Listening – how to get feedback

I’ve observed a lot of listening lessons recently as part of my job as a CELTA and Delta trainer. I’ve noticed that sometimes there’s a problem in the way we get feedback on a listening comprehension task – especially when students are listening for details in the recording. The feedback goes like this:

Teacher: What’s the answer to question 1?
Student 1: The answer’s A.
Teacher: No, that’s not quite right. The answer’s B. What about question 2?
Student 2: It’s B.
Teacher: Yes, that’s right. It’s B.  Good!

The problem here is that Student 1 has no idea why s/he was wrong.  Student 2 knows s/he was right, but what about the other students in the class?  Did they get it right too?  Here we are TESTING rather than TEACHING the listening skill.  If students get an answer wrong (which is when things get interesting), we say ‘Never mind – better luck next time!’  And will they be any better next time, if we haven’t helped them to understand why they didn’t understand it now?

Here are some ideas on how to go about getting feedback on a listening task:

• Ask ‘Do you agree?’ to open up feedback to everyone in the class
• Give poker-faced feedback: don’t tell them who’s got it right (yet)
• Encourage students to listen and re-listen until they hear it for themselves by replaying relevant bit of tape, several times if necessary

 Give support by:

• Getting students to check in pairs / groups before group feedback
• Writing up gapped sentences on the board showing what’s missing
• Analysing features of connected speech i.e. what happens when words are put into a sentence
• Drilling tricky phrases, showing how words link up together (it’s often a case of understanding where one word ends and the next one begins)

 And a last piece of advice:

Spend less time on pre-listening stage so you have more for feedback – it’s such a pity when the lesson runs out of time and there’s no time left for the strategies I’ve mentioned above.

I’ll be posting soon with some ideas on how to work on features of connected speech when doing a listening lesson – I find I do most of my work on pronunciation here, and not in speaking lessons.  Come back to my blog to find out why!

Speaking – developing fluency

Many of my students are not very fluent when they speak in English.  They hesitate, pause, go back and correct themselves, try and remember the grammar rules, think of the right word – it can become a bit of a strain for the listener!

The problem is that they are having to think about WHAT they want to say (the content) and HOW to say it (the language).  They are so worried about being accurate that fluency goes out the window!  I’ve found a nice activity that allows them to concentrate on developing fluency – and it’s enjoyable!

It goes like this:

• Students do an interactive speaking activity in pairs.  For my exam classes I use the simulated situation, such as Part 2 of the Cambridge Preliminary Speaking test (see here for details).  It’s ideal.
• Tell the class how long they have e.g. 5 ninutes.  While they are speaking, go round, don’t get involved or interrupt (that would inhibit their fluency and make them lose the thread of what they are saying).  But make a note of any errors or examples of good language that you hear.
• After the time limit, get some feedback on the speaking task itself – What did you decide?  Did you agree?  Tell me something interesting you talked about.
• Then put the examples of errors up on the board, along with the examples of good language use.  Get students to identify the errors and correct them.
• Tell the students they need to do the same activity with the same partner, saying the same things, but in only 4 minutes.  Repeat the stages – but this time, make it into a race: say ‘Ready, steady, GO!’  Use a stop watch and stop them after 4 minutes.
• Then tell them they have to do it again.  But this time in only 3 minutes!  See them start to panic!

The idea here is that since they already know WHAT they want to say (because they’ve already done the activity once) they can concentrate on saying it more quickly.  They can focus on FLUENCY, since the work on ACCURACY has already been done.

In my experience, by the 3rd go, students are speaking faster than I’ve ever heard them before!  Try and see if it works for your exam classes too.  It’s great preparation for the Cambridge Speaking exams.

Teaching grammar – dictogloss

I teach a lot of higher level students – and prepare them for Cambridge First, Advanced and Proficiency exams.  Of course, many of them find the Use of English paper very tricky. I find that the usual approach to teaching grammar – ‘OK today we’re going to do the present perfect continuous (class groans!)’ – doesn’t really work as it did at lower levels.

This is partly because at B2 plus level, students have already ‘done’ most of the main grammar areas.  And I find that doing more lessons on these areas doesn’t seem to make much difference in terms of how accurately they use them.  Students also seem to get a bit bored by these sorts of lesson (or is it just the way I teach them?!)

