There were some parts of the Celce-Murcia reading I thought were interesting, and some parts that I found somewhat confusing. Toward the end of the article (p.10) she writes that she has barely scratched the surface of her topic, and I agree. I think the article tried to cover so many different approaches (9!!) in such a short space that sometimes I didn’t always have a really clear idea of what these approaches looked like, or what made two approaches different from each other.
So while I was a little confused sometimes, I still thought the article was useful. I hadn’t really thought of the history of language teaching before. In the first section (p.3), Celce-Murcia makes the point that language teaching theory kind of swings back and forth more than in physics or chemistry. I guess that’s true, but I’m not sure if she meant teaching physics or actual physics, the science, changes slowly, because I think all kinds of education practice changes dramatically like she describes. I also found it interesting to think about how long language teaching has been going on—in one sense, learning a second language seems like one of the hardest things to do, but people have been doing it forever, so hard is it really?
The main part of the article focused on describing 9 different approaches to language teaching. She also mentioned methods and techniques, but her comments on methods (p.6) seemed to indicate that methods are these dogmatic ways of teaching that were popular in the 1970s but not now? Which is kind of strange since this course is called Methods of Teaching English. She points out four of the methods that were used extensively in the last part of the 20th century: Cognitive, Affective Humanistic, Comprehension Based, and Communicative. I tried to focus on those since she said they were the most modern. I thought the Affective Humanistic Approach and the Communicative Approach seemed really similar, since there seemed to be a lot of pairwork and emphasis on communication. I also know I hear about communicative language teaching a lot, so I think that’s a really important term. I’m not really sure what to do with the Cognitive Approach or the Comprehension Approach; the short summaries of them (pp.8-9) seemed really obvious.
Some terms I thought seemed important but that I wasn’t sure I understood were inductive and deductive and affective considerations. Is anyone else familiar with these?
Task (sample only—please do not post): Think of an activity you have experienced in a language class. Write a short, but detailed description, and then discuss which of the approaches you think it might fit under and why.
In my Spanish learning, I have been exposed to the majority of the learning styles described by Celce-Murcia. I have been taking Spanish since I was in kindergarten and therefore have had teachers of all different styles teach me in manners that were both effective and not.
ReplyDeleteOne activity that sticks out was in my middle school spanish classroom, when we were to listen to a Spanish song and fill in the blanks with the vocabulary we heard. I believe that this excercise can fall into a few categories but overall is part of the audiolinguistic approach. By listening to a native song, we as students become aware of pronunication and how words sound and flow together within a language. Likewise, filling in vocabulary makes the students listen intently, but they may or may not fully comprehend what is being spoken. Although we enjoyed listening to the cheesy spanish songs, this activity was more effective in terms of a cultural reference than a learning excercise. I could recite the song to you completely, but don't think i really understood the meaning of the words until much later on.
The ESL classes I am involved with mainly teach through the Communicative Approach. However, I have seen many different techniques used that are from other methods and approaches. An example of the Audio-lingual technique used in one of those classes follows below.
ReplyDeleteThe instructor passed out a transcript of a conversation. The conversation was centered around some task, maybe checking out a book at the library. The conversation was very back and forth with two interlocutors trading complete sentences.
After distributing the transcript, the instructor told the students to read the transcript as he played an audio recording of the conversation. After going through the conversation once this way, the instructor went back and stopped after every line. The students would then repeat that line. If a phrase seemed particular difficult for the students, the instructor would repeat that line.
Example:
Library patron: Hello, I would like to check out this book.
Librarian: Okay, do you have your library card?
Library patron: Oh no! I should have remembered to bring it.
Librarian: That's okay. May I have your phone number?
Library patron: Yes. It's XXX-XXX-XXXX.
Librarian: Okay John Doe, the book is due back in two weeks.
Library patron: Thanks.
We used this technique a lot in this particular ESL class, at least once every session. I found it worked very well with understanding and picking up on certain colloquial terms, such as okay, gonna, shoulda, use of contractions (it's, he's, we'd).
In my Chinese class, my professor will often read sections of the textbook dialogues out loud. She pauses after every phrase, and we repeat the phrase back to her. She rarely pauses to explain words or grammar, but will repeat a phrase if most of the class stumbles over it. She will also repeat a phrase with different emphasis that we are meant to copy. I think that this exercise fits under audiolingualism, because we are using mimicry to learn set structures.
ReplyDelete~Elena Dunckel
In my Spanish class we would often be given sentences to translate. Sometimes the sentences would be in English and we would have to re-write them in Spanish, or they would be in Spanish and we would translate them into English. The sentences were sometimes taken from our class readings or the teacher would just make them up. We would be graded on how close our translation was to the actual meaning of the sentence, and also on our grammar. This activity could be from the grammar-translation approach. There was a large emphasis on using the correct grammar and also just translating the sentences from one language to another.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Mark when he stated that the 9 different approaches were not explained thoroughly. It was hard to differentiate the major differences between the nine approaches. I was also confused between the differences of an approach and a method. It was not until class that I understood that a method is a trademark of teaching, and an approach is a technique. The number one technique is communicative.
ReplyDeleteThe article went over the nine methods, but ti was not until the worksheet we did in class that I actually understood the differences, pros and cons of each approach from the Celce-Murciz reading. Now I understand that methods are not really followed today, we use approaches/techniques instead. The most common approach is the commutative approach. the direct approach is not really used anymore, but it connects to teh commutative approach.
I took a German language class for four years during high school. While I think that many of the nine approaches discussed in the article were incorporated at various times throughout my instruction I think the communicative approach was used the most. My teacher definitely emphasized that she wanted us to be able to communicate in the language and be able to incorporate our vocabulary knowledge into real life situations and everyday conversations. We spent a lot of classes working in pairs or groups working on dialogues. By the end of the year we would have composition books filled with different conversations we had prepared. The teacher would present us with a situation or a location and have everyone prepare a 10, 20, 30 ect. line conversation with your partner that we would then memorize and "act out" in front of the class at the end of the period. We spent more time on these activities then any others.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite activities we did in my high school Spanish class was actually generated by us (the students). In my AP class, we would work through different units that each had some kind of theme, and they would have these huge vocabulary lists on the first page of the chapter. For fun one day in our extra time we created an extravagant drawing on the back board that depicted all of the vocab words. For each chapter after that we would do the same thing, with the idea being that our collaborative effort on the project as well as the time we spent thinking about/using the different words would help commit them to our memory.
ReplyDeleteThe genesis of this activity was very Affective Humanistic, in that it was entirely student created. We were using the language how we wanted to, and ultimately got a lot out of it because we were interested in what we were doing. The actual nature of the process was very much Communicative, because the entire process focused on our ability to communicate our ideas about our drawing to each other, and then our ability to explain the story behind the drawing to our teacher.
I took four years of Spanish at my high school. As we developed our skills and moved up into our 3rd and 4th years of Spanish, we were able to start practicing our conversational spanish. My favorite activity within my Spanish class had a communicative approach. One time, we had recently watched a movie about La Tomatina. So, our teacher split us into pairs and had us discuss the movie. We were asked to talk about the celebration, the risks, why they celebrate, and our personal idea of the celebration (if we would want to participate or not.) This activity gave us a chance to reflect on the movie and made sure we were understanding the information given. However, it also allowed us to form an opinion on the subject and practice our conversational Spanish. I wish that we would have done more activities that had a communicative approach, because I felt much more confident in my spoken Spanish when we did these conversations.
ReplyDeleteThis activity had a communicative approach because it had a natural feel, we were working with others, practiced conversational language and it was also learner-centered.
-Kelly Prior
In my Spanish class in high school we had to do a lot of activities. One was to make a sample menu in Spanish, including headings. I think the point of this was to familiarize us with the Spanish words for foods, along with give us an idea of how to read a menu we might come in contact with if we were to visit a country that spoke the language. We also had to have conversations in Spanish in small groups, generally using basic phrases that would be helpful while visiting a Spanish speaking country.
ReplyDeleteI think both of these activities are examples of the Communicative Approach. The first because it is trying to familiarize the student with words or phrases they would come in contact with. The second because it involves working in small groups to increase abilities in communicating in the language. I think the communicative approach was largely used in my high school spanish classes.
In my high school spanish class, we would often listen to our teacher pronounce letters, words, and sentences. Then we would all repeat what she said, as she pronounced it. For instance, she would say the letter "A" and we would all repeat in unison, the sound for "A". This would continue on until we finished the alphabet. She would do the same thing for words, then eventually sentences.
