Sunday, March 28, 2010
A video Extract on the Improper Application of Communicative Language Teaching in the EFL context
Please upload one video in the EFL which is not in line with the principles of communicative teaching in your own interpretation (not exceeding 10 minutes).If you encounter difficulty uploading the video, please provide the link to the video. Please explain why and in what ways you consider the video an improper application of communicative language teaching in the EFL context.
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http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5656102197382461157#docid=4102583537820870718
ReplyDeleteIn the video teacher uses a dialogue while teaching. This is a common and useful practice in communicative language classrooms. In CLT, activities that involve real communication promote learning. Language is for communication. The goal of language teaching is to develop "communicative competence". Using the language appropriately in social contexts is important and communicative competence should be acquired. The dialogue is appropriate for real social context. A woman goes to shopping and lost her jacket. The dialogue is between this girl and Mrs Johnson.
The primary units of language are not merely its grammatical and structural features, but the teacher in video gives much importance to sentence structure. When she asks “Where is my jacket?“ the students don’t answer in full sentence. She wants them to answer in full sentence.
In CLT classrooms the teacher is a facilitator of his/her students' learning. He/she is a manager of classroom activities. He/she acts as an advisor and monitors students' performance. However; in the video the lesson is teacher centred. Students are communicators. St-st interactions take place very often. Students benefit from group work, pair work, group discussions, projects...etc. However; in the video there is very little interaction between st- t and no interaction between st-st.
Articles from magazines or newspapers, songs, short stories, advertisements...etc., which are used by native speakers in real life are used as class materials. Although it is possible that this dialogue take place in a real context, materials are not authentic. She draw pictures on the blackboard. She uses the pictures on the board to act out the dialogue. It may be better to find someone to act out the dialogue.
Students should know that many different forms can be used to perform a function, and one single form can serve a variety of functions. However; the teacher in video uses memorization and repetitions. First she wants them to repeat parts of sentence then, she wants them to repeat full sentence. When she stands in front of the pictures of people, students repeat the dialogue. It is like memorization and repetition.
http://video.yahoo.com/watch/4683478/12516913
ReplyDeleteThis lesson is a clear example of improper application of CLT. It takes place in Turkey, and probably in a private course. The teacher tries to teach conditionals, of which I am not sure whether he really knows or not, in an explicit way and without using almost any English. Just the example sentences that they formed are in English.In this sense, it seems much more like grammar translation method lesson.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8779658092744341009#docid=-8354908938888920852
ReplyDeleteIn this video, we have a teacher introducing new vocabulary items in Florida. When we look at as a whole, we can say that he has a good way of teaching vocabulary because students themselves find chances to say different words like synoyms or antonyms. they have a effective vocabulary learning, they had a implicit way of learning but when we think of communicative language teaching this is not an appropriate way. according to communicative language teaching, the teacher should interact with students more that he does her. also he only wants them to say different words about what he is showing. as the focus in on vocabulary, we can not mention communication here which is the main purpose of communicative language teaching. There is no activity for developing communication. In the perspective of communicative approach the teacher should do vocabulary teaching by speaking and by creating social context to make them speak.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletehttp://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5656102197382461157#docid=4102583537820870718
ReplyDeleteThis video shows us that learning through dialogs and repetitions, is important for foreign language learners. In this video the teacher’s teaching style merely focus on communicative language teaching approach. Altough her activities are from real life she gives more importance to learning through repetitions. To make students pronounce the words appropriately, she makes the students repeat the words again and again. Also she uses dialogs to make the situation more real and provide a better remembrance. Moreover, dialog drill is one of the teaching styles of CLT because the students are familiar with the dialogs; they communicate using dialogs in real life.
One of the other styles of the teacher is teaching by visualizing the events. I think it is a very effective and easy way of learning. The teacher draws some pictures on the board and speaks in the way of telling a story. In this way it becomes too difficult to be forgotten by students. When they forget any word, they can remember easily if they try to refresh the picture.
Using the body movements of teacher is another way of effective teaching. She uses role play to provide permanent learning. However, only she herself acts in the classrooms. There is no interaction between student and student. The teacher monitors the class and this video lesson is teacher centered. In terms of it, this lesson does not lead to CLT totally. I think it would be better to give more chance to the students to speak. For example, they can act out the dialogs instead of the teacher. Because the style of the teacher can be boring for students; they only repeat the words, they are very passive. They should speak more in the classroom to be good foreign language speakers. The lesson could be more effective if there was more interaction between teacher and student; and student and student.
The teacher also wants the students to repeat the sentences as a whole; she doesn’t want to hear short sentences. It can be a good way to some extent, but the students couldn’t learn the structures immediately. It causes them to memorize the sentences without paying attention to the structures and forget easily. I think repetition is a good way of learning pronunciation but not learning structures or comprehending well. It should be avoided unnecessary repetitions to provide an actual learning.
Here is the link of the video:
ReplyDeletehttp://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5656102197382461157#docid=-9127686640797781920
This video is very effective for vocabulary tecahing by using Total Physical Response. The topic of the lesson is “body parts” and students learn every word with an action. In the video, tecaher is very creative. In my opinion, he is very rich in terms of tecahing methods. I liked the idea that he brings a doctor’s jacket/uniform and a steteskop to the class. In this way, he has the opportunity to use realia while teaching. This is very beneficial strategy to draw students’ attention to the lesson because if students want to speak or write in English, they can do this very easily. This is because they see what is going on in front of them. By using these materials, teacher has two voluntary students respond to the commands and the rest of the class watch them and sometimes do the same things. By doing the actions, they learn the target vocabulary items with various combinations. All in all, this lesson is very attractive and nice. It seems that students’ knowledge will be permanent because they learn everything by doing themselves. However, this lesson lacks the aspects of Communicative Language Teaching. For example; there is not such a concern that students should create meaning. It wasn’t designed in the way that students would improve their communicative competence. After this lesson, students may not use their knowledge to communicate in a real environment or interact with others. There aren’t any activities requiring interaction in the target language. Actually there is no communication purpose at all in the lesson. These examples can be expanded.
