Delta course Verona
Delta COURSE VERONA
PRE-COURSE TASK
Answers and comments
Task One: - About your Teaching
Please bring along some notes on your answers for this task. We will be using it on Day One of the course.
Task Two - Learning & Teaching
1. What do you think are the ideal conditions for learning a language? Imagine a friend of yours is about to start learning a language for the first time and frame your answer in terms of advice you would give to him or her.
Comment: I’m sure you all came up with a range of ideas here, although there will probably be many points in common. The interesting question here is: to what extent do the lessons you teach provide - or make explicit - what you advise?
There might be a mismatch here. For example, would you actually suggest doing a course at a language school?! Personally, I would suggest doing as much speaking as possible in the new language, maybe getting a conversation exchange with another student. The question is: do I tell students to do this? Do I try and set them up with speaking opportunities e.g. online with or do I leave it up to them? Do I tell them explicitly how important speaking is when learning a language – or do I imagine they can work it out for themselves from my methodology?
Whether we actually offer what we think people need, and whether we tell them the reasoning behind our methodology are very interesting, and important questions. And our opinions can change during our career, as we get more teaching experience.
2. Consider these statements made by language students. Which opinions do you agree / disagree with, and why?
a) ‘We need to do a lot more grammar. You can do nothing if you don’t know the grammar well.’ (Spanish student)
Comment: The issue here is how useful it is to explicitly look at grammar rules when learning a language. Historically, English language teaching has answered this question in very different ways at different periods. We will be looking at this early on in the Delta course. After many years of grammar teaching being out in the wilderness, with teachers doing it because it was expected of them, but with no real conviction that it was doing any real good, grammar seems to be back in fashion now – although its exact role, and how it feeds into language learning seems to be rather different from what we thought, and how coursebooks seem to present it.
b) ‘Why doesn’t the teacher correct all my mistakes? I know I am making a lot of mistakes, but he only says ‘Good’. (French student)
Comment: Correction is another hot topic that different teachers have very different ideas on. It seems to depend on so many factors: the student, the lesson, the teacher, the mistake itself etc. We will be looking at correction later on in the Delta course. Perhaps one important thing to agree on for the moment is that making mistakes needs to be seen as a wonderful learning opportunity. We need to welcome mistakes in the classroom and see correction as a valid learning moment, perhaps even more memorable and meaningful than whole lessons spent on a particular grammar area.
c) ‘We always speak with other students. But they make a lot of mistakes. To learn well, we need to speak more with the teacher.’ (Swiss student)
Comment: We use pairwork and groupwork so much, we sometimes teach lessons where we, as teachers, always take a back seat. So some teachers are beginning to wonder why students insist so much on having native speaker teachers. Are we writing ourselves out of the lesson too much? We will look at Live Listening early on in the Delta, where the teacher interacts naturally with the whole class, taking the place of the tape recorder. Teacher talking time is extremely high – another classic CELTA myth broken! - but it can be an effective way of developing listening skills and involving students in authentic communication with a native speaker.
d) ‘We never repeat words or read aloud in the class. If we did this, we would speak English much better.’ (Ukrainian student)
Comment: How useful is drilling? The audiolingual method believed it was the magic key to language learning. Along with that method, it has perhaps fallen a little out of fashion. I, however, can still remember the Arabic dialogue we learnt on the first day of my CELTA course in 1987 - thanks to all the drilling. Reading aloud seems a very old-fashioned idea. But could it provide useful pronunciation work? The point here is that some classroom activities and techniques are closely associated with a particular method or approach, and as a result, when the method is discredited the activities and techniques disappear too. But they can still work, with some learners in some teaching contexts. The idea is that we need to become principled eclectics as teachers i.e. we pick and choose from a wide repertoire, aware of the range of possibilities available to us and making our choices according to explicit principles.
e) ‘Not first conditional! I know all this. We must use 'if' with the present and will.’ (Japanese student)
Comment: this links to student a)’s comment and the value of looking at grammar explicitly. The question is: when can we say that a student has ‘learnt’ a grammar rule? Often they can get it right in a gap-fill exercise, but then ‘forget’ to use it when speaking spontaneously. If this is the case, what does the student need to bridge this gap? Many teachers think that Task-Based Learning (TBL) can help here – encouraging students to activate the language they ‘know’ but can’t use by getting them to use it in a personalised, meaningful speaking task. We’ll be looking at TBL on the Delta course, and you can choose to focus on it your Experimental Practice assignment.
