Appendix

Introducing new language: examples.

(a) Physical surroundings: prepositions.

The teacher starts by producing some objects. They can be very ordinary, for example a stapler, a pen, a bag, a pencil, a pencil case, etc. The teacher elicits the words for these objects from the students and if they do not know them models the words and leads choral and/or individual repetition.

The teacher gives one of the objects (a book. for example) to one of the better students and then says something like “Put the book on the table.” If the student docs not understand the teacher helps by pointing and by gesture. When the student has put the book on the table the teacher says “Well done” and then chooses another student who is told to “Put the ruler in the box”, etc. As the students gradually do what they are asked they are getting wonderful listening practice.

The teacher now asks the students if they can give instructions thus eliciting the new language. When the students give their instructions the teacher will decide whether it is necessary to interrupt and model some or all of the new language or whether to move straight on to the immediate creativity stage where students are giving whatever instructions they want (within reason!).

As a written stage the teacher can write up some instructions on the board as models. Students can now be asked to write their own instructions which they give to their classmates who then have to do what is written there.

(b) Likes and dislikes

This presentation will consist of two stages. In the first students will learn to

say “Do you like ______?” and in the second they will be presented with “He/she likes/doesn't like ____”.

The teacher starts the sequence by asking students “Do you like coffee?”. With mime and expression he or she will soon convey the meaning of the question and a student will answer “Yes” or “No”. The teacher then gets

choral and individual repetition of the answers (“Yes I do/No, I don't”) if this is necessary. For a very brief period the teacher asks students questions and they give their answers. Then the teacher elicits the question (which the students have heard the teacher using). If necessary the question is explained and the teacher goes through the accurate reproduction stage, cueing students to ask and answer different questions. The students then work in pairs doing the same thing. This is a form of immediate creativity.

While the students are working in pairs the teacher puts the following on the blackboard:

NAME	FISH	CAVIAR	SPAGHETTI	LIVER	BANANAS

The teacher selects a student, for example, Carlos, and puts his name in the name column. The other students now ask him whether he likes the items on the chart and the teacher puts a tick (V) if he does and a cross (X) if he doesn't. The procedure is now repeated with other students until the chart looks like this:

NAME	FISH	CAVIAR	SPAGHETTI	LIVER	BANANAS
Carlos	V	V	X	V	X
Maria	V	X	V	X	V
Juan	X	X	V	V	V
Ctl'WI	V	V	V	V	V

The teacher then asks the students what they can say about Carlos and fish, hoping to elicit 'Carlos likes fish'. This new presentation (of the third person singular of the present simple with 'likes') now proceeds in the normal way using Carlos' likes and dislikes for the accurate reproduction stage and the other preferences for immediate creativity.

The teacher can later introduce the question 'Does Carlos like fish?', etc.

For the introduction of writing the teacher can use the fill-in idea (see (a) above) or the students can see the following model:

Carlos likes fish, caviar and liver, but he doesn't like spaghetti or bananas.

They can then be asked to write similar sentences about one of the other names on the list. This is a simple form of parallel writing.

(c) Using hands and gestures

Teachers can use their hands and various gestures to make grammatical form clearer.

One of the things we often need to do is to show how a full grammatical form is contracted in speech.

One way of explaining this to beginning students is to use the fingers of one hand to represent the different parts of the sentence, e.g.

do

not

like

pears

I

Figure

As we say the words we point to the fingers of the hand which represent those words.

Now we can show how “I do not like pears” becomes “ I don’t like pears”

don’t

like

I

pears

Figure

The use of the fingers has given a graphic description to the class.

We can pretend to hold the word ‘do’ in one hand and ‘not’ in the other. By bringing the hands together we show how ‘don't’ is formed.

(d) Explaining statements

In this case the teacher wishes to explain such model as:

She goes to school.

Here is a procedure we can follow:

Stage I The teacher says the sentence in a normal way with a clear voice using correct stress and intonation. This may he done two or three times.

Stage 2 The teacher isolates a particular feature of the model.

Stage 3 The teacher distorts this feature showing how it is constructed.

Stage 4 The teacher returns to the isolated element.

Stage 5 The teacher gives the normal model again.

W

T normal

model

e can represent this procedure in Figure :

Isolation

Distortion

T returns to

isolated element

T normal model

Figure

Sometimes, however, the teacher may not have to distort the isolated feature (where it is only a one syllable word).

Where there is more than one item that needs isolating the teacher goes through the procedure in Figure. with the first item to be isolated and then repeats the sequence with the second item.

The following example clearly shows the procedure in action. The teacher wishes to isolate both the verb form and the pronunciation

T: Listen … she goes to school … she goes to school … listen …goes … goes … go … /z/ …go … /z/ … goes … she goes to school … listen … she goes to school.

The teacher may back up this oral explanation by writing the following on the blackboard:

She goes to school.

The use of a box to highlight the main grammar points helps to focus the students' attention on that point.

(e) Explaining question forms

When we have to do the same kind of explanation for a question form we may follow the same procedure as for (a) above. However, particularly where a question form is taught after the affirmative version of the same grammar point has already been the subject of practice, some extra techniques may help the students to understand the form of the question.

Unlike many languages English uses inversion to signal a question. Thus if we take an affirmative sentence such as "He is running" we find that the equivalent question form has the subject and the auxiliary in a different order, e.g. 'Is he running?'. Even where we put a question word (such as ‘which’, ’what’, ‘how’, ‘when’, etc.) at the beginning of the question this inversion is still used. Students of English frequently find this confusing.

When introducing a question teachers will follow the same procedure as for (a) above. They will, however, isolate and distort in a slightly different way, and it will be advisable to use the blackboard and/or gesture to make the inversion clear.

Suppose we wished to 'explain' the question model 'Is he running?' We might do it in the following way:

T: Listen ... Is he running? Is he running? ... listen ... he is running? ... no (teacher shakes head and crosses arms in un 'inversion' gesture} ... Is he running? ... Is he running?

We can write the following on the blackboard at the same time:

He is running

Is he running