[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.If the learners are not spending a lot of time on task, there could be several reasons for this:1The teacher uses such a variety of techniques and lesson formats that learners are uncertain about what they should do.If the organisation of each lesson was more predictable and if familiar procedures or techniques were more regularly used, the learners could get on with the job.2The tasks that the learners are asked to do do not interest them.If the content of a task is not attractive to the learners and it cannot be changed, the teacher can try the following things:(a) Add a competitive or a score-keeping element to the task.Learners may compete against each other or against their previous achievement.Graphs are one way of recording this achievement.Forexample, when doing a cloze exercise, the class can be divided into half.The learners in each half do the exercise individually, and then reach a group consensus on the answers.The correct score of each half of the class is then compared.60Principles(b) Explain the learning goal and the way this goal is achieved to the learners.One way of classifying learning tasks is on a blind–informed–controlling scale.In a blind task, learners do the task without knowing why they are doing it and what it is supposed to achieve.In an informed task, the learners understand the goals of the task.In a controlling task, the learners know how to manipulate the task to suit their own requirements.For example, when doing a cloze exercise learners can be told of the role of cloze in developing prediction skills.Where the learners could not guess an item they could note what they could predict, such as part of speech, positive or negative meaning, cause of prediction difficulty.(c) Provide a choice of activities by developing equivalents to a reading box for other aspects of language learning.3Individual learners have difficulty maintaining attention on one task.Such learners may need some special practice in remaining on task.As they often tend to interfere with the work of other learners, it is worth making some special supervised tasks for these learners and rewarding them for increased attention.The “time on task” principle is important at all levels.Even with absolute beginners there are many opportunities to establish the target language as the main classroom language, by using it for greetings and farewells, instructions and other naturally recurring interactions (Davis and Pearse, 2000).This will help the learners to view the target language as a means of communication rather than an object of study.Also where English is learned for specific purposes, which may involve solely the development of a reading knowledge, substantial time needs to be spent on the reading skill.8Learners should process the items to be learned as deeply and as thoughtfully as possible.The “levels of processing” hypothesis (Craik and Lockhart, 1972) proposes that the single most important factor in learning is the quality of mental activity in the mind of the learners at the moment that learning takes place.Items that are repeated without thoughtful attention will not be learned as quickly or retained as long as those that are related to past experience, result in some meaning-directed effort, or are thoughtfully analysed.Another way of expressing this principle is to say that “the quantity of learning depends on the quality of mental activity at the moment of learning”.Many teachers apply this principle without really being aware of it.They do it to keep the attention and interest of their learners.Applying the principle only requires a small change to normal teaching procedures.Here are some examples:Principles611Instead of translating the meaning of a useful unknown word, the teacher describes its meaning using foreign-language explanations.So, to describe allow the teacher might say, “I will not allow my children to eat dirty food”.While listening, the learners have to find the appropriate first-language translation.So instead of the teacher providing the translation and the learners making little effort, the learners make the effort and work to find the translation.This also gives the teacher useful feedback.Variations of this technique are described in Nation (1978).2While doing a substitution table activity, the teacher writes the items on the board.The teacher gives a spoken model and points to the appropriate parts of the table.The learners repeat.As the exercise continues, the teacher gradually rubs out words and phrases from the table so that the learners are repeating parts from memory.3Before the learners read a text the teacher shows them the first sentence of each paragraph.The learners look at each sentence and discuss it in groups in order to anticipate what will come next in the paragraph.After guessing, they then read the paragraph.Reading thus becomes a more thoughtful and informed activity.It is possible to check how much a course applies the levels of processing principle by looking at the various exercise types that it uses and ranking them according to the depth of processing they require from the learners.Most courses regularly make use of only a small range of techniques and these are the ones that should be considered rather than the “one-off ” activities.It is not straightforward to rank diverse activities according to a single scale of depth but it is worth doing so, particularly if one considers that each activity used takes time that might be more profitably spent doing some other activity.The following scale for depth of processing (Table 4.4) is offered as a starting point for such ranking.The learners’ level of proficiency and the relevance of their first-language knowledge will have a strong effect on the positions of items on the scale.If a course does not allow for adequate depth of processing, a teacher can make up for this lack by making use of a new range of teaching techniques Table 4 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]