. TECHNIQUES – CONVERSATION

CHAPTER 11. TECHNIQUES – CONVERSATION
5. Provocative statements are often than question
We have already noted that it is often better to make a ‘wrong’ tagged statement rather than ask a question if the student is to be stimulated to produce language.
Teachers are sometimes inhibited about expressing their own views in this provocative way. If teachers do feel inhibited, however they can overcome the difficulty by introducing a “friend” into the lesson – An English friend of mine told, Mel wrote to me other day that he thought it was better that … needless to say, the “friend” can be given any views which the teacher finds convenient.

6. Problem solving is often an excellent basis for “conversation”
Most teachers now recognize the importance of “the information gap” in lanianguage teaching. In formal life we do not speak unless we have a reason to do so.
In a similar way, problem solving of all kinds creates information gaps and therefore, the conditions for natural language use, such problem solving activities have a further, and extremely important, advantage-namely, they invite the students to use information from experience outside the language learning classroom.
Problem solving activities may range from simple puzzle of the kind just mentioned to the kind of full-scale management training problems sometimes used to teach business students. The essential feature is, however, always the same – by generating a natural information gap they ensure that language uses is a spontaneous.

7. Encourage active listening
Unfortunately the formal pattern of classroom conversations is teacher question, student answer. When one speaker delivers a relatively long monologue, the listeners constantly signal their reactions. Reflect this in the conversations you have in your classroom. While conduction the conversation part of the lesson, will find that if you use such tactics, the students will automatically respond and expand. If you have taught them in advance, you will find that they will start using them too. Aim to stop them relying on direct questions which can so easily them seem as if they are interrogating the listener.

Blogged with the Flock Browser