TEACHING ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

3rd year 1st semester

Lector univ. Dr. Denisa Drguin

GENERAL OBJECTIVES
As prospective teachers of English as a second language, graduates of the course are prepared to:

Possess instructional skills that enable them to teach in diverse setting;

Recognize how diverse languages, cultures, family backgrounds, and abilities affect the
learning of English as a second language, as well as affirm students native languages and
cultures;
Identify and implement curriculum theories and practices relevant to human development
and learning;
Be well grounded in current trends and research in English as a Second Language, and be
able to conduct action research;
Acquire the leadership skills to share their knowledge of ESL instruction with mainstream
teachers and other professionals.
Affirm that all students with limited English proficiency can learn English;

SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES

Demonstrate understanding of concepts, theories, research, and practice relating to

language acquisition and literacy development;
Apply effective methods, practices, and strategies based on second language acquisition
theories and research to plan, implement, and manage ESL and content instruction;
Use a variety of assessments related to education;
Stay current on research, trends, policies, and legal mandates affecting ESL programs;
Collaborate within the educational community and serve as resources and models for their
peers to enhance learning and encourage cross-cultural interaction;

COMPETENCES
By the end of this course in Teaching English as a Foreign Language, prospective teachers
should possess a comprehensive knowledge base that is comprised of:
conceptual knowledge: relates to the individuals broad knowledge base as well as a
more specialized knowledge base in their content field and knowledge of how human
beings learn and develop;

pedagogical knowledge: entails the understanding of methods of effective teaching:

knowledge of how to teach subject matter and knowledge of how to teach the subject
matter to specific learners, with attention to individual differences;
reflective knowledge: enables cogent evaluation of teaching practice, including selfappraisal;

The following competences are built up:

1.
Knowledgeable
demonstrate highly advanced knowledge of human development and of student needs;
demonstrate highly advanced knowledge of curriculum and content;
make links among theory, research and practice as well as between content and pedagogy;
expand professional knowledge through the use of technological resources;
2.

Effective
use justifiable, appropriate strategies well grounded in research;
apply their knowledge to planning, goal-setting, implementation, and continuous
assessment;

3.

Reflective
demonstrate reflective self evaluation skills;
demonstrate flexibility and adaptability;

4.

Responsive to Equity/Diversity
apply their knowledge and skills to foster educational environments that are respectful of
diverse backgrounds and cultures
hold high expectations for all children/youth/young adults and provide high levels of
support for high achievement
recognize that equity and social justice are enhanced through education

5.

Collaborative
demonstrate effective communication, decision making, problem solving and interactive
teaming skills.

THEMES
Actually, foreign language teaching has always been subject to change, but it is said that
the process of change has not resulted from steady accumulation of knowledge about the most
effective ways of teaching languages but from the fashion of the day! Although, it is difficult to
prove the effectiveness of language teaching methods, it is not so difficult to convince people of
the virtues of some approaches, for a while at least. Gifted teachers, who combined original
thought with a strong power of persuasion, have often led to the adoption of his or her method
which survived until another gifted teacher argued a different view with equal conviction.
Experience in foreign language teaching might be the final say but to base language teaching
only on experience means to perpetuate a situation in which thousands or, maybe millions of
learners are victims of a gurus whims!

What is a teacher of foreign language?

