(Part two of a four-part series of articles)
Part one focused on the Content and Resources in the EFL Classroom.
Part two focuses on Content Plus and the Process of Teaching (the teaching way).
Part three focuses on Classroom Management and Discipline Techniques.
Part four focuses on Teacher Dynamics, the Teacher as a Professional, Teacher Evaluation and Development.

Be aware that your first difficulty may lie in convincing or persuading parents and senior, peer, more conservative English teachers that communicative teaching techniques and methods are best for really teaching students to learn how to use a language in the five skills of listening, speaking, reading, writing and thinking.

　　The new teacher is often very much alone in the beginning. This loneliness and lack of support can breed insecurity; insecurity breeds dependence-on textbooks and the “tried and true” methods. This in fact, breeds a false sense of security.

　　Excellent teachers are creative teachers; learning to depend on your own abilities (hopefully with support from senior colleagues) is a necessary life skill.

　　Perhaps the most interesting and challenging part of your teaching is creating a real language environment in the classroom – displays of student work, posters, pictures, English phrases, mobiles, English comics or storybook corner (!), signs for classroom objects, daily sentences, using real language practice activities etc. – depending on your student level of course.

　　It may even be appropriate to display signs around the (cram) school as well as in your classroom. Such examples of signs that shed a humorous light on learning a language in a functional way can be found here, and one of your most valued resources should be displayed in poster size and referred to frequently – this is your Classroom Phrases & Instructions poster found here.

　　If you have read the previous article on lesson plans, you will know that phonics cards are one of your best resources. Samples for making these are here, and the instructions for enlarging and printing are here. Combinations of vowel sounds and consonants should be taught in clusters, i.e. focus on a group of initials then finals, with short vowel sounds before you teach long vowel sounds. Obviously, when teaching new vocabulary, it pays to have the name of the pictured object on a separate card so that you can pair them together, or so that you can play classroom matching games with pictures and words, but for students practicing vocabulary and sentences in pairs, their mini-version flashcards should have the words on the back of the cards for partner testing.

　　The student textbook will most likely have the words matched with the pictures, but this should not be used until after you have inputted the vocabulary matched with the pictures (see the IRDP lesson plan previously mentioned).

　　 Following such lesson plan outlines give you a solid, secure sequence of teaching – this is your process – your teaching way.
Using Realia (real fruit, items of clothing, sports equipment, classroom objects etc.) is a very attractive way to introduce new vocabulary, and you should take advantage of topics that introduce common objects easily found. Introducing family for example, the students can bring a picture of their family to talk about, or talking about animals, they could bring a picture of their favorite animal or pet.

　　Naturally, if you are actively introducing new language, then your body language must be congruent with the vocabulary; –teaching adjective opposites are fun using this principle, and I am sure that you can think of what to do to show the difference between “fat-thin, tall-short, young-old, happy-sad, heavy-light etc.” Develop a sequence of signals that the students get comfortable with, and use them frequently when introducing new vocabulary. Simple signalling instructions like these should also be part of your teaching repertoire.

　　As you become more comfortable with the teaching process, you may wish to introduce games into the classroom. Many activities that you can give students are actual learning activities, but call it a game, and they will redouble their enthusiasm for the activity! There are typical cram school games which in my opinion, if used at Grades 4-6 of elementary school and above, merely waste a lot of time and lead to little learning on the part of the students, but “keep the students entertained”, which is what some (cram) schools and parents are happy with. These are fine for kindergarten and lower level classes, but not for higher levels. Examples of such games can be found here, and more advanced mid-level games here. Another example of Number 22 in the mid-level games is this anagram puzzle here.

　　I have mentioned using S-S pairings for practice, and this idea often scares a new teacher, who thinks that complete bedlam will result (and it will, unless you set clear rules first!). You should use this communicative technique in any case, as the students will get far more practice than you the teacher could ever give them using a T-S one-by-one approach, or a purely game-playing approach. Use a controlled approach in the beginning, and make the sharing task genuine, i.e. it should be a split-information activity, where each student is in possession of matching information that the other student does not have. In the beginning, some students will “cheat” and look at each other’s worksheet, so you may have to “model” what you want them to do. Ways of setting up pair-work once the students are familiar with this are found here.

　　What I have always found most successful before doing pair-work, is to use S-WC activities first as a “training” run. In this case, every student has a worksheet with a “Find someone who can/likes/eats/plays _______”, depending on whatever vocabulary and topic group you are practicing, and they have to go and talk to every class member to find out who can _____. Once they find someone, they should write down their English name on their sheet. Examples of this kind of worksheet are here for younger students, and here, rewritten for older students. Students of all ages like this kind of activity as they get a chance to talk with many other students, they get a lot of practice, and it’s fun. It also gives you the teacher, a chance to circulate and give weaker students support or advice, and an opportunity to get closer to your students – in fact, you may encourage them to also ask you questions! This activity is great for review and consolidation work.

