语言教学方法评价

The Assessment of Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching During the winter holiday, I had read the book Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching. It is one of the main textbooks of our major, but I didn’t finish reading it during my school days. I decided to finish it because I benefit a lot from it. The book took me to the filed of language teaching, and my horizon has been broadened. The book was written by the English scholars Richards and Rodgers. The main focus of the book is the introduction of approaches and methods in second language teaching. The book can be divided into three parts: major trends in twentieth-century language teaching, alternative approaches and methods, and current communicative approaches. All of the three parts include different language teaching approaches and methods. Before the publish of first edition of the book, in the filed of second language teaching, almost all language educators focused on finding out the best teaching methods of second language teaching. During this period, different teaching schools contended, and different teaching methods emerged. It can be said that it was a period of pursuing methods. In the book, different teaching methods appeared during this period are included. The writer tried to present gallery of language teaching to the readers. After it comes to the 1980s, the foreign language teaching developed rapidly because of the development of technology, the expansion of international communication, and the globalization. With the further study of foreign language teaching, various schools and methods came into being. The notion “teaching without a definite method” was recognized by many people. That is to say, even though there are lots of approaches and methods, there is no good and bad between them. When using a method, the teaching objects, time and many other factors should be taken into consideration. As the writer said “our goal is to enable teachers to become better informed about the nature, strengths, and weakness of methods and approaches so that they can arrive at their own judgment and discussion.”As for me, this is also my purpose to read the book. Only I have a better understanding of different teaching methods and approaches, can I apply them into practice skillfully. In this part, the main contents of the three parts will be discussed. As for the first part- major trends in twentieth-century language teaching, a brief history of language teaching and two traditional language teaching methods are presented. From this historical perspective we are able to see that changes in language teaching methods throughout history have reflected recognition of changes in the kind of proficiency learners need, such as a move toward oral proficiency rather than reading comprehension as the goal of language study; they have also reflected changes in theories of the nature of language and language learning. 500 years ago, it was Latin that was the most widely studied foreign language for it was the dominant language of education, commerce, religion and government in the Western world. From 16-19 century, French, Italian, and English gained in importance. During this period, the Grammar-Translation Method dominated European. But in the mid-and late nineteenth century, opposition to the Grammar- Translation Method gradually developed in several European countries, but this led to the language innovation in the nineteenth century. The most active period in the history of approaches and methods was from the 1950s to the 1980s. The 1950s and 1960s saw the emergence of the Audiolingual Method and the Situational Method. There are many similarities between Situational Language Teaching and Audiolingualism. For example, the order in which language skills are introduced, and the focus on accuracy through drill and practice in the basic structures and sentence patterns of the target language. In fact, however, Situational Language Teaching was the developments of the earlier Direct Method and dose not have the strong ties to linguistics and behavioral psychology that characterize Audiolingualism. The similarities of the two methods reflect similar views about the nature of language and of language learning, though these views were in fact developed from quite different tradition. The decline of these two methods reflects that they have weaknesses. Both of the two methods are teacher-centered. During the teaching process, it is always the teacher who initiates the interaction, and most of the interactions are between the teacher and the learners. In fact, the interactions between learners and learners are much more important. In addition, these two methods just regard the learning process as a “S-R”process, thus neglect the emotions of the learners. What’s more, over emphasis on the accuracy sacrifices the fluency. These weaknesses lead to the decline of these two methods. Part two deals with alternative approaches and methods. This section describes approaches and methods that have attracted support at different times and in different places throughout the last 30 or so years, but have generally not been widely accepted or, in some cases, have not maintained substantial followings. Unlike Audiolingualism and Situational Language Teaching which were developed by linguists and applied linguists, the approaches and methods described in this section were either developed outside of mainstream language teaching or represent an application in language teaching of educational principles developed elsewhere. For example, Total Physical Response, Silent Way, Counseling Leaning, Suggestopedia, Neurolinguistic Programming and Multiple Intelligence. These methods are developed around particular theories of learners and learning, sometimes the theories of a single theorizer or educator instead of starting from a theory of language and drawing on research and theory in applied linguistics. These methods are consequently relatively underdeveloped in the domain of language theory, and the learning principles they reflect are generally different from theories found in second language acquisition textbooks. These alternative approaches and methods of 1970s and 1980s have had a somewhat variety history. Although Total Physical Response, Silent way, Counseling-Learning, and Suggestopedia did not succeed in attracting the support of mainstream language teaching, each can be seen as stressing important dimensions of the teaching-learning process. They can be seen as offering particular insights that have attracted the attention and allegiance of some teachers and educators, but they have each seen their popularity rise and wane since the 1970s. But what makes us happy is that even though these approaches and methods are popular in a short period, their influence is deeply. Especially the humanistic spirit is reflected among these approaches and methods. Both the role of teachers and learners changed somewhat. Learners