These are some principles to be considered in your lesson plan, classroom interaction and assessment:
(Taken from Larsen-Freeman 2004)
Community Language Teaching:
-Teachers must consider students as "whole persons".
-Groups help to feel a sense of community.
-Teachers and students should have a relationship of trust, support and cooperation.
Communicative Language Teaching:
-Use "authentic language"
-Consider the communicative intention.
-Foster classroom interaction.
-Une language function can have different linguistic forms.
-Work above the sentence level.
-Games are important because thy have certain features in common with real communicative events.
-Students should express their ideas and opinions.
-Errors are tolerated
-Social context is essential.
Content-based, task-based and participatory approaches:
-A subject matter is used for language teaching processes.
-The teacher scaffolds the linguistic content.
-Authentic materials, tasks and cognitively challenging language.
-The tasks are divided into smaller steps.
-Teachers make adjustments if necessary.
-Education is most effective when it is experience-centered, when it relates to student's real needs.
-Students learn to see themselves as social and political beings.
-Language skills are taught in service of action.
Learning Strategy Training and Multiple Intelligences
-Prior knowledge is valued.
-The teacher's job is to teach learning.
-"Hands on" experience.
-Learning a strategy means to be able to transfer it.
-Students have different strengths:
1. Logical/mathematical
2. Visual/spatial
3. Body/kinesthetic
4. Musical/rhythmic
5. Interpersonal
6. Intrapersonal
7. Verbal/linguistic
-Being aware of which type of intelligence is being tapped by a particular activity, teachers can keep track of which type they are emphasizing or neglecting in the classroom and aim for a different representation.
What do you think about these principles? Think for some minutes... How do you relate them to your experience as student? Did you observe then in your practicum? Did you include them in your lesson plans? If not, How can you integrate them? What advantages and disadvantages do you foresee?
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I think these principles cover broadly the factors that should be considered for the student to learn significantly. From the point of view as a student did not relate to my children's education because it was monotonous and very traditional. Social aspects were not taken far from what we felt the teachers were not interested in having a trusting relationship with us. currently do not see many of these principles developed. If there is commitment by some teachers want us to learn really, but the teaching methods are very boring. As for practice I must say I saw nothing of these principles the teacher was only interested in making the class as quickly as possible, she didn't listened to their students. I focused my Lesson Plans to make creative and fun activities for students but also encourage teamwork and continuous feedback between them and the teacher, I think I used these principles, but without intention. To include clearly I think I should focus on the strengths of students and do activities that cover all your skills gradually. With these principles are achieved only see advantages, but when he says that the teacher must be confident with their students, sometimes they confuse that and the limits are lost, also try to touch all points of the students, all their strengths in a activity would be very difficult I think, everyone is different and with different interests.
ReplyDeleteWell I think plenty of them are really useful for my track as a future teacher, for example in my opinion the principle called Community Language Teaching:
ReplyDelete-Teachers must consider students as "whole persons".
-Groups help to feel a sense of community.
-Teachers and students should have a relationship of trust, support and cooperation.
Is very important because, when a teacher tries to teach a second language he or she must create, and environment, which has the characteristics mention above, therefore if the teacher uses them the students will fell better, confidents and they will be free to ask confidently when they get any doubt, or something like that, and consequently they will learn second language quickly.
Also there is another one which is good to use, this is Content-based, task-based and participatory approaches:
-A subject matter is used for language teaching processes.
-The teacher scaffolds the linguistic content.
-Authentic materials, tasks and cognitively challenging language.
-The tasks are divided into smaller steps.
-Teachers make adjustments if necessary.
-Education is most effective when it is experience-centered, when it relates to student's real needs.
All of the point that belongs to this point are important, because we need to know that students needs a content which is situate in a real situation, and it’ll be significant and important for them, that way we get the attention on them, also the learning process must be divided in steps, from the easier to the harder, to facilitate this process.
Some adjustment are good in the case the students don’t know a plenty of English, we can see it in many publics schools when the teacher goes to the Mineduc, and tries to teach the content exactly from it sometimes it does not work, so here the teacher may use this principle (Teachers make adjustments if necessary)
And a very important one: Education is most effective when it is experience-centered, when it relates to student's real needs.
In this case I remember when I was in high-school; it was a technical high-school may be called, and there the teacher was centered in my specific career, it was gastronomy and they taught us culinary vocabulary, hotel vocabulary, how to attend a table etc. and in that time it was very useful for us, I think we need to know what are the students needs to teach in significant way.
I think in my practicum was used this principle: Education is most effective when it is experience-centered, when it relates to student's real needs. It was because I studied there and they still are using the same principle to teach, in each specific career.
We, in the last semester I was planning I did not know this principles but I think some of them were integrated without knowing it, for example:
-Teachers must consider students as "whole persons".
