A question for language teachers

peanuthead

I'm a language teacher who has just recently ended up teaching her subject after never having taught it since being in schools (5 years).

Its definitely keeping me on my toes!!

My question is this - bearing in mind 'what they say at college' we should be teaching in the target language.

Now that is fine with the junior classes I have. Instilling a love for the language and developing communication skills properly. I'm genuinely all for that.

I'm just wondering what peoples feelings are when it comes to senior cycle. This is purely hypothetical as I'm not teaching senior cycle, just want to get others opinions.

Say you have a bright class, very interested in going to college, just not interested in studying your subject. They see it as a means to an end - a way to get them into college.

Do you continue with the 'right' way of teaching the language, ie: through target language, an emphasis on communication - making the language fun and interesting, or do you give your class what they want which is vocab and grammar drills, relentless completing of past papers... even if its against what you think is right.

Sure you have a love for your subject, but if they don't and are happy to work, but in a grinds school fashion - is this okay with you?

freire

Great question. Good post. Interesting food for thought. Been in that quandary myself a lately.

I don't know if the grammar drill thing is necessary. I mean maybe depends what you teach but for myself 1st person singular and plural is sufficient for the majority of exam stuff. So I've been cutting that out to a minimum lately, think it just confuses and puts a lot of students off.

I'm swinging towards the high frequency word thing lately. And lots of deduction. Letting them figure things out themselves.

Vocab as I know you know should be learned in categories, up to you then to devise or adapt your activities, info gap exercises, role plays, games etc to include the relevant vocab.

When you break the exam papers down the same stuff is tested year on year.
An A1 grade student is going to work on their own initiative and read original / authentic source material and listen to podcasts / radio etc.

It's late and I'm not making dollops of sense but I think there's room for both approaches, traditional and CLT, in the modern classroom.

At the end of the line there's only so much you can do for students, one of your key roles is as motivator and keeping it interesting and 'fun' is inherent in this idea.

In my experience kids don't learn much from exam papers, in the real sense. Of course they have to practise, but much better to do this on a selective basis i.e. you teach a language aspect, grammar or vocab or both, select a relevant question and test them with it.

I'm still learning the ropes, trying various strategies and methods, I think I'm getting there but there's a long way to go.

With a bright and enthusiastic class you can do many things if they have the required grounding. Lucky you!

Good luck.

peanuthead

Thanks freire.

Well where I'm at at the moment I have only junior cycle, so I'm working on that grounding.

It was just a thought I had the other day and got me thinking. Didn't feel brave enough to bring it up with my colleagues so I thought I'd ask here first.

Would welcome more opinions.