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Jbhughes
Joined: 01 Jul 2010
Posts: 254
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 Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2012 5:56 am Post subject: Supplementary Materials - Beginners |
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It's about time that my employer expanded the centre's resources for teaching beginners.
I'm looking for listening and speaking resources that practice the most basic language points studied by sts during their lessons. The students study Cutting Edge Starter. I'm posting this on the Viet Nam forum because I'd love some recommendations that have been successful with Vietnamese learners.
Many thanks! |
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drpangloss
Joined: 21 Mar 2012
Posts: 25
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| Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2012 1:01 am Post subject: |
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I've been teaching adults for a bit now, most of whom are Vietnamese, and when I'm teaching beginners I spend a lot of time on pronunciation. I have the same class for roughly 4 hours a day and I'll spend at least 45 minutes on pronunciation, scattered as necessary. Anytime you encounter a pronunciation problem remember to drill, drill, drill. Make sure everyone has it, because a lot of people will think they've got it or pretend they do even if they don't. Of course, this is difficult to do if you've got upwards of 10-12 students, but don't let the shy beginners hide behind the strong speakers.
Students appreciate that too. It's easy for us to forget that the sounds they're learning are often totally unfamiliar to them, and being able to accurately say and understand a few things creates a foundation on which they can build the rest of their learning. |
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Jbhughes
Joined: 01 Jul 2010
Posts: 254
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| Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2012 4:13 am Post subject: |
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| drpangloss wrote: |
I've been teaching adults for a bit now, most of whom are Vietnamese, and when I'm teaching beginners I spend a lot of time on pronunciation. I have the same class for roughly 4 hours a day and I'll spend at least 45 minutes on pronunciation, scattered as necessary. Anytime you encounter a pronunciation problem remember to drill, drill, drill. Make sure everyone has it, because a lot of people will think they've got it or pretend they do even if they don't. Of course, this is difficult to do if you've got upwards of 10-12 students, but don't let the shy beginners hide behind the strong speakers.
Students appreciate that too. It's easy for us to forget that the sounds they're learning are often totally unfamiliar to them, and being able to accurately say and understand a few things creates a foundation on which they can build the rest of their learning. |
I completely agree we should focus on pronunciation at the beginner level. Of course, drilling is only part of the picture.
What supplementary material do you favour for listening and speaking at the beginner level and why? |
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I'm With Stupid
Joined: 03 Sep 2010
Posts: 432
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| Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2012 9:46 pm Post subject: |
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I've found the Teacher's Resource Book for both Cutting Edge and Reward to be very useful. The extra activities tend to focus on speaking in particular, and it's a fairly quick way to get a good activity for the language point you're working on.
For pronunciation, I like Tree or Three, which is the elementary version of Ship or Sheep, and is very logically structured for a longer course, based on the Adrian Underhill chart. I think it's very powerful if you teach it in combination with the chart (at any level), because it empowers the students to know exactly how to physically get to their target sound from the incorrect one they're currently saying, just based on its position on the chart.
But to be honest, at lower levels, I'm more likely to simply make my own activities in order to expand or adapt what's in the book. |
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snollygoster
Joined: 04 Jun 2009
Posts: 478
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| Posted: Fri Apr 06, 2012 12:46 am Post subject: Resources |
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Sparklebox.com
Anglomaniacy.com
eslkids.com
Thoise 3 will give you plenty of resources.
If my links are not correct (I'm doing this out of my head) Google the correct links and you will be busy all day making choices. |
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Andy123
Joined: 24 Sep 2009
Posts: 206
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| Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2012 4:29 pm Post subject: |
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I have spent thousand of hours researching for classroom material that "fits" my Viet students. Anyone who has a one fits all approuch is ignorant.
I make my own material mostly or use material and then Vietnamese it. When I do this it takes a couple of classes to iron out the wringles and test it. The great thing is that when you find that nugget you can recycle the hell out of it with differing classes. Unfortuantely, Viets have little interest in doing activities twice. Too short of an attention span.
Finding listening activities is tough but after years I came up with some good ones. Not to anger anyone but when a teacher tells me they teach listening I politely go to the restroom and vomit. Listening for the most part is self taught.
