Chapter 2

Adapting Recent Approaches and Methodologies to Your Work

In This Chapter

Finding out why TEFL courses are so varied

Identifying great sources for professional development

Considering different views on course planning

Getting lots of ideas for dynamic lessons

It’s likely that throughout your teaching career you’ll work for schools that have varying approaches and methodologies. You may even develop a few of your own. Still, as a TEFL teacher you needn’t consider any particular approach or methodology as being exclusively right or wrong. Keeping an open mind helps you to be adaptable and to select the best points from various sources, which you can then bring into your classroom.

In this chapter, I introduce you to a selection of approaches and methodologies in TEFL that are likely to influence your course design and teaching practice on a daily basis. The list is by no means exhaustive, but helps you to understand the thinking behind the current view of ‘best practice’ in English language teaching.

The insight gained from studying a bit of the theoretical stuff also helps you to start supporting your own ideas and instincts about teaching within an academic foundation. If you can explain why you’re following a particular procedure in your lessons, your managers and others who observe you, such as inspectors, are more likely to accept that you’ve prepared well and should be allowed to try new things. So I provide references for further reading too, to help you investigate the approaches and methodologies that appeal to you most.

Think of this chapter as developing an armoury. Some pieces are new and some old, but no matter what problem arises in the ‘battle’, you’ll have equipment to help you deal with it. First I explain some of the beliefs about language learning that course planners consider before deciding on the precise content of a course and the order it should be presented in, and then I move on to discussing actual classroom practice. The most exciting courses contain an eclectic mix of a few approaches, methodologies and hypotheses based on the observations of educators, and in this way teachers can meet a whole range of student needs (not to mention that the mix keeps the job interesting).

Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching by Jack Richards and Theodore Rodgers (Cambridge Language Teaching Library, 2001) gives you lots more useful information on this topic than I have space for here.

Knowing How People Learn, and How to Help Them Learn

Over the last century or so linguists such as Chomsky, Bruner and Piaget have put forward various theories about how humans learn their first language and how this knowledge should help us teach additional languages. Here I summarise the most common beliefs about language development without getting too technical.

Comparing the learning of a first language and a second one

To grasp a language you need to recognise its individual sounds, whole words, and then the grammar that makes sentences. Amazingly, it seems that almost all children everywhere are born ready to learn these things. So infants realise that if they make certain sounds, they get the same response over and over again, and they imitate those around them. Their caregivers reinforce learning of the language by encouraging the infant and by simplifying communication for them. Very young children can also decipher basic principles of grammar and structure as long as they receive lots of input from adults. To a large extent, then, imitation and conditioning are involved, but also there is an innate ability to develop language skills.

The aim of EFL teachers is to harness some of this knowledge so that we can use similar processes in the classroom. Teachers become like the caregivers, drilling language, grading the information to suit the student’s level, and egging the learners on. However, we rarely produce a student as successful as the infant. Our students may well progress but few reach native speaker-like proficiency. Why is this?

• The student’s first language is so embedded that the learner can’t help but refer back to it as ‘the right way’. This is how mother tongue interference arises, meaning that students somehow use rules and vocabulary from the mother tongue and transfer them to the new language. This, of course, creates errors.
• Learners become self-conscious and nervous, which slows them down.
• The stresses of life are far greater than when the learners were infants, so the mind is occupied with other things. The very struggle to learn can be demotivating in itself.

Helping successful language learning

First-language acquisition gives many clues as to how to assist learners with their second language.

In the classroom

Use principles from the infant and caregiver situation to enhance your teaching by following this guidance:

• Make new language relevant to learners.
• Ensure students feel relaxed.
• Grade lessons to become progressively more challenging.
• Give students encouragement and motivation.
• Repeat language items several times so that they’re truly learnt.
• Use non-verbal communication, such as mime and facial expressions, to reinforce meaning.
• Employ rictures and realia to clarify meaning and create interest.
• Set new language within a clear context.
• Follow this order for students: listen, speak, read and then write.
• Don’t correct every single mistake, which inhibits communication, but correct select ones to help students improve.
• Make sure students know the grammatical principles of the language in order to construct sentences.
• Teach culture and language together.

Outside the classroom

Like the growing child, students have to be motivated enough to develop their own skills rather than just relying on a teacher. Language students should endeavour to

• Get some good learning materials, such as a dictionary and a grammar book.
• Practise frequently.
• Read sentences or at least individual words aloud to get used to pronouncing the language.
• Try some of the same enjoyable activities in English as in their own mother tongue.
• Use memory aids such as flashcards.
• Set short-term and long-term learning goals.
• Be willing to make mistakes.

