Week 2 Notes

Approaches and methods in language teaching

CLT
Approach not method
Aims:
 Make communicative competencne the goal of language teaching
 Develop procedure for the teaching of the four lanhuage skills that
acknowledge the interdepdence of language and communication
- Using functions with structures
- Procedures: groups, pairs, problem solving
- Weak: learning to use English strong’ using English to learn it’- two types
of CLT
- Direct rather than delayed practice
- “Learning by doing” and “the experience approach”
- 7basic functions of children learning a first language

- Conditions needed for learning

- -communication principle: real communication  learning
- - task principle: language used for meaningful tasks = learning
- Meaningfulness principle: meaningful to learner – supports learning
process

Syllabus design
 - TBL in CLT

-
- Purely emergent vs grammatically based syllabus which function,
notions and communicative activities are grouped
- Activities e.g. jigsaw, information gap, guessing of blurred pictures

Learner roles
- Negotiator- procedures and activities
o Learner contributes as much as gains  learning in
interdependent way
o Cooperative (can be difficult for Ls who aren’t used to this)
Teacher roles:
- Faciltator of communication
- Organizer of resources, acts as recource, there as a guide
- Based on needs analysis of learners’ needs
- Group prceoss manager (monitoring and feedback)

Materials
- Text based (e.g. pair work, situations)
- Task based: games, pair communication practice
- Realia

Procedure:
CLT THornbury
 - Social function, appropriacy, register empahsises
- Interactive activities, role plays and real conversation
- Fluency based activities  learning
- X misses out on form- can learn a language by using it but need to
know the formal features
- Thornbury suggests having reactive attitude to form rather than
premptive
Task based language teaching

- Task = activity or goal that is carried out using language e.g. telephone
call, writing a letter, assembling a toy.
- Process not product based
- Authentic  motivational
- Input + output for SLA
- Ts design task so that ss have maximum fluency/accuracy output (if too
difficult, accuracy drops). Can be designed to focus on particular sets
of language/structures for accuracy/fluency

Syllabus
Conventional syllabus

TBLT syllabus
X 2 different types of tasks

e.g.
can be thematic e.g.

Considerations for ordering of tasks

- Pretask- intro, prep time, vocabulary/phrases games

- Task: pairs/groups- use any language they have to communicate
o T supports in formultation but not error correction on form
o Spontaneous, fluency, exploratory talks
- Planning- ss plan how they’ll present results
o Peer editing if writing
 o Emphasis on clarity, organization and accuracy as appropriate
for public presentation
- Post task- presentation and ss listening are given a task to do e.g.
compare results
- Posttask listening- listen to fluent speakers doing same task
- Analysis- language focused tasks based on TL e.g. past simple, ss find in
tapescript- revie analyse
- Practice Ss practice new TL

Scott Thornbury PPP

- Cognitive skills learning theory
o Learn a skill by engaging with it (facts knowledge off)
o Through practice proceduralised (knowledge how)
automatic skills
- Easy to use template PPP
- Logical for ss (facts, apply)
- Criticism
o Presentation at expense of practice/production
o Linear, mechanistic way of learning languages
o Language learning is recursive non-linear
o Requires packaging language into presentable units
(misrepresents the complexity of language)
o PPP raises awareness of features of language both in and out of
classroom. Need to allow as much production as possible so it’s
authentic/easier to internalize for SS

Thornbury and Harmer talk on CLT