Week 3 tutorial- Communicative Language Teaching

Week 3: Tutorial

 
a) Identify the theory behind communicative language teaching (CLT).

·         Spada & Savignon’s article

 

CLT is defined as a meaning-based, learner-centered approach to L2 teaching where fluency is given priority over accuracy which emphasizing comprehension and production of messages, not the teaching or correction of language form. In contrast to that, CLT is also said as an approach to L2 instruction which is primarily meaning-based and encompasses attention to both fluency and accuracy. Thus, the presence or absence of attention to language form is the main difference between the two definitions of CLT.

Spada’s article mentioned that CLT is influenced by Hymes' theory of communicative competence.  He believes that knowing a language includes more than a knowledge of the rules of grammar (i.e. linguistic competence) but also a knowledge of the rules of language use (i.e. communicative competence). This communicative competence theory is to broaden the current conceptualizations of language which is proposed by Chomsky (1957) on linguistic competence theory. Communicative competence theory will focus on the accurate use of grammatical forms in L2 teaching because knowledge of a language (first or second) includes knowing how to use forms appropriately in different contexts. Based on the linguistic theories of Firth (1957), Austin (1962), Searle (1969), and Halliday (1973), consistently involved formal and semantic features within their conceptualization of language and language teaching. The investigations on two related hypotheses of SLA which are the comprehensible input hypothesis (Krashen, 1984b) and the interactionist hypothesis (Long, 1983, 1996) also enhance our understanding about CLT. Both concentrate on the central role of meaningful communication in language acquisition.

 

Savignon’s article stated that Hyme’s communicative competence theory is to represent the use of language in social context, which means the observance of sociolinguistic norms of appropriateness. His concern with speech communities and the integration of language, communication, and culture is equal to Halliday’s as his focus is language as social behavior and not language learning. Savignon (1972) used the term communicative competence to distinguish the ability of language learners to interact with other speakers, to make meaning, as distinct from their ability to perform on discrete-point tests of grammatical knowledge. CLT is seen as to be derived from a multidisciplinary perspective that includes, at least, linguistics, psychology, philosophy, sociology, and educational research.
 

 Four components of communicative competence:

a.     Linguistic competence (grammar, phonology, lexis)

b.     Pragmatic competence (cohesion and coherence)

c.     Sociolinguistic (formal and informal)

d.     Strategic competence (compensatory strategies)

 

b) State the implications of communicative language teaching towards materials development.

Since CLT contained different definitions and interpretations of the communicative approach to second language (L2) instruction, this has created in several misconceptions on how it is implemented in the L2 classroom. There is no exact answer on what is communicative language teaching (CLT). It really depends on whom we ask regarding their ideas on what it is all about. Different individuals will come up with many different and supportive opinions. However, most experienced linguists will have the general answers where they are on the opinion that CLT is a meaning-based, learner-centered, and the emphasis is mainly on the comprehension and the production of messages, not the teaching or correcting language structure.

 

The implications of CLT towards the materials development is that it can depicts the authenticity of the materials with the teaching and learning process that happens in the classrooms. Authenticity is one of the important elements as it shows the connections between the real-world situation and in the classrooms where teaching and learning occur. The theories of CLT help to guide in the process of developing the materials. Besides that, it can demotivate the learners as the materials involved might not achieve the level of suitability of the learners. The materials should suit the learner’s proficiency level to ensure the process of delivering the knowledge is successful.

 

c) Locate principles supporting CLT within the KBSM English Language Curriculum and F1 English Language.

The principle which supported the CLT theory in the KBSM English Language Curriculum are 7.o – Preparation for the real world: The curriculum aims to prepare the student to be able to face the real world. This is done by preparing a more authentic material. It claimed that the learner will be able to communicate within their social context. However this is not really what had been achieved as the curriculum seems to be exam-oriented rather than learning-oriented.

d) Identify general categories and specific items to evaluate chapters in a Malaysian English Language textbook

The general categories in evaluation of chapters for a textbook are [1] pre-use evaluation: during this time, we predicts the potential value of the chapters. It would required the teacher to do quick observation of the chapters means that they need to come up with an impression regarding the particular chapters [2] While-use evaluation: This stage measures the value of the chapters while being used or observing it react in teaching and learning context. It would include the effect toward the learners and also the easiness of teaching the chapters. [3] Post-use evaluation: This is the most important yet forgotten stages. In this period, it will allow the actual assessment of the chapters; is it teachable by itself or do it require the integration of other side materials?

The item which may be applied to do evaluation for the Malaysian English Language Textbook would include usage of checklist. Checklist is useful as it suggest the criteria which should be exist in a textbook. It is holistic as it evaluate the chapter based on the objective aspect [systematicness] and also the subjective aspect [impression, feedback] of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 5 -Reflection

Week 5 Reflection- Workbook Evaluation

After conducting the evaluation by using Williams checklist to a book, titled “Natural English” by Ruth Gairns and Stuart Redman, I found that the checklist is appropriate for the teachers, especially the pre-service teachers, as the checklist was very simple and easy to understand. There are two units chosen in the textbook which we have evaluated, which were unit 3 and 7. Even though the checklist was quite simple, but still, we encountered few problems with the terms used by Williams. This problem creating the difficulties of understanding the criteria stated in the sections. On the other hand, most of the criteria included in the checklist fulfilled the contents of the textbook.

In a nutshell, as a pre-service teacher, I can now understand how the sections in the checklist being divided and why each criteria was chosen in the evaluation. Besides that, I can applied the knowledge from what I had learned to teach in the future.

 

Week 4 Tutorial- Reflection

Week 4 Reflection- Developing Criteria for Textbook Evaluation- David Williams

 For this week’s tutorial, we had been given an article of David Williams with the title of “Developing Criteria for Textbook Evaluation”. After I went through the article, I found that the evaluation checklist proposed by Williams was quite simple and easy to be used especially for a pre-service teacher. In the checklist itself, Williams divided the criteria into different section, namely grammar, speech, vocabulary and few more. We can easily evaluate the textbook accordingly by referring to the checklist. On the other hand, it was found that the rating sections were not clearly explained in the article. This had aroused a bit of confusion as the ratings from 1-4 was not being mentioned which is good and which is bad. This was the only problem we encountered when using the checklist.

As a pre-service teacher, doing the evaluation was a new thing for me. However, after I had done with that, I can now come up with the idea on how to modify and develop new teaching materials when necessary.

Week 5

Presentation workbook evaluation.pptx by ElsaPriscilla

Week 4: Developing Criteria for Textbook Evaluation-David Williams

Developing criteria for textbook evaluation-MD.pptx by ElsaPriscilla

Checkpoint 1: Examples of Digital Language Learning Materials (DLLM)

·         POWER POINT (Teaching Aid)

·         FACEBOOK (Discussion and Forum)

·         YOU TUBE

·         BLOG

·         MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching)

·         WISC-ONLINE (A digital library of Web-based learning resources called 'learning objects)

·         JORUM

 

Checkpoint 2: SLA Theories and Principles

Theories:

a)     Behaviourisistic

b)    Interactionist

c)     Innatist

 

Principles:

 

a)     Materials should achieve impact

b)    Materials should help learners to feel at ease

c)     Materials should help learners to develop confidence

d)    What is being taught should be perceived by learners as relevant and useful

e)     Materials should require and facilitate learner self-investment

f)     Learners must be ready to acquire the points being taught

g)    Materials should expose the learners to language in authentic use

h)    The learners’ attention should be drawn to linguistic features of the input.

i)     Materials should provide the learners with opportunities to use the target language to achieve communicative purposes.

j)     Materials should take into account that the positive effects of instruction are usually delayed

k)    Materials should take into account that learners differ in affective attitudes

l)     Materials should permit a silent period at the beginning of instruction.

m)   Materials should not rely too much on controlled practice

n)    Materials should provide opportunities for outcome and feedback

o)    Materials should help the learner to develop cultural awareness and sensitivity.

p)    Materials should reflect the reality of language use.

q)    Materials should help learners to learn in ways similar to the circumstances in which they will have to use the language.

r)     Materials should help to create readiness to learn.

 

Checkpoint 3: Rough outline of own DLLM

1.      Blogging in character

·         Pick characters from a book, such as a history book. Then, have the students to journal in their new persona. Teachers assign identities for all of the books that the students have read and let the conversation begin.

 

2.     Art gallery

·         Take photos of student work (or scan and save as images), and then have students to add their artworks to blog posts. To encourage writing skills, ask students to describe their art and the creation process.

 

Checkpoint 4: Summarize explanation for each criteria

1)     Errors:

·         There are two types of errors which are serious and less serious. Less serious is referring to a situation when work of the users are disturbed while serious is when the users’ outputs are endangered.

 

2)    Efficiency:

·         It explains how well the experienced users can operate an application after they have mastered it.

 

3)    Learnability:

·         It refers to how long the beginners use the system before they learn the essential skills which are necessary for them to complete tasks.

 

4)    Memorability:

·         It explains the ability of an occasional user who has previously used the system to remember its operational principle.    

 

 

 

Pedagogical Usability

1.      Feedback

·         DLLM should provide students with encouraging and immediate feedback.

2.     Motivation

            ·         Support the direction of individual's general behavior

 

3.      Goal orientation

·         The goal of LM should be clear.

 

 

4.      Learner control

·         Learner’s memory should be put into optimal.

5.     Applicability

·         The knowledge should be transferable to other context.

6.     Added value

·         Value acts as an additional function towards learning.

7.     Learner activity

·         DLLM plays an important role in students’ activity.

8.     Cooperative/Collaborative learning

·         DLLM enables collaborative work with the teacher as a control.

9.     Valuation of previous knowledge

·         Include previous knowledge as an advantage for the learners.

10.     Flexibility

·         Contains diverse assignment, adaptable, suitable and fit learners’ need.

 

 

 

Reflection..

After completing the task, I found that Digital language Learning Material acts as a medium which may develop the knowledge, and at the same time increase the learner’s interest to learn in a different way. In my own view, digital language learning materials can enhance one’s creativity as a whole. After I had watched the three videos, I can differentiate the different elements within the DLLM. There are two which were the learning objects and learning materials. As a pre-service teacher, we need to know the criteria in developing and evaluating digital language learning materials in order to ensure that it can be used to deliver the knowledge or not. One of the most important criteria was the acceptability which consists of two. There are the social acceptability and practical acceptability. Those are very important in a way to know that the material is working or not and whether it can helps the student to learn better.

 

 

 

Materials Development:

Tutorial Week 2- Principles for Materials Development

A) Watch Jeremy Short’s presentation on his take of materials development.

Please take note on the reasons he created the materials and the characteristics of his materials.

Which principles for materials development did Short apply when producing his materials?

Answer:

Jeremy created the materials after he found that his students feel that textbook is boring and also expensive. Later, he managed to create interesting, fun and engaging learning through visual and audio. Hence, he implements the story telling into narrative which known as the graphic novel textbooks. It is important to ensure that the learning materials are interesting in a way to attract learner’s interest and understanding.

When producing his materials, Short applies the principle of Materials Development which found in Tomlinson’s Principle. Short believes that materials should achieve impact in order to attract learner’s curiosity, interest and attention through novelty, variety, attractive presentation and appealing content. Materials are created to help learners to learn the language with texts and illustration that relates to their own culture.

 

 

B) Design and complete the following diagram.

 

 

The reason why we choose to draw our diagram in this manner is because we believe that these aspects are inter-related with each other. Country’s vision is placed on top of the diagram because it works as a mover in the society which leads the parents to set a goal in their children’s academic performance. Later, curriculum goal and objective are created to suit previous relation between parent’s goal and country’s vision. Learners are expected to be able to master all the learning skills such as listening, speaking, reading, writing, grammar and vocabulary. Then, we can see the development of two principles which are the principles of teaching and learning and the principles of SLA. In the principles of teaching and learning, the styles of teaching and materials play an important role in ensuring the effectiveness of pedagogy and getting into effective language learning materials. Teachers can vary the learning materials according to curriculum requirements and learners’ interest. It is best to create fun and engaging materials such as via flashcards, videos and ICT. Connecting SLA research to materials development, there are principles in SLA that affect the designed materials. Moreover, teacher’s belief and rational should be based on the principles. From many perspectives, teachers believe that every student has different learning styles. Teacher sees the importance of creating effective materials to cope this problem. The rational is that teaching and learning process are influencing each other in a way that the teachers should be aware of learners’ proficiency level. The learners should be given tasks based on their proficiency level. 

 

Reflection…

After completing the discussion for tutorial week 2, I am now able know more and explore deeply about why teaching materials are created. In the video itself, Jeremy Short had includes some of the reason why he came up with learning material that he mentioned about, which is the graphic novel textbook. Based on my own understanding, we as a pre-service teacher needs to have a well-understanding regarding the preference of our future students in order to create a good learning process in our classroom. When I referred back to my own learning experience during my secondary school, our English teacher will ask the whole class on what types of learning method that we are comfortable with in regards to ensure that we will be able to learn gradually according to the flows. Despite, there are two types of learners in our classroom. That is why our teacher used two different learning approaches. I can now understand why she done that before. As a teacher, we cannot simply assume that all the students can understand and get what they have learnt in the class. Some might be yes but some might not. So, in the future, I will use implement the knowledge for the process of teaching and learning. Besides, I can also improve myself through developing the skills and the knowledge on creating the learning materials for my students.