LECTURE SEVEN (III)

TEACHING STRATEGIES

AND CLASSROOM TECHNIQUES

By Alec

2.     TEACHING METHODS ,

PROCEDURES AND APPROACHES

Teaching Methods

A teaching method is a specific set of teaching techniques and materials generally backed by stated principles but not necessarily having any reference to linguistics. A method determines:

a.    What and how much is taught (selection).

b.    The order in which it is taught (gradation).

c.    How the meaning and form are conveyed (presentation).

d.    What is done to make use of the language unconscious (repetition).

The method may be related to the syllabus, the learner and the teacher. When analyzing a syllabus four more main questions must be answered:

a.    What does it include?

b.    How specific is it?

c.    Why does it include what it does?

d.    How attainable is it by the majority of the learners for whom it is intended?

The method used has often been said to be the cause of success or failure in language learning for, according to Mackey, it is ultimately the what and how of language instruction. At the other extreme is the view that methods are of little importance wherever there is a will to learn; the quality of the learner is what counts. There is also the view that the teacher is the only important element; methods are only as good as their teacher—they are simply instruments in the hands of teachers.

Since we have already had another course on this subject, I do not talk further about it; instead, I simply mention some of the methods that are very commonly used and are very popular today. They are:

a.    audio-lingual method, or aural-oral method;

b.    direct method;

c.    eclectic method;

d.    grammar translation method;

e.    notional method; and

f.    reading method.

Teaching Procedures

The whole process can be divided into four stages:

Presentation

There are two techniques: demonstration (presenting items in isolation or in contrast with something already learnt) and involvement (where the teacher will not tell the students he is going to use a new structure, but will introduce examples into the lesson so that the structure will be understood by deduction).

Practice

Having presented new material, it must then be practiced; students must produce examples of their own in response to cues given by the teacher or the tape. The teacher or tape may provide generalizations in the students’ native language or the target language. Various manipulation drills may be used.

Development or Free Stage

The teacher relaxes control over the students. This stage will practice not only the new item but also what has been learnt in previous lessons. Do not correct every mistake the student makes. Encourage students to speak, exchange views, etc. The teacher should encourage the use of the new item, but should allow the students to practice other material in as natural a way as possible.

Testing

The purpose of testing here is to judge what has been learnt, what still needs to be learnt and what has to be taught again. In this stage the students should not receive any help from the teacher.

Teaching Approaches

We have mentioned of this in the previous course I gave, that teaching approaches are:

(1)       Descriptive Language teaching is the demonstration of how a language works—talking about skills already acquired, without trying to alter them, but showing how they are used.

(2)      Prescriptive  Interfering with existing skills for the purpose of replacing one pattern of activity, already successfully acquired, by another; it is thus restricted to the native language. Prescriptive here includes proscriptive, since each command to do something implies not doing something else.

(3)      Productive   The teaching of new skills; this includes the greater part of language teaching.

These teaching approaches are not, of course, mutually exclusive. In the classroom, effective procedures may be based on the following approaches:

(1)        Choral recitation by the class before individuals are asked to recite;

(2)       Drills and exercises in which the student’s response involves, for the most part, repetition of the materials contained in the question;

(3)       The use of the memorized dialog material in recreations of everyday situations.

Such an approach is likely to ensure that the students repeat aloud a great deal of foreign language material with a low probability of error.

I’ll introduce some practical approaches to our language teaching as follows:

(1)      Suggestopaedia

Suggestology

The science of suggestion. Suggestology is quite a new science which has only really started developing in the last thirty years or so. Its originator and prime moving force is Dr Georgi Lozanov, director of the Scientific Research Institute for Suggestology. Suggestology treats suggestion as a form of psychic reflection and as a universal phenomenon which is subject to control. The conscious and unconscious information processes between people are examined in the light of their dialectic unity and the possibilities of suggestion for tapping the reserves of the individual are exploited in a positive and deliberate way.

Suggestopaedia

Suggestopaedia is the methodological approach to teaching based on the science of suggestology. This system of instruction has the following basic characteristics:

a.       The tapping of the reserves of the student’s memory, intellectual capacity, and his whole personality.

b.      Instruction takes place in an atmosphere of relaxation. There must be no excessive stress or tension states such as can be caused by, for example, boredom or tiredness.

c.       Suggestopaedic training/instruction is always a pleasant experience.

d.      There is a tendency to minimize aggressive trends in the student and help him in the process of social adaptation and integration.

e.      It is said to have a marked psychotherapeutic effect in cases of functional disturbances.

Suggestoppaedic instruction in foreign languages is intensive. It is based mainly on psychological principles and laws which determine the specific features of the suggestopaedic system of instruction. The aim is to raise the capacity of the memory, and also to improve the possibilities of accelerated memorization. It has been proved that there is considerable intensification of memory function under the influence of someone who has authority. Authority and prestige constitute two basic elements of suggestopaedic instruction.

In the classroom, each new word or concept is accompanied by appropriate gestures or intonation, while visual aids are widely used. It is believed that gestures, facial expression and images are retained in the learner’s memory together with the particular linguistic item and are transformed into a signal for its immediate reproduction , i.e. recollection. Suggestopaedic courses last from ten to twelve weeks with five days of five hours’ instruction per week.

Most of the groundwork and experimentation has taken place in Eastern Europe and the former USSR, though an important series of experiments has taken place in Canada, the first of which began in 1973.