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Message board > Linguistics and language teaching
Linguistics and language teaching
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grimsim
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Linguistics and language teaching
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Hi friends, Can we find answers to these questions: What is the relationship between linguistics and language teaching? How can linguistics be used in language teaching? What can language teaching contribute to linguistics? Are linguists better language teachers? |
11 Jan 2018
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Logos
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I see linguistics as being the underlying principle upon which language teaching is based. It is similar to driving a car - you don �t need to know how the engine works to be able to drive it. But if you know how the engine works you can drive it more efficiently and recognise when there are problems or issues with the car. A study of say - psycholinguistics and different ideas of language acquisition can be extremely useful for language teachers to develop materials that promote effective language acquisition rather than just rote learning. In the same way language teachers can generate empirical data and provide examples to linguists that exemplify or even discredit language theories and ideas. As for linguists being better language teachers this is not necessarily the case. I firmly believe that while language teachers do need to have �some knowledge � of teaching and the language they are teaching, but ultimately the greatest gift a teacher can bring to their teaching is their imagination and creativity to be able to make difficult concepts easy and boring subjects interesting. I recently had an appointment as a project manager recruiting teacher trainer / mentors for a government project and I interviewed over 600 applicants. I turned down several people with Phd �s and MA �s and chose lesser qualified applicants as they demonstrated the personality and characteristics to be effective language teachers. So the answer to your question are linguists better language teachers? Some may be, but a lot are definitely not. |
11 Jan 2018
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