Language Teaching Approaches and Skills

Terminology

• Listening: Decoding meaning from audio.
• Speaking: Encoding thoughts into oral form.
• Writing: Encoding thoughts into written form.
• Reading: Decoding meaning from written text.
• Receptive skills: Reading and listening.
• Productive skills: Speaking and writing.
• Approach: Theoretical framework for language teaching.
• Method: Implementing the approach, (e.g., syllabus, progression).
• Technique: Practical classroom activities/tasks (e.g., role-play).
• Explicit teaching: Directly explaining grammar rules.
• Implicit teaching: Students deduce rules from examples.
• Accuracy vs. fluency: Balancing accuracy and natural language use.
• Natural use of language: Communicating meaningfully within context.
• Example - language practice: Communicative use of language.
• Dialogs: Practice with grammatical structures, with specified control of choice.
• Dialog question (wh- questions): Asking questions to choose right tense.
• Acquisition: Subconscious, informal language learning.
• Stable order of acquisition: Grammatical feel.
• Implicit/explicit order: Depending on attitude.
• Learning; Conscious & formal.
• Grammatical rules used depend on aptitude.
• Simple structures learned first, followed by complex ones.
• Feedback: Specific, factual, descriptive, and constructive.

Lesson Planning

• Types of planning: Long-term (semester/year) and short-term (per unit).
• Planning considerations: Class characteristics, goals, and content.
• Learning activities to create opportunities for cooperation, enjoyment, and talking time with students.
• Evaluation criteria: Goals met, student activity level, motivation, eagerness, organization, and success, mistake awareness.

Strategy for Education Policy (CZ by 2030+3)

• Reduce the overall volume of the curriculum to reduce information overload.
• Focus on outcomes (what students accomplish) instead of covering all materials.

Modernised Curriculum Content

• Aim: Creating coherent, modern curriculum content.
• Creative activities and teamwork.
• Critical thinking skills for linking science and mathematics.
• Learning methods that go beyond school.
• Aim : Prepare schools for transition to modernisation, including equipping.

Transforming Educational Content, Methods, and Assessment

• Aim: Reforming education system to emphasize effective application of knowledge, use of digital tools and interdisciplinary approaches.
• Prioritizing critical thinking, problem-solving.

Ensuring Equity and Access to Quality Education

• Aim: Addressing socioeconomic disparities, fostering inclusion and equal access.

Supporting Teaching Staff

• Aim: Enhance teacher effectiveness, reduce administrative burden, and provide resources to support educators.

Enhancing Professional Capacities, Trust, and Cooperation

• Aim: Fostering collaboration to improve the overall quality of education between Institutions, teachers, students, parents, and broader community.

Increasing Funding and Ensuring Stability

• Aim: Supporting the implementation of strategic goals relating to education and funding.

CEFR 3

• Standardized framework for describing and assessing proficiency levels across languages.
• Proficiency levels - Basic (A1, A2), Independent (B1, B2), and Proficient (C1, C2).

Competencies

• Listening - understanding spoken language.
• Reading - comprehending written text.
• Speaking - effectively communicating, producing spoken text, interacting.
• Writing - producing written texts.

Objectives

• Promoting plurilingualism (using multiple languages).
• Developing curriculum content.

Behavioralism, Classical Conditioning, Operant Conditioning, and Nativist

• Association between stimulus and response; learning through environmental influence.
• Controlled response with reward/punishment.
• Innate capacity for language acquisition.

Monitor Model (5 hypotheses)

• Learning through acquisition is more important than explicit learning.
• Monitor: Learnt language is used as a self-editing tool (monitor).
• Natural Order Hypothesis: Language elements are acquired in a predictable sequence.
• Input Hypothesis: Learners acquire language when they are exposed to input slightly beyond their current level (I+1).
• Affective Filter Hypothesis: Emotional factors affect the amount of input processed/acquired.

Neuroscience and ELT (Brain function)

• Synapses: Communication points between neurons.
• Neurotransmitters: Chemical messengers.
• Lateralization: Division of brain functions between hemispheres.

Language and Brain Functions

• Different areas of the brain are responsible in decoding and producing language.
• Left-temple cortex is responsible for spoken language.
• Left side of the brain controls producing language and also processing language.

Laterality

• Specialization of the brain hemispheres (left and right) and their associated functions.
• Typically, the left hemisphere controls the right side of the body, and vice versa.

Dyslexia

• Difficulties are observed in linguistic mechanisms, memory, and semantic-syntactic strategies in terms of reading and writing.
• Focus in left hemisphere.

Bilingualism

• How to support second language learning, without impacting first language skills.
• Importance of the context when learning a second language.

Approaches and Methods in ELT

• Strategies: Specific methods for addressing a problem.
• Styles: Consistent ways of approaching tasks.
• Processes: All people learn and engage in learning.
• Learning Styles: Reflective & Intuitive, Field Dependent & Field Independent.

Teaching Methods

• Grammar-translation: Focuses on translation, reading, and writing.
• Audio-lingual: Based on behaviorism, using repetitive drills.
• Direct method: Everyday situations and contexts as medium for teaching.
• Situational teaching: Connecting grammar to practical uses.
• Suggestopedia: Using environment and activities to enhance learning.
• CLT (Communicative Language Teaching): Focus on communication.

Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT)

• Learning through meaningful tasks, integrating grammar rules and vocabulary naturally.
• Real-world application and problem-solving focus.

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)

• Teaching a subject using a second language in a real-world setting.

Lexical Approach

• Learning language through exploring vocabulary and lexical chunks.

Blended Learning

• Combining in-person and online learning methods enhances flexibility and personalization.

Eclectic Approach

• Combining elements of different methods (best parts of each).
• Adapting methods based on learner needs, context and resources.

Communication, Cognition and Culture

• Focuses on language use for communication, cognitive skills for understanding, and cultural awareness.

Teaching Listening

• Warm-up, presentation, practice, production, wrap-up.
• Active engagement, multi-sensory learning and realistic tasks.

Teaching Speaking

• Pre-speaking stage, while-speaking stage, and post-speaking stage activities.
• Activities include dialogues, role-plays, and discussions.

Teaching Reading

• Pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading activities.
• Skimming, scanning and inferring meaning from context.
• Exploring vocabulary.

Teaching Writing

• Pre-writing, while-writing, post-writing activities.
• Focusing on effective communication, grammar and syntax.
• Promoting creative expression in learners.

Teaching Vocabulary

• Contextualization, repetition, categorization, visual aids, engaging practice.
• Connecting vocabulary to personal contexts and interests.

Motivation in ELT

• Internal drive to pursue and act on learning.
• Extrinsic motivation (external factors) and Intrinsic motivation (internal factors).
• Mechanisms: Desires, efforts, achievement, positive vs. negative feedback, long-term and short-term goals.

Learning Styles in elT

• Grammatical-translation, Direct method, Audio-lingual method, Suggestopedia.
• Communicative language teaching, Task-Based Language Teaching.