Teaching beginners

Some of you may be teaching students with very very little English. Others may have 'false-beginners'. This refers to students who have learned some English but can produce almost nothing.  Here are some dos and don'ts for teaching beginner and false beginner classes.

Don'ts

• Don't try to cover too much material or too quickly. Take things slowly, recycle language from previous lessons and build on this to give the students a sense of progress. A lot of practice with limited language is more rewarding for the students than charging on with things they can't do.

• Don't use activities that are very 'free'. Students just don't have the language to be able to do more than controlled practice activities. They only have the language you have taught to draw on. 'False beginners' on the other hand may have more passive knowledge and you could gradually introduce some freer activities once you have seen what they know.

• Don't talk too much. When students can't or won't say much, then there is a tendency to want to fill the silence with chatter. Listening to you talk a lot may be demotivating and boring for students when they can't understand what you are saying.

• Don't over-correct. Only correct the language that you have taught or are currently teaching them, not their attempts as communicating above their current level. The except to this is if you have false beginners. 

• Don't get impatient with the students. Put yourself in their shoes!

Dos

• Provide lots and lots of repetition. Model and drill new language. Use a range of fun drills  (I'll recap drilling in another post). 

• Do lots and lots of controlled practice with only small substitutions of vocabulary to provide variety in what they are saying.

• Recycle and revise language often to give the students a sense of progress.

• Mime, use visuals and demonstrate tasks and activities.

• Grade your language (choose your words carefully and avoid complex sentences).

• Slow down, pause more often, paraphase and repeat (but still try to sound natural to some extent).

• Expect and praise limited responses from the students. A response, albeit brief, shows that the student has understood.

• Scaffold speaking tasks. This means giving an example of a task (e.g. a dialogue) and then removing the content, leaving only the structures. Then students rebuild the dialogue using different content. For example, if you want students to talk about what they do in their free time, describe your own free time as an example, giving them key phrases such as 'At the weekend I usually...... In the evenings I sometimes.....I really like.....' etc. Then get them to use these key phrases in their own personal responses.

• Give the students the opportunity to prepare for a speaking activity (either in class or at home).

• Choose activities that are simple to set up. If an activity is complicated then the students may not understand your instructions or it may take a long time to explain. Is it worth it? Or would it be better to do something simpler?

• Make sure that you pre-teach essential vocabulary before listening, reading or speaking tasks.

• Give clear whiteboard records of new language and give students time to copy it.

• Teach useful classroom language ('Can you say that again?', 'Can you speak more slowly please?' etc).

• Try to keep instructions and procedures consistent throughout the course so that students soon learn what you want them to do with minimum instruction.

• Create a positive, encouraging learning environment in which students feel comfortable and confident to have a go with the new language.

• Praise signs of progress, no matter how small.

Beginner classes can start out difficult but often end up being amongst the most rewarding you will teach!

Teaching beginners

Some of you may be teaching students with very very little English. Others may have 'false-beginners'. This refers to students who have learned some English but can produce almost nothing.  Here are some dos and don'ts for teaching beginner and false beginner classes.

Don'ts

• Don't try to cover too much material or too quickly. Take things slowly, recycle language from previous lessons and build on this to give the students a sense of progress. A lot of practice with limited language is more rewarding for the students than charging on with things they can't do.

• Don't use activities that are very 'free'. Students just don't have the language to be able to do more than controlled practice activities. They only have the language you have taught to draw on. 'False beginners' on the other hand may have more passive knowledge and you could gradually introduce some freer activities once you have seen what they know.

• Don't talk too much. When students can't or won't say much, then there is a tendency to want to fill the silence with chatter. Listening to you talk a lot may be demotivating and boring for students when they can't understand what you are saying.

• Don't over-correct. Only correct the language that you have taught or are currently teaching them, not their attempts as communicating above their current level. The except to this is if you have false beginners. 

• Don't get impatient with the students. Put yourself in their shoes!

