Дипломная работа: Communication The Exchange of Information

From time to time, it is a good idea to record and analyse interactions in your own classroom. These interactions can either be between you and your students, or between students as they interact in small-group work. If you do, you may be surprised at the disparity between what you thought at the time was happening, and what actually took place as recorded on the tape. You should not be disconcerted if you do find such a disparity. In my experience, virtually all teachers, even the most experienced, discover dimensions to the lesson which they were unaware of at the time the lesson took place. (These will not all be negative, of course.)

The raw data of interaction, as above, are often illuminating. The following reactions were provided by a group of language teachers at an inservice workshop. The teachers had recorded, transcribed and analysed a lesson which they had recently given and were asked (among other things) to report back on what they had discovered about their own teaching, and about the insights they had gained into aspects of classroom management and interaction. Most of the comments referred, either explicitly or implicitly, to teacher/learner roles:

'As teachers we share an anxiety about "dominating" and so a common assumption that we are too intrusive, directive etc.' 'I need to develop skills for responding to the unexpected and exploit this to realise the full potential of the lesson.' 'There are umpteen aspects which need improving. There is also the effort of trying to respond to contradictory notions about teaching (e.g. intervention versus non-intervention).' 'I had been making a conscious effort to be non-directive, but was far more directive than I had thought.'

'Using small groups and changing groups can be perplexing and counterproductive, or helpful and stimulating. There is a need to plan carefully to make sure such changes are positive.' 'I have come to a better realisation of how much listening the teacher needs to do.' 'The teacher's role in facilitating interaction is extremely important for all types of classes. How do you teach teachers this?' 'I need to be more aware of the assumptions underlying my practice.' 'I discovered that I was over-directive and dominant.' 'Not to worry about periods of silence in the classroom.' 'I have a dreadful tendency to overload.' 'I praise students, but it is rather automatic. There is also a lot of teacher talk in my lessons.' 'I give too many instructions.' 'I discovered that, while my own style is valuable, it leads me to view issues in a "blinkered" way. I need to analyse my own and others' styles and ask why do I do it that way?'

Chapter I

Types of communicative exercises

Warming-up exercises

When people have to work together in а group it is advisable that they get to know each other а little at the beginning. Оncе they have talked tо each other in an introductory exercise they will be less reluctant to cooperate in further activities. One of the pre-requisites of cooperation is knowing the other people's names. А second one is having some idea of what individual members of the group are interested in. One important use of warming-up exercises is with new classes at the beginning of а course or the school year. If уои join in the activities and let the class know something about yourself, the students are mоrе likely to accept you as а person and not just as а teacher. А second use of warming-up activities lies in getting students into the right mood before starting on some new project or task.

However, even warming-up activities mау seem threatening to very shy students. In particular, exercises in which one person has to speak about himself in front of the whole class belong in this category. You can reduce the strain by reorganising the activity in such а way that the student concerned is questioned by the class, thus avoiding а monologue where the pressure is on one person only. Students often find pair work the least threatening because everybody is talking at the same time and they have only got one listener. Depending on the atmosphere in your classes, you mау wish tо modify whole-class exercises to include pair or group work.

А number of warming-up exercises, are also suitable for light relief between periods of hard work. Grouping contains а lot of ideas for dividing students into groups and can precede all types of group work.

Most of the warming-up exercises are suitable for beginners because they do not demand more than simple questions and answers. But the language content of the exercises can easily be adapted to а higher level of proficiency.

Names

Aims: Skills — speaking

Language — questions

Other — getting tо know each other' s names

Level: Beginners

Organisation: Class

Preparation : As many small slips of paper as there are students

Time : 5-10 minutes

Procedure : Step 1: Each student writes his full name on а piece of paper. All the papers are collected and redistributed sо that everyone receives the name of а person he does not know.

Step 2: Everyone walks around the room and tries to find the person whose name he holds. Simple questions can bе asked, е.g. 'Is your name...?' 'Are you...?'

Step 3: When everyone has found his partner, he introduces him tо the group[12] .

Interviews

We watch, read and listen to interviews every day. In the media the famous and not sо famous are interviewed on important issues and trivial subjects. For the advertising industry and market research institutes, interviews are а necessity. The success of an interview depends both on the skill of the interviewer, on her ability to ask the right kinds of questions, to insist and interpret, and on the willingness to talk on the part of the person being interviewed. Both partners in an interview should be good at listening so that а question-and-answer sequence develops into а conversation.

In the foreign language classroom interviews are useful not only because they force students rо listen carefully but also because they are sо versatile in their subject matter.[13] As soon as beginners know the first structures for questions (е.g. Can you sing an English song? Have you got а car?) interviewing can begin. If everyone interviews his neighbour all students are practising the foreign language at the same time. When the learners have acquired а basic set of structures and vocabulary the interviews mentioned in this section can be used. А list of possible topics for further interviews is given at the end of the section. Of course, you may choose any topic you wish, taking them from recent news stories or texts read in class. In the warming-up phase of а course interviews could concentrate on more personal questions.

Before you use an interview in your class make sure that the students can use the necessary question-and-answer structures. А few sample sentences on the board may be а help for the less able. With advanced learners language functions like insisting and asking for confirmation (Did you mean that...? Do you really think that...? Did you say... ? But you said earlier that...), hesitating (Well, let me see...), contradicting and interrupting (Hold on а minute..., Can I just butt in here?) can be practised during interviews. When students report back on interviews they have done, they have to use reported speech.

Since the students' chances of asking а lot of questions are not very good in 'language-oriented' lessons, interviews are а good compensation. If you divide your class up into groups of three and let two students interview the third, then the time spent on practisinig questions is increased. As а rule students should make some notes on the questions they are going to ask and of the answers they get.

Self-directed interviews

Aims: Skills — writing, speaking

Language - questions

Other — getting tо know each other or each other' s points of view

Level : Intermediate