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A Course in English Language Teaching

A Course in English Language Teaching. 英语教学法教程. By Hu Yining FLD, Huangshan College. Something about the Course: It is a must for English teachers-to-be. It’s a compulsory course. It’s a great help to everybody here no matter what kind of profession he will be engaged in.

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A Course in English Language Teaching

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  1. A Course in English Language Teaching 英语教学法教程 By Hu Yining FLD, Huangshan College

  2. Something about the Course: • It is a must for English teachers-to-be. It’s a • compulsory course. • It’s a great help to everybody here no matter • what kind of profession he will be engaged in. • If you don’t want to be left behind in the field • of English learning and teaching, you should • learn the course well.

  3. It will help you to become a qualified English teacher sooner since all the in-service teachers have already been informed about the latest development in the field. • Additionally, see the “Preface” to the 1st edition of the course book.

  4. A List of Reference Books: 1. 《英语新课程教学模式与教学策略》黄文源, 上海教育出 版社; 2. 《中学新课标资源库 英语卷》教育部基础教育课程编辑 部,北京工业大学出版社; 3.《英语课程标准解读》 英语课程标准研制组, 江苏教育出版社; 4. How to Teach English(怎样教英语) Jeremy Harmer, 外语教学与研究出版社; 5. A Course in Language Teaching, Penny Ur, Cambridge University Press;

  5. 6. Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching (语言教学的基本概念)H. H. Stern, 上海外语教育出版社; 7. Issues and Options in Language Teaching (语言教学的问题与可选策略)H. H. Stern, 上海外语教育出版社; 8. The English Language Teacher’s Handbook Joanna Baker, Heather Westrup; Continuum Press; 9. Teaching Practice Handbook Roger Gower, Diane Phillips, Steve Walters; Macmillan Heinemann; 10. The Practice of English Language Teaching Jeremy Harmer; Longman Publishing;

  6. 11. Materials and Methods in ELT – A Teacher’s Guide (英语教学中的教材和方法) Jo McDonough, Christopher Shaw 北京大学出版社; 12. Challenge and Change in Language Teaching (语言教学的挑战与变迁) Jane Willis & Dave Willis 上海外语教育出版社; 13. Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom (语言课堂中的教与学)Tricia Hedge, 上海外语教育出版社; 14. Success in English Teaching (英语教学成功之道) Paul Davies & Eric Pearse, 上海外语教育出版社; 15. The Reference list at the back of the course book. ( They are available on the Internet or in the college library or in the small library of our department set up by the VSO teachers.)

  7. Arrangements of the Course: • Look at the “An overview of the book”(P.11) and the preface to know the layout of the course book. • Besides the contents in the course book, there will be some complementary contents added to the course in terms of “affective attitude, learning strategies, and cultural awareness”. (See the new curriculum and personal paper.) • Discussion and activities will be part of the course; micro-teaching and teaching practice count heavily for the assessment of the course. • Continuous assessment will be given to everybody besides the terminal exams.

  8. Unit 1 Language and Learning 1.1 How do we learn languages? • Much of human behavior is influenced by personal experiences. • The way language teachers teach in the classroom is to some extent influenced by the way they learned languages. • From Task 1 on P.2, what kind of conclusion can you get? • The challenge the language teacher is confronted with is how teaching methodology can cater for learners who have more differences than commonalities.

  9. 1.2 Views on language • “Whatis language?” The answer to this question is the basis for syllabus design, teaching methods, teaching procedures in the classroom, and even the techniques used in the class. • Different views on language generate different teaching methodologies. • To give a concise definition of language has always been difficult for linguists and philologists. Up to now, no authoritative answer has been given to “What is language?”

  10. For definitions of “language”, please refer to Appendix 1 on Page 177. • In the past half century, language teaching and learning practices have been influenced by 3 different views of language, namely, the structural view, the functional view and the inter-actional view. Structural view: • It sees language as a linguistic system made up of various subsystems: from phonological, morphological, lexical, etc. to sentences. • To learn a language means to learn these structural items so as to be able to understand and produce language.

  11. To know a language is to know its structural rules and vocabulary. Functional view: • It seeslanguage as a linguistic system but also as a means for doing things. • Most of our day-to-day language use involves functional activities: offering, suggesting, advising, apologizing, etc. • Learners learn a language in order to be able to do things with it. To perform functions, learners need to know how to combine the grammatical rules and the vocabulary to express notions that perform the functions.

