Teaching and Learning Language: Grammar and Vocabulary This essay will focus on the subject of learning and teaching languages. More specifically it will deal with two different, but intrinsically related topics. The first topic investigates the deductive and the inductive approaches to teaching grammar, and the positive and negative aspects of them both. The deductive approach is the more teacher-centered approach, where the teacher explains rules and so forth to the students, while the inductive approach is more learner-centered and encourages the student to guess rules instead of being told by the teacher. The second topic examines how vocabulary can be taught and learned differently from the much used word list method, or glosmetoden. This method concentrates on a list of target vocabulary that the student is supposed to learn: English on one side, and Swedish on the other side. A large vocabulary is essential to proficiency in any language (Lundahl, 2012, p. 334), and the question is what the most efficient way of learning vocabulary is. There are many faults with the wordlist method which makes it an insufficient way of acquiring new vocabulary: the vocabulary items are treated in an isolated manner, often without much context. It is not really worthy of being called a method, since the method to learn the vocabulary is really up to the learner him/herself. It basically relies on the rote learning technique, memorization through repetition. As a language myself, I have tried different methods to learn new vocabulary, and what I have found to be the best for me personally has been learning through massive comprehensible input. It not only is the easiest way of learning, but ensures a good feel for the language. Learning in ... ... middle of paper ... ...ally want to learn. For grammar, we have seen that inductive approach should be the approach most used in the classroom; focusing on the communicative content rather than form is far more motivating than the more teacher-oriented deductive approach, even though in some cases the deductive approach is called for. In vocabulary learning, there are far superior methods of learning than the word list method; concentrating on the content rather than explicitly on certain words often is better, and finding different methods for learning, that suits the needs of the student, is essential. Brown, H.D. (2007) Teaching by Principles. An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. New York: Pearson Longman. Lundahl, B. (2012) Engelsk språkdidaktik. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Nunan, D. (1998) Teaching grammar in context. ELT Journal, vol 52/2. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
I was interested in finding out how teachers can help ELL students to develop this type of vocabulary and whether or not there is a highly effective technique that can benefit every student in class. As classroom teachers we need understand the unique needs of our ELLs. We need to understand that while they are just as capable as our native speakers, they are at a distinct disadvantage because of the amount of information they must process all at once that is in a language they do not fully understand. I have found that there are a number of ways that teachers can foster vocabulary growth in ELLs, I am going to focus on of the most effective: use of graphic organizers.
racie Allen of the comedy team of Burns and Allen was once asked how one should speak French. She replied, “Well, you speak it the same way you speak English; you just use different words.” When trying to assist in instructing English language learners, they usually have many concepts and language abilities that they need to master, as do the teachers that are trying to teach them. With the incorporation of the concepts and approaches to identify and assess the issues and concerns that we have learned in our classroom instruction, such as lesson preparation, building background, and comprehensible input, we can indeed teach our future English language learners all the right moves with all the right words.
When a student learns a new concept, that information is stored in one of two ways - linguistically or non-linguistically. Traditional instructional methods present new concepts linguistically to students; in other words, by having them read and/or listen to the information they are expected to learn. In the student’s long-term memory, that information would be formed in a fashion similar to a sentence. On the other hand, Non-linguistic r...
Moreover, students acquire the knowledge of most new words indirectly, through day to day experiences with
In the article, “Current Developments in Research on the Teaching of Grammar” by Hossein Nassaji and Sandra Fotos two main issues had been discussed. The first one is whether grammar teaching make any differences to language learning where the questions raised are whether grammar should be taught or not. The second issue is what kinds of grammar teaching have been suggested to facilitate second language learning. If grammar should be taught, how much and should it be implicit or explicit grammar teaching? Lastly, the article discussed on the current approaches to grammar teaching in which formal instruction can be integrated with communicative activities which are processing instruction, interactional feedback, textual enhancement, task-based
This report was assigned for us to learn understand language teaching and how it is practiced more. My assigned area is vocabulary learning and teaching. For this I have thought about what my thoughts and believes on the subject of learning and teaching vocabulary were and how they changed after interviewing a teacher of English as a second language and a learner of English as a second language.
Swarbrick, A. (2013) Aspects of Teaching Secondary Modern Foreign Languages: Perspectives on Practice. London: Routledge Falmer.
learning strategies in general (Nation, 2001) are important due to the fact learning of vocabulary often poses some
Richards, J. C., Platt, J., & Plat, H. (2000). Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied linguistics. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.
traditional approaches to vocabulary teaching have unsurprisingly focused on activities for the explicit study of vocabulary. There numerous sources that illustrate a wide variety of vocabulary exercises, including teachers’ reference books such as Techniques in Teaching Vocabulary (Allen, 1983), Vocabulary (Morgan and Rinvolucri, 1986), Working with Words (Gairns and Redman, 1986), Teaching and Learning Vocabulary (Nation, 1990) and
It can be seen from the above definitions that there is no consensus among researchers about specific definitions of language learning strategies with regard to the actual way that learners act or think during language learning processes. Given that there is no unifying concept or theory of language learning strategies, some scholars (e.g., Rubin, 1975; Stern, 1975) proposed that we should study and observe what successful language learners do while learning a language, in order to learn and understand what language learning strategies are. Accordingly, a number of characteristics of successful language learners were identified (Rubin, 1975; Stern, 1975).
Both Krashen (1982) and Brown (1994a) presented teaching principles that have stood the tests of time. Principles equip “enlightened” teachers to incorporate any number of possible methodological, or pedagogical options (Brown, 1994a), in classes tailored to fit particular contexts. Therefore, theory from research into language learning takes on greater importance with a principled approach. This principles enable teachers, as “technicians”
In most institutions of learning today, the classes are made up of students from different ethnic backgrounds. These have different traditions and also speak different languages. In a typical classroom, the majority of the students will speak the same language. The teacher must then employ strategies which will accommodate all the students in the class. This will ensure that every learner gets the best quality of education. This will enable them to be better prepared for career and expressing themselves. In this paper, strategies to assist learners of the English language in their literal development for third grade learners. In the paper, three strategies that can be used by the teacher will be discussed. New strategies and research that will help the English language learners to gain in depth mastery of the language will also be discussed. Due to the widespread learning of the English language in most schools, addressing issues of the language learners is of vital importance. Teachers should have the understanding that cultures are what give someone identity and therefore no student should leave their culture for another. Instead, there should be the blending of different cultures so that students can appreciate and learn from each other.
Another problem is that students usually complain that they forget newly learnt words soon after learning them. Many students learning a new language look at vocabulary instruction as simply looking up the word in a translation dictionary (Huyen&Nga, 2003). This process seems to frustrate the learners because they simply cannot remember the list of words and blame it on themselves (Gnoinska, 1998). Huyen and Nga claimed that researches have shown that the “look and remember” way of vocabulary learning seems to be not very effective for learners of the English language (Huyen&Nga, 2003, p.
Brown, H. Douglas. Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. 2007. San Francisco. Pearson Longman.