Browsing by Subject "ELT"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Taking scripts as a model of lesson organisation for the integration of culture and language in ELT.
    (Universidad de Alicante, 2009-11-15) Criado, Raquel; Filología Inglesa
    Culture and language are two intertwined constructs essential to understand the interpretation of reality by different communities. Apprehending the foreign language culture is thus vital to attain genuine and fully communicative competence in the L2. This article specifically focuses on the teaching of scripts in ELT. Scripts (Shank and Abelson, 1977) are defined as proceduralised sequences of events of a temporal, cause-and-effect nature which underlie daily stereotyped situations. In this work, scripts are also regarded as cognitive sequences of events for culturally idiosyncratic situations pertaining to a certain linguistic population. The objective of this article is to propose the integration of culture and language teaching in ELT by means of the pedagogical adaptation of scripts for cultural situations made up of an ordered sequence of events. This will be accomplished through the “Communicative Processes-based model of activity sequencing” (CPM). The present proposal attempts at compensating the shortage of traditional culture teaching, which has been almost exclusively restricted to lexis or Elementary Meaning Units (Lado, 1957). The CPM adaptation will be illustrated with a complete ELT lesson created by the author for the script of the Cheese-Rolling festival in the English region of Cotswolds. This lesson will be critically analysed from cultural, pedagogical and cognitive perspectives.
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    The 'Interface Issue' in SLA: Is there a reflection in ELT materials? Rationale for a proposal.
    (Ediciones de la Universidad de Salamanca, 2012) Sánchez Pérez, Aquilino; Criado, Raquel; Filología Inglesa
    Since Krashen (1981, 1982) raised the question of 'learning' vs. 'acquisition', an increasingly hot debate has gained momentum in SLA. Such a debate is referred to in the literature as the 'interface issue'. Briefly, the interface issue is centered on the role that the explicit and implicit components may play in knowledge acquisition and on whether there is any kind of interaction between them. This issue has been traditionally analysed from the point of view of SLA, but it could also be viewed from the perspective of FLT: do FLT materials also assume the interface position – consciously or not– and are they built on the assumption that explicit and implicit knowledge really interact with each other? In order to answer this question a construct should be designed to discover the potential of teaching activities to promote explicit or implicit teaching, or both. The elaboration of such a construct should be based on a previous definition and identification of the operational features of explicit and implicit knowledge as applied to FLT materials. Our stand is that such a construct is feasible. We offer here the outline of a proposal based on the rationale presented along the paper. ------------------------------------
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    The Distribution of the Lexical Component in ELT Coursebooks and its Suitability for Vocabulary Acquisition from a Cognitive Perspective. A Case Study
    (Edit.um, 2009) Criado, Raquel; Filología Inglesa
    The psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic perspective of language acquisition requires some essential conditions in vocabulary acquisition: a) repetitive practice, which allows for data to reach long-term memory, and thus become proceduralised and automatised; b) how relevant the lexical items are regarding the communicative needs of the learners insofar as communicative relevance is linked to frequency in general linguistic usage; c) the potential in vocabulary acquisition, which will necessarily relate to the amount of new lexical items introduced in each one of the units in textbook; d) the way words are taught, i.e. whether aimed at explicit or incidental learning. In order to analyse and evaluate these issues, we will study the lexical items presented in a specific textbook from the point of view of frequency, distribution along the manual, opportunities for rehearsal and repetition (which will depend on frequency), and the nature of the activities centred on vocabulary. The results of this case study will allow us to check whether or not they may stand a comparison against the findings of psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic research on vocabulary acquisition
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    The impact of activity sequencing on the differences between ELT methods: a critical analysis of sample units
    (Universidad de Granada, 2010-06) Criado, Raquel; Filología Inglesa
    One of the methodological variables frequently forgotten by most ELT methods is activity sequencing. However, this is not a secondary variable and it should be intrinsically related to the cognitive built-in process governing knowledge acquisition. Consequently, activity sequencing fully affects the pedagogically based organisation of the teaching materials and the cognitive processes of language acquisition. The aim of this paper is to perform an analysis of the activity sequencing in three different textbooks representative of three main methods in the history of ELT: the Direct Method, the Audiolingual Method and the Communicative Method. The analysis will be undertaken from pedagogical and cognitive perspectives. The results will illustrate a) the degree of agreement or non-agreement detected in each method and textbook; b) that the activity sequencing variable is crucial to determine the nature of such differences or similarities. Since the activity sequencing is similar across the three textbooks, it could be assumed that methodological differences may be of less consequence than usually considered.-------------------------------------------