TEACHING
The activities of theme-based are linked together by their content; the topic runs through everything that happens in
the classroom. It is extremely demanding on teachers in both planning and implementation; a wide knowledge of
activity types and resources is needed to plan according to childrens needs.
Besides, knowledge of patterns of cognitive, language and motor skills development is useful for planning and is
needed to evaluate progression in all areas of the curriculum through theme-based teaching.
THEME-BASED TEACHING OF A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
1. Origins and transfer to foreign language classroom
Theme-based has been practiced since the 1960s in UK primary schools, where children spend all day with the same
teacher. In this way, different areas of the curriculum can be taught in an integrated way, without being separated
into subject areas that have to be taught at specific times by separate teachers.
In its original (1st language) uses, theme-based teaching required teachers to choose a theme or topic and then to
plan a range of teaching and learning activities related to the theme, that incorporated aspects of mathematics,
science, art, language, history, geography, music and so on.
With creative thinking and skilled organization, a theme can generate a long list of activities relating to all areas of
the curriculum under one theme
Theme-based teaching has been transferred across from general primary education to the teaching of English as a
foreign language. It offers one way of solving the problem of what to teach in primary FL classrooms.

2. VARIATIONS ON A THEME
In a theme-based foreign language teaching, a topic provides content for a range of language learning activities. For
example, other subject areas, such as mathematics or art, can offer teaching techniques and activities, as well as
content, that can be used in the FL classroom; foreign language lessons can provide content for other subject areas;
whole subject lessons can be taught in the FL.
A further variation on theme-based teaching is an activity-based approach. In this approach learning of language
takes place as children participate in a range of activities on the theme, such as sorting, measuring and playing
games.
The next figure shows some of the many activities that can be transferred from other subject areas for use in the
foreign language classroom:

Other authors suggest that activity-based approach offers whole learning/whole language experience in which the
activities are of value to the overall educational and social development of the child, and not merely to develop
English language skills.
3. CHOOSING THEME -BASED TEACHING FOR THE FL CLASSROOM
Theme-based teaching could replace course book and syllabus altogether. More realistically, it can be adopted for
one or two lessons in a week, or for several weeks in a term, to supplement other work, and to help teachers build
up the skills and knowledge that are demanded.
Many course books use topics or themes to structure their units, although this is often a superficial covering for a
grammatical or functional sequencing. The title of a unit, such as 'Pets' or 'My Family', can be treated like a theme,
and adopting a theme-based approach can extend teaching and learning beyond the confines of the-text book.
PLANNING THEME -BASED TEACHING
The language learning opportunities offered by theme-based teaching in the foreign language classroom arise from
the content and the activities that pupils undertake. Together, the content and activities produce language-using
situations and discourse types.
ADVANCE VERSUS 'ON -LINE' PLANNING

Theme-based teaching can be planned in advance, or it can emerge from dynamic teaching and learning, that
according to the interests of children and teacher.
The dynamic nature of theme-based teaching can be improved by building in 'choice points', where pupils and
teacher have choice over direction, activity or timing. As a theme proceeds, there may be points at which the class
can decide which of two or more possible directions the theme-based work will take.
In a theme-based lesson, children can be allowed to choose a fixed number of activities from a small set of activities.
They can also be encouraged to take some responsibility for their own learning by being required to organise their
time. The use of choice points contributes to children's capacities for self-directed learning by giving them supported
practice in making decisions, as learning proceeds, so that later they will be able to identify these points themselves.
FINDING A THEME
A theme can come from the children's current interests, from topics being studied in other classes, from a story, or
from a local or international festival or event. A list of possible themes shows something of the range of sources:
-Spiders and mini-creatures
-Circus
-Potatoes / vegetables
-Islands - Bridges
-Halloween / festivals
Children might be asked to suggest themes, or to select a theme from a list.
PLANNING CONTENT
Two basic planning tools for theme-based teaching are:
BRAINSTORMING: it is a mental process that starts with one idea and then spread others through random and
spontaneous links. All possibilities are noted down and are then used to select from
WEB: it is a way of writing down ideas and connections without forcing them into linear form as in a list or in a text.
The main idea is put in the centre of the board or paper, and connecting ideas with lines showing connections.
The brainstorming and webbing processes can be carried out with the children, rather than by the teacher alone. A
good way to start is by asking the children for words connected to the theme, and writing these on the board,
constructing a web as words are suggested. This can be done in the foreign language, or bilingually, with the teacher
translating words that children suggest in their first language.
The advantage of doing this work with the children is that it also provides a quick assessment of their knowledge and
interest around the topic, through the words that they suggest and through areas that they do not mention.
PLANNING LANGUAGE LEARNING TASKS
Planning has to bring a 'language-learning perspective', so that planning moves from content to FL classroom
activities, with discourse types and aspects of language use guiding the construction of tasks with clear goals and
stages. Tasks can be organised into stages, each with language and content goals, and fitted to the timing of the
lessons. It is necessary to construct classroom tasks that will build on what pupils already know of the FL and extend
their language learning.
LEARNING LANGUAGE THROUGH THEME -BASED TEACHING
THE LANGUAGE LEARNING POTENTIAL OF THEME -BASED

The language is not selected in advance as a set of language items to be taught. Planning can predict some
possibilities, but there will still be a degree of unpredictability about the language that will appears in the activities.
Children may need support to understand content and teachers will help them to notice and understand the
language.
LEARNING VOCABULARY
Theme-based work is likely to introduce new vocabulary items, with the theme providing support for understanding
and recall. Vocabulary items that have already been introduced in the course book may be met again in the new
context of a theme, and the encounter will reinforce the words or phrases while also adding new meaning aspects to
them.
LEARNING DISCOURSE SKILLS
A real benefit of theme-based is that it offers a natural use of discourse types, both spoken and written. Texts that
can be used in theme-based teaching will include relevant songs, rhymes, video, stories, and non-fiction
informational texts, including sources accessed through the Internet or on CD-ROM, catalogues, leaflets and
magazines, and educational materials written for native speakers.
The text itself is likely to include short self-contained chunks of information, often around pictures or diagrams. The
different types of writing - introduction, description, narrative, argument or summary - will use grammar and
vocabulary in different ways from stories. Information books can be used as resources for finding out specific
information or as starting points for a theme. They offer opportunities to see the language used for these purposes
and to develop reading skills at text level. They also provide a model for writing information texts in the foreign
language.
MOTIVATION TO PRECISION IN LANGUAGE USE
When communicating with others about a theme, it can become more important to communicate precisely and
accurately. Precision in language use involves learners selecting and adapting their language resources to say or
write exactly what they mean; accuracy, the term more often used in the literature, refers to using the language
correctly relative to the target form.
OUTCOMES AND PRODUCTS FROM THEME -BASED LEARNING
As a theme proceeds, children will produce pieces of work - poems, pictures and sentences, reports, graphs and so
on. These can be saved by each child in a personal folder for the theme. As a final stage in the theme, the pieces of
work are gathered together to make a record of what has been covered for the children and for other people.

GIVING FEEDBACK TO EACH OTHER

Pupils can plan an activity together before starting, and can be brought together in the middle of the process to
show their 'work-in-progress3 to others. If planning and giving feedback are carried out with the teacher at the
beginning of the year, pupils can gradually take over the processes themselves, using the language modelled by the
teacher.
ENCOURAGING PRIVATE SPEECH IN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Vygotsky emphasised the importance of private speech in children, the 'talking to oneself' that leads developmental
from social speech with others to inner speech and thinking. Talking to oneself when making or doing something can
help even adults to focus and concentrate.

CHAPTER 9: Communicative Language Teaching

1- What is the goal of most of the teaching methods of foreign languages?
The goal of most of the methods used to be for students to learn to communicate in the target language.
2- What are the observations that contributed to a shift in the field of language pedagogy in the late 1970s and early
1980s from a linguistic structure-centered approach to a Communicative Approach?
(1) Students could produce sentences accurately in a lesson, but could not use them appropriately when genuinely
communicating outside of the classroom.
(2) Being able to communicate required more than mastering linguistic structures.
(3) Students may know the rules of linguistic usage, but be unable to use the language.
(4) Communication requires that students perform certain functions as well, such as promising, inviting, and
declining invitations within a social context.
(5) Being able to communicate requires more than linguistic competence; it requires communicative competence,
i.e. knowing when and how to say what to whom.
3- What is the aim of Communicative Language Teaching?
Communicative Language Teaching aims broadly to apply the theoretical perspective of the Communicative
Approach by making communicative competence the goal of language teaching and by acknowledging the
interdependence of language and communication.
4- What are the main principles of Communicative Language Teaching?
OBSERVATIONS

PRINCIPLES

1. The teacher distributes a handout that has a copy of a

sports column from a recent newspaper.

Whenever possible, authentic language'language as it

is used in a real contextshould be introduced.

2. The teacher tells the students to underline the reporters

predictions and to say which ones they think the reporter
feels most certain of and which he feels least certain of.

Being able to figure out the speakers or writers

intentions is part of being communicatively competent.

3. The teacher gives the students the directions for the

activity in the target language.

The target language is a vehicle for classroom

communication, not just the object of study.

4. The students try to state the reporters predictions in

different words.

One function can have many different linguistic forms.

Since the focus of the course is on real language use, a
variety of linguistic forms are presented together. The
emphasis is on the process of communication rather than
just mastery of language forms.
Students should work with language at the discourse or
suprasentential (above the sentence) level. They must
learn about cohesion and coherence, those properties of
language which bind the sentences together.
Games are important because they have certain features
in common with real communicative eventsthere is a
purpose to the exchange. Also, the speaker receives

5. The students unscramble the sentences of the

newspaper article.

6. The students play a language game.

7. The students are asked how they feel about the

predictions.

immediate feedback from the listener on whether or nor

he or she has successfully communicated. In this way they
can negotiate meaning. Finally, having students work in
small groups maximizes the amount of communicative
practice they receive.
Students should be given an opportunity to express their
ideas and opinions.

8. A student makes an error. The teacher and other

students ignore it.

Errors are tolerated and seen as a natural outcome of the

development of communication skills. Since this activity
was working on fluency, the teacher did not correct the
student, but simply noted the error, which he will return
to at a later point.

9. The teacher gives each group of students a strip story

and a task to perform.

One of the teachers major responsibilities is to establish

situations likely to promote communication.

10. The students work with a partner to predict what the

next picture in the strip story will look like.

Communicative interaction encourages cooperative

relationships among students. It gives students an
opportunity to work on negotiating meaning.

11. The students are to do a role play. They are to imagine

that they are all employees of the same company.

The social context of the communicative event is essential

in giving meaning to the utterances.

12. The teacher reminds the students that one of them is

playing the role of the boss and that they should remember
this when speaking to her.

Learning to use language forms appropriately is an

important part of communicative competence.

13. The teacher moves from group to group offering advice

and answering questions.

The teacher acts as a facilitator in setting up

communicative activities and as an advisor during the
activities.

14. The students suggest alternative forms they would use

to state a prediction to a colleague.

In communicating, a speaker has a choice not only about

what to say, but also how to say it.

15. After the role play is finished, the students elicit

relevant vocabulary.

The grammar and vocabulary that the students learn

follow from the function, situational context, and the
roles of the interlocutors.

16. For their homework, the students arc to listen to a

debate on the radio or watch it on television.

Students should be given opportunities to listen to

language as it is used in authentic communication. They
may be coached on strategies for how to improve their
comprehension.

5- What are the goals of teachers who use Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)?
The goal is to enable students to communicate in the target language. Communication is a process; knowledge of the
forms of language is insufficient.
6- How could teachers who use the CLT Method enable their students to communicate in the target language?
(1) Students need knowledge of the linguistic forms, meanings, and functions.
(2) Students need to know that many different forms can be used to perform a function and also that a single form
can often serve a variety of functions.

(3) Students must be able to choose from among these the most appropriate form, given the social context and the
roles of the interlocutors.
(4) Students must also be able to manage the process of negotiating meaning with their interlocutors.
7- What is the role of the teacher? What is the role of the students?
The Teacher:
(1) The teacher facilitates communication in the classroom.
(2) One of his major responsibilities is to establish situations likely to promote communication.
(3) During the activities he acts as an adviser, answering students questions and monitoring their performance.
(4) He might make note of their errors to be worked on at a later time during more accuracy-based activities.
(5) He might be a co-communicator engaging in the communicative activity along with students.
The Students:
(1) Students are communicators.
(2) They are actively engaged in negotiating meaning, in trying to make themselves understood, and in
understanding others even when their knowledge of the target language is incomplete.
(3) Since the teachers role is less dominant than in a teacher-centered method, students are seen as more
responsible managers of their own learning
8- What are some characteristics of the teaching/learning process?
(1) The most obvious characteristic of CLT is that almost everything that is done is done with a communicative
intent.
(2) Students use the language a great deal through communicative activities such as games, role plays, and problemsolving tasks (see discussion of these in the review of techniques).
(3) Another characteristic of CLT is the use of authentic materials.
(4) It is considered desirable to give students an opportunity to develop strategies for understanding language as it is
actually used.
(5) Activities in CLT are often carried out by students in small groups. Small numbers of students interacting are
favored in order to maximize the time allotted to each student for communicating.

9- What are the features of truly communicative Activities proposed by Morrow (in Johnson and Morrow 1981)?
Activities that are truly communicative, according to Morrow (in Johnson and Morrow 1981), have three features in
common: information gap, choice, and feedback.
(1) An information gap exists when one person in an exchange knows something the other person does not.
Example: If we both know today is Tuesday and I ask you, What is today? and you answer, Tuesday, our exchange
is not really communicative.
(2) In communication, the speaker has a choice of what she will say and how she will say it. If the exercise is tightly
controlled so that students can only say something in one way, the speaker has no choice and the exchange,
therefore, is not communicative.
Example: In a chain drill, for example, if a student must reply to her neighbors question in the same way as her
neighbor replied to someone elses question, then she has no choice of form and content, and real communication
does not occur.
(3) True communication is purposeful. A speaker can thus evaluate whether or not his purpose has been achieved
based upon the information she receives from his listener. If the listener does not have an opportunity to provide
the speaker with such feedback, then the exchange is not really communicative.

Example: Forming questions through a transformation drill may be a worthwhile activity, but it is not in keeping with
CLT since a speaker will receive no response from a listener, so is unable to assess whether her question has been
understood or not.
10- What is the nature of student-teacher interaction? What is the nature of student-student interaction?
The teacher
(1) The teacher may present some part of the lesson, such as when working with linguistic accuracy.
(2) At other times, he is the facilitator of the activities, but he does not always himself interact with the students.
(3) Sometimes he is a co-communicator, but more often he establishes situations that prompt communication
between and among the students.
The students:
Students interact a great deal with one another. They do this in various configurations: pairs, triads, small groups,
and whole group.
11- How are the feelings of the students dealt with?
(1) One of the basic assumptions of CLT is that by learning to communicate students will be more motivated to study
a foreign language since they will feel they are learning to do something useful with the language.
(2) Teachers give students an opportunity to express their individuality by having them share their ideas and
opinions on a regular basis.
(3) Student security is enhanced by the many opportunities for cooperative interactions with their fellow students
and the teacher.
12- How is language viewed? How is culture viewed?
Language
(1) Language is for communication.
(2) Linguistic competence, the knowledge of forms and their meanings, is just one part of communicative
competence.
(3) Another aspect of communicative competence is knowledge of the functions language is used for.
(4) A variety of forms can be used to accomplish a single function. Example: A speaker can make a prediction by
saying, for example, It may rain, or Perhaps it will rain.
(5) The same form of the language can be used for a variety of functions. Example:
May, for instance, can be used to make a prediction or to give permission
(You may sit in the back).
(6) Learners need knowledge of forms and meanings and functions.
(7) They must also use this knowledge and take into consideration the social situation in order to convey their
intended meaning appropriately. Example: A speaker can seek permission using may (May I have a piece of
fruit?); however, if the speaker perceives the listener as being more of a social equal or the situation as being
informal, he or she would more likely use can to seek permission (Can I have a piece of fruit?).
Culture
(1) Culture is the everyday lifestyle of people who use the language.
(2) There are certain aspects of it that are especially important to communicationthe use of nonverbal behavior,
for example, which might receive greater attention in CLT.
13- What areas of language are emphasized? What language skills are emphasized?

(1) Language functions might be emphasized over forms.

(2) Typically, although not always, a functional syllabus is used.
(3) A variety of forms are introduced for each function.
(4) Only the simpler forms would be presented at first, but as students get more proficient in the target language,
the functions are reintroduced and more complex forms are learned. Example: In learning to make requests,
beginning students might practice Would you ...? and Could you ...? Highly proficient students might learn I
wonder if you would mind ....
(5) Students work with language at the suprasentential or discourse level.
(6) They learn about cohesion and coherence. Example: The students recognize that the second sentence of the
scrambled order was the last sentence of the original sports column because of its introductory adverbial phrase, In
the final analysis.... This adverbial phrase is a cohesive device that binds and orders this sentence to the other
sentences. The students also recognized the lack of coherence between the first two sentences of the scrambled
order, which did not appear connected in any meaningful way.
(7) Students work on all four skills from the beginning.
(8) Just as oral communication is seen to take place through negotiation between speaker and listener, so too is
meaning thought to be derived from the written word through an interaction between the reader and the writer.
The writer is not present to receive immediate feedback from the reader, of course, but the reader tries to
understand the writers intentions and the writer writes with the readers perspective in mind. Meaning does not,
therefore, reside exclusively in the text, but rather arises through negotiation between the reader and writer.
14- What is the role of the students native language?
(1) Judicious use of the students native language is permitted in CLT.
(2) Whenever possible, the target language should be used not only during communicative activities, but also for
explaining the activities to the students or in assigning homework.
(3) The students learn from these classroom management exchanges, too, and realize that the target language is a
vehicle for communication, not just an object to be studied.
15- How is evaluation accomplished?
(1) A teacher evaluates not only the students accuracy, but also their fluency.
(2) The student who has the most control of the structures and vocabulary is not always the best communicator.
(3) A teacher can informally evaluate his students performance in his role as an adviser or co-communicator.
(4) For more formal evaluation, a teacher is likely to use an integrative test which has a real communicative function.
(5) In order to assess students writing skill, for instance, a teacher might ask them to write a letter to a friend.

