LANGUAGE LEARNING APPLICATIONS

Language Learning Applications

Language Learning Applications

Introduction

Language teaching as a profession, though it has its own domain-specific principles, beliefs, values, and philosophies, is not an isolated activity but is part of an educational system. As such, language-teaching programs can be said to be governed by organizational principles as are any number of other businesses and operations. This is particularly true in the case of English language teaching (ELT), which in recent decades has grown to be an enormous and important global endeavor. Whether this spread is in all respects a worthwhile event (Brisk, 2006, pp. 56), it is nonetheless the case that the spread of English as an international language is widely believed to provide economic, educational, and sociocultural benefits (Doughty, 2003)

Language Learning and teaching theories

Brief History of Language Teaching

A core framework in the ELT profession over the last several decades is that put forth by Richards and Rogers (1986), in which they set the elements of approach, design, and procedure as a way describe and evaluate the various language teaching methods that have appeared and in some cases disappeared over time. They state, "A method is theoretically related to an approach, is organizationally determined by a design, and practically realized in procedure". It is, beyond the scope of this paper, to analyze in detaillanguage teaching methods according to this model; it is sufficient here to consider that all accepted methods emerge from and built upon theoretical principles, situated in an instructional system, and implemented in classroom pedagogy.

In the Western world, the teaching of Greek and Latin was based on learning grammar rules and memorizing vocabulary. Because this approach was useful in enabling one to translate from a second language into the native language, it came to be called Grammar Translation. In this method, the foreign language taught in the mother tongue, with an emphasis on learning isolated vocabulary words and complex grammatical analysis through context-free drills and text analysis. This method is still prevalent today in many EFL environments because "it requires few specialized skills on the part of teachers [and] tests of grammar rules and translations are easy to construct and can be objectively scored" (Ellis, 2003, 1). Unfortunately, Grammar Translation does little to help a student learn how, to genuinely communicate, in the foreign language.

The Direct Method is in use for over 100 years. It is based on the belief that second languages can be learned in much the same was as first languages are learned no use of the native language in the classroom; emphasis on useful, everyday vocabulary and grammar patterns; inductive teaching of grammar through modeling and practice; and attention given to both speech and listening comprehension. In part due to the difficulty of implementing the Direct Method in the classroom, it fell out of favor in the 1920s. However, key elements of the Direct Method resurfaced in the structural linguistics-based Audiolingual method (ALM) of the 1940s. This method was popular for many years, and adaptations of it can still be found in ...