Essay On Second Language Instruction

Since the 1940s, new solutions to successful English as a Second Language (ESL) instruction have been discovered many times. Like bestseller novels, the latest hit pop songs, and blockbuster films, second-language theories and methodologies enjoy a few months or years in the spotlight and then fade away into oblivion due to many instructors not taking the chance to truly experiment with these instructional methods. There was always a “tried-and-true” methodology from an expert theorist, who may or may not have had first-hand experience learning a second language, to fall on. Douglas Brown, a renowned professor of San Francisco State University, notes that languages were “not being taught primarily to learn oral communication, but to learn for the sake of being ‘scholarly’ or…for reading proficiency” (15). Theories of second-language acquisition did not start to pop up until the instructional objective became oral competence and comprehension. New and effective methodologies of ESL classrooms are necessary in order for learners to obtain and understand the language and its culture; teachers need to consider their teaching style, each student’s learning style, and the classroom behavior, interests, and culture.
Before the late nineteenth century, second-language instruction mirrored the old method of teaching the Latin and Greek languages; lessons were based on more mentally tasking exercises like repetition drills and vocab exercises as well as lots of reading and translating of the ancient texts. These methods were proven successful for a dead language and have been proven successful in many subject areas such as learning formulas in Math, or learning terms and definitions in Science, but have no real value in a language that is ...

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...n is often a welcome relief from guided conversation in the foreign language; and a five-minute session of English only can give students a sense of true accomplishment. Many teachers believe that they only need to make sure the kids are having fun in language class, as though having fun were the one and only criteria for success in ESL. On the other end of the method spectrum, there are language classes whose teachers demean students who do not respond to their textbook approach to language instruction. Neither extreme, fun or misery, is truly effective. The LLS approach takes the best that ESL theorists have to offer and incorporates it with techniques that work in the classroom. In the end, teachers have a huge challenge in teaching their students all the components of English so that they may be formidably competent on all levels in their newly acquired language.