Usage of warmers, time fillers, and coolers in English for specific purposes classes

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Usage of warmers, time fillers, and coolers in English for specific purposes classes

Anastasia Dubinska, MD in Philology, Lecturer at the Department of Foreign Languages, Kamianets-Podilskyi National Ivan Ohiienko University

Abstract

Knowledge, creativity, assessment, learner agency and time management are the key aspects of every ESP ('English for specific purposes' here and after) class because they help students be active participants in the learning process, evaluate their knowledge on the given topic or their progress in mastering a language. Effective classroom management and discipline are the paramount factors for successful student outcomes. When classes end significantly earlier than is planned, instructors may be exposed to the danger of living a spare time when students can misbehave or be bored. Thus, it is advisable to be preplanned for such instances, which can pop out at one point or another. When they occur, an instructor doesn't have to panic but be equipped with activities (like starters, fillers and coolers) that can absorb extra time without stopping the learning process and engage the attention of students on the lesson. In this article, we highlight the importance, types, ways and precautions of usage warmers, time-fillers and coolers for the conduction of a successful English class, which are the handful tools for establishing vivid and knowledgeable atmosphere in the classroom and can be beneficial for both sides of the educational process.

Moreover, we base our study on ESP classes where we must pay attention not only to basic phonetics, lexis, grammar and business English but also to special vocabulary, grammatical constructions suitable for a particular speciality of a taught group. The article also focuses on introducing warmer, time filler and cooler activities from a theoretical point of view, highlights the benefits of usage of these types of activities in the classroom, outlines the features and methods of their use and provides examples of implementation of these exercises during ESP classes.

Keywords: warmers; time fillers; coolers; ESP; creativity; vocabulary; conversation; grammar; methods; knowledge; class.

Анотація

Використання завдань для розминки, заповнення часових пробілів та завершення роботи на заняттях з іноземної мови професійного спрямування

Дубінська Анастасія Володимирівна, магістр філології, викладач кафедри іноземних мов, Кам'янець-Подільський національний університет імені Івана Огієнка

Знання, творчий підхід, оцінювання та управління навчальним часом є ключовими аспектами кожного заняття з англійської мови професійного спрямування. Вони допомагають здобувачам вищої освіти бути активними учасниками процесу й оцінювати свої власні знання з теми або свої освітні здобутки в оволодінні мовою. Ефективне управління академічною групою та дисципліна є першорядними чинниками для успішного навчання студентів. У тому випадку, коли заняття закінчуються значно раніше запланованого часу, викладачі можуть зіткнутися з небезпекою надлишку вільного часу.

Таким чином, рекомендується заздалегідь спланувати такі випадки, які можуть трапитись у той чи інший момент. Коли виникають такі ситуації, викладачеві не потрібно панікувати, однак він повинен бути забезпечений такими видами засобів навчання (вправи для розминки, заповнення часових пробілів і завершення роботи), які можуть зайняти цей додатковий вільний час, не зупиняючи освітній процес, і привернути увагу студентів до навчальної діяльності. У статті ми визначаємо важливість, типи, способи та застереження щодо використання вправ для розминки, заповнення часових пробілів і завершення заняття задля проведення успішного заняття з іноземної мови, які є допоміжними інструментами для створення жвавої та пізнавальної атмосфери в аудиторії й можуть бути корисними для усіх учасників освітнього процесу.

Більш того, проводимо наше дослідження на заняттях з ESP, де слід приділяти увагу не тільки базовій фонетиці, лексиці, граматиці і діловій англійській мові, а й спеціальній лексиці, граматичним конструкціям, відповідним для конкретної спеціальності певної академічної групи. У дослідженні також розглядається впровадження окремих видів завдань з теоретичної точки зору, висвітлюються переваги використання їх в аудиторії, описуються особливості та методи використання й наводяться приклади виконання таких вправ під час занять ESP.

Ключові слова: вправи для розминки; заповнення часових пробілів та завершення роботи; ESP; креативність; запас слів; бесіда; граматика; методи; знання; заняття.