16- How does the teacher respond to student errors?

(1) Errors of form are tolerated during fluency-based activities and are seen as a natural outcome of the
development of communication skills.
(2) Students can have limited linguistic knowledge and still be successful communicators.
(3) The teacher may note the errors during fluency activities and return to them later with an accuracy-based
activity.
17- Why are authentic materials used in CLT?
Authentic materials to native speakers of the target language are used in CLT in order to:
(1) Overcome the typical problem that students cannot transfer what they learn in the classroom to the outside
world and
(2) Expose students to natural language in a variety of situations.

18-What are the main techniques of Communicative Language Teaching?

1) Authentic materials
(a) The teacher uses a real newspaper article.
(b) He also assigns the students homework containing authentic materials such as requiring them listen to a live
radio or television broadcast.
(c) What is authentic and natural to native speakers of the target language is not so to learners in the classroom.
What is important is that these materials are used in a way that is real for learners.
(d) For students with lower proficiency in the target language, more accessible materials (for example, the use of a
weather forecast when working on predictions), or at least ones that are realistic, are most desirable.
(e) With a lower level class it is possible to use realia that do not contain a lot of language, but about which a lot of
discussion could be generated. Example: Menus in the target language are an example; timetables are another.
2) Scrambled sentences
How:
(a) The students are given a passage (a text) in which the sentences are in a scrambled order. This may be a passage
they have worked with or one they have not seen before. They are told to unscramble the sentences so that the
sentences are restored to their original order.
(b)In addition to written passages, students might also be asked to unscramble the lines of a mixed-up dialog.
(c) They might be asked to put the pictures of a picture strip story in order and write lines to accompany the
pictures.
Advantages:
(a) This type of exercise teaches students about the cohesion and coherence properties of language.
(b)They learn how sentences are bound together at the suprasentential level through formal linguistic devices such
as pronouns, which make a text cohesive, and semantic propositions, which unify a text and make it coherent.
3) Language games
(a)Games are used frequently in CLT.
(b)The students find them enjoyable.
(c) If games are properly designed, they give students valuable communicative practice.
Show how Morrows three features of communicative activities are manifested in card games.
(a) An information gap exists because the speaker does not know what his classmate is going to do the following
weekend.
(b) The speaker has a choice as to what he would predict (which sport) and how he would predict it (which form her
prediction would take).
(c) The speaker receives feedback from the members of his group. If his prediction was incomprehensible, then none
of the members of his group would respond. If he gets a meaningful response, he could presume his prediction is
understood.
4) Picture strip story
Many activities can be done with picture strip stories.
Description: One student in a small group is given a strip story. He shows the first picture of the story to the other
members of his group and asks them to predict what the second picture would look like.
Show how Morrows three features of communicative activities are manifested in picture strip story.

(a)An information gap existsthe students in the groups do not know what the picture contains.
(b)They have a choice as to what their prediction would be and how they would word it.
(c) They receive feedback, not on the form but on the content of the prediction, by being able to view the picture
and compare it with their prediction.
Why do problem-solving tasks work well in CLT?
(a) Problem-solving tasks work well in CLT because they usually include the three features of communication.
(b)They can be structured so that students share information or work together to arrive at a solution.
(c) This gives students practice in negotiating meaning.
5) Role play
Advantages: Role plays are very important in CLT because they give students an opportunity to practice
communicating (a) in different social contexts and (b) in different social roles.
Types: Role plays can be set up so that they are (a) structured (for example, the teacher tells the students who they
are and what they should say) or less structured (for example, the teacher tells the students who they are, what the
situation is, and what they are talking about, but the students determine what they will say).
Show how Morrows three features of communicative activities are manifested in less structured role plays?
(a) It gives the students more of a choice.
(b) Structured role plays also provide information gaps since students cannot be sure (as with most forms of
communication) what the other person or people will say (there is a natural unpredictability).
(c) Students also receive feedback on whether or not they have effectively communicated.

CHAPTER 10: Content-Based Approach

The special contribution of content-based instruction is that it integrates the learning of language with the learning
of some other content, often academic subject matter. It uses content from other disciplines in language courses.
Principles
The subject matter content is used for language teaching purposes. For e.g. the class is studying geography.
Teaching should build on students previous experience. For e.g. the teacher asks the students what they
know about a globe.
When learners perceive the relevance of their language use, they are motivated to learn. They know that it
is a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. For e.g. the students call out their answers enthusiastically
as the teacher writes them on the blackboard.
The teacher scaffolds the linguistic content, i.e. helps learners say what it is they want to say by building
together with the students a complete utterance. For e.g. the teacher supplies the missing language when
students have trouble in explaining a concept in the target language.
Language is learned most effectively when it is used as a medium to convey informational content of interest
to the students. For e.g. the teacher reads the new vocabulary and then the students watch a video entitled
'Understanding Globes.'
Vocabulary is easier to acquire when there are contextual clues to help convey meaning. For e.g. the
students fill in the vocabulary words in the blanks in the modified cloze passage as they watch the video.
When they work with authentic subject matter, students need language support. For e.g. the teacher
provides a number of examples using the present passive with latitude and longitude co-ordinates.
Learners work with meaningful, cognitively demanding language and content within the context of authentic
material and tasks. For e.g. the students are given the latitude and longitude co-ordinates, and they have to
come to the front of the classroom to find the city on the globe.

 Communicative competence involves more than using language conversationally. It also includes the ability
to read, discuss, and write about content from other fields. For e.g. for homework, the students are given a
map, which they are to label based on a descriptive reading they have been given.

A Task-based approach
In recent years a debate has developed over which approaches to structuring and planning and implementing
lessons are more effective. This article presents an overview of a task-based learning approach (TBL) and highlights
its advantages over the more traditional Present, Practice, Produce (PPP) approach.
PRESENT PRACTICE PRODUCE (PPP)
During an initial teacher training course, most teachers become familiar with the PPP paradigm. A PPP lesson would
proceed in the following manner.

First, the teacher presents an item of language in a clear context to get across its meaning. This could be
done in a variety of ways: through a text, a situation-build, a dialogue etc.
Students are then asked to complete a controlled practice stage, where they may have to repeat target
items through choral and individual drilling, fill gaps or match halves of sentences. All of this practice
demands that the student uses the language correctly and helps them to become more comfortable with it.
Finally, they move on to the production stage, sometimes called the 'free practice' stage. Students are given
a communication task such as a role play and are expected to produce the target language and use any other
language that has already been learnt and is suitable for completing it.

THE PROBLEMS WITH PPP

Teachers who use this method will soon identify problems with it:

Students can give the impression that they are comfortable with the new language as they are producing it
accurately in the class. Often though a few lessons later, students will either not be able to produce the
language correctly or even won't produce it at all.
Students will often produce the language but overuse the target structure so that it sounds completely
unnatural.
Students may not produce the target language during the free practice stage because they find they are able
to use existing language resources to complete the task.

A TASK-BASED APPROACH
Task -based learning offers an alternative for language teachers. In a task-based lesson the teacher doesn't predetermine what language will be studied, the lesson is based around the completion of a central task and the
language studied is determined by what happens as the students complete it. The lesson follows certain stages.
Pre-task
The teacher introduces the topic and gives the students clear instructions on what they will have to do at the task
stage and might help the students to recall some language that may be useful for the task. The pre-task stage can
also often include playing a recording of people doing the task. This gives the students a clear model of what will be
expected of them. The students can take notes and spend time preparing for the task.
Task
The students complete a task in pairs or groups using the language resources that they have as the teacher monitors
and offers encouragement.

Planning
Students prepare a short oral or written report to tell the class what happened during their task. They then practise
what they are going to say in their groups. Meanwhile the teacher is available for the students to ask for advice to
clear up any language questions they may have.
Report
Students then report back to the class orally or read the written report. The teacher chooses the order of when
students will present their reports and may give the students some quick feedback on the content. At this stage the
teacher may also play a recording of others doing the same task for the students to compare.
Analysis
The teacher then highlights relevant parts from the text of the recording for the students to analyse. They may ask
students to notice interesting features within this text. The teacher can also highlight the language that the students
used during the report phase for analysis.
Practice
Finally, the teacher selects language areas to practise based upon the needs of the students and what emerged from
the task and report phases. The students then do practice activities to increase their confidence and make a note of
useful language.
THE ADVANTAGES OF TBL

Unlike a PPP approach, the students are free of language control. In all three stages they must use all their
language resources rather than just practising one pre-selected item.
A natural context is developed from the students' experiences with the language that is personalised and
relevant to them. With PPP it is necessary to create contexts in which to present the language and
sometimes they can be very unnatural.
The students will have a much more varied exposure to language with TBL. They will be exposed to a whole
range of lexical phrases, collocations and patterns as well as language forms.
The language explored arises from the students' needs. This need dictates what will be covered in the lesson
rather than a decision made by the teacher or the coursebook.
It is a strong communicative approach where students spend a lot of time communicating. PPP lessons seem
very teacher-centred by comparison. Just watch how much time the students spend communicating during a
task-based lesson.
It is enjoyable and motivating.

CONCLUSION
PPP offers a very simplified approach to language learning. It is based upon the idea that you can present language in
neat little blocks, adding from one lesson to the next. However, research shows us that we cannot predict or
guarantee what the students will learn and that ultimately a wide exposure to language is the best way of ensuring
that students will acquire it effectively. Restricting their experience to single pieces of target language is unnatural.

Task-based learning for beginners a lexical approach

Task-based learning involves meaning-focused interactions teacher with class, learners with learners. Words and
phrases are vital for getting meanings across successfully, and success is the key to motivation.
SIX PRINCIPLES

1 Start with words and phrases they know and build around them.
Brainstorming task: International words of English
Purposes: to show learners how much they know already; to help them adapt their pronunciation. Also to encourage
them to go on collecting English words from outside sources.
2 Lots of exposure to spoken English teacher talk is good, interaction is vital.
Task: classifying words and phrases, extending categories and talking about them.
Purposes: to help learners notice key words in the stream of speech; to begin to familiarise them with new language
in a meaningful context language they will need later in the teaching sequence or meet later in written form in
their text book.

3 Engage learners set precise tasks with clear goals and minimal speaking.
Task: sequencing/ordering e.g. alphabet dictation (names); classifying alphabet letters according to vowel sounds;
matching (e.g. towns to countries to languages).
Purposes: to allow learners to experience success in achieving the goals; to show that achieving the task outcome is
more important than achieving linguistic perfection
4 Have fun use number games, guessing games, memory challenges, sing songs.
Tasks: Bingo (numbers and words), Odd word out, Whats in my bag? The Tray Challenge, Picture Hide and Seek.
Purposes: to recycle language in different ways; to show that learning English can be enjoyable; to create a relaxed
atmosphere in class.
5 Empower learners wherever possible, give them choices (of what? or how?).
Task: survey of clothes and colours learners bring items of clothing from home and/or pictures from magazines
rather than stick to text book pictures. Also, learners can create their own questionnaires, quiz questions, test items,
feed-back forms, blogs.
Purposes: to redress the balance of power in the classroom; to generate a spirit of co-operation; to show you can
use the text book flexibly and not be boring!
6 Be positive about your learners contributions accept, recast and extend.
Purposes: to show that you value what they offer; to encourage learners to activate and use and extend whatever
English they have; to recognise that mistakes are a necessary part of language development.

CHAPTER 3: Learning the spoken language

LEARNING THE SPOKEN LANGUAGE : GUIDING PRINCIPLES
This chapter deals with the development of childrens skills in using the spoken language. The chapter is built around
two guiding principles for teaching.

Meaning must come first: if children do not understand the spoken language, they cannot learn it.
To learn discourse skills, children need both to participate in discourse and to build up knowledge and skills
for participation.

DISCOURSE AND DISCOURSE EVENTS

The term 'discourse is used in two ways in the literature- Firstly, discourse is contrasted with text to emphasise that
it concerns use of the language. While text means nothing more than a piece of language, if it is considered as
discourse, we must include the context of use and the users of the text.
A very simple example is a shopping list. If we consider the shopping list as a text, we have a list of items. If we
consider the shopping list as discourse, then we have the text but we must also consider many other elements
around the list: that it was written by a woman, who has a family and a house to look after, who was planning a trip
to a supermarket, that the list was written on the back of an envelope, that it was intended to be used while walking
around the supermarket. These use and user factors are part of any analysis of discourse, and help explain content
and form.
The second use of discourse is in contrast to sentence, when it refers to a piece of language longer than the
sentence. The sentence has traditionally been taken as a basic unit for grammatical analysis, broken down into
clauses, phrases and then words. Once we move from sentences to paragraphs or to books, articles or other large
units of text, we are in the world of discourse. When we think about spoken language, discourse in this sense refers
to conversation or to larger units of talk, such as stories or songs.
Discourse in foreign language learning needs both senses.
1. Discourse as real language use is the target of teaching: we want children to be able to use the foreign
language with real people for real purposes. Part of this requires that children know how the foreign
language works in conversations and longer stretches of talk and text.
2. Discourse occurs in language classrooms: when teachers and learners interact on tasks and activities, they
are involved in a discourse event.
CHILDREN'S DRIVE TO FIND MEANING

From early childhood, the desire to connect emotionally and communicate with other people seems to drive
speaking. As children move through infancy, they begin to communicate with others about things in their shared
world, and develop their vocabulary of labels alongside their developing abilities to categorise.
In this quest to connect with anothers thoughts, language is the primary tool we have. When we interact, we use
words to try to capture our own and other peoples sense, our own particular contextualised understandings and
connotations for events and ideas {Vygotsky i962).
Locke points out that we need to be aware that young children must inevitably have to operate with only partial
understanding of much of the language that they hear every day, but that this does not stop them interacting. As
they get older, so they build up knowledge of word meanings from a wider range of contexts, and language gradually
becomes a more precise and effective tool for communication.
When children encounter new language, we can expect that they will try to make sense of it by bringing their social
knowledge, i.e. what they know already about how the world works, how adults, in this case teachers, talk to
children and what kinds of things those adults have previously wanted them to do. This knowledge and experience
will help children find social purpose that can be used as a key to understanding. It will also help' children
understand the foreign language as a means of communication, as words and phrases are learnt to fit familiar
contexts, such as greeting and naming
WHY TEACHERS NEED TO CHECK THAT MEANING IS ACCESSIBLE ?
As adults, we usually ask a question if we cannot make sense of what we were told or asked to do. But for children it
takes years for them to become equal participants in interaction, and to see that each participant has responsibility
for making themselves understood to the other.
Generally respecting and wanting to please their teachers, children may continue with activities even if they do not
understand. They will continue to speak in the foreign language and continue to perform classroom activities,
without understanding. And, if they do not understand, they cannot be learning. So, teachers have the responsibility
to check how children are working and doing the activities. They should also check if the child can find or construct
meaning in the language and the activity.
MEANING IN SPEAKING AND LISTENING
Speaking and listening are both active uses of language, but differ in the mental activity involved and demands that
they make on learners of language in terms of finding and sharing meaning.

Listening can be seen as (primarily) the active use of language to access other peoples meanings.
Speaking is the active use of language to express meanings so that other people can make sense of them.

The labels receptive and productive uses of language can be applied to listening and speaking respectively.
In active listening, the goal of the mental work is to make sense, e.g. of a story or instructions, and is thus naturally
meaning- focused rather than language-focused. For example, children listening to a story told in the foreign
language from a book with pictures will understand and construct the gist, or outline meaning, of the story in their
minds. If we were to check what the children understood, we might find they could tell us the story in their first
language, i.e. they could recall the meaning, and they might recall some words or phrases in the foreign language. It
is very unlikely that they would be able to re-tell the story in the foreign language, because their attention has not
been focused on the words and syntax of the story but on its underlying meaning.
To speak in the foreign language in order to share understandings with other people requires attention to precise
details of the language. A speaker needs to find the most appropriate words and the correct grammar to convey
meaning accurately and precisely, and needs to organise the discourse so that a listener will understand.

