Advanced Level Learners

Objectives for teaching listening and reading to advanced learners of English

[A] Definition of objectives for LISTENING at ADVANCED LEVEL (taken from B. Carroll, British Council):

See the English Speaking Union Framework by Brendan Carrol & Richard West (1989). Contains performance scales for different LEVELS and SKILLS - therefore good for specifying objectives and defining standards in lesson planning, syllabus or test design.

1. SIZE [Large]: Can understand a lecture, talk or extended dialogue, a conversation, a set of instructions, a documentary film, a commentary or radio/TV news, can use telephone well.

SIZE : BBC English Magazine, Video "Airport"
2. COMPLEXITY [High]: Can cope with several major points, each with subsidiaries. Can cope with noise, gaps and irrelevances and if speaker not seen. Appreciate detail and use of discourse markers

COMPLEXITY: Tony Hancock's "Blood Donor"; "Listening Comprehension & Note-taking" Jordan
3. RANGE [Wide]: Can handle a wide range of forms, tones, skills and functions presented orally, discussions on articles from newspapers, current affairs, humanities, editorial comment

RANGE: Try with Panorama programme, BBC English Magazine Current Affairs, Interviews outside; outside speakers
4.

SPEED [Normal]: Can keep up with normal lecture at conversation speed

5. FLEXIBILITY [Good]: Can cope with varied rates of delivery, types of voice, variety of accents; switches in topic or interpolations.

FLEXIBILITY: Try with audio-cassette recordings from English Accents and Dialects by Hughes and Trudgill (Edward Arnold 1979) or from International English - A Guide to Varieties of Standard English by Trudgill and Hannah (Edward Arnold 1982). The BBC released a long playing record: English with an Accent, though you should have enough foreign accents in your school if you are learning English in a multilingual class. I believe the BBC also released an LP: English with a Dialect.
6. ACCURACY [Good]: Can interpret accurately lexical and grammatical usage and the meaning of variations of tone and stress pattern

7. APPROPRIACY [Good]: Understands features of contemporary British style; many colloquialisms and idioms; the more widely used slang and regional expressions.

APPROPRIACY: Try with Alf Garnett, Eastenders or Coronation Street
8. INDEPENDENCE [High] Only needs reference sources for unusual or special terms; may query speaker in obscure or confusing presentation and uses such reference effectively.

9. REPETITION [Little]

No need to ask for repetition in ordinary topics presented under normal conditions at normal speed.
10. HESITATION [Normal]:

Understands coherent presentation, but hesitation by speaker may be as confusing as it is to a native speaker.

[B] Definition of objectives for READING from John Munby's Communicative Syllabus Design.

1. Script
2. Inference/Deduction (Cloze)
3. Explicit & Implied information
4. Sentence relations between parts of text
5. Reference / Discourse markers (nominalization, synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, derivatives, logical cohesion
6. Reader experience
7. Main idea & supporting detail, ranking, sorting into propositional content (note-taking from reading, precis & summary)
8. Extracting salient points
9. Basic reference skills (skimming and scanning, jumbled paragraphs)

[C] Advanced learners can be categorized in terms of:

* examinations
* educational backgrounds
* balance of different skills
* What are their targets?
* Will they have to write essays, letters, reports, messages, instructions?
* Will they need to attend conferences, give lectures?

The importance of Stylistic and Functional Analyses in teaching at advanced levels

Stylistic Analysis

See (below) Investigating English Style by David Crystal and Derek Davy for a linguistic model which will allow you to analyse as special variety of English.

Advanced level learners often find themselves in positions of employment where English is important and where much is expected from them. Language school teachers will normally have the competence to help these learners with general aspects of register (e.g. politeness; appropriate forms of address), but will not necessarily know much about professional varieties of English.

Native speaker entering new work environments would need time to adjust to new language needs within their own cultures. English teachers are no exception.

A probable shortcoming of many of the expensive 1:1 courses offered in UK language schools is that teachers do not normally have more than a weekend's preparation time to gather materials appropriate to the varieties of English needed by their next clients and to familiarize themselves with new professional registers.

A teacher can prepare for these demands by spending some of their training in investigating English Style: e.g. the languages of advertising, marketing, banking, finance, economics, religion, literature, science, engineering, nursing, medicine, public administration, politics, air traffic control, tourism, hotel reception & hospitality, news, television, computing, telephony etc.

To learn a new professional register requires considerably more than a knowledge of new words. Stylistic Analysis looks at every level of language: phonetic (e.g. alliteration is important to politicians, advertisers and marketing executives), phonological, graphetic (e.g. lay-out in important in news and TV graphics departments), graphological, morphological, syntactic, grammatical, semantic and pragmatic.

Teachers are unlikely to have done much formal stylistic analysis unless they have chosen it as an option e.g. on a Masters Degree Course in Applied Linguistics.

Investigating English Style by David Crystal and Derek Davy

This work provides a model which linguists have been using from the late 1960s to describe special varieties of English, giving attention to phonology and syntax as well as lexis. The authors are aware of functional critera, though language courses based on notional functional criteria mainly follow the publication of D. A. Wilkins' "Notional Syllabuses" in 1976. However, Crystal and Davy's model of analysis continues to be very useful.

Describing Language by David Graddol, Jenny Cheshire and Joan Swann

The chapters of this book, which is useful across many social sciences, include the nature of language, the sounds of language, sentence and word structure, meaning, writing systems, face-to-face interaction and discourse and text. I covered these areas in some detail in an MA course in Second Language Learning and Teaching, ten years before this useful book was available. Professor Jenny Cheshire supervised my MA thesis, which was a stylistic analysis of the language of political party election manifestos. More recently, learners in UK Secondary Schools have been challenged with the task of textual or stylistic analysis as part of their English language project work. Previously, A-level English more commonly involved the study of English Literature rather than language. "Describing Language" provides a valuable resource, which makes linguistic description more accessible to Secondary as well as Higher Education. There has long been talk of bringing language awareness into the Secondary School curriculum, but there has been a shortage of really good materials on linguistic description. This title has helped to fill the gap.

Functional Analysis

See (below) John Munby's Communicative Syllabus Design to see what expensive language schools would have time to do in an ideal world.

In addition to LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS, familiarity with both general and specific varieties of English requires considerable FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS.

Language schools get round this by making time in some 1:1 courses for NEEDS ANALYSIS. Part of this is often getting the learner to explain the roles which he or she has to perform using English.

The well-travelled ESP teacher, who has had many different postings, may be able to cover the generalities of a 'Sales' or 'Credit Control' department.

A few companies recruit their own English language teachers directly. If teachers remain in such postings for a second year, they will then have the opportunity to get down to specific language registers and to prepare their lesson materials according to the needs of the workplace.

Too often, companies use local language schools to supply their teachers, paying well for staff who are often underpaid by their employers. This system is advantageous should a teacher fall ill or need to be substituted quickly, but does not provide the settled position which would motivate a teacher to make themselves a specialist in a particular workplace.

