Experimental lessons
Was hoping some of you could help me brainstorm things that could be done for the Cambridge DELTA experimental practice lesson, as well as any other advice on being experimental that they may have. The main difficulty in the DELTA is that you need to be able to write a whole essay on the theory behind it etc, so not all of the ideas below are very easy to do, but are just my initial brainstorm:
- Spoken grammar
- Process writing
- Peer correction (e.g. of writing)
- Other alternative ways of correcting, e.g. people choosing coloured cards to show when they do and don’t want to be corrected
- Projects
- Storytelling, e.g. with adults
- Extended speaking, e.g. student presentations
- Collaborative writing
- (Proper) test teach test
- Authentic video
- Dogme
- TPR with adults
- Authentic texts with very low levels
- Community Language Learning
- Dictogloss (= Grammar Dictation)
- Other ideas for dictation, e.g. pairwork dictation, or even traditional dictation if you’ve never used it before and can find references to back it up
- Songs
- Live listening
- A whole lesson on collocations/ chunks
- Using online games, e.g. with adults
- Using online dialogue building or animation
- Memorization, e.g. of whole dialogues
- Drama techniques
- Using Google or other online tools like online corpora to analyse collocations, word frequency etc in class
- Learner training
- Analysing learning styles
- Student-led grammar presentations
- Graded readers in class
- Reading for pleasure in class
- Using images
- Memory techniques
- Direct method
- Delayed production (Would only work with a new class)
- Suggestopedia
- Jazz chants
- Teaching aspect (rather than tenses)
- Linked speech
- Teaching international gestures
- CLIL (teaching subject content through English)
- Teaching cultural differences
- Functional and/ or situational language
- Negotiating syllabus etc
- New ways of recycling language
- New ways of teaching vocab, e.g. avoiding words from the same area
- Helping students notice language without actually “teaching” it (a kind of focus on form)
- Humanistic language teaching
- Using music, e.g. to set the mood or aid retention
- Use of silence, e.g. time for students to plan or reflect on what they learnt
- Giving planning time
- Recycling tasks
- NLP (Neuro linguistic language learning)
- Using L1, e.g. translation
- Using a language lab
- SAC training
- Using dictionaries in class
- Teaching fluency
- Using a new kind of technology, e.g. digital voice recorders, laptops
- Things for mixed level classes, e.g. extra activities for early finishers or alternative activities
- Teaching grammar through typical sentence stems and collocations
- Creating online content with students, e.g. blogging or a wiki
- Webquests
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:10 am
- proper TBL (not the watered down, albeit still reasonably effective, variety)
- proper PPP (that’s an oxymoron to some people, I know! But that lesson shape is not necessarily the work of the Devil; it’s all in how you deal with that first “P”!)
- working with newspapers
- similarly, working in contexts where TL materials are scarce
- learner diaries/journals
- integrating new media such as YouTube & Twitter into lessons (maybe not so much research on this puppy, though, eh?)
- mind-mapping as a way to record vocab
- dialogue-builds
- the role of structured and dedicated practice/rehearsal time for productive tasks
- dictionary skills for independent learning (not just in the context of the classroom)
- circumlocution strategies
…
Whoo! Coffee’s up! Gotta run.
Hope that helps,
Leslie
P.S. You suggested above that Dictogloss is some kind of grammar translation method. I disagree with that. It’s a bit more of ZPD-type activity to me. I understand why you might say that (allowing Sts to take notes in L1 and then reconstruct the text using translation), but I think it’s much more than that. At least the way I’ve always done it.
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:29 am
zpd activity-clearly you have not read vygotsky
March 3rd, 2010 at 11:04 am
meant to say Grammar Dictation, not Grammar Translation, now changed
March 3rd, 2010 at 2:45 pm
I bottled it and did TBL. My essay, slightly adapted, is available for all to see at the ESL Lounge website.
http://www.esl-lounge.com/adam-simpson-task-based-learning.shtml
March 3rd, 2010 at 5:40 pm
I’m doing my DELTA EP next week. Wanted to do something to do with real time / live writing in terms of social networking (using ‘twiducate’ or something similar) but not allowed. :-( Doing learner autonomy instead.
March 3rd, 2010 at 8:48 pm
Hi, teflisshit. I’m more than happy to be educated if I’ve misinterpreted something.
March 3rd, 2010 at 9:52 pm
How do you mean “not allowed”?? Do you mean that you won’t be able to find enough references on it, or that you can’t use that in your school?
Some more ideas from 5:30 this morning:
- using a video camera to record and play back to students
- using mental imagery
- improving short term memory as a way of improving listening and reading
March 4th, 2010 at 1:06 am
I mean…my trainers said I had to think of something different! I’ve spoken to other trainers who assumed the problem was because it’s a new genre and there would be difficulties in assessing the success or otherwise of the lesson. I would have thought that was part of my task in the essay/ post lesson evaluation. Still, I thought it was a good idea. But there you are… I’m happy with Learner Autonomy too. It’s always good to reassess teacher/ learner roles.
March 4th, 2010 at 2:24 am
I am not scaffolding you laura
March 4th, 2010 at 6:19 am
You haven’t left much spare Alex!
I did (de)suggestopedia… my interpretation was that it should be something slightly nutty that no one would actually do these days but was once hailed as the future of language learning.
If Scott Thornbury were Russian, dogme would be perfect… although having said that, how would you plan a dogme lesson?
March 4th, 2010 at 12:34 pm
Hey, I’m happy without the sc********* word!
March 4th, 2010 at 4:23 pm
Scottik Tornburyov – I like it, Darren.
If you wanted to be really radical, Alex, I guess you could do the CELTA method. You could pull the theory from the CELTA manual and see what they make of that. I’m sure no-one else will be doing it.
March 4th, 2010 at 6:11 pm
I did a translation lesson – and bizarrely was told that nobody had ever done it before. The argument being that to take L1 out of the classroom is absurd when many of my learners actually had to do translation for their managers at work …
March 6th, 2010 at 11:36 am
Best, perhaps, to avoid NLP … since there is no theory behind it.
March 15th, 2010 at 7:43 am
Hi Alex.. anything is acceptable, as far as I am concerned, as long as it is not
- part of ‘standard’ practice; e.g. collocations and lexical chunks (this would be best for a Systems assignment)
- too wooly and broad & difficult to pin down (e.g. suggestion abt CELTA method above? What is THAT? Where did it come from? There is NO such thing, in fact)
- sth the tutor knows nothing about…a very cynical comment but have heard a lot of people suggesting topics and being dissuaded because “it doesn’t work”, “there is not theory behind it” etc. Best clear topic with tutor – you don’t want to challenge them at that point of your course…you are almost done with it.. criticeze this later!!!
What I would suggest to you as a DELTA tutor is to think of a big/small problem learners usually have and to look around for a method, technique, approach which claims to take care of that problems.
Really that’s all there is to this assignment – mini class research to see if things work. It doesn’t matter if they don’t work.
e.g. My learners don’t remember the vocabulary – what can I use to help them recall it? (suggestopaedia? mnemonics? learner training lesson on how to record vocab? dictionary training lesson?)
Hope this helps
Marisa
March 15th, 2010 at 7:45 am
Sorry about typos above – no way to edit. :-(