ENGLISH TEACHING Professional • Issue 59 November 2008 • 1
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Issue 59 November EENGLISHNGLISH 2008 TTprofessionalprofessionalEACHINGEACHING The Leading Practical Magazine For English Language Teachers Worldwide The write stuff Viv Midlane The sudden specialist Robin Walker Managing the very young Joanna Gruchala See you at the coffee stand! Darren Elliott • practical methodology • fresh ideas & innovations • classroom resources • new technology • teacher development • tips & techniques • photocopiable materials • competitions & reviews www.etprofessional.com www.diako.ir www.diako.ir ContentsContents MAIN FEATURE TEACHER DEVELOPMENT THE WRITE STUFF 4 PLUS ÇA CHANGE 46 Viv Midlane puts the case for reassessing Peter Wells reflects on a letter he wrote 25 years ago our attitude to student writing and on how not much has changed since then SEE YOU AT THE COFFEE STAND! 49 Darren Elliott FEATURES has some sensible suggestions for attending conferences A TOOLKIT FOR TEACHERS 8 Stephanie Hirschman offers some multi-functional lesson plans for teaching the four skills TECHNOLOGY DOG DAYS 12 WICKED WIKIS 52 William Chaves Gomes slots in some Margaret Horrigan shows how teachers can spontaneous language practice unleash the power of the wiki RUDE STUDENTS 16 USING WEBQUESTS 55 Paul Bress gives advice on dealing with the Carina Grisolía demonstrates the benefits of socially challenged internet-based projects PHONEMIC PLAYING CARDS 18 WEBWATCHER 57 Paul Charles creates a playful resource for Russell Stannard suggests there are many more teaching pronunciation ways to use YouTube than you may think I THINK, THEREFORE I LEARN 2 28 Tessa Woodward looks at the questions REGULAR FEATURES teachers ask ACTIVITY CORNER: 25 A PROCESS APPROACH TO 29 THREE PROBLEM-SOLVING ACTIVITIES TEACHING CULTURE Jon Marks Guo Yan wants to meet her students’ needs and expectations PREPARING TO TEACH ... 38 Could DIFFERENTIATION 2 36 John Potts Doug Evans lists some practical ways to provide different activities for different learners EYE ON THE CLASSROOM: 50 OBSERVATION BY CHECKLIST John Hughes TEACHING YOUNG LEARNERS NORMAN’S HAT 59 MANAGING THE VERY YOUNG 23 Rose Senior Joanna Gruchala tackles the challenge of very young children IT WORKS IN PRACTICE 40 REVIEWS 42 BUSINESS ENGLISH PROFESSIONAL SCRAPBOOK 44 THE SUDDEN SPECIALIST 34 COMPETITIONS 39, 60 Robin Walker offers comfort for teachers working within other people’s fields of expertise INTERNATIONAL SUBSCRIPTION FORM 58 Includes materials designed to photocopy • www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 59 November 2008 • 1 www.diako.ir EditorialEditorial everal of the articles in this issue reflect the provide the inspiration. Concerned that culture courses influence that other people have had on the were not giving the students exactly what they needed Swriters, once again demonstrating how helpful it or expected, she conducted a survey to find out how is when we share our ideas with fellow teachers. best their expectations could be fulfilled. Paul Charles was inspired by Adrian Underhill’s Peter Wells’s muse is himself, or, more accurately, his wonderfully logical layout of the phoneme chart to younger self. He has discovered a letter he wrote as an create a series of playing cards which will help students assignment during a teacher training course, which understand how to pronounce the various sounds. We reflected teaching styles and methodologies of the day. have provided some photocopiable blanks so that you Curiously, some things don’t seem that different from can create your own. (Incidentally, in the Reviews what happens in classrooms today, nearly 25 years section you will find information about some later! commercially available cards for children showing the Finally, our three contributors to the Technology section mouth positions in the form of monsters.) enter the ultimate space for sharing information and Darren Elliott finds inspiration every time he attends an ideas: the web. ELT conference, while William Chaves Gomes had his notion of the teacher’s role in the classroom turned around by exposure to the idea of Dogme, as propounded by Scott Thornbury. He now includes a ‘Dogme slot’ in his lessons where all the language input Helena Gomm comes from the students and their needs. Editor For Guo Yan, too, it is the students themselves who [email protected] ENGLISH PO Box 100, Chichester, West Sussex, PO18 8HD, UK TEACHING Tel: +44 (0)1243 576444 Email: [email protected] Tprofessional Fax: +44 (0)1243 576456 Web: www.etprofessional.com Editor: Helena Gomm Published by: Keyways Publishing Ltd, Editorial Consultant: Mike Burghall PO Box 100, Chichester, West Sussex, PO18 8HD Editorial Director: Peter Collin © 2008, Keyways Publishing Ltd Designer: Christine Cox ISSN 1362-5276 Advisory Panel: Dave Allan, Ruth Gairns, Yvonne de Subscriptions: Keyways Publishing Ltd, Henseler, Susan Norman, Janet Olearski, Julian Parish PO Box 100, Chichester, West Sussex, PO18 8HD Advertising Sales: Sophie Dickson, Mainline Media, Printed by: Matrix Print Consultants Ltd, Tel: 01536 747333 Kettering, Northants, NN16 9QJ Tel: 01536 527297 Fax: 01536 746565 Número de Commission Paritaire: 1004 U 82181. Email: [email protected] Prix à l’unité = EUR14.75; à l’abonnement (6 numéros) = EUR59. Directeur de la Publication: Sarah Harkness Publisher: Sarah Harkness Cover photo: © iStockphoto.com / Soubrette Pages 21–22, 25–27, 38–39, 44–45 and 50–51 include materials which are designed to photocopy. All other rights are reserved and no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted without prior permission in writing from the publishers. 