Module 12 Reading Material资料文件与下载

Module 12 Integrating Language Skills and Classroom Management

Integrating The Main Language Skills in EFL Classes: Why and How?!

Integrating the main four language skills means combining reading, writing listening, and speaking in foreign language teaching in the classroom.

In some cases, teachers separate language skills and highlight just one skill at a time. That was often for instructional purposes but even if it were possible to develop one or two skills effectively in the absence of the other language skills at the beginning stages, this does not ensure the real communication using the language in which not only all the language skills, but also communicative skills are employed simultaneously.

In a normal situation, people use all language skills to communicate so experts in foreign language teaching have been moving in recent years toward integrating the four main language skills in EFL classes.

All new courses which are being created nowadays seem to integrate these language skills with communicative skills to improve learners’ communicative competence using accurate and fluent language.

Reasons for Integrating the Four Main Language Skills:

• By integrating the four skills, the students experiment and take risks with learning the foreign language which makes learning more lovely and productive.

• By integrating the four skills, we are providing a certain input that becomes a basis for further intake, which in turn will become a new output.

• Production and reception are two sides for the same coin.  

• Interaction means sending and receiving messages.

• Written and spoken languages have a relationship with each other.

• This Integration will reflect the interrelationship among language, culture, and society.

Here Are More Reasons

• By inviting all four skills into an activity, we focus on what learners can  do with a language.

• Of course, one skill will reinforce another.

• The integration of all the four skills can contribute toward a more real-life environment for both teachers and learners, the thing which may make learning more meaningful and motivating.

• The integration will ensure that students will learn to use English both fluently and accurately.

• Teaching integratively support the connections between language and the way we feel, think and act.

How to Integrate the Four Main Language Skills in Your Teaching:

• Aim ultimately to preserve accuracy while still making use of authentic communicative activities for the students.

• Use the “PPP” (Present, Practice, Produce) approach. This is basically a structural approach that incorporates a final ‘free production’ stage  where learners have the chance to use the structure they have practiced in a communicative activity where they primarily focused on meaning.

• Use the communicative activities in which students produce certain structures according to certain real-life situations. While they do so, provide feedback to encourage students to use grammar accurately.

• When presenting and practicing new linguistic items, provide communicative activities to reinforce students moving from “controlled practice’ to “free production”

• Always present new language to students in rich contexts. Always provide them with situations in which they can practice the language, through role-playing, acting out scenes, or by asking and answering questions.

Final Word:

It is important to understand that the main purpose of integrating the four language skills is developing real-life communication, which means that it is very important to provide students with authentic materials and create real-life situations to increase opportunities for real communication and continuous practice in order to gain both fluency and accuracy in using the language.

12 Simple (Yet Powerful) Techniques for Classroom Management

Research shows that classroom management is one of the main preoccupations for novice teachers; in many cases, it may be more important than subject knowledge for them.  However, during preparing training courses for teachers, classroom management receives little attention when compared with more general aspects of the methodology.

What Classroom Management Is

From my point of view, classroom management means that your students do what you want them to do. If you want them to laugh and have fun, they do, if you start to explain an important item in the lesson, they focus on learning, and if you want them to behave well during the class, they stick to the rules you set.

What Successful Classrooms Are

Successful classrooms are those in which orders are not always being given and the teachers there aim ultimately at motivating and encouraging students to learn and reach their most potential. While teachers are doing so, their classes are being well managed, and students are focusing on the learning and sticking to the agreed-upon rules.

In fact, if you cannot control your class, it will be impossible to teach anything.

You should follow a specific system and practical techniques to succeed in managing your class effectively so that you will be able to go toward achieving the set learning objectives.

Powerful Techniques for Classroom Management

Here are some of these techniques that successful teachers get accustomed to following along the school year in their classes and if you give them a try, you will make a difference in your classroom management.   

1. Speaking at the students’ language level, giving them comprehensible language.

2. Teaching according to the level and needs of the students.

3. Creating a friendly and engaging learning environment in the classroom.

4. Communicating clearly in language the students can understand.

5. Behaving well in the class and act confidently. Your shoulders and heads should be held high, your eyes should be kept in contact with the students’ eyes.

6. Keeping moving around the room having control of everything therein.

7. Being well planned and well organized.

8. Making sure the students understand what you are doing and why you are doing it.

9. Giving clear instructions for students to follow.

10. Preventing bad behavior and if it occurs you should deal with it immediately.

11. Allowing the students to share some of the responsibility for creating a purposeful  atmosphere in the classroom.

12. Distributing classroom tasks among students such as cleaning the board, taking care of  visual aids, collecting homework, distributing papers and materials, etc… The more responsibility students have, the more they will feel that it is their class and the more they will be managed by your instructions.

From my own experience, these techniques have worked well and I’m sure that if you try them with your students, you will have more motivated and enthusiastic learners.

Most importantly, if you follow these techniques and tips, you will have more time in your class for teaching and your students will enjoy learning.

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