English Teaching Forum recently published an article by Juan Pablo Zúñiga Vargas, an English teacher in Costa Rica. The submission outlines a hybrid activity that combines listening cloze with info-gap and integrates macro-and micro-language skills. Importantly, it allows students to play a more autonomous role in class.
Zúñiga Vargas says, “One way to integrate as many skills as possible is to combine different activities. Integrating skills is simply approaching real life and real language use… If you model key language functions and social skills for students and monitor them during the task, this activity fosters students’ ability to negotiate for meaning, engage in turn-taking, monitor the interlocutor’s understanding, and ask for clarification—all skills a competent speaker should master. Finally, promoting peer assessment in the class takes some responsibility from the teacher and shows students that they can play an active role in their language-learning process.”
Objective: SWBAT fill in the cloze activity and then assess and correct as needed their partners’ responses.
Time: one hour or longer with additional tasks
Materials: Listening cloze handouts (set for students A and set for students B)
Preparation
The author suggests using radio broadcasts, podcasts, songs, or written materials to prepare two cloze handouts (one for group A and one for group B), in which different words are missing from the same overall text. Teachers can skip every fifth word, for example, to create a pattern; however, Student A’s handout will start skipping at a different point than Student B’s handout so that each student pair has a completed cloze between the two handouts. In this way, the pairs will be able to help each other determine the correct missing words.
Presentation and Production
Ask students to listen and complete the text of their handout by filling in the missing words. Teachers may read the cloze text aloud or play the podcast or other recording of the text. After that, students will work in pairs, one Student A and one Student B, and take turns checking their work. Teachers should model useful questions like those below that paired students can ask one another to help them successfully complete the cloze. This becomes the info-gap part of the activity.
Useful Questions
- Could you repeat that again, please?
- Would you mind speaking slowly, please?
- How do you pronounce this word?
- How do you spell that?
Author’s suggestions for tasks to make the lesson more complex:
- If the material used in the activity has a story, you can have students do a role play to test their comprehension. Give full rein to their creativity.
- Students could write an alternative ending to the story.
- Students could write, record, or videotape a response to the content of the recording. The responses could become a class discussion or an assessment.
- Students can write down any words they have trouble pronouncing during the activity to produce pronunciation work.
- Students could also record the material themselves and upload it to a free podcasting site. They can compare their recorded version with the original.
Teach Like A PCV 