We have a great course with Mrs. Mohammadi this semester called Language teaching techniques. Every session of this course is separated into 2 parts, a presentation by students and classroom discussion. Also, our given book is Techniques and principles in language teaching by Larsen Freeman which is a very useful book and I bought it ASAP.

 

The first two sessions of our new course were about 1)our syllabus and dividing us into pairs in order for us to be prepared for presentation of each season, 2)some elaborations about various terms related to language teaching by our professor and some classmates in class discussion.


Up till now we've studied 5 out of 15 chapters of our book and we've had 3 presentations. The first one was for chapter 2, the grammar-translation method by Mr. Heydarnezhad & Zareie. As a brief summary GTM method was similar to what most of us experienced during school. The purpose of this method is reading and translating, not communicating. The second presentation was for chapter 3,the direct method ,by Mr. Palme and Rezazade. As another short summary, in this method only the target language is spoken and the purpose is mainly communication. Also unlike GTM, grammar in this method is taught inductively. The third presentation was for chapter 5, the silent way, by Mr. Poorsultan and Khabazzade. In this method in which I didn't find myself very interested teacher barely speaks and lets the students think and get engaged and develop independence. Chapter 1 and 4 were both taught by Mrs. Mohammadi. Chapter 1 was an introduction and the terminology of language teaching was mainly discussed and chapter 4 was about the audio-lingual method in which the purpose was to learn how to use the language to communicate.

 

All in all this course is, in my opinion, very useful and educational. Every presentation is analyzed by our professor and students, which is conducive to great developments. Plus we have discussions in the class that somehow involve some students and make the learning active. The point required to be observed about these discussions is that we need more controversial topics to involve everyone and it would also be a good idea to consider some extra activities particularly for smart students to involve them more.

 

Thank you for reading...