The process of giving instructions

[Ang26]

Hello

Not sure If I'm posting this in the right place. I'm a newbie still trying to find her way in these boards , but I'm currently conducting an action research project as part of my Masters program, and I was wondering if anybody knows of a good article or book about giving effective and clear instructions to your students.

Thank you!

Angie

[jotham]

I don't know if this helps you, but I've always liked this website and referred it to others, especially textbook writers.
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/ ... ation.html

[fluffyhamster]

Hi Angie. Can you clarify if you indeed mean 'instructions plural' (that is, commands to direct students and ensure the smooth running of activities, "Classroom English"), or 'instruction uncount/explaining grammar' (which is what Jotham seems to be assuming). Me, I'm guessing that you mean the former - though it is related to and feeds into the latter i.e. might not be a particularly "vital" area in and of itself (see e.g. Thornbury & Slade's Conversation for discussion of how threadbare and sterile, "unfruitful" a lot of pedagogy is); that being said, at the other extreme, formulating explicit rules without exceptions is a tough task for teachers let alone students and can soon get out of hand with no clear benefit in sight. I'm sure for example that you too might also soon find a fair bit that is shaky in the page that Jotham posted (some might argue however that it is a catalyst for discussion, and exciting discussion at that!).

I'm not saying that teachers shouldn't be educating and pushing themselves, just that what we sometimes burden ourselves with need not concern our students directly so much.

[Ang26]

I'm talking more about the "Classroom English". Those instructions you give to your students to work on a specific task. The reason I decided to work on this as part of my action research project is because I sometimes find myself over-explaining things or making instructions too difficult to follow.

Thanks for the replies.

[fluffyhamster]

Found these after searching for Spratt, and Willis. Note the non-native intended consumer/audience (as if natives don't have problems ever in expressing themselves!):

3a) English for the non-native teacher (chronological sequence):
Jane Willis. 1981. Teaching English through English. Longman.
Hughes, Glyn S. 1981. A handbook of classroom English. Oxford U.P.
Mary Spratt. 1994. English for the teacher. Cambridge U.P.
Voss, Bernd. 1995. A coursebook in classroom English. Lang. [for Germans]

None of these are or appear to be particularly academic (but then, you are doing action research).

I'd add books like Blundell et al's Function in English - unfortunately still out of print whenever I've looked - because they'll help blur that line between classroomese and wider usage; establishing a set pattern of expected behaviour through a limited stock of phrases might be useful when dealing with unruly classes, but a teacher who always orders e.g. 'Turn to page ten' for want of thinking of anything "better" (more varied, less imperative and more e.g. invitational - 'Hey, have you seen the picture on page ten?', or even just '(Can you) take a look at page ten!') is not to my mind helping the students (by modelling wider usage) enough, and you have to wonder which sort of class generally might develop the better dynamics.

[fluffyhamster]

Bear in mind also that a lot can be achieved (or avoided!) by good material design - if it is intuitively clear what is to be done, you can save a lot of breath (Silent Way ahoy! LOL).

[Ang26]

Thank you so much for those, fluffyhamster. I appreciate it.

[revel]

Hey fluffy and all!

This is an curious subject and I’d be interested to find out what individual teachers do in the case of giving instructions.

I don’t see myself as a colloquial informant for my students. As the majority of them have more severe issues to face, such as word order and pronunciation, I usually train them to accept standard instructions such as “page 13” or “open your student books to page 13” so that they begin to accept strings of sounds instead of stubbornly trying to understand each and every “word” of my instructions. This has often been an important interference in their comprehension of English. My most frustrating private students are those who ask me to pronounce each and every word clearly and separately and who then complain when, in “real life” (conversations, songs, movies) they find that there are no words but just long strings of sounds that firstly they are unable to replicate and secondly are unable to understand based on their insistence to hear and understand every single “word”.

It is also a case of economic use of class time. The majority of my students will not dedicate time outside of class to practice, so some of the class time must be dedicated to pronunciation exercise to strengthen muscles and manipulate sound combinations to later be able to recognize those sounds as meaningful when heard. It’s what my guitar teacher pointed out to me when teaching me finger exercises: you play each scale twice, not only to teach your fingers to make the right moves, but also to teach your ears to identify those sounds you are making with your finger moves. It’s like typing this posting, I find my lips moving as I write each word, some of those words I have typed thousands of times, but longer, unfamiliar words are sounded out and the fingers rapidly respond by plucking out the correct letter.

