Unit 1 language and language teaching
1. What makes a good language teacher? ? Ethic devotion
? Professional qualities ? Personal styles
2. Views on language learning and learning in general:
? Process-oriented theories: concerned with how the mind organizes new
information such as habit formation, induction, making inference, hypothesis testing and generalization.
? Condition-oriented theories: emphasize the nature of the human and physical
context in which the language learning take place, such as the number of the students and the kind of input learners receive, and the atmosphere.
3. How can one become a language teacher?
It involves more factors and longer learning time, and may never be finished.
other's experiencelanguage developmentreceived knowledgeown experiencePractice Stage 2 ReflectioProfessional competence
Stage 1 Goal Stage 1: all English teachers are supposed to have a sound command of English. Stage 2: learning, practice and reflection.
? Learning:
? Learning from others? experience (empirical knowledge gained
through reading and observation)
? Learning the received knowledge (language learning theories,
educational psychology, language teaching methodology, etc.)
? Practice
? Pre-service practice (pseudo practice) ? Real classroom practice
? Reflection: take on reflection seriously and keep reflection
Goal: (do not have an end) one can never become a perfect teacher. There is
always room for improvement.
Unit2 communicative principles and task-based language teaching
1. What is communicative competence
? Linguistic competence
Knowledge of language itself ? Pragmatic competence
The choice of the vocabulary and structure depends on the setting, the relative status of the speakers and their relationship. ? Discourse competence
The ability to understand or to express a topic logically and coherently by effectively employing or comprehending the cohesive marks, such as first, second.
? Strategic competence
Searching for other means of expression, such as using a similar phrase …… ? Fluency
the ability to link units of speech together with facility and without strain or inappropriate slowness or undue hesitation)
CLT: communicative language teaching
2. Principles of communicative language teaching ? Communication principle
Activities that involve real communication promote learning. ? Task principle
Activities in which language is used for carrying out meaningful tasks promote learning.
? Meaningfulness principle
Language that is meaningful to the learner support the learning process.
3. Main features of communicative activities ? Communicative purpose
There must be some information gap that students seek to bridge ? Communicative desire
A real need to communicate ? Content not form
They must have some massage they want to communicate ? Variety of language ? No teacher intervention ? No material control
TBLT: task- based language teaching 4. Four components of a task ? A purpose
Make sure students have a reason for undertaking the task ? A context
5.
6.
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This can be real, simulated or imaginary, and involves sociolinguistic issues such as the location and the relationship of the speaker…… ? A process
Getting students to learn some language strategies such as problem solving, reasoning…… ? A product
Focus on individual language items –
Purposeful andcontextualized communication + Then
Exercise → task
TBL:
? Pre-task
Introduction to topic and task ? Task cycle
? Task ? Planning ? Report
? Students hear task recording or read text ? Language focus
? Analysis and practice ? Review and repeat task PPP
? Presentation
Of single new item; teachers introduces new vocabulary and grammatical structures. ? Practice
Of new item: drills, exercise, and dialogue ? Production
Activity, role play or task to encourage ?free? use of language
How to design tasks
? Think about students? needs and interests and abilities ? Brainstorm possible tasks ? Evaluate the list
? Choose the language items ? Preparing materials
9. Constrainsof CLT:
? Whether it will meet the needs of learners from different contexts
? It is very difficult to design a one to one correspondence between a function a
form.
10. Constrains of TBLT
? Not effective for presenting new languages ? Time is limited: teachers are busy
? Culture of learning: some students may find it difficult to adapt to TBLT
? Level of difficulty: students may find task-base language teaching quite
difficult of they do not have sufficient linguistic resources.