Discourse Analysis Approach!

Discourse Analysis Approach 




Why is it important to use this approach? When can we use it?

Well, to begin with, we must say that one of the main aspects that is developed in this approach is the use of language as it appears in its own context, without any special adaptation (authentic material)

Discourse Analysis approach is not only important in order to learn real language in context without adapting but also, thanks to this authentic material “Learners gain so a greater appreciation and understanding of […] the sociolinguistic factor that contribute to linguistic variation across setting and contexts” (Douglas 2001).

In some groups with an advanced level of English this approach can be carried out, but what happens with the little ones? Can we use authentic material without adapting it? The answer is yes. We can facilitate lexical items that appear in our lesson and give them a previous context so that students can understand better what's going on. Also, as teachers, we need to use material that has been very carefully chosen . It implies more work, more hours at home surfing the Internet, but at the end we will see the reward at class.

Bibliography:

• Celce-Murcia, Marianne and Elite Olshtain 2000: Discourse and Context in Language Teaching: A Guide for Language Teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Douglas, A. 2001: „Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers‟. ERIC Digest.

The Communicative Approach!

The Communicative Approach 

A communicative methodology should be based on the Communicative Approach or Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)

What do we teach? We need to give special importance to language functions rather than grammar and vocabulary.

As Jeremy Harmer says in his book The Practice of English Language Teaching (2008) the activities "typically involve students in real or realistic communication, where the accuracy of the language they use is less important than successful achievement of the communicative task they are performing. [...] What matters in these activities is that students should have a desire to communicate something. [...] They should be focused on the content of what they are saying or writing rather than just one language structure. The teacher will not intervene to stop the activity; and the materials he or she relies on will not dictate what specific language forms the students use either"

"The emphasis of CLT is on functional communication, social interaction, and real-life language use. Addressing fluency and accuracy, this approach considers integrated components of communicative competence, including the grammatical, functional, and sociolinguistic. The major tenet of CLT is that language acquisition is achieved through using language communicatively, rather than from repetitious drills that are common in the grammar-based approach." (Pu, Chang 2008)

Activities you can use at class following this approach include:

• Role Play
• Interviews
• Information Gap
• Games
• Language Exchanges
• Surveys
• Pair Work
• Learning by teaching

• Harmer, Jeremy 2008: The Practice of English Language Teaching (4th Edition). Essex: Pearson Longman
• Pu, Chang 2008: "English as a Second Language (ESL) Approaches". Encyclopedia of Bilingual Education. SAGE Publications.

Useful Bibliography!

Applied linguistics, Psychology and Language Teaching 


Carter, Ronald & David Nunan eds. 2001. The Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Celce-Murcia, Marianne and Elite Olshtain. 2000. Discourse and Context in Language Teaching.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Hedge, Tricia. 2000. Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Lightbown, Patsy and Nina Spader. 2006. How Languages Are Learned. 3^rd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Williams, Marion and Robert Burden. 1997. Psychology for Language Teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Schmitt, Norbert. 2002. An Introduction to Applied Linguistics. London: Arnold.