Speaking is much more demanding than listening on language learners language resources and skills. Speaking
activities, because they are so demanding, require careful and plentiful support of various types, not just support for
understanding, but also support for production.
The terms Input and Output are often used to refer to listening and speaking (and reading and writing)
respectively. This terminology reflects a computer model of the human brain that sees language used by other
people as information, which is received as input, is mentally processed, and the results produced as output. The
computer metaphor has been helpful, but is not adequate to describe listening and speaking in a foreign language
because the key processes between input and output, that we have described as finding and sharing understanding,
are down-graded in importance.
For some time in the 1980s, it was suggested that comprehensible input, i.e. listening to or reading English and
making sense of it, was not just necessary for learning a language but would be enough on its own to drive language
development (Krashen 1982).
Cognitive differences between listening and speaking help us understand why the metaphor of input and output is
inadequate for language learning. For a computer, input leads to output through invisible processes. The metaphor
directs attention away from the crucial learning processes which happen between input and output, both in the
classroom and in learners minds, and from how these learning processes may be supported by teaching and tasks.
USE OF FORMULAIC LANGUAGE
Formulaic sequences are learned by the child. These are pre-fabricated phrases that are produced as whole chunks,
rather than being put together word by word. Sometimes these pre-fabricated phrases have a structure that does
not quite fit into the talk or they are longer than the rest of the childs utterances. In all types of language-using
situations, child and adult speakers seem to rely on such chunks of language that come ready made and can be
brought into use with less effort than constructing a fresh phrase or sentence.
There is some evidence that phrases learnt formulaically are later broken down into individual words that can be
combined with other words, giving new ways of speaking. There are some suggestions that direct teaching of
formulaic phrases will help discourse skills development.
SELECTING AND ADAPTING LANGUAGE ON -LINE
Learning and use are tightly interconnected - when a child uses English, adapting his or her oral skills to the task in
hand, a micro-level instance occurs of learning in action. These accumulating experiences of using language will
produce changes in language resources that constitute learning.
Over time and many, varied uses of language, the child will move from partial to more complete understanding of
aspects of language and develop a greater range of language resources and skills; when the child is then put into a
new language-using situation, there are more language resources and skills to select from and the language can be
adapted more precisely to fit.
The repeated use of the same words in different physical and language contexts helps to construct in the childs
mind the sound, shape, and use of the word. Language learning is the continual changing of these resources of
words and phrases and of grammar, contextualised initially, and de-contextualising as it develops.
CONVERSATIONAL INTERACTION AND EXTENDED TALK
Conversational interaction and extended talk are two types of discourse that can be developed in both first and
foreign languages. Empirical research has shown that the two types involve different discourse skills and
developmental patterns for young children in their first language. This work has shown that, not only do these two
types of discourse develop at different rates for different children, but that the rate and quality of development is
connected with how much children are exposed to and participate in each type.

The key differences between conversation and extended talk are length of turns and degree of interaction. In
conversation, the social interaction is more obvious, as each part contributes to the development of the talk. But
extended talk, if done well, also needs to take account of the listeners and how they will understand the longer talk
turns.
DEVELOPMENT OF CONVERSATIONAL SKILLS IN CHILDHOOD
Young children are not very good at taking other discourse participants into account and shaping what they say to fit
the needs of others. Young speakers, as listeners, understand other peoples talk relative to their current level of
social and cognitive resources. However, children up to age seven seem to blame themselves if they do not
understand something said to them, rather than judging that what was said to them might have been inadequate.
Even 10 and 11 year olds who have problems in understanding something may not ask for more information.
When children are asked to take part in conversations that are beyond their development, they cannot fully
participate and may be forced to repeat without understanding. Discourse in young learner classrooms should follow
patterns children find familiar from their home and family, or from their school experience, and should not demand
more of children than they can do, in terms of imagining someone elses state of mind or expressing causes and
beliefs.
Familiarity of content and context in foreign language use will help children as speakers and as listeners. Teachers
should act on behalf of the child in this respect, carefully monitoring how they talk to their pupils in terms of what
and how their pupils can find meaning in that talk.
DEVELOPING CHILDREN 'S DISCOURSE REPERTOIRES
Learners of a foreign language will increase their range or repertoire of discourse skills and types. They will learn to
interact conversationally with an increasing range of people, in different situations, with different goals and on
different topics, moving from the familiar settings of home, family and classroom to situations in the wider world.
Children develop skills to produce different types of talk including:
narratives
descriptions
instructions
arguments
opinions
Here we will concentrate on narrative and description, since these are probably the most accessible to young
learners. Other discourse types - instructions, arguments, opinions - can be analysed in similar ways for their content
and organisation. They require sometimes more developed skills in communicating with other people,
understanding their points of view, gathering and ordering information and shaping discourse to persuade or to
illustrate ideas.
THE PRIMACY OF NARRATIVE
In the child development literature, narrative appears not just as a discourse form but as a mode of mental
organisation that is found in memory construction and that features in the early social experiences of children. Key
features of narrative are the organisation of events in time, the intentional actions of participants, cause and effect,
and the resolution of problems, often through some surprising event. Narratives have thematic structure as well as
temporal structure: sequences of actions have some underlying meaning, or driving force.
Bruner (15)86) argues that narrative discourse and mental organisation is primary in childrens development. We can
note that young children encounter narrative in many types of talk and visually too: in story books, in songs, in
cartoons, on TV and video, in computer games, and as part of everyday talk in the home and in school. Children are

included in narrative production when their parents encourage collaboration. The adult may initiate a narrative for
the child to participate in: lets tell daddy where we went today; and will provide questions and suggestions to help
the child keep the sequence of actions going: what did we see next? and what was the lion doing? Children are thus
exposed to narrative from very early ages, they participate in narrative and they develop their skills in producing
narratives. Such skills and knowledge are brought to foreign language learning; what is lacking is the language to
express them.
THE LANGUAGE OF NARRATIVE
In their first language, children develop the language for doing narrative quite early, with sentence grammar and
discourse grammar appearing to develop interdependently. Constructing cohesive narrative requires the use of
relative clauses, connectives, pronominal reference, and of adverbs, verb tense and aspect to convey temporal
relationships.
Contextual information has helped the child get a rough idea of a phrases meaning, and a model of its use, but it will
take many more exposures and uses in a range of contexts before the full and specific meaning is available to the
child.
NON-NARRATIVE DISCOURSE : DESCRIPTION
Narrative is contrasted with paradigmatic mental organisation, which is concerned with categorising the world, and
naming objects and characteristics. Paradigmatic discourse is also found in early childhood social interaction, when
parents teach children their colours or name animals they see together. S
A description clearly derives from paradigmatic organisation: objects, animals or people and their parts, features and
habits are labelled and described. If pupils are to produce successful descriptions, they will need to access their prior
knowledge of such descriptive features and the language to express them. By building up the language components
of a description, the teacher can carry out more effective preparation for extended talk.
EFFECTIVE SUPPORT FOR CHILDRENS FOREIGN LANGUAGE DISCOURSE SKILLS
The teacher can give support through motivating topics. If children are to talk meaningfully in foreign language
classrooms, they must have something they want to say. The teacher must take on the responsibility for adjusting
tasks and topics so that they relate to pupils interests. A sure way to do this is by building in to a task an element of
choice for pupils. Encourage them to choose which animal they will talk about, and if they lack information they may
at least be motivated to discover it. Find things in which the children are experts, whether that is the life of budgies,
how to program the computet, or football teams, and use these interests in tasks.
Teacher can also support through task structure. Children usually benefit from knowing what is going to happen at
the different stages of a task. It helps too if a task has a clear goal or purpose. To construct a human purpose for a
task, we try to imagine a realistic reason for why one person might want to say these things to another person. This
simple purpose might be enough to motivate and support talking telling people what they dont know, but are
interested to find out about.
Support through language practice. Interest in a topic and purpose for a task, though important, are not enough..
Unlike first language children, foreign language learners are not immersed in a continual stream of spoken discourse,
from which they can pick out words and phrases while also being helped by adults to participate in the discourse.
Foreign language teaching needs to compensate for this lack of exposure to the language by providing other learning
opportunities.

General language learning principles and research show that language learners need the following:

Models of language use to listen to, notice and appropriate;

Plentiful opportunities for repeated listening;
Plentiful opportunities to say the words and phrases;
Feedback on production to improve fluency and accuracy.

Producing extended talk in addition requires:

Preparation time;
Support for remembering the information to be included, while talking;
Rehearsals of large chunks of talk, as well as words and phrases.

SHORT ACTIVITIES FOR LEARNING THE SPOKEN LANGUAGE

Listening and doing
In these activities, the main learning focus for the children is to listen to the names and characteristics of the animals
so that the English words and phrases become familiar and the children begin to notice features of the English.
After playing the games a few times, the children will begin to speak as well as listen, and can gradually take over the
teachers role and play in pairs or groups. Most of the games produce an outcome, e.g. one picture left or a scenario
completed, that can be talked about as immediate revision of the language.
Listen and identify
In its simplest form, the teacher says the name of an animal and the child points to the picture or puts a counter on
it. The teacher can see at a glance whether the pupils understand the spoken word.
The game can be developed by the teacher describing a picture in more detail:
This animal has fur, four legs and barks.
Bingo: Each pupil chooses six animals, and puts the other pictures back in the envelope. The teacher says the
names of the animals at random. When a pupil hears one of his or her animal names, she or he turns that
picture over. The first one with all the pictures turned over shouts bingo! and is the winner.
Listen and take away
Pupils start with the full set of pictures. The teacher instructs them to take away certain animals:
Take away all the animals with wings / beaks / who live in hoi countries.
This continues until only one animal is left. Anyone who has that animal is a winner. Again, the moving of the
pictures gives the teacher information about who understands and who not.

CHAPTER 4: Learning Words

MEANING OF LEARNING VOCABULARY

Vocabulary development is about learning words, but it is about much more than that. Vocabulary development is
also about learning more about those words, and about learning formulaic phrases or chunks, finding words inside
them, and learning even more about those words.
Children will ask what a particular word means, or how to say a word in the foreign language, and, in learning to
read, the word is a key unit in building up skills and knowledge.
The role of words as language units begins with the early use of nouns for naming objects in first language
acquisition, and of use of other words to express the child's wants and needs, e.g. more or go.
We need to be aware that although children may use the same words as adults, they may not hold the same
meanings for those words. The acquisition of word meanings takes much longer than the acquisition of the spoken
form of the words, and children use words in their speech long before they have a full understanding of them.
METAPHOR U NDER THE FLOWER OF SPOKEN WORDS
We can think of words as rather like flowers growing in the soil. All we see above ground is the flowery but that
flower is kept alive and growing by roots that spread underneath it. Underneath the flowers of spoken words lie the
roots, a connected web of meanings, understandings and links. All through childhood, words are used with only a
partial understanding of the full meaning system that underlies them.
Some of the foreign language words will map on to word meanings that are already fully formed in the first
language. Many of the words, however, may link to first language words and concepts that they are in the process of
learning about and have only partial meanings for. In addition, the first and foreign language words may not map
straightforwardly one on to another; but may have different underlying meanings because of cultural or other
differences.
Each time children meet familiar words again, they too have changed and will bring new first language and
conceptual knowledge to the vocabulary. The root system of word knowledge continues to grow and become thicker
and more tightly inter-linked, so that the flowers of word use are more and more strongly supported.
VOCABULARY SIZE

Gap between vocabulary size in first and foreign language is very large
A realistic target for children learning a foreign language is around 500 words/year, given good learning
conditions
Not all words are useful in foreign language learning
Vocabulary teaching can focus to help learners build up a knowledge of words

WORD KNOWLEDGE IS A MATTER OF DEGREE RATHER THAN ALL OR NOTHING

To illustrate the many types of knowledge involved in knowing a word, consider the following classroom extract, in
which a native- speaker teacher is talking with a second language learner of English about the equipment needed to
draw a pie chart (a circular graph that shows proportions like a pie or cake cut into slices).
T: a compass (2.o) you need a compass (.) what else do you need for a pie chart? (2.o) because youre measuring
angles arent you? Slices of the cake (.) so to speak (.) so what do you need for angles?
P: measure (.) angle measure
T: whats it called? Is there a special name for (. ) the piece of equipment that we use for measuring angles? (. ) Go on
(.) youve started
P: ????? (Unclear utterance)

T: protractor
The extract of classroom talk helps consider what the pupil knows about the word protractor and what he still has to
learn about it. If we ask the naive question - Does the pupil know the word protractor? - we would have to answer
that he does seem to know something about it, since he tries to say it in line 9, and in order to do that, he must
understand the meaning of what is being talked about. Word knowledge is always then a matter of degree, rather
than all or nothing.
The pupil seems to have some receptive knowledge of the word, but not yet to have sufficient productive knowledge
to be able to produce it automatically on demand (line 5). Because the pupil did not himself say the word in this
piece of discourse, we cannot tell whether he can pronounce the word acceptably, i.e. has phonological knowledge
of the word.
KNOWING A WORD
TYPE OF KNOWLEDGE

WHAT IS INVOLVED

RECEPTIVE
MEMORY

To understand it when
spoken/written
To recall it when needed

CONCEPTUAL

To use with correct meaning

SPOKEN FORM : PHONOLOGICAL

ORTHOGRAPHIC

To hear the word and pronounce it, on

its own, and in phrases and sentences
To use in grammatically accurate way, well and good
to know grammatical connections
She sang very well.
She sang very good.
To know which other words can be A beautiful view. Vs
used
A good looking view.
To spell correctly
PIZZA not BIZZA

PRAGMATIC KNOWLEDGE

To use in the right situation

GRAMMATICAL KNOWLEDGE

COLLOCATIONAL

CONNOTATIONAL

METALINGUISTIC

EXAMPLE
it

is

Not to confuse effect

and affect

would you like a

drink
what can I get you?
To know its positive and negative slim has positive
associations
connotations
skinny is negative
To know explicitly about the word
To
know
that
protractor is a noun

SINTAGMATIC -PARADIMACTIC SHIFT

Conceptual knowledge grows as children experience more and more of the world in their daily lives. There are also
maturational factors that seem to affect the nature of conceptual knowledge about first language vocabulary at
different ages, and that can be expected to have a knock-on effect for foreign language learning. One of these
factors is the syntagmatic-paradigmatic shift that occurs between five and ten years of age.
This shift refers to the types of associations that children make between words and ideas. Children in wordassociation experiments are given a word and asked what the word brings to mind; as they get older; so the types of
words that come to mind seem to change. When given a cue word like dog or table, younger children tend to make
syntagmatic associations, choosing a linking idea in a word from a different part of speech, or word class, so the
noun cue words might produce verb responses bark or eat.

We can also think of these links as thematic, in that the ideas link together in a kind of theme. Older children are
more likely to respond to cue words with words from the same word class: animal or chair. These are called
paradigmatic responses.
Childrens shift to paradigmatic responses probably reflects other developments: they become more able to deal
with abstract connections, such as a dog is a kind of animal, and they build up more knowledge of the world, words
to go with it and ways of organising it. Schooling has a major impact on how childrens knowledge and vocabulary
develops because it introduces them to formal logical thinking. As they move through school, so they learn how to
sort things into sets, how to classify and label sets and categories according to characteristics, how to compare and
contrast categories.
The categorising, labelling and talking about categories is, moreover, increasingly carried out in the language of the
adult world, as children learn the ways of dunking and using language that is characteristic of subject disciplines
YOUNG LEARNERS USE THEIR FIRST LANGUAGE SCHEMAS IN ORGANISING THEIR FL WORDS
Words and their meanings are connected in syntagmatic and paradigmatic patterns. These patterns create networks
of connections in the mind that have been variously called schemas (or schemata), scripts and frames. When a
word is encountered, the schema that they are part of will be activated, and the network of activated meanings
becomes available to help make sense of the discourse and the words at a holistic level.
The general idea of networked and connected ideas in the mind is a useful one in thinking about vocabulary. In
particular, it is helpful to remember that, for foreign language learners, these schemas are usually being constructed
throughout childhood (and onwards) within the first language culture. When foreign language words are learnt, they
are likely to be mapped on to first language words and to thereby enter schemas that have already been built up.
However, this mapping of foreign language words on to first language schemas may lead to problems, because
different cultures organise aspects of the world differently. The schemas that foreign language words are placed in
may be appropriate for the first language but less so for the second.
BASIC LEVEL OF A WORD
Categorisation is particularly significant for children, and hence for their foreign language learning The most general
hierarchies are:
Superordinate

FURNITURE

ANIMAL

Basic level

CHAIR

DOG

Subordinate

ROCKING CHAIR

SPANIEL

In each case, the hierarchies could be extended upwards and downwards. However it is the middle, or basic, level
that is of interest. The words for basic level concepts are the most commonly used words, they are learnt by children
before words higher or lower in the hierarchy, they are the shortest words, and they are the words used in neutral
contexts e.g. We have always kept dogs is more likely to be used than We have always kept spaniels. Conceptually,
the basic level is the highest level at which objects have similar shapes, are used in similar ways and at which a single
mental image can be used for the whole category
In the foreign language classroom, basic level concepts are more likely to have been mastered than superordinate
and subordinate levels that develop through formal education When teaching vocabulary around a topic or lexical
set, e.g. food or space travel, we can begin from basic level items, such as pizza or rocket, moving over time to
superordinate or more general vocabulary (such as vegetables or vehicles), and downwards to more specific words
{sprouting broccoli or moon landing module).

