New Tendencies in the New Tendencies in the ELT WorldELT World

Modern State of the Art Review

1R. Millrood. Modern Tendencies in the ELT World

Pre-communicative eraPre-communicative era

Cognitive code learning prompted the idea of grammar awareness – conscious approach to language acquisition.

Psycholinguistic research increased interest in the natural mechanisms of language acquisition.

Chomsky’s theory of Universal, Generative and Transformation Grammar boosted belief in structure-based exercises.

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Communicative eraCommunicative era

Student-centered approach focused attention on active learning in the lesson.

Intensification ideas prioritized brain resources and the ways to exploit them fully (suggestopedia, TPR, NLP).

Humanistic approach stemmed from humanistic psychology and sought the ways to provide for learner personality growth.

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Post-communicative eraPost-communicative era

Teaching communication has been the goal of ELT at all times.

At the pre-scientific stage of ELT methodology phase-books existed (France, 16th century)

Grammar-translation method (19th century) was the “known” way of teaching practical English.

The idea of practical English culminated in the 70s due to communicative-oriented teaching

By the 90s communicative ideals were getting lost

Post-communicative era started to be.

4R. Millrood. Modern Tendencies in the ELT World

Post-method eraPost-method era

A method had been considered a universal way to successful teaching.

Anthropological centeredness of ELT has attracted attention (teachers and learners).

The role of teaching aptitude (talent) has become the subject of research.

The role of the learner has been enhanced and responsibility put on them.

Teaching and learning styles/strategies have been exposed.

5R. Millrood. Modern Tendencies in the ELT World

Return to Linguistic orientation of Return to Linguistic orientation of ELTELT

Return of the interest in the language: from communicative linguistics and discourse analysis to the corpus analysis.

British National Corpus (BNC) contains 100 million samples of oral and written language use – a real-world perspective on the discourse as a chaotic system.

New technologies are being used for browsing corpus linguistics (concordancers)

The corpora data are being used for teaching and text-book development.

6R. Millrood. Modern Tendencies in the ELT World

Competence oriendation of ELTCompetence oriendation of ELT

Learner competencies – communicative (linguistics, discourse, strategic, cultural), learning (self-instruction, self-control, self-organization), para-communicative (project, research, product).

Teacher competences – key (inter-disciplinary), subject (ELT methods and techniques), special (unsuccessful learners, authoring manuals)

Successful demonstration of practical skills and activities.

Competences and competencies.

7R. Millrood. Modern Tendencies in the ELT World

Technological orientation of ELTTechnological orientation of ELT

Technology in ELT has made progress from cassette-recorders to learning environment called e-learning.

E-learning is a medium of instruction that creates vast learning opportunities provided by multi-media resources.

The foci of research are: computer-assisted teaching, learning and testing, multimedia resources in ELT, the use of corpus linguistics in language teaching and learning

New products appear (interactive white board)

8R. Millrood. Modern Tendencies in the ELT World

Testing perspective in ELTTesting perspective in ELT

Intensive development of language testing methodology is the result of focus on quality control in education.

Self-assessing testing is getting common due to computer-assisted procedures.

Computer-generated testing increases the objectivity of measurements in education.

The instructional role of testing is being studied (wash-back effect).

The concepts of testing competence and test wiseness are being developed.

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Co-teaching/learning of language Co-teaching/learning of language and culturesand cultures

Interest in the cultural component of communicative competence has increased.

The notions of socio-cultural, cross-cultural and inter-cultural competencies have been differentiated.

Project work is being increasingly used for co-teaching language and cultures.

ICT is being employed for co-teaching language and cultures.

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Global English adventGlobal English advent

English language is largely taken as the means of global communication.

Regional “Englishes” are being recognized as rightful language varieties.

The standards of correctness are being lost in the language classrooms.

Standard English is still present in course-books and international testing exams.

English language is no longer associated with BANA cultures.

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Further readingFurther reading

Annual Review of Applied Linguistics.

ELT Journal. The Modern Language Journal.Language TestingApplied Linguistics.

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