Teaching Speaking Skills
While it is a bit of an exaggeration, students clearly feel that classroom-based speaking practice does not prepare them for the real world. Why do students so often highlight listening and speaking as their biggest problems? Partly because of the demands of listening and speaking and partly because of the way speaking is often taught. It usually consists of language practice activities (discussions, information-gap activities etc.) or is used to practise a specific grammar point. Neither teaches patterns of real interaction. So what can we do in the classroom to prepare students for real interaction?
- What do students need?
- Practical suggestions
- What language should I teach?
- How do I get students to use new language
- Further reading
What do students need?
- Practice at using L1 (mother tongue) strategies, which they don't automatically transfer.
- An awareness of formal / informal language and practice at choosing appropriate language for different situations.
- The awareness that informal spoken language is less complex than written language. It uses shorter sentences, is less organised and uses more 'vague' or non-specific language.
- Exposure to a variety of spoken text types.
- The ability to cope with different listening situations. Many listening exercises involve students as 'overhearers' even though most communication is face-to-face.
- To be competent at both 'message-oriented' or transactional language and interactional language, language for maintaining social relationships.
- To be taught patterns of real interaction.
- To have intelligible pronunciation and be able to cope with streams of speech.
- Rehearsal time. By giving students guided preparation / rehearsal time they are more likely to use a wider range of language in a spoken task.
Practical suggestions
- Transferring L1 strategies
When preparing for a spoken task, make students aware of any relevant L1 strategies that might help them to perform the task successfully. For example, 'rephrasing' if someone does not understand what they mean.
- Formal / informal language
Give students one or more short dialogues where one speaker is either too formal or informal. Students first identify the inappropriate language, then try to change it. Also show students how disorganised informal speech is.
- Vague language
Using tapescripts of informal speech, focus on examples of vague language.
- Different spoken text types
Draw up a list of spoken text types relevant to the level of your class. Teach the language appropriate for each text type.
- Interactive listening
Develop interactive listening exercises. Face-to-face listening is the most common and the least practised by course books. Any form of 'Live listening' (the teacher speaking to the students) is suitable. (See Try article for a more detailed outline of this)
- Transactional and interactional language
Raise students' awareness by using a dialogue that contains both. It could be two friends chatting to each other (interactional) and ordering a meal (transactional).
- Real interaction patterns
Teach real interaction patterns. Introduce the following basic interactional pattern: Initiate, Respond, Follow-up. This is a simplification of Amy Tsui's work. See Tsui (1994)
The following interaction could be analysed as follows:
A: What did you do last night? (Initiate)
B: Went to the cinema (Respond)
A: Oh really? (Follow-up)
What did you see? (Initiate)
B: Lord of the Rings (Respond)
Have you been yet? (Initiate)
A: No it's difficult with the kids (Respond)
B: Yeah of course (follow-up)
- Understanding spoken English
After a listening exercise give students the tapescript. Using part of it, students mark the stressed words, and put them into groups (tone units). You can use phone numbers to introduce the concept of tone units. The length of a tone unit depends on the type of spoken text. Compare a speech with an informal conversation. In the same lesson or subsequent listening lessons you can focus on reductions in spoken speech, for example, linking, elision and assimilation.
- Preparation and rehearsal
Before a spoken task, give students some preparation and rehearsal time. Students will need guidance on how to use it. A sheet with simple guidelines is effective.
- Real-life tasks
Try to use real-life tasks as part of your teaching.
What language should I teach?Spoken language is both interactional and transactional, but what should teachers focus on in class? Brown and Yule (1983) suggest the following:
- When teaching spoken language, focus on teaching longer transactional turns. This is because native speakers have difficulty with them and because students need to be able to communicate information efficiently whether in their country or in a native-speaker country.
- Teach interactional language by using an awareness-raising approach. For example, with monolingual classes by listening to a recorded L1conversation before a similar L2 recording.
For recordings of native-speaker interactional and transactional conversations, have a look at 'Exploring Spoken English' by McCarthy and Carter (1997). It not only contains a variety of text types, but each recording comes with analysis.
How do I get students to use new language?Research by Peter Skehan on Task-based Learning shows that giving students preparation time significantly increases the range of language used in the performance of the task, whereas the accuracy of the language is not as influenced. If this is so, then it seems sensible to give students preparation time when encouraging them to use new language.
