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Date Posted: 21:05:28 06/13/07 Wed
Author: Andrea Faria
Subject: Re: task 4/final paper -Sônia Nagy
In reply to: Sônia Nagy 's message, "task 4/final paper -Sônia Nagy" on 11:08:54 06/12/07 Tue

A revolutionary /Sp approch/

According to Audiolingualism, learners are viewed as
organisms that can /R (connecting ideas) be directed ,be skilled/ in techniques to produce correct responses. Usually they play a reactive role responding to stimuli and they have little control over the content, pace or style of
learning. Through repeating and memorizing the correct
structures, they are able to avoid making mistakes which are seen as something bad, unacceptable. They are also not encouraged to interact because it can lead to mistakes as well. It is known as a teacher-centered method, once the teacher models the target language, controls the direction and pace of learning and monitors and corrects the learners’ performance. He keeps their attention using a range of tasks,drills and situations to practice the grammatical structures. Although this method seemed very efficient, in reality, the results showed that “learners were often found to be unable to transfer the skills acquired through Audiolingualism to real communication outside the classroom, and many found the experience of studying through audiolingual procedures to be boring and unsatisfactory” /references/. The communicative approach, on the other hand, came as a revolution in language teaching for some reasons.
Firstly, /?? it occurred in relation to learners/. Instead of receiving the content passively, they are /Ww fostered/ “to be active in the process of learning responding in novel and authentic communicative situations” /references/; to interact with people; to struggle to communicate,often by trial and error because it makes part of the process of learning; to achieve /X their/ autonomy; to apply the strategies learnt in /V classroom/ outside it, that is, /?? they are boosted to go beyond the class/, for instance, navigating on the internet to do a research, /Wvf take/part in a chat, and so on. The learners are expected to understand the language and acquire
competence for communication /P/ which includes grammatical, discourse, sociolinguistic and strategic skills.
Secondly, /C it refers to the teacher’s role in classroom/. It can vary from one activity to another. He can work as /V guide/; as a facilitator of the process of learning; as a controller; /X (repeated)as an assessor/; as an organizer; as an assessor (correcting and giving feed-back); as a participant, and so on. The teacher is responsible for providing learners with input which is authentic, intelligible, and contextualized. He is also responsible to create a classroom atmosphere conductive to interaction in which he has to take into account the learners’ differences. He has to give opportunities /V/ to “express themselves in meaningful ways; to listen to each other; to express their ideas in speech and writing and read each other’s writing.”/references/ In this kind of interaction, "negotiation of meaning /Wvf need/ to become the norm .While negotiating, students need to have a chance to ask and to receive clarification, to confirm their understanding,generally asking questions and reacting to responses.If true negotiation of meaning is going on, students will be fully engaged in using English to understand the meaning intended by the others, as well as to
express their own meaning as clearly as possible.
Negotiation of meaning also implies that students have
choices as to what to say and how they want to say it.” /references/
Thirdly, different from /X the/ Audiolingualism which views /Bw/e the structure/ as something that should be memorized and that treats it without worrying /Ww with/
meaning(function) and context, the communicative approach considers language as something that “can not only be seen in terms of grammatical form; it can also be seen in terms of ‘what it does’ or its ‘function’ in communication.” /references/ /X The/ structure teaching is based on the tripod called /R the form, the meaning(function) and the use(Pragmatics)/. So as to illustrate it, we can present the language item, such as "the verb to be in the simple past tense, to talk about the past (yesterday, I was at my friend’s house); to ask a question politely (What was it you wanted?); to report what someone said( Mary said it was her birthday tomorrow)”./references/ In relation to its use, it is necessary to think about the context, /P if /Ww its/ formal or informal/, the participants , how and when /Ww its/ should be employed, on which occasions and etc.
In summary, all the reasons pointed out above contributed to make this approach special and effective /R in relation to the Audiolingualism/ method/. /P Both,/ the teacher and the learner gained more freedom to act.

>Works cited:
>.Gebhard, Jerry G .Teaching English as a Foreign or
>Second language.The University of Michigan Press.
>.Gower, Philips, Walter. Teaching practice. MacMillan,
>2005.

Dear Sônia,

I really liked reading your text. You provided a very good overview of the Communicative Approach and compared it to the Audiolingual method to support your thesis that it came to revolucionize language teaching. As a whole, I think you did some good research to discuss the topic and wrote a very nice essay, which needs just some final adjustments.

Now, some comments and suggestions on the structure of the text. In my opinion, you produced an arguable thesis in the introduction and supported it with good arguments in the next three paragraphs, using references to better substantiate them. The ideas are well-organized and coherent. The use of cohesive devices was also appropriate. As to the concluding paragraph, I think you can develop it a little more (without extending it too much), so as not to end the essay too abruptly. Apart from freedom, maybe you could just cite some other benefits that the Communicative Approach brought to teachers and students. But this is just my opinion and probably has more to do with my own writing style than with the structure of your paragraph. Finally, feel free to disagree not only with this comment, but also with some changes suggested in the editing of your text.

If you need any help to "decipher" my ideas behind the correction codes, please e-mail me and I'll try to help.

Best wishes,

Andrea

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