GUIDELINES FOR LANGUAGE CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION

A. Language Presentation

A.1 Planning for lesson objectives – Which elements of language are

undertaken depends on the objectives a teacher has in mind for the lesson.

A.2 Modalities (Materials, AV) – Teachers need to be aware that they are
not in the classroom to fill up the time with the sound of their own voices, but to
arrange matters so that their students do the talking (or writing, or listening). Class
time is so valuable that the teacher should move on to practice phases of a lesson as
soon as possible in a manner consistent with an adequate presentation of material
and the giving of clear instruction for some practice exercises.

If a certain teaching objective calls for some support in the way of

materials, what then? The major resource is of course the textbook.
Here are other teaching aids which fall into two categories: nontechnical
aids and technical aids.

a.) Nontechnical aids- chalkboard, realia, flashcards, magazine pictures,

charts
b.) Technical aids – overhead projector, audio and video recordings,
internet

Use of aids is usually a matter of individual teacher judgment, supported

by general considerations:

a.) Does their use in a given circumstance aid comprehension?

b.) Do they stimulate more student talk than would have otherwise
occurred?
c.) Does their use constitute an efficient use of class time, particularly
taking into account the teacher time required to produce them or the
logistics of setting them up and removing any necessary equipment?

Although the textbook is a generally accepted primary aid in instruction,

sole reliance on textbook is becoming less common in more-resourced
schools. Developments in technology have made the creation and almost
immediate use of in-house materials increasingly possible.

A.3 Rule presentations and explanations – The various communicatively

oriented language teaching methods and prescriptions developed de-emphasized the
use of explicit grammar rule presentation and questioned the use of grammatically-
based materials.

Based on the claims of most theorists that focus on form can be required
by learners or by a given classroom sequence, it is reasonable for
teachers to be aware of options in how to make a rule explicit or not;
whether or not to isolate a rule; whether an explanation involve a
deductive or inductive presentation; who should give the explanation -the
teacher, the text, or another student; whether the language is abstract or
not; and whether the explanation is provided orally or in writing.

B. Tasks – This is the next major step in executing classroom lessons. It involves
practice and learning of the material.

B.1 Subsections of a lesson-

The Activity- This refers to classroom procedures that are primarily
geared to practicing the aspect of language presented or targeted,
involving students working with each other to achieve a specific purpose.
For each specific learning point, learners need to develop from more
controlled and mechanical to freer and communicative behaviors.
A list of four activity types are: (Phases of instructional sequencing)
a.) Information and motivation phase- in which learners’ interest,
experience, and relevant language knowledge are aroused.
b.) Input/control – in which learners are involved in deepening their
understanding by close attention to detail.
c.) Focus/working – in which individual linguistic and thematic difficulties
can be isolated and examined in depth.
d.) Transfer/application – in which new knowledge and the learner’s
refined communicative abilities can be put to active use.

Possible activities under the Information and Motivation Phase:

 Warm-up: mime, dance, song, jokes, play, etc.; the purpose is to get
the students stimulate, relaxed, motivated, attentive, or engaged and
ready for the lesson; not necessarily related to the target language.
 Setting: Focus is on lesson topic; either verbal or nonverbal evocation
of the context that is relevant to the lesson point; teacher directs
 attention to the upcoming topic by questioning, miming, or picture
presentation, or possibly a tape recording.
 Brainstorming: free, undirected contributions by the students and
teacher on a given topic to generate multiple associations without
linking them.
 Story telling: oral presentation by the teacher of a story or an event as
lengthy practice; it usually aims at maintaining attention or motivation
and is often entertaining.
 A propos: conversation and other socially oriented interaction/speech
by teacher, students or even visitors on general real-life topics;
typically authentic and genuine.

Possible activities under the Input/Control Phase:

 Organizational: managerial structuring of lesson or class activities;

includes reprimanding of students and other disciplinary, organization
of class furniture and seating.
 Content explanation: explanation of lesson content and grammar or
other rules and points, or whatever is being taught.
 Role play demonstration – use of selected students or the teacher to
illustrate the procedure/s to be applied in the following lesson
segment.
 Recognition: students identify a specific form, function, rule, or other
lesson-related item, either from oral or visual data, but without
producing language as a response (e.g. checking off items, drawing
symbols, rearranging pictures, matching utterances with pictures,
underlining significant information from a text).
 Language modelling – presentation of new language by the teacher
through isolated sentences with the help of visuals, drawings on
blackboard, realia, miming, recorded materials, etc.; involves students’
participation in the form of repetition, question-answer display,
translation, etc.; it usually aims at checking correct pronunciation and
syntax or meaning comprehension.
 Dialogue/narrative presentation – reading or listening passage in the
form of dialogue, narration, song, etc. for passive reception (students
become familiar with the text without being asked to perform any task
related to the content).
  Question-answer display – controlled activity involving prompting of
students’ responses by means of display questions (teacher or
questioner already knows the response).
 Review – teacher-led review of previous week/month or other period;
a formal summary and assessment of students’ recall and
performance.

