method - 5

Teaching Listening

Listening is the language modality that is used most frequently. It has been estimated that adults spend almost half their communication time listening, and students may receive as much as 90% of their in-school information through listening to instructors and to one another. Often, however, language learners do not recognize the level of effort that goes into developing listening ability.

Far from passively receiving and recording aural input, listeners actively involve themselves in the interpretation of what they hear, bringing their own background knowledge and linguistic knowledge to bear on the information contained in the aural text. Not all listening is the same; casual greetings, for example, require a different sort of listening capability than do academic lectures. Language learning requires intentional listening that employs strategies for identifying sounds and making meaning from them.

 Listening involves a sender (a person, radio, television), a message, and a receiver (the listener). Listeners often must process messages as they come, even if they are still processing what they have just heard, without backtracking or looking ahead. In addition, listeners must cope with the sender's choice of vocabulary, structure, and rate of delivery. The complexity of the listening process is magnified in second language contexts, where the receiver also has incomplete control of the language.

Given the importance of listening in language learning and teaching, it is essential for language teachers to help their students become effective listeners. In the communicative approach to language teaching, this means modeling listening strategies and providing listening practice in authentic situations: those that learners are likely to encounter when they use the language outside the classroom.

Section Contents
Goals and Techniques for Teaching Listening
Strategies for Developing Listening Skills
Developing Listening Activities
Using Textbook Listening Activities
Assessing Listening Proficiency
Resources
Material for this section was drawn from “Listening in a foreign language” by Ana Maria Schwartz, in Modules for the professional preparation of teaching assistants in foreign languages (Grace Stovall Burkart, ed.; Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics, 1998)

Goals and Techniques for Teaching Listening

Instructors want to produce students who, even if they do not have complete control of the grammar or an extensive lexicon, can fend for themselves in communication situations. In the case of listening, this means producing students who can use listening strategies to maximize their comprehension of aural input, identify relevant and non-relevant information, and tolerate less than word-by-word comprehension.

Focus: The Listening Process

To accomplish this goal, instructors focus on the process of listening rather than on its product.

• They develop students' awareness of the listening process and listening strategies by asking students to think and talk about how they listen in their native language.
• They allow students to practice the full repertoire of listening strategies by using authentic listening tasks.
• They behave as authentic listeners by responding to student communication as a listener rather than as a teacher.

• When working with listening tasks in class, they show students the strategies that will work best for the listening purpose and the type of text. They explain how and why students should use the strategies.
• They have students practice listening strategies in class and ask them to practice outside of class in their listening assignments. They encourage students to be conscious of what they're doing while they complete listening tape assignments.
• They encourage students to evaluate their comprehension and their strategy use immediately after completing an assignment. They build comprehension checks into in-class and out-of-class listening assignments, and periodically review how and when to use particular strategies.
• They encourage the development of listening skills and the use of listening strategies by using the target language to conduct classroom business: making announcements, assigning homework, describing the content and format of tests.
• They do not assume that students will transfer strategy use from one task to another. They explicitly mention how a particular strategy can be used in a different type of listening task or with another skill.

By raising students' awareness of listening as a skill that requires active engagement, and by explicitly teaching listening strategies, instructors help their students develop both the ability and the   confidence to handle communication situations they may encounter beyond the classroom. In this way they give their students the foundation for communicative competence in the new language.

Integrating Metacognitive Strategies

Before listening: Plan for the listening task

• Set a purpose or decide in advance what to listen for
• Decide if more linguistic or background knowledge is needed
• Determine whether to enter the text from the top down (attend to the overall meaning) or from the bottom up (focus on the words and phrases)

During and after listening: Monitor comprehension

• Verify predictions and check for inaccurate guesses
• Decide what is and is not important to understand
• Listen/view again to check comprehension
• Ask for help

After listening: Evaluate comprehension and strategy use

• Evaluate comprehension in a particular task or area
• Evaluate overall progress in listening and in particular types of listening tasks
• Decide if the strategies used were appropriate for the purpose and for the task
• Modify strategies if necessary

Using Authentic Materials and Situations

Authentic materials and situations prepare students for the types of listening they will need to do when using the language outside the classroom.
One-Way Communication
Materials:

• Radio and television programs
• Public address announcements (airports, train/bus stations, stores)
• Speeches and lectures
• Telephone customer service recordings

Procedure:

• Help students identify the listening goal: to obtain specific information; to decide whether to continue listening; to understand most or all of the message
• Help students outline predictable sequences in which information may be presented: who-what-when-where (news stories); who-flight number-arriving/departing-gate number (airport announcements); "for [function], press [number]" (telephone recordings)
• Help students identify key words/phrases to listen for

Two-Way Communication
In authentic two-way communication, the listener focuses on the speaker's meaning rather than the speaker's language. The focus shifts to language only when meaning is not clear. Note the difference between the teacher as teacher and the teacher as authentic listener in the dialogues in the popup screens.

Strategies for Developing Listening Skills

Language learning depends on listening. Listening provides the aural input that serves as the basis for language acquisition and enables learners to interact in spoken communication.
Effective language instructors show students how they can adjust their listening behavior to deal with a variety of situations, types of input, and listening purposes. They help students develop a set of listening strategies and match appropriate strategies to each listening situation.

Listening Strategies

Listening strategies are techniques or activities that contribute directly to the comprehension and recall of listening input. Listening strategies can be classified by how the listener processes the input.
Top-down strategies are listener based; the listener taps into background knowledge of the topic, the situation or context, the type of text, and the language. This background knowledge activates a set of expectations that help the listener to interpret what is heard and anticipate what will come next. Top-down strategies include

• listening for the main idea
• predicting

• drawing inferencessummarizing

Bottom-up strategies are text based; the listener relies on the language in the message, that is, the combination of sounds, words, and grammar that creates meaning. Bottom-up strategies include

• listening for specific details
• recognizing cognates
• recognizing word-order patterns

Strategic listeners also use metacognitive strategies to plan, monitor, and evaluate their listening.

• They plan by deciding which listening strategies will serve best in a particular situation.
• They monitor their comprehension and the effectiveness of the selected strategies.
• They evaluate by determining whether they have achieved their listening comprehension goals and whether the combination of listening strategies selected was an effective one.

Listening for Meaning

To extract meaning from a listening text, students need to follow four basic steps:

• Figure out the purpose for listening. Activate background knowledge of the topic in order to predict or anticipate content and identify appropriate listening strategies.
• Attend to the parts of the listening input that are relevant to the identified purpose and ignore the rest. This selectivity enables students to focus on specific items in the input and reduces the amount of information they have to hold in short-term memory in order to recognize it.
• Select top-down and bottom-up strategies that are appropriate to the listening task and use them flexibly and interactively. Students' comprehension improves and their confidence increases when they use top-down and bottom-up strategies simultaneously to construct meaning.
• Check comprehension while listening and when the listening task is over. Monitoring comprehension helps students detect inconsistencies and comprehension failures, directing them to use alternate strategies.
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  Developing Listening Activities

  As you design listening tasks, keep in mind that complete recall of all the information in an aural text is an unrealistic expectation to which even native speakers are not usually held. Listening exercises that are meant to train should be success-oriented and build up students' confidence in their listening ability.
  

  Construct the listening activity around a contextualized task.

  Contextualized listening activities approximate real-life tasks and give the listener an idea of the type of information to expect and what to do with it in advance of the actual listening. A beginning level task would be locating places on a map (one way) or exchanging name and address information (two way). At an intermediate level students could follow directions for assembling something (one way) or work in pairs to create a story to tell to the rest of the class (two way).
  

  Define the activity's instructional goal and type of response.

  Each activity should have as its goal the improvement of one or more specific listening skills. A listening activity may have more than one goal or outcome, but be careful not to overburden the attention of beginning or intermediate listeners.
  Recognizing the goal(s) of listening comprehension   in each listening situation will help students select appropriate listening strategies.
  
  • Identification: Recognizing or discriminating specific aspects of the message, such as sounds, categories of words, morphological distinctions
  • Orientation: Determining the major facts about a message, such as topic, text type, setting
  • Main idea comprehension: Identifying the higher-order ideas
  • Detail comprehension: Identifying supporting details
  • Replication: Reproducing the message orally or in writing

  Check the level of difficulty of the listening text.

