4. Reading and writing not neglected but postponed to serve as reinforcement.
5. Highly motivating: learner senses achievement from beginning through practical use and participation.
6. A-LM requires and encourages use of simple and mechanical aids.
Cons:
1. Lack of spontaneity if learning is overmechanical.
2. Reliance on inductive process dangerous.
3. Time lag between oral and written work: dependence on ear alone can lead to insecurity – emotional dislike of aural-oral work and invention of graphic equivalents.
4. A-LM for all students? Average student does best, intelligent student border?
5. Makes considerable demand on the teacher: preparation/drilling/imagination.
6. Is order of presentation natural?
7. Does A-LM produce language illiterates –fluent speakers who cannot read or write?
Possible remedies:
1. Avoid dull drills –contextualize: use variety.
2. Practice should be meaningful and point of drill should be explained to the learner and understood.
3. Time lag must vary according to situation – in some cases oral/written work side be side.
4. Intelligent students should be told that practice makes perfect – hence importance of fluency, clarity and precision.
5. Order of presentation probably logical though analogy with child learner not relevant. Adult is trained to think and use books/dictionaries, but without first learning how to pronounce words he will not learn how to read well.
6. Experience showed that A-LM trainer learner did better is all skills than traditional counterpart except in writing.
Though the emphases at the beginning are strongly on listening and speaking, no devaluation of literature is implied. It appears that mastery of sound system of a language is essential for efficient reading and for appreciation of literature. One of the qualities that makes a work of literature great is the choice of words and phrases, and one of the factors that governs this choice is how they sound. “To read a work of literature without any idea of what it sounded like to the writer is to be as handicapped as the tone-deaf listening to music or the colour-blind looking at a painting”.
Losanov’s Method or Suggestive Method
Few methods have been met with claims ranging from sensational to skeptical: mysterious and costly, a highly questionable new gimmick (one critic has unkindly called it “a package of pseudo-scientific gobbledygook”) and far remote from language teaching styles as language sleep learning, medative relaxation, electrical and sound impulses (E. Davydova).
Suggestopedia as G. Lozanov called his pedagogical application of :The Science of Suggestology” aims at neutralizing learning inibitions and de-suggesting false limitations that cultural norms impose on learning.
The suggestive method or Suggestopedia is a modification of direct method.The originator of this method believes, as does Silent Way's Caleb Gattegno, that language learning can occur at a much faster rate than what ordinarily transpires. In G. Losanov's view the reason for the pupils inefficiency is that they set up psychological barriers that block the way to learning. They fear that they will be unable to perform, that they will be limited in the ability to learn, and finally fail. One result is that the learners' full mental powers are not engaged. According to G. Losanov and his proponents, only five per cent of the learners' mental capacity is used. In order to make better use of the mental reserves the limitations, which they think we have, need to be "desuggested". Suggestopedia, the application of the study of suggestion to pedagogy, has been developed to help students eliminate the feeling that they cannot be successful and, thereby, to help them overcome the barriers to learning.
The behaviourist principles of G. Losanov's method assume theform of five maxims:
1. Get the learners to utter the same structure repeatedly.
2. Get them to do so correctly.
3. Do this through good grading of structures by arranging them in order of difficulty and by introducing them one at a time if possible.
4. The behaviourist approach is repetition and drilling to the point where the learner automatically makes the correct response.
5. Lessons must be designed so as to prevent the learners from making mistakes.
Behaviourist psychology described all learning (including language acquisition) as a matter of conditioning - as the formation of habits through responses to outside stimuli. Thus one learns a language through mimicry, memorisation and analogy .
Communication takes place on "two planes": on linguistic and psychological one. On the linguistic plane the message is encoded; and on the psychological are factors which influence the linguistic message. On the conscious plane, the learner attends to the language; on the subconscious plane, the music suggests that learning is easy and pleasant; when there is a unity between conscious and subconscious, learning is enhanced .
