4. Introduction
‘Another language is another soul’
Charles V
It means that to know two languages is
to possess a second soul.
There is another German proverb that
means (the more languages you know,
the more you are a human being)
4
5. A second language teacher should
know :
• How languages are learned?
• How do differences among learners affect
learning processes and teaching procedures?
• What motivations do learners have for learning
English?
• What roles can learners and teachers play in the
language and learning processes?
• What roles can learning materials play in the
classroom?
5
6. Issues for the language
teacher
• Issues about the learning conditions in terms of
language input and language practice on which
students study are :-
• 1. Variety of learners motivations and needs.
2. Insufficient authentic English language
materials.
• 3.The balance between commercial materials and
teacher –made materials in fulfilling curriculum
objectives.
6
7. • 4. A sense of awareness that language teaching is a
complex endeavour, requiring a professional
approach which involves decision-making at a variety
of levels .
5.Principles of classroom practices which are
set as a teacher’s credo involve :
using English for purposes that are as real as
possible.
responding to the different needs of students.
offering more opportunities to students to take on
more responsibility for their own learning.
7
8. What do we know about how
languages are learned ?
• Attention from English language teachers should
be placed on the following four areas:-
The nature of the input provided to
learners.
How learners process that input.
The role of the classroom interaction.
The role of error in language learning.
8
9. The nature of input
• It deals with the significant and recent idea of
‘comprehensible input’
• Krashen (1985) hypothesizes that language picked
up or acquired, when learners receive input from
‘messages’ which contain language of a little above
their existing understanding and from which they
can infer meaning.
9
11. The process of intake
• Intake refers to the ways in which learners
process input and assimilate language to their
interlanguage system.
The concept of intake has given to us some
insights into why teachers cannot control the
learning process to the extent we might
previously have believed.
Some kinds of input is needed if language
acquisition is to occur, but many questions remain
about the kind of input which is most useful in
facilitating the process.
11
12. Kinds of Input
If learners attend to items of input,
there are implications for the presentation
of grammatical forms.
If input receives more attention when it
comes from the teacher, there are
implications for classroom management.
12
13. Why is the notion of
comprehensible input being
enthusiastic
It confirms the need for meaningful input which
will engage learners in working with language at a
level which is slightly above their competence.
It suggests the value of providing input through
out-of- class recourses such as readers and
listening cassettes for self- access learning.
It seems to confirm the usefulness of teachers
adjusting their own classroom language, in line
with students’ proficiency, to simpler vocabulary
and slower speech while retaining natural rhythm
and intonation.
13
14. The role of interaction in the
classroom
• Swain (1985) argues that Learners need practice in
producing comprehensible input using all the language
resources they have already acquired.
• Getting feedback from the teacher and from other
students in the class enables to test hypotheses and refine
their developing knowledge of the language system.
• To produce output, obliges learners to cope with their lack
of language knowledge by struggling to make themselves
understood, for example :by speaking slowly, or by repeating
or clarifying their ideas through rephrasing.
• When a group of students do this while talking together, it
is called negotiation of meaning and its aim is to make
output more comprehensible.
14
15. The role of error
Attitudes have moved from those of the
behaviourists in the 1950s and 1960s who saw
error to be prevented as far as possible through
intensive modelling and eradicated through
intensive drilling.
Errors are now seen as reflections of a learner’s
stage of interlanguage development.
Krashen’s interest in the possible parallels
between children’s acquisition of their first
language and adult second language acquisition led
him to suggest that error correction had dubious
value in the classroom.
15
16. How do differences among learners affect
learning process and teaching procedures?
• Learners differ in ways that need careful thought
when making decisions about course content and
methodology.
• Language aptitude has been measured by tests, but other
dimensions of individual differences among learners have
been investigated largely by introspective methods:
• 1-Self-repot: responding to interview questions and
questionnaires.
• 2- Self-observation: using diaries or immediate
retrospective verbal reports.
• 3-Self-revelution: using think-aloud reports recorded on to
cassette as learners usually perform tasks.
16
17. Aptitude
• Two well-known language aptitude tests :
• 1- The Modern Language Aptitude Test (MLAT).