Inspiring success

As a teacher, your role is to facilitate learning by developing your personal and professional qualities:

• Training and experience put you in a position to prepare lessons well. Also, it’s best to maintain your own desire to learn so that you continually find new information to refresh and update your lessons.
• Your lessons must be well-organised, stimulating, and tailored to your particular students.
• A good level of commitment to your employer and your students means that you’re reliable and true to your word. So, for example, if you set homework, students should reasonably expect to get it back within a short time, marked, and with constructive comments.
• In your general interaction with the learners, do your best to be patient, positive and in possession of a sense humour!

Looking at Approaches and Methodologies for Course Planning

Have you noticed that every course book claims to offer something a little different to the competition? Then again, every language school believes that the way it teaches English is far better than other establishments. These notions of superiority are often based on the underlying approach or methodology that the school or author adopts and consequently applies to a syllabus.

As a newer teacher, course planning in a school is often taken out of your hands. It’s quite normal to simply follow the syllabus in the chosen course book. It is not unheard of, though, for an organisation to give you a group of students, something approximating a classroom, and expect you to get on with planning and delivering the course. And you’ll certainly receive private requests for one-to one-lessons in which students puts their faith in you to give their learning real structure.

Use this section to help you understand course planning and work out how to adapt a syllabus.

Killing two birds with one stone: Content and language integrated learning

Content and language integrated learning, or CLIL, is a way of designing a curriculum in which students in mainstream education learn about another subject in English. So instead of having a truly language-based lesson about English adverbs or prepositions, they learn about biology, for example, in English.

The principles of CLIL include

• Pupils should use language to study a school subject as well as discover how to use the language.
• It is normal for bilingual speakers to code switch, meaning that they use both languages in the same sentence or conversation.
• Exposure to different cultures helps learners develop deeper perspectives.

Considering the advantages and disadvantages

The strengths are many. Schools that use this type of course design generally promote bilingualism and create a higher level of motivation in their students. They believe in students picking up language in natural settings, which is a good long-term strategy for retaining it. Also, the English teacher’s work isn’t repetitive because you have the potential to cover many subjects (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve taught the tenses, and it can get a little dull!)

The approach has weaknesses too, though. As you can imagine, such an approach requires a great deal of co-operation between subject teachers and language teachers. However, in some circumstances an educator may see CLIL as an infringement on her specialist role. You also need to be willing to learn more about the other subject in order to teach it, so success depends on the language teacher being highly motivated. In addition, as yet few TEFL courses prepare you for this kind of work.

Applying CLIL to your course

Something you can learn from CLIL that benefits all courses is that students don’t always want to focus on language itself. For instance, higher level learners get tired of studying the present perfect tense or the difference between all the conditional structures. Just because they can’t get it right in practice doesn’t mean that they want to study it again and again relentlessly.

Here are some tips for using CLIL:

• Leave space in the syllabus for you to join the students in learning about a topic they’re interested in; it can be a really refreshing way to approach English language studies. I did a session on Paul Weller’s music recently and the students were really engaged in the culture.
• Encourage the students to talk about their first language (or L1, as it’s known). Bilingual people don’t block out one language, they just choose when and how to use it. So, allow students to tell you about the structure, vocabulary and idioms of their mother tongue and use this information to make interesting comparisons.
• When students speak to you in their first language, answer their questions in English. Bilingual families tend to operate like that when the parents want to keep their mother tongue to the fore.

Focusing on frequently used expressions: The Lexical Approach

The Lexical Approach: The State of ELT and the Way Forward by Michael Lewis (Language Teaching Publications, 1993) presents an approach that looks at chunks of language that students could learn as little set phrases rather than just trying to memorise individual words. Lewis asserts that fluency is based on knowing lots of ‘lexical chunks’ rather than simply mastering grammar. So, using this approach you teach a complete string of words, because that is how people make conversations and it would be inefficient for students to put each of those words into a sentence one by one. Here’s an example of a question I’ve divided into three chunks of lexis for students to learn.

• By the way, have you ever been on a cruise?
• [By the way] + [have you ever] + been + [on a cruise]

Considering the advantages and disadvantages

There is a great deal to be said for this approach. We all use English this way, rattling off clichés, idioms and collocations in everyday speech, and when you begin to learn a foreign language you normally learn how to ask for what you need using a whole chunk from your phrase book. A focus on native-speaker-like fluency and authentic usage is often more attractive to students than grammar.

However, the problem is that nobody knows the order in which you should teach all the chunks in the English language, whereas already a well-recognised order exists for teaching grammar right from beginner to advanced level. For that reason, planning a course based entirely on this approach is a challenging task.

Applying the Lexical Approach to your course

The general consensus is that using some of Lewis’s principles is beneficial.

Here are six practical ideas:

• Introduce your students to authentic materials (not materials written especially for TEFL but taken from real life) as early in their learning as possible so that they can see vocabulary in its natural context.
• Highlight commonly used chunks of language in set reading or listening texts.
• From the beginning of a course, make sure you train your students to record whole chunks, not individual words, in their notebooks.
• Make English–English dictionaries available in the classroom and use them frequently for information about collocations, not just meaning.
• Build songs into the course so that whole phrases stick in the students’ minds in a fun way.
• Encourage students to guess the meaning of vocabulary from the context.

Types of activities typical of a lexical course include matching, deleting and categorising of vocabulary.

Even if you don’t have a syllabus based on the Lexical Approach, you can use principles and techniques from this approach to handle vocabulary more effectively in lessons.

Being a counsellor for your students: Community language learning

Not to be confused with CLIL above, you could say that community language learning (CLL) courses are designed by the students themselves in the sense that the teacher, called the knower, only translates and transcribes the things the students have decided to discuss. CLL is generally used with monolingual groups who all sit in a circle, rather like a group counselling session. The process is something like this for lower levels:

1. The learners decide what to discuss. You sit nearby but slightly out of the circle.
2. Someone calls you over and whispers to you in their first language explaining what she wants to say.
3. You whisper back the translation.
4. You record the utterances and a whole discussion builds up.
5. You transcribe the discussion using the recording.
6. You analyse the discussion with the group in another session.
7. The class reflects on the session and what they have accomplished.

The methodology here is that students gradually learn to increase their independence. Eventually, they don’t need much help from the teacher/knower and another learner can take the role of the knower by assisting weaker members of the group.

Considering the advantages and disadvantages

One of the good things about counselling learning, as it is sometimes called, is that the students take more responsibility for their learning and also build up a strong team spirit. They provide the content themselves so it’s highly relevant to the group. Practitioners consider this kind of course to be more holistic in its approach because the knower doesn’t dominate the group or force anyone to speak.

The downside is that the knower needs a good knowledge of the students’ first language and it’s difficult to translate constantly without preparation of the topic. Even for a bilingual knower, the session can be very draining. Then there’s that annoying tendency we teachers have of wanting to actually teach! Of course, with this approach you have to avoid butting into the discussion.

When it comes to the students, CLL doesn’t suit all ages because the students need a sufficient level of maturity and patience to handle the counselling style. The first few sessions can be painfully slow too, until students get the hang of it.

Applying CLL to your course

Occasional use of CLL can help you reassess your role as teacher and show your students that you value their input. You can use it to help your class to become more active participants if they’re inclined to leave it all up to you.

Here are some suggestions to consider:

• If your class has a range of different skills and backgrounds, set up smaller groups with one student acting as the knower who’ll help the others learn about their own particular specialism. So, for instance, the graduate in fashion design may be the one to help the others learn about clothing expressions.
• Because many students have recording devices built into their mobile phones, you could integrate recording and analysis of classroom discussions into your course as a way of recycling language.
• At the beginning of each week, ask your students to come up with a topic for a ten-minute discussion. Help them prepare the necessary vocabulary. Record the discussion session, making sure to stay out of it (except for the odd whispered bit of assistance). Then get the students to transcribe the discussion as you play it back (the whole thing or just the good bits depending on how much time you have). Finally, they can offer each other correction on their respective errors.

Deciding between global English and other varieties

Global English and English as a lingua franca are expressions that are becoming more common. These days there is a move afoot in the TEFL world to banish something called linguistic imperialism in which ‘good English’ traditionally means the kind used by educated native speakers in countries such as the UK, the USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, giving them a rather unfair advantage in the world (which we TEFL teachers tend to exploit shamelessly, of course). The supporters of ELF (English as a lingua franca) and Global English propose that TEFL teachers adjust their view of correctness.

In our first language varieties of English plenty of linguistic idiosyncrasies exist that learners find totally frustrating and not entirely necessary for effective communication. In reality the majority of people in the world who speak English aren’t native speakers at all. They’ve learnt it as a second or third language, or are life-long bilinguals, and a great many of them use the language very fluently and effectively. This is despite the fact that they don’t apply all the rules the academics of the native-speaker community insist on.

So those in favour of ELF may say that if most non-native and bilingual speakers drop the third person ‘s’ anyway (‘He speak’, for example), why insist on teaching and correcting it? A good number of native speakers do it too, so ELF advocates argue that TEFL teachers should recognise this as a variant, not a grammatical error. After all, in the global village it is communication that matters and everyone can understand the simpler ELF version, so there should be no problem.

