Learning Inside the classroom

Learning Inside the classroom

            On 1^st, July 2014. I learned about teaching principles: Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), Content-Based Instruction (CBI), Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) and lesson plan.

            The first, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). The principles of CLT to make real communication the focus of language and provide opportunities for learners to experiment and try out what they know. Beside, link the different skills such as speaking, reading, listening together and let student include or discover grammar rule to develop both accuracy and fluency. The activities which are used in CLT, seek to develop students’ communicative competence by teaching grammar in the context of a communicative task. Teacher have to teach grammatical knowledge inductively or deductively for learner. Moreover, allow students to apply to knowledge learned in class in real life situation.

          The second, Content-Based Instruction (CBI) in use content. In CBI classroom, students attend to the learning of the content or subject matter explicitly and learn the language incidentally. Furthermore, CBI lessons are developed from and round the selected content. Thus, the language topics to be covered in the lesson are designed based on the selected content. Students learn about this lesson using the language they are trying to learn, rather than their native language, as a tool for developing knowledge and so they develop their linguistic ability in the target language. This is though to be a more natural way of developing language ability and one that corresponds more to the way we originally learn our first language.

            The third, Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT). TBLT use of tasks as the core unit of planning and instruction in language teaching. In addition, a task is an activity or goal that is carried out using language.

            Last, I learned lesson plan as follow the teacher given such as writing the objectives and lesson plan outline. Consequently, from this class I learned about teaching principles for understanding better. Teaching principles are useful for teaching English, we can use these methods apply into the real classroom. As well as, lesson plan this is the one to use in teaching too.

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)

As the language theories underlying the Audiolingual methodand the Sitiuational Language Teaching method were questioned by prominent linguists like Chomsky (1957) during the 1960s, a new trend of language teaching paved its way into classrooms.Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) Which is an approach to the teaching of second and foreign languages, emphasizes interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of learning a language. It is also referred to as “Communicative Approach”. Historically, CLT has been seen as a response to the Audio-Lingual Method (ALM), and as an extension or development of the Notional-Functional Syllabus. Task-based language learning, a more recent refinement of CLT, has gained considerably in popularity.

Shortcomings of structuralism and behaviorism

The theories underlying the audiolingual method and the situational language teaching were widely criticized during the 1960s. Noam Chomsky, for instance, rejected the structuralist view of language and demonstrated that there is a distinction between performance and competence.  The goal of the linguist is to study the linguistic competence native speakers are endowed with. He also showed, rightly, that structuralism and behaviorism were unable to account for one fundamental  aspect of language, namely the creativity and uniqueness of individual sentences. A child is able to produce an infinite number of sentences that s/he has never encountered. This makes  the factors of  imitation, repetition and habit formation weak arguments to account for any language learning theory.

Computer - Assisted Audiovisual Language Learning

The Silent Way

The silent way is a methodology of teaching language based on the idea that teachers should be as silent as possible during a class but learners should be encouraged to speak as much as possible. There are three basic principles:

- The learner needs to discover or create

- Learning is made easier by the use of physical objects such as Cuisenaire rods

- Learning is made easier by problem-solving using the target language

Example

The teacher shows the learners a small red Cuisenaire rod and a bigger blue one and says ‘The blue one is bigger than the red one'. The learners repeat this. The teacher then substitutes the rods to produce other models, and finally encourages the learners to produce their own comparisons.

In the classroom

Areas of target language where Cuisenaire rods can be useful include word boundaries, contracted forms, prepositions, word order and word stress. Learners can use the rods to first represent and then to manipulate language.