Introduction to English Language Teaching

Translation (preferably of words in authentic contexts)

• based on authentic contexts and realistic communicative situations
• task is reality-based, often needed in real life
• tasks is be easy to design (as opposed to multiple choice tests; for translation tasks, you can just use concordances)
• tested persons need to get active => no answer choices given
• easy to check
• practicability

E.g. cloze testing (filling in the gaps)

• active remembering (first letter(s) can be provided)
• good to test constructions (e.g. collocative nouns, correct collocators or prepositions of items)

• How large is the vocabulary of the learners?(small => bilingual testing)
• Has the vocabulary been learnt receptively or productively?
• When did the learners learn the words? How long ago is the time of the first encounter with the word? (the longer ago, the easier)
• How difficult is the test supposed to be? Level of the learners?

an online tool to prepare texts with blanks for cloze tests

• "seeing how language works" (D. Crystal)
• system of a language, its structure and "rules" (but: no language has fixed rules, they evolve over time)
• mental system of rules and categories needed to form and interpret words and sentences
• grammar encodes and conveys meanings that are not easily inferable from the immediate context
• => representational meaning (used to describe and interpret the world around us)
• => interpersonal meaning (facilitates interaction with others)

• units: morphemes, words, phrases and clauses
• classes of word, phrase and clause: nouns, verbs, prepositional phrases, etc.
• functions of words and phrases in the clause: subject, object, etc.
• choices (a vs. the, he did it vs. it was done by him): every choice carries a different meaning
• -> research question: relationship between units and classes
• -> research question: what are the acceptable functions?
• -> research question: what are the meanings encoded by different choices?

• Institutional/pedagogical norms (specified by insitutions (e.g. school)) and language-specific norms (specified by the language community)
• language-specific norms: structural selections valid in a language community (comprises individual speaker's grammar competence; focus on linguistic interaction and the communicative adequacy of utterances--> how grammar is actually used)
• prescriptive vs. descriptive norms
• norms ensure language understanding and learning
• written vs. spoken register (textsbooks usually based on written registers) --> different ways of constructing sentences in spoken and written language!

A system of meaningful structures and patterns governed by pragmatic constraints

• Typically unplanned
• Simple phrasal structures
• Phrasal and clausal chaining (several clauses in a  row, no proper end)
• Few subordinate clauses
• Clausal blends
• Preface – head – tail structure (fronting of the most important information)
• terminal overlap (when the listener thinks that the speaker has finished and starts talking)
• latching (repeating things that have been said, processing information)
• back-channels (listener's responses and expressions)
• hesitation devices
• ellipsis (because of time pressure)
• vagueness tags (signal lack of precision, establish a common basis)
• discourse markers ("I think/mean", "you know")
• modifying particles

1. form
2. meaning
3. use

e.g. passive voice: 

1. communicating sth. about/to which sth. has happened
2. patterns to form the passive (be+V in past participle)
3. used when the agent is unknown, unimportant, redundant, word order etc.

• attention to form (explicit teaching of grammar and explicit error correction or more indirect means such as input enhancement)
• a combination of focus on form and implicit learning is superior to exclusively form-focussed instruction or exclusively communicative teaching (unresolved issue: long-term effects of focus on form)
• instruction is important to enhance subsequent noticing

• explicit teaching = 1. deductive (rule explanation) 2. inductive (learners try to find the rules)
• enhanced salience (input enhancement): form of deductive teaching: exaggerated models, colour-coding, underlines, etc.--> makes learners aware of certain structures, but in a less direct way

• laboratory experiments overwhelmingly in favour of explicit teaching (Robinson 1996)
• the more explicit error correction is, the better (Ellis 1994, Spada 1997)
• the most important feature of the (teacher’s) recast seems to be the saliency of the new form rather than the negative evidence of the erroneous form (Leeman 2003; e.g. for English: he try to do -> he tries to do)

The explicit-deductive approach (instructed) =>  the rules were presented to the learners

• raising awareness of language structures without introducing rules, concerned with the use of patterns, conscious reflection of language use

Follow the natural sequence of developmental stages:

1)Words/single units: Hello.

2)Category procedure: canonical word order: I like spaghetti. / a nice house

3)Phrasal prcedure: Adverb fronting/wh-fronting/do-fronting (etc.): Where you have been?

4)VP-/Yes/no inversion: Has he seen you?

5)Do2nd: Why do you sell it?

