Teaching English as a Foreign Language Summary PDF

Teaching English as a foreign language – TEFL (Wilden) Unit 1 - First language acquisition WUG-Test: Children are shown made up words and they are asked to use grammatical rules on them ➔ can apply rules without knowing the meaning Early weeks of life: - Auditory discrimination and distinguish...

Teaching English as a foreign language – TEFL (Wilden) Unit 1 - First language acquisition WUG-Test: Children are shown made up words and they are asked to use grammatical rules on them ➔ can apply rules without knowing the meaning Early weeks of life: - Auditory discrimination and distinguishing voices/languages (e.g. mother) - Cooing and gurgeling sounds - Earliest vocalisations: crying when they have needs First year: - First words - Understanding frequently repeated words Age of two: - Produce around 50 words - Begin to combine words into simple sentences = imitation ➔ Telegraphic speech (no articles, prepositions etc.) - Get relations between words - Master grammar/some morphemes (kind of) - Ask simple questions (what? Why? Who? Where?) Age of three: - Acquire morphemes - Development of negations - Ask more specific questions and use how? And when? Pre-school: - Give commands - Report real events & create imaginary stories - Basic structure ➔ use the correct word order - Use language in all situations & interact more - Metalinguistic awareness - Begin to understand how and why language differs School year:  - Abilities grow - Learn to read ➔ More linguistic awareness - Understand that the form is not the same as meaning - Understand ambiguity ➔ one word has one meaning - Different language registers ➔ written is not the same as spoken and you can not speak the same way with everyone - Growth of vocabulary ➔ reading is important Unit 2 – Second language learning Behaviorist perspective: - By B. F. Skinner and others in the 1940s and 50s - Stimulus response cycles ➔ learning through positive reinforcement - Focus on imitation and practice ➔ forming habits - Memorization - Teaching approach: Audiolingual method - BUT: does not explain real life/spontaneous language use, logical problem of language acquisition Innatist perspective: - Related to Chomsky (1959) - States that we are biologically programmed to learn language -> innate ability to learn language -> LAD = Language Acquisition Device - Language/grammar does not have to be taught - Input needed to activate UG (Universal Grammar) - Just need to speak to somebody regularly - Universal Grammar (UG) -> knowledge about the structure of language - BUT: not enough focus on progress and the stages - BUT: no evidence for this theory Interactionist/developmental perspective  - By Jean Piagel (1951) and Lev Vygotsky (1978) - rejects Universal Grammar - children need to be exposed to language - emphasis relationship between cognitive development and language acquisitions - children need a supportive and interactive environment - importance of conversations -> origin of language and thought - also called the Sociocultural theory Processability theory: - Manfred Pienemann (1998) - Learners can only produce what they can process Output hypothesis: - Merill Swain (1985) - Need input and output - Output is necessary to test your limits -> learners need opportunities for language practise and use -> pushes learners Input hypothesis: - Language that learners receives -> should be modified -> speak slowly; modify vocabulary; simplify grammar use -> your way of speaking depends on where you are and who you are with - No input + no output = no learning Interaction hypothesis: - By Long (1996) - (i) input is necessary for language acquisition - (ii) output/production of language - (iii) feedback on that production Monitor model: - By Krashen (1982) - Language is acquired, rather than learned - Learning with no conscious attention to language form - Learn rules through conscios attention to rule learning and form  - 2nd L learners monitor others - BUT: wrong conclusions from research - BUT: hypothesis can not be tested Interlanguage: - By Lanny Selinke (1972) - “Fossilisation” -> some features in the learners language seem to stop changing - Learners interlanguage show characteristics -> previous learned languages (Elements of L1) -> some elements of L2 -> overgeneralization of L2 rules -> systematic & dynamic -> continually evolving -> changes when learners receive more input, revise their hypothesis at the L2 Unit 3 – Receptive competences – a skill-based approach Reading competences: - Extensive competence with build in sub-competences - Ability to generate follow up communication - Reflection on what has been read - They can decipher the meaning of unknown words - They can use pre-, while- and post-reading strategies and adapt these