LESSON 1.

SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION THEORIES

Ever since different languages have existed and ever since we have had a historical memory,
people have felt the need to acquire languages. Speaking more languages opens doors for
cultural exchange, commercial transactions, travelling, communicating and better global
understanding.

Theories about how we learn and teach languages have been produced all around the world and
now we have some streams and approaches that are widely accepted and systemised.
This unit is devoted to the main theories and methods that have influenced language teaching in
general and English teaching in particular. There are of course many more methods and
approaches that have been developed by teachers and researchers lately within the specific
context of a particular school or community. As language teaching has been in continuous
evolution, theories and approaches are still being implemented and we learn about new ones
every single day. Here we have made a selection of the major ones and we have added our own
approach to English teaching and learning.

Now is the moment to encourage all future teachers to be very critical and curious. The more you
evolve in your teaching career, the more you will question methods, approaches and practices.
Do not lose the critical analysis in everything you do; no matter how good you become, there is
always room for improvement.

TEFL BASICS. TERMONOLOGY AND JARGON

As professional teachers we have to be used to the jargon used in our profession and learn to
interpret the specific TEFL terminology.

We differentiate on one hand the language that you use with your students, which we’ve called
‘classroom language’ and the one that you use when talking to colleagues or consulting
professional literature and teaching documents. Thus, the classroom language section will
show you some commonly used phrases and formulas in the classroom whereas the TEFL basic
terminology is targeted at understanding specific linguistic text and interprofessional jargon.

Classroom language

The way we communicate with our students in the classroom has nothing to do with the way we
do it outside the classroom. Outside the classroom we usually apply courtesy formulas targeted
at greeting, small talk and light hearted topics.

Inside the classroom though we are more focused on giving instructions and explanations and
guiding the students towards using a particular structure or vocabulary. This is known as teacher
talk.
Let’s see some commonly used phrases in the classroom for easy instructions and explanations.
Remember, at low levels, the more we repeat, the easier the students follow your guidance. And
no matter what you say, never forget your manners and mind your tone of voice; it has to be kind
and respectful.

DON’T FORGET!

Specific teacher talk is especially important for low levels: beginners and elementary level
students or S1 and P2 according to the Oxbridge levels. For these students it is imperative that
you give short and clear instructions, selecting cognates (words from different languages that
have similar pronunciation) as much as possible.

Opening a class:
- Hello. How are you?
- Are you all right / ok?
- Nice to see you again!
- Good to see you again! b

Giving instructions for an activity:

- Please repeat (repeat is a cognate for Spanish and English).
- Please look at picture ...
- Can you repeat ... please?
- Can you read/write/listen to…
- Please tell me ...
- What do you see in this picture?
- What is there in this picture?

Concept checking:
- Can you please explain ...
- Can you repeat, please?
- Do you remember what ... is?
- What are the ....(e.g. colours, numbers, sense verbs...) in English?

Disciplining students:
- Please, be quiet!
- Please, don’t talk!
- Quiet, please!
- Pay attention, please!

Saying goodbye:
- See you tomorrow/next time/on Monday, Tuesday,...
- It’s time to go.
- Thank you very much.
- See you soon.

TEFL basic terminology

Acquisition: A term used to describe language being absorbed without conscious effort; i.e. the
way children pick up their mother tongue. Language acquisition is often contrasted with language
learning. The internalization of rules and formulas which are then used to communicate in the L2.
For some researchers, such as Krashen, 'acquisition' is unconscious and spontaneous, and
'learning' is conscious, developing through formal study.
Applied Linguistics: The study of the relationship between theory and practice. The main
emphasis is usually on language teaching, but can also be applied to translation, lexicology,
among others.
Authentic Language: Real or natural language, as used by native speakers of a language in
real-life contexts; not artificial or contrived for purposes of learning grammatical forms or
vocabulary.
Authentic Materials: Unscripted materials or those which have not been specially written for
classroom use, though they may have been edited. Examples include newspaper texts and TV
broadcasts.
Authentic Task: A task which involves learners in using language in a way that replicates its use
in the 'real world' outside the language classroom. Filling in blanks, changing verbs from the
simple past to the simple present and completing substitution tables are, therefore, not authentic
tasks. Examples of authentic tasks would be answering a letter addressed to the learner, arguing
a particular point of view and comparing various holiday brochures in order to decide where to go
for a holiday: See pedagogic task.
Authentic Text: A text which is not written or spoken for language teaching purposes. A
newspaper article, a rock song, a novel, a radio interview and a traditional fairy tale are examples
of authentic texts. A story written to exemplify the use of reported speech, a dialogue scripted to
exemplify ways of inviting and a linguistically simplified version of a novel would not be authentic
texts: See simplified texts; text.
Body language: The gestures and mannerisms by which a person communicates with others.
Cognate: Cognates are words from different languages which are related historically; for
example, English bath - German bad or English yoke - Hindi yoga. Beware of False Friends
however.
Collocation: The tendency for words to occur regularly with others: sit/chair, house/garage.
Communication Strategies: Strategies for using L2 knowledge. These are used when learners
do not have the correct language for the concept they wish to express. Thus they use strategies
such as paraphrase and mime: See learner strategies and production strategies.
Communicative Approaches: Approaches to language teaching which aim to help learners to
develop communicative competence (i.e., the ability to use the language effectively for
communication). A weak communicative approach includes overt teaching of language forms and
functions in order to help learners to develop the ability to use them for communication. A strong
communicative approach relies on providing learners with experience of using language as the
main means of learning to use the language. In such as approach, learners, for example, talk to
learn rather than learn to talk.
Communicative Competence: The ability to use the language effectively for communication.
Gaining such competence involves acquiring both sociolinguistic and linguistic knowledge (or, in
other words, developing the ability to use the language accurately, appropriately, and effectively).
Communicative Functions: Purposes for which language is used; includes three broad
functions: communicative, integrative, and expressive; where language aids the transmission of
information, aids affiliation and belonging to a particular social group, and allows the display of
individual feelings, ideas, and personality.
Communicative Language Teaching: An approach concerned with the needs of students to
communicate outside the classroom; teaching techniques reflect this in the choice of language
content and materials, with emphasis on role play, pair and group work, among others.
Comprehensible Input: When native speakers and teachers speak to L2 learners, they often
adjust their speech to make it more comprehensible. Such comprehensible input may be a
necessary condition for acquisition to occur.
Comprehensible Output: The language produced by the learner (the 'output') may be
comprehensible or incomprehensible. The efforts learners make to be comprehensible may play
a part in acquisition.
Contextualization: Placing the target language in a realistic setting, so as to be meaningful to
the student.
Competence: Ability to function according to the cultural rules of more than one cultural system;
ability to respond in culturally sensitive and appropriate ways according to the cultural demands
of a given situation.
Extensive Reading: Reading for general or global understanding, often of longer texts.
Feedback: The response learners get when they attempt to communicate. This can involve
correction, acknowledgement requests for clarification, backchannel cues (e.g., "mmm").
Feedback plays an important role in helping learners to test their ideas about the target
language.,
Functions: the things people do through language, for example, instructing, apologizing,
complaining. Functional Approach: A course based on a functional approach would take as its
starting point for language development, what the learner wants to do through language.
Common functions include identifying oneself and giving personal facts about oneself; expressing
moods and emotions.
Grading: The order in which language items are taught. Systematic grading may reduce the
difficulties of language learning by introducing the language in steps or stages.
Idiom: An expression in the usage of a language that has a meaning that cannot be derived from
the conjoined meanings of its elements (e.g., raining cats and dogs).
Input: This constitutes the language to which the learner is exposed. It can be spoken or written.
It serves as the data which the learner must use to determine the rules of the target language.
Interference: According to behaviorist learning theory, the patterns of the learner's mother
tongue (L1) get in the way of learning the patterns of the L2. This is referred to as 'interference'.
Interlanguage: The learner's knowledge of the L2 which is independent of both the L1 and the
actual L2. This term can refer to: i) the series of interlocking systems which characterize
acquisition; ii) the system that is observed at a single stage of development (an 'interlanguage');
and iii) particular L1/L2 combinations.
Language "chunks": Short phrases learned as a unit (e.g., thank you very much); patterned
language acquired through redundant use, such as refrains and repetitive phrases in stories.
Language proficiency: The level of competence at which an individual is able to use language
for both basic communicative tasks and academic purposes.
Learning strategies: These account for how learners accumulate new L2 rules and how they
automate existing ones. They can be conscious or subconscious. These contrast with
communication strategies and production strategies, which account for how the learners use their
rule systems, rather than how they acquire them. Learning strategies may include meta cognitive
strategies (e.g., planning for learning, monitoring one's own comprehension and production,
evaluating one's performance); cognitive strategies (e.g., mental or physical manipulation of the
material), or social/affective strategies (e.g., interacting with another person to assist learning,
using self-talk to persist at a difficult task until resolution).
Learning styles: The way(s) that particular learners prefer to learn a language. Some have a
preference for hearing the language (auditory learners), some for seeing it written down (visual
learners), some for learning it in discrete bits (analytic learners), some for experiencing it in large
chunks (global or holistic or experiential learners) and many prefer to do something physical
whilst experiencing the language (kinaesthetic learners).
Learning: The internalization of rules and formulas which can be used to communicate in the L2.
Krashen uses this term for formal learning in the classroom.
Lexical item: An item of vocabulary which has a single element of meaning. It may be a
compound or phrase: bookcase, post office, put up with. Some single words may initiate several
lexical items; eg letter: a letter of the alphabet / posting a letter.
Lexical item: An item of vocabulary which has a single element of meaning. It may be a
compound or phrase: bookcase, post office, put up with. Some single words may initiate several
lexical items; eg letter: a letter of the alphabet / posting a letter.
Linguistic Competence: A broad term used to describe the totality of a given individual's
language ability; the underlying language system believed to exist as inferred from an individual's
language performance.
Materials adaptation: Making changes to materials in order to improve them or to make them
more suitable for a particular type of learner. Adaptation can include reducing, adding, omitting,
modifying and supplementing. Most teachers adapt materials every time they use a textbook in
order to maximise the value of the book for their particular learners.
Nonverbal Communication: Paralinguistic and non linguistic messages that can be transmitted
in conjunction with language or without the aid of language; paralinguistic mechanisms include
intonation, stress, rate of speech, and pauses or hesitations; non linguistic behaviours include
gestures, facial expressions, and body language, among others.
Patterns: These are a type of formulaic speech. They are unanalysed units which have open
slots. For example: 'Can I have a .......?': See formulaic speech and routines.
Production strategies: These refer to utilization of linguistic knowledge in communication. They
do not imply any communication problem (cf., communication strategies) and they operate largely
unconsciously: See communication strategies and learning strategies.
Pro-forms: A pro-form is a type of function word or expression that stands in for (expresses the
same content as) another word, phrase, clause or sentence where the meaning is recoverable
from the context. In low levels pro-forms are often used instead of the word that the learner
doesn’t know, such as this, that, object, do, etc. Gradually, we substitute the pro-forms of generic
word by the concrete object as students learn their names in English.
Synchronous (adj.): Happening in real time. Synchronous communication is immediate, such as
communication by instant messenger, or by telephone.
Target language: This is the language that the learner is attempting to learn. It comprises the
native speaker's grammar.
Teacher talk: Teachers make adjustments to both language form and language function in order
to help communication in the classroom. These adjustments are called 'teacher talk'.
Commonly used abbreviations
ESA – Engage, Study, Activate. Stages in a lesson plan according to Jeremy Harmer.
ESL – English as a Second Language. A commonly used term to refer to teaching, learning or
acquiring English as a non-mother tongue.
L1 – The first language of the learner or the mother tongue.
L2 - A term used to refer to both foreign and second languages: See foreign language; second
language.
ESP - English for Specific Purposes–a term that refers to teaching or studying English for a
particular career (like law or medicine) or for business in general.
CCQ – Concept Check Question. A fundamental practice in the classroom for eliciting that the
recently taught target language has been learnt.
TTT – Teacher Talking Time. According to linguists, the teacher talking time has to be less in
proportion than the Student Talking Time.
STT – Student Talking Time. The time dedicated to students’ language production in class.
SLA - Second Language Acquisition. Used to refer to research and theory related to the learning
of second and foreign languages.
TL – Target Language. The language that is to be learnt in class. It can be related to one lesson
or one particular activity in it and contains the vocabulary and structures that are new and
relevant for the aims and objectives of this class or activity.
Levels of the students

Teaching beginners is very different from teaching more advanced students for many reasons,
the main reason being the learner’s inability to understand L2 native speech. It is of extreme
importance to identify levels in order to grade your language and gauge the right approach when
preparing your classes.

In order to understand the differences between the students’ levels of production, we have to
consider two main skills in their language mastery: understanding and speaking. The
proportion between these two skills will give us their level of proficiency. There are 5 main levels
that go from little or no level at all to a complete mastery of the English language as you’ll see
described below.

In Oxbridge we think that the first assessment that should be made of a student is the self-
assessment. Students seem to know almost with a surgeon’s precision what their level is and
with a couple of questions you can easily find it out. A further level test would probably reinforce
their self-assessment.
Beginners: Students with no previous knowledge of English. We also can have “false”
beginners, or students that have studied or used to know a little bit of English before but think
they have forgotten pretty much everything.
According to the Oxbridge scale of levelling, these are S1 students.
These students would define their level such as: “I don’t speak English at all” or “I’ve
studied it before but I don’t remember anything”.
Elementary: Students at this level may have a vocabulary of up to 1000 words and will probably
be learning or practicing present simple and continuous tenses, past simple and present perfect,
will/shall, 'going to' futures. They should be able to hold simple conversations and survive in
everyday situations.
According to the Oxbridge scale of levelling, these are P2 students.
These students would define their level such as: “I understand a little but I don’t speak
 much English”.
Intermediate: At this level a student will have a working vocabulary of between 1500 and 2000
words and should be able to cope easily in most everyday situations. There should be an ability
to express needs, thoughts and feelings in a reasonably clear way.
According to the Oxbridge scale of levelling, these are P3 students.
These students would define their level such as: “I understand English but I don’t speak
it very well”.
Upper Intermediate: At this level we expect from the learner to be able to speak quite fluently
and with minor grammatical mistakes about pretty much all the topics of conversation related to
their everyday and professional life. Students have mastered almost all the complex grammar
points and understand almost freely native speech at a normal speed.
According to the Oxbridge scale of levelling, these are P4 students.
These students would define their level such as: “I understand almost everything and I
speak English quite well”.
Advanced: A level of attainment where the learner has mastered most of the structures and
functions of the language and is able to move freely through several registers - there may be a
working vocabulary of in excess of 3000 words.
According to the Oxbridge scale of levelling, these are P5 students.
These students would define their level such as: “I understand and speak English very
well, but I feel I can still learn and improve it”.
CONCEPT CHECK QUIZ
· What does “Low TTT” stand for?
Low Teacher Talking Time
Low Teacher Topic Training
Little Talking To Teachers
· Engage-Study-Activate refers to:
The stages of a lesson plan
Syllabus planning
A teacher’s attitude to the students
· What do the initials CCQ stand for?
Concept Check Question
Clear Concept Questioning
Control Concept Quality
· In an elementary level of linguistic competence, we are to expect:
Little understanding and little oral production
Good understanding but little oral production
No understanding and no oral production

SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION THEORIES

How do people learn a (any) language? There are many theories about first and second
language acquisition, most of them developed in the 1960’s and 70’s.

How do we acquire a second language? Researchers prefer to talk about acquiring a

language rather than studying or learning it. “To acquire” doesn’t necessarily mean to study. It is
a result of having learnt it though. “Study” and “learn” have different connotations. The former
suggests effort while the latter suggests ease.

Acquiring a language though has to do with the natural ability of human beings to learn
languages, not so much with what methodologies and processes we apply to achieve it. A child
living in a foreign country acquires the local language without explicit studying sometimes.

The age factor or how long does it take to learn a language

What is the best age to start learning a second language? It was thought years ago that the
earlier you start learning L2, the better. Modern theories reject very early guided learning. They
insist more on the approach rather than the early age factor.

Any age is a good age to start learning a second language. However, for children it is more
natural as they don’t question grammar rules and don’t try to apply the structure of their own
language to L2. They are also not so tempted to try to translate literally. Their flexibility and lack
of fear of speaking make them excellent learners.

Can you still learn at the age of 50? Yes, of course. And at the age of 60, 70, 80... Where there
is a will, there is a way and this is exactly what learning theories insist on. Rather than be
concerned about the age of the learner, we have to ask: what the motivation of the learner is; the
exposure to English that they have; their reasons for learning the language; and, above all, what
approach they take to do it. As examples taken from our practice, we’ll mention three cases or
elder learners for whom the age factor has never been a handicap in learning and progressing
their English skills.

Adela, a Spanish learner, started actively learning English at the age of 65, so that she can speak
to her grandchildren, who were being raised in England and spoke little Spanish. Hers is a clear
example of motivation. Her progress was amazing as she strongly believed in learning and put
into practice everything she learnt in class.

Let’s also consider the case of Francesc, who started as a complete beginner and in a few
months was able to maintain a fluent conversation in English. In his case perseverance and
exposure to the language was the key, as for several months Francesc took classes every
single day for at least one hour and after classes he would watch films and read online
magazines so that he would progress faster. Very soon he was much more fluent than his
teenage son, who was as surprised as Francesc himself with the progress made.

Lastly we’ve had an adorable 94 year old learner, Enric, who had used English during his
younger years but still felt he needed to improve his speaking skills and used to take classes just
for the pleasure of learning something new every day! Enric was the most inspired of our
students and an inspiration for all our staff!

