Blog Post 6: Maximizing Learning Opportunities

Blog Post 6

September 24, 2012

Brown Chapters 4 & 16  

Kumar Chapter 3

            Brown’s chapter four in Teaching By Principles, will be a great resource in the future.  I found each section was answering either questions that I had and answering questions I didn’t even know I had.  These sections or elements, are referred to as foundational principles that form building blocks for theoretical rationales.

            “I have see many a novice language teacher gobble up teaching techniques without carefully considering the criteria that underlie their successful application in the classroom…..I just want to know what to do when I get into the classroom” (Brown 63).  I believe that this statement is relevant to all preservice teachers, including myself.  This semester in particular I have been focusing on building a database of methods, approaches, and activities because, frankly, I am terrified by the idea that next semester I will be teaching ELL’s in a high school.

            As important as methods, approaches, and activities are to teaching language, Brown states that we need to carefully consider the criteria that underline their successful application in the classroom (Brown 63). The principles that form the core approach to language teaching are as follows: Cognitive Principles: automaticity, meaningful learning, the anticipation of reward, intrinsic motivation, strategic motivation, and autonomy.  Socioaffective principles: Language ego, willingness to communicate, and the language-culture connection. Linguistic Principles: the native language effect, interlanguage, and communicative competence

            Automaticity is an interesting concept.  Teachers need to realize how children, adolescents and adults learn languages differently.  Children do not focus on the grammatical aspects thus allowing them to absorb the language and promote fluency.  Adults can benefit from certain focal processing of rules, definitions, and other formal aspects of language.  However, adults, stated by Brown, “can take a lesson from children by speedily overcoming our propensity to pay too much focal attention to the bits and pieces of language and to move language forms quickly to the periphery by using language in authentic contexts for meaningful purposes” (Brown 65).  I think the hardest part for me when I was learning an L2 was moving the rules, definitions, and other formal aspects of the L2 to the periphery of my focus.  I guess I, as being as linguistically inclined as I am, focused strongly on grammar-translation and assumed I was past the ability of using automaticity to gain fluency and comprehension.

            As Brown discussed in his chapter four, students need to learn autonomy without too many outside rewards.  In Kumar’s chapter three in Beyond Methods, he also states that, “learning is primarily a personal construct controlled by the individual learner” (Kumar 44).  With this in mind, we can help our students by maximizing learning opportunities for our learners.  Kumar discusses that we need to realize that our lessons cannot be bound by teachers’ agenda, teaching materials, or by syllabus specifications.  We can sort all of these out before we even get our class list of students, but as we begin to learn about our students, our agendas, materials and syllabi need to reflect the information we obtain. 

Blog Post 5: The Essence of CLT

Blog Post 5

9-17-12

The End of CLT by Stephen Bax

Task-Based Instruction by Peter Skehan

Potential Cultural Resistance to Pedagogical Imports by Guangwei Hu

            The first article I read, The End of CLT: A Context Approach to Language Teaching, by Stephen Bax, discusses and problematizes Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). The author starts off by discussing how CLT does not meet all of the needs in language instruction, and just because a teacher, or institution does not use CLT does not mean that they are “backward.”

            I find the stories at the beginning of the article interesting because I was not aware of the idea that not using CLT is “backward” and that CLT is the modern way of teaching language.  “This in turn rests on the unspoken assumption that CLT is not only ‘modern,’ but is in fact the only way to learn a language properly” (Bax, 279). 

            Bax’s way of countering this common belief is stating that we need not think of CLT as the one and only, we must realize that there are many different approaches to consider and use when teaching, sticking with CLT alone is wrong.  The reason why it is wrong is because CLT lack the use of the context, which is what Bax calls “Context Approach.”  Bax uses this term because he believes that CLT needs to take a step down from the number one, and only spot, and take second place to the Context Approach, because CLT lacks a key aspect of language teaching, which is context. 

