Amalia Mărăşescu, Main Issues in Teaching English for Speakers of Other

Languages, Ed. Universitaria, Craiova, 2014

1. The Main Actors in the Teaching / Learning Process

“Obviously, not every learner is a genius: in fact, few pupils actually enjoy
learning for the sake of learning. Rather, it is the teacher who can make them love or hate
a subject. The teacher’s tactfulness, his/her warm closeness and understanding of the
students’ needs and wants, his/her interesting presentation and emotional involvement, as
well as his/her understanding of the times we live in (the age of speed and of computers),
to mention just a few, can make wonders with the most difficult cases.
And the most difficult cases are not always the ‘slow’ children; quite the opposite,
the brightest kid in class is often put down because s/he is always interrupting the lesson
and disturbing the others, because s/he has crazy ideas, or because s/he wants to talk
about the latest computer game instead of solving ‘boring’ tasks of grammar or
vocabulary.” (Vizental 133-134)

 Which, do you think, is the main actor in the teaching/learning process: the
teacher or the learner?

1. 1. The Teacher
 What are, in your opinion, the qualities of the ideal teacher?
Children spend more time in school with their teachers than they spend home with
their parents. Therefore, teachers influence students very much, even though the latter do
not always realize this. Teachers should be aware of this influence and should use it to
achieve positive things.
Elementary school students have a model in their teacher. Everything the teacher
does at school is imitated at home in front of the dolls. First, children imitate the exterior
elements (the gestures, words, etc.), but later on they get to imitate the teacher’s way of
thinking as well. The older the students get, however, the more difficult to shape they
become. Still, teachers remain important. Let us remember how many times we got to
love a subject because we liked the teacher who taught it and how many times we got to
hate a subject just because we hated the teacher. Children love the teachers who love
them, who love their subject and who know how to treat students.
Adrian Underhill (apud Scrivener 2005) suggests that there are three broad
categories of teaching styles:
1. the explainer, who lectures, conveying information to the students. The lectures
may be interesting and informative, even entertaining, but the students are not
personally involved or challenged. The explainer knows the subject matter.
2. the involver, who involves the students actively and uses appropriate teaching and
organizational techniques to help students learn about the subject matter. Still,
s/he retains control of what happens in the classroom. The involver knows the
subject matter and the methodology.
3. the enabler, who shares control with the learners, if s/he does not hand it over to
them; s/he enables students to learn for themselves. The enabler knows the subject
matter, the methodology and the people (in his/her class).
Consequently, we can say that methodology and knowledge of subject matter are
important, but not the most important. It is more important to be “an aware and sensitive
teacher who respects and listens to her students, and who concentrates on finding ways of
enabling learning rather than on performing as a teacher.” (Scrivener 22)
We can classify teachers according to various other criteria as well. Thus, the
Neuro-Linguistic Programming Model takes into consideration the sense that is mostly
used when teaching. (cf. Harmer 2007) Thus, we can have:
 visual teachers who: talk fast, use visual aids, like to cover a lot of content,
consider forms (grammar, spelling) important, like work to be done in time.
 auditory teachers, who: speak rhythmically, like class discussions, tend to repeat
students’ commands by paraphrasing, discipline their pupils by talking to them
usually with memorized sermonettes beginning with “How many times did I tell
you...?”, are easily disoriented from the focus of the lesson, read and ask the
students to read the text aloud, rarely use visual aids, make comments on
students’ performance using various words and noises (OK, etc.);
  kinesthetic teachers, who: talk slowly, use manipulatives (hand-outs etc.),
involve students in projects and in team work, consider concepts important,
believe in what students can do, use a lot of demonstrations.
According to the pattern of authority that teachers use in class, they can be:
1. paternal-assertive – characterized by aggressiveness and dominance, but also by a
deep concerned for the advancement and reward of subordinates. The problem is
that the subordinates may not detect this concern and may develop a spirit of
rebellion or anxiety.
2. maternal-expressive – characterized by the fact that they avoid aggressiveness,
but concentrate instead on creating affective ties with the subordinates, exercising
control over them by withdrawing affection and threatening them with rejection.
The problem is that if a subordinate is rejected, s/he may get very angry or even
depressed.
3. fraternal-permissive – characterized by the fact that they consciously minimize
any status differentiation, aiming instead at equality. The needs of the
subordinates appear to dominate. The leader shares with the subordinates as much
responsibility as possible and tries to encourage them. This type seems to be the
ideal one, but the teacher needs to be very confident. The problem is that the
subordinates may not have the necessary experience to decide and they may get
confused. Moreover, some of them need a strong authority figure.
4. rational-procedural – characterized by the fact that they minimize emotions and
interpersonal relationships. They try to resort to the constraints of impersonal
authority in the form of objectives, laws, regulations, syllabi, textbooks. The
problem is that this pattern reaches the subordinates only at a superficial level in
their emotional experience, therefore producing very little involvement and
creativity.
Traditional teaching is characterized by emphasis on “chalk and talk” – the
teacher spends much time writing on the board and explaining, while the students listen,
take notes and do some practice meant to test whether they have understood what they
have been taught. In many cultures, this is the dominant mode of education. Students
expect such teachers and other teachers may be suspicious of a colleague who behaves
differently. Therefore, “what you do in any school or with any learner will often represent
your best compromise between what you believe and what seems right in the local
context.” (Scrivener 17)
Traditional teaching is also characterized as “jug and mug” – the teacher “pours”
the knowledge into the learners’ mind. However, there is a problem with this model:
teaching does not equal learning. Being in a class in the presence of a teacher and
listening attentively to him / her is not enough to ensure learning. The teacher cannot
learn for his/ her students. S/he can only help to create conditions in which they might be
able to learn. Moreover, we should be aware that students do not learn everything they
are taught, but those parts that suit their understanding of the world and make sense to
them.
Currently, teaching has become student-centred, in opposition to the teacher-
centred approach that dominated traditional teaching.

Learner-Centred Approach Teacher-Centred Approach

- based on a preliminary assessment of - based on an imposed syllabus, determined
learner’s needs on the basis of tradition and of the
characteristics of the subject;
- frequent student-student interactions - most interactions are teacher-student or
(pairwork and groupwork), and some task teacher-whole class; there are the same
differentiation; tasks for all students;
- the method is adapted to class needs or - the method is predetermined, the same for
even to individual needs; all classes and all individuals;
- is based on an attempt to estimate - is based on a universal learning theory
students’ expectations and previous and on a traditional concept of good
learning, their aptitudes and cognitive teaching;
styles;
- learners participate in classroom decision - all classroom decisions are taken by the
making; teacher;
- the teacher seeks feedback not only on - the teacher seeks feedback only on
cognitive learning, but also on the learners’ cognitive learning;
feelings, attitudes, motivation, etc.
- the teacher is an organizer, a facilitator of - the teacher is a source of knowledge and
learning an authority figure;
- if the students fail it is also the teacher’s - it is only the students’ fault if they fail.
fault.

Teachers become different when they are in class from what they are in other
situations. “Effective teacher personality is a blend between who we really are, and who
we are as teachers.” (Harmer 24) The learners need to see the real person behind the
profession, but also the professional. Teaching is not acting, but we need to think
carefully about how we appear in front of our students.
In this respect, non-verbal communication is also very important in teaching.
Alongside linguistic and paralinguistic signs (especially tone of voice and pitch), the non-
verbal ones help the teacher establish both a hierarchy and a peer status. Effective non-
verbal signs include: eye contact, hands, positioning towards students, touch, head nods,
smiles. Eye contact is important because the eyes reflect the teacher’s attitude towards
and opinion about students and show who is in control of the class. The most suggestive
part of the body in teaching, however, is represented by the hands. Hands can regulate,
support or emphasize the verbal message, express the attitude of the teacher towards the
students, or express the teacher’s emotions by touching. Maintaining eye contact and a
semi-oriented position towards the board when writing on it the teacher shows that s/he is
still in control. Romanian students also feel comfortable when their teacher is closer to
them and walks through the rows because thus they have an opportunity of establishing a
personal relationship with him/ her. A pleasant appearance and smiling are also important
(though we should not smile too often).
Learning to become a teacher is a continuous activity, for which we can benefit
from books about methodology, experience, university courses, our former experience as
learners, talking to peers and other people (e.g. the school psychologist), and from learner
feedback. Teachers should constantly reflect on their activity, discuss it with their peers
and find solutions for their problems together.

1. 2. The Learner
 The atmosphere in a class is determined by the “rapport” established between
teacher and students. Consequently, we cannot discuss the teaching / learning process
without focusing on the learner as well.

 What are, in your opinion, the qualities of the ideal learner?

The process of learning often involves five steps:

1. doing something;
2. recalling what happened;
3. reflecting on that;
4. drawing conclusions from the reflection;
5. using the conclusions to prepare for future practical experience.
The learner can receive information, guidance, feedback and support from others
at any of the five steps, but s/he has to do the thing himself/herself.
This 5-stage process is known as an “experiential learning cycle”. (Scrivener 21)
It leads to the following conclusions:
 it is more important to give people opportunities to do things themselves than to
expose them to information;
 the main concern of a teacher should be to enable learning rather than to know
theoretical things about teaching;
 students should be given space to do things themselves; the teacher should not
learn for his/her students;
 the teacher should help learners see how they are learning and what techniques,
procedures, materials are suitable for them.
People learn more by doing things themselves than by being told about them. The
students do not come to classes as blank slates. They “may bring pen and paper to the
lesson, but they also bring a whole range of other, less visible things to class: their needs,
their wishes, their life experience, their home background, their memories, their worries,
their day so far, their dreams, their anger, their toothache, their fears, their moods, etc.”
(Scrivener 21) Given the opportunities, they will be able to take responsibility for their
learning.
 New learning is constructed on the foundations of each person’s earlier learning.
That is why the message taken away from one lesson is different for different people.
“It is tempting for a teacher (or a school) to view a class as a fairly homogeneous
group with a single ‘level’ and similar behaviour, preferences, interests and ways of
working.” (Scrivener 62) However, learners may have different:
 reasons for needing English;
 beliefs about what a teacher can or should do;
 previous learning experiences;
 preferences for classroom methodology;
 preferences for what content to work on in class;
 speeds of working and learning;
 ability to remember things;
 difficulties or physical disabilities;
 intelligences;
 boredom thresholds;
 reactions to things, moods, habits, etc.;
 motivations;
 senses of humour, response to jokes, practical jokes, sarcasm, etc. (cf. Scrivener
2005)
The following factors will influence what and how the students are taught:
 the reasons why they learn the language (they are obliged by the school, they have
moved into a target-language community, they need English for Specific Purposes
– ESP – or English for Academic Purposes – EAP, they think it will be useful for
international communication and travel);
 the context in which the language is learnt (whether an ordinary or a language
school, a large class or a one-to-one teaching environment, in-school or in-
company, in a real or in a virtual learning environment);
 learner differences (in age, learning styles, levels, educational and cultural
background).
 According to Păcurari and Vizental (2000), all language learners share the
following needs:
 the need to get informed;
 the need to be motivated;
 the need to be actively involved in the learning process;
 the need to practice for habit formation and skill development;
 the need to communicate and negotiate meaning;
 the need to make an apprenticeship and develop an individual style.
In addition to these general needs, the learners may have specific needs. They
may need the language for communication, to read professional bibliography, to write
letters, to negotiate, etc. Regardless of this, however, all learners need general English,
therefore we should include topics like family, food, clothing, weather, travelling, books,
etc. in specialized language courses as well.
As far as the learners’ age is concerned, we distinguish between:
 children – aged 2 to 14;
 very young learners – aged 2 to 5;
 young learners – aged 5 to 9;
 adolescents – aged 12 to 17;
 young adults – aged 16 to 20;
 adults.
Briefly, we can characterize the major groups as follows:
 Children respond well to individual attention from the teacher, have a short
attention span, need tasks that stimulate simultaneously as many of their senses as
possible (hearing, seeing, touching are all important for them), have a limited
capacity for abstract thought, need practical activities, learn to speak very easily,
but also forget very easily.
 Adolescents have a greater capacity for abstract thought, have great capacity for
learning, an enormous potential for creative thought and a passionate commitment
to things which interest them, need activities that challenge their imagination and
inventiveness.
  Adults are more disciplined and motivated, come with a lot of previous learning
experience which may prevent their progress, prefer rules and schemes and need
to feel respected and in charge.
In the same manner in which there are several types of teachers, there are also
several types of learners.
A first classification (valid for all people, regardless of age or occupation) takes
into account the brain hemisphere which is dominant. The left hemisphere of the brain is
associated with logical, analytical, computer-like thought. The right hemisphere
processes information diffusely, simultaneously and synthetically. Consequently,

Left-brained people Right-brained people

analytical synthetical
deductive (theory → practice) inductive (practice → theory)
serialist (learn in a series) holist (<whole)
intolerant of ambiguity tolerant of ambiguity
introvert extrovert
rational emotional
prefer exact sciences prefer humanistic subjects
learners acquirers

Extreme learners constantly monitor their language output in ways which

seriously limit the amount of information they communicate. Acquirers may make many
mistakes, but are quite fluent. Learners prefer logical, alert, formalized language
instruction. Acquirers prefer any type of learning environment that provides intake
(language they receive and internalize) where language rules can be acquired and stored
in a holistic fashion.
A second classification takes into account again the sense that is most used when
learning.

Visual Learners Auditory Learners Kinesthetic Learners

-well-organized; -learn by listening; -learn by doing;
-good observers; -talk to themselves; -do not sit still;
-quiet; -are easily distracted by -respond to physical
-good spellers; noise; rewards;
-memorize by pictures; -move lips when reading -touch and stay close to
-less distracted by noise; silently; people;
-would rather read -can repeat back; -point when they read;
something than be read to; -can mimic tone, pitch, -memorize by walking;
-need an overall view/ intonation; -make many gestures;
purpose; -remember what was -remember an overall
-remember what they saw; discussed; impression of the
-may have difficulties with -are the most talkative; experience;
verbal instructions. -love discussions; -like action-oriented books.
-tell the whole sequential
event.

Howard Gardner (1993) claims that, rather than having a single unified
intelligence, people might have seven:
 verbal/ linguistic;
 visual;
 musical;
 logical / mathematical;
 bodily / feeling;
 interpersonal (related to contact with other people);
 intrapersonal (related to understanding oneself).
We should provide activities that are best for each, e.g. create a poem similar to
one given, read a fragment of a text and draw an image connected to what is presented
there, read something in a rhythmic manner, categorize stylistic devices in a chart, act a
piece of literature, involve students in a project and have them write a diary page starting
from a certain fragment, respectively.
In a classroom, teachers tend to value students whose cognitive style is like theirs.
When mismatching occurs, the student is likely to feel frustrated and hostile to the
teacher, to the subject matter or to learning in general. The solution is to know your
students and to use techniques that will help all types.
  Should we teach the class or the individuals?

Though all learners in one class are considered to be at a certain level, very often
they are mixed in level. There are various reasons for this:
 the students are grouped by age;
 the school does not have sufficient levels;
 even if at the beginning they are in the same level, at the end the students may be
in different levels because they progress differently.
A common level structure used in schools divides learners into:
 advanced;
 post-intermediate;
 upper intermediate;
 intermediate
 pre-intermediate;
 elementary;
 beginner.
Another system coming from the Council of Europe and the Association of
Language Testers of Europe (ALTE) classifies learners as:
 C2 (= nearly native-speaker level);
 C1 (=advanced);
 B2 (=upper intermediate / post-intermediate);
 B1 (=intermediate);
 A2 (=pre-intermediate);
 A1 (=beginner / elementary).
Beginners require simple texts and extensive drilling. Intermediate students need
more complex texts and activities oriented towards free production and independent
work. Advanced learners need authentic materials and activities that encourage their
creativity and develop their analytic spirit.
At the beginning we get a general idea of the overall class level. Then, little by
little, we come to perceive:
  a general idea of individuals’ levels;
 individuals’ levels in various systems and skills;
 individuals’ levels over specific tasks.
The conclusion is that every learner has an individual range of levels and that
every class is a mixed-level class. Therefore, the teacher should constantly adapt.

1. 3. Why Do We Need a Teacher?

Language learners can learn in several ways:
a. by studying at home with books, CDs, computer programs, video tapes etc.;
b. by “picking up” a language by immersion (by living and communicating in a
place where that language is used);
c. in classes with a teacher and colleagues, classes where they choose to come or
which they are required to attend;
d. by using all three ways mentioned above.
Then why would they need a teacher?
It has been stated that second language instruction is most facilitated not by the
input provided or the output produced but by a combination of various types of language
assistance, which occurs in the context of language-promoting interaction (i.e. interaction
that facilitates language development). This kind of context assists students precisely
when they need it and it does so in several ways, according to the individual student’s
needs. The teacher may be required to offer encouragement, information, attention,
learning strategies, particular structures, etc. Thus, s/he can encourage students by:
 complimenting them (“Well said.”);
 prompting them to communicate either verbally (“Tell me more.”) or through
non-verbal means (smiling, nodding, etc.).
S/he can help students understand the input by:
 simplifying the lesson: speaking slowly, rephrasing, repeating key concepts,
explaining, etc.;
 checking to make sure the students understood;
 training students to ask questions when they do not understand;
  making links with the students’ background knowledge, checking that they have
the knowledge necessary to understand the topic.
S/he can help students remember key words or ideas by writing them on the blackboard
and focusing the students’ attention on them (by asking questions, for instance).
Explanations are not particularly useful, especially for language learners. If the
explanation is done in the language being learnt, then it might be more difficult to
understand than the problem being explained. Even if the explanation is done in the
mother tongue, it is better for it to be brief. We learn how to use a language by trying to
do it rather than by hearing/ reading about it. Therefore, language learners need to do a
variety of exercises, to communicate with a variety of people and to get feedback on how
successful they were (rather than just to listen to explanations).
During the English language class, students may learn more than simply the
language. They may learn new study techniques, they may get to know better their
colleagues and themselves, they may learn about the culture of the English-speaking
countries or how to achieve a goal (pass an exam, make a presentation), etc.
“If we start using English in class to do more than simple mechanical drills, then
the subject matter becomes anything we might do with language, any topic that might be
discussed with English, any feeling that might be expressed in English, any
communication that we might give or receive using English. The people who use the
language in class, and their feelings, are, therefore, also part of the subject matter.”
(Scrivener 34)
Motivation is a key to learning. It leads learners to use a variety of strategies that
help them learn better and even maintain their language skills after classroom instruction
is over. Therefore, the activities and materials suggested should be exciting, stimulating
and interesting. But, besides this, the attitudes students bring to language learning should
be paid great attention to and positive attitudes towards the foreign language, culture and
learning process should be inculcated. Speaking in a foreign language is a major anxiety-
provoking situation, making students feel nervous, not feel confident, fear their peers and
teacher will laugh at them for various reasons or criticize them too harshly. The teacher
should help students lower their anxiety (by using relaxation, deep breathing, meditation,
music or laughter), encourage themselves (by making positive statements, taking risks
wisely, rewarding themselves) and take their emotional temperature (by writing a
language learning diary or discussing their feelings with someone else).
Teachers need to be careful not to present too many alternative ways of saying
something, not to teach too much vocabulary at the same time, not to go too quickly and
ultimately not to give students information which is irrelevant to them. After all, good
teaching does not mean showing students what we know, but helping them improve their
knowledge, skills and performance.
A small but important part of the teaching time should be spent making students
aware of the learning process, of why certain things will help them and others will not. If
they understand that, they will be able to take more responsibility for their own learning.
Even in the 1960’s, some considered teaching as rather unimportant and overrated
(cf. Rogers 1967). That is teaching in the sense of instructing, imparting knowledge,
making somebody know something, showing, guiding, directing people. This kind of
teaching makes sense in an unchanging environment, where older people impart
knowledge to the young to help them survive. But we live in an environment that is
continually changing. What we learn now by heart in the field of chemistry, biology,
physics, etc. is likely to change in a few years’ time. Therefore, we no longer need to
learn facts, but we need to learn how to learn, how to adapt and change, ultimately how to
seek knowledge. The goal of education should therefore be that of facilitating learning,
i.e. unleashing curiosity, opening everything to question and consideration, allowing
people to go in new directions dictated by their interests, etc. The facilitation of learning
rests upon some attitudinal qualities existing in the personal relationship between the
facilitator (teacher) and the learner:
 realness/ genuineness – the facilitator appears to the learner as a real person, not
as a façade. S/he can be enthusiastic, bored, angry or sympathetic, just like the
students. But s/he accepts these feelings as his/her own and does not impose them,
but discusses them with the students.
 trust in the learner, manifested by prizing and accepting him/ her as a separate
person having worth in his/ her own right. Such a teacher can accept a student’s
apathy, fear and hesitation as well as his/ her enthusiasm;
  empathic understanding – the teacher understands the students’ reactions from the
inside, from their own point of view and does not judge them.
We can help learners become autonomous by:
 getting them to investigate a grammar issue themselves instead of explaining it to
them;
 asking them to look for the meanings of words in dictionaries;
 getting them to do homework that should be neither too long nor too short, neither
too easy nor too difficult;
 encouraging them to use monolingual dictionaries;
 showing them where they can study outside the classroom (suitable websites, for
example).
Teaching is more about how to lead students to learn than about how to teach
expertly. This means that we should show students how to practice and think, rather than
give them information about the language. If we always control students’ learning from
the outside, they will find it very difficult to control it themselves and to apply their
knowledge about the language when using the language in real life.
 2. Teaching Methods and Approaches

