6- LISTENING

TEACHING LISTENING (BROWN)

The importance of listening can hardly be overestimated. Through reception, we internal -
ize linguistic information without which we could not internalize language. In classrooms,
students always do more listening than speaking. Listening competence is universally
“larger” than speaking competence. That is why in recent years the language teaching pro-
fession has placed a concerted emphasis on listening comprehension.
However, listening comprehension has not always drawn the attention of educators to the
extent that it now has. Listening as a major component in language learning and teaching
first hit the spotlight in the last 70’s with James Asher’s work on Total Physical Response
(TPR). In TPR the role of comprehension was given prominence as learners were given
great quantities of language to listen to before they were encouraged to respond orally.
Similarly, the Natural Approach recommended a significant “silent period” during which
learners were allowed the security of listening without being forced to go through the anxi-
ety of speaking before they were “ready” to do so.
Such approaches were an outgrowth of a variety of research studies that showed evidence
of the importance of input and especially intake in second language acquisition.
Listening is not a one-way street, it is an interactive process in which the brain acts on the
impulses, bringing to bear a number of different cognitive and affective mechanisms.
Types of spoken language
A classification of type of oral language enables teachers to plan lessons or curricula and
to see the big picture of what teaching listening comprehension entails.
In monologues, the hearer must process long stretches of speech without interruption.
Planned as opposed to unplanned monologues differ considerably in their structures.
Planned monologues usually manifest little redundancy and are therefore relatively difficult
to comprehend. Unplanned monologues exhibit more redundancy, which

makes for ease in comprehension, but the presence of more performance variables and
other hesitations can either help or hinder comprehension.
Dialogues involve two or more speakers and can be subdivided in those exchanges that
promote social interaction (interpersonal) and those for which the purpose is to convey
propositional or factual information (transactional). In each case, participants may have a
good deal of shared knowledge (background info); therefore the familiarity of the interlocu-
tors will produce conversations with more assumptions, implications, and other meaning
hidden between the lines. In conversations among participants who are unfamiliar to each
other, references and meanings have to be made more explicit to assure effective compre-
hension. When such references are not explicit, misunderstandings can easily follow.
These categories are not discrete or mutually exclusive, but rather a continuum of possibil -
ities.
What makes listening difficult?
Whenever designing lessons, a number of characteristics of spoken lge need to be taken
into consideration:
o Clustering: in spoken lge, we break down speech into smaller groups
of words.
o Redundancy: rephrasing, repetitions, elaborations, etc. Such
redundancy helps the hearer to process meaning by offering more time and extra informa-
tion. Learners need to be aware that not every new sentence or phrase will necessarily
contain new information.
o Reduced forms: Reduction can be phonological, morphological, syntactic or pragmatic.
These reductions usually pose significant difficulties for language learners.
o Performance variables: in spoken language, except for planned discourse, hesitations,
false starts, pauses and corrections are common.
o Colloquial language: idioms, slang, reduced forms and shared cultural knowledge are all
manifested at some point in conversation.

o Rate of delivery: it is common for language learners to think that native speakers speak
too fast.
o Stress, rhythm and intonation: the prosodic features of English lge are very important for
comprehension. Intonations patterns are very significant, not just for interpreting straight-
forward elements such as questions, statements, and emphasis but for understanding
more subtle messages like sarcasm, endearment, insult, solicitation, praise, etc.
o Interaction: conversation is especially subject to all the rules of interaction. So, to learn to
listen is also to learn to respond and to continue a chain of listening and responding. Stu -
dents need to understand that good listeners are good responders.
Microskills and Macroskills of Listening
Brown distinguishes microskills from macroskills in listening. The former pertain to skills at
the sentence level and the latter to skills at the discourse level.
Microskills
1. Retain chunks of lge of different lengths in short-term memory
2. Discriminate among the distinctive sounds of English
3. Recognize English stress patterns, words in stressed and
unstressed positions, rhythmic structure, intonational contours,
and their role in signaling info.
4. Recognize reduced forms of words
5. Distinguish word boundaries, recognize a core of words, and
interpret word order patterns and their significance
6. Process speech at different rates of delivery
7. Process speech containing pauses and errors
8. Recognize grammatical word classes, systems, patterns and rules
9. Detect sentence constituents and distinguish between major and
minor ones.
10. Recognize that a same meaning may be expressed in different
grammatical forms.

