How To Make Drills More Exciting by Using Pictures

During the past few years, I have been working with the teachers in the Baltic republics: (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia), demonstrating multiple ways of using pictures for teaching language skills. A surprisingly large number of teachers do not use visuals on a regular basis in their classrooms. Due to limited access to literature on methodology, we have had to develop our own techniques for using pictures. I myself, have developed about 20 different activities which need only one or two sets of simple pictures but which can be used to teach different skills, but mainly speaking and writing.

Often I draw the pictures myself, since commercially-produced games do not always correspond to the demands of the curriculum. But if you cannot draw, ask your pupils or their parents to help, or, cut pictures out of old workbooks.

I have been using simple pictures of everyday objects, animals, fruits etc. and, though it may seem quite boring to deal with the same set of cards for a long period, children never tire of playing with them. Children use their imagination and can see their own pets and toys behind the lines of the visuals. Besides I always try to put an element of surprise in the lesson-by playing a new game with a well-known set of cards, or replaying an old game with a new set of cards with unfamiliar pictures. Another reason for using the same pictures again and again is to refresh the students' memories and give them the opportunity to review vocabulary previously learned.

A lot can be done with only one set of cards, but teachers have more possibilities if they use two or more sets of the same picture: one set is left as it is, or is colored by the teacher or students; a second one can have both pictures and words, and a third set just words. If the teacher has photo-copying possibilities, s/he can provide the children with one set of cards so that they can play some games at home with their family or friends. Children can also be asked to color their own set, as well as the set they will use in class-that way the children feel more motivated and involved in the whole process.

Following are some games and activities that I have developed to encourage participation in learning English. While using these activities, the teacher should not forget that even the most boring drill can be made exciting with the help of drama techniques. And finally, after the students have practiced the activities, they can take over the role of teacher in the activity, thus varying their participation.

Activities with one set of cards

Name it!

Played in groups of five to 10 students. All cards are displayed on the table face down. Player one picks up one card and repeats the word or gives a whole sentence, depending on his/her level or particular needs. If the player is correct s/he can keep the card. If not, s/he places the card on the table (face up) and the next player has a turn. Often the other pupils provide the necessary word saying, for example, "Don't you know that it is a book?" The teacher can also provide the word if no student is able to come up with the correct response.

Guessing game

Played in groups of five to 10 students. All the cards are in a pile face down. Player one tries to guess the first card by naming it, then takes the card and sees if s/he is correct. If correct, the student can keep the card and make a second guess. If not, Player two has a turn.

Variant. If the player has guessed a word that belongs to the same group; e.g., the player has said "an apple" and there is a picture of an orange on the card, it is a correct answer because they are both fruit. At a more advanced level it is possible to ask the students to prove the connection between the guess and the picture on the card; e.g., a player has said "a banana" but there is a picture of a monkey, so the player can say "monkeys love bananas" and then s/he can keep the card.

Twenty questions

Played in groups of 10 to 20 students. The teacher chooses one card from the set. Students take turns trying to guess what it is by asking yes/no questions; e.g., "Is it an animal? Is it big? Does it live in the jungle?" The student who succeeds can keep the card or take the place of the teacher.

Variant. It can be made easier for the beginners, if the teacher gives some clues as to the category; e.g., "Is it a thing or an animal?"

Give it to me

Played in groups of 10 to 15 students. The cards are distributed among the players. The teacher calls out the names of the objects on the cards. When the students hear their cards mentioned, they give them to the teacher. Often other students will help those who cannot remember the exact word.

Kim's game

Played in groups of five to 10 students. From 10-12 cards are displayed face up on the table. Students have a minute to look at them, then the teacher covers them, and one of the students is asked to recall them, or, each student writes down as many as s/he can remember.

Shopping

Played by the whole class. Some students play the role of shop-assistants, the others are customers. The goods-some five to 10 cards (with no written identification) are displayed face up on the tables (it is even possible to have different shops with different assortments of goods). Customers walk around the classroom trying to buy as much as possible through identifying the objects on the cards. After everything is sold, the roles can be changed.

Odd man out

Played in groups of two to seven students or individually. The teacher gives out a set of five to seven cards to each group or individual. The students have to decide which things do not belong to the set and why. According to their level these explanations can be mentioned very briefly or described in written form.

The ABC game

Played in groups of two to six students or individually. Each group or student has 10 to 20 cards to arrange in alphabetical order according to the initial letters of words. The students may be asked to make an alphabetical list of the words in written form.

Do you like it?

Played individually or in groups of two to five students. The players' task is to arrange the pictures; e.g., five to eight pictures of animals, from the one they like best to the one they like least. The teacher can ask them to explain their preferences orally or in written form.

Listen up!

Played with the whole class. One or more sets of cards are distributed among the students, three to five cards per student. The teacher tells a story mentioning the objects that are on the students' cards. Whenever the students hear their cards mentioned, they hold up the appropriate cards.

Man from Mars

Played with the whole class. The teacher walks around playing the role of the man from Mars who has never seen the objects, animals, etc. before asking, "What's this?" The students answer the teacher naming the cards or even explaining them in greater detail.

Invent a story

Played in groups of five to 12 students. All cards are in a pile face down. Player one takes a card and starts a story, using the word on the card; e.g., a card with a picture of a tree on it and s/he begins, "Once upon a time there was a big tree." Player two takes the next card (with a picture of a book) and tries to continue: "Little Mary liked to sit under the tree and read a book on a warm summer day."

Activities with two or more sets of cards

Memory game

Played in groups of four to seven students. Two sets of cards are spread out face down. Player one turns up one card, identifying it, then turns up another one trying to find the matching pair. If the player succeeds, s/he keeps the pair and has another turn. If not, Player one puts the cards back face down and it is the next student's turn. The student who collects the most pairs is the winner.

Find your pair

Played with the whole class. Since an even number of players is necessary for this game the teacher may have to join the class to make an even number. Two sets of cards are distributed among the students so that everybody has one card and there is a matching pair for each card among the players. The students walk around and try to find their pairs by asking questions. They can show the cards to each other only after they have found the matching pair.

Variant. Find your group; e.g., animals, clothes, vegetables, etc.

Bingo

Played in a groups of five to 25 students. One set of cards is distributed among the students (the number in the set dependent on the number of students playing the game), and the other set is used by the teacher. The teacher calls out a word and when the student hears it, s/he turns the card face down. The first player who has turned over all his/her cards calls out "Bingo" and is the winner.

Arranging pictures

Played in pairs. Each student in the pair receives the same set of five to seven cards which form a story. Player one arranges the cards in order, so that the other student cannot see them. Then the player describes the arrangement either orally or in writing. His partner arranges his cards accordingly. Player one shows his cards to the partner and they compare the arrangement.

Find the differences

Played in pairs. Each pair of students get the same cards. They describe them trying to find the differences. After they have finished, they show each other their cards and compare the differences and similarities.

Matching pairs

Played in groups of five to eight students. Two sets of cards are distributed among the students of the group, six to eight cards each. If any player has a matching pair, s/he calls it out and puts the cards on the table. Then Player one asks another player for a card s/he needs. If this student has it, it is given to Player one and s/he puts down that pair and asks another student for a match. If there is no match, it is that student's turn to ask somebody. The student who gets rid of all his/her cards first is the winner.

Don't lose a seat!

Played with two or four sets of cards in groups of even numbers of students (8, 10, 12, etc.) or with three sets of cards in groups of odd numbers of students (9, 15, etc.). All players have one card and sit in a circle. The teacher stands in the middle and calls out one of the pairs (or 3, or 4). The students who have these cards must get up and quickly exchange their places. While they are doing so, the teacher tries to sit down on one of the chairs and one of the students remains in the middle, gives his/her card to the teacher and calls out the next pair (or 3, or 4).

Inara Dimpere teaches English to beginners at Riga English Grammar School. Her interest lies in developing methods of teaching young learners.

References

Bowen, B. M. 1991. Look here! Visual aids in language teaching. Modern English Publications.
Gairns, R. and S. Redman. 1991. Working with words: A guide to teaching and learning vocabulary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gerngross, G. and H. Puchta. 1992. Pictures in action. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
Rixon. S. 1992. How to use games in language teaching. Modern English Publications.
Ur, P. l992. Grammar practice activities: A practical guide for teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wright, A. 1990. Pictures for language learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Construct Validity in Reading Tests

Designing a good test is one of the most important tasks in teaching a reading course. The objective of this article is to provide guidelines to help teachers to write valid reading comprehension tests. To achieve this, some important areas from the reading and testing literature must be considered.

The work of Goodman (1967) made important contributions to the way in which we understand reading today. He rejected the notion that reading is a precise process of perception and identification and described it as a psycholinguistic guessing game. He suggested that the reader begins a reading task already possessing certain information, which allows her/him to pick up important fragments of the text in order to reconstruct it. The information that readers already possess is characterized as background knowledge. Authors like Coady (1979) described the role that such knowledge played in EFL/ESL reading.

Schema theory

The importance of background knowledge in reading is also central to schema theory (Rumelhart 1980). This theory claims that reading a text implies an interaction between the reader's background knowledge and the text itself. The knowledge that is organized and stored in the reader's mind is called schemata. According to this theory, fluent readers relate their schemata with the new information present in text.

Many teachers now accept the view that reading is the result of a two-way communication between the reader and the text, achieved through the simultaneous interaction of bottom-up information processing (which involves word recognition, sound/spelling correspondence, etc.,) and top-down processing (which involves skills like prediction, inference, etc.)

Construct validity in testing

Validity is an important factor in designing good reading comprehension tests. Psychometricians distinguish between several types of validity. Savignon (1983) mentions five: face validity, content validity, predictive validity, concurrent validity, and construct validity.

Construct validity explores the adequacy of a test in relation to theory. In the case of reading comprehension, tests should reflect the theoretical assumptions under which reading teachers operate. For instance, if teachers view reading as an interactive process, tests have to be designed to give students opportunities to make use of their schematic knowledge.

Factors related to the construct validity of reading comprehension tests

Carrell (1983) distinguished between formal schemata (knowledge about the structural configuration of texts) and content schemata (knowledge about the subject matter of text). She found that a reader may fail to understand a text if it does not follow a formal schema (coherent organization) or if content schema was lacking. Carrell (1984) and Alderson and Urquhart (1988) documented the discipline-specific effect of content schemata in their work with students who found it difficult to read texts which did not relate to their area of study. Stefensen, Joagdev and Anderson (1979) found that a particular content schema may not exist for a reader if that schema is culturally specific; so the texts used in a test should be culturally accessible. Rivers (1968) suggested that the cultural link between culture and language must be maintained to allow for complete understanding. Thus, previous cultural and schematic knowledge is a factor in constructing reading comprehension tests.

Rumelhart (1980) claims that bottom-up and top-down processing occur simultaneously while reading. This reading process should not be neglected in tests (Eskey 1988). A test should not concentrate solely on asking students to draw inferences from a text. The test should also allow for the reader's use of lower level decoding skills. Briefly put, tests should contain items that test both, bottom-up and top-down elements.

Tests should provide sufficient room for students to use their background knowledge. Shing and Dunkel (1992) investigating EFL listening comprehension, suggest that the passage-dependent items (listening-bound items) and passage-independent items (information related to the listener's prior knowledge) should be balanced. Eliminating passage-independent items would leave only low-level questions on the tests, reducing the chance for the listeners to make inferences and predictions while processing the aural information. On the other hand, if passage-dependent items are skipped, the test will draw primarily upon background knowledge and not measure listening skills. This testing implication of Shing and Dunkel's work is applicable to reading-comprehension tests.

Guidelines for constructing valid reading comprehension tests

Based upon this body of research, I suggest the following guidelines for constructing reading tests.

1. Reading tests should take into account the students' content schemata by including texts about topics which have been dealt with previously in class.
2. Reading tests should not include texts which are tied to a culture (i.e., culture-specific).
3. Tests should contain passage-dependent, as well as passage-independent items.
4. The texts should be coherently organized to allow students to draw the organizational patterns from their formal schemata.
5. It is advisable to use texts which are semantically complete and authentic.
6. The tasks involved in answering test items should allow for higher-level interpretation skills, as well as low level recognition skills.

These guidelines reflect the latest developments in the area of reading research within the framework of schema theory. I hope these recommendations will help teachers appreciate the importance of construct validity in assessing reading comprehension.

Wilfredo Sequera is currently teaching reading courses at the Universidad Simon Bolivar in Caracas. He is also working on his EFL master thesis at the Universidad Pedagogica Experimental Libertador in Caracas.

Storytelling and the Art of Teaching

Storytelling is the original form of teaching. There are still societies in which it is the only form of teaching. Though attempts have been made to imitate or update it, like the electronic storytelling of television, live oral storytelling will never go out of fashion. A simple narrative will always be the cornerstone of the art of teaching.

In dealing with stories, learners have an experience with the powerful real language of personal communication, not the usual "teacherese" of the foreign-language classroom. Colloquial or literary, unaffected or flowery-the full range of language is present in stories. Oral stories develop listening skills in aunique way. The listeners benefit from observing non-polished speech created on-the-spot.

While listening to stories, children develop a sense of structure that will later help them to understand the more complex stories of literature. In fact, stories are the oldest form of literature.

Through traditional tales, people express their values, fears, hopes, and dreams. Oral stories are a direct expression of a literary and cultural heritage; and through them that heritage is appreciated, understood, and kept alive.

Stories in the affective realm

Through a story, listeners experience a vicarious feeling for the past and a oneness with various cultures of the present as they gain insight into the motives and patterns of human behavior. However, many storytellers feel that cognitive enrichment is not the primary aim of their art. Stories have numerous affective benefits for social and emotional development. A story session is a time to share feelings. A relaxed, happy relationship between storyteller and listener is established, drawing them together and building mutual confidence. Stories help children to know themselves and to know others so they can cope with the psychological problems of growing up. As Augusta Baker and Ellin Greene (1977:17) assert,

Storytelling brings to the listeners heightened awareness-asense of wonder, of mystery, of reverence for life. Thisnurturing of the spirit-self comes first. It is the primarypurpose of storytelling, and all other uses and effects aresecondary.

Storytelling is also a living art. Like music and dance, it is brought to life in performance. A story will be altered by the storyteller's background: his/her choice of setting and detail, and the rapport established with the audience. The storyteller's building materials are words, sounds, and language patterns. The tools are the voice, face, and hands. The product is the creation of a shared human experience based on words and imagination.

Storytelling is an individual art, and an imposed method or ready-to-use plan will prove inadequate. Beginning storytellers must go beyond the rules. They must know their personal strengths and develop their own unique style. As master storyteller Ruth Sawyer (1951:26) puts it, "The art of storytelling lies within the storyteller, to be searched for, drawn out, made to grow."

Selection

Selection requires an ability to evaluate stories and to discriminate between those that meet your learners' needs and those that do not.

