,TEFL/TESL: Teaching English as a foreign or second language
Peace Corps
INFORMATION COLLECTION & EXCHANGE
Manual M0041
BRENDA BOWMAN, GRACE BURKART, and BARBARA ROBSON
Prepared for PEACE
CORPS by
Center for Applied Linguistics Washington, DC
PEACE CORPS
Information Collection and
Exchange May 1989
INFORMATION COLLECTION & EXCHANGE
Peace Corps’ Information Collection & Exchange (ICE) was established so that the
strategies and technologies developed by Peace Corps Volunteers, their co-workers,
and their counterparts could be made available to the wide range of development
organizations and individual workers who might find them useful. Training guides,
curricula, lesson plans, project reports, manuals and other Peace Corps-generated
materials developed in the field are collected and reviewed. Some are reprinted "as
is"; others provide a source of field based information for the production of manuals
or for research in particular program areas. Materials that you submit to the
Information Collection & Exchange thus become part of the Peace Corps’ larger
contribution to development.
Information about ICE publications and services is available
through: Peace Corps
Information Collection & Exchange
1111 - 20th Street,
NW Washington, DC
20526 USA
Website:
http://www.peacecorps.gov
Telephone : 1-202-692-2640
Fax : 1-202- 692-2641
Add your experience to the ICE Resource Center. Send materials that you’ve
prepared so that we can share them with others working in the development field.
Your technical insights serve as the basis for the generation of ICE manuals, reprints
and resource packets, and also ensure that ICE is providing the most updated,
innovative problem-solving techniques and information available to you and your
fellow development workers.
Prepared for the Peace Corps by the Center for Applied Linguistics under Contract No.
PC-888- 2244A, May 1989.
This Manual may be reproduced and/or translated in part or in full without payment
of royalty. Please give standard acknowledgment.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank JoAnn Crandall of the Center for Applied Linguistics,
and John Guevin and David Wolfe of the Peace Corps, for their valuable editorial
comments. We would also like to thank Frank Harrison of the Center for Applied
Linguistics for his help with the figures and
,diagrams. Finally, thanks are due to Peace Corps Volunteers who shared their
experiences with us, helping to make this a manual which will show the way to future
Volunteers.
About this manual
TEFL/TESL: Teaching English as a Foreign or Second Language is for Volunteers who are
currently teaching or who are about to teach English. It is a practical guide for the
classroom teacher.
The manual describes procedures and offers sample exercises and activities for:
•a wide range of listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills
•whole-class, small-group, and individual participation
•classroom testing and preparing students for national
examinations It covers a great variety of teaching situations:
•primary and secondary schools and college
•the office or workplace
•school and work settings which have limited facilities for instruction and those
which provide ample support
•any geographical or cultural setting where Peace Corps Volunteers may be found
You may already have training in the teaching of English, or your specialty may be in
another technical area. Regardless of whether you are an old hand or a newcomer,
this manual was written for you. Clear directions are given for presenting the sample
exercises. Possible problems are anticipated. Where different approaches and
techniques of teaching are discussed, the reasons for using them are explained. In
short, both experienced and novice teachers will be able to use the manual with
confidence.
When using the manual, you should keep one important point in mind. Because many
different teaching situations are represented, you will find procedures and materials
to meet the needs of every Volunteer. If you can lift an exercise from the manual and
use it unchanged tomorrow morning with your students, well and good. On the other
hand, you should not expect to use every procedure and exercise exactly as it is
presented in the manual. Some suggestions will seem wrong for your class. But don't
just discard those which appear unsuitable. It is often possible to change a technique
or an activity so that it will work for you. So rather than look at the suggestions only
in the forms presented in the manual, get into the habit of looking for ways to adapt
the suggestions for your own purposes.
You will probably turn to this manual because you need the answers to one or more
questions. What better way then to explain how to use the manual than by trying to
anticipate some of your questions?
Your first question may be How do I find out how much English my students know?
Chapter One begins with several possible answers to this question. It shows you
how to go on a fact-finding mission to discover not only what your students know,
but also how much more they need to know.
Next you may ask How can I teach a class of 50 students which meets only two times a
week?
The second part of Chapter One deals with these two problems and others, such
as not enough textbooks, poorly motivated students, and the need to follow a
prescribed syllabus. It also considers the special problems of teaching English to
your co-workers or to their families.
, There are a number of approaches to the teaching of languages. You may find this
variety more confusing than helpful, and you may wonder How can I sort out all these
methods of language teaching? How can I tell one from another?
Chapter Two describes ten approaches to language teaching. For each approach
the distinctive features are given so that you will be able to recognize whether the
approach is being used in your school. You will also learn what to expect if your
students are already used to a particular approach, and what kind of impact that
will have on your teaching. At the end of the chapter are some suggestions for
using selected techniques.
You may also wonder Which approach is the best for me to use?