Task Three: Terminology
1) The terms in the pairs below all occur in the pre-course reading. How many of them do you know?
Add definitions to the list, and add new items as you come across them in your reading.
acquisition v. learning
Here, there is an important distinction between the natural acquisition process which young learners experience when acquiring their L1, perhaps unconsciously, and the conscious studying involved when learning L2 as an adult. The big question is: can adults acquire L2 just as they acquired their L1? We’ll see if we can find an answer to this on the Delta course!
synthetic v. analytic approach
This is a contrast between approaches which can apply to all sorts of areas in ELT. For example:
syllabus design: a synthetic syllabus breaks language down into component parts, teaches them separately, with the idea that the learner then synthesises or combines them into a whole. This is the sort of syllabus an ordinary ELT textbook provides. An analytic syllabus, on the other hand, presents learners with whole texts (both spoken and written) which the learner then analyses into its component parts, either consciously or subconsciously). Some forms of CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) may provide this sort of syllabus, for example.
Skills work: the teacher may approach skill development by separating out various sub-skills e.g. listening for gist / reading for detail / writing paragraphs / using spoken discourse markers. This would be a synthetic approach, since the idea is that the learner then combines (synthesises) these various sub-skills when using the language. An analytic approach would simply give the students lots of skills practice in a holistic way, believing that the learner will break down (analyse) and develop individual sub-skills on the way.
What do you think works best – a synthetic or an analytic approach? Does it depend on the skill, the learners, the level, or what?
communicative competence v. linguistic competence
Linguistic competence, the idea of using language systems accurately (pronunciation, lexis, grammar, discourse) used to be the aim of language learning i.e. not making any mistakes. However, with the introduction of Communicative Language Teaching teachers changed the goalposts, deciding that it was more important to get your message across (communicative competence) than whether you made any mistakes or not. Clearly linguistic competence is a part of communicative competence – if you make too many mistakes, people won’t be able to understand what you want to say – but there is more to language learning than simply getting it accurate. These are clearly key concepts if we claim as teachers to be part of the communicative approach.
competence v. performance
This is the idea that there is a difference between what we know about language – our ability to produce and understand sentences (competence – basically ‘linguistic competence’ as defined above), and what we actually say when we speak (performance), which might be variable and idiosyncratic. This is true of us as native speakers, but especially true for our students who may ‘know’ grammar rules (competence) but be unable to use them when speaking spontaneously (performance) (see comments to question 2e)
product .v. process approach
These terms, rather like ‘synthetic’ and ‘analytic’, are used in various areas of ELT. One important area is grammar. In a product approach to grammar, language is analysed into discrete parts and then displayed to learners who then manipulate them in a carefully controlled way (i.e. what most coursebooks provide). In a process approach, grammar is seen as a resource that learners can use to make choices in order to creatively express meanings in discourse. It follows in a process approach that grammar is something that happens in certain conditions, emerging out of the encounter between a pattern-hungry brain and a language-rich environment. While, in a product approach, grammar is a set of facts that you learn and internalise, resulting in proficiency.
Which approach seems to represent how you learnt grammar in L2?
locutionary meaning v. illocutionary force
As part of Communicative Language Teaching (as mentioned above) a distinction was made between the ‘neutral’ meaning of a sentence made up of a combination of the meaning of all the words that make it up (locutionary meaning) and the meaning the sentence has when used in a particular context by a particular person (illocutionary force – or ‘function’) So the illocutionary force of the sentence ‘The door is open’ can be very different in different contexts e.g. during a business negotiation it can mean ‘we are always ready to listen to new offers and suggestions’.
2) The terms in this list are all used to described different areas of language systems.
