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TESOL Matters Vol. 9 No. 2     (April/May 1999)

From the column of the TESOL Intensive English Programs Interest Section
by Laura L. Latulippe

Editor's note: This is the second part of a two-part article. Laura L. Latulippe presents insights she gained from 2 weeks as a beginning Spanish language student. The first part was printed in the February/March 1999 issue of TESOL Matters.

In Part I of this article, I discussed three problems common to IEP students that I encountered as a beginning Spanish student in Costa Rica. I mentioned the strategies that I used to tackle these problems and suggested ways that IEP instructors can help students overcome them. I will now discuss several conclusions about language teaching that I reached as a result of my experience.

IEP curricula and activities should be planned around students' need and desire to communicate. Teachers need to encourage students to realize or create their own motivation, to find something they want to read, write, listen to, and talk about. Class activities to create motivation include (a) planning a trip that students want to take, (b) writing letters to the editor on topics of interest, and (c) posing questions about U.S. culture that students answer after interviewing U.S. citizens.

Students should be trained to really listen to English. They should repeat what they hear, if only in their heads--not only words, but also such aspects as intonation and conversation patterns. Teachers can tape actual conversations as models, prepare tape scripts, and then have students use the tapes and scripts to practice the conversations for a class presentation or videotape.

Students should be trained to "act" in English. They need to become English-speaking people, different from the people who speak their native language, assuming the body language, intonation, and life view of English-speakers. One way to train students is to show movie clips or videotapes of dialogues between native speakers and ask students to mimic the speakers as closely as possible.

Teachers need to create context for student learning. They can do this by using visual aids in the classroom, providing field trips with visual stimulation, and preparing lessons that utilize several senses. Language use can begin from the senses and move to abstract concepts. For example, a lesson to build food vocabulary might include pictures of objects in a kitchen, describing the touch and smell of fruits and vegetables (e.g., hard, cold, sharp, strong, pungent), discussing how the items are used, and finally viewing or listening to a tape about kitchen appliances used in food preparation.

Whenever possible, students should be placed in context-rich situations. For example, they might be asked to work on a volunteer project requiring them to communicate with native speakers or be required to ask a museum guard a question about an interesting display. They could be asked to talk with workers about their jobs or about the institution or agency for which they work. Questions should move from the concrete to the abstract as students' language skills improve.

Students should be encouraged to set realistic goals. This allows them to take their language learning one step at a time. Students' concentrating too much on their final goal (e.g., passing the TOEFL or using English in their business at home) can become a barrier to their learning English. They need to be trained to complete small daily goals leading to their final goals. One example of a daily goal for a student hoping to study chemistry would be to be able to describe the steps of a simple experiment to a classmate.

Students must be convinced that they should try to speak only English until enough base is formed to safely use both languages. At beginning proficiency levels, students easily slip into their native language, even though context that can facilitate learning is readily available. At this level, the vocabulary and necessary conversational exchanges of daily living provide contexts for using and building upon aspects of language being taught in class. When students use these contexts, language ability increases rapidly. Using English makes students comfortable using it and provides motivation for them to learn new vocabulary and structure.

Students should be encouraged to say the same thing in a variety of ways. They need to practice rephrasing sentences they hear spoken by native speakers. Teachers can help them practice by saying the same thing in several ways, asking students to note differences and talk about which way is the clearest for them and why. We can encourage a variety of answers to questions we ask by responding, "That's correct, now how else might you say the same thing?" Teachers should be sensitive to how much correction students need and can tolerate when speaking. By correcting quietly in the background with an encouraging smile, the teacher provides a model so that bad habits are not reinforced without making students so self-conscious about their speaking that they do not want to try again. Students need to have errors corrected, but not in a way that discourages fluency and breaks down confidence.

Teachers should encourage students to enrich their vocabulary daily. We can do this by providing synonyms and antonyms to common vocabulary words and helping students to practice using them correctly. We need to teach them to use vivid verbs and descriptive adjectives. They need to be taught to use all of their senses to describe the world and to build ever more complex sentences. We need to make language interesting.

Teachers and staff need to be patient when students talk. We should not complete sentences for them, but give appropriate feedback and ask them to clarify and expand upon the ideas they are expressing.

Although I had only 2 weeks of intensive language study, rather than the longer and more challenging experiences that our IEP students generally face, I renewed my energy and found that changing my role to that of a beginning language learner had a significant effect on my thinking about language learning and teaching. There is more for a professional in the field of TESOL to gain from the process of learning a new language than just the language itself.

Laura L. Latulippe is director of the Career English Language Center for International Students (CELCIS) at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan.