Teaching English as a Secondary Language
Starting from January 2020, the 7th semester of my university education entailed five courses, “Teaching English as a Secondary Language” (TESL), assigned to ma’am Bushra, being one of them. The sessions being engaging and interactive, were free from monotony and usually lasted for two hours. The atmosphere of enthusiasm and motivation created by the instructor encouraged participation in the class, where she effectively played the role of a teacher and a communicator. The class used, to begin with, free-write practice before formal lectures which helped calm the mind, enabling it to remain focused and attentive during the lecture. The class activities centred on group work where every single opinion was valued. In retrospect, communication was induced by the positive reinforcement that followed after class participation.
The course syllabus included Four Teaching methods from ”Techniques and principles in Language Teaching by Diane Larsen Freeman,” and four skills: Listening, speaking, reading and writing from TESL manual. In a month, the “Techniques and principles in Language Teaching by Diane Larsen Freeman” was completed and the class moved on to TESL Manual in February, when the classes were suspended indefinitely due to covid-19, after barely covering listening skills. Given below is the account of topics covered.
Grammar translation method (GTM), also called classical Method, is used to teach students a target language through its literature and grammar. Its proponents believe that to learn a foreign language, students should be taught the grammar and literature of the target language. While teaching, the literary language is held higher in regard than commonly spoken language and is limited to its literature and fine arts. The primary aim of this method is to enable students to read and comprehend literature written in the foreign language by understanding its grammar and vocabulary. The role of a teacher is conventional: he acts as the authority and students are expected to abide by him. According to this method, a successful language learner is a person who can successfully translate one language into the other, the translation materials being excerpts written in the target language about its culture and literature. The focus is on translation instead of fluent communication. Reading comprehension is followed by questions, which students have to answer in the target language. The focus is on the reading and writing skills of that language, not on building speaking and listening skills. Native language plays a facilitator role as the excerpts are translated into it. This is employed to clear the meaning of a passage to students, while most of the class interaction between students and teachers is in L1. There is a major emphasis on errors: mistakes are discouraged and if committed are corrected by other students present. The techniques employed in this method are:
- Translation of literary passages
- Reading comprehension questions
- antonyms/synonyms
- Cognates
- Application of grammar rules
- Fill in the blanks
- Memorization
- Using vocabulary in sentence construction
- composition
The direct language teaching method
It is employed when the goal of teaching is to enable students to carry out a conversation/communication in the target language. The meaning is conveyed directly in this method. Teachers use visual aid demonstrations to make students understand the language. Unlike GTM, this method doesn’t use translation as an aid, there is no use of native. It does not confine the culture of the target language to its literature and fine arts like GTM but believes in studying geography, attitudes, and daily life activities of people where the target language is spoken. Thus, language is spoken, laying the main focus on communication. The role of the teacher is to demonstrate the meaning through visual aids and enable students to form a direct link between the object and its meaning. Regarding vocabulary, the Direct method focuses on using the words in full sentences in terms of its use in different situations instead of memorizing a list of words. The teacher teaches grammar inductively, unlike GMT, whereby students are required to find out the rule from generalized examples. This method is appropriate for teaching topics that involve language use in situations, places, geography, money etc. The teacher and students work as partners in the class, unlike GMT where the teacher is the authority figure. In this, both can ask questions from each other. This method focuses on all the four skills- reading, writing, speaking and listening- but all the reading and writing exercises are dependent on oral communication. Mistakes are corrected through self-correction and are relatively less discouraged.
Following are the techniques employed in the classroom following the Direct method:
- Reading aloud
- Question and answer exercise
- self -correction by students
- Conversation practice
- Fill-in-the blanks exercise
- Dictation
- Map drawing
- Paragraph writing
The Audio-lingual Method
It is an oral-based language teaching method, just like the direct method. However, it considers acquiring target language as a process of habit formation taking its roots in behaviourism. ALM focuses on the structural system of language- morphology (sentence patterns), phonology, and semantics. The teacher, in this method, plays a role model for the target language. New vocabulary and structural patterns are presented through dialogues which are learned through imitation and repetition. The students are taught different sentence patterns through different drills like backward build-up drill, repetition drill, chain drill, single/multiple slot submission drill, substitution drill, and question and answer drill. The response given by students during these drills is met by feedback from the teacher, with good feedback acting as a positive reinforcement for correct habit formation. Errors are strictly discouraged because they can lead to bad habit formation. Like the direct method, there is no use of native language, it is believed to be interfering in the learning of target language because its habits prevent the formation of new habits. The major objective of language teaching should be for students to acquire the structural patterns, sound system and grammatical patterns, they learn vocabulary afterwards as it is considered secondary. Further, the role of culture is expanded by incorporating the everyday behaviour of the people who use the target language. Like the direct method, reading and writing are based upon oral work.
The techniques used in the Audio-lingual method are:
- Dialogue memorization
- Expansion drill
- Repetition drill
- Chain drill
- single/multiple substitution drill
- Transformation drill
- Question and answer drill.
Communicative Language Teaching Method
The major goal of using this method is to enable students to communicate in the target language. To be fluent in it, the students need to know its different forms, functions and meanings. They need to know all the available forms and their use in a given social context. The teacher performs the role of facilitator and communicator and asks students to rephrase the original statements given in the handout, through this they learn a variety of functions of one form. As a facilitator, the teacher’s role is to promote communication within students by assigning them group activities and answering their questions. As a communicator, he/she participates in communication besides students and is less dominant in this method as compared to others. This method prepares students for using target language outside the classroom.
