Tag Archives: esl

Understanding Techniques in Language Teaching

4 Replies
Advertisements

Technique is a core term in the jargon of language teaching. This leads to people using a term without really knowing what it means. In simple terms, a technique is any task/activity that is planned in a language course. Such a broad term makes it difficult to make sense of what exactly a technique is.

This post will try to provide various ways to categorize the endless sea of techniques available in language teaching.

Manipulation to Interaction

One way to assess techniques is along a continuum from manipulation to interaction. A manipulative technique is one in which the teacher has complete control and expects a specific response from the students. Examples of this include reading aloud, choral repetition, dictation

Interactive techniques are ones in which the student’s response is totally open. Examples of interactive techniques include role play, free writing, presentations, etc.

Automatic, Purposeful, Communicative Drills

Another continuum that can be used is seeing techniques as an automatic, purposeful, or communicative drill. An automatic drill technique has only one correct response. An example would be a repetition drill in which the students repeat what the teacher said.

A purposeful drill technique has several acceptable answers. For example, if the teacher asks the students “where is the dog”? The students can say “it’s outside” or “the dog is outside” etc.

Restricted to Free

The last continuum that can be used is restricted to free. This continuum looks at techniques from the position of who has the power. Generally, restricted techniques are ones that are teacher-centered, closed-ended, with high manipulation. Free techniques are often student-centered, open-ended, with unplanned responses.

Conclusion

All levels of language teaching should have a mixture of techniques from all over any of the continuums mentioned in this post. It is common for teachers to have manipulative and automatic techniques for beginners and interactive and free techniques for advanced students. This is often detrimental particularly to the beginning students.

The continuums here are simply for attempting to provide structure when a teacher is trying to choose techniques. It is not a black and white matter in classifying techniques. Different teachers while classifying the same techniques in different places in a continuum. As such, the continuums should guide one’s thinking and not control it.

Institutional Context of Language Teaching

Leave a reply
Advertisements

The context in which language teaching happens influences how the language is taught to the students and how the teacher approaches language instruction. Generally, the two most two most common context in which formal language instruction takes places is at the primary/secondary and tertiary levels.

How language is viewed at these two levels depends on whether they see the mother-tongue of the students as subtractive (negative) or additive (positive) to acquiring the target language. The purpose of this post is to explain how language teaching is approached based on these two context.

Primary/Secondary

There are several language models used at the primary/secondary level. Some of these models include submersion, immersion, and bilingualism.

Submersion is a model in which the student is thrown into the new language without any or little support. This is derived from a subtractive view of the mother tongue. Naturally, many students struggle for years with this approach.

Immersion allows for students to have content-area classes with other students who have the same mother tongue with support from a trained ESL teacher. The mother tongue is seen as additive in this context

Bilingualism involves receiving instruction in both the first and second language. This can be done for the purpose of transitioning completely to the second language or to try and maintain or enrich the first language.

Tertiary

At the tertiary level, many of the same models of language are employed but given slightly different names. Common models at the tertiary level include pre-academic, EAP, ESP, and social.

Pre-Academic language teaching is the tertiary equivalent of submersion. Generally, the students are taught English with a goal of submerging them in the target language when they begin formal studies. This is the same as mainstreaming which is one form of submersion

EAP or English for Academic Purposes is essentially advanced language teaching that focuses on scholarly type subject matter in pre-academic language programs.  This is often difficult to teach as it requires a refinement of how the student approaches the language.

ESP or English for Specific Purposes is a general form of EAP. Instead of the focus being academic as in EAP, ESP can be focused on business, tourism, transportation, etc. Students learn English focused on a specific  industry or occupation.

Social programs for English provide a brief exposure to English for the sake of enjoyment. Students learn the basics of listening and speaking in a non-academic context.

Conclusion

There are various programs available to support students in acquiring a language. The programs vary in essentially no support to support in maintaining both languages. Which program to adopt at an institution depends on the context of learning and the philosophy of the school.

Teaching Advanced ESL Students

1 Reply
Advertisements

Advanced ESL students have their own unique set of traits and challenges that an ESL teacher must deal. This post will explain some of these unique traits as well as how to support advanced ESL students.

Supporting Advanced ESL Students

By this point, the majority of the language processing is automatic. This means that the teacher no longer needs to change the speed at which they talk in most situations.

In addition, the students have become highly independent. This necessitates that the teacher focuses on supporting the learning experience of the students rather than trying to play a more directive role.

The learning activities used in the classroom can now cover a full range of possibilities. Almost all causal reading material is appropriate. Study skills can be addressed at a much deeper level. Such skills as skimming, scanning, determining purpose, etc. can be taught and addressed in the learning. Students can also enjoy debates and author opinion generating experiences.

The Challenges of Advanced ESL Students

One of the challenges of advanced students is they often have a habit of asking the most detailed questions about the most obscure aspects of the target language. To deal this requires a Ph.D. in linguistics or the ability to know what the students really need to know and steer away from mundane grammatical details. It is very tempting to try and answer these types of questions but the average native-speaker does not know all the details of imperfect past tense but rather are much more adept at using it.

Another frustrating problem with advanced students is the ability to continue to make progress in their language development. With any skill, as one gets closer to mastery, the room for improvement becomes smaller and smaller. To move from an advanced student to a superior student takes several small rather than sweeping adjustments.

This is one reason advanced students often like to ask those minute grammar questions. These small questions are where they know they are weak when it comes to communicating. This can be especially stressful if the student is a few points away from reaching some sort of passing score on an English proficiency exam (IELTS, TOEFL, etc.). Minor adjustments need to reach the minimum score are difficult to determine and train.

Conclusion

After beginners, teaching advanced ESL students is perhaps the next most challenging teaching experience. Advanced ESL students have a strong sense of what they know and do not know. What makes this challenging is the information they need to understand can be considered somewhat specializes and not easy to articulate for many teachers.

Teaching Intermediate ESL Students

1 Reply
Advertisements

Intermediate ESL students are often the easiest group of students to teach. Usually, they have basic skills in the language while still having plenty of untapped upside potential to develop.

Unlike beginners who have no language skills and thus require a patient and thorough teacher and advanced students who need advanced knowledge minute knowledge of the language, intermediates have some skill without expertise. Therefore, for beginning teachers, it is usually best to start their teaching career working with beginners.

This post will provide some suggestions on how to approach and teach intermediate level ESL students.

Automaticity and the Role of the Teacher

By this level, students are somewhat automatic in their speaking process. This allows the teacher to back off from being the center of the classroom in order to allow more student-student interaction as the student are able to be much more creative in their learning experience. Therefore, the learning can now be much more learner-centered with a significant reduction in the amount of talking the teacher does.

Again, for beginner teachers, the students know enough to not require intensive hand-holding but not enough to challenge the expertise of the teacher. This combines to create an excellent initial teaching experience for many.

Focus on Perfection

Intermediate students begin to become obsessed with grammar. They want everything they say to be “perfect.” This focus on over analyzing everything they say can impair fluency and accuracy as they criticized themselves for every slip-up.

The goal of the teacher at this point is to help the students take their focus off of the accuracy of what they are saying and focus on the flow of the conversation. They should be accurate enough to be understood with more complex correction coming later. Grammar has its place in a limited manner but should not dominate the learning experience.

Learning Activities and Techniques

Intermediate students can learn in a more cooperative environment. Some examples of activities suitable for intermediate students include role-plays, discussion, problem-solving and interviews.

The teacher takes on more of a supervisory role in the learning of the students. The provides guidance as necessary as the students determine what to do themselves.

Conclusion

Teaching at the intermediate level is good for many people new to teaching a language. A new teacher can focus on working with students with some competency without the pressure of exit-examines are people have had no clue about the language.

Teaching Beginning ESL Students

2 Replies
Advertisements

Beginning ESL students have unique pedagogical needs that make them the most difficult to teach. It’s similar to the challenge of teaching kindergarten. The difficulty is not the content but rather stripping what is already a basic content into something that is understandable for the most undeveloped of students. Some of the best teachers cannot do this.

This post will provide some suggestions on how to deal with beginning ESL students.

Take Your Time

Beginning students need a great deal of repetition. If you have ever tried to learn a language you probably needed to hear phrases many times to understand them. Repetition helps students to remember and imitate what they heard.

This means that the teacher needs to limit the number of words, phrases, and sentences they teach. This is not easy, especially for new teachers who are often put in charge of teaching beginners and race through the curriculum to the frustration of the beginning students.

Repetition and a slow pace help students to develop the automatic processing they need in order to achieve fluency. This can also be enhanced by focusing on purpose in communication rather than the grammatical structure of language.

The techniques used in class should short and simple with a high degree variety to offset the boredom of repetition. In other words, find many ways to teach one idea or concept.

