3 What can go into a lesson? be exposed to lots of new language and may even notice things about it, both consciously and unconsciously, but because they are tired or unmo- tivated, or motivated NOT to remember or learn, or because they are working with language they perceive as being difficulr, will not be able to remember or use it. They will need lots of motivating and many moves through the noticing, remembering, using and refining cycles before they feel they have gor the hang of it. I have put the ‘use’ stage slightly to one side because it is also possible to use language again and again witho: noticing much about ir or caring that you are using it wrongly, thus with- out refining it. We have probably met lots of people (ourselves included!) whose target language has fossilised in this way. Although the order of the stages of exposure and noticing seems logi- cal, learning and refinement and use can happen in many different orders and simultaneously in the experience of the learner, It’s highly unlikely thar all the stages of work méntioned above can be got through for all the new language in one lesson (:). Inis likely, however, that most of the stages are necessary over time for new language to be learned, and thus they need to be planned in, 3.4 Language skills In order to express yourself in any spoken language and understand other people, you have to be able to read, write, speak and listen in the ryet language. So time has to be Spent practising and using these skills, s been fashionable in recent Years. break down these four skills auibsokills) by considering what a IGirner has t""S4 each Skill in order to tunction effectively, glistening When listening, one has to be able to: @ recognise sounds, words and phrases . @ get the general idea, remember salient points and Predict what’s deers. ghi coming next Nwvaiton @ understand the Ae ion get used to liste: Exposition of time ® screen out what you're not in interested in ® deal with accents and dialects ® interpret a Message aj respond accordingly discourse type or genre you're listening to ning to different types of People for differing lengths terested in and focus on what you are igainst a background of expectations and 923.4 Language skills ‘© Speaking When speaking, you have to be able to: ; © use different parts of the mouth and body from those needed in your own language . © make individual sounds and combine them Aeduc ens ® produce correct stress on individual words and on longer stretches depending on the meaning you want to convey vecord/ recor. @ use intonation (including tones across discourse) # work with appropriate rhythm and pace @ express your own meaning and your own personality by choosing from a range of physical and verbal expressions @ interact with people appropriately, repairing breakdown of messages, taking turns and speaking alone for short and long periov's ® describe, agree, beg, plrad, insult ... and all as naturally as possible Naturalness also involves clothing, posture and’ body orientation, gesture, body contact, facial expression and gaze. . Reading When reading, we need to be able to: @ recognise different formats such as headlines or faxes and different styles and genres ® know letters, words and phrases ® understand implication and style ® skim, scan, predict, guess and remember @ relate what we've read to our own experience, mentally agree or disagree, criticise or commend; physically turn the pages from right to left, and read the lines from left to right ® survey books; speed read * read aloud * pore over what every word means or cead for pleasure and the general idea leok oF And stody carefelly 6 Writing When writing we need to be able to: @ form individual letters, both upper and lower case, space them from left to right in relationship to a line and join them up ® think of something to write * make sentences with punctuation ® indent and know what a paragtaph is 93SE Aa a 3 What can go into a lesson? © write different kinds of texts such as letters, postcards and summaries, with appropriate choice of layout, vocabulary and . logical structure Editin 4p read and reread our own work, crossing out, rewriting and reorganising as well as correcting grammar, spelling and punctuation @ write with accuracy, fluency and confidence Practical principles for working on skills and sub-skills All of these skills and sub-skills can be dealt with in the language class- room, Here are a few suggestions if you decide to include this type of work: @ Take nothing for granted. Individual students can have very different skill profiles. Just because a student can fluentlyjfor example, i acaba con wre well. Groups too can differ wildly in cfs respect. One ‘inter M@diate group will have good listening skills, another won't. @ boas the fact that students having problems with skills work May not just be suffering from a lack of facility with the target language. Many students are either short-sighted, hard of heari st suffer from ek or severe dyslexia or word blindness, eee you hear of certain things as being ‘forbidden’ (such as ‘using mother tongue-English dictionaries, asking students to read aloud in class, letting students read transcripts while listening to a tape, etc.), doesn’t mean you have to accept this without thinkiny about it, Tithe same vein, there are good reasons sometimes for using a particular skill order, but there are no hard and fast rules, Irs ace lle, do writing before speak eading before listenin, er ee If you think there may well exist an initial ‘silent.phasedin language learning, then build in some ‘no response necessary’ or ‘minimal response’ activities to your classes. ~ ‘The proportion of-time.you spend on.different skills.will. depend on why your students areJearning thelanguage. If they have mo chance roffisten to or speak to other English language users, don’t deny them the chance to stay in touch with the language and gain pleasure from it by reading. Skills can be worked on indizidually and in combinations depending on what students are hoping to use the language for. There used to be quite a lot of attention paid to the differences between formal (usually written) and informal (usually spoken) texts. The sorts of differences often mentioned were that written m4 |3.4 Language skills language was considered densely packed with information, not immediately interactive and lasting. Spoken language,was seen as often more spontaneous, full of hesitation and redundancy, usually interactive and often ephemeral. These sorts of differences are still ; ones you could spend time on in class. But views have changed a bit in the last 10 or 15 years. People now feel that the differences are less hard and fast than they used to be. Much of what we hear on the radio and TV, for example, is unscripted and st we can’ interact with the speakers, Lots of natural speech ends