How many of the terms can you use accurately?
a) collocation – different writers use this in slightly different ways. However, a useful definition is ‘two or more words that co-occur at more than chance frequency’. A key term in a lexical approach to language e.g. stale bread.
b) lexical item – ‘vocabulary’ seems to suggest a list of individual words. If we believe (following a lexical approach) that we also need to teach combinations of words (e.g. collocations), then we talk about ‘lexis’ rather than ‘vocabulary’ and ‘lexical item’ rather than ‘word’.
c) determiner - a part of speech which gives us information about the quantity or identity of a noun e.g. ‘the’ ‘few’ ‘no’ etc.
d) complement – the part of a sentence that comes after a copular verb, giving more information about the subject (or object) of the sentence e.g. He is tall – ‘tall’ is the complement of the sentence.
e) discourse – a spoken or written text consisting of a number of sentences. In the past, the sentence was seen as the basic unit of language in language teaching. This has now been replaced by discourse, so language use can be seen in context and analysed in terms of what comes before and afterwards, and what the writer / speaker wants to achieve.
f) discourse marker – words or phrases used to structure and monitor a stretch of discourse. They often come at the beginning of utterances. Common spoken discourse markers: okay / good / well / you know / I mean / as I was saying etc. Common written discourse markers: on the other hand / moreover / nonetheless etc.
g) prominence – a term connected to phonology. Another way of saying sentence stress i.e. the syllables in an utterance that are said more loudly, longer and at a slightly different pitch (usually higher).
h) tone unit – this is a term used when analysing intonation. A tone unit contains one single pitch movement. For example, the sentence ‘we prefer dancing to music’ can be said in two ways with two different meanings. One way has just one tone unit: ‘we prefer dancing to music’ (compared to dancing without music). The other way has two tone units: ‘we prefer dancing, to music (between the two options of dancing and music, we prefer dancing). Can you hear the difference? In a tone unit, the main voice movement comes after the main sentence stress and can do 4 possible things: fall / fall-rise / rise-fall / rise.
i) ellipsis – a term connected to discourse. Parts of a sentence or utterance can be omitted in informal conversation or writing e.g. ‘Fancy a drink?’ ‘Went to town yesterday.’
j) elision – a term connected to phonology. A sound disappears when two words are said together in connected speech e.g. ‘ last week’ – the final ‘t’ of ‘last’ isn’t really pronounced.
k) sentence frame – a term connected to lexis, describing a type of lexical item consisting of a combination of several words which usually come at the beginning of a sentence or utterance e.g. ‘If there’s one thing I can’t stand about … it’s…’ The idea is that teaching this sort of sentence frame is very useful, since it can help reduce processing time and promote fluency.
l) homonym – part of lexis. Two words that have the same spelling, same pronunciation, but different meanings e.g. stalk (of a plant) and stalk (a celebrity)
m) noun phrase – a constituent of a sentence, a phrase which could be reduced to a ‘head’ noun or pronoun e.g. a big red house with a garden (‘house’ = head noun)
n) affixation – prefixes or suffixes are morphemes that are added to a word stem to create a new word e.g. antisocial / happiness
Task Four: Synonyms
Synonyms can be useful in the classroom to help students understand what new language items mean. However, it is very rare for two synonyms to mean exactly the same thing, or to be used in exactly the same way. Look at these synonyms and say in what way they are different.
|synonyms |Comments on differences |
| | |
|gas = petrol |Here there is a difference in the variety of English i.e. American English and British |
| |English |
| | |
|luggage = suitcases |Here there is a difference in the part of speech: uncountable and countable nouns |
| | |
|put up with = tolerate |Here there is a difference in style: informal phrasal verb and more formal (or neutral) |
| |latinate verb (you may have put ‘register’ rather than ‘style’ – and different authors use |
| |these terms slightly differently. However, usually, ‘style’ involves levels of formality, |
| |while ‘register’ involves language used by different groups of people e.g. ‘tummy ache’ and |
| |‘gastroenteritis’. Clearly there will be some overlap here since doctors and family members |
| |also tend to use different levels of formality) |
| | |
|don't have to = mustn't |These are not really synonyms since they mean quite different things: a lack of obligation, |
| |compared to a strong obligation not to do something. A trick question! |
| | |
|however = although |These linkers have a similar use: the express a contrast of ideas. However, they are |
| |different parts of speech (adverb .vs. subordinating conjunction) and as a result have |
| |different word grammar (or colligation): with ‘however’ the two ideas are put in separate |
| |sentences, or connected by a semi-colon, and ‘however’ is followed by a comma and a full |
| |sentence. With ‘although’ the two ideas are put in the same sentence, and ‘although’ is |
| |followed by a subject + verb subordinate clause |
Task Five: Teacher Questions
The teacher often uses questions in the classroom, for a variety of reasons. Here are some examples, with the expected answer in brackets. Decide in each case why the teacher is asking this question.
