Issues in foreign language teaching: review and techniques

Language is a crucial part of human communication. Although there are variety of ways in connection among all species, humans are unique to have mastered cognitive language communication. Language is valuable to express and share our ideas, thoughts, and feelings, as well as, to expose our deep notions, points of view, as close as we can put into words. It has the power to create societies, unite nations, build a strong bond amongst tribes, allow people to live in peace and tranquil, but also knock them down in a second.

Learning a language is not straightforward, as it seems. It takes a long time and hard work and dedication. Clear purpose may aid to convince a person to take the plunge, whether such persuasion is necessary. Some rationale are practical, some aspirational, some academic and others emotional, but whatever one’s motives, having a clear idea of why one is learning a language can assess one to inspire that person in reaching one’s goals.

As we do believe, knowing more languages makes our lives easier. From this perspective, we draw a line in our life. Nevertheless, there are so many reasons for learning languages as we mentioned above. Some people learn it for fun as an activity or as a vocation who think that is the best choice for them. Some will go for making a fortune because a language is the basic core for communication in the entire world. Some learn because of being compulsory. Nevertheless, it is not our duty to judge them.

Literature Review

I believe that teaching is a creative art in which evidence based knowledge is applied toward meeting the learning goals of learners. I believe that effective teaching is often the spark that ignites the imagination, possibility, and promise for learners, including the teacher.

Barbara Paterson

Research methods

This empirical research was conducted within the quantitative and qualitative research method. The goal of this research is to examine the effective techniques in teaching foreign languages from both teachers’ and students’ perspective. In order to find out this, the researcher utilized a mixed methods study, both quantitative and qualitative research design. As noted by Brannen, “The combining of different methods within a single piece of research raises the question of movement between paradigms at the levels of epistemology and theory. Whether or not such movement occurs, the process of combining methods highlights the importance of choosing the appropriate methods for the research questions and theory” (1992, p.20). By utilizing quantitative and qualitative techniques within the same framework, the author is aiming to do some research on his work in a concise and effective way. To come to the point by using a single technique will not be enough. To give broad explanations and a variety of ways to identify the result of your research is so crucial.

In this research, teachers involved demonstrating activities contemplate some main aspects: fulfilling the tasks as their students do, preparing for the lesson before the class, utilizing diverse techniques comparing with the other that the teacher practiced afore. “Many of the problems that are perceived to exist between proponents of quantitative and qualitative research appear to us to stem from misunderstandings and misstatements of the positions involved. From a fundamental epistemological standpoint, we are not sure that any differences exist. Both quantitative and qualitative methods are, after all, empirical, dependent on observation.”(Sechrest and Sidani,1995, p78).

The researcher made use of field observation, classroom teaching and student survey. In this context interviewing was also conducted in a form of informal conversations with some teacher and student participants. As for data collection, they were particularly related to documents that were continuously collected during the entire period of the researcher’s study programme.

Discussions and Some Suggestions

The relationship of learning language and teaching language has also been researched widely. The link between students’ learning and their apprehension, attitude and perhaps self-efficacy is believed to cause students’ fruitful outcome. In this case a question “How can a teacher help his or her students to become better learner?” arises vertically. There are a variety of techniques which a teacher can apply as a good teacher, as well as ways of creating assignments and assessments that will aid students in this effort.

Many of the teaching techniques we take for granted are not at all obvious to our students. And yet, these issues arise so frequently that there are resources available for teachers to share with their students.

Some Useful Techniques

The author suggests some methods and grants detailed information about them.

Characteristics of Silent way:

emphasises the autonomy of the learner

• •    the teacher's role is to monitor the students' efforts

• •    students are encouraged to have an active role in learning the language

• •    pronunciation is seen as fundamental uses a The choice of vocabulary: functional and versatile words seen as the best

• •    Translation and rote repetition are avoided

Language is practiced in meaningful contexts

• •    Evaluation is carried out by observation structural syllabus, and structures are constantly reviewed and recycled

  “There are twelve English charts containing about 500 words… There are eight Fidel charts for learning English…”(Gattegno, 1963,pp.1-15).

Gattegno, (2010, p.27) states that Scores of the teacher who are using The Silence Way to recognize silence’ to be one of the powerful tools in their teaching.

Stevick, (1974, p.312) discusses that “In the Silent Way, the teacher spends much less of the time in the "teaching" mode than in other methods that I have seen.”

Grammar translation method

Richards and Schmidt (2002, p. 231) have defined the grammar-translation method as “a method of foreign or second language teaching which makes use of translation and grammar study as the main teaching and learning activities.”

Peters (1934) summarizes that “In the grammar-translation method group the following were observed: (1) Studying a list of disconnected words (vocabulary); (2) Memorizing grammatical rules and exceptions; (3) Oral translation from the native tongue into the foreign tongue and vice versa; (4) Written translation; (5) Teaching of pronunciation; (6) Practice in reading aloud and listening to some spoken French”(p.528-529).

Grammar is taught deductively (by the presentation of rules followed by translation practice) and accuracy in translating sentences and texts is the main focus of this methodology. (Benati,2018, para.1).

Total Physical Approach.

“Actions speak louder than words, but words sometimes get all the attention”

-Susan Gale

The teacher takes on the role of the parent; giving prompts, setting patterns, playing games, and the student then responds physically to the prompt. In giving feedback, the teacher responds positively to the correct answer, much in the way that a parent would. This reinforces the learning and encourages further steps. TPR is a powerful technique, it is most effective when it is followed by games, songs, stories or demonstrations. Asher mentions that: “The strategy of the total physical response is to have the students listen to a command in a foreign language and immediately obey with a physical action” (1969, p.4).

Direct method

It is a shift from literary language to the spoken everyday language as the object of early instruction. In this method, the learning of languages was viewed as analogous to the first language acquisition, and the learning process involved were often interpreted in terms of an association’s psychology. The direct method was a first attempt to make the language-learning situation one of the language use. It demanded inventiveness on the part of teachers and led to the development of new techniques of language, such as demonstrations of pictures and objects, the emphasis on questions and answer, spoken narratives, dictation and imitation, etc. Nevertheless, two questions will be raised inevitably about this method: one is how to safeguard against misunderstanding without translating (especially, some abstract ideas), without reference to the first language; the other is how to apply this method beyond elementary stage of language learning.

Classroom instruction and classroom activities are carried out in the target language; therefore, students are actively involved in using the target language.

Today, there is a growing demand that students need different languages to succeed in the workplace and to fully participate in society. However, educators passionately vary on the best ways to teach those languages. Some pay greater attention on the fundamentals of grammar: building vocabulary, identifying parts of speech, and mastering punctuation. Others consider that students need more opportunities to develop their speech, communicative competence through interaction and work that allows them to make connections between people who know that language.

In fact, learning requires making effort. In this case, teachers can help students most by teaching them how to speak and read many books and teach to utilize vocabulary that they covered. They can introduce students to a process of making improvement on yourself a lot and never stop enhancing even when you became a perfect teacher. With an understanding of how to discover and find out fruitful methods, teachers will have more success in making their ideas clear to their students. When we come to conclusion, the teacher affects learners more than a technique. Therefore, they suggest choosing best teacher before selecting the method. While some students do not care about technique, they do care about their teacher.

In this paper, the researcher tried to focus on problems of students in learning languages and suggested few techniques for teachers in order to improve their effectiveness.