Apart from metaphors in which we are said to be orchestra conductors, actors, gardeners,
parents etc., a browsing of dictionaries does not make the issue clearer.
Nowadays, the dilemma seems to be as Jeremy Harmer (2001) puts it: is teaching about
transmission of knowledge from teachers to students or is it about creating conditions in which,
somehow, students learn for themselves. In other words, teacher-centred or learner-centred
approach!
In our opinion, irrespective of the view one adopts, it is obvious that a teacher of English should
know What, Whom and How to teach!
What to teach?
English has spread across the globe and depending on who speaks or writes it, and where
they do it, there can be great differences in pronunciation, vocabulary, spelling, grammar, a.o.
Braj Kachru (1985, 12-15) suggests the division of the English-speaking world into three
concentric circles. In the first, inner circle, there are countries where English is spoken as a first
language [UK, the USA, Australia, New Zeeland, a.o.]. In the next circle are all countries where
English is spoken as a second language [India, Pakistan- over 1,000,000,000 people, Nigeria,
Zambia, a.o.]. In the third, the faster expending circle, there are countries where English has
acquired prestige and importance [Romania, China, Sweden, Japan, Israel, etc.] and it is used as a
foreign language, or it is used to speak to foreigners.
Therefore, in world of so many Englishers, we are asked to consider which variety we should
teach. Of course, when the teacher is a native speaker s/he will use, most probably, his or her
variety of English as a model. But, what about the non-native speakers, who are teachers of
English? We share the opinion of those who uphold the idea of choosing a variety from the inner
circle provided it is understood by most English speaking people. This will not apply when local
varieties of English [e.g. Singaporean, Creole, pidgin, etc.] are both necessary and desirable. But,
methodologically speaking, since learning foreign English is neither easy nor rewarding all the
time, teachers should, at least at the beginner level, keep strictly to one and only one variety of
English. From our experience as both learners and teachers of English it seems to be clear that, at
least, at the beginner level, we should be as unconfusing as possible about what we mean by
teaching a foreign language.
General English or English for Specific Purpose (ESP)?
Another issue concerning the language variety has to do with whether the English to be taught
will be general or specific. General English or all purpose English is taught in courses which
usually offer a blend of language skills and topics are selected from a wide range of sources
taking into account the student interest and engagement rather than some specific need. In fact,
students are taught to communicate on a general social level and to cope with the normal texts
educated language users might experience outside their professional lives. The decision to teach
General English is made when it is known why or when students will need English in the future
and, then, they are given language with the broadest range of use possible.
English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is taught to students who have a clear reason for
learning English. There are several branches of ESP such as: English for Academic Purposes
[EAP] the emphasis is on writing academic essays, taking notes, functioning in seminars, etc; English for Science and Technology [EST] i.e. the type of language needed by scientists and
engineers; English for Occupational Purposes [EOP] the language of air control, cooking,
tourist industry a.o. where a specialized vocabulary has to be acquired and peculiar types of

language interactions should be well understood and effectively performed; -Business Englishthe kind of language used in the world commerce. We do share the opinion of those
methodologists who deem ESP as an approach to foreign language teaching rather than a distinct
English variety.
Whom we teach
In order to adopt the most suitable methodology for a class, a teacher should know who
his or her students are. In our practice, a fact has puzzled us people are so different but, at the
same time, so much alike! One point should be made here the same person is quite different
when s/he is alone with the teacher from what s/he is as a member of a group. But who might be
our students and why do they learn foreign languages? Generally, the factors taken into account
are: age, language aptitude, learning styles, language levels and motivation.
Age Learners characteristics change with age. There are, at least, three distinct age groups:
children, adolescents, and adults and each of these groups has its generally well known features.
Language aptitude refers to the specific ability a student has for learning a foreign language.
This aptitude is different from the general ability to master academic skills, which is referred to
as intelligence. In our opinion, such an aptitude implies language ear, that is different from
the musical one, a fairly good memory, capacity to initiate, at least an average Qs, some
personality traits.
But even if this language aptitude exists being proved by means of the linguistic aptitude tests it
does not mean that the respective person will be successful in the acquisition of a foreign
language!
Learning styles If people adopt different way in learning a foreign language, this would indicate
that there are differences in the ways individual brains work. At present, two theories in particular
have tried to account for such differences: Neuro-linguistic programming [NLP] and Multiple
intelligence theory [MI]. According to NLP, people use some primary representational systems
to experience the world. The acronym VAKOG (V- visual, A- auditory, K-kinaesthetic, Oolfactory, G-gustatory) describes best these systems. Human beings make use of all these
systems, but, nevertheless, each of us has a prevailing one. For us, as teachers of English,
VAKOG offers a framework to analyze different student responses to stimuli and environments.
This suggests, for instance, that purely oral presentations of language may be appropriate only for
some students, whereas visual material and written text more effective for other students!
According to MI theory, humans do not possess a single intelligence, but a range of
intelligences. There are listed nine such intelligences: Musical/ Rhythmic, Verbal/ Spatial,
Bodily/ Kinaesthetic, Logical/ Mathematical, Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, Naturalistic
Intelligence, Emotional Intelligence. If we accept that different intelligences predominate in
different people, it means that an approach, a method, a procedure or a technique might be
suitable for alones students in a class. But, although we cannot teach each individual student in a
class of 25 students, we can keep an eye on each of them, so that, in a long term planning, to
provide a variety of activities to help the various types of learners or, permanently to direct them
to learning activities which are best suited to their strengths.
Language levels Students are generally considered to be in one of the following level groups:
beginner, intermediate and advanced. The intermediate level is often sub-divided into lower
intermediate and upper intermediate. The problem with these labels is that they mean different
things to different people. The issues directly related to the level of our students are:
methodology, language, topics, negative feeling and effects.

