Shrinking and linking (shrinkin_n_linkin) - practical techniques for teaching stress and reduced speech

Jason R Levine

This was the title of a webinar presented by Jason R Levine (@FluencyMC) as part of the recent ELT Techniques MOOC on Listening and Pronunciation.  What follows is a summary of what Jason had to say.

English is a stress-timed language.  This isn't common - most languages are syllable-timed.  We want our students to feel the stress (rhythm) of the language, and can draw their attention to it by using a bold font to show stress, for example.  However,

There's a fine line between raising awareness of pronunciation issues and raising stress (the other meaning!).

We need to raise awareness sufficiently to motivate students and follow up with loads of practice.  We shouldn't fill their heads with loads of rules.  It's usually best to follow the three Rs:

RELAX, REPEAT, REMEMBER

 

The rhythm of English is best described as 3/4, as in a waltz:

123

223

323

423

This is the beat of the language.  For example:

 

Students feel stressed.   (4 syllables)

     S         V       O/C

     1         2         3

 

The students feel stressed.   (5 syllables)

Th' students feel stressed.

 

The students are feeling stressed.   (7 syllables)

Th' students_r feelin' stressed.

 

The students have been feeling stressed.   (8 syllables)

Th' students've bin feelin' stressed.

The word order of subject, verb, object is common in English.  There are times when the word order is different, but these are exceptions - questions, passive structures, for emphasis, negative adverbials, etc.  There is a connection between the almost fixed word order in English and the rhythm of the language.  Because English gravitates to this word order, the rhythm has become 1,2,3.  This doesn't mean that every sentence is 1, 2, 3, but it does mean that this rhythm is always there.  It's in the background.

schwa

In English, unlike most other languages, each word which has more than one syllable, has a syllable which is stressed.  It's important to get learners very familiar with where the stress is - from dictionary use, from listening, and from your instruction.  Don't worry about trying to teach the more complex issues of secondary and tertiary stress.  Once students know where the stress is, the other syllables automatically become unstressed - hence the schwa everywhere!  Syllables reduce to the /ǝ/ and /ı/ sounds all the time.  It's important not to panic students about how they're going to remember all this - just make them familiar with it so that they know what sounds right and what sounds wrong.

Going back to our 'students feel stressed' example, we add in syllables to every sentence and yet the rhythm stays the same.  Just like in music, speed doesn't affect the rhythm.  You can play/say something fast or slowly, but if the time signature is 3/4, then the rhythm stays the same.

In English, when the grammar structures get more complex, they're harder to hear because the grammatical words aren't stressed.  We need to give students much more practice at listening to these kinds of sentences.  We can slow them down, but we must make sure the rhythm is maintained.  To be a fluent listener, we often tell our students they don't need to understand every word - they should focus on the content (stressed) words because they carry the meaning.  This is true, but, in order to be able to speak and write well, they also need to know the grammar words.

 

When teaching pronunciation, we shouldn't really highlight the shrinking and linking.  We should concentrate on the stressed words and, with familiarity with the rhythm of English, the reduced forms automatically become reduced.

 

Some learners think that stress changes according to how formal a situation is.  This is not true!  Stress and intonation are not the same thing. 

 

How many people are there in your family?

How many people_r there_in yr family?

 

What are you going to do on Friday?

What're ya gonna do_on Friday?

 

In these sentences, the stress or rhythm is the same, but the intonation isn't.  Intonation in informal speech (with friends) is very flat and we speak with a lower tone.  In formal situations, we usually speak with a higher tone and more intonation.  The key determiner as to whether someone sounds formal or informal, rude or polite, is INTONATION.

 

Techniques to use in the classroom

 

1.  Highlight word and sentence stress.

 

2.  Have students mark the stress after a listening task.  They already know the vocabulary and have understood the text.  Then they can listen again and mark the stress.

 

3.  Have students mark the stress before a listening task.  They try to predict where it's going to be.  Then they listen to check.