1. Read, read, read. Although learning stories directly from other storytellers is the traditional method, you will learn most stories from books. Wide reading gives authority to your telling. Read all types of traditional stories and literary fairy tales, modern tales, picture-books, action stories, romances, fantasies, juvenile fiction, nonfiction, and biographies, etc. Read different versions of the same story.

2. Choose stories you like. You can only effectively tell the stories that you feel comfortable with and which have meaning for you. Choose stories that you can tell-beginners should tend towards folk tales for their simplicity of structure and language, and shy away from complex literary tales.

3. Choose stories appropriate for your learners. Find stories they will like, and that match their age and language level. Fairy and folk takes, which blend fantasy and reality, and use repetitive language, are good for beginners. Contemporary stories which treat problems of personal identity with more elaborate language are better suited for more advanced learners.

4. Choose stories with a simple structure. Look for a single, clearly defined theme, a well-developed sequential plot, a consistent style, standardized characterization (except perhaps for the protagonist), conflict resolution, dramatic appeal, unity, interesting subject matter, and strong emotional content. Avoid stories with long explanations or descriptions, flashbacks, subplots, and other literary devices that break the flow of a story.

5. Choose stories with positive values. I prefer to tell stories that implicitly express joy, compassion, humor, resourcefulness, and other positive aspects of human nature. On the other hand, psychologists tell us not to be excessively concerned about violence, fear, anger, hatred, lying, etc., in stories.

6. Study the story's background. Know something of the cultural, social and historical background of the story and the country of its origin. If you can't put the story in context, and its contents are not universal, consider choosing another.

7. Test your selection. Final selection is done through trial, ultimately through the positive or negative reactions you get from your audience.

Preparation (prevents forgetting and flopping)

1. Learn the story. Learning the story means to make the story your own. Read it from beginning to end several times. Read it out loud. Master the structure of the story: the beginning (introduction of characters), the body (building of conflict), and the climax (resolution of con- flict). Visualize the succession of scenes. Work on creating sensual setting and character descriptions. Note unusual expressions, word patterns, rhymes, and dialog.

2. Outline the story. Storytellers agree that memorizing word for word is not useful. Learn a story incident by incident, and prepare notes that will help you remember this structure. Typed skeleton outlines stick in the minds of visual learners. Cue card outlines are also useful in preparation and storage of tales, but should not be used in telling.

3. Control the story's length. Long stories can be simplified or serialized, but not excessively modified or censored. Time yourself during practice. A "story hour" should probably include a mixture of activities: reading storybooks, listening to story tapes, reciting poetry, singing songs, playing games, etc. besides the oral story itself.

4. Control the story's vocabulary. A rich vocabulary, with carefully chosen adjectives and adverbs, gives color and texture to the telling. However, you need to be comfortable with your use of language and not try too hard to get things "right" or the story will come out flat and nervous. Don't worry if the listeners don't already know every word; guessing is part of language learning.

5. Refine your storytelling style. Tell the story aloud to listen to your voice - your instrument - which you can exercise, train, and even change. A pause and dropped voice are often more effective than shouting. Take poetic passages slowly; report conversation at natural speed; tell narration more rapidly, building toward the climax.

6. Practice, practice, practice. Practice aloud to yourself, your family or friends. You could practice on audio or even video tape. Practice in front of a mirror to eliminate poor gestures and facial expressions. Some say practice makes storytelling artificial and studied, but it is essential to the beginner.

7. Relax before telling. Warm up as the situation allows with breathing, stretching, and vocal exercises.

Presentation

A story should be presented in a way that emphasizes the "what" of the story and not the "how" of the telling.

1. Start on the right foot. The beginning introduces the characters, sets the scene, establishes the mood, defines the conflict or predicament of the protagonist, and arouses pleasurable anticipation. Then the narrative carries the action. It is sometimes essential for comprehension, before beginning a tale, to make some background comments on new or difficult vocabulary or the cultural assumptions and setting of the story. You might share an object related to the story or light a ritual candle to signal the beginning of the special storytelling time.

2. Be your best self. Express enthusiasm, spontaneity, creativity, and enjoyment. You can create a mood through your physical appearance and mannerisms. Don't rush or ramble. Don't be condescending or phony. Don't reveal nervousness or embarrassment. And most of all, don't let your technique show.

3. Concentrate on your voice. The audience absolutely must hear everything loudly and clearly! Try for a pleasant, intimate, smooth, low-pitched tone of voice. You will need vocal energy for projection, articulation, enunciation, and intonation. Altering your speed and pitch-for example, giving different tones to different characters-adds to the emotional impact.

4. Maintain eye contact. Eye contact is of the utmost importance as it not only holds the listener's attention and involves the listener in the story, but it checks understanding and gives instant feedback.

5. Help with your hands and body. The hands also create. Use only gestures that come naturally, but be aware of your hands; don't hide them or flap them about. Facial expressions and movement are also vital aids. Some tellers use very limited movement; others almost mime a story.