So, how long does it take to learn a language? Many students will ask you
this question and many school will make easy promises for fast learning but we
 always answer this question with another one: How long is a piece of string?
There are many factors that affect this including the motivation, exposure to the
language, the need of the student and importantly the approach or
methodology. Unfortunately there is no short cut or easy promise.
Perseverance, exposure (input and output) and approach are key elements in
this equation. (see also the secion on Individual Variation in SLA).

It is important for an EFL teacher to understand the learning process and the mechanisms that
operate when people acquire a new language.

Second language acquisition

Second language acquisition (SLA) or second language learning is the process by which
people learn a second language.

Second language refers to any language learned in addition to a person's first language. SLA
refers to what learners do; it does not refer to practices in language teaching. The analysis of
how we learn or acquire a language is a relatively new discipline. It is closely related to several
other disciplines, including linguistics, sociolinguistics, psychology, neuroscience, and education.

The term acquisition was originally used to emphasise the subconscious nature of the learning
process, but in recent years learning and acquisition have become largely synonymous.

There has been much debate about exactly how language is learnt, and many issues are still
unresolved. There have been many theories of second language acquisition that have been
proposed, but none has been accepted as an overarching theory by all SLA researchers.

Comparisons with first language acquisition

People who learn a second language differ from children learning their first language in a number
of ways. Perhaps the most striking of these is that very few adult second language learners reach
the same competence as native speakers of that language. Children learning a second language
are more likely to achieve native-like fluency than adults.

In addition, some errors that second language learners make in their speech originate in their first
language. For example, Spanish speakers learning English may say "Is raining" rather than "It is
raining", leaving out the subject of the sentence. This influence of the first language on the
second is known as language transfer.

Also, when people learn a second language, the way they speak their first language changes in
subtle ways. These changes can be with any aspect of language, from pronunciation and syntax
to gestures the learner makes and the things she or he tends to notice.
Interlanguage
Interlanguage, or the language used by a learner who is not yet proficient in the L2, is an
important object of studies in order to predict and anticipate errors. Learners tend to be
constantly influenced by the structure of their mother tongue.

There are three different processes that influence the creation of interlanguages:

• Language transfer. Learners fall back on their mother tongue to help create their language
system. This is now recognized not as a mistake, but as a process that all learners go
through.
• Overgeneralization. Learners use rules from the second language in a way that native
speakers would not. For example, a learner may say "I goed home", overgeneralizing the
English rule of adding -ed to create past tense verb forms.
• Simplification. Learners use a highly simplified form of language, similar to speech by children
or in pidgins. This may be related to linguistic universals.
In the 1970s there were several studies that investigated the order in which learners acquired
different grammatical structures. These studies showed that there was little change in this order
among learners with different first languages. Furthermore, it showed that the order was the
same for adults as well as children, and that it did not even change if the learner had language
lessons. This proved that there were factors other than language transfer involved in learning
second languages, and was a strong confirmation of the concept of interlanguage.

However, the studies did not find that the orders were exactly the same. Although there were
remarkable similarities in the order in which all learners learned second language grammar, there
were still some differences among individuals and among learners with different first languages. It
is also difficult to tell when exactly a grammatical structure has been learned, as learners may
use structures correctly in some situations but not in others. Thus it is more accurate to speak of
sequences of acquisition, where particular grammatical features in a language have a fixed
sequence of development, but the overall order of acquisition is less rigid.

Input, output, and interaction

The primary factor affecting language acquisition appears to be the input that the learner
receives. Stephen Krashen took a very strong position on the importance of input, asserting that
comprehensible input is all that is necessary for second language acquisition. Krashen pointed to
studies showing that the length of time a person stays in a foreign country is closely linked with
their level of language acquisition. Further evidence for input comes from studies on reading:
large amounts of free voluntary reading have a significant positive effect on learners' vocabulary,
grammar, and writing.

The type of input may also be important. One tenet of Krashen's theory is that input should not
be grammatically sequenced. He claims that such sequencing, as found in language
classrooms where lessons involve practicing a "structure of the day", is not necessary, and may
even be harmful.

Once the learner has acquired the first and basic functions in the new language, it is reasonably
easy to help them improve their competence in L2 by providing enough input. But how do we act
if the learner has no competence at all in L2? How do we make them acquire basic functions so
that they get to understand and use in communication simple but vital messages? How do we
make an S1 student progress to a P2 level without using any translation from their mother
tongue?

Planning our S1 classes has been a difficult but exciting research about the best way we can
present new target language so that a complete beginner starts communicating with the most
basic functions of daily speech.

We had to first identify which these basic functions were and what formulas to use so that we
present them in English, instead of translating from Spanish or Catalan. The result is a very well
guided S1 syllabus which allows the learner progress quickly in communicating the most
common and basic functions such as explain who they are, what they do, what they have, what
their likes and dislikes are, what they do for living, talk about their families, friends and hobbies,
what they need, take, eat, drink... (see S1 syllabus later in this module)

This is the only level in which classes are structured from the first minute to the last and where
there is little room for improvisation. Every step is carefully planned, every word is carefully
selected, every structure is chosen to enable them with a multi functional communicative
strategies.

While input is of vital importance, Krashen's assertion that only input matters in second language
acquisition has been contradicted by more recent research. For example, students enrolled in
French language immersion programs in Canada still produced non-native-like grammar when
they spoke, even though they had years of meaning-focused lessons and their listening skills
were statistically native-level. Output appears to play an important role, and among other things,
can help provide learners with feedback, make them concentrate on the form of what they are
saying, and help them to automatize their language knowledge. These processes have been
codified in the theory of comprehensible output.

Researchers have also pointed to interaction in the second language as being important for
acquisition. According to Long's interaction hypothesis the conditions for acquisition are
especially good when interacting in the second language; specifically, conditions are good when
a breakdown in communication occurs and learners must negotiate for meaning. The
modifications to speech arising from interactions like this help make input more comprehensible,
provide feedback to the learner, and push learners to modify their speech.

Form and meaning

A linguistic form is how something is said. Meaning is what is said. In L2 we accept that not
always a correct meaning implies form (or grammar) correctness.

The meaning of things being communicated is more important for second language
acquisition than their form. There is a general agreement among researchers that learners
must be engaged in decoding and encoding messages in the second language for the conditions
to be right for second language learning. Learners must also be engaged in creating pragmatic
meaning (meaning which depends on the context) in order to develop fluency.

Some sort of focus on form does appear to be necessary for second language acquisition,
however. Some advanced language structures may not be fully acquired without the opportunity
for repeated practice. Schmidt's noticing hypothesis states that conscious attention to specific
language forms is necessary for a learner's interlanguage to develop. This attention does not
have to be in the form of conscious grammar rules, however; the attention is on how each
specific form affects the meaning of what is being said. To put it in simple words, it is absolutely
necessary to explain the correct form if a confusion in the message occurs by using the wrong
form, or a student conveys the wrong message.

If this does not happen, we can be more permissive with form and emphasize transmitting
effectively meaning in L2.

Language processing
The way learners process sentences in their second language is also important for language
acquisition. According to MacWhinney's competition model, learners can only concentrate on
so many things at a time, and so they must filter out some aspects of language when they listen
to a second language. Learning a language is seen as finding the right weighting for each of the
different factors that learners can process.

Similarly, according to processability theory, the sequence of acquisition can be explained by

learners getting better at processing sentences in the second language. As learners increase
their mental capacity to process sentences, mental resources are freed up. Learners can use
these newly freed-up resources to concentrate on more advanced features of the input they
receive. One such feature is the movement of words (inversion). For example, in English,
questions are formed by moving the auxiliary verb or the question word to the start of the
sentence (John is nice becomes Is John nice?) This kind of movement is too brain-intensive for
beginners to process; learners must automatize their processing of static language structures
before they can process movement.

On the other hand reinforcing the use of such a structure at an early learning stage, even though
these structures are not fully acquired can help students to automatize them before the actual
“explanation” of the structure occurs. This happens for example in Oxbridge’s QQs. Beginner
students struggle at first and want to know the meaning of every single example. What they learn
though is something much more complex and important than it appears: they learn a fundamental
construction in English very different from their mother tongue syntax schemes.

Individual variation in SLA

Let’s go back to the question “How long does it take to learn a language?”. This is a frequently
asked question for language learners.
There is considerable variation in the rate at which people learn second languages, and in the
language level that they ultimately reach. Some learners learn quickly and reach a near-native
level of competence, but others learn slowly and get stuck at relatively early stages of acquisition,
despite living in the country where the language is spoken for several years. The reason for this
disparity was first addressed with the study of language learning aptitude in the 1950s, and later
with the good language learner studies in the 1970s. More recently research has focused on a
number of different factors that affect individuals' language learning, in particular strategy use,
social and societal influences, personality, motivation, and anxiety. The relationship between age
and the ability to learn languages has also been a subject of long-standing debate.

The issue of age was first addressed with the critical period hypothesis. The strict version of
this hypothesis states that there is a cut-off age at about 12 years old, after which learners lose
the ability to fully learn a language. This strict version has since been rejected for second
language acquisition, as adult learners have been observed who reach native-like levels of
pronunciation and general fluency. However, in general, adult learners of a second language
rarely achieve the native-like fluency that children display, despite often progressing faster than
them in the initial stages. This has led to speculation that age is indirectly related to other, more
central factors that affect language learning.

There has been considerable attention paid to the strategies which learners use when
learning a second language. Strategies have been found to be of critical importance, so much
so that strategic competence has been suggested as a major component of communicative
competence. Strategies are commonly divided into learning strategies and communicative
strategies, although there are other ways of categorizing them. Learning strategies are
techniques used to improve learning, such as mnemonics or using a dictionary. Communicative
strategies are strategies a learner uses to convey meaning even when she or he doesn't
have access to the correct form, such as using pro-forms like thing, or using non-verbal
means such as gestures.

Early stage (S1) learners’ material at Oxbridge has been designed to develop powerful
communicative strategies with little linguistic resources. The usage of generic words or pro-forms
is constantly reinforced as they are carriers of an enormous communicative potential.

If a learner uses generic words or pro-forms such as thing, this, here, to get, something, etc. it is
very easy to substitute them with the concrete objects or actions they refer to: e.g. In the
sentence “I want this”, “this” can be substituted by “an apple” and becomes “I want an apple”.
Even if learners do not know the names of concrete objects, by knowing generic words they can
make their point in communication.

Affective factors
The learner's attitude to the learning process has also been identified as being critically important
to second language acquisition. Anxiety in language-learning situations has been almost
unanimously shown to be detrimental to successful learning. A related factor, personality, has
also received attention, with studies showing that extroverts are better language learners than
introverts.
We like the subject because we like the teacher. Affection is very important in the learning
process at any age. Both children and adults learn more if they create good rapport with their
teacher.

Learning in a natural context vs. learning in the classroom

While the majority of SLA research has been devoted to language learning in a natural setting,
there have also been efforts made to investigate second language acquisition in the classroom.
This kind of research has a significant overlap with language education, but it is always empirical,
based on data and statistics, and it is mainly concerned with the effect that instruction has on the
learner, rather than what the teacher does.

The research has been wide-ranging. There have been attempts made to systematically measure
the effectiveness of language teaching practices for every level of language, from phonetics to
pragmatics, and for almost every current teaching methodology. This research has indicated
that many traditional language-teaching techniques are extremely inefficient. It is
generally agreed that pedagogy restricted to teaching grammar rules and vocabulary lists
does not give students the ability to use the L2 with accuracy and fluency. Rather, to
become proficient in the second language, the learner must be given opportunities to use it
for communicative purposes.

CONCEPT CHECK QUIZ

· Modern language learning theories:

Reject very early guided learning (ok)
Encourage very early guided learning
Ignore the age factor in the learning process
· Language transfer is:
The influence of the first language on the second
Transfer linguistic knowledge to students
The language spoken by parents transferred to children
· Interlanguage is:
The language used by the learner who is not yet proficient in L2
A language spoken by the classmates in the classroom
A mixture of all the languages spoken by the learner
· The three main elements for a successful linguistic competence in L2 are:
The input, the output and the interaction of the learners in L2
Speaking, writing and reading
Studying, doing homework and watching movies
· The affective factors are:
Recognized as crucial for language learning
Unimportant for L2 learning
Irrelevant for adults but important for kids when learning a second language
WHAT MAKES A GOOD TEACHER? SOME PRACTICAL ADVICE

We’ve asked this question to pretty much all the teachers that we have met in our professional
time as an English Teaching and TEFL company. The answers usually include different personal
traits such as the linguistic and cultural knowledge of the teacher, social skills, experience,
empathy, patience, kindness and understanding, but there is one answer that is repeated over
and over again and it has even replaced the personal traits in second position on the scale:

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING WELL PREPARED FOR CLASS.

Such is the importance of being well prepared to class, that it can compensate for lack of one or
more of the personal traits of the teacher or their experience.

Being well prepared can substitute for a lack of experience.

No one has been born a teacher, and in your first classes you’ll feel nervous, especially if you
don’t know the students. This is normal. But good preparation can “disguise” that feeling, and
after the first 5-10 minutes you will relax and go with the flow.

One of the main differences between experienced and new teachers is the management of
silence in the classroom. Silence in the classroom occurs as a consequence of the teacher not
knowing or thinking about what to do next. An experienced teacher is less likely to allow silence
between the elements in class. You can avoid this uncomfortable situation by being extremely
well prepared. That means, knowing what to do in each moment and how to react if there is an
activity that does not work with your group. You should always have at hand a mechanism for
compensating activities that won’t work with your students and this is part of your preparation.
Plan a little bit more at first and learn the order of elements in your class by heart. Only then you
will be able to switch quickly from one element to another in the right moment.

Always start with the same activity: the quick questions. In the Oxbridge system, the Quick
Questions always the start the classes. This start will give your students a feeling of continuity
and give a structure to the lesson. Even though you are new to them, you are not new to the
system. No need to worry then. Besides, while doing the QQ, you’ll calm down and will start
breathing normally. Instead of wasting time in small talk, you will be doing the first effective
activity in class aiming to change the chip and the linguistic code into English.

A story about time management. There was a student who used to always get to
class 5 minutes late. He was a good student, a fast learner and a pleasure to teach. His
late arrival would repeat class after class and the teacher was confused with the
repeated lateness. “Why do you always arrive 5 minutes late to class?” the teacher
decided to ask one day. “Because the first 5 minutes we do nothing in particular, we just
talk about what we’ve done yesterday or over the weekend”, was the student’s reply.
This is a significant answer that gives us a clue about how students feel about time
distribution in class. The conclusion cannot be more obvious: students like to take
advantage of their full class time and five minutes of small talk is just not worthwhile.
Find something in the class you especially like. There is a suggested order for each class but
for sure, if there is an activity that you especially like and will enjoy doing with your students, they
will get involved and will participate. You’ll relax and break the ice.

Know your class by heart. Not every single word, but the essence of every single activity. That
way you’ll be able to do fast links (natural or provoked) and the pace of the class will be smooth.
Your students will enjoy it more and you’ll feel the success of the learning process. Remember:
relaxed students learn better!

Even though your training can be optimum and even though you can do your best preparing for
the class, something can unexpectedly go wrong. Here is something that I wrote some years ago,
as I felt that despite having a well trained team of teachers, we were all facing the same concerns
in similar situations. Teaching entails a continuous interaction with your students and sometimes
we can have a breakdown in communication with undesirable consequences.

I dedicate this short essay to all the good teachers who wanted to be seen as such.

Caesar's wife should not only be honest but also be seen to be honest

Those were hard times! Caesar’s wife was supposed to be above any suspicion! So, not only did
she have to be pure and honest, she also had to appear so, so that her behaviour wouldn’t be an
offence to Caesar.

As Caesar’s wife, you as teachers not only have to be good teachers but also appear to be good
teachers. That is, seem confident, well-trained, experienced and know that you represent
Oxbridge where ever you go and whomever you interact with. And the students have to feel that
you know where you are taking them. Yes, appearance is important! Every time you decide what
to say, what to put on, what perfume to use, what haircut to wear, you transmit something. But
let’s forget about clothes and fragrances and haircuts and focus on what you can tell your
students.

Sometimes, the difference depends on the answers that you give to apparently simple questions.
And sometimes these questions or comments are not as innocent as they appear. Your students
probably love you, but they also test you.

Besides it’s good to know why the students ask or say something that apparently doesn’t have to
anything do with the teaching system. They may feel uncertain and insecure about some aspects
of the teaching practice and they want to be sure that they are getting the best that you can offer.

If you are aware of what the students mean when speaking, you’ll know what the best answer to
that should be. You’ll appear confident and well prepared; you’ll be “above suspicion”.

The objective is a very simple one: avoid the students thinking that you are not qualified enough
to be English teachers. Yes, it’s partly a question of experience and practice to look self-confident
but while you are acquiring this experience you may get nervous and appear less prepared than
you are.

There follows a list of some “hidden meaning” in apparently simple and inoffensive questions.
Please think about them. You may agree or not, but believe me, I know that when I’m angry and
somebody asks me what’s wrong with me I say “nothing” and I mean “everything”! I’m one of
those types of people… So why not your students?

If the students ask… they can possibly mean…

How long have you been here in How well do you know the system? How well
Spain? trained are you? Can you be an expert or you are
a rookie?
What have you studied? Are you qualified enough to be my teacher?
Why do you want to teach? And not work in a bar for example? Do you like
teaching?
Have you taught before? Am I your guinea pig? Are you qualified enough to
be my teacher?
You seem very young... Again, are you experienced enough to be my
teacher?
I don’t understand your accent. I don’t understand English. I’m lost and don’t follow
you.
I don’t understand! Please, explain it to me again! I’m very lost!
‘No entiendo nada!’ I am getting too nervous!!! I will never learn
English.
Can you write/spell that word, please? I don’t get the pronunciation of that word.
Can you recommend me a grammar I need more grammar, I think I’m not learning any
book? grammar. In fact I think I’m not learning anything.
Are you a new teacher? (Oh, my god! We have a problem here if they ask it
that way!!!!!!!!!) They think you lack practice.
Who is teaching us next? I still don’t know if that question is good or bad
symptom for you ;-)

Also, learn to read your students’ body language. The way they appear to be may guide you in
your decision whether to do one element (or activity) or another.
If…. Then…
If they seem bored, change the activity.
If they seem quiet, change the activity.
If they seem to be struggling a lot, change the activity (but come back to it later).
Don’t try to over explain.
If they get frustrated, change the activity. Don’t try to over explain.
If they seem uninterested in the change the activity.
activity,
If it’s toooooo easy for them, change the activity (but tell them that you are just
checking that they know that very important issue).
If they seem annoyed with a topic, If they want to talk about it let them go, if they don’t
seem to be comfortable, change the focus of the
topic or the topic itself. Smile ;-)
If it’s difficult for them don’t change the activity, change the explanation
or the target language. Grade your language.
Guide them.
If they speak in Spanish change the language!!! (Theirs, not yours)
If they write too much in their hide their pencils if need be! Explain to them that
notebooks they need to be focused on what you, or other
people, say, for their own benefit and the benefit of
the whole class. Otherwise the whole class will get
bored! It is difficult to write and pay attention at the
same time and writing entails a more passive
learning than listening, understanding and
speaking.

Remember to always start with Quick Questions. If you do so, your students will feel that you
know your stuff. This is what they expect, so give it to them if you don’t want them to have any
doubts about you from the beginning. Make sure you know how they feel. Prepare the class, and
let it go!

You are good teachers! Prove to your students that not only is that so, but that nobody could
possibly suggest that you seem unprepared! Never! Ever!

LESSON 2. TEACHING METHODS AND APPROACHES

This unit is devoted to some of the strategies that are involved in language and English teaching.
You’ll learn about the difference between teaching and learning, what learning strategies we
apply with students and what are the students’ learning styles and goals. Not all students are
alike, in fact there are as many learners’ needs and motivations behind the decision of learning a
second language as individuals.

Still, there are some patterns that repeat from one learner to another and we’ll try to summarise
them in this unit. Last but not least, we are going to examine the methods and approaches to
teaching through a brief research exercise and analysis of the main approaches in language
teaching.

TEACHING VS. LEARNING

Language Teaching and Language Learning: Are they the same?

It is a question of action and result. We are all quite used to learning as a result of conscious and
continuous studying. We’ve all heard many times that we have to study English, we have to study
all the school subjects in order to get a school certificate, we have to study at the university in
order to get a university degree. Learning a language though is something different. Certificates
or diplomas or exams should no longer be valid, only acquiring a real command of the language
proven through speaking and communicating in that language is what matters when we have to
answer the question “Do you speak English?”

As opposed to studying, which entails a less or more hard and time-consuming process, learning
entails easiness. Easiness in the process of acquisition and easiness in the approach that
teachers take to the classroom practice. Studying lists of irregular verbs or doing homework is
only studying. Progressing as a result of a good exposure (input) to the language and the right
stimuli that provoke in the learner the need to say something and “negotiate” for meaning is
learning. Filling gaps in a photocopied hand-out for a certain grammar point is studying,
practicing that same grammar structure with a communicative activity is learning.

There is also a difference between taking care of the teaching process and taking care of the
learning process of the students. All modern methods claim that they take care of the learning
process of the students but at Oxbridge we are convinced that we can only ensure the students
learn if we improve the teaching process that our teachers use in the classroom. We realise that
if we take care of the teacher, we take care of the learner, therefore we have decided to
continuously make their job easier and help them to be more effective. All teachers agree that
part of their job is dedicated to preparation and this can be a hard and time-consuming task. Not
only do traditional teachers have to spend time preparing their classes but also they do that
alone. They build their own resource library as a result of years of teaching. Sometimes if they
have to prepare one single class they spend several hours researching and looking for the best
aids to bring to class. But what if they have to prepare for 20 hours a week? This kind of thorough
preparation is no longer possible, the effort is not worth it and they simply choose to take an easy
path and take a book that brings gives them all that preparation, at least in general terms. Then
they have to adapt or add more to it but the economy of preparation is achieved. Nevertheless
this situation is detrimental to the learning process as the quickest way is not always the most
effective way. Students lack communicative practice, as they are more exposed to written stimuli
than to real communicative activities. Lack of time, lack of preparation, lack of teaching aids, lack
of learners’ skills. That’s the chain and it is sad that this happens to thousands of English learners
around the world.

Does this situation have a remedy? In Oxbridge we think it does. There is a way of taking care of
the teaching process and implementing effective tools for the teacher with less time needed for
preparation. We realised that if our teachers share the preparation of class material and lesson
plans under the same system, all of them would go to class better prepared with less effort and
they would enjoy the teaching process much more. Their classes would be much more
successful, enjoyable and fun. The learning process therefore will become more pleasant,
motivating and much faster!

We started by creating a system in which each and every teacher was asked to share their
experience and concerns about teaching. After some weeks of regular meetings and
brainstorming what teaching and learning entails, we realised we were creating something much
more powerful that the sum of individual experiences. We were creating a system, a common
ground for our teachers to develop and upgrade their skills. We were creating a new and modern
approach to teaching using and sharing material that was created by and for the teachers. The
Oxbridge way is the “third solution”, the one that comes as a result of two individual concerns that
would have provided two different solutions. “The third solution” is the one that has been tested
by the team and the one that we will pass on to the future teachers-to-be to transmit to the
following generations on their turn.

Learning to speak

Now that we have seen the importance of learning over studying, another question needs to be
answered: “What exactly should a student learn?” When checking somebody’s competence in
English the question is one very revealing:
“Do you speak English?”
In opposition of other possible question that could be:

Do you know English grammar?

Do you understand English?
Do you write in English?
Do you read English?

Speaking thus is the key. Speaking English should be the aim in every single class, in every
single activity.

You learn to play football if you play football and you learn to play chess if you play chess. You
don’t learn to play football if you watch football matches on TV or if you read about it in
newspapers and you can’t learn chess if you only read books about chess. Why is then different
with the English and any other language? Why and when have teachers forgotten that in order to
learn a language the students have to speak that language? Can studying grammar substitute
speaking real language? Can studying grammatical rules guarantee meaningful communicative
competence for our learners? The answers are obvious, but sometimes, despite their best
intentions, teachers tend to forget what the main goal of their students is and they focus on the
formal side of the learning process. They focus on its grammar, prepare students for “official”
exams and plan classes so that the students get a diploma or a certificate in a certain level of
command of English.

Learners sometimes also forget what acquiring a language is for and ask the teachers to prepare
them for passing exams at school or sitting for a certificate. As a marketing for selling English
courses, the so called “official exams” attract students all over the world but once and again,
languages are alive, communication is alive and only in successful interaction you can prove that
you have a good command of that language.

LEARNERS’ NEEDS AND GOALS. TEACHERS’ AND STUDENTS’ MOTIVATION

What motivates students and why?

The main motivation for learning English seems to be the need to communicate in the universal
language at work, for business purposes, university, travelling.
Often, the teacher or the system (sometimes English classes are like group therapies or social
clubs).

Next time you go to class, try to answer these questions:

Why are your students learning English?

What are their previous learning experiences? What methods have they used?
Do they listen to English music, watch films, TV?
Do they have a job where they use English?
Do they write everything down? Why do they need to do that?
Do they like mistakes to be corrected?Do they study at home?
What would you recommend them to study at home or review?

It helps a teacher of a new class to determine students’ needs through a questionnaire. This is
called a needs analysis. This analysis has to take into consideration the learners’ level, their
short and long term objectives, their time and dedication, their motivation.

Assessing Learners’ Goals

When assessing learners’ goals we have to consider the following factors and their implications
in the learning process:
• The age of learners. Break the conventionalism about it. Any age is a good age to learn if
there is a will for it.
• One to one teaching. It differs from group teaching in dynamism and interaction. One to one
classes are thought to be more effective but sometimes students are too limited in terms of
interaction.
• Group teaching. The group size affects and determines the teaching process. Modern
teaching advices of the importance of keeping groups reduced (up to 8-10 students per
 teacher) as big size groups, as school groups can deviate into a non-interactive teaching
practice.
• The student personality, reactions and response to stimuli. The student is your main
recipient and major critic of the system / product. The better you know your students, the
better you will be able to interpret their reactions. Always ask yourself the following factors:
- What are the students’ problems? You can face tiredness, shy students,
stressed, etc.
- What are the students looking for, what do they need?
- What are some of the prejudices in English teaching? It is often thought
that native teachers are better than non-native teacher, writing is
sometimes placed before speaking, homework is thought to be necessary
for good progress, etc.
- How the teachers can gain their students’ trust? This will make you look
inside you and your ability to create rapport with your students.
- Learn to read between the lines of your students comments. Remember
that messages are conveyed in many ways so be good psychologist and
learn to interpret your students’ reactions and comments.

Some considerations about learners’ goals and lesson planning

Below are some frequently used formulas or “clichés” about how to find out the learners’ need
and motivation. Whenever you have to do that, be critical! We’ve tried to bring our own
considerations to these commonly used statements. Quoted are the statements and next to them
our considerations about them.

“Find out about the student as a person and a learner”

Good intention but possible only with reduced number of students. Only after some time
you’ll get to fully know your students. Until then, your main assessment criteria will be
the student’s level and previous experience, if any.

“What is your previous learning experience?”

Ask them for how long they’ve been learning English and what was it like. Did they learn
English at school? Did they attend English courses? Did they use books or any other
methodology?

“Student’s preferred learning style”

Students may have preferences, but they may not have any basis for comparison. We
can also have different learning styles in one class / group. Listen to them but offer them
different alternatives as well.

“What language strengths/problems does he/she feel he/she has?”

They could point out one, or two, or three, but their main problem is one and only: they
want to speak English! Also, you can discover a different problem, not the one that your
students point out.
You will often hear that from a student that they are very bad with languages. That only
 means that they’ve tried many times and feel that they haven’t fully succeeded.
Frustration is one of the main problems we have to fight. The way to do it is to explain to
students that there are not bad students, but wrong approaches to learning and that you
will try to help and guide them from the very first day.

“Materials, tasks and activities used in the lesson should be taken from published
sources.”
There is definitely no need for that at all! You can choose to prepare your own lesson
plans using vast number of resources: published or created by you.

“Relax the students, make them feel welcome”

Your students have to feel welcome to your class, no doubt. They have to be relaxed as
opposed to frustrated or negative about the learning process.
But consider also that it is good to create in students a positive tension; they have to
attend every single minute of the class and not be too laid out. It is the teacher who has
to be relaxed and the teacher can be relaxed only if he/she is well prepared for the
class!

“In a lesson, try out at least one speaking activity.”

All the activities should involve speaking!

Learning Styles

We learn with our senses. Mostly, for the learning purposes, we use:
· Visual style: we see written signs, books, pictures, etc. Adult learners often tend to
think that they need to see written texts as this is the way they have learnt pretty much
everything at school and university. Still, language speaking is about using all your
senses and the rest of them such as hearing and remembering are often neglected.
Your students need to develop also those forgotten skills as they are very useful for their
learning.
· Auditory style: we hear things being said, recorded, and sung. It is how children learn
almost everything until they learn to read and write.
· Kinaesthetic style: we feel externally (tactile) and internally (emotion), we move. We
get information through our hands and body language. Students sometimes take notes
not because they will look at them again but because moving their hand across the page
helps them to absorb the information. This style is typical for kids and again, we tend to
forget that adult learners can use this style successfully and enjoy English classes much
more than the traditional class based on blackboard usage.

All the activities that we do in the classroom will stimulate one or more than one of our senses for
the purposes of learning and the visual style shouldn’t dominate in the classroom over the other
two.

What motivates teachers and why?

Not only students need motivation, but so do teachers. The teaching profession can be very
rewarding; eventually we are one of the few professionals who can see in real time the result of
their work in the students’ progress. Apart from the obvious answers to choose this profession
such as travel, experience, money, etc, always remember that student’s progress motivates a
good teacher.

Teacher’s roles

Remember that you are the first and sometimes the main carrier of the English language and
culture therefore you are a model for your students.
The first impression that you will cause on your students is vital.
Your appearance speaks volumes – dress well!
Start with a smile and make eye contact!
Be prepared and on time.
Start the same as everyone else – Quick Questions!

In an English class, a teacher is much more than a teacher. As we say, you are the main
resource for your students and your role multiplies with all the implications that your job entails.
Here are some of the most important roles that an English teacher adopts in class:

· A guide. The teachers guides and directs the class dynamics. The teacher guides
students how to learn and communicate effectively in the English language. He or she
knows where they take their students, where they are going and what they want to
achieve.
· An assessor. The teacher advices and clears doubts related to the English language
and its usage in different contexts and registers.
· A controller / organiser. The teacher organises the class time and controls the right
execution of the activities.
· A resource. The teacher is the main resource for his or her students.
· A coach. The teacher brings extra linguistic knowledge to the learners and acts as a
coach in different situations, such as making presentations, negotiating in English, etc.
· A playmaker. The teacher understands that his or her role is of enormous
importance but his/her talk has to be discrete. Even though the teacher guides, it
is the students who have to “score the goals” in class. A good playmaker knows
how to organise the class game so that everybody participates and learns under
his or her guidance.
· Psychologist. The teacher has to interpret learners’ reactions and responses to stimuli
in order to adapt his or her class and reach high effectiveness in achieving goals.
Sometimes you have to deal with difficult students and you have to make your way
through them and revert their rejection to learn.
· Agony Aunt. Sometimes students share their problems and concerns with us, we have
to be able to listen and understand them.
· Conversationalist. Nothing is more effective and motivating in class than a good topic
for conversation. Knowing how to make students talk is an art used by experienced
teachers. Have a good conversation and your class will be remembered, your students
will learn without an apparent effort and will be waiting for your next class!

Dealing with difficult students

The teaching process is exciting and rewarding, but in this, as in any profession, sometimes we
have to face some difficult situations. Most of the time you will feel comfortable and happy with
your students and the interaction between you and your group will flow. Sometimes, though, you
will be challenged by students. As we see it, they love you but they also test you.
Here are some situations for you to think of:

What can you do in the following situations?

· The student is tired

· The student lacks confidence
· The student lacks motivation
· The student is rude
· The students is very demanding
· The teacher feels very tired

CONCEPT CHECK QUIZ

· When assessing learners’ goals you have to consider:
The students’ age, previous learning experience, needs and motivation
The students’ mood
You just have to follow the book provided by the institution you work for
· Learning using written signs, books and pictures is known as:
Visual style
Auditory style
Kinaesthetic style
· The kinaesthetic style of learning involves:
Using motion elements and body language
Listening to songs in class
Watching movies with original sound track
· The teacher in class has to:
Adopt different roles in order to guide, control, provide resource, counsel, advice,
etc.
Stick to the role of “the authority” for the students
Choose the role that adapts best to his/her own personality

TEACHING METHODS AND APPROACHES

All of the different teaching methods that have existed and co-existed were created with only one
aim: to find the best way of teaching a language.

Methods used in the past focused more on the teaching process that is understood as studying,
not on the learning process or the process of acquiring a language.

Modern methods are more aware of the necessity of taking care of the learning process.
Throughout history, acquiring foreign languages has always been a necessity and the answers
about how to teach them have evolved to reach an obvious conclusion from our point of view: a
language is a means for communication, therefore reaching that objective (the communication) is
the goal of all the methods.

Traditional methods often tend to be perceptive and focus on teaching rules and tips. The reality
found in textbooks and classrooms is quite similar: languages are usually taught by means of
their grammar. Even though modern methods realise the importance of the communicative side
of the language, the axis of lesson plans is often still a grammar point, thought priority is given to
the linguistic functions. Students are sometimes language analysers rather than language
users.

Grammar, although necessary, is a secondary feature of a language. Language is

communication, grammar is the analysis of how that language works. If we teach grammar we’ll
achieve one objective: students to learn grammar. But if we teach a language probably we’ll
succeed in the objective that is apparently similar but that carries an enormous qualitative leap:
students learning the language. The difference is one of level of success between them and the
time involved in them.

There are many teaching methods. They differ in their priorities in terms of grammar, vocabulary
or fluency, attitudes to errors, syllabus planning, teacher’s behaviour, etc.

Methods are to be assessed by three major themes:

1. Approach to teaching and learning goals;
2. Organisation of the syllabus;
3. Teacher’s attitude and behaviour in class.

We will refer to these three issues when analysing the most commonly applied methods that you
will find in L2 teaching.

The Grammar-Translation Method (GTM)

Focuses on written texts

Characteristics of GTM:
1. Literary language is superior to spoken language.
2. The ability to communicate is not a goal.
3. The primary skills to be developed are reading and writing.
4. Little attention is given to speaking and listening, and almost none to pronunciation.
5. The teacher is the authority in the classroom. The students do as s/he says so they
can learn what s/he knows.
6. It is very important that students get the correct answer (attitude to errors).
7. Written tests are often used.
8. Three types of questions are sequenced for reading comprehension:
a. Questions for information contained within the reading passage.
 b. Questions for making inferences based on their understanding of the passage.
c. Questions relating the passage to students’ own experience.
9. Students are given a series of sentences with words missing for fill-in-the blanks drills.
10. The GTM teaches students about the target language, but not how to use it.

