Critical Book Report (TEFL/TESL: Teaching English As A Foreign Or Second Language)

Critical Book Report

(TEFL/TESL: Teaching English As A Foreign Or Second Language)

SUBJECT : TEFL CURRICULUM

NAME : LIZA MUHARINA BAYAZID

REG. NO : 8236111006

CLASS : LTBI A 2023

LECTURER : Dr. RAHMAD HUSEIN, M.Ed.

ENGLISH APPLIED LINGUISTICS STUDY PROGRAM POSTGRADUATE PROGRAM

UNIVERSITAS NEGERI MEDAN 2023

Identity

Main Book:

Title TEFL/TESL: Teaching English as a Foreign or Second Language Publisher Peace Corps

Publisher City Washington, USA

Year 1987

Author(s) Information Collection & Exchange Reviewer Liza Muharina Bayazid

Date October, 10 2023

Pages 156 pages

Comparison Book:

Title Teaching speking and listening: a toolkit for practitioners Publisher Portishead Press, Bristo

Publisher City England

Year 2007

Author(s) Writing team (Debbie Cole, Christine Ellis, Barbara Mason, John Meed, Deborah Record, Anna Rossetti, Graham Willcocks)

Reviewer Liza Muharina Bayazid

Date October, 10 2023

Pages 280 pages

Introduction

A. The substance of the content of the books

The first book discussed about at overlapping of language skills in a Communicative Aproach addresing the whole person. It discuses the role of speaking in language learning and the qualities promoted by spoken interactive exercises. Practical soutions to overcoming the obstacles to impementing spokn communicative activities are also outlined. The final section discusses the role of pronunciation in a Communicative Approach.

And discusses the role of listening in language learning. It focuses on the need for exposure to the spoken language and for meaningful “real life” interaction between listener and speaker. The resourches for teaching listening comprehension are discussed: the teacher, other speaker of English, and tapes. The characteristics of good listening exercises are explained, an eexercises exeemplifying these characteristics are presented. "The reason why we have two ears and only one mouth is so that we may listen more and talk less.” This chapter looks at the implications of this quotation from Diogenes on the teaching of listening.

The second book discussed about speaking and listening is a major component of key skills and literacy qualifi cations. It is also one of the three elements of the new standards for functional English. However, there is a signifi cant lack of material available to help teachers, trainers and tutors to develop their learners’ skills in this important area and this is the principal reason for producing the toolkit. The toolkit contains a wealth of resources to make teaching speaking and listening explicit, relevant and engaging for learners. It goes beyond commonly taught aspects such as talks, presentations and formal discussion to help improve all aspects of

everyday communication – at work and in daily life.

B. Importan things in the books 1) Book 1

 Chapter 3

In developing communicative speaking skills, speak to the whole person. The role of speaking in language learning is to promote:

 participation

 interaction

 fluency

 confidnce

 communication strategies

Obstacles to the development of communicative speaking skills include:

 restriction of the classroom

 limited practice time

 learner anxiety

Five steps in teaching pronunciation are:

 identify problem areas

 write sentences where sounds naturally occur

 develop communicative tasks that incorporate problem sounds

 provide practice in new contexts

 develop self-monitoring practices

 Chapter 4

In developing your students' listening skills, allow for exposure to English:

 provide plenty to listen to lower stress

 let your students' brains work while they are doing something else Provide meaningful "real life" messages:

 build in response time

 allow for visibility of the speaker

 provide background clues

 allow for redundancies

Use the three resources for listening comprehension:

 the teacher

 other speaker of English tapes Develop listening activities which:

 provide interesting content

 include listening preparation

 offer visual support

 encourage whole-message listening

 encourage listening for specific details

 communicate real message

2) Book 2

Section I Issues in teaching and researching speaking Conceptual and historical background

The skill of speaking

The nature of speech in contrast to writing Section II Issues for teaching and assessing speaking

Approaches, materials and the issue of ‘real’ speech

 What are our models and standards when we teach speaking?

 The evolution of materials to teach speaking

 The current scene in materials to teach speaking Section III Researching speaking

 The IELTS speaking test

 The status of speaking in classrooms

 The role of spoken interaction in Communicative Language Teaching classrooms

 Speaking and new technologies

First three levels of speaking and listening, Cambridge ESOL Skills ForLifeSpeaking test assessment focus

 Entry 1

 Entry 2

 Entry 3

Summary of Book Content

A. SUMMARY BOOK 1

CHAPTER 3

TEACHING SPEAKING

Speaking to the whole person:

 First of all you must feel comfortable in talking about feelings and opinions.

 Second, you must check that your students also feel comfortable in sharing their feelings and opinions. Some cultures do not consider it appropriate to talk about oneself, or to share deeply held values with those who are not members of the immediate family.

 Third, you must create a classroom environment which is accepting and non-judgmental. To achieve this, you should take on the role of an impartial facilitator: one who listens and acknowledges, but who does not impose views. If you expect students to trust you by talking about matters which are important to them, then you must show that you respect their right to express their opinions, even if you do not agree with them. It should also be acknowledged that your students have certain rights. They may opt out of certain discussions, and should not be forced to speak; they should be heard and respected; and they should extend the same courtesy to their classmates.

 Fourth, the overall focus on feelings and opinions in discussions and activities should be constructive. This is not to say that you should deny expressions of negative feelings. Many of your students may be living in difficult conditions. Their problems are real and should not be avoided. But while allowing time for consideration of the negative, you should also be prepared to move in positive directions. You can do this by asking questions such as "What do you like about yourself and your life?", rather than asking the kind of questions which focus on "What do you not like about yourself and your life?"

In teaching speaking you are asking your students to perform, to speak up in front of their classmates. As a result, many of your student's may experience stress during these activities. Whether the anxiety is a help or a hindrance often depends on the degree to which it manifests itself in your students. For example, no anxiety might result in a student's not caring or putting any effort into speaking English; too much might block learning. But a small amount will bring your students to an optimal state of alertness. Your role is to monitor this level of anxiety, and while not aiming to eradicate it altogether, to make sure that this level is kept reasonably low. There are various techniques you can use to prevent anxiety from taking over.

First, you can provide in your classroom a sort of surrogate "family" which offers support and the

sort of encouragement which leads to independence and enables your students to go out and use English in the real world outside of the school compound.

Second, be specific in your feedback. When you praise a student, do so around a precise point.

Empty praise becomes meaningless very quickly. But by underlining a specific item that you know a student has worked hard at, you can offer the meaningful recognition that builds a student's confidence. An example of this specific praise is: "Well done. You managed that conversation well.

Did the rest of you notice how he was using those 'Uh-huhs' to keep his partner talking?" On the other hand, when you correct a student's English, make sure your explanations are clear and brief and that you deliver them at an appropriate moment.

Third, while including, an element of competitiveness in some of your activities, you should take care to prevent this competitiveness from getting out of hand. To balance out the win-lose tendencies, which undoubtedly exist in your class, make sure that you are including cooperative activities such as "Two Heads Are Better Than One."

There are five main steps involved in teaching pronunciation:

1. Identify the areas in which your students are having difficulty in being understood. You will be listening for problems with vowels, consonants, stress, and intonation.

2. Find or write sentences that have a number of natural occurrences of the problem sounds.

3. Develop communicative tasks that incorporate the words.

4. Develop exercises so that you can review the problem and provide students with practice of the target sounds in new contexts.

5. Develop self-monitoring practices in your students.

CHAPTER 4

TEACHING LISTENING

In an exercise of this sort you should include approximately ten informational mistakes.

Do not include grammatical mistakes in this exercise. Your only aim is to teach your students to listen for information. Your story should not be more than about twelve sentences long.

 Allow for the visibility of the speaker

In real life situations, listeners can usually see the person or people speaking, and the

visual clues offered by the speaker, such as facial expressions and gestures, help the listeners understand what is being said. The exceptions to this visibility come when using the phone or listening to the radio. If your students do not use English on the phone, or do not listen to English on the radio, then most of the time the speaker should be visible in your listening exercises.

