Adults Who Are Learning to Speak English - Essay Example

?Assignment One: The following scenario includes a room in a nation of origin with adults who are learning to speak English. When someone studies English in England or in the United States, it is easier to develop an understanding of the language. In this case, the students are studying in their homeland so conversational English is not as readily available. A lesson that would allow students the opportunity to learn how to speak a second language is to pair the students with those at the same level of conversation then instruct them to engage in conversation for fifteen minutes in order to make a discovery about the other person. Each level of learning would have a different level of discovery that they need to make. At the end of the fifteen minute period, each student would need to state in English what they learned about their conversation partner. The sample demographic that is used for this assignment is adult students in a classroom environment when the school is in their own home nation. The ages of the students range from 21 to 38. The students are divided into the three groups, beginner, intermediate, and advanced so that they can communicate at the level they have attained or are in which they are working. Through creating partnered conversation, the students can achieve participation and interaction so that they can gain confidence and begin to develop communications strategies. This will give them more confidence in their ability to communicate in the English language. The goal for all three groups is to work towards fluency. One of the best ways in which to teach speaking skills is to have students speak to one another in the classroom. The time frame should be fifteen minutes of conversation for all three groups. The beginning group will use phrases that are short. These phrases may contain only three to five works but can be used to develop a conversation. The instructions for beginners will be to greet one another and introduce themselves. They should talk about their family, give the time, and talk about how they are feeling. They should be instructed to thank each other at the end of the conversation. The intermediate conversation should be conversations in which they ask for details about ideas, they give opinions, and they begin to work with agreeing and disagreeing. The advanced students should be paraphrasing what each other has said during the course of the conversation. One learner will make a comment on a topic after which the second learner must first paraphrase the comment of the first learner, and then contribute their own opinion. In a class with multiple advancement levels, the best way in which to teach the subject is to have one activity, such as a conversation between paired students, which has different instructions for each level in the classroom. This way there is group experience even when the students do not all have the same level of education on a subject. The following table shows how the instruction lesson would be broken down. Beginner Intermediate Advanced Phrases 3 to 5 word phrases Full sentences Paraphrases of the partner’s opinions. Information Name, age and something they like. Details about their family and work life. Opinions about the world. Identify Problems Is pronunciation correct? Is sentence structure correct? Are the ideas developed? Assignment Two: The students in this classroom are learning from within their own nation and are adult learners. They have three levels of skill within the one classroom: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. The ages of the students range from 21 to 38. The lesson that will help them to learn to listen would first include a film. The film would be in English and would have a variety of information in it that the students could learn. Before the class session would start, the film would be playing as the students come into the classroom. An example of a film that might work is the BBC documentary, Technology of the Future (Prabh Stories 2013). This film has English spoken in American style, but in relatively slow rhythms. At the beginning of the class, the teacher asks if they learned anything from the film. The film is then showed to the students again. The beginning level students would be expected to have learned basic concepts, with the intermediate being able to recognize more details. The advanced learners would be able to critically analyse the information and give an opinion on what they learned. The key to doing this exercise is to have a listening evaluation at the end of the program. Three different evaluations would be targeted to each of the three groups of learners. This would allow them the opportunity to see what they could hear from the video. The film would accomplish many of the goals through which the students could develop listening skills. This includes interesting content, visual support, listening preparation through the introduction of the film, whole messages about individual topics, specific details, and an opportunity for students to give responses at the end that relate to what they have heard and seen. It might also be prudent to have a text version of the script available so that connections between the information they have listened to can be processed by reading it as well. Because the video has ‘real life’ messages, students would be able to determine what was being said somewhat through the visual stimuli. In addition, the instrument used at the end of the video to see what they learned would link the experience of listening to a writing opportunity. Discussing the results allows for students to learn from each other, picking up on the different ways that the information can be heard through the experiences of their peers. The discussion between the students at the end is vital to having them each learn how the others are seeing and hearing the film. One of the issues with assessments is that they may not measure the skills used. This can be accomplished by including questions that are both at the level of expected acquired knowledge and just advanced of that point to see if they are catching more or less at their level. Including questions that may be a bit above their level will allow them to be challenged towards stretching their knowledge towards the answers to those questions. Bibliography Prabh Stories. 