　　Your textbook will give you a list of language themes, but here is a typical order of language topics that you will wish to cover in your syllabus (again, depending on the level).

　　As you may have to follow a school syllabus for extension vocabulary apart from your textbook, I am including two vocabulary lists here and here. The first one is the alphabetic GEPT 1,000-word list from the Taiwan Ministry of Education, and the second (which I feel is far more useful, as it is organized in topic groups and themes and thus more relevant for topics teaching), is the 1,000-word Little Language Vocabulary List for EFL Learners.

　　Getting back to the inputting stage, knowing how to use objects and pictures well is an important component and skill in your teaching, and is one of the biggest challenges beginning teachers face. Suggestions for this important skill are here.

　　One example of an activity that you can use once students have learnt lots of vocabulary in different topics is to set team game challenges (SG-SG). This is a variation on point seven in the previous sheet on Use of Objects, and is here, and can be used at all levels.

　　I mentioned at the beginning of this article about making your classroom as real as possible; with real activities being role-played activities, where the students practice as if in real daily life. You can make your classroom become a mini-English town or market by running shopping or sightseeing activities. After introducing a unit on food or shopping for example, you can set student shop assistants and shoppers up with labels at different locations in the classroom. A supermarket example is found here. Appropriate hats and signs for younger students make the activity a lot of fun. This principle works well with older students, even adults. A fitting finish to the food activity is a S-S board game in the last 15 minutes of the class; example here. In fact, I frequently use this game format as part of my process of topic teaching to wind up the lesson, and have used it with 10- to 50-year-olds.

　　So far, you can see that to run a communicative-style classroom, you need to consider using these kinds of teaching aides. This necessitates a lot of initial work on the part of the teacher in making many activities and game sheets etc, but once you have these, you can recycle them for repeat classes studying the same topic themes.

　　As your students get more confident at asking questions of you and each other, then your final triumph as a teacher will be to see them able to independently manipulate the language to find out things for themselves, with a questioning process that looks a bit like this sheet. This leads into WC-S activities where the students can ask questions of a student who is hiding/thinking of some “treasured” object that the class has to guess. The example here is for advanced classes, but the same principle can be used for younger students using simpler sentences.

Common Problems:

　　Pronunciation is something that trips many teachers up, and there are many common errors I encounter, every new class I teach. Apart from phonics drills and correct pronunciation teaching in the first place, another thing you can use apart from remedial work, is tongue twisters for children and adults, which are also fun (just make sure that you can say them yourself first)!

　　Handwriting is also another problem teachers have to deal with, and using simple worksheets to help students practice like this is helpful, after you have taught the letter strokes.

Running out of Activities is a common problem, but if this happens, then you should have a box of activity cards or ideas up your sleeve, like these suggestions here, or crossword puzzle examples here and here, which I designed using WISCO teaching software.

And talking of time, here is a sheet that explains how to use time words correctly.

(Part one of a four-part series of articles)

　 　Most teachers would agree that using authentic material is important in an EFL classroom. Authentic materials can raise student interest and give students important practice with English. However, introducing students to authentic material can be difficult for both teacher and student. Several problems could occur. These problems include vocabulary, overall comprehension, and motivation or level interest. Indeed problems with vocabulary and comprehension may be a major cause of a lack of interest among students with regard to authentic materials. Discovering Fiction is a series of books that addresses each of these problems in a way that gives students access to authentic English short stories. The book accomplishes this with effective pre-, during-, and post-reading activities.

　　One problem with authentic texts is that the students usually lack the vocabulary to understand each sentence in the text. This presents a barrier because students often feel uncomfortable when presented with segments that they do not understand. Furthermore, students might miss important parts of the story if they lack comprehension at the word level. Since many beginning students take a bottom-up approach to reading, they often resort to using their dictionary to translate all the words they do not know. This can slow reading down to a crawl and waste time that could be spent more effectively on other things. The Discovering Fiction series gives students support with both a bottom-up and top-down strategies. In the pre-reading section, there is an activity called “Story Preview” that addresses both strategies elegantly. This is a short summary of part of the story that will give students the main idea of what they will read without giving away too much of the plot. The Story Preview will give students the scaffolding to understand the reading even if they do not understand all the sentences. The Story Preview also introduces a set of about 5 words by using them in a way that allows students to guess the meaning from context. Students are then required to fill out a CLOZE activity using these words. This activity also reinforces an important reading skill: making educated guesses about unknown vocabulary. These two top-down tools (e.g. 1. knowing parts of the main idea of the story and 2. guessing vocabulary from context) will allow students to make sense of the story even though the level of the vocabulary is too high for them. Allowing students to access these stories will improve their level of interest. Furthermore, practicing these top down techniques of previewing and making inferences based on the context will improve their reading ability in general.