The class, where this method is used, is different from other classrooms - the students are seated in cushioned armchairs that are arranged in a semicircle facing the front of the room. The teacher is lively, dynamic, confidant, yet sensitive, and speaks only the target language, which suggests that thelearners do the same. In the firsts three-hour meeting all learners choose a new name and nationality, after which they are given a fictional autobiography. By means of song, imitation, and play, the learners introduce themselves to each other and assume their new roles. Then over the next two days, the teacher twice presents a long script, each time with a different aim and a different learning set-up; these script performances called "concert sessions", are accompanied by music. In the first of these, the "active concert session", the music is emotional, and the tone of the artistic presentation reflects the character of the music. The learners have the script in two languages arranged in short phrases on opposite sides of the page. After the "concert session" come various kinds of elaboration activities, including group and choral reading of parts of the scripts, singing and playing games as a group and individually. The second day the script is performed again, this time in a "pseudopassive concert session” where a state of wakeful relaxation is artfully stimulated. This reading is accompanied by music of a different tone and mood, generally barouque style. Following that, the learners (in their new identities) are aided again in elaborating the script in various ways. This may include narrating a story or event, or creating an original story, using the language in the script .
Gradually the selection of vocabulary becomes more elaborate.Itmay include situations from literary works, rustic scenes, and facts from everyday life. Using pantomime to help the students understand, the teacher acts out various occupations, such as pilot, singer, carpenter and artist. The students choose what they want to be.
The teacher reads a dialogue partly in English and partly through pantomime, and outlines the dialogue's story. He also calls his students attention to some of the comments regarding vocabulary and grammar structures.
Next, the teacher asks the students to read the dialogue in a sad way, in an angry way and finally in an amorous way. This is followed by asking questions about the dialogues. Sometimes he asks the students to repeat an English line after him; still other times he addresses a question from the dialogue to an individual student.
So, the principles and techniques of Suggestopedia can be conveniently summarized under the following headings:
1. classroom set-up;
2. positive suggestion;
3. visualization;
4. choosing a new indentity;
5. role-play;
6. concert;
7. primary activation (the students playfully re-read the dialogue);
8. secondary activation (the students engage in various activities designed to help them learn the new material and use it spontaneously).
Activities particularly recommended for this phase include singing, dancing, dramatisations, games. The important thing is that the activities are varied and don’t allow the students to focus on the form of the linguistic message, just the communicative intent.
And finally, instruction is designed so as to tap more successfully the learning powers of the mind and eliminate psychological barriers that block learning and inhibit production. The lessons are pleasant, interesting, and nonthreatening; the teacher gives lots of encouragement, and similar admonitions.
Eclectic Method
Having come to the realisation that each learner possesses distinct:
cognitive and personality traits, it follows that one teaching methodology will not be the most appropriate for all students. The recent tendency has therefore been towards eclecticism, selecting materials and techniques from various sources.
This obviously puts a much larger responsibility on the teacher, for now he should be familiar with a much wider range of materials, exercises and activities than before. It is no longer a matter of picking up the textbook and following it page by page.
Depending on the content and difficulty of the subject matter, the learner would apply one or more of these different types of learning in a given situation. Evidently, if the teacher is to be aware of this multiple individual cognitive and personality factors and be able diagnose and utilise them to the fullest, he must have more than a passing knowledge of the recent investigation in all related sciences. But the problem lies not only in lies amount of information to be mastered but in the organization and application of that knowledge to a practical situation.
An eclecticist tries to absorb the best techniques of all well-known language-teaching methods into his classroom procedures and seeks the balaced development of all four skills at all stages while retaining emphasis onan oral presentation first.He adopts his methods to the changing objectives of the day and to the types of students who pass through his classroom. The eclectic teacher is imaginative, energetic, resourceful, and willing to experiment.His lessons are varied and interesting.
Techniques
1. Some grammatical explanations in native language.
2. Translation as short-cut to conveying meaning.
3. Balanced development of four skills at all stages with emphasis an aural-oral procedures. .
4. Adjustments according to needs of class and personalities of teachers.
Communicative Method of FLT
A comparative study of methods and approaches in TEFL/TESL has shown that the past methodologies seem to have pursued too narrow objectives. A flexible uniform language-teaching strategy should be based on a careful selection of facets of various methods and their integration into a cohesive, coherent working procedure which will suit the realities of the particular teaching situation. It is assumed that the goal of language leaching is the learner's ability to communicate in target language. It is assumed that the content of a language course will include linguistic structures, semantic notions, and social functions. Students regularly work in groups or pairs to transfer meaning in situations where one student has information that the others lack. Students often engage in role-play or dramatizations to adjust their use of the target language to different social contexts. Classroom materials and activities are often authentic to reflect real-life situations and demands. Skills are integrated from the beginning: a given activity might involve reading, speaking, listening and perhaps also writing. The teacher's role is primarily to facilitate communication and only secondarily to correct errors. The teacher should be able to use the target language fluently and appropriately. Written activities should be used sparingly with younger children. Children of six or seven years old are often not yet proficient in mechanics of writing in their own language.