So I started using Dictogloss activities, also known as grammar dictations.  These are intensive grammar lessons, but they have a very different feel to normal coursebook lessons, and – in my experience – are more memorable and relevant.  Here’s a basic procedure:

• Find a short text (about 4/5 lines long).  For exam classes, I often take them from the Reading paper – for example, a paragraph from one of the reading texts.  See this link from the Cambridge English website – scroll down for the Cambridge First Handbook with a sample paper.
• Read out the text at a normal speed and get students to write down as much as they can.  They will soon realise that it’s impossible to write down every word as in a normal dictation – they need to listen out for the key words such as nouns and verbs that convey the main message of the text.
• In pairs, students need to try and reconstruct the text.  This means they will need to add the bits that are missing – trying to make sure it means the same thing.
• If you have time, create bigger groups, with pairs checking their version with other pairs.  If you can, try and get one final version which everyone more or less agrees with.  Don’t get involved here – let the students battle it out together – your moment will come!
• Get the final version on the board so everyone can see it.  The show them the original text.  Of course there will be differences – some predictable, some unexpected.  The idea is that you help the class explore these differences, using these 2 key questions:  Is your version grammatically correct?  Does it mean the same as the original or something different?
• You’ll find yourself clarifying all sorts of grammar areas that coursebooks don’t often touch on.  It’s a very student-centred approach to grammar teaching: they show you what they need, by focussing on the gap between their version and the original.

Here’s an example of a dictogloss I did with a group of proficiency students. 

This is one sentence from the original text:

It has succeeded in capturing the imagination of millions since it first emerged as a genre back in the 1930s. 

This is the final students’ version:

It succeeded in the capturing of the imagination of millions since the genere emerged first in the 1930’s.

 It brought up all sorts of grammar areas – past simple vs. present perfect / verb patterns (to succeed in doing something / to capture something) / article usage / position of adverbs (first) / etc.

Try one out with one of your classes and let me know how it goes!

Pronunciation of English vowels

I teach a lot of Italian primary school teachers, and they often tell me that they have trouble with the British English sounds, especially the vowel phonemes – I’m thinking of /ɜ:/  /ɔ:/ and /ɑ:/ in particular.  It’s true that Italian doesn’t have anything similar to these vowel sounds.

Have a look at this site – it has some great games to practise British English phonemes.

I suggest starting with the Entry/Exit Tests to see how much you know, and then trying out some of the games.  My favourites are Shoot-a-Symbol and Odd Phon’ Out.

Then why not look at Flashcard Maker – you can use it to make some really professional-looking visual aids for the classroom.  /ɪnʤɔɪ/!

Reading activity for all classes at all levels!

This morning I did a reading activity with my Cambridge First students – and I thought it would be a good one for my first post on this blog.  It’s an activity I’ve been using on and off for years – I like it because it’s really flexible: you can use it with all classes at all levels.

And you can’t get more flexible than that!

All you need is a newspaper – it doesn’t even have to be an up-to-date one.  Tear it up into separate sheets and give one to each student in the class (if there are more than 10, create 2 or more groups).  Each student needs to read some bits of the newspaper s/he has got – the bits they understand, not the bits they don’t (that’s the important thing) – and write a question at the top of the sheet of newspaper whose answer can be found somewhere on the sheet.

The answer might be in a headline, in an advert, in the middle of an article, in a caption to a photo – anywhere.

Then everyone needs to stand up and find the answers to everyone’s questions as quickly as possible – the student who finishes first, wins.

This means that they’ll be going round, scanning the pages, until they find the information they need.  In my experience, students enjoy it – they respond well to the idea that their classmates have come up with the questions, which makes it a sort of challenge.

Many teachers think that students need to get used to reading authentic texts  – texts not written for the language classroom.  But we all know that in pratice, authentic materials can be very demotivating if they are not exploited very carefully.

In this activity, it’s the students themselves who write the comprehension questions, and this ensures that the activity is achievable.  It’s a good example of adapting the task, not the text, to the students’ level.  I like the fact that it’s student-centred (not much for the teacher to do, once you’ve set it up and made sure the questions are written correctly).  It also focusses on a key reading sub-skill – scanning – which is extremely useful in all the Cambridge reading exams e.g. Cambridge First, Reading test Part 3.  Click here for a link to the Cambridge English site with info about the First exam.  I don’t know about you, but my students tend to read slowly, almost one word at a time, stopping when they come to a word they don’t know.  And this activity can encourage them to read more quickly, focussing on what they have understood, rather than what they haven’t.

I’ve just thought – if you don’t have an old newspaper, just print off pages from a range of internet sites and use those.  Scanning is exactly how we read when surfing the net, so it’s the perfect choice!

Try it out with one of your classes – let me know how it goes.