Communicative Syllabus Design by John L. Munby.

John Munby's model (dating from the 1970s) for specifying syllabus design may look like overkill, but the book is a milestone in the history of ESP teaching and it certainly illustrates all the factors at play in situations where special varieties of language are used.

Further tools for functional analysis

Threshold Level 1990: Modern Languages

Waystage 1990: Council of Europe

"Threshold Level" and "Waystage" are the syllabus specifications set by the Council of Europe for modern language courses at the intermediate level and pre- intermediate levels respectively. Both sets of guidelines have been used by experts (e.g. linguists at the University of Reading in Berkshire!) who are called upon to help large companies and ministries of education in the design of their language curriculums. The needs analysis checklists provided in "Threshold" and "Waystage" are probably easier to work with than John Munby's very detailed procedures. Threshold and Waystage were last updated in 1990, which means that they are due for further revision in the light of developments such as Internet access (access to authentic texts on countless topics) and better communication technology (improved access to audio and video). "Communicative Syllabus Design", "Threshold" and "Waystage" are very good documents to have available when designing any special language syllabus. Search engines, available now to both teachers and learners, can locate masses of text, audio and video. However, needs analysis checklists have an important part to play in determining suitable search strings. To use a familiar analogy, digital TV owners now enjoy a choice of countless broadcast channels. The onus is no longer on quantity, but on quality.

Goals and strategies in teaching beginners & elementary learners

Teaching Beginners
(from a talk by Robert O'Neill circa 1980 post publication of "Kernel One")

Goals can be classified by TYPE and STATUS. See "Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives"

TYPE

1. Cognitive
2. Affective
3. Psycho-Motor

STATUS

1. Long term
2. Mid term
3. Short term.

Many basic mistakes are made by teachers because they do not pay enough attention to Affective Goals and they fail to distinguish sufficiently in their own teaching and analysis of other people's teaching and materials between long/mid/short term goals.

Strategies: Expository

1. Explaining
2. Focussing
3. Problem-setting
4. Exemplification
5. Correcting and
6. Model-Giving
7. Summarising.

Strategies: Eliciting

1. Questions
2. Drilling
3. Role-Simulation
4. Repetition
5. Recall
6. Modelling
7. Silence

Strategies: Integrative

1. Linking lesson-segments to lessons
2. Linking lesson-segments to blocks of lessons
3. Linking blocks of lessons to overall goals
4. Establishing rapport with the class
5. Establishing rapport and interaction between members of the class.


TEACHING BEGINNERS: with reference to Robert O'Neill's Kernel One 1978 Longman SB 51925 X TB 51926 8

Two basically different approaches to teaching beginners:

Approach One:

1. Select simple structures and vocabulary
2. Move from one step to the next slowly and carefully
3. emphasize accuracy throughout.

Approach Two:

1. Select only according to strict functional criteria
2. Present & practise variety of structures and lexis in one lesson
3. Emphasize fluency rather than accuracy.

Staged Progression (Kernel One):

1. What's your name? My name is..
2. What time is it? (1-6 o'clock)
3. What's his/her name?
4. What time is it? (7-12 o'clock)
5. Is/isn't a city/country ... is/isn't a big/small country ... is in ...
6. He/she is in ... Is he/she in..? Yes/No is/isn't
7. .. is a big/small country/city
8. Are you in..? Yes, I am/ No, I'm not.
9. He/She is from.....
10. Where's ...from?
11. Where are you from? I'm from..
12. Are you from..? Yes, I am. No, I'm not.
13. ... is near... It's a town/city
14. He/She has got a bike/ small/big car.
15. What about you? I've got a...
16. I haven't got a.. He/She hasn't got a
17. Have you got a Has he got a phone/flat/house/bike?
18. Numbers 12-100.

Themes and Operations to be distributed throughout the course:

1. Talking about ones job, salary, colleagues
2. Describing ones own flat or house, giving such information as address, telephone number, how to get to where one lives
3. Describing ones own hobbies & interests
4. Getting information from others in reference to three above themes
5. Getting and giving opinions about films, books, clothes, food, other people's behaviour and tastes
6. Family, home and friends (describing relationships, "doing" socialising language)
7. Talking about, buying and ordering food & clothes
8. Making & getting suggestions about what to do, where to go in ones spare time
9. Giving & soliciting advice
10. Giving & getting instructions about how to do things.
11. Describing ones daily habits and routine.
12. Describing other states such as certainty, uncertainty and doubt = expressing such things directly. Describing and inquiring about Cause and Effect in various areas
13. Health, minor illnesses
14. Language associated with travel.

TOPIC: Some examples of typical goals for elementary learners categorised according to status or term.

1. SHORT TERM Teach a few examples of the most frequent questions we use to get information from and about other people's jobs, nationality, where/live
2. MID TERM Building on Wh corpus above, extend outwards to other functions such as inquiring into cause, asking about likes/dislikes. At the same time begin to contrast systematically the difference in construction between simple & progressive Qs.
3. LONG TERM Help the learner towards generative competence in Giving & Getting information about oneself & other people, asking for things, suggesting things, offering & refusing things. Relate these utterances to the structural principles underlying them:
* Tense
* Word Order
* Modality.

This will involve contrasting utterances like -

* Can/Do/Did you (do)?
* Are/Were you (doing)?
* Have you (done) (been ....ing)?

Reading in the Second Language Class

Reading in a second language is not the same as text study

Reading - There is no one method, medium, approach, device or philosphy that holds the key to the process of learning to read.

DEVELOPMENT OF READING SKILLS

1. PRIMARY - The reader must learn to recognise the shape of separate letters, groups of letters and whole words and associate the appropriate sounds with these letters or collection of letters. To achieve this students must respond to SHAPE and ORIENTATION.
2. INTERMEDIATE - At this stage students must have the ability to handle sequences of letters and whole words and larger units of meaning which are essential skills for fluent readers.

ESSAY TITLE: Intermediate pupils who have been taught with the aid of courses based on intensive text study may often believe that reading English is a very different activity from reading in their own native language. Why is this so? What obstacles will it raise to their aquiring better reading skills in English and how would you tackle the problem of improving these skills?

Few people stop to analyse the skills used in the different kinds of reading they do in their native language. Most adult students of EFL are familiar with the Roman Script before they embark on English Language Courses. General coursebooks capitalize on this familiar ground by using written texts as the main vehicle for developing both spoken & written skills.

In the early stages of learning, the main aim is often to present and practise a body of lexis, grammatical forms and language functions. This serves to give students entry points into the new language - a simple core to assist in the communication (reception and expression) of basic concepts such as number, quantity, spatial relationships, time and modal meaning.

Practice of listening, speaking, reading and writing is often limited to the purpose of reinforcing this basic survival kit. It is hardly surprising that this emphasis on intensive text study fails to represent both the English heard & spoken and the English read & written outside the class. The limited treatment of listening and speaking skills is understandable, since face to face oral interaction is very difficult to script.

