1. English - the most important second language
Over 700 million people in the world speak English and it is the international language of diplomacy, business, science, technology, banking, computing, medicine, engineering, tourism, and Hollywood films. Furthermore two-thirds of German companies anticipate that applicants have thorough knowledge of English. Therefore teachers have to advance students' foreign language competences as early as possible to prepare them for the globalised world outside the classroom. This is a challenging mission and a lot of teachers fail to provide their students with enough language input so that students feel unsure if they are able to fulfil the companies' expectations after graduating school. So teachers have to find a way to teach the five language skills that are, writing, listening, reading, speaking, and mediating, in a meaningful way by involving students in interacting in the target language while their attention is mainly focused on meaning and negligibly on form.
2. Different approaches to syllabus design
General Information
The main problem for a foreign language teacher is how to present the elements of the target language like structures, words and notions, to their students. To help the teachers with their demanding task, different syllabi have been designed. Widdowson points out that a syllabus is "the specification of a teaching program or pedagogic agenda which defines a particular subject for a particular group of learners ... a syllabus specification, then, is concerned with both the selection and the ordering of what is to be taught"(1990,p.127).
The traditional and the holistic syllabus are the mostly used syllabi in the foreign language classroom and it is cr...
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In today’s competitive world, academic is very important and a good grade is most have in order to make a decent career. For the international student, this ESL class is very important. This class teaches us to adopt the writing styles used in many fields and also makes us able to communicate properly within the society. The vast diversity and increasing immigration in this country are making the society more globalized. To stand out among those crowds and make a decent career, we have to do better in learning the way the society understands and ESL class teaches us that. Furthermore, as English is generally the language used by almost everyone working and dealing at all levels, mastering it is important for ESL students to like me. Hence,
In your company, a position that pays a higher salary and has more regular work hours opens up so you decide to apply for the job. Your supervisor tells you that you cannot be considered for the position because although you are fully fluent in English, you have a Vietnamese accent. Instead, another employee who speaks with a British accent is interviewed for the position. In Myriam Marquez’s article “Why and When We Speak Spanish in Public” and Amy Tan’s article “Mother Tongue” we get a taste of what it feels like to be linguistically impaired and discriminated against. Through exploring Tan’s and Marquez’s articles, one can see the importance of learning a certain amount of English so one can get far in life and not be taken advantage of,
The purpose of this assignment is to explain the impact of English language learners in the classroom. As a foreign student, English language learner in the United States faces multiple challenges for achieving academic success. To successfully complete a task, they need to master both English as a language and how it is used in core content classes especially when they are an adult. 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,
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 ...
8). In this regard, instructors can either be independent researchers or work in collaboration with educators who deal with theoretical aspects of SLA. Ellis proposes principles of effective teaching in the SLA context that, to the scholar’s mind, should be made part of the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) program. The aim of these principles may be summarized as follows: people who are trained to become foreign language instructors should be assisted in developing their theory of teaching L2; and teacher training college students should not be given models of teaching but rather offered ideas that they may find useful. At the same time, having a specially designed course of SLA pedagogy means that future foreign language educators will benefit from the experience of their colleagues and will have more insight into the practical results of the studies conducted so far. One of such aspects is referred to by Ellis (2010) who speaks about the importance of corrective feedback role in a language classroom and suggests that teachers-to-be have to be offered some tasks where they would have to evaluate a specific educational situation, listen to, or read, a student-teacher interaction in class, and decide, either independently or in groups, whether any feedback is necessary and, if yes, how it should be introduced (the subsequent section will dwell more on the nature of the corrective feedback). Such research-oriented teaching may also contribute to establishing the most essential attributes of effective teaching, which are still lacking. On this note, Bell (2005) analyzes the outcomes of the questionnaire mailed to and filled out by 1000 foreign language teachers (dealing with French, Spanish and German) to claim that over 50% or nine categories of foreign language teaching are seen as important by all the instructors.
To start with, this research was conducted in Monsenyor Gibert Primary School located in Sant Fruitós de Bages (Bages). It is a two-form entry public school, which covers students from Preschool Education to Primary Education, age 3 to 12. Furthermore, they lack of a CLIL program, but the English teacher uses once a week a book with different topics about all the subjects. Thus, children can acquire some vocabulary about other disciplines in the foreign language.
