Oxford's teachhing methods of english language
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Другие материалы по предмету Педагогика
ediateTime:55 minutesMaterialsNone
In class
- Choose a grammar area the students need to review. In the example below there are adjectives, adverbs and relative pronouns.
- Ask each student to work alone and write a sentence of 12-16 words (the exact length is not too important). Each sentence should contain an adjective, and adverb and a relative pronoun, or whatever grammar youve chosen to practise. For example: She sat quietly by the golden river that stretched to the sea.
- Now ask the students to rewrite their sentences on a separate piece of paper, leaving in the target grammar and any punctuation, but leaving the rest as blanks, one dash for each letter. The sentence above would look like this:
--- --- quietly -- --- golden ----- that --------- -- --- ---.
While they are doing this ask any students who are not sure of the correctness of their sentence to check with you.
- Now ask the students to draw a picture or pictures which illustrate as much of the meaning of the sentence as possible.
- As students finish drawing, put them into groups of three. One person shows the blanked sentence and the drawing, reserving their original sentence for their own reference. The other should guess: Is the first word the? or ask questions Is the second word a verb? etc. The student should only answer yes or no. As they guess the words, they fill in the blanks.
- They continue until all the blanks are filled and then they do the other two persons sentences.
Note
Groups tend to finish this activity at widely different speeds. If a couple of groups finish early, pair them across the groups, ask them to rub out the completed blanked out sentences and try them on a new partner.
Acknowledgement
Ian Jasper originated this exercise. Hes a co-author of Teacher Development: One groups experience, edited by Janie Rees Miller.
Puzzle stories
Grammar:Simple present and simple past interrogative formsLevel:BeginnersTime:30 minutesMaterials:Puzzle story (to be written on the board)
Preparation
Ask a couple of students from an advanced class to come to your beginners group. Explain that they will have some interesting interpreting to do.
In class
- Introduce the interpreters to your class and welcome them.
- Write this puzzle story on the board in English. Leave good spaces between the lines :
There were three people in the room.
A man spoke.
There was a short pause.
The second man spoke.
The woman jumped up and slapped the first man in the face.
- Ask one of the beginners to come to the board and underline the words they know. Ask others to come and underline the ones they know. Tell the group the words none of them know. Ask one of the interpreters to write a translation into mother tongue. The translation should come under the respective line of English.
- Tell the students their task is to find out why the woman slapped the first man. They are to ask questions that you can answer yes or no. Tell them they can try and make questions directly in English, or they can call the interpreter and ask the questions in their mother tongue. The interpreter will whisper the English in their ear and they then ask you in English.
- Erase the mother tongue translation of the story from the board.
- One of the interpreters moves round the room interpreting questions while the other stays at the board and writes up the questions in both English and mother tongue.
- You should aim to let the class ask about 15-25 questions, more will overload them linguistically. To speed the process up you should give them clues.
- Finally, have the students copy all the questions written on the board into their books. You now have a presentation of the main interrogative forms of the simple present and past.
- After the lesson go through any problems the interpreters had-offer them plenty of parallel translation.
The solution
The second man was an interpreter.
Further material
Do you know the one about the seven-year-old who went to the bakers? His Mum had told him to get three loaves. He went in, bought two and came home. He put them on the kitchen table. He ran back to the backers and bought a third. He rushed in and put the third one on the kitchen table. The question: Why? Solution: he had a speech defect and couldnt say th.
Word order dictation
Grammar:Word order at sentence level
The grammar you decide to input in this example: reflexive phrases, e.g. to myself/by myself/in myselfLevel:IntermediateTime:20-30 minutesMaterials:Jumbled extracts (for dictation) One copy of Extract from Sarahs letter per pair of students
In class
- Pair the students and ask one person in each pair to prepare to write on a loose sheet of paper.
- Dictate the first sentence from the Jumbled extracts. One person in each pair takes it down.
- Ask the pairs to rewrite the jumbled words into a meaningful sentence, using all the words and putting in necessary punctuation.
- Tell the pairs to pass their papers to the right. The pairs receiving their neighbours sentences check out grammar and spelling, correcting where necessary.
- Dictate the second jumbled sentence.
- Repeat steps 3 and 4.
- When youve dictated all the sentences this way give out the original, unjumbled Extract from Sarahs letter and ask the students to compare with the sentences theyve got in front of them. They may sometimes have created excellent, viable alternative sentences.
Jumbled extracts
- Myself in absorbed more and more becoming am I find I
- When mix I do other people me inside a confusion have I I find
- David John and Nick as though I am me I do not feel when I walk through the park with
- Strange seems it and a role acting am I like feel I
- Walk park myself talk aloud myself to I by the through I when
- Completely feel content I
Extract from Sarahs letter
I find I am becoming more and more absorbed in myself.
When I do mix with other people I find I have a confusion inside me.
When I walk through the park with David, John and Nick, I do not feel as though I am me.
I feel like I am acting a role and it seems strange.
When I walk through the park by myself I talk aloud to myself.
I feel completely content.
Grammar lessons Taking notes
Passive voice
During the lecture ask the students to note cases when we use passive:
- In more formal contexts than active sentences.
For example: Your attention is drawn to Paragraph 6. (But note that using got, usually makes the sentence less formal, for example: We got beaten.They got married.) - when the agent is not clear.
For example: Their office was burgled. - or not important
For example: This cake was made from carrots. - or obvious
For example: They were all arrested. - to give emphasis to the passive subject and add weight to the message.
For example: A state of emergency has been declared. - to make our message more impersonal.
For example, as in a letter saying: No police action will be taken.
Read the following newspaper article and ask the students to:
- note down the six verbs that are in the passive
- suggest a possible reason for the use of the passive in this article.
ORCHESTRAS SCHOOLS BOOST
Schools and community groups will be the winners if the world famous Philharmonia comes to town.
Negotiations are still under way to make Bedford the orchestras first British residency outside London beginning in 1995, it has been confirmed.
What is being talked about is a strong educational emphasis on the deal, which would see members of the orchestra travelling into the community doing workshops with school and other local groups in the borough. School children will be invited in to the Corn Exchange for afternoon rehearsals of the main concerts to be staged.
Massive alterations to the Corn Exchange are being planned in tandem so that the orchestra, which was formed in 1945, and the audiences watching them, will enjoy superior back and frontstage facilities including new sloped seating going from the stage to the present balcony and a new auditorium.
Comment
1. The six verbs in the passive are: