REMEDIAL INSTRUCTION IN ENGLISH (SYLLABUS) This three-unit course in Remedial Instruction in English deals with the strategies and methods of contemporary English language teaching. This is geared for En glish language learners who are faced with difficulty in communicative competence in one or more mor e domains. It also attempts to provide actual remediation through hands-on practice and various situational case studies. I. Orientation to Functional Grammar a) Parts of speech b) Verbs & Tenses c) Sentences Structures Suggested Reading/ Resources Materials Theory and Problems of ENGLISH GRAMMAR Third Edition b y Eugene Ehrlich II. How to teach English 1. Vocabulary a) Compound words b) Conversions c) Word-attack skills 2. Listening and Comprehension: a) Grasping the gist b) Identifying the specific & extracting relevant information c) Following Stress/Volume/Tone/Pace of speaker d) Correcting the pronunciation e) Understanding instructions f) Answering oral questions 3. Speaking and oral interaction Different language functions in Daily life situation: a. to give personal details: name, age, qualification, address etc. b. to make requests/offers/Proposal/statements c. to give instruction/to ask & answer questions d. to agree/to disagree/ to argue e. to invite/apologize/ refute/ regret/ welcome/ condole/ congratulate
g) Note- making skill / Dictation h) Reproducing / transforming short aural and oral texts i) Comprehending interviews / Report / Articles j) Reading Handout / Describing Pictures
f. to describe picture/map/chart/diagram g. to take part in short contextualized dialogues h. to present specific topic i. to converse/to transforms/ to prepare speech. j. to debate and discuss k. to read/ to recite aloud l. to reproduce/to define/to interpret
Books Recommended: 1. Fifty Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners Herrell, Adrienne and Michael Jordan (California State Univ.) 2. The Practice of English Language Teaching by Jeremy Harmer (Cambridge, UK)
REMDENG: REMEDIAL INSTRUCTION IN ENGLISH (http://www.dlsu.edu.ph/academics/programs/undergraduate/ced/bse-eng.asp) 3 units This course is designed for students and prospective teachers to acquire a deeper perspective of the importance of reading as a necessary tool for learning the different subject areas. Particularly it is intended to familiarize the teacher/student with the different reading difficulties met by learners and to be able to help the learners with reading disabilities to acquire skills and improve their reading abilities through a functional mana gement of the program of reading remediation and correction. ENGL 316. Remedial Instruction in English, 3 units Develops the students‘ ability to organize, design, implement and evaluate a remedial English program in many of the four-macro skills. (http://www.mvc.edu.ph/main/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=118:description-of-coursesmajor-in-english&catid=74:school-of-education&Itemid=132) Remedial Instruction in English (Teaching oral skills) http://www.slideshare.net/darlingniugibac9/teaching-oral-skills
Remedial Instruction in English (http://gegrapha74.wordpress.com/about/) FOUR GENERIC INSTRUCTIONAL MODELS MODEL # 1 – Listening and Repeating Learner Goals: To pattern-match; to listen and initiate; to memorize Instructional material: Features audio-lingual style exercises and/or dialogue memorization – based on a hearing-and-pattern matching model. Procedure: Ask students to a) listen to a word, phrase, or sentence pattern; b) repeat and imitate it; and c) memorize it often, but not always a part of the procedure. Value: Enables students to do pattern drills , to repeat dialogues, and to use memorized prefabricated patterns in conversation; enables them to imitate pronunciation patterns. Higher level cognitive processing and use; d) propositional language structuring are not necessarily an intentional focus. Model # 2 – Listening and Answering Comprehension Questions Learner Goals: To process discrete-point information; to listen and answer comprehension questions. Instructional material: Features a student response-pattern based on a listening and question answering model with occasional innovative variations on this theme.
Procedure: Ask students to a) listen to an oral text along a continuum from sentence length to lecture length; and b) answer primarily factual question. Use familiar types of questions adapted from traditional reading comprehension exercises. Also called a ―quiz-show‖ format of teaching. Value: 1) enable students to manipulate discrete pieces of information, hopefully with increasing speed and accuracy of recall; 2) Increase students‘ stock of vocabulary and grammar constructions; 3) Do not require students to make use of the information for an y real communicative purpose beyond answering the questions; 4) Is not interactive two-way communication. Model # 3 – Task Listening Learner goals: To process spoken discourse for functional purposes; to listen and do something with the information, that is, carry out real tasks using the information received. Instructional material: Ask students to a) Listening-and using (listen-and do) response pattern; b) Complete a task, solve a problem, transmit the gist of the information orally or in writing; listen and take lecture notes, etc. Procedure: Ask students to a) listen and process information b) use the orally transmitted language input immediately to complete a task which is mediated thru language in a context in which success is judged in terms of whether the task is performed. Value: The focus is task-oriented, not question-oriented. to use info., not to answer it. There are two types of tasks: 1) language use tasks: to give students practice in listening, grab gist of it and ―make functional use of it‖ 2) language analysis tasks: to help students dev elop cognitive and metacognitive language learning strategies, i.e., to guide them toward personal intellectual inv olvement in their own learning. NOTE: Metacognitive – is a term used in information-processing theory to indicate an ―executive‖ function, strategies that involve planning for learning, thinking about the learning process as it is taking place, monitoring of one‘s production or comprehension, and evaluating learning after an activity is completed. e.g., a composition, a lecture, a short essay, etc. Cognitive – strategies are more limited to specific learning tasks and involve more direct manipulation of the learning material itself. Model # 4 – Interactive Listening Learner goals: To develop aural/oral skill in semiformal interactive academic communication; to develop critical listening, critical thinking, and effective speaking abilities.