 Provide background clues

Clues provide a framework and context for a spoken message. Your students use these clues unconsciously when they are talking to each other in their own language. Remember to provide clues and to help your students use them when they are listening to English. Your clues could be as simple as a picture of the place or thing you are talking about. It may seem surprising to think that your students need help in using these clues, but you may find that they are not used to listening for complete messages in English, and that they listen for words in isolation and get stuck and stop listening if they do not understand each and every word. Gradually, as they begin to realize that you only want them to get the gist of what you are saying, they will relax and stop worrying about the words they do not understand, and they will begin to use background clues to understand the whole message just as they do in their native language.You do not need to restrict yourself to visual clues either. If your listening passage has something to do with a market, then bring to class some of the spices, vegetables, and fruits you would find in a market. Give your students the time to smell and feel those objects as they listen to you talk. Not only will the clues help them understand, they will also help your students to retain any new words they may hear.

 Allow for redundancies

In everyday conversation people use a lot more words than are really necessary to convey their messages. They repeat themselves, they restart sentences several times over, they correct themselves, and they use fillers such as "you see," "I mean," and "well." These repetitions, false starts, corrections, and fillers are redundancies. Your students need experience in identifying and separating the main ideas from these redundancies, which are part and parcel of everyone's speech. You would be doing your students a disservice if you only gave them exercises in which the listening passage had been cleaned up and no longer contained redundancies.

Resources for teaching listening comprehension

Students have access to three main resources for practicing listening comprehension: the teacher, other speakers of English, and tapes.

 The Teacher

You, as the teacher, are clearly the most important resource. Develop an awareness of yourself as the primary source of English for your students and tailor your teacher talk to meet their needs. This involves monitoring your vocabulary choice, your sentence structure, your speed and volume of voice, and your speech characteristics. Your vocabulary choice should be appropriate. Ask yourself if you are choosing words which are too abstract or too slangy. Try recording yourself as you teach, then listen to the recording to see if your vocabulary is appropriate. Check your sentence structure, too. Allow for redundancies, but as a general rule of thumb keep to straightforward structures. Sometimes it may be necessary to slow down your rate of speech. Be careful not to fall into the trap of making your speech sound unnatural when you slow down. Pause between phrases, not after each word. Make sure that your pronunciation is distinct and that you project your voice so that it carries to the back of the class. Make your speech characteristics larger than life. Watch any good teacher at work and you will recognize the performance artist in her. Develop this same sense of performance in yourself when you present materials to your class. Do not be afraid to use gestures and dramatization to catch your students' attention and to get your message across.

 Other speakers of English

Another source of listening comprehension is other speakers of English. These other speakers can help in several ways. First, they will give your students the chance to hear other accents; second, they will offer you the opportunity to talk about accents and the values sometimes placed on them; and third, they can motivate your students by talking about interesting topics.

Calling in outside speakers can also provide the opportunity for your students to learn about what is going on beyond the confines of the school community. If you can, look for speakers among the expatriate business people, or representatives of development agencies, or government experts in health, agriculture, road construction. Once you start asking, you may be surprised at the willingness of all sorts of people to come to your school. If you do not have access to many outside speakers, ask fellow Volunteers to come and speak. The change of pace and pick-up in energy levels generated by a new face never fails to stimulate a class.

 Tapes

Your third resource for listening comprehension is tapes. Unless you are teaching a very specialized group of learners such as air traffic controllers or international telephone operators,

your use of tapes should be carefully limited. In many cases this limitation will happen naturally.

You will not have access to recorders which can be heard by large classes, nor to commercially produced tapes suitable for your students. So unless your students have specific need to be able to listen to but not see the speaker, do not worry about not having tapes. Frequently the use of tapes imposes a difficult task with insufficient reward to show for a lot of effort.

However, you may find some use for tapes in a multilevel class. You could give work to do with a tape to the advanced section (preferably no more than seven students), while you work with the rest of the class on another project. If you do not have a commercially produced tape and accompanying textbook, you might consider making some of your own tapes. You could give your advanced group a tape of a song, such as Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al," from his album Graceland, and ask them to write clown the words. You could record a reading of a story or short

passage and ask them to write answers to questions as they listen to the tape. You could describe a scene and ask them to draw a picture of it. This description should include items, colors, and activities which can be simply represented by your students. The goal is to practice listening comprehension, not to test artistic skills.

Good listening exercises:

 provide interesting content

 include listening preparation

 offer visual support

 encourage whole-message listening

 encourage listening for specific details

 communicate real meaning

 require listener response

B. SUMMARY BOOK 2

Conceptual And Historical Background 1.1.The skill of speaking

One of the central difficulties inherent in the study of speaking is that it overlaps with a considerable number of other areas and disciplines. These three areas broadly relate to fairly stable areas of activity in linguistics of discourse, lexis and grammar, and phonology/phonetics and map on to, and overlap with, other threads of

study in theoretical and applied linguistics.

1.2 The nature of speech in contrast to writing

Whether in face-to-face situations or via televisual or other media, language which is spoken to be heard is (or should be) quite different from texts created to be read. One of the commonest problems in oral presentations is information overload for listeners as they try to process densely informative language that has been prepared via a written text.

To sum up, this chapter aimed to place the teaching and research of speaking into a conceptual and historical context. In so doing, it drew attention to a fundamental issue in dealing with speech data: the status of instances of real speech within current theories of language, and in particular in the dominant research paradigm behind second language acquisition. The tendency to split off ‘pure’ linguistic theory from more descriptively or pedagogically oriented studies was discussed. I argued that this is because, generally speaking, linguistic theory gives little weight to the activity of speaking itself.

Approaches, Materials and The Issue of ‘Real’ Speech

2.1 What are our models and standards when we teach speaking?

In this view, therefore, although the spoken form is unique, the features that go to make up that uniqueness may not be something entirely desirable for the learner to emulate, or for the teacher to introduce into the classroom. These are materials to be handled by a teacher experienced in group work as there is little guidance for the novice, but they will almost inevitably get students talking. The nature of discussion is dealt with briefly in the introduction but beyond that the material is simply there to function as a prompt rather than to raise awareness about matters such as the nature of interactions during discussion, cultural differences between discussions in different contexts or any socio-linguistic issues underlying debate or argument. In this sense, the book is solidly in the tradition of the past forty years in language teaching, which holds that it is imperative for the student to engage in activities that generate speech, and that such activities will promote language acquisition through processes similar to first language development

2.2 The evolution of materials to teach speaking

This section looks at published materials on the spoken form taken from different eras in the evolution of language teaching. . The issue underpinning many of the commentaries is that it is significantly easier to teach speaking as if it were isolated from its users, and the greater the flexibility and authenticity of the materials the harder it can be to manage them in a structured syllabus.

2.3 The current scene in materials to teach speaking

There has been some nervousness on the part of the commercial publishers to tackle the issues surrounding

teaching spontaneous, richly contextualised speech data.The first, larger, is the international community of often non-native speaker teachers who depend on published materials and work in contexts where the use of a textbook is an imperative. The second are those who work in contexts that allow time and training to support the confident teaching of speaking skills by teachers of all backgrounds and languages. In general, the former group will be highly likely to have to teach speaking via standard coursebooks and materials for test preparation such as those shown at the start of the next section.

Researching Speaking 3.1 The IELTS speaking test

In contrast to the iBT TOEFL speaking test, the IELTS speaking test is conducted with a face-to-face interlocutor/examiner. It is a test with a stronger focus on holistic communicative skills than on the hierarchy of separate language facets underlying the TOEFL test. Each test lasts 10 to 15 minutes and is recorded. A three- stage interview takes place beginning with general and familiar topics for around 4 minutes. A card with a prompt is presented to the candidate in the second stage of the test and they are asked to prepare what they are going to say (around 1 minute) and then speak in monologue for 2 minutes about the given topic

3.2 The status of speaking in classrooms

• the primary mode in which ‘natural uptake’ can occur (as in ‘The Natural Method’ or ‘The Oral Approach’

prevalent in the early years of the last century until the early 1960s), • a powerful tool for developing automatic and fluent output, together with consolidation of grammatical patterns (as in ‘The Direct Method’ or

‘The Audio-lingual Approach’), • the ideal medium for the exploration of language and one that allows a focus on communication to take precedence over form (a fundamental aspect of ‘The Communicative Approach’ and later developments such as ‘Task Based Language Teaching’).

3.3 The role of spoken interaction in Communicative Language Teaching classrooms

The Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach that has dominated English language teaching from the 1980s if not earlier and the Natural Approach that retains a strong influence on teacher training were developed around the idea of meaningful interaction and the focus on communication rather than linguistic facts. The handling of classroom talk has therefore become something of a marker of ability to promote good language learning environments. It is also used as a measure of the level of learner versus teacher centredness of a class, with a correlation being between low levels of teacher talking time (TTT) and higher levels of student engagement and autonomy.

