Job Discussion Forums

[schminken]

I have a newish class and I did a needs analysis and they want something done with tenses. I don't really don't know how to approach this. The problem is that it is a mixed level class: Some are really advanced and just want to work on the finer points of the language, some need more grammar than I can give them.
My university says "being fluent in English is an entrance requirement for our technical study" but there is no entrance exam in English. Now, I've done a tense review with them already (last semester) but they want more. Should I just start with present simple and work my way up or do you think I should start working backwards with error analysis exercises? Most of the students have had many years of English grammar and they still make the same mistakes. Does anyone have a helpful website that has an indepth analysis of problem areas in tenses for German speakers? Obviously present perfect but I need more! I guess the real problem is I don't know where to start with them and how far to go. They are doing a technical study and we do a lot with technical and business English.

[longtimeteach]

The issues you've come up against your class are the same ones faced by all of us I think. There aren't any websites that I know of and I've looked plenty.

The mixed level class is so common here in Germany that I just hope for enough space to separate them into groups so I can run around the classroom dealing with each level separately. The noise level escalates and that's frustrating.

I'd start with the more challenging tenses - in a review - and work backward. The reason I'd do it this way is to avoid the boredom for the more advanced speakers while alerting the less fluent to their problem areas. Once the advanced students have reached the level where it's too easy for them, have some challenging grammar acquisition exercises prepared for them to go on with or give them a killer of a writing assignment and tell them they will be exchanging the completed work with their colleagues for critique and correction.

Ask the other students to keep a list of where their problem areas are. Go over their lists with them and point them to resources they can study on their own - on the web, with grammar texts or even with a flashcard system. After all, we can't simply peel back our skulls and transplant the knowledge. Students need to take the initiative to catch up on their own and, at uni level they should be doing that already.

I'd add that I've come to believe that the plea for more grammar - even though most younger Germans are positively experts in English grammar rules - is a stall tactic used to put off the more challenging learning. (but that's simply my own experience over here)

Re: the chronic basic errors. These mistakes appear to be so ingrained the only way I've found to help at all is this method:

While it will slow things down, why not also encourage them to keep a diary of their own mistakes, as you point them out? Encourage them to use a flashcard system utilising the knowledge of the mistakes - memorising the correct way to say it.

The problem here is that you need to access a wider knowledge base than would probably exist in forums such as these. Do you belong to any e-Lists of teachers teaching German speaking students? The Swiss contingent have an excellent one. PM me for details on how to join if you're interested.

[Hod]

The first problem is your Needs Analysis. They �want something with tenses� is vaguer than vague. I�d have given them all a yellow Headway course on that information!

You need to know why they�re learning English. Is it just to get into university or will their technical course have a high English content? If the latter, they�ll need loads of writing (general and report) practice.

Germans, so I guess Austrians too, can be obsessed by grammar which is but a small part of being �fluent�, and you need to instil this into them. There are books you can buy with pages of examples of German English called something like Horror Mistakes. They have the usual �Can I become money�, but others are tricky and will test your explanation of grammar and other stuff too.

p.s. I can�t let this pass. I hope someone�s paying you very well to coordinate this mixed-level course as well as teach it.

p.p.s. You could devote your life to teaching German speakers the present perfect, but they�ll never get it. Don�t get bogged down. Does it really matter if this one tense isn�t 100% understood? You could try this one translation which helped me a bit:

Ich habe vor 3 Jahren in Frankfurt gearbeitet.
In English is:
I worked in Frankfurt 3 years ago.

[schminken]

Thanks you two! This is really great infomation and insight. I work in a Fachhochschule and I have two groups: full-time and part-time students. The full-time students are not so hard. They are younger and usually come from Gymnasium or HTL(Secondary School for Technical Studies. They get a Matura(Abitur) but the focus is on technical subjects.) They are used to being students and are more or less on the same level. The part-students are older and work 40 hours a day and come to school at night. Some of them went to HTL, some of them went to HTL or Gymnasium but 15 years ago, some of them just did a Lehre, and some of them have only learned what they know about English on the job. On top of this, we met 10 times a semester for 3 hours. It's really frustrating to make these classes flow together. I teach all the classes, all 8 semesters and you know how it is, the class dynamics never change from Semester 1 to Semester 8.

As for the grammar, I do stress communication. I tell them grammar is the nuts and bolts of the language but they just can't seem to get past it. Trying to find a starting point for the grammar is really difficult when you've got some people who can communicate pretty well but who have never had any formal grammar and on the flip side have people who are almost experts on the subject of English grammar. It's really frustrating for me. Our University states that one should be proficient in English before studying here but there is no kind of English entrance exam. It's a private institution and they can make their own rules. They want people to study here instead of going to the Technical University of Vienna or whatever so I don't think they would ever stop someone from studying here because of a low mark on an entrance exam. On the other hand, English is part of the cirriculum for every semester! Sigh.

Thanks for your help!!!! I need all the support I can get.

[poro]

schminken, you can make this very easy for yourself.

Firstly, get both classes to agree that they need to practise tenses - this is important, because then you can justify all subsequent steps.

After that, get hold of a copy of English Grammar in Use (if you don't have one already) - and suggest your students do the same - and go through the tenses, using the book's very logical order. There's a good test near the back of the book that you can use to determine where the students' deficits lie.

There's nothing about English tenses that Germans can't learn, if they (are forced to) practise for long enough.

[MarquisMark]

I would always be sure to do enough work with grammar. But I found that it was best to concentrate more on the most important tenses, and the ones that cause the most confusion with the Deutsche cause they don't exist in Deutsch, like Present Simple vs. Present Continuous, Simple Past vs. Present Perfect, etc.

Try to get them in conversation where they have to use them together in conversation, for example having the students ask each other about their experience in life (have you ever been to Spain?) to use Present Perfect and then to elaborate on a certain experience (oh yes, i was in Spain a year ago, it was a great time) to use the Simple Past. This way they can hear the difference between how they're used.

Excersizes like that help out a lot.

Some of the more complicated tenses, I ended up avoiding all together, like Past Continuous and Present Perfect Continuous, just because it caused more confusion than anything else.

And don't let them get you into the trap of trying to explain the tenses, like the reasoning behind them, as they will so often ask, or all the various exceptions to each tense. You can really get tangled up in all that and no grammar rule is absolute.

Good luck!

[bobs12]

I especially agree with the above bit about not trying to explain grammar. If you think they're just not taking it seriously enough (i.e. the need for correct grammar) and that it's bad enough to warrant effort spent on it, I use two approaches.

One, if you know the students' own language, is to translate their mistakes into their own language so they can hear what it 'really' sounds like.

Another, kinder, method is to lead them into conversation 'traps' where they have to use the grammar you want to teach them. Shake your head or show that you don't understand when they get it wrong- at more advanced levels I find a problem that students are lulled into a false sense of security by teachers who are well practiced at understanding foreign mistakes, and too lax to correct them.

Make them think for a bit and let them try a few suggestions before giving them the right answer. It might not work with everyone, but I've found it very effective with Russian students. I believe the trick is to get people's natural curiostiy going, rather than lecturing grammar straight from the book.