- Imagine you have been working on the language that would be useful for the following task: 'Having a conversation with a stranger on public transport'. You have now reached the stage where you wish students to perform the task. Rather than just give students 10 minutes to prepare and rehearse the task, give students guided preparation time.
A simple preparation guide for the task could be a few key questions like:
How will you start the conversation?
What topics are you going to talk about?
How are you going to move from one topic to another?
How are you going to end the conversation?
After the preparation stage, students give a 'live performance'. This can be in front of the class or group to group in a large class. This increases motivation and adds an element of real-life stress.
- Another way of encouraging students to use new language in a communication activity is to make a game out of it. Give students a situation and several key phrases to include. They get points for using the language.
Similarly, when working on the language of discussion, you can produce a set of cards with the key phrases/exponents on. The cards are laid out in front of each group of 2/3/4 students. If a student uses the language on a particular card appropriately during the discussion, he/she keeps the card. The student with the most cards wins. If he/she uses the language inappropriately, then he / she can be challenged and has to leave the card on the table.
Rolf Donald, Eastbourne School of English, Teacher and Teacher Trainer
What do students need?
When preparing for a spoken task, make students aware of any relevant L1 strategies that might help them to perform the task successfully. For example, 'rephrasing' if someone does not understand what they mean.
Give students one or more short dialogues where one speaker is either too formal or informal. Students first identify the inappropriate language, then try to change it. Also show students how disorganised informal speech is.
Using tapescripts of informal speech, focus on examples of vague language.
Draw up a list of spoken text types relevant to the level of your class. Teach the language appropriate for each text type.
Develop interactive listening exercises. Face-to-face listening is the most common and the least practised by course books. Any form of 'Live listening' (the teacher speaking to the students) is suitable. (See Try article for a more detailed outline of this)
Raise students' awareness by using a dialogue that contains both. It could be two friends chatting to each other (interactional) and ordering a meal (transactional).
Teach real interaction patterns. Introduce the following basic interactional pattern: Initiate, Respond, Follow-up. This is a simplification of Amy Tsui's work. See Tsui (1994)
The following interaction could be analysed as follows:
A: What did you do last night? (Initiate)
B: Went to the cinema (Respond)
A: Oh really? (Follow-up)
What did you see? (Initiate)
B: Lord of the Rings (Respond)
Have you been yet? (Initiate)
A: No it's difficult with the kids (Respond)
B: Yeah of course (follow-up)
After a listening exercise give students the tapescript. Using part of it, students mark the stressed words, and put them into groups (tone units). You can use phone numbers to introduce the concept of tone units. The length of a tone unit depends on the type of spoken text. Compare a speech with an informal conversation. In the same lesson or subsequent listening lessons you can focus on reductions in spoken speech, for example, linking, elision and assimilation.
Before a spoken task, give students some preparation and rehearsal time. Students will need guidance on how to use it. A sheet with simple guidelines is effective.
Try to use real-life tasks as part of your teaching.
For recordings of native-speaker interactional and transactional conversations, have a look at 'Exploring Spoken English' by McCarthy and Carter (1997). It not only contains a variety of text types, but each recording comes with analysis.
A simple preparation guide for the task could be a few key questions like:
How will you start the conversation?
What topics are you going to talk about?
How are you going to move from one topic to another?
How are you going to end the conversation?
After the preparation stage, students give a 'live performance'. This can be in front of the class or group to group in a large class. This increases motivation and adds an element of real-life stress.
Similarly, when working on the language of discussion, you can produce a set of cards with the key phrases/exponents on. The cards are laid out in front of each group of 2/3/4 students. If a student uses the language on a particular card appropriately during the discussion, he/she keeps the card. The student with the most cards wins. If he/she uses the language inappropriately, then he / she can be challenged and has to leave the card on the table.
The Best Popular Movies/TV Shows For ESL/EFL (& How To Use Them)
Movies
and television shows can be an effective tool for teaching and learning
English (or, for that matter, any academic subject) if used
strategically and not as a “babysitting” device.
I thought it might be useful to prepare a “The Best…”
list sharing resources that teachers might find useful related to using
video in the ESL/EFL classroom. I’ve appreciated the suggestions that
readers have offered and, even if they didn’t make my list, I’ve shared
the titles that they have recommended near the end of this post.
