Guardian article on CLT
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fluffyhamster
- Posts: 3031
- Joined: Tue Oct 26, 2004 6:57 pm
- Location: UK > China > Japan > UK again
That sort of article could be waved by crap teachers in both camps. For example, here are some interviews I did just today here in Japan re. the article:
Teacher A(nal east asian): See, CLT is silly! Japanese students don't really go for it. I can't remember much about my own schooldays, except for the swoosh of the teacher's shinai...anyway, I myself prefer now that I'm a teacher to bang on so very earnestly about 'There is one pencil on the desk', as opposed to 'There are two erasers'. I certainly won't permit my students to get confused or make mistakes (among themslves, and especially not in front of me) along the lines of 'There's two erasers', even if doing so would might help speed things up a bit sometimes. Don't you know the university entrance exams are only four years away?!?! (translated from the Japanese original)
Teacher B(*llocks to that): I don't have a CELTA or any other form of halfway decent training or books, but boy did I lap up everything they told me on my half-day induction here at McTw*t's, and being a native speaker, I obviously know all about 'communication' without ever having to read a boring stuffy old grammar book...so, I consider myself a pretty communicative teacher, and what Senior said chimes with and pretty much applies to me.
Perhaps the most interesting thing for me (fluffyhamster now speaking LOL
) would be a discussion of "spoon-feeding". What would be so wrong with it if we had some damn nutritious stuff to stuff into 'em, eh eh eh? Holding back all the time (when we could, if we are actually knowledgeable and prepped, be teaching or presenting something to the students) seems (must seem) peverse (that's not to say "fluency" activities don't come in later on). Ah, but then I was forgetting that in the west, many classes are filled with intermediate (read, quite often reasonably capable, "communicatively"), rich students who don't seem to mind paying an arm and a leg to just have some fun and games.
Teacher A(nal east asian): See, CLT is silly! Japanese students don't really go for it. I can't remember much about my own schooldays, except for the swoosh of the teacher's shinai...anyway, I myself prefer now that I'm a teacher to bang on so very earnestly about 'There is one pencil on the desk', as opposed to 'There are two erasers'. I certainly won't permit my students to get confused or make mistakes (among themslves, and especially not in front of me) along the lines of 'There's two erasers', even if doing so would might help speed things up a bit sometimes. Don't you know the university entrance exams are only four years away?!?! (translated from the Japanese original)
Teacher B(*llocks to that): I don't have a CELTA or any other form of halfway decent training or books, but boy did I lap up everything they told me on my half-day induction here at McTw*t's, and being a native speaker, I obviously know all about 'communication' without ever having to read a boring stuffy old grammar book...so, I consider myself a pretty communicative teacher, and what Senior said chimes with and pretty much applies to me.
Perhaps the most interesting thing for me (fluffyhamster now speaking LOL
) would be a discussion of "spoon-feeding". What would be so wrong with it if we had some damn nutritious stuff to stuff into 'em, eh eh eh? Holding back all the time (when we could, if we are actually knowledgeable and prepped, be teaching or presenting something to the students) seems (must seem) peverse (that's not to say "fluency" activities don't come in later on). Ah, but then I was forgetting that in the west, many classes are filled with intermediate (read, quite often reasonably capable, "communicatively"), rich students who don't seem to mind paying an arm and a leg to just have some fun and games.