Teaching English as a Foreign Language for Dummies (48 page)

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Dragging the pen across the page helps to keep up forward momentum and instead of constantly rereading sentences

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They can use the pen to underline key words.

Usually answers are in order in the text so it shouldn’t be necessary to keep going back to the beginning.

When you tackle reading tasks in class, help students by highlighting new vocabulary but encourage them to guess the meaning instead of always resorting to the dictionary. You should also look at the structure of the text in terms of grammar, layout and expressions which link ideas together.

The questions for Reading exams usually involve:

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Choosing headings for paragraphs or parts of a text

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Classifying
:
This involves putting information into appropriate groups or under the right headings.

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Completing a table or flow-chart

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Completing notes: Students fill in the gaps on an incomplete set of notes based on a reading or listening text.

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Completing sentences

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Identifying the views or claims of the writer

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Locating information

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Matching: These questions usually involve matching a heading to a paragraph or a character in a text to activities/attitudes associated with them.

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Summarising: Students need to be able to get the gist of and rephrase information in just a few words.

Speaking in exams

In most speaking exams the examiner is looking for intelligible pronunciation, a range of grammar, and vocabulary appropriate for the level and task.

Some students try to memorise a speech or at least set answers. However this doesn’t work because they end up sounding robotic and sometimes fail to answer the actual question.

Communication between the candidate(s) and the examiner should be as relaxed and natural as possible. Some tips your students can follow to achieve this are:

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Take your time.
It’s no problem to pause for breath before answering. In fact you’re more likely to mix up your grammar if you rush.

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Practise speaking on the day of the exam.
If you can have a practise session with your teacher on before the exam, this helps, but you can at least use English before entering the exam room to get ‘tuned in’.

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Relax yourself by smiling and using the names of the people with
you.
Sometimes two or three candidates take an exam at once. Use their names if they are easy to remember and listen out for the examiner’s name too.

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Learn what to say if you don’t understand or you need to hear something
again.
There are very polite and realistic expressions such as, ‘I‘m terribly sorry but I didn’t catch that’ or ‘Could you possibly rephrase that for me?’(this isn’t always possible but when the request is made in good English you are unlikely to be marked down for asking).

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Realise that the examiner can’t give anything away.
The examiner can’t let students know how well they have done or put words into their mouths. So, if students know what to expect, they won’t be put off by the lack of commendation from the examiner.

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Know how to waffle a bit.
Make sure that you know how to buy thinking time with expressions like, ‘That’s a good question. Let’s see…’

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Listening in exams

While listening in exams students have to:

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Circle or tick correct information.

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Complete multiple choice questions.

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Complete multiple matching questions where there are several answers and several categories.

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Complete sentences and other information using no more than three words or numbers.

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Fill in a table.

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Get the gist by stating what the overall purpose of a text is even though it may not be stated explicitly.

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Label a diagram.

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Pinpoint details.

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Write short answers.

Some suggestions for preparing are:

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Tune your ears by practicing English on the same day before the exam.

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Get used to hearing different accents because you never know what kind of voices might be used on the recording. You can do this by practising with authentic materials such as radio broadcasts.

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Read all the questions first so you know what you are listening out for and predict the kind of information required – a name, a place or a number, for example.

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Try to relax but stay focussed. Even if something happens around you, don’t lose your concentration.

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Don’t get bogged down. If you don’t know the answer to one question, just move on. It isn’t worth missing the next answer and you can always go back and guess the answer later.

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If you can’t hear properly, speak to the examiner immediately. If you have a choice of exam location, choose the one where they use headphones.

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Teaching Exam Classes

Most exam classes involve practising actual exam questions from past papers and analysing what went well or badly. There is also a need for general training in grammar, vocabulary, text structure and overall exam techniques.

The first thing to do is get hold of up-to-date information from the examining board on what the exam consists of. Then sit down and take the exam yourself. Don’t just answer the questions, make notes on how you found the answer or structured your argument. There is always a reason why one answer is better than another and it’s your job to explain it. Did you find synonyms or use a process of elimination, for example?

Find examples of good written texts by students and analyse what makes them successful. Do the same for poor attempts.

Organising your course

After you know what the exam is like, find some course materials. You need a book of past papers or typical exam questions and another book which helps students build up their skills. Ideally students should have their own copies of the book(s) to save you doing photocopies every day and to encourage self-study. Don’t worry too much about students looking ahead and cheating, after all they are only cheating themselves. You can also draw on authentic materials from the real world to liven things up and help students to find their own learning resources. So, instead of a text from the course book, use a newspaper article or extract from a popular novel.

Work out how much preparation time is available before the exam and organise the course syllabus accordingly. Students should have a full mock exam during the course, about three quarters of the way through so there is time to put a few things right. Some teachers set a full mock at the beginning of the course so students know what they are aiming for but this can be intimidating. You should definitely go through all parts of the exam though.

