Motivation and EFL context

Extrinsic motivation and EFL classrooms
A practical suggestion
Have you ever thought of rewarding your students especially after a big achievement? Have you ever stumbled over the idea of ‘motivational teaching’? Did it ever occur to you that extrinsic motivation is the sole kind of motivation that can be fruitful in EFL classrooms? Didn’t it?
It’s not unbeknownst to every practitioner that a reward is the unique way to instill and ensure that a good behavior is to become a habit. And that’s, for sure, a behaviorist approach, if you consider it for a while. The carrot and the stick approach, originally political, is a can-not-do-without in enhancing teaching/ learning process. Teaching in view, ‘carroting’ is the term I personally coined to stand as a counterpart to that approach. An approach, though criticized for its short-sightedness, turns to be a momentum to the development of the sixth competence namely that of ‘learning how to learn.’
Yes, for sure! You are right to consider that as far off topic and you are wrong to over-rule that that might be right. Allow me to clear your brains of this entire blur. Why can’t you admit an existing correlation between ‘learning how to learn’ and ‘extrinsic motivation’? Why not? I think that is feasible. ‘Learning how to learn’ aims at extending the quest of knowledge beyond classrooms to real life. It aims, succinctly, at immortalizing students’ learning and education to a degree where a student can and picks up his own learning enterprise even after he finishes his school based studies. Techniques that fit to develop this competence are, to my opinion, those geared towards motivation, let alone those on learning per se. Examples to this latter are note-taking, organizing one’s notebook, etcetera.
Motivation of its extrinsic type is, in this respect, of great import in the plain sense that as much as you motivate your students you ensure, to a variable extent, the immortality of learning desire in their lives. An immortality that only a focus on emotion can achieve. Here, I suggest that a teacher should keep on and on motivating his/ her students as part of their development of the known competence.
Thus, ladies and gentlemen, I think I have answered your question of how can you link extrinsic motivation to ‘learning how to learn.’
To get things out of the blueprint, herein I suggest a doc. (document) that is handy, affordable and that fits all that spiel (I hope that you do not consider so!). It is a ‘certificate of excellence’ and the below affixed link leads directly to. So enjoy it and get us through your feedback.

http://www.box.net/shared/0jvnn8tnzm

By: Nouamane ERRIFKI

Managing Speaking Activities

On managing in-class activities:
Ten useful Tips for managing speaking activities

1- Be integrative to the other skills (namely reading, listening, and writing) with speaking as much as possible. Other skills study can be used to build control of the field, which is an important cycle in the teaching-learning cycle.

2- Contextualize and relate speaking to previous work and experience. Remember Stephan Krashen’s theory of language acquisition and especially the input hypothesis in its claim that knowledge and comprehension of whatever language is built one brick over the other. And that a student’s acquisition is furthered by relying basically on previous experience and knowledge.

3- Make sure that students understood how to interact with your prompts or succinctly your questions.

4- Demonstrate, if in need. Dramatization is the best way to demonstrate for beginner students.

5- Provide students with vocabulary/ transactional language that they might need to accomplish the task.

6- Give clear instructions. That does not mean too much instruction. A few words that are carefully chosen may do well.

7- Set a time limit to the activity, but be flexible!

8- Don’t interrupt or correct. But make notes of commonly made mistake and comment on them at the end of the activity or in another session that you may call ‘remedial work’.

9- Go around, through aisles and give help to those in need of and orient others.

10- Ask for feedback. Students say is invaluable in these new approaches that are essentially humanistic. I mean students-centered.