|Question |Reason |
| | |
|What's the animal with a long neck? (giraffe) |This is an example of an eliciting question. The idea here is to see |
| |whether the learner already knows the answer. This involves the class |
| |and is considered more effective than simply telling them. |
| | |
|If I get away with something, how do I feel? (Happy, relieved) |This is an example of a concept checking question (CCQ). This is a way|
| |of checking whether the class has really understood the meaning of an |
| |item (grammar or vocabulary) that has just been taught (here, the verb:|
| |‘to get away with s.t.) Concept questions are a key teaching tool: if |
| |we don’t use them, we have no real evidence that they have understood |
| |what we have taught. We will be looking at concept questions in Days |
| |One and Two of the course. |
| | |
|So, in this activity, are you working alone or in pairs? (In pairs) |This is an example of an instruction checking questions (ICQ). This |
| |makes sure that the class know what they have to do. Good ICQs involve|
| |one-word answers and are nice and simple so they do not tax students’ |
| |listening skills. |
| | |
|When did the lesson start? (10 minutes ago) |There might be more than one answer for this since there isn’t enough |
| |context to make it completely clear. One possibility: it might be an |
| |‘open pair’ (i.e. in front of the rest of the class) question to get |
| |students to practise some recently taught piece of language e.g. ‘ago’.|
| |It might be used to set up a pairwork activity where students ask and |
| |answer similar questions using ‘When’ and ‘ago’. Alternatively, it |
| |might be an eliciting question (as seen above) to see whether students |
| |know the item ‘ago’. |
| | |
|What do you think about Berlusconi? (student gives opinion) |This question is trying to encourage the student to speak, so it would |
| |be part of a stage of the lesson where the aim is to develop fluency. |
| |Perhaps as a way to introduce a topic, or at the beginning of a class |
| |discussion. |
Task Six: Aims of activities
Here are two mini lessons taken from coursebooks. For each stage, decide what the aim of the activity is.
Lesson 1 (Upper-Intermediate)
|Activity |Aim: For students to… |
|1 Sam has decided to get married. What advice do you think his |Revise ‘should + infinitive’ to give advice about the present or future|
|friends gave? Use should / shouldn't e.g. You should try and not |(at this level, this won’t be tricky for students) |
|travel abroad so much. | |
|2 Sam's marriage didn't last. Listen to the first part of the |Develop the skill of listening for main ideas. |
|conversation he had with his friend 5 years later and write down the | |
|following: | |
|1) Two things Sam regrets doing. | |
|2) What the friend says Sam did wrong. | |
|3 Listen again and note how Sam expresses his regret and how his |Develop the skill of listening for detail. |
|friend criticises him. Write down exactly what they say. |Provide model examples of target language (should have + past |
| |participle) |
|4 Practise saying the three expressions e.g. should've /ʃʊdəv/ |Have clarification and controlled practice or target language |
|5 Listen and note how Sam continues the conversation. Work in pairs |Develop the skill of listening for detail |
|to guess what his friend said to him. |Semi-controlled practice of target language (friend uses ‘you should / |
| |shouldn’t have + p.p.) to criticise what Sam did) |
Lesson 2 (Intermediate)
|Activity |Aim: For students to… |
|1 In Britain, some school children go on exchanges to another country.|Get interested in topic |
|They stay with a family and then the boy or girl of the family comes to|Develop fluency talking about topic |
|stay in Britain. Does this happen in your country? | |
|2 Read the conversation between Anna and Nina, two schoolgirls. Put |Show their knowledge of target language (questions with ‘like’) TEST |
|one of the questions into each gap: | |
|What does she like doing? | |
|What's she like? | |
|What does she look like? | |
|Anna: My French exchange visitor came yesterday. Her name's | |
|Marie-Ange. | |
|Nina: That's a nice name. ….......? | |
|Anna: She's really nice. We have a lot in common. | |
|Nina: Why? ….......? | |
|Anna: Well, she likes dancing and so do I. (etc.) | |
|3 Listen and check your answers. |Develop the skill of listening for detail |
|4 Match each of the above questions with the correct definition: |Have clarification of meaning / use of target language (this technique |
|a Tell me about her physical appearance |of getting student to work it out for themselves is known as ‘guided |
|b Tell me about her in general |discovery’) |
|c Tell me about her hobbies and interests |TEACH |
|5 In pairs, read the above conversation out loud. |Have controlled oral practice of target language (for pronunciation |
| |practice) |
Task Seven: Anticipated difficulties
An experienced teacher is able to predict the sorts of problems that students might have in the classroom at each stage of the lesson – when teaching a new language item, and when developing skills. Anticipate possible difficulties for the following language items and skills activities.