  The factors listed below can help you judge the relative ease or difficulty of a listening text for a particular purpose and a particular group of students.
  How is the information organized? Does the story line, narrative, or instruction conform to familiar expectations? Texts in which the events are presented in natural chronological order, which have an informative title, and which present the information following an obvious   organization (main ideas first, details and examples second) are easier to follow.
  How familiar are the students with the topic? Remember that misapplication of background knowledge due to cultural differences can create major comprehension difficulties.
  Does the text contain redundancy? At the lower levels of proficiency, listeners may find short, simple messages easier to process, but students with higher proficiency benefit from the natural redundancy of the language.
  Does the text involve multiple individuals and objects? Are they clearly differentiated? It is easier to understand a text with a doctor and a patient than one with two doctors, and it is even easier if they are of the opposite sex. In other words, the more marked the differences, the easier the comprehension.
  Does the text offer visual support to aid in the interpretation of what the listeners hear? Visual aids such as maps, diagrams, pictures, or the images in a video help contextualize the listening input and provide clues to meaning.
  

  Use pre-listening activities to prepare students for what they are going to hear or view.

  The activities chosen during pre-listening may serve as preparation for listening in several ways. During pre-listening the teacher may
  
  • assess students' background knowledge of the topic and linguistic content of the text
  • provide students with the background knowledge necessary for their comprehension of the listening passage or activate the existing knowledge that the students possess
  • clarify any cultural information which may be necessary to comprehend the passage
  • make students aware of the type of text they will be listening to, the role they will play, and the purpose(s) for which they will be listening
  • provide opportunities for group or collaborative work and for background reading or class discussion activities
  Sample pre-listening activities:
  
  • looking at pictures, maps, diagrams, or graphs
  • reviewing vocabulary or grammatical structures
  • reading something relevant
  • constructing semantic webs (a graphic arrangement of concepts or words showing how they are related)
  • predicting the content of the listening text
  • going over the directions or instructions for the activity
  • doing guided practice

  Match while-listening activities to the instructional goal, the listening purpose, and students' proficiency level.

  While-listening activities relate directly to the text, and students do them do during or immediately after the time they are listening. Keep these points in mind when planning while-listening activities:
  If students are to complete a written task during or immediately after listening, allow them to read through it before listening. Students need to devote all their attention to the listening task. Be sure they understand the instructions for the written task before listening begins so that they are not distracted by the need to figure out what to do.
  Keep writing to a minimum during listening. Remember that the primary goal is comprehension, not production. Having to write while listening may distract students from this primary goal. If a written response is to be given after listening, the task can be more demanding.
  Organize activities so that they guide listeners through the text. Combine global activities such as getting the main idea, topic, and setting with selective listening activities that focus on details of content and form.
  Use questions to focus students' attention on the elements of the text crucial to comprehension of the whole. Before the listening activity begins, have students review questions they will answer orally or in writing after listening.   Listening for the answers will help students recognize the crucial parts of the message.
  Use predicting to encourage students to monitor their comprehension as they listen. Do a predicting activity before listening, and remind students to review what they are hearing to see if it makes sense in the context of their prior knowledge and what they already know of the topic or events of the passage.
  Give immediate feedback whenever possible. Encourage students to examine how or why their responses were incorrect.
  Sample while-listening activities
  
  • listening with visuals
  • filling in graphs and charts
  • following a route on a map
  • checking off items in a list
  • listening for the gist
  • searching for specific clues to meaning
  • completing cloze (fill-in) exercises
  • distinguishing between formal and informal registers

   

  Using Textbook Listening Activities

  The greatest challenges with textbook tape programs are integrating the listening experiences into classroom instruction and keeping up student interest and motivation. These challenges arise from the fact that most textbook listening programs emphasize product (right or wrong answer) over process (how to get meaning from the selection) and from the fact that the listening activities are usually carried out as an add-on, away from the classroom.
  You can use the guidelines for developing listening activities given here as starting points for evaluating and adapting textbook listening programs. At the beginning of the teaching term, orient students to the tape program by completing the exercises in class and discussing the different strategies they use to answer the questions. It is a good idea to periodically complete some of the lab exercises in class to maintain the link to the regular instructional program and to check on the effectiveness of the exercises themselves.
  

  Integrating Listening Strategies With Textbook Audio and Video

  Students can use this outline for both in-class and out-of-class listening/viewing activities. Model and practice the use of the outline at least once in class before you ask students to use it independently.
  1. Plan for listening/viewing
  • Review the vocabulary list, if you have one
  • Review the worksheet, if you have one
  • Review any information you have about the content of the tape/video
  2. Preview the tape/video
  • (tape) Use fast forward to play segments of the tape; (video) view the video without sound
  • Identify the kind of program (news, documentary, interview, drama)
  • Make a list of predictions about the content
  • Decide how to divide the tape/video into sections for intensive listening/viewing
  3. Listen/view intensively section by section. For each section:
  • Jot down key words you understand
  • Answer the worksheet questions pertaining to the section
  • If you don't have a worksheet, write a short summary of the section
  4. Monitor your comprehension
  • Does it fit with the predictions you made?
  • Does your summary for each section make sense in relation to the other sections?

  5. Evaluate your listening comprehension progress

   

  Assessing Listening Proficiency

  You can use post-listening activities to check comprehension, evaluate listening skills and use of listening strategies, and extend the knowledge gained to other contexts. A post-listening activity may relate to a pre-listening activity, such as predicting; may expand on the topic or the language of the listening text; or may transfer what has been learned to reading, speaking, or writing activities.
  In order to provide authentic assessment of students' listening proficiency, a post-listening activity must reflect the real-life uses to which students might put information they have gained through listening.
  
  • It must have a purpose other than assessment
  • It must require students to demonstrate their level of listening comprehension by completing some task.
  To develop authentic assessment activities, consider the type of response that listening to a particular selection would elicit in a non-classroom situation.
  For example, after listening to a weather report one might decide what to wear the next day; after listening to a set of instructions, one might   repeat them to someone else; after watching and listening to a play or video, one might discuss the story line with friends.
  Use this response type as a base for selecting appropriate post-listening tasks. You can then develop a checklist or rubric that will allow you to evaluate each student's comprehension of specific parts of the aural text. (See Assessing Learning for more on checklists and rubrics.)
  For example, for listening practice you have students listen to a weather report. Their purpose for listening is to be able to advise a friend what to wear the next day. As a post-listening activity, you ask students to select appropriate items of clothing from a collection you have assembled, or write a note telling the friend what to wear, or provide oral advice to another student (who has not heard the weather report). To evaluate listening comprehension, you use a checklist containing specific features of the forecast, marking those that are reflected in the student's clothing recommendations.
  

  Resources: Teaching Listening

  Byrnes, H. (1984). The role of listening comprehension: A theoretical base. Foreign Language Annals , 17 , 317-329.
  Coakley, C.G., & Wolvin, A.D. (1986). Listening in the native language. In B. H. Wing (Ed.), Listening, reading, writing: Analysis and application (pp. 11-42). Middlebury, VT: Northeast Conference.
  Gass, S. M. (1988). Integrating research areas: A framework for second language studies. Applied Linguistics, 9 , 198-217.
  Lund, R.J. (1990). A taxonomy for teaching second language listening. Foreign Language Annals, 23 , 105-115.
  Mendelsohn, D.J., & Rubin, J. (1995). A guide for the teaching of second language listening. San Diego, CA: Dominie Press.
  Morley, J. (1991). Listening comprehension in second/foreign language instruction. In M. Celce-Murcia (Ed.), Teaching English as a second or foreign language (pp. 81-106). Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.
  Nunan, D., & Miller, L. (Eds.). (1995). New ways in teaching listening. Alexandria, VA: TESOL.
  Omaggio-Hadley, A. (1993). Teaching language in context (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.
  Peterson, P.W. (1991). A synthesis of methods for interactive listening. In M. Celce-Murcia (Ed.), Teaching English as a second or foreign language (pp. 106-122). Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.
  Richards, J.C. (1983). Listening comprehension: Approach, design, procedure. TESOL Quarterly, 17 , 219-240.
  Rixon, S. (1981). The design of materials to foster particular linguistic skills. The teaching of listening comprehension. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 258 465).
  Rost, M. (1990). Listening in language learning. London: Longman.
   Rubin, J. (1987). Learner strategies: Theoretical assumptions, research history and typology. In A. Wenden & J. Rubin (Eds.), Learner strategies in language learning (pp. 15-30). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
  Rubin, J. (1995). The contribution of video to the development of competence in listening. In D.J. Mendelsohn & J. Rubin (Eds.), A guide for the teaching of second language listening (pp. 151-165). San Diego, CA: Dominie Press.
  Underwood, M. (1989). Teaching listening. London: Longman

method - 4

Teaching Reading

Traditionally, the purpose of learning to read in a language has been to have access to the literature written in that language. In language instruction, reading materials have traditionally been chosen from literary texts that represent "higher" forms of culture.