6. Use props sparingly. Some storytellers are strongly against the use of any objects, puppets, costumes, bells, etc. They consider them a clever showman's device and an unnecessary distraction. I don't feel so strongly and suggest that you try them out and see the effect.

7. Pay attention to the physical setting. Some rooms can kill a good story. You need a quiet, well-lit, acoustically acceptable, comfortable space. You can tell a story standing up (for more freedom of movement) or sitting on a stool (for better eye-contact) before a semi-circle of chairs or (for more intimacy) sitting in a tight circle on a carpet.

Follow-Up Activities

While no follow-up is necessary-stories are valuable in their own right, but a variety of options are available.

1. Ask comprehension questions carefully. If a story is followed immediately by a barrage of comprehension questions, its artistic value is lost and storytelling suffers. I would suggest waiting at least a day to ask the usual who, what, where, when, how much, and why questions. There are other, more creative ways to use questions. Multiple choice questions and questions that can be answered by inference can be used. Suppositions can be made, like: What would you have done? What should the character have done? Students may choose from a list of questions provided by the teacher and ask a partner. It's even possible to give out comprehension questions first and have the students construct the story.

2. Invent exercises in phonetics, semantics, and syntax. There is no limit to the language exercises that can be based on a story: introduction of new vocabulary in lexical sets, rhyming sets, or grammatical sets; verbal practice and grammatical analysis of repeated phrases: "Who's been sleeping in my bed?" "I'll huff, and I'll puff and I'll blow the house down," just to name a few.

3. Do listening activities. After a tale, listeners can demonstrate comprehension by: comparing, discriminating, predicting, sequencing, classifying, transferring information, etc. Unlike other listening activities, stories are often repeated, but never in exactly the same words.

4. Do oral activities. Choral reading, story fill-in, add-on stories, building a tale from key words, etc., are all options. Discussion topics can be taken from the story's themes. Students can retell their favorite tales, or invent stories based on their own personal experiences.

5. Do written activities. Rewriting, summarizing, or paraphrasing a tale are obvious and worthwhile activities. Written exercises can include controlled writing dictation and cloze paragraphs, guided writing (sentence extension or sentence-combining exercises), or free writing using the tale as a literary model. Other options include: journal writing, research projects, making up original stories patterned on stories told to the group, and writing a poem or a play version of a story.

6. Do visual activities. Story-related artwork can include: posters, models, collages, crafts, masks, puppets, mobiles, photos, picture stories, blackboard drawing, etc. Stories are part of aesthetic education and develop creativity.

7. Do creative drama activities. There are many story games to play. Stories naturally lend themselves to be dramatized, mimed, or roleplayed. Prepared dialogs from tales can be recited, or students can tell or retell stories they choose or make up themselves.

Stories educate, illustrate, enlighten, and inspire. They give relief from the routine and stimulate the mind. They are a great motivator for teachers as well as for students. Stories are used in an exclusively positive scholastic setting, i.e., no grades, no failures, no textbooks, no notepads, no dictionaries, no costly audiovisual equipment- nothing coming between the listener and the teller. In EFL, stories fosternderstanding and acceptance of the foreign language and culture.

Storytelling is learned slowly over a long time, but the novice and the expert storyteller can both experience success on different levels. A storyteller eventually makes a personal collection of stories for various occasions and purposes. Storytelling is a folk-art which can't be manipulated, intellectualized, or mass-produced. Its magic is unique. The storyteller is always a teacher, and the teacher is always a storyteller.

[Storytelling] can take many disciplines from the realm ofthe often dreary textbook and raise them to great heights ofexciting, fruitful experiences in learning. Storytelling asa pedagogical technique has been used by the world'sgreatest teachers. Jesus used it, as did Plato, Confucius,and other great philosophers and teachers. . . . The modernteacher who employs this technique as a teaching tool isusing a technique of teaching that has stood the test oftime (Chambers 1970:43).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baker, A. and E. Green 1977. Storytelling: Art and technique. New York: R. R. Bowker.
Barton, B. 1986. Tell me another: storytelling and reading aloud at home, at school, and in the community. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Bauer, C. F. 1977. Handbook for Storytellers. Chicago: American Library.
Bettelheim, B. 1976. The Uses of Enchantment. New York: A. A. Knopf.
Breneman, L. N. and B. Breneman. 1984. Once Upon a Time: A Storytelling Handbook. Chicago: Nelson-Hall.
Caduto, M. and J. Bruchac. Keepers of the Earth. Golden, CO: Fulcrum.
Colwell, E. 1964. A Storyteller's Choice. New York: Henry Z. Walck.
Chambers, D. W. 1970. Storytelling and Creative Drama. Dubuque, IO: Wm. C. Brown.
Cook, E. 1969. The Ordinary and the Fabulous. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cundiff, R. E. and B. Webb. 1957. Storytelling for You: Handbook of Help for Storytellers Everywhere. Yellow Springs, OH: Antioch Press.
Ellis, G. and J. Brewster. 1991. The Storytelling Handbook for Primary Teachers. London: Penguin.
Livo, N. J. and S. A. Reitz. 1986. Storytelling Process and Practice. Littleton, CO:Libraries Unlimited.
Maguire, J. 1985. Creative Storytelling. Hightstown, NJ: McGraw-Hill.
Morgan, J. and M. Rinvolucri. 1983. Once Upon a Time: Using stories in the language classroom. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Pellowski, A. 1977. The World of Storytelling. New York: R. R. Bowker.
Ross, R. R. 1980. Storyteller. Columbus, OH: Charles E. Merrill. Sawyer, R. 1951. The Way of the Storyteller. New York: Viking Press.
Schimmel, N. 1978. Just Enough to Make a Story: A Sourcebook for Storytelling.
Berkeley: Sisters' Choice Press.
Shedlock, M. 1951. The Art of the Storyteller. New York: Dover. Tooze, R. 1959. Storytelling. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Veilleux, J. 1967. Oral Interpretation: The Re-creation of Literature. New York: Harper & Row.
Wagner, J. A. and R. W. Smith. Teacher's Guide to Storytelling. Dubuque, IO: W. C.Brown.
Ziskind, S. 1976. Telling Stories to Children. New York: Wilson.