Questions therefore arise about the future of the English language and which form of it teachers should be teaching in the classroom. So when designing a TEFL course, considering what your group of students need is important. Is it British English, American English, or perhaps something else?

Considering the advantages and disadvantages

Using ELF is a very modern take on English language teaching and the debate surrounding it forces reflection on your beliefs as a teacher and ‘guardian’ of the language. This new form of English is simpler, logical in structure and yet easy for every speaker of the language to understand. As it develops it can accommodate the input of educators and speakers all over the world in establishing the core language. Surely this is better than having rules dictated by a seemingly elite minority? Moreover, students could achieve proficiency much more quickly than with current models of English.

But publishers haven’t yet latched on to ELF in a big way, so it’s rather difficult to find course books that support using it. In fact, some academics don’t even recognise that this variant form of English exists! Furthermore, although ELF speakers can communicate, they may find that they’re disadvantaged in situations where native speaker varieties are held in higher esteem. Whether you like it or not, your clients, the students, often like the prestige that certain varieties of English seem to offer, and business is business, so you just have to give the customers what they want.

Applying ELF or global English to your course

Follow these pointers:

• Whatever your beliefs about linguistic imperialism, make sure the materials you use fit the kind of English your students actually need or specifically request.
• Remember that many people around the world resent having to learn English and blame the language for undermining local culture. Be sensitive to this in the classroom and adapt as necessary.
• Promote bilingualism instead of always setting native speaker-like competence as the ultimate goal.
• Encourage some translation rather than thinking in English.
• Don’t teach British English (or some other high status version) as the best; put it on a par with Standard Jamaican English, Indian English or any other effective and well-used variety.

Exploring a notional functional approach

The traditional way to structure English language courses is to start with the easy grammar and vocabulary and then get progressively more difficult with each lesson, but this isn’t the case with a notional functional syllabus. With this kind of approach the course designer has to consider what the students actually need to do using the English language. You analyse social contexts and organise the courses based on these. So if today’s lesson is about shopping, it’s at this point that the students learn: How much is that? Could I have …? And so on. The fact that grammatically speaking ‘could’ is a modal verb and is followed by an infinitive is rather less important here than the students’ need to say these particular words when they want to buy something.

Considering the advantages and disadvantages

A course syllabus organised in this way can be highly motivating for students. This is because they feel that they can actually go out and do something in the real world using their English. What they learn has a communicative purpose.

Then again, what happens if the student doesn’t want to perform that function? Perhaps your course features a whole lesson on shopping but you have a class of teenage geeks who only ever order things online? One of the main problems then is that course designers tend to use their own intuition about the notions and functions students will need and they’re not always right.

And what if beginner students seem to require some very complex grammar and vocabulary in English that they’re not yet ready to learn? There are obviously issues of grading language if you don’t start from easy and progress to the difficult parts.

Life isn’t just about social functions. Where other goals are important, such as taking exams for access to academic courses, this kind of syllabus may not prepare students adequately. So educators’ needs can be different to the students’ view of their needs.

Keep in mind that men and women perform different social functions in many cultures and so this syllabus may not have the equal gender appeal of a grammatical one.

Applying a notional/functional approach to your course

Here are some ideas to try:

• When you write your lesson plan, include this sentence and add a particular function or notion: By the end of this lesson my students will be able to … If, after every lesson your students are able to say ‘I know how to do x in English now’, their motivation will be higher.
• When you plan your lessons, think about notions and functions so that you don’t end up teaching abstract pieces of grammar, even if your syllabus wasn’t designed in this way. For example, when it’s time to teach the third conditional, tell your students that they’re going to learn about expressing their regrets. This makes the grammar more approachable; after all, everyone has an ‘If only …’
• Use this approach to question your choice of vocabulary to teach. You may have some interesting words you’d love to tell students about but ask yourself in what context they could ever use them. If you can’t come up with a realistic context, don’t bother teaching the vocab!

Face to face meets online tuition with blended learning

At the name suggests, blended learning is a mixture of media for course delivery. Modern technology affords course providers the opportunity to vary the way they give instruction so that some content is provided online, outside of the classroom lesson, and some is delivered in a more traditional way by a teacher.

Blended learning has much in common with Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL), when students use computers in the classroom. The International Teaching English as a Second Language Journal has a vast array of CALL links on its website: iteslj.org/links/TESL/CALL/.

Considering the advantages and disadvantages

Computerised media allows students to access documents such as resources, syllabi, learning objectives, and marking criteria with ease online. The resources they access reflect their own pace of learning and encourage learner independence. In addition, students can set up their own discussion forum for mutual support or field questions and comments back to the teacher online, which can bring greater focus to the face-face sessions.

