How to place your students Part 3

Following our previous articles, now it is the finally two levels that your students should be able to perform. However, please keep this in mind that many school in Taiwan place students according to their age, not with their ability. Often you will have class full with beginners and one kid who can speak perfect and fluent English.


Upper-intermediate
At this level students can speak and write with reasonable fluency using a range of tenses and expressions for linking ideas. They can use appropriate language in a variety of situations demonstrating an understanding of formal and informal language.
Grammar to cover includes:
✓ To have something done: students are used to speaking about actions they do themselves. With this grammatical structure they can express the idea of paying or instructing other people to do things. For example, I had my house painted.
✓ Third conditional: If I had known, I wouldn’t have done it.
✓ Reported speech: She said that she . . .
✓ Defining relative clauses: The man who is standing over there is nervous.

✓ Modal verbs in the past: I could have come.
✓ Passive verb forms: The room was cleaned.
✓ The verb to wish: I wish I could go, you wish you were me (after wish you use a verb in one of the past tenses, so students have to learn this verb separately)
✓ To be used to/ to get used to: I'm used to London now but I'm still getting used to my new job. Students easily confuse these two grammatical structures.
✓ Past perfect continuous tense: I had been working.
✓ Future perfect: I will have written it.
Vocabulary to cover includes:
✓ Adjectives of personality: generous, manipulative.
✓ Medical problems: ache, bruise, sprain.
✓ Crime words: to arrest, fraud, mugging.
✓ Feelings: hurt, fascinated, relieved.
✓ Science and technology words: software, appliance.
✓ Media and communications words: broadcasting, the press.


Advanced
Students at this level are able to communicate with native speakers without much difficulty. They get the gist of most texts and conversations and have sufficient vocabulary to express themselves on a wide variety of topics. The grammar and vocabulary they use is similar to that of native speakers even when it's not strictly necessary to be understood. Question tags, which showed in the following grammar list, provide a good example of this.
Grammar to cover includes:
✓ Prefixes and suffixes: respect/ disrespect/ disrespectful
✓ Compound nouns: tooth + paste = toothpaste.
✓ Active and stative verbs (actions and conditions): She bought (active) a motorbike and also owns (stative) a car.
✓ Future perfect continuous tense: I will have been working.
✓ Detailed rules on phrasal verbs: Phrasal verbs consist of a verb and a preposition or two that together make a new meaning. For example: to get on with someone, to put up with something.
Vocabulary to cover includes:
✓ Newspaper headlines. There are a number of words that are favorites for newspapers but hardly used elsewhere, for example, Minister Rapped After Expenses Probe. Journalists also like to be very playful with the language. They use nicknames, rhymes, and slang and students want to be in on the joke so that they can understand the press for themselves. However, it sometimes takes a great deal of explaining and a detailed
analysis of the language for students to get the point.
✓ Words with different connotations. Old and elderly have basically the same meaning. However, elderly is more polite than old when referring to people, so the connotation (attitude behind the word) is different. When students understand that words have similar meanings they also need to know the subtle but important differences between them.
✓ Metaphors and similes. You use metaphors when you say that one thing is another because they're somehow similar. There was a storm of protest. Storm is a word that describes violent weather conditions but here it means a violent outburst.
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10 Easy Tips on Teaching Grammar Pt.3

7.  “Teach idioms, reductions, and slang to intermediate level students.”

Most of these idioms, reductions and slang did not follow the grammar rules. In order to avoid any confusion, it is better to teach these after they reach a higher level. Students need to understand the rules before they learn to break it.

8.  “Have your students peer-edit each other.”

Have your students edited each other’s work, it can train them to proof-read. Furthermore, it can remind them where to look for mistakes or not to make one. Another advantage is that it won’t overwhelm your students with sea of red marks---if your students made lots of mistakes. When they edited it before the paper get to you, they would have the chances to correct their mistakes.

9.  “Bring a concise English grammar handbook.”

Tired of students kept asking you the same questions and they just couldn’t remember it….. I know I am! Having an English grammar book in class provides the opportunities for students to look up the answers themselves. By doing so, your students will remember and actually “own” the answer.

10.  “Never say you don’t know the answer to a question a student has about grammar.”

By saying “I don’t know” devalues your position as a teacher. The best way to handle a situation like this will be “This is a good question and let’s deal with it next time,” and then go home, do your research, find out the answers. Next day give a mini 5 minutes lesson on the subject.

One more week till Global TESOL college’s amazingGrammar specialization courses! Hurry up! Sign up and learn more about teaching grammar!

10 Easy Tips on Teaching Grammar Part 2

Here are more tips on grammar teaching!

4.        “Once students have acquired enough language to understand the process, start teaching them the rules so they can apply them for themselves.”

Before they acquired enough language skills, your students won’t be able to understand the rules. Some more tangible grammar rules such as is/are, he/she etc. can be taught at beginner level. However it could be confusing to explain to your student the difference between adjective and adverb. A teacher’s role is to facilitate the process of learning. So the more students understand, the better they are able to tell when the form and the function are used.