Dos

• Provide lots and lots of repetition. Model and drill new language. Use a range of fun drills  (I'll recap drilling in another post). 

• Do lots and lots of controlled practice with only small substitutions of vocabulary to provide variety in what they are saying.

• Recycle and revise language often to give the students a sense of progress.

• Mime, use visuals and demonstrate tasks and activities.

• Grade your language (choose your words carefully and avoid complex sentences).

• Slow down, pause more often, paraphase and repeat (but still try to sound natural to some extent).

• Expect and praise limited responses from the students. A response, albeit brief, shows that the student has understood.

• Scaffold speaking tasks. This means giving an example of a task (e.g. a dialogue) and then removing the content, leaving only the structures. Then students rebuild the dialogue using different content. For example, if you want students to talk about what they do in their free time, describe your own free time as an example, giving them key phrases such as 'At the weekend I usually...... In the evenings I sometimes.....I really like.....' etc. Then get them to use these key phrases in their own personal responses.

• Give the students the opportunity to prepare for a speaking activity (either in class or at home).

• Choose activities that are simple to set up. If an activity is complicated then the students may not understand your instructions or it may take a long time to explain. Is it worth it? Or would it be better to do something simpler?

• Make sure that you pre-teach essential vocabulary before listening, reading or speaking tasks.

• Give clear whiteboard records of new language and give students time to copy it.

• Teach useful classroom language ('Can you say that again?', 'Can you speak more slowly please?' etc).

• Try to keep instructions and procedures consistent throughout the course so that students soon learn what you want them to do with minimum instruction.

• Create a positive, encouraging learning environment in which students feel comfortable and confident to have a go with the new language.

• Praise signs of progress, no matter how small.

Beginner classes can start out difficult but often end up being amongst the most rewarding you will teach!

Conducting a speaking test

Have you been asked to test your students' speaking skills?

Some of you have been asked to do speaking tests with your students. In order to successfully run a speaking test you need prompts for speaking and criteria against which you are assessing the students. Ask your school if they have these.

If not, you can use published materials for public tests such as the Cambridge ESOL exams (Movers, KET, FCE etc) or you could make up your own tests using picture prompts or questions that you have chosen. If you need some speaking test materials, I have created a Dropbox with some in (including tests for teenagers that are copyright to my school – ELC – so you are welcome to use them). Just send me an email and I will invite you to join the Dropbox and you can then download the materials.

It is difficult to be the interlocutor (the person speaking to the student) as well as the assessor (the person grading the student). If possible, ask if you can conduct the tests with another intern or colleague. However, if this is not possible, you will need to make sure that you give the students the chance to take a long turn when you can listen without interacting much with them. You can do this by asking two students to speak to each other while you listen or by giving an individual a task such as describing a picture.

Below is an example of assessment criteria for speaking tests. This is quite a basic guide but it’s actually easier to stick to something simple if you have a lot of students to test and especially if you are doing it on your own. This is a guide for all levels so you will need to determine what is an acceptable pass mark for your students depending on their level. For example for a low-level class, a mark of 5 might be the highest you would award and they might be given a grade A for this.

Example marking guidelines for speaking tests

Mark the students from 1-10.

9-10	Communicates message effectively with a minimum of grammatical mistakes and natural-sounding delivery, uses repair strategies if he/she makes errors.
7-8	Communicates message effectively but with some grammatical mistakes, some pronunciation errors, uses repair strategies if he/she makes errors.
5-6	Communicates message with some effort, makes quite a lot of grammatical mistakes, with some pronunciation errors that interfere with message, some pauses and silences.
3-4	Communicates some of the message, with great effort. Makes quite a lot of grammatical mistakes, some of which interfere with comprehensibility, some pauses and silences, and use of own language.
1-2	Tries to communicate, needs great effort, makes a lot of serious grammatical mistakes, many of which interfere with comprehensibility, many pronunciation errors that interfere with intelligibility, many pauses and silences, and use of own language.

