ASSIGNMENT NO.

1
COURSE : EFL IN THE CLASSROOM ( 5662) DIP TEFL
SEMESTER II:

NAME: REHANA ALAM REGISTRATION NUMBER:

09PSA03618

QUESTION NO.1: Exemplify the use of role-play in language class.

What are the benefits of doing role-play activities in the classroom ?
Discuss it with examples.

ANSWER: ROLE PLAY IN ENGLISH CLASS

Role- play is an effective technique to get your student use the language
creatively. Therefore, it is complex and requires good handling to achieve
desirable outcomes. A teacher can use simplest to most complex kind of role
play activities to ensure both fluency and appropriateness in the use of
language. For example choose a simple dialogue based on four to five
exchanges. Make the class practice it and then delete or erase some content
words, ask the class to replace with some other word and two of the
exchange that dialogue. Imagine how much this small activity has to teach to
the students like spoken structure and use of expressions in a particular
situation. Of course, where necessary the teacher is there to guide the
required amendments. Role playing activities demand the students to
imagine themselves the characters they are portraying. So broaden their
horizons and make them think of the suitable expressions, vocabulary and
tone. In a senior class like intermediate, a teacher can guide his class to
write a play on the model of one act plays in their syllabus and enact it on
the college stage. Other teachers and students can be invited to encourage
and applaud them. With a careful and well planned performance, a teacher is
teaching confidence, team work, language accuracy, fluency,
appropriateness and much more. But the most important thing is that the
teacher should have a very clear objective in mind and execute it with good
planning.

QUESTION NO.2: What do you mean by the term dramatization?

Justify the use of dramatization in speaking skills class? Design the
activities

ANSWER: DRAMATIZATION
Dramatization is an umbrella term for pretending, drama, dramatic activities,
role- play and simulation. Dramatization gives students opportunities to use
language in an imaginative and creative way. The phrase let’s pretend is very
common among the children to start imaginative play when they are on their
own. We all must have observed our little ones at home making their toys set
in the arrangement of a class and teaching them like their teachers. Mimicry
is the first and foremost way of learning for all humans and it auto starts on
our birth in the world. Dramatization develops skills of fluency and
appropriateness along with confidence and creativity. Contrasting patterns
of rhythm and intonation are practiced and further improved in the most
natural way. For example, if a student is asked to utter a sentence in a
shocked tone , he would find difficult to do. In comparison, if in a dramatic
situation where such emotion is demand of the situation, it will be much
easier for him to perform with right intonation. We can exemplify the concept
with help of two activities given as follows:

ACTIVITY 1: Give a situation of two neighbors meeting each other after a

lapse of a month. Let your students imagine the possible topics they can
discuss. Restrict them to write ten to fifteen utterances for each person. This
activity is suitable for group work at the level of ninth class. It’s also part of
their syllabus. Once the dialogue is written ask the groups to select two
representatives to perform it. Teacher ‘s role is of a monitor, and it’s better
he ignores minor mistakes for fluency and confidence purpose. Later on,
such mistakes can be corrected by some other method.

ACTIVITY 2: The teacher can use the method of mime for creating a
dramatic activity in the class. He can use a picture / portrait large enough to
be seen easily by all students or he display the one on multimedia projector
screen about some characters shown engaged in a conversation. A muted
video clip can also be used. It can be a scene from movie or documentary.
Now ask the students to imagine themselves person involved in the situation
and write utterances on behalf of them. Then deliver in front of the class.
This activity is suitable for pair or group work. It will give students a chance
to think about given situation creatively and they would be unknowingly
more conscious while watching TV etc next time to pick exact diction and
intonation etc for future learning purposes.

In a nutshell, dramatization has many benefits for the learners’ better

learning.

QUESTION NO.3: How can you promote formative teaching in your

own teaching? Discuss it in detail.
ANSWER: PRACTICING FORMATIVE TEACHING

Just grading the students as high, average or low performers at the end of
the term or academic year may not be letting the students hon their skills
and get a direction for further improvement. For this reason, proper,
gradual, properly spaced out feedback that gives comprehensible guidelines
is required. Such a teaching methodology is called Formative Teaching
Method. I think by assessing the learning shortcoming of my students in
their understanding of the lessons taught in a week or month through
multiple choice questions, cloze tests or writing activities and given a
feedback regarding weak areas can be a good formative teaching
methodology. In this regard, students can be made to check the work of each
other or even of they themselves. While the teacher can write solutions /
corrections on the board. It will be less time consuming and effort taking
activity.

Another simple and effective method of formative teaching for creative

writing is that check work of the students other than the class time making
the list of most glaring mistakes. These mistakes can be discussed in the
class while returning concerned work with an objective not to be repeated
again and again by the students.

