Some teachers of English,and me too, follow the Modern Language Association Report of 2007 which promotes teaching meaning by the use of various methods and disciplines of knowledge.
In my point of view, one of the best ways is to use words in different contexts and taking benefit of multimedia demonstration.
This strikes me as a very interesting question, and I wonder if it might be elaborated a bit for the non-specialist, like myself. How do you go about using the "Various methods and disciplines of knowledge" to teach English? What comes to mind is Wittgenstein's idea, "don't look for the meaning, look for the use." Or, again, I think of the work of the lexicographer. If the dictionary writers want to define a word, then they first assemble representative examples of sentences employing the word to be defined. The meaning assigned to the word must, in some sense, explain the range of usage.
In teaching vocabulary of a given discipline, it seems to make sense to take a short article on the given subject, extract a list of sentences which summarize the account of the subject in the article, and then construct exercises on the basis of the sentences selected--say, leaving a word of interest out and asking it to be filled in, or asking for paraphrase of the sentence in the students own words, etc. The general idea is to associate and clue the word meanings to a narrative of the subject or subject-matter. Also of interest is the idea that the meaning acquired must be an inference from the established usage.
I wonder if these sorts of suggestions make sense in terms of the Language Association Report.
H.G. Callaway
Philadelphia, PA.
Hi Janina,
I think it would depend on the level students have. That is, elementary students have a high level of anxiety and need to exactly know the equivalent translation of words, whereas more advanced students may infer the meaning through the context. It's important to be alert in these aspects and make the most when teaching. Meaning texts with rich vocabulary + structures are necessary.....and also being active learners to underline, translate, and reuse the words in other contexts.
this is what we do when teaching EFL.
take a look at some suggestions provided by Carol Read, 500 activities for the primary classroom.
Best,
Laura
Hi Janina, maybe we have a specific situation, but as we are the computer training center, we have special English courses fot IT Pros. And our trainers teach English with computer based specific features.
Hi Janina,
Since the goals of MLA is translingual and transcultural competence, I would suggest communicative language learning, or task-based language teaching.
Yet again, depends on what skill you are teaching (i.e. speaking, listening, reading, writing) you may come up with various tasks and approaches.
Nevertheless, when you aim to teach meaning, you need to expand the learners' vocabulary knowledge. Therefore, reading authentic materials, watching movie with English subtitle and peer-learning are highly recommended to the learners.
Take context into consideration. Words have fleeting meaning until they are used in context. This standpoint appears very useful to me; it may also lead you to the functional view of language meaning - which I also consider very insightful.
First of all, we know that the term ´meaning´ is interpreted in various ways. I think that meaning should be what Frege intended to by speaking about Sinn. So I use Tichý´s theory in Transparent intensional logic where meanings are well defined procedures that lead us to the denotation. So meanings are ´algorithmically´ structured and to say that we know the meaning of some expression is to say that I understand that expression. So the role of definitions is great. I can exploit the fact that I have to understand some expressions of the language in question in order to teach the meaning of some new expression. A good game is here Twenty questions.
Textbooks & related materials; dictionaries & encyclopedias; audio, video, software programs; Youtube and other image/video rich sites; language learning web sites; social media. Direct translation, visuals, gestures, games. Meaning-focused activities in speaking, listening, reading, writing, and grammar.
Years ago I was invited to a lesson in Germany which was announced as a pretty good example for how to teach meaning in second language acquisition. The children were Turks, and – if I remember well – about 8 years old. The lesson subject was: What do I need at school? The children had already learned the words ruler, pencil, rubber, book, booklet, notebook, and so on. The main subject was the verb „need“. The meaning of this verb. The teacher took one of these things, held it aloft, went through the class still holding it aloft, showed it everybody, and said: I NEED a ruler. The children had to answer: (At school) I NEED a ruler. The teacher took another object: I NEED a… And the pupils had to fill in the right word. This was repeated many times using different objects. Every child had to demonstrate that she or he was able to form the sentence: (At school) I NEED a… Or: …you NEED… What do we NEED, and so on. The children were very eager to speak. They were wonderful. The lesson finished, and I asked some children: What is I NEED in Turkish? And they all answered like a shot: Gösteriyorum. That’s in English: I am showing.
The director of a teachers training institution (who had invited me) asked me: Wasn’t it wonderful? I said: No, it was terrible.
Maybe I was more polite at that time.
My recommendation was: Never use pedagogical methods when teaching meaning. Just translate. And, later on, teach how to use a dictionary. Otherwise – as it was demonstrated - you teach 45 minutes, and the children learn something wrong.
Another hint: They should use a dictionary which is very thick, so that they don’t fail to find a word they are searching for.
I have answered but my answer somehow disappeared. Who is responsible???
