Atttttttttt TEACHING SPEAKING

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The Language Teacher

Teaching Speaking:
Suggestions for the Classroom
Robert Sanborn Brown & Paul Nation
Kyoto City University of Arts & Victoria University,
Wellington
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This article will assert that in speaking classes students must

be exposed to three key items: (1) form-focused instruction,
that is, attention to details of pronunciation, grammar,
vocabulary, and so forth; (2) meaning-focused instruction, that
is, opportunities to produce meaningful spoken messages with
real communicative purposes; and (3) opportunities to
improve fluency. Elements of all of the above should be
present throughout a speaking program, with emphasis on
form-focused instruction at the elementary levels and, as the
learners progress, on meaning-focused instruction at the
higher levels. This paper will also discuss different types of
errors and how to work with them to help learners.
Form-Focused Speaking
When learners first begin to speak in another language their
speaking will need to be based on some form-focused learning.
An effective way to begin is to base speaking on some useful,
simple memorized phrases and sentences. These may be
greetings, simple personal descriptions, and simple questions
and answers. These can be practiced in Repetition drills. The

teacher says a phrase or sentence several times and then asks
the learners to repeat. Some learners can be called on to
repeat individually, and then the class may repeat together.
Because it is helpful to give learners quite a lot of repetition
practice in beginning level courses, the teacher needs to find
ways of varying repetition activities to keep the learners
interested. Here is a list of possible ways to vary repetition. As
an example, use the sentence "Where is the train station?"
1. The teacher varies the speed. The teacher says the
sentence slowly and the learners repeat. Then the teacher says
the phrase a little faster until the phrase is being said at
normal speaking speed.
2. The teacher varies the way of choosing who is to repeat the
sentence. The teacher says the sentence and points to the first
person in the first row to repeat it. The teacher says it again
and points to the second person in the first row. Then the
teacher starts pointing at people at random so that the
learners cannot predict who will be the next person called on.
This variation can also include choosing individuals or choosing
the whole class to repeat the sentence. Another variation of
this kind is to get the learner who just repeated the sentence
to call the name of the next person to repeat the sentence.
3. The teacher can vary the content of the sentence. That is,
the teacher can substitute a word for one of the words in a
sentence. So instead of only saying "Where is the train
station?" the learners might also be called on to repeat "Where
is the Post Office?" This is called a Substitution drill.
4. The teacher varies the way the substitution is signaled to
the learners, for example, on the board there may be a
substitution table like this:
Where is
the station?
the post office?
your house?
the bank?
the hospital?
At first the teacher points to the words "the station" on the

board and says "Where is the station?" The learners repeat.
The teacher points to the next substitution, "the post office,"
and says that and the learners repeat. After doing this for a
while, the teacher just points to the substitution and does not
say it, but the learners have to say the whole sentence. After
doing that for a while the teacher does not point but just says
the substitution.
5. The teacher may vary the way of choosing the substitution.
At first, the teacher chooses the substitutions in the same
order as they are written on the board. Then the teacher may
choose them in random order so that the learners cannot
predict what the next substitution will be.
The Role of Drills
The skill of a teacher in carrying out a drill lies in learning
when to vary the activity so that the learners do not become
bored by it. Skilled teachers make continual, small variations
so that the activity is always challenging, smooth, and
interesting. The activity can be taken a step towards a more
meaning-focused activity by getting the learners to choose
their own words to substitute for words in the model sentence.
The 1970s saw the first steps away from (among other
teacher-centered approaches) audiolingualism, a method of
teaching that sees the role of the teacher as "central and
active . . . [who] provides models, controls direction and pace"
(Nunan, 1992, p. 195). In this methodology, teacher-centered
drill activities play a large role in the curriculum. With the rise
recently of more student-centered approaches -- ''which are
characterized by the involvement of the learner, and the
utilization of information about the learner in all aspects of the
curriculum" (Nunan, 1992, p. 144) -- repetition and
substitution drills have come to be considered old-fashioned
and (worse still) not useful for language learning. While
acknowledging the contribution that audiolingualism has made,
Stern (1991) essentially argues against its use: "It's
theoretical base was found to be weak. But also in practical
terms its hopes had not been fulfilled. Empirical research did
not conclusively establish its superiority, and teachers using
audiolingual materials . . . complained about the lack of
effectiveness of the techniques in the long run and the

boredom they engendered among the students" (p. 465).
Moreover, on the role of the teacher in the classroom,
Widdowson (1992) writes: "It is widely accepted that is
undesirable to force learning into conformity with the teacher's
preconceived ideas, and it is preferable for the teacher to
adapt to the learner rather than the reverse" (p. 261).
The use of drills, however, should be seen as merely one kind
of form-focused activity that needs to be balanced with other
types of form-focused activities, as well as with meaningfocused and fluency development activities. Drills play a useful
part in a language course in helping learners to be formally
accurate in their speech and in helping them to quickly learn a
useful collection of phrases and sentences that allow them to
start using the language as soon as possible. As their
proficiency and experience in the language develop, most of
these sentences and phrases may be re-analyzed and
incorporated into the learners' system of knowledge of the
language. Language use based on memorization can be the
starting point for more creative use of the language.
Meaning-Focused Speaking
In addition to form-focused speaking, language learners should
also be exposed to and given opportunities to practice and use
meaning-focused communication, in which they must both
produce and listen to meaningful oral communication. An
example of a meaning-focused activity for beginning students
is Speaking by numbers. Each learner is given a number and a
topic. The topics could include family, money, coming to
school, a color, future goals, travel, work, and so forth. The
learners can think about their topics for a minute or two and
then the teacher calls a number. The learner with that number
then says two or three sentences about his or her particular
topic. The speaker then calls a number and the learner with
that number has to ask the speaker a question or two related
to the topic just spoken about. When the question is answered,
the questioner calls a number and the person with that
number asks another question. This continues three or four
times and then the speaker calls the number of a new person
who will speak about the topic that she or he was given.
This is a meaning-focused speaking activity because both the

speaker's and the listeners' attention is on the message being
communicated.
Developing the Learner's Knowledge of Language Items
A problem in meaning-focused speaking activities is making
sure that the activity is actually developing the learner's
knowledge of language items. There are several ways of using
speaking to increase the speaker's control of the language
items.
1. The meaning-focused speaking activity follows some formfocused instruction. That is, the teacher presents some new
vocabulary or grammatical features, gives the learners some
practice, and then uses a meaning-focused activity to help the
learners use and remember these items.
2. Before the learners speak on a topic or take part in an
activity, they work in pairs or groups of three of four to
prepare. This gives the learners the chance to learn new items
from each other. Here is an example using a Same or different
information gap activity. In this kind of activity the learners
work in pairs. Learner A has a set of small numbered pictures.
Learner B has a similar set except that while some of B's are
exactly the same as A's, some are different. They should sit
facing each other so that they cannot see each other's
picture(s). Learner A describes the first picture and B listens
and then says if her picture is the same or different. If it is the
same they both write S next to their picture; if it is different
they both write D. Then Learner B describes picture number 2
and they decide if the pictures are the same or different. After
they have done five or ten pictures, they can change partners
so that Learner A works with a new Learner B. Before the
activity begins, all the Learner As can get together in groups
and help each other describe their pictures. All the Learner Bs
do the same. When they have had enough preparation and
practice they form Learner A and B pairs and do the activity.
3. The learners are given topics to talk about. They prepare at
home, using dictionaries, reference texts, reading sources, and
so forth. Here is an example called Newspaper talks. Each
learner has to choose a short and interesting article from an
English language newspaper to present to the class. The

learner must not read the article aloud to the class but must
describe the main points of the article. The class should then
ask the presenter questions.
4. Many speaking activities involve some kind of written or
picture input in the form of a worksheet. In the Same or
different activity this is two sheets of pictures. In a Ranking
activity or a Problem Solving activity, the worksheet contains
written data about the situation, what to do, and possible
choices. In a "Who Gets the Heart" activity, for example, a
group of three or four students must decide from a list of
several possible candidates who is to receive the only available
heart for transplantation. None of the patients will survive
without the new heart. They are a Nobel Prize winner in
medical research (a 59 year old male with no family), a
homemaker of three (32 year old female), an Olympic athlete
(24 year old female, married with no children), an Academy
award winning film director (female, 37 years old, two
children), and a 45 year old homeless male. The students must
rank in order which of these people is most deserving of the
heart. Then, each student presents his/her case to the group.
Based on these presentations, and the ensuing discussion, the
group must choose one candidate for the transplant. Then,
each group must present its conclusion to the class as a whole.
The worksheets contain vocabulary and phrases that may be
new to the learners and which will be necessary or useful in
the speaking activity. For example, in the Ranking activity, the
vocabulary in the list of items to rank will need to be used by
the learners. Those items which generate the most
disagreement over the ranking will likely result in the greatest
amount of vocabulary learning. According to Joe, Nation and
Newton (1996): "Negotiation of word meaning indicates that
an item is noticed and that the learner has a gap in his or her
knowledge. Items which [are] negotiated [have] a much
greater chance of being learned than items which were not
negotiated" (p. 3). If the teacher gives careful thought to the
placement of new vocabulary in worksheets for speaking
activities, there is a very good chance that the vocabulary will
be learned during the speaking activity. If the worksheet uses
pictures, some of the pictures or parts of pictures can be given
labels that can be used in describing the pictures.

5. Some speaking activities encourage learners to ask each
other about the meaning of unfamiliar words or constructions.
This seeking and giving of explanations is called negotiation.
There are similarities between this type of activity and the
Same or Different activity in that each learner in a pair or
group has different pieces of information for completing the
activity. These kinds of activities are given lots of different
names including jigsaw tasks, two-way tasks, information gap,
and so forth.
We have looked at five different ways of making meaningfocused speaking tasks contribute to a learner's knowledge of
language items. Language can be learned through production
(speaking and writing) as well as through reception (listening
and reading), but this learning needs to be planned.
Development of Speaking Fluency
Fluency in speaking is the aim of many language learners.
Signs of fluency include a reasonably fast speed of speaking
and only a small number of pauses and "ums" and "ers." These
signs indicate that the speaker does not have to spend a lot of
time searching for the language items needed to express the
message.
4/3/2 is a useful technique for developing fluency and includes
the features that are needed in fluency development activities.
First the learners choose a topic or are given a topic with which
they are very familiar. The first time that learners use this
technique it may be best if the topic involves recounting
something that happened to them. This is because the
chronological order of the events will make it easier to recall
and repeat because the time sequence provides a clear
structure for the talk. The learners work in pairs. Learner A
tells a story to Learner B and has a time limit of four minutes
to do this. B just listens and does not interrupt or question
Learner A. When the four minutes are up, the teacher says,
"Change partners"; learner A then moves to a new Learner B.
The teacher says "Begin" and Learner A tells exactly the same
story to the new partner but this time has only three minutes
to tell it. When the three minutes are up, the teacher says
"Stop. Change partners." With a new partner, Learner A now

has two minutes to tell the story. During the three deliveries of
the same story, the B learners do not talk and each listens to
three different people. When the A learners have given their
talk three times, the B learners can now go through the same
sequence, this time as speakers.
Research on this activity shows that the learners' speed of
speaking increased during the talks (as measured by the
number of words per minute), the hesitations they make
decrease (as measured by hesitations per 100 words), and
surprisingly their grammatical errors in the repeated parts of
the talk decrease and they tend to use several, more complex
grammatical constructions in the last of the three talks than
they did in the first talk (Nation, 1989, p. 381).
The features in 4/3/2 that help the development of fluency are
the same features that occur in activities to develop listening
fluency.
1. The activity involves known vocabulary, grammar, and
discourse.
2. The learners have a high chance of performing
successfully at a higher than normal speed.
3. There are repeated opportunities to do the same thing.
Here are other techniques to develop speaking fluency that
involve the same features.
In the Headlines activity, students create newspaper
"headlines" that will serve as the basis for the speaking
activity. The learners all think of an interesting or exciting
thing that has happened to them. Using a felt-tipped pen -- so
that the writing is easily seen -- each learner writes a
newspaper headline referring to that event. The teacher should
give some examples to help the learners, such as "Burning Bed
Brings Joy" and "Forgotten Shoes Never Return." Half of the
learners hold their headlines up for the rest of the class to see.
Those not holding up a headline go to hear a story behind the
headline that interests them. Each story can be told to no
more than two people at a time. When the story is done, the
listeners should circulate to a second headline that interests
them. The tellers will thus have to repeat their story several
times. After there has been plenty of opportunity to tell the

stories, the other half of the class hold up their headlines and,
in similar fashion, tell their stories.
4/3/2 and Headlines rely on repetition of the same story to
develop fluency. This kind of fluency is useful for predictable
topics that learners may need to speak about. For example,
when meeting other people learners may need to talk about
themselves, about their country, about the kind of food they
eat, about their travels, about their interests and hobbies, and
about their experiences. Speaking fluency also needs to be
developed for less predictable topics and the Say it! activity is
a useful way of doing this.
In Say it!, learners work in groups of about four people. First
they read a Say it! text carefully until they have reached a
good understanding of it. They discuss their understanding of
the text to make sure everything is fairly clear. Then they do
the tasks in the Say it! grid, which is a collection of simple
verbal tasks related to the reading (see the following
example). One learner chooses a square for the next learner to
perform, for example square B2. The learner does this task
while the others observe and, when the student has finished,
s/he calls a square, for example, A3, for the next learner. This
continues with some learners doing the same task several
times and with some tasks being done several times by
different learners. Often the tasks are like role plays and
require the learners to use the vocabulary that was in the
reading text, but to use it in a different way. This helps the
development of fluency by providing lots of associations with
the vocabulary used in the task, that is the associations from
the reading text and its discussion, and the associations from
the Say it! role play. Although the Say it! activity does not
involve large amounts of repetition, it involves preparation by
the learners. That is, the learners prepare for the spoken task
by studying the written text. This preparation should increase
the fluency with which learners do the spoken task.
The following is an example of a Say It! activity (Joe, Nation, &
Newton, 1996, p. 6). The story is called "Castaways Survived
on Sharks Blood."
Three fishermen who drifted on the Pacific for four months told how they
drank shark's blood to survive. The fishermen from Kiribati told their story
through an interpreter in the American Samoa capital of Pago Pago after being
rescued by the ship Sakaria. Kautea Teatoa, Veaieta Toanuea, and Tebwai
Aretana drifted 400 kilometers from home after their outboard motor failed on
February 8. They said four ships had refused to help during their ordeal. When
they were picked up on June 4 they had eaten the last of a one meter shark four
days before and drunk all of its blood. "I have not prayed so much in all my
life," Mr. Aretana said.
A
You are Kautea.

1. Say what helped
you survive.
You are Tebwai

Aretana. How did
you feel when the
ships refused to
help you?
You are a sailor

on the Sakaria.
What did you do
to help the
fishermen?
You are Tebwai.

Explain why you
were in the boat
2.
and what
happened after it
broke down.
You are Kautea.

How did you feel
when you caught
the shark?
You are the

captain. Explain
why you stopped.
You are Veaieta.

Explain what
3.
caused the
problem.
You are the

interpreter.
Describe the
appearance of the
three men.
The journey was

called an ordeal.
Why?
Error Correction
Some learners may experience difficulty in pronouncing certain
sounds and groups of sounds in another language. Some
Chinese and Japanese speakers of English, for example, have
trouble with /l/ and /r/. Some learners have trouble with the
beginning sounds in the words "three" and "they." Giving too
much attention to the correction of pronunciation in the early
stages of language learning can make learners worried and
reluctant to speak because of fear of making errors.
It is worth thinking about why errors occur, because this can
help teachers decide what to do about them. The study of
errors and their causes is called error analysis.
For each cause listed below, suggestions for the teacher are
given in square brackets.

1. The learner makes an error because the learner has not had
sufficient chance to observe the correct form or to develop
sufficient knowledge of the language system. [Don't correct
the learner but give more models and opportunities to
observe.]
2. The learner makes an error because the learner has not
observed the form correctly. [Give a little correction by
showing the learner the difference between the correct form
and the learner's error.]
3. The learner makes an error because of nervousness. [Don't
correct. Use less threatening activities -- or, if and when
appropriate, joke with the person/class/yourself to lighten the
mood.]
4. The learner makes an error because the activity is difficult,
that is, there are many things the learner has to think about
during the activity. This is sometimes called cognitive overload.
[Don't correct. Make the activity easier or give several chances
to repeat the activity.]
5. The learner makes an error because the activity is
confusing. Use of tongue twisters, for instance, for
pronunciation can be confusing. [Don't correct. Improve the
activity.]
6. The learner makes an error because the learner is using
patterns from the first language instead of the patterns from
the second language. [Give some correction. If there has been
plenty of opportunity to develop knowledge of the second
language, then some time should be spent on correction to
help the learner break out of making errors that are unlikely to
change. Errors which are resistant to change are sometimes
called fossilized errors and imaginative correction is often
needed to break the fossilization. If there has not been a lot of
opportunity to develop knowledge of the second language,
correct by telling the learner what to look for when observing
people using the second language. This is called consciousness
raising. It does not actually teach the correct form but makes
the learner more aware of what to look for to learn it.]

7. The learner makes an error because the learner has been
copying incorrect models. [Correct the learner and provide
better models.]
This range of causes shows that the teacher should not rush
into error correction, but should consider whether the error is
worth the interruption and, if it is, the teacher should consider
possible causes and then think of appropriate ways of dealing
with the error.
Pronunciation Correction
The teaching and correcting of pronunciation to learners who
are past the age of puberty is often a difficult task. The
audiolingualism method argues that native-like pronunciation
is one of the most important aspects of language proficiency.
However, as Ueno reports: "The research on this issue
[whether specific instruction can improve students'
pronunciation] is inconclusive. In a recent survey . . . almost
half of the recent experiments on this subject show no
improvement in students' production of target-language
sounds" (Ueno, 1994, p. 1). There is some hope that specific
pronunciation instruction may be effective in improving
students' perception or overall comprehension of the targetlanguage. Moreover, to use a sports metaphor, a beginning
tennis player must "develop and automatize basic muscle skills
necessary to perform the new physical tasks. Similarly, a
language learner must practice the new motor skills involved in
producing the sounds of the target language" (Ueno, 1994, p.
2).
The following are simple suggestions for correcting
pronunciation.
1. Say "What?" and see if the learner is capable of selfcorrection.
2. Give the correct form for the learner to copy. If the learner
cannot copy it after two or three attempts, then some
explanation and guidance may be needed.
3. Explain how to make the correct form and, if necessary,

what is wrong with the error. For example, to make the /th/
sound as in "then," say "Put your tongue between your teeth
and make a long sound." A variation on this is to tell the
learner to look at what you are doing and say, "Put your
tongue like this."
Conclusion
In this paper it has been asserted that in speaking classes
there must be (1) some attention to the formal aspects of
speaking such as pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and the
appropriate use of the spoken language; (2) opportunity and
encouragement for learners to produce meaningful spoken
messages where the messages have real communicative
goals; (3) opportunity for the learners to gain truly fluent use
of what is already known. There must be an appropriate
balance of these three elements in a speaking program. At
elementary levels, emphasis should be placed on form-focused
activities; at higher levels, a correspondingly greater emphasis
should be placed on fluency activities. All of these parts,
however, should be present at each stage of an effective
speaking program.
References
Joe, A., Nation, P., & Newton, J. (1996). Vocabulary learning and speaking
activities. English Teaching Forum, 34 (1), 2-7.
Nation, P. (1989). Improving speaking fluency. System, 17 (3), 377-384.
Nunan, D. (1992). Designing tasks for the communicative classroom.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stern, H. H. (1991). Fundamental concepts of language teaching. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Ueno, N. (1994). Teaching English pronunciation to Japanese English
majors: A comparison of suprasegmental with segmental oriented teaching
approaches. Unpublished dissertation, Temple University, Japan.
Widdowson, H. G. (1992). Innovation in teacher development. Annual
Review of Applied Linguistics, 13, 260-275.
Paul Nation can be contacted at: English Language Institute,

Victoria University of Wellington, P. O. Box 600, Wellington,
New Zealand.
Robert Sanborn Brown can be contacted at: 27-8 Jazuka, Uji,
Uji-shi, Kyoto. 611. Tel/Fax: (h) 0774-22-3880.
All articles at this site are copyright 1997 by their respective authors.
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Teaching Speaking: Activities

to Promote Speaking in a
Second Language
Hayriye Kayi
http://unr.edu/homepage/hayriyek
kayih[at]unr.nevada.edu
University of Nevada (Nevada,USA)
Introduction
Speaking is "the process of building and sharing meaning through the
use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts"
(Chaney, 1998, p. 13). Speaking is a crucial part of second language
learning and teaching. Despite its importance, for many years,
teaching speaking has been undervalued and English language
teachers have continued to teach speaking just as a repetition of drills
or memorization of dialogues. However, today's world requires that the
goal of teaching speaking should improve students' communicative
skills, because, only in that way, students can express themselves and
learn how to follow the social and cultural rules appropriate in each
communicative circumstance. In order to teach second language
learners how to speak in the best way possible, some speaking
activities are provided below, that can be applied to ESL and EFL
classroom settings, together with suggestions for teachers who teach
oral language.
What Is "Teaching Speaking"?

What is meant by "teaching speaking" is to teach ESL learners to:
Produce the English speech sounds and sound patterns
Use word and sentence stress, intonation patterns and the
rhythm of the second language.
Select appropriate words and sentences according to the proper
social setting, audience, situation and subject matter.
Organize their thoughts in a meaningful and logical sequence.
Use language as a means of expressing values and judgments.
Use the language quickly and confidently with few unnatural

pauses, which is called as fluency. (Nunan, 2003)
How To Teach Speaking

Now many linguistics and ESL teachers agree on that students learn to
speak in the second language by "interacting". Communicative
language teaching and collaborative learning serve best for this aim.
Communicative language teaching is based on real-life situations that
require communication. By using this method in ESL classes, students
will have the opportunity of communicating with each other in the
target language. In brief, ESL teachers should create a classroom
environment where students have real-life communication, authentic
activities, and meaningful tasks that promote oral language. This can
occur when students collaborate in groups to achieve a goal or to
complete a task.
Activities To Promote Speaking

Discussions
After a content-based lesson, a discussion can be held for various
reasons. The students may aim to arrive at a conclusion, share ideas
about an event, or find solutions in their discussion groups. Before the
discussion, it is essential that the purpose of the discussion activity is
set by the teacher. In this way, the discussion points are relevant to
this purpose, so that students do not spend their time chatting with
each other about irrelevant things. For example, students can become
involved in agree/disagree discussions. In this type of discussions, the
teacher can form groups of students, preferably 4 or 5 in each group,
and provide controversial sentences like people learn best when they
read vs. people learn best when they travel. Then each group works
on their topic for a given time period, and presents their opinions to
the class. It is essential that the speaking should be equally divided
among group members. At the end, the class decides on the winning
group who defended the idea in the best way. This activity fosters
critical thinking and quick decision making, and students learn how to
express and justify themselves in polite ways while disagreeing with
the others. For efficient group discussions, it is always better not to
form large groups, because quiet students may avoid contributing in
large groups. The group members can be either assigned by the
teacher or the students may determine it by themselves, but groups
should be rearranged in every discussion activity so that students can
work with various people and learn to be open to different ideas.
Lastly, in class or group discussions, whatever the aim is, the students
should always be encouraged to ask questions, paraphrase ideas,

express support, check for clarification, and so on.
Role Play
One other way of getting students to speak is role-playing. Students
pretend they are in various social contexts and have a variety of social
roles. In role-play activities, the teacher gives information to the
learners such as who they are and what they think or feel. Thus, the
teacher can tell the student that "You are David, you go to the doctor
and tell him what happened last night, and" (Harmer, 1984)
Simulations
Simulations are very similar to role-plays but what makes simulations
different than role plays is that they are more elaborate. In
simulations, students can bring items to the class to create a realistic
environment. For instance, if a student is acting as a singer, she brings
a microphone to sing and so on. Role plays and simulations have many
advantages. First, since they are entertaining, they motivate the
students. Second, as Harmer (1984) suggests, they increase the selfconfidence of hesitant students, because in role play and simulation
activities, they will have a different role and do not have to speak for
themselves, which means they do not have to take the same
responsibility.
Information Gap
In this activity, students are supposed to be working in pairs. One
student will have the information that other partner does not have and
the partners will share their information. Information gap activities
serve many purposes such as solving a problem or collecting
information. Also, each partner plays an important role because the
task cannot be completed if the partners do not provide the
information the others need. These activities are effective because
everybody has the opportunity to talk extensively in the target
language.
Brainstorming
On a given topic, students can produce ideas in a limited time.
Depending on the context, either individual or group brainstorming is
effective and learners generate ideas quickly and freely. The good
characteristics of brainstorming is that the students are not criticized
for their ideas so students will be open to sharing new ideas.
Storytelling
Students can briefly summarize a tale or story they heard from
somebody beforehand, or they may create their own stories to tell
their classmates. Story telling fosters creative thinking. It also helps
students express ideas in the format of beginning, development, and
ending, including the characters and setting a story has to have.
Students also can tell riddles or jokes. For instance, at the very
beginning of each class session, the teacher may call a few students to
tell short riddles or jokes as an opening. In this way, not only will the
teacher address students speaking ability, but also get the attention of
the class.
Interviews
Students can conduct interviews on selected topics with various
people. It is a good idea that the teacher provides a rubric to students
so that they know what type of questions they can ask or what path to
follow, but students should prepare their own interview questions.
Conducting interviews with people gives students a chance to practice
their speaking ability not only in class but also outside and helps them
becoming socialized. After interviews, each student can present his or
her study to the class. Moreover, students can interview each other
and "introduce" his or her partner to the class.
Story Completion
This is a very enjoyable, whole-class, free-speaking activity for which
students sit in a circle. For this activity, a teacher starts to tell a story,
but after a few sentences he or she stops narrating. Then, each
student starts to narrate from the point where the previous one
stopped. Each student is supposed to add from four to ten sentences.
Students can add new characters, events, descriptions and so on.
Reporting
Before coming to class, students are asked to read a newspaper or
magazine and, in class, they report to their friends what they find as
the most interesting news. Students can also talk about whether they
have experienced anything worth telling their friends in their daily lives
before class.
Playing Cards
In this game, students should form groups of four. Each suit will
represent a topic. For instance:
Diamonds: Earning money
Hearts: Love and relationships
Spades: An unforgettable memory