Macroskills
11. Recognize cohesive devices in spoken discourse
12. Recognize communicative functions of utterances
13. Infer situations, participants and goals using real-world
knowledge
14. Infer links and connections between events
15. Distinguish between literal and implied meanings
16. Use non-verbal clues to decipher meanings (facial, kinesic, body
lge)
17. Develop and use listening strategies such as detecting key
words, appealing for help, etc.
Types of classroom listening performance
1. 2.
3.
4.
5.
Reactive: It requires little meaningful processing. About the only role that reactive listening
can play in an interactive classroom is on brief choral or individual drills that focus on pro-
nunciation.
Intensive: Techniques whose only purpose is to focus on components (phonemes, words,
intonations, discourse markers, etc.). Students are asked to single out certain components
of spoken language.
Responsive: Activities that consist of short stretches of teacher language designed to elicit
immediate responses (asking questions, giving commands, seeking clarification, checking
comprehension, etc.)
Selective: The task of the students is to scan the material selectively for certain info, such
as ask Ss to listen for people’s names, dates, certain facts or events, locations, situations,
context, main ideas and/or conclusion, etc.
Extensive: These tasks aim to develop a top-down, global understanding of spoken lan-
guage (listening to lengthy structures, conversations etc., and deriving a comprehensive
message or purpose). Extensive listening may require students to invoke other interactive
skills (note taking, discussions, etc.) for full comprehension.

6. Interactive: This one include all five of the above types as learners actively participate
in discussions, debates, conversations, role plays and other pair and group work.
Principles for teaching listening skills
1. 2.
3. 4.
Include a focus on listening on an integrated-skill course
Use techniques that are intrinsically motivating: Take into full account the experiences,
goals and abilities of your students
Utilize authentic language and contexts
Carefully consider the form of the listeners’ responses: Lund (1990) offered nine different
ways that we can check listeners’ comprehension:
*doing: the L (listener) responds physically to a command *choosing: the L selects from al-
ternatives such as pictures, objects and texts
*transferring: the L draws a picture of what is heard
*answering: the L answers questions about the message *condensing: the L outlines or
takes notes on a lecture. *extending: The L provides an ending to a story heard *duplicat -
ing: the L translates the message into the native lge. *modeling: the L orders a meal, for
example, after listening to a model order
*conversing: the L engages in a conv that indicates appropriate processing info.
5. Encourage the development of listening strategies. Draw their attention to the values of
strategies such as looking for key words, looking for non-verbal cues to meaning, predict -
ing a speaker’s purpose by the context, associating info with one’s existing cognitive struc-
ture, guessing meanings, seeking clarification, listening for the general gist, etc.
6. Include bottom-up and top-down listening techniques. Bottom-up processing proceeds
from sounds to words to grammatical relationships to lexical meanings, etc., to a “final”
message. Top-down processing is evoked from a “bank of prior knowledge and global ex-
pectations and other background info that the listener brings to the text”. Bottom-up tech-
niques usually

focus on sounds, words, intonation, grammatical structures, and other components of

