Teaching Dialogical Speech at Different Levels of Language Acquisition

b) Speech samples from different learners are directly comparable because they are based on the same pictures; virtually the same story or interpretation will be given. This makes it easier to judge which learners communicate best.

c) At the same time, the words used by a learner are not completely predetermined; there is still a lot of opportunity for personal expression and interpretation.

d) A good picture can be the stimulus that generates the confidence to speak and a flow of conversation. If this is its purpose, the picture can be abandoned as soon as this warming-up has been achieved [27, 67].

Disadvantages

a) With a visual stimulus, there is a danger that the learner will miss the point of a picture or story, for personal or cultural reasons. A learner from a culture in which men regularly cook, for example, may not react much to a picture story in which a man is cooking for his wife on a special occasion and making a mess of it. He would find it difficult to say much about such a mundane story. A learner from another culture, however, might appreciate the intended humour better, and may therefore have more to say. Even if the first learner is not penalized directly for missing the point, he may get marked down for having little to say [17, 30].

b) Unless vocabulary items in the picture are supplied, the learner who knows the names of only two or three crucial items will be at a strong advantage over those who do not. Even if the items are supplied on request, and marks not deducted, it is psychologically demotivating to have to ask for vocabulary before you begin.

c) Suitable cartoon stories are hard to find and difficult for an amateur to draw. Even deciding on a good storyline can be a difficult task. Particularly in situations where learners can and will discuss with each other details of the test, it may be necessary to find several alternative pictures or stories to use in rotation [13, 37].

 

Chapter III

Teaching Dialogical Speech: Elementary to Advanced Levels

3.1. Elementary level

Elementary level usually involves pupils of primary school in specialized schools and those of 4th or 5th grade in general comprehensive schools. Though the age of the learners is different in these corresponding groups there are some ideas for teaching dialogical speech that might be useful and helpful in work with both groups of pupils. We’ll need such things:

• a book of Calvin and Hobbes cartoons or your other favorite cartoon from a book or the newspaper;
• several copies of an easy to read book that contains dialogue (we used the "Bunnicula" easy to read spin-off books);
• sentence strips;
• sharpie markers;
• paper and pencil for the kids;
• notes on paper for the kids – it is better to try using the reteach page that might come with the teacher’s language series.

The first step of dialogical teaching at the elementary level is brainstorm – we ask the kids what they already know about dialogue. What is it? They will probably say "people talking". The teacher is to guide them to tell more... what does it look like in a book? (quotation marks) How do you know who is speaking? (tag lines / "details") . . . one will be surprised how much they come up with when they can bounce ideas off each other. We may ask someone to give an example and write it on the board. The example can be used to help the teacher discuss the placement of the punctuation and tag line with the students. It is also possible to discuss how tag lines can be made more interesting by using adverbs to spice things up ("I have a stomachache," moaned Sara.) [12, 28].

The second step is to have kids write down what the class has brainstormed as part of their notes, including the example. We can provide some written notes on paper, but it is also good to have them add a few things. When they write it themselves, it is much more meaningful.

Then, we use our language series reteach page. It is very easy. It just lists a bunch of sentences written as a dialogue and the pupils very simply have to underline exactly the words that were said. All the students could do this very quickly, making this a good confidence booster.

The second task on the reteach page we can use is to have pupils write a 5 line conversation of their own. Instead of following the directions exactly here, we can have kids get into groups of 2 or 3 and make up the conversation together. The teacher should remember, we have only just barely introduced this so we don't feel the need to silent, solo seat work at this point.

The following step is to have pupils "perform" their conversations and discuss where they included punctuation.

During another lesson, it is useful to distribute copies of some easy to read books that contain dialogue. The teacher can use the Bunnicula spin-off books which are aimed at a 3rd grade reading level or lower. The task is to have pupils find the examples of dialogue like a scavenger hunt. Have them find one with the tag line in the beginning of the sentence, for example. Have them find one exclamatory, one declarative, one imperative and one interrogative sentence. Extend it as far as you want it to go. The teacher could give them one item to find at a time and the first pair that finds it correctly gets a point. The group with the most points at the end of the class could win an ice cream from the cafeteria or a small prize.

