Video equipment

Video is an excellent source of authentic spoken language material; it is also attractive and motivating. It is flexible: you can start and stop it, run forward back, 'freeze' frames in order to talk about them. And there are many good programmes on the market. A disadvantage is their lack of mobility: few vide sets are portable, which means that classes need to be specially scheduled for video rooms; and of course there is the problem of occasional breakdowns ar technical problems. When planning a video lesson, always have a 'back-up' alternative lesson ready!

Audio equipment

Cassette recorders and cassettes are relatively cheap, and easy to use; and the are the main source (other than the teacher) of spoken language texts in most classrooms. They are more mobile and easier to use than video recorders, but lack, of course, the visual content. Again there may be problems with electric on the other hand, most portable cassette recorders - unlike video and most computers - also work on batteries. When buying cassette recorders, make sure that there is a counter, and then use it to identify the desired entry-point; otherwise, if you want to replay during the lesson, you may waste valuable time running the tape back and forth to find it.

Posters, pictures, games

Materials of this kind are invaluable particularly for younger learners, and teachers of children find that they constantly use them. However, if you have time, this type of material can be largely home-made: glossy magazines in particular are an excellent source of pictures.

2 Lecture 2. Learning and teaching processes

2.1 The teaching process

2.2 Presentations and explanations

2.3 Practice activities.

2.4 Class organization

2.1 The teaching process

The process of teaching a foreign language is a complex one: as with many other subjects, it has necessarily to be broken down into components for purposes of study. There are three such components: (1) presenting and explaining new material; (2) providing practice; and (3) testing.

In principle, the teaching processes of presenting, practising and testing correspond to strategies used by many good learners trying to acquire a foreign language on their own. They make sure they perceive and understand new-language (by paying attention, by constructing meanings, by formulating rules or hypotheses that account for it, and so on); they make conscious efforts to learn it thoroughly (by mental rehearsal of items, for example, or by finding opportunities to practise); and they check themselves (get feedback on performance, ask to be corrected).

In the classroom, it is the teacher's job to promote these three learning processes by the use of appropriate teaching acts. Thus, he or she: presents and explains new material in order to make it clear, comprehensible and available for learning; gives practice to consolidate knowledge; and tests, in order to check what has been mastered and what still needs to be learned or reviewed. These acts may not occur in this order, and may sometimes be combined within one activity; nevertheless good teachers are usually aware which is their main objective at any point in a lesson.

This is not, of course, the only way people learn a language in the classroom. They may absorb new material unconsciously, or semi-consciously, through exposure to comprehensible and personally meaningful speech or writing, or through their own engagement with it, without any purposeful teacher mediation as proposed here. Through such mediation, however, the teacher is to provide a framework for organized, conscious learning, while simultaneously being aware of - and providing opportunities for - further, more intuitive acquisition.