Last Thursday we continued with our method presentations, and finally shifted from traditional methods, which focused on linguistic skills, to the communicative approach, that takes into account more skills and aims at making learners communicatively competent.
It was obviously a nice shift, and I really enjoyed both presentations. The first one was a general introduction to the communicative approach, and I felt our classmates did a very good job, because I guess the topic is so wide they could have gotten us lost in a big jungle. Instead, they focused on three activities representative of three different periods of development in the approach. We got to experience them and see the evolution from more guided and still grammar-based ideas, to activities where learners play a much more active role.
Besides, I had a chance to travel back in time and see the "Arthur&Mary" textbook which I have used (not a clue on exactly when, though), and it was interesting to look at it with my "teacher's specs" on. I remember having fun with the textbook, but now that I look at it and compare it with even more "fun" things that could be done, I can see it was still quite old fashioned. I have to say that the dialogue we read was very realistic, though. The situation might not have been too real, especially if the textbook was used with children, like it was with us (it pictures Arthur arriving late at work and making up a lie with Mary's help), but the dialogue itself was good. The pictures also helped a lot, and were really rich and appealing.
One of the main ideas I got out of the presentations was that the activities proposed to learners must be meaningful to them; the students must have their own purpose other than doing as they are told. This is linked with other things we have been reading on scaffolding in another unit: we should leave behind the discussion on the learner-centred approach vs. teacher-directed approach, and think of a learning-centred teaching. Our activities in class have one goal: to promote learning, which is constructed while interacting. Learning for all those involved in the activity, and learning which will reflect on teaching.
From that point of view, learning is somewhat ephemeral and fragile, because it doesn't necessarily have a material form and it can easily vanish if we are not careful enough to make it visible for the whole group, but it leaves permanent traces among those who have actually participated in the learning process. It is the teacher's responsibility to promote engaging as many students as he/she can in the learning process that can potentially happen in each lesson, and that is not always easy. Too often students are not interested in learning what the curriculum says, and very few have the guts to drop out to pursue their real interest, like Steve Jobs (I am thinking of university students now, not pre-primary or primary students). And too often too, the teacher will insist on producing the learning she/him had in mind, and not what students are interested in learning (this happens at all stages in the educational system, but is becomes more common as you "climb up the ladder", because teachers feel the pressure to deliver outcomes through their students' achievements).
The second presentation, on natural way, was very good too. We really enjoyed our italian lesson, and they managed to communicate and make us experience what the method was about perfectly. I liked the idea of lessons seeming casual, the easygoing atmosphere, using realia, gestures and total physical response (TPR). The method seems to draw on earlier methods we have seen, since besides TPR, I saw a lot of suggestopedia in it. I liked very much the concept of i+1, that input which is partly comprehensible, but partly forces you to use inference to create meanings which are new to you. It is a very powerful resource and, again, very much linked with scaffolding, as the +1 bit of the concept will only be grasped with support.
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