英语教学法教程考研笔记.doc

Unit 1 language and language teaching
1. What makes a good language teacher?
l Ethic devotion
l Professional qualities
l Personal styles

2. Views on language learning and learning in general:
l Process-oriented theories: concerned with how the mind organizes new information such as habit formation, induction, making inference, hypothesis testing and generalization.
l Condition-oriented theories: emphasize the nature of the human and physical context in which the language learning take place, such as the number of the students and the kind of input learners receive, and the atmosphere.

3. How can one become a language teacher?
It involves more factors and longer learning time, and may never be finished.
Practice
Reflection
Professional competence

Goal
Stage 1
Stage 2

Stage 1: all English teachers are supposed to have a sound command of English.
Stage 2: learning, practice and reflection.
l Learning:
ü Learning from others’ experience (empirical knowledge gained through reading and observation)
ü Learning the received knowledge (language learning theories, educational psychology, language teaching methodology, etc.)
l Practice
ü Pre-service practice (pseudo practice)
ü Real classroom practice
l Reflection: take on reflection seriously and keep reflection
Goal: (do not have an end) one can never become a perfect teacher. There is always room for improvement.

Unit 2 communicative principles and task-based language teaching
1. What is communicative competence
l Linguistic competence
Knowledge of language itself
l Pragmatic competence
The choice of the vocabulary and structure depends on the setting, the relative status of the speakers and their relationship.
l Discourse competence
The ability to understand or to express a topic logically and coherently by effectively employing or comprehending the cohesive marks, such as first, second.
l Strategic competence
Searching for other means of expression, such as using a similar phrase ……
l Fluency
the ability to link units of speech together with facility and without strain or inappropriate slowness or undue hesitation)

CLT: communicative language teaching
2. Principles of communicative language teaching
l Communication principle
Activities that involve real communication promote learning.
l Task principle
Activities in which language is used for carrying out meaningful tasks promote learning.
l Meaningfulness principle
Language that is meaningful to the learner support the learning process.

3. Main features of communicative activities
l Communicative purpose
There must be some information gap that students seek to bridge
l Communicative desire
A real need to communicate
l Content not form
They must have some massage they want to communicate
l Variety of language
l No teacher intervention
l No material control

TBLT: task- based language teaching
4. Four components of a task
l A purpose
Make sure students have a reason for undertaking the task
l A context
This can be real, simulated or imaginary, and involves sociolinguistic issues such as the location and the relationship of the speaker……
l A process
Getting students to learn some language strategies such as problem solving, reasoning……
l A product

5. Focus on individual language items –
Purposeful and contextualized communication +
Then
Exercise → task

6. TBL:
l Pre-task
Introduction to topic and task
l Task cycle
ü Task
ü Planning
ü Report
ü Students hear task recording or read text
l Language focus
ü Analysis and practice
ü Review and repeat task

7. PPP
l Presentation
Of single new item; teachers introduces new vocabulary and grammatical structures.
l Practice
Of new item: drills, exercise, and dialogue
l Production
Activity, role play or task to encourage ‘free’ use of language

8. How to design tasks
l Think about students’ needs and interests and abilities
l Brainstorm possible tasks
l Evaluate the list
l Choose the language items
l Preparing materials

9. Constrains of CLT:
l Whether it will meet the needs of learners from different contexts
l It is very difficult to design a one to one correspondence between a function a form.
10. Constrains of TBLT
l Not effective for presenting new languages
l Time is limited: teachers are busy
l Culture of learning: some students may find it difficult to adapt to TBLT
l Level of difficulty: students may find task-base language teaching quite difficult of they do not have sufficient linguistic resources.

Unit 4 lesson planning
1. Why is lesson planning important?
l It can make teachers aware of the aims and language contents of the lesson.
l It helps teachers distinguish the various stages of a lesson and see the relationship between them so that activities of different difficulty levels can be arranged properly and the lesson can move smoothly from one stage to another.
l It gives teachers opportunity to anticipate potential problems that may arise in class, and prepare some solutions to them.
l It builds teachers’ confidence in class.
l Teachers can also be aware of teaching aids in class.
l Planning is a good practice and sign of professionalism.