  12. To the knowing a language, the communicative or notional-functional view add the need to know how to do what one wants to do. Inter-actional view: • It considers language as a communicative tool, whose main use is to build up and maintain social relations between people. • Learners not only need to know the grammar and vocabulary of the language but as importantly they need to know the rules for using them in a whole range of communicative contexts.

  13. The interactional view says that to know how to do what one wants to do involves also knowing whether it is appropriate to do so, and where, when and how it is appropriate to do it. • In order to know this, the learner has to study the patterns and rules of language above the sentence level to learn how language is used in different speech contexts. • To learn a language means to use it, rather than just study what it is and how it is formed.

  14. 1.3 Views on language learning • The language learning theory usually answers the 2 questions: 1. What are the psycholinguistic and cognitive processes involved in language learning? 2. What are the conditions that need to be met in order for these learning processes to be activated? • Although the two questions have never been satisfactorily answered, a vast amount of research has been done from all aspects. • The research can be broadly divided into process-oriented theories and condition-oriented theories, the details of which will be dealt with in Linguistics.

  15. 1.4 What is a good language teacher? (P. 6) • Think over the reasons for the phenomenon: Some teachers with an excellent command of a foreign language cannot teach the language well, while some teachers with a general command of the language teach it very well. • Whether a person can become a good foreign language teacher does not solely depend on his/her command of the language. • There are a variety of elements that contribute to the qualities of a good language teacher.

  16. These elements can be categorized into 3 groups: ethic devotion, professional qualities and personal styles. • Look at Task 5 and have some discussion. • A good English teacher should have ethic devotion, certain desirable personal styles, and more importantly, he or she should have necessary professional qualities. • These 3 aspects constitute the professional competence of a good English teacher. • A person with a good command of English is not necessarily a good teacher because he might have only one of the elements of professional competence.

  17. All responsible English teachers have ethic devotion, and they are supposed to make their personal styles compatible (suitable) with their work. • Ethic devotion and personal styles can be achieved as long as the teacher himself has the willingness to do so. • This book is mainly dealing with the “professional qualities” that an English teacher needs to have.

  18. What makes a good English teacher in students’ eyes? • He knows more than just what’s in the book; • He is young or young at heart; • He likes teaching and is well prepared; • He marks and returns students’ homework in time; • He shows the same interest in all his students; • He makes all the students work;

  19. He is patient, encouraging, sympathetic and motivating; • He has good pronunciation and intonation; • He is never sarcastic and never loses temper in class; • He is always full of vigor, in high spirits; • He enjoys good relationship with students; • He speaks slowly, clearly, and loudly; • He always treats his students as his equals; • He is highly responsible and devoted to his job.

  20. 1.5 How can one become a good language teacher? • The most important and most difficult part of the making of a good language teacher is the development of professional competence, which is the state or quality of being adequately qualified for the profession, and armed with a specific range of skills, strategies, knowledge, and ability. • Deal with TASK 6 in class and try to make everyone present aware of the importance to develop professional competence.

  21. A language teacher’s professional competence is much more difficult than a driver’s skill to handle a car, and is more complicated than a student’s competence of speaking a foreign language. • It involves more factors and longer learning time, and may never be really finished. • Some people think teaching is a craft; that is, a novice/new teacher can learn the profession by imitating the experts’ techniques, just like an apprentice.

  22. Others hold the view that teaching is an applied science, based on scientific knowledge and experimentation. • Wallace makes a compromise between the two views and uses a “reflective model” to demonstrate the development of professional competence. • Look at the chart of the model on P. 9 and discuss it.

  23. From the model, we can see that the development of professional competence for a language teacher involves Stage 1, Stage 2, and Goal. • The first stage is language training. All English teachers are supposed to have a sound command of English. • Language is always changing so language training can never come to an end.

