Uni-Wissen Introduction to English Language Teaching E-Book

Andreas Müller-Hartmann

• Herausgeber: Klett Lerntraining
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Uni-Wissen
• Sprache: Deutsch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 357

Beschreibung

Introduction to English Language Teaching offers a general view of all the major subjects in the teaching of foreign languages starting from linguistic abilities to questions of performance, learning and bilingual teaching as well as to a discussion of the initial work on forms. Introduction to English Language Teaching gibt einen Überblick über alle wesentlichen Themen des Fremdsprachenunterrichts - angefangen von den sprachlichen Fertigkeiten oder Fragen zur Leistungsbewertung, über biliguales Lehren und Lernen bis hin zur Diskussion grundschulspezifischer Arbeitsweisen.

Leseprobe

Andreas Müller-HartmannMarita Schocker-v. Ditfurth

Introduction toEnglish LanguageTeaching

Impressum:

Das Werk und seine Teile sind urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Nutzung in anderen als den gesetzlich zugelassenen Fällen bedarf der vorherigen schriftlichen Einwilligung des Verlages. Hinweis zu § 52a UrhG: Weder das Werk noch seine Teile dürfen ohne eine solche Einwilligung eingescannt und in ein Netzwerk eingestellt werden. Dies gilt auch für Intranets von Schulen und sonstigen Bildungseinrichtungen. Fotomechanische Wiedergabe nur mit Genehmigung des Verlages.

© Klett Lerntraining, c/o PONS GmbH, Stuttgart 2014. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

www.klett-lerntraining.de

E-ISBN 978-3-12-939106-8

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

Language Teacher Education: Defining the Knowledge Base

Chapter 2

Language Teaching and Learning in the Classroom: Discussing Purposes, Participants, Practices

2.1The Purpose: Developing Intercultural Communicative Competence

2.2The Teacher

2.3The Learner

2.4The Process: The Task-based Approach

2.5The Context: Language Policy, Curriculum, Classroom

Chapter 3

Language Learning and Language Use: Developing Skills and Subskills

3.1Language Skills

3.1.1Speaking and Mediating

3.1.2Writing

3.1.3Listening

3.1.4Reading

3.2Subskills

3.2.1Language as Discourse: Teaching Vocabulary and Grammar

Chapter 4

Language Teaching Contents: Exploring Relevant Areas and Contexts

4.1Teaching Cultural Studies and Intercultural Learning

4.2Teaching Literature and Other Texts

4.3Media in the English Language Classroom

4.4Acknowledging, Promoting and Assessing Achievement

4.5Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)

4.6Teaching English in the Primary Classroom

Bibliography

Journals

Introduction

Rationale of this book

Writing a book on the teaching and learning of English as a foreign language (EFL) is, for various reasons, a daunting task: The subject matter is complex as it covers a heterogeneous field where a number of factors come into play, involving different disciplines, research approaches, contexts of practice, learners and teachers, and social settings. Besides, there are quite a number of books on the teaching of English as a foreign or second language already on the market – so why write yet another one? As MEDGYES (2002: 87) put it while reviewing one such book, “While suppressing a yawn, the reviewer begins to wonder what makes any of the titles unique and competitive. Aren’t they mere clones of one another? (…A)ren’t I supposed now to review a book which shares too many features with other titles to make it distinctly different?” So, what is it that makes our book distinctively different from other introductory textbooks on the teaching and learning of English as a foreign language?

The context: Teaching and learning EFL in Germany

Each of the books available at present is based on a particular philosophy of the teaching and learning of EFL. This is necessarily so, given the multitude of aspects to consider. Besides, each of these course-books has been produced for a particular ‘EFL market’ and does not therefore take into account the particularities of a specific teacher education or foreign language learning context. Our book, on the other hand, has been written for German student teachers of English as a foreign language in that it refers to approaches and materials which are particularly relevant for our context.

English as the language of instruction

Unlike other course-books, it is written in the target language. This is because we consider it to be a basic professional competence of EFL teachers to be able to join the European or international professional discourse in English. Besides, English is the means of instruction and communication in university-based methodology seminars, which is why the bulk of basic relevant readings has to be provided in English.

Research-based focus

Our methodology is research-based in that it draws insights about the teaching and learning of English from relevant research. It therefore hopes to contribute to the establishment of Fremdsprachendidaktik as an autonomous discipline.

