METHODOLOGY IN LANGUAGE TEACHING

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MOTIVATIONAL VIDEO: “THE NOISE OF SCHOOL”
WHAT IS IT THAT LANGUAGE TEACHERS NEED TO KNOW AND DO TO BE EFFECTIVE CLASSROOM PRACTITIONERS AND LANGUAGE TEACHING
PROFESSIONALS?

HOW IS THIS KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICE ACQUIRED?

HOW CAN WE GET AN EFFECTIVENESS IN TEACHING?

HOW CAN WE RECOGNIZE THOSE TEACHERS WHO ARE KNOWN AS EXEMPLARY LANGUAGE TEACHING PROFESSIONALS?

HOW CAN WE GET THE COMPETENCE, EXPERTISE AND PROFESSIONALISM IN LANGUAGE TEACHING?

THE ISSUE OF LANGUAGE TEACHERS’ KNOWLEDGE AND SKILL BASE IS FUNDAMENTAL TO OUR UNDERSTANDING OF EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND NEW
APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION. FIRST OF ALL WE NEED TO EXPLORE THE KNOWLEDGE, BELIEFS, AND SKILLS THAT LANGUAGE
TEACHERS SHOULD USE IN THEIR DAILY PRACTICE.
MOREOVER, THE EFFECTIVENESS IN TEACHING IS NOT ALWAYS EASY TO DEFINE BECAUSE CONCEPTIONS OF GOOD TEACHING DIFFER FROM
CULTURE TO CULTURE:

IN SOME CULTURES A GOOD TEACHER IS ONE WHO CONTROLS AND DIRECTS LEARNERS AND WHO MAINTAINS A RESPECTFUL DISTANCE BETWEEN
THE TEACHER AND THE LEARNERS. LEARNERS ARE THE MORE OR LESS PASSIVE RECIPIENTS OF THE TEACHER’S EXPERTISE. TEACHING IS VIEWED
AS A TEACHER-CONTROLLED AND DIRECTED PROCESS.

IN OTHER CULTURES THE TEACHER MAY BE VIEWED MORE AS A FACILITATOR. THE ABILITY TO FORM CLOSE INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS WITH
STUDENTS IS HIGHLY VALUED, AND THERE IS A STRONG EMPHASIS ON INDIVIDUAL LEARNER CREATIVITY AND INDEPENDENT LEARNING. STUDENTS
MAY EVEN BE ENCOURAGED TO QUESTION AND CHALLENGE WHAT THE TEACHER SAYS. TEACHING IS VIEWED AS A STUDENT-CENTERED PROCESS.
WHICH ONE DO YOU AGREE WITH AND WHY?
Implications for Methodology

As well as rethinking the nature of a syllabus, the new communicative approach to teaching prompted a rethinking
of classroom teaching methodology. It was argued that learners learn a language through the process of
communicating in it, and that communication which is meaningful to the learner provides a better opportunity for
learning than through a grammar-based approach. The meaningful principles of communicative language
teaching methodology at this time can be summarized as follows:

Make real communication is nowadays the focus of language learning.

Provide opportunities for learners to experiment and try out what they already know.
Be tolerant of learners’ errors as they indicate that the learner is building up his or her communicative
competence. (Pedagogy of Error)
Provide opportunities for learners to develop both accuracy and fluency.
Link the different skills such as speaking, reading, and listening together, since they usually occur so in the real
world.
Let students induce or discover grammar rules, without teaching them separately, but in context. In the moment
we apply these basic principles in the classroom, another techniques and activities are going to be needed, and the
roles for teachers and learners will be reinforced. Instead of making use of activities that demand accurate
repetition and memorization of sentences and grammatical patterns, some other new activities that require
learners to negotiate meaning and to interact meaningfully are going to be developed, but all of them based on
students’ needs.
 The language proficiency
Most of the world’s English teachers are not native speakers of English, and it is not necessary to have a nativelike
command of language in order to teach it well. Some of the best language classes have been taught by teachers for
whom English was a foreign or second language. On the other hand some of the worst classes have been taught by
native speakers. So the issue is, how much of a language does one need to know in order to be able to teach it
effectively?
To answer to this question we need to start by considering the language-specific competencies that a language
teacher needs in order to teach effectively. These include the ability to do the following kinds of things:
• To comprehend texts accurately
• To provide good language models
• To maintain fluent use of the target language in the classroom
• To give clear explanations and instructions in the target language
• To provide a lot of examples of words and grammatical structures and give accurate explanations
(e.g., of vocabulary and language points)
• To use the most appropriate classroom language
• To select easy target-language resources (e.g., newspapers, magazines, books, class readers, the
media, the Internet)
• To give a correct feedback on learner language
• To provide input at an appropriate level of difficulty
• To provide language-enrichment experiences for learners
• To act with empathy and also be tolerant and comprehensive.
3.- Teacher Roles
“Effective teachers create rich learning environments that appeal to a variety of individual learners.”
What are the teacher roles?
Teachers need to behave in different ways at different stages of a lesson to manage the classroom and to successfully guide
learners through the lesson. These different ways of behaving in and managing the class are called “Teacher Roles”.
Teachers adopt (have) a number of different roles in every single lesson. Teacher roles vary depending on the teaching
approach (way of teaching) used and on the teachers’ and learners’ preferred learning styles and learning needs.
Here are some roles teachers often adopt.
Role The Teacher:

prepares and reflects on the lesson before teaching, anticipates problems and selects, designs and adapts
1.- Planner materials.

organizes the learning space, makes sure everything in the classroom is running smoothly and sets up rules
and routines (e.g. things which are done regularly) for behavior and interaction.
2.- Manager

goes around the class during individual, pair and group work activities, checking learning and providing
3.- Monitor/Observer support as necessary.

provides opportunities for learning, helps learners to access resources and develop learner autonomy.
4.- Facilitator

works out the causes of learners’ difficulties.