spoken language. Top-down techniques are more concerned with the activation of
schemata, with deriving meaning, with global understanding and with interpretation of a
text. It is important for learners to operate from both directions since both can offer keys to
determining the meaning of spoken discourse.
Assessing listening in the classroom
What is the difference between assessment and test? Tests are a subset of assessment.
Assessment is an ongoing pedagogical process that includes a number of evaluative acts
on the part of the teacher. When a student responds to a question, offers a comment, or
tries out a new word or structure, the teacher subconsciously makes an evaluation of the
student’s performance. Technically it is referred to as informal assessment because it is
usually unplanned and spontaneous and without specific scoring and grading forms, as
opposed to formal assessment, which is more deliberate and usually has conventionalized
feedback. Tests fall into the latter category.
The taxonomies of types of listening and micro- and macrostructures (explained before)
are indispensable to valid, reliable assessment of students’ listening comprehension abil-
ity. The more closely you can pinpoint exactly what to assess, the more reliably will you
draw your conclusions.
A PROFICIENCY ORIENTED APPROACH TO LISTENING (OMAGGIO, ALICE)
Similarities in Listening and Reading
Listening and reading comprehension are both highly complex processes that draw on
knowledge of the linguistic code, cognitive processing skills, schema-based understand-
ing, and contextual cues both within and outside the text. Both skills can be characterized
as problem solving activities involving the formation of hypothesis, the drawing of infer-
ences and the resolution of ambiguities and uncertainties in the input in order to assign
meaning.
Although the goals and some of the global processing in listening and reading compre-
hension are often similar, the nature of the input (speech or writing) and the way in which
the way in which that input is processed is quite different.
Differences between Spoken and Written Discourse
Written discourse is normally organized in well-formed grammatical sentences arranged in
coherent paragraphs. Ideas are planned and produced by one person, allowing the dis-
course to flow logically as the topic is developed. In contrast, spoken discourse can often
include ungrammatical or reduced forms, dropped words, and sentences without subjects,
verbs, auxiliaries, or other parts of speech.
The accessibility of the text is also different; in reading, one can look back at what was
read before and also look ahead to get an idea of what is coming. The listener, however,
cannot do this, and any inattention to what is being said at the moment may easily cause
him or her to lose an important part of the message.
Variety of modes of speech Variety of text types
o Spontaneous free speech o Deliberate free speech
(interviews, discussions) o Oral presentation of written
text (lectures, newscasts) o Oral presentations of fixed
scripts (in a stage or a film)
o Literary texts
o Technical texts
o Correspondence
o Journalistic literature
o Informational texts
o Miscellaneous realia (tickets,
menu, recipes, advertisements, etc.)
These types of resources often present learners with information that requires the integra-
tion of listening and reading skills and can easily involve productive skills such as writing
as well. These are often rich in cultural information and can help learners make connec-
tions to other disciplines.

Planning Instruction for the Development of Listening Proficiency

How can teachers determine which types of materials and tasks to use for listening in -
struction for their students? Most scholars agree that at the lowest proficiency levels, lis-
tening materials that present very familiar and/or predictable content and that are relevant
to students’ interests will be best, given that students will be able to use their knowledge of
the world to aid them in comprehension when their linguistic skills are deficient. Also, be-
ginning and intermediate students will need prelistening activities to help them anticipate
and predict the relevant content in the passage.
Lund (1990) describes a plan for designing listening instructions. He constructs a taxo-
nomic framework for listening comprised of two basic elements: (1) Listener function,
which relates to what the learner attempt to process from the message and (2) listening re-
sponse, which corresponds to the way in which the listener shows comprehension for the
message. The following illustration presents Lund’s taxonomy:
Respo nse
Identification
Orientation
Main ideas Comprehension
Detail Comprehension
Full comprehensio n
Replication
Doing
Choosing
Pantomime the product
Match ads and pictures
Select best ad
Function
Transferring
List adjectives
Write magazine ad
List the selling points
Answering
What kind of text?
What goods are advertised?

Condensing
Write close-captio n text
Extending
Duplicating
Modeling
Conversing
Second ad in campaign
------------------ Transcrib - e the text
Create own ad
“Talk back” to the ad
He suggests that this matrix be used to design instructions so that the full range of com-
petencies in listening is practiced. The sample tasks given for purposes of illustration all
relate to listening to an authentic text type: radio advertisements.
Each function presents a potential goal of listening comprehension:
·
·
·
·
·
·
Identification: recognition or discrimination of aspects of the message rather than attention
to the overall message content. (words, words categories, phonemic distinctions, etc.)
Orientation: identification of important facts about the test, such as the participants, the sit-
uation, the general topic, the tone, the text type, and the like.
Main idea comprehension: understanding of the higher-order ideas in the listening pas-
sage.
Detail comprehension: understanding of more specific information
Full comprehension: understanding of both the main ideas and supportive detail. Lund
maintains that this level of comprehension is the goal of instruction in listening proficiency.
Replication: ability to reproduce the message in either the same modality or in a different
one.
The six listener functions were defined before.
Lud maintains that growth in listening proficiency can be understood in terms of progress -
ing through these listening functions, learning to do new functions with familiar texts or per-
forming lower-level functions with more difficult texts.

