18.1.1. Limitations of aims and objectives

As the less able learner has the greatest difficulty in the productive skills it is suggested that work concentrating on receptive skills may be more desirable. In other words, understanding rather than using the language would become an overall course objective. In extreme cases, it may be necessary to confine the learner to a passive understanding only, but, ideally, even in these difficult circumstances, some limited form of production is, of course, desirable. We could be accused of giving up the struggle if we ‘leave our learners speechless’.

However, we will concentrate on techniques for exploiting reading and listening material for passive understanding mainly – with some development into very limited guided production. This implies that the teacher has to find ways of checking understanding that do not involve production of the language by the learner, or at the most only some form of very limited production. To do this the teacher has to plan his questions on the reading or listening material very carefully, as the normal question and answer exchange procedure may involve the learner in production that is too difficult for him.

There are, of course, certain types of questions that do not require production of the language at all, such as multiple choice questions. However, these seem to belong more to the realm of testing than teaching, and furthermore, the production of good multiple choice questions is a difficult and time-consuming activity for the already overworked teacher, and indeed may be virtually impossible at a very elementary level. This type of questions also tends to be more suitable for eliciting gist meaning rather than for detailed work on a text or dialogue. There are alternatives that still do not involve production in the foreign language. These alternatives are: 1) question and answer in the mother tongue; 2) question in the foreign language and answer in the mother tongue; 3) completion of a table of information from reading and listening. For instance:

Mr and Mrs Brown live at number two Rainbow Street. They have two children. Mr Brown has a car and Mrs Brown has a bicycle. They have a TV set and a fridge, but they do not have a washing machine.

Mr and Mrs Black live at number four. They do not have any children. Both Mr and Mrs Black have cars so they do not need a bicycle. They have a fridge and a washing machine, but they do not have a TV set. They do not like television.

Mr and Mrs Green live at number three. They have six children. Neither of them has a car. Mrs Green has an old bicycle. They are a poor family. They have a very old TV set, but they have neither a fridge nor a washing machine.

Name of family	Brown	Black	Green
House number	2	4	3
Children	2	0	6
Car	Yes	Yes	No
Bicycle	Yes	No	Yes
TV set	Yes	No	Yes
Fridge	Yes	Yes	No
Washing machine	No	Yes	No

The table has been completed as the students should complete it.

So we have seen that whereas questions types 1 and 2 involve production in the mother tongue, question type 3 could be exploited for developing passive understanding only or could be used as the basis for controlled oral or written production. However, we appreciate that the production of such material by the teacher may not always be possible. The time and materials may not be available, the texts in the prescribed textbook may not be suitable for exploitation in the way. So the teacher may feel he has to attempt a more orthodox question and answer exchange. Still, as was pointed out earlier, this may involve the less able learner in a task that is too demanding for him. To overcome this, the teacher would need to exercise great control and patience and plan and use his questions in a strictly graded order, so that initial production is at a minimum. Thus, the following types of questions could be graded according to difficulty like this:

1. Yes/No questions.

2. Alternative questions.

3. Who/ What + main verb.

4. What + auxiliary.

5. Other WH-questions.

6. False statements for correction.

Here is an example of question and answer exchange for weak learners:

A sentence from a text: Ivan is watering the flowers.

T: Is Ivan watering the flowers?

S: Yes (he is).

T: Is Ivan watering the trees?

S: No (he isn’t).

T: Is he watering the flowers or the trees?

S: The flowers.

T: Who is watering the flowers?

S: Ivan (is).

T: What is Ivan watering?

S: The flowers.

T: Ivan is watering the trees.

S: No – the flowers.

At this stage the learner may be encouraged to attempt to produce the entire sentence either by contradicting the false statement or possibly from the question ‘What is Ivan doing?’ However, for very weak learners this question may be better avoided as it could prompt a learner to begin ‘Ivan is doing…’ Even when contradicting the false statement the following may result: ‘Ivan is water the flowers’ or ‘Ivan watering the flowers’ or ‘Ivan water the flowers’. At this point the teacher could attempt to correct by the backchaining technique:

T: flowers

S: flowers

T: the flowers

S: the flowers

T: watering the flowers

S: watering the flowers

T: is watering the flowers

S: is watering the flowers

T: Ivan is watering the flowers.

S: Ivan is watering the flowers.

Anyhow, with the less able learners it may not be psychologically desirable to indulge in such correction as they need all the encouragement and motivation possible. The teacher should possibly be satisfied with the erroneous production and merely repeat the student’s words in the correct form. For these learners fluency is more important than accuracy. Thus, the limitations of aims (mainly positive understanding, and limited, even inaccurate production) may be one way of achieving at least something with weak classes.