Slide 1

English language
Teaching in the “postMethod” Era
Prepared By: Ismail Harb
Supervised By Dr. : Awad Qeshta


Slide 2

What is an approach?
An approach is a set of assumptions dealing with
the nature of the language and the nature of
language teaching and learning. That is, for example,
all the ideas or hypothesis you have about the
language learning and teaching. (It indicates WHy..)
It does not involve procedures or provide any details
about how such assumptions should translate into
the classroom setting.


Slide 3

There are three principal views at this level:
•The structural view treats language as a system of
structurally related elements to code meaning (e.g.
grammar).

•The functional view sees language as a vehicle to
express or accomplish a certain function, such as
(requesting something).
•The interactive view sees language as a vehicle for the
creation and maintenance of social relations, focusing on
patterns of moves, acts, negotiation and interaction found in
conversational exchanges. This view has been fairly
dominant since the 1980s


Slide 4



Variation at approach level….. Why???
1. An approach is dynamic…. It is subject to some
“tinkering” as a result of one’s observation and
experience.
2. Pedagogy findings are subject to interpretations
rather than giving conclusive evidence.


4

One’s approach to language teaching is the
theoretical rationale that underlies everything
happens in the classroom. It is the cumulative
body of knowledge and principles that enables
teachers to diagnose the needs of students, to
treat them in successful pedagogical techniques
and to asses the outcome of those treatments.


Slide 5

A method
Method:

A settled kind of procedures, usually
according to a definite, established, logical, or
systematic plan “one method of solving a
problem”. How to carry out the assumptions of
approach and theories ( HOW..)

5

In order for an approach to be translated into a
method, an instructional system must be designed
considering the objectives of the teaching/learning,
how the content is to be selected and organized, the
types of tasks to be performed, the roles of students
and the roles of teachers


Slide 6

Examples


Examples of structural methods are grammar
translation and the audio-lingual method.



Examples of functional methods include the oral
approach / situational language teaching.



Examples of interactive methods include the direct
method , communicative language teaching,
Suggestopedia , Total Physical Response , and
Teaching Proficiency through Reading and
Storytelling.


Slide 7

A technique

7



A technique is a very specific, concrete stratagem
or trick designed to accomplish an immediate
objective. Such are derived from the controlling
method, and less-directly, with the approach.



Technique: The manner and ability with which an
artist, writer, dancer, athlete, lawyer, or the like
employs the technical skills of a particular art or
field of endeavor so as to effect a desired result.
(steps to achieve certain goals)


Slide 8

Twelve Principles


There are twelve principles on which classroom
practices are grounded:

1- Automaticity: Unlimited number of language forms depend
on the automatic processing and conscious concentration on
rules impede the graduation to automaticity.

2- Meaningful learning: It will lead towards better long-term
retention than rote learning. (Content-centered approaches)
(mathematics, science, social studies)
3- The

8

anticipation of reward: Humans are driven by

anticipating rewards (tangible “physical” or intangible
“concrete”) (short-term or long-term) that will follow as a
result of a behavior. Teacher’s role is to create chances for
those moment -by- moment rewards that can keep classrooms
interesting, if not exciting.


Slide 9

4- Intrinsic Motivation: It is more powerful than extrinsic
motivation as it is generated inside the learner especially if
behavior stems from.
5- Strategic Investment: A person's own investment of time,
effort, and attention to the second language as individualized
strategies for comprehending and producing the language leads
to the mastery of the second language.
6- Language Ego: As human beings learn to use a second
language they develop a new mode of thinking, feeling, and
acting a second identity. This new “language ego”, intertwined
with the second language, can easily create within the learner a
sense of fragility, defensiveness and a raising inhibitions.
7- Self-confidence: The eventual success the learners attain in a
task is partially a factor of their belief that they are capable of
accomplishing the task ; this leads to self-esteem.
9


Slide 10

8- Risk taking: It is very important. Because of the strong
intention of achieving success on learning something, students
yearn for mastering. Interaction requires the risk of failing to
produce intended meaning, of being laughed at, of being
shunned or rejected. They should be gamblers.
9- The language culture connection: Whenever you teach a
language, you also teach a complex system of cultural customs,
values and ways of thinking, feeling , and acting.
10- The native language effect: learners can depend on
language 1 system to predict the target language system. Native
system plays both facilitating and interfering (positive and
negative transfer) effects on the production and comprehension
of the new language, but the interfering effects are the most
significant.

10


Slide 11

11- Interlanguage: An interlanguage is an emerging linguistic
system that has been developed by a learner of a second
language (or L2) who has not become fully proficient yet but is
approximating the target language: preserving some features
of their first language (or L1), or overgeneralizing target
language rules in speaking or writing the target language and
creating innovations. The interlanguage rules are claimed to be
shaped by several factors, including: L1 transfer, transfer of
training, strategies of L2 learning (e.g. simplification),
strategies of L2 communication and overgeneralization of the
target language patterns.
12- Communication competence: As communication
competence is the goal of a language classroom, instruction
needs to point towards all of its components: organizational,
pragmatic, strategic, and psychometric. Communication can be
achieved by language use not just usage, fluency and not just
accuracy and authentic language and contexts.
11


Slide 12

Diagnosis, Treatment, and Assessment


12

A principled approach to language teaching
encourages teachers to engage in a carefully crafted
process of diagnosis, treatment and assessment. It
enables us to account for communicative and
situational needs anticipated among learners, and to
diagnose appropriate curricular treatment for them
in their distinctive context. It helps us to devise
effective pedagogical objectives which have taken
into account all the contextual variables in the
classroom. It enables us to assess what went right
and what went wrong in a lesson and it helps us in
revising activities, lessons, materials and curricula


