People are different and learn in different ways, of course, perhaps regardless of whatever unique language-specific mechanisms we might believe are at play in the process. It’s only natural, then, that the teacher should strive to meet her students’ learning styles in the best possible way. Or is it?
This post is my answer to an agony letter I received a while ago. The question was “Is teaching through translation a good idea?”
Before we go any further, click on the link for a short post explaining the basic differences between declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge. This is an e-mail I’ve just received: Dear Luiz, When teaching grammar, it seems we can never control what students use… and sometimes I’m not really sure what to do. I’m teaching a certain …
It is relatively easy to create good, purposeful controlled activities to practice a given structure or lexical area (check out this book if you have the time), but it is very hard to devise communicative tasks that naturally “trap” the language you want to focus on. So what’s plan B?
