1. Evaluate the behaviourist views on the first language acquisition on the basis of what we know about this process today.

First of all, the behaviourist theory was developed by Skinner who claimed that language learning is just like any other learning. It is a habit formation. The child is like a tabula rasa when entering the linguistic world and it imitates, repeats and practices. But today, it is known that it is not true. Children are able to create utterances which they have never heard before that is why we cannot treat children as parrots who only repeat. But the behaviourist theory should not be discarded. It explains how simple and regular things are learnt. Also not all children repeat and still at some point they start talking and even if some children repeat they are not able to repeat all the phrases.

According to Chomsky, however, a language can't be learned in a mechanical way because it's too complex:

• You don't have to learn the grammar structure to be able to learn it

• What you know is much more you're exposed to in your life

• Parents rather focus on what is true and untrue rather than grammatical and ungrammatical

2. How do children acquire their mother tongue? Discuss some theories you are familiar with.

First of all, the process of acquiring language by children is universal. All children all around the world learn mother tongue in a similar way. There three main first language acquisition theories:

1. Behaviourism

Language learning is the same as any other learning - habit formation. Child that enters linguistic world is like tabula rasa. What he/she learns comes form the environment. The process of that the child hears sounds, responses to them and sees what is the reaction of the environment. Then he/she associates the sound with the effect. Then child can imitate it and receive reinforcement. This theory, however, does not explain how children are able to create new utterances that they have never heard before. Also, not all children repeat and what is most important they cannot repeat everything.

2. Innatism

Lenneberg claimed that language is a species specific behaviour and it is only human beings that can learn the language. Children come to the world and are specifically programmes to learn language, they are well equipped.

McNeill - LAD (Language Acquisition Device).

It is a mechanism, predisposition to learn the language. It consists of 4 linguistic properties:

1. Ability to distinguish sounds from other sounds in the environment (child picks up only humans sounds)

2. The ability to organize linguistic events into various classes which can be changed. The words can be grouped. Children may make mistakes as the group expands.

3. LAD includes knowledge that only a certain kind of linguistic system is possible

4. It is also the ability to emerge in constant evaluation of the developing system so as to construct the simplest possible system out of the linguistic data provided.

According to nativist views the child is smart and it looks for the rules (Universal Grammar - Chomsky). That is a set of universal principles and rules that can be activated only by language and they adjust to it. Which of the rules will be activated it depends on the environment.

Innatist theory - hypothesis, formation and testing. A child forms some hypothesis and tests it. It can be confirmed, rejected or modified.

Eric Lenneberg introduced a theory of critical period. It is a period in which the child is able to acquire language only be being exposed to it. It is believed that it is by the age of puberty (when the brain is lateralised). There are two versions of critical period hypothesis :weak (it is possible to develop language- Gene ) and strong (it's impossible19th century France, Viktor).

3. Interactionism

In this theory the emphasis is put on the linguistic environment and people who take care of children. The language is simplified and it is modified:

One way it is linguistic modification, where the speaker uses short sentences, simple structures, here and now vocabulary. Second modification is non-linguistic where we repeat, modify intonation, stress or pitch of voice.

Children that do not understand particular words can understand from intonation, gestures. They develop language as a system through which they communicate with the world around them.

Neither of these theories is a full explanatory of how language develops so they are complementary.

3. Second language acquisition - is similar or different from the first language acquisition?

When we want to compare L1 and L2 we need to take into account Learner characteristics (e.g. knowledge of the world, cognitive maturity, knowledge of another language) and Learning conditions (freedom to be silent, modified input).

These two processes differ in such a way that the learner of the mother tongue knows less about the world and has less knowledge about things that are here and now to be able to communicate. L2 learners have more complicated ideas and they may want to communicate even with their knowledge of L2 to communicate

Also L1 acquirer has little fear of making mistakes and they are highly motivated to communicate in their L1. L2 learners may have different levels of motivation. L1 learners spend more time on learning language, they are exposed to the language very much in their first five ears. L1 learner will acquire native speaker status, what is not impossible for L2 acquirer but it is much easier. Also L1 learners do not undergo grammatical instruction.

Factors to be taken into consideration when comparing L1 vs L2 acquisition:

Learner characteristics:

• Knowledge of another language - L1 acquirers don't have it. L2 learners have it.

• Cognitive maturity - L2 may or may not have it. L1 develop it with the lg

• Metalinguistic awareness - small children don't have it. Mature learners do. For example distinguishing between things and actions, grouping words, understanding and using metalanguage

• Knowledge of the world - all learners develop it. Ability to make connections from your schemata

• Nervousness about speaking - children don't have it. Adults do.

Learning conditions

• Freedom to be silent - L2 learners usually have no choice in most lessons

• Ample time (sufficient time) - L1 have all the time they need. L2 learners - limited by classes

• Corrective feedback - grammar Children don't get it. L2 learners do

• Corrective feedback - word choice Both children and L2 learners are corrected

• Modified input (a lg which is adjusted to the language level of a person)- Both children and L2 learners get modified input. In the classroom - teacher talk

4. Child - adult differences in the process of acquiring a second language.

Children: TPR is needed, concrete thinking, short attention span

Pre-school students (2-4 years old)

• They absorb language effortlessly

• Imitate sounds

• Do not work well in groups

• Short attention span but patience for repetition

• Concrete thinking

Primary students (5-7 years old)

• Like to name objects and define words

• Learn through oral lg

• Learn through play

• Short attention span

• Large variety of exercises

• Use lg skills subconsciously

Intermediate students (8-10 years old)

• Can work in groups

• More systematic learning

• Open to people and situation

• Resist cooperation with opposite sex

Transcendent students(11-14 years old)

• Have to learn how to deal with a variety of new experiences

Adults:

• Adults are usually more motivated (intrinsic motivation), they are not forced

• Adults have less time for learning and it's not systematic

• Adults do not regularly attend classes

• Adults are afraid of loosing their face, being laughed at

• Adults use learning styles and techniques - they have developed it

• Thing abstractly

Children	Adults
Due to their psychological make-up children have a very short attention span and frequently change their interests, since they have not yet developed a lasting motivation to learn.	They usually have some kind of a goal and expectations related to the purpose of learning the language.
Their enthusiasm is short-lived: it may be raised easily but lost very quickly. In the school context they may eventually base their motivation on an external obligation.	Since adults usually learn languages voluntarily, they tend to have more stable motivation and are self-disciplined.
They have no negative attitudes towards learning and languages (and the culture that comes with it).	They may have certain inhibitions as a result of earlier experience, e.g. e.g. the fear of ridicule and failure. They have developed their learning style and deep-seated beliefs about their own abilities.
Children have little experience and knowledge of the world, which leads to worse understanding of complex semantic or grammatical relations. They are usually exposed to simpler language and their understanding comes from what they can see, hear, touch and interact with. They take information form the surrounding and thus often learn indirectly. They do not analyze or investigate that much.	Adults have already developed their ways of conscious, analytical reasoning and are able to comprehend abstract notions or generalizations, which can be used in providing formal explanation of grammar. They tend to over-intellectualize.
Their interest is enticed by engaging the mind and the body alike. They benefit form the use of educational game-based procedures, which bring together the enjoyment of playing and the productivity of language practice.	Interest comes form the content and its purposefulness. Adults are more willing to use textbooks providing formal rules and exercises. They do, however, value discussions, etc.
Most children are keen to talk about themselves and compete with others.	Adults may choose to stay anonymous and see themselves as individuals. Yet, they are able to cooperate if needed.
They are good at learning pronunciation (flexible speech organs)	Teaching pronunciation, which is more demanding for adults, whose speech organs are less flexible and used to native speech
Younger children lack certain skills that facilitate learning (e.g. cannot write).	Having the ability to read and write, adults may broaden and test their knowledge in a written form.
Habitual learning is to some extent involved at this stage of development	Drill may seem childish and discouraging.
Children fill less pressure to learn against the time.	Adults are limited by time.
They are easily fatigued, so a balance between stirring activities and calming activities must be maintained.	Their intellectual powers may be diminishing with age, e.g. hearing problems.
The teacher is not so much the provider of knowledge or a partner in gaining it but an authority they can rely on, also emotionally. The teacher is thus both an instructor and a caretaker	The teacher's authority is based on knowledge, rather than on any official status of superiority. He is supposed to be an expert but also a partner in interaction. Adults may be critical of teaching methods and expect to be treated like clients.
Children pick the language quickly, but need systematic contact to retain the knowledge.	Generally, adults are less successful unless they put more time and effort.

5. Krashen's theory of second language acquisition.

Krashen's theory of second language acquisition is also called a Monitor Model. It an Innatism theory. The theory explains second language development in adults and it is based on child acquisition of the language. It's based on 5 hypothesis:

1. The acquisition - learning hypothesis

It explains how language development takes place, what are the possible ways of mastering the language. There 2 ways :

Acquisition - it is picking up the language, just like our mother tongue. When we are exposed to the language we can learn it subconsciously.

Learning - developing second language takes place by conscious learning, use of metalanguage and conscious attention.

These two processes result in different types of knowledge.

2. The monitor hypothesis

The Monitor hypothesis explains the relationship between acquisition and learning and defines the influence of the latter on the former. The monitoring function is the practical result of the learned grammar. According to Krashen, the acquisition system is the utterance initiator, while the learning system performs the role of the 'monitor' or the 'editor'. The 'monitor' acts in a planning, editing and correcting function when three specific conditions are met: that is, the second language learner has sufficient time at his/her disposal, he/she focuses on form or thinks about correctness, and he/she knows the rule.

3. The natural order hypothesis

There is a certain order in acquiring morphemes, the order of acquisition is not the same as the order of learning. Acquisition as a process is more describable and more complete. It is natural and has become an internal part of our system.

4. The input hypothesis (comprehensible input `i+1)

The most important theory. It explains how acquisition takes place. We acquire language by understanding message that are slightly beyond our current level of competence. So, we acquire the language when we are exposed to the comprehensible input. I+1 - the language beyond our level of competence. If there is enough input provided all the necessary grammar will be provided as well, so we do not have to teach grammar - the learner will figure it out himself. We need to be exposed, we need input not output. Speaking is a matter of being exposed to the language and acquiring it.

5. The affective filter hypothesis

It explains the conditions for acquisition to take place. The proper environment is needed. The affective filter is a psychological concept, an imaginary obstacle. The linguistic input is blocked then and the information are blocked, do not go through the filter. Emotions, attitude, personality, prejudices, tiredness, hunger etc., are factors that may block the input.

6. Discuss the notion of LAD. What implications does it have for language acquisition?

McNeill - LAD (Language Acquisition Device).

It is a mechanism, predisposition to learn the language. It consists of 4 linguistic properties:

1. Ability to distinguish sounds from other sounds in the environment (child picks up only humans sounds)

2. The ability to organize linguistic events into various classes which can be changed. The words can be grouped. Children may make mistakes as the group expands.

3. LAD includes knowledge that only a certain kind of linguistic system is possible

4. It is also the ability to emerge in constant evaluation of the developing system so as to construct the simplest possible system out of the linguistic data provided.

7. Discuss the concept of “critical (sensitive) period”. Is there such period in second language acquisition?

The notion of critical period was researched by a biologists Eryk Lenneberg. It supported the LAD concept. He discovered that there is a certain limited period in human life during which it is possible to develop language without any problems. It happens only by being exposed to it. Some think that is is around puberty (12-14) some that by the age of 7 (near the process of lateralization). Until then the hemispheres are not separated. After this period there are two hypothesis:

Weak - where there is still possible to develop language after puberty (Gene, according to LAD the process slows down)

Strong - if we didn't manage to develop the language it won't be possible later on (Victor, France 19^th c). It is commonly believed that children are better suited to learn a second language than are adults. However, in general second language research has failed to support the Critical Period Hypothesis in its strong form, which argues that full language acquisition is impossible beyond a certain age. There is no limit for learning second language. If of course the person knows the mother tongue then there are no limits. Of course it is believed that children learn faster and the process of acquiring the langue by older people takes more time it is not impossible. We hear about third age universities where people learn languages. But it is difficult to get native like pronunciation.

8. Is younger really better? What are the effects of age on second language acquisition? (+ pytanie4)

Physiological arguments:

• Until the child is 10 years old his brain is very plastic

• Better abilities to learn pronunciation - larynx is still flexible, the ear can hear better

• Brocas' area is developed in adults (they learn faster)

Psychological arguments:

• Children are interested in the world, they like to experiment, they communicate with the outside world and are not afraid of making mistakes

• With children It is easier to make them fascinated and motivated in learning language

• By learning children faster start thinking in concrete terms

Advantages of early FLT:

Intellectual improvement ( grater mental flexibility, superiority in concept formation)

• Mother Tongue improvement ( mother tongue does not interfere, learners will understand it even better, how it works when they are learning second language)

• Cultural gains ( wider cultural outlooks, tolerance towards people who are different)

9. Contrastive Analysis - does it have any role to play in the process of teaching?

Contrastive Analysis was used as a method of explaining why some features of a Target Language were more difficult to acquire than others. According to the behaviourist theories prevailing at the time, language learning was a question of habit formation, and this could be reinforced or impeded by existing habits. Therefore, the difficulty in mastering certain structures in a second language (L2) depended on the difference between the learners' mother language (L1) and the language they were trying to learn.

The theoretical foundations for what became known as the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis were formulated in Lado. In this book, Lado claimed that "those elements which are similar to [the learner's] native language will be simple for him, and those elements that are different will be difficult".

In its strongest formulation, the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis claimed that all the errors made in learning and L2 could be attributed to 'interference' by the L1. It was soon pointed out that many errors predicted by Contrastive Analysis were inexplicably not observed in learners' language. Even more confusingly, some uniform errors were made by learners irrespective of their L1. It thus became clear that Contrastive Analysis could not predict learning difficulties, and was only useful in the retrospective explanation of errors.

10. What is the role of the learner's native language in the process of second language acquisition?

Contemporary views on L1 influence:

• rejecting the interpretation of CA which made `transfer' or rather `interference' the explanation for all of a learner's difficulties with the TL;

• learners draw on their knowledge of other languages as they try to discover the complexities of the new language they are learning;

• there is an important interaction involving L1 (or other languages), some universal knowledge and processes, and the samples of the TL which learners encounter in the input;

• accepting the idea of transfer (`borrowing'); a question asked: when does it occur? likely answers: lower levels of language proficiency (though not as a rule) + certain language areas (pronunciation, lexis).

11. Discuss the concept of “learner language” and its significance to teaching.

Research findings suggest that most errors are developmental and not a result of interference. Both children and adults follow a sequence in the acquisition of grammar items in the FL. This might be called an internal syllabus. The sequence is universal and occurs whatever the learner's L1.

Order of acquisition of grammatical morphemes in English:

1. Present progressive

2. Plural - s

3. Irregular past forms

4. Possessive `s

5. Copula

6. Articles

7. Regular past -ed

8. Third person singular simple present - s

9. Auxiliary be

Contemporary research views SLL as a creative process of constructing a system in which learners are constantly testing hypotheses about the TL from a number of possible sources of knowledge:

1. Limited knowledge of the TL itself

2. Knowledge about/of NL

3. Knowledge about the communicative function of language

4. Knowledge about the language in general

5. Knowledge about life, human beings etc.

Learner language - a system developed by the learner on the way to the target language

• It's characteristic to him/her, it's both correct and incorrect. The incorrect forms may be incorrect in different ways

• A lot of errors made by the learners are developmental and are not the result of interference.

