ESL: The Art Of Eliciting

1. Introduction.: Hello there and welcome to the Art of eliciting one of the many techniques that we can use the English classroom with teaching English as a foreign language is eliciting. Eliciting is a range of techniques which are used by teachers to get information from the students. In this lesson, we're going to learn how we can elicit from pictures. And we're going to learn how we can get students the guest unknown words and structures. We're going to look at questions that gets students to use their imagination. And we're going to learn how we can cultivate this culture in our classrooms. As well as this, we're going to explore how we can use techniques such as pattern prediction at position sense-making to help with elicited. So why should you care about eliciting in your classroom? More and more, we are moving towards student-centered classrooms. Traditionally, teacher stood at the front of the classrooms and gave information to the students who are passive participants in the lesson. But these days, we prefer to give the students more power in the lesson and allow them to do more work. As a result of this, instead of the teacher giving answers to the students all the time, we encouraged the students more and more to contribute what they already know to the lesson. This is why eliciting is important in your classroom. Using these eliciting techniques in your class further helps the students to build on their foundation of knowledge. Encourages them to think for themselves and come up with their own answers, which in turn also helps them to retain the knowledge learned from the lesson. There are many obvious benefits of elicitation, such as it can be fun if done in the right way. And it's also a great way to review. It involves everybody from the quietest students up to the local district. And it forces the students to use their brains in the whole brain method. As well as this improves the teachers improvisational skills and moreover, it encourages participation and co-operative learning from the class. 2. Eliciting From Pictures.: Eliciting from pictures. Pictures are the easiest way to elicit a particular item, especially if a word lends itself to visual representation. Use pictures when ever you can, but be aware if the students need or help or if the picture itself is a little ambiguous. So let's take a look at this example. A teacher wants to use this picture on the right to elicit questions structures from the students. The teacher wants the students to elicit potential questions to ask each other. There are some answers provided. So think about how can you encourage and create interest in the picture? How can you get your students to open up and create some questions? Well, the first thing that we could do is we could play a contextual understanding game. This way, we build up towards what we want. I mean, make it a bit more fun and entertaining and interactive At the same time. This could be something competitive where we put them into teams and they can make vocabulary less than their team by looking at the picture, seeing which team could come up with the most items of vocabulary. Or we could have a sentence creation game where they could do in teams or individuals to see who can come up with the longest are maybe the most interesting sentence. These types of games will be based on your student's level and how well you know them, you know what types of games they enjoy, you know what types of games get them interested and motivated. So those are the types of games you want to focus on here at the beginning. Next, we can let them imagine situations and get creative. There are no wrong answers here. Let them discuss it amongst themselves, do some cooperative learning and discussion within the groups. And then let them tell the class or the teacher what they come up with. It can be easy sentences like, I think the colors are happy because I think the lady is enjoying feeding the donkeys because, and so on, give them points for imagination and for being creative. Finally, you will provide the answers for them on the board or on a piece of paper and get them into groups or pairs to elicit some questions out with them. Let them discuss it amongst themselves and use cooperative learning. Afterwards. You can discuss it with each group or individually, or even discuss it with the class. So here are some of the answers. What questions could you provide for these answers? Could there be multiple questions for each of the answers? Always think of it from your perspective first before you put it to the students. Okay, so I'll go through some questions to the answers for you just to give you some examples, I'm sure you can think of more. Please have a think and see if you can think of any others. For she is a farmer. Obviously you can have what's her job or what is she? Very easy, very straightforward for she is feeding her animals. There's quite a few different questions you could provide here. What is she doing? What is happening in the picture? What is the lady up to? What is the farmer up to? And you could just simply say, describe what is going on. All of these would be acceptable questions. The answer being there are donkeys and Carlos, you can have how many animals are there? What are they? What animals can you see? What type of animals can use? C, and so on. For the answer, it is a cloudy day and there might be some rain to you could have, what is the weather like? And try to encourage them to stay longer. Questions if possible, what is the weather like in the picture? Describe the weather in the picture. What type of day is it in the picture? For the older students want to ask some follow-up questions. Look more closely at the picture and the details. Make them think more deeply about it. How would you know that she's a farmer? How can you tell that she's happy? What makes you think that she likes the animals? Get them to give you more details and information based on the picture, the body language, the clothes, the scenery. And you might be surprised about the answers that you get from them. So in this example, the teacher wants to elicit specific words In the box and make the students use them in relation to the picture. The words are rice to plant by hand, bend down and rules. So here's a task. I want you to think about what questions you could ask. Do they need some guidance? Is the picture obvious or could you give them leading questions and maybe some hints? While other words could you get from the picture as well. So the simplest way to elicit the correct responses that you are looking for would be to ask leading questions. So for number one, Reich's, you would ask questions like, what do you think they are farming? And you could give clues like, this is a food commonly eaten in Asia. It's a white small grain. It's a staple food in Asia. And you can expand on this point if you felt like they weren't getting it. The second one, plant, we can say, what do we call it when we put seeds in the ground, or what are they doing? We could give them a clue until the noun version of this word includes flowers, trees, and bushes. The third one by hand is, how are the farmers planting the rice? You can make it a bit silly, you could say, or the planting by foot, by knows, by ears. No, they're planting it by hand. The fourth one vein down. You would ask them, Well, how are they standing? Are they standing up straight? And you could do some examples maiming here as well, actions. What would you call this position? The fifth one? Rows, you could ask, are they standing in a circle? What's another word for line? Once you've asked these questions, using them in actions or other sentences are relating them to the student's life is all a good way to elicit more responses. Once you've got the ideas of the words in the vocabulary from the students, you want to get them to use it as much as possible and as many different ways as possible. 