Group 6 PowerPoint Presentation

Group members and topics:Meghan Tansey -Motivating English Learners

Shinan Zhou -Teaching Vocabulary to EFL

students

Michael Trap -Teaching bottom-up and top-down

processing

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Motivating English Language Learners

Meghan Tansey

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Idea’s on motivating students to speak.

1. An important facet of teaching English to second language learners is to maintain a classroom that is open and positive! Make students active participants in learning.

2. Students motivation starts with a teachers enthusiasm followed by relevance of the material, the organization of the course, appropriate level of material, active involvement of the student according to a study done by the University of Hawaii.

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Classroom Environment• If the classroom is maintained with a positive attitude from both

the teacher and students, shame or embarrassment won’t be a factor within the class.

• Make students active participants in learning: Give students a key phrase and/or question to ask fellow students, followed by appropriate answers, then have them ask one another for a Q&A session.

• For an example of this click on the link below.

• Q&A Game Video* (click on the Game Video)• * These were 1st and 2nd graders and we were working on food vocabulary. The key

sentence we had worked on was “What do you want?” and we exchanged -want for -have. “What do you have?” Each student was given a vocabulary card. Student #1 was in the center and walked up to any seated student to ask the question “What do you want?” that student #2 then answered “I want (vocabulary word).” Those students who have the same vocabulary card will have to change seats, there will only be one student left standing to repeat the process over again. The question can be changed at anytime as long as you repeat the prompted question.

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How to motivate students through games.

• The teacher needs to select the target language/sayings that will be focused on for the game. Students should have already been taught the key vocabulary.

• Emphasize listening and repeating before the game starts. This is key in order for the students to speak appropriately.

• Have students see an example of how the game is supposed to be played with the specific vocabulary in mind.

• Watch over the students and if they need help, prompt them into saying the key phrase.

• In a lot of cases the students will make their own rules up for the game. This is ok as long as everyone is speaking.

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Click here

• Make the classroom as less threatening as possible. As the teacher you will be setting the tone of the classroom.

• Each classroom of students will be different. It is up to the teacher to make appropriate changes within the lesson to accommodate for the change of energy. What worked with one class may not work for another class.

Special consideration

of teaching of listening and speaking

Vocabulary

I think vocabulary is the most important for

teachers to consider when they are in the process of

teaching of listening and speaking. Because if there

is no vocabulary, there will be no grammar, no

structure and no meaning.

Why vocabulary is so difficult for ESL/EFL learners?

1. They can’t get the right pronunciation of the vocabulary.

2. They can’t connect the sounds with the right

vocabulary.

3. They have difficulty in memorizing many new words.

4. They don’t fully understand the meaning of the

vocabulary in different situations.

5. They don’t have the chance to use the vocabulary often.

When EFL learners start to learn English, teachers and

texts will focus on the teaching of phonics, but later when

teaching listening and speaking, teachers will assume

that the learners will practice the pronunciation by

themselves according to the phonetic symbol, but that is

not the case. Many learners can’t remember the new

vocabulary, one of the reasons is that they can’t read the

new words or phrases.

So for the new vocabulary I’ll teach the

learners how to read and after teach them how to

read according to the phonics. Also try to ask them

to spell words according to sounds.

The EFL learners have difficulties in memorizing so many vocabularies.

First, they don’t have right strategies to memorize the new vocabulary.

Second, they don’t spend much time memorizing new words or phrases because they feel it’s boring to memorize the vocabulary just by reciting.

Third, they can’t use the new words in daily life.

Teachers will help offer the right strategies for learners to memorize the new vocabulary. And the next day, teachers will check the new vocabulary to see whether the learners have mastered them or not. Also try to create authentic tasks or situations for learns to use the new words they have learned.

The EFL learners don’t totally understand the meanings of the word, especially polysemy, synonyms and homophone.

When teaching these kinds of vocabularies, teachers just read through the sentences instead of focusing on the differences of the words. Students will be confused about their uses. It’s important for the learners to know about the differences in word use and they will decide when to use them in appropriate situations.

Teachers should keep in mind when teaching polysemy, synonyms and homophone, they will focus on distinguishing the different uses among these words.

Teaching bottom-up and top-down processing of spoken

discourse

EESL 542.d

Module 2

By Michael Trap

Understanding spoken discourse There are two different types of processes involved in

understanding spoken discourse:

Bottom-up processing• Refers to using the incoming input as the basis for understanding the message

• Comprehension begins with the data that has been received, is analyzed in sequential levels of organization (sounds, words, clauses, sentences, texts)

• Comprehension is viewed as a process of decoding that goes from language to meaning CLICK FOR AUDIO EXAMPLE

Top-down processing• Comprehension goes from meaning to language

• Refers to the use of background knowledge in understanding the meaning of a message

• Comprehension begins with the identification of the topic, background knowledge in the form of previous situational or contextual knowledge about the topic or as “schemata” or “scripts” (assumptions about the overall structure of events and the relationships between them)

CLICK FOR AUDIO EXAMPLE

Prepared by: Michael Trap

Teaching Bottom-up processingLearner requirements for bottom-up Processing:• Large vocabulary• Knowledge of sentence structure- Ability to retain input while it is being

processed- Ability to recognize word and clause

divisions- Ability to identify key words- Ability to recognize transitions in a

discourse- Ability to recognize grammatical

relations between key elements in sentences

- Ability to use stress and intonation to identify word and sentence functions

Prepared by: Michael Trap

Traditional classroom activities that support bottom-up listening skills:• Dictation exercises• Cloze listening• Multiple choice questions after listening

Classroom materials that develop bottom-up listening skills require the listeners to do the following:

• Identify the referents of pronouns in an utterance

• Recognize the time reference of an utterance• Distinguish between positive and negative

statements• Recognize the order of occurrence for words in

an utterance• Identify sequence markers• Identify key words that occurred in spoken text• Identity which modal verbs occurred in a spoken

text

Teaching top-down processing

Specific skills required:• The ability to apply prior knowledge

about things, concepts, people and events to a particular utterance about a specific topic to obtain comprehension

• Ability to use key words to construct the schema of a discourse

• Can infer the setting for a text• The ability to infer the role of the

participants and their goals• Mastery of the skill to infer unstated

details of a situation• Ability to anticipate questions related

to the topic or situation

Prepared by: Michael Trap

Activities to developtop-down listening skills:• Students generate a list of questions they

expect to hear about a topic and listen to see if they are addressed

• Students generate a list of things they already know about a topic and things they would like to know more about, then listen and compare

• Students read one speaker’s part in a conversation, predict the other speaker’s part, then listen and compare

• Students read a list of key points to be covered in a talk, then listen to see which ones were mentioned

• Student’s listen to part of a story, complete the rest of it, then listen and compare endings

• Students read news headlines, guess what happened, then listen to the news items and compare

Key points about bottom-up and top-down processing in listening

• University entrance exams and other competency evaluations usually include a listening component, an acknowledgement that listening is now viewed as a core component of second language proficiency

• Current views of listening emphasize the role of the listener, who is seen as an active participant in listening, employing techniques such as bottom up processing, top-down processing, or a combination thereof, to improve comprehension.

• In real world listening, both bottom-up and top-down processing occur together, the extent to which one or the other dominates being dependent on the listener’s familiarity with the topic and content of a text, the density of information in a text, the text type, and the listener’s purpose for listening

• Spoken text is often context dependent and personal, often assuming shared background knowledge, top-down processing makes comprehension possible

• A typical lesson sequence in current teaching materials involves a three part lesson sequence consisting of pre-listening, while listening and post-listening and contains activities which link bottom-up and top-down processing

Prepared by: Michael Trap