Student Self-Correction

(Teacher facilitates opportunities for students to self correct using follow-up questions, tone, etc)

The teacher when provided with the opportunity should have the students self-correct by offering them a choice between what they said and the proper pronunciation. For example if the student says, "I have cree apples," the teacher should say, "Do you have cree apples or three apples?"
Objective: Reflect on speaking behaviors and strategies.

Conversation Practice

(Teacher asks students and students ask students questions using the target language)

Fill-in-the-blank Exercise

(Items use target language only and inductive rather than explicit grammar rules)

Dictation

(Teacher reads passage aloud various amounts of times at various tempos, students writing down what they hear)

The teacher chooses a grade appropriate passage from a book and reads the text aloud three times. The first time the passage is read the students only listen. The second time the passage is read it is read phrase by phrase, with the teacher pausing long enough for students to write down what they have heard. The third time the text is read, it is read at normal speed and the students check their work.
Objective: Listen attentively, courteously, and purposefully to a range of texts from a variety of cultural traditions for pleasure and information.

Paragraph Writing

(Students write paragraphs in their own words using the target language and various models)

Map Drawing:Students are provided with a blank map of Canada. The teacher gives specific instructions to the students. Once they are finished, their map will be completely labeled. The teacher takes the same map on an overhead and the students give the teacher instructions on how to label the map. Objectives: Listen purposefully to determine the main ideas and important details; use language appropriate to audience, purpose, and situation.

FURTHER READING

The Direct Method

Gouin had been one of the first of the nineteenth-century reformers to attempt to build a methodology around observation of child language learning. Other reformers toward the end of the century likewise turned their attention to naturalistic principles of language learning, and for this reason they are sometimes referred to as advocates of a "natural" method. In fact at various times throughout the history of language teaching, attempts have been made to make second language learning more like first language learning. In the sixteenth century, for example, Montaigne described how he was entrusted to a guardian who addressed him exclusively in Latin for the first years of his life, since Montaigne's father wanted his son to speak Latin well. Among those who tried to apply natural principles to language classes in the nineteenth century was L. Sauveur (1826-1907), who used intensive oral interaction in the target language, employing questions as a way of presenting and eliciting language. He opened a language school in Boston in the late 1860s, and his method soon became referred to as the Natural Method.

Sauveur and other believers in the Natural Method argued that a foreign language could be taught without translation or the use of the learner's native tongue if meaning was conveyed directly through dem­onstration and action. The German scholar F. Franke wrote on the psychological principles of direct association between forms and mean­ings in the target language (1884) and provided a theoretical justification for a monolingual approach to teaching. According to Franke, a language could best be taught by using it actively in the classroom. Rather than using analytical procedures that focus on explanation of grammar rules in classroom teaching, teachers must encourage direct and spontaneous use of the foreign language in the classroom. Learners would then be able to induce rules of grammar. The teacher replaced the textbook in the early stages of learning. Speaking began with systematic attention to pronunciation. Known words could be used to teach new vocabulary, using mime, demonstration, and pictures.

These natural language learning principles provided the foundation for what came to be known as the Direct Method, which refers to the most widely known of the natural methods. Enthusiastic supporters of the Direct Method introduced it in France and Germany (it was officially approved in both countries at the turn of the century), and it became widely known in the United States through its use by Sauveur and Maximilian Berlitz in successful com­mercial language schools. (Berlitz, in fact, never used the term; he referred to the method used in his schools as the Berlitz Method.)

In practice it stood for the following principles and procedures:

1. Classroom instruction was conducted exclusively in the target language.

2. Only everyday vocabulary and sentences were taught.

3. Oral communication skills were built up in a carefully graded progression organized around

question-and-answer exchanges between teachers and students in small, intensive classes.

4. Grammar was taught inductively.

5. New teaching points were introduced orally.

6. Concrete vocabulary was taught through demonstration, objects, and pic­tures; abstract vocabulary was taught by association of ideas.

