to make it possible for students to concentrate further on the working of the language; to give any students, who for some reasons, were not present during the discussion on
the language, the possibility of understanding certain mechanisms of the language on their own.
Teacher should remember that the content of this section must never be used for test learning.
4. Expansion Developing Skills
This section represents the transfer stage, where all the linguistic material presented earlier in the unit is made use of again, together with the material learned in previous units. Students
carry out language activities within the scope of the main language skills, listening, spoken production, spoken interaction, reading and writing.
a Listening activities There are many listening activities in all the units. At this point, listening is of an extensive
kind which is very similar, therefore, to the way we listen during a conversation or to the radio, for example. At this stage, of course, vocabulary and structures are not strictly controlled, but it
is not necessary for the students to understand every single word of what they are listening to; they must instead grasp the global meaning or be guided toward concentrating only on some
elements present in the text. The task of the student is therefore reduced but hisher interest in listening is held high because what heshe is asked to do while listening. The task is never too
difficult, so the student is reassured that hershe will be able to face it, and will have the satisfaction of being able to carry it out.
b Speaking activities These activities aim at developing students’ oral production through recall of linguistic material
learned previously. Productions stimulated by involving students in simulations during which they exchange roles, or discussion to be carried out in the class.
There are open dialogues, interviews, problem solving activities, crosswords, word puzzles, and songs.
There are also many games, some of which stress competitiveness as a means of stimulating oral production, while others require verbal corporation reach the objective of the game.
Open dialogues are also useful. They usually focus on the functions presented in the teaching unit. An advisable to encourage students to give “true” answers using the appropriate vocabulary and
structures. At the beginning of the course, the teacher is advised to give an example before the activity begins. Heshe will play the recording and supply the appropriate utterances during the
pauses. Then, a few students can be asked to do the same. The songs are also very useful. First, the teacher plays the recording and students
listen to the song. Then heshe reads the text, explains the meaning, and ask students to practise pronouncing the words line by line. The teacher then plays the song again
and asks students to sing along with the recording. The teacher should sing with the students, encouraging the shy ones to sing in the chorus. Dedicating, from time to time,
the last five or ten minutes of the lesson to a song is an excellent way to conclude a lesson in which students have concentrated on exercises, leaving them in a good mood,
more eager than ever to begin another lesson. Motivation and pleasure are worth a hundred exercises
c Reading activities Written texts are always accompanied by some kinds of activities. These activities
take into consideration the various kinds of reading each of us engages in during our everyday life. In fact, the way we read is influenced essentially by our reasons for
leading and by the kind of text we are reading. If we want to know what time a television programme will be broadcast, for example, we look through the text
rapidly, the text in this case being a TV guide, until we find the place that interests us; this kind of reading is called scanning
-
. Other kinds of text can be read in this way too. We can also scan a text to fine, for example, a date or a name that interests us in a
newspaper article. Another technique, known as skimming, is adopted when we are reading a text quickly in order to find out if it is of interest to us and if it is worth
reading more carefully. It is important that students become accustomed to using these techniques right from
the start. Therefore, various activities of this type are found in the course book, together with other activities aimed at helping students understand the meaning of the
various texts, select the main ideas of the texts first, and then of the various paragraphs, classify details, understand difficult words, etc.
These activities accompanying the text are often placed before the text they refer to and students must carry them out while reading. This differs from the usual technique
of presenting a list of questions at the end of the passage. The questions at the end only check comprehension of the passage itself, whereas the activities to be carried out
before reading or while reading help students understand the passage. It is clear, therefore, why we have given precedence In this kind of activity. However, many
questions are also included to check comprehension.
d Writing activities The written activities in this section are for written discourse beginners. Students
must be trained to organize a written text which, at this level, consists of a letter, a brief a brief report or a summary. The exercises are graded and begin with the
organization of the sentence and go on to the organization of paragraph, within a complete text. To do this, the most common logical syntactic connectors have been
introduced quite early. Later, the activities take into account the organization of the sentence to finally reach organization of paragraph within a complete text. Since the
beginning, students are asked to write chart short personal letters and brief reports. Summary is also dealt with using techniques which help the student distinguish more
important ideas from details, in a written text. e Pronunciation
This section is dedicated to pronunciation and must be carried out in the classroom with the teachers help. The pronunciation exercises concentrate on areas of
pronunciation, intonation and stress that Indonesian students of English find particularly difficult. For example, particular attention has been paid to:
- [] and [] sounds voiceless and voiced in plural nouns and third person singular of the simple present;
- pronunciation of -teen and -ty in number endings; - [] sound at the end of the word;
- [], [], [] sounds in past tenses; - [], [] sounds;
- [] sound at the beginning of a word; - pronunciation of the sound []
- word tress and sentences; - intonation it question tags;
- linking sounds; - full and reduced forms of words.
5. Self evaluation Unit Self Test
