Classroom Strategies for Teaching Language
Overcoming Communication Apprehension in Foreign Language Classes
Aug 9, 2009
Teachers committed to teaching a foreign language to teens or adults (and that can be English as a second language) know well that foreign language anxiety and communication apprehension can inhibit many students and severely impact on their success.
Communication Apprehension
Most beginner students are a little uncomfortable about speaking aloud or being singled out to answer a question in any classroom, but in language classes the difficulty is magnified by having to formulate answers in an unfamiliar tongue in oral exercises. Some students are so embarrassed and self-conscious that they avoid the classroom conversation practice and participation that is essential for the development of language skills.
Foreign Language Anxiety
For many students, apprehension levels are highest in the first lesson, when they meet the teacher, encounter the unknown, and, in some cases, make nerve-wracking presumptions about being expected to perform instantly, remember everything, and demonstrate their lack of skill to a roomful of people. It is vital for the ultimate success of the class that such tension be defused early, and that students be encouraged to overcome shyness and inhibitions. The very first class is the perfect time for the language teacher to present a fun lesson that makes few demands and prepares students to open up in front of others.
Classroom Strategies for the First Lesson
For the language teacher, the first class is the equivalent of the actor's first entrance on the stage. The audience is expectant and curious. In the language classroom, the audience may also be nervous and reticent, despite their expressed desire to learn a foreign language. The question foremost in many students' minds is: "What's the teacher like?"
Teacher Demeanour
This is the day to pull out all the stops. The teacher should be prepared with plenty of smiles, a light-hearted approach and lots of reassurance. He or she should try to keep administrative matters, class rules, and "housekeeping" issues to a minimum, as these things tend to require a serious, dull approach, when freshness and enthusiasm is most required.
Tackling the Shyness or Reticence Issue Head-on
It's quite a good strategy to open with a discussion about what students hope to achieve by attending and how they might use the skills they learn. However, the discussion is steered to what students might be afraid of, or see as potential difficulties, and the answers recorded.
It is highly likely that the issues of speaking in public, looking and sounding foolish, failing, making mistakes and appearing "dumb" will quickly emerge. The teacher should suggest that these difficulties might make some students reticent about joining in conversation practice and then try to elicit what the likely results of that might be.
Overall, the discussion and teacher contribution should cover the following points:
- sounds and language structures will be unfamiliar and, of course, take time to learn
- some languages require a much more forceful voicing, more exaggerated lip and tongue movements than English and so will feel strange to produce
- the voice is an instrument and, with a foreign language, especially one with fricatives, trilled r's, nasal intonation, and glottal stops not found in English, students are learning to play a new instrument. Would they expect to learn a new instrument overnight without mistakes and without much practice?
- Correction is not criticism. When a child learns his or her first language, correction by parents is necessary, but doesn't represent criticism. Mistakes left un-corrected become habits that are hard to change.
- The student can't learn to speak a language by reading it. Sooner or later, the mouth and larynx has to tackle those unfamiliar tasks.
- Avoiding regular classroom practice means slower or little progress.
Classroom Exercise to Overcome Shyness and Anxiety
- Teacher states that the entire aim of this exercise is to act and sound silly and get used to it, without any fear of "getting it wrong".
- Teacher reinforces that the sounds and "words" in the exercise are nonsense words, so getting them right isn't an issue. Success is measured by participating, making a lot of noise, being silly and having fun.
- Teacher commences a "repeat after me" exercise, encouraging the class to louder and louder expression in unison. The words initially can be nonsense syllables or "scat singing" eg: "babba-dup dup dup", "Ooogly - boogly-boo." All nonsense expressions should be easily manageable.
- If the group is not judged to be too reserved, the words could be accompanied by silly actions to be copied, or perambulating round the classroom in a conga line. The aim of the exercise is to loosen inhibitions, encourage a fun, social atmosphere, and release "first class" tensions.
- The second stage of the exercise begins with an explanation that, when a student first starts to pronounce phrases in a foreign language, his or her face feels as if it will fall apart. Language pronunciation for second language acquisition can require lips to be more pursed or stretched, tongues to be more vigorously used and larynxes to produce sounds that will seem quite odd to English speakers (examples for the specific language can be given).
- Teacher then has students imitate a sequence of exaggerated facial expressions and, later, strange sounds pertinent to these particular second language learners. For example, students learning German could be introduced to the ich-laut and ach-laut, as "train noises" or "exhausted dog noises" – the sillier the nomenclature the better.
Paradoxically, by avoiding "real" language in the first lesson, the process of teaching a foreign language can be given a good head start by preparing students to overcome shyness and embarrassment that might otherwise impede their progress.
 |
