Hello! Hello! ActionSpeak using Rhythm and Story
This is a warm up you can use in your class every lesson! And the students never get tired of it. I have used this activity successfully for more than 20 years. I first used it with preschoolers and then expanded its use into early elementary school to provide a repertoire of phrases that could be used to teach grammar points , modals, and Q & As. I have used this activity with all ages, however its repeated use is best for younger learners ( I have even used this technique to teach Japanese to New Zealand primary school students).
For a detailed explanation of the steps to use to get the most out of this activity, click the link below.
For a detailed explanation of the steps to use to get the most out of this activity, click the link below.
What is ActionSpeak?
A teaching technique for young learners of English (and sometimes older ones).
Planned and systematic gestures which are performed concurrently with spoken speech.
A great way to begin your class. Use them as a regular warm-up activity to provide routine and to set a fun tone.
A great way to teach phrases and question/answer patterns for pre-readers.
A way to for your students to learn a repertoire of language phrases, so you can teach Q & A, modal use and conjugations more easily.
Why do it?
1. Gestures have been shown to help most children to remember new words by providing a physical memory to complement their
audio memory of new words.
2. Gestures can convey the meaning of the target language. This is great if you want to mostly teach in English only.
3. Gestures can provide support for the ordering or syntax of the phrases you want to teach.
4. Gestures can promote intonation and stress of key words as well as the rhythm of the phrase; kind of like a conductor does with an orchestra.
5. Gestures can be fun. Children (and adults) enjoy moving around and ActionSpeak can provide one way to harness all that
physical energy into something educational.
What it's not:
Gestures are not new
What differentiates ActionSpeak is that it is a planned and systematic way to teach short language phrases using concurrent gestures to support their meaning, encoding and retention. They can be used in whole class teaching, and in one-on-one situations to support recasting, rephrasing and correcting of students' speech attempts.
ActionSpeak is not Total Physical Response (TPR)
TPR is a popular and effective way to convey meaning and promote comprehension through 'listen and do' activities . In TPR, the actions are a response to the spoken commands of the teacher or other students. With ActionSpeak your students mimic your gestures and speech and do them at the same time together. So they are speaking and doing, not just doing.
ActionSpeak is not intended to teach everything
I think there is a point at which all those gestures will get muddled and would then need to be systemically taught, to the point it may feel like you are teaching a sign language in addition to the target language. I don't know when that point is, but I think it is reasonable to leave it up to your professional judgement on how many gestures are too many. Instead, I intend ActionSpeak to be an additional tool in your teacher toolkit, which you can use to provide further variety and interest for your students in addition to your current teaching practices.
Power point explanation of ActionSpeak (formerly intentional gestures) JASTEC 2017
jastec_intentional_gestures_presentation__1_.pptx | |
File Size: | 1544 kb |
File Type: | pptx |
About ME
My name is Andy Lankshear. I am a New Zealander who has been teaching English in Japan for over 20 years. I am an English teacher at Koriyama Xaverio Gakuen www.xaverio.ed.jp and co-author of the skills book for young learners entitled English Language Booster published by Pearson Japan.