REMEDIAL INSTRUCTION IN ENGLISH (SYLLABUS)

This three-unit course in Remedial Instruction in English deals with the strategies and methods of contemporary
English language teaching. This is geared for English language learners who are faced with difficulty in
communicative competence in one or more domains. It also attempts to provide actual remediation through
hands-on practice and various situational case studies. It focuses in helping the slow learners and disabled
readers to find the golden key to the enlightenment and enjoyment by converting these learners into voracious
readers.

I. Orientation to Functional Grammar

a) Parts of speech
b) Verbs & Tenses
c) Sentences Structures
Suggested Reading/ Resource Materials
Theory and Problems of ENGLISH GRAMMAR Third Edition by Eugene Ehrlich
II. How to teach English
1. Vocabulary
a) Compound words
b) Conversions
c) Word-attack skills

2. Listening and Comprehension:

a) Grasping the gist g) Note- making skill / Dictation
b) Identifying the specific & h) Reproducing / transforming short
extracting relevant information aural and oral texts
c) Following i) Comprehending interviews /
Stress/Volume/Tone/Pace of speaker Report / Articles
d) Correcting the pronunciation j) Reading Handout / Describing
e) Understanding instructions Pictures
f) Answering oral questions

3. Speaking and oral interaction

Different language functions in Daily life situation:
a. to give personal details: name, age, f. to describe
qualification, address etc. picture/map/chart/diagram
b. to make g. to take part in short contextualized
requests/offers/Proposal/statements dialogues
c. to give instruction/to ask & answer h. to present specific topic
questions i. to converse/to transforms/ to
d. to agree/to disagree/ to argue prepare speech.
e. to invite/apologize/ refute/ regret/ j. to debate and discuss
welcome/ condole/ congratulate k. to read/ to recite aloud
l. to reproduce/to define/to interpret

Books Recommended:
1. Fifty Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners
Herrell, Adrienne and Michael Jordan (California State Univ.)
2. The Practice of English Language Teaching by Jeremy Harmer (Cambridge, UK)
REMDENG: REMEDIAL INSTRUCTION IN ENGLISH
(http://www.dlsu.edu.ph/academics/programs/undergraduate/ced/bse-eng.asp)
3 units
This course is designed for students and prospective teachers to acquire a deeper perspective of the importance
of reading as a necessary tool for learning the different subject areas. Particularly it is intended to familiarize the
teacher/student with the different reading difficulties met by learners and to be able to help the learners with
reading disabilities to acquire skills and improve their reading abilities through a functional management of the
program of reading remediation and correction.

ENGL 316. Remedial Instruction in English, 3 units

Develops the students ability to organize, design, implement and evaluate a remedial English program in many
of the four-macro skills.
(http://www.mvc.edu.ph/main/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=118:description-of-courses-
major-in-english&catid=74:school-of-education&Itemid=132)

Remedial Instruction in English (Teaching oral skills)

http://www.slideshare.net/darlingniugibac9/teaching-oral-skills

Remedial Instruction in English

(http://gegrapha74.wordpress.com/about/)

FOUR GENERIC INSTRUCTIONAL MODELS

MODEL # 1 Listening and Repeating

Learner Goals: To pattern-match; to listen and initiate; to memorize

Instructional material: Features audio-lingual style exercises and/or dialogue memorization based on a
hearing-and-pattern matching model.

Procedure: Ask students to a) listen to a word, phrase, or sentence pattern; b) repeat and imitate it; and c)
memorize it often, but not always a part of the procedure.
Value: Enables students to do pattern drills , to repeat dialogues, and to use memorized prefabricated patterns in
conversation; enables them to imitate pronunciation patterns. Higher level cognitive processing and use; d)
propositional language structuring are not necessarily an intentional focus.

Model # 2 Listening and Answering Comprehension Questions

Learner Goals: To process discrete-point information; to listen and answer comprehension questions.

Instructional material: Features a student response-pattern based on a listening and question answering model
with occasional innovative variations on this theme.
Procedure: Ask students to a) listen to an oral text along a continuum from sentence length to lecture length;
and b) answer primarily factual question. Use familiar types of questions adapted from traditional reading
comprehension exercises. Also called a quiz-show format of teaching.

Value: 1) enable students to manipulate discrete pieces of information, hopefully with increasing speed and
accuracy of recall; 2) Increase students stock of vocabulary and grammar constructions; 3) Do not require
students to make use of the information for any real communicative purpose beyond answering the questions; 4)
Is not interactive two-way communication.

Model # 3 Task Listening

Learner goals: To process spoken discourse for functional purposes; to listen and do something with the
information, that is, carry out real tasks using the information received.

Instructional material: Ask students to a) Listening-and using (listen-and do) response pattern; b) Complete a
task, solve a problem, transmit the gist of the information orally or in writing; listen and take lecture notes, etc.

