Teacher Discussion Forums

Hi,Teachers:
I'm a teacher in Lima Peru and my students run from 10 to 68 years old.However ,there are 2 common factors when teaching basic levels and these are :they are reluctant to speak in English even if the language is written right in fron t of them.they just won't talk,maybe they're insecure,lazy,shy...etc..so I wonder what methods do you uase in this situation.And my other question is why are ss making the same mistakes when speaking and seems no matter what ,they won't correct them.e.g. "I am agree" or "He is John and your surname is ...."

We have had some excellent discussions on speaking and why the students don't do it. Go to the search button above and type in speaking and chose one that has many answers.
This will start you off-
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewt ... ght=#40236

I bet if you taped your students today and then in a month and played it back to them, they could pick out at least some of their errors themselves. That is one of the best ways to stop fossilization it seems or you will discover that they have corrected themselves.

well,thanks so much,I think taping them is an excellent idea.Although,I have to admit I remain in the 80's when I use my walkman to record anything ..but i hope i can find my way into it.Do you have an interetsing or amusing anecdote to share???

Is there another way to tape than using the walkman?

Lately I have been using Notebook on my computer though (a Mac) and that is neat because you can insert pictures.

I once taped a young autistic student who I didn't understand very well when she talked. No one could understand her well and we thought she was producing giberish. It was at the end of the day and the walkman's battery was low so when I played it back it was slower than normal and lo and behold, I could understand every word of this low voiced playback. She had been talking so quickly that no one could understand her but every word was correct and it all made sense. We just had to tell her that and get her to slow down in real life and though that was hard for her, she would do it eventually whenever anyone looked puzzled as to what she was saying.

I did it once for an ESL student who I thought had pronunciation problems too with the same result.

If you have a macbook, just sit them in front of it and record their speech using quicktime. you can even take a video of them too, although you may want to do this in a quiet setting since the built in mic will pick up lots of sound. But, you can adjust the sensitivity too.