As teachers when can give limited tools but that is it. The student does the work and teachers that use CD's in the classroom are lazy in my humble opinion. The Ss can do that at home and there is no need to waste valueable classroom time.
I am sure this will make the fur stand up on many. Sorry, just my experience. |
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toiyeuthitmeo
Joined: 21 May 2010
Posts: 213
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| Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2012 12:38 pm Post subject: |
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| Sound Foundations is a good book for pron ideas and methodology. Oxford has a series called Resource Books for Teachers and I believe it has a Beginners book, which is good. |
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Jbhughes
Joined: 01 Jul 2010
Posts: 254
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| Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2012 5:27 pm Post subject: |
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Many thanks for your replies and apologies for the belated response.
| I'm With Stupid wrote: |
I've found the Teacher's Resource Book for both Cutting Edge and Reward to be very useful. The extra activities tend to focus on speaking in particular, and it's a fairly quick way to get a good activity for the language point you're working on.
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I use the Teacher's Resource Book for Cutting Edge too and find it useful for the most part. Some of it is a bit dated though, or not relevant to Vietnamese learners, another problem can be having to spend (waste) some time on feeding them some vocab to be able to complete the task. Obviously, I don't think that the latter is a problem in itself, but when the words are not likely to be used by sts in the future, I'd rather be using lesson time for something else. Another problem I find is that some of the tasks seem a little boring or at least aren't very lively. Would you (or anyone else) say that the Reward resource book (or perhaps another) plugs the gaps that the Cutting Edge one doesn't fill?
| I'm With Stupid wrote: |
| For pronunciation, I like Tree or Three, which is the elementary version of Ship or Sheep, and is very logically structured for a longer course, based on the Adrian Underhill chart. I think it's very powerful if you teach it in combination with the chart (at any level), because it empowers the students to know exactly how to physically get to their target sound from the incorrect one they're currently saying, just based on its position on the chart. |
Mostly, I use my own activities for pronunciation, a lot of it can be something simple such as underlining the structure in the tapescript and noticing whatever features are important. Vietnamese learners that I've taught have always been so entrenched in attempting to pronounce words using the spelling (often causing interference from L2). I find that moving them away from this (and the incorrect pronunciation they learnt in previous learning experiences) is at least as important as anything else when it comes to pronunciation. In earlier attempts, I use to do a lot of drilling, highlighting sounds in words. Nowadays, I've moved towards more discovery-based learning and crucially I think, giving them something more tangible to replace their attempts at trying to read the words out loud. I don't use the chart explicitly, I think I will take your advice and try out using it though. Of course, I'll have to remember all that business about the mouth widening and opening as you go across or up or whatever it is...
| I'm With Stupid wrote: |
| But to be honest, at lower levels, I'm more likely to simply make my own activities in order to expand or adapt what's in the book. |
Yeah, I do create some of my resources, but most that I have now I created a while ago and I'm feeling quite uninspired on that front. Maybe with a breath of fresh air from some decent resources, I'll start making some better ones again.
| snollygoster wrote: |
sparklebox.com
Anglomaniacy.com
eslkids.com
Thoise 3 will give you plenty of resources.
If my links are not correct (I'm doing this out of my head) Google the correct links and you will be busy all day making choices. |
I found the correct links:
http://www.anglomaniacy.pl/
http://www.esl-kids.com/
http://www.sparklebox.co.uk/
They look pretty good for kids, thanks!
| Andy123 wrote: |
I have spent thousand of hours researching for classroom material that "fits" my Viet students. Anyone who has a one fits all approuch is ignorant.
I make my own material mostly or use material and then Vietnamese it. When I do this it takes a couple of classes to iron out the wringles and test it. The great thing is that when you find that nugget you can recycle the hell out of it with differing classes. Unfortuantely, Viets have little interest in doing activities twice. Too short of an attention span.
Finding listening activities is tough but after years I came up with some good ones. Not to anger anyone but when a teacher tells me they teach listening I politely go to the restroom and vomit. Listening for the most part is self taught.