Clubs: Best teacher
Each student in a group will choose a card. Then, each student will
write 4-5 questions about that topic to ask the other people in the
group. For example:
If the topic "Diamonds: Earning Money" is selected, here are some
possible questions:
Is money important in your life? Why?
What is the easiest way of earning money?
What do you think about lottery? Etc.
However, the teacher should state at the very beginning of the activity
that students are not allowed to prepare yes-no questions, because by
saying yes or no students get little practice in spoken language
production. Rather, students ask open-ended questions to each other
so that they reply in complete sentences.
Picture Narrating
This activity is based on several sequential pictures. Students are
asked to tell the story taking place in the sequential pictures by paying
attention to the criteria provided by the teacher as a rubric. Rubrics
can include the vocabulary or structures they need to use while
narrating.
Picture Describing
Another way to make use of pictures in a speaking activity is to give
students just one picture and having them describe what it is in the
picture. For this activity students can form groups and each group is
given a different picture. Students discuss the picture with their
groups, then a spokesperson for each group describes the picture to
the whole class. This activity fosters the creativity and imagination of
the learners as well as their public speaking skills.
Find the Difference

For this activity students can work in pairs and each couple is given
two different pictures, for example, picture of boys playing football and
another picture of girls playing tennis. Students in pairs discuss the
similarities and/or differences in the pictures.
Suggestions For Teachers in Teaching Speaking

Here are some suggestions for English language teachers while
teaching oral language:
Provide maximum opportunity to students to speak the target
language by providing a rich environment that contains
collaborative work, authentic materials and tasks, and shared
knowledge.
Try to involve each student in every speaking activity; for this
aim, practice different ways of student participation.
Reduce teacher speaking time in class while increasing student
speaking time. Step back and observe students.
Indicate positive signs when commenting on a student's
response.
Ask eliciting questions such as "What do you mean? How did you
reach that conclusion?" in order to prompt students to speak
more.
Provide written feedback like "Your presentation was really great.
It was a good job. I really appreciated your efforts in preparing
the materials and efficient use of your voice"
Do not correct students' pronunciation mistakes very often while
they are speaking. Correction should not distract student from
his or her speech.
Involve speaking activities not only in class but also out of class;
contact parents and other people who can help.
Circulate around classroom to ensure that students are on the
right track and see whether they need your help while they work
in groups or pairs.
Provide the vocabulary beforehand that students need in
speaking activities.
Diagnose problems faced by students who have difficulty in
expressing themselves in the target language and provide more
opportunities to practice the spoken language.
Conclusion
Teaching speaking is a very important part of second language
learning. The ability to communicate in a second language clearly and
efficiently contributes to the success of the learner in school and
success later in every phase of life. Therefore, it is essential that
language teachers pay great attention to teaching speaking. Rather
than leading students to pure memorization, providing a rich
environment where meaningful communication takes place is desired.
With this aim, various speaking activities such as those listed above
can contribute a great deal to students in developing basic interactive
skills necessary for life. These activities make students more active in
the learning process and at the same time make their learning more
meaningful and fun for them.
References
Celce-Murcia. M. 2001. Teaching English as a Second or Foreign

Language (3rd ed). USA: Heinle&Heinle.
Chaney, A.L., and T.L. Burk. 1998. Teaching Oral Communication
in Grades K-8. Boston: Allyn&Bacon.
Baruah, T.C. 1991. The English Teacher's Handbook. Delhi:
Sterling Publishing House.
Brown, G. and G. Yule. 1983. Teaching the Spoken Language.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Harmer, J. 1984. The Practice of English Language Teaching.
London: Longman.
McDonough, J. and C. Shaw. 2003. Materials and Methods in
ELT: a teachers guide. Malden, MA; Oxford: Blackwell.
Nunan, D., 2003. Practical English Language Teaching.
NY:McGraw-Hill.
Staab, C. 1992. Oral language for today's classroom. Markham,
ON: Pippin Publishing.
The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. XII, No. 11, November 2006
http://iteslj.org/
http://iteslj.org/Articles/Kayi-Teaching Speaking.html
The Internet TESL Journal
A Technique for Practising

Conditional Sentences
Galina Kavaliauskiene
ukk@ltu.lt
Law University of Lithuania (Vilnius, Lithuania)
This technique aims at teaching learners to personalize target
structures and produce short narrations or sentences which are
meaningful to them.
Introduction
Teachers are aware that learners have to be motivated and involved in
order to be successful. A very effective way of increasing learners'
motivation and involvement is by making the learning personally
meaningful. This can be achieved by integrating individual learner's
personal attitudes, opinions, experiences, likes and dislikes into the
process of activating target language, or in other words, integrating
personalization into the learning process.
I have used personalization to practise the usage of conditional
Sentences. Activities can be carried out in different variations.
In pairs or small groups, learners are asked to generate questions,
short narrations or dialogues. If learners are reluctant to produce
information referring to themselves, they are welcome to volunteer
information on somebody they know well enough to be interested in
creating a story about, e.g., a friend, a neighbor, a classmate, etc.
In order to maximize classroom opportunities for interaction, the

activities can be transformed into 'question-answer' dialogues between
pairs or small groups. Such activities are successful only if all learners
are interested and involved. So, a question 'What would you do of you
met a famous basketball player?' will only be of interest to basketball
fans. Once in a while such an activity might be successful, but next
time you want learners to exercise conditional sentences you had
better choose A coherent activity, e.g. theme-based activity.
Any topical issues can be included into these activities provided that
learners are really involved. Here are possible areas for practicing
conditionals:
leisure,
jobs,
habits,
hobbies,
skills,
friends,
news,
terrorism,
sports, etc.
It is always advisable to negotiate the topic with learners, so let them

choose which one they prefer to do. Give learners a demonstration
before they start creating their own dialogues or short stories. All
types of conditionals can be practiced at the same time. It is essential,
however, that learners know the difference in meaning and usage of
various types of conditionals.
Short Narrations
In my experience, short narrations proved more beneficial to learners
than separate sentences. You will be surprised with the masterpieces
that your learners are likely to produce.
Here are two examples. The first one concerns a student's hobby.
'If I hadn't met my friends last week, we wouldn't have gone to a
casino. If we hadn't gone to a casino, I wouldn't have won a lot of
money. If I hadn't won a lot of money, I wouldn't have had so much to
drink. If I hadn't had so much to drink, I wouldn't have started a fight.
If I hadn't started a fight, I wouldn't have been taken to the police
station. If I hadn't been arrested by the police, I wouldn't have been
late for work the next day. If I hadn't been late for work, I wouldn't
have lost my job. If I hadn't lost my job, I would have been able to
gamble from time to time. If I had been able to gamble, I might have
won some money.'
The second narration is about learner's speculations about life
experience.
'If I buy a lottery ticket, I might win a jackpot. If I win a jackpot, I
would buy a big car. If I buy a big car, I would drive to the seaside . If
I drive to the seaside, I may might make a lot of friends. If I had a lot
of friends, I would probably spend all my money on drinks and girls. If
I spend all my money, I would lose all my new friends. If I lose all my
friends, I would be miserable and lonely. That is why I never buy
lottery tickets.'
A Whole Class Activity

There is another variation of the whole class activity. Divide the class
into two equal groups. Ask the first group to write only 'if clauses', and
the second group--only 'major clauses'. Allocate a student-assessor in
each group who will give points for accuracy, appropriateness and
promptness. In the activity, each group takes turns by reading their
half of a sentence, and the other group does their best to match it
from their bank of clauses. The assessors give independent 'verdicts'
on the performance of each group. At the end of the activity 'prizes'
are awarded. The teacher's input is minimal and often unnecessary.
The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. VIII, No. 3, March 2002
http://iteslj.org/
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Kavaliauskiene-Cond.html
Grammar Correction in ESL/EFL

Writing Classes May Not Be
Effective
Ronald Gray
mnenomic_2000 [at] yahoo.com
Beijing Language and Culture University (Beijing, China)
Introduction
Second language writing textbooks for teachers are typically full of
advice concerning techniques and activities to use in class, but they
rarely tell teachers what things not to do. The purpose of this short
paper is to argue that a widely used and very popular form of writing
class correction feedback should be avoided.
Most ESL/EFL writing teachers would strongly agree with the
statement that teacher correction feedback is a necessary part of any
writing course. Most would also concur that grammar correction is
essential. This belief seems to be intuitively obvious and just plain
common sense, but solid research conducted in the last 20 years has
revealed it to be wrong. This paper aims to explain why, and also
attempts to offer some practical recommendations on the type of
feedback writing should be giving their students in place of grammar
feedback.
The case for grammar correction in writing classes is based on the idea
that if a teacher points out to a student a grammatical error they have
made, and provides, indirectly or directly, the correct form, the
student will then understand the mistake they have made, learn from
it, and their ability to write accurately will improve. It is also widely felt
that if teachers do not correct their students' grammatical mistakes,
'fossilization' will occur, and it will become very difficult to later
eliminate these errors. Studies have shown these arguments to be
incorrect.
Grammar Correction in Second Language Writing Courses

Does Not Work
The research that has been conducted on grammar correction in
writing classes has largely consisted of comparative studies measuring
the effectiveness of different types of feedback on students writing
abilities. In a famous study by Robb, Ross, and Shortreed (1986), four
kinds of grammar corrections used on the surface errors of Japanese

students were compared to see if they had an influence on the
students' writings over time. These types were: (a) explicit correction,
where errors were pointed out and correct forms offered; (b) marking
mistakes with a yellow pen, without explanation; (c) a tally was kept in
the margin of the number of errors per lines, and students were told to
examine the line and find and correct the mistakes; (d) the use of a
correction code which showed both the location and kind of errors. In
all these cases, the students were told to write their essays again,
making the necessary corrections. Results showed that at the end of
the course, no significant differences existed between all the groups in
terms of accuracy. Consequently, the authors concluded that
comprehensive treatment and overt corrections of surface errors are
probably not worth the trouble for teachers to make.
Additional studies have shown that neither the use of direct or indirect
techniques in correcting student errors has an influence on writing
ability results. Moreover, making full (every error is corrected by the
teacher) or selective (only on
Grammar Correction in ESL/EFL

Writing Classes May Not Be
Effective
Ronald Gray
mnenomic_2000 [at] yahoo.com
Beijing Language and Culture University (Beijing, China)
Introduction
Second language writing textbooks for teachers are typically full of
advice concerning techniques and activities to use in class, but they
rarely tell teachers what things not to do. The purpose of this short
paper is to argue that a widely used and very popular form of writing
class correction feedback should be avoided.
Most ESL/EFL writing teachers would strongly agree with the
statement that teacher correction feedback is a necessary part of any
writing course. Most would also concur that grammar correction is
essential. This belief seems to be intuitively obvious and just plain
common sense, but solid research conducted in the last 20 years has
revealed it to be wrong. This paper aims to explain why, and also
attempts to offer some practical recommendations on the type of
feedback writing should be giving their students in place of grammar
feedback.
The case for grammar correction in writing classes is based on the idea
that if a teacher points out to a student a grammatical error they have
made, and provides, indirectly or directly, the correct form, the
student will then understand the mistake they have made, learn from
it, and their ability to write accurately will improve. It is also widely felt
that if teachers do not correct their students' grammatical mistakes,
'fossilization' will occur, and it will become very difficult to later
eliminate these errors. Studies have shown these arguments to be
incorrect.
Grammar Correction in Second Language Writing Courses

Does Not Work
The research that has been conducted on grammar correction in
writing classes has largely consisted of comparative studies measuring
the effectiveness of different types of feedback on students writing
abilities. In a famous study by Robb, Ross, and Shortreed (1986), four
kinds of grammar corrections used on the surface errors of Japanese
students were compared to see if they had an influence on the
students' writings over time. These types were: (a) explicit correction,
where errors were pointed out and correct forms offered; (b) marking
mistakes with a yellow pen, without explanation; (c) a tally was kept in
the margin of the number of errors per lines, and students were told to
examine the line and find and correct the mistakes; (d) the use of a
correction code which showed both the location and kind of errors. In
all these cases, the students were told to write their essays again,
making the necessary corrections. Results showed that at the end of
the course, no significant differences existed between all the groups in

terms of accuracy. Consequently, the authors concluded that
comprehensive treatment and overt corrections of surface errors are
probably not worth the trouble for teachers to make.
Additional studies have shown that neither the use of direct or indirect
techniques in correcting student errors has an influence on writing
ability results. Moreover, making full (every error is corrected by the
teacher) or selective (only one type of error is marked at a time)
grammatical corrections is also not effective. There is no evidence of a
delayed effect to grammatical corrections, that is to say, an effect
which later shows up. The kind of instruction used by teachers in the
study did not appear to have an impact on the results. Nor was the
lack of benefits of grammatical correction dependent upon the
students' gender, age, proficiency level, or educational background.
(For additional information on these studies, see Truscott's seminal
article (1996), Krashen (2004a) and Loewen (1998). Interestingly,
many of these results are also true of corrections made in first
language writing classes).
The results of these studies should not be too surprising, for as John
Truscott has noted:
Veteran teachers know there is little connection between correction
and learning: Often a student will repeat the same mistake over and
over again, even after being corrected many times. When this occurs,
it is tempting for the teacher to say the student is not attentive or
lazy; however, the pervasiveness of the phenomenon, even with
successful students, argues against any such explanation. Rather the
teacher should conclude that correction simply is not effective.
(Truscott 1996, p.
341).
Grammatical Correction in ESL/EFL Writing Classes Can

Actually Be Harmful To Students' Performance and
Development
Numerous studies have revealed that grammar correction to second
language writing students is actually discouraging to many students,
and even harmful to their writing ability (Semke 1984; Kepner 1991;
Sheppard 1992; and Truscott 1996). Generally those who do not
receive grammar corrections have a more positive feeling about
writing than those who did, wrote more, and with more complexity,
than those who did receive grammar corrections. Moreover, the time
spent by students and teachers on correcting grammatical errors

causes needed attention to be sidetracked from other important
elements of writing, like organization and logical development of
content.
Why Doesn't Grammar Correction Work?

The first reason why writing class grammar feedback doesn't work is
that it treats only the surface appearance of grammar and not with the
way language develops (see Truscott 1996 for details). Secondly,
learning grammar in a second language is a complex and gradual
process which occurs both developmentally and hierarchically (some
items are acquired before others). Compounding this is the fact that
the learning of linguistic items does not occur in a linear fashion, that
the learning curve for an item is full of valleys and peaks, progress and
regressions. Therefore, for grammatical correction to work, the
correction must be precisely tied into the correct levels of this process.
If a student is given a correction for a stage he has not yet reached, it
would not be effective. In order to offer useful corrections, a teacher
would need to precisely know where the student is developmentally
and hierarchically in terms of their grammar level. Yet because of the
complexity involved in learning grammar, this would be a virtual
impossibility.
The third reason for the ineffectiveness of grammar correction involves
the practicalities associated with teachers comments and students
understanding of these comments. Research has shown that
corrections made by second language writing teachers are frequently
arbitrary, not consistent, and greatly dependent upon the age and
amount of time the teacher has with L2 students. According to Zamel
(1995), teachers also commonly misread student texts and evoke
abstract rules and principles in their comments. Moreover, students
often find teachers remarks vague, confusing, and contradictory, and
feel that teachers do not provide sufficient grammatical explanations
about their writing mistakes (Cohen 1987). Finally, students generally
only make a mental note of the corrections they have understood, and
if they have to rewrite their papers, regularly do
not incorporate these corrections into their work (Cohen 1987).
Practical Implications For ESL/EFL Teachers

So what should a L2 writing teacher do? The quickest and most
effective solution would be for writing instructors to simply stop
making grammar corrections. This would of course be difficult for
teachers to do because it has been shown most students strongly
expect teachers to notice their writing errors and comment on them,

and they become quite resentful if this does not occur. Adding to this
pressure to give grammar feedback is the fact that established
curriculum of many language school and university writing programs
(especially overseas) is based on the value of grammar correction and
if a teacher did not employ it, they would have a good chance of being
considered unprofessional.
One possible solution to this problem which I have found to be useful
is to give periodic short grammatical lessons at the beginning of class
(the week after a big homework assignment), and I discuss one or two
widespread grammatical problem (e.g. articles, prepositions) that I
encountered in the students' homework. This usually has gone over
well and generally satisfied the students need for grammatical
correction feedback. Krashen (2004b) recommends teachers simply
inform their students of the limitations of grammar correction but I
have doubts whether students would be satisfied with such an
explanation.
But just because grammar feedback is problematic does not mean all
feedback is ineffective. The general problem with is with the focus of
S2 teacher's feedback. Studies indicate that writing teachers spend
most of their busy time offering grammatical or surface level
corrections in their comments. In other words, they commonly view
their students' work as language instead of writing teachers,
concentrating primarily on form over content. As a consequence, they
address only one part of the writing process. What writing teachers
need to do is give priority to MEANING and MEANING RELATED
problems, to make remarks about students' texts instead of just form.
Semke (1984) has demonstrated that students who received
comments from teachers only on content did much better and spent
more time working on their essays than those who received criticism
only on grammar.
Specifically, this means that teachers should devote their time to areas
like:
Organization
Logical development of ideas and arguments

Effectiveness of introduction and conclusion
Content
Use of description
Thesis statement
Focus
Use of facts and experience
Cogency and consistency of how and why explanations
In short, teachers need to train themselves to set aside their red pens
and examine ideas and see what students are trying to say instead of
simply looking for grammatical errors.
If ESL/EFL writing teachers are really concerned with improving their
student's grammatical competency, they should, in lieu of offering
grammar correction feedback, constantly stress in their classes the
importance of outside reading. Studies have shown that voluntary,
'light,' authentic reading (graphic novels, comics, the easy section of
newspapers, popular literature) in the target language greatly helps
the overall writing and grammatical skills of second language students
(Krashen 2004a).
Teaching writing can be a very taxing and time-consuming process.
Minimizing grammatical error feedback has the advantage of greatly
simplifying teachers jobs, giving them needed time to spend on
concentrating on other important elements of the writing process,
while also removing a significant impediment to their students learning
how to effectively write.
References
Cohen, A.D. (1987). Student processing of feedback on their

compositions. In A. Wenden & J. Rubin (Eds.), Learner strategies
in language learning (pp. 55-69). New York: Prentice Hall.
Kepner, C. G. (1991). An experiment in the relationship of types
of written feedback to the development of second language
writing skills. Modern Language Journal, 75, 305-313.
Krashen, Stephen. (2004a). Applying the Comprehension
Hypothesis: Some Suggestions. Retrieved August 5, 2004 from
Stephen D. Krashen website:
http://www.sdkrashen.com/articles/eta_paper/index.html
Krashen, Stephen. (2004b). Why support a delayed gratification
approach to language education? The Language Teacher, 28:7,
3-7.
Loewen, S. (1998). Grammar correction in ESL student writing:
How effective is it? Retrieved August 3, 2004 from Temple
University, Schuylkill website:
http://www.temple.edu/gradmag/fall98/loewen
Robb, T., Ross, S. & Shortreed, I. (1986). Salience of feedback

on error and its effect on EFL writing quality. TESOL Quarterly,
20, 83-95.
Semke, H.D. (1984). Effects of the red pen. Foreign Language
Annuals, 17, 195-202.
Sheppard, K. (1992). Two feedback types: Do they make a
difference? RELC Journal, 23, 103-110.
Truscott, John. (1996). The case against grammar correction in
L2 writing classes. Language Learning, 46:2, 327-369.
Zamel, V. (1985). Responding to student writing. TESOL
Quarterly, 19, 79-101.
The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. X, No. 11, November 2004
http://iteslj.org/
http://iteslj.org/Technique/Gray-WritingCorrection.html
Using Picture Dictation

Exercises for Practising All
Four Skills
Sylvia Sao Leng Ieong
slieong [at] umac.mo
University of Macau (Macao SAR, PR China)
This exercise focuses on choosing or preparing a text in clear visual
terms so that it can be used for picture dictation, which involves
learners in all four skills of listening with attention, fun and interest,
speaking with confidence, reading with care and purpose and writing
with accuracy.
Rationale
Dictation has never been popular with learners of English as a foreign
language. However, the picture dictation designed here, which
sufficiently prepares learners for the activity, involves students in all
four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. It has been
extremely popular with pre-intermediate level learners and has proved
very successful. Success is always a good motivator for learners.
Steps
Normally the exercise takes about 20-30 minutes, depending on the
length of the dictation, in the following six steps:
1. Prior to the dictation exercise, the teacher chooses or prepares a
text that is appropriate to the level of the learners and is written
in simple visual terms, like the one quoted from John Haycraft:
There's an island in the middle of a lake. In the middle of the
island there's a house with a big door and four windows on the
ground floor, and six windows on the first floor. There're a lot of
big trees to the left of the house. On the lake, to the right of the
island, there's a boat with two men in it. One of them is fishing.
To the left of the lake there's a hill with a church on the top. It's
midday and the sun is in the sky.
2. Listening with an immediate purpose, interest and fun:
The teacher asks two students (gradually more and more
students will be eager to volunteer) to come up to the
black/white board, each using half of the board, and draw what
they hear while the teacher reads aloud the text to the class,
explaining contractions, prepositions, new or difficult words,
plural nouns, etc., and even writes them on the board if
necessary. As these will be dictated later on, students will listen
with attention and interest and try their best to remember them.
The teacher can speak faster or more slowly depending on the
students' response and performance to ensure that learners can
work and progress smoothly.
3. Speaking with confidence and pride:
After the teacher finishes reading aloud and the two students
have completed their pictures, the teacher asks the class if the
pictures are correct. After corrections are made, the teacher
asks the two student artists to explain and talk about their
pictures. They are ready and proud to talk about their work in
front of the class.
4. Listening again with understanding and writing with
accuracy:
Now the teacher dictates the text in the traditional way while the
students write on sheets of paper or in their notebooks.
5. Reading with special care in order to locate mistakes:
Now the teacher displays the correct text using an overhead
projector, PowerPoint or the blackboard and asks the students to
exchange their sheets or books to check and correct each other's
work.
6. The teacher may only need to do a sample check of students'
work if the teacher can trust their students to correctly make
corrections.
Conclusion
Both pre-service student teachers and in-service teachers have tried
this method with beginners, pre-intermediate- and intermediate-level
learners. Their response is very encouraging. Learners like picture
dictation because it is positive and interesting. When they do the
actual dictation they are already well prepared and find the work
pleasant and rewarding. Some teachers report that there are no more
failures in this kind of dictation. However, these teachers could not find
enough appropriate texts or passages available for picture dictation
and they have difficulty in creating such texts suitable for picture
dictation.
Reference
Haycraft, John, An Introduction to English Language Teaching,

Longman, 1978, p.80.
The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. IX, No. 2, February 2003
http://iteslj.org/
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Ieong-Dictation.html
Teaching ESL Students to

"Notice" Grammar
Francis J. Noonan III
chipperchina [at] hotmail.com
Easton Area School District (Easton, PA, USA)
This article explains how to teach ESL/EFL students to notice grammar.
There is also a suggested lesson plan.
Introduction
Many teachers are confused on how to teach grammar. The formfocused instruction of the audio-lingual method produced students that
knew a lot about a language but could not apply what they knew to
spontaneous speech. Conversely, the lack of grammar instruction in
the Communicative Approach has often produced students who
communicate well but lack grammatical competency. Is it possible to
teach grammar in a way that will help students develop grammatical
competency, even in spontaneous speech? This article explores a
possible answer to this dilemma, the theory of noticing, and its
application to the classroom.
Why Noticing?
The theoretical basis for noticing centers around the relationship
between explicit and implicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge is
conscious knowledge of grammar rules learned through formal
classroom instruction. For example, Li knows every rule about subjectverb agreement but makes frequent mistakes in natural speech. This
knowledge is only available to him when he has time to think about
the rules and then apply them (i.e. a grammar exercise or a writing
assignment). In contrast, implicit knowledge is unconscious,
internalized knowledge of a language that is available for spontaneous
speech. For example, Jim speaks English with near perfect use of the
basic rules of subject-verb agreement. This is despite the fact that he
may have no idea what subject-verb agreement is or what the rules
are.
The question is can explicit grammar knowledge (Li's knowledge)
become implicit knowledge (Jim's knowledge)? There are two basic
answers to the question. The first is the non-interface position
proposed by Krashen. In his view, explicit knowledge can never
become implicit knowledge because these two types of knowledge are
located in different parts of the brain. Li could keep studying
grammatical rules for the rest of his life and never speak like Jim. On
the other hand, the interface position claims that explicit knowledge
can have some impact on implicit knowledge. The interface position is
divided into two views, the strong and the weak position. The strong
interface position holds explicit knowledge becomes internalized
through practice, like the acquisition of other skills. The weak interface
position, however, agrees with Krashen that explicit learning does not
become implicit knowledge, but that it can aid or foster the acquisition
of implicit knowledge (Brook). Proponents of this position acknowledge
that there are simply too many linguistic rules for any learner, native
speaker or not, to learn them all consciously. Thus, a strong interface
is unlikely. Nevertheless, recent data suggests that students who have
explicit grammar instruction as part of their study achieve a higher
level of grammatical accuracy than those who do not (Ellis, 2002,
p19). This suggests a weak-interface between explicit and implicit
knowledge. Noticing is based on this position.
What is Noticing?
Noticing is basically the idea that if learners pay attention to the form
and meaning of certain language structures in input, this will
contribute to the internalization of the rule (Batstone, 1996). Ellis
expounds on this idea:
". . . we don't actually try to influence the construction of the complex
network [implicit knowledge] . . . because really learners can only do it
themselves. We cannot implant rules into that network. Learners
extract from the available information around them the regularities
that form into their knowledge system. If this is the case, all that we
can do is make them aware of some of these patterns . . . under the
assumption that if you have an awareness of them, then ultimately
your pattern detector might function a bit more efficiently" (Ryan,
2001, p2).
In addition, learners acquiring language through a natural approach
often experience fossilization, certain errors do not get better despite a
significant amount of experience with the target language. Perhaps
once learners develop communicative sufficiency they do not make
progress in accuracy. Noticing helps rectify this by helping learners
"notice the gap." They recognize that the language features noticed
are different from their current language.
Remember, according to this theory, the primary nature of explicit
knowledge is to develop awareness of rather than production of target
forms. Hence, teachers ought not to grade students on accurate use of
these forms in spontaneous speech. Hopefully, this awareness will help

learners notice target forms in future input and facilitate the eventual
acquisition of these forms as implicit knowledge (Ellis, 2002, p 29).
How Do Teachers Help Students Notice?

How can we as teachers help students notice target forms? Cross
(2002) summarizes factors that draw attention to certain features in
input:
Explicit instruction -- instruction explaining and drawing
attention to a particular form.
Frequency -- the regular occurrence of a certain structure in
input.
Perceptual Salience -- highlighting or underlining to draw
attention to a certain structure.
Task Demands -- constructing a task that requires learners to
notice a structure in order to complete it.
Also, Rod Ellis outlines five teaching activities to develop grammatical
knowledge of a problematic feature (Ellis 2002, pp. 30-31):
1. Listening to Comprehend: Students listen to comprehend a
text that has been structured to contain several examples of the
target form.
2. Listening to notice: Students listen to the same text again,
but are given a gap-fill exercise. The target form is missing and
the students simply fill it in exactly as they hear it to help them
notice the form.
3. Understanding the grammar point: With help from the
teacher, the students analyze the data and "discover" the rule.
4. Checking: Students are given a written text containing errors
and are asked to correct them.
5. Trying it: Students apply their knowledge in a production
activity.
Ellis warns that this is not designed to develop implicit knowledge, but
simply to develop awareness of grammar, which -- when supplemented
with other forms of input and communicative tasks -- may aid in the
eventual acquisition of implicit knowledge.
Conclusion
In conclusion, explicit grammar knowledge can foster the acquisition of
implicit knowledge through noticing. Teachers can draw students'
attention to certain language features of input through explicit
instruction, increasing the frequency and perceptual salience of the
structure, and/or designing tasks that require the students to notice a

structure to complete it.
Lesson Plan
The following lesson plan is a direct application of the five step
approach by Rod Ellis (above), designed to teach the problematic
features of tense and subjunctive use of "were" in imaginative
conditionals to adult students.
Standards
TESOL 1.1 - To use English to communicate in social settings:
Students will use English to participate in social interactions,
engaging in conversation.
Objectives
Students will analyze the subjunctive mood in sample
imaginative conditional sentences and synthesize a "rule"
governing the behavior of these sentences.
Students will correct grammar mistakes in conditional sentences.
Students will create conditional sentences to engage in
conversation.
Materials (Included at bottom)
Dialogue -- for teacher
Handouts: dialogue -- cloze, analyze sheet, exercises
Procedure:
1. Read dialogue orally to students one or more times.
2. Ask comprehension questions. 1) Where are these people? 2)
What do they do for a living? 3) Do they think they could do the
other person's job?
3. Cloze exercise -- Hand out dialogue-cloze. Read again to
students. Students fill in blanks as they hear them.
4. Analysis -- Pass out "analyze" handout. In groups, students
analyze the sample sentences and write a rule that describes the
pattern they see.
5. Teacher led large group discussion of the rule.
6. Students write the real rule and compare it with their rule.
7. Application: In pairs, students complete exercises 1 & 2. In
exercise 1 students correct errors in conditional sentences. In
exercise 2, students use prompts to create conditional sentences
for paired conversation.
Evaluation
Teacher observes student answers and conversations in exercise
1 and 2.
Dialogue - Listen to Comprehend

John: Hello. My name is John. What's your name?
Sue: My name is Sue. What brings you to this party?
John: I work with Tom.
Sue: Oh, so what do you do?
John: I am a teacher.
Sue: Oh really, well, I can't stand kids. If I were a teacher, I think I
would go crazy.
John: Really? Well, what do you do?
Sue: I am a politician.
John: Oh wow! Well, if I were a politician, the world would be
in even worse shape than it already is. And my wife . . . if she
were a politician's wife, she would definitely be even unhappier
than she already is. She is a woman that needs time to her
work in her garden. Well . . . what does your husband do?
Sue: Presently, he is a lawyer. But if he were a teacher, I'm sure he
would go crazy too.
John: You are being too hard on yourselves. You see that
couple over there? They are teachers. If they can do it, so can
you.
Sue: I suppose so, but if they were ballerinas, I'm sure they would be
great too. I think anybody can be anything they want to if they try
hard enough.
John: I suppose. But if we were ballerinas, I don't think we
would be great ones. We are professionals who work in an
office all day. I doubt we would have much success with
professional athletics or arts.
Dialogue -- Cloze - Listen to Notice

John: Hello. My name is John. What's your name?
Sue: My name is Sue. What brings you to this party?
John: I work with Tom.
Sue: Oh, so what do you do?
John: I ______ a teacher.
Sue: Oh really, well, I can't stand kids. If I __________ a teacher, I
think I _________ go crazy.
John: Really? Well, what do you do?
Sue: I _________ a politician.
John: Oh wow! Well, ______ I _____________ a politician, the
world ____________ be an even worse shape than it already
is. And my wife . . . ________ she _____________ a
politician's wife, she ____________ definitely be unhappier
than she already is. She ____________ a woman that needs
time to her work in her garden. Well . . . what does your
husband do?
Sue: Presently, he __________ a lawyer. But ______ he ___________
a teacher, I'm sure he ___________ go crazy too.
John: You are being too hard on yourselves. You see that
couple over there? They are teachers. If they can do it, so can
you.
Sue: I suppose so, but ______ they ____________ ballerinas, I'm
sure they ____________ be great too. I think anybody can be
anything they want to if they try hard enough.
John: I suppose. But ______ we ___________ ballerinas, I
don't think we ___________ be great ones. We are
professionals who work in an office all day. I doubt we would
have much success with professional athletics or arts.
Analyze -- Understanding the Grammar Point

Analyze the following sentences. At the bottom of the page, write a
rule to describe the patterns you find.
1.
A) I AM a teacher.
B) If I WERE a teacher, I would go crazy.
2.
A) I AM a politician.
B) If I WERE a politician, the world would be in even worse shape than
it already is.
3.
A) She IS a woman that needs time to her work in her garden.
B) If she WERE a politician's wife, she would definitely be unhappier
than she already is.
4.
A) He IS a lawyer.
B) If he WERE a teacher, I'm sure he would go crazy too.
5.
A) They
Using Simple Poems to Teach

Grammar
Hawanum Hussein
hawanum [at] uniten.edu.my
Universiti Tenaga Nasional UNITEN (Kajang, Malaysia)
Teachers have been debating on what method is the best for teaching
grammar for generations. A few prefer the old style discrete and
explicit explanations of the English syntax while many prefer the
Communication syllabus and the implicit teaching of grammar. This
paper will discuss a blended approach and the use of simple poems to
teach and reinforce grammar points as well as language structure
Introduction
Not many Malaysian English teachers relish the thought of teaching
grammar due to the complexity and irregularities in the syntax of the
English language. Teachers often ask what exactly is the best way to
teach grammar? In the early days of grammar teaching, the grammar
translation method required students to do the tedious tasks of
translating sentences into English based on grammar rules. However,
many critics found fault with this method as it was too methodical and
arithmetic. Thus, students may end up constructing sentences that are
grammatically correct but would be perceived as 'unacceptable' by
most native speakers. (Howatt 1984)
In the 1940s and 50s the audio-lingual method was popularized by
behavioural psychologists such as Skinner and Watson. Teaching
grammar was simply making students learn language habits through
numerous drills and pattern practices.(Brown, 1994). But again, there
were problems with this method as there was no focus or emphasis on
"the intentions, thinking, conscious planning and internal processes of

the learner" (Stern, 1984, p.305).
In the 1970s and 80s the Communicative Approach propelled by
sociolinguists and the collective works of Krashen, Halliday and Hymes,
replaced the audiolingual method. This approach focuses on meaning
rather than form (grammar rules) as it was believed that it is meaning
which drives language acquisition and development. Ellis (1994) noted
in his review of research in the 1970s that much of the Communicative
L2 teaching focussed on meaning only. In the 1980's Malaysian schools
embraced this communicative approach and Malaysian educators' own
conundrum began. While the Communicative Approach simplified the
teacher's task, schools began seeing hordes of students who could
provide 'meaningful' sentences but which were often riddled with
grammatical mistakes. The question teachers now often ask is whether
a return to grammar teaching is necessary. If so, should grammar be
taught implicitly or explicitly? Research indicates that a combination of
form and meaning may be the best teaching approach. A research by
Prabhu (cited by Beretta & Davis, 1985) showed that students who
received meaning-based instruction did well on the meaning-based
test but poorly on a discrete-point grammar test. Spada & Lightbrown
(1993) postulated that "form focussed instruction and corrective
feedback within the context of communicative interaction can
contribute positively to second language development in both the short
and long term" (p.205). This is supported by Celce-Murcia, Dornyei
and Thurrell (1997) who suggest that the integration of form and
meaning is gaining importance in what they refer to as the 'principled
communicative approach.' Musumeci (1997) went on further to say
that students should learn grammar explicitly but should also be given
the opportunity to practise them in communicative and authentic /
simulated tasks.
For Malaysian students for which English is a second language, for
effective communication, a knowledge of the rules is sorely needed.
Pavel V. Sysoyev (2003) stresses this need for L2 students to receive
both form and meaning, which he labelled as Integrative Grammar
Teaching. Both fluency and accuracy are desirable and cannot be
taught in isolation. This paper will discuss an integrated or blended
approach to teaching and reinforcing grammar. For each kind of poem,
specific teaching points will be highlighted. Classroom experience and
management such as immediate feedback and correction will also be
discussed.
Types of Poems Used in the Writing Class

The Intensive English Program at UNITEN is a preparatory, proficiency
course designed for school leavers who wish to enroll in UNITEN. In
the writing class, a series of poems were used to review and reinforce
grammar rules the students should have 'learnt' while in school. This
was deemed necessary as most of the students have limited to
average English proficiency. The majority were Malaysians but there
were three Arab speaking students from Sudan and Yemen.
The following are writing activities adapted from Holmes and Moulton's
"Writing Simple Poems ."
Adjective Poems
Teaching Points
Adjectives
Adjectives after linking verbs
Basic sentence structure
Dictionary usage
The first few classes focused on parts of speech, and word class. The
lesson began with a revision of the basic structure of an English
sentence. To help them students use the structure, the adjective poem
pattern was shown to them.
Pattern
Line
Line
Line
Line
Line
Line
1
2
3
4
5
6
:
:
:
:
:
:
Noun
Same noun + is or are + adjective
Same noun + is or are + adjective1, adjective 2
Is or are + adjective 1, adjective 2, adjective 3
Adjective 1, adjective 2, adjective 3, adjective 4
New related noun/
The following is an example of an adjective poem written and revised

by a student :
Coffee
Coffee is bitter
Coffee is bitter, marvelous
Is bitter, marvelous, satisfying,
Bitter, marvelous, satisfying, splendid.
Coffee Bean
(Nur Asma Hussain, 18)

As the students wrote their poems, the teacher monitored their work
and pointed out problems with the structure and subject verb
agreement. It was also observed that many had problems with
adjectives and used nouns to modify the subject.
A typical mistake would be : She is success.
Adjective Placement Poem

Teaching Points
Adjectives
Placement of Adjectives
Subject Verb Agreement.
Present Progressive Tense
To help students learn the placement of adjectives, an adjective

placement poem was used. The lesson began with the exploration
stage in the Integrative L2 grammar lesson. The teacher gave each
group of students three sets of cards consisting of adjectives and a
noun. They were then given time to sort the adjectives out in the
correct order and to explain what grammar rule was used. After some
discussion, they were shown the correct way to order adjectives:
Order of Adjectives
1. determiners
2. possessive words
3. ordinal numbers
4. cardinal numbers
5. general description
6. size, height, length
7. shape
8. age, temperature
9. colour
10.
origin
11.
nouns as adjectives
12.
head noun
(Holmes & Moulton, 2003)
To write the poem, students were told that they were going on a long
trip and must decide what to bring to keep them happy. After the
writing stage, they were asked to exchange papers and check the
correct order of adjectives. This was done to introduce to them the

concept of peer editing which is an integral part of any process writing
class. As this was happening, the teacher went around to monitor the
activity and asked students to correct grammar mistakes in their
poems as necessary. The following is an example of an adjective
placement poem :
Hawaii
I'm taking a trip to Hawaii
And I'm taking along my favourite things :
My sporty, new, brown Camel Active shoes,
A big, plasma TV,
One pack of Pokemon cards,
A comfortable, black, German sweater,
A pair of sexy, old swimming trunks,
And most important, my beautiful grandmother.
(Muhd. Zarif Kamrdin, 18)
Alphabet Poem
Teaching Points
Verbs
Past Tense
Dictionary Usage.
Cooperative Learning through group work
An alphabet poem can be used to teach parts of speech or sentence

structure while reinforcing dictionary skills. Since this kind of poem is
rather long, students were put into groups to write two kinds of
alphabet poems. This group poem required the students to use their
dictionary extensively and to work together to collate group ideas into
one group poem As a warm up , each group was asked to list on the
board all the things that could be found in a teenager's closet
alphabetically. To write the second poem, students had to start each
letter with a verb in the past tense. This enabled the class to revise
their verbs in the simple past tense while writing some wacky and
often hilarious group poems :
What I Did The Last School Holidays (Verbs)

Accessed information from the internet
Babbled with my friend
Conversed with my principal
Donated some clothes to the orphanage

Escorted my best friend to see her boyfriend
Fought often with my sister
Gave my football cards to my friends
Hacked into the computer system
Insisted on colouring my room pink
Joined the army for a week
Kicked my neighbour's dog
Learned how to cook
Murdered my brother's girlfriend
Nagged my neighbour's daughter
Opposed my parents' plans to go to Langkawi
Puzzled why my parents went to Langkawi without me
Qualified to join the Newboyz group
Rebuilt my tree house after my brother threw stones at it
Sold my hand phone because it was broken
Took my young brother to his friend's house
Unfertilized the soil behind my backyard
Vandalized a bus stop with my friend
Waited for my girlfriend at the bus stop which I had vandalized
X-rayed my body
Yelled at the field
Zapped my discipline teacher's car.
(Mohd Zarif, Mohd Khairy, Nur Dalila, Mohd Khairul, Nur Syahida)
Adverb Poem
Teaching Points
Verbs
Adverbs
Articles / Determiners
Phrases
Clauses
Dictionary usage
Logically, the next class focussed on adverbs and how they are used to
modify verbs. The students were shown that adverbs often end with
ly but may also take other forms such as often, fast, and high. After
the class discussion, they were shown the poem pattern which was
very similar to the adjective poem. To restrict topics and to help
students overcome that " Have no idea, teacher " phenomenon,
students were asked to give some nouns which were written on the
board. As they wrote their poem, the teacher assumed the regular role
of monitoring their writing and helping them correct their own

mistakes as necessary. Common mistakes noticed and corrected were
subject-verb-agreement and the omission of articles before the
noun. Students also asked the difference between 'a frog' and 'the
frog.' The following is an example of an adverb poem following the
pattern shown below :
Pattern
Line 1 : Noun
Line 2 : Same noun + verb + adverb 1
Line3 : Same noun + verb + adverb 1, adverb 2
Line 4 : Verb + adverb 1, adverb 2, adverb 3
Line 5 : Adverb 1, adverb 2, adverb 3, adverb 4
Line 6 : Phrase or clause showing condition, time or place.
Example :
The Goat
The goat bleats happily,
The goat bleats happily, disturbingly,
Bleats happily, disturbingly, weirdly,
Happily, disturbingly, weirdly, calmly,
When it sees a female goat.
(Mohd Khairy Effendy, 18)
"I am" or "We Are" Poems

Teaching Points
Sentences
Subject Verb Agreement
(Subordinate Clauses)
After the numerous lessons on parts of speech and word class, the last
lesson discussed in this paper is a longer poem which students write in
pairs or threes. This poem required students to use complete
sentences and write three stanzas. To begin writing, the students were
given an interest web aimed at generating ideas, words or phrases
that described them.
Examples were also shown as a model to help the students write their
poem.
This poem proved more challenging as it required creativity as well as
grammar accuracy . The most amusing of the lot is the one below
written by three boys : a Malay, a Sudanese and a Yemeni.
We Are
We
We
We
We
We
We
are loving guys

wonder about the girls and our families
hear voices of ladies
see beautiful girls
want to get married
are loving guys
We
We
We
We
We
We
pretend to be fathers
feel important about getting married
touch the rings of our wives
worry if our wives will find another husband
cry if our children die
are loving guys
We
We
We
We
We
We
understand that marriage is a new life

say that our plans will be true
dream that we are having children
try to make our wives happy
hope to have a nice life with our family
are loving guys.
(Hazimin Mohd., Abdul Aziz Rabea Omar Lashram, & Ahmed

Elfadilfathal R, Taha)
Conclusion
The teaching of grammar is by far, the most challenging task any
Malaysian teacher may face in his/her daily classroom. Many do not
wish to teach grammar explicitly but are keenly aware that students
need an understanding of the rules to achieve fluency as well as
accuracy. The Communicative Syllabus in place in Malaysian schools
frowns upon the teaching of grammar per se and emphasizes meaning
through communicative activities. Unfortunately, many students
leaving schools and entering universities do not have adequate English
proficiency to excel in their studies. This is even more crucial in private
universities where English is the medium of instruction. One possible
solution is thus, the blended or Integrated approach to grammar
teaching where there is a focus on the form but the activity is meaning
based. It can be said that the first module of the writing class was
partially successful as there were some marked improvement in some
of the students' writings. This was more apparent in the weakest

students and the foreign students. Those with average proficiency did
not improve much. It was noted that they were able to identify their
grammar mistakes when these mistakes were pointed out by the
teacher. However, the students continue to produce the same
grammatical mistakes in their writing. This would suggest a lack of
concern for accuracy, perhaps an indirect effect of the Communicative
approach. In any case, the students found the class challenging and
interesting as evident from their poems. And that is in itself, a major
success to breaking the traditional view of grammar classes as dull and
immensely boring.
References
Beretta, A. & Davies. (1985). Evaluation of the Bangalore

Project. ELT Journal 39: 121- 7.
Brown, H.D. (1994). Principles of Language Learning and
Teaching, 3rd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ : Prentice Hall.
Celce-Murcia,NM. Dirnyei,Z & Thurell, S. (1997). Direct
Approaches in L2
Instruction : A Turning Point in Communicative Language
Teaching ? TESOL Quarterly, 31 : 141-152.
Ellis, R. (1994). The Study of Second Language Acquisition.
Oxford : OUP University Press.
Holmes, V. & Moulton, M.R. (2001). Writing Simple Poems.
Oxford: OUP
Howatt, A.P.R. (1984). A History of English Language Teaching.
Oxford : OUP
Musumeci, D. (1997). Breaking the Tradition : An Exploration of
the Historical
Relationship Between Theory and Practice in Second Language
Teaching. NY : Mcgraw Hill.
Spada,N. & Lightbrown (1993), Instruction and the Development
of Questions in
The L2 Classroom. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 15:
205-224.
Stern, H.H.(1984). Fundamental Principles of Language
Teaching. Oxford : OUP.
Sysoyev, P.V. (2003). Integrative L2 Grammar Teaching :
Exploration, Explanation and Expression.
http://iteslj.org/Articles/Sysiyev_integrative.html.
The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. X, No. 5, May 2004

http://iteslj.org/
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Hussein-Poems.html
Helping Students with Modals

Michael Thompson
mthomp_italy [at] yahoo.com
Universit degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca (Italy)
When asking students to learn modal auxiliaries and modal
equivalents, ESL/EFL teachers are asking them to learn how to form
these modals correctly, recognize categories of modality, and choose
the appropriate modal for expressing modality. These activities are
desgined to help students learn to master the intricacies of English
modals. These activities are desgined to help students learn to master
the intricacies of English modals in three areas: forming modals,
recognizing categories of modality, and using modals to express
modality.
Introduction
We ask our students to learn a lot when we ask them to learn modal
auxiliaries and modal equivalents [1] . There are, first of all, the
myriad forms taken by the various modals, some of which have subtle
distinctions. Students need to become comfortable with the fact that
can does not take the auxiliary do in a question (no *do you can speak
Spanish?) while have to does (no *Have you to go to Rome?).
More important is that modals are distinguished from other auxiliaries
by the fact that they have meaning. Students, therefore, need to
become comfortable not only with the grammatical properties of
modals, but their semantic properties as well. This is complicated by

the fact that there is more than one category of meaning and the
same modals are often used in more than one.
The first category -- called "deontic modality" -- is used to perform
speech acts, such as offering, requesting, granting permission,
commanding, etc.. When I tell my son, "You must be home by 10
o'clock." I am using deontic modality.
The second category -- epistemic modality -- is used to express the
speaker's opinion about the truth of a proposition. When I say, "You
must be Rachel Thorne. You look just like your sister." I am saying that
I am certain that the proposition "you are Rachel Thorne" is true.
A third category of modality is a bit more elusive. One characteristic of
both deontic and epistemic modality is that the modals are connected
with the speaker, not just the subject. With deontic modality, the
modal refers to what the speaker is doing with the sentence. With
epistemic modality, the modal refers to how the speaker sees the
proposition. The third category -- sometimes called "dynamic
modality" -- is more subject-oriented. "Rosa can run a mile in under
five minutes." refers to one of Rosa's abilities; it does not give
information about the speaker.
A third hurdle for English-language students is that not all languages
prefer to use modals to express these ideas. Modality is often
expressed with other forms of speech. "You are obliged to be home by
10 o'clock", "I am certain that you are Rachel Thorne. You look just
like your sister.", and "Rosa is capable of running a mile in under five
minutes." all express the ideas explored, and if they sound stilted it is
only because English has a preference for modal verbs rather than
modal adjectives.
Re-phrasing
One of the most direct methods for providing experience with modals
is to ask to students to re-phrase sentences. This can be done either
as a speaking or writing exercise, and offers an advantage over more
traditional cloze exercises in that the context is not open to
interpretation. Such interpretations of context are common (I think the
sentence refers to an obligation, but the student thinks it refers to a
suggestion), and make it difficult to evaluate whether the student is
using the modal correctly (i.e., is he using should because he thinks
that the sentence refers to a suggestion or because he thinks should is
used to express obligation?).
Generally with re-phrasing, students are given a sentence which

expresses modality without using a modal. They are then asked to rephrase this sentence, using the appropriate modal. One example would
be:
I am reasonably certain that Francesca is home.
Francesca __________________. (should be home)
However, there is no reason the presentation cannot be reversed, with
students being asked to re-phrase a sentence that contains a modal.
A variation which might be helpful for lower-level classes would be to
give students a choice of three possible re-phrases.
I am reasonably certain that Francesca is home.
a. Francesca should be home.
b. Francesca doesn't have to be home.
c. Francesca must be home.
Role Plays
In this activity, students are divided into pairs, and each pair is given a
situation.
The situation might be:
"Student A, you want to go to a concert with your friends. Please ask
Student B for permission. Student B, you are worried about Student A
going to the concert. Negotiate with Student A and command him be
home at a specific time."
Another situation might be:
"Student A, you are going to a business meeting in Tokyo with Student
B. Please discuss your trip with him and say when you expect the
meeting to start and finish, and when you expect to return home.
Student B, discuss the trip with Student A, and say that it is necessary
for you to be back at a certain time because you have another
meeting."
The situations chosen should, of course, be meaningful to the
students. Modals should be avoided in the description of the situation,
but used during the role play itself. The students should be given a
couple of minutes to prepare the role play, which is then presented in
front of the class. Examples of modals are then taken from the role
play, and the students who did not participate are asked to identify
what the modals referred to. (For example, "Student A said "We have
to be back by tomorrow evening." Was she making a suggestion? Was
she talking about being certain that something was true? What do you
think?)
Footnote
[1] modal auxiliaries are those auxiliaries such as can and should that
1) have no non-finite form; 2) no ?s inflection for the 3rd person
singular; 3) cannot be used with other modals in a sentence; and 4)
are inverted for questions. Modal equivalents are auxiliaries such as
have to and used to which function like modals but have different
structures. In the interest of brevity I will use the term "modals" to
mean both groups.
The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. VIII, No. 9, September 2002
http://iteslj.org/
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Thompson-Modals.html
Communicative Grammar -- It's

