Didáctica Del Inglés Susan House - Completo

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FORMACIN DEL PROFESORADO. EDUCACIN SECUNDARIA
DIDCTICA
DEL INGLS
Classroom Practice
Susan House (coord.)

Jorge Bascn, Beatriz Calle, Mike Downie, Gavin Dudeney,
Ramiro Durn, Nicky Hockly, Katharine Scott, Paul Seligson,
Karina Vidal
9 Vol. II
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Formacin del Profesorado. Educacin Secundaria

Serie: Didctica de las Lenguas extranjeras/Formacin y Desarrollo Profesional del Profesorado
Director de la coleccin: Csar Coll
Coeditan
MINISTERIO DE EDUCACIN
Secretara de Estado de Educacin y Formacin Profesional
Instituto de Formacin del Profesorado, Investigacin e Innovacin Educativa (IFIIE)
Secretara General Tcnica
Catlogo de publicaciones del Ministerio: educacion.es
Catgolo general de publicaciones oficiales: publicacionesoficiales.boe.es
Editorial GRA, de IRIF, S.L.

C/ Hurtado, 29. 08022 Barcelona
www.grao.com
Susan House (coord.), Jorge Bascn, Beatriz Calle, Mike Downie, Gavin Dudeney, Ramiro Durn,
Nicky Hockly, Katharine Scott, Paul Seligson, Karina Vidal
De esta edicin:
Editorial GRA, de IRIF, S.L.
Ministerio de Educacin, Secretara General Tcnica
1. edicin: junio 2011

NIPO: 820-11-257-7
ISBN: 978-84-9980-090-5
D.L.: B-24.109-2011
Diseo: Maria Tortajada

Maquetacin: Albert Lpez
Impresin: CEVAGRAF, S.C.C.L.
Impreso en Espaa
Quedan rigurosamente prohibidas, bajo las sanciones establecidas en las leyes, la reproduccin o
almacenamiento total o parcial de la presente publicacin, incluyendo el diseo de la portada, as
como la transmisin de sta por cualquier medio, tanto si es elctrico como qumico, mecnico, ptico,
de grabacin o bien de fotocopia, sin la autorizacin escrita de los titulares del copyright. Si necesita
fotocopiar o escanear fragmentos de esta obra, dirjase a CEDRO (Centro Espaol de Derechos Repro-
grficos, www.cedro.org).
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1. Transforming the Curriculum into Activities and Work for the Classroom,
Katharine Scott . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Organisation of the syllabus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Units of work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
From units to lessons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
The shape of a lesson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Classroom activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Mixed-ability classes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Common problems with classroom activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Assignments/Further reading/References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2. Choosing and Developing Classroom Material, Mike Downie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Choosing and changing materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Selecting a coursebook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Writing checklists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Who am I teaching? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
What level am I teaching? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
What are the official requirements?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
General and detailed checklists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Educating, not just teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
What else do I want from materials?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Pilot, consult and gather opinions: learning by doing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Developing and supplementing materials: plan ahead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Using technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3. Digital Literacies and the Language Classroom, Gavin Dudeney and Nicky Hockly . . . 51
Technology today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Today's learners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Digital literacies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Practice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
4. Developing Productive and Receptive Skills in the EFL Classroom,

Ramiro Durn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
The communicative competence framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Teaching and integrating the skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Receptive sub-skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Productive sub-skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
5. Vocabulary Instruction in Secondary Schools, Karina Vidal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

Fundamental concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Some criteria for teaching vocabulary in secondary schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Assignments/Further reading/References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
6. Getting Students Interested in Pronunciation: an Interview with Paul Seligson,

Paul Seligson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Pronunciation and Phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Teaching and learning pronunciation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Models for teaching pronunciation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Mouth maps, phonetic script and sound charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Activities for teaching sounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Weak forms, connected speech and sentence stress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Rhythm and intonation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Reading out loud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Generating exercises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Assignment/Further reading/References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
7. Effective Grammar Teaching, Jorge Bascn and Beatriz Calle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

What is the grammar of a language?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
The logical order of grammar input. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
The importance of contextualising grammar work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Explicit v implicit grammar teaching. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Deductive v inductive grammar teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Learning how to learn. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
Example activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
8. Classroom Management, Paul Seligson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

Manage the room and the students dont let them manage you. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Manage your board well. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

Six more key tips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Think and teach visually . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Really trust pairwork. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
The six key ingredients of good pairwork . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Monitor well. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Use mother tongue intelligently . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Comment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Pause often and elicit fairly. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Exemplify at least as much as you instruct and avoid echo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
Echo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Routines are important but so is variety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Keep trying to improve your timing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Dont be a dinosaur like me! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
INTRODUCTION
Susan House
Coordinator
Didctica del Ingls. Classroom Practice is the second of three volumes for the subject of En-
glish which make up the Formacin del profesorado. Educacin secundaria collection. This
volume of work provides eight chapters dealing with some of the most important aspects of
planning and carrying out classroom practice. Your first taste of classroom practice will be in
your Practicum, which can be a rather nerve-wracking experience. Careful planning of your
lessons and classroom strategies will help you cope with some initial problems, but it should
be stressed that good teaching practice involves both careful planning and an ability to res-
pond to situations on the spot.
We mentioned in Volume I (House, 2011)1 of these works that there is no such thing as teacher-
proof theory, meaning that your practice cannot be simply informed by attention to theoretical
models. Jerome Bruner coined the expression folk pedagogy to underline the importance of
teachers beliefs about how learners learn and how teachers should teach. His observations show
us that teachers often hold onto unexamined principles as to how we should carry out our
practice. These beliefs tend to be grounded in our own experience as learners and our experience
of teachers during our own education. Some of these beliefs, although unreflective, are eminently
sensible, whilst others would benefit from a more considered and systematic scrutiny.
It may come as some surprise to you to know that what is considered to be good teaching prac-
tice varies widely in different educational environments. And this is because teaching practice
is not simply the putting into practice of universally held theoretical principles. Teaching is a
socially and culturally embedded practice. It reflects other, more general values found in our
social communities. In some cases these can be defined along national or regional lines, but you
will find others that are much more local in nature. One difficulty for English language teachers
is that much of our literature is global in scope and, furthermore, has been forged from expe-
riences in very different social, cultural and educational environments. This means that you
will be required to examine these principles from the point of view of your own educational
environment, but you must also be prepared to put your own folk pedagogy on hold and be
open-minded when examining alternative approaches.
Teaching practice affords teachers many possibilities for engaging in their own research
and testing different approaches. You should embrace these possibilities not just now, during
1. Ingls. Complementos de formacin disciplinar. Theory and Practice in English Language Teaching.
8 CLASSROOM PRACTICE
your Practicum, but throughout your professional career. As students we have all experien-
ced the dull, boring teachers who limit themselves to repeating established models of work
year after year without any attention to variety and changes of approach. And we all know
that this is not good teaching practice! We have also experienced teachers whose constant
revisiting and reviewing of methods and materials made their lessons exciting, engaging and
motivating, and it is to this good teaching practice we should all aspire.
The chapters in this volume are all independent articles written by a variety of specialists in
different themes. Most of the chapters in this volume have a practical focus to provide you
with strategies and blueprints of activities you can use in the classroom. We have also inclu-
ded some more academic articles to provide you with a rich source of both academic and
practical material. It is important that you remember that teaching is not an exact science
and you will come across differences of opinion and approach to teaching and learning. The
purpose of exposing you to a variety of ideas and opinions is to encourage you to develop
your own teaching style. The chapters have been placed in an order from the more general
themes to the more specific themes, but you can read these chapters in any order depending
on the themes you are working on in your teacher-training classes.
This Volume begins with two chapters dedicated to general aspects of classroom practice. The
first discusses the transformation of a curriculum into a syllabus for classroom activities and
the second considers how we make choices regarding the materials and activity types we use
in the classroom. Other chapters address specific aspects of language teaching such as wor-
king with language skills; dealing with vocabulary; dealing with grammar; and how to work
on pronunciation skills. There is a further chapter on using ICT in the language classroom with
a comprehensive selection of technologies and related activities. Finally there is a chapter dea-
ling with classroom management and organisation.
Within the body of each chapter there is a series of tasks for you to carry out as you are wor-
king with the contents. These tasks are designed to help you examine the issues raised in the
chapter more carefully and to develop activity types for working in the classroom. It is im-
portant that you become accustomed to observing and being observed whilst you are wor-
king with students on these activities. Receiving feedback on your performance in the
classroom and giving feedback to your colleagues is an essential part of reflective teaching
and will help you to adjust and modify your working practice.
At the end of each chapter there are some assignments for you to work on which will help
you further your knowledge and understanding of the issues that have been addressed in the
chapter. These are longer pieces of work and require you to use a variety of different sour-
ces, including other chapters in Volume I (House, 2011): Ingls. Complementos de formacin
disciplinar. Theory and Practice in English Language Teaching, and Volume III: Ingls. Inves-
INTRODUCTION 9
tigacin, innovacin y buenas prcticas. Teacher Development. It is also extremely important

that you widen your research into other sources and that you keep a diary of your classroom
experience (teachers log) in order to include examples in your writing where appropriate.
At the end of each chapter there is a short list of Further Reading. These are texts or digital
documents that the writers feel are useful for widening your understanding of the theme of
the chapter. You should attempt to read at least some of these works; perhaps you could di-
vide them up amongst the members of your group and report back to each other on the con-
tents and ideas expressed in the works.
The work you cover in your tasks, assignments and further reading will provide you with a
considerable body of knowledge and information. This should help you to build up a file of
work and sources towards your final assessment.
11
1. TRANSFORMING THE CURRICULUM INTO

ACTIVITIES AND WORK FOR THE CLASSROOM
CHAPTER CONTENTS
Organisation of the syllabus

Units of work
From units to lessons
The shape of a lesson
Classroom activities
Mixed-ability classes
Common problems with classroom activities
Conclusion
Katharine Scott
Author and Teacher Trainer
This article is aimed at clarifying the main issues involved in planning a syllabus, the sub-
sequent units of work and the final classroom activities. The principal purpose of the arti-
cle is to consider what to teach and what to do in the classroom, rather than how to teach
(methodology). However, these two issues are related. How you teach has an impact on
what you do in the classroom and so methodology inevitably influences the shape of a
syllabus. In general terms, the main direction of English language teaching at all levels in
recent years has focused on the importance of meaningful communication. This is reflec-
ted both in recent methodological developments and in the Spanish state curriculum for
foreign languages:
[] el eje del currculo lo constituyen los procedimientos encaminados a conseguir una competen-
cia comunicativa efectiva oral y escrita, en contextos sociales significativos, que permita a alumnos y
alumnas expresarse con progresiva eficacia y correccin y que abarque todos los usos y registros
posibles, incluido el literario. (Real Decreto 1631/2006)
As such, communicative competence must be considered an essential organising principle

in the development of a syllabus and of related classroom activities.
The starting point for planning a syllabus of work is the official curriculum which provides the
broad framework within which the syllabus is constructed. The Spanish curriculum, which es-
tablishes the Enseanzas Mnimas for Secondary Education, has been directly shaped by the
Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). This document describes language com-
petence in terms of linguistic functions or capabilities. These functions are expressed as can do
statements and are organised by linguistic skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. These
linguistic skills are in turn divided into different communicative functions (e.g. speaking: com-
mercial transactions). See Chapter 5, The Common European Framewada of Reference, by
Snchez-Reyes, in Volume I (House, 2011a), for a detailed description of the CEFR.
The Enseanzas Mnimas, following this functional analysis of language, are divided into four
main blocks. The first two blocks are centred on communicative skills: Bloque 1: Escuchar, hablar
y conversar; Bloque 2: Leer y Escribir. The third block, entitled Conocimientos de la lengua, is
aimed at an analysis and more formal understanding of the morphological structure of the foreign
language and its points of comparison and difference from students first language. While this
block, with its focus on language structure, may seem to lead to a traditional grammar focus, it
is important to note that the study of language rules is intended to be fully contextualised:
El punto de partida sern las situaciones de uso que favorezcan la inferencia de reglas de funciona-
miento de la lengua. (Real Decreto 1631/2006)
This would imply that the analysis and study of formal elements of the language should
come after exposure to and use of the language elements to be studied.
Finally, the fourth block of the Enseanzas Mnimas has a sociocultural focus designed to in-
crease students awareness of and interest in countries where the foreign language is spoken.
In addition, the Spanish curriculum calls for the development of a range of learning skills ca-
lled competencias bsicas throughout all curricular areas. Eight types of learning skills have
been identified (Real Decreto 1631/2006):
1. Competencia en comunicacin lingstica.
2. Competencia matemtica.
3. Competencia en el conocimiento y la interaccin con el mundo fsico.
4. Tratamiento de la informacin y competencia digital.
5. Competencia social y ciudadana.
6. Competencia cultural y artstica.
7. Competencia para aprender a aprender.
8. Autonoma e iniciativa personal.
TRANSFORMING THE CURRICULUM INTO ACTIVITIES AND WORK FOR THE CLASSROOM 13
See Chapter 4, Understanding the Curriculum, by House, in Volume I for a more detai-
led description of the curriculum (House, 2011a).
Since they focus on knowing how, rather than on a body of information (knowing what),
these skills are often present in many of the communicative, task-based activities that make
up an English language class.
It is worth noting that the curriculum contains no specification as to the methodology that
should be adopted beyond its insistence on the communicative purpose of language. Tea-
chers and learning centres are expected to decide on and adopt a methodology or metho-
dologies which enable the objectives, broadly outlined in the curriculum, to be achieved.
Task 1
1. Design activities for competencias bsicas:

Make a list of activity types for the English language classroom that could develop one or more
of the competencias bsicas.
Example: a survey competencia matemtica.
Think of one or more topics to provide the subject matter for the activities in your list.
Develop activities to cover all the competencias bsicas.
Justify in your work how the competencias bsicas are developed through the activities.
Present and describe your activities to your colleagues.
2. Analysis of the CEFR:

Download a copy of the CEFR from:
Common European Framework for Languages: www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/cadre_en.asp
Find and list the different communicative functions for each linguistic skill identified in the
CEFR.
Organisation of the syllabus
Traditionally a syllabus of work for English language learning was based on the teaching
of grammar. Students worked through a series of language structures starting with the
verb to be and moving on through the different verb tenses and sentence structures.
Ive got to the past passive students would say as a means of explaining their level of
proficiency.
However, by adopting a communicative approach, a syntactical organisation of the syllabus

ceases to be the central issue. This does not mean that grammar is unimportant. Nor does it
mean that a progressive development of syntactical awareness should not be included in the
syllabus. It is, rather, a reflection on the role of grammar as a part of the communicative pro-
cess. Grammar is not the end product effective communication is.
The communicative approach, outlined in the Spanish curriculum, calls for syllabus
organisation based on topics or themes that promote communication. Language is a
communicative tool and we need something to talk about in the classroom. With
a communicative approach the emphasis is not on correct pronunciation or producing
grammatically perfect sentences but rather on meaning: Clear, meaningful and interesting
contexts provide settings in which new language is understandable, and familiar language
becomes more memorable and useful (Curtain, 2004). The focus of the class is not on the
language in itself, but rather on a topic or theme which provides a context for the learning
process. For example, rather than learn a list of means of transport, students learn about the
transportation links between mayor cities in their area. In this way, a thematic organisation
leads students to take part in activities that involve thinking skills and avoids the isolated
decontextualised practice of grammatical structures.
The key questions for identifying suitable themes are often What will motivate students?
or What are students interested in?. While this approach ensures that the themes are con-
nected to students reality, it does not always lead to subjects that provide rich and varied
opportunities for exchanging information and communicating ideas and opinions. Additio-
nal questions needed to identify a suitable theme include:
What language can students learn with the theme?
What else can students learn? Does the theme add to their general knowledge and un-
derstanding of the world?
Does the theme provide opportunities for crosscurricular links?
Does the theme provide opportunities for developing competencias bsicas?
Does the theme help develop thinking skills?
Does the theme provide opportunities for developing sociocultural understanding?
Does the theme have the potential to develop different communicative situations and
functions?
Does the theme provide opportunities for a variety of task-based activities?
What type of materials (print, audio or video) can I use with this theme?
For a theme to provide material for meaningful communication, it cannot simply be a lexi-
cal focus. Transport, for example, on its own may lead to nothing more than a list of dif-
ferent means of transportation. However, Transport in the future, The history of aviation
or Transport networks in my town are richer themes that are more likely to engage stu-
dents and have a wider potential for the exchange of opinions, meaningful information and
ideas that make up communicative situations. Themes are typically:
Related to students everyday experiences.

Related to popular culture.
Taken from other areas of the school curriculum.
The unfolding of CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) programmes of learning
across much of Spain has made this last category particularly relevant. By selecting themes
from other areas of the school curriculum and exploring them in the English language
classroom, useful links are established between different subject areas. This does not mean
that material already studied in, for example, Naturales, is simply repeated in the English
classroom. Instead, themes can be explored in more depth through hands-on activities and
learning experiences. See Chapter 6, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in
Secondary School and Llinares, in Volume I (House, 2011a), for a more detailed discussion
of CLIL programmes.
The themes chosen provide the vehicle for all language learning in that the reading and list-
ening materials, as well as the language focus, functional objectives and communicative acti-
vities, are thematically connected. Whatever the theme, a syllabus must also contain systematic
work to develop linguistic skills as well as activities to practise the communicative functions des-
cribed in the CEFR. It must also develop language awareness by exploring the features of the
foreign language and promote cultural sensitivity. The construction of a syllabus, then, is chiefly
a matter of organising these and other elements of the curriculum, such as the competencias
bsicas, in a rational, systematic manner and grouping them around a number of themes.
Task 2 Discussion: features of a syllabus for English language learning
Discuss the following list with your colleagues and identify the features you think are essential parts
of a syllabus:
Speaking skills. Language analysis.
Writing skills. Pronunciation focus.
Listening skills. Crosscultural focus.
Reading skills. Projects or WebQuests.1
Syntactical development. Crosscurricular activities.
Vocabulary development. Literacy focus.
Write a description of any other features you think should be included. Justify your reasons.
1. WebQuests: an inquiry-based approach where all or nearly all information is researched on the internet by students
in order to complete the assignment.
What is not clear is how to establish a rationale for the teaching of syntax. In other words, in what
order should students start using different language structures? It is interesting to note that most mate-
rials for teaching a foreign language deal with grammar as a progression of structures that build on
from one to another. The verb to be leads on to the present continuous. The present simple is taught
before the past simple and so on. It is clear that this progression of language is not based on purely
communicative reasons. If we analyse which verb tense we use most often in English, the answer
would probably be the present perfect. Yet this tense is not formally taught until an intermediate stage.
Another aspect to bear in mind is that students are not beginners at the start of ESO. They have
been learning English for at least six years and maybe for as many as nine. Many of the lan-
guage structures at the start of a traditional grammar progression are not new to students in
1. ESO. While there is (often) no formal study of grammar in Primary Education, most students
are familiar with and have used present, past and future verbal constructions.
It would seem, then, that the traditional feeding-in of grammar, which means a child with
years of experience in English classes starts with to be at the beginning of 1. ESO, as if
they had no previous experience of the language, does not have to be the invariable starting
point for a syllabus of work for ESO.
Task 3 Analysis of classroom materials: grammar syllabus
Choose a selection of four or five textbooks for secondary-school English language teaching.
Work with a partner and draw up a chart showing the standard progression of a grammar
syllabus through the four secondary-school years.
Identify common ground and differences in the syllabuses.
Summarise your findings in an essay and give reasons for the similarities.
Finalise your essay by writing a critique of the standard progression and describing any dif-
ferences you would make.
There are other possible criteria for feeding in language structures. Examples include:
Language structures are chosen because of their relevance to the topic.
Language structures are chosen according to their frequency of use.
Language structures are chosen because they are perceived to be easy, perhaps due to
a similarity to the first language.
Units of work
There are several practical considerations to bear in mind when drawing up a syllabus. The num-
ber of lessons per week and the length of the lessons will determine the scope of the syllabus.
In other words, how much work can be covered in the academic year? The number of stu-
dents is also a determining factor in the scope of a syllabus. In general terms, more material
can be covered with fewer students.
A syllabus is usually divided into units of work (Figure 1), with the length of each unit, in
terms of lessons, a key question in the overall design of the syllabus. When a unit of work
is based on a theme, one consideration is its range. How many lessons can be based on the
theme? How long can students interest in the theme be maintained?
Within each unit of work, all the different component parts of the syllabus should be pre-
sent so that the work is systematically and evenly distributed throughout the academic year.
At the centre of the planning process is the theme for the unit.
Figure 1. Structure of a unit
Lesson objectives
Communicative functions: Language:
Listening. Lexis.
Speaking. Structures.
Communicative functions:
Reading. Unit theme Language analysis
Writing.
Competencias bsicas Crosscultural focus
Pronunciation focus
As well as the features in the diagram above, a syllabus may contain other features, such as
a crosscurricular focus or a literacy focus, which would be included in each unit.
Task 4
1. Planning a content-related unit of work.

Choose a theme from another subject area in the school curriculum and do the following tasks
with a partner:
Brainstorm and make a list of vocabulary the students would need to know.
Discuss the theme with your partner and make a note of the structures most likely to occur when
working on this theme.
Choose and describe a literacy focus you could include.
2. Analysis of classroom materials: unit design.

Choose a unit of work from the coursebook used in your Practicum.
Copy the diagram in Figure 1 and fill it in with the details of the syllabus for that unit.
Add any additional contents you think would improve the unit.
From units to lessons
Once the unit has been planned and the number of lessons within the unit determined, the
next step is the organisation of the features of the unit into lessons.
Not all the features outlined in the map of the unit will be present in every lesson. Indeed, a unit
needs variety to sustain students interest. Moreover, there are certain aspects of the unit that stand
apart from the rest. In a lesson aimed at language analysis (often known as Grammar Focus or
Language Awareness lessons) the development of concepts related to the theme of the unit will
no longer be the central focus. Similarly, if there is a literacy focus working through the syllabus,
these lessons will also have distinctive characteristics. In both cases, the thematic link to the unit
should be maintained. The language analysed in a dedicated Language Awareness class should
have been used previously in communicative activities. Similarly, the subject of the reading text
that provides the literacy focus should be linked to the unit theme.
As with the syllabus and the units of work, lessons need to be carefully planned to ensure
that all the different aspects of the syllabus are covered systematically. Lesson plans are ne-
eded to ensure that there is a balance of activity types within the lesson, to ensure the co-
herent development of linguistic skills through the unit and to provide a unique, and ideally
memorable, learning/teaching focus for each lesson. See Chapter 8, Practicum, by House
(2011b), in Volume III, for models of unit/lesson plans.
Each lesson plan should start with a specific learning objective or objectives for the lesson.
These objectives (sometimes described as outcomes) are most effective when they describe
what the students will be able to do at the end of the lesson. In turn, students should be able
to answer the question What have I learnt today?.
In part, the lesson objectives should reflect communicative linguistic functions: I can talk
about my daily routine. However, when objectives are only expressed in linguistic terms,
be they functional or grammatical, they become removed from what the students themsel-
ves consider as important. Decontextualised language objectives are difficult to assimilate
once they are removed from a meaningful communicative context. The lesson objectives
should include, then, not only the linguistic functions that are being practised, but also a
learner-centred objective connected to the unit theme that gives context and meaning to
the learning process. Learner-centred objectives (or student outcomes) often describe
what the students will do during the lesson: Students will carry out a class survey to
determine how their classmates travel to school.
This point is addressed directly within any CLIL programme of work, be it a subject class
such as Music taught in English, or an English language class doing a unit of content-related
work. CLIL is described as dual-objective learning because each lesson has two objectives,
one linguistic and one taken from an area of the general curriculum (content objective). In
terms of language learning, the linguistic objective has more significance, but in terms of the
students it is the content objective that provides meaning.
There are many different formats for planning lessons. They typically include some or all
of the features given in Figure 2:
Figure 2. Features used in lesson planning
Unit theme:
Lesson title:
Linguistic objective:
CLIL objective:
Student outcome:
Language:
Structures:
Lexis:
Materials:
Outline of activities:
Assessment criteria:
Lesson title: describing the individual lessons through a lesson title helps to ensure that
the topic of the unit is coherently developed and to make each lesson unique by dis-
tinguishing it from the rest of the unit.
Linguistic objective: this should be expressed in terms of communicative functions:
Students will be able to .
CLIL objective: within a CLIL programme, the area of the curriculum and the specific
content objective should be listed for each lesson.
Student outcome: this is needed to describe the aim of the lesson from the students
perspective rather than a linguistic perspective. This section should help students answer
the question What have I learnt/done today?. It should also serve as a descriptor for
what the students are going to do in the lesson.
Language: all the language that is the focus of the class should be listed here. It is
important to emphasise that this by no means represents all the language that will
be used during the class. This section indicates the language that will be used by the
students either receptively (reading materials or oral instructions) or productively
in speaking or writing activities. It may be useful here to categorise the language
according to whether it is new to the students or has been seen before.
Materials: these may include posters, audio materials, realia, printed materials, ebooks
and DVDs, as well as the standard textbook. It is important to make a list of the
materials for simple reasons of personal organisation. Many English language teachers
have a huge number of students and various different classes within the same working
day. A checklist of materials ensures that the teacher does not forget vital material for
a class.
Outline of activities: this includes a detailed description of the class activities and an
indication of the estimated time for each activity. It could also include an indication
as to the class dynamic for each activity (individual, pair work, small groups).
Assessment criteria: assessment procedures are essential as a means of checking stu-
dents progress and ensuring they are assessed continuously at all stages of their lear-
ning and not just in a final evaluation. The procedures do not need to be formal and
much of the most effective assessment is based on classroom observation. However,
in order for the observation to acquire relevance within an overall marking scheme,
students must be systematically observed and the results recorded. Checklists and ob-
servation sheets can be very useful as a means of recording individual students per-
formance in class.
Task 5 Designing a thematically based lesson
Choose a theme and make a note of some language objectives that fit well into the theme.
Plan a lesson using the outline above.
Write a checklist for recording classroom observations for the lesson you have planned.
Deliver your lesson and make notes in your lesson plan to indicate successful activities and
problems.
After delivering your lesson, assess the efficiency of your checklist and how you used it.
Make any adjustments you need following your assessment of the efficiency of the checklist.
Plan and deliver a PowerPoint presentation of your checklist for your colleagues.
The shape of a lesson
A few minutes are needed at the start of the class to help students change register and start
thinking in English. Warm-up activities need to be simple and quick. They can be game
based, but the game should not need a lot of explanation. One of the most effective warm-
up activities, however, can be as simple as conversing for a few minutes with the class in
English. The conversation should be informal and based on points of common interest, per-
haps relevant to school or family life such as sporting events, school outings, exams, new
music, family celebrations and so on. The point of the conversation is both to warm up the
class for thinking in English and to establish a positive affective relationship with the stu-
dents. It has the added advantage that students hear the foreign language being used na-
turally. Teachers should surround their students with language while at the same time
supporting students in their replies. Elements of caretaker speech2 can be adopted such as
prompting through closed questions, repeating back muddled or unclear utterances, provi-
ding unknown vocabulary, and making a conscious effort to keep the conversation going.
Answers that are given all or partly in the students first language can be repeated back in
English and correction should be kept to a minimum as the aim is to encourage a natural
communicative situation.3
Language work within a lesson is typically divided into three stages of practice. Students move
from a presentation activity through to activities where key language is practised in a teacher-
controlled setup and on to freer and more autonomous production of the language. This format
has the advantage of focusing closely on items of language and is appealing to language tea-
chers who are chiefly concerned with covering a series of syntactical and lexical objectives.
Example outline
1. Presentation activity: students follow an audio script to associate past holiday experiences to
named characters.
2. Controlled practice: students follow a model dialogue to ask each other about the information
previously gathered: Has (Sally) ever...?.
3. Free practice: students carry out a class survey to collate information about their own past expe-
riences: Have you ever...?.
This pattern, however, allows no space within a lesson for reviewing and recycling langua-
ge that has been learnt previously. It does not build on previous linguistic knowledge, or
2. Caretaker speech: a description of how careers talk to and encourage speech in infants learning their first language.
3. For a more detailed description of caretaker speech and its role in Krashens comprehensible input theory see Krashen
(1981, p. 125).
indeed on any other kind of knowledge. In this lesson plan, the emphasis is placed on the
linguistic objectives, with other learner-centred objectives taking second place.
An alternative lesson plan could place the emphasis on developing the student outcome as
the focus of the lesson.
Example outline
1. Initial phase: the teacher introduces the lesson through a whole class activity. Examples: brainstorm
holiday destinations. Ask about types of holiday activities at the different destinations and list on
the board. The purpose of this stage is to prepare the students both linguistically, cognitively and
conceptually. In other words, they should be stimulated to start thinking.
2. Class work: students work individually, in pairs or in groups to carry out the proposed activities. At
this stage they put into practice both the language and the concepts introduced earlier.
3. Round-up: the final phase can again be a whole class activity that focuses on both the key con-
cepts and language of the lesson. It is useful to end the lesson with activities that encourage stu-
dents to connect what they have learnt in the class with their wider reality. It is notoriously difficult
to take activities in the English language classroom outside the classroom walls. This final phase
can be regarded an opportunity for students to transfer the focus to themselves and use the new
language to talk about their own experiences.
Task 6 Identifying student outcomes
List at least four different student outcomes related to a theme of your choice. Include diffe-
rent types of outcomes (roleplays, written texts, oral presentations, etc.).
Justify your choices by describing the communicative functions that will be developed
through the student outcomes.
Choose one of these and develop a lesson plan.
Deliver the lesson in your Practicum. If possible ask a colleague to observe you as you work.
If you have been observed, ask your colleague to write a short, critical report. If you have not
been observed, write your own critical report.
Classroom activities
For classroom activities to meet the lesson objectives, they should develop the linguistic ob-
jectives at the same time as leading to the final student outcome.
As meaningful communication is the purpose of an English language class, all classroom ac-
tivities must develop communicative skills. It is important not to mistake communication for
drills or other mechanical, oral activities. There is very little communication involved,
for example, in describing elements of a picture that are obvious to everyone: The boys
got a red shirt.
For communication to take place a message, a piece of information or an opinion has to be

expressed and exchanged. Sometimes this can be achieved simply by changing an aspect of
a standard activity. If the activity above is presented as a game and the student is relying on
memory to describe the elements in a picture, then the activity becomes communicative. It
has both a context for communication (the game) and a purpose (winning points are ear-
ned for each correctly remembered item).
Within the CEFR, communicative situations are classified into three broad groupings or com-
municative modes. In the interactive mode, there is a two-way flow of communication
where participants are both producers and receivers of information. In other communicati-
ve situations the flow of information is one-way from the producer of the message, in writ-
ten or oral form, to the receiver(s). These situations can be productive, when students
produce the message, or receptive, when students receive the message.
Within an English language class all three communicative modes should be present at diffe-
rent times. When the teacher explains activities or outlines a theme, the communicative mode
for students will be receptive. When students produce a piece of written work or do an oral
presentation in class, the communicative mode is productive. It is interesting to note that in
bilingual programmes, where another subject area is taught in English, the communicative
modes that are practised are largely one-way with a strong emphasis on the receptive mode.
This is not surprising as teachers are focused on transmitting knowledge (both information and
skills) related to their subject rather than on developing language competence.
The interactive communicative mode, however, is central to language development. Inter-

active communicative activities, with students working together in pairs or groups, should
be part of all language lessons once students are old enough to work with a degree of auto-
nomy. Cooperative learning tasks, where students need to work together to achieve the set
goal, hold great potential for the English language classroom. When students work together,
the opportunities for language use are greatly increased and group tasks provide a natural
and meaningful context for practising language. These activities have to be carefully plan-
ned and managed and teachers should expect a certain level of noise in the classroom. In
order for students to stay on task and keep using English, it is essential that they are equip-
ped with the language they need to carry out the task. This may mean providing vocabulary
sheets and examples of model sentence structures for the students to use. In cooperative
learning tasks the teacher takes a back seat, although this by no means implies a passive atti-
tude. The teacher should be moving around the class monitoring language use and the deve-
lopment of the activity, as well as solving problems and providing extra language as needed.
Mixed-ability classes
While all students start Secondary Education with previous experience of learning English as
a foreign language, by no means do they all start at the same level of language competen-
ce. English language classes are notorious for the differences in levels of ability among stu-
dents. Some students may attend extra language classes and some students may have
studied under a bilingual programme for Primary Education, while other students expe-
rience will be more limited. Classroom activities should have an inbuilt flexibility to address
mixed ability in the classroom. One way of dealing with a mix of abilities is to make it a fac-
tor when organising groups. Stronger students can be placed to work with students who
have a lower level of language competency to help them carry out class activities. Howe-
ver, faster students should not only be treated as teachers helpers. Their use of language also
needs to be developed and encouraged. Activities that are open ended can be extended for
faster students. For example, faster students should not be expected to work from a closed
list (for example, of holiday experiences), but should be asked to draw on their wider know-
ledge. The round-up at the end of class can also be a moment when students express them-
selves using a wider range of language.
In short, planning classroom activities consists of engineering communicative situations in the

classroom that allow students to interact linguistically in order to fulfil a goal or objective (stu-
dent outcome). The following aspects should be considered when planning an activity:
Type of activity: exchanging information, a survey, giving directions, etc.
Procedure: a list of the steps students will follow to carry out the activity. This infor-
mation can be given to students orally.
Language: this includes lexis and structure.
Final outcome: a description of what students will have produced when they finish the
activity. Examples: a completed text, a graph, a map.
Grouping: pairwork, groups, whole class, individual, etc.
Timing: an indication of how long the activity will take.
Assessment: the criteria for assessing the activity which could include: the use of tar-
get language whilst carrying out the activity, the standard of the final product, the ac-
curacy of language use, and so on. The assessment of an activity also needs to fit into
an overall marking scheme.
Task 7
1. Analysis of classroom materials: linguistic skills and activity types:

Look through the English language textbook used by your class in your Practicum and make a
list of common activity types.
Draw up a chart showing the linguistic skills developed in these activities.
2. Review of a unit of work:

Choose a unit of work and write a critical review. Consider the following:
- Balance of language skills.
- Focus on student outcomes.
- Opportunities for communicative exchanges.
- Group dynamics.
- Assessment procedures.
Conclude your report with your personal opinion of the unit of work and any changes you
would make.
Common problems with classroom activities
1. Students are unclear about what to do: this sometimes occurs because an activity is
too complex and has too many steps. Alternatively, this might occur if the activity,
with its component steps, has not been explained clearly.
2. Students are unclear as to the larger (nonlinguistic) purpose of the activity: students should
be able to answer the questions What am I doing? and Why am I doing this? without
reference to the language goals (to learn new words in English). The answers to the above
questions should refer to the student outcome what the students are doing or producing
with the activity: a class survey, a completed story, an information sheet about
3. There is no connection between the activity and the theme of the unit: an activity does
not exist in isolation. Activities need to be connected to the theme of the unit and to
develop the objectives of the class. In other words, they need to fit into the larger fra-
mework. This is important as it contextualises the classroom activity within the theme.
It also helps to give shape and pattern to the learning experience. Memory relies very
strongly on pattern and it is generally easier to remember an activity if it forms part of
a whole. In addition there needs to be a sense of forward progress in students work
as they work through the concepts connected to the unit theme.
4. The planned student outcome does not help students achieve the linguistic objectives
of the class: paradoxically, this most often occurs when the linguistic objectives overs-
hadow the student outcome. When planning activities, the emphasis should be on
what students do with the language not on the language itself.
Conclusion
The work of transforming the curriculum into classroom activities relies on careful, layered
planning from the design of the syllabus through to the structure of each unit, the objectives
of the lessons within the unit and, finally, to the classroom activities needed to achieve the
objectives. The component elements of the syllabus should be chosen to meet the broad ob-
jectives in the official curriculum. Thematic planning of units within the syllabus ensures
that its distinct elements are distributed evenly throughout the course and worked on syste-
matically. Lessons within the units are planned to establish the linguistic objectives and stu-
dent outcomes that make class work relevant and meaningful. Once these stages of planning
have been carried out, the design of each activity becomes clearer. They are, in essence, com-
municative situations that are constructed as a means of achieving the lesson objectives.
ASSIGNMENTS
Assignment 1 A report on WebQuests and language learning
WebQuests are used increasingly in secondary-school project-type activities. Research some of

the WebQuests available on the internet:
WebQuests: http://webquest.org
Choose one to write a report on. Consider the following questions:

How can WebQuests fit into a syllabus for language learning?
Which communicative linguistic functions are being practised?
Then design a project for your students in your Practicum using the WebQuest. Include any ad-
ditional language practice you think they need and any additional resources.
Assignment 2 Essay: What are the advantages and dangers in bilingual education programmes?
An increasing number of Autonomous Communities and regions are moving towards a bilingual model
of education programmes. However, some specialists think that this move has been made without pa-
ying due consideration to the possible difficulties and problems thrown up by this model of education.
Draw up a questionnaire to find out teachers opinions on bilingual education in the scho-
ol where you are doing your Practicum. Ensure you ask both English language teachers and
teachers of other subject areas.
Use your findings and your own opinions to write a critical essay titled: What are the ad-
vantages and dangers in bilingual education programmes?.
Consider the question from the perspective of both an English language teacher and a tea-
cher from another subject area.
Assignment 3 Design a complete unit of work
Choose and justify a theme for a unit of work.

