Popular Methodologies In Teaching Languages - Essay Example

The Importance of Morphology and Teaching Methods in the Teaching Process school The Berlitz Advert The coastguard in the Berlitz advert mixes up the word sinking and thinking. A captain of a ship was asking for help saying they are sinking but the young coastguard misunderstood it as thinking. On the coastguard’s side, there was a problem on phonemes, interchanging the s and th sounds, being unable to distinguish the difference between the two sounds. This interchange then made a great change in the meaning of the cry of the ship captain to the listening coastguard. This then brings us to the importance of phonology especially when we are learning a different language because in most cases, word pronunciation makes a great deal in bringing our messages across no matter how wide one’s vocabulary is in a certain language. What aspects of pronunciation do your learners find more challenging? Sound production is a widely recognized problem and considered to be the most challenging part in learning a second language. Intonation and accentuation are equally challenging but do not give much problems in contrast to sound production because it is the pronunciation of the word correctly that makes one coherent. Why do older learners have a hard time achieving native-like pronunciation? Older learners have difficulty in achieving a native-like pronunciation because they have already been used to the accent and intonation of their own tongue. This may be compared to training a plant to follow a bend that the florist desires for it to have a unique design wherein, if it is still young, the plant is easily bent while when it is already of age with its trunk hardened, there would be difficulty in bending it. Thus, if one wants to learn another language, it is best to start while he is still young and is able to develop the communication skills more effectively. Pronunciation should be taught not only in a certain period of time where the lesson is concentrated in sound formation but should be taught in all levels of the teaching process. Correction is more effective when the mistake is brought to light right then and there because the student is most aware of the mistake when he just made it. Whereas, when you let a mistake pass and try to correct it later during a specific pronunciation class, the student tends to forget and deny the mistake he committed. Thus, pronunciation should not be treated separately but should be taught all throughout. Do you teach pronunciation as a separate lesson? For beginners, I teach pronunciation separately during the first lessons. Of course it would be irrational to be teaching beginners many words that would just confuse them and worst, might scare them. Thus, I introduce my lessons systematically starting with the basic and common sounds and even giving examples to magnify the differences. When the basic pronunciations are already established, I introduce the students to more challenging exercises like sentence construction, reading, listening and speaking. I integrate pronunciation teaching with these other skills as it is a vital task in the mastery of the languages I teach. For non-beginners, I do not use a separate pronunciation syllabus however, I always allow some room for it during our reading, listening and speaking tuition, dealing with the problems as they arise. Think of examples of each of the word formation processes we have just looked at the language that you teach. In teaching the Turkish and Greek languages, I use the question and answer method so as to facilitate an exciting exchange of ideas in the said languages. This enhances their thinking and speaking abilities in the languages I am teaching, enabling them to achieve better results in a shorter period of time. I also do the method of explanation especially in the introduction of lessons to let the students be able to understand our objectives with each lesson and also with the production of sounds. I demonstrate how a word is pronounced and explain the positioning of the tongue to produce a certain sound. I also allow collaboration among the students to initiate a productive conversation among them as they freely express their ideas using the Turkish or Greek languages. Audio-lingualism is importantly used also in my methodology since this is a helpful means of helping the students with their pronunciations. Listening is an important factor I always consider in the correct production of sounds because how students imagine the word to be verbalized is how they are going to imitate the words. One of the difficulties encountered in teaching pronunciation is on the listening part because the students usually confuse sounds with that of their native tongue. Thus, their pronunciation is affected, the students being unable to make the correct sounds for certain words. There are word formations which are used in the Turkish language like in the process of coinage, the word subay meaning officer came from Mongolian language where the word originally meant sterile later meant childless then finally adopted to mean light cavalryman because they say he who stands alone travels the fastest. In the process of borrowing where foreign words are adopted, basketbol for basketball and tenis for tennis are common in the Turkish language. Joining two words, we form the word bugün meaning today and another example would be büyükanne meaning grandmother. Here are some words also for the process of blending; kahve meaning coffee to kahvalti meaning breakfast and mevcut or existing and mevki which denotes place, location, position or rank. Ağabey meaning big brother can be reduced to a shorter form, Abi. The verb sabretmek meaning to be patient, in the process of reduction called hypnocorism or back formation is reduced to form the noun sabir meaning patience. A word in the Turkish language can also be converted in its meaning without changing its form like the word yaz which could mean summer or yaz! meaning write! Of course in this language, we also would like to save time and energy when it comes to words especially in writing that we also use acronyms like DK which stands for the word dakika meaning minute. Derivation of words are