Repeat After Me…Here Comes The Choo-Choo Train!
I’ve written elsewhere about drilling vocab using flashcards and prompts. In this article, I’d like to look at the psychology, if you will, of drilling vocab, PARTICULARLY if you teach senior high school or adult students. The title of this article will become quite apparent as we move along (if it’s not already!).
Firstly, students don’t mind repeating vocab items aloud. I’ve met teachers who have been hesitant to drill vocab items (with adult learners) because they (i.e. the teachers) thought it might be considered “baby-ish” by their students–who were doctors and lawyers and engineers, for example.
But students are well aware that they need practice in order to “get their mouth around it”, to “test out” the sounds (particularly if those sounds don’t exist in their native language!), and to get feedback… from who else but the teacher!
Sidenote: I should point out here that most of them do, that is. Every now and again you get a student who won’t repeat after the teacher. These are usually either one of four cases:
(i) they’re the super-shy wouldn’t say boo to a goose types who barely utter a word and when they do speak it sounds more like a mouse with a gimp ball in its mouth. Their repeating after the teacher resembles vaguely moving their lips like a crazy bag-lady mumbling to herself in the park, only with no sound actually coming out
(ii) they’re simply not interested in learning the foreign language. They’re just clock-watching. These students are in your class because it’s a compulsory component of the course they’re taking, their parents made them go, they have to turn up a certain minimum number of hours per week to fulfill their student visa requirements, and so on…
(iii) they’re idiotic and really do think they don’t need to do it
or
(iv) they object to the patronising tone of the teacher and refuse to be treated like a baby
And that’s what I’d like to turn my attention to in this article.
Let’s start with tone of voice and then we’ll move on to gestures.
1. Tone of Voice
I couldn’t count the number of times I have walked past a classroom and cringed! The teacher is talking to his/her students in that really patronising tone of voice that, frankly, isn’t even appropriate for children!
It always reminds me of the (Australian) film “The Sum of Us” starring Russel Crowe, John Polson, and Jack Thompson. It was originally a stage-play and there is one point I distinctly remember in the film which employs the theatrical technique of “breaking the frame”, that is speaking directly to the audience. In cinema this is known a “looking down the barrel of the camera”.
The father has had a stroke and is paralysed. He has lost his ability to speak and is sitting in the bed. His son comes in and talks to him in exactly the tone I’m talking about and fusses around and then leaves. The camera moves in and the father “breaks the frame” and addresses us directly “Jesus! I may have lost the ability to speak, but I haven’t turned into a fuckwit!”
And that’s the way I feel about that tone of voice (in fact, whether it’s drilling vocab or just generally talking to the class): these students are not necessarily fuckwits (yes, some actually ARE, but the tone of voice I’m objecting to is STILL not warranted!), the fact is they are just not (yet) proficient speakers of the foreign language under instruction.
End of story. I’ve had high court judges, university professors, CEOs, you name it in my class! And if you teach adult EFL, you probably have too.
So if you’re guilty of this (and if you have to pause and think about it, I would suggest taping your own lessons now and again and then listening back to them to see if you cringe)..
…stop it!
Right, now onto the next one:
2. Gestures
Personally, I am a fairly animated person and I have no problem with looking a bit foolish. I think most language teachers are probably the same. This is NOT to say, however, that you have to be swinging off the light fixtures to try and elicit “orang-utan”, for example!
What I would really like to comment on here is the gesture to repeat after the teacher. It’s only a small thing, but it lets students know what you expect them to do. They don’t mind repeating, as I’ve already mentioned and as I’m sure you know.
But they don’t always know whether they should repeat or not. And who wants to be that dude who chants out “orang-utan” when no one else does?
So you have to give a CONSISTENT cue to your students to let them know you want them to repeat the vocab.
A simple, slightly sweeping gesture than includes the whole class works beautifully. It needn’t be as wooden as the models on game shows showcasing the wonderous prizes on offer tonight, but just a little gesture like that–used whenever you want them to repeat–will elicit greater compliance with your (and probably their) wish to orally drill the vocab.
I once observed a lesson (not from a newbie teacher) who did this outrageously dramatic lunge forward with his body and a huge sweep of his hand as he cried out whatever the word or phrase was! It was all I could do to keep a straight face given that I was, essentially, a guest in his classroom!
Now, dramatics are fine… up to a point. How could he POSSIBLY have been listening to the students with all that lunging and roaring?
And that is, of course, the other half of having your students repeat after you: To listen to them so you can offer them feedback!
