Teacher correction

If neither self-correction nor student-student correction is effective you must assume that either the student hasn't understood what you're getting at or doesn't know what the correct version should be. If it's an important point and the others don't know it either, you may have to stop and teach it to the whole class. If not, and the meaning of the item is clear, your simply saying it and getting the students to say it should be enough.

No matter how you have done the correction, get the student who made the error to say the correct version, if possible in its original context. This is a vital part of any correction process. You can do this by gesture or saying something like OK, again. The whole thing.

26 вопрос The deductive approach

In a deductive approach, students are given explanations or grammar rules, for example, and then, based on these explanations or rules, they make phrases and sentences using the new language.

In the following example, elementary students are going to focus on the present continuous tense.

The teacher starts by showing them pictures of people doing certain actions (painting a house, fixing the roof, cutting the grass, etc). He or she then models a sentence about one of the pictures ('He's painting the house') before using a series of devices to draw the students' attention to the grammar of the present continuous ('Listen... he's... he's... he is... he is [ using a gesture, perhaps fingers or hands coming together to show 'he' and 'is' joined together to make the contracted form]... he's... he's... painting... listen... paint... ing... paint... ing... he's painting the house'). Students then repeat the sentence, before moving on to the next one ('He's fixing the roof), where the teacher once again models the sentence, and again draws the students' attention to the construction of the present continuous by isolating parts of it ('he's', 'fixing'). The students then repeat the second sentence. The teacher now cues the students with a prompt ('paint') and the students have to say 'He's painting the house', or 'fix' and they say 'He's fixing the roof. They then use what they are learning to make sentences about the other pictures, and as they do so, the teacher corrects where necessary.

It can be seen that this explain and practise approach to teaching aspects of the language system looks very much like a straight arrows sequence in which the order of elements is engage -> study -> activate. It suits some students and language points very well.

The inductive approach

In a so-called inductive approach, things happen the other way round. In other words, instead of going from the rules to the examples, students see examples of language and try to work out the rules. Thus, for example, after students have read a text, we might ask them to find examples of different past tenses and say how and why they are used. This boomerang-type lesson (where the elements occur in the sequence engage -> activate ->study) is especially appropriate where language study arises out of skills work on reading and listening texts.

But in an inductive approach we prefer the students to find this information out. However, not all students feel comfortable with this approach and would still prefer to be 'spoon-fed'.

28 вопрос A distinction can be drawn between intensive and extensive listening. As with reading, the latter refers to listening which the students often do away from the classroom, for pleasure or some other reason. The audio material they consume in this way - often on CDs in their cars, on MP3 players, DVDs, videos or on the Internet - should consist of texts that they can enjoy listening to because they more or less understand them without the intervention of a teacher or course materials to help them. It is true that there is not at present a body of material developed for extensive listening as there is for extensive reading, but this looks set to change in the foreseeable future. Already, many simplified readers (see page 100) come with accompanying CDs on which the books are read or dramatised. Students can also use tapes and CDs to listen to their coursebook dialogues again after they have studied them in class. There is a growing number of podcast sites from where students can download free materials. And another way of getting students involved in a form of extensive listening is to encourage them to go to English language films with subtitles; as they hear the English dialogue, the subtitles help them understand; as they understand, they will, to some extent, absorb the language they hear.

Intensive listening is different from extensive listening in that students listen specifically in order to work on listening skills, and in order to study the way in which English is spoken. It usually takes place in classrooms or language laboratories, and typically occurs when teachers are present to guide students through any listening difficulties, and point them to areas of interest.