• 2-The Pimsleur Language Aptitude Battery (LAB).
Both of them put forward a multi-componential
view of aptitude as comprising four components :
auditory ability,
grammatical sensitivity,
inductive language learning ability.
memory.
17
18. Learning style and learning strategies
• This subject deals around the question of
what are the ways in which the individual
style affects language learning?
• Whether it is an aspect of:
cognitive style or
learning style.
•
18
19. Motivation for learning English
• Adult learners returning to study may regard
language learning as a hobby or cultural pursuit
worthy of the educated person, or may have
pressing reasons for wishing to communicate in
English.
• Any individual may be influenced by a variety of
motivations which will affect such things as
anxiety, or attitude, or willingness to try new
language learning strategies.
19
20. Major reasons of motivation to
learn English
• 1- To be able to communicate with people in an international
language
• 2- To be able to read a wide range of English language
resources for study purposes
• 3- To have a better chance of employment, status, and
financial reward in the job market
• 4- To be able to read and listen to English language media
for information and pleasure
• 5- To find more about people, places, politics etc. of English
speaking cultures
• 6- To take up a particular career, e.g. English language
teaching work in an international company.
• 7-To read English-language literature
• 8- Because of parental pressure.
20
21. Kinds of motivation
• Two kinds of motivation are suggested according
to the previous list of reasons for motivation.
Instrumental Integrative
motivation motivation
needing a language wishing to
as an instrument to
achieve other
integrate into the
purposes such as activities or
doing a job culture of another
effectively or group of people
studying 21
22. Gardner and Smythe’s (1980)AMTB shows the
complex of areas under investigation by that
time. It reveals that motivation is a highly
complex phenomenon consisting a number of
variables.
22
23. What factors of context should
teachers take into accounts?
23
24. What roles can teachers and
learners play in the learning
process
• In the social setting of classroom,
teachers and learners’ exceptions
about what are appropriate functions
in various learning tasks will
determine the roles that each
performs, and these will be culturally
influenced.
24
25. The teacher’s roles and activities
• The teacher’s roles suggested by Harmer (1991):
• 1-As controller: in eliciting a learner’s answer.
• 2-As assessor: in helping learners to pronounce
words accuracy.
• 3-As organizer: in giving instructions for
conducting pair and group activities.
• 4-As prompter: while learners are working
together.
• As resource: when learners need help with words
and structures during the classroom activities.
25
26. The role categories listed by a multicultural
group of experienced teachers
( Karavas-Dukas 1995)
• 1- Source of Expertise:(instructor , actor ,informant, input
provider,……etc)
• 2- Management roles:( manager, organizer, director
arranger,..etc.)
• 3-Sourse of device: (councellor, advisor, ..etc. )
• 4- Facilitator of learning: (helper, guide, mediator,..etc.)
• 5- Sharing roles:( negotiator, participant, cooperator ..etc. )
• 6-Caring roles: ( friend, sister/mother, supporter ..etc.)
• 7-Creator of classroom atmosphere:( entertainer,
motivator,..etc.)
• 8-Evaluator.//9-Example of behavior and hard work.
26
27. The learner’s roles and
responsibilities
• There are four perspectives on
learner-centered teaching suggest a
far wider range of roles for the
learner than those performed in a
traditional, teacher dominated
classroom.
27
29. What roles can learning
materials play?
• Any textbook is based on the assumptions about learning
and the design of its activities implies certain roles for
teachers and learners and assumes certain dispositions
towards learning styles.
• Allwright suggests that the use of textbook materials
places emphasis on the teaching process perhaps at the
expense of emphasis on the learning process, and that this
may lead to ‘teacher overload’ and learner underinvironment’
• The logical outcomes of an emphasis on learning will be
learning guides for students.
29
30. Continue….
A number of writers have reviewed the complex
relationship between language learning ,language
teaching and culture. Others have focused on
using the target language culture as a vehicle for
presenting the language in textbook materials.
It is commonplace for materials published in a
particular English-speaking culture to use that
culture as a setting for stories and dialogues.