Possible activities under the Focus/Working Phase:

 Translation: student or teacher provides L1 or L2 translations of given

text.
 Dictation: students write down orally presented text.
 Copying: students write down visually presented text.
 Reading aloud: student/s read aloud from a given text- distinguished
from dialogue presentation in that the focus is on pronunciation and
rhythm.
 Drill: typical language activity involving fixed patterns of students and
teacher responding and prompting, usually with repetition,
substitution, and other mechanical alterations.
 Dialogue/narrative recitation: students recite a passage or dialogue
which they have previously learned or prepared; either in unison or
individually.
 Cued narrative/dialogue: students build up a dialogue or a piece of
narrative following cues from miming, cue cards, pictures, flow charts
(e. g. filling empty bubbles, cued dialogues, completing a dialogue or a
text, discourse chains, etc.)
 Meaningful drill: language activity involving exchange of a limited
number of fixed patterns of interaction.
 Preparation: students plan the subsequent activity (in pairs,
individually, or in group) by means of rehearsing, making notes, or
simply thinking.
 Identification: students pick out and produce/label or identify target
form, function, definition, or other lesson-related item.
 Games: organized language activity that has a particular task or
objective and a set of rules which involve an element of competition
between players (e.g. board games, bingo, etc.); it usually implies
entertainment and relaxation.
  Checking: teacher guides the correction of students previous activity
or homework, providing feedback as an activity.
 Wrap-up: brief teacher- or student-produced summary of points or
items that have been practiced or learned.

Possible activities under the Transfer/Application Phase:

 Information transfer: students extract information from a text (oral or

written) which they apply to another mode (e.g. visual – written; oral-
written, etc.) ; it implies some transformation of the information by
filling out diagrams, graphs, answering questions, etc. while listening
or reading.
 Information exchange: activity that involves one-way or two-way
communication such as information gap exercises, in which one or
both parties must obtain information from the other to achieve a goal.
 Role play: students act out specified roles and functions in a relatively
free way.
 Report: prepared oral exposition of students’ previous work (books or
stories read, project work, etc.) and elaborated on according to
students’ own interpretation; it can also be students’ reports on
information obtained from previous activity as long as it can be
considered as preparation.
 Narration: students’ lengthy exposition of something which they have
seen (film, video, program, event, etc.) read (news, books, etc.),or
experienced (events, story, etc.); narrated in their own words and
without previous preparation.
 Discussion: debate or other form of group discussion of specified
topic, with or without specified sides/positions prearranged.
 Composition: written development of ideas, story, dialogues, or
exposition; akin to ‘report’ but in the written mode.
 Problem solving: students work on an activity in which a problem and
some limitations on means are established; it requires cooperative
action on the part of participants, in small or large groups, in order to
reach a solution; only one outcome- sometimes among other possible
solutions – is allowed per group.
 Drama: planned dramatic rendition of play, skit, etc.
  Simulation: activity that involves complex interaction between groups
and individuals based on simulation of real-life actions and
experiences.

C. Facilitation - a major role of the teacher is to arrange matters so the material

presented gets used and thereby learned. These considerations must be taken:
the overall organization of the classroom; the nature and dynamics of teacher-
student and student-student interaction; the interface between these matters; the
selection of classroom learning tasks.

C.1 Class organization- the key participants in a classroom organization are

the teacher, the individual student and groupings of students, the class as a
whole, the language presentation materials (e.g., textbook, AV media).
C.1.1 Traditional teacher-dominated classroom (“teacher-
fronted”) – is characterized by the teacher speaking most of the time, leading
activities, and constantly passing judgment on student performance.
C.1.2 Student-centered classroom – students are observed working
individually or in pairs and small groups, each on distinct tasks and projects.
Benefits of learner-centered classroom: greater individualization of
learning objectives, increased student opportunities to perform using the
target language, increased personal sense of relevance and achievement.
Students often will pay more attention and learn better from one another since
their performances and processes of negotiation of meaning are more closely
adapted to one another’s level of ability.
The most appropriate and effective classroom organization is pair and
group work, (Doughty and Pica ). Group work has been shown to result in
many advantages: learners speak more frequently and with longer stretches
of speech; they produce more interactional modifications directed at one
another; and they utilize a wider range of language.