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDRENS VOCABULARY : SUMMARY

What implications does vocabulary and conceptual development across the early years at school have for vocabulary
development in childrens foreign language learning? Conclusions from this section and principles for teaching are
listed below:

The types of words that children find possible to leam will shift. Five year olds learning a foreign language
need very concrete vocabulary that connects with objects they can handle or see, whereas older learners
can cope with words and topics that are more abstract and remote from their immediate experience.
Vocabulary development is not just learning more words but is also importantly about expanding and
deepening word knowledge. Children need to meet words again and again, in new contexts that help
increase what they know about words. Teaching needs to include the recycling of words.
Words and word knowledge can be seen as being linked in networks of meaning. Meeting a word will
activate the network and thus provide support for understanding and for learning.
Basic level words are likely to be more appropriate for younger children, or when learning vocabulary for
new concepts. Older learners can benefit from building up superordinate and subordinate vocabulary linked
to basic level words they already know.
Children change in how they can learn words. Whereas the very young learners, will learn words as
collections, older children are much more able to make connections between the words they learn and to
use the paradigmatic organisation of words and concepts as a help in vocabulary learning.

ORGANIZATION OF WORDS IN A LANGUAGE

FUNCTION AND CONTENT WORDS how they are used to construct sentences. Content words carry lexical
meaning, function words carry grammatical meaning. Eg : The little house in the street was built when my
mother was a child.
Content and function words need different teaching approaches.
Content words taught in planned and explicit ways.
Function words incidentally, through continued use.
RECYCLING VOCABULARY
THE DYNAMIC NATURE OF VOCABULARY (steps in vocabulary learning)

Have source for encountering new words

Getting a clear image
Learning the meaning of new words
Making strong memory connection between forms and meanings of words
Using the words

Vocabulary needs to be met and recycled at intervals, in different activities, with new knowledge and new
connections developed each time the same words are met again
THE ROLE OF TRANSLATION OF NEW VOCABULARY ITEM
Techniques which teachers can use to explain the meanings of new words:
By demonstration or pictures:

using an object
using a cut-out figure
using gesture
performing an action
photographs
drawings or diagrams on the board
pictures from books

By verbal explanation:
analytical definition
putting the new word in a defining context (e.g. an ambulance takes sick people to hospital)
Translating into another language: it is important to realize that the immediate translation of a new word
takes away from the child any need or motivation to think about the meaning of the foreign language word
or to hold the new word in mind.
Sometimes a new word is first explained in the foreign language or with pictures, but is then immediately translated
in the first language. Pupils will soon realise the pattern of their teachers explanations and' learn that they dont
have to concentrate on working out the meaning, because the translation is predictably given afterwards.
As a general principle, it would seem useful to avoid translation as a regular way of explaining new words, and to try
other techniques, both for variety and for promoting learning. Often when new words are introduced, pupils will
produce the first language translation. Then the teacher can accept the translation, as useful evidence of
understanding, but can still proceed with explanations in the foreign language that will provide useful input.
CHECK UNDERSTANDING OF A NEW WORD
An explanation is quickly followed by a check of understanding, using a different technique. So, having explained
ambulance through a defining context, learners understanding can be checked by asking them to identify an
ambulance in a picture. If the new word has not been understood, a further explanation can be given.
ATTENDING TO FORM
Form (how it is pronounced and written) is a key part of word knowledge. For young learners, spoken form is a
priority. Written form can be introduce soon after or later as reading and writing skills are developed. Pupils need to
hear the new word in isolation as well as in discourse context, so that they can notice the sounds at the beginning
and end, the stress pattern of the word, and the syllables that make up the word.
MAKING STRONG MEMORY CONNECTIONS
Having met and understood a new word, and paid attention to its form, the pupils vocabulary learning process has
begun. The word has entered the learners short term memory, and the next teaching issue is how to build up the
memory of the word so that it is available for use in the longer term. Memorising activities are needed at the point
of learning new words for the first time, and at regular intervals to recycle vocabulary, so that it stays active and
ready to use.
Thematic organization of vocabulary
Things that go together or happen together can be seen as including:
people + objects + actions + processes (combinations of actions) + typical events + places.
Organization of whole to parts

For example, body - arms / legs - fingers / toes.

Organization from general to specific hierarchies
For example, types of food - vegetables - cabbages.
Organization through words and antonyms
Some words that have meanings related through antonymy can be placed on lines or clines (sloping lines) that give a
picture of the degrees of difference, e.g.:
Hot warm - cold
Organization in ad-hoc categories
This is the name given to collections of things put together on the spur of the moment e.g.:
Things to take on a picnic

CHAPTER 5: Learning grammar

A PLACE FOR GRAMMAR ?
Grammar does indeed have a place in childrens foreign language learning, and that skilful grammar teaching can be
useful. Grammar is closely tied into meaning and use of language, and is inter-connected with vocabulary.
Chunks of language, is also present in the learning of grammar. The chunk may be used as a whole for some time,
but it is available to be broken down and parts re-used with other words, e.g. it was very dangerous. The breaking
down and recombining of previously learnt chunks of language is a process of grammar construction, and appears to
be a useful part of language learning. All in all, we should know that:

grammar is necessary to express precise meanings in discourse;

grammar ties closely into vocabulary in learning and using the foreign language;
grammar learning can evolve from the learning of chunks of language;
talking about something meaningful with the child can be a useful way to introduce new grammar;
grammar can be taught without technical labels (e.g. intensifying adverb);

DIFFERENT MEANINGS OF GRAMMAR

Grammar can refer to:
How a language is conventionally used as a system of language
The way that system is described by linguists
Internal mental representation of the language that the learner has built up
THE GRAMAR OF A LANGUAGE
A language does not really exist as an object or entity, separate from people; we tend to think of it that way, but we
might also think of it as a collection of all its uses. As such, a language is constantly changing, i.e. it is dynamic.
To teach a language to non-native speakers, we need to stop it, to fix it so that we can understand it as a more static
set of ways of talking, and break it into bits to offer to learners. Breaking a language into word-sized bits produces
vocabulary, finding patterns in how words are put together produces grammar.
So English has the pattern that expresses the idea of intensification by placing very in front of adjectives. These
patterns are often called rules, but we should notice that patterns are rules in so far as they describe what people
usually do, rather than being like school rules or rules of football that teachers or referees ensure are obeyed.

THEORETICAL AND PEDAGOGIC GRAMMARS

Theoretical linguists concern themselves with finding and describing the patterns in the use of a language. The way
they fix and then describe the language depends on their theoretical views about language use and their objectives.
Chomskyan linguists aim to describe language as it is internalised in the mind / brain, rather than as it is produced by
speakers. Their main goal is to explore, and unify, on a theoretical level, similarities in syntax across all languages,
and this work has little, if any, application to the language classroom. At one stage in this research programme, the
idea of a generative grammar was developed. Hallidayan linguists, on the other hand, view language as a tool for
expressing meaning, and so they categorise language in terms of how meaning is expressed, and produce functional
grammars.
A new generation of corpus linguists are producing grammars based on real data about frequency and patterns of
use, rather than on the intuitions of native speakers that were used earlier. New ways of analysing these large
datasets are producing new theoretical concepts of language.
Pedagogical grammars are explicit descriptions of patterns, or rules, in a language, presented in ways that are helpful
to teachers and to learners. Teachers need an overview and description of the whole of the language that is to be
taught, but learners will encounter the pedagogical grammar bit by bit, as parts of it are introduced in text book
units.
INTERNAL GRAMMARS
Learners will meet pedagogical grammar if not directly from a learners grammar book, then indirectly through
lessons, teacher explanations and text books. Every learners internal grammar is different from every others
because each has a unique learning experience. Internal grammar is sometimes referred to as interlanguage or as
linguistic competence.
FROM WORDS TO GRAMMAR
In the beginning stages, learners seem to use words or chunks strung together to get their meanings across, with
little attention paid to grammar that would fit the words or chunks together in conventional patterns.
Cognitive psychology suggests that our brains / minds work always with a limited amount of attentional capacity (or
mental attention) that is available to concentrate on getting a task achieved. When that task is communicating an
idea or message through the foreign language, then it seems that finding the right words takes up attention early on.
This will be a repeating process of moving from lexis to grammar, as language resources get gradually more
extensive.
Weinert showed that they used formulaic phrases or chunks both for communication and for developing grammar.
Chunks that had been learnt by rote were sometimes split up into their parts and those parts re-used with other
words to make new sentences.
LEARNING THROUGH HYPOTHESIS TESTING
Hypothesis testing is the rather grand name given to mental processes that are evidenced from a very early age.
Eventually the child learns that the hypothesis was right, but only for a limited number of drops, after which adult
fatigue sets in, and the spoon probably disappears!

It is suggested that something similar happens when children learn the grammar of their first language, once they
move past holistic use of language chunks. Children do not just produce random word orderings and forms, but they
somehow work out how to use the language and then try out their hypotheses in saying things.
Such refining of language and of ideas is characteristic of mental development, and is thus likely to occur in foreign
language learning too, as children build hypotheses about how the foreign language works from the data they have
received from their limited experience with the language. As they get more input, so the hypotheses will change.
Errors in language use can often act as a window on to the developing internal grammar of the learner, and are
signals of growth. They can also suggest what types of teacher intervention may assist learning.
INFLUENCE OF THE FIRST LANGUAGE
It will be apparent that constructing hypotheses about the foreign language is much more difficult than for the first
language, simply because the learner has relatively little amounts of data to work on. When data is limited, learners
are more likely to use the first language to fill the gaps.
If the foreign language cues are not particularly obvious, the probability of them being noticed and used is even
smaller. Harley suggests that it is precisely these cross-linguistically different and low-profile features of grammar
that need form-focused instruction.
TEACHING GRAMMAR AS EXPLICIT RULES: LEARNING AS BUILDING BLOCKS
Grammar rules are introduced one-by-one, explicitly, to the learners. Metalinguistic labels are used to talk explicitly
about the grammar, e.g. the past perfect tense, and the terms and organisation needed to talk about language
become another part of what has to be learnt. Learners are expected to learn the rules and to practise using the
rules to construct sentences.
It is known from language testing, that students who do well on grammar tests often also do well on reading and
writing tests, reinforcing the possibility of a link between more formal educational success and success via formal
explicit grammar teaching.
We need a more organic metaphor for the growth of internal grammar, that does not see it as the piling up of
discrete blocks of knowledge, but that captures the idea of non-linear and interconnected growth: grammar grows
like a plant, perhaps, watered by meaningful language use, and pushing out new shoots while older stems are
strengthened.
FOCUS ON FORM : THE REVIVAL OF GRAMMAR TEACHING
Communicating through a language and learning a language can actually conflict with each other, and that focusing
on meaning in classrooms does not automatically, as. was assumed with CLT, guarantee continuing language
development on all fronts.
Grammar may emerge naturally in first language, it may even be genetically determined, but the grammar of a
foreign language is foreign, and grammar development requires skilled planning of tasks and lessons, and explicit
teaching. From the learners point of view, it is increasingly recognised that attention to form is vital, and that
learners need to be helped to notice the grammatical patterns of the foreign language, before they can make those
patterns part of their internal grammar that instruction should include explicit suggestions for what to look for in an
FL pattern and structure input activities in which learners do not try to produce new forms but are required to

manipulate language information in some way.

Batstone helpfully brings some of these ideas together in a suggested sequencing of grammar learning activities
around particular patterns or structures:
(re) noticing
(re) structuring
Proceduralizing
Noticing is an active process in which learners become aware of the structure, notice connections between form and
meaning, but do not themselves manipulate language.
Successful noticing activities will usually:
support meaning as well as form;
present the form in isolation, as well as in a discourse and linguistic context;
contrast the form with other, already known, forms;
require active participation by the learner;
be at a level of detail appropriate to the learners - a series of noticing activities may zoom in on details;
lead into, but not include, activities that manipulate language.
Structuring involves bringing the new grammar pattern into the learners internal grammar and, if necessary,
reorganising the internal grammar. Structuring usually requires controlled practice around form and meanings, and
the learner must be actively involved in constructing language to convey precise meaning, thus perhaps prompting
further noticing at a more detailed level.
In structuring activities:
learners should manipulate the language, changing form in order to express meaning
learners can be given choices in content that require adjustments in grammar to express meaning
there will be limited impact on spontaneous use - most of the results of structuring work are still internal
Proceduralisation is the stage of making the new grammar ready for instant and fluent use in communication, and
requires practice in choosing and using the form to express meaning. Tasks used for proceduralisation must require
attention to grammar as well as effective communication.
PRINCIPLES FOR LEARNING-CENTRED GRAMMAR TEACHING
Young learners need to be surrounded by and participate in meaningful discourse in the foreign language, and it
would not be conceptually appropriate for grammar to be explicitly taught as formal, explicit rules in young learner
classrooms to children under the age of 8 or 9 years.
Good learning-centred grammar teaching will be meaningful and interesting, require active participation from
learners, and will work with how children learn and what they are capable of learning. As with all other aspects of
learning and teaching, the socio-cultural context of foreign language lessons will strongly influence what actually
happens, in classrooms, but some general principles for learning-centred grammar teaching can be summarised:
The need for grammar
Grammatical accuracy and precision matter for meaning;
Without attention to form, form will not be learnt accurately;
Form-focused instruction is particularly relevant for those features of the foreign language grammar that are

different from the first language or are not very noticeable.

Potential conflict between meaning and grammar

If learners attention is directed to expressing meaning, they may neglect attention to accuracy and
precision.

Importance of attention in the learning process

Teaching can help learners notice and attend to features of grammar in the language they hear and read, or
speak and write;
Noticing an aspect of form is the first stage of learning it; it then needs to become part of the learners internal
grammar; and to become part of the learners language resources ready for use in a range of situations.

Learning grammar as the development of internal grammar

the learner has to do the learning; just teaching grammar does not make it happen;
grammar learning can work outwards from participation in discourse, from vocabulary and from learnt
chunks;
learners errors can give teachers useful information about their learning processes and their internal
grammars.

The role of explicit teaching of grammar rules

teaching grammar explicitly requires the learner to think about language in very abstract, formal ways that
some enjoy and some find difficult. The younger the learner, the less appropriate/it is likely to be;
children can master metalanguage if it is well taught; metalanguage can be a useful tool.
WORKING FROM DISCOURSE TO GRAMMAR
Many types of discourse that occur in young learner classrooms have grammatical patterns that occur naturally, but
that can be exploited for grammar learning. It requires teachers to think about their language use from a
grammatical perspective, so that they become aware of opportunities for grammar that arise every day.
Classroom discourse contexts and routines can serve to introduce new grammar, with, access to meaning supported
by action and objects, or to give further practice in language that has already been introduced in other ways.
GUIDING NOTICING ACTIVITIES
Listen and notice
Pupils listen to sentences or to a connected piece of talk, e.g. a story or phone call, and complete a table or grid
using what they hear. In order to complete the grid, they need to pay attention to the grammar aspect being taught.
Presentation of new language with puppets
In language syllabuses that require teachers to present new language regularly to children, the idea of learnernoticing can be helpfully introduced into more traditional ways of teaching grammar. When introducing a new
pattern, the teacher can construct a dialogue with a story-line that uses a repetition plus contrast pattern, to be
played out by puppets.

LANGUAGE PRACTICE ACTIVITIES THAT OFFER STRUCTURING OPPORTUNITIES

In structuring activities the goal is to help learners internalise the grammatical pattern so that it becomes part of
their internal grammar. The focus is on internal work that happens as a result of activities that demand accuracy,
rather than on fluency in production.

Questionnaires, surveys and quizzes

The teacher needs to plan which language forms the pupils will be encouraged to Use. Preparation and rehearsal of
the questions is necessary to ensure accuracy, and the activity must be managed so that the questions are asked in
full each time.
The language use in a questionnaire activity can easily become reduced to something like cakes? sweets? pizza?
Pretending to carry out the survey by phone, rather than face-to-face, would provide a realistic reason to require the
full question, Do you like pizza? or Which do you prefer, pizza or cake? to be asked each time.
Structuring requires learners to manipulate the language so that they produce the form with attention and
accurately.
Information gap activities
Activities with information gaps are often found in course books to practise oral skills. Again, with just small
adjustments, they can be used with grammar goals rather than oral fluency goals.
Drills and chants
Drills have been used in language classrooms for decades, and are a useful way of giving all children some speaking
practice when the class is too large for individual speaking. They also offer language and involvement support to
children when used to practise new language, because the child can listen to others to pick up bits that she or he is
unsure about, and drills can be lively and fun if the pace is kept up. The dangers of over-using drills occur mostly if
the children do not understand the content, and drills are then a mechanical exercise in making a noise, rather than
language learning opportunities.
PROCEDURALISING ACTIVITIES
Task design must ensure that grammar is essential for achieving task goals and that some attention to accuracy is
required, but the idea is that attention to accuracy can gradually be relaxed as it becomes automatic.
Polar animal description re-visited
Description does need some grammatical knowledge that has already entered the internal grammar through
'noticing and structuring*. The production of a description to the whole class might then be a useful proceduralising
activity for those items of grammar. Because it is a public performance, it will justify attention to getting forms
exactly right through rehearsing and perhaps writing down a text.
Dictogloss
The basic idea of Dictogloss is that the teacher reads out a text several times, the pupils listen and make notes
between readings, and then reconstruct the text in pairs or small groups, aiming to be as close as possible to the

original and as accurate as possible. During the collaborative reconstruction, learners will talk to each other about
the language, as well as the content, drawing on and making their internal grammatical knowledge.