• They evolve in time

• Both children and adult follow a sequence in acquisition of grammar items in a foreign language. There is what might be called an “internal syllabus” - learners seem to be acquiring the language by the same kind of built syllabus

12. Where do errors come from? Explain how different theories of second language acquisition try to account for learner errors.

An error refers to the competence of the learner. The error occurs when the learner has gaps in his knowledge.

Sources of errors:

• Interlingual transfer- they are made because of the negative transfer from L1. Learner has not enough knowledge in the target language.

• Intralingual transfer - within the target language

• Context of learning

• Communication strategies - enhancement of getting message across, but at the same time a source of error.

First research that aimed at the errors made in speech of foreign language learners was Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis. The goal of this analysis is rather to predict learning difficulties than how to deal with learner's errors. The CAH contributes to the study on errors because it stimulated studies for explicating learning difficulty. On the other hand it focuses too much on the cause of interference. It was based on the false theory of learning that is basically a matter of habit formation and regarded errors as negative elements that hinder development in language learning.

Error Analysis clarified that learner's errors result not only form interference of native language but also from many other sources. So the mainstream in that field focused on this new approach. The aim of EA is to explain and describe errors and tell what kind of influence they have on the interlocutor. Problems with the Error Analysis are that it focuses on products such as sounds and sentences that first and second language learners generate, and it tends to neglect the learning process itself. Another drawback as that this analysis treats errors in isolation.

Interlanguage is believed to be an independent system and it is reflected in the errors. It focuses on systematic errors in normal adult learning. Learner's errors are important because they provide evidence of the system of the language that is used. The errors are important for the teacher to show him how far towards the goal the learner has progressed and what remains for him to learn. They also provide the researchers the evidence how language is acquired, what strategies and procedures the learner is employing.

From the Error Analysis:

Overgeneralization - you know the rule and you think it applies to everything, for example “broked”

Ignorance of rule restriction - using the rule when it doesn't apply “I made him to do it”

Incomplete application of rules “You read much?”

False concept hypothesis (“One day it was happened”)

Error can be classified according to basic type: omissive, additive, substitutive or related to word order.

They can also be classified by how apparent they are: overt errors such as "I angry" are obvious even out of context, whereas covert errors are evident only in context.

Errors of comprehension versus errors of production

Comprehension errors include both phonological mistakes and grammatical mistakes. A phonological mistake would be the spelling of the word physics as fyzics; a grammatical mistake would be transcribing Yesterday he worked as Yesterday he work. We can define spelling errors as those that would likely be made by a native speaker (e.g., receive/recieve)

errors of production

Speech errors provide insights into the workings of the language system.

(Freudian Slips: Speech errors caused by repressed intentions. Last night my grandmother (died) lied.)

Errors may also be classified according to the level of language: phonological errors, vocabulary or lexical errors, syntactic errors, and so on. They may be assessed according to the degree to which they interfere with communication: global errors make an utterance difficult to understand, while local errors do not. In the above example, "I angry" would be a local error, since the meaning is apparent.

13. Discuss different types of errors.

Intralingual errors - coming from the language itself

Interlingual errors - coming from differences between L1 and L2.

Errors of addition, omission, substitution, ordering

Within each category, levels of language can be considered (phonology etc)

Global - communication is impossible (problem with intonation and pronunciation), there is a misunderstanding

Local - communication is possible (Corder)

Covert - hidden errors, we need to analyze the context.(Corder)

Overt - they can be identified immediately

14. List and discuss (in the order of importance) five factors that, in your opinion are decisive about second language achievement.

Motivation

Language aptitude (if it happens that a learner has a talent it makes the learning process less painful and quicker, especially when other people notice this talent)

Attitudes

Self-esteem

Personality

Cognitive + affective factors (16+17 question)

15. What is meant by “individual variation” in language learning?

Cognitive + affective factors (16+17 question)

16. Cognitive factors in language learning.

Cognitive factors types of individual differences between learners. It is how we process information.

Intelligence - It is the ability to think logically, to adapt to new situation. There is famous multi - intelligences theory created by Gardner ( some of them are: linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, inter-intrapersonal etc.)

Language aptitude :

• Phonemic coding ability (ability to identify, repeat, and identify sounds)

• Grammatical sensitivity (ability to identify grammatical functions of words, sentence structures)

• Inductive language learning (ability to induce rules)

• Rote learning ability

Cognitive learning styles - individual's natural and preferred ways of absorbing, processing and retaining new information and skills.

• Field independent/ dependant - ability to learn when there are background noises

• Reflectivity/ impulsitivity- thinking/doing

• Aural/visual - seeing/hearing

• Hemisphere specialisation - left - things connected with language. More intellectual. Linguistic and mathematical intelligence. Right - special and musical intelligence.

• Tolerance of ambiguity - one of learning styles - some people need to know exactly what something means some not.

Learning strategies - things that we do when we have to learn something.

• Metacognitive - strategies that involve planning/ thinking about learning/ monitoring/evaluating.

• Cognitive - it is more limited to specific learning tasks and involve more direct manipulation of the learning material itself. For example: summarising, induction, imaginary, note - taking, translation etc.

• Socio - affective strategies - cooperating, clarifying, self - talk, communicating strategies - we have to co9mepensate for the words that we forgot or we do not know.

17. Affective factors in language learning.

These are factors that relate to the emotions, they play role in learning process. Affective - it refers to learner's emotions, all the factors that influence our performance.

Motivation - Some kind of force or a drive that makes us do something that makes us do something, it may be a need of achievement, the desire, curiosity, inner or outer force.

Extrinsic (comes form the outside) vs. intrinsic (comes from within the learner, it is his own will/desire)

Instrumental (language as an instrument to achieve something )vs. integrative (desire of learner to communicate with other cultures)

Integrative ( integrating with culture, doesn't require direct contact with foreign people) vs. assimilative ( to become a member of target community, one of them).

Attitude - How we approach the language and the whole group of factors that are related to the language, how we perceive the language, culture, speakers. It can be negative, positive, connected with stereotypes. There can be an attitude towards:

• the language

• the culture

• target language speakers

• teaching context

• the teacher, peers

• target materials

• teaching methods

Self - esteem (self-image) - ho we see ourselves, evaluation that the learner creates. It comes form the experience with other people.

Global (holistic picture, we judge ourselves; we are nice) vs. situational ( refers to particular situation, it may change and vary depending on situation)

Risk - taking - one of the characteristics of a successful learner. Risk taking compromises not being afraid of communicating, asking questions, willingness to try language. Making good guesses, relay on us.

Anxiety - it is not only limited to language learning, we all suffer from it. When we experience fear, uncertainty etc. Anxiety is related to degree of proficiency and the level of knowledge, generally to ability.

Trait (a feature of character) predisposed to being more anxious, worried about everything vs. state related to the events or situations. Some of them make us anxious.

Facilitate ( the fact that we are a little bit anxious) vs. Deliberate ( when we suffer during the exam, it will influence our performance. People worry about things that are not relevant)

Personality -

Extroverts -depend on other people, need other people, energy source, talkative, acting out

Vs.

Introverts - they keep themselves to themselves, good for individual work, hate speaking in public, not spontaneous, don't like acting out

Careful learners - perfectionist, hate making mistakes, expect other people to be perfect, unwilling to take risk, shy, reserved, monitor themselves

Vs.

Adventurous learners- risk takers, sociable, do mind making errors, dynamic, successful in communicating

Empathy - The ability to put yourself in other people's shoes, to think how other people feel. It is believed that people who have greater ability to empathy better acquire pronunciation.

18. The role of motivation. How can the teacher motivate his/her students?

Motivation - Some kind of force or a drive that makes us do something that makes us do something, it may be a need of achievement, the desire, curiosity, inner or outer force.

Extrinsic (comes form the outside) vs. intrinsic (comes from within the learner, it is his own will/desire)

Instrumental (language as an instrument to achieve something )vs. integrative (desire of learner to communicate with other cultures)

Integrative ( integrating with culture, doesn't require direct contact with foreign people) vs. assimilative ( to become a member of target community, one of them).

1. General Strategies

• Capitalize on students' existing needs.

• Make students active participants in learning.

• Ask students to analyze what makes their classes more or less "motivating

Eight characteristics emerge as major contributors to student motivation:

• Instructor's enthusiasm

• Relevance of the material

• Organization of the course

• Appropriate difficulty level of the material

• Active involvement of students

• Variety

• Rapport between teacher and students

• Use of appropriate, concrete, and understandable examples

• Incorporating Instructional Behaviours That Motivate Students

• Hold high but realistic expectations for your students.

• Help students set achievable goals for themselves.

• Tell students what they need to do to succeed in your course.

• Strengthen students' self-motivation:

• Give frequent, early, positive feedback that supports students' beliefs that they can do well.

• Ensure opportunities for students' success by assigning tasks that are neither too easy nor too difficult.

• Help students find personal meaning and value in the material.

• Create an atmosphere that is open and positive.

• Help students feel that they are valued members of a learning community.

• Avoid creating intense competition among students.

• Be enthusiastic about your subject.

3. Structuring the Course to Motivate Students

• Work from students' strengths and interests.

• When possible, let students have some say in choosing what will be studied

• Increase the difficulty of the material as the semester progresses

• Vary your teaching methods

4. De-emphasizing Grades

• Avoid using grades as threats

19. Humanistic psychology and its influence on the theory and practice of language teaching.

Humanising in 1999

The term humanistic describes learning approaches that assert the central role of the 'whole person' in the learning process. Humanistic approaches emerged in the mid-twentieth century partly as a reaction to the 'de-humanizing' psychology of behaviourism, but also as a counterbalance to exclusively intellectual (or cognitive) accounts of learning, such as mentalism. Some basic tenets of humanistic education include the following:

• Personal growth, including realizing one's full potential, is one of the primary goals of education.

• The development of human values is another.

• The learner should be engaged affectively (i.e. emotionally) as well as intellectually

• (-> affect).

• Behaviours that cause anxiety or stress should be avoided.

• Learners should be actively involved in the learning process.

• Learners can - and should -take responsibility for their own learning.

Today

'Humanistic Approach' can be described this in the following terms:

Effective teaching and learning engages the whole person - the mind, the body and the heart

The learner is the central person in the act of learning

Creativity, involvement and enjoyment are the essential elements for lifelong learning.

Theory

- Humanistic psychology, introduced by Karl Rogers, had a major impact on the theory and practice of language teaching, since it turned the focus away from teaching and focused on the learner and learning.

- It was a reaction to cognitive theories, which focused on human brain. Humanistic psychology is a whole-person theory. Humanists believe a person consists of 3 domains: cognitive, psychological and emotional.

- They stress the role of emotions (affective focus) because emotions are behind everything people do and so they decide about effectiveness, etc.

- An individual has an inborn ability to develop educationally and enhance his/her existence, but needs a non-threatening environment to do so.

- The role of education is to create the right conditions for learning, e.g. reducing stress, exciting interest. There is a hierarchy of needs (A. Maslow) which have to be satisfied in the 1^st place if learning is to take place, e.g. the need to feel warm and safe, the need to belong somewhere, etc.

- Also, learners should be prepared to accept and deal with the changes that accompany learning. Hence, learning how to learn is may be even more important than acquiring knowledge.

- The learner is responsible for learning (the autonomus learning approach).

- The teacher is a facilitator of the learning process (creates the right conditions), not a transmitter of knowledge.

- Two types of learning may be distinguished on the basis of affective factors:

- defensive learning - learning is an external obligation in order to avoid someunpleasant consequences, e.g. punishment, withholding of rewards;

- receptive learning - the learner perceives the relevance of the material and is interested, open to the incoming instruction.

The second type of learning should be promoted. It is meaningful as it uses associations to form a cognitive structure (as early as in 17^th c it was believed that “All is in all” - we should connect the background with the new knowledge). Receptive learning is more permanent, since it has a positive affective focus and the learner is willing to make more effort.

Practice

- Humanistic psychology was a drive for a new type of learner-centered methods - fringe methodologies.

- These methods emphasis the non-threatening atmosphere; most of them also emphasis communication (or at least meaningfulness) form the very beginning.

- Errors are seen as information about the learner. The methods are non-punitive and use gentle correction to make the learner notice the error.

- Some well-known fringe methodologies and their basic assumptions are:

- Community Language Learning (by Charles Curran) which had a psychotherapeutic basis. It was thought adults felt threatened by the language learning situation. Teachers should be counselors who make adults feel comfortable. Students should use the lg communicatively and learn about their own learning. All this should be achieved in a non-defensive manner, e.g. during the 1^st lesson students should get the feel of a community, so they sit in a circle, may use their native lg (Teacher is “the knower” and translates); they use the human computer exercise (teacher repeats the utterance but always correctly); teachers refer to learners' experience; learners grow independent, etc.

- Total Physical Response - the idea of the comprehensive input is crucial; it enhances retention when learners respond physically, e.g. move, draw, match pictures, tick off, etc. Feeling of success and low anxiety also facilitate learning. The goal is to prepare for communication, but comprehension is more important than production (we don't control the lg we receive but we can control our speech). Teacher= director of students' behavior.

- Suggestopedia - we need to overcome psychological barriers to learning - desuggest the limitations by providing a deeply relaxed state in which the learner's momory capacities are increased (hypermnesia). Also, by infantilization - an emotional reduction to the state of a child, learners may at the same time preserve their full intellectual potential and become open to learning (cf. children). Exapmles of how to overcome the limitations: learners can develop new identities to feel safer, the concert phase- using music.

- The Silent Way - teaching is subordinate to learning; teacherswork depending on what happens in the classroom; learners are responsible for learning and develop their own criteria for correctness; teacher works with the students while the students work with the language; silence is important for the memory. Techniques: rods, color-coded and word charts, silence, self-correction, etc.

20. Learner centred vs. teacher centred approaches to teaching.

In a teacher-centred class, the focus is on what the teacher is doing and saying.

In a student-centred class, the focus is on what the students are doing and saying.

Students need student-centred activities to practice and use the language. But a class must also have some teacher-centred activities to provide structure, discipline and input.

In a student-centred classroom, students are encouraged to participate actively in learning the material as it is presented rather than being passive and perhaps taking notes quietly. Students are involved throughout the class time in activities that help them construct their understanding of the material that is presented. The instructor no longer delivers a vast amount of information, but uses a variety of hands-on activities to promote learning.

Students working in groups. We can use mini-lectures using PowerPoint presentations, in-class collaborative learning, peer presentations, group homework projects.

21. What is a syllabus? List and describe types of syllabuses. What theoretical principles are they based on?

A syllabus is an outline or a summary of the main points of a text, lecture, or course of study. It should agree with curriculum. A fully developed syllabus should take into consideration:

• ss needs

• theories of language learning

• resources

• time

• teacher's competence attitudes

Types of syllabuses:

1 division:

1. Process oriented (focuses on experience of learning) vs. product oriented (structures, forms)

2. Synthetic (step by step, grammar) vs. analytic (functional)

3. Linear (like synthetic) vs. spiral (for concrete purposes)

• division:

1. Lexical - words in situations

2. Grammatical - + ss know grammar; - there is grammar, no communication; not useful metalanguage

3. Grammatical - lexical - combining the two above

4. Topic based - for small children, focus on topic (words, interests, concrete things)

5. Situational - at he air port

6. Notional - ideas, concepts, more abstract

7. Mixed - multi-strand - grammar can be a starting point

8. Skilled - based - in course books where skills are separate

9. Procedural (task based) - to achieve a goal, task from real life

10. Process - negotiation with ss,

Syllabus design criteria:

• learnability (how difficult or easy sth is)

• frequency ( how often sth is used, how common a lg item is)

• usefulness

• coverage (how many different uses particular items cover)

22. Communicative language Teaching - its advantages and disadvantages.

Communicative language teaching is the generally accepted norm in the field of second language teaching. CLT suggests communicative language and language acquisition, and the approach proposes way for learners to internalize a second language and to experiment in a classroom context. Therefore, the classroom context is used to create activities to teach students how to react in a real world situation, not to fake real-world situations. Its basic features are:

• An emphasis on learning to communicate through interaction in the target language.