Who’s the Center

Beginning students are highly teacher-dependent because of their lack of skills. Therefore, at least initially, the classroom should probably be teacher-centered until the students develop some basic skills.  In general, whenever you are dealing with a new subject the students are totally unfamiliar with it is better to have a higher degree of control of the learning experience.

Being the center of the learning experiences requires the teacher to provide most of the examples of well-spoken, written English. Your feedback is critical for the students to develop their own language skills. The focus should be more towards fluency rather than accuracy.

However, with time cooperative and student-centered activities can become more prominent. In the beginning, too much freedom can be frustrating for language learners who lack any sort of experience to draw upon to complete activities. Within a controlled environment, student creativity can blossom.

Conclusion

Being a beginning level ESL teacher is a tough job. It requires a skill set of patience, perseverance, and a gift at simplicity.  Taking your time and determining who the center of learning is are ways in which to enhances success for those teaching beginners.

Drill Pattern Activities for ESL Students

1 Reply
Advertisements

Drill and practice is a behavioral approach to acquiring language. Through the frequent use of drills, students will hopefully uncover the pattern and structure of the language.

Although there is criticism of drill and practice such as the focus on memorization and the common inability of the student to generate language on their own. This method is still used frequently in language teaching.

The purpose of this post is to provide several drill and practice activities that can be used in teaching language. In particular, we will look at the following activities

  • Inflection
  • Replacement
  • Restatement
  • Completion
  • Transportation
  • Contraction
  • Integration
  • Rejoinder
  • Restoration

Inflection

Inflection involves the modification of a word in one sentence in another sentence

Example

I bought the dog —–> I bought the dogs

Replacement

Replacement is the changing of one word for another

Example

I ate the apple —–> I ate it.

Restatement

Restatement is the rewording of a statement so that it is addressed to someone else

Example

Convert the sentence from 2nd person to third person

Where are you going?—–>Where is he going?

Completion

Completion is when the student hears a sentence and is required to finish it.

Example

The woman lost _____ shoes—–>The woman lost her shoes

Transposition

A change in word order is needed when a word is added to the sentence

Example

I am tired. (add the word so)—–>I am so tired.

Contraction

A single word replaces a phrase or clause

Example

Put the books on the table—–>Put the books there

Integration

Two separate sentences are combined

Example

They are kind. This is nice—–>It is nice that they are kind

Rejoinder

These are responses to something that is said. A general answer based on a theme is expected from the student

Example say something polite

Thank you

Example agree with someone

I think you are right

Restoration

The student is given several words and they need to combine them into a sentence

Example

boy/playing/toy—–>The boy is playing with the toy

Conclusion

The examples in this post provide some simple ways in which English can be taught to students.  These drill and practice tools are one of many ways to support ESL students in their language acquisition.

Community Language Learning

Leave a reply
Advertisements

Community Language Learning (CLL) is a humanistic approach to language learning based on psychological insights of Carl Rogers. The role of the teacher shifts to that of a counselor and the role of the student shifts to that of a client. The difference is that in CLL the counselor is a knower and the client is a learner.

This post will discuss the beliefs of CLL as well as its curriculum.

The Philosophy

CLL is based on interaction between learners and between learners and knowers. The goal is to strengthen social ties in order to establish a community. This is defined as intimacy in CLL lingo.

The interaction between learners and knowers goes through five stages.

  1. The learner explains what they want to say
  2. He tries to become self-assertive without success
  3. The learner becomes resentful of their dependency
  4. The learner becomes tolerant of their dependency
  5. The learner becomes independent

This five-stage process is based on the development of babies as the move from helplessness to independence.

The roles of teachers and students has already been alluded too. Learning is viewed as collaborative in CLL. This explains why learners are consistently working together. The learners need to move from one affective crisis to another. These crises are what encourage development in the language skills of the learners. A crisis is any challenge that pushes the learners.

The teacher’s role, in addition to being a knower, is to provide a stable learning environment in which learners collaborate. In addition, the teacher provides the various affective crises in order to encourage learning.

Curriculum

The primary goal of CLL is oral proficiency. As such, interaction is a primary characteristic of a CLL curriculum. Common activities in a CLL classroom include conversation, listening, translating, and transcribing.

Materials are developed by the teacher and are suited for the local context. The actual procedures vary and are not agreed upon among proponents of CLL.

Conclusion

CLL is an approach that is focused on providing students with an opportunity to learn from each other and the teacher. The environment is one in which learners are supported by a knower who provides guidance and language knowledge to the students.

Cooperative Language Learning

4 Replies
Advertisements

Cooperative language learning (CLL) is the application of the instructional method cooperative learning in the language classroom. This approach to language teaching was a reaction against the teacher-centered methods of its time in favor of learner-centered methods.

This post will discuss the assumptions of CLL as well as the instructional practices associated with it.

Assumptions

Proponents of CLL see language as a primary tool for social interactions. Students learn the language through these social interactions. This idea is based primarily upon the work of Vygotsky. In addition, language also serves the function of communication and accomplishing tasks. This implies a need for authentic assessment.

The student’s role is to work as a member of a group. CLL questions if learning a language alone is an appropriate way to learn. The teacher must provide a highly structured environment in which they serve as a facilitator of learning.

Curriculum 

CLL has several specific goals including the following.

  • Learn the target language naturally through group interaction
  • Develop learning strategies
  • Create a positive learning environment
  • Develop critical thinking skills

These goals are partially achieved through developing interdependence among the students, individual accountability, and the formation of groups. Interdependence is useful in showing students that what benefits one benefits all of them.

Individual accountability happens through not only assigning group grades but individual grades as well for projects. Lastly, group formation is the foundation of the CLL experience.

Some common activities based on CLL includes

  • Jigsaw-Divide the work and then have the students put the pieces together
  • Projects-Any assignment that requires more than one person
  • Think-Pair-Share-Pose a question, let them think, put them in pairs, and have each pair share.

All of these activities involve collaboration with communication in the target language.

Conclusion

CLL involves learning in groups rather than alone. There is research that indicates that CLL is beneficial in acquiring the target language. As such, CLL is yet another way in which language teachers can support their students.

Lexical Approach

1 Reply
Advertisements

The Lexical Approach is a unique approach in TESOL methods. This approach starts from the position that language learning is not about the individual word but rather multi-word chunks. As such, a student should focus learning various combinations of word chunks.

This post will share the assumptions and curriculum of the Lexical Approach

Assumptions

The Lexical Approach states clearly that language acquisition happens through acquiring the chunks or collocations of a language. Learning a language is not about rules but rather about acquiring enough examples from which the learner can make generalizations. For example, I child will eventually learn that “good morning” is a greeting for a  specific time of day.

Chunks are learned through one or more of the following strategies

  • Exposure-You see it over and over again and make a generalization
  • Comparison-You compare the target language chunk with a chunk for another language
  • Noticing-You notice a combination for the first time

Lexical approach is primarily an approach for developing autonomous learning. Therefore, the teacher’s role is to provide an environment in which the student can manage their own learning.

The student’s responsibility is in using what is called a concordancer. A concordancer is an online resource that provides examples of how a word is used in real literature. Each concordancer has one or more corpus from which examples of the word being used come from.

Curriculum

The Lexical Approach is not a comprehensive method and as such does not include any objectives. There are several common activities used in this approach.

  • Awareness activities help students to notice chunks and include. The teacher might provide several examples of sentences using the word “prediction” to allow students to try and determine the meaning of this word
  • Identifying chunks involves having the students search for chunks in a text. The results are then compared during a discussion.
  • Retelling involves having a student make their own sentences while reusing a chunk that they have just learned. For example, if the students learn the chunk (don’t put all your eggs in one basket) they would have to use this chunk in their own unique sentence.

Conclusion

The Lexical approach is a useful approach for those with a more analytical way of learning a language. Digesting a language through memorizing and applying various collocations can be beneficial to many language learners.

Text-Based Instruction

4 Replies
Advertisements

Text-Based Instruction (TBI) employs the use of different genres of text in a social context to encourage language development. This post will discuss the assumptions and curriculum development of this method.

Assumptions

TBI starts with the belief that different forms of text are used for various situations. This leads to another conclusion that mastering a language involves exposure to these different genres.  Furthermore, each text has a distinct organizational pattern

However, exposure to different types of text is not enough. Students must also use language in a social setting. Communicating about the text is critical for language acquisition.

TBI also stresses the importance of learning explicitly about the language. This means conscious awareness about what one is learning. This again can happen through discussion or through the illustrations of the teacher. In fact, scaffolding is a key component of TBI.

Students learn through the guidance and support of the teacher. The teacher’s role, in addition to scaffolding, is to select materials and sequence the curriculum.

Curriculum

The objectives in a TBI curriculum depends on the text that is used in the learning experiences. For example, the objectives for reading newspapers are different from reading textbooks.

