EXERCISES ABOUT SECOND LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODS (Didáctica)

EXERCISES ABOUT SECOND LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODS

1.    It has been said that the Grammar-Translation Method teaches students about the target language, but not how to use it. Explain the difference in your own words.

The difference is that the goal of the Grammar-Translation method is be able to read, to translate and learn explicit grammar rules, but it is not able to communicate. With this method children only know the structures of a language, because its skills are reading and writing.

A good method is one that develops the communicative competences.

2.    In the Grammar-Translation Method, grammar is treated deductively; in the Direct Method, grammar is treated inductively. Can you explain the difference between deductive and inductive treatments of grammar?

In deductive method, children learn the grammar because the teacher explains it. This type of language acquisition goes from the general to the particular. However, in the inductive method children get the grammar because they have an input in the real life. It is goes from particular to general, this means that with the information that they receive, they make the general rule.

3.     Which of the following techniques follows from the principles of the Audio-Lingual Method, and which ones don’t? Explain the reasons for your answer.

a.    The teacher asks beginning level students to write a composition about the system of transportation in their home countries. If they need a vocabulary word that they don’t know, they are told to look in a bilingual dictionary for a translation.

It is no connected with Audio-Lingual Method; it is connected with Grammar-Translation Method.

b.    Towards the end of the third week of the course, the teacher gives the students a reading passage. The teacher asks the students to read the passage and to answer certain questions based upon it. The passage contains words and structures introduced during the first three weeks of the course.

No, because in Audio-Lingual Method at the beginning children talk and then they can read.

c.     The teacher tells the students that they must add an “s” to third person singular verbs in the present tense in English. She then gives the students a list of verbs and asks them to change the verbs into the third person singular present tense form.

No, in Audio-Lingual Method you don’t see the rule before, you just do it.

5.    Asher believes that foreign language instruction can and should be modeled on native language acquisition. What are some characteristics of TPR that are similar to the way children acquire their native language?

At the beginning children don’t say anything because they are getting inputs and they are learning the commands. Imitation is basic in this method.

7.    A lot of target language structures and vocabulary can be taught through the imperative. Plan part of a TPR lesson in which the present continuous tense. Or another structure in the target language is introduced.

If we want to teach the present continuous, the teacher will say: “everybody is sleeping” and children have to do the action of sleep, “everybody is jumping” and children have to do the action of jump.

If we want to teach the colours, teacher will say “everyone touch something blue”, and children have to do it, but they have the freedom to choose the blue thing; “everyone touch something green” and children have to do it. 

If we want to teach relative sentences the teacher will say “the boys that are wearing jeans stand up”, “The girls that are wearing skirt stand up”.