• The introduction of authentic texts into the learning situation

• The provision of opportunities for learners to focus not only on language, but also on the learning process itself.

• An enhancement of the learner's own personal experience

• An attempt to link classroom language learning with language activation outside the classroom.

• emphasis on learning language functions.

• focus is on helping learners create meaning rather than helping them develop perfectly grammatical structures or acquire native-like pronunciation.

• This means that successfully learning a foreign language is assessed in terms of how well learners have developed their communicative competence, which can loosely be defined as their ability to apply knowledge of both formal and sociolinguistic aspects of a language with adequate proficiency to communicate.

• in the classroom CLT often takes the form of pair and group work requiring negotiation and cooperation between learners, fluency-based activities that encourage learners to develop their confidence, role-plays in which students practice and develop language functions, as well as judicious use of grammar and pronunciation focused activities.

Critiques of CLT

Writers have critiqued CLT for paying insufficient attention to the context in which teaching and learning take place, though CLT has also been defended against this charge (e.g. Harmer 2003). The Communicative Approach often seems to be interpreted as: if the teacher understands the student we have good communication. What can happen though is that a teacher who is from the same region, understands the students when they make errors resulting from first language influence. Problem with this is that regular speakers of the target language can have great difficulty understanding them. This observation asks to rethink and adapt the communicative approach. The adapted communicative approach should be a simulation where the teacher pretends to understand only that what any regular speaker of the target language would, and should react accordingly.

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)

• based on the functional theory of language

• gradually becoming the methodological mainstream

Advantages:

• it does not focus on the knowledge of grammar rules but on developing communicative competence (term introduced by Hymes), naturally used by people; communication is seen as the fundamental, real-life function of language;

• foreign language lessons cease to be about the language itself but focus on its purpose - expressing opinion, feelings, etc. also through the negotiation of meaning with the interlocutor, whose reactions are an essential part of interaction;

• CLT acknowledges that form, meaning and function must be taught together;

• knowledge of the FL-speaking countries and their society is taught on the way, since the learner is expected to develop sensitivity to the context and socio-cultural implications of real discourse; thus, authentic materials of various forms, styles and registers are used (possibly simplified to suit the learners); learners practice more natural language

• there is a great variety of activities to engage in a CLT classroom; while all the activities must have communicative purpose, most of them also combine the use of different skills, just the way they are integrated in real life (e.g. opinion-gap activities, dictoglosses, games or role plays); this diversity reduces boredom in the classroom, proves how useful language is for various purposes and stimulates learners' motivation;

• CLT tries to cater for learners' needs in setting the (linguistic and functional) objectives, e.g. by arranging the syllabus according to the learners age, proficiency, occupation and their own suggestions, by giving the learners time to express their individuality and group status, along with the comforting choice to participate or not;

• student-teacher interaction is of less threatening nature than in teacher-centered classes; teachers' goal is to promote communication and facilitate language learning; teachers may co-communicate with the learners, but mainly to give advice and correct global errors;

• minor errors are not dealt with on the spot, so as not to overwhelm the learner or disrupt interaction; linguistic feedback is mostly given at the end of the lesson;

• CLT leaves teacher much freedom to decide on the understanding and implementation of the proposals; it is open to innovation;

Disadvantages:

• there is some inconsistency in the theory of CLT; hence, it has many interpretations, generally divided into weak (moderate), strong and extreme; the stronger versions are nowadays more critically looked upon;

• there may be too little focus on form, in which case the learners become entirely dependent on communication strategies;

• when the strategies are inappropriate and teachers fail to monitor the learners or provide too little feedback, there is an increasing risk of some errors becoming fossilized;

• the suitability of authentic language has also been questioned; e.g. listening to authentic radio broadcasts may be too difficult for lower level language learners, whereas it may be difficult for a non-native teacher to judge if the semi-authentic materials are probable enough;

• CL lesson timing and syllabus planning might be more challenging to the teacher; lessons cannot be entirely learner-dependent, as this could lead to little language development and too much play; it may also be problematic to adopt CLT to courses aiming to prepare for grammar-based tests, e.g. language certificates;

• it may eventually happen that CLT fails to meet learners' expectations, as it often happens that due to prior school education learners expect the teacher to present grammar rules explicitly and correct every error;

Conclusion:

CLT has its advantages and disadvantages. It is still being improved on and modified, serving as the basis of other related whole language approaches, such as the Task-based Approach and Content-based Instruction. It seems true that when not taken to extremes, but well balanced, CLT is a beneficial way of teaching foreign languages.

23. What is communicative competence? Can we teach it?

The communicative competence is the knowledge of varieties of language and ability to use them. It is an ability to make sense as a participant in discourse, whether spoken or written, ability to be appropriate, to know what to say in every environment. The communicative competence is connected with Communicative Approach where the focus is on the communicative functions of language.

Communicative competence is a linguistic term which refers to a learner's L2 ability. It not only refers to a learner's ability to apply and use grammatical rules, but also to form correct utterances, and know how to use these utterances appropriately. The term unlies the view of language learning implicit in the communicative approach to language teaching.

Canale and Swain (1980) defined communicative competence in terms of four components:

• grammatical competence: words and rules

• sociolinguistic competence: appropriateness

• discourse competence: cohesion and coherence

• strategic competence: appropriate use of communication strategies

24. Communication strategies and their role in language learning.

Non-native and native speakers of a given language sometimes struggle to find the appropriate expression or grammatical construction when attempting to communicate their meaning. The ways in which an individual speaker manages to compensate for this gap between what she wishes to communicate and her immediately available linguistic resources are known as communication strategies (CS). Although researchers are still not in complete agreement, one widely accepted definition is “communication strategies are potentially conscious plans for solving what to an individual presents itself as a problem in reaching a particular communicative goal”.

One benefit of teaching communication strategies is for reasons of second language acquisition. Communication strategies would serve as an excellent means for less proficient learners to have the tools to maintain the conversation, resulting in the opportunity to receive more language input and improve their language ability.

In terms of communication strategies, interactional strategies, such as appeals for assistance could be particularly worthwhile. If learners can put CS to use as a way to negotiate meaning, then, not only will their comprehension improve, but also they can learn new words and have the opportunity to talk in the L2. Some of the communication strategies:

• Avoidance - topic avoidance, message abandonment

• approximation - “animal" for "horse"

• paraphrase - word coinage "airball" for "balloon".

• circumlocution - “when you make a container" for "pottery"

• transfer - literal translation "Make the door shut"

• language switch - "That's a nice tirtil" (caterpillar)

• appeal for assistance - “What is this?"

• mime - getting some candles in a shop in France by singing "Happy Birthday" in English and miming blowing out candles.

25. Input vs. interaction. Identify the two terms and explain how they relate to language learning/teaching.

INPUT: the language that the learners hear (or read) - i.e. the language samples to which they are exposed;

COMPREHENSIBLE INPUT: a term popularised by Krashen. It refers to the fact that not all the target language to which SL learners are exposed is understandable; only some language makes sense to them - `i + 1' (+1 - input that is challenging but not overwhelming). In such cases - comprehension is possible with effort.

Problems here:

1) it is not obvious that incomprehensible input is absolutely of no value to language learners (more to be learned beyond linguistic forms and their meanings - e.g. intonation and stress patterns);

2) it is not easy to see how the mere exposure to language, even comprehensible, actually promotes language development - one possibility here: it is the effort by the learner to comprehend the input that fosters development.

ENHANCED INPUT: input that is altered to make it more salient to learners; it can be more or less explicit, ranging from explicit metalinguistic comments to typographical enhancement (bold type or underlining) or exaggerated stress in speaking.

INTERACTION: “the collaborative exchange of thoughts, feelings, or ideas between two or more people resulting in a reciprocal effect on each other” (Brown 1994:159).

Long's model accounting for the relationships between negotiated interactions, comprehensible input, and language acquisition:

Verbal communication task involving a two-way exchange of information Opportunity for a less competent speaker to provide feedback on his or her lack of comprehension Negotiated modification of the conversation

Comprehensible input Language acquisition

Long's model emphasises the primacy of conversation (interaction) and its role in getting comprehensible input.

Swain (1985) - “while comprehensible input may be sufficient for acquiring semantic competence in the target language, `comprehensible output' is needed to gain grammatical competence” - i.e. language learners must struggle with producing output which is comprehensible to their interlocutors if they are to master the grammatical markers of language (such mastery - the result of negotiations). Accordingly, language acquisition can be seen as the direct outcome of the work involved in the negotiation process itself (the concept of `investment').

NEGOTIATED INTERACTION: modifications that occur in conversations between native speakers and SL learners (or advanced NNS and less proficient SL learners). Interactional adjustments include a whole range of attempts to understand and be understood (confirmation checks, comprehension checks, clarification checks). In the process of interacting, learners have opportunities to negotiate meaning by seeking further input. Interaction contributes to LD because it is the means by which the learner is able to crack the code. It may influence the route and the rate of progress.

Classroom interaction:

• the nature of input provided;

• the kinds of interaction.

TEACHER TALK:

• systematic simplification of the formal properties of language (formal adjustments);

• functional adjustments (repetition, prompting, modeling, expansions);

Interaction as discourse: predominant type here:

IRF = a teacher initiation a pupil response teacher feedback

The following aspects of discourse may be important for LD:

• quantity and quality of `intake';

• a need to communicate;

• independent control of the propositional content (= ability to express one's own mean ings);

• adherence to `here-and-now' principle;

• the performance of a range of speech acts;

• an input rich in directives;

• an input rich in extending utterances;

• uninhibited practice (similar to the egocentric talk of children).

26. List some of the typical classroom procedures (i.e. techniques) of the following methods: Grammar - Translation, Audio- Lingual, Communicative. What are their characteristic features and what kind of learner ability they develop?

Method	Procedures/techniques	Skills developed
Grammar Translation	Translation (from one lg. to the other by applying rules) Application of grammar rule	They develop reading and writing. The techniques focus on accuracy, not fluency, on form, not the meaning.
Audio- Lingual	Oral drills (Different kind of drills: repetition drill/chain drill/single-slot substitution drill/multiple- slot substitution drill/transformation drill/question-answer drill)	They develop listening and speaking. This method is learner-centered and emphasizes communication and real-life situations.
Communicative	Authentic material Information gap activities Problem solving Role play	they develop mainly speaking, oral practice .All kinds of activities focus on language functions rather than forms

27. What methods do you associate the following techniques with: minimal pair drill, object lesson, paraphrase, mim-mem practice, problem-solving activities, question-and answer technique? What theoretical principle do they illustrate.

minimal pair drill - Audio Lingual Method - The teacher works with pairs of words which differ only in one sound. (ship/sheep). Students are first asked to perceive the difference and later to be able to say these words. The teacher selects the sounds to work on and after she has done a contrastive analysis, a comparison between students' native language and the language they are studying.

??object lesson (a lesson based on a material object that is presented to the class) - TPR?? In the Total Physical Response method ss are to follow teacher instruction/ commands. They are to go to the blackboard, point to the pen etc. Object are needed to do that. SILENT WAY?? All these rods and charts?? Direct Method?? The teacher is using realia. He should not use native language of students that is why he needs a lot of visuals and objects.

paraphrase -Natural Approach - paraphrase is used to make associations between words and actions, objects etc.

mim-mem practice ("mimicry-memorization") - Audio Lingual Method - The Audio-Lingual Method advocates "mimicry-memorization" in pattern drills in which the role of understanding is minimized as much as possible. The major emphasis is on the mechanical production of the utterance as a language form and in the development of automatic responses of the desired nature - i.e. good habits.

problem-solving activities - Communicative - it's a good method of practicing communication (it includes the three features of communication. The exercises are structures so that students share information or work to arrive at a solution. This gives students practice in negotiating meaning.

question-and answer technique - The Direct Method - This exercise is conducted in target language. Students are asked questions and are to answer in full sentence so that they practice new words and grammar structures. They have opportunity to ask questions and answer them.

28. Should foreign language grammar be formally taught? Give some arguments for and against.

Advantages of informal teaching: Inductive approach to teaching grammar is when students are provided with the context and they work out the rules by drawing conclusion. When the T wants their students to be independent, force them to think, increase autonomy and involvement, when T wants that the lesson is more student centred and that they understand better, are more motivated and interested and when grammar becomes more meaningful. Then they should use inductive method. It's goods to use them with younger learners.

Advantages of formal teaching: Deductive approach to teaching grammar is when students are provided with the rule by the teacher. Very often teacher provides an example before giving a rule. This method should be used with adults which like to have things presented in a clear way (there is a rule which they can apply, it's not confusing). When the Teacher has little time for preparing inductive lesson (inductive is time consuming).

29. How to teach foreign language grammar? + pyt 36

By using inductive approach. Inductive approach to teaching grammar is when students are provided with the context and they work out the rules by drawing conclusion. When the T wants their students to be independent, force them to think, increase autonomy and involvement, when T wants that the lesson is more student centred and that they understand better, are more motivated and interested and when grammar becomes more meaningful. Then they should use inductive method. It's goods to use them with younger learners.

Implicit approach - not learning grammar consciously/ grammar is not taught/ no grammar focus/based on the way in which one learns L1

Explicit approach - learning grammar consciously/ grammar is taught openly/ grammar rules and explanations are both given

30. Compare the teaching of grammar in the following methods: Grammar- Translation, Audio - Lingual, Silent Way. Why there is no one universal way of grammar teaching?

Grammar- Translation	Audio - Lingual	Silent Way
In this method grammar is emphasized. Students study grammar deductively (they are given rules and examples and are to memorize them, later they are to apply them)	The structures of the language are emphasized over all the other areas. The structures (of grammar) are introduced with a particular situation/ they are contextualized within a dialogue.	The main focus is placed on pronunciation. There is a focus on the structures of the language but explicit grammar rules may never be supplied.

There is no one universal way because there are different theories and each of them treats grammar in a different ways and ascribes different role in SLA.

Many people, including language teachers, hear the word "grammar" and think of a fixed set of word forms and rules of usage. Language teachers who adopt this definition focus on grammar as a set of forms and rules. They teach grammar by explaining the forms and rules and then drilling students on them. This results in bored, disaffected students who can produce correct forms on exercises and tests, but consistently make errors when they try to use the language in context.

Other language teachers, influenced by recent theoretical work on the difference between language learning and language acquisition, tend not to teach grammar at all. Believing that children acquire their first language without overt grammar instruction, they expect students to learn their second language the same way. They assume that students will absorb grammar rules as they hear, read, and use the language in communication activities. This approach does not allow students to use one of the major tools they have as learners: their active understanding of what grammar is and how it works in the language they already know.

The communicative competence model balances these extremes. The model recognizes that overt grammar instruction helps students acquire the language more efficiently, but it incorporates grammar teaching and learning into the larger context of teaching students to use the language. Instructors using this model teach students the grammar they need to know to accomplish defined communication tasks.

31. Inductive vs. inductive teaching of grammar: when would you use them?

Inductive approach to teaching grammar is when students are provided with the context and they work out the rules by drawing conclusion. When the T wants their students to be independent, force them to think, increase autonomy and involvement, when T wants that the lesson is more student centred and that they understand better, are more motivated and interested and when grammar becomes more meaningful. Then they should use inductiove method. It's goods to use them with younger learners.