30
31. Meanings of ‘culture’
• In terms of making decisions about the cultural content of
materials, Adaskou et al.(1990) distinguish four meanings of
the word culture:
• 1-The aesthetic sense: means the art, literature, music,
media, etc.
• 2-The sociological sense: life and institutions’, the nature of
family life , work, customs ,etc.
• 3- The semantic sense: about the conceptual system
embodied in the language.
• 4- The sociolinguistic sense: things such as politeness
conversation, the ways in which language is governed by
issues of status or age in relationships , etc.
31
32. Conclusion
• Good teachers have always taken a positively
critical approach to appraising and developing
their work, using what insights are available from
their own and others’ experience, and from the
possible implications of research, especially from
studies which are based in the language
classroom.
• It is one of the ways in which we create our own
continuing professional development.
32
34. The Concept of
Communicative
Language Ability
• To be able to:
Operate effectively in the real world,
Develop an ever improving capability to use
English,
Communicate with others,
acquire , develop and apply language,
think and solve problems,
respond and give expression to experience .
34
35. Narrow and Wide Focus
of Language
A narrow focus of Chomsky (1965): He
refers to the term of competence to
describe the knowledge on language when
he distinguishs between (competence and
performance)
A wide focus of Hymes (1972): He asserts
that to add the ‘communicative’ element to
‘competence’ means adding rules of use
without which the rules of grammar would
be useless.
35
36. The key Components of
communicative competence
lingustic competence,
pragmatic competence,
discourse competence,
strategic competence, and
fluency.
•
36
37. lingusticcompetence
• It is concerned with knowledge of the
language itself, its form and meaning. It
involves a knowledge of spelling,
pronunciation, vocabulary, word formation,
grammatical structure, sentence
structure, and linguistic semantics.
• Hedge observes that teachers have to
take into consideration the fact that
linguistic competence is an integral part of
communicative competence.
37
38. Pragmatic Competence
• It means knowing how to use language in order to
achieve certain communicative goals or intentions.
For example the statement ‘It’s so hot today’ can
have a number of different functions. It might be
a statement about the physical atmosphere, a
request to open the window, or an attempt to
elicit the offer of a cold drink .The sociolingustic
competence, This competence enables a speaker
to be ‘contextually appropriate’ , to know ‘when to
speak, when not, what to talk about with whom,
when, where and in what manner’.
38
39. Discourse Competence
• competence is concerned with the abilities
needed to create coherent written texts
or conversation and understand them.
More specifically, discourse competence
in conversational use of the language
involves the abilities, inter alia, to perform
turns in discourse, to mantain the
conversation, and to develop the topic.
•
39
40. Strategic Competence
• Canale and Swain (1980) defined it as ‘how
to cope in an authentic communicative
situation and how to keep the
communicative channel open’ .
• Strategic competence consists of using
communication strategies. These
strategies are used by learners to
compensate for their limited linguistic
competence in expressing what they want
to say.
40
41. fluency
• The term fluency relates to
language production, and it is
normally associated with speech. It is
the ability to link units of speech
together with facility and without
inappropriate slowness, or undue
hesitation.
•
41
42. Types of Fluency
• 1- Semantic fluency: Linking together
propositions and speech acts.
• 2- Lexical-syntactic fluency: Linking
together syntactic constituents and
words.
• 3- Articulatory fluency: Linking
together speech segments.
42
43. Issues for the Communicative
Curriculum
• In relation to the previous
components and aspects of
communicative language, the question
then arises of how the ELT
profession has responded to the
significant implications of the
mentioned components.
43
44. Examples of Implications
Linguistics Pragmatic Discourse Strategic fluency
competence competence competence competence
To achieve To learn the To take To be able to To deal
accuracy in relationship longer turns, take risks in with
the between use using both informatio
grammatical grammatical discourse spoken and n gap of
forms of forms and markers, and written real
the language functions. open and language discourse
close
To To use conversation
To be able to To use a To be able
pronounce stress and use cohesive range of to respond
the forms intonation to devices in communicati with
accurately express reading and on strategies reasonable
attitude and writing texts speed in
emotion. ‘real time’
44
45. What are the implication for the
communicative classroom?