For the Speaking test, see if you can get a colleague to pose as an examiner as this feels more realistic than when you do it.

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Your students must be prepared to do homework. If you plan your lessons carefully you can usually incorporate some of the marking into the lesson time without short changing the class. So for example, if the exam includes a listening or reading component, you can set students a timed exercise and mark work while they do it. Use a marking correction code and get your class to redo their work. (Chapter 7 lists suggested marking codes.) Remain upbeat and optimistic even if the students are not quite there yet. Let them know if there doesn’t seem to be much point enrolling for the exam this time and focus on more appropriate timing. If enrolment isn’t optional you can focus on the skills the students will gain by taking it. And beware of the over confident students who rely on being clever rather than practising their techniques. They sometimes fail.

Using English exam papers: Teaching

what sounds ‘English’

The Use of English paper in Cambridge exams is probably the most difficult to teach. Even if an exam doesn’t contain a paper with this name, there is bound to a number of questions based on the same principles. The idea is for students to demonstrate whether they have good overall knowledge of the language and the familiarity to know what sounds correct.

The best way to test this kind of knowledge initially is by using a cloze test.

This means that you delete words from an appropriate reading text at regular intervals, perhaps every eighth word, and ask students to complete it. By doing this you take in all parts of speech and get an immediate impression of your students’ abilities. From this kind of assessment you may discover that your students have a particular area where they need more study – idioms and prepositions often fall into this category – but on the other hand you could opt for a more comprehensive training regime. This can include:

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Synonyms:
Highlight
synonyms
(words that mean the same as other words) all the time. You can do this during reading lessons if you decide to dissect the text, and in addition, do a synonym brainstorming activity before a writing task so that the students are less likely to repeat themselves. As a stand alone activity you can set matching tasks for synonymous pairs or ask the class to find the odd one out which is not a synonym.

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Rephrasing:
This is related to the use of synonyms and also
syntax,
or how words in a sentence fit together. As a teacher, your own definitions should include examples of rephrasing so that students become aware of alternative ways of expressing things. A typical rephrasing task is like this one:

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Complete the second sentence so that it has the same meaning as the first one. You must use the words in parentheses.

I won’t come to the barbecue if it rains. (unless)

I…….…………………………...it

rains.

Teach grammar rules so that students can more easily work things out for themselves.

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Preposition agreement:
Choosing the right preposition is pretty difficult because there aren’t always rules to follow, so highlight which preposition goes with which verb or other part of speech.

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Collocations and chunks of vocabulary:
Sometimes there is no particular rule about which words go together, so you just have to teach a whole phrase at once and highlight to students that those words fit together in a particular way.

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Identify part of speech:
In a
cloze test,
one where you have to fill in the gaps, you can decide whether a preposition or adjective or other part of speech is missing to help guess the answer.

Read the sentence and think of the word which best fits the space.

He would often……
visit
……….the forest.

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Prefixes and suffixes:
Once students know which part of speech they need, it’s easier to manipulate a base word by adding to it. Here’s an example.

Use the word given in capitals to make a new word which fits in the space.At the computer company, all the ……
programmers
……….. take their break at 1pm.

PROGRAMME

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Dictionary usage:
Train students to use dictionaries efficiently. They are a tremendous source of information so if students read more of the entry for a particular word, they will learn about all the associated parts of speech and synonyms too.

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Editing:
Students should be used to editing their own work from your correction code. However, they often have to apply grammar rules to eliminate words from a text in exams. For this reason, always try to explain why a sentence is incorrect.

If a line has a word in it which is incorrect, write that word in the space provided.

1)

Even though my car it was driving smoothly, I took it to the mechanic.

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Chapter 22

Distinguishing Monolingual and

Multi-lingual Classes

In This Chapter

▶ Handling classes in which everyone speaks the same language

▶ Teaching multi-lingual classes

▶ Comparing two teaching situations – at home and abroad

English is English wherever you go but the nature of classes varies tremendously. In this chapter I tell you about learning environments at home and abroad and give you some tips on handling similar and diverse students.

Speaking the Same: Monolingual Classes

In the majority of EFL courses, all the students speak the same native language. These usually run in the students’ home land. These classes tend to be larger in size than multi-lingual groups and the students are quite often from the same background and age group as well.

Predicting errors

The advantage of teaching monolingual classes is you can fairly easily predict problem areas, or
L1 interference
.
L1
means first language – mother tongue, in other words.
L2
is a second or foreign language
.

Most people who speak another language have an accent which reveals where they’re from and usually make mistakes typical of anyone from the same language group. Their mother tongue influences pronunciation, structure and vocabulary. The good news is that because all the students have the same problems it’s easier to predict what could go wrong.

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Pronunciation errors