ASSIGNMENT:
METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES

GENERAL INFORMATION:

This assignment has to be done in groups of 3 or 4 students and has to fulfil the following conditions:

-   Length: between 5 and 6 pages (without including cover, index or appendices –if there are any-).

-   Type of font: Arial or Times New Roman.

-   Size: 11.

-   Line height: 1.5.

-   Alignment: Justified.

The assignment has to be done in this Word document and has to fulfil the rules of presentation and edition, as for quotes and bibliographical references which are detailed in the Study Guide.

Also, it has to be submitted following the procedure specified in the “Subject Evaluation” document. Sending it to the tutor’s e-mail is not permitted.

In addition to this, it is very important to read the assessment criteria, which can be found in the “Subject Evaluation” document.

 

Assignment:

Look at the classroom activity suggested in the Assignment materials section (at the same place where you can find this paper), and answer the following questions:

1.    There are various statements in this text which are extremely questionable, depending on your own personal view of language learning.  For example, the text says, “...the chart....can serve as a basis for lively questions and discussions....”   Why might this be ‘questionable’? 

2.    Criticise the approach suggested here from the point of view of a ‘strong’ communicative teacher.

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.

Important: you have to write your personal details and the subject name on the cover (see the next page). The assignment that does not fulfil these conditions will not be corrected. You have to include the assignment index below the cover.

Assignment: METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES

Students’ names:

- Manuel Moreno Tapia

- Germán Tacora Cauna

- Maricela Hernández

- Alma María Silguero Cena

Group: FP TEFL 2017-06

Date: August 18, 2017

 

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF CHARTS AND TABLES IN THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH

1. There are various statements in this text which are extremely questionable, depending on your own personal view of language learning.  For example, the text says, “...the chart....can serve as a basis for lively questions and discussions....”   Why might this be ‘questionable’?  

Nowadays English is the most popular language in the world, and the speaking skill plays an essential role in communication in our daily life. Even though, teaching speaking by focusing on grammar is out of date and less interesting. The use of charts and tables is very helpful, but it does not mean that students should make discussions or questions about it.

There is no doubt to consider communication the most important objective in language learning. However, can we consider that this only happens through simply input understanding? Krashen and Terrel and their natural approach advocate the input hypothesis in which learners should receive a sufficient quantity of comprehensible input to carry on a successful acquisition. They argue that the students are exposed to input that is a little beyond their present level and through understanding it they will acquire the language. The idea of determining the student’s level is not so easy so getting this so called comprehensible input according to the level of students is something that represents a very dedicated job for teachers and sometimes very difficult to determine.

In the text Personal Charts and Tables, it is used charts and tables as a means of providing comprehensible input with information about the students in a particular class. The teacher collects information about the students’ routines with the objective to practice the simple present tense and the use of the s or es in the verbs in third person. We may understand that the students’ level is basic for the type of structure and tense being taught. However this comprehensible input does not assure the students will be able to use this information at more advanced levels. A more advanced level may require types of questions and expressions that maybe these students haven’t seen yet. On the other hand the text poses the possibility to use this material with a higher level of difficulty and shows some questions to be used. Yet the information in the chart is insufficient to increase the level of the discussion. It will depend on the internal students’ motivation to move on to a higher level of discussion. We need to collect more detailed information from the students to achieve lively questions and discussion to provide the so desired comprehensible input. As it is mentioned in the text Krashen and Terrell's “Natural Approach” by Ken Romeo:

“Krashen would have the teacher think that this was all that is necessary, and it is just a matter of time before the students are able to express themselves freely. However, Ellis (1992) points out that even as of his 1985 work (Krashen 1985), he still has not provided a single study that demonstrated the Input Hypothesis.”

Thus creating charts with students’ information and pretending that these pieces of information can be used to increase the level of students’ production will wind up in using the mere structure to construct questions and answers but not in having a real communicative session.

Beyond any doubts these kinds of charts promote interaction and in some way communication among students, considering the communicative approach in which students can express concepts and perform communicative activities (Widdowson, 1990). They also encourage learners’ autonomy using the target language. Nevertheless, they do not fulfill the main characteristics of communicative competence that suggests language is always used in social contexts, knowing when to speak, what to talk about, with whom, etc. (Hymes 1972) as well as developing notional and functional competency (Wilkins 1976).