E. Martin Pedersen teaches English to future teachers at the Universit di Messina, Italy. He has written on the role of folklore in education, storytelling, using songs in ELT, composition, and literary appreciation.

Four Strategies for Increasing Oral Production in the EFL Classroom

Two factors present themselves in a discussion of oral production in Syrian university EFL classrooms. The first is that students are incompetent in the oral skill. The second is a positive factor: Students have a real desire to speak English more effectively, not only in the language classroom but also in out-of-class situations.

Many Syrian university students suffer from mother-tongue interference. This interference seems deeply rooted, making them translate in their minds what they want to say. The result is a speech variety that does not sound English and leads to frustration even on the part of the speakers. Some students choose to give up and remain silent.

Silence, however, does not always mean lack of interest. I have seen students listen, read, and write when asked. They show their comprehension of whatever oral production they hear by their facial expressions. They smile or frown, nod their heads in agreement, or shake them in disagreement. And they laugh heartily when they hear a joke. Yet they are reluctant to make a single spontaneous utterance in English.

To deal with this situation, I have used the following strategies:

1. The Message

After greeting the students, I announce that I am going to whisper a message into the ear of the student sitting nearest to me. Students should pass on the message orally from mouth to ear till it gets to the last student, who then writes what he has heard on the board. Sometimes the message gets wholly or partially distorted. When I write the original version next to the received one, students burst out in laughter. Once the original message was: "Marry in haste and repent at leisure." The message that emerged at the end was: "Marry in haste and repeatwith pleasure ." When I put the two messages side by side, my students were hysterical. The activity made them ready to plunge into hard work. In addition, they had some practice in vocabulary and spelling.

2. Reflections

Writing a word on the board, I ask students to reflect on it and say whatever comes to their minds, with one condition: Everyone must say something different in a complete sentence. There is a prize for the student who says the best sentence (as determined by vote). Once I gave a group of medical students the word "patient" to respond to. One response was: "A doctor should be patient when dealing with a difficult patient." Another was: "Patients are often victims of their own environment." A third was: "One patient's doctor might become another doctor's patient." To come up with quick, original responses, students have to listen carefully. They do not have the time to translate and are forced to think in English.

3. The Dilemma

I present a dilemma to the class to respond to. It may be a real-life situation, or imaginary. For instance, a successful surgeon asks his wife, also a well-known pediatrician, to close her clinic and stay at home to bring up her young children. What should she do? In responding to such dilemmas, students get so involved that they forget they are using a foreign language.

4. The Mystery Package

I place an attractive, present-like parcel on the table, declare that something "valuable" is inside, and tell students to ask questions to discover what it is. Their questions should have only "yes" or "no" answers, with no repetition of questions allowed. The student who guesses correctly gets the parcel. To get students to ask many questions, it is better to choose an object that is hard to guess. Once I put a baby's pacifier in the parcel. The allotted time was over before any student had the right answer. When I opened the parcel, the class roared with laughter.

The overall aim of these strategies is to encourage students to talk and use the language spontaneously. I have found them very useful in creating a relaxed non-threatening atmosphere conducive to learning. They provide the sort of involvement necessary for genuine interaction in an EFL classroom situation.

Sada A. Daoud has been teaching at the E.S.P. Centre, University of Damascus, since 1988. She previously taught in secondary schools in Tartous and at Tishreen University, Latakia.

Teaching Spoken English for Informative Purposes

Teachers involved in developing spoken-language skills in ESL learners often find themselves in a paradoxical situation. There seems to be a conflict between, on the one hand, the learners perception that fluency and naturalness in spoken English are a preeminent badge of success in learning the language and, on the other, their disinclination to participate in activities designed to develop competent speaking skills. It is ironic that in the one skill area where we might expect real enthusiasm and interest, i.e., speaking skills, we face problems. This suggests a need to reexamine our practice to see how we can exploit the motivation inherent in the learners positive perceptions of the ability to speak English fluently.

