Página 14 - Teacher’s book - ENGLISH FOR HEALTH-CARE PROVIDERS

12 ENGLISH FOR HEALTH-CARE PROVIDERS
have been given in the units and provide students with a context in which to reinforce the
use of appropriate communicative formulas, conventional approaches to making speech
acts, and other language forms characteristic of spoken language.
Many adult learners and late-teenager learners are self-motivated and really grateful for the
time they are given to talk in the target language. However, speaking activities may be a
challenge in certain teaching contexts even if the topics are relevant for health-care provid-
ers and even if they can choose from a number of options.
To help students talk, it is also useful to make a friendly environment where English is
not considered as a linguistic barrier, but as a means to communicate. In this respect,
teachers should be understanding with students when they may occasionally slip into
their mother tongue. It is also useful not to observe students talking with a view to
further structural (e.g. grammatical, lexical, phonological correction), but simply actively
participating in communicative exchanges. Some students it may be liberating to know
mistakes are allowed.
The textbook proposes two different types of exercises based on the number of students
taking part in them: a) pair work; and b) group work (three or more students). All of them
aim to encourage students to use critical thinking, permitting interaction, cooperation
and exchange of knowledge between classmates/peers, and promoting students’ con-
trol and responsibility for their learning. Their main disadvantage is that it can be hard for
the teacher to monitor and can lead to domination by a few. Because of this, it may be
a good idea to set a time limit to each participation –as some students may speak more
than others.
Pair-work exercises increase the opportunity for student talking time and student to stu-
dent interaction. They also give students a safe environment to try out ideas and thoughts
before sharing with the group. Most pair-work exercises ask students to think about specif-
ic topics such as smoking, physical exercise, measures for home safety, etc., and provide
binary answers (yes/no, good/bad, healthy/unhealthy, urgent/non-urgent, etc.) to a number
of items. Some pair-work exercises ask to students to carry out role-play activities in which
member of the pair performs a different role (patient, doctor, etc.). For these, teachers
could do well to provide students with useful conversational formulas and common struc-
tures to introduce themselves and topics, as well as to maintain the listener’s attention and
turn-taking.
Group work, like pair-work, can visibly increase student talking time and student to student
interaction, and it encourages students to cooperate and negotiate in English. Most exer-
cises require students to work together to make a collaborative report that should be deliv-
ered at the end of the exercise to the rest of the class. Some activities even take the form
of “form and against” debates or intend the groups to work towards the preparation of a
collaborative report to deliver to the rest of the classroom. For this kind of task, teachers
would do well to teach students efficient ways to structure speech which, in many cases,
may be similar to the ones used in writing exercises.