How To Learn English

Tips and ideas on the best ways to learn English faster.

Tips for Beginners

1. You are like a new baby
   Babies learn their language slowly.
   First they learn to listen.
   Then they learn to talk.
   Finally, they can read and write.
2. Listen to English every day
   Listen to English radio.
   Watch English TV.
   Go to English movies.
   Use online lessons.
3. Make an English/ESL friend
   Make up conversations.
   Practise dialogues.
   Use beginner textbooks.
4. Read English stories
   Start with children’s storybooks.
   Try ESL readers.
   Read advertisements, signs and labels.
   Try EnglishClub.com for Young Learners.
5. Write down new words
   Start a vocabulary (new word) notebook.
   Write words in alphabetical order (A…B…C…).
   Make example sentences.
   Always use an English-English dictionary first.
6. Keep an English diary
   Start with one sentence.
   How do you feel?
   How is the weather?
   What did you do today?
   Write another sentence tomorrow.
7. Visit an English speaking country
   Learn English more quickly.
   Stay with an English family.
   Hear native speakers talk.
   Have a fun experience.

My English Learning Contract

Sample Learning Agenda

Monitoring

Steve Darn, Izmir University of Economics, Turkey

Monitoring is a classroom management technique loosely defined as listening to the learners for their accuracy and fluency, or checking to see whether activities are going to plan and that the learners are ‘on task’. However, monitoring is often carried out as a vague listening and looking exercise by the teacher, and sometimes not done at all, whereas in fact effective monitoring is a skill that needs to be developed if learners are to benefit fully from activities, particularly those of the information gap and group interactive types.

• When to monitor
• Purposes of monitoring
• How to monitor
• Conclusion

When to monitor
Monitoring goes on all the time, but particularly during speaking activities when the teacher is concerned with the general assessment of learners’ performance in relation to general progress or recent language and skills development. Monitoring of individual learners takes place during written practice exercises, when the aim is to point out errors and encourage self-correction. Guided practice activities, particularly of the pairwork format, are monitored for accuracy, while less guided groupwork activities are monitored for task achievement and fluency. Monitoring may be general or multipurpose, focusing on one or more of the following aims.

Purposes of monitoring
Not all learners develop at the same rate. Monitoring offers the opportunity to assess the progress of individuals, and often provides an indication of what to re-teach or practise further. Specific aims of monitoring, depending on the stage of the lesson and the activity include:

• Being aware of the whole class. The teacher should always be aware of how the class is getting on, whether the pace is too fast or too slow, and which students may need individual attention. There is often a tendency to teach to the lesson plan and materials at the expense of teaching the learners themselves.
• Listening for errors in the target language, particularly during guided practice activities. Correction is required here, since these are usually accuracy-based activities.
• Listening to ensure that learners are on task. Some re-instruction, modelling of the activity or prompting may be required.
• Taking opportunities for micro-teaching to individuals or pairs who have clearly not grasped the target language.
• Assessing both individuals and the whole class. Monitoring provides clues to individual and group difficulties and progress. In this respect, monitoring is a kind of on-going needs analysis. All students should receive some attention, even if it is only a few words of encouragement
• Adding input. Particularly in fluency activities, learners may not be able to sustain output. The teacher’s role here is to feed in language and ideas when appropriate to keep the activity alive.
• Assessing the development of fluency. This involves monitoring from a distance, and the teachers role is often to take notes about common errors to be dealt with in a delayed correction slot, as well as mentally noting the use of target language in a freer context.
• Assessing the task. Some activities work better with one class than another, others are being tried out for the first time. Monitoring offers the teacher the opportunity to assess the success of an activity and to get feedback from the learners.
• Planning. Monitoring facilitates decision making in terms of what to do next, whether to modify the original lesson plan, planning future lessons and giving feedback to students on their performance.
• Maintaining discipline. Large groups may become restless and bored if some learners have finished a task before others. The teacher should have some short back-up activities for these learners, or could use the quicker learners as assistants to help slower groups.

How to monitor
Monitoring is an acquired skill which hopefully becomes a good habit. Less experienced teachers may feel that they need to monitor closely and maintain control of activities, while other teachers feel that they should be involved at all times, and that monitoring is the solution. In either case, there is a danger of over-monitoring, interference, and a tense rather than relaxed, student centred learning environment during less guided practice activities.