The necessity of elaborating a coherent teaching methodology appeared in the 19th

century, when foreign language teaching was integrated into the secondary-school
curriculum. Since that time, methods used in teaching modern languages have changed
according to the purpose of mastering a foreign language, the materials available and the
priority of certain objectives. Their development has also been influenced by the socio-
historical conditions requiring knowledge of a foreign/ second language, by the linguistic
theories or by the findings of psychological research.
Regarding the socio-historical conditions that have influenced the development of
a theory of foreign language teaching, we can distinguish the following aspects: 1. in the
19th century, the European community grew closer as a consequence of the intensification
of commercial and diplomatic contacts and of traveling; 2. in the second half of the 19 th
century and the first quarter of the 20th, large waves of immigrants populated the USA; 3.
foreign language study was introduced on a large scale in schools in Europe and in the
USA; 4. in the second half of the 20th century, the increase in the commercial, diplomatic,
scientific and technological contacts, and the bloom in tourism made it necessary that at
least two modern languages be taught in schools. (cf. Popa 1995)
“A method is a way of teaching. Your choice of method is dependent on your
approach, i.e. what you believe about:
 what language is;
 how people learn;
 how teaching helps people learn.” (Scrivener 38)
The method is the practical realization of an approach. A procedure is an ordered
sequence of techniques that describe the way in which you do an activity (first, you do
this, then you do that, etc.), while a technique is a type of activity (such as “silent
viewing”, i.e. playing a video with no sound).
The following main methods and approaches have been used in teaching foreign
languages along the years: the grammar-translation method, the direct/ oral method, the
audio-lingual and audio-visual method, the cognitive-code approach, the notional-
functional approach and the communicative approach. As they usually borrow
characteristics from one another, it is difficult to establish clear-cut distinctions between
some of them.
The grammar-translation method is the oldest method ever used and was
influenced by the way in which Greek and Latin used to be taught. According to this
method, grammar is learnt by means of memorizing rules and exceptions to rules.
Students also memorize long vocabulary lists and use their knowledge of rules and
vocabulary to translate literature from one language into another. The best way of saying
a sentence in a foreign language is to start with a sentence in the mother tongue, analyse
it grammatically into such components as subject, predicate, object, etc., then find the
corresponding forms in the foreign language. The method was modified at the end of the
19th century and in the 20th century. Now the grammars of the two languages are
compared with the result of better comprehending and retaining all points of difference
and interference. One observation needs to be made concerning this method: the language
model samples used in grammar explanations to students are at the level of the sentence
and not the text.
The direct method appeared as a reaction against the grammar-translation
method. It was called “direct” because it made an attempt to establish a direct connection
between a foreign word and the thing or notion it denoted without the help of the mother
tongue. Consequently, the existence of the mother tongue was ignored, being assumed
that the foreign language was learnt in the same way as the mother tongue had been, only
at a different age. Translation was applied restrictively or very often completely
eliminated; instead, visual aids and various oral and written exercises were used on a
large scale. Spoken language became the basis of teaching, and pronunciation was taught
with great care since adequate pronunciation ensured comprehension and speaking.
Grammar was taught inductively (from examples to theory), and the subjects of the texts
were paid special attention to, the material being arranged topically with the purpose of
ensuring speech development.
The method found many supporters because it stimulated the students. But it also
posed the following difficulties: 1. the students had to assimilate a great number of
words; 2. the school conditions (too few classes a week, too many students in a class, no
visual materials) did not favour the development of students’ speech habits; 3. in the
hands of inexperienced or ill-equipped teachers, the method did not work.
The audio-lingual method exaggerated the oral aspect of the language, resorting
to meaningless repetition and mechanistic procedures. Grammar was taught through
pattern practice, the grammatical exercises taking usually the form of drills (repetitive
exercises after a model: put the following sentences in the interrogative/ negative/ past
tense etc.). The descriptions of patterns were taught only after the patterns were mastered
at the oral level and only when it was felt that they would stimulate the learning process.
Audio-lingual skills (listening and speaking) were the first to be developed. Writing was
considered a secondary derivative system that people use to record spoken language.
Speaking was given special attention since it was considered that the learner should come
to use the spoken forms as accurately as possible. For this he should have an adequate
model, a native or near-native speaker, or the faithfully recorded voice of such a speaker.
The teaching of reading and writing started from the material that the student had learnt
orally. Translation was rejected, all exercises being performed in the target language, and
real-life communication situations were used extensively.
The cognitive code approach contradicts the idea that language is a set of habits,
underlining the fact that if the student gets conscious control of the phonological,
grammatical and lexical patterns of a foreign language, his fluency will develop
automatically in meaningful situations. The new language material is introduced in
situations that will clarify their meaning. It has to be selected by the teacher, graded
according to its complexity and to its frequency of use, and arranged in a way that will
permit students to perceive the recurring features and the underlying rule. Language
learning is considered to mean acquiring the ability to produce the authentic forms used
by native speakers of the target language. For this, the students should be taught the
sound system and the structure system of the language. In addition to that, language
learning includes the culture, gestures, and spoken expressions which give added
meaning to the words and the sentences. (cf. Clonţea and Clonţea 2001)
The notional-functional approach organizes instruction not in terms of
grammatical structures, but in terms of “notions” and “functions”. The notion is a
particular context in which people communicate, and the function is a specific purpose
that a speaker has and that makes him/her communicate in a given context. For example,
the notion or context “shopping” requires language functions like asking about prices or
features of a product, or the notion “party” requires functions like introductions, greetings
and discussing interests and hobbies. Those who proposed the notional-functional
approach claimed that it helped students develop their ability to effectively communicate
in a variety of real-life contexts.
The communicative approach underlines the importance of learner-oriented
language activities that develop the learners’ communicative competence. Task-solving
activities which are information-centred, like information-gap activities, are used to give
the students a meaningful context of language learning. Classroom activities are
dynamized by the use of simulation and role play, brainstorming, problem-solving,
information-transfer activities, performed in groups or pairs. Teachers should encourage
learners to produce language of their own and should enable them to speak fluently and
using appropriate language. Language should be learnt with the help of authentic
materials and the mother tongue should be used alongside the foreign language whenever
it is absolutely necessary. Grammar is explained and practiced rarely, however, and
writing is given little emphasis.
There are also other methods and approaches:
 the total physical response, in which the learners listen to instructions given by
the teacher, understand them and do things in response; they do not speak until
they are ready;
 the natural approach, which is a collection of methods and techniques meant to
help the learner acquire language in a way similar to that in which children learn
their first language;
 task-based learning, which is based on preparing for, doing and reflecting on
tasks that are based on real-life needs and skills;
 person-centred approaches, that place learners and their needs at the centre of
what is done;
 lexical approaches, that emphasize the importance of lexical chunks in
communication;
  dogme, which is based on getting back to the fundamental relationship and
interaction of teacher and students in class, without making use of unnecessary
technology, materials and aids.
The new teaching methods that have appeared in recent years are known as the
post-communicative turn. Post-communicative teachers take from each approach the
strategy that might have a good result. Learners are taught to use the language to
communicate in contexts that are compatible with their knowledge and experience.
Language learning goes hand in hand with cultural awareness and is a collaborative
experience (i.e. is achieved through social interaction). Learner autonomy is encouraged.
There is no perfect method for teaching a foreign language. Successful teaching
depends on many factors, among which the socio-cultural environment, motivation, the
group of students and others. Therefore, what most teachers use is a personal
methodology of their own. “The process of choosing items from a range of methods and
constructing a collage methodology is sometimes known as principled eclecticism.”
(Scrivener 40). For instance, beginners may benefit from the techniques of the audio-
lingual method that help them build good linguistic habits; with advanced learners the
grammar-translation method can successfully be used; communicative activities must be
used at all levels.

 Find out more teaching methods and comment extensively on one of them.
 3. Theories of Language and Language Learning/ Teaching

3.1. Linguistics and Foreign Language Teaching

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Structural linguistics studies
language on the basis of its structure. The school was founded by Ferdinand de Saussure
and continued by Edward Sapir, Leonard Bloomfield, Charles Fries and Robert Lado, the
last two turning it into applied linguistics. According to structuralism, language is vocal
behaviour – first we speak, then we write. This behaviour is patterned and grammarians
should describe these patterns and segment structures into smaller components.
Structuralists consider that: language is a system of interrelated parts; it is made up of a
series of structures that are organized wholes; it is a network of relations and is
manifested through speech; each language has its own structure that makes it different
from other languages. On the basis of structuralism, there appeared a theory of language
teaching founded on the idea that the structure of a language has two substructures:
expression and content. Expression is “the system of sounds, words, phrases, sentences as
spoken, heard, felt or imagined, independent of their particular meanings”, while content
is “the system of classified units of cultural meaning and their combinations and relations
in the language.” (Popa 22) The smallest unit of full expression is considered to be the
sentence and not the word. Structuralism emphasizes the mastery of the language system
through drills (repetitive exercises) and specially written texts into which particular
language items are carefully included. The unit of organization in the syllabus is the
grammatical category. Structures are carefully graded according to difficulty and
vocabulary is introduced at a relatively slow rate. The emphasis is on form rather than on
meaning or use. The audio-lingual method, the Total Physical Response and the Silent
Way are based on structuralism, widely used during the 1960’s and the early 1970’s.
Another school in linguistics that is of relevance to language teaching is
transformational grammar/ linguistics. It makes use of transformational rules to convert
the deep structure of a sentence into its surface structure. Chomsky’s book Syntactic
Structures (1957) was very influential in this respect. Transformational grammar made
the distinction between competence and performance. Competence enables a person to
recognize and produce grammatical sentences, while performance represents the actual
production of utterances. Transformational grammar considers sentence the basic unit,
made up of a noun phrase and a verb phrase.
The early 1970’s witnessed a gradual reaction against structuralism. Language
began to be seen as a vehicle for the expression of functional meaning. The notional-
functional theory emphasizes the semantic and communicative dimension rather than the
grammatical categories of a language. A totally different syllabus was proposed, giving
priority rather to what language is used to do than to language forms. Activities in the
classroom were no longer repetitive, but of the social interaction type and functional
communicative type. This theory is at the basis of the notional-functional method.
The 1980’s saw the development of communicative grammar. G. Leech and I.
Svartvik’s influential book A Communicative Grammar of English (1975) focuses on
grammar in and for use. The communicative approach in linguistics points out that not
only what we say is important, but also how we say it. The new emphasis is on the use of
language, with the explicit way of developing communicative competence. The syllabus
is multidimensional, containing both grammar, and notions and functions. At the same
time, authentic materials (i.e. materials designed for native speakers) are used, students
work in groups or in pairs, errors are corrected selectively. The method based on this
theory is the communicative method.
3.2. Sociolinguistics and Foreign Language Teaching
Language has a social function, it mediates between humans, who communicate
to one another in certain spatial, temporal and socio-historical conditions. While
linguistics refers to acceptability according to grammatical rules, sociolinguistics refers to
acceptability according to social parameters. That is why we should also develop the
learners’ ability to choose the appropriate register and in this respect literature can be
used to point out “how a character’s speech functions as a means of delineation and, at
the same time, how it marks out geographic, temporal and social background as well as
interpersonal relationships between the speakers.” (Popa 29)
3.3. Psychology and Psycholinguistics in Foreign Language Teaching
Psychology attempts to describe the way in which the language system functions
when people produce and understand sentences. Psycholinguistics tries to determine how
a baby comes to speak, what happens when we speak and understand speech and what
language means and does to us.
Psycholinguistics also concentrates on the distinction between acquisition and
learning. According to Stephen D. Krashen (1985), acquisition is subconscious and leads
to knowing a language, being the natural assimilation of language rules through using
language for communication, while learning is conscious and leads to knowing about a
language, being the formal study of language rules, the grammatical knowledge about a
language that is learnt through formal instruction.
Moreover, Strevens (1977) points out that language (mother tongue) acquisition is
familial, individual, time-free, quotidian and vital, while foreign language learning is
institutional, a group activity, time constrained, occasional and peripheral. (apud Popa
1995)
Krashen suggests that foreign language learning should be more like the
children’s acquisition of their native language. The children do not set out to learn the
language. It happens as a result of the input they receive and of the experiences which
accompany this input. Much foreign language teaching, on the other hand, seems to
concentrate on getting the student to consciously learn items of language in isolation, the
exact opposite of the acquisition process.
Krashen considers successful acquisition as depending on the nature of the
language input which the students receive. There are two kinds of input that the students
may receive: Roughly-Tuned Input and Finely-Tuned Input. Roughly-Tuned Input
contains language that the students already know as well as language that they have not
previously seen, i.e. it is at a slightly higher level than the students are capable of using,
but at a level that they are capable of understanding. Finely-Tuned Input is made of
language chosen precisely to be at the students’ level and it is received by them during
conscious learning.
While we use acquired language when we want to communicate, the only use for
consciously learnt language is to check or monitor the acquired language just as we are
about to use it. Krashen also claims that acquired language is better than learnt language
because you would have to concentrate to produce the latter, thus interrupting the flow of
language production. In addition to that, acquisition is more successful and longer lasting
than learning.
Other researchers, however, state that this division does not make sense because it
is very difficult to say whether someone has acquired or learnt a certain piece of
language. Moreover, at a certain stage, learnt language can become part of the acquired
language store. This happens if we use the respective language in free practice activities.
Acquisition takes a very long time. Conscious learning of certain items speeds the
process up. Moreover, students want and expect this type of learning. Adults especially
will gain great benefit from clearly explained language work. Therefore, Roughly-Tuned
Input and the use of the foreign language in communicative tasks can satisfactorily exist
side by side with work which concentrates on conscious learning where new language is
being introduced and practiced. (apud Harmer 2007)
“The conclusions of researchers in psycholinguistics lead to the idea that
linguistic competence in a foreign language is built up through practice, awareness and
conscious learning, which provide both habit formation and communicative competence
according to linguistic and extralinguistic restrictions.” (Popa 35)
In deciding how to approach the teaching and learning of languages, we can
divide classroom activities into two broad categories: those that give students language
input and those that encourage them to produce language output. Whether acquisition or
conscious learning is taking place, there will be stages at which the student is receiving
language and stages at which the student is producing language. Language production is
like a rehearsal of language use in classroom conditions. The feedback that students
receive (from the teacher, from other students or from themselves) is very useful in
allowing them to adjust their perceptions of the language input they have received.
Language output can be divided into two subcategories:
1. practice output, produced during controlled practice or semicontrolled practice
activities, when students are asked to use the new items of language in different contexts,
e.g. to make sentences with the new words.
2. communicative output, produced during communicative activities, when student use
language in order to perform some kind of communicative task. Because this task is of
supreme importance, the language used to complete it takes second place. The language
becomes an instrument of communication rather than an end in itself. However, even
during a communicative activity, students’ output and the degree of success this output
achieves may provide valuable information about language, which is then internalized.
What we should aim at is a balanced activities approach, i.e. an approach that
includes a variety of activities, achieving a balance between the different categories of
input and output. Roughly-Tuned Input and communicative activities will tend to
predominate over controlled language presentation and practice output, but without
excluding them.
By presenting students with a variety of activities, we can ensure their continuous
interest and involvement in the language program.
A final, but important component of a balanced activities approach is the
teacher’s willingness to be adaptable and flexible. Adaptability refers to the teacher’s
ability to adapt the program to the different groups that are being taught. Flexibility refers
to the teacher’s ability to be sensitive to the changing needs of the group as the lesson
progresses. Decisions taken before the lesson about what is going to happen are not
sacred. Good teachers must be prepared to adapt and change their plans if this proves
necessary.
 4. Teaching the Language Systems

New language is introduced in three stages: presentation, practice and production/

use, i.e. the teacher presents the new structure, the students practice it and the students
use it in communicative activities.
As far as the presentation is concerned, J. Harmer (1991) suggests a general
model for introducing new language, made up of 5 components:
1. lead-in;
2. elicitation;
3. explanation;
4. accurate reproduction;
5. immediate creativity.
During the lead-in stage, we introduce our context and show the new language in
use, demonstrating its meaning. The context is represented by the situation which causes
the respective language to be used.
A good context must be clear, simple, interesting (i.e. it should arouse the
students’ interest) and generative (i.e. it should provide the background for a lot of
language use). Often, we can find contexts for our presentation in textbooks but
sometimes we may want to create our own. The contexts may be represented by:
 the learners’ world: physical surroundings, lives, experiences, themselves;
 the outside world: stories, situations; authentic stories are better, because they are
more natural, but they may contain language that is too complex and that we may
want to avoid by using simulated contexts;
 formulated information: tables, charts, statistics, maps.
During the elicitation stage, the teacher tries to see if the students can produce the
new language. We should base our teaching on eliciting rather than instructing because
we should not tell students what they can tell us. Therefore, if they can produce the new
language, it would be wasteful and demotivating for them to spend a lot of time
practising the language that they already know. The teacher can then decide which of the
following stages to go to next.
 If the students cannot produce the new language at all, the teacher will move to
the explanation stage, during which s/he shows how the new language is formed.
If they can produce it, but with minor mistakes, we may move to the accurate
reproduction stage, during which the students are asked to repeat and practise a certain
number of models. The emphasis will be on accuracy. At this stage, the teacher makes
sure that the students can form the new language correctly, getting the grammar right and
perfecting their pronunciation.
If the students know the new language, but need a bit more controlled practice in
producing it, we may move to the immediate creativity stage. Now the students try to
use what they have just learnt to create sentences of their own. It is at this stage that both
the teacher and the students can see if the students have really understood the meaning,
use and form of the new language.
The accurate reproduction stage consists of choral and individual repetition.
Choral repetition
After we have explained the model, we can ask the whole class to repeat it
together. This technique is useful because it gives all the students a chance to say the new
language immediately with the teacher controlling the speed and the stress. It also gives
the students confidence and it gives the teacher a general idea whether the students have
grasped the model. There are three things important to remember for choral repetition:
1. clearly indicate when the students should start the chorus;
2. clearly indicate the stress during the chorus;
3. stay silent during the chorus so that you can hear how well the students are performing.
Individual repetition is normally conducted in three stages:
1. the teacher nominates a student;
2. the student responds;
3. the teacher gives feedback (positive or negative).
Students should not be nominated in a discernable order because this makes the
activity less exciting. A random order keeps the interest level high since anyone can be
nominated at any moment.
A form of individual repetition is murmuring, i.e. every student tells the new word
/ phrase quietly to him/herself a few times.
 In general, the accurate reproduction stage should be dealt with as quickly as
possible to avoid boredom – max. 10 minutes.
The stage of introducing new language is followed by practice activities, which
are situated somewhere between the two extremes of the communication continuum. The
students performing these activities may have a communicative purpose and may be
working in pairs, but there may be also a lack of language variety and the materials may
determine what the students do/ say. The teacher will intervene slightly to guide the
students and point out inaccuracy.
Communicative activities give students both a desire to communicate and a
purpose, and involve them in a varied use of language. Such activities are vital in a
language classroom since now the students can use the language as individuals, arriving
at a degree of language autonomy.
It is probably true that at the early stages of language learning there is more
presentation and practice than there are communicative activities. This balance should
change dramatically as the standard of students’ English rises. As this happens, there
should be heavier emphasis on practice and communicative activities than on
presentation.

Error Correction
Mistakes have been classified into three types:
 slips, i.e. mistakes which students can correct themselves once the mistake has
been pointed out to them;
 errors, i.e. mistakes which students cannot correct themselves;
 attempts, i.e. mistakes that students make when they try to say something but do
not yet know how to say it.
Besides these, there are also developmental errors, made as the students’
knowledge of language develops and they make what seem to be logical assumptions
about the way language works. For instance, on the basis of I have to go / I want to go / I
would like to go, they say * I must to go.
No matter which of these types of mistakes the students make, first, we have to
identify if it is a mistake in grammar, pronunciation, meaning or style. Then, we will
indicate to the student that a mistake has been made. If the student understands this
feedback, s/he will be able to correct the mistake and this self-correction will be helpful
as part of the learning process.
The following techniques are used to show incorrectness:
 echoing - repeat what the student has just said, but stop before the mistake, using
a questioning intonation;
S: I know he have been waiting for an hour.
T: I know he...?
 asking the student to repeat;
 denial – you say “no”, but it may be discouraging;
 questioning – “is that correct?”;
 using facial expressions, gestures – this is dangerous if the student thinks it is a
form of mockery; it depends on the teacher’s style.
In general, we should deal with showing incorrectness with tact and consideration
because the process of student’s self-correction that it provokes is an important and
useful part of the learning process. Showing incorrectness should be seen as a positive
activity.
If the students are unable to correct themselves we use the following techniques:
 student corrects student – “Can anybody help?”;
 teacher corrects student and, if necessary, re-explains, then goes again through
choral and individual repetition, etc.
After someone has produced the correct response, it is very important to go back
to the original student and make sure that he has got the right variant.
Thus, error correction is performed in the following stages:
1. the teacher indicates that there has been a mistake and where the mistake is;
2. the teacher indicates what type of mistake it is;
3. the teacher sees if the student can self-correct;
4. the teacher sees if other students can correct; if not
5. the teacher corrects;
6. the teacher checks understanding;
7. the teacher gets the original student say the correct variant.
 Explaining Meaning
When we want to explain meaning, there are several things that we can do:
 show it: show the object, mime the action, use facial expressions (for happy, sad,
etc.), gestures (for big, bigger, the biggest, etc.) or pictures;
 describe it by using definitions, synonyms, antonyms;
 list vocabulary items to explain concepts, i.e. caring professionals: doctor, nurse,
social worker, counselor;
 translate the words.
“The trick of explaining meaning effectively is to choose the best method to fit
the meaning that needs to be explained.” (Harmer 2007: 84). Actually, most teachers use
a mixture of techniques.

Checking meaning
It is very important for the students to understand the meaning of the new
language; that is why it is necessary for the teacher to check meaning frequently. S/he can
do this in several ways:
1. by asking concept questions
e.g. for the understanding of Present Perfect
I have lived here for seven years.
Concept questions: When did I start to live here?
Was I living here in 2005?
Do I still live here?
In order to make concept questions you reduce the target structure to a number of
simple statements (2-3) which describe the meaning of that structure and then turn the
statements into questions.
I have lived here for two years.
I started living here 2 years ago.
I still live here.
The target structure should not appear in the concept questions.
causative “have”: I had my suit cleaned.
concept questions: Did I clean my suit myself?
Did someone else clean my suit?
Is my suit clean now?
2. by asking students to produce sentences of their own with the new structure;
3. by using translation – a quick and efficient technique, but not recommended.

 Formulate concept questions to check the meaning of a structure of your

choice.
4.1. Teaching Pronunciation
Teaching pronunciation actually means teaching:
 the sounds: vowels, consonants, semi-vowels, diphthongs;
 sound linking;
 the stress;
 intonation.
When teaching sounds, we should pay attention to two aspects:
 the phonemes that do not exist in Romanian: /æ/, /ð/, /θ/, /ŋ/;
 the existence of two phonemes for a sound that seems to be a single one: the long
and short vowels.
Special attention should also be paid to semi-vowels that are spelt as vowels but
are actually consonants and behave as such. Words like university, year, web, etc. begin
with a semi-vowel (/j/, respectively /w/) and take the indefinite article a.
An important problem to be discussed is which pronunciation we should teach:
British, American, Australian, etc. Most UK-published textbooks offer CDs with
Received Pronunciation (RP). This is the accent generally associated with educated BrE
and used as the pronunciation model for teaching it to foreign learners. Described for the
first time by Daniel Jones in the English Pronouncing Dictionary (EPD) in 1917, it is
often informally referred to by the British middle class as a BBC accent. In England, it is
also often referred to as Standard English. The problem with RP, however, is that it is a
minority accent, being used by only 3 - 4% of the British population, and it is socially
and politically controversial because it is class-related, identifying the speaker as a
member of the middle or upper classes.
In her book The Phonology of English as an International Language: New
Models, New Norms (2000, Oxford University Press), Jennifer Jenkins claimed that we
should no longer use as a model the standard native pronunciation. Instead, a Lingua
Franca Phonological Core should be developed, which would provide foreign learners
with the features of International English. However interesting this approach might seem
in theory, it is rather difficult to achieve in practice since International English is
constantly changing and cannot be standardized and prescribed in advance. The
respective pronunciation would be artificial, based on RP, but including influences from
native languages, therefore quite useless and ignorant of the students’ need to relate to
and get to achieve an “ideal”, native-like pronunciation.
Still, students need to learn pronunciation that will allow them to be understood in
the contexts where they will use the language, and most of them will use it when talking
to non-native speakers that may not be able to follow their RP. Moreover, it will be
appropriate and honest to teach the pronunciation you speak yourself and draw attention
to local variations you are aware of and to differences in accent that appear in course
material.
Receptive awareness comes before productive competence, therefore students
should be first made aware of the differences between the Romanian and the English
sound systems and then got to produce the sounds themselves. An interesting way to do
this is to start from a larger picture rather than from small details, i.e. to start from distinct
impressions about how a certain language is spoken. The students can:
 watch native speakers on video;
 discuss noticeable speech features (voice settings);
 try speaking nonsense words using these features;
 practice reading a short dialogue in as “native” a way as possible.
Phonemic work should be integrated in teaching grammar and lexis since
pronunciation cannot be taught apart from vocabulary and grammar. Students should be
encouraged to make phonetic transcriptions and their pronunciation should be checked.
Teachers should demonstrate tongue and lip position for the production of sounds in
isolation and in context and correct the students’ mistakes patiently. Phonetic
transcription should be introduced from the very beginning, otherwise the students will
tend to invent their own symbols. First, teach them to recognize the symbols, then to use
them. Encourage them to do dictionary work, in the classroom or independently.
The following ideas can be used for teaching pronunciation:
1. minimal pair drills (minimal pairs are made of two words which differ in only one
sound), based on sound differences that are not to be found in Romanian. Use short lists
of words associated with pictures:
hat – hut
thin – tin
reach – rich
leaves – lives
field – filled
said – sad
then – than
men – man
Then, introduce the words into sentences.
2. tongue twisters: She sells sea-shells on the seashore.
3. phonetic transcriptions of texts;
4. games, like “Phoneme bingo” (use phonemes and call out sounds instead of numbers)
or anagrams with phonemes instead of letters;
5. keep a phonemic chart on the wall of your classroom and use it.
Students should be made aware that there is a difference between the way in
which a word is pronounced in isolation and the way in which it is pronounced in
connected speech. In connected speech:
 unstressed syllables become “weak”;
 sounds get dropped (elision);
 linking/ intrusive sounds may appear to bridge the space between words;
 sounds get changed (assimilation).
These are all reasons why listening comprehension is so difficult.
For example, a sentence like “What are you going to do about it?” /wɒt ɑ:(r) ju:

`gəʊɪŋ tu: du: ə`baʊt ɪt/ may become in connected speech /`wɒtʃə gənə `dʊwəbaʊdɪ/

The students need to recognize and understand such sentences even if you may
not want them to produce them.
Stress changes meaning and makes words impossible to understand. Here we
should make the difference between word stress and sentence stress/ prominence (which
falls on content words: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, some of the pronouns).
Unstressed words tend to be pronounced faster and in a “weak” manner (with shorter

vowel sounds) – instead of /fɔ:/ (for) we may have /fə/ or just /f/. The most common
weak form vowel sound is the schwa /ə/. This happens because in English the stressed
syllables tend to occur at approximately regular intervals regardless of how many
unstressed syllables there are between them.
Intonation influences meaning and gives information about the speaker’s
attitude. It is hard to teach intonation systematically, but here are some ideas for working
on it:
 get students to mark intonation patterns on dialogues (use arrows, lines, etc.);
 get students to say the same word with different intonation to convey different
meanings;
 hum the sentence without words before you say it;
 indicate intonation with hand gestures;
 exaggerate intonation/ lack of intonation;
 encourage students to “feel” the emotion as they speak;
 have them read aloud phrases, sentences, texts with appropriate intonation and
have them perform the texts (without the scripts).
In addition to that, sentence stress and intonation can be practiced in the following
kinds of drills:
1. repetition drills:
I have a red pencil and a green one.
I have a long pencil and a short one.
2. substitution drills: for the rising intonation in question, for instance:
Is English easy?
Is the lesson easy?
Is the lesson difficult? etc.
3. fill in drills: for tag questions, for example:
He … some sentences, didn’t he? (write down)
They … Peter, didn’t they? (meet)
4. transformation drills: turn affirmative sentences into interrogative ones:
They go to school together.
Do they go to school together?
5. sentence expansion drills:
John went to see Dennis.
John went to see Dennis one evening.
6. building up sentences according to a given pattern: What a …!
What a bright room it is!
What a sunny day it was!
We should be, however, aware of the fact that mastery of pronunciation is much
more difficult to achieve than that of the other systems and we rarely get to speak like
native speakers. That is why we should begin by being tolerant listeners and intelligible
speakers.
4.2. Teaching Vocabulary/ Lexis
When we speak about teaching words, we actually mean teaching:
 single-word vocabulary items;
 collocations (words that are frequently used together like traffic jam);
 chunks/ multiword items (longer combinations of words that are typically used
together like someone you can talk to).
According to Jim Scrivener (2005), while the items in the first category are
referred to as vocabulary, all three are actually included within the concept of lexis. Still,
most of us refer to all three categories as words and use the terms vocabulary and lexis
interchangeably.
Lexis has a bigger communicative power than grammar since we can get our
meaning across by using the right words even if they do not appear in grammatically
correct sentences. Therefore, we may draw the conclusion that knowing as many words
as possible is the key to learning a language. Still, knowing a word might be difficult
because it means knowing:
 how it is pronounced and spelt;
 what it means;
 the words it normally collocates with;
 the situations and contexts in which it is used.
But there are also other things we can know about it:
 the number of syllables it contains;
 the number of phonemes it contains;
 which syllables are stressed;
 which stresses are stronger or weaker;
 what part of speech it is;
 its grammatically related forms (i.e. the past tense form of a verb);
 its metaphorical meanings;
 its connotations;
 its synonyms and the way in which their meanings differ from one another;
 its homonyms;
  its antonyms;
 its lexical family, etc. (cf. Scrivener 2005)
Therefore, when teaching vocabulary, an English-English dictionary should be
preferred to a bilingual dictionary since it offers us the kind of information stated above.
That is also why explaining words at random in the middle of the lesson in which we
come across them is not a way of teaching vocabulary. Vocabulary teaching should be
done systematically:
 in lexical sets, e.g. clothes, food etc. Thus, the words are easy to remember,
practice is easy to contextualize and the sets can be expanded as the students
progress;
 at early levels, in relation to grammar and functions. E.g. the lexical set of
adjectives of physical appearance can be related to the verb to be; or, the lexical
set about health and fitness to the function of giving advice;
 in reading/ listening texts – the advantage is that the lexical item appears in its co-
text (the text that surrounds it) and thus the learner can see samples of language in
use;
 by dictionary work – more appropriate with intermediate or advanced students.
The last activity should be followed by a creativity stage.
When using texts, we can teach vocabulary before, during or after reading or
listening to the text.
The words that are pre-taught should be the ones that are needed for the
completion of the reading/ listening task. The pre-teaching can be done during the
introductory conversation with the help of questions or statements that use the new words
or with the help of activities like:
 match the words with the pictures/ definitions;
 complete the sentences with words from the following list;
 check the meaning of these words in the dictionary;
 tell me as many words as you can think of on … (the topic), etc.
Teaching lexis during the work with the text is not recommended unless: the
students specifically ask for it (in this case, give few short explanations); the text contains
few unknown words, the learners have some skill in reading and the teacher wants to
teach them to work independently or the teacher wants to teach learners to guess the
meaning of the new words from context. We can explain the new words after reading
each paragraph or the whole text. We should not ask students if there are words that they
do not know/ understand because very often they do not realize that. If we ask them to
look up the words in a dictionary we should also teach them when and how to use the
dictionary. They should read the whole paragraph, and not stop at the first unknown word
and they should read the whole dictionary entry or at least up to the point when they find
the meaning that fits the context (instead of just the first meaning listed in the dictionary).
The following activities can be used to focus the learners’ attention on lexical
items:
 can you guess the meaning of …?
 find words in the text that mean …
 find in the text synonyms/ antonyms of …
 find words that the writer uses to describe …
 do you know other phrases containing …?, etc.
The presentation of the new words can be made through:
 demonstration: gestures, mime, facial expressions;
 visual aids: pictures, objects, drawings;
 verbal explanation: by means of definition, analysis (derivatives), context,
translation, synonyms, antonyms.
Translation is recommended only in the following cases:
 if it is easier to translate than to explain or define: measles – pojar, oak-tree –
stejar;
 in the case of false friends or partial cognates: library – bibliotecă; button –
buton, nasture;
 in the case of idiomatic expressions.
We should vary the way we explain the meaning of new words.
We should make the distinction between the passive/ receptive lexis (represented
by the words we recognize and understand, though we do not use them in everyday
situations) and the active/ productive lexis (represented by the words we use). Normally,
the former exceeds the latter. Low level students should be given a limited active
vocabulary quickly. From this, each student can build his/her own vocabulary at a
natural, unforced speed. Words that are unlikely to be used by the students should not be
insisted upon. We should also encourage learners to read widely outside the class, and to
use dictionaries and other independent learning strategies to enrich their knowledge of
lexis.
The vocabulary to be taught is selected according to the following criteria:
 frequency;
 range. i.e. the number of contexts in which a word can be used (polysemantic
words);
 familiarity – we teach first the names of the objects we use very often;
 usefulness – we select vocabulary to be taught according to the students’ needs.
Another distinction that we should make is the one between content words and
function words (according to their semantic value). Content words are the lexically full
words (nouns, full verbs, adjectives, adverbs), while function words express relationships
or meanings (articles, auxiliary and modal verbs, prepositions, conjunctions). While the
previous remarks referred mainly to the teaching of content words, we should note that
special attention should be paid to the teaching of function words as well, which is done
in several ways. Usually articles are taught with nouns as vocabulary elements, the
auxiliary and modal verbs are taught as grammatical items, while prepositions and
conjunctions are also taught as vocabulary items.
Function words should be taught in context, in exercises that are graded and
sequential; grammatical understanding will also be necessary. The exercises used will
vary from pattern practice and chain drills to arranging words in a sentence, question and
answer practice and guided composition. Function words help students organize their
writing and improve their understanding. They are essential in teaching both vocabulary
and grammatical structures.
We should not assume that once a word has been taught it will automatically be
learnt and always remembered. Vocabulary should constantly be revised. Activities
meant to help students remember the vocabulary learnt are of two types: pattern practice
and communication practice. The drills to be used when reinforcing or building up
vocabulary fall into three main types:
1. mechanical drills:
 simple substitution drills – replace one part of a given sentence with a given cue;
 multiple substitution drills – replace parts of the sentence progressively;
 expansion drills – expand model sentences with two or three words provided;
 integration drills – make up a complex/ compound sentence out of two or three
simple sentences;
 cued response drills – make up a sentence according to a model, with two cue
words being given;
 direct practice – question-answer practice.
2. meaningful drills and exercises:
 multiple choice exercises;
 synonyms;
 definitions;
 matching drills;
 sentence completion;
 the cloze.
3. communicative drills or exercises:
 adaptation or variation of a dialogue – convert it into indirect speech;
 eliciting a summary of the story (the teacher elicits it from the students by
asking questions);
 paraphrasing a story – by using synonyms or transforming structures;
 retelling a story from a different point of view. (cf. Popa 1995)
Besides these activities that can be done orally or in writing, there are two other
activities that can be only written: translation and composition. They “not only reinforce
and build up vocabulary, but also point to the degree of skill to select the appropriate
words, to associate them, to perceive the nuances in meaning and, eventually, to use
creatively a newly acquired vocabulary.” (Popa 83)
 The words that have been taught should be written on the board in sentences
which illustrate their meaning. Stress should be marked. The students should be given
time to copy them accurately (at lower levels the teacher should check the way in which
they wrote). Phonetic transcription should also be used. Teachers will encourage their
students to keep a separate section in their notebooks for vocabulary. It may look like
this:

New word Phonetic transcription Definition Example

nap /næp/ short sleep After lunch I was very tired,
so I took a nap.
4.3. Teaching Grammar
In school we teach pedagogical grammar, i.e. a practical grammar that helps
students understand and produce correct sentences. It is very important to avoid the
formation of bad linguistic habits because, though bad language may be understood, its
use is penalized by society. A distinction should be made, however, between
grammaticality and acceptability. Grammaticality is linked to linguistic competence
(knowledge about the language), while acceptability is linked to performance (actual
language use) (cf. Chomsky 1965). While “grammaticality should still be used as a solid
foundation for foreign language teaching since it covers the most (proto)typical
occurrences of a particular grammatical phenomenon”, at more advanced stages of
learning “more attention should be paid to acceptability, which cannot be fully
determined by analyzing sentences in vacuo, but it is affected by various contextual
factors, be it lexical selection, register associations or sociolinguistic variation.” (Ilc 378-
379). We should also pay attention to grammatical prescriptivism, “especially if it
involves (over)simplified grammatical generalizations, because in the long run they may
impede rather than facilitate students’ linguistic development.” (Ilc 379)
When introducing grammar, we can use the deductive or the inductive approach.
The deductive approach starts from theory (explanations, grammar rules) and goes to
examples (phrases or sentences). The structure is introduced overtly, the teacher stating
its name, meaning, form, usage, exceptions, etc. and then giving examples to illustrate it.
It is actually the fastest method of teaching grammar, but the students may find the
grammatical terminology difficult or may get bored with too many explanations. In the
case of the inductive approach, the students see examples of language and then work
out the rules. Generally, the teacher uses a text that contains several examples of the
structure and asks the students to read it. Then, s/he helps the students induce the form,
meaning, usage of the structure. The deductive approach is rarely used nowadays, though
it is preferred by advanced students. The inductive approach is favoured, as it is
considered to ensure a more effective learning because it requires students to make some
cognitive effort. The fact that the explanation arises from a context will reinforce the
meaning and make it easier to remember.
 Scrivener (2005) differentiates three categories within the “umbrella” of
“presentation”:
1. teacher explanation;
2. guided discovery;
3. self-directed discovery.
Though sometimes it may become boring, explanation is useful when the
teacher:
 keeps it short;
 speaks slowly;
 uses language that is less complicated than the one explained;
 brings in no other language issues;
 gives examples;
 asks questions;
 uses diagrams or other visual aids;
 checks that the class is following the explanation;
 explains difficulties when the students encounter them.
Long explanations can be avoided if the teacher helps the learners discover and
explain things on their own (guided discovery). This can be done by means of tasks set
at the right level, questions and other techniques. The teacher’s role here would be to “(a)
select appropriate tasks; (b) offer appropriate instruction, help, feedback, explanations,
etc.; (c) manage and structure the lesson so that all learners are involved and engaged,
and draw the most possible from the activity.” (Scrivener 268) Good questions (“Socratic
questioning”) are the key to discovering how language works. The teacher can:
 ask questions that focus on meaning, context or form;
 offer examples for analysis and discussion;
 ask learners to analyse sentences from texts, to reflect on language they have
used, to analyse errors or to undertake research;
 set problems or puzzles about the language;
 help students stay focused;
 encourage them to add ideas, etc.
 Guided discovery is demanding both for the teacher and the learner, requiring
imagination and flexibility from the former, but it proves very fruitful.
Self-directed discovery occurs when the learners study on their own without a
teacher or when the teacher’s role is primarily to facilitate the learner’s self-direction. It
is not usually found in classrooms because it requires learners to agree with the method
and be able to work with it (i.e. have enough information and experience) and it may
make the teacher abandon his/ her responsibilities.
Regardless of the approach preferred, the teacher should isolate the structure and
focus the students’ attention on it. S/he must give a clear spoken model of it, which the
students should then repeat in chorus and/ or individually.
The teacher may explain language construction in the following ways:
 by writing words on individual cards which can then be moved around (to show
the difference between the affirmative and the interrogative, for example);
 with the help of Cuisenaire rods;
 by using gestures;
 by writing on the board.
The structure can be introduced with the help of written texts or with the help of
auditory materials or visual demonstrations (tapes, pictures, grids, charts, etc.). With
young students, pictures, songs, movements should be preferred to theoretical
presentations that they find too abstract. Visual demonstration is actually useful at any
age, since it offers support for abstract problems. We can use gestures, arrows, time lines,
patterns, funny pictures, etc.
It is important to remember that the learner facing a grammatical problem should
not encounter vocabulary difficulties.
If we want our students to remember the new language we need to make them
repeat it, one way or another. Therefore, this introductory stage should be followed by
that of practice. The structure is drilled in exercises, both orally and in writing. The
following types of pattern practice drills can be used:
1. repetition drills;
2. substitution – one word in the sentence is replaced by another of the same class:
We ate at the restaurant last week.
They … at home … yesterday. etc.
3. replacement – the substitution of one word in the sentence triggers changes, but the
basic structure is preserved:
I come to school every day.
She …
…. yesterday.
4. transformation or conversion – affirmative into negative or interrogative, active into
passive; singular into plural, present into past.
5. completion – requires production of a sentence to make it complete:
I want a …
I want to …
6. question-answer: Do you learn English? Yes, I do. / No, I don’t.
The practice stage is probably the most important part of any grammar lesson.
Though many teachers do not use drills, considering them old-fashioned, fairly repetitive
and not very creative, drills should be used because they build automatisms and help us
come to use certain structures without thinking about them. They also give students the
opportunity for safe practice (they have fewer chances of making mistakes). However,
they should not be used for too long or too frequently. Drills should not necessarily be
easy and we should praise our students only if they indeed did a good job. Otherwise, we
should offer honest feedback. “If the whole aim of a drill is to improve accuracy, it seems
to make sense to aim for a very high standard. There is little point in doing a drill if the
teacher and students are prepared to accept sloppy or half-good production.” (Scrivener
256)
The practice stage should be followed by communicative activities in which the
learners use the new structure. Communication in the classroom has several
characteristics that differentiate it from real communication: it is controlled by the
teacher, it is limited both in content and in possibilities of expression and is based on
simulated situations. As far as grammatical structures are concerned, communication is
achieved when the learner is able to produce a correct sentence with the respective
structure.
 Grammar should be taught all the time, not just in purely grammar lessons. In
teaching it, we should use a diversified approach, but apply at the same time the
principles of systematization and generalization. We should also keep in mind that the
learning of grammar is not an aim in itself, but part of the whole language program.
 5. Teaching the Language Skills

Literate people who use language possess the four basic skills of writing,
speaking, reading and listening. Writing and speaking involve language production
and are called productive skills; reading and listening involve receiving messages and
are called receptive skills. Though in practice we cannot separate them (in general
speaking and listening appear simultaneously, and so do reading and writing, but not
only), in the classroom the teacher may want to approach each of them separately.
However, it is also recommended that we should apply the principle of integrating
skills, which means that the focus on one skill should lead to practice in another (e.g.
writing on the basis of listening/ discussion/ reading).
5.1. Teaching the Receptive Skills (Reading and Listening)
When we learn a language, we are first of all receivers: we listen to/ read
messages before we start to produce them, at the beginning repeating mechanically,
afterwards interacting and communicating.
“When engaged in teaching receptive skills, the teacher must consider some basic
features of real-life listening/ reading:
 listening/ reading is not a mere manipulation of vocabulary and grammar, but a
process of extracting meaning;
 the receiver is not a passive recipient of the message, but actively interacts with
the text s/he is reading/ listening to and contributes meaning to it;
 receptive skills do not work alone, but together with productive ones, in an
integrated way.” (Vizental 139)
The teacher should aim at producing active listeners/ readers. This can be done
by means of using activities that simulate real-world listening and reading.
In real life listening/ reading has a purpose. We read / listen for interest, i.e. for
pleasure, or for usefulness, i.e. for information (in the case of newspapers, phone books,
timetables, etc.). We do not focus on individual words, but on whole messages and we do
not care so much if we do not understand the meaning of all the words or if we not hear
certain parts of the message. To understand a text properly, the students should get first
of all its overall meaning and should be taught how to use contextual clues to get the
meaning of the words that they do not know.
Another characteristic of readers/ listeners is that they have expectations: as they
read/ listen, they expect something to follow. The teacher should create such expectations
in the class, by using pre-reading/ pre-listening activities.
Readers and listeners also employ a number of subskills when reading / listening.
Their success at understanding the content of the reading / listening text depends on their
expertise in these subskills. E.g. scanning – extracting specific information; skimming –
getting the general idea; guessing meaning from context; reading / listening for
detailed comprehension. Very important are the predictive skills, as they are at the
basis of the expectation principle. Efficient readers / listeners predict what they are
going to read / hear. The process of understanding the text is the process of seeing how its
content matches their predictions. As they receive more information from the text, their
predictions will change.
These are skills that we have in our mother tongue. But reading / listening in a
foreign language creates barriers for the learners (they are afraid of making mistakes, of
not being able to solve the task, etc.), which may make these skills more difficult to use.
The teacher’s job is to reactivate the skills, to help the students transfer them from their
mother tongue to the foreign language.
In Harmer’s view (1991), a basic methodological model for the teaching of the
receptive skills has five basic stages:
1. lead-in – the students and the teacher prepare themselves for the task and
familiarize themselves with the topic of the reading / listening exercise. The
purpose of this stage is to create expectations, helping the students make
predictions;
2. the teacher directs task to follow – a shorter stage. A general principle for
reading / listening texts is to have students perform a task while they are reading /
listening. During this stage the teacher makes sure that the students know what
they have to do;
3. students read / listen and perform the task;
 4. the teacher directs feedback – helps the students see if they performed the task
successfully;
5. the teacher organizes a follow-up task – asks them to create something based on
the text; work based on reading/ listening texts can lead to discussion or written
work in related areas.
The following activities may be used for prediction:
 minidiscussion on the topic;
 discussion of a headline / title;
 discussion of the first line / paragraph;
 brainstorming related to the topic;
 announce the topic and ask the students to think of questions they expect to be
answered by the text;
 announce the topic and the characters involved and ask the students to predict
their attitudes and opinions;
 the cloze can also be used as a prediction activity – for lexical prediction.
This stage should have a degree of informality and should be carefully prepared
because prediction activities bring about a “heightened degree of attentiveness” (Carter
112 in Brumfit and Carter, eds.); they can be done in pairs or in small groups, even in the
students’ native language, though the foreign language should be used as much as
possible.
The pre-reading/ pre-listening tasks will help the students “activate their prior
knowledge of the world or of society in matters related to the subject of the text”, will
introduce the new topic and will arouse the students’ interest in the text, will introduce
the linguistic difficulties of the text so as to give the students confidence that they will be
able to understand it, etc. (Vizental 162)
Tasks to be performed while reading / listening:
1. gap-filling exercises;
2. tables, charts, diagrams to be completed with information given by the text;
3. true / false statements;
4. note-taking;
5. find synonyms / antonyms for certain words in the text;
 6. asking the students to guess the title;
7. asking them to answer a series of questions.
Types of questions based on a text:
1. questions of literal comprehension – their answer is directly and explicitly
available in the text;
2. questions involving reorganization and reinterpretation – the students have to take
information from various parts of the text and to put it together, or to reinterpret
it; they have to think of the text as a whole;
3. questions of inference – the students have to read between the lines;
4. questions of evaluation – the students will have to make a judgment of the text in
terms of what the writer is trying to do and how well s/he has managed to do it;
5. questions of personal response – the students will have to report their reactions to
the text. (Did you like it?, Do you agree with the opinions expressed?, etc.)
Generally, while-reading/ listening activities aim at helping students understand
the text better and become familiar with the language used.
It is important to vary text presentation and questioning, but to be able to suggest
an interesting activity the teacher should know well both the students and his/her aims
with the respective activity.
As a follow-up we may ask the students to make a summary of the text. We
should impose a word limit and ask initially “for a summary which is not an
interpretation of the story but rather an account of what happens.” (Carter 114 in Brumfit
and Carter, eds.). The word limit makes the exercise useful from the linguistic point of
view, as it requires restructuring, deleting, reshaping, etc. and enforces selection of what
is significant, while this kind of summary draws attention to narrative structure, making
the students focus on the role of the plot, see the difference between plot and theme, etc.
Other examples of follow-up activities:
 have students compare and criticize alternative summaries;
 organize a debate;
 guided re-writing – re-write a set of instructions as a description, etc.
 ask the students to explore grammar problems and language functions (use) or to
comment on the events/ characters.
 These activities should aim at enhancing the comprehension of the text, practicing
grammar and vocabulary, interpreting, expanding and personalizing the text.
The tasks set should not be beyond the learners’ abilities since they may be
discouraging and demotivating, but should guide them along the difficult and long-term
process of acquiring efficient receptive skills. This can be done in three stages:
1. controlled reception – students are told what information to listen for/ locate while
listening/ reading;
2. guided activities – students are provided with some support, but are also allowed
some freedom;
3. free reception – students deal with the text independently.
The listener/ reader and the text must not be seen as separate elements, but as
interactants, in the sense that the listener/ reader communicates with the text and
contributes meaning to it. The teacher functions as a mediator between the learner and the
text helping them establish an effective relationship.
The texts chosen should be relevant and interesting to the students, on topics that
are familiar to them and easy to exploit.
Last but not least, we should realize that the skills must be taught in an integrated
way. In classroom, as in real life, listening and reading cannot be separated from
speaking and writing.

5.1.1. Teaching Listening

There are two basic reasons why listening needs to be taught:

 students need to be able to understand what other people tell them;
 listening improves pronunciation and speaking.
We may speak about:
 intensive listening – occurring in the classroom;
 extensive listening – occurring away from the classroom.
In the case of the former, we may require students to listen to recorded extracts or
we may resort to live listening (i.e. face-to-face encounters in the classroom), in which
case the one who talks may be the teacher or a visitor brought into the class. If the
students can interact with the speaker, the experience becomes more dynamic and
exciting. Though in many countries there are native speakers who teach foreign
languages, in Romania it is less customary to do so. That is why the teacher should take
every opportunity to use the foreign language in class. The recorded extracts provide
authentic listening material and are largely available nowadays, but we should be familiar
both with their content and with the way in which the electronic devices we use to listen
to them function. Though authentic speech may pose difficulties for lower level students,
we should offer them realistic language use and, therefore, we should get them to listen to
authentic English as soon as they can. Moreover, we should expose them to various
regional varieties of English.
When teaching listening, we should apply the following principles:
1. Encourage students to listen as often and as much as possible.
2. Help students prepare to listen: have them look at pictures, discuss the topic, help
them get engaged with it.
3. Once may not be enough. Play the audio track or extracts of it several times.
4. Encourage students to respond to the content of a listening text, not just to the
language.
5. Different listening stages demand different listening tasks. For a first listening
suggest general tasks that the students can solve successfully, then focus on
detailed information.
6. Good teachers exploit listening texts to the full.
We can also use video material, but in this case we should be careful because
students may pay more attention to what they see than to what they hear. Therefore, we
can try:
 playing the video without sound and having the students try to guess what the
characters are saying;
 playing the audio without the picture and having the students try to imagine the
speakers: where they are, what they look like, etc.;
 freezing frame and having the students predict what will follow;
 dividing the class in half and having half the class face the screen, the other half
sit with their backs to it and the former describe the visual images to the latter.
 Listening involves three main sub-skills:
1. hearing, i.e. recognizing the oral message, dividing the flow of speech into
recognizable words and phrases, identifying stress and intonation;
2. understanding, i.e. interpreting the message, its figurative or additional meaning,
the function of certain utterances and the paralinguistic clues (like the tone of the
voice);
3. responding, i.e. reacting to the message in the desired way. The response may be
linguistic or non-linguistic.
Visual support improves performance in the case of a listening activity, whether
we speak of pictures or of a grid to be filled out.
Listening may be practiced for: specific vocabulary, specific information or
meaning and message. The acquisition of each subskill requires the use of various
activities.
In the case of listening for specific vocabulary, we want our students first of all
to recognize the vocabulary they hear. We may ask them to fill in the blanks or simply to
put down certain words they hear in a text (like names of vehicles), to distinguish among
homonyms (dictate sentences containing homonyms, like leave – live, correct sentences),
etc.
For listening for specific information we may ask them to say if certain
sentences are true or false, or we may ask them to fill in a grid (with characters’ names,
age, place and time of certain events, etc.). It is not necessary for the students to
understand the whole text.
In the case of listening for meaning and message, we may use multiple choice
tasks, asking them to choose the correct answer to a set of questions, for instance.
Listening for meaning and message should be the goal of most of our activities,
since this is the subskill mostly required in real life. The students should be made aware
that it is not necessary to understand every word in the text in order to get the message.
Two of the most effective techniques used to assess this subskill are taking notes and
outlining.
An effective listening activity must really demand listening, must not be a
memory test, must help students improve their listening and must not be threatening. In
addition to that, the teacher should offer realistic and useful tasks and help students work
around difficulties to achieve specific results. This can be done in the following stages:
1. set the task;
2. play the recording;
3. check if the students performed the task;
4. if not, play the recording again as often as necessary. Usually, we play the
recording twice before we ask for the students’ answers.
If you suggest several tasks, set them in turns, and then play the recording and get
the students’ answers and offer feedback after each of them.
Ultimately, we should choose texts of the types the students are likely to
encounter in real life and suggest tasks accordingly. Thus, we can ask the students to:
 follow the route on the map;
 move according to the instructions;
 say a reply to each comment they hear;
 draw a picture;
 note down;
 choose the correct picture;
 take down a message;
 follow the instructions to make something, etc.
Difficult recordings that challenge the students are more useful than easy ones
that can be understood from the first playing. Our goal is to work on the listening skill
and not to get right answers to the activities we set.
The following guidelines can help us work well on listening:
 keep the recording short;
 play it a sufficient number of times;
 let students discuss their answers together;
 do not immediately acknowledge correct answers;
 do not assume that if one student got the answer the others got it as well;
 help the students if they are stuck, but rather guide them into getting the answer
themselves than offer it to them;
  play little bits of recording until it is clear;
 consider giving the students control of the player to listen when and to what they
wish;
 do not change tasks halfway;
 do not let students get discouraged; the task should be difficult, but achievable.
(cf. Scrivener 2005).
Though it was believed that we understand texts in a bottom-up manner (starting
from individual sounds, then going to words, phrases, sentences and finally the whole
text), we actually use a combination of bottom-up and top-down (from the whole
message to words) techniques. When we plan a listening lesson, we start from discussing
the topic and predicting the content, then we go to listening to get the general meaning
and later we concentrate on specific structures.

5.1.2. Teaching Reading

Definitions given to reading vary “according to the importance given to the

linguistic aspect of this process or to the intellectual or affective components of reading.”
(Popa 99). A distinction is made between word recognition and interpretative reading.
Reading may be the identification of linguistic forms from strings of written signs that
represent them, a conceptualized response to a printed word stimulus or getting meaning
from a printed or written message. Reading is useful for language acquisition, having a
positive effect on students’ vocabulary and grammar knowledge, spelling and writing, but
it also expands their intellectual horizon, sharpens their thinking, enriches their spiritual
life; it has an educational and an aesthetic role.
At lower levels, taking into account the fact that English is not a phonetic
language, we should start with words or very short sentences already known from the oral
period or we should ask students to memorize texts that they already understand.
Reading as a skill should be targeted later.
In this respect, a distinction can be made between extensive reading, that
students do away from the classroom and intensive reading that students do in the
classroom. In the case of the former we read fast and fluently, in the case of the latter we
go over the text several times to understand it as well as possible and in as many details
as possible. Other useful distinctions would be between authentic texts and adapted
texts, and between authentic texts and artificially created texts.

 Mention some advantages and disadvantages of authentic and adapted texts.

