当前位置：课程学习>>第二章>>课前准备>>本章导学


课前准备：

阅读本章第一节【现象思考】并回答问题。

教师导引：教师引导学生根据自身经历分析M老师的问题症结所在。

小贴士：你是否有类似的经历，你是如何调节自己上课计划的。

小试牛刀

学习目标

After studying this section，you should be able to：

1.Describe major language teaching methods and approaches outside China, in particular their historical backgrounds，theoretical assumptions，and teaching procedures；

2.Think critically about these methods and approaches；and

3.Develop awareness to apply appropriate methods or approaches to your own teaching.

4.Outline the historical development of foreign language teaching in China and the influences it has received from the outside world；

5.Understand the assumptions underlying the National Curriculum Standards of English language education for the 21st century；and

6.Discuss an English class with respect to the National Curriculum Standards.

知识结构

Chapter 2 ELT Methods and Approaches in and outside China
ELT
Methods
and
Approaches
Outside
China		 The
Grammar
Translation
Method		 Background: The Grammar-Translation Method originated at the end of the eighteenth century in the grammar schools of Prussia in Germany.
1.A brief review
Criticism
1) The focus on the sentence.
2) The ignorance of the spoken language.
3) The native language as the medium of instruction.
4) The use of translation.
Strengths
1) It is easy for teachers to manage as it makes few demands on teachers, teaching tools and classroom facilities.
2) Today there is a more positive attitude to the Grammar-Translation Method due to recent research findings on the influence of the native language on language learning; the use of translation as an aid to language learning; the usefulness of translation as a testing device and the practical applications of translation as an invaluable skill in itself.
The
Direct
Method 		Background: The development of natural methods led to the emergence of the Direct Method. At the turn of the century, the Direct Method was officially accepted in France and Germany, and in the United States.
Theoretical assumptions
1) the primacy of speech,
2) the centrality of the connected text as the kernel of the teaching-learning process, and
3) the absolute priority of an oral methodology in the classroom.
A brief review: Criticism
1) It is difficult in implementing it in public secondary school education.
2) It also failed to consider the practical realities of public schools.
3) The principle of conducting instruction exclusively in the foreign language often caused problems and frustration for teachers.
4) The Direct Method was also cited as an approach which limited innovation at the level of teaching procedures.
The
Situational
Approach 		Background: The origins of the Situational Approach began with efforts by a group of British applied linguists to develop a more scientific foundation for an oral approach to language teaching.
Classroom characteristics
1) Material is taught orally before it is presented in written form.
2) The target language is the language of the classroom.
3) New language points are introduced and practiced situationally.
4) Vocabulary selection procedures are followed to ensure that an essential general service vocabulary is covered.
5) Items of grammar are graded following the principle that simple forms should be taught before complex ones.
6) Reading and writing are introduced once a sufficient lexical and grammatical basis is established.
Theoretical assumptions
1) Underlying the Situational Approach was the notion of structuralism.
2) Based on a behaviourist theory of learning, the Situational Approach considered language learning to be habit formation.
3) It adopted an inductive approach to grammar teaching.
A brief review
1) The Situational Approach is a grammar-based language teaching method
2) The Situational Approach uses a structural rather than situational syllabus.
The
Audiolingual
Method		 Background: The Audiolingual Method came into being in the United States in the 1950s as a result of the increased attention given to foreign language teaching during and after World War II.
A brief review
Characteristics:
1) The Audiolingual Method is a grammar-based language teaching method which emphasizes the teaching of listening and speaking before reading and writing.
2) Dialogues and drills form the basis of audiolingual classroom practices and contrastive analysis is often used.
Criticism
1) Linguists such as Noam Chomsky questioned structural linguistics and behavioural psychology for being unsound in terms of language theory and learning theory.
2) In practice, students found the audiolingual classroom boring and unsatisfying, and experienced poor transfer of the skills.
The Communicative
Approach
Learning 		Background: The Communicative Approach was developed in early 1970s.
Development
1) Earlier Communicative Language Teaching ( 1970s to 1990s) , and
2) Current Communicative Language Teaching ( 1990s to the present)
Theoretical assumptions
1) The communication principle
2) The task principle
3) The meaningfulness principle
Earlier Communicative Language Teaching (1970s~1990s): The overarching principles of CLT classrooms