This approach assumes that students learn to read a language by studying its vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structure, not by actually reading it. In this approach, lower level learners read only sentences and paragraphs generated by textbook writers and instructors. The reading of authentic materials is limited to the works of great authors and reserved for upper level students who have developed the language skills needed to read them.

The communicative approach to language teaching has given instructors a different understanding of the role of reading in the language classroom and the types of texts that can be used in instruction. When the goal of instruction is communicative competence, everyday materials such as train schedules, newspaper articles, and travel and tourism Web sites become appropriate classroom materials, because reading them is one way communicative competence is developed. Instruction in reading and reading practice thus become essential parts of language teaching at every level.

Reading Purpose and Reading Comprehension

Reading is an activity with a purpose. A person may read in order to gain information or verify existing knowledge, or in order to critique a writer's ideas or writing style. A person may also read for enjoyment, or to enhance knowledge of the language being read. The purpose(s) for reading guide the reader's selection of texts.
The purpose for reading also determines the appropriate approach to reading comprehension. A person who needs to know whether she can afford to eat at a particular restaurant needs to comprehend the pricing information provided on the menu, but does not need to recognize the name of every appetizer listed. A person reading poetry for enjoyment needs to recognize the words the poet uses and the ways they are put together, but does not need to identify main idea and supporting details. However, a person using a scientific article to support an opinion needs to know the vocabulary that is used, understand the facts and cause-effect sequences that are presented, and recognize ideas that are presented as hypotheses and givens.
Reading research shows that good readers

• Read extensively
• Integrate information in the text with existing knowledge
• Have a flexible reading style, depending on what they are reading
• Are motivated
• Rely on different skills interacting: perceptual processing, phonemic processing, recall
• Read for a purpose; reading serves a function. 

Reading as a Process

Reading is an interactive process that goes on between the reader and the text, resulting in comprehension. The text presents letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs that encode meaning. The reader uses knowledge, skills, and strategies to determine what that meaning is.
Reader knowledge, skills, and strategies include

• Linguistic competence: the ability to recognize the elements of the writing system; knowledge of vocabulary; knowledge of how words are structured into sentences
• Discourse competence: knowledge of discourse markers and how they connect parts of the text to one another
• Sociolinguistic competence: knowledge about different types of texts and their usual structure and content
• Strategic competence: the ability to use top-down strategies (see Strategies for Developing Reading Skills for descriptions), as well as knowledge of the language (a bottom-up strategy)

The purpose(s) for reading and the type of text determine the specific knowledge, skills, and strategies that readers need to apply to achieve comprehension. Reading comprehension is thus much more than decoding. Reading comprehension results when the reader knows which skills and strategies are appropriate for the type of text, and understands how to apply them to accomplish the reading purpose.

Section Contents
Goals and Techniques for Teaching Reading
Strategies for Developing Reading Skills
Developing Reading Activities
Using Textbook Reading Activities
Assessing Reading Proficiency
Resources

Material for this section was drawn from “Reading in the beginning and intermediate college foreign language class” by Heidi Byrnes, in Modules for the professional preparation of teaching assistants in foreign languages (Grace Stovall Burkart, ed.; Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics, 1998)

Goals and Techniques for Teaching Reading

Instructors want to produce students who, even if they do not have complete control of the grammar or an extensive lexicon, can fend for themselves in communication situations. In the case of reading, this means producing students who can use reading strategies to maximize their comprehension of text, identify relevant and non-relevant information, and tolerate less than word-by-word comprehension.

Focus: The Reading Process

To accomplish this goal, instructors focus on the process of reading rather than on its product.

• They develop students' awareness of the reading process and reading strategies by asking students to think and talk about how they read in their native language.

·         ·  They allow students to practice the full repertoire of reading strategies by using authentic reading tasks. They encourage students to read to learn (and have an authentic purpose for reading) by giving students some choice of reading material.

·         ·  When working with reading tasks in class, they show students the strategies that will work best for the reading purpose and the type of text. They explain how and why students should use the strategies.

·         ·  They have students practice reading strategies in class and ask them to practice outside of class in their reading assignments. They encourage students to be conscious of what they're doing while they complete reading assignments.

• They encourage students to evaluate their comprehension and self-report their use of strategies. They build comprehension checks into in-class and out-of-class reading assignments, and periodically review how and when to use particular strategies.
• They encourage the development of reading skills and the use of reading strategies by using the target language to convey instructions and course-related information in written form: office hours, homework assignments, test content.
• They do not assume that students will transfer strategy use from one task to another. They explicitly mention how a particular strategy can be used in a different type of reading task or with another skill.

By raising students' awareness of reading as a skill that requires active engagement, and by explicitly teaching reading strategies, instructors help their students develop both the ability and the   confidence to handle communication situations they may encounter beyond the classroom. In this way they give their students the foundation for communicative competence in the new language.

Integrating Reading Strategies

Instruction in reading strategies is not an add-on, but rather an integral part of the use of reading activities in the language classroom. Instructors can help their students become effective readers by teaching them how to use strategies before, during, and after reading.
Before reading: Plan for the reading task

• Set a purpose or decide in advance what to read for
• Decide if more linguistic or background knowledge is needed
• Determine whether to enter the text from the top down (attend to the overall meaning) or from the bottom up (focus on the words and phrases)

During and after reading: Monitor comprehension

• Verify predictions and check for inaccurate guesses
• Decide what is and is not important to understand
• Reread to check comprehension
• Ask for help

After reading: Evaluate comprehension and strategy use

• Evaluate comprehension in a particular task or area
• Evaluate overall progress in reading and in particular types of reading tasks
• Decide if the strategies used were appropriate for the purpose and for the task
• Modify strategies if necessary

Using Authentic Materials and Approaches

For students to develop communicative competence in reading, classroom and homework reading activities must resemble (or be) real-life reading tasks that involve meaningful communication. They must therefore be authentic in three ways.
1. The reading material must be authentic: It must be the kind of material that students will need and want to be able to read when traveling, studying abroad, or using the language in other contexts outside the classroom.
When selecting texts for student assignments, remember that the difficulty of a reading text is less a function of the language, and more a function of the conceptual difficulty and the task(s) that students are expected to complete. Simplifying a text by changing the language often removes natural redundancy and makes the organization somewhat difficult for students to predict. This actually makes a text more difficult to read than if the original were used.
Rather than simplifying a text by changing its language, make it more approachable by eliciting students' existing knowledge in pre-reading discussion, reviewing new vocabulary before reading, and asking students to perform tasks that are within their competence, such as skimming to get the main idea or scanning for specific information, before they begin intensive reading.
2. The reading purpose must be authentic: Students must be reading for reasons that make sense and have relevance to them. "Because the teacher assigned it" is not an authentic reason for reading a text.
To identify relevant reading purposes, ask students how they plan to use the language they are learning and what topics they are interested in reading and learning about. Give them opportunities to choose their reading assignments, and encourage them to use the library, the Internet, and foreign language newsstands and bookstores to find other things they would like to read.
3. The reading approach must be authentic: Students should read the text in a way that matches the reading purpose, the type of text, and the way people normally read. This means that reading aloud will take place only in situations where it would take place outside the classroom, such as reading for pleasure. The majority of students' reading should be done silently.

Reading Aloud in the Classroom

Students do not learn to read by reading aloud. A person who reads aloud and comprehends the meaning of the text is coordinating word recognition with comprehension and speaking and pronunciation ability in highly complex ways. Students whose language skills are limited are not able to process at this level, and end up having to drop one or more of the elements. Usually the dropped element is comprehension, and reading aloud becomes word calling: simply pronouncing a series of words without regard for the meaning they carry individually and together. Word calling is not productive for the student who is doing it, and it is boring for other students to listen to.