For beginners to B1 level (and admittedly mostly for primary school children) I have been using a hand gesture system. A complete dictionary of fixed handsigns that represent words or short collocations. Meaning is transferred from a visual or even a whispered translation to a hand gesture. From then on, gestures serve to elicit language from the students in the L2 and maintain meaning by their iconic nature. This is the focus of my Phd thesis and you can see a video of this in action (actually a revision session video for homework) at the following link:
http://www.englishspanishlink.com/gestureway/lesson-1.htm
EFL learners using memorization as a technique to learn the new word through repetition or practice. so, using different strategies in teaching them could be help. some of these strategies like keyword, mental linkage, saying the word a laud.
Dear fFuad and Mike -i'm grateful to both of you for sharing your ideaas -thanks a lot.
Regards,
Janina
Translation is the last thing you want to do. The use of pictures and proper sequencing of language input is more than sufficient for learners to get the meaning. You can begin with simple icons such as 1, 2, 3 and then show a book, for example, add colors and numbers, then people with names and where they are from. This has worked very well for our millions of users. Learners are equipped with brains that try to make sense of things. We use that systematically.
Lance,
I fear many problems of modern societies with failed integration of minorities which originally come from other countries result from language-teachers who are against translation. An immigrant child needs to learn about 30 words a day if she/he wants to get a chance of success in school and job. How to do this without translation?
And in school you need to know exactly what the meaning of a word is, not roughly. (If you want to gain a good exam.)
Hi Klaus,
Meaning is negotiated in context. Therefore vocabulary needs to be presented in carefully controlled contexts and with appropriate comprehension support, such as the use of well-designed graphics. One's first language is learned through boot-strapping, and we can facilitate that with older learners as well. It just needs very careful preparation and placement. At higher levels, we can teach meaning by setting up contrasts in context. Anyway, an important exchange.
Lance,
second language acquisition should be quite different from first language acquisition.
The context is important. In translation it has to be considered.
No way is faster and more exact than (context-sensitive) translation.
Slower ways are those by which you make minority children stupid. Language is the basis of the development of knowledge and thinking.
Hi everybody,
I totally agree with Klaus, many foreign language teachers are afraid or even prevented from using translation to explain meaning because of pedagogical ideology: it sounds old fashioned and a foreign language course should be as modern as possible. Wrong. It must be useful for the learners, whatever they need to learn and whatever the available material is. So the question is : is translation more effective or not? The answer seems to be yes if you read recent research.
And there are all sorts of possible ways to do it: let them guess a little, let them use metalinguistic cues, let the learners who know languages close to the one your are teaching help the others and so on.
It is not a matter of going back to the nineteenth century, but of using the linguistic knowledge your students already have.
Dear Esther Juan Olivia,
Thank you very much for your vauable answer,
Regards,
Janina
It seems that I am in the minority in this discussion. Let me explain a little about how I have come to the conclusions that I have. First, there is the data we have from more than 20 million students, which shows rapid fluency gains from beginner to advanced, for children through airline pilots. In the first 10 years of our computer-based programs in schools and businesses, we provided translations. What the data showed was that with time the majority of students quickly moved away from translation use, partly because it slowed things down, and our aim was to develop fluency. Subsequently, and for the last 10 years, we have dropped the translation support, providing only a limited glossary which students can access, but seldom do. Our data suggests that dealing with ambiguity (provided it is at the right level) is a skill students need to develop in the second language and prepare them for real use. Anytime they switch back into L1, the language processing is interrupted, especially for oral communication. Just as children, adults are still equipped with subconscious mechanisms for rapid guessing and adjusting to context, provided that the input is carefully controlled, sequenced and supported with appropriate visuals or reference to their own life experience, which we exploit extensively. In addition, we provide training and support for both teachers and students to allow learning to take place. I might add here that this approach requires computer assistance and cannot be done with traditional textbooks which are laden with text. Our approach is to develop the skills in this order: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Our results speak for themselves, but I admit that they come from a specific approach to language learning that is guided by a learning theory, sequencing, testing and in a blend with classroom support - a 'flipped' approach.
I hope this helps clarify things. Translation is used only as a last resort. Students who rely too much on translation are the ones who make the slowest progress.
Dear Janina,
I would like to give my opinion on this question. I would say that it all depends on many factors including the level of the students, the age, aptitude, motivation, preference, expectations and etc.
I have had students who preferred translation - especially 36-56 year-old beginners who were used to the 'traditional' way of learning, and who had previous meta-linguistic knowledge of other foreign languages, but also 6-9 year-old students who could 'take in' English words like sponges whatever way I presented them. The adults expected translation because they were used to it and their brain accepted it. Young learners learn how to learn and experiment unconsciously with whatever is presented to them so that later they can use whichever method is most acceptable for them.
