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What if?

use of the LI is less appropriate. If we want students to activate their English, they won’t be helped if they talk in a different language instead.

When students use their LI in such circumstances, they often do so because they want to communicate in the best way they can and so, almost without thinking, they revert to their own language. But however much we sympathise with this behaviour, the need to have students practising English in such situations remains paramount, and so we will need to do something to make it happen. Here are some ways of doing this:

Talk to them about the issues

Teachers can discuss with students how they should all feel about using English and/or their own language in the class. Teachers should try to get their students’ agreement that overuse of their own language means that they will have less chance to leam English; that using their own language during speaking activities denies them chances for rehearsal and feedback.

Encourage them to use English appropriately

Teachers should make it elear that there is not a total ban on the students’ own language - it depends on what’s happening. In other words, a little bit of the students’ native language when they’re working on a reading text is not much of a problem, but a speaking exercise will lose its purpose if not done in English.

Only respond to English use

Teachers can make it elear by their behaviour that they want to hear English. They can ignore what students say in their own language.

Create an English environment

Teachers themselves should speak English for the majority of the time so that, together with the use of listening materiał and video, the students are constantly exposed to how English sounds and what it feels like. Some teachers anglicise their students’ names too.

Keep reminding them

Teachers should be prepared to go round the class during a speaking exercise encouraging, cajoling, even pleading with the students to use English - and offering help if necessary. This techniąue, often repeated, will gradually change most students’ behaviour over a period of time.

What if students don*t do homework?

We know that homework is good for students. After all, the morę time they spend working with English, the better they get at it. Yet homework is often a dispiriting affair. Teachers sometimes give out homework tasks with no special enthusiasm, students don’t always do it and teachers don’t especially enjoy marking it.

In some schools, systems have been developed to deal with this situation. Students all have a homework ‘diary’ in which they have to write their homework tasks, and whether or not they have done them. Their parents have to sign off their homework diaries at the end of the week so there is some hope that they will ensure that their sons and daughters do the required tasks.

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