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I learnt that there are a number of common methodologies used to teach a language. These include: grammar-translation (learning about a language by finding parallels between L1 and the foreign language); audio-lingualism (focuses on repetition-drill to form habits through conditioning); presentation, practice, and production (the teacher explains context, meaning, and form of the new language before providing a controlled environment for the students to practice sentence construction in until they are given the opportunity to use the language more creatively); task-based learning (students are given a task to complete in the new language and are only provided with language study to clear up any problematic areas that arose during the task); communicative language learning (focuses on the importance of language function with less importance place on grammar and vocabulary, so roleplay and simulation are popular activities of this method); community language learning (this method is a lot more student-centred out of the approached with the teacher acting as resource); the silent way (the teachers say very little and make use of Cuisenaire rods to better the learning of the language for the student through discovering it for themselves); suggestopaedia (consists of three main parts: an oral review, presentation and discussion of new language, and listening to relaxing music as the teacher reads new dialogue); the lexical approach (the focus of this approach is words and phrases rather than grammatical structure). You applied methodology must allow your students as much exposure to the language as possible, it requires input from the teacher, communicative tasks should be part of, but not the main focus of a lesson, students need to be relaxed and comfortable to learn effectively, and students need to be encouraged to take initiative when it comes to discovering the new language. A method that caters to all these necessities is the ESA – Engage, Study, and Activate – method. Elicitation is an extremely important component of the ESA method. This is great to determine what students already know and need to know, offers the student more talk time, and has the effect of more ‘student discovery’ and less ‘teacher telling’. Examples of elicitation techniques include: real objects, flashcards/pictures, drawings, ask for the question, gap-fill, lists, follow-on questions, concept descriptions, mime, and definitions. The Engage Component: The teacher will get students excited and involved in the lesson. Activities that are effective in this sequence is games, music, interesting pictures, stories, etc. This is not a teaching phase, but rather a warmer to get them thinking and speaking in English. The Study Component: This component is more language focused. It starts with elicitation, followed by presentation of the language point, and drilling exercises. Worksheets are good for checking understanding and reinforcing material. The Activate Component: In this phase students are encouraged to use the language they know freely with the focus more on fluency than accuracy. Activities during this stage include roleplays, communication games, debates, story writing etc. A Straight Arrow lesson follows the simple sequence of engage, study, and activate. A Boomerang lesson follows the sequence of engage, activate 1, study, and activate 2. A Patchwork lesson follows the sequence of engage, activate, activate, study, activate, engage, study, and activate. Ideas for the Engage phase: introduction prompts, partner information share, fizz-buzz, alphabet relay, sevens, I spy, memory games, word linking, alphabet introductions, I’m going on holiday and…, slow Pictionary, anagrams, word linking, information search, an adaption of Scattegories, my marvellous machine, the box game, sentence prompts, adjectival introductions, consequences. Ideas for Study phase: elicitation, pronunciation (language drills, tongue-twisters, mouth diagrams), spelling (hangman, word searches, crosswords, unscrambling jumbled words), meaning ( gap fills, matching exercises – pictures to definitions, answers to questions, words to definitions, true to false activities), word order (unscrambling jumbled sentences, inserting words into sentences), and analysis (analysing typical constructions in texts/ dialogues). Ideas for the Activate phase: roleplay, surveys, producing materials, communication games, debate/discussion, and story building. Feedback is useful to help students evaluate their success and progress. It also encourages self-awareness and improvement. There are multiple ways of correction. These include: self-correction, student-student correction, and teacher-student correction. Teacher-students correction should be the last resort. The other methods allow the students to engage the language and discover their own errors. There are three stages where it is relevant to correct: 1. the mistake occurs with the language point that is being taught, 2. it is a repeated mistake with the risk of becoming ingrained, 3. the mistake impedes understanding. This unit has given me greater understanding of different activities and in which stage of the lesson they are best suited. It has also given me a clear guideline on how and when to correct.