Instructional materials play a crucial role in TBI. This is because of the emphasis on authentic materials. As such, actual reading samples from books, articles, and magazines are commonly employed.

A common instructional approach using TBI would include the following steps

  1. Build the context
    • This means providing a background about the reading through sharing necessary information for an understanding of the topic of the text. This can be done verbally, visually, a combination of both, etc.
  2. Deonstructing the text
    • This involves comparing the writing of the text the students are using with another similarly written text. For example, comparing the structure of to newspaper articles.
  3. Joint Construction of text
    • Students, with the support of the teacher, develop their own example of the text they were reading. For example, if the text was a newspaper article. The class develops a sample newspaper article with teacher support.
  4. Independent construction of text
    • Same as #3 but now the students work alone.
  5. Reflection
    • Students discuss how what they learned can be used in other contexts

Conclusion

TBI is a unique approach to language teaching that focuses on reading to develop the other three skills of language. This approach is particularly useful for people who prefer to learn a language through reading rather than in other forms.

Whole Language Approach

2 Replies
Advertisements

Traditionally, the teaching of language in America has focused on decoding skills. This means splitting a part a word it to it phonemes. This is where the famous phonics programs came from.

However, with every reaction, there is often a reaction. The reaction to the emphasis on decoding and phonics lead to the development of the Whole Language Approach. Whole Language has to distinct camps one for first language reading acquisition and the other for ESL. In this post, we will examine the assumptions, curriculum, and procedures of the Whole Language Approach within ESL.

Assumptions

Whole Language Approach stresses that language learning happens in interactional and functional ways. This means that students learn a language through engaging one another and through the actual use of the language in real-world experiences. This means that authentic assessment is a core component of the learning.

With the emphasis on interaction, the Whole Language Approach is also heavily influenced by constructivism. As the students experience the language in authentic situations, they are building on prior knowledge they have.

The teacher is viewed as a facilitator and not an expert passing on knowledge. Students serve the role of evaluating their own and others work. The classroom environment is one of self-directed learning with the students’ experiences used as learning material. This heightens relevancy which is an important aspect of a humanistic classroom.

Curriculum & Procedures

A Whole Language Approach classroom have some of the following in its curriculum

  • Authentic assessment
  • Integration of the language skills (reading, writing, speaking, listening)
  • Collaboration when reading and writing
  • Real-world reading and writing rather than for pedagogical purposes

It is always important to have a degree of flexibility in the curriculum when using this approach. This is due to learning new things about the students and their needs as the class progresses.

The procedures and activities used in the Whole Language Approach include several of the following.

A primary goal of this approach is to provide an experience. The experience helps the students to acquire the language through the various activities of the class.

Conclusion

Whole Language is not a commonly used approach these days. A major problem with overly student-centered/self-directed learning is measurement of results. With other approaches such as content or task-based, it is much easier to measure cause and effect in terms of language acquisition.

Another closely related criticism of Whole Language is the negative view of the approach of teaching and acquiring specific measurable skills. Students would learn but it was not always clear what they learned.

Many skills require systematic instruction such as reading. Exposure to text does not teach a person to read. Rather, learning the sounds of the individual words often leads to reading. As such, a top-down approach to reading acquisition is the favor theory currently

Regardless of the weak points, Whole Language can still be useful for English teachers. The requirement is to find ways to use it situationally rather than exclusively.

Communicative Language Learning

3 Replies
Advertisements

Communicative language learning was an approach of language teaching that was developed in reaction to the Oral Approach. One of the major differences between communicative language learning and the oral approach is former focuses on the function of language while the latter focuses on the structure.

Communicative language learning (CLL) is also has a learn by doing focus. In addition, this approach is learner-centered. The students master the language through using it in communication rather than focusing on the structure of the target language.

Approach

There are four primary competencies a student needs to develop according to CLL.

  • Grammatical competence-Grammar
  • Sociolinguistic competence-Understanding social context
  • Discourse competence-Meaning of what is said
  • Strategic competence-Ways to maintain a conversation

In CLL, language is seen as a tool for expressing meaning. Language allows people to interact with one another. These two points lead to the following principles of CLL

  • Real communication is critical to language acquisition
  • The language task must be meaningful for the students

The emphasis on interaction indicates that CLL derives heavily from constructivism in that students learn from each and build on their prior knowledge.

Design

Often, those who employ CLL approach will develop a notional-functional syllabus. Notional means ideas. For example, a teacher may develop units on leisure, shopping, business, etc. Functional means using language for real-world activities. For example, in the shopping unit, students would use language related to shopping.

This way of developing lessons is different from other methods such as grammar-translation with its focus on grammar. In CLL, the student uses the language in various real-world settings.

Two major focuses of CLL are on fluency and accuracy. The development of these two abilities takes place through such activities as role plays, sharing/gathering information, and expressing one’s opinion. During these activities, the teacher encourages and supports students through their success and failures with the language.

Instructional materials are based on text, task, realia, or technology. The goal is always to have students model real-world behavior. The text might be an actual newspaper or article. The task might be interviews. Realia might be graphs and charts. Lastly, the technology could be blogs and or developing videos.

Teacher and Student Roles

The teacher in CLL is a facilitator. They conduct a needs analyst and provide a learning environment that encourages growth. The teacher provides encouragement and support while the students are engaged in various tasks.

The students are the center of the learning. They are actively involved in various activities and experiences developed by the teacher.

Criticism of CLL

CLL has been criticized as inapplicable in a non-western context. Many cultures expect a teacher-centered learning environment. As such, a student-centered environment would be confusing for many language learners.

CLL also has been accused of encouraging fossilization. With so much interaction happening in the classroom it is difficult to correct mistakes. As students build confidence and learn to survive in English they may find it difficult to fix more nuance mistakes with so little feedback.

Conclusion

CLL is a useful method for those who want to motivate students from a more humanistic perspective. With this approach, students are actively learning and engaged in various real-world task. Despite the problems, this approach is yet one other way of teaching a target language.

Audiolingualism

4 Replies
Advertisements

The background to audiolingualism was discussed in a previous post. This post will look at the characteristics of audiolingualism in greater detail. In particular, we will look at the theories and design of audiolingualism

Theories

Audiolingualism is heavily influenced by a structural view of language. This view sees language rule-governed and systems within systems. Furthermore, language should be broken down into its smallest units. For a structuralist, things like phonemes and morphemes are highly important because these are the smallest units of a certain language structures.

Language is oral in nature for a structuralist. This is one reason for audiolingualism’s focus on speech.

Behaviorism is another influential theory in audiolingualism. People learn a language through stimulus and response. Drills and more drills with feedback is how they improve. It doesn’t matter if the student understands as long as they can execute. Analysis is not important. Instead, context is how students learn vocabulary.

Curriculum Development

An audiolingual curriculum will focus on the structure of the language. It will also include lots of repetition and memorization. This focus on repetition leads to the use of technology such as CDs which allow students to practice. The medium of instruction will primarily be oral and verbal with reading and writing be secondary.

The primary goal would be mastery in a behavioral manner. This means execution of the language in various context.  Objectives will further support this by providing measurable behaviors that show competence.

Student-Teacher Interaction

The teacher plays a critical role in this method. the learning is centered around the teacher and the students’ willingness to imitate. Such activities as choral responses are a part of the learning.

The student is dependent on the teacher for language acquisition. They are expected to imitate even when they do not understand what they are saying. This emphasis on action over understanding is a key characteristic.

The End of Adudiolingualism

After having time to use the method, many teachers became disappointed in the results in their students when employing audiolingualism. In other words, audiolingualism never live up to the hype in a practical sense.

Furthermore, the behavioral focus of audiolingualism was being attacked by cognitivist learning linguists such as Noam Chomsky.There was a shift from imitation to competence in language circles that undid audiolingualism.

Conclusion

The audiolingual method was a highly influential method for its time. Its focus on repetition and behavioral aspects of language were a major strength that became a weakness.

Even though this method is mostly gone. Its impact is still felt every time a student tries to imitate the speaking style of a native.

The Birth of the Audiolingual Method

2 Replies
Advertisements

In this post, we will examine the background to the Audiolingual method. Audiolingualism is considered by many to be the first American approach to ESL.

Background

During the Great Depression, an influential study called the “Coleman Report” recommended that foreign language should be taught through the use of a reading approach. This led to many teachers teaching language using a combination of Direct Method and Oral Approach.

A major change came with the start of WWII, the US now needed people who were fluent in the languages of the enemy and those conquered by them. For many of these exotic languages, there was no textbook available. This led the army to a creative solution called the informant method.

The informant method was simple. A native speaker of the target language teamed with a student and a linguist and they would spend time together. The native speaker would say phrases and vocabulary for the student to learn through imitation. The linguist would provide structure for what the student was learning.

The informant method required students to study 10 hours a day six days a week for 12-18 weeks. By the end of such an intense experience, excellent languages skills were developed.