Motivation There are many reasons why people learn a foreign language. In this country, in our
opinion, these reasons are: school curriculum probably the greatest number of language
students do it because it is on the school curriculum whether they like it or not. For many of these
students English is something that both their and their parents want to be taught, but there are
also some who feel neutral or even negative about it.
Advancement- some people want to learn English because they are clear that, thus, they might
have better chances for advancement in their professional lives or be offered opportunities to get
a better job.
Target language community Nowadays, not few young people want to integrate themselves in a
target language community and they need to learn English in order to survive in that community.
English for Specific Purposes
Culture: At present few people study a foreign language because they are attracted to the culture
of the target language community. However, there are some who want to watch and understand
dialogues in English spoken films, listen to American or British pop music, read magazines,
thrillers, literary works, etc.
Motivation: Depending on the reasons why our students learn English, another very important
factor is to be taken into consideration, i.e. motivation. It is said that at its basic level motivation
is internal drive which makes someone do something, whereas a cognitive view of motivation is
essential to success, because without any kind of motivation, students will almost certainly fail to
make the necessary efforts implied by the difficult process of foreign language acquisition. There
is an accepted distinction between: extrinsic motivation which comes from outside and intrinsic
motivation, which comes from within the individual. Most researchers and methodologists have
concluded that intrinsic motivation is especially important for success. In our opinion, the
teachers duty is to sustain or to create motivation, because a students initial motivation or lack
of it does not stay the same for good! What can we do about it? Set goals because motivation is
closely bound up with ones intention to achieve a goal. There are long-term and short-term
goals. Long-term goals may include somebodys desire to become a teacher of English, whereas
a short-term goal might be the passing of an exam at the end of the term. If we can help students
in such short-term goals- realistically set and at the right level of challenge- this will upkeep a
high level of motivation.
Provide interesting classes- Language classes may be boring, repetitive, gloomy. If students are
to be motivated they need to be interested not only in English language as much, but also in the
multiple, varied activities and topics they are presented with. Therefore, the choice of materials,
educational aids as well as the ways in which they used in the lessons will be of utmost
importance.
Mind the learning environment- Physical appearance of our classrooms counts a lot and we can
do much in this respect apart from asking for new funds. But all of this is less important than the
emotional atmosphere that teachers should create. In our opinion, a learning environment should
contribute mainly to the enhancement of each and every students self-esteem and autonomy.
Since we know what to teach and whom to teach the next point is how to teach or
Approaches or Methods, Procedures. An approach is, in fact, a theory of the nature of language
and of language learning. Taking an approach as a theoretical basis, one or several methods can
be designed. Generally, a method designer will establish: general and specific objectives, a
syllabus model, types of teaching and learning activities, teacher roles, and role of the
instructional materials.

Procedure- It seems to gradually agree that in FL teaching there are three main stages, namely:
presentation, practice and production (PPP). Lately, the PPP has come under a sustained attack
because it is clearly teacher-centred, it only describes one kind of lesson, it reflects neither the
nature of language nor the nature of learning, etc. Alternatives have been suggested such as the
deep end strategy, ARC [Authentic use, Restricted use, Clarification], OHE [Observe,
Hypothese, Experiment], III [Illustration, Interaction, Induction], ESA [Engage, Study, Activate],
Patchwork lessons in which a variety of such sequences may be followed. In fact, all these
models require flexibility in the planning and performing the teaching and learning process.
Presentation stage- a model of presentation might be the following:
Lead-in Elicitation Explanation Accurate reproduction Immediate creativity
But, in practice, we often recognize the following: a language teacher needs to present new
material in order to extend learners' mastery of the language. Generally, this is done through
texts, activities and situations. Irrespective of the adopted procedure, the presentation should be
economical, because understanding is only part of the learning process, and effective, otherwise
learners will not know what to practice later in the lesson.
Practice stage after the presentation of new language items has been done in meaningful
contexts, and some imitation and repetition have been carried out during 'accurate reproduction'
students should be given opportunities to practice the new language. This practice can be oral or
writing practice.
There are many techniques used for practicing the new language, from among which the
following seem to be the commonest:
chorus work a technique that requires a number of students to speak in unison;
reading aloud as a practice technique;
drills they are a step forward from mere imitation. Students produce correct sentences; thus
they gain confidence and fluency.
Production stage- students are supposed to use the foreign language as means to an end. Students
should be forced to retrieve the English that they have in there and develop strategies for
communication.
The roles of the teacher are proscribed by the method s/he adopts. A teacher may be:
an organiser the teacher tells the students what they are going to do, gives them instructions
about the task, shows or demonstrates how it should be done, gets the activity going, organizes
feedback, gives a follow-up, task-related homework;
assessor- it is the responsibility of the teacher to assess his or her students' work. An error is
made when the student does not know the rule. A distinction has to be made between correction
and feedback. Students' mistakes are corrected on the spot during accurate reproduction or guided
practice drills when we insist on students ' repeating or saying the sound, word, sentence.
Feedback is organised mainly during the production stage. The teacher waits until an activity or a
task has been completed and then he tells the students how well they did.
provider of comprehensible input input is a concept that means the language students are
exposed, too. Roughly tuned input is language at a level above the students' abilities. Finely tuned
input is language selected to be at the students' level. Comprehensible input is language above
what students have learned or acquired but which they can understand. As teachers we can
provide comprehensible input since we know our students and we can talk at the right level. But
we need to be aware of how we are not allowed to practice (i.e. student-talking time) there will be
no gains for them. Other roles are:
prompter; participant, resource; observer/monitor.

