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Modulo Didactics of English
Modulo Didactics of English
Modulo Didactics of English
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................... 1
UNIT 1
DIDACTICS AND MAIN SKILLS IN LANGUAGE TEACHING................................. 3
UNIT 2................................................................................................................ 14
CURRICULUM, LESSONS AND EVALUATING DESIGN IN LANGUAGE
TEACHING ........................................................................................................ 14
Chapter 4. The ELT curriculum: A flexible Model for a Changing World ............ 15
Curriculum: A definition ................................................................................... 15
Models of curriculum planning ........................................................................ 15
Syllabus, design, methodology and evaluation ............................................... 16
REFERENCES ...................................................................................................... 25
INTRODUCTION
This course is designed for students concerned with their practices in the
contexts of teaching and its impact in the classroom interaction when performing
the activities proposed. The Didactic in Teaching and learning is one of the
disciplines that has relation with different elements in the classroom and with the
formal aspects of teaching, methodology and all elements that interact within the
classroom.
Hence this didactic material of the course Didactics of English aims to
become a valuable tool and guidelines to enhance the practice of language
teachers through two units, each one consisting of three chapters:
Unit 1 Didactics and Main Skills in Language Teaching
Unit 2 Curriculum, lessons and Evaluation Design in Language Teaching
The first unit presents the overall context and importance of different theories
and philosophy conceptions about the language teaching, some useful strategies
to maintain and protect the motivation and as well as how the students can
improve their skills through a combination of extensive and intensive material and
procedures.
Unit two describes the interaction of the different elements in the teaching
and learning process in a foreign language classroom such as the importance of
working with a flexible curriculum, the use of some models of lesson planning and
some approaches to evaluation in teaching language.
The main sources of the six chapters that comprise the didactic material of
this course (Didactics of English) are the online books: Methodology in language
Teaching and Curriculum Development in Language Teaching by Jack C.
Richards, Motivational Strategies in the Language Classroom by Zoltan Drnyei
and A Course in Language Teaching Trainee Book by Penny Ur. At the end of
each chapter you will find the instructions to login in UNAD virtual library and the
links to the corresponding chapters in the e-books.
UNIT 1
DIDACTICS AND MAIN SKILLS IN LANGUAGE TEACHING
Teaching and learning are processes which have happened from ancient
times. One of the disciplines in charged of the description of these processes, and
the relation of them to different elements in the classroom is didactics.
It can be said that didactics may be defined in two ways, as the art of
teaching or as the discipline about teaching. In the first sense, it is the teachers
ability to communicate knowledge to others, to make easier for students to
understand the content they are learning. In the second sense, didactics as the
science refers to clear, ordered and supported concept in theory (Gutirrez,
2001). From this perspective, it can be stated that this discipline has two objects of
study
The teaching learning process
The teaching learning techniques and methods
Therefore, didactics studies the teaching learning phenomena related with the
formal aspects of teaching, methodology and all elements that interact within the
classroom.
In order to reach the goal and to clarify some aspects about the didactics
and its impact in the classroom interaction it is necessary to consider the following
topics:
The changing rationale for foreign language study and the classroom
techniques and procedures used to teach languages have reflected responses to a
variety of historical issues and circumstances.
Tradition was for many years the guiding principle. The GrammarTranslation Method reflected a time-honored and scholarly view of language and
language study. At times, the practical realities of the classroom determined both
goals and procedures, as with the determination of reading as the goal in American
schools and colleges in the late 1920s. At other times, theories derived from
linguistics, psychology, or a mixture of both were used to develop a both
philosophical and practical basis for language teaching, as with the various
reformist proposals of the nineteenth century. As the study of teaching methods
and procedures in language teaching assumed a more central role within applied
linguistics from the 1940s on, various attempts have been made to conceptualize
the nature of methods and to explore more systematically the relationship between
theory and practice within a method. This chapter will clarify the relationship
between approach and method and present a model for the description, analysis,
and comparison of methods.
This chapter reviews theory and research in the realm of language learning
strategies and provides implications for teaching and future research. Learning
strategies are 'operations employed by the learner to aid the acquisition, storage,
retrieval and use of information, specific actions taken by the learner to make
learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective and
more transferable to new situations '.
The motivation to learn, just like the ability to acquire language, is an innate
characteristic of the human species. Therefore, in an ideal world where the
learners' curiosity and inherent motivation has not as yet been curbed or
diminished by a student-unfriendly school system, all learners are eager to learn
and the learning experience is a constant source of intrinsic pleasure for them.
People are usually quite willing to spend a great deal of time thinking and
learning while pursuing activities they enjoy. That learning does not necessarily
have to be a boring and tedious chore (which it very often is). If we could somehow
make the learning process more stimulating and enjoyable, that would greatly
contribute to sustained learner involvement.
protect it from distracting or competing action tendencies but also generate and
increase student motivation. That means such motivational strategies are used to
increase student involvement and to save the action when ongoing monitoring
reveals that progress is slowing, halting or backsliding. (Dornyei, 2001).
What if we apply the same self-regulating principle to the control over one's
motivation? Is there a way of getting learners to take personal control of the
motivational conditions and experiences that shape their own commitment to
learning? In other words, can we envisage ways of getting the learners to motivate
themselves? A positive answer would be of considerable practical importance
because most of the discussion in the motivation literature tends to focus on the
teacher's responsibility and role in stimulating student motivation and, therefore, by
enlisting the students' help, the range and effectiveness of motivational strategies
could be greatly increased.
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The integration of all four skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) can
contribute towards a more-life environment for both teachers and learners, as well
as more meaningful and motivating.
Listening
Speaking
Reading
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Writing
Writing differs from teaching other language skills in two ways. First, even as
late as the 1970s, L2 writing was not viewed as a language skill to be taught to
learners. Instead, it was used as a support skill in language learning to, for
example, practice handwriting, write answers to grammar and reading exercises,
and write dictation. In fact, while graduate programmes in TESOL regularly offered
courses in other skill areas, virtually no coursework was available in teaching L2
writing.
UNIT 2
CURRICULUM, LESSONS AND EVALUATION DESIGN IN
LANGUAGE TEACHING
The second unit provides the characteristics of the curriculum, the lesson
planning and the evaluation in order to help students be successful in the learning
process.
The 'curriculum' is taken to mean all the factors which contribute to the
teaching and learning situation, in the EFL class, planning becomes important
because it guides teachers about their performance in their professional practice to
reach their course goals. Evaluation is an important part in this process because it
let us know how much the course objective was fulfilled. Evaluation is also used as
an instrument that provides information not only about students, but also about the
course organization itself.
Thus, this unit is divided in three chapters: The ELT Curriculum: A Flexible
Model for a Changing World, Lesson Planning and Approaches to Evaluation in
Teaching Language. These are elements that may have an impact in the teaching
and learning process.
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It is clear that it is no longer enough to teach merely the structures and rules
of a language the myriad approaches to curriculum design which have sprung up
in the last four decades under the umbrella of the communicative approach have
illustrated the shortcomings and lack of relevance of the grammar-systems model
of language teaching. Language is communication, and as teachers we must
develop in our learners the ability to communicate effectively in a wide range of
professional and social contexts.
In this chapter, It will study briefly three dominant models of curriculum
design which are rooted in educational traditions and see how they relate to the
field of English language teaching (ELT).
Curriculum: A definition
One of the basic components of the Didactics is the curriculum which
provides the teacher the security of a coherent framework within which there is the
flexibility to respond to the changing needs of learners and which recognizes
learners as active participants in the language learning process who acquire the
theoretical and practical skills necessary for the curriculum design.
Both Clark (1987) and White (1988) refer to the framework developed by
Skilbeck (1982) to explore the value systems underlying educational traditions,
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and relate it to language teaching. The three traditions are identified as Classical
Humanism, Reconstructionism and Progressivism, which they relate to the
structural grammar/systems approach, the notional functional syllabus, and the
process-procedural approach, respectively.
To design a syllabus is to decide what gets taught and in what order. Course
content and procedures will usually be expressed in the form of goals or learning
objectives; within language teaching there are a number of different ways of
expressing objectives, and indeed considerable debate on the role and nature of
objectives.