Introduction

Statement of the problem. We as ESP teachers face a common problem while conducting a lesson- make students utter a pair of utterances in a foreign language that usually evokes a great fear and uncertainty and as a result the refusal to participate in the overall process of a class, so teachers must find some hooks for their students to conduct a successful foreign language class. It is known, that we learn best when we are soothed and relaxed thus warmer, time filler and cooler activities that facilitate relaxation and joy and do not stress students or require too much from them is a fine place to start. Scientists say: “ The teacher who prepares to 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 our expectations of what normally happens. When we look at texts in our language, for example, we unconsciously recall previous knowledge of a topic or skill area. Warmers, time fillers and coolers are 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, they play an important part” [4].

However, there are some educators who think that these activities don't bring sense and knowledge into a class and they consider them to be as a way of jollification in a class. They usually stick to cramming-reproduction techniques that lead sooner or later to refusal of memorizing, participation in class and even skipping from a class. Despite the given fact, we are trying to investigate the pros and cons of the given activities in the classroom environment and persuade foreign language instructors to use them widely for the successful English class.

Analysis of recent research and publications. The theme under the study is one of the newest in the field of methodology of teaching English and at the same time one of the urgent because knowledge and behavior of students change every single year and the classroom management also changes. Educators are able to make any topic an interesting one when it comes to foreign language education, all depending merely on the way it is dealt with. Creativity at lessons can be achieved in different methods and ways. They also believe that starters and time fillers play quite an important role in language education. Cotter Chris in his work states that a joyful warming activity can not only create a soothing atmosphere with growing levels of energy but also make the learners go to the English mode, which helps in segregating from the world outside the classroom, where English is not spoken [3]. Cox Janelle dwells upon time fillers activities as an ideal mode for smoothing the transition periods, keeping the learners engaged and refilling them with the energy to work further and be motivated [4]. In addition, cooler are to consolidate/round-off a lesson, leave students on a high and evoke their desire to master a language after the class. Warmers and time filler activities are a great method for practicing the previously acquired language or grammatical structures [8, p. 17]. Nowadays, foreign language instructors are free of choice what methods or what sorts of task to choose and implement in their classes to make them meaningful. Helgelsen Mark sees the importance of considering audial, visual or kinesthetic stimuli in the classroom just as much an as the verbal ones [6].

time-filler cooler english class

Aims and tasks

In this article, we aim to show the ways how less harmful and stressful entice the students to move into English classes and make them participate in them with the help of the warmers, time fillers and coolers. The main tasks for us are to dwell on the benefits, peculiarities, ways and examples of the use of defined activities on the ESP lesson for mastering and improving peculiar language skills and try to persuade language instructors to use them as a handy tool for a successful class.

Research findings

Warmers are generally short 5-10 minute activities, often in the form of a game introduced at the start of a lesson. Warmers can help to review the language from previous classes or to present new topics, ideas and language items. They can also be freestanding and have little or no connection with what was done before or will be done later in the lesson. Warmers are often active and fun and involve group, pair or individual work. Warmers are also good to use for the shift from one activity or skill to another, after a break, following a difficult reading passage or whenever students have 'gone cold' or fallen asleep. Moreover, they can be done as 'cool down' activities to revise or summarize the lesson or as controlled speaking activities [2].

The bullet points for doing warm-up activities at the initial stage of a language class are simple: a) to get students with limited language exposure to thinking in, or at least think about, the target language; b) to focus the attention of the students; c) to encourage group cohesion among students who have just come from various pursuits and places; d) to set a welcoming, positive and productive tone for the lesson; e) to fill a small block of time when a lesson runs shorter than you planned; f) to replace a lesson that students can't grasp or are bored with; g) to have on hand for emergencies such as broken audio-visual equipment or photocopiers [1, p. 28]. Kate Fuscoe states: “Communicative approaches recognize the fact that a good learner should have ownership of language. It is now understood, that restricted written or spoken exercises, where a student can manipulate language in a 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 warmup stage, however, where students have the chance to be playful with language and create their communication, is an important step toward effective language ownership. Errors are tolerated in this stage because the main purpose is conversational interaction. While some learners express doubts about unstructured pair work, we might learn each other's mistakes; there is evidence to suggest that the successful language learner does improve communicative competence through such exercises” [5].

