CLASS PREPARATION

ELEMENTS
Here you will find a list of elements that need to be taken into consideration when
preparing a class. Before beginning their classes, teachers must write their names,
date, and lesson (the lesson number, that is, “part 1” or “part 2”) on the board.
 
Teacher’s Desk (a report of the students’ class preparation): Before class,
check if your students have prepared their classes. It will help you to plan the class
better as well as address specific students who have not prepared their class.
 
Digital Resources: All classes contain a set of digital resources that help teachers
explain language topics and do their overall teaching. Teachers are free to select
the ones they want to use. A list of digital resources available for each activity is
found in the Teacher’s Guide.
 
Duration: the duration of each activity as indicated in the Teacher’s Guide. It is
part of the teacher’s responsibility, in terms of classroom management, deal with
this item accordingly to the following point: do students take more or less time to
finish an activity than the TG anticipates? Avoid rushing through activities if you are
behind schedule. It is wiser to plan a more conscious catch up strategy for your
next classes. Make sure the School Coordinator is aware of any substantial delay.
 
Grouping: Groupings are possible ways in which students should be grouped
according to their levels.
 

 SAME LEVEL: Students should work only with students at the same levels.
 NEARBY LEVELS: Levels are grouped according to their moments in the
learning process and the topic or activity being performed.

Examples:

 Basic 1 + Basic 2 / Basic 3

 Basic 3 + Intermediate 1
 Intermediate 1 / Intermediate 2 + Intermediate 3
 Advanced 1 / Advanced 2
 
 

 MIXED LEVELS: Groups must be formed with the greatest variety of levels
available in the classroom.

 
Setting: Settings are classroom management organizations of students, according
to the relationship between teacher/student and student/student.
 

 U-shape
 Pairs
 Groups (3 to 4 students)
 Individual

 
NOTE ON GROUPING AND SETTING RELATION: grouping should prevail over
setting at all times. When the teacher needs to make a decision on how to divide a
group, the grouping should lead the decision. For example, imagine there are six
students in class, with five being Basic 1 and one being Basic 3. If the suggested
grouping is SAME LEVEL (Basic 1) and NEARBY LEVELS (Basic 2 and Basic 3)
and the suggested setting is IN GROUPS, the teacher must arrange her students
according to the grouping, which means she will have all Basic 1 students working
together by forming a pair and a trio. The Basic 3 student in the group will naturally
work individually.
 
Procedures: instructions on how the teacher should deal with the activity.
Procedures may also contain common problem-solving suggestions for the activity.
 
Links: small talk started by the teacher to connect elements from one activity to
the previous one. Links produce a feeling of constant flow in the class.
 
Chat: moments selected by a teacher to engage students in unplanned talks.
While preparing classes, teachers should identify the questions that will naturally
lead students to a chat about the topic. It is important to bear the activity topic in
mind as you chat in order to avoid spending time talking without a purpose. Chats
should be used to promote more in-depth discussions about questions contained in
the book according to students’ interests and to class goals, creating a light
environment where students feel that the class is similar to an informal talk with
language exercises. See below the two types of chat we employ.
 

 CONTROLLED CHAT: mostly yes or no questions. Students are not

expected to elaborate on their answers.
 OPEN CHAT: mostly content questions. Teachers are supposed to
encourage students to elaborate on their answers.

 
Vocabulary Investigation: This section is not included in the Teacher’s Guide of
every activity. It is, rather, a note at the beginning of the TG for teachers to keep in
mind while teaching. Students will frequently ask questions about the meaning and
use of words and expressions. They will also ask teachers how they can say in
English a word they only know in Portuguese. Besides that, they may misuse and
produce mistakes related to vocabulary choice. These are the moments when
Vocabulary Investigation plays a role in our methodology. Take the chance to
analyze collocations, lexical groups, fixed and semi-fixed expressions, and other
language chunks. Words are rarely used alone. They are almost always used with
other words, in a context. When focusing on a Basic level questions regarding the
meaning of words, for example, give preference to lexical groups and collocations
when doing Vocabulary Investigation. Pay attention to students’ interest and to
time constraints.
 

 COLLOCATIONS: Words that frequently co-occur.

have a bath, have a drink, have a good time

 

 LEXICAL GROUPS: Words that share a community of meaning.

time, hour, minutes and seconds

 

 FIXED AND SEMI-FIXED EXPRESSIONS: Short phrases that allow little or

no variation.

Have a good day / night / time!

 
There are moments in which the teacher should only explain vocabulary, and for
such moments, the following techniques should be used: body language, visual
aids, examples, contextualization, definition, word association games etc.
 
NOTE: It is important to acknowledge that teachers often should explain the words
that, although being more difficult to understand, do not play an important role on
students' fluency. On the other hand, common and everyday words should always
possible be investigated - since they play a crucial role on students' fluency. For
example: the verbs to take, to get, to have, to keep and others.
 
