KOTESOL: What’s Wrong with Long-Used Teaching Practices
When teaching techniques and practices have been used for a considerable length of time, we often fail to question their effectiveness and blindly accept them based on their longevity. Just as commonly, when a new teaching technique becomes popular, we tend to entirely discard the formerly-used technique without consideration of its previously-held merits. Here we discuss several of the “tried-and-true techniques” of the past and present, and their place in the modern-day English classroom.
What’s Wrong with Drills?
The structure drill, or pattern practice, was largely inspired by the audio-lingual method and its concept of language learning as habit formation. The belief was that through drills, students would form the habit of using sentences correctly, never getting into the habit of forming incorrect structures. Teachers would provide only correct sentence forms for drilling, while students would only be exposed to correct forms and they would thereby only produce correct forms. The method became popular in the 1950s and 1960s. Textbooks filled with drills flooded the market, and language labs designed for pattern practice were built everywhere. The method came to Korea in the 1970s and became the method of instruction most prominently used by the SDA (Seventh Day Adventist) language schools here. Registration day at the SDA School in Gwangju saw a long line of students starting to form in the pre-dawn hours, with the students hoping to snag one of the limited spots available.
Structural drills start out being quite controlled by the teacher – these are the listen-and-repeat type of drills. After this controlled drilling, cues are used to make the drills less controlled and make the students recall more of the expected output. Whole class periods consisted of structural drill practice. Students learned sentences without making mistakes.
Then Noam Chomsky came along, refuted behaviorism and thus, structural drills lost their appeal. Disregarding the question of the validity of Chomsky’s generative-transformational ideas that supplanted behavioral drills, there was valid reason for drills to lose popularity. Though students became good at parroting the sentences that they had been drilled in, they had not gained the ability to generate any related sentence structures on their own. Drills did not nurture linguistic creativity. So should structural drilling be tossed into the trash can of antiquated teaching methods? Not so quickly. Drills do have a place in the English classroom – they can be used as one of several varied techniques employed in the practicing of newly introduced structures.
What’s Wrong with Correcting Errors?
It is quite common for the student and teacher alike to think that speaking errors are bad and that they should be corrected, so that students do not fall into the bad habit of repeating them until they become ingrained into their English. If you poll your students, asking them if they wish to have their speaking errors corrected, the vast majority will say “yes.” Ask them how frequently they wish to be corrected, a large percentage will say “all the time.” If you have ever tried to correct all or most of the mistakes that were being made in an English class, you would quickly find that very little dialogic practice was being accomplished. Error correction would take up a large portion of the class time, and that is not such a good thing. Modern thinking has it that error correction can even be detrimental to language learning.
We now divide classroom speaking practice into two types – accuracy practice and fluency practice. During accuracy practice, the focus is on grammatical correctness and errors are pointed out. During fluency practice, the emphasis is on a continuous flow of speech, so interruptions for corrective feedback would actually be a hindrance to this activity. Even during accuracy practice, the teacher must decide what errors to correct and how to correct them. Errors that are at or near the student’s proficiency level should be selected for correction; those errors beyond the student’s proficiency level should be allowed to pass until the student’s ability is at a level where they can deal with them.
For those errors that the teacher does decide to correct, she/he must also decide how to correct them – explicitly or implicitly. An explicit correction (“No, that’s not right. You should say . . .”) has the advantage of being clear but may also cause embarrassment to the student. An implicit correction (“Could you repeat that?” / “So you went with 13 friends, not 30.” / “You did what?”) can decrease the risk of embarrassment but reduce the chances that the student will recognize that you are correcting them. So, yes, error corrections do have a place in the English classroom, but it is now more of a “niche.” Not all errors should be corrected; not all types of errors should be corrected; not all types of activities should emphasize error correction; not all errors should be overtly corrected.
What’s Wrong with Praising & Rewarding Students?
Teacher: Can you tell me what Gina is wearing?
Student: She is wearing a pink blouse, and blue skirt, and black shoes.
Teacher: Good job!
Praising students for their production is something that teachers are encouraged to do. Its purpose is to motivate students to continue their efforts to progress in their language learning. So it is often thought that the more we use it, the more we motivate our students. But is that the way it works? When the teacher offers praise (as above) after every production that a student makes, the student begins to recognize the emptiness of the words. When the teacher awards equal praise to a student for easy as well as difficult tasks to complete, the student realizes that the praise is not so sincere. Such “praise” will not motivate the student, but actually demotivate them because of what is perceived as the teacher’s insincerity. Praise has a very important place in the language learning classroom, and it can have a strong motivating force, but the teacher must be careful not to overuse it – only giving praise where it is really due.
“Okay, I’ll give a piece of candy to the first student who can spell ‘pineapple’ correctly.” “I’ve got a candy bar for the first student to finish writing their letter.”
Like praise, student rewards can have a motivating effect. And because they have a motivating effect, they tend to be overused. Students then tend to expect a reward for everything that they are asked to do, and if a reward is not offered, they lose their motivation to complete the task. Additionally, rewards offered to the first student to complete a task encourages students to work quickly (and carelessly) rather than carefully, and this does not lead to good learning results.
As with praises, give rewards only where they are due. Also, one should consider what they are giving as rewards. Parents may not want their kids filled with candy. Gold stars pasted on a chart next to the rewarded student’s name can be surprisingly motivating – and cause less tooth decay. Rewards, too, have their place in the classroom but it is not the case that more is better.
Throwing away old teaching techniques for new ones may not be the best course of action. They can be retooled for greater effect.
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Monthly Chapter Meeting
Date & Time: October 15 (Saturday), 1:30 pm
Place: Chosun University, Main Building, Left Wing
Featured Workshops
“Teaching Grammar to Young Learners Using the PPP Method,” Ross Chambers (Gwangju National University of Education)
Swap-Shop: Share your teaching ideas and activities.
Admission: No Charge
KOTESOL International Conference
October 12-13, 2013; Seoul
http://koreatesol.org
Facebook: Gwangju-Jeonnam KOTESOL
Website: http://koreatesol.org/gwangju
Email: gwangju@koreatesol.org
Twitter: @GwangjuKOTESOL
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David Shaffer
David E. Shaffer is the current President of the Gwangju-Jeonnam Chapter of Korea TESOL (KOTESOL). On behalf of the Chapter, he invites you to participate in the teacher development workshops at their monthly meetings and special events. Dr. Shaffer is a professor of English at Chosun University, where he has taught graduate, undergraduate and postgraduate courses for many years. He is a long-time member of KOTESOL and a holder of various KOTESOL positions. He is a seven-time recipient of the KOTESOL President’s Award and also the recipient of the KOTESOL Lifetime Achievement Award.