Approaches, methods, procedures

Technique

 A common technique when using video material is called ‘silent

viewing’. This is where a teacher plays a video with no sound. Silent
viewing is a single activity rather than a sequence , and as such is a
technique rather than a whole procedure. Likewise the ‘finger
technique’ is used by some teachers who hold up their hands and
give each of their five fingers a word. E.g. he is not playing tennis,
and then by bringing the is and the not finger together , show how
the verb is contracted to isn’t.
 A term that is also used in discussions about teaching is ‘model’ –
used to describe typical procedures or sets of procedures, usually for
teachers in training. Such models offer abstractions of these
procedures, designed to guide teaching practice. Confusion occurs
when these models are elevated to the status of methods, since their
purpose is pedagogic in terms of training, rather than inspirational as
statements of theoretical belief.
Grammar-translation, Direct method
and Audiolingualism
 Grammar-translation method: students were given explanations
of individual points of grammar, and then they were given sentences
which exemplified these points. These sentences had to be translated
from the target language (L2) back to the students’ first language
(L1) and vice versa.

 The Direct method:

 Audiolingual method: when behaviorist accounts of language
learning became popular in the 1920s and 1930s, the Direct method
morphed into the Audiolingual method. Using the stimulus-response-
reinforcement model, it attempted, through a continuous process of
such positive reinforcement, to engender good habits in language
learners. Audiolingualism relied heavily on drills to form these habits;
substitution was built into these drills so that, in small steps, the
student was constantly learning and, moreover, was shielded from
the possibility of making mistakes by the design of the drill.
Presentation, practice and
production

 In this procedure the teacher introduces the situation which contextualizes

the language to be taught. The language, too, is then presented. The
students now practice the language using accurate reproduction
techniques such as choral repetition, individual repetition and cue-
response drills (where a teacher gives a cue, such as cinema, nominates
a student who makes the desired response, e.g. Would you like to come to
the cinema?). Since cue-response drills are contextualized by the situation
that has been presented, they carry more meaning than a simple
substitution drill. Later the students using the new language, make
sentences of their own, and this is referred to as production.
PPP Procedure

 Presentation: a teacher shows the students a picture and elicits the

fact presented in the picture. The teacher points to the boy and
attempts to elicit the sentence He’s listening to music by asking a
question: what is Nick doing? Then the teacher models the sentence
before isolating the grammar she wants to focus on, distorting it (he
is), and putting it back together again (he’s) and then giving the
model in a natural way once more (he’s listening to music).
 Practice: the teacher gets the students to repeat the sentence He’s
listening to music in chorus. She may then nominate certain students
to repeat the sentence individually, and she corrects the mistakes she
hears. Now she models more sentences from the picture, getting
choral and individual repetition. Then she does the cue-response drill
to conduct a slightly freer kind of drill.
 Production: the end point of PPP cycle is production, which some
trainers have called ‘immediate creativity’. Here the students are
asked to use the new language (in this case the present continuous)
in the sentences of their own. E.g. what are your friends doing at the
moment?

 Byrne’s ‘alternative approach’

PPP and alternatives to PPP
 In response to this criticisms many people have offered variations on PPP and
alternatives to it. In 1982 Keith Johnson suggested the ‘deep-end strategy’,
where by encouraging the students into immediate production (throwing them
in at the deep end), you turn the procedure on its head. The teacher can now
see if and where students are having problems during this production phase
and return to either presentation or practice as and when necessary after the
production phase is over.
 According to Harmer, a different trilogy of teaching sequence elements is ESA:
Engage, Study and Activate. E – unless students are emotionally engaged
in what is going on, their learning will be less effective. S - study may be part
of a ‘focus on forms’ syllabus, or may grow out of a communicative task,
where the students’ attention on form is drawn to it either by the teacher or
through their own noticing activities. A – any stage at which students are
encouraged to use all and/or any of the language they know.
 ESA allows for three basic lesson procedures. The sequence in ESA is much like PPP.
The teacher engages students by presenting a picture or a situation, at the study
stage of the procedure, the meaning and form of the language are explained. The
teacher then models the language and the students repeat and practise it. Finally
they activate the new language by using it in sentences of their own.
 Contrary to it, a ‘Boomerang’ procedure follows more task-based or deep-end
approach. Here the order is EAS, as the teacher gets the students engaged before
asking them to do something like a written task, a communication game or a role-
play. Based on what happened here, the students will then, after the activity has
finished, study some aspects of language, which they lacked or which they used
incorrectly.
 ‘Patchwork’ lessons may follow a variety of sequences. E.g. engaged students are
encouraged to activate their knowledge before studying one and then another
language element, and then returning to more activating tasks, after which the
teacher re-engages them before doing some more study.
Four methods

 Four methods developed in the 1970s and 1980s.

 In the classic form of Community Language Learning, a ‘knower’ stands
outside a circle of students and help the students say what they want to say by
translating, suggesting or amending students’ utterances.
 Suggestopaedia was developed by Georgi Lozanov and is concerned above all
with the physical environment in which the learning takes place. Students need to
be comfortable and relaxed so that their affective filter is lowered. Students take
on different names and exist in a child-parent relationship with the teacher
(Lozanov calls this ‘infantilization’).
 A typical Total Physical Response (TPR) lesson may involve the teacher giving
students some instructions. When the students can all respond to commands
correctly, one of them can then start giving instructions to other classmates.
James Asher believed that since children learn a lot of their language from
commands directed at them, second-language learners can benefit from it too.
 According to The Silent Way, a teacher rather than entering into
conversation with students, says as little as possible. This is because
the founder of the method, Caleb Gattegno, believed that learning is
best facilitated if the learner discovers and creates language rather
than just remembering and repeating what has been taught. Here the
teacher frequently points to different sounds on a phonemic chart,
modelling them before indicating that students should say the
sounds. The teacher is then silent, indicating only by gesture or
action when individual students should speak. Because of the
teacher’s silent non-involvement, it is up to the students – under the
controlling but indirect influence of the teacher – to solve problems
and learn the language. It is students who should take responsibility
for their learning, and it is a teacher’s job to organize it.
Conclusion
Communicative Language Teaching
(CLT)

 A major strand of CLT centers around the essential belief that if students are involved
in meaning-focused communicative tasks, then ‘language learning will take care of
itself,’ and that plentiful exposure to language on use and plenty of opportunities to
use it are vitally important for a student’s development of knowledge and skill.
Activities in CLT typically involve students in real or realistic communication, where the
successful achievement of the communicative task they are performing is at least as
important as the accuracy of their language use. Here role-play, solving a puzzle and
simulation have become very popular.
Task-based Learning (TBL)

 One way of looking at Task-based Learning is to see it as a kind of deep-

end strategy. According to Jane Willis, ‘it is like a sort of PPP upside down.’
this is similar to the ‘Boomerang’ procedure we mentioned before.
 Willis suggests three basic stages in TBL: the Pre-task, the Task-cycle, and the
Language focus.
 in the Pre-task stage, the teacher explores the topic with the class and might
highlight useful words and phrases, helping students to understand the task
instructions. During the Task-cycle stage students perform the task in pairs or
small groups while a teacher monitors from a distance. In the Language focus
stage, the students examine and discuss specific features of any listening or
reading text which they have looked at for the task, or the teacher may conduct
some form of practice of specific language features which the task has provoked.
 Different teachers may plan their TBL lessons differently. As Nunan suggests,
‘learners should be encouraged to move from reproductive to creative language
use.’ It is believed that tasks are building blocks of a language course. Students
do the tasks while focusing on language forms. As Widdowson remarked, ‘get
performance right and competence will, with some prompting, take care of itself.’
The Lexical Approach

