Bachelor of Special Education Self Learning Material PAPER-I PEDAGOGY OF TEACHING ENGLISH (SECM 02) B.Ed. Spl. Ed 1 Madhya Pradesh Bhoj (Open) University Bachelor of Special Education B.Ed. Spl. Ed. A Collaborative Programme of Madhya Pradesh Bhoj (Open) University & Rehabilitation Council of India MADHYA PRADESH BHOJ (OPEN) UNIVERSITY RAJA BHOJ MARG (Kolar Road), Bhopal (M.P.) - 462 016 Ph. 0755-2492095, Fax 0755-2424640 Email:[email protected] www.bhojvirtualuniversity.com 2 © Madhya Pradesh Bhoj (Open) University All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission in writing from the Madhya Pradesh Bhoj (Open) University. The views expressed in this SIM are that of the author(s) and not that of the MPBOU. 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Fax: (0755)-2424640. email: [email protected] website : http://www.bhojvirtualuniversity.com 3 PEDAGOGY OF TEACHING ENGLISH (SECM 02) Block I: Nature of English Language & Literature Unit 1: Principles of Language Teaching Unit 2: Language Proficiency: Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency( CALP) Unit 3: English Language in the school context: An Evolutionary Perspective Unit 4: Current Trends in Modern English Literature in Indian context Unit 5: Teaching as second language in Indian context. 4 Unit 1: Principles of Language Teaching 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Language Learning: 1.3 Language Teaching: 1.4 Instructional Context: 1.5 Activity-Based Language Teaching And Learning Principle 1 Active Engagement Principle 2 Cultural Relevance Principle 3 Collaboration Principle 4 Learning Strategies 1.6 Communicative Teaching And Learning Principle 5 Differentiation Principle 6 Comprehensible Input With Scaffolding Principle 7 Prior Knowledge Principle 8 Content Integration Principle 9 Clear, Appropriate Goals And Feedback 1.7 Summary Points For Discussion And Clarification References: 5 6 1.1 Introduction It is important to recognize that methods link thoughts and actions, because teaching is not entirely about one or the other. Of course this is as true about your own teaching as it is about any method you will read about in this book. As a teacher of language, you have thoughts1 about your subject matter—what language is, what culture is—and about your students—who they are as learners and how it is they learn. You also have thoughts about yourself as a teacher and what you can do to help your students to learn. Many of your thoughts have been formed by your own experience as a language learner. It is very important for you to become aware of the thoughts that guide your actions in the classroom. With this awareness, you are able to examine why you do what you do and perhaps choose to think about or do things differently. As an example, let us relate an anecdote about a teacher with whom Diane Larsen- Freeman was working some time ago. We will call her Heather, although that is not her real name. From her study of methods in Stevick (1980), Heather became interested in how to work with teacher control and student initiative in her teaching. Heather determined that during her student teaching internship, she would exercise less control of the lesson in order to encourage her students to take more initiative. She decided to narrow the goal down to having the students take the initiative in posing the questions in the classroom, recognizing that so often it is the teacher who asks all the questions, not the students. Diane was Heather’s teaching supervisor. When Diane came to observe her, Heather was very discouraged. She felt that the students were not taking the initiative that she was trying to get them to take, but she could not see what was wrong. When Diane visited her class, she observed the following: HEATHER: Juan, ask Anna what she is wearing. JÜAN: What are you wearing? ANNA: I am wearing a dress. HEATHER: Anna, ask Muriel what she is writing. ANNA: What are you writing? 7 MÜRIEL: I am writing a letter. This pattern continued for some time. It was clear to see that Heather had successfully avoided the common problem of the teacher asking all the questions in the class. The teacher was not asking the questions—the students were. However, Heather had not achieved her goal of encouraging student initiative, since it was she who took the initiative by prompting the students to ask the questions. Heather and Diane discussed the matter in the postobservation conference. Heather came to see that if she truly wanted students to take more initiative, then she would have to set up the situation in such a way that her participation in an activity was not essential. Diane talked about several ways Heather might do this. During this discussion, Heather came to another important awareness. She realized that since she was a fairly inexperienced teacher, she felt insecure about having the students make the decisions about who says what to whom, and when. What if the students were to ask her questions that she was unable to answer? Having students take the initiative in the classroom was consonant with her values; however, Heather realized that she needed to think further about what level of student initiative would be comfortable for her at this stage in her career as a teacher. The point was that it was not necessarily simply a matter of Heather improving her technique; she could see that that was one possibility. Another was to rethink the way in which she thought about her teaching (Larsen-Freeman 1993). The links between thought and action were very important in Heather’s teaching. She came to realize that when something was not going as she had intended, she could change her thought or she could