How can the learning of vocabulary be encouraged to appeal to pupils and students?
In our eyes, there are too many examination bodies which prescribe a far too basic means of learning vocabulary by chapter and an alphabetical glossary. The majority of pupils regard this method as being tedious and agree with the point that schools are being too persistent in the belief that vocabulary should be learned in this fashion. It is more logical, as far as this venture is concerned, to promote such a task as a form of independent learning, thus freeing up contact time to concentrate on more essential aspects of foreign language learning. An interesting, yet enjoyable way of enabling pupils and students to build their vocabulary is to group a number of lists of cognates, i.e. those words which are pronounced or written very similarly in more than one language and have a unique set of endings in accordance with a particular suffix.
- English ‘atlantic’ / ‘patriotic’ > Spanish ‘atlántico’ / ‘patriótico’
- English ‘nation’ / ‘constitution’ > French ‘nation’ / ‘constitution’ (with a change in pronunciation)
- English ‘act’ / ‘pact’ / ‘fact’ > Italian ‘atto’ / ‘patto’ / ‘fatto’
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Of course, such an exercise whereby learners are able to work out previously unknown words through syllabic emphasis and recognition of similarities between words has proven to be extremely beneficial and drive the learning of vocabulary.
How innovative and realistic is the Lingua Genesis approach to improving listening ability?
Lingua Genesis appreciates that secondary school teachers of modern foreign languages regularly incorporate listening comprehensions into their schemes of work, however, a number of those materials are far too unilateral and do not include, unlike a number of carefully designed exercises used on AQA and Edexcel exam papers, a wide choice of differentiated learning exercises, such as multiple-choice, true or false questions, word scramble or direct translations, so as to address a scope of learner needs. Furthermore, they rarely cover or reiterate, even to a limited degree, any elements of simplified grammar, which would certainly add to their appeal.
Hence, I have sought to place a more realistic and culturally appreciative stamp on activities of this nature by considering, amongst other things, a number of songs by various artists to which learners can listen and complete, by entering omitted words into blank spaces. There is every so often an indication as to the number of letters contained in each solution, and where necessary, the songs are paused and rewound at regular intervals to allow everyone to tune their ear into what is being said. A great deal of care is taken to ensure that a large proportion of omitted words are ones which are generally encountered in everyday conversation, but if learners are unsure of any word, they are asked to judge whether it makes sense within the given context of the song. Each track is accompanied with a brief piece of background information about the artist and among the comprehension tasks which accompany these exercises are questions which allow learners to express views and identify any characteristics in dialect variations.
Lingua Genesis also makes use of audio resources which seek to combine spoken and written forms of the same examples of language, again on the basis of numerous learning tasks, by focusing a great deal on language survival topics, such as making acquaintances, eating out, booking a hotel room, etc, while at the same time and at intervals providing easy-to-master points of grammar, which should preferably be given a secondary degree of importance.
What measures has the company taken to develop natural conversational fluency?
I look upon some of the content and make-up of dialogues from auditory tasks and role-play exercises produced by examination bodies as being wooden, artificial or too formal for the situations in which they might be used. Examples include the description of one’s daily routine, stating the objects in one’s bedroom, or making endless complaints in a restaurant, etc. As such, I have aimed to produce exercises, such as free-flowing dialogue and realistic role-play enactments, which make use of colloquialisms (and / or sometimes jargon) and appear far more natural sounding in their wording. Students may be required to repeat examples of language from the spoken source, whilst paying attention to inflection (tone of voice), building a number of similarly worded sentences of increasing length, through the replacement of nouns with pronouns or adding adjectives (e.g. ‘I know’ > ‘I don’t know’ > ‘I don’t know him’ > ‘I don’t know her’), teaching a number of useful icebreakers and common remarks for the purpose of sustaining conversations, and reproducing orally a number of series of incorrectly placed words in the right order, i.e. a word scramble.
The practical use of role-play
In an attempt to encourage learners to pool resources during class contact time, there are always plenty of opportunities for them to form pairs or small groups by acting out short role-play dialogues, created by myself on the basis of mainly personal experiences during my year abroad from university. It has been agreed that the nature of such role-plays makes them far more realistic and less stilted in their content than those sometimes produced by examination boards, and even so, students are encouraged to refrain from or at least make only limited notes in their preparation of such exercises. Meanwhile, they are encouraged to abridge and perform their respective roles within their individual linguistic capabilities, rather than reproducing a word-for-word translation of the exact wording of a complete dialogue.
Series of extensive role-plays are also scripted to include the most common examples of vocabulary and increasingly more difficult linguistic structures for learners to practise, noting down any styles of language or translations, although only after they have delivered their role-play in the spoken form.
Lingua Genesis 