Materials for the Teaching of the Future Tense - Assignment Example

RUNNING HEAD: ESL MATERIALS FOR THE TEACHING OF THE FUTURE TENSE TOPIC ESL Materials for the Teaching of the Future Tense DEPT/INSTITUTION COURSE/CODE : Materials Design and Development DATE Abstract THE AIM OF THIS PAPER IS TO DISCUSS THE DESIGN, USE AND AIMS OF A SET OF INTEGRATED SKILLS MATERIALS THAT HAVE BEEN DESIGNED TO TEACH AND REINFORCE THE FUTURE TENSE TO A GROUP OF SIX STUDENTS, AGED 16-17, WHO ARE PREPARING THE CAMBRIDGE CERTIFICATE OF ADVANCED ENGLISH (CAE) EXAMINATION FOR SPEAKERS OF OTHER LANGUAGES (ESOL). THE SKILLS COVERED WILL RANGE FROM LISTENING TO SPEAKING, AND FROM READING TO WRITING IN A NINETY-MINUTE SESSION. Key words: materials design, ESL teaching, CAE. ESL Materials Design for the Teaching of the Future Tense The field of second language (L2) teaching is naturally full of challenges, not only for learners, who would have several language-acquisition difficulties not present in most L1 learners - eradicating accents, formulating English-sounding sentences, poverty of vocabulary - but also for the teacher, who must find ways and means to expose learners to a variety of real-life materials, contexts and challenges which will sufficiently enable learners to operate in those contexts, while transmitting and promoting correct usage and ease with the language (Allwright, 1990). In this light, this paper discusses the design, use and aims of a set of integrated skills materials that have been designed to teach and reinforce the future tense to a group of six students, aged 16-17, who are preparing the Cambridge Certificate of Advanced English (CAE) examination for speakers of other languages (ESOL). The skills covered will range from listening to speaking, and from reading to writing in a ninety-minute session. The learning environment is a small English language institute for non-native speakers (NNS) of English with a modern language laboratory, equipped with a teacher's terminal and twelve individual student terminals. Each student terminal consists of a desk and an internet-enabled computer. The desk is wooden, on the face of which are call buttons to the teacher's terminal, adequate writing space and a mouse, as well as a glass screen giving visibility to the monitor beneath. To one side of the desk is the central processing unit (CPU), providing access to features such as a headset, CD and diskette-drives for individual practice. The teacher's terminal has the same features with additional buttons for her to monitor and assign tasks. In addition, the lab has a whiteboard, flip charts, large television, DVD-player and slide projector, and is next door to the document centre, which has subscriptions to many English language publications. These resources facilitate the employment of a variety of integrated materials in facilitating maximum and optimal language acquisition and practice (Levy, 1997). The laboratory offers the learners to opportunity to be immersed in English through a maximum of methods, and accounts in part for their relative ease with the language at their level. Hinkel and Fotos (2002) in their book, New Perspectives in Grammar Teaching in Second Language Classrooms, trace the change in attitudes to and perspectives about effective grammar pedagogy, showing how teachers have moved from textbook delivery and memorization of grammatical rules and structure, through audio-lingual, then functional, then cognitive, then to communicative language teaching (Allwright, 1979, 1990), particularly in L2 contexts (Hinkel and Fotos, 2002, pp. 2-4). The latter approach and its offshoot humanistic approach, developed to correct the problem of learners who "knew grammar rules but could not use the target language communicatively, and others [who] urgently needed immediate survival competency in English" (Hinkel and Fotos, 2002, p. 4). These approaches saw formal language teaching being superceded by "natural" acquisition through real communication, by means of exposure to a variety of language uses, namely listening, reading, speaking and writing. However, recent practices and research attempt to wed formal instruction with learner awareness through communication, to account for the inadequacies of former approaches, and thus revises traditional approaches to grammar teaching in ESL classrooms (Hinkel and Fotos, 2002, p. 5). The CAE is an advanced proficiency examination geared at students who are preparing to enter professional or academic life, and who require a high-level proficiency in written and spoken English, to be able to adequately function in the above-mentioned settings. (CAE Handbook, 2006, p.3). The objectives of this lesson are in tandem with those of the CAE syllabus, namely to "develop the skills [learners] need to make practical use of the language in a variety of [real-world] contexts" (CAE Handbook, 2006, p.3). Among the specific objectives of the examination are for students to be able to: use