Time to Talk.
Noriko Nishiguchi
Noriko24gucci [at] aol.com
Nara YMCA and Doshisha Women's University (Japan)
Aim
To reinforce previously studied grammatical and vocabulary

areas and to activate them through communicative activities
(interviews).
To enable students to get to know one another more by
communicating in English.
To get students to practice summarizing information in writing.
Level / Class Size
Can be adjusted to meet almost any class level and size. Works
well in large size classes.
Time Necessary for the Activity
From 30 to 40 minutes
Preparation
Decide on a theme or topic that is appropriate for the students

considering their areas of interests and levels.
o lower level students: topics that are connected to their
everyday lives, hobbies, school, friends, memories, likes
and dislikes, etc
o more advanced level students: topics that go beyond
everyday matters such as social issues, values, news, etc
Decide the grammatical area(s) to be focused on, to be
reinforced or to be introduced.
Prepare six to eight questions related to the particular topic area
chosen in #1, the theme/topic, and the grammatical area in #2.
o lower level students: Start with yes or no questions.
o more advanced level students: Start with WH questions
(where, who, when, why, and what) and questions asking
for opinions.
Use the questions to make a gap filling or matching exercise.
Add space for students to produce their own questions.
On the backside, write a number (letter) on each handout - two

handouts with the same number (letter), so that in class
students can look for their partners to pair up with (someone
with the same number) to do the interviews.
(Sample 1) Grammar focus: reviewing WH questions and

responses about travel
LET'S FIND OUT! -- Travel
My interviewee:
Where
Who
When
Why
What
was your worst trip?

do you want to do most when you travel?
was the last time you went on a trip?
do you usually travel with?
do you want to travel to next?
do you like to /don't like to travel?
was your best trip?
Let's match and make four or five questions. (Write an original

question for number five.)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
________________________________?
________________________________?
________________________________?
________________________________?
________________________________?
(Sample 2) Grammar focus: How questions

LET'S FIND OUT! -- Summer Vacation
My interviewee:
did you go traveling?
books/movies did you read/see?
many
did you cook your meals?
much
days did you do part-time work?
How late
did you go out with your friends?
far
times did you go swimming?
often
were you up until every night?
money did you save?
Let's complete the questions and choose four. (Write an original

question for number five.)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
________________________________?
________________________________?
________________________________?
________________________________?
________________________________?
Procedure
Have the students match and complete the questions in the box.
This can be done in groups or on their own. Ask for volunteers or
assign students to write their questions on the board for
everyone to see. Go around and help students make their
original questions.
Start the interview activity. Students, with a pen and their
handout, go around looking for their partners asking, "What's
your number? / What number are you?" They sit down with their
partners and interview each other with their questions in English.
After they finish the interview, have them write a short report
(summary) to the teacher of their interview results. Small
classes can report the results orally.
Suggestions
This activity can be used not only as a review but also to

introduce new grammatical areas or vocabulary. With a little bit
of creativity and flexibility on the teacher's side it can be
expanded or made more challenging.
For more advance level classes, the interview questions can be
made totally by the students themselves. In such cases, the
teacher can provide topics which students can choose from to
create their own questions for the interview part. For example,
the teacher brings in the topic; "Things in Fashion" and sub-topics; karaoke, shops, designer brand goods and inter-net
shopping. Students then choose a topic and prepare their
questions individually or with their group members.
Encouraging students to stay in English, to use as much English
as possible can also be the teacher's challenge. Having students
set their goals as to how much English they are going to use in
the activity helps them stay motivated. In this case, it is
suggested that students also evaluate themselves after the
activity.
Responding to the reports the students have written is one way

to have some kind of contact with individual students, especially
effective with large classes.
Final Thoughts
Students have commented that this activity helped them get to know
and talk to members in the class they usually don't talk to. (This was a
college class of 55 first year students.) They were also able to get new
information, hear different thoughts and opinions from various
members. Setting their goals as to how much English they were going
to use in the activity helped them take more responsibility in their
learning. Many said they realized that they had to play a more positive
role in their language studies: to ask questions when they didn't
understand, to set their own goals and work towards them and to
make efforts to use the language and not just sit and listen to the
teacher. Some were simply happy when they were able to have a
successful interview with their partners.
As a teacher I felt, at first, this activity required more work on the
teacher's side. However, seeing students trying to use the language to
communicate with one another and asking me questions when they
got stuck, encouraged me to continue this activity at the beginning of
each class as a warm-up activity. Progress could be seen in the
students' reports as well. By responding to their writings, I was able to
communicate with them and at the same time, students were able to
see that writing was another way they could communicate in English.
The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. IX, No. 4, April 2003
http://iteslj.org/
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Nishiguchi Communicative.html
Using Humour in the Second

Language Classroom
Paul-Emile Chiasson
pchiasso [at] unbsj.ca
University of New Brunswick (Saint John, NB, Canada)
Introduction
This article examines how humour can be an effective tool in teaching
and in creating the affective second language classroom. It will also
examine the reasons why humour is sometimes avoided, and will
dispel the myth that one must be a comedian to use humour in a
language classroom. The focus is on the use of cartoons with practical
examples of how to use and adapt this particular resource. One
doesn't have to be a gifted humorist to reap the benefits of using
humour in the classroom.
"Classrooms in which laughter is welcome help bring learning to
life."[1]
Much has been written in recent years about the importance of the
affective environment in the second language classroom. Such
classrooms are ones in which learners are not afraid to take risks and
use their second language. Students are encouraged and praised for
their efforts to always use their second language in class. Students
don't face ridicule, nor negative criticism. Error correction is
appropriate, timely, constructive and seeks to instill confidence in each
student.
However, at times we overlook humour as an important element in
teaching, in teacher training and how humour can contribute to a
positive environment for learning. Students of education are not
always given the opportunity to examine the impact of their own
preferences of teaching style or their own willingness to use certain
strategies, such as humour in the language teaching. Because of the
lack of time to explore such personal views we may be missing an
opportunity to enhance learning in our classrooms.
Kristmanson (2000) emphasizes this need to create a welcoming
classroom for language learning;
"In order to take risks, you need a learning environment in which you
do not feel threatened or intimidated. In order to speak, you need to
feel you will be heard and that what you're saying is worth hearing. In
order to continue your language learning, you need to feel motivated.
In order to succeed, you need an atmosphere in which anxiety levels
are low and comfort levels are high. Issues of motivation and language
anxiety are key to this topic of affect in the second language
classroom." [2]
Why Haven't We Been Using Humour in Our

Classrooms?
For many the simple mention of humour condors up notions and
protests of, "I'm not funny, I don't use humour." " I can't tell a joke;
let alone use one in class." For others it is something to be feared,
synonymous with classroom disorder and chaos. "I'm not about to
start telling jokes, it will mean complete loss of control."
For some this resistance to using humour may simply be a lack of
knowledge as to how one may use it effectively in class. " I enjoy
humour, but I don't know how to go about using it, so I don't. I don't
want to look foolish." Others associate humour and its use with nonproductivity. Students can't be learning if they are laughing. Yet
humour is as authentic and as communicative a human reaction and

social skill as is greeting and conversing with friends.
Commercial language teaching methodologies have tended in the past
to avoid the use of humour. It is one thing to train or explain to
teachers how to teach the future or passe compose, however, it is a
more evasive concept to train teachers to have a sense of humour or
even develop such a human characteristic. [3]
The humour discussed in this article however requires no form of
humour training, nor requires that a teacher have the humouristic
skills that would match the Robin Williams of the world. It will
demonstrate a simple yet very beneficial use of humour, the use of
cartoons in the communicative teaching of a second language.
Why Should We Use Humour in Our Classrooms?

Humour and laughter are areas that have not been closely studied.
Their role in education and medicine has been briefly examined as far
back as Wells (1974) to as recently as Provine (Dec. 2000) in, "The
Science of Laughter", Psychology Today .
Loomax and Moosavi (1998) in an article on the use of humour in a
university statistics class point out that anecdotal evidence in past
studies consistently suggests that humour is an extremely effective
tool in education. These same studies suggest that the use of humour
in the classroom reduces tension, improves classroom climate,
increases enjoyment, increases student-teacher rapport and even
facilitates learning.
Regardless of what evidence there may be, we all have personal views
on the value of humour, as depicted in the film "Patch Adams" and for
years in Reader's Digest, "Laughter is the Best Medicine." Yet, there is
little in literature that speaks of its pedagogical value and in particular
in second language teaching and in second language teacher training.
According to Provine (2000) laughter is generally subdued during
conversation. Speech will dominate and laughter serves as a phrase
break creating a punctuation effect in language. Laughter therefore
has a specific role in conversations and is not random. Therefore, as in
authentic communication, humour in the classroom shouldn't be
random. It shouldn't be used without preparation and a clear
objective. It may be simple or complex in nature. It is your decision as
to how, when and why you will use it.
One reason for using humour is that as a human trait it is a selfeffacing behavior (Provine, 2000). It can allow the shy or timid student
in your class to participate with the group. If it is used properly
humour allows the student to feel a part of the class and possibly
contribute without loosing face, feeling exposed or vulnerable. This is
of particular importance in a communicative classroom where the
accent is on verbal authentic communication, participation and
interaction. It's a way of reaching out to those students who are too
afraid or nervous to attempt expressing themselves in their second
language. Humour is as human and as authentic as the need to
communicate. As with other facets of our lives it plays a major role in
our every day social interaction. We should therefore not ignore it but
instead make it part of our everyday classroom learning.
Laughter helps us forget about ourselves, our problems, our fears and
allows us to lose ourselves momentarily. This momentary loss may be
interpreted by some teachers as a loss of control, poor classroom
management and therefore something to be avoided. However,
humour as with all activities in the communicative language classroom,
must be well prepared and have a specific objective.
Interestingly enough, Provine (2000) also discovered that even though
both sexes laugh a lot, females laugh more. It might explain why the
females in our classes seem to enjoy more the humour used in the
classroom. Although, as Provine points out, males appear to be the
initiators of humour in any culture, beginning in early childhood.
As was stated earlier, Kristmanson (2000) stressed the importance of
the affective environment in second language teaching. It can't be
emphasized enough that students are more willing to participate and
take risks in using their second language in a classroom that allows
them to do so without fear of criticism and ridicule. It's important for
the teacher to create a "positive atmosphere" for learning. Humour, by
decreasing anxiety and stress can, contribute to this positive
classroom, to class unity and learning.
"Indeed, the presumed health benefits of laughter may be coincidental
consequences of its primary goal: bringing people together."[4]
Guidelines for Using Humour

"The job of the teacher is to get students laughing, and when their
mouths are open, to give them something on which to chew. " [5]
Although the above quote is an interesting and humorous way to

describe the use of humour, it is not our role as teachers to be standup comedians. Nor will we all use humour in the same way, or use the
same humour. With this in mind there are certain points to consider
before using humour in your classroom. Proper preparation is key as in
all language teaching preparation. In so doing we really will have
something for the students to "chew on."
1. Don't try too hard. Let humour arise naturally, encourage it, don't
force it. Don't be discouraged if the first time it doesn't meet your
expectations. As Provine (2000) states, your reaction to their nonreaction (to a cartoon for example) may be the most amusing part.
Like all things, proper preparation is needed for proper delivery.
2. Do what fits your personality. Never force it, it won't work. You
might want to venture outside your comfort zone and try a different
genre, cartoonist, or style of humour. Remember you class is made up
of individuals with different tastes.
3. Don't use private humour or humour that leaves people out. Your
goal is not to become a comedian. The humour described here is
through cartoons. It doesn't make fun of any particular group,
nationality, etc ... Private humour, if you use it, should be for affective
reasons as well, used carefully, never demeaning or sarcastic.
4. Make humour an integral part of your class, rather then something
special. Humour works best as a natural on-going part of classroom
learning. Be careful not to over use it, it could loose its value and
effect. With practice you will develop a style and comfort zone with
humour.
The use of humour will depend on the content you are teaching and
the availability of appropriate humorous material. Have specific goals
or objectives in mind. Using humour, like teaching, has to be well
prepared. With time you will become more and more at ease, or self
assured with its use. Allow yourself time to experiment and see what
works well.
"When humour is planned as part of the teaching strategy, a caring
environment is established, there is an attitude of flexibility, and
communication between student and teacher is that of freedom and
openness. The tone is set allowing for human error with freedom to
explore alternatives in the learning situation. This reduces the
authoritarian position of the teacher, allowing the teacher to be a
facilitator of the learning process. Fear and anxiety, only natural in a

new and unknown situation, becomes less of a threat, as a partnership
between student and instructor develops."[6]
5. Humour and cartoons should be related to what your are doing in
the classroom. Humour may be used to solicit dialogue, conversations
and develop vocabulary. At times you may want to use it as a break
before going on to something else. However, the cartoon should
always be of an appropriate nature and interest to your students.
It is useful, on occasion, to present a cartoon on an overhead projector
as students come into class. The humour can relax and re-energize the
students for class. It can also prepare them to converse in their second
language. The cartoon can become the signal that they are now in
French or ESL class. To help the students shift from their first language
to their second language they could enjoy a lighthearted moment of
discussion or interpretation of the cartoon. This interaction is authentic
and can stimulate real discussion and or debate, so much so that at
times you may have to bring the discussion to a close to proceed with
the class.
6. The extent to which you use humour will vary on your class.
Interpretation, discussion and analysis will vary on the proficiency of
your class. The humour must be comprehensible, with themes that
your students can relate to.
As with all communicative learning activities, prepare your students.
Begin by discussing cartoons; what are their favorites, what are yours.
Tell them you are going to use cartoons to illustrate what they are
learning and to have fun. The pedagogical reasons for their use can be
known by you. What the students will know is that the cartoon will
help them better understand and learn the language.
Remember, it is important to keep it simple, with a specific objective.
Don't attempt to use, for example, the future, passe compose, verb
agreement and the use of idiomatic expressions all at once. You may
want to use a specific cartoon again to illustrate another point.
Although I recommend that you use a different cartoon and enjoy the
humour more.
A Practical Example
In the past I have generally used cartoons with multi panels. They
provide more material for communicative questioning and discussion.
However, the choice of carton that you choose to demonstrate or
practice a particular point will naturally depend on the theme,
grammatical or cultural component you are teaching or examining. It

is important to decide beforehand why you want to use it and how you
want to use it. Ask yourself the question, "What knowledge do I want
the students to demonstrate by interpreting this cartoon?" As
mentioned previously try not to deal with multiple aspects at one time.
Perhaps you simply want to illustrate or have the students
demonstrate their knowledge of vocabulary or expressions related to
emotions. However, nothing is stopping you from returning to the
cartoon at a later date to talk about intonation and stress in the
language and how it can change the meaning of what is said. As
before, don't overuse the cartoon. I suggest you keep it simple and
use other examples to illustrate supplementary points.
The absence of a title or any written dialogue allows your students to
use their imagination and express themselves orally or in written form
(I have primarily used cartoons to stimulate oral expression. I have
used writing as a possible extension, a re-investment of the activity).
Such an exercise allows students to defend their point of view and also
to explore their interpretations of possible dialogue and scenarios.
It is motivating and interesting to have students suggest a before and
after sequence to the situation illustrated by the cartoon. Students
willingly offer possible "before" and "after" segments and delight in
coming up with the most original. This particular aspect of the lesson
can take place after each individual panel or once all panels have been
shown.
To add variety to the use of such cartoons you may want to present
the first several panels together and solicit an ending to the story or
an interpretation of the story. Presenting the panels one at a time
makes the activity more communicative and intriguing as students
confirm or don't confirm their interpretations of what will happen next.
More discussion and fun is had as the story unfolds with each
segment. Anticipation builds as you approach the final panel. The
ending takes on a greater value as everyone waits for the true ending!
Another approach is to ask your students to actually create, or imagine
the dialogue for each panel. It could be an opportunity to introduce or
review expressions of emotion, in this case, anger and despair. For
example one could use a cartoon that depicts, what one would
assume, is a mother scolding her child. However, in the final panel we
discover that it is the house pet. If the class was an ESL class students
could possibly come up with the following examples of ways to
expression displeasure and disappointment:
"I'm not very happy with you."

"I'm very upset with your behaviour."
"I'm very saddened, unhappy, disappointed, bitterly
disappointed..."
"I'm very annoyed."
"I'm very disillusioned, discontented, heavy-hearted..."
"I'm so ashamed, pained, ..."
"We (speaking for both parents) are so weary, tired,
disgusted..."
"We are furious, incensed, infuriated, enraged by this behavior...
"
"We feel blighted, dejected by this whole affair."
You may want to examine the role of intonation, stress and

syllabication related to such a situation, on another occasion or at
another point in your lesson.
Vocabulary work begins immediately with the presentation of the first
panel, when the class begins to describe the scene and brainstorm
what they see and understand to be happening. Examples of openended communicative questions that force students to go beyond a
simple "yes" or "no" could be:
1. "Describe what you see in the first panel." "Where does the story
take place?"
2. "To whom is the woman speaking?" "Imagine what she is
saying."
3. "What do you think happened before this story began?"
4. "How will the story end?"
As with the multidimensional approach we seek to have students
reinvest what they have learned by completing an extension activity or
enrichment activity. A possible example suggested by Lavenne (1988)
and enjoyed by students is to write the story as if reporting the news
for a newspaper, if the cartoon can be adapted for such a
reinvestment. If students aren't aware of the structure of a newspaper
article it would be good to review it and provide authentic examples.
Students can then model the style correctly in writing his or her own
news report. Another option is to have students write out the dialogue.
As in the case of this cartoon, researching and writing the dialogue to
share with the class could be fun and entertaining. Such an exercise is
motivating and enables you to see if students have mastered, in
written form, the point of grammar, structure, vocabulary or
expressions of emotions you have taught and have examined with

them.
Conclusion
Humour can contribute a great deal to the second language classroom.
It enables you not only to create an affective or positive environment,
but is a source of enjoyment for you and your students. Language is
seen in authentic and real life situations. Humorous situations allow
your students to express themselves without fear of ridicule and
criticism. Anxiety and stress is reduced and your students are
encouraged to take more risks in using their second language.
As with all language activities care must be taken to prepare students
before the activity and guide them along the way. Although the
teachers may perceive the exercise as a lighthearted moment in the
course of their lesson plan, humour should be an integral part of a
positive learning classroom environment. Specific goals and objectives
must be pre-established and clear in the mind of the teacher. Humour,
along with encouragement and praise should be one of the many
useful tools used by language teachers to make their classrooms more
inviting and conducive to learning.
References
Dickinson, D. (1998). The Humor Lounge; Humor and the

Multiple Intelligences.
http://www.newhorizons.org/rech_mi.html
Fleke, C.L., Kuhs, T., Donnelly, A. Ebert, C. (1995). Reinventing
the Role of Teacher: Teacher as Researcher. Phi Delta Kappan ,
76 , (5), 405-407.
Gilliland, H., Mauritsen, H. (1971). Humor in the Classroom. The
Reading Teacher , 24, 753-756.
Kristmanson, P. (2000). Affect*: in the Second Language
Classroom: How to create an emotional climate. Reflexions , 19 ,
(2), 1-5.
Loomax, R. G., Moosavi, S. A. (1998). Using Humor to Teach
Statistics; Must they be Orthogonal?, Paper presented at the
annual meeting of the American Educational Research
Association, San Diego, April 17th, 1998.
http://www.bamaed.ua.edu/~rlomax/LOMAX/HUMOR.HTM
Lavenne, C. (1988). Le Dessin humoristique dans la salle de
classe. Fiche pratiques/images, V., Le Francais dans le monde,
(215), mars.
Mollica, Anthony (1976). Cartoons in the Language Classroom.

Canadian Modern Language Review, 32 , (4), 424-444.
Provine, R. Ph.d (2000). The Science of laughter. Psychology
Today, November/December 2002, 33 , (6), 58-62.
Rhem, J. (1998). Humor in the Classroom. The National Teaching
& Learning Forum (online), Vol. 7, No. 6.
http://cstl.syr.edu/cslt/NTLF/v7n6/research.htm
Sadowski, C.J., Gulgoz, S. et all (1994). An Evaluation of the use
of Content-Relevant Cartoons as a Teaching Device . Journal of
Instructional Psychology , 21 , (4), 368.
Underhill, A. (2000). The Psychological Atmosphere We Create in
Our Classrooms. The Language Teacher Online.
http://langue.hyper.chubu.ac.jp/jalt/pub/tlt/97/sep/underhill.ht
ml
Vizmuller, J. (1980). Psychological Reasons for Using Humor in a
Pedagogical Setting . Canadian Modern Language Review, 36 ,
(2), 266-71.
Watson, M.J. Emerson, S. (1988). Facilitate Learning with
Humor. Journal of Nursing Education, 2 , (2), 89-90.
The Wil-Burn Type Humour Test.
http://www.cheersproject.com/wil/burn.htm
Guideline for Using Humor in the Classroom.
http://venus.cottonwoodpress.com/extras/ideas/humor.htm
English as Second Language; Being Creative. TELE-Learning &
Secondary English Language (online).
http://www.to.utwente.nl/ism/online96/project/kiosk/team10/bc
10.htm
Footnotes
[1] Dickinson, D., "Humor and the Multiple Intelligence", New

Horizons for Learning, Seattle, WA,
htp://www.newhorizons.org/rech-mi.html, (2001).
[2] Kristmanson, P., "Affect*: in the Second Language
Classroom: How to create an emotional climate", Reflexions, 19,
(2000): 1
[3] You may be interested in determining your "Humour Type".
The "Wil-Burn type Humour Test is available on line
(http://www.cheersproject.com/wil-burn.htm). Try it! It will
make you laugh and give you a possible insight into "your" sense
of humour.
[4] Provine, R.R., Ph.D. (2000): " The Science of Laughter",
Psychology Today , 33 (2000): 61.
[5] A quote by Tom Davis, in Elaine Lundberg & Cheryl Miller

