Articles on Education of Bangladesh - Knowledge is power ONLY when shared

MD. MASUM BILLAH

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In the language teaching profession we have best and worst experiences. After many years of teaching we have information which seems to be slippery. When we begin our teacher education journey it is appropriate for us to focus on what we do know, what we have learned, what we can say with some certainty, about second language acquisition. Many novice language teachers gobble up teaching techniques without carefully considering the criteria that underline their successful application in the classroom.  The quick-fix approach to teacher education will not give you that all-important ability to comprehend when to use a technique, with whom it will work, how to adapt it for your audience or how to judge its effectiveness.

The principles of automaticity: Efficient second language learning involves a timely movement of the control of a few language forms into the automatic processing of a relatively unlimited number of language forms. Overanalyzing language, thinking too much about its forms, and consciously lingering on rules of language all tend to impede this graduation to automatic.

Meaningful learning: The language classroom has not always been the best example of meaningful learning. Some classroom implications of the Principle of Meaningful Learning:

Capitalize on the power of meaningful Learning students’ interests, academic goals and career goals.

Whenever a new topic or concept is introduced, attempt to anchor it in students’ existing knowledge and background sothat it gets associated with something they already know.

As teachers we should avoid the pitfalls of rote learning:
(i)    Too much grammar explanation
(ii)    Too many abstract principles  and theories
(iii)    Too much drilling and /or memorization
(iv)    Activities  whose purposes are not clear
(v)    Activities that do not contribute to accomplishing the goals of the lesson or unit or course
(vi)    Techniques that are so mechanical  or tricky that students get centered on the mechanic instead of the langue meaning. Read more: Some Teaching Principles