Language Teaching Methodologies

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Language Teaching Methodologies 1 Language Teaching Methodologies The two methods that stand out to be the most effective in teaching languages as presented in Diane Larsen-Freeman’s book Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching are The Community Language Learning (CLL) method and The Total Physical Response (TPR) method. The two methods take into account the feelings of the learners. CLL was created by Charles A. Curran and he was influenced by Carl Rogers’ humanistic psychology. CLL “advises teachers to consider their students as ‘whole persons.’ (LarsenFreeman, 2000) The teacher takes into consideration not only the intellect of the learners, but also as Larsen-Freeman (2000) states, their feelings, physical reactions, instinctive protective reactions and their desire to learn. This method is heavily based on trust, support and cooperation. In CLL the students determine what is to be learned. In the basic form of CLL a small number of students are seated in a circle with a tape recorder in the middle. The teacher explains the activity before they start. The students have a conversation where they tell the teacher what they want to say in their native language and the teacher stands behind them with the tape recorder and translates it into the target language. If the speaker is having difficulty in saying a word or phrase, the teacher repeats it until the speaker is satisfied to record it. The sentence they say in the target language is recorded. This is repeated until everyone in the circle has gotten a chance. Then the teacher sits in the circle and asks about their feelings of the experience. After this the tape is played back and they listen to it and try to recall what was said on the tape. Next the students arrange themselves in a semicircle and watch as the teacher writes the dialogue on the board with the native language equivalents. Then they
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