Филологические науки 1. Методика преподавания языка и литературы

Полежако Валерия Игоревна

Киевский национальный университет биоресурсов и природопользования Украины

Good ideas and advice on how to organize an effective fluency class

Pre-task preparation

To start with, the warming-up phase is the most important part of any skills activity. You could begin by asking students to tell their partner what things they think are important to mankind then eliciting these to the whiteboard. How will you check students understand? Modeling is one way, or you could ask a student to repeat what they have to do. At this point you should be clear on whether you want to impose the two positions on students or whether you’ll give them the choice. A free choice is more natural, but you may find the numbers don’t work. Alternatively you could put students into two groups and ask each group to decide on the object or entity they’re going to defend. Once they start on the actual activity give students plenty of time to think and prepare in pairs before they do the scary part of speaking in front of the whole class. Perhaps they could write down their own ideas individually, and then share these with a partner before getting into their groups of four and five. This organization from individual to pairs then fours and finally whole class is often referred to as a pyramid discussion.

The task

I divide my OHT into sections beforehand: vocabulary that I noticed students searching for or misusing, grammar areas to work on and pronunciation. Stick the OHT on the projector and give pairs time to discuss it before looking at it together as a plenary. I never name names on the OHT and no-one seems to mind if their incorrect language is up there! A different focus on form could be achieved by recording part of students’ talk. The pair work part is probably easiest as two people are clearer on a tape than nine. Students can transcribe their share of the talk – or just a two-minute stretch if it’s a longer than this – then they can work on improving their collocations. These words which go together are tricky for students to get to grips with yet vital for them to sound natural. Or, you could complete the task loop in true Task Based Learning style by listening to a native speaker recording of the same task. Pick out language the speakers used to help them to persuade others. Following this – or instead – you could provide a practice opportunity for the extra language taught by giving a second similar task.

Here’s a quick overview of the lesson structure I’m suggesting:

5-10 minutes warmer

5 minutes vocabulary eliciting

5-10 minutes setting up the task and thinking individually

5-10 minutes pair work on the task

10 minutes groups of 4 and 5 exchange ideas and prepare their arguments

15+ minutes the task as a whole class

10 minutes focus on form – correction, teaching extra language needed

?? Minutes repeat the cycle as in task-based learning

Other fluency activities

Ranking. Pyramid discussions are a good way to organize this as you can get students to list their own order then they can try to persuade their partner. With arguments rehearsed they can then work as a four, and so on.

Q and A

Question and answer games are many and varied. They range from the EFL essential of “Find someone who…” where each person finds someone who… plays the guitar / rides a bike / has been to Italy, to full-blown student-devised questionnaires. Asking a question demands an answer, so in a simple way any Q and A activity prompts conversation.

Role-play

Conventionally a role play gives a role or part to a student such as sister / father / shop assistant or whatever. It could be as simple as telling one member of each pair to be a customer who wants to buy stamps and the other to be a post office worker. Or it could be something that student improvise themselves, involving writing the dialogue, deciding who plays which part and finally performing it for the class.

Problem-solving

Make sure students do in fact have to talk to each other to achieve the end result. Perhaps give some information to each student so that they have to pool this to find the solution.

Story-telling

This should be intrinsically interesting for students. Stories could range from anecdotes (short, personal accounts of an incident from real life) to long and meandering sagas using pictures or words as prompts.

And finally, look in the books below for more ideas of fluency activities. You’ll soon get an idea of what works with your group. Perhaps they’re more into team games with points, or maybe they like co-operative games. Whatever the activity, think through the language they will need to complete it and include some kind of post-activity focus on form slot. Variety is important as anything can become dull if it’s done too often and is thus predictable. Vary the task, the seating arrangements, group size and materials used.

Literature:

1. Bygate, M. (1996) ‘Effects of task repetition: appraising the developing language of learners’ In Challenge and Change below.

2. Hadfield, J. (1990) Elementary / Intermediate / Advanced Communication Games, Nelson.

3. Klippel, F. (1984) Keep Talking, CUP.