"Drilling new language"

Today is the 6th of October of 2020. A sunny and beautiful day, the perfect way to start Unit 2.

We start the class by overviewing the objectives for the lesson. First of all, we have taken a look at some documents in Moodle. They talk about methods and techniques we are going to see this week, also, there is a chapter on methods by Richard & Rogers we have to read for next week. I love having so many materials for reading and grow my idea of how to teach English, it is really interesting for me!

Once we have done an overview of the topics of today, we began to work in small groups with the aim of comment and analyze this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6zPWppJikA&feature=youtu.be It talks about a new methodology called Drilling, which is very useful and attractive from my point of view. We have to answer some questions about the video:

1. What is the level of students? The group of students is beginners, even though they are adults. Maybe is an A1 level.
2. What are the main teaching techniques used by the teachers? The main techniques can be described as audiovisual resources. The teacher used videos, audio records, or flashcards to present vocabulary and grammar structure to the students, so they can repeat them and practice de pronunciation. 
3. What is the purpose of those techniques used in each case? The purpose of the video and audio resources is to make the students listen to the intonation and pronunciation of the words or sentences (like the silent period, is an input) and to practice it later when the teacher gives them the space to do it (with prompts that push them to create the output). Also, we thought the purpose can be, also, to contextualize the sentences into a context (in the videos we can see like role playings of people selling or buying food in a common situation), so they can see the words and sentences are not isolated. The main aim of repetition activities is to practice intonation and pronunciation. And, with the pictures, the objective is to connect the word with its meaning, so they can understand the sound and the orthography with the real meaning. 
4. What prompts do the different teachers use? One prompt we identified and that caught our impression was the finger technique to make them say a sentence. In this way, students can identify the different words that make up a sentence. Also, there is a coral drill which is a prompt the teacher creates to make the whole group do something, for example, repeat a word. In this way, there is also a nominated drill, with the same mechanic but only one person.
5. What L2 theories and methods would you associate with these ELT techniques? We thought in the first place, this could fit with the Interactionist theory because they are learning by being able to communicate in the future together, but, after listening to our classmates we came up with the idea that this idea is intrinsic to all the theories (everyone learns a language to communicate). So, we have to think about how they are learning, and not for what. In conclusion, this is an example of behavioral theory, because there is a stimulus (the teacher, videos, pictures, audios, etc.) that push them to create a response (an answer to the questions, a repeat of a sound, etc.). There is also reinforcement from the teacher every time the answer (input, output).

We finished the class looking further at the methods we have mentioned at the beginning of the class. We have seen the grammar-translation, which was widely used at the beginning of the 19th century (right now, is still used in India), and the direct method, which was very popular at the end of the 19th century. 

• Grammar translation: An example of this method could be flashcards that include pictures with the meaning of it in both languages, L1 and L2. The advantage of these is that is so intuitive for the student to understand the meaning of those words. But, there are more disadvantages: if there is L1 present on the content, the student will not focus his/her attention on the L2, because there is like a comfort zone where they can understand without effort. Also, in these cases, the teacher has an authority role that is not good for the students. And, finally, the dynamic with this method is very tight, there are rules the students need to follow, they have to memorize a lot without even understanding, there is not very much interaction because the lessons are based on writing and listening, not speaking. 

• The direct method: It is very similar to the first one, but here we can find a little more interaction between the students and with the teacher, the student's role is less passive. No translation is allowed, because they need to communicate in the target language. 

And that's all we have seen today! Pretty interesting right?

See you tomorrow!