Design the unit of work.
Indicate the number of lessons within the unit and identify the linguistic objectives and stu-
dent outcomes for each lesson.
Develop classroom activities for each lesson.
Draw up a full list of materials and resources needed by you and your students.
Complete your plan by describing what you expect the students to have learnt by the end of the unit.
FURTHER READING
Books
CURTAIN, H. & DAHLBERG, C.A. (2004). Languages and Children. Making the Match. Har-
low: Pearson Education.
A comprehensive guide to implementing a communicative model for language learning in the
classroom. It includes a discussion of language-acquisition theory as well as more practical
guidelines for a thematic approach to syllabus planning, classroom activities and assessment.
GILLES, R.M. & ADRIAN, F. (eds.). (2003). Cooperative Learning: The Social and Intellectual
Outcomes of Learning in Groups. London: Routledge.
A collection of articles that discuss the role of groupwork in the learning process. The articles
range across the spectrum of formal education from preschool to university and link theories of
group dynamics to their application in the classroom.
KRASHEN, S.D. & TERRELL, T. (1996). The Natural Approach. Language Acquisition in the
Classroom. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
A research-based examination of second-language acquisition which underpins Krashens
hypotheses of language learning, including the theory of comprehensible input.
MARSH, D. & LANG, G. (eds) (2000). Using Languages to Learn and Learning to Use Lan-
guages. Jyvskyl, Finland: University of Jyvskyl.
An outline to the CLIL approach and its benefits for young learners. The article examines dif-
ferent CLIL classroom experiences.
Website
Common European Framework for Languages.
www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/Source/Framework_EN.pdf
This website contains the full document describing the CEFR and its role in language teaching.
REFERENCES
CURTAIN, H. & DAHLBERG, C.A. (2004). Languages and Children. Making the Match.
Harlow: Pearson Education.
HOUSE, S. (coord) (2011a). Ingls. Complementos de formacin disciplinar. Theory and Prac-
tice in English Language Teaching. Vol. I. Barcelona: Gra.
HOUSE, S. (coord) (2011b). Ingls. Investigacin, innovacin y buenas prcticas. Teacher De-
velopment. Vol. III. Barcelona: Gra.
KRASHEN, S.D. (1981). Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning. Oxford:
Pergamon Press.
Legislation
Real Decreto 1631/2006, de 29 de diciembre, por el que se establecen las enseanzas mni-
mas correspondientes a la Educacin Secundaria Obligatoria. Boletn Oficial del Estado
(05/01/2007), 5, 677-773. Also available online at: <www.boe.es/boe/dias/2007/01/05/pd
fs/A00677-00773.pdf>.
31
2. CHOOSING AND DEVELOPING CLASSROOM

MATERIAL
CHAPTER CONTENTS
Choosing and changing materials

Selecting a coursebook
Writing checklists
Who am I teaching?
What level am I teaching?
What are the official requirements?
General and detailed checklists
Educating, not just teaching
What else do I want from materials?
Pilot, consult, and gather opinions: learning by doing
Developing and supplementing materials: plan ahead
Using technology
Conclusions
Mike Downie
If I had more time, I would spend it surfing the net looking for materials, downloading and
then adapting them for each of my groups. And of course if my students had more time (and
were more self-motivated), I would get them to search for materials and create their own
activities to bring into class too. Unfortunately the reality is that I dont have the time and
the majority of my students dont either. So, like most teachers, I make compromises. Publis-
hed materials and coursebooks offer us the possibility for that compromise, providing a bank
of materials that cover our syllabus requirements and which, with creative management, can
be supplemented and developed to better suit our individual needs. Personally, I try to be
pragmatic with these materials rather than dogmatic (following the book to the letter) or
dogme(tic) (not following the book at all).
But what do I choose? There are so many different kinds of materials available. No study that
I am aware of has ever established the absolute efficiency of one particular method, approach
or type of material over another. Indeed, practice suggests the reverse: different strokes for
different folks. Of course, some of our choices will be inappropriate (or even wrong). We all
sometimes make mistakes when we choose materials; the difference between a good teacher
and bad one is that good teachers will learn from their mistakes. Looking for material, then,
is not the search for the holy grail; it is rather a reflection of who we are as teachers and what
kind of relationship we want with our students. Materials should help define our relationship
not only with the changing use of language but also with individual learners and their
learning. This article will look at some of the questions we need to reflect on before making
that choice and how, once it is made, we can best develop the materials with our students
over the duration of their course.
Choosing and changing materials
There is enormous pressure on teachers to change materials. On the one side, publishers are
constantly adapting materials to keep pace with new technologies and bringing out new titles
to increase their market share, whilst on the other side, students are becoming increasingly
more articulate and demanding in terms of content. Younger people nowadays are the new
consumers. But changing books to keep up with the latest fashions and trends can be disastrous
unless the change is for the better. And as I suggested at the start of this chapter, our materials
should be developed over time with students to get the best out of them. If we are constantly
changing books, this never happens. So we need to be very clear why we are changing.
One very good reason for changing material is that it doesnt work. It is often easier to see
why something doesnt work than the reverse. When considering a change, then, a good
starting point is to think about what has not worked with our present materials. Possibilities
include:
Too difficult.
Too easy.
Confusing.
Monotonous.
Too much material.
Not enough practice.
Out of date.
Mistakes.
Others.
CHOOSING AND DEVELOPING CLASSROOM MATERIAL 33
If you hardly ever use your coursebook in class, it is definitely time for a change. It is unfair
to make students buy materials that are not working. Such a situation is a good opportu-
nity to find resources that will be more effective for your teaching circumstances.
Of course, sometimes we are required to change materials that have been working for us
because of educational reform. It is important in this case to think about what the reform
implies in terms of contents, goals and methods and what different kinds of material are
needed. Our choice of new materials will be conditioned by what we are expected to teach
and how we are expected to teach it.
Task 1
Interview three practising teachers and write a report. Include the following information:
The teachers reasons for last changing their classroom materials.
Were any of the above reasons mentioned? Which ones?
Any other reasons they gave.
Classify their reasons in order of importance and discuss them.
Summarise your findings.
Present your report to your colleagues.
Selecting a coursebook
Working with a coursebook in class should never mean shouting aloud the page number and
following to the letter everything the book suggests. Selecting and developing materials implies
we are taking control. We should be in charge of the material, not the reverse, and we can
only do this from a position of awareness. We need to know what we are doing and why
which implies knowing who we are teaching and why.
So why are we teaching a modern foreign language? The answer to this question is critical
for choosing materials we feel comfortable with. Our reasons for teaching English as a
modern foreign language will inform our method and inspire the techniques and activities
we employ.
A recent study carried out by the Council of Europe into why teachers around Europe are
teaching modern foreign languages suggested three important reasons shared by most of them
(Council of Europe CUP, 2001). The first reason is that we are teaching a living language, and
teaching students to communicate in that language. The second reason is that we are teaching
students for lifelong learning, that is, helping students to become more independent both in
and outside the classroom by equipping them with the strategies and attitudes to carry on
learning foreign languages not only in school but also outside and throughout their life. The
third reason is to provide relevant and recognisable qualifications so our students can travel
within education and employment around Europe. Whilst the study itself was not prescriptive
in its approach to either method or technique, but rather described good practice, it did
nevertheless highlight the close link between communicative approaches and success in
meeting these three objectives: developing communicative language skills, encouraging
independent learning strategies and attitudes and providing useful qualifications.
The answer to why we are teaching, then, requires some reflection on who we are as tea-
chers and our assumptions about learners and learning. Reading the CEFR provides an inte-
resting overview of recent trends and practices in teaching and learning modern foreign
languages in Europe. Importantly, the reasons for teaching a modern foreign language as
described in the CEFR (communication, lifelong learning and relevant qualifications) are
also reflected in official documents describing curricular requirements in Primary, Secon-
dary and Bachillerato not only in Spain but throughout Europe.
Task 2
Examining and reflecting on our motives and goals in teaching English as a foreign language can
help us make a more informed choice as to which materials we will use.
Write answers to the following questions:
Why are you teaching English as a modern foreign language?
What are your main aims with respect to your students progress?
What should materials be like as a result?
Write a description of the themes, activity types and methodological approach you would like
to work with.
Writing checklists
When looking at new coursebooks it is always a good idea to read the blurb on the back of
the book. This gives you a sense of who the book was written for, its components and some
of the authors concerns: a two-level course preparing students for university entrance;
extends students knowledge of vocabulary and grammar in a clear systematic way;
focuses on strategies needed for autonomous language learning.
Does the blurb sound interesting? If so, the book is worth us investigating further.
There are many ways of analysing a coursebook, depending on the time we have available and
our experience. Checklists are a useful way of identifying features we expect coursebooks to
contain, although it should be noted that some writers like Sheldon (1988) see coursebook
assessment as fundamentally a subjective, rule-of-thumb activity, one for which no neat formula,
grid or system will ever provide a definite yardstick. Checklists can be more general or more
detailed, more objective or more subjective. Hutchinson and Waters (1987), in an attempt to
make checklists more reliable, created lists of questions which were both subjective and objective.
So, for example, they suggested asking both a subjective question, What language points should
be covered?, and a more objective one, What language points are actually covered in the
material?. They saw the best materials as the ones that provided the closest match between both.
So whilst good checklists can provide us with an understanding of a writers approach and
a clear description of contents, they can also reveal discrepancies between what we want
and what the materials contain. To this extent they are very useful for shortlisting possible
contenders for our course. But which checklist should we use, or rather, whose? Using an
off-the-peg checklist is timesaving and if we have never written one before it can inform us of
areas of concern that we should take into consideration. However, even the most profes-
sionally crafted general checklist needs to be tailored to our needs if it is to be effective. Wri-
ting our own checklist makes us more aware of our own learning and teaching situation
since in order to prepare a checklist we need to know both what we are supposed to be te-
aching (the syllabus) and how (the method or approach). Knowing these things will form the
basis for developing our checklist and for subsequent evaluation of materials.
Task 3
When we choose materials for teaching we need to be very clear as to our students needs and
characteristics, which may vary considerably from class to class and level to level.
Consider the following questions:
Who am I teaching?
What are the official requirements for the course?
Are there any official exams?
What do I want from materials?
Now use your answers to create your own checklist.
Compare your checklist with those of your colleagues and discuss any differences.
Who am I teaching?
I have unfortunately been in too many classrooms where teachers use material written for
older students with younger children. In the past this was understandable, as fewer materials
were available and we used what we had. Sometimes materials inappropriate to the age
group were chosen because of their higher level, especially as younger and younger
children were being entered for higher-level examinations. Nowadays there are plenty of
good materials for students of all ages. Books written for adults with a range of adult topics
should not be used with teenagers. Their interests are different, the kinds of interaction and
activities are different and if we want to motivate students, finding books with the kinds
of activities and topics that reflect their world is vital.
Task 4
It is important to match your classroom materials closely to your students field of interest. It is ne-
cessary to introduce students to themes that you think they will find interesting, not just ask them
to come up with a list.
Design a list of topics for different age groups.
Brainstorm some ideas for different age groups with your colleagues and justify your choices.
- 11- to 13-year-olds.
Then interview some students from each age group and compare your choices with theirs.
Summarise your findings and report back to your colleagues.
Look at the bigger picture. Did students have any contact with English in their previous school?
What have they studied previously? To what level? We should expect coursebooks to provide
lots of spiral revision of language, but going over the same language every year as if students
had never studied English previously can be tremendously frustrating and demotivating for
them. Testing and evaluation too should provide students with ambitious but realistic targets.
This is particularly important when we consider that lifelong learning depends on learners being
aware of their progress. The CEFR levels are particularly useful in this respect as they describe
in transparent, jargon-free language what students can do at different stages of learning.
See Chapter 5, Framework for Languages, by Snchez Reyes, in Volume I (House, 2011), for
the CEFR Global Scale table showing the levels from A1 to C2. In this Global Scale there are
general, overall and particular descriptors for each of the skills which are important to know,
especially as international and European language exams have been benchmarked to these le-
vels (Table 1). We should check that the materials we choose reflect the CEFR levels and that the
evaluation they provide tests appropriate Can Do descriptors. The key questions are:
Are the materials linked to the CEFR levels?
What qualifications do the materials prepare students for?
Table 1. Comparison of exams in ALTE
ALTE LEVEL CEF LEVEL IELTS EXAM CAMBRIDGE EXAM PITMAN ESOL TOEIC TOEFL
Level 5 C2 7.5+ CPE Advanced. 910+ 276+
Level 4 C1 6.5 - 7 CAE Higher . 701 - 236 -
Intermediate. 910 275
Level 3 B2 5-6 FCE Intermediate. 541 - 176 -
700 235
Level 2 B1 3.5 - 4.5 PET - 381 - 126 -
540 175
Level 1 A2 3 KET Elementary. 246 - 96 -
380 125
Breakthrough A1 1-2 - Basic. - -

level
Task 5
Use the information in the chart above and find additional data on the following websites:
The Association of Language Testers in Europe: www.alte.org
Council of Europe: www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/cadre_en.asp
Map the Secondary and Bachillerato qualifications onto the Common European Framework levels
and the exams in ALTE.
Download some sample exams (both secondary-school exams and the ALTE exams). Compare:
The types of skills that are tested.
The vocabulary contents.
The structures tested.
Write a report comparing the three modes of assessment.

What are the official requirements?
Whilst most coursebooks closely follow the content requirements for the educational segment
they are written for, it is still important for teachers to be aware of what these requirements
are. (See Chapter 4, Understanding the Curriculum, by House, in Volume I (House, 2011),
for a detailed description of the official curriculum). Some of the requirements in the official
curriculum may be specific, for example, requiring the past simple to be taught in the first or
second year of a course. Others may be more general, for example, in the Ley Orgnica
2/2006, de 3 de mayo, de Educacin (LOE) documentation referring to reading in 1. ESO:
Comprensin general e identificacin de informaciones especificas en diferentes textos sencillos au-
tnticos y adaptados, en soporte papel y digital, sobre diversos temas adecuados a su edad y rela-
cionados con contenidos de otras materias del currculo.
The descriptor suggests that materials develop skimming, scanning and gist reading skills
(see Chapter 5, Vocabulary Instruction in Secondary Schools, by Vidal, in Volume II, for
a more detailed explanation of these skills), but doesnt mention the kinds of texts to be used,
only that they be simple authentic and adapted texts relevant to the age group and, tan-
talisingly, that they should have a crosscurricular link. A lot is left to teachers and course-
book writers in deciding which specific texts are most appropriate.
General and detailed checklists
General checklist questions can be used to create a shortlist of books that we want to analyse
in detail. We can use more detailed questions to compare where particular strengths and
weaknesses lie. So, for example, whilst the question Does the book contain a variety of
readings of interest to my students with links to other subject areas of the curriculum? will
indicate to us in a general sense whether or not the book deals with the reading skill in
relevant contexts, questions such as What kinds of readings are in the book? or What
kinds of reading strategies are practised? will give a much more detailed picture of how
comprehensive and thorough the book is in dealing with reading and whether its choice of
texts is best suited to us.
Whilst many descriptors might be general, they can form a basis for more detailed questions.
For example, descriptors taken from the LOE documentation below on learning to learn may
give rise to a general question:
ESO 1 4: Aplicacin de estrategias bsicas para organizar, adquirir, recordar y utilizar lxico.
Does the material develop basic strategies for storing and reviewing vocabulary?
However, the descriptors also allow for more detailed questions which could be either open
What types of activities does the material use to develop strategies for storing and reviewing
vocabulary?
Does the material have:

- A learner diary or language portfolio?
- Brainstorming activities?
- Vocabulary-building activities?
- Different ways of revising words?
Both types of questions allow us to see the kind of activities that are present in the book.
What is of primary importance in setting the questions is understanding beforehand what the
requirements for our course are and then setting questions to check if materials cover the re-
quirements and, importantly, finding out how.
Task 6
Write a general and a detailed checklist of questions for the descriptors below:
1. ESO (LOE) Contenidos Bloque 1 (Escuchar, hablar y conversar).
Escucha y comprensin de mensajes orales breves relacionados con las actividades de aula:
instrucciones, preguntas, comentarios, dilogos.
Obtencin de informacin especfica en textos orales sobre asuntos cotidianos y predecibles
como nmeros, precios, horarios, nombres o lugares, presentados en diferentes soportes.
Uso de estrategias bsicas de comprensin de los mensajes orales: uso del contexto verbal y
no verbal y de los conocimientos previos sobre la situacin.
Discuss and compare your checklist with a colleagues and make any adjustments.
Educating, not just teaching
Another important question raised by the CEFR concerns cultural diversity. Namely: Do
materials promote pluricultural awareness?
In a school context, the ways in which a book deals with sociocultural issues are as im-
portant as how it addresses language learning. As educators in the broader sense, we
would expect a book to promote positive values and attitudes with open-minded, pluri-
cultural, nonsexist agendas. There are crosscutting themes in education for which all te-
achers should take responsibility: moral and civic education, peace education, consumer
education, health and safety (road safety), education in nonsexist and nonracist attitudes.
In this context, it would be wrong to use materials that only represent a narrow band of
white middle-class children when learners themselves are from a broad mix of ethic and
social backgrounds.
Task 7
Write an analysis of the coursebook your pupils are using in your Practicum and answer the follo-
wing questions:
What is the ethnic mix in the materials?
Does it reflect my students reality?
Are different kinds of social reality represented?
Are other social issues dealt with?
How are they dealt with?
Are they relevant to my students lives?
Prepare a PowerPoint presentation of your analysis and present it to your colleagues.
Where they are available, look carefully at descriptors of sociocultural content. Some of the
descriptors in the LOE documents, for example, deal specifically with sociocultural content:
1. ESO: Valoracin del enriquecimiento personal que supone la relacin con personas pertene-
cientes a otras culturas.
A general question prompted by this descriptor might be:

Do the materials reflect on how contact with other cultures can be personally enri-
ching?
A more specific question would be:

How do the materials show that knowing other cultures is personally enriching?
Task 8
Look through your coursebook again. Copy and complete the chart below focusing on the ques-
tion: How do materials show that knowing other cultures is personally enriching?:
Through reading. Yes/No How:
Through listening. Yes/No How:
Through speaking. Yes/No How:
Through project work. Yes/No How:
Other. Yes/No How:
Related to this is the fact that materials should explore the richness and diversity of the world
students live in and encourage them to reflect on their place within it. The amount of per-
sonalisation in materials is of paramount importance in this respect. Activities about my
world, my school, my friends, my parents, my family and so on should encourage students

to bring the real world into the classroom.
Key questions to add to our checklist would therefore be:

Does the book allow for personalisation of the language/topic/skills?
How and how often?
Task 9
Use the coursebook your pupils are using in your Practicum and answer the following questions:
What is the proportion of girls and boys represented throughout the materials?
In what roles are they found?
Write a critical summary of the gender/role balance in the coursebook and explain how you think
it should be improved.
What else do I want from materials?
Other differences between materials can also affect our choice. When all other factors are
equal, these differences can be decisive. They concern aspects such as the overall attracti-
veness of material and the range of extra resources.
Task 10
Use the coursebook your pupils are using in your Practicum and answer the following questions:
What is the quality of visuals and the design of the book?
Is the material up to date? When was it published?
Are there extra resources (DVD, CDs, CD ROMs, MultiROMs, etc.) for the student? (Are they
useful? Are they attractive to the age and level of my students?)
Are there extra resources for the teacher? (Are they useful?)
Summarise your findings by describing how these aspects could be improved.
And finally price, an important part of any course:

Can my students afford the book?
Pilot, consult and gather opinions: learning by doing
Most practising teachers will tell you that you can never be sure about materials unless you
use them. This is why a vital stage in choosing the most appropriate materials is piloting.
Piloting means taking part of a book and trying it out in the classroom with our students. The
longer the trial the better the feedback you are going to get. However, even trying one or
two activities can help us get an idea of how materials work. Checklist questions can help
focus our piloting.
Task 11
Use the coursebook your pupils are using in your Practicum and write a critical review focusing
on the following questions:
Communication:
- Are students given opportunities for freer practice? How? How often?
- Do student learn by doing or being told?
- What is the attitude of the materials to mistakes?
- Are students allowed to personalise?
Lifelong learning:
- Is the material teacher-centred or learner-centred?
- Is there a learner training syllabus?
- What student resources are there for independent learning?
Evaluation:
- Does the material test what it teaches?
- Are there different types of evaluations? Teacher, peer, self?
- Does the material allow for positive washback? Are students made aware of what they can do?
Read a review by one of your colleagues (of a different coursebook) and discuss the differences.
Other questions can address practical issues such as whether instructions are clear, how
easy activities are to manage and so on. Another advantage of piloting is that we can ask our
students for their opinion too.
Task 12
Prepare a questionnaire for your pupils in your Practicum about their materials. Include the follo-
wing questions and some more of your own:
Do you enjoy the material? Why? Why not?
Are you able to follow the structure of the coursebook easily? Why? Why not?
Do you feel involved?

Do you feel it helps you learn effectively?
If you were the teacher, would you choose this material? Why? Why not?
....
Use the questionnaire in a discussion class with your pupils.
Video the class and then write a report on the results of the questionnaire.
Unfortunately, we are not always able to pilot materials in class; in this case consultation
and gathering opinions become more important. Talking to users of the material who are in
a similar situation to ours can give us a good idea as to whether material will work for us.
Task 13
Use the coursebook your pupils are using in your Practicum. Prepare a questionnaire based on the
list below, and ask a colleague to rate the material on a scale from 0 to 4:
0 = not at all 1 = a little 2 = OK 3 = quite a lot 4 = a lot
Does the material promote communication?

Does it give opportunities for students to be more independent?
Does the material involve students?
Is it user-friendly?
Is the Teachers Book helpful?
Are students resources useful? Clear?
Does the material recycle sufficiently?
Does it work well in large/small groups?
Does it provide relevant evaluations? What type? (Formal, informal, teacher-led, self, peer?)
How often?
Does it promote a positive attitude to learning?
Do your students enjoy using the book?
Is it fun to teach with?
Compare the results of the questionnaire with those of your colleagues.

Developing and supplementing materials: plan ahead
No coursebook should be used in every lesson. Indeed, over-reliance on a single course-book

can be detrimental to our overall goals of creating independent learners. There will be
obvious times when we will want to supplement a topic or digress. Very often the pacing of
materials will require us to add things, or at certain times of the year special festivals will
provide an opportunity for bringing in extra material. However, we will almost always need
to be selective with additional materials as we have a limited amount of time.
In order to plan we need to know how much real time we have with our students. An hour
in the classroom is never a full hour, for we spend time at the start of each lesson settling
our class and setting homework or collecting work at the end. An hour is sometimes only
50 minutes or even less. Lessons are always shorter than we would like them to be. Not to
mention what happens at the start of term. How many classes do we use getting to know
new students? And how many classes are used for evaluation through the year? How many
classes coincide with special events?
In order to develop supplementary materials while still covering our objectives we need to
plan ahead. Questions to ask include:
How many hours is my course in theory? And in reality?
What core content do I need to cover in that amount of time?
If you do not plan ahead, and if you constantly digress, you will find yourself either not co-
vering the syllabus or rushing through items that come later in the course. Either way, you
are storing up problems for the future.
As we work through our course material we will discover points where we have an opportunity
or a need to bring in other resources. The type of students we have, their particular interests and
motivations, which things they find easier and which more difficult will all suggest different types
of supplementary material. This may be a reading about a particular topic, a song, or a different
way of looking at a particular language point. However, it is essential to link supplementary ma-
terial to the content of the syllabus. A more topical reading could be used to replace the one we
have in the unit, but we should make sure it practises the same strategies. Supplementary mate-
rial should not be seen to compete with our course material but rather complement it.
It is also important to give some thought as to how we organise the resources that we use to
supplement our coursebooks. Creating banks of resources and self-access materials allows
us and our colleagues in the department to use these materials more easily and effectively.
Simple systems can be organised around coursebook units, topics or even specific syllabus
requirements. The original copies should be kept in plastic sleeves and should include some
notes on how they can be used. Well-stocked and well-resourced schools are infinitely bet-
ter places to work than those that are resource poor, but it is important to have clear routes
into this wealth of complementary and often competing materials.
Students should also be encouraged to keep supplementary materials. They can be given
simple files or encouraged to use the dossier section of a Language Portfolio. Language Port-
folios are a collection of individual students work put together by them in a file or a ring
binder. The Portfolios belong to the students and can be updated as language learning con-
tinues by adding to and taking away pieces of work. Portfolios are a good way not only of
encouraging students to reflect on learning goals and helping them keep track of work done,
but also are a useful tool for getting them to start to take control of their learning. See Chap-
ter 5, The Common European Framework of Reference, by Snchez Reyes, in Volume I
(House, 2011), for a more detailed description of Language Portfolios.
Task 14
The European Language Portfolio forms part of the assessment strategies recommended in the
CEFR:
Read the documents describing ELP from: www.oapee.es/oapee/inicio/iniciativas/portfolio.html
Find out and describe the characteristics of the three parts of a Language Portfolio.
Consider and describe how you would encourage students to use their Portfolio.
Using technology
Where technology promotes our goals in relation to communication and lifelong learning,
we can safely judge it to be a valuable resource. However, do the ways in which techno-
logy is delivered have any other knock-on effects on classroom interactions?
Task 15
Evaluate the technology used in your Practicum by answering the following questions:
Do the technology platforms allow students to work more independently?
Are they time-efficient?
Do they offer equal access to all students in large groups?
Do they discriminate against different learning styles or aptitudes?
Compare your answers with a colleague and say what changes you would make to improve your results.
We should be careful, for example, in the case of digital whiteboards to ensure that the
materials do not remain solely in the hands of the teacher, without ever passing to the stu-
dent. Technology should encourage students to take the initiative and become more confident
and independent in the classroom. What perhaps is less controversial is the use of techno-
logy to find and prepare supplementary material for the classroom. There are many exce-
llent sites for teachers and students to find ready-made materials and a plethora of other sites
(text, audio and video) that we can visit and select material from. It is worth building up a
list of the best EFL sites.
Task 16
Do an internet search for EFL sites.

Make a list of your top ten EFL resource sites.
Classify your list into different types (articles on teaching theory, useful activities, resources, fo-
rums and discussion groups etc.).
Hold a class discussion with your colleagues and make a database which you can all share.
Doing away with coursebooks

In 2000 Scott Thornbury wrote an article for IATEFL called A Dogma for EFL. The article
seemed to suggest that published textbooks should be avoided and that language and lear-
ning should emerge instead from a mutual interest in communication generated between the
teacher and student. This led to the creation of a DOGME ELT discussion group that has pro-
ved popular for experienced teachers who are fed up following mainstream materials and
coursebooks. However, even in Thornbury and Meddings (2002) Thornbury acknowledges
that a Dogme approach doesnt necessarily exclude the use of a coursebook. He makes
the point that coursebooks should not be allowed to become the tail that wags the dog. In-
deed one of the ten key principles that Thornbury outlines is that of critical use where te-
achers and students should use published materials and textbooks in a critical way that
recognises their cultural and ideological biases. It would seem that the bottom line is not
so much doing away with coursebooks as using them more effectively.
Task 17
Do an internet search to find information on Dogme ELT:

Find out the ten key principles of Dogme ELT.
Write a critical review of Dogme ELT including other specialist opinions and your own appraisal.
Conclusions
Choosing a relevant, well-designed coursebook which allows for adaptation and learner
spontaneity is vital in developing a balanced teacher/learner relationship. Of course we can
be more pessimistic or more optimistic about the amount and quality of present-day mate-
rials for the teaching and learning of English. The optimist sees more opportunities whilst the
pessimist sees more confusion. Neither would be wrong. More is not always better and
we know the real constraints on us in the classroom: time, space, technology and the offi-
cial syllabus will all limit and define our relationship with our material. Indeed, more is often
not even possible.
Yet we also know that the materials we use are enormously important in shaping the kind of
relationship we have with our students as well as the learning outcomes they achieve. Choosing
the best materials from the plethora of resources available can become one of the keys to a
successful course. Perhaps in the past it was easier and less stressful, since there was less to
choose from, but language changes, students change and so do we.
We have seen that there is no one right answer. Nevertheless, just as a well-stocked
and well-resourced school has greater potential than a resource-poor school, so a class full
of material choices is richer too. However, without clearly understood relevant objectives
and clear routes into competing materials, we will suffocate and confuse our students rather
than help them. We need to take control, most importantly by understanding the why and
how of what we should be teaching.
Creating checklists from our curriculum and syllabus is a good starting point as it allows us
not only to choose more effective and better-targeted materials but also to understand bet-
ter when to extend and supplement them and how to pace our materials over the duration
of the course. Getting to know ourselves as teachers and the circumstances in which we
teach are prerequisites for building a relationship with our students. The real constraints
(time, money, location, class size) and the expectations (exam, official syllabus, specific
goals) should all help frame the questions we set to evaluate and develop materials.
ASSIGNMENTS
Assignment 1 Create a checklist
Choose one of the compulsory school years for learning English and write a comprehensi-
ve checklist using all the considerations in this chapter based on the official curricular re-
quirements for that year.
Then compare your checklist to the coursebook you are using in your Practicum and write
a critical review describing any failings or missing elements.
Assignment 2 Planning ahead: mapping out a coursebook
Choose a coursebook written for Secondary or Bachillerato.

Make a study plan for the year allowing time for supplementing and testing.
Write a critical review of the coursebook.
Assignment 3 Supplementing a unit of a coursebook
Choose a unit of work from a secondary-school coursebook.

