Stretching The Advanced Learners' English

Stretching advanced students’ English Luiz Otávio Barros [email protected] A few examples of classroom routines which in some cases can be conducive to “stretching” (or at least students’ perception thereof). 1

As far as possible, I make a conscious effort to pitch my level of English above theirs. If I notice, therefore, that students never go “uh?” when they listen to me, then that might be evidence that my English is not a source of i+1.

2

At the end of most extended speaking activities, I usually ask students to think of something they said which retrospectively they think was a mistake a sort of “redeem yourself after the fact” activity. A massive flop when I first tried it out, but surprisingly effective once students had been trained.

3

When writing new lexis on the board, I tend not to write isolated words, but phrases or sentences. So, the other day when we were talking about accidents in class and a student asked “how do you say capotar?”, rather than write “flip over” I wrote “the car flipped over”. So what they copied down was the sentence, not the word. Luiz Otávio Barros.

4

I find it useful to have a broad idea of what it is that a student should know when they embark on the advanced course, so that I can train myself to constantly assess specific instances of their production against that general benchmark. This has enabled me to set generally higher standards and draw a clearer line between advanced and upper intermediate.

5

I tend to think that attention to grammar at this level is more profitable when it originates from gaps and/or faults in students’ oral/written production. It is useful, for example, to write recurrent errors on an OHT and perhaps plan a grammar lesson to iron out the rough spots. So in many ways what I end up with is a sort of a dual grammar syllabus: coursebook grammar + grammar to meet students’ needs. Luiz Otávio Barros.

6

Though I usually tend to avoid echoing students, at advanced levels it’s sometimes useful to echo them in a slightly different way - paraphrase what they said using “more advanced” (whatever that means!) language.

7

I sometimes tell students at the beginning of the lesson that I will deliberately make , say, two or three grammar mistakes as I speak. Their task is then to discover what it is that I said wrong and tell me at the end of the lesson. Fails first, second, third time, but works wonders eventually.

8

Whenever I correct gap-filling / sentence transformation exercises, I usually ask students to read each sentence silently first, and then say it out loud from memory at natural speed (rather than with lousy stress and intonation with their eyes fixed on the coursebook page). 9 I think there are certain aspects of language that can only be taught ©Luiz Otávio Barros. All rights reserved.

through texts (listening and reading). This is why I usually do some sort of language work after students have done the comprehension tasks. In other words, skimming/scanning/reading intensively and whatever PLUS some sort of focus on lexis/discourse features/formulaic language or grammar. 10

When students are talking in groups, it’s often useful to appoint a rotating “language assistant”, who might be in charge of, say, jotting down examples of “advanced language” as well as mistakes and errors for subsequent feedback.

11

With groups that insist on reading slowly, subvocalising and underlining all the words they don’t know, it’s sometimes useful to ask them to read a text and underline all the words they do know or they think they know.

12

When I’m talking, I make an effort to include in my speech examples of recently learned language, thereby “engineering” students’ exposure in a way that’s pedagogically useful.

In other words, you can stretch your advanced learners’ English by:

a. Controlling your own verbal behaviour b. Doing everyday things differently c. Shifting the focus towards form by enabling learners to notice d. Fostering long term accuracy by training students to monitor their speech e.Teaching lexis more systematically f. Using a Test-teach-test approach to grammar

©Luiz Otávio Barros. All rights reserved.