However, the failure to represent the kinds of reading we really do, given access to print, pictures and diagrams, becomes far less excusable after 200 hours of teaching.

Ideally, within the 200 hours, the simple text study model should make a growing concession to mid and long-term goals. We need to utilize the reading skills already developed in L1. Prolonged exposure to intensive "reading" of grammar/function/lexis/pronunciation study texts implies the neglect of a variety of text-types and the reading skills strategies required in different types of decoding. Language study texts are prose passages or dialogues in which items pre-selected by the course writer have been embedded. Contextualization of this kind provides mainly a pedagogical purpose for reading.

Outside the classroom students in LT environment encounter a variety of situations in which different reading purposes are inherent. The texts they may meet may include record cards, forms, immigration documents, notices, telephone directories, town plans, letters, tickets, timetables, price lists, menus, newspaper headlines and advertisements. The sum of these should activate many different reading strategies. Application of the equivalent reading strategies in L1 (where equivalents exist) will usually involve some form of cultural adaption, for example familiarization with the conventions of layout in LT or perhaps even knowledge of the London Underground system.

The section on "places" from "Reasons for Reading" (Davies & Whitney) gives good illustration of the cultural problems involved when reading for information. It deals with the London A-Z Street Atlas and index. South Gro. N6 - 3D 29 must never be confused with South Gro. E19 2B 32.

Text-types that can usefully be studied to aid in the transfer of reading skills, may include:

* a column of advertisments or a timetable for scanning
* a choice of readers for (i) skimming and (ii) the global activity of reading for pleasure.
* Time Magazine kept on coffee table

Note "Cue For a Drill" and "Task Listening" contain texts suitable for scanning or skimming, including:

1. horoscopes
2. price-lists
3. school reports
4. timetables

Other reading materials planted on coffee table could include:

1. colour brochures for self-catering holidays in rural England with price lists
2. leisure guides for London & the S.East
3. London bus maps
4. illustrated guides to the British Museum and Brighton's Royal Pavilion.
5. Winter Sports holiday brochures for skiing in Austria
6. Guides for the Young Traveller (Adult learners have children of school age who may make visits to countries where English is spoken or needed as a passport to travel)

When I teach English in the surroundings of the UK, I emphasize reading for information. I raid the Tourist Information Centre and the bus companies - maps of the Brighton Transport Area for bus and rail. The purpose behind the reading activity is motivated by both NEED and INTEREST. If an area of shared experience already exists (e.g. knowledge of/Interest in TOPIC), it is far more likely that the reading skills used in L1 will be activated.

Knowledge of topic can be discovered by seeing if students can anticipate the contents of the text from the title or a very brief outline of the subject. One of my worst lessons was centred round a text entitled "Centrifugal Governors" from The Structure of Technical English. The students who had been quite knowledgeable about Heat Treatment of Steel and Welding (since they all worked in a steelworks!) did little more than ask me to explain unknown items of lexis to enable them to understand the individual sentences.

A far better response was drawn from a text comparing life in a Stockholm suburb with life in the wilds of Sweden - few "unkowns" which the students didn't succeed in inferring. Their immediate interest showed that their reading was above sentence level. The rhetorical organisation of their discussion points - contrast and comparison related interestingly to the global content of the text. Unfamiliarity with and lack of interest in the topic seems to ensure that students fall back on the worst of their sentence level reading habits.

The question of why sentence level reading habits exist and the task of replacing them with better more global habits can be further examined with reference to the teacher's role in presenting reading texts. A distinction should be made between classroom procedures for efficient reading comprehension and those used in intensive text study. It is important that most READING TEXTS are SILENTLY READ to give students practice in skimming. This involves extracting salient details while discarding unimportant grammatical content.

Students who feel that reading English involves choral repetition after a model voice which booms "Say After Me" in a jolly British accent, may feel that the teacher who watches them read is not earning his keep. Indeed, teachers often have a sense of not playing their part unless they are conducting a chorus. Choral repetition of a text has two unfortunate effects:

1. Firstly, it gives a definite moment of attention to every word in the sentence. This does not happen in efficient silent reading. The efficient reader repeatedly skips words. Sometimes whole sentences can be anticipated and left unread.
2. Secondly, a person's natural purpose for reading rarely requires that every word or paragraph should be given equal attention or even read. Choral repetition therefore discourages good anticipation and purposeful reading.

In presenting reading texts, we therefore need to give guidelines which will replace sentence-level, text study procedures:

1. ANTICIPATION.
* Use all available clues: accompanying picture, layout, type-face.
* Make guesses about the subject matter, authorship, intented audience and the original context in which the text appeared [SITUATION = Physical Setting + Roles & Status + Feelings/mood/attitude + Shared/Unshared knowledge & experience]. The above model can be used to explore the context for written as well as spoken communication. My students use it mainly for preparing roles in dialogue construction, but the same questions can be asked of a prose text, its author and its audience: What is the role the author adopts in relation to his/her reader? What are the author's feelings towards his/her subject? How much knowledge of the subject does the author assume is shared? These hypotheses can be properly developed in the next stage of presentation.
2. SKIMMING: Check and extend existing hypotheses and make new ones as to the contents.
3. READING: Read more carefully (extending your purpose for reading if further hypotheses are developed). Try to answer the questions you have asked yourself.

To understand the point of these new procedures and to specify more closely the reading skills which my students practise, it may be helpful to refer to the nature of discourse. Both spoken and written communication need not be bounded by individual sentences. The latter rarely occur without both linguistic and situational context. In the encoding and decoding processes, units of language are weighted differently in terms of their contribution to the function and meaning of the spoken utterance or written text as a whole.

The efficient reader therefore relates the ideas that are being presented and manipulated by the writer to one another, to the function of the text and to his own experience of the topic / knowledge of the situation. He or she falls back on a host of reference skills. These include:

* anaphora
* cataphora
* synonymy
* antonymy
* hyponymy
* conparison and
* nominalization.

Together with discourse markers (lexical & grammatical cohesion devices and directional indicators), these help in the active processes of prediction, anticipation and confirmation as well as in the recognition of different levels of generality. We fail to exercise most of the above skills and much of what readers bring to a text, if we remain with or within the sentence. Study at sentence level is a very small part of reading comprehension.

Having correctly presented the reading text, it is wise to try to prevent sentence-level addicts from reaching for dictionaries or demanding instant explanation of unknown items. Interesting material for purposeful reading will probably be authentic. students who are used to structurally graded texts may find the new material frighteningly difficult, particularly if they observe their old procedures. The teacher's pre-questions, detailed comprehension Qs and exercise types may also lead back to sentence level habits unless they are thoughtfully constructed.