 

4.  Focus on stress in dictations:

• Dictate five sentences of authentic English - read them yourself or use a recording.
• Repeat each sentence at least three times, giving students time to write.  Do not change the speed or stress patterns.
• Ask students to write down the stressed words first.
• Pair students to compare their work and reconstruct the sentences as best they can.
• Elicit the sentences from the students or have them write them on the board.
• Ask students to highlight the word or sentence stress.
• As an extension activity, have students write responses and create dialogues or stories.

Sample dictation

1. What's the weather supposed to be like today?
2. Where do you feel like going for lunch?
3. Tell her we'll meet her around two.
4. Actually, I think I'll stay at home tonight and watch TV.
5. Do you want to meet at the library tomorrow?

Number 3 is particularly difficult - the shrinking and linking is blatant!

 

5.  Use meaningful shadowing and repetition.  Try scenes from movies and TV shows, music videos, commercials, roleplays created by students, scenes from plays and musicals, famous speeches, karaoke, poetry, limericks, jokes, tongue twisters, songs, etc.  When teaching pronunciation, we need to use repetition more as actors would when learning their lines.  Practice makes perfect!!



Using grammar to create a good relationship

Michael McCarthy

This was the title of a recent webinar hosted by Cambridge English Teacher and presented by Michael McCarthy.  He should have been joined by Anne O'Keefe, but unfortunately technical issues meant she was unable to connect.  What follows is a summary of what Michael had to say.

Grammar is more than just a set of abstract rules - it can be used to create appropriate relationships:

• Forms of address (sir, madam, mate, etc.)
• Formal vocabulary (e.g. we wish to advise you....)
• Hedging and vagueness (e.g. a bit hungry, hungry-ish)
• Indirectness (e.g. one shouldn't worry, it is hoped that....)
• Using tense, aspect and modality (e.g. I wondered..., I should be grateful...)
• Involvement strategies/use of pronouns - ways of making the person you're talking to feel more part of the topic of conversation
• Ellipsis (e.g. want some coffee? you ready?)

Corpus evidence

• Cambridge English Corpus - 2 billion words
• CANCODE Spoken Corpus - 5 million words (mostly informal speech)
• Cambridge Learner Corpus - 5 million words
• CANBEC Spoken Business English Corpus - 1 million words
• CLAS Spoken Professional/Academic Corpus - 1 million words taken from a hotel management context in Ireland

These corpora give us the evidence to understand how grammar is used.  Where grammar gives us choices, the choice you make affects how your spoken or written word is received.  Look at this example which goes from direct to less direct and, therefore, more polite:

• Where's the key?
• I hope you've got the key.
• I was hoping you had the key.

Or this example:

• I wonder if you can help me?
• I'm wondering if you could help me?
• I was wondering if you could help me?

All of these sentences are grammatically correct, but small changes affect the degree of politeness.

Some verbs are more polite and less direct when used in the continuous form (present or past).  For example:

• Are you needing something?
• I was wondering if I could ask you a question?
• I was hoping you'd come to visit.
• We were thinking we should finish this by Friday.

Look at this example in context:

 

or this one:

Customers and servers work hard from the beginning to set an appropriate relationship.

 

Use of pronouns (we versus you)

 

Choice of pronouns can create closeness or distance.  In this example, the salesperson uses 'you' and 'your' to make the customer feel involved - almost as if he owns the item already:

 



In this example, we see the pronoun of involvement used in an academic setting - a hotel and catering college:

Modality

 

Modality can express degrees of formality and degrees of imposition.

 

Looking at corpora for incidences of 'can I ...?' and 'could I ...?', we see a huge difference in the number of times these are used in spoken informal English.  We can also see that there are no examples in Cancode of 'might I ...?' being used.  Corpus enables us to see the degree of formality these forms express, but also in what context they're used.

 

Ellipsis

 

Ellipsis, the non-use of items normally considered obligatory, in conversation reinforces directness and closeness.  For example:

To conclude:

 

Incorrect choices can project the wrong relationship in terms of the degrees of directness and imposition.  The grammar discussed in this webinar is all very common and is normally taught at low levels, but we need to look at it again at higher levels to explore the subtleties.  Good teaching materials should include this grammar of choice to enable students to communicate effectively.