No doubt grading is unavoidable for future purposes and promotion to the

next classes which is ensured by summative method, but applying formative
method is essential for learning and language skills improvement in the real
sense.

QUESTION NO. 4

What are main stages of error analysis? Enlist and explain the
causes of error made by the learners of English language, and
discuss it in detail.

Answer: STAGES OF ERROR ANALYSIS:

Errors occur when there is lack of knowledge about the target language, or
when learners are still in the process of sorting things out for themselves.
The foreigner learning Urdu will who says usne aya has made an error since
he has not yet learnt the rule about transitive verbs with past tense
reference. He has made an error because at the time he didn’t know any
better. Usually learners are unaware of their errors and thus in no position to
correct them for themselves. Knowledge about the target language must
come in its own time; an error does not stop being an error simply because it
is pointed out once or twice by a helpful native speaker. The learner has to
be grateful for correction but still work things for himself.Following are the
stages of error analysis.

i. RECOGNITION:

The teacher has to decide what is and is not an error. At times is very
straightforward; at other times it is less obvious.

ii, INTRPRETATION:

This stage is central to whole process. It is where the teacher has to decide
what the writer probably meant. Of course, the easiest way to do this is to
ask writer but this is frequently not possible.

Iii. RECONSTRUCTION:

This overlaps very considerably with stage ii. At this stage, the teacher has
to be reconstruct the sentence so that it communicates the new
interpretation adequately.

iv.CLASSIFICATION:

This overlaps very considerably with the previous stage. At this stage the
teacher has to reconstruct the sentence so that it communicates the new
interpretation adequately.

v. EXPLANATION:

In this final stage, the teacher has to account for the error or explain its
cause that are mostly one three main causes that are interference, over
generalization and faulty material or teaching.

CAUSES OF ERROR:
It is a pity to see well-intentioned, and often highly motivated, students
continue to produce errors in both their speech and writing. At least three
reasons have been suggested for these errors namely interference, over
generalization and faulty teaching methodology or model.

INTERFERENCE:
Interference used to be given a great deal of prominence. It was thought that
if a linguistic comparison could be made between the mother tongue and the
target language, it would be possible to devise a course that would highlight
the differences and provide activities to bridge them. This linguistic analysis
was called contrastive analysis, and great things were expected of it since it
was believed that it could predict problem areas. Such an analysis would, for
instance, predict that Urdu speakers would have greater problems with
English articles than any other European language speaker say French. The
reason for this , of course, is that Urdu does not have definite and indefinite
articles, but French does. Interference is still recognized as a major reason
for error, but is seen as only one contributing factor in a more complex
network. Most linguistics would now agree that the effect of interference
shows itself mostly in areas of phonology.

FAULTY TEACHING AND MATERIALS:

Faulty teaching and materials is another reason for error, but is the most
difficult to identify. The truth is that badly trained teachers with poor
command in English themselves are bound to do a great deal of harm. If
teachers constantly mispronounce certain words, we can hardly blame the
students for the following suite. If the textbook uses old fashioned and at
times inaccurate English, we can hardly hope for anything better from the
average students. However, this is an awkward and controversial areas. A
well plan training course for teachers and students can do something to
remedy this unfortunate situation.

QUESTION NO. 5: Explain the different underlying philosophical

approaches to the learning process implicit in norm- referenced and
criterion- referenced marking.

ANSWER: NORM- REFERENCED MARKING

There is a concept found at large in the world of education that in any

assessment approximately out of a class of hundred students, there will be
10 A's, 20 B’s , 20 C’s, 20 D’s and ten will be the failing cases. This
distribution of marks mentioned above is known as the normal distribution.
An evaluation test or exam set keeping in mind this distribution is called
norm- referenced assessment leading to norm referenced marking. It
indicates that in a norm- referenced marking expectation of the failure are
built in. If too many students are found to have passed, then the standard
required for passing is merely raised quite arbitrarily. In this way, a student is
not judged on the level of his own performance, but on the level of his
performance compared with others. In a way, student is not assessed on the
bases of his own performance. Even if he improves, he will not do any better
in terms of results, if the grades of his class fellows also improve. Thus the
same way the same student is likey to achieve better grades if his class
fellows are weak. So, this kind of assessment does not reflect the individual’s
improvement or otherwise. This method may be suitable for placing people
in different categories or sorting for further admission or job, but not at all
advisable for individual’s self improvement.