to their reading goals - They plan, direct and monitor their reading process - They are able to examine and critically reflect on what they have read - Different processes of comprehension take place simultaneously - Cognitive factors: emotional participation - Cognitive factors: decoding skills, application of schemes Listening comprehension: - Ability to focus on what they are listening to - Picture different controversial situations - Capture, progress and interpret different listening texts and contexts ➔ Audible language input ➔ Tonal and musical impulses Visual competences  - Involves critical and cultural components - Construction of meaning on the basis of the formal characteristics of a picture + the context in which it is presented - Get what type of image they are looking at and what it means for the image - Awareness that pictures do not have an illustrative nature in them and of themselves, rather subjective interpretations and cultural products Combined text comprehension: - Capture different signals simultaneously and process bottom-up and top- down and have to connect them to each other Top-down processing - Each input is also influenced by interference and hypothesis building ➔ Interpretations/conclusions as a result of predications about the development of the text - Takes place on the basis of cognitive patterns by means of which the recipient and different on personal experience (context related frames, general world knowledge, genre knowledge, … ) - Knowledge driven/concept driven construction of meaning - Tasks: -> creative tasks -> action- and production-oriented tasks, such as writing the continuation of a story -> recalling and using previous knowledge - Gets automatic later - Is done by successful language learners - Just for receptive skills Bottom-up processing: - Decoding words/recognition of sounds and phonemes - Then chunks and sentences (at which point larger units of meaning can be deciphered) - While listening: characteristics of spoken language, recognition of sounds, prosodic (intonation, speed, volume) and non-verbal aspects - In Mulitmedia: meaning of pictures, symbols and similar - Tasks: -> learners are encouraged to extract general, specific or detailed info  -> encourages learners to use linguistic aspects found within a text, like connectors or adverbs of time -> supports learners in decoding information by utilizing strategies involving cues within the text, like deciphering the meaning of an unknown word from context/its use within a chunk -> usage of written, audio or visual texts as their starting point - While listening: characteristics of spoken language, recognition of sounds, prosodic (intonation, speed, volume) and non-verbal aspects - In Mulitmedia: meaning of pictures, symbols and similar Pre-reading/-listening/-viewing - Activate prior knowledge - Prepare topic wise and emotionally to work with the text - Establish context and prepare for the main event - Generate expectations - Familiarize with the word-field While-reading/-listening/-viewing - Structure and support for text reception - Reflect impressions - Focus learners attention and occasionally redirect (example: observational tasks) Post-reading/-listening/-viewing - Link to tasks in pre- and while phases - Evaluation of the reception process, taking a deeper look at the text and engage in further language or topi-specific work - Opportunity to express their personal reactions to the text Unit 4 – Productive competences – a skill-based approach Mediation - Intercultural communitcative competence is significant for successful mediation - For teachers ➔ Demand a high amount of teachers content knowledge and pedalogical skill - Successful mediation requires activating linguistic, cultural, pragmatic, strategic, social interactive and discourse competences - Different strategies ➔ Language strategies (e.g. paraphrasing key words from the original text ➔ Information strategies (e.g making explicit connections between ideas) - Process where the “language user is not concerned to express his/her/their own meaning but simply to act as an intermediary between interlocutors who can not only understand each other directly” ➔ Not translating - Became a core component in courses and classes - Mediation in steps ➔ Understanding context and task ➔ Setting goals for text reception ➔ Listening, reading and/or viewing ➔ Evaluating and selecting ➔ Creating and editing of new text Communicative competence - Ability to interact with others ➔ Including understanding them and producing own language - A skill that is not given or achieved easily but is rather learned piece by piece over the course of years - Consists of receptive competences + productive competences - Practiced by speaking, listening, writing, reading - Key