王蔷 英语教学法教程 第二版 Unit2

第2章CLT与TBLT

一、Language use in real life vs. Traditional pedagogy

The ultimate goal of foreign language teaching is to enable students to use the foreign language in work or life when necessary. So we should teach that part of the language that will be used and we should teach language in the way it is used in the real world.

The differences between language used in real life and language taught in the classroom:

①In real life, language is used to perform certain communicative functions. e.g. to give directions, to exchange information, or to make a complaint, etc.; In a traditional language classroom, the teaching focus is often on forms rather than functions.

②In real language use we use all skills, including receptive skills such as listening and reading, and productive skills such as speaking and writing. For various reasons, traditional pedagogy tends to focus on one or two language skills and ignore the others.

③In reality language is always used in a certain context, but traditional pedagogy tends to isolate language from its context.

二、CLT

1. CLT refers to an approach to the teaching of foreign or second language through communicative activities.

2. The goal of CLT is to develop students’ communicative competence, which includes both the knowledge about the language and the knowledge about how to use the language appropriately in communicative situations.

3. Principles of CLT

1) Communication principle: Activities that involve real communication promote learning.

2) Task principle: Activities in which language is used for carrying out meaningful tasks promote learning.

3) Meaningfulness principle: language that is meaningful to the learner supports the learning process.

4. Five components of communicative competence

Hedge discusses five components of communicative competence. Namely, linguistic competence, pragmatic competence, discourse competence, strategic competence, and fluency.

（1）Linguistic competence is concerned with knowledge of the language itself, its form and meaning. It involves spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary, word formation, grammatical structure, sentence structure and semantics.

（2）Pragmatic competence refers to the appropriate use of the language in social context. That is to say, the choice of the vocabulary and structure depends on the setting, the relative status of the speakers, and their relationships.

（3）Discourse competence refers to one’s ability to create coherent written text or conversation and the ability to understand them. In other words, it is one’s ability to express or to understand a topic logically and coherently by effectively employing or comprehending the cohesive markers used in the discourse, such as “first”, “it”.（4）Strategic competence is similar to communication strategies. It refers to strategies one employs when there is communication breakdown due to lack of resources.

（5）Fluency means one’s ability to link units of speech together with facility and without strain or inappropriate slowness or undue hesitation.

5. CLT and the teaching of language skills

The translation of communicative competence in language teaching practice is to develop learners’ language skills, namely, listening, speaking, reading and writing.

①Listening and speaking skills need to be redefined in terms of the real communicative use, that is, students should have the chance to listen to and produce what is meaningful, authentic, unpredictable, and creative if

possible. Listening is viewed not only as the counterpart of speaking, but as an independent skill with its own objectives.

②Reading is to extract meaning or information and the learning of grammar and vocabulary is to facilitate such a process. In CLT with different reading purposes, students use different skills, such as skimming, scanning, etc.

③In writing, students should have the chance to write to express their own feelings or describe their own experiences, so making the practice of writing meaningful and authentic.

In a word, CLT has not replaced the previous approaches or methodologies. It has expanded three areas: language content, learning process, and product.

6.Main features of communicative activities如何设计交际活动

(1)Functional communicative activities:

Communicating patterns and pictures

Following directions

Identifying pictures

Discovering missing information

Discovering missing features

Discovering differences

(2) Social interaction activities:

Improvisation

Role-playing through cues and information

Role-playing through situations and goals

7. Six criteria for evaluating communicative classroom activities:

（1）Communicative purpose

The activity must involve the students in performing a real communicative purpose rather than just practicing language for its own sake. There must be some kind of ‘information gap’ that students seek to bridge when they are communicating.

（2）Communicative desire

The activity must create a desire to communicate in the students.

（3）Content, not form

When the students are doing the activity, they must be concentrating on what they are saying, not how they say it.

（4）Variety of language

The activity must involve the students in using a variety of language, not just one specific language form. （5）No teacher intervention

The activity must be designed to be done by the students working by themselves rather than with the teacher. （6）No materials control

The activity should not be designed to control what language the students should use.