Using computerised media is eco-friendly because it reduces photocopying drastically and effectively means that the language school is open all hours (or at least its online library is). The computer will happily let you repeat an exercise again and again if needs be, without getting frustrated or being subject to the time constraints a teacher has.

Where the technology falls down is that some students are demotivated by being forced to stare at a screen. Others don’t have access to reliable Internet connections so find themselves at a disadvantage having to spend hours in the library rather than with a simple course book at home.

That brings me to the advantages of the classroom component of blended learning courses. Students want personalised commendation and correction. Teachers can give positive reinforcement with a simple smile, nod or pat on the back. Also, students generally enjoy the friendship and spontaneity of classmates they can see, and this stimulates further progress. Access to a teacher is vital because you cannot possibly predict all the questions students will need to ask and store the answers online.

So, taking all that into account, blending makes sense. It requires language schools to invest in technology and in the initial preparation time for the teacher to place all the documents and links online. The blended course may not be quite as spontaneous as a purely teacher-led one in the sense that after the syllabus and materials have been posted online, you can’t so easily shift to suit your particular learners. However, because most 21st-century students seem to spend a great deal of time on the Internet anyway, why not harness that for the students’ good?

Applying blended learning to your course

Taking both forms of course delivery into consideration, the blended approach seems to be the way forward wherever the technology to do so is available. If your school hasn’t designed the course this way, you can still mimic some of the principles that blended learning embodies.

Try these ideas:

• Give students plenty of opportunity to learn independently by supplying references for further study whether in print or online.
• Even if the Internet isn’t available in your school, students may well have access to it privately. Set some homework based on Internet research every now and then.
• Apply a level of differentiation to your course by having extra but non-essential activities on hand.

Assessing Approaches and Methodologies for Classroom Delivery

This section helps you to develop your own personal flair in the classroom. Even when your syllabus is set in stone, you often get to choose how exactly you deliver the information to the students. Finding out about different ways to deliver your lesson makes you less predictable and more dynamic.

Using principles from the Silent Way

Silent Way teaching has been around since the 1970s. As the name suggests, the teacher doesn’t say much, but actually uses props, gestures, and charts to elicit all the responses from students and prompt further utterances.

I recommend that you find a video to show you the method in operation because no written description can do it justice. For example, search for Silent Way ESL Class on YouTube. It’s worth a look!

The main principles behind the Silent Way are:

• You help students to learn through discovery and creating instead of memorising and repetition.
• Actual physical objects do much to aid learning. Typical props are:
  • Cuisenaire rods: wooden sticks of different colours and lengths that you can use to represent something different; for example, parts of a sentence or characters in a story.
  • A chart with all the sounds of English represented in colourful blocks. When you point to the appropriate place on the chart the student makes that sound and pronounces the word correctly.

  What’s good about these props is that when students try to remember what they’ve learnt, they recall the colours and shapes as well as, or instead of, just words.

• Problem-solving activities related to the material the learners are focusing on are very effective.

Considering the advantages and disadvantages

There are no intimidating course books to put students off. Students don’t take a back seat and let the teacher do all the work; they have to get stuck in from the outset. On the whole students in the Silent Way classroom take more responsibility for their learning and become quite independent.

This way of teaching has not taken off everywhere, which can only mean drawbacks exist. One is that students don’t tend to communicate with each other as much as with other methods; they speak aloud in response to what you’re doing. In addition, teachers don’t give the students any examples to start them off, nor offer correction. Also, many teachers find the Silent Way less effective with larger classes. Finally, although the props are useful you can’t teach everything in the language using them. That’s why I particularly recommend using the principles of this approach with lower-level students.

Applying the Silent Way to your course

Here are elements of the approach you may want to incorporate in your teaching:

• Limit teacher talking time. Don’t always jump in when your students need a little thinking time.
• Use visual prompts in the classroom including colour and shape. Mime and gestures are great too.
• Have useful charts on the wall – for example, a coloured phonology one – to remind the students of points they need.
• Engage your students’ curiosity.
• Don’t simply offer the answers. Let the students work things out because problem-solving engages more of the brain.
• Don’t be totally reliant on the course book.
• Remain silent while the students are working so that you can observe more. Then you’ll know their strengths and weaknesses.

Allowing students to acquire, not learn, with the natural approach

Before considering the natural approach you need to know the difference between learning a language and acquiring one, because this is at its core.

Learning is very much a conscious process. You sit with a teacher and pay attention to the rules, structure and vocabulary. However, acquisition is basically picking up language, allowing the brain to do what it did naturally when you were an infant.

With that differentiation in mind, the natural approach is designed to recognise the limited, but necessary, value of learning.