CHAPTER 6: Learning literacy skills

INTRODUCTION
Literacy is both social and cognitive. Socially, literacy provides people with opportunities to share meanings across
space and time. Cognitively, literacy requires that individuals use specific skills and knowledge about how the written
language operates in processing text.
Foreign language reading debates since the mid-i5iSos have been dominated by top-down approaches, that
emphasise making meaning over the lower level skills of word recognition or knowing letter-sound links. At primary
or elementary school level, a similar opposition between top-down and bottom-up approaches has been created,
between whole language approaches and phonics teaching
LITERACY SKILLS IN ENGLISH
Literacy skills include being able to read and write different sorts of texts for different purposes. In most societies
today, literacy is part and parcel of everyday life for children and adults, and life is full of different sorts of written
texts: in the home, on the street, on television, and on computers. In societies where widespread literacy is more
recent, schools may still make more use of written texts than homes, but information technology will probably bring
rapid changes in the next few years. Literacy skills are then, not just an additional set of skills learnt in schools, but
an integral part of peoples lives.
An activity, such as story-book reading or sending birthday cards, in which reading and writing is involved can be
described as a literacy event. People in their daily lives are regularly involved in a range of literacy events, in which
they use skills that extend beyond writing and reading text. Participation in literacy events at home provides children
with their first experiences of written language.
If we take the wider view, we each learn multiple literacies and can see that becoming literate begins long before a
child goes to school, and that the school has a foundation of literacy events and experiences upon, which to build
the narrower and more detailed skills of reading and writing.
Within the broader idea of literacies lies the narrower and perhaps more traditional, view of literacy as reading and
writing words and texts. While applauding the broadening of our thinking about literacy, especially for the way these
new ideas expand our views of what children already know and are capable of, I remain convinced that learning the
detail of how texts are written and can be understood is crucial to childrens educational and personal development,
and can be helped by good teaching.
Embedded in both the broader and narrower concepts of literacy is the idea that reading and writing are essentially
about understanding: that readers will understand texts that they read by constructing a meaning for themselves,
and that writers will try to ensure that their readers are able to understand what they write.
Reading brings together visual information from written symbols, phonological information from the sounds those
symbols make when spoken, and semantic information from the conventional meanings associated with the words
as sounds and symbols. All three types of information are used by fluent readers in reaching an understanding of the
text, together with information about the social uses of the text as discourse. In addition, skilled writing requires
mastery of the fine motor skills to form the written shapes and orthographic knowledge of how written symbols are
combined to represent words through spelling conventions.

Spoken language was used first to represent mental ideas and meanings; in a socio historical second step, written
language was developed to represent talk.
As the written form of a language develops as a tool for representing the spoken language, conventions and rules
emerge in the use of written forms that then have to be learnt anew by each successive generation of children. In
the case of English, some spelling conventions date back to the 16th and 17th centuries, others were imposed in the
nineteenth century and, because spelling has been fixed while pronunciation has changed, many of the conventions
or rules of the written language do not match how English is spoken today (Stubbs 1980). To a modern child, the
spelling of English does not offer a natural match between written and spoken forms.
A second way in which written language is often much less natural than spoken language for children is in its social
context of use. Spoken language is used in contexts that offer much support for meaning, often from familiar and
helpful adults who know the child and interact with him or her regularly. A child faced with a written text has
support only from previous knowledge, from what the writer can build in, or through pictures or diagrams that
illustrate the text. The writer is much more distant from a reader than is the case with speaking, and this distance
can place a high demand on a reader to construct an understanding of the text.
HOW SKILLED READERS OPERATE
In making meaning from a text, skilled readers use a combination of visual, phonological and semantic information,
taken from the letters, words and sentences of the text. Readers build up an understanding of the text as they go
along, sometimes called a text base. The text base is a kind of dynamic and temporary meaning for the text that
draws on information processed at different scales.
Skilled reading is a process of constructing meaning from written language. The knowledge and skills used to extract
information at the various text levels are:

FACTORS AFFECTING LEARNING TO READ IN ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

The Competition model of language use embodies a theory that helps us think about how our minds are affected by
the learning of our first language (or L1). Each language is structured differently, and the different structures offer
users different cues to meaning. So when we learn our first language, our brain / mind tunes into the way the
particular L1 works, and we learn to attend to the particular cues to meaning that are most helpful.
When we meet a new language, our brain / mind automatically tries to apply the first language experience by
looking for familiar cues. Part of learning a foreign language is developing new understandings about the particular
cues to meaning that the new language offers, and that differ from those of our first language.
The ideas of the Competition model apply also to written languages. Features of the written language influence the
skills and strategies that are most appropriately developed for using it. If Li readers of Italian or Spanish begin to
learn to read English, they are likely to transfer their skills and strategies to the new language. In this example,
Spanish learners might need to lean some extra reading skills at the level of grapho-phonemic relationships to equip
theit for reading English. If we reverse the situation, and imagine English Li readers learning to read Italian, then
things are different, and simpler. A fluent reader of English will need to learn some new sound-letter relationships,
but will then find reading Italian quite straightforward because s/he can use the skills and strategies used with
English, and will have many fewer irregularities to deal with.

The way the child is being, or has been, taught to read the first language will create expectations about how foreign
language reading will be taught. While taking a quite different approach in the foreign language classroom may be a
good idea, because it helps children to differentiate the languages and the literacy skills required in each, it may also
confuse children by requiring them to cope with different definitions of good behaviour or success in reading.
Social aspects of first language literacy may also impact on learning to read in a foreign language, the extreme case
being when a childs Li does not have a written form, or when the medium of education is a second language, so that
the child does not learn L1 literacy.
THE LEARNER'S KNOWLEDGE OF THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE
Oral skills in the new language are an important factor in learning to be literate. Phonological awareness in the
foreign language, the ability to hear the individual sounds and syllables that make up words, will develop from oral
language activities, such as saying rhymes or chants and singing songs.
Vocabulary knowledge is extremely important:
(a) when a written word is being sounded out or built up from its component letter or morpheme sounds, knowing
the word already will speed up recognition, and
(b) when a sentence is being read, known words will be easier to hold in short-term memory as meaning is built up.
In the early stages, children should only encounter written words that they already know orally. If a text contains
unknown words, then either the meanings of these need to be explained in advance, or the meanings must be
completely obvious from the rest of the text.
AGE
Age of starting to learn to read clearly overlaps with first language reading experience. However there are other
factors that may make learning to read and write in English a very different experience for children of six or ten years
of age.
The youngest children are still learning how written text functions, so that they may not be able to transfer even the
most general concepts about text and print. They are still mastering the fine motor skills needed to shape and join
letters, and so producing a written sentence takes a long time, and, because their attentional capacities are also
limited, they may only be able to write a small amount.
Teaching children between the ages of 6 and 9 years to read and write in English as a foreign language can make use
of some of the methods used with children for whom English is a first language, perhaps with extra stress put on
those aspects of English literacy that contrast most strongly with the learners first language reading and writing.
STARTING TO READ AND WRITE IN ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
Young children will benefit from a broad approach to literacy skills that include activities from the different scales of
text levels. Most can be learnt informally rather than through direct teaching.
From Text
Attitudes to literacy: enjoy being read to from a range of books; enjoy looking at books.
Print conventions: learn how text is written down in lines and pages, with spaces between words, capital and
small letter.

Participate in range of literacy events in school, and link to out of school literacy events.

From Sentence
Learn to copy short sentences that have a personal meaning, and read them aloud.
From Words
Learn a basic set of words by sight.
Begin spotting words and letters in books.
From Morphemes / syllables
- Listen to rhymes, chants and songs, and, by joining in with them, leam by heart, and be able to say or sing them.

From Letters I sounds

Leam the names, shapes and sounds of some initial consonants.
Begin to ieara the alphabet in order, by name.
CREATING A LITERATE ENVIRONMENT IN THE CLASSROOM

The language classroom may be the only place where children will be exposed to environmental print in the foreign
language, so it is helpful to make the most of the opportunities offered by the classroom environment.
Labels
Start by labelling the childrens coat hooks, trays, and desks with their names. Bilingual or foreign language labels
can be put on furniture and objects around the class and school, and will familiarise children with written forms.
Posters
Colourful posters that include quite a lot of text can be an on-going interest for children, as they gradually recognise
more and more of the words. A rhyme that they are learning could be used for this - but notice that this is presenting
children with the written words after they have encountered them orally, not before.
Messages
Using written language for communication boosts childrens motivation, and shows them some of the uses of
writing. An English message board in the classroom may have simple messages from the teacher like Don't forget
your crayons on Friday, or more personal messages that children can write too: My rabbit had seven babies.
Reading aloud
Reading aloud to young children by the teacher (or other adult) has an enormous range of benefits. It can be done in
several ways:
Teacher reads aloud, children just listen, and perhaps look at pictures; e Teacher uses a big book, i.e. a large
book with large enough print so that all children can see;
Each child uses a text
Teachers should ensure that children understand the overall meaning of what they hear and most of the individual
vocabulary items in the text. Understanding can be supported by the use of pictures that show characters and
action, and by talking about the text in advance and giving enough of the meaning, so that children have a skeleton

they can build on as they listen.

It is very important that children regularly read aloud individually to their teacher, since it is only by listening
carefully to how children are making sense of written words that we can understand their progress in learning.

MAKING LITERACY TEACHING A MULTI-SENSORY EXPERIENCE

In learning to read and write, children have to make links from meaning to what they see (printed text), what they
hear (the spoken language) and what they produce (written words). To assist the building and strengthening of all
these various sorts of mental connections, we can use a range of modes and senses.
Early literacy activities can provide opportunities for children to see, hear, manipulate, touch and feel. For example,
if children are learning the letter shape <S>, then, as well as practising writing the shape, they need to see the
shapes on display in the classroom and in their books. They might cut -out examples of the letter S from newspapers
and magazines and make a collage of them.
FUN WITH LITERACY SKILLS
There is a lot to learn about written English and the more fun that can be had in the process the better. Learning the
alphabet can be made more exciting by singing or chanting it rhythmically. It can be recited backwards or starting
somewhere other than A.
Simple games may help interest and motivation: e.g. the teacher says a letter at random from the alphabet and
children shout out the next letter (or the next but one, or the one before).
LITERACY EVENTS AND ROUTINES IN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM
We can take the idea of a literacy event as being some kind of social activity that involves reading and writing, and
see that it can link to the idea of routines and formats. We can then find and develop opportunities in foreign
language classrooms for literacy events.
The figure shows how a regular Birthday routine can incorporate various types of reading and writing. If more or less
the same routine happens for each child in the class, the written text becomes part of the event and will be learnt
through participation in the event.

EMERGENT LITERACY
Emergent literacy describes' the (first language) phenomenon in which children seem to learn to read without any
teaching, gradually, and through exposure to text and to reading. When children spend lots of time being read to
from interesting and appropriate books, some will begin to work out for themselves the patterns and regularities
that link spoken and written text. It is this process that has been called emergent literacy
Emergent literacy ideas may have potential for foreign language literacy, but ,as in first language, it works best-for a
subset of children, and that most learners will need more formal teaching alongside experiences with books. The
features of emergent literacy that are most relevant for foreign language teaching are:

children choose the books they want to hear and read;

children are motivated by choice and by the quality of the writing they encounter;
children often choose to read the same book many times, and this is a valuable learning experience;
meaning comes first because the child understands the story as a whole;
the link between reading and oral skills is very strong because children adopt and play with the language of
the story;
parents can be involved with their childrens language learning through reading aloud with them.

LANGUAGE EXPERIENCE APPROACH

The Language Experiences key feature is the childs use of his or her own experience as the topic of texts. As a way
of starting reading, this method has some nice features, which can be adopted in foreign language classrooms:

the childs ideas are used to compose the reading text;

child and teacher together compose the sentences;
the childs learning moves from a meaningful idea unit (the sentence as a mini-text) to whole words to
letters;
words have a physical reality, as well as meaning, for the child as they are moved and put together;
punctuation is present from the start as part of the physical reality of sentences: spaces between words and
full stops;
the integration of writing and reading helps the child see how texts are composed and understood right from
the start.

Language Experience work can be done as a whole class, as well as individually, if the teacher asks for sentences
from children and writes them on the board to build up a text. The process of joint writing presents an opportunity
for talking with the children about the words, punctuation, spelling, or text organisation, which can help childrens
metalinguistic knowledge and push them to 'notice certain features of written English. If the writing is done on large
sheets of papery the product of joint writing can be made into a big book for the class, and used for farther reading
activities.
WHOLE WORDS / KEY WORDS APPROACH
It starts from word level, with children looking at single words on cards' (called flash cards', because they are
sometimes shown very quickly to the children, or flashed in front of their eyes) to encourage rapid whole word
recognition. A child will begin with five or six very common words, such as mummy and likes. The child practises
saying the word when he sees the card, and once the first five or six are mastered, moves on to the next set. Once
the child has about 15 words, very simple books are introduced that only use the known words. The child then reads
the books at that level to the teacher, one or two pages a day, and practises alone.
The features of whole word methods that are relevant for foreign language contexts include:
children get practice at fast recognition of whole words through use of flashcards;
children get a good sense of achievement and motivation by being able to read a whole book quite early;
the sight vocabulary can provide a resource that the child can use to work out how letters combine into
syllables.
PHONIES TEACHING
Phonics teaching focuses on letter-sound relations, building literacy skills from the bottom-up. The usual way
involves showing children the sounds of the different letters in the alphabet, then how letters can be combined. A
recent approach suggests children will find it more natural to start from sounds and learn which letters make them,
since they are- moving from experience with the spoken language to the new world of written letters and words.
Phonics teaching works if it directs childrens attention to letter-sound level features of English and helps children
make the mental connections between letters and sounds. It can be very dry, boring and demotivating, if done in
isolation, so it is probably preferable to incorporate five or ten minutes of concentrated phonics work inside other
activities.
CONTINUING TO LEARN TO READ
Learning a range of reading strategies
Wherever a child starts in reading, the teacher needs to make sure development takes him or her to the other scales

and that reading activities require the active integration of information across scales.
Ask children to choose a book to read to the teacher;
Give children a different book to read, so that they are moved into the zone of proximal development and
teachers would be able to see the strategies children use for unknown words.
Show children how they can break up words into two bits (morphemes). By doing this, children are
introduced to the strategies of breaking down words, and using context as a support for meaning. At the
same time, they are helped to see that words can be separated from the context, i.e. the surrounding text, in
which they first appear.
Teachers can point to the first letter of a word so that students can use phonics knowledge and skills to
attack new words.
FOCUSED TEACHING ABOUT WRITTEN LANGUAGE FORMS
Explicit teaching about features of the written language can help move children on, as part of a broader reading skills
programme. The procedure has five steps. It starts and finishes with meaningful discourse, focusing in the middle
steps on the precise aspect of literacy writing that is the goal of the teaching. It can be used to fill gaps in childrens
knowledge and skills, or to highlight areas in which the FL literacy works differently from the L1.
The Steps
1. Start from a meaningful context.
2. Focus the pupils attention on the unit and key feature being taught.
3. Give input: examples, a rule, etc.
4. Provide varied practice.
5. Give pupils opportunities to apply their new knowledge and skills in different, meaningful contexts.
These steps can be followed for any of the literacy features at word level or below:

sight words initial consonants rimes

final consonants
vowels
morphemes
consonant clusters and blends

CHAPTER 7: Listening and speaking Developing

LEARNING TO LISTEN IN ENGLISH
The initial stages
Listening to a foreign language is hard work, especially for young children. In the early stages, the pupils may spend
much of their time listening to the teacher while playing simple games, singing songs, saying rhymes or listening to
stories and simple instructions, as in TPR. The teacher will have to decide how much of the general 'classroom
language' such as instructions, questions or praise will be in the pupils' L1 and how much in English.
It is important to remember that listening is not a passive activity. The teacher will be able to support children's
understanding more effectively if she directs her pupils' attention to specific points that have to be listened for. She
can do this by using activities that actively support learners' understanding and guide their attention to specific parts
of the spoken text. This might include the use of visual materials, for example, pictures to match or sequence, or perhaps written support such as the completion of charts. All of these techniques and procedures are what we mean
when we talk about scaffolding.
Give the children confidence
We should not expect pupils to always understand every word and they should know this. Your gestures, tone of
voice and visual aids will help children feel confident about what is important to concentrate on.
Explain why the children have to listen
Make sure the learners are clear about why they are listening, what the main point or purpose of the activity is. This
helps to build up learners' confidence and reduce anxiety.
Different kinds of listening purposes are described below.
To physically settle pupils: to calm them when they are too energetic. There will often be some form of
mental engagement.
To stir pupils: to stimulate or allow them to physically 'let off steam' (to do or say something that helps you
to get rid of strong feelings or energy) if they seem bored or tired.
To improve the general listening attitude: listen for enjoyment, improve concentration span, or develop the
memory.
To develop aspects of language: listening to improve pronunciation, stress, rhythm and intonation, as well as
familiarity with new words and structures. Listening to learn songs and rhymes provides pronunciation
practice, while listening to stories may provide practice in tenses or vocabulary connected with the topic.
To interact with others: activities which encourage children to work with others require the learners to
negotiate meaning by listening and asking questions, checking meaning, agreeing, and so on.
To provide support for literacy: older children can be encouraged to make connections between spoken and
written English by picking out written words or statements which are part of a spoken message.
Help children develop specific strategies for listening
An important strategy that the teacher should teach is 'intelligent guesswork'. Pupils are used to drawing on their
background knowledge to work out something they are not sure of. Teachers need to be aware of this so that they

can provide support and raise pupils' awareness about the benefits of doing this. Some important listening strategies
include:
1. Predicting. Before learners listen to something it is useful to encourage them to guess what they think they
will be listening to. Use pictures to encourage them to guess the topic, the language or some of the details.
While they are in the middle of listening, stop to ask them what they think might come next. In both cases
this encourages learners to check whether their expectation matches the reality of what they hear, which
helps to keep motivation high.
2. Working out the meaning from context. Although the teacher might like to act out or even translate new
words before the children listen to something, she also needs to encourage them to use pictures, their
general knowledge or the message itself to work out the meaning of unfamiliar words.
3. Recognizing discourse patterns and markers. Words such as first, then, finally, or but, and, so give important
signals about what is coming next in a spoken text. Sequence markers are especially important in stories and
instructions.
SET A SPECIFIC LISTENING TASK
It is useful to think of listening in three stages:
What pupils do in preparation for listening (pre-listening activities);
While they listen so they remain active (while-listening activities) and
After they have listened (post-listening activities), e.g. produce a drawing, make a tape, answer questions,
and so on.
For example, if you ask learners to listen to a simple description and then label a plan of a bedroom, useful prelistening work might focus on key nouns, adjectives or prepositions to show where things are. The point of prelistening activities is to do some of the following: personalize a context, provide motivation and interest, build up a
picture of useful background knowledge and introduce useful words, structures and concepts.
In order to make listening an active, learning-focused process, teachers need to develop a repertoire of different
pre-, while- and post- activity types which 'fit' different types of language. When listening to a series of actions in a
narrative, for example, a listening task which asks the children to rearrange a series of pictures, or put numbers by
pictures describing different actions, supports the child's understanding very well.
ORGANIZING LISTENING
If you do have a cassette of published listening materials, this is useful to provide a good model of spoken English. It
may be useful to introduce variety by setting up a 'listening corner' in one part of the classroom for one or two
groups to use at a time while the rest of the class does something else. This can be created by screening off a corner,
with a cupboard or screens, to provide a quiet area for children to listen in pairs or groups.
A cassette recorder is needed for this purpose, ideally accompanied by a set of materials such as pictures, a book, or
sentence strips for learners to use as they listen. The activities can be made 'self-correcting', so that the children can
find out quickly whether a listen and sequence activity, for example, has been completed accurately.
LEARNING TO SPEAK IN ENGLISH
Expectations