• There are two ways to use reading aloud productively in the language classroom. Read aloud to your students as they follow along silently. You have the ability to use inflection and tone to help them hear what the text is saying. Following along as you read will help students move from word-by-word reading to reading in phrases and thought units, as they do in their first language.
• Use the "read and look up" technique. With this technique, a student reads a phrase or sentence silently as many times as necessary, then looks up (away from the text) and tells you what the phrase or sentence says. This encourages students to read for ideas, rather than for word recognition.

Strategies for Developing Reading Skills

Using Reading Strategies

Language instructors are often frustrated by the fact that students do not automatically transfer the strategies they use when reading in their native language to reading in a language they are learning. Instead, they seem to think reading means starting at the beginning and going word by word, stopping to look up every unknown vocabulary item, until they reach the end. When they do this, students are relying exclusively on their linguistic knowledge, a bottom-up strategy. One of the most important functions of the language instructor, then, is to help students move past this idea and use top-down strategies as they do in their native language.
Effective language instructors show students how they can adjust their reading behavior to deal with a variety of situations, types of input, and reading purposes. They help students develop a set of reading strategies and match appropriate strategies to each reading situation.
Strategies that can help students read more quickly and effectively include

• Previewing: reviewing titles, section headings, and photo captions to get a sense of the structure and content of a reading selection
• Predicting: using knowledge of the subject matter to make predictions about content and vocabulary and check comprehension; using knowledge of the text type and purpose to make predictions about discourse structure; using knowledge about the author to make predictions about writing style, vocabulary, and content
• Skimming and scanning: using a quick survey of the text to get the main idea, identify text structure, confirm or question predictions
• Guessing from context: using prior knowledge of the subject and the ideas in the text as clues to the meanings of unknown words, instead of stopping to look them up
• Paraphrasing: stopping at the end of a section to check comprehension by restating the information and ideas in the text

Instructors can help students learn when and how to use reading strategies in several ways.

• By modeling the strategies aloud, talking through the processes of previewing, predicting, skimming and scanning, and paraphrasing. This shows students how the strategies work and how much they can know about a text before they begin to read word by word.
• By allowing time in class for group and individual previewing and predicting activities as preparation for in-class or out-of-class reading. Allocating class time to these activities indicates their importance and value.
• By using cloze (fill in the blank) exercises to review vocabulary items. This helps students learn to guess meaning from context.
• By encouraging students to talk about what strategies they think will help them approach a reading assignment, and then talking after reading about what strategies they actually used. This helps students develop flexibility in their choice of strategies.

When language learners use reading strategies, they find that they can control the reading experience, and they gain confidence in their ability to read the language.

Reading to Learn

Reading is an essential part of language instruction at every level because it supports learning in multiple ways.

• Reading to learn the language: Reading material is language input. By giving students a variety of materials to read, instructors provide multiple opportunities for students to absorb vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, and discourse structure as they occur in authentic contexts. Students thus gain a more complete picture of the ways in which the elements of the language work together to convey meaning.
• Reading for content information: Students' purpose for reading in their native language is often to obtain information about a subject they are studying, and this purpose can be useful in the language learning classroom as well. Reading for content information in the language classroom gives students both authentic reading material and an authentic purpose for reading.
• Reading for cultural knowledge and awareness: Reading everyday materials that are designed for native speakers can give students insight into the lifestyles and worldviews of the people whose language they are studying. When students have access to newspapers, magazines, and Web sites, they are exposed to culture in all its variety, and monolithic cultural stereotypes begin to break down.

When reading to learn, students need to follow four basic steps:

1.      Figure out the purpose for reading. Activate background knowledge of the topic in order to predict or anticipate content and identify appropriate reading strategies.

2.      Attend to the parts of the text that are relevant to the identified purpose and ignore the rest. This selectivity enables students to focus on specific items in the input and reduces the amount of information they have to hold in short-term memory.

3.      Select strategies that are appropriate to the reading task and use them flexibly and interactively. Students' comprehension improves and their confidence increases when they use top-down and bottom-up skills simultaneously to construct meaning.

4.      Check comprehension while reading and when the reading task is completed. Monitoring comprehension helps students detect inconsistencies and comprehension failures, helping them learn to use alternate strategies.

Developing Reading Activities

Developing reading activities involves more than identifying a text that is "at the right level," writing a set of comprehension questions for students to answer after reading, handing out the assignment and sending students away to do it. A fully-developed reading activity supports students as readers through prereading, while-reading, and post-reading activities.
As you design reading tasks, keep in mind that complete recall of all the information in a text is an unrealistic expectation even for native speakers. Reading activities that are meant to increase communicative competence should be success oriented and build up students' confidence in their reading ability.

Construct the reading activity around a purpose that has significance for the students

Make sure students understand what the purpose for reading is: to get the main idea, obtain specific information, understand most or all of the message, enjoy a story, or decide whether or not to read more. Recognizing the purpose for reading will help students select appropriate reading strategies.

Define the activity's instructional goal and the appropriate type of response

In addition to the main purpose for reading, an activity can also have one or more instructional purposes, such as practicing or reviewing specific grammatical constructions, introducing new vocabulary, or familiarizing students with the typical structure of a certain type of text.

Check the level of difficulty of the text

The factors listed below can help you judge the relative ease or difficulty of a reading text for a particular purpose and a particular group of students.

• How is the information organized? Does the story line, narrative, or instruction conform to familiar expectations? Texts in which the events are presented in natural chronological order, which have an informative title, and which present the information following an obvious organization (main ideas first, details and examples second) are easier to follow.
• How familiar are the students with the topic? Remember that misapplication of background knowledge due to cultural differences can create major comprehension difficulties.
• Does the text contain redundancy? At the lower levels of proficiency, listeners may find short, simple messages easier to process, but students with higher proficiency benefit from the natural redundancy of authentic language.
• Does the text offer visual support to aid in reading comprehension? Visual aids such as photographs, maps, and diagrams help students preview the content of the text, guess the meanings of unknown words, and check comprehension while reading.

Remember that the level of difficulty of a text is not the same as the level of difficulty of a reading task. Students who lack the vocabulary to identify all of the items on a menu can still determine whether the restaurant serves steak and whether they can afford to order one.

Use pre-reading activities to prepare students for reading

The activities you use during pre-reading may serve as preparation in several ways. During pre-reading you may:

• Assess students' background knowledge of the topic and linguistic content of the text
• Give students the background knowledge necessary for comprehension of the text, or activate the existing knowledge that the students possess
• Clarify any cultural information which may be necessary to comprehend the passage
• Make students aware of the type of text they will be reading and the purpose(s) for reading
• Provide opportunities for group or collaborative work and for class discussion activities

Sample pre-reading activities:

• Using the title, subtitles, and divisions within the text to predict content and organization or sequence of information
• Looking at pictures, maps, diagrams, or graphs and their captions
• Talking about the author's background, writing style, and usual topics
• Skimming to find the theme or main idea and eliciting related prior knowledge
• Reviewing vocabulary or grammatical structures
• Reading over the comprehension questions to focus attention on finding that information while reading
• Constructing semantic webs (a graphic arrangement of concepts or words showing how they are related)
• Doing guided practice with guessing meaning from context or checking comprehension while reading

Pre-reading activities are most important at lower levels of language proficiency and at earlier stages of reading instruction. As students become more proficient at using reading strategies, you will be able to reduce the amount of guided pre-reading and allow students to do these activities themselves.

Match while-reading activities to the purpose for reading

In while-reading activities, students check their comprehension as they read. The purpose for reading determines the appropriate type and level of comprehension.

• When reading for specific information, students need to ask themselves, have I obtained the information I was looking for?
• When reading for pleasure, students need to ask themselves, Do I understand the story line/sequence of ideas well enough to enjoy reading this?
• When reading for thorough understanding (intensive reading), students need to ask themselves, Do I understand each main idea and how the author supports it? Does what I'm reading agree with my predictions, and, if not, how does it differ? To check comprehension in this situation, students may
• Stop at the end of each section to review and check their predictions, restate the main idea and summarize the section
• Use the comprehension questions as guides to the text, stopping to answer them as they read

Assessing Reading Proficiency

Reading ability is very difficult to assess accurately. In the communicative competence model, a student's reading level is the level at which that student is able to use reading to accomplish communication goals. This means that assessment of reading ability needs to be correlated with purposes for reading.

