Teaching Goals and Methods
This section outlines the goals and methods that characterize language teaching in colleges and universities in the United States, and provides guidelines for implementing those methods in the classroom.
Two worksheets, available as pdf files, help language instructors assess their overall teaching approach and their ways of using current methodology in specific lessons. A third worksheet allows supervisors to provide specific feedback after observing an instructor in the classroom.
Section Contents
Goal: Communicative competence
Method: Learner-centered instruction
Guidelines for Instruction
- Provide appropriate input
- Use language in authentic ways
- Provide context
- Design activities with a purpose
- Use task-based activities
- Encourage collaboration
- Use an integrated approach
- Address grammar consciously
- Adjust feedback/error correction to the situation
- Include awareness of cultural aspects of language use
Resources
Material in this section is drawn from the modules “Research and language learning: A tour of the horizon” by Ken Sheppard, and “Spoken language: What it is and how to teach it” by Grace Stovall Burkart in Modules for the professional preparation of teaching assistants in foreign languages (Grace Stovall Burkart, ed.; Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics, 1998)
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