Educational technology and teaching equipment- many teaching aids can be used to explain
language meaning, practice language or as a basis for productive activities. From among them we
would like to mention: the board, realia, pictures and graphics used in the form of flashcards,
cuecards, slides- the overhead projector, language laboratory, computers, the internet, CD-Roms,
DVDs, audio and video tapes.
Teaching Pronunciation
The choice of a model of pronunciation is a matter of special importance as far as English
is concerned because of the profusion of differing spoken forms existing not only in such firstlanguage areas as Britain, USA, and Australia, but also in those regions of Africa and Asia where
English is used as a second language or as an adopted lingua franca. Whatever abilities the
learners may acquire later, at the beginning (i.e. standard language) they should stick to one type
of spoken English, without any conscious attempt to alter their pronunciation according to
situation in the way that the native speakers do. As they gain confidence, productive precision,
and fluency in a single type of spoken English, for the purposes of widening their receptive
competence, they can be exposed gradually to other Englishes. For teachers of English, the
criteria in the choice of any teaching model must be the one which has wide currency, is widely
and readily understood, is adequately described in textbooks and has ample recorded material
available for the learners. If these criteria are adopted Southern English Standard or General
American seem to be the best choices.
Perfection versus Intelligibility
Should learners of EFL sound as native speakers or it is enough if they are understood when they
speak English? The degree to which learners acquire pronunciation depends on their goals and
their aptitude. It has become customary for language teachers to consider intelligibility as the
goal of pronunciation teaching.
Teaching English pronunciation to speakers of Romanian
According to Galateanu-Farnoaga, the most important peculiarities in this respect are:
certain English phonemes are not found in standard Romanian;
certain Romanian phonemes are not found in standard English;
certain differences in the articulation of same sounds which, at the first sight, seem identical in
the two languages;
the phonemic difference between long and short vowels in English;
the frequent use of more than one pronunciation, the so-called strong and weak forms in the
case of auxiliary words;
the great discrepancy between spelling and pronunciation in English;
the frequent cases of assimilation, i.e. the change of certain voiced sounds into voiceless ones
and vice versa;
the main characteristic features of stress in English speech;
the peculiar features of rhythm and intonation in English.
In order to acquire an acceptable English pronunciation, the learners should be able to:
recognize the sounds occurring in English and remember their acoustic qualities;
articulate the English sounds in a correct and accurate manner;
master all the other sound attributes (length of vowels, stress);
master the articulation of clusters of sounds in connected speech;
learn the correspondence between the conventional spelling and pronunciation.
There are, roughly speaking, three techniques of teaching pronunciation of foreign sounds:

