Teaching English As a Foreign Language in the Glocalized Contexts

January 29, 2016

Teaching English as a foreign language in the glocalized contexts

of South East Asia and Thailand

©
Numa Markee
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
ThaiTESOL 2016 Plenary 1
Khon Kaen, Thailand
Sample task based lesson plan (long)

Based on Markee, N. (1997). Managing Curricular Innovation (p. 37-39).
New York: Cambridge University Press

Picture description task 1 (focus on fluency; small group work)

Instructions to teachers: Divide the students into groups of 4-6 students. Choose one student who is outgoing and not afraid to take risks, who will be asked to draw the attached picture on the blackboard based on the instructions from the other students. Then distribute the picture to the groups of students (Only one picture per group: make sure the groups do not unintentionally show the picture to the student at the blackboard!).
Instructions to students in groups: Plan for about 5 minutes how you are going to describe the picture to the student at the blackboard. Your task is to describe the picture to this student, so that s/he can draw it on the blackboard.
Instructions to student at blackboard: When your classmates start to describe the picture to you, be sure to ask as many questions as you need in order to clarify the instructions you receive from your classmates (VERY IMPORTANT!)
Standard of accuracy (= how accurate does the drawing have to be?):
Beginners: Getting the very rough gist of the story. A very approximate picture is OK. Time limit for completing the task: Approximately 35-40 minutes.
Intermediate: Getting the gist of the story. An approximate picture is OK. Time limit for completing the task: Approximately 25-30 minutes.
Native speakers/Very advanced: No more than 10 errors of detail. Time limit for completing the task: 15 minutes.
Teacher’s role: Make sure the students keep to the time limits you have set. Do NOT pre-teach vocabulary or grammar. Do NOT intervene in the fluency task, even if the students ask for your help (for example with grammar and vocabulary). Force them to complete the task as best as they can with their current linguistic resources. Keep notes of the problems the students have with grammar and vocabulary. If you have access to a video camera, record the fluency task and note important episodes on the frame counter.
Language this task will generate: Imperatives; the language of spatial relationships; the language of description (present tense, present continuous); figurative language; repair (comprehension checks, clarification requests, circumlocution).

Debriefing task (focus on accuracy; teacher fronted)

Once the students have finished Task 1, compare the original picture with the one on the blackboard and evaluate whether the students have met the evaluation criteria you have prescribed for the standard of graphic accuracy.
If you have recorded Task 1, show the students episodes that are interesting in some way. If you do not have a video camera, use your notes to draw the students’ attention to the errors they have made (for example, “Do you remember when you were trying to explain X? Let’s see how to say this more accurately …)
examples of successful communication
examples of errors in grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation; use these for mini lessons on the errors, so that you are teaching to the students’ specific errors

Dialog task (focus on accuracy; pair work)

Once you have finished Task 2, ask the students to get into pairs and to write up the story in dialog form. Once the students have finished writing their dialogs, ask a few pairs to perform their dialogs in front of the class. You should take away their scripts before they perform the dialogs so they don’t just read them out. Provide feedback on how well the pairs do.

Speaking  Writing task (focus on accuracy; simple past/continuous past; pair work)

Tell the students to look at the dialog boxes in the top part of the picture. Point out that the date when this story took place is January 26, and that the date on the wall of the hospital room is January 27. This information situates the story in the past. Ask the students to retell the story orally from the patient’s perspective (“it was raining very hard. There was lots of thunder and lightning … I crashed into a tree”. Make sure the students understand the difference between past continuous and simple past but only teach this explicitly AFTER they have attempted to retell the story)

Past continuous

|------xxxxxxx------|------|

Past Present Future

Past simple

|------x------|------|

Past Present Future

Once you are satisfied that the students understand the difference between these two tenses, ask them to rewrite the story from the perspective of the police officer who investigated the accident (“The suspect said that it was raining very hard … He claimed that the accident occurred at 10.20am”)

Picture description task 2 (Evaluation)

Repeat the procedures used in Task 1 but with a different picture that is more difficult to describe than the first one.

Empirical data

Task 1:Actual performance of students at three different levels of proficiency

Native speakers/very advanced speakers of English

Early intermediate/late beginners

False beginners

Sample transcript extracted from 1 minute of interaction from a group of
native speakers/very advanced speakers of English

Note: these data were selected because these speakers
are much more intelligible than the lower levels

BUT THIS KIND OF LANGUAGE LEARNING BEHAVIOR(see lines 22-29)
HAPPENS IN ALL LEVELS

1Numa:group two, please
2K:his right arm
3M:his
4K:is up
5M:his right
6K:in the cast
7M:arm (laughter) but does he have his leg
8up, too?
9K:yeah
10M:okay. So (.) yeah, he has this thing
11K:here.
12M:yeah. Both of them (.) up
13K:okay
Limbs (.) have casts
14(laughter)
15M:okay
16S:and then between them there is a table
17M:between them there is a table?
18S:yeah
19M:and is that a small table?
20S:a small table
21M:alright
22J: there is a vase ((British pronunciation))
23(.) and flowers (.) on thetable
24M: there is (.) what? What is on the table?
25J:a vase ((British pronunciation))
26K?:a vase ((American pronunciation))
27SJB:a vase ((American pronunciation))
28M:a vase. Thank you.
29?:and there’s three flowers in the vase