C.2 Aspects of the Teacher-Fronted Class

C.2.1 Question types:

Display questions – the questioner already knows the answer;

Referential questions – the questioner does not already know the
answer.
 Closed referential questions – questions to which the
speaker does not know the answer, but to which there is either
only one or a very limited set of possible answers;
Open referential questions- questions to which the speaker
does not know the answer and to which a large variety of
answers are possible.

C.2.2 Wait – time- refers to the length of the pause which follows a
teacher’s question to an individual student or to the whole class. This lasts
until either a student answers or the teacher adds a comment or poses
another question. It can also apply to the period between one student’s
answer to a question and the response of the teacher or another student.

D. Correction and Feedback- The teacher is expected to be the source of

“correcting” behavior. The feedback should be a natural outcome of the
communicative interaction, often between learners. Even in the most learner-
centered instruction, learners need feedback in order to differentiate between
acceptable and unacceptable target language use.

LANGUAGE SKILL: LISTENING ( initial learning )

Skills and Strategies for Proficient Listening

 At the beginning stages of language study, before students have learned to read
well, it is by listening that they can have the most connection to meaning in the
new language.
 Through listening, learners can build an awareness of the inter workings of
language systems at various levels and thus establish a base for more fluent
productive skills.
 A regular program of listening can extend learners’ vocabulary and use of idioms
and build their appreciation.
 Successful academic study in English requires a mastery of the listening demands in
the interactive exchanges which are common to conversational lecture styles.

THEORIES OF LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION

A. Listening Is the Primary Channel for Language Input and Acquisition

Proponents of comprehension approaches recognize the primacy of listening in the

processes of comprehension, retention of information in memory, and acquisition of
language competence. Learning to speak a language is very largely a task of learning to hear
it. Hence, the need for early intensive oral practice. There is a need for:

1. an extended period of listening with delayed oral production.

 2. a long preproduction phase in which students listen, follow commands demonstrate
their comprehension through nonverbal actions, is greatly helpful in language
acquisition.
3. a pre speech period for listening only, to be followed by an early production phase in
which students give answers in single words or short phrases.

Reception should precede production because reception enables production.

B. Listening Comprehension Is a Multilevel, Interactive Process of Meaning Creation

At beginning proficiency levels, perceptual operations require great amounts of conscious

attention. Later, after lower level skills have been rehearsed, many times, they can be
performed automatically.

There are three phases of comprehension:

1. Perceptual processing – the listener uses his/her knowledge of the language to

recognize meaningful sound units, to determine syllable boundaries, and to identify
words.
2. Parsing phase – the listener works with words and phrases he/she has decoded to
form meaningful units, which are stored in short term memory.
3. Utilization stage – the listener searches long-term memory for ideas to relate to the
new information; when a match is made between old and new information,
comprehension occurs.

There is the importance of the student’s prior knowledge, schemata, in making sense of
incoming linguistic data. Schemata is a data structure for representing generic concepts
stored in memory. There are two kinds of schemata:

Content Schemata -include cultural knowledge, topic familiarity, and previous

experience with a field. Knowledge about certain field or about everything
 Formal Schemata – have to do with people’s knowledge of discourse forms, text
types, rhetorical conventions, and the structural organization of prose. Alam niya na
ano yung word , phrases or kinds of sentences.

Both content and formal schemata can aid the reader in comprehending texts.