If you are going to use warmers in your class, you should keep in mind some points of their usage: 1) keep it short (5-10 minutes); 2) keep it simple; 3) make it relevant; 4) make it enjoyable [1, p. 29].

While teaching students ESP every teacher challenges the problems of using the general English and English of professional orientation in one go, thus a lot of them practice warmers. We make use of different types of warmers: a) general use of English; b) ESP and we can divide them into three major categories: 1) phonetic; 2) lexical; 3) grammatical. If we dwell upon general use of English, we mention the very first class with the students where a teacher and students get known with each other. Here, a teacher uses a set of introductory questions like: What is your favorite food? Name your favorite book/ TV show/ movie and why?, to create a pleasant and amiable atmosphere in a room and make them talk on the previously learned topic to estimate their level of English knowledge. During the course of study, we usually talk about everyday life and the most common activity for us is to create a mind map. The latest example is the mind map based on the concept of autumn. The teacher refers to students: “Students, dwell upon the given season, create a mind map to continue the thought: Autumn for me is..., including minimum 6 points in our answers”. The next warmer is Name Ten, where students think of 10 items that fit particular criteria, for example: name ten things you use every day, ten things you are good/bad at, ten things you could do to save the environment. Sometimes the instructor asks students to create a short story that must include some vocabulary items. For instance, talking about Halloween, you could ask students to compose a short-chain story using words like spooky, ghost, pumpkin, haunted house, bat, Jack-o-lantern [10].

Grammar is an inevitable part of language acquisition, we pay a lot of attention to its gain and practice that can sometimes be boring that is why we involve warmer to practice it in an unperceived way. For example, to revise all the present tenses in English we divide students into groups and give them specific tasks with the usage of the peculiar tense, like

Interview with a star (use Present Perfect), Dear Diary (describe today's day using the mixture of all present tenses), A home letter (write a letter to your parents from the university dwelling upon the present events, using Present Continuous). A large number of warmers are usually devoted to the recollection of some structures like If-clause, Would you rather... and phrasal verbs. To revise the given structures, we prepare a list of questions or patterns to fill in that can be done in groups or individually like 1) list of issues: Would you rather have a lot of money or a lot of friends?/ Would you rather be always sleepy or hungry?/ Would you rather travel by train or plane?; 2) If I were you, I would ... to practice this structure, we usually prepare a picture with a specific problem written on it and require learners to give pieces of advice to solve the problem using The Second Conditional; 3) Phrasal verbs can be connected with the professional orientation, so we pre-prepare a matching activity of a phrasal verb with its definition and ask students to match them and create a sentence of their own with them: a) check-in-1) to start your stay in a hotel, b) set off- 2) to start a journey. Example: When I go on a day trip I like to set off early [9].

Phonetics is also practiced in ESP class in the way of warm-up activity. Tongue twisters can be used as a warm-up so you should reproduce a tongue twister by your own then you should get the students to practice a tongue twister for one minute, later get them to say it to the class individually - or within smaller groups if they feel embarrassed [1, p. 29]. The following tongue twisters are good for practicing “th”- /9/: Thirty-three thousand feathers on a thrush throat or The thirty-three thieves thought that they thrilled the throne throughout Thursday.

The practice of professional vocabulary is a must of each lesson. If you want to start the work with the revision of the vocabulary you can use the category game as a warmer. Example: the lexis based on the hospitality industry, so a teacher should put students into teams and write on the board vocabulary categories, give them a list of word and the teams must race to think of filling a word into each category. The two widely used warmers are Charades and Pictionary when in the first case you scatter all around the group cards with terms based on a professional topic and ask a student to show the given item of vocabulary with the help of gestures to colleagues, who must guess it. In the second case, each student receives a word, so his/her task is to draw it on the blackboard in the way that the fellow students guess what it is [9].