The Direct (Berlitz) Method

Vocabulary over grammar

The direct method is also called the Berlitz Method.

One very basic rule: No translation is allowed.

1. Language is primarily speech.
2. Objects (e.g. realia or pictures) are used to help students understand the meaning.
3. The native language of the learners should not be used in the classroom.
4. The teacher should demonstrate, not explain or translate.
5. Vocabulary is emphasized over grammar.
6. The purpose of language learning is communication. Opportunities are given for
students to use language in real contexts.
7. Pronunciation receives attention right from the beginning of the course.
8. Grammar should be taught inductively. There may never be an explicit grammar rule
given.
9. Writing is an important skill, to be developed from the beginning of language
instruction.
10. The syllabus is based on situations or topics, not usually on linguistic structures.
11. Although work on all four skills occurs from the start, oral communication is seen as
basic. The reading and writing exercises are based upon what the students practice
orally first.

The Audio-Lingual Method

Grammar patterns over vocabulary

The Audio-Lingual Method is slso an oral-based approach.

It is very different in that rather than emphasizing vocabulary acquisition through exposure to its
use in situation (Direct Method), the Audio-Lingual Method drills students in the use of
grammatical sentence patterns.
It is also, unlike the Direct Method, has a strong theoretical base in (structural) linguistics and
(behavioural) psychology.
In behaviourism, learners could overcome the habits of their native language and form the new
habits required to be target language speakers.

Principles for ALM:

1. One of the language teacher’s major roles is that of a model of the target
 language.
2. Language learning is a process of habit formation.
3. It is important to prevent learners from making errors.
4. The purpose/goal of language learning is to learn how to use the language to
communicate.
5. Positive reinforcement helps the students to develop correct habits.
6. Students should acquire the structural patterns; they will learn vocabulary afterward.
7. Speech is more basic to language than the written form. The ‘natural order’ of skill
acquisition is: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The oral/aural skills receive most of the
attention.
8. Grammar is induced from the examples given; explicit grammar rules are not
provided.

The Silent Way

The teacher is passive so that students develop inner criteria for correctness

1. Students need to develop their own ‘inner criteria’ for correctness. If students are
simply given answers, rather than being allowed to self-correct, they will not retain them.
2. Teacher is silent. A teacher’s silence frees the teacher to closely observe the
students’ behaviour. Silence is a tool. It helps to foster autonomy, or the exercise of initiative.
3. The teacher’s silence encourages group cooperation.
4. No praise and criticism. If the teacher praises (or criticizes) students, they will be less
self-reliant. The teacher’s actions can interfere with students’ developing their own criteria.
5. There is no fixed, linear, structural syllabus.

Suggestopedia

Eliminate negative barriers

The originators of Silent Way (Caleb Gattegno) and Desuggestopedia (Georgi Lozanov) asserts
that the reason for our inefficiency in language learning is that we set up psychological barriers to
learning: We fear that we will be unable to perform, that we will be limited in our ability to learn,
that we will fail.
Desuggestopedia has been developed to help students eliminate the feeling that they cannot be
successful or the negative association they may have toward studying and, thus, to help them
overcome the barriers to learning.

1. Learning is facilitated in a cheerful environment. If students are relaxed and confident,

they will not need to try hard to learn the language.
2. The teacher should attempt to ‘desuggest’ students’ psychological barriers.
3. Indirect positive suggestions should be integrated into the learning situation to
enhance students’ self-confidence and to convince them that success is obtainable.
4. Fine arts (music, art, drama, and classical paintings) enable positive suggestions to
 reach the subconscious for the students.
5. Native language translation is used to make the meaning of the dialog clear.
6. Communication takes place on ‘2 planes’: (1) conscious plane, the learner attends to
the language; (2) subconscious plane, the music suggests that learning is easy and
pleasant. When there is a unity between conscious and subconscious, learning is
enhanced.

Total Physical Response

All senses involved

1. The fastest, least stressful way to achieve understanding of any target language is to
follow directions uttered by the instructor (without native language translation).
2. Meaning in the target language can often be conveyed through actions.
3. The teacher gives the commands quite quickly.
4. Students can learn through observing actions as well as by performing the actions
themselves.
5. Language learning is more effective when it is fun.
6. Students will begin to speak when they are ready.
7. The goal of teachers who use TPR is to have their students enjoy their experience in
learning to communicate in foreign language.
8. The phases of TPR are:
(1) Modelling,
(2) Students demonstrating,
(3) Recombining commands,
(4) Reading and writing,
(5) Students issuing commands,
(6) Skits and games. The teacher performs the actions with the students in the
beginning to clarify meaning.

Content-based, Task-based, and Participatory Approaches

Involves subjects taught in English

1. The special contribution of content-based instruction is that it integrates the learning

of language with the learning of some other content, often academic subject matter.
2. In CBI, there must be clear language objectives as well as content learning objectives.
3. Language is learned most effectively when it is used as a medium to convey
informational content of interest to the students.

Communicative approach

Integrating four skills for communicative competence

Being able to communicate requires more than linguistic competence; it required communicative
competence — knowing when and how to say what to whom.
1. Authentic language — language as it is used in real context—should be introduced.
2. The target language is a vehicle for classroom communication, not just the object of
study.
3. Games are important because they have certain features in common with real
communication events—a purpose to the exchange, meaning negotiation, and maximizing the
amount of communicative practice.
4. Errors are tolerated and seen as natural outcome of the development of
communication skills.
5. The grammar and vocabulary that the students learn follow from the function,
situational context, and the roles of the interlocutors.
6. Another characteristic of CLT is the use of authentic materials.
7. Development of four skills: productive (speaking, writing) and receptive (listening,
understanding)

The communicative approach uses the idea of a task (a piece of classroom work) as teaching
strategy.
A communicative task should consist of:

1. A goal; that is, what the teacher expects the learners to be able to do after
completing the task, for example, being able to use a particular verb tense correctly.

2. Some sort of input; this could be in the form of a specific reading text like a
questionnaire, a newspaper article or the operating instructions for a TV; similarly, it
could be a piece of listening, such as a radio discussion on a contentious issue, one
side of a telephone conversation or a dialogue.

3. An interesting and motivating activity (or activities); this will be directly related to
the goal and the input – so from the input we might obtain the following activities in
the classroom.

The Oxbridge System

Learners’ communicative competence is the goal.

Teachers’ optimum preparation is the means.
The system created by the teachers is responsible for the students learning.

The Oxbridge model is based on the Triangular Projection Model.

1. It was originated in 2002 and started out of a question: How should we teach
English so that the students learn it? The constant concern about students’ learning
is the leading engine of Oxbridge.
2. All the current methods and their results were thoroughly revised. We believe
methods fail in their practical application more than in their theoretical basis. In
the classroom we still find many non-communicative practices such as gap-filling,
 matching columns, choosing the right answer out of many, etc. We turn every single
activity in a communicative activity.
3. Language can be acquired effortlessly, we have eliminated all negative implications
of studying and encourage students to increase input in English.
4. The class in done entirely in English and no native translation is contemplated.
5. The system is responsible for the learning process, not a single teacher. A team of
teachers sharing the same goals and resources can provide better teaching than a
single individual.
6. Speaking and understanding is first, writing is a secondary ability and results from
students’ communicative competence. You know how to write something if you know
how to say it. Spelling is not writing! Knowing to spell and knowing to write is often
confused but the latter is the result of a correct command of English, not of correct
spelling.
7. The role of the teacher changes and gives place to the playmaker, which is much
more active and dynamic than in the rest of the practices. The playmaker directs the
game all the time so that the students score their best goals.
8. The playmaker projects knowledge by guiding. The elements of a class are
combined in different proportions depending on the level of the learners.
· The trade mark of the system is the way classes start and finish: with Quick
Questions at the beginning and a recap at the end.

PRINCIPLES OF THE TRIANGULAR PROJECTION MODEL

Have a look at the scheme below.

TOPIC (T)

VOCABULARY (V) STRUCTURES (S)

The triangle and its vertexes represent the elements that are always present in each
communicative act: we need to say something for the purposes of communication
(topic), we use words in order to express our ideas (vocabulary) and we do it with the
 help of structures to bring coherence and meaning to these words (structures). If these
three elements are always in a speech act, then they have to be there in our classes. All
our classes include activities aimed at developing fluency (topic activities), or ones
focused on enriching vocabulary (vocabulary activities) or activities that provide and
practice grammar accuracy (structures activities).

These three elements are combined in a different proportion according to the different
levels. Thus, in S1 students learn basic and selected vocabulary integrated in the most
common functions necessary for communicating in daily life.
In P2 more emphasis is still given to vocabulary and structures as students have to build
basic structure in L2. One or two topic activities are introduced for the more advanced
students in this level.
The P3 level balances in proportion the topic, structure and vocabulary activities. At this
level students become more confident in free topics but still need guided activities for
accuracy (grammar) and vocabulary and pronunciation.
In P4 and P5 topic activities are preferred over grammar, even though more complex
structures are essential for the students’ richness of linguistic skills. Vocabulary is
always necessary but again, its complexity increases and more idioms, phrasal verbs
and specific terminology is contemplated at these levels.
The P4 and P5 are also the levels in which students can prepare for specific purposes
such as English in law, in medicine, business English, etc.

At Oxbridge we believe in an innovative approach to teaching English. Our system radically

changes the traditional idea in four fundamental aspects:

· Sessions:
On one hand traditional teaching disappears, and is substituted by constant encouragement to
use English, and only English, during the whole session. Not only do we use
English in the classroom with our students but also outside. When they see us they
think in English.
On the other hand the traditional teacher figure gives way to a system. We teach through the
Oxbridge English System and not through the teacher figure. The Oxbridge English
system is responsible for the students learning at all times. We work as a team for
the final benefit of the student.
2.Material:
The traditional book disappears and it is substituted by activities through which the PM (the
person who is part of the system) makes the student use English.
Every class includes an average of 7-8 communicative and engaging activities especially
prepared for the different levels of command of English. Structures, vocabulary and
fluency activities are all thought to be actively practiced instead of being done in a
passive or written way.
3.Physical space:
The classroom with a blackboard disappears and is substituted by an environment which allows
the student to feel more relaxed and amongst friends.
4.Teachers’ preparation:
A teacher is no longer alone in the task of preparing for his/her classes. A team of teachers
sharing the same goals prepares the material under the same system; a system
created and developed by the teachers. That way of sharing system and material
increases the teachers’ preparation and dramatically reduces time for preparing the
resources. As a result we have better prepared and more motivated playmakers
who enjoy the classroom dynamics and bring effectiveness for the students.

The Callan Method

The Callan Method was designed by Robin Callan in 1959. It claims to be a variety of the natural
approach, giving priority to the conversation, listening skills and memory through a quite practical
approach. The objective is that students gain confidence from day 1 and start speaking in English
from the very beginning.
· Language content is structured in 14 levels.
· Practical skills are trained in each lesson.
· Lessons consist of three blocks:
o Listen and speak
o Repeat and retain
o Read and write
· In the first two blocks the teacher has a constant dialogue with the students using the
formula answer-answer-question-answer at a very high speed, with an average of 50
questions her hour.
· That way the student has no time to translate into their mother tongue and assimilates
the new content through repetition
· Grammar is acquired in a practical way through repetition
· The high-speed interaction implies better student involvement. Student’s attention is
constantly kept in class and there are no silences
· The contents weren’t updated since its creation, so they were considered obsolete even
though a revision of all of them was done in 2012.
· This method achieves good progress at low levels, nevertheless for high levels it can be
a little too repetitive and not spontaneous. Free topics are not considered in the
sessions.

CONCEPT CHECK QUIZ

· Vocabulary over grammar is the main feature of the:
Direct method
Audio-lingual method
Total physical response
. The Grammar-Translation Method emphasises:
Grammar rules over spoken language
Oral practice over grammar
Usage of the target language in the classroom only
. The Audio-Lingual Method is:
An oral-based approach to learn English
 A computer program to learn English
A distance learning method
. The Communicative Approach:
Integrates the four communicative skills to achieve communicative competence
Focuses on the linguistic competence of the learners only
Uses translation in low levels
. The Oxbridge English Teaching System:
Integrates orientation for the students and for the teachers
Allows translation in the classroom
Uses books as main resource
. According to the Oxbridge model:
All activities are the same
Activities have to have a communicative purpose and actively practice the
target language
Activities are mainly written
. A teacher according to the Oxbridge model:
Encourages students to use English inside and outside the classroom
Punishes students if they fail in saying something correctly
Brings photocopied material for the students
. A class in Oxbridge starts with:
Quick questions
Small talk
We always talk about the weather

LESSON 3. TEACHER-STUDENT INTERACTION. BUILDING PRODUCTIVE

AND RECEPTIVE SKILLS IN LEARNERS

In Unit 1 we went through some features of the teacher student interaction, specifically the ones
related to interpreting students reactions.

In Unit 2 we followed the fundamentals of the teaching methods and approaches and how they
are represented in a book or a lesson plan.

In both the previous units we dealt with a pillar concept in L2 teaching: preparation. In this unit we
hope you will fully understand what it entails to be well prepared and how this reflects on good
classroom management.

This unit is therefore designed to answer some more in depth questions about the teacher-
student interaction, especially at its most difficult level, the complete beginner learners. What aids
and techniques you can use with them is an important part of this unit.

We are also going to consider what skills we should develop in students and at what stage of
their learning process we should build them.
Next time you go to your teaching practice, pay attention to the teacher-student interaction, how
this is related to their preparation and the teacher’s aids with S1 students and the skills we build
in students.

TEACHER-STUDENT INTERACTION AND CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT

Interacting with learners is interacting with people. It is an art and the list of tips can be extremely
long! The more practice you get, the better you will learn to interact with students. Below are only
some suggestions and guidance but, as we say, your practice will put you in many more
situations from which you will learn and improve as a professional. Remember, no matter how
long we make the list, it is always based on the skills you will have to learn and develop the most:
common sense and preparation!

The way teachers interact with their students is essential for their development, progress, self-
esteem and self-confidence. This is valid both for young learners and for adult learners.
So, “get out from behind the desk” and become an actor!

Play and laugh with your students

For low level students, such as beginners (S1) or elementary level students (P2), games and role
plays will bring variety and remove tension from learners. Games are understood as essential for
kids, but adult learners also enjoy them.

Have you tried playing the song “Head, shoulders, knees and toes” with your business students?
Next time you have to teach body parts, make them stand up and sing, executing the movements
the song suggests. This will wave away tension and you’ll start the class with a positive
atmosphere.

You can achieve this easily if you know your activities and you are well prepared!

Call the students by their names

Do you know your students names? Do you call them by their names? You would be surprised of
how little students’ names are used sometimes in the classroom but how much impact on a good
learning process they have!

We all like to hear our names pronounced. Our attention is immediately kept and we become
more open to the teacher and what they transmit.

Use this as a technique to create rapport but it will also help you with the pace of the class, it will
make it more dynamic and fun.
You can achieve this easily if you know your activities and you are well prepared!

Do not hesitate in class

You may only think of what your next activity will be, but this can be interpreted as not knowing
what to do; that is, lack of preparation. Be a fast thinker and use the following technique if you
need some time to think:
- Ask a concept check or a wrap up question to a student.
- Meanwhile think fast!

Do not hesitate when you are asked a tricky question and be honest with your students. If you
don’t know the answer you can admit it but tell students you will bring the answer next time you
see them.

Once you provide an explanation, don’t hesitate. Hesitating will make your students unsecure
about your preparation and you will lose their trust.
Rectify next time if you have committed an involuntary mistake and you’ve realized it.

You can achieve this easily if you know your activities and you are well prepared!

Give clear instructions

Always illustrate with examples (especially structures points). Once you’ve given the instruction,
repeat the same if need be, don’t change it for something more complicated as it can only
confuse students. Change the instructions only if you are not understood. Make it simple! Make it
short! Make it clear! And above all, make it using familiar language and structures!

DON’T FORGET!

Think complex, speak simple! Simplicity is the art of good teachers.

Speaking simple means to avoid unnecessary constructions for the message you want to
transmit.

For S1and P2 students “polite” formulas may appear way too difficult. Substitute the “Would you
please” formula for something shorter. You won’t sound imperative if your tone is polite.

e.g. “Please repeat” is better than

“Would you repeat please”.

“Please stand up and say” is better than

“Would you kindly stand up and explain the class…”

You can achieve this easily if you know your activities and you are well prepared!
Your tone of voice is educational
You can give short instructions and still appear very polite and respectful to students. Speak up
but never shout! Speaking up will make your instructions easy to understand, shouting will lose
your students respect immediately! No one likes “obeying” a shouting teacher. If you want to be
well heard, try lowering your tone of voice. Your students will immediately shut and try to listen
to what you say.

DON’T FORGET!

Remember that to lose your temper is never the key to discipline. Quite the opposite, try lowering
your tone of voice but convey a clear message.

Have your material cut and ready

Don’t waste time looking for an activity sheet. A horrible impression is a teacher cutting
something out in front of the students while chatting. At that stage, and in order to fill silence, an
unprepared teacher tends to talk too much and increase TTT only because they don’t know
what to do or they need more time to prepare. If you and your material are ready for the class,
there’s no need to worry. This is what being well prepared for class means.

Involve all students, not only the dominant personalities

This has to do with the right classroom management. It is quite natural that we tend to involve the
most participative students which can even help us in class, but let us never neglect the shiest
students. Distribute STT evenly between all the students in the group.
At this point, remember to use students’ names. If you know that María is very dominant and
always answers first, don’t throw and open question. Instead, say: “Jordi, what is your opinion
about...”, “Elena, can you define ...”, etc.

This easiness in involving all the students is again a result of your good preparation. You’ll be
able to measure and devote even STT only if you are well prepared and know your activities and
objectives.

Create a warm classroom atmosphere

Be enthusiastic. If you enjoy, learners enjoy! If you are bored, students are bored! In case of
bored kids and teenage groups, learners will start misbehaving and you will lose their attention
and discipline. Bored adult learners will drop out of your course soon! You will lose their attention
and they will lack motivation.
Quite the opposite, if you enjoy yourself, your students will enjoy even more. And learn better!
Creating rapport is one of the fundamental classroom management principles and you will be
developing one of the most important affective factors for a good learning process.
You can even make fun of yourself, as long as you are not offensive.
If you want to know if a class is successful, look at your students’ faces at the end of it. What do
you see? Students smiling and laughing or bored faces and looks of concern? Ask yourself why
this is and make sure next time the class finishes with smiling students.

DON’T FORGET!

Enjoying yourself and being relaxed is only possible if you are prepared and know every step of
the lesson.

Remember: informal chats shouldn’t be part of the class but outside the class. Don’t confuse
creating warm learning atmosphere with too relaxed and aimless atmosphere. Your class
objectives have to be accomplished!

Praise and encourage!

Don’t patronise or punish. Punishing students for errors belongs to the past. It is much more
effective to praise and encourage students if they’ve accomplished a task. Be fair, don’t do it if
they don’t deserve it but do it every time you feel they’ve done great!
Never mock or patronise students. Students make errors in their attempt to convey a message.
Sometimes these messages can be hilarious but if you laugh, make sure your student
understands the funny part of it and realise that you are not mocking at them! Students are
sensitive and may interpret wrong your reaction.
This positive reinforcement, this praise and encouragement will benefit a lot your students. Not
only you will be creating good atmosphere, but you’ll increase students’ self-esteem and that
helps them build confidence and lose fear of speaking.
Praising in the right moment is another characteristic of good preparation and knowing your
lesson plan objectives and aims.

Seating arrangements and eye contact

This is a question of detachment or involvement.
Have you asked yourself why at school students are usually seated in the same way, in rows one
after the other? Why is the teacher standing at the board most of the time?
Probably the answer is that in such a learning environment we don’t except from students
immediate feedback. This type of seating arrangement is more traditional and thought for large
groups of students. In it, the students are not expected to use the language actively but to act
more as passive receivers of the teacher’s knowledge, therefore there is no need for eye contact.
In such a teaching atmosphere, if we need feedback, we do an exam or a test.

Modern L2 learning changes this situation dramatically. Groups are more and more reduced as
focus is on interaction rather than on teaching for the sake of it. This change requires also
changing the teacher’s attitude from one-directional to bi-directional (student-teacher) learning
process and therefore eye contact becomes essential in achieving even students’ participation.
Seating arrangements are crucial for good eye contact; therefore they change regarding the ones
that we find in a more traditional context.
In modern learning environments the teacher is expected to face all the students equally.
Therefore he or she is often to be found among them, instead of in front of them, facing all of
them easily.

Why is eye contact so important? Your students’ faces are the key to the question of whether
they understand and learn. Interpreting students’ reactions is one of the key factors for successful
teaching. This is only possible if you are facing them.

What happens when there is a board? Teachers are often depicted standing at a board. Back in
time it was a black board and teachers used chalk, later boards became white and we use all
kind of aids such as pens, projectors, slides and presentations, etc. No matter how modern our
equipment is, our position in front of the class at the board facing it, does not grant good two
sided communication. We have to be conscious of it when we use it.
Consider that when facing the board, you stop monitoring the students. The teacher is distracted
and so can be the students, especially in the teenage and kids age.
The teacher is not facing and speaking to the students, and the board definitely will not reply.
Next time you are going to use the board ask yourself whether this is really necessary or it is yet
another “tic” that we’ve inherited from the past. Can we not explain orally or use a piece of paper
without losing eye contact? Maybe we can and definitely if we can, we should.

We don’t use the board in Oxbridge. But if you choose or have no choice but to use it, mind the
following:
- write clearly
- don’t obscure the board
- don’t stand with your back to the class
- use upper and lower case correctly (not upper case only)
- plan how you are going to use it beforehand

DON’T FORGET!

Remember: seating arrangement tells a lot about how attached or detached you are from your
students. Eye contact is essential in interpreting students’ reactions and using the board can be
distracting and unnecessary. Make a clever use of it only if there is no other way for your
audience to receive the message right.

Monitoring
Closely related to seating arrangements, monitoring is another extremely important feature for
successful classroom management. Monitoring means following up the students’ interventions,
making sure they understand correctly the new target language and their performance when
activating it is satisfactory.

You can easily monitor one student at a time. But what would happen if all the students start
talking at the same time? Would we be able to monitor them all? Certainly not. This is why all the
activities that we choose have to take this factor in mind. Monitoring has to be easy and as a
result, we have to provide the means for it.

Seating arrangement will grant part of good monitoring. The rest would be a question of
suggested practice in the activities.

DON’T FORGET!

Say no to pair work. Think of what happens if you pair up students and go around the
classroom trying to monitor them. It is very likely that they start using their mother tongue shortly
after you’ve turned your back at them and the next step will be probably talking about something
quite far from the communicative task that you’ve assigned them. Kids and teens will lose
discipline. Adult learners will lose interest.

Turn pair work intro group work instead and monitor only one group or participant per group at a
time. While one student is speaking, all the rest should be attentive to them.

If we have one student speaking at a time, make sure interventions are not too long and all the
students get the same chance to speak.

Concept check questions and feedback

CCQ and feedback is the natural consequence of good monitoring and it is also a good close and
a chance to evaluate the progress of students. CCQ show that the teacher cares about the work
the students have just completed and has a clear objective in mind!

Not until you make sure that your students have mastered the target language of the activity you
should move on to the next one. It is not enough to ask “Do you understand?” You have to make
sure students have understood. You achieve it by asking questions which contain the target
language and force students to use it so that you can decide whether they are ready to move on
or need more practice.

In Oxbridge all our activities end with a wrap up, which is an element that assures concept
checking on one hand and is a good opportunity to link the activity with the following one by
making a smooth transition.

Non verbal communication

In the process of teacher-students interaction, communication is of enormous importance.
Usually we think that communication starts when we open our mouth to speak. And the truth is
that is has started long ago, when we first met the students we are sharing the physical space
with. In this previous phase is when we create the first and very important impression about what
we are.

For a positive interaction, the non verbal messages are much more important than what we can
say verbally.

DON’T FORGET!

Look at your students’ eyes. That way the communication is real.

Smile. Our smile is one of the most powerful reflections of our positive
emotions.

Use meaningful gestures to complement the communication. They create a

perception of enthusiasm and energy. Not doing so can be a sign of a cold and
rational personality.

Be observers. If you pay attention at people’s behaviour and reactions, you’ll

create a strong data base in your brain which will allow you to interpret non
verbal signs and reactions immediately.

Dress code
Last, but not least, your appearance speaks a lot of you and the institution that you represent. It
is another element of non-verbal communication. You are a teacher, not a businessman, but
dress smartly. Mind hygiene and body odour. In hot countries you can sweat more than in your
home country so adopt regular hygiene habits and be an example for your students.

Even though dress code can change from institution to institution in level of formality, our advice
is to have always in mind your target students. You may teach business people and although you
are not expected to dress as they do, you always have to appear appropriate for their
environment. Avoid flip flops and very short trousers for instance. Sandals and socks is not smart
for teaching. We are English teachers, not tourists.

Some considerations for some common classroom instructions

As we’ve widely discussed, the way you give instructions can turn your class in something to
remember to into something to forget. We often read instructions in text books or teachers’
guides that we accept for granted and never question, but do they always work? You can take or
leave our advice, of course, but let it be as a result of a profound and conscious analysis. Think
and observe in your students how different instructions have different impact on them. Let’s see
the following clichés:

Cliché nº 1: “Give thinking time to the students.”

We think that this can slow down the rhythm of the class. The students’ feeling
can be one of waste of time.
2-3 minutes of thinking time is a lot!
Spontaneous reactions are preferable and thinking time can be reduced to
some seconds, after the student has understood the instructions.

Cliché nº 2: “Don’t feel obliged to fill quiet periods with comments”.

 We agree. Excessive teacher talk is counterproductive.
Once you give an instruction students might need some time to assimilate it.
But, you can’t let the silence dominate! You are in charge of the class, make if
lively! Too much silence carries as a consequence a bad pace of a class; it can
be a symptom of boredom.

Cliché nº3: “Be patient with silence”.

Up to a certain extent only. Silence can mean that students haven’t understood
our instructions and we have to repeat them or change them or that they are
thinking and in that case it is not necessary that you intervene.
Be patient, but also proactive. Make students be active too.

Cliché nº4: “Work in pairs”.

Involve the whole group but only one student speaks at a time. You have to
control the class and you can’t listen simultaneously to 4 pairs of students.

Cliché nº5: Students at low levels need to keep the same teacher, as they get used to his/her
accent and way of speaking.
It’s a big world; you won’t have your teacher with you all the time. The sooner
you emancipate the better.
That’s why Oxbridge by system establishes a team of three teachers minimum
to guide a group and be responsible for its learning.

Steps for a successful classroom management

Do you remember the teachers’ roles? Out of the many roles an L2 teacher can have, let us here
focus on the classroom management from the point of view of the playmaker or the teacher seen
as the main force of the class, but being the students the main characters and stars in our
particular “movie”.
After some practice we are certain that you will achieve all of the steps and tips and naturally you
will become an excellent playmaker, a wonderful guide and a pleasure to learn with.

DON’T FORGET!

The playmaker is aware in any moment of what he/she is doing, what the
purpose of the activity is and how to perform it. S/he guides and distributes
the play, but does not dominate over the students.

The playmaker analyses the situation and has fast reactions if an activity
doesn’t work as expected.

We always use English in the sessions and don’t translate.

We teach our students to speak and understand English, not to read or

 write it first.

We always start our sessions on the dot with Quick Questions. That way
students know they are in an English class and no other language is to be
used and we don’t waste time with small talk.

We introduce ourselves after the Quick Questions, and don’t waste time in
long presentations. Asking the students who they are and what they do
again and again is not our policy.

A playmaker is always well prepared for a class (knows what class they
are teaching and its content, who and where they are teaching).

The rhythm of the sessions has to be appropriate for the level so that the
students are never bored or frustrated in class.

Each session should include all the elements of the communication: QQ,
listening, vocabulary, topic, structures activities and a wrap up.

A good playmaker knows how to manage Teacher Talking Time (TTT)

versus Student Talking Time (STT)

Punctuality is a must.

What to do with uncooperative or shy students

We’ve seen in previous units that unfortunately not all the students have good previous learning
experiences and sometimes we have to deal with their fears and frustrations. After a long and
exhausting working day, our students may not appear cooperative and we can think it is entirely
our fault that they close themselves to the suggested class dynamics.
Most of our students nowadays learn English because they want to and they are convinced about
it, but sometimes we have hard time with them and we don’t know what to do.

Once again, recall the teachers’ roles and especially the ones of psychologists and agony
aunt. You have to understand why they behave like that. They can be:
- Frustrated (teaching is unstructured, unclear, too difficult)
- Bored (activities are not stimulating, done before, too easy)
- Afraid of making mistakes. Make them feel that this is a stage in the
learning process. We all make mistakes. Mistakes and errors are
necessary. They make us human and we learn from them.
- Afraid of giving their opinion. Make them feel that any opinion is valid, as
long as it is respectful. Praise something about it even though you don’t
share the opinion: could be the correctness, the appropriate usage of the
vocabulary, the right register, vocabulary, etc. You are a teacher, not a
judge.
Children & discipline
§ Keep children busy. If they are busy and amused, they don’t misbehave.
§ Lower the tone and volume of your voice. They will pay attention
immediately.
§ Call them by their name and surname. This works!
§ Never shout! That makes you weak. They will never respect you.
§ The sooner you face it, the better: you are the mirror your students reflect in!
Students’ behaviour depends on you and there is no one else to blame!

INTERACTING WITH BEGINNERS

Teaching beginners is when and where any L2 teacher shows mastery in their profession.
Teaching beginners anywhere in the world without translating is the most challenging part of our
job especially if our aim is to use only English in class and not to deviate from our purpose to
make our classes as interactive as possible.

How can we interact with our beginner level students if they know no English at all? Is this at all
possible? It is as long as you are aware of the steps to follow. Again, we have a list of tips for you
based on our research and practice but again, your own experiences will complement and make
this list larger.

Let’s start with the end in mind which is that our students have to end up speaking English. Let
us also remind you once again the teachers’ roles. One of it is to be the model and resource for
your students. This will be our starting point.

If the first thing that we say to our students is “Hello!” and wave our hand to greet, they will
probably do the same. They will wave and say “Hello”. So far, so good.
If we next say “Hello, my name is María”, students will probably reply the same: “Hello, my name
is XXX”.

What this example shows us is the first principle in teaching and learning anything: repetition. We
learn by repetition and we repeat by imitation. No matter what our age is, our mother tongue, our
life experiences. We learn by observing and imitating. We learn by repeating patterns.
Establishing the most common learning patters is the key to teaching beginners.
These patterns have to be logically sequenced. At that level we do have to sequence well the
functions that we teach.

So, if we want students to learn a communicative pattern or function, the first thing to do is to
model it for them. Say the answer by providing an example with yourself before you ask a
question to a student.
E.g. “I am very well”. (Make it slow at first and loud, then at a normal speed.)
“I am very well. How are you? Are you very well?” (Help using gestures,
thumbs up, then help student to reply: “I am very well”.)
Allows students to memorize sentence patterns by means of repetition. Do it very slowly at first,
then increase the speed until normal pace of speaking.
E.g. “I am 25 year old. Hooooow ooooold aaaaare yooooouuuuu? Hooow ooold aaare
yooouu? How old are you?”

Repeat the student’s reply, correct incorrect usage of grammar, vocab or pronunciation. Make the
student repeat the corrected answer.
E.g. Student: “I have 25 years”.
Teacher: “I AM 25 years OLD”.
Student: “I am 25 years old”.
Teacher: “I am 25 years old. Very good, very good!”

Before introducing a new function, elicit first words students know already. E.g. before teaching
the age, make sure students know the numbers in English. You can pre-teach them first, and
then do the function of asking and saying the age.

Teach only one new concept at a time. No matter whether it is new vocabulary or a new
function, make sure there is also an already known element to support your next step.

Use a lot of visual material and mimicry to introduce new TL. Use pictures, mimes, realia (real
objects), body language. Play with your intonation to show a question and shake your head when
you want to represent a negative statement.

At the end of the practice, you can subtly insert a new structure, which can be a natural link to the
following activity.
E.g. After learning to say: “I am 25 years old. She is 23 years old”, students could
possibly learn “I am older than she”.

You can model the task with individual students and drill the TL. If you have a more advanced
student it would be good sometimes to use them as a model and show how the task works with
them. Don’t abuse of that practice though, students might feel a bit jealous.

Instructions have to be short, simple and clear. Reinforce them with gestures. Repeat them and
repeat the same classroom language preferably.
E.g. If we teach “How tall are you?” we can use our hands to show the height.
Instructions have to contain words familiar or similar to the students L1.

Always reformulate L1 responses into English. This is essential as students may understand
but be unable to respond in English. If they do it in L1, they show they’ve understood. Help them
formulate the same in English.

Grade your language. Use cognates whenever possible and simplify to the minimum.

CONCEPT CHECK QUESTIONS

 · Watch the following video about L1 usage in the classroom and think of the following
topics that will be discussed in your next training session:

How much L1 is used in class? In what situations?

How much do the teachers use the board? Is it really necessary?
What are the seating arrangements? Can you rearrange students for a more successful learning
process?
How many times does the second teacher make the students repeat the same TL?
Does she use mimics?
How does the Indonesian teacher introduce the new TL?
What seating arrangements has the Thailand teacher chosen? What does he achieve with it?
Is there any teaching practice in the video you disagree with?

· Watch the following video about using games in the classroom and think of the
following topics that will be discussed in your next training session:

What games does the first teacher (Taiwan) suggest? What practice does she suggest and how
can she monitor the students?
Look at how teacher 2 (Vietnam) explains the game to the children. Something to think about:
what happens when the teacher tries monitoring too many groups at the same time?
What does the game consist on? How does she explain it? Analyse her instructions.
How does she keep the discipline of the children?
What happens whenever the children are not closely monitored?
Have any of them needed to use L1 in the classroom?
Is there any teaching practice in the video you wondered about?

· Watch the following video about teaching speaking to large school groups and think of
the following topics that will be discussed in your next training session:

What strategies are put in practice to make students speak English and why?
How does the teacher (Indonesia) give the instructions?
Does she model first? Are the instructions clear? How many times does she ask the target
question?
Are the students responding right?
Does the teacher have a good feedback from students? Does she include TPR practice?
How much does she use the board?
Does she cope with classroom discipline?
Which in your opinion is the new TL of the activity and which one the students already know?
What structure does the teacher introduce at the end?
Does she model the task with individual students?
How would you describe her instructions?

· Watch the following video about storytelling to children large and small classes and
think of the following topics that will be discussed in your next training session:

What is the purpose of storytelling in the classroom?