 





 

Joined up listening – how to understand natural speech

Johanna Stirling

This was the title of a recent webinar hosted by Cambridge University Press and presented by Johanna Stirling.  What follows is a summary of what she had to say.

Why don’t students understand natural speech?

·         It’s too fast for them to process.

·         The words aren’t spoken clearly.

·         They aren’t listening properly.

·         They don’t know all the words.

·         They panic.

The first two are probably the main reasons for non-comprehension.

How do we teach listening?

1. Skills development:

·         predicting

·         listening for gist

·         listening for specific information

·         inferring

2. Practise

These are important, but they are not enough.  Following on from practice, we need to analyse the wrong answers.  We need to find out why students got the answers wrong. 

Micro-listening – receptive pronunciation

It's important to focus on specific parts of what the students have already listened to, as in this example from Face2Face:

Pronunciation is normally associated with speaking, but receptive pronunciation is vital for listening.

Difficulties when listening

1. Ellipsis - incomplete sentences, which are very common in spoken English, are extremely difficult for learners to cope with.  We can give students conversations like this:

 

and ask them to supply what's missing, or give them the whole conversation, listen and cross out what they don't hear:

 

2.  Weak forms - where we have strong stress on one word and the others all get squashed, it is very problematic for learners.  We need to show students weak forms to help with their comprehension.  They don't necessarily have to say it that way themselves, but they need to recognise it.

 





 

 

 

3.  Elision - when we put words together, we often lose the last phoneme.  We need to raise students' awareness of this.

 

 

4.  Linking - it's often difficult to tell where one word ends and another starts - mad_idea_about, for example.  Look at how these combinations can sound to an untrained ear:

 

We should introduce linking to our students at pre-intermediate level at the latest.  It's really never too early to show students what's happening in joined-up speaking.

 

5.  Assimilation - some sounds change when they're near other sounds.  For example, 'sunbathing' sounds like 'some bathing', 'sandwich' becomes 'samwich', and 'handbag' sounds more like 'hambag'.

 

To conclude:

 

We need to make our students aware of all of these anomalies in spoken English through the practice of micro-listening and receptive pronunciation.

 

Reference

 

Listening in the Language Classroom by John Field.







 

 

Teachers as writers

Tessa Woodward

This was the title of a recent webinar hosted by Cambridge English Teacher and presented by Tessa Woodward.  What follows is a summary of what she had to say.

As teachers, we need to make sure that all of our writing is clear and accurate.  We need to proof-read everything we write and be strict about self-editing.  As good writers, we need to use lexical variation and avoid repetition.

These are some of the types of writing that teachers do:

Writing on the board

 

We can be creative even with the most basic writing we do, as in the example above where the lesson plan is displayed as a menu, with homework as a takeaway!  We can use colour to highlight information.

 

Comments on students' work

 

We need to vary our praise words and not use 'good' all the time!

 

Lesson plans

 

These are usually written just for ourselves (unless for observation purposes), so we tend to develop our own idiosyncratic ways of writing.

 

Logs, reflective diaries and journals

 

These are indubitable proof of your own CPD and should be written in such a way that they can be referred to by others.  You can use the Cambridge English Teacher website to keep your journal.  Critical Incidents in Teaching by David Tripp is a good reference source for this topic.

 

Writing with our students

 

Here, we are talking about interactive dialogue journals, where each student has a notebook in which the teacher writes a letter to him or her.  The student replies with a letter of their own written in the notebook.  This is an ongoing conversation and serves as a record of your learning relationship.  You can read more about this in Joy Peyton's book.

 

Materials creation

• Adapting coursebook exercises - making examples more relevant to your students, for example.
• Writing your own reading texts.
• Adapting authentic texts.

Check out eltteacher2writer.co.uk.

