ICELT 2009- 2010Centre: MX 030 BC Ciudad Victoria UAT

METHODOLOGY TASK 3

Evaluating and supplementing materials

Candidate: 023 Orson Daniel Adrián Vázquez Sandoval

Tutor Ma. Antonieta de Silva.

Ciudad Victoria, TamaulipasMarch 2010

1.A

So far we have spoken about the language and its systems as well as some basic management

tools that contribute with the better selection and arrangement of topics in order to be presented

to our learners. This paper is about how to evaluate the tools to use within a classroom to help

our students generate better meanings throughout their English learning process.

Our job as instructors is to decide what materials will better depict what we want to teach taking

into account our learners´ personalities as well as our own. The general scope that we should

carry in mind is to provide variety and help our learners acquire new knowledge or recycle

previous items with as wide a plethora of teaching tools as possible.

THE TOOLS I HAD

For this lesson, I decided to put into practice “Role Playing Dialogues” in order to teach my

students key vocabulary for “Travel”. I wanted to expand on the topic because I knew that

students at this level were au fait already with some of the terms but required to get more

insight. The recycling of the topic was hopelessly short and visually unappealing. I wanted to

bring something wildly imaginative to the class that students would thank. I only had a mind

map that swiftly moves into a reading activity without consolidating vocabulary, so I wanted to

expand:1

1.B

1 ( “Attitude 2” Tim Bowen et al: 2008: pg42. Editorial Macmillan )

The tools I needed

So two main problems were about to be tackled:

1. Is what I am going to teach relevantly depicted to come across and be acquired in some

way by my learners?

If not,

2. How much of a chance do I stand of being cheerfully successful at trying to make

meaning out of a chalk-and-board situation when facing the daunting challenge of

recycling knowledge effectively?

In practice, the reality is that we have enough material to teach but we are unfamiliar as to how

to properly exploit it. Personally I believe that the course book package with which I teach is

fairly good and I have learned that through teaching with different course book packages an

instructor raises his possibilities to better implement basic items for other lessons. For this

particular occasion I needed:

1. 2A visual or flashcard

that helped me warm up the

class and set a context to

elicit some information. I

got this chart depicting a

hotel to elicit about the

different reasons that may

bring a person to check into

a hotel room and the

numerous situations that might be lived at once.

2. A dialogue to act out (I attach a copy as APPENDIX)

This dialogue was absolutely optional. Students were given the chance to write their

own dialogues and to act them out, on the condition that the language they used and the

context they set themselves in were Hotel/Travel-like.2 A picture of my board in the middle of the class. after having elicited situations. Students were working on the dialogue while this picture was being taken.

They focused on basic request formulae and data completion. Dialogues needed to

remain short without losing effectiveness communicatively. 3

3. A set of realia items to spice up

the role-playing and to simulate

the lobby of a hotel which

consisted of :

A tie

A pair of shades

A bag

Two paintings

A tablecloth

A credit card

A computer

A projected scenario

2Lesson Plan Methodology Task 3

Class Profile3 How many can you spot!? The computer, the tie, the paintings, the shades. Keep going!

This lesson was taught at an elementary level at A2 in the Common European Framework of Reference. It is composed of 19 students from which 10 are male and 9 are female. They have had approximately 150 hours of effective English practice. At the beginning of the course they were given a test to find out what their learning styles were. Research suggested that the class was to be adapted to a visual and kinesthetic approach.

This does not, by any means, signify that they need to be looking at material or playing all the time. According to my experience, it only shows that they have certain preference towards those activities and that any well-prepared class containing one or both of the aforementioned aspects stands a higher chance of becoming a major success to them.

This class was carefully prepared following those indications in order to tackle the problem of the form leaving only the contents to learn. With this I mean that I can be sure that they will enjoy the activities but I am not sure that they will really learn what they are supposed to learn. I can always test them later. Let’s start

Class Contents

General Scope: VocabularyLanguage skill: Speaking

Material: Hotel Flashcard Image projector Computer Dialogue handout Speakers Board, markers, eraser. Realia simulate a dialogue between a vacationers and a receptionist: a tie, a pair of

shades, a bag, two paintings, a computer, two chairs.

