Delphi module

12.1.2.1
Sample teaching activities

1) Rephrasing ideas
Students working at the 'awareness' level might be given tasks whose pedagogical goals are very easy to work out. For example, Scharle and Szabo (2000: 63) describe an activity that is designed to practise the strategy of rephrasing an idea, to make it clearer to the audience. Students are put in pairs and Student A in each pair must convey a short piece of information to Student B. Student B must then keep saying 'pardon' or 'I don't see what you mean' again and again, forcing student A to rephrase the idea. Having carried out this activity, the students could be asked to say what the purpose of the activity was, and what strategies student A had needed to use in order to respond to student B's demands.

Pair up with another student.

Decide who will be student 'A' and who will be student 'B'.
Student 'A' tells student 'B' how the British voting system works.
Student 'B' keeps interrupting by saying 'pardon' and 'I don't understand'.
Student 'A' responds by rephrasing the ideas.
After the activity, both students should guess what the purpose of the activity was.
List the strategies used by student A to respond to student B's demands.

Figure 12.1 Sample student work card for 'Rephrasing ideas'

2) Designing questionnaires
Students working at the 'involvement' level might be given a task in which they are asked to design questionnaires to find out more about their classmates. It would be up to the students to decide what kinds of questions they included in their questionnaires. They could be given a range of possibilities for administering their questionnaires and be asked to choose their favourite approach. They could then be asked to decide whether they would like to present their findings in the form of an oral presentation, a written report or a poster presentation.

Think of eight things that you would like to know about your classmates.
Write eight appropriate questions.
Discuss how you would like to get them answered (orally or on paper).
Administer the questionnaires either orally or in their written form.
Decide how you would like to present your findings (oral or poster presentation).
Prepare and give the presentation.

Figure 12.2 Sample student work card for 'Designing questionnaires'

3) Grammar quiz
Students working at the 'intervention' level might be encouraged to prepare exercises for each other. For example, Tudor (1996: 210) suggests an activity where, after presenting a new grammar point, the tutor divides the class into groups. Each group is then asked to prepare a short quiz for one of the other groups, based on this grammar point. The tutor may need to provide a couple of example questions, and circulate during the quiz preparation. The groups then complete the quizzes and give each other feedback at the end. This activity is likely to develop students' awareness of their strengths and weaknesses. It should also help them to acquire the necessary skills to make and test their own hypotheses, and make decisions about what aspects of the lesson to pay particular attention to.

Listen to the tutor's explanation of the difference between 'ser' and 'estar'.
You are going to work in groups of three to make a short quiz.
Look at the example questions given by the tutor.
Write five of your own questions.
Give your questions to another group.
When they have finished, mark and discuss their answers.

Figure 12.3 Sample student work card for a Spanish 'Grammar quiz'

4) Peer vocabulary teaching
Students working at the 'creation' level could be involved in peer-teaching. Assinder (1991: 220) describes a lesson in which a group of students was divided into two and each group regularly prepared video-based lessons and teaching materials for the other group. Peer-teaching could also be used to encourage the use of vocabulary learning strategies. For example, many textbooks ask tutors to pre-teach difficult vocabulary before a reading or a listening task. A tutor could delegate this task to the students themselves by dividing the class into groups, and giving each group the reading text and a dictionary. Each group could then be asked to scan a section of the text for unknown words and look them up in the dictionary, checking their meaning in the context of the text. They could then use a range of techniques (for example, onomatopoeia; repetition; showing pictures; contextualization; metaphor; mnemonics) to teach these words to their peers. Peer-teaching should encourage learners to see learning as a process of self-discovery as well as stressing the role of other learners as a support group.

You are going to work in groups of three.
Listen to the tutor's description of the different ways of learning new vocabulary.
The tutor will hand out a new reading text.
Each group must take one paragraph and underline all the unknown words.
Think of ways of teaching these words to your classmates.
Teach them and devise a short test to make sure that they have learned them properly.

Remember, if you know a word properly, you can:

recognize it;
recall it at will;
relate it to appropriate concepts;
use it in its appropriate grammatical forms;
use it with the right collocations;
use it at the appropriate level of formality;
recognize whether it has positive or negative connotations.

Figure 12.4 Sample student work card for 'Peer vocabulary teaching'

5) Project presentation
Students working at the 'transcendence' level might engage in group project work. Tudor (1996: 219) describes a technique used in a university-level English language course for students of Business and Economics. At the beginning of their course, students are informed that they have to work in groups to prepare a project on a subject related to their area of interest. They are required to produce a written report and make a group presentation to the rest of the class at the end of the course. This presentation forms part of their final assessment in English. This approach is likely to make students more aware of their own learning, and to help them decide how they are going to meet their learning needs. The fact that they choose their own topic means that the activity should emphasize meaningful learning. A caveat is necessary here, as research has shown that language students vary significantly in their preference for project work (Wintergerst et al, 2001).

You are going to work in groups of three to write and present a project in ten weeks' time.
Choose a topic for your project.
Remember the project must be analytical, not descriptive.
Produce a written outline and start to gather the information (week 3).
Decide who will do what.
Produce the first draft for your tutor to comment on (week 7).
Produce the final draft and attend the presentation skills class (week 9).
Make a group oral presentation of its contents (week 10).

Figure 12.5 Sample student work card for a 'Project presentation'

The attitude of the tutor is crucial to the successful promotion of learner autonomy (Clemente, 2001: 45). In carrying out activities such as those mentioned above, tutors may need to rethink their teaching goals, and evaluate the ways in which they teach. Allowing students more freedom to decide the content and approach to learning can, in many cases, represent a radical shift away from what tutors have always done in the classroom. This may provoke a certain amount of anxiety and in order to cope with this it is important for tutors to analyze their beliefs about teaching, and discuss them, whenever possible, with colleagues.