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    Lund & Svedsen (2001) What Is Good Language Teaching

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    Laura Natalia Valbuena Peña
    Good language teaching is a dynamic process that requires constant adaptation based on student needs. While certain principles can guide practice, the best teachers dynamically adjust principles based on concrete activities and student feedback. They also reflect on the theories underlying their principles and practices. Good language teachers create communicative learning forums that allow students to use the language authentically. They design tasks requiring two-way interaction and feedback to promote linguistic attention and development. They help students gradually assume responsibility for their own learning over time.

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    Lund & Svedsen (2001) What Is Good Language Teaching

    Uploaded by

    Laura Natalia Valbuena Peña
    208 views4 pages
    Good language teaching is a dynamic process that requires constant adaptation based on student needs. While certain principles can guide practice, the best teachers dynamically adjust principles based on concrete activities and student feedback. They also reflect on the theories underlying their principles and practices. Good language teachers create communicative learning forums that allow students to use the language authentically. They design tasks requiring two-way interaction and feedback to promote linguistic attention and development. They help students gradually assume responsibility for their own learning over time.

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    Pedagogía

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    Lund & Svedsen (2001) What is Good Language Teaching

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    Good language teaching is a dynamic process that requires constant adaptation based on student needs. While certain principles can guide practice, the best teachers dynamically adjust principles based on concrete activities and student feedback. They also reflect on the theories underlying their principles and practices. Good language teachers create communicative learning forums that allow students to use the language authentically. They design tasks requiring two-way interaction and feedback to promote linguistic attention and development. They help students gradually assume responsibility for their own learning over time.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    208 views4 pages

    Lund & Svedsen (2001) What Is Good Language Teaching

    Uploaded by

    Laura Natalia Valbuena Peña
    Good language teaching is a dynamic process that requires constant adaptation based on student needs. While certain principles can guide practice, the best teachers dynamically adjust principles based on concrete activities and student feedback. They also reflect on the theories underlying their principles and practices. Good language teachers create communicative learning forums that allow students to use the language authentically. They design tasks requiring two-way interaction and feedback to promote linguistic attention and development. They help students gradually assume responsibility for their own learning over time.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 4

    62

    SPROGFORUM NO. 19, 2001

    What is Good Language


    Teaching?
    Karen Lund
    Lecturer, Ph.D. (Danish as a Second
    Language)
    The Danish University of Education

    Michael Svendsen
    Pedersen
    Managing Director, BLitt, MLitt
    LINGVA FRANCA Language & Culture

    For both pedagogical and educational


    reasons it is crucial to know what it is
    that makes language teaching good
    language teaching. Surveys have been
    conducted to find out that the good
    language learner does; it would be
    wonderful to have a corresponding
    top-ten list of what the good language
    teacher does. But language teaching
    and language acquisition are complex
    entities and it is difficult to point to
    what exactly it is in teaching that leads
    to the results in learning. All language
    teachers have experienced activities being a success in one class but an absolute failure in the next. Good language
    teaching in practice is, then, to a great
    extent a series of relative processes, It is

    only good if it is constantly adapted to


    particular students needs, potential
    and situation.
    On the other hand, there are also certain
    principles that underlie practice. The
    concrete activities in the actual teaching are an expression of certain
    generalisable principles, and it is in the
    interaction between principles and
    practice that good language teaching is
    to be delineated as a dynamic entity.
    For language teaching to preserve its
    dynamic nature and to become, and remain, good language teaching, the language teacher must constantly work
    dialectically with principles and prac-

    KAREN LUND & MICHAEL SVENDSEN PEDERSEN: WHAT IS GOOD LANGUAGE TEACHING?

    tice: convert principles into concrete


    teaching activities and use the concrete
    activities to adjust the principles. Thirdly, the good language teacher must be
    able to develop principles and practice
    in the light of the theories underlying
    both principles and practice and therefore be able to reflect on what view of
    language, acquisition, culture and human beings is the driving force behind
    given principles and activities.
    Good language teaching is then a dynamic entity which derives its dynamism from the teachers research activity.
    Principles for good language teaching
    We can ask the question and attempt to
    come up with some possible answers:
    What must the good language teacher
    be able to do? What learning forum
    must he or she place at the disposal of
    those seeking to acquire the language?

    Good language teaching opens up


    the possibility for a communicative
    learning forum
    In a communicative learning forum
    language learners gain the opportunity
    to:
    experience themselves as users of
    the new language in genuine communication
    express themselves in the new language forum
    undergo experiences involving the
    new language
    undergo experiences involving cultural and social differences.
    These principles are based on a con-

    63

    ception of language as a functional


    means of communication and learning
    as a cognitive, social process where the
    search for language for mediation, interaction and understanding of an outside world are seen as the driving force
    behind acquisition.
    The possibilities of putting these principles into practice lie in content-oriented problem-solving tasks that supplement each other and together create
    content-based contexts (tasks, problembased assignments, projects).
    A central criterion for assessing
    whether the planned activities will
    lead to the establishing of a communicative forum is where there lies behind
    the activities a visibly well-defined
    content-borne aim. Are there good reasons for the individual to set out on a
    linguistic interaction with the outside
    world - orally or in writing - as a listener or as a reader? Whether the pedagogical organisation with initiate linguistic interaction depends on whether
    there is any good reason for listening
    or reading that which is to be communicated, and whether there is any clear
    aim in talking or putting pen to paper.

