Too much presentation; not enough practice and production

<b> Forum for teachers and administrators of IEP programs </b>

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John Hall
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Joined: Sat Jan 20, 2007 6:12 pm
Location: Costa Rica

Too much presentation; not enough practice and production

Post by John Hall » Fri Feb 09, 2007 5:39 pm

The age old problem with intensive courses seems to be this: there is always too much material packed into too short a period of time. Teachers have to plow through the material in order to make sure that it is all covered by the end of the course, and this inevitably results in there being way too much presentation in the lessons and insufficient time for practice and production activities. Is this just my experience, or have most other teachers of intensive courses experienced the same problem?

harmony
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Joined: Tue Sep 12, 2006 2:49 pm
Location: Oman

Post by harmony » Thu Feb 15, 2007 9:42 pm

I experience exactly the same thing. It is as if the designers of curriculum, for lack of a coherent theory of language learning, decide that they'll just hit them with everything and keep everyone terribly busy so that they can tell administrators that they've covered all the bases. But covering things is about all that occurs. We would be much wiser to reveal the language through practice and use.

I have notived that many times it is only the students who already have a general grasp of what is being taught that progress while those who really need to learn it are left behind.

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John Hall
Posts: 31
Joined: Sat Jan 20, 2007 6:12 pm
Location: Costa Rica

Post by John Hall » Thu Feb 15, 2007 11:49 pm

Makes you wonder, doesn't it, if perhaps it would be better just to put the students through some kind of English immersion simulation (where it would mostly be just practice and production)? I've learned Spanish without ever having taken a proper course in it. Of course, my grammar is not the best, but at least I have learned to communicate on a daily basis in the language.

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