260 likes | 679 Views
LING 306 TEFL METHODOLOGY. CONTENT BASED TASK BASED & PARTICIPATORY APPROACHES. CONTENT-BASED, TASK-BASED, AND PARTICIPATORY APPROACHES. CONTENT BASED INSTRUCTION.
E N D
LING 306 TEFL METHODOLOGY CONTENT BASED TASK BASED & PARTICIPATORY APPROACHES
CONTENT BASED INSTRUCTION • For years, specialised language courses have included content relevant to a particular profession or academic discipline, e.g., for airline pilots, medical practitioners, lawyers • It integrates the learning of language with the learning of some other content, often academic subject matter – academic subjects provide natural content for language instruction • Motivated “language across the curriculum” movement for native speakers in England • Snow (1991) referred the approach as “a method with many faces”
CONTENT-BASED APPROACH - MODELS • LANGUAGE IMMERSION PROGRAM • ADJUNCT MODEL • SHELTERED INSTRUCTION • COMPETENCY-BASED INSTRUCTION
CONTENT BASED APPROACH • In a second language environment, it offers the significant advantage that second language students do not have to postpone their academic study until their language reaches a high level • Competency-based instruction – an effective form of content-based instruction for adult immigrants – offers an opportunity to develop their language skills and vital ‘life-coping’ skills
CONTENT-BASED APPROACH - PHILOSOPHY • Uses the WHOLE LANGUAGE APPROACH – calls for language to be regarded holistically rather than by pieces • Claims that students learn best when they are working to understand the meaning of the whole text • Work from top-down – understand the overall text before work on the linguistics forms
CONTENT-BASED APPROACH - PHILOSOPHY • Whole language educators provide content-rich curriculum where language and thinking can be about interesting and significant content (Edelsky, Altweger, and Flores 1991) • Errors are seen as part of learning process • Embraces Vygotsky’s idea about social nature of learning – learning is best served by collaboration between teacher and students and among students
TASK-BASED APPROACH • A task-based approach aims to provide learners with a natural context for language use • As learners work to complete a task, they have abundant opportunity to interact • Learning can be facilitated by the interaction in which learners work to correctly understand others and make themselves understood • Learners will have opportunity to acquire language that beyond their current level and use them later
TASK-BASED APPROACH • Prabhu (1987) identified 3 types of tasks: an information-gap activity, an opinion-gap activity, and a reasoning-gap activity (p. 148) • An information-gap activityinvolves the exchange of information among participants in order to complete a task • An opinion-gap activity requires that students give their personal preferences, feelings, or attitudes in order to complete a task • A reasoning-gap activity requires students to derive some new information by inferring it from information they have been given
TASK-BASED APPROACH • Prabhu feels that reasoning-gap tasks work best: • Information-gap tasks often require a single step transfer of information, rather than sustained negotiation • Opinion-gap tasks tend to be rather open-ended • Reasoning-gap tasks encourage a more sustained engagement with meaning, though they are still characterized by a somewhat predictable use of language
PARTICIPATORY APPROACH • In some ways the participatory approach is similar to the content approach - • It begins with content that is meaningful to the students • Any forms that are worked upon emerge from that content • Difference – the nature of the content • It is not the content of subject matter texts, but rather content that is based on issues of concern to studen
PARTICIPATORY APPROACH - PHILOSOPHY • What happens in the classroom should be connected with what happens outside that has relevance to the students • Education is most effective when it is experience-centred, when it relates to students’ real needs • A goal of the participatory approach is for students to be evaluating their own learning to increasingly direct it themselves • Students are motivated by their personal involvement • Teachers are co-learners, asking questions of the students, who are the experts on their own lives
PARTICIPATORY APPROACH - PHILOSOPHY • The curriculum is not a predetermined product, but the result of an ongoing context-specific problem-posing process • Students can create their own materials, which, in turn, can become texts for other students • Focus on linguistic form occurs within a focus on content • Language skills are taught in service of action for change, rather than in isolation • When knowledge is jointly constructed, it becomes a tool to help students find voice and by finding their voices, students can act in the world