Thurston (1997): "If They're Laughing ...", Cottonwood Press,
Inc., Retrieved on the World Wide Web: "Guidelines for Using
Humor in the Classroom",
http://venus.cottonwoodpress.com/extra/ideas/humor.htm
[6] Watson, M.J, Emerson, S., " Facilitate Learning with
Humour", Journal of Nursing Education 27 (1988): 89.
The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. VIII, No. 3, March 2002
http://iteslj.org/
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Chiasson-Humour.html
75 ESL Teaching Ideas
Hall Houston
allhou [at] yahoo.com
http://www.geocities.com/tokyo/flats/7947/
Introduction
These are the ideas included in Hall Houston's Random ESL Idea
Generator. If you have a JavaScript-enabled browser, you can use the
generator to get a randomly-selected idea from this list. Perhaps you
will find it useful to print out this list and refer to it from time to time.
The Ideas
1. Alter the pacing of your class. If you rush through your class at
full speed, slow things down and take time to ask your students
personal questions based on the materials you are using. If you
tend to proceed at a snail's pace, prepare some additional
activities and push yourself to accomplish more than you usually
do.
2. Ask a student to demonstrate a dance, and assist the student in
explaining the movements in English.
3. Ask students to name as many objects in the classroom as they
can while you write them on the board.
4. Ask students to present to the class a gesture that is unique to
their own culture.
5. Ask students to write one question they would feel comfortable
answering (without writing their name) on an index card. Collect
all of the index cards, put them in a bag, have students draw
cards, and then ask another student the question on that card.
6. Ask your students if there are any songs running through their
heads today. If anyone says yes, encourage the student to sing
or hum a little bit, and ask the others if they can identify it.
7. Assign students to take a conversation from their coursebook
that they are familiar with and reduce each line to only one
word.
8. At the end of class, erase the board and challenge students to
recall everything you wrote on the board during the class period.
Write the expressions on the board once again as your students
call them out.
9. Begin by telling your students about an internal struggle
between two sides of your personality (bold side vs. timid side
OR hardworking side vs. lazy side), providing a brief example of
what each side says to you. After a few minutes of preparation in
pairs, have students present their struggles to the class.
10.
Bring a cellular phone (real or toy) to class, and pretend to
receive calls throughout the class. As the students can only hear
one side of the conversation, they must guess who is calling you
and why. Make the initial conversation very brief, and gradually
add clues with each conversation. The student who guesses
correctly wins a prize.
11.
Bring a fork, knife, spoon, bowl, plate and chopsticks (if
you have them) to class, and mime eating some different dishes,
letting students guess what they are. Then let your students
take a turn.
12.
Bring an artifact from the student's culture to class, and
ask them questions about it.
13.
Bring in some snacks that you think your students haven't
tried before, and invite the students to sample them and give
their comments.
14.
Call on a student to draw his or her country's flag on the
board, then teach him or her how to describe the flag to the
class (It has three stripes...).
15.
Choose one topic (food, sports) and elicit a list of examples
(food - chicken, pudding, rice). Then have your student come up
with the most unusual combinations of items from that
list(chocolate-beef or wrestling-golf).
16.
Collaborate with your students on a list of famous people,
including movie stars, politicians, athletes, and artists. Have
every student choose a famous person, and put them in pairs to
interview each other.
17.
Come to class dressed differently than usual and have
students comment on what's different.
18.
Copy a page from a comic book, white out the dialogue,
make copies for your class, and have them supply utterances for
the characters.
19.
Copy pages from various ESL textbooks (at an appropriate
level for your students), put them on the walls, and have
students wander around the classroom and learn a new phrase.
Then have them teach each other what they learned.
20.
Copy some interesting pictures of people from magazine
ads. Give a picture to each student, have the student fold up the
bottom of the picture about half an inch, and write something
the person might be thinking or saying. Put all the pictures up on
the board, and let everyone come up and take a look.
21.
Describe something observable in the classroom (while
looking down), and tell students to look in the direction of what
you described.
22.
Draw a map of your country or another country that your
students know well. By drawing lines, show students where you
went on a trip, and tell them about it. Then call on several
students to do the same. The trips can be truthful or fictional.
23.
Draw a pancake-shape on the board, and announce that
the school will soon be moving to a desert island. Invite students
one by one to go to the board and draw one thing they would
like to have on the island.
24.
Draw a party scene on the board, and invite students to
come up and draw someone they would like to have at the party.
25.
Empty a bag of coupons onto a table, and have students
find a coupon for a product that they have no need for.
26.
Experiment with how you write on the board, altering your
writing style, the size of the letters, the direction you write, and
the color of the chalk/pens.
27.
Explain to your students what it means to call someone a
certain animal (dog, pig, fox) in English, and then ask them what
these mean in their languages.
28.
Fill the board with vocabulary your students have
encountered in previous classes (make sure to include all parts
of speech), and get them to make some sentences out of the
words.
29.
Find out what famous people your students admire, and
work together with the class to write a letter to one of them.
30.
Find out what your students are interested in early on in
the semester. Go to the Internet from time to time to collect
articles on these subjects for students to read during the class
period.
31.
First, instruct your students to write on a slip of paper the
name of one book, CD, or movie that changed them in some
way. Collect the papers, call out the titles, and ask the class if
they can guess who wrote it. Finally, let the writer identify him or
herself, explaining his or her choice.
32.
Give each student a piece of chalk/pen and tell them to fill
the board with pop song lyrics. Then put them in pairs, and get
them to use the words on the board to create a new dialogue.
33.
Give students a reward (such as a candy or a sticker) each
time they take the artificial language in your textbook and turn it
into an authentic question or comment about someone in the
class.
34.
Hand a student a ball of yellow yarn. Have him toss it to
another student, while saying something positive about that
student and holding onto the end of the yarn. Continue in this
manner until there is a web between all the students.
35.
Hand each student an index card, and tell them to write
down a sentence that includes an error they have made this
week, along with the correct version of the sentence. Next, tape
all of the index cards on the board for students to look over.
36.
Hang up four different posters (example - one of a world
map, one of a famous singer, one of a flower, and one of
Einstein) in the four corners of your room. Tell students to
choose one corner to stand in, and talk about why they chose
that poster.
37.
Have each student make a list of the five most useful
phrases for tourists visiting an English speaking country.
38.
Have students come to the board one by one, draw a
poster for an English language movie (without the title) they
think the other students have seen, and let the other students
guess which movie it is.
39.
Hire a musician (flute? harmonica? banjo?) to play for a
few minutes of your class period.
40.
In small groups, have your students design a billboard for
something other than a product (wisdom, humility, friendship,
etc.).
41.
Inquire to see if your students have any unusual talents
(can wiggle their ears, can bark like a dog), and encourage them
to demonstrate.
42.
Instead of saying "Very good!" all the time, vary the ways
you praise (and correct) students as much as possible.
43.
Instruct your students to find something in their
wallets/purses/pencil boxes, and tell the story behind it.
44.
Invite your students to stand up and explore the classroom
from new angles (look in drawers, under desks, behind posters,
on top of cabinets). Then have students report their findings.
45.
Just a few minutes before the bell rings, call on your
students to choose the ten most useful words they came in
contact with during this class period, then have them narrow it
down to the three most useful words.
46.
Pass around some magazines, and have each student
choose an ad that he or she likes. Give students an opportunity
to explain their choices.
47.
Play a listening activity from your book an additional time
with the lights turned off.
48.
Play a recording of instrumental music and have some
students draw on the board what the music makes them think
of.
49.
Play five very different sounds from a sound effects tape or
CD, and assign students in pairs to create a story based on three
of the sounds.
50.
Play music that enhances certain activities (quiet music for
a reading activity, dance music for an energetic TPR activity).
Ask your students for their reactions.
51.
Prepare colored letters of the alphabet on cardboard
squares and put them in a bag. Students must draw a letter
from the bag, and work together to create a sentence on the
board. Each student must raise his or her hand to make a
contribution, but the word the student calls out must begin with
the letter he or she chose. Put the expanding sentence on the
board, adding words only when they the grammar is correct.
52.
Prepare several paper bags, each with a different scent
inside (perfume, cinnamon, cheese), pass the bags around the
class, and let students describe what they smell.
53.
Print phrases such as "in the library" "at an elegant dinner
with the Royal Family" "in a noisy bar" "in a dangerous
neigborhood" on separate strips of paper, put them in envelopes,
and tape them to the underside of a few students' desks/tables
before they arrive. Write on the board a useful expression like
"Excuse me. Could I borrow a dollar?" When students arrive, tell
them to look for an envelope under the desks/tables. The ones
who find envelopes must say the sentence on the board as if in
the context written on the page. Other students must guess the
context from the student's tone of voice and body language.
54.
Produce a list of commonly used sentence-modifying
adverbs on the board, such as suddenly, actually, unfortunately,
and happily. Then launch into a story, which each student must
contribute to, with the rule that everyone must begin the first
sentence of his or her contribution with a sentence-modifying
adverb.
55.
Provide each student with a list of the current top ten
popular songs. Play excerpts from some or all of the songs, and
choose some questions to ask your students, such as: Did you
like the song? Have you heard this song before? How did the
song make you feel? What instruments did you hear?
56.
Purchase a postcard for each member of your class, writing
his or her name in the name and address space. Turn them
picture side up on a table, have each student choose one
(without looking at the name), then he or she will write a
message to the person whose name is on the other side. If a
student chooses the postcard that has his or her own name on it,
the student must choose again.
57.
Put students in pairs and ask them to guess three items in
their partner's wallet/purse/pencil box.
58.
Put students in pairs. Tell them to converse, but to
deliberately make one grammatical error over and over, stopping
only when one student can spot the other's intentional error.
59.
Put students into small groups to create an application
form for new students to the school.
60.
Put the students in small groups, and ask each group to
plan a vacation for you. They must plan where you will go, what
you will do, who you will go with, and what you will buy. When
they are finished, have each group present their plans.
61.
Review a phrase or sentence that you want students to
remember, by holding a competition to see "Who can say it the
loudest/the quietest/the quickest/the slowest/in the deepest
voice/in the highest pitched voice?".
62.
Set up a board in your classroom where students can buy
and sell used items from each other by writing notes in English.
63.
Supply each student with a copy of the entertainment
section of the local newspaper, and tell them to choose
somewhere to go next weekend.
64.
Take a particularly uninteresting page from your
coursebook, and put students in groups to redesign it.
65.
Teach on a different side of the room than you usually do.
66.
Tell each student to report the latest news in their country
or city to the class.
67.
Tell your students to practice a conversation from their
coursebook that they are familiar with, but this time they can
only use gestures, no words.
68.
When they are practicing a dialogue, have students play
around with the volume, intonation, pitch, or speed of their
voices.
69.
Write "Tell me something I don't know." on the board, then
ask students questions about things they know about and you
don't, such as their lives, cultural background, interests, and
work.
70.
Write a common adjacency pair (Thank you./You're
welcome OR I'm sorry./That's alright) on the board. Ask students
if they know of any expressions that could replace one of the
ones you just wrote. Write any acceptable answers on the board.
71.
Write a number of adjectives, such as mysterious, happy,
peaceful, sad, angry, and frustrated on the board. Call out a
color, and ask your students to tell you which adjective they
associate with that color.
72.
Write a word on a slip of paper and show it to a student.
This student must whisper it to the second student. Then the
second student must draw a picture of what he or she heard,
and show it to the third student. The third student, then, writes
the word that represents the picture and shows it to the fourth
student. Then the fourth student whispers it to the fifth
student.... and so on. This continues until you get to the last
student, who must say the word to the class.
73.
Write an idiomatic expression (such as "It beats me." or
"I'm fed up.") in big letters on the board. Call on a few students
to guess what it means before you tell them.
74.
Write down the names of about five very different people
on the board (a small baby, a rude waiter in a restaurant, a
fashion model, a stranger in a crowd, and a grandfather). Give
students a common expression, such as "Good morning!" or
"Sorry!", and ask students how they might say it differently
when talking to a different person.
75.
Write your name on the board vertically, and add a suitable
adjective that begins with each letter of your name. The next
step is to invite students to do the same.
The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. V, No. 11, November 1999
http://iteslj.org/
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Houston-TeachingIdeas.html
Teaching Phrasal Verbs Using

Songs
Subrahmanian Upendran
utwo [at] tatanova.com
Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages (Hyderabad, India)
Introduction
Many songs can be successfully employed to provide meaningful
contexts for learning phrasal verbs. This will be illustrated through the
use of the first four lines of the song "Another Day in Paradise" by Phil
Collins.
Procedure
Students were provided with incomplete lyrics.
The students were given incomplete lyrics of the song "Another Day in
Paradise" by Phil Collins and were instructed to familiarize themselves
with it by going through it silently. Each line contained a blank, which
they would be required to fill in as they listened to the song.
Students were asked to fill in the blanks.

After they had familiarized themselves with the lyrics, the next step
involved was to expose the students to the song in small chunks of
four lines each. Every segment was replayed several times, till most
students were confident that they had written in the appropriate
words. It was only when the students completed filling in all the blanks
contained in the first stanza that any attempt was made to determine
how correct or incorrect their answers were.
Students were asked to volunteer information.

Each of the blanks was taken up one by one and every student in the
group was asked what word he/she had used in a particular blank.
(Since my focus here is on the teaching of phrasal verbs, I'll confine
myself to the first blank in the song, which completes the phrasal verb
"calls out".) The different answers provided by the students were put
up on the blackboard. No attempt was made to weed out the incorrect
answers at this stage. As all answers were being accepted, students
enthusiastically revealed what they had put down. Some of the
answers given for the first blank was (calls) "out", "on", "off", and
"up".
Students were asked the meaning of phrasal verbs.

When all the students had volunteered information about the word
they had inserted in the first blank, they were asked the meaning of
each phrasal verb.
What is the meaning of "call out"?
What does "call on" mean?
The meaning of each phrasal verb was discussed individually and when
a student provided a definition, which everyone agreed on, it was put
up on the blackboard. The participants were asked to use the phrasal
verb in a sentence. Examples provided by the students were put up
alongside the meaning.
Students were provided with contextual clues.

When the students were unable to define a phrasal verb, there was no
attempt to provide them with one. Instead, the phrasal verb was used
in a context and all students were expected to guess the meaning. For
example, when the students were unable to define "call off", the
following context was provided.
"The class is over. You're ready to begin looking through your notes in
the short break before the next class. You have a test on that class.
Suddenly a student runs into the classroom and shouts that the test is
called off as the teacher has left to deal with a family emergency. You
are overjoyed, and you throw your books back into your bag and rush
to the playground to join the cricket game."
The students were asked to determine the meaning from the context
provided. Once the meaning had been arrived at, further examples of
how the phrasal verb was used were provided.
John's appointment with the doctor was called off.
The teacher called off the meeting.
Students were asked to study the lyrics again.

When the meanings of all the phrasal verbs had been figured out, the
students were then asked to study the lyrics again and determine
which phrasal verb was demanded by the context. If, for example, all
students agreed on "calls out", they were asked to provide cogent
arguments why it couldn't be any of the other phrasal verbs that they
had initially come up with. Some of the arguments put forward by the
students were: people don't visit someone on the street, they can
meet them accidentally, but not 'visit'. The grammar does not permit
'call on'. One can 'call on' someone, but not 'call on to' someone.
Getting/providing such answers from/to students ensured that they
not only remembered the meaning of the phrasal verb but also where
and how it should be used.
Conclusion
Using songs provides an ideal context for students to learn new
phrasal verbs. The enthusiasm generated by songs will enable the
teacher to discuss those phrasal verbs, which have been brought up by
the students, and not those randomly selected by the teacher or the
textbook writer. Making students learn the songs will ensure that they
will remember not only the meaning and also how to use the phrasal
verb.
A teacher can build up a collection of songs to use for different
purposes, and prepare simple fill-in-the-blank exercises based on the
lyrics of the songs. Not only do the students enjoy listening, but they
also learn to listen for meaning.
The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. VII, No. 7, July 2001
http://iteslj.org/
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Upendran-PhrasalVerbs.html
Helping Prospective EFL

Teachers Learn How to Use
Songs in Teaching
Conversation Classes
Natalia F. Orlova
orlova [at] pf.ujep.cz
University of Jan Evangelist Purkyne (Usti nad Labem, Czech Republic)
Introduction
For the last two decades, EFL (English as a Foreign Language)
methodology has been actively considering the possibility of using
music and songs in class The analyses of the recent EFL literature on
the problem in question (Graham, Murphey, Saricoban, Eken, Jedynak,
etc.) makes it possible to suggest that among the methodological
purposes with which music, songs and chants are used in class, it is
possible to rank the following:
Practicing the rhythm, stress and the intonation patterns of
the English language. (For this, see the excellent works by
Carolyn Graham).
Teaching vocabulary, especially in the vocabulary reinforcement
stage.
Teaching grammar. In this respect songs are especially favored
by teachers while investigating the use of the tenses.
Teaching speaking. For this purpose, songs and mainly their
lyrics are employed as a stimulus for class discussions.
Teaching listening comprehension.
Developing writing skills. For this purpose a song can be used
in a variety of ways--for example, speculating what could
happen to the characters in the future, writing a letter to the

main character, etc.
Theoretical Background
Though the list of publications devoted to the topic in question
continues to grow yearly, and though no one would doubt the potential
of the songs and music as a springboard to students' creativity, I think
there are still several aspects in which music is overlooked in the
classroom. First, songs, especially chants, are very popular with
teachers whose target audience are young learners, while adult
learners are less often exposed to songs. Secondly, though a song is
an inseparable unity of the music and its lyrics, it is the musical part
that is constantly overlooked and ignored.
My own teaching shows that songs can be effectively used in an
intermediate class for the purpose of teaching speaking to prospective
EFL teachers. The main reasons for this are as follows:
As a cultural phenomenon, songs can introduce students to the

musical and cultural patterns typical for the target language
community.
Songs belong to a synthetic genre, which includes both lyrics,
and music and these two constituents may be used as a good
incentive for speaking English in class.
Songs can effectively contribute to the students' development of
esthetic appreciation since they may help them shape their
artistic tastes in formulating a critical evaluation of the songs
they listen to and discuss.
Prospective teachers of English, in order to be able to use
effectively songs in their own teaching in future, should
themselves be exposed to them in the context of a teacher
training program.
The question that any teacher who is willing to use music in class
has to wrestle with is 'what kind of music and what particular
songs should we choose from the "ocean" of today's music?' A
quick glance at the musical picture of modern society shows how
picturesque and colorful it is. When I use musical material in
class for the first time, I always choose the songs I know and
love myself. This enables me to be more emotionally persuasive
as I expose my students to the songs and their interpretation of
them. Later, while encouraging students to choose the songs for
discussions, I ask them to follow the following criteria (though
they are not free from being subjective):
o
o
o
The song must be an example of a particular musical

trend.
There shouldn't be any form of violence in it.
The song should contain a certain artistic image.
I have been incorporating songs into teaching EFL to prospective

teachers of English for more than 10 years and I have to admit with a
certain degree of surprise and content, that the songs by the
"Beatles," though composed more than thirty years ago, generally
appeal to the tastes of 19-25 year-olds since they deal with such
eternal problems as love, commitment and parents/children
relationships. One must also not forget to mention that the words are
very intelligible and easy to distinguish. They are deservedly
considered to be classics of pop music, from which different musical
trends sprang up.
In my view, the main purpose of using songs in an advanced class
should be for the development of the students speaking skills and the
promotion of their cultural competence. The model of speech
development through songs was worked out with the tasks mentioned
above in mind. This model should be comprised of three stages preparatory, forming and developing - each of them having its own
logistics.
The Model of Speech Development through Songs
Preparatory
o Introductory talk: Micro-texts about different musical
trends and history of the Beatles
o Activities aimed at vocabulary development
Forming
o Listening and discussing songs; 7-step sequence:
1. Pre-listening tasks.
2. Listening to the song.
3. Answers to the pre-listening tasks.
4. Post-listening tasks.
5. Presentation of the text of the song. (Optional)
6. Second listening.
7. Song discussion.
Developing
o Discussing different problematic issues and music genres
o Tasks for using songs in English language teaching.
The aim of the first stage is to form lexical subskills of monological

speech and to develop the speech content. For this purpose students
are encouraged to read texts, containing information about different
musical trends as well as musical reviews about various groups and
singers, to fulfill pre-reading and post-reading tasks. As an example
may serve the pre-reading and post reading activities that follow.
Rank the musical trends you like most in the decreasing order.
Compare your list with the one by your fellow student.
Read the beginning of the essays on different musical trends and
match them with the trend they refer to: Classical, Country,
Electronica, Folk, Hip Hop/Rap, Pop, Rhythm and Blues.
For the full texts of the essays visit the Art and Culture magazine
(Music section) at http://www.artandculture.com
It is at this stage that students do the activities aimed at vocabulary
development, which also create the basis for song interpretation at the
next forming stages. Below follow some examples of activities of this
type.
Match the words in Column A with their definitions in Column B.
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
g.
h.
i.
j.
k.
l.
Accompaniment
Song cycle
Motif/motive
Ballad
Bridge
Air
Oldie
Bubblegum
A cappella
Solo
Cut
Hook
m. Lip-sync (vb)
1. Simple tune, melody or song.

2. Vocal or instrumental part that
compliments melody.
3. A group of related songs unified by theme
or lyric.
4. Immediately memorable and appealing
musical catch phrase.
5. Individual song on an album;(vb) to record
a song.
6. A short melodic pattern or musical idea
that runs throughout a piece.
7. Segment of pop song that connects verses
and chorus.
8. A song that tells a story; In popular music,
usually a love song in a slow tempo.
9. Pop song from early ears.
10.
(Slang) light, trendy, innocuous pop
music.
11.
Singing without instrumental
backing.
12.
Single instrumental lead played over
rhythm section usually in absence of

vocals.
13.
To mouth lyrics in sync with
recording during performance.
Music is an extremely powerful art. It may evoke a strong

emotional response. Listen to the song (choose any song you
like ) and determine the mood the song evokes as well as the
feelings it arouses. Useful vocabulary: quiet, peaceful, active,
buoyant, calm, restful, happy, dreamy, mysterious, self-pitying,
intimate, sad, somber, festive, joyful, etc.)
Music gives rise to our imagination and feelings. Bring to class
several instrumental pieces of different genres of your
preference. Play them and compare the associations caused by
them among your fellow students. You may use the following
phrases:
o It reminds me of ...
o It depicts the picture of ...
o While listening I can easily imagine ...
You may often hear somebody saying I like the voice of this
singer." Describe the voices of the singers you know, using the
words given below.
o Deep, gentle, soft, fresh, clear, lyrical, expressive, nasal,
guttural, hollow, resonant, gruff, harsh, raucous, husky,
mellow, metallic properly/not properly placed.
It is possible to define the rhythm of a song in different words.
Study the list of adjectives below and use them in the sentences
of your own while speaking about the songs you prefer to listen
to.
o Assured, distinct, crisp, regular, irregular, dense, scattered,
impatient, regular dance, abrupt, jaunty.
o Models:
The song attracts me by its regular and assured
rhythm.
I like the regular dance rhythm of this song, etc.
Bring in class several songs you like and describe their vocal part
with the help of the useful vocabulary given below.
o Useful vocabulary: to sing lead; to be on lead; to do lead;
to sing backup; to be on backup; to do backup; to do
backup vocals; to sing harmony.
Fill in the grid with the phrases that follow.
Manner of singing
and playing
Stage
presentation
Establishing rapport with

the audience.
Introduce a fresh style of melody, of harmony, of rhythm; retain

originality; have an outburst of new sounds; present an
entertaining stage act; satisfy audience tastes; tend to be
detached while singing; meet the tastes of the audience; put
emphasis on vocal expression; shift emphasis from drums to
bass; establish contact with the audience; be backed by drums;
achieve variety of sounds; supply accompaniment; borrow old
tunes; use familiar verses in new contexts; present an unusual
interplay between vocal and guitar; echo one another; sing with
high-pitched whoops.
The second stage is aimed at formation of speaking skills while

interpreting and discussing the songs under consideration, with the 7step sequence being used. (See the model above.)
As an example, let us consider the tasks fulfilled while working with
the song "Yesterday."
Pre-listening questions: Who is on lead vocal and what instruments
accompany him?
Post-listening questions:
What mood do the melody and lyrics evoke?

What is it about the song that makes it sound like it comes from
another time?
What instruments contribute to this effect?
Can you describe the person speaking?
What kind of love is depicted in the song?
Is the love story told emotionally or with a tinge of detachment?
How can you describe McCartney's manner of singing?
Listen to the song again. How would you describe the interaction
between the singer's voice and instruments in the song?
The song "Yesterday" is the most covered rock 'n' roll song of all
time. More than 2.500 artisits (Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles
among them) covered it. Listen to the recorded version of the

song "Yesterday" by Ray Charles. What differences in the
manner of singing and in the song over all can you point out?
Which singer is more dramatic?
Choose a song you like most of all. Design your own activities for
the 7-step sequence (see above). Bring the song in class and
encourage your fellow students to interpret and discuss its lyrics,
musical part and the artistic image created in the song.
The aim of the third stage of the presented model is to further

develop speaking skills on the topic 'Music" and to prepare students for
using songs in the EFL classroom. At this stage students are involved
in less teacher controlled activities, such as: discussions, simulations
and role-plays. The examples of the questions for discussion as well as
simulations might serve the following:
Is it difficult to be an attentive and appreciative listener?
What should a person need to know?
Why do young people gravitate towards new rhythms?
Should a teacher know and understand pop music in order to be
able to discuss it with the pupils; helping them to differentiate
between original and well-written music from second-rated ones
of newly formed groups?
The task "Support or challenge the following statements" also serves
the purpose of preparing students for discussion about the modern
perspectives of development in music:
Nowadays, young people prefer only that kind of music to which
they can dance or just talk to friends. It should be simple,
cheerful and up-to-date.
The pop music rhythms may be new and vigorous, but they lack
variety: it's the same monotonous beat again and again. The
tunes are mostly primitive and as easily forgotten as picked up.
Todays pop music is at a crossroads. New and interesting
composers and soloists have appeared. Established styles have
been replaced by new ones. Some groups are trying to achieve
alloys of different styles.
The concluding lesson on the topic may go in the form of a panel talk
where students present their points of view on trends in modern
music, supporting their presentation by musical pieces related to the
discussion.
Since the ability of using the songs and music in class is an important
constituent of the would-be teachers preparation, the third phase
should also include training, so that prospective teachers of English

could have the knowledge and skill to do the following:
Be able to select interesting texts on the topic music.

