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Some new points about Teaching
and Learning English as a Foreign Language
Language
education is the ?teaching ?and learning
of a language.
It can include improving a learner's mastery of her or his
native language, but the term is more commonly used with regard
to second
language acquisition, which
means the learning of a foreign
or second language and which is the topic of this article. Some scholars
differentiate between acquisition and learning. Language education is a
branch of applied linguistics.
Need for language education???????????
?? People need to learn a
second language because of globalization, connections are becoming inevitable among nations, states and
organizations which creates a huge need for knowing another language or more multilingualism. The uses of common languages are in areas such as; in trade, tourism
international relations between governments, technology, media and science.
Therefore, many countries such as Japan (Kubota, 1998) and China (Kirkpatrick &
Zhichang, 2002) create education policies to teach at least one foreign language in
primary and secondary school level. However, some countries such as India, Singapore, Malaysia and Philippines make a second official language in their governing system. However, according
to Gao (2010) many Chinese people are giving enormous importance to foreign language
learning especially learning the English Language.
History of foreign language education
Ancient to medieval period
? Although the need to learn foreign languages is almost as old as human history
itself, the origins of modern language
education are in the study and teaching of Latin in the 17th century. Latin had for many
centuries been the dominant language of education, commerce, religion, and government in much of the Western world,
but it was displaced by French, Italian, and English by the end of the 16th
century. John Amos Comenius was one of many people who tried to reverse this trend. He
composed a complete course for learning Latin, covering the entire school
curriculum, culminating in his Opera Didactica Omnia, 1657.
? In this work, Comenius also outlined his
theory of language
acquisition. He is one of the first theorists to write systematically about how
languages are learned and about pedagogical methodology for language acquisition. He held that language
acquisition must be allied with sensation and experience. Teaching must be oral. The schoolroom should have
models of things, and failing that, pictures of them. As a result, he also
published the world's first illustrated children's book, Orbis Sensualim
Pictus. The study of Latin diminished from the study of a living language to be used in the real world to a subject in the school
curriculum. Such decline brought about a new justification for its study. It
was then claimed that its study developed intellectual abilities, and the study
of Latin grammar became an end in and of itself.
"Grammar
schools" from the 16th to 18th centuries focused on teaching the grammatical
aspects of Classical Latin. Advanced students continued grammar study with the
addition of rhetoric.
18th century
? The study of modern
languages did not become part of the
curriculum of European schools until the 18th century. Based on the purely academic
study of Latin, students of modern languages
did much of the same exercises, studying grammatical rules and translating
abstract sentences. Oral work was minimal, and students were instead required
to memorize grammatical rules and apply these to decode written texts in the
target language. This
tradition-inspired method became known as the 'grammar-translation
method'.
19th?20th century
?? The examples and perspective in this
article deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a
worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. (November 2010)
Henry Sweet was a key figure in establishing the applied linguistics tradition in language teaching..
?? Innovation in foreign language teaching
began in the 19th century and became very rapid in the 20th century. It led to
a number of different and sometimes conflicting methods, each trying to be a
major improvement over the previous or contemporary methods. The earliest
applied linguists included Jean Manesca, Heinrich
Gottfried Ollendorff (1803?1865), Henry Sweet (1845?1912), Otto Jespersen (1860?1943), and Harold Palmer
(1877?1949). They worked on setting language teaching
principles and approaches based on linguistic and psychological theories, but
they left many of the specific practical details for others to devise.
??? Those looking at the history of foreign-language education in
the 20th century and the methods of teaching
(such as those related below) might be tempted to think that it is a history of
failure. Very few students in U.S. universities who have a foreign language as a major manage to reach
something called "minimum professional proficiency". Even the
"reading knowledge" required for a PhD degree is comparable only to
what second-year language students
read and only very few researchers who are native English
speakers can read and assess information written in languages other than English. Even a number of famous linguists are
monolingual.
????? However, anecdotal evidence for
successful second or foreign language
learning is easy to find, leading to a
Page 1
?
discrepancy between these cases and the failure of most language programs,
which helps make the research of second language acquisition emotionally charged. Older methods and approaches such as
the grammar
translation method or the direct method are dismissed and even ridiculed as newer methods and
approaches are invented and promoted as the only and complete solution to the
problem of the high failure rates of foreign language
students.