Phil Wade, in his article, suggests using warmers as a part of the business English classroom. He believes that students do all the intensive and relevant work for them connected with their professional field, but at the same time they are not too familiar with basic topics like daily routine or hobby. Here, warmers can be very stimulating - sometimes students don't want to stop talking about general things. Besides, the author facilitates the introduction of this type of activity via the internet or mobile technology. He believes that chat rooms or discussions on social network sites help expand the limits of the lesson to include before and after. For instance, pre-class blog postings or tweets could provoke discussion before class and produce warmed-up, motivated students who are ready for the topic of the lesson beforehand [7, p. 31].

Phil Wades gives the list of common warmer-up activities which can be used in the business English class like: 1. An interesting agenda: tell one student what activities will be in the next class and ask them to prepare an agenda, as if for a business meeting, which they then read to start the lesson, another student can then conclude the lesson with a summary (like the minutes of a meeting); 2. The experts: pair up the students so each is with someone from a different profession. Ask them to explain their jobs briefly and then to give each other advice from their professional perspective; 3. Loads of money: tell the students you've come into Ј100,000 and you would like to invest it but are not sure how. Ask them for advice; 4. Where are you going and how? Explain that you want to become a CEO within ten years, but you don't know how. Ask the students to plan your strategy; 5. World's worst/best: Ask the students to explain their worst or best career move or business decision; 6. Why are they better? Find a market-share diagram of any industry and ask the students to discuss why those with lower shares are in that position and how they can challenge the market leaders for top position [7, p. 31].

Sometimes teachers and students can do all the planned activities earlier that it is planned, so students will hang about, get out of hand and become bored. When an instructor faces the given problem, we recommend using time fillers. Time fillers are 5-minutes activities, used to change the pace of the lesson in the middle of the lesson. Time filling activities are a great way for smoothing the transition periods, keeping the learners engaged and refilling them with the energy to switch to the next activity. These types of activities can be of various modes: oral or written, individual or group, lexical or grammatical, speaking or listening, on freshly learned material or revision of the previous one. In this case, we should state that during ESP classes we can use professionally oriented materials, peculiar grammatical topic or country studies topics [6].

Mainly teachers facilitate fillers in to revise professionally oriented vocabulary from the previously learned texts and exercises. We are willing to demonstrate you the common time fillers that we use during the ESP lessons. The most of time we devote to the revision of professionally-oriented lexis, so in order to do this we do the following activities like: 1) Twenty questions: a student chooses a word based on the topic, comes to the front while other students ask him/her strategic questions to identify the object; 2) Noughts and Crosses: draw a large Noughts and Crosses grid on the board, have a list of vocabulary related questions, divide your class into Teams A and B. Team A is 'noughts' and Team B is 'crosses', tell them the aim of the game is to create a line of 3 noughts or crosses to win. Team A chooses a square and must answer the question correctly to claim the square. For example, 'something made of leather'. Team B then chooses a square and answers a question and the activity continues. The team who has a line of 3 noughts or crosses is the winner; 3) Personal Association: Think of a lexical set of vocabulary items you wish learners to revise then brood over an appropriate object students can draw. Students will then write the lexical items within this object. As an example, for a lexical set of words related to crime, students can write the words into a picture of a house. After students have drawn their object, slowly read out the list of items, and then ask learners to write them in the relevant part of their object. Students then discuss why they wrote their items where they did in their house e.g. 'I wrote 'fraud' in the study because this is mostly done on the Internet'. Students retain the picture to use as a memory tool [9, pp. 10].

Time fillers can also be used for the revision of the grammar structures like: 1) Consequences: where the teacher should give a sheet of paper to each student and should announce that they will write a simple story following a set pattern: (Name of Boy) met/ (Name of Girl)/ in (Place)/. He said to her/. She said to him/. And the consequence was...Explain that the students should write the first line only, and then fold the paper down so no-one can read what has been written. The paper is then passed to the next student who writes the next part of the story then passes to the next student. The procedure continues until all stories have been completed. The students then read all the stories and vote on the best one; 2) Practice the formation of special questions with the help of Why/Because activity: where the first student asks the second student Why-question and the second student must answer with the beginning because; 3) Whose weekend? (revise Past Tenses) give each student a slip of paper and ask each student to write down three things they did on the weekend. Collect up the slips of paper and randomly read each one out. The students must guess whose weekend is being described [9, p. 10].

