Beyond Methods

Beyond Methods
Ways of Teaching in the New Millenium

CLT Principles:

• Learners learn a language through using it to communicate.
• Authentic and meaningful communication should bethe goal of classroom activities.
• Fluency is an important dimension of communication.
• Communication involves the integration of different language skills.
• Learning is a process ofcreative construction and involves trial and error.

Lexical Approach: Main tenets

• Language is a “grammaticalized lexis” = Words (lexis) arranged in a certain way (grammar) to make senseand mean something.
• Lexis: different kinds of multi-word chunks
• Organizing learner’s notebooks to reveal patterns and aid retrieval

Are these binomials correct or incorrect?Discuss your answers with the person sitting next to you.

a) black and blue
b) salt and pepper
c) bad and good
d) go and comee) right or wrong
f) high and low
g) take or give

Key assumptions of Task-Based Instruction (Feez, 1998):

• The focus is on process rather than product.• Basic elements are purposeful activities and tasks that emphasize communication and meaning.
• Learners learn language by interacting communicatively and purposefully while engaged in theactivities and tasks.
• Activities and tasks can be either:
- those that learners might need to achieve in real life;
- those that have a pedagogical purpose specific to theclassroom

The Multiple Intelligences model proposed by Howard Gardner (1983):

• Linguistic (editors, writers, lawyers)
• Logical/Mathematical (engineers, programmers, scientists)
•Spatial (decorators, sculptors, painters)
• Musical (singers, musicians, composers)
• Bodily/Kinesthetic (athletes, craftspersons)
• Interpersonal (salespeople, teachers, politicians)...