STAGE 1 Warm-upSPECIFIC OBJECTIVE To greet and start the classESTIMATED TIME 10 minutesLANGUAGE FOCUS VocabularyINTERACTION PATTERNS Teacher StudentsCONTEXT Hotel/ Travelling/ VacationPROCEDURE T. greets the class and writes on the

board: “Hotel _____”

T. asks: “What are the reasons for a

person to check into a hotel?”T. writes on the board the answers.T. sticks on the board a visual aid.T. completes the cue with a name given by SS.

“Hotel *California*” for instance

(The visual aid shows several rooms with different people performing dissimilar demeanors)T. asks :

“What are they doing?”Students come up with answers.

MATERIALSBoard,

markers,

Visual aid.

ANTICIPATED PROBLEMS/SOLUTIONS

Students are to recall certain items of vocabulary to successfully combine them with the modal of deduction “may”

STAGE 2 Mind mapSPECIFIC OBJECTIVE To construct further knowledge on

vocabularyESTIMATED TIME 6 minutes + 2 minutes to check with

partners.LANGUAGE FOCUS VocabularyINTERACTION PATTERNS S S SCONTEXT Hotel/ Travelling/ VacationPROCEDURE T. will project the image of the

mind map with some missing

blanks and the following pool of items: Drop you off at Cancel Check into Arrive at Leave for Confirm

MATERIALS Interactive board, computer, digital marker, course book student’s book

ANTICIPATED PROBLEMS/SOLUTIONS

Students might mix the words and fill out the blanks erroneously. Teacher asks them to work in teams and compare.

STAGE 3 Dialogue rehearsal. Controlled stageSPECIFIC OBJECTIVE To present students with the dialogue

they were going to act out and to help them train with intonation.

ESTIMATED TIME 12 minutesLANGUAGE FOCUS Speaking and intonationINTERACTION PATTERNS TSS // SSSSCONTEXT Hotel/ Travelling/ VacationPROCEDURE T. drills chorally the dialogue between A

and B:Teacher – A Students –B T. swaps roles T-B SS-AT. has students drill in pairs the dialogue

MATERIALS Hand-outANTICIPATED PROBLEMS/SOLUTIONS

Students might have problems with long sentences. At this point the teacher has the option to backwards chain construction

STAGE 4 Shooting of the videos.SPECIFIC OBJECTIVE Once students are acquainted to the

dialogue they start practicing to dress up and act it out for the camera.

ESTIMATED TIME 12 minutesLANGUAGE FOCUS SpeakingINTERACTION PATTERNS SSCONTEXT Hotel/ Travelling/ VacationPROCEDURE T. calls students to the stage to practice

actively what they have been rehearsing.

MATERIALS Hotel Flashcard Image projector A digital handy-cam Computer Dialogue handout Speakers Board, markers, eraser. Realia simulate a

dialogue between a vacationist and a receptionist: a tie, a pair of shades, a bag, two paintings, a computer, two chairs.

ANTICIPATED PROBLEMS/SOLUTIONS

Students might forget their lines.Students might be subject of bloopers.

STAGE 5 Video clapping competitionSPECIFIC OBJECTIVE To decide which video was the best

through popular applauseESTIMATED TIME 8 minutes.LANGUAGE FOCUS ListeningINTERACTION PATTERNS T SSCONTEXT Hotel/ Travelling/ VacationPROCEDURE T. plays the video clips continuously and

after playing them thoroughly shows the names of the participants on the board and ask students to clap excitedly for the video they enjoyed most.

MATERIALS ProjectorComputerSpeakersBoard and markers

ANTICIPATED PROBLEMS/SOLUTIONS

Students might have divided opinions towards the final decision.

