Methods and Approaches

1. What is the difference between use and usage?

2. Which approaches are more focused on usage?
3. What are the main features of the Direct method? 
4. What is the Methodological Pendulum?
5. Which are the main features of the Grammar Translation Method?
6. What is the difference between linguistic competence and communicative competence?
7. Which are the main features of the Audiolingualism approach?
8. What is the difference between approach and method?
9. What do we mean by "cognitive approach"?
10. What are the five methods/approaches in the study of foreign languages? 
11. Which method is the most authentic?
12. What is the Reading approach?
13. In what way are students' errors seen in the cognitive code approach? 
14. What does the expression "Cognitive approach" stand for?
15. What is a "use-oriented" approach? Explain with examples.
16. What is a "usage-oriented" approach? Explain with examples.
17. What is meant by "communicative approach"?
18. Explain the relevance of MT and TL in the Cognitive Code approach. 
19. What methods and approaches do you know? 
20. What does Chomsky mean by competence and performance?
21. What is the Cognitive-Code Approach? 
22. Do you think that the direct method is useful to learn grammar or not?

Communicative Approaches

1. Which are the basic principles of the Communicative approach?

2. What's the difference between cohesion and coherence?
3. What's the difference between the weak and the strong version of the Communicative
approach?
4. Explain the terms fluency and negotiation.
5. What are the disadvantages of the methods focusing just on usage or just on use?
6. What is the difference between linguistic competence and communicative competence?
7. What do we mean by negotiation?
Are fluency and accuracy equally important? Why?
Name the difference between coherence and cohesion.
8. In his essay, what does Brumfit give more importance to, accuracy or fluency? 
9. What are the characteristics of traditional and communicative approaches?
10. Which are the differences between the linguistic competence (Chomsky) and the
communicative competence (Hymes)?
11. What language should be used in the communicative approaches?
12. What is the situational method and what is its limit?
13. Explain the differences between "linguistic competence" and "linguistic performance".
14. How are mistakes seen in the affective-humanistic approach? 
15. What is the goal of the functional method?
16. What are the main differences between traditional and communicative approaches according
to Nunan?
17. What does negotiation mean according to Brumfit?
18. What does Hymes mean by "negotiation"?
19. How should a student's mistake be considered during a fluency task?
 20. How are mistakes considered in the "communicative approach"?
21. Should the teacher be more concerned with fluency or accuracy?
22. What are the main tenets and limits of the Affective-humanistic approach?
23. What are the objections to the situational method?
24. What is the Notional-Functional-Situational Approach?

