ENG503 Final Term Notes

Eng503

Q. Any six trends of research in ELT/ 1)English Language Curriculum, Assessment, and Reform :What should be taught to students on different levels? How can school/university programs be organized to optimize the English Language Learning development of students?/2)Individual Differences L2 Motivation, anxiety, attitudes, aptitudes are powerful contributor to the learner’s ability to learn a language./3)Learner Autonomy & Self EfficacyThe learner’s autnomy is very much important to make him a successful learner/.4)Course and Material Development It is according to the needs of students and changing trends of the use of English in various social and Academic fields. Not only development but the division is also a popular area of research./5)Learning and Teaching Strategies They are also very much important in various contexts./6)Error Analysis It includes systematic methods to analyze learners’ errors. It also includes identifying, describing, and explaining student’s errors.

Q. Relationship between language and identify with reference to ELT.Language can be defined as a shared set of verbal codes and as a generic, communicative phenomenon especially in descriptions of instructions. In ELT, teachers and students use both spoken and written language to communicate. Students learn to read and write - learn the discourse of academic disciplines (academic literacies). When it comes to the discussion of language and education, both definitions are important./ Relationship between Language and Education / Q. What kind of information is provided by curriculum? /Q.What questions does the curriculum address? What is the purpose of educating students in this particular institution / educational level? /What kinds of knowledge should students is taught? /What kinds of learning experiences do the students need to go through in order to acquire the knowledge and achieve our purposes?/What kinds of teaching methods should be used to help students acquire the knowledge and achieve our purposes?/How should these learning experiences be organized?/By answering these questions. Q:Conversational Analysis (CA) Conversation is discourse mutually constructed and negotiated in time between speakers. It is usually informal and unplanned (Cutting, 2010). A conversation can be viewed as a series of speech acts - greetings, inquiries, comments, congratulations, invitations, requests, refusals, accusations, etc. Cook (1989: 51) says that talk may be classed as conversation when:/ (1) It is not primarily necessitated by a practical task.(2). Any unequal power of participants is partially suspended.(3). The number of the participants is small. (4). Turns are quite short. (5). Talk is primarily for the participants not for an outside audience .(cited in Cutting, 2010) /Based on this, classroom transactions, doctor-patient interviews and TV quiz shows are not conversations because they do not have all the properties listed here. For example, teacher-pupil exchange carries an unequal power balance./The analysis of natural conversation in order to discover what the linguistic characteristics of conversation are and how conversation is used in ordinary life is called conversational analysis (CA). It includes the study of how speakers decide when to speak during a conversation, how the utterances of two or more speakers are related. Q. Elements of CA: CA introduced a continuing major theme of SLA research: ‘the influence of L1 on L2’. It involves predicting and explaining learner problems based on the comparison of L1 and L2 to determi ne similarities and differences. It is influenced by the theories of Structuralism and Behaviorism. The focus of CA is on the surface forms of both L1 and L2 systems and on describing and comparing the languages one level at a time – generally contrasting the phonology of L1 and L2 first, then morphology, and then syntax. Lexicon and discourse usually receive little attention. Following behaviorist view, CA assumed that language acquisition essentially involves habit formation in a process of Stimulus – Response – Reinforcement (S-RR). Assumption - transfer of elements acquired in L1 to the target L2. The process of CA involves analyzing roughly comparable segments of the languages for elements which are likely to cause problems for learners. Effective teaching would concentrate on areas of differences and prepare materials accordingly .Q. Sociocontextual and relational factors:There are different theories on relationship between language and society./Social structure may either influence or determine linguistic structure and/or behavior (AgeGrading).//Linguistic structure and/or behavior may either influence or determine social structure (Whorfian hypothesis)./Language and society may influence each other (Marxist View)./There is no relationship at all between linguistic structure and social structure (Chomsky). Q. Factors of language knowledge and awareness teacher should know before he/she starts teaching. *Linguistics Factors • Teacher needs to understand the system and function of the second language and the differences between L1 and L2 of the learner./• A teacher should know how to speak and understand a language. He/she should attain the technical knowledge required to understand and explain the system of that language - its phonemes, morphemes, words, sentences and discourses structures. /Learning Processes • How can a person ensure success in language learning? • What cognitive processes are utilized? • What kinds of strategies are available to a learner and which ones are optimal? /Age and Acquisition • To know about differences between children and adults’ learning process. It is a common observation that children are better language learners than adults. /Instructional Variables • What are the effects of varying methodological approaches, textbook, materials teacher. Q. Types of reference Major Forms of Reference Endophoric Reference (Endophora) - where the interpretive source lies in the co-text. An Endophoric reference can be divided into two sub-types:Anaphoric Reference (Anaphora): where the referent lies in the prior text, e.g. respect a man, he will do the more./Cataphoric Reference (Cataphora): where the referent lies in the text to come, e.g. When I met her, Mary looked ill.//Exophoric Reference (Exophora): where interpretive source lies in context, e.g. (Mary is standing there) I like her. //Role of a Learner : Negotiator – Between the self, the learning process, and the object of learning.///Contributor - Learner is not a passive recipient of knowledge //Roles of a Teacher: Facilitator - between all participants in the classroom, and between these participants and the various activities and texts.//Participant - within the learning - teaching group. //Organizer, guide.//Researcher, learner//Needs Analyst, counselor. Q.Role of a teacher: Teacher as an organizer:Within the classroom, teacher’s role may change from one activity to another. Teacher’s role such as prompter, resource, or tutor may well fulfill this concept//.Resource: Students do not know everything so they need the teacher’s help as a resource. Teachers give information, such as teaching grammar, explaining vocabulary, Students might ask how to say or write something or what a word or phrase means. They might want to know information in the middle of an activity or they might want information about where to look for a book or a website. This is where a teacher can be one of the most important resources they have.