• To understand what is meant by this
question, we should answer the following
questions:
What are communicative tasks and what are their
roles in teaching and learning?
How can we manage a communicative classroom?
What does communicative language teaching imply
for authenticity in the classroom?
45
46. What are communicative tasks and what
are their roles in teaching and learning?
• In the communicative classroom and their roles
in teaching and learning: Brumfit (1984) argues
for ‘natural language use’ and suggests the need
for ‘fluency activities’
• Fluency activities ‘ develop a pattern of language
interaction within the classroom which is as close
as possible to that used by competent performers
in the mother tongue in real life’.
46
47. Criteria necessary for achieving
fluency
• 1- The language should be a means to an
end ,i.e. the focus should be on meaning
and not on the form.
• 2- The content should be determined by
the learners who is speaking or writing.
• 3- There must be a negotiation of meaning
between the speakers.
• 4- There should be an information gap in
order to avoid predictability.
47
48. 5-The normal process of listening, reading,
speaking, and writing will be in play.
6-Teacher intervention to correct should be
minimal this distract from the message.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
Brumfit’s views fluency
activities as opportunities that will be
given to students to produce and
understand items which they have
gradually acquired during activities
focused in linguistic form, which he calls :
“ accuracy activities”
48
49. Prabhu’s typology of activities
• In 1987, Prabhu gives a useful typology of activities which
formed the basis of much contemporary material:
• 1- Information-gap activity: which transfer of given
information from one person to another, or from one place
to another– generally calling for the decoding or encoding of
information from or into language.
• 2- Reasoning-gap activity: which involves deriving some new
information from given information through process of
inference, deduction, practical reasoning, or a perception of
relationships or patterns.
• 3- Opinion-gap activity: which involves identifying and
articulating a personal preference, feeling, or attitude in
response to a given situation.
49
50. How can we manage a communicative
classroom?
Building cohesive within the group is important role for the
teacher.
The composition of groups or the kind of teamwork required
for projects or for the preparation of complex simulations.
The teacher needs to make decisions about whether to
allocate roles within the group or whether to let members
decide these among themselves.
To be effective in completing a task, it needs at least one member
who is interested in keeping the group on task achieving a useful
outcome, and one member who will be interested in maintaining
good relationships within the group.
50
51. Continue …
• A communicative classroom involves the teacher in a wider
range of roles beyond that of providing and presenting new
language. While monitoring groupwork, the teacher acts as :
Guide to performing the task successfully,
A language resource providing words and forms at the point
of need,
corrector of key errors sheared as the students work
together, and
A diagnoser of the students’ strengths and weaknesses.
51
52. What does communicative language teaching
imply for authenticity in the classroom?
• With communicative language teaching has come
pressure to use authentic material; the language of the
real world. So ,it is essential to give students sufficient
activities to cope with authentic language in the classroom.
o Communicative methodology tends to use authentic
materials in relation to listening and reading skills.
o Speaking and writing activities also mirror the real-world
purposes and situation in which and for which language is
used.
52
53. Writing tasks which reflect the reasons for writing
outside the English language classroom include :
A note to a neighbour apologizing for a
noisy party.
A letter of complaint about a product to
the manufacturer a notice to fellow
students publicizing a meeting.
An invitation to a birthday party with
directions for how to get there.
53
54. Widdowson’ view of Authenticity
• He argues that authenticity can only be achieved
when the reader can interpret the intentions of
the writer and respond appropriately to them.
(Widdowson,1981)
• His argument has implications not only for the
language level of the text but also for the prior
knowledge a learner will bring to reading or
listening to it, and whether that knowledge will
be sufficient for successful interpretation.
54
56. Conclusions
• Communicative language teaching
sets out to involve learners in
purposeful tasks which are embedded
in meaningful contexts and which
reflect and rephrase language as it is
used authentically in the world
outside the classroom.
56
58. The Self- Directed Learner
• Self- directed learning means letting students choose
their own topics and activities for homework.
• To the passionate, it means students’ emancipation from
the hands of teachers.
