History of Language Teaching Flashcards
What is Language?
Language is a system of communication through a set of symbols, sounds, gestures, or written characters. Through these symbols, people are able to transmit information, to express themselves. Last but no least, language is a medium between teachers and students.
What is teaching?
When we teach we don’t just transmit knowledge, but we get students involved in the construction of knowledge. We encourage them to transform themselves from passive students into active learners. Teaching is, basically creating a pedagogical, social and ethnical condition for our students to take part of their own learning individually and collectively.
What is learning?
Learning implicates understanding, relating ideas and making connections between prior and new knowledge, independent and critical thinking and ability to transfer knowledge to new and different contexts.
How is the history of language teaching?
-Everything started with Latin. Latin was the most studied foreign language in the world. It was the dominant language of education, commerce, and religion in the world. Then, as a result of political changes in the Europe, latin became displaced.
The study of Latin became the model for studying foreign languages.
The study of Latin was said to develop intellectual abilities, and the study of it became an end itself.
As the study of phonetics grew, the International Phonetic Alphabet was in invented.
Phonetics Association
- Spoken language should be taught first.
- Use dialogues and texts to introduce phrases and idioms.
- Inducted approach to teach grammar.
- Not L1. Use target language to make meaning associations.
The Oral or Situational Approach
Starting the 30’s, British linguistics were dominated by the functions of language where meaning, context and situations are given a prominent place. This came to be known as “Firthian” under the name of its founder John Rupert Firth.
- This method organizes structures around situations or contexts.
- New items (grammar, vocabulary) are practiced situationally (at the bank, on a date, etc).
- Teaching begins with spoken language.
- Target language in the classroom.
- Grammatical structures are graded from simple to complex.
- Students do a lot of drilling.
GRAMMAR TRANSLATION METHOD
At first it was called the “Classical Method” since it was used to teach the classical languages as Latin and Greek. In the 20th century it was used to help students to read and appreciate foreign literature.Besides, foreign languages would help students to grow intellectually.
In this method:
-Reading and writing are the major focus. Little or no attention is paid to speaking and listening.
- Students have to b able to translate each language into the other.
-Students have to learn the grammar of the target language.
-Accuracy is emphasized.
-Grammar is thaught deductively (presentation and study of grammar rules, which are then practiced through translation exercises).
- L1 is used inside the classroom.
DIRECT METHOD
-Result from the Reform Movement
-Popular in France and Germany
-Reading for pleasure
-No L1 was permitted.
-Conversational Style.
-Actions and images were used to make clear meaning.
-Teacher has to be a native speaker or at least has to have a proficiency level.
TEACHER’S ROLE: is to direct the class class activities, encourage the students to participate in class by asking them questions constantly, and correct their mistakes immidiatly.
STUDENT’S ROLE: is less passive than in the GTM. Moreover, there is a student self-correction, they have to speak a lot, which means that their communicative skills are emphasized.
THE AUDIOLINGUAL METHOD
-It started during the WWII for members of the military so they can learn new languages.
-Passive students.
-Focuses on speaking, as historically, speaking came before writing in lg production.
-Language is habit formation (repetition, drilling)
-SS need to learn the culture so the sound more like a native speaker.
-No use of L1 (created bad habits).
-Inductive teaching. Grammar was presented with dialogues.
-Memorization of dialogues and vocabulary.
-Accuracy important, so error correction was important.
-Drilling of grammatical sentence paterns.
-It also focused on pronunciation.
Positive reinforcement leads to succesful habit formation.
COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE APPROACH
- In order to learn a language, one must practice using that language to communicat meaning to others.
- Interaction, speaking is key.
- Errors are welcome.
- Use topics they care about, meaningful activities.
- Working in groups or in pairs is more effective.
- Communication is not the gosl, but is integral to the process.
- Students learn the language socially.
- Grammar and vocabulary enable communicative competence.
- Activities are designed to create a need to communicate. These activities require students to exchange ideas in order to complete a task.
BEHAVIORISM
- Students are considered to be blank slates, with no prior knowledge.
- Passive students.
- Learning through selective imitation and habit formation.
- Use rewards and punishment as a basis of conditioning students slowly learn appropiate behavior.
- Learning result of enviroment rather than genetic factors.
- Lg is seen as a behavior to be taught.
- Techniques: pattern drills, memorization of dialogues, choral repetition.
- Students repeat correctly without understanding the meaning of the utterances.
- Teacher center of the lesson.
- Behaviorism is only concerned with observable behavior and denies the importance of the cognitive processes and prior knowledge.
COGNITIVISM
- People are rational beings that require active participation in order to learn, and whose actions are a consequence of thinking.
- The teacher provides students with material that will help directly their learning.
- Cognitivism recognizes that students have different ways of learning and there are individual differences between learners.
- The role of the teacher is to facilitate the learning process by providing guidance and accomodating individual needs.
- Cognitivism sees mottivation as largely intrinsic. It involves significant restructuring of existing coognitive structuress, succesful learning requires a major personal investment on the part of the learner.
COGNITIVIST THEORISTS
JEAN PIAGET:
+Cognitive Development: there are four stages of intellectual development.
-Sensorimotor stage (birth-2 years)
-The pre-operational stage (2-7 years)
-The concrete-operational stage (7-11 years)
-The formal operational stage (12+)
+Schemas: children are born with a very basic mental structure on which all subsequent learning and knowledge are based.
+Process of adaptation:
- Assimilation: fitting new information, you make sense by referring to information you already have.
- Accomodation: adjust information to make room for new information
- Equlibration: individuals try to balance their present understandings with new events or data they encounter that conflict with what they know, while attempting to maintain stability.
CONSTRUCTIVISM
- People construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world, throgh experiencing things and reflecting on those experiences.
- The constructtivist view of learning usually means encouraging students to use active techniques (experiments, real world problem solving) to create more knowledge and then to reflect on it, and talk about they are doing and how their understanding is changing.
CPH - Critical Period Hypothesis
- There is a determinated period in which we can aquire a language easily and after that period is more difficult.
- To acquire a second language this critical period accurs around puberty.
HOW MIGHT NEUROLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT AFFECT SECOND LANGUAGE SUCCESS?
- As the human brain matures, certain functions are assigned, or lateralized, to the left hemisphere of the brain, and certain other functions to the right hemisphere.
- Intelectual, logical, and analytic functions are located in the left hemisphere, while the right hemisphere control functions are related to emotional and social needs.