Typically, you speak to the class about a given topic, or play an audio recording, while the students listen. Then the students do an activity based on what they’ve heard, such as filling in a gapped text or labelling a diagram. You correct the students according to the meaning they’ve conveyed, not their grammar. Then you set a more challenging communicative activity on the topic.

These are some of the basic principles:

• The main focus is communicative ability.
• Vocabulary is the most important part of the language, not grammar.
• Taking in the language by listening and reading should come first and speaking and writing later.
• Language is all about meaningful messages.
• Learning the rules of a new language only helps you correct yourself following acquisition.

Considering the advantages and disadvantages

A great aspect of the natural approach is that motivation, self-confidence and low anxiety are very important considerations, so the classroom allows the student to acquire English in a relaxed environment. Learners don’t speak until they feel ready to do so because comprehension takes priority over producing language. Another positive aspect is that most language learners dread grammar, but the natural approach has no grammatical syllabus. Finally, the input provided is well graded so that students are given a slightly harder challenge each time.

On the other hand, some would argue that if learners ‘emerge’ and begin speaking when they feel ready to, this may happen at too many different stages among the students in one class and make activities difficult to manage. In addition, the natural approach places a great deal of emphasis on graded reading texts, whereas some learners would prefer to just read about things they’re interested in, even if the level is much higher than their current stage. Finally, many teachers feel that producing language (speaking and writing), helps to solidify learning or acquisition, but this approach stresses receiving language (reading and listening).

Applying the natural approach to your course

See how the natural approach can inspire your teaching:

• Get students responding to a listening text by following a map, filling in a grid, or putting information in order.
• Recognise that controlled teacher talking time can be valuable. If you have periods of speaking about a chosen topic, students can acquire expressions in English very naturally from you.
• Don’t over-correct students. Allow them to continue during a communicative activity for as long as they’re able to convey the right meaning (despite dodgy grammar).
• Use closed questions before open ones. For example, give students multiple choice or yes/no questions before expecting them to be comfortable enough with the vocabulary to express an opinion.

Teaching playfully with Suggestopaedia

Practitioners of Suggestopaedia (sometimes called Desuggestopaedia or spelled Suggestopedia) believe in the power of both conscious and non-conscious influences on the mind. The method uses carefully selected music, art, decorations, and furniture in the classroom. It’s quite teacher-centred because you provide all the information, but you do so in a playful manner.

Here are the key principles:

• Learning happens on two levels – through linguistic messages given by the teacher and another message suggested by the rich sensory environment of the classroom.
• Students must be relaxed and have an expectation of success.
• Teachers should employ a range of activities such as acting things out, singing and playing games.

Lessons taught in this way attempt to follow a typical pattern:

1. The introduction stage: The teacher imparts the material playfully but doesn’t analyse the new grammar or lexis.
2. The concert session: You play classical or baroque music quietly enough so that you can read a text over it with special intonation. The text contains the new information for the students to learn. The music provides a sense of relaxation, as well as structure and pace due to its regular beat.
3. Practice time: The teacher uses games or activities to practise and help students remember.
4. Discussion time: The class can engage in freer discussion in English.

Considering the advantages and disadvantages

Some of the principles of this method are very easy to adapt. For example, a newer teacher may know that students need to relax in the classroom but be unsure of how to make that happen. Suggestopaedia teaches you the value of music, not just as a recreational tool but as a learning tool. It encourages a positive self-image for the learner because the environment is relaxing but the course promotes confident, independent learning using the materials posted around the room. Suggestopaedia claims to produce results far more quickly than other methods and approaches.

Unfortunately, it’s not all good news, because only a limited number of teachers can create a cosy classroom with comfortable furniture and baroque music. The resources aren’t always available. Also, Suggestopaedia may place a little too much emphasis on memorisation rather than students working things out for themselves and communicating meaningfully with others in the class.

Applying Suggestopaedia to your course

Give Suggestopaedia principles a try:

• Use carefully chosen background music during your lessons. Apparently music in 4/4 time is the most effective for learning.
• Make sure your classroom is a relaxing place for your students.
• Use the tone and rhythm of your voice more deliberately when you read. Doing so adds meaning.
• Embed new vocabulary into stories for the class to listen to.

Making movement part of your plan: Total physical response

Total physical response, or TPR, describes a way of delivering language lessons that mimics the way very young children learn – that is, they respond to what others say by their actions even before they can speak. Here’s the idea:

• Adults can learn languages better than children do (with the exception of pronunciation) but they need particular circumstances.
• TPR instructors mimic the behaviour of parents by giving direct commands.
• Speaking and comprehension happen in different parts of the brain, so students can suffer from brain overload, meaning slow learning, if they are forced to do both at the same time. Students don’t have to speak in a TPR activity but they perform actions instead, which is less demanding on the brain.