Procedure: Ask students to a) listen and process information b) use the orally transmitted language input
immediately to complete a task which is mediated thru language in a context in which success is judged in
terms of whether the task is performed.

Value: The focus is task-oriented, not question-oriented. to use info., not to answer it. There are two types of
tasks:
1) language use tasks: to give students practice in listening, grab gist of it and make functional use of it

2) language analysis tasks: to help students develop cognitive and metacognitive language learning strategies,
i.e., to guide them toward personal intellectual involvement in their own learning.

NOTE:

Metacognitive is a term used in information-processing theory to indicate an executive function, strategies

that involve planning for learning, thinking about the learning process as it is taking place, monitoring of ones
production or comprehension, and evaluating learning after an activity is completed.

e.g., a composition, a lecture, a short essay, etc.

Cognitive strategies are more limited to specific learning tasks and involve more direct manipulation of the
learning material itself.

Model # 4 Interactive Listening

Learner goals: To develop aural/oral skill in semiformal interactive academic communication; to develop
critical listening, critical thinking, and effective speaking abilities.
Instructional material: Two-way communication by means of individual or small-group presentation or
discussion, followed by audience participation in Q&A.

Procedure: Ask students to participate in discussion activities that enable them to develop all three phases of the
speech act: speech decoding, critical thinking, and speech encoding.

Value: the focus is communicative/competence-oriented as well as task oriented. Learners have opportunities to
engage in and develop the complex array of communicative skills in the four competency areas: linguistic
competence, discourse competence, sociolinguistic competence, and strategic competence.

Some Psychosocial dimensions of Language and the Listening act

Purpose: to bring students to an understanding that listening is not a passive skill, but an active receptive skill
which requires as much work as does becoming skilled in reading, writing, and speaking in a second language.
Listening in three modes:

Bidirectional (two-way) listening mode Two (or more) participants take turns exchanging speaker role and
listener role as they engage in face-to-face or telephone verbal interaction.

Unidirectional (one-way) listening mode auditory input comes from a variety of sources: overheard
conversations, public address announcements, recorded messages (telephone answering machines), radio, TV,
lectures, religious services, etc. Being unable to interact, we respond by talking to ourselves or in self-dialogue
manner. We may sub-vocalize or even vocalize these responses.

Autodirectional listening mode or self-dialogue communication. In our thought process, as we think, plan
strategies, and make decisions, we talk to ourselves and listen to ourselves.

Psychosocial functions of listening:

Transactional function:

1) message-oriented

2) focus on content and conveying factual or propositional information

3) giving instructions, explaining, describing, giving directions, ordering, inquiring, requesting, relating, etc.

4) The premium is on message clarity and precision. Speakers often use confirmation checks to make sure what
they are saying is clear.

5) Its business-type talk.

Interactional function

1) person oriented
2) the objective is the establishment and maintenance of cordial social relationships.

3) examples: identifying with the other persons concerns, being nice to the other person, and maintaining and
respecting face.

4) Its social-type talk.

Developing listening comprehension activities and materials

Three principles for materials development

a) Relevance
b) Transferability/Applicability
c) Task Orientation

1. Relevance

Both the listening lesson content (the information) and the outcome (the way the information is put to use)
need to be as relevant as possible to the learner. This serves to hold learner attention and provide motivational
incentive.

The more the lessons focus on things with real-life relevance, the more they appeal to students, and the better
the chance of having learners wanting to listen.

If the listening activities is self-created, relevance is easy to control. If published materials are used, Richards
suggests some ways to adapt materials to suit students needs: modifying the objectives; adding prelistening
activities (warm-up); changing the teaching procedures for class presentation and devising postlistening
activities (wrap-up).

2. Transferability/Applicability

internally: can be used in other classes.

externally: can be used in out-of-school situations.

The best listening lessons present in-class activities that mirror real life, i.e.,
the use of radio or television news broadcasts in adult classes can provide not only a real experience in listening
comprehension, but such lessons also contain content that can be applicable outside of class as a source of
conversation topics.

3. Task Orientation

In children, teenage, and adult classes, it is productive to combine two

different kinds of focus: 1) language use tasks and 2) language analysis
activities.

Define Task?

a) to provide actual meaning by focusing on tasks through language.

Success is judged in terms of whether the tasks are performed.

b) It is task-oriented, not question-oriented, providing learners with tasks which

use the information in the aural text, rather than asking learners to prove their
understanding of the text by answering questions.

Focus 1: Language use tasks

to give students practice in listening and then doing something (Listen-and do), e.g., Simon says, taking
phone messages, outlining info. etc.

Focus 2: Language analysis tasks

aimed to give students opportunities to analyze selected aspects of language structure (i.e., form) and language
use (i.e., function) and to develop some personal strategies to facilitate learning.

Focus 2: Language analysis tasks.