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Teachers may wonder which way they ought to go before they enter a
classroom. This usually means that teachers need to plan what they want to do in
their classrooms. Most teachers engage in yearly, term, unit, weekly, and daily
lesson planning (Yinger, 1980). Yearly and term planning usually involve listing the
objectives for a particular program. A unit plan is a series of related lessons around
a specific theme such as The Family. Planning daily lessons is the end result of a
complex planning process that includes the yearly, term, and unit plans. A daily
lesson plan is a written description of how students will move toward attaining
specific objectives. It describes the teaching behavior that will result in student
learning.
This chapter addresses the daily planning decisions that English language
teachers make before they enter the classroom. Included in this discussion are the
interactive and evaluative decisions teachers make during and after the lesson.
Richards (1998) stresses the importance of lesson planning for English language
teachers: The success with which a teacher conducts a lesson is often thought to
depend on the effectiveness with which the lesson was planned (p. 103). For the
purposes of this chapter, lesson planning is defined as the daily decisions a
teacher makes for the successful outcome of a lesson. This chapter discusses the
following issues associated with lesson planning:
Why plan?
Models of lesson planning.
How to plan a lesson.
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Why Plan?
plan with effective, appropriate and clearly written objectives, the Implementation of
the lesson plan and the final part of daily lesson planning happens after the lesson
has ended, it is the evaluation of the plan, which can take place during the lesson
too.
These phases provide a clear plan will also maximize time and minimize
confusion of what is expected of the students, thus making classroom
management easier.
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The syllabus and program content: for example, how relevant and
engaging it was, how easy or difficult, how successful tests and assessment
procedures were.
Classroom processes: to provide insights about the extent to which a
program is being implemented appropriately.
Materials of instruction: to provide insights about whether specific
materials are aiding student learning.
The teachers: for example, how they conducted their teaching, what their
perceptions were of the program, what they taught
Teacher training: to assess whether training teachers have received is
adequate.
The students: for example, what they learned from the program, their
perceptions of it, and how they participated in it.
Monitoring of pupil progress: to conduct formative (in-progress)
evaluations of student learning.
Learner motivation: to provide insights about the effectiveness of teachers
in aiding students to achieve goals and objectives of the school.
The institution: for example, what administrative support was provided,
what resources were used, what communication networks were employed.
Learning environment: to provide insights about the extent to which
students are provided with a responsive environment in terms of their
educational needs.
Staff development: to provide insights about the extent to which the school
system provides the staff opportunities to increase their effectiveness.
Decision making: to provide insights about how well the school staff
principals, teachers, and others make decisions that result in learner
benefits.
(Sanders 1992; Weir and Roberts 1994)
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In order to reach the goal and to clarify some aspects about the evaluation,
it is necessary to consider the following topics:
Purposes of evaluation
Weir and Roberts (1994) distinguish between two major purposes for
language program evaluation, program accountability, and program development.
Accountability refers to the extent to which those involved in a program are
answerable for the quality of their work. Accountability-oriented evaluation usually
examines the effects of a program or project at significant end points of an
educational cycle and is usually conducted for the benefit of an external audience
or decision maker. Development-oriented evaluation, by contrast, is designed to
improve the quality of a program as it is being implemented. It may involve staff
who are involved in the program as well as others who are not and may have a
teacher-development focus (Weir and Roberts 1994, 5). The different purposes for
evaluation are referred to as formative, illuminative, and summative evaluation.
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These principles will be emphasized in this topic: The audience for evaluation,
participants in the evaluation process, quantitative and qualitative evaluation, the
importance of documentation and the implementation
Many of the procedures used from the perspective of needs analysis may
have different purposes in conducting evaluation. Here we will consider their role in
evaluation and possible advantages or limitations of each procedure:
Tests,
Comparison
of
two
approaches
to
course,
Interviews,
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Besides, this topic shows some examples that can guide the learning
process of students, gather useful information, transmit them to know whether or
not learned, that is to say, a reflective analysis of the practices that are involved in
planning and teaching a language course. This has involved an examination of the
context in which the program occurs, of the goals, syllabus, and structure of a
course, and how these can be planned and developed during the course.
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REFERENCES
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