3. Improvising And Interpreting.: Improvising and interpreting. Let's take a look at this chart on the right. This part is all about knowing your students better. Knowing what buttons to push to get the best responses. You formulate questions that are designed to elicit and probe their thinking. And you pose those questions. The children themselves, they listen and interpret anything. Then they develop additional questions. You as a teacher have to make sense of what the students know and can do and ask follow-up. So the key points here are the times when you're using this type of technique that the teacher needs to improvise and try to make sense of what the student is trying to say. Again, this is where you need to know your students better. You need to try and understand what they're trying to express, because they won't always be able to express it correctly and in the correct grammatical form. By using carefully chosen questions, the teacher can draw all the students sentences and create a safe space for them to share their innermost thinking. You need to make them calm and confident enough to say things and make mistakes. Making stakes is how we learned, but they need to be competent enough in your classroom to be able to make those mistakes. So you can try interpret what they're trying to say. This can be done with care, encouragement and positive reinforcement. This is key. Why? Because if we feel bad, we shut down. If we shut down, we won't speak and will be less likely to speak in the future. Moreover, if one feels bad, the others will feel bad as well. And the other students need also feel that they can add to the conversation, even if the conversation isn't quite grammatically correct, they still should feel comfortable enough to try and add their own thoughts into. This idea is called position sense making. By predicting and interpreting student thinking that the teacher gives the students the power in the classroom and mix them. Understand that they're thinking is valuable, interesting, and it's rewarding for everyone. The key point here is making mistakes is how we learn. There are no wrong answers. We need to encourage her students to elicit as much as possible. Try and speaking out is all that's required. The teacher can interpret the rest and improvise as needed. Pattern prediction. What is it? Well, this is a great method to stimulate an elicit problem-solving abilities while producing English. Pattern prediction uses examples in English and patterns to elicit the student's knowledge of what will predictably come next and how to create their own structure. This is a mixture of previously learned knowledge and the student having a guess predicting what will come next in the pattern. This technique involves a bit of guessing at first, and it may even require teachers help or guidance. But once they get it, they're much more likely to retain the knowledge going forward due to the process they use to get the answer. This is much the same as rather than someone just handing you the answer. Blocking out for yourself is going to help you remember it better. So, how do we use it? Well, in order to get the students they elicit unknown words or phrases. First, you have to provide them with the example structures or the patterns. When using this technique, you should try your best to involve the students in the process as much as possible. Creating groups or pairs for cooperative learning and discussion can also be very helpful here. This is a very useful technique. And if done right, it can be used with vocabulary, sentence structures, role-plays, charts, and more. Here are some pattern prediction examples. In this example, we will be working with higher level students and the need for teachers input here should be minimal. In most cases, once the pattern is identified, they should be able to continue using previous English knowledge of subjects and verbs. Teachers intervention in this case would be to encourage expansion and more interesting combinations. You can use this technique for basic sentence patterns in English, you can learn rules and structures via elicitation and use pattern prediction. English sentences themselves present themselves and varying patterns. These patterns refer to their maintenance of the elements of the sentence or the grammar structure. You can use the eliciting and prediction techniques to help your students create their own structures easily. So in the first example here is a basic grammar pattern, one of the basic sentence patterns in English, subject plus the intransitive verb. This pattern uses verbs are in the base form and doesn't even nouns or adjectives to complete the meaning. For example, Peter marches, Peter, jumped, Peter Singer, peter, student to continue the add an intransitive verb and then the ad, the subject, and so on and so on. The second one here is also a basic grammar sentence pattern in English, subject plus transitive verb plus direct object. Here we use the transitive verbs, which means they need a direct object. They are baking cookies and cakes. They are baking pies. They are baking. And then you add a direct object and so on. The class will easily be able to do this using previously learned knowledge. Let's take a look at some more examples. These are much more basic inappropriate for younger learners. How can you continue these patterns? And can you think of any others? This is also sometimes called chunk learning. You can use it for basic phonics, sounds, CVC, words, way, say, day, may, play, and so on and so on. You can use it for nationalities, Italy, Italia, India, India, Canada, Canadian, and so on. You can use it for basic sentences as well. She can swim. She is a swimmer. He can sing, he is a singer. They can run. They are runners. The sentences can be as basic as you like for the youngest of learners, you can just be focusing on basic adjectives. She is plus adjective. She is happy, she is sad, she is glad. She is upset, and so on and so on. From describing a person, you could describe a room or the classroom or the child's bedroom wherever you like. It is big. It is long, it is cold, it is hot, it is bright, it is lovely. It is beautiful. As you go up into the intermediate section, you can make it longer and make a slightly more complicated, but at the same time, following a pattern and make them understand that it will go in the same direction. They can predict it. Someone who loves pizza, pizza lover, someone who drives buses, is a bus driver. Someone who hunts. Lyons is our lion hunter, and so on. I play guitar, he plays football. I sing, she draws. I like to eat bananas. My father likes to eat apples. You may need to expand the sentences and give some variable clues or prompts, or even do some actions, or even make a vocabulary list. So that becomes something to draw from. But they will get it a bit of trial and error and practice. And they will understand what is expected. 