For choral drilling, this is my usual method:
1. I get them to listen to my model TWICE
They will almost always repeat along with me the first time so I just hold up my hand, smile, and say “Just listen twice, okay?”
Then I model it twice and point out any features of the sounds or stress or intonation or whatever.
Then I model it again.
2. I then say something like “Your turn!” and gesture for them to repeat.
The first time I model along with them.
Then I repeat my gesture once or twice and just listen. Then I offer feedback and more modelling and tips for tongue placement, etc. as necessary. It’s not always necessary.
3. One more time together
4. Then I select individual students at random by gesturing to them with my open hand. Not pointing. Not saying their name. Not nodding at them. Clearly indicating who I would like to repeat the target language (TL) in a non-threatening way.
Any individual repetition and practice at this stage is fine as long as it’s not extended. Don’t expect students to “get it” right away with difficult phonological aspects. Just give them some feedback and another shot at it and move on.
5. Without breaking the pace, after three or four individual drills, return to the first gesture (i.e. Okay, class, everyone repeat after me!)
6. Move onto the next item.
This takes a bit of practice believe it or not! I didn’t naturally reel off this technique when I first started teaching. The basic framework was taught to me and I’ve refined it a little bit over the years.
It won’t take you long to internalise it, but you will need to clearly visualise the steps before you head off to class to drill a bunch of new vocab. Then when you come back think about whether you nailed it or whether you missed a step. Not the end of the world if you did. Just keep going through the steps and this–very effective and non-patronising–method of choral drilling will become second nature to you!
Good luck with it!
May 10th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Thank you, Leslie, for the model and drill reminder. I hope I wasn’t the teacher mentioned (I do have an OTT full-contact classroom gesture at times and I hope I never sound condescending in the classroom)! If I was, please let me know. I remember that half-good lesson you observed at EF and I still use the whiteboard marker and connected speech comments afterwards (thank you very much, by the way.).
There is a bit of debate at Kaplan Aspect Sydney as to whether you should pre-teach vocab or let the learners discover new words in context either through listening or reading. I mostly, but not exclusively, prefer the in-context approach (the old you-know-more-English-than-you-think approach). Although it sometimes depends on the importance of certain words in a text and the comprehension questions that follow. It’s the usual if your not sure, guess. Then we’ll do an analysis after comparing answers with a partner.
I find that students are very keen to repeat after modelling (I tend to do it three times atthe start) no matter their status in their home countries, particularly at lower levels. Advanced learners tend to think they’re too cool for schools on occassion, but I still use the method.
Thank you again for the smokin’ website. It’s always worth a read, even if you have been teaching for some years like me.
Cheers,
Luke.
May 10th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
P.S. My apologies for the missing space and, yes, it’s too cool for school. Memo to self: improve typing skils, sjills, bugger, skills.
May 29th, 2008 at 12:36 am
Heya, Luke!
Nice to hear from you, as always, mate.
In answer to your question, no, it wasn’t you who has the OTT gestures! LOL! That’s only when you’ve had a few too many. But by that time I’m doin’ the same!
Thank you for your kind comments about the blog and the whiteboard phonology follow-up.
Re: The old pre-teach or not, here’s what I reckon:
When you’re talking about this, you’re obviously dealing with receptive skills. That is, either Reading or Listening.
So, what you want is for your students to be able to process a text at ever-increasing degrees of complexity.
And that’s precisely where a lotta folks go wrong. They want their class to be able to process the whole goddamn text in one fell swoop! She no work like dat.
Your comment about the relative importance of certain phrases is correct. But it still falls foul of this mode of thinking to some degree. Here’s how you get around that:
First, you set up your listening or reading (let’s say it’s listening, which is what students need MUCH more practice in… most textbooks provide a listening script for what is TITLED reading… so in most cases I simply do it as a listening lesson to be honest unless it’s an academic course, in which case I spend equal time on developing reading SKILLS and listening SKILLS–which is ENTIRELY different, of course, to simply doing the standard textbook style “listening” or “reading” lesson which more resemble tests than skills development lessons (more on that in another post!))…
Sorry, tangent…
[What? Who, me?]
So, first set up your (let’s say) listening task in such a way that it [Warning! Warning! Wanky DELTA/MA jargon to follow!] “activates their schemata”, which basically means:
“Give them some kind of pre-task that asks them to draw on their experience of the world in such a way that it starts to ‘pull in’ concepts the text deals with (in L1) and hopefully this will start to ‘pull in’ (even fragments of) L2 vocab that will assist when we hit the text.”