You could also adjust the assessment rubric according to your expectations of students at a particular level, for example:

Upper Intermediate speaking task

Students are given a list of jobs and are asked to discuss the pros and cons of each job, concluding with the one they would most and least like to do.

For a high mark the student should communicate a complex message effectively. The student uses natural intonation and appropriate sentence stress and pronounces individual sounds correctly.

Elementary speaking task

Students are asked to talk about their free time – What do they like doing?

For a high mark the student should communicate a simple message effectively. Pronunciation of simple words and phrases should be intelligible with appropriate stress.

We do inform the schools that you are not experienced teachers and should not be asked to examine in high-stakes tests or you should have the support of a Vietnamese teacher. 

Friday's activity

Food from my country

Over the last week I've posted a range of activities, each with a different aim. Today I am posting an entire lesson so there are multiple aims. As you read about the lesson, think about the aim(s) of each stage of the lesson.

Lesson aim: To practise listening, reading, writing and speaking skills

Age: Ages 10 and up

Level: Pre-intermediate and above

Time: 30-50 minutes (depending on whether you extend it to writing)

Preparation:  Choose a dish from your country. Prepare how to describe the dish to someone and to explain how to make it. Get some pictures of the dish and ingredients if possible.

Procedure

1. Tell the students that you will describe a typical meal in your country.  Write 3 sets of words on the board in these categories: Ingredients / Ways of cooking / Taste. Depending on the students’ level include 5-8 words in each category. 3 of the words (at least) will be words you will include in your talk. Ask students to copy them. Check the meaning of the words.
2. Explain to students that they should listen to your talk and circle the words they hear you use.
3. Deliver your talk and students do the task.  They can compare in pairs before you check with them.
4. Now hand out (on one piece of paper each student as jumbled sentences, or preferably on cut up strips that you give to groups of 2/3 students) sentences that describe the procedure for making the dish. Ask students to guess the order of the sentences (stages of making the dish).
5. Explain the procedure and students listen and check their order.
6. Clarify any vocabulary as necessary.
7. Ask students to work in small groups to choose a dish from Vietnam. They should plan how to tell a foreign visitor about the dish.  Show them how to brainstorm (ingredients, ways of cooking, taste, procedure for cooking).
8. One student from each group should prepare to explain their dish to the class. (This can be done in another lesson).

Extension

This procedure can be followed to prepare students to deliver talks on all kinds of topics (a celebration, New Year, a custom etc). Basically, you give a model which provides listening and reading practice for the students and they produce their own talk which gives them writing and speaking practice. This is an integrated-skills lesson with multiple aims.

Thursday's activity

Fast, freaky animals

Here's an activity for those of you with younger learners but it could be adapted into a pictionary style task for older learners with words rather than pictures.

Aim: To practise vocabulary and basic questions in the simple present

Age: Ages 6 and up

Level: Elementary and above

Time: 10 minutes

Preparation: You'll need paper and coloured pens or pencils and a small picture card of an animal for each child (or sets for the children in each group).

Procedure:

1. The object of the game is to draw an animal as quickly as possible, but so that it can be recognized by the other students.
2. Give each child a piece of paper. Put the pens in the middle.
3. Deal a small flashcard face down to each child. On the word Go! the students look at their flashcards, being careful not to show them to the other students. They then have 15 (or 30) seconds to draw a picture of this animal on paper.
4. When the time is up, call Stop! and all pens must go back to the middle immediately.
5. In turns, the students now try to guess what the pictures of these animals are, by asking, for example, Is it a….? or Does your picture show a…..?The child who drew the picture answers. The child who guesses correctly gets two points and the player who drew the picture gets one point.
6. If a picture is unrecognisable, the artist gets no points.

Variation: 

This could be used with almost any set of vocabulary which can be represented by pictures (vehicles, fruit, household objects…..).