ELT, SLA, TESOL: Key Concepts and Language Teaching Methods
Key Concepts in Language Teaching
- ELT → English Language Teaching
- SLA → Second Language Acquisition
- TESOL → Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
- ELTL → English Language Teaching and Learning
- FLT → Foreign Language Teaching
- CEF → Common European Framework
- TBL → Task Based Learning
- PPP → Present Production Practice
- CLT → Communicative Language Teaching
- TPR → Total Physical Response
- ESOL → English for Speakers of Other Language
- ALTE → Association of Language Testers of Europe
- CLL → Community Language Learning
Lesson Plans: Definition and Components
A lesson plan is a document that maps out the teacher’s intentions for the lesson. It reflects the teacher’s planning decisions as well as the teacher’s understanding of the principles of lesson design.
Parts of a Lesson Plan:
- Aims: items of some skill or sub-skill
- Timetable fit: how the lesson fits into an overall scheme of work
- Assumptions: What the teachers assumes the learners may already know
- Anticipated problems: Problems that are specific to the lesson aim
- Materials: what the teacher plans to use
- Class profile: a description of the class, students level
- Development aims: The teacher personal aims
- Procedure: how the teacher anticipates the lesson will progress
Foreign Language Reformers
- Berlaimont: Created a new method against the classical method: the market methodology. Berlaimont wrote dialogue books with lists of vocabulary between different languages. The problem was that some manuals were not written by academic people and nowadays are hardly in use, but was the precursor of the nowaday communicative approach.
- Antonio de Nebrija: A Spanish grammarian who wrote the first grammar of a vernacular language in Europe. He wrote a Spanish grammar for Spanish people; however, in the fourth part of his book, he took into account foreign students.
- Amos Comenius (1592-1617): Became one of the most important figures in Europe. He included pictures in books for teaching languages and grammar books.
- Franz Ahn and Heinrich Ollendorff: Became very famous and important. Their textbooks became very important in Spain and other cities because their method was deductive (Explanation of grammar and then some exercises), and in Spain people preferred a deductive methodology for English teaching.
- Harold Palmer (1877-1949): He advocated oral and conversational approaches to language teaching: oral repetition reading, group work before individual work, drill exercises before free production, concrete before abstract meaning.
- Albert Sydney Hornby: From the Scientific Period (1920-1970). He associated with this method: The Situational Approach.
Methodology and Exercise Types
- Grammar-Translation → Translation
- Notional-Functional → Conversational dialogues
- Audiolingualism → Oral drills
- Task-based Learning → Tasks
- Communicative → Role play