            The Context Approach disagrees fundamentally with CLT by arguing that methodology is not the only solution.  I like the idea of the Context Approach because it seems to not only observe that the whole context is of importance but that other approaches may be equally valid and implemented.  Any method or approach that claims that you should only use that specific method of approach and discard all others immediately raises a red flag in my head.  Nothing can be taught or solved using just one approach, especially because students are all different.  Teaching can’t be a one size fits all, and the Context Approach discusses that other methods and approaches may be equally valid.

            The second article, Task-Based Instruction, by Peter Skehan, discusses the concept of task-based instruction.  Over the course of the last fifteen years, researchers have made vast improvements in the methodological progress within the task-based area.  From my understanding after reading this article, during the 1970’s there were moves in instruction to move from language structure focus alone to a focus more on conveying meaning and information to one another and to develop the capacity to express meanings.  This in turn influenced a lot of things, which I believe one was CLT which in turn called for task-based approaches.  The term “communicative activity” was replaced with “task.”

            Something that I found very interesting was the discussion of cognitive perspectives on TBI.  Take the aspects of performance (complexity of language, accuracy, fluency).  There are two approaches here.  When we focus on one aspect of language, some researchers believe that there will be a trade off. Attending to one aspect will result in the suffering of another.  Other researchers believe that learners can access multiple and non-competing attentional pools.  It is unclear which is correct, more research is needed.

            The last article, Potential Cultural Resistance to Pedagogical Imports: The Case of Communicative Language Teaching in China, by Guangwei Hu, has really brought everything together for me as well as raise some important issues that may arise in classrooms.  The article discusses that communicative language teaching in China is important, however, it goes against the Chinese social culture of learning.  This is something I have never considered, but it is so obvious.  Not to stereotype, but it is common to see a Chinese classroom run by teacher centered approaches and traditional methods.  The Chinese students have primarily learned English through grammar-translation and audiolingualism but this approach has failed to develop an adequate level of communicative competence.  The question I have is this: Just because the Chinese are learning English does not mean that they have to adapt an American-like culture classroom, but how do they obtain the communicative competence they need?  How did they originally obtain their L1 communicative competence? Is the Chinese school structure not beneficial to the learning of an L2? Of course this can be, just as American classrooms cannot be.  But the main issue comes down to how do the Chinese students, even if they are in America, best learn communicative competence.

            In China there has been tremendous efforts to promote CLT; they have changed curricula and spent a lot of money on resources and materials to aid in the revamping of instruction. However, despite these efforts, CLT has not received the support that it was thought to gain and the traditional approach is still the dominant approach in the classrooms.  This is, as stated in the article, because of the “host of constraints on the adoption of CLT in the Chinese context which includes, among other things, lack of necessary resources, big class size, limited instructional time, teachers’ lack of language proficiency and sociolinguistic competence, examination pressure and cultural factors” (Hu 94).

            What I believe seems to be the biggest obstacle that the Chinese schools face is the cultural factors because Hu discusses that the conception of CLT is that of communicative competence, rather than linguistic competence alone.  Communicative competence consists of grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse, and strategic competence.  With the lack of in-class communicative work, students will not practice and obtain these aspects.  I believe that unless Chinese classrooms completely change their culture of teacher lead and student submissiveness, which is unlikely due to the countrywide ideology, CLT cannot work in its totality.  Parts of it can be practiced and aspects can be altered but CLT in the true essence cannot be practiced.  Now as we learned from the previous article, CLT is not the end-all-be-all.  There are other methods and approaches that can be implemented.

Blog 4: Learning Opportunities and Informed Approaches

Blog Post 4
9/10/12
Kumar Chapter 3
Brown Chapter 3
Kumar Article


In Kumar's third chapter in Beyond Methods, he discusses the importance of maximizing learning opportunities.  As teachers, we begin to plan our lessons based off of the syllabus that either we have created or the syllabus that has been created for us, the textbooks that are given to us and the written lesson plan that we may have created.  According to Kumar, this does not equal a prime learning opportunity alone.

"We need to recognize the possibility that creation and utilization of learning opportunities are not bound by teachers' agenda, not bound by teaching materials, and not bound by syllabus specifications" (Kumar, 45).  He then goes on the describe how each can limit authentic and useful learning opportunities that may arise.

