4. Expansion Developing Skills 5. Self Evaluation and Testing Unit Self-Test.
1. Presentation Stage
This stage is very important because it is the first time the linguistic material students must learn is presented. For false beginners, each unit in the Module 1 Plus starts with the section Recalling
Vocabulary. In this section, students are guided in their efforts to recall and reuse the lexical items needed for the functions and structures contained to the unit.
The vocabulary and the structures are then contextualized in a dialogue. It is imperative that students clearly understand from the outset what is presented.
Teachers may adopt various techniques, and the expert teacher is able to select the most suitable according to the type of material heshe is using and hisher teaching situation. The techniques
described here have been tested by the authors and many other experienced teachers over many years of teaching. Nevertheless, the techniques we suggest may be varied and adapted to fit
various teaching situations.
a Pre-listening activities Since language always depends on the situation the speakers are in, before asking students to
listen to the recorded dialogue, the teacher should help them recognize and consider the various elements of the situation of communication. Teachers may ask questions such as: Who it
speaking? Who is he or she speaking to? Where are the speakers? What do you think they are talking about? What relationship is there between the speakers?
This can be done from the very first lesson with the help of the illustrations and using the students mother tongue. Precisely for this reason, some of the illustrations have been made large
enough to visualize the overall situation clearly and easily transmit cultural information. It is obvious that English can be used more frequently as students progress in learning.
There are many levels of interpretation in “reading” a picture. Four levels of speculation are suggested here:
What is seen in the picture.
What is known about the setting and the characters.
What can be inferred. What can be hypothesized
What is seen in the picture At this level of comprehension, the students
task is to identity the components of the picture. Questions may be WhoWhat can you see? How many people are there? What are they
wearing? What colour.., etc. The teacher can also try to discuss cultural aspect for example the sorts of houses shown. It is better not to provide too many explanations, although some
comparisons and contrasts can be made between the British way of life and the culture of the students country. By looking at the picture carefully, students can better understand not only the
foreign culture, but also their own.
What is known about the setting and characters When proceeding to the other pictures accompanying the dialogues in the course book,
students should recognize features they have already met; people, objects, places, relationships between people, people and places, people and objects etc.
What can be inferred At this stage students can be guided in their attempts to infer relationships between
people, people and objects, and people and actions.
What can be hypothesized This stage is not really very different from the above. However, it is slightly more
challenging. The teacher may ask students to make hypotheses about relationships between elements in the picture and what can be outside of the picture.
The last two stages are very important in developing the creative ability of students. The ability to make hypotheses is an essential thinking skill that needs to he practised in
both the foreign language and the mother tongue. The specific aims of the four stages are:
to present the general situation; to set the scene:
to give a general idea of the story: to present the cultural environment;
to recall known vocabulary and structures; to present new vocabulary and structures;
to predict events; to encourage creativity.
These activities with pictures are most productive if they take place in friendly atmosphere. This encourages students to speculate quite freely so that even shy students
will want to contribute. Examples of how this stage can be conducted are given in the lesson plans.
Pre-listening can also be carried out by trying to focus the students attention on one or more key points in the dialogue. The teacher can, for example, write questions on the
black-board before asking students to listen to the dialogue, and ask them to answer these after listening. Occasionally, listening purposes are given before the dialogue. Of course,
the questions will be in the students mother tongue during the initial stage. b Listening
Students listen to the dialogue once or twice without pauses and then discuss the answers to the listening purposes given in the book or by the teacher.
c Predicting the utterances of the dialogue The teacher may ask students to reconstruct the utterances of the dialogue asking questions
such as: Who speaks first? What does heshe say? Then, the students listen to the actual utterance in confirm or reject their hypotheses. The teacher stops the CD player and asks
other questions like: What do you think Eddy will answer? and students provide suitable answers. The teacher plays the CD player again. Then heshe asks other questions to elicit
all the other utterances of the dialogue. It is important that students listen to each utterance after they have made a series of hypotheses.
This procedure is used to encourage students to predict most or the utterances contained in the dialogue. The teacher must accept all of the students’ predictions, provided they are
appropriate to the situation of communication. This is to ensure that shy students are not discouraged from mentioning their predictions when these are continually rejected by the
teacher.
d Listening and repetition Students listen to the dialogue with pauses and repeat the utterances. When students repeat the
dialogue for the first time it is advisable that they do not see the written version, in order to avoid
interference due to the discrepancies between sounds and their written symbols. If teachers consider it useful, they can ask the class to repeat the utterances in chorus, then in
groups of students for example whole rows and finally individually. When, interference from the written text is reduced to a minimum, students can repeat the
utterances by reading from their books.
e Reading out loud Reading out loud should be done by groups of students either at the same time or one after the
other. Each member of a group reads out loud the utterances of one character.
f Reconstruction of the dialogue The reconstruction of the dialogue must obviously be carried out with books closed. The teacher
asks question; to help students reconstruct the dialogue: Who speaks first? What does heshe say? How does Susan answer? What happens now? etc.
g Dramatization At this point, the dialogue will have been memorized by almost all the students, who will
therefore be able to act it out. This is always extremely interesting and fun for students, and it would be a pity to dedicate only a short time to this activity. If the lesson is almost over, it
would be better to postpone this activity until the following lesson thus giving all students, even the slowest enough time to memorize the entire dialogue at home.
It is advantageous to use props”, if the students have them available where necessary the teacher or the students can procure them. Other students not directly involved in the activity in
question can provide background noise a doorbell ringing, a door opening, etc., or they can act as extras
. The whole activity should be carried out in a lively playful atmosphere in order to reassure stage-shy actors
, and also encourage shy students. The teacher should coordinate the activities, but also be able to remain in the background at the right time and, when necessary,
suggest forgotten lines. Heshe should avoid correcting students. Correcting can be done after the acting is over.
2. Oral Practice Stage Communication Practice
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