 imitation;
articulatory description;
comparison with the nearest sound in Romanian.
As regards the difficulty in acquisition of English sounds by speakers of Romanian, they fall into
three categories:
the most difficult for the Romanian learners are the English sounds which have certain features
in common with the corresponding sounds in the native language, being however articulated in a
different manner. In this case imitation should be associated with description and comparison;
the second group contains English sounds which are not found in standard Romanian. In
learning these sounds the most effective techniques are imitation and description;
the third group includes the sounds which are identical or almost identical in both languages. As
a rule, these sounds do not pose special difficulties to us.
Pronunciation may be taught in:
whole lessons in the international language teaching practice There are teachers who devote
entire lessons to pronunciation, using:
discrete slots some teachers plan short pronunciation drills into lesson sequences. Over a
period of time they work on all the phonemes, on the aspects of intonation. Such short activities
are useful and provide a change of activity during a lesson. There is also
the opportunistic teaching, that is to tackle the pronunciation issues that have arisen in the
course of an activity.
Learners need help on the areas of pronunciation, which include individual sounds, word and
phrase/ sentence stress and intonation, connected speech and correspondence between sounds and
spelling.
The steps in teaching pronunciation are:
Step 1 to hear the sound. Until students cannot hear properly what they are supposed to
produce there is no chance of their being able to learn the English sound. Thus teachers begin by
having them listen to easy structures, focusing attention on the phoneme.
Step 2 to listen to contrasting phonemes.
Step 3 to sharpen the recognition by identifying the two vowels, i.e. aural discrimination.
Teachers further sharpen recognition by using one-syllable words, the meaning of words being
sometimes irrelevant. hen-fan-set/ ten-pan-mad
Step 4 generalization it consists in a brief description of the significant features of the two
phonemes, pointing out in what they are different.
Step 5 practice first choral, and then individual. The students pronounce after the teacher
contrasts with minimal pairs.
Teaching Vocabulary
Part of the problem in teaching vocabulary lies in the fact that whilst there is a consensus
about what grammar should be taught at what levels, the same is hardly the matter with words
and lexical phrases. It is known that the great Oxford English Dictionary contains about 290,000
entries. This huge list should be reduced to manageable proportions for our learners. For doing it,
some criteria are needed. So, a general principle in the past was to teach more concrete words at
lower level and gradually passing to more abstract ones. Or, another method was to start with
words like table, clear, pen, etc. because these represented objects that were in front of the
learners and thus easily explained.
Other criteria concern frequency and coverage. So, a general principle of vocabulary
selection is that of frequency, i.e. the words, which are more commonly used, are the ones to be

taught first. Research shows that an educated native speaker will probably have a vocabulary of
about 20,000 word families. Any English Dictionary for intermediate levels includes many more.
It has been calculated that an adult foreign language learner may be lucky to have acquired 5,000
word families even after several years of study. This relatively slow progress is related to the
exposure the average classroom FL learner experiences.
But, research has found out that most native speakers use in their daily conversations
about 2,000 words and this amount has been considered as a threshold level for a foreign
language learner. It has been also found out that the 2,000 most frequent words in English would
provide a reader with nearly nine out of every ten words used in most written texts. It has been
calculated that the most frequent 100 words in English make up fifty percent of most texts. But
the majority of these 100 high frequency words are grammar or function words. Then, the ten
frequent words in written are: the, to, of, a, and, in, I, was, for, that. Another principle that has
been used in the selection of vocabulary is that of coverage. The decision about what vocabulary
to teach will be influenced by the information about frequency and use, but this will be assessed
in the light of topic, function, structure, teachibility, needs and wants. From a teachers point of
view, knowing a word means to know its meaning, use, formation, grammar.
Meaning the first thing to realize about words is that they usually have more than one meaning
and a particular meaning of a word is given by the context in which they occur. At the same time,
words have meanings in relation to other words (synonyms, hyponyms, antonyms, etc); therefore
we should also teach about word sense relations.
Use word meaning can be changed, i.e. stretched or limited through the use of metaphor, idiom,
etc. Word use is governed by collocation, that is which words go with each other [e.g. to make,
and to do collocations]. Style and register also govern use. Concluding, learners need to
recognize neutral and metaphorical use of language, to know how words collocate and to realize
in what stylistic and topical contexts, words and expressions occur.
Word formation words change their shape and their grammatical value, too. Thus, wordformation means knowing how words are written and spoken and knowing how they can change
their form.
Word grammar knowing what part of speech a word is means to know how to use that word.
Without this knowledge one cannot really say that s/he knows vocabulary items such as
furniture, look up, vegetable, be aware of, etc.
In teaching and learning vocabulary one should be aware of the fact that everyone is usually able
to recognize many more words than can produce, that there is a difference between productive
and receptive vocabulary. The former term refers to vocabulary one is able to use- i.e. to
pronounce it or spell it, to use it the correct grammatical form, use the right words collocating
with it, a.s.o.- whilst the latter refers to words which one recognizes when s/he meets them but
which s/he is not able to use it productively.
Another issue concerns the way in which human memory works. Learning words is
remembering them. Unlike the learning of grammar, which is essentially a rule based system,
vocabulary knowledge is mainly a question of accumulating individual items.
Researchers into workings of memory distinguish: the short-term memory, working memory, and
long-term memory. The short-term memory is the brains capacity to hold a limited number of
items for periods of time up to a few seconds. For words to be integrated into long-time memory
they need to be worked up. The working memory performs operations on words or the learner
should interact with the new words, not only to repeat them. Tasks as founding their antonyms,
making a noun an adjective, putting them together in mind maps, etc. help to fix the words in
learners minds. Long-term memory content is durable, but even it is not always as long as one

