teaching with a coursebook

One topic I've seen discussed a lot recently is the role of a coursebook in language learning. I have several colleagues who are extremely critical of coursebooks and proudly proclaim "I don't use books!" In my own teaching, I use coursebooks, but will alter the content from time to time and add other material when I think it's necessary.

Lindsay Clandfield created a summary of the pros and cons of using coursebooks over on Scott Thornbury's A to Z of ELT blog in May 2010.

For those who would like some practical teaching ideas for using a coursebook, Marisa Constantinides has a wonderful powerpoint titled Animating Your Coursebook. Also, Ken Wilson has more inventive ideas in his webinar, In The End, It's Only A Book.

Now I'd like to share with you a few ideas from my own classroom. I've used these four activities in my freshman and sophomore university classes in Taiwan. I hope you find them useful.

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1. Dialogue Reading Competition

Before class, prepare a handout with 4 two-line excerpts from dialogues your students have studied before. Make enough copies for half the class. Move three chairs to one side of the front of your classroom.

In class, announce that you're going to have a competition. Choose 3 students to act as judges. They should sit in the three chairs. Tell the other students that they will be reading a short dialogue in pairs for the judges who will decide which pair did the best job. Before passing out the handouts, remind the whole class about areas in which they can improve their performance, such as pronunciation, intonation, speed, volume and body language. Put students into pairs and give each pair a handout. Give them about 10 minutes to practice the first excerpt. Ask for two volunteers to perform the two-line dialogue for the judges. Let the judges make a quick decision, and then tell the class, giving reasons for their decision. Repeat this process once with other pairs. After the second round, ask the judges to find 3 other students to take their places. Get everyone to change partners. Repeat the same process with the two other dialogues.

2. Quizzing Teams

Before class, take a long dialogue that students haven't practiced before and make a copy of the tapescript. Divide it into two sections, and put each section on a separate handout. Make a few copies of each section.

In class, tell students that they will be working in two teams. Their task is to quiz the other team about half of a dialogue that they will only hear twice.

Divide the class into two groups. Explain that each group will get a handout containing half of a dialogue. (The groups will each get a different section.) Each group will read over the dialogue and think of 6 questions about it for the other group to answer. Their questions should include one "dummy" question, a question whose answer is not contained in the dialogue. After 15 minutes, each group will put their questions on the board. Then you will play the dialogue twice. Each group must listen carefully for the answers to the other team's questions. Then the teams will have a few minutes to write answers to the other team's questions on the board. In addition, teams should mark the "dummy" questions with a big X. The final stage is to let the groups grade each other's answers. You can give a prize to the winning team.

3. Extending a Dialogue

Before class, select a dialogue from your coursebook that your class has covered in the past few days. Think of four situations involving one or two of the characters in the dialogue. This might include a dialogue that occurred in the past, in the future, or a dialogue between one of the characters and a family member/friend/stranger. (You can even include the name of someone in your school or class!) Put a clear explanation of the situation on top of a sheet of paper, assigning one role as A and the other as B. Write A and B four times vertically on the left side of the page, representing 8 lines of dialogue between A and B. Prepare a copy of each situation handout.

In class, put students into four groups. Remind them of the dialogue they covered before by briefly reading it out or playing the audio. Tell the groups that they will be writing a dialogue about the characters in the dialogue. Encourage them to make it funny or crazy if they wish. Give each group a handout and ask them to work together to create the first two lines of dialogue. Then ask each group to pass their handout to another group, who will complete the next two lines. Continue until the dialogues are complete. Finally, ask each group to practice the dialogue for a few minutes. Pick a pair from each group to perform their dialogue for the class.

4. Secret Life

Before class, copy the faces of four characters from previous units in your coursebook. Put each face on a separate sheet of paper and add a title such as "The Secret Life of Jim". Add four sentences starters to each page (some examples - One thing Jim's friends don't know about him is . . . or Jim will never forget the day he . . . or Jim hopes that some day he can...) Print these out on large sheets of paper. You should have one handout for each character.

In class, hold up your coursebook and say the names of the characters. Ask students what they remember about them. Tell the class that you're going to give them an opportunity to think more about these people. Put students into four groups, and give each group a handout. The groups will now work together to complete the sentences. Encourage them to be as creative as possible. When they're finished, ask the groups to put their handouts on the board for the entire class to read.

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(For more practical teaching ideas, seek out a copy of my latest book, Provoking Thought.)

What about you? If you're working with a coursebook, what are some interesting games and activities you've developed to give students more practice? Post them here for everyone to read.

9 variations of brainstorming

Brainstorming is an activity that's not new to ELT. It's a superb way to motivate students to work on all four skills, talking (or writing) about real topics and working towards solutions. Well-known ELT professionals, such as Natalie Hess, Rose Senior, Jane Willis and Dave Willis have all written about its strengths as a language learning activity. I've written here and here about the basic rules of brainstorming and how to have a successful brainstorming session. (In addition I can recommend JVC's excellent article, The Step by Step Guide to Brainstorming)

Today I'd like to share with you 9 different formats for brainstorming, each one with its own unique characteristics.

Brainwriting - Participants write ideas on slips of paper, then pass the slips of paper to others who can add comments. Ideal for classes that prefer to discuss through writing.

Brainwalking - Similar to brainwriting, but in this case, students write on large sheets of paper covering the walls. Each sheet of paper has a topic related to your problem, and students can walk around and add comments. This one is highly suitable for kinesthetic students who don't want to spend the whole class sitting down.