Using Authentic Material for Listening and Reading Instruction

Language is more communicative when authentic material is used. However materials are
difficult to select and obtain or sequence to ss’ level of proficiency. They are usually ran-
dom in vocab, grammar and length. They are also impractical to integrate the curriculum
and they may produce frustration in beginners.
Teachers can help students overcome these problems by using controlled and guided ac-
tivities. They can adapt the original material to the ss’ level. “Teacher talk” is another type
of listening material that contributes to the acquisition of language.
7- GROUP MANAGEMENT & BOARD MANAGEMENT BOARD MANAGEMENT
Advantages Disadvantages
- Use it for brainstorming
- Call their attention
- All the students are involved in
the lesson
- You can explain only once and
for everybody
- Everybody can copy
- It’s a visual aid that can
complement the auditory aid of
your voice, for example.
- Inexpensive
- Students like to go to the front
and write or draw on it.
- Use it as a memory store
- You have to have a clear handwriting
- If you do not organize it, it can be very messy
- You may lose time writing on it
- Takes time to practice how to use
it appropriately
- Difficult to use the blackboard
appropriately and give the class
at the same time
- Don’t forget the chalk!
Be aware of visibility!
- All students must have a clear and uninterrupted view of the board (Be
aware of sunlight!)
- Write clearly, with legible handwriting
- Check what you write. After you write everything, go to the back of the
classroom and check if there are any mistakes in what you wrote.
- Be selective. Only write what is important for the purposes of that specific class. If what
you have to write is too detailed, it’s better to give handouts.
- Give students time to copy. Check that they all do it.
- Develop skills. Avoid talking to the board. Try to discuss with students, talk to
them or make them do something while you write so that they do not get bored or lost in
the meantime.
Organization
- Have a plan! For example, if you are going to do a brainstorming, plan it in
advance! so that you can guide your students to say what you want and have
a clear blackboard organization as well.
- Give clear instructions. For example, copy or read?
- Mind key sections. The upper-left part of the board is the most visible one for
all students, from the front to the back of the classroom.
- Be organized. Divide the board in columns. Use one part to be cleaned and
reused.
- Highlight. Use different colours, wisely! If it is a greenboard, try to use white
chalk as much as possible, avoid using colours such as blue since it is not so visible for all
students.
General tips
- Erasing the board: make sure you erase/clean it after every class.
- Avoid using capitals
- Use prints rather than cursives.
- Check your student’s notes.
- Use the board as a support to the voice.
GROUP MANAGEMENT
The notion of effective teaching is a difficult one to pin down precisely because two teach-
ers may both teach the same lesson from a textbook or other source, teach it very differ-
ently, yet both lessons may be regarded as very effective. Are success and effectiveness
the same thing? Learners may enjoy a lesson a great deal even though it fails to achieve
goals, or a teacher may feel that he covered the lesson plan perfectly, but students did not
appear to learn anything from it. Teaching is very much shaped by the context in which the
teacher is working and by his or her understanding and beliefs about teaching.
Classroom management refers to the ways in which both the physical and the affective di-
mensions of the class are arranged in order to provide an environment that promotes suc-
cessful teaching and learning. Good classroom management is a
 prerequisite to an effective lesson. It depends on the ethos or climate of the class that
both teacher and students build up to create a sense of mutual trust and rapport. The
teacher has to organize students’ behaviour, movement and interaction in such a way that
there are minimal disruptions to the flow of the lesson. Class routines need to be quickly
established. These are things that have to be learned through experience of teaching.
ARTIST: Creativity, Curiosity and Enthusiasm (Body language reflects it) Group manage-
ment is connected to the artist in us!
The focus is always on LEARNING. Group management helps you to do it smoothly and
fluently.
BE OBSERVANT OF EVERYTHING THAT IS HAPPENING IN CLASS. Emotional intelli-
gence: “Mirror neurons” Your good mood is contagious to the students!
Set the tone: icebreakers - Games
- Competitions - Music
- Quotations
- Anecdotes
- News
Less DON’Ts, more DOs. For lower levels, emphasize action words and make it simple.
Initiating interaction in the classroom.
What is interaction?
Interaction is the collaborative exchange of thoughts, feelings or ideas between two or
more people, resulting in a reciprocal effect on each other. The best way to learn to inter -
act is through interaction itself. Through interaction, according to Wilga Rivers, students
can increase their language store as they listen to or read authentic linguistic material, or
even the output of their fellow students in discussions, etc. Students can use all their
process of the language in real-life exchanges. In this way, they learn to exploit the elastic-
ity of language.
Interactive principles:
1) Automaticity:Truehumaninteractionisbestaccomplishedwhenfocal
attention is on meanings and messages and not on grammar and other