sign of a good language learner and an important goal Speaking - Fluent speaking as the goal ➔ Achieved by diverse and interrelated cognitive process  ➔ Lots of practice, meaningful repetition and some level of automatisation - Knowledge base of speaking ➔ Intercultural awareness and valuable insights into the sociocultural knowledge base of English-speaking cultures ➔ Awareness of social backround and culture of L1 speakers ➔ Nature of spoken discourse (use of language in a specific context/use of language in units that exceed the length of a sentence ➔ Discourse is concerned with how sentences and larger units are connected to form coherent and cohensive speech - Cohersion: refers to use of linguistic devices to join sentences & paragraphs together, like conjunctions, reference words, substitutions and lexical devices such as collocations and lexical groups - Coherence: refers to the structure and unity of a text as far as meaning is concerned - The speaking process: underlying process of speech production (3 interrelated concepts) ➔ Fluent speakers plan what they want to say while still articulating ther previous idea ➔ 1. Conceptualism: message gets processed in the speech comprehension system(interpretation) and conceives of what to say as a response in the conceptualizer (preverbal message is generated)  ➔ 2. Formulation: preverbal message is formed into a phonetic plan by grammatical and phonological encoding, knowledge stores are accessed ➔ 3. Articulation: overt speech is articulated self-monitored - Communicative strategies ➔ Paraphrasing ➔ Code-switching (more than one language is used) ➔ Use of all-purpose words (things, stuff, …) ➔ Word-coinage (word of another language is turned into an English- sounding word) ➔ Non-verbal/paralinguistic communication (gestures and facial expressions) ➔ Asking for help and classification ➔ Avoidance (use of a less complex statement) - Spoken discourse: linguistic features, genres and pronounciation ➔ Knowledge about these is highly relevant for teaching and how to speak accurately, fluently and with an appropriate level of complexity ➔ Spoken and written language differ a lot ➔ Interactive speaking: process of speech production - Pronounciation ➔ Knowledge of the phonological system on two levels ➔ 1. Segmental level (mikro level) concerned with individual vowels and consonants and their combinations ➔ 2. Suprasegmental level (makro level): deals with stress, rhythm and intonations ➔ Particularly important with regard to the intelligibility ➔ Intelleigibility = degrees to which a speakers utterance can be understood ➔ Key features of learners´speech: The quality of a learner´s speech is determined by its fluency, accuracy and complexity ➔ Levels of proficiency: Of course, foreign language learners achieve different levels of oral proficiency in the target language due to various individual factors of second language acquisiton (e.g. motivation, language,…) - Purposes of speaking ➔ Interactional: centers on engaging in direct social interaction with a strong focus on building a relationship ➔ Transactional: about conveying and receiving information often follow a script, high amount of formulaic language - Genres: classifies different types of spoken or written discourse. A genre is characterized by typical features and characteristics - Approaches to teaching and learning speaking ➔ From awareness-raising to appropriation to autonomous speaking ➔ Scaffolding: a process whereby learners take on more and more control of their language production in a framework of repetition and variation ➔ Three different perspectives: ➔ 1. Behaviorist: habit formation through repetition and reinforcement ➔ 2. Sociocultural theory: learning is socially mediated, interaction is key ➔ 3. Cognitivist perspective: learners are equipped with a capacity for information processing - Speaking activities for different stages  - Teaching speaking to young learners ➔ Playful way: singing, games & role-play = strong element of repetition ➔ Input that focuses on verbs and structure words, not just nouns ➔ Strong focus on pronunciation is important ➔ Principles of developing speaking skills in the primary classroom Writing - Feedback ➔ Is needed for growth ➔ Writing competence ist build ➔ Peer feedback : benefits both students, offers opportunity to discuss topics and contents - Understanding writing ➔ Developing writing skills: knowledge about genre and text production process, linguistic development (accuracy, complexity, fluency, cohesion &coherence), metalinguistic knowledge (planning, monitoring and evaluating), use of strategy, writing goals and motivation ➔ Writing and technology, new genres, all kind of information in many forms of global communication - Approaches to teaching and learning