PRACTICE EXERCICES FEBRUARY2 2020 Dra Jelena Bobkina PRACTICE

PRACTICE EXERCICES FEBRUARY-2 2020 Dra. Jelena Bobkina

PRACTICE EXERCISES Madrid: Practice 3

PRACTICE EXERCICE 1 LISTENING 1. LISTENING COMPREHENSION. Listen to an interview to John Hattie in ‘The Educators’ and do the two tasks below. You can download the listening file here: https: //abracadabra 9. cms. webnode. es/notasexamenes/

PRACTICE EXERCICE 1 LISTENING TASK 1: Complete the following sentences with a word of phrase from the recording. a) It’s considered________; finding out what works and how much it works. b) Well the studies go back to the fifties and sixties but the majority of them are in the eighties, nineties, two thousands ‘cos that’s ________ has happened. c) So, I truly __________ to build this database. d) It’s a ________that, ‘this is what makes the difference’. e) Walking round we like ___________ and how the children were mixed between the years and that was a big choice for us f) f) I think there’s so much to be gained from ___________, sometimes more important than the actual lessons.

PRACTICE EXERCICE 1 LISTENING TASK 2: Read the following sentences and decide which were mentioned and the order in which they were mentioned in the recording. There are TWO extra options you do not need to use. a) Parents try to decide where to send their kids based on what they feel is more important in education. b) Professor Hattie is trying to work out what really matters in teaching. c) It is not possible to establish what works in education because people are different. d) Teachers usually teach in the same way, regardless of the number of students they have in class. e) Professor Hattie believes that smaller class sizes result in higher quality education.

PRACTICE EXERCICE 1 LISTENING 2. Provide a definition of the following words from the recording: a) League table: b) Impressive: c) Chain of command: d) Proxy: e) Strip out:

PRACTICE EXERCICE 1 LISTENING 2. Provide a definition of the following words from the recording: a) League table: a comparison of achievement or merit in a competitive area OR A set of statistics used to compare the performance of a number of individuals, groups, or institutions b) Impressive: arousing admiration or respect. c) Chain of command: A hierarchy of authority in which each rank is accountable to the one directly superior. d) Proxy: An entity or variable used to model or generate data assumed to resemble the data associated with another entity or variable that is typically more difficult to research. e) Strip out: remove a component from a mixture.

PRACTICE EXERCICE 1 USE OF ENGLISH 3. Give an example of two communicative activities for FLT. Justify your answer, explaining the features that make them ‘communicative’.

PRACTICE EXERCICE 1 USE OF ENGLISH According to Harmer (2007), communicative activities are those which show the following characteristics, at least to a certain extent. o o o They create a need or a desire to communicate They have a communicative purpose They are based on content, not on form They use a variety of language Teacher intervention is kept to a minimum Moreover, contrary to controlled practice activities, in communicative activities there is not only one correct answer, and students have multiple options for responding.

PRACTICE EXERCICE 1 USE OF ENGLISH One example could be carrying out a role play that deals with daily life situations. These activities are among the most ‘communicative’ given that they arise from a true need to communicative and they have a very clear communicative purpose: students are given roles and they are supposed to interact to fulfill a previously established objective (i. e. buying 2 kg of bananas). The role of the teacher here is usually restricted to that of facilitator or consultant- helping students whenever they require it, leading the activity and giving them guidelines. Another possibility is playing games such as ‘I packed my bag with…’, which is a good option for practicing vocabulary that works both with young and with older students. In this game, the teacher begins by saying something they packed in their bag beginning with ‘A’, the next student needs to continue by adding something beginning with ‘B’…and so on.

PRACTICE EXERCICE 1 USE OF ENGLISH The communicative force of this activity lies in students’ ability to choose among a range of options (there is not only one correct answer). The teacher monitors the activity but their intervention is kept to a minimum. However, contrary to the previous activity, here there is more focus on form, since correct spelling and pronunciation are a requirement.

PRACTICE EXERCICE 1 USE OF ENGLISH 4. Sentence transformation. Rewrite each sentence so that it has the same meaning. Use between THREE and FIVE words. a) Can you understand what this paper means? SENSE Can you ……… this paper? b) It wasn’t necessary to meet me at the airport yesterday. NEED You ……… me at the airport yesterday. c) It was unkind of you to talk to her like that. NOT You …… to her like that. d) I saw the film although I strongly dislike thrillers. SPITE I saw the film in …… of thrillers.