ReplyDeleteThis exercise fits well under the Audiolingualism Approach. Both mimicry and memorization were used, so we could form habits when pronouoncing the sounds. She especially applied this to the alphabet; she wanted us to know how to pronounce the sounds so we could pronounce words correctly.
I took German for several years beginning in the eighth grade. One activity that I remember from my first year was a fashion show that my friend and I put on. I don’t remember what the exact assignment was, but I believe it was pretty open-ended and we just had to work in pairs/groups and do some sort of presentation or role-play. For some reason, my friend and I came up with a fashion show. We videotaped the show at my house and then brought it in to show for the presentation. We took turns being the “model” and “reporter.” The reporter would introduce the model and give a little speech about the outfit while the model walked the runway. For example, “Megan is wearing a beautiful blue dress and high heels. She is very stylish. She wears this dress in the spring. She wears it to fancy restaurants...” I think that this fashion show activity would fall under the Communicative Approach. As first-year German students, we certainly didn’t have the vocabulary to put on anything in German that sounded remotely like a realistic fashion show. The goal of the activity was not for us to speak the language perfectly, but for us to gain practice speaking and communicating in a semi-realistic context.
ReplyDeleteI began taking Spanish in 9th grade, and while I had different teachers each year, the techniques used to teach vocabulary were the exact same throughout high school. The process was for the vocabulary to be written on an overhead projector. We would first copy all of the vocab and translations down for our own use and study. Our instructor would then run through the entire list, saying each word twice and having us repeat it twice. We would do this each day at the beginning of class for about 3 days. We would spend time memorizing, and we were encouraged to spend time repeating the words at home if we needed to. The goal for quizzes was memorization only- we weren't often asked to use the vocabulary in practical settings. This reflects Audiolingualism, since the focus was on memorization, pronounciation, and mimicry.
ReplyDeleteIn middle school and part of high school I took French, and after four years of learning the same language I felt like I knew nothing. My senior year I decided to try Japanese and after that class I can honestly say I learned more in one year taking Japanese than I ever did in my four years of taking French. My French teacher never made the learning activities exciting. The main goal was about learning the grammar and being able to write sentences properly. And after four years I was capable of writing sentences and stating vocabulary terms but I could never carry a conversation unless it was prewritten. When I decided to take up Japanese I had to learn the different alphabets before I could write or speak the language. There are three different alphabets but since it was only my first year we stuck to two alphabets (Hiragana and Katakana). Learning the alphabets was easy it just took a lot of repetition, but learning the vocabulary words was a bit tricky. To learn the vocabulary my teacher would show the class a picture and match it with the Japanese and then it just took practice and repetition to memorize. Memorizing the Japanese for the words was easy but what my teacher stressed was that it’s easy to write and say the words because you know how they are spelled, but you have to know how to read the sentences and words to actually speak it. My teacher taught the class on the first day how to say sentences that are commonly used in the classroom and if we didn’t speak in Japanese she would not respond. This technique forced us to learn the phrases very quickly. It was also fun language to speak and practice with friends. After a year of Japanese I thought every activity was fun from learning the vocabulary to speaking in dialogue, but the activity that stands out the most is when we had a Japanese tea ceremony with four native Japanese women. At this point in the class we had learned a wide range of vocabulary words and worked on several partnered dialogues but this was the true test to see if we could carry a conversation. The women spoke to the class and would ask individual questions and to answer we had no choice but to speak in their language. I think that these activities fit mainly under the communicative approach because my teacher’s main goal of the class was to teach us how to communicate the language. She gave us the material and taught us the rules but once we could speak it, the writing would flow naturally.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree that the creator of the syllabus has extreme power over the communication within the classroom. In that argument, any creator of a second language program a school follows (for example, learnables in Spanish classrooms) have complete control over the content that is available to the students within the classroom. The creator of these programs have influence from their life experiences, which in turn reflects on their lessons and programs. This is also true for certain books used within classrooms. They have the ability to shape our understanding of a culture that we cannot observe everyday like we do our own. If we are not living in a culture than we in no way can develop our own personal understanding of it, so we rely on books/professors/etc. to shape our understanding. I believe this is why study abroad is such an important aspect within learning. It allows personal interpretation of a culture/country.
ReplyDeleteMy high school Spanish teacher used a lot of communicatice approaches to teaching the foreign language. She would often times have us get into groups of three or four and read conversations in Spanish and then discuss and try to figure our exactly what was said. It really helped me personally because the conversations were ones that us high school students could relate to.