-Groups help to feel a sense of community.
-Teachers and students should have a relationship of trust, support and cooperation.
It is reflected in the part when I ask questions, when they have to do some role-play, and also may be in test questions ideas from today’s objectives.
I think all of them are useful but I centered in some which for me are significant, in my opinion the principles do not present disadvantages
Very interesting reflection. Now it is time to apply these principles every time you plan and teach.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think about these principles?
ReplyDeleteAs we saw in the explanation the Community language teaching involves the relationships between the students and the teacher and how him/her see the students and the concept that he/she has about them, in the other hand communicative language teaching is focused in how the students communicate, and they role in the activities presented in the classroom, how they interact between them and how they create new opportunities to improve their language with their classmates. In Content-based, task-based and participatory approaches the most important part is that education is most effective when it is experience-centered, when it relates to student's real needs, learning Strategy Training and Multiple Intelligences focus in teaching strategies to the students to help them to improve the way that they have to learn.
How do you relate them to your experience as student?
In my times the teachers didn’t use those methods, I remember that in high school we never spoke in English during classes, and the teacher never taught us techniques or strategies to improve our learning.
Did you observe them in your practicum?
The teacher used a book as the whole material of her classes so the methods mentioned here were ever seen.
Did you include them in your lesson plans?
I never knew that those methods exits, I mean with those names and with all those aspects to consider in each one.
How can you integrate them?
I think that the idea of those methods is to make a class more interactive also to make it more fun for the students focusing in the opportunities that we create as teachers for them to communicate in a very significant way
What advantages and disadvantages do you foresee?
Well most of those methods contain different experiences that reflect the reality of another countries, so considering that we are exposed to this contextual factor is why we need to make an effort to foresee those possible difficulties in order to adapt each method to the reality of the school.
Susana Zapata
ReplyDeleteI think all of theses principles are very important since they each have relevance in class planning and are all focused on the student. I find that a mixture of these methods is more effective rather than considering only one. This way you can choose and vary the techniques of each method that is more adequate to each class objective desired.
Unfortunately when I was a student these methods were no where in site. It was the classic teacher = knows everything = student only listens and learns.
I my internship I was able to observe some techniques like in communicative language teaching, classroom interaction and tolerating error was demonstrated. A little bit of content based was tried to be implemented when the teacher had the students write a letter to the teacher. But the truth is that very little of the techniques where used.
When I did my class planning for methodology 1, I was under the impression that we were to start from scratch and create something new which of course made it very difficult to achieve.
But know I understand the concept and will definitely incorporate these methods and techniques in my class planning.
The advantages I foresee, is the variety that I have to work with which should help make the teaching much more effective and interesting, but at the same time could be a disadvantage in that it could also make it a bit difficult in choosing the right combination for a particular objective.
In my personal opinion, I think the new methods can lead in a better way the teaching-learning process, all of them are focused on the student himself as the main actor of the teaching learning process, so it is a good point of view if you compare them with the old ones. Now, the education is focused on the constructivism approach where the student builds his/her own knowledge based on his/her previous experiences with the help of the teacher as a mediator, and at the same time being part of a social group, where reality takes place. After that, I believe every method has different characteristics which are very important to be considered in our teaching-learning process.
ReplyDeleteIn the case of “Community Language Learning” as you know, it is considered to give importance to the human being as a whole person, further than cognitive side of the person, also it is considered the feelings, emotions, values, etc… so in this case you can see that this approach can help us to give importance to the person as independent, trying to develop many skills on him/her for his/her future life as a professional and personal background.
On the other hand, we know that “Communicative Language Teaching” is based on the different ways that we can communicate our intentions; the goal is centered on the functional approach, taking the english language as an authentic element to communicate our thinking, ideas in a real content, where situations can be part of our reality in a social community where the world we belong to is happening.
A third method is “Task Based” and it is focused on using the english language to learn in a very first time, where it has a real purpose to learn, where students can be motivated because there’s an intention to understand it, they can learn easily when they can based their new learning process on a previous experience, it really makes sense. Also, the authentic material is an additional point of view to be considered.
And the last method “Learning Strategy Training” emphasizes the way we can learn, if we know how to learn, the tools that we have to be considered in different situations, the advantages and disadvantages that we have to learn different topics, we can lead our learning process in a better manner.
Finally, in my personal opinion there’s no a unique method, the idea is to integrate all of them to manage the class, they have different characteristics which help us to develop on the students abilities, skills for their future as professionals and human beings, to be better persons inside of our society. And the most interesting thing is that they help us to give a new approach to the english language based on the contructivism paradigm by Vigotsky.