We learn in many ways, but an important way we learn is through the input around us.  If the classroom is teacher centered, there is obviously less diversity in the input that is generated.  However, if the lessons involve students who bring their own background knowledge and experiences to the environment, there is a more layered array of input that can be added.

An aspect that I find that I may need to work on when creating a rich learning environment for my students is the concept of teacher questioning.  "Yet another possibility for creating learning opportunities is for the teacher to ask the right type of questions that will trigger meaningful interaction.  In the field of general education, Hugh Mehan (1979) has identified four types of questions that normally occur in a classroom setting" (Kumar, 49).  The list consists of choice questions, product questions, process questions, and metaprocess questions.  While choice and product questions have their time and place of use, in a language classroom, especially an L2 language classroom, process and metaprocess questions are of the utmost importance because they facilitate interaction between students and the teachers.

In Brown's third chapter of his book Teaching By Principles, he discusses the concept of moving away from teaching methods and concentrating on teaching approaches instead.  "By the early 1990s it was readily apparent that we didn't need a new method.  We needed, instead, to get on with the tasks and techniques that were informed by approach" (Brown, 40).  He refers to this time as the "postmethod" era of language teaching. This involves Kumar's (2006b) concept of "pedagogy of particularity" which he means "sensitive to a particular group of teachers teaching a particular group of learners pursuing a particular set of goals within a particular institutional context embedded in a particular social milieu" (p. 538).

As with Kumar's chapter, Brown's chapter discusses the need for teachers to create lessons that are tailored to the particular class.  He states that we need a global understanding of the process of learning and teaching. Our practices should never be set in stone, however.  They need to change with the changed of our classes and students. We will inevitably gain more experience through our experiences which will in turn affect our future teachings, hopefully for the better.

Brown then goes on to explain Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) which "for some is an accepted paradigm with many interpretations and manifestations.  For others, CLT is laden with issues of 'authenticity, acceptability, and adaptability' and instead we are exhorted to embrace task-based language teaching as a more appropriate model" (Brown, 45).

Some characteristics of the CLT approach are the overall goals, relationship of form and function, fluency and accuracy, focus on real-world contexts, autonomy and strategic involvement, teacher roles, and student roles (Brown, 46).  CLT is learner centered and students are active participants.  Authentic learning is a big part of CLT and there is a less focus on the overt presentation and discussion of grammatical rules than traditional approaches.

Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT) is one of the most prominent perspectives within the CLT framework.  Some researchers such as Kumar believe that TBLT is a completely different approach while others believe that it is "at the very heart of CLT."  As stated by Brown, this approach puts the use of tasks at the core of language teaching.  Tasks are defined simply by "an activity which requires learners to use language, with emphasis on meaning, to attain an objective" (Brown, 50).

In Kumar's article, TESOL Methods: Changing Tracks, Challenging Trends, he, also, discusses the changes in pedagogical trends.  He describes the perceptible shifts as (a) from communicative language teaching to task-based language teaching, (b) from method-based pedagogy to postmethod pedagogy, and (c) from systemic discovery to critical discourse. He describes these changes not as replacements, but as works in progress.

As was stated in Brown's chapter about CLT, Kumar discusses that CLT is a broad approach of methods and curricula.  These methods and curricula "embrace both the goals and the processes of classroom learning, for teaching practice that views competence in terms of social interaction and looks to further language acquisition research to account for its development" (Kumar, 60).

CLT was actually a response to the "failure" of the audiolingual method that we read about in Brown's chapter.  CLT was thought to move classroom teaching away from largely structural orientation that relied on a "reified rendering of pattern practices and toward a largely communicative orientation that relied on a partial simulation of meaningful exchanged that take place outside the classroom" (Kumar, 61).  This could be done by role plays, drama and scenarios.  This seems to a great way of moving away from teacher centered classrooms and to a student/learner centered classroom.  When activities and discussions are based off authentic concepts that the learners can relate to, learning is best facilitated.  As we read in Kumar's book, certain teaching materials, written lesson plans, and syllabus can close the opportunity for learning opportunities and lead to a boring, unstimulated classroom.