Issues
- TEF does 25-minute, high-impact lessons. But reading and listening exercises as they stand in the textbooks can be vague, boring, or not useful.
- A top complaint from students is monotony in the textbook. That might mean we do a poor job of listening and reading.
- We don’t have the audio or videos to use. But even if we could use them in class, it would go against our ethos.
Overview: what’s a good exercise?
- It has a clear aim.
- The parameters of success should be clear.
- It should be achievable but challenging.
- The student should be in flow state. Too easy=boring; too hard=anxiety-producing.
- It teaches something useful.
- The skill should be useful outside the textbook.
- The student buys in.
- The student should engage. It should pique their interest.
Reading exercises
Discuss expectations before reading. Read the title, predict what’s going to be in the passage. In the real world, language always comes with expectations and context. (One of the many reasons tests are not accurate measures of real-world ability)
Key point: reading and speaking are different skills. If you want to read for gist, meaning or do a close reading of the contents, you should let the student read silently. If you want to work on speaking skills, get them to read out loud.
Exercise 1: Scanning
Scan ridiculously quickly (10 seconds) and tell me the main topics.
Skills: reading for gist, quick reading in business meetings and English tests
Exercise 2: Paraphrasing
Just read the first few paragraphs. What did that mean? Paraphrase them in different words.
How long? Option A, predict how long it’ll take and time your student. Option B, race the teacher. If you have a higher-level student, show them how quick native-level speakers can read.
Skills: critical reading, deep active learning
Exercise 3: Close reading
Do a close reading. Relate the close reading to their needs or goals. For example:
- Identify 5 collocations that the writer used.
- What tenses are used? Why?
- Identify every article in the first paragraph. Why is it used?
Skills: grammar and composition
Exercise 4: Speaking
Nail pronunciation and intonation of a couple of sentences. Self-evaluate, model, repeat. Repetition is key—do it until you are awesome.
Skills: Natural spoken output;
Notes:
- Then read the rest for homework.
- Don't worry about the comprehension questions if the student has shown a clear, open understanding of the passage.
Listening exercises:
Be careful about length. Some transcripts are quite long.
Discuss expectations before listening. Look at the situation and ask what might happen. Again, in the real world, you also listen expecting to hear something.
Exercise 1: Active listening with interjections
You read and the student listens actively. Read all the speakers (not in a different voice, but just read the speaker names).
Tell them something like, "I'm not a CD. You can stop me, you can slow me down, you can ask and confirm. Imagine you are in the room and you need to know the answers. Use listening exercises to control the speakers in the room."
Read too quickly for the student. They should need to stop you. They probably won’t, but they should.
Exercise 2: Note taking and production
The student prepares to listen closely. The teacher reads at a challenging speed, the student notes key elements and then tells the teacher what they heard.
- You may do this freely.
- For example, "Here's the topic, just give me a recap."
- Or you may do this with targeted info.
- For example, "What's the conclusion that's reached?"
Exercise 3: Read & listen
Student reads along with the transcript as you speak at native speed
The student should pair the sound of English with the reading of English. That means spelling to speech, word stress, chunking, how we read punctuation, and more.
Exercise 4: Speaking
Pull out chunks from the reading or listening. Work on smooth, natural output. Use principles of word stress, connected speech and clear intonation.
- Which words should be stressed?
- Do you think the tone should go up or down?
- Where do you think you should pause? Which parts are chunked?
Exercise 5: Close reading
Deeply read a section. Discuss the difference between written and spoken English. You could also note tense, articles, collocations, etc...
Video
Depending on what you have available, go with the classic three choices: 1) use the exercises above, 2) assign it for homework or 3) skip it altogether.