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on October 29, 2020 0


Principles for language teaching methodology



1. Focus on the learner:

    A learner-centered classroom is one in which learners are actively involved in their own learning processes. There are two dimensions to this learner involvement. The first of these is the involvement of learners in making decisions about what to learn, how to learn, and how to be evaluated. The second is in maximizing the class time in which the learners, rather than the teacher, do the work.


Reflection

1. What do you think some of the objections to the two dimensions of learner involvement outlined above might be?

2. Brainstorm possible solutions to these objections.

    In relation to the first dimension, it is sometimes argued that most learners do not have the knowledge or experience to make informed decisions about what to learn, how to learn, and how to be assessed. According to this view, the teacher is the boss, and it is the professional responsibility of the teacher to make these decisions. A countervailing view is that ultimately it is the learner who has to do the learning.

    One possible solution to this dilemma is for the teacher to make most of the decisions at the beginning of the learning process. Then gradually, through a process of learner training, begin developing in the learners the skills they need in order to begin taking control of their own learning processes. (See Christison, Chapter 13, this volume.) 

    In fact, it is not an “all or nothing” issue in which either the teacher or the learner makes all of the decisions. In most classrooms it is somewhere in between, with teacher and students negotiating things such as when to submit assignments, whether to do a task in small groups or pairs, whether to do a reading task before a listening task or vice-versa, and so on. However, a teacher who is committed to this principle will look for opportunities to involve learners in becoming more reflective and in making more decisions about their own learning. 

    Here are some ways of getting learners more involved in their own learning process and to gradually take control of that process. Each step entails greater and greater involvement of learners in their own learning processes.

Involving learners in the learning process:

1. Make instructional goals clear to learners.
2. Help learners to create their own goals.
3. Encourage learners to use their second language outside of the classroom.
4. Help learners to become more aware of learning processes and strategies.
5. Show learners how to identify their own preferred styles and strategies.
6. Give learners opportunities to make choices between different options in the classroom.
7. Teach learners how to create their own learning tasks.
8. Provide learners with opportunities to master some aspect of their second language and then teach it to others.
9. Create contexts in which learners investigate language and become their own researchers of language.
10. Give a feedback to the learners.


2. Develop your own personal methodology:

    As we saw in the background section of this chapter, the search for the “one best method” was elusive and ultimately proved to be futile. When researchers looked at what teachers actually did in the classroom as opposed to what proponents of one method or another said they ought to do, they found that teachers had a range of practices that were widely used regardless of the method that any given teacher was supposed to follow. The major difference lies, not in the tasks themselves, but in the ordering and prioritizing of the tasks. In other words, in terms of actual classroom practices the same techniques might be used, but their ordering and emphasis would be different. 
    
    Another related observation is that just as learners have their own learning styles, so teachers have their own teaching styles. They are derived from their professional training and experience as well as their own experiences as learners. While one teacher might correct errors overtly, others might do it through modeling the correct utterance. These two styles are exemplified in the following examples. 

For Example:1

Student: I go home at three o’clock, yesterday. 
Teacher A: No. Remember Luis, the past tense of go is went. 

Example:2 

Student: I go home at three o’clock, yesterday. 
Teacher B: Oh, you went home at three, did you Luis? 

Similarly, one teacher may prefer to give explicit explanation and practice of a new grammar point before getting students to use it in a communicative activity. Another teacher may prefer to introduce the grammar point in the form of a contextualized dialogue and only draw the attention of the student to the grammatical form after they have used it communicatively or pro-communicatively. 


    What is important, then, is that teachers develop their own preferred classroom practices based on what works best for them in their own particular situation and circumstances and given the learners they have at the time. As circumstances, students, and levels of experience change, so will the practices. (If you are teaching large classes, it may not be feasible to do much pair or group work, no matter how highly you think of them.) 


    This is not to say that all practices are equally valid for all learners. Experiment with different practices. Try out new ideas. Record your lessons, observe your teaching, if possible have a peer observe your teaching, and above all reflect on what happens in your classroom. If you have time, keep a reflective journal and set out observations, questions, challenges, and puzzles. Even if you have relatively little experience, you will be surprised at how much you can learn about processes of teaching and learning by systematically reflecting on what happens in your classroom.


3. Build instructional sequences based on a pretask, task, and follow-up             cycle.

    Successful instructional sequences share certain things in common, regardless of the methodological principles or approaches that drive them. First of all, the main task, whether it be a drill, a role-play, or a listening comprehension, is set up through one or more pretasks. Pretasks have several functions: to create interest, help build students’ schema in relation to the topic, introduce key vocabulary, revise a grammatical point, etc. 