linguistics forms. Learners are thus free from keeping language in a controlled
mode and can more easily proceed to automatic modes of processing.
2) Intrinsicmotivation:Asstudentsbecomeengagedwitheachotherin
speech acts, their deepest drives are satisfied. And as they more fully appreciate their own
competence to use language, they can develop a system of self-reward.
3) Strategicinvestment:Interactionrequirestheuseofstrategiclanguage competence both to
make certain decisions on how to interpret language and to make repairs when communi-
cation pathways are blocked. The spontaneity of interactive discourse requires judicious
use of numerous strategies for production and comprehension.
4) Willingnesstocommunicate:Interactionrequiresthisattitudeonpartofthe learner, which fur-
ther implies the risk of failing to produce intended meaning, of failing to interpret it, of being
laughed at or rejected. However, the rewards are great and worth the risk.
5) Thelanguage-cultureconnection:Theculturalloadingofinteractivespeech and writing re-
quires that interlocutors be thoroughly versed in the cultural nuances of language.
6) Interlanguage:Thecomplexityofinteractionentailsalongdevelopmental process of acquisi-
tion. Numerous errors of production will be part of this development and the role of the
teacher’s feedback is fundamental to it.
7) Communicativecompetence:Allofitselements(grammatical,discourse, sociolinguistic,
pragmatic and strategic) are involved in human interaction. All aspects must work together
for successful communication to take place.
Roles
An interactive teacher is by definition one who is fully aware of the group dynamics of a
classroom. Effective interaction within the dynamics of a classroom is a gradual incremen-
tal process.According to Vygotsky, effective learning in students’ “zones of proximal devel-
opment” involves “starting out with firm leading and modeling on the part of the teacher
and shifting as students internalize more and more of the processes and teachers learn
how to let go”.
Teacher can play many roles in the course of teaching. According to Rebecca Oxford,
teacher roles are often best described in the form of metaphors.
1) Teacherasacontroller:arolegenerallyexpectedintraditionaleducational institutions, a
“master” controller always in charge of every moment in the classroom. They determine
what students do and they can often predict many students’ responses because every-
thing is mapped out ahead of time, with no option of divergent paths. But for interaction to
take place, the teacher must create a climate in which spontaneity can thrive, in which un-
rehearsed language can be performed and freedom of expression makes it impossible for
the teacher to predict everything that students
of the interactive teacher
will say or do. Nevertheless, some control on your part is actually an important element of
successfully carrying out interactive techniques. Allowing for spontaneity of expression in-
volves yielding certain elements of control to students, however, the teacher must maintain
some control simply to organize the class hour.
2) Teacherasdirector:teacherislikeaconductorofanorchestraordirectorof a drama. As stu-
dents engage in either rehearsed or spontaneous language performance, it’s the teacher’s
job to keep the process flowing smoothly and efficiently. The ultimate motive of such direc-
tion is to enable students eventually to engage in the real-life drama of improvisation as
each communicative event brings its own uniqueness.
3) Teacherasmanager:Theteacherissomeonewhoplanslessons,modules, courses, and who
structures the larger, longer segments of classroom time, but who then allows each indi-
vidual player to be creative within those parameters.
4) Teacherasfacilitator:alessdirectiverolethatfacilitatestheprocessof learning for students,
helping them to clear away roadblocks, find shortcuts, to negotiate rough terrain. The facili-
tating role requires that the teacher steps away from the managerial or directive role and
allow students with the teacher’s guidance to find their own pathway to success. A facilita-
tor capitalizes on the principle of intrinsic motivation by allowing students to discover lan -
guage through using it pragmatically, rather than by telling them about language.
5) Teacherasresource:theleastdirectiverole.Theimplicationofthisroleis that the student
takes the initiative to come to you. The teacher is available for advice and counsel when
the student seeks it. However, some degree of control, planning, of managing the class-
room is essential.
You should be able to assume all five of these roles on this continuum of directive to
nondirective teaching, depending on the purpose and context of activity. The key to inter -
active teaching is to strive toward the upper, nondirective end of the continuum, gradually
enabling your students to move from their roles of total dependence (upon textbooks, class
activities, the teacher) to relatively total dependence.
Questioning strategies for interactive learning
The most important key to to creating an interactive language classroom is the initiation of
interaction by the teacher. The key is for the teacher to provide the stimuli for continued in -
teraction. These stimuli are important in the initial stage of a classroom lesson as well as
throughout the lesson. Without such ongoing teacher guidance, classroom interaction may
indeed be communicative, but it can easily fall prey to small chitchat and other behaviour
that is off-course from the class objectives.
One of the best ways to develop your role as initiation and sustainer of interaction is to de-
velop a repertoire of questioning strategies. Teacher’s questions:
- Give students the impetus and structured opportunity to produce language comfortably
without having to risk initiating language themselves. It’s very scary for students to initiate
a conversation or topics for discussion.
- Can serve to initiate a chain reaction of student interaction among themselves.
- Give the instructor immediate feedback about students’ comprehension. The teacher can
use the question to diagnose linguistic or content difficulties, especially grammatical and
phonological problems.
- Provide students with opportunities to find out what they think by hearing what they say.
They can discover what their opinions and reactions are. This self-discovery can be very
useful for pre-writing activities.
Effective questions in the classroom can be display q, which attempt to elicit information
already known by the teacher, or referential q, that request info not known by the ques -
tioner. Generally, display questions are very useful in eliciting both content and language
from students. Usually, the higher the proficiency level you teach, the more you can ven-
ture into the upper, referential questions. Make sure that you challenge your students suffi-
ciently but without overwhelming them. Asking a lot of questions in the classroom will not
guarantee stimulation of interaction. Certain types of questions actually discourage interac-
tive learning:
- Too many display questions make students weary of artificial contexts that don ’t involve
genuinely seeking for info.
- Questions that insult students’ intelligence by being so obvious that they will think it’s too
silly to bother answering.
- Vague questions that are worded in abstract or ambiguous language.
- Questions stated in language that is too complex or too wordy for aural
comprehension.
- Too many rhetorical questions, they get confused if you or they have to
answer.
- Random questions that don’t fall into a logical, well-planned sequence,
sending students’ thought pattern into chaos.
Other strategies that promote interaction:
- Group or pair work.
- Giving directions.
- Organizational language (“get into groups”)
- Reacting to students (praise, recognition)
- Responding genuinely to student-initiated questions
- “Lecturing” (orally providing info) or make students read

