Eliciting

How:

1. Instead of giving information, ask if anyone in the class can provide it.
When a student asks‘What does this mean?’ or ‘What’s the past of this verb?’ etc. say something like ‘That’s a good question - what do you think?’ Can you
guess? Can anyone help Maria here?’
2. If you want to teach some vocabulary, for instance, then rather than giving it to the students, tryto get them to give it to you. For example: I want to teach the word ‘cow’. I could draw alittle picture on the board. I could explain what a cow is. Or I could elicit the word from the students along these lines: ‘What do we call/What’s the word for an animal which makes milk and goes ‘mooo’?! With any luck the students will say ‘cow’. There you go - I’ve elicited the word ‘cow’ from the students. I didn’t say it to them - they said it to me; that’s eliciting.

Why:
1. If you don’t elicit you run the risk of telling the students everything they want to know and ending up spoon-feeding them (see TT9 - ‘ the Why to avoid doing it’ part for further explanation).
2. Eliciting means getting information from people as opposed to giving it to them - asking, throwing questions back at the students, in a nutshell.

Extra info:
When I take the register, I always elicit today’s date from the students (‘What’s the date today?’)
because I find that even at high levels students are shockingly bad on dates.
Sometimes students don’t understand the value of eliciting. They think that you’re not doing your
job if you don’t answer their questions. If I have a student like that I tend to explain like this:
‘I know I know the answer but I’m not the one learning English here. What is important is,
do any of you know the answer?’ or ‘Why should I explain again? We did this last week!’
If you try to elicit something and obviously no one knows what you are getting at or they’ve all forgotten it or they haven’t done their homework then don’t keep on trying to get it out of them.
Flogging a dead horse will get you nowhere and it just embarrasses/irritates the students and wastes valuable lesson time.

Content-Based Learning (Instruction)

What is content based instruction?

• The focus of a CBI lesson is on the topic or subject matter. During the lesson students are focused on learning about something. This could be anything that interests them from a serious science subject to their favourite pop star or even a topical news story or film. They learn about this subject using the language they are trying to learn, rather than their native language, as a tool for developing knowledge and so they develop their linguistic ability in the target language. This is thought to be a more natural way of developing language ability and one that corresponds more to the way we originally learn our first language.
  
• What does a content based instruction lesson look like?There are many ways to approach creating a CBI lesson. This is one possible way.
  
• Preparation
  Choose a subject of interest to students.
  Find three or four suitable sources that deal with different aspects of the subject. These could be websites, reference books, audio or video of lectures or even real people.
  
• During the lesson
  Divide the class into small groups and assign each group a small research task and a source of information to use to help them fulfil the task.
  Then once they have done their research they form new groups with students that used other information sources and share and compare their information.
  There should then be some product as the end result of this sharing of information which could take the form of a group report or presentation of some kind.
  What are the advantages of content based instruction?
  It can make learning a language more interesting and motivating. Students can use the language to fulfil a real purpose, which can make students both more independent and confident.
  Students can also develop a much wider knowledge of the world through CBI which can feedback into improving and supporting their general educational needs.
  CBI is very popular among EAP (English for Academic Purposes) teachers as it helps students to develop valuable study skills such as note taking, summarising and extracting key information from texts.
  Taking information from different sources, re-evaluating and restructuring that information can help students to develop very valuable thinking skills that can then be transferred to other subjects.
  The inclusion of a group work element within the framework given above can also help students to develop their collaborative skills, which can have great social value.
  
• What are the potential problems?

Because CBI isn't explicitly focused on language learning, some students may
feel confused or may even feel that they aren't improving their language skills.
Deal with this by including some form of language focused follow-up exercises to help draw attention to linguistic features within the materials and consolidate any difficult vocabulary or grammar point.

Particularly in monolingual classes, the over use of the students' native language during parts of the lesson can be a problem. Because the lesson isn't explicitly focussed on language practice students find it much easier and quicker to use their mother tongue. Try sharing your rationale with students and explain the benefits of using the target language rather than their mother tongue.

It can be hard to find information sources and texts that lower levels can understand. Also the sharing of information in the target language may cause great difficulties. A possible way around this at lower levels is either to use texts in the students' native language and then get them to use the target language for the sharing of information and end product, or to have texts in the target language, but allow the students to present the end product in their native language. These options should reduce the level of challenge.

