CiC3-TB

B: Yeah, I agree. You need a good job in order to support yourself. A: For sure (5) . What’s your dream job? B: Well, I’d love to work as a photojournalist, traveling the world and taking pictures. A: Wow, sounds exciting! I take it you don’t want to be stuck (6) behind a desk! B: Oh, you got that right ! (AUS: you bet) What’s important for you in a job? A: Well, not having to move, believe (7) it or not. B: Really? A: Yeah. I want to live and work near my parents so I can take care of them. B: That’s very noble (8) of you! Speaking Time: Free Conversation Step 1: • Go over the questions from the unit one more time, then have students talk with each other about them in whatever manner you deem best. • Encourage students to give longer answers by answering implicit questions, or to ask implicit questions out loud if their partner gives short replies. Step 2: • If you have time, try the Guided Role-play activity. This will give students a break from always talking about themselves and give them an opportunity to work on improvising answers in the moment. Reflecting on progress If you have a chance in your final class, take a moment to reflect with everyone about how much progress they have made over the course of the year. Students have gone from talking about what time they wake up and eat breakfast to discussing important life issues. We hope that by looking back at a year-long body of work, both you and your students will feel a big sense of satisfaction on the progress everyone has made. If students did some recording throughout the year, now is a good time to go back and listen to some of the early ones made at the beginning of the year. By listening to themselves, students will be able to evaluate for themselves how well they progressed. Similarly, students can look over the transcripts of recorded conversations, tests, and review activities. Note that there are several ways to measure progress. You can look at fluency by listening for

gaps of silence in a recording. Obviously the fewer the gaps, the better the fluency. On a transcript of a recorded conversation, gains in fluency can be measured by the average number of words or turns per minute. You can listen for intonation as well- how has this changed over the year? Do students still speak with wooden, flat voices, or are they sounding more like themselves when speaking English? Accuracy is also another metric to look at. Are students making fewer grammar mistakes? While this has not been a main focus of the course, it is something to value because speaking English with fewer mistakes helps build self-confidence. Students can track their accuracy by looking over dialog transcripts. Use of the students’ first language (L1) during conversation is also something to examine. Most L1 tends to come up unconsciously when needing time to think (the dreaded eeto ). How about now, at the end of the year? Are students sill using L1 thinking sounds, or have they begun using English ones? If so, which expressions are they using? Another great point to reflect on is the degree to which students have incorporated the key pragmatic elements from the textbook, the Golden Rules and various conversation strategies . If recordings are available, listen for these elements. They can also be highlighted on various transcripts the students have written. Which rules are they using with consistency? Can they use various repair strategies for avoiding silence? Are they able to consistently make longer answers? Can they sustain 4, 6, or more turn sequences without resorting to questions? Which conversation strategies do they often use? Are they constantly repeating only a few, or can they use a diverse amount of them? The degree to which students have incorporated these pragmatic elements will show how much smoother and more natural their English has become.

Notes for Teachers: Unit 8 119