So, for me, offering alternatives, as suggested by fluffy, like “Hey, did you guys get a look at the generous chest of the girl on page 13 of your textbook?” would simply lead to unuseful time spent on explaining “hey” and “you guys” and “generous chest” (I mean t*ts, boobs, and the other dozen words for them) that would not contribute to learning what I am teaching, which is 1. How to take advantage of the generous study time offered by television advertising; and 2. How to stop thinking about English as a construct and begin using it as an automatic way to communicate thoughts. I repeat “for me”, as my objectives in class are not to teach my students English, I don’t offer them the fish but rather the fishing pole.

Thanks for listening!

peace,
revel.

[fluffyhamster]

Yesterday I thought I'd try some Lotte papaya chunks coated in chocolate, and found that they reminded me a lot of the Revels with the orange centers that get stuck all over your teeth; and the very next day look who appears! (Talk of the revel!) I tell you, it's uncanny. How you resemble those Revels, revel. Anyway, welcome back! How've you been?

I like your no-nonsense 'OK lads, you know the drill, page 13 and here are your cyanide capsules if you get left behind' (which they may well do if you refuse to model slower at first, even if the phrases aren't as tough as 'You were oggling those resplendent zeppelins, be honest now SJ').(BTW did you catch the spanking recent "panties" thread? That was more excitement than us old codgers should be able to stand).

Anyway enough of page 10 or 13 or even page 3 (of the Sun tabloid newspaper), none of these are functionally that vital or hard to grasp (fnarr ha ha).

[revel]

Hey fluffy and all!

Fluffy said “none of these are functionally that vital or hard to grasp” and there I agree with him. A word or two might need to be looked up in the dictionary or asked of the teacher, if the student is really going to use that word it will be remembered for future use and very little class time will be needed for such. Give the student a long list of vocabulary for br**sts and then tell him (usually a man, women would use other, more polite words) that he can choose the one or two that most suit him when talking about them with other men over a beer or when seeing some big ones float by the office window (as in zeppelins). In any case, such is vocabulary building and doesn’t usually involve instructions in my class.

Now that is a lie, I do say “note that word on your New Words Sheet, it’s pronounced this way (here I put a phonetic transcription on the board) and it means this or is used in these circumstances.” Vocabulary work is part of many classes, as I like my students to ask, with a basic question like “What does xxx mean?” (And not the textbook, lengthy and artificial sounding “What is the meaning of xxx?” which does not offer a real practice of the do auxiliary in a question that will get a real response from the listener and not simply a parrot response from the practice partner) so that I am sure that the majority of the nouns and verbs that they will encounter in the ensuing exercises will not be “greek” to them and that they will concentrate on the manipulation of sound and structure instead of beating their heads against vocabulary. You can imagine how many teenagers, for example, claim not to understand entire texts simply because there are two or three unfamiliar words in such. If such texts are taken apart structurally, without explaining the unknown words, students can often guess the meanings or at least get the gist of the text without exact meanings. This process has helped so many of my review students pass those silly exams they have to take to prove that they have studied English in school, when they have actually studied it at home and in the academy where I work.

I’ve been away a while, it’s true. Bought a house in a village where internet was either a 26k modem or a thing of the 22nd century, until I finally got the city hall to turn on the Wifi dish, (it had been installed for six months before they got around to plugging it in). I had checked in at work a couple of times back in February, but quit that job and have had to move my arse to find other work, which I have found, in an academy where there are no bosses, just fellow teachers, all working to make sure there are students in their classrooms, that those students learn and thus repeat the next year. Lots of stress has flaked off of me leaving that bossy boss (there’s a thread here called something like “Quitting my Job” where I had given details a couple of years ago). So, yes, I’m back, with my free comments and my avoidance of addressing other members directly. Interesting to see that we are the same old five or six who use this forum despite the vast number of members who could give their $.02! After nearly a year without writing a post, I’m still number 12 on the ranking of posters….and heading towards number ten again!

peace,
revel.

**[I can't believe that word is censured here! What if I were giving a recipe for chicken *beep* in green sauce? Please, someone, do something about the parental control on this forum, I'm a grown-up now and respect my fellow posters by trying not to use too harsh of language, like "br**st". For those who don't get it, ** is ea] {I've just discovered that if it is singular, that is, breast, it gets by the auto-cesure, but if you make it plural, it becomes *beep*. Hmm, are those "double standards" working there?}

[Lorikeet]

While I agree you shouldn't have to, you can always use spaces like b r e a s t s to get your point across. Just be glad your name isn't D i c k.