| 55 - Reviews |
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Teaching Grammar Creatively by Günter Gerngross, Herbert Puchta and Scott Thornbury Helbling Languages 2006 978-3-902504-29-6 This practical book, in Helbling’s popular Resourceful Teacher series, offers teachers and trainee teachers a wide range of lessons and activities for everyday use in language classes. The book opens with a very interesting introduction, which sets out the ideological framework for its contents: teaching grammar by awareness-raising. Unlike traditional methods of teaching grammar, in which presentation is mostly teacherled, awareness-raising is essentially learner-led: the learners ‘discover’ the grammar through an induction process in which they are given language data in context and then encouraged to work out the rules themselves. The authors claim that the old saying You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink applies equally to the teaching of grammar rules. In a holistic approach to learning grammar, like this, which also lays emphasis on the reliance on visual, auditory and kinaesthetic modes, rules are acquired subconsciously. The bulk of the book is made up of four chapters containing 53 grammar lessons. Each lesson is divided into two main sections: Language awareness activities and Creative grammar practice. The former introduces a particular grammar point and focuses on the initial stages of teaching it; the latter provides a deeper understanding, with the grammar point in question now embedded in an extended context. Activities in theCreative grammar practice sections also offer some element of individual creativity, with students writing on different themes and experiences. The language awareness activities are sub-divided into three stages: Discovery, Consolidation and Use. This three-way division replaces the traditional PPP (Presentation, Practice, Production) format that the authors see as producing grammar learning which is very mechanistic and teacher-directed. Teachers can adapt all these activities to fit their own language teaching environment. In one lead-in activity which I found very interesting, the teacher recounts a pleasant episode from childhood and then tells the students they are going to be taken on a fantasy trip: ‘Imagine you are standing close to a river. It is a wonderful morning, the sun is shining ... and there’s a boat waiting for you.’ When the students ‘return’ to the classroom, they are willing to talk about what they saw or felt. The book is full of activities like this, which focus on the senses. I also particularly liked the activity on I’d rather. This has a very clear ‘consolidation’ stage in which the students are required to match the first half of a sentence – for example, I’d rather arrive late than ... – with the correct second half – not at all. The ‘use’ stage is also interesting; students are asked to draw a triangle and write at each point of it oneor two-word answers to the questions Where would you rather be? Who would you rather be with? and What would you rather be doing? Working in groups or in pairs, the students then look at each other’s triangles and ask questions about them. My attention was further captured by a model text practising conditionals. The text is about a person the writer doesn’t like and the students have to unjumble it: If he was a colour, he’d be a dirty grey; if he was a sound, he’d be the hissing of a snake, etc. Then in the text creation stage, the students write similarly about a good friend, someone in their family or a person they know of from the media. The accessible layout of the book, with the use of clear head words, helps make most activities easy to implement in class. The book is accompanied by a CDROM. This contains the listening material and files of the model texts from the lessons, plus all the worksheets and language boxes. There are also audiofiles of the model texts, which can be played on a computer or CD player. The book ends with a very useful reference guide for locating the grammar point, the level and the location of any activity in the book. All in all, this is a book I can recommend to all those teachers of English with an interest in gaining a ‘creative’ insight into a fresher way of teaching grammar. I hope many people have the chance to use it. Sebastian Amado Buenos Aires, Argentina BBC World Service Online resources for teachers www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/ learningenglish/teachingenglish The BBC’s internet service includes an extremely extensive bank of resources for ESOL teachers. Perhaps of most interest to many teachers will be the weekly news story with lesson plan. The story can be printed out directly from the internet. It is also available as a click-to-play sound recording, but unless you are an advanced computer user and record it onto a CD-R/RW (technically possible, but involving additional software), this unfortunately won’t be much use in the average classroom. Students with computers could listen at home, though. The lesson plan and worksheets can be downloaded as PDF files, a process which is very straightforward on most computers, and instructions are given for anybody new to downloading. At four to five pages, the teaching notes are extremely full, but once familiar with the format, most teachers would probably not feel it necessary to read every word every time. Following the notes there are three worksheets: one of comprehension questions, one of vocabulary work, and the third on a particular language point (for example, a grammar item) related to the text. There is an archive of stories with lesson plans going back to 2005, and finding a topic or language point relevant to your class is easy. Once you are familiar with the site, about five minutes’ preparation will give you an involving intermediate/upper-intermediate lesson based on authentic English. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. In the Downloads section (bbc.co.uk/ worldservice/learningenglish/ downloads.shtml) there is an extremely rich array of audio material with accompanying worksheets and activities. One example is Grammar Challenge, in which a ‘contestant’ listens to conversations and answers comprehension questions with a grammatical focus. Another is The Flatmates, a radio soap opera with a generous amount of supporting material for teachers. A third is Pronunciation Tips, featuring audio material, activities and posters. At the time of writing there are 16 different formats. Most of the recordings can be downloaded as MP3 files, and it is straightforward to copy these to CD (for example, open Windows Media Player, click ‘Copy to CD or Device’, select the file to be copied and follow instructions from there). Copyright restrictions permit you to make copies in this way for your personal teaching use. There is a large business English section at bbc.co.uk/worldservice/ learningenglish/business and a special section for Chinese learners at bbc.co.uk/china/learningenglish. The Watch and Listen section (bbc.co.uk/ worldservice/learningenglish/ multimedia) contains some good video material, but the download times involved may be impracticable for some teachers. As impressive as the resources for teachers is the range of self-study material for students. There are audio and video programmes, quizzes, exercises and a great deal more. The Grammar and Vocabulary section contains well-produced and motivating activities for learners at a range of levels and is updated regularly. It would certainly be a good idea to bring the site to the attention of your students, and encourage them to use it. You could also look through what’s available and direct your students to material that ties in with your lessons or might otherwise be particularly useful to them. My initial reaction to the site was ‘There’s just too much stuff here, I’m never going to find my way to what I want’. However, I persevered, and I’m glad I did. This site offers a vast array of top-quality teaching material, and it’s all completely free. Alison Wooder, Bridport, UK Business English Study Advanced 1 by Paul Fletcher Business English Study 2007 978-0-9557044-0-6 Trying to find business ELT texts that are appropriate for students’ needs while also presenting the information in an easy-to-understand context can be a challenge for any teacher, but especially so when the teacher has no actual business experience. Business English Study Advanced 1 is readily accessible because it doesn’t try to cover absolutely everything in business (as many books do), but limits itself to the topics of entrepreneurs, companies and products. This is a wise move because every aspect of business has its own particular language, and limiting itself to these three areas gives the book more space to really concentrate on the language which is relevant to them. The first in a series, Business English Study Advanced 1 is aimed at students with a high level of English skills who have a TOEIC score of around 600–800 and are seeking to use their English in a business setting. Each chapter begins withintroductory questions, and then moves on to reading and listening exercises, finally ending with a roleplay exercise. This is not perhaps a particularly innovative structure, but it is effective – after all, most people don’t learn business English for fun, but out of necessity. On the whole, the book is well presented and accomplishes its purpose well. By the end, students won’t be experts in any of the fields that are covered, but they will have a good general understanding of them. In conclusion, I found the case studies and activities to be quite appropriate for a new business English class and felt the book achieved its goal. Jamar Miller Fukuoka, Japan Justyna Walczak livesand works in Ostrowiec S´ w, Poland, where she is a primary school English teacher. She has a particular interest in student motivation |
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