Personal assignment 9

Make your own summary of at least 5 theories, using words that your (future) pupils would understand.

1. Grammar Translation Method; 17^th – 19^th century.

When learning a language, pupils had to learn grammatical rules and vocabulary by repeating it until they remembered it. The exercises these pupils had to do consisted of translating texts and copying sample sentences. They concentrated on the form of words in a specific sentence; pupils didn’t have to understand the meaning of what they learnt and in fact it had little to do with their real-life situation.

2. Direct Method; mid-19^th century.

This method is considered to be the first of natural methods. Pupils have to begin with speaking the new language and later, when they are able to understand a language well, they start to learn other language skills. This way words are presented in a context, which makes understanding them a lot easier.

Important names: C. Marcel, F. Gouin and T. Pendergast.

3. Audio-lingual method; mid-20^st century.

In World War II there was a need for army officials and soldiers who were able to express themselves verbally. They learnt other languages by repeating sentence structures, which were given to them by their teachers. Learners had to learn these structures and set phrases by heart. There was no grammatical explanation or understanding. The audio-lingual method is inspired by Behaviourism. Although this method sounds very unnatural, it was very successful and the ‘Army Method’ became popular way of learning a language until the mid-1960’s.

Important names: I. Pavlov, J. Watson and B.F. Skinner.

4. Transformational Generative Grammar; mid-1960’s.

Linguist Noam Chomsky developed the Transformational Generative Grammar. He stated that learners of a second language do not need an endless list of rules, but a smaller set of grammatical criteria which can be used again and again.

Important name: N. Chomsky.

5. ‘Designer’- methods: The Silent Way; mid-1970’s.

The Silent Way expected the pupils to learn how to solve language problems by themselves or work

together solving them. Therefore the Silent Way was a language teaching method that had to be

understood. The teacher had a silent role: he or she was not expected to explain something to pupils

and this was considered a rather harsh way of teaching.

Important name: Gattegno.

My sources: 

http://www.aber.ac.uk/~mflwww/seclangacq/langteach1.htm

http://www.englishclub.com/tefl-articles/history-english-language-teaching.htm

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/blogs/sanjukta-mukherjee/a-short-historiographical-study-language-teaching-methodology

BlackBoard assignment 10

Think back of how YOU were taught your second (or third) language. Describe how it happened at the time, using the newly acquired terminology. Write a 300-500 word essay in which you reflect on your own language learning memories. Give examples of the kind of exercises and activities you were asked to carry out, indicating what views on language were behind it.

English is my second language, but if you would like to take my dialect into account, it is actually my third. English lessons were offered at my primary school and I enjoyed them a lot. I believe I must have been eleven or twelve. I think the purpose of the lessons was that we should go to secondary education ‘well’ prepared and thus we were allowed to watch a television series called ‘The Secret of the Lost Druid’. Although I liked to watch the series and I liked the workbook that came along with it because it allowed me to draw a lot, I cannot remember if it taught me any English apart from the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and ‘what’s your name… my name is…’ I already knew.

The first ‘real’ English lesson I can remember was at my school for secondary education. I remember writing ‘its’ and ‘it’s’ on the blackboard. We had a brilliant teacher, Mr Konings. Although the method made us memorize all sorts of words alphabetically (starting with ‘abolition act’) and provided grids filled with grammatical rules, Mr Konings managed to actually teach us English. My love for the English language started in his classroom and English turned out to be the strongest subject on my diploma.

The method we used was called ‘Notting Hill Gate’. I can still recall the drawings of the British teenagers who had all different kinds of ‘adventures’, differing from baking cookies and making us memorise the ingredients to going to a football match. I really liked that book. It provided English in a playful way, which appealed to most pupils, I think. The vocabulary ‘training’ was offered to us in a separate book, of which I cannot remember the name.

Compared to the techniques in teaching vocabulary that are offered to me in this teacher training course the method of learning vocabulary in alphabetic order is ‘ancient’. I must admit that I found it very difficult to learn all those words by heart, especially since they didn’t make sense at first. There was just no connection between them. 

Fortunately, our brilliant teacher had his way with words. He made us understand the importance of learning vocabulary and grammar and he even provided us with penfriend agencies for speakers of English as a second language all over the world. I had a Japanese and a Korean penfriend for a while. That was before the age of email and Skype! I believe that the method was about learning as many words as possible, combined with knowledge of grammar. What I actually learnt during those lessons was that the teacher’s effort made the difference. I suppose that did not change over the years. (448 words)

Source photograph: http://www.amazon.com/Notting-Hill-Gate-Tl-1-Textbook/dp/3425030019/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309604214&sr=1-10

BlackBoard assignment 11

Due to circumstances, I had my internship in a Dutch language class. Of course, Dutch is not our second language; to the majority of the pupils it is the mother tongue. Therefore it is impossible to indicate the method of second language learning used during my internship.

Of course, whilst studying this course and another module concerning Language Acquisition, I came across a few theories I would like to use in my classroom. In my Language Acquisition course (ENEN TELA), I have studied Gerard Westhoff’s Penta Pie. This Penta Pie appealed a lot to me, since the contents of lessons have much variation and the lessons are designed in order to present very motivating subject matter. I feel that if my lessons – the ones in the future or the ones that I design now for other courses – contain a lot of learning alternatives, my pupils will be inspired to learn effectively. What I like best of Westhoff’s Penta Pie is the input. Pupils are provided with the second language all the time; during English classes the only language spoken by the teacher – and by pupils preferably – is English. This way pupils get acquainted with the new language.  Furthermore I believe that Westhoff shows that all ingredients of his Penta Pie work together and that they are very effective.

I want to be a very creative teacher. I have already sent in my Culture 1 Literature project. I designed a number of literature lessons for the first Harry Potter book, written by J.K. Rowling. I am absolutely convinced of the fact that pupils will be able to learn something – no matter what subject you teach -  if the subject matter given to them is creative, interesting, realistic and fun. (285 words)