3.4 Speaking and new technologies

A fast-moving area in recent years has been the development of new technologies that blur or alter the traditional boundaries between the spoken and written mode. There are several strands to this, ranging from

text to speech software, speech recognition, to robotics, to mobile computing and telephony. The aim of much work is for the user to be able to speak to a computer in much the same way as they would to another person, and for the machine to be capable of carrying out the instruction. The major applications of human–machine speech are in automated call centres, internet searching as well as applications in the military and aid for the physically less able.

4.1 First three levels of speaking and listening, Cambridge ESOL Skills For Life Speaking test assessment focus Entry 1

Assessment focus: listen and respond to spoken language, including simple narratives, statements, questions and single-step instructions speak to communicate basic information, feelings and opinions on familiar topics engage in discussion with another person in a familiar situation about familiar topics

Entry 2

Assessment focus: listen and respond to spoken language, including straightforward information, short narratives, explanations and instructions speak to communicate information, feelings and opinions on familiar topics engage in discussion with one or more people in a familiar situation, to establish shared understanding about familiar topics.

Entry 3

Assessment focus: listen and respond to spoken language, including straightforward information and narratives, and follow straightforward explanations and instructions, both face-to-face and on the telephone

Conclusion

Learning a new language gives you a greater global understanding of the world we live in. Even by learning a few phrases, never mind a whole language, you will access many fascinating cultures around the world and understand the differences between the two countries. Teaching English has significant activity in the classroom to deliver knowledge, experience, and motivation to students. In globalization era, students need about learning language especially English has growth up for last three years. It shows that student’s eagerness in learning English is so high. Teacher must have other methods and strategies to improve their teaching ways in the class.

Students need the new way to learn English which is more creative, effective, and fun than previous strategy.

Strengths

 Book 1

1. Very complete and accurate explanation in straightforward language but very easy for the reader to understand

2. Equipped with examples and very good examples by serving diagrams or tables so it is very easy for the reader to understand

3. Writing in the listening and speaking chapters is very structured and systematic

4. Each sub topic in the speaking and listening chapters is explained with full explanation and very easy to understand

 Book 2

1. Very complete and accurate explanation with More than 200 page book content on listening and speaking and we know that the explanation of this book is broader and deeper

2. Equipped with tables and diagrams that will facilitate the reader 3. There are summary in each chapter

4. There are learning objectives to be achieved in each chapter

Weaknesses

 Book 1

Contains several sentences and words that are foreign and difficult for readers to understand.

 Book 2

A lot of sentences that are difficult to understand and convoluted explanations are confusing the for reader. The contains of this book also used some of the foreign word and indirect explanation those are confusing the readers .

Implementation in Indonesia

Curriculum is a standards-based sequence of planned experiences where students practice and achieve proficiency in content and applied learning skills. Curriculum is the central guide for all educators as to what is essential for teaching and learning, so that every student has access to rigorous academic experiences . Since scientific approach plays a great role as standard of teaching and learning process in K13 and merdeka curriculum, the teachers tend to do any classroom activities based on the steps in scientific approach. It is found that following steps in scientific approach aims at giving chance for learners to be active and creative. Through these steps, Students will actively ask questions and answer questions. They will also show their interest and effort, to take part and be responsible, and keep their motivation to learn. Furthermore, it requires students to solve problems, find everything for themselves, and apply their ideas in creative way. Teacher on the other hand should encourage them to be active learners by facilitating and monitoring them. As facilitator, teacher can provide various teaching activities that enhance the students’ creativity and fully engage them in the meaningful activity

Suggestion

This research only focused to find out the demotivating factors on English language learning and how to overcome it. I hope that the next researcher who want to conduct the similar research can give the solution to overcome the demotivating factors, and also find out the other factors that caused students’ demotivating factors.

Subsequently, based on what I found in this study, I truly expect that the teacher can improve the way she teaches English subject, can pay attention to the students in class, build the good relationship with the student, so the teacher can reduce the students demotivating factors.

References

Information Collection & Exchange.1989. TEFL/TESL: Teaching English as a Foreign or Second Language.

Peace Corps, Washington, USA

Huges, R.2011. Teaching and Researching Speaking. Pearson Education Limited, Harlow CM20 2JE, United Kingdom