Scarica Teaching Methods, Techniques & Principles in Language Teaching e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Lingua Inglese solo su Docsity!
Teaching Methods
Grammar Translation Method
G.T.M isn’t a new method. At one time, it was called the Classical Method and it was used for the teaching of classical languages Latin and Greek.
Its purpose is to help students read and appreciate foreign literature.
Goal: The students have to be able to translate from one language to the other. If they can do that, they are considered successful language learners. The primary skills to be developed are writing and reading.
The teacher is the authority of the classroom and getting the answer right is very important.
This teaching method is still common in many countries and institutions around the world, and still appeals to those interested in languages from an intellectual or linguistic perspective.
Grammar rules are learned deductively; students learn grammar rules by rote, and then practice the rules by doing grammar drills and translating sentences to and from the target language.
However, it does little to improve your ability to use the language for oral communication.
Examples:
- reading comprehension questions
- Memorization
- Fill-in blank exercises
- Composition
The Direct Method
The direct method has one vey basic rule: No translation is allowed. In fact, The direct method receives its name from the fact that meaning is to be conveyed directly in the target language through the use of demonstration and visual aids, with no recourse to the students's native language.
The reading skill will be developed through practice with speaking. Language is primarily speech.
Objects such as pictures present in the immediate classroom environment should be used to help students understand the meaning. The native language should not be used in the classroom.The teacher should demonstrate, not explain or translate. Students should learn to think in the taret language as soon as possible. Vocabulary is acquired more naturally is students use it in full sentences, rather than memorizing word lists.
Some of the techniques that we have to take into account are conversation practice: the teacher ask students a number of questions in the target language, which the students have to uderstand to be able to answer correctly. Dictation: the teacher reads the passage three times
Audio- Lingual method
Language forms do not occur by themselves; they occur most naturally within a context. The native language and the target language have separate linguistic systems. They should be kept apart so that the students´ native language interferes as little as possible when students attempts to acquire the target language.
One of the language teacher´s major roles is that of a model of the target language. Teachers should provide students with a good model. By listen to how it is supposed to sound, students should be able to mimic the model. Language learning is a process of habit formation; the more often something is repeated, the stronger the habit and the greater the learning.
Errors lead to the formation of bad habits. When errors do occur, they should be immediately corrected by the teacher.
These are the techniques that you can apply when you use this technique.
Single-slot substitution drill: the students repeat the line the teacher has given to them, substituting the cue into the line in its proper place. The major purpose of this drill is to give the students practice in finding and filling the slots of a sentence.
Use of minimal pairs: the teacher works with pairs of words which differ only in one sound. Students are first asked to perceive th difference between the two words and later to be able to say the two words.
The Silent Way
This method emphasizes learner autonomy and active student participation. Silence is used as a tool to achieve this goal; the teacher uses a mixture of silence and gestures to focus student´s attention.
The teacher should start with something that students already know and build from that to the unknown. The teacher should give only what help is necessary.
the teacher reads the dialogue at normal speed. For homework, the students read over the dialogue just before they go to sleep, and again when they get up the next morning.
What follows is the second major phase (the active phase), in which students engage in various activities designed to help them gain facility with the new material. The activities include dramatizations, games, songs, and question-and-answer exercises.
Situational Language Teaching
The Situational Language Teaching, or “Oral Approach”, is based on a structural view of language.
Speech, structures and a focus on a set of basic vocabulary items are seen as the basis of language teaching.
Situational Language Teaching is characterized by two major features:
focus on both vocabulary and reading is the most salient trait of SLT.
Mastery of a set of high-frequency vocabulary items is believed to lead to good reading skills;
An analysis of English and a classification of its prominent grammatical structures into sentence patterns (also called “situational tables”) is believed to help learners internalize grammatical rules.
The objectives of Situational Language Teaching involve accurate use of vocabulary items and grammar rules in order to achieve a practical mastery of the four basic skills.
Learners must be able to produce accurate pronunciation and use of grammar: mistakes are banned so as to avoid bad habit formation.
The ultimate aim is to be able to respond quickly and accurately in speech situations with an automatic control of basic structures and sentence patterns.
Communicative Language Teaching
Language learners in environments utilizing the Communicative Approach techniques, learn and practice the target language through the interaction with one another and the instructor, the study of "authentic texts" (those written in the target language for purposes other than language learning), and through the use of the language both in class and outside of class.