up quoted in Writing. New forms of communication such as e-mail are blurring the old distinctions. Differences between speech and writing still, exist but they may now be in terms of intricacy and density, Be careful in skills classes to sort out your motives at various stages. Are you using a text because it’s interesting, because it enables good Practice of certain sub-skills to take place, or because it has some useful vocabulary and language patterns in it? Of course you may want to do a little work on all these things in class but, within any one phase, be clear.of your reasons and communicate these to students. Otherwise it can be very vexing for students, for example, to be told to ‘listen to the gist’ and then later to find themselves being quizzed on some minute item contained in a stretch of listening. © Don’t. always.concentrate your feedback on student speaking and writing at the micro levil correcting individual sounds and commas, important though these may be. Spend time on the larger issues such as whether an essay ha: real content or fits its title, Whether a @ jalk.shows enthusiasm and whether a speaker has good eye, contacs with listeners. ss Work.to.improve your feedback, skills, finding different, ways.to comment on written work and respond to student talk. Learn sofiéthing new yourself. Tes a good way of reminding yourself how distressing and frustrating it can be to be a beginner or intermediate student, Let students learn to write by doing lots of writing, learn to speak by speaking, etc. ° Use plenty of different styles, lengths and genres. . If you would like a useful methodological model for doing skills work in class see the ‘pre-, in-, post-’ model on page 124. In order to be able to listen, speak, read and write, learners need to know lots of individual words and lexical phrases and to be able to recognise and use patterns at sentence level and beyond. But also BY listening, Speaking, reading and writing learners will pick up and learn more about 95 nahrenanrn3. What can go into a lesson? all these things. We start to see then how language is like air, We can Know about the composition of air in terms of molecular components and yet we are breathing it and it is doing things in our body that we have no consciousness of. We can’t say that knowing about air is more important than breathing it. We can’t say that knowing about bits of language is more important than using language. Where to go for help on skills There are plenty of skills books around and everyone has their favourites. Mine are: for listening Rost (1991); for speaking Celce- Murcia et al (1996) and Klippel (1984); for reading Nuttall (1996); for writing Yorkey (1970), Horn (977), Pincas (1982), Hedge (1988) and Douglas Brown et al (1991). 3.5 Combinations Everything mentioned so far in this ‘What there is to teach and learn’ section can be combined. For example, you can learn what behaviour is expected of you in a classroom in terms of punctuality, dress and posture all'on one day in the same class. And in terms of language, lexical phrases are combinations of words, and messages are combinations of noun and verb groups. Speaking and listening in a foreign language involve combinations of sub-skills, as well as combining all the previous items mentioned in this chapter and including cultural knowledge such as when to interrupt or take the floor. Everything that we could include in a syllabus is a combination of smaller constituent parts. The simple nesting of smaller units inside bigger units is not the only combination possible, however. Pronunciation, for example, can be stud ied, or practised, under ‘words’ (e.g. how to pronounce the word ‘com- fortable’) or under ‘functions’ (e.g. how to intone ‘Excuse me ...’ when you have said it three times already to a shop assistant bent on ignoring you) or, in a speaking skills lesson when you want to sound sure in an argument. Learning about group dynamics can happen in any kind of lesson whether on discourse analysis or prepositions. Different types of unit can be not only nested inside but also mapped onto other units. With higher level language learners other types of subject combination become possible. We can take issues such as ‘gender’, ‘plurality’, ‘role’ and ‘degree of definiteness’, issues which cut across all the language items described so far, and look with students at how these are dealt with in the target language. These concepts are hard to define and yet, as native speakers, we know a lot about them intuitively in our own lan- guages. The best way to tackle them is simply to display them at work, 96: 5 RES OATES ho AO MP 3.5 Combinations in context, in stories, conversations and magazine articles and encourage students to explore positive and negative exemplars of the concept under study. Other issues that cut across individual categories of language item are notions of correctness, language change and the individual coinage of new language. More standard combinations mentioned in TESOL coursebooks are situations, topics and themes, literature and study skills. Broader combin- ations still are culture and information subjects. I'll go on to mention these below. All of them can be planned into lessons and courses. Situations Many coursebooks have little sections based on the idea of situational English. A situation may be expressed as a place, such as ‘at the railway station’. A situation often implies: roles, e.g. a ticket seller and a passenger relationships, e.g. rather distanced since the seller and Passenger don’t normally know each other * attitudes, e.g. polite but perhaps siightly rushed or brisk * tasks, e.g. getting information, buying a ticket * vocabulary, e.g, platform, departure * skills, e.g. talking, listening, reading * materials, e.g. money, ticket . structures, e.g. the present simple for timetables (What time does the train leave?) * functions, e.g. asking for informatiyn A situation creates a fairly meaningful and realistic context and exerts a loose binding force for the choice of vocabulary, skills, grammatical pat- terns, etc. Of course, almost anything can happen at a railway station. You can buy things and eat things, meet old friends and have arguments and use virtually any vocabulary, structure or function. Even if you take « the standard task of asking for a ticket, there are hundreds of different ways of asking for one. We must recognise then that situations are use- ful contrivances for gathering language together for a particular lesson. We should not take them too seriously or rigidly. * Topics and themes Real world topics such as ‘my family’, ‘mobile phones’, ‘how to solve conflicts’, ‘escape’ and ‘honesty’ (see Grundy 1989 for other interesting themes) are organising devices similar to situations in that they are designed to pull together vocabulary, skills work and so on into larger 97