writing ➔ process-based approaches: focus on the process of writing mainly from a cognitive point of view; How do writers create good texts?; mainly by discovery and thinking; planning, drafting and revising; pre-writing tasks (writing several drafts, subsequent structuring of activities, brainstorming); following a process-approach to writing teachers would set; main sub-process : 1. setting goals 2. generating ideas 3. Organizing information 4. Selecting appropriate language 5. Making a draft 6. Reading and reviewing 7. Revising and editing ➔ genre/text-based approaches:  focus on the product of writing by examining e.g the formal surface elements and discourse structure of sample texts What makes a good text? Own communicative ideas Analysing and imitating the style and content of sample text and their sociolingual context = genre/text-based Focus on linguistic and rhetorical features only after social context has been established Step by step procedure: 1. helping student to identify their writing needs 2. building awareness of discourse organization 3. helping students to develop crafting skills 4. enabling students to apply criteria of an effective text Unit 5 – Task-based language teaching (TBLT) Focus on content - using authentic literature - meaningful with personal relevance to the rader ➔ starting point for any communicative competence ➔ development of communicative competence - content and language integrated learning (CLIL) ➔ Scaffolding: forms of language support ➔ Speech acts like a discourse in the subject ➔ Bilingual subject as an example ➔ It is hard to teach topic and form at the same time(lacks acts like a discourse in the subject) ➔ Also known as content-based instruction (CBI), bilingual instructions sheltered instructions or English as an additional language (EAL) TBLT. Vs. language exercise - Task-based: ➔ Focus on communicative purpose (meaning/context) ➔ Carried out independently by learners ➔ Meaningful and relevant to learners ➔ Focus on multiple skills rather than on one skill only ➔ Used in context ➔ Error correction is delayed - Language Exercises ➔ Immediate error correction ➔ No reference to the context ➔ Focus on a single skill or language aspect ➔ Potentially not meaningful ➔ Guided and controlled by the teacher ➔ Focus on linguistic outcome (e.g.form) The communicative turn and its implications - Before ➔ Idea: learning L2 through learning about its structure ➔ Criticism: structuralist approaches neglect social dimension of language use ➔ Pre-communicative structuralist approaches to FLT ➔ Based on behaviorist learning theory ➔ Teaching approaches: grammar translation method and audiolingual method - After ➔ Origins in the 1970s ➔ Criticism of structuralist approaches ➔ Realization: L2 learning needs more than just knowing the word and grammar of L2  ➔ Instead: integrated teaching of language skills ➔ Idea: learning L2 while actively using it for communication ➔ Communicative language teaching: aims at developing learners´ Communicative Competence, learners can apply Communicative Competence in the real world outside of school Focus on learners - Competence orientation - Learner autonomy ➔ Giving students responsibility for their own learning ➔ Supporting their use of learning strategies ➔ Focusing students responsibility for their own learning ➔ Using visual support for leaving vocabulary ➔ Guessing the meaning of unknown words from context ➔ - Differentiation and individualism ➔ Giving students choices regarding tasks, topics, social forms, materials and methods or learning strategies ➔ Learner-centredness: learning interests and needs and abilities and skills are used as the starting point ➔ After some experience, learners can choose their own respective level (e.g. reflective and introrespective activities for and individual progress; individualized settings with choice of activities, partners and materials; choice of content/topic based on interest ➔ Materials with different competence levels: Qualitative: same tasks are made more accessible for weaker students through e.g. less complex sentences, a smaller range of vocabulary and more task support Quantitative: achieved through a reduction or expansion of activities and material  ➔ Different types of support are needed ➔ Leaning processes are individual and differ: prior experiences, languages they know, social backround, motivation, cognitive abilities, strategies, learning styles, etc. ➔ The diversity in classrooms is increasing - Multilingualism ➔ Linguistic diversity ➔ Already acquired languages influence the learning of another language = language awareness ➔ Competence orientation: Takes into consideration what learners can do with language and focuses on the language in use rather than targeting at native speaker like