Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching

Communicative Language Teaching
1. Teacher´s role
  1. Breen and Candlin describe teacher roles in the following terms: The teacher has two main roles:
    1. the first role is to facilitate the communication process between all participants in the classroom, and between these participants and the various activities and texts.
    2. The second role is to act as an independent participant within the learning-teaching group.
      1. These roles imply a set of secondary roles for the teacher; first, as an organizer of resources and as a resource himself, second as a guide within the classroom procedures and activities
    3. A third role for the teacher is that of researcher and learner, with much to contribute in terms of appropriate knowledge and abilities, actual and observed experience of the nature of learning and organizational capacities. (1980: 99)
  2. The CLT teacher assumes a responsibility for determining and responding to learner language needs.
2. Characteristics
  1. It aims to make learners to attain communicative competence so the learners can use language accurately and appropriately
  2. The syllabus emphasizes the functional use of language. The syllabus is relying on the authentic materials. The tasks which are assigned to the learners have purposes and meanings
  3. The major focus while using CLT approach is on the learners. The teacher is just the facilitator. The teacher is a person who manages the environment and helps the learners to become autonomous.
  4. Communicative activities enable the learners to attain communicative objectives of the curriculum, engage learners in communication, and require the use of such communicative processes as information sharing, negotiation of meaning, and interaction (Richards & Rodgers 1986:76).
3. Activities
  1. Classroom activities are often designed to focus on completing tasks that are mediated through language or involve negotiation of information and information sharing. These attempts take many forms.
  2. Geddes and Sturtridge (1979) develop “jigsaw” listening in which students listen to different taped materials and then communicate their content to others in the class.
  3. (Johnson 1982: 151) Littlewood (1981) distinguishes between “functional communication activities” and “social interaction activities” as major activity types in Communicative Language Teaching.
    1. Functional communication activities include such tasks as learners comparing sets of pictures and noting similarities and differences; working out a likely sequence of events in a set of pictures; discovering missing features in a map or picture; one learner communicating behind a screen to another learner and giving instructions on how to draw a picture or shape.
    2. Social interaction activities include conversation and discussion sessions, dialogues and role plays, simulations, skits, improvisations, and debates.
4. Student´s role
  1. Breen and Candlin describe the learner’s role within CLT in the following terms:
    1. The role of learner as negotiator – between the self, the learning process,
    2. and the object of learning – emerges from and interacts with the role of joint negotiator within the group and within the classroom procedures and activities which the group undertakes.
5. Materials
  1. Materials thus have the primary role of promoting communicative language use. We will consider three kinds of materials currently used in CLT and label these text-based, task-based, and realia.
    1. Text-based materials
      1. Morrow and Johnson’s Communicate (1979), for example, has none of the usual dialogues, drills, or sentence patterns and uses visual cues, taped cues, pictures, and sentence fragments to initiate conversation.
      2. Their tables of contents sometimes suggest a kind of grading and sequencing of language practice not unlike those found in structurally organized texts.
      3. WatcynJones’s Pair Work (1981) consists of two different texts for pair work, each containing different information needed to enact role plays and carry out other pair activities.
      4. Texts written to support the Malaysian English Language Syllabus (1975) likewise represent a departure from traditional textbook modes.
    2. Task-based materials
      1. variety of games, role plays, simulations, and task-based communication activities have been prepared to support Communicative Language Teaching classes.
      2. These typically are in the form of one-of-a-kind items: exercise handbooks, cue cards, activity cards, pair-communication practice materials, and student-interaction practice booklets. In paircommunication materials, there are typically two sets of material for a pair of students, each set containing different kinds of information.
    3. Realia
      1. Many proponents of Communicative Language Teaching have advocated the use of “authentic,” “from-life” materials in the classroom. These might include language-based realia, such as signs, magazines, advertisements, and newspapers, or graphic and visual sources around which communicative activities can be built, such as maps, pictures, symbols, graphs, and charts.
Cooperative Language Learning
1. Teacher´s role
  1. The role of the teacher in CLL differs considerably from the role of teachers in traditional teacher-fronted lesson.
    1. The teacher has to create a highly structured and well-organized learning environment in the classroom
    2. An important role for the teacher is that of facilitator of learning.
      1. During this time the teacher interacts, teaches, refocuses, questions, clarifies, supports, expands, celebrates, empathizes.
      2. Depending on what problems evolve, the following supportive behaviors are utilized. Facilitators are giving feedback, redirecting the group with questions, encouraging the group to solve its own problems, extending activity, encouraging thinking, managing conflict, observing students, and supplying resources. (Harel 1992: 169)
    3. The teacher may also have the task of restructuring lessons so that students can work on them cooperatively. This involves the following steps, according to Johnson et al. (1994: 9):
      1. 1. Take your existing lessons, curriculum, and sources and structure them cooperatively.
      2. 2. Tailor cooperative learning lessons to your unique instructional needs, circumstances, curricula, subject areas, and students.
      3. 3. Diagnose the problems some students may have in working together and intervene to increase learning groups’ effectiveness.
