Post 2

 From my experience as a student of foreign language I recall a few different approaches being used. In high school much of the focus was on memorized dialogue, audiolingualism. This means that we were given a prompt and had to either create a dialogue of our own or we were just told to memorize a scenario from the textbook. I do not feel this is the best way to go about learning a foreing language. I do not remember specifically my teacher correcting my pronunciation of the words. I remember as a student being very nervous to have the whole script memorized. I do not think this facilitated learning. In fact I would say it impaired my ability to focus on the language because I was too nervous about saying each word in order. The cognitive approach was also implemented in high school. We focused on learning a grammar lesson and then putting it into practice. This was not the best approach because as I recall, the activities and exercises followed a certain formula. This lead to issues once a student had the opportunity to answer open ended questions and state their opinion. I remember the communicative approach more in the higher levels of the language. We were able to discuss in groups the language and have dialogues based on a role-plays and prompts. I feel that these approaches are comfortable to me because that is what I am used to doing. But, in college when there were other approaches used or even a lack of approach and it was lecture based, I had to adapt. I do not believe that one single approach can lead to learning in a student. There needs to be a combination of parts from different approaches in order to be a successful teacher. For example including dialogue in the classroom is very important. However, the memorization may not be the way to practice dialogue. A scenario with different options can perhaps assist the learning process.

 My first comment on the readings is on the first sentence. The saying that teaching is both an art and a sicence. I interpret this as the idea that we as teachers have a way of doing things that have specific reasons and purposes (the science) and the students can interpret the results (the art). The art can also be that there is room for creativity when creating a lesson. I disagree with the the sentence in chapter 1 which states that teachers are passive technicians just passing knowledge along. It is the purpose of the teacher to teach the knowledge. This cannot be done by simply passing on the content. The teacher needs to make lessons and organize appropriate activites in order to reach the objectives. The idea of a teacher being a reflective practitioner makes more sense because it is a conscious effort rather than a routine action done because it has been tradition. The other idea of teachers who are willing to reflect upon the ideological principles that inform their practice is a good thing. Teachers need to be aware of the social issues and other aspects that are taken into account once inside the classroom. In the second chapter the author discusses methods. The fact that methods is so loosely used in our field of education makes it difficult to define the term. We do know though, that methods are continuously being added to try and improve the way all teachers approach a classroom. We also know that not one single method is the end all be all. This is because the "methods are based on idealized concepts geared toward idealized contexts." This is a bold quote that has a lot of meaning behind it. I find this very fascinating because of all the variables that need to be taken into account. A classroom is an unpredictable place, and a set method is not going to be the way to deal with an extraneous situation.