三、TBLT

1. TBLT is a method of instruction under CLT, which emphasizes taking various tasks as the center of the language teaching. It is widely promoted in English language teaching nowadays. It is a further development of CLT. It shares the same beliefs in the use of language in real life, but stresses the importance to combine form-focused teaching with communication-focused teaching.

2. Task: A task is essentially goal-oriented; it requires the group, or pair, to achieve an objective that is usually

expressed by an observable result, such as brief notes or lists, a drawing, a spoken summary.

3. Four components of a task:

a purpose: making sure the students have a reason for undertaking the task;

a context:the task can be real, simulated or imaginary, and involves sociolinguistic issues such as the

location, the participants and their relationship, the time, and other important factors;

a process: getting the students to use learning strategies such as problem solving, reasoning, inquiring,

conceptualizing and communicating;

a product: there will be some form of outcome, either visible or invisible.

4. How to design a task:

Teachers need to address four sets of questions when designing tasks:

①What is the objective of the task?

②What is the content of the task?

③How is the task to be carried out?

④In what situation is the task to be carried out?

There are basically five steps:

Step 1: Think about students’ needs, interests, and abilities.

Step 2: Brainstorm possible tasks.

Step 3: Evaluate the list.

Step 4: Choose the language items.

Step 5: Preparing materials.

四、PPP

1. PPP is a model of teaching consisting of the presentation, practice, and production.

①Presentation of single ‘new’ item: introduce new vocabulary and grammatical structures in what ways appropriate;

②Practice of new item: drills, exercises, dialogue practice: the lesson moves from controlled practice to guided practice and exploitation of the texts when necessary;

③Production: activity, role-play or task to encourage ‘free’ use of language: the students are encouraged to use what they have learned and practiced to perform communicative tasks, at this stage, the focus is on meaning rather than accurate use of language forms.

A typical PPP lesson would start by the teacher introducing a new language item in a context followed by some controlled practice, such as drilling, repetition, dialogue reading, etc. Students then move on to produce the language in a more meaningful way, such as a role play, a drama, an interview, etc.

2. Differences between PPP and TBLT

Willis explains the differences between the two models from two perspectives: one perspective looks at the way students use and experience the language; the other perspective looks at the procedures and context of learning.（1）The way students use and experience language in TBL is radically different from PPP.

①free of language control and learners rely on their own linguistic resources;

②a free exchange of ideas;

③a genuine need to use language to communicate;

④a genuine need to strive for accuracy and fluency;

⑤appropriateness and accuracy of language form in general, not production of a single form;

（2）TBL can provide a context for grammar teaching and form-focused activities, PPP is different in this aspect.

①a task-established context;

②encourages students to analyze and think, not simply to apply, repeat, and manipulate;

③a more varied exposure to natural language;

④language forms not pre-selected for focus;

⑤learners’ free selection of language;

⑥TBL cycle lead from fluency to accuracy;

⑦In TBL integrated skills practiced.

五、评价

1.评价CLT

①The first is whether it will meet the needs of learners from different contexts becomes a questions.

②The second problem relates to the design of the syllabus for teaching purposes in the classroom. And it is very different to design a syllables with a one to one correspondence between a function and a form.

③The third problem is that whether such an approach is suitable for all age level of learners or all competence level of learners.

2.评价TBLT

①The first is that it may not be effective for presenting new language items. Neither may it be appropriate for those contexts where language exposure is not sufficient and class time is limited.

②The second constraint is time as teachers have to prepare task-based activities very carefully. This makes demands on the teacher, who is already busy with many other professional duties.

③The third is the culture of learning. Some students may find it difficult to adapt to TBLT.

④The forth is level of difficulty. Students may find task-based learning very difficult if they don’t have sufficient linguistic resources to handle holistic communication.

Despite these potential drawbacks, TBLT can help students learn English in a challenging and stimulating way.

3.评价ppp

PPP offers a simplified approach to language learning. It is based on the idea that you can present language in a clear way. And your language develops by adding new forms from one lesson to the next. However, simply being able to produce forms in isolations will not help learners acquire the language for communication.