ESL Approaches and Methods

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ESL Approaches and Methods

• Douglas Fleming
• University of Ottawa

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Pendulum Swings in the Field

• our field has been afflicted with many false
  dichotomies, weak conceptualizations, and neglect
  of critical issues and variables (Carroll, 1965,
  p. 102)

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Methods and Approaches

• tension between conceptions of teachers as
  technical implementers of fully developed
  curricula vs. fully developed professionals
• inequalities between SLE theorists and
  practitioners with methods approaches
  (Pennycook,1989)
• discard simple formulas (Stern, l983)
• singular methods are irrelevant to most practice
  (Nunan, 1991)
• Krashen challenged many of the assumptions held
  within the field

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The Communicative Approach

• the most commonly accepted methodology since the
  1980s.
• emphasizes the communicative aspect of teaching
  language, concentrating on function rather than
  form. As Allen and Widdowson (1979) stated, the
  approach involves, "the learning of rules of use
  as well as rules of grammar" (p.141).
• The goal is to create a realistic context for
  language acquisition in the classroom.

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• The focus is on functional language usage and the
  ability to learners to express their own ideas,
  feelings, attitudes, desires and needs.
• Open ended questioning and problem-solving
  activities and exchanges of personal information
  are commonly utilized.
• Students usually negotiate meaning while working
  with authentic materials (realia) in small groups
  activities. 

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• Behaviorism forms the basis of the audio-lingual
  approach (which consists mainly of oral drills).
  The communicative approach assumes that language
  should be taught in the context of practical
  communication and use.
• Hymes (1966) built on Chomskys notion of
  competence to describe what he called
  "communicative competence", the ability the
  people have to communicate (and not merely to
  know the grammatical structure of the language).

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• This led to Canale and Swains highly influential
  four-part model of language competency
• linguistic the more purely language elements
  structures and grammar
• socio-cultural the social and cultural content
  and assumptions underlying language use
• strategic what strategies a user of the language
  utilizes to overcome difficulties or enhance
  communication
• discoursal what forms of discourse and
  conventional use is the communication framed in

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• What is the relationship between explicit
  knowledge of the language and actually using it?
• Ellis (1997) identified 3 positions in the
  research
• Strong Interface Position
• Non-Interface Position
• Weak Interface Position

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• 1) Strong Interface Position
• (Biaystok, McLaughlin, Sharwood-Smith)
• practice turns explicit knowledge of the language
  directly into implicit knowledge
• practice involves supplying the learner with
  opportunities to produce targeted structures so
  as to increase implicit knowledge

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• 2) Non-Interface Position
• (Krashen, Terrell)
• there are many cases of acquisition where no
  learning (formal instruction) occurs
• students often cannot produce the structures even
  though they have excellent explicit knowledge of
  these structures
• even the best learners can only state a limited
  number of rules, far fewer than the number of
  structures they can produce

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• learners benefit from being in the classroom
  through the use of comprehensive input (teacher
  talk) and by given the opportunity for meaningful
  practice of the communicative use of language
• in normal language use, the learner does not have
  the time to make use of explicitly understood
  grammar (at least in oral communication) it is
  only when the learner can attend to form that
  explicit grammar knowledge can be put to use

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• 3) Weak Interface Position
• (Ellis, Long, Selinger)
• explicit instruction is a consciousness-raising
  activity the enhances input
• 1) for comprehension, helping the learner to
  intake (recognise and understand features of the
  input)
• 2) for explicit knowledge, helping a learner
  learn about the structure metalinguistically
• facilitates noticing and noticing the gap
• helps combine structured syllabi with those that
  are functional or task based

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Cognitive Approaches

• characterized by the belief that language
  learning is marked by active mental processes and
  does not occur simply through habit formation

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Focus on Form

• the new trend
• "The focus on form approach considers grammar to
  be heterogeneous, meaning that some grammar
  points are easy to explain and easy to apply, and
  other points are difficult if not impossible to
  apply...
• A focus- on form pedagogy profitably mixes
  explicit and implicit techniques depending on the
  grammar item and the communicative task
  (Kennedy, 2004)

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• Builds on the Communicative Approach
• Is a compromise between the strong and the
  non-interface positions
• Has been developed into structured formulae for
  the K-7 and Secondary panels such as Balanced
  Literacy and Smart Learning

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• These approaches all stress the need to
  distinguish between classroom activities that are
  either
• Meaning focused
• That concentrate on purely communicative
  activities
• Form-focused
• That draw attention to the way language forms
  are used in discourse

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Components of Cognitive Lesson-planning

• 1) Input
• comprehensible models of the target language
  are provided for learners
• 2) Central Processing
• Bottom-up processing consists of decoding input.
• Top-down processing uses the context of one's
  learning to ascribe meaning to what has been
  decoded.
• 3) Output
• 'noticing the gap' between the models of
  input that have been provided and the output
  produced

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Implications for Autonomy and Professionalism

• learners
• become less dependent on rote learning and
  more adept at understanding and manipulating
  linguistic forms in actual communication.
• teachers
• must exercise professional agency in the
  interests of a balanced and thoughtful approach
  to lesson planning and task design