Deductive approach to teaching grammar is when students are provided with the rule by the teacher. Very often teacher provides an example before giving a rule. This method should be used with adults which like to have things presented in a clear way (there is a rule which they can apply, it's not confusing). When the Teacher has little time for preparing inductive lesson (inductive is time consuming).

Which method to choose is up to the students. Some don't like the rule being elicited and some can be confused - in this case it is better to use deductive approach. It all depends on the need of the learner.

32. How is vocabulary taught in some of the methods you are familiar with? Describe the main procedures and discuss their advantages and disadvantages.

Grammar Translation	Vocabulary is taught by preparing a list for the student with the native language translation. They are to learn it by heart. The advantage is that they know a lot of words but they do not know them in the real context. They also get to know only one meaning.
Audio Lingual	Learning language is like habit formation. Students learn words by repeating them in drills. Vocabulary is contextualized in dialogues.
Communicative approach
Silent Way	At first vocabulary is restricted.
Direct Method	T uses objects, realia or pictures present in immediate classroom environment to make students easier to understand the meaning of words. Vocabulary is acquired in a natural way, it is used in full sentences. Advantages: students are able to use words in communication. Taught through demonstration, objects, pictures or through association. It's especially good for visual learners. Visual aids are especially useful in teaching concrete vocabulary. It is worse with the abstract words, such as love, hate, war since it's harder to present them in a visual way.
Suggestopedia	Vocabulary is emphasized. Large number of words are to be acquired. There are native language translations.
TPR	Vocabulary is taught by using them as single items or in multi word chunks.
Lexical approach	Lexis is the basis of language. Lexis is misunderstood in language teaching because of the assumption that grammar is the basis of language and that mastery of the grammatical system is a prerequisite for effective communication. One of the central organizing principles of any meaning-centered syllabus should be lexis.

33. Your student has just said: I haven't gone to school last week. What would be your reaction, if you were : a) an audio lingual teacher b) a grammar-translation teacher, c) a communicative teacher

a) an audio lingual teacher - Students' errors are to be avoided by the teacher's awareness of where the students will have difficulty and restriction of what they re taught to say. Errors should be avoided so that there is no habit formation.

b) a grammar-translation teacher - I didn't go to school last week (The T supplies the correct form) or would probably ask another student to correct. The correction: John, tell me what's wrong with this sentence and please correct your friend.

c) a communicative teacher - Probably the T would not react. Errors of form are tolerated and are seen as a natural outcome of the development of communication skills. Students can have linguistic knowledge and still be successful communicators. if it was a longer statement the teacher wouldn't correct it immediately, since the focus in this approach is on fluency. The correction would be made afterwards in such a way as not to discourage the student but to encourage him/her for example to self correction.

34. Dealing with errors in a foreign language classroom.

There different approaches of the teacher towards mistakes:

• That they are unavoidable

• They affect communication

• Are related to the whole structure

• Make it hard to follow the content

• Need focusing on

When an error is made by the learner the teacher must think:

1. What kind of error it is?

2. Do I want to correct it? (Is it necessary to do it. If the teacher wants that students practice fluency he should not correct the student)

3. When do I want do deal with it? (he can point out the errors later. Or at the spot)

4. Who is to correct? (the teacher may correct or the peer - correction or self-correction)

5. How do I want to correct? (facial expression, gestures, repeating sentences up to the error, a single word used to indicate a problem e.g. noun, verb; behave like native speaker)

- It is now generally agreed that errors are a natural and unavoidable part of acquiring languages. Hence, teachers should adopt a health investigation of errors within the larger perspective of learners' total interlanguage performance rather than focus on every incorrect production.

- Nevertheless, teachers need to correct some errors to help students avoid fossilization and learn the correct forms of the language.

- The crucial point is to provide appropriate feedback. Feedback may be divided into

- affective (relating to the relationship between the source and the audience; encoded mostly by gestures, facial expressions, tone of voice,etc.)

- cognitive (relating to facts, suppositions; conveyed by means of linguistic devices)

With the prerequisite positive affective feedback, negative or neutral feedback to an error in the cognitive dimension (e.g. “Yes, but…”; “You're almost right,but…”) will not threaten or demotivate but it will encourage learners to “try again” and prevent fossilization.

- In order to deal with errors properly, the teacher must know specifically when and how to deal with errors. Although the matter is complex and context-dependent, major suggestions are the following:

- provide immediate feedback to global errors (those that hamper communication) and to errors concerning the linguistic item practiced at the given moment; delay but remember about less urging feedback;

- do not provide the correct version yourself; give the learner time to self-correct; use peer-correction, but only if the class dynamics doesn't make it humiliating;

- signal the nature of the error by gestures, word clues (e.g. tense, verb), phonetic charts, etc.

- as a last resort, provide the correct answer yourself and tell the learner(s) to repeat it and ask concept questions to check understanding;

- depending on the activity, correct individually or, especially with serious and recurring errors, give “whole class” feedback;

- do not devote much time during the lesson to errors that do not concern the subject matter practiced that day, but possibly assign the final part of the lesson to remedying those additional problems;

- check if serious errors recur after some time.

Generally, the idea is to discern the optimal tension between positive and negative feedback

35. What is the teacher's response to errors committed by students in the following methods: Direct Way, Silent Way, Total Physical Response?

Direct Way - The teacher employs various techniques, tries to get students to self correct whenever possible.

Silent Way - errors are essential, natural in process of language learning. They encourage to explore language. The T uses student errors as a basis for deciding where further work is necessary. Self correction is desirable. Students need to learn to listen to themselves and to compare their own production with their developing inner criteria. If student cannot self-correct peers cannot help, then the teacher gives the correct form but as a last resort.

Total Physical Response - It is expected that students will make errors when they first begin speaking. The T should be tolerant of them and only correct major errors.

36. How is grammar taught in some contemporary methods of language teaching?

1. Grammar rules are complex that is why the teacher should not provide all information at one goal

2. Grammar should be taught meaningfully

3. Some grammar is bound to be learned subconsciously

4. There should be a shift between accuracy and fluency

5. There should be not too much emphasis on the rule itself

6. L2 should be used as often as possible

7. L1 may have a facilitation role in teaching and learning grammar

8. Learning a language is not a linear process (different structures are connected together and cannot be separated)

9. Teacher should use a combination of different teaching grammar approaches

10. The form-function relationship cannot be neglected

37. Compare two methods: the Grammar Translation Method and the Direct method.

	Grammar Translation	Direct Method
What the student was supposed to be able to do	Translate from one language to the other. Know, apply and quote grammar rules.	Express himself and understand the language
Role of the Teacher	The authority and judge of performance	The kindly active guide and leader of activity
Attitude to error	A regrettable evidence of lack of care or of ignorance	Not a cause of concern (sufficient practice will iron it out)
Typical interaction patterns	T-SS (students respond to the teacher)	Teacher to pupils. Pupils are freer to participate than in grammar translation.
Main skills emphasis (In both first there is a focus on receptive skill then on productive - but it differs in types of skills)	Reading and writing	Listening and speaking
Typical exercise types	Translation Application of grammar rule Writing out grammatical paradigms	Describing Teacher's actions Responding to the questions in the foreign language mime

38. What is the place of the listening skill in various methods of teaching and how is it developed?`

Grammar Translation	There is very little attention to listening and speaking.
Audio Lingual	The natural order of skills is listening, speaking etc. The oral/aural skills receive most attention.
Silent Way	Students are to repeat sounds and words and they need to listen carefully to the T because he repeats everything only twice and then they have to really on their memory. There is little listening but still students have to listen very carefully.
Direct Method	All 4 skills are equally developed (reading, listening, speaking, writing).
Suggestopedia	Listening is not very important here. The main emphasis is on vocabulary, using the language and speaking in a communicative way.
TPR	Understanding spoken words is very important. TPR assumes that sla takes place as in the first language acquisition that is why ss should acquire it by listening to the commands and following them.

39. What are characteristic features of pattern drill? How and for what purpose are they used in language teaching? How do they differ from other exercises? (Give examples)

Drills were used extensively within audio-lingual approaches but nowadays we recognise their limitations & use them for pronunciation practice in helping the students to get their mouths round the items. It is a chance for them to say it right in a controlled, safe way before more challenging tasks with the new language. They can be used after the presentation & when correcting during a controlled activity or after a freer one. These are for oral practice so if the language you are introducing is used in the written form then give a written drill! Drills can become a bit boring & predictable if you don't keep them snappy & lively so make them fun.

It's also not the case that higher, more advanced levels don't need drilling. If they find something difficult to say then drill them. Clearly they are going to find less language that is difficult to say than lower levels but all the same if it's difficult to say then help them out.

Categorization of Drills: Mechanical, Meaningful, and Communicative drills

A mechanical drill is one where there is complete control over the student's response, and where comprehension is not required in order to produce a correct response.Example: book --> this is a book. pen --> this is a pen.

A meaningful drill is one in which there is still control over the response, but understanding is required in order for the student to produce a correct response.

Teacher reads a sentence	Student choose a response
I'm hot. I'm cold. I'm thirsty. I'm hungry.	I'll get you something to eat. I'll turn on the air conditioning. I'll get you something to drink. I'll turn on the heater.

Example:

A communicative drill is one in which the type of response is controlled but the student provides his or her own content or information.

Teacher	Student completes cues
What time did you get up on Sunday? What did you have for breakfast?	I got up _____ . I had _____ .

A few of the more common oral drills

Repetition drill.	Substitution drill	Question and answer drill
T: She went to the cinema. Ss: She went to the cinema.	T: She went to the cinema. Ss: She went to the cinema. T: Theatre Ss: She went to the theatre. T: Disco Ss: She went to the disco	T: Where did she go yesterday? Std 1: She went to the cinema Std 2: Where did she go on Monday? Std 3: She went to the disco.

Backchaining - for long sentences that you are drilling to help the stds remember & say. eg.
Tch: a million pounds?
Stds: a million pounds?
Tch: if you won a million pounds?
Stds: if you won a million pounds?
Tch: What would you do if you won a million pounds?
Stds: What would you do if you won a million pounds?

40. What is the role of the students' native language in some of the methods you are familiar with? In your opinion, should or shouldn't the teacher use it in the classroom?

Grammar Translation	The meaning of the target language is made clearly by translating into student's native language. The language that is used in the class is mostly the students' native language.
Audio Lingual	The target language is used in the classroom, not the native language of students.
Communicative approach	The students' native language has no particular role. Target language should be used during communicative activities and in explaining and assigning homework. Language is a vehicle for communication, not just an object to be studied.
Silent Way	Meaning is made clear by focusing students' perceptions not by translation. The students' native language can be used to give instructions when necessary (to help improve pronunciation).
Direct Method	The student's native language should not be used in the classroom.
Suggestopedia	Native language translation is used to make the meaning of dialogue clear. The teacher also uses the mother tongue in class when necessary. As the course proceeds the teacher uses the native language less and less.
TPR	The method is usually introduced in students' native language. After the introduction, rarely would the mother tongue be used. Meaning is made clear through body movement.

41. What would be some guidelines for using the learners' native language in a foreign language classroom?

The most beneficial for the students would be the situation in which the teacher spoke mainly target language. T should mainly use L2 when introducing to the lesson, checking attendance, organizing where students sit, asking questions on a text and especially during routines. Sometimes it is good to use L1 to set a homework, to be sure that students know what to do. Correcting errors and presenting new language can be done by using both languages.

42. All teaching methods claim that their final goal is to teach communication. Choose three methods and explain how each of them understands communication and how it tries to develop communicative abilities of its learners.

Communicative approach - The primary goal is enabling students to communicate using the target language. Acquisition of linguistic structures or vocabulary is emphasized. Communication is seen as a process where students need to apply the knowledge (target language forms, meanings and functions) in negotiating the meaning. Because of speaker listener interaction the meaning becomes clear. That is why in communicative approach exercise like information/ opinion gap or problem solving tasks are used. Also authentic materials are used to give students opportunity to develop strategies for understanding language as it is actually used by native speakers.

Suggestopedia - The goal of this method to learn, at accelerate pace, foreign langauge for everyday communication by overcoming psychological barriers. The teacher has the authority, commands, trusts and respects the students. Learning is facilitated in pleasant environment.

The Direct method - It's goal is to learn language to use it later in communicative way. There is no translation allowed. The meaning is connected directly with the target language. Grammar is taught inductively, language is primary spoken. Students are encouraged to think in the target language.

Audio Lingual Method - it was developed in America during II WW. It aimed at teaching language in a rapid way, so that soldiers could “speak” in a basic way in few languages. The purpose of language learning is to communicate. To be able to say right things. Students od A-L method practiced by repeating drills until they “overlearn” it.

43. What areas of language and what language skills are emphasized by the following methods: Grammar Translation, Silent Way, Natural Approach and Community Language Learning?

Grammar Translation	Vocabulary and grammar are emphasized. Reading and writing are the primary skills that the students work on. Much less attention is given to speaking, listening and pronunciation.
Community Language Learning	Particular grammar points, pronunciation patterns and vocabulary are worked with, based on the language the students have generated. The most important skills are understanding and speaking the language. Reading and writing are also worked on.
Silent Way	Sounds are basic to any language, pronunciation is worked on from the beginning. It is important that students acquire the melody of the language. There is also focus on the structures of the language, although explicit grammar rules may never be supplied. Vocabulary is restricted at first. All four skills are worked on since the beginning - there is a sequence in that students learn to read and write what they have already produced orally. The skills reinforce what students are learning.
Natural Approach	Students learn basic communication skills: oral and written. The Natural approach is designed to develop basic communication skills.

44. Discuss various types of student - teacher interaction and their disadvantages and advantages.

Lockstep T - Ss

Advantages	Disadvantages
The whole class is involved	It is impossible to work with individual students
Discipline is better	Students get little language practice
All students have the same opportunity to get new information	Some students may not be involved in a lesson
Teacher controls everything (including pace)	It's hard to find suitable pace for all the students
It's good for presenting new material and when the T wants to control the class/ prevent misbehaviour	Everybody does the same thing at the same time
	It may be stressful for a student to say something aloud
	Students only follow teacher's instruction

T- S

T - group of students

45. Which techniques from the methods you are familiar with are worth applying and why?

problem-solving activities - Communicative - it's a good method of practicing communication (it includes the three features of communication. The exercises are structures so that students share information or work to arrive at a solution. This gives students practice in negotiating meaning.

Role-play - Communicative Approach- They give students opportunity to practice communicating in different social contexts and in different social roles. They can be used in a structured and less structured way (giving students more choices and that leads to information gap activities). Students also get feedback - if they have communicated something properly. In Suggestopedia - Students are asked to pretend temporarily that they are someone else to perform in the target language as if they were that person. They are often asked to create their own lines relevant to situation.

Getting students to self-correct - Direct Method - The teacher makes student to self correct by asking them to make a choice between what they said and alternative correct version. Other ways are when teacher repeat by using a questioning voice to signal that something is wrong. Another possibility is when the teacher repeats what the students has said stopping before the error.

Fill-in-the blanks - Grammar Translation Method - This is an exercise where students are given series of sentences with word missing. They need to fill it with new vocabulary item or particular grammar type. In Direct Method - it's different in application in comparison to Grammar Translation Method. All items are in target language. No explicit grammar rule would be applied. Students have to induce grammar rule they need to fill in the blank from the example.

