Hi. I often have my students read passages aloud in class. I find it difficult to keep the others occupied or engaged when someone is reading aloud. I find that by the time the second or third person has finished the others are looking bored. Help! Also, I find this happens when they are doing public pair work e.g. role-playing customer service situations. How do I keep the others interested and occupied? I'd love to hear from you. Thanks.
Any advice or ideas for Arun? Are there tasks the other students could do? How can you get them to concentrate on their peers' perfomances? Any tips, suggestions or comments? Contact us.
This question is from Arun Ganapathy, India
Comments
rebecca1
Dear Arun,
I guess this is a problem for many English teachers here in Brazil and abroad as well. I used to do that, however, after taking a course on reflective teaching at the School for International Training (Vermont, USA), I've learned that this kind of activity usually leads to failure. At first, I was quite shocked to know that. However, after reflecting on some of the moments I had in class and by analyzing sts.' perfomance, I realized I was doing something wrong in my classes. Why?
For all the aforementioned reasons, I really don't see reading out loud as a profitable activity to be done in class. If you want to make your students engaged in learning, make them talk or whatever you purpose may be, I guess reading silently first and then, asking them to discuss the text is much more profitable. You may now ask me: How about the new vocabulary presented in the text? How about the right pronunciation of words? I guess there are other ways to work on these areas. Hope to have helped you. Regards
CR, India
This happens in my class also. The students must be motivated by asking the others to listen to what the other boy is reading and to ask questions on the reading passage to the other students.Group activity can also be tried where one group reads, the other group asks questions and the third group answers. The elite students of the class can be asked to act as teachers to encourage peer group activity.
Naveen Mathur, India
Hi Arun,
You have raised a valid point. I have also experienced the same thing in my training sessions. An effective technique would be keeping the passages short & interesting and asking questions related to the passage. You can also stop the reader all of a sudden and ask a question to anyone. In this way your students will be attentive and spontaneous.
DomÃcio Moreira Ribeiro, Brazil
When working with reading lessons, have some extra marks (for example, 1 or 2 points out of total mark 10) to give for those students who participate actively of the lessons, but in order to acquire this mark, tell them that at any moment you will call another student's name to continue reading from the point the last student (who was reading) stopped. If he doesn't know exactly where to start, he doesn't acquire the mark. You can do it differently: a student is called to continue reading; if he starts at the correct point, OK, he doesn't earn an extra mark, but keeps the possibility to have top mark by the end of the course, etc. If he cannot continue reading from the correct point, he loses part of the 1 or 2 points reserved for this kind of activity and cannot reach top marks.That is, if the student does correctly what he was asked to do, ok, it's part of his obligation to do what his teacher asks him. If he cannot because he was not following the lesson (or other unreasonable reasons), he loses part of his total mark. You can adapt this idea, improve it, etc.
I hope you can understand. Best wishes and good luck with your students. Do not forget that it is difficult to deal with young students in any part of the world.
Dean Holdsworth, England
I would advise against getting students to read long passages out in class. It does nothing for the morale and it doesn't really lend itself to a communicative lesson. How often do people need to read aloud outside the classroom? When we read horoscopes to each other perhaps, but not much more than that. It puts students on the spot and other students are too busy looking at their passage to listen. A way to make 'reading aloud' tasks more communicative is to turn them into student led dictations. Get a little story and give each student a few sentences to dictate. This way students combine reading, writing and listening. Another activity is as above but this time students are sentences and have to arrange themselves into a line. this is a good activity for students who need switching on as it gets them on their feet, there isn't any writing involved and students really need to listen to each other in order to complete the activity successfully. Good luck.
Maria, Honduras
I would have the ones who are not reading write down what is being read. Since it is going to be repeated three or more times, they can catch whatever words they missed. Then have them review it by reading it yourself. As to keeping them interested in the role play, form "teams". Half the class has to help one of the "players" and the other half helps the other. Tell them to watch for errors in the opponent and the one who has fewer errors "wins".
Gail Schafers, US
I had the same problem keeping other students' attention while one student is performing some task in class. My solution is to require the other students to write down 2 or 3 things that the main person said. For example, if they are doing a role play, have them write down two things that speaker A said and two things that speaker B said. They have to pay attention in order to be able to write something down. I collect the papers and the students are graded on how well they listened. Since I have started doing this I have had very few problems with student inattentiveness.
Debra Hill, UK
One exercise I took part in, known as the Goldfish Bowl, involved some students doing a role play exercise, with the rest of the class making notes, or being given certain things to look for and to make notes on that if possible. This keeps their focus on the activity.
Francisco Campos. Spain
Hi, I would not let the reading activity last longer than a few minutes especially if your students look bored. If you are working with role-plays you can ask them to perform their dialogues in front of the other students. Thus you can make the activity more pleasant with the continuous change of participants. If the other students do not pay attention, tell them that you are going to ask them about the dialogues later or make them actually write something down. I can do this quite well with small classes but with large ones I sometimes have to reduce the time of the activity as I see that I can have problems managing my students. Good luck.
Harrow English School
We suggest:
(a) each pupil be given a number;
(b) the teacher or another pupil be armed with those numbers listed in a random order (as for Bingo-calling);.
(c) the caller calls a new number every three minutes in that random order (use eggtimer sandglass);
(d) the pupil with the newly-called number starts reading at once and
at exactly the point reached by the current reader;
(e) failure to read correctly (teacher is judge) is a crime (a criminal moves at once into a "sin-bin");
(f) failure to take over at once when number called is also a crime;
(g) failure to take over at correct place is also a crime;
(h) when half the class is in the sin-bin the reading stops; those who are not criminals may do other (quiet) work or may continue to follow the action, but the numbers are now collected and re-issued only to the criminals.
(i) a new sin-bin is established and the reading restarted (criminals only);
(j) when half the criminals are in the new sin-bin the reading ends but those recidivist criminals (that is to say, 25% of the class) are given extra work to sharpen their ability in this exercise.
NB. Local circumstances will enable a competent teacher to vary the methods
and/or awards.
Gordon Hunter, China
Are you really surprised that the class switches off after the third reading? Doesn't this tell you that two readings might be enough for one sitting? I would be listening very carefully to what's going on amongst the students and adjusting my lesson plan accordingly. What is the value of student after student reading out in class?