    Following the pretasks comes the task itself. This will usually consist of several steps or subtasks. In the communicative classroom, the teacher will seek to maximize the time that the students are processing the language or interacting with each other (although, of course, this will depend on the rationale for the instructional sequence). The teacher will also carefully monitor the students to ensure that they know what they are supposed to do and are carrying out the tasks correctly. 

    Following the task proper, there should be some sort of follow-up. This also has a number of functions: to elicit feedback from the students about their experience, to provide feedback to the students on how they had done, to correct errors that the teacher might have noticed in the course of the instructional sequence, and to get students to reflect on the tasks and engage in self-evaluation.



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on October 29, 2020 0

Exploring skills:


    This first section of the book introduces you to language teaching methodology from the perspective of language skills, that is, listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Before looking at the skills in detail, there is an initial chapter on language teaching methodology that provides a framework, not just for the four other chapters in this section, but for the book as a whole.

    Each chapter follows a set format. Firstly, the skill dealt with in the chapter is defined. Next comes a section providing background information on the skill. This section provides a brief history of the teaching of the skill, summarizes important research findings, and elaborates on key concepts. Section Three sets out key principles that should guide you when teaching the skill concerned. The next two sections provide examples from published and unpublished materials as well as from direct classroom experience illustrating the principles in action. The chapters conclude with useful follow-up text and resources, including Web sites, to provide you with further information and ideas.


1. What is methodology?

    The field of curriculum development is large and complex. It includes all of the planned learning experiences in an educational setting. Curriculum has three main sub-components: syllabus design, methodology, and evaluation. Syllabus design has to do with selecting, sequencing, and justifying content. Methodology has to do with selecting, sequencing, and justifying learning tasks and experiences. Evaluation has to do with how well students have mastered the objectives of the course and how effectively the course has met their needs. The following diagram shows how these different elements fit together.

Curriculum component Focus Defining questions

    Syllabus design Content What content should we teach? In what order should we teach this content? What is the justification for selecting this content?

Methodology Classroom techniques and procedures

    What exercises, tasks, and activities should we use in the classroom? How should we sequence and integrate these?

    This book is basically about language teaching methodology. In other words, the focus of the chapters is principally on techniques and procedures for use in the classroom, although most chapters also touch on aspects of content selection and evaluation. 

1. ... the study of the practices and procedures used in teaching, and the principles and beliefs that underlie them.


Methodology includes:

a. study of the nature of language skills (e.g., reading, writing, speaking, listening, and procedures for teaching them) 


b. study of the preparation of lesson plans, materials, and textbooks for teaching language skills

c. the evaluation and comparison of language teaching methods (e.g., the audio-lingual method)

2. such practices, procedures, principles, and beliefs themselves.

    

    From the table of contents you will see that this book addresses most of these areas. Section 1 focuses on the language skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Section 2 looks at aspects of language—discourse, grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. Section 3 explores elements that support the learning process, including learning styles and strategies, content- based instruction, using textbooks, using computers, fostering autonomy and independence, and classroom-based assessment and evaluation.



2. Background to language teaching methodology:

The “methods” debate

    A language teaching method is a single set of procedures which teachers are to follow in the classroom. Methods are also usually based on a set of beliefs about the nature of language and learning. For many years, the goal of language pedagogy was to “find the right method”-a methodological magic formula that would work for all learners at all times (Brown, 2002). Methods contrast with approaches, which are more general, philosophical orientations such as communicative language teaching (see page 6) that can encompass a range of different procedures. The dominant method for much of the last century was the grammar- translation method. This was challenged in the 1950s and 1960s by audi- olingualism, a method that is still very popular today, and whose influence can be seen in a variety of drill-based techniques and exercises. Audiolingualism was the first method to be based on a theory of learning— behaviorism, which viewed all learning as a process of forming habits, and on a theory of language-structural linguistics. Behaviorism and structural linguistics provided the following key characteristics of audiolingualism:

• Priority is given to spoken rather than written language.
• Language learning is basically a matter of developing a set of habits through drilling.
• Teach the language, not about the language. (Avoid teaching grammar rules. Get learners to develop their skills through drill and practice— teach through “analogy” not “analysis.”) (Moulton, 1963)

    In the 1960s, behaviorism and structural linguistics were severely criticized as being inadequate representations of both the learning process and the nature of language. In place of behaviorism, psychologists proposed cognitive psychology while the linguist Chomsky developed a new theory called trans- formational-generative grammar. Both approaches emphasized thinking, comprehension, memory, and the uniqueness of language learning to the human species. Methodologists seized on the theories and developed a method known as cognitive code learning. This approach promoted language learning as an active mental process rather than a process of habit formation. Grammar was back in fashion, and classroom activities were designed that encouraged learners to work out grammar rules for themselves through inductive reasoning. (For examples, see Nunan, Chapter 8, this volume.) 