Close monitoring needs to be carried out sensitively, and an element of personal and cultural awareness is required. Some learners resent a very close physical presence, others object to the teacher crouching in front of them. Monitoring from in front of the learners is distracting and sometimes intrusive, tending to interrupt the activity and shifting the focus onto the teacher. Students then expect the teacher to provide some input, make a comment, or correct them. Unobtrusive monitoring is most effective, and is often best done from behind the learners. Some useful tips are:

• Move chairs away from walls.
• Make sure that there is a clear route around the classroom.
• Arrange seating so that all students are visible from wherever the teacher is positioned.
• Monitor pairs or groups randomly.
• Don’t spend too much time with one individual, pair or group, and make sure that all learners are monitored.
• Rather than standing or crouching, sit with pairs or groups. A chair with wheels is an ideal vehicle for moving from group to group.

Monitoring from a distance is done from any position in the classroom which offers the possibility of ‘tuning in’ on different conversations. In larger classes, the teacher may need to move around the room. It is important not to sit near one group for the whole activity, suggesting that the teacher is listening only to them. Often, the best position is behind the learners, out of their field of vision, so that they are focused on the task and each other rather than the teacher.

Learners may want to ask questions during freer practice activities. The teacher’s response will depend on the activity, but it is a useful learner-training exercise to teach the learners to note down any questions to be asked at the end of the activity.

There are possibilities for self and peer-monitoring. Self-monitoring involves training in self-correction. All learners may be involved in peer monitoring, but a useful technique is to ask learners to work in threes rather than pairs, with learners taking turns in monitoring the performance of the other two.

Conclusion
The monitoring techniques above apply to all teaching and learning situations, but monitoring also achieves the purpose of providing discipline in certain circumstances. In classes where there are less-well motivated or younger students, and often in monolingual and mixed-ability classes, the temptation for the learners may be to abandon the task, leave the task to more able students, or to lapse into the mother tongue. Sometimes the presence of the teacher in a supervisory role is enough, but careful monitoring guarantees the best performance from the learners and provides the most instructive feedback for the teacher.

Asking questions

Steve Darn, Freelance Trainer & Funda Çetin, Izmir University of Economics, Turkey

Asking questions is a natural feature of communication, but also one of the most important tools which teachers have at their disposal. Questioning is crucial to the way teachers manage the class, engage students with content, encourage participation and increase understanding. Typically, teachers ask between 300-400 questions per day, however the quality and value of questions varies. While questioning can be an effective tool, there is both an art and science to asking questions.

Every question demands a response (except in the case of requests and suggestions), so that questions inevitably generate communication. However the quantity of questions asked needs to be considered in relation to general time constraints and the need to keep teacher talking time to a minimum while maximising learner contributions.

• Types of questions
• Purposes of questions
• Effective questioning
• Conclusion

Types of questions
There have been a number of typologies and taxonomies of questions. Socratic questioning, exemplified by Paul’s taxonomy, forms the basis of eliciting, while Bloom’s taxonomy identifies six types of questions by which thinking skills may be developed and tested. In the context of language teaching and learning, Bloom himself maintained that;“The major purpose in constructing a taxonomy of educational objectives is to facilitate communication…” Classroom questions tend to fall into two broad categories:

• Display questions. These are designed to elicit learners’ prior knowledge and to check comprehension. They often focus on the form or meaning of language structures and items, and the teacher already knows the answer.
  • What does ….. mean?
  • When do we use …..?
  • What comes after …..?
  • What’s the opposite of …..?
  • Where’s the stress in …..?
• Referential questions. These require the learner to provide information, give an opinion, explain or clarify. They often focus on content rather than language, require ‘follow-up’ or ‘probe’ questions, and the answer is not necessarily known by the teacher.
  • What do you think about …..?
  • Have you ever….when/where …..?
  • If you had …..wha t…..?
  • What kind of …..?
  • How do you …..?

The best referential questions are those that are ‘divergent’ or ‘open-ended’ in that they are broad, may have multiple answers, and require a higher level of thinking from the learners.

Open-ended questions are ideal for developing skills such as inferring, predicting, verifying and summarising, as well as eliciting more language. ‘Convergent’ or ‘closed’ questions have more narrowly defined correct answers which can be recalled from memory and, require little reflection or originality. Closed questions are common in conventional tests.

Purposes of questions
Questions have a variety of purposes often related to the type and stage of a lesson.

