Teaching English in the Primary Classroom

Selasa, 11 Desember 2012



Septiyani Wafda                                109014000077                                    VB
Book Response Form
Book title        : Teaching English in the Primary Classroom
Author             : Susan Halliwell
Publisher         : Longman
Date Published: 1992                                                  Number of pages: 169
Genre              : Reference


CHAPTERS
PART I: PRIORITIES AND PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Working with young language learners
            I think this chapter will tell us about instincts, skills and characteristics which will help the learner in the primary school in study another language. And this chapter also help the teacher to teach English in the primary school.
Identifying priorities and their implications
            I think this chapter will tell us about the attitude goals and real language use. This chapter also will tell about how to make learning english in primary school fun. And help the teacher to be more creative.
Being realistic
            I think this chapter will tell us about how to know the characteristic of the students. Is he a stirrer or settler. This chapter also give us the way to face a stirrer student and the settler student.

PART II: PROGRAMMES AND PATTERNS OF WORK
Working with a coursebook
            I think this chapter will tell us about how to choose a good book for the student. this chapter also help the teacher how to choose the subject that related to the student need and how to make a planning based on the book.

Working without a coursebook
            I think this chapter offer us one way of contracting our own programme without coursebook.  This way is not only suitable for teachers in school, but also for who are working independently. It is also useful for those who are working with children under eight years old.
Integrating language work and other subjects
            I think this chapter will tell us about how to integrate language work and other subjects. In this chapter we will given some way to teach language as we teach other subject such as mathematics.

TABLE OF CONTENT
I.       PRIORITIES AND PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS

1.      Working with young language learners
1.1  Children’s ability to grasp meaning
1.2  Children’s creative use of limited language resources
1.3  Children’s capacity for indirect learning
1.4  Children’s instinct for play and fun
1.5  The role of imagination
1.6  The instinct for interaction and talk

2.      Identifying priorities and their implications (page 9)
2.1  Giving high priority to attitude goals
2.2  The special nature of language
2.3  The significance of the way we check understanding
2.4  The significance of the way we treat mistakes
2.5  Making language exercises into real exchanges
2.6  Teaching language lessons in the target language

3.      Being realistic (page19)
3.1  Knowing which activities ‘stir’ a class and which ‘settle’ them
3.2  Knowing which activities engage children’s minds and which keep them physically occupied
3.3  Choosing the style to suit the mood
3.4  Keeping the lesson simple
3.5  Reusing materials
3.6  Reusing a core of ideas

II.    PROGRAMMES AND PATTERNS OF WORK

4.      Working with a coursebook (page 113)
4.1  What a coursebook does well and what a teacher can often do better
4.2  Choosing a course book
4.3  Increasing the real interaction and communication offered by a coursebook
4.4  Pacing your progress through the book

5.      Working without a coursebook (page 122)
5.1  Finding a unifying thread and purpose
5.2  Deciding what to include
5.3  Involving the children in the planning
5.4  Deciding how frequent and how long language lessons should be

6.      Integrating language work and other subjects (page 130)
6.1  Why is integration a good idea?
6.2  What makes integration a realistic possibility?
6.3  Using language classes to provide material for work in other lessons
6.4  Using techniques from other subjects to stimulate language work
6.5  Introducing topics from other subjects into language lessons
6.6  Teaching whole lessons of other subjects in English

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
I.       PRIORITIES AND PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS

1.      Working with young language learners
1.1  Children’s ability to grasp meaning
What is children’s ability to grasp meaning?
We know from experience that very young children are able to understand what is being said to them even before they understand the individual words. intonation, gesture, facial expression, actions and circumstance all help to tell them what the unknown words and phrases are probably mean.
1.2  Children’s creative use of limited language resources
What is children’s creative use of limited language resources?
            In the early stages of their mother tongue development children excel at making a little language go along way. They are creative with grammatical forms. They are also creative with concept.
1.3  Children’s capacity for indirect learning
How is children’s capacity for indirect learning?
            In general terms, however, it is probably true to say that at primary school level the children’s capacity for conscious learning of forms and grammatical patterns is still relatively undeveloped. In contrast, all children, whether they prefer to ‘sort things out’ or ‘muddle through’, bring with them an enormous instinct for indirect learning.
1.4  Children’s instinct for play and fun
Why is children’s instinct for play and fun?
      Children have an enormous capacity for finding and making fun. Sometimes, it has to be said, they choose the most inconvenient moments to indulge it! They bring a spark of individuality and of drama too much that they do.
1.5  The role of imagination
What is the role of imagination?
      In the primary school, children are very busing making sense of the world about them. They are identifying pattern and also deviation from that pattern. They test out their versions of the world through fantasy and confirm how the world actually is by imagining how it might be different. In the language classroom this capacity for fantasy and imagination has a very constructive part to play.
1.6  The instinct for interaction and talk
What is the instinct for interaction and talk?
      Children need to talk. Without talking they cannot become good at talking. They can learn about a language, but the only way to learn to use it is to use it.

