ESL Approaches and Methods
Douglas Fleming
University of Ottawa
Pendulum Swings in the Field
“our field has been afflicted with
many false dichotomies, weak
conceptualizations, and neglect of
critical issues and variables” (Carroll,
1965, p. 102)
Methods and Approaches
• tension between conceptions of teachers as
technical implementers of fully developed curricula
vs. fully developed professionals
• inequalities between SLE theorists and practitioners
with methods approaches (Pennycook,1989)
• discard simple formulas (Stern, l983)
• singular methods are irrelevant to most practice
(Nunan, 1991)
• Krashen challenged many of the assumptions held
within the field
The Communicative Approach
• the most commonly accepted methodology
since the 1980s.
• emphasizes the communicative aspect of
teaching language, concentrating on function
rather than form. As Allen and Widdowson
(1979) stated, the approach involves, "the
learning of rules of use as well as rules of
grammar" (p.141).
• The goal is to create a realistic context for
language acquisition in the classroom.
• The focus is on functional language usage and
the ability to learners to express their own
ideas, feelings, attitudes, desires and needs.
• Open ended questioning and problem-solving
activities and exchanges of personal
information are commonly utilized.
• Students usually negotiate meaning while
working with authentic materials (realia) in
small groups activities.
• Behaviorism forms the basis of the audiolingual approach (which consists mainly of
oral drills). The communicative approach
assumes that language should be taught in
the context of practical communication and
use.
• Hymes (1966) built on Chomsky’s notion of
competence to describe what he called
"communicative competence", the ability the
people have to communicate (and not merely
to know the grammatical structure of the
language).
This led to Canale and Swain’s highly influential
four-part model of language competency:
• linguistic: the more purely language
elements; structures and grammar
• socio-cultural: the social and cultural content
and assumptions underlying language use
• strategic: what strategies a user of the
language utilizes to overcome difficulties or
enhance communication
• discoursal: what forms of discourse and
conventional use is the communication
framed in
What is the relationship between explicit
knowledge of the language and actually
using it?
Ellis (1997) identified 3 positions in the
research:
- Strong Interface Position
- Non-Interface Position
- Weak Interface Position
1) Strong Interface Position
(Biaystok, McLaughlin, Sharwood-Smith)
• practice turns explicit knowledge of the
language directly into implicit knowledge
• practice involves supplying the learner with
opportunities to produce targeted
structures so as to increase implicit
knowledge
2) Non-Interface Position
(Krashen, Terrell)
• there are many cases of acquisition where
no learning (formal instruction) occurs
• students often cannot produce the structures
even though they have excellent explicit
knowledge of these structures
• even the best learners can only state a
limited number of rules, far fewer than the
number of structures they can produce
• learners benefit from being in the
classroom through the use of
‘comprehensive input’ (teacher talk) and by
given the opportunity for meaningful
practice of the communicative use of
language
• in normal language use, the learner does
not have the time to make use of explicitly
understood grammar (at least in oral
communication); it is only when the learner
can attend to form that explicit grammar
knowledge can be put to use
3) Weak Interface Position
(Ellis, Long, Selinger)
• explicit instruction is a ‘consciousnessraising’ activity the enhances input:
1) for comprehension, helping the learner to
intake (recognise and understand features of
the input)
2) for explicit knowledge, helping a learner
learn about the structure metalinguistically
• facilitates ‘noticing’ and ‘noticing the gap’
• helps combine structured syllabi with those
that are functional or task based
Cognitive Approaches
characterized by the belief that language learning
is marked by active mental processes and does
not occur simply through habit formation
Focus on Form
• the new trend
• "The focus on form approach considers grammar to
be heterogeneous, meaning that some grammar
points are easy to explain and easy to apply, and
other points are difficult if not impossible to apply...
• A focus- on form pedagogy profitably mixes explicit
and implicit techniques depending on the grammar
item and the communicative task” (Kennedy, 2004)
• Builds on the Communicative Approach
• Is a compromise between the strong and the
non-interface positions
• Has been developed into structured formulae
for the K-7 and Secondary panels such as
Balanced Literacy and Smart Learning
These approaches all stress the need to
distinguish between classroom activities that
are either:
• Meaning focused
That concentrate on purely communicative
activities;
• Form-focused
That draw attention to the way language
forms are used in discourse
Components of Cognitive Lesson-planning
1) Input:
comprehensible models of the target language
are provided for learners
2) Central Processing:
• Bottom-up processing consists of decoding input.
• Top-down processing uses the context of one's
learning to ascribe meaning to what has been
decoded.
3) Output:
'noticing the gap' between the models of input
that have been provided and the output produced
Implications for
Autonomy and Professionalism
• learners:
become less dependent on rote learning and more
adept at understanding and manipulating linguistic
forms in actual communication.
• teachers:
must exercise professional agency in the interests of a
balanced and thoughtful approach to lesson planning
and task design