Pedagogical Approaches in English Teaching

Introduction

The corresponding essay would be formulated on the discussions of pedagogical decisions undertaken for the purpose of delivering the lessons of English to two distinct groups of learners. The first group has been consisted by 60 university students the first language of whom has been Korean. The second group has been constituted by 10 students of English at UK within the age group of 14 to 15 years. These students have been related to a mixed first language base. The associated language learner textbook module has been concentrated upon to provide the specific lessons to individual groups. The emphasis of the learning experience development has been on the development of productive and receptive skills in the learners.

Registering ideas of pedagogical and teaching decision formulation

From the perspective of impartation of English language based learning experiences to the students with different first languages, the role of the teacher in management of the classrooms which could be populated with such diverse measures of learners, becomes of paramount significance involving the process of pedagogic decision formulation. It is of significance to note the fact that such decision formulation is intrinsic to shape the role of the teacher when management of such as disparate learner groups could become essential. Thus, the learning experience impartation through English lessons with the assistance from the associated language learner textbook, has been influenced through differential motivations, on part of the learners and the teacher both, concerning the individual roles and responsibilities of them. Verplaetse & Migliacci (2017) have observed that this process involves the method of interactive decision formulation. This process could be better elaborated as the selection, evaluation and rejection of multiplicity of alternate courses of pedagogic procedural undertakings (pertaining to imparting of learning experiences to diversified learner groups). In case of imparting of English language based training to the Korean speaking university students and the teenagers with mixed first languages, this process had emerged during the course of detailing of different instructions from the teacher regarding the methods of learning progression. The purpose had been to improve the perceptual skills of the learners regarding their learning experiences involving English lessons with the assistance from the text book module. Emphasis had been concentrated on the possibility of accuracy of decisions which had been based on explicit student behaviours so that the quality of such decision formulation could be enhanced.

To this effect, the underscoring realisations of pedagogic decisions have been comprehended to be two in number. The first has been the fact that the teacher has to play the key role in the classrooms so that effective management of quality and quantity of learning experiences gathered by the students could be ensured. The second has been directly incumbent on the impact of the first realisation in the form of the transformation of perceptions and working abilities of both the teachers and their students which could occur in the discourse of learning experience management. The collective effect of tools, strategies and experiences employed by the teacher could be perceived in explicit terms of the development of cognitive abilities of the learners. Thus, in the management of complex teams of learners, teachers have to undertake certain decisions which could as well be intricate in nature.

Format of teaching

The process of teaching of English as a foreign language, is primarily a complicated endeavour, however, the onus remains to the teacher to maintain the interest of the learners so that such complications could be overcome. The primary obstacle of teaching English as an unfamiliar language to two different groups of students, including the university and the teenaged learners, could be comprehended as the transversal commonality of the effect of unfamiliarity with any foreign language on individual learners. This effect could be interpreted in multitudinous manner as the responses which could be generated from the individual groups of learners. In case of the learning experience impartation on the Korean speaking learners, shaping of the learning experience was influenced by the Social-constructivist pedagogy. Hall (2017) has observed that in spite of the specificity of English as a language, the teaching of it can never be considered to be independent from the didactic and pedagogic standards which could be applied to every instance of learning and teaching. Nunan & Richards (2015) have opined that there exists a conflicting notion amongst some of the scholars that the linguistics segment of the English language could be considered to be off greater significance than that of pedagogy in terms of teaching and impartation of learning experiences. This could be elaborated from the perspective that the linguistic component of English has been of greater significance than that of the teaching component while English could be taught to the learners with different first languages. Thus, it had been critical from the teaching perspective to define the influence of linguistics and associated significance while having to formulate the pedagogic decisions. In this context, the first pedagogic decision which had been formulated involved the considering of language didactics as an independent field which is associated with the internal aspects of Applied Linguistics. Thus, the supposed predominance of linguistics over pedagogy in English teaching could be considered to be null and void. The potential applications of language teaching could thus be disassociated from linguistics based approaches and the learning experience could be concentrated upon as the essential training which language teachers could rely upon.

