CHAPTER REPORT T. Writing, T. Speaking, Text Base LT, Problem related to Students; Why, What, etc

Name            : Rezki Firdaus

Student’s ID : 1407335

Topic            : Summary (Teaching Writing, Teaching Speaking, Text based Language Teaching, 
                      Problems related to Students: Why, What, and some possible solutions)

Date             : November 11^th, 2014

Teaching Writing

Handwriting is a Personal issue. Students should not all be expected to use exactly the same style, despite copying exercises. Badly-formed letters may influence the reader against the writer, something which is undesirable whether the work is the product of some creatif task or more seriously, work that is going to be assesed in a test or exam. Although incorect spelling doesn’t often prevent the understanding of a written message, it can adversely affect the reader’s judgement. All too often, bad spelling is persieved as lack of education or care. One of the reasons that spelling is difficult for students of English is that the correspondence between the sound of a word and the way it is spelt is not always obvious, a single sound may have many different spelling, and the same spelling may have many different sounds. One of the best ways to help students improve their spelling is through reading, especially extensivel.

Different writing communities (both between and between cultures) obey diferrent puctuation and layout conventions in communications such as letters, reports and publicity materials. These are frequently non-transferable from one community or language to another. Such differences are easily seen in the different punctuation conventions for the quotation of direct speech which different language use. Though punctuation is frequently a matter of personal style, violation of well-established customs make a piece of writting look awkward to many readers. Different genres of writing are laid out differently; business and personal letters are different from each other and emails have conventions all of their own. News paper articles are laid out in quite specific ways and certain kinds of small ads. Approaches to student writing, There are a number of different approaches to the practice of writing skills both in and outside the classroom. We need to choose between them, deciding wether we want students to focus more on the process of writing than its product,wether we want them to study different written genres, and wether we want to encourage creative writing- individually or cooperatively. We want to build the ‘writing habit’.

Process and Product, In teaching of writing we can either focus on the product of the writing or on the writing process itself. When concentrating on the product, we are only interested in the aim of a task and in the end product. There is a various stages in writing go through; pre –writing phases, editing, re-drafting and finally producing a finished version. In its simplest form, a process approach ask students to consider the procedure of putting together a good piece of work. One of disadvantages of getting students to concentrate on the processes of writing is that it takes time: time to brainstorm ideas or collect them in some other way: time to draft a piece of writing and then, with the teacher’s help, perhaps, review it and edit it in various ways before. Changing the focus, generatingmore ideas, re-drafting, re-editing, and so on. This can’t be done in 15 minutes. The various stages may well involve discussion, research, language study and a considerable amount of interaction between teacher and students, and between students themselves. The writing process is at least as important as the product and even in exam writing task, the students’ ability to plan (quickly) and later back through what they have written in order to make any necessary corrections is extremely important.

Genre, represents the norms of different kinds of writing. When the teacher  concentrate on genre, students study texts in the genre which they are going to be writing before they embark on their own work. Thus, if we want them to write business letters of various kinds, we let them look a typical models of such letters before starting to compose their own. And also when we want them to write an newspaper articles we have them study real examples to discover facts about construction and specific language use which are common to that genre. Students are asked to spend more time everyday for a week looking at letters make notes of particular vocabulary and grammar constructions used in them. A genre approach is especially appropriate for students of English for specific purposes. Students who are writting within a certain genre need to consider a number of different factors. They need to have knowledge of the topic, the conventions and style of the genre, and context in which their writing will be read, as well as by whom.   

Creative writing, The term creative writing suggests imaginative task, such as writing poetry, stories and plays. This sense of achievement is significantly more marked for creative writing than for other more standard written product. When tachers set up imaginative writing tasks so that their students are thoroughly engage, those students frequently strive harder than usual to produce a greater variety of correct and appropriate language than they might for more routine assignments. While students are writing a simple poem about someone they care about, or while they are trying to construct a narrative or tell stories of their childhood. Creative writing also provokes the kind of input-output circle. Writing as a cooperative writing, Cooperative writing works well whether the focus is on the writing process or, alternatively on genre study. In the first case, reviewing and evaluation are greatly enhanced by having more than one person working on a text, and the generation of ideas is frequently more lively with two or more people involved than it is when writers work on their own. Writing in groups, whether as part of a short game like communicative activity, can be greatly motivating for students, including as it does, not only writing, but research, discussion, peer evaluation and group pride in a group accomplishment. Building the writing habit, Building the writing habit can be done with a range of activities. We can promote instant writing by dictating half of sentence which the students have to complete, we can get students’respon to music or film. Picture can provide stimulation for writing habit activities, students can describe what they see in the picture. There are many writing games too, such as story reconstuction activities where the students have to build up a story from a set of picures. The whole points of all activities is just to get students to write for the fun and practice of  rather than have them write as a skill.  

