Language Teacher Toolkit: Steve Smith's blog

Some traditions in language teaching are very hard to shift. Two key ones, as I see it, are teaching with a grammatical syllabus and setting vocabulary to learn. I want to look at the second and suggest five reasons why vocab learning (and tests) are a bad idea. 1. What does knowing a word mean? Paul Nation has for many years reminded us that knowing a word is much more than about knowing what it means or how it translates. A bilingual translation of an isolated word is a starting point (and is of course useful), but there is much more to it than this. As well as meaning, we need to know about FORM and USE of words. Form refers to aspects such as spelling, morphological form (is it a noun, a conjugated verb, an adverb based on an adjective?), what it sounds like (phonology) and how its sound relates to its spelling (phonics). USE refers, for example, to other words which commonly go alongside a word, namely collocations (think of what appears when you start a Google search) and, at a m

This is the fourth and final part of this mini-series of posts based on Charles Dodson's 1967 book. Each post has been based on a chapter but this one, though I will refer to elements of Chapter 4, is mainly a reflection on what we have seen so far. Chapter 4, which is brief, considers the role of the technology being used in the late 1960s, namely the reel-to-reel tape recorder and language laboratory. He does not have an awful lot to say about these, but essentially sees the role of these as replicating what a teacher would do using his method. One value he sees with the language lab is that the students can work at their own pace. He suggests how exercises might be designed to maximise the number of 'listening and speaking contacts', as he likes to call them. He quickly returns to his main arguments, however, notably that second language learning is unlike first, except for infant learners. (At this point the notion that only young learners had access to natural language

This third post of four based on C.J. Dodson's book Language Teaching and the Bilingual Method (1967) is the one that readers may be the most interested in. The previous two posts are here and here . Having summarised the attacks made by Dodson on those two extremes of the spectrum, as he saw it in 1967, Grammar-Translation (his so-called Indirect-Grammatical Method) and Direct Method, we now turn to his response to these orthodoxies of the time. Chapter 3 is enticingly called The Bilingual Method . We got there! There is a reminder on the first page that the big step for educators is to accept that first and second language learning are fundamentally different. (Recall that I am summarising his thesis, not defending it! But at the very least I think we might all just about agree that first and second language learning are not exactly the same - that would be a preposterous claim.) Dodson also reminds us in this preface to the chapter that his ideas are based on experimentation. I

In the previous post , I wrote about Chapter 1 of Charles Dodson's book Language Teaching and the Bilingual Method (1967). Chapter 2, called Foreign-language Learning and Teaching, is where we start to get into the meat of his ideas while preparing us for Chapter 3 when we get to see what his method consists of in more detail. To begin with, Dodson presents us with a somewhat familiar dichotomy betqween what he calls the Indirect-Grammatical Method and the Direct-Oral Method. In between he places what he calls 'eclectic methods'. Indirect-Grammatical method  -------------     Eclectic methods  ---------------     Direct-Oral method This is reminiscent of other dichotomies or dimensions which have been described in the history of language teaching. Think of: formal v informal natural v classroom learning v acquisition grammatical v conversational conscious v unconscious explicit v implicit I have written in detail about the history of these dichotomies here. Dodson says that

This is the first of four posts based on an old book by C.J. Dodson called Language Teaching and the Bilingual Method (Pitman Education Library) . . Each post will be based on one of the four chapters of the book. The first chapter is entitled Experimental Data.  A little background first, though. Dodson, at the time his book was written, 1967, was a Senior Lecturer in Education at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. His work was to inspire later books and articles by Wolfgang Butzkamm (for example here ), another proponent of the bilingual approach. Both Dodson and Butzkamm were breaking with what they saw as orthodoxy. Dodson, in particular, as we shall see, was set against both the Grammar-Translation Method, still widely used in British schools in 1967, and the Direct Method, that approach to language teaching developed around the turn of the twentieth century and still influential today. By 1967 it was uncontroversial to be critical of Grammar-Translation - too focused o

Steve Glover and I have made very good progress with our forthcoming handbook for A-level language teachers. Steve has been focusing mainly on the teaching of film and literature, while I have been producing material on aural and written texts, vocabulary and grammar, and developing oral skills. If all goes well, we could publish in around two to three months. If you don’t know Steve Glover, he writes the superb website dolanguages.com and has a long record of materials writing, including his own A-level French course Attitudes. He is an expert in his field and has provided specialist CPD to A-level teachers on many occasions. He’s also an old friend which makes the collaborative writing process easy and enjoyable. I’m sure he’s done many other things I don’t even know about. It’s fair to say we are both veterans now! My own relevant expertise stems from 32 years of A-level teaching and resource writing, working as an associate for a few years with AQA (focused on A-level) and my gener