THE TEACHING OF MEANING

Talking Points:

1. How are meanings of new words to be taught in class? Can the teacher resort to translating the new words into the students' moth er tongue or is it an error in method?

2. Which ways of meaning presentation are especially effective at different study levels?

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I. a) Read the following article:

The meaning of words can be communicated or taught in many different ways. The following list includes most of the possibilities.

1. By demonstration: using an object, using a cut-out figure, us ing gesture, performing an action.

2. By pictures: photographs , blackboard drawings, pictures from books.

3. By verbal explanation: description, giving a word with the same meaning, giving a word with opposite meaning, putting the new word in a defining context, translating into another language.

Some people often criticise translation into the mother tongue as a way of communicating or teaching meaning. Their objections are generally like this:

1. There is usually no exact correspondence between one lan guage and another.

2. Translation into the mother tongue is indirect.

3. The use of the mother tongue takes time which could better be spent in using English.

All of these criticisms are true. But they can also be applied to the use of pictures, drawings, demonstration, and the use of real objects. For example, a picture for one group of learners does not always have the same meaning as it does for the teacher. The use of a picture to convey meaning is indirect because it requires decoding. Time spent using pictures could be better spent in using English.

Translation into the mother tongue, however, has certain features that can be used by the teacher to the learners' advantage. Here is a list of the main advantages.

(a) Translation can be done quickly. This is a disadvantage if the teacher wants to spend time on a word so that the learners will be sure to remember it. The speed of translation is an advantage, however, if the teacher wants to pass quickly over an unimportant word in a reading text. By giving the meaning quickly, using translation, the teacher has satisfied the learners and has avoided spending too much time on an unimportant word.

(b) Translation is not limited like pictures and objects to nouns, adjectives, and verbs. It can be used to explain many different types of words.

(c) The teacher can ask the learners to respond by using transla tion to see if they have understood something he presented in anoth er way. Except where the teacher provides a multiple-choice list of

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definitions or pictures, there is not really any other way in which the learners can respond freely, quickly, and easily to show they have understood something.

It is true that the use of translation as a way of teaching meaning has its drawbacks препятствия. It is usually too quick, it takes away time that could have been used to expose the learners to English, often there are not exact equivalents of English words in the mother tongue. However, translation shares these drawbacks with other ways of conveying meaning. By careful use of translation in suitable teaching tech­niques many of these drawbacks can be avoided.

The exclusion of the mother tongue from the classroom as a way of communicating meaning robs the teacher of one useful technique of encoding. It also leaves the learners to make their own uncon­trolled and often incorrect translations.

(From: English Language Teaching Journal. L., 1978. Abridged.)

b) Answer the following questions:

I. What ways of teaching the meaning of words does the author suggest? 2. Which of the suggested ways do you consider more ef fective for different study levels? (Give your reasons.) 3. What kind of meanings cannot be conveyed in any other way but by verbal ex planation? What are the subtypes of this method? (Illustrate each subtype by examples showing how it is possible to convey this or that meaning.) 4. What are the usual objections against using translation as a way of teaching meaning? 5. What are the author's arguments in favour of using translation? 6. What is your opinion? 7. What are the drawbacks помеха of the demonstration method of teaching meanings? 8. What are the drawbacks of using pictures? 9. Does verbal expla nation in the target language always achieve the aim? Why can it sometimes fail? What should be done to prevent the failure? 10. How can translation be used to check the students' understanding? What do you think of the recommendation? 11. Do you think that the mother tongue should be absolutely excluded from a foreign lan guage class? Give sound reasons for whatever you say.

П. Which way of presenting meanings would you choose for the italicized words in the following fragment? Explain your choice for each case:

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the hank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversa-

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tions in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations ?"

So she was considering in her own mind whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a white rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.

There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!" (when she thought it over after­wards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it Hashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and was just in time to see it pop down a large rab- bit-hole under the hedge.

(From: "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll)

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