Important aspects to take into account: 1) Sight,soundandcomfort

Students are profoundly affected by what they see, hear and feel when they enter the
classroom. So:
- The classroom should be neat, clean and orderly in appearance.
- Chalkboard erased.
- Chairs appropriately arranged.
- Classroom free of external noises as possible.
- Acoustics within the classroom are tolerable.
- Heating or cooling system.
2) Setting arrangements
If your classroom has movable desk-chairs, consider patterns of semicircles, U-shapes,
concentric circles or one circle so that students aren’t all facing the teacher. Try to come
up with configurations that make interaction among students more feasible, not like rows
or lined up columns because students are members as a team and should see and talk to
one another instead of making them feel like they are part of a military formation. Give
some thought to how students will do small-group and pair work with as little chaos as pos-
sible.
3) Chalkboard use
One of your greatest allies. It gives students added visual input along with auditory . It al -
lows you to illustrate with words, pictures, graphs and charts. It is always there and it is re-
cyclable. Try to be neat and orderly in your chalkboard use, erasing as often as appropri -
ate; a messy confusing chalkboard drives students crazy.
4) Equipment
If you are using electrical equipment, make sure that:
- The room’s electrical outlets are within reach of the cord provided, otherwise, add an ex-
tension cord to your equipment list
- Everyone can see or hear the visual/auditory stimulus
- You try out the machine ahead of time to verify it actually works.
- you know how to operate it
- There is an extra battery or whatever else you’ll need in case a routine
replacement becomes necessary.
YOUR VOICE AND BODY LANGUAGE
Another fundamental classroom management concern has to do with you and the mes-
sages you send through your voice and body language. One of the requirement of good
teaching is good voice projection. You need to be heard by all the students in the room.
When you talk, project your voice so that the person sitting farthest away from you can
hear you clearly. If you are directing comments to a students in