Perhaps the strongest point made in Chapter Two is that no single approach works
all the time for all learners. Each of the approaches has its strengths and
weaknesses. These are pointed out to you in Chapter Two and at various points in
Chapters Three to Six, which discuss the teaching of the individual language skills.
Another point which is made in Chapter Two is that you must exercise caution and
tact when trying to introduce innovations into your language classroom.
Once you have answers to these more general questions, you may look for help in
the teaching of the language skills. You may ask What can I do to get my students to
really speak English to me and to each other?
This is quite a challenge, especially if you are teaching a large class and if your
students are used to language lessons which focus more on the written language
than on speaking. Chapter Three shows you how to set up speaking activities
which will make your students want to participate and to interact with one
another. Sample exercises aim at increasing your students’ fluency and
confidence. Realistic suggestions are offered for overcoming the limits of the
classroom and the anxiety of your students. There are even suggestions for
teaching pronunciation in a more meaningful, communicative way.
Closely related to the problem of motivating your students to speak is the need to
improve their ability to understand spoken English. You may want to know How can I
get my students to feel more confident about listening to English, so that they won’t just
freeze when someone speaks to them?
Chapter Four will help you ease your students into activities in which they are
listening to "real life" messages. You will be able to give your students a lot of
exposure to different kinds of natural spoken messages. They will gain in
confidence as they learn to pick out what they need to understand from the
message and respond in appropriate ways.
School systems in most countries put a lot of emphasis on the written language. But
you may be dissatisfied with the way your reading lessons have gone. In desperation
you may ask Is there any way to teach reading so that it is more interesting? How can I
make the reading of English more useful for my students?
Reading lessons become tedious when the teacher and students have too narrow
a view of what reading really is. Chapter Five shows you that reading is more than
translating or discussing excerpts from literary works. Sometimes people read
advertisements, instructions, timetables, or product labels. Sometimes they read
in order to gather information for a report or to prepare for an examination.
Greater variety in the types of reading selections and more purposeful tasks to
follow up on the reading will make your reading lessons both more interesting and
more useful.
Your students may worry about learning vocabulary, and you too may want to know
What is the best way to learn vocabulary?
In Chapter Five you will see that memorizing vocabulary lists is not the most
effective way to go about learning vocabulary. Sample exercises will also show
you that there is more to know about a word than its meaning.
Even experienced teachers may quail at the prospect of having to teach students
how to write compositions in English. If you find yourself in such a position, you may
Peace Corps
INFORMATION COLLECTION & EXCHANGE
Manual M0041
BRENDA BOWMAN, GRACE BURKART, and BARBARA ROBSON
Prepared for PEACE
CORPS by
Center for Applied Linguistics Washington, DC
PEACE CORPS
Information Collection and
Exchange May 1989
INFORMATION COLLECTION & EXCHANGE
Peace Corps’ Information Collection & Exchange (ICE) was established so that the
strategies and technologies developed by Peace Corps Volunteers, their co-workers,
and their counterparts could be made available to the wide range of development
organizations and individual workers who might find them useful. Training guides,
curricula, lesson plans, project reports, manuals and other Peace Corps-generated
materials developed in the field are collected and reviewed. Some are reprinted "as
is"; others provide a source of field based information for the production of manuals
or for research in particular program areas. Materials that you submit to the
Information Collection & Exchange thus become part of the Peace Corps’ larger
contribution to development.
Information about ICE publications and services is available
through: Peace Corps
Information Collection & Exchange
1111 - 20th Street,
NW Washington, DC
20526 USA
Website:
http://www.peacecorps.gov
Telephone : 1-202-692-2640
Fax : 1-202- 692-2641
Add your experience to the ICE Resource Center. Send materials that you’ve
prepared so that we can share them with others working in the development field.
Your technical insights serve as the basis for the generation of ICE manuals, reprints
and resource packets, and also ensure that ICE is providing the most updated,
innovative problem-solving techniques and information available to you and your
fellow development workers.
Prepared for the Peace Corps by the Center for Applied Linguistics under Contract No.
PC-888- 2244A, May 1989.
This Manual may be reproduced and/or translated in part or in full without payment
of royalty. Please give standard acknowledgment.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank JoAnn Crandall of the Center for Applied Linguistics,
and John Guevin and David Wolfe of the Peace Corps, for their valuable editorial
comments. We would also like to thank Frank Harrison of the Center for Applied
Linguistics for his help with the figures and
,diagrams. Finally, thanks are due to Peace Corps Volunteers who shared their
experiences with us, helping to make this a manual which will show the way to future
Volunteers.
About this manual
TEFL/TESL: Teaching English as a Foreign or Second Language is for Volunteers who are
currently teaching or who are about to teach English. It is a practical guide for the
classroom teacher.
