IEC HT Languages to Young FT yey aa gli ae bs Te ey Escaneado con CamScannersping Languages 10 YOUNE ACOSSS N Teaching 14 Effective support for children’s foreign language 3.6 discourse skills .ction has demonstrated that a use the foreign i ive or description requires the assembling Of iq BU, juce narrative or descr , : OF idege Re to procs ‘discourse patterns, in pear ee val make sense tg ising, organs translate this idea to the teaching of foreign languages ints, We ei w teachers can support children’s oral skills develo, men ae 10 see Pom ducing a short spoken description of an aninva} PM. If task 0 ble to transfer the ideas and sugpesy Yt! be usc? again; readers will be able BBEStions ty of ed tasks. ‘The previous Se 7 he 3.6.1 Support through motivating topics int to be made is that if children are to talk Meanin, 7 Cee aaa classrooms, they must have Something they fll in say. Pupil E’s talk makes this point very strongly ~ he wanted ty talk about this budgie, and his motivation seems to push him to Manage tg do so. A and B did not have the same motivation to talk about the fox or the reindeer. Pupil E re-created the teacher's task so that it gave him the opportunity to talk about something that interested him, but for every confident pupil lke E, there are many more like A and B yt” won’t take control and whose opportunities for language using ang thus for language learning are thereby reduced. Once again the teaches an take on the responsibility for adjusting tasks and topics so that they relate to pupils’ interests. A sure way to do this is by building in to a task an element of choice for pupils. Encourage them to choose which animal they will talk about, and if they lack information they may least be motivated to discover it. Find things in which the children a experts, whether that is the life of budgies, how to Program the computer, or football teams, and use these interests in tasks, 3.6.2 Support through task structure Children usually benefit from knowing what is going to happen at the different stages of a task. I suspect that when A and B wrote fox and reindeer on the board, they did not know that they would be asked to describe them. By the time E’s turn came, he might have worked out what the task was and have deliberately chosen the budgie because he knew he could talk about it. Sharing with the pupils the expected outcomes of the task will usually help pupils. It helps too if a task has a clear goal or purpose. Here purpose means a communicative or interpersonal Purpose — why was one pupil to tell 58 Escaneado con CamScannerLearning the spoken language bout an arctic animal? To _ a are I? To construct a hi fast to say these things to another person, Why might the cian yest Throw the descriptive information? Why would the pupil were eee fn? As the task was set up, no clear purpose was given, Inhofe K a was git thetict, pupil E changes the task and seems to create 9 real eg , human for his talk; the teacher wants to - Pa pose mii cough ca tba, iting people what they don’t know, but are interested to ed Spout. Human beings are generally interested in the lives of other le. Such interest underlies our fascination with soap operas fy Pr eazines that show the houses and parties of film and Testes nt Other more intricate purposes might be constructed. One way to d this is to think of an imaginary situation or event in which 7 h Janguage would naturally be used. Perhaps a very unusual animal had been spotted in the neighbourhood ~ a polar bear wandered down fi further north or a pet lizard escaped. Then a news acpaHtes Gait describe the animal so that people could look out for it. Petheps someone has lost a valued pet and prepares a description to be read 7 én local radio to encourage other people to help find it. Sometimes real situations can be created — perhaps the class is preparing a video, CD- ROM, or cassette and pictures about local animals to exchange with a school in another country. Each of these situations supports the produc- tion of language by linking it to real people and purposes; each situation or event produces constraints on who would say what, and how, that limit the language that is needed while, at the same time, provide a reason for using it. The final way in which tasks can support oral skills development is through their structure, and in particular through the preparation stage. If producing a description is the core activity in our task, with goals and outcomes decided on, then the preparation stage allows for preliminary work to assemble ideas, vocabulary and sentences, and to put together and rehearse the extended description. Willis (1996) suggests various ways this can be done, and many of her ideas can be adapted for younger learners. In section 3.7, I give examples of short language practice activities that can build language resources and discourse skills either immediately before a description task or in the weeks and months building up to one. 3.6.3 Support through language practice Interest in a topic and purpose for a task, though important, are not enough. Even when talking about his budgie, pupil E still needed more 52 Escaneado con CamScanner’ ge teaching bans! word, phrase and clause Jey, i ch bis Englise ae evel to organise their tal, inet berg | “i iscou! toy Bool * INto ay | ser i fan IN ah a eripti is differs in i from 48age tion. hat this : ame an ed ro accept ae first language ee languay igi Wrest language: Ul continual stream of spoken scours, frog! a AIS t nmersed in a is and phrases while also being helped or Mhigh iscourse. Foreign language teaching -Y Ady « di i lic of exposure to the language by Providin’ i 0 tunities. I suggest os although Patticipatign & th learning OPP of foreign language learning, it is Not the only adit course is the Hepes and that direct language Practice at wo, ch es | of reaching ae vel has an important contribution to make jn bai | and sea re (see also Widdowson 1998). The Part-skills of Usinalte discourse sit (phrase and sentence level can then Hue ©! Wing Lo ah discourse-level practice. compensate “Sing t Ombine ‘a integrate e learning principles and research show. that lan, Sea llowii and young learners need much the sq mie uae bursts and more frequently: models of language use to listen to, notice and appropriate, plentiful opportunities for repeated listening; - plentiful opportunities to say the words and Phrases; ~ feedback on production to improve fluency and accuracy, Producing extended talk in addition requires: ~ preparation time; . . - einer for remembering the information to be included, while talking; ~ rehearsals of large chunks of talk, as well as words and phrases, In addition, the central message of this chapter bears Tepeating yet again ~all these types of language practice should make sense to the child, as an activity and as meaningful language. ildren 242Pted for other topics. Most will wok children hee only ten, They can be used with language that the F e 'Y Met for the first time, or to revise languag’ 60 Escaneado con CamScanner