To sum up, this lesson is very useful in itself, but it is an example of improper use of CLT in EFL context.
http://www.ktunnel.com/index.php/1010110A/c7c8f40891292583d90a8ff08160a634e85a5ff882672c542be4829bed99991c4b8470343f8ab955db10fc90f62ceb473ff46ddec47e75aa16008
ReplyDeleteIn the video, the teacher teaches English grammar to her students. She starts asking questions to the students about the present tense and the present continuous. The lesson is more like direct grammar teaching. She does not create a context or she does not give a chance to the students to create their own context. She just gives examples about her own actions for the time being. In fact, it seems she is good at teaching grammar but she is not teaching grammar according to communicate language teaching. As we now, in communicative language teaching it is very important to present the language as a set of grammatical, lexical and phonological rules. However, in the video we see just teaching grammar and she just practicing very little on the topic. In fact, the most interesting part is that she does not give any written notes about the present continuous and the present tense. This comes to me very weird. The students may not be able to take notes appropriately since this is another language. Also, in CLT, communicative competence should be improved during the lesson but after that lesson, I am not very sure that the students are able to use the two tenses. Moreover, at the beginning of the lesson, she may present some materials to prepare students for the lesson instead of directly starting to it. All in all, I think that the lesson may be improved by adding more activities to practice the target language.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI preferred to make my other video comment on a different presentation rather than sessions in IATEFL conference. Here is the link:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y62axpsDtm0&feature=related
In this video, the teacher gives some useful tips for pronunciation and teaching techniques. They are interesting, useful and easy to use. According to him, the teacher shouldn’t pronounce the sentence word by word while writing the sentence on the board in a lesson. Because if she or he does, then the students have problem in making a sentence and pronouncing the words. I think he is right because they should hear the whole sentence as if they are speaking. Other thing that he recommends teachers is not to complete the sentence instead of the students. The teacher should wait for them to complete the sentence or ask help from other students. Otherwise, they don’t do anything but teacher does the learning. We should give them time to express themselves. They should talk in order to learn. He suggests that we should record ourselves while teaching in a class with the help of a camera so that we can see our problems. This is an important point for a person to see himself in action because in this way he or she can see his or her mistakes and can solve his or her own problems about teaching. There is no need to reach to the top success for a teacher but every time he or she must know how to see the problems.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bW15RpON9M
ReplyDeleteThis video demonstrates the communicative language teaching activities. Lesson topics are “my best friend”, “my last vacations”, “my favorite TV program”, “my hobby” and “my favorite food.” Teacher’s name is Rocio Domingez Gaona. (I wrote her name because I think she is a non native speaker of English) I provide the link of first part. In this part, teacher first asks their favorite things like food and TV program. Learners are adults. Firstly they say the names of their best friends and the place that they spent their last vacation etc. Teacher writes them on board. Then, teacher wants them to write vocabulary and expressions related to these topics. I believe she does that in order to activate students’ schemata. She teaches from known to unknown. Therefore, she starts with something students know. That is, topics are related to students’ lives and they write the vocabulary they know. They write the vocabulary and expressions on board. Then, the other teacher (there are two teachers in the class) takes the floor and she makes a group activity. She divides class into groups of three with the help of the other teacher. They do a speaking activity in which they talk about the things that they mention at the beginning of the lesson. Teachers provide example in order to make instructions clear. This activity is quite logical because students talk about the things they know like their favorite TV program. They are not forced to talk about global warming, so they are very relaxed and comfortable while they are talking. They don’t feel threatened. I like this lesson, it is very practice based.
Now, I have realized that I have misunderstood the instructions of this post, so I have uploaded a link that shows a good use of communicative language teaching approach. Therefore, now I gave the link of a video which is about communicative approach but there is almost no communication at all. Teacher is just talking and he is as if lecturing. Lesson is very monotonous. Besides, it is far away from being professional. There is a pizza box on the teacher’s table and it is open. I think that is very distractive for students. Teacher keeps talking with the same tone of voice. I really don’t want to be in that class. I believe a communicative language teaching lesson includes various ways of communication between teacher and students and between students. In my opinion, this lesson should be reorganized from the beginning starting with the class environment.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6iFPh_mlXg
ReplyDeleteHere is a short activity which is done with young learners of English. At the beginning of the lesson, the activity starts very well. Teacher provides the necessary materials to the students. Students seem excited about the activity. Then, to my surprise, teacher distributes the handouts and leaves students. That is a wrong behavior, I think. The role of teacher should be to create an environment in which learners could communicate easily. While creating such an environment, teacher should direct students and give some advice to them. If necessary, he should answer the questions of students and as the most important he should observe learners' performance. While this observation, teacher notes down the mistakes and errors of learners in order to mention these errors later and correct them indirectly. He also has a role to create a communication environment between the students in course of activities. After the competition, teacher gives some token-like green things to the winner group. It is a good thing to reward students. And I think, after they collect some amount of these tokens, they have another good reward also. However, teacher does not give any feedback to students. There may be some question marks in the minds of students. The loser group may have understand something wrong or both the groups are not be able to understand the conveyed meaning of the passage. I think the aim of the activity seems absent in this video. Teacher should load some meaning on activities. He may tell students the aim of this or why they do such a thing or so on. I think the lesson has started well but for the ending part, I cannot say the same thing. All in all, with some revision and arrangements in this lesson, it will be very useful in EFL context and also in line with the principals of Communicative Language Teaching Approach.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clFaR46cDmg&NR=1
ReplyDeleteIn this video, teacher tells a story to the student in company with relaxing music. Students listen to the teacher in absolutely comfortable atmosphere. The teacher tells them to take deep breath and think that this morning is very beautiful before beginning to tell the story. In this way, they can be included in the lesson without having any stress .Moreover , while telling the story , teacher, at the same time, acts it in order that students understand better by visualizing. In Suggestopedia method, music helps long term memorization, games and activities also help memorizing and the learning stress disappears thanks to alternating phases of relaxation and activities. On the other hand, the teacher’s approach to the students is also appreciable. She is very supportive and tolerant to their mistakes. However, this method has some disadvantages although I like some parts of it. When we look at the course in detail, there is almost no interaction among students or little interaction and they are so passive because of being exposed to teacher-centered lesson type. Furthermore, sometimes repetitions and group readings can be boring for students and they limit the time for other activities. Unlike the communicative approach, teacher is talkative and the students are not in the role of the communicators. Then, they don’t create any meaning by their own and the order of the lesson doesn’t allow the students to enhance their communicative competence.