After WWII, there was a shift among many linguists towards a structural function of language combined with behavioral approaches to learning. There was also a focus on aural training with support in developing pronunciation skills. Later did the student learn about speaking, reading, and writing. This way of teaching language became know as the Aural-Oral Approach.

Enter Audiolingualism

Audiolingualism came out of the background of the intense language experience of the informant method and the structural/behavioral emphasis of the Aural-Oral Approach. This method, with its focus on “drill, drill, drill”, was used in ESL teaching at universities throughout America at one point and is stilled used in many parts of the world today.

Audiolingualism was touted as taking language teaching from art to science. It was considered systematic and efficient in providing results. For teachers, it meant often being the center of instruction and speaking to allow the students to imitate and to correct them when they were wrong. For students, it meant parroting what was said without always knowing what it means.

For its time, there is no question as to the influence of audiolingualism. It was based on prior study and was one of the first major contribution of American linguists to ESL teaching. In a future post, we will examine in detail the audiolingual method.

The Oral Approach of Language Teaching

4 Replies
Advertisements

During the early part of the 20th century, linguist in Europe developed the Oral Approach. This approach to learning a language had a major impact for several decades in language teaching. In this post, we will look at the history and characteristics of what was once a revolutionary approach to teaching language.

Background

The Oral Approach was a direct reaction to the Direct Method. In contrast to the Direct Method, Oral Approach was based on scientific research. One of the primary desires of the developers of this approach was to have a systematic way of teaching English.

Characteristics

The Oral Approach stresses the following…

Vocabulary-Vocabulary is seen as a way for developing reading skills in this approach. The Oral Approach stipulates a list of 2000 words essential for reading comprehension

Grammar-In terms of grammar, it is not the same as the grammar-translation method which stresses a universal grammar. Rather, in the Oral Approach, it is the patterns of the sentences that matter such as Subject-Verb-Object. Students learn the structures in order to use and understand the language.

Curriculum-There are three main elements to curriculum development in Oral Approach selection, gradation, and presentation. Selection is the choosing of content. Gradation is the process of organizing the curriculum, and presentation is the instructional component.

Another major aspect of curriculum was the development of the PPP instructional model.  PPP stands for presentation, practice, and perform. Presentation is the teacher sharing information with students. Practice is the students having time to demonstrate their understanding without fear of failure. Perform is the students sharing their knowledge as a form of assessment.

Theories  & Teaching

The Oral Approach has a structural view of language learning as mention in the curriculum section above. With an emphasis on behavioral practices. Students learned through repetition. Teaching takes place inductively.

The Oral Approach relies on the use of situations to teach language. A situation is the use of such as pictures, objects, and or realia, to teach. Students are expected to listen and repeat what the instructor says. This means that students have little control over content.

The lessons are highly teacher-centered and the teacher is extremely active with timing, reviewing, testing, etc. The ultimate goal is to have the students use the language in non-structured real-life settings.

Another Name

The Oral Approach is also called situational language learning. The difference is really a matter of age. The Oral Approach was developed in the 1920’s while situational Language learning was developed in the 1960’s. There are other minor differences but the primary separation between these two is time.

Conclusion

The Oral Approach is yet another reaction to what was done before its implementation. With new information came a shift in teaching language that lasted 70 years. As perhaps the first scientifically based way of teaching a language. The Oral Approach paved the way for even more innovation in language teaching.

Understanding Procedures in Language Teaching

2 Replies
Advertisements

Procedures are the most practical aspect of language teaching. At this point, a teacher actually applies a method that was derived from an approach. This means that procedures are the actual use of various skills in teaching a language. This post will provide insight into the role of procedures in language teaching.

Three Components

There are three components to procedures that a teacher needs to keep in mind. One, procedures involve teaching activities such as drills, discussion, etc. Second, procedures also involve how a teaching activity is used such as cooperatively or individually. Lastly, procedures also include how feedback is given.

To say things simply, procedures involves the presentation of information, the practicing of new skills, and the giving of feedback. In other forms of teaching, procedures would be the equivalent of instructional design in that it focuses on the delivery and use of content.

Examples of Procedures

Different methods have different procedures. For now, the point is just to provide examples of various types of procedures without focusing on a particular method.

Presentation-Sharing information directly, indirectly, or some other way  with students

Practice–This can take the form of any assignment that requires the students to use something they have just learned.

Checking-Providing students with correct answers or guidance

Homework-Additional practice of class material.

All methods have some or all of the points above in one form or another. What influences how these procedures are used is the approach that it is based on. For example, in grammar-translation method, the presentation procedure would always be direct and deductive. In other styles, the presentation procedure would be indirect and inductive. Despite these differences, it is likely that all language teachers would agree that some sort of presentation happens in all methods of language teaching.

Conclusion

Procedures are the most practical aspect of language teaching. At this point, the goal is to have various ways of actually teaching. It is at the procedure level that many teachers spend the majority of their time.

However, to truly understand what is happening in the classroom is to know the method and approach of a particular set of procedures Knowledge of this will help a teacher to know why they are doing something as well as knowing how to explain this.

Method Design

3 Replies
Advertisements

In language teaching, the approach shapes and influences how an instructor views language learning and language in general. Once an instructor has an idea of how they see the language learning experience it is necessary to actually develop a plan or method of teaching language.

Method design is the development of the actual curriculum for language teaching. Methods are practical applications of various learning theories of language. There are several major methods of language teaching from Grammar-Translation to Silent way. The purpose of this post is to provide an overview of how people have approached the design of a method.

Consider the Objectives

Objectives are what the teacher expects the students to do. Often this is the first step in the systematic design of a method. In TESOL, there are two types of objectives. Process-oriented methods and product-oriented methods.

Process-oriented methods focus more proficiency or the actual use of the language. They are often more behaviorist in nature. For example, “the student will speak the language with clarity.” Would be an example of a process-oriented objective. Such an objective is holistic in nature and often involves several steps.

Product-oriented objectives often focus more on knowing than doing. These objectives are about grammar and vocabulary. For example, “Students will know how to form plural words” is a product-oriented objective. These objectives usually do not focus on the big picture of complex language communication.

Develop a Syllabus

The syllabus is a document that includes the subject matter and how it is discussed. Different methods have different subject matters. Some methods focus on grammar while others focus on communication in specific situations. How the language is learned is shaped by the focus of the syllabus.

Instructional materials are the actual tools that help to achieve the content in the syllabus. For example, if the syllabus has a subject about Asian history. The instructional materials will include a reading on China as an example.

Select Learning and Teaching Activities

The activities of learning and teaching are the tools that are employed for the actual benefit of the improvement of the students’ language skills. Again, each method has different activities. A grammar focused method will employ grammar activities. A functional focused method will focus on communication in context. Perhaps it is becoming clear how the approach shapes so much of how a person teaches a language.

Roles of Learners and Teachers

Method design also examines the responsibilities of students and teachers. Older methods of learning a language are usually more teacher-centered. This is consistent with the era in which they were developed as most teachings were focused on the teacher. Newer methods of teaching are more focused on the student and increasing student activity. Lessons are inductive in nature rather than deductive.

Regardless of the method, it is the teacher’s responsibility to apply the method. This means that a teacher-centered method relies on a teacher while a student-centered method calls for the teacher to facilitate student learning.

Conclusion

Method design often includes the concepts above. However, this is not the totality of developing language teaching methods. The purpose here was to provide some basic understanding of the components of a method.

Approaches/Theories of Language in TESOL

9 Replies
Advertisements

In the field of TESOL, different teachers hold different views of how students learn a language. These various theories of language learning are called approaches. Approaches are significant as they influence everything that happens in a classroom from the objectives, the learning activities, and even the role of the learners and teacher.

In this post, we will look at several common approaches or theories of language.

Cognitive Approach

Supporters of the cognitive view believe language reflects the characteristics of the mind. The mind is a computer. Therefore, learning language is about the acquisition of abstract knowledge. By abstract we mean general principles about a language such as the formation of nouns, developing questions, etc.

The cognitive approach suggests that there is a universal grammar that all languages have in common. Understanding and teaching this universal grammar will help individuals to learn a language. One method commonly associated with the cognitive approach is the grammar-translation method.

Structural Approach

The structural approach views language as a system related elements that provide meaning. For example, a language has phonological elements, grammatical elements, lexical elements, etc. Learning the structure of these elements helps a person to learn the language. The audiolingual method is based on this approach.

Functional & Genre Approach

The functional approach sees language as a tool for expression one’ self in real-world experiences. The ultimate goal of language is the ability to communicate with it. Therefore, an understanding of semantics and communication is most important. This focus on communication downplays the need for a deep study of grammar. One method that is based on the functional approach is English for specific purposes.

