Jon Naunton is co-author of Business Result and Oil and Gas 2 in the Oxford English for Careers series. In the first of three posts, he offers advice for helping students to overcome challenges in presenting in English.

Many schools and universities require students to give presentations. It is difficult enough to present successfully in one’s own language, let alone a foreign language. A shy and timid learner in his or her own language will not miraculously become a fantastic presenter in English!

This article will examine how we can help students become better presenters by developing their confidence and improving their preparation. Good presenters say something interesting, which they communicate in a lively and memorable way – it is a true performance art. Nevertheless, I sincerely believe that good presenters are made, not born, and that even those learners who lack self-confidence can be transformed into acceptably confident, albeit not brilliant presenters.

Download my helpful hints on Presentations – Expressions and introductory phrases (PDF).

Confidence building

Use sub-groups

The stress presenters feel tends to grow with the size of the audience they address. In most cases, during the training process, the audience will be other class members.  Recently, I have taught larger groups of up to thirty, so breaking them up into sub-groups can be useful.  Speaking in front of six people is usually less intimidating than speaking in front of thirty. Arranging the classroom into different zones means three or four students can present simultaneously. Not only is this a more efficient use of classroom time, but it shifts the focus away from a sole individual. I generally play background music to reduce distraction between groups.

Choose familiar topics

When students start to present, I believe they should begin with familiar, everyday topics which require little preparation.  The aim is to get them on their feet and overcome the block of standing up in front of other people. I often give them a menu of topics to choose from, which require little specialised knowledge or vocabulary e.g. public transport in my town, a national celebration etc. (The first few sessions, I don’t ask them to prepare anything for homework as they can worry too much.) Students who have picked the same topic from the menu can work together in pairs or groups. I allow them a few minutes to write down a few key ideas, and move round the class ready to provide a missing expression or quick translation. Then they present to the other members of their sub-group – making sure that the same topic isn’t dealt with at the same time as this can be distracting!

Poster presentations

Poster presentations are a great way of providing students with lots of practice in a less-threatening environment. Again, it is a useful activity for those of us who teach large classes and a common approach at conferences. I usually treat it as a collaborative activity with three or four people working on the same poster. I show a model of the kind of thing I expect – you can see an example on page 94 of ProFile Upper Intermediate. Students produce a poster on one or two large sheets of paper – pages from a flip-chart are ideal. This will usually mean meeting up for one or two sessions before the exhibition. They make the poster as visually interesting as they can and include the main points of their presentation – you need to emphasise that the poster is not a script which they simply read aloud.

Six or seven posters are enough for a small exhibition. Display the posters in different parts of the classroom or a reception area or school cafeteria. Student takes it in turns to stand by their poster and talk visitors through it while the other members of the poster team move around freely. Invite people from other classes to visit and ask questions. This will give students a taste of speaking to people outside their immediate class. Telling students that the head of department is coming provides a further incentive!

Download my helpful hints on Presentations – Expressions and introductory phrases (PDF).

What are some tips you use to build your students’ confidence in presenting? Share your experiences in the comments below.

Keith Morrow is the editor of ELT Journal and has worked in language testing for many years. He was involved in developing some of the first ‘communicative’ language tests, and is currently working as a consultant to testing projects in Austria and Luxembourg. Keith hosted a Global Webinar ‘Designing Good Tests: Principles Into Practice’ on January 12th and will be repeating it on January 31st. You can find out more information and register to attend here.

Testing goes on in almost every educational institution in the world, and is familiar to both teachers and students. “On Thursday we’ll have a vocabulary test”.  “I want to get good marks in the end-of-year exams”.

Despite this, teacher training programmes often pay very little attention to the role, purpose, and nature of testing in the classroom. As a result many teachers feel insecure about the principles and practice of testing, and so they put together tests based on what they have always done – or just use tests from published sources.

Do you see a little bit of yourself in this description? Would like to find out more about some background ideas in testing?

