Thursday, September 13, 2012

Introduction




THE LEARNERS’ FEATURES
Small children require the teacher’s individual attention as much as possible. Their attention span is small (five to fifteen minutes). For the teacher, it can be quite disconcerting when a three-year-old wanders off in the middle of a song or story to play with a toy. It does not mean they are not following what is going on; it is probably because some other child had the toy before and they see this as their only opportunity to get hold of it. We must not take it as a personal rejection. It is very difficult to hold the attention of a whole group of small children and the best way to do it is to ring the changes every five to ten minutes –unless you see that they are all really absorbed in what they are doing, in which case the teacher can let it go on a bit longer.
Usually, children of this age love what is familiar and may seem indifferent to something new. However, this does not mean that the teacher should never try anything new, because what is new in one lesson has become familiar by the second lesson.
Young children may spend a long time absorbing language before they actually produce anything. It is not a good idea to try to force them to speak in the target language as this can create a lot of emotional stress. By doing repetitive songs, rhymes, games and plenty of choral work, children will be able to produce language without the stress of having to speak individually.
Children of this age are less inhibited. They are not afraid to be imaginative and they are not yet bound by the constraints that demand that adults be logical. As they are so young, they are not carrying any negative attitudes left over from previous school experiences. They are curious about everything, keen to learn, and very receptive. However, they can be selfish and uncooperative. If they want something, they will push another child over to get it and show little concern for the other child’s feelings. Some of them will use temper tantrums to try and get their own way, and may scream or bite. Some may need help with going to the toilet and there could be occasional accidents with incontinence.
In the primary school years (6-11 years), children are in the concrete operational stage, that is, they are not as egocentric as before, they can perceive something else beyond their own realities and point of view, and have an incipient comprehension of physical and mechanical realities and causal relationships, though they cannot yet carry out abstract operations. Their memory techniques are progressively developed, being able to review, organize and use imagery, recall and scripts for learning. The first metacognitive abilities appear, so that they can start learning how to carry out intellectual processes such as planning, decision-making and strategic choice for solving problems.
Linguistically speaking, they have learnt nearly everything regarding the oral aspects of the language, including discourse and pragmatic skills such as illocutionary intentions, speech registers and topic shifts. Nevertheless, some grammatical aspects are still in the process of being learnt, such as the full use of co-ordinators, conditionals, and relative clauses. Another very important task ahead is the achievement of complete proficiency for the symbolic communication represented by reading and writing, which, for the English learners, has an added degree of complexity, due to its deep orthographic system.
This is the situation of prospective Primary learners, whose job is learning a new language with the cognitive and linguistic tools they have and with the help of the teacher (and probably a textbook).

THE TEACHING PROCESS
o  Language learning takes place best of all in an anxiety-free and joyful atmosphere
o  The development of receptive skills (listening) takes place before the development of productive skills (speaking)
o  Children learn by what they see, hear and do.
o  Children usually go through a silent period, in which they understand but are unable to speak. Thus, listening activities should take a large proportion of the class time.
o  Written activities should be used very sparingly with younger children. Children of six or seven years old are often not yet proficient in the mechanics of writing in their own language.
o  Humour, stimulation of pupils’ fantasy, vivid illustrations, clear visual aids and a good teaching system are important devices for successful learning.
o  Use the second language as much as possible. It is not difficult to give instructions for the usual classroom routines in English: using gestures as well, the children will soon become used to them. The teacher can also use words that are similar to the mother tongue, or use visual cues, or even build an ‘English hat’. Wearing it, the teacher is supposed to understand only English.
o  There should be different groupings: whole class/  pairwork/ groupwork/ individual.
o  Feedback is vital for learning. Feedback is a time in class when the children and teacher can look back at, and reflect on, what they have been doing. Feedback can take place immediately after the children have done an activity, at the end of a series of activities, or on a fixed day each week or fortnight. But it must be regular.



Approach, Method, Technique, and Strategy



APPROACH
o   A set of assumptions dealing with the nature of language, learning, and teaching.
o   Theoretically well-informed positions and beliefs about the nature of language, the nature of language of learning, and the applicability of both to pedagogical settings.


