Read the following dialogue. The expressions in bold type show the ways of instructing people how to do things. Note them down. Be ready to act out the dialogue in class.

Experienced Teacher: Jenny, I'm sorry to have kept you waiting.

What was it you wanted to talk to me about? Beginner: Oh! I just don't know what to do. E. T.: What's the matter?

B.: Well, you know, it's again the problem of discipline in my class. When the lunch bell rings everything becomes so awful, and the pupils so noisy. E. T.: Oh, come on! First of all pull yourself together. Try and look on the brighter side. It can't be as bad as that. B. Oh, honestly it is. The children slam their books shut, shuffle their feet, splash their paint-water and rush toward food and freedom, I'm at my wits' end. What should I do? E. T.: The first and most important thing I have to tell you is that you should have fixed rules for your pupils. And by the way, don't forget to rehearse them at the beginning of each school year.

B.: To rehearse the rules at the beginning of the year? But how? E. T.: I really do recommend that you state them calmly and dis­passionately. When an electric buzzer shrills, your children should sit quietly in their places. While in the classroom they are not at the beck or call of mechanical noises.

B.: Oh yes, yes certainly.

E. T.: After you've done that you should show them the way the books are closed not slammed in the respectful manner due to books. B.: Yes, of course.

E. T.: The next thing you do is to get them used to the following commands: "Attention please. The class will rise. The class is dismissed." Make sure you remember to avoid familiarity. Be careful not to have moods. You should always be a certainty, be predictable.

B.: I think I understand what you mean. I should be today what

I was yesterday and will be tomorrow. E. T.: Right. And then within limits their behaviour will be also pre­dictable.

11. Learn the clichés, instructing people how to do things:

First of all you...

The first thing you have to do is...

After you've done that you...

The next thing you do is...

Oh; and by the way, don't forget to...

Make sure you remember to...

Oh, and be careful not to...

 

12. Use the clichés of Ex. 11 in the following situations:

1. The Home Economics teacher explains to the girls how to make a cup of tea.

The following expressions may be useful:

to fill the kettle, to boil the water, to warm the teapot, to put the tea in the teapot, to fill the pot with boiling water, to stir the tea, to leave the tea to brew for five minutes.

2. In the course of professional studies a lecturer helps a student teacher to arouse the class' interest in the subject.

The word combinations to be used: "To have informal classes, to express one's willingness to help, to apply oneself enthusiastically to some subject, to encourage smb. to express his views against the general background of textbook information, to stimulate smb.'s interest in school work, to use eve­ry device, one can think of.

1. An experienced teacher gives a piece of advice to a probation teacher who finds some difficulty in teaching East London children the English language.

The word combinations to be used:

to feel at ease with smb., to blend informality with a correctness of expression, never to speak down to smb., to make the meaning sufficiently clear in context, to encourage smb., to ask for an expla­nation any time one feels unsure.

2. The primary school principal who also trains teachers gives advice, a "bag of tools" which will enable the students to have con­trol over unfortunate classes (difficult, badly-behaved classes).

The word combinations to be used:

to enter into the class as you wish, to start on time, to know in full the alibis of any late arrival, to allow no movement of furniture, to forbid squabbling over who sits where, to learn who is who, to use in­dividual names as much as possible, not to talk for long periods, to require pupils to do a piece of work within their capability, to keep a note of those who are consistently without what they should have, to be strict but consistent, to finish in an orderly fashion.

Read the following text. Consider the penalties which are described in the extract. Do you think they will have a positive effect? Which of them would you use in class if any at all? Do you know any others? Do you think punishment in general should be used in teaching?

Penalties Against the Fixed Rules

There was no need to waste time in preliminary admonitions. Miss Dove's rules were as fixed as the signs of the zodiac. And they were known. The penalties for infractions of the rules were also known. If a child introduced a foreign object — a pencil, let us say, or a wad of paper, or a lock of hair — into his mouth, he was re­quired to wash out his mouth with yellow laundry soap. If his pos­ture was incorrect he had to go and sit for a while upon a stool without a back-rest. If a page in his notebook was untidy, he had to rewrite it. If he emitted an uncovered cough, he was expected to rise immediately and fling open a window, no matter how cold the weather, so that a blast of fresh air could protect his fellows from the contamination of his germs. Again if he felt obliged to disturb the class routine by leaving the room for a drink of water (Miss Dove loftily ignored any other necessity) he did so to an accompa­niment of dead silence. Miss Dove would look at him — that was all — following his departure and greeting his return with her per­fectly expressionless gaze and the whole class would sit idle and motionless, until he was back in the fold again. It was easier — even if one had eaten salt fish for breakfast — to remain and suffer.