    In addition to methods based on theories of learning and language, there emerged a number of methods that were based on a humanistic approach to education. These methods emphasized the importance of emotional factors in learning, and proponents of these methods believed that linguistic models and psychological theories were less important to successful language acquisition than emotional or affective factors. They believed that successful learning would take place if learners could be encouraged to adopt the right attitudes and interests in relation to the target language and target culture. The best known of these methods were the silent way, suggestopedia and community language learning. The best introduction to humanistic learning within language education is Stevick (1997). Stevick became interested in humanism after he observed both audiolingual and cognitive code learning in action. He found that both methods could either be quite successful or extremely unsuccessful. “How is it,” he asked, “that two methods based on radically different assumptions about the nature of language and learning could be successful or unsuccessful, as the case may be?” He concluded that particular classroom techniques mattered less than establishing the right emotional climate for the learners.


Communicative language teaching (CLT):

        During the 1970s, a major reappraisal of language occurred. Linguists began to look at language, not as interlocking sets of grammatical, lexical, and phonological rules, but as a tool for expressing meaning. This reconceptualization had a profound effect on language teaching methodology. In the earliest versions of CLT, meaning was emphasized over form, fluency over accuracy. It also led to the development of differentiated courses that reflected the different communicative needs of learners. This needs-based approach also reinforced another trend that was emerging at the time-that of learner-centered education (Nunan, 1988). 

    In recent years, the broad approach known as CLT has been realized methodologically by task-based language teaching (TBLT). In TBLT, language lessons are based on learning experiences that have nonlinguistic outcomes, and in which there is a clear connection between the things learners do in class and the things they will ultimately need to do outside of the classroom. Such tasks might include listening to a weather forecast and deciding what to wear, ordering a meal, planning a party, finding one’s way around town and so on. In these tasks, language is used to achieve nonlanguage outcomes. For example, the ultimate aim of ordering a meal is not to use correctly formed wh-questions, but to get food and drink on the table.


Research:

    During the “what’s the best method?” phase of language teaching, several studies were carried out to settle the question empirically. For example, Swaffar, Arens and Morgan (1982) set out to decide which was superior, audi- olingualism or cognitive code learning. The results were inconclusive, and it appeared that, at the level of classroom teaching, few teachers adhered rigidly to one method rather than the other. Instead, they evolved a range of practices that reflected their own personal teaching styles. Among other things, it was studies such as these that gradually led people to abandon the search for the “right method.” 

    In the 1970s, a series of investigations were carried out that had (and continue to have) a great deal of influence on methodology. These came to be known as the morpheme order studies. These investigations set out to examine the order in which certain items of grammar were acquired. (For a more detailed description, see Nunan, Chapter 8, this volume.) The researchers concluded from their investigations three significant points: one, that there was a “natural order” in which grammar was acquired; two, that this order did not reflect the order in which items were taught; and three, that the natural order could not be altered by instruction. According to one of the researchers, the implications for the classroom were clear: it was not necessary to drill grammar (Krashen, 1981, 1982). All that was needed in order to teach another language was to engage learners in “natural” communicative tasks that were roughly pitched at their level of proficiency (Krashen and Terrell, 1983). 

    As you will see in the chapter on grammar, subsequent research has demonstrated that a grammar focus in class does seem to be beneficial for most learners. However, the insights provided by Krashen and others did help to advance the field, and many of his suggestions have found their way into current methodological approaches. 

    Out of the research just cited grew the question: What kinds of communicative tasks seem most beneficial for second language acquisition? A great deal of research has gone into this question in the last fifteen years. (For a review see Nunan, 1999, particularly Chapter 2.) While results from this research are varied, one characteristic that seems particularly beneficial is required information exchange tasks. These are tasks in which two or more learners, working in pairs or small groups, have access to different information. This information needs to be shared in order for the task to be completed successfully. (An example of a required information exchange task is provided below.) It is hypothesized that required information exchange tasks force students to negotiate with each other, and this is healthy for language development because it “pushes” the learners to reformulate and extend their language.



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