I was unable to find the article online so I will just post some snippits here and hopefully get an interesting discussion going.
According to this article the Communicative language teaching (CLT) method “differs from traditional naguage teaching methods in that it emphasizes fluency over accuracy, contextualized language over learning about the language and understanding through pair work and cooperation over doing exercises and memorizing. The prevalaent assumption at present is that CLT is the “best” teaching method available to us.”
This was published by the gwangju communicator and they are realizing that there are more effective ways of teaching a language. This is a good thing however according to the article. “We surved over 200 university freshman in an intensive english program and surveyed them on personal language needs, and more importantly, the role of the teacher. Some of the results of the survey indicate that due to the influence of their culture and its pedagogic practices, the korean survey participants favored the familiar traditional methods over the modern CLT approach.”
This is rather unfortunate and it explains in some wayswhy Koreans are very skeptical on using other methods, I have even asked a lot of my students to try other methods including lingQ and none of them are willing to try it. It has been ingrained in there heads that the only way to learn a language is by studying grammar, word lists and word orders.
If you were in my situation, would you continue using the traditional methods in a classroom even though you know how ineffective they are or would you try out a new method and see if you could actually get it to work in a society that is not ready?
Would you even be allowed to change your method so easily? I mean, if you work for a school it seems that the schools wants the inneffective methods taught aswell, just like the students.
If you can change it, then I would say go for it. If you believe in it and you are the teacher, then you are doing your job correctly by showing the students the most effective way to learn. If they really don’t want to change methods, why don’t you try using LingQ for say a couple of hours a week to start off. This might give them just enough to start seeing that it is fun and it does work.
Actually my situation allows me to teach pretty much anything that I wan’t as long as it is related to English. the concern with Lingq is if I were to get a class working on just LingQ that is alot of basic accounts to subscribe for and I can’t affoard it. However there is a computer lab here so I would more then be willing to try it, especially with my sixth graders. Elementry kids for the most part don’t care what they are doing as long as it is fun and engaging. . . and im trying to teach them that learning a second language is fun. It is just kind of hard to do currently. Many of the parents already feel that I am wasting my time coming up with fun and engaging activities in only english.
If I could strike a deal with Steve on how to set up LingQ in the classroom without paying a hefty fine out of my own pocket I would more then be willing. Maybe post results on kids progress or something? I dunno. . .
