A useful activity for teaching English
Some of the common reasons all students of English learning classes give for their inability to speak in English are:
I don’t know grammar,
I have poor vocabulary,
I lack self confidence,
Others make fun,
I lack environment to practice, etc.
‘I don’t know grammar’ generally occupies the top slot as the reason for inability to speak in English. Generally no amount of discussion is able to fully convince the students that they don’t really have to master grammar to speak in English.
In order to convince the students that even with a little knowledge of English we are able to understand the message of the receiver, I have created an activity. Teachers of English improvement classes will find it useful. I flash some common everyday questions given below on the screen:
Which is your favorite sport?
Who is sitting next to you?
What is in your pocket?
What is the color of your shirt?
In which class do you study?
Which is your favorite tourist place?
Who is your favorite actor?
Which is your favorite movie?
What is the name of your school?
What is the name of your favorite teacher?
Where do you stay?
How do you come to the class?
Can you drive a car?
Shall we go for a movie after the class?
Many more such routine questions can be added. Students are asked to sit in a circle and each student is required to ask any question from above list at random to any other participant.The student who has been asked question is required to reply without worrying about grammatical accuracy of the answer. The answers given by the students are recorded on an electronic device.
Other students are required to just listen to the answer without making any comment.
We can all guess that as the students are learners, many of the answers given are grammatically wrong.
After everybody has the chance to ask a few questions and also reply, I ask the students as to what they were doing when somebody was answering the question. Were they trying to understand the message of the speaker or were they checking if the answer given is grammatically right or wrong?
Till date not even one student has replied that she/he was checking the answer for gramatical accuracy. Every one replies that they were trying to understand the message of the speaker. They also agree that they have understood the messges of almost all the speakers.
Now the answers recorded are played back to demostrate that many of the answers were grammatically wrong and yet the listeners did not have much diffculty in understanding the message of the receiver.
This eventually convinces most of the students that important thing for us, and what we actually do, is to understand the message of the speaker and for this the message need not be grammatically correct.
Some discussion on the difference between content words and structure words takes place to explain that so long as we do not miss the contents words from our sentences, the listener will be able to understand the intended meassage, which is primary requirement of any communication.
The activity ends with asking those students who do not have proper knowledge of grammar to raise hand. Most of the hands go up.
And, I ask them to reflect on that if I do not myself know grammar, how can I check if the sentence I listen or read is grammatically right or wrong? All round nodding of heads!
No one after this activity says that she/he is unable to speak in English as she/he doesn’t know grmmar.
We conduct workshop on ‘English Improvement’ and many other soft skills improvement workshops for industries, educational institutes and individuals. We also offer a few programs like ‘Shine under Stress (Strategies to Succeed in Exams)’, ‘Seven Laws of Teaching’, ‘Student’s Behaviour Management’ etc. pro bono to educational institutes
Please visit link http://bit.ly/sarwansingh or write to us at sarwansingh6644@gmail.com or englishacademybaroda@gmail.com or call (91)8866680407 for further details.
By:
Sarwan Singh
@sarwan_singh
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