It is probably best if the tasks demanded of the students (I.e. exercise types and their content) are suited to the nature of the text. Initial questioning should focus on general function rather than detailed comprehension. Note: Widdowson's "Reading & Thinking In English" - anticipation questions (the ones the students ought to ask themselves!) are planted in the text. I'm not sure how wise it is to guide students' anticipation or 'purpose for reading' to this extent. Another technique is to pre-list 6 or 7 pieces of information. The students are asked which of the items they would expect to find in a text of the given title. They then confirm their hypotheses by reading the text. This is probably preferable to the degree of guidance in Widdowson's Reading & Thinking in English, which to some learners could appear rather condescending, given that the reading skills discussed are ones that my students have fully mastered in their L1. Transfer of skills to LT and practising them in the new language can be achieved without telling students overtly that they are learning reading strategies.

Reading skills are rarely needed in isolation from other activities. Therefore there is ample justification to integrate ones teaching of reading with listening, speaking and writing. Although it is useful to specify reading skills, a broader goal may be to develop and practise study skills in LT (the target language). It has been mentioned how selection of interesting texts can lead fairly directly to discussion of topic. Reading as preparation for a role play or a simulation may draw further on internal resources. The link with dramatic activities draws the practice into the realm of interpretation, raises motivation and increases the possibilities for discussion.

Texts describing roles may be interpreted very differently depending on the way the readers adapt themselves to the tasks they have to perform. Role cards will provide clues to character, situation and language but will leave scope for student interpretation. Discussion as to what is salient both within and outside the texts could easily be as useful as the role play itself. Simulations also involve longer reading texts and diagrams representing the main areas of conflict as well as detailed preparation of lexis and language functions (See Heyworth's "The Language of Discussion").

Reading tasks designed to familiarize students with the nature of discourse may not only improve reading speed and efficiency but may also build a bridge between reading and writing. Putting pictures into a satisfactory sequence, matching them with sections from a text which have themselves been taken out of sequence, can focus on the organization of discourse. See jumbled paracgraphs in F. Grellet's "Developing Reading Tasks". To complete this task students will probably need to recognise lexical/thematic cohesion markers, grammatical cohesion markers and other indicators. Removing the visual support will ensure that these recognition skills are developed.

Another way to focus on the rhetorical organisation of reading texts presented to the student is through use of visual aids:

* Labelled diagrams accompanying texts to assist with texts containing difficult technical descriptions or explanations
* Cartoons (political or stongly situational) to help with texts embodying arguments
* Picture series / comic strips to accompany narrative texts. (e.g. picture stories such as 'The man with the flowers')

The same visual aids can be used to challenge students to RECONSTRUCT the descriptions/explanations, arguments, stories ORALLY or through WRITTEN PRECIS. A good visual aid has the virtue of focussing both on the global function of the accompanying text and the important points to be included in any transfer of information.

Activities such as 'reading leading to spoken or written summary', note-taking or transfer of information to a grid or diagram, help to emphasize that as in the learner's L1, reading is an active process. Moreover, a given text is only one possible vehicle for carrying meaning (given information). In native reading we constantly extract and reconstitute information bringing our own personalities and knowledge of audience to bear on its future presentation. Our students should be encouraged to bring their own personalities (feelings, experiences, knowledge) to bear, transferring information from one rhetorical mould to the next to suit their purposes.

The language study input need not block out the purpose for reading I.e. the global function of the text. I have used the Cloze procedure and fill-in exercises to test various grammatical items and forms. However, the completed texts can also be taken a whole.

* My 'on-the-spot reporters' describing the actions and scenery they see around them are not only cueing the Present Continuous. The function of these texts is to encourage students to visit Rottingdean, etc.
* My preposition stencils give a detailed guide to shopping in the Lanes and the Royal Pavilion & Gardens. If students have assembled something then they should have a chance to use it as a whole.
* My stencils read sufficiently naturally to be used for oral or written reconstruction e.g. phone your friend and tell him/her about the Royal Pavilion.

Purely atomistic teaching (e.g. pre-teaching of lexis which could reasonably be inferred or permitting overdependence on dictionaries rather than encouraging learners to guess unknown lexical items) will inevitably lead to inefficient reading. It may be demonstrated to the intermediate student that the purpose for reading is clearly not the comprehension of every word in a text.

Given suitable follow-up tasks (note: complexity of tasks can be varied), authentic texts can also be judiciously selected - ones that bear close resemblance to the natural follow-up we do in L1. The comprehension of authentic reading texts need not prove discouragingly impossible.

Reading

1. Teaching reading NOT the same as text study
2. Reading should be dealt with as an activity separate from text study
3. Not teaching a new skill except with some (new script) - We have to teach students to transfer their reading skills applied in L1 to L2.
4. Culture
5. Students rarely given a chance to read properly in LT and even more rarely given a chance to read for any USEFUL PURPOSE.

Native speakers:

1. Know why they're reading
2. Bring knowledge & interest to the task
3. Read different types of material at different rates with different amounts of attention

Reading techniques

1. Survey the whole text.
2. Identify features which give you a clue to the type, function, style. Fluent readers read in broad phrases skipping unnecessary detail or words that are not vital to meaning.
3. Unconsciously apply skills for guessing meaning from context
4. Confidently ignore large parts of the text.

Information and ideas are often carried by maps, charts or tables which supplement and replace the verbal message.

Elements involved in reading:

1. Recognising conventions of layout/visual/diagramatic input
2. Structuring of inputs into meaningful stretches
3. Reference skills
4. Inference skills - interpretation of inputs.

Teaching L2 reading

Classroom activities: skills needed for reading different texts-types

A. PREDICTION:

1. What is coming next?
2. Anticipation questions (Give title: "Women in Africa". Ask students to anticipate the questions they think the article may answer.
3. Pre-questions focussing on global function / most important aspect
4. Surveying a book using index, chapter, paragraph headings (read topic sentences)
5. Completing sentences: It was a lovely day so/but

B. SKIMMING (Rapid reading for overall gist and to extract specific information)

C. SCANNING (a passage for specific information) - timed activities with specific questions.

D. COHESION The way in which the forms of the language are used to tie ideas together, to build up stretches of text. Cataphora, Anaphora, Logical Connectors, Substitute words (different ways of saying the same thing), Related words

Related words (Lexical sets = collocation), questions about reference words, jumbled sentences, invent paragraph jigsaws (leave out one paragraph), Cloze tests are a good way of testing cohesion links within a text.

E. COHERENCE The way in which arguments are linked and developed in terms of the ideas they convey. See "From Paragraph To Essay". Organisation is * Chronological * Problem/hypothesis *Experiment/conclusion

F. INFERENCE & INTERPRETATION: students apply their knowledge of real world to what is stated as well as what is implied (but not stated).

QUESTIONS TO BE CONSIDERED:

1. What do we teach? CAPITALS. TYPOGRAPHICAL VARIATIONS or HANDWRITING.
2. How are we going to teach them to read? Whole word approach, phonics, I.T.A.?
3. What is learning dependent upon?

