English language Teaching in the “post-Method” Era

English language Teaching in the “post-Method” Era Prepared By: Ismail Harb Supervised By Dr. : AwadQeshta

What is an approach? An approach is a set of assumptions dealing with the nature of the language and the nature of language teaching and learning. That is, for example, all the ideas or hypothesis you have about the language learning and teaching. (It indicates WHy..) It does not involve procedures or provide any details about how such assumptions should translate into the classroom setting.

There are three principal views at this level: • The structural view treats language as a system of structurally related elements to code meaning (e.g. grammar). • The functional view sees language as a vehicle to express or accomplish a certain function, such as (requesting something). • The interactive view sees language as a vehicle for the creation and maintenance of social relations, focusing on patterns of moves, acts, negotiation and interaction found in conversational exchanges. This view has been fairly dominant since the 1980s

One’s approach to language teaching is the theoretical rationale that underlies everything happens in the classroom. It is the cumulative body of knowledge and principles that enables teachers to diagnose the needs of students, to treat them in successful pedagogical techniques and to asses the outcome of those treatments. • Variation at approach level….. Why??? • An approach is dynamic…. It is subject to some “tinkering” as a result of one’s observation and experience. • Pedagogy findings are subject to interpretations rather than giving conclusive evidence.

A method • Method: A settled kind of procedures, usually according to a definite, established, logical, or systematic plan “one method of solving a problem”. How to carry out the assumptions of approach and theories ( HOW..) In order for an approach to be translated into a method, an instructional system must be designed considering the objectives of the teaching/learning, how the content is to be selected and organized, the types of tasks to be performed, the roles of students and the roles of teachers

Examples • Examples of structural methods are grammar translationand the audio-lingual method. • Examples of functional methods include the oral approach / situational language teaching. • Examples of interactive methods include the direct method , communicative language teaching, Suggestopedia , Total Physical Response , and Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling.

A technique • A technique is a very specific, concrete stratagem or trick designed to accomplish an immediate objective. Such are derived from the controlling method, and less-directly, with the approach. • Technique: The manner and ability with which an artist, writer, dancer, athlete, lawyer, or the like employs the technical skills of a particular art or field of endeavor so as to effect a desired result. (steps to achieve certain goals)

Twelve Principles • There are twelve principles on which classroom practices are grounded: 1- Automaticity:Unlimited number of language forms depend on the automatic processing and conscious concentration on rules impede the graduation to automaticity. 2- Meaningful learning: It will lead towards better long-term retention than rote learning. (Content-centered approaches) (mathematics, science, social studies) 3- The anticipation of reward: Humans are driven by anticipating rewards (tangible “physical” or intangible “concrete”) (short-term or long-term) that will follow as a result of a behavior. Teacher’s role is to create chances for those moment -by- moment rewards that can keep classrooms interesting, if not exciting.

4- Intrinsic Motivation:It is more powerful than extrinsic motivation as it is generated inside the learner especially if behavior stems from. 5- Strategic Investment: A person's own investment of time, effort, and attention to the second language as individualized strategies for comprehending and producing the language leads to the mastery of the second language. 6-Language Ego: As human beings learn to use a second language they develop a new mode of thinking, feeling, and acting a second identity. This new “language ego”, intertwined with the second language, can easily create within the learner a sense of fragility, defensiveness and a raising inhibitions. 7-Self-confidence: The eventual success the learners attain in a task is partially a factor of their belief that they are capable of accomplishing the task ; this leads to self-esteem.

8- Risk taking:It is very important. Because of the strong intention of achieving success on learning something, students yearn for mastering. Interaction requires the risk of failing to produce intended meaning, of being laughed at, of being shunned or rejected. They should be gamblers. 9- The language culture connection: Whenever you teach a language, you also teach a complex system of cultural customs, values and ways of thinking, feeling , and acting. 10-The native language effect: learners can depend on language 1 system to predict the target language system. Native system plays both facilitating and interfering (positive and negative transfer) effects on the production and comprehension of the new language, but the interfering effects are the most significant.

11-Interlanguage: An interlanguage is an emerging linguistic system that has been developed by a learner of a second language (or L2) who has not become fully proficient yet but is approximating the target language: preserving some features of their first language (or L1), or overgeneralizing target language rules in speaking or writing the target language and creating innovations. The interlanguage rules are claimed to be shaped by several factors, including: L1 transfer, transfer of training, strategies of L2 learning (e.g. simplification), strategies of L2 communication and overgeneralization of the target language patterns. 12-Communication competence: As communication competence is the goal of a language classroom, instruction needs to point towards all of its components: organizational, pragmatic, strategic, and psychometric. Communication can be achieved by language use not just usage, fluency and not just accuracy and authentic language and contexts.