2. Student´s role
  1. The primary role of the learner is as a member of a group who must work collaboratively on tasks with other group members.
  2. Learners have to learn teamwork skills.
  3. Learners are also directors of their own learning.
  4. The learning is something that requires students’ direct and active involvement and participation.
  5. Pair grouping is the most typical CLL format, ensuring the maximum amount of time both learners spend engaged on learning tasks.
3. Characteristics
  1. From the perspective of second language teaching, McGroarty (1989) offers six learning advantages for ESL students in CLL classrooms:
    1. Increased frequency and variety of second language practice through different types of interaction
    2. Possibility for development or use of language in ways that support cognitive development and increased language skills
    3. Opportunities to integrate language with content-based instruction
    4. Opportunities to include a greater variety of curricular materials to stimulate language as well as concept learning
    5. Freedom for teachers to master new professional skills, particularly those emphasizing communication
    6. Opportunities for students to act as resources for each other, thus assuming a more active role in their learning
4. Activities
  1. Johnson et al., (1994: 4–5) describe three types of cooperative learning groups.
    1. Formal cooperative learning groups. These last from one class period to several weeks. These are established for a specific task and involve students working together to achieve shared learning goals.
    2. . Informal cooperative learning groups. These are ad-hoc groups that last from a few minutes to a class period and are used to focus student attention or to facilitate learning during direct teaching.
    3. Cooperative base groups. These are long term, lasting for at least a year and consist of heterogeneous learning groups with stable membership whose primary purpose is to allow members to give each other the support, help, encouragement, and assistance they need to succeed academically.
  2. Olsen and Kagan (1992) propose the following key elements of successful group-based learning in CLL:
    1. Positive interdependence occurs when group members feel that what helps one member helps all and what hurts one member hurts all. It is created by the structure of CL tasks and by building a spirit of mutual support within the group. For example, a group may produce a single product such as an essay or the scores for members of a group may be averaged.
    2. Group formation is an important factor in creating positive interdependence. Factors involved in setting up groups include:
      1. - deciding on the size of the group: This will depend on the tasks they have to carry out, the age of the learners, and time limits for the lesson. Typical group size is from two to four
      2. - student roles in groups: Each group member has a specific role to play in a group, such as noise monitor, turn-taker monitor, recorder, or summarizer.
    3. Individual accountability involves both group and individual performance, for example, by assigning each student a grade on his or her portion of a team project or by calling on a student at random to share with the whole class, with group members, or with another group.
    4. Social skills determine the way students interact with each other as teammates. Usually some explicit instruction in social skills is needed to ensure successful interaction.
    5. Structuring and Structures refer to ways of organizing student interaction and different ways students are to interact such as Three-step interview or Round Robin (discussed later in this section).
  3. Coelho (1992b: 132) describes three major kinds of cooperative learning tasks and their learning focus, each of which has many variations
    1. 3. Cooperative projects: topics/resources selected by students – discovery learning – Topics may be different for each group. – Students identify subtopics for each group member. – Steering committee may coordinate the work of the class as a whole. – Students research the information using resources such as library reference, interviews, visual media.
    2. 2. Jigsaw: differentiated but predetermined input – evaluation and synthesis of facts and opinions – Each group member receives a different piece of the information - Students regroup in topic groups (expert groups) composed of people with the same piece to master the material and prepare to teach it.
    3. 1. Team practice from common input – skills development and mastery of facts – All students work on the same material. – Practice could follow a traditional teacher-directed presentation of new material and for that reason is a good starting point for teachers and/or students new to group work.
  4. Olsen and Kagan (1992: 88) describes the following examples of CLL activities:
    1. Three-step interview: (1) Students are in pairs; one is interviewer and the other is interviewee. (2) Students reverse roles. (3) Each shares with team member what was learned during the two interviews.
    2. Roundtable: There is one piece of paper and one pen for each team. (1) One student makes a contribution and (2) passes the paper and pen to the student of his or her left. (3) Each student makes contributions in turn. If done orally, the structure is called Round Robin.
    3. Think-Pair-Share: (1) Teacher poses a question (usually a lowconsensus question). (2) Students think of a response. (3) Students discuss their responses with a partner. (4) Students share their partner’s response
    4. Solve-Pair-Share: (1) Teacher poses a problem (a low-consensus or high-consensus item that may be resolved with different strategies). (2) Students work out solutions individually. (3) Students explain how they solved the problem in Interview or Round Robin structures.
    5. Numbered Heads: (1) Students number off in teams. (2) Teacher asks a question (usually high-consensus). (3) Heads Together – students literally put their heads together and make sure everyone knows and can explain the answer. (4) Teacher calls a number and students with that number raise their hands to be called on, as in traditional classroom
5. Materials
  1. The same materials can be used as are used in other types of lessons but variations are required in how the materials are used.
    1. For example, if students are working in groups, each might have one set of materials (or groups might have different sets of materials), or each group member might need a copy of a text to read and refer to.
    2. Materials may be specially designed for CLL learning (such as commercially sold jigsaw and information-gap activities), modified from existing materials, or borrowed from other disciplines.

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