LECTURE # 2 Aims, content and principles of teaching foreign languages in a secondary school. Plan: Aims of teaching.
Content of foreign language teaching.
3. Principles of foreign language teaching in a secondary school.
Aims of teaching. Aims are the first and most important consideration in any teaching. The teacher should know exactly what his pupils are expected to achieve in learning his subject, what changes he can bring about in his pupils at the end of the course, at the end of the year, term, month, week, and each particular lesson, he should know the aims and objectives of foreign language teaching in schools.
The terms “aims ” and “objectives” are clearly distinguished in this work in accordance with the suggestion given by R.Roberts. Here is what he writes: “The term “aims” be reserved for long-term goals such as provide the justification or reason for teaching second languages… the term ‘objectives’ be used only for short-term goals.
The changes the teacher must bring about in his pupils may be threefold: practical – pupils acquire habits and skills in using a foreign language; educational – they develop their mental abilities and intelligence in the process of learning the foreign language; cultural – pupils extend their knowledge of the world in which they live.
Therefore there are three aims, at least which should be achieved in foreign language teaching: practical, educational, and cultural.
Content of foreign language teaching. The content of foreign language teaching or what to teach is one of the main problems the Methods deals with.
The first component of “what to teach” is habits and skills which pupils should acquire while learning a foreign language. According to the aims of learning this subject they are: hearing, speaking, reading, and writing. The level of habits and skills is determined by the syllabus for each form.
The second component of “what to teach” is a linguistic one. It includes, on the one hand, language material, such as sentence-patterns, utterance-patterns, pattern-dialogues, texts different in style arranged in topics and serving as starting points for the development of oral language and written language, which allows the teacher to reach the practical, educational, and cultural aims set by the syllabus.
The third component of “what to teach” is a methodological component, i.e. pupils should be taught how to learn the foreign language, how to work at the subject to attain the aims. For example, how to memorize words and keep them in memory, how to perform drill exercises in a most effective way, how to perform creative exercises which require a personal approach on the part of the pupil.
To sum up what has been said above, the content of foreign language teaching, i.e. what to teach, involves three main components.
psychological component, i.e. habits and skills which ensure the use of the target language as a means of communication in oral (hearing and speaking) and written (reading writing) forms;
linguistic component, i.e. language and linguistic material which should be assiliated to be used in language skills;
methodological component, i.e. the techniques which pupils should acquire to learn the foreign language in a most effective way.
In conclusion it should be said that the content of teaching in our schools is laid down in the syllabus and realized in teaching materials and in teacher’s own speech.