5.        “The higher your students’ speaking abilities are, the more they need to study grammar.”

Some teachers/ students* believed their advanced students should be free-talking, conversational only class. However, we never really acquire our first language completely, so there is no point in a student’s life where he or she needs to stop learning.

* Many advanced students often request conversation class to maintain their English abilities. Though they might only request free talking, it is important to combine grammar into conversational class. Since these students are more advance, they would appreciate and understand the grammar rules better.

6.        “In a classroom setting, never correct a student’s error more than twice.”

Some students might feel embarrassed and shut down. This happens quite often in Taiwanese classroom setting, since “face(面子 mianzi)” is a key factor in the culture. If the student is still making the same mistakes, move the error correction into a much more private setting. Language leaning should be taught in a safe and comfortable environment.

If you enjoy this week’s tip, please leave your comment and come visit us again next week!

You may know the rules of grammar, but do you know how to teach them effectively?
Global TESOL College Grammar Specialization course can show you how! Sign up now!

Teaching Grammar Specialization    TESOL文法師資班

Tuesday ~ Friday: April 24th ~ 27th

星期二～星期五 : 早上10:00到下午5:00

10 easy Tips on Teaching Grammar

Are you constantly struggling with teaching grammar? No matter how hard you try, your students just don’t seem to grasp the concept or remember it. If you have these troubles, then come read this week’s Teaching Tips on teaching grammar!

From my GLOBAL TESOL COLLEGE Grammar specialization training, I learn that there are easier and more effective ways to teach grammar! Here are 3 easy tips for teaching grammar:

1.      “Don’t try to teach formal grammar unless you have EXTREMELY motivated learners. Grammar should be taught in conjunction with something else.”

I can still see my students’ faces diming when I said “It’s grammar time, please take out your text book.” Textbooks, worksheets somehow have the magic power to turn your classroom into a lifeless dessert. Sometimes even I got bored myself teaching it. Try to combine your teaching with other activities such as games or role-play. When students think they are engaging activates, they are more focused and easier to remember the lesson.

2.      “When correcting students, never phrase what you are saying in a negative form. It is easier just to rephrase what you are saying with the CORRECT grammar inserted.”

This technique could avoid your students feeling discouraged and shamed in front of the class. Students will realize that that what they said and what you have said are not the same thing. However, from my personal experience this method only works with more advance students or students who have better perceptions. There were times when students could detect the differences.

3.      “Don’t overwhelm your students with the correct terminology. Use simplest terms possible”

If your students are younger, instead of telling your students that they will learn about VERBS today, you can easily replace it with ACTION WORDS. In this way, it is in a more familiar context for them and they would feel less intimated. If they are more advanced, you can use verbs and noun without scaring them but you should use verb-ing instead of gerunds, helping verbs instead of auxiliary verbs.

Here are this week’s teaching tips on teaching grammar.

Come back next week for more tips on teaching grammar!  

Teaching Grammar

I used to teach all the subjects in my English school. The subjects ranged from reading, writing, listening, grammar, phonics, to science, math , and project. Among all these subjects, grammar is the least favorite subject from my students.
Instead of drilling them with lots of paper-based exercises, I noticed that if I spent less time explaining the rules and more activities-based drills. It created a more joyful learning atmosphere and my students seemed to learn faster and actually remembered it better. However, this method is a two-blades swords, by decreasing the paper-based exercises, it also decreases students's familiarity to the test/evaluation formats. Different teachers, students, classroom settings will all effect on the results.

So how do you manage your class when teaching grammar? Please share with us!

Grammar Lesson Plan: "if"

http://www.pablosinferno.com/blog/?p=70

Do you need more ideas for teaching grammar?
Come check out my lesson plan !

Grammar Lesson Plan: "if"

Four important tips for teaching grammar.

Last weekend I went to Global TESOL college Taipei for Grammar Specialization Course. It was an extremely rewarding experience. I have picked up a few tricks and tips teaching grammar. Teaching grammar is very different than teaching conversations. It is generally paper based and relies heavily on more reading and writing skills. However, there are few other teaching/practice way that would depend on speaking and listening skills. It is all came down to how to satisfy your student's need.
 In Taiwan, most of the grammar classes are paper based. As a teacher, I found it easier to teach and receive better results if I adopt my methods. Instead of repeating the same process of reading-writing-memorizing, why not spice it up with games and other fun activities?

According to the Grammar Specialization Workbook, there are four things one should consider when teaching Explicit Grammar:

1.      Moving knowledge from mechanically learned grammar lessons to everyday speech is an almost impossible task for language learners.

2.      Students learn syntax at their own pace and it differs from one to one.

3.      Teaching grammar through communicative approaches is by far the most effective way of learning a language.

4.      Each student learns differently.

Do you have any insights on how to teach grammar effectively? Please share with me!