would wish. A word will enter the long-term memory, according to research findings if the
following operations are implemented while learning it: repetition, retrieval, spacing, pacing, use,
cognitive depth, personal organizing, imagining, affective depth, motivation, a.o.
In presentation of new vocabulary, the teacher has to decide on the number of words s/he is going
to teach depending on:
the level of the students (beginners, intermediate, advanced)
the students familiarity with words;
the difficulty of the items;
the teachibility of the items (i.e. they can be easily explained);
whether the items are being learned for production or recognition.
Having decided on the number of the new words (7 to 12 words in an hour for productive
use), the teacher can choose to present meaning through: translation; real things; pictures; mime,
actions and/or gestures; definitions; situations; explanations; enumerations; contrasts, or to use
discovery techniques that would allow students to infer or guess from context the meaning of the
new lexical items. There are other two main problems here, namely teaching pronunciation of the
new words generally it is done through modelling, visual representation, or phonemic symbols
and word spelling. At present more teachers advise their students to hear lexical chunks such
as: collocations, phrasal verbs, idioms, catchphrases and sayings, sentences frames, discourse
markers.
Another very fruitful way to help learners with vocabulary is to teach them 'word
formation' (affixation, compounding, conversion, etc.). One can deal with finer distinction within
each of these categories (e.g. negative prefixes, etc.)
Use of dictionaries Any dictionary has its strengths and weaknesses. It seems that at the top of
the list of recommended dictionaries we find reference dictionaries- dictionaries where one looks
up a word to see what meanings it has, have it used, and the way in which it is spelled and
pronounced. Next comes the monolingual dictionary (MLD). But these dictionaries are for
beyond the beginner level. The learners themselves should be encouraged to build up their
'dictionaries', either as the classical vocabulary notebooks or as 'cards' that can be organized in
many different ways so that they suit the learner needs.
Teaching and Learning Grammar
There is no grammarless language so anyone who tends to attain a minimal degree of
functional language usage has to acquire a 'core of grammar' without which his or her foreign
language 'mastery' would be in the sphere of unacceptability. Pedagogic grammars are designed
specifically to be of help to teach students to make correct sentences by giving them simplified
rules. But such grammars are based on the soundest achievements in the field of scientific
grammar, so, for teachers, a good knowledge of descriptive grammars and linguistic insights
helps them to approach grammar teaching in an open-ended way, i.e. learners will not get
confused or even hindered in their more advanced study of English by the pedagogic grammar
rules they have been taught as beginners. Each approach and/or method advocates a certain
procedure for grammar learning and acquisition. First, there is 'covert grammar teaching' where
teachers help the students to acquire and/or practice the language, but they do not draw conscious
attention to any of grammatical items of the language, and there is 'overt grammar teaching'
where the teacher actually teaches grammar. From school experience, it has become obvious that
grammar can be taught from rules, that is the deductive approach, from examples, that is the

inductive approach, and through texts, that is discovery techniques. In teaching grammar, the
following stages are generally observed:
a) Presentation or use of discovery techniques;
b) Isolation and explanation;
c) Practice, consolidation, refreshing;
d) Test.
Presentation or use of discovery techniques-A good presentation should be: clear, efficient, lively
and interesting, appropriate, productive. Presentations that share these characteristics may be
those in which teachers use dialogues, situations, texts, visuals, etc.
Discovery techniques involve, according to Jeremy Harmer, four types of activities: preview,
watching, text study and problem-solving.
Preview is a technique where students are exposed to the new language, they are not asked to
concentrate on it, but the fact of having seen the 'grammar in action' will help them to study and
acquire it later.
Matching exercises- students have to make choices what goes with what, and this activity helps
them to discover correct facts of grammar.
Text study- students concentrate on a text to discover new grammar, teachers asking them to look
at different language forms and their meaning. For instance, students are asked to look at the
verbs forms in 'if clauses'.
Problem solving- at higher levels, students may be asked to look at areas of grammar rather than
small details. e.g. how the future is expressed in English or why six sentences that use the same
structure have six different meanings.
Isolation and explanation- is a stage where teachers focus on grammatical items themselves and
explain what they look like, what they mean, how they function and 'give the rule'. The objective
is that the learners should understand the various aspects of language.
Practice, consolidation, refreshing- consists of a series of exercise done both in the classroom
and for home assignments, whose aim is to cause the learners to absorb the new knowledge
thoroughly, or to transfer what they know from short term to long-term memory. The function of
any type of exercise is to make the rules clearer and to ensure that they are learnt more
thoroughly. But practice will become 'consolidation' or 'refreshing' in time, because,
unfortunately, people keep forgetting! Another type of practice, that is also called consolidation,
in some cases refreshing, is not organized after the initial presentation and explanation, but when
the teacher feels that his or her students 'falter' in using a grammar structure, in applying a rule,
etc. in such cases, the following steps should be observed:
Pre-learning or re-learning- i.e. the students are helped to remember and become clear about
what they are to practice. If such a step has not taken place prior to the practice, much time will
be wasted on in comprehension or unacceptable responses, a clear frustrating time of our lives
either teachers or students. These consolidation and refreshing activities are not meant for testing
even if teachers get feedback! This is a moment when classroom can be transformed in a friendly
learning environment!
Success-orientation- practice is more effective if it is based on successful performance. Again,
teachers should not start from what learners do not know, maybe they have forgotten, but from
what has been consolidated and doing it, the learners' self-esteem should also be fostered!
Heterogeneity- a 'heterogeneous' exercise is one that can be done at various levels. Because most
classes are in fact composed of mixt-ability groups, 'the common' exercises do not provide

