Sunday, 16 September 2012

How do we generate language from a topic? - A practical example

A picture is worth 1000 words
This was the title of a webinar presented by Adrian Tennant as part of the MacMillan series.  What follows is a summary of the session.

Adrian began by telling us that two or three 50-word texts should generate five or six hours of teaching.  This was quite a surprising claim and had us hooked from the off!

We were then shown that we don't even need 50 words.  For example, we should treat a picture as a text.  Remember the saying: 'A picture is worth a thousand words'.

Another place to start would be with a newspaper headline.  For example.

Youth Badly Hit in Jobs Market

The ambiguity of headlines like this make them rich pickings for language analysis:
  • Who or what does the word 'youth' refer to ?
  • What is a jobs market?
  • How was/were the youth hit?
  • Who or what hit the youth?
  • What was the youth hit with?        etc., etc.
This could easily be adapted for low level students:


Young People Can't Get Jobs


Here, you could focus on modals, negatives, the verb 'get', and so on.

A five or six word text can generate 15-20 minutes of teaching and/or discussion, so how much more can be generated from a 50-word text? 
 
With a 50-word text, you can
  • pick up on collocations and do vocabulary matching exercises
  • isolate the grammar - tenses, comparatives, etc.
  • teach a particular part of speech - adjectives, articles, prepositions, etc.
  • highlight referencing words - like this, this kind of, these, they, etc.

An example of a short text


Usually in course books, the higher the level, the longer the text.  Remember:

size
doesn't
matter!!
 
Short, complex texts can be much more useful than longer ones.
 
 
 
 
What else can you ask students to do with a short text?
  • You can ask students to paraphrase or summarise the text. 
  • Use it to increase vocabulary.  For example, you could get students to replace every adjective with a synonym, thus teaching them to avoid repetition in their own writing.
  • You can use the text as the basis for a class discussion.
  • You can ask students to generate questions from the text for their classmates to answer.
  • You can get students to prepare two-minute presentations based on the text.
 
What is the difference between using short texts and using a coursebook?
  • The texts are bite-sized.
  • The language emerges from the topic, NOT the topic from the language.
 
There are thousands of topic-based lessons for all levels freely available on the internet, covering subjects such as: crime, family, weather, politics, travel, work, relationships, environment, culture, education, transport, etc.
 
Remember!
 
There is no such thing as an authentic text in an EFL classroom.  The minute you take a text into class, it loses it's authenticity!  There are only authentic tasks!
 
How do you create a topic-driven lesson?
  1. Choose a topic.
  2. Find (or write) short texts about the topic.  These can be like short newspaper articles.
  3. Start looking for the language - DO NOT try to write a text to illustrate a grammar point or a particular type of vocabulary.  The text should never be contrived - the language should emerge from a naturally-written text.
  4. Design your activities - don't forget to record audio versions of your texts to be able to add listening activities.
  5. Always have the topic at the forefront of your mind.
Extension activities
  • Higher level students can generate their own texts (this is good for error correction, too).
  • Texts written by higher level students can be used in lower-level classes.
  • Give students a similar text to the original as a gap-fill - articles, linkers, etc.
Conclusion
 
The most important thing is getting students to notice language through exploring and analysing a text.  We need to teach students how to learn and give them the curiosity and the tools to take control of their own learning.
 
Further reading
 
'Uncovering Grammar' by Scott Thornbury


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