1) Make real communication the focus of language learning.
2) Provide opportunities for learners to experiment and try out what they know.
3) Be tolerant of learners' errors as they indicate that the learner is building up his or her communicative competence.
4) Provide opportunities for learners to develop both accuracy and fluency.
5) Link the different skills such as speaking, reading and listening together, since they usually coincide in the real world.
6) Let students induce and discover grammar rules.
Current Communicative Language Teaching
Ten core assumptions
1) Second language learning is facilitated when learners are engaged in interaction and meaningful communication.
2) Effective classroom learning tasks and exercises provide opportunities for students
3) Meaningful communication results from students processing content that is relevant, purposeful, interesting, and engaging.
4) Communication is a holistic process
5) Language learning is facilitated both by activities and organization.
6) Language learning is a gradual process that involves creative use of language, and trial and error.
7) Learners develop their own routes to language learning, progress at different rates, and have different needs and motivations for language learning.
8) Successful language learning involves the use of effective learning and communication strategies.
9) The role of the teacher in the language classroom is that of a facilitator.
10) The classroom is a community where learners learn through collaboration and sharing.
characteristics of classroom activities
1) They seek to develop students' communicative competence.
2) They create the need for communication, interaction, and negotiation of meaning through the use of activities.
3) They provide opportunities for inductive and deductive learning of grammar.
4) They make use of content that connects to students' lives and interests.
5) They allow students to personalize learning.
6) Classroom materials typically make use of authentic texts.
Content-based instruction
Content-based instruction emphasizes the use of content as the driving force of classroom activities. Language learning in content-based instruction is the by-product of the content learning process.
The underlying assumptions of content-based instruction
People learn a language more successfully when they use the language as a means of acquiring information.
Content-based instruction better reflects learners' needs for learning a second language.
Content provides a coherent framework that can be used to link and develop all of the language skills.
Criticism:
1) There are questions about to what extent a focus on content provides a sufficient basis for the development of language skills.
2) Whether language teachers have sufficient grounding to teach subject matter in which they have not been trained.
3) Will learners be assessed according to content knowledge or language use or both?
Task-based instruction
Task-based instruction claims that learners can better develop their grammar and other dimensions of communicative competence when they are engaged in interactive tasks.
The key characteristics of task-based instruction:
1) A task is something that learners do or carry out using their own linguistic resources.
2) A task has a clearly defined communicative outcome.
3) A task involves a primary focus on meaning rather than linguistic forms.
4) A task involves real-world processes of language use.
Background:
Task-based instruction began with the Bangalore/Madras Communicational Teaching Project by N. S. Prabhu and colleagues in India between 1979 and 1984.
Evaluation
Few would question the value of employing tasks as a vehicle for promoting communication and authentic language use in second language classrooms.
In classroom practice in China today, particularly since the educational authority officially promoted the approach, teachers are often confused about, and have difficulty working with, the definition of task.
Text-based instruction
Text-based instruction also known as a genre-based approach.
A brief review
1) Text-based instruction focuses more on the products of learning.
2) Critics have highlighted a missing emphasis on individual creativity and personal expression.
3) Likewise, there is a danger that learners in a text-based syllabus will become unengaged over time if lessons are organised repetitively.
Competency-based instruction
It is a form of Communicative Language Teaching which seeks to teach students the language skills or competencies they need in work-related or everyday life situations.
Eight key features of competency-based instruction can be identified as follows:
1) A focus on successful functioning in society.
2) A focus on life skills
3) Task-or performance-centred orientation.
4) Modularized instruction
5) Outcomes are made explicit
6) Continuous and ongoing assessment
7) Demonstrated mastery of performance objectives
8) Individualized, student-centred instruction
A brief view
1) Competency-based instruction is often employed in programmes whose learners have very specific language needs.
