The document provides an overview of ACC4300-2 Learning unit on Language Teaching Methodologies from Australia City College (ACC). It describes ACC's comprehensive three-part unit that teaches trainee teachers to contrast different teaching methodologies and evaluate their effectiveness. It also gives examples of methodologies like the Audio-lingual Method and roles of teachers and learners. The unit aims to help teachers discover their teaching style and research prominent styles of Language Teaching Methodology.
2. OVERVIEW
In this unit we will look at different types of Language Learning
Methodologies in the TESOL context.
Generally when an ESL teacher contracts out to an Asian school ,
State, or Private, the syllabus has already been decided upon by the
school principal and is already in place. The ESL teacher has to
quickly gather all the information to start participating in teaching the
ESL syllabus. Sometimes, his could be the next day after landing in
the contracting Asian nation with little, or no preparation.
3. ORIENTATION PROCEDURES:
One of the constants for all ESL teaching positions is that the first
lesson in any teaching syllabus is the Orientation class, that is defined
by standard procedures, facilitated by the ESL teachers. The
opportunity to fully implement the Orientation lesson procedures is
more likely when the ESL teacher is in a private school situation and
has absolute control of the ESL classroom , These procedures are:
have general hand-out messages on hand that relate to
aspects of the Orientation class procedures.
making an attendance register
4. ATTENDANCEREGISTER
In China and Korea attendance registers are usually
drawn up with national given names. During orientation the ESL
teacher discusses with the students whether or not they would
like to adopt English names for the duration of the course, inviting
the students to choose an English name for lesson purposes.
At the same time, is to circulate a form with a column of male
and female English names, a column for the student's native
names, and a column for the student's adoptive English name,
the ESL Teacher can then enter the English names in the roll
register. In some ESL situations students decline to use English
names presenting the ESL teacher with the task of learning many
foreign names. In this case asking students to wear name tags is
not unreasonable.
5. ORIENTATION
Orientation can then proceed with student introductions by getting the students to
introduce themselves by name, city, (country, if a multinational classroom), and the
school attend, and how they travel to school each day, e.g. bus, train, bicycle or
car.
If the class level is Beginner, a readable handout, or speech prompts written up on
the whiteboard, modelled by the ESL teacher, will help students introduce
themselves to the rest of the class. The value here is that the ESL teacher learns
a little about each student through their response to the roll call, and a little about
the student's personal language ability profile, e.g. speech ability, comprehension
of what they have been asked to do by the teacher, personal mannerisms,
attitude, and deportment (each student is required to stand up before speaking).
6. ORIENTATION
For the Orientation class the ESL teacher will have acquired a lesson
timetable, and will be able to give students general information about
the course time frame, how the general coursework syllabus will run,
the lesson time table, and any different classroom room locations
such as language laboratory and library.
The ESL teacher will inform the students of:
Any ESL prerequisites required by students to be enrol in the
particular being started
room number and free S-T contact times
teacher phone number, and email address
7. TEACHERS IN ORIENTATIONS
The ESL/TESOL teacher will issue a mission
statement to the students that tell the students of the
teacher's requirements of the students during the
course. This first part of the mission statement will
talk about homework, essays, and project drafts
being returned on the due date, and late submission
penalties, e.g.10% deduction from final course work
mark.
Project drafts (1500 words, UI, and A levels) are
prerequisite for the final examination's oral
presentation, which will not be permitted if drafts 1st,
2nd and the final draft have not been completed,
submitted to the teacher for feedback, and signed off
by the teacher. Failure not to fulfil the project
prerequisites will result is a course failure.
TESOL Teachers
8. TEACHERS IN ORIENTATIONS
The ESL teacher also informs the students of teacher commitments to
the students, which will include the following:
to be on time and prepared for all lessons
to make sure that the lesson material is presented clearly
to listen to, and encourage students who have difficulty with any
aspect of the course work or with reading, writing, speaking.
comprehension of texts and, or grammar material
to set time aside, and be available for individual T-S tutorials
prompt marking of practice tests,
to give students test feedback
to give students classroom aid on request
to administer practise tests before the end of course final testing
make sure all classroom resources are available to students at all
limes
to moderate an solve any student problems that may arise
ESL Teachers
9. DURINGORIENTATION
During Orientation the
teacher shows the
students a weekly time
table and explains that a
weekly update will be found
posted on the students
notice board, on display
somewhere in the
classroom
.
The aims and objects of the ESL course are defined
for each student level (B,I.A), and the ESL
coursework books are discussed. For private
schools these are likely to be a classroom text book
and a student homework book. The teacher will
have a teacher's book with lesson guidelines, tests
and answer keys.
Any free time near the end of the Orientation can be
used in playing vocabulary games (hangman), or by
asking for, and writing up on the whiteboard,
vocabulary from the word set used during the
orientation, or asking for knowledge about word
classes, etc..
10. LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY
The actual Language Teaching Methodologies for delivering ESL
course work are many and various, and are often characterised by
an individual ESL teacher's own teaching personality. For the
prospective new ESL teacher, good policy would be to discover if
they have a particular teaching bias in their personal approach to
language teaching, and most beneficial would be to for a new ESL
teacher to research each of the most prominent styles of Language
Teaching Methodology.
11. ACC MATERIALS
Australia City College (ACC) has a comprehensive,
three part, Language Teaching Methodology teaching
unit component to both their ACCTESOL 111, and
ACCTESOL 1V, teacher training courses. In either of
these ACC TESOL courses trainee ESL teachers
learn to contrast different teaching methodologies and
elucidate the effects that they have on the student's
learning environment.
12. PUTATIVE AUDIO-LINGUAL LANGUAGE
TEACHING METHOD
An example of a Language Teaching Method in use, is the putative
Audio-lingual Language Teaching Method, where an ESL teacher
predominantly presents lessons that underpin the phonemic,
morphological and syntactical elements of English language
grammar that are biased towards language modelling, text, and
vocabulary drills, where the students are asked to practice language
use through repetitions of phrases, whole sentences, pronunciation
and intonation drills and choral vocabulary drills, for accuracy of
learning.
13. TEACHING METHODOLOGIES
Several other Language Teaching Methodologies are shown in Table 1 taken
from the ACC TESOL 1V teacher training course workbook (2004). This
comprehensive ACC TESOL 1V unit is in three parts:
1. Part one is a history of Teacher Training Methodologies, that compares and
contrasts two common teaching methodologies and evaluates their
effectiveness.
2. Part two identifies various communicative teaching strategies, encourages
implementation of those communicative teaching strategies in TESOL
environments or simulations, and evaluates the strength/weaknesses of
effective communicative teaching.
3. Part three identifies and describes the various styles of teaching, identifies the
weakness and strengths, of particular styles in relation to the learners in the
TESOL context, and identifies the weaknesses of trainee teacher's own
teaching style.
14. In part two TESOL trainee ESL teachers will learn
how to evaluate the stages learning acquisition,
and use language promoters to stimulate speaking
activities in the ESL classroom, and further
promotes the use of various given examples of
c o m m u n i c a t i v e a c t i v i t y t h a t e n c o u r a g e
communication.
These activities take the form of Pairs Interviews
e.g. conducting role play interviews between
two students and presenting to the rest of the
class, Pairs comparison, e.g. comparing a selection
of picture taken from a pictorial resource, and
placed in a grid pattern for comparison by the
active pa.ir. Picture differences, a self evident
activity, etc. there are sections on fluency and
communication, as well as Drama and role play
In part three teacher trainee will
evaluate four teaching styles:
formal authority ~ the teaching is focused on
content, the teacher provides and controls the
flow of information, the student is expected to
receive and internalise the content
demonstrator or personal model ~ teacher
centred, with a lot of demonstrations and
modelling
facilitator ~ teacher is focused on activities with
the emphasis on student learning, student
initiative to accomplished given tasks.
Derogatory ~ focused on developing students
ability to design and compliment
Part Two Part Three
15. Theses four styles can become nebulous when teaching in the ESL as they tend to overlap style
depending on the student body, or the particular teaching format prevalent in the ESL classroom
at anyone time.
The ESL teacher needs to undertake:
classroom control
organise
be a capable assessor of student performance
be able to prompt a student who is lost for words or chokes up when asked a
question, in the classroom
the ESL teacher needs to be able to become integral with student activities or roll
play in the classroom, but not in the teacher's position and without being dominant
in certain activities the ESL teacher may only be required to be the student's
resource, and not participate in any part or of their activities.
to be tutor
an to be an observer in order to provide feed back on their endeavours
These roles are constantly interchanging in the ESL teaching environment and
improve with ESL teaching experience.
16. TEACHING METHODS AND TEACHER & Lear Nerd ROLES
Method Teacher Roles Learner Roles
Situational Language
Teaching environment
Context setter
Error Corrector
Imitator
Memoriser
Audio-lingualism Language Modeller
Drill Leader
Pattern Practician
Accuracy
Enthusiast
To dedicated Communicative Language
Teaching
Needs Analyst
Task Designer
Improviser
Negotiator
Total Physical Response Commander
Action Monitor
Order Taker Performer
Community Language
Learning
Councillor
Paraphraser
Collaborator
Whole Person
The Natural Approach Actor
Props User
Guesser
Immerser
Suggestopedia Auto-hypnotist
Authority Figure
Relaxer
True-Believer
Table 1
(http://www.wordhistory.com/language.htm) from ACC TESOL 1V teacher training course work book, 2004
17. Well, that ends this very brief introductory overview
of ACC's TESOL full on Teacher Learning
Methodologies unit. I hope that you have enjoyed
the journey through this introductory ACC4300-2
Learning unit: Teacher Training Methodologies
overview of the topic, and I will see in the next unit,
ACC4300-3 Learning unit Teacher training.
Bye for now!