Plenary session: 7 things beginning with M

PLENARY SESSION: 7 things beginning with M - by Scott Thornbury

a)Method
During the 60s and 70s, we moved away from a single-method perspective. The idea is that people don't seem to learn more or better depending on a particular method. Therefore, we can conclude that other elements must matter more. What are these elements?

b)Motivation
This is one of the key elements. Given motivation, students will learn. (See the article '10 commandments for motivating language learners' by Donyez).

c)Meaning
The audiolingual method came under critique because it became clear that it is important to give students 'the ability to choose what they want to say'.
Students are also often given reading exercises in class which may have no interest because they carry no meaning for them. Therefore, students need to be given material that is true, coherent, genuine, interesting.

d)Memory
If a text is meaningful, students will remember. Most of the topics are generated by the teacher though.
Memory is often underestimated. In terms of grammar, there is not much to be remembered (only a few tenses in English) but in terms of vocabulary, there is a vast amount (100 function words, 3000 lexical words, ??? word combinations).
As teachers, we need to be aware that students probably need to see a word between 7 and 16 times for a word 'to stick'. Learning and memorizing phrases is key. In other words, students need to build up a phraseological dictionary.

e)Management skills
These are necessary on the part of the teacher to encourage the students to manage their own learning.

f)Mediation
The teacher needs to be involved in code-instructing. For example, the teacher's role in teaching reading is one of guiding while the students interact one with another.
Ex: students can be involved in writing a conversation (in pairs).

g)Methodology
This term is less prescriptive than the term 'method'. In the post-method methodology, there is no single method. Instead, multi-methods is the new methodology.