TASK-BASED TEACHING METHODS

TASK-BASED TEACHING METHODS

During the prcess of teaching different methods have been used.The most successful ones has managed to survive and give their contribution to the students and the teachers even nowdays. But even those methods which were less successful have given their contribution to the process of teaching with some of their elements that have helped the whole teaching process be more effective and more useful to the students and the teachers.

By studing those methods will help us as future teachers to be more effective and more successful as teachers.Being a students for about 15 years now I can not resist without expressing my personal opinion.I have had some teachers who were and still are idols to me,their way of expressing , of communicating with us was a motivation for us,I felt their words and their way of expressing them like a hand pushing me slightly on the back to continue the way to the knowledge.But I have had also some other proffessors who even though they were very inteligent their way of transmiting to us their knowledge was not a way that I as a teacher would envy.The only thing they could manage was to take away the enthusiasm that I had for learning new things and make me belive that I was not too good or better not as good as they were to achive what they had achived,knowledge.I added those opinions and expreinces of mine just to illustrate and to come up to the conclusion that communication is the most important thing in the teacher-student relation.We as teachers had to motivate and inspirate our student before exposing them to any kind of learning.All the good and successful teachers that I had during the years have given me an example of how should I be and what should I do so as to be a successful teacher and I thank them for this,but even the “not successful” teachers that I had have given me an example of how should I not be and what should I not do so as to become a successsful teacher.

Going now back to the methods used in teaching they have been a few,some of them were succesful and some of them were not but let’s take them one by one.

One of the methods has been the grammar translation method.This is an old method where the focus was on reading and writing.This method remainds me of the old Albanian method of teaching foreign languages.In this method the teacher was the authority in class and the role of the students was passive.He was the only sourse of inforamtion.The students had to do a lot of translation,reading and wrting and little focus was given to communication.This method was used for the purpose of helping students read and appreciate foreign language literature.It was also hoped that through the study of the grammar of their native language and that this familiarity would help them speak and write their native language better and also it was thought that foreign languages leraning would help students grow intellectually.

The grammar part of this method was learned through a deductive way, that is, students were given first the rules and than the examples.Memorization was another charcteristic of this method,student had to memorize lists of new words, of grammar patterns etc.

Another method is the Direct method.The Direct method has one basic rule NO TRANSLATION IS ALLOWED.The consept of the Direct method is that the teacher should demostrate not explain or translate so that the meaning is directly conveyed in the target language through the use of demostration and visual aids with no recourse to the students’ native language.Here communication comes first and the teacher is not the authority but a director, he should not correct the students but lead them to self-correction.In this method the role of the students become more active than this in the grammar translation method.Grammar here is tought inductively that means that the students were given the examples and that later they would come up with the rules themselves.Unlike Grammar translation method the focus of Direct method was primarily spoken language and than written language and vocabulary was emphasized over grammar.

A third method is the Audio-Lingual method.This method is also a oral-based method.The teacher becomes an orchestra leader, directing and controlling the language behaviour of his/her students while the students are imitators of the teacher’s model.The teachers want their students to be able to use the target language communicatively.In order to do this ,they belive students need to overlearn the target language, to leran to use it automatically without stopping to think.That’s why this method makes great use of drills like: repetition drills, chain drills, backward build-up drills, transformation drills,question-and-answer drills, single-slot substitution drills, multiple-slot substitution drills etc.Special atttention is given even to the right pronauncation of the words.

Another method would be suggestopedia .This method was developed to help students to eliminate the feeling that they can not be successful or the negative association they may have toward studing and thus to help them overcome the barriers to learning so this method gives a great deal of attention to students’ feelings.This method suggest that the students should be relaxed and confident so that they would not try hard to learn the language but it will just come naturally and easily to them.That’s why this method make use of music ,of brightful and colorful enviroment,peripherial learning,posters, role-plays,dialogs etc.The teachers here is the authority in the classroom and the students must trust and respect him/her so as they can feel more secure.Vocabulary is emphasized in this method too and the grammar is dealt with explicity but minimally. Native language is used to make the meaning clear and the errors are corrected gently with the teacher using a soft voice.

A last method is TPR, Total Physical Response.In these method listening comprehension comes first.It suggest that language learning should start first with understanding and later proceed to production.The teacher in this method is the director of all students behaviour and the students are imitators of her/his nonverbal model.The teacher gives rules and the sudents obey or acts so the teacher commands to direct behaviour.It was thought that this method helps students to reduce the stress while learning foreign languages because feeling of success and low anxiety facilitate learning.Vocabulary and grammatical structures are embedded through imperatives.

These are some of the methods and some of their principles and elements used during the teaching proccess.We have learned a lot about them in our three year corse of teaching English and I belive that there are no successful or non- successful methods but there are methods which have all contributed and will contribute with their most successful elements in the teaching process so as we as teachers and the coming teachers be more succesful In their work which is a very precious one.

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