5.- Diagnostician
can be used by the learners for help and advice about language.
6.- Language Resource
evaluates the language level and attitudes of the learners by using different means of informal and formal
7.- Assessor assessment.

tries to create a good relationship with and between learners.

8.- Rapport builder
You’ll notice how teacher roles match with different aspects of teaching and with different stages of a lesson. We can be planners before the
lesson, rapport builders during the warm-up and lead-in phase, language resources during the language input and practice phase,
monitors during role-play, pairwork activities or writing, and assessors during the lesson, both formally and informally, and after the lesson
when we are correcting learners’ work.
The teacher roles we adopt have to be appropriate for the teaching and learning context, the teaching approach, the lesson aims, the
stage of the lesson, the type of activity and the age, level and attitude of the learners. A teacher using a PPP approach will, for example, at
different times of the lesson, act as a controller, a model and a guide. However, these teacher roles are not so appropriate for a teacher
using a communicative approach. Teacher roles more suitable for a communicative approach include facilitator, resource, provider of
language, prompter.
Effective classroom management, e.g. organizing the classroom and the learners is dependent on the teacher adopting appropriate roles.
For example, when learners arrive late in class or misbehave, the teacher needs to deal with the situation appropriately to ensure that the
learners understand that this is not behavior. In this situation, the teacher´s role is primarily to maintain discipline. If, on the other hand, the
teacher adopts inappropriate roles, this can have a negative effect on their classroom management.
There are several common situations in which a teacher has to adapt his or her role as appropriate to encourage smooth classroom
management. These include learners not completing homework, monitoring learners during pair and group activities, learners failing to
understand instructions, learners chatting during pair or group work and not focusing on the task.
The roles that teachers adopt also depend on the needs of the learners. With young learners, we might take on the role of a parent or a
friend when a young student is unwell or unhappy. With teenage or adult learners, two of the key teacher roles are those of motivating
students and maintaining discipline (establishing a clear system of rules and codes of behavior). With adult students the teacher’s roles
are often those of facilitator, language resource and diagnostician.
(PPP approach is a paradigm or model used to describe typical stages of a presentation of new language. It means presentation, production and practice. The practice stage
aims to provide opportunities for learners to use the target structure).

(The communicative approach is based on the idea that learning language successfully comes through having to communicate real meaning).
The Goals of Language Teaching

Communicative language teaching sets as its goal “The Teaching of Communicative Competence”.
What does this term mean?
Perhaps we can clarify this term by first comparing it with the concept of Grammatical Competence.
Grammatical Competence refers to the knowledge we have of a language that accounts for our ability to produce sentences in a
language. It refers to knowledge of the building blocks of sentences (e.g., parts of speech, tenses, phrases, clauses, sentence
patterns) and how sentences are formed. Grammatical competence is the focus of many grammar practice books, which typically
present a rule of grammar on one page, and provide exercises to practice using the rule on the other page. The unit of analysis
and practice is typically the sentence. While grammatical competence is an important dimension of language learning, it is clearly
not all that is involved in learning a language since one can master the rules of
sentence formation in a language and still not be very successful at being able to use the language for meaningful communication.
It is the latter capacity which is understood by the term communicative competence.

The Communicative Competence on the other hand includes the following aspects of language knowledge:

• Knowing how to use language for a range of different purposes and functions not only grammar
• Knowing how to vary our use of language according to the setting and the participants (e.g., knowing when to use formal and
informal speech or when to use language appropriately for written as opposed to spoken communication)
• Knowing how to produce and understand different types of texts (e.g., narratives, reports, interviews, conversations)
• Knowing how to maintain communication despite having limitations in one’s language knowledge (e.g., through using
different kinds of communication strategies)
Four skill areas

When we say that someone ’speaks ‘a language fluently, we usually mean that they have a high
level in all four skills – listening, speaking, reading and writing. But, as any teacher knows,
learners often have strengths or weaknesses in particular skills, and in some cases can achieve
high levels in, for example, reading and writing, while not being able to speak or listen at a
comparable level.

For some purposes – highly specialized jobs, for example – these uneven skills may not matter
very much. However, English is such an important skill in the global world, and needed in so
many different contexts, that someone without a good ability in all four skills will greatly reduce
the opportunities open to them in education and professional life. The four skill areas of learning
a foreign language need to be addressed consistently and continually. Good lesson plans
incorporate all four: Listening, Reading (and Vocabulary), Speaking and Writing (and Grammar).
Native speakers do not learn the skill areas separately, nor do they use them separately, so they
shouldn’t be taught separately. However, it is easy to fall into the trap of teaching about the
language, instead of actually teaching the language.

Reading

What are the skills of reading?

Decoding, fluency, vocabulary, sentence construction and cohesion, reasoning and background
knowledge and finally working memory and attention skills are key to reading comprehension.
Being able to connect ideas within and between sentences helps kids understand the whole text.
Reading aloud and talking about experiences can help kids build reading skills.
Some people think of the act of reading as a straightforward task that’s easy to master. In reality,
reading is a complex process that draws on many different skills. Together, these skills lead to
the ultimate goal of reading: reading comprehension, or understanding what’s been read.
Reading comprehension can be challenging for lots of reasons. Whatever the cause, knowing
the skills involved, and which ones your child struggles with, can help you get the right support.
Here are six essential skills needed for, and tips on what can help kids improve this skill.
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