Writing for other teachers

• Get an idea first.
• Pilot it with your students.
• Think it through and read around the topic.
• Write it down as if you were explaining to a colleague (clear and informal).
• Read it out loud to yourself and others.
• Change any muddled parts and make them better.
• Spell check, grammar check, and note the word count.
• Look around at local, regional, national and international periodicals for language teachers - look at websites for teachers, too.
• Read their guidelines as to readership, length, style, format, etc.
• Edit your piece to make it fit the periodical you've chosen.
• Send it in with a pleasant cover note.
• Expect your idea to be edited!

Remember:

• Idea first
• Then write
• Then think about publishing

It's important that your motivation to write is clear.  You should be writing for you and for your students first and foremost.  Then, you want to share your ideas with colleagues and then the wider industry.  If this is the case, then rejection doesn't matter.

 

Conclusion

 

We write a lot as teachers and we learn incredibly useful writing skills by doing it.  We already are writers!

 

 

 

 

The validity of automated scoring software and its application in ELT contexts

This was the title of the closing plenary at this year's VUS-TESOL conference, given by Professor Timothy L. Farnsworth.  What follows is a summary of what he had to say.





What is automated scoring?

• Computer software that automatically assigns scores to writing or speaking samples.
• Essays can be assigned scores instantly by computer.
• Test takers can call a testing centre and take an oral test without speaking to a human.
• Scores can be reported instantly.
• Some level of feedback is given to test takers.
• There is a variety of software available.

How does a computer grade a test?

1.  Natural Language Processing (NLP)

• software identifies and counts linguistic features.
• software does not attempt to gauge content in any way.
• used for testing writing.

2.  Speech recognition

• software compares the speech sample to a large database of samples of the same test questions.
• faster responses are 'more fluent'.
• used for testing speaking.

E-rater (ETS)

• automated scoring of timed essays
• uses NLP
• currently used in a limited way to rate TOEFL and GRE
• used for formative assessment (e.g. TOEFL practice online)
• individual assessment
• students submit essays, receive scores and re-write them as many times as they want in order to improve their score

E-rater takes an essay and counts:

• the number of words
• the number of sentences
• the number of paragraphs
• sentence length
• the number of unique words used versus the total number of words (lexical diversity)
• the number of low-frequency words (lexical depth)
• the number of prompt-specific words (topic appropriateness)

The computer doesn't try to understand the essay, but it does look at grammar:

• dependent/independent clauses
• passive voice
• subject-verb agreement
• plurals
• sequencing words
• logical relations
• mechanics (punctuation, for example)

What is a good essay according to E-rater?

• It's long - longer is always better!
• It has a standard structure.
• It has many longer sentences with a lot of dependent clauses.
• It has many explicit organisational words.
• It has a lot of obscure vocabulary - for example, indubitably would score much higher than surely!
• It has a wide range of vocabulary.

This is not necessarily a good thing!  Good English writing is often simple, clear and concise.

What does E-rater not notice?

• Untruths
• Grammatical errors
• Lexical errors
• Flawed arguments
• Insanity!

Therefore, ETS doesn't use E-rater as the sole scorer for tests.  Rather, it is used as the second human in order to save money.  More than ten years of research hasn't solved the problems with E-rater - it's incredibly hard to get a computer to understand language!

Criterion

This is an E-rater application designed for in-class use.  Students' essays are instantly scored using E-rater software.  Students are given individual scores and extra resources to refer to about their errors.

Versant

This is the first fully automated oral language test used commercially.  It is a Pearson product.  The test is taken in a computer lab or over the phone (speaking to a computer).  The computer automatically rates the speech and produces scores.  It is used widely in business and increasingly in schools.  There are many versions with multiple uses and languages - for the aviation industry, for example.

The test is fifteen minutes long and includes:

• repeating sentences
• scrambled sentences
• oral multiple choice

All responses are totally scripted with only one possible right answer.  There is an optional 'free response' answer, but this is not scored.  Answers are scored on:

• fluency
• pronunciation
• sentence mastery
• vocabulary
• grammar

Speech is captured by microphone and compared to a large database of human-scored responses.  The database includes responses from native speakers from different countries, and English learners from different countries and of all proficiency levels.  Scores are given in the range of 'most similar' to the sample.

What is a good Versant response?

