PARTICIPATORY

APPROACH
The Approaches for Teaching
Language Arts
 Background

■ • Developed by a Brazilian language

educator Paulo Freire
■ • Participatory also known as Freirean
Approach
■ • Freire opposes the old "banking method" of
teaching and advocated the learners to
cocreate knowledge.
■ • Participatory approach is under the
umbrella of Content-Based Instruction (CBI)
Introduction

■ The Participatory Approach belongs under the

umbrella of CBI because it employs themes and topics
that affect or interest learners. With this approach
students are taking ownership of their learning as well
as adding cooperative learning as they have to
collaborate with other classmates in finding and
endorsing solutions to social issues that affect the
community they belong to.
 Overview

■ A participatory approach incorporates themes or

content area that are of interest to the learners.
With participatory approach, students are
encouraged to work with fellow students either
in pairs, small groups, or in whole groups for
collective participation and for learning to be
meaningful.
Goal of Participatory Approach

■ • To use language learning as a tool to provide

solutions to social problems that impact learners
in their daily lives, and to help empower students
to take actions and make decisions in order to
gain control over their lives
 Suggested Activities

• Pair
• Two-way
• Group work
Dialogue/Discussion
• Whole class • Problem-posing
• Problem-solving
• Role play
• Group reporting
• Writing a letter/story
• Science project/Experiment
Advantages of Participatory Approach
• It uses inexpensive resources.
• It is interesting and fun.
• It helps people to build self-confidence.
• It helps people to learn about themselves.
• It helps people to understand the perspectives of others.
• It prevents individuals from being singled out for what they know, or don't
know.
• It is less intimidating for less confident participants.
• It helps people to analyze complex situations.
Dis-advantages of Participatory Approach

• It takes longer process

• It is difficult to plan, because planning often depends on what
the participants want to do.
• It may be difficult to assure that all of the students get to the
table.
• It takes patience and commitment on everyone’s part.
 Conclusion

■ Language teaching and learning have gone a long way. Recent

methods are more learner-centered which also require pro-active
involvement by the learners. Language domains can be taught even
in specific content-area subjects and it can be used to empower
people to free themselves from the social ruts they are in.
■ By teaching language we are providing new possibilities for
students to see things around them in a different perspective; we are
giving them voice to express their thoughts and opinions; and we
are giving them the power to act. Language is liberating.