In apple book, the history of teaching vocabulary is explained. There is pendulum of teaching vocabulary based upon the changes of favor of teaching method and theory. I am very interested in the history of teaching vocabulary. I would like to know the detail.
When I built up vocabulary, I often used audiolingual method. I just memorized the word itself with Japanese translation by doing drills again and again. I never memorized the words in context. Those were sometimes boring and time consumer. Unfortunately, I cannot use the words which I memorized. It means that my vocabularies are passive vocabulary. In order to use them in real life, I have to find out the way to make the passive vocabularies active vocabularies. According to the apple book, the author suggested that we should associate target words to something. I think that it is really helpful way.
In grammar teaching, the authors of The Grammar Book mentions that we should teach grammar from three dimensions: form(accuracy), meaning(meaningfulness) , and use(appropriateness). We should have the following questions. How is it formed? What does it mean? When/why is it used? Students have to learn to use grammar structures accurately, meaningfully, and appropriately. In my experience, these three components were not well balanced. Fortunately, I am taking a grammar course of ENG 583 in this semester. So, I would like to find out appropriate way to teach grammar.
1 comment:
I believe that grammar should be taught in communicative contexts and that drills are a thing of the past as far as I am concerned. It is very important to create a large active vocabulary. It helps students express themselves and makes for better communication. This can be very hard. I think a good way to solve this is to create some theme based instruction using some new vocabulary and have the students complete life oriented tasks such as applying for a credit card ect. This way the real life vocabulary is practiced with in a context.
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