Facilitating Fluency

Right, so it's taken me 100 posts to actually get down to the bones of the matter. How on Earth are we to improve the fluency of our students? Well, generally speaking it's easy. Ensure they know that speaking in a language that isn't their mother tongue isn't easy and that making mistakes is both natural and useful. Once they're past that everything should start looking rosey.

How do we get past that and how do we apply it to a totally unnatural exam situation? Again, there are more ways that one. I'm just going to whizz you though a lesson I did with a few classes just last week based on an idea another teacher, and friend, came up with.

The lesson starts with a fairly simple statement. Ensuring students that the day will be about fluency over accuracy. Mistakes are ignored (not completely of course) and thinking (well, overthinking) is actively discouraged.

The first activity is simple. Put thirty seconds on the clock and students just speak. In English. About anything. Anything at all. If they're feeling particularly shy you can provide them with some kind of stimulus. The colour yellow or something equally obtuse.

Activity 2. After students have losened up I like to move onto the next section. This is where "the exam" comes into play. Be it a PET, FCE, CAE what ever. go to the picture section of the exam. Remind students of the types of thing examiners listen out for. In PET, some complex grammar, what people are doing, a bit of speculation etc.In FCE far more speculation, questions answering and a bit of comparing. The next step is to ask students to think about what they're going to say for a minute or two and then try and say it without taking a breath. Simply say what thay can in one nice deep breath. Give students 3 or 4 attempts. When they manage to complete the task they'll notice that their hesitation has gone and there are fewer umms and ahhhhs than ever before.

Activity 3and 4. Depending on class size you can do this first as a group actvitity and then broken down into pairs/threes. For this activity I get students to continue looking at the photo section of the exam, a new photo, of course. This time they work with their partner/group to create "The Perfect Minute" First they decide what they're going to talk about, then they take turns in saying a word each. This can be adapted to a sentence each if you so desire. The fact of the matter is, if students are only taking one word each, they aren't going to say um, ah, er or even... hang on a second.  When doing this, they may start by feeling silly but soon enough your students will be working in unison and giving some of the best answers you've heard. This also helps with communication further down the line. But for now we'll focus on our fluency.

Right, that's about all you're going to get from me. Saturday night has turned into Sunday morning and I think it's time I went to bed.

'Til the next time.

H

The Mind Boggles as does the game

Have you ever played boggle? It's a wonderful game to use in the classroom. you have a set of 16 dice each with 6 different letters on them. you shake them up and have to find as many words as you can. In the traditional games the letters have to be conected. In the classroom version I just get students to find as many words as they can. Or for the longest word they can conjure up with the letters on show in the time limit.  You can buy your own game then you can use it at home on those long cold rainy winter's nights or you can simply use an online generator.  I find the real game
engages my students more as they can be the ones in control of what letters come out and if there are 6 e's then they can blame Pablo and not just say it's impossible.
After the students have made a list or two I then ask them to use those words as the basis to a story or a dialogue between their teams. 
I tried this with my elementary adult class at the start of the year and saw they were porducing short sentences which often made very little sense. By the end of the year the students were trotting out bizarre and unique and often fairly racey stories. This game can really add to the studentes spontinaaity and helps them think on their feet about what to write. You can get students to keep a boggle folder and play the game a few times throughout the year. Your students will be able to see how much they've improved by the end of the year. Not only at writing but also at spotting hidden words within the game.

I trust you'll have as much fun with it as I have. Probably the best investment in a board game since buying Trivial Pursuit.

What's that sound, A step further.

good morrow one and all,
I've been talking a lot recently about the importance of pronunciation in class. I mentiod a few posts back about using the phonemic chart in the classroom as a useful tool but by no means as the be all and end all of how to help`pron.  I've been teaching my students, bit by bit, what each sound looks and sounds like. I mentioned my game What's that Sound a wee while ago. Not only does it help pron but it also throws up a whole bunch of new vocab the students would never have come across without a wee push. Well, it's been a few weeks since then and I have a whole bunch more sides that I've used in class. They have been added to the materials link just over there   --------------->                                                                                  Have fun with phonemes and don't thrust them upon your students or you'll just get a bunch of scared looking faces staring up at the utter guff you've projected in front of them.

I always follow the sounds, especially the minimal pairs, with a game or an activity in the next class to rehash them to the students. Minimal Phone numbers is always a favourite. I'll repost that blog next time so as to give you all a quick reminder and as a way of seeing some updated material.

'til next time

Game of Tones

Good afternoon all,

In further adventures from the land of STRIP I bring you. "You Had Me at Hello" This is a wonderfully quick activity which helps students understand the difference tone makes. With a great number of languages tone is absolutely vital so this concept is usually be very easily transmitted.

