Contextualizing Language When You Teach English

By Rosa Sandovalwww.rvsandoval.blogspot.com

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Introduction

Contextualizing language is a good tool that teachers can use to make learning English easier for the learners.Students can understand better if they talk about familiar topics and real life situations than about hipothetical situations.

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What is Contextualization?

It is the act or process of putting information into context; making sense of information from the situation or location in which the information was found.

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Why Contextualization Is Important?

It is important because it uses:

REAL LIFE

SITUATIONS

AUTHENTIC MATERIALS

PREVIOUS KNOWLEDGE

MIXiING CONTENT AND CONTEXT

PROBLEM SOLVING SITUATIONS

CONTEXTUALIZATION

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Real Life Situations

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“With real life situations, you get:

• Richer Information when using the web, and offline resources, like libraries, television and radio.

• The diversity in style, function and formality of the sources provides a wide range of language to work with.”

-Howard Vickers-

Authentic Materials“Using authentic material is significant for many reasons: • Students are exposed to real discourse.• They keep students informed.• Textbooks often do not include popular

English.• They can produce a sense of

achievement.• Language change is reflected in the

materials.”-Alejandro Martínez-

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Previous knowledge

• “Each person’s prior experience provides the foundation for interpreting new information.

• Our prior knowledge enables us to make inferences about the meaning of new words and expressions.

• The more of the text we understand, the more new knowledge we can acquire.

• It is important to activate students’ prior knowledge because students may not realize what they know about a particular topic or issue.”

-Jim Cummins-7

Mixing Content and Context• Content is something that is

communicated by or to or between people or groups.

-Thesaurus Dictionary-

• The context is the setting – the sentence and paragraph – in which a word or phrase appears.

• A single English word can have many different meanings. Its precise meaning depends on the context.

-Good At ESL-

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Problem Solving Situations

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Effective problem solving situations involve:• Listing alternative solutions.• Listing advantages and disadvantages of

each alternative.• Comparing the options.• Deciding which is the best solution.• Reporting the decision.• Discussing why it is the best Solution.

-British Council-

Useful Links

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http://violetacautin.blogspot.com/2009/07/context-context-of-utterance-can-mean-i.html

Classroom Techniques for contextualization: How to make “This is a pen” a pragmatically motivated utteranceby Yoshinori Sasaki

http://www.cas.sc.edu/ling/faculty/bezuidenhout/ELL2_ms1168.pdf

Expression meaning vs. utterance/speaker meaning by Anne L. Bezuidenhout

http://www.avatarlanguages.com/blog/surreal-language-quests/

English Activities by Howard Vickers

http://www3.telus.net/linguisticsissues/authenticmaterials.html

Authentic Materials: An Overview by Alejandro G. Martinez

Useful Links (Cont.)

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http://www.ednebula.com/index.php/earticles/434-the-three-pillars-of-english-language-learning.html

The Three Pillars of English Language Learning by Dr. Jim Cummins

http://www.goodatesl.com/vocabulary/vocabulary-in-content-and-techniques-to-guess-meaning-from-context.html

Vocabulary in Context

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/six-types-task-tbl

Six types of task for TBL by British Council

http://esolonline.tki.org.nz/ESOL-Online/Teacher-needs/Teaching-and-learning-sequences/Marine-mammals-Reading-an-information-report-US17363/Learning-task-2-Prediction

Marine mammals: Reading an information report (US17363)Learning task 2: Prediction