The genre approach is derived from the functional view. In this approach, people learn a language in specific genres such as business, science, health care, etc. From learning language in specific genres people develop meaning. Academic English is one method based on the genre approach

Interactional & Sociocultural Approach

This approach sees language as being for the purpose of interacting with people. This means that people learn language through attempting authentic conversation with the people around them. Rules and grammar of a language are not of major significance. Task-based language teaching follows this approach.

The sociocultural approach is so similar to interactional that it is difficult to separate them. Sociocultural approach sees language learning as a communication activity in a social context. People learn language in the context of social relationships. Task-based language learning also is based on this approach.

Conclusion

There is little reason to try and decide which approach is the best. The best approach is the one that works well with a given group of students. The benefit of approaches is that they help to explain why a teacher does what they do. If a teacher stress interaction in class it may be because they hold an interactional view of language learning.Being able to explain what one believes is a critical component of better teaching.

Reform Movement in Language Teaching

1 Reply
Advertisements

By the late 19th century, there was a general push for making strong changes to how language was taught. There was a resurgence in linguistics and phonetics that serve as major influences on language teaching. This post will share some of the major reform factors of this time period.

International Phonetic Association

In the 1880’s, the International Phonetic Association was founded. Not only did this organization developed the International Phonetic Alphabet. They also laid down several influential principles of language teaching. For example, the IPA believed that the focus of learning a language should be on the spoken language. This is another indication of the shift away from reading and writing.

The focus on spoken language also led to recommending the use of proper pronunciation and the use of conversation in the classroom. There was still a prescriptive emphasis in developing “proper” speaking skills as though there is one standard for how to talk. This emphasis on verbal accuracy may have come from the stress of accuracy in the Grammar-Translation Method.

The IPA also encouraged the teaching of grammar inductively. This means to teach grammatical concepts through the use of examples or applications of the rules. From these examples, students would extract the rule for themselves. This is a much more engaging way to teach details such as rules in comparison to the standard deductive approach in which the rule is given followed by applications of it.

Other Reform Principles

There are several other significant reforms. One key idea was the need to teach language in a matter that was simple to complex in design. One has to wonder how language could have been taught with teaching from simple to more complex content. However, this principle may have been simply stating something that had been taken for granted.

Another reform idea was a focus on reading the language before seeing it in writing. This is in contrast to the focus on text by the Grammar-Translation method. Lastly, learning should happen in context. A focus on context became a major topic of controversy in education in general in the 20th century.

One last major reform that brought an end to the Grammar-Translation Method was the belief that translation should be avoided. Translation was at the heart of language teaching up until this point. Such a stance as this may have been highly shocking for its time as it was a pushing against a tradition that dated back to the 16th century.

Conclusion

Change is a part of life. The reforms brought about in language teaching at the end of the 19th century were for the purpose of improving language teaching. The primary desire was not to throw away what had been done before. Rather, the goal was to further help in the improvement of language teaching.

Reaction Toward Grammar-Translation

1 Reply
Advertisements

By the mid 19th century, many language educators began to react negatively towards the grammar-translation method. This post will examine several concerns of the grammar-translation model and the proposed early solutions to these concerns.

The Problems

Among some of the problems people had with grammar-translation includes was the inability to communicate verbally and lack of context. The lack of verbal communication was a major problem particularly when grammar-translation was used to teach living languages such as English. For many, learning a living language involves learning to speak it and the grammar-translation model does not provide this.

A closely related problem was a lack of context. A large part of communication is the setting in which it takes place. Another term for this is pragmatics. The setting along with body language (paralinguistic features) determines a large portion of understanding in communication. This is all ignored with the grammar-translation method as it is focused on text exclusively.

Proposed Solutions

Several 19th-century language teaching innovators offered answers to these problems. Prendergast was one of the first to notice how children learn language through context. He also found that children memorize commonly use phrases for future use. From these two observations, Pendergast proposed a structural approach to language learning in which the most basic units of a language are taught first followed by more complex ideas.

Gouin also studied how children learn language He proposed that language learning was easiest through using language to accomplish sequenced events that were related. For example, students might learn several phrases using the word door such as “I walk toward the door” and “I stop at the door”. Students would then learn the verb of such phrases like “I walk” and “I stop”. This experience happens in several different ways in order to help the student understand what “walk” and “stop” mean.

Gouin also supported the use of paralinguistic features such as gesturing in order to help explain ideas in a conversation with students. This support of body language influenced several methods of teaching English.

Conclusion

The reformers of the 19th century notice something about language that is obvious to us today, and that is the need to learn to communicate verbally.This led to many proposed reforms. However, few have heard of these reforms as they did not spread throughout the world of language teaching. This is due to inferior ways of communicating when compared today.

Though lacking recognition. The reforms suggested in the 19th century have become a part of standard practice for any teachers today.

Grammar Translation Method

7 Replies
Advertisements

The grammar-translation was developed through the teaching of Latin. This post will explain some of the traits of the grammar-translation model as well as reactions towards it.

Characteristics

The goal in grammar-translation is to learn read and write another language for the sake of developing mental discipline. This is consistent with the perennialist worldview of education at the time. Learning a language is focused on grammar rules used in manipulating the meaning of the text.

As such, listening and speaking are not a focus. This leads to the students’ native language being used as the mode of instruction and the foreign language is strictly for other purposes. A typical lesson involves copious amounts of translating with a goal of high accuracy.

Grammar was taught deductively which means that the teacher always explained the rules for the students who would then apply them. This is in contrast to discovery learning which relies on students learning principles of a lesson themselves.

Impact

Grammar-translation was essential the first formalized way of teaching a language. Even today, this approached is used for the teaching of English as well as many “dead” languages such as Latin, Koine Greek, and Classical Hebrew.

The result of this approach to learning a language was an endless amount of vocabulary without context combined with an emphasis on memorizing.  Many a pastor and theologian bemoan their days of taking biblical languages. This was partially due to how the language was taught. Many programs require memorizing an extensive list of word and declensions even though there are dictionaries, lexicons, and concordances readily available.

There are some advantages to this approach. For learning to communicate on an academic level via writing this method is supreme. This makes sense as the student does not have to develop speaking and listening skills. In addition, understanding the rules of a language provides insights into how and why of using it.

The grammar-translation method was easy to administer for teachers while boring for students. For teachers who lack verbal ability, it allows them to provide some sort of understanding of the language to their students. This method is also beneficial to large classes where it is difficult to monitor behavior.

With time, language teaching was becoming more and more important. Combine this with the dissatisfaction that was arising from the grammar-translation and there arises a shift and push back against the grammar-translation.

The Influences of Latin in TESOL

1 Reply
Advertisements

There are probably many TESOL teachers who are perhaps unaware of the role Latin has played in shaping the world of TESOL today. Latin has had a tremendous influence on how language teaching has been shaped as Latin was one of the first languages that were systematically taught on a large scale. As such, Latin provided the foundation for how language was taught for several hundred years.

Latin at its Role in Language Teaching

Speaking several languages was the norm for most of known history in most parts of the world such as Europe. However, with the dawn of empires such as the Greek and Romans, there came a need to have a dominating language over local languages.

The language of Rome was primarily Latin. As such, this led Latin to the spreading of Latin throughout the Western world. What was unique was how long the Roman Empire lasted. After over 1000 years, Latin was the language of education, business, and government. It was embedded in tradition and not just an outside language imposed on locals.

With the decline of the Roman empire came a growth in the use of other languages in Europe such as English, French, Italian, etc. This contributed to Latin being taught as a subject because of the prominence it uses to have. Change is difficult and abandoning a language that was so ingrained in Western civilization was not easy for scholars.

Another reason that Latin was still taught after its decline was for purposes of strengthening the mind. Educators believed that study of Latin would improve intellectual prowess of students because of the challenge of learning it.

The Teaching of Latin

Latin was taught to young people through a focus on grammar rules, declension, and conjugation of verbs. Students also translated passages to and from Latin to developing writing skills.

A deductive approach was used in developing a knowledge of the grammar. Students were taught the rules of the grammar first and then provided with opportunities to apply them. There was no discovery or inductive approaches to learning.

Furthermore, students only learned to read and write Latin. This is partly due to the fact that Latin had died as a verbal language. Therefore, there was no development of conversational skills or practical application.

Latin and Modern Language Teaching

The approach of Latin with its focus on grammar and translation was how other languages were first taught by the 19th century. Since there was no other example of how to approach language teaching it only made sense to copy how Latin was taught. Everybody was focused on text but never on context.

People learned to communicate in through text even though they were studying living languages.  Every language was taught as a mental exercise rather than as a skill for practical use.

Conclusion

The teaching of Latin led directly to the development of the grammar-translation method. This method laid the foundation for reactionary methods that are a part of the field of TESOL.