2) Often little more than intuition is involved and decisions are not justified either empirically or theoretically.
3) Competency-based instruction is also questioned for being reductionist in approach.
The Natural Approach
Background: It was first proposed by Tracy Terrel in 1977. It is, however, different in that it was not proposed based on the Communicative Approach.
Principles
1) As much comprehensible input as possible must be presented.
2) Whatever helps comprehension is important.
3) The focus in the classroom should be on listening and reading; speaking should be allowed to “emerge”.
4) Student work should centre on meaningful communication and input.
A brief view:
1) Natural Approach classroom techniques are often borrowed from other methods.
2) The Natural Approach regards the goal of language teaching as developing learners' communicative competence.
3) It rejects grammar-based teaching and emphasises language comprehension, meaningful communication and suitable comprehensible input.
The
Humanistic
Approach		 Some of the premises underlying humanistic education are as follows:
1) A principal purpose of education is to provide learning opportunities and an environment that facilitate the achievement of the full potential of students.
2) Personal growth as well as cognitive growth is the responsibility of the school.
3) For learning to be significant, feelings must be recognised and put to use.
4) Significant learning is discovery for oneself.
5) Human beings want to actualize their potential.
6) Having healthy relationships with other classmates is conducive to learning.
7) Learning about oneself is a motivating factor in learning.
8) Increasing one's self-esteem is a motivating factor in learning.
Community Language Learning
Background: it was inspired by Carl R. Rogers' counselling theory and developed by Charles A. Curran and his associates in the 1970s.
A brief view
1) The roles of teachers and students: Community Language Learning redefines the roles of the teacher and learners as the counsellor and the clients.
2) Demands for teachers: They have to be highly proficient in both the target language and the learners' native language. They also need to be familiar with, and sympathetic to, the role of counsellors in psychological counselling. They must be able to operate without materials in the traditional sense, and shape and motivate the class depending on the students' wants and needs.
Evaluation
1) The approach is also cited for the lack of a syllabus, making objectives unclear and evaluation difficult to accomplish.
2) Community Language Learning has its own strengths. It is a learner-centred method with an emphasis on the humanistic side of language learning rather than merely its linguistic dimensions.
The Silent Way
The Silent Way is a language teaching method which seeks to enable learners to be independent, autonomous, and responsible.
Three learning hypotheses
1) Learning is facilitated if the learner discovers or creates rather than remembers and repeats what is to be learned.
2) Learning is facilitated by accompanying ( mediating) physical objects.
3) Learning is facilitated by problem solving activities involving the material to be learned.
Tools
1) Sound/Colour chart.
2) Fidel.
3) Word charts.
4) Cuisenaire rods.
Evaluation
1) Generally speaking, the Silent Way is innovative in its philosophy.
2) It uses a rather traditional syllabus based on structures and vocabulary.
3) The innovations of the Silent Way basically derive from the manner in which classroom activities are organised.
Suggestopedia
Suggestopedia was devised by the Bulgarian psychiatrist-educator Georgi Lozanov in the 1970s.
The following principles are therefore followed in Suggestopedia
1) An emphasis on teacher authority.
2) Infantilization of the learner.
3) Double-planedness.
4) Varying the tone and rhythm of presented material.
5) Coordinating intonation and rhythm with a musical background.
Suggestopedia is a language teaching method characterized by including concert reading to music in language classes with an emphasis on the influence of suggestion on human behaviour.
The
Constructive
Approach		 Constructivist theory of education
John Dewey is generally recognised as the philosophical founder of the approach. It emphasises the learner's role in learning and views learning as a process in which the learners construct knowledge themselves while the teacher is in a secondary role, supplying guidance, help, and assessment.
Some major perspectives of constructivism:
1) Knowledge is not a static reality, but develops with human society.
2) The learning process is a process in which learners construct their own knowledge by looking for meaning and order.
3) In the learning process, learners are active agents who construct their own knowledge.
Some guiding principles of constructivist teaching are:
1) Posing problems of emerging relevance to students.
2) Structuring learning around primary concepts.
3) Seeking and valuing students' points of view, as they are instructional entry points at the gateway of personalized education.
