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8OPINIONS ON TRADITIONAL AND MODERN METHODOLOGY
QARSHIEVA GULJAHON GULMURODOVNA
dotcent the Department of the methods of foreign languages department Bokhtar State University named after Nosir Khusrav.
Annotation: In my article I present how I applied the two approaches in teaching, modern methodology and traditional methodology in real classrooms and with what effect. The Opinions on Traditional and Modern Methodologies at school. These days, especially at private schools and language schools, we have great possibilities in what a teacher can do with his or her students, in terms of teaching methods, seating arrangement, visual aids, etc. With this freedom in teaching, we have as well an enormous number of ideas to use in our classrooms. A young teacher is discovering a great number of new ideas and activities all the time. However, since the time of our students is precious, one of the teacher's crucial tasks is to compare, analyze and evaluate the methods they use in order to motivate the students and to make the learning as effective as possible.
Key words: information, article, methodology, traditional, effect, process,
experiment, create diversity, foundational, sustaining.
Аннотация: В моей статье показано, как я применил оба подхода в обучении и эффект его использования. Мнения о традиционных и современных методологиях обучения в школе в наших дни, особенно в частных школах и языковых школах, у нас есть огромной количество идей, которые можно использовать в наших классах.
Ключевые слова: статье, подхода, эффект, традиционных, современных, методологиях.
The key terms in my article are 'traditional methodology' and 'modern methodology' or 'traditional teaching' and 'modern teaching' as their synonyms. I am aware of the fact, that teaching can have a broader meaning than just methodology. However, in this thesis I will use one of the possible meanings of this term which is synonymous with methodology. Since different people can have various concepts of these two expressions, I define them in detail in this section. Now we can turn our attention to the comprehensive description of the key terms, 'traditional methodology' and 'modern methodology'. I will first focus on traditional methodology, its aims, philosophy, and procedures, and some examples of its methods.
Clearly, one of the aims of any methodology in foreign language teaching is to improve the foreign language ability of the student. However, traditional methodology is based largely on a reduction of the integrated process of using a foreign language into sub-sets of discrete skills and areas of knowledge. It is largely a functional procedure which focuses on skills and areas of knowledge in isolation. Following on from this, traditional methodologies are strongly associated with the teaching of language which is used in a certain field related to the students' life or work. As stated in the book Teaching English as a foreign language by Geoffrey Broughton "the recognition that many students of English need the language for specific instrumental purposes has led to the teaching of ESP - English for Special or Specific purposes." The same authors illuminate the impact of this approach on the teaching output created; they inform the reader about "the proliferation of courses and materials [being] designed to teach English for science, medicine, agriculture, engineering, tourism and the like" [Broughton 1994, 9], which actually meant that the content of the course was limited to the specific vocabulary and grammar of the chosen field. For example agricultural courses included exclusively agricultural vocabulary and all grammar was presented only in an agricultural context. Vocabulary, phrases, and sample sentences from other fields and activities, even from the realm of specifically communicative English, were excluded.
Let us now turn our attention to the teaching of grammar in line with the traditional methodology. Tharp, in his article "Modern Foreign Languages," introduces us to this issue by
pointing out that the "emphasis was placed on the formal side of the language" [Tharp 2008, 49]. After analysing the way people speak, the professionals came to the conclusion articulated by Broughton at all in their book Teaching English as a Foreign Language that "the actual choice of words and their arrangement is new virtually every time we produce an utterance with a very small list of exceptions.
Because of the above mentioned facts, the teaching also focuses on the grammatical rules and items of lexis. As stated by Jack C. Richards, "earlier views of language learning focused primarily on the mastery of grammatical competence" [Richards 2008, 14]. The same author offers a definition of this term in these words:
Grammatical competence refers to the knowledge we have of a language that accounts for our ability to produce sentences in a language. It refers to knowledge of building blocks of sentences (e.g. parts of speech, tenses, phrases, clauses, sentence patterns) and how sentences are formed. [Richards 2008,30].