In methodological literature of the last two decades the word "communicative" is the most frequently used one. Communicative method (sometimes referred to as approach) grew out of the works of anthropological linguists who view language first and foremost as the system of communication .This method stresses the need to teach communicative competence as opposed to the linguistic competence: thus functions are emphasized over form. The long and complex history of communicative competence and the importance of the relation between ideas about the nature of language and their social, intellectual and cultural contexts have become a major concern not only for methodologists, linguists, but also for psychologists and social theorists.
Communicative theory enables learners to realize that every speech act takes place in a specific social situation. Psychological factors (the learners' age, sex, complement of the group, pupil's personality, their roles, etc.) as well as linguistic factors (a topic of discussion, type of discourse; a colloquial, informal or formal variety of English (also known as register) play a crucial role here. In other words appropriateness and accessibility of speech in the particular social situation are as equally important as accuracy of pronunciation and grammar.
Communicative competence is the ability of learners to use the language appropriately for the given socio-cultural context. To do this the learners should be able to manage the process of negotiating meaning with the teacher and among themselves.
Communicative competence is not a compilation of items, but a set of strategies or creative procedures for realizing the value of linguistic elements in contextual use, an ability to make sense as a participant of spoken or written discourse by shared knowledge of code resources and rules of language use .
The content of communicative instruction is based on the concept that the process of instruction and the model of communication.
All this does not necessarily mean that the process of instruction is the exact replica of the process of communication. When we communicate, we use the language to accomplish some function, such as persuading, arguing, agreeing, disagreeing or promising. Moreover, we carry out these functions within an appropriate social context. A speaker will choose a peculiar way to express his argument according to his intent, his level of emotion, and what his relationships with the collocutor are. For example, he maybemore direct in arguing with his friend than with his senior.
Furthermore, since communication is a process, it is insufficient for learners to simply have knowledge of target language forms, meanings, and functions. Students must be able to apply this knowledge in negotiating meaning. It is through the interaction between speaker and listener (or reader and writer) that meaning becomes clear, the listener gives the speaker feedback as to whether or not he understood what the speaker has said. In this way the speaker can revise what he has said and try to communicate Ins intended meaning again, if necessary.
In communication, the speaker has a choice of what he will say and how he will say. If the exercise is tightly controlled so that the pupils can only say something in one way, the speaker has no choice and the exchange, therefore, is not communicative. In a chain drill, for example, a student must answer his collocutor's question. In the same way he replied lo someone else's question. Therefore, the student has no choice of form and content and quasi-communication occurs.
True communication is purposeful. The speaker can thus evaluate whether his intent, based upon the information he receives from the listener, has been achieved. If the listener does not have an opportunity to provide the speaker with such feedback, then the exchange is not really communicative.
Communication has parameters which are difficult to prognose, there are no certain guidelines to govern this interactive process. To model communication means to establish basic constraints, its underlying principles which include:
1. individual approach;
2. functional approach (stresses the context rather than the very structure of language);
3. communication-oriented activity;
4. personal involvement;
5. situational approach;
6. novelty;
7. heuristics.
The teacher's role is to have his students to become communicatively competent. To do this students need knowledge of the linguistic forms, meanings, and functions. They need to be reminded that the said categories are in dialectical unity and many different forms can be used to perform a function, as well as a single form can often serve a variety of functions. They must be able to choose from these forms the most appropriate one, given the socio-cultural context and the roles of the interlocutors.
The teacher's role is to facilitate the teaching/learning process, to establish situations which will promote communication. During the activities he acts as an advisor, answering his students questions and monitoring their performance. At other times he might be a "co-communicator" - engaging in the communicative activity along with the Students .