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DIP Lesson Plans
As promised I’ve posted some important aspects of a Dip style lesson plan. This part of the plan about linguistic aims, assumptions, outcomes etc is crucial and will be discussed during your pre and post interviews. It is important for you to be able to justify your aims through stages, activities or tasks and show how you will measure the outcome has been achieved. As mentioned in a previous post, including some kind of phonological aspect will give you that extra mark and try to do as many lesson plans as possible before TP making sure your tutors provide you with feedback. Although you won’t know who your learners are before you have the TP apart from perhaps a rough profile, it’s a good idea to prepare lesson plans before TP. You will probably have to chop and change and adapt them to your learners needs when you get there but any prep is better than no prep!
In a real life lesson plan we can divert, change it around completely or spend more time on a stage if necessary, depending on our student’s responses and needs. However, in a 60 minute observation during TP you need to try and stick to the stages and address issues that are time consuming after class or in another class. The good thing is if your lesson doesn’t go to plan e.g. it is too easy for them or you feel you could have spent longer on a specific stage you can discuss this in your post interview and tell the examiner what you would have done instead. This demonstrates a reflective, experienced practitioner who KNOWS his/her stuff! And YOU DO!
Below are some examples, hope they’re helpful!
Referencing the ‘Gurus’
Referencing and quoting authors in your Unit one written exam as well as self evaluations is something highly recommended and will help your grade. This can be quite tricky, especially remembering an entire quote! I can’t even remember what I had to eat the night before let alone an entire quote by an ELT author! However, this can really up your grade. The key is to remember the idea or the point the author was trying to make rather than a word for word quote especially if it’s not a short catchy one like “Language consists of grammaticalised lexis, not lexicalised grammar” Lewis, 1993 (one of my favourites!)
By referencing you not only make your essay look more professional but its argument becomes more powerful which in turn means points for you! What I found useful was to add quotes to the areas I was revising and as I did spider diagrams on those subjects I added the views of the author or actual quote if it was easy to remember.
Below are some examples quotes linked to the different topics:
1. English as a Lingua Franca:
Jenny Jenkins “There is really no justification for doggedly persisting in referring to an item as an error if the vast majority of the world’s L2 English speakers produce and understand it” 2000
Peter Trudgill “Standard English may be the most important variety of English, in all sorts of ways: it is the variety of English normally used in writing, especially printing; it is the variety associated with the education system in all the English-speaking countries of the world, and is therefore the variety spoken by those who are often referred to as “educated people”; and it is the variety taught to non-native Learners” 1999
David Crystal “I take the view that all varieties of the language have an intrinsic value and interest, while recognising that one of these varieties – formal standard English – carries more social prestige and has more universal standing than any other” 2004
2. Writing skills:
Tricia Hedge “Writing… involves a number of activities: setting goals, generating ideas, organizing information, selecting appropriate language, making a draft, reading and reviewing it, then revising and editing”. 2000
David Crystal “Speech is time-bound, dynamic, transient… Writing is space-bound, static, permanent” 2005
3. Learner autonomy:
Henri Holec “The ability to take charge of one’s learning…to have and to hold responsibility for all the decisions concerning all aspects of this learning” 1981
David Little– Learner autonomy is “a capacity for detachment, critical reflection, decision making, and independent action” 1991
4. Lexical Approach:
Michael Lewis “Much of what we say, and a significant proportion of what we write, consists of prefabricated multi- word items” 1993
Richards and Rodgers – The Lexical Approach “is still an idea in search of an approach and a methodology” 2001
Michael Lewis “A central element of language teaching is raising students’ awareness of, and developing their ability to ‘chunk’ language” 1993
5. Authenticity:
Jim Scrivener “Authenticity means behaving in a way that is appropriately real…letting students see something of your genuine reaction to things, your moods and your natural behaviour, rather than covering everything up in a performance” 1994
L Herod ”authentic learning ‘ materials and activities’ are designed to imitate the real world situations” 2002
C Nuttal on authentic materials and three main criteria used to choose and access texts to be used in the classroom “suitability of the content, exploitability and readability” 1996
6. Differentiation and multiple intelligences:
Jeremy Harmer “If we accept that different intelligences predominate in different people, it suggests that the same learning task may not be appropriate for all our students” 2001
Doug Evans “…there are three fundamental building blocks to effective differentiation: Assessment, Task worthiness and Frequent student interaction.” 2008
7. Continuous professional development (CPD):
Sandra Piai “You can train me, and you can educate me, but you can’t develop me—I Develop” 2006
Duncan Foord “It isn’t the same having ten years’ experience as having one year’s experience repeated ten times” 2009
8. Technology in ELT:
Hugh Dellar “IWBs are simply used as giant held-up coursebooks, as another form of crowd control. Interactivity in the classroom has to happen between teacher and students – and among students themselves”2012
Marc Prensky “Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach”. 2001
9. Listening:
Penny Ur “In principle, the objective of listening comprehension practice in the classroom is that students should learn to function successfully in real-life listening situations” 1984
10. Speaking:
Scott Thornbury “Speakers need to be able to work fast, be spontaneous, and cope with unpredictability”
Scott Thornbury ““Classroom speaking is traditionally thought of either as a way of reinforcing newly learned language structures – that is, as accuracy practice – or as a means of developing the skill of speaking itself, i.e.as fluency practice”
Unit 4: Teaching, to include learner analysis, preparation, delivery and self-evaluation
The TP is the face to face part of the course if you’re doing the online Dip. It’s extremely intense and you probably won’t sleep much! However, since you’re already a teacher and a great one no doubt, you’ll get through it and pass with flying colours! It’s hard to know your student profiles and needs until you meet them onsite, but I’d recommend doing some lesson plans beforehand to be prepared. I was given a very general profile and took some dip style lesson plans with me which I had to change and adapt while I was there. Having said that, once the learner needs had been established I had to write lesson plans + handouts from scratch the night before as well as all the other stuff like self evaluations and class profile which I’ll get to later.
During the TP you will be observed/ evaluated internally by your course providers and once externally by a Trinity examiner. The Trinity examiner observation is a must pass. Just keep reminding yourself that YOU ARE A TEACHER! And you CAN DO THIS! Just requires a lot more prep and following guidelines. For those of you who haven’t been observed much in the past and find it daunting, I suggest you get fellow teachers to observe you if they have time before you do the TP. You will seriously forget there is someone sat taking notes and watching you at the back within 5 minutes of your lesson.
Needs analysis:
You will have to think of how you’ll analyse the needs of your new learners for the TP, this may be done individually or with other teachers you may be sharing the classes with. You can write a questionnaire, have a class discussion or both. This will probably be done when you first meet your students, at the beginning or end of class. Your first class will be a ‘diagnostic’ it is ungraded. Here the tutors will give you feedback about your lesson plan and teaching style or any feedback where perhaps you can improve on or develop something you’re doing. This class and the following few will also help you get to know your learners in order to plan according to their needs, levels, abilities and learning styles.
Class Profile:
This is something you have to write up throughout the duration of the TP with every observed lesson. This document needs to be updated with every new lesson given. The document includes information about all your learner’s profiles, learner needs and a rationale for lesson content. The minimum word count excluding the individual learner info is about 800 words.
Below is an example of a class profile:
Pre-interview before class:
This is a short interview with the observing tutor before your class takes place. It lasts about 15/20 minutes. The observer has probably already read your class plan and rationale and will ask you questions about it. These questions may be as follows:
- Are your aims achievable? Why?
- What will learners better be able to do by the end of the lesson?
- How will you evaluate their learning?
- How will you address mixed abilities?
- Why did you choose this context or linguistic point?
- Discuss your anticipated problems and how you’ll address them
- Discuss the phonological input and why you choose to focus on that
Post-interview after class:
This will be done after every class you give with the same observer and lasts about the same time as pre-interview 15/20minutes. Here you’ll discuss how the class went and answer any questions the observer may have such as:
- How do you know you achieved your aims?
- Would you have reorganised any stages or activities and why?
- Would you have changed timings in any of the stages?
- Did anything unexpected happened and how did you address it?
- Were there any problems caused by mixed levels or abilities?