Before I list specific movies or shows, I’ll begin by sharing some
ideas, and sites, where you can get more recommendations on how to use
video in the classroom.
I’ve hardly ever shown a video clip for more than ten minutes during
one class period. There are many ways to use them, but I’ve primarily
done so in two ways. One is just to show a clip connected to the theme
we might be studying at the time, and then have students write what
happened chronologically.
The other is a technique called “Back To The Screen” that I adapted from Zero Prep: Ready To Go Activities For The Language Classroom by Laurel Pollard and Natalie Hess. I pick a clip from a movie (the highway chase scene from one of the Matrix
movies, for example. I then divide the class into pairs with one group
facing the TV and the other with their back to it. Then, after turning
off the sound, I begin playing the movie. The person who can see the
screen tells the other person what is happening. Then, after awhile, I
switch the groups around. Afterwards, the pairs need to write a
chronological sequence of what happened, which we share in class.
Finally, everyone watches the clip, with sound, together. Students
really enjoy this activity.
Two excellent sites that offer countless other ideas about how to use videos in teaching and learning English are Ressources pour le College and The English Learner Movie Guide.
The resources they offer are just too numerous to list here. In
addition to teaching activities, you can get suggestions for which
movies might work best for specific purposes.You might also be interested in The Best Movie Scenes To Use For English-Language Development.
Now I’ll list what I believe to be The Best Popular Movies/TV Shows For ESL/EFL (by the way, links usually are connected to Amazon). I’m doing this ranking a bit differently from my past lists. All the ones I list I think are comparable in terms of usefulness in the classroom. However, there are two that I think are stand-outs. I’ll save them for the end.
Here are my picks:
I like Brum , a little talking car that has all sorts of adventures. Younger and older students find it entertaining.
Animated Tales Of The World from HBO is an excellent series of folktales from throughout the world. I’ve used them to teach geography, history, and writing.
The Pink Panther series of movies have been great, specifically the parts where Peter Sellers fights his man-servant Cato. These hilarious slapstick scenes are wonderful times to teach vocabulary related to home. However, I offer this recommendation with some hesitancy, since some could view it as perpetuating stereotypes and find it offensive. I’d be interested in hearing opinions on this issue. Certainly, none of my students, who are mostly Asian, have felt that way. I’ve engaged students in this kind of discussion everytime I’ve shown the movies.
Father Of The Bride with Steve Martin (and its sequel) provides some hilarious and teachable scenes about family, food, and home.
David Deubelbeiss, from EFL Classroom 2.0, and I agree that the movie Big is a great one. In fact, David is going to upload a bunch of classroom activities related to the movie on his site. (Since I originally posted this list, David has shared more ideas and resources here.)
The Bear provides a lot of opportunities to discuss serious topics. It doesn’t have a whole lot of dialogue, so it’s very accessible to Beginning English Language Learners.
Globe Trekker has a ton of excellent travel videos. I’ve used them in all of my English, Geography, and History classes, and they’re very accessible.
I’m ranking two collections of TV shows as the Top Two videos for teaching and learning ESL/EFL.
Number two is America’s Funniest Home Videos. It has so many editions — family, pets, sports, animals — that you can find something to teach just about anything. They’re already divided into short clips. My only caveat, though, is that a few of them seem cruel and/or disgusting to me. So I screen them before I use a clip in class.
My absolute favorite show to use is Mr. Bean — The Whole Bean. Mr. Bean is very accessible to even Beginning English Language Learners, and he is involved in so many situations that you can find a clip that will support whatever unit you’re teaching. And he’s so funny! David Deubelbeiss at EFL Classroom 2.0 has collected the best Mr. Bean videos for English Language Learners.
Readers made a number of other suggestions. I didn’t include some of them in my list just because I haven’t seen the shows.
Sebastian recommends Seinfield and Joey, specifically the episode called Joey and the ESL. I definitely want to see that — how often is an ESL class shown in a TV situation comedy?
EFL Geek recommends several movies, including An Inconvenient Truth, Almost Famous, and Stand By Me. For TV, he likes Lost, Corner Gas, Prison Break and Smallville. I did a quick and informal poll of my students, and they agreed that Smallville helped them with their English a lot.