How many lessons of material does the unit offer?
Create alternative lesson plans for the whole unit that include supplementary materials
which reflect the core objectives in the unit and the considerations in this chapter.
FURTHER READING
Books
For general methodological reflections on why we are teaching modern foreign languages, what we
are teaching and how we can do it, some useful further reading is provided by the following:
BROWN, H.D. (2001). Teaching by Principles: an Interactive Approach to Language Peda-
gogy (2nd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
HARMER, J. (1998). How to Teach English. Harlow: Longman.
KUMARAVADIVELU, B. (2003). Beyond Methods: Macrostrategies for Language Teaching.

New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
NUNAN, D. (1999). Second Language Teaching and Learning. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.
RICHARDS, J.C. & RODGERS, T.S. (2001). Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching
(2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
SWAN, M. & SMITH, B. (eds.). (2001). Learner English (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.
If you are interested in reading on the topic of material and curricular development here are
some useful titles:
GRANT, N. (1987). Making the Most of Your Textbook. Harlow: Longman.
GRAVES, K. (2000). Designing Language Courses: a Guide for Teachers. Boston, MA: Heinle
& Heinle.
NUNAN, D. (1988). The Learner-centred Curriculum. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
RICHARDS, J.C. (2001). Curriculum Development in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.
TOMLINSON, B. (1998). Materials Development in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
You can also read more about writing checklists in these materials:
BYRD, P. (2001). Textbooks: evaluation and selection and analysis for implementation. In M.
Celce-Murcia (ed.), Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language (pp. 415-427). Boston,
MA: Heinle & Heinle.
CUNNINGSWORTH, A. (1984). Evaluating and Selecting EFL teaching materials. London:
Heinemann.
GARINGER, D. (2002). Textbook selection for the ESL classroom. Center for Applied Linguis-
tics Digest. Available online at: <www.cal.org/resources/Digest/0210garinger.html>.
SKIERSO, A. (1991). Textbook selection and evaluation. In M. Celce-Murcia (ed.), Teaching
English as a Second or Foreign Language (pp. 432-453). Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.
If you are interested in the work being done with the European Language Portfolio there are a
lot of interesting examples to be found in:
SCHNEIDER, G. & LENZ, P. (2001). European Language Portfolio: Guide for Developers. Stras-
bourg: Council of Europe. Available online at: <www.coe.int/T/DG4/Portfolio/ docu-
ments_intro/Eguide.pdf>.
Website
Dogme ELT.
www.thornburyscott.com/tu/portal.htm
REFERENCES
CHAMBERS, F. (1997). Seeking consensus in coursebook evaluation. ELT Journal, 51(1), 29-35.
COUNCIL OF EUROPE (2001): Common European Framework of Reference for Languages:
Learning, Teaching, Assessment. Strasbourg. Council of Europe. Available online at:
<www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/cadre_en.asp>.
COUNCIL OF EUROPE STANDARD (COE). What your language level means.
HOUSE, S. (coord) (2011). Ingls. Complementos de formacin disciplinar. Theory and Prac-
tice in English Language Teaching. Vol. I. Barcelona: Gra.
HUTCHINSON & WALTERS. (1987). English for Specific Purposes: A Learner-centred Appro-
ach. Chapter 9, 96-106. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
THORNBURY, S. & MEDDINGS, L. (2002) Dogme and the coursebook. Modern English Te-
acher, 11(1), 36-40. Available online at: <www.thornburyscott.com/tu/MET3coursebo
ok.htm>.
SHELDON, L.E. (1988). Evaluating ELT Textbooks and Materials. ELT Journal, 42(4), 237-246.
Legislation
Ley orgnica 2/2006, de 3 de mayo, de Educacin. Boletn Oficial del Estado (04/05/2006),
106, 17.158-17.207. Also available online at: <http://www.boe.es/boe/dias/2006/05/04
pdfs/A17158-17207.pdf>.
Websites
The Association of Lenguage Testers in Europe.
www.alte.org
Council of Europe.
www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/cadre_en.asp
51
3. DIGITAL LITERACIES AND THE LANGUAGE

CLASSROOM
CHAPTER CONTENTS
Technology today
Today's learners
Digital literacies
Practice
Conclusions
Gavin Dudeney
E-learning Consultant at The Consultants-E
Nicky Hockly
E-learning Consultant at The Consultants-E
In this chapter we look at technology access and the changing face of today's learners.
We consider the concept of new digital literacies before moving on to examine how these
can be addressed through the use of new technologies whilst not significantly impacting
on the current pedagogical or methodological approaches favoured by the average class-
room teacher.
Technology today
Young people in Spain today have more access to technology than ever before: from gaming
machines to mobile phones, fast internet access at home and on the move and, increasingly,
at school as new initiatives bring interactive whiteboards, electronic content, netbooks and
other technological tools into their learning.
In terms of leisure, a recent study by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and the Fun-
daci Catalana de l'Esplai concluded that almost 97% of Spanish adolescents between the ages
of twelve and eighteen have had some access to the internet, with nearly 54% of those users
having taught themselves the basics, and a mere 16% having received some training at school.
Other noteworthy statistics from the ongoing study include almost 95% use email as a form of
communication (though Messenger remains the preferred communication tool for most) and a
preference for mobile phones as a primary source of communication between social groups.
This study supports data from other countries in terms of primary uses of technology, which
are mostly combined to the synchronous, social side of real-time communications with
friends, online (and offline) gaming and the use of media such as music and movies online,
with very few engaging in productive activities such as keeping blogs or similar, though pho-
toblogs continue to prove popular among adolescents. This lack of the use of participatory
technological tools is worth noting (see Today's learners below) having, as it does, real
implications for any introduction of technology in the classroom.
What is apparent in most studies on youth technology use is that they are more connected than
ever before: connected to each other outside of class time, primarily through synchronous tools
such as Microsoft Messenger and the ubiquitous mobile phone, but also (for those who use the
internet to help with their learning: nearly 70% of the users in the study) to other sources of in-
formation and learning which can impact on how they view what they do and learn in class.1
Although advances in educational uses of ICT are now more commonplace within the Spa-
nish school system, there is still some way to go in terms of implementation of infrastructu-
re, development of suitable electronic content and teacher training. This last factor is crucial
in terms of teacher use of technology in the classroom, and breaking down the digital lite-
racy divide between teachers and today's learners.
Task 1
Conduct a Technology Use Survey. This will help you evaluate which technologies you
should be considering incorporating into your classroom teaching in your context.
Write a survey to do in your Practicum to find out which technologies are most prevalent
among your learners.
1. For more on informal learning and connectivism, see Siemens (2005).

DIGITAL LITERACIES AND THE LANGUAGE CLASSROOM 53
Investigate which technologies they use and what they use them for.
Summarise your findings.
Compare your finding with your colleagues and note any differences from school to school.
Today's learners
Much has been made in recent years of the perceived digital divide in terms of technologi-
cal knowledge between what Prensky (2001) popularised as the digital natives (those born into
a world with widespread access to technology) and digital immigrants (those born before
such access became commonplace in much of the developed world).
Whilst Prensky himself has since moved on from these (recently) polemical terms to a more
knowledge-based view of the changes occurring in society (Prensky, 2009), much stock is still
placed in the supposed difference in skills level and experience between young people and their
elders, and this difference is equally widely deemed to be leading to a significant disjunct in what
learners expect from their school and college experience, and what they actually receive.2
The so-called Net generation (Tapscott, 1999), it is argued, are highly-skilled and regular
users of technologies such as blogs, wikis and podcasts, spend most of their time online and
are rarely parted from their games machines or mobile phones. Whilst it is certainly true that
most young people in Spain today have extensive access to various types of technologies
(see above), there is still quite a gap in what they do with these technologies and what edu-
cators in the immigrant fold might otherwise imagine.
In fact, many commissioned reports across the globe reflect what might be called a purely
social use of technologies. One such report carried out for the Channel 4 television station
in the UK concluded:
However, the research explodes this myth by showing that young peoples immersion in these devices
and the time spent on them is not due to an obsession with the technology per se, but largely due to
the gadgets ability to facilitate communication and to enhance young peoples enjoyment of traditio-
nal pursuits. For most, the focus of their passion is not so much the device itself, but more about how
it can help them connect, relax or have fun. The technology itself is invisible to the young consumer.
(OTX Research, 2009)
2. For a critique of this view, see Bennett, Maton & Kervin (2008).
Task 2 Technology and communication
Prevailing research suggests that the predominant use of technologies is social in nature, and this
sits comfortably with our language teaching objectives (communication and the sharing of kno-
wledge).
Write an essay: How could you use this tendency to impact positively on classroom learning of
English in your context?. Use the following guidelines:
Defend the idea that the predominant use of technologies is social in nature, giving examples
from your students.
Describe examples of how you would use this tendency in classroom activities.
This gives some credence to Prensky's assertion that digital natives tend to speak of tech-
nology in the form of verbs (whereas educators generally tend to use nouns [Prensky, 2001])
and also fits in with Bax's notion of normalisation (Bax, 2003), where technology only rea-
lises its potential when it ceases to be noteworthy or special within any given context.
However, this level of comfort with certain technologies, this invisibility does not neces-
sarily carry over into any tangible or positive benefits in terms of their learning. As Sansone
(2008) notes, natives are too often described as tech savvy when what we really mean
is that they are tech comfy: that is that they are comfortable with technology, but not
necessarily in a good position to put it to work in service of their knowledge and learning.
He argues that perhaps a part of a new educator role may be to assist in the transformation
from practical, social use of technology to a more rigorous, pedagogical use.
Given the kind of data revealed in reports such as the OTX one (above), it is difficult to see
how an educator's view of technologies in teaching will work towards bridging the gap bet-
ween the natives and the immigrants. ELT exponents well-versed in the use of techno-
logies regularly assume that the ubiquity of technologies in their learners lives will lead to
a ready acceptance, say, of the use of blogs and wikis for reading and writing, podcasts for
audio practice and other such approaches, whereas these may simply be written off as in-
sufficiently social or entertaining by their intended audience.
As the OTX report concludes:

Traditional activities such as hanging out with friends, listening to music, and seeing boy/girlfriends
dominate the top three favourite pastimes of young people, while digital behaviours such as crea-
ting user-generated content have a much lower penetration than commonly perceived (only 16% of
young people have written a blog and less than a quarter (21%) have filmed and uploaded a clip to
a site like YouTube).
Whilst these kinds of tools certainly can work in classroom contexts, it is often in the face
of considerable resistance on the part of younger learners. In these circumstances, teachers
can engage in more successful and constructive technology-driven instruction by integrating
more traditional tools and techniques in their standard repertoire, and it is these that we will
be concentrating on in the Practice section of this chapter (below).
More advanced techniques such as the use of blogs, wikis and other social-constructivist
media along with the use of synchronous tools such as voice and text chat, video-confe-
rencing and similar may be introduced at a later date, when teachers have reached a
comfort level with such tools, and learners have seen stimulating and attractive examples
with which they can identify. The bibliography section of this chapter references several
works which will be of use.
Task 3 Learner attitudes to technology and learning
Write an essay answering the following questions:

Why do you think learners might be resistant to incorporating certain digital technologies
into their classroom learning?
How does this resistance fit in with their understanding of the notions of play, work and
study?
In your conclusion formulate strategies to overcome this resistance and summarise them.
Digital literacies
Traditionally, literacy has referred to the basic skills of reading and writing, occasionally
coupled with basic numeracy and referred to as the 3 Rs (reading, writing and arithmetic).
With the proliferation of digital media, however, commentators have come to consider a wider
range of skills as figuring in a new definition of digital literacy. Pegrum (2009) explores
these new literacies in some detail, highlighting, amongst others:
Print and texting literacies. Whilst print literacy is a familiar typology, texting literacy
remains the domain of regular mobile phone users and is much maligned in educa-
tional circles for the purported detrimental effect it is having on literacy. In fact, as
Crystal (2008) points out, typically less than ten percent of the words in text messa-
ges are actually abbreviated in any way.
Personal, participatory and intercultural literacies. These literacies come to the forefront
in social-networking spaces and other online media where personalisation occurs. They
may include blogs and wikis, as well as social networks such as Facebook. In such
spaces users not only write about themselves and their lives, but also participate in
wide social groupings which transcend more closed groupings in terms of ethnicity,
religion, geography, etc.
Search and information literacies. In many ways, these are two of the most important
literacies for any learner to acquire: the ability not only to find information amongst
the mass of sites and sources afforded by technologies, but also to evaluate that infor-
mation according to a set of criteria relevant to its intended purpose.
Remix literacy. This form of literacy refers to the modern trend of remixing pictures,
videos and other media to often striking effect. This may refer, for example, to the trend
for making literal versions of music videos (http://tinyurl.com/l397zp), through
remixing music videos for political or satirical ends (http://preview.tinyurl.com/yffh
gnb) to the doctoring of digital images such as that afforded by sites such as PhotoFu-
nia (see the Practice section below). In each instance, a recognition of the remix
that has taken place is crucial to an understanding of the media being viewed.
Task 4 Practise your search literacy
Try the quiz below. How many of the questions can you answer in ten minutes?
What is the capital of Outer Mongolia?
Who was the second man on the moon?
What is the weather like in Tokyo today?
What was the name of the 24th president of the USA?
Who wrote Anna Karenina?
Who is the prime minister of Italy?
How many albums did the Beatles record?
What products is Jamaica famous for?
How much is the entrance fee to the London Dungeon?
Where in the world is Jakarta?
Now use the following guidelines/questions to write a report:

Make a list of the search strategies you used did you use one search site or several? Did you
go to specialist websites (perhaps for weather information)?
How do you know the information you have collected is accurate?
How did you evaluate the websites you visited for your answers?
What implications do these skills have when working with websites in the classroom?
What sort of activities will you need to take into class to ensure that your learners are sufficiently
well versed in these strategies?
Clearly, then, this is a complicated mix of skills to master, and teachers can play a part in help-
ing learners acquire some of the necessary skills by integrating them into their classroom
practice alongside the regular content they deal with. In this way we can make a difference
to our learners' comfort level, helping them beyond the tech comfy to the tech savvy
which will contribute to their life beyond school as they move into the professional workpla-
ce and (increasingly) knowledge-based economies.
Practice
We move on now to look at how the theory relates to practice in terms of classroom
work. It is certainly not our intention to suggest that teachers make an immediate switch
from current practices and instantly implement a wide range of technologies in their
classrooms, combining computers, interactive whiteboards, mobile phones and compu-
ter games to entertain and pander to the perceived needs of a new generation of learners.
Instead, in this section, we look at how teachers can begin to engage with these digital
literacies whilst not significantly changing their current working practices and pedagogi-
cal approach.
The practice section is broken up into the following areas:

Working with websites.
Working with images.
Working with video.
Working with audio.
Working with words.
Miscellaneous tools.
For each section there is a short introduction and overview and a sample class or activity,
followed by further resources for teachers to explore after reading the chapter itself. For most
of the tools and resources you will notice that the suggested activities and applications fit
quite comfortably into the day-to-day practice of the average classroom teacher and make
no significant demands on their methodological knowledge.
Working with websites

Since the advent of the more interactive tools which fall into the category of Web 2.0 (sites
which encourage user creativity and content sharing), the use of more static webpages
seems to have fallen out of favour, with many educators considering them a poor relative to
the more modern version of the World Wide Web.
However, many thousands of websites still have much to offer, if only in terms of up-to-date
content which is relevant to our learners. Indeed, with millions of sites online, it is relatively
easy (if we as educators are search-and information-literate) to find content which is at the
right level, stimulating and most importantly current.
In many respects, it is static websites which work the best in combination with a traditional
coursebook, allowing teachers to teach to the syllabus and exam content which govern most
annual teaching schedules, whilst making use of these more motivating resources. Being
able to unlink the syllabus from the delivery method (the texts, listening materials, etc. in
the prescribed coursebook) and reposition it in the context of more relevant and interesting
content can have a significant impact on the success of classroom activities.
When choosing websites, it's important to assess them both for language content and level,
as well as in terms of other criteria such as their currency (how up-to-date they are), appro-
priateness and functionality. For more on evaluating websites, see the UC Berkeley Library
resources on the subject of teaching using the internet.
Sample class
Our sample class makes use of a regularly updated news source for creative writing and
speaking practice. Many coursebooks feature units or activities on news, but suffer (as noted
above) from the perennial issue of their content either being hopelessly dated, or perhaps
worse fabricated for the book itself. Whilst the news can be a stimulating source for classroom
language work, the materials used do need to be current and of direct interest to learners.
Our material for this sample comes from the Yahoo News site (http://tinyurl.com/2ga), from a
section called Odd News (http://tinyurl.com/mj8crk). These are curious, short stories from
around the world which should provide opportunities for discussion and creative follow-up ac-
tivities in class.
In terms of preparation, the teacher needs to visit the site and make a note of a few headli-
nes which she thinks will interest her learners. Headlines at the date of writing this section
included the following:
Authorities: Boy, 12, robs store with a toy gun.
Airline pickpocket strikes as passengers sleep.
Napoli fans to bid for Maradona's earring.
Speeding motorist fined $290,000.
Once any vocabulary needs from the headlines have been cleared up, the class is divided
into groups, with each group receiving one of the headlines. The groups then work on dis-
cussing what they think their stories are about and on making a list of six words they might
expect to encounter in their story.
Once this stage has been completed, the groups are rearranged so that one member from each
original group forms a new group. Learners share their stories with each other. The class then
comes back together and the teacher gets the vocabulary from each group up on to the board.
At this point the groups can read their stories (either online, if computers are available, or as
printed versions if not) and compare their versions of the stories with the real ones. They
should also keep an eye out for the six words they thought might be in the articles.
This is a simple activity which can be repeated often, since the stories are updated each day.
At the end of the activity the teacher has a set of learner-generated vocabulary items which
can be used for further follow-up activities such as article writing, storytelling, etc.
The key here is current and stimulating materials which can be chosen to fit in with cour-
sebook units by subject or by language point or whatever approach the teacher herself takes
in the classroom. It does not impact on the effective coverage of syllabus but does provide
a stimulating vehicle for learner engagement.
The stories themselves are short and not overly complicated (especially when coupled with
the use of online dictionaries or translating services such as that offered by Google) and the
entire activity can be done with or without technology in the classroom. It is precisely this
effective low-tech use of technology which is both easy to train teachers to engage in and
extremely effective in practice.
Task 5 Teaching practice: simple websites
Try one of the following tasks:

Try the sample news class with your learners as part of your teaching practice. Plan the class
using today's headlines. When you have taught it, write a short summary of your experiences,
including personal reflection on the class itself, and an evaluation of its impact and acceptance
amongst your learners.
Choose one of the themed units from the coursebook you are using in your Practicum, then find
one or two relevant websites. Plan and teach a class around the theme using the websites
you've found. When you have taught it, write a short summary of your experiences, including
personal reflection on the class itself, and an evaluation of its impact and acceptance amongst
your learners.
Websites
Since this is such a wide area, any list of websites would be impractical. Instead we direct
you to a teacher in the US who publishes regular lists of websites in particular areas. On his
website you can sign up for email updates to his site content.
Larry Ferlazzo, teacher: http://tinyurl.com/4kzlnf
Working with images

Images have formed a staple part of most classrooms for decades. Traditionally they are used
as vocabulary teaching and practice aids, prompts for speaking or writing activities, or if
brought by learners as aids in more personalised activities such as show & tells.
More recently, however, images have undergone a certain re-examination in the light of the
digital revolution and the ready availability of millions of them online. This, coupled with
the digital literacies question, seems to be resulting in new approaches to the use of images
in the classroom. As Goldstein (2008) notes:
Todays learners are image-oriented, more visually literate; they are able to access and manipulate digital
images as never before. So, in a sense we owe it to them to make the image an integral part of our teaching
practice, to work with images in their own right and encourage a critical and creative reading of them.
In many cases teachers will have built up quite a stock of photos and flashcards, but these may
not appeal to the more tech-comfy learners of today, and so it is advisable to make use of on-
line sources of graphic material which may impact more positively on their acceptance in class.
Sample class
Our sample class is a creative speaking activity, building on the remix literacy (see above).
In this activity teachers present a set of images (Image 1) from their lives before they beca-
me teachers and invite learners to piece the story together by putting the images in order and
deciding what happened in the story.
Image 1. Example images used to get learners to speak

The images are, of course, invented and designed to provoke strong reactions in the learners as they
try to invent a creative story which encapsulates the events depicted. Again, this is not so much a
large departure from traditional teaching techniques and approaches, but a visually attractive way
of introducing an activity, which it is hoped will capture the imagination and energy of the class.
Until recently, putting together a visual such as this would have involved a sophisticated
level of graphic design skill, but sites such as PhotoFunia (http://tinyurl.com/59qmg4) make
the preparation of this kind of images as simple as uploading a digital photo of ourselves and
choosing the effects we wish to apply to it.
The impact of such images cannot be underestimated in a classroom scenario, though like
most tricks of the trade tools such as these should not be overused. In this sample activity
we have clear opportunities for speaking and creative writing, as well as the construction of
personalised fictions by the learners, with both written and spoken follow-up activities.
PhotoFunia is one of a number of sites where photos can be retouched to make alternate re-
alities. Other sites allow for collages of images, image books, cartoon-style strips with
speech bubbles and other such creative possibilities. These can all be used in a variety of
ways to bring some creative language practice to the classroom.
Image sites
Flickr: http://tinyurl.com/d3uum
PhotoFunia: http://tinyurl.com/59qmg4
EffMyPic: http://tinyurl.com/q5wmk7
StumblePics: http://tinyurl.com/yje26ow
LIFE Photo Archive: http://tinyurl.com/69z8ke
Bubblr: http://tinyurl.com/lhp8gt
Bookr: http://tinyurl.com/63wgrp
YouTellYou: http://tinyurl.com/yahh5um
Task 6 Teaching practice: creative writing
Try out the PhotoFunia class with your Practicum group. Model your own alternative bio-
graphy (with pictures) before going on to let your learners create their own pictures and put
together their own alternative biographies.
Invite your learners to present their new selves to the class.
After the class, reflect on this use of images compared to your normal use of images. Did the
use of technologies have an impact on the success of the class?
Did it have an impact on your learners enthusiasm and language output?
Write a report of your lesson.
Working with video

When working with video in the classroom, teachers naturally tend to focus either on ma-
terials specifically prepared for language learners, or on feature films, both of which can be
problematic. Whilst dedicated ELT materials may indeed provide examples of target lan-
guage in context, they are usually non-authentic in terms of their setting,3 dialogue and plot,
and subsequently of little intrinsic interest to today's viewers.
By contrast, feature films are, perhaps, too long (particularly if some learners are not inte-
rested in the film itself) and often interrupted by the teacher, to work on vocabulary, struc-
tures or other content. Whilst this approach exploits the film itself for classroom use, it is an
unnatural and far from enjoyable way of watching a film.
It makes sense, then, to choose shorter authentic film clips which will be of interest to our
learners and which we can exploit on a linguistic level suitable to the class. Again, as with
most of these tools and approaches, it is the motivational aspect of the materials that will
play a part in the successful implementation of the technology. One of the best sources of
short video materials is YouTube (http://tinyurl.com/9zza6), with a typical video lasting
around four minutes. However, even short videos such as these can form the basis of an in-
teresting, motivating and fruitful class.
Sample class
In our sample class we are taking a video that features absolutely no dialogue at all, making it
suitable for all levels depending on the task designed to go with the viewing material. Our video
is Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) and can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/nd7s4u. The
video features Matt doing a comical dance in a variety of countries around the world.
The video, therefore, is exploitable on a variety of levels, from beginner country names (or
languages and nationalities) through low-intermediate activities involving past tenses (Have
you ever been to...?, When you went to ... did you ...?) to upper-intermediate conditio-
nals (If I went to... I'd...) and beyond. The only trick for the teacher is to show the video
without revealing the names of the countries, which figure at the bottom of the screen (ea-
sily achieved by moving the video player software window down until the names are no lon-
ger visible).
Clearly this is an almost ideal video sample, being short, visually interesting and cheerful.
Many follow-up activities can be incorporated, including writing activities such as mystery
postcards, where learners send each other postcards without naming the place they are vi-
3. For an alternative viewpoint on non-authentic video in the ELT classroom, see Viney (1997).
siting, but including enough clues so that people can identify it, to interviews with Matt (you
will find plenty more information about him here: http://tinyurl.com/6ffwcc), and even
more complex multimedia practice with the creation of audio or video interviews, etc.
Again, however, there is no real challenge to the teacher's current practice or approach,
with the video material simply providing a stimulating media wraparound to the content the
teacher is practising or revising. For more on YouTube video in the classroom, visit Jamie
Keddie's TEFLClips site (see video sites below).
Learners can also benefit greatly in their speaking and listening practice from producing their
own videos. This can be done using any of the inexpensive video cameras currently on the
market (such as the versatile and extremely easy-to-use Flip cameras: http://tinyurl.com/
yhshz52) and can help pronunciation, presentation skills and other areas such as creative
writing, interviewing and more. For more on using video cameras in class, see Tom Barret-
t's 45 Interesting Ways.
As with audio recording devices and software (see below), learners have the opportunity to
revisit and refine their work, as well as edit it and produce polished final versions. Creating
such digital artefacts can also help with the preparation of an electronic language portfo-
lio which learners may use in the future to demonstrate their language proficiency to poten-
tial employers, colleges and others.
Video sites
YouTube: http://tinyurl.com/9zza6
TEFLClips: http://tinyurl.com/d3uum
Viral Video Chart: http://tinyurl.com/ctvbws
MixTube: http://tinyurl.com/kw9csy
Google Video: http://tinyurl.com/6ek8l
ScreenJelly: http://tinyurl.com/mjxerf
Task 7 Video production for class
Work with your colleagues to produce a video for use in your Practicum. Use a digital camera if
you have one, or a mobile phone:
Chose a theme from the coursebook and create a three-minute news item about it. Prepare
accompanying activities to exploit the video material.
Then, ask your learners to prepare a similar video, but with a different angle on the story.
How does this kind of technology-driven production affect the language output in your tea-
ching practice class?
Reflect on the motivation you saw in class.

Did technology impact positively on the success of this activity?
Discuss your results with your colleagues.
Working with audio

As with video, audio can be a great way for learners to get more practice with the language
without constant direct teacher intervention. Apart from offering learners exposure to more
real language by way of audio recordings and podcasts freely available on the web, teachers
can also engage them in language production using audio recording and sharing websites
and free audio recording software.
Giving learners control over audio reproduction allows them to work at their own pace and to
get what they need from listening material, whilst authentic material from websites and
broadcasters such as the BBC and CNN can provide engaging materials to work with.
With the explosion in podcasting (via iTunes and other distribution channels), teachers can
easily find and select appropriate listening materials on a per-learner basis and, with a me-
asure of artifice, even manage to get them on to their mobile phones or portable media pla-
yers, encouraging them to listen to some English in between other media such as their
favourite music.
By recording and editing their own audio, learners can rehearse and refine conversations,
interviews and presentations, leading to an increase in proficiency as well as confidence.
PodOmatic (http://tinyurl.com/yfyv45d) allows learners to create and share their own pod-
casts (or short audio recordings) with anyone globally. Learners can not only record and bro-
adcast themselves (to the public, or a selected audience) but can get feedback on their
output by way of the comments facility that PodOmatic incorporates.
One example of this kind of project run by Carla Arena (2006) made use of PodOmatic to ask
learners to record excuses for not having done their homework. The excuses and recordings
are both creative and enjoyable, but it is the feedback that learners got from global visitors
which adds an extra layer of engagement to the activity. Taking language production outside
the classroom in this manner provides a different degree of motivation and, in many cases, a
different investment in terms of the quality of output. Encouraging learners to think carefully
about what they produce, and why, is often an added bonus of Web 2.0 tools which speak
to a wider audience.
For more on the use of podcasts in ELT see Graham Stanley's (2005) article on the British
Council Teaching English Website.
Sample class
Our sample activity involves another tool, VoiceThread. With VoiceThread you can combi-
ne documents, photos and videos to create stimulating multimedia projects, presentations
and teaching aids accompanied by a recorded audio commentary. An example of one made
by an American teacher living in Turkey (Image 2) can be found from this source: http://tin
yurl.com/ydy2gu7. You will see that the teacher combines images, audio commentary and
notes on the side of the video window as well as the handwritten vocabulary key cards in
the presentation itself.
Image 2. An example of VoiceThread
This activity involves learners preparing and scripting a presentation of their own, about a
subject which inspires them, perhaps a hobby or interest. In order to make their presenta-
tion they will need to research the subject, source suitable royalty-free or Creative Commons
images,4 prepare their script and record the presentation using VoiceThread.
This kind of activity is a welcome change from more traditional ways of presenting such as
the American idea of show & tell and, again, allows for multiple edits as well as feedback
from a global audience.
4. For more on Creative Commons licences, and Creative Commons image searches, see the Creative Commons web-
site. Retrieved 11 January 2010 from: http://tinyurl.com/3d3c8r
Audio sites
PodOmatic: http://tinyurl.com/2yseuf
Voxopop: http://tinyurl.com/yjp2afg
VoiceThread: http://tinyurl.com/2jbnxz
Audacity: http://tinyurl.com/7xp2v
Task 8 Show & tell
Ask your pupils to plan and record a show & tell related to one of their hobbies. They will
be able to use their search skills to find pictures to illustrate it.
Encourage them to develop the script that will accompany the presentation, before they
move on to record it.
Use their recordings to do some corrective language work. Don't forget, though, that this
kind of activity should largely concentrate on fluency rather than accuracy.
Record the lesson and write a report.
Working with words

In dealing with vocabulary and more productive activities such as creative writing there are
various tools at the disposal of the wired teacher, from word clouds through more structu-
red sites such as blogs and wikis to higher-level tools such as online concordancers.
In the case of word clouds, these can make vocabulary more memorable and can signifi-
cantly impact on levels of engagement for reading and listening texts as well as post-reading
and listening activities involving language production.
Blogs make for structured writing projects as well as collaborative and intercultural projects
and wikis can be a great aid to process writing activities, allowing as they do for multiple
revisions and various levels of peer and teacher correction.
Concordancers allow advanced learners to get to grips with more detailed areas of langua-
ge usage, and are ideal for discovery-style language and vocabulary activities where lear-
ners can be encouraged to investigate and draw their own conclusions about usage,
collocations and similar aspects of the language. Although concordancers work best when
learners already have a fair degree of knowledge, with some creative thought and by limi-
ting searches and results, they can also be used to great effect at lower levels.
Sample class
Since a lot of what is done in this area often involves shorter activities, here we offer a cou-
ple of samples of using online tools to deal with vocabulary. The first looks at word clouds;
the second, at concordancers.
Word clouds present vocabulary in an attractive and memorable format. In this sample, re-
trieved from www.wordle.net (Image 3) learners are presented with the following word
cloud and asked to guess what the article they are going to read is about:
Image 3. An example of a word cloud
Wordle takes a text and makes images like the one above. The more common the word in the
original text, the bigger it will appear in the word cloud. Thus from the example above we can
infer that the article is about Barcelona, a city in Spain, on the Mediterranean, etc. We might even
try creating a sample text using the words in the cloud, before reading. You can find the original
text about Barcelona on the Simple English version of Wikipedia (http://tinyurl.com/ybe2jqt),
which is designed for readers whose first language is not English.
This is a motivating way of reviewing vocabulary or introducing new vocabulary and of hel-
ping learners approach texts in various formats. Word clouds can also be used after working
with texts, for reconstruction purposes as well as for working with specific structures such
as question forms (Image 4):
Image 4. Another example of a word cloud

Task 9 Word-cloud grammar
Choose a grammar point that has been causing difficulties with your learners.
Prepare a lesson plan involving word clouds and try it out.
When you have delivered the lesson, reflect on the following and write a report:
Did the word clouds help?
How did your learners react to them?
Do you think their language processing was deeper than usual?
What might you change in similar activities in the future to make them even more successful?
A powerful online concordancer, on the other hand, allows learners to work with large
amounts of English and use the data they access to work out usage rules, collocations and
other more advanced facets of the language. Concordancers search large databases (corpo-
ra) of written or spoken language and display results in the following way:
1. of reply to Mr's counter motion. Well Mr took a terrific swipe at

us and I think I couldn't possib
2. y the most atrocious furniture can't you? And pay a terrific amount
of money for it Mm and you
3. time! And you got a seat this time. Good! That's terrific! I got one
of those square seats. A squar
4. no er, no you don't Comet they're chosen they're terrific er No,
well they're closing down for the,
5. er cabbages and things at her back door Oh he was terrific, he had
green fingers oh yeah then he got
Here we searched for examples of the word terrific, a word that some Spanish speakers
may have trouble with (terrific, terrifying). The concordancer returns some examples (in this
case it is from the British National Corpus of Spoken English), with a little context before and
after the word searched for. From the results, learners should be able to work out some very
general rules for when terrific is used.
Higher-level learners will benefit from this kind of exposure to large quantities of real lan-
guage but, as noted above, concordancers can also be used with lower levels. An example
of such an activity might be the following:
1. He said well youve been right since Christmas and if

you say its
2. is. Arent you? No I havent been out since Boxing night!
Wh what are you
3. secret. Obviously the law has been updated since eighteen ninety
three. The one
4. wife and that he had been with her since erm she was
twelve. The problem
5. You know what, I had havent sat down since half past seven.
What you do is,
6. how old it was. Mm So he said oh no since I left. I said well
I, Id stil
7. And lives on there. Well Ive known Derek since I was six weeks
old. I was taken
8. pic which the EEF has been promoting hard since last October.
Weve been doing
9. Act which, and weve had that law since nineteen sixty
eight. So weve
10. asking. Im, Im asking, Ive been here since Saturday now
Ive sat here
1. bits in there for her a few kittens in there for a couple of
days I, so theyd
2. theyre married and theyve been married for a couple of
years I reckon,
3. going, you should of said oh I just come up for a few days. Blair
had to look
4. your toes. Weve still got that tape for a couple of a
weeks. Havent
5. we do, but when he goes back to work now for a couple of
days itll take
6. of February er so. So he was only in for a couple of
days then?
7. mate! Are you cheeky! Had a sore throat for a couple of
days! Hiya
8. yeah that way. It wont be like it for a couple of
years. But hes
9. whos friend of Mats? Thats right yeah, for a little bit, I was
on about
10. thatll say ah yeah weve been doing this for a little while,
why dont we
Here we have done two concordances, one on the word since and one on the word for.
We have then edited the results to make them more suitable to our lower-level class, who
now have the job of working out when we use these two words from the contextualised
examples they have been given.
Task 10 Low-level concordancing
Choose a grammar point in your practice class coursebook which you think will be problematic
for your learners.
Prepare a concordance for them, and help them to work out guidelines for usage as part of your class.
When you have delivered the lesson reflect on the following and write a report:
Did this approach help or hinder them?
Are your learners used to working things out for themselves, or being told the rules?
What implications do these kind of discovery activities have for the way you teach?
Word sites
Wordle: www.wordle.net
Corpus Concordance English: http://tinyurl.com/6y3muw
VocabGrabber: http://tinyurl.com/ck65mu
WordSift: www.wordsift.comc
Word Magnets: www.tritico.co.uk/doconload/
VisuWords: www.visuwords.com
Edublogs: http://tinyurl.com/ytgznw
PBWorks: http://tinyurl.com/y9j5oyb
Miscellaneous tools
The explosion of Web 2.0 tools has made the process of keeping up-to-date with everything that
is available virtually impossible to the average teacher with limited free research time. In
this section we offer a small selection of other tools which we have enjoyed using with
learners and which teachers may find useful in their own lesson preparation or teaching. For
each resource there is a link and a small description.
Dvolver MovieMaker: http://tinyurl.com/56y3um. Make animated, dialogue-driven
cartoons.
Bookr: http://tinyurl.com/63wgrp. Make photo stories from Facebook photos.
DotSUB: http://tinyurl.com/yjarwfu. Upload and subtitle videos (or subtitle YouTube
videos).
Slideshare: http://tinyurl.com/2au2g8. Upload and share presentations.
Jing: http://tinyurl.com/23lfa7. Make video tutorials and screen captures.