- How and what would you change in this plan?
- Discuss your board work/ phonological input- did it work? If not, why not?
- How can you measure the success of this class?
Self evaluations:
As painstaking as writing these up after every lesson is, for me it was one of the best learning curves. In real life we’re running around like headless chickens, preparing, lesson planning, marking, admin, chasing up students, with long contact hours that you just don’t have time to really sit down and reflect on aspects of your lesson or instruction. So writing up these evaluations or more importantly consciously and carefully evaluating myself was a definite plus during the TP. These self evaluations have to be up to 1000 words for each lesson and constitute to 20% of the unit 4 marks.
The information you need to include in each self evaluation is as follows:
- How you achieved lesson aims and outcomes
- Effectiveness of Phonological input
- Any changes you made or would make in the lesson plan
- How appropriate were the tasks/ activities/ stages
- Relevance and effectiveness of materials and aids used
- Different learner styles and mixed abilities
- Alternative strategies you would use
- Your teaching beliefs relevant to the lesson given
- How your teaching is developing
- ELT theories relevant to your lesson- quote authors
Lesson plans:
Throughout your course you should receive practice of doing and submitting diploma style lesson plans. If you are not required to, then please demand your tutors to check your plans and give you feedback. Your lessons are more than likely going to be 60 mins. You can either adapt existing lesson plans you have or take some authentic material and base your class around it. Once you meet your students you’ll have a clearer idea of their needs and will be able to plan accordingly but do plan some lessons before you take the TP. These can be based around the general info your tutors give you about your potential students.
The Marks for this unit are as follows (although it may differ slightly depending on your course provider):
The 4 internally observed lessons (40%)
The externally observed lesson and a MUST PASS (40%)
The TP journal- includes self evaluations and class profile. This is externally moderated and a MUST PASS (20%)
Tips for lesson plans:
- Be very clear in your lesson aims/linguistic aims– These are statements of what you hope to achieve and relates to which part of language you’ll focus on e.g. to introduce and practice Modal verbs of advice- should/could/can/ought to. You should have about 2/3 main aims or more! But not just for the sake of it but because they’re a part of your lesson and you hope to achieve them
- Again clarity on subsidiary aims- main aims aside there’s a lot more happening in the lesson which you need to highlight e.g. Practising a receptive skills, top down/ bottom up skills, reading for gist, promote learner autonomy etc
- What do you want your students to be able to do at the end of the lesson? Be clear and realistic with your lesson outcomes g. Ss will be better able to give advice in the context of…, Ss will be able to understand and practice language used in business negotiations or Ss will be more confident in talking about planning a holiday using the appropriate collocations etc
- Your professional aims are very personal to you and can be anything from timing of stages, maximising STT, giving clearer/ succinct instructions, using Ss as a resource, or any area you feel you need to develop in that class
- Another important part of the lesson plan is assumptions. These are your beliefs about students which influence decisions on lesson content and mode of delivery. These assumptions must be identified clearly in your plan e.g. Ss may be familiar with collocations presented, Ss have used the TL before, most learners are already confident in using the lexical items in the review, some lower level Ss will find the leaflet challenging etc
- Your anticipated problems and solutions is an important part of the lesson plan and one that is likely to be discussed in the pre/post-interview. Defining these shows you are a reflective practitioner and able to identify problem areas and how you will address them when they arise. These problems are relevant to your lesson and can be things such as ‘lower level students may struggle with the controlled practice stage therefore pair them up with stronger class members and monitor closely’.
- Each lesson stage should have a short aim- Why are you doing this warmer? Why are you doing the reading exercise?
- Practice the lesson plans you have written up at home to get an idea of the timings. 60 mins is very short and you need to cover everything. I always found I spent too long on the lead in and was advised it shouldn’t be longer than 4 mins. Although it’s hard practising lesson plans not having students! It helped to control the timing of my stages which is fundamental.
- Include phonology in every lesson! Trinity are very big on phonology so every one of your lessons must have some phonological input whether it’s connected speech features, or particular lexis you’ll present.
Below is an example:
I hope to add more/ full lesson plans so watch this space!
