- Choral repetition: When you have students repeat
after a model, do it in di"erent ways—sometimes with
the whole class repeating together, sometimes only the
left or right half of the class, only the boys, only the girls,
only people whose birthdays are in a certain month, or
whatever rule you can think of. This makes it a little
easier to hear how well the smaller groups are doing, and
the variety keeps students more alert.
- Pair work: This can range from very simple to more
complex activities—reading sentences to a partner,
practicing a dialog together, or doing information gap or
communicative activities. (See Chapters 7 and 13 for
examples.) Students can also work in larger groups, for
example, with two people practicing a dialog or role
play as a third listens and checks on a certain aspect of
their pronunciation.
- Go low-tech: Use low-tech tools such as listening tubes
during student practice. This helps students hear their
own voices while cutting down on the noise they hear
from the many students around them. To lower the cost
of using these in a big class, have students cut and
assemble their own listening tubes from heavy paper (See
Chapter 7 for instructions.)
- Go high-tech: Have students record their pronunciation
practice for you to listen to and evaluate. To prevent this
from taking an impossible amount of your time:
- Don’t do it all at once. Have just some of the students
record their practice for each class, eventually getting
around to all the students.
- Keep the recordings short—maybe 30 seconds each.
- Give your comments e#ciently by circling problem
areas on a script of the practice passage and adding
quick notes. Don’t try to respond to every aspect of the
recording—just a couple of points that you’ve told the
students to concentrate on.
- Use a website that collects all the students’ recordings
in one place where you can easily listen to them, such
as Voxopop (http://www.voxopop.com) (See Chapter
13.) Just click on the recordings one after another to
listen. I’ve found that this is much less complicated and
time consuming than having students email recordings.
Teaching in an ESL or EFL context
The location of your teaching—in a country where English is
a commonly spoken language or one where it’s seldom heard
—makes a big di"erence in your teaching. In ESL classes in
countries such as the U.S., Canada, Britain, or Australia,
students can more easily see the usefulness of having good
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