Teach English in Zhenxin Jiedao - Shanghai Shi

Comparative teaching methodologiesRecent years has witnessed the significant change of ESL teaching methodologies, from heavily relying on drills and repetition to the great emphasis on oral and aural abilities. It is delightful to notice that after ESL teaching has undergone some twists and turns in determining what the best teaching methodology is, we have come to a general realization of the advantages and disadvantages of each methodology and give a full play of them in our everyday classroom. I am going to compare two widely-accepted teaching methodologies in ESL area and to analyze some pros and cons of their practice. Presentation, Practice and Production Presentation, practice and production, or PPP as it is called, is one of the most common teaching methodologies for ESL. Presentation is referred to teacher?s presentation of the target language context and situation. Depending on the curriculum chosen, this could be pronunciation, parts of speech, vocabulary, sentence structure and grammar. Next is the practice stage where students have a chance of learning the language through activities towards mastery. The final phase is production, which is an advanced form of practice that requires students to think on their own rather than completing exercises. Overall these three steps are generally sequential, progressing from little student involvement to maximum student involvement. Engage, Study and Activate ESA, or Engage, Study and Activate, is different from PPP in that students can move more freely among the three stages in this methodology. Teachers can arrange the sequence of those three elements while still incorporating ESA, thus increasing possibilities of benefiting students in a full dimension. There are three kinds of ESA approaches, straight arrow, boomerang, and patchwork. Engage stage serves as a warm-up in which teachers try their best to create a desire for language mastery among students prior to the learning process. The second step is to engage students in practicing language point or information and how it is constructed. And finally it comes to a phase where students are encouraged to use any/all of the language they know as freely and communicatively as possible. Compare PPP and ESA strengths and weaknesses Strengths of PPP method It?s self-evident that PPP follows a very clear path while progressing in the lesson, well structured to be easily understood by both students and new teachers. For new ESL teachers who have no clues how to structure a lesson, the PPP method provides them with a clear view of what a successful lesson is supposed to be like. For students, the PPP methodology can help to develop their fluency especially for low level students. Weaknesses of PPP method Even though it?s very easy for beginner teachers to pick up, the PPP method has been considerably criticized in this regard. In addition, some critics think this method is far too teacher-oriented in that 65% to 90% time is spent on the first two stages, only leaving very limited opportunities for students to practice communicative skills. It?s also believed that PPP lacks a great deal of flexibility, for it reflects a specific order for a lesson schema. Strengths of ESA method Due to the characteristics of ESA, it gives a lot of flexibility to teachers when planning the lesson. Teachers can balance what learners need overall to arrange the instruction procedure. Second, it ensures that students are motivated enough to participate in the class and they can also have much exposure to language. Weaknesses of ESL method Since ESA is not a recommended procedure, instead it?s more like a labeling system used to contrast different lesson schemas. Therefore if we just use three key factors to label different steps within a lesson, it will be far too limited as a successful lesson usually incorporates a lot more elements. Conclusion From what has been discussed above, we could safely draw the conclusion that there are a lot more limitations in PPP practice than ESA, although they serve different purposes and both of them have their own advantages and disadvantages. I believe when teachers are planning lessons, they should take the level of target students, the objective of lesson and other factors into consideration before choosing appropriate teaching methods.