During a subsequent lesson, the teacher gives pupils a couple of frames from a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon. We can get cartoons from the paper or a book and have pupils work in pairs to take the dialogue in the speech balloons and write it as dialogue. Pupils can then put together their work as a class to complete the whole story [15, 32].

Another thing we can do is to write some quotations on sentence strips, cut them up and have pupils arrange them appropriately so they can show the teacher that they know where the punctuation goes. This makes a great centers activity and informal assessment.

For morning work or as an "exit ticket" it would be quite effective to chop up some tests that include dialogue. This way, pupils will be familiar with the kind of questions asked and the format of the test.

3.2. Pre-intermediate level

Pre-intermediate students perhaps can best be summarized with the following statement: They are in a state of transition, having acquired the basics of the language yet unable to use these elements consistently and accurately. 
The weakest of pre-intermediate students can handle short, basic conversations relegated to work, family, hobbies, and other areas of interest. In many cases, a lack of vocabulary sends the students scurrying for dictionaries, as they don't yet possess the ability to explain around unknown words. In fact, vocabulary usage remains quite low, and suffices for simple conversations. These conversations tend towards the reactive rather than the participatory. In other words, students can ask and answer questions, but little or no additional information or follow-up questions voluntarily occur. The conversations often feel more like an interview. 
Stronger students at this level similarly react to conversations, unless otherwise directed by the teacher. (For example, the teacher instructs the students to speak about two questions for at least five minutes, or assigns the class to ask additional questions based on a partner's response.) Stronger students may also speak with somewhat more ability and confidence on less familiar topics, yet they will do so with long pauses. These topics will need to focus more on concrete, everyday aspects like travel, friends, or work. Discussions on politics, the environment, and most current events will generate only the most elementary of responses, and will lead to frustration rather than a meaningful opportunity to practice the language [20,15]. 
 In order to show the practical skills of pre-intermediate students we prepared some types of exercises such as ordering, matching, gap filling, finding your partner mill drills, completing the dialogue, relay dictation, stripper dialogues, incorrect dictation, Jigsaw listening as a review, freaky friday opposites, reconstructing dialogues, directed dialogues/role-plays, conveying attitudes, lost in translation, write and swap. These exercises are very helpful in improving speaking, listening, reading and writing skills.

Ordering:

The teacher cut up the dialogue and pairs reorder.

Matching: 

The students should match prompts with replies. Then the teacher cuts up cards and pairs match and type on paper. The task of students is to match individually in pairs. The students should practice reading with good intonation and pronunciation. Once matched drill chorally and individually. The teacher gives students prompts and elicit responses.

Gap fill:

The students’ task is to make a gap fill in order to highlight a grammar point or lexical set. They need to white out all future tenses (this could be a lead in to a grammar presentation) and white out all foods and drinks. The teacher may asked the students to write in their own ideas.  This could work like a substitution drill.

Find your partner mill drills:

The teacher takes a pair of clear /obvious prompts and replies from several dialogues.  Each prompt/reply should be written on a separate card. The students memorize their phrase.  Student A walks around the class saying his phrases to other students. All students must  listen to each other’s  phrases.  The goal is to find your partner.  The partners have to stand together when they found each other.  As a check, the teacher asks students to say their prompts/replies for the whole class. She might want to follow up by asking the class in what situation would they hear these phrases.

Complete the dialogue:

The teacher whites out one of the character’s lines in the dialogue.  Pairs work together to complete the dialogue.  Pairs compare with the original version. Then she leaves the first two lines of the original dialogue intact.  The teacher whites out character B’s lines and gives the paper to student B and whites out character A’s lines and gives to student A.  After that she  pairs A’s together to complete their dialogues and pairs B’s together to complete their dialogue. The teacher switches pairs and puts A’s and B’s together, too.  A’s and B’s read their side of the conversation to see if the whole conversation makes sense.  They could discuss changes that should be made and compare with the original dialogue. 

Relay dictation

  The teacher explains the context and situation and elicits the sort of things people might say in this situation.  The teacher posts sentences from the dialogue in a random order at back of room.  Student A looks at the paper and memorizes the sentence.  The teacher returns to team and dictates sentence to Student B.  Student B goes to the back of the room and tries to memorize the next sentence.  She returns to the team and dictates to student C.  The team that finishes the first gets one point. The teacher explains that some sentences are spoken by the Person A and some by Person B.  She  asks students to identify which sentences are spoken by whom and to order the dialogue. Then she  gives a copy of the original dialogue.  Students can check the dictation (including spelling) and the order.

Stripper dialogues

The teacher boards a simple and short dialogue on the board. She drills it and  erases the last part of the first sentence. She asks students to read aloud together; they must supply the language that has been erased. She erases the second half of the second sentence and repeats. She has to keep repeating this process until all of the dialogue has been erased and students are doing it from memory.

Incorrect dictation

The teacher tells students that her eyes are very tired. Then she explains that she will try to read a dialogue for them but that she might make mistakes. The teacher asks students to underline any part of the dialogue which differs from what she actually say. She  reads the dialogue making deliberate mistakes (house instead of hotel, drop you off rather than pick you up). She checks the differences with students and asks what they have actually said (this is great for generating more vocabulary, such as antonyms or synonyms). Then she may asked some basic comprehension questions.

Jigsaw listening as a review

The teacher pre-records three or four dialogues on different blank tapes. She  puts different groups into different rooms and asks them to answer some questions.  For example: What is the situation?  Who are the people?  What is happening?  How do they feel?  How do you know?  They can listen as many times as they’d like.  When they are ready, the teacher asks one person from each listening group to form a new group for speaking.  Each student can explain the situation to their partner in their own words.  Perhaps they could wrap up by saying which conversation was most interesting, amusing, etc.

Freaky Friday Opposites

The teacher gives each pair a dialogue with the instruction that they should re-write it and make it opposite in meaning.  So, if the dialogue says “Oh, I am very sorry, sir” then the students re-write it to say something like, “Serves you right, sir”.  Or they change the following…Teacher: “Could you all please sit down and be quiet while I am talking?” Students: “Sorry, Ms. Calton.” New Dialogue: Teacher: “Could you all please stand up and shout while I am talking?” Students: “Of course Ms. Calton”. These can be quite funny depending on the situation. The teacher ask the students to perform this dialogue in front of the others. 

Reconstructing dialogues

The teacher asks students to read through a dialogue. She tells them that they should try to remember as many details as possible and takes away the dialogues.  In pairs the teacher asks students to write down key words that they can remember.  Which pair could remember the most items?  The students should compare their key words open class and board the words.  The teacher asks them to work together and try to reconstruct the dialogue.  Then the pairs compare dialogues and check against the original.

Directed Dialogues/Role-plays

As a warmer, the teacher gives students prompts.  They should create their own dialogues.  She can get inspiration from pre-made dialogues.  For example:

Student A: Welcome your guest   Student B: Respond

Student A: Ask about the journey   Student B: Respond

          (negatively)

Student A: Say you’re sorry.              Student B: Respond

Conveying attitudes

We got this idea from a transactional psychology book we read recently. The teacher gives each student a role-card, explaining who he or she is, how she feels and why.  (This book pointed out that we can assume different roles in any given situation and we have expectations for how people should respond to us in the given situations.)  The student A should read his part in character and the student B should try to respond in an appropriate manner.  Here we can consider the tone of voice, intonation patters, gestures, etc.  The audience should try to guess what the student is trying to convey, how he feels and why.  The teacher might also give the student, the freedom to adlib and add on.

Lost in translation

  The teacher divides the class into groups.  Each group is assigned the speech bubbles from one character.  (This can be typed up on separate pieces of paper for each group).  Each group translates their sentences/phrases into Ukrainian on a separate piece of paper.  This can be done in class or as homework. Groups then exchange their translations with other groups. Now students must translate their classmates’ Ukrainian back into English. The teacher allows students in each group to consult each other. She compares it with the original dialogue and helps  to highlight and drill any phrases or lexical chunks that students had difficulty with.

Write and Swap

The teacher gives students a situation, such as “Dealing with complaints”. She   asks them to brainstorm around the topic.  For example, she boards a list of what passengers may complain about and boards another list of phrases used to show sympathy, etc.  Then she asks students to work in pairs to write their own dialogue by choosing some of the boarded items.  Teacher checks dialogues. Then the pairs switch and perform another pairs dialogue for the class [16, 25].

