Effective Presentations in ELT

ELT, Teacher Development, Teaching Practices, Teaching Practicum 0 comments

Effective Presentations in ELT

Penny Ur’s Approach -Reloaded

Intro: The Necessity for Presentation

Why do we need presentations in English Language Teaching? The reason seems to be self-explanatory: The lack of presentation means no overt instruction to students. Yet we teachers must bear in mind that these presentations help our students to perceive and understand the new material that is given to them. This “new material” hast to be –not only- accessible –but also- ready for student initial learning. For this reason, the presentation serves as a means to a limited and controlled modeling of a target item that needs to be provided to students (Ur 1996), whether it is vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, etc.

Student Reflective Task

As a language learner, can you recall a particular teacher presentation that facilitated your grasp and comprehension of some aspect of English?

Discuss students’ answers with the whole class.

Taken from Ur, P (1996) A Course in Language Teaching. Cambridge: CUP, and adapted for educational purposes.

What happens in an effective presentation?

If you have asked yourself this question before, you should compare your answer to what Ur (1996) suggests as an answer. For Penny Ur, the answer relies on four basic components: 1) attention, 2) perception, 3) understanding, and 4) short-term memory. Let me also provide my own interpretation of each one.

1) Attention: The role of the student is to be “alert” and “attentive.” The teacher must make sure that all students in class are actually paying attention and that there are no distractors preventing them from concentrating on the class. Distractors can hinder comprehension and the success of language activities.

2) Perception: Now that the teacher is sure that s/he has students’ attention, pupils are ready to “hear” and “see” the new material being presented to them. Their mind is open to receive what the teacher is providing them via presentation.

3) Understanding: Now that the teacher has his/her students’ attention and they are fully perceiving the new information, the instructor must make a connection between the presentation and the students’ prior knowledge (schema activation). In this way, the pupils will relate to the material and will understand how to use it in real world contexts and/or situations.

4) Short-term memory: Now that we have our pupils’ comprehending the new info, it is imperative that they store it in their short-term memory to be used later on in class. That is, we want them to retrieve it easily so we can have them practice the new content to consolidate their learning.

Criticizing Presentations

Here you are provided with a reflective exercise on presentations. The idea is not to “negatively” criticize what teachers do in their individual teaching situations, but to grasp their effort and ideas to import them into our current teaching context.

Different Presentations

For each of the presentations on the handout, consider and discuss the following:
1	What was the aim of the presentation?
2	How successful do you think the presentation was or is in getting Students' attention, perception, understanding, and remembering?
3	How appropriate and effective would a similar procedure be for you, in your teaching situation?
*Discuss students’ answers with the whole class.*
*Taken from Ur, P (1996)* A Course in Language Teaching.** Cambridge: CUP, and adapted for educational purposes.

Explanations and instructions

Guidelines on giving effective explanations and instructions

The effectiveness of explanations and instructions rely on six different components, as suggested by Penny Ur (1996). Based on my experience as a teacher, they do depict what a good explanation and/or set of instructions should look like. Let’s analyze them to use this data for lesson planning.

1. Preparation: As a teacher, keep in mind that not everything you explain to students is fully understood by them. The simplest thing that can be explained can be misunderstood by a student. So be prepared to cope with misunderstanding and try to avoid it by making sure pupils comprehend. Always think of alternative ways of presenting material; this way you’ll prevent wasting teaching/learning time.

2. Student Attention: As we discussed above, it is imperative that students attend to your explanations. If they get distracted, they can misunderstand the whole thing. A distracted group of students can lead to a “catastrophic” climax in class. Ensuring everyone is following your explanation can also avoid wasting precious teaching/learning time.

3. Presentation of info more than once: Do not believe that just by presenting the information once, it is enough. Present it several times, but in different ways. Some students are more receptive when giving them a variety of explanations, so they can reaffirm their understanding. When planning for your class, consider different ways to approach the subject so students have a change to grasp the gist of the information provided.

4. Briefness: Do not overextend your presentation. Bearing in mind concentration spans, students can’t focus for long periods. Students’ limited attention spans in school are not suitable for lengthy instructions or presentations. So keep everything simple and direct, and please don’t beat around the bushes. Brevity can also maximize teaching/learning time in class.

5. Illustration with examples: Penny Ur (1996) suggests that we teachers “do a dry run,” –an actual demonstration of the activity. This “dry run” can guarantee all class members’ understanding of the exercise and will prevent wasting time in repeating the explanation over and over again. If necessary, identify the “best” students in class to demonstrate the task for the others with your help. That way can help you have the rest of the class understand what it is expected from them.

6. Feedback at All Time: Penny Ur (1996) also warns us: since experience tells us that students can misunderstand the whole explanation, we are bound to fail. For this reason is highly recommended to get feedback from our students. With a couple of “dry runs,” we can ensure full comprehension and the success of the activity. Just be careful!!

With this thorough review of presentations, explanations, and instructions, our student teachers are ready to reflect upon their performance in class. It’s advisable to consider all this information when planning for one’s class. Keeping these issues in the lookout can guarantee lots of time-saving, great use of student attention span, and some real learning for the students.