13. Discuss the text of Ex. 13 and the problem of punishment in pairs. One of the pair will insist that punishment should be abolished and never used in class, the other will defend the opposite point of view. Be sure to provide sound argu­ments for whatever you say. Consider the following and expand on the items where possible.

 

For:

1. Punishment helps to do away with animal instincts such as greed, anger, idleness and discourtesy which lie in the depth of human nature.

2.It is impossible to bring up self-confident,strong-willed citizens without any punishment, as it keeps them under control.

3.The thing that distinguishes a man from a brute is not instinct but performance, and certain kinds of punishment help here a lot.

4.Not all kinds of punishment are acceptable, but it is inevitable as a phenomenon to control discipline.

5.The means of punishment is important, it should never be humiliating, never contemptuous. Children are not monsters, some of them simply go a little further than they intend.

6.It is not punishment itself that is important, but the threat that it represents (it keeps children from breaking the rutes).

 

 

Against:

1..It is no good to discipline children through fear.

2.Any punishment (corporal punishment in particular) humiliates a human being.

3.Teachers who punish their pupils do not care for children, they care only that children conform to the rules.

4.When one uses any kind of punishment he brings up (produces) cruel and heartless people.

5.Punishment leads to lies, as children would tell any lie to prevent the unpleasant act.

6. Punishment destroys a child's personality.

 

 

 

15. The extracts given below present controversial subjects. Team up with another student, work out arguments "for" and "against" and discuss the ex­tracts in pairs. Use conversational formulas of agreement, disagreement, giving opinion (see Appendix).

A. Should a teacher take home his pupils' work to check it?

"Don't fall into the habit of bringing work home, Rick. It indi­cates a lack of planning, and you would eventually find yourself stuck indoors every night. Teaching is like having a bank account. You can happily draw on it while it is well supplied with new funds; otherwise you're in difficulties. Every teacher should have a fund of ready information on which to draw; he should keep that fund supplied regularly by new experiences, new thoughts and discov­eries, by reading and moving around among people from whom he can acquire such things."

B. Should a teacher plan all the procedure of a lesson?

"The rest of that summer Miss Dove mapped her strategies in her bed-chamber. To represent a classroom she laid her father's chessboard on a table by the north window. The squares were desks. The ivory men were children. For hours on end, moving them about the board, speaking to them in unequivocal terms, she did what might be called "practice teaching". To the last detail she planned her procedure. The greeting to each class, as it entered the room, the ceremony of its dismissal, the rules and penalties and forms were all settled upon. The presentation of her subject matter was carefully considered."

C. Should compulsory school attendance be abolished?

"We should abolish compulsory school attendance. Our com­pulsory school attendance laws once served a humane and useful purpose. They protected children's rights to some schooling, against those adults who would otherwise have denied it to them in order to exploit their labour, in farm, shop, store, mine, or factory. Today, the laws help nobody, not the schools, not the teachers, not the children. To keep kids in school who would rather not be there costs the the schools an enormous amount of time and trouble, to say nothing of what it costs to repair the damage that these angry and resentful prisoners do whenever they get the chance. Every teacher knows that any kid in class who, for whatever reason, would rather not be there, not only doesn't learn anything himself but makes learning harder for anyone else. For many kids, not go­ing to college, school is just a useless time-wasting obstacle pre­venting them from needed money or doing some useful work."

D. Should fixed curriculum be used in schools?

"Some harder reforms are required. Abolish the fixed, required curriculum. People remember only what is interesting and useful to them, what helps make sense of the world or helps them enjoy or get along in it. All else they quickly forget, if they ever learn it at all. The idea of the "body of knowledge", to be picked up at school and used for the rest of one's life, is nonsense in a world as compli­cated and rapidly changing as ours. Anyway, the most important questions and problems of our time are not in the curriculum, not even in the hot-shot universities, let alone the schools. Check any university catalogue and see how many courses you can find on such questions-as Peace, Poverty, Race, Environmental Pollution and so on."

Role -Playing.