For example, what is testing? Is it the same as assessment)? Why do we test? To help the students or to frighten them? Is it a carrot or a stick? How is a test made? What are the different forms a test might take? What are the different focuses a language test might have? And most importantly, of course, how can we design better tests in our own context and for our own purposes?

These are some of the areas we will be looking at in my webinar on 31st January. Please come and join me, to meet colleagues from all over the world online, and to have a chance to share ideas and insights about testing.

After the webinar on this topic that I gave earlier this month, there were a lot of questions that I didn’t have time to answer online. So here are some quick thoughts on some of them.

Can the selected response task test both elements of language and communicative skills?

A multiple-choice test can be a good way of finding out what students know. But finding out what students can do is rather more difficult. If you are thinking of communicative skills in terms of production (speaking and writing), I think you have to see how well they can actually speak or write. And you can’t do that with multiple choice.

How about testing reading skills in the students own language?

I think this is a really interesting idea. If you want to find out how well students have understood a reading text, ask them some questions on the text and let them answer the questions in their own language. After all, it is their reading you are interested in assessing, not (in this case) their writing in English. But there are problems. What do you do if you have a class with ten or twenty different “own languages” which you do not speak? And will you be able to persuade parents and the school authorities that this is a good idea?

Can we use a mix of both selected and created responses in the same reading, for example?

In principle there is no problem with this. But you need to ask yourself ‘why’? Why am I using a selected response here, why am I using a created response there? If you have good answers to these ’why?’ questions, by all means mix the formats.

When a student has only two options – A or B, does that stop them analysing the question/ choices at all?

This is an interesting question about all multiple choice questions – not just A / B (True / False) questions. Some students find the answer to the question  in the way you would like them to – by reading the question carefully and thinking about the right choice; others try to “outsmart” the teacher (the answer to the last three questions was A so this one must be B); others just guess without bothering to think at all. There are some advantages to multiple choice questions (as we discussed in the webinar) but this is a big disadvantage.

What should we focus on in a speaking test?

That depends what you want to find out!! Do you want to test spoken production (how well the student can give a mini-presentation or a little talk about something – a monologue) or spoken interaction (how well the student can take part in a conversation). In judging what the student says, you might want to focus on areas like ‘communication’ (does the student get his / her message across?); ‘accuracy’ (is the language the student uses accurate and correct?); ‘range’ (is the student able to draw on a good range of vocabulary and grammar?). The important thing is not to turn a speaking test into a form of grammar test, penalising the student for each and every grammar mistake and not looking at other aspects of his/her performance.

Meghan Beler is a full-time teacher trainer for Oxford University Press in Istanbul, Turkey. In this piece she writes a letter to herself about things she wished she knew when she first started teaching.

Dear Younger Self,

As you have probably realised by now, teaching is hard work. On top of a full teaching load you have to deal with homework, exams, misbehaving students, staff meetings and (gasp!) students’ parents. You are experiencing a lot of uncertainty and ups and downs, sometimes even on an hourly basis. You may feel that you don’t have enough time to plan the spectacular lessons you dreamt of when you were training to become a teacher. I remember what it feels like to be a new teacher, so I would like to offer you some simple advice that can help you deal with some of the challenges you are currently facing.

Choice: First of all, don’t be afraid to give your students choices about their learning. As a teacher, it’s very easy to fall into a pattern of being the decision-maker, judge and jury in the classroom, but allowing choice is an important part of helping students become autonomous learners. By having your students make some decisions in the classroom, you can also increase their involvement and enjoyment of your lessons. Start with something simple, such as allowing students to choose which questions from an exercise that they would like to answer. You might also consider asking them how they would like to carry out an activity – individually, in pairs or in groups? Homework and projects are other areas where choice is a possibility. If you want them to get more practice with past simple at home, give them some options and take a whole class vote, for example:

1. Write a short composition about your last holiday.
2. Record yourself talking about what you did last weekend.
3. Prepare a ‘past simple’ quiz for your classmates.