In my personal experience as a student in elementary and high school, I can say that I have very good teachers, although they didn’t speak english inside the class, but they motivated me to take the opportunity to become an english teacher. The methods that they employed in those days were the old ones, Grammar Translation and The Audiolingual Methods specifically, but at least they used to apply different tools to motivate students like playing games, singing songs, filling crosswords, talking about an interesting famous people between others. And I remembered some interesting story about Hellen Keller, it was very amazing for me, because the girl could continue her life taking away her obstacle to do things in her life because she was a blind girl. It taught me to encourage my life in a different way.
ReplyDeleteIn accordance with my practicum I can say that I had a good experience, I could see the things are different when there’s a teacher in these days that loves teaching english language, she focused her clases all the time in the four skills (Oral, Written, Reading and Listening), apart from that she used the target language as a functional approach, and in other case also she used it to communicate intentions, feelings, etc… she used to apply different supplementary materials inside the classroom, she didn’t have any specific book to apply her class, although she had a goal. It was a very good time where I learnt a lot.
I think I could include them in some classes, although I didn’t know much about them, but the good thing was to give the english language a purpose, to talk about our daily situations, to work with authentic material, to have in consideration the interest of our students, the reality of them, etc… in this way I can integrate them, knowing the background of my students, knowing the purpose about what’s the idea for them to learn english language?. The idea is to give the english language a functional approach and a communicative one, based on the content.
The advantages in these methods are to use the target language with a purpose, considering our background as I said before, also to take in consideration the reality, to communicate our ideas, thinking, to use them with real material, to apply the language on the four abilities, to speak english inside the class, taking apart the old methods.
Desadvantages? Well it’s a bit difficult to find disadvantages, although every method has its own characteristics or in other words they focus their attention in different elements, I can say a good alternative for us could be to integrate them, to know much about them in order to have a good repertory to use in our classes.
So to speak, it depends a lot of the type of students who are you teaching in order to give an accurate idea of these techniques and their effectiveness, like for example Communicative Languaje Teaching implies already a level of languaje to develop certain activities, so it's not teaching itself it's just applying knowledge, and according to reality in most of of chilean educational establishments, this method can't be considered in early stages of languaje learning.
ReplyDeleteI must admit I'm kinda fan of Content-based, Task-based and Participatory Approach Technique most of it because if a Unit's coursebook is relevant, actual, and awakes interest among the students, can be very helpful to get always their attention and encouraging to participate actively during class, but probably a non-interesting subject can double-cross you and will send any fun activity to the class' hypothetical grinder.
LST and Multiple Intelligences Are good in groupwork and self-assesment objectives achievement,and also welcoming to a variety of student's content approaches and opinions, but this last thing can be very confusing by the time to give an appropiate assesment, depending of the type of educational establishments. Some of them can be self-reflexive and being honest with their actions and learning, they will give you true accurate feedback, but in other places if you're not paying attention they'll do nothing and they'll say they got everything right and eveybody did well.
I relate them this way because at least those are some scenarios I can think they can happen, also including that I haven't seen anything of this methods during my practicum, just repetition and grammar in a deductive method class after class.
Applying these methods in my lesson plans can be helpful if I'm smart enough to take the elements that are going to create effective learning in my students, relating content with strategies more like their reality and adequately challenging to their learning level.
In my opinion I think all these principles are really important at time of teaching. We can combine them, but we can't let them apart of our lesson plans.
ReplyDeleteStudents can have fun, can learn in an interactive way if we know how to apply the correct method, or different features of each one.
I think that we should employ these methods, maybe if we focus just in one we'll miss the good things that other methods offer.
I just observed grammar translation in my practicum, I hope observe some other this semester.
At the first time, might be difficult to integrate them, maybe because students have not been taught through this way.
Francisca, I'm sure you'll have the opportunity during this semester to internalize all of the new methods in order you can apply them in a good way... the idea is to know much about them to have a repertoire to teach english language as well as you can and to motivate students...
ReplyDeleteEnjoy this course!!!!
In my opinion all of these principles are very important, because in this time, when the student is the main actor of the teaching process is very important to use the new methods in the classroom. For example the main characteristics of these principles are the relationships between students and teacher, also the importance of how students communicate between them, the interaction in the classroom, their experiences and needs that are essential for good teaching-learning process.
ReplyDeleteWell in my experience in high school the teacher didn't use these methods in class, sometimes we spoke in English but usually the teacher explained something with the help of the workbook and students had to try develop some exercises related to the topic.
In relation to my practicum, in every class the teacher used a workbook and the students answer different types of exercises. In my case I didn't see these methods in the class, only explanation of the teacher and then students develop exercises, something like my high school experience.
Well, to conclude I think that all of these methods are very important because the objective is that the student constructs their knowledge with their previous experiences and with the orientation of the teacher in the class. So, we will try to use these principles in our future lesson plans because is necessary to practice and to know more about these important elements when we work with students and children in the school.