17.4.6. Reusing a core of ideas

It has already been suggested that the ‘guess which one I have chosen’ activity set out earlier in this talk could be used to practise almost any phrase. It is only the matter of working out the appropriate guessing question. The basic grid format can be used for any two elements you wish to combine, for example, people and what they like eating, days of the week and the weather.

The point is that because such activities are simple in principle, they will transfer to all kinds of topics and situations. Because you use them regularly you will quickly get to know the best way to set them up with your classes. Because the classes know them, they will take to them easily when they appear. You will also, through using these activities often, get to know which of them are good as stirrers and which act as settlers. You will develop ways of adapting them to actual as well as mental involvement. They can become truly the core of you language teaching.

17.5. Conclusions

In this talk we have identified some of the skills and instincts a young child brings to learning a foreign language at school. We have been able to define how the children’s ability to grasp meaning, their creative use of limited language resources and their capacity for indirect learning, as well as the children’s instinct for play and fun, and the role of the imagination in children’s lives provide very powerful stimuli for real language use. We have identified three priorities: 1) teaching which is based on the skills and instincts children bring with them to the classroom; 2) the development of attitudes and responses which contribute to the process of developing competence in the second language; 3) ways of working with the language for real. Having taken these priorities seriously, we considered teaching that involves teachers in adapting the textbook or in devising activities on their own. We have suggested ways of applying what it calls constructive realism to questions of classroom behaviour and preparation load. The considerations of stir/ settle, the concepts of mental engagement and actual occupation, and the comments about variation and simplicity have become a focus of the highlight too.

Discussion

1. What natural capacities and instincts do children bring to the classroom?

2. Is young children’s ability to grasp meaning in any way different from that of adolescents? Which is the best way to make use of it in class?

3. Why is children’s creative use of limited language resources fundamental for language development?

4. How could you turn children’s capacity to indirect learning to advantage in the language classroom?

5. Why is children’s instinct for play and fun such a powerful contribution to learning English?

6. In which way do children’s imagination and their instinct for interaction and talk stimulate their language acquisition?

7. How do content goals and attitude goals correlate in the primary classroom? List all the attitude goals you would bring to your primary class.

8. How would you check understanding in your primary class?

9. Which, in your opinion, is the best way of correcting young children’s mistakes? What particular techniques would you use?

10. How would you make language exercises seem real exchange to your young pupils? Give examples.

11. What are the advantages of teaching in the target language? How would you explain a complicated game activity to your young pupils without shifting to their mother tongue?

12. How would you sequence stimulation and settle-down activities in the primary classroom? Give examples of activities of either kind.

13. What is the difference between activities implying mental involvement and those implying actual occupation? Give your own examples.

14. How could you make your lesson varied and simple at one and the same time? Give examples of your own.

15. Is it possible to reuse your handout material for different activities and topics? How would you do it? Can the same be said of reusing the core if ideas? Why?