Major issues of teaching and learning

A last distinctive feature of our book relates to our choice of contents and topics. It is based on three aspects of EFL teaching and learning which we consider to be particularly relevant today:

Promoting intercultural communicative competence

Developing learner- and learning-centred teaching in classrooms to delineate ways in which the social context of school affects language teaching and learning

Supporting task-based learning

Organization of chapters

Each chapter follows roughly the same pattern: it introduces the main issues of a topic (including a survey of the historical development, if appropriate); it gives a summary of relevant research; it draws conclusions or illustrates examples of good classroom practice (we have included as many examples for materials and tasks from EFL classrooms as the space we were provided allowed); and it concludes by listing current trends and future perspectives. There is an end-of-book bibliography for students to get a survey of relevant current readings. In the bibliography we marked certain books (see: ) as recommended readings for students who wish to focus on specific topics in more detail (to prepare a topic for their exam, for example).

Intended readership

Our book may be used in various learning-to-teach scenarios. Student teachers may wish to prepare or read up on lecture-based methodology courses, or use it in accompanying tutorials. Lecturers may use it as a course book for their introductory methodology courses, and provide additional examples from practice (classroom tasks, lesson videos etc.) to illustrate what has been said. Or student teachers may wish to use it as a compendium to prepare their methodology exams, to choose a topic for their oral exams or to find relevant reading for a classroom research project they wish to do in their teaching practice.

Limitations

We are against top-down models of applied science in teacher education (WALLACE 1991) which merely use classroom practice to exemplify academic research. Instead, we see language teachers not simply as consumers of theory, but as generators of theories based on their professional knowledge and their ongoing reflection on classroom teaching (RICHARDS 2001). Theories should be developed not by people outside the classroom but by practitioners themselves (FREEMAN 2001). However, the limited length available for titles in this series made it impossible to present material in this way.

Glossary

We are not offering a glossary of basic theoretical terms as a tool for students. This is because there is an excellent dictionary for students to use for this purpose we would like to recommend instead. It explains very clearly those difficult theoretical terms (there are about 2000 entries) which students may encounter in the field: JACK RICHARDS, RICHARD SCHMIDT, HEIDI PLATT, MARCUSSCHMIDT. Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics. 3rd. ed. Paperback Harlow: Pearson Education 2002.

Thanks

We would particularly like to thank KEITH MORROW and the editor of this series, ANSGAR NÜNNING, very much for their very thoughtful revision work. A word of thanks also goes to ANNETTE RICHTER who participated in the design of the general structure of the book. A number of colleagues provided helpful advice, among them KLAUS FEHSE, MECHTHILD HESSE, WERNER KIEWEG, MARKUS RITTER, JUTTA RYMARCZYK, and GISELA SCHMID-SCHÖNBEIN. We wish to thank all of them for their support.

CHAPTER 1

Language Teacher Education: Defining the Knowledge Base

 1Introduction

Content and process of teacher education

We would like to begin this book on the teaching and learning of English as a foreign language by asking two basic questions:

1. What is the subject matter or content of foreign language teacher education? In other words: What is it that foreign language teachers need to know?

2. What is the process of teacher learning? In other words: How do people learn to teach?

To begin with a discussion of the knowledge base and how it may be acquired in teacher education may come as some surprise because other textbooks which deal with the same subject matter usually start differently: they place chapters concerned with the teaching of the basic skills at the beginning (CARTER/NUNAN 2001), they summarize what we know about how languages are learned (HEDGE 2000; CAMERON 2001) or they integrate these two aspects, offering some perspectives on what there is to learn – a foreign language – and on language learning itself (JOHNSON 2001).

Base teacher education on teaching

The reason why we feature the question of the knowledge base and teacher education so prominently is that when asked to write a compendium on the teaching and learning of English as a foreign language we felt we were in a dilemma: providing knowledge may give readers the idea that all it takes to become a good language teacher is relevant readings. But professional action in dynamic situations of practice (like in a classroom) has been characterized by features such as uncertainty, complexity, uniqueness, instability and value conflict (SCHÖN 1983). This is why teachers cannot be equipped adequately for their job just by reading relevant academic knowledge. Following SCHÖN and FREEMAN and JOHNSON (1998) we argue that the knowledge base must focus on the activity of teaching itself, on the teacher who does it, and on the contexts in which it is done. The starting point of this book is to highlight the fact that no knowledge whatsoever will ever contribute to the quality of learning foreign languages unless this knowledge becomes part of student teachers’ ideas of their professional selves. Therefore we would like to make some basic remarks on teacher education to begin with.

 2The content of foreign language teacher education: What is there to learn?

a) A heterogeneous discipline

Different labels for one discipline

Second and foreign language learning and teaching is studied in different disciplines and therefore involves different labels. Within the scope of this book we cannot offer a comprehensive analysis of the various concepts used in different contexts, but we would like to present the most important ones (for a detailed description and further readings see B et al 2003: 1–18).