Animoto: http://tinyurl.com/2zj97a. Create videos of image collections.
Bubblus: http://tinyurl.com/bp5ywq. Online mind-mapping tool.
Glogster: http://tinyurl.com/6ld7p8. Make interactive posters.
Xtranormal: http://tinyurl.com/53fdo9. Real-time movie creation tool.
SurveyMonkey: http://tinyurl.com/2tvtp. Create online polls and questionnaires.
For a more comprehensive list of tools and ideas for exploiting them in the language class-
room, see Nik's Learning Technology Blog (http://tinyurl.com/3ml7uz).
Conclusion
In this chapter we have looked at the changing face of today's learners with particular
reference to evolving digital literacies, and at ways in which teachers can address these
literacies through the use of simple creative technologies in class.
We saw that although younger learners (the so-called digital natives) are comfortable with
technology, they are not necessarily adept at using it for learning, preferring to use it
for communication with peers. In this sense we can characterise the Net generation as tech
comfy (comfortable with technology), rather than tech savvy.
We discussed how teachers can integrate a range of free web-based tools into their current
teaching practice. Integrating technology into teaching does not necessarily mean having to
embrace an entirely new approach to pedagogy. Simple tools and websites can serve well
as a first step to integrating technology into teaching, with the use of more complex tools
that rely on user-generated content (such as blogs or wikis) being implemented with learners
later on, once both parties have become accustomed to the presence of technology in the
classroom context.
We also outlined a number of digital literacies in the chapter, such as print and texting lite-
racies, collaborative and intercultural literacies, information and search literacies, and fi-
nally remix literacies, and saw how these are fundamental skills needed by learners for the
knowledge society we now inhabit. We suggested that the teacher's role is to help learners
acquire these literacies, and that this can be done through the integration of a range of prac-
tical activities based on a range of technologies. We provided example activities in the form
of sample classes, in which teachers and learners work with web pages, images, audio and
video, and a number of other miscellaneous online tools.
ASSIGNMENTS
1. Review and write a summary of what you have learnt about digital literacies in this chapter, and
the tools and approaches which can be used to address them in class:
Choose one unit from your Practicum coursebook and prepare a series of lessons which
cover the coursebook material, but use some of the tools and approaches from this
chapter.
Write an essay using the following questions as guidelines:
- Compare your materials with others. How have you integrated the technologies?
- Do they complement the existing materials?
- How would you go about adopting the same approach for a whole academic year?
- What do you think would be the advantages and drawbacks of this kind of approach?
2. Plan an Introduction to New Technologies in the Classroom workshop for colleagues not on
this course:
Decide what you can show them in three hours and plan some hands-on activities for them
to try some of the tools and websites.
Deliver the workshop to your colleagues.
Write a reflective journal on your experience with the training session.
- What sort of difficulties did you encounter and how did you solve them?
- What implications does this have for introducing similar tools to your learners?
3. Set up a blog at Blogger.com and use it to chart your development as you integrate more tech-
nologies into your teaching. Invite your colleagues and tutors to read and comment.
FURTHER READING
BABER, E. (2007). 50 Ways to Improve Your Business English Using the Internet. Oxford: Sum-
mertown Publishing.
This book is an excellent primer for those involved in teaching skills and career-orientated En-
glish. You will find plenty of practical activities involving new technologies.
BABER, E. & GORDON-SMITH, D. (2005). Teaching English with Information Technology.

Chichester: Keyways Publishing.
Although a little dated, this book still offers a solid overview of how ICT fits into the teaching
process. It also contains practical ideas easily implemented in the classroom.
DUDENEY, G. (2000, 2007). The Internet and the Language Classroom. Cambridge Univer-
sity Press.
This book divides into a theoretical overview and a large selection of lesson plans, all of which
use some kind of internet-based technologies. Lessons are graded by difficulty, theme, lan-
guage point, etc.
DUDENEY, G . & HOCKLY, N. (2007). How to Teach English with Technology. Harlow:
Pearson Longman.
This book gives a highly practical overview of technologies in English teaching with plenty of
practical ideas and lesson plans. It looks at a variety of different technologies, not all of which
are web based.
HOCKLY, N. & CLANDFIELD, L. (2010). Teaching Online: Tools and Techniques. Peaslake:
Delta Publishing.
This book concentrates on teaching online and looks at the skills needed as well as the wide variety
of online tools available to teachers wishing to experiment with distance teaching and learning.
KEDDIE, J. (2008). Images. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

This book focuses on the uses of digital media in the classroom, most notably images and video.
LEWIS, G. (2007). The Internet and Young Learners. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
This is one of the very few books available to teachers of young learners looking to integrate
technologies into their teaching practice. There is plenty of sound advice and some good te-
aching ideas.
LEWIS, G. (2009). Bringing Technology into the Classroom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
This short, practical guide explains how to use new computer technology, including interac-
tive whiteboards, in the classroom. This title is intended for teachers of students aged 14-18.
SHARMA, P. (2003). The Internet and Business English. Oxford: Summertown Publishing.
This is another publication looking at Business English and technologies. Although much may
not be of interest to the general English teacher, some of the sections on presentations and si-
milar skills may well prove useful.
SHARMA, P. & BARRETT, B. (2007). Blended Learning. London: Macmillan.

This book looks at blended learning, examining what makes a good blended approach and the
kind of balance needed between face-to-face and technology-mediated instruction for effec-
tive learning.
SHERMAN, J. (2003). Using Authentic Video in the ELT Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
This book guides and supports teachers with practical suggestions for activities, which can be
used with films, drama, soap operas, comedy, sports programmes, documentaries and adverts.
REFERENCES
ARENA, C. (2006). Level 4 Transmitting Loud & Clear. Retrieved 11 January 2010 from:
<http://tinyurl.com/yavnx5w>.
BAX, S. (2003). CALL Past, Present and Future. System 31, 1328. Retrieved 7 December
2009 from: <http://tinyurl.com/yk6v6u6>.
BENNETT, S; MATON, K; KERVIN, L. (2008). The digital natives debate: A critical review
of the evidence. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39 (5), 775-786. Draft version
retrieved 7 December 2009 from <http://tinyurl.com/dbd5j7>.
CRYSTAL, D. (2008). Txtng: The Gr8 Db8. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
(2008) On the Myth of Texting. Retrieved 7 December 2009 from: <http://tinyurl.com/
yhwb5dj>.
GOLDSTEIN, B. (2008). Working with Images. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
More than a Thousand Words: Images and ELT. Retrieved 7 December 2009 from:
<http://www.cambridge.org.br/catalogue/books-for-teachers?uk>.
OTX RESEARCH (2009). A Beta Life - Youth. Research report, commissioned by Channel 4.
Retrieved 7 December 2009 from: <http://tinyurl.com/yza799c>.
PEGRUM, M. (2009). From Blogs to Bombs: The Future of Digital Technologies in Education.
Crawley: UWA Publishing.
PRENSKY, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1-6. Retrieved
8 December 2009 from: <http://tinyurl.com/ypgvf>.
(2008). Are you Lecturing about Nouns or Facilitating Learning with Verbs? Retrieved 7
December 2009 from: <http://www.marcprensky.com/blog/archives/000066.html>.
(2009). H. sapiens digital: from digital immigrants and digital native to digital wisdom. In-
novate, 5(3). Retrieved 7 December 2009 from: <http://tinyurl.com/yj7mo4l>.
SANSONE, M. (2008). Hey Teachers! Your Digital Natives Still Need You. Retrieved 7 De-
cember 2009 from: <http://tinyurl.com/4m3dlq>.
SIEMENS, G. (2005). Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age. International Jour-
nal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning. 2 (1). Retrieved 8 December 2009
from <http://tinyurl.com/6e5fd>.
STANLEY, G. (2005). Podcasting for ELT. Retrieved 11 January 2010 from:
<http://tinyurl.com/4n9wxy>.
TAPSCOTT, D. (1999). Educating the Net Generation. Educational Leadership, 56(5), 6-11.
Retrieved 8 December 2009 from <http://tinyurl.com/yaxb4jl>.
UC BERKELEY. Evaluating Web Pages: Techniques to Apply & Questions to Ask. Retrieved 10
January 2010 from <http:www.lib.berkeley.edu/teachinglib/guides/internet/evaluate.html>.
UNIVERSITAT OBERTA DE CATALUNYA & FUNDACI CATALANA DE LESPLAI. Estudio
sobre el Uso de las Tecnologas Digitales en el Ocio de los Jvenes. Retrieved 8 Decem-
ber 2009 from: <http://sociedadinformacion.fundacion.telefonica.com/url-direct/pdf-gene
rator?tipoContenido=noticia&idContenido=2009110210030001>.
VINEY, P. (1997), Non-Authentic Video for ELT. Retrieved 7 December 2009, from <http://tin-
yurl.com/ku59mn>.
Website
Tom Barretts 45 Inteesting use your Rocket Video Camera in Class.
http://tinyurl.com/l3mos3
77
4. DEVELOPING PRODUCTIVE AND RECEPTIVE

SKILLS IN THE EFL CLASSROOM
CHAPTER CONTENTS
The communicative competence framework

Teaching and integrating the skills
Receptive sub-skills
Productive sub-skills
Ramiro Durn
Universidad de Salamanca
The communicative competence framework
Spanish legal frameworks that regulate educational practice justify the primacy of
communication within the area of foreign languages based on the needs of todays society: the
economic and cultural globalisation process, the European Union project, increasing citizen
mobility between countries, the new information and communication technologies, and the
forming of a spirit that is tolerant towards other forms of culture and at the same time aware of
its own identity. They also recognise that the purpose of both the primary and the secondary
curriculum in the area of foreign languages is to learn to communicate in a second language,
orientating language teaching towards the acquisition of communicative competence both for
instrumental purposes and for cultural understanding. Thus, the ultimate goal of second-
language teaching is that learners should acquire the communicative competence necessary to
express their ideas, knowledge, feelings and opinions in the second language, similar to what
they are capable of in their mother tongue.
For several decades now, the hypothesis that we learn first to manipulate the structures of a
language and then apply them in authentic discourse has been called into question. The
communicative approach suggests that the process is the reverse: we learn to communicate
through verbal interaction and it is in this interaction that the suitable syntactic structures are
developed. In short, we learn by doing things with the language. A communicative orienta-
tion is focused more on comprehension and negotiation of meaning than on the mere re-
production of structures. Furthermore, the communicative approach gives great importance
to the educational nature of interpersonal communication since communicative interaction,
through the use of the four skills, favours the development of attitudes of cooperation and
solidarity among the students, which besides being beneficial for their psychological growth
also helps to attain both linguistic and social educational objectives.
Many different classifications of communicative competences may be found in the wealth

of literature on second-language teaching. For example, the Common European Framework of
Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment (CEFR) (2001) describes the
different competences necessary for successfully approaching the communicative situations
in which the students will find themselves, establishing a distinction between general and
communicative competencies: the former are divided into declarative knowledge, skills
and knowhow, existential competence and the ability to learn, while the latter are formed
by linguistic competences (lexical, grammatical, semantic, phonological, orthographic and
orthoepic competences), sociolinguistic competences (register, politeness conventions,
linguistic markers of social relations, etc.) and pragmatic competences (discursive, functio-
nal and organisational):
Communicative language competence can be considered as comprising several components: lin-
guistic, sociolinguistic and pragmatic. Each of these components is postulated as comprising, in par-
ticular, knowledge and skills and know-how. Linguistic competences include lexical, phonological,
syntactical knowledge and skills and other dimensions of language as system. Sociolinguistic com-
petences refer to the sociocultural conditions of the language use. Pragmatic competences are con-
cerned with the functional use of linguistic resources, drawing on scenarios or scripts of interactional
exchanges. (CEFR 2001, p. 13)
If we exclusively focus on the skills more closely associated with the teaching of a foreign
language, two main kinds of competences may be distinguished (Table 1). Linguistic com-
petence, which refers to the language system and is usually divided into the four compo-
nents mentioned below, and communicative competence, which refers to language skills
and is directly linked to listening, speaking, reading and writing.1
1. Instead of the classical division into four skills, the CEFR (2001, p. 14) establishes four different language activities
by which the learner's communicative competence is activated: reception, production, interaction and mediation
(interpreting and translating). Each of them is possible in relation to texts in oral or written form, or both.
DEVELOPING PRODUCTIVE AND RECEPTIVE SKILLS IN THE EFL CLASSROOM 79
Table 1. Linguistic and communicative competences
COMPETENCES
Linguistic Communicative
Lexis: how words relate to their meaning. Listening: how to make sense of the mea-
Grammar: how parts of speech are combined ningful sounds of language.
to convey meaning. Speaking: how to use speech to convey
Phonology: how sound features are used to meaning.
communicate meaning. Reading: how to derive meaning from a text.
Pragmatics: how utterances have an eect Writing: how to communicate a message by
on the interlocutors and how context making signs on a piece of paper, computer,
inuences the interpretation of meaning. interactive whiteboard, etc.
Even a superficial analysis of the competencies mentioned, both linguistic and communica-
tive, clearly shows their degree of complexity and richness and situates the communicative
approach to language teaching far from the antigrammatical model which even today it is
occasionally and erroneously associated with. A foreign language classroom based on the
communicative approach involves work on both the different elements of the language
system and the four skills, though particular emphasis is placed on one or the other depen-
ding on the teaching situation. For example, most teachers tend to start a class working on
a language skill and later focus on learners attention to particular aspects of the language
system: vocabulary, tenses, prepositions, etc.
Task 1
Work with a partner and classify the following classroom activities as either skills based or system
based. Specify which skill/sub-skill or which language system is mainly worked on:
The teacher chats with his/her learners about their plans for their holidays.
Learners underline all adverbs of frequency in a magazine article.
The teacher writes a text with gaps on the board. Students copy it and fill the gaps with the mis-
sing prepositions.
Learners write an email to the teacher, send it and receive the corrected version.
The teacher uses a map to teach eight words related to geography.
The teacher asks: What adjectives are used to describe Paola? Learners listen to a CD.
Learners listen to tomorrows weather forecast and decide if they can go cycling.
Learners read a film review and then discuss if it is worth watching the film.
After reading a text, learners match vocabulary and definitions.
Check your answers with other colleagues.

Teaching and integrating the skills
It is commonly accepted that in order to use language efficiently for communicative purpo-
ses learners should aim to develop their own use of the four skills: listening, speaking, rea-
ding and writing. These are divided into receptive skills i.e. listening and reading which
involve responding to a text rather than producing it, and productive skills i.e. speaking and
writing which involve producing language rather than receiving it.
Nevertheless, this distinction between receptive and productive skills may lead to confusion
as it might suggest that receptive skills are a kind of passive skill, and this is certainly not the
case as many different cognitive processes are activated when learners are faced with
the task of reading or listening to a text in a second language. The division of communicative
competence into four skills may also pose a second problem as it might be assumed that
the teacher has to teach each skill separately from the others. This is certainly not the case as
both in everyday life and in a communicative classroom people tend to use more than one
skill in the same communicative situation as communication is a two-way process: when
having a conversation, we speak but we also listen to our addressee and, after receiving
feedback, we word our next utterance in an appropriate way depending, among other factors,
on the effect of the previous one on the interlocutor. Harmer highlights that the same may
happen in other situations. As he puts it: The ideal learning sequence, then, will offer both
skill integration and also language study based around a topic or other thematic thread
(Harmer, 2007, p. 268).
One of the most natural ways of integrating the four skills in a lesson around a topic is CLIL
(Content and Language Integrated Learning, also known as Content Based Learning) where the
foreign language is conceived as a means of learning content, and no longer as an end in itself.
Borrowing the definition by David Marsh, CLIL refers to situations in which a particular subject
or part of a subject is taught in a foreign language with a dual objective to learn the content
while at the same time learning the foreign language: In CLIL, the learning of language and
other subjects is mixed in one way or another. This means that in the class there are two main
aims, one related to the subject, topic or theme and one linked to the language. (Marsh, 2000,
p. 6) See Chapter 6, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in Secondary School,
by Whittaker and Llinares, in Volume I (House, 2011), for a more detailed description of CLIL.
When students are learning about, for example, volcanoes using the CLIL model, they may
listen to an expert describing the eruption process or read a text, accompanied by visual support,
describing the different parts of a volcano. They could also discuss the influence of volcanoes
in a particular area or write a report about Europes most active volcanoes. As House (2007)
points out, when implemented successfully, CLIL produces a deeper impact in the learners
conceptual framework than more traditional second-language teaching approaches.
Although we have acknowledged that both in everyday life and in classroom communica-
tion skills tend to be integrated and are hardly ever used in isolation, for the sake of clarity
we have decided to use the receptive-productive distinction to deal with them in this paper
as there are some common elements in the way listening/reading and speaking/writing are
used in the EFL classroom. Consequently, in the next sections of this paper we will analyse
aspects such as the different sub-skills involved in each skill, the most common procedures
to work with receptive and productive skills and strategies and activities to develop the four
skills in the classroom.
Task 2
Use the example of a lesson about volcanoes:

Plan a lesson for your Practicum, with the main focus on communicative skills.
Collect or design your materials and describe how you will address the skills.
Deliver the lesson in your Practicum.
Write a report about your lesson and discuss the outcome with your tutor.
Receptive sub-skills
The way we read or listen to a text depends on our reason for listening or reading as we do
not read or listen to every kind of text in a similar way: our purpose when facing a text will
determine the sub-skill, or sub-skills, we are going to use and this is also going to have a di-
rect influence on the different tasks we might consider using in the EFL classroom to deve-
lop our learners receptive skills.
When we read a text, we can use the following sub-skills, which can also be applied to listening:
Skimming (or reading/listening for gist): fast reading/listening to get a general idea of
what the text is about. For example, when we browse a magazine in a shop before de-
ciding if we are going to buy it or not or when we listen to a weather forecast to find
out if it is going to rain.
Scanning (or reading/listening for specific information): reading/listening to a text to
find specific information. When we read a TV guide in a newspaper, we dont read it
from beginning to end, but focus our attention exclusively on the information we are
interested in: a particular time period, a particular kind of programme or a particular
channel. This same skill is also used when we listen to the sport news on TV to find
out the result of a particular football match.
Close reading/listening (or reading/listening for detail): for example, if we are technopho-
bic and we need to install a new antivirus software in our computer, we will probably
read the instructions carefully about how to install it step by step, just as when we listen
to a famous cook on the radio explaining a recipe we are interested in, we need to iden-
tify and recall all the relevant information.
Task 3
Choose a reading text related to a theme from the coursebook your Practicum class is using.
Design three activities to work on:

Skimming.
Scanning.
Close reading.
Do the activities in your Practicum and report back to your tutor.
Receptive skills: procedure

A suitable methodology is essential for working with any of the four skills in the EFL class-
room as it will determine the success or failure of the activities put forward by the teacher.
With some minor differences, the following procedure may be used for both listening and
reading skills:
Lead-in. The main aims of lead-in activities are to generate interest in the topic we are
going to work with, consequently increasing the learners motivation, and to activate
and generate their passive vocabulary, as well as triggering their background knowledge.
Vocabulary work. This stage is optional for reading comprehension tasks as we might
want learners to guess the meaning of unknown words from context, following a more
inductive learning approach, but when students are faced with a listening task we
should pre-teach the essential vocabulary as this will help them achieve the final out-
come and thus increase motivation.
Gist task and first listening (or reading). The teacher will set the gist task to give lear-
ners a reason for listening (or reading) within a time limit. Then, learners should be
given the opportunity to compare answers in order to practise their listening and spe-
aking skills and to prepare them for the next stage: giving feedback to the teacher and
the whole class.
Intensive task and second listening (or reading). This task should give learners a rea-
son for a more detailed listening/reading of the text. Learners will also be given the op-
portunity to compare answers before giving feedback.
Exploit the listening and reading text for follow up activities. Learners either analyse a spe-
cific linguistic element of the text or discuss how this topic relates to their own lives.
Task 4
Put the following stages of a reading lesson (based on a film review) in a logical order:
Read the text in three minutes and answer the following questions: Did the reviewer like the
film? Why (not)?
Write a review about the last film you watched.
Match the following vocabulary with its definition.
Chat with students: When was the last time you went to the cinema? What film did you watch?
What kind of films do you like?
Read the text again and decide if the following statements are true or false.
After examining the poster of the film, predict what the film is going to be about.
Underline all the adjectives in the text the reviewer uses to describe the film.
Once you have decided on the correct order, describe the order of activities and justify your reasons.
Receptive skills: activities

In order to make the most of receptive skills in the class we should organise our activities in
three stages: pre-, while- and post-reading (or listening) tasks. When we work with reading
skills, we should notice that most texts are usually accompanied by pictures, illustrations,
diagrams, maps or headlines. Traditional pre-reading tasks include describing the illustra-
tions or reading the headlines (or titles/headings) in the text and predicting what the text is
going to be about or having a preliminary discussion on the topic. While-reading activities
comprise multiple choice or true/false comprehension questions, matching headings and
paragraphs, putting paragraphs into their correct order, answering open questions, correc-
ting the information in a set of statements, etc. Post-reading activities tend to focus learners
attention either on particular language features of the text vocabulary work, a relevant/re-
current grammar item in the text, deducing meaning from context, analysing discourse mar-
kers, inferring attitude, analysing opinion or on relating the topic to the learners personal
experience: plan a writing task related to the topic, set up a discussion where learners give
their opinion on the issue, etc.
Some of the previous activities may also be adapted to develop learners listening skills. Pre-
listening activities such as answering open questions for gist, matching sentences with pic-
tures, numbering the sentences in the correct order (and checking later) should be aimed at
helping learners to listen more effectively: arousing their interest, creating expectations, trig-
gering their background knowledge and pre-teaching essential vocabulary would help make
listening exercises success oriented. While-listening activities may be based either on
understanding the information provided, such as in a listen-and-complete-the-chart task, or
by telling students to identify a particular group of words in the text, usually by asking them
to complete some phrases with the exact words from the listening. In the post-listening stage
there may be an opportunity for an in-depth study of the script using the same kind of acti-
vities which were suggested in the post-reading stage, particularly those dealing with analy-
sing opinion, attitude and personalising the topic.
Task 5
Choose a listening activity from the coursebook your Practicum class is using.
Design three activities:

Pre-listening.
While-listening.
Post-listening.
Indicate how these activities are related to the types of listening skills described in the paragraph above.
Productive sub-skills
In our personal experience we have found that most learners consider speaking the most dif-
ficult skill to master as it involves using many different sub-skills in a very limited period of
time. Its complexity is easily understood when we mention the twelve qualitative categories,
based on different elements of communicative language competence that the CEFR (2001)
distinguishes to characterise the speaking skill:
Turntaking strategies:
- Cooperating strategies.
- Asking for clarification.
- Fluency.
- Flexibility.
- Coherence.
- Thematic development.
Precision:
- Sociolinguistic competence.
- General range.
- Vocabulary range.
- Grammatical accuracy.
- Vocabulary control.
- Phonological control.
These twelve categories are divided into five broader elements for practical reasons: range,
accuracy, fluency, interaction, and coherence. Consequently, in order to master the spea-
king skill, an English language student needs to learn, among other things, to use a variety
of vocabulary, to use complex sentence forms, to use grammar correctly (i.e. range), to pro-
nounce utterances in a correct way, to use stress, rhythm and intonation appropriately, to
use tenses correctly, to correct his/her own mistakes (i.e. accuracy), to avoid hesitation and
to express him/herself spontaneously with a natural flow (i.e. fluency), to start speaking when
the other speaker stops, to ask for clarification, to respond adequately (i.e. interaction) and
to plan what he/she is going to say, to use connectors and other cohesive devices in dis-
course, and to use organisational patterns (i.e. coherence).
On the other hand, if learners want to be able to write in English, they will need different
sub-skills, some of them related to form (spelling with reasonable accuracy, building sen-
tences in a grammatically correct way, selecting the correct vocabulary, linking sentences
appropriately, using paragraphs in a suitable way, etc.), and some others related to content
(using relevant ideas, organising them correctly, choosing the right register, etc.). When de-
veloping our students writing skills we need to focus not only on accuracy in writing but
also on having a message successfully communicated to other people. Sometimes teachers,
particularly non-native teachers, are so concerned with correcting learners mistakes that
they forget to react to content.
Task 6
Read the five paragraphs below taken from the general descriptors for the CEFR B1 Reference
Level (2001) for qualitative aspects of spoken language use and match them to their correspon-
ding category (justify your answers):
Can keep going comprehensively, even though pausing for grammatical and lexical plan-
ning and repair is very evident, especially in longer stretches of free production.
Can initiate, maintain and close simple face-to-face conversation on topics that are familiar or of
personal interest. Can repeat back part of what some has said to confirm mutual understanding.
Uses reasonably precisely a repertoire of frequently used routines and patterns associa-
ted with more predictable situations.
Has enough language to get by, with sufficient vocabulary to express him/herself with some
hesitation and circumlocutions on topics such as family, hobbies and interests, work, travel,
and current events.
Can link a series of shorter, discrete simple elements into a connected, linear sequence of
points.
Range Accuracy Fluency Interaction Coherence

Productive skills: procedure

In his recently revised edition of the classic The Practice of English Language Teaching, Je-
remy Harmer (2007, p. 275) puts forward the following five steps in the procedure for tea-
ching productive skills:
1. Lead-in. As in receptive skills, the main aims of these activities are to generate interest
in the topic, trigger their background knowledge and predict what the language lear-
ners are going to need.
2. Set the task. Learners are told what they have to do and are given all the information
they need to do the task. The teacher may need to demonstrate how the activity works.
3. Monitor the task. The teacher should keep an eye on learners work, check that ins-
tructions are being followed and help them when they are in trouble.
4. Give task feedback. When the activity is over, we may show learners what they have
achieved and we may also suggest some aspects for further development.
5. Follow-up. Activities directly related to the topic of the main task.
Task 7
Choose a writing activity from the coursebook your Practicum class is using.
Write a script showing how you would set the task for the students.
Set the task in class and monitor.
Collect and correct students work.
Write a short report on the activity indicating any changes you would make to the original
description of the task based on the results.
Productive skills: activities

There is an endless number of activities which can be used to practise the speaking skill,
most of which involve pair and group work. In his conversation practice book, Peter
Watcyn-Jones (1997) includes different types of activities, which will be briefly commented
on here as they account for the most relevant types of speaking practice activities.
In roleplays, learners are required to talk to each other in different character roles while in
simulation exercises students play themselves but are given a definite task to do and are
asked to make appropriate responses. One-sided dialogues are activities where students read
just one side of the dialogue and have to act it out by providing their own responses. Infor-
mation-gap activities, such as finding the differences in a picture, filling in the missing in-
formation or completing a drawing, are based on a communicative principle in which a
learner knows something that another learner does not know and needs to communicate to
close that gap. Discussion and conversation activities aims at stimulating students to debate
a subject with their partner. Jigsaw reading gets pairs of learners to put a mixed-up text in
the correct order. Finally, problem-solving activities are activities in which students need to
work out the answer to a problem in a collaborative effort.
Task 8
Choose three of the seven different speaking practice activities described above.
Design a classroom activity for each one.
Do the activities in your Practicum and record the activities.
Listen to the recording and write a report on the activities. Indicate any changes you would
make to the original design.
In his now classic book Teaching Writing Skills (1992), Byrne presents different activities
where students, working together and in a relaxed atmosphere, have to write things which
they can later do something with. In the early stages, Byrne mentions writing questionnai-
res, short quizzes, puzzles, TV or radio programmes, writing a dialogue, which is then cut
up into separate sentences and given to another group of students to put together, writing
role descriptions for roleplays, imaginary diaries for a famous person, writing about pictures
or speech bubbles, etc. The aim of these activities is to develop learners writing skills while
at the same time giving them the opportunity to express themselves imaginatively. Apart
from adapting the previous activities, for intermediate students Byrne suggests the following
writing activities: posing problems and finding solutions, writing clues for crosswords, ins-
tructions for board games, inaccurate accounts with deliberate mistakes of fact for their part-
ners to find the inaccuracies, instructions for drawing a map or a picture, giving learners a
headline and asking them to write a related story, etc.
None of the previous activities is designed to develop learners composition skills as this
is a specific activity which involves a more complex process. Once the teacher has set
the task and created an audience, the following stages are usually distinguished when
writing a composition:
1. Think of ideas (a brainstorming session is a very useful strategy for this aim) and ask
learners to take notes.
2. Plan your writing, organising the most relevant ideas into a logical sequence using a
mind map.
3. Write a first draft where your notes are turned into full sentences and paragraphs. This
draft is only rough and it is bound to be changed.
4. Edit your draft, correcting, reorganising and improving the text where necessary.
5. Write a final draft and check for mistakes again.
ASSIGNMENTS
1. Read about the different classifications of communicative competences and write your con-
clusions about which exercises worked best for you as a student to develop your own compe-
tences and subcompetences (both communicative and linguistic). Give reasons for your
answers. Prepare a PowerPoint presentation with your explanation and conclusions and pre-
sent it to your colleagues.
2. Look at a unit in a coursebook of your choice and write a critical review, taking into account
the following questions:
How does it work with the four skills?
What sub-skills does the unit focus on?
What activities are put forward?
How are activities organised?
Would you change anything? Why (not)?
Compare your review with a colleague who has chosen a different book. Discuss the differences.
FURTHER READING
HEDGE, T. (2000). Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
This comprehensive book on language teaching is divided into four parts: A Framework for Te-
aching and Learning; Teaching the Language System; Developing Language Skills; and Plan-
ning and Assessing Learning.
SCRIVENER, J. (2005). Learning Teaching (2nd ed.). Oxford: Heinemann Macmillan Books for
Teachers.
This book offers a valuable introduction to the world of ELT in an easy writing style. Though
less detailed that Harmer (2007), it deals with topics such as planning lessons, classroom ma-
nagement, receptive and productive skills, language awareness, aims and activities. It also
provides many different resources such as lesson plans, questionnaires, worksheets and ideas
to make your own resources.
SPRATT, M. et al. (2006). The TKT Course. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
This coursebook was designed for Cambridge TKT (Teaching Knowledge Test) candidates as
an introductory ELT handbook. Its main aims are to introduce readers to basic ELT terms and
give examples of different theories, approaches, resources and activities.
MEHISTO, P., FRIGOLS, M.J. & MARSH, D. (2008). Uncovering CLIL. London: Macmillan
Books for Teachers.
According to David Marsh, CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) refers to situations
in which a particular subject or part of a subject is taught in a foreign language with a dual ob-
jective: to learn the content while at the same time learning the foreign language. This award-
winning book has been designed to guide both language and subject teachers to the different
techniques involved in CLIL teaching.
THORNBURY, S. (2006). An A-Z of ELT. Oxford: Macmillan Books for Teachers.