Be able to analyze the didactic potential of a particular song.
Know how to teach a song to the pupils.
Critically evaluate songs with the purpose of including them in
class activities.
To develop the skills mentioned above, it is possible to encourage the

students to fulfill the following tasks:
Study the song lyrics by your favorite group. Select those ones
you believe would be effective for language teaching while
discussing the topics Friendship, Parents and Children, Love
in Song lyrics and Poetry.
Collect interesting stories about music and musicians. Explain
why these texts may be effective tools for language instruction;
work out pre-reading and post-reading activities.
Select five pieces of music that belong to different musical
genres; etc.
Listen to the song and think of the questions you could ask your
pupils to help them understand the song.
Give a two-minute introductory talk on the importance of being a
careful listener.
Conclusion
Concluding, I would like to mention that the system of activities
presented above has the character of a training model, which may be
creatively extrapolated to different musical genres - be that jazz,
classic music, country music or any other.
References
Eken, D. K. 1996 Ideas for using pop songs in the English

language classroom. In English Teaching Forum, 34, 1, 46-47.
Graham, C. 1993 Grammar chants: More Jazz Chants. OUP
Graham, C 1994 Mother Goose Jazz Chants. OUP
Jedynak, M. 2000 Using Music in the Classroom. In English
Teaching Forum, 38, 4, pp.30-32
Murphy, T. 1992 Music and Song. Oxford University Press.
Saricoban, A. & Metin, E. (October 2000). Songs, Verse and
Games for Teaching Grammar, The Internet TESL Journal, Vol.
VI, No. 10, October 2000
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Saricoban-Songs.html
The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. IX, No. 3, March 2003

http://iteslj.org/
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Orlova-Songs.html
Some Techniques for Teaching

Pronunciation
David F. Dalton
ddalton [at] academ01.chs.itesm.mx
Chiapas, Mexico
Background
When I did my initial training as an E.F.L. teacher, one of the course
tutors always described pronunciation as "the Cinderella of language
teaching", i.e. she never got to go to the ball. By this he was referring
to the often low level of emphasis placed on this very important
language skill. We are comfortable teaching reading, writing , listening
and to a degree, general oral skills, but when it comes to
pronunciation we often lack the basic knowledge of articulatory
phonetics (not difficult to aquire) to offer our students anything more
than rudimentary (and often unhelpful) advice such as, "it sounds like
this ; uuuh".
There is also a tendency for us to focus on production as the main
problem affecting our learners. Most research however, shows clearly
that the problem is more likely to be reception - what you don't hear,
you can't say. Moreover, if the "English" sound is not clearly received,
the brain of the learner converts it into the closest sound in their own
language . Thus the dental English fricative / th / (sorry, phonetic
symbols can't easily be displayed) in "those" ,becomes converted by
Spanish speakers into the denatlised Spanish /d/ , producing "dose" as
this is what the speaker hears. Given this reality , it would seem
logical to place a heavy emphasis on listening (reception) as a way
into releasing appropriate pronunciation (production).
Apart from using knowledge of our students and our ears in order to
be aware of their pronunciation problems, it is also useful to have
some prior knowledge of what elements of English phonetics and
phonology are likely to cause problems. This is one area of language
learning where few people would question the use of contrastive
analysis. For instance, to give some simple examples, we can predict
that Arabic speakers will have difficulty distinguishing between / p /
and / b / , Japanese speakers will not perceive the difference
between / l / and / r / and Spanish speakers will hava a problem
realising consonant clusters like [ sts ]. Having informed him or herself
of some of the main areas of contrast between native language and
target language and what difficulties students have, it then remains for
the teacher to build this information into some meaningful classroom
exercises.
Techniques :
Exercise should be simple, accessible , fun and combine reception and
production. Some students (usually adults) do feel embarassed to pull
ridiculuous faces when practising vowel sounds (this may be personal
or cultural or both) but I have generally found that this soon passes
and students enjoy the pronunciation work. Where possible, exercises
should be communicative in that they should (and do generate
differences of opinion and disagreement about what was said/heard.
Below are two examples.
Exercise A :
After having taught or exposed the students to long and short vowels
through listening and oral work, the teacher can check recognition,
retention and ability to discriminate in the following way. This could

also be used simply for teaching.
Stage 1 :
The teacher writes a variety of words containing the target sounds
(long and short vowels) on the board. The following is just one
possible set.
PORT PIT PAT
0
1
2
3
PERT PET POT PUTT

4
5
6
7
8
PUT
9
PART
PEAT
Here, the only difference in sound is that of the vowel - familiar to

anyone who has done minimal pair work. As in these examples, the
word should begin and end with the same consonant. 0, 3, 8, and 9,
are long vowels and the rest are short.
Stage 2 :
The teacher then models each word and individal repetition follows.
The vowel sound can be isolated and the procedure repeated until the
teacher is reasonably sure that there are no major problems. He or
she then tells the students that they are going to hear one of the
words and must write the number which corresponds to the word they
hear. What the students have written is then checked and compared.
This automatically leads into a discussion of what they heard and what
sounds they are confusing. If student X heard1 when the teacher said
9, they are confusing the short vowel / I / with the long vowel / i: / .
The teacher gives feedback and the sounds may then be modelled
again and practised.
Stage 3:
Two or three words are then presented together and the procedure
repeated. The teacher then tells the class they are going to hear six
words and that the numbers correspond to an important telephone
number. The teacher delivers the words and asks , "What's my
number?". Again there will be differences in what was heard. This
allows a focus on which sounds are not being discriminated effectively
by which students and where their problems lie. Later discussion may
revolve aroud what strategies students may employ to improve their
discrimination skills - songs, minimal pair games with friends, movies,
radio, etc.
Stage 4:
Learners are then invited to model the telephone number. This stage
usually generates much discussion and disagreement along the lines of
- "You said ...... ", "No I did'nt ", "Say it again" and so on and is
usually very lively. The teacher is, of course, the final arbiter of what
was really said. The important thing is that the learners are thinking
actively about their pronunciation and how to repair it if necessary.
They also begin to hear themselves (often for the first time) and this is
of immeasurable importance in the retention of sounds.
Exercise B:
This exercise was designed for a multi-lingual class, but is equally
effective with monolingual groups. It is more communictive in nature
than Excercise A as it involves giving and carrying out instructions.
Stage 1:
Having identified some problem areas for the class, the teacher makes
a list of instructions containing these. Below is such a list.
1. Draw a sheep on the board. (Spanish speakers often draw a
ship).
2. Write the letter "P" above the sheep. (Arabic speakers often
write " B").
3. Use the "P" as the start of the word "pleasant" and write the
word (Japanese speakers often write "present ").
4. Write "light" next to pleasant. (Japanese speakers often write
"right").
5. Draw a mouse next to the word "light". (Spanish and Japenese
speakers often draw a mouth)
6. Draw a pear next to the mouse. (Arabic speakers often draw a
bear)
Other examples can be added.
Stage 2:
After presentation and practice of the problem areas, each student is
given a piece of paper with an instruction containing such sounds. The
papers are given so that a student will hear an instruction containing a
sound which they have a problem hearing. The instruction is then
whispered in the ear of the receiving student and they carry out what
they hear. They sit down and read their instruction to the next student.
This continues until all the instructions have been carried out and there
is something resembling a picture on the board. No comments should
be made as the work is in process.
Stage 3: Feedback
There will be reactions from laughter to dismay as the students see
how ther instructions were carried out. The teacher needs to focus the
students on what went wrong. Was the problem production or
reception? What did Miko say and what did Joel hear? The dilema
pushes the students to correct themselves and hear what they are
saying. The discussions are often very animated and again the teacher
must abitrate. The learners also see the real-life consequences of not
producing or not hearing appropriate English sounds as well as getting
personal and class feedback on their problem areas. As in exercise A,
discussion can take place on strategies for pronunciation.
Some Conclusions
1. The exercise allows clear practice in production and reception
and gives concise feedback to individual learners as to where
their problms lie in these areas and how to repair them. Often
these are very simple physical questions such as not roundig the
lips as in / u: / in fool , which the teacher can help them focus
on.
2. This, in turn, allows discussion on learning strategies for
pronunciation which can be drawn up it the classroom.
3. It is a communicative exercise as it involves disagreement,
repair and ( hopefully !) agreement among other things.
4. Many language learners feel self concious and negative about
their pronunciation . To effectively deal with this question in the
class and enable learners to see an improvement, is invariably a
great psychological boost.
5. I have used these activities with learners from many different
cultural and language backgrounds and they have invariably
been seen as both very useful and fun.
6. As teachers, we are often not the best judges of the accuracy of
our students' pronunciation . We are accustomed to it and
usually very tolerant when in general, native speakers are not.
Such exercises help us to be more aware of real problems
learners have in their oral production and to help to correct
them.
7. Such activities should be an integral part of any language
teaching programme as they make pronunciation an active
element of the learning process and focus learners on the
language they are producing.
Thanks to Ray Parker of Sheffield Hallam University; England for the
gelephone Game. Some useful and very accessible constrastive
analysis can be seen in the " Ship or Sheep" and "Three or Tree"
series.
The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. III, No. 1, January 1997
http://www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/
A Genre Approach to Oral

Presentations
Fiona Webster
webster [at] lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp
http://lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~webster/
Nagoya University (Nagoya, Japan)
Introduction
Standing in front of a group and presenting a talk can be a daunting
task for even the most confident of us, and even more so for language
learners. What is the best way to approach oral presentations with
Japanese university students? When sifting through my class's needs
analysis results, it became obvious that many of my students may
eventually be called on to give oral presentations. The target contexts
include international research forums, conferences and post-graduate
study abroad in English-medium institutions.
Theoretical Framework
In an article by King on students at a Taiwanese University there
appear to be several similar features. In particularly, "oral
presentations are a face-threatening activity" (p1), and "speech
anxiety and limited presentation skills are the major problems that
lead to learners' oral presentation failures" (King:2). Certainly having
learners share their worries and concerns before tackling their oral
presentations has proved a useful step, as has eliciting from the
learners prior experience of presenting to a group.
When we use language, we employ particular genre, which are like
pre-determined linguistic formulae for achieving an outcome.
Therefore, learners need to be equipped with these formulae in order
to communicate effectively, in this case in the context of an oral

presentation. Taking the cue from Halliday's genre approach, analyzing
generic staging of various texts (in this case the oral presentation
genre) is an essential step in the so-called teaching-learning cycle
(Hammond et al:17), consisting of four stages:
Stage 1: Building knowledge of the field (learners discuss field,

tenor and mode features of oral presentations)
Stage 2: Modelling of the text (teacher gives model oral
presentation to class), learners then analyse staging
Stage 3: Joint construction of the text (learners work together
on developing their talks)
Stage 4: Independent construction of the text (learners give
their presentation to the class)
Whilst not following this cycle to the letter, it certainly underpins most
classroom activities I do with learners, and an understanding of Stage
2 (Modelling of the Text) is absolutely imperative.
Procedure
Rather than devoting an entire semester to this genre, I instead
include several steps throughout the semester to gradually develop
skills for oral presentations, as a component of our negotiated
syllabus. Following is an outline of the process and product of the oral
presentations component of the Advanced English communication
classes. I am indebted to my former workplace colleagues at the
University of Western Sydney's language centre (SWIC) for the overall
idea for the assessment grid and procedure for preparing students for
oral presentations.
Fluency Practice
During the semester, learners are given three minutes, then two
minutes, then one minute to speak on any topic of their choosing. The
learners are instructed to focus on fluency rather than grammatical
accuracy. This requires overt explanation, as learners are generally not
familiar with the differences between these two skills. After the initial
three minutes with a partner, the pairs are rearranged and learners
asked to speak about the same topic in two minutes, then with a new
partner in one minute. The feedback from this preparatory activity is
immediately positive ? all feel they really need and enjoy the
opportunity to speak uninterrupted for a set period of time.
Class Handout
The next focus is the staging of a typical oral presentation. This is
achieved by giving learners a copy of the actual assessment handout
(Appendix A) to be used for final grades. The length of the
presentation depends on the level of the learners. The space to the
right of the table is left blank on purpose for learners to jot down
useful words and phrases to use in their talks, in line with the various
stages in the oral presentation genre. This section of the procedure
needs quite a deal of explanation and elicitation, so we spend most of
one lesson going over the assessment sheet. Below are comments
pertaining to each section as presented on the handout.
Field, Tenor and Mode

Field (area of vocabulary to be used), tenor (register) and mode (oral
versus written language) of oral presentations are identified. Some or
all of the following activities can be done in class.
Learners are asked to share experiences of prior oral
presentations, how they felt, what they talked about and so on.
This can be done as pair work, or if numbers permit as a general
group discussion.
Attention needs to be drawn to the differences between spoken
and written language, and mention made of the habit some
students have of pulling chunks of text from the internet or from
booksc. How interesting is that for the audience? More
advanced learners can have a mini-lesson on nominalization ?
the fact that written text contains sentences with very long and
complex nominal phrases acting as the subject, whereas spoken
text does not. Learners are presented with a short task to
convert a sentence such as the one below into a more "written"
type of sentence:
Prime Minister Koizumi ANNOUNCED today that there will be a
new tax on company waste. He HOPES it will encourage larger
corporations to play a more responsible role in reducing waste
products in this country.
The verbs announced and hopes are capitalized in order to show
their position in the sentence, near the front, as is common with
spoken text. Learners are then asked to use passives and also to
make a larger noun phrase as subject of the sentence, and to
finally combine the sentences into one. Their results should be
something like this (with a little teacher help.):
In order to encourage larger corporations to play a more
responsible role in reducing waste products in this country, a
new tax on company waste was today ANNOUNCED by Prime

Minister Koizumi.
In order to illustrate how most spoken text is rather
ungrammatical, learners can transcribe a simple transcription of
someone speaking on the radio (or yourself if all else fails).
Laborious, but worth it for making a point.
The remainder of the "language" and "physical features" sections of

the handout can then be discussed, with examples and explanations
where necessary.
Learners should be made aware of the various features of

pronunciation. By allowing learners to focus on smaller, more
manageable segments of language, they feel there is more room
for improvement rather than focusing on sound articulation
alone, as is often their experience.
Learners can also share their ideas about some memorable
speeches ? because they were good or because they were bad!
This often ties in with the "physical features" section of the
handout.
Modelling of the Text

The teacher can then present a model talk to the class. After asking
the learners for gist and main ideas, the staging of the presentation is
analyzed using the handout (see "genre" section).
Each stage is discussed in pairs or as a whole group, and
appropriate words and phrases written on the board.
Lower level learners are given sample phrases to match each
stage, for example:
o State topic clearly--The topic of my presentation today
is ...
o Enumerate or signal each point-- Furthermore, in addition,
in contrast
Joint Construction
In pairs learners can work on their oral presentations and peer

check each other's outlines. I generally suggest learners choose
a topic from their area of research, and they have to email me
their proposed topics so I can check whether there is enough
"meat" in them.
Learners are discouraged from giving a narrative or report style

presentation, but rather developing a talk with a few issues ?
points for and against.
The teacher can also be a participant in the joint construction
stage, giving help and advice with edits and drafts where
required.
Individual Construction
Presentations are given during class, timed, and points lost if too
short or too long, so learners know to practice several times at
home (in front of the mirror ideally).
During the presentations, each student is asked to write a few
comments on paper, and these are given to the speaker once
their presentation is finished. Students seem to appreciate this
peer feedback and read their comments voraciously.
I also complete assessment sheets for each speaker and hand
them all back to the class once everyone has presented.
Conclusion
By analyzing oral presentations from a genre perspective, learners can
grasp the basic scaffolding of this particular text type, and tailor it to
their particular context. The activities mentioned in this discussion may
of course be developed and expanded further, especially in the area of
presentation tools, such as PowerPoint, overheads, or handouts. Those
students aiming at longer talks should also practice question elicitation
techniques for discussion time, and strategies to have questions
rephrased should they not understand them.
With the experience of at least one oral presentation in English,
learners can forge ahead in their English studies with more confidence,
and the skills and strategies required to develop other similar
presentations. In this era of increasing internationalization,
opportunities for students to study or work abroad are growing
steadily, and being able to speak to a group with confidence and ease
is an essential skill.
Appendix A
7-min. speeches: results and comments
NAME:
TOPIC:
Genre (10 Points)
Introduction
RESULT: /25
State topic clearly

Outline talk
Define any difficult vocabulary
Body
Enumerate or signal each point

Reiterate your topic
Give examples and/or anecdotes
Give statistical information if relevant
Conclusion
Restate your topic
Summarise your talk
Give suggestions for future, recommendations for more research

Language (9 Points)
Grammatical accuracy
Vocabulary
Fluency
Appropriate spoken language (ie: not written language)
Pronunciation (rhythm, intonation, word stress, sentence stress,

linking, sound articulation)
Physical Features (6 Points)
Eye contact
Audience interaction
Gestures
Notes
Stance
Bibliography
Hammond J., Burns A., Joyce H., Brosnan D. & Gerot L. English
for social purposes. NCELTR: Australia.
King J. (2002) March. Preparing EFL Learners for Oral
Presentations. The Internet TESL Journal, VIII:3
http://iteslj.org/Lessons/King-Public Speaking.html
The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. VIII, No. 7, July 2002
http://iteslj.org/
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Webster-OralPresentations.html
Making Jigsaw Activities Using

Newspaper Articles
David Dycus
Department of the Study of Contemporary Society
Aichi Shukutoku University
9 Katahira, Nagakute
Nagakute-ho, Aichi-gun
Aichi-ken, Japan 480-11
(Infrequently Used) E-mail Address: dcdycus [at] asunews2.aasa.ac.jp
Introduction
Newspaper articles have long been a staple item in both reading and
conversation classes because they are generally short, predictable in
style, timely in content, and easy to find and use. However, the
traditional method of having students read silently, answer comprehy,
answer comprehension questions, and then discuss an article can
become boring to both students and teachers. An alternative to this
traditional approach is turning articles into jigsaw activities, in which

any one student only has a portion of the information needed to
complete a task.
The advantage of jigsaw activities is that students must depend on
each other for their information, so they must interact to accomplish a
given task. The technique described below for making jigsaw activities
from newspaper articles structures activities so that students read the
text, hear the text, master new vocabulary, paraphrase, and
interact at all stages of the activity (not at just the discussion stage,
as in the traditional approach). In my experience, pre-intermediate to
advanced students have almost all preferred using jigsaw newspaper
articles to the traditional approach. The general procedure described
below can be used with other types of texts as well as with newspaper
articles. The description below is for a discussion class, but I have also
used it with introductory sections of chapters in books as a warm-up
activity for long texts. (For an informative discussion of the making
and using of jigsaw activities, see the chapter devoted to it in C.
Kesslers (1992) Cooperative Language Learning: A Teacher's
Resource Book, published by Prentice Hall Regents).
Preparation
(Materials: a newspaper article, scissors, paste/glue/tape, prepared
handouts with enough space to paste on sections of the article (see
Fig. 1), and a complete copy of the article)
Select a newspaper article to suit your teaching purpose and student
level. Decide how many sections into which you will divide all or part of
it. (I recommend three, and no more than 4 sections, or the second
group activity (see Procedure below) becomes time consuming.) If
possible, enlarge it on a photocopying machine to make it easier for
students to read and for you to cut and paste. Generally you will want
to omit the first paragraph of an average article because it contains all
the key information. Also omit any other sections which give away too
much information. The goal is to select sections that 1) have just
enough information to arouse the students interest in the rest of the
story, 2) contain some information that overlaps with other sections
but also 3) contain important information not found in other sections.
Dividing the article up according to these criteria presents information
in a way that forces students to develop and share hypotheses and to
depend on others for information. Thus, the task of reading becomes
an interactive problem-solving activity.
Next, prepare a handout sheet with instructions for doing the activity
(see Figure 1). The sheet should have enough blank space for the
section of the article to be attached. Label each sheet differently as a
way of making sure students in the first group activity (see Procedure
below) have the same handout. I recommend using colors (e.g. blue,
red and green) as labels instead of numbers or letters. When numbers
(1, 2 and 3) or letters (A, B and C) are used, students often assume
that they indicate the order in which the sections appear in the original
article. Using colors avoids this problem. Try to keep the handout as
general as possible so you can use it for a variety of articles, and keep
master copies, sans article, for future use.
Procedure
(Total Time: 35-60 minutes, depending on student level and the
difficulty of the article)
First Group Activity (Time: 10-20 minutes)
1. Divide the class into 3 or four groups, depending on how many
sections you have selected from the newspaper article. (More than four
sections usually takes too much time.) Give the same section of the
article to each member of a particular group.
2. Have the students read the instructions carefully, noting the rules.
Stress that for them to benefit most from the activity, they should go
through their section of the article together until they are all satisfied
that they understand it and can explain it to others. Insisting that they
practice paraphrasing it lets them (and you) check their understanding
of the section. Also, make sure they can explain all the vocabulary .
3. As a group, have the students write out two questions they would
like to ask others to gain a better understanding of the entire article.
Some groups may be slower at this than others. If time is short, be
ready to either accept only one question or to suggest a few.
Warning: In their questions students often refer to things like this
problem or the man which have context only in reference to their
section of text. Other students will not understand what they are
referring to. You may need to correct vague questions and have them
clarify what the pronouns refer to in their questions.
Combined Group Activity (Time: 15-25 minutes)

1. When you feel the students are ready, have them form new groups
with at least one member of each of the other groups. (For example,
combine a member from the red, blue and green groups. Depending
on class size, you may need to have more than three students to a
group, and may have two members of the same first group (e.g. two
blues ) together.) Warn them not to show their papers to the
members of the new group. Explain that they are expected to
negotiate everything orally.
2. Have the students take turns reading, paraphrasing, explaining, and
answering questions about their sections, as well as asking the
questions they wrote down in their previous groups.
Encourage them to stop each other, ask questions, and do whatever is
needed to come to a conclusion about what the entire article is about,
and to discuss any interpretations and hypotheses that come to mind.
3. When the students feel they understand the article as well as they
can, have them write down a brief description of what the article is
about. This neednt (and shouldnt) take too much time. If you are
running out of time, you may want to skip it.
Full Class Discussion and Wrap-up

(Time: 10-15 minutes)
1. With students remaining in the combined discussion group, ask
someone from each group to explain what they think the article is
about and any other important points or questions that came up as
they tried to piece the article back together again. Sometimes groups
will have very different ideas about certain points, and this can be
exploited for discussion purposes (or to point out where
comprehension broke down).
2. Distribute copies of the complete article. You may want to read it
aloud.
3. At this point you can have a full class discussion of the article.
Hopefully, the one you choose will lend itself to spinoff discussions of
related topics.
Conclusion
While I have had a few students who did not care for this technique,
the general response to it from both lower-level and higher-level
students has been overwhelmingly positive. Students say they
appreciate the time spent negotiating the text because it helps prepare
them better to discuss it, and because it is more interesting than just
reading and discussing articles. As a teacher, I like using such articles
because students generally enjoy them, and because they are easy to
prepare once the initial handouts are made.
Some final advice. Dont give up if things go a little rough the first time
you try this technique. As with anything new, students may not
understand at first what they are doing and why they are doing it. In
the end, most enjoy it. Good luck!
Figure 1.
Sample handout page.
Blue Group
PART 1: Single Group Reading and Discussion

Part of a newspaper article is presented below. You must understand
it completely because later you will share the information with people
in other groups. You should
1) read it through and discuss it, being sure you understand the
content and all vocabulary, 2) practice paraphrasing it and, 3) write
out two questions you want to ask members of the other groups to get
a fuller understanding of the entire article.
(Attach a section of the newspaper article here)
Questions: What would you like to know from other groups to help you
understand this article better? As a group, think of two questions to
ask the others.
1. _____________________________________
2. _____________________________________
Part 2: Combined Group Discussion

Leave your original group and form a new group with a member
from each of the other groups. You should 1) read your section to
them once or twice so they can hear the original, 2) answer any
questions they have and explain any vocabulary they dont know and,
3) paraphrase your section so they can check their understanding.
Continue like this until everybody has shared their information. Finally,
as a group, decide what you think the whole article is about and write
your ideas down below. Remember, DONT SHOW YOUR SECTION
TO YOUR NEW PARTNERS!
We think this article
_____________________________________
_____________________________________
_____________________________________
The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. II, No. 2, February 1996
http://iteslj.org/
Teaching Integrated Writing