Writing -for-learning and writing-for-writing, Writing for learning is the kind of writing we do to help students learn language or to test them on that language. When we ask students to design a good magazine advertisement, however, we are doing this so that they may become good at writing advertisements. When we get them to write narrative, it is their ability to write a story that count, not just their use of the past tense. The role of the teacher, Teacher in the writing class as a motivator where she have to motivate the students, creating  the right conditions for the generation the ideas, persuading them of the usefulness of the activity. Teacher also as resource for their students, teacher should be ready to supply the information and language where necessary. Furthermore teacher is as feedback; teacher should respon positively and encouragingly to the content of what the students have written. Writing lesson sequences, The writing activity is specified, together with its paricular focus. Some activities are about the nut and bolts of writing. If you want the students to learn about punctuation, they need to make the connection between the way we speak and the way punctuation reflect this, commas, for example are often place a speaker would take a breath if the were reading the text. Full stops represent the end of a tone group, etc.The following task-at elementary level-ask students to punctuate a prose passage using capital letters, commas, inverted commas (quotation marks) and full stops. At the points where some are designed to build the writing habit, some are to give students practice in skill of writing. The sequence aims to make the students aware of coherence- and especially cohesive device in writing.

Portfolio, Journals, letters, Portfolio are also used as a way of encouraging students to take pride in their work; by encouraging them to keep examples of what they have  written, we are encouraging them to write it well and with care. Many education institutions and teachers get students to keep portfolio of example their written work over a period of time. These can be used for assessment, since judging different pieces of student work written over a period of time is seen by many people to be fairer than ‘sudden death’ final test. The European language portfolio has three parts: Language biography: language biography asks them to say what language experiences they have had, and reveals the fact that a huge number of school students in various countries have rich and varied language backgrounds.Language passport: the language passport is the clearest, and possible statement of the advantages and benefits that accrue to people who speak more than one language it reinforces students ‘pride in their language profile.Dossier: this is where students keep examples of their work-projects, reports, diplomas, power point presentation, etc. the students indicate whether this work was done individually or with other students.

Teaching Speaking

One of the language skills that needs to be acquired in language learning is speaking skill. In teaching speaking, there are some considerations needed in order to create successful learning. There are six categories of different speaking events in terms of purposes, participation, and planning. The speaking categories based on its purposes are differentiated into transactional and interpersonal functions. The main purpose in transactional function is to inform something and facilitate the exchange of goods and services, while in interpersonal function is to keep good connection among people. A conversation also can be categorized into interactive and non interactive. An interactive conversation may take place in a shop or restaurant which requires response from others, while leaving message on an answer phone can be considered as non interactive. Speaking events can also be distinguished between planned and unplanned. Speech and lectures are categorized as planned, while daily conversation can be taken as the example of unplanned speaking.

Various discourse markers are often found in a conversation as strategies to maintain successful interaction. Those discourse markers are usually used to buy time, to start a turn, or to mark the beginning or the end of a segment. In interactive situation, survival and repair strategies are necessary, for example to ask for repetition, repeating up to the point of conversation breakdown, to paraphrase, to use an all-purpose phrase to get round the problem of not knowing a word, and to appeal for help. In the real talk, in which students might need to expose more language skill, some forms such as questioning reformulation, multifunctional question forms, and the pilling up of questions one after the other.

In the classroom situation, teachers need to build students’ awareness of those discourse types that may occur when they are in a real conversation. Moreover, students also should be aware of adjacency pairs (i.e: A question “Nice day, isn’t it?” should be followed by “Yes, it is.”) and fixed and semi-fixed phrases (e.g: “Catch you later”, “Would you like a…?”) which lead to a good functional exchange. This awareness is expected can develop students’ English conversational skill.