I start by asking the Ss what difference tone can make. I then arm them with two words. Hello and Really.  I  make sure they are aware the power these two words can weild and then I let them unleash that power on their partners.

For the first half of the activity I ask students to use one of the situatuions on the powerpoint (paper, boards) and speak to their partner in the tone of voice one would imagine a person in that situation would use. Their partner then has to guess which one they are trying to convey. If they get it wrong and feel their partner has misunderstoon the phrase then they can show them how it should be done.

It always helps to model the first two or three situations just to get students up to speed with the task. Especially those who aren't as quick as your star students.

When the students get to the Really section, I get them to translate or simply share with the class what each phrase means. Then they get 5 minutes to practice with a partner and finally they are called upon at random to do the same action as before, however, this time to the whole class. He, (or she) who guesses correctly get's to choose who speaks next.

The funnier you make the situations the more fun the students will have doing mock, over the top tones of voice.

As always you can find the slide for this within the STRIP presentation just there ------>STRIP materials
in  even more materials.

I hope your students enjoy this task as much as mine.

hasta la proxima.

H

20 Question.......Tags

Well, it's been a while hasn't it. Too long some might say. How on earth have we gone on with our lives without your frequent updates Harry? I don't know, but it seems you have and so have I.

I recently took my ESL presenter train, well bus,  off to Madrid for TESOL Spain 2014. Despite speaking at 09:30 on a balmy Sunday morning I got a pretty decent turn out, so thanks to everyone for showing your faces. Upon my return I've jumped right back into work and a mere three weeks later here I am, posting again.

There'll be a few more posts over the next few days because my brain has been simply overflowing with ideas.

This first one came about due to my students, who are all Spanish, constant use of the word No as a question tag. Try as I might I couldn't get through to them that, while English speakers do use no as a question tag, they really aren't "supposed" to. I also explained that in an exam situation they'd be looked upon in a much better light if they used the correct question tag. Or at the very least. Right?

The question tag unit in the book came at just the right time. I started by playing question tag dominoes. Which you can see below. I just cut them up and handed them around. It's a great introduction. (I'll add the downloadable doc to my the useful links above)

aren’t we?	You’re name’s Harry	isn’t it?	You’ve been here before
haven’t you?	Let’s make a move	shall we?	You didn’t see the film
did you?	She’ll be at the party	won’t she?	You couldn’t lend me five euros
could you?	You can speak Spanish	can’t you?	You haven’t seen Gavin anywhere
have you?	He’s bringing Barbara	isn’t he?	She won’t tell anyone
will she?	Give us a hand with this	will you?	We are all agreed

Next I did simple matching exercise. I used this one here:
http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/exercises/questions/question_tags.htm

Finally I got students to select the most obscure thing they could find in the room and played 20 questions with them. However, this time with tag questions. I started by giving them examples so they didn't get stuck on isn't it?

When the students felt they were getting closer I told them to change their intonation to a falling intonation to show they pretty much knew what it was but just wanted confirmation.

Here were a few of my examples.

We use it every day, don't we?

Marco has one in his bag, doesn't he?

It starts with a letter from the first half of the alphabet, doesn't it?


So that's all for now folks.

I'll be back in a couple of days with my newest activity Imagine if.... a great way to practice phrasal verbs and dependent propositions. Not to mention an imagination booster.

'til then.

H
Follow me on twitter for regular updates: @sirhofthebomb

Could you Put the Pet in a Pot of Peat

Good afternoon. I realise it's been a while, again. Alas the perils of working and it being the new year I have been dragged into doing an awful lot of stuff. Whilst doing said stuff though my creative juices began to trickle.
I came up with a fun little game that I have found to be useful with my Spanish learners. It also adds a bit of a giggle to the class, which is always nice.

So what I do is: Using the super fun animations function on PowerPoint I make lists ten of 1 syllable words appear at 3 minute intervals. The first one I use to explain the activity.
Each of the words has to start and end in the same consenent sound or one, in Spain's case V and B, that frequently get confused.  Change the vowel sound.
Next up write numbers 0 -9 underneath the words. Make sure they understand and can pronounce the words.
Then tell them your phone number, passport number, inmate number (or something similar) using only the words. They have to then see if they got your number right.
The next step you should bring the next list of words up onto the screen. Do the same with the numbers underneath. then get the students to tell their partners their number.
Continue until everyone has had a turn and you've used all the lists of words. It took me about 20 minutes in total and was a great laugh

Until the next time my friends.

