Warming up

Introduction

1   Warming up as means of teaching phonetics

1.1 The role of phonetics in the teaching process

1.2 A brief description of lesson procedure

1.3 Different approaches to warming up technique

1.4 The importance of warming up as a part of English lesson

1.5 Types of phonetic warming up

2 Phonetic skills acquiring through warming up

2.1 Developing sound pronunciation

2.2 Teaching correct pronunciation of words, with special attention to stress

2.3 Teaching right intonation in sentences

Conclusion

Appendix

 

INTRODUCTION

 

«In the 21st century, a nation that is not able to develop knowledge is doomed to failure. We should create a depth of talent for the high-technology and research-based industry of the future. The republic Kazakhstan is recognized by the world community as the state with market economy. For the short historical period of independence the country has reached considerable growth in economy, being integrated with the world community.

The role and value of educational system, human resources increase in the context as criteria of level of social development, economic power and national safety of the country. Changes in system of public relations influence formation, demanding from it the mobility, the adequate answer to realities of a new historical stage and conformity to requirements of the development of economy. [33] Nowadays Kazakhstan suffers rapid changes in every sphere of political, cultural and social activity. Due to the new course of our President N. A. Nazarbayev, the education is being restructured; juvenile forms of instruction are involved in the teaching process. According to the new educational paradigm teacher should try to motivate students, arouse their interest to the lesson. Warming up is a powerful means of involving students in the classroom interaction, way of “tuning” students up in the beginning of a lesson. A warm up to prepare students for a period of concentration may involve physical movement with activities that keep them active by standing up, walking, jumping, matching pictures with sentences or vocabulary, drawing or writing personal experiences or stories, and singing or listening to familiar songs and chants. These are, among others, enjoyable and motivating warms ups.

The use of warming up has the next advantages: creating a positive feeling for language learning, awakening interest during the lesson, stimulating students to greater oral participation, and breaking the monotony of the day.

Especially warming up is useful for developing phonetic skill since phonetic exercises are usually regarded as one of the most tiresome part of a lesson due to numerous number of mechanical repetitions. In the given course paper we investigate the ways of teaching phonetics and arousing motivation at the same time.

The course paper aims to investigate the phonetic skills’ acquirement during the initial lesson stage.

We settle down a number of objectives:

1. to define the maim features of the phonetics as a science
2. to describe the peculiarities of the phonetic skills
3. to figure out the distinctive features of the warming up stage
4. to classify the different means of a phonetic warming up

During our work we applied the following methods: analysis of a theoretical literature, synthesis.

Urgency is determined by the following factors: warming up stage is an important part of English lesson as it increases students’  motivation, helps them to concentrate their attention and get new skills. Young children tend to change their mood every other minute, and they find it extremely difficult to sit still. On the other hand, they show the great motivation to do things that appeal to them. Since it is almost impossible to cater to the interests of about 25 young individuals, the teacher has to be inventive in selecting interesting activities, and must provide a great variety of them. Warming up activities can foster motivation and this is, in turn, an essential component when planning warming up.

Novelty lies in the field of investigation - warming up stage – thus it wasn’t carefully examined through the prism of phonetic skills development.

The subject can be defined as the influence of warming up on the development of phonetic skills: thus the object is the process of English language teaching..

During our research we employed the working hypothesis about great importance of warming up in the process of the phonetic skills development.

 

1   WARMING UP AS MEANS OF TEACHING PHONETICS

1.1 The role of phonetics in the teaching process

 

 

Phonetics is one of the fundamental branches of linguistic. It’s very important in the study of a language, because neither grammar nor lexics can exist without the phonetic form. All these phenomena are expressed phonetically. Neither linguistic theory nor the linguistic description can do without phonetics. Phonetics is an independent branch of linguistics like lexicology or grammar. These linguistic sciences study language from three different points of view. Lexicology deals with the vocabulary of language, with the origin and development of words, with their meaning and word building. Grammar defines the rules governing the modification of words and the combination of words into sentences. Phonetics studies the outer form of language; its sound matter [13,7].