I regularly use Connect With English, a video series that’s designed to help students learn English and be engaging. It seems to be one of the better ones of its type out there. Though the supporting materials are good, you do have to pay for them. I thought readers might be interested in this one page worksheet that we use instead. Students have to make predictions based on the title of the episode, explain if their predictions were correct, write several questions about the episode that they ask a partner afterwards (who then writes the answers). It’s good listening, speaking, and writing practice.
(I’m adding Movie Lens to The Best Popular Movies/TV Shows For ESL/EFL. It’s a new recommendation/search engine for movies, and it’s by far the most effective tool — for teachers, at least – I’ve found to search for movies.
The other typical sites that let you search for movies do it by genre (adventure, romance, etc.). Movie Lens is the first that I’ve found that, in addition to searching by genre, lets you search by what they call “tags.” For example, I searched for “World War II” and got an extensive list of World War II-related movies — a list that I would not have found through Amazon, Netflix, or any other tool on The Best Places To Get Blog, Website, , Book, Movie, & Music Recommendations list.
This is particularly helpful to me in the Social Science classes I teach to English Language Learners, where I often use short snippets of movies. )
Nanocrowd has been written-up by Read Write Web, and their post is probably worth a look. It’s another way to find good movies for ESL/EFL. Basically, you start typing in the name of a movie that’s similar to what you’re looking for (as you type letters, movie titles will appear). Click “enter” and you will be led to a page filled with similar movies and descriptive “tags” for those movies, too. Click on the tags, and you’ll see more of the same.
The Internet History Sourcebook Project is an extraordinary collection of history resources. I’m particularly impressed with their Modern History in the Movies, Ancient History in the Movies, and Medieval Movies. In those three collections, movies are categorized by era and described. It’s a gold mine for any Social Studies teacher, and especially for those of us who teach English Language Learners. I use very short clips of movies, following by a writing/thinking prompt, all the time.
American History Film Resources also offers a good listing of film resources for different periods of American history.
Movieclips has immediately become an indispensable website in my “teachers’ repertoire” of links.
It has thousands of short video clips from movies and they’re not blocked by our content filter! And they’re available without registering — except for clips that have “mature” content.
That in itself makes it a wonderful resource. But that’s only part of why I like this new site so much.
What makes it a real winner is that that clips are categorized by theme, character, setting, mood, and more. They’re incredibly detailed.
This kind of organization makes it a gold mine for English Language Learners and their teachers. A ready-made video to teach vocabulary or an academic concept is at your finger-tips. Plus, they’re easily used for an activity like “Back To The Screen.”
In addition, users can create questions about the clip that the site will host. That’s a nice feature, and an opportunity for students to write for an authentic audience. The only tricky part is that in order to do so you have to register for the site, which is easy enough. However, that also gives you access to the mature content clips, so you’d only want to have students use it under supervision.
AnyClip has indexed and categorized scenes from twenty movies, and will soon be doing the same with 200 more this month. It’s categorization system is not nearly as sophisticated as Moveclips, but it could still be useful.
David Deubelbeiss at EFL Classroom 2.0 has given us all a gift by compiling his Top 100 Youtube videos for EFL. You might find The Best Ways To Access Educational YouTube Videos At School helpful to use with his list.
Using film and moving image to enrich ESOL teaching and learning is a very nice listing of different ways to use film with English Language Learners. It was written by Cormac Conway and Michaela Salmon.
Meltinpop is a new site dedicated to what they call “free association.” Users identify “themes” related to anything they are interesting in — songs related to food, movie scenes with car chases, scenes from television shows about doctors, etc. Other users then respond with their suggestions. It’s got quite a few “themes” already started. This could be very handy for ESL/EFL teachers looking for multimedia to connect to the thematic unit or specific lesson they want to teach. You can only log-in through Facebook, so it probably wouldn’t be workable for student use.
David Deubelbeiss shares some nice resources and ideas in his post, Using Silent Video in the EFL Classroom.
I’ve always asked students to watch English movies or television programs as part of their weekly homework, but David Deubelbeiss writes much more thoughtfully about the idea in this post on what he calls Extensive Watching.
WingClips has organized a huge number of short clips from movies thematically — perseverance, responsibility — and then lets you show them from the site or embed them elsewhere. Important caveats to keep in mind before checking it out are that it clearly comes from a religious, and Christian, perspective, so a number of the themes — adultery, for example, you probably just want to skip. In addition, it appears to have an exceptionally large number of war-related movie clips (“Machine Gun Preacher”?), but that might be a false impression. As in any website, you just have to pick and choose what’s useful.
