Vol 10 No 4 TESL Reporter

              TESL hesi
vol 10 no 4
providing student language teachers with opportunities for meaningful practice teaching is a recurring problem for teacher trainers schools are understandably reluctant to let beginning teachers experiment or practice teach on their students in addition

teaching english as a second language
laie hawaii
summer 1977

PROVIDING PRACTICE TEACHING
THROUGH PEER TEACHING
A REALISTIC APPROACH a by ted pl uister P lol
there frequently are logistical problems connected with practice teaching that is the teacher trainees are in location X whereas the schools with available students are in location Y with transportation from X to Y infrequent and expensive all these obstacles are undoubtedly painfully familiar to the reader who has the responsibility for arranging practice teaching for neophyte language teachers the purposes of practice teaching may be summarized briefly as follows first it teachers with an fledgling provides opportunity to undergo the experience of standing on the other side of the desk second it lets prospective teachers discover for themselves whether or not they really like teaching it is a worthwhile idea to introduce practice teaching fairly early in teacher training programs so that individuals who realize that teaching is not what they want to follow as a career have an opportunity to change to another field before having invested too much time third it gives the practice teachers a means by which they can gain insights into how theory and practice are meshed related to this aspect of practice teaching is the chance for the beginning teacher to use instructional materials which may only have been objects of study finally it provides a cumulative

CONTENTS
providing practice teaching through peer teaching A

realistic approach 1 page I by ted plaister repetition within a fun context page 4 by emilio G cortez
r

sector analysis and working
sentences by lynn henrichsen
prefixes by mohammed
page
5

the TESL teacher and english ali al kuhli
page
8

discourse in reading by ron shook

page 10

page 2

TESL reporter

experience tying together all elements of the teaching act especially if the practice teaching is of sufficient duration most teacher trainers would agree that one or two sessions of practice teaching while admittedly better than none are insufficient to give an individual a feeling for what it is like to teach on a day to day basis over a protracted period how long is necessary for someone to teach in order to discover whether a career in teaching is ones ultimate vocation will vary from individual to individual

english it is conceivable that one could construct a genuine vocabulary lesson using obscure vocabulary but this approach is at best contrived would like to propose that when using peers we abandon the notion of teaching english per se and in its stead teach something else the rationale behind this suggested change is my conviction that some of the most fruitful language learning takes place when subject matter is taught in the language rather than the language itself being taught strong evidence for this comes from the results of well planned bilingual education programs further evidence may be seen in the work of richard A via in his use of drama as a vehicle for teaching english in japan via a professional theater man with no language teaching training or experience worked with japanese university students putting on a play hence his focus is on the play and not on the direct teaching of language consequently he pays little or no attention to pronunciation in the beginning stages of work on me play nor th does he permit the memorization of dialogs in the usual sense this procedure may come as something of a surprise to the reader especially if the reader has used drama in what could be called a conventional way and is not familiar with vias writings 1976 vias approach to language teaching requires that the students be involved in doing something the results which the present author has observed h firstthand are extremely good not only in terms of the amount of language learned but perhaps more importantly in terms of attitudes which the individuals develop about themselves
1 I

one of the more common solutions to m the problem of providing practice teaching is the use of peer teaching in my experience as well as in that of others this approach has not been very successful
in a teacher training program where all the teacher trainees are native speakers of english aspiring to become teachers of english as a second or foreign language one common procedure is for the students to pretend that they dont know english while their peers go through the motions of teaching them english this technique has been used rather extensively in a variety of programs one instance of widespread use was in peace corps training programs of a few years back similarly if all of the students are native speakers of a language other than english the chances are that the level of english proficiency will be approximately the same for all consequently the a s situation is somewhat analogous to that sketched above for native speakers of english one of the main reasons for failure of this kind of peer teaching is that the teaching is fraudulent simply because it does not qualify as real teaching the know mis the students thl teacher knows this and the teacher trainer knows this As a result the entire experience becomes an academic exercise with little of real value resulting what is desired by teacher and teacher trainees alike is a valid teaching situation perhaps over the years we have been in error by insisting that the content of the practice teaching lesson at least where peers are involved be a regular english lesson involving grammar teaching pronunciattiion teaching vocabulary teaching on or the teaching some other aspect of