ReplyDeleteIn Spanish class in high school, there were many times where we were exposed to audio-lungual learning. My teacher would play tapes for us & we would listen to them & write down the English word or sentence on a piece of paper. I thought this was a good way of learning the foreign language.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that the 9 approaches werent clearly or easily laid out. It seems like it could have been laid out in a nicer way or even in a chart like we did in class which nicely lays everything out for you. It was kind of difficult to understand which was which at first since many of the methods overlap. In my high school French class we did many of these methods which is really cool to see now, having the knowledge of all these ways and actually being able to witness them being demenstrated in an active class. I also find these methods really important because it helps target every type of learner out there, providing more than one way of getting into a students mind, while also helping them to participate actively. I believe my French class was mostly oral situational because we did many picture to word matching, which really helps visual learners, while connecting to real life. Another way we learned was through audio-lingualism as we were constantly listening to conversation or tapes, while having to repeat, memorize and mimic back to the teacher which helped learn the material.
ReplyDeleteI took five semesters of Spanish in high school. Over that period I had three different teachers and it was obvious that they each implemented different methods in their classrooms. The teacher that I learned the most from was Senora Somers whom I had for two of the five semesters.
ReplyDeleteIn her classroom we were only allowed to speak Spanish, with very few exceptions. The activity I remember the most was book reports we had to do. Each student was required to complete five book reports over the semester. The books ranged from children's picture books to chapter books. We had to read the book and give an oral report telling what the book was about and why we liked it (all in Spanish of course). It was a challenging class but the more we spoke and listened to the language the easier it became. We did not do very much writing in the class, however the writing we did do became easier as the semester went on and our communication skills grew.
Looking back it is clear that Senora Somers was using the direct method in the classroom. Along with the reading she had us do she also clarified vocabulary and phrases with flashcards and had us participate in dialogues daily. In comparison to my other Spanish experiences I found it to be very effective.
In my Chinese class, our teacher would pair us off and have each group read through a dialog. We would first read the dialog to each other. Then after we were familiar with it, we would have to memorize the dialog with our partner. Then our teacher would bring us back as a group and would pick some of us to speak the memorized dialog in front of the class.
ReplyDeleteI think this activity is partly utilizing the reading approach and partly audiolingualism. I think it is partly the reading approach because the vocabulary was controlled. New vocabulary was taught when the dialogs used new words. Also on the page that the dialog was on, a translation of the dialog was put in English. The use of translating is a common procedure in the reading approach. I also think the activity is partly audiolingualism. The activity consisted of a dialog and memorization of that dialog. The use of dialogs and memorization is a crucial part of the audiolingualism method. Since the student was to have the dialog memorized this helps prevent errors made in the target language. Prevention of errors is an aspect of audiolingualism.
It was interesting to read all your comments and hear the various ways in which you were taught the languages of study. As several of you mentioned any given teacher uses his or her own flavor of an approach or may not even be following any particular method at all. Most of the time teachers use techniques from various methods that they feel work for particular parts of language learning and student groups. Several of you also mentioned learning styles and the importance to address the diversity of learner learning style in a classroom. It is true that certain methods cater more towards particular learning styles.
ReplyDeleteReading your comments about experiencing CLT, I am wondering how authentic is a scripted and planned role-play? And further more can a FL or even a SL class really be authentic?
I took Arabic for one year at State. It was beginners Arabic so the first semester focused on learning the alphabet. We learned how to read and write the letters by having our professor pronounce the letter out loud and having us repeat it. The professor would also give us a list of words we needed to memorize and then we would get quizzed on them the next week. These methods would be the Audiolingualism Approach because mimicry and memorization are used. Listening skills were important.
ReplyDeleteSecond semester of Arabic involved learning much more vocabulary and grammar structure. The professor would help us memorize the vocabulary by placing pictures or actions with them. He would give us a worksheet with random pictures and ask us to write the vocabulary word that matched it. This method could be the Direct Approach because actions and pictures were used to make meanings clear. Grammar was learned inductively.
Although these two approaches were used more often, the other approaches were still very useful in my learning of Arabic. Such as the Reading Approach which helped with learning standard Arabic. Only the grammar useful for reading comprehension was taught. The comprehension based approach was important also because we focused on our listening comprehension. We listened and repeated until we felt comfortable enough to speak. Pronunciation was important and errors in pronunciation were corrected immediately.
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