4) Adapting curricula to address students' suppositions.
5) Assessing student learning in the context of teaching.
Constructivist teaching methods
Scaffolding instruction
Jerome Bruner defines scaffolding as the process of setting up a situation to make the child's learning easy and successful and then gradually pulling back and handing the role to the child as he becomes skilled enough to manage it.
Scaffolding is closely related to Vygotsky's theory of the zone of proximal development (ZPD).
Six main types of instructional scaffolding can be identified in English teaching:
Re-presenting text.
Bridging.
Contextualising.
Schema building.
Modelling.
Developing metacognition.
Anchored instruction
Anchored instruction was an approach to instruction developed in the 1990s by the Cognition and Technology Group by John D. Bransford.
Its major idea is to situate, or anchor, learning in meaningful problem-solving environments so as to help students develop effective thinking skills and attitudes for problem-solving and critical thinking.
Two principles of anchored instruction are as follows:
1) Learning and teaching activities should be centred at an anchor.
2) Instructional materials should include rich resources.
Anchored instruction provides students with the opportunities to think about and work on problems either individually or in groups for collaborative problem solving.
ELT
Methods
and
Approaches
in
China		 Introduction
of
Teaching
Methods
and
Approaches
from
Abroad		 The Grammar-Translation Method came to China first. Other language teaching methods and approaches followed this. These included the Direct Method (before 1949), the Conscious-comparative Method (1950s), the Audiolingual Method (1960s), and the Communicative Approach (1980s).
The Grammar-Translation Method
The application of the Grammar-Translation Method in foreign language classrooms in China started at the beginning of the 20th century.
The Grammar-Translation Method still dominated the English language classrooms in the Republic of China in the period from 1911 to 1949. After 1949, the dominance of the Grammar-Translation Method continued despite the widely used Conscious-Comparative Method.
The Direct Method
After 1911, many scholars began to promote the Direct Method in China. The efforts by Zhang Shiyi and other proponents of the Direct Method were rewarded in the curriculum guidelines for foreign language courses.
Teaching suggestions with features of the Direct Method:
1) Emphasise repetition so as to achieve perfection.
2) Avoid translation but use the spoken target language directly.
3) Encourage students to freely use what they have learned.
4) Listening and speaking should both be emphasised.
5) Remind students of grammar at all times so that they can truly learn how to apply it.
6) Provide guidance on learning strategies at all times.
Conscious-Comparative Method
The Conscious-Comparative Method was developed in the Soviet Union and most widely used in China in the 1950s, though a reaction against it had already started in the Soviet Union(Kreusler, 1959：163-166).
The key features of a Conscious-Comparative class:
●The study of grammar is the main approach in foreign language teaching.
●Contrastive Analysis between the native and target language is a vital part of classroom teaching.
●The teaching should be designed around reading.
●The order of teaching should progress from the simple to the complicated.
The Audiolingual Method
In the 1960s, the Audiolingual Method was practised in some Chinese colleges and middle schools.
The main focus when the method was introduced into China in 1964, as Xu notes, was on teaching methodology. Audiolingual influences can also be found in the trial version of the 1978 English teaching guidelines for elementary and middle schools.
The Communicative Approach
The Communicative Approach was introduced to China after the country started its reform and opening up to the outside world in 1978.
The Communicative Approach was also evident in the Teaching Guidelines for Junior Middle School in the Nine-Year Compulsory Educational System. The general goal was defined in it as helping students gain basic knowledge of English language and ability to use the language for communication through listening, speaking, reading and writing practice(ibid, 203).
The document was most conspicuous for the inclusion of a list of functional and notional items. In 1992, the authority officially issued the guidelines for trial after years of experiments. The use of these materials gradually helped popularise the ideas of the Communicative Approach among school teachers.
ELT
Methods
and
Approaches
in
China		 Introduction
of
Teaching
Methods
and
Approaches
from
Abroad		 The Grammar-Translation Method came to China first. Other language teaching methods and approaches followed this. These included the Direct Method (before 1949), the Conscious-comparative Method (1950s), the Audiolingual Method (1960s), and the Communicative Approach (1980s).
The Grammar-Translation Method
