TeachingEnglish
Post-proficiency students
Submitted by sandymillin on 15 March, 2009 - 16:00
Hi,
I've just started teaching a very high level student who has already done her CPE. She used to be a translator and interpreter and has already studied legal English. She now wants to improve her accuracy in terms of collocations and idioms and expand her range of vocabulary. Does anybody have any ideas of how to help her without creating hours of work? I only teach her for 90 minutes a week and have a full teaching load. Although I have some ideas for the start of the course they'll run out pretty quickly!
Thanks very much,
Sandy Millin
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It seems the ideal student to work with but it also requires a lot from teachers, doesn't it? :)
You said she wants to improve her accuracy and vocabulary.My suggestion would be to find out what things interest her in general and work on such specific topics. But above all, it seems to me that this is a perfect case for extensive reading work. Literary texts can be a golden mine to explore in terms of language and will also provide you rich material for discussion and writing.
Cheers - Chris
Hi,
If you find out what interests her, you could produce some materials for discussions.
Also, if she likes reading books, there is a list of reading groups on the British Council website. Once she becomes a member she can join in discussions and develop her English further.
You might also think about swapping roles with her from time to time and let her take more initiative over what you are doing together. She could be your teacher from time to time, prepare a lesson based on a text chosen by her or suggested by you. Before the lesson she would have to prepare her materials and then at the beginning of the lesson introduce you to the topic and engage into a discussion on the topic.
Also, you mentioned that she has worked as a translator and that she is interested in improving her accuracy in terms of collocations and idioms and expanding her vocabulary, so maybe she would like to take on translating a book that she really likes?
Reading fiction of one's level continually is a fair resource.
Reading inset with analysis is more challenging and more productive. This means reading fiction the normal way and pace with some words only guessed and stopping over a page that appeals in some 50-70 pages of text. This page has to be studied, read forward and backward, all unknown words learnt, synonyms picked and useful collocations memorised, not excluding regular and finer patterns and structures. A composition then has to be written (200-250 words) with the vocabulary and patterns learned. The text then has to be analysed from a literary point of view, considering its imagery, characters and conflict, events and resolution, if any, and a summary analysis with an opinion should finally be written. It is good if this work (reading inset with analysis) is done in the company of a teacher.
There is one more way to enrich one's manner of expression and vocabulary. This means picking expressions (collocations, patterns and quoatations - to view the body, teaching hospitals, muzak, etc) while listening in to the radio in English as a foreign language, reading and even while listing a dictionary and catching sight of an incidental word. It is exciting and useful to match instantaneously an equivalent in one's native language to the phrase which holds attention and jot it down in reverse order (the native word - foreign word equivalent pair). One gets thus authentic English and records it in a handy way for further use or rehearsing. It is possible to create a working dictionary for oneself in the form of a box of cards working this way.
Good luck with your demanding student!
Marija Liudvika Rutkauskaite
Newspaper and magazine articles would also be useful I think - broadsheets and the Economist come immediately to mind, because of the challenge level, quality of writing and argument as well as current use of language.
You can decide together a topic area for the next lesson, and use the week in between to find interesting articles. She can read them and find collocations she thinks are worth learning, and come to you with questions about meaning or usage, which you can sort out together in the lesson. You can also design some pellmanism games to help her retain the collcations and establish the association more firmly.
Very high level learners can be motivated with high degree of learner control and independence, and a clear topic area or context is always helpful. A bit of fun with matching or retention/recall can't hurt either.
Hope this is useful.
Thank you all for your help.
Just to give a bit more background - my student is particularly looking to increase her range of informal language. She also doesn't want to find texts herself, although she is happy looking for interesting and useful phrases from texts I've given to her.
My main problem seems to be practising the language in ways that will help her to retain it. For example, I introduced 6 idioms to do with being angry:
-to rant and rave
-to throw a wobbler
-to be on the warpath
-to hit the roof
-to be up in arms
-to blow one's fuse
Although she had never seen them before, she had no trouble understanding the meaning. The challenge now is recycling the idioms so that she can remember them. I can give her controlled practice, but how do I put them into a freer context? (This is the ongoing issue here, not just with these particular vocab items!)
Thank you very much,
Sandy