Some students may copy directly from the source texts they use to get their information. Avoid this by designing tasks that demand students evaluate the information in some way, to draw conclusions or actually to put it to some practical use. Having information sources that have conflicting information can also be helpful as students have to decide which information they agree with or most believe.

• Conclusions

While CBI can be both challenging and demanding for the teacher and the students, it can also be very stimulating and rewarding. The degree to which you adopt this approach may well depend on the willingness of your students, the institution in which you work and the availability of resources within your environment. It could be something that your school wants to consider introducing across the curriculum or something that you experiment with just for one or two lessons. Whichever you choose to do I would advise that you try to involve other teachers within your school, particularly teachers from other subjects. This could help you both in terms of finding sources of information and in having the support of others in helping you to evaluate your work.

Task Based Learning

Why TBL see TBLPresentation,
Condition for Language Learning

• Exposure = to a rich but comprehensible input of real spoken and written language use
• Use = of the language to do things (i.e., exchange meaning)
• Motivation = to listen and read the language and to speak and write (i.e., toprocess and to use the exposure

What is task? A task is an activity where the TL is used by the laerner for a
comunicative pupose in order to achieve an outcome

Type of task

1. Listing:

• brainstorming
• fact finding

2. order and sorting

• sequencing
• ranking
• categorising
• classifying

3. Comparing

• matching
• finding similaritis
• finding differences

4. Problem Solving

• analysing real situation
• analysing hypothetical situation
• reasoning
• decision making

TBL see TBL Longman

What is Task-Based Learning?

• Using tasks

Teachers have been using tasks for hundreds of years. Frequently, in the past,
the task was a piece of translation often from a literary source. More recently,
tasks have included projects for producing posters, brochures, pamphlets, oral
presentations, radio plays, videos, websites and dramatic performances.

The characteristic of all these tasks is that rather than concentrating on one
particular structure, function or vocabulary group, these tasks exploit a wider
range of language. In many cases, students may also be using a range of
different communicative language skills.

• What makes 'task-based learning' different?

The traditional way that teachers have used tasks is as a follow-up to a
series of structure/function or vocabulary based lessons. Tasks have been
'extension' activities as part of a graded and structured course.

In task-based learning, the tasks are central to the learning activity. Originally developed by N Prabhu in Bangladore, southern India, it is based on the belief that students may learn more effectively when their minds are focused on the task, rather than on the language they are using.

In the model of task-based learning described by Jane Willis, the traditional PPP (presentation, practice, production) lesson is reversed. The students start with the task. When they have completed it, the teacher draws attention to the language used, making corrections and adjustments to the students' performance. In A Framework for Task-Based Learning, Jane Willis presents a three stage process:
- Pre-task - Introduction to the topic and task.
- Task cycle - Task planning and report
- Language focus - Analysis and practice.

Task-based learning can be very effective at Intermediate levels and beyond, but many teachers question its usefulness at lower levels. The methodology requires a change in the traditional teacher's role. The teacher does not introduce and 'present' language or interfere ('help') during the task cycle. The teacher is an observer during the task phase and becomes a language informant only during the 'language focus' stage.

Adjectives Taught with Music


Grade Level: 3


Concept: The students will broaden their knowledge about adjectives through using them to describe both objects and music.


Objectives: The student will:


1. write down adjectives to describe objects in a bag.


2. report to the class the adjectives they used.


3. write down adjectives that describe the music they listen to.


4. share their adjectives with the class.


Materials Needed:


5 paper bags

5 different objects to place in each bag (potato, granola bar, fabric softner, apple, bagel)

various samples of recorded music (Classic Disney Volume I )


Procedure:


Introduction: The teacher asks the students what an adjective is. (a word that describes) The teacher then talks with the class about the work they have done with adjectives the past few days. They have been identifying adjectives in sentences. Explain that today they are going to do a fun activity using adjectives.


Development: Five mystery bags will be distributed around the room. Each student is asked to place one hand in the bag and feel the object. They can touch the object, shake the bag, etc., but they can not look at the object. The student should then write down as many adjectives as they can to describe the unknown object. After each child has written adjectives for all five bags, the adjectives will be shared with the class. The teacher will ask the students if they can name the object. The teacher will then display each object to the class. We will then talk about the fact that adjectives can help us figure out what objects are. Next, the teacher will play a sample of music (Zip - A - Dee - Doo - Dah) and the students will write down adjectives that describe the music (elements of the music, how it makes them feel, what it makes them think of). The students will then share their adjectives with the class.