Diagnosis, Treatment, and Assessment • A principled approach to language teaching encourages teachers to engage in a carefully crafted process of diagnosis, treatment and assessment. It enables us to account for communicative and situational needs anticipated among learners, and to diagnose appropriate curricular treatment for them in their distinctive context. It helps us to devise effective pedagogical objectives which have taken into account all the contextual variables in the classroom. It enables us to assess what went right and what went wrong in a lesson and it helps us in revising activities, lessons, materials and curricula

Diagnosis The first phase of the diagnostic stage of language pedagogy begins with curricular plans and continues as an ongoing monitoring process in the classroom. Language curricula call for an initial study of “situational” needs, or the context of the teaching. Situational needs include consideration of the country, the socioeconomic and educational background of the students, the specific purposes the students have in learning a language, and institutional that are imposed on a curriculum. Some of the twelve principles cited earlier come into play in isolating situational needs: • Is language proficiency perceived by students as intrinsically motivating? • To what extent will the language in question involve students in wrestling with a “new identity” and therefore imply a language ego issue? • What is the relationship between the target language and the native culture of the students?

Of equal importance in the planning stages of language courses is the specific diagnostic assessment of each student upon entering a program. Once courses have been carefully planned , with pedagogical options intricately woven in, how can teachers and administrators become diagnostic scientists and artists, carefully eliciting language production and comprehension on the part of every student? How should those elicitations be measured and assessed in a way that the language course can be either slightly or greatly modified to meet the needs of the particular students who of that calss?

Treatment • Treatment can have several options ranging from controlled (drills, dialogues, reading aloud, display questions/answers .. etc) to semi controlled (referential questions/answers, cued narratives, information gap activities, etc.) to free (role-plays, problem solving, interviews, discussions, etc). • The teacher should choose among all these activities to apply inside the class. • One way of looking at principled choices for treatment is the extent to which a technique promotes a desired goal. For example, let’s suppose a teacher wishes to deliver techniques that seek to create intrinsicmotivation in learners.

Consider the following checklist, each item of which represents a facet of the principle of intrinsic motivation: • Does the technique appeal to the genuine interests of students? Is it relevant to their lives? • Is the technique presented in a positive, enthusiastic? • Are students clearly aware of the purpose of the technique? • Do students have some choice in: (a) choosing some aspect of the technique? and / or (b) determining how they go about fulfilling the goals of the technique? • Does the technique encourage students to discover for themselves certain principles or rules (rather than simply being “told”)? • Does it encourage students to develop or use effective strategies of learning and communication?

7. Does it contribute to students’ ultimate autonomy and independence (from you)? 8. Does it foster cooperative negotiation with other students in the class? Is it a truly interactive technique? 9. Does the technique present a “reasonable challenge”? 10. Do students receive sufficient feedback on their performance (from each other or from you)? • By the careful delivery of techniques that incorporate many of these criteria, teachers can be more assured of offering treatments that are specifically designed to accomplish the goal of fostering intrinsic motivation.

Another way of looking at the relation between approach and treatment is in building a sense of strategic investment in the classroom. We have ten principles that imply certain activities that may be appropriate in second language teaching: 1- Lower Inhibitions: Play guessing and communication games; do role-plays and skits; sing songs; use group work; laugh with your students; have them share fears in small groups. 2- Encourage Risk Taking: praise students for making sincere efforts to try out the language; use fluency exercise where errors are not corrected at that time; give outside-of-class assignments to speak or write.

3- Build Students’ Self – Confidence: Tell students verbally and non verbally that you indeed believe in them; have them make lists of their strengths, of what they know so far in the course. 4- Help Students Develop Intrinsic Motivation: Remind them about the rewards of learning English (jobs – prestige- self confidence – results of tests …) 5- Remote Cooperative Learning: Direct them to share knowledge; play competitions; get them think of themselves as a team; do group work. 6- Encourage Students to Use Right-Brain Processing: Use movies and tapes in the class; have them read passages rapidly; do skimming exercises; do rapid “free writes”; do oral fluency tasks to let them talk without correction

7- Promote Ambiguity Tolerance: Encourage them to ask questions when they don’t understand something; deal with just few things at a time; sometime you can translate. 8- Help Students Use Their Intuition: Praise students for good guesses; don’t always give explanations of errors; correct only selected errors (those that interfere with learning) 9- Get Students to Make Their mistakes Work for Them: Tape-record students’ oral production and get them identify errors and correct them (don’t always give them the correct form). 10- Get Students to Set Their own Goals: let them make lists of what they can do with the language at home.

Assessment • Nowadays there is increased emphasis on ongoing ( Formative Evaluation) assessment of students’ performance as teaching progresses. • Applying techniques for performance-based assessment, portfolio development, oral production inventories, cooperative student-student techniques, and other authentic testing rubrics, we are quickly developing the capacity to provide an ongoing program of assessment throughout a student’s course of study.

With formative processes of assessment in place, teachers can make appropriate midcourse pedagogical changes to more effectively reach goals. • The tradition that evaluation must be confined to summative (despite its importance), end-of-term or end-of-unit tests alone is vanishing. • Today we can see a wide variety of assessment batteries that cover both production and comprehension skills, a range of assessment tasks, individualized tests, and increased attention to the communicative properties of tests.

English language Teaching in the “post-Method” Era