If children are to maintain initial motivation, they need to be given opportunities to speak English as soon and as
much as possible, so as to be made to feel that they are making progress and fulfilling their expectations, thus
avoiding disappointment.
The initial stages
It is important that children leave their first few lessons with some English to 'take away'. It is therefore useful to
begin an English programme by teaching children vocabulary for basic concepts, such as numbers, colours, and so
on, which can provide the basis for subsequent activities.
First lessons often focus on teaching simple greetings and introductions. Pupils could also be given English names,
although they should be allowed to keep their own name if they wish. Teaching pupils a few rhymes and songs at the
beginning of their course will also give them the impression that they are learning to speak English quickly.
Formulaic language
In the early stages of learning, not much spontaneous speech can be expected from pupils. Much of the English they
will learn to produce in the initial stages will be formulaic language, language that is produced as whole chunks
rather than being put together word by word. It often consists of routines or patterns which children memorize and
which enable them to communicate with a minimum of linguistic competence. By hearing this language over and
over, children learn to use it.
As this type of language is repeated regularly, children learn it quickly and have the impression that they can speak a
lot. Such language consists of:

Simple greetings: Hello! How are you? / I'm fine, thank you. And you?
Social English: Did you have a nice weekend? / Have a nice weekend!
Routines: What's the date? What's the weather like today?
Classroom language: Listen. Repeat. Sit down. Work in pairs. Good.
Asking permission: Can I/May I go to the toilet? Can I clean the board? Can I wash my hands? Can I look at a
book?
Communication strategies: Can you say that again, please? How do you say ... in English, please? What does
... mean, please? I don't understand. Can I have a ... please?

ORGANIZING SPEAKING ACTIVITIES

Some speaking activities require pupils to work together in pairs or groups or to move around. Consideration will
need to be given on how to arrange the classroom in order for these activities to be carried out smoothly.
Pupils may also like to record themselves from time to time and listen to their recordings afterwards. For example,
activities such as retelling a story could be recorded and played to pupils in other classes. Most pupils find this
activity very motivating and it can help them become aware of the structures and vocabulary they are using and of
certain aspects of English pronunciation.
The teacher needs to develop a repertoire of activities providing a balance between control and creativity, repetition
and real use and provide varied models of spoken English.

WHILE LISTENING ACTIVITIES

ACTIVITY TYPE

PURPOSE

MATERIALS

1 Listen and repeat

Examples of this are found in
games such as ' Chinese Whispers
where one child whispers a
message to another who then
passes on the message to another
child and so on. The last child
repeats what they have heard and
the class compares this message
with the original. Other listen and
repeat games ask the learners to
repeat something only if it is true.

Listening for details to improve

memory and concentration
Listening with enjoyment to
improve listening attitude
Listening to physically 'settle' or
calm pupils

Short, spoken messages

such as instructions, or
statements containing no
more than ten words

2 Listen and discriminate

The learners' attention is often
focused on pronunciation features
such as listening for words which
rhyme, or selecting phrases which
have the same rhythmic pattern.
This is especially useful when using
songs and rhymes or stories which
have rhyming sequences. Use Find
the Pair or Odd-Man-Out type
activities.

Listening
for
detail
to
discriminate between sounds
and rhythmic patterns
Providing
ear-training
to
improve pronunciation
Listening to physically 'settle' or
calm pupils
Listening to encourage mental
activity and problem-solving

Sets of three or four words

which contain a matching
pair
Songs and rhymes
Rhyming stories

3 Listen and perform actions/follow

instructions
This kind of activity (TPR) is used
with instructions (Being a Robot),
action songs, rhymes, or games
such as Blind Man's Buff or What's
the Time Mr. Wolf? Asking learners
to trace a route on a plan or map is
quite difficult and should not be
used if the children find this
difficult in their mother tongue.

Listening for enjoyment

Listening to improve memory
and concentration span
Listening to 'stir" pupils, make
them more lively, relieve
boredom etc.

Action songs and rhymes

Plans or maps
Instructions for games, e.g.
origami (paper-folding)

4 Listen and draw/colour

Picture dictation is often used to
help children focus on key nouns
and on adjectives used to describe
their colour, size, shape, and so on.
The whole picture can be drawn, or
a picture which has missing items
can be added to as children listen.

Listening
to
develop
concentration on specific items
e.g. specific verbs/actions
Listening
to
consolidate
understanding of
concepts and new vocabulary,
e.g. round, square, large, small,
blue, yellow

Short, spoken descriptions

which can be accomplished
by drawings.

5 Listen and predict

This kind of activity has already
been referred to and is particularly
useful in drawing on pupils'
previous learning.

Listening to increase motivation

and concentration
Listening to activate schemata
or previous knowledge
Finding out which words or
concepts pupils already know
Listening to encourage mental
activity and problem-solving

Question
and
answer
sessions based on, e.g.
general knowledge, pictures
or the cover of a book or
story
Predict content or key
words from a picture
Draw a word or mind maps
about a topic
Complete a quiz to draw
attention to what pupils
already know

6 Listen and guess

This kind of listening is often based
on the description of something
whose identity the children have to
guess.

Listening for detail to pick out

key vocabulary used to
describe, e.g. parts of an
animal's body
Listening to encourage mental
activity and problem-solving

Short, spoken descriptions

which can be accompanied
by a selection of items for
pupils to eliminate

7 Listen and label

This activity is used with drawings,
maps or diagrams where the
learners are asked to listen to a
description of an animal, person, or
place in order to label key parts.

Listening to develop reading

and writing skills or to develop
concepts
Listening to physically settle
pupils
Listening to encourage mental
activity and problem-solving.

Written labels provided for

pupils or written words on
the blackboard for pupils to
copy

8 Listen and match

This usually involves matching
pictures to spoken words and is
common in games such as Bingo.
Older children can be involved in
activities which ask them to match
pictures or written statements to
other written texts, such as speech
bubbles taken from dialogues or
stories.

Listening to consolidate new

vocabulary and structures
Listening to encourage mental
activity and problem-solving
Listening to settle pupils

Bingo cards
Worksheets
on
which
children draw a line to
connect a picture with the
correct words or written
labels or speech bubbles to
match with pictures

9 Listen and sequence

As described earlier, this activity is
usually based on pictures or written
phrases which are rearranged into
the correct order while listening to
a story or set of instructions.

Listening to improve memory

and concentration span
Listening to consolidate new
vocabulary and structures
Listening to physically settle
pupils Listening to encourage
mental activity and problemsolving

10 Listen and classify

This activity is also usually based on
pictures. The children listen
carefully to descriptions, for
example, different animals, which
they then have to sort into
different sets. This should be
accompanied by some kind of key
visual.

Listening
to
improve
concentration span and to
consolidate new vocabulary and
structures.
Listening to physically settle
pupils.
Listening to encourage mental
activity and problem-solving.
Listening
to
improve
interactional skills Listening to
encourage mental activity and
problem-solving

TYPOLOGY OF SPEAKING ACTIVITIES

Pictures
or
written
statements
Worksheets with boxes in
which children number the
order of details listened to

Pictures
Worksheets using written
words on the blackboard
which pupils copy into the
appropriate column of a
chart while listening
Key visuals, e.g. a tick chart,
Venn diagram, matrix or
grid

CHAPTER 8: Reading and Writing

LEARNING TO READ IN THE LI AND L2
One view of learning to read, held by educationalists such as Cummins (1979), is that the development of reading
skills in a foreign language is greatly assisted if pupils have developed strong reading skills in their first language. In
this view, the positive relationship between the two is a result of children being able to transfer L1 reading skills to
the L2.
In some contexts it has been decided to encourage speaking first and leave reading until later, especially if the pupils
are still not fully literate in their LI. Teachers of very young children may not use a coursebook at all, or may use
coursebooks such as First Steps, which rely on pictures alone. In other contexts, where they start learning English
later, children may be quickly introduced to coursebooks in their first English class and be expected to begin reading
and writing in English as soon as possible.
WHAT DO CHILDREN ALREADY KNOW ABOUT READING?
When children learn to read successfully in their L1, they develop different forms of awareness and knowledge.
Awareness and knowledge about print: the realization that print represents speech, and is written in a certain
direction. The challenge for children, of course, is to find out how print represents sounds.
Graphophonic knowledge: how certain sounds occur together. Phonological awareness refers to an awareness of
syllables, onsets and rimes (rime is not the same as rhyme). Onset refers to the consonants or consonant clusters
preceding the vowel in a syllable; rime refers to the vowel and any consonants following the vowel within the
syllable. Thus in the word RAT /b/ is the onset and /at/ is the rime. The use of songs, rhymes and rhyming stories
help to build up this knowledge.
Lexical knowledge: that certain words are very common, collocate or go together (e.g. at the seaside). Teaching sight
reading of high frequency words develops this ability.
Syntactic knowledge: helps children to 'chunk' phrases and to predict what might come next in a sentence or story.
Semantic knowledge: knowledge of the world and experience of life and culture helps pupils to have expectations
about literacy events.
LEARNING TO READ IN ENGLISH: THE INITIAL STAGES
Which teaching methods are in use?
In many countries general agreement about the most effective way of teaching reading means using a balanced
approach with several methods. This includes phonics, working out sound/letter correspondences to develop 'word
attack' skills. This approach aims to consolidate children's phonemic, phonological and morphological awareness. It
highlights the recognition of individual sounds and sound blends or combinations so that the words can be 'sounded
out'.
Most teachers use a balance of activities that focus on sounds, letters and words but also activities that promote
word recognition associated with meaning, for example the Look and Say and Language Experience methods. Look
and Say is based on encouraging sight recognition of the most common words, such as the, he, she, is, are, so that
part of reading becomes automatic

Coping with English orthography

Once children are introduced to the written word in English they will quickly discover that English spelling does not
always help them in their reading.
Developing print awareness
Decorate the classroom with functional print, such as alphabet friezes, flashcards, posters, words of songs, or signs,
using published material or materials you make yourself. You can make labels for equipment such as card, scissors
and glue. Provide displays with information or questions written in English that can link to classroom routines. Other
examples include environmental print, examples of written English available in the local environment, e.g. T-shirts,
food labels or advertisements.
SUPPORTING READING IN THE INITIAL STAGES
It is important to introduce reading after the pupils have some basic knowledge of the spoken language so that it
quickly becomes meaning-based and not simply decoding. Nevertheless, reading in English in the early stages will
combine 'meaningful' reading in sentences supplemented by independent reading at the letter and word level.
Generally the teacher should support pupils' association of letters, words and pictures through songs, visual aids,
games, and so on. Simple games such as Dominoes, Snap-or: Bingo and puzzles like word searches help learners to
become familiar with typical letter combinations to form words. At first pupils will be introduced to pictures only,
then pictures and words together as flashcards. Once the pupils are more confident they will be able to cope without
so much visual support, but it will still remain an important support for many years. When designing flashcards,
words with similar sounds can be written in the same colour, for example, bed, head, guess or words in a lexical set
e.g. table, chair, lamp.
Ensure that the child experiences reading as purposeful and enjoyable rather than simply a meaningless, repetitive
activity. Pupils enjoy listening to simple dialogues and stories which are well illustrated and have an interesting story
line. In the very early stages pupils can simply listen as the plot unfolds and the illustrations are shared with them.
This is especially easy if the teacher is able to obtain any Big Books, which are very large versions of popular stories
and rhymes. Teachers may be interested in producing their own big books using versions of stories they think are
useful.
READING TO LEARN : THE LATER STAGES
As pupils become more confident in reading their own language, they use reading to learn. After an initial
introduction to English learning, pupils will be expected to cope with the independent reading required of a
coursebook. Pupils are often introduced to and learn new vocabulary or grammar through reading short texts in the
form of dialogues, descriptions, instructions or short stories, often lavishly illustrated to support the pupils'
understanding. They may be learning how to learn through their reading. Much of the advice given in the section on
teaching listening also applies to teaching reading.
Reading strategies
When children are listening to spoken messages they are trying to understand and interpret information in a similar
way to when they are trying to understand and interpret written messages. This means they will often use similar
strategies. Research has shown that actively encouraging learners to use comprehension strategies helps them
understand both spoken and written passages more effectively.

Activities using visuals such as charts provide an intermediate stage in reading development and also provide a
framework to support children's listening and speaking skills. Reading practice may also be derived from listening
work or may lead to writing. In this way, reading becomes integrated with other language skills.
Reading activities
Traditionally, pupils are asked to complete gap-filling activities or comprehension questions after reading a text.
Since all teachers know how these work we shall focus here on other activities which provide variety in the
classroom and cater for different learning styles and intelligences. Reading to learn activities which are meaningfocused are often referred to as DARTS (directed activities related to texts). These focus on the processes and
outcomes of reading. DARTS include reconstruction activities and analysis activities.
Reconstruction activities
Here the text has been modified by the teacher in some way so that the pupils can match parts of sentences or
'speech bubbles' to characters, fill in gaps in sentences or texts (words, phrases or titles), sequence parts of a
sentence or text (a dialogue, story, life cycle of an animal, set of instructions, a diary, etc.), predict the next parts of a
sentence or text after reading a section at a time, complete tables, flow charts, matrices and other key visuals or
graphic organizers, and complete pictures or diagrams with colours, labels or missing parts.
Analysis activities
Pupils hunt for specific information to organize it in some way. This is more difficult and at primary level the pupils
can underline specific parts of a text, perhaps in different colours, to show different things. They may underline any
shape words in blue and any size words in red (cover the text in plastic and use wipeable pens), label parts of a text
using labels provided by the teacher (e.g. with recipes use labels like what we are going to make; what we are going
to need) and create their own questions from a text for other pupils to answer.
Reading awareness activities
It is also helpful to reinforce the idea that reading is used for a variety of purposes. Language awareness activities
can be encouraged by asking pupils to notice similarities and differences between alphabets or by counting how
often letters occur in words. Older pupils can be introduced to the notion of genre, or text type, where pupils are
introduced to the names of different types of text, such as greetings card, menu, comic, brochure, manual, advertisement.
They are then asked to label different types of text with these names (this is a good use of a collection of authentic
texts that are often too difficult for children to actually read). The pupils can compare specific text types, such as
comics or menus, with examples in both their LI and L2.