A useful dictionary of the main terms and concepts used in English language teaching.
REFERENCES
BYRNE, D. (1979). Teaching Writing Skills. Harlow: Longman.

COUNCIL OF EUROPE (2001). Common European Framework for Languages: Learning, Te-
aching, Assessment. Strasbourg: Council for Cultural Cooperation Education Committee.
Language Policy Division. Retrieved 8 March 2010 from: <www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguis
tic/CADRE_EN.asp>.
HARMER, J. (2007). The Practice of English Language Teaching. Harlow: Pearson Education.
HOUSE, S. (2007). CLIL: a new model for language teaching. In R. Durn Martnez & S. Sn-
chez-Reyes Peamara (eds.), El componente lingstico en la didctica de la lengua inglesa
(pp. 123-129). Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca.
(coord.) (2011) Complementos de formacin disciplinar. Theory and Practice in English Lan-
guage Teaching. Vol. I. Barcelona: Gra.
MARSH, D. & LANG, G. (eds.). (2000). Using Languages to Learn and Learning to Use
Languages. Finland: University of Jyvskyl.
WATCYN-JONES, P. (1997). Pair Work 2. Conversation Practice for Intermediate to Upper-In-
termediate Students. London: Penguin.
91
5. VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION
IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS
CHAPTER CONTENTS
Fundamental concepts
Some criteria for teaching vocabulary in secondary schools
Karina Vidal
Universidad Autnoma de Madrid
The following acronyms are used in this chapter:

L1: first language, mother tongue.
L2: second language. The language a person knows or is learning in addition to their first
language.
ESL: English as a Second Language. This term is used to describe English language learning by
students from non-English-speaking backgrounds in countries where English is the official langua-
ge. For instance, Chinese students learning English in the USA.
EFL: English as a Foreign Language. This term is used to refer to English language learning by stu-
dents from non-English-speaking backgrounds in countries where English is not spoken outside of
the classroom. For example, Spanish students learning English in Spain.
Foreign language vocabulary teaching in secondary schools has usually been taken for gran-
ted. In a large number of classes, vocabulary teaching is reduced to introducing the voca-
bulary included in the syllabus of the coursebook the teacher has decided to use. No
decisions are usually taken as regards selection and sequencing. Although there is still
no generally accepted theory of vocabulary acquisition, at least we have a broad idea of
how acquisition might occur, built up from the wide range of studies conducted so far. It is
therefore the purpose of this chapter to provide teacher trainees with an overall picture of
the nature of EFL vocabulary acquisition based on the research available and to describe a
set of strategies and techniques which have been found to help students acquire and learn
how to acquire and retain new words.
Fundamental concepts
Levels of word knowledge

A number of studies have sought to define what it means to know a word or the different le-
vels and types of knowledge we may have of the items in our lexicon. Nation (1990, p. 30),
for example, proposed the following description of word knowledge, which consists of eight
knowledge categories:
The spoken form of the word.
The written form of the word.
The grammatical behaviour of the word.
The collocational behaviour of the word.
The frequency of the word.
The stylistic register constraints of the word.
The conceptual meaning of the word.
The associations the word has with other related words.
As can be seen, this type of word knowledge list facilitates the conceptualisation of voca-
bulary knowledge and can act as framework with which to evaluate vocabulary learning ac-
tivities and tests (Schmitt et al., 1999, p. 389).
Task 1
Choose two words (you can use words from a piece of text you are using in your Practicum).
Write definitions of knowledge of these words using the eight points above.
Another description of the different levels of word knowledge developed in order to deter-
mine how vocabulary knowledge can affect reading comprehension is that of Jenkins and
Dixon (1983). These authors make a distinction between expressive and receptive vocabu-
lary knowledge: expressive knowledge (also called productive knowledge), where the stu-
dent can give a label to the idea she wants to convey, versus knowledge at the level of
recognition, where the individual can associate a word with a given meaning only when se-
eing it. Within receptive vocabulary they differentiate several varieties of knowledge: full
concept knowledge, which is achieved when one is able to recognise uninstructed exam-
ples of the concept as examples; partial concept knowledge, which comprises knowledge of
several of the features of the word; verbal association knowledge, which implies learning a
label for a concept which is completely or partially known (for instance, to learn that
VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS 93
altercations means fights); and derived knowledge, which is used when the individual
encounters a word and infers enough about its meaning so as to go on reading. In fact, the lat-
ter is not really word knowledge since it is not usually retained. As Kameenui et al. (1987)
point out, this is actually knowledge of a strategy for inferring at least part of the meaning of a
word. Another type of knowledge related to prompting is that which is referred to as promp-
ted recall: the reader encounters a word he has come across elsewhere but not retained well.
On seeing it, he makes use of the context to prompt its recall at some level.
Task 2
1. Chose a piece of text (you can use any piece of authentic text) and:
Identify words you do not have full concept knowledge of.
Identify what type of knowledge you have by using the other four categories.
2. Design an activity to get pupils to develop productive knowledge of lexical items:

Choose a piece of text to work on in your Practicum. You can use texts from the students
coursebook.
Identify the words you think your students may have difficulty with.
Design an activity to help them develop productive knowledge of these lexical items.
Present your activity to your colleagues and discuss their feedback.
Types of vocabulary
Nation (2001, pp. 11-12) provided the following classification of items of vocabulary.
High-frequency words: these are the most frequent 2,000 words of English (West,
1953).1 They have a wide range, may occur many times in a text, and account for at
least 85% of the words on any page of any book. Their coverage of spoken language
may be even greater.
Academic vocabulary: these 570 headwords, which make up the Academic Word List
(Coxhead, 2000)2 cover about 9% of the words in academic texts and in newspapers.
Technical vocabulary: these words, which account for about 3% of the words in speciali-
sed texts, have a small range since they are used within a specialised field. They may occur
several times within a subject area, but they are not usually found in texts outside that area.
Low-frequency words: these types of words make up a very large group and occur very
infrequently. They cover approximately 2% of any text.
1. A General Service List of English Words by Michael West (Longman, 1953).

2. To consult the AWL, please go to: www.academicvocabularyexercises.com/id21.htm#word (a set of exercises is also
available).
Task 3
Make use of the information presented in this section to write a short essay reflecting on the type
of vocabulary secondary-school instruction should focus on.
Give examples in your essay.
Development of L2 vocabulary knowledge

In order for L2 students to acquire new vocabulary and also enhance their knowledge of known
words, it seems crucial to help them become aware of what vocabulary learning involves and
of the approaches they can adopt to learn new words (Graves, 1987; Laufer 1990, 1997, etc.).
In what follows we will describe the different tasks involved in learning words which, as Gra-
ves (1987) claims, vary markedly depending on the students needs, the knowledge of the word
and concept to be learnt and the level of word knowledge she should achieve.
Learning words
Evidently this is a very complex process which involves, among others, the following stages
and tasks (Graves, 1987). It should be noted that this aspect of vocabulary learning has been
partially dealt with above, though from a different perspective. Therefore here I will only
expand on those tasks which I find more relevant to secondary-school instruction and which
have not been fully developed above:
Learning new meanings for known words: according to empirical evidence (Graves,
1987), L1 students find this task really difficult, and the same seems to be the case with
ESL/EFL students (Laufer 1990, 1997; Vidal 2003, forthcoming 2011), who tend to
stick to the first meaning they learnt.
Learning new words representing known concepts: this long-term word-learning task
is one of the most demanding tasks both L1 and ESL learners have to deal with.
Learning new words representing new concepts: this is, according to Graves (1987),
the task that causes the most difficulty to L1 students. As regards ESL/EFL students,
those new concepts they are likely to find more difficult are those which express
features of the new culture or factors which are language-specific.
Clarifying and enriching the meanings of known words: not too much attention is de-
voted to this task in L1 instruction and, as Graves (1987) points out, encountering
words in context is a slow process which does not guarantee the development of this
type of word knowledge. This task seems even more complex for ESL/EFL students,
considering their disadvantaged position as L2 learners as well as the few probabilities
they have of recurrently encountering the same words.
Moving words from receptive to productive vocabularies: as L1 empirical evidence
shows (Duin, 1983, cited in Graves, 1987), instruction in this direction leads students
to use the given words more frequently. Similar findings were also obtained from L2
research (Newton, 1995).
Learning to learn words

Among the different skills students need to develop in order to become efficient word lear-
ners, Graves (1987) mentions the following:
Using context: although this seems to be one of the most practical ways of learning
new words, as already mentioned, context clue instruction does not always prove to
be as effective as it is thought to be (Laufer, 1997). This may be so, as Graves (1987)
points out, for a number of reasons. To begin with, some of the context clues most
usually taught, such as contrast clues, are not very recurrent in real texts, and others,
such as experience clues, do not usually provide students with useful insights into the
meanings of unfamiliar words. Another apparent drawback of this type of instruction
is that the texts used often have richer clues than ordinary texts. Besides, this type of
learning seems to require more instruction and time than it usually receives.
Learning and using word parts: mastery of this skill can prove very helpful for voca-
bulary learning. However, even L1 instruction in word parts shows several weaknes-
ses. As Graves (1987) claims, not all types of prefixes and suffixes are worth teaching,
since not all of them can help students to understand word meanings. This is the case
with inflectional suffixes, for instance, which do not contribute to the clarification of
word meanings. Therefore instruction should focus on those ones that carry a clear le-
xical meaning such as un-, in-, dis-, non-, etc. Another important issue is the order of
introduction of word parts, an area in which more research is needed.
Using the dictionary: even though in ESL classrooms the tendency has usually been to
encourage students to refrain from dictionary use and rely mainly on context clues, re-
cent findings have shown its usefulness. According to empirical evidence (Knight,
1994), those subjects who use a dictionary while reading for meaning learn more
words than those who do not. In spite of the fact that these findings as well as others
in the same vein (Hulstjin, 1993) are really enlightening, using the dictionary in
ESL/EFL vocabulary instruction does not seem to be very popular. As is the case with
L1 students (Graves, 1987), ESL/EFL students also need direct instruction in dictionary
use. This instruction should obviously vary according to their level and needs.
Developing and adopting a personal approach to dealing with unknown words: stu-
dents should be encouraged to approach words in a way that works for them and helps
them expand their vocabularies over time. In this respect, a research study conducted
by Parry (1991) reports some of the different ways in which ESL students build their
vocabularies and, on the basis of the findings obtained, she emphasises the need to
make students aware of the range of strategies available, so as to help them improve
their approaches to unfamiliar words.
Learning about words

Although a thorough understanding of the topics mentioned below would seem rather unli-
kely, if not impossible, at certain ages and ability levels, this type of knowledge is essential
if the student is to become an independent word learner (Graves, 1987).
Learning that many words have multiple meanings: this type of knowledge is crucial for
those students who intend to enter English-medium institutions and for those who have to
embark on content courses taught through the medium of English (for example, students
on CLIL programmes). These learners will undoubtedly encounter words which in the
specialist area have a different meaning from the more general one they already know.
Learning to identify and make use of figurative language: according to Graves (1987),
the full range of images, figurative language and wordplay should be formally intro-
duced, periodically reviewed and pointed out in the speech and writing of others and
encouraged in the students own writing and speech.
Task 4
Do an online search for the meaning of polysemous words and collect some examples. Then:
Find a piece of text with polysemes and identify their meanings.
Do you believe all the meanings of polysemous words should be taught at the same time?
Justify your answer.
Choose a listening text in which polysemous words are used in a different meaning to the more
general one the pupils already know.
Make a note of the students comprehension problems.
L2 Vocabulary instruction versus incidental learning

This is undoubtedly a source of disagreement in most of the literature. Since teaching the
meanings of individual words may be effective for a specific lesson but is most unlikely to
result in substantial increase in overall vocabulary size (Nagy & Herman, 1987), the useful-
ness of teaching vocabulary is usually questioned. Twaddell (1973), for instance, claims that
teaching single word meanings out of context can be misleading considering that most
words are polysemous. Moreover, to Twaddells thinking, even in those cases when ins-
truction is not misleading, it is at least of little use, given the low frequency of occurrence
of most words in a language.
However, despite this long-held resistance to the direct teaching of word meanings, there
has been evidence over the last years of the effectiveness of learning word meanings directly
(see Chall, 1987; Hunt & Burglar, 2005). As regards this common tendency against
direct teaching, Chall, for instance, suggests it is the result of the long-held philosophical
preference for more open and natural approaches to teaching and learning which are
usually considered to lead to better learning due to the learners emotional wellbeing.
In my view, there seems to be no point in defending one form of vocabulary acquisition at

the expense of the other, since both incidental and instructional learning have a different role
to play in vocabulary growth. What is at issue here is when and in what cases to apply each
of these approaches.
As Chall (1987) clearly states, not all students can profit equally from learning word meanings
from context and this is mainly the case, as research evidence shows, with children from low-
income families, minorities and bilinguals. In the same vein, McKeown and Curtis (1987) pro-
vide research evidence that the power of increasing vocabulary through reading is significantly
diminished for less-able readers. For example, it has been shown that less-intelligent students
find it very difficult to acquire information from context because they cannot differentiate bet-
ween relevant and irrelevant information and, what is more, they cannot combine the new in-
formation acquired with their prior knowledge so as to store it in a way they can access later.
Therefore, it is believed that instruction should target these at-risk and less-proficient students
(Chall, 1987; McKeown & Curtis, 1987). Needless to say, L2 learners are even more in need of
direct instruction, at least at the early stages of second-language acquisition.
Another significant contribution of vocabulary instruction is that it provides students with

some of the skills they need in order to become independent word learners (Meara, 1993).
In other words, through instruction, they are made sensitive to new words in their environ-
ment and therefore recognise them when they appear in other contexts. Students should be
trained, then, to develop strategies to learn the words encountered.
As regards when to apply direct instruction and when to advise incidental learning (learning
words from context), Carter (1987) points out that at the initial stages of L2 learning, items should
be introduced directly and internalised as single or paired items. In other words, he claims that
at this learning stage words cannot be effectively learned in context. In the same vein as Chan-
nell (1988), he stresses the importance of phonological patterns to aid retention in lexical store
and therefore the need to identify words as individual entities so as to be able to recognise them
in subsequent pragmatic social encounters with other words in contexts of actual use.
Carter also claims that as the learners become more advanced, they start benefiting from con-
text and therefore making use of more inferential and learner-centred vocabulary learning
strategies. Nevertheless, as he wisely adds, in learning there are no clearly marked stages of
transition, which means that it is difficult to indicate when exactly to move from direct instruc-
tion techniques such as keyword, translation pairs or dictionary/word lists to context-based
inferential strategies.
Even at advanced levels, vocabulary can be acquired either directly or incidentally. To give
an example, if advanced learners need to acquire certain lexical items for specific purposes in
a very short period of time, they can do so both quickly and efficiently by rote learning, a me-
thod not always regarded as respectable in the literature (Nation, 2001), but which is effecti-
ve in situations like these. In other words, teachers should be eclectic and choose and
encourage students to adopt the most adequate techniques for their needs and learning stage.
Task 5
Write a short essay considering the following question: do you think academic vocabulary should
be introduced directly in class or do you think it should be studied by the students on their own
(through rote-learning)?
Vocabulary selection
West (1953), Gairns and Redman (1990) and Nation (2001) propose several criteria for vo-
cabulary selection. Those considered more relevant to secondary-school vocabulary tea-
ching are reviewed below.
Frequency: even though frequent words are not necessarily useful, there is a signifi-
cant correlation between frequency and usefulness (Gairns & Redman, 1990) There-
fore, the different frequency word-counts (Coxhead, 2000; West, 1953) and corpora
available can be of help, mainly at the initial levels. The flaws of these lists indicate
that frequency alone is not enough: these lists and corpora should only be used for
reference and in combination with the other criteria.
Need and level: Gairns and Redman make a point of the difficulty of selecting voca-
bulary for students of English for Specific Purposes with a low level of English profi-
ciency. They believe that current practice frequently errs on the side of asserting the
supremacy of level over need (1990, p. 60), as a consequence of which the students
lose interest in the learning of the language input they are exposed to. Gairns and Red-
man, then, suggest that the lexical input selected should be relevant, which will indi-
rectly contribute to the effectiveness of the overall programme.
Expediency: some words will have to be introduced as soon as possible in order for
the students to be able to understand and participate in classroom explanations and
activities.
Necessity: West (1953) holds that an important factor to be considered in vocabulary
selection is the range of necessary ideas the word covers.
Learning burden
According to Nation (2001), the learning burden of a word has to do with the amount of ef-
fort the student has to devote to learning and remembering it. He considers that this depends
on three things:
1. Learners previous experience of English and their mother tongue.
2. The way in which the word is learnt or taught.
3. The intrinsic difficulty of the word.
As regards the latter, a research study conducted by Ellis and Beaton (1993a) tried to deter-
mine the psycholinguistic factors that affect the ease of L2 vocabulary learning. Their fin-
dings showed that there is a significant correlation between ease of learning and the
phonological and orthographic similarity that exists between the native word and the target
word. That is to say, it is easier to learn a foreign word when it conforms to the phonotac-
tic patterns of the native language and is, consequently, easier to pronounce, and when
there is similarity between the orthographic patterns of both languages.
The part of speech and the imageability of the concept also have a strong influence on the
learnability of the lexical item. This means that nouns are the easiest words to learn, follo-
wed by adjectives, verbs and adverbs. Besides this, concrete words are easier to learn than
abstract ones (Ellis & Beaton, 1993a; de Groot et al., 2000). De Groot et al. tried to account
for the different acquisition rates for concrete and abstract words by resorting to context-
availability theory. According to this view, context-availability ratings are usually higher
for concrete than for abstract words because more information is stored for them. In
other words, the larger number of elements stored in the memory representations of
concrete words provides relatively many opportunities to anchor the new L2 words in
memory (de Groot et al., 2000, p. 38). Ellis and Beaton (1993a) also demonstrated that cog-
nates are easier to learn than noncognates. Similar findings were obtained by de Groot and
Keijzer (2000) and Vidal (2003).
Drawing on empirical studies, Laufer (1990, pp. 296-303) also provided a description of the
factors that affect the ease or difficulty with which L2 words are learned. Those which are
of relevance to secondary-school vocabulary teaching will be described below.
Phonological factors
Pronounceability: a foreign language learner finds it easier to perceive and pronoun-
ce words which follow a familiar phonological pattern to those in his L1 sound system
(Laufer, 1990).
Length: apparently longer words are more difficult to learn than shorter ones. Howe-
ver, empirical results are inconclusive.
Grammatical characteristics of the word: part of speech

Inflexional complexity: because of the greater learning load of multiple forms, the fo-
llowing features make an item more difficult to learn: irregularity of plural, gender of
inanimate nouns, noun cases.
Derivational complexity: although the knowledge of suffixes and prefixes can help the
student recognise and eventually produce the word, lack of regularity as to the mea-
ning of certain morphemes and the words they can combine with can be a source of
difficulty. Laufer (1989, 1990) mentions the notion of deceptive transparency: the
meaning of certain words looks transparent from its parts, but it cannot be deduced
from those morphemes since in these words they do not have the meaning which
is familiar to the students. To give an example, FL learners sometimes mistakenly
assume that the meaning of a word such as nevertheless equals the sum of meanings
of its components (e.g. nevertheless = never less) (Laufer, 1989).
Semantic features of the word

Abstractness: although it seems to be agreed that it is more difficult to learn abstract
words than concrete words, as was discussed in the previous section (Ellis & Bea-
ton, 1993b; de Groot et al., 2000), Laufer holds that it is often other features the L2
word has which determine its learning burden. For instance, a concrete word may
be difficult for certain students because it refers to a concept they do not have in
their L1, or because of the difficulty they find in pronouncing it. Therefore, accor-
ding to Laufer, concrete words are easier than abstract words when all other factors
are equal.
Specificity: foreign language learners tend to prefer acquiring and using superordina-
tes than cohyponyms. They feel it is safer and easier to remember and use the general
word which can be applied to more contexts.
Idiomacity: students tend to learn non-idiomatic expressions more easily than their co-
rresponding idiomatic equivalent. For example, they tend to use one-word verbs
where English speakers would use a phrasal verb.
Register restrictions: ESL students find it difficult to recognise the appropriacy of items
from different registers.
Multiple meanings
Once students learn one of the meanings of a polysemous word, they find it difficult to learn
and use any of its other meanings (Laufer, 1990, 1997; Vidal, 2003, forthcoming 2011).
Task 6
Make use of the information introduced in this section to discuss with a group of your colle-
agues which kinds of vocabulary should be held back and presented later on in the course.
Then discuss and estimate the learning burden of three high-frequency words.
Report your conclusions back to the rest of the class.
Vocabulary sequencing
Based on Nations (1990) classification of vocabulary levels, Nation and Newton (1997) sug-
gest high-frequency words should be learnt first since they are essential to communicate in
any normal way. They believe considerable time and attention should be spent on them.
In the case of students who intend to read newspapers, study in university or do any other
academic study, Nation and Newton propose continuing instruction with academic voca-
bulary. This is also essential for learners in secondary schools where content subjects are
taught through the medium of English. If the students only need English for social purposes
instead, the next level at which learning should aim is the low-frequency word level. For this
type of words Nation and Newton suggest incidental learning. Since these words are very
infrequent, it is not worth devoting them time from direct instruction. They recommend, ins-
tead, teaching students strategies for coping with them: guessing from context, using word
parts and using mnemonic and rote vocabulary learning.
As regards technical vocabulary, it is usually best learnt within the content area of the given
subject. In the case of content-based programmes, the presentation and teaching of techni-
cal words should be left in the hands of the given science, geography, or mathematics
teacher, to give some examples.
Task 7
In pairs, find and consult a high-frequency list (you can do an online search for high-
frequency lists).
Then individually, identify and justify:
- The words you would recycle the first week of class with second-year ESO students.
- The high-frequency words you would introduce the second week of class.
Discuss your conclusions with your partner and compare.
Some criteria for teaching vocabulary in secondary schools
How to approach vocabulary teaching

Teachers should try to instil a love of words in their students. They should try to make lear-
ners aware of the fact that vocabulary learning is a process they will have to pursue throug-
hout life and that in order to be effective they need to be curious about words and provide
the right conditions for their growth. In other words, students need to develop an interest
and awareness in words beyond vocabulary school assignments (Beck et al., 2002, p. 13).
For this to happen effectively they should be given appropriate training in learning strategies.
As Nation (2001) recommends, not all vocabulary items should be given the same attention.
In particular, care should be taken to devote the necessary attention to those items with the
heaviest lexical burden. Nation also suggests presenting items in natural use rather than in
groupings of synonyms, opposites, etc., since introducing synonyms or opposites together
could bring about interference and consequently make learning much more difficult than it
should be.
Type of vocabulary
By the end of their secondary-school instruction students should have mastered the 2,000
most frequent words of English. Words which are not included in the 2,000 most frequent
but which are relevant to the learners immediate situation should also be introduced early
on in the course. Words which are of interest to the given group should also be included in
the syllabus (ODell, 1997).
The secondary school curriculum should also cover at least part of the academic vocabulary
as listed in Coxhead (2000). This is especially relevant for students in secondary schools
where content subjects are taught through the medium of English. Academic words are
equally important for learners who intend to go onto university study in English-medium ins-
titutions. As regards low-frequency words, students should be exposed to different vocabu-
lary-learning techniques and encouraged to become independent learners and take the
approach that suits them best. They should be trained gradually to identify and focus on
those words which are relevant to their immediate situation and future pursuits. It also seems
advisable to encourage students to concentrate on words which provide precision to gene-
ral concepts they already handle (Beck et al., 2002).
Task 8
Choose a piece of text you are planning to use with your students in your Practicum and identify:
The words you would introduce directly.
The words you would get the learners to infer themselves.

The words you would not focus on.
Use a colour key to identify the three different types and then write your justification.
Learning techniques and activities

In what follows I shall briefly review some of the techniques and tasks which could be of
help to secondary-school students throughout their vocabulary acquisition process.
Techniques that students need to master in order to continue to acquire vocabulary on

their own:
Dictionary work.
Use of context clues to discover the meaning of words.
Cooperative Techniques to focus on vocabulary:

Problem solving activities.
Classification activities.
Brainstorming activities.
Information-transfer activities.
Split-information tasks.
Retelling activities.
Roleplaying (Nation, 2001)
Memory techniques to commit new words to memory:

Keyword technique: it involves two steps: first the learner chooses a word which sounds like
part or all of the new word he wants to store in his long-term memory. Then he thinks of a
visual image which links the L1 keyword and the new word (Macaro, 2005). Ellis (1995)
provides the following example: the Russian word for battleship is linkr. The learner can
use the keyword Lincoln to help consolidate the word linkr in his memory.
Vocabulary notebook/word cards: the learner keeps a record of the new words she en-
counters in her reading (or for instance while watching a film) in a notebook, in a com-
puter program or on word cards and is encouraged to rehearse them periodically.
Maintenance techniques: the secondary-school foreign language curriculum should devo-
te time to developing maintenance techniques and to carrying out activities that allow for
the recycling of vocabulary. Vocabulary knowledge is usually acquired over extended pe-
riods of time. Unless it is periodically rehearsed and retrieved, only a small proportion of
what was acquired during the first exposure will be retained, if at all (Bahrick, 1984).
Vocabulary must be accessed or used periodically to boost long-term retention. Now,

these retrieval opportunities should be distributed at successively longer delays. Therefo-
re, it is essential that teachers provide opportunities for rehearsal and retrieval of words. To
give an example, they can devote some minutes at the beginning of each class to rehear-
sing at least some of the words learnt in previous classes.
It is also advisable to try to integrate new words with old ones as much as possible to help
learners establish links between words and eventually build networks in the lexicon. This may
aid students in storing words effectively (Skmen, 1997). Skmen recommends games like the
following to help students to recycle vocabulary: Bingo, Concentration Password and Jeopardy.
Task 9
Write a sequence of the different activities you would use in class to get students to practi-
se the words you have already introduced.
Then write a lesson plan showing how you would help students recycle the words introdu-
ced and practised in previous classes.
ASSIGNMENTS
1. Consult one or two first-year ESO coursebooks, for example:

DURA, R. (2007). Everything for ESO 1. Madrid: Richmond Publishing.
QUINN, R. (2001). Switch 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
On the basis of the vocabulary selection criteria enumerated in this chapter and of the voca-
bulary content in these materials, design and write the vocabulary component to a first-year
ESO syllabus. You need to:
Decide which words you would introduce in class and which words you would get the learners
to work on, on their own.
Determine how you would sequence these new words and the type of tasks you would ask the
students to carry out.
Describe when and how you would recycle these words.
2. Access: www.academicvocabularyexercises.com/index.htm
Go through the ten sub-lists and decide which academic words you would include in a second-
year Bachillerato syllabus.
Determine and describe how you would sequence and introduce them.
Prepare a PowerPoint presentation of your work and present it to your colleagues.
3. Download the Range Programme: www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/resources/range.aspx

Take two sample Selectividad reading texts and run them through the Range programme.
Examine the results to see the vocabulary difficulties these texts would present to Spanish
learners.
Write your conclusions for vocabulary teaching in Bachillerato.
FURTHER READING
Books
MILTON, J. (2009). Measuring Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition. Bristol: Multilingual
Matters.
This book provides useful insight into measures of vocabulary knowledge and development.
Websites
British National Corpus.
www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk
The British National Corpus is a collection of 100 million words of written and spoken British
text. It allows for a wide range of searches. You can find, for instance, the frequency of words
and phrases in any combination of registers that you define (spoken, academic, etc.).
Academic Word List. Victoria University of Wellington.

www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/resources/academicwordlist
The Academic Word List consists of 570 word families of English which occur frequently over
a very wide range of academic texts. This is a very useful resource for students preparing for
university studies.
Vocabulary Levels Test. Universit du Qubec Montral.

www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/r21270/levels
The Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) is widely used to assess ESL/EFL learners' vocabulary size.
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109
6. GETTING STUDENTS INTERESTED

IN PRONUNCIATION: AN INTERVIEW
WITH PAUL SELIGSON
CHAPTER CONTENTS
Pronunciation and Phonology

Teaching and learning pronunciation
Models for teaching pronunciation
Mouth maps, phonetic script and sound charts
Activities for teaching sounds
Weak forms, connected speech and sentence stress
Rhythm and intonation
Reading out loud
Generating exercises
Paul Seligson
Pronunciation and Phonology
Whats the difference between pronunciation and phonology?

Phonology is the study of the sound system of a language. Pronunciation is the act of pro-
nouncing words, or indeed any utterance of speech. Its the equivalent of spelling and punc-
tuation in writing, a set of systems which combine to convey meaning. It can also refer to
the transcription in phonetic symbols of the way a word is spoken. The main aspects of pro-
nunciation are given in Figure 1 (on next page).
Figure 1. Main aspects of pronunciation
Sounds
Intonation Word stress
Pronunciation
Rhythm Sentence stress

Strong and weak forms
Teaching and learning pronunciation
A silly question perhaps but why teach it at all?

There are many reasons.
1. Because of its essential role in aural and oral communication. It allows us to unders-
tand and to convey meaning.
2. Students need to develop awareness, sensitivity and control: the better their pronun-
ciation, the better they can communicate.
3. In order to recognise the difference between spoken and written forms, e.g. /wdjlak/
= would you like.
4. To help them to read between the lines, recognising e.g. tones, mood, appropriacy, etc.
5. Because its easy to improve your own pronunciation if you both want and know how
to. It can be lots of fun too, and very playful. Remember, its impossible to learn a lan-
guage well without playing in that language. Part of our job is to help equip students
with the tools to do the job, for example, helping them to compare recordings of them-
selves with native speakers.
6. If not, theyre unlikely to learn sounds and patterns which dont exist in their langua-
ge, and will revert to native language habits.
7. Teachers own English may well atrophy, especially with monolingual groups, if they
dont keep trying to stretch students pronunciation, so it helps all parties.
8.In this global age, with English everywhere, just think of the implications of avoi-
ding pronunciation as far as possible, or not teaching it at all. It would be like
learning Latin a dead, unspoken language.
GETTING STUDENTS INTERESTED IN PRONUNCIATION: AN INTERVIEW WITH PAUL SELIGSON 111
But many people say that pronunciation is acquired and cant really
be taught. Is it teachable?
David Brazil (1994) said It is not so much a question of whether good pronunciation is
best taught or caught: it is rather a matter of making the catching process more effective
and efficient of enabling learners to make the best use of such experience as comes their
way.
Of course we cant physically force pronunciation changes nor, as ever, does teaching any-
thing automatically lead to it actually being learnt. However, as teachers there is an awful lot
we can do to give students the best chance of improving, continuously monitoring and so fur-
ther improving their own pronunciation. If we seem genuinely interested, they are much more
likely to be too.
We can certainly help students:

Hear and notice.
Practise and produce.
Establish priorities.
Gain confidence with and an instinct for pronunciation.
We can also:
Explain whats going on, and teach some rules/general patterns.
Provide clear pronunciation models to refer to and learn from (from us, others and
from recordings).
Offer countless activities, recipes and resources for self-improvement.
Provide feedback on performance.
Assess and inform of progress.
What do I need to do to become a good pronunciation teacher?

Here is a checklist of the eight key things teachers can do:
1. Have an awareness of basic rules (sounds, spelling, stress and intonation).
2. Integrate pronunciation at all levels of teaching and provide a good range of activities.
3. Expose students to a variety of different accents, both native and non-native.
4. Develop an ear for students pronunciation difficulties.
5. Anticipate problems, e.g. comfortable /kmftbl/, Id love to /adlvt/.
6. Correct major errors.
7. Ensure both you and they know what pronunciation levels you expect from them.
8.Above all, inspire students to want to help themselves as any pronunciation chan-
ge is internal. No matter how much we drill or re-position tongues and lips, the
only people who can physically and consistently change anything are the learners
themselves.
What exactly do students need to do?

Again a checklist of seven points you can use to measure yourself or another teacher you know:
1. Recognise all aspects of spoken pronunciation.

2. Discriminate, i.e. be able to hear the difference between Sorry? and Sorry!
3. Produce for intelligibility (i.e. different sounds, words, pronunciation patterns).
4. Have their confidence built. Its extremely disheartening to be constantly misunderstood.
5. Learn how to communicate their needs appropriately to get cooperation (intonation).
6. Recognise all aspects of written pronunciation: sound/spelling relationships, e.g. their,
theyre and there, punctuation, etc.
7. Above all, develop awareness of targets and options and self-awareness sufficient to
learn how to help themselves.
Models for teaching pronunciation
Which model should we teach?