46. Which methods do you associate the following techniques with: fill-in-the blanks, memorization, getting students to self-correct. Backward build - up, sound-colour chart, role-play? What theoretical are they based on?

Fill-in-the blanks - Grammar Translation Method - This is an exercise where students are given series of sentences with word missing. They need to fill it with new vocabulary item or particular grammar type. In Direct Method - it's different in application in comparison to Grammar Translation Method. All items are in target language. No explicit grammar rule would be applied. Students have to induce grammar rule they need to fill in the blank from the example.

Memorization - Grammar Translation Method - Having list of words with the translation in the native language and learning it by heart/memorizing. Students are also required to memorize grammar rules. Students study grammar deductively - they learn it and they should apply them. Memorization/ language learning provides good mental exercise.

Getting students to self-correct - Direct Method - The teacher makes student to self correct by asking them to make a choice between what they said and alternative correct version. Other ways are when teacher repeat by using a questioning voice to signal that something is wrong. Another possibility is when the teacher repeats what the students has said stopping before the error.

Backward build - up (Expansion drill) - Audio Lingual Method - This drill is used when a long line of a dialogue is giving students trouble. The teacher breaks line into several parts and students repeat a part of the sentence - usually the last phrase. Then following the teacher cu, the students expand what are they repeating part by part until they are able to repeat the entire line. The teacher begins with the part at the end of the sentence and works backward from there to keep the intonation of the line as natural as possible. This also directs students to the end of the sentence where new information typically occurs.

Sound-colour chart - The Silent Way - The chart contains block of colour, each on representing a sound in target language. The teacher, and later students point to the bocks of colour on the chart to form a syllables, words etc. When introducing a stress pattern the teacher may tap the sound. The chart allows students to produce combinations in the target language without doing so through the repetition. The chart draws students' attention and allows them to concentrate on the language, no ton the teacher. The chart represents all the sounds so the learners know what they already know and what is to be learnt.

Role-play - Communicative Approach- They give students opportunity to practice communicating in different social contexts and in different social roles. They can be used in a structured and less structured way (giving students more choices and that leads to information gap activities). Students also get feedback - if they have communicated something properly. In Suggestopedia - Students are asked to pretend temporarily that they are someone else to perform in the target language as if they were that person. They are often asked to create their own lines relevant to situation.

47. Discuss the role of the teacher in methods derived from the Humanistic Approach to language teaching. How does it differ from a more traditional one?

Methods deriving from Humanistic Approach:

• Suggestopedia ( The T is the authority. The trust must trust and respect his/her. The teacher is in a way adopt the learners like children - if they feel secure they can be less inhibited)

• Total Physical Response ( T is the director of all student behaviour. Students are imitators.

• Community Language Learning ( T is a counsellor, he/she recognizes how threatening a new learning situation may be for an adult learner, so he skilfully understands and supports his students in their struggle to master the target language.

• The Natural Approach

The teacher should take into account emotional aspects.

They have to treat learners as a whole person.

They should let them grow, develop, including realizing one's full potential, is one of the primary goals of education.

Teacher should avoid behaviours that cause anxiety or stress.

Teacher should actively involve learners in the learning process.

Effective teaching and learning engages the whole person - the mind, the body and the heart

Teacher should enhance the development of creativity, involvement and enjoyment.

Normally the teacher is the organizer, he forces students' attention, gives examples, director, controller etc.

48. Evaluate from your point of view, the effectiveness of so called fringe methodologies, i.e. “new” methods offering somewhat original solutions.

(??) Multiple Intelligences - The Multiple Intelligences concepts offer relatively simple and accessible methods to understand and explain people's preferred ways to learn and develop. It is an approach which characterizes the ways in which learners are unique.

NLP - it is not a language teaching method. It is a humanistic philosophy and a set of beliefs and suggestions based on popular psychology designed to convince people that they have the power to control their own and other people's lives for the better. If the language teacher adopts and uses the principles of NLP, they will become more effective teachers. There are four key principles (know what you want/establish rapport with yourself and others/use your senses. Look at, listen to, and feel what is actually happening/keep changing what you do until you get what you want).

Content based Instruction - Integrating learning of languages with learning of some other content, often academic subject. Students study academic subjects in a non native language. Learners work with authentic materials, vocabulary is easy to acquire because it's used in context. Teaching is build up on students' previous experience.

Task based instruction - providing natural context to language use. The learners work to complete a task and they have an opportunity to interact. By interacting they tend to listen to language which may be beyond their present ability but which may be assimilated into their knowledge for use at later time. Information/opinion gap activity is used here. Project work is also included.

Whole language - language is taught holistically. Students learn best when they understand the whole text - not in pieces. Top - down processing is involved. Whole Language approach includes diary writing.

The so-called fringe methodologies include such theories of lg teaching as: Suggestopedia the Silent Way and Total Physical Response. Their innovative approach to lg learning gained as many supporters as critics.

Suggestopedia (Lozanov)- we do not use the full mental powers that we have, so we need to stimulate our mental reserves by desuggesting the psychological barriers that we, as learners, set up. Among the right conditions to learning are: a state of relaxation (Baroque music, bright, colorful classrooms, posters on the walls etc.) and giving over of control to the teacher. The teacher is the authority in the classroom. Students are the imitators; they imitate the teacher's pronunciation and follow teacher's directions.

Disadvantages of this method:

• not very practical: comfortable chairs or relaxing music are not available in every classroom,

• the emphasis is on vocabulary skills, grammar is dealt with minimally,

• focused more on memorization techniques than LA,

• the techniques may not be suited for all the learners and cultures (there are people who find classical music irritating rather than stimulating, it will not work with hyper teenage-ss who are used to learning in a more guided and controlled classroom settings).

• doesn't help ss to improve their communication skills- they stay passive till the teacher stimulates them to take part.

Advantages:

• a variety of activities (games, songs, role-playing, and questions/ answers exercises) are used to avoid boredom and to release tension that inhibits learning,

• peripheral learning is a useful technique- by being exposed to lg at a visual level (posters of irregular verbs or vocabulary items hung on the walls), ss have a chance of internalizing the linguistic items subconsciously,

• state of relaxation facilitates learning.

The Silent Way (Gattegno)- a methodology of teaching based on the idea that the lg should be approached by the L as a puzzle to be worked out. By using tools such as Cuisenaire rods (wooden or plastic colored rods), a selection of specially prepared charts and a pointer, the teacher presents the puzzle to the learners. The learners work out the "puzzle" and ultimately learn the lg involved in it. The teacher is silent most of the time, he stimulates rather than explains everything. Learners cooperate with each other in solving lg problems. Acc to Gattegno:

• learning is facilitated: a) if the L discovers or creates rather than remembers and repeats what is to be learned, b) by problem solving involving the material to be learned,

• learners should develop independence and responsibility,

• ss errors are seen as natural- errors are inevitable since ss are encouraged to explore the lg themselves,

• peer correction- in this method, ss are encouraged to help one another.

Advantages:

• this method fosters cooperative learning between individuals,

• it embodies a respect for the individual and an awareness of the individual's extraordinary cognitive powers,

• with this way ss will say `I learned' instead of `I was taught well',

• if it is feasible to teach the lg by using the rods without repeating too much, it will save time and energy for both teachers and ss.

Disadvantages:

• this method can be benefited by the teacher only in small groups of ss,

• it would seem necessary for a teacher to gain a good deal of training and skill in order to apply the Silent Way in the lg classroom,

• for some teachers the rigidity of the system (no repetitions by the teacher, no answers by the teacher etc.) may be meaningless,

• lg is separated from its social context and taught through artificial situations, usually by rods.

All in all, no one method is the solution to the problems of the language learning. It would be better to take fruitful techniques from each method depending on the ss' level, age and needs.

Total Physical Response

It is based upon the way that children learn their mother tongue. Parents have 'language-body conversations' with their children, the parent instructs and the child physically responds to this. The parent says, "Look at mummy" or "Give me the ball" and the child does so. These conversations continue for many months before the child actually starts to speak itself. Even though it can't speak during this time, the child is taking in all of the language; the sounds and the patterns. Eventually when it has decoded enough, the child reproduces the language quite spontaneously. TPR attempts to mirror this effect in the language classroom.

Its use in the classroom

In the classrom the teacher and students take on roles similar to that of the parent and child respectively. Students must respond physically to the words of the teacher. The activity may be a simple game such as Simon Says or may involve more complex grammar and more detailed scenarios.

TPR can be used to practise and teach various things. It is well suited to teaching classroom language and other vocabulary connected with actions. It can be used to teach imperatives and various tenses and aspects. It is also useful for story-telling.

Advantages

• It is fun and easy. Students will enjoy getting up out of their chairs and moving around.

• Simple TPR activities do not require a great deal of preparation on the part of the teacher. However, some other more complex applications might.

• "TPR is aptitude-free." according to Asher. It is inclusive working well with a mixed ability class.

• It is good for kinæsthetic learners who need to be active in the class.

• It is a good tool for building vocabulary.

• It is memorable. Actions help strengthen the connexions in the brain.

• Class size need not be a problem.

• "TPR seems to work effectively for children and adults. There is no age barrier." according to Asher.

Disadvantages

• Whilst it can be used at higher levels TPR is most useful for beginners. It is also at the higher levels where preparation becomes an issue for the teacher.

• Students are not generally given the opportunity to express their own thoughts in a creative way.

• It is easy to overuse TPR. "Any novelty, if carried on too long, will trigger adaptation." Asher writes, "No matter how exciting and productive the innovation, people will tire of it.

• The teacher may find that it is limited in terms of language scope. Certain target languages may not be suited to this method.

• It can be a challenge for shy students.

49. What is meant by eclecticism in language teaching? What possibilities does it offer to language teachers? (??)

Eclecticism is a conceptual approach that does not hold rigidly to a single paradigm or set of assumptions, but instead draws upon multiple theories, styles, or ideas to gain complementary insights into a subject, or applies different theories in particular cases.

Principled Eclectisim

A few years ago I was introduced to principled eclecticism as a means of establishing ESL/EFL class objectives. Basically, principled eclecticism refers to the use of various teaching styles in a discriminating manner as required by learner needs and styles.

Applying Principled Eclectisim

While this "loose" approach may sound either ideal or simplistic depending on your point of view, it requires a basic grasp of some of the principle schools of thought as a means of getting an overview of issues directly related to satisfying learners' needs. In a nutshell, the application of principled eclecticism proceeds by first addressing the issue of learners' needs and styles. Once these two basic elements have been evaluated, the teacher can develop a needs analysis which can then be used to develop the course syllabus.

Example Class Needs and Styles

• Age: immigrant adults from 30-65

• Nationalities: a variety of countries

• Learning Styles: most of the class has had little secondary education and has not studied languages formally

• Goals: Basic ESL skills for everyday usage and job acquisition

• Interlanguage Skills: basic tasks such as ordering a meal and making a telephone call are still difficult

• Course Duration: 2 month intensive course meeting four times weekly for two hours

Approach

• The approach to teaching this class is dictated by two principal factors: need for "real world" skills, lack of background in traditional learning styles

• Pragmatic functional English is of prime importance. Luckily, the course is intensive and provides the perfect opportunity for intensive role-playing and "real world" game activities.

• As students are immigrants and a native speaker environment is at hand, teaching can also take place by bringing the "real world" into the classroom and/or - even more preferably - taking the classroom out into the "real world".

• Low level English skills mean that comprehensible input will play a great role in the success or failure of the class. Considering the low level of Interlanguage skill, students desperately need the teacher to help them by filtering experiences into a comprehensible form so that they may make sense of situations that are too difficult if faced on a strictly "authentic" level.

• Learning by process will be of great importance. The positive side of low-level education is that students are not attached to traditional learning methods such as grammar charts, exercises, etc. The use of holistic learning approaches can be very effective as students will not have any pre-conceived notions about what learning should be like.

50. Present the sequence for introducing grammatical item.

Research findings suggest that most errors are developmental and not a result of interference. Both children and adults follow a sequence in the acquisition of grammar items in the FL. This might be called an internal syllabus. The sequence is universal and occurs whatever the learner's L1.

Order of acquisition of grammatical morphemes in English:

10. Present progressive

11. Plural - s

12. Irregular past forms

13. Possessive `s

14. Copula

15. Articles

16. Regular past -ed

17. Third person singular simple present - s

18. Auxiliary be

51. Suggest two different ways in which you could introduce the structure contained in: If it rains, I'll stay at home. Give reasons for your choice.

If it rains, I'll stay at home.

Using inductive method - First giving a dialogue with sentences containing this structure. Doing pre-reading, while-reading activities (arousing schemata, pre-teaching vocabulary, comprehension questions). Then writing model sentences on the blackboard and making students describe the situation and how these conditions are expressed linguistically. After that T together with Ss formulates the rule. Students practice. This is with students in schools.

With adult learners the deductive approach to teaching grammar would be used. First giving an example of structure and presenting the rule. Then after that learners practice it.

52. Give reasons for and against for using pair- or group work in he classroom.

Pair work - There are 3 types of pair work (close pairs, open pairs and mingling pairs).

Advantages	Disadvantages
Students are relaxed (no stress)	Tasks are not sheared equally
Students co-operate	Usually students work with the same partner
Students are self dependant	Students make mistakes and it's not controlled by the teacher
Students learn to interact
Students learn autonomy	Disadvantages only concerning groups:
Students can choose their own pace	Students may not like each other and work unwillingly
STT is increased	To prepare and form groups is time-absorbing

53. List different kinds of student grouping in the classroom, discuss their advantages and disadvantages, and explain when you would use each of them.

Lockstep

Advantages	Disadvantages
The whole class is involved	It is impossible to work with individual students
Discipline is better	Students get little language practice
All students have the same opportunity to get new information	Some students may not be involved in a lesson
Teacher controls everything (including pace)	It's hard to find suitable pace for all the students
It's good for presenting new material and when the T wants to control the class/ prevent misbehaviour	Everybody does the same thing at the same time
	It may be stressful for a student to say something aloud
	Students only follow teacher's instruction

Pair work + Group work

Advantages	Disadvantages
Students are relaxed (no stress)	Tasks are not sheared equally
Students co-operate	Usually students work with the same partner
Students are self dependant	Students make mistakes and it's not controlled by the teacher
Students learn to interact
Students learn autonomy	Disadvantages only concerning groups:
Students can choose their own pace	Students may not like each other and work unwillingly
STT is increased	To prepare and form groups is time-absorbing
Advantages only for group work:
S learn to negotiate and compromise
There is less pressure on individual students than in pair work
Students exchange ideas freely

Individual work

Advantages	Disadvantages
Students work on their own pace	The teacher cannot devote much time for individual student
Students are independent
At the same time different students may work on different tasks
The teacher can meet individual students needs
Students can use self - access centres

54. Compare the two receptive skills.

The two receptive skills are reading and listening.

They are both used to practice language and practice reading and listening skill. They provide background and stimuli for further practicing of productive skills. They provide cultural information.

55. Top down - processing vs. bottom-up processing in listening.

Top - down processing: This is when language is studying as a whole. It is when the students tries to understand listening selection without worrying about individual components of language. Listening for the gist is a type of activity in top - down processing. The learner is trying to understand using cues such as intonation, tone of voice without focusing on specific words and structures. Also during top - down approach the T refers to the students knowledge before listening. He/ She creates expectations and looking globally at the heard text. It is absorbing an overall picture by using schemata.

Bottom - up processing: Language learning that proceeds from the most basic blocks of language, such as words, and then proceeding to more complex structures, and finally meaning. Listening to the exact phrases and word would be considered a bottom up listening activity. It is when we look straight to the text and try to understand everything. The attention is given to the isolated fragments of the text and focusing on details. First student is trying to understand each part and then put these details to build up a whole.

