Effectiveness of Language Teaching

           I am studying Spanish and English with my education courses in order to become a good language teacher, and be able to teach a language effectively.  What would be the point if my language teaching was ineffective?  I think the best way to assess effective language teaching is to survey the students and somehow quantify what they have learned.  What makes a teacher effective is the way he or she presents the material.  Language material should be presented in multiple ways and as we learned last week, language students should be provided with multiple forms of language “input.”  Also, as cognitive theory states, teaching should promote meaningful learning. 

The type of language instruction that will augment language learning should be “meaningful,” this type of instruction should relate to the student and put what they are learning in context.  Some ways to do this could be to have students go to a Spanish restaurant as a class and actually order from the menu in Spanish, this brings what they have learned in the classroom to the outside world.  I love having my students listen to music they like, in this case it was American music, and I had my intermediate English high school students write down the lyrics of the song, but told them that they did not have to translate it.  At the beginning of class we would go over their assignment and it was great to see that there were only a few words they did not understand.  I love the idea of learning through music, because it is something that is easily relatable.  Having students listen to conversations either on tape or video then work in groups and come up with their own dialogue and then present it is a good idea.  Maybe even have students act out a scene and videotape it.  I also think it is a great idea to have students record themselves and when they are at a high enough level have a conversation partner.  Language instruction should not be all about just classroom lectures, assigned readings and written homework.    

I don’t think that teachers should speak the target language a 100% of the time, but should speak the target language as much as possible.  Once the students are at the intermediate level then classes should be conducted in the target language all the time.  However, in the lower level classes, especially beginner classes the teacher should use the target language only to say things that have already been reviewed in class or to explicitly name an object that they are holding, so that way it is easy for the students to make connections and comprehend what is being said.  It would be useless to teach the class a 100% of the time in the target language if students do not understand what is being said most of the class.  It would be frustrating and discouraging to students if they could barely understand half of what was being said in class.  The class needs to be taught at the level that students can understand; so in lower language level classes teachers should speak in the target language when they feel it is appropriate or speak in both languages when needed.