READING ACTIVITIES

ORGANIZING READING ACTIVITIES

Some of the activities described in THE TABLE can be used with the whole class, while others can be done
individually, in pairs or in groups. When using group work any supplementary reading activities should be clearly
labelled and/or colour-coded to show their level of difficulty so that the children can organize themselves and work
independently.
LEARNING TO WRITE IN THE LI AND L2
The kinds of writing activities pupils do tend to fall into two sets in the same way that they do for reading: learning to
write, where pupils are involved mostly in tightly guided copying which focus on 'surface' features, such as
handwriting, spelling, punctuation and using the correct words and grammar. In writing to learn, there may be less
tightly controlled writing activities, moving to much freer or even creative writing where there are higher cognitive
demands and a greater focus on meaning and personal expression as well as form.
The demands of activities and tasks for productive skills (speaking and writing) can be divided chiefly into two. The
first is connected with choosing the right language while the second is concerned with thinking and having ideas,
such as remembering, choosing, selecting, ordering, prioritizing and interpreting visual clues using a picture or
graphic organizer. The language demands of a writing task depends on which category it falls under. In learning to
write, the focus on form and 'surface' features means that writing activities tend to focus on word or sentence level
writing only.
It is important to understand what native-speaker children can do in terms of writing at different stages so that
teachers do not make unrealistic demands on children writing in a foreign language. Kroll and Wells have identified
stages through which English native-speaker children appear to progress, both In terms of their writing skills and
their attitudes to writing.
The preparatory stage is when the child acquires the basic mechanisms of handwriting and spelling, which become
automatic for most children by the age of seven. This is preceded in most pre-school children by drawings and
scribbling, which are not always as random as might first appear.
From the age of around seven years and older, children reach the consolidation stage, where writing is still personal,
colloquial, situational and context-bound (as in news time, writing captions for drawings, stories). Children are
willing to rub out or alter letter shapes or spellings, but are rarely willing to revise or edit their work.
Between seven and nine years of age many native-speaker children are becoming fluent story writers; Graves
suggests that by the age of nine children are more aware of the notion of audience. This means they develop much
greater awareness of the fact that the success of writing depends on its communicative effectiveness with others,
rather than writing being simply for oneself. Personal writing is still important at this stage, however.
The differentiation stage at around nine or ten years of age shows evidence of writing structures becoming more
distinct. The structure of a story, for example, becomes more shaped and organized and sentence structure becomes
more formal and less colloquial.
When should children learn to write in the foreign language?
Children learning English may not write very much in the first year or two. In Austria, where writing used to be
'banned' in the early stages, some pupils were found to be inventing their own writing systems in order to capture a
visual form of what they were learning. This is because writing is a good memory aid.

Teachers need, therefore, to be especially sensitive to the different demands and purposes of written tasks they
impose on their pupils and to be aware of a variety of ways of supporting their writing.
The initial stages
In the early stages of learning to write in an L2 young pupils may still be consolidating their concept of print. Copying
at this level provides opportunities to practise handwriting, to learn and consolidate their understanding of new
vocabulary, develop an awareness of and confidence in English spelling and practise a range of simple sentence
patterns they have learned to use in speaking.
An important principle at all levels is that children should not be asked to write something that they cannot say in
English. Pupils in the second year may move on to practise writing sentences and very simple, short texts. Much of
this writing provides specific language practice, as in selecting and spelling words correctly, using the correct word
order, using grammatical structures accurately and linking sentences together with simple conjunctions.
Writing practice also helps gradually to widen and consolidate the range of vocabulary, grammatical structures and
sentence patterns they can produce. It is helpful to provide plenty of practice in the meaning and spelling of basic
words so their use is familiar and gradually becomes more automatic. Children enjoy personal writing, so it is a good
idea to personalize writing tasks, where possible. The more pressing need is to ensure writing is contextualized and,
where possible, sometimes relates to a real-life situation, as when pupils write up the results of a survey they have
carried out with classmates. Older pupils will become more aware of writing for an audience and so displaying
children's work and having them produce written work for others to read and respond to is a good idea.
ENGLISH SPELLING
English spelling is illogical and difficult and is not easy for young children to learn. According to Palmer, there are
four main ways in which children learn the spelling of words: visual, auditory, linguistic and kinesthetic.

With visual style, learners respond to the shapes of words and the patterns of letter strings within them and
have a feeling whether something 'looks right'.
With auditory style it is better for learners to sound the word out as they can recognize the relationship
between sounds and letters or groups of letters.
With kinesthetic style spelling is a graphic-motor skill and the writer lets the hand remember the kind of
movements and shapes made when producing words.
The linguistic style is one some children might draw on as they grow older and develop skills in seeing
relationships between words based on grammar, meaning, and so on. However, it is important to remember
that a multi-sensory approach is probably best for all young learners.

There are many useful spelling games you can play with younger learners. Here are two examples.
Hide and seek encourages children to look at groups of words and to use the 'look, say, cover, write, check'
approach.
Materials: Flashcards with selected words related to topics, units from coursebooks, etc.
Method: Choose one child to stick six (or more) of the words on the blackboard. The class close their eyes while one
card is removed. The pupils then try to write down the missing word. After practice with the whole class, this can be
played in groups of two to five. More than one card can be removed when the pupils are familiar with the game.
Noughts and crosses aims to practise personal spelling lists using the 'look, say, cover, write, check' approach.
Materials: A traditional noughts and crosses board divided into nine squares. Noughts and crosses cards to cover the
squares. A set of flashcards.

Method: Each player should have a set of cards showing some words which she finds difficult. This is given to the
other player. The first player chooses a spelling word from the list, shows it to their partner and lays it face down oil
the table. The second player then tries to write down the spelling. If it is correct, she can cover one square on the
noughts and crosses board. The game continues until one player has three cards lined up horizontally, vertically or
diagonally on the board.
The 'look, say, cover, write, check' technique that you can teach your pupils for self-testing their spelling is as
follows:
1. Look and notice the letter shapes and number of letters, think about the word and make a mental picture.
Make this picture big then small, in different colours. If the word is right you can draw a real picture of the
word.
2. Say the word and then the letters out loud. Listen carefully.
3. Write the word in the air with one finger several times, making it large and small.
4. Cover the word and try to write it correctly on paper, syllable by syllable. Make sure you have a letter for
each of the most important sounds. See if it 'looks right'. If not change it.
5. Now check to see if the spelling is correct; if not, repeat stages 1-6.
GUIDELINES FOR A SUPPORTIVE WRITING CLASSROOM

Reinforce the connection between writing and speaking English and reading and writing in English. Use a
range of activities such as rhymes and stories, big books to show your enjoyment of reading and writing, and
instill enthusiasm for reading and writing in the pupils.
Try to develop an awareness of environmental print.
Make sure your own classroom has many examples of English writing, functional print.
Reinforce the concept of words and letters with alphabet songs, jingles and games. Help pupils build lists of
high frequency words from their reading and writing using personal picture dictionaries.
Organize resources so that there are word bank cards placed around the room which pupils can refer to. The
cards show a word and a picture, where possible, and are helpful for checking spellings and wore meanings.

WRITING IN THE LATER STAGES

After two years of English, many pupils will have mastered some of the more basic skills in writing and should be
encouraged to produce writing for a specific context and audience which goes beyond the practice stage.
Guided copying at sentence level and above can be supported through the use of support frameworks and graphic
organizers such as pictures, written models, tickcharts, flow charts, grids, and so on. These give learners support in
producing written work within clearly defined constraints.
More creative writing activities, which encourage the children to compose their own sentences or texts, provide
useful and motivating practice in planning, organizing ideas and understanding the conventions of discourse. As
children grow in confidence some might like to become more involved in choosing text types for themselves. In
planning the vocabulary they want to use, they can do word maps for example, where they map out some of the key
ideas and vocabulary for writing a description or even a poem.
Even with older children, writing tasks should always be prepared for by specific activities, including the technique of
modelling, which provides for the rehearsal of key vocabulary and structures. If writing is always strictly controlled,
with children usually completing rather impersonal and mechanical exercises such as gap-filling, they will tend to
lose interest in writing.

Dictogloss is a creative way of using gap-filling and dictation. The basic procedure is:
1. Prepare pupils with a range of pre-listening activities to listen to a story to introduce the topic and key
words. Give the pupils a list of the key words.
2. Read the story once, not too fast. After the first hearing the key words list is read through and pupils
find the words. Pupils listen to the text a second time and while they listen they tick off the words from
the list. Afterwards pupils complete gap-filling activities.
3. Pupils re-tell the story orally in pairs, using the completed gap-filling text and pictures.
4. Pupils now re-tell the story in writing working in pairs or individually, trying to reconstruct the text
together. They do not try to reproduce the text exactly but recreate the main meanings with
grammatical accuracy and well organized ideas.
5. Display finished versions and discuss the stories produced.
6. A variation is that pupils try to create a different ending.
7. This task involves listening for detail, predicting words, matching spoken to written words, working out
what is missing from sentences by using memory, clues from visuals and the context and constructing
coherent sentences.

Guided activities at sentence level and above for older pupils may include putting words in the correct order,
matching sentence halves and copying, gap-filling using visuals or words, writing captions for pictures, writing speech
bubbles or dialogues, creating sentences from a tickchart, and sequencing sentences.
To develop a greater awareness of different text types, the children should ideally have collected, discussed, and
read a variety of text types, perhaps in both the L1 and in English. Although the language in some of these texts is a
little difficult, they are all adaptable and provide a humorous introduction to reading and writing text types, in fact,
this kind of activity does not necessarily need to be kept until the last stage of learning; children can write very
simple texts such as birthday cards at a much earlier stage.
Producing different text types needs to be guided, but after modelling and rehearsal can also provide opportunities
for pupils to express their own meanings and be more creative.
When supporting writing tasks with older children it is important to keep the same basic principles in terms of
preparing pupils through talk. The teacher should also be aware of the language demands and thinking demands.
The language demands can be broken down into key language functions, such as identifying, describing and
comparing people, places and things, writing instructions, describing a simple process or cause and effect,
sequencing events or classifying. The language functions can then be analysed into key words, not just nouns but
also verbs, adjectives and adverbs, and key sentence patterns.

With older pupils it is useful to provide variety and not ask them simply to write compositions or stories.
RESPONDING TO WRITING
The way in which teachers respond to or mark writing will depend on the kind of writing focus the writing activity
practises and the age and language level of the pupils. Where the focus is on surface features such as handwriting or
spelling or on language forms, such as new vocabulary and sentence patterns, and the activity is based on very
tightly controlled copying, you are more likely to insist upon accuracy. Pupils may receive grades, gold stars, marks
out of ten, and so on. The main point is to develop a sense of what each child is capable of, so that you build up a
picture of when a child has tried very hard or has been rather careless. You can then recognize both accuracy and
effort.

Section 5 Games
Games are the stuff of life in the primary classroom. As well as providing stimulation, variety, interest and
motivation, they help to promote positive attitudes towards learning English. They also encourage active
participation and boost childrens confidence and selfesteem. Far from being peripheral or used on an occasional
basis, games are an essential, integral part of children's language learning. At the same time, however, the use of
games comes with a health warning, especially with large classes or in contexts where children are not used to
playing games to learn in other subjects. In order to have the intended language benefits and achieve desired
learning outcomes, games need to be selected, set up and managed with great care.
Characteristics of games
Games share many characteristics of other primary classroom activities. They may be multi-sensory and involve
movement. They may develop a range of different social, cognitive and language skills. They may be played using a
variety of different interaction patterns. Games also have specific outcomes and goals, for example, to remain in the
game as long as you can, or to reach the last square of a board game first. The fact that the goals of many games are
non-linguistic engages children naturally in using English as a vehicle to achieve the goal, rather than practising
language for its own sake. Games are above all enjoyable and fun, and this is both the source of their appeal and
what makes them potentially hard to manage, especially if children do not perceive them as part of 'real work.
Games also have rules which need to be adhered to if they are to function successfully. From the point of view of
classroom management, this is a major advantage, since children are usually much more willing to adhere to rules
that are an intrinsic part of a game, rather than other kinds of rules.
In addition to rules, another defining characteristic of games is the existence of some kind of contest. This may be
either a contest between the players, in which case the game is competitive, or a contest between the players and
the goal, in which case the game is cooperative.
Different games may also contain a different balance between skill, eg whether the player is able to answer the
question in the game correctly, and luck, eg whether they throw a two or a six on the dice. This balance between skill
and luck influences the process and outcome of games. It may also be an important factor to consider when
selecting games which homogenize rather than accentuate the different abilities of individual children.
Although competitive games are not suitable for very young children, you need to weigh up carefully the pros and
cons of using them in the later primary years. It is certainly the case that healthy competition between children can
be very motivating. Competition is also an undeniable fact of real life and, as part of their overall personal and social
development, children need to recognize that a game is only a game' and learn to be 'good losers'. At the same
time, however, competitive games tend to bring out the worst in children and can lead to overexcitement, or even
aggression, and this may make them difficult to manage, especially if you have a large class. You also need to
consider the behaviour implications of competitive games if, for example, as part of the rules children are eliminated
or 'out' of the game. If children are excluded and no longer involved in a game, it will not be very surprising if they

become bored or disruptive and seek attention in other ways. With competitive games, there is also the danger of
always having the same 'winners and losers and the consequent negative impact that this is likely to have on some
children's motivation, confidence and self-esteem.
Selecting and adapting games
When selecting and/or adapting games to use in class, it is frequently possible to address the potential drawbacks of
competitive games by making a small shift in the rules to turn what is potentially a competitive game into a
cooperative one. In musical or action games, where children are traditionally made 'out', you can introduce a system
of lives instead and end the game before any child has lost all their 'lives' in order to maintain the participation of
everyone till the end. In memory games, where children repeat and add to what others have said, you can, for
example, introduce a rule whereby, instead of being eliminated, children can call on others to 'help'.
At the end, you can then count up how many things they have remembered collaboratively. Another solution for
some games is to organize them so that children are cooperating within groups or teams, at the same time as
competing against other groups or teams, in order to win. This kind of organization keeps a motivating, competitive
edge to the game but defuses the potential problem of competition between individual children. It also allows you
to place an emphasis on the value of the process of participation and collaboration between children during the
game, rather than winning as such.
Learning through games
Young children have a natural tendency to express themselves and find out about their world through play and this
can provide positive foundations for learning a foreign language too. Through games and directed play (as opposed
to free play), children can be given initial opportunities to recognize and respond to language non-verbally. They can
also produce chunks of language, in contexts which require enjoyable repetition and which draw them into using
English in a natural and spontaneous way. With very young children, the use of games and directed play provides a
familiar context for encountering new language, and acts as a bridge between home and school in much the same
way as storytelling and learning rhymes, songs and chants.
Games and directed play allow for holistic learning and the integrated physical, social, emotional and cognitive
development of young children. As well as developing language skills, games and directed play help to develop
young children's social skills, such as showing willingness to cooperate and take turns, listening to others and
learning to follow and respect the rules of a game. In games which involve actions or movement, they also help to
develop physical coordination and psychomotor skills, while other games develop skills such as childrens visualspatial awareness, creative thinking or numeracy. In addition to this, games and directed play allow for divergent
responses and also have an important role in developing young childrens concentration and memory skills, as well
as their ability to associate language and meaning with actions, pictures, objects and sounds.
Given that very young children are still egocentric and have only recently embarked on the whole process of
socialization at school, the most suitable games for language lessons tend to be ones which the whole class play
together (although an exception to this is if you have an 'English corner' in the classroom where there are also games
available for independent play). With young children, you need to lead and direct games, especially at first,
demonstrating and modelling the processes and responses involved in a very explicit way. As children develop
familiarity and confidence in playing the game, however, they can increasingly lead or take over more of the game
themselves, while you continue to supervise but play a less directing role.
As children move up through primary school, it is unrealistic to expect them to be willing or able to interact and play
games in English in pairs and groups without training them. The use of simple games such as, for example, picture
card games , guessing games or board games provides frameworks which encourage children to practise interacting
and taking turns in ways which are purposeful and also involve other cognitive skills, such as strategic thinking, visual

observation, memorization and logical deduction. The regular use of such games also helps children to build up and
transfer the interactive skills they are developing to everyday communication in the classroom.
In order for children to understand the language learning value of games and recognize that these are real work', it
is important to explicitly state the reasons for playing specific games, for example, when setting lesson objectives, eg
We're going to play a guessing game in order to practise asking and answering questions about food, and to
encourage children to reflect on these themselves when reviewing learning, eg Why did we play the guessing game?
This can be either in LI or English. If children are aware of the reasons for playing games, they are much more likely
to make an effort to use English when working independently in pairs and groups and to recognize the learning
benefits of this.
Tips for playing games
When setting up games in class, it may be useful to refer to the general points about classroom management. Some
other general tips for playing games with children are as follows:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

Go for simplicity! Its often the simplest games that 'work' the best, especially in large classes.
Make sure that all the children are involved all the time (even if not directly).
Make sure you know how the game works yourself before getting the children to play it!
Give clearly staged instructions and demonstrate and/or model playing the game. Play with the whole class
first.
Teach children interactive language for playing the game, if appropriate, eg Its my/your turn and encourage
them to use it.
Be fair and firm about enforcing rules (children expect and want this).
If children are playing the game independently, circulate and monitor. At the same time, however, give
children space to experiment and to show that they can play the game responsibly on their own.
Stop the game while the children are still 'on task and before they begin to lose interest.
Familiarize the children with the names of games you play regularly to reduce the need for instructions.