Phonetics was known to ancient Greeks, where the theory of public speech and phonetic delivery were important.

The main thing pupils should acquire during their study is how to pronounce sounds. It's a big mistake to underestimate the importance of pronunciation. Pronunciation is the only way to deliver the  knowledge of English to the listener. Speaking to people is the only way to communicate. Correct, standard English pronunciation is necessary to acquire if students want to understand English speakers and want to be understood. Standard pronunciation consists of:

1. Correct pronunciation of sounds;

2. Correct pronunciation of words, with special attention to stress;

3. Standard intonation in sentences, which includes such notions as sentence stress, rhythm, and rising and falling intonation.

Much has been said about the importance of paying due attention to intonation when studying a foreign language. The process of communication cannot be performed without intonation as it has its own functions in a sentence.

English pronunciation is very different from Russian pronunciation. The number of letters and the sounds they represent are not the same in English and Russian, and some English sounds do not have corresponding sounds in Russian [2, 99].

English  phonetics  is  idiosyncratic,  including  various characteristics  that  are  unusual  from  the  point  of  view  of universals:  an  large  and  elaborate  vowel  system,  including complex  processes  of  length  alternation  and  weakening (compete-competitive-competition);  a  consonant  system  that includes  dental  fricatives   and  voiced  sibilants,  which  are  problematic  for many  learners; words  stress placement  that  is  free,  i.e.  arbitrary and  frequently unpredictable; and an intonation system that seems to be more complex and  to have a much higher functional  load  than  that of most other languages.   
The objects of teaching English phonetics are the following: 
1. Pronunciation training (II кл., V -VI кл.);

2. drilling of auditory, articulatory, rhythmic, intonation skills (Ш grade, VI-IX grade.);

3. correction and  improvement of articulatory skills [23]. 
The material for teaching phonetics must be sorted out according to the following principles: 
1. correspondence to the needs of communication

2.stylistic principle

3.standards of pronunciation

4. taking into account the peculiarities of students’ native language  
Phonetics is the study of the way humans make, transmit, and receive speech sounds. Phonetics occupies itself with the study of the ways in which the sounds are organized into a system of units and the variation of the units in all types and styles of spoken language [1, 112].

Phonetics is a basic branch of linguistics. Neither linguistic theory nor linguistic practice can do without phonetics. No kind of linguistic study can be made without constant consideration of the material on the expression level.

 

2. A brief description of lesson procedure

 

Teachers need more than a vague, or even a precise, notion of educational goals and objectives to be able to sequence these objectives or to be proficient in the skills and knowledge of a particular discipline. The effective teacher also needs to develop a plan to provide direction toward the attainment of the selected objectives.

There are many different methods of writing a lesson plan, such as the Herbartean method or Madeline Hunter's method. The Madeline Hunter method is a kind of direct instruction model and method mostly applied to lesson planning. Madeline Hunter developed the Instructional Theory into Practice teaching model. It is a direct instruction program that was implemented in thousands of schools throughout the United States. Hunter identified seven components for teaching:

1 knowledge of human growth and development;

2 content;

3 classroom management;

4 materials;

5 planning;

6 human relations;

7 instructional skills [1, 8].

She believed that teachers were foremost teaching decisions makers. That each teacher makes thousands of decisions each day. All of the decisions a teacher makes can be put into one of three categories;

1 what you are going to teach - content category;

2 what the students are going to learn and let you know that they've learned it - learning behavior category;

3 what you as the teacher will do facilitate and escalate that learning - teaching behavior category.

The second global educational theory was named Herbartian. One of the two areas of concern for the professors was to find a scientific approach to lesson planning which would not only be useful to their students but also be academic enough to merit scholarly study.  They found their answer in 1892 when students of the German Philosopher Herbart introduced his ideas to American professors [4, 111].