This allows you to cater to different learning styles while encouraging students to take responsibility for their own learning. For learners who are not accustomed to being given choice in the classroom, this new responsibility may come as a shock to them and they may struggle to come up with ideas or even try to ‘cheat’ the system. But with a bit of persistence and optimism on your part, you will be amazed at the wonderful ideas your students can come up with.

Aims: While the amount of material you feel you need to ‘cover’ over the course of a week/month/semester may seem overwhelming, it’s important not to lose sight of the aim(s) of each lesson and (even more importantly) how best to help students accomplish them. When working on a new grammar point, stop and ask yourself whether you should spend an hour on mechanical drills or whether it would be better to get students really using the language in a more communicative activity. If the aim involves developing students’ reading skills, try not to get bogged down explaining every vocabulary item. At the beginning of the lesson, write your aim(s) on the board and be sure that you give students enough time and opportunities to reach those aims.

Checking Answers: Although it is an inevitable part of the language learning classroom, answer-checking tends to be monotonous and teacher-centred. You might have found yourself spending so much time checking answers that you had little time left for anything else. Instead of acting as a human answer key, give some of these ideas a try:

1. After students finish an exercise, have them check their answers with the person sitting next to them, behind them or across from them.
2. Go over problematic answers only.
3. Assign a specific number of questions to small groups. When they finish, have them put their answers up on the board. As students are working, alert them to any answers that might need revisiting.

My last piece of advice to you is this: don’t be so hard on yourself. When the students aren’t as enthusiastic as you had hoped or an activity doesn’t go as well as you had planned, don’t take it to mean that you are not good at your job. Discovering what works and what doesn’t in your lessons is part of becoming a good teacher and the experiences you are going through now will be a source of knowledge and an important point of reference for you in the future. It’s okay to slow down, relax and enjoy your lessons. You’re doing just fine.

Sincerely,

The More Experienced You

If you could write a letter to your younger self, what teaching advice would you give?

Continuing the 10 Commandments for motivating language learners series, Tim Ward, a freelance teacher trainer in Bulgaria, takes a closer look at number nine of the 10 Commandments: Create a pleasant, relaxed atmosphere in the classroom.

This is the latest of the blogs dealing with the vexed matter of motivation. A recap: I’ve been musing on the 10 Commandments of Motivation as categorised by two top Hungarians, Zoltan Dornyei and Kata Czizer, and wondering what their practical ramifications might be. In some senses, I’ve left the most interesting two till last. One is the imperative to create a pleasant relaxed atmosphere in the classroom. This is about the physical properties of the classroom, by the way, and not so much about the human relationships inside it – though one way of looking at it is to think about how the classroom atmosphere can facilitate good relationships and an atmosphere conducive to learning.

I’m loath to provide any recipes here as so much depends on the context you’re working in and, for example, the physical condition of a classroom in a state university in my part of post-communist Europe is very different from the state-of-the-art hi-tech private schools students might be in. But atmospheres can always be better and there is a framework to think about them provided by the senses. Why? Well, we know enough from research to have, to say the least, strong suspicions that brains do not thrive in environments with a narrow range of stimuli. In plainer English, poorly kept classrooms inhibit learning. I should say here I’m relying on one of my favourite books on this area – it’s Using Brainpower in the Classroom: 5 Steps to Accelerate Learning by Steve Garnett, and it says some hugely useful things about the classroom environment.

One place to start is with the display. I’m a great believer in displaying students’ work, even that of adults (as long as of course that it’s not kept on the wall too long). It’s not just about self-esteem, though seeing your work displayed is likely to increase that. There are also important learning points here. Writing should always be for an audience, and displaying writing gives any bit of work a wider audience than just the teacher. The posters that come with English File can be enormously useful too. If they are legible from anywhere in the room and positioned at eye-level, long term recall of their learning points can be as high as 75%. If we replace these learning displays frequently, then obviously more knowledge can be learnt, almost passively, in this way.