While created texts are built specifically to illustrate a certain grammar or

vocabulary problem, the authentic texts can hardly be controlled in this respect.
Moreover, they may be too difficult for foreign learners. If we try to approach such texts
prematurely, the result will only be a painstaking process of laborious word-for-word
deciphering with the help of a dictionary. Therefore, it has been recommended that
students at lower levels should use simplified / graded readers for extensive reading.
Their use increases the students’ motivation since they can read and understand them, but
it presents the following disadvantages: reduction can result in loss (of pages, situations,
characters, events, vocabulary, structures); ambiguities are resolved; figures of speech
tend to be removed; they lack linguistic, emotional, aesthetic qualities that characterize
genuine literature. Thus, the use of other texts would be preferable: stories that are
familiar to the students (like Cinderella) in the foreign language; English literature in the
learners’ language; children’s literature (is simpler) and short works for adults.
We should be aware of the fact that different types of texts require different
reading techniques. We may employ sentence-level reading vs. global reading
techniques, linear reading vs. skimming or scanning, reading aloud vs. silent
reading. Therefore, students should be taught how to use these techniques according to
the types of texts they encounter and to the reasons they have for reading. Sentence-level
reading and linear reading refer to reading each and every word and sentence as they
come, from top left to bottom right, from the first to the last page of the text, while the
global reading techniques, like scanning and skimming, help the reader cope with the text
as a whole and get its message fast and accurately. They are also silent reading
techniques. Skimming means reading fast to extract the main idea, leaving out parts of
text that do not seem relevant. This is the way in which we read a magazine or we
evaluate a book to see whether we would like to read it or not. A typical skimming
question would be “Is this story set in a restaurant or in a school?” In the case of scanning
we “photograph” the entire page to perceive certain elements that catch our eye. In this
way, we locate specific information quickly, without reading the whole text. A typical
scanning question would be “What time does the Brighton train leave?”
When we read a text linearly, we often get lost in unimportant details and fail to
grasp the meaning of the text, but the global and silent reading techniques help us select
the essential elements so as to get to the overall meaning of the text, being fast and
efficient. While reading fast and silently, the students are also encouraged to guess the
meaning of words from context, to organize the information and take notes.
With skimming and scanning tasks, the teacher should also impose a strict time
limit that should not allow the word-for-word reading of the text or guessing.
However, after the students get the message of the text, they must be guided
towards sentence-level reading. They will read the text linearly, both aloud and silently,
and focus on specific words and grammar problems, on the organization and meaning of
individual sentences, etc.
The following ideas for reading tasks can be used:
 put the paragraphs/ illustrations of the text in the right order;
 insert the sentences in the appropriate places;
 find words in the text that mean the same as those in the list;
 act out the dialogues, story, etc.;
 pick out the texts with missing sentences/ paragraphs;
 decide whether information is missing before or after the text;
 select a sentence/ paragraph that does not belong to the text.
“Traditional reading is linear (from top left to bottom right, along the lines of
written words) and traditional classroom reading is reading aloud. However, in the real
world, we do not always read linearly and we rarely read aloud.” (Vizental 140) Since
reading aloud by the students may also be boring, Scrivener (2005) suggests some
alternatives to it:
 the teacher reading;
 the teacher reading the narrative and the students the dialogue;
 the teacher telling the story in his/her own words, in a spell-binding manner;
  students reading to each other in small groups or pairs.
Reading may be practiced for: locating specific information, the main idea or
inferences. Various activities can be used for each: in the case for reading for specific
information, we may give the students a grid to be filled in with information from the
text; in the case of reading for the main idea we may ask them to summarize the text in
one sentence; in the case of reading for inferences (characteristic of literary texts) we
will discuss the text with the students, asking them to express their feelings and opinions.
“Whatever the technique or strategy used, the teacher’s aim is to help the students to
become:
 flexible readers, i.e. readers able to choose the technique that is best suited for the
given type of text;
 active readers, i.e. readers capable to interact with the text, able to promote a kind
of dialogue between themselves and the writer;
 reflective readers, i.e. readers able to personalize the subject of the text and learn
from it.” (Vizental 158)
The following reading principles should be applied extensively:
1. Encourage students to read as often and as much as possible, since fluency in reading
comes through exercise.
2. Engage them with what they are reading (offer them joyful texts, that appeal to their
interest).
3. Encourage them to respond to the content of a text (and explore their feeling about it),
not just concentrate on its construction.
4. Prediction is a major factor in reading.
5. Match the task to the topic when using intensive reading texts. Use imaginative and
challenging activities.
6. Good teachers exploit reading texts to the full.
The following means can be used to encourage students to read extensively:
 offer them access to a library with books at their level and of different genres; we
do not necessarily need a large library, just a box with books and magazines can
be enough sometimes;
 offer them the possibility to choose what they read;
  offer them the opportunity to give (informal) feedback on what they read;
 give them time for reading during the class as well (for 10 minutes or so), a period
when the teacher should also read to underline the attractiveness of the activity.
Whatever we do, we should be aware of the fact that not all students become
active readers. We cannot force them to read, but we should do our best to encourage
them in this respect.
 5.2. Teaching the Productive Skills
5.2.1. Teaching Speaking

Acquiring receptive skills is not enough for someone to be able to say s/he knows
a language. For that, we also need to be capable of producing messages.
There are three main reasons for teaching speaking:
1. it provides the opportunity for rehearsal for real life – the students get to practice real-
life speaking in the safety of the class;
2. it provides feedback both for students and for teachers regarding the language
problems that students are experiencing;
3. it makes students become more fluent and confident.
We refer to speaking as a skill when there is a task to complete and speaking is
the way to complete it.
Motivation and practice are essential if we want to get our learners to produce
language. We should suggest interesting topics and attractive activities, and we should
help students move on from controlled and guided activities to free production of
language. To get students to speak, we should help them activate their knowledge,
overcome their anxiety or shyness and manage communicative strategies. For this, we
should provide them with opportunities to speak as early in the language course as
possible, we should offer interesting activities, but also support and guidance, and create
a relaxed, encouraging atmosphere in the classroom.
There are two basic modes of oral communication: the conversational (dialogic)
one and the expositional (monologic) one. The former involves (at least) a speaker and a
listener who change roles permanently and rapidly, and an also permanent and rapid
exchange of information. It allows for no preparation and it also requires listening skills.
The latter involves a speaker who presents his/her ideas at length in front of an audience.
The two modes cannot be separated. The expositional mode also implies a dialogue with
the audience, while in a conversation there may also be one participant who speaks too
much. This is a problem that may appear in the classroom as well and that may be solved
by the teacher by pairing or grouping students with similar linguistic proficiency and
personality.
 In the early stages of language learning, students should be asked to imitate. They
can read dialogues in the textbook in a dramatized way and then repeat them from
memory, with or without changes. From these controlled activities, we can move on to
guided practice, requiring the students to produce similar texts with different material,
involving them in question-answer practice, asking them to continue/ join/ reorder
sentences or paragraphs. When this is done in a satisfactory manner, we can proceed to
free communication.
Though communication is an extremely complex phenomenon, we can make
some generalizations about it, which have particular relevance for the learning and
teaching of languages. In real life two people get engaged in a conversation because they:
1. want to say something;
2. say it because they want something to happen as a result of what they say, i.e. they
have some communicative purpose;
3. in order to achieve their purpose, select from their language store the language they
think is appropriate.
In their turn, the listeners:
1. want to listen to what is being said;
2. are interested in the communicative purpose of what is being said;
3. process a variety of language in order to understand exactly what is being said.
When organizing communicative activities in the classroom, teachers must make
sure that these activities fulfil the 6 conditions mentioned above. First of all, the students
involved in the activity should have a desire to communicate. If they do not, then the
respective communication would probably not be effective. The students should also
have a communicative purpose, i.e. they should be using the language to achieve an
objective. This objective should be the most important part of the communication;
consequently, the students’ attention should be centred on the content of what is being
said and not on the language form that is being used. The students will have to deal with
a variety of language structures, rather than just one grammatical construction. While the
students are engaged in the communicative activity, the teacher should not intervene, i.e.
should not insist on accuracy by telling students that they are making mistakes, asking for
repetition etc. This kind of intervention would undermine the purpose of the activity.
However, the teacher may be involved in the activity as a participant and will also be
watching and listening very carefully in order to be able to conduct feedback. During
communicative activities, the students should not be working with materials that restrict
their choice of what to say or how to say it.
In short, the 6 characteristics of communicative activities are:
1. desire to communicate;
2. communicative purpose;
3. attention focused on content, not form;
4. variety of language;
5. no teacher intervention;
6. little materials control.
By contrast, the non – communicative activities are characterized by:
1. no desire to communicate;
2. no communicative purpose;
3. attention focused on form (accuracy);
4. one/ few language item(s) practiced;
5. teacher intervention;
6. materials control.
In the case of most communicative activities it might be useful to create an
information gap between the students. A “gap” of information between two people
appears when one person knows something that another person does not. By creating
such gaps we give the students a reason for communication, which is motivating and
useful.
Communicative activities are classroom activities designed to get learners to
speak and listen to one another.
There may be:
A. Oral communicative activities – designed to provoke spoken communication
between the students and/ or between the teacher and the students.
B. Written communicative activities - designed to provoke written communication
between the students and/ or between the teacher and the students (they will be
mentioned under Teaching Writing).
A. Oral communicative activities
Jeremy Harmer (1991) distinguishes the following types of oral communicative
activities:
 Reaching a Consensus
In this type of activity, the students have to agree with each other after discussions.
The task is not complete until they reach an agreement. Ex. Choosing Candidates –
the students are divided in groups; each group is given a list of candidates for a job;
each group has to choose the most appropriate candidate for the respective job.
 Discussion.
Sometimes teachers complain that their students have nothing to say and are not
prepared to discuss anything. In order to avoid such a situation, several techniques
can be used:
 put students in groups to try out the topic; thus, they will give their opinions in a
less threatening environment and the teacher will have the opportunity to see if
the topic is interesting for them;
 give students a chance to prepare, sometimes even at home;
 give students a task, for example a list of controversial statements that they score
from very negative to very positive;
 offer students a cue (a short text, a provocative question);
 ask just one question and then shut up instead of continuously adding new
comments and questions that are meant to help the students but that might have
the opposite effect;
 you can use “open” questions that require longer answers, instead of “closed”
questions that are answered with “yes” or “no”;
 sometimes you can play “devil’s advocate”, supporting the opposing point of
view in order to stimulate conversation.
 A type of discussion activity is the debate – two sides arguing for and against
something. A variation is the “balloon” debate. Each student must choose a
character. All characters are in the basket of a hot-air balloon. The balloon is losing
air, so some characters have to jump from the basket to save the lives of others. Each
character must bring convincing arguments in favour of his/ her survival. A final vote
decides who should jump and who should remain.
 Relaying Instructions – students have to give each other instructions; the success
of the activity depends on whether the instructions are clear and correct and on
whether they were understood. The most popular of these activities is Describe
and Draw: students are working in pairs; one student is given a picture that the
other cannot see; the second student has to draw an identical picture in content by
listening to the first student’s instructions.
 Communication Games – based on the principle of the information gap.
Students have to use any or all the language they know to complete a game-like
task. E.g. Find the Differences: the students are divided in pairs; one student in
each pair is given a picture, the other another picture; they are supposed to find
the differences between the two pictures without showing them to each other.
 Problem Solving – the students are given a complex situation and are told to find
a solution. E.g. The Desert Dilemma: Your plane has crashed in the desert. The
pilot and co-pilot are dead. The plane has no radio. There is a small camp 100
kilometers north of the plane and you decide to go there. Which 7 objects will you
take from the plane? (give them a list)
 Talking about Yourself - What we have in common - students are put in pairs at
random and told to discover 5 things that they have in common;
 Simulation and role play.
Role Play as a Special Type of Communicative Activity
1. Definition of Role Play
When students assume a role, they play a part in a specific situation. They are
creating their own reality, much like a group of children playing school or Star Wars for
example. There are no spectators to this play and the occasional eavesdropper (a parent or
a teacher) may not even be noticed. None of the risks of communication and behaviour in
the real world are present. The activity is enjoyable and does not threaten the students’
personality. It will build up self-confidence rather than damage it. For this, however, it is
very important to draw the students’ attention to the fact that in this case the process is
more important than the finished product. They are not supposed to produce dramatic
performances in front of a possibly hostile audience, but to carry out the activity for
themselves.
2. Reasons for Using Role Play
 it can bring into the classroom a very wide variety of language – functions, structures,
vocabulary areas, thus training students in speaking skills that can be used in any
situation;
 it is a useful dress rehearsal for real life, enabling students not just to acquire set
phrases, but also to learn how interaction might take place in a variety of situations;
 it helps many shy students by providing them with a mask. Thus, no longer feeling
that their own personality is involved, these students become more talkative;
 it is funny, enjoyment leading to better learning.
Role play is one of a series of communicative activities that develop fluency,
promote interaction and increase motivation. It encourages not only peer learning, but
also the sharing between teacher and student of the responsibility for the learning process.
3. Types of Roles
There are several different types of roles:
 roles that correspond to a real need in the students’ lives. E.g. doctors dealing with
patients;
 roles in which students play themselves in a variety of situations of which they may
or may not have direct experience. E.g. a customer complaining, a passenger asking
for information;
 roles that few students will ever experience directly, but of which they have vast
indirect experience. E.g. the television journalist;
 fantasy roles, fictitious, imaginary and sometimes absurd, that set free the students’
imagination.
Role cards should be concise and contain only essentials. If linguistic structures
are suggested for use, they should be the ones that the students are already familiar with.
When students have read their role card they can either return it to the teacher or turn it
over and refer to it only when completely stuck. Thus they are free to explore the
possibilities of the role in a more spontaneous manner.
As for the distribution of role cards, the teacher can decide who is who, the
students can choose or the distribution can be done at random. In the second case, the
negotiation about who would play which role may also give rise to authentic
communication. In the third case, a very weak student may get a key role, which may
lead to the failure of the play.
Assessing the Communicative Activities
It is very important for the teacher to assess the content and the form of the
activity, after it has been performed. During the communicative activity, the teacher
should not devote much time to correcting errors. Just showing the students that a
mistake has been made is enough. Still, the teacher might employ scaffolding, “the way a
competent language speaker helps a less competent one to communicate by both
encouraging and providing possible elements of the conversation.” (Scrivener 162). This
can be done in the following ways:
 by showing interest and agreeing (nodding, saying “yes”, etc.);
 by asking brief questions that encourage the speaker to extend the story (“and
then …”);
 by unobtrusively saying the correct form;
 by giving the correct pronunciation of words in replies without drawing attention
to it, etc.
After the communicative activity, the teacher should conduct feedback. This can
be of two types: content feedback and form feedback. While offering content feedback,
the teacher should insist on evaluation rather than criticism, and make sure that the
students talk about what went well before they get on to what went badly. This
encourages positive thinking about the experience. Moreover, this stage may be as
important as the main activity because it will also offer an opportunity for authentic and
spontaneous communication. After this discussion the teacher can concentrate on the
form feedback, discussing with the students the errors noticed while they were
performing the task.
  Which is more important: content feedback or form feedback?

We should be aware of the fact that speech is not spoken writing. Therefore, we
should not speak like a book, but in a true-to-life, natural and spontaneous manner. The
sentences made in speech are different from the way they appear in print: they are shorter
and differently arranged, being less complex and sometimes even incomplete.
Speakers have a limited time at their disposal to decide what to say and how to
say it, and they need to be familiar with the various strategies they can employ to buy
more time: using fillers like well, err, hmmm, you know, ah, using colloquial and
idiomatic expressions (As far as I know…, Correct me if I’m wrong…, To make a long
story short…, I thought you’d never ask…, etc.). In addition to that, speakers can repeat
what they have already said in order to correct or improve it so as to ensure that they are
understood. Repetition and rephrasing are also used as another kind of fillers to buy more
time until the speakers find the word or phrase they need. That is why we should also
remember that when we are speaking it is normal and acceptable to a certain extent to
hesitate, say the same thing in different ways, or change the subject in the middle of the
sentence. Therefore, these situations should be treated with tolerance.
Though accuracy is not important in the case of a communicative activity,
appropriacy of language is. We should teach students to choose their vocabulary and style
according to the situational context.
Though most teachers focus on the conversational mode, we should also give
proper attention to the expositional one. Students need to be trained to speak fluently and
freely for some time, apparently without support or feedback. To be able to do this they
must be proficient language users, and must have enough and well-organized information
at their disposal. To get the audience’s attention and good will, expositions must be
interesting, well-organized and well-presented, in a correct and stylistically appropriate
language. Appropriate body language and paralanguage (tone, intonation, mimicry)
should also be employed. In short, learners should be aware of the fact that speakers can
rely not only on the actual words they use, but also on facial expressions, gestures and
general body language, on intonation and stress (whose variations show which part of
what they are saying is most important) or on the possibility to rephrase, speed up or slow
down what they are saying in response to the feedback they are getting from their
listeners. In their turn, the listeners will show that they do not understand through a
variety of questions, interruptions, gestures, facial expressions.
To practice the expositional mode, we can ask our students to: tell a story,
describe an object or picture, express an opinion, comment on a text/ event, deliver a
speech, etc. We may ask them to speak spontaneously (which is very difficult) or we may
allow them some time to prepare.
Class Management During Communicative Activities
Any communicative activity can lead to chaos if it is not properly organized. Here
are some hints for class management to avoid this:
 distinguish between noise and chaos. There will a small amount of noise, inevitably,
as during groupwork and pairwork all students speak at the same time. To avoid its
getting louder and louder, the teacher can circulate among the students and even tell
them from time to time to be more quiet;
 begin with pairwork rather than groupwork. Thus, the layout of the class will not be
disturbed and the students will not have to talk so loud. Moreover, if the students are
involved in direct one-to-one communication, they get on with the task better and are
less self-conscious;
 keep the activity short until students get used to it;
 make sure the activity can be used with a different number of students;
 do not use an activity that is too difficult or too emotionally loaded until the students
are used to this activity;
 tolerate of a minor intrusion of the native language if it is helping the activity along;
 have a follow-up activity prepared for the groups that finish before the others;
 set a strict time limit and stick to it.
Conversation activities are meant to help learners become fluent and confident.
But this does not happen overnight. There are people who have a lot of knowledge about
language, but who cannot use it to express what they want. They may be afraid of
appearing foolish in front of others or they may just find it difficult to put language
together in a piece of coherent communication. They may be helped by being placed in
“safe” situations of communication in class. These would be activities that allow learners
to use language that has not become part of their active language store yet, but in which
they do not feel nervous or under pressure. Students develop their fluency and confidence
by speaking as much as possible. Therefore, in order to increase the time allotted to each
individual student, we should organize such activities in pairs or small groups and not
only with the whole class.
The communicative activity is not an isolated activity, but an integral part of the
lesson in which it is used. It may be the climax of the lesson, or only a small part of it.
Anyway, it should be well prepared by the teacher in advance and not the result of
momentary inspiration.
 5.2.2. Teaching Writing

As Jim Scrivener (2005) notices, the role of writing in everyday life has changed
dramatically over recent decades. While in the early 1990’s many people wrote little
every day, the appearance of e-mail, web forums, Internet messenger services and text
messaging led to an increase in written communication. This kind of communication has
its own rules, abbreviations and lexis. The generally recognized conventions for sending
electronic communications are known as Netiquette. Apart from this, most people
actually do little writing, restricted to brief notes to colleagues and friends, diary entries,
postcards, answers on question forms, etc. The need for longer formal written work
seems to have decreased over the years and this is reflected at the level of the classroom,
where comparatively less time is devoted to writing activities. However, including
writing in a course is useful because:
 students may need to develop their writing skills for academic study, examination
preparation and Business English, where writing is very important;
 note taking is a useful skill that is worth focusing on;
 writing activities can give teachers a break, quieten a noisy class etc.
We should not ask our students to write summaries, compositions and essays from
the start because writing does not come naturally, without training. Instead, we should
ask learners to go through a whole range of activities. On a continuum, written work in a
classroom may range from very controlled to very free. Thus, we can engage our students
in copying from the board or from books or in doing various exercises, ranging from
guided writing (after models) and process writing (following the steps in writing) to
unguided writing (though a task or title may be set). The focus on accuracy,
characterizing the first types of activities leaves gradually room for a focus on fluency as
we approach the end of the list. Moreover, the first two types of activities do not help
students become better writers, but help them learn something else. Therefore, a
distinction should be made between writing-for-writing, i.e. developing students’ skills as
writers and writing-for-learning, when writing is used as an aide-mémoire.
 Many teachers consider that writing is essentially an individual activity and there
is little to be done about helping students write effectively. However, teachers can help
learners: choose a topic and a genre; generate ideas, discuss them with others, select and
organize them; practice the language items that they consider will be useful; study texts
similar to what they want to write; get feedback on content and language use; write a first
version of the text; revise; write the final version; find appropriate readers. Regarding this
final step, it is very useful in the writing process in the class, as it is in real life.
When teaching writing, we should be aware of the problems that students face
when dealing with it. They may not be proficient enough in the language, they may not
know how to structure the information or how to voice their thoughts, they may not be
aware of the differences between discourse types. Therefore, the teachers should focus
not only on the product of writing, but also on the process.
The kind of writing we ask our students to do will depend on their age, level,
interests, needs, learning styles. In order to help students write successfully, we need to
consider the following:
1. genre – what genre we think they need to write in. We will perform genre analysis to
show them how typical texts within a given genre are constructed and then use guided
writing to help them produce similar texts. In a typical text they can study: the layout, the
message, the organization of the items, the specific sentences and phrases used, the
distinctive grammatical features, the style and tone and the effect on the reader. This will
help them understand: the features of a piece of writing according to its genre, function,
degree of formality etc.; the characteristics of the written discourse as compared with the
oral discourse; the construction of paragraphs and the way in which they and the
information within them is linked together to be coherent.
2. the writing process – we should teach students to plan what they are going to write,
and to draft, review and edit what they have written. This is not a linear process, any of
these stages being resumed over and over again, sometimes in a chaotic order.
3. building the writing habit – encourage students to get over their reluctance to write
by engaging them in easy and enjoyable activities.
We should be aware of the fact that creative writing will represent only a small
part of the students’ writing. Therefore, we should offer them more practice in the kind of
tasks that they are more likely to face, like: writing letters, newsletters, magazines, local
news, advertisements, comments, reviews, questionnaires, long-term projects,
applications, etc. There are three main types of writing that they may be required to
produce:
1. functional writing: CVs, letters of application and of other kinds, memos;
2. academic writing: compositions, essays, reports, research papers;
3. creative writing: diaries, short stories, poems, articles, informal letters.
We should remember that unlike speakers, writers must be accurate. They get no
immediate feedback from their readers. They do not have intonation, stress, facial
expressions or body movements at their disposal. Instead, they should rely on greater
clarity, a logical organization, correct spelling, grammatical and stylistic techniques for
focusing attention on the main points, showing attitude etc. Writers should also pay
attention to the organization of sentences into paragraphs and to the way in which
paragraphs are joined together to form a piece of coherent writing. That is why we should
offer our students practice not only in specific language items, but also in various
activities like: using pronouns to replace nouns, using synonyms to avoid repetition,
using conjunctions, etc. The following subskills are required for writing:
 spelling accurately;
 using the correct layout;
 choosing the appropriate range of vocabulary;
 using correct grammar;
 using correct punctuation;
 linking ideas and information appropriately;
 developing and organizing the content clearly. (cf. Hedge 1992)
Basically we can use writing to target two educational aims:
1. consolidation of language;
2. development of writing skills.
In the case of the former, we can use the following activities:
 labeling pictures;
 arranging jumbled words/ sentences;
 filling in exercises.
 Special attention should be given to dictation, that not only helps learners acquire
correct spelling, but also develops listening skills, involves students actively in detecting
and correcting errors and trains them to assess themselves and others. The most common
type of dictation involves three readings of the text by the teacher. The first one is meant
to familiarize the learners with the text and is done at normal speed. During the second
one the teacher pauses after each logical unit for the students to write, but s/he still reads
naturally, while the third reading, again at normal speed, gives the students the
opportunity to check their texts. A variant of dictation is the dictogloss, in which the
students write the text that is read at normal speed and then compare their versions with
the original.
To develop writing skills, the teacher can use the following activities:
 note-taking – similar to dictation, but the students put down only the essential
information, not the entire text;
 outlining – planning the composition;
 summarizing – develops our ability to present the information clearly and
succinctly.
Other examples of writing activities:
 instant writing: Complete the sentence: I will never forget the time I …
 using music and pictures – ask the students to describe the scene from a film
that might accompany a certain piece of music that they have just heard; describe
a picture; guess which the picture being described is.
 writing newspapers and magazines;
 writing brochures and guides;
 writing poetry.
There are also written communicative activities, like:
 exchanging letters –The Agony Column – experts giving advice on various
topics;
 co-operative writing – writing a story; each student writes a sentence.
Any kind of writing should be guided and corrected by the teacher. Guiding
students does not refer only to explaining them what they have to write about but also to
helping them come out with a plan, giving them key structures (words, sentences, etc.),
etc. In its turn, feedback on writing should not be offered only after the text is completed.
As a matter of fact, the most useful comments are those that will have an impact on it,
therefore they should be made as the text progresses. Not only the teacher can comment
on the students’ work, but also the students themselves can offer one another ideas,
suggestions, etc.
Over-correction can be demotivating, therefore we should try to achieve a balance
between being accurate and treating students sympathetically. For instance, we can tell
students that for a certain piece of writing we are going to correct only the spelling /
grammar / punctuation. Or we can use a green pen instead of the traditional red one. We
should react not only to the form of the text, but also to its content, and make sure that
they have understood why we have reacted in a certain way (discuss the errors and the
marking criteria with the students). Correction codes can be used to mark the mistake
(where it is and what type it is), which the learners have then to correct themselves.
Possible codes: WO = word order, S = spelling, WW = wrong word, etc. Neatness and
legibility should be encouraged, especially with students who will take pen-and-paper
examinations. Otherwise, we may also consider the alternative on writing on a computer,
which has the advantage that it is easier to read by other people and to modify by the
student.
Remember, however, that before teaching communicative writing, we might have
to teach our students to master spelling, which can be done by means of:
 copying words, sentences, meaningful units;
 dictation;
 exercises where only one element is new and the rest repeats the items found in
the exercise: fill-in, combination of units in a sentence, etc.
 7. Testing

“Just like all the other aspects of education, evaluation is a complex task for the
responsible teacher. Instead of ‘just grading’ the students the way s/he considers fit, the
teacher should first try to find answers to questions, such as: when to test the students,
what to focus on in each test, what kind of items to include, how to formulate each item,
the duration of the test, how to assess the results, how to continue the teaching activity in
the light of the results obtained, etc.” (Vizental 307)
Testing is thus an intrinsic part of the learning process. It includes all the
techniques and procedures the teacher uses to promote and assess learning. It enhances
learning and it gives teachers feedback on the efficiency of their work. “By testing their
students (orally or in writing), teachers want to see if, how much and how well the
learners have acquired the new material, what their typical mistakes are, the deficiencies
of their own work, etc.” (Vizental 86) Testing includes grading, but it is not restricted to
it.
There should be a match between the teaching and the testing techniques. If this
match does not occur, various problems might appear, as the results of the test might not
be reliable and the conclusions drawn afterwards might be wrong.
According to whether they take place before, during or after teaching, tests may
be:
1. placement tests, given at the beginning of the learning process;
2. progress, diagnostic and achievement tests, given during the learning process;
3. proficiency tests, given after the learning process.
“Finding good exercises for each individual test should not be a problem: apart
from the exercises in the textbook and the students’ books, there are countless books of
exercises, and teachers may also write their own test items. However, finding the suitable
(relevant) items for a certain test is more problematic; selecting them and putting them
together to form a complex, well-rounded, test is really hard and time-consuming.”
(Vizental 308)
Placement tests are intended to provide information which will help to place
students at the stage or in the part of the teaching programme most appropriate to their
abilities. They are also meant to help the teacher elaborate an efficient teaching strategy.
Consequently, such tests should be designed to assess the overall language proficiency of
the class, but also the students’ relative language level. They test grammar and
vocabulary, sometimes reading and writing, but rarely listening or speaking, and
generally favour objective testing techniques.
Progress and diagnostic tests help the teacher find the weak and strong points of
the students, but also the deficiencies of his/her own work. Progress tests are small-scale
tests meant to verify recent, short-term learning. They cover a narrow range of language
and information, the one taught the previous day or week, for example. They make use of
both objective and subjective / communicative tasks, the latter devised in such a way as
to take little time, since the typical progress tests take place during 10 minutes at the end
of the lesson or during 20 minutes at the beginning of the new class, as unannounced
papers. Progress tests should be given frequently, assessing acquisition of the new
language, listening or reading skills, or essay writing. Diagnostic tests are larger-scale
ones, covering information taught during an entire unit or even semester. Consequently,
they last longer, 50 minutes or even more, contain both objective and subjective tasks and
target both receptive and productive skills, vocabulary, grammar and communication.
Achievement (attainment) tests are designed to establish how successful
individual students, groups of students or even courses have been in achieving objectives.
They are comprehensive tests set at the end of a school year, of a teaching cycle or of a
language course. They are complex, large-scale tests that assess a large amount of
language and a wide range of language skills. They contain both objective and
subjective / communicative tasks, and are generally organized at higher levels than the
individual class (school, region or even national level). They can be devised by one
teacher or by a testing authority or the ministry of education (the Baccalaureate).
Proficiency tests are designed to measure students’ ability in a language
regardless of any training they may have had in that language. They can be held at any
moment in a person’s life, assessing that person’s knowledge of the language at that
moment. However, they do not have only a diagnostic function, but also a selectional
function (establishing the most likely candidate to succeed in a certain position). Some of
them are also occupational tests (designed for a specific field, like banking or medicine)
or customized ones (which consist of a standard test and an additional section for a
certain profession).
After the test, the teacher must analyse the results in order to determine the
learners’ difficulties and the flaws of his / her teaching. Remedies must be found and
efficient strategies must be devised for the next stage in the course.
The teacher may also set up mock tests based on self-assessment. They are useful
because they involve the learners directly in the process. If the students know that the
teacher will not grade them, they are honest and co-operate.
Qualities of test
A test should have the following qualities:
 discrimination – the test should help the teacher see who the most able, least able
and average students are;
 predictive validity - the test should show the teacher whether a student will be
able to cope in a particular English language context in the future;
 reliability - the test should produce consistent results if the same students take it
again some other time;
 concurrent validity - the test should rank the students in the same way as other
well-known and respected tests;
 face validity - the test should look acceptable as a test of language skills to a non-
expert;
 practicality - the teacher should be able to administer the test in the time and with
the resources available;
 utility - the test should provide the teacher with diagnostic information which will
be useful in determining which language skills and areas need most attention in
future classes;
 content validity - the test should cover the skills and language areas which are
necessary for its purposes;
 construct validity - the test should be based on sound principles of what is
known about language acquisition and learning.

Testing can be subjective or objective.

 Subjective testing is characteristic of the traditional grammar-translation
teachers. It includes techniques such as:
1. oral interviews, consisting in comprehension questions used by the teacher on the
basis of the text studied;
2. oral or written compositions, which are summaries of the text;
3. translations from the mother tongue into the foreign language and vice versa;
4. dictation.
These are graded according to the teacher’s personal judgment that may be
influenced by a bad day, personal problems, personal opinion on the student and other
factors.
The most significant disadvantages of subjective testing are that it presents:
1. variations from testing to testing, i.e. the same teacher may grade the same test
differently on different occasions;
2. variations from one tester to another, i.e. two different teachers may grade the
same test differently.
Objective testing was introduced by Robert Lado’s Language Testing (1961) and
developed subsequently. It relies on the opinion that for teaching and testing purposes the
language should be broken down into its components and each component should be
drilled and tested separately. Each individual item is given a number of points and the
final mark is the sum of the points obtained. The objective testing is favoured by the
audio-lingual approach and consists of discrete-point tests and global-integrative tests.
The discrete-point tests consist of a large number of items, each assessing one
problem and being granted a certain number of points. In order to give the correct grade,
the teacher should only count the correct answers. Such tests are scientific, reliable and
practical. They also encourage students with poor language proficiency. Common
discrete-point testing techniques are:
 multiple choice (m/c) – circle the correct answer:
A car is … a plane.
the safest the safer than safer than more safe than
 dual choice, which can be used to assess:
a. the correct form: My sister works/is working in a school.
 b. true or false: The comparative of little is less.
c. same or different: Say if the following sentences have the same meaning or not:
I stopped to talk to her./ I stopped talking to her.
 matching elements (also Put the words in the list in the correct column)
 arranging elements: students are given jumbled words, sentences or paragraphs
that must be put in the right order to form a coherent sentence, paragraph or text,
respectively.
 joining elements – students are given two or more short sentences which they
must rewrite as one sentence.
 blank completion
 blank and clue: put the words in brackets in the correct form.
 transformation/ conversion: singular to plural, present to past, etc./
paraphrasing (rewrite the sentence beginning with the words given)
 adding elements: rewrite the sentences by adding the words in brackets or
continue the sentences: I agree with you. (totally)
 replacing elements - rewrite the sentences by using the words in brackets: They
wanted to get home before the guests arrived. (arrival)
 language traps – correct the mistakes in the sentences.
The discrete-point tests present the following disadvantages:
1. they only test isolated items, while language functions as a whole; they lack
authenticity of language and do not reflect the learner’s actual mastery of the
language;
2. there may be people who perform well in such tests, but who cannot communicate
fluently and people who can communicate very well, but who perform badly in
the tests;
3. good results in such tests may be achieved by guessing;
4. they cannot assess productive language – the students only recognize the
language, but do not produce it;
5. they are difficult to write, being time-consuming and ambiguous;
6. they expose students to a lot of bad language;
7. they can be expensive and boring.
 The global-integrative tests were promoted by John Oller. They “assess several
aspects of the learning process at the same time, with the full linguistic context provided
by a well-constructed text.” (Vizental 74) The tasks to be performed are thus based on the
perception of the whole text. Common global-integrative testing techniques are:
 the cloze – a multiple-slot substitution exercise, implying a text from which
words, parts of words or specific information have been deleted at regular
intervals or according to certain criteria (lexical, grammatical or stylistic). Cloze
tests are easy to design, practical to assess and efficient. They are even liked by
learners. The learners may be asked to provide the missing words themselves or
may be given a list of words from which to choose. Attention should be paid to
the slots that may accept several correct variants.
 improved multiple choice – relies on full texts followed by problem questions
with 4-5 possible answers. The questions do not refer only to isolated elements,
but also to the type of text, audience or publication in which it appeared.
 dictation – was criticized because it is based on slow reading, which is artificial
(not normal). Therefore, several improved types of dictation were derived, like,
for instance, the reverse dictation, where the students are given a text that
contains gaps or mistakes, they listen to the text and fill in the blanks or correct
the mistakes.
 information transfer – the students have to fill in the missing part in a dialogue
(they have the lines of only one of the speakers).
The cloze may also be used in the following variants:
1. the dual-choice / multiple choice cloze – where the students are given a number
of choices for each blank;
2. C-testing – when we delete half of every 2nd, 3rd or 4th word in the text;
3. the authentic cloze – that looks like resulting from some kind of accident (the
words are missing or blurred because of a fire or spilled water, etc.);
4. gapped text (template) – where the blanks should be filled in with longer
stretches of language.
In general, objective tests have the following disadvantages:
 1. they do not give learners the opportunity to use their mother tongue;
2. they are mostly written, while students also need spoken language;
3. they test only linguistic competence, not performance;
4. they test only receptive language, not the productive skills as well.
That is why testers decided to improve the subjective tests and designed an
improved subjective technique that is called communicative testing. Communicative
testing, favoured by the communicative approach, assesses the learners’ communicative
skills, i.e. their ability to use language in order to cope with actual communicative
situations. The first communicative test was designed by Keith Morrow in 1977. The
most common communicative testing techniques are:
 the role play;
 the oral interview;
 letter writing;
 the telephone conversation;
 the group discussion to solve problems.
One observation should be made here: the tasks given to the students should be
very specific. Instead of just asking them to write a letter of application for a job, we
should give them the advertisement for the job, the number of words the letter must
contain, the purpose of the letter, etc.
Communicative testing has the following disadvantages:
1. it relies on the teacher’s inventiveness;
2. it takes a long time to read and assess;
3. it is still subjective;
4. the students are hard to control;
5. it is hard to make all students interact.
Consequently, a new type of testing was developed, the non-communicative
subjective testing, which characterizes the post-communicative turn. Examples of non-
communicative subjective tasks are:
 discussion - Argue for or against: Playing computer games is the greatest evil of
the 20th century.
  composition – Write a story (250 words) beginning / ending with the following
sentence: …
 essay writing – Enlarge upon the following, by referring either to a literary text
or to your own experience (150 words): “Clothes make the man. Naked people
have little or no influence in society.” (Mark Twain)
 read and write: Read the following passage and decide: … (4 tasks).
Post-communicative testers realized that important benefits can be drawn from
each type of testing. Objective tests can be used for the assessment of receptive skills and
subjective ones for the assessment of productive skills, both types alongside
communicative tests. Non-communicative subjective tasks must also be used with
students who need accuracy of language and extensive speaking and writing skills.
Subjective scoring can be objectified by means of two methods:
1. the detailed marking scheme, which refers to breaking down the students’ output
according to several categories and assigning a separate mark for each category. Each
category may have subcategories. For instance, for an oral performance we can grant
marks for: content, organization, delivery, overall impression, and within delivery, we
can mark clarity and pronunciation, stress and intonation, volume and pace, body
language, eye contact and manner. The teachers can offer the detailed marking scheme to
the students before or after the test.
2. the yardstick or scale, which organizes assessment according to levels of performance
(basic, intermediate, advanced) and has several criteria for assessment. It provides a list
of the correct expectations for each level.
All in all, testing can be objective (discrete-point or global-integrative) or
subjective (communicative or non-communicative). Tests may contain direct test items,
which ask students to do something with the language (e.g. write a letter) or indirect test
items, which test students’ knowledge of the language rather than ask them to do
something with it (e.g. multiple choice, fill-in, cloze). Neither category is flawless, but
each offers a variety of possibilities and advantages for the teacher that knows how to use
them and is willing to work hard to prepare testing materials.
Tests have a washback/ backwash effect. This means that the teachers see the
form of the test the students are going to take and start teaching for it. This is normal, but
should not be the dominant way of teaching. The test should fit our teaching and not the
other way round. That is why the test items should look like the kind of tasks students
have been practicing in their lessons.
Tests have a strong impact on students’ motivation, therefore they should be
designed in such a way as to enable students to pass them – with activities that are not too
easy, but not too difficult either.
Testing should be used side by side with continuous assessment, which is the
evaluation done all through the learning period by means of the following alternative /
complementary methods of evaluation:
 the systematic observation;
 the project;
 self-evaluation;
 the portfolio, which includes all learner’s activities (tests, projects, systematic
observation files, etc.)
The Project
“The project is a long-term task (...) that can be performed individually or by
groupwork.” (Vizental 87) It provides “an ongoing ‘thread’ to classroom work”
(Scrivener 364), by supplying a longer term goal. Very often, teachers lay too little
emphasis on long-term tasks that students should perform individually. However, the
importance of such tasks should not be underestimated. They involve and activate the
students physically, intellectually and emotionally, develop their independence and
creativity, lead to the development of an individual style. The students enjoy the task,
although they must often work really hard on it, because they feel they are doing
something important. The information acquired in this way is functional and retained in
their long-term memory.
A project goes through three stages. It begins in the classroom, with a discussion
between the teacher and the students about the necessity of doing a project, about its
objectives and requirements, and about the tasks that have to be performed by the
students in order to meet the respective requirements. The second stage takes place
outside the classroom, and involves the students in various processes (researching,
writing, designing, performing, visiting, speaking, etc.) that have as a purpose the
gathering of the information necessary to carry out the project. This is done with or
without the teacher’s help. During the third stage, the students return to the classroom,
giving the material its final form, which they present to the teacher and to their
colleagues. The final product can be published, displayed, presented or even performed.
The teacher plays a very important role in organizing, directing and controlling
the students, in advising and assessing them. S/he has to make the aims of the project
clear to the students, to explain the stages in elaborating it, to devise an evaluation
strategy. S/he should help the students by showing them how to start the work and
discuss with them the possible problems that may appear along its elaboration.
Before the beginning of the project, the teacher should make the following issues
very clear to the students:
 whether there will be a single project for the whole class or several projects for
several groups;
 whether the project will be one large task that the teacher sets and learners work
on or it will be structured in a series of cumulative steps and stages;
 whether it will last for the whole term or for several lessons;
 whether there must be an intermediary report or just the final one;
 whether s/he will provide the material resources or they have to be found by the
students;
 whether there is a particular format of the finished product or a presentation
standard required;
 whether s/he will evaluate the elaboration process, the finished product or both;
 whether s/he will assess the project at various stages of its elaboration or only at
the end.
It is also very useful if the teacher can offer a model to the students so that they
perceive more clearly what it is that they have to do.
Though project work may seem difficult to organize, appearing to require a lot of
teaching preparation, it quickly becomes learner-centred. Most demanding for the teacher
are the initial planning and the start.
Doing a project has several advantages, concerning both foreign language
learning and the development of the students’ personality. As far as the use of the foreign
language is concerned, project work focuses on practice, ensuring genuinely
communicative use of spoken and written English, as it offers students a reason to
communicate in English in order to achieve their goal. In addition to that, it offers “a
valuable chance for learners of mixed levels to work on something at their own current
ability level.” (Scrivener 364) Besides, projects are task-oriented rather than language-
oriented, and have tangible outcomes, the end products that the learners can take pride in.
On the other hand, project work can help in building the personality of the students, since
it involves them in taking decisions about what to do, how to do it, how to present the
final product, or in planning, making decisions, collecting ideas, structuring, discussing,
negotiating, solving problems, etc. It is also group-building.
My personal experience with conducting project work consists in organizing three
series of such activities with three series of students. The first series consisted of 2 groups
of 3rd year students in Romanian-English and French-English, who worked on their
projects during the first semester of the academic year 2007-2008. The second series was
a group of 2nd year students in English-Spanish during the second semester of the year
2007-2008, and the third series consisted of four groups of 3 rd year students in Romanian-
English and French-English, during the first semester of the year 2008-2009.
All three projects were part of the seminar in English Teaching Methodology and
were scheduled towards the middle of the semester, i.e. seminars 5 and 6 out of 14. I
began by offering my students the theoretical information about doing a project, then I
asked them to consider doing a project themselves in order to understand better what it
was and how it was done in case they had to do it with their own students in the future,
and I had them think of a suitable theme.
They were all interested in doing the activity, mainly because it provided them
with some time off school. The advantage was that it offered them a little break by
requiring them to concentrate on the same topic for several weeks. The disadvantage was
that it interrupted their rhythm and it became rather difficult afterwards for them to
concentrate on the following topics. This happened also because they preferred to stay
home and work rather than bring the materials to the classroom. The period when they
were required to do the projects was the period of testing in the practical courses, and the
period when there was no heating in the building. The first series also had to get through
the teaching practice in the major subject. In addition to that, their main source of
information was the internet, and there were no computers in our seminar classroom. I
presented to them the advantages and disadvantages of doing the activity in the middle of
the semester and I offered them the choice to do it at the end, but they preferred to do it
as it had been planned.
Regarding the themes of the projects, under my guidance, the first series, made of
two groups, chose to come out with two guides to Piteşti, the second series with a
Dictionary of Stars, and the third with four projects (as there were four groups): The
Seven Wonders of the World, A Dictionary of British Authors, Romanian Touristic
Objectives, and Events Which Influenced 20th Century England.
The differences in the students’ personalities and in the cohesion of the groups, as
well as my own skills in organizing the activity account for the differences in the results
obtained. As always, some students worked more than others, and there were complaints
about it, especially in the case of the first series. Because they chose to work at home and
to come to class just to point difficulties, the cohesion of the group played a key role in
putting together the final product. As far as my organizational skills were concerned, I
tried as much as I could to learn from experience and to share my conclusions with the
students.
As regards the final products of the projects, the two guides to Piteşti did not
come out at all. The students worked both at home and in the classroom, using the
internet and several guidebooks, but did not manage to offer complete information about
the town. After four weeks they gave up, bringing only a part of the project and
complaining that some of their colleagues would not cooperate at all. Their interest also
ran out as time passed and they saw no progress.
Coming after this failure, The Dictionary of Stars was a pleasant surprise. The
students working on it were fewer, 12 (as compared with the 30 in the previous groups),
were very united and helpful to one another. They wanted an “impressive” dictionary to
come out, so they were willing to work more. I suggested one personality for each
student, but they wanted two or three, with two pages for each personality. The
presentation included basic information and a photograph. One student volunteered from
the very beginning to put together the information. The work can be improved, as the
letter style varies throughout it, and so does the structure of the entries, not to mention
that some of the artists were introduced by their first names. (Thus, we have Catherine
Zeta-Jones listed under C and George Clooney under G, but Anthony Hopkins under H.)
But it does look like a dictionary, even having an introduction and small pieces of paper
with the letters written on them attached to the pages, for easier reference. And it was the
only project that was ready in two weeks.
Realizing that small groups do better, especially if they are made of friends, I
allowed the next series to split and work on several projects at their choice.
The presentation of The Seven Wonders of the World was done by seven students,
each working on one wonder. Each entry is dealt with on 5-7 pages, containing
information about the location, description, history, role and destruction of the
Mausoleum of Maussollos at Halicarnassus, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the
Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Temple of Artemis at
Ephesus, the Great Pyramid of Giza and the Colossus of Rhodes. Photographs are also
included.
The Dictionary of British Authors was compiled by 14 students. It includes 43
authors, ordered chronologically, from Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare and John
Milton, to Doris Lessing and A. S. Byatt. Two-three pages are devoted to each author,
containing their biography and bibliography, and also photographs. The students also
included less famous authors like the poetess Emilia Lanyer or the dramatist John Ford.
The 17 students working on the Romanian Touristic Objectives came out with
information about the location, description, history, etc. of 15 objectives (towns, resorts,
castles, caves etc.), among which the Bucegi Mountains, the Danube Delta, Peleş Castle,
Poenari Castle, Scărişoara, Herculane, Iaşi, Sibiu, Sighişoara. Two-three pages are
devoted to each objective. Photographs are also included, and the student working on the
presentation of Sibiu included photographs taken by herself when visiting the town in
2007, when it was European Cultural Capital.
The Events Which Influenced the 20th Century England were selected by 5
students, and what is remarkable is that they tried to select events that happened on each
day of the calendar. Of course, they could not, and not all events are necessarily notable,
but they include births, deaths, marriages and divorces of famous people, political acts
and scientific discoveries, prizes obtained, battles lost or gained, show premières,
coronations, explosions, the passing of certain more important laws, etc.
All four projects of this last series were finished in three weeks. Their main
source was the internet. Because the students worked on various projects, I also asked
them to present them in front of the class, but, though I gave them time to prepare their
presentations, they were not very enthusiastic about it. I had to point out their strengths,
and I was more interested in hearing what they had to say.
At the end of the activity, I also asked the last series to write anonymously their
opinion about it. It is significant that rather few did, but also that some of them signed
their papers. Here are some of the opinions:
“What I really appreciated about this project was that it gave us the possibility to
choose our subject and also to work in groups. This way we could really enjoy what we
did and also we could make new friends and know one another better. It’s a pity we did
not do this kind of project earlier, when we were in the first year. These projects are very
interesting and educative, but in the last year of faculty they only make our schedule
more crowded and therefore make us not to give them the importance they deserve.” (A.
D.)
“I consider that doing a project has been a great experience for me. In the project I
spoke about Iaşi City, a city that I have never visited, and I found interesting things
about, so I want to visit it soon.” (anonymous)
“Working on this project made me feel part of a group and that was very nice. It
was very nice how each of us worked and did his job and how we met and discussed
about the next steps. It was fun because each of us had something to do and because you
did not have to do all the work by yourself.” (L. C.)
“The project was put together relatively easy. The students included in our project
carried their tasks through without giving our project coordinator any emotions. All in all
it was a nice project. It can be useful too. It provides enough information in order to
convince someone to visit a place or just information about a place, in general. It can be
used in a school as a didactic material at geography classes. I personally enjoyed working
on this project together with my fellow students. It was an opportunity to find out more
about them and an occasion to work as a team.” (anonymous)
 “It was a pleasure to be involved in such an activity. It is very nice to work with
other colleagues. There can be shown feelings such as: unity, collaboration, common
interests and also it was revealed a strong desire to realize an exquisite common work.
Moreover I believe that team work is always less stressful than individual work.” (A. E.)
“Doing this project did not seem too difficult to me as I had to write about three
English writers that I had already studied last year. It was actually nice because I got to
re-read things I had studied and recalled the information. After doing this project, I
remained with the feeling that we should do our best to keep a vivid memory of the
things we studied so that they do not get lost. And, no matter the topic, every project
enriches our weak knowledge so any subject is welcome to deal with.” (N. M.)
“I have always hated the idea of doing a team project. Why? Because, in my
opinion, doing this kind of project implies more work than doing a project on your own.
First, the team has to choose a subject. Then the team makes a short plan, from which
every member of the team chooses a chapter that he treats in his own way. Now the team
has to choose the leader, the one who will have to give the final form of the project.
Nobody wants to be the leader, so in the end they choose me. The day when everybody
brings the individual work comes and I find that there is no connection between the
chapters. So I must read all pieces of information and try to gather them into a coherent
project work. So I work the whole weekend doing a team project work while my team
solves personal problems, does other homework or even has fun. As far as I am
concerned, when I become a teacher, I will never ask my students to do this kind of
project work.” (anonymous)
“My project consisted in writing about the most important English writers. I
cannot say I consider it extremely important or difficult to do. I chose this project because
I considered it the easiest. It took me a couple of hours to click right after selecting the
material and choose ‘copy’ and then ‘paste’. Of course, I had to reduce the information
before printing it. I do not believe the project to be useful for me, as I will never read
what is in it as I have already studied most of the authors and we are to study the rest of
them. It was just another duty I had to carry out as a student. I sincerely hope someone
will read it and will use it in order to do his/ her homework or simply to try to obtain
further information about a certain writer.” (I. T.)
 All in all, doing a project proved to be an instructive activity both for the students
and for myself. The students experienced the advantages and disadvantages of working in
a team, learnt more about their colleagues, and improved their skills in finding,
organizing, translating and presenting information. I learnt about my students’ interests
and personalities, and, hopefully, improved my organizing skills. And we all enriched our
general knowledge in the process.
 8. Class Management

