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Methods for Teaching Language - Advanced | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| mthmchris Newbie United States Joined 5354 days ago 6 posts - 8 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 1 of 3 29 March 2010 at 11:12am | IP Logged |
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I apologize if this has been hashed out a million times already - I did a quick search
and found some great information on this site about how one should approach teaching language, but unfortunately not much applied to this particular situation. In any event, here's the question: how would you approach teaching English (field- specific English in particular) to a student who was already at an intermediate to advanced level? When you were at this level, how did you take that next step? A little background might help. I live in China, and after a few months doing TEFL I realized two things: 1. traditional language classes are borderline useless, and 2. I could make a bit more money teaching field-specific stuff ;) (my background is Finance, by the way). So I started selling specialized "English for the Financial Sector" classes, and I've gotten a great deal of positive feedback. They're one-on-one classes, and even though they were just a blend of traditional classes (Translation- Grammar approach) and discussions (The Direct Approach), the students seemed to enjoy them and I've been able to get referrals. That said, in order to get this success I've had to resort to various tricks to get the students to feel like they're learning more than they actually are (which I dislike doing, for obvious reasons). Now, in my more elementary classes I do quite a bit of TPRS, which is quite successful. But, I've had quite a bit of trouble figuring out how to structure more advanced classes to get similar results. My average advanced student knows quite a bit of vocabulary, can read well, can write at a decent level, but comes up short with regards to listening and speaking. Pronunciation can make things quite difficult on the ear, grammar vis-à-vis spoken English is simply a mess, and listening to quick or colloquial conversations is enormously difficult for the students. One of my "English for the Financial Sector" students has been gracious enough to be my guinea pig of sorts for trying some different methods. Yet after a couple classes, I'm still not quite sure of the efficacy of the methods - I've primarily been using an Audiolingual approach. What I've been doing: - Going through a book of interviews with hedge fund managers and picking out sections that I think he could learn from. - Whatever that section is talking about, I'll make a writeup with regards to the concepts embedded within the passages (sometimes he'll need a refresher), being sure to use difficult words that are within the section of the interview that I selected. - I get a good friend of mine to translate the vocabulary to Chinese, and I send over the reading by e-mail for him to read before class. - In class, after a quick warm-up, we'll review the portions of the interview that I selected. I'll read it once through, and he'll check off any phrases or words that he doesn't know. I'll explain the phrases (in English, but he usually understands the explanations), and read through again while he shadows me. - I select a sentence that I feel would be useful. We go through and he mimics my speech (pronunciation and stress), and he memorizes the sentence. I then do substitution drills with the sentence so that he sees why the formation can be useful. - He selects a sentence he thinks is useful and we do the same thing (often sans substitution drills). - We have a discussion about the topic. - After class, I record the interviews into my computer, and burn them to a disc. In his spare time, he shadows my recordings, and does flashcards (SLS) with regards to the vocab and phrases he didn't know. Now, I think this should and is more effective than my previous classes, but I just don't think I'm getting the results that I do with TPRS. Any ideas? My Chinese is improving rapidly, but their English is far superior to my Chinese (I always tell them that they should be embarrassed if I know how to translate something they don't, haha), so alot of the stuff like the L-R method I can't really apply. I know this isn't a teaching forum, but I'm a believer that successful learners often know more about what works than teachers (and there's quite a bit of nonsense in alot of the TEFL forums). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 2 of 3 29 March 2010 at 2:13pm | IP Logged |
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First off, at that level you're never going to get quite the same results as you do at lower levels, because you're now rounding off the corners.
One thing you should be doing is looking for weak spots in their English. If they're good readers, listening to them read aloud will tell you their weaknesses in terms of pronouns, prepositions and the like, because good (quick, flowing) readers will often read them the way they would say them without actually thinking about it. This means that you shouldn't read the passage first, or not every time at least. Once you have a handle on their individual weaknesses, you can work on them in parallel with the domain-specific language. It's the domain-specific language that they think of as progress, but it's their general ability in English that you notice, and that's a lot of what they need to improve. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6949 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 3 of 3 29 March 2010 at 4:17pm | IP Logged |
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If speaking and listening are a main concern, have you tried teaching IPA?
I teach English in Japan to students of many different levels, and from what I understand, their style of learning English is probably similar to those of Chinese students - a heavy focus on rote memorization and written language, which results in a huge (though quite stilted) vocabulary and a deep understanding of grammar, but practically zero ability to understand what is being said to them and make themselves understood - even when the things being said should be really simple for them (e.g. 'What did you do?' said in a natural American accent, which sounds completely different than how it's spelled). In my school, we teach a simplified version of IPA (just about 10 characters or so) which illustrate not only sounds found in English which are not found in their language, but also phonological rules of English (e.g. in American English, the 't' between two vowels as in 'water' becomes a flap, not like a 't' at all, while the 'o' of some closed syllables like 'hot' and 'on' is actually pronounced like an 'ah', etc). We instruct the students to memorize new vocabulary using IPA, completely ignoring conventional spelling and resisting the temptation to approximate the sounds using their native orthography. It's really hard for them to get into that habit at first, but the problem is that once the word with the wrong pronunciation (whether based on English spelling or based on influence from their native orthography) gets stuck in their memory it's all but impossible to change the 'sound' stored in their minds, so it's really imperative that they memorize new words using an orthography system based on the actual sounds of a native speaker. Once they are able to pronounce the words like a native speaker themselves, they will start to recognize the words in conversation easily as well. I've found this method to be successful both with absolute beginners and more advanced speakers who are just 'rounding off the corners' (as Cainntear above me put it). At least with Japanese learners, though, I feel that even the most 'advanced' require less of a 'rounding off of the corners' than a revolutionary 'throw everything you thought you knew out the window' when it comes to matters of pronunciation and practical conversation! For that reason, they will find this restructuring of their pronunciation actually more of a challenge than beginning students with a clean slate. Good luck, and I hope this has helped. I'd be happy to provide further info or advice to anyone who's interested. :) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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