56. Some writers distinguish two types of listening exercises: intensive and extensive listening. What is the difference. Think of examples.

Extensive listening is listening for pleasure, outside a classroom. It is not a skill but an approach. A student might listen to the radio in foreign language just because he likes doing it. Extensive listening involves listening to a recording to get a general understanding. For example, watching a film, understanding and enjoying the story; or listening and carrying out instructions.

Intensive listening involves more detailed analysis of the language used or listening for specific information. Listening for specific information involves finding the answers to specific questions. Students listen for that particular response. On the other hand, “does the speaker generally have a positive or negative opinion of Italian food?” would practise a different skill, listening for gist i.e. getting a general feel for the text. Intensive listening is also used to do detailed study of a language point. Asking students to listen and fill in gaps in a text can also be done to study language; this type of task is considered to be intensive listening. Asking students to listen and follow the transcript in order to identify a certain grammar or vocabulary point is a further example of intensive listening.

57. What is the function of pre-reading/listening activities?

Examples of pre-listening/reading exercises:

1. Looking at picture and taking about it

2. Reading through the questions.

3. Informal talk/discussion

4. Predicting/speculating

5. Completing a chart

To arouse students' schemata, to make students think what the text will be about, for making predictions. It is important to provide a lot of pre-listening/reading support, to make SS confident enough to listen/read effectively. The aim of these activities is to prepare SS for L/R, in the sense that help SS focus on what they will see/hear; narrow down their minds to what will come;, activate prior knowledge and linguistic; that is, bring in the forefront lexis and syntax necessary for comprehending the text.

58. Describe pre-listening/reading, while- listening/reading, and post- listening/reading activities.

The pre-listening/reading phase is a kind of preparatory work which: ought to make the context explicit, clarify purposes and establish roles, procedures and goals for listening/reading. (Looking at pictures and describing them, Predicting/speculation, Informal talk/ class discussion)

While listening/reading: The nature of these activities is to help learners to listen/read for meaning, that is to elicit a message from spoken/written language. During while-listening/reading stage students should not worry about interpreting long questions or giving full answers, but they should concentrate on comprehension, whether they have understood important information from the passage. That means that students can focus their attention on listening/reading itself, rather than on worrying about writing, grammar or spelling. The aim of the while-listening/reading stage for students is to understand the message of the text not catching every word, they need to understand enough to collect the necessary information. While-listening/reading exercises should be interesting and challenging, they should guide the students to handle the information and messages from the listening/written text. (True/false, Multiple-choice questions, Gap-filling)

The post-listening/ reading stage comprises all the exercises which are done after listening/reading. Some of these activities may be the extensions of those carried out at pre- and while-listening/reading work but some may not be related to them at all and present a totally independent part of the listening/reading session. Post-listening/reading activities allow the learners to `reflect' on the language from the passage; on sound, grammar and vocabulary as they last longer than while-listening/reading activities so the students have time to think, discuss or write. (summarizing, Matching, role-play)

59. Teaching reading

It divides into stages: (detailed description in question 58)

Pre-reading

• Vocabulary

• Activating schemata

• Introducing task to be done by working

While- reading

• Reading and completing task

( sub skills to be used:

• Scanning/ selective reading (looking for specific information)

• Skimming/ reading for gist (looking for the main ideas)

• Intensive/extensive

• Inferring the attitude of the author

• Reading between the lines

• Guessing the meaning of unknown vocabulary

• Identifying discourse markers and patterns

Post-reading

• Exercise connected with topic

• vocabulary

60. Students reading aloud in the classroom: a waste of time or a useful exercise?

Advantages:

• It is useful to practice pronunciation

• Students can see that there is little relationship between spelling and pronunciation

Disadvantages:

• Time consuming

• Slow

• Useless for reading skills

• Stressful for some students

• Difficult to perform with new text

• Difficult to find a right pace for all students

• Unnatural

• Students do not focus on the content

61. What do you understand by the mechanical drill? How do mechanical drills differ from other kinds of drills? Are they useful at all (give example).

Mechanical drill - students switch off and do not think of what they are saying/ they just repeat. Drill can be also meaningful (students have to think what phrase to choose, there is an option). Mechanical drills can be only useful in practicing pronunciation (repetition drill and Back -chaining drill when students can not repeat the whole sentence). Meaningful drills, except from practicing pronunciation can be helpful in learning some grammar structures (like do/does - like/likes)

62. What kind of activities can be built around the text in a foreign language?

• Multiple choice,

• matching paragraphs with headings,

• picture with paragraphs,

• put paragraphs in order,

• t/f statements,

• choose the best title,

• Wh-questions,

• put sentences in a correct order,

• role play,

• personal questions,

• opinions

63. Principles of language testing.

a) Theoretical concepts: validity, reliability, washback

b) The distinction between the pairs of concepts:

- achievement v. proficiency tests

- diagnostic v. prognostic tests

- discrete-point v. integrative tests

- subjective v. objective

c) The form of the following types of test items:

- multiple - choice(with concept of stem, options, distractors)

- cloze

We test general fluency, lg skills, language (grammar, vocab, pronunciation, spelling), specific items taught (food, past simple)

a) reliable - the results do not differ in different classes of the same level

TEST RELIABILITY - you can rely on results, and students must know the technique of testing

SCORER (RATER) RELAIBILITY - intra rater - teacher marks tests in the same way

• inter rater - different teachers mark the same test in different ways

b) validity (zasadność) We need to know what do we want to test

- content - gives samples of Ss knowledge

- construct - we teat what is supposed to be tested

- face - does it look like a test?

EMPIRICAL VALIDITY - results of the test do not differ from results of other assessments

PREDICTIVE VALIDITY - gives some info for the future

c) practical - easy to check and to fill in, not to short or too long (multiple choice, fill ins)

d) positive washback (backwash) effect - Students are better trained in areas of a language they know will occur on tests

65. Different kinds of tests

a) informal - diagnostic whether Ss have to work more

- formal - ends up with a grade

b) direct - focused on specific area

- indirect - focused on different areas (pronunciation, grammar, vocab)

c) Subjective - based on your own opinion (criteria)

- objective - clear criteria (matura)

d) APTITUDE - to see how Ss are gifted in lgs, general ability to learn lgs (bilingual classes)

e) DIAGNOSTIC - whether S is suitable to take an exam FCE, CAE (sample test)

f) PLACEMENT - to choose levels students should be in

g) PRACTICE - to give students chance practice before some major exams

h) PROFICIENCY - diagnoses level where students are

i) PROGRESS - to check what they have achieved

64. Qualities of good test.

Good tests must be:

• Reliable (enough examples, varied techniques)

• valid (content: they should test what they are supposed to test)

• practical (not too long, not to short, doesn't require equipment)

• positive wash back - effect (positive effect on teaching)

65. Discuss different types of tests.

Tests:

• Diagnostic (weak points)

• Aptitude (given by bilingual schools)

• Progress tests (to check progress)

• Placement ( to put in a good group)

• Proficiency (if person is at good level)

• Practice ( to practice)

We have also: multiple choice tests/cloze etc.

66. Give some examples of some techniques for testing grammar.

• Gap-fill

• Word sequence

• Identifying structures

• Word - formation

• Translation

• Open sentences

• Cloze - test

67. Multiple-choice test - advantages and disadvantages. Give a few examples of multiple choice items for testing grammar. What else can multiple choice tests test?

Advantages:

• Very easy to mark thus good for very large classes

• Good for checking gist or intensive understanding

Disadvantages:

• Very difficult to construct

• Wrong option can distract better students

• Guessing element

Multiple - choice tests can be used for testing reading/listening.

Examples: choose the correct verb form/word/ pronoun etc.

68. Mary knowed the answer; He asked me where do I live. What do you think has caused these errors? How would you deal with them?

Mary knowed the answer - wrong application of rule. T should repeat the sentence with question intonation and remind students' to revise irregular verbs.

He asked me where do I live -

69. Imagine a teacher who corrected every error immediately it occurred. What are advantages and disadvantages of doing this.

a) Adv b) Disadv

- While practicing and teaching form or accuracy - can not be during free practice, or when for fluency task. Students become shy, are unwilling to speak

70. Dictation - what does it practice? Describe some modern dictation techniques.

Dictation:

• Is not a way of teaching/ practicing writing

• It might be useful to practice spelling and listening

It can be adapted so that it practices writing: teacher reads text twice and students re-construct the text from their memory in writing. Also Partial Dictation where there are gaps and students should fill in only some parts of it. It can be also listening to the song).

Dictation makes the students and the teacher aware of the students' comprehension errors--phonological, grammatical, or both. In English, typical errors include the frequent omissions of bound morphemes such as:

The -s plural

The -'s possessive

The -s third person singular

The -ed ending for regular past participles.

Dictation shows students the kinds of spelling errors they are prone to make.

Dictation gives students practice in comprehending and transcribing clear English prose. Note: I find this important because we have all encountered awkward sentences in textbooks that are not good models of English writing, or raise grammatical, syntactic, or semantic questions that are not the point of the exercise to begin with. One example from a rather famous source: "When you receive a request like that, you cannot fail to obey it." This was in a textbook for a pre-intermediate class and came without a footnote to aid the student.

Dictation gives students valuable practice in notetaking. ESL college students may already be in courses in which they must take notes of lectures delivered in English at normal speaking speed. While no one should take lecture notes that are exact transcriptions, learning to write spoken language quickly is an essential college skill.

Dictation gives practice in correct forms of speech. Note: We have all read student compositions with grammatically correct sentences that are not correct forms, for example She is a surgeon of hearts or He is a good cooker.

Dictation can help develop all four language skills in an integrative way.

Dictation helps to develop short-term memory. Students practice retaining meaningful phrases or whole sentences before writing them down.

Dictation can serve as an excellent review exercise.

Dictation is psychologically powerful and challenging.

Dictation fosters unconscious thinking in the new language.

If the students do well, dictation is motivating.

Dictation involves the whole class, no matter how large it is.

During and after the dictation, all students are active.

Correction can be done by the students

Dictation can be prepared for any level.

The students, as well as the teacher, can get instant feedback if desired.

Dictation can be administered quite effectively by an inexperienced teacher.

While dictating, the teacher can (in fact should) move about, giving individual attention.

Dictation exercises can pull the class together during the valuable first minutes of class.

Dictation can provide access to interesting texts.

Knowing how to take dictation is a skill with "real world" applications. Many jobs demand accurate understanding of spoken orders (phone agents, dispatchers, administrative assistants, etc.). Also, the U.S. citizenship exam requires examinees to take a dictation.

Dictation can be a good indicator of overall language ability.

71. What are some criteria for selecting vocabulary.

• Easy before difficult

• General before specific

• Simple/basic before compound

• Concrete/before abstract

• Frequency

• Coverage (how many meanings does it have)

• Student's age and level

• Learnability

72. List and describe some techniques for consolidating and then checking vocabulary?

- Ask for a Polish equivalent

- ask concept questions

- ask tricky questions

- Ask for examples

(listen and point, do activities, demonstrations, miming)

73. What are some common problems with learning/teaching foreign language vocabulary?

- similarity of some words to the native lg which may be misleading (ex. ordinary)

- spelling is different

- pronunciation is different

- connotations (positive or negative meaning)

- collocations (the way in which some words are often used together) f.ex.` commit a crime'

74. How to help students to learn foreign language vocabulary.

• Learning words with associated meaning (also with sounds, shape)

• Learning words with associated grammar together

• Learn words based on the same root

• The T should teach the form/ meaning and use of the word

• Using different methods by presenting (giving definitions for audible students, pictures/ realia for visual, miming for kinesthetic)

75. What are collocations and idioms and what are some of the problems involved in teaching them? Give an example of each and explain how you would teach them.

Collocations - the feelings associated with the words. There can be positive connotation and negative ( for example a spinster has negative connotation and a bachelor, positive).

Idioms - a set of words which meaning does not relate to individual words ( to rain cats and dogs)

76. Think of some “listen and do” activities which could be used with students at intermediate level. What is the use of such activities?

• It's good for kinesthetic students

• To introduce variety, practice vocabulary, phrases, to make lesson more lively, turn on the light, take a photo, do the ironing, stare at the wall.

• (preparing food with ingredients, completing a computer set, or at the beautician.

77. How would you present the following vocabulary items: tooth, tape, recorder, charity, mammal. Give reasons for you choice.

Tooth/ tape- show it, draw it -it's an object

Recorder - show the process by miming, describe it

Charity - giving definition, giving examples of charity names

Mammal - showing pictures of mammals, reptiles, fish etc and eliciting from the students the Polish equivalent

78. What are different types of drills that you can use in the classroom? Give examples. How can you “put meaning” into a drill?

Types of drills:

• Repetition drill ( good for presentation of pronunciation)

• Substitution drill (replacing parts of sentences) - single slot/multiple slot

• Transformation drill ( paraphrasing)

• Back -chaining drill ( building words and sentences)

• Chain drill

• Question- and - answer drill

Drills can be meaningful (students have to think what phrase to choose, there is an option) and mechanical (students switch off and do not think of what they are saying/ they just repeat).

79. What are contemporary views on teaching writing?

There are two approaches to teaching writing:

Product approach - to communicate something (each weak a different type of writing)

• It does not teach how to write

• Students create their own texts and the final text is the aim of this approach

• Teacher evaluates the final text

Process approach - to practice language system ( you go through stages: Introduction-generating ideas-organizing ideas-the first draft-final draft)

• Focuses on what students do, how they do and not on the final text

• The final text is of less importance

• Writing process is divided into stages

Product approach	Process approach
Students work at home	Students work at school
Students work alone	Ss cooperate
Teacher focused on the final text	There is self- and peer evaluation
Teacher is a judge, evaluates the final text	The teacher evaluates the process of writing
There is more focus on form	There is more focus on content
Writing is an isolate task	There is integration with other skills

Writing as a means - be able to write down things in order to remember

Writing as an end - your aim is how to write an academic piece of writing (story, letter)

Stages of writing:

1. controlled (copying from the blackboard)

2. doing written answers

3. writing on the basis of a model

4. free writing (letter, note)

Cohesion - correct use of linking words

Coherence - if the text is logic

80. Information gap activities and their role in the classroom.

In an information gap activity, one person has certain information that must be shared with others in order to solve a problem, gather information or make decisions. These types of activities are extremely effective in the L2 classroom. They give every student the opportunity to speak in the target language for an extended period of time and students naturally produce more speech than they would otherwise. In addition, speaking with peers is less intimidating than presenting in front of the entire class and being evaluated. Another advantage of information gap activities is that students are forced to negotiate meaning because they must make what they are saying comprehensible to others in order to accomplish the task. Each participant plays an important role and the task cannot be accomplished without everyone's participation. Many information gap activities are highly motivational because of the nature of the various tasks. Activities that require the solving of a problem or a mystery are especially effective. As teachers, we know whether an activity is of an acceptable level of difficulty for our students. If students are sufficiently prepared for the activity, the level of language accuracy will be acceptable. Information gap activities can also reinforce vocabulary and a variety of grammatical structures taught in class. They allow students to use linguistic forms and functions in a communicative way. These activities bring the language to life for students. Grammar is no longer a concept they have difficulty applying to their speaking. Students have the opportunity to use the building blocks of language we teach them to speak in the target language. It fosters all the characteristics that are needed in successful speaking activity ( Learners talk a lot/ Participation is even/ Motivation is high/Learners are eager to speak/Language is of an acceptable level)

81. List characteristic features of truly communicative activity. Give such examples of such activities.

• There is an information gap

• There is a desire and purpose for communication

• There is a free choice of language used

• There is limited teacher's interaction/control

• The activity is focused on the content not on the form

• Feedback is delayed

• There is negotiation of meaning (feedback between students themselves)

• There is no material control

• Focus on meaning

Examples of activities:

• Opinion- information gap - activities

• Problem solving

82. The use of visual aids in the classroom.

Types of visual aids:

• Real objects

• Blackboard

• Flash cards (cards on which pictures, words are printed (they must be clear for students to see)

• Wall charts

• Pictures for oral composition ( students make up dialogues on the basis of the pictures, students discuss, make possible sentences)

• OHP (it's easy to prepare transparencies)

• Films and video

Advantages of Visual Aids

Visual Aids:

• Strengthen the clarity of the speaker's message

• Increase the interest of the speaker's information

• Make a speaker's message easier for listeners to retain

• Enhance the speaker's credibility

• Can improve the speaker's persuasion

• Helps combat stage fright

Types of Visual Aids:

• Objects

• Models

Small-scale of large object

Large-scale of small object

Life-sized model

• Photographs- enlarged

• Drawings

Diagrams, sketches, maps

Can be specifically designed for particular speech

• Graphs

Line- best for statistical trends

Pie- effective for distribution patterns

Bar- well suited for showing comparisons

• Charts

Summaries of large blocks of information

• Speaker's body

Demonstration showing how to do something

Requires practice to coordinate body with words

• Transparencies

Inexpensive and easy

Writing must be large enough

Use appropriate font

Speaker should rehearse with overhead projector

Can use multiple layers for overhead

• Power Point- quick, easy, and effective

• Slides and Video footage

• Slides best if you have many

• Video is effective IF it is edited skillfully and integrated smoothly into speech

• Speaker should practice with equipment in room before presenting

Guidelines for VA Preparation

• Prepare in advance!