In the TPR classroom the teacher gives commands, usually accompanied by an action that helps demonstrate meaning, and then the students perform the action. When they know the action, students can try repeating the command and later give each other commands.

Considering the advantages and disadvantages

A particular advantage of TPR is that students feel less stressed when they don’t have to speak. TPR is called a ‘brain compatible tool for learning’, and that means that students effectively retain language in the short and long terms. Anyone can enjoy this kind of lesson, from small children upwards, and you can adapt it for all levels. Another positive point is that students don’t need to be gifted language learners or have an academic mind. Kinaesthetic students especially, who learn best through movement, love TPR. Conveniently for you, there is no photocopying or lengthy preparation of materials. Finally, research shows that students achieve comprehension very quickly.

On the other hand, TPR doesn’t work so well when classroom space is restricted because it limits the commands that you can give. For instance, if you have a small classroom, you can’t instruct students to walk up and down. And while it’s great to begin the course in this way, your class may eventually get bored, so after a while you need to mix in other kinds of activities. TPR also makes it tricky to express some of the abstract ideas or higher level grammar as a command.

Applying TPR to your course

Some ideas for employing TPR:

• Use a TPR activity as an icebreaker on the first day or when you need to lift the mood.
• Teach students a recipe or how to fix something in this way. No doubt you can bring in all kinds of verbs and vocabulary.
• Give groups of students some new vocabulary and then get them to perform the actions to each other using TPR routines.

Helping students bond with NLP

Neuro-Linguistic Programming is all about understanding processes in the mind and how you can train your brain to improve your life. It takes into account personal identity and positive environments. These are a few of the basic principles:

• Each individual learner is important.
• You must take into account and accommodate visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic (VAK) styles of learning.
• Students have personal filters that affect the way they learn, namely what they remember, value, believe, and decide.
• You should teach both verbal and non-verbal communication in the classroom.

NLP involves encouraging students to create a comfortable new identity for themselves in the new language. They must observe the things others do well and try to imitate, or mirror, them thereby creating a good rapport. You need to be aware that faced with new language the students will delete from their minds whatever they can’t handle.

Considering the advantages and disadvantages

Many people advocate the use of NLP in second language acquisition because it helps students to feel positive and successful without stress. Understanding more about how the mind works helps teachers to chunk ideas and vocabulary together, making it easier to store. Also, NLP is about how you learn more than what you learn, so students who’ve been exposed to English for a long time but haven’t achieved the desired results may find it refreshing to undo negative thinking about their learning and renew their thoughts using NLP

The main obstacle is that many people believe NLP is a pseudo-science, lacking in scientific evidence. It has also failed to produce the results it claimed in some areas. Without a truly positive attitude from instructors and learners, NLP can’t be wholly effective in the classroom.

Applying NLP to your course

You can take the following ideas and see how they benefit your students:

• Use mind maps on the board and encourage students to make notes in this way.
• Maintain flow in lessons by varying the activities and not sticking to your own preferences.
• Allow students to learn from the successes of others in the class and emphasise good tactics.
• Don’t focus on errors.
• Establish a good rapport by being supportive and showing empathy.
• Get students to question themselves about when, where, and how they acquire language best by means of questionnaires and discussion.

For a general background on the use of NLP check out Neuro-Linguistic Programming For Dummies by Romilla Ready and Kate Burton, (Wiley, 2nd edition 2010).

Keeping everyone interested using multiple intelligences theory

Multiple intelligences (MI) theory recognises different kinds of intelligences rather than just the conventional academic view of one overall intelligence such as the kind of intelligence measured by an IQ test. Developed by Howard Gardner, a Harvard professor, MI theory tells educators to acknowledge these eight types of intelligence which are each related to the ability of an individual to solve problems in a particular social or cultural setting:

• Verbal/linguistic – using words
• Visual spatial – using pictures and images
• Bodily kinaesthetic – using movements and the body
• Interpersonal – using co-operation with others
• Intrapersonal – using self-awareness
• Musical – using music or rhythm
• Logical mathematical – using a mathematical formula or a form of logic
• Environmental – using the natural world

Academics traditionally recognise only the verbal/linguistic and logical mathematical intelligences.

Considering the advantages and disadvantages

The best thing about MI theory, is that TEFL teachers use it to move out of their comfort zone (which is likely to be standing up and speaking) and think instead about how to give students a more rounded experience through varied activities. Students are more likely to become proficient in the second language because they have used a variety of skills and maintained interest in learning.