Imaginary Brainstorming - Here, you create a problem statement and give a traditional brainstorming session. Then, everyone suggests changes to some of the words to create a new problem statement, ideally one that is off-the-wall and bizarre. Brainstorm again and make a list of solutions. Now apply these solutions to your original problem.

Rawlinson Brainstorming - Unlike most ideas here, this one does not emphasize group interaction. One person presents his or her problem and the ideal situation he or she is looking for. Other group members present their solutions directly to the presenter in two-word phrases. The presenter focuses on the ideas that he or she finds most helpful.

Visual Brainstorming - Group members sketch solutions to a problem. The sketches are used as a springboard for more solutions. This variation will appeal to visual learners, as well as learners with artistic inclinations.

Negative Brainstorming - Participants begin with a problem statement that is the opposite of their goal (ex. How can we go out of business? or How can we make our workplace more depressing?). They brainstorm a number of ideas. Ultimately, they use their ideas as a springboard to more realistic and useful solutions to their actual problem statement.

Didactic Brainstorming - Begin with a question that is an abstract version of your problem statement (ex. What is beauty?). Get participants to discuss for a few minutes, and come up with a variety of answers. Then reveal your true problem statement (ex. How can we improve the appearance of our staff room?). This approach might appeal to more philosophical learners.

Rolestorming - Create a set of roles for a role play that represents a problem statement. Ask students to perform their role plays in groups. Next students will write down any solutions that came to mind as they watched and performed in the role plays.

Value Brainstorming - Ask the group to make a list of primary concerns regarding their problem statement. Then ask them to make a list of some of the hidden values behind these concerns. Participants should rank these values and clarify their meaning. Finally, the group should suggest solutions based on these values.

The Mycoted website has many more creativity exercises that are ideal for the classroom.

Creativity in ELT

Last night, I discovered this wonderful article on creativity and teaching:

The art of being creative

written by Marisa Constantinides. A well-written piece on how we can develop into more creative teachers. If you are interested in teacher training, you might also want to read her blog post over at Kalinago English:

How to Become an ELT Teacher Educator

Creativity in the News

According to a recent article, there is a connection between living abroad and creativity.


http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13643981



This article was published in the Economist and cites research from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

ELT Weekly

Recently I've discovered a new periodical for ESL/EFL teachers. It's called ELT Weekly, and it's described as "India's first weekly ELT e-newsletter".

http://www.eltweekly.com

Some interesting content, including articles, ELT news and events and weekly features, such as book of the week, ELT blog of the week, and even ELT cartoon of the week.

This week's edition features a new article I wrote, titled "A Creative Approach to Lesson Planning". You can see the article here:

http://eltweekly.com/more/2009/04/25/eltweekly-issue17-article-a-creative-approach-to-lesson-planning-by-hall-houston/

I would also recommend you read Mario Rinvolucri's blog, featured as this week's ELT blog of the week.

Compelling Conversations blog

Recently, Eric Roth, the author of Compelling Conversations, mentioned my book, The Creative Classroom on his blog. Here's what he had to say:

The Creative Classroom: Teaching Language Outside the Box, by Hall Houston, contains dozens of bite-sized exercises to spark authentic language and creative discourse, This slim book, published by Lynx, should especially appeal to ESL students with a background or interest in engineering, science, and the arts.

http://compellingconversations.com/blog/?p=121

Thanks for the kind words, Eric!

BBC's 5 steps

The BBC's website has an interesting article called

5 steps to get creative:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blast/fivesteps/

It's perfect for someone working on an artistic project.

Creative Problem Solving

I've got a new article over at Humanising Language Teaching about Creative Problem Solving. If you are working on a project with your classes, or would like to help students practice both creative and critical thinking, you might want to read about CPS.

A book I'd like to read

Helbling Languages has a new book that sounds very interesting. Imagine That! Mental Imagery in the EFL Classroom by Jane Arnold, Herbert Puchta and Mario Rinvolucri is all about using students' imagination. It has 5 sections - Visualisation Training, Language in Mind, Stories Stories Tell, Images of Time and Space, and Spinning Inward. The book includes a CD-ROM with music, artwork, photos, photocopiable worksheets, and visualization scripts. There's an article about this book which includes several sample activities here. I'm looking forward to reading it and trying out some of the activities in my classes.

new article

I just had another article published. This time it's at developingteachers.com:

Warming Up to Creativity: Starting Points

In addition, I was mentioned at the Tech ELT Blog:

http://www.ihes.com/bcn/tt/eltblog/blog/

New page for my book

The publisher has generously added a page of information about my book to the Lynx Publishing website. Take a look...

The Creative Classroom

New publishing news

I've just got word from my publisher that the first few copies of my book, THE CREATIVE CLASSROOM, have just been printed. She says they look GREAT! She's going to send me a few copies soon, and I'm really looking forward to seeing them.

In the meantime, head over to the Lynx Publishing website, as my book should be on sale in the next few weeks.

...and another...

Yes, that's right, my adoring fans. I've got another article published. This one is in Humanising Language Teaching. Its title is Activities for Boosting Creativity. If you like the activities in the article, look for my new book, THE CREATIVE CLASSROOM, which will be published in a few weeks by Lynx Publishing.

another article published

I wrote a lesson plan about brainstorming that was published last week on The Internet TESL Journal. It's called A Brainstorming Activity for ESL/EFL Students. I am always looking for new ways to get my students brainstorming and doing other kinds of creative work.

Promotion

I'm giving away a copy of my book, along with several other Lynx Publishing titles. If you are interested, send me a copy of your best teaching idea. For more information, go here:

free BOOKS!!!