• Keep them simple- should be straightforward, clear, and uncluttered

• Make sure visual aids are large enough

• Use Fonts that are easy to read

• Font size - should be 36 pt for titles 24 pt for subtitles

• Use color effectively

Tips for presenting Visual Aids

• Avoid using the chalkboard - back often faces the audience

• Display VA's where they can be seen

• Avoid passing out VA's among audience

• Talk to audience NOT visual aid!!!!!!

• Explain visual aids clearly and concisely

• Practice with visual aid when rehearsing speech

83. Discuss various types of exercises and their function in the teaching of grammar.

translation, fill in the gaps, matching, choose the right form, write words In appropriate form

Paraphrasing, error correction, finish a sentence, asking and answering questions, describing a picture, discussion, role play

84. How can we test communicative ability of our student?

By giving them life-like situations and observing how they solve them.

85. Discuss various types of activities leading to the development of speaking skill.

Role play, simulation, discussion, debate, memorizing dialogues

86. Teaching foreign language pronunciation: what should we aim at?

T should use simple explanation and demonstration how to produce sounds. Provide repetition. For adults it may be useful to present in-depth explanation and the sound graph.

• Sounds (it can change the meaning of the word)

• Word stress

• Sentence stress (it can change the meaning of the sentence)

• Intonation( it can change the meaning of the sentence)

87. What should be the stages in teaching foreign language pronunciation?

• Sounds ( simple explanation and demonstration, with adults in-depth explanation, repetition)

• Word stress

• Sentence stress

• Intonation

88. Authentic materials - give a definition and discuss their role in language

Authentic materials - are materials taken from real life e.g. a newspaper article, recording of news program, a film in the cinema.

Advantages of using:

• Real language in real context

• It's interesting and motivating

• There is variety of structures

• Students have the feeling of success

• Students get prepared for more difficult tasks

• Students get familiar with different types of materials

• Skills can be practices efficiently

• Culture is presented

Some disadvantages:

• It may be too difficult, the language too formal

• Need to adopt material and then it is becoming semi-authentic

89. Give some criteria for choosing authentic material for the classroom.

According to level, age, interests

90. Should we use literature in language teaching?

Yes:

• It's an authentic text

• There is a linguistic knowledge

• Different styles

• There is context

• Global understanding is involved

• Text as a whole

• History, culture

• Opinion - gap

• Self dependence

• Interesting

• Personal involvement

No:

• It may be boring

• Difficult

That is why the text must be carefully chosen

91. Using songs and poetry in foreign language teaching.

Songs:

Advantages:

• There is a friendly classroom atmosphere

• Students are relaxed

• They can feel safe

• There is a language input

• Supplemet exercise

• Exercising memory

• Creating interest

Problems:

• Stress and grammar in songs is not always correct

• Not clear voice

• Music may disturb some students

• Non - authentic songs

POETRY (POTTERY) :

Poems to develop receptive skills:

Active listening
It is crucial for students to be able to get a feel for the rhythm and sounds of a poem - more so than for most pieces of prose. This isn't always easy in a second language, and so listening to their teacher read the poem, or to a professional recording, perhaps by the poet or by an actor, is, I feel, essential.

• As with any listening activity, students will need some kind of preparation and task so that they can be actively engaged. They might be asked to check predictions that arose from a warm-up discussion, to compare their suggested rhyming couplets with the poet's, or to identify stressed words and syllables.

• You might also want to get your students to listen to recorded or live discussions about poems. This can, for example, take the form of a couple of teachers or a group of students giving their views on a poem, or even an interview with the poet.

• I'm a big fan of jigsaw listening because of the natural information gap. If your school has the facilities, you might like to;

• divide your students into two, or even three groups

• give each group a different cassette or CD and tasks to work on

• then they come back together to share what they have learned.

• Remember that your own enthusiasm is a key factor in any activity relating to literature in the classroom.

Finally, don't forget to encourage art for art's sake. Listening for pleasure, to poetry (or to anything else, for that matter), is to be fostered at every opportunity, because of the obvious benefits which include motivation, vocabulary acquisition and learner autonomy. Many good song lyrics could be termed poetry and treated accordingly in the classroom, copyright rules permitting.

Active reading
Reading activities can centre around not only the poems themselves, but also around background reading sources like biography or criticism.

• Some reading texts might be produced by other students, perhaps based on internet research, if your school has the facilities.

• Don't get stuck in literary analysis unless your students have specifically asked for a literature lesson, but do draw attention to useful syntax, grammar and vocabulary, and beware of common poetic conventions like inverted word order, ensuring that students are aware that this is a deviation from the norms of everyday English language.

• Too much analysis can kill enjoyment, and we are aiming for the opposite! As a pre-reading activity, I get the students to predict what they are about to read. With poetry, this can be done with the title as a catalyst, by revealing the lines gradually on an overhead projector, or by looking at the first verse of a longer poem. Refer students back to what they have read in the text so that they are justifying their predictions.

• You might like to prepare some jigsaw reading exercises too. With shorter poems, this might involve different groups working on different, thematically related, poems, each group having the same set of questions.

• Exam students might benefit from some discourse analysis: it's easy to make your own cloze exercise with a poem, and of course I always encourage my students to try to deduce the meaning of new vocabulary from the context.

• More advanced learners might enjoy identifying register and reading between the lines to infer meaning. Once again, exploit the chance to encourage reading for pleasure too.

Some pros and cons
You might need to spend a bit of time finding a poem that links thematically with your scheme of work, and making sure you respect the copyright rules.

• I have rejected poems that are too long, too archaic or too obscure, or that I can't muster any enthusiasm for or that the students may not respond to. The wrong poem is worse than no poem at all.

• I find that I need to explain my pedagogical rationale and the aims of activities very clearly, and students who have disliked studying literature in their own language may need extra motivation.

• I sometimes reassure my students that their other needs, e.g. exam preparation, are being met.

• It's worth taking the risk and using poems though, because poems can foster a love of English, and they are so versatile.

• I have used them as warmers or fillers, and as the catalyst for many different activities with students ranging from Pre-intermediate to Proficiency, and with multilevel classes.

• Students find a poem a welcome, and sometimes inspirational, change from a coursebook. Poems can be involving, motivating and memorable, and they can supplement and enrich just about any lesson.

poems to develop productive skills:

Communicative speaking activities
Before doing any productive work, I like to give my students plenty of pre-reading activities so that they are adequately prepared.

• As a way in to a poem, I might play some background music to create the atmosphere, show some pictures to introduce the topic, and then get students to think about their personal knowledge or experience which relates to this topic.

• They then talk about the poem, first with a partner and then in small groups, perhaps coming together as a class at the end to share ideas. I monitor and feed in ideas and vocabulary if necessary, give brief feedback on language used and note any language problems to be dealt with at a later date.

• I usually prepare worksheets for pre-reading speaking activities which might involve a quiz, a questionnaire, sentence stems to be completed and discussed, statements to be ranked and discussed, and so on.

• Students might predict endings to verses, the whole poem, or events occurring after the end of the poem.

• Afterwards, the students could talk about their personal response to the poem, discuss the characters and theme, or debate the moral issues.

• Role plays work well, interviewing a partner, or even dramatising the poem and making a video. Students could compare poems on related topics, with different groups working on different poems and then regrouping to pool their ideas.

Working on pronunciation
It can be fun to get students to rehearse and perform a poem. I read the poem to them or play a recording, and they identify the stresses and pauses.

• We take a chunk (usually a line, sometimes two) at a time, and one half of the class claps out the rhythm while the other half beats time, and then they swap over.

• I recite while they mumble rhythmically, and then as their confidence grows they could chant in a whisper, a shout, or show a range of emotion. For me, this tends to work best when it is improvised. I keep it snappy - it's a high energy activity, and you have to know and trust each other!

• I sometimes do intensive phoneme work centred on the rhyming patterns in the poem: Some poems are crying out to be exploited in this way. I elicit possible rhymes before revealing the poet's choice, and discuss which suggestions have exactly the same sound and which don't, leading to a minimal pair activity.

Writing activities
A poem can spark off some wonderful creative writing. Students can add more lines or stanzas individually or in pairs or groups.

• They can write a letter to a character in the poem, write about what happened before the beginning or after the ending of the poem and so on.

• Students could use the poem as a starting point and model for some parallel writing: Each group might contribute a verse to a collective poem (or rap).

• Genre transfer presents a lot of opportunities for writing practice; letters, diary entries, radio plays, newspaper articles, agony aunt columns all based on the original text from a poem.

• My students have found reformulation exercises very stimulating, where they switch between formal and informal language.

• Longer poems can be summarised in fifty words.

• It is also fun to get students to transform content words to synonyms or antonyms and then discuss the subtleties of vocabulary.

Some pros and cons
You might need to spend a bit of time finding a poem that links thematically with your scheme of work, and making sure you respect the copyright rules.

• I have rejected poems that are too long, too archaic or too obscure, or that I can't muster any enthusiasm for or that the students may not respond to. The wrong poem is worse than no poem at all.

• I find that I need to explain my pedagogical rationale and the aims of activities very clearly, and students who have disliked studying literature in their own language may need extra motivation.

• I sometimes reassure my students that their other needs, e.g. exam preparation, are being met.

• It's worth taking the risk and using poems though, because poems can foster a love of English, and they are so versatile.

• I have used them as warmers or fillers, and as the catalyst for many different activities with students ranging from Pre-intermediate to Proficiency, and with multilevel classes.

• Students find a poem a welcome, and sometimes inspirational, change from a coursebook. Poems can be involving, motivating and memorable, and they can supplement and enrich just about any lesson.

92. The role of homework.

Homework also is a way of training the students' brain. It also provides the students with extra tasks in order to train the subject that was covered in the classroom. It is also quite important in developing student-parent relations in school life.

93. Features of good homework assignment.

To my mind a good homework assignment should be relevant to the already covered material, should be challenging, but not discouraging, it should be well prepared (by the teacher before giving the task to the learners). The task shouldn't be too long (there are also other subjects to be studied at home) it should be interesting and involving for the students. Homework assignments should be, in my opinion, different from the tasks done in classroom. Homework should also help to develop students' autonomy and are a great way of dealing with heterogeneous classes.

94. Dealing with mixed ability classes.

Mixed ability classes/ heterogeneous classes are the ones in which learners differ in something, e.g.

• come from different backgrounds,

• they have different abilities

• are at different levels

• different age (generation gap, speed, motivation)

• different nationality (different things are difficult for them, gestures)

• status (businessmen can be afraid of loosing their face)

• education (lack of background knowledge)

• learning styles and strategies

• gender (different topics, girls are more often shy)

• social background

• attitude and motivation

• level

How to deal with it?:

• Grading tasks

• Activities with different responses

• Open - ended activities

• Content teaching

• Self - access

• Assessment

• Dealing with different learning speeds

Uneven level:

• Different tasks

• Extra material

• Motivating weaker students by using interesting topics

• Cater for different learning styles

• Learner training - how to learn vocabulary

• Grading tasks- at different levels, using dictionaries, grading dictation etc.

• Content teaching

Different speeds:

• More questions for better students

• Exercise fillers

• Extra tasks (writing extra questions, doing extra homework)




95. Good language learners: do they exist?

Good language learners:

• find their own way and take charge of their learning. They determine the methods that are best for them as individual learners. They learn form others and experiment with different methods.

• organize their study of the language, and they organize information about the language they study.

• Are creative. They understand that language is creative. They experiment with the language and play with grammar, words, and sounds.

• make their own opportunities for practicing the language inside and outside of the classroom.

• learn to live with uncertainty by focusing on the meaning of what they can understand, by not getting flustered, and by continuing to talk or listen without necessarily understanding every word.

• use mnemonics and other memory strategies to recall what they are learning.

• make errors work for them and not against them.

• use linguistic knowledge, including knowledge of their first language, in learning a second language.

• learners use contextual clues to aid their comprehension of the language. They maximize use of all potential contexts around the language attended to for enhancing comprehension.

• learn to make intelligent guesses.

• learn certain tricks that keep conversations going.

• learn certain production techniques that also fill in the gaps in their own competence.

• learn different styles of speech or writing to learn to vary their language according to the formality of the situation.

You can be a good language learner if you develop the above skills.

96. Qualities of good language teacher.

A good teacher:

• Should make lessons interesting

• Must love, enjoy job

• Should have his own personality

• Has a lot of knowledge not only of his subject

• Is an entertainer in a positive way

• Should try and draw out the quiet ones and control the more talkative ones

• Has an affinity with the students that he is teaching

• Should be able to correct people without offending them

• Help rather than shout

• Knows students names

• Can manage the class and inspire

• Gives instructions in a simple, logical way

• Uses gestures, expression, mime

• Uses his common sense and experience

• Is flexible enough to cope with different situations

97. Discipline problems: origins and ways of dealing with them.

Origins in teacher:

• Lack of preparation

• Lack of consistence

• Manner of speaking

• Attitude

• Neglecting students

• Not being example for students

• Personality

• Strictness

• Exaggerated friendliness

• Preferences towards some of the students

• Not keeping eye on students and not maintaining eye contact

Origins in students:

• Boredom - ss don't know what to do

• Topic is too easy or too difficult

• ATTENTION

• POWER

• REVENGE

• SELF CONFIDENCE

There are 7 primary needs: hunger, thirst, sexuality, air rest, escape form pain

And secondary:

• aggression

• Inquisitiveness

• Affiliation

• Achievement

• Power

• Status

• Autonomy

• Gregariousness

External factors:

• Noise

• Temperature

• Forthcoming weekend/holiday

PREVENTING:

• Planning and organizing

• Clear and assertive instructions

• Keeping eyes and ears open

• Clear routines

• Being consistent

• Respectful but assertive tone of voice

• Clear fair positive rules (consequences for braking them)

98. Various teaching styles and their advantages and disadvantages.

99. The roles of teachers in the classroom.

Teacher's roles:

Assessor - Assessing students performance and progress and giving feedback.