Inspire My Kids has short video clips and descriptions of people that are designed to inspire students.
Learn English Through Movies is from clubEFL.
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Teaching the tale: language and memory
Joining in
In many cultures listeners are invited to join in with these kinds of language chunks when being told a story in their mother tongue, so it makes sense for us to invite learners of a second target language to join in. Where the story being told in English is already known to learners in their mother tongue (this may well be the case in many parts of the world regarding the three stories mentioned above) this knowledge will provide additional support when joining in with the teacher and retelling the story partly or wholly in English. When orally reproducing the language chunks after the teacher and saying them along with the teacher in the context of the story, learners are also being given the chance to express character and mood meaningfully through voice, rhythm, intonation, posture, expression and gesture. This happens naturally in storytelling.
Storytelling for all agesThe three tales referred to above are often thought of as children’s fairy stories and some teachers may hesitate before asking older children, teenagers and adults to join in with these tales. Wide-ranging experience tells me that playfulness in language learning can be effective at any age and the familiarity and positive associations people usually have with oral storytelling experiences in their lives leads to enthusiastic participation. It is worth remembering that repetition is not only a feature of tales associated with childhood. Many stories from religious texts involve repetition and it is also a feature of many longer jokes and humorous tales.
Teaching the tale
Of course a tale does not have to be already familiar to language learners in order for this kind of participation and repetition to work in the language classroom. Huge numbers of suitable folk tales involving repetition are to be found on the internet – see links below. Here is one way of teaching students to retell the West African tale of Akakro. This story was contributed by Gerry Abbott to Storytelling in ELT (IATEFL). I learnt it from this source and focused in my telling on the high frequency language chunk ‘Have you got something to ... (eat/drink/wear)?’ I have followed the steps below with young learners, teenagers and older students - you can view this process in practice by going to: www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5Rr54snUdE You can view me telling the whole story at www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t6htD1lCWM
- First I tell the tale, using pauses and gesture to indicate to learners that they can join in with the ‘Have you got something to…’ phrases.
- After telling the tale, I invite a confident volunteer student to play the role of the boy and I play the role of the old woman. I ask the other students to focus on our postures and voices while the two of us act out the scene at the old woman’s house. By getting into the role of the old woman through posture, mime, voice and concern for the boy I model that these features are as important to the dialogue as the text itself.
- All the students then stand in pairs and act out the scene at the same time (but not chorally). As long as the target language chunk ‘Have you got something to...’ is reproduced adequately, the rest of the dialogue can vary to a small extent and certainly the performances are naturally very different from each other in style, mood and physicality.
- I might invite one pair to show us their scene. One suitable task for students watching is to notice something that impresses them about the way the pair plays the scene and afterwards give feedback directly to them. This often leads to interesting or unexpected comments such as ‘You looked really hungry’ or ‘The old woman you played is just like my grandmother’ or ‘I felt the gold shining from you both’.
- Stepping the Story: This is a whole-body approach to story-learning where pairs of students walk through and remember the story as they go. First I make as much space as possible in the classroom. I model this with a confident volunteer student. We stand next to each other, link arms, and together we remember and retell the story. When we have told the first part of the story (what would be the first paragraph if it were written down) we pause and take a step forward together. Then we tell the next part before taking a second step. Observing the two of us stepping the tale reinforces the first half of the story in the minds of the rest of the students. We continue until we have got to the point where the boy comes to the door of the old woman’s house.
- Now all the students are ready to step the story all the way through from the start. They remember the scene between the boy and the old woman when they get to it because they re-enacted it earlier. I remind students to take their time. Each pair finds their way through the story at their own pace. I make myself available to prompt pairs if they get stuck. Each pair of students tends to step through a story differently. Some narrate it in unison. Others take in turns. Some elicit from their partner. Some tell events in the story as if they are checking off items on a list. Some act the story out physically and mime as they go. After finishing, many students have commented that they imagined the landscape of the story setting as they stepped through. Some felt they were journeying through the story as invisible onlookers. Others said they were active protagonists in the story. Some even felt the heat of the African forest or tasted the fruit the old woman offered the boy.
