An Article Discussing the Silent Way Approach to Language Learning

8/3/2019 An Article Discussing the Silent Way Approach to Language Learning

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It's best if you can use a microphone as the sound quality is better and it's easier to pick up andput down.Here they're working on pace and fluency. They immediately stop recording and then wait untilanother student wants to respond. This continues until a whole conversation has been recorded.

Stage 3 - DiscussionNext the students discuss how they think the conversation went. They can discuss how they feltabout talking to a microphone and whether they felt more comfortable speaking aloud than theymight do normally.This part is not recorded.

Stage 4 - TranscriptionNext they listen to the tape and transcribe their conversation. I only intervene when they ask forhelp.The first few times you try this with a class they might try and rely on you a lot but aim to distanceyourself from the whole process in terms of leading and push them to do it themselves.

Stage 5 - Language analysisI sometimes get students to analyse the language the same lesson or sometimes in the nextlesson. This involves looking at the form of tenses and vocabulary used and why certain ones

were chosen, but it will depend on the language produced by the students.In this way they are totally involved in the analysis process. The language is completelypersonalised and with higher levels they can themselves decide what parts of their conversationthey would like to analyse, whether it be tenses, lexis or discourse.With lower levels you can guide the analysis by choosing the most common problems you noted inthe recording stages or by using the final transcription.

Length of stagesThe timing will depend entirely on the class, how quickly they respond to CLL, how long you orthey decide to spend on the language analysis stage and how long their recorded conversation is.Be careful however that the conversation isn't too long as this will in turn make the transcriptionvery long

For and against CLLProsLearners appreciate the autonomy CLL offers them and thrive on analysing their ownconversations.CLL works especially well with lower levels who are struggling to produce spoken English.The class often becomes a real community, not just when using CLL but all of the time. Studentsbecome much more aware of their peers, their strengths and weaknesses and want to work as ateam.ConsIn the beginning some learners find it difficult to speak on tape while others might find that theconversation lacks spontaneity.We as teachers can find it strange to give our students so much freedom and tend to intervene too

much.In your efforts to let your students become independent learners you can neglect their need forguidance.

Inductive approach and Deductive approach in TESOL

By International Teacher Training OrganizationIn teaching, there are many theoretical approaches that have been developed to promote thestudents' success in learning new information. In TESOL (Teaching English to Students of OtherLanguages), there are two main theoretical approaches for the presentation of new Englishgrammar structures or functions to ESL/EFL students: inductive approach and deductive


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approach. The more traditional of the two theories, is the deductive approach, while the emergingand more modern theory, is the inductive approach.The deductive approach represents a more traditional style of teaching in that the grammaticalstructures or rules are dictated to the students first (Rivers and Temperley 110). Thus, thestudents learn the rule and apply it only after they have been introduced to the rule. For example,if the structure to be presented is present perfect, the teacher would begin the lesson by saying,"Today we are going to learn how to use the present perfect structure". Then, the rules of thepresent perfect structure would be outlined and the students would complete exercises, in anumber of ways, to practice using the structure. (Goner, Phillips, and Walters 135) In thisapproach, the teacher is the center of the class and is responsible for all of the presentation andexplanation of the new material.The inductive approach represents a more modern style of teaching where the new grammaticalstructures or rules are presented to the students in a real language context (Goner, Phillips, andWalters 135). The students learn the use of the structure through practice of the language incontext, and later realize the rules from the practical examples. For example, if the structure to bepresented is the comparative form, the teacher would begin the lesson by drawing a figure on theboard and saying, "This is Jim. He is tall." Then, the teacher would draw another taller figure nextto the first saying, "This is Bill. He is taller than Jim." The teacher would then provide manyexamples using students and items from the classroom, famous people, or anything within thenormal daily life of the students, to create an understanding of the use of the structure. The

students repeat after the teacher, after each of the different examples, and eventually practice thestructures meaningfully in groups or pairs. (Goner, Phillips, and Walters 135-136) With thisapproach, the teacher's role is to provide meaningful contexts to encourage demonstration of therule, while the students evolve the rules from the examples of its use and continued practice(Rivers and Temperley 110).In both approaches, the students practice and apply the use of the grammatical structure, yet,there are advantages and disadvantages to each in the EFL/ESL classroom (Rivers andTemperley 110). The deductive approach can be effective with students of a higher level, whoalready know the basic structures of the language, or with students who are accustomed to a verytraditional syle of learning and expect grammatical presentations (Goner, Philips, and Walters134). The deductive approach however, is less suitable for lower level language students, forpresenting grammatical structures that are complex in both form and meaning, and for classrooms

that contain younger learners (Goner, Philips, and Walters 134). The advantages of the inductiveapproach are that students can focus on the use of the language without being held back bygrammatical terminology and rules that can inhibit fluency. The inductive approach also promotesincreased student participation and practice of the target language in the classroom, in meaningfulcontexts. The use of the inductive approach has been noted for its success in EFL/ESLclassrooms world-wide, but its disadvantage is that it is sometimes difficult for students whoexpect a more traditional style of teaching to induce the language rules from context.

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An Article Discussing the Silent Way Approach to Language Learning