Reading Aloud

A student's performance when reading aloud is not a reliable indicator of that student's reading ability. A student who is perfectly capable of understanding a given text when reading it silently may stumble when asked to combine comprehension with word recognition and speaking ability in the way that reading aloud requires.
In addition, reading aloud is a task that students will rarely, if ever, need to do outside of the classroom. As a method of assessment, therefore, it is not authentic: It does not test a student's ability to use reading to accomplish a purpose or goal. However, reading aloud can help a teacher assess whether a student is "seeing" word endings and other grammatical features when reading. To use reading aloud for this purpose, adopt the "read and look up" approach: Ask the student to read a sentence silently one or more times, until comfortable with the content, then look up and tell you what it says. This procedure allows the student to process the text, and lets you see the results of that processing and know what elements, if any, the student is missing.

Comprehension Questions

Instructors often use comprehension questions to test whether students have understood what they have read. In order to test comprehension appropriately, these questions need to be coordinated with the purpose for reading. If the purpose is to find specific information, comprehension questions should focus on that information. If the purpose is to understand an opinion and the arguments that support it, comprehension questions should ask about those points.
In everyday reading situations, readers have a purpose for reading before they start. That is, they know what comprehension questions they are going to need to answer before they begin reading. To make reading assessment in the language classroom more like reading outside of the classroom, therefore, allow students to review the comprehension questions before they begin to read the test passage.
Finally, when the purpose for reading is enjoyment, comprehension questions are beside the point. As a more authentic form of assessment, have students talk or write about why they found the text enjoyable and interesting (or not).

Authentic Assessment

In order to provide authentic assessment of students' reading proficiency, a post-listening activity must reflect the real-life uses to which students might put information they have gained through reading.

• It must have a purpose other than assessment
• It must require students to demonstrate their level of reading comprehension by completing some task

To develop authentic assessment activities, consider the type of response that reading a particular selection would elicit in a non-classroom situation. For example, after reading a weather report, one might decide what to wear the next day; after reading a set of instructions, one might   repeat them to someone else; after reading a short story, one might discuss the story line with friends.
Use this response type as a base for selecting appropriate post-reading tasks. You can then develop a checklist or rubric that will allow you to evaluate each student's comprehension of specific parts of the text. See Assessing Learning for more on checklists and rubrics.

 Teaching Reading

Ackersold, J. A., & Field, M. L. (1997). From reader to reading teacher: Issues and strategies for second language classrooms. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Anderson, N. (1999). Exploring second language reading: Issues and strategies. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.
Barnett, M. A. (1989). More than meets the eye: Foreign language learner reading theory and practice. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Regents.
Bernhardt, E. (1991). Reading development in a second language. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Carrell, P. L. (1989). Metacognitive awareness and second language reading. Modern Language Journal, 73, 121-133.
Day, R. R., & Bamford, J. (1998). Extensive reading in the second language classroom. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Devine, J. (1993). The role of metacognition in second language reading and writing. In J. G. Carson & I. Leki (Eds.), Reading in the composition classroom (pp. 105-127). Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.
Eskey, D. (2002). Reading and the teaching of L2 reading. TESOL Journal, 11(1), 5-9.
Galloway, V. (1992). Toward a cultural reading of authentic texts. In H. Byrnes (Ed.), Languages for a multicultural world in transition (pp. 87-121). Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Co.
Glazer, S. M. (1992). Reading comprehension: Self-monitoring strategies to develop independent readers. New York: Scholastic Professional Books.
Grellet, F. (1981). Developing reading skills: A practical guide to reading comprehension exercises. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hosenfeld, C., Arnold, V., Kirchofer, J., Laciura, J., & Wilson, L. Second language reading: A curricular sequence for teaching reading strategies. Foreign Language Annals, 14, 415-422.
Kramsch, C. (1985). Literary texts in the classroom: A discourse model. The Modern Language Journal, 69(4), 356-366.
Phillips, J. K. (1985). Proficiency-based instruction in reading: A teacher education module. Introductory Packet; Applications Packet; Sample Materials. Material produced in conjunction with a grant from the International Research and Studies Program, U.S. Department of Education.
Silberstein, S. (1994). Techniques and resources in teaching reading. New York: Oxford University Press.
Swaffar, J., Arens, K., & Byrnes, H. (1991). Reading for meaning: An integrated approach to language learning. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Urquhart, A. H., & Weir, C. (1998). Reading in a second language: Process, product, and practice. New York: Longman.

 

 

 

method -3

MOTIVATING LEARNERS
Learning to communicate in another language takes a long time. It is one of the most
challenging tasks your students are likely to undertake, and they can easily become
discouraged and bored with it. This section presents techniques that language teachers
can use to keep their students interested and motivated by helping them understand the
language acquisition process, connect language learning with their larger educational
and life goals, and succeed as language learners.
A self-evaluation worksheet, attached at the end of this document, allows instructors to
assess their current and potential motivation techniques. A supervisor observation
worksheet enables supervisors to support instructors' development of such techniques.
Section Contents
Understanding language acquisition
Promoting engagement in language learning
Achieving success with learning strategies
Resources
Worksheets
Instructor self-evaluation worksheet
Supervisor observation worksheet
The material in this section is based on “Research and language learning: A tour of the
horizon” by Ken Sheppard and “Teaching learning strategies to language students” by
Anna Uhl Chamot from Modules for the Professional Preparation of Teaching Assistants in
Foreign Languages (Grace Stovall Burkart, Ed.; Washington, DC: Center for Applied
Linguistics, 1998).

Understanding Language Acquisition
To become engaged learners, students need to understand that learning a language is
not the same as learning about a language. When students think of the language as a
school subject like any other, they may learn a great deal about its vocabulary, grammar,
and sentence and discourse structure, but the language will not become a true medium
of communication for them and won't engage them very deeply. Students need to
understand that learning a language means becoming able to use it to comprehend,
communicate, and think—as they do in their first language.
Students also need to recognize that language learning takes place in stages. Interpretive
skills (listening, reading) develop much more quickly than expressive skills (speaking,
writing), and the ability that students covet most—the ability to speak the second
language fluently—requires the longest period of growth.
All language learners have to work through a sequence of "approximate" versions called
interlanguages (ILs), each of which represents a level of understanding of the target
language. Understanding the features of ILs can help teachers and learners understand
and monitor the language learning process.
Uniqueness: ILs vary significantly from learner to learner in the early stages of language
learning. Learners impose rules of their own on the oral and written input they receive.
Each learner does this differently, combining emerging understanding of the rules of the
new language with ideas derived from the first language and other information that
comes from their individual situations and backgrounds.
Systematicity: As learners begin to develop proficiency in a language, they make errors
in systematic ways. For example, once students learn the inflections for a single class of
verbs, they may apply them to all classes indiscriminately. These errors are based on
systematic assumptions, or false rules, about the language. When students become
aware of this aspect of their language skill development, they often appreciate and even
ask for overt error correction from the instructor.
Fossilization: Some false rules become more firmly imprinted on the IL than others and
are harder for learners to overcome. Fossilization results when these false rules become
permanent features of a learner's use of the language.
Convergence: As learners' rules come to approximate more closely those of the language
they are learning, convergence sets in. This means that learners who come from different
native language backgrounds make similar assumptions and formulate similar
hypotheses about the rules of the new language, and therefore make similar errors.
Instructors can help students understand the process of language skill development in
several ways.
(a) Focus on interlanguage as a natural part of language learning; remind them
that they learned their first language this way.
(b) Point out that the systematic nature of interlanguage can help students
understand why they make errors. They can often predict when they will make
errors and what types of errors they will make.
(c) Keep the overall focus of the classroom on communication, not error
correction. Use overt correction only in structured output activities. (See
Planning a Lesson for more on structured output.)
(d) Teach students that mistakes are learning opportunities. When their errors
interfere with their ability to communicate, they must develop strategies for
handling the misunderstanding that results.
If you maintain the attitude that mistakes are a natural part of learning, you will create a
supportive environment where students are willing to try to use the language even
though their mastery of forms is imperfect.