The importance and goals of pronunciation can be nicely summarised by this true story:
On a visit to the United States, Charles de Gaulle was honoured at a White House banquet.
Sitting next to his wife was an official who spoke no French, but who tried to engage her in
conversation by asking: Madame de Gaulle, what do you think is the most important thing
in life?. A penis, she replied. Overhearing, her husband leant over and said gently: My
dear, I believe in English it is pronounced 'appiness.
While neither of them got it completely right (Charles de Gaulle still couldnt aspirate the h on
happiness), his improvement and correction of the word stress at least made it comprehensi-
ble and avoided an embarrassing front page story in the following days newspapers!
Unless teaching children under the age of about eleven who can realistically aspire to
native speaker levels as they learn non-analytically, acquiring patterns and sounds like spon-
ges, with little or no interference between languages our goal as foreign language teachers
should not be to teach perfect, native-like pronunciation. Rather, we should be aiming for
comfortably comprehensible pronunciation, mainly helping learners to:
Overcome interference or errors from transferring their mother tongue pronunciation
into English.
Practise and improve in order to produce English which is easily and globally intelligi-
ble to other users.
In terms of accent, teachers can only really teach and model the accents they have themselves.
As a British native speaker, I have tried to teach imitating an American English accent and the
lesson always ends in fits of laughter! More seriously, I do feel a lot of time is wasted on this,
with Which accent? used almost as a distraction even an excuse for not doing more
pronunciation work. For example, teachers often ask: Should I teach or use American or
British English materials?. All you can do is model and practise the different variations using
recorded materials, then get the students to practise as much as possible. Unless they work
extremely hard to lose their mother tongue pronunciation, most adult learners will end up with
a local accent anyway, i.e. Brazilians will speak with a Brazilian accent, Italians will sound
Italian, etc.
Personally, I find most accents endearing, even sexy at times, and dont tend to worry much
about this. It all depends on them and the time and effort they wish to invest in trying to improve.
Furthermore, accents are closely aligned with culture and many students dont mind sounding
accented, as it is part of their identity.
Mouth maps, phonetic script and sound charts
Do you think maps of the mouth and technical explanations can help?
In his humorous novel Three Men on the Bummel in 1900, J.K. Jerome wrote about the ago-
nies of an Englishman learning German:
I think the pronunciation of a foreign tongue could be better taught than by demanding from the
pupil those internal acrobatic feats that are generally impossible and always useless. This is the sort
of instruction one receives: Press your tonsils against the underside of your larynx. Then with the
convex part of the septum curved upwards so as almost but not quite to touch the uvula, try with
the tip of your tongue to reach your thyroid. Take a deep breath and compress your glottis. Now,
without opening your lips, say Garoo. And when you have done this... they are not satisfied.
Although fun, this sort of thing is clearly far too technical. However, simple clear explana-
tions like Put your hand on your throat to feel voiced/unvoiced sounds or Your tongue
has to move out between your teeth to make the 'th' sound, are helpful, and many teachers
swear by position charts. When the sounds dont exist in the learners mother tongue, they
do need to see and feel clearly what they are trying to do. Using your one hand to represent
the mouth and the fingers of your other hand to show teeth/tongue position can be very ef-
fective. Adrian Underhills work is particularly good on the physicality of pronunciation.
Is it important to teach phonetic script?

A lot depends on the age group, context and teachers personal preferences. Very young le-
arners obviously dont need it, although much of the teaching of English as a mother tongue
is actually based on phonics, a system of teaching sounds and spelling together. Many Asian
countries have traditionally begun by teaching the 44 sounds of British English, before the
students learn to say anything, and have obviously had success with this approach. There
are advantages: it provides a standard from which to teach and learn, students who can
recognise phonetic symbols can check words in a dictionary, and be more autonomous
generally, and its an effective way to identify and correct errors. If you decide to do so, a
suggested order for introducing and teaching the script would be:
1. Learn first to recognise brackets at the start and end of symbols (//), the dictionary
stress mark (), two dots for a long vowel (:), and the schwa (//). The schwa is by far
the commonest vowel sound in English: it represents a third of all weak forms in British
English. Telling students little facts like this really helps them to get into pronunciation,
as well as remember better.
2. Elicit and teach the thirteen vowel symbols that are different from letters of the alpha-
bet, i.e. which they couldnt work out for themselves. Many of these include the schwa
sounds and are guessable once they know that: cake /e/, five /a/, soap //, bag //,
horse /:/, foot //, sun //, girl /:/, house /a/, hair /e/, ear //, oil // and Euro-
pe //.
3. The eight consonant symbols which are different from letters of the alphabet. Be
careful with /j/ which might confuse as its the same as a letter (J), but represents a dif-
ferent sound.
thing //, the //, shoe //, pleasure //, church, /t/ judge /d/, sing //, yellow /j/
A very useful activity with any age group, which both teaches the alphabet and gets students
interested in sounds, is to introduce it in seven groups, reading down each column:
/e/ /i:/ /e/ /a/ // /u:/ /:/
A B F I O Q R
H C L Y U
J D M W
K E N
G S
P X
T Z
V
Once students have learnt the symbols and can identify and produce and transcriptions, you
can do activities like the ones below.
Task 1
Do these tasks with a partner:

1. Decoding transcriptions: orally or in writing, for example, as clues for puzzles. Write these words:
/ks/, /bg/, /bred/, /kl:k/, /sn/, /ft/, /bn:n/, /ti:z/, /st:/, /g:l/, /w:l/, /mu:n/.
2. Giving wrong transcriptions to correct. Correct these transcriptions of the eight diphthongs in
the chart:
/kk/ /ej/ /sp/ /hows/
/hr/ /r/ /l/ /jrp/
/kk/, /ej/, /sp/, /hows/, /hr/, /r/, /l/, /jrp/.
3. Transcribe and mark the word stress on these words. How many syllables are there in each
one?
business, afterwards, a candidate, February, folk music, height, jewellery, a politician, pre-
rogative, some, vegetables, zoology.
4. Match the words which rhyme. Then write them out as words.
:l, mez, klan, rld, dans:r, dsp, blu:n, kw:t
hl, frez, prnan, kld, d:r, b, du:n, d:t
5. Find and cross out the silent letters in these words:

answer autumn friend guest half know listen
sign sword thumb Wednesday witch what
Check your answers in a dictionary.

Youve created different Sounds Charts. How do they help and how can I
use one well?
Well, they provide a clear, compact, attractive visual reference, particularly where there are
lots of picture words.
First students need to identify and learn the picture words:

1. In pairs, name both pictures for each vowel sound: kiss and fish, cat and bag, etc. On
another day, do the same thing for the consonant words. Dont bother with the
symbols yet.
2. Playing in pairs to practise, for example:
Choose one that you find hard to say and say it three times to your partner for
him/her to admire.
Together, say each one in a different voice that you feel is appropriate to that item,
for example, Treeeeeeeeeeeeeee! (with falling intonation as it crashes to the
ground).
3. Test yourself / a friend until youve memorised all the picture words, for example:
Point and ask Whats that in English?.
Mime an item for your partner to name.
Make the sound which one item makes for your partner to name.
Mouth (but dont say) the name of one for your partner to decide which it is.
Spell one item a letter at a time for your partner to guess as soon as s/he recognises it
S1: T-R-A-
S2: Train. P-E
Write one letter by letter with your finger on your partners back or hand while s/he
looks away, until s/he works out which it is.
Describe an item for your friend to name. Its black and white and
Then students need to identify and learn the sounds and symbols:
4. In pairs, find and say the 20 different vowel sounds within the pairs of words: kiss and
fish = //, bag and hat = //, etc. On another occasion, do the same for the 24 conso-
nants.
5. Test yourself and a partner until you know them, as above.
6. Dictate three or four tricky spellings with a common sound for students to write and
then spot the sound, for example: u-s-e, t-h-r-o-u-g-h, n-e-w.
7. Begin to transcribe words, and check them in a dictionary, plus some of the activities
above.
8. Think of and write some more words containing each sound: // = (big, willing,
women, English). Then find all the possible spelling patterns for each sound; mainly
I between two consonants, but also O and E = //.
Heres another example of how to do this in class:

1. With a class, brainstorm all the words you know with the sound /:/ to make a Sound
and Spelling Bank. This could be words alone, pictures or a combination of both, e.g.
on a poster; girl, first, nurse, turn, work, her, verb, world, learn, earth, journey
2. Together study the words and work out the most and least common spelling patterns:
- Regular: IR, UR, ER (= over 90%).
- Irregular: OR (mainly) and EAR (around 8%).
- OUR (= exception).
Grouping words with common patterns, into Sound and Spelling Banks, helps sensitise stu-
dents to sound/spelling patterns and relationships, train them to guess how to say new words
more successfully, and be more independent.
Task 2
Make a Sound and Spelling Bank (as described above) using the sounds /e/ and /:/.
Extension activities from a Sound Bank

Once you have a bank of words or a collage of pictures for any sound you can produce
some wonderful things from them. Here are three simple examples:
1. Make your own tongue twisters: The big black bat blew beautiful bubbles in the bath.
2. Each week generate the silliest possible sentence for them to enjoy saying:
This weeks silly sentence: Three sleepy sheep see a bee in a tree eat a piece of green
cheese!
3. Simple poems:
Its a (fly)
(Wearing a tie)
(Saying Bye Bye).
From Pronunciation Poem Cards by Crutchley (1978).
4. Lastly, a particularly effective way to use a pronunciation chart is for correction. When
students mispronounce cut as /ku:t/ or but as /bu:t/, point at the picture of the sun and
ask How do you say this? Assuming theyve memorised the models they should say
it correctly. Then push them to say cut and but like sun, i.e. with the // sound. Co-
rrection by reference to other similar models rather than correcting each error indivi-
dually is far more effective and efficient, and really helps sensitise students to
sounds/spelling patterns.
Task 3
In groups, each of you should choose a different vowel sound:

Brainstorm words containing that sound to produce a sound/spelling bank. Write a des-
cription of the spelling rules for your sound.
Produce a tongue twister, a silly sentence and a poem (for your vowel sound) beginning Its a.
Present your work to your colleagues.
Activities for teaching sounds
Why do most published pronunciation activities focus on teaching sounds?

Most pronunciation materials build from the ground up, like building blocks, starting with individual
sounds (bricks), which are then built up into words, followed by sentences. This is obviously use-
ful, especially for drilling sounds which are new. Its also easy and finite, a bit like teaching gram-
mar rules: theres a right and wrong answer so teachers have historically felt comfortable with it.
But we need to combine this with a top-down approach too, regularly listening to longer
phrases, and sentences to notice how pronunciation changes in connected speech or liste-
ning. For example, listen and understand, then read the audio script and comment on how
the words have changed from their written form, e.g. from is nearly always pronounced
/frm/. In many ways, pronunciation is a listening activity, learning to decipher spoken lan-
guage. How did you become a native speaker (of Spanish)? It certainly wasnt by being dri-
lled on individual sounds by your mother. It was through your ear, listening again and again
to the patterns of Spanish until you acquired them yourself.
What are the best activities for teaching sounds?

First, a tip: be selective about the sounds you prioritise, concentrating on those which help
learners become more comprehensible in English globally, i.e. with non-Spanish speakers.
For Spanish speakers, priority would be given to vowel length and the sounds which dont
exist in Spanish. How else can students learn to produce them?
Task 4
The following pages contain a broad selection of activities for practising pronunciation.
Over the next few weeks do the activities either with your colleagues or in your Practicum.
Write your feedback on the activities and design new ones using the basic ideas.
When you are considering your feedback think about the following:
- The time the activities took.
- Students participation and motivation.

- The impact of the activities on the students pronunciation.
- The level of difficulty.
Discuss your feedback with your supervisor before you attempt the final assessment.
Two people, two sounds
Task 5
Work in pairs. Each choose a character, Val or Bill and, in pairs, race each other to complete the
chart below.
Everything in the first column begins with /v/, everything in the second one with /b/, and you
mustnt repeat any two words. Record the time it took you to complete the chart.
Val Bill
Comes from...
Eats...
Drinks...
Plays...
Has a pet called...
Loves...
Doesnt like...
There are three reasons why Im so fond of this activity:

The process: whilst doing this exercise, students are effectively drilling themselves as
they say v-v-v-Venice, b-b-b-Bali, etc. They cant refer to Spanish or translate as Spanish
doesnt make this distinction, so they have to think in English. Its fun, lively and has
a clear goal.
The focus: were actually introducing and practising the present simple third person
s, but the primary focus for once is on pronunciation. They see and consolidate the
s throughout the exercise, but only have to produce it when they feedback their ans-
wers, so theyre effectively getting 2 for the price of 1, (grammar and pronunciation),
which is a bargain in any culture!
Flexibility: by changing either the verb forms, e.g. to irregular past, present perfect or
going to forms, you can practise any main tense, and by changing the names, e.g. to
Willy and Brenda, Lily and Ron, Helen and Ann, you can practise most initial conso-
nant problems, although it doesnt work for 'th' sounds as there are so few nouns to
choose from.
Task 6
Adapt the exercise for your practicum.

Choose an appropriate:
- Tense.
- Verbs.
- Two sounds to contrast.
Do the activity as pair work.
Make a note of the time it takes and any problems that arise.
Compare your results with a colleague.
Ways to mark word stress

Stress is best marked either by underlining the stressed syllable (a window) or, by putting a
blob, circle or box above it (a window ), my own preference as its easiest both for us to do

quickly on the board and for students to copy it accurately. You could use capital letters (a
WINdow) but thats hard to do, doesnt help with capitalisation and capitals are best saved
for marking sentence stress: Do you MIND if I CLOSE the WINdow? You can use a
dictionary-type stress mark (a window) but thats hard to spot, especially when the stress
falls in the middle of a word, and accents (a wndow) can confuse, as English doesnt use
them. A nice technique is to elicit the stress pattern of the words on the board at the end of
a lesson as a way of rounding it up. If students find it hard to hear, put the stress on each
syllable in turn so they can hear the difference, and ask which sounds best. Its also very
useful to cross out the silent letters in words. Doing both and ensuring students do the same
really helps improve students lessons records, which after all, is the only document which
will live on long after your lesson has finished! Avoid words in isolation, even when
brainstorming words onto the board so they can copy them down in context. At least give
nouns + articles, or elicit adjectives and verbs in an appropriate useful phrase, (not just
to + verb).
Task 7

Mark the stress and cross out any silent letters in these phrases in British English: Heavy interest.
A lovely library A white Christmas
Similar or different? Comfortable slippers
Rules worth teaching

Words have only one main stress, always on vowels, never on consonants. While there can
be a secondary stress in some longer words, it is much smaller than the main or primary
stress. A stressed syllable combines five features: its longer, louder, said more clearly, has
a change in pitch from the syllables before and after it, and uses larger facial movements.
Stressing the wrong syllable can make a word very hard to understand and its worth
highlighting to students that unstressed syllables have the opposite features. Some learners
love to learn technical aspects of language, while others prefer to feel or see the
language more, hearing the music of word stress or seeing the shapes of words. Use a
variety of approaches to help different types of students to engage with English in different
ways.
You can also build students confidence by drawing their attention to the tendencies and
patterns in word stress that do exist, even if there are exceptions. If students notice these ex-
ceptions and actually point them out to you, thats a cause for celebration! It means they
have assimilated your rule, applied it, noticed a difference and had the courage to tell you.
What wonderful students!
Task 8
Think of examples and work out the rules for:

Most two-syllable nouns.
Most two-syllable verbs and adjectives.
The following suffixes: -ion, -ial, -id, -ish, -ian, -ic, -ious and -age.
Words ending in -cy, -ty, -phy, -gy and -al.
These foreign origin suffixes: -oo and -ette.
Compound nouns, like football, greenhouse or hairbrush.
Compound adjectives like old-fashioned and bad-tempered and compound verbs like un-
derstand and overflow.
Exchange your rules and examples with a colleague.
Check your colleagues rules and examples for accuracy and offer critical comments.
Weak forms, connected speech and sentence stress
Why should we work on weak forms with students?

Because theyre everywhere in spoken language. Say the following sentences aloud, stressing the
nouns and main verbs and weakening the underlined words: Fish and chips. A cat and a dog. I can
play the guitar. A litre of milk. She should have been here at six. Has Juan been at home all day?
For example, if you had to choose, which form of for do you think would be more useful
to teach: the full form /f:/ or the weak form /f/?
Students need to understand them to aid comprehension and to use them so their language
sounds more natural. About forty words in English (almost all function or grammatical words) can
be pronounced in two different ways, strongly and, far more frequently, weakly. Theyre some
of the most common words in English: a(n), and, at, but, for, from, of, to as, from, some, am, is,
are, was, were, can, could, do, does, have, has, had, must, shall, should, that, than and the.
We need to ensure the weak forms are given emphasis and priority by teaching contextualised
phrases and chunks as above, not just individual words. A fun activity is to give a mini-dicta-
tion (your own voice or a recording), and then ask students how many words they can hear.
Task 9
Unstressed syllables normally have the short closed vowels //, // or the schwa //.
Of the words listed above, which are pronounced with a schwa in their weak form?
Use a dictionary if necessary.
What are the key features of connected speech?

Contracted forms, reductions, elisions and linking. These reinforce the regularity of English
rhythm, helping to keep it stress-timed. Linking happens when one word ends with a
consonant and the next word begins with a vowel, making it sound like the consonant has
jumped onto the next word
Give_us_another_option. Sometimes new sounds can intrude. Is she /y/ into /w/ opera?
Task 10
1. Say these phrases, making the links.

Mark the point where a new sound is produced (intrusion) and write it in the correct place.
I want to (w)eat.
I agree Dont do it You and me Here or there? Day and night
Elision is when we swallow sounds. When one word ends with a consonant sound and the
next begins with a consonant sound the first consonant sound is often changed.
2. Say these words/phrases. Cross out the sound which is lost. Then write them phonetically.
Tell him - Tellim
The first three You shouldnt have We stopped for lunch A bad cold Boiled carrots
What about sentence stress?

The basic rules of sentence stress are:
1. Content words are usually stressed: main verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, question
words, negative auxiliaries and demonstrative pronouns. However, when be is used
as a main verb, its usually unstressed (even though its a content word). Dont be late!
2. Structure words are usually unstressed: pronouns, relative pronouns, possessive adjectives,
prepositions, articles, common conjunctions, auxiliary verbs and one (as in the red one).
We only stress them on specific occasions:
- Position (at the end of a sentence): notice how these prepositions change from
strong to weak.
Who's it for? It's for me. Where's he from? He's from Leeds.
- Correction: notice which of these prepositions are strong and weak.
It's a quarter to nine. Did you say a quarter past nine? No, a quarter to nine.
- Change of subject: notice how the pronunciation of you changes from weak to strong.
Where did you go last night? Nowhere special. Where did you go?
- Special emphasis: notice how the verb be is stressed to emphasise the difficulty of
the mans problem in the second sentence.
What's he going to do now? vs What is he going to do now?
Rhythm and intonation
What about rhythm?

Dips (one potato, two potato, three potato, four, etc.), rhymes, poems and jazz chants are great
fun and help to raise awareness. Carolyn Graham (1978) has produced hundreds of excellent
jazz chants for all age groups although they can sound and feel a bit artificial. Like intonation,
rhythm is mainly learnt by massive amounts of listening, but two excellent activities are:
1. Consistently beating sentence stress (clicking your fingers, clapping or conducting the
tonics in sentences) is very helpful so students can see and feel the language, espe-
cially if they beat with you.
2. Simple graphic exercises like this:
Say and click: 1-2-3-4. Then say and click to the same beat: 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. Then say
and click to the same beat: a 1 and a 2 and a 3 and a 4. In other words, adding more words
each time yet keeping to the same beat to show students how English rhythm and stress-
timing works.
Can we teach intonation?

It isnt really teachable in that it cant be memorised or learnt either rule by rule or phra-
se by phrase. However, theres a lot we can do to raise awareness, sensitise and encourage.
These techniques below can help a lot:
Hum/whistle/sing the phrase before you say it. Beginning by listening to and repeating
only the intonation, then hearing and learning the words and setting them to the
music, can often help students to produce far more accurately.
Conducting using gestures and waves. For example, to show the intonation rise or
fall at the end of questions, or helping them to see as well as hear changes of pitch.
This is particularly powerful when combined with beating sentence stress.
Spotting the tonic-syllable (most stressed syllables), usually a high-content word, near
the end of each tone unit (a single stretch of language that represents a complete pitch
pattern, often but not always a clause).
Exaggeration when modelling really helps pupils both notice and produce. English has
a particularly wide pitch range and getting students to say things like Really! with
falling and rising as high/low as they can is both fun and useful.
Picking out attitudes from recordings, e.g. the differences in each tone-unit.
We can also focus on effects of wrong intonation, for example, by responding na-
turally yourself if/when they sound flat or disinterested.
Comparing examples of the same phrase said in different ways, for example by using
moods, characters, roles and situations to practise intonation. Use a series of faces to
drill different moods (see Seligson, 1997). Student chorus according to the mood you
indicate or, equally, can test each other, asking
S1: How do you say encantado in English? (pointing to sad face)
S2: (sadly) Nice to meet you. How do you say hasta maana in English? (pointing to
surprised face)
S1: (surprised) See you tomorrow, etc.
Consistently systematise marking up intonation in your board work or audio scripts. For
example: arrows for tone, tonic-syllable in capitals and double lines (//) for tone-unit boundaries.
Teach the few rules which do exist:
- Tag questions, rise for a real question but fall for a check question.
u
- Wh-word questions, imperatives and statements usually fall.

- Yes/No questions usually tend to rise.
- Lists of items: rise, rise, rise, fall. For example: eggs, bacon, sausages and toast.
- Generally, new information has a fall tone and shared knowledge a fall-rise. To
teach this, you can for example, invent a small dialogue like this one in a coffee shop:
WAITER: What can I get you?

CUSTOMER: I'd like a white coffee.

WAITER: One white coffee . Anything else?

CUSTOMER: Yes, a chicken sandwich.

WAITER: One white coffee , and one chicken sandwich . Anything else?

CUSTOMER: Yes. One white coffee , one chicken sandwich and a bar of chocolate.

Students identify whats new and whats shared information, then practise and extend ac-
cordingly. Again these are only tendencies rather than concrete rules, but every time they
find an exception, remember to celebrate, for the reasons stated above.
Task 11
Choose at least three of the ideas above and build them into your next Practicum.
Summarise your feedback and discuss the results with your tutor.
Reading out loud
What about reading aloud?

Youre right to think its a pronunciation activity: it should really be called pronouncing
aloud. There are all sorts of problems with traditional reading aloud which there isnt space
to go into here, but I do like shadow reading, which both challenges and motivates and can
be used at any level. A key thing to do is to highlight phonological features in any text so
it becomes a true audio script:
1. Indicate the pauses; i.e., meaningful chunks (not necessarily complete sentences).
Note the relative length of each pause using one stroke (/) for a shorter pause, two stro-
kes (//) for a longer one.
2. Underline the stressed syllables, not necessarily of each word, but of each chunk.
3. Mark links between words (keep_out).
4. Cross out silent (elided) vowels/consonants (blind man).
5. Add any intrusive sounds: be y able, too w easy, vodka r and tonic
You can obviously do this with any textbook audio script too.
Task 12
Go to this website: www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/081222_download.shtml

Download a transcript and listen to a recent news item. Mark up the audio script using the five
steps above, like this:
CALLUM: Hello / and welcome to Six Minute_English. // I'm Callum Robertson_and with me
today_is Rosie, / hello Rosie.
ROSIE: Hello.
CALLUM: A question_about_age Rosie / which_I hope_is not too personal. // Do_you remem-
ber the 1970s?
Give your transcript to a colleague and ask him/her to read it out loud.
Record the readings and discuss them in a group.
Generating exercises
How can I create my own exercises in order to include pronunciation

in my tests?
There are five basic, simple exercise types, A-E below, found in many different guises in ELT
materials.
Task 13
Complete tasks A-E and add two more examples to each activity. Give them to a colleague to do.
1. Putting words into groups.

How is the ed pronounced in these past participles? Put three in each column.
called kissed mixed needed revised refused stayed stopped wanted
/d/ /t/ /d/
arrived wished ended

Match the past tense forms which rhyme.
said, crossed,
paid, caught, preferred, read,
lost, saw, wore, stood,
heard, could played,
bought
2. Same or different.
Do the vowels in these words have the same or a different sound? Circle S (same) or D (different).
beer / ear S D
ear / wear S D
back / bake S D
3. Odd-one out.
Cross out the word with a different vowel sound.
/e/ when read need
// shows nose gone
// come one you
4. Find the common sound.

Circle the common vowel sound.
four board small // /:/
smoke road know // /:/
cut up come // //
5. Mark the stress.

Put a circle above the stressed syllable.
Example:
afternoon
today morning yesterday tomorrow evening
Various combinations of these five basic exercises are very simple both to teach and to in-
clude in your evaluations. Doing so makes students (and teachers!) far more likely both to
take pronunciation seriously. Students can even learn to produce them for each other too.
A further good idea in terms of continuous evaluation is to set termly (or annual) pronun-
ciation aims for each course. For example:
Aim for Term 1: Focus on sentence stress

Teach it with: tongue twisters, short couplets, dialogues, marking up audio scripts,
focus on assimilation (dont you, good boy), elision (next please, sandwich, last time)
and contractions (couldve done) .
Assess ability using: short sketches or oral interviews.
Aim for Term 2: Teach phonemic script

Teach it with: games, puzzles, dictionary work, etc.
Assess ability using: look up and say new words from a dictionary.
A 24-point checklist to see how much pronunciation teaching you do

To finish, heres a summarising checklist see below to review all the points Ive raised for you to
measure yourself, either now or in the future, or teachers youve had in the past. To get students
interested in pronunciation. we need not only occasional games, drills or 5-minute one-off
activities, but consistent sensitisation and highlighting, i.e. systematic exposure. Use the checklist
below to see what youre already doing and identify areas where you might do more.
Give yourself 1 point if you regularly do these things, or point if you sometimes do.
When you finish look back at any where you scored zero or half. Could do more in
this area?
Checklist
Do you ...?
1. Explore what students already know (usually more than we think!), e.g. from songs, TV, their travels. Ask them what
American / other English accents sound like, what English names / phrases / lines from songs they know and can
say with the best English accent they can.
2. Ensure you present natural pronunciation models yourself as far as possible when you speak and tell stories. Use
natural sentence stress, linking, contractions and reductions to give the best model you can. Pause between short
phrases and chunks rather than say one word at a time.
3. Use lots of gesture / mime / visual aids so you can speak both more quickly and more naturally and still be un-
derstood. Remember, pronunciation is learned mainly through the ear.
4. Use lots of gesture too to draw attention to and correct pronunciation, e.g. beating word stress with your hands, from your
right shoulder to your left across your body so they can read the word from left to right, conducting sentence stress, etc.
5. Model new words in context / a short phrase rather than in isolation. For example, give nouns + article, i.e. a bike,
an orange bike, not just bike or car. Or, teach words in pairs: shoes and socks, apples and oranges. A knife and fork,
so they get used to stressing and reducing.
6. Highlight pronunciation when presenting new language. For example, really exaggerate or lengthen sounds and
words to help students hear and notice them (a BEEEYOOO0000tiful prinCESS!) and drill specific problems.
7. Use a pronunciation focus to introduce and practise other aspects such as grammar (as in the 2 for 1 activity
above) or vocabulary. For example, introduce/elicit/divide new lexical sets in sub-groups with common sounds:
e.g. find three b words or g words: blue, black, brown or pig, goat, dog.
8. Contrast similarities / differences between L1 and English to help students to focus their efforts, especially
where these differences are significant.
9. Exploit what Adrian Underhill calls the physicality of pronunciation; the breathing, facial and body move-
ments of sounds / stress. Some students appreciate simple tongue / lip /mouth drawings as models to see
what they have to do and where to position their mouths.
10. Sensitise often. For example, try to give words a syllable at a time when eliciting. For example, Hes A-ME-RI- for
students to supply the rest (can) as soon as they can. They may say /kn/ but then hear you say /kn/ and
so get continuous, non-threatening feedback too.
11. Use recognition and awareness-raising exercises: syllable-counting, prominence spotting, imitation, tongue
twisters, picking out different tones/moods from recordings, singing, etc.
12. Use rhyme, rhythm, chant, poetry, rap and all kinds of music regularly and even dance. For example, It
rhymes with foot to teach / correct put, It sounds like tree to teach sea.
13. Respond appropriately to incorrect models, as if you werent familiar with an L1 accent yourself, and encou-
rage repetition to say it better. For example, say Pardon? in response to overly L1 pronunciation or very flat,
bored intonation.
14. Consistently mark the stress on new words for students to copy and include in their own word lists, for
example, with a circle or blob above the stressed syllable.
15. Cross out silent letters and encourage students to keep lists of words with silent letters, for example, listen,
Wednesday, dictionary.
16. Build Sound Banks (picture collages and lists of words with common sounds) and work on sound / spelling
relationships, for example, highlighting key patterns.
17. Encourage students to enjoy and play with words, to experiment, create and invent where possible, for
example, combining a crocodile and an elephant to make a CROcophant.
18. Highlight linking (a line between words: an_orange) and sentence stress shift (eliciting different meanings
according to which words are stressed).
19. Use imposed moods, characters and roleplay to practise intonation, for example the mood faces activity
above.
20. Make students aware of (at least some) phonetics, for example, the schwa sound and symbol, the /:/ symbol
for a long vowel sound, /'/ in dictionaries for word stress, etc..
21. Encourage students to use (online) dictionaries to check word stress and basic pronunciation.
22. Work on transcripts, for example, shadow read text and sub-vocalise to self, notice and underline the most
stressed words, marks links, etc.
23. Set oral homework tasks and make sure your homework contains regular listening and pronunciation exerci-
ses. For example, listen to and memorise dialogues/rhymes, listen and read activities, pronunciation games.
24. Include aspects of pronunciation in their evaluation and tests. For example, grouping words by common
sounds, spotting the odd one out, or simple stress marking.
Your total: / 24
(anything over 18/24 = a strong score!)
Above all,
Dont unconsciously transmit negative values about pronunciation, e.g. by prioritising
grammar or vocabulary over it.
Do enjoy the fun and excitement that exploring and learning about pronunciation can
offer. Keep your pronunciation antennae alert at all times!
Dont feel insecure about your own pronunciation and then use this as an excuse to
deny students access to pronunciation activities.
Do try to exploit regularly the many opportunities that pronunciation offers, and so
(hopefully!) inspire students to be interested and to want to help themselves.
ASSIGNMENT
Use the activity ideas that you practised in the tasks in this chapter to develop a digital ac-
tivity bank for working with pronunciation skills in your classroom.
Classify the activities into the different aspects, provide a plan for each one with model and
answers.
Indicate how these activities cover the points in the checklist above.
FURTHER READING
Most publishers' websites are full of good exercises you can use in class, or to practise your
own pronunciation. Googling the area of pronunciation you wish to pursue will lead to
plenty of articles too. Below are the more recent books Ive found most useful. All of them
are rich with practical ideas. Hancock is the best purchase to recommend to students for self-
study as it is now available at three different levels. Kenworthy was the book which first gave
me real confidence as a teacher to delve more into pronunciation. The other titles are all use-
ful in their specific areas and the contents are self-explanatory.
BAKER, A. (1981). Ship or Sheep? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
BRADFORD, B. (1988). Intonation in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

CELCE-MURCIA, M.; BRINTON, D. & GOODWIN, J. (1996). Teaching Pronunciation. Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press.
DALTON, C. & SEIDLHOFER, B. (1994). Pronunciation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
HANCOCK, M. (2003). English Pronunciation in Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
HAYCRAFT, B. (1971). The Teaching of Pronunciation. A Classroom guide. Longman: Longman.
HEWINGS, M. (1993). Pronunciation Tasks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
JENKINS, J. (2000). The Phonology of English as an International Language. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.
This book identifies the features of the Lingua Franca Core crucial for intelligibility. The au-
thor argues that these are the key areas which prevent communication and should be priori-
tised in teaching English as a global language. They include:
All consonant sounds except for th (both unvoiced as in thin and voiced as in the)
and dark l (as in hotel).
Vowel length contrast (the difference between short and long vowel pairs, e.g. live /lv/
v leave /li:v/).
Tonic stress (the main/shifting stress indicated by capital letters in I come from SPAIN
or Where are YOU from?).
For Jenkins, most other areas of pronunciation are non-core, including many features tra-
ditionally emphasised, such as individual vowel sounds, word stress, or the typical rhythm
of British English, where lots of little words (articles, prepositions, etc.) are so weak they
are barely audible.
KELLY, G. (2000). How to Teach Pronunciation. Harlow: Pearson.
KENWORTHY, J. (1987). Teaching English Pronunciation. London: Longman.
LAROY, C. (1995). Pronunciation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
ROACH, P. (2002). Phonetics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
SELIGSON, P. et al. (2010). Richmond Essential English Course Level 5. London: Richmond
Publishing.
In this book you will find examples of different ways to mark up audio scripts for pronuncia-
tion purposes.
VAUGHAN-REES, M. (editor-in-chief). (from 1986 onwards). Speak Out! Journal of the IA-
TEFL Pronunciation Special Interest Group.
REFERENCES
BRAZIL, D. (1994). Pronunciation for Advanced Learners of English. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.
(1997). The Communicative Value of Intonation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.
CRUTCHLEY, C.J. (1978). Pronunciation poem cards. In H. Moorwood (ed.), Selections from
MET. Harlow: Longman.
GRAHAM, C. (1978). Jazz Chants. New York: Oxford University Press. Also available as an
ebook from: <www.ebook3000.com/Carolyn-Graham-_-Jazz-Chants--an-amusing-way-
of-learning-English-_18599.html>.
SEROME, J.L. (2009): Three Men on the Bummer. LLC. Serenity Publishers.
SELIGSON, P. (1997). Helping Students to Speak. London: Richmond Publishing.
UNDERHILL, A. (1994). Sound Foundations. London: Macmillan.
135
7. EFFECTIVE GRAMMAR TEACHING
CHAPTER CONTENTS
What is the grammar of a language?