Students’speaking skills are likely to be improved easier when they take part in the classroom activities freely and enthusiastically. Nevertheless, some students might feel reluctant to speak in some situations because they are shy or worried of speaking badly in front of people. Teachers can help students by giving them time to prepare about how they will speak since it can help students to speak fluently and calmly. This can be done in pairs or let students think in their heads. Another thing that has beneficial effect is repetition. Teachers might ask students to repeat their speaking tasks and have analysis either from their fellow or teachers. This is necessary since it allows students to do better than what they did before. Appropriate grouping is also necessary to get students more confident in speaking. Students may be asked to have speaking tasks in a small group first so they will be more prepared when they are going to talk in a big group. The last technique can be used is mandatory participation which requires all students to take part in the activities.

Besides facilitating students with those things, teachers also have some roles in order to get students speak fluently; as a prompter, participant, and feedback provider. Teacher can play as a prompter to help students when they are having nothing to say. Teachers can try to give suggestion which will not interrupt students’ discussion. Teacher can take place as a participant to ensure that the activities keep on going, maintain students’ engagement, and to create a creative atmosphere. However, teachers should be aware to not being too much involved so students have a lot of chances to speak. As a feedback provider, it is important to know the right way and situation to give correction. It might be very helpful to give gentle correction which may solve students’ problems of misunderstanding and hesitations.

In order to get students to speak, teachers should provide some classroom speaking activities which are interesting for them. In the playscripts, it is suggested to make it as a real acting. Students will be required to practice their gesture, facial expression, emotion, speaking elements, etc. It was said that drama can be motivating and can build students’confidence. In acting out dialogues, teachers should make sure that students have enough rehearsal before performing the dialogues.

Second category is communication games such as information-gap games and television and radio games. Information-gap games can be solving a puzzle, describing and drawing pictures, find similarities and differences, etc. Television and radio games that are used in the classroom can practice students’ English fluency. One example is “Twenty questions” which can be done within teams. The leader will choose a topic and tell the members. Then, the members need to guess an object by asking “Yes/No questions” and should try to answer in 20 questions or fewer.

The next one is discussion which is divided into highly formal, whole-group staged events to informal small-group interaction. This includes some activities such as (1) buzz groups which require them to explore the topic of discussion before going further to the class discussion, (2) instant comment which nominate students to give immediate comment about particular things (3) formal debates in which students in groups will give their arguments which is against each other. This may take extra time since students will need to plan their arguments as well as practicing their speech, (4) unplanned discussion which can occur in the middle of lesson which is unprepared by the teacher, and (5) reaching a consensus in which can encourage students’ discussion since they need to have final decision or a consensus among a range of options.

Another category is prepared talks in which students choose their own topic to be presented. It is important that students have chances to prepare their talk, have rehearsal to practice their presentation, and to get feedback from their fellow or teachers. This activity should also involves active listening as well as active speaking since students need to pay attention to others’ presentation during the class.

Questionnaire can also be used as a speaking activity. This can be useful since both of questioner and respondent have something to say to each other. Teachers can take place as a resource to help them in designing questionnaire with an appropriate topic chosen by the students. The questionnaire results can be used for discussion, prepared talks, or written work afterwards.

Then, the last category is simulation and role-play. Moreover, simulation and role-play also have three advantages; the activities can be both entertaining and motivating since it allows students to stimulate a real life situation, it may encourage students to speak since they will not have a great demand of their talks since they will act as different character, and there is a great chance for students to broaden their language knowledge as well as to use wider range of language.

Text-based Language Teaching

The Nature of Text, A text is any stretch of spoken or written language that is meaningful in a social context. It is meaningful because it fulfils a social purpose and represents a unified whole. The important thing about the nature of the text is that, although when we write it down it looks as though it is made of words and sentences. It is really made of meanings. A text is essentially a semantic unit. Different text-types with has consistent pattern and certain social purposes are called genre. Genre can be defined as culturally specific texts with particular patterns that fulfil different social purposes. Language users draw on genres to fulfil their individual purposes. Both cultural and social context influence on the way the texts are structured.

In social context, there are three variables: field, tenor and mode. Field, It refers to what is going on (the activity). It is about who does what to whom and under what circumstances. Tenor, It refers to the relationship between people in a social situation ( the people’s status, how often they have contact, whether there is an element of power). Mode, It refers to the channel of communication (spoken or written language, face to face or over distance communication). These three variables, field, tenor and mode, work together to create texts that function in social context.

The Relationship between Text and Context, There is a reciprocal relationship between text and context. The variables of social context (field, tenor and mode) will determine the way the text is constructed. And  learners use their skills to work with texts to make meaning in various socio-cultural contexts. So both text and context influence each other.