Based on the Herbartian concept of the mind as an appreciative mass, his students developed a five-step lesson plan appropriate for all teachers.  It included:

1.    Preparation

2.    Presentation

3.    Association

4.    Generalization

5.    Application

Teacher manuals, plan books, and evaluation instruments can be all organized around the five-step lesson plan.

Nowadays lesson planning has undergone some essential changes. Common stages of an ordinary English lesson are:

1. Warming-up
2. The main part of lesson (Teaching new material)
3. Revision/ Control
4. Feedback

Three stages of lesson planning follow:

Stage 1: Pre-Lesson Preparation

1. Goals
2. Content
3. Student entry level

Stage 2: Lesson Planning and Implementation

1. Unit title
2. Instructional goals
3. Objectives
4. Rationale
5. Content
6. Instructional procedures
7. Evaluation procedures
8. Materials

Stage 3: Post-Lesson Activities

1. Lesson evaluation and revision
2. Feedback [12, 93]

Thoroughly following these steps teacher can easily compose his own lesson adequately fitting all the methodical rules and regulations.

 

3. Different approaches to warming up technique

 

Warm up - he act or procedure of warming up, phonetic warming up we define as the initial lesson stage, in which the process of preparation of student to the lesson is held.

There exist several approaches to using warming-up technique during the English lesson.

It is logical to mention in the first place such points of view as necessity and uselessness of conducting warming-up.

Those teachers who are against warming-up usually spend a lot of time preparing explanations and worksheets to introduce and practice the target language. But commonly students who came from a math or a ph class demand some time for “tuning on” for English lesson and preparing for the intensive forty-five minutes of learning grammar, vocabulary, etc., and consequently an immediate more or less difficult activity (such as for example confusing grammar exercises) that students must complete, results in a disinterested and distracted class. Thus in this practice the warm up of a lesson often receives unfairly less attention than it should which is obviously contributes to the less efficiency in learning language.

On the other hand those teachers who approach warming-up as a necessary and regular activity greatly success in teaching English. According to them, an effective warming-up serves as a springboard into the topic or target language of the lesson. A fun warm up raises energy levels. Fun activities also produce relaxed, less inhibited students. With the right warm up, you'll have created a positive atmosphere to practice and experiment with the language. If the lesson focuses on a definite theme, then a few lower-intermediate questions will get the students thinking about the topic. The warm up activates already held information. There's the chance, too, that students may even inadvertently produce some of the key language, which can be made a note of and used to present the target material [18, 105].

Because the warm up opens the class session, it sets the atmosphere and expectations of the lesson. It also allows important assessment opportunities, which will later determine the type of activities, who will partner with whom, and the scope of the lesson. Always give equal consideration to the warm up as to other steps of the lesson. The result will be a more focused and positive group of students performing to teacher’s expectations.

Without enough time to get warmed up, though, students will continue to make mistakes during the early stages of the lesson - important time needed to present and drill the new material. Students may be slow to understand, too, again because their minds are still far away from lesson.

Further on, warming-up can be classified into a teacher-focused or a student-focused type, as a whole process of teaching. As mentioned, the warm up sets the tone for the lesson. If teacher participates in the activity, especially in a small-sized class, it turns the focus towards him.

Obviously, teacher will succeed more establishing himself as a participant rather than a guide. The students will not be as quick to volunteer information or participate in conversations unless teacher initiates and runs them. This steals valuable talk time from the students, and creates more hesitant speakers inside and outside the classroom. In comparison, an activity in which teacher writes three questions on the board, and instructs the students to pair up and sustain the conversation for at least five minutes the first one always strives for an atmosphere in which the students take responsibility for the language they produce.

Another approach consists in the question whether to correct students’ mistakes during the first five minutes of the lesson or not. Some teachers suppose corrections are necessary during every step of the lesson, including warming-up, other teachers are strictly against any corrections during the warming-up.