Levels of Reading Comprehension

1 Reply
Advertisements

Reading comprehension is a key academic skill. To comprehend a reading text means to understand what the author was trying to communicate and to share the author’s intentions along with, if possible, your own perspective on the text. Doing this is not easy at all.

In general, there are three levels of reading comprehension and they are.

  1. Decoding
  2. Critical literacy
  3. Dynamic literacy

This post will discuss each of these three levels of reading comprehension.

Decoding

Decoding is the most basic level of reading comprehension. At this level, a person breaking down words into there component syllables and “sounding them out.” He or she blends the words together and reads the text. This is the experience of many people who are learning to read. The focus is on learning to read and not reading to learn.

There is a minimal amount of reading comprehension at this level. The reader can recall what they read based on memory but there is often an inability to think and comprehend at a deeper level beyond memory.

For teaching, teaching decoding normal happens either with ESL students or with native speakers in early the early primary grades. This can be taught using a phonics-based approach, whole reading approach or some other method.

Critical Literacy

Critical literacy assumes that decoding has already happened. At this level, the reader is actively trying to develop a deeper understanding of the text. This happens through analyzing, comparing, contrasting, synthesizing, and or evaluating. The reader is engaged in a dialog with the text in trying to understand it.

Developing critical literacy in students requires employing teaching and learning strategies from the higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Leading discussions that require higher level thinking and or writing assignments are some ways to accomplish this.

It is important to remember that readers should have already mastered decoding before attempting critical literacy. It is easy to cause cognitive overload by trying to have a reader decode text while trying to discuss the deeper meaning of the content. As such, critical literacy strategies should be avoided until upper primary school.

Dynamic Literacy

Dynamic literacy assumes mastery of decoding and some mastery of critical literacy. Dynamic literacy goes beyond analysis to relate the content of the text to other knowledge. If critical literacy is focused only on the text, dynamic literacy is focused on how the current text of the reading relates to other books.

For example, a reader who is reading a book about language acquisition may look for connections between the acquisition of a language and grammar. Or they may be more creative and look for connections between language acquisition and music. This interdisciplinary focus is unique to what is currently considered the highest level of reading comprehension.

A more practical approach to doing this would be to compare what several authors say about the same subject. Again, the focus is on going beyond just one book or one subject to going across different books and or viewpoints. In general, dynamic literacy is probably not possible before high school or even college.

Conclusion

Many people never move beyond decoding. They are content with reading a text and knowing what happens but never thinking deeper beyond that. However, for some, higher levels of reading comprehension is not a goal. For many, reading the newspaper in English is all they want to do and they have no desire for a more complex reading experience.  The challenge for a teacher is to move readers from one level to the next while keeping in mind the goals of the students

Working with Quiet ESL Students

1 Reply
Advertisements

In many classes, there are always one or more students who are quiet and do not want to speak in class. This is often even more common in an ESL class, which adds the additional challenge for students speaking in a different language. Despite these challenges, there are several ways that a teacher can deal with this. Among them includes the following…

  • Preparation time
  • Repetition
  • Adjust group size
  • Understanding the role of the teacher

Preparation Time

Speaking spontaneously is difficult for many ESL students. Part of the challenge is not having time think about what they want to say and determining how to say it in English. Sometimes quiet students will share if they have time to think in advanced.  This can happen through the teacher prompting the students and giving them time to formulate an answer.

A teacher can ask the students any question, such as, “What is the best mall in town?”. Give the students a few minute to think and then call on students. Perhaps not all will share but the preparation time greatly reduces stress.

Repetition

Repeating the same speaking experience often helps students to improve. This depends greatly on whether they receive feedback each time. Students also need to reflect upon how they did themselves. The combination of feedback and reflection often leads to improvement.

For example, if we ask the students about the “best mall in town” students share their answer and are given feedback from peers as well as a chance to think about their performance. The next day the teacher could ask this question again allowing the students to demonstrate how they have improved.

Adjust Group Size

Often, students do not share because of shyness. Speaking in front of the whole class is scary even for some adults. To deal with this, the teacher needs to try different groups sizes. Some students will never speak in a group but will speak if they are paired with someone. The reason being it is really hard to hide when a quiet student is a partner.

Understanding the Role of the Teacher

The teacher, in addition to applying strategies such as the ones above, also can provide support to quiet students. For example, the teacher can encourage the students to speak by providing suggestions for what the students may want to say.

Another approach would be to have the teacher participate in the discussion. Through this, the teacher can guide the discussion. The downside to this is that it is easy for the teacher to take over and dominate the discussion.

Conclusion

Quiet students in ESL classrooms have many reasons for choosing not to share. Whatever the case, there are ways and strategies to deal with this. It is up to the teacher to find ways that are appropriate for their students.

Extensive and Intensive Reading

1 Reply
Advertisements

Most teachers are trying to get their students to read more. The question to ask is what kind of reading are teachers trying to get students to do. In general, there are two common ways in which students read and they are extensive reading and intensive reading.

Extensive Reading

Extensive reading is having students read broadly for the sake of reading in a pleasurable way. Doing so improves students word recognition and builds overall reading ability. For many students, including adult ESL, you cannot just turn them loose and say read. Rather, it is important to develop some sort of guidelines for extensive reading.

  • The books students choose to read extensively should be at their reading level so that comprehension is the primary goal.
  • The teacher needs to provide motivation. This can be done through the use of assignments, group work, or other activities related to the books the students are reading.
  • There must be some mechanism in which students are required to report their opinion about a book they have read.

Extensive reading is often done outside of class or as a small part of the school day. If it happens outside of class it requires the students to have some discipline to complete an assignment on their own. If it happens in class it is often used as a cool-down after an exciting activity.

Intensive Reading

Intensive reading is serious focused reading for the purpose of achieving a study goal. A common example is reading a chapter to answer questions. This requires a slightly different scaffolding in order to have success. Below are some principles to keep in mind when having students read intensively.

  • Students must know why they are reading and for how long. This helps with goal-setting and self-regulation.
  • There must be some sort of way for students to provide feedback about what they learned. It can something as simple as a discussion, or as complex as developing a presentation.
  • When a discussion takes place, students must refer to the text while discussing to demonstrate their familiarity with it.

Intensive reading is often done in class. One challenge with intensive reading is vocabulary. Students often see too many words that they do not know the answer too. The constant use of dictionaries uses up all the time set aside for reading. As such, teachers need to monitor dictionary use so that they do not impede the goal of reading the text.

Conclusion

Reading is a skill that most would agree that students need to develop. Extensive and intensive reading provide different ways in which students can develop reading skills. Reading for pleasure or purpose is some of the primary ways in which adults read. As such, extensive and intensive reading are excellent strategies for supporting students in the development of their reading abilities.

ESL Students and Challenges with Pronunciation

1 Reply
Advertisements

Pronunciation is often a forgotten skill in the ESL classroom. As English has become more and more internationalized many have stepped away from pronunciation with an attitude of taking whatever the student says and trying to decipher it. There are many aspects of pronunciation that an ESL teacher needs to consider. Among them includes

  • The benefits of improving pronunciation
  • The challenges of pronunciation
  • Ways to teach pronunciation

The Benefits

Helping students to improve their pronunciation helps students to overcome intelligibility issues. All ESL students have different speaking issues depending on where they are from. Despite, the difference in geographical origin, what all students have in common is that if their pronunciation improves the ability for people to understand them improves as well.

Another benefit is that practice with pronunciation helps the student to better understand spoken English. As the student learns the nuances of saying words clearly it also helps them to notices the nuances when they are listening.

The Challenges

One major problem that is faced when teaching pronunciation is the students’ inability to hear the sound that the teachers want them to reproduce. For example, Thai ESL learners always make a ‘w’ sound in place of ‘v’. Demonstration is one way to deal with this problem until mastery is achieved.

A second more obvious problem is the sound that students make. During early infancy, we lose the ability to reproduce any sound as we focus on our mother language. As such, non-native tongues are difficult to say correctly and require extensive practice.

Teaching Pronunciation

There are several ways to teach pronunciation. The examples below flow form most intensive to less intensive in terms of their focus in the classroom. The ways to teach include

  1. Whole lesson
  2. Discrete slots
  3. Integrated phases
  4. Opportunistic teaching

Whole Lesson

Whole lesson is just what it says. It is an entire lesson devoted to pronunciation. A teacher may have students use various sounds, focus on intonation, or practice key phrases. Intonation is a personal matter and it is hard to focus on all the students in such a format. In addition, it can sometimes be challenging to keep the lesson engaging since it is hard to provide feedback with everyone speaking at once.

Discrete Slots

This approach involves sneaking in little pronunciation lessons during the class. A teacher might focus on vowel sounds for ten minutes at a time or some other lesson. The point is to teach pronunciation in snippets and not all at once.

