Effective Communication Strategies for English Language Teaching

Communication is the exchange of information (ideas, desires..) between two or more people for different reasons and by different means.

Elements communication process: sender, receiver, message, channel, code and context. ^{Additional elem: affective component, age, interlanguage. Proposed pattern for any lesson: warm-up, presentation, practice, production. Listening: Pre-listening, during-, post.}

^{3 strategies to speaking: questions and answers, instructions and directions, interviews.}

^{Theater is important: Concentration is so difficult for kids. They need to make associations through their senses / Theater normally reflects pupils interests and world.}

Stories are important: Enjoyment and fun. Pupils need to be motivated to learn. / Real context. Pupils need to see a real usage of the language they are learning. They need to make associations.

Songs advantages: Great motivation degree / Useful to learn routines (at the beginning or end of the lesson…) / Pronunciation improvements (imitation and repetition).

Classification of games: Murado Bouso (2010). Cards game: Flashcards / Movement games: Roll the ball / Music games: If you are happy and you know it, clap.. / Relax games: Individual work and concentration.

At the moment of teaching the phonemes to our students, a first point that we must have clear is to focus on one sound at a time. In this case, let's focus on the / S / sound. Perhaps the / S / sound is one of the most appropriate to start teaching the phonemes to our students, because it is a particular sound that can be exaggerated notably as for example: Ssssssnake!

Make fun the moment of learning: Use gestures, mime, movements, tongue twisters, etc. It will help children remember sounds more easily. Sally sings songs about snakes.

Help the child to listen to the sounds of the words carefully in order to find out if a word contains a particular sound. we hear / SSSSS / in the word ssssssnake ???

Practice through reading the ability to identify the phonemes on the text we are reading, When they are reading we can point out each time the phoneme we are working on appears, in this case the / S /.

Main strategies in the English classroom:

Strategies to learn: use of humor, congratulate “good” students, encourage “bad students”, constructive use of errors and mistakes, create lessons routines and procedures, reinforce good results with labels/stickers..(something visual), combine/teach good habits (go to the library, reading, painting), play…

Strategies to control/manage the classroom: avoid distractions, make students interact, make students feel important, be proactive, create a discipline code (behaviour), create routines and procedures…

Parents´collaboration.*Don´t forget about prizes&rewards.