 The Lexical approach, discussed by Dave Willis, and popularized by Michael

Lewis, is based on the assertion that ‘language consists not of traditional grammar
and vocabulary, but often of multi-word prefabricated chunks.’ These are the
‘lexical phrases’, ‘lexical chunks’ and other word combinations, such as
collocations, idioms, semi-fixed phrases which form such an important part of the
language. E.g. I’ll give you a ring, I’ll be in touch, I’ll be back in a minute, etc.
Lewis proposes that fluency is the result of acquisition of a large store of these
fixed and semi-fixed pre-fabricated items which are ‘available as the foundation for
any linguistic novelty or creativity.’ According to Lewis, ‘exposure to enough
suitable input, not formal teaching, is the key to increasing the learner’s lexicon,
as most vocabulary is acquired, not taught.’
 Thornbury criticizes this approach and suggest that learning the system is a vital
pre-requisite of the ability to string phrases together into a coherent whole.
Otherwise we are left with the danger of having to learn endless succession of
phrase-book utterances – ‘all chunks but not pineapple.’
Teachers and students in dialogue
together
 Thornbury published a ‘short uncharacteristically provocative article’
in 2005, suggesting that ELT needed a return to the materials- and
technology-free classroom in which language emerges as teachers
and students engage in a dialogic relationship. This article had many
supporters, who claimed that language is co-constructed between
teachers and students, where is emerges(as it is scaffolded by the
teacher) rather than being acquired. According to the ‘pedagogy of
bare essentials,’ students learn because they get to express what
they want to say.
 However, some critics say that this kind of dialogic model favours
native-speaker teachers. Besides, materials, such as coursebooks, are
highly prized by both teachers and students alike for a variety of
reasons.
What is methodology?

 Methods and culture: the writer Adrian Holliday has come up with the term native
speakerism to describe the way that British and American teaching methodology and
practices have been exported around the world. Native speakerism, he worries, ‘cuts
into and divides World TESOL by creating a negatively reduced image of the foreign
Other of non-native speaker students and educators.’
 Bargains, postmethod and context-sensitivity: one approach for context-
sensitive teachers is to try to create a bridge between their methodological beliefs
and the students’ preferences. E.g. Dilys Thorp had a problem with students from
China when they were confronted with listening tasks. Thorp’s students were not
used to listening for gist, they wanted to listen to tapes again and again,
translating word for word. According to Thorp, ‘initially we allowed them to listen
as often as they liked, but in return – and this was their part of the bargain – they
were to concentrate on the gist and answer guided questions. Then we gradually
reduced the number of times they were allowed to listen.’
 It must be noted that we have reached a ‘postmethod’ phase. According to
Kumaravadivelu, instead of one method, e.g.TBL, we should apply ten
‘macrostrategies, such as maximize learning opportunities, facilitate negotiation,
foster language awareness, promote learner autonomy.’
 Dick Allwright is also concerned to get away from methods as the
central focus of decisions about teaching. In what he calls exploratory
practice, teachers should determine and understand the classroom
quality of life. Then they should identify a learning puzzle (find
something that is puzzling in class when teaching students), reflect
on it, gather data, and try out different ways of solving the puzzle.
 According to Stephen Bax, methodology is just one factor in language
learning. Other factors may be important, and other methods and
approaches may be equally valid. His solution is for teachers to do
some kind of ‘context analysis’ before they start teaching so that
they can develop their own procedures from the range of
methodological knowledge and techniques they have available to
them. Then they reflect on and evaluate what has happened in order
to decide how to proceed.
Making choices

 It is widely accepted that we need to extract the key components of the various methods
and tailor them according to students’ needs and necessities.
 Six strands should be mentions here:
 Affect: students learn better when they are engaged with what is happening.
 Input: students need constant exposure to the language, otherwise they will not learn
how to use it.
 Output: students need chances to activate their language knowledge through meaning-
focused tasks.
 Cognitive effort: students should be encouraged to think about language as they work
with it since this aids retention.
 Grammar and lexis: lexis is as important as grammar.
 How, why and where: the actual way we do things depends not on the choice of a
method, but rather on why and where we are teaching.