Unit 3: Phonological theory in classroom practice
This part usually happens during your TP and is a 30 minute interview with the external examiner observing you that day. The phonology exam/interview was a particular mystery to me due to lack of clarity on what goes on until my TP and the actual interview itself! Phonology was also one thing I didn’t feel too confident in and was absolutely dreading! There wasn’t much out on the internet to help apart from a video on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3extN9_vR68 which I watched repeatedly! To cut the long story short, I passed and the examiner was lovely! Although the key is prepare your presentation, know the learner issue inside out and revise the key terms. Below is a break-down of what goes on!
-Presentation of your topic- Select a pronunciation issue common to you learners and here you explain the what/why’s/ and activity you do regarding this issue – 5mins
-Discussion of Topic- Examiner asks questions about topic, asks for clarification and perhaps more examples- 5mins. The presentation and discussion is about 35% of your mark
-Phonemic Transcription: You have 5 mins to transcribe something the examiner says into phonemic script- be sure to pay close attention to connected speech and accent. It’s usually a sentence he/she will repeat as many times as you want. This is about 15% of your mark
-General Phonology discussion: This can vary depending on the examiner, but typical things covered are:
-Why you chose your topic? Analysing the problem- referring to mouth position, L1 influences etc
-How you deal with the problem when it arises or how you plan a lesson activity around it
-Phonemic chart- How you use it
-How the dip has helped you in integrating phonology?
-They may ask about something specific e.g. what is a fricative/ vowel trapezoid/ allophones etc
The mark in this part is 50%
The key is to select a topic you know inside out, a learner pronunciation issue you’ve been dealing with for years! You know why they make it, you know which activities work, and any other typical errors related to your specific group of learners. The examiners are usually informed of your presentation beforehand, so they may either already be familiar with your learner error or have time to do a bit of research in order to ask you the relevant questions. If you are like I was- not so familiar with all the phonological terminology you need to learn and understand the terms. I used online phonemic transcription sites (there are loads), tried using the chart in classes more, used apps like Sounds Macmillan and Pronunroid (they’re free!) and tried to transcribe as much as possible…to motivate myself, they were usually my favourite songs! Sounds Foundations by Adrian Underhill was helpful too.
The following are phonological terms I revised for the interview:
- IPA – International phonetic alphabet, it is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet.
- fortis- Latin for strong, refers to consonant sounds (unvoiced) with greater energy such as the P in Pat, – fortis sounds are plosives P/T/K, fricatives Sh/ F/Sss and affricative ch in cheese
- lenis- Latin for weak, refers to consonant sounds (voiced) with lesser energy e.g. b/d/g in plosives, v/z in fricatives and d3 (J) in magic
- voiced- refers to consonant sounds where vocal chords vibrate e.g. B book /G genre/ D dish
- unvoiced- refers to consonant sounds where the vocal chords don’t vibrate e.g. P please/ F five/ T ten
- vowel trapezoid- is a chart describing vowel sounds based on the shape of the oral cavity- there are 9 sections and sounds vary from high/mid/low to front/ central and back position
- allophones- is a phonetically distinct variant of a phoneme- occurrence of one or another is determined by the position initial/medial or final e.g. T sound in hit/ tip/ little are all different allophones for T- they are different in terms of aspiration/voicing / point of articulation
- plosives- plosive consonants known as oral stops, are made by blocking part of the mouth so air can pass through, pressure increases behind the place it’s blocked and so when air is allowed to pass again this sound is created- basic plosives P in pepper/ Pizza, T in top, K in cook/ask
- fricatives- A consonant sound e.g. F/V produced by bringing mouth into position to block the passage of airstream but not making complete closure e.g. class (sss), This (SSS), Think (THH) laugh (FFF)
- affricates- is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative e.g. ch cheese/ j judge
- schwa- unstressed central vowel sound the/ docter
- segmental phonology- refers to segments of sound e.g. the word cat has 3 segments C-A-T
- supra-segmental phonology – refers to other aspects of phonology such as tone, stress and intonation
- word stress- refers to emphasis given to certain syllables in a word/phrase/sentence, signalled by increased loudness, vowel length, pitch changes etc
- tonic stress- Tonic stress refers to the syllable in a word which receives the most stress in an intonation unit. An intonation unit has one tonic stress. A sentence can have more than one intonation unit, and therefore have more than one tonic stressg. He’swaiting, He’s waiting / for his friend, He’s waiting / for his friend / at the station.