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Behaviourist pedagogic significance

The second pedagogic decision which had been arrived at during learning impartation to the 14-15 years age group related students with mixed first language variations, had been the significance of behaviourist pedagogy in teaching of languages. Godley Reaser & Moore (2015) have observed that justification of any format of language teaching could be derived from the behaviourist pedagogy which could permit the teacher the learning space on the basis of which repetitive and drilling practices of learning could be provided to the students. However, in case of imparting learning experiences to the students of 14 to 15 years of age as well as the university students of Korean first language also, the emphasis was on imparting of Utilitarian utilisation of English as a communication tool rather than an instrument of reflective learning. The third pedagogic decision had been formulated in this context to revise the teaching standards as per the demonstrated abilities of the students. The intuitive abilities of critical reasoning realisation had been the factors which influenced the pedagogic decisions of the teacher to this effect. This decision pertained to the detailing of the key difference between subject matter based knowledge and the pedagogic content knowledge. This decision was further evaluated at the backdrop of providing learning experiences to the teen aged learners regarding the rearrangement of apparently haphazard and randomised words in a sentence. This was necessary to ensure that the risk of underrating the functions of pedagogy could be averted through not preventing the assumption that possession of expertise in any subject matter could not be considered to be the prerequisite for anyone to teach the same. This process also brought forth the realisation that pedagogy could not be considered to be a superfluous experience while teaching any language based subject matter could be concerned. The teaching material of signs and notices, in conjunction with shopping word web, had been also pedagogic instruments, as much as these have been the tools of impartation of coherent comprehensions associated with the English language. Thus, it was realised that English language education to the students with foreign languages as their first language could essentially be independent from the conditions which govern the instances of teaching relating to other conventional subject matters.

Learning based transmission of communicative context

However, the educational obstacle which became apparent during impartation of lessons to the Korean speaking University students could be ascertained as the management of the linguistic mode through which the essence of learning could be transferred from the teacher to the learners. This conundrum has been observed by Fang (2017) to be a direct outcome of the general principles of Social-constructivist pedagogy. This obstacle pertained to the Social-constructivist pedagogic notion that abilities and skills of learners could not be considered to be original and therefore, could not be acknowledged as constitutive realities. However, the abilities and skills of learners to inculcate foreign language lessons could be associated with gradual constitution of cognitive and learning experiences. Such experiences, in case of the Korean speaking university learners, were constituted through a prolonged and arduous session of exchanges which took place at multiple levels between the teacher and the learners in a direct and inter-relational context. Such exchanges of information and experiences also influenced the pedagogic decisions of grouping different learning tools for the purpose of effective learning perception impartation from the teacher to the pupils on the basis of the variability of effective learning ability development at the classroom level (Richards, 2017). Such observations through interaction with the first group of students involving the learners of Korean first language brought forth the realisation that educational effects could be developed by communicative situations which a teacher could effectively develop in terms of facilitation of learning through modifications in the teaching methods which could be further influenced by the group characteristics of the learners, such as their ability to associate themselves with the general discourse of learning. This becomes additionally significant while having to learn foreign languages such as English which could have a completely different etymological, philological as well as rhoticity based structure than that which the learners could have become directly associated with during their formative years, such as their first languages.

Interactive teaching

To this effect, greater emphasis was consistently placed upon process of Micro-interactions at all of the levels between the educator and the learners. The outcome has been analysed by Bayyurt & Akcan (2015) to be the reinforcement of coercive relations between the two involved sides with varying degrees of promotion of collaborative relations. In case of the second group of 10 students, the emphasis had been concentrated on the negotiations of personal spaces which had been created by the interactions between the learners and the teacher. The challenge which the teacher came to experience in this context, was the proper management of societal process of subordination. This was performed through the affirmation of the identities of learners in the context to their learning groups. The pedagogic decision of programme intervention designing was modified to accommodate such perspectives in this context (Murray & Christison, 2019). The objective of such intervention had been to effectively develop academic engagement on part of the 10 aforementioned students to the most extensive threshold possible so that reversing the underachieving instances, regarding the learning of communicative English, by the culturally diverse students with multiple first languages, could become a definite possibility. In case of the second group of 10 students, this intervention programme, on the basis of the learning textbook module mentioned previously, was developed on the perspective that the subsequent outcomes in the educator to pupil interactions could bring forth any particular alternative through which the conventional patterns of coercive relationship based unidirectional learning experience transmission could be effectively substituted through the broader learning approaches.