Sometimes students hit a plateau at about intermediate level because they are simply bored. So, test their intelligences and see which are strongest. You may be able to re-ignite a student’s enthusiasm if you present activities which match her main intelligence.

Unfortunately, some educators are put off this theory by the lack of scientific data to support it. In addition, some teachers feel that the categories are too broad to realistically be applied in the classroom. For example, they find it unnecessary to consider an application of grammar to the natural world for the benefit of environmentally intelligent students. Added to that, from the student’s perspective there might be some resistance to a non-traditional approach.

Applying MI to your course

If MI appeals, try these tips:

• Use a questionnaire to establish the intelligences of your students and then plan your lessons according to what will suit them.
• Help students to be aware of their own strengths and weaknesses; this will help them in setting goals.
• Give your learners the opportunity to present their work in different ways. For example, some prefer writing an essay and others prefer an oral presentation.
• Set a project. Each student in the group can perform a task that suits her intelligence.

Choosing a deductive or inductive approach to lesson plans

As I show you in Chapter 3, several well-recognised models exist for lesson planning. They basically cover two approaches: deductive and inductive reasoning:

• A deductive approach might also be called ‘top down’. You start off with the rule and then continue to practise it. Anyone on a TEFL course learns this kind of lesson planning as the traditional PPP (Presentation, Practice, Production).
• An inductive approach is ‘bottom up’ or ‘guided discovery’. So this time you start with examples of language use in context and then you use these to work out the rules.

Considering the advantages and disadvantages

A deductive lesson has certain advantages. It’s clearly structured, and because most educators in the world take this approach, the students have a sense of the familiar. They understand how the lesson works, which in turn builds trust. The guided examples you provide build confidence before the students try using the new language input for themselves. Finally, deductive lessons are quicker to teach than inductive ones. The only issue is that students get bored after decades of these kinds of lessons in the education system.

The inductive way has advantages too. It encourages students to use their own observations to establish probabilities, so they make explorations that engage the mind. Inductive thinkers use their natural ability to decipher language, and when your learners do finally work it out they’re more likely to remember the information. However, it takes longer to prepare an inductive lesson because you cannot be sure what your students will say or how long they need to reach the right conclusion. Therefore, you have to be ready for different outcomes.

Be careful that students don’t over-generalise, though, trying to make rules that don’t exist (drink/drank/drunk, think/thank/thunk).

Applying the deductive and inductive approaches to your course

Students can be highly sceptical of inductive lessons at first because they may not fit their image of real learning. Use both approaches until the students relax and show some faith in you.

Here are some suggestions:

• For an inductive approach, find several texts that provide examples of the point you’re teaching and see whether students can spot the similarities.
• Use an inductive approach when students seem tired of studying in general.
• Use a deductive approach when lesson time is very limited and when students are not used to studying, for example with adult students who have been out of the education system for some time.

There is often a ‘clever clogs’ in the class who’ll blurt out the answers at the beginning of an inductive lesson. You don’t have to confirm or deny what that student says at the outset. Let the class continue and test out the student’s theory.

Taking a task-based approach to language learning

The idea behind task-based learning (TBL) is that students should undertake a task in English that mimics something they may do in their own language. The focus is on fluency, and the class learns the particular vocabulary and grammar required for the task rather than having a structured syllabus. The lessons follow this type of structure:

1. Pre-task stage: You introduce the task and allow for preparation of the language that students will need to complete it.
2. Task: You run a problem-solving activity that’s tackled in small groups.
3. Plan report: The groups prepare a report about how the task went.
4. Deliver report: Each group delivers their report by speaking or writing.
5. Analysis: You help the class to correct some language points that came up during the lesson.

Considering the advantages and disadvantages

In a TBL lesson one of the main advantages is that the students are freer in their use of language because they say whatever they can to complete the task. The students can see the relevance of the language as it is contextualised and generated by them, which is more natural than a course book syllabus. On the whole they enjoy themselves because they communicate for a larger proportion of the lesson and this is very motivating.

One of the criticisms of TBL is that it may not be appropriate for beginner students because they’re unable to produce enough language to complete tasks. They need input. Another problem is that it takes a considerable amount of time to get through the tasks and their success depends on the students’ abilities to undertake team work effectively. Also, you need to control the noise and discipline when the students are working independently in many groups.

Applying TBL to your course

Give these ideas a go:

• Even if you have a fixed syllabus, use TBL from time to time for extra speaking practice.
• Make sure the activities you set for your students are linked to things they (will) do in the real world.
• Sometimes students lose interest while other students are speaking. Use a reporting stage by getting the students to make notes about what others say and then compile a report about whose ideas they preferred.