front of you, remember that the whole class needs to be able to hear the comments. As
you speak, articulate clearly, because students need every advantage they can get when
learning English. Clear articulation is usually more of a key to comprehension than slowed
speech. You should slow down your normal rate of delivery for beginning level classes, but
only slightly. Keep as natural a flow to your language as possible.
Also, non verbal messages are very powerful:
- Let your body posture exhibit an air of confidence.
- Your face should reflect optimisms, brightness and warmth.
- Use facial and hand gestures to enhance meanings of words and sentences
that may be unclear.
- Make frequent eye contact with all students in the class.
- Do not plant your feet firmly in one place for the whole hour. MONITOR,
WALK AROUND.
- Move around the classroom, but not to distraction.
- Follow the conventional rules of proxemics (distance) and kinesthetics
(touching) that apply for the culture(s) of your students.
- Dress appropriately, considering the expectations of your students and the
culture in which you are teaching.
UNPLANNED TEACHING: MIDSTREAM LESSON CHANGES Classroom management
involves decisions about what to do when:
- Your students disagree or throw off the plan of the day
- You digress and do the same.
- An unexpected but pertinent situation comes up.
- Some technicality prevents you from doing an activity.
- A student is disruptive in class
- there isn’t enough time at the end of a class period to finish an activity that has already
started.
In short, you are daily called upon to deal with the unexpected. You have to engage in
what is called unplanned teaching that makes demands on you that were not anticipated in
your lesson plan. The key of learning how to deal with these events gracefully is poise (a
calm confidence in a person’s way of behaving). You will keep the respect of your students
and your own self confidence by staying calm, assessing the situation quickly, making a
midstream change in your plan and allowing the lesson to move on.
TEACHING UNDER ADVERSE CIRCUMSTANCES
NO teaching-learning context is perfect. There are always imperfect circumstances that we
have to deal with. Sequencing (what you plan) vs Pacing

(the real time of the class). How you do it is one of the most significant factors contributing
to your professional success.
1) Teachinglargeclasses
Ideally, language classes, should be comprised of no more than 12 to 15 students. They
should be large enough to provide diversity and student interaction and small enough to
give students plenty of opportunity to participate and get individual attention. Unfortunately,
with paltry educational budgets worldwide, too many language classes are significantly
larger. Large classes present some problems:
- Proficiency and ability vary widely among students.
- Individual teacher-student attention is minimized.
- Students opportunities to speak are lessened.
- Teacher’s feedback on student’s written work is limited.
Solutions:
- Try to make each student feel important and not just a member by learning
their names and using them. Name tags
- Assign students as much interactive work as possible, so that they feel part of
the community and are not just lost in the crowd.
- Optimize the use of pair and small-group work to to give students chances to
perform in English.
- Through active listening comprehension, students can learn a good deal of
language that transfers to reading, speaking and writing.
- Use peer-editing and feedback
- Organize informal conversation and study groups.
TEACHING MULTIPLE PROFICIENCY LEVELS
You are faced with the problem of challenging the higher level students and not over-
whelming lower level ones, and at the same time, keeping the middle group well placed to-
ward their goals. Most of the time, the phenomenon of widely ranging competences in your
class is a by-product of institutional placement procedures and budgetary limits, so there is
little you can do to change this situation. How can you deal with this?
- Do not overgeneralize your assessment on student’s proficiency levels by blanket classi-
fications into “bad” or “good” students. We must be very sensitive to the issue of profi-
ciency vs ability. It’s often difficult to determine whether a student’s performance is a factor
of aptitude, ability or a factor of time and effort.
- For most students, competencies will vary among the four skills, within each skill and by
context. Try to identify the specific abilities and skills of each student so that you can tailor
your techniques to individualized needs.

- Offer choices in individual techniques that vary according to needs and challenges. Sen -
sitively convey that they all have challenges and goals to pursue, and that if someone is
ahead, is due to previous instruction, exposure and motivation.
- The tenor of your classroom teacher talk (instructions, explanations, lectures, etc) will
need to be gauged toward the middle of the levels of proficiency in your class.