Listening and speaking

When children start learning English at primary school, there is usually an emphasis on developing listening and
speaking skills. Through listening to English, children are led naturally into speaking. From using single words and
formulaic language, children gradually develop the ability to produce language and to interact with others in a more
extended way.
LEARNING TO LISTEN
When learning to listen in English, children are actively engaged in constructing meaning and making sense of what
they hear. To do this, they use not just language but their knowledge of the world and clues provided by the context,
for example:
1. their expectations about the intentions of the speaker
2. predictions about what they will listen to
3. the speaker's use of voice, mime and gesture
4. the reason and purpose for which they are listening
5. Other features in the immediate environment which supports their understanding, eg flash cards, story or
course book illustrations, posters, real objects, puppets, sound effects on a CD, or the visual setting of a DVD.
Essentially, young children need plenty of opportunities to listen to language embedded in engaging and meaningful
contexts. Through listening, children become familiar with the sounds, rhythm and intonation of English.
Listening also allows children to recognize, understand and respond to language nonverbally before they produce it
themselves. Classroom talk as, for example, when you give instructions, organize and manage different classroom

activities and give the children feedback, encouragement and praise is a major source of listening material for
children. As far as possible, it is advisable to use English for this kind of classroom language. Through repetition and
routines, you will build up an expanding repertoire of language that children understand and respond to as part of
everyday communication in class.
DEVELOPING LISTENING SKILLS
In L2, as in LI, children develop listening skills before speaking skills. It is enriching to expose them to language that is
ahead of their productive competence, as long as their understanding is guided and supported, for example through
mime, illustrations and/or the activity they are asked to do. From the outset, it is important to use a variety of
different spoken text types: instructions, rhymes, stories, songs, dialogues, conversations, descriptions. It is also
important to build up confidence and show children that they can be successful listeners without necessarily
understanding every word. The use of longer texts, such as stories, can also help develop childrens extensive
listening skills, where listening is motivated by pleasure rather than information.
When you do a listening activity, it is often useful to plan for the following three stages: before, while and after
listening.
STAGE 1
Before listening, you need to create a clear context which interests and motivates the children and you need to
establish a reason and purpose for listening. It may be appropriate to introduce new language or vocabulary which
occurs in the listening text at this stage too. Children can also be encouraged to predict and make active guesses
about the listening, based on pictures or other clues.
STAGE 2
While listening, children do one or more activities to develop listening sub-skills such as listening for global
understanding or gist, listening for specific information or detail, listening for mood or attitude, and to show their
understanding either verbally or non-verbally or through a written response, such as completing a grid.
STAGE 3
After listening, it may be appropriate to ask children to report back, express their opinions or relate the text to their
own lives in a speaking activity using at least some of the language it contains.
Learning to speak
Speaking is a complex skill and the difficulty for children learning a foreign language should not be underestimated.
Although children are good at imitating and may acquire better pronunciation than older learners, they are still
developing language and discourse skills in their LI. Their age and level of social, cognitive and emotional
development need to be taken into account when planning speaking activities in English.
Spoken interaction and spoken production
Speaking skills can be broadly divided into two areas: spoken interaction and spoken production. Spoken interaction
refers to the ability to ask and answer questions and handle exchanges with others, whereas spoken production
refers to the ability to produce language, for example, in a rhyme, a description or an account, such as retelling a
story. It is important to develop children's competence in both these areas in order to build up confidence and lay
the foundations for future learning.

Initially children will benefit from activities which require lots of repetition and which help them to memorize
vocabulary and 'chunks of language and acquire pronunciation in a natural way. Many such activities can be found
in the sections on Vocabulary and grammar, Games and Songs, rhymes and chants.
Much of the language children produce in the early stages of learning will be single words or short formulaic
utterances, eg I'm fine. There may also be a tendency to mix languages, eg in the case of Spanish-speaking children,
Dame el rubber (give me the rubber), Mira! El monkey esta alii (Look! The monkeys there). Rather than explicitly
correcting language mistakes, it is best to respond to childrens meaning and what they are trying to communicate.
As you do this, you can remodel or recast what they say, eg Yes. You're right. The monkey's there!
Very young children may be reluctant to speak at first, and it is important to give them time to listen and absorb the
sounds of English before participating actively. Insisting on participation is likely to be counter-productive. The best
strategy is usually to provide lots of opportunities for speaking activities in a very secure and nonthreatening way, eg
through choral repetition of action rhymes or choral counting games, and allow children to join in when they are
ready.
Frameworks for speaking activities
Whatever the childrens age, it is important to provide frameworks for speaking activities which encourage them to
use English for real purposes which they can relate to, rather than simply practise language for its own sake. As
children become increasingly capable of interacting with each other in pairs and groups, it is also important to
ensure that speaking activities are designed to foster active listening, turn-taking and respect for other peoples
opinions.
None of these can be taken for granted because children are still developing these skills and attitudes as part of their
general educational and personal development. Speaking activities which are personalized and offer choice tend to
increase children's willingness to participate. Such activities give them 'ownership' of language, thus helping to make
learning more memorable. Whenever possible, it is beneficial to establish frameworks where children are motivated
to speak and feel that they have something they want to say.
Over time, through speaking activities which use different interaction patterns and provide opportunities for
meaningful practice of a range of discourse types, children will develop confidence in their ability to produce English
and to interact with others in class.
Pronunciation
Through exposure to English in the form of classroom language, instructions, games, stories, dialogues,
conversations, rhymes, chants and songs, children develop familiarity with the sounds, rhythm and intonation
patterns of English and imitate these features in a natural way. It is important to provide lots of models and to build
up children's confidence through the acceptance of approximate pronunciation. This gives them time to acquire
good habits in an unforced way. Insistence on correct pronunciation with very young children is likely to prove
counterproductive.
With older children, in addition to an implicit, global approach to pronunciation, it is often appropriate to do
activities designed to raise awareness of particular features of pronunciation that may be different from the
childrens own language. Pronunciation activities included in this section can be adapted to cater for particular
difficulties that speakers of different languages may have.

Reading and writing

Reading and writing are two sides of the same coin. The more children read, the better writers they are likely to
become. This is generally held to be the case as much in LI as when children learn a second or foreign language.

Learning to read
Many children are growing up in an increasingly print-dominated world where, although they may learn to click on a
computer mouse before they learn to turn the pages of a book, reading is a vital skill. As children grow older, reading
competence in English is essential to pass exams and to succeed at secondary school and beyond. Through learning
to read in English, children develop positive attitudes, strong motivation and a sense of achievement. Reading also
reinforces and extends what children learn orally. Reading in English provides an opportunity to build on and
transfer skills from and to LI. For all these reasons, it is arguable that it would be doing children a disservice not to lay
solid foundations in early foreign language literacy at primary school.
When to start reading
One of the main debates is not about whether children should learn to read and write in English, but when it is most
beneficial to start. The answer is neither clear-cut nor conclusive and depends on the context and a range of factors,
such as the childrens LI, and whether this shares the Roman script, the children's existing literacy skills in L1, how
much English they already know, and their own interest and enthusiasm for learning to read. With very young
children, it may quite often be this latter factor which drives the process, as for example, when pre-reading children
notice that instead of writing 'Very good', you write something else, such as Excellent', on their work, or when
beginning readers respond enthusiastically to using a word card bank as 'important and serious' learning. The usual
approach in most foreign language programmes, however, is that reading and writing in English are introduced
gradually after basic literacy has been established in L1 (and possibly also L2, if the children are growing up in a
bilingual environment).
What is involved in reading?
Reading competence involves constructing meaning and making sense of written text. It requires the complex
interaction of knowledge and skills at multiple levels. These include, for example, the recognition of shapes of letters
of the alphabet, grapho-phonemic correspondences and the direction of text. They also include sight recognition of
common, high frequency vocabulary and morphemes, the recognition of syntactic patterns and word order within
sentences, and an understanding of the structure and organization of texts.
When children read in English, they need to learn to make use of visual, phonological and semantic cues in an
integrated way and to relate these to their previous knowledge and experience of the world, the topic and the genre
in order to construct coherent personal meaning. To enable children to become competent readers in English, they
need practice in developing their knowledge and skills in all these areas.
How to approach teaching reading
As a start, it is a good idea to ensure that the children's classroom is a literate, print rich environment in English. This
can include, for example, labelling classroom furniture, creating a weather and date chart, making a birthday
calendar and making a chart of key instructions, eg Listen, Read, Draw, with symbols to show what they mean. It can
also include a display of pictures of famous people, story or course book characters with speech bubbles for key
classroom language, eg Can you repeat that, please? I've finished, I don't understand and a notice board where you
and the children can write messages, eg Please remember to bring a photo on Monday.
In developing initial reading skills in a foreign language, it is beneficial to read aloud regularly with the children while
they follow the pictures and/or the text in a story or big book. This provides an implicit, global opportunity for
children to become familiar with conventions of print and text. It also enables you to show and share your own

pleasure and enthusiasm for reading, which is likely to be catching, and to model the processes and strategies
involved.
When teaching children to read themselves, it is best to base this initially on language that is already familiar
orally/aurally and to use a combination of whole-word sight recognition. The potential for using phonics in a foreign
language context, however, is often limited, given children's lack of vocabulary in English. Care also needs to be
taken that children are not sounding out letters and words in a meaningless way. The use of phonics is usually most
effective when embedded in a context such as a rhyme or chant.
Whether at word, sentence or text level, reading activities should be meaningful and create a reason and purpose
for reading which practise one or more sub-skills. These include de-coding written language, skimming a text for
global understanding, scanning a text for specific information, inferring implicit meaning in a text and understanding
the writer's intention.
As children move up through primary, it is important to expose them to an increasingly wider range of text types or
genres and to develop their awareness of different purposes for reading and strategies to use.
As with developing listening skills, many reading activities can be usefully staged into before, while and after reading.
If children are not yet confident readers, it is particularly important to create interest and motivation before reading,
as they can easily feel daunted by chunks of text. After reading, it is often suitable to lead into an activity in which
children write, using the text they have read as a starting point or guide.
FROM READING TO WRITING
Reading provides a scaffold for learning to write and it is frequently appropriate to teach reading and writing in an
integrated way, both in the initial stages and when children have more developed skills.
Initial writing
In the initial stages of learning to write, young children need to develop hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills,
and the effort and concentration which goes into forming letters and words is a challenge in itself. The amount of
time children need to spend on the mechanics of forming letters and words in English lessons also depends on the
writing system used in their L1.
The emphasis in initial writing is to support and consolidate oral/aural work, through, for example, reinforcing the
understanding and spelling of familiar vocabulary items and sentence patterns.
As children progress, they can be introduced to writing short texts, which may either be based on a model or
structured by a series of questions or prompts. Through providing frameworks which guide children's writing and
lead to successful outcomes, children develop confidence and enthusiasm for writing, as well as an increasing ability
to incorporate linguistic features typical of writing, such as the use of conjunctions, and to structure and organize
texts.
How to approach teaching writing
When setting up writing activities, it is important to create motivating and meaningful contexts, a reason and
purpose for writing and also to ensure that the children have a sense of audience and who they are writing for.
There also needs to be careful preparation to equip children with the language they need to express and order their
ideas in an appropriate way. Before children write independently, it is also often helpful to model the processes and
strategies involved in creating a text with the class together

During the writing process, it is important to encourage children to be responsible for checking and correcting their
own work and, as they get older, to be willing to draft, edit and revise their written work, and to understand the
value of this. By regularly displaying childrens written work or publishing this in class books, you can convey that you
value their efforts. This also encourages children to take pride in the presentation of their work, and take care over
things such as legibility and accuracy, as well as develop an interest in, and respect for, the work of others.
Feedback and correction
When giving feedback and correcting written work, particularly in more challenging and/or personalized areas of
writing, it is important to respond to children's meaning, and not just to spelling and grammatical mistakes. A
positive comment on the content, eg What a lovely poem! can almost feel I'm at the seaside!, plus, with older
children, possibly also focused correction of a target aspect of language, eg verb forms or use of prepositions, is far
more likely to make your feedback memorable and motivating than correcting every single mistake. Through
conveying that you are interested in what children have to say and value their attempts to communicate what they
mean, children will leave primary school with the confidence and enthusiasm to develop into more skilled writers in
future.

Vocabulary and grammar

Vocabulary and grammar are closely interrelated in children's early language learning, both in LI and in a second or
foreign language. Young children initially learn chunks of language, which combine vocabulary and grammatical
patterns, in a holistic, unanalysed way. As they grow older, they develop the ability to relate vocabulary to networks
of meanings and to notice and analyse language forms and functions more explicitly. Whether they are learning
holistically when younger, or developing more conscious language awareness and powers of analysis as they grow
older, it is vital to give children plenty of opportunities to memorize, practise, recycle and extend their vocabulary
and grammar in meaningful contexts throughout the primary years.
LEARNING VOCABULARY
Children often measure their own language learning progress in terms of how many words they know'. Learning
vocabulary can be one of the most significant and satisfying outcomes in the first years of English lessons. It boosts
childrens confidence and self-esteem. It also lays the foundations for leading children into using grammatical
structures, which initially present a greater learning challenge, in more extended and creative ways.
Words and concepts
Although initial vocabulary learning in a foreign language appears straightforward, with an apparent one-to-one
correspondence between words and the objects or concepts that these refer to, it is in reality a very complex
process, which develops gradually in a cyclical way over time.
As part of the process of learning vocabulary, children need to learn the form of the word, that is, the way the word
sounds and is spelt. They also need to understand the meaning and the way that this relates to other concepts and
words, eg the way a word like tiny relates to other words to describe size, such as big and small. In addition to this,
children need to be able to recall the word whenever they need it and, in the longer term, to gradually extend their
understanding of its use.

The importance of recycling

Children often appear to learn vocabulary easily, 'like little sponges', as the saying goes. However, in the same way
that sponges lose water, children also forget vocabulary very easily too, unless they are given regular opportunities
to use it, and to deepen and extend their understanding of how it relates and connects to other language they know.
Given this, it is essential to recycle vocabulary regularly and systematically at all levels and ages in primary school.
Through regular recycling, children can be given opportunities to meet the same vocabulary, embedded in different
contexts, language and activity types, again and again. This not only improves their recall and develops memory
processes, but also extends their understanding and associations of vocabulary in an ever expanding network of
meanings and use. Through using vocabulary in a variety of social, experiential and personalized ways, children
develop 'ownership' of language and this also leads to new learning.
In addition to the vocabulary activities in this section, there are many examples of other activity types, such as
games, rhymes, songs, stories, drama, art and craft, which provide opportunities to recycle vocabulary in a range of
meaningful and creative ways. These are described in different sections of this book.
Vocabulary practice
With younger children, it is most appropriate to teach concrete vocabulary items which relate to the 'here and now
of their immediate environment and personal experience. As children grow older, they gradually become able to
deal with more abstract concepts and vocabulary removed from their immediate surroundings. When practising
vocabulary, it is important to provide opportunities to help children:
1. associate words and meanings and develop their recall of vocabulary
2. think about the properties and meanings of words
3. improve their recognition and spelling of vocabulary
4. reinforce connections between words
5. personalize vocabulary learning
6. develop strategies for inferring meaning
7. develop strategies for conveying the meaning of unfamiliar words
8. collaborate and interact with others
LEARNING GRAMMAR
In order to lay the foundations for understanding and learning aspects of grammar, it is above all important to give
children exposure to language in meaningful contexts which engage them in practising and using English for
purposes which they can relate to and enjoy.
Initial stages
With young children, initial learning of grammatical patterns is implicit, based on formulaic sequences and
unanalysed chunks of language met in the context of, eg lesson routines songs, rhymes, stories and games. As a
result of acquiring chunks of language, children develop a sense of achievement and become increasingly willing to
participate in classroom activities in English. As they grow in confidence, they also begin to transfer chunks to new
contexts and to use them creatively.
The holistic learning of language chunks plays an important role in fostering childrens enthusiasm for learning
English. It also provides them with a potentially rich, internal language resource as they grow older and are

encouraged, or expected, to pay attention to grammatical features and apply more explicit analytical skills to the
way they learn.
Understanding how English works
One of the key issues and challenges during the primary years is when and how to move beyond the implicit
teaching-learning of language chunks, and to develop childrens awareness and explicit understanding of aspects of
grammar. This will enable children to begin to systematize their knowledge and potentially enrich and extend the
creative ways in which they are able to use language. In terms of age, it is unlikely to be appropriate before
somewhere between the ages of 8-10. It depends on factors such as the educational and cultural context, children's
cognitive maturity and conceptual readiness, their level and the number of hours spent studying English (it is best if
they already have basic skills), as well as the approach used in teaching their first language.
Language awareness
One way to explicitly develop children's language awareness is by encouraging them to notice particular language
patterns or features of grammatical forms and, if appropriate, to compare and contrast these with other patterns
and forms and/or with their own language. Through stimulating children to show interest and ask questions about
how English works as a system, and encouraging them to observe and pay attention to this, children are helped to
develop metacognitive awareness.
This means becoming more self-knowledgeable and aware of the processes involved in their own learning. The
provision of opportunities to notice features and/or regularities in grammatical patterns can also be particularly
helpful for children who have a more logical-deductive kind of intelligence and who may feel more engaged when
treating language as a kind of logical 'puzzle', and also more secure knowing that there are 'rules that they can
apply. Awareness-raising or noticing activities with children need to provide concrete means of drawing their
attention to abstract concepts in ways which involve active participation and cognitive engagement. These can take
a variety of forms and include, for example:
1.
2.
3.
4.

using analogy or metaphor

relating parts of speech to colours
manipulating word cards
using mime, movement and gesture
5. using logical deduction
6. classifying skills
Metalanguage
In addition to developing language awareness and providing for frequent, varied opportunities for contextualized,
meaningful practice, with older children it may also be helpful to gradually introduce them to grammatical
metalanguage.
The potential value of beginning to learn metalanguage to describe and analyse language towards the end of
primary school does not replace the importance of practice and needs to be assessed in each context. If it is
considered worthwhile, however, it can contribute significantly to children's developing metacognitive awareness
and also play an important role in helping to prepare children for the transition to secondary school where the
approach to learning is likely to be more explicitly grammar-based.