By all means, teacher’s assistance is important, especially if some students have difficulty participating in the activity. But every teacher should remember: students still are not in thinking in English, so they are tend to make mistakes even with familiar material. Besides, correction interrupts the flow of the activity, and generates a teacher-centered lesson [4, 114] [27].

One more approach is in thematically or randomly chosen warming-up. It is up to the teacher to decide whether to associate warming-up with the main course of the lesson or to pick up warming-up disregarding the topic.

The last approach comprises dividing into grammar, vocabulary, phonetic, etc. warming-ups. Such warming-ups give teachers a dynamic way of delivering stimulating and effective grammar, phonetic and so on exercises to get students motivated at the start of class and develop their skills.

It is obvious that integrating approaches regarding students’ interests and capability is a way to successful teaching English as a foreign language.

 

1.4 The importance of warming up as a part of English lesson

 

In order to understand the importance of warming-up during the lesson, we must apply to the aims it refers.

1) To create a positive atmosphere for learning

When students arrive in the lesson at perhaps the end of a busy working day or in the middle of a study day, they can be easily distracted from the purpose of learning. It is widely recognized that we learn best when we are comfortable and relaxed – Maslow’s theory on the hierarchy of needs suggests that we need to be physically comfortable, not too hungry or cold, and importantly that we need to feel safe, loved even. No that people cannot learn when the conditions are not ideal, but that they learn best when their physical and emotional needs are satisfied. So a warm up activity that promotes relaxation and fun, that does not stress students or demand too much of them, is a good place to start [5, 255].

Students can leave behind the stresses of their real lives when they are working together People learn best when they are comfortable, and a warm up activity is about making them feel comfortable. Basically, if you are stressed, anxious or self-conscious, you are unlikely to learn anything. This is most particularly a feature with adult learners, as  self-consciousness is not something that children generally have a problem with until a certain age.

2) Activating schemes

If we look at the place of ‘warmers’ in a lesson, a teacher will often use a warm up activity at the start, in order to lead in to skills work. In this case the purpose could be linked to a cognitivist viewpoint, where learning is not passive but an active process of making sense of things. The teacher who warms up to the reading by introducing the topic and inviting students to discuss is activating schemata – alerting the student to any prior information, knowledge or experience of the topic of the text so that they can access the lesson most effectively. A schema can be said to be a kind of memory, based on students’ expectations of what normally happens. When people look at texts in our own language, for example, they unconsciously recall previous knowledge of a topic or skill area. They look at the pictures, the font, the page layout and make certain judgements about what they see. A warm up activity is a way for a teacher to enable students to make these links in an additional language and thus transfer skills across – creating the memories in another language. So in terms of learning theory, the warm up plays a very important part.

3) Revision and recycling

Many teachers use the warm up stage to recap on the previous lesson. They can see how much has been retained and decide where to go next. This is good for the learner too, who can measure his or her own progress through homework and revision tasks. Some learners will be able to access material successfully second time around, when it is presented in a manner that they find more appealing – visually, kinesthetically etc.

It has been well documented that students find it difficult to retain new language unless they see it again within 24 hours, and then again within a week, a month and so on. So many good teachers do in practice – perhaps unwittingly – things which are underpinned by solid rationale [14, 11].

4) Language and communication

Communicative approaches recognize the fact that a good learner needs to have ownership of language. It is now understood that restricted written or spoken exercises, where a student can manipulate language in a very controlled manner seem to have little effect outside the classroom. Many students have studied ‘the theory’ for years and years, but when it comes to it, just can’t quite bring themselves to speak. The warm up stage, however, where students have the chance to be playful with language and create their own communication, is an important step to effective language ownership. Errors are tolerated in this stage, because the main purpose is conversational interaction. While some learners express doubts about unstructured pairwork, ‘We might learn each others’ mistakes’, there is evidence to suggest that the successful language learner does in fact improve communicative competence through such exercises.