14-05-2015_19-15-42 / AНСМОВА_ПДРУЧНИК

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your lists with the person sitting next to you; correct the mistakes and count the words. Which list will be the longest one?

Topic: WRITING LETTERS.

Warmer: (pre-teach) Game "Jigsaw sentences". Teacher gives a set of jigsaw sentences to each pair or group of students and asks them to make up and read three sensible sentences. The sentences are related to the topic of the lesson.

Warmers or warming up activities, ice-breakers, brainstorming, regrouping activities, information gap, jigsaw, problem-solving and decision-making, opinion exchange, games, role-play and simulations, drama, projects, interviews, making surveys are typical activities of interactive classroom which motivate learners to participate using the target language. The majority of them are communicative or free.

Special attention should be given to the characteristic of communicative/free activities as they are the goal in communicative classroom (see table 24, App. 4). As any speech activity, a communicative activity is purposeful. Teacher should create a communicative purpose motivating learners to fulfill a stated communicative task. That will create a desire to communicate, without which communication will fail. Free, communicative activity focuses on content, first and foremost, not on form, as the priority is given to fluency of speech, its appropriacy to the situation, but not to grammatical accuracy. Students are free to express themselves, thus a variety of language is used. Such kinds of activities encourage students to communicate without teacher intervention or material control as in real life.

The biggest challenge for teacher during a lesson is converting exercises written in a textbook into classroom activities, to state a communicative task which is a must for communicative classroom. Sometimes instructions to exercises may leave teacher uncertain as to the management of classroom realization of it, its conversion into activity. For example, a typical instruction may be as follows:

Fill in the words from the list or Underline the correct word then explain your choice. How can teacher break the monotony and convert the exercise into exciting

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a)__________________________________;

b)__________________________________;

c)__________________________________;

d)Product of activity;

e)___________________________________.

2. Choose free activities from the list belon:

3. Match the terms with their definitions:

4. Rearrange the components of activity procedure in a logical way:

a)close;

b)set up;

c)lead-in;

d)post activity;

e)run.

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5. The activities that follow - games, surveys, projects, brainstorming,

information gap, jigsaw, problem-solving, decision-making exercises - can be

Useful terms

Choir work: Variant of cooperative interaction in the mode Class – Class;

Student – Class)

Controlled practice: Exercises or activities where the teacher models the forms to be produced, provides a necessary linguistically correct input.

Exercise: An activity or process that helps practice a particular skill/habit; test a student's knowledge or skill.

Free practice: The stage of a lesson in which teacher does not intervene or attempt to control learner production. Practice can vary in the extent to which it is free (contrast with controlled practice).

Icebreakers: Activities to help learners and teacher get to know each other at the beginning of a course.

Interactive activities: Activities that promote interaction in the classroom being the most effective at maintaining cooperative learning atmosphere and fostering students‘ acquisition of communicative competence.

Manipulated activities: Those which provide students with a "prepackaged structures" (by means of tape, book, etc).

Mode of interaction: Pattern according to which classroom interaction runs. There are some most widespread modes as Teacher-Class/Class-Teacher; TeacherStudent; StudentStudent; Student1Student2- Student-3 etc; group work.

On-task behavior: Learner behavior which is directed towards the lesson or activity (opposite: off-task behavior).

Problem-solving activity: An activity where learners have to solve a problem (e.g. choose the best applicant for a job from several descriptions of applicants).

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Rapport: The quality of relationship within the classroom.

Re-grouping activities: Aimed at the ways of organizing groups, for example, dividing students by rows, hair colour, dates of birth, number of family members, or food preferences.

Simulation: A group activity which imitates (simulates) real life situations. Learners play themselves.

Speech activity: A purposeful interaction of people via language.

Task: Applied to a separable element of a lesson, which is primarily geared to practicing language presented earlier and which has a specific objective.

Working in chain: Students answer one by one, in chain.

Reports proposed on the theme

The role of warming up activities in successful classroom communication.

Controlled practice in the English lesson.

Variety of re-grouping activities and techniques.

Project work in language classroom and outclassroom practice.

Further reading

Чуйко С. В. Проектна методика навчання іноземної мови / С. В. Чуйко //

Англійська мова та література. – 2004. – № 31. – С.4–5.

Якунін І. С. Інтерактивність як засіб розвитку критичного мислення на уроках англійської мови та літератури / І. С. Якунін // Англійська мова та література. –

2004. – № 22-23. – С.4–10.

Душеина Т. В. Проектная методика на уроках иностранного языка / Т. В. Душеина // ИЯШ. – 2003. – № 5 – С. 38–41.

Deller Sh. Lesson from the Learner / Sh. Deller. – Harlow : Longman, 1991. – 78 p.

Scrivener J. Learning Teaching / J. Scrivener. – Oxford : Macmillan Heinemann, 1994. – 218 p.