Prepared by: Nouamane ERRIFKI

Pairing and Grouping students

On managing in-class activities:
Techniques for pairing and grouping students

Motivational, tension-freer, funny, for mixed-ability classes, and above all an outlet from some pesky situations that, the question of with who should I team up? May cause is this bunch of techniques.

a- The ‘wheels’ scenario: Make your students into two sets to form two circles (‘wheels’). One circle faces inwards and the other outwards. The former circle moves around clockwise and the latter anticlockwise, and keep on revolving until the T. whistles to stop. In that stop position, every student gets paired with the one facing him/ her.

b- Find your partner (s): Hand out two sets of cards: an ‘A’ set and a ‘B’ set. Students who get the ‘A’ cards go and fetch, each one, a partner from ‘B’ card holders. Thus, pairs are formed. A mild adaptation can be made to make up groups. Having an ‘A’ card, the student gets off his/ her seat and tries to find three (or whatever number not exceeding five) partners of the ‘B’ cards. Once pairs/ groups are formed, the T. can pick on with his activity.

c- Pick a pair: Get every one of your students to write their own names on a piece of paper. Once finished, you get the pieces of paper and shuffle them, then call on a student to pick two pieces (or more for groups) of paper from the pile. The students picked up become thus pairs or members of one group to accomplish that in-class activity of yours.

d- Numbers: Get one half of your class cards on which numbers are written and get the other half to choose their partners by saying a number aloud. The cards should be handed out at first at random. That’s for pairs formation, as for groups of fours as an instance, get your class divided into four quarters. Hand out numbered cards to three quarters, and make the fourth quarter pick up partners by saying numbers (only three numbers).

e- No need to comment on these techniques: Swap places and Rotate…


Prepared by: Nouamane errifki

On pronunciation

On pronunciation:
Can you say these tongue

twisters without getting
Your toungue tied-up.

If yes, prove it!

1- M- Minnie house makes many marsh mallows for Mickey Mouse to munch on.

2- Sh- - She saw shy sheep.
- She sells seashells on the seashore.

3- B- - Bugs black blood, bugs black blood.
- Rubber baby buggy bumpers.
- Betty botter bought some butter
‘’Oh!’’ she said, ‘‘this butter’s bitter, if I use this bitter butter, it will make butter
Bitter I need a bit of better butter, just to make my batter bitter’’
Betty bought a bit of better butter, now Betty’s batter isn’t bitter.

4- Oo- (As in ‘good’): how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could
Chuck wood?

5- i- (AS in ‘fish’): River Wytham, River Wytham.

6- U- (As in ‘university’): unique New York, unique New York.

7- E- (As in ‘bed’): Red lorry, yellow lorry, red lorry, yellow lorry.

8- OI- (as in ‘boy’): which noise annoys an oyster most, a noisy noise annoys an oyster most.

9- S- : this snail is stale, its tail is stale and this is a stale tale.

10- Fl- : a fly and a flea in a flue were caught, so what did they do?
Said the fly, ‘’let us flee!’’
Said the flea, ‘’let us fly!’’
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.

11- r- :- round the ragged rock, the ragged rascal ran.
-Roger rocket ran around the river and rented a raft to ride on.

12- f- : - Phineas Foster fishes for flat flounder.

13- v- : - Veronica Victor vowed to view the vanguard.
- When the very Venetian vet went to Venice, his voyage was viewed with
Vindictive regret by a Venetian vendor named Vemon.

14- ca- (as in ‘can’): canals in the Alps are comparable to a lot of canyon-like canals in
The Capital of Canada.

15- t and th- : The enthusiasm that Teresa Thomas told of took the terribly thin
Thirty-ish Turkish Thespian Thesus Thurber completely by
Surprise.


Prepared by: Nouamane ERRIFKI

Task-Based Learning

The Task-Feedback

chain Model

Hands on the how to proceed teaching reading and listening (also: video watching)
Guidelines:a- Grade the task rather than the material. i.e. try to upgrade or downgrade your tasks in terms of difficulty to suit your students’ levels of proficiency. Do not try to act physically on the material itself eg. By cutting it short or making it lengthy.
b- Task fisrt- then text or tape. i.e. it should ( must!) be succinctly made clear to your students what they are supposed to perform. Thus, the task-first strategy spares them from the wandering and wondering for elongated times. Be clear, succinct to save time, energy and progress forward.
c- Process rather than product: what is of most import is not the listening/ reading or whatever per se, it is rather the things rekindled in the process of the listening/ reading…I mean the discussions, opinion exchange… all that is triggered in the process of achieving a task, let alone the task in itself.

Link-1-
Lead-in: pre-listening, introduction to topic, discussion of themes, looking at pictures, etc.

