The importance of meaning

It is undoubtedly important for the students to understand the meaning of the new language they are learning. This is conveyed during the lead-in stage where the key concepts clearly demonstrate what is going on. We also need to know whether the students have understood the new language so that we can organise our teaching accordingly. Not only is the lead-in stage vital, therefore, but it will also be necessary for the teacher to check frequently that the students have understood. If they have not, we will have to re-present the key concepts.

Checking meaning can be done in three ways: information checking, immediate creativity and translation.

a) Information checking. The teacher will often need to find out if students have understood the information in the lead-in, or whether students understand what a model means. We can do this in a number of ways. We might, for example, ask a question. An example of this would be ‘Does Carlos like spaghetti?’ after the class has found out that he doesn’t. If the students answer ‘Yes’ they clearly haven’t understood the meaning of the new language concerning likes and dislikes. Another way of checking is to say sentences that are incorrect, e.g. ‘Carlos likes spaghetti but he doesn’t like fish’. The students will then, if they have understood, correct this error.

b) Immediate creativity and different settings. The immediate creativity stage is a good indicator of whether or not students have understood the meaning and use of the new language (as well, of course, as its form). We may ask students to produce sentences of their own even before we get to this stage in order to check that they have understood the new language.

Another good check of meaning is to ask the students something using the new language, which is not part of the context being used for the presentation. Thus, for example, if the teacher introduces ’can’ and ‘can’t’ with the kind of simulated story context he or she may ask (at any stage during the presentation) ‘Juan, can you run?’ Unless Juan has broken his leg or is in some way disabled he should answer ‘Yes’ to this question. If he does, the teacher is confident that he has understood the meaning of ‘can’ that is being introduced.

c) Translation. Where the teacher is teaching a monolingual class, translation is obviously an excellent technique if the teacher is fluent in the students’ language. The main advantages are that it is quick and efficient.

There are, however, two disadvantages to the use of translation: the first is that it is not really possible with groups of different nationalities, although where there are two or more speakers of a language one student can translate for others. Secondly, it is not always possible to translate exactly. Not all languages have words for exactly the same concepts, and it is often the case that in a given language there is not really a word, which means the same as a word in another language.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-13