- elision- is the omission of a sound (a phoneme) in speech, elision may refer to the omission of an unstressedvowel, consonant, or syllable. , common in contracted forms I’ll (I will/), isn’t (is not)
- assimilation- When one sound becomes more like a nearby sound. This can occur either within a word or between words. In rapid speech, for example, “handbag” is often pronounced [ˈhæmbæɡ] wouldja couldya
- intrusion- When a new sound appears in a position e.g.intruding /w/ in do w it, the /r/ in the area r is, and the /j/ in I j agree
- liaison- The linking of sounds or words- linking r- far away- we link r with vowel a
- catenation: Refers to the linking of the final consonant sound of a word with the initial vowel sound of the following word. The two words run into each other, appearing to merge, which eases the flow of language.
thinkaboutit
standup - juncture: “the relationship between one sound and the sounds that immediately precede and follow it” (Roach 1991: 129) Ice scream- I scream, helies – heal eyes, keep sticking – keeps ticking
- intonation: the use of changing vocal pitch (rising and falling) to convey grammatical information or personal attitude.
(This is just a basic list of terms and meanings that helped me, you can elaborate and check online for explanations and examples that help you understand better)
Unit 2: The Teacher as Developmental, Reflective Practitioner- Course work portfolio
These are the 3 projects you’ll have to do as part of unit 2. It is internally assessed (by your course provider) and externally moderated. You can do this during the online course or submit it after you finish but there is a charge of about £75 from Trinity. Trinity gives you 3 years to submit these assignments so it’s easy to put them on hold but best to get then done as soon as! To get it out of the way and get that certificate we’re all eager for.
This unit is divided into 3 sections:
- The observation instrument: Here you need to look at an area of teaching, complete 10 hours of guided observation of fellow teachers, and you need to create an instrument (a chart/checklist/ survey/questionnaire) to help record and evaluate your findings. You also need to adapt or modify your instrument at least twice according to responses of what you see during observations. Word count is 2,700 – 3,300 words excluding appendices
- The developmental record: Here you will reflect on a particular aspect of your own teaching that you want to develop. This can be anything specific e.g. using technology in class, handling complex lexis in class, using the phonemic chart etc. You’ll need to report the results of your research. Word count is 2,700 – 3,300 words excluding appendices
- The independent research project: In this assignment you need to research a particular area of interest to you in ELT. The project will be based on a minimum of 10 hours of taught classes in the area you’re keen to develop. Word count is 2,700 – 3,300 words excluding appendices.
The score used to assess this component of the portfolio for each assignment is as follows:
Clear rationale, a statement of objectives 20%
Quality and Relevance of reflection on the developmental process 25%
Evaluation of and conclusions drawn and implications for future practice 40%
Presentation: organisation into a coherent piece of academic writing style,
standard of written English and mechanical accuracy. 15%
Ideas for The observation instrument:
- TTT Vs STT
- Error correction techniques
- Giving feedback on errors
- Using L1 in the classroom
- Student interaction and participation in class
- Checking lesson outcomes are met
- Effective use of CCQ’s
- Practising grammar/ lexis
- Methods of motivating/engaging learners
- Methods or approaches to address mixed abilities in class
- Evaluating the level of your students
- Activities used and student participation levels
- Methods and how effective they are (PPP Vs TBL)
- Giving instructions
- Evaluating Pair/group work
- Cultural differences and how they affect learning
- Using gestures and non-verbal communication
- Uses of the whiteboard in class
- Fulfilling lesson aims
- Reading/listening/writing activities and their effectiveness
Ideas for The developmental record:
- Integrating phonology in the classroom
- Using the phonemic chart with learners
- Managing large classes- techniques
- Classroom management- behaviour, seating, dynamics, interaction patterns
- Accuracy Vs fluency activities
- Using learners as a resource
- Different ways of monitoring learners in class/ during an activity
- Using realia in class
- Introducing authentic texts
- Handling/ promoting writing skills
- Promoting cognitive skills
- Integrating brainstorming and mind mapping
- Effective use of warmers/ lead in tasks
- Different ways of giving feedback
- Inductive Vs deductive approach
- Dealing with pronunciation issues
- Different ways of presenting new lexis
- Using technology in the classroom- smart phones, IWB, apps, Internet
- Promoting learner autonomy in class
Ideas for The independent research project: Go wild!