??? Most books on language teaching list the various methods that have been used
in the past, often ending with the author's new method. These new methods are
usually presented as coming only from the author's mind, as the authors
generally give no credence to what was done before and do not explain how it
relates to the new method. For example, descriptive linguists seem to claim
unhesitatingly that there were no scientifically-based language teaching
methods before their work (which led to the audio-lingual
method developed for the U.S. Army in
World War II). However, there is significant evidence to the contrary. It is
also often inferred or even stated that older methods were completely
ineffective or have died out completely when even the oldest methods are still
used (e.g. the Berlitz version of the direct method). One reason for this
situation is that proponents of new methods have been so sure that their ideas
are so new and so correct that they could not conceive that the older ones have
enough validity to cause controversy. This was in turn caused by emphasis on
new scientific advances, which has tended to blind researchers to precedents in
older work. There have been two major branches in the field of language learning; the empirical and theoretical, and these have almost
completely separate histories, with each gaining ground over the other at one point in time or another. Examples of researchers on the empiricist
side are Jesperson, Palmer, and Leonard Bloomfield, who promote mimicry and memorization with pattern drills.
These methods follow from the basic empiricist position that language acquisition basically results from habits formed by conditioning and
drilling. In its most extreme form, language
learning is seen as basically the same as any other learning in any other
species, human language being
essentially the same as communication behaviors seen in other species.
?? On the theoretical side are, for example,
Francois Gouin, M.D. Berlitz, and Elime de Sauz?, whose rationalist theories of
language acquisition
dovetail with linguistic work done by Noam Chomsky and others. These have led to a wider variety of teaching methods ranging from the
grammar-translation method to Gouin's "series method" to the direct
methods of Berlitz and de Sauz?. With these methods, students generate original
and meaningful sentences to gain a functional knowledge of the rules of
grammar. This follows from the rationalist position that man is born to think
and that language
use is a uniquely human trait impossible in other species. Given that human languages share many common
traits, the idea is that humans share a universal grammar which is built into our brain structure. This allows us to
create sentences that we have never heard before but that can still be
immediately understood by anyone who understands the specific language being spoken. The rivalry of the two camps is intense, with
little communication or cooperation between them. ???????????????????????????????????????????????????
Methods of foreign languages
Main
article: Methods of? foreign languages??????????????????????????????????
??? Language education may take place as a general school subject or in
a specialized language school. There are many methods of teaching languages. Some have fallen into
relative obscurity and others are widely used; still others have a small
following, but offer useful insights.
While
sometimes confused, the terms "approach", "method" and
"technique" are hierarchical concepts. An approach is a set of
correlative assumptions about the nature of language and language learning, but does not involve
procedure or provide any details about how such assumptions should translate
into the classroom setting. Such can be related to second language acquisition theory.
There
are three principal views at this level:
The structural view treats language
as a system of structurally related elements to code meaning (e.g.
grammar). The functional view sees language
as a vehicle to express or accomplish a certain function, such as
requesting something. The interactive view sees language as a vehicle for
the creation and maintenance of social relations, focusing on patterns of
moves, acts, negotiation and interaction found in conversational
exchanges. This view has been fairly dominant since the 1980s.
Examples
of structural methods are grammar translation and the audio-lingual method. Examples of functional methods include the oral approach /
situational language teaching.
Examples of interactive methods include the direct method, the series method, communicative language teaching
language immersion, the proprioceptive language learning
method, the Silent Way, Suggestopedia, the Natural Approach, Total
Physical Response, ?Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling and Dogme language . A
method is a plan for presenting the language material to be learned and should be based upon a selected
approach. ?In order for an approach to be
translated into a method, an instructional system must be designed considering
the
?
Page 2
?
objectives
of the teaching/learning, how the content is to be selected
and organized, the types of tasks to be performed, the roles of students and
the roles of teachers. A technique is a very specific, concrete stratagem or
trick designed to accomplish an immediate objective. Such are derived from the
controlling method, and less-directly with the approach.