2. Principles for good class planning:
l Aim
It means realistic goals for the lesson; the things students are able to do at the end of the class.
l Variety
Planning a variety of different activities to introduce a wide selection of materials, so that learning is always interesting.
l Flexibility
Preparing some extra and alternative activities and tasks as the class does not always go according to the plan.
l Learnability
The contents and tasks planned for the lesson should be within the learning capability of the students.
l Linkage
The steps and steps in each stage are planned in such a way that they are someway linked with another one.

3. Macro planning
A planning over a longer period of time, for instance a whole-year course. It is often done by a group of teachers who are to teach the same course.
l Knowing about the profession
Which language area and language stage should be taught?
l Knowing about the institution
The institution arrangements of the time, frequency of the class……
l Knowing about the learners
l Knowing about the syllabus
l Knowing about the textbook
l Knowing about the objectives

4. Components of a lesson plan
l Background information
Who the students are. The time and date of the class.
l Teaching aims
What students are able to achieve at the end of the lesson
(Linguistic and language skills)
l Language contents and skills
l Stages and procedures
l Teaching aids
Teaching aids and resources, and how teachers will use them to aid learning
l End of lesson summary
Take some time to summarize what is learned in class.
l Optional activities and assignments
l After lesson reflection

Unit 5 classroom arrangement
1. Efficient classroom arrangement can be achieved when these six conditions are met:
l The teacher plays appropriate roles.
l The teacher provides clear instructions
l Students are grouped in a way suitable for the learning activities.
l The teacher asks appropriate questions.
l There is discipline as well as harmony in the class.
l The students’ errors are treated properly.

2. The different roles of teachers:
l Controller
ü The teacher controls the pace so that the activities run smoothly and efficiently.
ü The more communicative the activity is, the less control it needs.
l Assessor
ü Correcting mistakes
ü Organizing feedback
l Organizer
Design and organize the tasks
l Prompter
When students are not sure how to start an activity, or what to do next, the teacher give appropriate prompts. (and……/anything else?/yes, but why?)
l Participant
l Resource-provider

3. Rules to follow for making instructions effective:
l To use simple instructions and make them suit the comprehension level of the students. (Also, make your comments as simple and as natural as possible)
l To use mother tongue only when it’s necessary.
l The best thing to do is to model the task/activity before letting students move into groups and pairs.
l Demonstration is more effective than words.

4. Student grouping:
l Whole class work:
ü Advantages:
Ø Everyone feels being together with others.
Ø It is good for teachers to instruction and explanation together, and also an ideal way to show materials and do presentation together.
ü Disadvantages:
Ø Individuality is not favoured in this sense.
Ø Not everyone has an opportunity to express himself.
Ø Some students feel nervous and anxious when they are asked to present in front of class.
Ø It favors the transmission of knowledge from teacher to students rather than students discovering things by themselves.
Ø It is not a good way to enhance real communication. Students cannot communicate with others in this sense.
l Pair work
ü Advantages
Ø It dramatically increase students’ speaking time in class.
Ø It allows students to work together rather than under teachers’ guidance.
Ø It allows teachers to work with the weak pairs when others are working on their own.
Ø It can promote cooperation between students.
ü Disadvantages
Ø It is often very noisy and teachers are afraid of losing control of the class.
Ø Some students may talk in native language or something not related to the topic. It is not very easy for teachers to monitor every pair.
Ø Some students may not like to work with peers, and they, think they can only learn from their teachers.
Ø So they refuse to participate in the activities.
Ø The choice of pair is a problem. Some students don’t like to work with a particular partner while someone may dominate all the time.
l Group working
Some groups may finish the task fast while some may be very slow. Teachers may have to prepare some optional activities for the quick group and be ready to help the slower groups all the time.
l Individual study
Teachers need to prepare different tasks for different groups.