How does the teacher (Korea) prepare the students for the activity?
What are her intro questions?
How does she engage her students?
Is there a pre-listening activity and if so, of what type?
What other means different from the linguistic ones does the teacher use?
How does she reinforce the key vocabulary?
How does she conduct concept checking?

DEVELOPING STUDENTS’ PRODUCTIVE AND RECEPTIVE SKILLS

Do you remember what a skill is? – It is the ability to perform a communicative task.

According to the communicative approach, we need to develop four skills for successful
communication in L2. They are listening and understanding, speaking, reading and writing.

What would the order of priorities be for them? Undoubtedly, understanding and speaking first;
then reading and writing.

Which of them would you define as receptive skills? And productive skills?
What skill or skills have the priority over the rest? Why do you think is so?

Productive skills
Speaking and writing are seen as productive skills as language production is involved in them,
while listening and reading refer to receptive skills as they both deal with language
understanding. Not to confuse the latter with passive skills. For the communicative approach all
four skills have to be actively developed in learners.

DON’T FORGET!
 Even though speaking and writing are both considered productive skills, their nature is
quite different, being the latter a consequence of the former.

We can write only if we can speak. In other words, not until we learn to say something
will we be able to learn to write it correctly. The natural focus is on speaking and writing
is a consequence of mastering speaking, not a condition for it.

Speaking skills and speaking practice

Most methods and text books consider speaking activities as a part of the class only. They
suggest that at least one activity should be oral practice.

For the Oxbridge model ALL the activities should be practiced orally for the complete
achievement of the communicative purposes. No matter whether our goal is learning new
vocabulary or structures, the focus of our activities is always the oral production.

Speaking is not only repeating what the teacher has said. This could be valid only for S1 level
and even at that level we have to motivate students to use the language with a clear
communicative purpose. Speaking is performing an oral task with a real motivation behind it.

Some considerations to have in mind:

Adapt the language for different levels: we won’t use the same language for P2 and for P5,
but both levels have to stimulate speaking practice all the time. Also known as grading your
speech.

The Projection Triangle: in the P2 level the vocabulary and structures vertexes are dominant.
The topic vertex will be dominant in P5. In P3 all three vertexes will have the same importance.
Speaking is the purpose of each and every activity, no matter what our focus is on (fluency,
vocabulary or structures).

How to get students to talk? It’s not enough to ask them “What would you like to talk about
today?” You have to plan carefully how to engage learners in a speaking activity so that they let
themselves go.

i. The opening of the activity is of enormous importance. It has to be engaging and

straight to the point.
Compare the openings. What reaction do you expect from each of them?
What is your favourite music? (general, boring)
Do you like music? (yes/no answer, uninteresting)
Music calms the beasts. Do you agree? (attention catching, engaging,
inviting to think and give opinion)
ii. The activity itself has to encourage and guarantee an active practice of the target
vocabulary or structure. If target language and activity instructions don’t match we
will not achieve our purpose.
 iii. Stimuli (visual or audio or physical) are always necessary to provoke students’
reactions. Good attachments achieve sometimes even more than the instructions
themselves.
iv. Variety of activity types is of extreme importance (abuse of the same type of
activity is counterproductive; too much matching practice for vocabulary acquisition
can be boring).
v. Help for the teacher: if the activity requires additional information for the teacher or
key for the answers it should be provided and not to expect the teacher to know all
the answers.
vi. A logical end (conclusion) of an activity assures good understanding whether the
goals were achieved and gives chance to analyse mistakes and errors.

When you plan your activity:

Establish the target language. Not too much, not too little. 5-8 items are enough for 1
activity.
Work out timing. Not too long, not too short. More than 10-15 minutes for an activity is
counterproductive.
Prepare attachments carefully. Note the quality of sound and visuals. Bad attachments
can ruin an excellent activity and vice versa.
Simplify instructions for the teacher. Add a guide or a key. Minimize teacher preparation
time, maximize efficiency.
Make the activity user-friendly.

When you teach the activity:

Don’t pair your students in order to increase the speaking practice. You will be unable to
monitor them and they will end up speaking their own language.
Don’t allow thinking time more than 5-10 seconds or you will lose spontaneous practice.
Don’t use gap fill activity. They ensure zero real communicative practice.
Be a good listener. Show interest and respond naturally. Don’t judge.
Listen and take notes of students’ mistakes to analyse later after their speech.
Remember: your talking time should be less than the students talking time.

What does “communicative activities” mean?

Activities aimed at developing real communicative skills potentiating active oral

production over one-word answer-activities.
Although all the activities should aim real communication, some of them are not for full
but for partial communication. Activities such as gap fills or matching columns do not
achieve full communication. Activities focused on full speech patterns do achieve the
latter.

Pronunciation and how to work on it:

Vocabulary activities are the most appropriate ones to drill the pronunciation. The
 presentation of new target vocabulary is the perfect occasion to focus on the correct
pronunciation and work on pronunciation patterns.
Still, if considerable pronunciation mistakes are observed in the session we can allow
time for corrections, explanations and practice even though we are practicing structures
or topic activities.

Writing skills and writing practice

Language is communication and communication in the 21st century requires good speaking skills
but also being able to write an email, a claim, a note.

Expressing thoughts and messages in a written way is also important for L2 learning but be
careful, in English we use two concepts which are often confused: spelling and writing.

Knowing how words are spelt has nothing to do with being able to write a meaningful paragraph.

Try the following experiment in class. Assign your pre-intermediate level students a written task.
Ask them to describe what they did last weekend, an easy task from the point of view of the
grammar and vocabulary implied in it.

Correct and analyse the errors in the texts. How many spelling mistakes are there? We are
certain not that many.

How many morphological syntactical mistakes are there? Errors such as wrong preposition
usage, wrong tenses, wrong word order,

How many lexical and semantic mistakes are there? Such as inappropriate words or phrases,
false friends, etc.

How many pragmatic mistakes are there? Wrong register, literal translation from the mother
tongue, etc.

Would you say that the text, as a whole, has been written thinking in English? Or it was an
attempt to transfer L1 language structure into English?

To conclude, what types of errors would worry you the most: spelling mistakes or the above
mentioned grammar errors? Which would take less to correct?

In Oxbridge we did this experiment and the results were quite revealing. Students failed to
express in writing what they failed to express speaking. Spelling had nothing to do with most of
their mistakes.

Activities for improving writing, therefore, must not be confused with activities for improving
spelling. In other words, just because you know how to spell words, you can write in L2. Quite the
opposite; only if you are able to express something meaningful orally, you will be able to do the
same in writing.

Having made this clear, another question arises. Now that we know that learning to write has to
follow learning to speak, how do we make our students learn to write? To answer this, let’s see
what the students actually need to write?

Your adult learners will point out that they need to communicate by emails, business letters,
essays, presentations, etc. Younger learners might be motivated by using new technologies such
as Facebook and Twitter and other social media for communicating and receiving information of
interest.

All these objectives have to be dealt with carefully. Learning to write an email is not just about
knowing the correct spelling of the words used in it. It also involves using the correct register,
opening and closing formulas according to our communicative purposes, correct text exposure,
richness of vocabulary, usage of idioms and phrasal verbs, etc.
And here is the surprise: we can teach all of this without the teacher writing any single word on
the board! With the right resources, visuals, cut-outs, slides, our students can learn to write well.

At what stage can students start developing writing skills? Once they’ve acquired the correct
pronunciation and written texts won’t interfere with their pronunciation. Remember: pronunciation
is first, spelling is next.

In what situations teaching writing is absolutely necessary? For instance, when we have a
different alphabet in L1, with languages such as Chinese, Russian, Bulgarian, Japanese, and a
long etcetera.

In what situations should we avoid emphasizing writing over speaking? When we have the same
alphabet (e.g. Spanish pronunciation interferes in the correct acquiring of English pronunciation
patterns)

Don’t base your entire lesson on written activities only. This can be very repetitive and
monotonous. You will be relaxed in class, it’s true, as little involvement on your part is required,
but you will bore your students to death.

Reasons behind written activities and their pros and cons:

Choosing a written activity has to have a clear purpose and objective. Here are some
reasons to choose to give students a written task. Which ones would be valid for you?

- To give the teacher a rest.

o What do you think about this? – Students will consider this a waste of time.
o Can unprepared teachers abuse this practice? – Yes, a lot! Consequences: you
kill the pace of the class and the level of satisfaction of the students. They are
unhappy. You are neglecting the learning process.
- To change the pace of the class
o In what sense does the pace change? – It slows down, often provoking
 boredom. We may lose the purpose of the written practice.
- To encourage creativity and self expression
o This is something that doesn’t have to do with L2 acquisition. If the students
don’t know how to write in their own language, we won’t achieve much in the
L2.
- To raise students’ awareness of the conventions of writing different text types
o A valid reason, especially for emails and letters
o you can achieve it with an attachment especially prepared for the activity

Types of written activities and how to carry them out:

There is a variety of activities that would activate the communicative purpose they are meant to
cover. Here are some of them with more or less communicative aim behind:
- Write a letter (email, letter of complaint, cover letter, etc.)
- Write an essay
- Copy a letter or a paragraph
- Dictation (very old fashioned)
- Description (of a photograph, image, etc.)
- Gap fill (very little communicative written practice is required here)
- Opinion about a text
- Summary of a text

If you assign a written task, always provide a model of it, an example of what you want the
students should do. Let them analyse the text and then give them a task / scenario where they
have to produce something similar.

How to correct written work

Have in mind the following considerations:

- Correcting every single mistake can be discouraging.

- Correction has to follow the goal of the activity (e.g. if the task is focused on
grammar we’ll correct grammar mistakes or syntax; if the task is focused on
acquiring difficult words we’ll focus on the spelling and the correct usage of the
words and will only correct major grammar mistakes.)
- Establish a set of criteria for correctness at each stage. Don’t “punish” mistakes
due to the students’ desire to use something above their level. They are trying to
make their way through English.
- After correcting written work there should be analysis and synthesis for the
students’ major mistakes. Analyse also the L1 interference.
- Punctuation has to be also included as an object of analysis.

What are some typical mistakes students can make during written activities?

- Orthography problems (use of upper or lower case)

 - Punctuation (incorrect or no use of punctuation)
- Spelling
- Layout
- Language: lexical and grammar mistakes or errors
- Sentence structure: wrong syntax
- Appropriate register for the type of writing

Receptive skills

“Receptive” comes from reception, and are the skills that have to do with understanding both
spoken and written messages. Listening and reading are therefore the skills that involve receiving
and decoding messages.

Once again, there is a difference in priorities between listening comprehension and reading
comprehension. We can read easily once we know how English is pronounced. Natural focus is
on the primacy of listening comprehension.

Listening skills
Listening comprehension is the first step to acquiring a foreign language. First we hear the words,
then we understand them, next we are able to utter them in their correct context. Improving
listening comprehension is, thus, a starting point for a successful mastery of a language.
L2 learners often face the same problems when listening to authentic texts. It is difficult for them
to understand the message if:

· People talk over each other,

· The speed of delivery is very fast,
· The tone is too low,
· Some accents are different from what students are used to.

Increasing the input outside the classroom helps students a lot in this sense. Communicating with
as much native L2 users as possible is a fantastic opportunity to improve listening
comprehension and watching films or series with original sound track is yet another help in this
regard.

Students often ask us how they can improve their listening and speaking skills. We use to advice
them to expose themselves much more to original English speech. We suggest them to watch
films and forget about dubbing or subtitles and turn the original sound track on. We encourage
them to listen to songs and sing them, even though they may not know fully understand the lyrics.
It can appear meaningless and frustrating at first but in no time and without much effort, what
used to be meaningless will start making sense, words will sound more and more familiar and
understanding native speech will no longer be a fruitless effort.

One of the reasons for us in Oxbridge to implement a rotating system of teachers is that this
brings the vast variety of English accents to our learners. Being one of the teacher’s roles a
model and resource for authentic speech, exposing students to different accents gives very soon
fantastic results. Students understand faster and easier all kind of accent patterns and feel more
confident if they have to communicate with native speakers or non-native English users, no
matter where they come from.

How to perform listening activities

What we explained about the speaking activities is applicable to the listening activities as well.

Start with something engaging, ensure speaking practice after the listening, and prepare a
consistent activity so that the pace and the motivation don’t decrease. Always ask yourself “Is
this interesting?” If you are going to play a listening, ask yourself, “Why would someone listen
to this? Is it relevant for the student / level / interests, etc.”

The teacher sometimes is the primary and sometimes she or he is the only resource for the
listening practice. His speech has to be clear and has to modulate the voice accordingly.

When playing a listening, set up a time; 1 to 3 minutes is more than enough for a listening chunk.
It is more or less what students can cope with, without distracting and losing track of the story or
dialogue. You have to think of the pace of the class again; this cannot decay or cause discipline
problems.

On the other hand, using songs, advertisements or catchy videos can bring fresh air to the class.

Remind students that they may not understand all the words! This is sometimes the objective of
the listening activity; there is no point in practising something that they already know. The
purpose of a listening activity can vary from understanding specific words to understanding the
whole meaning or specific parts of the text. Sometimes we use listening to provoke a debate or a
specific reaction in students. Always explain what you want to achieve by playing the listening.

Play the listening once for general understanding and again for details. If you want the students
to answer details, give them the questions beforehand.

Possible listening activities, with more or less communicative goal behind them
- Following instructions
- Answering true/false
- Detecting mistakes
- Guessing definitions (or unknown words)
- Answering comprehension questions
- Paraphrasing – retelling the information in a different way
- Interpretation
- If your listening is a song or a story, putting pictures in order

Remember: you are the best listening practice for your students, your English has to be good
enough for them to acquire good pronunciation.

Reading skills

Reading is possible and recommended once students are familiar with pronunciation patterns in
English. It is not rare for foreign learners to apply their L1 pronunciation patterns when reading,
which seems unnatural and a native English speaker would struggle to understand the message.

Transferring L1 pronunciation patterns when reading in L2 is therefore one of the most common
problems for English learners. An added difficulty comes for learners whose mother tongue has a
phonetic pronunciation, that is words are pronounced as they are written. Such is the case for
Spanish learners who try to apply Spanish articulatory rules for pronunciation, stress and
intonation. How can we make sure that reading will not have a negative effect on pronunciation?
The key is again in the method and approach to reading that we take. Making students read
before they have correctly acquired the pronunciation of the words that we make them read can
be quite harmful at first. In fact, very often we teachers have to correct vices that come from too
much reading and too little pronunciation correction. Learners who only study to pass their school
exams encounter that problem very often. Those who are exposed simultaneously to an
increased listening practice usually do not have it.

The conclusion is quite clear: we can work on students reading skills only after we’ve worked
enough on their pronunciation.

Who should do the reading in the sessions? For the Oxbridge model, the teacher, as model and
resource, reads the text in the first place. The reading has to have a purpose: to introduce or
clarify an activity, to catch the students’ attention, to engage students or to start a debate. For
those purposes it has to be short. As in listening, a very long reading can be too much and we
have to know when to make pauses in order to alter the rhythm of the activity.
That way the reading exercise turns into a listening activity.

Some considerations about reading activities:

o Limit the length of the text. Long texts are tiring.

o Choose something engaging and catchy. Whenever your students have to read,
make the reading task attractive and appealing.
o Use stories or fairy tales. Illustrate with images and visuals (especially for kids)
o Reduce reading practice for the students to 1-2 sentence chunks. Use it with a
purpose: further discussion, eliciting opinion or new language, etc.
o We don’t recommend that you make young learners read as a specific activity in
the classroom. You could do so as a part of an activity. It’s important to always
have a purpose behind the activity.

Both listening and reading comprehension activities are based on two types of understanding:

- Global understanding (the first time you play or read a text)

o You can pre-teach some key words
 o Assign first a task to focus students attention
o Ask for feedback

- Detailed understanding (second or consecutive time you play or read a text)

o Use pauses accordingly to allow students to perform the task
o Elicit feedback from the whole group, not only 1 or 2 students
o Again, you can give the questions beforehand

Possible order of instructions for listening / reading activities:

1. Pre-listening/reading introduction
2. Set clear task
3. Play the listening/reading
4. Feedback on task
5. Conclusion (analysis, correction)

Possible activities for reading practice:

- Provide a title
- Summarise
- Continue the story
- Preface the story (what happened before or after the chosen text)
- Discussion/debates
- Guess the content by the title
- Order the story
- Provide an ending
- Draw a picture
- Comprehension questions
- Identify vocabulary
- If characters are involved: describe the character, tell the character something, etc.
- Retell the text from another character’s point of view

Remember: Any activity can be an oral activity

CONCEPT CHECK QUESTIONS

· The link below is a video suggested for a listening activity. Watch it and note down:
o All the relevant TL you would excerpt from it.
o Relevant comprehensive questions for the students.
o What activity can you create for it?
o Is the video relevant/interesting/engaging?
o What level is it appropriate for?

· Bring to the discussion sessions four activities from a textbook corresponding to the
 four skills: listening, speaking, writing and reading. Analyse them in terms of the
following:
o Do they accomplish their communicative goal? How / Why not?
o How are they presented?
o Are they engaging/of interest? Why/Why not?
o What type of practice do they involve? Is it a communicative one?
o Is the activity creative?
o Are the instructions clear?
o Would the teacher struggle to perform it? Is teacher key provided?
o Is extra preparation necessary for them?