change her action. Heather had an idea of what she wanted to accomplish—but the action she chose to carry it out did not achieve her purpose. When she examined her intentions more clearly, she saw that she was not yet ready to have her students take complete initiative in the lesson. So for now, the thinking underlying her approach had to change. As time passes, new methods are created and others fall into disfavor. Rajagopalan (2007) has observed that teachers experience ‘methods fatigue’ with the continual coming and going of methodological fashions. This has not been our experience, however. Our experience is that teachers always want to know what is new. They know that teaching is difficult work, and 8 they are always searching for ways to make it more successful. It is also sometimes the case that methods or practices that fall into disfavor in one era are resurrected in another. For instance, for many years, teachers were told that they should never use the students’ native language in the classroom— that they should never translate—even when all the students shared a language in common. The motivation for this advice was to maximize students’ opportunities to use the language they were studying. Associated with the Direct Method , this admonition arose because its immediate predecessor, the Grammar-Translation Method, made abundant use of translation (as the name suggests), but it did not prepare students to communicate in the language of instruction. However, these days such absolute proscriptions to avoid use of the students’ common language have come under attack. For instance, Cook (2010) suggests that such a proscription is isolationist and undermines the possibility for teachers and students to establish a relationship between languages. Further, he notes, it also violates the pedagogical principle of moving from the known (here the common language of the students) to the unknown (the language the students are learning). This principle is firmly embedded in Community Language Learning which makes use of translation to establish meaning and correspondence between the languages. It should be clear, then, that some of the methods featured in this book are incompatible with others. Of course, it is not only the dynamics internal to the field that contribute to changing practices. There are factors external to the field that affect language teaching as well. For instance, population flows among countries of the world have increased multilingualism (Todeva and Cenoz 2009). Then, too, the development and promotion of the Common European Framework (CEFR: Council of Europe 2001) has influenced thinking about language education. Among other things, the Council of Europe has encouraged plurilingualism (an individual’s language proficiency in several languages). Use of the CEFR promotes the view that most learners are not complete tabulaerasae. They already have some degree of competence in another language or languages, and teachers should take advantage of this (Paradowski 2007). The ongoing development of technology is another of those external influences that has had a major impact in the field, and this is likely to increase in the future. Speaking of external influences, we should also acknowledge that standardized examinations and textbooks, which require adherence to even the smallest details through their teacher guides, 9 mean that, in reality, teachers are not always able to exercise the methodological choices they would wish (Akbari 2007). Finally, it was not our intent to be comprehensive and to deal with all language teaching methods that have ever been practiced. While we consider the various methods in a rough chronological order, it is also the case that there were methods practiced before the first one discussed in this book, and that many of them are practiced concurrently. To be clear, we are not claiming that newer methods are better in all respects than older methods. What we did choose to do was to include methods2 that are practiced today, and that reflect a diversity of views on the teaching and learning processes. By confronting such diversity, and by viewing the thought- inaction links that others have made, we hope that you will arrive at your own personal conceptualizations of how thoughts lead to actions in your teaching and how, in turn, your teaching leads to the desired learning outcomes in your students. Thus, ultimately, the choice among techniques and principles depends on learning outcomes, a theme to which we will return in the final chapter of this book. 1.2 Language Learning: Children learn their first language subconsciously with relative ease and little if any stress. When all circumstances are normal, most children learn the basic structures and vocabulary of their first language within the first four years of their life. The language continues to develop through life in sophistication and complexity depending primarily on the child’s eventual level of education and use of the language in question. Generally speaking, all people are successful in the acquisition of their first language, and their speech tends to be marked by the accent and regional expressions of the area where they grow up. Although people are capable of learning any number of languages during their lifetime, many experience failure to different degrees in the process of learning other languages. Adults often complain that the target language (second/foreign language) is difficult to understand or pronounce. Anyone who has ever seriously attempted to master another language knows that it is a time consuming and challenging effort. Yet, research and experience demonstrate that the only 10