Author: gustavorernesto

PDF #52 – Teaching for Cross-Language Transfer in Dual Language Education Possibilities and Pitfalls – Jim Cummins

Bilingual education and second language immersion programs have operated on the premise that the bilingual student’s two languages should be kept rigidly separate. Although it is appropriate to maintain a separate space for each language, it is also important to teach for transfer across languages. In other words, it is useful to explore bilingual instructional strategies for teaching bilingual students rather than assuming that monolingual instructional strategies are inherently superior. The paper explores the interplay between bilingual and monolingual instructional strategies within dual language programs and suggests concrete strategies for optimizing students’ bilingual development.

PDF #51 – Access to Meaning The Anatomy of the Language Learning Connection – David Skinner

In this Part II the author examines the most common assumptions about second language acquisition by means of the anatomical model created in Part I. The examination includes a review of the most widely-used second language acquisition methods, and shows how they owe their basic assumptions to those embodied in the Direct Method — a century-old approach to teaching second languages.

After reading “Joe Gilliland’s ‘A Teacher’s Memoir’ ” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.

PDF #50 – Learning Strategies in Second Language Acquisition Jenny X Montano-Gonzalez

Learning strategies refer to a set of tactics that people use in order to gain control over their own learning process. Nowadays, enhancing strategies in second or foreign language classrooms is one of the teachers’ roles, since their mission is to facilitate the learning among their students and make their thinking process visible. In order to teach a second language (L2) effectively, educators must take into consideration the needs and biographies of each learner, as a result, they are able to employ methodologies that guide students in using strategies which enhance their L2 learning process. This paper helps readers understand the concept of such strategies and its importance in terms of accelerating and facilitating English learning by putting forth a number of the definitions of the concept as posited by different authors. Then,  it discusses three differing approaches to L2 instruction such as Grammatical, Communicative, and Cognitive in order to identify which of these approaches promote useful learning strategies in the classroom. And finally, based on the Biography Driven Instruction (BDI) model, this paper analyzes on how four learning strategies were put into practice in settings of English as a Foreign Language (EFL).

PDF #49 – A.P.R. Howatt-A History of English Language Teaching -Oxford University Press (1984)

The history of English teaching is a vast subject, and this is a relatively short book which of necessity has had to adopt a specific and therefore limited perspective. the spread of English round the world in the wake of trade, empire-building, migration, and settlement has ensured the teaching of the language a role, sometimes central, sometimes peripheral, in the educational history of virtually every country on earth. the European focus of this book is, therefore, only a small part of the history of the subject, hence the indefinite article in the title.

PDF #48 – Pedagoy of English Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad

Curriculum is the most significant part of any programme which acts like the constitution of a particular course. Therefore, It is essential for any programme to emphasize optimally into making of its curriculum in order to get the desired outcome from education.

PDF #47 – Claude Marcel 1793-1876 A Neglected Applied Linguist Richard Smith University of Warwick UK

This article contributes to the as yet underexplored field of applied linguistic
historiography by surveying the life and achievements of Claude Marcel
(1793–1876), author of a two-volume study of language education published
in London in 1853 under the title Language as a Means of Mental Culture
and International Communication. The question of whether Marcel was an
applied linguist ‘avant la lettre’ is addressed, as are possible reasons for the
contemporary and subsequent neglect of his work. It is suggested that the
identification of precursors depends on one’s view of the nature of applied
linguistics, and that there are alternatives to a linguistics-focused conception. Indeed, a consideration of Marcel’s writings — and the contemporary
and subsequent neglect of them — highlights the way language teaching
theory has tended, for the last 120 years or more, to be dominated by
linguistic much more than educational considerations.

Claude Marcel (1793–1876), who served in Cork as an official representative of the French government between 1816 and c. 1864, was additionally an innovative teacher of French and the author of a two-volume study of language education published in London in 1853 under the title Language as a Means of Mental Culture and International Communication; or, Manual of the Teacher and the Learner of Languages.

A Neglected Applied Linguist for Howatt (1984/2004: 174), ‘there is no single work in the history of language teaching to compare with it for [. . .] strength of intellect [. . .] breadth of scholarship [. . .] and [. . .] wealth of pedagogical detail’, with the possible exception of Henry Sweet’s (1899) The Practical Study of Languages. Should we not, then, consider Claude Marcel a major pioneer of applied linguistics, comparable in this respect with figures like Sweet (1845–1912) and Harold E. Palmer (1877–1949)? Although his work had little apparent influence on his contemporaries, Marcel’s principled and systematic approach to the elaboration and selection of teaching methods seems at first sight to qualify him as an early applied linguist of some stature. In this article I present original findings relating to Marcel’s overall career and writings as a basis for considering further the question of Marcel’s status — or otherwise — as an applied linguist avant la lettre. In so doing, I hope to contribute a fresh perspective in the as yet underdeveloped area of applied linguistic historiography. Thus, while Linn (2008) — who also remarks on a relative dearth of research in this area — has recently made a convincing case for the ‘birth of applied linguistics’ in Anglo-Scandinavian work of the late nineteenth century, I shall suggest, taking Marcel’s work as a case in point, both that the identification of precursors depends very much on one’s view of the nature of applied linguistics and that alternatives to a linguistics-focused conception may deserve greater consideration.

You can check more articles like this on my PDFs sections and you can also visit my Youtube channel.