    Good language teaching creates lin


    guistic attention in relation to the
    content-oriented communication
    Does the task require two-way communication? Does everybody in the
    group have to participate for the
    task to be solved - i.e. have all parties gathered information that the
    others need?
    Is interaction required for the task to
    be solved or the project completed?

    64
    Is it built into the task that the parties have to attain a common goal?
    The more times one can answer in the
    affirmative to the above questions, the
    greater the possibility will be that the
    activities taking place in the class will
    give rise to active, concentrated readers, listeners, speakers and writers. If
    one can answer in the affirmative to
    these questions, opportunities will exist for the participants to be part of activities that require them:
    to understand the input they are exposed to
    to try and clarify meaning whenever there is something they do not
    understand
    to give feed-back on what they hear
    and to get feed-back on what they
    say.
    This means that the conditions exist for
    language learners to note that which is
    one of the central learning tasks, i.e. the
    new language clothing that surrounds
    the content. The more it is built into the
    communicative activities that understanding, clarification and feed-back
    are necessary, the greater the chance
    that the participants will acquire new
    language and develop their interlanguage. One of the central conditions for
    a developing of interlanguage taking
    place is that the individual discovers
    and notes the hole in his or her own
    interlanguage and then sets about
    plugging it.
    Learning a new language is a longterm, experimental process in which
    hypotheses have to be put forward and
    tested concerning the relationships be-

    SPROGFORUM NO. 19, 2001

    tween linguistic content and linguistic


    forms. This is best achieved if the activities one is involved in regularly enable one to consciously focus on the
    new language.
    Learning a new language is also a process that requires opportunities to use
    the same language for a variety of purposes. Without repetitions, no automation of the new language will take
    place.

    Good language teaching helps the


    students to assume responsibility for
    their own learning
    One of ways of trying to promote communicative teaching has to do with
    moving from the more closed, teacherdefined types of tasks to open, self-defined activities. This is a hard lesson not only for the language learner but
    for the teacher as well. The teacher has
    to learn to let go, and the students who
    are used to having teacher-controlled
    teaching have to go through a phase of
    reassessment as to what good teaching
    is. This is best achieved via a process. A
    sudden change to more open forms of
    organisation will probably not lead to
    autonomous, self-governing language
    learners but rather to discontented students who long to return to the good
    old authoritarian teaching forum.
    The role of the teacher in the communicative forum will change from being
    the mediating tanker to being a pedagogical organiser, initiator, observer
    and resource person. And most of the
    teachers work will consist of planning
    - before and after the actual teaching.

    KAREN LUND

    & MICHAEL SVENDSEN PETERSEN: WHAT IS GOOD LANGUAGE TEACHING?

    Good language teaching breaks


    down walls
    In autonomous, communicative teaching, walls have been broken down. The
    class seeks information and does project
    work in the right place, which will only
    rarely be in a classroom horseshoe. In
    second-language teaching there are
    ideal possibilities right outside. The
    Danish language, Danish society are
    right there and can be fetched and
    used in the activities of the class. In foreign-language teaching, the Internet
    opens up possibilities which, in many
    ways, can help to liberate the students.
    IT and the Internet can enhance the
    process towards greater autonomy, but
    only if IT is conceived in conjunction
    with a pedagogical practice that builds
    partly on communicative activities and
    partly on a problem-solving learning

    65

    forum where responsibility for ones


    own learning is one of the portals. The
    worst scenario is every man his computer, without an iota of pedagogical
    innovation taking place. That would
    take us back to a teaching and a medium that are best at dealing with the
    structural filling-in exercises of the
    past. No amount of introducing technical aids will be of any benefit if they
    are simply anchored in a traditional,
    teacher-governed, grammar-fixated
    teaching practice.
    Good language teaching seeks to establish free scope in the form of workshops
    and study centres as a centre of gyration for the activities of both the individual and the class. It creates work
    fora where there is not only freedom
    but also an obligation to assume responsibility for ones own learning.

    Previous issues: 1994/95: No. 1: Kulturforstelse (out of print); No. 2: Didaktiske tillb
    (out of print); No. 3: Et ord er et ord (out of print). 1996: No. 4: Kommunikativ kompetence
    (out of print); No. 5: Mellem bog og internet (out of print); No. 6: Den professionelle sproglrer (out of print). 1997: No. 7: Fra grammatik- til systemtilegnelse (out of print); No. 8:
    Projektarbejde (f eksemplarer); No. 9: Dansk som andetsprog (out of print). 1998: No.10:
    Sprogtilegnelse (out of print); No. 11: Evaluering af sprogfrdighed (out of print); No. 12:
    Sprog og fag. 1999: No. 13: Internationalisering; No. 14: Mundtlighed (out of print); No. 15:
    Lring og lreoplevelser. 2000: No. 16: Sprog p skrift; No. 17: Brobygning i sprogfagene; No. 18: Interkulturel kompetence (out of print).
    Most articles are available on our homepage www.dpb.dpu.dk/infodok/Sprogforum/
    from where they can be printed out free of charge

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