PRINCIPLES FOR LISTENING COMPREHENSION IN THE CLASSROOM

1. Increase the amount of listening time in the second language class – Make listening
the primary channel for learning new material in the classroom. Input must be
interesting, comprehensible, supported by extralinguistic materials, and keyed to
the language lesson.
2. Use listening before other activities – At beginning ang low-intermediate levels,
have students listen to material before they are required to speak, read, or write
about it.
 3. Include both global and selective listening- Global listening encourages students to
get the gist, main idea, topic, situation, or setting. Selective listening points
student’s attention to details of form and encourages accuracy.
4. Activate top-level skills- Give advance organizers, script activators, or discussions
which call up students’ background knowledge. Encourage top-down processing at
every proficiency level.
5. Work towards automaticity in processing - Include exercises which build both
recognition and retention of the material. Use familiar material in novel
combinations. Encourage overlearning through focus on selected formal features.
Practice bottom-up processing at every proficiency level.
6. Develop conscious listening strategies – raise students’ awareness of text features
and of their own comprehension processes. Encourage them to notice how their
processing operations interact with the text. Practice interactive listening, so that
they can use their bottom-up and their top-down processes to check one against the
other.

DEVELOPMENTAL VIEW OF LISTENING SKILLS

A. Profile of the Beginning-Level Student in Listening

 True beginners in a second language lack adequate bottom-up processing

skills because they have not yet developed the linguistic categories against
which the language must be heard.
 They perceive the language as undifferentiated noise.
 They are not yet able to segment the speech stream into word units – to tell
where one word begins and another ends.
 They have no idea about phonological rules that change sounds in certain
environments or cause reductions of sound. .
 They are not familiar with rules for word formation, inflections, or word
order. Their vocabulary store is practically nonexistent.

Bottom-Up Processing Goals and Exercise Types: Listening

Goal: Discriminate between intonation contours in sentences.

Exercise: Listen to sentences with either rising or falling intonation and mark them with
appropriate punctuation for statements (.), questions (?), surprise (??), or excitement (!).

Goal: Discriminate between phonemes.

Exercise: Listen to three words and determine which word is different from the other two.

Top-Down Processing Goals and Exercise Types: ( application ng natutunan nila )

( mas mataas ang quality ng exercise )
Goal: Discriminate between emotional reactions.
Exercise: Listen a statement about a vacation and decide whether or not the speaker
enjoyed the vacation.

Goal: Get the gist or main idea of a passage.

Exercise: Listen to a dialogue and decide what type of weather is being described. Find the
picture that shows the weather.

B. Profile of the Intermediate-Level Learner ( complex exercise )

Language input : Kung ano yung natutunan nila sa language
 Intermediate -level learners continue to use listening as an important source
of language input to increase their vocabulary and structural understanding.
 Although they have internalized the phonemic system of the language fairly
well, they may have little understanding of the complexities of phonological
rules that govern fast speech: reductions, elisions, assimilation and so forth.
 Intermediate -level learners have moved beyond the limits of words and
short phrases, their memory can retain longer phrases and sentences.
 They can listen to short conversations or narratives that are one or two
paragraphs in length.
 Increase their vocabulary , medyo naiintindihan nila ang phonological rules.

Bottom-Up Processing Goals and Exercise Types:

Goal: differentiate between content and function words by stress pattern.

Exercise: Read a series of sentences and predict which words will be stressed (content word)
and which will be reduced (function words).

Goal: Find the stressed syllable.

Exercise: Listen to a list of multisyllable words. Check whether the tress is on the first,
second or third syllable.

Top-Down Processing Goals and Exercise Types:

Goal: Listen to identify the speaker or the topic.

Exercise: Listen to four short conversations with people making small talk and match each to
a picture of the speakers and the setting.

Goal: Make inferences.

Exercise: Listen to a woman and a man ordering dinner in a restaurant. Based on the food
choices they make, tell which person is more conscious of health concerns.

WEEK 8: Principles for Listening Comprehension in the Classroom, Developmental View of

Listening Skills
ACTIVITY:

1. Choose the best three principles for listening comprehension and discuss your
understanding of them.
2. Give a brief description of each of the developmental levels of listening.
3. Develop two goals ( one for bottom-up and one for top-down) and give one
corresponding exercise type for each goal, for both the beginning and intermediate
levels of learners.

WEEK 9: Developmental view of Listening Skills, Speaking, Four Dimensions of Language

Competence

OBJECTIVES:

1. Compare the profile of the advance learner to those of the two lower levels of
learners.
2. Enumerate the dimensions of speaking competencies and identify the areas that
they develop in the learner.
3. Develop three goals for the advance learner and give appropriate exercises to wards
their achievement.

C. Profile of the Advanced Learner

 Advanced students are no longer simply learning to learn the language.

 They are listening in the language to learn about the content of other areas.
 They can listen to longer texts such as radio and television programs and
academic lectures.
 Their vocabulary includes topics in current events, history and culture, they
can deal with a certain degree of abstraction.
 Many advanced learners are more skilled at reading than they are at
listening.