The logical order of grammar input
The importance of contextualising grammar work
Explicit v implicit grammar teaching
Deductive v inductive grammar teaching
Learning how to learn
Conclusion
Example activities
Jorge Bascn
ELT Consultant
Beatriz Calle
ELT Consultant
Task 1
Before you read this chapter, read and discuss the following statements with your colleagues:
When we acquire our first language we do not need to learn grammar rules, and neither do
students learning English as a foreign language. They just need to be exposed to the language.
Grammar rules have to be taught formally in order to learn English successfully. Mere ex-
posure is not enough.
Students need to work out grammar rules for themselves in order to learn English successfully.
Most of the work we do in secondary school should be designed around the grammar rules
of the language.
There are many other skills a teacher has to work with in a class which are more important
than grammar.
The role we give to teaching grammar in English language classes and how we approach te-
aching grammar depends greatly on how we view language, or perhaps, more to the point,
the trends that influence our conception of what language is and, therefore, how it should
be taught. Over the years this conception has changed considerably and this has had a no-
ticeable influence on our work in the classroom.
There are two main views of language that impact on our work as English language teachers:
language as a system of structures and language as a socially constructed tool for commu-
nication. These two views are not necessarily antagonistic, but they do place the emphasis
on different forms of teaching practice. If we view language as a system of structures then
our priority in the classroom will be to explain and practice the structures so that our stu-
dents are able to internalise the system and put it to use. If, on the other hand, we view lan-
guage as socially constructed and essentially a tool for communication, then our priority in
the classrooms shifts from placing the focus on the structures themselves to placing it on ef-
fective use of language.
The tension between these two positions has led to changes in methodology in English
language teaching over the years from traditional methods such as Grammar-Translation to
methods where the communicative focus is paramount, such as Communicative Language
Teaching. More recently there has been a shift away from the orthodoxy of specific metho-
dologies towards eclectic methods where teachers pick and choose different approaches for
different purposes.
What is the grammar of a language?
Language can be viewed as the ability to speak and be understood by others who know
that language. This means one has the capacity to produce sounds with certain meanings
and to understand or interpret the sounds produced by others. This language capacity involves
certain linguistic knowledge, which traditional grammarians have analysed according to four
(or three, depending on how we group them) layers of organisation, namely: phonetic-
phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic.
Phonology
Phonological knowledge allows the speaker to do things such as produce sounds which form
meaningful utterances, recognise a foreign accent, add the appropriate phonetic segments to
form plurals and different verb tenses, produce aspirated and unaspirated voiceless stops in
the appropriate context or to know what is or is not a sound belonging that language.
Although knowing the sounds (the phonetic units) of a language is only a small part of
the phonological knowledge of a native speaker, this will be a main focus as English
EFFECTIVE GRAMMAR TEACHING 137
language teachers. When learning a foreign language we have to learn which speech sounds
occur in the target language and how they form patterns according to patterns and rules.
Task 2
1. Write a questionnaire for your pupils to find out what is most difficult for them with regard to
sounds, pronunciation and intonation in English. Use the questionnaire in your Practicum class
and summarise your findings.
2. Work with your students in your Practicum class.

Write the following words on the board : tree, three, car, cat, coat.
Ask your students to pronounce them and correct their pronunciation.
Discuss any difficulties with them.
Draw up a list of minimal pairs for your pupils (words that differ in just one phoneme, which
can be either a vowel sound ship / sheep or a consonant sound very / berry).
Tell them to work in pairs and take turns dictating the words to each other.
hey should then check against the original list and correct their dictations.
Morphology
The fact that the internal structure of words is subject to rules is easily seen in the following example.
Nobody doubts that words such as uneaten or untangled are words in English, whereas
eatenun or tangledun are not. That is due to the fact that in English we do not form a negative
meaning of a word by suffixing un, but by prefixing it. By means of this morphological rule and
by many others, speakers of the language engaging in word building. These new words, depending
on the rules applied in their formation, are called derivates, compounds, blends or back-formations.
Teaching pupils how to recognise the morphological structure of English is an important part of
the work we do in the classroom. We concentrate on two different categories of morphological
rules: inflectional rules (for example, pluralisation where elements are added to the existing word)
and word formation (for example, compounds that we build out of existing words). We begin
with inflectional rules such as forming plurals or comparative adjectives and progress to word
building, which requires a larger repertoire of language. It is useful to think of the game element
involved in this kind of activity and to present it initially as a physical manipulation. One of the
problems that pupils face when tackling grammar rules and patterns is trying to hold the concepts
as abstract ideas rather than something they can actually play around with and move about. For
example, instead of listing the rules for forming the plurals in English, we can make a card game
as follows.
Chose a list of singular nouns to cover all the possibilities for plural formation (dog - s, fox
- es, fly - yies, wolf - fves, mouse - irregular, sheep - no plural). You can use a lexical
set of words or a mixed set but you will need about five examples of each form. Make
a set of cards using these words.
Make another set of cards with the possible plural endings. Ensure you have one for
each noun.
Shuffle the cards in their sets and place them in two piles.
The pupils take turns turning over a card from each set and seeing if they can plurali-
se the noun using the form on other card.
You can extend the activity by asking the pupils to come up with the morphological
rules once they have played.
Task 3
1. Look up the following terms (either online or in a grammar reference book), and find mor-
phological rules:
Derivates.
Compounds.
Blends.
Back-formations.
Give an example for each term.
2. Design and make a game to show your pupils how to manipulate morphological rules (either
inflectional rules or word building) in English.
Play the game with your pupils during your Practicum and then ask them to work out the rules.
Record the results of your activity.
Present your activity to your colleagues (together with your feedback from the lesson) and
ask them to offer critical comments.
Syntax
Knowing a language also includes the ability to put words together to form phrases and sen-
tences that express our thoughts. This part of grammar, which represents a speakers kno-
wledge of the structure of phrases and sentences is called syntax.
In English, and indeed in every language, every sentence is a sequence of words, but not
every sequence of words is a sentence. Sequences of words that conform to the rules of
syntax are said to be well formed or grammatical and those which violate the syntactic rules
are, therefore, ill formed and ungrammatical. In some cases ill-formed sentences result in
confusion or a lack of understanding, but in many cases the interlocutor is able to apply a
series of strategies to clarify the meaning.
However, the rules of syntax do not only account for the grammaticality of sentences. They
also account for the double meaning, or ambiguity of expressions such as fresh orange
juice, which could be interpreted either as orange juice which is fresh or as juice made out
of fresh oranges. Syntactic rules also reveal the relationships between the words in a
sentence and tell us when structural differences result in the differences in meaning, and
when they do not. And finally, it is also syntactic rules which permit speakers to produce
and understand an unlimited number of sentences for the first time, which linguists have
called the creative aspect of language use.
Task 4
1. Look at the following sentences and write an explanation of the double meanings.
They can fish.
He ate the pie with relish.
The police shot the robbers with guns.
The girl hit the boy with a book.
Now indicate which double meanings are the result of lexical ambiguities and which are the
result of structural ambiguities.
2. Draw up a list of sentences with double meaning (both lexical and structural) to work on with
your Practicum class.
Semantics
Semantics describes our linguistic competence and is responsible for our capacity to com-
bine words to produce phrase and sentence meanings. We are not free to change the mea-
nings of words at will, for if we did we would be unable to communicate with anyone.
However, the capacity to speak a language involves more than just knowing the meaning of
the words. We comprehend sentences because we know the meaning of individual words
and we know the rules for combining their meanings.
The logical order of grammar input
For many years English students have learnt, and teachers have taught, the language through
explanations as to how the language functions followed by activities that put those grammar
rules and paradigms into practice, but humans acquire language by understanding messa-
ges or by receiving comprehensible input (Krashen, 1985). All learners acquiring L1 or L2
successfully depend on comprehensible input (Larsen-Freeman & Long, 1991). Research
shows us that meaningful input is essential in order to acquire a second language. This
means students need to be exposed, as much as possible, to English input. Traditionally le-
arners practice a target structure but if they do not have enough input to internalise those
structures, they may well not get beyond the specific examples of the target structure.
We also know that what English learners listen to and observe may be not processed; in
other words, the input does not go in. If the process for learning a foreign language were
simply a question of providing input, we would all be effortlessly accomplished language le-
arners. We need to distinguish between the input in terms of what the teacher attempt to
put in and the part that actually does go in. That is, intake (Corder 1967), is not the same
as input.
When English teachers want to facilitate the intake of language, oral and written input
should be used systematically and with clear specific purposes.
Task 5
With a group of colleagues, choose a selection of secondary-school coursebooks.

Make a note of the how grammar is presented, and sequences of grammar input.
In some cases the differences and similarities are the result of a practical orthodoxy (we
have always done it like that), but in others there may be deeper, more structural reasons.
Discuss this question with your colleagues and draw conclusions.
The importance of contextualising grammar work
In every EFL classroom grammar plays an essential role, in one way or another. But how
should we present the grammar contents? In other words, how can we help our students to
learn the grammar needed to express themselves successfully in a foreign language?
At first glance, we might be tempted to think that teaching grammar is just a matter of ex-
plaining rules and practising the rules with numerous examples. After all, this method was,
and still is, widely used. But what kind of examples are we talking about? If they are merely
examples of the target structure at work, then we are missing a vital clue for language me-
aning and meaning is given not just by using structures correctly, but by paying attention
to context. Grammar is not simply an abstract system detached from contexts of use. Lear-
ners receive meaningful language input through experience of English not as a subject to be
learnt, but as a means of communication, where the focus is on the meaning not the form
of the language (Moon, 2000). Contextualising grammar activities means working on struc-
tures within a given context that provides the underlying meaning to the forms.
Explicit v implicit grammar teaching
The contrast drawn here is between knowing about a language and knowing how to use a
language in practical situations, which may be either in oral or written forms. It is incontro-
vertible that many L1 users of language have extremely limited knowledge of the language
itself and its internal structures and yet are able to use the language successfully. The ques-
tion is whether or not this model will work for L2 language learners.
When we teach grammar explicitly we deliberately draw students attention to the target
structure. For example, we say: Today we are going to learn to use the present perfect
tense. Our activities are all overtly directed towards practising the target structure.
There are some very good reasons why this type of teaching is widely practised. Some
of these reasons are found in our educational practices, which are, generally speaking,
widespread:
A social understanding (both within the teaching community and in society at large)
of what it is to learn a foreign language involves explicit grammar teaching.
Most students are required to take examinations in which the structures are clearly
tested.
Other reasons that are given refer to the needs of the learner. Stephen Krashen's Monitor
Model (1999) suggests that explicit teaching of grammar helps students monitor their own
output more successfully. In other words, a learner can reflect on how to say something if
she knows how it should be said (correct grammar rules). Furthermore it is also suggested
that some learners enjoy learning about grammar as an intellectual exercise much as they
might enjoy code breaking. This is certainly the case for some adult learners, but is more
questionable in younger learners.
When we teach grammar implicitly we embed the target structures in activities that, on
the surface, have a different aim. So we say: Today we are going to talk about places we
have been to. There are very good reasons for teaching grammar in this way, as well.
We provide students with a functional objective they can understand and share.
We contextualise the grammar instruction within a recognisable communicative
practice.
We do not isolate the grammar from its underlying meanings.
However, it is also the case that when we work like this the internal structures may be hid-
den from view to the extent that whether or not the students realise the deeper objectives in-
volved in the activity depends largely on their intellectual skills and interests.
Task 6
Choose a grammar structure to teach in your Practicum:

Design two different lessons, one based on the explicit model and the other on the implicit model.
Then integrate the two models to provide a third lesson design that provides a mixed approach.
Deductive v inductive grammar teaching
The contrast expressed here is about how we approach grammar rules. Deductive grammar
instruction starts with the rule and applies the rule to generate correct examples of the tar-
get structure.
Example
The third-person singular of the present simple tense is the only form that changes. We add s, es or chan-
ge the y for an i and es.
Now complete the sentences with the correct form of the verb in the present simple.
Inductive grammar instruction works the other way round. First we expose the students to
several examples of the target structure (preferably within a clearly defined context), then we
draw their attention to the structure, often through questions and answers, then we ask them
to apply the structure, and finally we ask them to formulate some rules.
Example
Look at this information about... (defined context). Underline all the verbs. Do you notice anything about
the verbs? Do some of them end in an s? Which ones? What do these verbs refer to? Is (it) singular or plural?
Are there any other changes? Which ones? How do we write these verbs in the other cases? And so on.
Now write information about...
Now tick the correct rules / Match the sentence halves to make rules / Write rules for the present simple.
The deductive approach has several disadvantages over the inductive method:
As teachers we all know that knowing language rules and how to apply them in a writ-
ten exercise rarely ensures correct use of the target structure in communicative situa-
tions. Students may well complete the exercises perfectly but when they are using the
structure in either an oral or written activity, they fall back into the same old errors.
Grammar rules are notoriously elusive. Try formulating something simple such as the rules for
pluralising nouns, and you will see that it is much harder than it would seem at a first glance.
In teaching grammar rules we rarely deliver everything from the start because it would
overload the students. So when we teach them how to use a verb tense, for example, we do
not teach them all the cases at the same time, the common, the less common and the
exceptions. If we start from a rule we face the problem of how to articulate the rule without
leading the students into errors. For example: We use the present continuous for actions that
are happening now. But this is not strictly true. I can use this verb tense for something that I
am not actually doing at the moment but for something that I am doing within a set period
of time: Im painting my house (not this minute but during this month). Or for future plans:
My sister is having lunch with us on Sunday. Or for a repetitive action that is annoying:
Hes always breaking the TV. And so on. When we formulate the rule we have to do so
in such a way as to leave the door open for feeding in these cases in the future. This makes
the rules sound not so much like rules anymore, but if we do not do this the rule is incorrect.
Very often the rules are so unwieldy that the students get lost in all the complexity of
the meta-language.
Task 7
Choose a grammar structure to teach in your Practicum:

Plan a lesson using the inductive approach and pay special attention to the contextualisa-
tion of the language.
Deliver the lesson to your colleagues and discuss their feedback.
Learning how to learn
Approaches to learning how to learn take account of the fact that different pupils have
different ways of learning. This means they also have different approaches to learning gram-
mar. Therefore, in teaching grammar we must aim to develop self-awareness and gradually
lead pupils to a conscious development of their own learning strategies, so they become
more effective and independent learners. This entails developing the following strategies:
Metacognitive strategies, such as planning for learning, hypothesising, self-assessment
and reflection on the learning process.
Cognitive strategies, such as sorting, classifying, matching, predicting, using dictiona-
ries and repeating.
Social meditation strategies, such as collaborating and peer-correction, which may be
developed by means of materials designed for pair or group work.
Communication strategies, such as using phrases to enable them to participate and
maintain communication in English, while they are working with classmates, e.g.
Can you explain that to me, please?.
Task 8
Design a grammar activity to work with each of the strategies described above. You can use
models from the coursebook used in your teaching practice class but you should write your
own activities.
Write an explanation showing how these activities serve to develop each strategy.
Conclusion
The considerations we have examined briefly here lead us to the conclusion that a sensible me-
thodological approach to teaching grammar should take account of both input practice and
communicative output. While students need a lot of input, and while there must be an em-
phasis on communicative activities which improve students ability to communicate, there is
also a place for controlled presentation of input and semi-controlled language practice.
Notional or functional syllabuses may provide an alternative to the emphasis on formal

language teaching, where the content of a course is organised in terms of the meanings
learners require in order to communicate in particular functional contexts. Major commu-
nicative notions include the linguistic expression of time, duration, frequency sequence,
quantity, location and motion. Major communicative functions include evaluation, persua-
sion, emotional expression and the making of social relations. In this model the functions
and notions drive the structures, rather than the other way round.
Communicative methods have attracted universal interest and have much influenced the practice
of English language teaching. But there has also been a critical reaction, as linguists and teachers
encounter problems in providing a principled basis for interrelating the proposed notions and
functions. Of particular importance is the need to provide learners with principles that will enable
them to make a bridge between functional aspects of language and the correct use of formal
structures. Proponents of the approach have recognised these problems and there has been
considerable discussion of the way communicative teaching might develop in the future.
Example activities
Activity 1. The Money Game

Instructions
Divide the class into two groups.
Give each member of the class ten coins or counters.
Place two sheets of paper on the floor between the two groups. The sheets of paper are labelled: The spe-
aker is right / The challenger is right.
Tell the groups to draw up a list of conversation topics (one per person). You will need to guide them by
giving them examples.
Explain the rules

Group A gives Group B a topic to speak on. A member of the group begins talking on the topic.
If anybody in the Group A hears a grammar mistake, he/she stops the speaker and says: You said:
.. Its wrong.
At this stage the challenger must not propose a correction.
The members of Group B vote by placing a coin/counter on one of the sheets of paper depending on
their opinion.
The teacher then gives a verdict.
If the teacher declares the challenge correct, Group A must attempt a correction. If this is right Group A
take all the coins/counters.
If the correction is not right, Group A takes only the coins on The challenger is right.
If the teacher declares the challenge incorrect, Group B takes all the coins/counters.
Swap roles and continue playing.
The winner is group member with most coins after an allotted time of, say, fifteen minutes.
Activity 2. Right that seems wrong and wrong that seems right
Instructions
Draw up a list of ten sentences.
Five sentences should be sentences that are grammatically incorrect but seem right to the students.
Five sentences should be sentences that are grammatically correct but seem wrong to the students.
These sentences are often examples where they transfer structures from L1 to L2. For example: The pe-
ople at the airport was all waiting for the weather to get better (singular verb instead of plural). Happi-
ness is difficult to find (no article before an abstract noun).
Mix up the order of the sentences and give each student a photocopy.
Tell them to cut the sentences into strips, work in pairs and decide which ones are right but seem wrong
and which are wrong but seem right.
Discuss their decisions and ask them to give reasons as to why this happens.
ASSIGNMENTS
1. Work in groups. Prepare a database of activities to cover the following aspects of grammar:
Adjectives and nouns.
Articles.
Subject-verb agreement.
Verb tenses (present simple, continuous and perfect; past simple, continuous, and perfect;
zero, first and second conditionals; present and past passive voice; modal verbs like
can/could/must/should; adverbs and adverbial clauses; questions and answers.
Remember to contextualise your activities and present them using an inductive grammar model.
Choose an activity and integrate it into a lesson plan describing the work you will do initially
to present the grammar structures.
2. Prepare a list of the most common and most repeated grammar mistakes in both oral and
written work, for example: missing off the s in the third-person present simple.
Identify the reasons why you think students make these mistakes, for example: interference with L1.
Design an activity for each case focussing on:
Awareness of the problem.
Strategies for solving the problem.
3. The Silent Way of teaching grammar was first proposed by Caleb Gattegno in the 1970s. The
theory suggests that students learn best when they discover features about the language
rather memorising and repeating, and when their activities are designed around problem
solving using physical objects (Cuisenaire rods) to represent elements of language.
Find out more about the Silent Way and develop a set of your own physical objects (you can
use coloured sticks or straws).
Choose three grammar structures to illustrate using the Silent Way and design activities.
Deliver the class to your colleagues and discuss their feedback.
FURTHER READING
This list proves a variety of work with both guidelines for teaching grammar and a variety of
exercise types and activities for working in the classroom.
HARMER, J. (1998). How to Teach English. London: Longman.

This work provides both theoretical background and practical ideas for teachers training to be
English language teachers, especially Chapter 5.
RINVOLUCRI, M. (1985). Grammar Games: Cognitive, Affective and Drama Activities for EFL.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Good for active grammar activities and games for working in the classroom.
THORNBURY, S. (1999). How to Teach Grammar. London: Longman.

This work provides a rich source of practical ideas for teaching grammar.
UR, P. (1988). Grammar Practice Activities: A Practical Guide for Teachers. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge Handbooks for Language Teachers.
This book is divided into two sections: the first deals with background information and gui-
delines for teaching grammar; the second provides an extensive and systemic list of practical
activities for the classroom.
WATCYN-JONES, P. (1995). Grammar Games and Activities for Teachers. London: Penguin
Books.
You will find a wealth of photocopiable activities for the classroom in this book.
REFERENCES
CORDER, S.P. (1967). The significance of learners errors. IRAL, 5, 161-170.

KRASHEN, S. (1985). The Input Hypothesis: Issues and Implications. Beverly Hills, CA: La-
redo Publishing Company.
KRASHEN, S. (1999). Three Arguments Against Whole Language & Why They Are Wrong.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
LARSEN-FREEMAN, D. & LONG, M.H. (1991). An Introduction to Second Language Acquisi-
tion Research. New York: Longman.
MOON, J. (2000). Children Learning English. Oxford: Macmillan Heinemann ELT.
149
8. CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT
CHAPTER CONTENTS
Manage the room and the students dont let them manage you
Manage your board well
Six more key tips
Think and teach visually
Really trust pairwork
The six key ingredients of good pairwork
Monitor well
Use mother tongue intelligently
Comment
Pause often and elicit fairly
Exemplify at least as much as you instruct and avoid echo
Echo
Routines are important but so is variety
Keep trying to improve your timing
Dont be a dinosaur like me!
Paul Seligson
The number of different roles we teachers take on is amazing. As well as linguistic specia-
list and instructor, a language teacher has sometimes to play coach, personal trainer, refe-
ree, translator, assessor, coordinator, doctor, detective, spy, social worker, prison officer,
interior designer, entertainer, storyteller, artistic director, mime artist, DJ, torturer, IT techni-
cian, psychiatrist, editor, ego builder, recipient of excuses, executioner, form filler, statio-
ner, pencil sharpener, coat finder, glasses lender, nose wiper, surrogate parent, peacemaker,
matchmaker, scapegoat and walking encyclopaedia, to name a few.
Above all we are decision-makers. My research suggests that language teachers perform around
650 different activities every class, and are constantly making innumerable decisions: Shall
I ask him or her? Shall I elicit or tell them? Shall we switch activities/partners/skills? Shall we
do this on the board or orally, skip the rest of this exercise, check the homework now or
later, should I stand or sit?, and so on. This constant, ongoing, internal dialogue is one of the
main reasons why teaching can be so tiring.
Task 1
Look again at the thirty-seven roles in the first paragraph:

Think and make a note of a different decision you have to make with each hat on, for
example: as a coach you have to decide the best tactics and methods to use to get the best
performance from your students.
It should quickly become clear that most are managerial, focused on organising, illustrating,
clarifying, orchestrating, stimulating, maintaining, gluing together, oiling and repairing classes.
The term class management is a huge area. Broadly speaking, it includes:

Environment, grouping and seating.
Starting, guiding, fixing and finishing lessons.
Atmosphere and relationships.
Use of teaching tools like the board and teaching techniques.
Deciding roles, who does what, when and with whom, and so on.
It includes infinite, tiny yet vital details too: key personal points like quickly learning and
then using students names or getting to know something personal about each student
and dropping it into the classroom dialogue to help develop relationships, or the importance
of making frequent eye contact with each student so they all feel involved. There are
countless books on all these topics. For the purposes of this short chapter, my own defini-
tion will be that classroom management is all about creating the best possible conditions to
foster learning opportunities for each and every member of the class.
In a classroom situation, particularly when you have more than a handful of students, one
of the biggest problems is balancing the needs of the individual with the needs of the
group.
Which do you think is most important: each individual or the group itself?
Of course they are both important, but my answer would most certainly be the group. Every
time you stop and deal with an individual students question, ask one student to answer, say
or repeat something, come up to the board and write, you need to think at least as much
CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT 151
about what the rest of the group are doing. Are they listening? Able to hear? Interested? Ma-
king the best use of their time? Likely to switch off? Its all too easy for us to slip into pri-
vate-class mode, where we try to ensure or simply allow each student in turn to have a
go. While this might seem fair, and even preferable with a small group of say 2-5 students,
the moment you have any more than that, and most classes are much nearer to 20, it can
take ages, and the pace of the lesson become grindingly slow. For example, its often far pre-
ferable to postpone answering the question (till the end of the class or the next lesson), or to
answer it alone with the individual while the rest of the class are doing something else, so
all are kept busy. All too often teachers answer each and every individual question, at the
expense of the rest of the class.
To my mind at least, class management is all about making the best use of class time and
generating the maximum amount of practice and learning opportunities for all the group,
and doing so simultaneously rather than individually wherever possible.
Indeed, efficient group management is in many ways the key teaching skill. Too many ELT
techniques tend to prioritise either of the following:
1. The individual over the group leading to an unnecessary lowering of pace and bored
students, wasting time doing little or nothing whilst the teacher interacts with one stu-
dent at a time. For example, activities like individuals taking turns to read aloud, re-
peat a word, phrase or sentence, answer comprehension questions one by one: all can
be perfectly effective activities in a 1-to-1 lesson, but poor, inefficient choices of acti-
vity in large classes. All of them are usually better done in pairs, groups, or as a whole
class or, for example, with the teacher quickly writing up the correct answers or mis-
sing words for a gap-fill on the board for students to quickly self-check, then only have
to deal with those that caused difficulty, rather than trawl through them all one by one.
2. Stronger students at the expense of the weak, leading to division, time-wasting and
missed opportunity. For example, elicitation, the heartbeat of communicative langua-
ge teaching, all too often leads to the same few stronger students always answering
first, or at least mostly, leaving the majority of the class excluded and usually frustra-
ted. Im not saying Dont elicit not at all but I do believe that many teachers need
to learn to elicit more democratically, to give most students more of a chance of ans-
wering more often. I will offer several alternatives below.
This chapter focuses on ten key areas of classroom management and offers a host of practi-
cal tips based largely on what I feel were errors in my own teaching over the years, as well
as things learnt from recent observations as a trainer.
Manage the room and the students dont let them manage you
Move chairs and students to your advantage and mix students up regularly so all levels of
ability, weaker and stronger, work together and dont fossilise into fixed groups. For exam-
ple, in my room, I have a sign on the wall which says:
Please change partners every class. If you dont, Ill have to move you.
Life is short so please move! Thanks a lot!
When they dont move, or whinge about moving, I just point to the sign and tell them its a
rule. It soon becomes a habit, and the issue goes away. Of course they dont have to sit next
to every single class member an ex-boyfriend, or a current enemy for example just keep
switching partners so the dynamic of group interdependence takes priority.
Most teachers let students sit where they want to until they have learned their names, then
ask them to move and it becomes a big fuss because students have got used to sitting in the
same place. Whose fault is that? The key to becoming a better manager is noticing what goes
wrong one year, then learning and anticipating from that experience the following year, so
you avoid making the same mistake again.
If they really insist on not moving then make them look in different directions, using the fa-
mously flexible human neck to work with the person behind, to the left and right of them.
As soon as they realise you will impose all this neck twisting they should conclude that its
both easier and more desirable to change partners regularly rather than keep twisting!
Task 2
1. Try this last activity in your Practicum:

Insist pupils change partners three times in a lesson, moving for example from checking ans-
wers in pairs, to working in threes, to larger groups and then back to different pairs for the
final activity.
Notice how the energy changes each time once activities get started, even if they seem re-
luctant when you first give the instructions. As Mary Underwood (1987) says, Its easy to
get used to an unsatisfactory environment and fail even to make the changes which can be
made with little or no trouble.
2. Look at your classroom. Write a description of how you could improve position of furniture,
lines of vision, acoustics, wall displays, space for different activities. Think about what you
could easily improve.
Manage your board well
How many teachers are really trained to use a board well? Most of us have learnt through
experiment and very occasional feedback, or by observing others. Yet its often the only re-
liable, ever-present resource we have, and making best use of it is vital.
The key thing is to be quick: prioritise speed over beauty at the board so your back is to them
for the shortest possible time. If its not clear, they will tell you but some teachers can be
over-ornate, seeming to care more about their handwriting/boardwork than the class itself.
What goes on the board is ephemeral, and mattering only as long as it is there and until the
students have transferred what they need to into their notebooks and minds. The only thing
which lives on long after a class is the students notebook. Our aim should be to get the best,
most concise information into that as efficiently as possible.
Six more key tips
Make it visually interesting. Use colours, graphics, student-produced drawings for variety
and highlighting. Have fun with it and enjoy it like a toy to encourage classes to do the
same.
1. Think twice before you cover it in lots of (new) words. Try to plan your boardwork.
Divide it into sections and practise economising layout to keep the amount students
have to copy to a minimum. Keep your lesson aims visible throughout the class so la-
tecomers know whats happening on arrival. Tick them off as you go along or turn
them into I can statements at the end of the class.
2. Ensure students all copy at the same time. If you dont, the class will always fragment
as some copy as you go along, while others dont, and so will need to later. This hap-
pens so often, and again, whose fault is it?
3. Use upper/lower case naturally for literacy purposes. And nowadays CAPITALS =
SHOUTING!
4. Avoid words in isolation, even when brainstorming, Write up words in a phrase not
individually. At least give articles with nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs in short
phrases (not just to + infinitive), and encourage students to write personal examples.
Words alone, with no context, can only be remembered via translation, and the basis
of fluency is phrases, not individual words.
5. At the end of classes, regularly go to the back of the room and judge yourself honestly.
Youll soon see what you can do better!
Most of these apply equally to interactive whiteboards. On the plus side, these are a much
enriched resource, allowing you for example to:
Bring the whole digital world into class.
Prepare duller phases (checking answers, grammar charts) in advance, significantly

speeding up classes.
Review and reuse lessons more easily and efficiently.
Encourage students to interact and participate in a host of new ways: bring in presen-
tations, songs, recordings, video of selves, and to peer teach far more richly.
However, there are potential disadvantages, which need to be anticipated and planned for.
For example, theyre generally quite a lot smaller (although paradoxically, teachers tend to
write bigger on them at least at first), so space management is more of an issue; only
one person at a time can write on them; the board itself can become more important than the
practice its supposed to be generating; lesson pace can drop while students come up one at
a time to drag and drop or write up items, and so on. You need to organise a series of separate
pages to work on and mark up the workings of a lesson: a page for or preferably a permanently
visible tickertape so the lesson aim can be seen throughout, a clean page to work on as the
lesson progresses, and so on.
Task 3
Arrange to observe an English language class:

As you observe, monitor and make a note of the use of the board.
Which of the tips above are/arent followed.
Write feedback that you could give to the teacher on their board use.
Think and teach visually
Which of your five senses is the strongest?