　　It is sometimes said that students must have a reason to read in order to get something out of it. A during-reading activity helps to give students this reason to read. The Discovering Fiction series has effective during reading activities. Before reading, students are asked to make a prediction about what will happen in the story based on the Story Preview. They are then asked to write a short entry in their journal elaborating on their prediction. As they read, they can check to see if this prediction is correct. Thus, before students have even begun, they are given a motivation to read that is based on the content of the story as opposed to a generic command from the teacher to “read this text, please.” This might improve their internal motivation and let them engage the story more deeply.

　　As a student reads, he or she should be encouraged to read fluently and not stop to look up words in a dictionary. The Story Preview and the set of words introduced in the beginning make it unnecessary to look up words in order to comprehend the main points of the story. Indeed, without resorting to a dictionary, the student will be able to do the during-reading task of seeing if he or she predicted the ending of the story. These are stories that can be read during class time in about 10 to 15 minutes, so the teacher will be able to monitor students and encourage them to read fluently without over-reliance on a dictionary. Enforcing a time limit, could also be useful, as could reminding students that they can always come back later and re-read it and look up words in their dictionaries.

　　In fact, the post-reading tasks in this chapter encourage re-examination of the text. Something like close-reading is encouraged as students are asked to guess the meanings of certain important words from the story by returning to the story, scanning it for the words, re-reading the context of the word, and guessing the meaning. Before students do the vocabulary practice, they are offered a chance to discuss the story in groups. In this discussion, they can make sure they understand the most important plot points of the story. This general knowledge can help students understand the context in which of the vocabulary exists. In addition to vocabulary, there is a grammar focus. The grammar focus is usually not enough to teach students a new form of grammar, but rather its purpose is the reinforce something students learned in the past. It also places grammar in a meaningful context for the students to see its usage. Again, students can scan the text to find the grammatical forms to re-read them in context. If time permits, teachers may assign the grammar practice activity that is provided by the book to give students more practice. Finally, there are a number of post-reading activities that focuses on the meaning of the story. These activities allow for critical thinking and are a good payoff for the hard work put into the other activities. Students can show knowledge and apply what they read by making charts or writing paragraphs using the content of the story as the focus. These activities are well structured and can be a satisfying conclusion both for student and teacher.

　　This text is not without its problems. For example, the pre-reading activities might be a little too extensive. Using all of them might take too much time and leave the students tired of the story before they even begin. Also, sometimes I feel that the story preview gives away too much of the story. The suspense is lost as a result. The teacher might choose leave out certain activities if need be. Another objection could be that the stories contain too much vocabulary. If a student were to take a bottom-up approach, he or should would need to look up several dozen words in order to read the text. The unknown words go far beyond what is dealt with the exercises and some students will be left is a state of confusion over these extra words, some of which are low-frequency words that do not need to be memorized. Student will often write the Chinese translation above a large percentage of the words. When they do this, I always wonder if they are reading English or a slightly altered form on Chinese. Extensive reading has been shown to be effective if there is a limited number of new vocabulary recycled frequently. This is difficult to achieve in authentic material. However, the texts that are chosen are quite readable by students, as long as the students are willing to accept a certain amount of ambiguity and make inferences based on whatever background knowledge they can bring to bare.

　　In sum, the Discovering Fiction series is book that can allow a teacher to bring authentic material into an EFL classroom successfully. The stories contain many more words than are practical to deal with in class, but by using top-down reading skills, students can manage to have a satisfying reading experience with the more manageable set of words that is taught in the chapter. The book is focused mainly on top-down strategies, but there is support for some bottom-up strategies in the form of vocabulary work and grammar activities. The activities in one chapter are enough to fill several hours of class time if all of them are done faithfully, but if the teacher picks and chooses a chapter can be completed in just one (slightly rushed) hour. The collection of stories in the book are varied and interesting. They are arraigned, generally, from easiest to hardest, but a teacher could pick and choose which stories to skip and which to use, given his or her own judgment. I have used this book as a supplement to a non-fiction book called Interactions 2 (see last month’s issue) in reading course. I have found that this book has often been a nice diversion and a good compliment to the non-fiction book. Fiction can sometimes be difficult to introduce to students in a test-based educational system, but the Discovering Fiction series certainly made it much easier to do in a way that encouraged use of reading skills and critical thinking skills. I recommend it to anyone looking to introduce authentic English short stories into their EFL reading classes.