Output Awareness: it’s the teacher’s ability to help students overcome silence,
which may have been caused by the fear of mistakes, shyness, the need for time
to think, etc. In the discourse approach landscape, teachers must be engaged in
leading students from sentence to discourse level. How can they do that? We have
established three ground rules to help teachers in this task:
 

 MAKE ROOM FOR PRODUCTION: This refers to the relationship between

Teacher Talking Time (TTT) and Student Talking Time (STT). Teachers should
respect students’ natural flow of speech (quantity and quality) and give
preference to Student Talking Time (in pairs, in groups, to the teacher).

 MAKE ROOM TO PRODUCTION: Questions and tasks must be discourse-

oriented. This can be understood by answering the following questions: Which
of the following questions will lead students to produce discourse instead of
sentences? “What did you use to do twenty years ago?” or “Tell us what your
life was like, twenty years ago.” Teachers tend to be more grammar-oriented,
using questions that lead students to sentence production.

 
 

 SHAPE LANGUAGE PRODUCTION (DISCOURSE INVESTIGATION): By

making discourse-oriented questions, teachers will be able to observe a wide
range of language constructions and choices. It is clear that teachers should
intervene and correct mistakes by using suggested correction techniques, but is
that enough? Aren’t teachers also supposed to interact with correct utterances
to incentivize students’ discourse production? Shaping discourse means to
provide students with new tools in addition to the ones they already have. It
 actually has nothing to do with notions of correct or incorrect production.
Instead, it has to do with constant improvement. Such comments as:

 “Come on. Make your statement more formal.”

 “How can you make that sentence more polite?”
 “Can you think of other ways to state your point of view?”
 “Okay, let’s say you are supposed to produce a definition of this same thing
without using the verb TO BE.”
 “Besides the Simple Past, can you use other verb forms to describe your life
twenty years ago?”
 “You know, what you said might have more than one meaning. What can
you do to prevent misunderstanding?”
 “All right, your sentence is absolutely correct, but it sounds a little misplaced.
You shouldn’t address a waiter this way. Can you guys think of other possible
sentences?”

 
 
Speech: This section is not included in the Teacher’s Guide. It is a topic for
teachers to keep in mind while teaching. It has to do with the language used by the
teacher during the class that takes into account the levels of the students. Speech
is made of linguistic and non-linguistic features (body language, visual language
such as drawings and pictures, etc.) In addition to that, teachers must carefully
analyze the language they use in order to promote real-life communication in the
classroom—, which means avoiding the use of “sanitized” language in order to
make themselves clear, or understood. Speech should be considered a tool to
avoid misunderstandings. Teachers should not be eager to make themselves
understood at any cost. The following aspects are the most conspicuous elements
of speech.
 

 BODY LANGUAGE: It helps anthropomorphize and bring alive actions and

things in general, being vital for students at Basic levels.
 EYE CONTACT: It is of great importance for students at all levels because it
keeps them emotionally connected to the class.
 STRESS AND INTONATION: They set patterns of native-like talk, and give
color and shades to words and phrases.
 ARTICULATION: It is extremely important when dealing with students at
Basic levels, but it should not be confused with speaking too slowly at the cost
of naturalness.

 
Teacher Talking Time (TTT): In order to understand the nature and role of TTT,
we should ask ourselves the following question: Why do English teachers speak
and what should be their purpose when using the language in the classroom?
 

 TO INSTRUCT AND MODEL: Teachers guide students to what they have to

do and how they have to do it, as well as help them in case they don’t
understand something.
 TO EXPLAIN: Teachers explain language through examples, questions,
role-playing, narratives and

board record.

 TO MOTIVATE: Teachers should naturally motivate students. However,

motivating is more than simply saying, “Way to go, Student!” or “Great job,
Student!” We motivate our students every time we turn our classroom into the
perfect setting for a get-together. Our motivation is more related to the pleasure
of meeting each other than to some motivational cliché of a sentence.

 
Considering all these elements, how much (and “how essentially”) do you speak?
Teachers’ use of language in the classroom should always be based on these
three elements (INSTRUCT/MODEL, EXPLAIN, and MOTIVATE) and these two
features: naturalness and conciseness. Do not simply assume that “teachers
should talk less” or “teachers must not talk all the time.” If you do, your speech may
come across as unnatural or artificial.
 
Real-life Language: Teachers should not have to simplify a language to make
themselves understood. Using real-life language in the classroom means to
respect students’ trust. They believe that teachers will help them learn, so they
shouldn’t be misguided with the excuse that their teacher is helping them avoiding
the difficulty and struggle involved in acquiring a foreign language. If they insist on
“simplifying” things artificially, teachers will in fact just be postponing and making
learning even more painful. It is almost as if they were getting rid of a “problem” for
someone else to have to deal with that problem in the future. At Wise Up, we
believe that real-life language must respect two main issues that establish a rich
dialogue.
 

