Written by Fidelio @ Worlda
It’s
a helpless suffering for an ESL kid to get stuck in a tough circle filled with
routine blocks announced by the teacher’s tedious orders: “Let’s
learn some new words first”, “Here
comes the patterns”, “Now we need to make
some practice for the sentences” ... These iron fences
somehow destroy both the students’ and the teacher’s
appetite for a new lesson: just successfully dragging themselves to
the end of the class.
Thus the methods on integrated teaching are
urged to get used in a vivid learning environment, which is definitely not
attempting to leave out some necessary procedures but combine their strengths
together in a global setting.
This passage here is going to talk briefly about
several limitations in conventional ESL classes and provide some references on
integrated meaningful teaching.
The Gap Between Words and Sentences
We’re commonly convinced
that language is a complex integrity and it generates and conveys meaning in
specific situations. Unfortunately, a pile of vocabulary usually comes ahead
separately of sentences or conversation patterns, simply like getting scattered
on two isolated islands, later then the ESL teacher tries hard but often vainly
to tie them tightly, with the gap remaining so clear: the students probably
fail to activate the dull learnt words and make use of the sentences in other
circumstances.
We hold that words and sentences (patterns
filled in with both new and old words) are supposed to be better acquired in a
concrete situation in which every step of students’ activities gets
implemented. So each point of the lesson should be presented at the very
beginning of the class and put into comprehension and application during kinds
of coming interaction that together lead to the accomplishment of teaching
objectives.
More Chances for Input and Practice
As sentence is the smallest linguistic unit in
social communication, it ought to be the production of highest levels in an ESL
class. How stressful must the students feel upon the patterns pushed to the
second half of the class! What poor efficiency of class-running!
It’s recommended that
sentences be first presented in the Warm-up part and remain continuously input
and practiced until they can be autonomously put out.
There’s no doubt that
well-created situations ideally serve language-learning but we often encounter inadequate
equipment or insufficient time. Though, we still need a simplified context for
students to listen more and speak more.
Here’s an extracted example
from a unit of Longman Welcome to English 3A, with the content of some
activities at a birthday party and Simple Future Tense indicated by the pattern
be going to.
New Phrases
Play games, make some snacks, do some magic
Conversation Patterns
-
What are you / they going to do?
- We / they are going to ________.
- What is he / she
going to do?
- He / She is going to ________.
For this, we can show a table on PPT as follow with
some relevant pictures around it, which illustrate the actions that the
students are about to learn and have already learnt before. Particularly, the
conversation patterns should be firmly kept on display during the interaction.
People Invited
|
Activities
|
Mom & Dad
|
|
Philip
|
|
John
|
|
Lily & Lucy
|
|
Alex
|
|
Aunt & Uncle
|
Then the teacher asks the student questions like
these:” Just Guess! What are Mom and Dad going to do at
the party?” (pointing to a picture) “Are
they going to sing a song?” (pointing to another
one) “Are they going to dance?” (shifting again) “Are
they going to MAKE SOME SNAKES?” (going into the new
phrase) “Who thinks Mom and Dad are going to MAKE SOME
SNAKES?”
Now the teacher may help a kid or a group relatively
better at English to complete the whole sentence with the new phrase and enter
its synchronous practice process (by a game) with the conversation at least
getting input for a few times. When the class finishes the phrase’s
full practice, there comes the time to reveal the parents’
activity, with which the students must be so familiar, not necessarily the
newly-learnt one.
It’s significant that the
teacher should closely mind the rhythm of students’ learning. When the
class reaches the second or the third row of the table, the students are likely
to have been engaged smoothly in the practice round of the patterns (both the
questions and the answers) because of the previous considerable amount of meaningful
repetition. Similarly, the last two rows can be seen as a platform to trigger
students to produce their own sentences.
Competitive System
Competition is absolutely not merely adding points.
It’s basically a measure for class arrangement, aimed
at drawing learners’ physical and mental attention. Meanwhile, according
to Piaget, a renowned psychologist on constructivism, it makes a crucial
contribution to knowledge construction for a learner to interact with the
environment, including the interpersonal reality and objective existence. So
positive and meaningful competitions (usually in the style of game and acing)
are indispensable.
Still taking the former instance, the stickers can
be designed as the ranges of activities that the students like to do: the more
stickers, the wider range. And when they get awarded, they’re
encouraged to interact with the teacher or other peers, making use of the
patterns as well as old and new words. What’s more, a chess-like mechanism
is another choice.
Actually, there’s surely not just a
single way. Inspiration comes form real action. What we
manage
to do is to let our kids and ourselves try more, think more and gain more.
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