METHOD
o   Described as an overall plan for systematic presentation of language based upon a selected approach.
o   A generalized set of classroom specifications for accomplishing linguistic objectives.
o   Tend to be concerned primarily with  teacher and student roles and behaviours and secondarily with such features as linguistic and subject-matter objectives, sequencing, and materials.
o   An approach is axiomatic, a method is procedural.

TECHNIQUE
o   Implementational – that which actually takes place in a classroom. It is particular trick, stratagem, or contrivance used to accomplish an immediate objective.
o   Must be consistent with a method, and therefore in harmony with an approach as well.

STRATEGY
o    Specific methods of approaching a problem or task, modes of operation for achieving a particular end, or planned design for controlling and manipulating certain information.

METHODOLOGY
o   Pedagogical practices in general (including theoretical under-pinnings and related research)
o   How to teach.

Lesson Planning and Classroom Management
A.   Lesson Planning
Most teachers engage in yearly, term, unit, weekly, and daily lesson planning (Yinger, 1980).
> Yearly and term planning usually involve listing the objectives for a particular program.
> A unit plan is a series of related lessons around a specific theme such as “The  Family.”
> Planning daily lessons is the end result of a complex planning process that includes the yearly, term, and unit plans.

Richards (1998) stresses the importance of lesson planning for English language teachers: “The success with which a teacher conducts a lesson is often thought to depend on the effectiveness with which the lesson was planned”.

Why Plan?
Language teachers may ask themselves why should they bother writing plans for every lesson. Some teachers write down elaborate daily plans; others do the planning inside their heads. Preservice teachers say they write daily lesson plans only because a supervisor, cooperating teacher, or school administrator requires them to do so.

Lesson plans are systematic records of a teacher’s thoughts about what will be covered during a lesson.
There are also internal and external reasons for planning lessons (McCutcheon, 1980).
Teachers plan for internal reasons in order to 
> feel more confident,
> learn the subject matter better,
> enable lessons to run more smoothly, and
> anticipate problems before they happen.

Teachers plan for external reasons in order to
> satisfy the expectations of the principal or supervisor and
> guide a substitute teacher in case the class needs one.

Lesson planning is especially important for preservice teachers because they may feel more of need to be in control before the lesson begins.

Daily lesson planning can benefit English teachers in the following ways:
  • A plan can help the teacher think about content: materials, sequencing, timing, and activities.
  • A plan provides security (in the form of a map) in the sometimes unpredictable atmosphere of a classroom.
  • A plan is a log of what has been taught.
  • A plan can help a substitute to smoothly take over a class when the teacher cannot teach.(purgason, 1991)

How To Plan A Lesson
Developing The Plan
An effective lesson plan starts with appropriate and clearly written objectives. An objective is a description of a learning outcome. Objectives describe the destination (not the journey) we want  our students to reach.

Generic Components Of A Lesson Plan
        I.    Perspective or opening
      II.    Stimulation
   III.    Instruction/participation
    IV.    Closure
       V.     Follow-up  

Implementing The Plan
Implementing the lesson plan is the most important (and difficult) phase of daily lesson planning cycle.
When implementing their lesson plan, teachers might try to monitor two important issues, namely, lesson variety and lesson pacing. Variation in lesson delivery and choice of activity will keep the class lively and interested. To vary a lesson, teachers should frequently change the tempo of activities from fast-moving to slow.
Pace is linked to the speed at which a lesson progresses, as well as to lesson timing. In order for teachers to develop a sense of pace, Brown (1994) suggests  the following guidelines:
(1)   activities should not be too long or too short;
(2)   various techniques for delivering the activities should “flow” together;
(3)   there should be clear transitions between each activity.

Evaluating The Plan
The following questions may also be useful for teachers to reflect on after conducting a lesson (answers can be used as a basis for future lesson planning):
  • What do you think the students actually learned?
  • What tasks were most successful? Least successful? Why?
  • Did you finish the lesson on time?
  • What changes (if any) will you make in your teaching and why (or why not)?

