Courtesy of
EVA HOMOLOVA
ESL/EFL Teacher Trainer
ESL lessons using job advertisements (14-18 years)
Here are some ideas how a teacher can base a lesson around job adverts. Considering aims of the lesson, level of learners and their needs, a teacher should select the most suitable activities/tasks to make up his/her lesson plan from the 5 sections below:
3. Teaching Vocabulary and Grammar
Theoretical background
A lot of work has been done on the effectiveness of language teaching and learning and the question “Who is a good language teacher?” is the one we keep constantly asking. Though it will never be possible to find a straightforward answer to it, we will constantly be attempting to define it in our own general terms. What learners consider a good language teacher almost never meets a parents or school's picture of a good teacher. (Medgyes 1992, Prodromou, 1992).
In general we can say that the profile of a good language teacher is created by his/her personal qualities, pedagogic skills and the level of language competence. Recent years have seen attention being given to one specific quality in the teacher's profile – creativity.
The aim of my article is to stress the importance of creative approach to everyday teaching practice with a special attention to using authentic materials in the classroom.
Creativity as a major agent in language teaching
A creative person is someone who is able to produce and use new and effective ideas, results and is very imaginative (Longman Dictionary of Cont. English p.319). So a creative teacher is the one who is able to use new and unusual approaches, methods and materials to reach the aims and motivate learners. In other words a non creative teacher can never develop creativity in his/her learners. Luckily it is possible to train, develop and increase creative skills and creative thinking.
Creativity can add joy and motivation to our teaching and offer learners non-traditional experience in the classroom - the experience to be remembered. “One happy fact about creativity is that, because it is a matter of the heart and spirit, it cuts across all boundaries. It is available to everyone… (Forum, Vol. 30/1 January 1992).
Authentic materials as a source of creative approach
Authentic materials can provide resources for ESL/EFL teachers and offer them the opportunity to expose learners to materials produced for real life and for out-of classroom context. By authentic material we understand materials with “real” language, produced by real speakers for a real audience. The focus is on the message, and means other than language such as format, design, style and context are often used to help to communicate it.
If teachers use authentic texts sensibly they provide learners with secure bridges into the real world of English use.
One way how it is possible to reach communicative goals in teaching English is to base classroom activities on authentic materials as often as possible. Authenticity means that the important factor is not the text itself but the reader and whether s/he has the necessary knowledge… to interpret it correctly, that is be capable of the appropriate response. Appropriate response correlates here with real life response.
On the one hand, the text of a job advertisement is boring and in real life we usually skip it over in newspapers unless we urgently need a job. On the other hand a boring text is a challenge for a (creative) teacher and brings questions such as:
- How can I motivate learners for it and prepare them for the topic?
- How should I approach the text and what aims should I state?
- Is reading and translating the only possible way how to approach the text?
The contribution of job advertisements lies in its real purpose and reflection of real needs in the target society. The texts of job advertisement are far from being exciting, their format is standard and as a whole they do not offer a lot of enjoyment for the teacher and learners.
However the teacher can benefit from “negative” features because learners can understand the main message of it at first sight. Here the way how the teacher works with it is more important than the content of the text. Undoubtedly, interesting texts bring motivation through a context and visual representation in themselves (Robinson, 1991). However, in using job adverts it must be the teacher who brings motivation through approaches and methods.
What applies to authentic texts in general is appropriate for job advertisements too and there are a number of reasons for an inclusion of job adverts in ESL:
- meaning has priority over language
- has its specific format
- learner are more or less familiar with the text type
- learners can easily predict kind of information it contains
- it brings reality into the classroom
- it helps to prepare our learners for life – they are perspective users of job adverts in near future
- it can be used as a springboard for other useful and “real” activities such as writing a reply, writing CV, role plays, etc.
The strongest argument for making use of job advertisements in language classroom is its availability. It is possible to use them for a long time – they do not become out of date as quickly as newspaper stories.
As far as language and skills, job adverts can give practice in vocabulary and grammar development and language skills – particularly skimming and scanning strategies, guided and free writing and speaking. Additionally they can be used as a way of looking at a culture.
Wider aim is to provide access to important source of information for starting up learners' professional life and carrier after graduating. Teacher’s role is not only to provide access to such information but teach them how to process it and respond to it.
Conclusion
The aim of my article is to provide less experienced teachers with opportunities to approach teaching materials differently yet at the same time effectively. Some activities are ready for immediate use, others could be adapted for the use with specific learners and a specific situation. Though the process of developing creativity is a long and painful process, it is worth trying it. Every human being has a capacity for being creative.
Literature:
FORUM Vol. 30/1 January 1992
ZELINA, Miron: Rozvoj tvorivosti detí a mládeže. Bratislava : IRIS 1994
PRODROMOU, Luke: The good language teacher In : FORUM Vol 19/2 April 1991 p.2
LINSTROMBERG, Seth (ed.): The Recipe Book. Longman.1990. ISBN 0 582 03764 6
GRUNDY, Peter: Newspapers. Oxford University Press. Oxford. 1994 ISBN 0 19 437192 1
MEDGYES, Peter. 1994. The non-native teacher. London : Macmillan, 1994. 128 s. ISBN 0-333-60020-7
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, 1995 ISBN 0582 237475
Robinson, Pauline. ESP Today. Prentice Hall ISBN 0 13 284084 7
Go to the 5 lessons:
1. Warm Up
3. Teaching Vocabulary and Grammar
Copyright 2004 Eva Homolova
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