ORAL APPROACH: A CURRENT VIEW

Talking Points:

1. For two decades or so an oral approach has been a most popu lar talking point in our profession. How is it evaluated today? What do you personally think of an oral approach to teaching children? teenagers? adults?

2. What are the current trends in foreign-language teaching to day?

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I. a) Read the following article:

Of course, we all know that an oral approach is the greatest thing since the invention of the wheel... don't we? All together now: "Yes, we do!"

But let's pause for thought.

An oral approach to teaching EFL* often seems so novel and in­teresting to new teachers that a general notion of it is formed and embraced without evaluation. Misguided введённый в заблуждение generalisations about prin­ciples and techniques are made, and it becomes twice as unproduc­tive as the traditional grammar-translation method.

Teachers, half understanding the terminology and techniques, dash otf into classrooms and wreak havoc among their students. This half-understanding leads to teachers at first:

Either being too sure of themselves, setting into complacency, rolling out the techniques, and teaching without ever really asking themselves why they do that they do, or if it's valid at all, or going through the motions of applying the techniques, meeting resistance and problems in class, and then having a crisis of confidence in the approach.

Neither of the two really know which of the techniques are achieving anything, because the confidence of the second is shak­en by the failure of some of the techniques which they believed infallible and universally applicable. Both are victims of the "Isn't- an-oral-approach-marvellous?" virus, which produces dogma and insularity.

At its best, an oral approach provides a set of techniques which can make learning more efficient and enjoyable in appropriate cir­cumstances.

At -its worst — and all too often — it leads to a pointless display of fireworks фейерверки on the part of the teacher, and confusion and dissatisfac­tion on the part of the students.

In the following sections I shall be more precise about all this.

I. Heads It's Dynamism, Tails It's Insensitivity**

Teachers can become so intent намерение on being "dynamic" that they become insensitive to what is really happening in their class. Stu­dents become items to be manipulated .

* teaching English as a foreign language ** On the one hand, it's

dynamism; on the other, it's insensitivity.

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II. Over-Valuing of Technique ("You Know, I did a Fantastic Progressive Substitution Drill Today")

This concentration on techniques goes beyond a reasonable aware­ness of their usefulness, and becomes petty, paranoid, punctilious, and (in conversation ) gigantically boring. Often acquiring all the how can blind teachers to the what, as well as they why (e.g. perfectly-organized questioning being done on a text which is irrelevant or unsuitable for the class, because of content or level; beautiful sets of carefully-pre- pared visual aids being used to teach expressions which are useless to students; suitcases full of flash-cards being used to teach all the vocabulary from a text before approaching the text itself, etc.).

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