%34تخفیف

PRINCIPLES of LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING

تعداد 79صفحه در فایل word

PRINCIPLES of LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING

Abstract

This study was done with the intention of investigating the effect of innovative teachers on EFL learners’ speaking ability. To accomplish the objective of the study, 80 upper-intermediate EFL learners of Mehr Afarin institute were chosen after going through an OPT and a speaking test (face2face Oral Placement Test) as a pretest and posttest. They were then randomly assigned to two experimental and control groups. The experimental groups consisted of classes 1 and 2 (group A) with two innovative teachers, respectively. Teachers’ innovation was measured by researcher’s observation. In their classes, the innovative teachers used their creativity and innovative methods such as using Skype, video projectors, and English news. Two other classes (classes 3&4), or the control groups (group B), had two non-innovative teachers. After 20 sessions, the two groups were post tested, t-test being employed to compute the differences between the two means. Having run a t-test, the researcher found out that group A outperformed group B on the posttest, concluding that innovative teachers affect EFL learners’ speaking ability.

Key Words:

OPT, EFL learner, Innovation, Communication, Creativity

 

 

 

 

 

1.0. Introduction

Speaking, defined by Hinkel (2005) as a process of oral language production, is one of the cardinal language skills traditionally referred to as the ‘four skills’. The skill of speaking in a non-native language, be it English or any other language is arguably difficult to teach, master and assess (Celce-Murcia, 2001; Cornfield, 1966; Díaz-Rico, 2008; Espinosa, 2003; Phillips, 1993; and Olshtain, 2001).

As linguistic research on second language acquisition has already revealed, there are fundamental differences between speaking one’s mother tongue and speaking a non-native tongue. In this connection, Starr (1996) has commented: “all normal children learn to speak the mother tongue fluently, without benefit of formal schooling, text or classroom” (p.7). Also, writing on the achievement of varying degrees of speaking proficiency in English as a non-native language, Richards and Renandya (2002, as cited in Hojati, 2013) have pointed out that “it is difficult for EFL learners, especially adults, to speak the target language fluently and appropriately”.

Speaking is one way to communicate orally. To enable students to communicate, we need to apply the language in real communication. Brown and Yule (1999) stated that speaking depends on the complexity of the information to be communicated; however, the speaker sometimes finds it difficult to clarify what they want to say. Zhang (2009) argued that speaking remains the most difficult skill to master for the majority of English learners, and they are still incompetent in communicating orally in English.

According to Ur (1996), there are many factors that cause difficulty in speaking, and they are as follows:

  1. Inhibition. Students are worried about making mistakes, fearful of criticism, or simply shy.

  2. Nothing to say. Students have no motive to express themselves.

  3. Low or uneven participation. Only one participant can talk at a time because of large classes and the tendency of some learners to dominate, while others speak very little or not at all.

  4. Mother-tongue use. Learners who share the same mother tongue tend to use it because it is easier and because learners feel less exposed if they are speaking their mother tongue.

While specific goals for change vary, common themes include developing problem-solving and teamwork skills, and using technology to support more powerful learning. Although there are inspiring examples of innovative teaching promoting this kind of learning, research continues to show that in most places classroom practice lags behind goals (e.g., OECD, 2009; Law, Pelgrum, & Plomp, 2010). The sources of this gap between the rhetoric of change and the realities of classrooms range from lack of access to resources and training to lack of clear expectations in systems that are still organized and incented toward traditional measures of achievement. Most students still experience instruction that is largely lecture-based, and extensive national education investments in technology have not yet resulted in widespread transformation of learning opportunities.

In a growing number of countries, the Innovative Teaching and Learning (ITL) Research program is fueling inquiry and discussion among policymakers, educators, and researchers about the distance between teaching and learning visions and practice—and what to do about it. ITL Research, sponsored by Microsoft’s Partners in Learning, investigates innovative teaching practices, the conditions that enable teachers to teach in new ways, and the resulting connection with students’ 21st century skills. As the program progresses, these methods will be adapted into tools and processes that educators can use to examine, discuss, and ultimately improve the educational opportunities they provide to students (Shear et al, 2009).

The general statement is that the reasons behind the innovative teaching and learning methods and approach are the failures and weaknesses of the traditional methods. Traditional methods are not enough to promote adequate level and quality of student learning.

It tends to be teacher-centered methods, while ignoring the student-centered aspects of teaching and learning. In terms of assessment it does not pay enough attention to students’ real knowledge and skills. On the contrary the crucial question without satisfactory answer still exists: Why teach and try to learn innovatively despite the risk associated with it? Adding that from the student’s perspective the innovative methods are not welcomed in any case, situation, learning environment. It is very interesting that however students are critical of conventional assessment methods they admit that they appreciate safety and security comparing to the innovative methods.

There is sometimes a presumption that the reasons behind the innovative methods are to release lectures, to make assessment easier, to reduce costs (RenátaGrosu, 2009). On the contrary students argue that exams, essays which often appear to them are totally irrelevant and pointless tasks. Since it does not measure real learning and would not make sense in real life situations. However a lot of empirical researches, studies, working papers support the idea and beneficial aspects of innovative methods we still do not know enough about the overall success of it.

In order to encourage students to concentrate and participate in the class, teachers need to be creative and innovative. A wide variety of materials and methods of teaching should be explored as students come in different packages with different learning styles and capabilities. But perennial problems plague both the novice and the experienced teacher. The innovative teacher can extract information from texts, audio and visual sources of information for teaching purposes.

Creativity, understanding and encouragement will go a long way towards establishing rapport with our students and towards learning the English language. Using task-based learning to teach English does not fall into the well-tried comfort zone of traditional teaching. The average teacher feels comfortable with the prescribed textbook. The introduction of task-based learning into the classroom may bring about the fear that ‘there is no teaching going on’. This unfortunately denies students the opportunity to immerse themselves in the English language. It is necessary that teachers try using other materials as a teaching resource. The language of communication is real-life or authentic and UN textbook-like in design.

By incorporating hands-on projects into their everyday language classroom, teachers are preparing students to enter the real world. Teachers can create a non-threatening environment to encourage both shy and talkative students to participate. In short, teachers can help students catch the passion for learning English. English speaking ability is very important for people interaction where people almost speak everywhere and every day through English.

In this global era, many people use English as a media of communication and it makes people who come from different countries to be easier in making interaction and communication. As an international language, English is also being taught in Indonesia both in religious or non-religious institution. As an institution of education, Islamic boarding school also has a program of learning English as the way of communication in daily conversation.

1.1. Statement of the Problem

Speaking in L2 has occupied a unique position throughout much of the history of language teaching. One of the main reasons which have made speaking an important skill in English is that people are interested in improving their communication with native speakers. Speaking is the skill which can be improved if learners wish to maintain themselves in an English environment and try to communicate and speak like their mother tongue.

According to Widdowson (1994), speaking is the active production skill and use of oral production. It is the capability of someone to communicate orally with others. Among all of the four key language skills, Khamkhien (2010) considers speaking as the most important in a second language.

A large percentage of the world’s language learners study English to develop proficiency in speaking, because speech is the most basic means of human communication, perhaps the most difficult aspect of spoken English is that it is almost always accompanied via interaction with at least one other speaker. This is one reason why many of us were shocked and disappointed when used our second or foreign language for the first time in real interaction. Oral skills have not always figured so centrally in second language pedagogy. In classes that utilize comprehension-based approaches to language teaching, listening is stressed before speaking.

The ability to speak a second language well is a very complex productive task if attempts are made to understand the nature of what appears to be involved. Investigations must be centered on developing the speaking skill of EFL learners through appropriate course design and materials (Rahimi & Asaei, 2012).

Oral proficiency (Speaking) has been strongly affected by the listening comprehension skill. There was a time when listening comprehension was paid little attention due to the assumption that its main problem to a foreign language had been in identifying the sounds that made up the words (Brown, 1987). Listening comprehension status was changed partly due to Krashen’s emphasis on the role of comprehension and comprehensible input: the input hypothesis.

Then, some new theoretical models of comprehension were derived from cognitive psychology that led to top-down and bottom-up processing. The former emphasized active construction of meaning, based on schema knowledge, inferences, etc. while the latter emphasized the extent to which the listener was successful in decoding the spoken text (Richards and Rogers, 2001).

There are many technological aids that foster the process of speaking; among these tools audio visual texts will provide realistic listening practice for producing speech. Video is an extremely dense medium, one which incorporates a wide variety of visual elements and a great range of audio experiences in addition to spoken language (Richards & Renandya, 2002). The problem of speaking a second language is not limited to a specific group of learners, nor is it restricted to a geographical area; rather, investigations have indicated that different learner groups encounter problems in improving their speaking ability and Iranian learners are not an exception (Rahimi & Asaei, 2012).

Jamshidnejad (2010) has brought together current isolated approaches and provides a comprehensive overview of the sources of oral problems in foreign language learning and communication. Using a systematic approach, he employs the general theory of interpersonal communication to understand the complexities of problem-construction in EFL oral communication. Accordingly, he summarizes the Iranian learners’ problems in oral proficiency in three main categories: ‘communicator based problems’, ‘meaning creating problems’, and ‘contextual problems’ (Jamshidnejad, 2010).

Liu and Jackson (2008) claim that lack of vocabulary was regarded as a main obstacle for oral communication by Chinese English learners. Insufficient opportunities to speak English in lectures and tutorials, lack of focus on language improvement in the curriculum, and the input-poor environment for speaking communication in English outside class apparently contribute to a range of problems that are closely related to the socio cultural, institutional and interpersonal contexts in which individual EFL students found themselves (Gan, 2012).

There are many factors which affect learning English; they include selecting and utilizing a good method of teaching, motivating learners, reforming the relation between teacher and students, a good class management (Brown, 2000), modern training technology (Harmer, 2001) and an appropriate curriculum (Richard & Renandya, 2002; Nunan 1998).

Among these factors, innovation and creativity of teachers in teaching speaking is the most important one (Zarei et al, 2012). Briefly, characteristics of innovative teachers are being reflective, creative, connected, collaborative and inquisitive (Wotten, 2012). What can guarantee permanent learning and a desirable situation involves using an efficient training method, quitting traditional methods, making students think, using innovative factors in teaching and maintaining a dynamic class. Accordingly, the present researcher tries to find out how innovative teachers can affect learners’ speaking ability.

1 دیدگاه برای PRINCIPLES of LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING

  1. Ecbnlp

    what is allergy medicine called types of allergy pills allergy pills for adults

دیدگاه خود را بنویسید

نشانی ایمیل شما منتشر نخواهد شد. بخش‌های موردنیاز علامت‌گذاری شده‌اند *

قبلا حساب کاربری ایجاد کرده اید؟
گذرواژه خود را فراموش کرده اید؟
Loading...
enemad-logo