405. Speeding up in communication



You can find what follows to be very useful. Composed by Georgina Hudson, and published on the site of British-Council BBC. Within the teacher forum of this web site/ Picture from www the-laser com



speaking skills


Submitted on 13 July, 2010 - 02:22


I go along with Mr Díez in every point he made. He has been so clear that there isn't a lot of room to add more comments.


I had the most enriching experience teaching a Franco-African boy some years ago. We couldn't resort to L1 just because I had no knowledge of Senegalese or French and my young learner didn't have any knowkedge of Spanish, my mother tongue.


It's absolutely possible to carry out your class in English a 100% of the time. For the most part from my experience with that boy, I had to resort to realia, story telling, songs, miming, role-playing etc. to convey meaning.


My expectations were very realistic from the very beginning. We drilled lots of classroom language to ease the learning-teaching experience (look and listen/look and call out/repeat/quiet, please/guess/touch/point to/etc), we had lots of TPR, pen to paper activities, craft activities, games, etc. because I tried to anchor the phrases/words/sentences he learned by doing.


Each lesson provided revision and recapping, presentation and practice of new language working towards a linguistic outcome, and a fun end-of-lesson activity.


It's also true that sometimes I found myself doing away with my carefully planned lessons and material. I relied a lot on my intuition and I observed my student carefully in an attempt to find out who he was, what he liked, what he was good at and what he needed to work on to tune in to him and adapt myself and the class to his requirements and not the other way around.


When I let go of methodologies, when I relaxed about what I "should" be doing and I followed my inner voice by watching him and catering for his needs linguistically and emotionally, then the classes started to flow and it became quite simple to teach my beautiful kiddy.


All the best!

Comments

Azimah Mima said…
I agree with you. When I teach, following the intuition works for me. I would have the lessons planned, but I do feel free to change and modify it as the need arises. :)
Monday, July 19, 2010
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