Skills
Dr. Cecilia B-Ikeguchi
ww4s-ikgc [at] asahi-net.or.jp
http://www.kasei.ac.jp/staff/cecilia/index.html
Tokyo Kasei Gakuin: Tsukuba Women's University (Japan)
This article was published in the International Journal for Teachers of
Writing Skills. (January, 1997)
This paper presents a technique in the Advance Writing Class that has
been proven successful in teaching the skills of summarizing, outlining,
expressing opinion through the medium of writing. In integrating
Writing Lessons with reading, speaking and of course listening,
students are able to produce dynamic writing output.
A Brief Theoretical Background and the Background of

the Students
This paper rests on the assumption that there is a staged development
of language acquisition, and that ESL learners go through different
stages of development towards the target language. More specifically
this implies that students learn different grammatical structures at
different levels of development in each of the four skills of listening,
speaking, reading and writing. At each stage, some grammatical
structures build on other structures and can not be acquired before
other structure. With focus on Writing skills, this paper reports on a
successful and effective teaching and learning technique used with
Japanese university students in the Advance Writing Classes.
Japanese students come from a mono-language environment, where
Japanese is the predominant language at home and in the community,
notwithstanding the school. English education in Japan is spelled out in
such a way that students start to learn the language formally in Junior
High School where heavy emphasis is placed on translations and

grammar studies in preparation for University Entrance Examination.
This being the case, university students are placed into three levels:
the Beginning, Intermediate and Advance in their Writing classes.
Japanese students in the advance level usually are a good mixture of
those who have at least a year of overseas study and those who have
not. Based on the Developmental Language Acquisition Theory
mentioned above, learners at this stage, with influences from L1
Writing, are now said to be able to write in paragraph forms, with a
paragraph being defined as a coherent presentation of a number of
utterance tied together by an overall message or intent. What
distinguishes a paragraph from a set of sentences is primarily textual
cohesion which refers to elements that refer forward and backward
among across sentence boundaries that tie sentences together. By this
time, Japanese university students are able to narrate, describe, and
manipulate sentence structures to a certain extent that they express
what they really are eager to communicate. Consequently, they are
also able to use correctly discourse connectors, subordination and
coordination. After having mastered the structural elements and style
of paragraph writing, they can and should tbe allowed to write longer
forms of writing.
The Teaching of Writing, Integrated with Other Skills

The most common problem that confronts teachers of a Writing Class
does not lie so much on what to ask students to write about; the
difficulty is more on how to motivate the students to write interesting
and effective materials. Writing for writing sake is a drag, and
produces boring output. The lesson plan presented here, by combining
the teaching of writing with other skills, allows students freedom to
express themselves meaningfully.
The first phase of the lesson begins one week before with the giving of
the ASSIGNMENT. I read (or write on the board, or make copies of) a
list of as many topics which I think to be of interest to the group. I
allow the students to choose any one topic that they are most
interested in, and something that they would like to know more about.
Then I tell them to look for a short (the shortest is one paragraph, the
longest is one page) magazine or newspaper article, read thoroughly
until they understood the content, and make a copy to bring to class.
No writing is done yet; students are required only to completely
comprehend the text they had chosen.
The second phase of the lesson is the INTERACTIVE PHASE which

begins on the day of the next class. Students who had chosen the
same topic are called to sit together and form a group. The are then
told to take turns in reading- or reporting- each of their articles to the
group members, while everybody else listens and then ask questions
to clarify points that are unclear, or make comments . I allow as much
time as the students are willing to talk, or half of the whole class time.
At this point, I make sure that students within the same group
recognize common or diverse aspects relating to the same topic. For
instance, on the topic on Environmental Problems, they would have
chosen articles on: Deforestration, Garbage Problems, Noise Pollution,
etc.
The third phase of the lesson is the WRITING stage. I ask the students
to get back to their seats and write about two things: (1) the topic
they had chosen to read and bring to class, and (2) the other related
aspects of the same topic that they found out from the group
interaction. I usually am surprised to find out that they write endlessly
and use up until the last minute of the lesson time.
The length of the written material required will depend on the skills to
be tested, the purpose of the lesson, and on the readiness of the class.
The shortest can be a one-paragraph writing of either a summary or
reaction to the articles they chose. The students are required to hand
in the finished material at the close of the period.
For a lesson on teaching skills on summarizing, I usually ask student
to find 3-5 sentences indicating the main points in the article, and rewrite these in their own 3-5 sentences.
For a lesson and at the same time an exercise on outlining, I ask them
to identify 2-3 main ideas in the article- or as many as they can find,
re-write these main ideas in their own words. At the same time they
are told to include a sentence supporting each of these main ideas.
For a lesson on expressing personal opinions / beliefs, students are
told to identify, again, 2-3 main ideas (or as many as they think there
are) and give their personal reaction to each of these ideas.
At the end of the term, or the school year, I require them to do a
summative writing which tests the application of some or all these
skills in a set of paragraphs forming a coherent set of ideas to form an
essay or a full composition. The final product would be an essay, for
example, which consists of: the 1st paragraph as a summary, the 2nd
paragraph as the outline (with main ideas and supporting ideas

indicated), the third paragraph containing their personal reaction to
the article, and so on.
The only hang-up with this technique is that it entails a lot of work on
the teacher. To be able to check students skill in summarizing or
outlining, the teacher has to read every student's article, thereby
increasing work twice as much.
Teaching the set of skills of summarizing, outlining, reacting to a
posted article using writing as a medium helps Japanese college
students organized ideas while allowing them to express these ideas in
complete sentences. They are trained to put ideas logically and
organize thought patterns and makes writing more interesting for both
themselves and the teacher. This technique allows the students to
write freely, and gives them a feeling that they have an investment on
the topic to be able to produce really dynamic writing expected at their
level.
The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. III, No. 3, March 1997
http://iteslj.org/
Approaching Writing Skills

through Fairy Tales
Silvia Bruti
brutis [at] italway.it
University of Pisa, Italy
Why Fairy Tales?

When I was asked to choose a topic for a seminar for second year
students of English I thought of a way of combining linguistics with the
teaching of writing skills. At that stage my ideas were still unclear and
all I knew was that I had to select a text type which could be analysed
and discussed at first and then serve as a model.
The aim of the whole second year course is to understand that
language is a communicative instrument that can be adapted to
different interactional and transactional situations. Consequently,
learning something about the nature of the language as a semiotic
system involves conscious reflection and understanding, but it is
through reflection and the development of more specific knowledge
about the language that the skills and competence to use it more
proficiently can be generated (McCarthy & Carter 1990). This is of
course a long-term aim, but our immediate, short-term goal was to
develop the students' sensitivity to textual appropriateness and
communicative efficiency. Communication takes on so many different
forms, each of which has its own distinctive qualities, which depend on
the people with whom we talk and on the different purposes for which
we talk.
Susan George, professor of English language and linguistics and
responsible for the second year, proposed I took up fairy tales thanks
to her own positive experience both in Pisa and in Camerino. I was
enthusiastic at the idea, although still looking for a connection between
them and linguistics.
On the one hand fairy tales are a well established, typical text, with
distinctive thematic and formal features (Pisanty 1993: 27; Lavinio
1993: 15-21). However, despite their tipicality, fairy tales allow more
scope for creativity than other text-types, and, what is even more
important, they can touch a place deep within our subconscious. They
are much more than just stories: they are teachings that have been
handed down from generation to generation, from which people learn
about both the dark and bright sides of life. And I nursed the hope that
they would delight us, stimulate our imagination and call up memories
from our own childhood.
Which Fairy Tales?

I had to pick a model which would be our reference text, something we
could analyse, dissect, tear into pieces and still love as something
which has and will stay with us forever. So I opened my book of
memory and... out came Little Red Riding Hood.
I chose it because it is a tale that is heard around the world. Perhaps it
is the prototypical fairy tale everyone has in mind.
When I began to collect some material for the seminar I was scarcely
aware of the number of different versions that spread out after the
first medieval legends. I was of course acquainted with both Perrault's
tale and the version by the Grimm Brothers, but I had no idea
whatsoever that the basic plot elements of LRRH can also be found in
tales from Japan, China and Korea.
Jack Zipes (1982) has collected many versions of the tale, from the
first literary versions to the present-day politically correct adaptations.
He has also commented on the history of LRRH's textual development
through centuries, by comparing texts with their illustrations. He has
shown that their referential systems are strongly interlinked and in
fact, in most cases, signs which belong to two different codes reinforce
each other to the point that images become signifiers of the signified
text. I have heavily relied on Zipes's anthology, first of all because it
provided me with a reference model of a viable teaching path.
Secondarily, it was from this collection that I selected the traditional
versions by Perrault and the Grimms, Anneliese Meinert's Little Red
Cap '65, Anne Sexton's poem Red Riding Hood, Rodari's Little Green
Riding Hood. I also included Angela Carter's two tales about LRRH, The
Company of Wolves and The Werewolves. But apart from the debt I
owe to Zipes, I drew most of my material from the Web. It was surfing
here and there that I came across many interesting, exciting sites
devoted to fairy tales. Some of them display research projects that are
going on at different universities around the world: "Little Red Riding
Hood"(http://www.southwestern.edu/lewisv/fairytale/redridinghood.ht
ml) and "Little Red Riding Hood Project"(http://wwwdept.usm.edu/~engdept/lrrh/lrrhhome.htm). Both of them are about
LRRH, but whereas the former collects the traditional versions by
Perrault and the Grimms and two medieval Italian versions (The False
Grandmother and The Wolf and the Three Girls), the latter gathers
many texts and adaptations, as well as comments, references to
important criticism and a selection of other major links in the Internet.
This generous, free corpus of resources provided me with some other
interesting texts, such as Roald Dahl's poem Little Red Riding Hood
And The Wolf, the politically correct version of LRRH (from Politically
Correct Bedtime Stories by James Finn Garner), and an Italian oral
version entitled The False Grandmother (with a parallel English/Italian
version).
Despite significant differences in language and tone, all the versions
share some dominant themes. This may explain why LRRH is so
widespread around the world: it is about many basic human themes,
such as initiation to independence, family ties, obedience or
disobedience to parents, female pubescence, sexuality and/or rape,
social order versus nature, female or male heroism, death and
rejuvenation, gluttony and even cannibalism. On identifying such
themes one might ask a question: are fairy tales like this for children
or for adults? Some associations in the U.S. have found some of the
classical fairy tales too overtly sexual or even subversive and have
therefore proposed blacklisting them. As Fromm (1957) and
Bettelheim (1976) have pointed out, erotic material has been present
in folk and fairy tales from the very beginning. The Grimm brothers
themselves consciously adapted the tales they had collected to make
them more innocent and less erotic than the popular versions. They
also restored a happy ending to LRRH, which both the folktales and
Perrault's version do not have.
In any case, Little Red Riding Hood lives on, because it can talk to
anybody, especially on account of the fact that fairy tales may be read
at many different levels, and so it opens many stimulating topics to
discussion.
During the seminar I also distributed copies of other popular tales by
Perrault, the Grimms and Andersen. I wanted my students to have a
small corpus of fairy tales to read and analyse for themselves, where
they could go and check the appropriateness of their own creations.
Despite the differences in style, these texts are all traditional, literary
tales. So, since I did not want to prevent the students from writing
modern stories, at the risk of infringing the limits of the genre (which
sometimes happened), I also gave them examples of modern
narrative. They were some of the stories written by Roald Dahl, which
display different strategies and technique devised to appeal to a
present day audience.
Which Approach?
As I have briefly touched upon above, my aim was to find a method of
text criticism that could bear some systematic relation to the
development of linguistic and, more in particular, writing skills in
students, and which might also be re-applied whenever analysing a
text, be it spoken, written, literary or non literary.
In spite of what is rather commonly stated, I think that the study of a
language and its functioning mechanisms (linguistics), and literary
texts (in this case fairy tales, as a literary genre) are not mutually
inimical, but can and should rather supplement each other as integral
stages in the development of both language and textual awareness. So
the employment of a linguistic framework in the reading of fairy tales
was meant to produce an inventory of the recursive linguistic forms
available in that type of text but also to isolate the relevant features of
the genre, such as the situation, i.e. the writer-audience relationship,
the informative structure, the level of formality, the ratio between
narrative and dialogic text chunks, etc. Yet, this type of categorisation
usually runs the risk of oversimplifying texts in order to make them fit
into some preordained framework. So I did not start by giving any
theoretical framework to my students. On the contrary, we tried to
elaborate regularities from the texts we read together, and eventually
interpret deviations as instances in which the author had broken the
rule for creative purposes. The reasons were the following:
1. I did not want to impose a fixed model which could later on curb
the students' creativity and inventiveness;
2. text-internal features are not important in themselves but in
relation to other contextual parameters such as the audience and
the aim of the genre (cf. the notion of genres as processes in
Benison 1998);
3. genres are themselves dynamic objects that vary according to
the needs of social systems. Therefore new genres arise and
others take on different features over time. So it would be more
precise to conceive genres as points along a continuum, with
some of them so near to one another that it becomes difficult to
identify which is which.
The selection of one text type only was constrained by the fact that I
wanted my students to develop a good awareness of at least one
textual world. Therefore, exposure to many different text types would
have probably resulted in less competence, less sensitivity, or would
have required more time. The main criteria for choosing fairy-tales
were usefulness and the feasibility of application, for my students are

students of languages and literature, and are expected to produce
well-written texts and critical essays. Through my choice, I hoped to
contribute to their general curriculum, so that they might re-use what
they learned in other courses, especially in written exams (e.g. the
critical/literary essay in third/fourth year exams). Our workshop was
meant to analyse, anatomise texts to discover their inner mechanism,
and to understand which elements one has to employ to achieve
certain communicative functions. Apart from the immediate goal of
increasing proficiency in the written language, the pedagogical value of
the second year project was to "sensitize students to rhetorical effects,
and to the rhetorical structures that tend to recur in genre-specific
texts" (Swales 1990: 213). Once they had developed such an
interpretative model, they could easily transfer it to other fields.
During the seminar students wrote both narratives and commentaries,
which varied from critical evaluations to linguistic analyses of texts. In
this way their competence in both these contrasting genres was
regularly exercised.
Which Narrative Features?

Fairy tales belong to the wider category of the narrative genre, which
has been extensively analysed from many different viewpoints (Eco
1979; Marchese 1983; Pugliatti 1985; Labov 1972; Levorato 1988).
Yet, they distinguish themselves especially for the relationship between
writer and audience. In fairy tales communication is asymmetrical,
consisting in an adult author or teller who tells his tale to an audience
or readership made up of one or more children. The aim of the genre,
of sub-genre, is to teach by delighting the child, which often, if not
always, implies transporting him into the world of the tale. Therefore
the author arranges his reader's textual journey before it actually
starts.
Like any other kind of narrative and also like any form of formal
organisation, fairy tales are able to exploit the features of the medium
they use. In particular, all verbal narratives exploit the characteristics
of language by way of encoding narrative form in linguistic form. One
of the clearest cases of encoding of narrative form in linguistic form is
the use of initial/final fixed phrases. Traditional folk tales, which belong
to the oral tradition, count on some outstanding characteristics, that is
to say all the possibilities of speech, such as prosodic phonology,
intonation, the use of pauses, rhythm, the different qualities of voice,
as well as on paralinguistic codes, among which gestures, mimicry, eye
contact and so on. Written narratives cannot exploit all the devices of
oral story telling, but have developed an independent tradition of

narrating with its own techniques. This is one of the first aspect one
must be aware of when dealing with narratives, and for this reason we
started by comparing the strategies of oral and written tale-telling
(Lavinio 1990, 1993).
As for the content, it was essential to grasp the basic nucleus of the
plot, which corresponds to the macro-structure (van Dijk 1977). The
macro structure of a narrative constitutes its line of development from
the beginning to the end and does not depend on the way in which
events are narrated, but must be reconstructed after reading the text.
Macro-structures and story-lines (a subtype of the more general
category of macro-structures) are often elaborated a priori by the
author, who has the whole narrative in mind before writing, and a
posteriori by the addressee, who on the contrary processes
information during the act of reading and retains only the most basic
pieces. The act of narration does not necessarily follow a strict
chronological order: quite the contrary, authors strategically exploit
the dimension of time and often call their readers to co-operate in the
construction of meaning.
The basic characteristic of a story-line is that it usually involves some
initial difficulty and a final resolution. Each narrative consists of a
number of episodes and sub-episodes that make up the story line.
Labov (1972) identified various components of the story line, among
which the complication and the resolution. He also distinguished other
stages: the abstract, which announces the topic of the story; the
orientation, which introduces the setting of the narrative; and the
coda, which is placed at the end and can therefore perform different
functions. It can in fact comment on the events and provide the
audience with a moral lesson, or signal that the narrative has come to
an end and it is time to move back to reality. Clearly, not all stories
have all these ingredients, but complication and resolution are
essential. Resolution in particular, despite its variable significance in
different stories, always brings forth a new state of affairs where order
has been re-established, "by the righting of the [initial] wrong" (Fabb
1997:165). In LRRH complication corresponds to the meeting with the
wolf and resolution to the killing of the wolf in the Grimms' version and
to the moral teaching in Perrault's one, which is not a proper
resolution, since the girl dies and the moral may only warn other
children. The identification of the main stages is an important help
when students begin to write their own stories. In this way they can
rely on a schematic framework and move from simple to more
complicated narratives.
When we analysed LRRH we agreed on a macro-structural plot, made

up of the main stages in the narrative, and then checked if this plot
could be successfully applied to the adaptations and re-writings. In
many cases the texts did not follow the same stages, so we just ticked
those which were present, but for other texts we had to add extra
stages, especially to be able to consider fundamental details. It should
also be remembered that stages can overlap and/or some categories
may have blurred margins and extend over the whole narrative. This is
the case of evaluation, in which the narrator often comments on the
resolution and expresses his view on the significance of the story
(Fabb 1998: 167). This does not necessarily occur through a moral
since, as Labov (1972) and others have noticed, narrators more
frequently intersperse evaluative comments throughout their
narratives with varying degrees of explicitness.
Which Linguistic Features?

Turning now back to the linguistic features, it is worth bearing in mind
that any narrative piece is conceived to be communicated to an
audience, who must be able to follow it and understand its meaning.
The linguistic form of a narrative depends partly on the genre and
partly on the audience for whom it is written.
In the telling of a tale, linguistic form communicates a part of the
information and may provide evidence for it. Our reading of fairy tales
was mainly aimed to identify the most recursive, outstanding features
of the genre and the most frequent ways of encoding and grading
information in linguistic form (Taylor Torsello 1997). The procedure of
scanning texts for significant patterns is text oriented and its major
purpose is to help students to get at their own interpretation of
phenomena without offering them theoretical models and
metalinguistic terminology beforehand. Once they had identified and
understood the textual aspects on which we had concentrated, it was
easier for them to learn a metalanguage for text description. My
students indeed discovered things for themselves and thanks to their
active role were able to re-apply the same devices when creating their
own texts.
As I have already pointed out, one of the clearest cases of encoding of
narrative meaning in some fixed phrases is the opening and closing
formula "once upon a time" and "lived happily ever after". These
expressions indicate the threshold between reality and the narrative
world and vice versa. So they both belong to the narrative agreement
which each writer establishes with his audience (Eco 1979; Pugliatti
1985). With this pact the reader engages himself to "suspend his
disbelief" and not to question the possible oddities he will find (e.g.
talking animals, spells). This feature is also reinforced by the constant
use of third person narration, "not [to] arouse any doubt in the
receiver's mind about the real nature of the supernatural events that
he is presented with" (Pisanty 1995: 132).
Along with these ritual formulas, fairy tales make extensive use of
repetitions of both expressions and events (stereotypical numbers,
binary or ternary rhythm; see Pisanty 1993: 31 ff.; Lavinio 1990:
144). This cohesive device is not only helpful in making the text easier
for the audience to understand, but is most of all a trace which oral
tradition has left in the literary tale. All these recursive mechanisms
were essential to the storyteller as long as they gave him time to
think, recollect ideas or even invent brand new episodes. In the
meantime, they eased the task of the hearers by refreshing their
memory and giving them some basis for future predictions. The ability
of a storyteller consisted in weaving together episodes which were
typecast so that the final outcome was not particularly original for its
narrative material, but for the way in which such material was
organized. Redundant structures are still one of the main features of
written fairy tales and perform a function that is practically identical to
the one of oral narratives: they allow the addressees to get a tight grip
on the narrative world and impose on them a minimal co-operative
effort. They also contribute to the processing of information, for they
reproduce shared information that may serve as a common basis on
which unshared information hinges. As Taylor Torsello demonstrates
(1997: 138), fairy tale writers usually organize information within texts
so that "structure [...] perfectly reflects the actual knowledge set". In
other words, writers write their stories starting from children's
knowledge sets and not from their own.
Some other formal features include the absence of detailed
descriptions. Both people and objects are rather sketchily outlined,
usually through a single attribute, to achieve semantic clarity and
uniqueness and avoid psychological complications (Luthi 1947; Lavinio
1994). This feature has again been inherited from the oral folk tale
where action prevailed over description. The result is that in fairy tales
characters may undergo moral development, but they do not change
physically, nor do they grow old. Both the temporal and spatial
dimensions are either obliterated or exaggerated: sometimes the tale
world is not identified and events take place in an undetermined
nowhere at an unspecified time. Other times the author provides the
narrative with some spatial or temporal information, which is
nonetheless indeterminate: it may be the case of hyperbolic distances

("he walked for hundreds of miles") and extended time (e.g. a
hundred-year slumber). There is nonetheless no gap between story
and plot (Propp 1966), because oral narratives followed an ideal linear
axis of development. Writing (and modern literature in general) can
rely on a physical space, the page, which can be visualized, and can
therefore make use of temporal deviations. Finally, as I have briefly
hinted at above, the presence of the narrator is hidden under the mask
of third person narration, but his voice is frequently heard as he
breaks in and comments on what is happening in the hope of
influencing his readers' response. The conative function (Jakobson
1966) was much more developed in the oral folk tale because the
telling of the tale was a collective action in which the storyteller led the
narration and his audience actively contributed by posing questions,
suggesting changes, and making comments (Zipes 1979).
Another interesting feature is connected to the use of different tenses.
As Weinrich (1964) clearly points out, verbal tenses function as indices
that guide addresses and help them to discover basic information such
as linguistic attitude, perspective and focus. Tenses may be either
"commentative" or "narrative": in the first case a commentative
attitude is associated to a deep involvement of the speaker, and
consequently of his addressees, in the world he describes. In English
the present perfect is an example of commentative verb. Narrative
verbs (e.g. the English past tense) convey a more detached attitude.
Perspective is concerned with the temporal sequence in the narrative,
so tenses are classified into two categories, the retrospective, which
point to the past, and the perspective, which point to the future. Focus
is instead the dimension that regulates the perceptual evidence of
information through verbs. There are in fact verbs that describe
background actions (cf. Italian imperfetto) and verbs that outline more
salient events. In English the choice is more limited, because there is
no tense corresponding to Italian imperfetto, French imparfait, or
German Pr_teritum, so the expression of salience is entrusted to other
means. After all the defectiveness of the English verbal paradigm turns
out to be positive, for the massive use of past tense in fairy tales
(apart from a few occurrences of "commentative" verbs, when the
author crops up) makes the students' task very much easier.
As for the content, it must be observed that it is not often
extraordinary in itself: ordinary objects coexist with supernatural ones.
When everyday objects are inserted in a fantastic world they lose their
real nature to fit the dynamics of the narrative. To use Eco's
terminology (1979), they are "narcotized" in that they lose any social
or psychological value to become instrumental in smoothing the

proceeding of the action. So content is rarely fairy-tale like in itself,
but it becomes so when it is framed within the fairy tale architecture.
Audience and Reception

The audience usually does not object to the presence of supernatural
elements or phenomena, but accept them readily because they
recognize them as typical traits of that genre. As Levorato (1988)
claims, people have a schematic knowledge about narratives that
enables them to decide what is a narrative text and what is not. This
mental model is abstract and predictive, and concerns the ways in
which sequences of actions and events are narrated. It is thanks to
this that readers make predictions on the type of information they will
find. This schematic pattern is rather narrow in children, but becomes
more flexible and widens to include less prototypical members of the
same narrative category for more sophisticated readers.
Reception is very important for narrative sub-genres and distinguishes
fairy tales from other narrative types such as myth, science fiction and
so on. Todorov (1977) locates fantastic tales between the two
categories of "l'trange" and "le merveilleux". When the reader notices
something odd in the narrative world he has two options: either he
finds a convincing explanation, or he has to postulate new laws which
may justify them. In the first case "le fantastique" dissolves into
"l'_trange" (cf. the case of thrillers), whereas in the seconds it turns
into "le merveilleux". As often happens with classifications, the
categories are not enough to cover all the possible texts: Todorov
added some borderline sub-genres, such as "le fantastiquemerveilleux" where a tale that begins as a fantastic story ends up with
a supernatural explanation. When on the contrary the supernatural
elements are not questioned, either by the characters or by the
readers, the genre is "le merveilleux pur", which encompasses many
different narrative types, among which fairy tales. Despite the results
of the application of this taxonomy, which might be disappointing, this
classifying task is useful because it familiarises students with genres,
so that "they learn to make distinctions, think about subtle categories,
and apply abstract thinking in imaginative and concrete ways" (Zipes
1995: 17)
Concluding Remarks
The task of establishing what distinguishes one sub-genre from
another is indeed difficult and I myself experienced it when I read my
students' fairy tales before their examination. Some of them are

clearly meant to be traditional fairy tales and even share some plot
elements with traditional ones. Some others also belong to the genre,
but they indulge in the characterisation of both people and places, and
are therefore more suitable to an older audience or readership.
Students were justified in adding complexity to their plots because
even some literary tales indulge in detailed descriptions and impart
moral lessons to readers. Besides, a certain tendency towards deeper
psychological characterization can easily be detected in modern tales
(e.g. Calvino's tales). Some of the stories hardly fit the paradigm of
fairy tales at all and cross the frontier into the domain of short stories.
I had in fact warned my students that I would accept any story
provided they were ready to defend their choices. They had the same
freedom in the writing of their commentaries. During the seminar they
had done different types of analyses, ranging from linguistic
descriptions to more general comments about content and genre. For
their final paper they had full freedom and were allowed to choose how
to organise their comments. Some of them concentrated on the
linguistic aspects, some on the plot, while others tried to reconcile
both aspects and showed how they wanted to communicate meaning
through specific constructions.
The final results were very pleasing: the fairy-tales were all rich in
inventiveness, imagination and more or less overt messages to the
audience. The students demonstrated to be capable of mastering the
genre and their competence in the written language was quite good although they varied from individual to individual-. Linguistic
knowledge was however sufficient to communicate well, whereas
deficiencies mostly occurred in the handling of the narrative material
(especially in managing information and in sequencing episodes). On
the whole it can be said that students not only have learned how to
reduce a text to its macro-structure, but are now also familiar with the
most typical linguistic and rhetorical strategies of the genre they have
concentrated on. The parallel structure of text-analysis and production
was essential to stimulate a better pragmatic awareness in the
students. At the end of the year, I was glad to verify that it had been
possible to account for the specific rhetorical functions and speech acts
that characterize different text-types by closely analyzing texts. This
investigation allows to identify the parameters which guide textual
organization and the recurrent features of different genres. All these
patterns are not only factors of increased "readability" in that they
make both reading and comprehension easier, but become cardinal in
the act of text production.
References
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Benison, J., 1998, "Analisi e produzione di testi scritti in inglese:
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Pavesi and G. Bernini (eds.), L'apprendimento linguistco
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Biber, D., 1988, Variation across Speech and Writing, Cambridge,
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The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. V, No. 11, November 1999
http://iteslj.org/
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Bruti-FairyTales.html
Portfolios and Process Writing:

A Practical Approach
Simon Rea
simon.rea [at] lang.uni-linz.ac.at
Institute for Business Languages, University of Linz, (Linz, Austria)
Introduction
A simple search of the Internet using the key words "language
portfolios" and "portfolio assessment" shows how popular these
concepts are in educational circles: the former produced about
150,000 mostly European-based hits and the latter about 250,000
mostly US-based hits. Many of these articles naturally link portfolios
with personal skills like reflection. Many practitioners (see for example
Santos' 1997 about Japanese students) would agree about the links
but bemoan the lack of training and opportunity their students have
had to develop such skills. The author's own teaching experiences in
Japan, New Zealand, Central Europe and the UK also suggests that
such problems are not to limited to Asian teaching situations. For some
this means that they consider a portfolio approach to be unworkable in
their teaching situation. They find a gap between what they believe
could be a helpful pedagogical approach and what their students
actually do. This article aims to bridge that gap by showing how the
positive benefits of portfolios and reflection can be integrated into a
process writing course without causing a critical overload on the
instructors' time resources. This will be done by describing their place
in a university-level process writing course called Text Production (TP).
Course Background
The TP course consists of 21 contact hours which are divided into 14
blocks of 1 1/2 hours and is taught on a weekly basis. The final
teaching block comprises the interviews. The students are generally in
the third semesters of their studies and there can be up to 30 students
in each class. As part of the course requirements the students are
expected to produce a typewritten report of about eight A4 pages
(excluding bibliography and notes). The final grade is based on this
dossier, homework grades, participation in class work, a writing journal
and a portfolio which the students themselves select and discuss with
the instructor in a final interview discussion.
In common with many ESL writing courses (see for example

Flowerdew 1993 or Kay and Dudley-Evans 1998), students are
familiarised with insights of the genre approach and given practice in
producing different academic (Swales 1990) and professional genres
(Bhatia 1993). In common with much process writing instruction, the
course also emphasises methods which help the students to become
aware of writing as a process (see for example White and Arndt 1991,
Raimes 1992). In the TP course, these include practice in and direct
teaching about generating and planning techniques such as
brainstorming and concept mapping. Students are also given an article
(Rea 2000) and short content-based inputs about writing as a process.
These theoretical inputs are linked to the tape of a think-aloud protocol
of a short text being written which the students listen to and then talk
about.
Text reformulation (Cohen 1983, Allwright et al 1988) is used to
encourage students to look at their own writing critically. In a first
stage, the students work on set texts, including introductions and
conclusions of dossiers from previous years, which are read, corrected
for surface level errors and then rewritten. They do this first as
individuals and then discuss the results as a whole group. Following
this, the students read and rewrite different sections of each other's
texts, using the insights they have gained from the class discussions.
After that they go on to re-formulate their own work based on the
insights of their colleagues (and the instructors) rather than just
correct it for grammar and spelling mistakes. Reformulation obviously
helps students to become aware of external readers and this is
reinforced with video and text-based input (Littlewood 1994).
Journal writing and fastwrites are also integral parts of the course. In
both activities the students can prepare for the final interview without
being aware that they are doing so because both activities can by their
very nature be very reflective. There are two compulsory fastwrites.
Both take seven minutes and are on the topic "How I write ...". One is
written in the first meeting and the other in the final professional
writing workshop. These very often show the development of the
students' writing skills. Some students use fastwrites in their writing
journals too.
The writing journal is a kind of "personal diary" (cf Raimes 1992)
where the students can write about their experiences and feelings
about writing in general and this course in particular. Students are told
that it has two main purposes, namely to make students feel at ease
writing in English and to give them the chance to express themselves.
For these reasons, it does not have the relatively tight structure
recommended for example by Nunan (1988) who suggests a number
of questions which students should answer about their learning. This is
because the diary aims to help the students overcome "writing
anxiety", as well as to help them focus on their learning processes. It
does this by modelling the type of writing students can do in the way
the activity is introduced and in the fast writes. They are expected to
spend about five to ten minutes a day (or 30-60 minutes a week) on
this writing. The journal can be written by hand or with the computer.
It is evaluated for quantity rather than quality. Because of the personal
nature of some of the comments, the instructor only looks at the
journal if the students request this or add it to their portfolios.
Portfolios
What then are the portfolios and how do they fit in? The answer is that
they provide a framework for the whole course. In the schedule they
get at the start, students are told that they will prepare a portfolio of
their best work during the semester which they will discuss with the
instructor in a personal interview at the end of the semester. It should
document their progress (as measured by their subjective feelings and
the amount of effort they have put into the course); their achievement
(as measured by the "objective" grades they have been given during
the semester); and any other information they believe is relevant. In
this way the course begins and ends with a portfolio focus.
The portfolio consists of six pieces of written work including a written
self-evaluation, the eight-page research dossier and three pieces of
work of the students' own choice. The written self-evaluations tend to
be in the form of memos or letters to the instructor. It is, however, up
to the individual student to chose which genre suits him or her best.
Some students even choose to write a mini-case study with a SWOT
analysis, explaining their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and
threats in writing. Appendix 3 shows two typical self-evaluations.
Together the portfolio and the interview account for 50% of the final
grade.
The three pieces of work of their own choice may be taken from any of
the work they have done during the semester. They may be work they
have done in-class or as homework. They may be from any part of the
course and include the introduction and/or conclusion with their
reformulation versions or even their writing diary or any two of the
fast-writes. It is completely up to them.
Teacher's Viewpoint
The portfolio discussion interviews tend to follow a similar framework:
starting with a focus on the students' view of the process of writing,
then moving on to their choice of work and/or specific course features
and finishing with their self assessment. The order is not always the
same but all three elements tend to be present, as the idea is to allow
the students to talk quiet freely and bring in their own views on what
and how they have learned during the course. This is similar in effect
to the "interlocutor frames" given for examinations such as the
Cambridge Advanced English (see http://www.cambridge-efl.org for
more details). Such a framework makes it easier to judge students'
oral abilities, as the content variable is not given to the same extent as
in subject-based oral examinations or presentations. As far as grading
is concerned, the students' spoken performance in this relatively
content-controlled environment can easily be benchmarked against
internationally-recognised marking scales such as those from the
Council of Europe (http://culture.coe.fr/lang/eng/eedu2.4j.htm) or the
Association of Language Testers in Europe (http://www.alte.org),
which is also used in examinations like the CAE.
The process questions focus on how they chose the pieces of work for
their portfolio. More mature students tend to start with the
developmental aspect as they have generally chosen texts with both
good and poor grades while less reflective students will tend to put all
the good grades together and focus only on the product aspect. With
the former group of students it is relatively easy to have a good
discussion and fruitful and honest reflection. The latter group
sometimes needs to be reminded of the in-class discussions about
learning before this can take place. This can also be done by asking
them directly about their choice and getting them to reflect on what
makes each piece of work good. Moving on to the "most useful
activities from your (=the student's) point of view " can also help to
move the discussion from a product to a process perspective. When
this has happened it is much easier for the students to focus on
reflection than negotiation and trying to play the system.
Using portfolios in this way has both strengths and weaknesses. On
the negative side is of course the amount of time needed with between
15 minutes per student and a short break between each one. This can
lead to a certain "portfolio fatigue" on the instructor's part, generally
after the first six or seven interviews. In turn this may lead to the
instructor dominating the discussion and not allowing the students to
express themselves in their own way.
For some students any such interview situation can be stressful and
this may affect their performance. As noted above, some students
make use of the interview as an opportunity for "plea bargaining"
about their grades while others may try to be sycophantic in the hope
that this will improve their grades. However, such problems are
common to almost all internal viva voce examinations.
On the other hand, the strengths of this approach include the real
"quality time" given to each student as an individual. This is in a
situation where they must talk and they have "nowhere to hide".
Additionally, it means that students have to reflect on learning as a
process and can help them to see their own strengths.
These discussions are also very useful for the instructors as it is
possible to get a more detailed "consumer feedback" on the course
than is otherwise possible. They can learn about student effort and
difficulties which can lead to better preparation and more effective
materials.
Conclusion
This article has presented a way to integrate portfolio approach into a
process writing course. Portfolios by their very nature require reflection
on the part of those who are putting them together, be they students
(Santos 1997) or teachers (Bastidas 1997). While many students in
Austria have not been trained to reflect on their learning, process
writing techniques, especially activities like reformulation and journal
writing can encourage them to do so. The value of reflection in
learning processes has long been recognised in management education
(eg. Argyris and Schn 1978). The portfolio-based personal interview
between students and instructors can lead to the start of consciously
self-analytical deutero-learning cycle which can then be applied in
other situations as well. When this happens, the text production has
done more than just help students with their English.
References
Argyris, C. and Schn, D A. 1996. Organisational Learning: A

Theory of Action Perspective. Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley
Allwright, R.L., Woodley, M.., and Allwright, J.M. 1988.
"Investigating Reformulation as a practical strategy for the
teaching of academic writing." Applied Linguistics 9/3: 236-256.
Bastidas, J. A. 1996. The teaching portfolio: A tool to become a
reflective teacher." English Teaching Forum. July/October: 24-28.
Bhatia, V.K. 1993. Analysing Genre: Language use in

professional settings. London: Longman.
Cohen, A.D. 1983. "Reformulating compositions." TESOL
Newsletter 17/6: 15.
Daley and Hailey 1984. "
Flowerdew, J. 1993. "An educational or process appraoch to the
teaching of professional genres." ELT Journal 47/4: 305-316.
Kay, H.L. and Dudley-Evans, T. 1998. "Genre: What teachers
think." ELT Journal 52/4: 308-314.
Littlewood, W. 1994. "Reading and writing as a joint journey
through ideas." Video of Paper given at Reading and Writing
Research International Conference Southeast Asian Ministers' of
Education Organisation Regional Language Centre Singapore.
Nunan, D. 1988. The Learner-centred Curriculum. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Raimes, A. 1992. Exploring through Writing: A Process Approach
to ESL Composition 2nd ed. New York: St. Martins Press
Rea, S. W. J. 1999. "Picture this: Three pictures in search of a
process." English Language Teaching News (British Council /
TEA).
Santos, M. 1997. "Portfolio Assessment and the role of learner
reflection." English Teaching Forum. April: 10-14.
Swales, J.M. 1990. Genre Analysis - English in Academic and
Research Settings. Cambridge: CUP.
Appendix I
This sheet is handed out and discussed during the first course
meeting.
COURSE PORTFOLIO
As part of the course you will be expected to produce a portfolio of
your work during the semester. You will discuss it with the instructor in
an interview of about 10 minutes on ________________
The aim of the portfolio is to give you a chance to show the progress
you have made during the semester. The aims of the portfolio and the
interview are to show your progress during the semester.
The portfolio will consist of 5 pieces of written work. These will include:
1. A written self-evaluation
2. Your dossier (final version)
3. 3 pieces of work.
You will also have to show the instructor your writing journal during
the interview. The writing journal will not be read by the instructor
unless you want it to be!
Written self-evaluation
The written self-evaluation should be in the form of a memo or letter
to the instructor. It should cover your own view of your progress (as
measured by your subjective feelings and the amount of effort you
have out into the course), your achievement (as measured by the
"objective" grades you have been given during the semester) and any
other information you believe is relevant. You may even decide to do it
the form of a SWOT analysis, explaining your strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities and threats as far as the course is concerned. It should
be handed in on ________________
3 pieces of work.
The 3 pieces of work of your own choice may be taken from any of the
work you have done during the semester. They may be work you have
done in-class or as homework. They may be from the professional
writing part or from the academic writing part. You may also include
the introduction and/or conclusion with their reformulations in this part
or even the generating activities. You could also include your writing
diary or other fast-writes if you prefer. Another alternative is to include
2 of your fast writes (=1 piece of work) to show how your writing
and / or your opinions about writing have changed. The choice is
completely up to you but it would be helpful to choose a broad
selection of your work.
Appendix II
These are some of the most common and useful questions for the final
interview.
1 Process focus questions
What did you think about the (process of putting portfolio

together)? / Could I have a look at the documents?
Do you think it's a good idea for the teacher to ask the students
to put together the best pieces of work?
What part of the course did you find useful?
What did you learn? (why?) / What changes do you think you
made (in the way you write)?
2 Product focus questions
Which piece of work is most characteristic? (Why?)

Which piece of work best shows their progress? (Why? / How?)
What about (free writes) (writing journal)?
Self evaluation
What grade do you think you should get ? remember it's 50% of
the grade
The last thing I asked you to do was to reflect. Do you think it's
a good idea for the teacher to ask the students to put together
their best pieces of work?
Appendix III
Self-evaluation 1
Dear Mr. Rea,
As you can imagine, it is difficult to formulate a self-evaluation. Mostly,
the result of such a work can be seen as a compromise between
modesty and overestimation of the own abilities. However, I am
convinced that I have improved my English writing abilities during this
course. Although my writing style is far from being perfect, the writing
of the diary has given me a lot of practice.
Besides, I appreciated this course because I have learned how to
manage writing a report. Now, I know that the research of
information, the organisation and other things like quotations and
references are as important as the writing itself It is astonishing but
the basic knowledge acquired in this course helped me to organise the
composition of my French final examination.
Despite all the progress I have made I am aware of some weaknesses
as the grade of my report shows. The final grade will probably be the
worst of all my English courses. However, I am not disappointed
because this course has been the hardest and most difficult of all
English courses till now.
Yours sincerely,
Self-evaluation 2
Dear Sir,
First of all, I want to thank you for your helpful instructions in text
production.
I remember you entering the classroom and asking us what we
associate with the word "text production" and what we are expecting
from the course. To be frank, I was not sure if I would be told
something new in this course, but I was wrong. You drew our attention
to producing texts and emphasised that writing is a process. I now
know how to read a letter effectively and what the important parts of a
report or a text are. Before the course I thought the body is the most
relevant part in a letter, not knowing that a clear and precise
introduction and an informative conclusion make a text to a good one.
Also the repeated emphasis on the structure and the links and to other
methods, such as KISS (keep it short and simple) or the six questions
(where and when and who and what and why and how) will influence
my further written works.
Not only the works in class, but also the tasks we had to do at home I
found very interesting and helpful. I liked very much to produce the
writing journal and I really noticed a change in my writing style
comparing the first and the last page.
The next thing we were told to do was a dossier. At the very first
moment I thought this would be the chance to write about something I
was interested in because the topic was up to us. Unfortunately, I
decided to write about "Jeeps", inspired by the last Jeep Jamboree in
Carinthia. I soon found out that this topic could not fulfil the
requirements because I had not very much useful information. So I
changed the topic just two weeks before we were asked to hand our
dossier in. It was not much time left and so the final dossier was not
the report I liked it to be.
In general, I have noticed that my strength is not the written, but the
oral English. I hope I can prove on Monday that I speak English well!
I am looking forward to our meeting on Monday,
Yours sincerely
The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. VII, No. 6, June 2001
http://teslj.org/
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Rea-Portfolios.html
Integrating Writing with

Reading
Yang Shuying
Dalian Naval Academy (Dalian, China)
ysy [at] mail.dlptt.ln.cn
Introduction
Reading and writing have been considered two different language skills
that should be studied separately. As a result, many college students
in China find it hard to put their thoughts into English. The process
genre approach can be successfully applied to integrate writing into
the reading class. In this approach, besides linguistic knowledge, the
writing genre, the schematic structure, and the writing skills of the inclass reading materials are also stressed. The writing skills are in turn
utilized in guided writing, from outline writing, drafting, to revising.
The purpose of such a teaching process is to achieve multilevel
understanding of the reading materials and a sound basis for the
writing of different genres.
Procedure
To demand students' active participation, a lesson using the process
genre approach can be divided into the following phases:
understanding specific information, in-class collective writing and
after-class writing practice.
Understanding of the Reading Materials
Preview Requirements:
o Master the main linguistic knowledge or the language
points.
Catch the main idea, find the topic sentence of each

paragraph.
o Try to determine the genre of the article.
Understanding Specific Information:
o Objectives:
understanding the main idea, mastering the main
language points
o Activities:
Ask several students to tell the main ideas of the
text, or give a brief summary
Ask questions and answers about the specific
information to make sure the students understand
details of the text
Explain the language points. As is required for
preview, students should have mastered the
language points before coming to class. So the
teacher's job is just to check to see if they have. The
way to check is to ask students to the blackboard to
do paraphrasing and or to give explanations and
examples.
As the students carry on with the language points,
the teacher should pay close attention and be able to
make necessary adjustment and supplement.
Analysis of Writing Skills:
o Objectives:
Understand the typical features and the writing
scheme of the genre of the text.
o Principle:
Using a heuristic teaching style, the teacher gives
out some clues for the students to think about and
infer from. Then the teacher gives final confirmation.
o Activities:
Analyze the genre of the article. Ask the students to
think about the purpose of writing according to the
main ideas they have derived. Decide the genre of
the text.
Analyze the writing skill and the schematic structure
of the text. Through discussion, students should be
able to decide the functions of each paragraph, and
the specific diction to support the main ideas.
o
In-class Collective Writing
Objectives:
Utilize the specific writing skills and the schematic

structure just derived.
Principle:
o Instead of being the information provider, the teacher
should just be the organizer of classroom activities, the
person who writes on the blackboard.
Activities:
Group discussion of the topic of the writing the
teacher provided.
Collective writing. Using the output of discussion, the
class will write a paragraph collectively. Each group
provides a sentence, following the writing scheme
very closely.
Comment on the total output. The teacher will make
comments on sentence coherence, semantic
conformity, the specific writing process, and make
necessary adjustments. Reasons must be given as to
why the change is necessary.
o
After-class Writing Practice

Students should write an article using the writing skills and the specific
diction achieved. The teacher must read every piece of writing very
carefully; select the best ones and the ones with typical errors to use
as examples for further comments.
Example
The following is an example of writing analysis of the writing of
refutation, and a paragraph of writing finished in class.
The schematic structure of a piece of refutation writing.
o The first paragraph: Present the ideas/opinions to be
refuted
o The second paragraph: Show the disagreement
o The third paragraph: Refute the first wrong idea
Writing skills:
1. present the idea again
2. show disagreement/ I think he is wrong
3. use illustrations to support one's own idea
o The fourth paragraph. Refute the second wrong idea
Writing skill:
1. present the idea
2. show disagreement/ I have news for him
3. use illustrations
o The fifth paragraph: Conclusion
In class collective writing of refutation. (in brackets are the

reasons for the original sentence, the reasons for the correction
and other comments). The topic is It is not necessary to work
hard once we enter college.
Paragraph One
Some people say that college should be a time for relaxing and fun.
[present the wrong idea] But in my opinion, college is a time for
studying [Show one's own attitude]. In the future, we will work in the
society. If we don't have enough knowledge and ability, we will lag
behind [illustration 1]. Our lives are limited, but study is unlimited.
The fact that we entered college does not mean we have mastered all
knowledge [illustration 2]. So we must study hard. We must read,
write, think and do a lot of things to get (us) ready for our future lives.
[conclusion]
Paragraph Two
Some people say [Somebody says, later 'them' is used, therefore, the
subject should be plural] the time at college is to relax and have fun
[Present the opposite idea]. I disagree with them [Show one's own
attitude]. First, I think we must face the society. If we want to get a
good job, we must study hard [Illustration 1]. Second, we must define
our goals. We must cherish our time, spend the time on studying, and
not waste time to make girlfriends or boyfriends. And we also have to
face examinations [illustration 2]. Third, the study in college is crucial
to building a positive attitude towards life [illustration 3]. If we (you
the person used should be relevant) relax and have fun, we(you ibid)'ll
have no motivation and our future will not bright.
The Requirements of the Teacher

1. The Ability to Organize Communicative Activities
The genre process approach is a quite demanding approach, in which a
two-way communicational learning environment is critical. The teacher
must use heuristic teaching style. Only through deductive teaching can
students acquire the ability to evaluate and analyze the reading
material as well as the ability to read for general information.
2. Very Sound Basic Linguistic Skills

Besides the linguistic knowledge, grammar rules, and cultural
background information generally required for teachers of other
approaches, teachers must also master the schematic structure of the
relevant genre of the text, and be competent to use the relevant

writing skills.
3. An Ability to Deal with the Unexpected in Class

This quality is essential to perform in-class collective reading, since it
is quite unpredictable. Even though the main idea of the passage is
unchanged, different class will come up with different paragraphs. The
teacher must be able to adjust unsuitable linguistic phenomenon,
observe coherence and conformity in writing, stimulate creative and
logic thinking, and grasp the students attention in class.
References
White, R and V. Arndt. 1991. Process Writing Harlow: London

Badger, R and White, G 2000, A Process Genre Approach to
Teaching Writing, ELT Journal, 54/2 153160Oxford University
Press
James Muncie, 2000, Using Written Teacher Feedback in EFL
Composition Classes, ELT Journal, 54/1, 4753, Oxford
University Press
Andrew Littlejohn Language Teaching for the Millennium,
English Teaching Professional, 2001.3
Paul Garca Teacher Training : Reshaping the Future of
Language Teaching, American Language Review, 2000.2
The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. VIII, No. 1, January 2002
http://iteslj.org/
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Yang-Writing.html

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| Main Page | The Language Teacher | JALT Journal | Other

Publications | JALT National |

The Language Teacher

This article will assert that in speaking classes students must

and answers. These can be practiced in Repetition drills. The

At first the teacher points to the words "the station" on the

effectiveness of the techniques in the long run and the

This is a meaning-focused speaking activity because both the

English language newspaper to present to the class. The

labels that can be used in describing the pictures.

"Stop. Change partners." With a new partner, Learner A now

times. After there has been plenty of opportunity to tell the

You are Kautea.

You are Tebwai

You are a sailor

You are Tebwai.

You are Kautea.

You are the

You are Veaieta.

You are the

The journey was

given in square brackets.

the learner more aware of what to look for to learn it.]

3. Explain how to make the correct form and, if necessary,

Paul Nation can be contacted at: English Language Institute,

| Main Page | The Language Teacher | JALT Journal | Other

Teaching Speaking: Activities

What Is "Teaching Speaking"?

Use the language quickly and confidently with few unnatural

How To Teach Speaking

Activities To Promote Speaking

should always be encouraged to ask questions, paraphrase ideas,

Spades: An unforgettable memory

Find the Difference

Suggestions For Teachers in Teaching Speaking

Celce-Murcia. M. 2001. Teaching English as a Second or Foreign

A Technique for Practising

In order to maximize classroom opportunities for interaction, the

It is always advisable to negotiate the topic with learners, so let them

A Whole Class Activity

Grammar Correction in ESL/EFL

Grammar Correction in Second Language Writing Courses

kinds of grammar corrections used on the surface errors of Japanese

Grammar Correction in ESL/EFL

Grammar Correction in Second Language Writing Courses

the course, no significant differences existed between all the groups in

Grammatical Correction in ESL/EFL Writing Classes Can

spent by students and teachers on correcting grammatical errors

Why Doesn't Grammar Correction Work?

Practical Implications For ESL/EFL Teachers

expect teachers to notice their writing errors and comment on them,

Logical development of ideas and arguments

Cohen, A.D. (1987). Student processing of feedback on their

Robb, T., Ross, S. & Shortreed, I. (1986). Salience of feedback

Using Picture Dictation

Haycraft, John, An Introduction to English Language Teaching,

Teaching ESL Students to

these forms in spontaneous speech. Hopefully, this awareness will help

How Do Teachers Help Students Notice?

structure, and/or designing tasks that require the students to notice a

Dialogue - Listen to Comprehend

Dialogue -- Cloze - Listen to Notice