Other Teaching Methods Influencing English Language Teaching (ELT) in China
Besides what are mentioned above, the following teaching methods are also worth mentioning because they also, to some degree, have influenced the English teaching in China. They are Suggestopedia, Total Physical Response (TPR), Community Language Learning, the Silent Way, Eclectic Approach, etc.
Suggestopedia
Suggestopedia is a method that was derived from Bulgarian psychologist Georgi Lozanov’s (1979) contention that the human brain could process great quantities of material if given the right conditions for learning, among which are a state of relaxation and giving over of control to the teacher. Music is central to this method.Baroque music, with its 60 beats per minute and its specific rhythm, creates the kind of “relaxed concentration” that leads to “super-learning”. The primary difference lies in a significant proportion of activity carried out in soft, comfortable seats in relaxed states of consciousness. Students are encouraged to be as “childlike” as possible, yielding all authority to the teacher and sometimes assuming the roles (names) of native speakers of the foreign language. Students thus become “suggestible”.
Total Physical Response (TPR)
TPR is a method developed by James Asher (1977). He holds the view that language classes are often the locus of too much anxiety, so he wishes to devise a method that is as stress-free as possible, where learners would not feel overtly self-conscious and defensive. The TPR classroom, then is one in which students do a great deal of listening and acting. The teacher is very directive in orchestrating a performance: “The instructor is the director of a stage play in which the students are the actors” (Asher, 1977: 43). Typically, TPR heavily utilizes the imperative mood, even at more advanced proficiency levels. Commands are an easy way to get learners to move about and to loosen up. No verbal response is necessary.
Community Language Learning
By the decade of the 1970s, as we increasingly recognized the importance of the affective domain, some innovative methods took on a distinctly affective nature. Community Language Learning is a classic example of an affectively based method. Whole person learning means that teachers should not only take their students’feelings and intellect into consideration, but also have some understanding of the relationship between students’ physical reactions, their instinctive, protective reactions and their desire to learn.
Community Language Learning (CLL) takes its principle from the more general Counseling-Learning Approach developed by C.A. Curren, who studies on adult learning for many years and develops Community Language Learning at the basis of his own counseling learning approach. This method advises teachers to consider their students as “whole persons”, therefore Community Language Teaching is sometimes cited as an example of a “humanistic approach”.
In order for any learning to take place, group members first need to interact in an interpersonal relationship in which students and teacher join together to facilitatelearning in a context of valuing each individual in the group. In such a surrounding, each person lowers the defenses that prevent open interpersonal communication. The anxiety caused by the educational context was lessened by means of the supportive community. The teacher’s presence is not perceived as a threat, nor is it the teacher’s purpose to impose limits and boundaries, but rather, as a true counselor, to center his or her attention on the clients (the students) and their needs. “Defensive” learning is made unnecessary by the empathetic relationship between teacher and students. Current’s Counseling-Learning Model of education is extended to language-learning contexts in the form of CLL. While particular adaptations of CLL are numerous, the basic methodology is explicit. The group of clients (for instance, beginning learners of English), having first established in their native language an interpersonal relationship and trust, are seated in a circle with the counselor (teacher) on the outside of the circle. When one of the clients wishes to say something to the group or to an individual, he or she says it in the native language and the counselor translates the utterance back to the learner in the target language. The learner then repeats that English sentence as accurately as possible. Another client responded in his native language; the utterance is translated by the counselor into English; the client repeats it; and the conversation continues.
If possible the conversation can be taped for later listening, and at the end of each session, the learners inductively attempt together to glean information about the new language. If desirable, the counselor might play a more directive role and provide some explanation of certain linguistic rules or items.
During the first stage of applying Community Language Learning in your classroom teaching, intense struggle and confusion may appear. But with the support of the counselor and of the fellow clients, the learner may gradually get used to it and become able to speak a word or phrase directly in the foreign language, without translation. This is the first sign of the learner’s moving away from complete dependence on the counselor. As the learners gain more and more familiarity with the foreign languages, more and more direct communication can take place, with the counselor providing less and less direct translation and information will occur. After many sessions, perhaps many months or years later, the learner may achieve fluency in the spoken language. The learner has at that point become independent.
CLL reflects not only the principles of Carl Rogers’s view of education, but also basic principles of the dynamics of counseling in which the counselor, throughcareful attention to the client’s needs, aids the clients in moving from dependence and helplessness to independence and self-assurance.