Learning strategies
Code switching
Main
article: Code-switching
Code
switching, that is, changing between languages at some point
in a sentence or utterance, is a commonly used communication strategy
among language learners and bilinguals.
While traditional methods of formal instruction often
discourage code switching, students, especially those placed in a language
immersion situation, often use it. If viewed as a learning strategy,
wherein the student uses the target language as much as
possible but reverts to their native language for any element of an utterance that they are unable
to produce in the target language (as, e.g., in Wolfgang Butzkamm's concept of enlightened monolingualism), then it has the advantages that it encourages fluency
development and motivation and a sense of accomplishment by enabling the
student to discuss topics of interest to him or her early in the learning
process?before requisite vocabulary has been memorized. It is particularly
effective for students whose native language is English, due to the high
probability of a simple English word or short phrase being understood by the
conversational partner.
Blended learning
Main
article: Blended learning??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Blended
learning combines face-to-face teaching
with distance education, frequently electronic, either computer-based or web-based.
It has been a major growth point
in the ELT (English Language Teaching) industry over the last ten
years.? Some people, though, use the
phrase 'Blended Learning' to refer to learning taking place while the focus is
on other activities. For example, playing a card game that requires calling for
cards may allow blended learning of numbers (1 to 10).
Skills teaching
?? When talking about language skills, the four basic ones are: listening, speaking, reading
and writing. However, other, more socially-based skills have been identified
more recently such as summarizing, describing, narrating etc. In addition, more
general learning skills such as study skills and knowing how one learns have
been applied to language classrooms.
??In the
1970s and 1980s the four basic skills were generally taught in isolation in a
very rigid order, such as listening before speaking. However, since then, it
has been recognized that we generally use more than one skill at a time,
leading to more integrated exercises. Speaking is a skill that often is
underrepresented in the traditional classroom. This could be due to the fact
that it is considered a less-academic skills than writing, is transient and
improvised (thus harder to assess and teach through rote imitation).
More
recent textbooks stress the importance of students working with other students
in pairs and groups, sometimes the entire class. Pair and group work give
opportunities for more students to participate more actively. However,
supervision of pairs and groups is important to make sure everyone participates
as equally as possible. Such activities also provide opportunities for peer teaching,
where weaker learners can find support from stronger classmates.
Language
education by region Europe
Foreign
language education
? 1995 European Commission?s White Paper "Teaching and learning ? Towards the learning
society", stated that "upon completing initial training, everyone
should be proficient in two Community foreign languages". The Lisbon Summit of 2000
defined languages as one of the five
key skills.
? In fact, even in 1974, at least one foreign language was compulsory
in all but two European member states Ireland and the United Kingdom (apart from Scotland).
By 1998 nearly all pupils in Europe studied
at least one foreign language
as part of their compulsory education, the only exception being the Republic of
Ireland, where primary and secondary schoolchildren learn both Irish
and English, but neither is considered a foreign language
although a third European language is also taught.
Pupils
in upper secondary education learn at least two foreign languages in Belgium's
Flemish community, France, Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Greece, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia and Slovakia.
?? On average in Europe, at the start of foreign language
teaching, pupils have lessons for three to four hours a week.
Compulsory lessons in a foreign language normally start at the end of primary school or the start of secondary school. In Luxembourg, Norway, Italy and Malta, however,
the first foreign language starts at age six, in Sweden at age
seven and in Belgium's Flemish community at age 10. About half of the EU's
primary school
?
Page 3
pupils
learn a foreign language.
English
is the language taught most often at lower secondary level in
the EU. There, 93% of children learn English. At upper secondary level, English
is even more widely taught. French
is taught at lower secondary level in all EU countries except Slovenia.
A total of 33% of European Union pupils learn French at this level. At upper
secondary level the figure drops slightly to 28%. German
is taught in nearly all EU countries. A total of 13% of pupils in the European
Union learn German in lower secondary education, and 20% learn it at an upper
secondary level.
Despite
the high rate of foreign language teaching
in schools, the number of adults claiming to speak a foreign language is
generally lower than might be expected. This is particularly true of native
English speakers: in 2004 a British survey showed that only one in 10 UK workers could speak a foreign language.