competence Competences are complex and comprise a variety of dimension Based on Weinert´s concept of competence ➔ Offers opportunities to students who do not have German as their first language ➔ Translanguaging (the ability of multilingual speakers to make use of their diffent languages in a communicative situation) - Holistic learning ➔ Learners identity is important ➔ Sensory, emotional and affective aspects of language are considered ➔ Learning should appeal to different senses (pictures, physical activity, video and audio material) ➔ Students attitude towards language learning influences their success (motivation, fear and openness towars the target culture) Unit 6 – Curricular guidelines & teaching resources Objectives of TEFL today - Communicative competence ➔ Ability to use the language different contexts, being able to use spoken and written language as well as understanding others - Text & Media Competence ➔ Ability to use the communicative competence also online to watch/read/understand media in the language & produce media yourself  - Intercultural competence ➔ Not only speaking the language but also knowing about culture, traditions, way of living, … deeper understanding of language and people - Methodical competence ➔ Knowing different skills and methods to be able to interact in complex communicative situations which require the application of a combination of different skills and knowledge Dimensions of Communicative Competences - Knowing how to maintain communication despite having limitations in one´s language knowledge (e.g. through using different kinds of communicative strategies) - Knowing how to use language for a range of different purposes and functions - Knowing how to vary your use of language according to the participents (e.g. formal or informal speech, written language,…) - Knowinghow to produce and understand different types of texts (e.g. reports, narrations, interviews, conversations,….) Primary School - CEFR: A1/A2 - Typical teaching resources ➔ Repetition and learner orientation ➔ Multisensory and active learning ➔ Differentiated material that caters to individual learner differences and contributes to learner autonomy ➔ Related to their real lives ➔ Focus on oracy (speaking and listening) but fostering reading and writing skills since visualization helps as a memory aid - Teaching princicples ➔ Practicing in a cheerful but meaningful way ➔ Rather playful and holistic approach ➔ Can not use the written word yet : need visualization and contextualization ➔ No abstract grammatical rules and no abstract vocabulary (categories) ➔ Lot of repetition and frequent praise and success is important ➔ Roleplays, stories and competitive games ➔ Playing, singing and imitate; story, comics and rhymes  - Curricular objectives ➔ Development of intercultural and communicative competences ➔ Supposed to develop methodological competences: observing, documenting, reflecting and assessing their own language processes Secondary Level I - CEFR: B1, B2 - Curricular objectives ➔ Methodological competences ➔ Self-observation and evaluation of their learning process ➔ Enlarge their vocabular and grammatic knowledge and develop their intercultural competences through fictional and non-fictional texts ➔ Texts are accompanied by activities and tasks that support the comprehension process ➔ Supposed to develop more independent competences that allows them to talk and write about common topics with others ➔ Building on the basic communicative, intercultural and methodological competences - Typical teaching resources ➔ Task based language teaching : meaningful and action orientated ➔ Learner orientation ➔ Meaningful tasks and authentic problems ➔ Usage of text books, texts technology ➔ Working with feedback ➔ Better time management and problem-solving techniques - Teaching principles ➔ Error correction is important ➔ Listen to, read, discuss and mediate texts in their complexity ➔ Aim: development of learner autonomy ➔ Communicative competences (reading, listening, speaking, writing, mediation) ➔ Task-based language teaching, meaningful and action-orientated forms of learning, authentic language ➔ Scaffolding: teacher gives the students more support, lead students to a stronger understanding and greater independence in the learning process Secondary Level II - CEFR: major: B2/C1 and minor: B2 - Typical teaching principles ➔ Reading, listening, speaking, writing and language mediation ➔ Less textbook use - Curricular guidelines ➔ Development of discourse competence ➔ Current issues, classical and modern literature ➔ Intercultural and communicative competences ➔ Text and media competences: electronic, written and spoken language can be analysed, evaluated, created, decoded, … ➔ Understanding of the human faculty of