I am teaching as an Assistant English Teacher in a Japanese high school classroom. In some of my classes, there is a text book which we must follow fairly closely. In practice, this often means that there is little oral communication in the classroom, and I am not able to contribute very much. Any good ideas on how to inject oral communication into text book reading/grammar classes such as these?
Any suggestions for Robin? How can he introduce some speaking without leaving the text book? Contact us
This question is form Robin, Japan
Comments
rebecca2
One method you might consider:
-Decide what your target language for the lesson is (i.e. simple past tense).
-Think of a practical situation you would use it in (i.e. telling a story about something funny that happened to you).
-Make a 4~6 line dialog combining the aforementioned (i.e. between two friends). -Be sure to end the dialog with language that doesn't necessarily end that conversation. This will leave a way for the students to expand if they are able.
-After doing the book lesson, have the students listen and repeat the first two lines of your dialog as one large group. (They may half-cup their ears in order to listen to their own voices). Do this three times.
-Pair the students up as 'A'-student and 'B'-student. Ask the 'A'-students to say the first line and the 'B'students to say the second. The students should be facing each other and not prompted individually.
-Do the same thing for the remaining lines of your dialog.
-For the last step, you should have them try the entire dialog together without teacher-intervention/correction.
I hope this helps.
Kimura Masakazu, Japan
Dear Robin,
I'm afraid the situation like yours is not uncommon, still, at many schools in Japan.
1. Select some useful expressions and make up some dialogues using those phrases, which can lead to a little conversation between you and the students.
2. As an after reading activity, you can have some Q & A sessions about the content of the text used in the lesson.
3. How about starting your class always asking some questions on anything of your and the students' interest, like sports results, weather, films.
4. See to it that the teacher you work with should be informed of what plan you have for the particular class.
5. How much you discuss about the class with the Japanese teachers beforehand should reflect how much you talk to the students.
6. There is a book published by Longman about team teaching. Have a look.
Best wishes
Silvia Tamara, Peru
Using interesting questions related to the reading topic as a warm-up activity works very well, even more so if they're personalised or quite controversial ones. Depending on the topic, some group work to discuss about a possible project to solve/improve a situation is useful. Depending on the tasks, you can give them aprox. 40 seconds to get a general idea from the text. They close the books and exchange the info they've got. Repeat this once or twice again and make them answer the questions. They practise two skills at the same time and do the tasks, you follow the syllabus and can work with other activities to develop other skills.
Ronel Moore, New Zealand
Dear Robin
About your request for ideas on speaking activities while closely following a text book - have you tried the following?
Cheers
Steve, Japan
I'm an AET in Japan too. I've been doing this for over 8 years. When you encounter that kind of teacher (who sticks to the Monbusho line) or that kind of textbook, try to look ahead a few lessons and "recycle" the grammar. I read what the students are going to study at least 2 weeks ahead. I then select some useful communicative element(s) from that and create a short skit for pairwork.
1)When you introduce it during the class the JET (Japanese English teacher) may be surprised at first, so a preliminary meeting with all the other JET's is advisable.
2)They won't be able to argue you down, because the skit contains what they are teaching.
3)Stress that your skit is more natural than the text.
4)Keep it short and they can't say it will cut into the lesson time. Always be ready for negative resonses and be prepared to counter them. Don't be put off by the slow pace of change here, it's part of the culture.
PS: Are you a JET? How long have you been here? And are you at junior or senior high? Good luck. I know you'll need it!
Francisco Serra, Spain
What I do is make improvised written exercises, that is to say, expanding exercises into personal matters with the students, doing them orally at first, and leaving the written version as homework in order to save time. I hope this tip could be helpul, at least students get a lot of fun. Cheers.
Melanie, Italy
For Robin, as you are bound by the book for your lessons, why not get the students to read out the English instructions on the pages, or mime them to the other students. And then exploit the words in the instructions. How would you say that in everyday English? What is a different way to say read? (have a look at) etc.