Promoting Engagement in Language Learning
Language teachers promote or discourage students' engagement by the ways they define
successful language learners. When the successful language learner is one who can pass
tests and make good grades, learning about the language is all that is required and
success is defined by mastery of rules and forms. When the successful language learner
is one who has the ability to use the language to accomplish communication goals,
success is defined as making the language one's own.
To promote engagement in language learning:
• Encourage students to use the language spontaneously to communicate ideas,
feelings, and opinions
• Identify informal out-of-class language learning experiences
• Ask students to evaluate their progress in terms of increases in their functional
proficiency
Students' motivation for learning a language increases when they see connections
between what they do in the classroom and what they hope to do with the language in
the future. Their attention increases when classroom activities are relevant to their other
interests.
To make these connections, begin by having students list the ways they may use the
language in future. Have them include both the ways they plan to use it and other ways
that might arise. Ask them to be as specific as possible. For each way of using language,
ask them to list specific communication tasks that they will need to be able to do. Use
these purposes and tasks as the basis for task-oriented classroom communication
activities.
Some lower level students will respond that they don't plan to use the language—that
they are taking the course to fulfill a university language requirement. Encourage these
students to develop an imaginary scenario for themselves in which they have some
reason for using the language. In doing this, some students may think of ways in which
they really might use it, and others will come to understand that purpose is an integral
part of language learning.
Sample Ways of Using a Language
• When traveling in a country where it is spoken
Tasks: ask for directions (and understand responses), purchase tickets and book
hotel rooms, read signs and informational materials
• To study at a university in a country where it is spoken
Tasks: understand lectures, take notes, read academic materials, talk with other
students (social and academic talk)
• To become knowledgeable about the history and culture of a country where it is
spoken
Tasks: read about history and culture, understand plays, movies, and other
performances, interview people from the country
• To provide legal assistance to native speakers who are immigrants to this
country
Tasks: gather personal statistical information, explain legal requirements, explain
social and cultural expectations, describe procedures, understand and answer
questions.
Another way of making language instruction relevant and interesting to students is to
find out what topics they are studying and draw materials for reading and discussion
from those fields. However, remember that reading and discussion do not always have
to be about serious issues or academic topics. Students enjoy talking about movies and
television programs, vacation plans, famous people, and other popular culture topics.
Finally, don't be afraid to drop a topic if students' interest begins to fade. Ask them to
suggest alternatives. When students know that they have some control over what they
do in the language classroom, they take ownership as engaged learners.

Achieving Success with Learning Strategies
Students learning a language have two kinds of knowledge working for them:
• Their knowledge of their first language
• Their awareness of learning strategies, the mechanisms they use, consciously or
unconsciously, to manage the absorption of new material
Students differ as language learners in part because of differences in ability, motivation,
or effort, but a major difference lies in their knowledge about and skill in using "how to
learn" techniques, that is, learning strategies. Classroom research demonstrates the role
of learning strategies in effective language learning:
• Good learners are able to identify the best strategy for a specific task; poor
learners have difficulty choosing the best strategy for a specific task
• Good learners are flexible in their approach and adopt a different strategy if the
first one doesn't work; poor learners have a limited variety of strategies in their
repertoires and stay with the first strategy they have chosen even when it doesn't
work
• Good learners have confidence in their learning ability; poor learners lack
confidence in their learning ability
• Good learners expect to succeed, fulfill their expectation, and become more
motivated; poor learners: expect to do poorly, fulfill their expectation, and lose
motivation
Learning strategies instruction shows students that their success or lack of it in the
language classroom is due to the way they go about learning rather than to forces
beyond their control. Most students can learn how to use strategies more effectively;
when they do so, they become more self reliant and better able to learn independently.
They begin to take more responsibility for their own learning, and their motivation
increases because they have increased confidence in their learning ability and specific
techniques for successful language learning.
Instructors can tap into students' knowledge about how languages work and how
learning happens—their metacognition—to help them direct and monitor the language
learning process in two ways:
• By encouraging them to recognize their own thinking processes, developing selfknowledge
that leads to self-regulation: planning how to proceed with a learning
task, monitoring one's own performance on an ongoing basis, and evaluating
learning and self as learner upon task completion. Students with greater
metacognitive awareness understand the similarity between the current learning
task and previous ones, know the strategies required for successful learning, and
anticipate success as a result of knowing how to learn.
• By describing specific learning strategies, demonstrating their application to
designated learning tasks, and having students practice using them. In order to
continue to be successful with learning tasks, students need to be aware of the
strategies that led to their success and recognize the value of using them again.
By devoting class time to learning strategies, teachers reiterate their importance
and value.
To teach language learning strategies effectively, instructors should do several things:
• Build on strategies students already use by finding out their current strategies
and making students aware of the range of strategies used by their classmates
• Integrate strategy instruction with regular lessons, rather than teaching the
strategies separately from language learning activities
• Be explicit: name the strategy, tell students why and how it will help them, and
demonstrate its use
• Provide choice by letting students decide which strategies work best for them
• Guide students in transferring a familiar strategy to new problems
• Plan continuous instruction in language learning strategies throughout the
course
• Use the target language as much as possible for strategies instruction
(See Planning a Lesson for information on integrating strategy instruction into a
language lesson.)
Learning Strategies for Language Learners
Learning strategies researchers have generated many lists of strategies reported by
students. Those listed here are ones that teachers can teach and that students have found
useful in learning a language.

METACOGNITIVE STRATEGIES
STRATEGY DESCRIPTION
Organize / Plan
• Set goals
• Plan how to accomplish the task
• Plan the task or content sequence
Manage Your Own Learning
• Determine how you learn best
• Arrange conditions that help you learn
• Seek opportunities for practice
• Focus your attention on the task
Monitor
While working on a task:
• Check your progress on the task.
• Check your comprehension as you use the
language. Are you understanding?
• Check your production as you use the language.
Are you making sense?
Evaluate
After completing a task:
• Assess how well you have accomplished the
learning task.
• Assess how well you have applied the strategies.
• Decide how effective the strategies were in helping
you accomplish the task.

TASK-BASED STRATEGIES
STRATEGY DESCRIPTION
USE WHAT YOU KNOW

Use Background Knowledge
• Think about and use what you already know to
help you do the task.
• Make associations.
Make Inferences
• Use context and what you know to figure out
meaning.
• Read and listen between the lines.
Make Predictions • Anticipate information to come.
• Make logical guesses about what will happen.
Personalize • Relate new concepts to your own life, that is, to
your experiences, knowledge, beliefs, and feelings.
Transfer / Use Cognates
• Apply your linguistic knowledge of other
languages (including your native language) to the
target language.
• Recognize cognates.
Substitute / Paraphrase • Think of a similar word or descriptive phrase for
words you do not know in the target language.
USE YOUR IMAGINATION
Use Imagery • Use or create an image to understand and/or
represent information.
Use Real Objects / Role Play
• Act out and/or imagine yourself in different roles
in the target language.
• Manipulate real objects as you use the target
language.
USE YOUR ORGANIZATIONAL SKILLS
Find/Apply Patterns
• Apply a rule.
• Make a rule.
• Sound out and apply letter/sound rules.
Group/Classify • Relate or categorize words or ideas according to
attributes.
Use Graphic Organizers /
Take Notes
• Use or create visual representations (such as Venn
diagrams, time lines, and charts) of important
relationships between concepts.
• Write down important words and ideas.
Summarize • Create a mental, oral, or written summary of
information.
Use Selective Attention • Focus on specific information, structures, key
words, phrases, or ideas.


TASK-BASED STRATEGIES
STRATEGY DESCRIPTION
USE A VARIETY OF RESOURCES
Access Information Sources
• Use the dictionary, the internet, and other
reference materials.
• Seek out and use sources of information.
• Follow a model
• Ask questions
Cooperate • Work with others to complete tasks, build
confidence, and give and receive feedback.
Talk Yourself Through It
(Self-Talk)
• Use your inner resources. Reduce your anxiety by
reminding yourself of your progress, the resources
you have available, and your goals.