4. Using Imagination.: Using imagination. Getting students to think creatively in the classroom can be a challenge. However, if you present this in the right way, this tool can be great for eliciting conversation in English. It even can bring in the quietest students into the fold of the class. The tasks for the teacher here is to make it as interesting and as appealing as possible. At the same time, creating a comfortable fear to relax the students and make it seem less daunting. This may take a few lessons to create this culture in your classroom, and it might not go perfectly the first time. So don't be disheartened. Keep on trying and keep on pushing gently, and they will get. There are many reasons why students might be resistant towards this. While they might want to avoid it, they might be shy. They might just think it's not cool or be easily distracted, board, lazy, naughty, or any of a 100 reasons. Certainly, one of the main reasons is that they're generally going to be afraid of being wrong in front of their peers. This is something I tell my students from the start. Being wrong is right. We have to make mistakes in language learning because that's how we learn. As a teacher, you need to cultivate an atmosphere of support and encouragement for all your students to want to help others to speak, respect each other, and try to learn together, not focusing on mistakes and focus on the effort and the meaning behind the mistakes. If you cultivate the right kind of classroom environment, you will find students helping each other get better and better and working together to avoid these mistakes in the future. Using imagination in class. In this lesson, the teacher wants to elicit the imaginative sentences from this picture. Think about how we could encourage your students to see past this picture and read between the lines to create a story. Again, you would start with the basics here. And depending on older, higher level students, you would decide how far you want them to go with backstory and so on. First, we would elicit contextual vocabulary knowledge from the students. We would add these words on the board and get the students to show, oh, interesting or new vocabulary for the class to hear. Where is she? Is it a man or a woman? What can you see? Next? We would add some basic contextual sentences. Where are they? Is it a man or a woman? And how can we tell, talk about gender norms? What are they doing? What can we see? What is he or she wearing, etc. These question types are designed to elicit vocabulary and basic structures and develop the coding skills. As well as this, these types of skills focused on improving student accuracy. Finally, we would ask open questions focusing on interpretation and imagination. Why is she there? What was she doing before going there? How does she feel? Now, imagine this scene from a film. What would happen next? Who is taking the picture? What is their relationship to the person? Using these types of open questions will allow students free reign with their imaginations. This is where encouragement and interpretation skills are vital from the teacher. If done correctly, the teacher can lead the students to the next part of the story with leading questions. And by acting interested in what they're saying. Leading questions such as So then what happened? But how did they do that? Or that's interesting. Can you tell me more? How did they feel about that? What was the reason behind that choice? And so on. Here is a task for you. We want the students to use their imaginations. Look at these scenes and think about how you could use them in your class and how you could elicit imaginative responses from your students. How can you encourage responses from everyone? Think about using groups or pairs. Would you include a reward system for interesting or longer answers? Would you prompt the class first or would you let them come up with their own ideas? First? Write your plan and give times each of the steps. So here's an example lesson plan for using imagination to elicit conversations in class. First, we project a picture on the board. One of these two pictures on the right would work fine. I asked the students to work in pairs and write down the sentences that describe elements of the picture using the target language. This can take five to seven minutes. Next will elicit the main contextual description sentences from the peers, correcting where necessary, we would make sure to highlight the main contexts elements of the picture will make it clear and we'd write it on the board. For example, there's a submarine, the minus sleeping. Cindy is writing that sort of thing. This can take up to five minutes. Next, you can get the students to ask each other open questions, or even the teacher can do this part, but try to include all the groups here and encourage silly or interesting ideas, such as, what is Cindy writing about? Why is the man sleeping? Why is there a snowman in the swimming pool? Why is there a submarine in the swimming pool and so on. After that, students write the description story of the picture. They use the target language and include basic contextual sentences with open-ended imaginative centers as well. We encourage interesting ideas and creative ideas here. This would take ten to 12 minutes. Then we can have students swap their texts and classmates can correct each other's papers. Peer correction. This can take up to ten minutes. Finally, we can get the pairs or groups to share their sentences are stories with the class and others can try to add ideas. It's the teacher's job here to try and get discussion's going and expand on the ideas. Students will often give basic ideas such as the man is sleeping. He is sleeping because he is tired. So you can try and push for more ideas and more details from the class. Why is he tired? What happened to him? Did he stay up late, et cetera? Let's can take ten to 15 minutes at the end.