…BUT…
…set up your pre-task in such a way that it doesn’t let the cat out of the bag as to the key details of your text (central themes: good, details: bad).
There are a number of ways you can do this. The simplest–and broadest–is to simply identify the overarching THEME/TOPIC of your text, go into class and say
Today we’re going to listen to a [insert genre, e.g. radio interview] about [topic, e.g nuclear power]. With your partner/group, I’d like you to discuss these two questions before we listen [write on board, give Sts chance to check in dictionary, concept check]:
* Does your country use nuclear power?
* Why?
* How do you feel about this?
* How do you think your neighbours think about this?
[Note: This is entirely off the top of my head and I’ve had a few lagers… but the POINT is to use THESE questions to establish a “referential context” for your students, to engage them in the lesson (sneaky, huh?) rather than just saying “Today we’re going to do X… Here we go!”, and to draw out any “tricky” vocab that you particularly want to focus on pre-task (which is my version of pre-teaching). This will become clearer in a moment, I hope.]
Give them a few minutes to make some notes (and use their dictionary to prepare–We’re talking multi-lingual classes here)… then they talk about it with their partner and you get some feedback.
Go around the room getting feedback and then ask them what they think the main issues that came up in the class discussion are. Get this vocab out and write it on the board. Drill pron as necessary and concept check everything.
You’ll probably find that all that super-specific vocab you thought you wanted to “pre-teach” has been dealt with! And without letting the cat out of the bag and undermining your comprehension questions.
If not, ask something like “So, we’re going to listen to an interview with a guy from North Korea talking about their nuclear power program. I’ll give you a few minutes to discuss what you think might be the key points of the interview…”
Again, elicit all feedback to whiteboard, concept check, drill as necessary, and then whaddayaknow… ya got your very first global-receptive-question (I just made up that bollocks term. You like? For some reason the standard CELTA terminology escapes my piss-addled brain right now…)
And that question is… ***drumroll please***
–Which of these ideas is the interview ACTUALLY about?
It ain’t rocket science. Don’t reinvent the wheel. And don’t overcomplicate things.
And wow! Suddenly you’re into your text!
Okay, this is 20 minutes into the lesson. But by this time you’ve done some nice “mini-communication” exercises–the type that I really like, where students are actually sharing their own personal opinions about things (and it needn’t be on some big, bad, heavy topic like Nuclear Power; I would do the same thing if it was a text about The Spice Girls. “Who’s your favourite pop group? Why? What do you like the most about them? Are they popular all over the world or just in your country? What sorts of problems do you think come with fame and fortune? (I’d save a couple like “Would YOU like to be a famous pop star?” and “Do you think pop stars and celebrities complain too much about lack of privacy?” and so on for post-text follow-up/the old “response-to-text” routine. But it really is the same)…
.. and you’ve covered the key vocab (and hopefully ‘pulled in’ a whole lot more that will help them process the text…
So not time wasted by any stretch.
And then you repeat the same concepts for each “layer” of the comprehension tasks.
First, you ask more “global” questions about each “block” of the text.
Then you ask more specific questions about the CONCEPTS and perhaps the relationship of concepts between blocks.
And THEN you ask for more specific details like “How many nuclear power plants are scheduled for production in the next 10 years?”
Then you answer any final questions regarding the MEANING of the text. (You’ve got students to check their answers at each “layer’s” step and then confirmed the correct answers as you’ve gone here, of course.
Then you do your optional language focus section.
Then you do your optional listening skills and phonology focus.
Why optional? Depends on your objective for the lesson. If your lesson is listeningSKILLS (not the same as “listening comprehension”), then these steps are NOT optional. If your objective is to draw out a particular set of language points (or even one if you’re a traditionalist) from the text, then the first is not optional but the second might be. And if your objective is to use the text as a springboard for a discussion and/or writing activity, then both might be optional.
But you see the point re: pre-teaching.
I’m not anti-pre-teaching. But I am MOST DEFINITELY anti-”here’s-a-list-of-words-and-phrases-we’re-going-to-need-for-the-text-let-me-teach-them-to-you-before-we-begin”.
This is nonsense. It makes your SKILLS work laughable because your comprehension questions either become braindead easy or else (because you’re struggling to come up with challenging questions) you end up going for all the micro-skills kinds of questions first, rendering your post-text tasks wobbly at best because you can’t be sure that your students have ACTUALLY processed the meaning of the text you are then asking them to respond to!
Does this all make sense? Or am I drunk and raving?
Leslie