A Text-based Teaching Methodology: The Text-based Working Cycle, There are some principles and issues which become basis for a text-based teaching methodology: 1) Language learning is concerned with how to work with texts in social contexts, 2) The goal of language learning is to acquire skills and knowledge to respond to and compose texts for social context, 3) In the process of learning language, learners learn language, learn through language and learn about language. 4) Language learning is a social process between teacher and students in which meanings are constructed, responded to, interpreted, negotiated and created in texts.5) Scaffolding is ‘teacher’s talk’ during the process of teaching and learning. It is a must that the teacher use English, such as when calling for the roll, greeting, leave taking, appreciating, rewarding, etc. These will give the students motivation to do so and to practice English in the class. Teacher is a model for them. It is important to support and guide students through interaction until finally they can do the tasks independently. 6)‘Zone of Proximal Development’(ZPD) is a space to growth for students in their social environment. It means that their language acquisition will develop better if they are supported by their social life, such as family, society and school. To gain the level of independent performance, adults must help the students to develop their language.

Practically, there are four stages of a text-based teaching methodology. And those four stages are linked each other to form a cycle. Each stage consists of several activities done by the students facilitated by the teachers.

No	Stage	Purpose	Activity
1.	Understanding Context of text (Building knowledge of the field)	To get learners to understand the context of the text, the purpose, text structure, audience and language features.	The teacher facilitates the students: -          To understand the roles and relationships of the text composer and its audience. -          To understand the language features (words, grammar, tone) of the text. -          To know the mode of language (spoken or written language) and different kinds of relationship (personal, formal, intimate, cautious, distant)
2.	Understanding Text (Modelling)	To help students to further examine the social purpose and overall structure of the text for the context in stage 1.	The teacher facilitates the students: -          To understand the presentation texts in context, sorting, matching, sequencing and labelling exercises and activities on cohesive devices, such as conjunction, lexical items, references, grammatical features: verb tenses, articles, adverbs, word choices and word combination. -          To understand the level of expression, such as the use of spoken and written language, tone, intonation, gestures, attitude, emotion, politeness formula. -          To share their ideas about text aspects in a collaborative and supportive processes. -          To interact with the text, the teacher and others
3.	Constructing Text	To guide students jointly construct texts with the teacher and the peer.	The teacher facilitates the students: -          To work with group/pair-group or whole class -          To share the idea on language features, vocabulary, and a particular structure of text in group by discussing them with more competent peer. -          To promote oral activities among students guided by the teacher. -          To start constructing the text-type and the teacher gradually reduces the contribution to the text.
4.	Applying Text	To respond to and to create the text themselves, without the help of others.	The teacher facilitates the students: -          To apply the knowledge and understanding of constructing text by themselves. -          To consult with teacher if it is needed. -          To do some revision of the text.

In text-based language teaching, grammar must be taught explicitly. It may be presented in stage 1 (Understanding Context of text) or in stage 2 (modelling). Explicitness in teaching language features and structural text give the students some benefits, as follows: 1) The students get to know the correlation between knowing how texts work and making meaning in text. 2)  They become aware of the text’s purpose and social contexts.

Adopting the text-based methodology to teach spoken exchanges, Spoken language activities (conversation, dialogue) become a fundamental way in communication, both in the classroom and in the social life. Through spoken language, the relationship between speakers are maintained, information is exchanged, service is done and knowledge is gained. So teaching spoken language is also possible by using text- based language teaching as suggested. Here is the example:

No	Stage	Activity
1.	Understanding the context of text	-          Discussing in group, pair or whole class about the subject, topic of several texts given. -          Finding the context by comparing among texts. -          Finding the purpose and the setting of the text
2.	Understanding text	-          Discussing about text-structure of conversation, the social purpose, language features, word choices, sentence structure, types of polite request. -          Discussing the model conversation text. -          Discussing about adjacency pairs/formulaic language (offer/accept, request/grant, question/answer)
3.	Constructing Text	-          Teacher and students, students and students in pair or group, talk and share to construct purposeful conversation texts. -          Role play can be used to enable the students take over the activity by themselves. -          Both teacher and students assess the activity
4.	Applying Text	-          The students construct the conversation text by themselves without the teacher’s intervention or guidance