The application of the Grammar-Translation Method in foreign language classrooms in China started at the beginning of the 20th century.
The Grammar-Translation Method still dominated the English language classrooms in the Republic of China in the period from 1911 to 1949. After 1949, the dominance of the Grammar-Translation Method continued despite the widely used Conscious-Comparative Method.
The Direct Method
After 1911, many scholars began to promote the Direct Method in China. The efforts by Zhang Shiyi and other proponents of the Direct Method were rewarded in the curriculum guidelines for foreign language courses.
Teaching suggestions with features of the Direct Method:
1) Emphasise repetition so as to achieve perfection.
2) Avoid translation but use the spoken target language directly.
3) Encourage students to freely use what they have learned.
4) Listening and speaking should both be emphasised.
5) Remind students of grammar at all times so that they can truly learn how to apply it.
6) Provide guidance on learning strategies at all times.
Conscious-Comparative Method
The Conscious-Comparative Method was developed in the Soviet Union and most widely used in China in the 1950s, though a reaction against it had already started in the Soviet Union(Kreusler, 1959：163-166).
The key features of a Conscious-Comparative class:
●The study of grammar is the main approach in foreign language teaching.
●Contrastive Analysis between the native and target language is a vital part of classroom teaching.
●The teaching should be designed around reading.
●The order of teaching should progress from the simple to the complicated.
The Audiolingual Method
In the 1960s, the Audiolingual Method was practised in some Chinese colleges and middle schools.
The main focus when the method was introduced into China in 1964, as Xu notes, was on teaching methodology. Audiolingual influences can also be found in the trial version of the 1978 English teaching guidelines for elementary and middle schools.
The Communicative Approach
The Communicative Approach was introduced to China after the country started its reform and opening up to the outside world in 1978.
The Communicative Approach was also evident in the Teaching Guidelines for Junior Middle School in the Nine-Year Compulsory Educational System. The general goal was defined in it as helping students gain basic knowledge of English language and ability to use the language for communication through listening, speaking, reading and writing practice(ibid, 203).
The document was most conspicuous for the inclusion of a list of functional and notional items. In 1992, the authority officially issued the guidelines for trial after years of experiments. The use of these materials gradually helped popularise the ideas of the Communicative Approach among school teachers.
Underlying
Theories
of
the
National
Curriculum
Standards		 Theory of education
Holistic education
The National Curriculum Standards emphasise that the development of the students' comprehensive ability to use the language is based on the holistic development of language skills, language knowledge, affect, attitude, learning strategies and cultural awareness.
Lifelong learning
In the National Curriculum Standards for English in Schools in China (MOE, 2001) , one of the curricular goals is to help students build a good foundation for lifelong learning and development.
Also relevant are the curricular goals, which include specific goals concerning learning strategies for different developmental levels.
Theory of language
The National Curriculum Standards adopt a communicative theory of language.
Below are some of the underlying assumptions about a theory of language in the National Curriculum Standards.
●Language is a system for the expression of meaning.
●The primary function of language is to allow interaction and communication.
●The goal of language teaching is to develop the learners' comprehensive ability to use language.
●The ability to use language refers to the ability to do things with language.
●Comprehensive language use involves knowledge of language, language skills, learning strategies, communicative strategies, affect and attitude, and cultural awareness.
●The primary units of language are not only the grammatical and structural features, but also categories of functional and communicative meaning in discourse.
Theory of language learning
Principles of language use
The national curriculum sets its general curricular goal as developing the students' comprehensive ability to use the target language.
Principle of inquiry
The National Curriculum Standards are also informed by other learning theories. Among them is the principle that language discovery and inquiry activities promote language learning.
Principle of learner autonomy
The national curriculum standards consider developing the students' skills in autonomous learning as one of its goals in basic education. Learning strategies are therefore emphasised. Learner autonomy is the learner's taking charge of his/her own learning out of conscious awareness.

进入学习任务