The emergence of so many different kinds (or 'varieties') of international English has caused a number of linguists to question the use of native speaker pronunciation models in the teaching of English.
Load the I can run song. Review the actions in the song through mime. Play Simon Says.
Listen and watch the song. Give the Ss the activity sheet folded in half and they complete the first activity.
Play the song again. The Ss sing along and do the actions.
Ask the Ss if they can do the actions, e.g. “Can you swim?” etc. Ss complete the second activity on the activity sheet.
Brainstorm some more actions with the Ss, e.g. climb, ski, spin, cook, etc. Write the actions on the board. Nominate two Ss to ‘play’. Get any of the Ss to ask you various ‘Can you’ questions with those actions. For every question from the Ss, you should say “No, I can’t”, until for one random question you say “Yes, I can” – at which point the nominated Ss must race to the board and be the first to touch that action with their finger. Ss could also play this game in groups of 3 or more with the words written on paper.
Ss write 5 questions for a class survey. Demonstrate the activity first, then Ss survey their classmates. Afterwards, Ss could turn their results into a bar chart. Depending on your Ss, you might want to prepare a blank survey table/bar graph as a worksheet first.
Ss vote for their 4 favourite alternate actions, and sing the song again with them, doing the actions.
Submitted by TE Editor on 9 November, 2011 - 16:43
As a teacher I had always perceived 'reading aloud' as a 'taboo' in the EFL classroom since it focuses specifically on a 'bottom-up' approach where learners can fall into traps of worrying about 100% comprehension or simply read aloud without understanding the text.
Teachers often disagree on whether or not to use the phonemic chart in their lessons. Watch Peter and Clare argue for and against, then why not tell us what you think.