grammar structures with ease and fluency demonstrate understanding of different registers adapt their language to a variety of social situations express opinions and take part in discussions, and produce a variety of types of [long and complex] texts and utterances, both factual and fictional (CAE Handbook, 2006, p.3). In order to effectively prepare the learners for the level of proficiency required by their future professional and academic situations and by the CAE examination, the ninety-minute lesson will cover the range of integrated learning skills and involve a variety of materials, focused primarily on a newspaper article, but including worksheets and role- and grammar-cards in the teaching of the future tense ("will + verb"). In addition, these materials have been designed to enhance and to optimize language-acquisition and use, and to cater to the variety of learning styles - from concrete to abstract, active to reflective (Kolb, 1976, in Bentham, 2002, p. 101). As such, the materials combine audio-visual material with writing, thinking and speaking activities. Listening Skills The lesson begins with a five-minute listening activity, which is included in order to provide training for real-life situations and preparation for the CAE Listening paper, where "candidates are expected to understand each text as a whole, gain detailed understanding and appreciate gist and the attitude of the speaker, [and] . to identify and interpret the context" of a range of audio materials. (CAE Handbook, 2006, p. 65). The first material is a one-minute long digital pre-recording of the newspaper article "Sister's Adventure" (Appendix A), read like a newscast. The article and the recording relate the upcoming adventure of two Colchester housewives, Claire Whyatt and Philippa Allcott, who are about to embark on a cross-country meet in Costa Rica. The recording is one-minute long, and is accompanied by a sentence-completion task worksheet (Appendix B). At the top of the worksheet is a short rubric in the format of the CAE Listening paper (which instructions are also repeated at the beginning of the recording). This gives information about the speaker, the topic and the context of the text. The two-minute pre-listening task is to read the rubric and to begin making predictions about the content of the text, then the teacher will play the recording from her terminal, and students will listen (twice) and fill in the missing information on the worksheet. The eight sentence completions are designed to train the learners to retrieve concrete details from the text, in response to a written prompt on the worksheet. (CAE Handbook, 2006, p. 45). For example, the first sentence requires the learners to identify the name of the country that the sisters will be going to from the onomatopoeic sounds in the first paragraph. 1. The two sisters will be going to _______. (Answer: Costa Rica). The first five questions are written in the form "will + verb" and ask about specific details such as place and month names, while the last questions test their comprehension (and spelling) of number words from five, to 33 to 1500. In this way, the material implicitly reinforces the grammar structure (Celce-Murcia, 2002, p. 119), while testing a range of comprehension skills. The activity is designed to develop the learners' ability to understand spoken English in general, and short recorded spoken English in particular. Furthermore, learners should be able to find the information required of them from the recording with little difficulty, and to reproduce it in the spaces provided on the document. Other skills which the learners develop from the activity are the habit of making predictions about a text from the title, or brief information given, listening for general gist from the first playing of the recording, and listening for specific details from the second playing. Reading Skills The listening comprehension activity is tied to and followed by a fifteen-minute reading skills activity with the actual newspaper article (Appendix A), coupled with a reading skills worksheet (Appendix B, reading). Again, the material is designed with the CAE Reading paper in mind, in particular, in training the learner to read and understand texts taken from [a variety of written sources, and] demonstrate a variety of reading skills, including skimming, scanning, deduction of meaning from context and selection of relevant information to complete the given task. CAE Handbook, 2006, p. 43. The article in question is from an authentic newspaper, is sufficiently recent (less than a year old), is short enough to be incorporated and manipulated for the lesson objectives, and adequately comprehensible yet with a few challenging words. The newspaper article has been re-formatted into paragraph blocks with numbers for easy identification in the skimming and scanning activity, which is the first section of the reading skills activity. Here, the learners will be asked to scan