- Students often need support with the final part of the story, so we gather and retell it together.
- Now students are ready to retell the story individually to a partner. A show of hands tells me which students feel most ready and these find a less-ready partner and they sit face to face. The listener’s role is vital as it will have a direct bearing on the confidence of the storyteller and therefore the success of the storytelling. The listener can also support the teller if prompting is required. The listener often has the confidence to have a turn at telling the story afterwards.
- A suitable follow-up task is to encourage students to retell the story orally to someone they know outside the class. This can be done in a very controlled way, for example students visit another group of students in another classroom and each finds a new partner, this time someone who doesn’t already know the story, to tell it to. Alternatively, or additionally, this can be an oral homework task: students tell family members or friends from outside (and perhaps teach them some English at the same time!). By this stage students are starting to innovate and ‘make the story their own’.
Scaffolding
Memorising language chunks through repetition is an effective way of scaffolding learners’ language use and is also at the heart of how people have always told stories. Storytelling is a co-creative experience connecting teller and listeners and is a fundamental aspect of who we are as human beings. Giving language students the opportunity to be storytellers themselves gets to the heart of good teaching practice.
For a shorter procedure see activity Teaching students the shortest tale.
Many of the ideas behind this article come from a session led by fellow storyteller Chris Smith from The Story Museum for teachers in UK state schools. Go to www.storymuseum.org.uk click on stories at school and then click on ideas that work then click on mapping and stepping.
There are huge resources of folk and fairy tales from all over the world published in English on the internet – here are just a few of the ones that I recommend:
For everyone:
- http://www.sacred-texts.com/ (huge resource)
- http://www.angelfire.com/ma3/mythology/worldtalesindex.html
- http://www.storiestogrowby.com/choose.php (find by category)
- http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/
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Creative writing for language learners (and teachers)
Creative writing normally refers to the
production of texts which have an aesthetic rather than a purely
informative, instrumental or pragmatic purpose. Most often, such texts
take the form of poems or stories, though they are not confined to these
genres. (Letters, journal entries, blogs, essays, travelogues, etc. can
also be more or less creative.) In fact, the line between creative
writing (CW) and expository writing (ER) is not carved in stone. In
general, however CW texts draw more heavily on intuition, close
observation, imagination, and personal memories than ER texts.
One
of the chief distinguishing characteristics of CW texts is a playful
engagement with language, stretching and testing its rules to the limit
in a guilt-free atmosphere, where risk is encouraged. Such writing
combines cognitive with affective modes of thinking. As the poet, R.S.
Thomas once wrote, ‘Poetry is that which arrives at the intellect by way
of the heart.’ The playful element in CW should not, however be
confused with a lax and unregulated use of language. On the contrary, CW
requires a willing submission on the part of the writer to the ‘rules’
of the sub-genre being undertaken. If you want to write a Limerick, then
you have to follow the rules governing limericks. If not, what you
produce will be something other than a limerick: obvious, perhaps, but
important too. The interesting thing is that the very constraints which
the rules impose seem to foster rather than restrict the creativity of
the writer. This apparent paradox is explained partly by the deeper
processing of thought and language which the rules require.
What are the benefits of CW for learners?
- CW aids language development at all levels: grammar, vocabulary, phonology and discourse. It requires learners to manipulate the language in interesting and demanding ways in attempting to express uniquely personal meanings. In doing so, they necessarily engage with the language at a deeper level of processing than with most expository texts. (Craik and Lockhart 1972) The gains in grammatical accuracy and range, in the appropriacy and originality of lexical choice, in sensitivity to rhyme, rhythm, stress and intonation, and in the way texts hang together are significant.
- As mentioned above, a key characteristic of CW is a willingness to play with the language. In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in the role of play in language acquisition. (Carter 2004, Cook 2000, Crystal 1998) In some ways, the sunami of the Communicative Approach has done a disservice to language teaching by its insistence on the purely communicative functions of language. Proponents of ‘play’ point out, rightly, that in L1 acquisition, much of the language encountered by and used by children is in the form of rhythmical chants and rhymes, word games, jokes and the like. Furthermore, such playfulness survives into adulthood, so that many social encounters are characterized by language play (punning, spontaneous jokes, ‘funny voices’, metathesis, and a discourse which is shaped by quasi-poetic repetition (Tannen 1989)). These are precisely the kinds of things L2 learners are encouraged to do in CW activities. This playful element encourages them to play creatively with the language, and in so doing, to take the risks without which learning cannot take place in any profound sense. As Crystal (1998) states, ‘Reading and writing do not have to be a prison house. Release is possible. And maybe language play can provide the key.’
