how to make a phonetics lesson active?

[Aileen]

Hi. I am an english teacher in China,and i am teaching the begainers(adults) mainly the phonetics. As they are not as active as the young people,it is a bit hard for me to activate the atmosphere in the classroom, and the main problem is that they are VERY SHY

Can anybody give any ideas about this or maybe some interesting activities??Thanks a lot in advance! [/b]

[Lorikeet]

I don't know if this is what you had in mind, but when I was teaching the very beginning level of ESL to adults, one of the things I did was to make a set of alphabet cards for each student. The letters were sort of small (all fit on one 8-1/2 x 11 sheet as I recall). I cut them out and gave each student an alphabet. First I had them put them in order. Then I said a letter and they held up the one they heard. I think you could adapt this to pair work--Two students with one set of cards. Also, the students could work together to make words, adding a "b" in front of "at" to make "bat," for example, and then changing the "b" to a "c" to make "cat," etc. I found the most important thing that Chinese students had to learn was the idea that letters are connected to sounds. Otherwise you get output like "cta" for "cat" because they are trying to memorize instead of sounding out.

[dduck]

Hi. I am an english teacher in China,and i am teaching the begainers(adults) mainly the phonetics. As they are not as active as the young people,it is a bit hard for me to activate the atmosphere in the classroom, and the main problem is that they are VERY SHY

In general, I think that shy students need a lot of emotional support to break out of the feeling "I am an idiot, I can't get anything right. What must everyone think of me?".

In order to encourage shy students to talk you need to give them easy stuff (to start with!) to do that doesn't tax their brains too much, but at the same time bonds them to you, the teacher, and the rest of the class. I like to use games with a new class - something to get them excited and interested.

Also, lots of positive feedback helps, and at the same time give all the students a chance to answer questions. Where one student is having difficulty ask the other students to help him or her. As I said, it's about bonding the students together.

I teach Hispanic students, who are generally not very hard to get worked up. I'm not sure how my ideas would translate to a Chinese class but there here for you to chew over.

Iain

[stephen]

I like the cards idea that Lorikeet gave; before you use the cards for what Lorikeet suggested you could also use them for doing some discrimination work. Maybe, you could try this.

First, introduce the sound/letter relationships (and maybe drill a bit.)

Second, you say the sounds and the students have to match the letter or the letter combinations (eg. th) to the sounds you make (I'd repeat each sound a couple of times.) (They could do this in pairs, groups or individually.)

Also, Lorikeet's activity deals with words with the same end sounds, when they get a bit more advanced you could use the same activity, but for words with the same beginning sounds. (And with not extra cutting things up!!)

Another thing you could use is Elkonin boxes. Basically, this is a picture of the object, animal, person, etc. with a box for each letter underneath. You say the word (or perhaps initially just spell it) and the students write the letters into the boxes. (Also, possibly at the same time allowing a bit of vocabulary revision.)

Anyway, good luck.
Stephen

"Giving up smoking is easy; I do it every day." Oscar Wilde

[Aileen]

Hi,all.
Thanks very much for your advices, i will try this word game tonight.
Hereinafter,i've got another question: what do you think is the most necessary things(English) the begainners should learn?
please advise,thanks.

Aileen
-----------------------------------
[email protected]