• To the reflective, a self- directed learner is one who
is self- motivated
takes the initiative
has a clear idea of what he wants to learn
has his own plan for pursuing and achieving his goal
59. • Self- directed learners:
Learn inside and
Know their needs outside the class
Learn with active
thinking
take classroom use recourses
Based material independently
Don’t think the
teacher is a god
Adjust their strategiesManage the time
60. • Good language learner has characteristic which are
provided by the teachers:
An ability to define one’s own objectives
areness of how to use language materials effective
Careful organization of time for learning, and active
development of learning strategies.
61. Strategies of the good language learner
1. Types of learner strategy:
Encouraging greater independence in language learners
comes from research studies into the characteristics
of the good learner.
These involve:
Deal directly with the second language ( what
Cognitive strategies
do to learn).
Metacognitive strategies
Manage the learning ( what learners do to r
their learning)
62. Cognitive Strategies
• They are used directly in learning which enable learners
to deal with the information presented in tasks and
materials by working on different ways.
e.g.
1. Learners use analogy to distinguish the meaning of
verbs.
2. Memorization ( the learner finds that both auditory and
visual memory are important).
3. Repetition ( imitating and guessing)
63. Metacognitive Strategies
• They involve:
1. Planning for learning.
2. Thinking about learning and how to make it effective.
3. Self monitoring during learning.
4. Evaluation of how to successful learning has been
after working on language in some way.
64. Communication Strategies
• They keep learners involved in conversations
through which they practice the language.
Learners are using these strategies when:
1. They use gesture, mime synonyms, paraphrase.
2. Cognate words from their first language to make
themselves understood and to maintain a conversation.
65. Socio-Affective Strategies
• They provide learners with opportunities
for practice.
• Examples include:
o Initiating conversations with native speakers.
o Using other people as informants about the language.
o Collaborating on tasks, listening to the radio or watching
TV programmes in the language. Or
o Spending extra time in the language laboratory.
66. 2. Research into learner strategies:
Researchers claim that observation of learners yielded
insufficient information and they used interviewing techniques
to try to elicit retrospective descriptions of language learning
experiences.
There has been a proliferation of labels for strategies such as
language processing, tactics, plans and techniques.
Research made an important contribution to ELT by highlighting
the possibility of learners becoming more self- reliant in
learning and by generating discussion of how learners can be
trained to take responsibility for learning.
67. Educational Thinking & autonomous Learning
• The focus here is on the concept of self-determination.
• Self- determination suggest that the learner can
Reflect , make choices and arrive at personally
constructed decisions.
• Barrow and Woods describe self- determinations as involving the notion of
thinking in the sense of reflecting, calculating, memorizing, predicting,
judging and deciding.
68. • Learners should not be passive recipient of knowledge
but should use their abilities for judging and deciding.
• In a classroom there is a powerful hidden curriculum at
work.
• In a teacher- directed classroom an easy perception to
shape is that learners are expected to be passive.
• It is difficult, then, how directed, regulated, and
passive students can convert suddenly to self-
determining and responsible adults who can continue
learning effectively throughout their lives.
69. • In self- directed learning or what is called by Holec
• ( autonomizaztion), there are two preconditions:
1. The learner must be capable of making decisions about learning.
2. There must be a structure for learning within which a learner can
take responsibility for those decisions.
Holec regarded learning as a management process which includes:
70. Implication for Learner Training
in the Classroom
• ELT methodology views that adult and adolescent
learners are capable of self- direction and able to
organize and undertake language learning with kind of
self- reliance.
• Dickinson and Holec make a distinction between two kinds
of preparation which can be called ( learner training ):
Change in perception about what learning involves
and change in expectation that language can be
learned through the careful control of teacher.
Acquiring a range of techniques with
which learners can enhance their learning.
71. • What are the aims of learner training?
learning training
classroom
learning self- access independent
learning learning at home
72. Types of Learner training
activities
1- Activities which help learners to reflect
on learning.
• 2- Activities which train strategies and
equip learners to be active.
• 3- Activities which encourage learner to
monitor and check their own progress.
73. Activities which help learners
to reflect on learning
• In learner training, it is a difficult task for teachers to
encourage the belief that adult learners accustomed to
teacher-directed classrooms can assume more
responsibility.
