A technique represents implementation; it is the actual implementation of a method in the classroom.
English - Teaching
Approach, Method and technique :
An American applied linguist, Edward Anthony proposed a three-level difference in 1963 between approach, method and technique. According to him:
a. Approach : An approach is a set of correlative assumptions dealing with the nature of language teaching and learning. An approach is axiomatic. It describes the nature of the subject matter to be taught.
b. Method : Method is an overall plan for the orderly presentation of language material, no part of which contradicts, and all of which is based upon, the selected approach. An approach is axiomatic, a method is procedural.
c. Technique : A technique represents implementation; it is the actual implementation of a method in the classroom. It is a particular thing of doing things to accomplish an immediate objective. Techniques must be consistent with a method which in turn must be in harmony with an approach.
Four Skills (LSRW) :
A. Listening means, an intentional and conscious act of interpreting and understanding, the meaning of sounds.
B. Speaking means, the ability to produce speech in language which can be understood. This involves the use of stress, tone, intonations, etc. so that people can understand what is being said.
C. Reading means recognizing written words and sentences with appropriate sounds. This involves many aspects such as like pronunciation, understanding and grasping the inherent meaning along with context, interpretation of the text, etc.
D. Writing enables us to express our thoughts; it involves the proper arrangement of letters, words and sentences so that the reader can get the meaning from the written text.
Receptive skill : Listening, Reading.
Productive skill : Speaking, Writing.
Bruner on Language
Jerome Bruner is a psychologist who focused much of his research on the cognitive development of children and how it relates to education. Initially, Bruner was interested in how the mind organized and categorized information. Because his early career focused on cognitive psychology, Piaget's theories played a large role in his initial studies. Eventually, Bruner's stages of representation came to play a role in the development of the constructivist theory of learning as well.
Bruner's Stages of Representation:
i. Enactive (action-based) - Sometimes this stage is called the concrete stage; this first stage involves a tangible hands-on method of learning. Bruner believed that "learning begins with an action - touching, feeling and manipulating".
ii. Iconic (image-based) - Sometimes called the pictorial stage, this second stage involves images or other visuals to represent the concrete situation enacted in the first stage. One way of doing this is to simply draw images of the objects on paper or to picture them in one's head. Other ways could be through the use of shapes, diagrams, and graphs.
iii. Symbolic (language-based)- Sometimes called the abstract stage, the last stage takes the images from the second stage and represents those using words and symbols. The use of words and symbols "allows a student to organize information in the mind by relating concepts together". The words and symbols are abstractions; they do not necessarily have a direct connection to the information.
Jean Piaget on Language
Jean Piaget believed that the children's conversation could be divided into two categories: egocentric speech and socialized speech.
i. Egocentric speech: Egocentric speech can be repetitive phrases, similar to echolalia, or repetitions of phrases, heard in toddler speech, or it can be a monologue of ideas that requires no listener. A child age 5 to 7 might be heard describing what his toys are doing. Piaget noted that this verbalization is similar to the way people who live alone might verbalize their activities.
ii. Socialized Speech: Socialized speech involves more of a give-and-take between people. In "The Language and Thought of the Child," Piaget stated that early language denotes cries of desire. He mentions the word "mama" as coming from a labial motion having to do with sucking.
Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Vygotsky divided the intellect into basic innate capabilities which he termed elementary functions (e.g. attention and sensation) and higher mental functions. Vygotsky argued elementary functions can only develop into higher functions via the input of culture. Vygotsky thought of culture as a body of knowledge held by persons of greater knowledge or in books-ideas transmitted through language - hence the importance he placed on language development as part of overall cognitive development. Thus, cultural knowledge is the means by which cognitive development takes place.
Vygotsky envisaged language progressing in three stages-
i. Pre-intellectual Social Speech (0–3 years) :Thought is not constructed using language and speech is only used to enact social change (e.g. receiving objects from a parent).
ii. Egocentric Speech (3–7 years) : Language helps to control the child’s own behaviour and is spoken out loud (e.g. when children play games, they often verbalize their actions).
iii. Inner Speech (7+ years) : The child uses speech silently to develop their thinking and publicly for social communication.
Parts of Language :
i. Phonology - It studies the combination of sounds into organized units of speech, the formation of syllables and larger units.
ii. Syntax - It is the level at which we study how words combine to form phrases, phrases combine to form clauses and clauses join to make sentences.
iii. Semantics - It deals with the level of meaning in language. It attempts to analyze the structure of meaning in a language, e.g. how words similar or different are related; it attempts to show these inter-relationships through forming ‘categories’.
iv. Discourse - It is the study of chunks of language which are bigger than a single sentence.