the article, which will be placed on the slide projector (to vary the handout method), and to indicate on their individual worksheets the paragraph in which certain information occurs, for example: 4. Details about the nature of the race __ (Answer: P2) Emphasis here is placed on how quickly the learners can find the correct information by skimming or scanning, and not reading for details. The second group of questions are in the multiple-choice format, and these test a higher level of comprehension than the listening skills questions. Skills tested include: using context clues : question 5 (finding the meaning of the word 'intrepid'), making inferences: questions 6-8 (for example, to infer how the sisters feel about winning from Philippa Allcock's statement), and identifying the writer's intention: question 8. The objective of this section is to get the learners into the habit of applying the appropriate reading skills with greater ease and within a specified time-limit. The article will also be manipulated to provide an opportunity for the students to read aloud. In this case, two students will be asked to volunteer to read half of the document each (P1, P2; P3, P4), imitating the newscaster. The aim of this activity is to allow students the opportunity to read English aloud and to become accustomed to their 'English voice'. In addition, the teacher will take the opportunity to correct problems of pronunciation, accent and stress. The teacher will then orally check the answers to both exercises as well as any additional comprehension of difficult vocabulary (e.g. "to bid", "traversing", "to secure", "to be keen on something"). The materials in this first section are designed to reflect what Birch (2002) calls "a new concept of the proficient ESL and EFL reader: that of an expert decision-making and problem-solving mind that uses extensive knowledge of language and the world, effective cognitive comprehension strategies, and quick automatic low-level processing strategies to interact with the text efficiently". (Birch, 2002, p. 146). For this reason, the two activities cover a wide-range of "input" activities in first twenty-five minutes of the lesson. Grammar Acquisition The CAE grammar component requires learners to be able to use English in a realistic setting (English in use). While the entire lesson is geared towards this, this particular section of the lesson draws to the students' conscious attention to the grammar structure under study. Fotos (2002) has pointed out that "there is recent empirical evidence demonstrating that explicit instruction is necessary to promote high levels of accuracy in the target language, even when communicative opportunities to encounter target forms are abundant" (Fotos, 2002, p. 137). This five-minute section employs use of grammar flash cards (Appendix C). This is a small index card (one for each learner), that has some information printed on it by the teacher, for example, the name of the tense and the form of the tense, and spaces for the learner to write information learned in the lesson: the use of the tense, examples from the article and their own examples. The first objective is for the teacher to check the learners' awareness of the correct use of the future tense "will + verb", as the learners refer to the article and underline every occurrence of "will + verb", then describe the time frame of the action (the action takes places at a time that has not yet arrived, for example). They will be given a grammar card to immediately note their "findings" and later on, their examples. At the end of the five minutes, the learners might have a maximum of seven discrete sentences on their cards: three from the article: "it will see them traversing remote mountain ranges", "five teams will compete", "just finishing will be a miracle"; and four from the instructions and questions on the listening task (if they are keen): "you will hear a radio newscast", "the two sisters will be going", and "they will be raising money for charity". In this first instance, they will recognize that language is active, and that they have been learning the use of the grammar structure without knowing it. In this way too, the teacher doesn't "lecture" grammar, but draws the student's attention to grammar in action (Celce-Murcia, 2002, p. 119). Furthermore, not only do these materials provide the learners with a useful future tool to build their proficiency level, but they are also immediately useful for the speaking and writing tasks ahead. This section is kept intentionally short, as the whole lesson is centered around the acquisition of the grammar structure so intense "teaching" is not required. However it is placed at a central point in the lesson for maximum impact, and the cards will be used and referred to for the remainder of the session. Speaking Skills As scores of L2 theories have shown, learning grammar effectively cannot be divorced from using the language in real-world