effective practice for all students. A heterogeneous exercise is one on which learners can perform
to the limits of their ability.
Teacher assistance having presented the practice tasks, students should perform it successfully
and fairly quickly. If the pre-learning has been proper, there will be few instances, and the
exercise is 'success-oriented'. During such practice activities the teacher's activity should be
directed towards supporting and assisting the students in their assessing and correcting.
Test learners do tests in order to demonstrate to themselves and to the teachers how well they
master the material they have been learning. The main objective of tests should be to provide
feedback without which learners would not be able to progress very far and the teachers would
not know what to do next
On Language Skills Teaching
Traditionally, language skills are considered to be:
Medium/Skill
Receptive
Productive

Speech
Listening and comprehension
Speaking

Written word
Reading and understanding
Writing

Teaching receptive skills or the way in which people infer meaning from the language they hear
or see. There are some general things which apply to both listening and reading , but there are
also differences between them. The reasons for reading and listening may be instrumental
utilitarian purpose, or pleasurable we do it for pleasure. The skills are:
identifying the topic, predicting and guessing, reading and listening for general information (in
reading this skill is called skimming);
reading and listening for specific information;
reading and listening for detailed information, interpreting texts.
The problems presented by teaching receptive skills connected with language, topic, and
tasks. In teaching receptive skills the teacher should organize and encourage both extensive and
intensive reading and listening, playing the roles of organiser, prompter and feedback organiser.
Teaching productive skills speaking and writing are different in many ways, but there are some
processes which are required by both of them: structuring discourse, following sociocultural
rules, observing styles and genres, interacting with an audience, dealing with difficulty. The
teaching of productive skills is closely linked with receptive skill developing, because language
output becomes input for the interlocutor or the reader! In developing productive skills, texts are
used as models as stimuli. In developing writing skill we should take into account writing skill
we should take into account writing conventions-handwriting, spelling, layout and punctuationand such activities from copying, parallel writing dictations to creative writing and using the
computer. The teacher needs to play all his or her usual roles, but the following seem more
important: motivator, resource, and feedback provider.
Developing speaking skills means fluency and ability to process information and language
during the interaction. Among the language features of the spoken language are: connected
speech, use of expressive devices, of the appropriate Lexis and grammar and negotiation or
classification of meaning. At the same time mental and social processing is involved- retrieval of
vocabulary from memory and organizing it in appropriate syntactically sequences, strategies of

interacting with others on the spot, information processing. To develop these abilities, the class
speaking activities include acting from a script, communication games, discussions/
conversations, prepared talks, interviews, simulation and role-play.
Testing information about people's foreign language abilities is useful and sometimes
necessary. Within educational systems, tests of some kind or another will be needed in order to
provide statements about the learners' levels of English, or to make sensible educational
decisions. In our opinion, the proper relationship between teaching and testing should be that of
partnership. If teaching is good and testing is not the background is harmful, but, equally, when
teaching is poor, then testing may exert a beneficial influence. Therefore, testing should be
supportive of good teaching and exert a corrective influence on the poor one. While for many
educational and other purposes, teachers' assessments are appropriate and sufficient, in some
cases, in order to make meaningful comparisons, a common yardstick is needed. In any particular
situation, testers have to be clear about the purpose of testing, since different purposes require
different types of tests. Generally the tests should:
measure language proficiency regardless of any language courses that the candidates may have
followed PROFICENCY TESTS
discover what students have achieved within in a course of study- PROGRESS or
ACHIEVEMENT TESTS
diagnose students' strengths and weaknesses and identify what they know or do not know
DIAGNOSTIC TESTS
assist placement of students by identifying the most appropriate programme to their ability
PLACEMENT TESTS
Thus, items may be direct if the candidates are asked to perform the skill, which is being tested,
or indirect if they try to measure a student's knowledge and ability by getting on what these are
based. The common indirect item types are: Multiple Choice Question (MCQs), cloze
procedures, transformation and paraphrase, sentence re-ordering. In marking tests, subjectivity
should be eliminated by adopting assessment scales that are objective, clear, practical, and do not
allow too much personal interpretation!
Planning any teacher thinks of three types of plans: long term plan, short term plan, and lesson
or unit plan.
The long-term plan is worked out by the teachers before the beginning of the school year or of
the language course and is the logical consequence of the teacher's through study of the
curriculum, syllabus and selected textbook or of the course programme.
The short-term plan on the basis of long-term plan the teacher drafts a short-term plan, which
covers either a period of time or a number of lessons. It is a more detailed plan in which the
teacher mentions the activities and the materials s/he needs, and starts preparing them.
Lesson plan there are many types of lesson plans and they tell what the teacher intends to
perform in English class. Any lesson could fall into several stages such as: revision, introduction,
presentation, explanation, practice, oral/ written consolidation, homework assignment. The
teacher establishes general aims for the lesson, objectives for each activity, the needed materials,
teaching or learning procedures and techniques, as well as necessary to ensure the success of
his/her English lesson.