The manual describes procedures and offers sample exercises and activities for:
•a wide range of listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills
•whole-class, small-group, and individual participation
•classroom testing and preparing students for national
examinations It covers a great variety of teaching situations:
•primary and secondary schools and college
•the office or workplace
•school and work settings which have limited facilities for instruction and those
which provide ample support
•any geographical or cultural setting where Peace Corps Volunteers may be found
You may already have training in the teaching of English, or your specialty may be in
another technical area. Regardless of whether you are an old hand or a newcomer,
this manual was written for you. Clear directions are given for presenting the sample
exercises. Possible problems are anticipated. Where different approaches and
techniques of teaching are discussed, the reasons for using them are explained. In
short, both experienced and novice teachers will be able to use the manual with
confidence.
When using the manual, you should keep one important point in mind. Because many
different teaching situations are represented, you will find procedures and materials
to meet the needs of every Volunteer. If you can lift an exercise from the manual and
use it unchanged tomorrow morning with your students, well and good. On the other
hand, you should not expect to use every procedure and exercise exactly as it is
presented in the manual. Some suggestions will seem wrong for your class. But don't
just discard those which appear unsuitable. It is often possible to change a technique
or an activity so that it will work for you. So rather than look at the suggestions only
in the forms presented in the manual, get into the habit of looking for ways to adapt
the suggestions for your own purposes.
You will probably turn to this manual because you need the answers to one or more
questions. What better way then to explain how to use the manual than by trying to
anticipate some of your questions?
Your first question may be How do I find out how much English my students know?
Chapter One begins with several possible answers to this question. It shows you
how to go on a fact-finding mission to discover not only what your students know,
but also how much more they need to know.
Next you may ask How can I teach a class of 50 students which meets only two times a
week?
The second part of Chapter One deals with these two problems and others, such
as not enough textbooks, poorly motivated students, and the need to follow a
prescribed syllabus. It also considers the special problems of teaching English to
your co-workers or to their families.
, There are a number of approaches to the teaching of languages. You may find this
variety more confusing than helpful, and you may wonder How can I sort out all these
methods of language teaching? How can I tell one from another?
Chapter Two describes ten approaches to language teaching. For each approach
the distinctive features are given so that you will be able to recognize whether the
approach is being used in your school. You will also learn what to expect if your
students are already used to a particular approach, and what kind of impact that
will have on your teaching. At the end of the chapter are some suggestions for
using selected techniques.
You may also wonder Which approach is the best for me to use?
Perhaps the strongest point made in Chapter Two is that no single approach works
all the time for all learners. Each of the approaches has its strengths and
weaknesses. These are pointed out to you in Chapter Two and at various points in
Chapters Three to Six, which discuss the teaching of the individual language skills.
Another point which is made in Chapter Two is that you must exercise caution and
tact when trying to introduce innovations into your language classroom.
Once you have answers to these more general questions, you may look for help in
the teaching of the language skills. You may ask What can I do to get my students to
really speak English to me and to each other?
This is quite a challenge, especially if you are teaching a large class and if your
students are used to language lessons which focus more on the written language
than on speaking. Chapter Three shows you how to set up speaking activities
which will make your students want to participate and to interact with one
another. Sample exercises aim at increasing your students’ fluency and
confidence. Realistic suggestions are offered for overcoming the limits of the
classroom and the anxiety of your students. There are even suggestions for
teaching pronunciation in a more meaningful, communicative way.
Closely related to the problem of motivating your students to speak is the need to
improve their ability to understand spoken English. You may want to know How can I
get my students to feel more confident about listening to English, so that they won’t just
freeze when someone speaks to them?
Chapter Four will help you ease your students into activities in which they are
listening to "real life" messages. You will be able to give your students a lot of
exposure to different kinds of natural spoken messages. They will gain in
confidence as they learn to pick out what they need to understand from the
message and respond in appropriate ways.
School systems in most countries put a lot of emphasis on the written language. But
you may be dissatisfied with the way your reading lessons have gone. In desperation
you may ask Is there any way to teach reading so that it is more interesting? How can I
make the reading of English more useful for my students?
Reading lessons become tedious when the teacher and students have too narrow
a view of what reading really is. Chapter Five shows you that reading is more than
translating or discussing excerpts from literary works. Sometimes people read
advertisements, instructions, timetables, or product labels. Sometimes they read
in order to gather information for a report or to prepare for an examination.
Greater variety in the types of reading selections and more purposeful tasks to
follow up on the reading will make your reading lessons both more interesting and
more useful.
Your students may worry about learning vocabulary, and you too may want to know
What is the best way to learn vocabulary?
In Chapter Five you will see that memorizing vocabulary lists is not the most
effective way to go about learning vocabulary. Sample exercises will also show
you that there is more to know about a word than its meaning.
Even experienced teachers may quail at the prospect of having to teach students
how to write compositions in English. If you find yourself in such a position, you may