7. Both speech and listening comprehension were taught.

8. Correct pronunciation and grammar were emphasized.

These principles are seen in the following guidelines for teaching oral language, which are still followed in contemporary Berlitz schools:

Never translate: demonstrate

Never explain: act

Never make a speech: ask questions

Never imitate mistakes: correct

Never speak with single words: use sentences

Never speak too much: make students speak much

Never use the book: use your lesson plan

Never jump around: follow your plan

Never go too fast: keep the pace of the student

Never speak too slowly: speak normally

Never speak too quickly: speak naturally

Never speak too loudly: speak naturally

Never be impatient: take it easy

(cited in Titone 1968:100-1)

The Direct Method was quite successful in private language schools, such as those of the Berlitz chain, where paying clients had high moti­vation and the use of native-speaking teachers was the norm. But de­spite pressure from proponents of the method, it was difficult to im­plement in public secondary school education. It overemphasized and distorted the similarities between naturalistic first language learning and classroom foreign language learning and failed to consider the practical realities of the classroom. In addition, it lacked a rigorous basis in applied linguistic theory, and for this reason it was often criticized by the more academically based proponents of the Reform Movement. The Direct Method represented the product of enlightened amateurism. It was per­ceived to have several drawbacks. First, it required teachers who were native speakers or who had nativelike fluency in the foreign language. It was largely dependent on the teacher's skill, rather than on a textbook, and not all teachers were proficient enough in the foreign language to adhere to the principles of the method. Critics pointed out that strict adherence to Direct Method principles was often counterproductive, since teachers were required to go to great lengths to avoid using the native tongue, when sometimes a simple brief explanation in the student's native tongue would have been a more efficient route to com­prehension.

The Harvard psychologist Roger Brown has documented similar prob­lems with strict Direct Method techniques. He described his frustration in observing a teacher performing verbal gymnastics in an attempt to convey the meaning of Japanese words, when translation would have been a much more efficient technique to use (Brown 1973: 5).

By the 1920s, use of the Direct Method in noncommercial schools in Europe had consequently declined. In France and Germany it was grad­ually modified into versions that combined some Direct Method tech­niques with more controlled grammar-based activities. The European popularity of the Direct Method in the early part of the twentieth century caused foreign language specialists in the United States to attempt to have it implemented in American schools and colleges, although they decided to move with caution. A study begun in 1923 on the state of foreign language teaching concluded that no single method could guar­antee successful results. The goal of trying to teach conversation skills was considered impractical in view of the restricted time available for foreign language teaching in schools, the limited skills of teachers, and the perceived irrelevance of conversation skills in a foreign language for the average American college student. The study - published as the Coleman Report - advocated that a more reasonable goal for a foreign language course would be a reading knowledge of a foreign language, achieved through the gradual introduction of words and grammatical structures in simple reading texts. The main result of this recommen­dation was that reading became the goal of most foreign language pro­grams in the United States (Coleman 1929). The emphasis on reading continued to characterize foreign language teaching in the United States until World War II.

Although the Direct Method enjoyed popularity in Europe, not every­one had embraced it enthusiastically. The British applied linguist Henry Sweet had recognized its limitations. It offered innovations at the level of teaching procedures but lacked a thorough methodological basis. Its main focus was on the exclusive use of the target language in the class­room, but it failed to address many issues that Sweet thought more basic. Sweet and other applied linguists argued for the development of sound methodological principles that could serve as the basis for teaching tech­niques.

In the 1920s and 1930s applied linguists systematized the prin­ciples proposed earlier by the Reform Movement and so laid the foundations for what developed into the British approach to teaching English as a foreign language.

Subsequent developments led to Audio-lingualism in the United States and the Oral Approach or Situational Language Teaching in Britain.

What became of the concept of method as foreign language teaching emerged as a significant educational issue in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? We have seen from this historical survey some of the questions that prompted innovations and new directions in language teaching in the past:

1. What should the goals of language teaching be? Should a language course try to teach

conversational proficiency, reading, translation, or some other skill?

2. What is the basic nature of language, and how will this affect teaching method?

3. What are the principles for the selection of language content in language teaching?

4. What principles of organization, sequencing, and presentation best facili­tate learning?

5. What should the role of the native language be?

6. What processes do learners use in mastering a language, and can these be incorporated into

a method?

7. What teaching techniques and activities work best and under what circumstances?

Particular methods differ in the way they address these issues. But in order to understand the fundamental nature of methods in language teaching, it is necessary to conceive the notion of method more system­atically.

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 1142