Language Teaching Methodology

I want to talk about a few “popular ideas about language learning” that are most useful for me:

1. Language is learned through imitation. However, it is the learner who decides what to imitate. The power of imitation, although important as a basic tool for learning a language, is limited and it is not universal. It does not fit everyone. What is more important than imitation is to use the target language to communicate meaningfully and authentically. This makes complete sense. No matter how well an apprentice learns, it does not mean much unless she puts her skills into practice.

2. Feedback – I have always found that corrective feedbacks most effective in mastering a language. This is why adult English learners, including me, spend a much longer time learning English compared with young children. Still, adult learners may never be able to master the target language because they lack the privilege that the young students have at school - formally receiving corrective feedbacks from professional teachers.

3. The influence of the learner’s first language can be good and bad at the same time. It is good because it provides a storehouse of knowledge about language and a reference system that the learner can always go back to. It is bad because the learner tends to copy the same structures and grammatical rules from her native language to the target language. I have witnessed both children and adult ESL learners make many of the same mistakes.

4. The most effective way of learning vocabulary is to expand it through reading in general and also through reading materials that are appropriate in level and content. This has verified what I have learned from theories, from my teaching practice and my own English learning experience. Level appropriate means the unknown words in a reading article should not exceed 90% (I have also read that it should be 95%). The idea is that there should be only a few unknown words when reading. Content appropriate means the reading materials should be interesting and meaningful.

5. The cultural diversity of today’s world has made practicality more valuable than the traditional ideas of accuracy. Because the standard for accuracy has changed, we have to be flexible with the idea of being accurate.

6. Grammar must be taught in sentence context. It definitely cannot be taught separately and isolated. This is especially true with younger children. However, no matter what age group a teacher teaches, getting students involved is a must. Otherwise, the teaching cannot go on effectively. Teaching grammar dryly and isolated from context will certainly turn students off. I asked my students whether they read the grammar notes in the textbook, and they said no unanimously.

7. Errors that students make are a resource for a teacher to understand why such errors are made. Usually, it reflects the learner is inappropriately transferring her first language patterns to a target second language and over-generalizing the second language’s rules (for example, yesterday I read this sentence from an article written by a Chinese woman: “You hurted me so much.”)

8. It is key to always have high expectation for students, and therefore to always keep the learning challenging. I have purchased a Chinese language textbook and workbook written by a New Jersey public school teacher. I chose her books because they are accessible, step by step, interesting and easy to use. It is her goal to make Chinese learning easy. However, she told me that some of her students still could not functionally communicate in Chinese after four years of studying. After receiving the books recently, I realized that they lacked challenge. The content deliberately avoids higher-level vocabulary, sentence patterns and grammars. I would have added more difficult materials to the book.

9. Cooperative learning – I have to remind myself repeatedly that I have to give students time to practice in class. I was so used to giving a teacher-centered lecture, although interactive and dialogue-based, that I tended to give very little time for students to practice. I have noticed the difference between giving more time for students to speak with each other and giving little time. Cooperative learning shifts the center from a teacher to students. It often makes the classroom more dynamic.