The sets could be based on the pere

The sets could be based on the perennial topics of pets, hobbies, likes and dislikes, and so on. We could also achieve greater variety by using more than two intersecting sets. For example, this is how the diagram could look if you wanted to use it for meaningful practice on ‘hobbies’.

Another basic technique, this time from science, which transfers to language work is that of ‘sorting’. Here is a diagram from some science work for young children.

It was part of a series of activities in which the children were learning to sort objects into categories. In this case, they were sorting sweets according to whether they were dull, shiny, transparent or not transparent. They did this by moving the sweets down the pathways, choosing the route according to the sweets’ characteristics. This sorting and categorising process is an important part of the children’s intellectual development. It later becomes more complicated and more abstract. In a language class, we can help to develop that same intellectual process by applying it in language practice as this next worksheet shows. We would again be linking language and thought in a very real way.


Introducing topics from other subjects into language lessons

We need to provide children with as much understandable listening as we can. Some of the best possible listening activities in the language classroom are those where children are listening to a commentary about something they are watching and are therefore processing both the new and the familiar language in the light of what they understand through seeing. This is a major source of indirect learning. The idea here then is for the language teacher to increase the integration of language work and other learning by doing a mini-demonstration in the language lesson of something which ties in with work to be dealt with later in a mother tongue lesson. So, for example, if you or another teacher are going at some stage to talk to the class in science about the way different substances expand at different rates, you can precede this in the language lesson by a brief demonstration and commentary on how to take a tight metal lid off a glass jar by submerging it in water.
This is not a complicated laboratory experiment which needs special equipment, a special room or even special language. You only need a jam jar with the lid screwed on very tightly indeed, a thermos of hot water and a small bowl. At this stage, all you are doing is providing the children with something interesting to watch while they listen and something which can provide the starting point for further work later in the mother tongue. The lesson would sound and look something like this: