Jane Revell - Collins Teaching Techniques for Communicative English

Enjoy!

Jane Revell,

I am a teacher of English as a foreign language and at the moment I am learning German as a foreign language in what I would say is a very ‘non-communicative’ way. For three whole hours every morning we listen to the teacher explain rule after rule before we move on to apply these rules in exercise after exercise in the book. In the street after the lesson, I need to know where the 53 bus stops. There is a lady coming. By the time I have managed to formulate my question in German, the lady has gone past. I ask the next passer-by, and expect short and easy-to-follow directions. Instead he says in German, ‘Oh you’ve just missed one. Actually I’m going towards the Haus der Kunst, so I could give you a lift if you like. My car’s right over there.’ ‘Wie bitte?!’ (Pardon?). I am unable to communicate successfully in German, even on a very simple level. Why? For the reasons let’s go back to the classroom.

In my German class I normally get to say something about once every hour, when I read out a sentence from an exercise or text. I always talk to the teacher and never to any of the other students, and I never decide what to say, as it’s written in the book for me. No wonder when I come out to face the real world I am thrown! It’s true that this is a very extreme example, and luckily, because I am living in Germany and surrounded by German, my German lessons are unlikely to be a permanent obstacle to successful communication in the language. For foreign learners of English outside an English-speaking environment, however, the problem could be a very serious one.

In coping with a foreign language, confidence plays a very large part. Students need to feel that they will be able to apply what they have learnt in the classroom to real life, and be able to tackle many different situations in a foreign language in a foreign country. It is up to the teacher to give the students this confidence, by providing plenty of opportunities for them to practise what they have learnt in as realistic a way as possible inside the classroom.

Very often teachers are tied to a specific book and are aiming to get their students through an exam which tests specific items in that book. Even in this situation, which is far from ideal, there is room for communicative activities, activities in which the students can transfer their learning to real situations.

Suppose the teacher is working with Alexander’s First Things First at Lesson 77, for example. Rather than just practise everything in the way suggested in the Teacher’s Book and move quickly on to the next lesson, the teacher might think about an activity where the students can practise the structures they have learnt (‘I want to …’ and, ‘Can’t you wait till … ?’) in a similar situation, but in a way which allows them to think and to use language more creatively. They could work in pairs, for example, one as the receptionist, who has some pages from a diary in which certain days and times are booked up, and one as the person who wants to make the appointment. Between them they must work out a suitable time.

The activities described on the following pages are of this type. They can be used on their own or they can be used alongside any standard textbook and slotted in at appropriate moments to provide a transfer stage in the lesson. They are activities (particularly the later ones), designed to give learners a chance to experiment with their new linguistic skills, to be more creative. Activities, in short, to bridge the gap between skill-getting in the classroom and skill-using in real life.

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