CONCEPT CHECK QUESTIONS

• In the teacher-student interaction it is very important to:

Know the students’ names and always address to them by their names
Be seen as an authority in class
This is not relevant at all. What matter is that the students study hard
• Which instruction would you use for your P2 students?
Would you please repeat that sentence again?
Please, repeat.
Would you be so kind to repeat what you just said?
• Good teachers
Are being helped by the best students
Involve all the students, not only the most dominant personalities
Are guided by the weakest students as they need more attention
• Sitting arrangements are:
Are relevant for the teaching process as they determine the teachers’ attention and classroom
management
Irrelevant for the learning process as motivation depends on the students only
Imposed by the institution I work for
• Non verbal communication is:
As important as verbal one and is expressed by eye-contact, mimics and encouraging or
disapproving gestures
Not a part of an English class.
Something necessary but not very productive

LESSON 4. NEW TARGET LANGUAGE THROUGH ACTIVITIES

We devoted Unit 1 to the main language acquisition theories and started defining the features of
what makes a good teacher.
In Unit 2 we analysed the different methods and approaches and their practical application as
well as the learners’ goals, needs and motivations.

In Unit 3 we continued looking in depth at the teacher-student interaction and classroom

management with a special emphasis on teaching beginners, and we spent a great deal of time
talking about how to develop students’ skills and the type of activities that we can use for that
purpose.

Continuing with the same line of analysing and searching for the best practical advice for the
teachers-to-be, we would like to dedicate this unit to the skills and techniques we need in order to
identify, define and present new target language for our learners. We will also look at: how to
improve their language usage and accuracy through structure activities; their lexical richness,
appropriacy and pronunciation through vocabulary activities; and their fluency and spontaneous
usage of the English language for communicative purposes through topic activities.

We will discuss what’s behind target language, how to define it, introduce it, activate it, adapt it,
quantify it and make sure learners have mastered it. The ultimate objective in language learning
is communicating in L2 through the newly acquired words and structures.

TARGET LANGUAGE

Target language is the most important part of the learning goals in a planned class. It is the
language the learners will be using to communicate in L2. It is the new language that we have
planned for a specific activity or class for the students to learn and activate and therefore it is the
element of the activity or a class that we encourage students to practice actively through the
different types of activities: guided or free activities, games or role plays, topics, vocabulary or
structure activities, activities to activate learning comprehension, speaking skills and fluency or
writing and reading skills.

We conceive target language therefore as the essence of the learning process and the different
activities are the means to achieve its acquisition in the classroom.

We are now going to look at how much target language there should be in an activity, in what
proportion we should combine familiar and new language and how to activate its usage.

INTRODUCING TARGET LANGUAGE

No matter what your activity type is, you can’t start it out of the blue. We need an “excuse” to
introduce a certain topic or a structure or vocabulary. The “Why?” or “What for?” answer, the
reason why we want students to focus on this or that language.

If our focus is the vocabulary from a specific semantic field, e.g. words related to accountancy
and bookkeeping, we might ask a couple of general questions to set the context for the student
and then ask some questions including the language we presume will be unknown for the
students. Presumably they won’t know or will be doubtful and we will be able to go in depth in
the concepts. Something catching is preferable to something that sounds boring or dull. We don’t
advice starting with “Today we are going to…” phrase as it takes away all the “suspense” of the
lesson.

An engaging intro including some of the new language is therefore a good start of an activity.

Compare these two ways of presenting a structure:

Teacher 1: Today we are going to study the past simple tense for irregular verbs.
The irregular verbs follow different patterns and you have to learn by
heart the following columns.

Teacher 2: - I usually HAVE a cup of coffee in the morning but YESTERDAY I HAD a
cup of tea.- At lunchtime, I normally GO to the cafe and EAT a
sandwich but YESTERDAY I WENT home and ATE a salad.

Which one is more engaging and less boring? In which case do you expect students to get more
involved?

The same idea of presenting new language in an engaging and effective way is applicable when
it comes to vocabulary.

ACTIVATING TARGET LANGUAGE

After setting our objectives and goals, the activity has to assure real practice of the target
language that we’ve established. Remember that it is not about learning lists of words, but
elements of connected and meaningful messages. If our selection is good, its practice has to be
easy to achieve. Think of what is the most effective way for your students to remember the new
TL, maybe some easy game, a chain game, a visual element, a role play, a riddle, a board-game,
a song, a video, anything that the student will relate to that particular context.

Once you know how to activate your TL, then make sure all the learners have equal chance to
practice it.

EXPLAINING THE MEANING OF TARGET LANGUAGE

Think carefully how exactly you will explain the new words and even check whether you are
familiar with them all. It is quite unprofessional for a teacher not to know key concepts of their
activity (grammatical or lexical items), so make sure have all the synonyms, antonyms, examples,
contexts, etc. to provide easy and simple explanations for the unknown words.

HOW MANY ARE TOO MANY?

One recurrent question for new teachers is how many new items are we able to learn in one go?
One activity or one lesson? How many are too many and how much is too much? Well, there is
no single answer as the new TL can be one structure only (e.g. inversion with never as in Never
have I seen such a disaster) but it can also be several words and phrases related to some
vocabulary field.

It is proven that we can’t really absorb more than a certain number of new vocabulary words,
which is specified as 8-10 items, so that’s the number that we should aim for. Usually an activity
that activates 5 to 10 newly learnt items is okay, while bearing in mind that the learners will be
using some old language as well.

Of course, not always all the vocabulary that we estimate will be new for the students is really
such. Maybe some of our selected items are already familiar, some might be similar to the local
language, and only few of them can present a real difficulty. In this case we don’t have to
overextend our list, but focus on the quality of the TL. Our aim is students to understand it and
use it fluently in the right context with the appropriate pronunciation. Make sure all these goals
are achieved when activating TL.

CONCEPT CHECKING TL AND WRAPPING UP

Your task is not finished until to make sure your learners have understood and are able to use
properly the TL that they’ve been activating.
Concept checking is not the answer to the question: “Do you understand?” but a smart selection
of questions that will reveal whether the learners have really mastered the TL. Demand for
examples, explanations, language in context, synonyms, etc. of the concepts. Only then your
task will be completed and you can move to the next activity.
Concept checking is also the best finish and transition to the next element of the class.

Now, a little bit more of details for each activity category and their particularities.

HOW TO APPROACH AN ACTIVITY: STAGES, STRATEGIES AND TIMING

Remember the elements of an activity: carefully selected target language, an engaging

introduction to get students’ attention on the subject, activity to provide its practice in an attractive
format and relevant context along with the visual elements or resources (attachments) chosen to
achieve it and a final part to summarise and recap of what has been taught.

An essential part of the communication is the vocabulary selection that we make to express our
ideas. Vocabulary activities are important at any level as they allow student to express their ideas
in L2. Vocabulary only though is not enough as we need something that sustains it in a
meaningful speech. This something is the structure of the language. Finally, there is no speech
without an intention or a topic to talk about, therefore no matter whether our activity is a
vocabulary, structure or topic one, teaching it will have similar features.

Learning vocabulary is not just learning lists of words. Unlike traditional teaching, in which
texts were used to excerpt vocabulary that the students were supposed to learn afterwards along
with their translation, modern methods always have in mind the relevance of the selected words
and the semantic field they belong to, so that remembering them is easier and contextualized,
instead of random and arbitrary.

Good target language includes elements that allow students to express meaningful ideas
within a context or a communicative purpose.

When teaching vocabulary or structures successfully you have to keep in mind the
following issues:

• APPROPRIACY FOR THE LEVEL

• SIMPLE, SIMPLE, SIMPLE EXPLANIATIONS
• PREPARE BEFORE CLASS
• TEACH IMPLICITLY
• REPEAT, REPEAT, REPEAT
• ELICIT
• DESCRIPTIVE OVER PRESCRIPTIVE TEACHING
• AVOID TRANSLATING INTO L1
• SPELLING DEVELOPS STUDENTS’ WORD AWARENESS
• REMEMBER THE GOAL- STUDENTS’ SPEAKING IN CLASS SO THEY CAN SPEAK IN A
NATURAL CONTEXT
• Simplify grammar when you teach vocabulary and use familiar vocabulary when introducing a
new structure.

Let’s look at these issues one by one:

Appropriate for the level

Remember that we won’t teach colloquial or slang words when students don’t even know the
common ones in L2. At a P3 level we can’t expect students to learn or be interested in these
items if they don’t know their equivalent in neutral register.
e.g. We won’t probably plan to teach to get the boot before our students learn to fire or to be
fired, which is the equivalent in “standard” language.

Do not assume knowledge. Assuming that students will know something may lead to
wrong activity presentation. Check for knowledge instead of assuming it.
It’s not enough to ask students “Do you understand?”. Make sure they do by
eliciting meaning, synonyms, antonyms, examples of the TL in use, etc.

Simple, simple, simple, simple

Keep the explanations “stupidly” simple. No, your students are not stupid, but that way it’s just
faster, easier and more effective.

e.g. you can define “shoe” as “a covering for the foot having a sturdy sole and not
reaching above the ankle” for your beginner students, which is a dictionary definition,
but be sure that they won’t understand a word. Instead, try a simpler and more practical
definition such as “you put it on your feet”. Yes, it can be also an explanation of “socks”,
but if you just show the item or provide a picture of it, your students will immediately
understand what you mean.

!!!!!! Before classes, prepare !!!!!!

If you are not 100% sure about a word or a phrase ask other teachers or look in a thesaurus,
dictionary, grammar book, for their way of explaining. Experienced teachers have often figured a
concise and effective description but think about how you use it in your own speech.
Have at hand some examples of the word in its most common context.
If your students have to learn “sour” try a simple examples such as “Lemons are sour”. Put a
funny face and your students will understand.

Do not explicitly teach the vocabulary…

…if it can be avoided, try to work them into a fun or memorable game, discussion or activity. Most
important is to get them using the words. Games or fun activities are a wonderful way of
activating vocabulary. Contextualising helps your student to situate the word’s most common
usage and remember it easily.

If you point out at pictures and ask every time “What is this?” learning vocabulary can be
a synonym of memorizing lists of words, not vocabulary in context.

Repeat, repeat, repeat

Unfortunately most students don’t study at home. If they only say or hear a new word once they
will forget it immediately unless you make sure they activate it in class.
Quality of the TL learnt in this case is much more important than quantity. You have to know how
many new items learners are able to remember at once and the number is limited. Repetition of
the new TL, in its most common context at first and then in different contexts helps students
remember and use the TL correctly.

At a low level this vocabulary has to be carefully selected and we choose words that have a
broad communicative application, that is, they are used a lot in everyday life.

At high levels too many vocabulary items can be overwhelming and unproductive. Students won’t
remember 10 phrasal verbs in a row, unless you practice them for an hour which would be way
too boring. Instead, select a reduce amount of them, preferably the closer to their work, interests,
needs and practice them in different context.
Make students hear themselves using the new target language. It’s not enough for you to
model it; your students are the ones to activate it and this is done by demanding full answers
where the new item is included.

Make sure students will be able to consult the TL after the class.
This can be done by keeping record of all the new language. In traditional environments, students
usually write down in their note books the new TL, but this rests time of the active practice in
class.

In Oxbridge we wanted our students to spend all their time in speaking and activating
the TL instead of writing it down. That’s why every week we send the students the target
language for all the activities by email. They can look at it before the class and come
with questions. After the class they can revise.

Have learners ask questions with the new words, answer questions in the positive and
negative form. Don’t practice statements only.
When learning verbs, we sometimes neglect question and negative forms and concentrate on
affirmative statements only. Practicing all three sentence forms also activates and
automatizes these forms which can be challenging for students.

Get used to providing many examples. They are often easier to understand than definitions. A
definition for a new word or phrase is very useful but it always has to go along with an example.

- Use synonyms and opposites

- Shows them the word used in an actual sentence, models it for them so they
can then mimic your structure
- Students can just look up a translation at home, they don’t need a teacher to
do that, we are there to show them how to actually use it correctly and guide
them in correct pronunciation.

e.g. Vegetables. You know what they are saying but still correct them and have them repeat
correctly after you. Learners often pronounce some words so poorly that the sentence
becomes unintelligible.

Always try to elicit meaning or usage

...instead of just telling them what words mean, they need to be able to think… in English
Here are some suggestions of what you can do:

- Ask a question, learners might say they don’t understand, but then break it
down and have them figure it out.

- Show word or picture, ask name of what it is, get students to explain each
other. It is more effective for learner to give each other answers and help than
relying on the teacher.
 - Give example, ask them for the meaning or to use the word in a sentence.

- Asking questions is a great way to introduce and get them using words but be
sure they also form questions and do not just spend an hour replying to the
teacher.

Descriptive vs. prescriptive teaching

It is always better to “describe” how the language is used to make the students sound natural and
correct, instead of “prescribing” how the language should be used. English is not Esperanto (an
artificial language) nor Latin (a dead language). English is an ever evolving and live language;
rules exist to give us guidance and make it easier for students but there are many variations of
English. We have British English and within it a wide range of accents and regional vocabulary
usage. We also have American English, Canadian, Australian, etc. and again, a wide range of
accents and regional vocabulary usage, local idioms, sayings and proverbs. This richness of
linguistic variations by no means makes English unlearnable. It only means that we, as teachers,
have to be open to local word usage or local accents. We have to explain and describe how the
English language works, and be tolerant to any usage considered as correct.

Don’t translate TL into L1

Target language can be introduced and explained by means of the English language itself.
Translating is not necessary. A good teacher doesn’t need to know the mother tongue of the
learners. Translating in class should be your last resort, once you’ve explained, demonstrated,
given examples, shown images but the concept still remains unclear. Not even at low levels
translating is necessary. All you have to mind is introducing new TL once the previous functions
have been fully acquired.

Here you have some suggestions of how to introduce new TL without translating.

5.You can use words that sound similar in their native language. These words are known as
cognates and share similar roots.
e.g. Eng. “describe” – Sp. “describir”
Eng. “use” – Sp. “usar”
Eng. “action” – Sp. “acción”

But be careful:
- Often one student translates it wrong and tells all the other students the wrong
translation in Spanish or Catalan (false friends). In this case, correct
immediately.

- Words have similar meanings but do not translate directly, leading them to use
it incorrectly (Eng. “have” – Sp. “tener” have the same meaning but very
 different uses)

- SS often do not see the relation between 2 words even when they are very
close, leading you to tell them the word in Spanish which can be a slippery
slope situation finding you are translating too much and the ss not thinking in
English. A way of avoiding it is to spell the word for them; when they see it
written they can realize that it is similar to their own mother tongue.

- Of course students might have different native language depending on where

you teach.

2.Remember:
It is very effective to present a word in its most common context.

Other ways of introducing/explaining new vocabulary:

- Synonyms – (with phrasal verbs especially: come in = enter)
- Antonyms – to hate = the opposite of to love
- Examples with realia – pen (we show them the object)
- Easy definition - cottage = small country house
- Examples of most common context - sour: Lemons are sour
- Drawing
- Image
- Most common situation - to apply - you apply for a job, you apply for a visa,
etc.
- Mime
- References to other known words (adore = love)

How not to do it:

- Translating
- Providing dictionary definition (too complicated)

Spelling develops students’ word awareness

Very often students are confused by similar sounds in English and can’t differentiate between two
words. Instead of writing the word on a piece of paper or on the board, spell it. By making the
effort of writing the word themselves, the students develop word awareness and “do the hard
work” on their own. They learn how spelling and pronunciation are related and get used to the
sounds of English.
Writing for them only interferes more in their pronunciation in a negative way. Not so much
spelling. After some failed attempts to understand a word, the teacher can spell it. It is in this
moment when the student learns to relate sounds with letters.

Remember the goal: students speaking in class so they can speak in a natural context
All classroom practices have to be aimed eventually at reproducing as much as possible real
communicative contexts. The teacher-student interaction is always done in L2 and this is the first
start to achieving this goal. On top of this basis we have to build contexts through every single
activity that we plan for a class. Again, this can be achieved through all the vertexes of a class:
vocabulary, structure and topics.

Simplify grammar when you teach vocabulary and use familiar vocabulary when
introducing a new structure
This simple rule will direct your students’ attention on the new target language only and will make
the new language appear easier. Too many new elements of a different kind in the same activity
can be more difficult for the students rather than one difficult or new thing at a time.

Golden rules of teaching grammar

Summarized below are some bullet points with the golden rules of teaching grammar. Some of
them apply to the rest of the activities as well, as for instance the one about changing your pace
to suit the level of the class. Remember them as they have proved to work in the classroom.

• Low teacher talking time.

• Keep vocabulary simple when teaching grammar.

• Break the grammar down into points to explain better.

• Make the lesson progressively more challenging. Start simple.

• Have students making positive and negative sentences.

• Have students ask each other questions.

• Don´t mix tenses until the students can perfectly use the grammar point.

• Change your pace to suit the level.

• Use time prompts to help students – today, this week, tomorrow, yesterday.

HOW TO WORK ON STUDENTS’ FLUENCY AND PRONUNCIATION

We use topic activities to improve the fluency of our learners. Spontaneous but guided topics
about relevant issues can stimulate students’ participation, they will lose fear to speak in English
and we can use these activities to guide them to correctness and work on their pronunciation as
well.

Have you ever considered the following when performing topic activities?

· If students don’t want to talk about a topic, what do you do?

- You can move on to the following activity. Maybe your students are not interested
in nuclear threats.
- You have to find out whether it is a question of difficulty. They have an opinion but
 don’t yet have the means to express it. Help them out with simple structures and
target language.
- Students can have different backgrounds and may not feel confident expressing
their opinion. Change an opinion question into a fact question. Facts are more
impersonal, there are no personal implications in them, and therefore it’s easier to
talk about facts than expressing opinion.

