Teacher Guide - Daily Lesson Plan

How to Improve Oral Communication Skills in English

Improving your spoken English can be much more difficult than improving your listening comprehension because you need to produce English speech that is not only grammatically correct, but is also understandable and appropriate for the situation. Native English speakers often speak much differently than they write, and spoken English has its own rules and peculiarities that differ by dialect.

Improve your pronunciation so that you are understood. Choose one standard accent (American, British or Australian) and attempt to imitate the pronunciation. Each dialect has slightly different pronunciation of vowels, diphthongs and some consonants. For example, the "r" is pronounced at the end of words in American English but is dropped in British English. Once you choose a dialect, immerse yourself in it. Watch movies and listen to music in that dialect and try to imitate the sounds. You can also hire a professional accent and pronunciation coach or take pronunciation classes at a local language school.

Build your vocabulary. How do you need to use English? Memorize words that are important for you. If you are a businessperson and need English for business, learn words and phrases that are most applicable to conducting business meetings. If you are learning small talk for basic conversations, learn words about the weather and how to describe yourself. Focus on learning words that you will use. If you studying a language course book and there is an entire chapter on farming words which you know you are not likely to use, skip that section and move on to learning vocabulary relevant to your needs.

Learn and practice transitional phrases. Phrases that connect thoughts and ideas can improve the flow of your speech. You can use words that add, generalize, exemplify, restate, contrast and or summarize. For example, think about the following statement:

"I usually work on Fridays; however, I am normally free on Saturdays."

Here the speaker uses a transition word, "however," to contrast his schedule on Fridays and Saturdays. Transition words make your speech less choppy and more natural. At the bottom of the page, you can access a link to an excellent list of transitional words and phrases.

Practice with native speakers. Nothing can substitute for practicing your communication skills with native English speakers. If you do not have anyone to practice with in person, you can find language partners on My Language Exchange (mylanguageexchange.com) or hire a teacher through a service like Live Person (liveperson.com). If you have friends who are native speakers or are fluent in English, ask them to practice with you and correct your speaking. Without feedback, you will have difficulty knowing what you are doing wrong and how to fix it.

Adapted From: www.ehow.com

Article Arrangement By: Harry George

Picture: www.ehow.com

How to Improve Your Oral English

Good oral English will benefit your career, schoolwork and personal life. Even if you are learning English as an adult, you can learn to speak well. Whatever difficulties you have -- pronunciation, fluency, vocabulary or grammar among them --- you can improve your oral English by following these steps.

Listen to a lot of high quality spoken English. Language learning expert Stephen Krashen says that we learn a language from input we can understand. Listen to a higher level of language if you want good English for business or academic purposes. As a beginner, listen to instructional CDs or software. When you are ready, listen to quality news, documentaries and movies in English. If you don't live in an English-speaking country, find these sources on the Internet. You will need a lot of listening to improve, so commit to listening for an hour or more every day.

Read to challenge yourself.

Read in English every day to increase your vocabulary. Read material you understand but gradually increase its challenge level. Try to read for 30 minutes to one hour every day.

Record your spoken English and listen to the playback. Try to hear your own strong and weak points. If you are taking an English class at a school with a language lab, look for pronunciation software. Listen to the speakers, record your own speech and play it back to compare. This practice will help you improve your pronunciation.

Pay attention to grammar when you speak. If you don't know the rules, take a grammar class and ask English-speaking friends to correct you. However, don't expect grammar exercises to take the place of listening and reading. Stephen Krashen believes that we learn grammar better by hearing and reading the language.

Improve your fluency by speaking in English every day. Seek out opportunities to talk to English speakers. Join a club, talk to neighbors or travelers and make new friends who speak English. Enjoy activities with English speakers so you use English in real-life situations. When you are alone at home or in the car, speak English out loud for practice. Speaking your thoughts aloud will also help you improve your oral English.

Look for opportunities to give speeches and presentations. Volunteer to give talks in English at school or in the community. If you don't belong to a suitable group, join an English club or a speech club or sign up for a speech class in English. You will gain confidence by talking in front of a group and you will get valuable feedback. If you practice diligently, you will improve your oral English.

Adapted From: http://www.ehow.com/how_6529077_improve-oral-english.html

Article Arrangement By: Harry George

Picture: www.ehow.com

Using Internet information as sources of learning and activity. 

Using the internet information as resources in the learning and activity process is a common for the Teacher nowadays. Usually the ordinary teacher will do his/her lesson plan using textbook because they wanted to follow the syllabus. An extraordinary teacher will use the internet information to teach the pupils but still following the syllabus. The perfect lesson plan must include with resources from the internet and textbook so that the pupils’ knowledge will not obsolete and suitable for modern situation.

