An Approach to Life

I began teaching in my new school a few months ago. I am teaching Spanish. I learned my language skills from teachers who used textbooks and thoroughly taught grammar and vocabulary. In this way, I have been using the "traditional" approach to teaching a foreign language. Another teacher at my school believes that the natural approach is the way to go and wants me to do that will all students that I teach. I have attempted the natural approach at times, but it doesn’t really work for me. My concern with the natural approach is that students don’t really learn the fundamentals of the language (verb conjugations, how/why adjectives agree in number and gender, etc.) These are things that I feel are important for students to understand as it will help them better understand English. How do people feel about the natural approach? Will using the natural approach help students be more successful in college? Any thoughts?

It seems to me that effective teaching should be a reasonable mix of styles. While the "mechanics" of a language are important, feeling confident in the conversational "natural" use is also important. Students need to feel fluent enough to actually speak to someone. Opportunities should be given for students use and experience a language through short real life interactions. Skits, group projects, games, easy t.v. shows or videos etc. are more enjoyable and can be used to introduce or reinforce themes before delving into the textbook version of grammar and vocabulary. The language needs a chance to live. Both aspects must be integrated in order for students to be successful.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 21st, 2009 at 11:57 pm and is filed under teaching approach. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.