language and it´s role in thinking, learning and social life ➔ Awareness of power and control through language ➔ More complex, abstract and more demanding - Teaching principles ➔ Task-based and creative forms of learning ➔ Rich language input through a variety of text form genre ➔ Process-orientation rather than product-orientation ➔ Cooperative and collaborative forms of learning ➔ Balanced approaches to media use (old and new/digital media) ➔ Increase of autonomous forms of learning ➔ Obligatory topics and texts Vocational school: - CEFR: B2 - Teaching principles ➔ Training for an occupation in the service sector ➔ Fitting for their future job ➔ Provision of educational tasks that correspond to the real world tasks of a certain job - Curricular objectives ➔ Communicative and intercultural competences ➔ Builds up on secondary level I ➔ English is not optional ➔ More focus on international communication and intercultural competences  ➔ Learning how to autonomously gain occupational specific language competences Unit 7 – Teaching culture in the EFL classroom - Cultural agent ➔ Exchanges, negotiates and shares cultural meanings - Intertextuality ➔ Every cultural text is linked to other cultural texts which together ake up a particular cultural discoure - ICC (Intercultural communicative competence) ➔ Educational aim with a focus on the ability to communicate and interact with people across languages and cultures - Decentering: the ability to change perspectives and critically self-distance - Intercultural speaker Someone who has acquired the necessary knowledge, skills and attitudes which allow them to manage intercultural encounters or solve intercultural conflicts - Transculturality = describes the internal differentiation within and the interconnectedness of cultures - The idea that culture should be influendced in foreign language education has been guiding L2 education since 1993 (Kramsch) ➔ Cultural context is necessary for successful communication - Culture as text ➔ Implies that culture can be read as a text; metaphor; says that every cultural text is linked to man other cultural texts; criticized because it neglets the >cultural agents< who exchange, share and negotiate cultural meanings LEADS TO - Culture as discursive practice ➔ Assumes that culture is a dialogic and discoursive process in which cultural meanings are negotiated among the participants of a culture - Multilingualism and multilingual subject: close connectionbetween language and cultural teaching ➔ An issue for foreign language education since Kramsch´s “Context and Culture in language teaching” and Risager´s of language culture - Developing language learners´symbolic competences ➔ Referring to the ability to use different symbolic systems to shove, exchange and reflect on people experience  - Culture ➔ Is a set of shared meaning ➔ Entails a diversity of meaning ➔ Is a controversial term - 3 dimensions of culture Unit 8 – Using literature and film in foreign language teaching - Definition of canon ➔ The collection of works considered representative for a period or genre, works that are representative of society - Role in education in the past ➔ Elite literary canon ➔ strong focus on the translation of significant works ➔ goal to conveycultural achievements ➔ strong educational, rather than lingual focus ➔ literary study as “supremely civilizing pursuit - Role in education in the past ➔ Shift from more traditional texts towards more recent and contemporary texts (and films) ➔ Mirrors the changing discourse - Reader Response Theory ➔ Developed in 1070s/1980s  ➔ Basic ideas: reading process as creative act (readers make meaning); exchange between reader and text; negotiation process, rather than decoding ´hidden meaning´ ➔ Focuses on the reading process as a creative act, involving the reader and their exchange with the literary text ➔ More received as a process of negotiation and not so much as ´decoding of >the hidden meaningslink> between literature and film (example: Grafic Novels) ➔ Pictures can provide a narrative scaffold and the readers can foll the story more easily ➔ Goal: the support of literary learning ➔ Contributions to the narrative in multiple forms (e.g. pictures, words, designs, …) Abrivations/Accronyms - TEFL = Teaching English as a foreign language - L2 learning = Second language learning - EFL = English as a foreign language - TOEFL = Test of English as a foreign Language - L2 = Second (foreign) language - SLA = Second language acquisition - CLT = Communicative language teaching - MSBNRW = Ministerium für Schule und Bildung Nordrhein- Westfahlen - KMK = Kultusministerkonferenz - CEFR = Common European Framework of Reference - GER - Gemeinsamer Europäischer Referenzrahmen für Sprachen - EAL = English as an additional language