Designing a Course in the Text-based Approach, The steps are: 1) Identifying the learners’ needs and goals; During enrolment, the students have to take part in a placement test to determine to what degree they belong: beginner, intermediate or advance. Details such as name, gender, age, date of arrival in the English-speaking country, level of education, country of origin, home language, prior English learning, placement test results, recommended level are recorded. 2) Course Planning: Based on the data above, the students are placed in a course suitable to their needs and goals, recommended language level, age, learning pace and education level. 3) Organizing Course Content; The course content is often organized into topics or learning outcomes. The duration of a course and hours are allocated for topics or learning outcome depend on the availability of time and organizational patterns of the courses of a language institute. 4) Topics as Items of Course Content; Course content may contain: A set of related topics which covers a number of social contexts, Text-types that may occur in those social contexts with their particular language features, Skills, strategies and learning outcomes.5) Learning Outcomes as Items of Course Content; When a learning outcome is chosen by the teacher, it needs to be contextualized for teaching. So various social contexts for that learning outcome will be set up for the students to respond to or to compose a particular purposeful text.

Assessment in the Text-based Approach, Assessment is an important component of the course, the objective of which is to find out whether students have achieved the Learning Outcomes set out in the course objectives. Assessment must be based on learning outcome and the result is gather and analyzed. It serves as a basis to make an appropriate revision and planning of teaching and learning experience in a course.

Assessment is on-going in the Text-based Working Cycle, On-going assessment is administered to get an evidence of students’ performance and progress. It also enables the teacher to plan teaching and learning experiences and revise a unit of work to facilitate more appropriate learning for students, lead them towards achieving the intended outcomes. It is carried out in every stage. It can be formal or informal assessment. In constructing text and applying text, assessment at various stages of the text-based working cycle is known as summative assessment, the objective of which is to certify specific level of achievement.

Criterion-referenced Assessment, It is a type of assessment in which student performance in each of the learning outcomes is assessed against certain explicit standards called assessment criteria. Any assessment of leaning outcome should be made in reference to three variables: 1) Assessment Criteria. It provides evidence of students’ achievement, skills/competencies in course outcomes, 2) Assessment Conditions. It is a description of circumstances or modes in which an assessment is done, 3) Assessment Tasks. It mentions activities to be used in an assessment, such as going on holiday, booking at travel agent.

Explicitness in Assessment, Prior to assessment, Assessment Criteria, Assessment Conditions and Assessment Tasks need to be discuss explicitly with students to make sure that they are well aware of the requirements of an assessment, how their performance is assessed and how their achievement is judged and recorded.

Reliability and Validity in Assessment, Reliability in assessment refers to consistency in the teacher’s judgment of students’ achievement. While validity in assessment refers to the idea that assessment should be based on the content, skills and knowledge that have been specified. It should assess what it sets out in the course.

Problems related to Students: Why, What, and some possible solutions.

A. Why problems occur

Rose senior (2006: Chapter 5) points out that when students come to class they bring with them their own personalities and their learning expectations. Their behavior will also be influenced by their current circumstances and by what happens in the lessons. There is always, as well the possibility of interpersonal tensions between students and between students and their teacher.

·         The family: students’ experiences in their families have a profound influence on their attitudes to learning and to authority.

·         Learning expectations: previous learning experiences of all kinds affect students’ behavior.

·         Approval: a student’s self-esteem may result partly from the way the teacher behaves and students also look for approval from their peers.

·         What the teacher does: a lot will depend on how we, as teachers, behave in class. The way that we react to inappropriate behavior will have a profound influence on our students’ subsequent behavior.

·         Success and failure: failure is a powerful engine for problem behavior. Teachers need, therefore, to manage for student success.

·         External factor: some external factors may affect students’ behavior, too, such as, feeling tired, classroom is too hot or too cold, discomfort, and noise from outside the classroom.

B. Creating successful classrooms

We need to examine how we can try to ensure that the classroom is a success-oriented environment.

Ø  Behavior norms

All groups – whether in education or anywhere else – have ways of behaving and quickly establish norms for this behavior which delineate the ways things are done in the group. There are three things we need to bear in mind in order to achieve this, namely, norms need to be explicitly discussed, norms can be jointly negotiated and norms need to be reviewed and revisited.

Ø  How teachers can ensure successful behavior

Without good rapport, creating an appropriate group atmosphere and identity is extremely difficult. But there are other things, too, which we can do to ensure a positive class atmosphere, namely, start as we mean to go on, know what we are going to do, plan for engagement, prioritize success, equality rules, and praise is better than blame.