Displays also provide a splash of colour. Now I’m a bit cynical about some of the wackier claims made for colour (red promotes energy, orange makes us happy and confident, yellow boosts self-esteem, green is about peace and harmony, blue is mentally relaxing, indigo is food for the imagination, while violet leads us all to contemplate creativity) – but that maybe comes with the territory of being grumpy and middle-aged, and even I accept that dabs of colour provide necessary stimulus. (I’ve also just returned from a training session done in a room planned by colour therapists which had lots of blues and occasional pinks and it was great…)

The other easy way into sensory stimulation is through the ears. Like the man said, music has charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak… or in classroom terms it can shape atmospheres. Just giving students control of the music to be played at break time is one easy way of changing dynamics. Some claims about the effect of music go further– there are those who have it that listening to Mozart, for example, will raise the IQ, create fertile brains and promote creativity. Even if you’re sceptical (me! I am!) about this stuff, it still makes sense that baroque music (60 beats per minute…) can create calm, drown out white noise, and if your students are doing writing maybe even promote that sense of relaxed alertness we need to get ideas flowing.

In other spheres (shopping, leisure developments and so on) those who’ve got a commercial interest in altering people’s moods use different smells to do so. Somewhere there may be a teacher who brings in cinnamon-scented incense to create a relaxed atmosphere. But for me, it’s enough to think about what the walls of my classroom look like, and how it sounds.

Remind yourself of the 10 Commandments for motivating language learners and look out for future posts by Tim exploring the remaining Commandments.

Continuing from last week’s post about teaching pronunciation, Robin Walker, author of Teaching the Pronunciation of English as a Lingua Franca, talks to us about the challenges of teaching and learning pronunciation.

Q: What are the challenges for teachers when teaching pronunciation?

RW: The main challenge is the need to gain and maintain an adequate level of pronunciation knowledge and competence in each of three areas:

• your own competence in the pronunciation of English. This doesn’t mean having a perfect accent (whatever that means), but there is obviously a minimum competence with pronunciation, just as there is with grammar or vocabulary.
• your knowledge of how the pronunciation of English works. Obviously if you don’t understand this, it’s unlikely that you’ll be very effective in helping your learners to improve their pronunciation.
• your competence in terms of teaching strategies and techniques. It’s not enough to know ‘about’ pronunciation, or even to be a native speaker. You also need to know as much as you can about teaching pronunciation to others.

Q: What challenges do students face when learning pronunciation?

RW: The first challenge is to do with the distance between their mother-tongue pronunciation and that of English. In that respect Dutch, Polish, or Scandinavian students, for example, have a lot less of a mountain to climb than Spanish, Greek, or Japanese learners.

A major challenge for most adult learners of English, however, is to ‘re-tune’ their ears so that they become sensitive to sounds and other features of English that don’t exist in their mother tongue pronunciation. I’m struggling right now with some of the consonants of Polish precisely because we don’t have these sounds in English. And if you can’t hear a sound, you’re not going to be able to pronounce it.

And an increasing challenge now that English is a lingua franca is the variation in accents – both non-native speaker and native speaker – that learners will encounter as they travel around the world and put their English to use.

Q: How do you think the English File approach helps teachers and students to tackle these challenges?

RW: When you open a copy of English File at the Syllabus checklist, the first thing you see running right down the centre of the page is a column with the pronunciation contents of each unit. You then notice that this pronunciation column sits strategically between the grammar and vocabulary contents on the one hand, and the skills contents on the other. This central position is a great help to teachers and learners because it flags up the pivotal importance of pronunciation in learning English successfully.

When you take a closer look at the pronunciation contents you find a very good balance between work on sounds and work at the level of words and whole sentences. Equally important is the fact that the pronunciation work is perfectly integrated into each unit, and that focused pronunciation work always leads to a communicative task of some sort. It’s pronunciation with a purpose.

And of course, in the Teacher’s Book there are not just notes telling the teacher what to do; there is also a brief explanation of how the exercises contribute to the learner’s English.

A new edition of the best-selling English File, improved throughout with brand new digital components to use inside and outside the classroom, will be available in Spring 2012. English File Third edition – the best way to get your students talking.