  24. The second stage seems to be more complicated because it involves three sub-stages: learning, practice, and reflection. • The learningstage is actually the specific preparation that a language teacher should make before they go to practice. • This preparation can be: 1. learn from others’ experience (empirical knowledge 实践经验) 2. learn received knowledge (such as language theories, educational psychology, methodology) 3. learn from one’s own experience

  25. Both experiential knowledge (others’ and one’s own) and receives knowledge are useful when the teachers go to practice. • Actually, this is the combination of “craft” and “applied science”. • The next stage is practice. The term “practice” can be used in two senses. • In one sense, it is a short period of time assigned for student teachers to do teaching practice as part of their education, usually under the supervision of their instructors (pseudo practice 假的,模拟的)

  26. The other sense of “practice” is the real work that the teacher undertakes when he finishes his education. • Teachers benefit from practice if they keep on reflecting on what they have been doing. • Teachers reflect on their work not only after they finish a certain period of practice, but also while they are doing the practice.

  27. When the student teachers are doing pseudo practice, they are aware that they are trying out what they have learnt and they are likely to reflect on their work because their instructors/teachers require them to do so. • The pseudo practice is beneficial only if they are serious about the reflection. • The most difficult thing to do is to keep on reflection on their work when teachers are doing practice in the “real work” sense.

  28. After some period of practice and reflection, a teacher matures and approaches the goal—professional competence. (in the chart on P. 9) • But actually, professional competence is a “moving target or horizon, towards which professionals travel all their professional life but which never finally attained.” (Wallace, 1991). • Look at TASK 7 and discuss the 4 questions.

  29. Unit 2 Communicative Principles and Activities 2.1 Language use in real life vs. traditional pedagogy • The ultimate goal of foreign language teaching is to enable the students to use the foreign language in work or life when necessary. • Thus we should teach that part of the language that will be used (rather than all parts of the language). • And we should teach language in the way that is used in the real world.

  30. However, this is not always the case in the present day foreign language teaching practice. • Very often there is a big gap between the use of language in real life and the traditional foreign language teaching pedagogy. (Look at TASK 1 on P. 14 briefly.) • The differences between language use in real life and what is done in traditional teaching pedagogy are numerous. • Generally speaking, language use in real life differs from traditional language teaching pedagogy in the following aspects:

  31. In real life, language is used to perform certain communicative functions; in traditional pedagogy, the teaching focus on is on form rather than functions. So, When students have learned a lot of sentences or patterns, they don’t know their functions. They arte unable to use them appropriately in real social situations. • For various reasons, traditional pedagogy tends to focus on one or two language skills and ignore the others. In real language use we use all skills, including the receptive skills of listening and reading, and the productive skills of speaking and writing.

  32. In real life, language is always used in a certain context, but traditional pedagogy tends to isolate language from its context. (e.g. The teaching of present tense in the situational methods + the example of teaching passive voice on P. 14.) Students keep asking questions because the grammar pattern is taken away from the language context. If the teaching of the passive starts with examples from real language use in context, students will have fewer questions to ask.

  33. 2.2 Fostering communicative competence • One possible solution to bridge the gap between classroom language teaching and real life language use is the adoption of communicative language teaching. • Communicative language teaching has in recent years become a fashionable term to cover a variety of developments in syllabus design and in the methodology of foreign language teaching.

  34. The goal of CLT is to develop students’ communicative competence, which includes both the knowledge about the language and the knowledge about how to use the language appropriately in communicative situations. • The term communicative competence is used in contrast to Chomsky’s term linguistic competence which is understood as the tacit knowledge of language structure and the ability to use this knowledge to understand and produce language.

  35. For Chomsky, competence simply means knowledge of the language system: grammatical knowledge in other words. • However, if we look at how language is used in real communication, we have to accept that real language use involves far more than knowledge and ability for grammaticality. • According to Hymes, there are “rules of use without which the rules of grammar would be useless.”

  36. That is to say, besides grammatical rules, language use is governed by rules of use, which ensure that the desired or intended functions are performed and the language used is appropriate to the context. • According to Hymes, communicative competence includes 4 aspects: • knowing whether or not something is formally possible (grammatically acceptable), which is roughly equivalent to Chomsky’s linguistic competence; • Knowing whether something is understand-able to human beings;

  37. 3) Knowing whether something is in line with social norms; 4) Knowing whether or not something is in fact done: Do people actually use language this way? • In other words, communicative competence entails knowing not only the language code or the form of language, but also what to say to whom and how to say it appropriately in any given situation. • Communicative competence includes knowledge of what to say, when, how, where, and to whom.