Research by Brown et al. (1984) questions the assumption that native-English-speaking children naturally acquire competence in all the uses of spoken English. Native-speaker children are often unable to express themselves articulately, and they need explicit instruction in some of the spoken-language skills.

This fact points to the urgency of the ESL learner s need in this area. It is too often assumed that spoken-language skills can be developed by assigning students general topics to discuss or by getting them to give a short talk on some subject. Not enough attention is given to the factors that inhibit or encourage the production of spoken language. In order to provide guidance in developing competent spoken English, it is necessary to examine the different uses of the spoken language, which learners will have to master as fluent speakers of English.

Uses of spoken English

Halliday (1985) has identified three major functions of language: the ideational, the textual, and the interpersonal. Two of these, the ideational and interpersonal, have particular relevance to a discussion of how the spoken language is used.

Halliday describes the ideational component of language as being concerned with the expression of content. The interpersonal is concerned with the social, expressive, and conative functions language.

The Interpersonal Function. The interpersonal function of language is reflected in the kind of social talk that we participate in throughout the day in conversational exchanges with family, friends, colleagues, etc. This kind of relaxed verbal interaction is the use of language to establish and maintain social relations. The ability to use language for social purposes begins early in the language experience of native speakers, and is not explicitly taught in formal classroom situations. As Brown et al. (1984) have pointed out, such chat talk is relatively undemanding, as it is often limited to short exchanges with people one feels comfortable with, and the topic is determined by the immediate interests of the participants. In a second- or foreign-language situation, such a component may or may not be considered necessary. For example, it may be thought that learners need spoken-English skills only in specific occupational or study situations, since they use the local languages, not English, to establish and maintain social relations.

On the other hand, the goal might be to equip learners with the full repertoire of language skills needed to function with confidence in any situation. This would necessitate a carefully planned course to teach conversational skills something that has become a key component of many ESL courses. The aim of such a course is to help the students learn in English the kind of sociolinguistic rules that they are so adept at in their native language. The activities lead to the development of social- relations skills and provide opportunities for practising common social exchanges such as greetings, leave taking, introductions, complaints, congratulations, etc. Students learn the common exponents for these functions and the rules for their use in both formal and informal situations; then they practise the expressions in conversational situations in which control is reduced by stages.

The Ideational Function. Halliday s second component of language, the ideational, corresponds to a function of language quite different from its use for social relations. This is the use of language to express content and to communicate information. It is an essential aspect of most real-life situations, whether in study or in business, professional, or most other work contexts. The management and organisation of activities depends on the efficient and accurate expression and transfer of the right information in the right ways.

Where the focus is on the transfer of information rather than the maintenance of social relations, language is used to get things done, to produce a result in real-life terms. The speaker may communicate information to a listener who needs it for a particular purpose, as when giving instructions on how to operate a piece of equipment. Or the speaker may need to give information to a listener in order that the listener can respond in appropriate ways.

Where content is the focus, the emphasis will be on transferring information clearly and effectively so that it can be comprehended quickly and easily. This obviously differs from interpersonal talk, where the concern is not with communicating a message but with keeping up a relaxed and cooperative chat relationship. The language appropriate to each of these two functions will be different; they are two distinct kinds of speaking skills.

In an ESL spoken-English course it is all too easy to make the mistaken assumption that students competence can be developed by just any kind of speaking activities. If the focus of the course is on conversational skills, this will not ensure that learners will develop the ability to use language for informative purposes, which is the aspect of spoken English that students most often have difficulty with. These skills must be introduced as a component in their own right and explicitly taught.

Part of the problem for students lies in the fact that the use of English to impart information requires them to produce long exchanges of speech, which are more difficult to plan and produce than the short turns typical in conversation. The longer the turn, the more planning the speaker is required to do. Long turns used to communicate ideational content place great demands on the speaker to control the flow of complex information skillfully and efficiently according to the needs of the listener. Students may be quite competent in producing conversation, including long exchanges where the transfer of content is secondary to the establishment of an amicable, cooperative atmosphere. However, when required to impart more complex information, as in justifying a position, refuting an argument, or explaining how something works, the need to quickly plan and organise what they must say often results in an immediate drop in fluency and confidence. The spoken-English skills that most urgently need to be taught seem to be those that relate to selecting appropriate information on a subject, and then ordering and expressing it in a clearly comprehensible way.

Motivation and the need to talk

How does this need to teach skills for transferring information relate to the problem of motivation? In our attempt to develop effective instruction in spoken language, we need to address an important issue. To develop fluency, we must generate a need to speak, to make learners want to speak. The learners themselves must be convinced of the need to relate to the subject and communicate about it to others. They need to feel that they are speaking not simply because the teacher expects them to, but because there is some strong reason to do so for example, to get or provide information that is required for a purpose.

