Methodology Communicative Language Teaching

Total Physical Response

Sequencing One of the goals of CLT is to develop fluency in language use. Fluency is natural language use occurring when a speaker engages in meaningful interaction and maintains comprehensible and ongoing communication despite limitations in his or her communicative competence. Fluency is developed by creating classroom activities in which students must negotiate meaning, use communication strategies, correct misunderstandings, and work to avoid communication breakdowns. Fluency practice can be contrasted with accuracy practice, which focuses on creating correct examples of language use. Task-completion activities: puzzles, games, map-reading, and other kinds of classroom tasks in which the focus is on using ones language resources to complete a task. Information-gathering activities: student-conducted surveys, interviews, and searches in which students are required to use their linguistic resources to collect information. Opinion-sharing activities: activities in which students compare values, opinions, or beliefs, such as a ranking task in which students list six qualities in order of importance that they might consider in choosing a date or spouse. Information-transfer activities: These require learners to take information that is presented in one form, and represent it in a different form. For example, they may read instructions on how to get from A to B, and then draw a map showing the sequence, or they may read information about a subject and then represent it as a graph. Reasoning-gap activities: These involve deriving some new information from given information through the process of inference, practical reasoning, etc. For example, working out a teachers timetable on the basis of given class timetables. Role plays: activities in which students are assigned roles and improvise a scene or exchange based on given information or clues. (Richards, 2006, Pp. 14-21) A language teaching method built around the coordination of speech and action A method of teaching a language using physical movement to react to verbal input Commands are given Listening and acting

No verbal response is necessary

Learning activities. Students follow commands Predominantly imperative drills Role playing can also be used Conversational dialogues begin after at least 100 hours of instruction. TPR Student Kit Learning process Review Teacher repeats items from previous time New commands Teacher gives new commands, repeat and vary them Role reversal Student command their teacher and classmates Reading and writing Teacher writes new items on the blackboard Task Based Learning Students are given a task to perform and only when the task has been completed does the teacher discuss the language that was used, making corrections and adjustments which the students performance of the task has shown to be desirable. Pre-task: Introduction to topic and task. Task Cycle: Task, planning, report. Language Focus: Analysis, practice. In pre-task the teacher explores the topic with the class and may highlight useful words and phrases, helping students to understand the task instructions. The students may hear a recording of other people doing the same task. During the task cycle, the students perform the task in pairs or small groups while the teacher monitors from a distance. The students then plan how they will tell the rest of the class what they did and how it went, and they then report on the task either orally or in writing, and/or compare notes on what was happened.

Dynamic Assessment

In the Language focus stage the students examine and discuss specific features of any listening or reading text which they have looked at for the task and/or the teacher may conduct some form of practice of specific language features which the task has provoked. (Harmer, 1991 Pp. 86-87) Supporting learner development actively by understanding learner abilities. A type of dynamic assessment commonly used in the reading literature is the test-teach-retest method. Testteach-retest measures a childs ability to learn after a predesigned learning opportunity rather than assessing previous knowledge. This method begins by administering a test, considered a pretest, which establishes the childs current performance. Dynamic Assessment should examine the effects of an awareness rising session on students. Awareness Session is any activity where the students are actively and purposefully using their minds in problem solving and reaching a concluding by the help of clues. Dynamic assessment is an assessment method based on Vygotsky's model of cognitive development. A key component to this model is the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). The ZPD is the area between what a child can do independently and what a child can do when helped by caregivers or peers The purpose of dynamic assessment is to determine how much learning can take place in the ZPD during a specially designed session, or sessions, for each individual rather than a score that indicates performance at a specific point in time (zgur and Kantar, 2012)

Situational Language Teaching

Focus on vocabulary and reading is one of the most salient traits of SLT. In fact, mastery of a set of high frequency vocabulary items is believed to lead to good reading skills. An analysis of English and a classification of its prominent grammatical structures into sentence patterns, also called situational tables, is believed to help learners internalize grammatical rules.

The behaviorist theory of learning is based on the principle of habit formation. Mistakes are banned so as to avoid bad habit formation. Following the premises of behaviorism, a teacher presents language orally then in written form. Situational Language Teaching syllabus is designed upon a word list and structural activities. Grammar teaching involves situational presentation of new sentence patterns and drills to practice the patterns. The teacher moves

from controlled to freer practice of structures and from oral use of sentence patterns to their automatic use in speech, reading and writing. Typical lesson According to Situational Language Teaching, a lesson starts with stress and intonation practice followed by a revision and a presentation of new material (mainly structures or vocabulary). The teacher then proceeds to oral practice and drilling of the elements presented. Finally, the lesson ends with reading activity or written exercises. Language learning is habit-formation Mistakes are bad and should be avoided, as they make bad habits Language skills are learned more effectively if they are presented orally first, then in written form Analogy is a better foundation for language learning than analysis The meanings of words can be learned only in a linguistic and cultural context

References Richards, Jack C. (2006) Classroom activities in Communicative Language Teaching in Communicative Language Teaching Today (pp. 14 -21) New York, Cambridge University Press. Harmer, Jeremy (1991) Chapter 6: Popular methodology in The practice of English Teaching (pp. 86-87) Editorial Longman. zgr Burcu and Kantar Murat (2012) Dynamic Assessment (DA) & Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) got September 11 2013 from http://www.ealta.eu.org/events/SIG_AWAP_Ankara2012/BurcuMurat_EALTA_SIG_Ankara2012.pdf
th

Guadalupe Luh Hernndez Andrade English III September 11 2013

th