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bored. It is not sufficient that half (or even three-quarters) of the
students understand what the teacher is talking about - all the
students must be kept in the picture. For example, if a teacher of
social studies were talking about how a friendly atmosphere among
workers could make the most unpleasant work bearable, he would
not say "D.H. Lawrence's father would often go to the pits on his
day off for the comradeship he found there". He would be taking
too much for granted. Perhaps some of the members of his audience
would not be quite sure who D.H. Lawrence was, or when it was
that his father was a miner. What the teacher would therefore say is
"The father of D.H. Lawrence, the novelist, who was a miner at the
beginning of the twentieth century when conditions down the mines
were very bad, would often go to the mines on his day off for the
comradeship he found there". Thus he would keep his whole
audience with him. At the same time he must not be too patronising
by treating his students as if they were totally ignorant of
everything.
In the same way the English teacher should not assume that all his
students know what a verb is, or a noun, let alone a past subjunctive,
even in their own language. He should explain things carefully, and
keep slipping in a quick explanation even at a future date, in case
any of his students have forgotten.
Short, headed paragraphs for easy reference
It will be noticed that the Callan Method Handbooks consist of short
paragraphs with headings. This is to make it easy for the teacher to
find any point he might be looking for.
Most teaching is done outside England
Although there are many thousands of students taught in England
each year, there are millions taught abroad. Consequently, the
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Callan Method is designed for students being taught in their own
country by teachers who are either of the same nationality as
themselves or who are English, but with an understanding of
something of the students' own language.
In England the teacher has the problem that his students are of
mixed nationalities, living in England for different periods of time
from 3 weeks to a year, and often studying 3 hours a day, which is
rather tiring. Little can be done to solve these problems, but the
Method can still be used very successfully under such conditions. It
just means that the students usually need about 25% more lessons to
complete the course than students studying in their own country -
although this can often be off-set by the fact that the students are
surrounded by the English language outside the school.
Keep re-reading the Handbooks and taping yourself
Once the teacher has trained himself, or been trained, and has
become proficient in the use of the Method, he should not think that
that is the end of the matter. Every year he should re-read his
Teacher's Handbook and the Student's Handbook, tape himself
giving a lesson, and do a word-count. If he does not do this, he will
find his teaching deteriorating without him noticing it. He will have
forgotten the importance of some of the points in his training, his
lessons will begin to slow down, and his students will start to
become confused and bored. This kind of thing can happen to even
the very best teachers. In fact, the Director of the school should
examine the teachers regularly each year.
Premature vocabulary
The teacher might notice that one or two words in Stages 5 to 8 of
the Method seem a little out of place. They do not seem to be very
useful words for that part of the student's studies: words like -
govern, speech, throne, seed etc. There are, in fact, about 50 such
words in the two books, but as they have only one question attached
to each, constituting 2½% of a total of 2000 questions, it is not very
important where they are placed.
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Although they ought perhaps to have come later in the Method, as
they are not frequently found in normal conversation, they are
among the 2000 most commonly-used words in the language, so
would eventually have to be taught somewhere.
Choice of vocabulary
The teacher will find that some words in the Method are not in the
Cambridge Lexicon of graded vocabulary. The Lexicon, however,
is a guideline; a very good guideline, but one which does not claim
to be totally precise in its choice of words. In any selection of
vocabulary there are bound to be apparent oddities. The words
"axle" and "algebra", for example, are included in the Lexicon, but
not the word "rope", whilst the word "chimney" is considered to be
more frequently used than "toast" or "tomato".
Such oddities are not of great importance, as they only constitute
about 1% of the vocabulary in the Lexicon or in the Callan Method.
By and large the vocabulary is more than sufficiently accurate for
the Cambridge Preliminary and First Certificate.
The re-introduction of words
The teacher might wonder why some words in the Method are
introduced more than once. The reason is that they might be used
with different meanings at different times, or might not be fully
practised on their first introduction. This system of re-introduction
is in order not to confuse or overload the student on first
introduction.
"Quite" and "whether"
Some teachers might puzzle over the way one or two words in the
Method, like "quite" and "whether", are taught. They might, for
example, not see, or not agree with, the distinction made between
"quite" with a heavy accent and "quite" with a light accent, or with
the distinction made between "whether" and "if". Such distinctions
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are not all that important, and are intended just to show the student
that they do exist. Hair-splitting over such issues does not concern
the student at this level of English. They are arguments that should
be confined to the teachers' common room.
No question is meant to offend
As elsewhere explained, no question in the Callan Method is [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]