Ingrid Preedy Methods of teaching English at vocational colleges

Short overview Dual college systemTeaching and motivating students

Everybody is a Genius. But If You Judge a Fish by Its Ability to Climb a Tree, It Will Live Its Whole Life Believing that It is Stupid.

Motivating students –how? Make the lesson funMake the lesson interesting Make sure the students always take a new piece of knowledge away with them Use a book rally to awaken interest in the book and to let the students know what they are going to learn – it isn’t a secret! Treat the students with respect

Make the lesson fun – how? Use games - TB unit 3 page 40 (revising place name) Make learning competitive e.g. dealing with unknown words Make sure even the weakest student can say something by repeating an exercise ad nauseum – you will be bored before they are! Page 44 SB Use a “treasure hunt” technique e.g. S.B. p.50/51: a) Find the names of jobs b) Find the names of places C) Find as many adjectives as you can

Make the lesson interesting – how? Make teaching vocabulary interesting Use think, pair, share - My top five reasons for missing my dental appointment – in groups, who then decide which is the best excuse and report back to the class Try to find a warming up task that is interesting e.g. p.4 TB 2

Dealing with unknown texts Teach the vocabulary first. Let the students find out the meaning of the new words themselves. They will remember them better and this will teach them to work autonomously – for themselves, by themselves Talk about any pictures that accompany the text- this is an opportunity to get the students to talk DON‘T go through the text line by line, reading it and having the students translate it. You will be bored and they will be bored.

Give the questions and answers in a mixed order and have them match them BEFORE reading the text.Now speculate about what the text could be about. Use the questions given in the book With weaker classes, give them the answers in a mixed order and get them to do a matching exercise. OR let them try to answer the questions first and have the answers on your desk so that they can come to the front and check their answers. extra tasks for slow /fast learners can be found e.g. unit 3 page 42, 45 Divide a text into two parts, 1 and 2 (and the class into two, A and B). A reads part 1 and has to retell it to B

Make sure the students always take a new piece of knowledge away with them – how ? Use partner work and group Use enquiry- based learning p. 40 TB2 FOCUS- how to form the passive

Differentiate Give weaker students easier tasks. Make the students work in pairs. Give weaker students help e.g. answers in the wrong order or matching exercise e.g. Match the questions and the answers. Give stronger students the role of “expert”

Listening pre-listening tasks are important as they get the students to concentrate on the text they are about to hear. - These can consist of one global question e.g. SB page 47, 49 Another pre-listening task is guessing the correct answer or word e.g. SB page 55 while-listening would then be the correction of the guessing task in the point above and any of the other tasks which appear in the book. - other while-reading tasks are presented as gap filling exercises. E.g. SB page 55 combine while- listening with speaking / reading. Play the track on the CD, stop it unexpectedly and call out a student’s name. This student now has to repeat the last sentence he / she has heard

Speaking give the students structure help on the board - KISS: don’t talk too much, repeat a question in the same way until you get a reaction, not in different words - collect the students’ mistakes. Speaking should be meaningful - say something nice about the person sitting next to you - tell me something good about today - what did you do at the weekend? - talk to a neighbour about next weekend’s plans i

A simple enough task?

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Thank you for listening to me!