3Use of visual aids at the “Warm-up” stage

At the beginning of the lesson students responded well to the reasons that brought a person to check into a hotel. The reason to this was to create a context so that students could welcome the visual.They got engaged when they were given the chance to actually give a name to the hotel. Once they were deep into the matter working on their own hotel, they started making sentences to describe what the characters were doing.

It is a remarkable comment to emphasize that without the visual, the teacher would have had to draw a similar structure on the board consuming more time from the class without guaranteeing enough meaningfulness.

After a while, they seemed to have got some enjoyment out of deducting the possible situations with sentences such as:

He might be there because he is on vacation. He could be there because he is visiting his grandmother.

Use of a page in the course book at the “Presentation” stage

I consider this stage was particularly important. Personally, I believe that the course book is a very powerful tool if used properly. This time it was used to present the core vocabulary items and for this we used a mind map cloze exercise that was in it.

Firstly, the teacher made sure he checked for meaning and recalled on the context by asking a student: Where are they? What are they doing? Why are they there?

based on the visual aid. The teacher then made sure he asked randomly ensuring most of his students gave similar answers.

Having done this, the teacher asked his students to open their student’s book on a given page and found then this mind map. The teacher asked them to fill out the mind map using the words in the pool.

Use of a dialogue hand out at the “Practice” stage

At this stage the learners were ready to take in more knowledge. They were given the cut outs and then they were asked to put the pieces in order of events.Through doing this the teacher ensured the

analysis of the contents and presented some of the vocabulary in context.After exploiting it a little bit in terms of structure and contents, the teacher moved on pronunciation and intonation. He drilled the class in total control and then had pairs play out the dialogue. Students look contented when they were told that they would dress up and act out to be recorded in a video to be finally chosen as winners.

Use of realia at the “Practice” stage

Finally the moment arrived. Students were ready after having practiced their dialogues for next to 8 minutes and the teacher called out the names of the first couple. They were given the items and started dressing up.

The role of realia at this point was of most importance because it would encompass a higher degree of commitment to produce better language in students. It would build a relaxed environment and spice up the

contents to further check in whole class when the videos were filmed in the end.

If I wanted to use this material again I would make sure that the students learnt the dialogue well in advance. Students seemed to be a little bit dubious about their lines and this is because they were given short time to fulfill the task. The dialogues were amazingly accurate and hilarious at some points. Students behaved spontaneously and this gave the whole situation more credibility.

The next time I wanted to use a visual aid I would draw on the board a grid and something similar to a hotel but I would bring stickers of characters’ faces. This would help them think of more reasons as to why the characters are there.Examples of the characters:

Albert Einstein Marylin Monroe Etc. varied characters.

In conclusion the activity was delivered successfully and the students left for home with knowledge of new vocabulary, intonation in phrases and lots of shining smiles.

Appendix 1Hand outICELT 2009-2010Candidate: 023 O.Daniel Vazquez SandovalCentre No. 030 MX BC CD VICTORIA UAT

Dialogue

I’m glad I finally arrived at your beautiful hotel!

Good afternoon! Why are you so late? We expected you by 11 this morning.

Yes, but nobody picked me up at the airport!

Can you please give me your full name to confirm your number of reservation?

Of course! My name is____________

Should I also confirm your flight back tomorrow morning?

Yes, please! And call a taxi. I need somebody to drop me off at the office meeting I have this evening.

Sure. Is there anything else I can do for you?

Not at all right now. Thank you very much

Enjoy your stay!

Bibliography

“Attitude 2” Bowen et al. Editorial Macmillan de MexicoPg.42

Visual aid

Hotel posterEditorial Macmillan de MexicoTeaching resources series

“Learning teaching” SCRIVENER.JimMacmillan publishing house.Exploiting an activity pg 47

“The TKT Course” SPRATT et al.ESOL Examinations1st Printing, 2005Cambridge University Press

“The practice of English language teaching” Harmer, JeremyLongmanPg 45 Learning differences