situations. Aside from the need for the learners in this class to demonstrate a range of oral skills for their Speaking paper, the most effective way of reinforcing a grammar structure is to have the students use it in different situations, hence the use of the role-play cards for the speaking skills activity (Appendix D). The half-hour speaking activity will be a directed situational role-play based on the newspaper article. After using about five minutes to explain the task and assign roles, the teacher will divide the class into two groups of three. In order to get each student to speak as much as possible employing the future tense, each student will have a discrete role. The objectives of the speaking activity is to check each students' ability to use the grammar structure correctly in a realistic conversational setting, to understand questions posed to them and to respond to such by formulating creative, comprehensible and adequately complex responses. Each group has approximately twelve minutes to do the role-play. The dynamic of each group is an interview or conversation with one of the sisters, plus someone who overhears and reports what has been said. In the first group, one learner will play the role of a journalist for The Intrepid Woman, a sports magazine program on television for women. She will interview Philippa Allcock about the meet in Costa Rica. In the second group, the "interviewer" is Claire Whyatt's six-year-old son Liam, who is curious about his mother and aunt's trip. Each learner playing role one in his respective group will be expected to formulate questions which will marry the question words 'what', 'how', 'when', 'why', 'where', and 'who' with 'will + verb'. Aside from the correct use of the grammar structure, the learner will be encouraged to formulate creative and complex questions. The second role in group one is that of Philippa Allcock, while in group two, it is Claire Whyatt. Miss Allcock will be interviewed by the journalist from The Intrepid Woman about her trip, Miss Whyatt by her son. S/he will be expected not only to draw the relevant information from the article with which to respond to the journalist's/her son's questions, her ability to comprehend questions and to formulate comprehensible, creative and informative responses using the grammar structure correctly will be evaluated. The third role in group one requires that the learner plays the part of a Colchester housewife with a keen interest in sports. Having watched the interview with Philippa Allcock, she will be expected to call her next-door neighbour and tell her about the upcoming challenge in a one-sided conversation. The group two variant requires the learner to pretend to be Liam Whyatt's six-year-old friend Matt, who has overheard Liam's conversation with his mother and will report to his own mother. While this role does not have a truly conversational nature, both learners will be challenged to not only understand the preceding conversation, but to recall essential details in order to reproduce the information, using variations of the structure "she said she will". The role-cards are thus designed to allow maximum variety and creativity in the roles, while reinforcing the grammar structure, and reflecting not only the nature of real-life situations, but the format of their exam, which consists of directed dialogue and interviews (CAE Handbook, 2006, p. 4). Richards (2002), for one, advocates the use of role-play in reinforcing grammar-acquisition for L2 learners, as the trying out of new language forms is essential to the acquisition process and that acquisition is most likely to occur in contexts 'where the learner needs to produce output which the current interlanguage system cannot handle [and so] pushes the limits of the interlanguage system to handle that output'. (Richards, 2002, p. 43) Other theorists agree with the view that while listening and reading skills activities encourage maximum intake of the second language, maximum output (demonstrating successful acquisition) is fostered "not by doing exercises and studying grammar rules but by using language for meaningful communication" (Mlynarczyk, 1998, p. 129), hence the predomination of speaking and writing tasks in the design of materials and time-plan for this lesson. Writing Skills The writing skills materials (Appendix E) consist of a pre-writing "Budget Crunch" and a writing task. This section of the lesson should take approximately twenty-five minutes. The "Budget Crunch" is actually an oral activity integrating mathematics and English, and functions in the same way as the stimuli (input text) on the CAE Writing paper. In the actual paper, the learner will be required to complete the writing task in response to written input and the instructions (CAE Handbook, 2006, p. 65), taken from a variety of real-life written material. For this lesson, however, the teacher will place the writing skills material on the slide projector, and prompt the learners