Learners converse about personal experiences with partners, and instructors teach topics outside of the realm of traditional grammar, in order to promote language skills in all types of situations. This method also claims to encourage learners to incorporate their personal experiences into their language learning environment, and to focus on the learning experience in addition to the learning of the target language
According to CLT, the goal of language education is the ability to communicate in the target language.
The classroom activities are:
role-play: an oral activity usually done in pairs, whose main goal is to develop students' communicative abilities in a certain setting.
This activity gives students the chance to improve their communication skills in a low-pressure situation. Most students are more comfortable speaking in pairs rather than in front of the entire class;
interviews: The instructor gives each student the same set of questions to ask a partner and the Students take turns asking and answering the questions in pairs.
group work;
opinion sharing: Opinion sharing is a content-based activity, whose purpose is to engage students' conversational skills, while talking about something they care about.
Opinion sharing is a great way to get more introverted students to open up and share their opinions. If a student has a strong opinion about a certain topic, then they will speak up and share.
Communicative Counseling Learning
The content of a method such as Counseling-Learning is assumed to be a product of the interests of the learners, since learners generate their own subject matter.
In that sense it would appear that no linguistic content or materials are specified within the method.
On the other hand, Counseling-Learning acknowledges the need for learner mastery of certain linguistic mechanics, such as the mastery of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.
Pre-task: The teacher introduces the topic and gives the students clear instructions on what they will have to do at the task stage and might help the students to recall some language that may be useful for the task.
Task: The students complete a task in pairs or groups using the language resources that they have as the teacher monitors and offers encouragement.
Planning: Students prepare a short oral or written report to tell the class what happened during their task. Then they practise what they are going to say in their groups. Meanwhile the teacher is available for the students to ask for advice to clear up any language questions they may have.
Report: Students then report back to the class orally or read the written report. The teacher chooses the order of when students will present their reports and may give the students some quick feedback on the content.
Practice: Finally, the teacher selects language areas to practice based upon the needs of the students and what emerged from the task and report phases. The students then do practice activities to increase their confidence and make a note of useful language.
The Natural Approach
The natural approach is a method of language teaching developed by Stephen Krashen and Tracy Terrell in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
It aims to foster naturalistic language acquisition in a classroom setting, and to this end it emphasises communication, and places decreased importance on conscious grammar study and explicit correction of student errors.
In the natural approach, language output is not forced, but allowed to emerge spontaneously after students have attended to large amounts of comprehensible language input.
The natural approach shares many features with the direct method, which was formulated around 1900 and was also a reaction to grammar-translation.
Both the natural approach and the direct method are based on the idea of enabling naturalistic language acquisition in the language classroom; the natural approach puts less emphasis on practice and more on exposure to language input and on reducing learners' anxiety.
The aim of the natural approach is to develop communicative skills, and it is primarily intended to be used with beginning learners.
Krashen makes a distinction between acquisition and learning: acquisition is a natural way of developing the abilty to speak a language, paralleling first language
development in children. Acquisition refers to an unconscious process that involves the naturalistic development of language proficiency through understanding language and through using language for meaningful communciation.
Learning, by contrast, refers to a process in which conscious rules about a language are developed. It results in explicit knowledge about the forms of a language and the ability to verbalize this knowledge.
Formal teaching is necessary for “learning” to occur, and correction of errors helps with the development of learned rules. Learning, according to the theory, cannot lead to acquisition.
There are three basic principles of the approach:
"Focus of instruction is on communication rather than its form.”
"Speech production comes slowly and is never forced.”
"Early speech goes through natural stages (yes or no response, one- word answers, lists of words, short phrases, complete sentences.)"
Lessons in the natural approach focus on understanding messages in the foreign language, and place little or no importance on error correction or on conscious learning of grammar rules. They also emphasize learning of a wide vocabulary base over learning new grammatical structures.
Terrell outlines four categories of classroom activities that can facilitate language acquisition:
Content: culture, subject matter, new information, reading, e.g. teacher tells interesting anecdote involving contrast between target and native culture;
Affective-humanistic: students’ own ideas, opinions, experiences, e.g. students are asked to share personal preferences as to music, places to live, etc.
Problem solving: focus on using language to locate information, use information, etc., e.g. looking at this listing of films in the newspaper, and considering the different tastes and schedule needs in the group, which film would be appropriate for all of us to attend, and when?