8.1. Organizing the Class

a. Seating
For each activity we do in class, we have to consider what grouping, seating,
standing arrangements are most appropriate. Changing seating arrangements can help
students interact with different people, change the focus from the teacher when
appropriate and allow a series of different situations to be created in the classroom, as
well as add variety to the predictability of sitting in the same place every time. As it is
difficult to sit still for a long time, it may be useful to include activities that involve some
movement. The teacher can ask students to:
 turn around and sit backwards, working with the people behind them;
 sit on the ends of their row and work with people in the next row;
 sit on their desks and talk with people nearby;
 stand up, move around and return to a different seat;
 stand in the aisle space between rows;
 all come to the front (or another open space) to talk.
If the teacher has exclusive use of the classroom or shares it with other language
teachers, s/he might also find useful a longer-term rearrangement of the seats, for
example in a circle or in a horseshoe shape. That would be preferable to the usual
arrangement because it would allow eye contact, as well as convey a sense of equality
between the students and/ or between the students and the teacher.
Other possible short-time arrangements:
 “enemy corners” – 2 groups at opposing corners of the classroom;
 opposing teams – 2 rows at a distance from each other;
 face to face – 2 long rows face to face;
 “panel” – 3 people at the front, the others in a semi-circle;
 “buzz groups”– several groups of 4-5 people each; people change groups
occasionally;
 “wheels” – 2 concentric circles; the outer wheel can move round, changing pairings.
b. Giving instructions
It is very important to give clear instructions, in a simple language that is easy to
follow and to understand. For this:
 use only the essential information;
 sequence it in a sensible order;
 use short sentences – one sentence for each key piece of information;
 do not say things that are visible or obvious (e.g. I am giving you a piece of paper.);
 do not give instructions that they do not need to know at this point;
 create silence before giving the instructions;
 make eye contact with as many students as possible;
 make sure they are listening;
 project your voice clearly, without shouting;
 use gestures to clarify ideas;
 demonstrate rather than explain wherever possible;
 check that students have understood what to do – get one or two students to tell you
what they are going to do.
c. Patterns of Interaction
 Lockstep (Teacher-fronted class) – all students are working with the teacher, being
“locked” in the same activity and the same rhythm. It is the traditional way of
teaching, very suitable for the accurate reproduction stage, for instance. The
advantages of this pattern are that it keeps all students concentrated, the teacher can
be sure that everyone can hear what is being said and the students are given a good
language model from the teacher. The disadvantages are that the students get little
chance to practice and that the learning often goes on at the wrong speed / pace: the
teacher is too slow for the good students or too fast for the slow students. In many
cases, this pattern involves too much teaching and too little learning.
 Pairwork – the students work in pairs, all at the same time. The advantages are that
all students have the opportunity to speak at the same time, they use the language and
they are encouraged to cooperate. The disadvantages are that the students can switch
to their native tongue, they can make mistakes which remain uncorrected, and there
 may appear discipline problems. The pairwork should be kept short because it causes
boredom. If it does not work it should be changed or demonstrated.
 Groupwork – the students work in groups, of 3-6 students (usually 4, but an odd
number for an activity in which they have to vote). It basically has the same
advantages and disadvantages as pairwork, but it is more dynamic, more relaxing and
more exciting.

 Comment on ways in which we can counteract the disadvantages of

pairwork and groupwork.

8.2. Roles of the Teacher.

During a class / an activity, the teacher can play one or more of the following
roles:
 controller – s/he is in complete charge of the class, controlling what the students do,
when they speak and even the language they must use. It is very useful in certain
stages of the lesson, like that of introducing new language. When acting as a
controller, very often the teacher talks a lot, so s/he becomes a source of roughly
tuned input. On the other had, students’ talking time is reduced. The control should be
in a way relaxed, authoritative, but not authoritarian.
 assessor – a major part of the teacher’s work is to evaluate the activities performed
by the students. There are two main types of assessment: correction and feedback.

 Comment on the differences between correction and feedback and on the

way in which the teacher should employ them.

 organiser – probably the most important and difficult role, since the success of very
many activities depends on good organization. The teacher should tell the students
very clearly what they have to do, then set the activity going and then organise
feedback;
 prompter – the teacher encourages the students and gives suggestions; the teacher
should be however careful not to take the activity away from the students;
 participant – s/he can take part in the activity as an “equal” of the students, trying
not to dominate;
 resource – s/he helps the students with the language they do not know;
 tutor – a combination of resource and prompter; the teacher points students in
directions they have not yet thought of taking, either when they work in pairs or
groups in the classroom or when they work on longer projects;
 observer – during various activities, when the teacher observes what the students do
in order to be able to offer feedback but also in order to see the students’ reactions
and judge the success of failure of the activities; when acting as observer, the teacher
should not be too intrusive and intimidating.
The teacher can also leave the classroom and let the students manage the activity
by themselves.

8.3. Discipline
Good discipline is not synonymous with absolute quiet. Often students must be
actively involved in using the language to be learnt. During groupwork or pairwork there
is noise, as they all talk at the same time. On the other hand, a quiet student, although s/he
may not be interfering with the progress of the class, may not be learning anything, being
mentally hours or miles away from the classroom.
The first few weeks of the school year are of crucial importance in establishing
the classroom atmosphere which the teacher desires. Usually, at the beginning, there are 1
or 2 lessons during which the students are weighing up the teacher, after which they start
to test how far they can go. Therefore, it is very important for the teacher to establish as
soon as possible a code of rules that should be respected and to eliminate all possible
discipline problems before they become established habits. It is easier to start in an
authoritative manner and relax later in the year than to reestablish your lost authority.
Ways of avoiding discipline problems:
 Start the class promptly and with a spirit of enthusiasm and vigour.
 Get everyone’s attention before starting the recitation.
 Have your plan and all teaching aids ready. When using audio-visual equipment,
be sure you are acquainted with it before bringing it to the class.
 Watch all the students all the time.
 Keep eye contact to the class.
 Talk to all students and ask them to talk to the entire class.
 Call on those students who are beginning to lose interest.
 Encourage all students to attempt to answer the questions whether they have been
called on or not.
 Watch your voice. Be expressive, and speak loudly and clearly.
 Stand in class and move around.
 Make sure you are seen and heard by all students.
 Behave as if you were sure of everything.
 Admit your mistakes.
 Learn to “feel the pulse” of the class, so that changes can be made as the class
progresses.
 State the question before calling on the student.
 Call on students in a random fashion rather than by rows. Point to them rather
than call them by name in order to keep their attention focused on you.
 Use a variety of activities, so as to avoid boredom.
 Know the material before attempting to teach it.
 Do not use sarcasm. Do not hurt students’ feelings. Use humour constructively.
 Do not smile too often, as some students may interpret your smile as a sign of
weakness.
 Keep the students busy.
 Do not leave the assignment of homework to the last minute. Take time to explain
the homework.
 At the beginning of a new course, discuss with the students why they are studying
English, what uses they see for it, what their expectations are about what will happen in
the classroom, what they expect to enjoy and not to enjoy.
 Do not be afraid of the noise – there will be noise if the students are involved in
groupwork or pairwork, but do not be afraid of silence either – they need to concentrate if
they are solving some task, they need time to formulate a thought, to remember a word,
to consider a grammar structure.
We have to be aware of the fact that sometimes the discipline problems are caused
only by the students’ need to get more attention. That may be the only reason why they
constantly ask questions, do not pay attention, chat with their neighbours or, on the
contrary, are the first to finish an activity. Those who look for attention try to find more
stimuli, more sources or expressions of attention and get bored when they are not
available.
If something happens, act quickly. In order to be able to do that, learn as soon as
possible the students’ names and notice potential difficulties early (who speaks too much,
etc.). Notice the behaviour, but address the student when you are doing something else,
so as to give them the impression that you know everything.
A difficult student is not the responsibility of an individual teacher, but of the
whole school. Though there is no magic formula for dealing with this kind of students,
Brenda Townsend (1993) suggests the following strategy based on three main steps:
1. define the difficult behaviour;
2. find the reasons behind the difficult behaviour (with the help of other teachers and/ or
students);
3. plan a course of action to help the student modify his/ her behaviour.
There are also other steps to be followed:
1. list the behaviour traits you find difficult to accept with the respective student;
2. discuss this list with your colleagues – they may not be serious problems, just facts that
you personally do not accept (like dressing untidily);
3. try to find out as much as possible about the student in order to contextualize the
difficult behaviour;
4. if what you find helps you explain the behaviour, discuss with your colleagues what
can be done to help the student; if you find nothing relevant, go to step 7;
5. implement the adjustments;
6. after one week discuss with your colleagues if there are improvements in the student’s
behaviour; in this case just keep monitoring the students’ progress;
7. if there are no improvements or if you have found nothing to help you, discuss with
your colleagues strategies for confronting the student with the problem in a supportive
but firm way and for negotiating improvements with the student (in which case also
consider if you need to involve his/ her colleagues);
8. monitor the progress and make adjustments if necessary.
You should avoid engaging in a direct confrontation with the difficult student
because this might not solve the situation but rather exacerbate it.
You should be neither their friend, nor their parent, but their teacher. Remember
that good discipline results from good teaching and begins with complete, well-prepared
lesson plans.
 9. Planning

Why do teachers make lesson plans?

