Current trends of thought in language education

Didactics I

Prof. Gabriel Diaz Maggioli

• Concerned with linguistic forms.

• Provide opportunities for learners to practicepreselected, presenquencedlinguistic structures through form-focused

• Preoccupation with form will ultimately lead to the mastery of the target language.

• Language development is more intentional than incidental.

• Language learning is treated as a linear, additive process.

• Concerned with learner needs, wants, and situations.

• Provide opportunities for learners to practice preselected, pre-sequenced linguistic structures and communicative functions/notions through meaning-focused activities.

• Preoccupation with form and function will ultimately lead to target language mastery.

• Language development is more intentional than incidental.

• These methods aim at making learners grammatically accurate and communicatively fluent and remain, basically linear and additive.

• Concerned with cognitive processes of language learning

• seek to provide opportunities for learners to participate in open-ended meaningful interaction through problem-solving tasks

• A preoccupation with meaning-making will ultimately lead to target language mastery

• Learners can deploy the still-developing interlanguage to achieve linguistic as well as pragmatic knowledge/ability.

• Language development is more incidental than intentional.

• These methods view language development as a cyclical, spiral process.

• A post-method perspective– The myth of “Method”

• There is a best method out there ready and wanting to be discovered

• Method constitutes the organizing principle for language teaching

• Method has a universal and ahistorical value

• Theorists conceive knowledge and teachers consume knowledge

• Ergo…– “Methods are relatively unhelpful…The

concept of method may inhibit the development of a valuable, internally-derived sense of coherence on the part of the classroom teacher.” (Allwright, 1991: 128)

• Teachers who claim to follow a particular method do not conform to its theoretical principles in classroom procedures at all

• Teachers who claim to follow different methods often use the same classroom procedures

• Teachers who claim to follow the same method often use different procedures

• Teachers develop and follow in their classrooms a carefully crafter sequence of activities not necessarily associated

with any particular method.

• The parameter of Particularity– Any postmethod pedagogy must be sensitive to a

particular group of teachers teaching a particular group of learners pursuing a particular set of goals within a particular institutional context embedded in a particular sociocultural milieu.

• The parameter of Practicality– Professional theories are generated by experts,

personal theories are those that are developed by teachers by interpreting and applying professional theories in practical situations while they do their job. Hence, a theory of practice is conceived when there is a union of action and thought.

• The parameter of Possibility– Pedagogy is closely linked to power and dominance,

and is aimed at creating and sustaining social inequalities. It is important to acknowledge and highlight teachers’ and students’ individual identities. “..develop theories, forms of knowledge and social practices which work with the experiences that people bring to the pedagogical setting” (Giroux, 1988:134)

• “One of the reasons that it is difficult to give general descriptions of good teachers is that different teachers are often successful in different ways…Teaching is not an easy job, but it is a necessary one, and can be very rewarding when we see our students’ progress and know that we have helped to make it happen.”

Harmer, 2007:23

• Personality– Effective teacher personality is a blend between who we really

are, and who we are as teachers (Harmer, 2007:24)

• Adaptability– Good teachers are able to absorb the unexpected and to use it

to their and the students’ advantage

• Teacher’s Roles– Controller

– Promoter of Agency

– Prompter

– Assessors

– ResourceHarmer 2007

• Rapport means, in essence, the relationship that the students have with their teacher, and vice versa. Rapport is established, in part, when students become aware of our professionalism, but it also occurs as a result of the way we listen to and treat students in our classroom.– Recognise students– Listen to them– Respect them– Be even-handed

Harmer, 2007

• Who we are and the way we interact with our students are vital components in successful teaching, as are the tasks which we are obliged to undertake. But these will not make us effective teachers unless we possess certain teacher skills:– Using language in class

(TTQ)– Managing classes– Matching tasks and groups– Adding variety– Know your destination

Harmer, 2007

• Language has three layers which occur simultaneously whenever it is used:– Meaning or discourse

semantics;

– Words and

structures or

Lexicogrammar;

– Expression or

Phonology and

Graphology.

• Language arises in the life of the individual through an ongoing exchange of meanings with significant others. (Hallliday, 1978)

• The Systemic Functional Model of Language:– Language is a resource for making

meaning.– The resource of language consists

of a set of interrelated systems.– Language users draw on this

resource each time they use language.

– Language users can create texts to make meaning.

– Texts are shaped by the social context in which they are used.

– The social context is shaped by people using language.

• Learners learn language– By interacting with others in purposeful social activities students begin to

understand that the target language is a resources they can use to make meaning.

• Learners learn through language– As they learn the target language, students begin to interpret and

organize reality in terms of that language.

• Learners learn about language– Learning about language means building a knowledge of the target

language and how it works. It also means developing a language to talk about language.

At the point of encounter there are neither utter ignoramuses, nor perfect sages; just people attempting together to learn more than they now know.

-Freire, 1973

• Allwright, D. (1991). The Death of the Method. (Working paper #10). The

Exploratory Practice Centre, The University of Lancaster, England.

• Freire, P. (1973). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum.

• Halliday, M.A.K. (1978). Language as social semiotic. London, UK: Edward

Arnold

• Harmer, J. (2007). How to teach English (2nd Ed) Harlow, UK: Pearson

Longman

• Kumaravadivelu, B. (2006). Understanding language teaching: From

method to postmethod. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates.