Didaktika cizích jazyků - přednášky

• Teaching productive skills is closely interwoven with receptive skills.

• Output and input – when a person produces fluent language it is output, it might be an input when we think about what we said before

• Texts as models

• Texts as stimuli – you read a story about something and it gives us an idea we want to speak about

• Reception as part of production

• Production enables reception

Problems and solutions:

• Supply key language, key words – it can be based on reading, we can connect it with brainstorming

• Plan in advance

• Choose interesting topics – we ask about their hobbies,

• Create interest in topics

• Activate schemata – brainstorming, showing them situations, pictures – they kind of „wake up“ their knowledge

• Vary topics and genre – formal/informal language, hospital, newsagents…

• Provide information

Speaking

• Communicative activities

• The main goal is to become more fluent.

Problems connected with speaking

• Shyness and inhibition – let them talk about themselves, give them a text, they will read it, summarize it, get the main point, they will become more confident that they know what to say

• Finding things to say – we should find an interesting topics

• Low participation of individuals

• L1 use

Practical principles for designing speaking activities

• Prepare the discussion well - make a careful choice of topic and task

• Use group/pair work – we have to choose the correct pairs, we should change the pairs

• Base the activity on easy language

• Give some instruction or training in discussion skills. – when they should pause…

• Keep students speaking the target language.

• Make students aware of the purpose of the activity.

Structure of a speaking/ writing activity

• lead-in - students to be get engaged with the topic

• setting the task - explanation of what exactly the learners are going to do + distribution of the materials required

• monitoring the task

• task-related follow-up (what information they’ve learned)

Some practical ideas for discussion activities/communication games:

• Dialogues - creating/rehearsing

• Communicative games – 20 questions/just a minute/call my bluff/

• Discussions - buzz groups/ instant comment/formal debate/balloon debate

• Describing pictures

• Picture differences (pair work)

• Things in common (pair work)

• Interactional talk (how to greet, take leave, begin and end conversation) – we practice situations

• Long turns (telling stories, jokes, describing a place or a person in detail, recounting the plot of a film)

• Questionnaires

• Role-play – problem might be that students don’t like their roles

• Presentations

Task and topic based activities

• Topic based activities - discussions

• Task based activities – solving problems/pyramid discussions/see a video/Boardgames (Activities, Tick tack boom, Scrabble, mazes…)

Roles of teacher

• Teacher shouldn’t be controller – shouldn’t just stand, say information

• Prompter

• Participant – taking part in an activity

• Feedback provider/ assessor

Feedback to spoken performance