Resources
Bialystok, E. (1990). Communication strategies: A psychological analysis of second language
use. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Chamot, A. U. (1993). Student responses to learning strategy instruction in the foreign
language classroom. Foreign Language Annals, 26(3), 308-321.
Chamot, A. U., Barnhardt, S., El-Dinary, P. B., Carbonaro, G., & Robbins, J. (1993).
Methods for teaching learning strategies in foreign language instruction and informal
assessment of language skills. Final report submitted to Center for International
Education, U.S. Department of Education. Available from ERIC Clearinghouse
on Languages and Linguistics, ED 365 157.
Chamot, A. U., & Küpper, L. (1989). Learning strategies in foreign language instruction.
Foreign Language Annals, 22(1), 13-24.
Chamot, A. U., & O'Malley, J. M. (1994). The CALLA handbook: Implementing the cognitive
academic language learning approach. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Derry, S. J. (1990). Learning strategies for acquiring useful knowledge. In B. F. Jones & L.
Idol (Eds.), Dimensions of thinking and cognitive instruction (pp. 347-379). Hillsdale,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Gagné, E. D., Yekovich, C. W., & Yekovich, F. R. (1993). The cognitive psychology of school
learning (2nd ed.). New York: Harper Collins.
Gass, S. M., & Selinker, L. (1994). Second language acquisition: An introductory course.
Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Harley, B., Allen, P., Cummins, J., & Swain, M. (Eds.). (1990). The development of second
language proficiency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hosenfeld, C., Arnold, V., Kirchofer, J., Laciura, J., & Wilson, L. (1981). Second language
reading: A curricular sequence for teaching reading strategies. Foreign Language
Annals, 14(5), 415-422.
Larsen-Freeman, D., & Long, M. H. (1991). An introduction to second language acquisition
research. London: Longman.
O'Malley, J. M., & Chamot, A. U. (1990). Learning strategies in second language acquisition.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
O'Malley, J. M., Chamot, A. U., & Küpper, L. (1989). Listening comprehension strategies
in second language acquisition. Applied Linguistics, 10(4), 418-437.
Oxford, R. (1990). Language learning strategies: What every teacher should know. Boston:
Heinle & Heinle.
Oxford, R., & Cohen, A. (1992). Language learning strategies: Critical issues of concept
and classification. Applied Language Learning, 3, 1-35.
Palincsar, A. S., & Brown, A. L. (1985). Reciprocal teaching: Activities to promote
"reading with your mind." In T. L. Harris & E. J. Cooper (Eds.), Reading, thinking,
and concept development: Strategies for the classroom (pp. 147-160). New York: The
College Board.
Palincsar, A. S., & Brown, A. L. (1986). Interactive teaching to promote independent
learning from text. The Reading Teacher, 39(2), 771-777.
Paris, S. G., & Winograd, P. (1990). How metacognition can promote academic learning
and instruction. In B. F. Jones & L. Idol (Eds.), Dimensions of thinking and cognitive
instruction (pp. 15-51). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Pressley, M., & Harris, K. (1990). What we really know about strategy instruction.
Educational Leadership, 48(1), 31-34.
Rost, M., & Ross, S. (1991). Learner use of strategies in interaction: Typology and
teachability. Language Learning, 41(2), 235-273.
Thompson, I., & Rubin, J. (1995). How to be a more successful language learner (2nd ed.).
Boston: Heinle & Heinle.
Vann, R. J., & Abraham, R. G. (1990). Strategies of unsuccessful language learners.
TESOL Quarterly, 24, 177-198.
Wenden, A. (1987). How to be a successful learner: Insights and prescriptions from L2
learners. In A. Wenden & J. Rubin (Eds.), Learner strategies in language learning.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Wenden, A., & Rubin, J. (Eds.). (1987). Learner strategies in language learning. Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Zimmerman, B. J., & Pons, M. M. (1986). Development of a structured interview for
assessing student use of self-regulated learning strategies. American Educational
Research Journal, 23(3), 614-628.


Instructor Self-evaluation Worksheet
Use this worksheet to think about how you help learners become motivated and ways
you can encourage them to become more engaged in language learning.
1. I define a successful language learner as one who can:
2. Ways I treat students’ interlanguages as problems to be corrected:
3. Ways I treat students’ interlanguages as steps in a developmental process:
4. My students’ goals for learning the language usually are:
5. Ways I ask (or could ask) my students to connect language learning with their goals
and interests:
6. Learning strategies I have seen my students use:
7. Learning strategies that could help my students, and ways to introduce them:
8. I have the following concerns or reservations about learning strategy instruction:

Supervisor Observation Worksheet
Use this worksheet when observing a teacher’s classroom performance to provide
feedback on teaching behaviors. Whenever possible, give specific examples.
1. What is the teacher’s definition of a successful language learner? How was that
apparent in the class?
2. How did the teacher respond when students’ interlanguages became evident?
3. How did the teacher and/or the students connect classroom activities with larger
goals and interests?
4. What learning strategies did the instructor teach or model?
5. What learning strategies did students use on their own?
6. How would you characterize students’ overall approach to and attitude about
language learning?

method - 2

PLANNING A LESSON

A key aspect of effective teaching is having a plan for what will happen in the classroom
each day. Creating such a plan involves setting realistic goals, deciding how to
incorporate required materials (course textbooks) and other materials, and developing
activities that will promote learning.
An example lesson plan and lesson planning worksheet, attached at the end of this
document, provide step-by-step guidance for lesson development. A supervisor
observation worksheet allows supervisors to give specific feedback on a written lesson
plan or an observed lesson.
Before working through this section, beginning instructors may want to check Be
Prepared: Survival Tips for New Teachers in the What Teaching Is section.

Section Contents
Set Lesson Goals
• Topic
• Linguistic content
• Communication tasks
• Learning strategies
Structure the Lesson
• Preparation
• Presentation
• Practice
• Evaluation
• Expansion
Identify Materials and Activities
Resources
Worksheets
Example lesson plan
Instructor lesson planning worksheet
Supervisor observation worksheet
Material in this section was developed by Dr. Anna Uhl Chamot (George Washington
University) and Dr. Catherine Keatley and Deborah Kennedy (National Capital
Language Resource Center).

Set Lesson Goals
Lesson goals are most usefully stated in terms of what students will have done or
accomplished at the end of the lesson. Stating goals in this way allows both teacher and
learners to know when the goals have been reached.
To set lesson goals:
1. Identify a topic for the lesson. The topic is not a goal, but it will help you develop
your goals. The topic may be determined largely by your curriculum and textbook, and
may be part of a larger thematic unit such as Travel or Leisure Activities. If you have
some flexibility in choice of topic, consider your students’ interests and the availability
of authentic materials at the appropriate level.
2. Identify specific linguistic content, such as vocabulary and points of grammar or
language use, to be introduced or reviewed. These are usually prescribed by the course
textbook or course curriculum. If they are not, select points that are connected in some
significant way with the topic of the lesson.
3. Identify specific communication tasks to be completed by students. To be authentic,
the tasks should allow, but not require, students to use the vocabulary, grammar, and
strategies presented in the lesson. The focus of the tasks should be topical, not
grammatical. This means that it may be possible for some students to complete the task
without using either the grammar point or the strategy presented in the first part of the
lesson.
4. Identify specific learning strategies to be introduced or reviewed in connection with
the lesson. See Motivating Learners for more on learning strategies.
5. Create goal statements for the linguistic content, communication tasks, and learning
strategies that state what you will do and what students will do during the lesson.

Structure the Lesson
A language lesson should include a variety of activities that combine different types of
language input and output. Learners at all proficiency levels benefit from such variety;
research has shown that it is more motivating and is more likely to result in effective
language learning.

An effective lesson has five parts:

1. Preparation
2. Presentation/Modeling
3. Practice
4. Evaluation
5. Expansion

The five parts of a lesson may all take place in one class session or may extend over
multiple sessions, depending on the nature of the topic and the activities.
The lesson plan should outline who will do what in each part of the lesson. The time
allotted for preparation, presentation, and evaluation activities should be no more than
8-10 minutes each. Communication practice activities may run a little longer.

1. Preparation
As the class begins, give students a broad outline of the day’s goals and activities so they
know what to expect. Help them focus by eliciting their existing knowledge of the day’s
topics.
• Use discussion or homework review to elicit knowledge related to the grammar and
language use points to be covered
• Use comparison with the native language to elicit strategies that students may
already be using
• Use discussion of what students do and/or like to do to elicit their knowledge of the
topic they will address in communication activities

2. Presentation/Modeling

Move from preparation into presentation of the linguistic and topical content of the
lesson and relevant learning strategies. Present the strategy first if it will help students
absorb the lesson content.
Presentation provides the language input that gives students the foundation for their
knowledge of the language. Input comes from the instructor and from course textbooks.
Language textbooks designed for students in U.S. universities usually provide input
only in the form of examples; explanations and instructions are written in English. To
increase the amount of input that students receive in the target language, instructors
should use it as much as possible for all classroom communication purposes. (See
Teaching Goals and Methods for more on input.)
An important part of the presentation is practice output, in which students practice the
form that the instructor has presented. In practice output, accuracy of performance is
important. Practice output is designed to make learners comfortable producing specific
language items recently introduced. 