I even have tried complete explanation in English without uttering a word in students' mother tongue, which was very demanding, I had to adapt my teaching methods, however, students got used to it and accepted it.Some students have an aptitude for understanding languages and either way works for them.
The objective also plays a very important role in learning a foreign language. For adult learners whose goal is to learn how to communicate in English prefer having a clear idea of the meaning in a context and having a singular meaning of the word as a separate lexeme is meaningless for them.
As far as it helps to convey the meaning, any way a teacher chooses to present the meaning to the students is the right way. There are many methods, techniques, - behaviorist, communicative, audio-lingual, etc.- which can be used. Recent research show that students' knowledge of their mother tongue can help in SLA but it can also interfere in SLA. I think that the key issue is to find what works best for your students.
I hope this helps.
Regards
Natasha
Dear colleagues,
It is my opinion that the meaning of a word should be explained in context(as Mr. Klaus suggested) or with collocations rather than directly giving the other equivalent word or a translation. sometimes it may be effective that asking the learner to guess the meaning of the new word in relation to the rest of the words in the sentence or providing another sequel sentence with the same word. A mind mapping technique often solves the problem if these methods wont work out, the recourse is providing a mother-tongue equivalent.
Hi Janina and all,
Referring back to harikrishna's contribution, I believe that meaning shouldn't be learned as an abstract feature related with a word, but should result as the combination of all the possible solidarities a word can form with other words. Giving the learner the meaning of the word train would represent a theoretical operation of abstraction, which would force the learner to a second operation of adaptation to reality when tackling expressions as "the train of the comet", or "a sad train of accidents". We should create a web of relations around the word train comprising the words comet and accidents (and thought, peacock, queen), letting the learner shape in his mind the abstract figure of the meaning as a result of all the solidarities the word might be found in.
A possible teaching practice to form such a web with the cooperation of the learners could be to ask them questions as "What can a train do?", "What objects might come in trains?", "What objects/Who might have a train?", "Where would you find a train?"...
Dear Lance,
Thanks a ot for sharing your vast experience in 2nd language acquisition. it's very interesting but in order to perform it you need to be equipped in special IT networks and programmes which are not available in a great majority of countries on a mass scale. Thank you very much once again -you are a great professional and I admire your answer.
Regards,
Janina
Dear harikrishna and Pabio ,
I'm grateful to you for expressing your opinions on teaching meaning in a foreign language. We all have differet points of view and that''s very good.
Regarrds,
Janina
Dear Janina,
Thanks for your comments. Much appreciated. As for availability, our programs are available on mobile devices and don't require networks - data is kept and accessed on the cloud. Our biggest challenge remains the human side - effective teachers/tutors!
Regards,
Lance
Every Foreign / Second Language classroom should have a smart board. This board enables the teacher to switch from the lesson presentation to the internet to locate some objects in a particular lesson that he/ she wishes to explain. It also enables him/ her to find drawings/ sketches that will help him/ her to explain some action words to the foreign students. In the case of grammatical works, the teacher could use gestures and mimics. He may use translation as a last resort.
Dear Dennis,
You are absolutely right, hightech, smart blackboards are very useful in teaching meaning in a foreign language. the point is that not every school can afford them. But your idea is great -thank you very much.
Best regards,
Janina
Janina:
I can suggest using the Debate as teaching strategy relating the debating topic to students prior reading/experience/ societal or global that makes it interesting/meaningful for them. Here's my recent conference paper on how it is done:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274720155_Debating_A_Dynamic_Teaching_Strategy_for_Motivating_Students_and_Teachers
Best regards,
Debra
Conference Paper Debating: A Dynamic Teaching Strategy for Motivating Student...
My first answer was a theoretical one, and I believe that before we think about how to learn X we should define what we mean by X. My answer was based on a rather deep analysis on what we mean by meaning, and beside some linguistic theories I was motivated by what has said Frege about Sinn and by the fascinating development of his theory by logicians like Church, Montague, Tichý and others. From the theoretical claims that I am able to explain and defend I can derive some important principles of the ways how to begin to understand meanings, i.e., for example, to seek respective procedures relevant to our concept of meaning / sense. But then it is a matter of a systematic work. Some useful practical steps can be done when we want to understand some expression which we do not yet well understand. For example, I want to explain the sense of the expression "prime number". Try it, we get interesting results concerning, e.g., equivalence of distinct definitions, etc.
hi. resourceful teachers should use all the resources available to convey meanings. they can use realia, any objects visible inclass to express a concept. sometimes making a scenario or putting the word in a context can clarify the meaning. skillful teachers can use codeswitching consciously to convey it. L1 is a resource useful in demanding situations. best
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