28 June 2013. Technology of the Future. Youtube.[ONLINE] Available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIvGtU63cVU Accessed 11 September 2013. Assignment Three: One of the problems identified for learning to read in a second language is that the learner will read more intensely than they do when reading in their native tongue. Activities that help students to learn to read more naturally are sometimes difficult to manage and create. However, the idea of reading in a more natural manner will help a student who is learning English as a second language to begin to think in English while they are using the language. The students in the classroom that is being discussed are adults between the ages of 21 and 38 and fall within three different categories. The students are either beginner, intermediate or advanced learners who all come together in this classroom that exists within their country of origin. They are learning English for a variety of reasons, but have been working together well towards gaining more skills. Although students typically need to be at an intermediate level to learn to skim reading materials in a secondary language, the skill can be given to all levels that can learn to skim as they advance. One lesson that can be used to help students to learn to read in English more naturally is to give them an abstract from a journal article which has only the basic information in it and allow them to read that abstract. The next step is to give them the article and have them find the portions of the article to which the abstract refers. Beginning readers will naturally seek out individual words, while intermediate readers will begin to look for sentences that apply the abstract. Advance learners will look for ideas and concepts, finding them more rapidly because they would not be reading word for word through the article. Peer reflection throughout the group would allow for members at each level to benefit from the skills shown by other members. What the beginners find would be very different than the advanced learners, but all of the learners would find benefits from the exercise. This learning exercise will allow for a number of competencies to be experienced. Knowledge that includes vocabulary is combined with learning how sentences are structured together. In addition, the students can learn about how English as a system of language is put into writing structures. Students will also learn how writers in the English language put thoughts together and transition from one thought to the next. The exercise provides for sociolinguistic competence so that language that is used in a journal article can be identified and compared to other types of writing. Skill assessment can be found through using a writing exercise with the reading exercise so that students write in English what they have learned from the article in comparison to the abstract. Learning to use more natural methods for reading in a second language can contribute to beginning to think in that language so that meaning becomes intrinsically linked to the phrase and sentences that are learned. Comprehension Potentials Assignment Four: Writing skills are highly dependent upon the level or learning that a student has achieved. In a group of adults, ages 21 to 38 that are all in the same class, different levels of writing will have been achieved. As well, for students who are learning to speak and write English as a second language their skills in one aspect of learning the language may be stronger than the other. This would have to be evaluated in order to understand how to approach each aspect of teaching them the English language. The students in the class range from age 21 to 38, meaning that they are all students who are adults learning to speak English. The following graph indicates how they are assessed in terms of their abilities to speak English in comparison to their abilities to write in English. Age Ratio of Skill Level in Reading Compared to Writing One lesson that can be used in a combined classroom would be to set up a number of objects on a table where the teacher knows that most of the class knows the vocabulary to name then and then to ask the class to write a story about those objects. The focus of the writing assignment is to create a piece of work that uses as many descriptions as possible. This will help to expand the vocabulary needed to get to the next level of writing. In this exercise sentence structure would be very important. In order to do well in this exercise, the student would need to write the level that they feel they have achieved, while paying attention to the punctuation, phrasing, and vocabulary so that is used correctly. The meaning of achieving this level of learning is so that when communicating on a more technical level, the student knows how to describe what they are trying to say. Through engaging their creativity, the student is challenged to push their use of the English language so that they can communicate the thoughts they have created about the subject matter. The assignment for beginning students who have achieved that level of writing would be to write a children’s story in which the objects become personified. This would allow them to use smaller sentences, but challenge them to write about a topic. Intermediate students would be encouraged to write about the objects and what they feel in the story. This could be either for adults or children. Advanced students would be asked to write something about the objects and what they mean to the people that they choose to write about in the story. This would give more critical depth to the story. In reading the stories aloud, skills of listening, reading, and writing can be evaluated by peers who would help each other to improve their works. One idea is to have these works be continually revised as students learn new vocabulary and skills in the English language. The various drafts could serve as a running journal on their increasing skills. Read More