2.      Identifying priorities and their implications (page 9)
2.1  Giving high priority to attitude goals
How to give high priority to attitude goals?
      Primary language work, in contrast, can give emphasis to the attitude goals. It should not lose sight of the content goals but should at the same time give clear priority to promoting the attitudes and response, i.e. Confidence, willingness, to ‘have to go’ risk taking. At primary school we have more freedom to do this because most of us are not yet to tightly constrain by the content focus of the public examination system. It can also be argued that we have a responsibility to give high priority to the attitude goals at primary level.
2.2  The special nature of language
What is the special nature of language?
      A language isn’t just a ‘subject’ in the sense of package of knowledge. It is not just a set of information and insights. It is a fundamental part of being human. It is, of course, perfectly possible to treat a language as if it were a free-standing package of information, i.e. to observe it, to analyze it and to fit together examples of how others use it.
2.3  The significance of the way we check understanding
What is the significance of the way we check understanding?
      We can check student’s understanding by watching what they do, watching their faces.
2.4  The significance of the way we treat mistakes
What is the significance of the way we treat mistakes?
      Giving priority to attitude goals in principles also affects our practice in another way, namely the way we treat mistake. Real conversation does not wait for us to work out everything exactly.
2.5  Making language exercises into real exchanges
How to make language exercises into real exchanges?
      There are plenty of classroom activities which provide an extremely useful combination of real communication and quiet deliberate rehearsal of clearly identified of fairly restricted material. They can involve only of the four skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing, but their contribution at primary level is probably in the field of spoken interaction between children. Because the range of language items can be limited without destroying the element of real communication.
2.6  Teaching language lessons in the target language
How to teach language lessons in the target language?
      The teacher has not to become a non-stop and elaborate mime artist in the classroom but we deliberately increase the ways in which we normally back up what we say by showing what we mean.

3.      Being realistic (page19)
3.1  Knowing which activities ‘stir’ a class and which ‘settle’ them
Which activities ‘stir’ a class and which ‘settle’ them?
      Another way of looking at it is in terms of the different effects of different language skills. Oral works always seem to stir. Listening usually settles. You can equally well apply the same stir/settle distinction to any typical and regular features of your teaching.
3.2  Knowing which activities engage children’s minds and which keep them physically occupied
Which activities engage children’s minds and which keep them physically occupied?
      Types of work which create mental engagement and those which actually occupy the learners.
-                     Mentally engaging; games, puzzles, competitions, imagining, talking about themselves
-                     Actually occupying; reading aloud, writing, drawing, and repetition.
3.3  Choosing the style to suit the mood
How to choose the style to suit the mood?
      We can adjust the middle of the lesson to fit the class mood. If the middle of the lesson is getting a bit of restless, most of us instinctively change activities. But if the class is getting silly we need to make sure we change to something settling. So look for settling version of what you want to do.
3.4  Keeping the lesson simple
How to keep the lesson simple?
      You can make a lesson varied by doing lots of activities on different topics. If that is what we mean by variation then we may produce a lesson which, say, begins with five minutes of greetings, then revises number, does a quick introduction of colors and finishes off by singing a song about the days of the week.
3.5  Reusing materials
How to reuse materials?
      We have just seen how one set of prompt cards can be used to provide a whole lesson of different activities around the same topic. Other materials are also reusable round the same theme. For example, if you go to the trouble of drawing a set of grids for an activity or take up time in a lesson getting the children to draw one, you don’t want to use it for two minutes and then move on to something else.
3.6  Reusing a core of ideas
How to reuse a core of ideas?
      Because you use them regularly you will quickly get to know the best way to set them up with your classes. Because the classes known them, they will take to them easily when they appear. You will also, through using these activities often, get to know which of them are good as stirrers and which act as settlers. You will develop ways of adapting them to actual as well as mental involvement. They can become truly the core of your language teaching
II.    PROGRAMMES AND PATTERNS OF WORK
4. Working with a coursebook (page 113)
4.1  What a coursebook does well and what a teacher can often do better
What a coursebook does well and what a teacher can often do better?
      Teacher and book make quite an impressive list of advantages. No doubt you could add others. However, there are several things that the teacher can often do better than a book, which are vital to successful language teaching and which tie in very closely with the priorities.
4.2  Choosing a coursebook
How to choose a coursebook?
      Identifying the potential strengths of coursebook generally, can give us a starting point for looking at the strengths or weaknesses of any specific book.
4.3  Increasing the real interaction and communication offered by a coursebook
How to increase the real interaction and communication offered by a coursebook?
      The most of the activities designed to be based on or grow out of coursebook work in this way. However, you may well be fortunate in your coursebook and may, in fact, not need to alter or add very much. Indeed, unless you are working from a book which is overwhelmingly unsuitable, it is probably a good idea first time through to use a book very much as the author suggests. After all, a great deal of thought has gone into the writing of it. By doing what the authors suggests, you can also discover what the book really does or does not do.
4.4  Pacing your progress through the book
How to pace your progress through the book?
      Working out a schedule is not a matter of being too teacher centered or rigid. You may decide that the children need longer. The point is that if you decided to take longer than originally anticipated, you now know that you will have to look for another perhaps easier area which you will be able to do more quickly than anticipated. Contrary to the view you will sometimes hear expressed, predicting your timing is a sign of effective flexibility not rigidity.

