Methodology in Language Learning: Contextualization

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Some environmental, usually visual, accompaniment to heard discourse is a characteristic of most listening activities in and outside classroom.

In the classroom these environmental clues will usually be represented by different kinds of visuals:

  • ü pictures,
  • ü sketches on the blackboard or overhead projector,
  • ü flannel- or magnet-board cut-outs,
  • ü objects.

 

The presence of such materials is of immense value in contextualizing and bringing to life the listening situation as well as in aiding comprehension of the language. I would go so far as to say that some kind of visual clue is essential in any language-learning activity based on face-to-face communication.

 

Visuals have an important function as aids to learning, simply because they attract students' attention and help and encourage them to focus on the subject in hand. It is relatively difficult to concentrate on spoken material that is heard 'blind', far easier if there is something relevant to look at. If this something is conspicuous, colorful, humorous, dramatic or in motion – so much the better: striking and stimulating visual aids are likely to heighten students' motivation and concentration. The teacher can be her own visual aid, of course, by acting or miming- but there is such a thing as overdoing it.

 

Visuals-based exercises are interesting to do and potentially very effective, so recently published listening-comprehension books usually include a number of examples. The trouble is that an illustration once marked cannot usually be used again, so that constant use of books like these can become expensive. For this reason I use a lot of home-made materials duplicated on the school's copying machine, keeping my designs as simple as possible. Some basic sketches can be duplicated en masse and then used for many different purposes  and even very detailed materials can usually be exploited in more ways than one.

 

Understanding foreign speech is a complex activity involving a large number of different skills and abilities. It follows from this that classroom listening practice is also complex, and that no one type of exercise - nor two, nor half a dozen - can possibly satisfy the needs of most foreign-language students. The teacher should therefore have at her fingertips a large battery of different exercises designed to give practice in most, if not all, of these various skills. Moreover, listening should be practiced very frequently, so that such exercises will be in constant use. This is not quite so time-consuming as it sounds. Most listening activities suggested here can be easily adapted so that they practice lexical, grammatical, or functional-notional material that is being learnt anyway in the class.

 

[1]



The large number of exercise-types suggested, I have found it convenient to organize them into subordinate categories arranged in a rough progression from the quicker and simpler ones at the beginning to the longer and more complex ones at the end.

 

One final point: sound-perception practice should be provided using a variety of techniques, so that the students (not to say the teacher!) do not get bored with what is, after all, a fairly mindless, if essential, part of the language-learning process.


[1] At what stage in the learner's progress in the foreign language should these exercises be used? It seems obvious that a grasp of the phonology of the new language is a fairly basic requisite for learning to speak it, and that therefore these exercises should be used right from the start. However, at least at the very early stages, many learners do not yet read the language well enough to be able to use written words as a basis for sound-practice; they may not know the Latin alphabet at all, or they may associate the letters with the corresponding sounds in their own language. Early training will therefore have to be based on purely oral-aural work without using written material at all. Later, the use of written forms makes possible a wider range of exercise-types.






Bibliography:

1.    Brown, H.D. (2000): Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. White Plains, NY: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. Gass,
2.    S.M. I L. Selinker. (2008): Second Language Acquisition. An Introductory Course. New York: Routledge. VanPatten,
3.    Leaver, B.L; Ehrman, M; Shekhtman, B. (2005): Achieving Success in Second Language Acquisition. CUP
4.    B. i J. Williams. (red.) 2007: Theories in Second Language Acquisition. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.
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