· What do you do if one student doesn’t participate?

- Again, find out whether it is a question of a learner struggling with the difficulty of
your question. Maybe s/he is behind the rest of the learners, maybe, on the contrary
they have more level and find the question too easy and uninteresting.
- If the topic is too sensitive, maybe you would need to reconsider its appropriacy for
these learners or this particular group.
- Move on. The topic might not be engaging.

· What do you do if one student dominates the class?

- Remember that one of your functions as a teacher is to distribute STT equally. It is
ok to say: “Jordi, thank you for your opinion but let’s hear what Susana has to say
about it.”
- Encourage the rest of the group to help weaker learners. That way everybody will
feel that it is important to participate and let the others speak as well.

· What are the pros and cons of classes with a lot of student talking time? Teacher
talking time?
- It’s a question of common sense and reading your students reactions.
- It’s a question of level as well. Lower levels require more guidance from you,
therefore your talking time might increase slightly.

Here’s what you can do while your students are doing topic activities:

• Make note of major mistakes and analyse. Better to do it after they’ve expressed their opinion;
you don’t want to interrupt them every now and then.
• Be sensitive to students feelings
• Try not to interrupt flow
• Drill if need be
• Keep corrections positive
• Encourage students to correct themselves and if that fails to correct each other.

Pick out all mistakes even if you are not correcting them at the time, try to point out later or at
end. Inconsistency is noticed.

Common sense and being sensitive to those around you go further than some guy giving you
advice.
Correct as much as possible but be aware of killing the rhythm, a bit of trial and error is needed.
CONCEPT CHECK QUIZ

“The good and the bad”

Give your opinion about the following statements about structure activities. You have a statement
and two possible options: good or bad.

Which one is applicable in each case according to your opinion? Have a think about this before
the TEFL debate session and be ready to discuss the details.

· Bring your favourite film to class for students to watch. There is a lot of grammar in the
film.

· Talk about the time you travelled through Thailand, or the time that you killed a
crocodile with your bare hands. The stories are all in the past tense.

· Start with easy uses of the grammar point as examples.

· Use difficult vocabulary when teaching grammar – challenge the students.

· Use only positive sentences when teaching grammar.

· Have students ask each other questions using the structure.

· Have Students making negative sentences.

· Keep the intro brief.

· Mix tenses. Mix up the present with the past for example all the way through the activity
to challenge them.

· Start simple and make it progressively more challenging. Eg. Start with the present
tense and later use past or future tenses.

· Change your pace to suit the level.

CONCEPT CHECK QUESTIONS

1.Target language is:
. A list of words the students are supposed to learn by heart in each activity
. The language that the students want to learn with our help
. It is the new language that we have planned for a specific activity or class for the
students to learn and activate
2.We have to introduce and activate TL:
. In an interesting and engaging way in order to encourage the students using it.
. Saying what the students will learn, no matter how difficult it appears
. We can improvise this part as it is not the most essential one in a class
3.It is proven that students can learn an average of:
. 15-20 new TL items per class
. 8-10 new TL items per class
. 2-4 new TL items per class
4.Repetition and eliciting of TL are good for:
. Only high level students
. Only low level students
. All levels of students
5.Descriptive teaching is:
. Better that prescriptive teaching
. Less efficient than prescriptive teaching
. As good as prescriptive teaching

LESSON 5. TEACHING BEGINNERS

The Philosophy: Teaching Beginners

One of the most useful things to learn in relation to English teaching is how to teach beginners. If
you are able to teach elementary or beginner level students then you will be able to teach any
higher levels, as this is often much easier than the low level students, especially when you
consider that most English language teaching is now taught solely using the target language,
English. It’s often easier at high levels because you can explain the concepts to students and use
synonyms that students will understand. However, this is harder at low levels because it is very
difficult to explain using a language that the students know nothing about.

Therefore, in this unit we will look at how to structure learning materials for complete beginners
and most usefully how to teach beginners solely using English. This will enable you to teach
English all around the world rather than just translating between Spanish and English. You will
develop skills in grading your language, keeping instructions simple and creating structured
learning materials.

How to Approach Teaching Beginners

Whenever you approach teaching beginners you have to be very sensitive towards the problems
and issues that students who are learning English for the first time may have. It’s important to
bear these issues in mind:

- The age factor. Learning at adult age can be as successful as at young age,
but the process is different
- Other previously studied languages interference. For example, students
who have studied French tend to apply the same pronunciation patterns in
 English and use French words. When they think of a foreign language they
think of French in this case, they don’t think in English.
- The interference of L1: constantly present at the initial stages.
- The pace of learning can be different: The learning pace can be faster in
some aspects (with words based on Latin for instance) and slower in other
(syntax constructions, phonology)
- Practice time is limited: Realistically many adult learners have less time
available for practice and utilising their language outside of the classroom,
expectations are also bigger.
- Impatience: The rush to learn the language for work or business purposes
can make these students impatient.

However, it’s important to remember and to remind your students that if they want to learn there
are a simple and easy ways.

It’s useful to base the teaching of beginners on some simple tasks: analyse immediate
communicative needs; analyse the most versatile vocabulary along with simple structures; and
go from the general to the particular (or specific).

a. Analyse their immediate communicative needs. Ask yourself the

question: what do students need to express first in the English
language? Is it talking about the world economy? No, probably their
immediate needs will be to answer a greeting, ask for directions, or
express a need. Therefore the contents will go from ‘who I am’, to
‘who you are’, to ‘what I have’, ‘where I go or live’, ‘what I need or
take’, ‘what I like or hate’, ‘what I do or make’, etc., etc. For these
functions we have selected the most relevant and simple
vocabulary, so that every word is considered as necessary and
important for communication at that specific stage.
b. Versatile vocabulary and simple structures. There is no need to
teach a long lists of words. The students need a selected and very
versatile vocabulary that can be used in many communicative
situations. Of course the structures don’t need to be complicated
either. It’s useful to remember at this level that we can express
almost everything with the present simple tense, polite words, basic
questions and orders.
c. From generic to specific (see the 4-step system below)

It’s often useful to think of the structure of a beginner’s course as a conversation on a train.
Would you start off a conversation with a stranger on a train by asking about their views on the
world economy or would you start by introducing yourself? By thinking through this process we
can help to create a sensible and simple structure to the class syllabus.
The 4-step system

Teaching beginners should follow this simple 4-step system:

 STEP 1 – teach a function: I am, I have, I need, go, live….

STEP 2 – use the function with generic words: this/that, here/there, thing/object
I HAVE THIS. I LIVE HERE. I GO THERE

STEP 3 – substitute the generic with the specific: THIS is a PEN. THIS are CHAIRS

STEP 4 – join function and specific nouns in a sentence: I HAVE A PEN

Example:
I VERB.
I VERB this.
THIS is a noun.
I VERB NOUN.

How context can help when presenting new language without translating

All the selected words for the level need to be presented in their most common context so
students are able to understand the meaning without translating or struggling. If students can
guess the meaning then we are gradually getting them used to thinking in English, which is one
of the most powerful aspects of language learning.

For instance, if we want to teach the question words WHO and WHAT, we can use them with
words that have the same Latin root and the meaning will be quite obvious for the students:

WHO is the president of Spain?

(new) (obvious or known) (known or obvious)

WHAT is the capital of France?

(new) (obvious or known) (known or obvious)

Another way of presenting new language is by examples or realia, mimes:

BITTER Lemons are bitter. (help miming)

SWEET Chocolate is sweet.

Class Structure

The Oxbridge English Teaching System’s S1 course consists of 25 classes. Every class includes
a revision of the previous class.
Class 25 is a general revision class of the whole course.
The structure of each class is:
 · Quick questions
· Revision of the previous class
· New content
· Recap (consolidation of the new content)
For revising previous content we use the same attachments and flashcards as in the previous
classes, which helps learning through repetition and consolidation.

How to teach beginners (S1) classes

Some key points to remember when teaching beginners classes are:

Teach them slowly and clearly! No, really, really slowly and as clear as possible!
Don't explain things in a complicated way.
Keep structures simple and vocabulary even simpler. Try to use cognates (words that are similar
in L1 and L2) to help students.
Don’t explain things that are not in the class. Each step has a logic behind it, we don’t need any
more at the current level.
Before you say or even teach these first beginners’ classes think about the way you will present
and teach them to your students. Why? Because you're introducing them to English
for the first time so you better start off right!
All of the first beginners’ classes have a different structure to the rest of the levels: it needs to be
taught in more of a scripted manner and should be kept very simple, whereas more
advanced levels are perhaps freer for the students.
And remember to always repeat things over and over to make sure your students have really
understood it.
Correct pronunciation when your students have finished speaking but correct the basic grammar
and structure points straight away.
Make good use of gestures in the classes.
Always try to model the answers for your students, for example “My name is Joe. What is YOUR
name?”

CONCEPT CHECK QUESTIONS

6.When teaching beginners we:

Go from specific to generic vocabulary
Go from generic to specific vocabulary
7.The priorities in teaching beginners are:
The students to learn some basic vocabulary first
The students to be able to great and say goodbye
8.New vocabulary when teaching beginners is presented:
Only when strictly necessary
Randomly. Students have to learn a little bit of everything
In its most common context to help understanding
9.Our teacher talk when teaching beginners is:
Slower and very clear with repetitions simple sentences
Unchanged. We want students to speak like us
We speak low so that students pay attention
10. We work on pronunciation:
A lot! At this stage it is very important to get students to pronounce right
From time to time. We don’t want to overwhelm students
Never. We’ll deal with it at a later stage

The S1 Course Syllabus

1. BASIC FUNCTIONS: TO BE in first and second person. Introductions

2. BASIC FUNCTIONS: Expressing possession: TO HAVE

3. BASIC FUNCTIONS: TO LIVE. Present simple tense

4. BASIC FUNCTIONS: TO BE in all persons. Plural

5. BASIC FUNCTIONS: TO SPEAK. Present simple questions and negatives

6. BASIC FUNCTIONS: NUMBERS AND LETTERS

7. BASIC FUNCTIONS: Identifying objects: THIS IS. THESE ARE

8. BASIC FUNCTIONS: TO BE in first and second person. Introductions

9. BASIC FUNCTIONS: Describing surroundings: THERE IS. THERE ARE

10. BASIC FUNCTIONS: Expressing movement: TO GO

11. BASIC FUNCTIONS: Expressing likes and dislikes. TO LIKE

12. BASIC FUNCTIONS: Expressing desires. TO WANT

13. BASIC FUNCTIONS: Doing things. TO DO. Present continuous tense

14. BASIC FUNCTIONS: Preparing things: TO MAKE

15. BASIC FUNCTIONS: Everyday actions: WORK, STUDY, PLAY

16. BASIC FUNCTIONS: Expressing necessity: TO NEED

17. BASIC FUNCTIONS: Expressing opinion: TO THINK

18. BASIC FUNCTIONS: Survival actions: EAT AND DRINK

19. BASIC FUNCTIONS: Expressing abilities: CAN

20. BASIC FUNCTIONS: Using things: TO USE

21. BASIC FUNCTIONS: Basic actions: TO TAKE. TO COME.

22. BASIC FUNCTIONS: Basic actions: TO GIVE

23. BASIC FUNCTIONS: Basic actions: TO WEAR. TO BUY

24. BASIC FUNCTIONS: Describing actions related to senses: TO SEE, SMELL, TOUCH,
FEEL, TASTE, HEAR

25. FINAL CLASS: Revision

<--h1>Activity Development

S1 ACTIVITY TIME

Part of the assessment for this module will be based on how you are able to teach beginner level
students. You will be required to create a sample S1 activity and then to practice teaching this.

- You need to teach your S1 "students" an engaging S1 activity focusing on an easy S1 verb
function that you will be assigned by the TEFL trainer.

- So, for example, you could teach them: 1) I am... 2) Who are you? 3) What are you? 4) What is
your profession?

- In order to teach them the above you also need to teach them some words, like: man, woman,
artist, teacher, office worker, businessman/woman, technician.

- You will also need to create some simple flashcards.

- It will then be up to you to decide how you will teach this material, as you will be required to
teach a practice class in the TEFL Debate Session.

- Here's a hint: Start off by saying, very slowly and clearly: e.g. "I AM A WOMAN/ MAN."

- Make sure that you grade your language appropriately

HOW AND WHEN TO USE EFFECTIVELY TEXTBOOKS

USING TEXTBOOKS IN THE CLASSROOM

3.Evaluating and adapting course material
What are some of the criticisms of course books?
Boring, inappropriate for the class, they stifle the students’ and teacher’s creativity;
lacking in variety, stuck in the same approach to language learning or skills
development. They offer little or no opportunity for engagement.

Why use course books?

If you are not using a system you may need a guide (a syllabus)
If you are not using prepared material (e.g. Oxbridge classes) your students may feel
insecure.
If you are not using a system that allows repetition and revision (e.g. in Oxbridge we
send the target language to the students), your students may need to revise and study
using a book.
If you are not using a system of consistently prepared classes, your students may lack
visuals, resources, etc.
If you are not using a system that takes care of teachers’ preparation time (e.g. in
Oxbridge we try to minimize the teacher preparation time to the strictly necessary for a
successful class providing clear instructions and all the resources at hand) a book is a
good option that saves your from external search.
If you don’t use a system and are inexperienced teacher, you may need to build your
own resource bank first and meanwhile you use books.
If you run out of ideas and you are not using a system, you’d rather use a book.

Oxbridge has the system, no need for a book then.

Why do most of the school choose to use books instead of a system then?
A system like the one that Oxbridge provides is expensive and very difficult to manage.
The results though are brilliant and definitely worth the while.

What to do in case you have to use books.

According to Neville Grant in Making the Most of Your Textbook there are 4 approaches:

Omit the lesson completely

Replace the lesson with your own version covering same target language
Add to what is in the book
Adapt what is in the book

Why does that happen, books being not suitable?

A question of detachment. Authors and target audience are far from each other. Books
are often obsolete and do not have in mind news, current events, etc.
If you don’t test immediately your material hardly you will know whether it works or not.
That’s why in Oxbridge teacher are playmakers and authors at the same time (two sides
of the same coin).

How should teachers choose course books?

 Task: Take some course books and comment their content and activities.

Questions for your consideration:

- how are they organized (topic based, task based, grammar based, etc.)
- what do they cover (general English, English for business purposes,
special purposes, etc.)
- what type of activities are reinforced (speaking activities, writing, reading,
…)
- do they allow enough speaking practice
- do they include enough resources
- what kind of explanations do they provide: technical or functional

Jeremy Harmer in his book How to teach English mentions the following issues to consider when
choosing a course book:
- Price: can the students afford it?
- Availability: is the course and all its components available?
- Layout and design: is the book attractive? User-friendly design?
- Methodology: what kind of teaching and learning does the book promote?
- Skills: does it cover the four skills? Is there a balance between skills?
- Syllabus: is it appropriate for your students?
- Topic: does it contain variety of topics?
- Stereotyping: does it represent people and situations in a fair and equal
way?
- Teachers guide: is there a good teacher’s guide? Is it easy to use?

Task: students to compare a course book with the Oxbridge method

Consider the following:

· Realize that a good teacher needs a good system, not a good book
· Good material needs good teachers
· How not to be lost in a book shop
· How to interpret a book’s content
Advantages of not following a book but preparing your own material.
· Again, you need a system first. A system that would state objectives and goals and will
give you the tools (material, resources, know how).
o You always have updated material in each class
· You always have different material in each class
· There is no possibility of repeating material or not knowing what you have to teach
· You can adapt the content to the concrete cultural reality you are in (e.g. contents that
Spanish people know better)
· You can prepare material to suit your classes. You have tailored classes, not prêt-a
porter
· You are extra motivated to create and teach something that is of your and your
students’ interest
· Omitting, replacing, adding and adapting are reduced to the minimum (especially
 replacing and adding).
· Preparation time for teachers is dramatically reduced
· Students are never bored, they don’t start every year revising present simple tense
· Creating material for the specific needs of your students is extremely easy. You know
the techniques, you know how to do it!! And if you don’t, some of your co-workers will
know and you’ll be able to take benefit of that preparation. In exchange, you’ll contribute
with something different to the material creation.

4 THINGS TO DO WHEN USING A COURSEBOOK

1. Add
Take the existing lesson or part of the lesson and add more material to further practice the point
being studied.

2. Adapt
Take the idea of the lesson but adapt parts of the lesson or activity to include more relevant or
more up to date information and scenarios

3. Replace
Completely replace the lesson or activity with your own version making sure that the same target
language is studied and used by the students.

4. Remove
Completely remove the lesson or activity altogether. This situation is the rarest of the four
methods and is used when an activity or lesson is either out of date or out of touch with and is
considered inadaptable. Usually this option is not considered for grammar or vocabulary
activities when the option to adapt, add or replace is more beneficial.

CONCEPT CHECK QUESTIONS

• Textbooks provide:
A good bunch of written activities and less speaking activities
A good bunch of speaking activities and less written activities
They claim to equally develop the four communicative skills in students
• The alternative of a textbook is:
A lesson plan prepared by your own
Improvisation. As teachers we know everything by heart
Photocopied handouts. They are effective and cheap

LESSON TEST
What do you think is the best type of activity to ensure a communicative lesson from the
examples in the table below?

A gap fill exercise comparing the present perfect and the past simple.

A vocabulary exercise on English used by Shakespeare.

A written exercise where students write about what they do on each day
of the week.

An exercise where students talk about their favourite concert ever.

A grammar exercise where students plan a party. Students have to talk

about what food, drink and music cassettes they will bring to the party.