New Tendencies in the ELT World Modern State of the Art Review 1 R. Millrood. Modern Tendencies in the ELT World

Pre-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. R. Millrood. Modern Tendencies in the ELT World2

Communicative 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. R. Millrood. Modern Tendencies in the ELT World3

Post-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, 16 th century) Grammar-translation method (19 th 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. 4 R. Millrood. Modern Tendencies in the ELT World

Post-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. 5 R. Millrood. Modern Tendencies in the ELT World

Return to Linguistic orientation of ELT 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. 6 R. Millrood. Modern Tendencies in the ELT World

Competence 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. 7 R. Millrood. Modern Tendencies in the ELT World

Technological 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) 8 R. Millrood. Modern Tendencies in the ELT World

Testing 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. R. Millrood. Modern Tendencies in the ELT World9

Co-teaching/learning of language and 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. R. Millrood. Modern Tendencies in the ELT World10

Global 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. R. Millrood. Modern Tendencies in the ELT World11

Further reading Annual Review of Applied Linguistics. ELT Journal. The Modern Language Journal. Language Testing Applied Linguistics. R. Millrood. Modern Tendencies in the ELT World12