I have conducted a research about the question used on the UPSR exam and found out that 70% of the question was taken from the textbook syllabus and only 30% of it was from general knowledge. We want to educate the pupils to learn the real life situation. Although the textbook resources also related to the real life situation but it was not enough for the pupils. The textbook information was too simple. Teacher need to enhance the pupil’s knowledge by inserting new idea from the internet.

Teacher need to go through all the sources of teaching such as textbook, internet, magazine, newspaper, books, article and many more to make his or her lesson valuable to the pupils. The best way is to search through the internet to get information for the teaching and learning activity. Some of the internet sources may not suitable for the pupils in Malaysia but most of it can be used as guidance to conduct any particular activity. As for me, my aim and goals is to teach the entire unit in the textbook with internet sources such as game, worksheet or simple story.

I have learnt that the knowledge and information inside the textbook was too simple and too easy. The information was not enough for the pupils and for high level of pupils it was so easy for them. The pupils can answer the question less than five minutes. But when I give the pupils question from the internet that related to the topic from the textbook they cannot answer it. Internet was the valuable sources for the teacher because there is a lot of information can be gathered there. You lesson will become more effective when inserting some of the important sources from the internet.

Although the internet was full with valuable information and knowledge but we as a teacher must screen it first before use it as a tool on delivering the teaching and learning activity. Some of the information might not relevant to the syllabus. So be careful when copying the sources from the internet. English sources can be gathered from the ESL website which stands for English second Language. There are a lot of exercise such as grammar, writing, spelling and many more. Just search it through Google Search. 

I will concentrate to complete all the unit inside the textbook first and then teach the pupils using the internet sources.  The most important thing was the syllabus and as long as the lesson using the internet sources was following it, the lesson was considered on track. I will used internet sources for my future daily lesson plan.

Written by: Harry George 

Picture: Google Image

Today my journal will be focus on implementing game as one of the enrichment activity to make the lesson plan more effective and successful. As a teacher, we need to think outside the box so that we can create more activity to make the pupils understand more about the topic taught. Games can make the pupils understand more and remember what they were being taught by their teacher.

I have read form the internet about inserting games as one of the activity conducted during the lesson and I want to try it whether this activity can produced good result or not.  Letting the pupils to relax and enjoy while the lesson conducted will let go their pressure in learning something new from the lesson. The pupils need to be entertained nicely so that they can accept any lesson given by the teacher. As for new comer in this challengeable career, I must do the trial and error process so that I can decide whether my lesson plan was effective or not. So I decided to insert games at every lesson. This game will not take too much time and everybody in the class will be participating and full cooperation.

During the game, every pupil was participating and really enjoying it. The pupils keep on asking when there will be a game again after their done with the game. One of the games that they really like was “Simon Say”. In this game, one pupils will come to the front and asking the other pupils a question or an instruction. For example; Simon say look to the right and every pupils need to follow the instruction. If there is a pupil not following the instruction she/he will be considered out of the game. From this activity teacher can give new vocabulary and can adjust the game for one purpose only. Other example of the game conducted was “I Spy”, “Whispering Game” and “Magic Box” or in Malay language we call it as “Kotak Beracun”

The pupils were really excited when the game started and I can see from their face that they were really enjoying it. It was easy to control them during the game because everybody wants to become the winner of the game. After the game ends, I will be asking them what have they learn from the game? Every pupil can answer it. This result appears to be like this because every pupil were participating the game. If compare with a group activity such as answering the word puzzle some of the pupils cannot give answer because only a handful of them were participating. 

I need to select appropriate game that is suitable for the yearly scheme and curriculum specification so that every game I conducted will be on track with the syllabus. Usually when conducting the game it will cost me more time and sometime the allocation of time for the game was not on track. I need to control the time so that the next steps can be conducted accordingly.

I’m trying to create and develop a lesson plan which includes games in every steps in the lesson plan. For example, step 1: Set Induction include one game, next steps Presentation I will be inserted another game and this will be continue until the end of the lesson. All the pupils must participate the game so that they can experience it and at the same time learn something new. At the ends of the lesson, teacher will be asking what they have learnt from the first game and the pupils will recall back what they have gone through and the question will continue until the last game conducted. Surely they can memorize all the knowledge that they have learn during the lesson. I have not conducted it yet and hopefully I can spare my time to do this lesson planning.

Written by: Harry George

Date: 6 October 2011