• So, it is necessary for ‘shedding baggage’;
a process of being accompanied by the
development of awareness of how to exploit a
range of resources and use methods of learning
other than a whole-class, teacher-directed one.
(Holec 1985)
73
75. The advantages of an
Inventory Activity
• 1- It engages and involves the students and makes them
think as they start the process of improving a particular
language skill.
• 2- It raises their awareness of what they come with to the
course, their preconceptions and expectations of the
teacher and of themselves.
• 3-It suggests by implication that there are ways of being
more responsible for their own learning.
• 4- It suggests that the course is about learning as well as
about writing in English and that they need to be actively
involved in learning.
• 5- It allows the teacher to raise expectations about the
methodology of the class and to justify it in a preliminary
discussion.
75
77. Training Cognitive Strategies
They are introduced progressively
by the teacher into a programme
that aim to increase student’s
knowledge of useful ways to learn and
develop the strategies they need.
77
78. Training a Metagonitive
Strategy
• It can be productive , at the
beginning of the course, to ask
students to share ideas about
possible metagonitive strategies or
self-help strategies.
78
79. Activities which encourage learner to
monitor and check their own progress
• These activities involve students in
two steps:-
• 1- They measure the extent to which they
have mastered something in the
programme.
• 2- They work with another students and
have a chance to assess how intelligible
they are.
79
80. Meaning and purpose:
Self-assessment is an attractive alternative or addition to
traditional forms of assessment for the classroom teacher.
It is a particular type of metacognitive strategy which
deserves special attention.
It aims to help students develop those
characteristics of the ‘good language learner’
which involve the ability to assess their own
per=rformance and the ability to be self-critical.
80
81. The role of self-access facilities
play in language learning
Self access resources can vary substantially from one
institution to another; (difficult and simple funding).
Where funding is available, decisions need to be
taken about :
the kind of recourses to be developed,
The skills that learners will need to use the resources
effectively,
the kinds of preparation and practice to be done in the
classroom.
For example, the facility ‘Using written texts’ could contain teacher-made
tasks, magazines, authentic, books, graded readers, reading cards with
texts, questions and answers for checking, information books for project
work, and dictionaries.
81
82. The ‘ Core Skills’
• This term refers the way in which
teachers will need to ensure that
they can use the cataloguing system,
locate items in alphabetical order,
use an index, a dictionary and so no,
in the case that learners are to use
the materials successfully.
82
83. The Ultimate Aim
•
The Ultimate Aim of self-access
facility is that eventually learners will be
able to use it in their own way, according
to self-formulated goals, with strategies
for monitoring their own progress.
83
84. and
learner training:
The issue centers around the question of how such
concepts are universally applicable?
There are a number of distinctive goals can be
made, the first, a distinction can be made between :
perceptions of
learner training
for self-directed
learning in
contexts other
than the
language
classroom such
as in an open 84
85. Two Distinct Goals
The previous distinction leads to gain the
following goals:-
Some teachers are interested in strategy training because
they want to improve their students’ capacity to work
effectively with classroom methods and materials.
The role of teachers in self –directed learning ,which is
originated in western cultures, is to mediate between
cultures to find a way forward . As with Asian teachers who
employ what the Chinese proverbs say:
“ Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I’ll remember; involve
me and I’ll learn “.
“ If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you
teach a man to fish you feed him for a lifetime “
85
86. Conclusions
• This chapter tries to deal with the
uncertainty that exists in interpretations of the
term learner autonomy:
Some teachers interpret it in a procedural way and
associate it with resource-based learning in situation.
Other teachers relates this term to a capacity that needs
gradual building and development through practice in self-
directed learning.
Others relates it more narrowly to practice in self-directed
learning.
86
87. Continue….
• Learner training is perceived as
having a number of possible Goals:
To prepare students to work with the systems and pathways
of self-access facilities.
To encourage learners to take cognizance of the ways in
which they can find and use language learning opportunities
in the community outside the classroom.
To develop learners who can use the learning opportunities
of the classroom effectively through applying a range of
strategies to the work they do with teachers and peers.
87