also common with the addition of prefixes and suffixes. For instance, the word, makarna meaning macaroni or spaghetti, when added affixes to form the word makarnacilar forms another word meaning sellers or makers of macaroni. In multiple processes, the example Ayşe benim büyükannemdir involves several processes in the formation of which where Büyük is an adjective added to anne, a noun; m, a possessive suffix and di a verb to be. Give examples of derivational and inflectional morphemes in the language you teach. In the languages I teach, derivational morphemes are similar to most of the other languages where there could bound or free morphemes. In Greek, suffixes and prefixes are used whereas in Turkish, only suffixes are used. Let’s take a look at the noun forming Turkish suffixes açmak, a verb meaning to open and the noun aç meaning hunger and the noun to noun transformation of the word yol meaning road, yol-cu meaning traveler and yol-cu-luk meaning a journey or trip. There are also verb forming suffixes like the noun karşi meaning the place opposite, karşilama expressing the noun meeting or greeting to the verb karşilamak meaning to meet. The adjective beyaz meaning white becomes to get white or whiten when it has a suffix forming the word beyazlanmak or beyazlaşmak. The noun tarih which means history becomes an adjective when the suffix –î is added forming the word tarih-î meaning historical. For inflectional morphemes, the word masa meaning table forms its plural form when the suffix lar is added producing the word masa-lar. A verb on the other hand forms its past tense by changing di to ti like çalişdim meaning I work, gets its past tense with the term çaliştim. In addition to that, a derivational suffix is always attached to a word before an inflectional suffice as exemplified by the word öğrenciler where öğren is the verb meaning to learn, -ci is the derivational suffix which in the English language is the suffix –er and –ler is the inflectional suffix to produce the plural form of learners or students. How does a good knowledge of morphology support the teaching of a foreign language? Study the structure of words: Antidisestablishmentarianism. A good knowledge of morphology or the structure of words in a language is very useful in teaching a foreign language since a teacher can easily adjust to the methods to efficiently reach the goal. Being knowledgeable of this teaching the meaning of words will be of a great help not only to the teacher but to the students as well as it shows how the word is formed and could even learn much especially with words with several forms. For instance, the word antidisestablishmentarianism is divided into seven parts. Anti is a prefix, dis is also a prefix which in this word is used in the middle, establish is a verb; ment, ar, ian, and ism are suffixes which when added up form a noun. The meaning of this word would be easy to comprehend especially if we study each part. Anti means against while dis connotes to do the opposite, establish means to set up, ment denotes a process, ar means resembling or relating to, ian means belonging to and ism is a system of belief. Popular Methodologies by Harmer Among the methodologies described by Harmer, I am most drawn to presentation, practice and production because this is one of the methods which use a variety in one (Harmer, n.d). I do the same in my teaching so this parallelism to my methods most probably is the reason for the attention this method gets from me. For me, a teaching method is a systematic process a teacher uses in order to reach his/her goals. Teaching methods should be well thought of to make sure of its effectiveness and efficiency as well as it should be flexible enough to cater to the different needs of different students. As to my teaching methods, I basically use the presentation, practice and production. I believe that in order to get my thoughts well communicated to my students, I have to make a presentation of the lessons. In this process, I am able to discuss my goals for the subject as well as explain the plan on how we are supposed to reach that certain objective, consequently encouraging them to journey with me as the aim is not for me but for them, the students. After the presentation, discussions among them could be encouraged which will then lead them to practice what has been taught. Practice is a vital part of the learning process because it is in doing that students retain what they learn. Discussions will be useless if only the teacher will do all the talking without giving the students the chance to get involved. Production on the other hand will be an evidence to whatever the students learned. This probably would be the most rewarding for both teachers and students because it shows the efficiency of a teacher and the cooperation and will of the students to learn. I chose to teach this way by observing the methods of most efficient teachers and adopting them to my own methodologies as well as basing it from my experiences as a student. Many teachers are attracted to the idea of ‘best method’ since I guess everybody wants his/her efforts to pay off. I think no one wants to think he is teaching only to find out that he was just talking rather, all teachers aim to produce the students that they have envisioned before they even started the teaching process. In this age of high technology though, there are some who say that we are already in the post-method area, that teaching methods are dead. I dare to disagree though because I believe that a lot could be achieved when there is a systematic plan of the teacher in teaching the lesson. However, I believe also that teaching methods should not be limited to just one which is to be used to different types of students. This then poses a real challenge to the teacher who should be very observant and sensitive to the needs of the students, able to adjust as the need arises and not be stubborn and fixated on the prepared tuition. References Harmer, J. n.d. The Practice of English Language Teaching, Popular Methodology, Third Edition, (online), October 25, 2010, Available at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/23200583/The-Practice-of-English-Language-Teaching-Jermy-Harmer, 93-113. Read More