Charts and tables can be very useful tools if students are more familiar with the structure, as mentioned above. However, there have been some changes nowadays. Communicative approach has encouraged the use of authentic materials in the classroom, such as magazine or newspaper articles, books extracts, native speaker dialogues and similar materials. The main advantages of using authentic materials are (Philips and Shettlesworth 1978; Clarke 1989; Peacock 1997, cited in Richards, 2001):

●        They have a positive effect on learner motivation.

●        They provide authentic cultural information.

●        They provide exposure to real language.

●        They relate more closely to learners' needs.

●        They support a more creative approach to teaching.

The text says, “...the chart....can serve as a basis for lively questions and discussions....”   Why might this be ‘questionable’? However, we need to consider that communicative competence does not only refers to having the ability to ask and answer in interactions but to develop the following aspects (Jack Richards, 2006):

-   To know how to use language for different purposes and functions.

- To know how to use language in different setting and with different participants.

-   To understand and produce different kinds of texts.

-   To know how to continue a conversation despite limitations in accuracy.

It also says, "… this information serves as a basis for the class follow – up discussion.” But the topic or topics would be basically the same. Therefore, it might become boring for students and they will not “acquire” the language which is defined as developing competence by using language for real communication (Krashen and Terrell).

To summarize, the extract of the text that says “...the chart… can serve as a basis for lively questions and discussions…” might be questionable because a chart produces less motivation than an authentic material such as role playing or discussing real-world videos or texts that have not been specifically designed for pedagogical purposes. So, in the end, the students focus more on understanding the chart and using the correct structure rather than using their knowledge to create lively questions and discussions.

Finally, the charts and tables suggested in the text can be very useful to encourage students to interact in the classroom but it is crucial to expose learners to real setting or at least simulate them so that they can develop communicative competence.

2. Criticise the approach suggested here from the point of view of a ‘strong’ communicative teacher.

According to Howatt (1984)

 “The strong version of a communicative teaching claims that language is acquired through communication, so that it is not merely a question of activating an existing and inert knowledge of the language, but of stimulating the development of the language system itself”.

From the point of view of a “strong” communicative teacher, charts and tables may not be the first choice to provide comprehensible input. When students interpret a chart, they automatically focus on structure, which is restrained by strong communicative teachers.

However, this kind of teacher prefers activities or tasks that motivate using English to learn it. (Howatt, 1984). For example, tasks which more closely reflect a real-world communication process are perceived as more valid by English learners. As a result, students increase their engagement and have a higher regard for their English education.

As stated in the previous answer, authentic or real-world material have taken the place of created materials, which are described by Richards (2001) as textbooks and others specially developed instructional resources.

The communicative approach in a language teaching starts from a theory of language as communication. (Hymes, 1972) referred that the goal of language teaching is to develop the communicative competence. Hymes coined this term in order to contrast a communicative view of language. Chomsky held that linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker, listener in a completely homogeneous speech community. For Chomsky, the focus of linguistics was to characterize the abstract abilities speakers possess that enable to produce grammatically correct sentences in a language. Hymes’ theory of communicative competence was a definition of what a speaker needs to know in order to communicate. In this chart we can observe that the structure pattern is the usage of the simple present, rules of the third person singular, daily routines and leisure activities. For some teachers this structure pattern seems to be easy but for the students it is very complicated and even though as a speaking activity they find it more difficult. For Hymes, a person who acquires communicative competence acquires both knowledge and ability for language use. Activities are consequently selected according to how well they engage the learner in meaningful and authentic language use.

Stephen Krashen, who is not directly associated with communicative language teaching, sees acquisition theories as the basic process involved in developing language proficiency and distinguishes this process from learning.

The use of charts with personal information from the students and its use in follow-up discussions or lively questions may be considered an activity that promotes communication, in some teacher’s view. However, we know that the goal of a communicative session is to develop communicative competence and we develop it through making communication the focus of the classroom.

