Samarkand state institute of foreign languages english faculty I course paper

2.2. Criterias of livening up an english lesson
Bring in Real-World Objects
In TEFL, sometimes you want to bring real items – called realia in the biz –into the classroom to help teach a particular point. These items may include clothing, food, household items or even a musical instrument. Lugging these things into class isn’t as easy as showing a picture or offering a definition, but the advantage is that students are more likely to remember the day the teacher came to school with a potato in her handbag than the day she pointed to one in a book. Students will want to pick the item up, play with it and generally make a connection with something three dimensional.As well as using realia for teaching new vocabulary, you can also use it to practise what the students already know. Take prepositions: A toy car moving through a Lego town is very engaging for young learners, and as one child plays with the car, the others can describe what’s happening or give instructions inevitably using prepositions. Even adults prefer using real maps from places they dream of visiting than pretend ones mocked up for the classroom.
Step Outside the Classroom
Whether you can leave the classroom behind for a while and get out into the real world depends on the context you find yourself teaching in. However, in most cases you can at least escape to the garden or local town. The fact is that when the language you are learning is associated with a new situation it can suddenly feel fresh again. So, it may never have occurred to a student to ask the word for sky, traffic light or market stall before because there had never been anyone to speak English to around these things. By getting outside, the students associate English with a wider range of situations, not just a classroom. If you are teaching in an English speaking country, you do a lesson or two building up to a visit to the local courthouse, a place of historical interest or even a café offering typical dishes. Even something as mundane as an English breakfast is fascinating to someone from overseas. The opportunity to speak English to a ‘real’ person under the watchful eye of their teacher is enough capture the students’ attention. The motivation to learn comes much more easily when the grammar or vocabulary you are teaching concerns a real event. In a non-English speaking country, you can still find examples of English words on hoardings and notices. Or perhaps the students can take you for a traditional drink or snack. They are likely to be very proud of their culture and make every attempt to explain and translate to initiate you. As long as you create a structure by noting the vocabulary/grammar appropriate to the situation and going over it beforehand or afterwards, the students will see the lesson as purposeful. Take your students out on the street in their town. Have them find as many English words as they can in ten minutes, then see whether they understand what the words they mean.
Browse the Net
The worldwide web is an absolute gift to teachers and a large proportion of it is in English! As with the two previous points, the internet is a way to bring the real world into your lessons. Students can do their research online instead of using a dictionary or depending on you. In addition, they can interact with other people iselected chat rooms and discussion forums. It gives students a thrill to know that outsiders understand their English too and that they can post information in their new found second language for all the world to see. If you have internet access in the classroom, or if you have taken your class to the Information Technology room as part of your lesson, it is your responsibility to make sure that students are not looking at offensive websites.
Start a Project
There comes a time when students want to take more control of their learning. Perhaps your students have their own interests which they would like to explore in English – anything from football, movies, music, fashion and more. Whatever their interest, it is liberating for students to do a presentation or wall display around it then share their efforts with their classmates. You can also have student tackle projects in small groups with each student adopting a different role. Teenagers, for example, often enjoy putting together a class magazine with a wide variety of articles, interviews, surveys and artwork. Establish a regular time for sharing or preparing project work. Make it part of the class routine.
Let the Students Teach
English lessons tend to follow the same pattern: teachers teach and students practise. But for a change, how about giving the students the board pens and seeing how well they rise to the challenge? There are always restless individuals who struggle to sit still and listen. And what about those know-alls who interrupt you at every turn? Well, these students are ideal candidates for a bit of role reversal. Or, you could give all the students a chance to have a go by giving everyone a 10 minute teaching slot over several lessons. Students don’t need to teach the whole class; more timid students can teach their partner or a small group. To be fair, you need to back up whatever they teach by thorough checks and feedback sessions.

