http://www.yearinthelifeofanenglishteacher.com/2010/05/i-is-for-intermediate/

Wendy.

Thanks for your contribution, but

“How do you justify calling learning a whole new system of symbols a must need for beginners?”

please re-read the sentence at the beginning in brackets! Also, it doesn’t say “the whole phonemic chart”.

Personally, I don’t “teach” the phonemic symbols to beginners (though I have done the whole chart with Elem students with English File), but I do use the symbols to mark sounds that I am correcting from day one

Interesting forum thread on the same question:

http://www.tefl.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3548

Honestly speaking I would never introduce them to the symbols unless pointing out that such a thing exists if they personally choose to learn it or take notice of it. O.k. show them the phonemic symbols exist on a chart & in their dictionaries and some text books, but paying close attention to them? Not for me at this stage. These are symbols that require memorisation & I’d rather have students notice/memorise words & sentence patterns e.g. morphology/syntax or other phonological basics instead.

Pronunciation comes from your mouth or the CD, so for me at a beginner stage, it’s enough. And once the learners get used to the basic sounds after some months, and show confidence in basic sentence patterns etc., then I will start paying more attention to the symbols.

To me it’s like introducing the rules before speaking, deductive/inductive learning: I’d rather the students picked up sounds aurally before visually.

Peace.
E.

But 5 is strongly linked with 3 because I tend to constantly let them know through 5 that they’re getting there and are all related to the other numbers.

I guess what I was trying to say on the other post was reaching a level of “mastery” at whatever level you are, gives one the confidence to keep moving forward. It’s very motivating to feel like you “can.”

I noted what Wendy was saying about past tenses and agree in part – the thing is that “time” and how we discuss the things that are important to us is actually very culturally dependent.

Depending on where the students are from then the bulk of their conversation will be driven by reflections, opinions, hypothesis, ambition and this may or not be in past, present or future – different say, from how we ourselves discuss these things.

So if you can get students to master the basics – simple present, past and future forms (and there is way more to the present than daily activities… although one could argue that daily activities are daily and therefore make up a massive time of our communication)…

then they gain the confidence to try out other forms – in fact, I don’t teach grammar in sequence at all. Once the basics are in place, the need for a specific tense naturally emerges and then that’s when it gets either

briefly explained (depending on the level – there’s no real point in going too deep into the future perfect with beginners) if someone asks a question which would need this form as an answer – then I add reassuring words like “well this is how we’d say xyz in English but don’t worry you don’t have to learn it now – how do you do that in your own language – interesting isn’t it, what you’ll be learning soon.”

deeply explained, context provided, multiple contexts elicited – language explored (for higher levels – say pre-int on) no matter even if they have not yet explored the normal general line-up. If they are asking about the tense then it came up in a meeting, in an article they read, in an email they need to write.

Hope that helps,
Karenne