In this activity, although we use personal information from the students; the level of the class, the socio-cultural factor and the students’ background; limit communication. It could happen that students’ economic situation does not let them do other things besides studying English, so the possibilities to discuss other activities any other day of the week will be very few to activate longer communication. On the other hand if the level of the class is at the “speech emerges” stage, the interaction in class will be very short and maybe will end in a traditional teaching approach emphasizing on the forms of the sentences and not on the context. The opportunity to develop knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, functional language and communicative skills will be only reserved for those with a higher level of learning language background. It is necessary to design a session where the objectives are closed related to a specific use of language and to promote communicative competence. To have an open possibility to discuss different aspects of students’ lives will end up maybe in a question and answer session in which the students will be asking for the meaning of words that are not familiar to them. In addition, the teacher will be using the class as a correcting session for all the mistakes that may come up for the lack of vocabulary and grammar knowledge. Finally, the diversity of scenarios that may occur will make almost impossible to control the different utterances that might happen during the communicative process, hence there will be as many objectives as scenarios.

Narrowing objectives and providing the vocabulary and structures to use and their use – considering the learners in all their linguistic and sociocultural aspects – will make the session more communicative. As Hymes argues:

“….the aim of language learning is to help the learners acquire the ability to perform naturally, that is, the learners acquire the knowledge of sentences not only as grammatical but also as appropriate.”

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.

If we were teachers more focused on form than in context, we would agree in the way the activity is presented. We would advocate the use of charts and tables – although some communicative teachers may say it is dull and boring – in developing linguistic as well as communicative competence. According to Chomsky formal grammar responds to the question of why humans are able to learn language at all. Chomsky believed all humans possess a deep “universal” grammar from which they developed the specific of their mother tongues. The deep structures of universal grammar are used to generate the language a person learns and to enable him or her to use transformations to create particular sentence structures in that language. So using charts to learn specific structures can generate linguistic competence in that structure considering the deep structures of universal grammar used to generate the language a person learns. In the activity mentioned the students practice language for weekly routines and hence the use of the present simple. In addition, they learn to make questions and sentences using this tense. The chart provides the necessary elements to successfully teach this structure, and students may expand this activity – according to their level- towards follow-up discussions.  We can’t deny that within a generally communicative approach, teaching grammar rules leads to a better learning and to unconscious knowledge, and this knowledge lasts over time.

On the other hand, not only grammar is taught using this chart but also vocabulary. The acquisition of vocabulary is influenced by the degree of engagement with it on the part of a learner, and this happens in this exercise because the terms for the activities are closely related to the interests of the students and in tandem with grammar develop linguistic and communicative competence. Even though using and charts and tables may be seen as a structural approach in learning a language this does not mean that they cannot be used to increase communicative competence. The paranoia of using only communicative approaches to learn a language can make teachers forget the important role that grammar has in acquiring it, lest our final product is a learner who can communicate but with serious linguistic problems to make his message inextricable and difficult to be understood.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES

 - Arzamendi, J., Ball Ph., Gassó, E. Communicative Approaches: A Dominant Paradigm in ELT. In Methodological Approaches. FUNIBER,106 – 109.

- Boers, F. (2013) Cognitive Linguistic approaches to teaching vocabulary: Assessment and integration.

-  Burns, A. (2009) Grammar and Communicative Language Teaching: Why, When, and How to Teach It? Aston University, Birmingham, UK. University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

- Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

- Howatt, A. (1984). A History of English Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University.

- Hymes, D. H. (1972) On Communicative Competence In: J.B. Pride and J. Holmes(eds) Sociolinguistics. Selected readings.

-   Liu, C. (2015) Application of Communicative Method in EFL Listening and Speaking Class. School of Foreign Studies, Nantong University, Nantong, China.

- Richards, J.C. (2001). Curriculum development in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

- Richards, J.C. (2006). Communicative Language Today. University of Sydney.

- Richard, J. (2012, June 25) Communicative Language Teaching.  [Video File]. Retrieved from   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20zBOWrP2yc

- Romeo K. Krashen and Terrell’s Natural Approach. Retrieved from https://web.stanford.edu/~hakuta/www/LAU/ICLangLit/NaturalApproach.htm

- Krashen, S.D. and Terrell, T.D.  (1983) The Natural Approach: Language Acquisition in the Classroom, Oxford, Pergamon Press.

- Walter, C. (2012, September 18) Time to stop avoiding grammar rules. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/sep/18/teach-grammar-rules

- Widdowson, H. G. (1990). Aspects of Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

- Wilkins, D. A. (1976). Notional Syllabuses. London: Oxford University Press.