to suggest possible costs for the Coast to Coast challenge, giving figures for things such as airfare, room and board, and babysitting for the boys. Together they will calculate the total budget for the challenge, the amount of money they want to raise for charity, and therefore the total money needed from sponsorship (mentioned in the article). The whole exercise still employs in a non-obtrusive way the grammar structure "will + verb": e.g. "how much do you think they will need for airfare" or "how much do you think babysitting will cost" From the total estimated figure, the learners will be expected to complete the writing task (Appendix E, Writing). This consists of a set of instructions detailing the role of writer, audience, purpose, word limit and time limit. It gives the learner some indication of the content of the letter, and asks them to use the future tense "will + verb". The objective of this activity is to consolidate the lesson and to check learners' ability to write using the grammar structure "will + verb". The form of the task is a (formal) letter requesting sponsorship. The learner will pretend to be one of the sisters, and use fifteen minutes to write a letter of about 80 words to a potential sponsor. Through this activity, learners should practice - making brief plans before writing - determining the target reader and thus appropriate tone - selecting the necessary information from the input - writing within the word limit (in this case, 80 words) - linking ideas effectively, and - using a range of complex language (CAE Handbook, 2006, p. 18). Following this activity, the four students who did not have a change to read before, will read their letters to the class, and the teacher will check for clarity of expression, adherence to instructions and pronunciation (all scripts will be collected for more structured assessment). This section provides a balance between the process-centred and product-centred approaches that have distinguished L2 and L1 writing. The materials would not only be focused on "developing and facilitating the student's composing process and recognizing that writing involves both rational and emotional thought processes" (Zamel, 1982, in Hinkel, 2002, 47), but on applying the same principles of composition as in L1 writing, where learners may "experience writing as a creative act of discovery" (p. 199). (Hinkel, 2002, p. 48). Hinkel (2004) also advocates the teaching of ESL writing in a manner that reflects the professional and academic needs of the learner (Hinkel, 2004, pp. 17-18), through higher-level writing tasks. At the end of the lesson, the learners would have practiced some of the key skills in language acquisition: listening effectively, reading actively, and communicating with relative ease and "correctness" in speaking and writing situations. Moreover, they would have consolidated the correct use of a grammar structure, in this case, the simple future tense, without feeling bored by traditional methods. The materials designed would have functioned as a means to stimulate the learners to speak and use English (Allwright, 1990) and to allow them to see the L2 as comparable in use and relevance as their native language. References Allwright, R. L. (1990). What Do We Want Teaching Materials For In R. Rossner and R. Bolitho, (Eds.), Currents in Language Teaching. Oxford University Press. Bentham, S. (2002). Psychology and Education. New York: Routledge. Birch, B. M. (2002). English L2 Reading: Getting to the Bottom. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. _________. CAE Handbook. University of Cambridge. ESOL Examinations: Certificate in Advanced English. Retrieved April 7, 2006. http://www.cambridgeesol.org/support/dloads/cae_downloads.htm. Celce-Murcia, M. (2002). 7 Why It Makes Sense to Teach Grammar in Context and Through Discourse In New Perspectives on Grammar Teaching in Second Language Classrooms, Hinkel, E. & Fotos, S. (Eds.) (pp. 119-134). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Hinkel, E. (2002). Second Language Writers' Text: Linguistic and Rhetorical Features. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Hinkel, E. & Fotos, S. (Eds.). (2002). New Perspectives on Grammar Teaching in Second Language Classrooms. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Hinkel, E. (2004). Teaching Academic ESL Writing: Practical Techniques in Vocabulary and Grammar. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Levy, M. (1997). Computer-Assisted Language Learning: Context and Conceptualization. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Mlynarczyk, R. W. (1998). 9 Fluency First in the ESL Classroom: an Integrated Approach. In Adult ESL: Politics, Pedagogy, and Participation in Classroom and Community Programs, Smoke, T. (Ed.) (pp. 127-143). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Richards, J. C. (2002). 3 Accuracy and Fluency Revisited. In New Perspectives on Grammar Teaching in Second Language Classrooms, Hinkel, E. & Fotos, S. (Eds.) (pp. 35-50). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Appendix A SISTERS' ADVENTURE A pair of intrepid sisters are swapping Colchester for Costa Rica in a bid to raise thousands for charity. Claire Whyatt and Philippa Allcock have secured places in the Costa Rica Coast to Coast challenge in February in the aid of the Prince's Trust. (P1) It will see them traversing remote mountain ranges, rivers and dense jungle, using a variety of transport including bikes, rafts and sea kayaks to travel from the Pacific coast to the Caribbean coast in seven days. Five teams will compete in the 250km race. (P2) Miss Whyatt and Miss Allcock, mother to six-year-old Liam and one year old Joshua, said they wouldn't be too worried about racing. 'Just finishing will be a miracle and a major achievement for us' she said. Miss Whyatt, 33, of Stanway, said she was keen to take the challenge but would have been too scared on her own. (P3) They have already raised 1,500 and are keen to get as much sponsorship as possible. For information about helping, go to www.justgiving.com/clairepip. (P4) From The Colchester and Mersea Weekly News, October 19th, 2005. Appendix B LISTENING You will hear a radio newscast about two sisters going abroad for a special event. Listen carefully to the recording and complete the sentences. SISTERS' ADVENTURE 1. The two sisters will be going to _____________ 2. They will be raising money for ______________ 3. The trip will be in the month of _____________ 4. They will cross __________, rivers and jungles. 5. _______ teams will compete in the race. 6. Ms. Allcock has a ______ year-old son, Joshua. 7. Miss Whyatt is _______ years old. 8. They have already raised _________ READING The following questions are based on the article. For questions 1 to 4, indicate which paragraph contains the following information: 1. The name of the competition ___ 2. The motives for doing the challenge ___ 3. Details about the sisters' family ___ 4. Details about the nature of the race ___ For questions 5 - 8, choose the correct answer from four choices given: 5. The word 'intrepid' (line 1) means: (a) fearful (b) brave (c) loving (d) generous 6. The type of competition is (a) a cross-country challenge (b) an Olympic race (c) a hiking challenge (d) a biking challenge 7. The sisters are __________ about winning (a) worried (b) not concerned (c) confident (d) obsessed 8. The aim of the article is to (a) show how intrepid the sisters are (b) inform us about the competition (c) raise interest in sponsoring the sisters (d) entertain readers Appendix C THE FUTURE TENSE Form: "will" + verb is used to describe an action ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Examples from the text: __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ Your own examples: __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ Appendix D Student 1A: You are a journalist for The Intrepid Woman, a sports magazine program for women on cable TV. Interview Philippa Allcock about her upcoming trip to Costa Rica. Use what/how/when/why/where/who will + verb Student 1B: You are Philippa Allcock. You are being interviewed by a journalist from The Intrepid Woman, a sports magazine program for women on cable TV. Answer the journalists questions about your trip. Use information from the article, but also be creative! Use I will, we will + verb Student 1C: You are a Colchester housewife with a keen interest in sports. You watch the sports program The Intrepid Woman on TV with Philippa Allcock from Colchester. Listen carefully to what they say, then call your next door neighbour and tell her what about the upcoming challenge. Use she said she/ they will + verb Student 2A: You are a Claire Whyatt's son Liam (6 years old). You are curious about your mother's trip to Costa Rica with Aunt Philippa. Ask her questions about where she will go and what she will do. Use what/how/why/when/who will+ verb Student 2B: You are Claire Whyatt. Your six-year-old son is curious about your trip to Costa Rica. Answer his questions using information from the article, but also be creative! Use I will, we will + verb Student 2C: You are Liam's friend, Matt. You hear Liam's mother Claire Whyatt talking about her trip to Costa Rica. Tell your mother what you overheard. Use she said she/ they will + verb Appendix E BUDGET CRUNCH Make a budget for the Coast to Coast Challenge: Airfare: Room and board: Baby-sitting for the boys: Other expenses : Total budget for challenge: Estimated money for charity: _________________________________________ Total money needed: WRITING Instructions: You are one of the 'Intrepid' sisters. Based on the budget you made, write a letter (80 words) to a potential sponsor (of your choice). Using the future tense ("will + verb"): - describe your project - give your budget - tell him/her how much, when and in what manner you will need the money Try to be as persuasive as possible! TIME: 15 mins Read More