Controller - Controlling the whole lesson and group.

Observer - Observing what is happening, drawing conclusion, seeing how things work, being reflective.

Organizer - planning and managing the whole lesson, being flexible, deciding how much time should be spent on what, informing students how much time they have for particular exercises, to organize and monitor activities, deciding about seating arrangements and material distribution

Participant - increasing students' motivation by working with them, decreasing the distance between student-teacher

Prompter - encouraging students during activities, giving clues how to do the exercise, increase pace of activities

Resource - to provide info about learning, to clarify, helping students in getting access to materials and recourses, helping students in getting information and sources during project work

Tutor - to provide students with individual work and assistance according to different needs, having more personal contact with them, providing guidance

100. Guidelines for error correction.

There different approaches of the teacher towards mistakes:

• That they are unavoidable

• They affect communication

• Are related to the whole structure

• Make it hard to follow the content

• Need focusing on

When an error is made by the learner the teacher must think:

• What kind of error it is?

• Do I want to correct it? (Is it necessary to do it. If the teacher wants that students practice fluency he should not correct the student)

• When do I want do deal with it? (he can point out the errors later. Or at the spot)

• Who is to correct? (the teacher may correct or the peer - correction or self-correction)

• How do I want to correct? (facial expression, gestures, repeating sentences up to the error, a single word used to indicate a problem e.g. noun, verb; behave like native speaker)

There are three basic types of error correction:
1. Teacher correction: The teacher corrects the student.
2. Self-correction: The teacher indicates the student has made a mistake or error (usually by repeating in a quizzical tone) and gives the student an opportunity to self-correct.
3. Peer correction: The teacher asks other students to correct the mistake or error.
A decision to correct or not is based on many factors: the most important criteria is whether the activity you are doing is for accuracy or fluency.

When you are concentrating on accuracy, you are making sure that what the students produce is grammatically correct English with correct vocabulary.

When you are concentrating on fluency, you are helping students to express themselves in English. You are not concerned with errors of grammar and vocabulary.

Typical accuracy activities: grammar presentations, fill-in exercises, frame dialogues.
Typical fluency activities: role plays, speeches, communicative activities, games.

Criteria for dealing with Spoken Errors
In 'Correction' by M.Bartram and R.Walton present these questions as a guide to deciding whether to let an error go or not. Which do you consider to be the most important?

1. Does the mistake affect communication?
2. Are we concentrating on accuracy at the moment?
3. Is it really wrong? Or is it my imagination?
4. Why did the student make the mistake?
5. Is it the first time the student has spoken for a long time?
6. Could the student react badly to my correction?
7. Have they met this language point in the current lesson?
8. Is it something the students have already met?
9. Is this a mistake that several students are making?
10. Would the mistake irritate someone?
11. What time is it?
12. What day is it?
13. What's the weather like?

Practical techniques / ideas for correcting spoken English

• On-the-spot correction techniques.
  These are used for dealing with errors as they occur.

• Using fingers
  For example, to highlight an incorrect form or to indicate a word order mistake.

• Gestures
  For example, using hand gestures to indicate the use of the wrong tense.

• Mouthing
  This is useful with pronunciation errors. The teacher mouths the correct pronunciation without making a sound. For example, when an individual sound is mispronounced or when the word stress is wrong. Of course it can also be used to correct other spoken errors.

• Reformulation
  For example:
  Student: I went in Scotland
  Teacher: Oh really, you went to Scotland, did you?

• Delayed Correction techniques - For example, after a communication activity.

• Noting down errors
  Either on an individual basis i.e. focusing on each student's mistakes or for the class as a whole. 'Hot cards', as Bartram and Walton call individual notes, can be used to focus on recurring mistakes. The student then has a written suggestion of what to work on.

• Recording
  In addition to recording students (individually, in pairs etc.) during a speaking task to make them aware of errors that affect communication we can use a technique from Community Language Learning. Students sit in a circle with a tape recorder in the centre. In monolingual classes they check with the teacher, who is bilingual, about how to say something in English, then rehearse it and record it. At the end of the lesson they listen back to the tape and can focus on specific utterances etc. With higher level multilingual classes students take part in a discussion which they have prepared for in advance. When they have something to say they record themselves and then pause the tape. Just as with monolingual classes they can use the teacher as a linguistic resource. At the end of the discussion students analyse their performance with the teacher. The focus is on improving the quality of what they say and expanding their inter-language. Although this form of discussion may seem a bit artificial it has two main advantages:

• Students pay more attention to what they say as they are taking part in a kind of performance (it is being recorded)

• Students not only become more aware of gaps in their spoken English but also can see how their spoken English is improving.

A model for Correcting Writing
When writing we do not have the chance to rephrase or clarify what we are saying. Our message must be clear the first time. Written errors are also less tolerated than spoken errors outside the classroom.
Look at this model for correcting written work and evaluate it for your teaching situation.

• 1. Comprehensibility

• Can you understand the output?

• Are there areas of incoherence?

• Do these affect the overall message?

• Does communication break down?

• 2. Task

• Has the student addressed the task?

• 3. Syntax and Lexis

• Are they appropriate to the task?

• Are they accurate?

 Correction techniques
It can be difficult to decide on what and how much to correct in a student's piece of writing. Students can develop a negative attitude towards writing because their teacher corrects all their errors or if the teacher only corrects a few, they might feel that the teacher hasn't spent sufficient time looking at their work. Evaluate the following techniques and decide which would be appropriate for your teaching situation.Underline inappropriate language in a piece of writing using a specific colour.

• Using a different colour from above, underline examples of appropriate language.

• Correct errors by writing the correct forms in their place.

• Use codes in the margin to identify the type of error(s), for example, VOC = a lexical error. Students have to identify the error(s) and if possible make a correction.

• Alternatively put crosses in the margin for the number of errors in each line. Students then try to identify the errors and make corrections.

• Put students into pairs / groups. They correct each other's work using one or more of the techniques above.

• From time to time give students an individual breakdown of recurring problems in their written work.

101. What should the good lesson plan look like?

• Unity/ plot - everything should be on right palace

• The sense of ending - achieving learning objectives

• Theme/topic - there should be a sense of wholeness

• Rhythm - changing rhythm

• Flow - sense of whole

Advantages of planning:

• Easier

• Lesson is successful

• Predicting problems

• For future use

Problems:

• Can't predict what will happen

• Time consuming

• Timing

• Homework will not be given when the bell rings because there will be time for setting it

102. Planning a lesson - what factors should be taken into consideration?

When planning a lesson:

Time, class, level, duration, topic, aims, language, course book teaching aids and stages of lesson should be taken into consideration.

Why planning?:

• To establish an order of events during the lesson

• To plan the timing and control it

• To decide about objectives

• To define aims

• To be reminded of all aids needed

• To anticipate problems and find solutions

103. Using video recordings in the classroom: “dos and don'ts”.

• The films should be specifically chosen

• Always see the film before showing it to the students

• Stop the film from time to time and ask questions

• Do not play the whole film but some parts of it

• Set A Task Before Students Watch The Video

104. Advantages and disadvantages of using video materials during the lesson.

Advantages:

• It's not expensive

• It's easy to operate

• Many materials are available

• The teacher/students can produce their own materials

• You can stop/rewind at any time

• It's interesting

• For visual students

• Easy to understand (body language etc.)

• Cross-cultural awareness

• Adding variety

• Providing context

• Practicing listening skill in natural context

• Building vocabulary

• Using video as a stimulus for other activities

Problems:

• The quality. Sound

• Nothing new syndrome

• Star t+ stop

• Length (after 4 minutes students are distracted)

• Boring and demotivating when used too often and with no clear purpose.

105. Project work in EFL classroom.

A project is defined here as an in-depth investigation of a real world topic worthy of children's attention and effort. The study may be carried out by a class or by small groups of children. Projects can be undertaken with children of any age. They do not usually constitute the whole educational program. Younger children will play and explore as well as engage in projects. Older children's project work will complement the systematic instruction in their program.

Projects are long term tasks which are done after the class. They involve cooperation. They are about topic such as culture.

Procedure:

1. Creating good class atmosphere

2. Getting class interested

3. Selecting a topic

4. Outline

5. Basic research

6. Reporting to the class

7. Processing feedback

8. Putting all together

9. Presenting

10. Assessing and evaluating

Advantages:

• Students find information, broaden their minds, are motivated

• Students need to cooperate

• They enjoy doing it\projects integrate cross-curricular studies

• Students learn about culture, they practice communication competence, self - discipline

• Projects involve learning through doing and develop responsibility in learners

• Binding gap between studying and language use

Problems:

• Ss won't sometimes cooperate

• They are too shy to present

• Better students will do the work

• Not all are able to select information

• No ideas how to do it

• Time-consuming

• No access to materials

• Expensive

• Extra work

• Monitoring

• Lack of motivation

• Use of L1

106. An ideal course book.

WHAT CAN A GOOD COURSEBOOK GIVE THE TEACHER?

A good course book can help a teacher by providing:

· a clearly thought out program which is appropriately sequenced and structured to include progressive revision;

· a wider range of materials than an individual teacher may be able to collect;

· security;

· economy of preparation time;

· a source of practical ideas;

· work that the learners can do on their own so that the teacher does not need to be centre stage all the time;

· a basis for homework if this is required;

· a basis for discussion and comparison with other teachers.

WHAT DO YOUR LEARNERS NEED FROM A COURSEBOOK?

Children want a course book to be colorful and interesting. They hope the course book will contain exciting games and activities. They hope the cassettes will contain exciting stories, amusing dialogues and entertaining songs and rhymes. But what do the children need? We all know that children have short memories. They find it difficult to retain ideas and language from one lesson to the next. So the children need a course book which becomes an accessible and understandable record of their work.

A good course book gives the children:

· a sense of progress, progression and purpose;

· a sense of security;

· scope for independent and autonomous learning;

· a reference for checking and revising.

THE PERFECT COURSEBOOK

The Perfect Course book for every teacher and every class does not exist. When selecting a course book you always need to make a compromise. There will be things which you don't like about any course book. How important are those things? Can you create materials to substitute those aspects? Has the course book got something missing? Can you find or create materials to fill that gap? Remember that you work in partnership with your course book. Never expect the course book to do everything for you. You will always need to personalize your teaching with your own personality.

WHAT CAN YOU CONTRIBUTE TO THE COURSEBOOK?

As a teacher you have a collection of skills. There are some things which you may be very good at doing. Are you a great artist who can draw all the pictures you need? Are you a musician who can play and sing any songs you need? Do you know hundreds of simple games for your learners to play? Do you have a good competence in English? It may not be enough to be a native speaker, you also need to be able to analyze and grade the language which you teach

107. Evaluate a course book you are currently using.

Criteria for evaluation:

• Cost

• Rationale ( refers to the type, style and organization of the book; methodological assumption it's based on)

• Context (for what context (region, audience, private, personal use??)

• Level

• Relevance to needs

• Facility and practicality (easy in use)

• Layout ( clear signposting, clear and systematic use of convections, using typeface etc.) and organization (sections, language topics etc.)

• Coverage ( are there any topics missing that are included in the syllabus)

• Range of task/activities

• Learner support materials

• Interest/motivation

• Teacher support material

108. The role of ESP teacher.

Teacher must be ready to fulfill all the objectives that ESP course offers, that is preparing the syllabus so that the student will achieve their goal such as for example learning business language. Other objectives are in 109 question.

Dudley Evans describes the true ESP teacher or ESP Practitioner (Swales, 1988) as needing to

perform five different roles. These are 1) Teacher, 2) Collaborator, 3) Course designer and materials

provider, 4) Researcher and 5) Evaluator. The first role as 'teacher' is synonymous with that of the

'General English' teacher. It is in the performing of the other four roles that differences between the

two emerge. In order to meet the specific needs of the learners and adopt the methodology and

activities of the target discipline, the ESP Practitioner must first work closely with field specialists.

One example of the important results that can emerge from such a collaboration is reported by Orr

(1995). This collaboration, however, does not have to end at the development stage and can extend

as far as teach teaching, a possibility discussed by Johns et al. (1988). When team teaching is not a

possibility, the ESP Practitioner must collaborate more closely with the learners, who will generally

be more familiar with the specialized content of materials than the teacher him or herself.

Both 'General English' teachers and ESP practitioners are often required to design courses and

provide materials. One of the main controversies in the field of ESP is how specific those materials

should be. Hutchinson et al. (1987:165) support materials that cover a wide range of fields, arguing

that the grammatical structures, functions, discourse structures, skills, and strategies of different disciplines are identical. More recent research, however, has shown this not to be the case. Hansen

(1988), for example, describes clear differences between anthropology and sociology texts, and

Anthony (1998) shows unique features of writing in the field of engineering. Unfortunately, with

the exception of textbooks designed for major fields such as computer science and business studies,

most tend to use topics from multiple disciplines, making much of the material redundant and

perhaps even confusing the learner as to what is appropriate in the target field. Many ESP

practitioners are therefore left with no alternative than to develop original materials. It is here that

the ESP practitioner's role as 'researcher' is especially important, with results leading directly to

appropriate materials for the classroom.

The final role as 'evaluator' is perhaps the role that ESP practitioners have neglected most to date.

As Johns et al. (1991) describe, there have been few empirical studies that test the effectiveness of

ESP courses. For example, the only evaluation of the non compulsory course reported by Hall et al.

(1986:158) is that despite carrying no credits, "students continue to attend despite rival pressures of

a heavy program of credit courses". On the other hand, recent work such as that of Jenkins et al.

(1993) suggests an increasing interest in this area of research.

109. Teaching ESP.

Course Overview and Objectives:

English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is known as a learner-centered approach to teaching English as a foreign or second language. It meets the needs of (mostly) adult learners who need to learn a foreign language for use in their specific fields, such as science, technology, medicine, leisure, and academic learning. This course is recommended for graduate students and foreign and second language professionals who wish to learn how to design ESP courses and programs in an area of specialization such as English for business, for Civil Engineering, for Academic Purposes, and for health service purposes. In addition, they are introduced to ESP instructional strategies, materials adaptation and development, and evaluation.

Its objectives include:

• To develop an understanding about the factors that led to the emergence of ESP and the forces, both theoretical and applied, that have shaped its subsequent development.

• To assist students develop needs assessments and genre analyses for specific groups of learners.

• To provide guidelines to adapt or create authentic ESP materials in a chosen professional or occupational area and to critically evaluate currently available materials, including technology-based ones.

• To become knowledgeable about assessment procedures appropriate for ESP and apply this knowledge in developing course and lesson evaluation plans in their professional or occupational area.

• To assist students in preparing a syllabus, lesson and assessment plan based upon their needs assessments and genre analyses.

Absolute Characteristics

• ESP is defined to meet specific needs of the learners

• ESP makes use of underlying methodology and activities of the discipline it serves

• ESP is centered on the language appropriate to these activities in terms of grammar, lexis, register, study skills, discourse and genre.

Variable Characteristics

• ESP may be related to or designed for specific disciplines

• ESP may use, in specific teaching situations, a different methodology from that of General English

• ESP is likely to be designed for adult learners, either at a tertiary level institution or in a professional work situation. It could, however, be for learners at secondary school level

• ESP is generally designed for intermediate or advanced students.

• Most ESP courses assume some basic knowledge of the language systems

110. Designing ESP courses. = QUESTION 109

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