Starting Out with ‘Once Upon a Time’

Story-telling is part of every culture in the world and is something you do frequently in day to day life. It combines human interest and clear settings for language practice. So, help your students develop this skill by giving them lots of opportunities to tell their favourite anecdotes and tales. To be honest, because most people struggle to make a story interesting in a foreign language, the first attempt at storytelling might be rather subdued. Interestingly though, things start to change if the same story is repeated two or three times. Students increase in confidence and fluency, and in between each telling they tend to check or note points which they have realised they need. Whereas most people don’t mind repeating their favourite tales, it is rather boring to hear the same story over and over. So, the best way to get around this is to change the pairings of students each time the story is told. You will find that with each re-telling they get livelier and more accurate to boot. Use traditional fairy stories, urban legends, jokes or your autobiography as resources. When you think about it, native speakers learn to appreciate stories right from when they are toddlers and long before they are able to tell stories themselves. What does this imply? Basically that if you tell your students stories, even ones which contain some new words or grammar, they will enjoy it because the overall meaning is clear and interesting
Open Up Your Life
As you’re from a different background (race, nationality, religion, and so on) to your students, they are bound to be more than a little curious about what goes on in your life. Feed them a few simple titbits about your life and you’ll find that students can’t wait to learn more. You might wonder what kind of information is safe to reveal. Your hobbies and interests are a good place to start. Bring in some realia or photographs for the class to examine. Even if the class don’t share your passion for, say, hiking, they will have something to talk to you about. It is surprising how a lack of cultural knowledge can really stifle conversation. So your students may need to know which topics are safe to discuss with you. Then again, a bit of junk mail which you would otherwise throw away could fascinate the students. If you are sure there is no classified information in it (the ‘Dear Homeowner’ kind is useful), you can even let them open it (from a new envelope if you want to conceal your address), have a go at filling in forms or planning a reply
Move Around
A kinaesthetic learner is someone who learns by actions and movement. Although some people just seemed to be wired that way (you know, the fidgeters who are always asking when the next break is), almost everyone benefits by getting out of the chair and shaking off the cobwebs from time to time. Try to adapt your activities so that they become more physical. Whenever possible, get students to:
✓ Change seats
✓ Stand up
✓ Do pair work (even back to back)
✓ Act things out
Play a Game
Most students, even serious business types are up for a challenge in the form of a game, puzzle or quiz. It makes sense to have an armoury of these at your disposal to use as warmers at the beginning of a lesson, coolers at the end or just to break things up when the atmosphere has become rather flat. Another approach is to see how you can turn your existing lesson material into something more competitive or entertaining by pitting teams against each other, setting time limits and awarding points. The games and puzzles we native speakers play are often easy to adapt for classroom use. All the children’s games below require speaking in simple statements and no props at all.
✓ Simon says: In this game one person gives orders such as ‘Simon says touch your toes’. However, you don’t follow the order unless the speaker first says ‘Simon says’. If you forget and follow the order anyway, you are out of the game.
✓ I spy: This popular game in one in which players take it in turns to secretly identify something in the room and the letter that the object begins with, for example ‘L’ for lamp. You then say, ‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with . . . L!’ Then all the other players have to guess what the thing beginning with L is.
✓ I went to the supermarket: This is a memory game based on shopping lists. The first person says, ’I went to the supermarket and I bought . . . ’. This person chooses an item and says the word. It might be a pen for example. The second person must now say the introduction, the word pen and then add another item of their own. ‘I went to the supermarket and I bought a pen and some cheese’. Move from student to student as they repeat the ever increasing list and add an item.
✓ Chinese whispers: Stand all the students in a line or a circle. Whisper a short message in the first student’s ear. That student whispers the message, as they have understood it, to the next student and so on. The challenge is to see whether the message remains the same by the time it reaches the last student.
Get Musical
Music generally puts a smile on people’s faces and reduces stress too, so if you can find a song to illustrate the piece of language you want to practise you will find your lesson much livelier than when you use a simple worksheet. Songs are generally seen as a listening activity and older, professional students may not want to sing along too often. There is an alternative though if you want to get musical and this means using jazz chants. A jazz chant is a cross between speaking and singing (a little like rapping) which involves repetition and rhythm. While chanting sentences you want to practise, you can snap your figures or clap your hands which really helps learners to hear how English pronunciation and intonation works[1; 340].