H

Don´t Talk To Me In That Tone Of Voice

Well hello there. Happy New Year. I trust you all had a wonderful break over the festive period. I most certainly did.  This year I'm going to start by looking more at tone, stress and pronuncian. 

I popped back to the UK for a wedding and to see some family. It finally dawned on me while I was there that English people, or perhaps it´s just my family, use sarcasm to such an extent that a non-native speaker would obviously struggle to even get the jist of a conversation. 
It was at this point I decided to have a look at some ideas as to how we could convey such a vital part of our language to those learning it. 
To respond properly to a native speaker, an EFL learner has to pay attention. 
One of the easiest ways to get this across to non-native speakers is to give a list of 5-10 comments that could be sarcastic or sincere, and change their meaning with your tone. Have your students work in pairs to replicate your tone, and have them practice responding to each other in turns based on their tone. Examples include:

• I just love your outfit today. Are those blue sneakers?
• I can’t wait for my workout today at the gym!
• Eating healthy just makes me feel so good. I really don’t miss cake.

Get students to write a few of their own and then let each students read them aloud in either tone and ask the other students to guess if it´s Sarcastic or sincere. 

So there we go, the first blog of the year. Have fun with it. 

Until the next time.

Just a Quick One

One of my favourite fillers is the YES/NO/MAYBE game. It's pretty simple really. Ask students some simple YES/NO questions and try and make them say YES, NO or MAYBE. If they do, they're out. At the end of a few rounds get the students to ask you questions and see if they can trip you up.
It's a great filler and really good for question formation and answer building.

Verbal Twins

Have you ever had that argument with your better half as to whose name comes first? Some of them are obvious. Brad and Angelina of course Sonny and Cher another glaringly apparent order. Others are a little less clear. There are some word pairs that just have to go in a certain order. I use this little warmer to make students aware of some of the twins that exist in our ever confusing language. Why do they exist that way? Well....... they just do. Some things are just black and white.

Put your class into pairs and give them 5 minutes to work out which pair goes with which and in what order.

Happy Teaching

'til the next time.

For more updates follow me on twitter @sirhofthebomb.

Odd One Out

do you ever find yourself drowning in a sea of exam papers marking practice exam after practice exam? I do. What's most upsetting, as I've said a great number of times before, is the fact that speaking practice in class has now drifted so far away from teaching English and deep into the rhelms of teaching exam technique.
One thing that is too often forgotten is pronunciation. Which itself is a huge part of speaking exams. Every nationality has its own little quirks when pronouncing English. Here in Spain there are a great number of them. I'll go into more detail in future posts about specific Spanish problems. With the help and input of the deeply knowledgeable font of information that is the great www.watersdw30.wordpress.com 
Today, however, I'm going to start with a universal activity that a colleage of mine, Beth Smith, introduced me to last week. It´s a great warmer or cooler and really helps students differentiate between different sounds. It's similar to the minimal pairs activity below but with a slightly more advanced twist.

As always with my classes I put students into pairs or groups and get them to read aloud the word groups below, one at a time. Students have to decide which word is the odd one out.
simple, effective and fun.

If you want more ideas or you want to tell me what I'm doing wrong. You can follow me on twitter @sirhofthebomb

Until the next time.

More Speaking Part 1 Fun and Games

I borrowed this idea from the Radio 4 panel show "Just a Minute". I then adapted it. It works really well in PowerPoint form or as flash cards covering questions.
There are a few ways you can do it depending on how much time you have and the level of your class.
I play it like Naughts and Crosses (Tic-tac-toe)

• Set up the board with dependent prepositions and put the questions underneath them. This works equally well with trending topics.

• Students make a sentence using a dependent preposition and let fate decide their (part one) question.

• Students must speak for as long as they can without:

•                               Repeating themselves.

•                               Pausing for more than three seconds.

•                               Using fillers. (umm, err,  etc)

• If a player fails to adhere to the above rules other students must make it known by using an animal sound. I find it makes it a lot more amusing. 

• Next, the student who interrupted can either be given the square or they can continue to speak for the rest of the minute to try and earn the square.

Here are a few sample part 1 questions: 

·         How much time do you spend at home? 

·         Tell us about a day you’ve really enjoyed recently? 

·         Do you like cooking?

·         What’s your favourite food?

·         Do you ever go to concerts? 

·         Where do you like listening to music?

·         Do you like going to the cinema? 

·         Do you enjoy playing computer games?

• Do you like to plan your holidays carefully or do you prefer to just go?

There is a printable worksheet and a powerpoint of this activity available from this link.
https://sites.google.com/a/thenglishouse.com/harry/

Give it a shot. It's a fantastic activity for improving fluency and great for a laugh.