Week 6

In chapter 4 of Brown, the principles of cognitive, socioaffective, and linguistic are discussed as the foundation of teaching practice.  One of the things that is discussed here is the importance of learning a language’s culture when learning a language.  I remember in high school when I learned Spanish, the book that we had often made connections to the Spanish culture.  However, many languages are spread across vast cultures, so how do we teach a culture with the language?  English, for example, is spread across tons of countries, not to mention the cultures within those countries, so what culture do we teach with it?  If I were to teach English as a foreign language in Japan, what English culture would I associate with?

Chapter 16 of Brown reminds me a lot of a podcast that I listened to recently for one of my other education classes.  The podcast talked about teaching writing to students, and stated that you can give them ideas for writing strategies, but in the end, the student needs to have their own strategy and style in order to become a successful writer.  Brown discusses a similar idea when talking about language learning strategies, by saying that students can be intrinsically motivated on their own, but by allowing students to develop their own strategies, they may become more motivated.  This is similar to many other situations in life, such as reading.  If there is a book that I am supposed to read for a class, I cannot get myself motivated to read it, because I am being forced to do it.  However, if I was relaxing with no homework to do, I might decide to read that same book because I have decided to do it on my own time for fun.

Week 5

In The End of CLT: A Context Approach to Language Teaching article, the author states that CLT is starting to have a negative effect.  The article gave a lot of examples for this reasoning, such as, “the view seems to be 1) assume and insist that CLT is the whole and complete solution to language learning; 2) assume that no other method could be any good; 3) ignore people’s own views of who they are and what they want; 4) neglect and ignore all aspects of the local context as being irrelevant” (Bax 280).  In my opinion, we cannot rely on one method of language teaching to be the best one.  There are all different kinds of learners, ages, and days, and the teacher must be prepared to switch up their teaching methods when necessary.  This goes for all aspects of teaching, not just language teaching.  If a class does not understand the material or not getting involved, it is the teacher’s duty to step aside, and see what they can change about their own teaching.

In connection to the article listed above, HU’s article about the educational Chinese culture backlashed with the End of the CLT article because those ideas seem to be thrown out the window now. However, it seemed to me that education philosophies around the world can be surprisingly similar to each other, and most teachers really do want what’s best for their students.  The quote that affected me in relation to other TESOL ideas that I have learned is “education can bring along social recognition and material rewards” (97).  Educational ideas really can be seen eye to eye from culture to culture.