Give plenty of time for rehearsal of spoken production
The aim of teaching speaking in general English at A2 level is mainly to produce students who are capable, in real time, of producing and responding to a small number of statements and questions such as How are you? and Where are you from? The aim of teaching speaking for academic English at A2 level is very different. Clearly, there is a role for the general English type of speaking, and this will arise naturally in lessons and is specifically focused on in English in action. But mainly, students need to be able to produce information based on research, in the form of a short talk or a contribution to a discussion. A key element in this kind of spoken production is rehearsal. You must give students plenty of time to try saying the sentences which they will eventually produce in a talk or discussion, and to practise the key skill which is highlighted in each unit, as well as remembering the key skills previously presented. Do not neglect this vital stage, which is cued in the Course Book as Practise the sentences or Practise your talk.
Monitoring and feedback
You should monitor during all pairwork and group work with a view to providing feedback. With a small class, you can of course move around and directly monitor each pair or group. With larger classes, you may only be able to get a general idea, but by ‘tuning in’ – i.e., looking at a particular pair or group – you will often find you can pick up issues.
With a small class, you can give individual feedback, i.e., correction of structure or pronunciation. With larger classes, make a note of common problems and feed back to the whole class.
For the rehearsal phase, ideally students should learn to monitor their own spoken production. Give clear guidance on what they should be looking to improve in a particular activity, and encourage students to say sentences to themselves several times for better articulation and fluency. It is also very good if you can teach students to monitor and advise their partner. Model the sort of feedback you can give with a good student and, when you monitor, monitor the monitoring!
Give a role to listeners during spoken presentations
In some cases, students have to make notes from a presentation, or fill in information in a table. But in a few cases, there is no specific information transfer, because all the students are presenting the same information. In these cases, make sure that the listeners are given a clear role, such as checking body language or the use of a good introduction or closure. Sometimes, a feedback form is provided for recording this.
Speaking: Pronunciation
Help students to be understandable Focus on the sounds causing the most barriers to communication for your own students. These could be:
• individual consonant sounds, e.g., the \DE\ • individual vowel sounds, e.g., should \SUd\
• consonant minimal pairs, e.g., fast vs vast \fA…st\ vs \vA…st/
• vowel minimal pairs, e.g., he’s, his, it, eat \hi…z\, \hIz\ \It\, \i…t\
• stress within words, e.g., "hospital • unstressed syllables in function words, e.g., a/the
Variety of English
Today, English is a global language, so the models should not necessarily be British English. We need to be realistic about what our students can and should produce. If students are producing consistently your own variety of English, that is fine.
Little and often
Good pronunciation is a vital part of language learning. An issue with pronunciation, particularly stress within words, may well lead to a communication error, when a tense mistake may not. But accurate pronunciation comes with a lot of practice, which is boring if it is concentrated into one period. Integrate pronunciation when possible, remembering that ‘little and often’ is probably the best policy.
Reading
Introduce students to the idea of texts based on more factual content
Students from traditional EFL classes will be used to reading simulated newspaper and magazine articles, and texts specially written in course books only really to practise grammar and vocabulary. The content of these General English texts needs to be understood only temporarily for the purposes of the lesson. Such texts are not useful in a course such as Moving into Healthcare & Nursing.
We have used a relatively small range of text types, including textbooks and websites, and chosen reading topics that will not only be useful to students in their further studies, but are also interesting and motivating, and raise issues for critical analysis and presentation of opinion and ideas. Therefore, use the texts for:
• critical thinking, e.g., what problems does the Primary Care Team have?
• discussion and opinion-giving, e.g., which aspect do you think is most important for you?
• eliciting reaction to information, e.g., which fact in the article is the most interesting?
• a springboard for further research into the topic 10
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