 APPROPRIATENESS OF LANGUAGE SELECTION: Which lexical items,

grammar structures, pronunciation patterns and sentence constructions are, in
fact, used in real-life situations and do not constitute “sanitized classroom
language?”
 APPROPRIATENESS TO THE AUDIENCE: While selecting the language to
be used in the classroom, one must also ask oneself this question: “Who am I
talking to?”

 
If the aforementioned is overlooked, teachers may fall into the following trap:

 Using appropriate language but not perceiving the nature of their audience
(Basic, Intermediate, and/or Advanced level learners).
 “Sanitizing” or making up structures that follow mother-tongue patterns in
order to make language more easily accessible to learners (Basic,
Intermediate, and/or Advanced level learners).

 
Correction Techniques: used by the teacher as a mean of making mistakes a
positive part of learning process. All mistakes should be used as tools that enable
students to deepen their target language understanding. Because of that, we do
not use the correction-on-the-spot approach, which consists of the teacher spotting
a mistake the moment it is made, interrupting the student, and providing the
student with the correct answer straight away, denying him a chance to learn from
his mistake by thinking about its nature. We believe that mistakes are part of the
learning process and should be seen as a natural outcome of student attempt to
learn a foreign language. Therefore, teachers reactions to mistakes should aim at
turning mistakes into a moment students revisit their language use. We want
students to experience mistakes not a curse or something they should be ashamed
of but as a mental process.
 
 

 SELF-CORRECTION: used for those previously taught topics so students

can correct themselves. The teacher could, for instance, repeat the sentence
up to the moment when the mistake or misuse took place and prompt the
student to finish the sentence. Alternately, the teacher could also provide
choices for the student to correct herself. We do not recommend that the
teacher repeat the mistake with a facetiously confused look in his face to
prompt the student to correct herself.

 
Example:
Student says, “She went to the movies with your husband.”
Teacher says, “She went to the movies with…?”
Student says, “Oh, her! She went to the movies with her husband.”
or
Teacher says, “Did she go to the movies with your husband, my husband or her
husband?” (stressing the possessive adjectives in that sentence as a way to
highlight all three and not as way to give away the answer)
 

 RECASTING: The teacher should rephrase the students’ sentences or piece

of discourse in a way that he corrects the mistakes they have made. To make
recasting an effective tool, however, the teacher needs to prompt the student to
interact with him right after the sentence is rephrased so he, the teacher, is able
to check whether the correct form was absorbed. Emphasis, intonation, and
turn taking are key elements in this type of correction.

 
Example:
Student says, “She watch a movie yesterday.”
Teacher says, “I went to the theater, but my brother also watched a movie. What
did your girlfriend do again?”
Student says, “Oh, okay. She watched a movie yesterday.”
NOTE ON SELF-CORRETION AND RECASTING: In the Teacher's Guide, SELF-
CORRETION and RECASTING are suggested as complementary correction
techniques since the teacher should decide which one to employ based on the
student’s level. If an Intermediate 1 student makes a Present Perfect mistake, the
teacher should opt for RECASTING (meaning the topic hasn't been presented yet).
However, if the student is in Intermediate 3 or up, then the teacher should opt for
SELF-CORRECTION.
 

 CLASS CORRECTION: The teacher is supposed to write the mistakes and

misuses on the board and ask all the students in the group to share knowledge
and correct the sentence.

 
Example:
Student says, “He already been to Russia.”
Teacher says, “Hmm. Let’s see. So, class, what do you think of this sentence?
Isn’t there something missing?”
One or more students: “He has already been to Russia.”
 

 GROUP CORRECTION: The teacher has to interact with the groups, one by
one, while they are doing their tasks, and provide them with hints and
corrections to facilitate their language production.

 CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK: The teacher should gather students in pairs or

groups and make them compare their production. While they do that, students
are expected to correct themselves as well as each other, providing
suggestions or feedback to enhance their peers’ production. It is a moment in
which they share and exchange information. The most important aspect of
Corrective Feedback enables the overall improvement of the production of
groups or pairs through peer interaction, but it is only effective if all students
have done the activity before class.

 NOTE TAKING + FEEDBACK: The teacher takes notes of students’

misuses, mistakes, and lapses during a specific interaction. At the end, she is
supposed to write those notes on the board and ask all the students in class to
help correct those mistakes.

 
 
Closing: It is at this moment (at the end of a class, hence the title) that the teacher
offers students feedback regarding their learning process and their progress. The
goal of Closing is a motivational one: to help students relate to the process. It is
important to mention that motivating students does not imply only refer to class
positive moments. If necessary, teacher should address delicate or difficult
moments to help students understand what happened. We could say that teachers
often use the close to praise student's effort, refer to negative or positive attitudes
students had during class time, demand student's commitment or participation,
help students understand the process of learning a foreign language. Good
teachers before the closing usually asks themselves: Emotionally speaking, How
do I want my students to leave the classroom? The Closing should be carried out
in English—except when you need to address a more delicate matter and
Portuguese will enable students to express themselves more freely, clearly and
easily.