Rules to bear in mind when planning the teaching programme:

1. The law of experience: doing something makes it likely we will remember it. First impressions are the most lasting.
2. The law of frequency: the more often we do, the more likely we will remember it.
3. The law of recency: the more recently we have done something the more likely we are to recall it
4. The law of relevance: select lesson content which is relevant to your student's immediate language needs
(This assumes that you have discovered what those needs are, and have the resources to address them).

The teacher's job is to produce an interesting lesson respecting the maturity level of the student. Note: failure of many reading schemes to interest adults.

For a reading scheme with an acceptable maturity-level for teenagers and adults try:
# Graded Readers (Oxford Bookworms) Headwords:
Stage 1: 400 | Stage 2: 700 | Stage 3: 1,000 | Stage 4: 1,400 | Stage 5: 1,800 | Stage 6: 2,500
Beginners-----Elementary-----Pre-intermediate----Intermediate---High Intermediate---Advanced
Useful books on the teaching of reading in English as a second or foreign language

PREDICTION, SKIMMING & SCANNING

Developing Reading Skills by Francoise Grellet (Cambridge University Press 1981)
Teaching Reading Skills in A Foreign Language by Christine Nuttall (Macmillan ELT - 3rd edition: 2005)
Practical Faster Reading: an Intermediate / Advanced Course in Reading and Vocabulary by Gerald and Vivienne Mosback (Cambridge University Press 1976)
Reading in The Language Class by Eddie Williams (Macmillan Educational 1986)
Reading and Thinking in English - Discovering Discourse TB by Tom McArthur (Oxford University Press 1979)

COHESION AND COHERENCE

Developing Reading Skills by Francoise Grellet (Cambridge University Press 1981)
From Paragraph To Essay - Developing Composition Writing by Maurice Imhoof and Herman Hudson (Longman 1975)
Cohesion in English by M.A.K. Halliday and Hassan Ruqaiya (Longman 1976)

INFERENCE AND INTERPRETATION

Reading in a Foreign Language edited by J. Charles Alderson & A. H. Urquhart (Longman 1984)
See especially chapter 3 (Cultural Knowledge and Reading - by Maragaret S. Steffersen and Chitra Joag-Dev) and chapter 12 (Case studies of ninth grade readers - by Carol Hosenfeld)

QUESTIONS TO BE CONSIDERED

For SCRIPT-RELATED ISSUES, see this website's section on basic literacy

For the laws of experience and frequency read the chapters on the behaviourist and cognitive approaches to language learning in
Julian Dakin's The Language Laboratory and Language Learning (Longman 1973). Alternatively, read about the same approaches in
Henry Stern's Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching: Historical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Applied Linguistic Research (Oxford University Press 1983) or consult the relevant chapters in Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching (2nd edition) by Jack Richards and Theodore Rodgers (Cambridge University Press 2001)

For the law of recency, consult books on memory and study skills such as
Tony Buzan's Use Your Head or
The Speed Reading Book: The Revolutionary Approach to Increasing Reading Speed, Comprehension and General Knowledge

For the law of relevance, ESL or ESP curriculum planners should be familiar with works on functional syllabus design:
John Munby's Communicative Syllabus Design: A Sociolinguistic Model for Designing the Content of Purpose-Specific Language Programmes (Cambridge University Press 1981) and T.C. Jupp's and Sue Hodlin's
Industrial English - An Example of Theory and Practice in Functional Language Teaching for Elementary Learners (ELT/ESP) (Macmillan Heinemann ELT; 2nd edition: Dec 1978)
Two more landmark publications in functional syllabus design were the Waystage 1990: Council of Europe Conseil de l'Europe: Council of Europe Conseil De L'Europe and Threshold 1990 syllabus specification, by J.A. Van Ek and J.L.M. Trim (originally published by Pergamon Press in 1979/1980; revised and corrected edition Cambridge University Press 1998).

The Cognitive Approach

The Cognitive Approach (awareness of the rules).

Cognitive theory assumes that responses are also the result of insight and intentional patterning.

Insight can be directed to (a) the concepts behind language i.e. to traditional grammar.
It can also be directed to (b) language as an operation - sets of communicative functions.

A variety of activities practised in new situations will allow assimilation of what has already been learnt or partly learnt. It will also create further situations for which existing language resources are inadequate and must accordingly be modified or extended - "accommodation". This ensures an awareness and a continuing supply of learning goals as well as aiding the motivation of the learner.

Cognitive theory therefore acknowledges the role of mistakes. See Dakin's Novish lesson in which he sets deliberate traps in "The Language Laboratory and Language Learning" by Julian Dakin published by Longman 1973. Dakin: "We must design our lessons and language laboratory tapes so as to invite the learner to make the minimum number of mistakes consonant with, and conducive to, learning new rules. Equally important to the principles underlying the use of "meaningful drills" and also relevant to the role of mistakes in cognotive theory is the association of mentalism with notionalism.
How much cognitive theory do English language teachers need to know?

* Step 1: make your trainees supply examples of all types of "meaningful" and "meaningless" pattern drills exploiting various relationships
* Step 2: allow your trainees to experience what it is like to be in a beginners class in a language outside their current knowledge. The "Novish" simulation makes this possible if time is at a premium.

Trainers of English language teachers can achieve practical coverage of cognitive learning theory by reviewing the history of language teaching, especially the period in the mid 20th century when "meaningful drills" were being advocated and the shortcomings of "meaningless drills" were being highlighted. Although drilling and rote learning became subject to considerable prejudice in some educational circles in the late 20th century, no language learner will proceed very far without recognition of language structure and nobody will succeed in learning much without practice and repetition. Knowledge of the "types of drill" which the accomplished language teacher or informed computer learning program can employ provide a full toolkit for anybody responsible for learning and teaching. A fuller examination of drills is therefore contained below.

Another ploy often used by teacher trainers is to put trainee teachers into the situations encountered by language learners. This is often done through demonstrations where new languages (of which trainees have no knowledge) are presented. As homework (especially on MA Courses where "Reflective Learning" features as a component) students are often required to learn new languages (and alphabets!) to a basic level. It is hoped that they will be reminded of the problems, especially the conceptual ones. Often, there is not enough time to do this on short teacher training courses. However, there is a famous chapter which trainees can read where the experience of learning a new language is simulated. This is Julian Dakin's introduction to "Novish" [ a fictitious language designed especially to simulate conditions experienced in real language learning situations ]. The chapter appears in "The Language Laboratory and Language Learning". This is possibly the best book ever written on language learning - the reference in the title to the language laboratory reflects a technology in fashion in the 1960s and 1970s and does not detract from the book's main treatise on language learning. The chapter on Novish is also reproduced in The Edinburgh Course of Applied Linguistics [ a four volume publication which may be easier to find than Dakin's book in second hand bookshops].
What are the principle drawbacks of mechanical or controlled drills and the ways of overcoming them?

