Discussion Questions on Language Teaching

1. Justification of the usefulness of communicative language, grammar in context and test-based language teaching.

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Communicative language teaching (CLT) -it is a type of teaching that has no particular attention regarding grammatical structure, but concentrates on the meaning. It advanced in response to a view of language instruction that depended on the establishment of four language skills, that is, listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Sandra Savignon, a professor of French, proposed that language teaching should foster the establishment of the communicative competence in language learners; what she referred to as the ability to interact with other speakers to make meaning, as distinct from the capacity to demonstrate grammatical competence on the discrete point tests. This argument is useful in the CLT in the pursuit of its goals which requires the students to learn to use feedback to judge the success of their attempts to communicate and use linguistic forms in the social contexts in which they will get considered appropriate. CLT also requires teachers to learn to suppress the desire to assist students in producing grammatically accurate communication. The goal gets justified by Nunan's transcript that shows CLT in action. In the transcript, a student tells a story to other students and to the teacher who demonstrates what Professor Sandra had termed as collaborative interaction in CLT. This is very useful since it shows some reasons for the reservations that teachers may have about the effectiveness of the method.

Grammar in context- this is a response to an attention on forms, an arrangement of conventional language teaching syllabi that present discrete units that emphasis on a particular syntax point. Nunan advocates a natural approach that urges students to become dynamic explorers of language. Nunan strategies of teaching grammar incorporate presenting the learners to numerous samples of credible language, giving them opportunities to utilize language that they have not known or have not practice in any systematic way. It then gives them open doors for teaming up with different students and contrasting their undertakings. They are then let to amend and compare their last attempts and the language in the first content. This justifies the usefulness of the grammar in context which seems to be more appropriate for students who have at least an upper-intermediate level of proficiency since students must possess a sufficient knowledge of grammar to make judgements about authenticity and to explain the basis of their decision.

Task-based language teaching- this arises from certain beliefs. One of these beliefs is that is that it arises from task-based interactions among the students and teachers promotes the real second language acquisition and also that the second language does not proceed in a step-to-step process a characteristic of language textbooks. Long (1997) justifies these beliefs and this is useful in task-based language teaching which provides the students with significant input and promotes cooperate learning between and among students.

The arguments appeal to teacher's common sense. For instance, Nunan advocates in grammar in context to urge student to be natural explorers of language and use the language that they have not gotten presented to or have not practiced in any systematic way and then explain the basis for their judgement. Task-based language also encourages learning through interactions between teachers and the students and again between the students themselves and explain that language acquisition does not proceed step by step like the research done in the textbooks.

2. Differences between the arguments presented for the usefulness of processing instruction and the output hypothesis to those used in question 1.

Processing instruction (PI) get intended to motivate students to upgrade the chances of input becoming intake. VanPatten expounds that PI includes three stages, that is, the students get given data or a particular semantic structure, educated about a particular input-processing structure that may negatively influence their capacity to make the form- meaning connection and pushed to handle the form with classified information. In his hypothesis of SLA, output, the language produced by students, has no impact on fostering learning. Similarly, in the output hypothesis, Swain explains that from French immersion programs in Canada, the second language learners who received a great deal of comprehensible input in different settings and contexts developed a good comprehension. This differs from other approaches such as the task-based language teaching that requires the student to interact among themselves or with their teachers and from this interaction they enhance their learning and thus a faster approach to learning the second language. The arguments are more compelling as they try to drive one to have the urge to learn more due to the antagonistic approaches to learning especially the second language.

3. The argument that would convince me to try a particular approach to teaching.

The argument from the Nunan manuscripts can convince me to try this approach of communicating language teaching. This is because according to Nunan, a student is given the opportunity to tell a story to other students and the teacher and through this they learn.

3.2 Discussion questions

1 Levels of proficiency for the applications of the techniques to the English learners.

The output practice is a strategy that gives the learners a chance to produce language. This technique gets utilized at the advance level. It is addressed by the pushed out technique which is a research on the output hypothesis. Another technique used mainly at the intermediate level is textual enhancement which highlights a particular grammatical structure in a written passage. Input flood is a technique used at the beginning level since it is used to supply students with many instances of targeted grammatical structures. It also provides a repeated instances of structures that will be hoped, be noticed and become intake. However, the textual enhancement can get used at all levels of proficiency. This because its main purpose is to draw students' attention to the particular structure in the written form and thus can perform at any level.

2. What technique are best suited for teaching English to preteens and teenagers?

Input flood. The method can get consolidated in the classroom through stories, enabling the learners to listen to or read that have become modified to focus on particular grammatical structures. In it, there are repeated occurrences of structures to encourage noticing and creation of permanent change in student grammar and thus helpful for the preteens and teenagers.