One more advantage of the traditional teaching should be mentioned here. Some authors agree that in no circumstances should some routines be broken. In a book on education, the typical procedures are described. It reads that the teacher "starts the lesson with revision of the previous lesson. He examines the pupil individually by asking them to come to the blackboard, they are asked to do an exercise, respond to teacher's questions or sometimes the whole class takes a written test." According to the same book, the next step is the "examination the teacher explains a new subject matter and practices it with exercises" [Chuda 1998, 19]. The traditional methodology teaches the written language as the highest priority in learning a foreign language. However, it presents writing in a very unpleasant way. This forms a significant contradiction in the students' attitude to the foreign language itself: writing in the language is essential and it is highly appreciated; if one can write in the language he is considered to have reached the goal; yet on the other hand, the same activity is a form of punishing students. For the students, this approach can be highly demotic.
Let us now turn our attention to modern methodology, its aims, philosophy, and procedures, and some examples of its methods. Unlike traditional methodology, modern methodology is much more student-centred. According to Jim Scrivener, the teacher's main role is to "help learning to happen," which includes "involving" students in what is going on "by enabling them to work at their own speed, by not giving long explanations, by encouraging them to participate, talk, interact, do things, etc." [Scrivener 2005, 18, 19]. Broughton adds that "the language student is best motivated by practice in which he senses the language is truly communicative, that it is appropriate to its context, that his teacher's skills are moving him forward to a fuller competence in a foreign language" [Broughton 1994,47]. Briefly put, the students are the most active element in this process. The teacher is here not to explain but to encourage and help students to explore, try out, make learning interesting, etc.
Since modern methodology is aiming for something different, also the way to achieve the goal has changed. As pointed out by Jack C. Richards, "attention shifted to the knowledge and skills needed to use grammar and other aspects of language appropriately for different communicative purposes such as making requests, giving advice, making suggestions, describing wishes and needs and so on" (Richards 8). Teachers' methods, courses, and books had to be adjusted to new needs of the learners to fulfill their expectations. Instead of grammatical competence, communicative competence became the priority. Ronald V. White articulates three principles of modern methodology: firstly, "the primacy of speech"; secondly, an emphasis on "the centrality of connected text as the heart of teaching-learning process"; and thirdly, an "absolute priority of an oral methodology in the classroom" [White 1988, 11].
Instead of memorizing grammatical rules and isolated vocabulary, modern methodology prefers to present contextualized language and to develop skills. Let us now focus on one important part of modern teaching - teaching skills. The main skills are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. They can be classified into two groups: receptive (listening and reading) and productive
(speaking and writing). These skills consist of sub-skills; for example, reading includes skimming (reading for gist), scanning (reading for specific information), intensive reading, and extensive reading. While listening, students can listen for gist, or for specific information: for some details, like numbers, addresses, directions etc. In real life we do not normally listen for every word spoken. Therefore, as many professionals today agree, the task should be realistic too.
The tasks should improve skills, not test memory. According to Jim Scrivener, with receptive skills it is always better to assign one task, let the students accomplish it, have feedback, and then assign another task, let the students read or listen to the text again, have feedback, etc. Scrivener also points out that the tasks should be graded from the easiest to the most difficult, or, in other words, from the most general to the most detailed, and the students must know what the assignments are before the listening or reading itself is done. If the students do not manage to accomplish the task, the teacher should play the listening again or give them more time for reading [Scrivener 2005, 170-173]. In the methodology course at Masaryk University the students are advised to let the students compare their answers in pairs, to get a feeling of security, and only then check the answers as a group [Zemenova 2006,33]. Students can become discouraged if the teacher expects them to undertake tasks which are too demanding, and tasks which are too difficult can be those not aiming where the teacher actually wants. Therefore it is vital to think and plan carefully before the lesson, so that the activity is useful.
Modern methodology includes a number of methods. One of the effective methods for presenting new language is so called 'guided discovery.' Scrivener defines it this way: the teacher is "leading people to discover things that they didn't know they knew via a process of structured questions" [Scrivener2005, 268]. The teacher can also introduce a situation, a context, and elicit the language from the students. A suitable reading or listening can be used as a source of the new language. As demonstrated at University, yet another valuable method is Test-Teach-Test, in which the students test themselves, or in other words discover what they already know, revise or learn something new and then practice the new language [Zemenova 2006,279]. These methods seem to be interesting, involving, efficient and probably highly successful.
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