Language teaching course Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Language teaching course - Essay Example Language learning has a little bit to do with survival. If you don’t speak a language, you cannot communicate or interact with others and you cannot have your needs met. Additionally, if the teacher does not give his students all the answers, they will play an important part in acquiring knowledge. This type of approach promotes learning of skills that can be applied in other areas. This approach helps students learn to analyze, memorize and, most important of all, they learn to draw inferences and conclusions (Field 2000). The vocabulary taught was basic: good morning, my name is†¦, I’m from†¦, you’re welcome, good bye, etc are some of the words taught during the lesson. The teacher would draw pictures to help us learn new words. The activity our teacher carried out seems to follow the Audio-Lingual Method, which is based on teacher-student and student-student interaction. According to this method teachers are to use both spoken and pictures cues so that students learn to respond to verbal and non-verbal stimuli (Larsen-Freeman 2000). The vocabulary selected has to be rather basic as the teacher has limited time and he has to be able to make simple drawings. This would not work with words that describe more complex ideas. Furthermore, when students are learning a new language, be it a familiar or unfamiliar language, teachers cannot go overboard and try to make them learn too much material. This means that the first couple of lessons are going to go slowly, hence the basic words, with emphasis on the survival skill (Richardson 1983). During the lesson the teacher did not translate any of the words into English, which required the teacher to become a sort of entertainer. He had to use body language and act out certain words and phrases, which was both amusing and helpful. The students felt they had to make an effort to understand and use their imagination. As my classmates and I listened to our teacher