QUICK RESOURCE SHEET #18
Teaching methodologies
Perhaps you’re an English teacher who took a course in methodology before you began teaching, though only now are you truly ready to delve into the topic - this time with greater understanding and renewed enthusiasm. Or you train English teachers who don’t have access to a wide variety of source material on varieties of approaches to language teaching. Maybe you’re quite comfortable in the classroom, so you are ready to challenge yourself and stimulate your students by incorporating a range of techniques. Take a look at the following resources to get you going.
http://www.cal.org/resources/faqs/RGOs/methods.html
“Within methodology a distinction is often made between methods and approaches, in which methods are held to be fixed teaching systems with prescribed techniques and practices, and approaches are language teaching philosophies that can be interpreted and applied in a variety of different ways in the classroom. This distinction is probably best seen as a continuum ranging from highly prescribed methods to loosely described approaches.
This Resource Guide provides information about and links to digests, journals, books, and web sites that offer information about second language teaching methods and approaches.”
http://www.btinternet.com/~ted.power/teflindex.htm
This “methodology index” includes links to a series of detailed articles with teaching suggestions and bibliographies. These articles – roughly one hundred of them – are divided into thirteen broad categories such as Syllabus and Course Design, Methods of Testing and Assessment, Pronunciation and Listening, and Syntax & Semantics.
http://www.sk.com.br/sk-revie.html
This brief article reviews the major concepts in second language teaching methodology to come out of the 20th century. A useful feature of this site is a series of instant links to information on the big names in the field, including Chomsky, Krashen, and Piaget. A great site to use as a crash course in methodology.
http://www.linguatics.com/methods.htm
But if you have even less time, this site is the Cliff Notes version.