IN LANGUAGE TEACHING

What Is The Relationship Between Theory And Practise In Language Teaching?

What Is The Relationship Between Theory And Practise In Language Teaching?

Introduction

Teaching at an institution like FSI as a best case teaching scenario.[with] small classes of well educated adult students who study languages to further their career goals, trained teachers with native speaker proficiency in the language of instruction, and systematic assessment. In a sense, FSI is a near optimal lab for testing the claims of classroom-based Second Language Acquisition theory and research. The term language proficiency was first established at FSI. For us, it refers to the ability to use language as a tool to get things done. Language training programs at FSI are accountable for developing pre-specified proficiency levels in our students in as short a period of time as possible. The accountability goes to whether graduates of our programs can use the language to carry out the important and complex work for which they are responsible. If, for some reason, they cannot do that work, the FSI program heads will hear about it in no uncertain terms. Language educators at FSI get direct feedback from our clients and stakeholders. When a dissatisfied cable comes to us from post, it demands our attention.

Analysis

In general, teachers believed that practice should play a more important role in ILTE programmes. For current programmes in Argentina, this would mean the extension of the practicum and the incorporation of more teaching opportunities, micro-teaching for example, during the four years of the course. It is clear that though teachers noticed a fracture between theory and practice, they saw theory as only external; they did not view their own beliefs and conceptions of teaching and learning as theories which interact and clash with the input provided in different subjects. In other words, participants viewed theory as one body of disciplines derived from science-philosophy circles, and practice as a set of strategies and positions on how teachers teach or should teach. On the other hand, what they showed interest in was the praxis, since their main concerns centred on the ongoing dialogue of theory and practice throughout their entire field experiences, and the practicum among other opportunities found in a course.

In other words, teachers need to develop strategies and materials based on some learning principles, together with an understanding of the values which impinge on those principles. In addition, teachers need to be creators of their own approach according to their personal teaching situations.

With reference to the theory-practice debate, participants, following the same line of thought expressed above, felt that efforts to devote equal time to theory and practice may be necessary. In addition, they emphasised that both practice and praxis could be more context-responsive. However, it was agreed that theory may precede practice and both may be combined in a deeper exposure to contextualised praxis. In addition, the gap between theory and practice could be bridged if the teaching of technology were introduced and if procedures which enhance the social nature of learning ...