William Cope
Wei Liu
Pinakini Shah
Greg Jack
Leah Goldberg
Nell C Rundle
Bahar AnahmiasNew Learning MOOC’s Updates
Update #3 - Didactic Pedagogy in English Language Instruction
Didactic Pedagogy
For this update, I would like to examine my own teaching context for examples of didactic pedagogy. I teach English as a foreign language in a Japanese university. Generally I aim for my classes to follow an authentic pedagogy (student-centered classes was the mantra of master’s program), I have elements of both didactic and reflexive - transformative as well.
Appropriate
I would imagine in the first few years of English language study some forms of didactic pedagogy are appropriate and effective. Professor Cope mentioned in one of the videos that memorization of vocabulary and grammar rules can be useful in a language learning class. Thus, a targeted list of essential vocabulary and basic grammar, such as word order and verb tenses, that is discreetly taught, practiced and tested as formative assessment is still a useful practice . Choral drills, (“Repeat after me …”) can be effective for new learners of the language, so they can become familiar with the phonemes for reception and production and can aid vocabulary acquisition (Jurianto 2016) . Reading and listening to passages and dialogues from a class textbook and answering comprehension questions can be an acceptable practice to give feedback on learners’ progress for the student and teachers (Habib 2016). De Jong and Commins (2006) suggest leveling students to match abilities for a class to prevent a large gap between the abilities of the most proficient and least proficient to allow the teacher to narrow down targeted language learning needs.
Anachronistic
Many of the above mentioned pedagogy becomes less appropriate as the skill level of the student increases. I would imagine a targeted list of vocabulary and grammar points would be a hit-and-miss proposition for students. From my experience, leveled language programs have students of various vocabulary and grammatical knowledge, mastery, and needs at the upper levels, so a pre-determined list of words and grammatical forms will be a mixed bag of usefulness. Celce-Mucia (2001) believes incidental learning would become a larger influence on learning as the student becomes more proficient in the target language. Lastly, summative tests of vocabulary and grammar use only demonstrate the students’ ability to memorize and repeat and it causes anxiety and esteem issues in learners (Harlen & Deakin Crick 2002).
References
Celce-Murcia, M. (2001). Teaching English as a second or foreign language (3rd ed.). Boston: Heinle & Heinle Publishers.
De Jong, E. & Commins, N. (2006). How should English language learners be grouped for instruction? In E. Hamayan & R. Freeman, English Language Learners at School: A Guide for Administrators. (pp. 118-121)
Habib, M. (2016). Assessment of Reading Comprehension. Revista Romaneasca pentru Educatie Multidimensionala, 8(1), 125-147. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18662/rrem/2016.0801.08
Harlen W, Deakin Crick R (2002) A systematic review of the impact of summative assessment and tests on students' motivation for learning. In: Research Evidence in Education Library. London: EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London.
Jurianto, R. 2016 The Use of Drilling Technique in Teaching English Vocabulary to the Seventh Grade Students of SMP Negeri 2 Tanggulangin. Anglicist Volume 05 No 02.
thanks for the very informative comment.
The Zone of Proximal Development is a principle developed by Soviet Psychologist Lev Vygotsky in the 1920s and 30s that has become foundational in modern pedagogy, underpinning a wide range of concepts and practices including collaborative learning, feedback, student-centered practice, etc.
With respect to leveling, this may shift the focus from establishing a correspondence between student and materials to establishing a correspondence between student and student. In this sense, then, we can create sub groups of learners who share a range of competencies within a larger group of more diverse learners.
You are correct, there should be a diversity of competency within learning groups - but this is probably a given since no two people are alike. For ZPD to work in this context, there may be an optimal number of students and I suspect it may benefit if there were a core who are fairly similar in ability and a couple of outliers either weaker or stronger. This could be an interesting topic for investigation, if you are able to work with groups over a year or so and accurately measure competency and progress.
I think this type of grouping be more productive to think of in terms of what people can do rather than how people correspond to levels created by standards - like the CEFR or leveled teaching materials - which are all based on artificial or speculative ranges of performance.
@Mark Johnstone, Thanks for the informative comment. I have not heard of ZPD, but it seems to contradict the need for leveling as much or more than it supports. I often hear as an argument against leveling (which is rarely done in Japan) stronger students will teach and motivate weaker students. If groups/classes are created based on their abilities, then that may not happen because they have the same abilities. However, I could be misunderstanding what you mean by overlapping. If they overlap in a complementary way, I can see how it can be beneficial. Very thought provoking, thanks.
Leveling in EFL is an interesting point. This practice is common and may be partly driven by materials producers who us it to produce books in series, often claiming calibration with the CEFR or other standards. Pedagogically, it can make some sense and may be supported with learning theory, particularly the notion of a Zone of Proximal Development. Another aspect of ZPD, that is sometimes overlooked, is that learning depends on active interaction between a learner and expert or peers - its context is collaborative learning. So, if we have a group of students who's relative Zones of Proximal Development all overlap, then we have a theoretically productive learning group. This may require grouping into smaller units or not. A ZPD based leveling method however would be relative to students' abilities, not to the levels of a set of teaching materials. That is to say, we would match students to students, not students to books. I don't know whether anyone has researched this or not. A couple of questions would be: what is the optimal size of a collaborative language learning group based on ZPD? How do you identify overlapping ZPD among a learning group? What is the optimal range of overlapping ZPD? and so on.