This is a great article and I think that it trully reflects waht a teacher micht feel whe trying to apply the Communicative Approach in her teaching. There is a huge difference between believing in the theory and applying that theory in our daily teaching practice.
In the first place I think that every language teacher aims to be learner-centered. It sounds beautiful, but in real life this is hard to apply and to make it true. We try to teach using a learner-centered approach, but we aslo have to deal with a whole group which is composed by twenty or more students and most of the times we consider the class as a whole rather than considering each student by himself in teaching situations. A learner-centered approach is the ideal methodology for every single language teacher. But I think that it really takes to be superheroes to really accomplish this goal in every single lesson or learning situation.
Another difficult task for Communicative teachers is to focus o meaning and on form simultaneously. Every teacher should at least try to pay attention to this two very different and almost opposed aspects of language. This is the theory, but it takes a lot of time and dedication to achieve this in real teaching situations.
The third point that Peter Medgyes talks about in his article is the fact that a real communicative teacher should provide her students with real communicative situations. I think that we all try to do this, because it is the way in which our students get to learn meaningfully. To create and desing real communicative situations also takes a lot of time and dedication, because it is much easier to follow a text book and make our students drill. This makes me think about another point mentioned in the article that is very interesting: The text book. It is obviously easier for a non-native teacher who teaches in a non-native speaking country to follow a text book instead of designing her own activities. But if we want to expose our students to real communicative situations in which real information exchange is needed, we should not be using a text book by itself. I think that text books should be used as a supportive material. The text book certainly offers great material to practice language, but we should try not to turn it into some kind of teacher's manual.
As you all see, there are many points to reflect on in this article. Very interesting since it deals with real life situations for teachers.
RE Medgyes:
ResponderEliminarNice comment Angela. But you could still go a bit deeper. The mask reference was in relation to Medgyes’ comment about teachers having to be "multi-tasking wizards". I know what you're referring to about people not understanding the teaching context (I had this experience first-hand myself as a relief teacher and know I wouldn’t be able to deal with 5-year olds day-in-day out) and I think that is one of the points Medgyes is trying to make. However, you also need to compare today’s classroom with similar classrooms 10, 20 or 30 years ago.
There are two things that you could reflect on here:
1. Who decides what is taught, why it is taught. etc (the teacher? the head of the department? The school? The parents? The local authority? The government?) i.e. how are educational decisions informed?
2. What tasks does the teacher do inside the classrooms that go, seemingly, un-noticed or are taken for granted?
I think that the biggest problem about education is that most of the people who decide what to teach or how to teach it, are not educators. People feel free to give their opinion about education and they have never even been in a classroom as teachers.
ResponderEliminarI mean, if were to expressmy thoughts about Economics, people would diregard me as I am not an Economist; therefore, my opinion would not be taken into account. This is exactly the opposite to what happens in education.
I totally agree Johanna, teachers are only to do but never to give opinions or make changes. Too many people decide or opinion on what should be done in the classroom but not many times WE have the chance to make the changes even when it is us who are in the classroom and the ones who chose and studied to become teachers.
ResponderEliminarOOoooo sorry, I agree with Bernardita, ups!
ResponderEliminar