 to situate the lesson within the time limits;
 to be sure they do not run out of ideas;
 to avoid digressions;
 to organize in a coherent way the material they want to teach;
 to have a support during the class.
“Planning is essentially a thinking skill. Planning is imagining the lesson before it
happens. It involves prediction, anticipation, sequencing, organizing and simplifying.”
(Scrivener 109) Though many lessons may go well without any pre-planning, still this
helps the teacher by increasing his / her options. There will be still a lot of things that will
happen in the class even though they were not planned.
A written plan serves as a reminder of what the teacher has to do in the class. But
it is not set in concrete. The teacher has to “teach the learners, not the plan”. (Scrivener
109)
We should offer active and stimulating lessons, passing from one activity to
another without any waste of time, lessons that combine formative work (that brings
about changes in the students’ activities, behaviour and personality) and informative
work in a calm, relaxed atmosphere. We should do in the class what we cannot do out of
it.
There are three major principles for planning:
1. variety, which means using different types of activities and a wide selection of
materials;
2. flexibility, which means altering the plan to suit what actually happens in the
classroom (e.g. if an activity proves to be unsuccessful, it can be given up or
changed, if the CD player does not work or you forgot the material, you should
suggest something else, etc.);
3. coherence, which means that lessons need to have a logical pattern.
Adaptability is another key word, but it refers to what teachers do in the class.
They should be able to adapt the program to the different groups being taught.
 Still, however much variety and flexibility we offer, we should remember that
students like to feel secure in the class and will want to know what is happening.
Therefore, offer a variety of activities within a constant framework.
The following things should be taken into consideration when planning a lesson:
 the classroom atmosphere;
 the learners;
 the aims / objectives of the lesson (the aims are general, the objectives specific);
 the teaching point;
 the tasks and teaching procedures;
 the challenge;
 the materials;
 classroom management.
The most important are the aims and objectives, i.e. what the teacher hopes his /
her learners will have achieved by the end of the lesson. Once s/he knows this, the other
things will become clearer.
Planning becomes easier if we imagine how people learn a language. For
example, Scrivener (2005) suggests we can consider that they go from ignorance, to
exposure, noticing, understanding, practice and active use. Exposure is more or less
similar to the stage of lead-in, i.e. during this stage, the students see or hear the new item.
Noticing is more or less similar to elicitation, during which attention is drawn to the
meaning, form and use of the new item. Then, we should devise classroom work that fits
in with our opinion of the way in which we think people learn.
Formal plans are usually divided into three sections:
1. background information about the class, the teacher, the materials and the aims
and objectives of the lesson;
2. language analysis of the items that will be worked on in the class;
3. a detailed chronological stage-by-stage description of the intended procedure for
the lesson. This should include the name or number of the stage of the lesson,
what the teacher will do, what the students will do, how long it will last, what
kind of interaction there will be, etc.
 A good plan is one that can be used easily not only by the teacher who devises it,
but also by someone else.
According to Adriana Vizental (2008), there are three basic approaches to lesson
planning:
 the linear model – it is the traditional approach, according to which the teacher
decides the aims of the lesson and then chooses classroom activities that help
him / her attain the aims. It is too teacher-centred and focuses on teaching.
 the kaleidoscopic model – intends to teach students how to learn, how to locate
information and how to use it. Lesson planning is based on a series of activities
selected by the teacher and / or by the students, planned or unplanned. It is
learner-centred. The teacher may announce the topic and ask the students to find
tasks to illustrate it, etc. The model may become chaotic.
 the mixed model – teachers plan their activity according to the linear model, but
allow flexibility, innovation and spontaneity in the classroom activities. Students’
contributions are welcome.
Other approaches to planning
Instead of a formal lesson plan, we might use:
 a running order (list) of activities;
 a flow chart (activities put in boxes, with different variants for the sequence of
activities);
 dream through the lesson (do not write it down, just think of it);
 focus on the critical learning moments (plan only those);
 a half-plan;
 plan the critical teaching moments;
 the jungle path (do not plan anything, let the lesson proceed).
The lessons planned can be of the following types:
1. focusing on one skill: reading, writing, speaking, listening;
2. grammar lessons;
3. lessons of revision;
4. combined / mixed lessons, which are most common.
Planning a lesson involves:
 1. considering the students’ interests, needs and difficulties (e.g. their age and
linguistic proficiency; personality; whether they learn easily or not; whether they
show interest in the language course or are noisy and disruptive; the number of
students in the class) and establishing the objectives of the lesson according to
them;
2. reading and analyzing the contents to be taught (e.g. the lesson in the textbook);
3. matching the lesson with the curriculum and the syllabus in terms of objectives,
contents, skills and functions;
4. managing time.
The following physical constraints are to be taken into consideration when
planning a lesson:
 the time – the frequency of the lessons, the time of the day when they are
scheduled;
 the availability of teaching materials;
 the size of the classroom and the nature of the furnishing.
The teacher should be aware of the fact that the new lesson actually begins 20-25
minutes after the beginning of the class and s/he can actually count on 25-30 minutes
actual working time for the new lesson.
At the end of the lesson we should analyse what went right or wrong during it and
then modify the lesson plan accordingly for future use.
There is no unique, generally accepted format for the lesson plan, but here is one
model (cf. Harmer 1991)

Lesson Plan – Guidelines

Form:
Date:
Subject (Title):
Teacher:
Aids: blackboard, pictures, etc.
Aims: to develop the students’ capacity to communicate orally about …
Objectives: e.g. - the pupils can use the Present Perfect in sentences of their own;
- the pupils can speak about the weather;
- the pupils can ask and answer questions about …;
- the pupils understand the meaning and use of the following words / grammatical
structures / functions, etc.
Anticipated problems: …
PROCEDURE
Nr. Lesson Time Teacher’s Activity Pupils’ Activity Comments
Stage
1. Warm-up 3’ Informal conversation Response to Questions about
(greetings, how are informal questions; their weekend,
you, weather, etc.) pupils’ questions holiday, term
papers, pets,
family, etc.
2. Homework 5’ Did you do your Pupils respond Be sure to involve
Check-up homework? Was it individually etc. all pupils; check
difficult? Etc. Who everybody’s
wants to read? Would homework.
anyone like to come to
the blackboard to write
the correct sentence
etc.?
3. Reading 9’ Transition: Do you Pupils read text … Involve several
remember our last text? (on fragments, on pupils, not just the
What was it about? Etc. roles, silently and best.
Who would like to answer
read? Etc. comprehension
questions etc.)
4. Transition to 5’ Informal conversation Pupils talk in pairs Pairwork
the new about … (aids: pictures, and / or with the Personalization
lesson music, realia, etc.). teacher about …
5. Prediction 5’ Pre-listening Qs and Pupils answer Qs Groupwork,
task and perform task individual, etc.
Pre-teaching of difficult … Raise interest in …
words Prepare pupils for
listening task
6. Listening 10’ Listen to the Pupils listen and Check equipment.
task conversation on the fill in the blanks. Help pupils
tape and fill in the Pupils guess perform task.
blanks in exercise … meaning of some Check
unknown words comprehension of
from the context. text by checking
task.
7. Post- 5’ What is your opinion Pupils discuss with Personalisation
listening about the text? Discuss the teacher and in
with your partner. Do pairs, using new
 you agree with … ? Did words.
you like the text?
8. Issuing 4’ For the next time, Pupils take notes Write homework
homework please write a short about homework, on blackboard.
composition / ask questions if not Check that
paragraph / do exercise sure, etc. everybody knows
X (using the new what they have to
words). do.
9. Dismiss 4’ Mark pupils with Pupils record Praise active
pupils grades, or just make marks. pupils.
notes about their Greetings.
activity.
Greetings.

The format of the plan will depend on the personal preference of the teacher or,
when the teacher is observed, of the trainers, examination schemes or institutions.
When we plan a lesson, we should take into account the textbook, the curriculum
and the syllabus.
In the past, there used to be one textbook for each class (year of study), and the
language curriculum followed it closely, enumerating the texts and allotting a certain
amount of time for each. Nowadays, there is one national curriculum, but several
textbooks. However, though the lessons included in them have different titles, they
concentrate on the same topics, communicative functions and language.
The curriculum for English as Modern Language 1, to be used in the 5 th-8th
grades includes the following elements:
 the presentation note, containing information about the necessity of revising the
curriculum, the premises at the basis of its elaboration and its structure;
 the general competences of the discipline;
 the values and attitudes targeted by its study;
 the specific competences correlated with the forms of presenting the contents on
classes / years of study;
 the contents on classes / years of study;
 the curricular standards of performance;
 methodological suggestions.
 The curriculum also recommends that at the end of secondary education the
students’ level of English should be comparable with level A2 from the Common
European Framework.
The English language curriculum for secondary schools was revised in 2009, as a
consequence of the replacement of the objective-centred model, in use in the 1990’s, with
the competence-centred model, appeared at the Recommendation of the European
Parliament and of the Council of the European Union on key competences for lifelong
learning (2006/962/EC). The curriculum defines competences as “combinations of
knowledge, skills and attitudes that will have been developed by the end of compulsory
education and that are needed by an individual for his/ her personal fulfilment and
development, social inclusion, and employability on the labour market, and in order for
him/ her to become an active citizen.” (p. 2, transl. mine)
The general competences of the discipline English Language refer to: decoding
oral messages, producing oral messages, decoding written messages, producing written
messages. (p. 4, transl. mine)
The values and attitudes targeted include, among others: “manifesting flexibility
in idea exchanges and in team work in various communicative situations”; “becoming
aware of the importance of knowing some geographical aspects specific to the Anglo-
Saxon space”, refering, thus, on the one hand, to cultivating some general traits of the
children (“developing respect for other people”, “becoming responsible towards the
environment”), and, on the other hand, refering to the Anglo-Saxon culture in particular
(“manifesting curiosity towards the traditions and customs specific to the Anglo-Saxon
culture and civilization”, etc.). (p. 4, transl. mine)
Among the specific competences subsumed to the general competence of
decoding oral messages targeted by the 5th grade curriculum we can mention: “extracting
the overall meaning of a clearly articulated message uttered at a normal speed” or
“identifying specific information in a short message articulated clearly and rarely”. (p. 6,
transl. mine) The correlated forms of presenting the content are: oral presentations on
familiar topics, unofficial conversations, fragments of texts that describe events and oral
stories. (p. 6, transl. mine)
 The competences, the forms of presenting the content and the content marked
with asteriscs and written in italics in the text will be taken in consideration only in case a
certain class chooses an extended curriculum (3 classes per week). Examples, also for the
5th grade: *identifying the essential information in a standard discourse on familiar
topics, * audio-video recordings, respectively *expressing preferences.
The content (i.e. the language material) to be learnt includes: themes,
communicative functions/ speech acts and elements of construction of communication.
Examples for the 6th grade:
 themes: the child about him/herself: physical and moral traits, nationality, sport
activities, health; the family: family relations (revision and development), etc.
 communicative functions: asking and giving directions, initiating verbal
interaction, etc.
 elements of construction of communication: the noun: countable/ uncountable; the
adjective: degrees of comparison of irregular adjectives, etc. (p. 9, transl. mine)
Among the curricular standards of performance we can mention: “formulating
simple questions in situations of everyday communication”, “offering information
concerning familiar topics”, “narrating an event using descriptions and expressing
opinions.” (These are the standards for developing the competence of producing oral
messages.) (p. 16, transl. mine)
The methodological suggestions refer both to the syllabi and to the types of
activities and exercises recommended in the didactic process. For instance, for
developing the competence of producing oral or written messages appropriate in certain
communication contexts they recommend exercises and activities involving: asking
questions and giving answers, filling in forms and gapped texts, constructing paragraphs,
giving oral presentations/ written expositions, summarizing or expanding texts (orally or
in writing), projects, etc. (p. 17, transl. mine). Recommendations are also made regarding
the evaluation, to be carried out both in a traditional manner and by using complementary
methods, like the systematic observation, the project, the portfolio or the self-evaluation.
The same types of elements can be found in the curriculum for English as Modern
Language 2 for the 5th-8th grades and in the curricula for high school, structured according
to the year of study and the profile (theoretical, vocational or technological). The
curricula for the 3rd and 4th grades contain objectives instead of competences and
examples of learning activities instead of forms of presenting the contents. These last
curricula also lack the values and attitudes targeted and the methodological suggestions.
The syllabus (planificare calendaristică) is a document elaborated by the teacher
for each level or class, taking into account the curriculum and the textbook chosen. The
syllabus has the role of planning the didactic activity. It performs the following functions:
1. it helps the teacher keep time: each lesson is assigned a certain number of classes,
so as the textbook can be covered by the end of the year; by looking at the
syllabus, the teacher can see if his/ her pace is too slow or too fast, i.e. if s/he
should bring extra activities or deal briefly with certain items;
2. it matches the requirements of the curriculum with the actual conditions in the
classroom.
Therefore, in order to elaborate a syllabus we should read carefully the curriculum
and the textbook, analyse the course objectives and match the contents (the lessons) with
the objectives, establish the sequence of lessons, match the contents with the material
resources available, and manage time according to the objectives of the course and the
characteristics of the class. “In other words, the syllabus represents the teacher’s personal
plan for the language course, based on the requirements of the curriculum, the content of
the textbook, and the concrete conditions imposed by the school / classroom and the
group of students.” (Vizental 128)
Though many modern textbooks offer syllabi that can be used by the teacher, s/he
can draw her/ his own syllabus, which can be rather sketchy sometimes, like the
following (adapted from Vizental 2008):

School:
Teacher:
School year:
Grade:
Textbook:

Syllabus
Semester I
 Unit Content Competences No. of Week Audio- Obs.
lessons visuals
1. London At the 1.2, 2.3, etc. 2 1 handouts,
Airport (acc. to the cassette
curriculum)
Around 2 2 texts,
London pictures

When planning a sequence of lessons we should also apply the principles of

coherence (i.e. the lessons should be linked to one another) and variety (by avoiding
predictability and sameness – for instance having two successive lessons that begin with
the same type of activity).
 14. More Practical Activities

Topics for Discussion

1. Characterize briefly the grammar-translation method.
2. Characterize briefly the communicative method.
3. Characterize briefly the notional-functional approach.
4. Characterize briefly the direct method.
5. Characterize briefly the audio-lingual approach.
6. Comment on the role of the phonetic transcription in teaching English
pronunciation.
7. Comment on the criteria used in the selection of the vocabulary to be taught.
8. Give five examples of prediction activities to be used when teaching reading/
listening.
9. Comment on the differences between spoken and written English.
10. Give five reasons for using a lesson plan.
11. Mention and comment briefly on the various types of tests.
12. Define the information gap and state why it is useful in organizing a
communicative activity.
13. Mention three techniques of explaining new vocabulary.
14. Comment on the use of context in teaching a foreign language.
15. Give five examples of tasks to be solved while reading/ listening.
16. Major principles of lesson planning.
17. What is a balanced activities approach?
18. The role of feedback in language teaching.
19. Comment on the roles of the teacher during a communicative activity.
20. Comment on the difference between acquisition and learning.
21. Mention three ways of keeping record of the vocabulary learnt.
22. Types of contexts in teaching vocabulary.
23. Mention the stages of a lesson.
24. What is the principle of integrating skills?
25. Give five characteristics of a communicative activity.
 26. Comment on the advantages and disadvantages of using pairwork and groupwork.
27. Comment on the use of technical equipment in the foreign language classroom.
28. Basic rules of choral and individual repetition.
29. What is more important: fluency or accuracy? Motivate your answer.
30. Give and comment briefly on the five components of a general model for
introducing new language.
31. Give five examples of oral communicative activities.
32. Mention the ways of organizing the vocabulary to be taught.
33. Comment on the use of drills in the foreign language classroom.
34. Comment on the use of translation in foreign language teaching.
35. Problems with teaching English pronunciation.
36. Do you prefer teaching grammar inductively or deductively? Motivate your
answer.
37. Mention three techniques of teaching spelling.
38. Give three examples of written communicative activities.
39. Comment on the role of prediction activities when teaching reading/ listening.
40. Comment on the use of the mother tongue in the foreign language class.
41. What does “knowing a word” mean?
42. Comment on the use of visual aids in teaching vocabulary.
43. Difficulties with teaching English grammar.
44. Class management during communicative activities.
45. Characterize the student-centred approach.
46. Mention and comment upon five roles the teacher can have in the class.
47. Comment upon five ways of dealing with disruptive behaviour.
48. Comment upon the various patterns of interaction that can be used during class
activities.

Comment on the following:

1. Lessons should be planned and timed carefully.
2. Sometimes the textbook stops you from teaching well.
3. I teach each unit of the book in the same way.
4. I never sit down during my lessons.
5. I don’t worry if I don’t follow the lesson plan.
6. It helps to contrast the students’ native language with the target language.
7. Students should not use their mother tongue during the lessons.
8. Teachers should use only English in the classroom.
9. Acquisition is better than learning.
10. Mistakes should always be corrected.
11. The best place for the teacher is standing at the front of the classroom.
12. I like busy lessons – with as little silence as possible.
13. I talk too much in my lessons.
14. I always read the whole coursebook before I teach the first lesson.
15. Over-prepared lessons are as bad as under-prepared lessons.
16. Knowing a rule does not mean you can use the language better.
17. All mistakes should be corrected by the teacher.
18. Mistakes are best corrected as soon as the students make them.
19. Too much correction is as bad as too little.
20. The best way to explain is to translate.
21. I see no use for silent reading in the class.
22. It is useful to ask some questions about a text before reading it.
23. Conversation lessons do not need too much preparation.
24. The best topic for a conversation is one that interests the teacher.
25. Good teachers are born, not made.
26. A real second language teacher is on my side, lets me be me and tries to
understand what it’s like to be me, accepts me whether he likes me or not,
doesn’t have expectations of me because of what I’ve been or what he/ she
has been, is more interested in how I learn than in what I learn, doesn’t
make me feel anxious and afraid, provides many choices, lets me teach
myself even if it takes longer, talks so I can understand what he/ she
means to say, can make mistakes and admit it, can show his/ her feelings
and let me show mine, wants me to evaluate my own work.
 27. The good language teacher makes the course interesting, teaches good
pronunciation, explains clearly, speaks good English, shows the same
interest in all the pupils, makes them participate, shows great patience,
insists on spoken language, makes pupils work, uses an audio-visual
method.
28. The most important characteristics of teachers for the students are
empathy, sociability, willingness to help others and enjoyment of teaching.
The teachers should be able to put themselves on the same level as their
students and “learn” together with them. The teacher should help rather
than give orders. It should be a person who enjoys teaching more than the
subject, someone patient, sociable and friendly.
29. Learners come to class to learn a language, not to be amused. While
entertaining lessons are definitely more pleasant than serious ones, they
are not necessarily more instructive.

Read the following text and devise exercises that will help you teach it:

Ladies and Gents …

by Donald Watson

One of the trickier aspects of speaking a foreign language is knowing how to

choose the most appropriate word when there are several which seem to have the same
meaning. In casual conversation, for example, we may talk about crooks, instead of
criminals. Instead of man, we might say guy, bloke or chap, or an older person might say
fellow (which sounds rather dated nowadays). In most dictionaries these words will be
described as infml – informal. Similarly ass is a more informal way of saying an idiot or
fool. The word clot has the description sl in the dictionary – slang, since it is an even
more informal word for a fool. Further along the spectrum are the “taboo” words, and
there are many such abusive words for a fool which need not be mentioned here.
Informal vs. Slang
 It is important to remember that informal does not mean the same as slang. It is
quite appropriate to use informal words in informal conversation, but slang words are of
much less use to foreigners, since they are generally used only between people who know
each other very well or who share membership of a particular group in the community.
Slang words often have other connotations too. When people refer casually to policemen
as coppers, the word has nothing of the derogatory connotations of slang words like pigs
and fuzz. Informal words are somehow friendlier. People talk of their family as my folks
(I’m going to see my folks at the weekend) and their children as the kids, and when talking
to children adults often become grown-ups. In some situations a neutral word would
sound inappropriate in casual conversation: my former girlfriend sounds rather long-
winded, so we prefer to say simply my ex, the informal abbreviation of ex-girlfriend /
boyfriend / husband / wife. My ex turned up unexpectedly last night. It was terribly
embarrassing.
Informal words are often more economical in other ways too. A whole range of
words – employer, manager, superior – are all covered by the one simple word boss.
Too formal?
At the other end of the spectrum there are some words which are extremely
formal, even excessively so. These might not be used very often at all in conversation:
they are more appropriate in writing or when discussing people in an official context. For
example, spouse is “officialese” for husband or wife, infant is a more formal word for a
child or baby, and kin is more formal than family. The police will not release the identity
of the victim until the next of kin have been informed. Similarly alien is a more formal,
bureaucratic word for foreigner. Aliens are required to register with the police on arrival
in this country. Another use of formal words is as euphemisms (euph in the dictionary),
as when a worker is referred to as an operative. He’s a refuse collector, but he likes to be
called a cleansing department operative. The slightly misplaced use of formal words of
this kind can easily sound pompous. There is a further degree of formality in words
which are poetic or literary (lit in the dictionary) such as foe for an enemy. He makes no
friend who never made a foe. (from a poem by Tennyson). The word maiden for an
unmarried girl falls into this category, although we still say a maiden aunt and her
maiden name in a neutral sense. (from Speak Up. 53. October 1991: 36-37)
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