Less than 5% could count to 20
in a second language, for example; 80% said they could
work abroad anyway, because "everyone speaks English."
In 2001, a European Commission survey found that 65.9% of
people in the UK spoke only their native tongue.
Since
the 1990s, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages has tried to standardize the learning of languages across Europe (one of the first
results being UNIcert).
Bilingual education
Main article: Bilingual education
?
?? In some countries, learners have lessons
taken entirely in a foreign language: for
example, more than half of European countries with a minority
or regional language community use partial immersion to teach both
the minority and the state language.
?? In the 1960s and 1970s, some central and
eastern European countries created a system of bilingual schools for
well-performing pupils. Subjects other than languages were
taught in a foreign language. In the 1990s this system was
opened to all pupils in general education, although some countries still make
candidates sit an entrance exam. At the same time, Belgium's French community, France, the Netherlands, Austria and Finland also started bilingual schooling schemes. Germany
meanwhile had established some bilingual schools in the late 1960s.
United States
Main article: Language education in the United
States
In
most school systems, foreign language is taken in high school, with many schools requiring one to three years of foreign language in order to
graduate. In some school systems, foreign language
is also taught during middle school, and recently, many elementary schools have
begun teaching foreign languages as well. However, foreign
language immersion programs are growing in popularity, making it
possible for elementary school children to begin serious development of a
second language.
? In late 2009 the Center for Applied
Linguistics completed an extensive survey documenting foreign language study in the
United States. The most popular language is Spanish, due to the large number of recent Spanish-speaking
immigrants to the United States (see Spanish in the United States). According to this survey, in 2008 88% of
language programs in elementary schools taught Spanish, compared to 93%
in secondary schools. Other languages taught
in U.S. high schools in 2008, in descending order of frequency, were French,
German, Latin,
Mandarin Chinese, American Sign Language, Italian,
and Japanese. During the Cold War,
the United States government pushed for Russian
education, and some schools still maintain their Russian programs. Other languages recently gaining popularity
include Arabic.
Australia
? Prior to European colonization, there were
hundreds of Aboriginal languages, taught in a traditional way. The arrival of a
substantial number of Irish in the first English convict ships meant that
European Australia was not ever truly monolingual. When the gold rushes of the
1850s trebled the white population, it brought many more Welsh speakers, who
had their own language newspapers through to the 1870s, but the absence of language education meant that these Celtic languages never flourished.
?
? Waves of European migration after World War
II brought "community languages," sometimes with schools.
However, from 1788 until modern times it was generally expected that immigrants
would learn English and abandon their first language
(Clyne, 1997). The wave of multicultural policies since the 1970s has
softened aspects of these attitudes.
?? In 1982 a bipartisan committee of Australian
parliamentarians was appointed and identified a
number of guiding principles that would support a National Policy on Languages (NPL). Its trend was towards
bilingualism in all Australians, for reasons of fairness, diversity and
economics.
?
Page 4
?? In the 1990s the Australian Languages and
Literacy Policy (ALLP) was introduced, building on the NPL, with extra
attention being given to the economic motivations of second language learning. A distinction became drawn
between priority languages and
community languages. The ten priority languages identified were Mandarin, French,
German, Modern Greek, Indonesian, Japanese, Italian, Korean, Spanish and
Aboriginal languages.
? However, Australia's federal system meant
that the NPL and ALLP direction was really an overall policy from above without
much engagement from the states and territories. The NALSAS strategy united
Australian Government policy with that of the states and territories. It focused
on four targeted languages:
Mandarin, Indonesian, Japanese and Korean. This would be integrated into
studies of Society and Environment, English and Arts.
?? By 2000, the top ten languages enrolled in the
final high school year were, in descending order: Japanese, French, German,
Chinese, Indonesian, Italian, Greek, Vietnamese, Spanish and Arabic. In 2002,
only about 10% of Year 12 included at least one Language
Other Than English (LOTE) among their course choices.