Integrated Phases

Integrated phases is blending pronunciation into a larger lesson. For example, if students are focusing on a listening assignment, the teacher may have them pay attention to the pronunciation of the speaker. Or during a reading aloud activity, students may be asked to assess their pronunciation while reading. The goal is to perform the main task with the additional feature of thinking about pronunciation.

Opportunistic Teaching

This form of pronunciation teaching happens in an extemporaneous. In other words, during the course of teaching, it becomes apparent that the students need help with pronunciation and the teacher provides assistance.

Conclusion

Teaching pronunciation should still be a part of a teacher’s approach. The benefits of learning pronunciation are often achieved through various styles of teaching. As such, teachers need to develop strategies to support students acquisition of the subjective nature of pronunciation

Methods of Teaching English: Part 4

1 Reply
Advertisements

The last few post have been looking at various methods of teaching English. In this post, we will look at the following

  • Communicative Language Teaching
  • Task-based learning
  • Lexical method

Communicative Language Teaching

The premise behind communicative language teaching (CLT) is that people need to learn the spoken functions of language as well as they learn the grammar. Therefore, students in this method focused on communicating as much as possible and learn the grammar of the language along the way. By doing this, students understand the language would happen naturally.

With CLT the focus is always on realistic communication. Role play and simulation are common techniques of the CLT method. For the most part, whatever replicates real communication falls under the CLT method. This has led to confusion in defining CLT as it is a vague method in terms of what it is.

There is some criticism of CLT. For example, it favors native-speakers who can teach in an improvised language environment. CLT is also difficult to use in a context that is traditionally teacher-centered. Another concern is that students develop fluency in the language at the expense of accuracy in their understanding of the grammar.

Task-based Learning

In Task-based learning (TBL) students learn the language by performing various task. TBL has three steps.

  1. Pre-task–Introduction of the topic and task
  2. Task cycle–Students complete the task
  3. Language focus–Students analysis what they did and learn the language lesson

For example, the teacher explains the activity of the day and goes over necessary new vocabulary (pre-task). Next, students are given a bus schedule and they are asked to tell what time such and such bus arrives (task cycle). Lastly, the students complete the task and then the teacher explains whatever language was being used (language focus). This is a highly inductive form of learning. The belief is that if they complete the task then they will develop competency in the language.

Criticism of TBL is that the term is vague and involves common learning task. Another problem is that there is more to language than just completing a task. Some even believe that focusing on a task while also learning the concepts of a language could overload a learner’s cognitive capacity.

Lexical Method

The lexical method is based on the belief that language is not about grammar but multi-word pre-made chunks. Examples include Come on…?, I’ll try, You must be kidding?, may as well. If students learn these “chunks” they can make a whole string of sentences. Students learn how to use these phrases and thus learn the language.

The Lexical method has detractors like all other methods discussed. For one, no one has been able to prove how learning these short phrases actually helps in learning the language. It is like learning the phrases in a phrase book. You know the phrases without knowing the language.

Another concern is the lack of procedures for the Lexical method. A method without procedures is not much of a method. For many, this is a method without support.

Conclusion

These methods here are among some of the most common teaching methods in language learning. Teachers and students need to see what is best among the myriad of choices when deciding on how learning will take place in their classroom.

Methods of Teaching English: Part 3

1 Reply
Advertisements

This post will continue our look at different methods to teaching English. This post is unique in that we will examine methods that are considered by many to be somewhat outside the main line of English teaching methods. The methods of this post are…

  • Community Language Learning
  • Suggestopedia
  • Total Physical Response
  • Silent Way

Community Language Learning

Community Language Learning method involves a circle of students who are attempting to speak. There is a person called the “knower”, also known as the teacher, who stands outside the circle and helps the students to articulate what they want to say. The knower helps the students by translating, suggesting, or modifying what the students are trying to say. Through this process, the students develop a basic idea of the grammar of the target language.

There is a significant lack of direction in the use of the Community Learning method. This concern has been one of the strongest complaints. In addition. students are constantly being corrected in groups, which is not appropriate in many different context.

Suggestopedia

Suggestopedia is perhaps one of the most unusual methods of teaching English. This method focuses on developing a relaxing environment in which the students emotions are made calm. The student-teacher relationship is one of a child-parent, which is disconcerting to many. During the lesson, the teacher reads a dialog with Baroque music in the background, which helps to provide a nice ambiance for the learning. The three phases of Suggestopedia are

  1. Pre-sessions-Students are informed of the topic and materials of the lesson
  2. Session-Students experience the lesson
  3. Post-session-Various elaborations of the topic are used to encourage assimilation of the text such as role playing or monologues.

It is not hard to prove that this is a unique teaching method. The teacher has an extraordinary amount of psychological influence over the students that few would consider healthy.

Total Physical Response

Total Physical Response (TPR) is a method in which the teacher tells the students in the target language to do various tasks. Examples include “run in place” or “jump up and down.” By doing the commands the students learn the language. As the students become comfortable they begin to give commands themselves.

TPR is an excellent approach for learning the basics of the conversational aspects of a language. However, deeper levels of communication and academic levels of speaking are not possible through this method alone. Initially, TPR can also be highly teacher-centered, which limits students learning at times.

The Silent Way

In the silent way, the teacher rarely speaks. Instead, they point to a phonemic chart and model the sounds. The students attempt to imitate the sound that they hear and the teacher uses gesture to indicate the accuracy of the students’ imitation. This places the burden on the students to figure out the language. When students are correct, the teacher moves to a different phoneme or word.

Lack of communication makes this approach frustrating for someone. Beyond pronunciation, this method is not widely used.

Conclusion

Different methods work for different people. Although these methods in this post are considered somewhat as being on the fringe of English teaching they are still useful in a variety of context. As such, it is the responsibility of the teacher to determine which methods are best for their students.

Methods of Teaching English: Part I

3 Replies
Advertisements

In this post, we will begin a discussion on various methods of teaching language, primarily English. In this post, in particular, we will look at the Grammar-Translation Method, the Direct Method, and Audiolingualism.

Grammar-Translation Method

One of the oldest methods for teaching people a new language is the Grammar-Translation method. It is derived from the belief that students can acquire a language through rigorous training in translating the language and learning the grammatical rules of it.

This belief or approach to language acquisition led to a practical set of techniques. Among some of the common techniques of the Grammar-Translation method include.

  1. Reading text in the new language.
  2. Translating the text into the students’ language
  3. Learning grammatical rules of the new language
  4. Memorizing vocabulary

This is an excellent method for learning to read in another language. You simply learn the vocabulary, grammatical rules, and you are ready to go. For those who study ancient languages such as Latin, Greek, and Hebrew in biblical studies, this is the approach used for acquiring knowledge of the language.

One of the biggest concerns with this method was the indifference to speaking. Students who learn with the Grammar-Translation method often do not acquire verbal communication skills. This leaves them with a theoretical knowledge of the language with an understanding of practical use.

Direct Method

The Direct method is a reaction to the Grammar-Translation method. The Direct method de-emphasized translation and focused instead on the teachers and students speaking together. Grammatical rules were related to real-life objects and the target language was the only language used in the classroom. Below is a list of common techniques associated with the Direct method.

  • Reading aloud
  • Self-correction
  • Dictation
  • Question and answers

This method allowed for the development of verbal skills while still allowing for understanding grammatical rules. The Direct method is also practical as it relates well to language use in the real world. However, there are problems with this method. The Direct method emphasizes pronunciation, which requires a native speaker. Another concern was that mostly strong teachers can use this method in the classroom. Lastly, the avoidance of the native language makes it difficult to communicate at times.

The Direct method, over time, has morphed into what is now called Audiolingualism. This method is derived from the approaches related to behaviorism. This method relied heavily on operant conditioning and stimulus-response-reinforcement. The same techniques mentioned above were employed with the added caveat of positive reinforcement. Drills were used to help students to practice the language.

Conclusions

There are many more methods used in language teaching beyond the ones mentioned in this post. All methods are used primarily to help students to acquire mastery of a new language. The method employed depends on the needs of the students as well as the abilities and talents of the teacher.

Approach, Method, Procedure, and Techniques In Language Learning

10 Replies
Advertisements

In language teaching,  in the general area of teaching methodology, people talk about approaches, methods, procedures, and techniques. This post will help to clarify the meaning of these interrelated terms and provide examples of each.

Approaches

An approach is a theory about language learning or even a philosophy of how people learn in general. They can be psychologically focused such as behaviorism or cognitivism. They can also be based on older philosophies such as idealism or realism.

Approaches are fuzzy and hard to define because they are broad in nature. An example of an approach that leads to a method would be the philosophies of scholasticism, faculty of psychology, or even perennialism. Each of these philosophies encouraged the development of the mind in the way of a muscle. Train the brain and a person would be able to do many different things. These philosophies have impacted some methods of language teaching as we will see below.