6)Cancel Inversion (information exchange btwn. clauses): I wonder why he sells …

• explicit teaching of complex areas of grammar (adverb placement; present perfect vs. past [contrastive])
• broad similarity of L1 and L2: divergences need to be pointed out (e.g. punctuation, S-V-O order in main clauses)

younger learners are generally less receptive to focus on form unless this involves the negotation of meaning (ask for clarifications, rephrasing...) --> priority should be given to implicit teaching

• pronunciation
• synonyms
• word finder
• collocations
• definitions
• differences between BE and AE
• information about the usages of a word
• idioms
• valency patterns

• good for looking up collocations, valency patterns etc., but potentially incomplete
• linguee: only as good as the input--> sources need to be checked

=> several different kinds of dictionaries need to be consulted!

• from the environment
• through habit formation and repetition
• from corrections provided by caregivers

• humans have the innate capacity to acquire language

• children: more questions and imperatives than declarative sentences, more grammatically correct sentences + well-formed isolated phrases, rich in deixis, repetition, and expansion
• adults: more declarative sentences, more syllables in utterances

• advantage: identical elements and rules in L1 and L2 are easily learnt, few errors
• disadvantage: differences between L1 and L2 lead to errors (because they transfer forms + meanings of L1 to L2)

• behaviourist view: language learning was a question of habit formation, could be reinforced or impeded by existing habits (L1)
• difficulty in mastering certain structures in a second language (L2) depended on the difference between the learners' mother language (L1) and the language they were trying to learn (L2)
• all the errors made in learning the L2 could be attributed to 'interference' by the L1

Second language learning requires...

1. integration (acceptance in cultural community, acculturation, social context, opportunities...)
2. immersion (in language and language community, acculturation)
3. willingness to communicate (and persistence in communicating)
4. interaction (communication, language performed in social interaction, development of syntactic structures)
5. alignment (communicative strategies, looking for recurring patterns and relevance/the gist, legitimate peripheral participation)
6. priming (priming function of classroom instruction, noticing hypothesis)
7. identity (redesigning the self, lang. as an identity-building tool)
8. appropriation (of the voices of others, fashioning a new self)
9. agency (active role of the learner, self-teaching)

• attaining impressive levels without instruction is possible, but 'priming function' of the classroom
• motivation to develop learning strategies is important
• strategies involving social interaction are effective
• communicative competences are less dependent on formal accuracy than on memorized formulaic language (chunks/pre-fabricated strings of language)

• pros: longitudinal studies, possibility to contextualise the findings, involve different views (multidimensional), thickly descriptive instead of superficial, layered, great stories
• cons: just individual cases, risk to generalize, only suggest things, learning process=individual (dependent on personality, teachers...)

• providing an extensive input is important (listening, reading, films...)
• simulating real-life situations
• bringing native speakers to class (natural language)
• bilingual teaching/bilingual mode (e.g. project work)
• good balance between correcting mistakes and content focus is important

• also audiolingual method
• first language teaching method based on specific theories: Structuralism (linguistic theory) and behaviourism (learning theory)
• emerged in the 1940s in the US  because of the need of people who could speak the language of the enemies well (soldiers, spies...)
• rote learning (memorization technique based on repetition through drills): pattern drill, backward-buildup drill, grammar drill --> overlearning to guarantee transfer to long-term memory

1. introduction of a communicative situation --> dialogue
2. teacher reads the dialogue to the audience aloud (twice)
3. repeating the lines of the dialogue in chorus --> memorizing the dialogue from sound without writing it down, corrections by the teacher: focus on correct pronunciation, backward build-up drill (starting with the last words and building up the sentence backwards)
4. picking individual students to repeat the lines
5. teacher plays one part of the dialogue and the class the other part
6. Role-play: two volunteers act out the dialogue in front of the class
7. Grammar practice based on a line from the dialogue: e.g. "cleanest house"-"biggest car"-"greenest lawn" --> focus on grammatical features instead of lexis or natural sentences
8. written copy of the dialogue to take home
9. homework: learning the dialogue by heart

• linguistic theory => Structuralism: Saussure, concerned with the underlying system of a language
• systemic relationships between the elements of the system: syntagmatic relations (= sequential flow / combination / chain of words) and paradygmatic relations (grammatical slots that can be filled with interchangeable elements of the same function)
• => the grammar practice in the Army Method also keeps the syntactic sequence of a sentence from the dialogue and uses paradygmatic replacement in order to illustrate grammatical features
• learning theory => Behaviourism: learning through habit formation and repetition (conditioning)
• => students in the Army Method are 'conditioned'  to produce particular sounds and grammar patterns through repetition

• oratory, an audio or audio-visual installation used as an aid in modern language teaching
• consisted of a booth with a tape-recording device=> teacher could listen to what the student was saying (later also more modern recording devices, e.g. modern language learning apps)
• students had to complete the dialogue on the tape while recording their own voices
• programmed instruction (presentation of the material through a medium in a logical and tested sequence) => focus on grammar patterns and pronunciation