• It's fast (fluency score)
• It's clear
• It's accurate
• It has native-like pronunciation

This last criteria is the most contentious.  We talk about 'global English' now and, for most of us, comprehensibility is much more important than native-like speech.

What Versant doesn't measure:

• the range of vocabulary used
• extended speaking
• pragmatics - cultural awareness, for example
• the ability to interact with others

Advantages of these systems

Reliability

• computers don't get tired
• computers aren't biased for or against individuals
• scores are more consistent than with human raters

Practicality

• it's less expensive than using human raters
• scores and feedback are obtained instantly

Research shows that when test takers are 'acting in good faith', scores are roughly equivalent to those of human raters.  Even though the scores are very similar, however, they are arrived at in very different ways.

Problems

Automated tests can be 'gamed' or tricked.  Versant scores, for example, can be quickly raised by coaching.

Positive effects on teaching

• Students can get more and faster feedback.

Negative effects on teaching

• The form of the test can influence what happens in the classroom.
• Teachers tend to focus on what is tested at the expense of communicative teaching.
• There can be a decreased focus on the quality of the content.
• There can be an increased focus on grammatical accuracy and low-frequency vocabulary.
• There is more oral repetition in order to increase the students' speed of response.
• There is less time spent on developing critical thinking.
• There is a decreased focus on the pragmatic.

To conclude

Despite the obvious drawbacks, computer scored testing is in all our futures.

Power of the image: ways to use photographs in ELT

This was the title of a presentation at this year's VUS-TESOL conference, given by Paul Grainger from National Geographic Cengage.  What follows is a summary of what he had to say.





Using images as the basis for discussion

• Show an image quickly and then hide it.  Ask the students what they remember about it.
• Show the image for longer and pose questions - who are the people?, what are they doing?, what happened before the picture was taken?, what do you think happened next?, how does this picture make you feel?

 

The history of the image

• Cave drawings
• Printing press
• Typewriter
• Visual literacy

We have gone from text rich images to those where the picture is more and more important.

The power of the image

Today pictures are uploaded and shared on social media, giving them an immediacy and profound impact.  As the saying goes, 'a picture is worth a thousand words'.  As teachers, we need to exploit this, even at low levels when we can teach new vocabulary with images.  People think using images, so seeing comes before the use of words.  As Aristotle said, 'without image, thinking is impossible'.  We remember far more about texts if they are illustrated - the 'picture superiority effect'.

Images can be:

• surprising
• shocking
• funny
• sexy
• powerful
• disgusting
• frightening
• ambiguous

After 72 hours, we retain 65-70% of visual information, whereas we remember only 10% of something we've read or heard.  After a year, the retention rate remains at 65-70% for information we've seen, but drops to only 1% for written or aural information.

The best images to use in ELT are those which:

• provoke an emotional response
• arouse interest
• generate discussion

Ideas for using photographs

1. Captions - If you can make your students laugh, you can make them do anything!  Show them a photo of people or animals and ask them to imagine what they are saying.  This is a great warmer - it engages students and stimulates creativity.
2. Creative question and answer practice - Show pictures of people and get students to work in pairs to ask and answer questions about them.  The person answering the questions pretends he knows the people in the picture and invents a whole back story for them.  For lower level students, you could limit the questions to the grammar point being studied.  You can do this activity with any picture in the coursebook - before a listening, for example.
3. Personal photos - Tie these in with the topic of the unit.  Show your own photos before the start of the unit as an introduction.  Get students to ask questions about them.  Students can also use their photos.  This is very engaging for students as they get to know more about their teacher as well as being able to share personal stories with their classmates.
4. Introducing a new topic or new vocabulary - Use photographs to generate interest in a new topic or to provide a visual reminder for new vocabulary. 
5. Pre-listening/pre-reading - Get students to focus on an image before they do a reading or a listening.  This really helps with their prediction skills and can be particularly useful when helping students with exam strategies.

Advantages of using images

• It motivates students
• It makes the material more memorable leading to higher retention rates
• It is a natural approach
• You can present the usual in an unusual way
• It's fun!

