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basiltherat · Joined: 04 Oct 2003 Posts: 952

A lot has been said about how much time the teacher should be talking and how much students should be talking. Ratios abound from 40%/60% to 10%/90%.. even 0%/100%. Personally, I am not particularly fond of this kind of stuff. My way of looking at this is... when I need to talk, I will and wen I dont need to, they will. I think this approach takes a lot of the worry away from the teacher instead of having to calculate all the time. Sometimes, I will spend 50% of the time talking and sometimes hardly any at all depending on the particular exercise or content of lesson.
any other views on this ?
basil

Stephen Jones · Joined: 21 Feb 2003 Posts: 4124

Deconstructor · Joined: 30 Dec 2003 Posts: 775 Location: Montreal

carnac · Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 10:32 am Post subject:

Hey Decon (or anyone with an idea) - do you run into the Arabic "p" and "b" thing when writing in English? As in "it is bretty" or "speaking in bublic" or drinking "bebsi"? "I went to the barty." 50% guessing rate in assessments, no clues on the part of students (at least in up-to-intermediate levels.)
Ifso, have any tricks to help them remember? Man, this causes me to lose what little hair remains. Have tried all the usual "puh" and "buh" things. It's the written part that's the problem.
Any ideas appreciated.

Deconstructor · Joined: 30 Dec 2003 Posts: 775 Location: Montreal

carnac · Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 3:35 pm Post subject:

Thanks, D. Sounds like classes I had in the US. What I've noticed here is that it happens when they're not paying attention. I hit on one tactic which is beginning to work for this and other speaking problems, but which could most emphatically NOT be used in the US, Canada, England - I went to a toy store and bought a plastic replica Uzi. When careless errors occur, I head for my Uzi while the class roars with laughter and the malfeasant scrambles for the correct pronunciation/verb form/whatever. The game is, they have until I get my Uzi in my hands to correct the error, or they are dead. (I put on a ferocious face as I put the gun to their heads!)
The students are all soldiers, so weapons are part of the scenery and not viewed as threatening, especially a plastic Uzi. It does in fact make a cool machine-gun noise when you pull the trigger! But, as I said, only usable in a very limited setting! Smile

I guess it's soldier humor. And they pay more attention. AND, most importantly, they remember!
But that damn p and b! (written).

Deconstructor · Joined: 30 Dec 2003 Posts: 775 Location: Montreal

Stephen Jones · Joined: 21 Feb 2003 Posts: 4124

Practise, and more practise.

First they need a lot of time to hear the difference. Remember that when thye were one month old babies they could hear the difference between the phonemes, just as we could hear the difference between different phonemes in Czech, but that by the time they had reached six months they could only hear the difference between phonemes that are distinct in their languages.

So, first of all you need to get them used to hearing the difference. Once they reach that stage, they might just end up being able to pronounce the difference.

With regard to spelling it depends how much they depend on the sound to recollect the spelling and how much on the shape of the printed word. Possibley because of the different alphabet, I find that they seem to rely much more on the sound.

Two anecdotes with regard to error correction and pronunciation. Back in Madrid many years back we had an Iranian friend who had managed to land himself a job teaching other Iranian refugees from Khomeini English. One day we were trying to make him understand his two main problems in pronunciation, confusing 't' with 'th' and 'i' with 'i:' . I know he replied, I can't get my tongue between my *beep*.

I had a Portuguese friend at that time who was a black belt in Tae-Kwondo. He spoke fluent but error-prone English. We agreed that I would correct his English by slapping him in the face everytime he made a mistake, and he would do the same every time I slouched with my head bent down looking at the ground, which was a bad habit I had had since childhood. After a week his progress in English was imperceptible but I had ramrod straight posture which I have never lost.