- Much of the teaching we do tends to focus on the left side of the brain, where our logical faculties are said to reside. CW puts the emphasis on the right side of the brain, with a focus on feelings, physical sensations, intuition and musicality. This is a healthy restoration of the balance between logical and intuitive faculties. It also affords scope for learners whose hemisphere dominance or learning-style preferences may not be intellectual or left brain dominant, and who, in the normal process of teaching are therefore at a disadvantage.
- Perhaps
most notable is the dramatic increase in self-confidence and
self-esteem which CW tends to develop among learners. Learners
also tend to discover things for themselves about the language… and
about themselves too, thus promoting personal as well as linguistic
growth. Inevitably, these gains are reflected in a corresponding
growth in positive motivation. Among the conditions for promoting
motivation, Dornyei (2001: 138-144) cites:
- “5. Create a pleasant and supportive atmosphere.
- 6. Promote the development of group cohesiveness.
- 13. Increase the students’ expectation of success in particular tasks and in learning in general.
- 17. Make learning more stimulating and enjoyable by breaking the monotony of classroom events.
- 18. Make learning stimulating and enjoyable by increasing the attractiveness of tasks.
- 19. Make learning stimulating and enjoyable for learners by enlisting them as active task participants.
- 20. Present and administer tasks in a motivating way.
- 23. Provide students with regular experiences of success.
- 24. Build your learners’ confidence by providing regular encouragement.
- 28. Increase student motivation by promoting cooperation among the learners.
- 29. Increase student motivation by actively promoting learner autonomy.
- 33. Increase learner satisfaction.
- 34. Offer rewards in a motivational manner.”
- All these conditions are met in a well-run CW class. The exponential increase in motivation is certainly supported by my own experience in teaching CW. Learners suddenly realize that they can write something in a foreign language that has never been written by anyone else before, and which others find interesting to read. (Hence the importance of ‘publishing’ students’ work in some form.) And they experience not only a pride in their own products but also a joy in the ‘flow’ of the process. (Czsikszentmihaly 1997).
- Finally, CW feeds into more creative reading. It is as if, by getting inside the process of creating the texts, learners come to understand intuitively how such texts function, and this makes similar texts easier to read. Likewise, the development of aesthetic reading skills ( Kramsch 1993, Rosenblatt 1978), provides the learner with a better understanding of textual construction, and this feeds into their writing.
And teachers?
I argued in the first article that teachers, as well as learners, should engage with extensive reading. In the same spirit, I would argue that there are significant benefits to teachers if they participate in CW.
I argued in the first article that teachers, as well as learners, should engage with extensive reading. In the same spirit, I would argue that there are significant benefits to teachers if they participate in CW.
- There is little point in exhorting learners to engage in CW unless we do so too. The power of the teacher as model, and as co-writer is inestimable.
- CW is one way of keeping teachers’ English fresh and vibrant. For much of our professional lives we are in thrall to the controlled language of textbook English and the repeated low level error-laden English of our students. As teachers of language, we surely have a responsibility to keep our primary resource alive and well.
- CW seems to have an effect on the writer’s level of energy in general. This tends to make teachers who use CW more interesting to be around, and this inevitably impacts on their relationships with students.
- The experimental stance with regard to writing in general appears to fee back into the teaching of writing. Teachers of CW tend also to be better teachers of writing in general
My evidence for these assertions is largely anecdotal, backed by a survey of writing teachers I conducted in 2006. One of the interesting facts to emerge was a widespread belief among teachers of writing that CW had a positive effect on students’ writing of Expository texts and helped them develop that much- desired but rarely-delivered ‘authentic voice’.
Space does not allow me to expand on these findings, nor on some of the possible activities teachers might try. I will attempt to make good these omissions in some of my blogs during the month of December. I will also make reference there to ways in which CW intersects with some of our major current concerns. Meantime, anyone interested could sample some of the books from the list below: Fry (2007), Koch (1990), Matthews (1994), Spiro (2004, 2007), Whitworth (2001) and Wright and Hill (2009)
