Personally, I think the structure based acquisition setting would not be very good for an ELL. The drills would not really allow for student creativity and may dissuade the ELL from trying to use their knowledge in class. This approach seemed the most 'old school' to me, erego, I immediately disliked it.
From chapter 6 I liked the "Teach what is teachable" section. I mean, it just makes sense; if students are unable or unwilling to learn it is useless to try and teach that particular lesson. It is kind of like the L+1 idea, teach them just beyond what they currently know and the teaching will likely be successful.
3 comments:
This was posted just moments after my last comment... scary... As teachers I don't think we have to strictly adopt just an NAS or an ELL approach. I think that in order to have a well rounded lesson then we should employ a mixture of these approaches when it is necessary and useful.
But Natural Acquisition Setting needs a teacher with fluent English and correct pronunciation. Most teachers are perfectionists, and they want the students "to get it right at the beginning", so it will be difficult for a teacher not to correct his or her students all the time. Do you usually correct the mistakes of your students?
Since Mitch doesn't write and I have to leave a comment for the week I'll answer the question... I only correct the mistake if I see it as a problem or as a reoccurring pattern because some mistakes are signs that a student is in the process of acquiring the language and aren't problematic over the long term. Knowing which mistakes signal acquisition of the language is what the teacher needs to find out (knowing which language is the students' L1 is very helpful).
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