  38. (补充内容) Communicative competence交际能力 • Something that helps a language user to understand others and to make himself understood; • Something that helps the user to achieve his communicative aim; • Something that helps the user to use the language effectively and appropriately.

  39. (补充内容) 交际能力的四个组成部分(即四种判断力): • The ability to judge whether something is grammatical; 2) The ability to judge whether something is psychologically acceptable; 3) The ability to judge whether something is socially appropriate; 4) The ability to judge how often something occurs.

  40. Based on the concept of communicative competence and aiming at developing such competence, communicative teaching has the following features: • It stresses the need to allow students opportunities for authentic and creative use of the language; 2) It focus on meaning rather than form; 3) It suggests that learning should be relevant to the needs of the students;

  41. 4) It advocates task-based language teaching. Students should be given tasks to perform or problems to solve in the classroom. 5) It emphasizes a functional approach to language learning (i.e. what people do with language, such as inviting, apologizing, greeting and introducing, etc.) also, to be competent in the target language, learners should acquire not only linguistic knowledge, but also the culture of that language.

  42. Although people’s understanding of communicative language teaching varies, the following three principles have been generally agreed upon: • Communication principle: Activities that involve real communication promote learning. 2) Task principle: Activities in which language is used for carrying meaningful tasks promote learning. 3) Meaningful principle: Language that is meaningful to the learner supports the learning process.

  43. (补充内容)交际英语课堂的特征 What are the features of communicative English teaching? 1) 尊重个人差异,面向全体学生; 2) 教学中以学生为主体; 3) 语言知识教学与语言交际能力的培养互相渗透、相辅 相成; 4) 时时注意激发学生的兴趣与学习动机; 5) 教学中体现多样性的特点 ; 6) 培养学生的创造性思维能力; 7) 体现师生之间、学生之间的情感交流; 8) 运用各种教学媒体,注意提高学生的学习效果; 9) 学生的活动要占一定的比例; 10) 与其他学科自然联系,寓德育美育于语言教学之中。

  44. 2.3 The implementation of language skills • Thetranslation of communicative competence in language teaching practice is to develop learners’ language skills, namely, listening, speaking, reading and writing. • In traditional pedagogy, listening and speaking activities include: • listening to texts either read by the teacher or pre-recorded on the tape; • repeating what is heard; • answering questions according to what is heard; • producing responses based on given cues; • retelling what is heard.

  45. It is clear that these activities involve use of language in a completely different way from how language is used in reality. • So, listening and speaking skills need to be redefined in terms of the real communicative use, that is, students should have the chance to listen to and produce what is meaningful, authentic, unpredictable, and creative if ever possible. • The listening skill has received special attention in CLT, possibly because it previously had been neglected as a skill in its own right.

  46. Listening shares a number of features of reading since both are interpretative and receptive skills. • Listening is viewed not only as the counterpart of speaking (as in dialogues, conversations, and discussions), but also as an independent skill with its own objectives. • In real life, there are many situations in which we act as listeners only, for example as audience for radio, television, lecture, films, etc.

  47. Since communicative courses focus on meaning rather than on form, the reading skill is redefined to focus on the purpose of reading. • Traditionally the purpose of reading is to learn language, namely, vocabulary, grammar, etc. The reading skills involved might be decoding, structural analysis, etc. • In CLT, reading is to extract the meaning or the messages, and for different reading purposes, the students use different skills, such as skimming and scanning.

  48. In CLT, the writing skill has been expanded to focus on its communicative goals as well. • Students should practice writing what people write in reality and writing in the way people write in reality. • Students should have the chance to write to express their own feelings or describe their own experiences, thus making the practice of writing meaningful and authentic.

  49. In a word, CLT has not replaced the previous approaches or methodologies. It has only expanded the areas: 1) language content (to incorporate functions); 2) learning process (cognitive style and information processing); 3) product (language skills). ( Have a quick look at TASK 3 on P. 17.)

  50. 2.4 Communicative activities (P.18) • The key assumption in communicative language teaching is that the students learn the language through engaging in a variety of communicative activities. • But what are communicative activities? In his classic book Communicative Language Teaching, Littlewood introduced a classification of communicative activities. ( See the list on P. 18 with explanations. )

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