In the twentieth century, the avoidance of the using L1 in classrooms dominated teachers’ minds; as well it was implemented in many policies and guidelines of language teaching (Cook, 2001). Thornbury (2010) listed a set of arguments against using L1 in L2 classrooms mainly for that the translation of L2 into another language will play negative effects on students’ learning process. He pointed out that the use of L1 will result learners to have a cognitive dependence on their mother tongue at the expense of developing independence TL learning. Although the two language systems are not equivalent in many aspects, students may have an awareness of the notion of equivalence of the two languages if translation serves to convey meanings. Some argue that the use of translation to convey the meaning of the TL is more efficient and more memorable. However, Thornbury (2010) sees the opposite. He stated that the simple and direct way of translation will make L2 knowledge less memorable since the process lacks mental efforts in working out meanings.
Since a language is highly complex and pervasive, all of it (which can hardly be determined) cannot be taught at a time. Moreover all the phenomena related to the language might not be relevant or necessary to be taught to the learner/group of learners. Therefore, successful teaching of the language evidently requires a selection and then an arrangement of the teaching items/materials depending on the prior definition of the objective(s), proficiency level to be developed in the learner, duration of the program, and the like, on the one hand, and on the other, upon the consideration of the learner's needs, lacks, aptitudes, motivation, age, personality memory transfer of training, cognitive style, and so forth. The selection and the sequencing absolutely take place in the syllabus planning stage.
An appropriate language learning curriculum considers the needs of the teacher, his or her students, the target language, and the learning environment. According to Craig (2008) from a Schwabian perspective, any curriculum can be understood in terms of four commonplaces: teacher, learner, subject matter, and milieu as well as the implied existence of a fifth commonplace: self-study (p. 2). For Craig, walking around the curriculum tree is a metaphorical explanation of the way in which a teacher’s self-study examines the teacher, the learner, the subject matter, and the milieu of a
Teaching students a language that is foreign can really be challenging for students as well as for the teachers. The dynamic rule for implementing instructing in a diverse class to English-learners is to use resourceful life skills such as diligence, hard work and patience. There are also methods that are involved in teaching English as a second language that can be creative for the teacher, yet beneficial to the student. First building a strong foundation that is essential to English learners will promote the language acquisition process. To do this teacher’s should always start with preparation. Advance preparation is essential in order to provide necessary adaptations in content area instruction and to make content information accessible for second language lear...
Long, M, H. & Doughty, C, J. ( Eds.).(2009). The Handbook of Language Teaching. Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
They are a kind of support for both teachers and learners. Textbooks provide students a kind of consistency"(p. 95). They have an important influence in the instructional process. ELT textbooks have major function in the current discussion. Sheldon (1988, p. 237) states that “textbooks represent the visible heart of any ELT program”. Textbooks are an almost universal component of English language teaching. ELT textbooks play the role of a teacher, a map, a resource, a restrictor, and as an ideology (Cortazzi & Jin, 1999). Textbooks hold a paramount status as an indispensible ingredient of language teaching profession; therefore, appraising and evaluating them seems to be imperative to assure their efficiency and consistency with the objectives defined and expected of the course. Constant evaluation of textbooks to see if they are appropriate is of great importance. This process enables us to make informed decisions through which student achievement will increase and educational programs will be more successful (Zohrabi, Sabouri & Behroozian, 2012). According to Ahour and Ahmadi (2012), textbooks give suitable knowledge to the learners. Subsequently, in order to collect an applicable textbook that provides the needs of the learners according to their cultures, the textbook evaluation is required. Though there are different standard textbook evaluation
Richards, J. C., Platt, J., & Plat, H. (2000). Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied linguistics. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.
English is, almost certainly, the most important subject that a child can learn in school. Without knowing proper English, a child will not be able to communicate effectively with the English speaking nation. They would be shut off from education and other people in this country. A person who does not poses proper English limits his or her ability to achieve their highest potential. Knowledge of the English language is important to learn to be able to communicate with others, in the teaching of immigrant students, and in finding and maintaining a job.