• During the lead-in to a lesson, referential questions form the basis of brainstorming a topic, generating interest and topic-related vocabulary. Student’s responses may be recorded as a mind-map on the board, or as the first phase of a ‘what we know / what we would like to know/ what we know now’ framework, particulary in receptive skills based lessons where predicting content is a useful pre-reading / listening activity.
• When language is being presented, questions are used to elicit students’ prior knowledge, and guide them into recognising patterns and forming hypotheses about how the language is used. ‘Noticing’ questions are used to help learners identify language in context (‘What language does he use to talk about is plans?’, ‘How does she make a promise?’)
• Meaning and understanding need to be checked before language is practised. Concept-checking questions (CCQs) should demand short answers, be simple and asked often (‘Is he talking about the past, present or future?’, has the action finished?’, ‘Is time important?’, ‘ıs the meaning positive or negative?’ (Checking meaning and understanding is the subject of another article on this site.)
• Question-response is a common form of guided oral practice. Nomination is often essential in this stage, but the traditional ‘lockstep’ pattern of interaction should be minimised by asking students to ask and answer questions in open pairs across the class and in closed pairs. Student involvement nay be increased by asking students to nominate the person to ask the next question (student nomination).
  Globally designed materials often suggest form-based questions for language practice which are too general, outside the learners’ experience, or which produce obvious answers. Form-based questions may also be personalised and divergent in that they require elaboration. Thus ‘How often do you brush your teeth?’ is unlikely to either stimulate interest or generate language, whereas ‘How often do you argue with your parents?’ offers the opportunity for follow-up questions as well as producing the target structure.
• In skills lessons, questions may focus on strategies as well as language (‘Do you have to read everything to get the information?’, ‘Do you need to understand every word?’. ‘What do you think will happen next?’ Questions may also focus on process rather than product (‘How did you guess the meaning of that word?’, ‘Where in the passage did you find the information?’, ‘What helped you to understand what the speaker’s opinion was?’)
• Student nomination may also be used for obtaining the answers to exercises and comprehension tasks, but feedback on the tasks themselves is equally important and can be dealt with by questions such as ‘What was difficult about that question?’. ‘Did you have enough information?’ and ‘Did you enjoy that activity?’
• The success of many fluency activities depends on the use of open-ended referential questions, but the teacher can also increase motivation by expressing interest through questions. Some of the best discussions take the form of ‘chats’, often outside the classroom, when paraphrasing and clarification can take place more naturally.

Questions focusing on form, function, meaning, concept and strategies may all be termed ’guidance questions’, and differ from comprehension questions is that learners are not necessarily required to provide correct answers. The overall aim of these questions is to gradually raise awareness of language and skills and to help learners develop strategies for learning in a focused way.

Throughout the lesson, questions play an important role in classroom management, including general questions (‘Can you all see the board?’, ‘Have you got your dictionaries ready?’) and questions for checking progress ‘Ready?’, Have you finished?’. Questions designed to check instructions are vital in order to avoid interrupting a task in order to reinstruct or clarify the task. These questions should be kept simple (‘Are you working alone or in pairs?’, ‘Who’s in group B?’, ‘Are you going to write anything?) and spread around the class.

Many teachers find it difficult to estimate the amount of time needed for a student to respond to a question, often due to pressure of time, impatience or fear of silence. Rushing learners may result in mistakes and frustration. Sufficient ‘wait-time’ is needed for learners to comprehend the question, formulate an answer, process language and respond. Wait-time before nominating and after the initial response encourages longer answers, questions from the learners, self-correction and level of student involvement.

Effective questioning
As with all aspects of teacher talking time, it is not the quantity but the quality and value of questions that is important. When thinking about their questioning technique, teachers might us the following as a check-list:

• Decide on the purpose of questions.
• Minimise the use of “yes / no” questions except when checking meaning and understanding or encouraging weaker students.
• Ask a balance of referential and display questions.
• Use open-ended (divergent) questions to encourage opinions, elaboration and discussion.
• Ask questions about important rather than trivial content.
• Grade language in questions and try not to over-paraphrase.
• Personalise questions where possible.
• Avoid questions that contain the answer.
• Make sure that students clearly understand questions.
• Spread questions randomly around the class.
• Balance questions to the whole class with individual student nomination
• Give enough time for students to answer.
• Anticipate students’ responses.
• Give appropriate responses to questions, particularly where correction is required. and in order to extend the dialogue.