Topics for final test

Teachers responsibility to initiate and sustain students motivation within and without EFL
classroom environment;
Roles of the teacher of English within the ELT classroom dynamics;
Roles of the FL learners in acquisition and learning of English. Student grouping and interaction;
Assessment in foreign language education. Correction and feedback;
Educational technology and its use by the teacher of English;
Approaches and methods;
The Grammar- Translation Method;
The Direct Method;
The Audio-Lingual Method;
Communicative Language Teaching;
Total Physical Response;
The Silent Way;
Community Language Learning;
Procedures and techniques, ( Presentation, Practice and Production);
Teaching pronunciation. Controversial issues;
Grammar teaching- aims, procedures, activities;
Vocabulary. What does it mean to know a word? Techniques for introducing new words;
Language skills and competencies. Communicative competence;
Listening and comprehension. Class activities to develop specialized skills;
Speaking- developing communicative strategies in classroom;
Reading- intensive and extensive reading. Specialized reading skills;
Teaching writing. Writing conventions, topics, registers, genres;
Testing students. Types of test. Writing and marking tests;
Curriculum, syllabus, textbook. Syllabus design. Choosing textbooks.
Planning. Long term plan. Short term plan. Lesson plan.

A. BIBLIOGRAFIE OBLIGATORIE/MINIMAL:
Harmer, J., 2001, The Practice of English Language Teaching, Third Edition, Pearson Education,
Education Ltd.
Larsen-Freeman, D. Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching, OUP
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Thornbury, S., 2002, How to Teach Vocabulary, Pearson Education Ltd.
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Wallace, C., 1992, Reading, CUP
Tribble, C., 1997, Writing, OUP
Tomlison, B., 1998, Materials Development in Language Teaching, CUP
Cunningworth, A.,1995, Choosing your Coursebook, Macmillan Heineman
B. BIBLIOGRAFIE FACULTATIV:
Ur, P., 1996, A Course in Language Teaching, CUP
Nunan, D., 1991, Language Teaching Methodology, Prentice Hall (BC);

Haycroft, J., 1991, An Introduction to English Language Teaching, Longman

Kenworth, J., 1997, Teaching English Pronunciation, Pearson Education Ltd.
Gairns, R. & Redman, S., 1991, Working with Words, A Guide to Teaching and Learning
Vocabulary, CUP
Woods, E., 1995, Introducing Grammar, Penguin, Penguin English Applied Linguistics
Yule, G., 2000, Explaining English Grammar, OUP
Rost, M., 1991, Listening in Action, Prentice Hall
Anderson, A.& Lynch, 1988, Listening, OUP
Underwood, M., 1988, Teaching Listening, Pearson Education Ltd.
Nuttall, C., 1996, Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language, Macmillan Heinemann
Byrne, D., 1986, Teaching Oral English
Byrne, D., 1988, Teaching Writing Skills, Pearson Education Ltd.
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Rivers, W.M., 1978, A Practical Guide to the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language
Rossner, R.& Bolith,R.(eds), 1990, Currents of Change in English Language Teaching, OUP
Hughes, A., 1994, Testing for Language Teachers, CUP
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Scott, A.& Ytseborg, L., 1990, Teaching English to Children, Pearson Education Ltd.
Halliwell, S., 1992, Teaching English in the Primary Classroom, Pearson Education Ltd.
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