CRITERION- REFERENCED MARKING

It must always be a much more admirable assessment that tells the assessed
how well he measures up to a prescribed criterion or standard. This approach
is in sharp opposition to the approach adopted in norm- referenced method.
In this kind of assessment, student’sl performance is not judged relative to
the performance of his fellow students. Distribution of marks is made against
a pre- set critarion. So, if everyone measures up to the desired standard,
everyone has a chance to pass. And if majority does not meet the required
parameters, the result can show a very large number of failures. Therefore,
this method is better in a way that it gives clearer picture of individual as
well as class performance and improvement. And the teacher gets a
realization may the learning objectives were unrealistic or the process was
faulty if the result was poor.

QUESTION NO. 6: Differentiate between audio and visual aids and

describe two language teaching activities which can be carried out
with the help of audio and visual aids.

ANSWER: AUDIO & VISUAL AIDS

In language teaching one has to deal with concepts that are non- concrete
and even abstract. One of the biggest benefits of using audio visual aids is
that it make easy to comprehend such concepts easily. Moreover, it
enhances the learning retention span due to the interest level created by
them. Students get involved in such activities and remember what is taught
for a longer time. Flash cards ,video clips ,newspaper cuttings, magazine
cuttings ,even chalk, marker and real life objects etc all these come under
the audio and visual aids. There was a time when the availability of all these
facilities was very difficult and not affordable for an ordinary kind of a
school , but in the present time and age due to all this advancement in
science and technology, most of these are readily available in the market. It
has become so easy for any language teacher to use as many audio visual
aids as he or she wants to use in the class. Just always ensure that whichever
audiovisual aid you are using is authentic and taken from the real life. Every
source is not worth presenting in the class in front of the students so a
teacher must have needed experience to sort the junk out and present only
authentic resources and audio visual aids in front of the class. Every piece of
printed material and every recorded stuff is not authentic. So it is obligatory
for a teacher to get prerequisite training to be able to y choose only potential
stuff that is effective for the learning of his students. These days the use of
multimedia projector is such a great blessing that a teacher can present
things made in PowerPoint, word , video clips , audio recordings and pictures
etc to bring a lot of variety in his class.

ACTIVITY 1: For teaching a class in phonetics take the phonemic sounds

recorded by the natives as we know that our pronunciation cannot match
them in accuracy. The teacher can make the learners listen to the authentic
native sounds and ask them to copy. This learning would be more reliable as
we know that our utterance of those sounds will never be equally reliable. In
the recent decades, we have seen many language labs being opened in
many institutions in our own country where this methodology is applied.
Audio and video recordings by the natives, selected by the trained teachers
with reliable and fruitful material are kept in the language laboratory for the
teachers to select and pick out of these according to the need of their
classes.They can teach the students to enhance their speaking skills. These
resources can also be used for enhancing vocabulary retention,intonation
and stress pattern Etcetera.

ACTIVITY 2: .Another interesting audio visual based activity can be

designed by the use of flash cards. Say the strength of your class is 28. You
can make 14 cards. On the one side of the card paste some picture or image
mostly taken from the newspaper or magazine and on the other side write
down the vocabulary or words you want to introduce in the class about the
image pasted on some other flash card. After dividing the class into pairs
give each pair a flash card and ask each pair to announce the word written
on the other side and whoever has the image related to that word waves his
card in the air and meanwhile teacher can write down all these words on the
board. This activity can be very useful in teaching new words. We have seen
in this activity, we have taken time more than usual and the students have
got suitable time for reflection. This is surely going to enhance the retention
time of memory of new words.

QUESTION NO 7: Define briefly; a) Diagnostic test b) Placement tests

ANSWER: DIAGNOSTIC TEST

These days many a good school set a diagnostic test for each subject at the
beginning of every academic year. It is in fact something very ideal to do.
Before the teacher starts teaching a new class , he should know what are
their requirement, what the students have already in their knowledge and
what they must be taught. In a Foreign language class this test must be
comprehensive and should assess all four language skills. It sould also cover
recognition of correct forms and function, and also their production. For this
reason a diagnostic test will not be confined to objective type questions, and
will therefore be more complex to mark as compare to placement test.

PLACEMENT TESTS

One of the most difficult classes to tackle for an English language teachers
are the multi ability classes. The topic and things which are interesting for a
few are oring and mere repetition of already known concepts. Therefore,
such students within a class must be divided into groups and if possible into
different sections. Placement tests are used in these kind of situations. They
help to divide students into groups of varying ability. In case of language
teaching these groups will differ according to the language proficiency of the
students.They are used particularly in language schools or in schools in
which students are streamed. The content of these tests would be the
language items consisting of structure and function both given in a way that
the students are expected to recognize the correct form or function rather
than to have to produce one of themselves. Therefore, these tests are
marking friendly. I remember back in my college days at Kinnaird College for
Women, Lahore, for our graduation classes, the sections were determined on
the basis of our English placement test.