Language Teaching Methods and Learner Needs

Learner Needs

Learner Needs: When a learner learns a foreign language, he or she has various kinds of needs which influence his/her learning.

• Personal needs: need for praise, need to become more fluent.

• Professional needs: learning English to give presentations.

Approaches to Language Teaching

Approach: Our view of a language or view of how learning a language takes place.

• They involve our beliefs about teaching, language learning, and how we translate all of these into classroom practices.

Presentation, Practice and Production (PPP)

A common teaching sequence:

1. Presentation: of an aspect of language in a context that students are familiar with.

2. Practice: students do an activity to become familiar with it.

3. Production: students will use the language in context, in an activity set up by the teacher.

Lexical Approach

• Learning chunks and complete units to become aware of use.

• To help learners notice themselves how language is typically used.

Functional Approach

Function: What you use language for.

• Students learning how to use the language to express functions.

• Functions based on learners' communicative needs.

Communicative Approaches

Learning language successfully comes through having to communicate real meaning.

Grammar-Translation

Learned by analyzing and applying grammatical rules.

• Studying grammatical rules through grammatical terms and using them in exercises.

Total Physical Response (TPR)

Grammatical structures and vocabulary are most important.

• Responding physically: used mainly with young learners and beginners.

Guided Discovery

• Teacher provides examples of a language item and helps the learners to find the rules themselves (encourages independence).

Content-Based Learning

• Learned best if presented through interesting topics.

• Learn the subject using the language they are trying to learn as a tool for developing knowledge, and so they develop their linguistic ability in the target language.

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)

Students learn a subject and a second language at the same time.

• Learned through acquisition and use.

Task-Based Learning

• Problem-solving tasks (to solve problems, students need to communicate).

Teachers ask students to complete purposeful tasks that elicit the use of the target language.

Structural Approach

Language is a system of structures to communicate meaning.

• Learn through controlled practice (mistakes should be avoided).

Eclectic Approach

Mixing different approaches.