- Technology in the classroom- Facebook, blogs, student webpage, wikis
- CPD project for teachers
- Designing a syllabus for a specific group of learners- Business, Teens, exam prep
- The use of diploma style lesson plans in reality
- Course books yay or nay?
- Student attitudes to grammar based lessons
- Promoting group projects- benefits and drawbacks
- Peer observation- benefits and drawbacks
- Assessing teacher attitudes to giving feedback
- Ways of promoting meta-cognitive skills in learners
- Controlled practice Vs freer practice
- The benefits of using L1 in the classroom
- Native and non-native teacher’s classroom instruction
- Teacher motivation
- What factors contribute to lack of motivation among learners (low level/advanced)
- Effective homework activities for a specific level of learners.
Unit 1- Language, teaching and learning
Unit 1- Language, teaching and learning.
This is basically the written exam. It’s 3 hours long but trust me time flies so you need plenty of prep before the exam. Below you have some info taken from the Trinity site regarding the 3 sections in the exam:
–Section 1 Language – Candidates must pass in a minimum of two sections which must include Section 1. – The weighting for Section 1 is now 40% – Candidates will answer four questions from a choice of five. These will relate to language, and will include focus on practical experience.
–Section 2 Learning and Teaching – There is a choice of three essay questions. – The marking criteria have been amended and clarified. – Each essay chosen has 30% weighting – Phonology can be integrated as relevant to the question asked. (Previously some providers have assumed that phonology should be relegated to Unit 3 only.)
–Section 3 Professional Development – There is a choice of three essay questions. – The marking criteria have been amended as for Section 2. – Each essay chosen has 30% weighting – Phonology can be integrated as relevant to the question asked. (Previously some providers have assumed that phonology should be included in Unit 3 only.)
Aggregate mark 50–79 for a pass, 80% for a distinction. Section 1 must pass.
Relevant Reading: The reading lists can be exhaustive! But here are some of the books I myself and the teachers I’ve spoken to found helpful:
-Grammar for English language teachers- Martin Parrot
-Learning Teaching- Jim Scrivener
-Teaching and learning in the language classroom- Tricia Hedge
-How languages are learnt- Patsy M. lightbown & Nina Spada
-The practice of English language teaching- Jeremy Harmer
-Big questions in ELT- Scott Thornbury
-Mistakes and correction- Julian Edge
-Practical English usage- Michael Swan
-Uncovering Grammar- Scott Thornbury
Language awareness Topics:
Your tutors should guide you as to which topics to study/ revise but the truth is the more the better! Here’s a little list!
-Affixes
-Dummy operators (it/there)
-Cohesion and coherence
-Ellipsis
-Inversion
-Cleft sentences
-Superordinates
-Adjacency pairs
-Adverbs- manner/time/degree
-word order
-Copular verbs
-Relative clauses
-Progressive/ perfect and simple forms
-Different ways of forming Negatives
-Indirect questions
-Adverb positions
-Conditional forms
-Articles A/the/an
-Multi-verb words/ phrasal verbs
-Gradable and non-gradable adjectives
-Cataphoric/anaphoric and exophoric references
-Non modal auxiliaries
-Modal & semi-modals
-Register and formality
-Collocations
-Idioms
-Quantifiers
-Stative verbs
-Plurals
-Finite and Non-finite clauses
-Time Vs tense
-Synonyms and antonyms
-Punctuation- apostrophe’s, colon/ semi-colon, hyphen
-Word formation- inflection/derivation/blended and clipped forms
-Lexis- homophones/homographs/homonyms
Revision:
Now this part is never easy but you can do it! I was lucky enough to have a study buddy for the last 3 months of the course which really helped. Here are some tips, tried and tested! However, each of us knows what works best so go with it!