As teachers when can give limited tools but that is it. The student does the work and teachers that use CD's in the classroom are lazy in my humble opinion. The Ss can do that at home and there is no need to waste valueable classroom time.
I am sure this will make the fur stand up on many. Sorry, just my experience. |
This is very interesting. I think essentially what you are suggesting is that listening for listening�s sake (For example, the parts of coursebooks where the listening isn�t used to introduce a language point) should be done in sts time and classroom time given over to other skills or learning requiring contact time with a teacher and other language users. Is this a fair reflection of your point? Perhaps that isn�t quite exactly it, but I certainly have some potential challenges in using this approach in my workplace and would love if you can take the time to answer a few of them:
-What medium do the sts use for listening at home? How do you supply this medium to them? Is it directed, for example �listen to this specific text and answer these questions� or more general, like �use these texts�, or �use this website to practice your listening� etc?
-How do you ensure that they do the listening homework? I realise that this is pretty much the same question as �how do you ensure they do homework in general?� but listening is such an important skill that can�t be skipped, I suppose this is one of the reasons why teachers cover it in the classroom.
-Do you use listening texts to present language points in the classroom?
-As I�m sure you�re aware, a lot of listening is �top-down�, the listener should use their knowledge of the listening content prior to listening to form some kind of prediction of what may be said. Without ensuring (/marshalling/stimulating/cultivating/) this skill happens within the classroom, how do you make sure sts regularly apply it to their listening activities before �pressing play�? Or do you follow some kind of other approach?
-Further to the previous issue:
To be honest, I�m so used to sts skipping to the next exercise, or finding the easiest route to complete whatever they are doing, that I end up treating most adults like kids. I wonder if I�m the only one who has had this experience, though.
Some examples of what I mean:
�Look at the picture, describe it, don�t look at the text below�
has become
�Cover the text below the picture. *pause to wait for all sts to do this* �Describe the picture�
--
�Answer q1, don�t answer Q2� {question 1 is a gist task, question 2 is a fill the blanks task based on the listening}
has become
�Close your books.� *pause to wait for all sts to do this* �Answer the question on this handout/the board�/dictate the question to them
--
�Look at the first part of your handout and answer the questions, then check in pairs�
has become
�Fold your handout in half here *fold handout in front of sts, show them exactly where to fold it, wait for all sts to fold it* �what is the final word at the bottom of the page?�
or
handing out parts of a handout piecemeal.
Now I do accept that this type of behaviour can be symptomatic of other problems � for example, not clear enough instructions, not checking that sts understanding the instructions or ineffectively checking their understanding. Pacing, incorrect placement of sts, too difficult or un-engaging tasks/lessons can also be causes. However, I have found enough cases where I�m sure enough that these common problems have been avoided to suggest that sts (that I teach) simply require a very prescriptive approach to tasks, without room to manoeuvre into the wrong territory. I can only imagine them turning on the cd, deciding it�s too hard and then digging up the tapescript, before translating half of it.
Did you experience similar attitudes to learning? Were you able to circumvent them somehow (learner training/study skills I suppose would be the area)? Further to prior question, how did you ensure that they were following the(a) correct procedure to listening at home?
It never ceases to amaze me how the attitude of the correct answer is so much more important than the way you get to the answer (and clearly implicated in that, the way you would get to the correct answer in a similar, but not exact situation). Sts will copy down the answer to a listening exercise from the board long after the listening exercise has been finished with and we�ve moved onto something else. Sts will gleefully outright copy the answers from someone else�s book without even considering the possibility that they haven�t learnt how to get them. Sts would much rather argue over the answer to some fill-in-blank answer, than discuss or discover the rules regarding the meaning of a particular grammar point.
Please don�t think my response critical (although I am critical of VNese learning), I�m genuinely interested in your point of view and something very much on my mind at the moment is listening homework.
Finally, would you mind sharing where you found some of the listening activities you mentioned?
| toiyeuthitmeo wrote: |
| Sound Foundations is a good book for pron ideas and methodology. Oxford has a series called Resource Books for Teachers and I believe it has a Beginners book, which is good. |
Thanks! I�ll check it out. |
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