The aim of language practice drills is to train learners to talk and to help them master the basic structural patterns of the target language. As a method of language practice, drills are difficult to reconcile when the language becomes "meaningless".
The drawbacks of meaningless drills:

1. lack of context
2. failure to offer learner an element of discrimination or choice
3. failure to give rise to naturalistic speech
4. they fail grammatically in many instances.

Lack of context results from behaviourist principle of focussing uniquely on form: the one-step-at-a-time approach which attempts to forestall mistakes. Unique focus on form may succeed in the controlled environment, but the benefits of structural learning may not be transferred into the real environment. Drills attempting to forestall mistakes show only positive instances of what can be done. Negative instances are not given. The meaning conveyed by an utterance (e.g. I'm not going) is a matter of the function of the sentence as a whole in the larger context in which it occurs. A sentence does more than communicate information. It performs a role both in relation to other utterances that have been produced and as part of the interactive process involving the participants.

Without this wider context, drills run the risk of overgeneralisation. They may cause as opposed to correct mistakes. The absence of an element of choice within a drill undermines the semantico-grammatical category of communicative function from which conceptual meaning is derived, thus inhibiting the learning process. When the only changes are vocabulary items controlled by prompts i.e. when drills embody invariant structural patterns, the given structures may just as well be represented by the sounds TUM and TE. [ Julian Dakin 1973 ]
Meaningful drills

In order to qualify as "meaningful", a drill must provide:

1. A context for the utterance it contains - without context, there is a risk of over-generalization. [ As put by D.A. Wilkins ] "The meaning conveyed by an utterance is a matter of the function of the sentence (utterance) as a whole in the larger context in which it occurs.
2. It should give rise to naturalistic language
3. It should allow the learner some element of choice or discrimination.

Arguments for drills
Track record and variety of exercise-types

There have been many successful courses which have been largely dependent on drills. An early example was the Minimal Language Acquisition Programme, designed by Charles Fries and Richard Lado. A later example was "Streamline Departures" [Oxford 1979], a UK English course book with a remarkable long shelf life, though the orginal method recommended in the Teacher's Book depended on many of the following drill-types.

1. Substitution drills merely require the learner to substitute in the previous response the word provided or embedded in the next prompt. The stimulus to which the response is trained is therefore the prompt taken in conjunction with the previous response. The prompts signal the internal changes and the series of responses set the pattern. For the teacher who sees the need for isolation and practice of mechanical production of sentences to improve learners' command of structure or pronunciation.
2. Mutation drills require systematic changes in the form of words provided in the prompt before a substitution is made. They may therefore be useful in practising inflection of verbs or nouns, agreements between such constituents in the sentence as subject and verb, adjective and noun (in French & Spanish) and case endings.
3. Transformation drills may embody the changes outlined above but also require at least the option of a change in word order, the addition or deletion of grammatical constituents and may exact the alternation of grammatical pairs. They can accordingly practise changes from affirmative to negative, changes in voice from active to passive, changes in mood, from indicative to interrogative to imperative to subjunctive and changes in sentence-type from simple to compound or complex. A further use of Transformation Drills is in the process of word derivation.
4. Application relationships (relationships of reference) prompted by pictures, sound effects or knowledge of the world.
5. Collocation relationships between vocabulary items in a sentence (involving any or all of its constituents) prompted by cue words or whole sentences. The relationship is exclusively verbal and responses depend on a knowledge of lexical inter-dependencies.
6. Implication relationships between sentences prompted by whole sentences and requiring the substitution of synonyms, hyponyms, antonyms, converse terms or consequences in place of their antecedents. S a word or words R its/their counterpart.
7. Consequence, Hypnonmy and Antonym Drills - S: This is a wonderful book. R: Good, I'd like to read it. S: This is a fantastic record. S: Good, I'd like to hear it. R: Felicity is a very nice girl S: Good I'd like to meet her.
8. Synonymy Drills

The role of repetition - a principle of both behaviourist and cognitive theories of learning

Regardless of preferences for behaviourist or cognitive, most teachers would find a place for repetition (for purposes of practice & consolidation), comparison (differentiation through minimal pairs or paired grammatical forms). Depending on their nature and scope, drills may EITHER elicit sequences of unrelated sentences from the learner OR build up something which begins to look like connected spoken prose. Given sufficient definition of aims and the avoidance of monotony, artificiality and inefficiency, drills must surely contribute to language learning by virtue of their many useful applications.
The use of drills at different levels of language proficiency:

1. Drills are likely to be useful at elementary level or in the "practice phase" of a lesson where limitation of the learning goal is desirable.
2. Drills are likely to be useful at the intermediate level where practice, revison and checking of learning is particularly important.
3. Drills are likely to be useful at the advanced level to diagnose and iron out a particular difficulty.

Drills may be tried with the whole class or used on an individual basis, perhaps for remedial purposes. The limitations of drills are clearly matched by useful possibilities.
Julian Dakin's use of drills in introducing us to Novish [an imaginary language]
a practical demonstration of language learning supported by Cognitive theory

Dakin's introduction to Novish (The Language Laboratory & Language Learning Longman 1973) is hardly a programme which invites "the minimum number of mistakes consonant with, and conducive to, learning new rules." Indeed, he readily admits that he was going deliberately out of his way to trap us.

The Novish structures, which contain the conceptual difficulties, perform such basic functions as identification and verification of class (N.B. whether a thing grows or not is of great social & cultural importance to native Novish speakers).

The behaviourist could not realistically avoid the "sademane" / "sadegru" distinction through selection or careful grading.

Dakin forces us into traps by including problem-solving in the drills he presents in his programme for learning Novish. Our mistakes very often derive from lack of conceptual awareness and failure to grasp important semantic criteria. However, Novish children make the same mistakes! The conversion of "rule" to speaking habit is likely to be a slower more conscious process in the case of L2 learners!
How important is it to understand the underlying rule for each step?

Under Skinner's model of language behaviour formed through the application of "habits", consciousness of underlying rules is not of any importance.

Chomsky's conception of language as "rule-governed" would imply that we must at the very least allow our students to induce the rules.

Carroll defines "rule" as "simply a formal, usually vebal, statement of the conditions under which something is expected to occur or not to occur under certain sanctions." He adds that it is a construct in some sense independent of actual behaviour.

Carroll illustrates this claim by citing the fact that people can speak a language without any conscious knowledge or application of the rules that underlie their language.
The importance of semantics conceptual awareness as a structurally-based basic language programme unfolds

Novish Frame 2 six different objects. "Sademane" is apparently used to define them. Insufficient knowledge of Novish to allow many L2 analogies, so we are tempted to measure each new item using L1 concepts as a gauge.

Novish Frame 3 introduces a refinement. Correct form is "Sademanena gal". However, the underlying rule is less important since a Novish speaker would probably understand our meaning if we said "Sademanena gal".

Novish Frame 6 introduces the use of "Sademane" in a question. It is noticeable that "Sademane" or "Sademanena" is replaced by "Sadestil" when verification is given.

At this stage, we think we know what is being verified just as we think we know what is being asked, but we are already on dangerous ground.

From this point, conceptual awareness of the distinction which Novish speakers make between things that grow and things that don't becomes increasingly important.

Novish Frame 9. The learner will quickly recognise "sadegru" as a second word he will sometimes have to use (as opposed to "sademane") in giving confirmation. Dakin has deliberately selected nouns which will lead to a false distinction: objects v people.

Whether it is justifiable for a teacher to lead his students into a trap and then to mystify them with "Ye sadegru opl" is a question in its own right.
At what stage should a teacher make learners aware of the rules rather than trying to trap them?

Clearly the proper distinction is one of some importance and any mystification should certainly not be prolonged beyond the point where Ss recognise that they have something new to learn.

To depend on "mim-mem" techniques to somehow unconsciously teach this distinction is clearly ludicrous.

It is widely recognised that learning language purely by imitation and repetition is uneconomical and that if each new speech pattern had to be learnt by imitation the task would be endless.

The catalogue of things which grow and don't grow is enormous and the structure under consideration is of fundamental importance and seems likely to allow further creation by analogy. Therefore in frames 9-12 the underlying rule must be realised.
The dangers of over-generalizing when forming new rules

Novish Frames 13 & 14 at first sight seem to be analogous to language concepts with which we are familiar. "Nu sadegru poi, sadestil tavl!" would appear to mean "No, it isn't a boy, it's a table.

Little do we suspect that the first phrase indicates that the table "doesn't grow like a boy".

We cannot develop a sound basis for further analogy until we have encountered steps 15 & 16.

Novish Frames 15 & 16. Here we learn that in comparing and contrasting different objects or people Novish speakers are vitally concerned with difference or even similarity of class as well as difference in identity.

The words "Ye" or "Nu" are applied essentially to class likenesses and differences and not to precise definition of what an object or person is or is not.

I can imagine many potential misunderstandings in situations where English speakers might use or take "Ye" to indicate a particular identity when what a Novish speaker understands is common membership of a certain group:

Q: Ki ku sademane? A: Ye sadegru ku, sadegru Margaret Thatcher!
Can language learning proceed without conceptual awareness and knowledge of culture?

Students should be given the chance to share the concepts of their target language. To deny them of what they are ready for, is to overlook what Chomsky recognised as the "creative aspect" of language use. Such a denial would serve to discourage creation by analogy, to kill the spirit of enquiry and to isolate the learner from a knowledge of the utterances which represent his achievements.
Classroom techniques: practical problems in (cognitive) learning and teaching:

1. Could a particular class understand rules of the complexity of Dakin's for Novish and if they couldn't, what should the teacher do?
2. To what extent can the teacher organise the examples for things so that the class can infer from them the "rule" without explicit explanation?
3. How can the teacher be sure that a class or a particular learner has actually inferred correctly?

Parallels between Dakin's rules for Novish and the rules which elementary learners of English need to know

Not all rules met in elementary English classes are so complex as those of Novish. Many things in English are much easier to work out from examples than this, and so might not need such "rules".

There are still a number of things that do appear to require explicit explanation, such as "mass" and "unit" nouns, the contrast between Present Perfect and Past, etc.
Did all behaviourists imagine that language learning could proceed without formulations of rules?

Sophisticated behaviourists like Fries [ in "Language Learning" ] did not suppose that the mind was a mechanism of habits, and no more. Fries merely argued that, given that it was very sophisticated and subtle, the human mind was capable of inferring underlying rules if the examples were well-chosen. Fries thought that the best way to infer underlying rules was through practice (of the pattern drill type) supported by judicious explanation of rules at times. Read Fries' own introduction to English Pattern Practices.
Bibliography:

1. The Language Laboratory and Language Learning by Julian Dakin (Longman 1973)
2. "Teaching Oral English." by Donn Byrne (Longman)
3. Best "meaningful drills" ever published: "Kernel Lessons Plus" Laboratory Drills/Tapescript Longman Group Ltd (c) Eurozentren 1974
These are set at the higher intermediate level. Superb use of situational context: e.g. Unit 10: law court as setting in which to practise Third Conditional forms.
4. Most comprehensive series of mainly "meaningful" drills: Streamline Departures Speechwork (elementary level);
Streamline Connections Speechwork (pre-intermediate to intermediate);
Streamline Destinations Speechwork (intermediate to higher intermediate).
These materials, published in the UK by Oxford Univesity Press in the 1980s, were widely used over a period of almost twenty years.
5. Key Figures in the history of drills include: a) Harold E Palmer, b) Charles Fries and Richard Lado "English Pattern Practice" c) Comenius.
6. History of theory - a) Skinner and Watson [See: B.F. Skinner's "Verbal Behaviour" 1957]
b) See intro to "Correct Your English" B Mendelssohn & J.W. Palmer Longman 1940
7. A History of ELT (second edition) - 1400 to the present, by A.P.R.Howatt with H.G.Widdowson (OUP)

The behaviourist approach

Audiolingualism (drilling as habit formation) and structuralism in language learning and teaching
Meaningless drills - the drawbacks

Choice (by the learner) of vocabulary is needed to permit individual control over the meaning of the information conveyed. When not permitted there's a danger that all that is being practised is pronunciation. Drills which lean heavily on automatic responses without reference to appropriate contexts may give rise to little or no naturalistic speech.
[ Question set by David Jones on RSA Course in Stockholm 1981 ]
Sample answer:

1. The artificiality of the stimulus (in drills) may give rise to a kind of "structurespeech"; which is marked by lack of interaction in a real sense. No information is conveyed which is not already known.
2. The content presented by "meaningless drills" may teach learners that listening is a waste of time. Only hearing is required to complete meaningless drills. Language learning may be presented as a tedious process.
3. Behaviourists unapologetically set out to minimize the role of understanding in order to focus attention on structure. e.g. Don't worry about the meaning of these minimal pairs (watch wash; batch bash). I want you to get your tongue round the sounds.
4. When using "meaningless drills" e.g. minimal pairs for pronunciation, teachers should remember to convince learners of the importance of phonology, stress and intonation or any other features of language systems which might be isolated from meaning for the purpose of practice. Students should be given the rationale behind any attempt to focus atomistically on some feature of paragraph, sentence or word. e.g. Watching v Washing the TV. Awkward consonant clusters or diphthongs. Communication often fails at motor skill level (e.g. poor pronunciation of certain phonemes)
5. These drawbacks can be avoided by selecting a high proportion of "meaningful drills". Reject drills with anachronistic vocabulary items such as "ducks", "geese" & "sheep". These might have worked during the Agrarian revolution. Drills should contain a large proportion of vocabulary which meets learners' communicative needs. Good illustration (picture reference prompts) allows for application relationships. See the drills included in the "Streamline Departures Speechwork" series. For the most part, these have meaningful context. Implication relationships are well exploited: S: Joe Freezer is strong. R: but Tim Lyons is _____ . Substitution, Mutation and Transformation should not be discarded as a means of practising known lexis in different patterns. Streamline selects and presents the lexis carefully before practising the patterns.