Conclusion
Clearly there is more to asking questions than the common division into ‘information’ or ‘wh’, ‘yes/no’, direct and indirect questions, though this is often how they are taught and how learners categorise them. Good questioning provides a model which hopefully will promote correct and intelligent questions from learners.

There are pitfalls such as over-eliciting when the learners have little collective knowledge, and bombarding students with questions of little relevance or importance. The questions ‘Do you understand?’, ‘Is that clear?’ and ‘OK?’ are unlikely to provoke a helpful response. It is also wise to avoid questions which may cause embarrassment or which may offend through sarcasm (‘Are you awake?’).

Given that little training is given in asking questions, and it is rarely mentioned in general ELT texts, teachers are left to develop the technique themselves, and are often unaware of how effective their questions are. The teacher’s questions are therefore a useful focus for peer observation and feedback on a lesson – an awareness raising exercise for teachers themselves.

Classroom Layout

 Jo Budden, British Council, Spain

The layout of your classroom can have a serious impact on the way you teach and the way your students learn. This article looks at some of the basic points that you can consider regarding the way you arrange your classroom.

• The importance of layout
• Some considerations
• Classroom layouts
• Conclusion

The impotance of layout
When you’re planning your lessons do you ever think about the layout of the classroom? Sometimes it may be impossible and impractical to move the furniture around at all for many reasons including the fact that in some schools the tables are bolted to the floor! However, even if the furniture is immobile, remember that your students aren’t, so you can think about how you want to group students and how you can use the space you have to your advantage. This may involve using spaces at the front, or down the side of the classrooms, letting students stand up or to sit on the tables to do certain activities.

Some considerations
In an ideal world the classroom furniture would be light and mobile so you could come in and quickly rearrange it to your liking. Unfortunately, in the real world it is often heavy and the rooms themselves are too small to make too many changes. Having said that I do think it’s worth thinking about the classroom layout and doing what you can to make it as appropriate as possible to your lesson. Here are some questions to consider:

• Can I see the faces of every single student and can they see me?
• Can everyone see the board (if you’re planning on using it)?
• Can the students see one another?
• Can I move around the room so that I can monitor effectively?

For me, the first question is really important. I substitute a lot of classes, so I don’t necessarily know all the students’ names so it’s vital to be able to see them all. Although it can seem like an extra effort and a waste of time I find that spending the first two minutes of a class moving the furniture so that I can see every single face is time well invested. You can usually get the students to help you and as long as you give the instructions in English it’s all good language practice! Now, I’d like to look at a few typical classroom layouts.

Classroom layouts

• The horseshoe
  Tables in a horseshoe or three sided square shape. This is great if you’re doing board work and speaking activities. All the students will be able to see you, the board and each other and you will have a lovely space in the middle of the horse shoe and around the outside to monitor. If you have a very large class you can get a similar effect by having one horseshoe inside another and using double rows.
• Chairs in a circle
  Tables pushed to the walls and just the chairs in a circle. You can sit in the circle with your students. If they need to write at certain times of the lesson they can either go to work at the tables facing the walls around the outside or they can rest a folder on their knees and stay in the circle. The circle formation is great for many games, group discussions, welcoming your students at the beginning of the class, doing the register and really talking to your students.
• Traditional rows
  Although many schools still use traditional rows, as you can pack in lots of people in a small space, there are very few advantages for a language teacher. If students are sitting in twos you have immediate pairs made for pair work but as you will probably want to change the pairs at some point this is only a limited advantage. If you can’t get around behind the students to look at their work it can be really difficult to monitor. If you have to work in this layout think about the spaces at the front of the class and the aisles between the rows. For mingle tasks make use of these. Look for alternative spaces for certain group tasks, such as the corridors, playground or halls.
• Nested tables in groups
  Nested tables are obviously great for small group work and project work. It can be difficult to start classes when students are already sitting on small tables as some students will have their backs to you. If possible have the students sit so they’re side on to you and remember to move around the classroom when you need to give instructions or change activities. Surprise your class by popping up at different places around the class.

Conclusion
I suggest you try as many classroom layouts as you can to see how you feel most comfortable. Experiment with the layout if possible. If you really can’t change how your classrooms are set up, then do spend time thinking about how you can vary where your students sit and where you position yourself in the room too. The classroom dynamics can improve dramatically when you change the layout, it’s a matter of experimenting and seeing what works best for you and your students and it’s something that you may want to take into consideration at the lesson planning stage.