|Language item (in bold) |Potential difficulties |
| |(from students' point of view) |
| |Form – students may forget the auxiliaries i.e. ‘What time you start work?’ ‘I |
|What time do you start work? I don't work on Saturday. |no work…’ |
|(Elementary) |Pronunciation – students might say /dɒnt/ rather than /dəʊnt/, no elision of /t/ |
| |in ‘don’t’, no weak form of ‘do you’ /ʤə/ They may put main sentence stress on |
| |‘do’ in the question instead of on ‘start’ |
| |Meaning – students will be confused by the idiomatic nature of this item i.e. |
|to get on with someone (Intermediate) |that the meaning cannot be constructed by adding together the meaning of ‘get’ + |
| |‘on’ + ‘with’. |
| |Form – student will use a different particle e.g. get in with, or forget a |
| |particle e.g. get on someone |
| |Pronunciation – students won’t link ‘get + on’, they won’t put the main stress on|
| |‘on’ |
| |Meaning – students from a Latin-based language won’t understand why the present |
|I've been living in Verona for 5 years. (Intermediate) |continuous can’t be used here. They might think it refers to a finished time in |
| |the past i.e. similar to ‘I was living’ or ‘I lived’. Students might have |
| |trouble with use of ‘for’ .vs. ‘since’, and the difference between present |
| |perfect simple .vs. continuous |
| |Form – students might leave out one of the elements e.g. I been living…, |
| |Pronunciation: students might not use weak form of ‘have’ and ‘been’ /aɪvbɪn/ or |
| |‘for’ /fə/. Students might not put main sentence stress on ‘living / Verona / |
| |five’ |
| |Meaning – students might not use this for a possible condition, but for |
|If it rains tomorrow, I'll come by car. |impossible / unlikely conditions, or conditions that are always true. |
| |Form – students might put ‘will’ in the subordinate if clause since it does refer|
| |to future time. Students might not use contractions. |
| |Pronunciation – students might not use fall-rise intonation pattern at end of |
| |subordinate clause |
| |Meaning – students may be confused by the idea that this familiar form can be |
|When I was a child, I would wake up really early on |used for another unrelated use: past habits. There may be some confusion between|
|Christmas Day. (Upper-Intermediate) |‘would’ and ‘used to’. |
| |Form – students may not use the contraction ‘I’d’. |
|Skills activity (for an Elementary group) |Potential difficulties |What the teacher can do in class to help, if |
| |(from students' point of view) |this occurs |
|Listen to the tape, and fill in the gaps in the|Students won’t be able to do this – they won’t |Play the tape again, stopping after each gap. |
|conversation with the exact words you hear. |hear exactly what’s being said. They’ll give |Get students checking in pairs, then get group |
| |up and say it’s too difficult. |feedback. If students still haven’t got it, |
| | |play it again, elicit any words they have |
| | |understood, put them up on the board with gaps |
| | |for missing words, then play the bit again. |
| | |Encourage and guide students till they hear it |
| | |for themselves. Then play it one last time so |
| | |they can see if they can hear it now. |
|Get into pairs and roleplay a conversation |They won’t know what to say. They’ll speak in |Give them a short preparation time to think |
|where a hotel client complains at reception. |L1. They’ll ask me for words during the |about what they are going to say. Tell them to|
| |roleplay which will stop them focussing on |ask me for any vocabulary they need. They can |
| |fluency. They’ll make lots of mistakes. |make notes, but no full sentences. Remind them|
| | |to speak in English before they start. Make a |
| | |note of any mistakes during the roleplay and |
| | |put them up on the board at the end for group |
| | |correction. |
|Read this letter quickly to see if it gives |They’ll read it slowly, stopping at every word |Give them a time limit (2 minutes). Remind |
|good news or bad news. |they don’t know, underlining it and asking me |them when one minute is up. Tell them they |
| |or another student what it means. |can’t use their pencils. Remind them to ignore|
| | |any difficult words for the moment. |
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