5. Measures for disciplined acts and badly behaving students:
l Acting immediately
Indisciplined acts should be immediately stopped, so that less damage is made.
l Stop the class
If the discipline is so disruptive as to hinder the progress of the whole class, the teacher should stop the class and make it clear what is wrong.
l Rearrange the seats
l Change the activity
l Talk to students after class
l Create a code of behavior
The teachers and learners can work together to create some rules for the class during activities.

6. Questioning in classroom
l Display questions: questions that are already known to teachers and they are asking questions to check if students know the answer.
l Genuine questions: questions that are used to find new information. They are often more communicative.
l Lower- order questions: questions that simply require recalling of information or memorization of facts.
l Higher-order questions: questions requiring more reasoning, analysis, and evaluation.

7. Dealing with errors:
l Dealing with spoken errors:
If the task is not focusing on accuracy or fluency, ignore it.
l When to correct:
It is best not to interrupt students during fluency work, unless communication breaks down. If there are some common mistakes that other students might also have problems with, the teacher can take a note in his/her mind and try to do the correction after the student’s perform.
l How to correct:
ü Self-correcting is encouraged.
ü Indirect correction: repeating; asking other students to answer again……

Unit 6 teaching pronunciations
1. The role of teaching pronunciation
l Students need not able to read and write IPA and to know phonetics.
l Adult learners need focus on pronunciations, but young leaners don’t.
l Learners who have more exposure to English need less focus on pronunciation than those who only learn English in the class.

2. Realistic goal of teaching pronunciation:
l Consistency: the pronunciation should be smooth and natural.
l Intelligibility: the pronunciation should be understandable to the listeners.
l Communicative efficiency: the pronunciation should help convey the meaning that is intended by the speaker.

3. Focusing on a sound:
l Say the sound alone
l Get students to repeat the sound in chorus.
l Get individual students to repeat the sound.
l Explain how to make the sound.
If students can produce the sound correctly, after the teacher’s modelling, it is not necessary to explain ‘how’.
l Say the sound in a word
l Contrast it with other sounds.

4. Perception practice:
l Using minimal pairs:
will-well till-tell fill-fell lid-led (tell which one is read)
l Which order
Pit pet bet (1 3 2)
l Same or different
Met-meet well-well
l Odd one out
Bit bit bit pit (No.4 is different.)
l Complete
_ate_ate_ate_ate_ate_ate
(late mate fate date hate rate……)

5. Production practice:
l Listening and repeat
l Fill in the blanks
ü Children love to play games.
ü Black and white make gray.
ü After April comes May.
l Make up sentences
Last fast calm dark ……
Making a sentence using as many from the given words.
l Use meaningful context
l Using picture
l Use tongue twisters

6. Practicing stress:
l Using gestures:
By clapping hands or using an arm movements as if conducting music.
l Use the voice:
Raise the voice to indicate stress
l Use the blackboard:
Highlight the stress parts by underlining them or writing them on the blackboard.

Unit7. Teaching grammar
1. Different ways to presenting grammar
l The deductive method
Relies on reasoning, analyzing and comparing
Disadvantages:
ü It teaches grammar as an isolate one
ü Little attention is paid to meaning
ü Practice is more mechanical
Advantages:
ü It can be successful with selected and motivated students.
ü It could save time when students are confronted with grammar rule which is complex but which has to learn.
l The inductive method
ü The teacher provide students with authentic language date and induces the learners to realize grammar rules without any form of explicit explanation.
ü Students are to apply the newly presented structure to produce sentences with given visual aids or verbal prompts.
ü The teacher may elicit the grammar rule from the students.
l The guided discovery method
ü Students are induced to discover the rules by themselves but carefully guided and assisted by the teacher.

2. Implicit knowledge and explicit knowledge
l Implicit knowledge: knowledge that is unconsciously existed in our mind, which we can make use of automatically without making any effort
l Explicit knowledge: our conscious knowledge about the language.

3. Successful practice
l Pre-learning
Practice is more effective when new language is clearly perceived and taken into short-term memory by the leaners.
l Volume and repetition
The more language the leaners are exposed to or