The role of grammar in ELT has varied a lot since what became known as the Grammar-Transla, Resúmenes de Idioma Inglés

¡Descarga The role of grammar in ELT has varied a lot since what became known as the Grammar-Transla y más Resúmenes en PDF de Idioma Inglés solo en Docsity! Universidad Internacional Iberoamericana ANTONIO PIRES SOARES JULIANA DE OLIVEIRA MARTINS PAULO JOSÉ CABANA DE QUEIROZ ANDRADE ROSANA DE FÁTIMA ELIAS FERNANDES SANTIAGO ALEJANDRO MOSCOSO CEPEDA ASSIGNMENT METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES – FP 006 2021 ANTONIO PIRES SOARES JULIANA DE OLIVEIRA MARTINS PAULO JOSÉ CABANA DE QUEIROZ ANDRADE ROSANA DE FÁTIMA ELIAS FERNANDES SANTIAGO ALEJANDRO MOSCOSO CEPEDA ASSIGNMENT METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES – FP 006 Paper written as a partial requirement for the Master in Teaching English as a Foreign Language, oriented by Professor María Eugenia Falabella. Before eliciting answers from the students to build the table, the teacher would have to first provide plenty of examples to involve the students in the proposed discussion. As Harmer suggests (2017: 128), “people need time to assemble their thoughts before any discussion”. The table itself could not fulfill this task, needing some sort of decisive complementation. The importance of input in language learning is acknowledged not only by Krashen, but also by other mainstream theorists. The material presented fails to provide input that is challenging, communicatively applicable and comprehensive. 2. Criticise the approach suggested here from the point of view of a ‘strong’ communicative teacher. Communicative language teaching is a set of approaches that appeared in the 1970s as a reaction to the focus on form which previous methods incorporated. Prior to CLT, language was seen as a formal system, and teaching was focused on promoting the acquisition of a command of this system (Funiber, 2019: 7). As a reaction to this standpoint, the strong version of communicative language teaching tends to underplay the importance of form, and, consequently, of the necessity for an explicit teaching of grammar, in favor of an emphasis on the communicative facet of language (Howatt, 1984, cited in Funiber, 2019: 106-107). The activity under analysis can be criticized from the viewpoint of a strong communicative teacher in more than one aspect. The first aspect that could be highlighted is the fact that, throughout the instruction proposed, the teacher occupies the center of the lesson. The table is built from the elicitation of data from the students, but their participation is limited to providing the information asked and answering questions about the chart. Communicative methodologies imply the acceptance of a less central role of the teacher in the classroom, such as that of facilitator or manager of the learning process (Larsen-Freeman, 1986, cited in Funiber, 2019: 99). In the development of the lesson described in the text, the teacher seems to remain the protagonist from beginning to end. The counterpart of the teacher’s withdrawal to a side position is the rising of the student to a central position. In a communicative learning environment, the student is also responsible for his or her own learning. The assumption is that students should contribute as much as they gain from the instructional process (Breen and Candlin, 1980, cited in Funiber, 2019: 74), taking a more positive role than in traditional approaches and determining the direction of their learning (Widdowson, as cited in FUNIBER, 2019: 99). The work with the table, on the contrary, keeps students in a secondary role, answering questions out of context and talking about different topics that may not have any relationship with each other. Also, the activity is not meaningful, in that it does not represent or reproduce situations of real communication. That is emphasized by Nunan, who advocates collaborative learning as fundamental in the development of linguistic competence (1992, cited in Funiber, 2019: 104). To fulfill this goal, learners should be involved, for example, in debates and discussions, which would contribute to the use of language as a tool to solve problems while engaging students in simulated social interaction. On the other hand, this lack of communicative potential can be verified in the text itself. To be communicative, materials should contain the identification of the students in specific situations rehearsing real life. Furthermore, situations of use must be linked to detailed scenarios where communication could take place, even if just imaginarily (Funiber, 2019: 97). While answering questions about the table, students are simply students, with no shift of role, and thus with little aptitude to produce learning. Finally, communicative language teaching substituted for the view of language as a formal system the idea that language is a skill with which one can do things. Among these things is the use of language to learn language (Howatt, cited in FUNIBER, 2019). If the students do not reflect on the language they produce or are exposed to, no real learning takes place. Once again, simply answering questions about the table, without analyzing the grammar and lexis involved in routines, such as the Simple Present tense or the vocabulary for sports, makes the activity demotivating and ineffective. In conclusion, the table and the question answering that follows it do not correspond to a strong version of communicative language learning because they are teacher-centered, they do not involve students in a context of real life communication and they fail to prompt learning when they do not lead students to the study of their own production. 3. Say what is good about the approach, from the point of view of a teacher more focused on form and a step-by-step, linear approach. The role of grammar in ELT has varied a lot since what became known as the Grammar-Translation method, back in the 18th century. Once the center of instruction (Funiber, 2019: 20), grammar was relegated to a secondary position by the Direct Method (Funiber, 2019: 24). In the Audiolingual Method, the idea was that grammar should be induced from massive drilling of sentence patterns and memorization of dialogs (Funiber, 2019: 35). Communicative language teaching, as seen in the previous answer in this assignment, can be understood in terms of “strong CLT,” which focuses on communication goals exclusively, and “weak CLT,” in which communicative content is brought into the lesson. The weak form has another important trait: it does not overshadow the importance of language forms for the acquisition of linguistic competence (Howatt, 1984, cited in Funiber, 2019: 106). The activity proposed seems to have this concern, and thus meets the profile of a teacher more worried about language forms. The linear approach followed by the teacher started with the presentation of the theme – routines – by elicitation. As students gave their answers, these answers were entered in the table, after the teacher shaped the students’ ideas into prompts. In doing so, the teacher provided controlled input that highlighted the necessary grammar pattern for talking about the theme: the simple present tense. At the same time, the cues written by the teacher in the chart show a focus on the third person singular. Even if explicit teaching of grammar rules was not something the teacher planned on doing, the inflexion in the verb forms would make the students realize the transformation in form that verbs in English take in that specific person. Practice comes right after the presentation. Using the personal data provided by the class, the teacher started a series of questions that could be answered simply and objectively. Yes/No questions and Wh questions about the table made the students use the language patterns in a controlled way. That would enable the teacher to monitor the output closely, correcting, almost instantaneously, the problems in accuracy that could arise. Finally, the last part of the activity, when more open-ended questions are asked using the table as a point of departure, the assumption is that students would expand the use of the language taught freely. Once again, the teacher can monitor learners’ production and guide it in a way that it is kept inside the theme and the corresponding grammar patterns. This would, in its turn, make it possible to take production even further, in more contextualized situations using the same language, such as songs and other text genres. The table would act as a bridge to a more natural learning context, where students could be confronted with real-life situations of language use. The tables used provide a clear path for the acquisition of the language forms related to routines. Students can then mentally organize their reasoning as they learn