Slide 13

Diagnosis
The first phase of the diagnostic stage of language pedagogy begins
with curricular plans and continues as an ongoing monitoring process
in the classroom. Language curricula call for an initial study of
“situational” needs, or the context of the teaching.
Situational needs include consideration of the country, the
socioeconomic and educational background of the students, the
specific purposes the students have in learning a language, and
institutional that are imposed on a curriculum. Some of the twelve
principles cited earlier come into play in isolating situational needs:
 Is language proficiency perceived by students as intrinsically
motivating?
 To what extent will the language in question involve students in
wrestling with a “new identity” and therefore imply a language ego
issue?
 What is the relationship between the target language and the
native culture of the students?
13


Slide 14



14

Of equal importance in the planning stages of language
courses is the specific diagnostic assessment of each student
upon entering a program. Once courses have been carefully
planned , with pedagogical options intricately woven in,
how can teachers and administrators become diagnostic
scientists and artists, carefully eliciting language production
and comprehension on the part of every student? How
should those elicitations be measured and assessed in a way
that the language course can be either slightly or greatly
modified to meet the needs of the particular students who of
that calss?


Slide 15

Treatment





15

Treatment can have several options ranging from
controlled (drills, dialogues, reading aloud, display
questions/answers .. etc) to semi controlled (referential
questions/answers, cued narratives, information gap
activities, etc.) to free (role-plays, problem solving,
interviews, discussions, etc).
The teacher should choose among all these activities to
apply inside the class.
One way of looking at principled choices for treatment is
the extent to which a technique promotes a desired goal.
For example, let’s suppose a teacher wishes to deliver
techniques that seek to create intrinsic motivation in
learners.


Slide 16


1.
2.

3.
4.

5.

6.
16

Consider the following checklist, each item of which
represents a facet of the principle of intrinsic motivation:
Does the technique appeal to the genuine interests of
students? Is it relevant to their lives?
Is the technique presented in a positive, enthusiastic?
Are students clearly aware of the purpose of the
technique?
Do students have some choice in: (a) choosing some
aspect of the technique? and / or (b) determining how
they go about fulfilling the goals of the technique?
Does the technique encourage students to discover for
themselves certain principles or rules (rather than
simply being “told”)?
Does it encourage students to develop or use effective
strategies of learning and communication?


Slide 17

7. Does it contribute to students’ ultimate autonomy and
independence (from you)?
8. Does it foster cooperative negotiation with other students
in the class? Is it a truly interactive technique?
9. Does the technique present a “reasonable challenge”?
10. Do students receive sufficient feedback on their
performance (from each other or from you)?


17

By the careful delivery of techniques that incorporate
many of these criteria, teachers can be more assured of
offering treatments that are specifically designed to
accomplish the goal of fostering intrinsic motivation.


Slide 18

Another way of looking at the relation between
approach and treatment is in building a sense of
strategic investment in the classroom. We have ten
principles that imply certain activities that may be
appropriate in second language teaching:
1- Lower Inhibitions: Play guessing and communication
games; do role-plays and skits; sing songs; use group
work; laugh with your students; have them share fears
in small groups.
2- Encourage Risk Taking: praise students for making
sincere efforts to try out the language; use fluency
exercise where errors are not corrected at that time; give
outside-of-class assignments to speak or write.


18


Slide 19

3- Build Students’ Self – Confidence: Tell students
verbally and non verbally that you indeed believe in
them; have them make lists of their strengths, of what
they know so far in the course.
4- Help Students Develop Intrinsic Motivation: Remind
them about the rewards of learning English (jobs –
prestige- self confidence – results of tests …)
5- Remote Cooperative Learning: Direct them to share
knowledge; play competitions; get them think of
themselves as a team; do group work.
6- Encourage Students to Use Right-Brain Processing:
Use movies and tapes in the class; have them read
passages rapidly; do skimming exercises; do rapid “free
writes”; do oral fluency tasks to let them talk without
correction
19


Slide 20

7- Promote Ambiguity Tolerance: Encourage them to ask
questions when they don’t understand something; deal
with just few things at a time; sometime you can
translate.
8- Help Students Use Their Intuition: Praise students for
good guesses; don’t always give explanations of errors;
correct only selected errors (those that interfere with
learning)
9- Get Students to Make Their mistakes Work for
Them: Tape-record students’ oral production and get
them identify errors and correct them (don’t always give
them the correct form).
10- Get Students to Set Their own Goals: let them make
lists of what they can do with the language at home.
20


Slide 21

Assessment
Nowadays there is increased emphasis on
ongoing ( Formative Evaluation) assessment of
students’ performance as teaching progresses.
 Applying techniques for performance-based
assessment, portfolio development, oral
production inventories, cooperative studentstudent techniques, and other authentic testing
rubrics, we are quickly developing the capacity
to provide an ongoing program of assessment
throughout a student’s course of study.


21


Slide 22

With formative processes of assessment in
place, teachers can make appropriate midcourse
pedagogical changes to more effectively reach
goals.
 The tradition that evaluation must be confined to
summative (despite its importance), end-of-term
or end-of-unit tests alone is vanishing.
 Today we can see a wide variety of assessment
batteries that cover both production and
comprehension skills, a range of assessment
tasks, individualized tests, and increased
attention to the communicative properties of
tests.


22