Closure: The teacher will discuss that adjectives can be used to describe many objects and can also be used to describe music. Even though we can't actually see the objects or the music, we came up with many descriptive words to help others understand what are senses are telling us about the objects and music. The song Zip - A - Dee - Doo - Dah uses many different adjectives in the song that can help students better grasp this concept.


Evaluation: The students will hand in the papers on which they recorded adjectives. If the students' words were indeed adjectives, then they will receive full credit for this assignment.


Follow - Up: The students can pair up and use adjectives to describe an object to their partner. The student describing will have an object to describe while their partner sits quietly with their eyes shut. The student describes the object using detailed adjectives so that the partner can guess the object. The same can be done with music. One student describes a popular piece of music while the other tries to guess the music by listening to the adjectives.


Musical Element: The song Zip - A - Dee - Doo - Dah can be taught using the repeated melody and form that it has throughout the song. Children between the ages of kindergarten and second grade would all know this song and they would understand form and repeated patterns more easily when working with a familiar song.

Colorful Parts of Speech
Grammar, level: elementary

Materials Required: paper, pencil, coloring utensils, teacher prepared sentences
Activity Time: class period
Concepts Taught: recognition of parts of speech


To help students learn the functions of words within a sentence, we
Language Arts teachers were often encouraged to teach them how to
diagram. YUCK! I never liked this activity, for I felt it defeated the
purpose of illustrating relationships within a context. Rather, it
encouraged separation and partition. To give my students practice in
identifying parts of speech and noticing the positioning of words in a
sentence, I developed the activity Colorful Parts of Speech.

Directions:

A. Have the students copy several sentences on their paper. I prefer
them to use pencil. You may want to dictate the sentences to them.
B. Assign a particular color to each of the eight parts of speech. I use
the following:
* Nouns= blue
* Verbs= red
* Adverbs= green
* Adjectives= yellow
* Pronouns= purple
* Prepositions= orange
* Interjections= brown
* Conjunctions= black
C. Have the students underline each of the words in the sentence
according to its function. NOTE: You may want to start with only nouns
and verbs, then progressively add more parts of speech as your students
become more proficient.


Your students' papers will certainly be colorful, and the finished
products make a nice display. My fifth and sixth-graders enjoy this
activity because, even though it is a skills practice, they think of it
as an art project. And everyone knows: ART IS FUN!

Eliciting

Teaching Tip 12: Eliciting
How:
Instead of giving information, ask if anyone in the class can provide it. When a student asks "What does this mean?" or "What's the past of this verb?" etc. say something like "That's a good question - what do you think?" Can you guess? Can anyone help Maria here?"
If you want to teach some vocabulary, for instance, then rather than giving it to the students, try to get them to give it to you. For example: I want to teach the word "cow". I could draw a little picture on the board. I could explain what a cow is. Or I could elicit the word from the students along these lines: "What do we call/What's the word for an animal which makes milk and goes "mooo"?! With any luck the students will say "cow". There you go - I've elicited the word "cow" from the students. I didn't say it to them - they said it to me; that's eliciting.
Why:
1. If you don't elicit you run the risk of telling the students everything they want to know and ending up spoon-feeding them (see TT9 - the "Why to avoid doing it" part for further explanation).
2. Eliciting means getting information from people as opposed to giving it to them - asking, throwing questions back at the students, in a nutshell.
Extra Info:
When I take the register, I always elicit today's date from the students ("What's the date today?") because I find that even at high levels students are shockingly bad on dates.
Sometimes students don't understand the value of eliciting. They think that you're not doing your job if you don't answer their questions. If I have a student like that I tend to explain like this: "I know I know the answer but I'm not the one learning English here. What is important is, do any of you know the answer?" or "Why should I explain again? We did this last week!"
If you try to elicit something and obviously no one knows what you are getting at or they've all forgotten it or they haven't done their homework then don't keep on trying to get it out of them. Flogging a dead horse will get you nowhere and it just embarrasses/irritates the students and wastes valuable lesson time.