Unit 1 language and language teaching
1.    What makes a good language teacher?
    Ethic devotion
    Professional qualities
    Personal styles

2.    Views on language learning and learning in general:
    Process-oriented theories: concerned with how the mind organizes new information such as habit formation, induction, making inference, hypothesis testing and generalization.
    Condition-oriented theories: emphasize the nature of the human and physical context in which the language learning take place, such as the number of the students and the kind of input learners receive, and the atmosphere.

3.    How can one become a language teacher?
It involves more factors and longer learning time, and may never be finished.
 



Stage 1: all English teachers are supposed to have a sound command of English.
Stage 2: learning, practice and reflection.
    Learning:
    Learning from others’ experience (empirical knowledge gained through reading and observation)
    Learning the received knowledge (language learning theories, educational psychology, language teaching methodology, etc.)
    Practice
    Pre-service practice (pseudo practice)
    Real classroom practice
    Reflection: take on reflection seriously and keep reflection
    Goal: (do not have an end) one can never become a perfect teacher. There is always room for improvement.
 
Unit 2 communicative principles and task-based language teaching
1.    What is communicative competence
    Linguistic competence
Knowledge of language itself
    Pragmatic competence
The choice of the vocabulary and structure depends on the setting, the relative status of the speakers and their relationship.
    Discourse competence
The ability to understand or to express a topic logically and coherently by effectively employing or comprehending the cohesive marks, such as first, second.
    Strategic competence
Searching for other means of expression, such as using a similar phrase ……
    Fluency
the ability to link units of speech together with facility and without strain or inappropriate slowness or undue hesitation)

CLT: communicative language teaching
2.    Principles of communicative language teaching
    Communication principle
Activities that involve real communication promote learning.
    Task principle
Activities in which language is used for carrying out meaningful tasks promote learning.
    Meaningfulness principle
Language that is meaningful to the learner support the learning process.

3.    Main features of communicative activities
    Communicative purpose
There must be some information gap that students seek to bridge
    Communicative desire
A real need to communicate
    Content not form
They must have some massage they want to communicate
    Variety of language
    No teacher intervention
    No material control

TBLT: task- based language teaching
4.    Four components of a task
    A purpose
Make sure students have a reason for undertaking the task
    A context
This can be real, simulated or imaginary, and involves sociolinguistic issues such as the location and the relationship of the speaker……
    A process
Getting students to learn some language strategies such as problem solving, reasoning……
    A product

5.    Focus on individual language items –
Purposeful and contextualized communication +
Then
Exercise → task

6.    TBL:
    Pre-task
Introduction to topic and task
    Task cycle
    Task
    Planning
    Report
    Students hear task recording or read text
    Language focus
    Analysis and practice
    Review and repeat task

7.    PPP
    Presentation
Of single new item; teachers introduces new vocabulary and grammatical structures.
    Practice
Of new item: drills, exercise, and dialogue
    Production
Activity, role play or task to encourage ‘free’ use of language

8.    How to design tasks
    Think about students’ needs and interests and abilities
    Brainstorm possible tasks
    Evaluate the list
    Choose the language items
    Preparing materials

9.    Constrains of CLT:
    Whether it will meet the needs of learners from different contexts
    It is very difficult to design a one to one correspondence between a function a form.
10.    Constrains of TBLT
    Not effective for presenting new languages
    Time is limited: teachers are busy
    Culture of learning: some students may find it difficult to adapt to TBLT
    Level of difficulty: students may find task-base language teaching quite difficult of they do not have sufficient linguistic resources.
 
Unit 4 lesson planning
1.    Why is lesson planning important?
    It can make teachers aware of the aims and language contents of the lesson.
    It helps teachers distinguish the various stages of a lesson and see the relationship between them so that activities of different difficulty levels can be arranged properly and the lesson can move smoothly from one stage to another.
    It gives teachers opportunity to anticipate potential problems that may arise in class, and prepare some solutions to them.
    It builds teachers’ confidence in class.
    Teachers can also be aware of teaching aids in class.
    Planning is a good practice and sign of professionalism.

2.    Principles for good class planning:
    Aim
It means realistic goals for the lesson; the things students are able to do at the end of the class.
    Variety
Planning a variety of different activities to introduce a wide selection of materials, so that learning is always interesting.
    Flexibility
Preparing some extra and alternative activities and tasks as the class does not always go according to the plan.
    Learnability
The contents and tasks planned for the lesson should be within the learning capability of the students.
    Linkage
The steps and steps in each stage are planned in such a way that they are someway linked with another one.

3.    Macro planning
A planning over a longer period of time, for instance a whole-year course. It is often done by a group of teachers who are to teach the same course.
    Knowing about the profession
Which language area and language stage should be taught?
    Knowing about the institution
The institution arrangements of the time, frequency of the class……
    Knowing about the learners
    Knowing about the syllabus
    Knowing about the textbook
    Knowing about the objectives

4.    Components of a lesson plan
    Background information
Who the students are. The time and date of the class.
    Teaching aims
What students are able to achieve at the end of the lesson
(Linguistic and language skills)
    Language contents and skills
    Stages and procedures
    Teaching aids
Teaching aids and resources, and how teachers will use them to aid learning