Spoken English is a must in each ESP class and one of the most involuntary tasks of every student because they are afraid to make mistakes and are not confident in their linguistic knowledge. To make students relax and sooth them after reading long ESP texts, instructors can involve time filler activities based on general or professional topics, to name a few: 1) Question Mill Drill: Arrange students in a circle. Students are given a slip of paper each. They are asked to write down a question they would like to ask everyone in the group. Example, 'What's the strangest dream you've ever had?' Students ask the question that they wrote to the student on their right. Once they have asked the question, the slip of paper is passed to the student who has answered the question and this student asks the next person. Students continue the activity asking questions then passing the question on while also being asked questions with the slip of paper passed on to them to ask the next person. The activity continues until learners get their original question back; 2) Songs and Music ( it is possible in some cases to join two or more skills): you could prepare a playlist or CD of appropriate tracks to use with your classes, play different pieces of music and elicit different feelings from learners. Ask students to write a story or statements about how music makes them feel, for example, a ballad could be used to elicit a sad atmosphere and so on; 3) Read aloud comprehension: read a peculiar passage on a ESP topic or news for a paper and ask them to dwell upon what they have heard and give them their own opinions on it [9].

The last helping hand of an ESP teacher is a cooler activity that could be adapted into an oral recycling activity at the end of the lesson to consolidate learning, especially, when you need an activity to help students wind down and relax at the end of a class. These activities are designed to revise vocabulary or just make students talk. As a way to recollect the previously learned words, we mainly use two basic cooler activities Bingo and Crossword. The first task implies the next steps: ask learners to draw a simple bingo grid on their paper and explain the rules of bingo; students write vocabulary items they have learned in the lesson in the grid, one vocabulary item per square; the instructor calls out vocabulary items learned in the lesson; each student puts a cross in the relevant square when they hear one of the vocabulary items they have written on their grid; learners can either get a line or a full house e. all their vocabulary items are called out; the learner to shout 'bingo' is the winner. The second task, Crossword, involves: give each pair of students a prepared crossword (you can create the crossword yourself or find an authentic crossword or use crosswords in published ESP materials; students work together to complete the crossword [9].

We usually omit the revision of grammar structures because it is tedious procedure and sometimes requires a lot of time to be done. In order to fit in time of the lesson teachers prefer the usage of coolers that are aimed to improve students' spoken fluency. Here are the basic activities to facilitate into classroom activity: 1) Just a minute: The teacher thinks of some vocabulary items learned in the lesson than writes a line to represent each letter of the word on the board; students call out letters, if the letter is in the word, the teacher writes the letter in the space it appears in the word, if the letter is not in the word, the teacher starts constructing a gallows and a hanging man, one line per incorrectly guessed letter; if the students guess the word before the picture of the hanging man and gallows is drawn, the students win or if they fail to guess, the teacher wins; 2) Lesson review: the teacher asks learners a series of questions designed to help learners assess their own progress, for example, 'which lessons did you find the most difficult?' 'Which skill would you like more practice in?'; students complete the questions and set themselves 3 learning goals; the teacher takes in the pieces of paper and discusses these with each student over subsequent lessons; 3) Making plans: the teacher asks learners to think of their plans after the lesson or on the weekend; students discuss their plans together in small groups or as a mingling activity, if appropriate to your group, ask learners to see if they can arrange something to do as a class; in feedback, focus on correct use of functional language for future plans if appropriate [9].

To examine the effectiveness of the implementation of warmers, time fillers and coolers into ESP classes and their influence on students, we, the lecturers of the the Department of Foreign Languages of Kamianets-Podilskyi National Ivan Ohiienko University, decided to scatter all around the groups (of second-year students from other departments of our university) of a kind of poll. The poll consisted of two basic questions: 1) Do you like to do warmers, starters and coolers during the ESP class? YES/NO; 2) Why do like/dislike them? Having counted the results of the first question, we have got the following results: 94% answered-YES; 3%- NO; 3%- did not answer and later explained so as it doesn't matter at all for them. Summarizing the answers received on the second question, we generalized as follows: a) like because they are fun; b) like because they make me relax and answer questions without stress; c) like because they help me revise the material; d) like them because I feel more energetic in a class and time flies faster. The common explanations for No answers are: 1) I don't like to play any games or quizzes; b) they don't influence my mood during the class; 3) it equals to me. In conclusion to our small investigation, we should state that most students do like the usage of the given activities during the class because they make them relaxed, be immersed in the classroom participation and material and revise, improve and evaluate their knowledge on a topic. Of course, we cannot miss out the percentage of students who are not too satisfied with the given activities, so in this case we lean on their diversity and inclusion.