5.      Working without a coursebook (page 122)
5.1  Finding a unifying thread and purpose
How to find a unifying thread and purpose?
      The first task is to find a starting point and a unifying scheme. Luckily, in the language classroom, there is a very obvious and excellent starting point to hand; the children themselves. Taking the children as the starting point can both give our programme coherence and, at the same time, can help us in the second of our tasks, namely, sorting out what to include in that programme.
5.2  Deciding what to include
How to decide what to include?
      Identify what the children use language for in each of these areas, that is to say the language function.
5.3  Involving the children in the planning
How to involve the children in the planning?
      The best occasion for working out the programme with the children would probably be in their mother tongue classes before they start the foreign language. Note that in the process of setting up the language course with you in this way, they will begin to discover a great deal about how language and communication work generally.
5.4  Deciding how frequent and how long language lessons should be
How to decide how frequent and how long language lessons should be?
      More than an hour of high density language work at a stretch is probably too much for most teachers and their classes. Less than half an hour is very insubstantial and fragmented. This sets the parameters. Within those, if you have roughly two hours a week to spend explicitly on language work, you can choose any combination of hours/half hours you like. By having four half hours, you can spread the contact through the week.

6.      Integrating language work and other subjects (page 130)
6.1  Why is integration a good idea?
Why is integration a good idea?
      Most teachers initially find the idea of integration rather unrealistic. They either doubt their own ability to do it or they think it will be too difficult for the children. However, there are forms of integration which are worthwhile without being too complicated and difficult for either the teacher or for the children. This is because there are several key elements which language work and other school learning have in common.
6.2  What makes integration a realistic possibility?
What makes integration a realistic possibility?
      In particular, those processes are:
-                Diagrammatic representation of information;
-                Repeated pattern;
-                Understanding through seeing;
-                Responding by doing.
6.3  Using language classes to provide material for work in other lessons
How to use language classes to provide material for work in other lessons?
      By using the language lesson in this way to provide material the children need for their other work, the language work is being tied in with the rest of their learning and the language itself is being tied in with thinking. It is therefore doubly real language use.
6.4  Using techniques from other subjects to stimulate language work
How to use techniques from other subjects to stimulate language work?
      In mathematics, the teacher would be stressing the key words ‘and’, ‘or’ and ‘not’ (what the mathematicians call the ‘logical connectives’). This is not very different from what a language teacher would be asking. With very little alteration, this could become a basic language activity. For example, one possibility is to use the diagram as a chart which the children to fill in as a listening exercise.
6.5  Introducing topics from other subjects into language lessons
How to introduce topics from other subjects into language lessons?
      We need to provide children with as much understandable listening as we can. Some of the best possible listening activities in the language classroom are those where children are listening to a commentary about something they are watching and are therefore processing both the new and the familiar language in the light of what they understand through seeing.
6.6  Teaching whole lessons of other subjects in English
How to teach whole lessons of other subjects in English?
     There is little doubt that being educated through the medium of the language you are learning is the best experience of real use of that language that schools can provide. However, few if any of the teachers reading this are likely to want to, or be organizationally able to teach large parts of the curriculum in English.

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