C. Modifying problem behavior

When students behave disruptively or uncooperatively, our first task is to find out what the problem is. We can then see if we can agree a solution with the student who is exhibiting the offending behavior so that we can set a target for them to aim at – one which will ensure the success we are striving for. There are many things to bear in mind if we wish to achieve these goals: act immediately, keep calm, focus on the behavior not the student, take things forward, talk in private, use clearly agreed sanctions, and use colleagues and the institution.

D. What if?

Ø  What if students are all at different levels?

One of the biggest problems teachers face is classes where the students are at different levels. Even if things are not quite so extreme, teachers of English regularly face mixed-ability groups where different individuals are at different levels and have different abilities. There are the possible ways of dealing with this situation, namely, use different materials/technology, do different tasks with the same material/technology, ignore the problem, and use the students.

Many teachers, faced with students at different levels, adopt a mixture of solutions. However, it is vitally important that this is done in a supportive and non-judgmental manner. Students should not be made to feel in any way inferior, but rather should have the benefits of different treatment explained to them. Furthermore, we should be sensitive to their wishes so that if they do not want to be treated differently, we should work either to persuade them of its benefits or, perhaps, accede to their wishes.

Ø  What if the class is very big?

In big classes, it is difficult for the teacher to make contact with the students at the back and ask for and received individual attention. Most importantly, big classes can be quite intimidating for inexperienced teachers. Despite the problem of big classes, there are things which teachers can do, namely, use worksheets, use pairwork and groupwork, use chorus reaction, use group leaders, think about vision and acoustics, and use the size of the group to your advantage.

No one chooses to have a large group. It makes the job of teaching even more challenging that it already is. However, some of the suggestions above will help to turn a potential disaster into some kind of a success.

Ø  What if students keep using their own language?

Students often do so because they want to communicate in the best way they can and so, almost without thinking. They revert to their own language. But however much we sympathize with this behavior, the need to have students practicing English in such situations remains paramount, and so we will need to do something to make it happen, namely talk to them about the issues, encourage them to use English appropriately, only respond to English use, create an English environment and keep reminding them.

Ø  What if students don’t do homework?

Teachers sometimes give out homework tasks with no special enthusiasm, students don’t always do it and teachers don’t especially enjoy marking it. In some schools, systems have been developed to deal with this situation. Students all have a homework diary in which they have to write their homework tasks, and whether or not they have done them. Their parents have to sign off their homework diaries at the end of the week so there is some hope that they will ensure that their sons and daughters do the required tasks. Teachers should try to ask the students, make it fun, respect homework, and make post-homework productive.

Ø  What if students are uncooperative?

Problem behavior can take many forms: constant chattering in class, not listening to the teacher, disengagement from what’s going on, blunt refusal to do certain activities or to do what they are told, constant lateness and even rudeness. There are a number of ways teachers can react to problem behavior, namely, remember that it’s ‘just a job’; deal with the behavior, not the student; and be even-handed.

Ø  What if students don’t want to talk?

Whatever the reason, it makes no sense to try forcing such students to talk. It will probably only make them more reluctant to speak. There are other much better things to try: using pairwork, allow them to speak in a controlled way at first, use ‘acting out’ and reading aloud, use role-play and use recording.

Ø  What if students don’t understand the audio track?

Sometimes, despite the best judgment of the teacher (or the materials designer), listening material seems to be too difficult for students to understand. The teacher then abandons the activity and everyone loses face. There are a number of alternatives to this scenario which can help. They are preview interview questions; use ‘jigsaw listening’; one task only; play a/the first segment only; play the listening in chunks; use the audioscript; use vocabulary prediction and have students listen all the time.

Ø  What if some students finish before everybody else?

If only one group finishes way before the others, we can work with that group or provide them with some extra material. If only one group is left without having finished, we may decide to stop the activity anyway because the rest of the class shouldn’t be kept waiting. One way of dealing with the problem is for the teacher to carry around a selection of spare activities – little worksheets, puzzle, readings, etc – which can be done quickly and which will keep the early-finishing students happy until the others have caught up. Another solution is to plan extensions to the original task so that if groups finish early, they can do extra work on it.

References

Harmer, Jeremy. 2007a. The Practice of English Language Teaching.       Malaysia: Pearson Education Limited.

Harmer, Jeremy. 2007b. How to Teach English. China: Pearson Education   Limited.

Thai, Minc Duc. 2009. Text-based Language Teaching. Australia: Mazmania Press.