Teaching accountability

The most significant pedagogic perspective which had been developed within the discourse of the performing the teaching experience had been the perspective of teaching accountability management, especially to the 60 students comprised group of Korean speakers since they have been related to an advanced measure of educational and linguistic affiliation to their vernacular and thus, was the most challenging group to impart effective English linguistic and academic frame of reference. Tajino (2019) has observed that this perspective of teaching accountability is demonstrative of particular patterns of interaction between the learners and their educators through which the determination of the teaching efficacy and learning experience qualitative measures could be undertaken under particular situations. In this context, the group based learning approaches also became evidently influential in determining and then shaping the orientation of the teaching process progression. The particular characteristics of each group of the students, such as, the complications encountered by the university level group of 60 students while having to familiarise them with the intricacies of various learning tools regarding the English learning textbook module which had been focused on during the teaching discourse. Particular challenges had emerged during the teaching of ‘Useful language’ section where multiple learning exercises had to be performed such as assigning specific English expressions to their contextual meanings involving listening to particular expressions and then making short dialogues out of them as well as modification of such phrases and dialogues to be infused off greater politeness. The most challenging aspect had been to ensure the compatibility of the perceptive capabilities with the requirements to play the roles of a perceived shop assistant and customer in terms of an interchange of effective conversation (Yang, 2017).

Interactive transmission of academic experience

Such challenges have been indicative of purposes which actually determine the effectiveness of teaching through interaction and transmission of learning experiences. Three particularities of teaching experiences were highlighted during the teaching of this university students groups. These could be acknowledged as the recasting of student experiences, contingent response and generation of redundancy of teaching messages for the students to familiarise them with the strategic approaches through which teacher to student dialogue could be taken forward. These particularities have been essential to consider regarding affording actual opportunities to the Korean speaking students to learn English. In order to teach effective vocabulary to disparate student groups, the foreign languages such as English, are required to be taught as particular International Languages. Special attention has to be concentrated on the processes through which the quality of communication could be attributed to English in terms of formulation of the most effective and extensively percolating tool of verbal communication amongst a variety of cultural backdrops. In case of the students who do not have English as their first language or as their vernacular, it is always a case of ascribing certain measure of foreignness to the language through academic or learning based interpretation (Mann & Walsh,2017). In case of the students or learners who could be the beginners in learning English, the compatible contextual meanings of the foreign and international aspects of the language itself, could be of particular interest. This could be effectively delineated in the format of vocabulary teaching experience gathered with the second group of 10 students. It was observed that each half of the teenaged students of the group focused on the reality of the contexts associated with the learning module vocabulary from different, although complementary standpoints. The contexts of Teaching English as Second Language (TESL) and Teaching English as Foreign Language (TEFL) have been consistently depended upon regarding the quantitative and qualitative dimensions which have determined the exposure of students or learners with different first language to that of English as a prime mode of communication.

Conclusion

At the conclusive phase, it could be acknowledged that habitual linking of institutional and social contexts of learning for students with different first languages other than English requires intense and methodical measure of exposure to the language itself. The teaching experience has highlighted a primary dichotomy in the methods through which English is taught at the post-graduation levels and at the school levels as well. Therefore, teaching of different groups of English require a pedagogic distinction which has to be based on the singularising the concreteness of rendering English as a tool of global communication through both the linguistic and pedagogic approaches. Thus, from the pedagogic points of view, the requirement for the teacher is to raise effective awareness regarding the educational context, of the various learning inertias which could be better identified through the Social-constructivist paradigms within the framework of teaching English as a second language.

Reference List

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Godley, A. J., Reaser, J., & Moore, K. G. (2015). Pre-service English language arts teachers’ development of critical language awareness for teaching. Linguistics and Education, 32, 41-54.

Mann, S., & Walsh, S. (2017). Reflective practice in English language teaching: Research-based principles and practices. Routledge.

Richards, J. C. (2017). Teaching English through English: Proficiency, pedagogy and performance. RELC Journal, 48(1), 7-30.

Verplaetse, L. S., & Migliacci, N. (Eds.). (2017). Inclusive pedagogy for English language learners: A handbook of research-informed practices. Routledge.

Yang, C. C. R. (2017). An investigation of the use of the'flipped classroom'pedagogy in secondary English language classrooms. Journal of Information Technology Education: Innovations in Practice, 16(1).

Hall, G. (2017). Exploring English language teaching: Language in action. Routledge.

Nunan, D., & Richards, J. C. (Eds.). (2015). Language learning beyond the classroom. Routledge.