Using PowerPoint for Teaching English

This was the title of a presentation at this year's VUS-TESOL conference, given by Khau Huu Phuoc.  What follows is a summary of what he had to say.






Teaching with information communications technology (ICT)

ICT involves using:

• mobile phones
• computers
• audio-visual systems
• the internet
• software, such as PowerPoint or Hot Potatoes

Teaching with PowerPoint

When using books, it's difficult for us as teachers to refer to a specific point nin a text.  With PowerPoint, we can:

• Make something appear - for example, in gapfills where we can show the answer so that students are clear about what is correct (we can make words appear in any order or we can number the gaps and then fill them by clicking on the number making the exercise very easy to follow), or when teaching new vocabulary, we can click on a part of a picture to make the word appear.
• Move something - for example, in matching sentence halves or in inserting relative clauses.  You can put in sound effects for right and wrong answers - audio feedback is very engaging for students.
• Make something disappear - we can hide answers, which is particularly good when doing vocabulary tests.  For example, we can make words disappear as a clock ticks down to zero.
• Use custom animations (although we must have a purpose for using animation!) - there are four types of animation available with PowerPoint - entrance, emphasis, exit, and motion path.

All of these tools can focus students' attention on what we want them to learn.  As teachers, we can highlight places in a text very easily.  It saves a lot of time writing on the board and is very engaging for students.

Flipping the classroom: using a blended learning approach to actively engage students inside and outside of class

This was the title of a presentation at this year's VUS-TESOL conference, given by Rebecca Fletcher.  What follows is a summary of what she had to say.

 

How have teaching and students changed in the 21^st century?

• Students take pictures of the whiteboard, rather than taking notes.
• Students’ attention spans are getting shorter.
• Teachers need more activities to engage students. 
• We now have interactive whiteboards.
• The classroom is much more student centred and collaborative.
• We use laptops and tablets rather than paper.

21st century student
 

What is blended learning?

 

Blended learning is teaching in the classroom mixed with learning outside the class.

Flipping the classroom – how does it work?

Flipping the classroom allows the school to become a place for talking, doing group projects and getting individual help from the teacher, and lets home become a place for doing pre-learning, such as watching instructional videos, and self-study.  Flipping what the student does means that they do the work ahead of time, come to class and debrief.  Students interact with the material before they come to class.  It empowers students to direct their own learning by coming to class ‘genned up’.

Why digital?

 

Digital is omnipresent in all aspects of life – we need to embrace it.  Flipping the classroom supports student centred learning and helps students make connections between the real world and the classroom.

What materials can be ‘flipped’?

• video
• audio files
• powerpoints
• documents
• images
• links to websites

It’s important to have a wide variety of materials.

Social networks

Use social networks to:

• support self-paced learning
• practise new language in an engaging environment
• maximise authentic input
• build a learning community

Using Facebook with your students

Students will be using English outside the classroom in an authentic way.

• Create a page for each of your classes.  Students can ‘like’ the page and comment on the links.
• Put images on Facebook and ask students, ‘what do you think will happen next?’ or ‘what happened just before this picture was taken?’
• Students post comments on an image and then come into class and discuss them.
• Students can write collaborative stories on Facebook.

For security, students should create a Facebook account to use only for students.

Where can you find materials to flip?

• You can create your own or, better still, get students to create them.
• Use publisher-created materials.
• Use ELT websites.

Recommended websites  

• BBC Learning English - especially 'The Flatmates', an ongoing soap opera with subtitles.  Students could watch it at home and then re-create scenes in class through role-play.
• EnglishCentral.com
• LyricsTraining.com 
• BreakingNewsEnglish.com
• Film-English.com

Learning Management Systems

LMSs or VLEs (Virtual Learning Environments) are software programmes which can be used to grade and monitor students.  One of the most well-known is Edmodo.  Teachers can assign work and track their students' progress.

Blogs

We have progressed from PPP (present, practise, produce) to PPPP (present, practise, produce, publish).  Blogs are student-centred with student-generated content.

To conclude

Flipping the classroom saves time both inside and outside of the class.