Jack Richards provides a grant to enable young people in economic difficulty take English courses at the Modern American English School in Antigua, Guatemala. The pictures show some of the recipients of recent grants, together with school director Patricia Ruiz (in pink!) and one of the MAES teachers.
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Submitted by Jayanta Das, India
What is the difference between a task, an exercise and an activity?
These terms are understood differently depending on who defines them. I use them as follows:
An exercise is a teaching procedure that involves controlled, guided or open ended practice of some aspect of language. A drill, a cloze activity, a reading comprehension passage can all be regarded as exercises.
The term activity is more general and refers to any kind of purposeful classroom procedure that involves learners doing something that relates to the goals of the course. For example singing a song, playing a game, taking part in a debate, having a group discussion, are all different kinds of teaching activities.
A task is normally defined as follows:
Submitted by Gethomil, Poland
Is autonomy an approach or a method?
The notion of learner autonomy is neither an approach or a method but it really a philosophy or set of principles that can be used in association with different approaches and methods, and may influence how they are implemented in the classroom. The notion of learner autonomy means shifting the focus from the teacher to the learners. This means involving learners in decisions concerning setting objectives for learning, determining ways and means of learning, and reflecting on and evaluating what they have learned.Autonomous learning is said to make learning more personal and focused and consequently to achieve better learning outcomes since learning is based on learners’ needs and preferences . Benson has suggested five principles for achieving autonomous learning:
In classes that encourage autonomous learning:
Submitted by Chiara Bauer, Italy
What concrete and specific advice would you give me, an EFL teacher, which is based on the findings of error analysis?
I don’t think there are any specific suggestions that result directly from error analysis. Error analysis has largely been replaced by other kinds of research in the field of Second Language Acquisition. However one of the general conclusions that developed out of early work in error analysis was that errors are not necessarily signs of faulty learning, but are indication of a creative- construction process at work as learners test out hypotheses and abstract the underlying rules and principles that accounted for language knowledge. Teachers were encouraged to spend less time on correcting errors and trying to elicit error-free production, and more time on providing rich, meaningful input for learning. However there is a stage when persistent errors need attention in case they lead to fossilisation. Here error analysis may be useful, providing information on which kinds of errors are transitional and which may require attention in teaching.
Submitted by Tourya Saada, Morocco
What are the stages of a speaking lesson?
It depends of what kind of speaking activity it is and what the demands are of that activity. For example in their Book Teaching Speaking, Goh and Burns recommend a seven-stage cycle of activities in a speaking lesson:
1. Focus learners’attention on speaking: Students think about a speaking activity, what it involves and what they can anticipate.
2. Provide input and/or guide planning: This may involve pre-teaching vocabulary, expressions or discourse features and planning for an activity they will carry out in class (e.g. a presentation or a transaction).
3. Conduct speaking task: Students practise a communicative speaking task with a focus on fluency.
4. Focus on language/skills/strategies: Students examine their performance or look at other performances of the task, as well as transcripts of how the task can be carried out, and review different features of the task.
5. Repeat speaking task: The activity is performed a second time.
6. Direct learners’reflection on learning: Students review and reflect on what they have learned and difficulties they encountered.
7. Facilitate feedback on learning: Teacher provides feedback on their performance.