Unit 15

Approaches to language teaching

As every single teacher know there is not a perfect approach or method to teach a language since it depends on how well teachers use each of them to make the learning meaningful and successfully. However, in this unit the terms approaches and methods will be used interchangeably as they are in the TKT to refer to views of language and language learning.

Let’s mention some of those methods and approaches by citing the most important aspects from each of them for instance:

Presentation, practice and production (PPP) it is based on grammatical structures and functions the main parts of language this also involve some useful classroom practices such as: lessons move from the presentation stage to the practice stage to the production stage and typical activities are situational presentations and miming at the presentation stage, drills at the controlled activities. Meanwhile, for lexical approach it is focused on vocabulary which consists of individual words and different kinds of chunks such as collocations, idioms and fixed expressions. Finally, content and language integrated learning (CLIL) in it the language serves to communicate meaning referring to view of language learning it is learnt mainly through acquisition whereas the syllabus is based round learning about the subject matter an cognitive(thinking and learning) skills relate to a school subject.

To sum up, many teachers want to know which approach to teaching is better but in fact it is difficult to say that one approach is better than another since each of those methods and approaches are focused on different purposes to teach the language the key is that teachers have to choose the ones which can help students in their learning process.

Here you have some links which contain useful information:

http://es.slideshare.net/emma.a/language-teaching-approaches-and-methods

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/knowledge-database/approach