ETo fully develop and comprehend this teaching issue, it’s advisable to research and expand these areas:

1	Metacognition in ELT
2	Learning strategies for EFL/ESL students
3	Reflective tasks for Student Teachers
4	Effectiveness in ELT: Explanations and instructions
5	Learning attention spans

Professor Jonathan Acuña-Solano

ELT Instructor & Trainer based in Costa Rica

Curricular Developer at CCCN

Senior ELT Professor at Universidad Latina

Freelance ELT Consultant four OUP in Central America

For further comments or suggestions, reach me at:

@jonacuso – Twitter

jonacuso@gmail.com – Gmail

Other blogs and sites I often write for my students at the university are:

1. http://bin-02.blogspot.com/	2. http://bin-04.blogspot.com/
3. http://bin-06.blogspot.com/	4. Computering Applications in Education

Ur, P. (1996) Module 1: Presentations and Explanations. A Course in Language Teaching. Cambridge: CUP [Pages: 11-18]

Get a copy of the exercise over here!

Effective Presentations in ELT.pdf by Jonathan Acuña

Monday, March 25, 2013

Writing Skills for EFL/ESL Students

ELT, writing, Writing Skills 0 comments

Writing Skills for EFL/ESL Students

Revising your own writing

Although I am not a writing teacher at the university where I work, students often ask me for some assistance for their compositions (term and research papers, essays, and paragraphs). To give them some guidance to self-check their work, it is customary to provide them with a copy of the questionnaire below. The idea behind this is to make students aware of their writing, so they can develop themselves as writers and self-editors.

This questionnaire is the product of a joint effort of an ex-partner of mine, Mauricio Parra, and me. We decided to create this set of questions to prompt some writing skills among our students, to make them aware of the importance of editing, and to provide them with a simple but direct guide to check their writing.

Writing Skills

Revising your own writing

Check your writing with these questions before you turn a paper in:

Did you do some prewriting activity such as brainstorming before you began to write your composition?

Will the first part of your writing (thesis or topic sentence) catch your reader’s attention?

Did you also include a title for your composition? Are you sure that you centered and capitalized it correctly?

Faulty

Television draws teens into a vast wasteland

Better

Television Draws Teens into a Vast Wasteland

Can you underline the topic sentence (TS) in each paragraph? If you can’t, write a topic sentence to state the introduction to it. And be sure you didn’t forget to indent your paragraph.

Does each sentence in the development of the paragraph(s) refer to the central idea stated in the topic sentence? Throw out irrelevant sentences or move them to a better location.

Did you avoid writing sentences with the word it that have people doing things?

Faulty

It was decided that company policy be changed to allow employee selection of personal leave days.

Better

The personnel committee decided to change company policy and allow employees to select their own personal leave days.

How about other pronouns?

Are pronoun references accordingly?

Faulty

The best job a person can get is in Tourism. There he or she can meet a lot of people, and they can make good money.

Better

The best job a person can get is in tourism. There he or she can meet a lot of people, and he or she can make good money.

Does each sentence follow the preceding one logically? Do you give your readers clues (words such as thus, therefore, first, because, but, etc.) to help them follow your thoughts? If not, rearrange sentences and add transitions where necessary.

Do sentences sound complex because they’re long? Break them up into simple sentences.

Faulty

The cost of leaving for retired Americans living in Costa Rica is quite good for them due to the exchange rate, which rarely goes up, and their retirement plans in dollars, which are higher for Costa Rican living standards.

Better

The cost of living for retired Americans living in Costa Rica is quite good for them. This is so due to the exchange rate which rarely goes up. Another reason is linked to their retirement plans in dollars, which are higher for Costa Rican living standards.

Are you sure that you are not using run-on sentences, -sentences which are just separated by commas? Check punctuation for your TS and supporting sentences (sentences in the paragraph development) as well.

Did you include a concluding sentence (CS)? Did you use any signal expression like as a conclusion, to sum up, or to conclude to remind you of the CS.

Do you repeat the same words too often? Do you use words you don’t need? Omit needless words and search the thesaurus for useful synonyms.

Did you cut unnecessary words, words that are not really necessary to include them?

Faulty

After a time interval of one to two minutes, the tone usually stops.

Better

After one to two minutes, the tone usually stops.

Did you substitute descriptive verbs for vague verbs? If so, try to use more descriptive verbs in your writing.

Faulty

He went to the island.

Better

He sailed to the island.

Read each sentence in the paragraph aloud to recognize errors in grammar, spelling of words you were not sure of, and punctuation. Correct these as well as typos.

Work with a partner and provide him/her with a copy of these grading criteria along with your paper. Pay attention to the aspects your partner will check in your composition to improve it.

Prewriting	2 pts.
Title, TS, CS	2 pts.
Indentation	1 pt.
Word choice	3 pts.
Conclusion	3 pts.
Unity, coherence	3 pts.
Grammar	3 pts.
Punctuation	3 pts.
Total	20 pts.

Hopefully, this kind of self-check post-writing task can make students much more aware of what it really means to sit down and write a piece that contains no mistakes. In doing so, and by working cooperatively with some other partner(s), students can get to produce “great” pieces to be submitted to their writing instructors.