1. INTRODUCTION
DISCUSSION 1
a)
With a partner, brainstorm for a few minutes and draw up a list of five methodsaccording to which you think foreign languages can be taught.b)
Which particular method has predominated in your own experience as a student?Did it work for you?c)
Are you familiar with any recent approaches to language teaching? Can you brieflycharacterize them?d)
Which approach to language teaching do you think is predominant at present ingeneral foreign language classrooms? And in Spanish schools?e)
Are there good teachers or good methods? Are there good learners or goodmethods?f)
List a series of factors affecting FL teaching. Which ones are the most relevant?Can we establish a rating or importance?g)
The most expensive textbook is the guarantee for a method to work. Do youagree with this statement? Are there other materials as effective as textbooks?h)
It makes no sense to spend time and effort on theoretical discussions. Discussthis statement.i)
Research requires many resources. FL teaching experience is more useful thancomplex research projects. Do you believe this statement is true? If so, why?
The pedagogical tendencies which have characterized second and foreign languageteaching have been profuse and varied. As Stern (1983: 453) phrases it, “Theconceptualization of language teaching has a long, fascinating, but rather tortuoushistory”, which Brown (1994: 52) portrays as the “changing winds and shifting sandsof language teaching”. This history has been formulated mainly in terms of diverseteaching methods, each of which has attempted to find more effective and efficientways of teaching languages and each of which has been based on different views of what languages are and of how they are best taught. And the aim of this chapter isprecisely to review such a methodological history of language teaching; framingrecent approaches to language teaching against the backdrop of a general historicaloverview which evolves from the Grammar-Translation Method to the post-communicative period.Behind any teaching enterprise there always exist some theoretical assumptions. Wemay refer to them as guiding lines or principles. Sometimes not even teachers can statethem as such explicit foundations. But these principles do work and influence theireveryday teaching activity. As Stern (1983: 24-5) puts it, “A language teacher canexpress his theoretical conviction through classroom activities as much as (or indeed,better than) through the opinions he voices in discussions at professional meetings”.The idea of how to teach a foreign language affects not just teaching development, butalso its results. There are many circumstances and factors which determine or modifythe teaching process, but a good theoretical body is fundamental in order to moderateevery factor and to achieve the general goal. We should analyse our own beliefs on
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Can you tell me when was this published? I want to cite this book but I can't find the year.Can you help me? Thanks, anyway.
thanks for this document!