PRACTICE EXERCICE 1 USE OF ENGLISH e) It’s not possible to play tennis because of the rain. MAKES The rain ………. to play tennis. f) I’ve never tasted such good food before. EVER It is the … tasted. g) Do your parents allow you to watch TV late at night? LET Do your parents ……. TV late at night? h) ”Did you write a note for Anna? ” I asked my mother. SHE I asked my mother ……. a note for Anna. i) He gave me the money first, and then he left. AFTER He left ………. . the money. j) I don’t find it difficult to get up early any more. USED I ………. up early.

PRACTICE EXERCICE 1 USE OF ENGLISH 5. What is TPR? Who is its creator? What are the underlying principles of this language teaching approach?

PRACTICE EXERCICE 1 USE OF ENGLISH It is an approach to teaching based on theory that memory is enhanced through association with physical movement, as well as with theories of mother tongue language acquisition in very young children, where they respond physically to parental commands, such as ‘pick it up’, ‘sit down’. It was originally developed by James Asher in 1960, although Palmer (1925) already experimented with an action-based teaching strategy.

PRACTICE EXERCICE 1 USE OF ENGLISH There are several ideas that underlie the TPR approach (Hadley, 2001): 1. Spoken language should be developed before speaking 2. Understanding and retention is best achieved through movement in response to commands 3. Adult language learning can be modeled after the way children learn their native language.

PRACTICE EXERCICE 1 USE OF ENGLISH For Asher, learning a first and a second language are parallel processes, so in the same way as in the native language, children should develop listening before speaking. (Bio-programme) He also remarks the importance of brain lateralization, since the child language learner acquires language through motor movement (both right hemisphere activities). Afterwards, language production takes place (left hemisphere activity). Finally, it is important to provide learners with stress-free classrooms that capture the pleasure of first language acquisition. In this sense, the ability to move freely reduces stress.

PRACTICE EXERCICE 1 PEDAGOGICAL QUESTION 6. Propose two TPR activities, one for 3 rd grade of Primary and another one for 6 th grade.

PRACTICE EXERCICE 1 PEDAGOGICAL QUESTION TPR is usually thought of as being more appropriate for children since they are the ones who seem to enjoy more movement in the classroom. However, older children and even teenagers or adults can also take part in TPR activities and find them enjoyable as well as profitable. Moreover, individuals have different learning styles, and teachers should try to cater for all of them. In this sense, TPR could be appealing for kinesthetic learners.

PRACTICE EXERCICE 1 PEDAGOGICAL QUESTION For 3 rd grade Primary students who are learning to tell the time, a fun activity could be to do the human clock. There need to be at least 15 students to play the game, in larger classes we can make two teams and monitor both at the same time. 12 students constitute a human clock by lying on the ground forming a circle, 2 students take the role of clock hands and the rest are guessers. The students who are the hands have to move to signal a certain clock time and guessers need to guess correctly. If they do, they swap roles. Other possible activities for this level include story-telling and using songs to repeat certain language patterns while moving or dancing to the music.

PRACTICE EXERCICE 1 PEDAGOGICAL QUESTION For older students, some of the activities that could work include role-plays with movement (sometimes even only mime role-plays so students can concentrate more on the movement) or miming some actions while repeating phrases. This can be done in pairs, groups or as a whole-class activity. In this last case, the teacher starts by moving around the classroom while verbalizing what he/she does (Ex. I walk to the window, I get my coat, I look in my pocket, I touch my ear, I find my key). Then, the teacher just says the words without actually performing the actions. Students can also be asked to write down their own set of instructions.

PRACTICE EXERCICE 1 PEDAGOGICAL QUESTION 7. Is TPR appropriate to be used as main teaching approach? What are its drawbacks?

PRACTICE EXERCICE 1 PEDAGOGICAL QUESTION The objective of TPR is to teach oral proficiency at a beginner level. Therefore, it is not recommended as the main teaching approach in the long run. It is better to integrate judiciously TPR activities in the curriculum so that there is a balance between these and activities of other kinds. As its drawbacks, we can mention: o Can be boring (a lot of repetition, not many structures can be learnt in this way- only imperatives and statements) o Not communicative (can cause robot-like learning since it does not foster a creative use of language) o Can only be used as a main method in lower levels. Not suitable for pre-intermediate and above