Four Walls

Academic Vocabulary (Click here to preview) Click here for preview

Teaching English pronunciation Teaching English pronunciation is a challenging task with different objectives at each level. This guide on how to teach pronunciation provides a short overview of the main issues to be addressed at each level, as well as pointing to resources on the site, such as lesson plans and activities, that teacher can use in class to help students improve their English pronunciation skills. Following each level are a few suggestions for level appropriate activities. Finally, the best way to help students improve their pronunciation skills is to encourage them to speak English as much as they possibly can. Introduce the idea that even when doing homework students should be reading aloud. Learning to pronounce English well takes muscle coordination, and that means practice - not just mental activity! 

Teaching vocabulary With hundreds of thousands of words in the English language, teaching vocabulary can seem like a very daunting prospect. Remember though that the average native speaker uses around only five thousand words in everyday speech. Moreover,  students won't need to produce every word they learn, some they will just need to recognize. Selecting what to teach, based on frequency and usefulness to the needs of particular students is therefore essential. Once you have chosen what to teach, the next important steps are to consider what students need to know about the items, and how teacher can teach them. What a student may need to know about an item What it means It is vital to get across the meaning of the item clearly and to ensure that students have understood correctly with checking questions.

The Teachers of Writing Writing teachers should themselves be writers. Through experiencing the struggles and joys of writing, teachers learn that their students will need guidance and support throughout the writing process, not merely comments on the written product. Furthermore, writing teachers who write know that effective comments do not focus on pointing out errors, but go on to the more productive task of encouraging revision, which will help student writers to develop their ideas and to achieve greater clarity and honesty. Writing teachers should be familiar with the current state of knowledge about composition. They should know about the nature of the composing process; the relationship between reading and writing; the functions of writing in the world of work; the value of the classical rhetorical tradition; and more. Writing teachers should use this knowledge in their teaching, contribute to it in their scholarly activities, and participate in the professional organiza...

Teaching of composition In the mid-twentieth century the dominant approach to writing pedagogy focused on the written product. The practice required a single, final draft, comprehensive error correction by the teacher on that draft, and summative comments justifying the grade assigned. The teaching of writing was consigned to English and Rhetoric departments; it was assumed that such courses could give students a generic or neutral set of good writing skills to apply to whatever writing tasks they might encounter in other disciplines. This traditional approach had drawn stiff critique by the 1970s and 1980s. The emphasis on eliminating error seemed adequate for students who were already skilled writers, but instructors working with students who made a lot of errors in Standard Written English found themselves pouring an excessive amount of time into voluminous markings and comments that students were too overwhelmed to learn from. Improvement from one assignment to the next was mi...

Teaching of poetry Poetry offers wonderful opportunities for reading, writing, speaking, and listening practice for ELLs. Poetry also gives students a chance to expand vocabulary knowledge, to play with language, and to work with different rhythms and rhyme patterns. The benefits of using poetry are not simply anecdotal, however — they have been well documented. Research demonstrates the positive effects of poetry on literacy development. As Dr. Hughes points out, "paying attention to vocabulary and rhythm develops oral language skills," (Hughes, 2007, p. 1) and the development of oral language skills has a strong correlation to proficiency in reading. Here are some ideas to get started where to begin:

Short stories Story 1:   A Wise Counting .   Emperor Akbar was in the habit of putting riddles and puzzles to his courtiers. He often asked questions which were strange and witty. It took much wisdom to answer these questions.   Once he asked a very strange question. The courtiers were dumb folded by his question.   Akbar glanced at his courtiers. As he looked, one by one the heads began to hang low in search of an answer. It was at this moment that Birbal entered the courtyard. Birbal who knew the nature of the emperor quickly grasped the situation and asked, "May I know the question so that I can try for an answer".   Akbar said, "How many crows are there in this city?"   Without even a moment's thought, Birbal replied "There are fifty thousand five hundred and eighty nine crows, my lord".   "How can you be so sure?" asked Akbar.   Birbal said, "Make you men count, My lord. If you find more crows it means some have c...

Teaching of Pros Prose is a form of  language  which applies ordinary  grammatical structure  and  natural flow of speech  rather than  rhythmic structure  (as in traditional  poetry ). While there are  critical debates  on the construction of prose, its simplicity and loosely defined structure has led to its adoption for the majority of spoken dialogue, factual discourse as well as topical and fictional writing. It is commonly used, for example, in  literature ,  newspapers ,  magazines , encyclopedias ,  broadcasting ,  film ,  history ,  philosophy ,  law  and many other forms of communication. The textbooks are written according to the structural approach, graded with each lesson illustrating on or two teaching items- vocabulary and structure. Reading skills are of two kinds. They are, 1. The Intensive Reading skill 2. The Extensive Reading skill. Though only one or tw...

Everything That Rises Must Converge (by Flannery O'Connor) HER DOCTOR  had told Julian's mother that she must lose twenty pounds on account of her blood pressure, so on Wednesday nights Julian had to take her downtown on the bus for a reducing class at the Y. The reducing class was designed for working girls over fifty, who weighed from 165 to 200 pounds. His mother was one of the slimmer ones, but she said ladies did not tell their age or weight.