Link-2-
Pre-task work (optional): looking through worksheet, work on vocabulary, prediction, etc.

Link-3-
Set a clear task: activities to develop reading/ listening for gist or specific details...

Link-4-
Play the tape or students read text: Ss are not supposed to understand every little tiny tiny word in the tape or text, they should get only what they need to achieve that especial task.

Link-5-
Feedback on task [( St to St) or (St to T) or …]: don’t ask unfair questions ( they could be retroactive in effect)- you set a clear task- have they done it? Don’t throw an extra pile of question now!

Link-6-
Could they do the task? Yes or No?1- If No, you go back to link-4- i.e. play the tape or students read the text again to close up the gaps left in their work. Ss try to work out things they didn’t get at first place. You do that as many times as needed.
2- If Yes, you have to move to…

Link-7-
Conclude: tie up loose ends, lead to follow on activities, review what has been gotten, etc.

N.B: links-3, 4, 5, 6, 7 are recurrent in the sense that they could be used more that once in a single lesson of listening/ reading (also, watching a video). That depends on how many tasks you set for your students.
Reference:
Jim SCRIVENER.2005.Learning Teaching. Thailand: MacMillan Heinemann.

Coursebooks

Choosing a coursebook

Choosing a coursebook is one of the most important selections which teachers can make. Teachers cannot influence their working lives in many ways. You cannot choose your teaching hours, your holiday periods, the classes you teach, and the learners who are in
those classes, or the classrooms you use, but you can choose your coursebook.
You select a coursebook for your learners and for yourself, so you first need to analyze your learners’ needs and your own needs.

WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM A COURSEBOOK?
Teachers want different things from their coursebooks and they use them in different ways. Some teachers want a coursebook to provide everything. They want the teacher’s book to tell us what to do, in which sequence to do each activity and how to assess the progress which our learners have made. However, some teachers do not want the coursebook to control their lives. They want to be able to plan their own lessons or even
their own syllabus. They want the coursebook to be a library of materials from which they can choose to be used in the ways they choose.

WHAT CAN A GOOD COURSEBOOK GIVE THE TEACHER?A good coursebook can help a teacher by providing:
1- a clearly thought out program which is appropriately sequenced and structured to include progressive revision;
2- a wide range of materials that an individual teacher may not be
able to collect;
3- security;
4- economy of preparation time;
5- a source of practical ideas;
6- work that the learners can do on their own so that the teacher does not need to be centre stage all the time;
7- a basis for homework if this is required;
8- a basis for discussion and comparison with other teachers.

WHAT DO YOUR LEARNERS NEED FROM A COURSEBOOK?Children want a coursebook to be colorful and interesting. They hope the coursebook will contain exciting games and activities. They hope the cassettes will contain exciting stories, amusing dialogues and entertaining songs and rhymes. But what do the children need? We all know that children have short memories. They find it difficult to retain ideas and language from one lesson to the next. So the children need a coursebook which
becomes an accessible and understandable record of their work.
A good coursebook gives the children:
1- A sense of progress, progression and purpose;
2- A sense of security;
3- Scope for independent and autonomous learning;
4- A reference for checking and revising.

THE PERFECT COURSEBOOKThe Perfect Coursebook for every teacher and every class does not exist. When selecting a coursebook you always need to make a compromise. There will be things which you don’t like about any coursebook. How important are those things? Can you create materials to substitute those aspects? Has the coursebook got something missing? Can you find or create materials to fill that gap? Remember that you work in partnership with your coursebook.
Never expect the coursebook to do everything for you. You will always need to personalize your teaching with your own personality.

WHAT CAN YOU CONTRIBUTE TO THE COURSEBOOK?As a teacher you have a collection of skills. There are some things which you may be very good at doing. Are you a great artist who can draw all the pictures you need? Are you a musician who can play and sing any songs you need? Do you know hundreds of simple games for your learners to play? Do you have a good competence in English? It may not be enough to be a native speaker, you also need to be able to analyse and grade the language which you teach your learners.

FIND OUT MORE:
To get a checklist on choosing a coursebook click on the following link:

http://www.box.net/shared/xo2sglpj5j


Edited by: Nouamane ERRIFKI