WARMING UP Teaching the four skills: task preparation MAP OF UNIT READING ‘Task 1: Why warm up? Relating real life to the classroom; reasons for using warming-up activities ‘OBSERVATION Task 2: Do as | say ‘Observation task: instruction giving PRE-READING ‘Task 3: Before you read Pre-reading tasks and reading about pre-reading PRE-LISTENING Task 4: Forearmed Evaluating prevlistening activities PRE-WRITING AND MICROTEACHING, ‘Task 5: Paving the way Designing pre-writing activities and. microteaching them PRE-SPEAKING ‘Task 6; Before you open your mouth... Evaluating pre-speaking activities for a role-play FURTHER READING Readings on warming up Reading TASK 1 Why warm up? ‘This reading introduces you to the reasons for using warming-up activities and their aims, Step 1 Pp Work in pairs. Discuss the following question before reading the text Why warm up? ‘Why are warming-up activities important? Think of at least three reasons, Step 2 ' Work individually, Now read this text Why warm up? about warming- Up activities and confirm or add to your original answers, Why warm up? This unit is about preparing our learners for 1 language skills work, You will be introduced to various types of pre-skils (or warming-up) activities and, by the end of the unit, you will have experienced and evaluated several 5 ‘warming-up activities; you will also be able to design some pre-skills activities for your own, learners ‘The type of work your learners are going to do and the type of task you are teaching will, oF 10 course, influence which type of pre-skills activity you might choose. Some are short, others are tong; some are content-based and others are anguage-based. your pre-skils activity will also depend on the amount of time you have and the 15 importance you wish to place on each language skill, Of course, during the preparation stage, the learners wil aso be using English ~ perhaps talking about a picture or discussing a topic or learning new vocabulary. But by the time 2 they do the language task, they should be well prepared for it “Warming up* in real life In eal ile, before you read, listen, watch, speak or write, ou already know a lot about what you 25 are going to do. You have all kinds of expectations and predictions in your head. Even before you open a letter from a good friend who frequently corresponds with you, you usually have a reasonably clear idea about possible 30 topics in that letter you know who sent it, you know something about the events in their life and what kind of letters they usually write When you write, you probably think about what you are going to write before you put pen to 35 paper: if you are writing a report, you might plan each section carefully beforehand, if tis @ quickly-scribbled note you know who you areED 5 warmer writing to and what your message is. If you switch the radio on, you anticipate the kind of a0 programme you are going to isten to: whether it willbe news or drama or pop music: or you will tune the radio to your favourite station \When you meet someone, itis likely that you have anticipated some of the topics you might 45 ciscuss and perhaps imagined some of the things you will say. In the classroom, if a teacher tums on the tape recorder and says, Listen to this, without having introduced the topic of the tape, for example, it $0 ‘may be very difficult for the learners to understand ‘what is happening on the tape. Itcan help our learners if we prepare them for language work, thus trying to replicate how they often read or listen or speak or write in eal life 88 In eal life, in your own language, you are aware cof many things before you communicate; other aspects of communication are unconscious. For exarnple: you predict + you expect '* you hope ‘+ you know something about a topic + you know the language you will use + you are motivated to read 6 + you have a context o” situation in which to communicate | «you are focused on what you are going todo + you have a purpose for listening, reading, etc. 70 + you ave personally involved. We can celete this knowledge to teaching English by using warming-up activities with our learners, which helps them to contextualse their learning, This, in turn, may help them to be more s successful learners, ‘Some aims of warming-up activities in class The general goal of warming-up activities is to help learners learn better, Some more specific aims are: ‘+ to create expectations about language, so 0 that fearners can understand better what is going to happen ‘+ to give learners a reason to listen, read, speak orwrite + to motivate learne’s to want to ead orlisten, 85 speak or write ‘+ 10 interest or intrigue learners in a topic * to involve learners by asking for their ideas or knowledge about a topic ‘+ to introduce or pre-teach vocabulary or 0 difficult language which might otherwise prevent learners from understanding ‘+ to introduce learners to the topic, for example by giving background information which is necessary for understanding or communicating 95 ‘+ to get learners communicating about the topic ‘+ to draw attention to something of importance * to focus learners (after a change in activity or if the lesson is beginning) + to prepare leamers with language to use during 100 the activity + to provide links between different stages of a lesson Pre-sill activities, therefore, aim to make language learning @ more meaningful and effective 108, ‘experience so that learners can be successful in their learning in the classroom Observation TASK 2 Do as! say Jn this task, you discuss instruction giving and ‘observe and reflect om a teacher’s use of instructions. Step 1 G and € 1 Work in groups. Make a list of factors which you consider to be Important for effective instruction giving. For example: clear voice quality, good eye contact 2 Asa class, collect together the factors you thought of in 1 and discuss how far they contribute to effective instruction giving. 3. Now look at the varlabies below. Are these the ideas you thought of? Add any more which you discussed and which you feel are important. ‘SOME VARIABLES IN INSTRUCTION GIVING ‘+ arty and simplicity of language voice quality body language and gesture use of visual aids checking understanding Using Lt oF 2 + your own teaching styleStep 2 1 5 WARMING UP EDD Step 3 ' Work individually. Your trainer will give you a copy of the Observation table: Instruction-giving skills for each activity in the Jesson. (Alternatively, if you have only one copy for all the activities, use a different-coloured pen each time.) Familiarise yourself with the table. Observe the instructions the teacher gives during the lesson and each time the teacher gives instructions for an activity, complete the table In the second column of the table are scales like this’ I unclear lear 4 For each skill you observe, circle the number on the scales to show how clear you feel the instruction giving skill is, as follows: 4 = very clear 3 = quite clear 2 = not very clear 1 = unclear If you do not observe one of the skills, leave the scale blank. in the right-hand column of the table, write in any comments which you feel are relevant to instruction giving, Pre-reading TASK 3 Before you read In this task, you read about using magazine articles for teaching reading, as well as experiencing a pre-reading task for yourself Step 1 G Work in groups. 1 You are going to read the first part of an article entitled Reading tasks with magazines from a magazine for English language teachers in secondary schools. What de you think the general topic of the article will be? Work individually, As soon as possible after your observation, answer the Post-observation questions in writing Post-observation questions 1 Summarise in one paragraph the instruction giving that you observed, 2 a In the activities you observed, was the instruction giving, in general, successful or unsuccessful? b Add up your circled numbers to obtain an overall mark and comment on the mark. 3. In your opinion, which three elements from the left-hand column made the instruction giving particularly successful? 4 In your opinion, which three elements from the left-hand column made the instruction giving less successful? 5 Look at the scales in the centre column which you circled with a 2 or less, How might these aspects of instruction giving have been improved? 6 What are the most important factors for you personally in instruction giving? 7 What have you leamt for your own teaching after doing this observation task? Step 4 c Discuss your answers to the Post-observation questions in class or give them to your trainer. 2 What do you think might be in the section entitled ‘Using headlines’? 3. What would you hope to learn in the section entitled ‘Key words"? 4 Below are some key words taken from the article. Based on these, what else do you think the article is about? st Whatese do you dink the inove Levon] [area] | “si er] Tee | eet Tener [os] [Loses J