Speaking & Listening

1. How can theatre and drama activities be used to practice speaking skills?
2. What are some original activities teachers can use to present authentic communication?
3. Explain why imaginative games or Taboo can be considered useful activities to improve
speaking skills. 
4. Is it important to give students constant incentives to talk? Why?
5. What are the main goals of a teacher during discussion in class?
6. What are the 5 most useful listening activities to do in the classroom?
7. Are there any problems students may face during a speaking activity? Which ones?
8. What are the main phases of a listening activity?
9. Discuss the difference between hearing and listening.
10. What happens in the brain while speaking? 
11. Which is the best way to teach dramatization and body language during a speaking activity?
12. Why are songs particularly effective to teach people correct pronunciation and new words?
13. Which are the best and the worst dispositions of the classroom during a listening exercise?
14. Which are the tasks of listening and repeating?
15. How can a teacher maximize students' interaction?
16. What classroom activities can be carried out to improve speaking skills? 
17. What pre-listening activities do you know? Name a few.
18. Could you describe how we listen and the process at the base of it?
19. How can listening activities be divided?
20. What are the characteristics for a correct listening activity material?
21. Is it correct to consider listening as an isolated skill?
22. Which kind of exercise is more suitable for the evaluation of listening activities?
23. Is listening an isolated activity or is it always correlated with other activities?
24. Which kind of exercise is more important between pre-listening and post-listening activity?
25. How much importance has the "interpretation" in the listening mental process?
26. How do students’ positions and their needs change in communicative approaches?
27. What is basic in the preparation of an oral activity?
28. What is the difference between interactional talk and talking to transfer information? 
29. What are the 4 learning demands of listening?
30. Which are the differences between interactional talk and transfer of information? 
To improve listening skills of the students, is it better to provide higher level material (more
difficult from time to time), or is it better to provide the same level of difficulty they will
find at the exam?
31. For the listening comprehension, is it better to create working groups among the students, or
an individual work?
32. Why do pre-listening and while-listening phases represent an important part of a successful
listening activity?
33. What is the main function of the preliminary explanations about the purpose of a listening
exercise?
34. Considering the different steps of the mental process during listening, how will you help
your students to interpret the information correctly?
Is it a good idea to explain some crucial vocabulary before listening?
 35. What is the worst mistake a teacher can commit regarding the post-listening?
36. Should the listening feature only correct sentences, or also wrong ones? For example, if it
contains a real-life dialogue, where the speakers say some incorrect utterances.
37. What are the primary considerations to have in mind when you want to organize a
successful listening activity for your class? 
38. Since listening means understanding, it is obviously much more difficult to do it in a foreign
language than in one's own language. This applies to both passive and active listening, such
as listening for pleasure and learning at school. However, there are different levels of
difficulty during listening: for instance, it is more difficult to listen in a foreign language
than in one's own language; anyway, in every language it is more difficult to listen actively
for an immediate need than to listen for pleasure.
Moreover, it is more difficult to listen to someone who speaks to us naturally and
spontaneously in a foreign language than to someone who speaks to us in order to teach us,
such as a teacher. This is not the same in the mother tongue: I think that people are more
likely to listen to natural and spontaneous chatter than to lectures from a teacher. 
I believe this phenomenon occurs because, being facilitated by the knowledge of our mother
tongue, we find it more pleasant to converse for pleasure than to listen compulsorily in order
to learn something, at least most of the time. What do you think about it?
Reading & Writing
1. What do writing’s editing activities consist in?
2. How can you train yourself before reading?
3. What do the mental process of a writing and reading activities consist of and require? How
are they different?
4. Is there a correlation between reading and writing?
5. What are the best strategies to write a summary?
6. Why is it important to teach writing?
7. What does the reader bring to the text in a reading activity?
8. Why are pre-acting activities important during the process of writing?
9. What happens when there’s inconsistency during the process of reading?
10. Is reading an active or a passive process?
11. Describe some reading strategies
12. What are the differences between speaking and writing? 
13. What should students take into consideration while writing?
14. What are the main differences between spoken and written discourse?
15. What do skimming and scanning mean and entail?
16. How does the teacher participate in the process of writing?
17. What does “extensive reading” mean and why does it have a strong impact on language
learning?
18. What does “bring the personal knowledge of the world” mean when reading?
19. What are the advantages of reading aloud together?
20. Why don't elementary school teachers teach children how to hold a pencil properly?
21. To what extent is it important to be quiet during a writing activity?
22. Why is brainstorming important in writing?
23. Is writing an easy and spontaneous or a more complex, reasoned and elaborate activity? 
24. What kind of interaction should be established between students and teacher during a
writing activity? 

Language Awareness and Lexis

1. Define the terms lexis, vocabulary and grammar.
2. Which activities would you use during a grammar lesson?
3. Which factors should be taken into account when planning grammar activities?
4. What are the different levels of mistakes according to Pit Corder's taxonomy?
5. What is the difference between lexis and vocabulary?
6. Why is it important to improve your lexis?
7. Which are the different areas of Lexis?
8. In which way do people learn new lexis? 
9. Is there any kind of relation between lexis and context?
10. Can you provide at least 3 lexical practice activities?
11. What kind of material can you integrate to improve lexis?
12. What are the main causes of errors?
13. What's the difference between errors and mistakes?
14. Explain the correlation between lexis and grammar?
15. What is a Boomerang Lesson?
16. What is the difference between fixed combinations and ready-made chunks?
17. Think about a possible activity in which both grammar and lexis can be trained. 
18. What does the saying "Meaning comes before form" explain?
19. What is the worst thing the teacher can do during a lexis conscious-raising activity?