Method

A method is an application of an approach in the context of language teaching. An example of a method is the grammar-translation method. This method employs the memorization of various grammar rules and the translation of second language material to the student’s native language. Students were able to develop the intellectual capacity to understand the new language through a deductive process of acquiring the rules of the language.The purpose is not to critique this method but to show how it was derived from the approach that the mind needs to be trained through intellectual exercises to be able to accomplish something.

Procedures

Procedures are the step-by-step measures to execute a method. These step-by-step measures are called techniques and will be discussed next. Common procedures for the grammar-translation method includes the following…

The ESL / ELL Teacher’s Survival Guide

  1. The class reads a text written in the second language.
  2. Student translates the passage from the second language to their mother tongue.
  3. Student translates new words from the second language to their mother tongue.
  4. Student is given a grammar rule and derived from the example they apply the rule by using the new words.
  5. Student memorizes the vocabulary of the second language.
  6. Student memorizes grammar rules.
  7. Errors made by the student are corrected by providing the right answers.

This is the process (with variation) that is used when employing the grammar-translation method.

Techniques

A technique is a single activity that comes from a procedure. Anyone of the steps of the procedure list above qualifies as a technique. Naturally, various methods employ various techniques.

Conclusion

Language teaching involves approaches that lead to methods, methods that are broken down into procedures, and procedures that are a collection of techniques. Understanding how these concepts interrelate can help a teacher know the reasons behind their choices in how they choose to teach.

Common Theories of Linguistics

1 Reply
Advertisements

One aspect of linguistic theories focuses on how children acquire language. In general, the theories of language acquisition are divided into nature vs nurture perspectives. Some propose that language acquisition is natural while others believe that the context that a child is in influences heavily their acquisition of a language.

In this post, we will look at one theory that supports the argument for nature and one theory that supports the argument for nurture in relation to language acquisitions. The nature argument is supported by the generative approach while the nurture argument is supported by the constructionist approach.

Generative Approach

The generative approach states that children are able to acquire language because they are born with the principles related to the structures of human language. In other words, children are born with the ability to obtain and use language. According to people who support this view, there is a place in the brain called the language acquisition device (LAD) and children use the rules within the LAD to develop language.

One major criticism of the generative approach is that the original theories related to this concept were based on results from adults and not children. Another problem was that there is little evidence of one set of language rules that can be applied to all languages.

Constructionist Approach

The constructionist approach states that children learn the linguistic rules of a language through the environmental input they experience. To put it simply, children are not born with innate rules of language as the generative approach states, rather, they learn these rules through interacting with their world.

As children are exposed to language, they find the patterns in the communication they experience. For example, parents speak to their children. From this experience, the children learn how to communicate.  The children use what they hear until it becomes natural for them. There are now innate abstracts, instead, the child acquires the rules through trial and error.

The focus of the constructionist approach is on the use of language. There is no desire to develop universal grammatical rules but to examine how the context impacts how language is acquired.

Conclusion

The purpose is not to claim that one theory is superior to the other. In reality, both theories are trying to explain the phenomena of language acquisition from different perspectives. Generative are seeing language acquisition from a deductive perspective in that the child starts with the rules and applies them to a specific context. Constructionist are seeing language acquisition from an inductive viewpoint as they believe the child starts with specific examples to acquire rules that are appropriate in the local language context. As such, there is room in the discussion of language acquisition for both arguments and many more.

Components of Language Part II

7 Replies
Advertisements

In the last post, we began a discussion on the components of language. In this post, we will conclude this discussion by looking at two more components of language, which are…

  • Semantics
  • Pragmatics

Semantics

Semantics is the rules that determine the meaning of words. Synonyms and antonyms are also a part of semantics. Synonyms are different words that have the same meaning. Examples include “small” and “tiny” or “big” and “large.” Antonyms are two words that have opposite meanings. Examples include “big” and “little” and “small” and “large.”

Understanding semantics can allow a language user to employ a rich vocabulary that is full of alternative words and meanings. However, it is the sentence and not the individual word that most significantly shapes the meaning of communication. This is due to the fact that the entire sentence or paragraph provides context, which is something we will look at later.

There are two ways to define the meaning of a word. One is denotative and the second is connotative. The denotative meaning is the dictionary definition. The connotative is the context-specific definition. For example, a dog is a four-legged animal that barks. This is the denotative definition. The connotative definition would depend on the setting. One person may think that a dog is a giant barking monster. Another might see a dog as a cute little friend. They both know a dog is a four-legged barking animal but the further define a dog by the addition of further explanation.

Pragmatics

Pragmatics is the study of language in the context of its use. This component of language describes the rules of communication, types of communication, and the intentions of communication. Culture is a powerful influence on the pragmatics of a language.

There are several common characteristics that influence the pragmatics and how people speak to each other. These characteristics are gender, age, race, dialect, style, social status, and role. In English, it is common to change how we communicate based on these characteristics. How we speak to our boss is different than to our children. How to speak to colleagues is different than to strangers. These differences in communication are due to pragmatics.

Conclusion

The components of language attempt to succinctly explain how communication takes place. Understanding these concepts will help those who are learning a language or teaching people to learn a different language where problems may be. For example. if a student uses an inappropriate phrase this may be due to a misunderstanding of pragmatics. If a student mispronounces a word this is due to issues with phonology. Language components can be valuable in identifying language learning challenges.

Components of Language

5 Replies
Advertisements

There are three major components of language. These components are form, content, and use. Form involves three sub-components of syntax, morphology, and phonology. Content is also known as semantics and use is also known as pragmatics. In this post, we will look at the sub-components of form which are…

  • Syntax
  • Morphology
  • Phonology

Syntax

Syntax is the rules for the structure of a sentence. Syntax deals with such details such as sentence organization, the order of clauses, relationships between words, elements of a sentence, etc. Syntax also determines which word combinations are acceptable. For example, if I say “He went to town.” it is acceptable, however, if I say, “town to went he” it does not work because of the syntax of English.

There are certain common rules of syntax. A sentence must contain a noun phrase and a verb phrase. Using our previous example “He went to town” contains a noun phrase “He” and a verb phrase “went to town.” Another example would be the “The big dog ran to the house.” The noun phrase for this example is “The big dog” and the verb phrase is “ran to the house.”

Morphology

Morphology is focused on the organization of words. Morphemes are the smallest grammatical units possible. Examples of morphemes would be any letter or vowel of the English alphabet.

There are two types of morphemes free and bound. Free morphemes can stand only. Examples include many words such as boy, small, and sad. These morphemes do not need any help to make sense. Bound morphemes must be connected to a larger word to make sense. Examples include prefixes and suffixes such as un-, non-, -ly, -s.

Phonology

Phonology looks at the sound of speech and the shaping of syllables. The sound for /p/ is different depending on its placement in a word and the vowels near it. For example, /p/ can vary in sound in such words as pea, poor, and soup. Each word contains /p/ but the sound is slightly different.

Sequencing also changes the of words the -ed sound is different in “jogged” than it is in “walked” the first has a /d/ sound while the second has a /t/ sound.

Conclusion

There is much more to be said about language form. The understanding of syntax, morphology, and phonology helps in better understanding language acquisition. Therefore, ESL teachers need an exposure to the basics of this in order to be able to provide better support for their students.

Properties of Language

Leave a reply
Advertisements

Language naturally plays a critical role in communication. Conveying ideas, sharing opinions, and even arguing are not often possible unless people are able to communicate using language. There are many properties and characteristics of language among them include the following.

  1. Social property
  2. Rules property
  3. Creative property

Social Property

Language serves the purpose of serving as a transmission code between people. This code is influenced by the context and culture that it is found in. In many cultures, how you speak to someone depends on their social rank. Teachers are addressed differently than students in many contexts. A teacher is called “sir” while a student might be called “girl” or “boy.”

Language is also influenced by the what happens before and after it. Saying “that’s a good boy” is appropriate when speaking to a dog by probably is not acceptable when speaking to your boss. It is the immediate context that impacts the appropriateness of a phrase or word.

Rules Property

There are rules for the process of using language.  A person’s knowledge of these rules is his linguistic competence. For example, if someone is excited the often sound “strange.” He or she may leave out words or stammer while speaking. Your ability to identify these mistakes is your linguistic competence.

Linguistic performance is the ability to use a language accurately. It is from the performance that we are able to derive a person’s linguistic competence. When the rules of language are broken a competent language user can edit the mistakes to derive the meaning of the world.

Creativity Property

There is an infinite number of ways in which a language can be used. The word order, phrase, and other aspect have endless possibilities. This has led to the conclusion that language use can be extremely creative.

Consider poetry, music, novels, and even movies, all of these examples demonstrate highly creative ways of using language. By knowing the rules of a language, a person can use it in a countless number of ways.

Conclusion

Language is at the heart of education. Understanding the properties of language can help people in understand language itself. The properties listed here are just the surface of the myriad of characteristics of language.