became the center of the teaching process gradually and the teacher is the facilitator. During the teaching process, learners are encouraged to think independently. The teaching environment becomes relaxed and learner’s emotions are taken into consideration. They are regarded as a whole person. We can see that these alternative approaches and methods give inspirations of developing language teaching methods in later time more or less. The third part brings the description of approaches and methods up to the present time and describes some of the directions mainstream language teaching has followed since the emergence of communicative methodologies in the 1980s. The communicative approaches include Communicative Language Teaching, Natural Approach, Content-Based Teaching, and Task-Based Teaching. Communicative Language Teaching marks the beginning of a major paradigm shift within language teaching in the twentieth century, one whose ramifications continue to be felt today. The Natural Approach belongs to a tradition of language teaching methods based on observation and interpretation of how learners acquire both first and second language in nonformal settings. Content-based Instruction refers to an approach to second language teaching in which teaching is organized around the content or information that students will acquire, rather than around a linguistic or other information type of syllabus. Although content is used with a variety of different meanings in language teaching, it most frequently refers to the substance or subject matter that we learn or communicate through language rather than the language used to convey it. Task-Based Language Teaching refers to an approach based on the use of tasks as the core unit of planning and instruction in language teaching. Task-Based Language Teaching proposes the notion “task”as a central unit of planning and teaching. Although definitions of task vary in TBLT, there is a commonsensical understanding that a task is an activity or goal that is carried out using language. The approaches and methods introduced in this part try to pay more attention to the communicative competence of learners. The teaching process becomes more communicative and the contents in the class are trying to match learners’needs. The teaching contents become more and more authentic which can help learners to apply what they learned in class into practice easily. Even though these approaches and methods are popular now, there are also attacks on these approaches and methods. More recently writers have critiqued them for paying insufficient attention to the context in which teaching and learning take place. Thus we can see that, each approach and method has their own strengths and weakness. There is still along way to go in the filed of second language teaching. The book Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching seeks to provide a comprehensive and comprehensible account of major and minor trends in language teaching methods from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present. To highlight the similarities and differences between approaches and methods, the same descriptive framework is used throughout. It describes approaches and methods according to their underlying theories of language and language leaning; the learning objectives; the syllabus model used; the roles of teachers, learners, and materials within the method or approach; and classroom procedures and techniques that the method uses. This structure of each approach and method makes me to follow the writer easily. In my opinion, this can be a distinctive feature of the book. After I read the book, I have a general concept of the approaches and methods in the field of second language teaching. The approaches and methods intruded in the book deepen my insights. The second language teaching methods go from the period of searching for method to the period of studying on the learners themselves. This shift reflects that we become more and more rational and deep-thinking. When I come cross with so many approaches and methods, I always think about the conditions of foreign language teaching in our country. In China, sometimes the application of these approaches and methods are hard because of the different conditions between Chinese and foreign countries. In recent years, the second language teaching in China has developed rapidly, but the traditional language teaching methods do not change completely. For example, the traditional teaching method---Grammar-Translation Method are still widely used in some areas. What’s more, the special conditions in China also become the obstruction of applying these modern approaches and methods. In the rural areas, because of the teaching conditions and the capacity of teachers, the universal of English teaching still does not come true. Even though some areas have English class, because of the limited capacity of teachers, it is hard to teach English with English. Most of the time, teachers use the mother language to teach English. Thus, it is inevitable to use Grammar-Translation Method. What’s more, we also should take the original purpose of language learning into consideration. With the social development, our country has put forward the competence education, but we can see it’s hard for us to get rid of the influence of examination-oriented education especially the entry examination of the high schools and universities. So many students pay more attention to passing the examination instead of the communicative competence, such as, speaking, listening and so on. Another factor that influences the use of these modern approaches and methods is the language environment. In China, English is learned as foreign language. Only in the English class, learners will have a language environment which makes it different from the study of English in European countries or America. What’s more, in China, almost every class has more than 40 students, and the English proficiency of the students is different, so to apply these modern approaches and methods is still difficult. Faced with so many problems, we should try our best to make some changes, for example, to increase education funding, to improve the teacher’s ability, to change the teaching conditions. The development of the history of language teaching has approved that, the emergence of every approaches and methods is the product of that period. They are deeply influenced by the objective conditions of that period. Now, we live in a period of much communication between different courtiers and rapid change of international politics, so the need of the communicative tool---language becomes urgent. Our attitude to these approaches and methods is that to adopt the strengths of each approach and get rid of the weaknesses. We should bear a basic principle in mind that “there is no definite method in second language teaching and the best teaching method is to teach according to the actual situations.’’