Every student activity has communication as its underlying motive, they have full freedom to express their opinions on different topics and exert their individuality. One of the basic assumptions of CLT is that linguistic competence doesn’t guarantee communicative competence. Knowledge of forms, meanings and functions is required for communicative competence, but students should also know the use of forms in different social situations. CLT focuses on the non-verbal behaviours of target language speakers, prefers Language function over language forms, and tolerates errors of forms. The following techniques are used in this method:
- Authentic materials
- Scrambled sentences
- Language games
- Picture strip story
- Roleplay
Listening skills
listening is receiving language through ears and the ability to give attention to a sound. It involves processing hearing into words and sentences and identifying speech sounds. In an informal speech, where there is the brevity of chunks, slurred pronunciation, informal vocabulary and lots of noise (extra words), the choice of what to listen depends on purpose in mind, called listener expectations. The listeners consciously select, omit and extract the meaning of incoming sounds accordingly. Listening is a skill that can be improved with the help of practice. Hence, students’ listening skills in the target language can be built by exposing them to real life listening in the form of listening texts and tasks. These exercises are more interesting for students to improve listening skills in comparison with traditional texts which are read aloud followed by comprehension questions. The listening texts save a great deal of expense and since they are on recorders, so speed can be adjusted according to students’ needs. Providing students with the context of tasks increases chances of succeeding since they will develop a purpose to listen. With a purpose in mind, students only seek for relevant information and exclude the noise. There are three types of listening activities used in classrooms: i. No overt Response: listening doesn’t require comprehension questions, for example, stories, songs, films, etc. ii. Short responses: listeners perform actions by following the instructions provided in the listening text, for example, true/false, mistake detection, close passages, guessing definitions, skimming/scanning. Iii. Longer Responses: listeners are expected to produce answers from the data provided in the passage. for example, Q&A, summarizing, long-gap filling. Iv. Extended Responses: listening aids extended reading, writing or speaking. for example, problem-solving, interpretations.
Speaking Skills
These skills enable us to communicate effectively and allow the speaker to convey his message comprehensively. Success is when learners communicate effectively, there is participation, high motivation, and average level language accuracy. Certain problems can hinder speech in the targeted language: Inhibition, nothing to say, uneven participation, over-talkative students leading to demotivation of others, and use of Native language. The teacher can cope with these issues by arranging group activities, allowing students to use simpler sentences, and teaching thought-provoking and familiar topics.
Reading Skills
They are defined as the ability to understand a written text and combine it with prior knowledge. It is a visual and cognitive process. Reading is different for everybody; for some, pronunciation is the end goal, for others, meaning extraction. There are three approaches to reading; bottom-up reading, top-down reading, and interactive reading.
The bottom-up approach, used in the 1940s, focused solely on pronouncing and understanding words. The top-down approach is the 1970’s style, stressing on the meaning of the text. The interactive approach is the blend of both- pointing out that word and its meaning coexist.
Another associated concept with reading skills is reading continuum. It has three levels: i. Reading aloud- a primary level usually for kids, ii. Reading along- an intermediary reading level requiring lesser scaffolding, iii. Reading alone- the master level that requires no external guidance. These three levels work in establishing the foundation of one’s reading skills/competency.
Writing Skills
It is a learnt skill used as a means of communication allowing to convey a message with clarity to a larger audience. It’s a physical and mental process. Written discourse is fixed, can be revisited at the writer’s convenience, has explicitness, densely arranged, and devoid of redundancy of ideas. Moreover, a written text is detached from its time and space, accessible anywhere and anytime. Writing skills can be used both as a means and an end, the ideas are the main component as writers communicate with the audience through ideas. Therefore, it demands more attention than other skills- must be organized and abide by the formal aspects of the target language. There are two approaches to writing: Traditional and Process Approach. When a teacher uses a Traditional approach, he selects topics for his students to write on whereas, in Process Approach, students have the liberty to select the topic. whereas in the latter teacher teaches students about the writing process, in the former, the focus is on the product not on the process. The ownership of write-ups rests with the teacher in a traditional approach, while in the process approach, students have it because it’s the product of their thought process. Thus, the teacher is the primary audience in TA and PA has a genuine real-life audience. TA tolerates errors little, but in PA students can make as many drafts before the final. The assessment in TA takes place within the class period but in PA students can submit the write-up later.
A piece of writing is produced after a step-by-step process: students pick up an idea, study about it to the point of generating their ideas, and further writing them down. This a three-stage process: Rehearsing- involves research, drafting- experimentation and errors, and revising- looking for clarity. The assessment criteria depend on the quality of content, expression of ideas, organization of ideas and thoughts, accuracy of form, and structure.
We shifted to online classes in mid of June because of covid19 pandemic, all the online sessions were quite interactive, regardless of connectivity issues. In Terms of class settings, online classes lacked decorum and uniform learning pace. Our familiarity with a typical classroom environment made it hard to adapt. Undoubtedly, there were stark learning differences. Nevertheless, we successfully managed to learn and finish the syllabus timely.