Instructional material: Two-way communication by means of individual or small-group presentation or discussion, followed by audience participation in Q&A. Procedure: Ask students to participate in discussion activities that enable them to develop all three phases of the speech act: speech decoding, critical thinking, and speech encoding. Value: the focus is communicative/competence-oriented as well as task oriented. Learners have opportunities to engage in and develop the complex array of communicative skills in the four competency areas: linguistic competence, discourse competence, sociolinguistic competence, and strategic competence. Some Psychosocial dimensions of Language and the Listening act Purpose: to bring students to an understanding tha t listening is not a passive skill, but an active rece ptive skill which requires as much work as does becoming skilled in reading, writing, and speaking in a second language. Listening in three modes: Bidirectional (two-way) listening mode – Two (or more) participants take turns exchangin g speaker role and listener role as they engage in face-to-face or telephone verbal interaction. Unidirectional (one-way) listening mode – auditory input comes from a variety of sources: overheard conversations, public address announcements, recorded messages (telephone answering machines), radio, TV, lectures, religious services, etc. Being unable to interact, we respond by talking to ourselves or in self-dialogue manner. We may sub-vocalize or even vocalize these responses. Autodirectional listening mode – or self-dialogue communication. In our thought process, as w e think, plan strategies, and make decisions, we talk to ourselves a nd listen to ourselves. Psychosocial functions of listening: Transactional function: 1) message-oriented 2) focus on content and conveying factual or propositional information 3) giving instructions, explaining, describing, giving directions, ordering, inquiring, requesting, relating, etc. 4) The premium is on message clarity and precision. Speakers often use confirmation checks to mak e sure what they are saying is clear. 5) It‘s ―business-type‖ talk. Interactional function 1) person oriented
2) the objective is the establishment and maintenance of cordial social relationships. 3) examples: identifying with the other person‘s concerns, being nic e to the other person, and maintainingand respecting ―face.‖ 4) It‘s ―social-type‖ talk. Developing listening comprehension activities and materials Three principles for materials development a) Relevance b) Transferability/Applicability c) Task Orientation 1. Relevance – Both the listening lesson content (the information) and the o utcome (the way the information is put to use) need to be as relevant as possible to the learner. This serves to hold learner attention and provide motivational incentive. — The more the lessons focus on things with real-life relevance, the more they app eal to students, and the better the chance of having learners‘ wanting to listen. – If the listening activities is self-created, relevance is easy to control. If published materials are used, Richards suggests some ways to adapt materials to suit students‘ needs: modif ying the objectives; adding prelistening activities (warm-up); changing the teaching procedures for class presentation and d evising postlistening activities (wrap-up). 2. Transferability/Applicability – internally: can be used in other classes. externally: can be used in out-of-school situations. — The best listening lessons present in-class activities that mirror real life, i.e., the use of radio or television news broadcasts in adult classes can provide not only a real experience in listening comprehension, but such lessons also contain conten t that can be applicable outside of class as a source of conversation topics. 3. Task Orientation – In children, teenage, and adult classes, it is produ ctive to combine two different kinds of focus: 1) language use tasks and 2) language analysis
activities. –Define ―Task‖? a) to provide ―actual meaning‖ by focusing on tasks through language. Success is judged in terms of whether the tasks are performed. b) It is task-oriented, not question-oriented, providing learners with tasks which use the information in the aural text, rather than asking learners to prove their understanding of the text by answering questions. Focus 1: Language use tasks – to give students practice in listening and then doing somethin g (―Listen-and do‖), e.g., ―Simon says‖, taking phone messages, outlining info. etc. Focus 2: Language analysis tasks – aimed to give students opportunities to analyze selected aspects of language structure (i.e., form) and language use (i.e., function) and to develop some personal strategies to facilitate learning. Focus 2: Language analysis tasks. To analyze ―fast speech, to chunk the input into units for interpretation, to anal yze sociolinguistic dimensions, including participants and their roles and relationships, settings, purpose of the communicative episode, and expected outcomes, and to analyze strategies used by speakers to deal with miscommunication, communication break-downs, distractions, etc. — Materials: Recordings of real-life conversations, talks, and discussions can be used to introduce listening analysis tasks. LECTURE 2 A Framework for Planning a Listening Skills Lesson Listening is one of the most challenging skills for our students to develop and yet also one of the most important. By developing their ability to listen well we develop o ur students‘ ability to become more independent learners, as by hearing accurately they are much more likely to be able to reproduce accurately, refine their understanding of grammar and develop their own vocabulary. In this article I intend to outline a framework that can be used to design a listening lesson that will develop your students‘ listening skills and look at some of the issues involved. a. The basic framework b. Pre-listening c. While listening d. Post-listening