For further clarification of the success of a lesson, teachers can ask their students the following four questions at the end of each class; the answers can assist teachers with future lesson planning:
  • What do you think today’s lesson was about?
  • What part was easy?
  • What part was difficult?
  • What changes would you suggest the teacher make?

Format Of A Lesson Plan
1.    Goal(s)
  • You should be able to identify an overall purpose or goal that you will attempt to accomplish by the end of the class period.
2.   Objectives
       Objectives are most clearly captured in terms of stating what students will do.  In stating objectives, distinguish between terminal and enabling objectives.  Terminal objectives are final learning outcomes that you will need to measure and  evaluate. Enabling objectives are interim steps that build upon each other and lead to a terminal objective. Consider the following examples:

Terminal lesson objective:
  • Students will successfully request information about airplane arrivals and departures.

Enabling objectives:
  • Students will comprehend and produce the following ten new vocabulary items.
  • Students will read and understand an airline schedule.
  • Students will produce questions with when, where, and what time.
  • Students will produce appropriate polite forms of requesting.

3.   Materials and Equipment
  • It may seem a trivial matter to list materials needed, but good planning includes knowing what you need to take with you or to arrange to have in your classroom.

4.   Procedures
  • As a very general set of guidelines for planning, you might think in terms of making sure your plan includes:
a.    an opening statement or activity as a warm-up
b.    a set of activities and techniques in which you have considered appropriate proportion of time for
                    I.    Whole-class work
                  II.    Small-group and pair work
               III.    Teacher talk
                IV.    Student talk
     c.   closure.
5.   Evaluation
  • Evaluation is an assessment, formal or informal, that you make after students have sufficient opportunities for learning, and without this component you have no means for (a) assessing the success of your students or (b) making adjustments in your lesson plan for the next day.
6.   Extra-Class Work
  • Whether you are teaching in EFL or ESL situation, you can  almost always find applications or extensions of classroom activity that will help students do some learning beyond the class hour.
B.   Classroom Management
In a succession of practicalities for the language  classroom is to grapple with what we call Classroom Management. By understanding what some of the variables are in classroom management, you can  take some important steps to sharpening your skills as  a  language teacher.
                                    
The Physical Environment of the Classroom
One of the simplest principles of classroom management centers on the physical environment for learning: the classroom itself. Consider four categories:
1. Sight, sound, and comfort
      As trivial as it may first appear, in  the face of your decisions to implement language-teaching principles in an array of clever techniques, students are indeed profoundly affected by what they see, hear, and feel when they enter the classroom. If you have any power to control the following, then it will be worth your time to do so:
Ø The classroom is neat, clean, and orderly in appearance.
Ø Whiteboards are erased.
Ø Chairs are appropriately arranged.
Ø If the room has bulletin boards and you have the freedom to use them, can you occasionally take advantage of visuals?
Ø The classroom is as free as from external noises as possible (machinery outside, street, noise, hallway voices, etc.).
Ø Acoustics within your classroom are at least tolerable.
Ø Heating or cooling systems (if applicable) are operating.

2. Seating arrangements
       If your classroom has moveable desk-chairs, consider patterns of semi-circles, U-shapes, concentric circles, or—if your class size is small enough—one circle so that students aren’t all squarely facing the teacher.

3. Whiteboards use
      The whiteboard is one of your greatest allies. It gives students added visual input along with auditory. It allows you to illustrate with words and pictures and graphs and charts. It is always there and it is recyclable! So, take advantage of this instant visual aid by profusely using the whiteboard. At the same time, try to be neat and orderly in your whiteboard use, erasing as often as appropriate; a messy, confusing whiteboard drives students crazy.

4. Equipment
       The “classroom” may be construed to include any equipment you may be using if you’re using electrical equipment , make sure that
  • The room has outlets,
  • The equipment fits comfortable in the room,
  • Everyone can see (and/hear) the visual/auditory stimulus,
  • You leave enough time before and after class to get the equipment and return it to its proper place,
  • The machine actually words,
  • You know how to operate it,
  • There is an extra light bulb or battery or whatever else you’ll need if a routine replacement is in order.