Bottom-Up Processing Goals and Exercise Types:

Goal: Use features of sentence stress and intonation to identify important information for
note taking.

Exercise: Listen to a number of sentences and extract the content words, which are read
with greater stress. Write the content words as notes.

Goal: Become aware of organizational cues in a lecture text.

Exercise: Look at a lecture transcript and circle all the cue words used to enumerate the
main points.

Top-Down Processing Goals and Exercise Types:

Goal: Use knowledge of the topic to predict the content of the text.
Exercise: Before listening to a conversation about food, write a description about the way
that food is prepared and eaten in your culture.

Goal: Recognize point of view.

Exercise: Take notes on a debate about whether or not it is ethical to keep dolphins in
captivity.

LANGUAGE SKILL: SPEAKING they already master the listening skill

Number 1. Phonology- they would know how to deliver the speech ,
semantics , grammar
For most people, the ability to speak a language is synonymous with knowing that language
since speech is the most basic means of human communication.

The ability to communicate in a language comprises four dimensions:

1. Grammatical Competence – include rules of phonology, orthography, vocabulary,

word formation and sentence formation.
2. Sociolinguistic Competence - - include rules for the expression and understanding of
appropriate social meanings and grammatical forms in different contexts. They know
how to use language and tone of language and to say right words.
3. Discourse Competence – rules of both cohesion- how sentence elements are tied
together via reference, repetition, synonymy, etc. and coherence, how texts are
constructed.
4. Strategic Competence – a collection of compensatory strategies that help with a
variety of communication difficulties. Whenever you encounter problem ,You know
how to solve your problem , ability to solve your own problems.

WEEK 9: Developmental view of Listening Skills, Speaking

ACTI VITY:

1. Differentiate the three types of learners. Enumerate distinct characteristics.

2. What are the four dimensions of speaking competencies? Identify the areas they
develop/activate in the learners.
3. Identify two goals for the advanced learner and a corresponding exercise type for each
goal.

WEEK 10: Major types of Speaking Activities in an Oral Skills Classroom

OBJECTIVES:

1. Generate topics for the major types of speaking activities.

2. Identify characteristics of learners who are ready for each of the major speaking
activities.
 3. Arrange the speaking activities according to developmental acquisition of skills.

MAJOR TYPES OF SPEAKING ACTIVITIES IN AN ORAL SKILLS CLASSROOM

A. DISCUSSIONS
 These are probably the most commonly used activity in the oral skills class.
 Typically, the students are introduced to a topic via a reading, a listening
passage, or a videotape and are then asked to get into pairs or groups to
discuss a related topic in order to come up with a solution, a response, or
the like.
 Teachers must take care in planning and setting up a discussion activity.
 First, planned grouping or pairing of students may be necessary to ensure a
successful discussion outcome.
 Second, students need to be reminded that each person should have a
specific responsibility in the discussion, whether it be to keep time, take
notes, or report results; these decisions can, and should be made by the
group members.
 Finally, students need to be clear about what they are to discuss, why they
are discussing it, and what outcome is expected.
B. SPEECHES
 Another common activity in the oral skills class is the prepared speech.
 Topics for speeches will vary depending on the level of the student and the
focus of the class, but in any case, students should be given leeway in
determining the content of their talks.
 An example is asking students to “tell us about an unforgettable experience
you had”; this allows them to talk about something that is personally
meaningful while at the same time encourages narration and description.
 A second type of speech is the impromptu speech. This activity gives
students more actual practice with speaking the language, but it also forces
them to think, and speak, on their feet without the benefit of notes or
memorization. A variation on this activity can be part of a lesson on using
hesitation markers such as um, eh, well, sort of, and like.

C. ROLE PLAYS
 Role plays can be performed from prepared scripts, created from a set of
prompts and expressions, or written using and consolidating knowledge
gained from instruction.
 This is particularly suitable for practicing the sociocultural variations in
speech acts, such as complimenting, complaining, and the like.

D. CONVERSATIONS
 One of the more recent trends in oral skills pedagogy is the emphasis on
having students analyze and evaluate the language that they or others
produce.
 It is not adequate to have students produce lots of language; they must
become aware of the many features of language in order to become
competent speakers and interlocutors in English.
 One speaking activity which is particularly suited to this kind of analysis is
conversation, the most fundamental form of communication.