 

 

 

3.3.Intermediate level

The Intermediate student is a very pleasant person to deal with. He/she has begun to communicate in English fairly well; can describe interests, preferences and daily activities, can inquire about matters of common interest and even about your health. This is the stage at which the student enjoys learning English the most. The student is happy to be able to converse in English; it is a newly found freedom of expression ( previously his thoughts and desires were confined to his own inner mind) which opens wide a window of opportunites including travel, study abroad and research [30, 214].

We designed a set of practical tasks and activities focused on developing speaking skills of intermediate students in the form of lesson  on the topic “Pleasure or reading”.  This lesson contains such teaching sections as grammar section, reading section, social English section.

This unit begins with the introductory debates. It’s common knowledge that reading is not popular among teenagers nowadays. In two groups the students should decide ‘Why to read?” The teacher divides the students into "optimists" and "pessimists". They use the previously learned material as the ideas and the language support follow the model for the debates given in their lessons.

The next task is making up and presenting stories. In two groups (the teacher should divide the students in groups according to their studying level. Group A is more advanced students and Group B is of lower level). The students make up a story using the words of narration and connectors and present their stories in class. The teacher can add some more words of narration. E.g:

- to begin with

- from the very start

- mentioned above

- before

- until

- as soon as

……………

Group A makes up a story using the pictures given by the teacher and Group В completes the story.

The second task is group or pair work. Each group or pair picks out two or more pictures and prepares a short presentation in a form of a chain story or a dialogue. One of the criteria for evaluation is using of connectors and words of narration.

Sample 1.

A chain story.

S1: At the beginning of the day my family had breakfast as usual.

S2: Afterwards I rode a bike to school because we don’t have a car.

S3: Just then I met my classmate…

Sample2.

A dialogue.

S1: - You see Frank, our lessons are over. Let’s first go to the swimming pool and then play football.

S2:- Although I like your idea I’m afraid I can’t.

S1:- But why?

S2: - Actually I must walk my dog and later on I should prepare or the test.

S1: - O.K. don’t mind. Anyhow we can play football on Sunday [36, 8]

  The following grammar section helps students to improve their knowledge in future tenses.

 Task 1

The teacher divides the jigsaw dialogue given in the exercise in parts. In pairs the students complete their part of the dialogue using suitable future forms. Then the pairs set out the logical turn of narration and act out the dialogue in chain.

Task 2

The teacher distributes the pictures and the captions among the students so as every student has either a picture or a caption. The students find their pairs matching a picture with the caption. Then they make up a short dialogue illustrating the situation in the picture using the caption.

E.g. S1: - What’s the matter? You are crying, dear.

       S2: - I’m so upset. You don’t remember about my birthday!

       S1: - Don’t be blue. I know I’ve forgotten about your birthday today but there’ll be others.

Task 3

The teacher combines the real life situations from parts A, B of the exercise from students’ book.  The students in turn pick out the cards with these situations, tell about it to the class asking for advice. Other students give their piece of advice in turns following the criteria:

using future forms;

         reasoning;

E.g. S1: - My mother is very tired after work and I’m hungry.

       S2: - Are you going to warm the cooked stew from the fridge?

       S3: - Will you go to the supermarket for some ready made food?

       S4: - I think, you won’t die while your mother is having a short rest. Wait  a bit.

       S5: - ………………………………………………………….. [18, 152]

   Reading Section presents the ideas of practising reading skills and carries out cognitive function.

Task 1

The teacher can arrange a jigsaw reading in three groups with filling in the format and exchanging the information.

Sample format

questions	Group 1	Group 2	Group 3
1. The topic of the passage	The earliest books	Invention of printing	Famous libraries
2.Historic period	Ancient times	Middle ages	19th– 20th centuries
3.The most peculiar facts	- on tablets of wood or pieces of bark; - clay tablets and papyrus; - skins of young animals; - survived until the present days	- books were handwritten; - libraries used to chain books; -Johan Guttenberg invented printing first	- the system of public libraries appeared; - the largest library is the Library of the US Congress (90 mln items); -computers and electronic catalogues are used