//Controller They are in charge of the class and of the activity taking place. Controllers take the role, telling students things, organize drills, read aloud, and exemplify the other qualities of a teacher-fronted classroom.//Prompter: A Teacher should hold back and let the students work things out for themselves or instead nudge them forward in a supportive way. Controller makes announcements, orders to be restored, provide explanations in a question and answer session. If we opt for the latter we are adopting some kind of a prompting role. Being a prompter, teacher will occasionally offer words or phrases, suggest that the students say something, or what could come next in a paragraph. E.g., often they can prompt students in monolingual groups to speak English rather than using their mother tongue Q:Qualities of manager in a classroom Classroom management refers to teachers’ behavior that facilitates learning. A well-managed classroom increases learning. Effective classroom managers are those who understand and use specific techniques and most effective instructional strategies. Effective teachers appear to be effective with students of all levels, irrespective of diversity in their classes. Even if the school they work in is highly ineffective, individual teachers can produce powerful gains in student learning. Q. Course rationale : Developing a course rationale/ Describing entry and exit levels/ Choosing course content/ Sequencing course content Planning the course content/ Preparing the scope and sequence plan/ Course Rationale -- starting point in course development. Q:Concordances: are software programmes which allow users to search thousands, and in some cases millions, of words of a corpus for in-context occurrences of particular morphemes, words, or phrases. Concordance can support language learning in several important ways: for both teachers and learners. For teachers, concordance can offer input for materials development and classroom teaching, and provide a source of lexico - grammatical information about naturally occurring language. For learners, it can provide opportunities for inductive learning, a resource for error analysis and correction, and opportunities for ‘serendipity learning’. Further, concordance tools may help us investigate lexical and grammatical patterns of academic language as it is actually used in written and spoken forms. Moreover, concordancing is an alphabetical list of words// --- --Q:Corpora: Language corpora are collections of spoken or written text, created for the purposes of linguistic analysis or description. Specially designed software along with digitalized corpora can allow researchers, materials developers, classroom teachers, and language learners to examine English closely in a range of contexts .Types of Corpora: Monolingual Corpus is texts in one language only. Usually tagged for parts of speech and is used by a wide range of users for various tasks from highly practical ones, e.g., checking the correct usage of a word or natural word combinations, to scientific use, e.g., identifying frequent patterns or new trends in language./ Parallel Corpus is a corpus consisting of the same text in two languages. The texts are aligned (matching segments, usually sentences are linked). The corpus allows searches in one or both languages to look up translations. The user can then observe how the search word or phrase is translated. Multilingual Corpus contains texts in several languages which are all translations of the same text and are aligned in the same way as parallel corpora. Sketch Engine allows the user to select more than two aligned corpora and the search will display the translation into all the languages simultaneously./Learner Corpus is texts produced by the learners of a language. Study the mistakes and problems learners have while learning an L2. Sketch Engine can use both error and correction annotation. It provides an interface to search for the error itself, error correction, and error type or for a combination of the three options. /Diachronic Corpus contains texts from different periods. It is used to study the development or change in language. It’ssketch Engine allows searching the corpus as a whole or only includes selected time intervals into the search./ Q. Usage of corpus The use of corpus contributes to language teaching in a number of ways.//The insights derived from native-speaker corpora contribute to a more accurate language description, which then feeds into the compilation of pedagogical grammars and dictionaries. /The analysis of learner language provides insights into learner’s needs in different contexts, which then form learner dictionaries and grammars.//Research on learner corpora also contributes to our understanding of language learning processes //Corpora of language teaching course books enable the examination of the language to which learners are exposed. //Facilitate the development of more effective pedagogical materials. //Corpus-based research has also revealed the inadequacy of many of the rules that still dominate ELT materials.//Corpus research in English language teaching has led to real innovations in material design and classroom practice. – ---Q: Virtual worlds (VW) are three dimensional environments in which you can interact with others and create objects as part of that interaction. One can appear as an avatar (representaing a person) in the virtual world. Then You can communicate with another person using text, sound, graphical images and gesture. Some of the more advanced worlds allow you to use voice or touch. For the purposes of language teaching, VWs are 3 Dimensional, web-based, network-based, simulated worlds. In order to learn a second language (L2), learners need to become proficient in four areas of language: Reading (interactions with objects and text chat), writing (text chat and object creation), speaking (voice chat), and listening (interactions with objects, voice chat) . Q. Functional Notational Approach: People who study and use a language are mainly interested in how they can do things with language - how they can make meanings, get attention to their problems and interests. They are only interested in the grammatical structure of the language as a means to getting things done. Objectives>To explain language in terms of how people use it to live.//Adopts a semantic and pragmatic orientation inside the grammar.//It does not see semantics and pragmatics as extra levels of organization but sees them as integral to the organization of the grammar.//Communicative meanings that learners would need in order to express themselves and to understand others effectively. Q: Disadvantages of teaching grammar through text: The difficulty of the text, especially an authentic one, may be counter-productive.//The alternative is to use simplified texts , may give a misleading impression as to how the language item is naturally used, again defeating the purpose of using texts.//Not all texts will be of equal interest to students. //Students who want quick answers to simple questions may consider the use of texts a lengthy route, and would prefer a quicker, more direct route instead.//No single method of grammar presentation is going to be appropriate for all grammar items, nor for all learners, nor for all learning contexts.