Practice output is a type of communication that is found only in language classrooms.
Because production is limited to preselected items, practice output is not truly
communicative.

3. Practice

In this part of the lesson, the focus shifts from the instructor as presenter to the students
as completers of a designated task. Students work in pairs or small groups on a topicbased
task with a specific outcome. Completion of the task may require the bridging of
an information gap (see Teaching Goals & Methods for more on information gap). The
instructor observes the groups an acts as a resource when students have questions that
they cannot resolve themselves.
In their work together, students move from practice output to communicative output, in
which the main purpose is to complete the communication task. Language becomes a
tool, rather than an end in itself. Learners have to use any or all of the language that they
know along with varied communication strategies. The criterion of success is whether
the learner gets the message across. Accuracy is not a consideration unless the lack of it
interferes with the message.

4. Evaluation

When all students have completed the communication practice task, reconvene the class
as a group to recap the lesson. Ask students to give examples of how they used the
linguistic content and learning or communication strategies to carry out the
communication task.
Evaluation is useful for four reasons:
• It reinforces the material that was presented earlier in the lesson
• It provides an opportunity for students to raise questions of usage and style
• It enables the instructor to monitor individual student comprehension and learning
• It provides closure to the lesson
See Assessing Learning for more information on evaluation and assessment.

5. Expansion
Expansion activities allow students to apply the knowledge they have gained in the
classroom to situations outside it. Expansion activities include out-of-class observation
assignments, in which the instructor asks students to find examples of something or to
use a strategy and then report back.

Identify Materials and Activities
The materials for a specific lesson will fall into two categories: those that are required,
such as course textbooks and lab materials, and authentic materials that the teacher
incorporates into classroom activities.
For required materials, determine what information must be presented in class and
decide which exercise(s) to use in class and which for out-of-class work.
For teacher-provided materials, use materials that are genuinely related to realistic
communication activities. Don’t be tempted to try to create a communication situation
around something just because it’s a really cool video or beautiful brochure.
Truly authentic communication tasks have several features:
• They involve solving a true problem or discussing a topic of interest
• They require using language to accomplish a goal, not using language merely to
use language
• They allow students to use all of the language skills they have, rather than
specific forms or vocabulary, and to self-correct when they realize they need to
• The criterion of success is clear: completion of a defined task

Resources
Chamot, A. U., & O'Malley, J. M. (1994). The CALLA handbook: Implementing the cognitive
academic language learning approach. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Kramsch, C. J. The order of discourse in language teaching. In B. F. Freed (Ed.), Foreign
language acquisition and the classroom (pp. 191-204). Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath.
Lee, J. F., & VanPatten, B. (1995). Making communicative language teaching happen. San
Francisco: McGraw-Hill.
Lewis, M., & Hill, J. (1992). Practical techniques for language teaching. Language Teaching
Publications.
Lightbown, P. (1983). Exploring relationships between developmental and instructional
sequences in L2 acquisition. In H. Seliger & M. Long (Eds.), Classroom-oriented
research in second language acquisition (pp. 217-243). Rowley, MA: Newbury
House.
McCutcheon, G. (1980). How do elementary school teachers plan? The nature of the
planning process and influences on it. The Elementary School Journal 81 (1), 4-23.
Nunan, D. (1989). Designing tasks for the communicative classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Omaggio Hadley, A. (1993). Teaching language in context (2nd ed.). Boston: Heinle &
Heinle.
Rooks, G. (1981). Nonstop discussion book. Cambridge, MA: Newbury House.
Shrum, J. L., & Glisan, E. W. (1994). Teacher's handbook: Contextualized language
instruction. Boston: Heinle & Heinle.
VanPatten, B. (1990). Attending to form and content in the input. Studies in Second
Language Acquisition, 12, 287-301.
VanPatten, B., & Cadierno, T. (1993). Explicit instruction and input processing. Studies in
Second Language Acquisition, 15, 225-244.
Example Lesson Plan (from English as a second language)

Lesson Topic The topic of the lesson is Planning Weekend Activities
Lesson Goals Linguistic content:
Using “going to / not going to” to describe future activities
I will present the grammatical form and the pronunciation issues
Students will do structured practice with workbook exercises
Students will use the forms in communication tasks

Communication tasks:
Reading event listings in newspapers and magazines
Providing information about weekend events to others
Completing individual weekend activity plan
Students will work in groups to share information
Students will develop individual plans
I will observe and act as resource
Learning strategies:
Cooperate
Selective Attention

I will model Selective Attention
Students will do structured practice with event listings
Students will use the strategy in the communication task

Structure Preparation (8-10 minutes)

• As students are arriving, chat with them about whether they like to go
to movies, concerts, restaurants
• Ask how they find out what’s going on around town
• Review homework sheet on simple future; ask for examples of other
ways to talk about the future
• Outline goals for today’s class

Grammar Presentation and Practice (8-10 minutes)
• Move from preparation into presentation of “going to/not going to.”
• Discuss native speaker pronunciation (“gonna”). Stress that they
don’t have to do it, but they need to be able to understand it.
• Use selected items from textbook exercises for student practice and to
identify and clear up any confusion.

Strategy Presentation and Practice: (5-6 minutes)
• Hand out photocopied page with sample event listings.
• Read first one aloud, describing strategy for identifying key
information (Selective Attention). Connect to discussion during
preparation stage if possible.
• Have class as a group read the others, modifying strategy to fit.

Communication Practice, Part 1 (12-15 minutes)
• Students divide themselves into groups of four.
• In each group, give movie listings to one student, TV listings to
another, theatre and concert listings to another, and restaurant guide
to another.
• Give each student an entertainment budget for the weekend.
• Students work together to develop weekend plans. Plans can include
joint activities (2, 3, or all 4) as well as individual ones. Plans can
include activities not listed on the distributed materials.
• Tell students that the product of the activity will be a written
weekend activity plan.

Communication Practice, Part 2 (5 minutes)
Each student writes an outline of planned weekend activities. The outline
should include costs for each activity to be sure the student is staying
within budget.

Evaluation (5-6 minutes)
Bring students back together as a class. Ask members of each group to
give examples of ways they used “going to” in making their plans. Ask
members of each group to describe how reading strategies helped them
find the information they needed to make their plans.
Expansion (homework for next class)
Have students bring in 3 examples of oral or written use of “going to”
that they find.
Materials Required Materials:
• Homework exercise on the simple future
• Textbook section on “going to”
Authentic Materials:
• Weekend TV listings
• Newspaper movie listings
• Newspaper theatre and concert listings
• City magazine restaurant guide
Instructor Lesson Planning Worksheet
Use this worksheet to plan a lesson on a specific topic. Remember that a lesson may
extend over more than one class session.
Lesson Topic The topic of the lesson is ______________________________________
Lesson Goals
Linguistic content:
Communication tasks:
Learning strategies:
Structure
Preparation
Time:
What teacher will do:
What students will do:
Presentation
Time:
What teacher will do:
What students will do:
Practice
Time:
What teacher will do:
What students will do:
Evaluation
Time:
What teacher will do:
What students will do:
Expansion
Time:
What teacher will do:
What students will do:
Materials
Required Materials:
Authentic Materials:

Supervisor Observation Worksheet
Use this worksheet when reviewing a teacher’s written lesson plan or observing the
teacher teaching the lesson. Whenever possible, give specific examples.
Lesson Topic The topic of the lesson was _____________________________________
Was the topic made clear to the students?
Lesson Goals
Linguistic content:
Communication task:
Learning strategies:
Were the goals explained to the students?
How were the goals appropriate/not appropriate to the topic and to the students’
proficiency level?
Structure
Preparation
Time:
Too little/too much time?
What teacher did:
What students did:
How well did it work?

Presentation
Time:
Too little/too much time?
What teacher did:
What students did:
How well did it work?
Practice
Time:
Too little/too much time?
What teacher did:
What students did:
How well did it work?
Evaluation
Time:
Too little/too much time?
What teacher did:
What students did:
How well did it work?

Expansion (if observation is possible)
Time:
Too little/too much time?
What teacher did:
What students did:
How well did it work?
Materials
Required Materials:
Appropriate to students’ proficiency level?
Authentic Materials:
Appropriate to students’ proficiency level?