Japan
Main article: Eikaiwa
Language
study holidays
Language school
?? An increasing number of people are now
combining holidays
with language study in the native
country. This enables the student to experience the target culture by meeting
local people. Such a holiday often combines formal lessons, cultural
excursions, leisure activities, and a homestay,
perhaps with time to travel in the country afterwards. Language study holidays are popular across
Europe and Asia due to the ease of transportation and variety of nearby countries.
These holidays have become increasingly more popular in Central and South
America in such countries as Guatemala, Ecuador and Peru.
With
the increasing prevalence of international business transactions, it is now
important to have multiple languages at one's disposal. This is also
evident in businesses outsourcing their departments to Eastern Europe.
Language
education on the Internet
The
Internet has emerged as a powerful medium to teach
and learn foreign languages. Websites that provide language
education on the Internet may be broadly classified under 3 categories:
Language exchange websites Language portals Virtual online schools Support websites
Language
exchange websites
? Language exchange
facilitates language learning by placing users with complementary language
skills in contact with each other. For instance, User A is a native Spanish speaker and wants to learn English; User B is a
native English speaker and wants to learn Spanish. Language exchange websites
essentially treat knowledge of a language as a commodity, and
provide a market like environment for the commodity to be exchanged.
Users typically contact each other via text chat, voice-over-IP, or email.
Language exchanges have also been viewed as a helpful tool to aid language
learning at language schools. Language exchanges tend to benefit oral proficiency, fluency, colloquial vocabulary acquisition,
and vernacular usage, rather than formal grammar or writing skills.?????????????????????????????????
Portals that provide language
content
?There are a number of Internet portals that offer language content, some in interactive
form. Content typically includes phrases with translation in multiple languages,
text to speech engines (TTS), learning activities such as quizzes or puzzles based on language concepts. While some of this
content is free, a large fraction of the content on offer is available for a
fee, especially where the content is tailored to the needs of language tests such as TOEFL, for the
United States.
? In general, language education on the Internet provides a good
supplement to real world language schooling.
However, the commercial nature of the Internet, including pop-up and
occasionally irrelevant text or banner ads might be seen as a distraction from
a good learning experience.
Virtual world-based language
schools
??? These are schools operating online in MMOs and virtual worlds. Unlike other language education on the Internet, virtual world schools are usually designed as
an alternative to physical schools. In 2005, the virtual world Second Life started to be used for foreign language
tuition, sometimes with entire businesses being developed.
??? Foreign language English has gained an
online presence, with several schools operating entirely online, and the British Council which has focused on the Teen Grid. In addition, Spain?s language and
cultural institute
Page 5
Instituto
Cervantes has an
"island" on Second Life. A list of educational projects (including
some language schools) in Second Life can be found on the second life
Educational wiki, or the SimTeach site.
Minority language education
policy
?? The principle policy arguments in favor of
promoting minority language education are the need for multilingual workforces,
intellectual and cultural benefits and greater inclusion in global information
society. Access to education in a minority language is also seen as a
human right as granted by the European Convention on
Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the European Charter for
Regional or Minority Languages and the UN Human Rights Committee. Bilingual Education has been implemented in many countries
including the United States, in order to promote both the use and appreciation
of the minority language, as well as the majority language concerned.
Materials and e-learning for minority language education
Suitable
resources for teaching and learning minority languages can be
difficult to find and access, which has led to calls for the increased
development of materials for minority language teaching.
The internet offers opportunities to access a wider range of texts, audios and
videos. Language learning 2.0 (the use of web 2.0 tools for language
education) offers opportunities for material development for lesser-taught languages and to bring together geographically dispersed teachers and
learners.
Acronyms and abbreviations
?? English language learning and for information on language teaching acronyms and abbreviations
which are specific to English.
CALL: computer-assisted language learning CLIL:
content and language integrated learning CLL: community language learning DELE: Diploma de Espa?ol como Lengua Extranjera DELF: dipl?me d'?tudes en langue fran?aise EFL English as a foreign
language ELT English language teaching FLL foreign language learning FLT foreign language teaching ?????????????????????????L1: first language, native language,
mother tongue L2: second language (or any additional language)
LDL: Lernen durch Lehren (German for learning by teaching) SLA: second language acquisition TELL: technology-enhanced language learning TEFL: Teaching English as a foreign language N.B. This article is about travel-teaching.