e. Applying the framework to a song f. Some conclusions The basic framework The basic framework on which you can construct a listening lesson can be divided into three main stages. Pre-listening, during which we help our students prepare to listen. While listening, during which we help to focus the ir attention on the listening text and guide the development of their understanding of it. Post-listening, during which we help our students integrate what the y have learnt from the text into their existing knowledge. Pre-listening There are certain goals that should be achieved before students attempt to listen to an y text. These are motivation, contextualisation, and preparation. Motivation It is enormously important that before listening students are motivated to listen, so you should try to select a text that they will find interesting and then design tasks that will arouse your students‘ interest and curiosity. Contextualisation When we listen in our everyday lives we hear language within its natural environment, and that environment gives us a huge amount of information about the linguistic content we are likely to h ear. Listening to a tape recording in a classroom is a very unnatural process. The text has been taken from its original environment and we need to design tasks that will help students to contextualise the listening and access their existing knowled ge and expectations to help them understand the text. Preparation To do the task we set students while they listen there could be specific voc abulary or expressions that students will need. It‘s vital that we cover this before they start to listen as we want the challenge within the lesson to be an act of listening not of understanding what they have to do. While listening When we listen to something in our everyday lives we do so for a reason. Students too need a reason to listen that will focus their attention. For our students to really develop their listening skills they will need to listen a number of times – three or four usually works quite well – as I‘ve found that the first time many students listen to a text they are nervous and have to tune in to accents and the speed at which the people are speaking.
Ideally the listening tasks we design for them should guide them through the text and should be graded so that the first listening task they do is quite easy and h elps them to get a general understanding of the text. Sometimes a single question at this stage will be enough, not putting the students under too much pressure. The second task for the second time students listen should demand a greater and more detailed understanding of the text. Make sure though that the task doesn‘t demand too much of a response. Writing long responses as they listen can be very demanding and is a separate skill in itself, so keep the tasks to single words, ticking or some sort of graphical response. The third listening task could just be a matter of checking their own answers from the second task or could lead students towards some more subtle interpretations of the text. Listening to a foreign language is a very intensive and demanding activity and for this reason I think it‘s very important that students should have ‗breathing‘ or ‗thinking‘ space betwee n listenings. I usually get my students to compare their answers between listenings as this gives them the chan ce not only to have a break from the listening, but also to check their understanding with a peer and so reconsider before listening again. Post-listening There are two common forms that post-listening tasks can take. These are reactions to the content of the text, and analysis of the linguistic features used to express the content. Reaction to the text Of these two I find that tasks that focus students reaction to the content are most important. Again this is something that we naturally do in our everyday lives. Because we listen for a reason, th ere is generally a following reaction. This could be discussion as a response to what we‘ve heard – do they agree or disagree or even believe what they have heard? – or it could be some kind of reuse of the information they have heard. Analysis of language The second of these two post-listening task types involves focusing students on linguistic features of the text. This is important in terms of developing their knowledge of lan guage, but less so in terms of developing students‘ listening skills. It could take the form of an anal ysis of verb forms from a script of the listening text or vocabulary or collocation work. This is a good time to do form focused work as the students have already developed an understanding of the text and so will find dealing with the forms that express those meanings much easier. Applying the framework to a song. Here is an example of how you could use this framework to exploit a song: Pre-listening Students brainstorm kinds of songs
Students describe one of their favourite songs and what they like about it Students predict some word or expressions that might be in a love song While listening Students listen and decide if the song is happy or sad Students listen again and order the lines or v erses of the song Students listen again to check their answers or rea d a summary of the song with errors in and correct them. Post-listening Focus on content Discuss what they liked / didn‘t like about the song Decide whether they would buy it / who they would buy it for Write a review of the song for a newspaper or website Write another verse for the song Focus on form Students look at the lyrics from the song and identify the verb forms Students find new words in the song and find out what they mean Students make notes of common collocations within the song Conclusion Within this article I have tried to describe a framework for listening develop ment that could be applied to any listening text. This isn‘t the only way to develop our students listening or to structure a listening lesson, but it is a way that I have found to be effective and motivating for my students.
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