“Opportunities for freer communication did not cause learners to do less well on measures of linguistic accuracy” Research by Sandra Savignon, quoted by Lightbown and Spada in “How Languages are Learned”
Search
Subscribe (via email)
Categories
Tag cloud
- advanced
- anecdotes
- beginners
- classroom language
- confidence
- contractions
- Creativity
- Drilling
- elicitation
- ELT jargon
- formal and informal
- gossip
- GTKY
- guest writers
- History
- History of TEFL blogs
- Home lessons
- Interviews
- Lists
- Living abroad
- Metaphors
- Motivation
- News
- NNESTs
- One to one classes
- Personalisation
- Professionalism
- questionnaires
- random tefl ideas
- revision
- Student feedback
- teacher talk
- Teacher talking time
- Teaching low levels
- TEFL humour
- TEFL marketing
- TEFL quotes
- TEFL recruiters
- TEFL stats
- TEFLtastic classics
- TEFL volunteer
- Time management
- trivia
- Youtube
Top Posts & Pages
- Passive voice games, worksheets and poem
- Present Perfect Continuous guessing game
- Second, third and mixed conditionals discussion questions
- Imperative games, worksheets, stories and songs
- There is/ There are games, worksheets and songs
- Don't do the CELTA
- Use the storytelling phrases
- Third conditional games/ worksheets
- Be used to and get used to games, worksheets and songs
- Negotiating games/ worksheets for EFL learners
Recent Comments
Blogroll: Active TEFL blogs
Blogroll: Less active TEFL blogs
- teflgeek
- A CLIL to Climb
- The Steve Brown Blog
- ELT Diary
- Candy's Stripe
- Escocesa in Madrid
- Richmond Share blog
- A Hive of Activities
- Kovacs Gabi's Teaching Blog
- The Business English Experience
- Close Up
- What Ed Said
- Jeremy Harmer
- Olya Sergeeva's ELT Blog
- Christina Jones ELT Blog
- Kamila of Prague
- What do you think you're doing?
- Allison Lewis
- Beyond Language Learning
- How I See It Now
- Views from the Whiteboard
- Toward Proficiency
- Sponge ELT
Sometimes a simple insight must be dressed up in formal, academic garb to gain widespread acceptance. Shock, shock, most people learn languages better when they feel comfortable speaking and being themselves.
The trick remains respecting the students, creating a tolerant and rigorous atmosphere, and encouraging students to “become who they are.”
I kind of agree but…
It’s very easy to dismiss experiment results when you think they say something obvious. It’s also very easy to dismiss scientific results when they say something you don’t agree with. But when it comes down to it, 700 years ago if you had produced a scientific result that said the world is flat people would have had exactly that “Doh, yer, obvious!” reaction. The fact that we as a species are not producing results now that say that is much more down to the use of the scientific method than it is to “learning to trust our feelings”.
If accepting SLA beliefs because someone famous says they are true with little or any practical proof is the point, then I 100% agree.
PS
I don’t know which country you teach in, but most of my Japanese students would respond to questions meant to ‘reveal their true self’ with the simple reaction “Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” (approximate translation- you expect me to answer that?????)