The eye, by far.
The eye takes in 10 million bits of information per second and deals consciously with 40.
The ear takes in 100,000 bits and deals consciously with 30.
The skin takes in 100,000 bits and deals consciously with 5.
We can smell 100,000 bits and can deal consciously with 1.
We can taste 1,000 bits and can deal consciously with 1. (Zimmerman, 1989)
So, ensure you input language visually as much as verbally. Remember, the more you show,
the faster you can go! Below are three key suggestions:
1. Try to design and teach in a dedicated ELT room, with rich linguistic input on the
walls, even on the ceilings why not! Not just photos from the Anglophone world or
a decontextualised list of irregular verbs but things like:
quotations riddles short jokes funny sentences our favourite mistakes
facts about English classroom language useful expressions posters e.g. Our
favourite adjectives their own projects phonetic charts newspaper headlines,
articles and clippings cartoons captioned photos
Seeing these all around them facilitates students switching into and actually believing
they both can and will speak English in this environment. It also gives them plenty of
rich input to read, digest and reflect on while waiting for others to finish.
2. Illustrate as much as you can using the board, flashcards, drawings and realia. In mo-
nolingual classes, its all too easy to translate everything, feeding only students analy-
tical or linguistic intelligences. And in these digital days, its all too easy to show
photos of everything, and forget the kinaesthetic joy of seeing, touching and passing
round real objects, which can be far more memorable.
3. Be generous with your own body language. This will allow you to speak faster. Exem-
plify rather than instruct, for example, give visual as well as verbal examples of what
to do/say rather than rely on verbal or written instructions. Consistent use of gestures
from teachers usually transfers to students too as they start to join in and copy what
you say and do. Personally, I think of language teaching as a very kinaesthetic activity,
feeling, shaping, showing and sharing words physically with students as I speak, guide
or correct them. Consistently doing this involves students much more fully, and makes
your teaching much more generous, personal and memorable too.
Task 4
Work with a colleague. Together, decide how best to gesture/facially express:

Past/present/future. -ing Think and try to imagine.
Stand up. Listen to me. Listen to each other.
Repeat Repeat - altogether. Read the instructions.
Open your books. Come here! I didnt hear what you said.
Nearly. Just one mistake. Say it more quickly.
Can anybody help? Work in pairs. Keep the noise down.
Make a full sentence. Thats right. Well done! Stop (working and be quiet)!
Contraction: It is Its To/at/in/on. Behave yourself!
Five minutes left. Homework. Third person s
Practise your gestures on another pair of colleagues and see if they can work out the meaning of
your gestures (imatge 1).
Past Present Future
Past perfect Future perfect
Imatge 1. Examples of visual prompts
Really trust pairwork
Groupwork too of course, but if for example you have a group of three with, say, A (a strong stu-
dent), B (a medium student), and C (a weak student), what will usually happen? In my experience,
A will lead, talking mainly to B, and C will be largely a spectator. The larger the group, the worse
this is likely to get, and the more time will be wasted, hence my innate preference for pairwork.
If you instead form a pair from any combination of these three students, it will work more
efficiently both in terms of involvement and opportunity to speak, intensity of practice and
maximising student talking time (STT). A and B would work fine, as would B and C. The only
problem combination would be A and C but, with no-one else in the group and the rest
of the class were busy in pairs, A would have no choice but to work with C!
If you have an odd number of students, one pair can form a three, or the extra student can
play teacher and try to monitor the other side of the room from you. Be sure to choose
different threes or monitors each time so various students get a turn. Or, you can form a pair
yourself. In this case, count your pairs in words simultaneously from both outer edges of the
class to the middle, so you ending up forming a pair with the odd student somewhere near
the centre of the room, to avoid leaving you out on the edge of the class and so unable to
monitor the majority.
I tried pairwork but it doesnt work!
Many teachers have a go at pairwork activities, hear too much noise and mother tongue,
lose control and give up, returning to more traditional types of teaching. Students need to
be trained how to do pairwork, get used to, enjoy and trust it. Sell it to them and give it a
fair chance! Its well worth investing a bit of time explaining why its the most effective for-
mation, the weaknesses of the alternatives, and how to get the most from it. You could write
a simple one-page letter to them at the start of a course, explaining your methodology.
Make it your basic modus operandi for doing/checking activities to maximise practice and
give all an equal opportunity. Pairs can predict, write, read, compare and check answers
after each phase of a listening, find the answers to half the comprehension questions each
then share answers, practise speaking, test each other, indeed, do almost anything in (and
out of) class more efficiently together. Their doing so allows you in turn to do what teachers
do best: observe and decide what to do next! You can see/hear what each individual is thin-
king/has understood, not just the strongest students with the confidence to speak to you, and
decide where, how or how not to intervene/continue the lesson.
The six key ingredients of good pairwork
1. A (short) time limit and clear objective. Short bursts of pairwork, for 1-3 minutes are
most effective, just giving students time enough to do the task and then return their
attention to you, the audio, text or whatever (even if only for a few seconds), before
returning to another short burst again. And so on. Most pairwork goes wrong either
because its allowed to go on for too long and so starts to drift/lose pace as students
arent hurried or dont know what their objective is, or because they feel their efforts are
wasted because no-one worthwhile is listening (i.e. you, the teacher). As Oscar Wilde
said, The best time to leave a party is when youre having the most fun. Its generally
much better to stop early when some or most students have finished, rather than let it
go on for too long whilst you tap your feet waiting for the last few to do so.
2. Eye contact, not looking down at a book or photocopy but at each other. In monolin-
gual classes, its much easier for students to stay in English when they support each
other face to face, with gestures, encouraging smiles and so on.
3. They should be exchanging new/interesting information (some kind of information

gap), not telling each other things that both of them already know perfectly well.
4. Space to express your own personality/personalise. For example, to make a joke, say
something in Spanish, skip anything too boring, etc. Playing at being English in pairs
is a very odd, almost laughable activity, and if it all gets to serious or strict, particu-
larly in monolingual classes, then it tends to meet with much more resistance, even
disdain.
5. An active role for the listener as well as the speaker. Its much easier to speak badly
than to know how to listen and deal with badly spoken language coming at you! Lis-
teners as well as speakers need clear behavioural instructions as to what their role is.
Should I note problems, react to or try to give mistakes, interrupt give feedback, wait
till my partner has finished, or what?
6. Supportive monitoring from teacher (see below).
For further ideas on pairwork, see my two articles in English Teaching Professional magazi-
ne, referenced below.
Task 5
In your Practicum, or when you next observe a class, pay close attention to the use of pairwork
and write short answers to the following questions:
Are all six ingredients above really in place?
If not, why? How might it have been improved?
When else might you, or the teacher you are observing, have used pairwork?
Monitor well
Im often surprised when observing more experienced teachers to see that so many could
still significantly improve their monitoring skills, especially when students are working in
pairs or groups. The eight purposes of monitoring are to:
1. Assess learners performance on tasks or more generally on their language pro-
gress/recent skills development.
2. Be able to decide what to do next (revise, re-explain, go on, give up!).
3. Ensure theyre on-task, in English and working hard, achieving as much as they can
from their time invested in the activity.
4. Maintain discipline where necessary, and enthusiasm both for the activity and for pair-
work itself.
5. Listen for errors and equally, for good performance.
6. Give ourselves opportunities to micro-teach individuals or pairs who need additional help.
7. Add in extra words/phrases/tips as they might need them.
8. Provide appropriate feedback and correction, either during or after the activity.
However, many teachers make the following mistakes:

Stand so close that they overshadow or interrupt rather than purely witness and take
note.
Make themselves too available to students so that they talk to the teacher rather than
a partner.
Are too far away from students, only vaguely looking and listening to whats going on,
making it hard for them to believe that theyre actually being listened to at all.
To avoid problems like this, you need to:

1. Monitor hard to include as many students as you can. In larger classes, you need to
learn to tune into several conversations at once, or at least appear to.
2. Initially stay central while you sweep the class with your eyes to check all are on-task,
not immediately wander off to the right or left.
3. Move around as/if necessary, but stay discreetly available, using eyes and ears in dif-
ferent directions to really (appear to) be listening. Unobtrusive monitoring is often best
achieved from behind learners, especially when theyre writing, so move chairs away
from the walls to facilitate this.
4. Avoid dwarfing students (especially if youre tall or wearing high heels) by sitting on a
chair (preferably one with wheels so you can whiz around the class!), kneeling or
squatting, so your eyes are at about the same level as theirs.
5. Avoid spending too much time with one individual, pair or group, and ensure that all
learners feel monitored. Especially in larger classes, train learners to self-monitor,
i.e. note down any questions to be asked at the end of the activity.
6. Take notes or intervene quietly as necessary. As long as it looks as if youre monito-
ring and preparing to give some useful feedback, then at least they will think youre
listening. Like Venice, the faade of monitoring is almost as important as the act itself!
Task 6
In your Practicum, or when you next observe a class, pay close attention to how the teacher mo-
nitors and write short answers to the following questions:
Which of the eight purposes for monitoring do you notice?
Are steps 1-6 above followed?
Does the teachers monitoring mainly help or hinder fluent, speedy, intensive pairwork?
How might it have been done better?
Use mother tongue intelligently
Imagine two Spanish-speaking students are in pairs, doing a since or for gap-fill. Read their
conversation, then answer questions 1-3 immediately afterwards.
S1: A ver. La primera. Since o for?
S2: T qu crees?
S1: No s. No tengo ni idea.
S2: Pues ponemos since.
S1: OK. Es fifty-fifty, verdad?
S2: Pues s. Y el number two?
S1: Yo qu s!
S2: Qu tal for?
S1: Me da igual. Venga, ponemos for. Por qu no?
Task 7
Discuss the following questions with your colleagues:

How would you feel as the teacher if your students were working like this?
Would it put you off using pairwork in class?
How could you get them to speak more in English?
Comment
At first sight it may look and sound pretty awful but actually, of the 41 words, 8 are in En-
glish, which is nearly 20%! Admittedly its only the same few simple words, but what often
seems superficially annoying, even pointless, with closer scrutiny can often seem much less
bad, even positive, especially if its an early attempt at pairwork. As with most other areas
of language leaning, pairwork is a process, and thats what counts, as they learn to work to-
gether in English. Remember, the focus is on English, theyre processing English using some
and then, little by little, ever more English and, with training, help and appropriate langua-
ge input, this proportion can be significantly improved quite quickly. The aim of speaking
only English in monolingual pairwork is generally overambitious, idealistic, unreal and
even inappropriate. Mainly English would be a really significant achievement, of which
you and your students should all be proud.
Pupils coming up from primary school are well versed in pairwork because they do it all the
time but, ironically, it often stops in secondary school because the teachers think its too
noisy, or because students slip into Spanish. Even two words in English is better than nothing
at all. Language learning takes a long time. Frankly, sometimes its best just to get on with
it, and not worry too much about small details like a few words in L1.
Dont simply try to police the students output. Every time you say No Spanish only English!
think what that really means. Whos likely to respond? It wont be the shy, the reluctant or even
the middle-level students, all of whom know that others in the class can do it better than them.
They will look down and wait. So, once again, this inevitably feeds the strong at the expense
of the weak as theyre the only ones likely to operate exclusively in English. If you ask them
instead in pairs, to tell each other the answer to your question or prompt, everybody is equal.
You may get 80% Spanish but at least all are active, processing English and choosing
individually whether they want to respond in English, Spanish, or a combination of the two,
rather than being forced into silence by only being able to choose English. Be happy for small
mercies: 20% English is a great result!
In addition, try to distinguish between laziness and lack of knowledge. If they arent using
English it might be because:
It is too hard for them.
They dont know how to express their ideas simply with the English they know.
They are too tired or unmotivated by this particular activity.
If youre hard on them when the task itself is the problem, this may well backfire.
Let them use L1 while you use L2. For example, feedback in L2 whenever they use L1. Ra-
ther than prohibit it dogmatically and thus hold back weaker or shyer students, its best to be
especially lenient about students using it when in closed pairs, e.g. to check what they have
to do, to compare what they understood from a listening, to confirm answers, etc. We should
generally expect a blending of languages in monolingual classrooms. Students will inevitably
mix languages on the way to greater fluency in English, so help them to enjoy it, whilst at the
shaping it by feeding in classroom language, the phrases they need to do more together in
English and so on. (See Seligson, 1997, for a Classroom Language Phrasebook). Eventually,
they will start to use more English. Set up tasks so that even if theyre using L1 to discuss
how theyre going to perform the task, the final output requires them to use English.
However, try not to allow them to get away with using L1 lazily, e.g. for what they can pa-
raphrase or express without any L1, in (broken) English, via gesture, mime, drawing or other
strategies. For many teachers, preventing L1 is like the finger in the dyke: once you let
the water start creeping in, the whole class will flood. But if students appreciate where
youre trying to take them, trust and respect you as a teacher, understand how they can help
themselves, and in particular are rewarded for their efforts through some form of conti-
nuous evaluation, this generally gets better and better with time.
Task 8
In your Practicum, notice every time students use:

- Only L1.
- A combination of L1 and English: e.g. Can you prestar me your goma?
ITry to work out why they arent using only English.
IConsider some of the factors mentioned above.
IHow important do you think this really is in the greater scheme of things?
Discuss your conclusions with your colleagues.
Pause often and elicit fairly
When considering how we should talk to a class many factors are important:
Clear audible English with a friendly, confident tone. Learning to use the full range of
your voice and appropriate intonation is vital (see Maley, 2000).
Careful choice of words, choosing e.g. continue (a cognate) rather than go on, at least
initially.
Avoiding excessive teacher talking time (the infamous TTT which most of us are ac-
cused of overdoing when we start out) in order to allow students to say as much as
possible, and so on. Both Scrivener (2005) and Harmer (2007) are good on this.
However, for me, the most important thing is pausing frequently to keep classes highly
interactive, with a good pace. Try to speak naturally, using contractions, but use pauses
(one heartbeat for a comma, three for a full stop) to chunk your language, and give them
time to take each bit in (or mentally translate if need be). You can really help students to
listen and keep up (or speak out if lost) by pausing often, for example to check/ask stu-
dents to recap or predict mid-anything, such as a listening or an explanation from you.
Good teaching is like table-tennis: each ping from the teacher should be met by one or
many pongs from the students. If its all ping and no pong, you havent got much of a
game, have you!
For example, introduce yourself but keep pausing for them to tell you the next word you are
going to say.
Hello, my names (pause for them to call out Paul), Paul and today Im (pause
for them to call out tired, going to, stupid, etc. ) wearing a pair of brown (pause for
them to call out trousers) trousers, etc.
Do this several times then, instead of calling out to the whole class, put them in pairs or threes
if you have a very large class) and make them whisper the next word youre going to say to each
other, both so they get used to working in pairs, but also to give them all an equal chance.
We need to elicit fairly too, and that means asking for smaller amounts from students. If a stu-
dent asks Whats the difference between lend money and borrow money?. Most teachers
would throw it back to the class to see if anybody could explain. To do so without translating
isnt easy, and only the stronger students would probably volunteer. If instead you say When
you lend money you give it. When you borrow money you (short pause) Finish the sen-
tence in pairs. All they have to say is take it, so the task becomes much smaller, simpler and
better cued, the strong cant shout out the answer and all have an equal chance.
So, dont always feed off the strong. Too much in language teaching is based on requiring
an immediate response, yes or no, true or false, instant gratification. Most students need a
bit more time to process and think before they can respond, especially at lower levels. Re-
gularly ask or field questions from them then say Dont tell me tell your partner! to give
everyone a chance to formulate an answer (or at least understand the question and think) in
pairs first. They compare, confirm or whisper the answer to a partner. before you take an
answer, and so the middle or weaker students may be more willing to offer an answer if their
partner has reached a similar conclusion. Pair-checking like this is one of the best ways
to allow everybody to be as involved as they can, or least want to be.
Here are a few more ways to equalise dominant students, and give the shyer, less-able or
slower students a better chance to respond to your elicitation.
Ask a question then

Give (ten) seconds thinking time, so more hands go up, and tell students to write ins-
tead of say the answers, to give them all more thinking time.
Say No more (girls). Lets have a (boy) this time, as a way to show them you want
others to answer.
Ask Somebody else?, plus a gentle restraining hand and a finger over mouth in the
Sh! gesture has a similar effect. Try using a remote control to pretend to turn off
over-keen students.
Simply nominate: No volunteers! You please (pointing to a quieter student). This
needs to be done with care, as it can terrify the really shy.
Count One-two-three! as a cue for all the class to call out the answer together.
Whether they do so or not is up to each of them, i.e. their choice, not yours.
Building this sort of levelling elicitation into much of your teaching will prevent the strong
from dominating and help democratise your classroom.
Task 9
Record your next Practicum class:

As you work try to get students to pong after each of your short pings, i.e. respond to
much shorter bursts from you.
As soon as you find yourself talking for as much as a minute, pause at an appropriate mo-
ment and see if they can predict (in pairs) what youre going to say next, or answer a sim-
ple question / piece of elicitation in pairs.
Do this repeatedly and see what happens.
It can help you to pause better, at appropriate moments, ask shorter questions, and avoid
excessively long explanations.
Listen to the recording and summarise your observations.
Exemplify at least as much as you instruct and avoid echo
Two further areas of teacher talk that deserve their own separate section are instructions and
echo, as teachers often struggle with both.
Here are five simple tips on giving instructions:

1. Instructions should, of course, be clear, concise, complete (the 3Cs). Try to give only
one piece of information in each phrase or sentence.
2. Accompany instructions with as much visual help as possible: gestures, illustrations,
appropriate pauses to help you chunk your words and, most importantly, at least one
example. Its vital to exemplify at least as much as you instruct.
3. A fourth C check. Instructions should be checked too. Not by asking Do you un-
derstand? or OK?, but by concept checking and getting concrete evidence from le-
arners.
For example, in any exercise, use a combination of the following:
Do the first one/step with them.
Have them do it in open pairs, across the class.
Use yes/no questions to check they know what to do: Are you going to speak or
write?.
Elicit any questions or problems they may have before starting.
Sweep the class with your eyes before you begin to monitor.
4. Its sometimes a good idea (at higher levels where they have the language to do so ea-
sily) to get them to tell you what they are going to do first, as another check.
5. If you struggle with instructions, rehearse them with a partner on your course before
the class. they will usually help you reduce the amount youre going to say.
Echo
Its all too easy to repeat exactly what students have said, almost like a parrot, echoing everything
they say. For example, when checking answers or when they volunteer words during eliciting and
brainstorming. The more you do this, the less they will listen to each other simply because they
dont have to. Personally, I have trained myself only to use echo for errors, so when they hear
me repeating something they have said, pupils know its because theres an error and I want them
to correct it. I will often place emphasis on the part which is wrong to help them notice more,
with rising intonation too. They went AT the beach?, You GO there yesterday?. But thats the
only time I will echo what they say, except perhaps when repeating their names when I first hear
them for initial bonding: Liliana? Hmm. Thats a nice name. The more purposes you choose to
use echo for (because they said it too quietly, some werent listening, to speed things up, etc.), the
more confusing it gets, as students wont immediately know why youre saying it at all.
To avoid echo
1. Instead of getting close to students when they speak to you or ask a question, walk back, away
from them, cupping your hands behind your ear, to force them to speak louder, so all the class
can hear. Break eye contact with them, looking instead at the rest of the class to see if they can
hear and are listening in order to help the speaker recognise that theyre talking to the group, not
just to you. Say Pardon? and make them say it again (and again). Repeat this as necessary, so
they get used to what youre doing and to speaking to each other in English across the class.
2. Sometimes ask the class What did (Maria) just say?. Tell your partner, to see how
many of them heard and took in Marias words. If they didnt, get Maria to say it again,
to encourage her to turn, look at and speak to the rest of the class.
3. Work hard to resist echo by noticing when you do and dont do it. Ask yourself each
time Why did I say that? Was it necessary? Who was I talking to? The speaker, the
class or myself?. You can train yourself not to echo using the task below.
Task 10
In your Practicum, make an audio recording of yourself (on your phone or a small recorder), by
turning on the recorder just before you begin to give instructions or check answers to a book exer-
cise, homework, etc. You can do this quite discreetly, so students arent aware of this.
After the class, listen and count the number of times you echo. Do this in groups with your co-
lleagues to get their feedback.
Ask yourself the questions in Point 3 above. Which of the echoes could you have avoided and how?
Summarise your conclusions.
Routines are important but so is variety
Particularly with younger learners, simple classroom routines really do help you start and
end lessons easily and manage tidily. There are far fewer choices and the syllabus tends
to be less ambitious or academic. However, older students require a lot more variety, and
drudgery/monotony is far more likely, particularly as motivation can often be quite low
with teenagers. A simple example is homework. If you always correct it at the start of
class, its both a dull start and those that dont do it will quickly learn to come late to
avoid a telling off.
To help students both attend and remain interested/awake, its imperative to change so-
mething, however small, and to change often. There are scores of simple little things you
can change subtly, to re-energise the class and add pace. For example, every (three to
five) minutes:
Move yourself, from sitting behind the desk to walking round the class to teaching
from the back or side of the room, so they have to turn around and think differently.
Students can move their minds/focus/eyes/senses by changing skills mid-exercise,
from speaking to writing, from words to pictures, from listening to the CD to listening
to you and then back again, from book to board, opening and closing their eyes, hol-
ding their ears while listening, and so on.
They can move their necks/bodies by changing partners, seats, raising their hands,
standing to mingle or standing to shout out a phrase or correct answer, then sitting
down again.
A static, vegetating class is unlikely to go as far as they can. Many discipline problems are
rooted in excess monotony, lack of variety or suppressed energy. We need to generate clas-
ses which appeal to all the senses and to all the different intelligences.
One example should suffice to get you thinking of other possibilities. If you have a standard
read the text and answer five comprehension questions activity, try doing it like this, wri-
ting these instruction on the board:
Q1 alone.
Q2 & Q3 in pairs.
Q4 standing up in pairs.
Q5 sitting down in pairs.
And have them do it thus: Question 1 they answer alone; Questions 2 and 3 they do in pairs;
they stand up and continue the exercise for Question 4, just to get some oxygen in their
brains; then they sit down to complete Question 5. All the class will be aware who is on
which question, there will be a few more giggles, and it can even become a bit of a race!
In the middle of any skills or language exercise you can always change something to help
them break it up and get to the end with more energy. If you dont, whose fault is it that they
didnt enjoy the exercise as much as they could have done?
To conclude, its generally advisable to try to involve students in your pedagogy by letting
them know what your managerial intentions are, why youre doing crazy things like this,
and giving them choices to respond to. By teaching in different ways on different days and
inviting comments, you should certainly get a better response. Youll certainly learn more
about teaching yourself. And, if learning is your objective, what have you got to lose?
Task 11
Look through your plan for your next Practicum class:

Count the number of physical, partnership changes there are going to be. Ensure there is
some small physical or mental change every three minutes.
If there isnt, think of a few small tweaks you can make and adjust your lesson plan.
Keep trying to improve your timing
Timing activities and classes is at best an educated guess, because were dealing with peo-
ple. Even very experienced teachers still get their time guesstimates about the likely dura-
tion of activities substantially wrong. How long an activity takes will always depend on so
many variables: day, time, class size, mood, memory, motivation, the whole spectrum of
human variables.
When we do mis-plan timing, or change our plans mid-lesson, cutting short, abandoning,
re-directing or lengthening activities, we shouldnt necessarily feel guilty. Not at all. After
all, its always to make things better not worse! Were merely adapting our plans on the spot
to that days reality. So the myth that we should stick to our plans or planned timing is mis-
guided. Poor guesses regarding timing arent necessarily always a bad thing, particularly if
it results in a better or more appropriate class. However, the key point is that we have to
learn from these miscalculations in order to:
Get better at timing.
Produce more accurate plans.
Avoid excess preparation or overlong lessons where you never get to the final cli-
max youd planned as the last activity., and most importantly, and
And, most importantly of all, to learn to tailor activities to the class and their needs ra-
ther than vice versa.
It isnt an easy thing to improve, as many more experienced teachers will confirm. Howe-
ver, the best and simplest way to improve your timing is:
1. To keep guessing how long each stage and activity will take before you do them.
2. Ensure you note the time when you begin and end them.
3. Reflect afterwards on how long it actually took.
4. Work out why it may have taken more (or less, but its usually more) time than you thought.
Then, when you use the activity or material again, build into your planned timing what you
learnt the last time you did it. Ask other teachers too how long they think things will take to
share ideas on shortcutting.
A final point worth remembering, as in so much else in teaching, is that its best to share res-
ponsibility with your students. Set and vocalise time limits to students so they too are aware
of how much (or how little) time they have for any activity and so should try to work ap-
propriately, usually with greater urgency. This will inevitably give you additional feedback.
Each time they ask for Just two more minutes when you thought they would have finis-
hed, youll get the ongoing feedback you need. This is particularly important for example
when reading, where you may want them to skim or scan quickly but give them too long so
they read painfully, word by word.
Task 12
Estimate the timing for each activity in your next Practicum.

Teach the class, making a note of the real time each one took.
Reflect on how accurate your guesses were, any distortion and the reasons why. Tick any
of the reasons below and add any other factors.
Students questions required additional explanations or practice.
Students needed more time to complete an activity, or preferred to do an activity in plenary
format/speaking rather than smaller groups/writing.
A natural digression occurred: unexpected errors, a funny incident, an interesting and rele-
vant discussion emerged, an anecdote came to mind, etc.
You suddenly had a better idea on the spot.
You realised your students could handle a further challenge, so you presented or asked for
more than you originally intended, e.g. additional questions or tasks.
Students hadnt done their homework or had forgotten something you had assumed.
Some students took far too long.
Others?
Then, if possible, teach the lesson again, preferably with an observer there to give you a se-
cond opinion, and see what changes the second time.
Dont be a dinosaur like me!
A final thought. Try not to get trapped doing things you hadnt planned or which are un-
sound pedagogically just because students start to do them, for example reading aloud text-
book questions, each student in turn answering every single question right round the class,
or each having to take their turn writing on the (interactive) board, waiting for even the slo-
west students to finish at the expense of the others or equally, being pulled along too fast by
the stronger students, and so on. Interrupt such activities and force them to do it your way.
Once they see and understand a better or more democratic alternative, they should soon
abandon these habits. Dont be a dinosaur just because you were once dinosaured your-
self at school!
Remember what Galileo said: You cannot teach a person anything; you can only help them
find it within themself. Our management techniques should aim to provide all students with
plenty of (equal) opportunities, options and activities to help themselves. Our pedagogical
choices should be tailored to making the most efficient use of class time for each student to
practice and learn as much as they can within a group situation. Good luck youll need it!
FURTHER READING
Most recommended titles below are self-explanatory.
Books
ATKINSON, D. (1993). Teaching Monolingual Classes. Harlow: Longman.
CROSS, D. (1995). Large Classes in Action. New York, NY: Prentice Hall.
DELLER, S. & RINVOLUCRI, M. (2002). Using the Mother Tongue. Peaslake: DELTA Publis-
hing.
In typical Rinvolucri style, the authors turn the issue on its head, with some intriguing ideas for
judiciously exploiting the mother tongue. Id recommend almost any book by Mario Rinvolu-
cri to teachers looking for new, practical ideas.
DRNYEI, Z. (2001). Motivational Strategies in the Language Classroom. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.
Good ideas on often neglected areas like presence, and ways to motivate.
GOWER & WALTERS. (1995). Teaching Practice Handbook. London: Heinemann.

Another sound, introductory manual.
HADFIELD, J. (1992). Classroom Dynamics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
HESS, N. (2001). Teaching Large Multi-Level Classes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
MCMANUS, M. (1995). Troublesome Behaviour in the Classroom (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
OLSEN, J. & COOPER, P. (2003). Dealing with Disruptive Students. London: Routledge.
PRODROMOU, L. & CLANDFIELD, L. (2007). Dealing with Difficulties. Peaslake: DELTA

Publishing.
Lots of excellent practical ideas for common problems like discipline and mixed ability.

A few ideas on justifiable uses of the mother tongue, simple speaking activities and oral
homework.
TICE, J. (1997). The Mixed Ability Class. London: Richmond.
UR, P. (1996). A Course in Language Teaching: Practice and Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Another excellent manual for new teachers.
Journals
SELIGSON, P. (1999). Two heads are better than one. English Teaching Professional, 11, 16-18.
(2001). Personalisation and pairwork. English Teaching Professional, 18, 18-20.

Both articles offer practical suggestions for implementing a range of pairwork activities.
Websites
There are also a lot of good ideas on:
British Councils Teaching English website.
www.teachingenglish.org.uk
Just type in class management or google ELT classroom management.
REFERENCES
Harmer and Scrivener are the two classic manuals for new teachers both rich, full and prac-
tical introductions to teaching EFL.
HARMER, J. (2007). The Practice of English Language Teaching (3rd ed.). Harlow: Pearson.
MALEY, A. (2000). The Language Teacher's Voice. London: Macmillan Heinemann.
SCRIVENER, J. (2005). Learning Teaching. London: Macmillan Heinemann.
UNDERWOOD, M. (1987). Effective Class Management. London: Longman.
ZIMMERMAN, M. (1989). The nervous system in the context of information theory. In R.F.
Schmidt & G. Thews (eds.), Human Physiology (pp. 166-173). Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
Interior mast2 copia:Layout 2 21/10/10 11:42 Pgina 29
Coleccin Formacin del Profesorado. Educacin Secundaria

Director: Csar Coll
1. Volmenes correspondientes al mdulo genrico y al prcticum
VOL. I Desarrollo, aprendizaje y enseanza en la educacin secundaria

Coordinador: Csar Coll
VOL. II Procesos y contextos educativos: ensear en las instituciones de educacin secundaria
Coordinador: Francisco Imbernn
VOL. III Sociologa de la educacin secundaria
Coordinador: Rafael Feito
VOL. IV Aprender a ensear en la prctica: procesos de innovacin y prcticas de formacin
en la educacin secundaria
Coordinador: ngel Prez Gmez
Volmenes correspondientes al mdulo especfico
2. Biologa y Geologa
Coordinador: Pedro Caal
VOL. I Biologa y Geologa. Complementos de formacin disciplinar
VOL. II Didctica de la Biologa y la Geologa
VOL. III Biologa y Geologa. Investigacin, innovacin y buenas prcticas
3. Dibujo: Artes plsticas y visuales

Coordinadores: Francisco Esquinas y Mercedes Snchez
VOL. I Dibujo: Artes plsticas y visuales. Complementos de formacin disciplinar
VOL. II Didctica del Dibujo: Artes plsticas y visuales
VOL. III Dibujo: Artes plsticas y visuales. Investigacin, innovacin y buenas prcticas
4. Educacin fsica
Coordinadores: Carlos Gonzlez Arvalo y Teresa Lleix Arribas
VOL. I Educacin fsica. Complementos de formacin disciplinar
VOL. II Didctica de la Educacin fsica
VOL. III Educacin fsica. Investigacin, innovacin y buenas prcticas
5. Fsica y Qumica
Coordinador: Aureli Caamao
VOL. I Fsica y Qumica. Complementos de formacin disciplinar
VOL. II Didctica de la Fsica y la Qumica
VOL. III Fsica y Qumica. Investigacin, innovacin y buenas prcticas
6. Filosofa
Coordinadores: Luis Mara Cifuentes y Jos Mara Gutirrez
VOL. I Filosofa. Complementos de formacin disciplinar
VOL. II Didctica de la Filosofa
VOL. III Filosofa. Investigacin, innovacin y buenas prcticas
7. Francs
Coordinadora: Carmen Guilln
VOL. I Francs. Complementos de formacin disciplinar
VOL. II Didctica del Francs
VOL. III Francs. Investigacin, innovacin y buenas prcticas
8. Geografa e Historia
Coordinador: Joaquim Prats
VOL. I Geografa e Historia. Complementos de formacin disciplinar
VOL. II Didctica de la Geografa y la Historia
VOL. III Geografa e Historia. Investigacin, innovacin y buenas prcticas
9. Ingls
Coordinadora: Susan House
VOL. I. Ingls. Complementos de formacin disciplinar
VOL. II Didctica del Ingls
VOL. III Ingls. Investigacin, innovacin y buenas prcticas
10. Lengua castellana y Literatura

Coordinadora: Uri Ruiz
VOL. I Lengua castellana y Literatura. Complementos de formacin disciplinar
VOL. II Didctica de la Lengua castellana y la Literatura
VOL. III Lengua castellana y Literatura. Investigacin, innovacin y buenas prcticas
11. Llengua catalana i Literatura

Coordinadora: Anna Camps
VOL. I Llengua catalana i Literatura. Complements de formaci disciplinria
VOL. II Didctica de la Llengua catalana i la Literatura
VOL. III Llengua catalana i Literatura. Investigaci, innovaci i bones prctiques
12. Matemticas
Coordinador: Jess Mara Goi
VOL. I Matemticas. Complementos de formacin disciplinar
VOL. II Didctica de las Matemticas
VOL. III Matemticas. Investigacin, innovacin y buenas prcticas
13. Msica
Coordinadora: Andrea Girldez
VOL. I Msica. Complementos de formacin disciplinar
VOL. II Didctica de la Msica
VOL. III Msica. Investigacin, innovacin y buenas prcticas
14. Tecnologa
Coordinador: David Cervera
VOL. I Tecnologa. Complementos de formacin disciplinar
VOL. II Didctica de la Tecnologa
VOL. III Tecnologa. Investigacin, innovacin y buenas prcticas
15. Orientacin educativa

VOL. I Orientacin educativa. Modelos y estrategias de intervencin
Coordinadoras: Elena Martn e Isabel Sol
VOL. II Orientacin educativa. Atencin a la diversidad y educacin inclusiva
Coordinadoras: Elena Martn y Teresa Mauri
VOL. III Orientacin educativa. Procesos de innovacin y mejora de la enseanza
Coordinadores: Elena Martn y Javier Onrubia

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qxp:Layout 2 2/6/11 11:42 Pgina 1

FORMACIN DEL PROFESORADO. EDUCACIN SECUNDARIA

Susan House (coord.)

Formacin del Profesorado. Educacin Secundaria

Editorial GRA, de IRIF, S.L.

1. edicin: junio 2011

Diseo: Maria Tortajada

2. Choosing and Developing Classroom Material, Mike Downie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

4. Developing Productive and Receptive Skills in the EFL Classroom,

5. Vocabulary Instruction in Secondary Schools, Karina Vidal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

6. Getting Students Interested in Pronunciation: an Interview with Paul Seligson,

7. Effective Grammar Teaching, Jorge Bascn and Beatriz Calle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

8. Classroom Management, Paul Seligson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

Manage your board well. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

tigacin, innovacin y buenas prcticas. Teacher Development. It is also extremely important

1. TRANSFORMING THE CURRICULUM INTO

Organisation of the syllabus

As such, communicative competence must be considered an essential organising principle

1. Design activities for competencias bsicas:

2. Analysis of the CEFR:

Organisation of the syllabus

However, by adopting a communicative approach, a syntactical organisation of the syllabus

Related to students everyday experiences.

Task 2 Discussion: features of a syllabus for English language learning

Task 3 Analysis of classroom materials: grammar syllabus

Figure 1. Structure of a unit

Competencias bsicas Crosscultural focus

1. Planning a content-related unit of work.

2. Analysis of classroom materials: unit design.

From units to lessons

Figure 2. Features used in lesson planning

Task 5 Designing a thematically based lesson

The shape of a lesson

Task 6 Identifying student outcomes

For communication to take place a message, a piece of information or an opinion has to be

The interactive communicative mode, however, is central to language development. Inter-

In short, planning classroom activities consists of engineering communicative situations in the

1. Analysis of classroom materials: linguistic skills and activity types:

2. Review of a unit of work:

Common problems with classroom activities

Assignment 1 A report on WebQuests and language learning

WebQuests are used increasingly in secondary-school project-type activities. Research some of

Choose one to write a report on. Consider the following questions:

Assignment 3 Design a complete unit of work

Choose and justify a theme for a unit of work.

2. CHOOSING AND DEVELOPING CLASSROOM

Choosing and changing materials

Choosing and changing materials

CHOOSING AND DEVELOPING CLASSROOM MATERIAL 33

Present your report to your colleagues.

CHOOSING AND DEVELOPING CLASSROOM MATERIAL 35

Now use your answers to create your own checklist.

What level am I teaching?

CHOOSING AND DEVELOPING CLASSROOM MATERIAL 37

Table 1. Comparison of exams in ALTE

Level 4 C1 6.5 - 7 CAE Higher . 701 - 236 -

Intermediate. 910 275

Level 3 B2 5-6 FCE Intermediate. 541 - 176 -

Level 2 B1 3.5 - 4.5 PET - 381 - 126 -

Level 1 A2 3 KET Elementary. 246 - 96 -

Breakthrough A1 1-2 - Basic. - -

Write a report comparing the three modes of assessment.

What are the official requirements?