To analyze fast speech, to chunk the input into units for interpretation, to analyze sociolinguistic dimensions,
including participants and their roles and relationships, settings, purpose of the communicative episode, and
expected outcomes, and to analyze strategies used by speakers to deal with miscommunication, communication
break-downs, distractions, etc.
Materials: Recordings of real-life conversations, talks, and discussions can be used to introduce listening
analysis tasks.

LECTURE 2

A Framework for Planning a Listening Skills Lesson

Listening is one of the most challenging skills for our students to develop and yet also one of the most
important. By developing their ability to listen well we develop our students ability to become more
independent learners, as by hearing accurately they are much more likely to be able to reproduce accurately,
refine their understanding of grammar and develop their own vocabulary.

In this article I intend to outline a framework that can be used to design a listening lesson that will develop your
students listening skills and look at some of the issues involved.

a. The basic framework

b. Pre-listening
c. While listening
d. Post-listening
e. Applying the framework to a song
f. Some conclusions

The basic framework

The basic framework on which you can construct a listening lesson can be divided into three main stages.

Pre-listening, during which we help our students prepare to listen.

While listening, during which we help to focus their attention on the listening text and guide the development of
their understanding of it.
Post-listening, during which we help our students integrate what they have learnt from the text into their
existing knowledge.

Pre-listening

There are certain goals that should be achieved before students attempt to listen to any text. These are
motivation, contextualisation, and preparation.

Motivation

It is enormously important that before listening students are motivated to listen, so you should try to select a text
that they will find interesting and then design tasks that will arouse your students interest and curiosity.

Contextualisation

When we listen in our everyday lives we hear language within its natural environment, and that environment
gives us a huge amount of information about the linguistic content we are likely to hear. Listening to a tape
recording in a classroom is a very unnatural process. The text has been taken from its original environment and
we need to design tasks that will help students to contextualise the listening and access their existing knowledge
and expectations to help them understand the text.

Preparation

To do the task we set students while they listen there could be specific vocabulary or expressions that students
will need. Its vital that we cover this before they start to listen as we want the challenge within the lesson to be
an act of listening not of understanding what they have to do.

While listening

When we listen to something in our everyday lives we do so for a reason. Students too need a reason to listen
that will focus their attention. For our students to really develop their listening skills they will need to listen a
number of times three or four usually works quite well as Ive found that the first time many students listen
to a text they are nervous and have to tune in to accents and the speed at which the people are speaking.
Ideally the listening tasks we design for them should guide them through the text and should be graded so that
the first listening task they do is quite easy and helps them to get a general understanding of the text. Sometimes
a single question at this stage will be enough, not putting the students under too much pressure.

The second task for the second time students listen should demand a greater and more detailed understanding of
the text. Make sure though that the task doesnt demand too much of a response. Writing long responses as they
listen can be very demanding and is a separate skill in itself, so keep the tasks to single words, ticking or some
sort of graphical response.

The third listening task could just be a matter of checking their own answers from the second task or could lead
students towards some more subtle interpretations of the text.

Listening to a foreign language is a very intensive and demanding activity and for this reason I think its very
important that students should have breathing or thinking space between listenings. I usually get my students
to compare their answers between listenings as this gives them the chance not only to have a break from the
listening, but also to check their understanding with a peer and so reconsider before listening again.

Post-listening

There are two common forms that post-listening tasks can take. These are reactions to the content of the text,
and analysis of the linguistic features used to express the content.

Reaction to the text

Of these two I find that tasks that focus students reaction to the content are most important. Again this is
something that we naturally do in our everyday lives. Because we listen for a reason, there is generally a
following reaction. This could be discussion as a response to what weve heard do they agree or disagree or
even believe what they have heard? or it could be some kind of reuse of the information they have heard.

Analysis of language

The second of these two post-listening task types involves focusing students on linguistic features of the text.
This is important in terms of developing their knowledge of language, but less so in terms of developing
students listening skills. It could take the form of an analysis of verb forms from a script of the listening text or
vocabulary or collocation work. This is a good time to do form focused work as the students have already
developed an understanding of the text and so will find dealing with the forms that express those meanings
much easier.

Applying the framework to a song.

Here is an example of how you could use this framework to exploit a song:

Pre-listening

Students brainstorm kinds of songs

Students describe one of their favourite songs and what they like about it

Students predict some word or expressions that might be in a love song

While listening

Students listen and decide if the song is happy or sad

Students listen again and order the lines or verses of the song
Students listen again to check their answers or read a summary of the song with errors in and correct them.

Post-listening

Focus on content
Discuss what they liked / didnt like about the song
Decide whether they would buy it / who they would buy it for
Write a review of the song for a newspaper or website
Write another verse for the song

Focus on form

Students look at the lyrics from the song and identify the verb forms
Students find new words in the song and find out what they mean
Students make notes of common collocations within the song

Conclusion

Within this article I have tried to describe a framework for listening development that could be applied to any
listening text. This isnt the only way to develop our students listening or to structure a listening lesson, but it is
a way that I have found to be effective and motivating for my students.

Jewell c. sasuya