Meaningful drills - the potential

Robert O' Neill is the author of some of the best language laboratory drills that have ever been constructed. The quality of these practice exercises depends on a clear understanding of the purposes which can be served by various types of drills and sensitivity to situational context and naturalistic conditions in their presentation. Moreover, learners using these "meaningful drills" are required to make choices i.e. to display conceptual awareness and a grasp of meaning by discriminating between different responses.

Robert O' Neill's success with the Kernel series [ see "Kernel Lessons Plus" Laboratory Drills/Tapescript Longman Group Ltd (c) Eurozentren 1974] stems from his interest is in both the generative function of language (TG Kernels) and the personal / creative use. The following steps are important in the provision of good meaningful driils:

1. Step 1 is contextualization - presenting a pattern in a context which suggests a basic use for that pattern.
2. Step 2 is to ensure through comprehension Qs on the short introductory texts that Ss actually understand the basic features of the context.
3. Step 3 Kernel Analysis K1 I object to something. K2 I share my room with the children. K3 I object to sharing my room with the children. The learner is fully prepared to manipulate the pattern as part of a drill.
4. Step 4 is to provide more K2s: i.e. the drill: You are an au-pair girl. You don't like your work. You have to clean the toilets… so you say: I object to cleaning the toilets. S You scrub the floors R… S You look after the baby. R… S You wash his nappies.

Far from being a collection of fragments with no reference to one another, Robert O Neill's prompts follow a series. The drill has something of the continuity of a real collection of utterances. It is centred both around a structural pattern & the function of complaining.

Tansfer: You are unhappy with your job. Tell your boss some of the things you object to doing. Learner supplies 50% of vocabulary through adding this phase.

Other landmark materials offering learners important opportunities to get their tongues round English syntax were provided by Shiona Harkness, John Eastwood, Duncan Shoebridge and L.G. Giggins. The virtue of Shoebridge & Giggins' book is that ONE COPY ONLY is required for the teacher. The learners actually speak. Far too much grammar is practised passively these days using materials which require no more than reading and writing + use of Answer Keys to check written exercise formats. The landmark drilling materials are:

Cue for a Drill by Shiona Harness and John Eastwood [0xford 1976]

Even if you only manage to get hold of a single copy of this book, suitable for practice at elementary to intermediate levels, it provides excellent examples of cues [pictures, menus, timetables - documents with an authentic feel to them although the authors have sensibly simplified them to make oral practice more accessible] which you could draw on the board for your learners to see. The cues are tied to areas of syntax and grammar such as verb tenses and adverb formation from adjectives. This book poses a fair challenge for learners and succeeds in its purpose i.e. practising grammar orally.

Tense Drills by Duncan Shoebridge and L.G. Giggins [Longman 1970]

This material demonstrates coalface experience of syntax, classroom dynamics [learner participation] and the related practice opportunities. You'll have everybody speaking to everybody else in every permutation and combination, providing you have enough participants to make up speakers A, B, C, D and E. It's a class resource as opposed to a One-to-One teaching material. It is intended for use at intermediate levels and draws upon practice of syntax to cover many useful lexical items e.g. What does a greengrocer do? A greengrocer sells fruit and vegetables. What does a pilot do? A pilot flies planes.
Conclusion

Although we are forced to be atomistic during some of the stages of our teaching, these stages need to be related to others where students attempt to arrive at the end-product. In this context drills can succeed. However, if drills become ends in themselves, students may never find out what it really is to communicate in another language. There are more examples of "meaningful drills" in Donn Byrne's "Teaching Oral English".
The theoretical background to pattern drill:

1. Behaviourist view: D. Starch 1915: "Apparently imitation and repetition of correct expression are far more efficacious in forming correct habits than grammatical knowledge." [ Some Experimental Data on the Value of Studying Foreign Languages ]
2. B.F. Skinner's "Verbal Behaviour" 1957: Skinner assumes that behaviour is the total of conditioned and associated responses. Learning depends on the frequency with which the responses are repeated, consistent reinforcement by suitably rewarding correct responses and on careful sequencing of Stimulus-Response bonds so as to minimize the chance of mistakes. Programming into easily assimilable and minimal steps allows control and conditioning of responses and building them into a behaviour pattern.
3. Associated with behaviourism and equally responsible for the kind of language syllabuses much in evidence in the 1960s is the theory of structural linguistics. Leonard Bloomfield in his book "Language" 1933 is preoccupied with form and not with meaning or function.
4. Behaviourism, Structuralism and reiteration of the fact that learners learn to speak L2 by speaking it have contributed in particular to the design of Audiolingual Courses.
5. The Audio-Lingual Method advocates "mimicry-memorization" in pattern drills in which the role of understanding is minimized as much as possible. The major emphasis is on the mechanical production of the utterance as a language form and in the development of automatic responses of the desired nature - i.e. good habits. Julian Dakin [in "The Language Laboratory and Language Learning" Longman 1973] coined the phrase "meaningless drills" to describe pattern practice of the kind inspired by the above ideas.
6. A History of ELT (second edition) - 1400 to the present, by A.P.R.Howatt with H.G.Widdowson (OUP)

CLT and the Task-based Syllabus

Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom by David Nunan CUP 1989

Appendix C Page 196 contains graded activities for the four macroskills: listening, speaking & oral interaction, reading & writing (for each of seven levels).

Checklist for evaluating and developing Communicative Tasks Page 135.

Task: a piece of classroom work which involves students in comprehending, manipulating, producing or interacting in the target language (LT) while their attention is mainly on MEANING rather than FORM.

THE COMPONENTS OF A TASK:

1. GOALS
2. INPUT
3. ACTIVITIES
4. TEACHER ROLE
5. LEARNER ROLE
6. SETTINGS

These are amplified in David Nunan's book, which has sold very well according to the Amazon on-line book ratings.

The starting point for task design should be the goals and objectives which are set out in the syllabus or curriculum guidelines which underpin the teaching programme.

The next step is selecting or creating input for Ss to work with. The use of authentic input is a central characteristic of communicative tasks. Where possible, it is desirable to build up a "bank" of data.

Texts, audio or video recordings can be classified and filed under topics or themes (e.g. Work/Jobs; Holidays; Future Plans; The Media), and provide a ready-made resource to be drawn on when designing tasks.

Nunan contends that one should work from the data to the teaching/learning objectives, rather than the other way round - i.e. it is better to derive communicative activities and other exercises such as grammatical manipulation exercises, from input, rather than say, deciding to teach a particular item, and then creating a text to exemplify the target feature or item.

While understanding Nunan's emphasis, I believe we should work both ways round. After all, Nunan concedes that the starting point for task design is the goals and objectives. The latter should guide us in our selection of data.