2 • Issue 59 November 2008 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com • www.diako.ir www.diako.ir MAIN FEATURE 1980s. I explain that I would plan the assignment, then write a first draft, check it and edit it. I then started again, rewriting a fair draft on fresh paper, which was then handed in. All this by hand, on lined A4 paper with a ballpoint pen. I had a permanent callus where the pen rubbed against my finger. At one stage I acquired a manual typewriter, but gave up using it because every time I made a mistake I had to retype the whole page. TheThe This process contrasts with how word-processing allows us to write. For modern students, the delineation of stages in the writing process is not fixed in the way it was for pre-ICT generations. Today we still teach EAP students the model of generating ideas writewrite through brainstorming, making a plan, writing a first draft, checking and editing before writing a final draft. But in practice, with word-processing, these A piece of writing is now never absolutely finalised in the way stuffstuffViv Midlane champions student writing. that it was when s is often the case, it began Across the centuries the mechanics handwriting meant with accountants. Around of writing, the process by which 6,000 years ago, in readable marks are made on a medium, that late changes Mesopotamia, trade and also developed. The Egyptians were involved creating an Acommerce evolved to a point where using papyrus by the third century BC, information became too complex to be with modern paper being developed in entire new draft retained in any one individual’s China two centuries later. Ink has a memory, and so it needed recording to similarly ancient history, traceable to put it beyond dispute. The ancient sixth-century China. But for millennia stages tend to flow into each other; bookkeepers hit on the idea of keeping the only means for a permanent record brainstorming with free writing or the records using a stylus to make marks in to be made of people’s lives and making of lists evolves into an outline; soft clay tablets. By doing so, they spiritual aspirations, or their business outline points expand into paragraphs; accidentally invented history, considered transactions, was through the laborious we juggle these about, experimenting to to be the tracing of man’s development process of hand copying. This changed find a logical and consistent sequence of seen through the evidence of written around the year 1440, when Johannes ideas and information; we keep writing records. Gutenberg established his printing press until we have nothing more to say and Writing moved slowly from early at Strasbourg. Now, what had been all our points have been made, or, more inventories and manifests into the written could be duplicated and passed likely for most students, we’ve realms of the imagination and of amongst many readers. Despite completed the required number of creativity. Around the third century BC, attempts to put this genie back in its words. After we’ve filled the blank the Epic of Gilgamesh was recorded on bottle, mankind had set out on the path space, we can start editing: looking for clay tablets, the oldest example of to mass literacy. better ways of saying what we mean, written poetry to survive. Gilgamesh is taking out irrelevancies or repetitions, the written record of an older oral A change in practice adding new points, examples or details. tradition, the epic learnt and relearnt by I suggest to my students that, because generations of storytellers, to be recited Anyone over 40 has witnessed massive of this process, a piece of writing is now to new audiences. Maybe those ancient changes in the mechanics of writing. I never absolutely finalised in the way bards saw the writing down of sometimes tell my English for Academic that it was when handwriting meant Gilgamesh as heralding a worrying new Purposes (EAP) students about the that late changes involved creating an technology, a threat to their traditional process of writing an assignment as an entire new draft. Then, one would working practices! undergraduate student in the early accept the final draft as complete, its 4 • Issue 59 November 2008 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com • www.diako.ir message carved as in stone. But now, where writing exists in electronic form The stuff of successful writing and tweaking text is so straightforward, it is possible, indeed tempting, to ● Free the imagination.