Needs Analysis in Language Teaching

Recently I had the opportunity to teach an Intensive English course to a foreign student for one month. My slot was on Speaking. I was required to do a Needs Analysis, which I found quite useful as I was able to introduce speaking topics based on information obtained about his job, family, education, and interests.In the field of training and development, conducting a needs analysis on training participants is de rigueur. Yet, in schools, colleges and universities, it is almost unheard of.  Students could be asked to fill up a form at the beginning of the year to obtain not only general information but also the students' different learning styles. A good understanding of the students will go a long way in helping the teacher tailor his or her lessons based on their needs.

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What Makes a Good Teacher?

Read What Makes a Good Teacher  at:

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Lessons from a Stump

I've been looking at this stump for over two months since my wife felled the red palm that had graced our little garden for about 18 years. This once tall leggy beauty has now been reduced to a midgety dull, prosaic stump, standing there daily in our garden in stoical silence. Despite having been brought down from her lofty heights, she never complains- not a hush, nor a rustle; how could she. anyway, when she's been shorn of her glorious green plumage. No, no, I'm not getting sentimental over her loss; I'm no tree-hugging nature lover. One day, for no apparent reason, I decided to take a close look at her, and this is what I find most amazing: even in her death throes, she's giving life to others-tiny plants sprouting to life and feeding off her. Walaoyeh!

Dateline: Sri Lanka, August 6, 2013
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigiriya
There I was climbing up the steps of this ancient heritage site: Sigiriya. At one of the stops to catch my breath, I was standing next to a French-speaking group when the local guide called out: Venez ici. Regardez! La statue de Buddha. Elle est plus grande! Imagine my excitement. I was able to understand what he was saying. Je peux comprenais! Bravo! 

What's your condition?

I often tell my students that English is a language where it's quite common to see writers making mistakes. A case in point is the opening sentence of a recent article in a local English daily: "If you live in Petaling Jaya, you would probably have heard of it. Three armed men rushed into a famous chilli crab restaurant shortly after closing time-and they were not looking for food".

The sentence in italics is a conditional sentence, but it's faulty. If the writer had intended to write in the "third conditional" the sentence should have been written thus: If you had lived in Petaling Jaya, you would probably have heard of it. However, we use the third conditional to express regrets for something that happened or didn't happen. Here's an example: If I hadn't missed the bus, I would have arrived at the office on time. It's quite obvious that the third conditional is not appropriate in this context.

The writer should have expressed his idea in the "first conditional": If you live in Petaling Jaya, you will/would probably know this. This sentence is possible as it expresses the idea that if the condition is fulfilled, the result is likely to happen. The use of would makes the writer's assertion more tentative.

A Coma Way to Speaking a Foreign Language

For most people, learning a new language incurs many hours of formal classroom lessons and daily practice of reading, writing, listening and speaking. In the case of a Croatian teenager, she awoke from a coma in 2010 to find that she had forgotten her native Croatian and spoke fluent German instead - a language she had just started learning in school.

I'm relearning French the hard way. I learnt the language in university a long time ago and I've forgotten most of it. Anyway, I still prefer learning it the hard way to speaking the language effortlessly after some traumatic experience. Anyway, there's no guarantee that one would speak a foreign language after waking up from a coma. Worse still, what if, instead of speaking French, I end up speaking a dead language like Latin!? Quid agis!

Learning English by Listening

Having taught English for a good number of years, I have often reflected on how to help my students learn the language in the quickest way possible. I must say that there's no shortcut to learning English, or any other language for that matter. Much has been written about how one can learn a language through listening, so what I'm about to share here is nothing new. 

Listening. This skill is often overlooked in the school system. Today,students are fortunate in that they have easy access to a wealth of free listening resources on the Internet. A quick search on Youtube using the keywords English listening exercises reveals 140,000 results. Pick the ones that you like which might not be too difficult for you to understand. Listen to each video several times: Understand what is being said, and after having understood it, learn to speak like the person in the video. I'm not saying you should mimic the person's accent because you may end up speaking as though you're parroting the speaker. If the video is good, you'll somehow know it, learn to adopt the speaker's fluency, pacing, and pronunciation. You might also want to pay attention to the speaker's body language, for example, eye contact and hand gestures for emphasis. Do this over several videos. Not only will you learn the language but you'll also become a good public speaker. 

What are you waiting for? Go to Youtube now!