Conclusions and prospects for further research

In conclusion, we must mention that warmers, time fillers and coolers are helpful tools for teaching ESP because these activities can be different and can get the students to participate and lead in nicely from a previous lesson or into the coming one. If they are successful, they would be beneficial for both sides of the learning process: for the language instructors to vary and control the pace of the lesson, to use different activities to train a particular field of knowledge, to make students alert, to teach them unprecedentedly and evoke an eager desire to study; for students to feel more comfortable and relaxed during a lesson; not to give them get bored and distracted from a topic, to help them evaluate their own knowledge on a topic and to train or revise learned material. Our findings may provide teachers with guidelines and tips for the implementation of warmers, time fillers and coolers into their own classroom environment. If language instructors apply these activities in a rightful manner, sacrifice enough energy and time for preparing them well, their ESP lesson will be filled with soothed and positive atmosphere, which will affect the students and the overall process of teaching. It may evoke students' motivation and desire for studying harder and more diligent. The positive, relaxed and comfortable climate in the class made by warmers, time fillers and coolers help refine the learning environment and contribute to obtaining success throughout the course of the teaching and learning process.

The future prospects of the given topic can be seen in the further investigation of the methods of fillers and coolers usage in ESP lesson and implementation of our own activities and methods for a successful ESP class.

References

1. Artusi Alicia, Manin Gregory, 2012. The wonder of Warmers. English Teaching Professional, 78 (January), Chichester: Pavilion Publishing, 64.

2. Chong Chia Suan, 2016. Warmers, fillers, what on Earth? English Teaching Professional. Chichester: Pavilion Publishing [online].

3. Cotter Chris, 2014. The Importance of Warming Up Students [online].

4. Cox Janelle, 2017. Classroom Activities: Teacher-Tested Time Fillers [online].

5. Fuscoe Kate. Methodology: using warmers [online].

6. Helgelsen Mark, 2002. Let's get physical - Warm-up activities involving movement and language [online].

7. Phil Wade, 2011. Warming up. English Teaching Professional, 74 (May). Chichester: Pavilion Publishing, 31.

8. Spratt Mary, 1994. English for the Teacher: A Language Development Course, University Press, Cambridge, 158.

9. Premier TEFL. Warmers, Fillers & Coolers. Activity Book. A Collection of Short Stories to Engage Your Students [online].

10. Classroom warmers activity booklet. Cambridge English [online].

Список використаних джерел та транслітерація

1. Artusi A., Manin G., 2012. The wonder of Warmers [In English]. English Teaching Professional, 78, Chichester: Pavilion Publishing, 64.

2. Chong C.S., 2016. Warmers, fillers, what on Earth? [In English]. English Teaching Professional, Chichester: Pavilion Publishing.

3. Cotter C., 2014. The Importance of Warming Up Students [In English].

4. Cox J., 2017. Classroom Activities: Teacher-Tested Time Fillers [In English].

5. Fuscoe K. Methodology: using warmers [In English].

6. Helgelsen M., 2002. Let's get physical - Warm-up activities involving movement and language [In English].

7. Phil W., 2011. Warming up [In English], English Teaching Professional, 74, Chichester: Pavilion Publishing, 31.

8. Spratt M., 1994. English for the Teacher: A Language Development Course [In English]. Cambridge: University Press, 158 р.

9. Premier TEFL. Warmers, Fillers & Coolers. Activity Book. A Collection of Short Stories to Engage Your Students [In English].

10. Classroom warmers activity booklet. Cambridge English [In English].

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