Practice of ELT & Peer Teaching -2: Overview of ELT Approaches

Which of the following best defines a ‘method’ of language teaching?

• a set of theoretically unified classroom techniques thought to be generalizable across a wide variety of contexts and audiences.

• a set of assumptions dealing with the nature of language, learning, and teaching to determine the selection and use of materials and the guidance of teachers.

• a specific classroom activity that follows a procedure to achieve learning objectives in a language class.

• a general tendency to plan and present a language systematically according to the needs of learners

What was common for the designer’s methods of the 20^th century?

• they all primarily focused on teaching grammar.

• they all assumed that learning a second language is similar to learning the mother tongue.

• they all claimed to be the best method.

• they all promoted ‘memorization’ of new words and rules of the target language

Which of the following is NOT one of the designer’s methods of the 20th century?

• Audiolingual Method.

• Suggestopedia.

• Community Language Learning

• Task-based Instruction

What is the main psychological theory behind the Audio-lingual Method?

• Humanistic psychology

• Behaviorist psychology

• Developmental psychology

• Cognitive psychology

Which of the following CANNOT explain why the obsession for the ‘best method’ is over in the 21^st century?

• it has been realized that there never was and never will be a good method of language teaching.

• the effectiveness of a method cannot ever be so clearly verified by empirical validation, because the language pedagogy involves art and intuition as well as a systematic inquiry.

• methods are quite distinctive at the early, beginning stages of a language course and rather indistinguishable from each other at later stages, and therefore they lose significance.

• methods are often overgeneralized in their potential application to practical situations.

Which alternative best completes the description below?

“_______________ encourages the language teacher to engage in a carefully crafted process of diagnosis, treatment, and assessment. It enables us initially to account for communicative and situational needs anticipated among designated learners, and to diagnose appropriate curricular treatment for those specific learners in their distinctive context and for their particular goals.”

• a communicative approach to language teaching

• a student-centered approach to language teaching

• a principled approach to language teaching

• a task-based approach to language teaching

Which alternative best completes the statement?

“Using imagery, semantic mapping, representing L2 sounds with familiar L1 sounds” are examples of the _____________ strategies.

• meta-cognitive

• memory

• affective

• compensation

Which alternative is the LEAST LIKELY to describe an essential feature of a contemporary foreign language teacher?

• The teacher’s speech in L2 must be a model for the learners to follow

• The teacher often gets students to work in pairs/groups

• The teacher seeks opportunities for students’ engagement in real-life communication in L2

• The teacher uses opportunities to compare L1 and L2 concepts and communication strategies

Complete the following statement in your own words:

According to the current paradigm of foreign language teaching, the ultimate goal of learning a foreign language is to get learners ______________________________________.

• to acquire the ability to function effectively across cultures, to think and act appropriately, and to communicate and work with people from different cultural backgrounds – at home or abroad.

• to be able to use the grammar, syntax, and vocabulary of the natives (i.e. British, American, Australian, etc. ) standard English.

• to speak a dialect of the English language (i.e. British, American, Australian etc.) as well as the native speakers

• to speak English accurately and fluently without an accent

Which approach to teaching is described in the following quote?

"The essence of this view of good teaching is invention and personalization. A good teacher is a person who assesses the needs and the possibilities of a situation and creates and uses practices that have promise for that situation" (Zahorik, 1986, p.22)

• Theory-Philosophy Conceptions

• Values-Based Approaches

• Science-Research Conceptions

• Art-Craft Conceptions