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3

TEACHING VARIOUS ASPECTS OF LANGUAGE

3.1.ENGLISH LANGUAGE PRACTICE. SYSTEM OF EXERCISES

3.2.TEACHING GRAMMAR

3.3.TEACHING VOCABULARY

3.4.TEACHING PRONUNCIATION

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3. TEACHING VARIOUS ASPECTS OF LANGUAGE

Language is the chief means of personality‘s self-expression and building social interaction with other people. Language functions owing to language habits and skills people have acquired. The only way to achieve a good operational command of the target language in a wide range of real world situations and to communicate effectively is to form language habits and develop speech skills.

3.1. English language practice. System of exercises

Teaching various aspects of language and language skills needs constant language practice. Chapter 2.4. covered the theory of activity and the ways of converting exercises prescribed in coursebooks and different teacher manuals into classroom activities. As we see, there is a difference between exercise and activity. The former contains a set of language material to practise individually or in cooperation with others, at home or in the classroom setting, whereas activity is a part of lesson. Exercise has a four-stage structure (see table 26 App.4) and is classified according to special criteria (see table 27 App.4). The first criterion is according to the direction of communication: receiving or producing the message. Exercises are classified as receptive, reproductive, receptive-reproductive (phrase level); productive, receptiveproductive (segment level).

Receptive exercises are aimed at receiving some oral or written information that is perceived via listening or reading. Listening to sounds, words, grammar structures, somebody‘s speech, recordings, etc. practises aural comprehension/reception. Reading words, word-combinations, phrases, texts practises reading comprehension/reception.

For example,

Listen to the recording and follow the map.

Read the words and find vowel letters in them.

Reproductive exercises are aimed at reproducing language forms such as grammar structures, lexical units, sounds and intonation patterns. Learners reproduce

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some language orally or in written form (e.g. pronounce phonetic drills/ pronounce or write fixed expressions, phrasal idioms, fixed frames, single word forms/different grammar elements and structures).

For example,

Pronounce the sounds/letters done:-

Copy the words into your copybooks.

Receptive-reproductive exercises aim at the two-step practice. For example,

Listen to the recording and repeat the structures of Present Perfect.

Read the words and write down those which are related to the topic FOOD.

Productive exercises aim at producing an utterance or a text. For example,

Look at the pictures and express your opinion about the variety of leisure activities people can enjoy at weekends. (Oral production)

Write a letter to your pen-friend inviting him to visit your country in summer.

(Written production)

Receptive-productive exercises aim at gaining some information through listening or reading first and reacting to the information received orally or in written form.

For example,

Listen to the dialogue and answer the questions.

Listen to the woman complaining about her holiday troubles and write down a letter of advice to her.

Read the timetable and discuss with the partner the best route to London. Read the article about Lady D and write down the plan of it.

The second principal criterion of exercise classification is according to its communicative value. In this sense exercises may be speech/communicative, relatively-communicative and language/non-communicative. Speech/communicative exercises are designed to practice speech skills and develop communicative competences. Such type of exercises is organized mainly in a classroom setting as

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classroom activities (see chapter 2.4.). Relatively-communicative exercises contain meaning-focused tasks only indirectly related to real-life tasks where learners have to respond to the situation given. Language/non-communicative exercises aim at accuracy practice of language elements and mainly form-concentrated.

In communicative classroom controlled/manipulated exercises aimed at habit formation are associated with meaningful drilling. Meaningful drills are special pattern practices/exercises contextualized to meet the requirements of a communicatively-oriented design. Appropriate communicative situations are created in the classroom where learners have to repeat target language structures. Teacher follows up learners‘ training by reinforcing the forms practised. Beginners require a recycling of material from controlled practice and drills to more free expression activities. Relatively advanced learners may need to polish already developed skills and can be trusted to carry out less structured activities on their own.

Points for discussion

Communicatively-oriented exercises/activities in the language classroom.

The role of language exercises in practicing accurate production. Classification of exercises.

Self-Check

1. There are six criteria for evaluating communicative activities. Two of them are done below, add four more:

a)_______________________________________________;

b)communicative desire;

c)_______________________________________________;

d)_______________________________________________;

e)no teacher intervention;

f)_______________________________________________.

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2. Read the following instruction and decide what type the exercise is:

Read the essay title below. In pairs/small groups think of three advantages of being the only child in a family.

a)productive, communicative;

b)receptive-productive; language;

c)receptive-productive; communicative;

d)receptive, relatively-communicative.

3.Tick the exercises classified according to their communicative value: a) receptive;

b) speech;

c) relatively-communicative; d) receptive-reproductive; e) productive;

f) language;

g) reproductive.

4.Choose the most appropriate instruction to the exercise for practicing the interrogative form of verb:

a) make the following sentences interrogative; b) insert the necessary auxiliary verb;

c) ask your partner if he has done the actions you telling him to do; d) complete the sentences.

5.Choose the most appropriate instruction to the exercise for practicing the negative form of verb:

a) correct me if I am not right;

b) insert negations where necessary;

c) make the following sentences negative; d) fill in the gaps with new words.