TEFLA: Teaching English as a foreign language
to adults TPR: total physical response TPRS: Teaching ?Proficiency through Reading and
Storytelling UNIcert is a European language education system of many universities
based on Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.
?
References
Richards, Jack C.; Theodore S.
Rodgers (2001). Approaches and Methods in Language.
Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN?0-521-00843-3.? Diller, Karl Conrad (1978). The
Language Controversy. Rowley, Massachusetts: Newbury House. ISBN?912066-22-9.? Holden, Susan; Mickey Rodgers
(1998). English language. tMexico City: DELTI. ISBN?968-6820-12-4.? Dorveaux, Xavier (15 July
2007). "Apprendre une langue dans un
monde virtuel". Le
Monde. http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0,36-935560,0.html. Retrieved 15 July 2007.? Dorveaux, Xavier (15 July
2007). "Study and? in Second Life". iT's Magazines. http://www.its-teachers.com/destinations/second_life/second_life03.asp. Retrieved 15 July 2007.? Sachdev, I; McPake, J (2008). "Community Languages in
Higher Education: Towards realising the potential". Routes into Languages. pp. 76. http://www.routesintolanguages.ac.uk/community. Retrieved 26 June 2009.? De Varennes, Fernand (2004). "The right to education and
minority language".
EUMAP: EU Monitoring and Advocacy Program Online Journal. http://www.eumap.org/journal/features/2004/minority_education/edminlang. Retrieved 26 June 2009.?[dead link]?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
??page 6
?
?
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National Center for Research on
Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning (1999-07). "Two-Way Bilingual Education
Programs in Practice: A National and Local Perspective". Center for Applied Linguistics. http://www.cal.org/resources/Digest/ed379915.html. Retrieved 26 June 2009.? Sachdev, I; McPake, J (2008). "Community Languages in
Higher Education: Towards realising the potential". Routes into Languages. pp. 61?62. http://www.routesintolanguages.ac.uk/community. Retrieved 26 June 2009.? Diouri, Mourad (2009). "Language learning 2.0 in
action: web .0 tools to enhance language learning". 4th Plymouth e-Learning Conference 2009. http://www2.plymouth.ac.uk/e-learning/conference_proceedings_2009.pdf. Retrieved 26 June 2009.?[dead link] Ikeda, A. Sho; Doty,
Christopher (14 March 2009). "New Roles for Technology in Language
Maintenance and Revitalization".
1st International Conference on Language Documentation and
Conservation (ICLDC). http://hdl.handle.net/10125/5011. Retrieved 26 June 2009.?
?? 12.Kubota, K (1998) ?Ideologies of English
in Japan? World Englishes Vol.17, No.3, pp.?295?306.
?? 13.Kirkpatrick, A & Zhichang, X
(2002).?Chinese pragmatic norms and ?China English?. World Englishes.Vol. 21, ???pp.?269?279.
?? 14.Gao, Xuesong (Andy). (2010).Strategic Language Learning.Multilingual
Matters:Canada, 2010
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Written by A.Golpaieganni
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Province, Nahavand 1391
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In the name of
the Soul Creating God
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???? ?????? ??? ????
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? Some new points about Teaching & Learning
English as a Foreign Language .
?
?????? ???? ???? ?? ???? ????? ???? ???????
?
?? ????? ???? ?????
?
Prepared & written by
?
Ali Golpayganni
?
2012- 04 - 10
+?????? ??? ?? ????? ??????? ?? 1391?????10:32  ????????? ?????
|?
Source: http://eng-nah.blogfa.com/post-51.aspx
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Source: http://minhgoodman134.typepad.com/blog/2013/01/-2.html
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Panasonic showed off a new tablet device at its CES 2013 keynote today. The Windows 8-based device is less than half-an-inch thick, with a 20-inch screen with 4K resolution for ultra-crisp images. The device is clearly aimed at the professional market, and a promo video Panasonic showed featured a photographer talking about how it can help him with his workflow. The tablet has pen input, and is not only incredibly thin, but also very light.
