SHARE CONVENTION: "When our students could talk in English."

When our students could talk in English

By Omar Villarreal

This seminar was delivered by Omar Villarreal. According to his lecture, sometimes we should try to go back to those old times when students could really talk in English. Although the methods of the past were inefficient in many aspects, some of them allowed students to speak in English. Then he started talking about the evolution of language teaching throughout the different methods that have been developed. He started with the grammar translation method.  He showed us pictures of exercises that belonged to that method. He said that the common belief in those times was that practice made perfect and there was no room for innovation and creativity so it seemed easier to teach English in the past.

  Omar went on talking about the different methods up to the communicative revolution. He said that with the communicative approaches students feel much freer to talk although they may not pay so much attention to grammar. It seems that the primary goal is to communicate at the expense of grammar.  He particularly mentioned Task-based learning’s disadvantages. Sometimes it seems impossible to implement it in the classroom because students do not have enough vocabulary to do it. They need to know the language very well to have real access to it.  He also talked about CLIL (Content and Language integrated method), which has become quite popular. However, it seems not to be so effective for students outside the classroom.

Finally, he talked about the importance of using grammar and how to teach it properly. He gave us some activities as examples that we could include in our lessons.

  I liked the seminar but I did not find it very useful. I could remember the most relevant features of the methods. I do not agree with the idea that language teaching used to be better in the past because it was an unsatisfactory experience for learners. In fact, I think that it has improved throughout time and we still need to go on looking for innovative ways of teaching so as to reach all students.