There are advantages and disadvantages of Community Language Learning. CLL attempts to overcome some of the threatening affective factors in second language learning. The threat of the all-knowing teacher, of making blunders in the foreign language in front of classmates, of competing against peers—all threats that can lead to a feeling of alienation and inadequacy—are presumably removed. The counselor allows the learner to determine the type of conversation and to analyze the foreign language inductively. In situations in which explanation or translation seemed to be impossible, it is often the client-learner who steps in and becomes a counselor to aid the motivation and capitalize on intrinsic motivation.
There are also some practical and theoretical problems with CLL. The counselor-teacher could become too nondirective. The student often needs direction, especially in the first stage, in which there is such seemingly endless struggle within the foreign language. Supportive but assertive direction from the counselor could strengthen the method. Another problem with CLL is its reliance on an inductive strategy of learning. It is well accepted that deductive learning is both a viable and efficient strategy of learning and that adults particularly can benefit from deduction as well as induction. While some intense inductive struggle is a necessary component of second language learning, the initial grueling days and weeks of floundering in ignorance in CLL could be alleviated by more directed, deductive learning, “by being told”. Perhaps only in the second or third stage, when the learner has moved to more independence, is an inductive strategy which is really successful. Finally, the success of CLL depends largely on the translation expertise of the counselor. Translation is an intricate and complex process that is often “easier said than done”; if subtle aspects of language are mistranslated, there can be a less than effective understanding of the target language.
Today, like other methods mentioned above, virtually no one uses CLL exclusively in a curriculum. However, the principles of discovery learning, student-centered participation, and development of student autonomy (independence) all remain viable in their application to language classrooms. As is the case with virtually any method, the theoretical underpinnings of CLL may be creatively adapted to your own situation.
The Silent Way
Like Suggestopedia, the Silent Way rests on more cognitive than affective arguments for its theoretical sustenance. Much of the Silent Way is characterized by a problem-solving approach to learning. Richards and Rodgers (1986: 99) summarized the theory of learning behind the Silent Way:
1. Learning is facilitated if the learner discovers or creates rather than remembers and repeats what is to be learned;
2. Learning is facilitated by accompanying (mediating) physical objects;
3. Learning is facilitated by problem solving involving the material to be learned.
“Discovery learning”, a popular educational trend of the 1960s, advocated less learning “by being told” and more learning by discovering for oneself various facts and principles. In this way, students constructed conceptual hierarchies of their own that were a product of the time they invested. Ausubel’s “subsumption” was enhanced by discovery learning since the cognitive categories were created meaningfully with less chance of rote learning taking place. Inductive processes were also encouraged more in discovery-learning methods.
Eclectic Approach
Eclectic Approach is an approach for English language teaching by using the effective techniques employed by different approaches, such as: Grammar-Translation Method, Direct Method, Communicative Approach, etc. That is, use whatever is effective. It should be clear from the foregoing that as an “enlightened, eclectic”teacher, you think in terms of a number of possible methodological options at your disposal for tailoring classes to particular contexts. Your approach, or rationale for language learning and teaching, therefore takes on great importance. Your approach includes a number of basic principles of learning and teaching (such as those that will be elaborated on in the next chapter) on which you can rely for designing and evaluating classroom lessons. It is inspired by the interconnection of all your reading, observing, discussing and teaching, and that interconnection underlies everything that you do in the classroom.
But your approach to language pedagogy is not just a set of static principles “set in stone”. It is, in fact, a dynamic composite of energies within you that change (or should change, if you are a growing teacher) with your experiences in your ownlearning and teaching. The way you understand the language-learning process—what makes for successful and unsuccessful learning—may be relatively stable across months or years, but don’t ever feel too smug. There is far too much that we do not know collectively about this process, and there are far too many new research findings pouring in, to allow you to assume that you can confidently assert that you know everything you already need to know about language and language learning.
The interaction between your approach and your classroom practice is the key to dynamic teaching. The best teachers always take a few calculated risks in the classroom trying new activities here and there. The inspiration for such innovation comes from the approach level, but the feedback that these teachers gather from actual implementation then informs their overall understanding of what learning and teaching is. This, in turn, may give rise to a new insight and more innovative possibilities, and the cycle continues.