for example

I in light of the above 1 am arguing that

practice teaching using peers should take a different form than that which has been traditionally followed an example will clarify my proposal let us suppose that y iv e one has a class of twenty ffive native speakers of english in an ESLEFL teacher training program let us further assume m that for them to teach english to each other is basically a sham still we want them to experience meaningful practice now it is a reasonable teaching y iv e assumption mat each of these twenty ffive th

summer 1977
students knows something that the others dont know this knowledge could either be something about a subject or expertise in performing some task even if the students all share a pool of mutual knowledge on a subject certain individuals will undoubtedly know a particular body of knowledge in greater depth than others basically my suggestion is that that something which each knows is perfectly adequate and appropriate material to use as a basis for peer teaching my argument is that teaching is teaching and the content of the subject matter is of little consequence
1 I

pa ge 3 fa

was reinforced in my belief that teaching is teaching no matter what the content of the subject matter is while taking a course in needlepoint some time ago while I taking this course 1 recall clearly being

my own view of teaching is that it is a 1 type of selling I have come to believe that the differences between a shoe salesperson and a language teacher are not very profound in that both the shoe salesperson and the language teacher have something to sell in the one case it is shoes in the other
language A successful shoe salesperson has to believe in the product being sold or the selling arguments he uses will not be convincing to his customers and not very many I shoes will get sold 1 submit that the qualities which go up to make a good shoe salesperson are by and large the same ones which are found in a good teacher possibly the only substantial difference between a shoe salesperson and an english es teacher is that really good shoe sales persons are probably more financially successful than are english teachers

differences between the language learner and the shoe buyer presumably the buyer of shoes knows something about shoes but not in any comae ns prehensive way it is the sallesspersons job to draw to the buyers attention unknown qualities and advantages to a particular kind of shoe does the language learner know something about learning language the obvious answer is yes however the language learner sometimes finds it difficult to express what his feelings and knowledges are just as the expert shoe salesperson can point out unknown features of shoes so can language teachers show language learners things about language A very simple example of this would be the use of the dictionary another would be an explanation of abbreviations
are

there

exasperated at the teachers presentation the teacher had a small portable blackboard which was used exclusively to illustrate the various stitches used in needlepoint while we sat waiting more or less patiently the teacher would take a good ten minutes to sketch a representation of a piece of needlepoint canvas on the blackboard which was then followed by a demonstration of whatever stitch it was we were to learn the teacher was a very neat person in everything he did therefore it took him considerable time to draw the lines up and down forming I a grid representing the canvas 1 recall thinking to myself why doesnt he paint those lines on the blackboard so as to save time and then devote valuable clas stime to showing us how the stitches are bade t in made ad I another example 1 thought the instructor could have used colored chalk which in this instance would have cleared up a lot of misunderstanding on how the various staches i ch be made there were other were to I instances of poor teaching all of which 1 might add interfered with my learning I of needlepoint 1 liked the instructor as an individual and admired his own needlepoint I but 1 found his teaching methods aggrava1 ting in fact I became so upset and annoyed by his teaching that it distracted my learning processes 1 I was the slowest student in the class im sure that students everywhere feel similar frustrations because of poor teaching

returning to the discussion of our class of twenty ffive students lets imagine that y iv e one of them knows how to make a particularly good potato salad in the kind of
1 practice teaching approach I advocate this students task would be to teach the peer class how to prepare potato salad further all the elements of good teaching can be looked for in the presentation one has only to use ones imagination a little to visualize a well organized and well taught lesson on the preparation of potato salad in fact one might even want to go so far as to get the students into a laboratory situation and have them prepare the salad and serve continued on page 12