A popular approach used by teachers to encourage students to speak is to assign a topic and require them to discuss it or to come up with a short talk. Such discussions, which do not lead to any outcome apart from the talk itself, intimidate most students. This approach assumes that the students are highly articulate and able to argue and express abstract notions in rapid and comprehensible speech. Often such discussion sessions become boring and talk quickly peters out. Student participation fizzles out because they have nothing more to say and look to the teacher to supply most of the language and ideas. The underlying problem is that students have no reason to say anything more. We have to recognize that we cannot expect students to produce long turns of speech by simply giving them topics and requiring them to get on with the discussion. We must arouse in the learners a willingness and need to talk by providing them with something they feel they have a need or reason to talk about. Telling students to talk about popularly offered topics like pollution or abortion is not very helpful. This seems to require the students to create talk simply for the sake of talking for a required amount of time. Students recognize the artificiality of the activity. The resultant lack of interest and motivation can be attributed to the purposelessness of the language they are being asked to produce.

Two specific difficulties

Brown et al. (1984) point out that many of the general essay-type topics that pupils are asked to talk about are particularly difficult for inexperienced speakers to control. They see one aspect of the problem in the difficulty speakers have in assessing the background knowledge of their listeners. When speakers are required to talk about something they know about and their listeners do not, they make judgments about the uneven distribution of background knowledge their listeners have and tailor the talk so that it presents an appropriate amount of new information.

Brown et al. (1984) suggest that a second difficulty lies in the problem of constructing a reportable event out of what is felt to be a relatively unstructured experience. In apparently straightforward tasks that require speakers to talk about experiences they have undergone, e.g., talking about films they have seen or describing how to play a game, they have to abstract from that total experience some portion which can be detached and presented meaningfully on its own (Brown et al. 1984:41). This makes demands on speakers to organise the experience and abstract it into chunks that can be identified as self-contained and "tellable."

Task-based activities

Thus, learners often have tasks imposed on them that may seem on the surface to be simple and direct, but are, in reality, formidable in terms of what it takes to select appropriate information and structure it according to listeners needs and states of knowledge.

It is perhaps inadvisable to require students who are not competent in spoken English to perform such complex tasks. However, without having to abandon the traditionally popular class discussions, a possible way of stimulating more informative talk might be to provide a lot more support for the learners by introducing activities that are more structured, organised around a definite purpose or objective. There might be some advantage in placing greater focus on purposeful, task-based activities for developing competence in the use of spoken English for transactional purposes. The task-based approach has been gaining prominence in recent years, and it appears to be particularly relevant for eliciting spoken language for the transfer of information. Brown et al. (1984) describe a variety of task-based spoken-language activities. These have been categorised into:

1. Tasks that involve the speaker in describing static relationships among objects.
2. Tasks that involve dynamic relationships among people or objects, with events that change over time and space.
3. Tasks that require the speaker to communicate abstract ideas for instance, in argument or justification.

Such task-based activities are one way of encouraging the production of spoken English that learners recognize as a means to achieving an objective. It is possible to transform general discussions into different tasks with definite objectives/purposes in the form of expected outcomes resulting from the long turns of student interaction and talk/discussion. A practical example of this: Instead of a free talk or general discussion on a topic like "cigarette smoking should be banned," it might be possible to have a structured activity in which a group of students are required to organise a propaganda campaign to convince the authorities or the public that smoking ought to be banned. This is likely to be more meaningful and motivating than the traditional approach because the speaker s attention is focused on performing a real-life activity. He/she is speaking not because the teacher expects him/her to say something for a certain length of time, but for the real purpose of convincing people of the need to ban smoking.

The teacher who organises such speaking activities will be required to do careful planning and to give consideration to providing appropriate stimuli of all sorts, pictorial or textual, with suggestions and guidelines for their exploitation. This will encourage interaction in the course of interpreting and discussing the stimulus material.

Conclusion

In this article we have suggested that there is a serious gap in our learners ability to use spoken English effectively for communicating ideational content. This is a vital aspect of developing speaking skills, and, to a large extent, academic and job-related success will be affected by the students ability to communicate orally and transfer information accurately and effectively.

It has been shown that a number of the traditional approaches, such as free talk and general discussion, do not offer the kind of support that many nonfluent learners need to produce long turns of informative speech on a range of cognitively demanding topics. We believe that a more structured approach organised around realistic tasks that lead to specific outcomes has many advantages in eliciting extended talk. These activities require the learners to participate actively because their attention is on performing a lifelike task. The task orientation gives the student a purpose for talking and, in this way, provides the speaker with interest in and motivation for speaking.

References

Brown, G., A. Anderson, R. Shillcock and G. Yule. 1984. Teaching talk: Strategies for production and assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Byrne, D. 1976. Teaching oral English. London: Longman.
Halliday, M. A. K. 1985. An introduction to functional grammar. London: Arnold.
Halliday, M. A. K. and R. Hasan. 1976. Cohesion in English. London: Longman.
Ur, P. 1981. Discussions that work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thomas Hawes is a lecturer at M.A.R.A. Penang, Malaysia. He has taught at all levels in U.K., Germany, France, Morocco, and Malaysia. His interests are discourse analysis and language and ideology. Sarah Thomas is a lecturer at the Language Centre, Science University of Malaysia, and chairperson of language and literature courses for students and teachers. Her interests include discourse analysis and ESP.