Verbal sound and illustrative (visual) aids

Let’s have a look at some of the most effective aids. Our consideration starts with the most complete and goes on to the least complete ones. First, it’s a substitution table. It gives our student an opportunity to pick up speech units in accordance with a typical communicative situation. Substitution table can be used for teaching monologue-description, storytelling and report.

E.g.: Topic ‘Appearance’, the 5^th form

1. 2.

5.

This is a clear example of a communication gap technique. To make the task of filling in the information gap, the complete verbal visual aidis used. Further, it can be replaced with an illustrative visual aid, prompting the order of description. It is sometimes called ‘a silhouette drawing’ (a paint-book picture). Another variety of a complete verbal aid is a model utterance in its sounding manifestation (e.g. a speaker’s voice on tape or a teacher’s voice live) or in the written form (i.e. a printed text). For teaching oral speech, a phonogram is preferable. The phonogram gives an opportunity to use pauses after each phrase. The pauses give students a chance to produce their utterances by analogy. In case of a visual model, a student reads it silently to himself and then produces an analogous utterance. Such aids should be better given in the form of a poster or an OHP transparency.

Besides complete verbal aids, partial verbal aids can be used. These are substitution tables of an open type, structural speech schemes and logical-semantic schemes of an utterance. Partial verbal aids also include key words, though a simple list of words in their dictionary form is of little help. The most effective key words are verbs in a required tense form, reflecting the sequence of events in a narration or a story. If a verb is used in the text with a preposition or a postposition, its positional combinability should be shown in the aids.

In many cases, mixed verbal-illustrative aids are very useful. In particular, mixed verbal-illustrative cues are of much help for teaching monologue-description. Thus, a plan of an apartment can contain the names of the rooms, or classrooms can be indicated on the plan of a school. The same concerns a scheme-plan of a town section or city bus routes and so on. It should be noted that work with such visual cues as separate pictures, slides, stills and the like requires creating communicative motivation for a description of a picture, a slide or a still. This could be done through a communicative task. The task gives way to simulating a real-life situation. E.g. Topic ‘Appearance’, the 5thform:

Task: You’re on the beach with your little sister or brother, but you can’t see her/him anywhere. To find the girl/boy announce the description of her/his appearance in the radio.

Procedure: Several groups of pupils in fours or fives are given pictures of different children. They make up their own description together. In 5-7 minutes, a teacher collects all the pictures and hangs them on the board. One representative of each group describes his ‘lost sister/brother’. All the rest are ‘to find a child’ according to the description and take her or him to his elder sister/brother.