Ancient and modern pronunciations — страница 9

helpful, but it is also important to have individual students repeat after you to make sure that bad pronunciation does not get hidden in the group. –Never allow your students to laugh at one another during pronunciation practice. Being laughed at can seriously damage a student’s inspiration to want to learn English. It is important to promote an environment were students can feel very comfortable with speaking outloud in class. –If your students are having trouble with a particular word or sound, ask them to watch your mouth as you repeat the word. They can attempt to imitate the shape of your mouth which will help improve their pronunciation. [14,78] 2.1 New ways of correcting spoken errors 1. Collect the errors for later You can then correct them later in the same class

(with a game like a grammar auction or just eliciting corrections from the class) or in a future class (for example writing error dictation pairwork worksheets or using the same techniques as can be used in the same class). Make sure you give positive reinforcement as well, e.g. “Someone said this sentence, and that is really good.” (see Appendix 1) 2. Facial expression For example, raise an eyebrow, tilt your head to one side or give a slight frown. Most people will do this naturally, but there is a slight chance a teacher’s expression will be too critical or too subtle for your students to pick up on, and you can (amusingly) practice facial expressions in a teaching workshop by participants communicating certain typical classroom messages (“move over there to work with

this person”, “work in pairs” etc.) using just their heads and faces, including feedback on spoken errors in that list. 3. Body language The problems with using body language to show errors could also be that it is taken as very serious criticism or that it is too vague. Possibilities include using your hands (rolling a hand from side to side to mean “so-so attempt”; making a circle by moving your index finger to mean “one more time”; or a cross with fingers, open palms or even forearms to show a very clear “no” or “wrong”- probably only suitable for a team game etc where the responsibility is shared), head (tilted to one side to mean “I’m not sure that sounds correct”), or shoulders (hunched to reinforce “I don’t understand what you are

saying”). Again, practising this in a teaching workshop can be useful, as can eliciting other body language teachers could have used after an observation. 4. Point at the correct language If you have something on the correct form easily accessible on the whiteboard, in the textbook or on a poster, just pointing at it can be a subtle but clear way of prompting students to use the correct language. What you point at could be the name of the tense or word form they are supposed to be using, a verb forms table or the actual correct verb form, a grammatical explanation, or another grammatical hint such as “future”, “prediction” or “polite”. 5. Repeat what they said This can mean repeating the whole sentence, one section of it including the wrong part, the sentence up to

the wrong part, the sentence with the wrong part missed out (with maybe a humming noise to show the gap that should be filled) or just the wrong part. You can illustrate that you are showing them an error and give some hint as to which bit is wrong by using a questioning tone (for everything you say or just for the wrong part). This method is overused by some teachers and can sound patronising if used too often or with the wrong tone of voice, so try to mix up the different versions of it described here and to alternate with methods described in the other tips. 6. Just say the right version The students can then repeat the correct version or tell you what the difference between the two sentences was and why their version was wrong. Because the students don’t do much of the work

in this way of being corrected, it might not be as good a way of remembering the correction as methods where you give more subtle clues. Its advantages are that it is quick and suits cultures, classes and students that think of elicitation as shirking by the teacher. It can also be more face-saving than asking them for self-correction, as trying to correct themselves risks making even more mistakes. The “right version” could mean the whole sentence or just the correction of the part that was wrong. In the latter case, you can then ask them to put it into the sentence in the right place and repeat the whole thing. 7. Tell them how many mistakes This method is only really suitable for controlled speaking practice, but can be a very simple way of giving feedback in that