- Past Papers: The obvious one but try to do as many as possible and if your tutors are kind enough to mark them then hand as many in as you can! Try the following:
-Divide the papers up- go through as many past papers as you can and pick out recurrent questions from all 3 sections
-Time yourself! You should spend an hour on each section (yes seems so little!) or depending on how fast you write maybe a little longer on section 1 since it’s the one that takes up more time. Now it’s called ‘short answers’ section which always confused me! How short?! Make sure you get feedback from your tutors on how short to keep it and what points you should include.
Section 1: One of the ways I was advised and really worked with language awareness questions in section one was answering 3 key questions about each point:
- Definition
- Learner problems
- Activities
Below is an example:
- Definition- Affixes: An affix is a morpheme, added to the root of a word to change its meaning or form a new word. . An affix added to the front of a word is called a prefix e.g. incapable used to adjust or qualify the meaning of the root word and an affix added to the end of a word is a suffix e.g. comfortable used to form a derivative, frequently converts the stem into another part of speech (ing/ fy/ ation)
Derivational affixes change the semantic meaning or the part of speech of the affected word.
Happy (adj) Happiness ( noun) unhappy ( negative adjective)
Inflectional affixes modify verb tense and nouns without affecting the word’s meaning or class
I go he goes cat cats
- Learner Problems: Using the inappropriate affix and confusion in meaning as some prefixes can have more than one meaning e.g. in- (not, into), ex- (out, beyond / former). Also several prefixes have the same meaning (e.g. un-, in-, im-, ir-, dis-). They can also have interference problems as some prefixes might mean something different in L1, hyphenations, spelling.
- Activity: Matching exercises with prefixes/ suffixes and their meaning, at higher levels correct the text exercise, adding the right prefix or suffix especially for exam prep classes (FCE/CAE), dictionary work and discovery exercises where Ss have to find words with unknown prefixes and look up their meaning in a dictionary. Also word building exercises work well with teaching prefixes and suffixes, where they’re given the base word and need to find the suffix e.g. help helpful or looking at word families and parts of speech through completing a chart (verb/ adj/ noun/ adverb)
Posters as peripherals, where Ss add prefixes to a list every time a word comes up in class
- Study buddy:
I highly recommend this! I don’t know what I would have done without my study buddy/ mentor! Find someone on the course who you can revise with and try to arrange Skype meetings at least twice a week. You can go through exam questions. Sections or entire papers together and compare answers, you can arrange 5 points each a session and give each other explanations/ a presentation- TEACH it! It’s what we do best and it’s how we learn.
3.Record it!
As much as I got SICK AND TIRED of hearing my own voice over and over! It was a helpful tool to record my notes on my voice recorder on the mobile- so instead of listening to the sweet sounds of Dylan and Bowie I was listening to myself on the bus, on the train, before bed! Obviously don’t overdo it, your mind needs to relax too but recording and listening to notes is a good way to remember things. You can also try mind maps, reading out loud (I pretended I was training teachers!), using visuals and acronyms for the main points of things you’re finding hard to remember.
4.Blank canvass:
A teacher friend of mine gave me this tip and it was awesome! Go into another room, a room with no resources (no notes, laptop, mobile) with blank paper and write down everything you can remember- so what I did was had headings, common points from each section e.g. copular verbs, learner autonomy, using authentic materials etc. I did this more with section 1 to be honest. It’s all about YOU and the BLANK CANVASS!! Or you can take a past exam paper. This technique really helps know what and how much you have retained and what are the gaps that need work on.
5.Don’t become a revision zombie!
Don’t overdo it! I say this because at one point I did and it caused nothing but stress and anxiety, so had to step away take a break for a few days. The mind cannot learn if it’s overloaded with info and on top of that you’re feeling anxious! Not a good mix. Take breaks, even if it means days without revising… YOU ARE A TEACHER! YOU’VE GOT THIS! Allow yourself downtime.
Dip TESOL 