2. Big questions
• What do language teachers do?
• Who are our learners?
• What beliefs do we hold about how learners
learn?
• What is our role in the language learning
process?
T.MacKinnon, April 2010
3. What do we do?
CLT:
Communicative Language Teaching
Presentation
Practice
Production
T.MacKinnon, April 2010
4. Who are our learners?
Knowles (1980) proposes Androgogy rather than
Pedagogy:
Adult learners:
•Decide for themselves what is important
•Use experience to validate information
•Expect what they learn to be immediately useful
•Have much experience
•Have significant ability to act as resource to group
T.MacKinnon, April 2010
5. What beliefs do we hold about how
learners learn?
Macaro, 2003
T.MacKinnon, April 2010
6. Where are you?
At the transmission end of this
continuum tutors would have At the interpretation end, the tutor is
positivist views that learning is concerned to train the learner to become
achieved through the transmission autonomous in language acquisition, more
of objective reality. They would see in tune with a constructivist view.
mastery and internalisation of
language structure and form to be
the learner’s goal.
interpretation
transmission
Wright, 1987
T.MacKinnon, April 2010
8. Issues affecting technology use
• Affective factors (Arnold, 1999)
• Tutor expertise (CALL study)
• Lack of engagement (Lurkers!)
• Transfer of control
• Constructivism
T.MacKinnon, April 2010
9. Lewis’ Lexical Approach
•Intensive and extensive listening and reading in the target
language.
• First and second language comparisons and translation—
carried out chunk-for-chunk, rather than word-for-word—
aimed at raising language awareness.
• Repetition and recycling of activities, such as summarizing
a text orally one day and again a few days later to keep words
and expressions that have been learned active.
• Guessing the meaning of vocabulary items from context.
• Noticing and recording language patterns and collocations.
•Working with dictionaries and other reference tools.
•Working with language corpuses created by the teacher for use
in the classroom or accessible on the Internet
T.MacKinnon, April 2010
11. The seven hypotheses for constructivist language learning
(Chapelle, 1998) :
•The linguistic characteristics of target language input need to be made
salient
•Learners should receive help in comprehending semantic and syntactic
aspects of linguistic input
•Learners need to have opportunities to produce target language output
•Learners need to notice errors in their own input
•Learners need to correct their linguistic output
•Learners need to engage in target language interaction whose structure
can be modified for negotiation of meaning
•Learners should engage in L2 tasks designed to maximise opportunities
for good interaction
T.MacKinnon, April 2010
12. Lewis proposes a new model:
observe
experiment hypothesise
T.MacKinnon, April 2010
13. Online tools can provide:
•New affordances (eg. asynchronous conversation)
•Innovation, wow factor (see Barnes and Murray, 1998)
•Re-location of some of your lesson content
•Facilitation of some activities (assessment, drill, real language
use)
•Opportunity to connect with learners
But be aware:
The changes you make may change you!
T.MacKinnon, April 2010
14. Further reading
Arnold, J. ed., 1999. Affect in Language Learning. Cambridge: CUP.
Benson, P. and Voller, P. eds., 1997. Autonomy and Independence in Language
Learning London: Addison Wesley Longman Ltd.
Conole, G. and Oliver, M. eds., 2007. Contemporary Perspectives in E-learning
Research. Oxen: Routledge.
JISC. 2007. Student Expectations Study. Downloaded from:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/publications/studentexpectations.pdf
Klapper, J. 2006. Understanding and developing good practice. Language teaching in
Higher Education. London:CILT.
Richards, J. and Rodgers, T. 2001. Approaches and methods in Language Teaching.
Cambridge: CUP.
Wright, T., 1987. Roles of Teachers and Learners. Oxford: OUP.
T.MacKinnon, April 2010
Notas del editor
The horizontal axis represents the polarisation between theories of language input. Implicit input arises from natural exposure and sub-conscious processing, explicit from teaching and conscious processing. The vertical axis represents the concept of how language input is processed. Nativist implies that language learning is an innate skill, interactionist that language is a specialised form of knowledge that is acquired through interaction with the environment. He adds this observation: “Of course polarizations are never absolute and theories as well as individuals place themselves on various stages along the continuum of these axes.” (p22)