Consequently, this method is not in line with the principles of communicative teaching in many ways despite its some useful parts.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ1tr8kKkGU
ReplyDeleteAudio- Lingual Method is used in this presentation. The teacher begins the class by teaching a dialogue. Firstly, the dialogue is a real-life material which is a good point for it to be useful for students; however the students are to memorize the dialogue point by point. I think, this should not be the case, because it makes students just memorize the dialogue, which does not let them use the language. If the teacher gives a case and asks students to build their own dialogue students have the chance to use their own words and this helps to improve communicative skills. Unfortunately, this is not the case in this video.
Secondly, the teacher corrects the students immediately when they make a mistake. For example, she made them pronounce the word “where” a few times while students’ focus was on the dialogue. She could have wait until the dialogue was practiced for the first time. Making students ask the same question and give the same answer seems meaningless to me, because this does not lead to learning or acquisition of the language.
Role-play is a good way to improve students’ communication skills, but not in the way in the video, because it is meaningless. I think we should let students use their creativity, build their imaginary skills and use the language communicatively. Giving them a dialogue and asking them to read it is not a real role-play I think.
Students should know that different forms can be used to perform a function, and one single form can serve a variety of functions.
To sum up, memorization and repetition are not enough to make students English speakers. We should let them use the language.
Zeynep ÇİÇEK
Communicative language teaching suggests use of real-life situations that facilitate communication. Therefore, the teacher should sets up a situation that students are likely to encounter in real life. Unlike the audio-lingual method of language teaching, which relies on repetition and drills, the communicative approach can leave students in suspense as to the outcome of a class exercise, which will vary according to their reactions and responses. The real-life simulations change from day to day. Students' motivation to learn comes from their desire to communicate in meaningful ways about meaningful topics. However, in the video, the teacher has the dominant role and does not conduct the activity as a student- centered one. She does not try to create a real- life situation which encourages students to speak. Making students listen a native speaker’s speech is a good idea; however, the speech is based on a specific grammatical structure (can, can’t) which cannot be seen in a real life communication. In other words, because she does not use authentic materials to teach the structure, the mood in the classroom is not realistic and her technique fails to satisfy necessary conditions for communicative language teaching.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc1DBTLCj7o
Among the iatefl presentations, I choose Dave Willis’s presentation which is about ‘what is grammar?’ In his study, he tries to find certain answers to some basic questions like ‘Should we teach grammar?’’ How should we teach it?’ and ‘What sort of grammar?’. Of course, his answers depend to a large extent on what we mean by ‘grammar’. Therefore, he looks at this issue from both a theoretical and a practical point of view and tries to tease out some answers.
ReplyDeleteAt the beginning of his presentation, he tries to categorize what ‘knowing grammar’ is; whether knowing the rules or being able to use them (performance) which is a very controversy issue currently. Secondly he points some common mistakes by giving the example of teaching present simple/progressive tense and concludes that grammar is taught as strict, fixed rules which limited learners’ creativity. Thirdly, he asks that how can students figure out complex grammar rules although we do not teach them? Of course, we have knowledge and experience to decide what is what, but how students do so? We don’t teach complex knowledge to them, but they figure it out themselves. Fourthly, he raises some basic questions to teachers like:
1. How can we justify telling learners things that are simply wrong?
2. What, if any, is the role of formal instruction in grammar?
3. How can we maintain that we are teaching grammar if we teach only the simple things and leave learners to work out the difficult things for themselves?
4. How do learners manage to develop a more complete and sensitive grammar than their teachers are able to explain or demonstrate?
Finally, he makes some recommendations (given above) which, I believe, will work with learners quite well. Therefore, I want to share them with you:
• Teachers need to recognize the limitations of what can be achieved by formal instruction. There is no way we can teach a language in its entirety. We will always depend on learners applying their own creativity and initiative.
• Teachers need to recognize that language is a meaning system not a set of ‘dos and don’ts – a form of polite etiquette. The rules that teachers give are designed not to help learners explore how to use a language to create meanings they are designed to help learners avoid error. But learners, particularly in the early stages will always make all kinds of errors. The only way to avoid error is by restricting language use and by restricting learners’ willingness to explore language and experiment language.
• Teachers should offer learners plenty of opportunities to use language both receptively and productively. Learners need exposure to spoken and written language to afford them the data they need to work on in order to build their grammar. They need to produce language in meaningful contexts to enable them to establish and extend their repertoire.
• Teachers should encourage the kind of activity that stimulates learners to think about language. By encouraging language awareness we may help to sharpen learners’ natural learning capacity, their natural tendency to look for patterns and regularities in the language they encounter
• Teachers should celebrate achievement rather than penalize error. We should be doing everything we can to help learners experiment with language and not inhibiting experiment by stigmatizing error.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5656102197382461157#docid=-9127686640797781920
ReplyDeleteTotal physical response is a very effective technique for teaching a foreign language. In this lesson we have a very creative and active teacher. He uses total physical response in his lesson in order to teach body parts. He first covers the things that they have learnt in the previous class and then he uses total physical response to review the body parts with imperatives. By doing this, he involves all the students to the activity and all the students enjoy what they are doing. After reviewing the previous vocabulary he introduces the new topic and while he is doing this he uses a doctor’s jacket and using real objects (realia) is a very good idea for a language class because it takes students attention. When he starts the lesson he chooses two models for the directions and the models follow the directions he gives. While the models are following the directions the other students watch them. I found the lesson very creative and enjoying. The teacher is very keen on involving students to the lesson and all the students benefit the total physical response activities. Although the students do not speak so much in the classroom they learn all the vocabulary items by acting and this provides very effective vocabulary knowledge. Besides there isn’t any interaction between student and student, they just follow their teacher. By looking at the deficiencies above I can say that the video is an improper application of communicative language teaching in the EFL context as there is no interaction no communication among students.
The link for the video is the following
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc1DBTLCj7o
First of all this video is claimed to be a communicative language teaching activity but it is not in my opinion. In this video there are three practice teachers I suppose and I also suppose that they are Turkish. The first teacher comes and asks them some questions like how they are and then they listen to a listening passage from the recorder. Then she wants them answer some questions in their books and also underline the ability structure. In the listening passage there is a lady who is just talking about ability ‘’can’’ and she actually does not speak about other things. The only thing that students can obviously hear is ‘’can’’ structure and short sentences like ‘’I can drive a car but I can’t drive a bus’’ etc. While listening to it, students just try to fill a chart by putting ‘’x’’ opposite to those actions as ‘’can’’ or ‘’can’t’’. After everyone is finished teacher elicits the answers from students. So the only interaction is between the teacher and an individual student which is not applicable in CLT. I think the way the teacher presents the topic and the way she elicits the answers from the students is just the opposite of CLT. I think it is mostly similar present practice approach or audio lingual methods maybe. It has nothing to do with CLT. One of the obvious points that made me surprised was that she even did not try to give them meaning-focused text. The listening passage consisted of short sentences which all included can, so it was so obvious that they were learning a grammatical point. She did not try to give the structure in a meaningful context. It was just like explicit grammar teaching. In that sense it is clear that the approach of the teacher was not in communicative language teaching. I am not against to teach grammar even in a communicative language classroom but this was an obvious example of explicit grammar teaching without being supported with a meaningful context which is a must in CLT.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OibFvGSMwjg&feature=player_embedded
ReplyDeleteThis video is undoubtedly an example of improper style for communicative language teaching. The lesson is probably recorded for sharing it on the net. The teacher tries to explain the structures used when expressing necessity. It is clear that he knows the subject very well and he is aware of what he should teach to his students. However, when it comes to his style , I cannot say the same thing.
He starts directly teaching grammar without creating a context. In this sense, it seems much more like grammar translation method lesson. In the video, firstly the teacher mentions the word necessity and tries to explain it very shortly. Later on, without even reading the sample sentences and whithout any focus on meaning, he explains the form of the sentences. Another problem with his teaching style is that he doesn’t focus only on the specific topic. When he is explaining “have to”, he makes the topic much more complicated by adin extra information about tenses etc. To some extent, the video fits to communicative language teaching, because he explains the grammatical, lexical and phonological rules together very well.But, creating a context is deficient in this lesson. The teacher should create a context before explaining rules, structures. Additionaly, the teacher may present some more sample sentences without focusing on the rule and he should focus on the meaning more. I cannot comment on the communication aspect, because this is just an online lesson.
Merve Bakkal
1691609
Esranur Efeoğlu 1620012
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc1DBTLCj7o
In this video, the students are supposed to do a listening activity which is about the structures “can” and “cannot”. Unfortunately, there is nothing beyond these two structures in the listening audio at all. I couldn’t come across any points that can be described in the framework of the communicative language teaching. It was neither learner-centred (the teacher wants them to listen and put a tick or cross on the sentences on the hand-out while listening to the audio and simply wants them to give answers) nor communication-promoting (The speakers are antive yet the authenticity of the conversation is debatable). Furthermore the teacher made no effort to develop students’s fluency which is essectial for CLT.
Yağmur Sağ 1548841
ReplyDeleteCOMMENTS ON SHEILA THORN’S IATEFL SESSION 10TH APRIL 2010
The presentation includes the purpose of the classroom listening practice, what happens when we listen, dangers associated with our current approach, raising awareness of the challenging features of spoken English, and practical solutions, which I found very effective and applicable in Turkey as well.
Firstly, she talks about some purposes of the classroom listening practice (i.e. to train students to decode authentic listening input). They are useful goals for training students in listening practices. These purposes should also be applicable in Turkey, because the EFL students here really need improvement in listening. They have difficulty in understanding the listening texts, because the sound system of English (intonation, pronunciation, stress) is different from Turkish, and they find English speakers very fast and hard to understand.
Secondly, the presenter explains what happens when we listen, which will help the English language teachers be aware of the procedures and challenges that are faced while their students do listening activities, which are also the same situation for Turkish learners.
Thirdly, she talks about dangers associated with our current approach that is finding the key word and trying to understand the topic, or meaning intended in the text. However, this may lead to misunderstandings. This approach is also widely used in Turkey, and we also need for a return to bottom-up processing that requires to focus on every part of the text.
Fourthly, she mentions the importance of raising awareness of the challenging features of spoken English, like assimilation, elision, linking, etc. These should also be worked on in Turkey, because the students have the most difficulty in those aspects, which they need to be trained on.
Finally, she gives some practical solutions, like gap-filling activities, dictation of short authentic texts, working on minimal pairs phoneme discrimination, etc. She also gives some activities that will help in raising the students’ confidence like corrections made by students. I think that all of them can and should be applied in Turkey.
As a conclusion, I found this presentation very useful, effective, and I strongly recommend that we as English language teachers in Turkey should take them into consideration and apply the techniques that she mentions to our classes.
Sorry, I copied my comments in the wrong place. Do you know how to extract it?
ReplyDeleteYağmur Sağ 1548841
ReplyDeleteComment on a Video improper for Communicative Language Teaching
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjToRuxbaMw&feature=PlayList&p=B2FE566FDDD34E10&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=3
The teacher explains ‘What is this/that/it?’ to students and gives some examples like ‘It is a ruler’. She uses the grammar translation method, and explains the usages of them in Turkish. She writes the Turkish translations of the words under the English versions. She also uses wrong explanations about the difference between ‘this’ and ‘that’, saying that we use this pointing at the objects that we can touch, and ‘that’ with the ones that we do not touch.
As can be understood from the video, there is no interaction between the students and the teacher. In order to motivate the students, the teacher sometimes uses strange voices, which makes her funny, not motivating. During the lesson only the teacher talks. This lesson has no activity for improving the communication side of the language, even there is no exercises of what she explains, namely she only shows some examples translating them to Turkish all the time.
As a follow-up activity, namely a show, they use a puppet show, which I think that they thought that the children will like. The puppets speak in Turkish and ask each other questions including the structure that the teacher tries to teach.
In summary, this lesson is far away from being an English lesson. There are no exercising activities, let alone communication ones. There is no interaction between the students and the teacher. The only focus is the form and usages of grammatical structures, the most of the explanations about which are wrong and made up by the teacher.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletehttp://video.yahoo.com/watch683478/12516913
ReplyDeleteCommunicative language teaching (CLT) is an approach to the teaching of second and foreign languages that emphasizes interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of learning a language. Historically, CLT has been seen as a response to the audio-lingual method (ALM), and as an extension or development of the notional-functional syllabus. Task-based language learning, a more recent refinement of CLT, has gained considerably in popularity. CLT is usually characterized as a broad approach to teaching, rather than as a teaching method with a clearly defined set of classroom practices. As such, it is most often defined as a list of general principles or features. One of the most recognized of these lists is David Nunan’s (1991) five features of CLT:
1. An emphasis on learning to communicate through interaction in the target language.
2. The introduction of authentic texts into the learning situation.
3. The provision of opportunities for learners to focus, not only on language but also on the Learning Management process.
4. An enhancement of the learner’s own personal experiences as important contributing elements to classroom learning.
5. An attempt to link classroom language learning with language activities outside the classroom.
However, in the video which I posted, it seems that the teacher does not aware of these facts.Because the method he uses is what we call as “the damned traditional.” It is a good example for non-CLT. It is quite open that, although the teacher is paid for his jobi he is not doing it fairly. This kind of teaching, in my opinion, is what limits our students and block their creativty. We cannot expect much from these students, because even their teacher cannot use English properly. Therefore, the most important parts of CLT “interaction,communication, language use” are absent in this classroom. Unfortunately, I could not find ant sign of CLT in this instruction.
http://video.yahoo.com/watch/4683478/12516913
ReplyDeleteIndeed this video is not only an improper application of communicative language teaching but rather it may be a very useful source for the issue "how not to teach a language properly"
There is a teacher (I hope) and probably working in dersane. This teacher has the illusion of he is teaching "eğer cümleleri" in other words if conditionals to the students. I did not hear any English from him except the sample sentences.
He tries to teach the subject in a very mechanical way probaly due to the fact that his students are getting prepared for an exam just as mechanical as his lessons. I could not even categorize the method he uses I mean it is not even the oldest and most traditional grammar translation method. Also I hated his using isolated sentences to teach the subject and I don't even think that he is a graduate of ELT department.
http://video.yahoo.com/watch/4681159/12511600
ReplyDeleteIn this video the teacher violates all the principles of CLT. In CLT, the aim of language teaching is to develop communicative competence. CLT makes use of communication to teach language. However, in this video there is not even a communication. Only the teacher speaks and he does not give an opportunity to the students to speak. In CLT exercises, the goal is for the students to communicate their needs and thoughts, without worrying about having perfect grammar. But this lesson is based totally on teaching correct grammar and communication is out of question. CLT is a student centered method and in CLT the teacher is a facilitator not the boss. However the teacher in this video, like in the traditional classroom, is in charge and "controls" the learning. He is in the central role and we don’t even hear the voice of students. Thus, he doesn’t allow students to be in charge of their own learning. Furthermore, there is no interaction between teacher and the students. Besides, teacher does not even try to build a student-student interaction. Moreover, in CLT materials are authentic materials. In this video there is no teaching material other than a board and a marker. In addition to these, in this video the teacher uses only Turkish. He doesn’t form any sentences in English. He continually translates the example sentences into Turkish. Because of all these reasons we can say that this video violates all the principles of CLT and it is based mostly on grammar translation method.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc1DBTLCj7o
ReplyDeleteUntil now all the Communicative Language Teching method that I observed and watched was different from this one. There in no communication in this video at all ! It is just a listening activity with worksheets. Even the seating arrangement is not appropriate for this technique. The students do not talk enough. the teacher just wirtes the correct answer on the board that is already written students paper. There is no point. It is not CLT based lesson. the asking question to the peers is also not CLT because it is prepared beforehand. The students just repeated it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYGJVjzhvnA
ReplyDeleteIn the video, the first teacher shows several pictures of a student and talks about that student’s problems. She asks students to give some advice to the student in the story depending on the situations. The teacher is successful in creating a meaningful context but the lesson lacks in real like communication, I think. There is some communication between the teacher and the students but there is almost no communication among the students.
The next teacher opens a screen on the computer on which there are some fruits, vegetables and some other food. The teacher asks students to find an object in the screen by saying “Can you find…” The student answers “Yes I can/No I can’t” and then s/he goes to the computer and clicks on the object. This is the whole communication in the lesson. They are practicing “can/can’t” structure by repeating the same sentences. In my opinion, it should be more real like. Also, there is no communication among students, either. So, this lesson is not an appropriate communicative language teaching lesson.
http://www.nartube.com/94a4596c60f4d9c3081f1b94c91d5cc51ad3caf0:5bW15RpON9M.html
ReplyDeleteand
http://www.nartube.com/7afd81f7667790e6b1678d9f9b855de2b3e2e34e:0OE6tJ9aWrc.html
These two videos are on the subject of communicative language teaching class activity demonstration: part 1 and part 2. Topics are such: my best friend, my last vacation, my favorite TV programmes, and my favorite hobby my favorite food. Actually, I find this lesson demonstration very problematic. Firstly, the warm up session is problematic and insufficient in this class activity. As far as I know, the basic principles of communicative language teaching are activities that involve real communication that promote learning, activities in which language is used for carrying out meaningful tasks and language that is meaningful to the learner. This video is not the best sample of communicative language teaching; however, there are also some good ideas of teacher, which make me to share this video with you. In the beginning of the class, the teacher asks about the favorite food, friend, hobby and so on, then she writes the headings on the board and then most of the students come and write on the board what their favorite things are. However, it seems that there is no relation between students. They just come and write their ideas, which makes the lesson unclear and what they do is a question mark for students. There are two teachers in the classroom, leading more input that is comprehensible for learners. Then, the teacher makes students to form groups for speaking activity. the students are supposed to speak about their favorite activities and so on; however, the atmosphere that s provided by teachers is not sufficient, I think. The activity does not seem as a communicative learning activity. Asking about the favorite things may bring the need to talk about your own life, but this does not mean that a communicative learning environment supplied. There lies more in communicative approach, I think.
tuğba özcan
Burcu Deryan
ReplyDelete1619980
http://video.yahoo.com/watch/4683478/12516913
This video completely comes into conflict with the communicative language teaching approach. It is rather like the grammar translation method. That the language is being taught as if it is mathematics or science within certain formulas is certainly contradictory with the CLT. Unfortunately as in the video the language is taught like in this format in especially the private teaching instructions in Turkey. There is neither the usage of the target language nor the communication in the classroom. Teacher only tells about the topic and students listen to their teacher. So it is teacher-centered class. Moreover, I think it will not be useful for the any level learners because it is not any lesson such as history, science, geography or etc, on the contrary, it is the language, and that is, it is the culture itself. At this point teachers should try to expose students to the ample, meaningful and pleasurable inputs and learners have to experience the language itself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_ntt5l6Yf8&feature=related
ReplyDeleteIn this video, a guy tries to teach adverbs in Simple present tense. However, he does this in traditional ways. He just writes the adverbs and gives examples on the board in his native language.
In Communicative approach, there must be a communicative activity for the students. Moreover, the authenticity of the materials is very important. In addition, the usability of the learned task in daily life and in communication is the another necessity in Communicative language aproach.
However, this guy seems to be unaware of this aproach:)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc1DBTLCj7o&feature=related
ReplyDeleteIn this video, students listen a record and then answer the questions in the handout. The video obviously took place in Turkey. In my opinion, it is not really good Communucative Language teaching. In CLT, studenst are expected to communcate really, not to answer the questions and paraphrase only. CLT also means being creative, speaking with no fear. A CLT learner should have the ooppotunities in his/her hand, but merely choose to look at. them.
In this video, all the students do is look at their handouts and try to answer the question, which is clearly not a communcation at all.
UGUR UZER
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwRjTLtVqPw
ReplyDeleteWhen I first watched the video, I could not believe that this is an English Lesson. Actually this is not a lesson at all. It is just a game without any purpose. I think also this lesson cannot be related to any method. Communicative language teaching totally conflicts with this method. I do not know this teacher is a real teacher or she knows only some rules and a few words of English and becomes an English teacher. This is a vocabulary lesson. Students are trying to guess the English word which is described in their mother tongue. They use their native language to explain things and students give many answers and eventually they find the word. When they find the word, they do not know how to pronounce the word and teacher does not correct them, because she does not know how to pronounce the word. I know that in Communicative Language Teaching there is no explicit feedback, but I do not think that teacher is aware of such kind of approach. Also I think that at this point some corrections must be done, but who will do that??? Actually this kind of activity would be useful, if they used target language. They would use many words; they would activate their schemata to find the target word. Unfortunately, teacher wastes time for such a useless activity. What I can find only one thing in this lesson related to Communicative Language teaching is that the lesson is learner-centered. This would be comment for this lesson, if students used target language.
I chosed a vide about vocabulary teaching and here is the link of my video:
ReplyDeletehttp://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5656102197382461157#docid=-9127686640797781920
In the video, a vocabulary lesson is shown. The teacher uses Total Physical Response effectively in the lesson. The topic of the lesson is “body parts” and the teacher teaches every word to students with an action. I think the teacher is really competent in terms of tecahing methods. The idea of bringing a doctor’s jacket/uniform and a steteskop to the class is really an effective and useful idea. This is very beneficial strategy to draw students’ attention to the lesson because if students want to speak or write in English, they can do this very easily. This is because they see what is going on in front of them. By using these materials, teacher has two voluntary students respond to the commands and the rest of the class watch them and sometimes do the same things. By doing the actions, the students acquire the target vocabulary items with various combinations. the lesson is really enjoyable and effective. However, this lesson doesn’t utilize Communicative Language Teaching. The students’ knowledge will be permanent because they learn everything by doing themselves but because dua to the fact that the lesson lacs the aspects of Communicative Language Teaching, the students may not use their knowledge to communicate in a real environment or interact with others after the lesson. Actually there is no communication purpose at all in the lesson.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2HHDjJFBX8
ReplyDeleteThere are three different teachers in the video and they all deal with different activities. The aim of them seems to be implementing CLT; however, their activities and ways of implementing CLT are very far from the real aims of CLT in my opinion. This most probably stems from the misconceptions mentioned my Spada. The teachers speak very slowly and they use their gestures and body language in order to help the students understand them; however, they are so stuck with the misconceptions of CLT that they cannot really make the students communicate. The first teacher’s part is teacher-fronted and as Spada says teacher-fronted activities are good in CLT in addition to the group works. However, there is no communication at all in the video because the teacher speaks and the students listen passively. The students do not talk, they sometimes spell the words and they do not seem to be motivated enough to follow what the teacher is doing. The teacher is very keen on spelling and he continues spelling in order to help the students write. However, I think it is very distracting and boring. As Spada states in the article, for a long time learning spelling has been very important and when the fact that the students cannot communicate with their sound or spelling knowledge, the focus has been changed into communication. I think the teacher in the first part has this misconception.
The second teacher tries to make the students complete a task individually by exposing them to the target language. She keeps telling how to complete the task and the students are just trying to understand and do what the teacher is doing. This teacher has the misconception that there should be artistic materials in order to keep the students on task. However, Spada declares that artistic material does not do any good if it does not have any communicative side. The part that the second teacher is shown does not include any communication at all.
The last part is better than others because the teacher tries to create a real life environment. The students are trying to buy travel tickets and the teacher is responsible for selling them. The teacher tries to give a context and make the students enjoy a little. However, I do not think that she achieves this because the only one who is talking is the teacher. She is speaking very slowly in order to be understandable and clear and she uses gestures. The student does not speak and the teacher tries to be sure that the student understands what she is saying by giving the students the signal to nod his head to tell that he understands.
For short, each of these teachers aim at making use of exposure apparently; however, they are not good at making the students communicate.
Özge Ceren ÇELİK
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYGJVjzhvnA&feature=related
ReplyDeleteI think the lesson in this video is an example for inappropriate use of communicative approach. The activities presented in this video by the teachers have nothing to do with Communicative Approach. All of them require students to use the language form(can /can’t) in pre-structured sentences. The fact that the focus of the lesson is introducing “can / can’t” structure doesn’t require limiting the activities and the language used by the students and the teacher so much. All of the activities have the same goals, they all focus on the same skills and content. Let alone CLT, the lesson design is not appropriate for any method, I think; as it is quite unnecessary to fill a whole lesson with the activities which are same and have no different objectives from each other.
The aspect which conflicts most with CLT in this lesson is the fact that there is no communication between students and actually also between students and the teacher. There have been many different views about CLT and many different applications of it. However, the feature that is common in all of these different applications is that it takes communication and genuine use of the target language as the basis. Communication is actually what makes the approach Communicative Approach. In this lesson, however, there is no communication, and there is no attempt to create communication neither in the activities nor by the teachers. Students just complete handouts and answer questions by the teacher by using the same structure over and over. In one part, they even make a drill. I think the teachers were inspired by Audio Lingual Method while designing this lesson and included these activities.
Also, the lesson is certainly a teacher-centered one. Teacher instructs the students in every minute of the lesson. There is even no pair-work or group work. CLT is a learner-centered approach which makes students get involved in the lesson actively, makes them learn the language by using it in genuine contexts and pays attention to students’ needs. In the lesson, students are completely passive and they never use the language actively and the lesson fails to create a genuine context and purpose for communication.
Considering all these aspects, I think that this is surely an unsuccessful application of CLT. I think the teachers in the video should reconsider the aims and functions of the activities they apply. Actually, they seem to need to reconsider their views and understanding of Communicative Approach, as well.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5656102197382461157#
ReplyDeleteIn this video, after greeting teacher directly enters the topic. He wants students to listen and watch him carefully. So students sit silently and watch the teacher passively. The teacher makes a role-play on his own. He always repeats what he says to the students. He shows a demonstration about a salesman and a housewife. After he finishes his presentation, he again wants students to listen him. He repeats his demo one more time. Then he wants students to repeat the words said by salesman and housewife. By repeating these words, teacher tries to make students memorize the dialogue.
During the whole lesson, students repeat this dialogue again and again. Here audio-lingual method is used. Unlike communicative language teaching, according to audio-lingual method language learning is a process of habit formation. It is improper for communicative language teaching principles, it is not related to students’ real life and it doesn’t give students a chance to speak freely. I think this method is not useful to teach students speaking in target language. It may be helpful for teaching some vocabulary items. However trying to memorize and act such an unrealistic dialogue in class is not appropriate.
Here is the link of the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc1DBTLCj7o&feature=related
ReplyDeleteIf this video did not the title of "communicative language teaching", I would never understand it is related to communicative approach. In the video, the teacher distrubutes hand-outs, and she plays a video and wants the students to answer questions. The students just listen and answer. There is no communication indeed. The teacher in the video teaches in a very traditional way. There is no creavity, no action, no converstaion, which is unlike communicative language teaching.
In communicative language teaching, the authenticity of the materials is very important. Also, it should be learner-centered, and the tasks which are learned in the lesson should be used in daily life. However, this video doesn't have anything to do with these.
Özge Tepegöz
1620400
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4298209530271117203#
ReplyDeleteIn this video there are three classroom environment in which the communicative language teaching is carried out, but I will mention the first one, because it seems more improper than the others when the aims and methods of communicative language teaching is considered. First of all, the context the teacher presents to the students is very good. They formed a classroom in a way as if they were in an airplane. The teacher seems to focus on the context, but actually he focuses on the error correction. He is always doing spelling check and makes the students focus on the correct form of the words rather than their meanings. However, as far as I know, communicative language teaching gives importance to production and meaning rather than correction. Also the teacher seems to apply this method to his classroom by talking about a meaningful context. He is always talking about the context, asking questions and repeating his sentences when they are not understood. However, I cannot see any production of students there. The students only listen to the teacher and answer by choosing one of the alternatives the teacher presents to him. I think it is not related to communicative language teaching because as we understand from the name of the method itself, there is no communication. The teacher cannot be sure whether the students understand the context or what is going on there. I don’t see any production of students but communicative method requires the active and meaningful production of the language learner.
The link of the video is http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5656102197382461157#docid=-91276866407977
ReplyDeleteThe video includes an example of using total physical response while teaching English. The teacher gives clear instructions, gives the students necessary feedback, motivates them, and provides them with a well-prepared vocabulary. It is also good for teacher reminding the students of the previous topics.
Total physical response is a good way to be able to include learners in the lesson in an active way. However, in this video learners just obey the teacher’s commands and do nothing other than this. Communicative approach requires both teacher-students and students-students communication in addition to active involvement of the learners to the lesson. Here there is no communication and obeying the teacher’s instructions doesn’t mean active involvement to the lesson. Teacher never asks the learners to speak in any way. The only positive action in this video is teacher’s being friendly and students’ obeying to the teacher’s commands.
If I were in this teacher’s shoes, I would start the lesson with some questions to prepare students’ modes to speak not just to listen and response physically. Also, I would prepare an atmosphere that students communicate with each other. The reason is that if the students feel they are just supposed to listen and obey, they may focus their interests on unrelated things and may pretend as if they understood what the teacher tries to teach.
In communicative approach another important issue is the effectiveness of communication. As teachers we should prepare the topic and the environment as effectively as possible. The students should really develop their communicative skills by the activities we present. The topic should be proper for students’ levels of age, proficiency and it should include authentic materials. This video lacks the important points I mentioned above.
Meral Üçok
1620731
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvWmB7FmAlY
ReplyDeleteThe video above is not just against the principles of CLT, it is against any principles of language teaching except for grammar translation method. All he does is lecturing, without any interaction. He gives away the rules and translate. Okay, he keeps lecturing, but he does not even stop for a second and asks students for feedback about whether they understood the topic or not. Unfortunately, this way of teaching is the mainstream in Turkish education system.
In communicative language teaching, as we know the main principle is "language is for communication". Interaction is promoted and opportunities for students to speak are tried to be created. However, in this video, there is not any kind of communication, let alone communication for language learning purposes. Moreover, he teaches everything explicitly and directly and this is one of the main conflict with CLT.
In brief, in the video, the teacher does not show a single act that promotes communicative competence which is the main goal of CLT.
http://video.yahoo.com/watch/5437982/14318200
ReplyDeleteIn this improper application of communicative language teaching, the teacher tries to teach future tense. I think it is grammar translation method. The way he uses is completely an explicit way of teaching, he tells the rules explicitly, he uses meta-language. In communicative language teaching, we teach the language forms implicitly. The way to teach the items implicitly is creatin different contexts and using the form in these contexts. By this way, the students learn language without being aware that they are being taught, they are exposed to English and this makes the learning more permament and successful. But in this video, the teacher tells what he is teaching, every Turkish correspondence of the English words, suffixes, etc. In communicative language teaching, only English should be used in class to create opportunity to exposition; only when it is too necessary, for example when communication breaks down or there is no other solution to be understood, then Turkish can be used. But in this video, everything is expressed in Turkish. The only thing in English is the example sentences on the board. Rather than creating a context, he only writes one example sentence for each case. In coomunicative language teaching, communication is vital, there should be interaction among the students and the teacher. But in the video, the teacher talks himself and students only listen. The students are so passive in the class; the teacher is the total leader, it is not learner-centered. There is no group work, pair work, even a question asked to the students, which can create an opportunity to commnunicate. In communicative language teaching, accuracy is not as important as fluency, but here all the teacher talks about is grammar and fluency is totally excluded.
http://video.yahoo.com/watch/4681613/12512256
ReplyDeleteThe teacher in the video uses grammar translation method. He always speaks Turkish except his sentences to teach the rules of superlatives. He gives rules at first and wants students to learn superlatives. I think his way is not appropriate, instead of giving the rule directly; he could make students predict the subject themselves. When he wants to make the subject clear fro students, he gives examples from the class. I think examples from themselves is good for attracting students and make the subject easier for them.However he asks the shortest student in the class, this may make the student, Kübra, sorry and distract from the lesson.
Also he sometimes reminds students the previous subject “comparatives”. In my opinion starting to lesson by reminding comparatives and with the help of this subject switching to the new topic is more helpful and understandable. However he starts to the lesson by saying “En’li cümlelere hoşgeldiniz.” He starts to give rules and sometimes he return to the old subject, comparatives. This makes students confused as they learned the comparatives in the last lesson, it is not so clear in their mind.
Consequently the lesson would be much better if he used deductive way of teaching and make transition from previous lesson to new lesson better.
Gülşah UYAR
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5656102197382461157#docid=4102583537820870718
ReplyDeleteIn the video, an example part related to communicative teaching is shown. The teacher mainly focuses on teaching the topic through dialogs. The main purpose of communicative teaching is to provide the learners with the necessary language which they can use in daily life. To succeed this, dialogs are mostly used by the teachers who want to teach language for communicative purposes. In the video, learners were usually adults and I infer that they are learning the language for specific purposes. At this point, we should not expect the teacher to surround the learners with the superfluous details of the language. On the contrary, we need to give just the necessary words learners so that they will not get bored while learning, at the same time attaining the very necessary language.
The teacher in the video generally makes use of dialogs as I said in the beginning. Dialogs are one of the best ways to convey the daily language and routines of the target language community. We can incorporate culture and norms of the community as much as we want. Thanks to dialogs, learners learn both the necessary language and the culture. During the use of dialogs, the teacher applied to repetition a lot, which is also a very good strategy. However, e need to be careful that repetition is not a mere repetition, but contextualized. The teacher presented the dialog as contextualized and repetitions ere also meaningful. Also, the teacher did not force the students to pronounce the sounds perfectly and talk and produce sentences. this was also a good decision because at the beginning levels, we should not expect much production. As we know, comprehension precedes production. If the learners comprehend what is being told and respond correctly, even if with body language, that must be enough for us. However the teacher always made the students repeat the sentences as group. This is a disadvantage, I think because she cannot deal with individual mistakes in this way. She should also be careful about the pronunciation because the learners will need to communicate with the native speakers. It would be better if she let a few students to repeat the sentences individually. Another mistake was that, sometimes the teacher uttered long sentences and expected the students to repeat them. Learners cannot keep those longer sentences in mind and this will cause frustration. The teacher should present the sentences as fragmented. Last point is that, the teacher benefited from the use of pictures to present the dialog. It is also a good strategy because as teachers we need to use different ways to appeal to different senses. Thanks to pictures, we make the leaning enjoyable and acting out will make the comprehension better and remembering will be easier. Through pictures and acting out, we can incorporate the language in the dialogs and they serve communicative purposes for the learners.