1. WORKSHOP 1, APPLIED LINGUISTICS.
María de los Angeles Betancur & Isidora Herrera.
1. WHAT ARE THE GOALS OF TEACHING ENGLISH?
A. How has the way of considering the English language changed over the last 30
years? In your opinion how does this affect teachers and teacher training?
Discuss.
In the past, the English language was considered a privilege. The English language
used to be a sign of status and only acquirable by the upper class. This indeed had
changed the teachers and teacher training over the years. In the past, English
language was particularly taught by native speakers. This encouraged skills such as
listening (receptive skill) and repetition, which are not the main focus of the
modern curriculum. In the present, there are many non-native speakers teaching
the English language which is fine because the curriculum is based on productive
skills, so a well-trained teacher can help even more than a native speaker in the
acquisition of English as a second language process.
B. What does Critical Pedagogy say about textbooks? Could you think about
examples?
Nowadays, some teachers have changed their vision about textbooks, because
before, thiskind of resources was essential to teach and learn in every school.
These are seen as “controlling instruments”, which are standardized and act as a
political term, talking to rigidity of the contents and teaching strategies. So, this do
not allow the spontaneity and creativity of every teacher, leading to “deskilling”,
that is very sad and worrying from the teachers and education’s point of view,
because they (teachers) had been dominated by old methodologies, that does not
tolerate a real education advance.
For example, in our country, the textbooks are basically guided to receptive skills
(reading, listening). But, it issue should change, because the most important skills
are abilities related to expression and creativity, as speaking and writing, in which
students can demonstrate their aptitudes and interact with the environment.
C. What does it mean that English is a world commodity?
“English is a word commodity” means that thanks approaches as globalization,
actual culture, among others, it have been marketed by different factors. So, the
world has turned its focus in English as an “International Language”, not as the
property of “English-speaking world”. That is, people are interested in use the

2. language, but not in its cultural value aspects. Today, we can say that English
language is almost completely commercial.
2. WHAT’S THE BEST WAY TO TEACH A LANGUAGE?
A. What does Richards means by the post-method era?
Richards’ post-method era means that now teachers use a group of methodologies
or processes that help to them to adapt their approaches and experiment with the
knowledge, giving them a contextualization according to local needs. These are
guided by macro-strategies, which in a generalized way, promote learning and
autonomy from the students through opportunities.
B. What are the uncontroversial principles of communicative language teaching?
Explain and provides examples in our context.
The uncontroversial principles of communicative language learning are:
-Language learning goal is communicative competence
-Learners learn the language by using it to communicate
-Authentic and meaningful communication should be the goal of classroom activities
-Fluency and accuracy are important for communication
-Communication means the development of different language skills
-Learning means a process of trials and errors
We are learning English to then provide our English knowledge in classrooms. As students
we have to prove our level of English in several ways, for example: we usually have
speaking test, depending on the task we have to develop our speaking skills to let our
teachers know that we have learnt the language and we can use it in different context.
As future teachers, most of the time we will have to explain our students, task, how does
language work etc. if we do not know how to explain it in English then we will not be able
to teach our student English, that is why it is important to develop the communication
skill.
3. WHAT IS THE ROLE OF GRAMMAR IN LANGUAGE TEACHING?
A. In your own words how has the role of grammar changed over the last 30 years
and what is your opinion about it? Think of it as a student and as a future
teacher.
At the 70s grammar in language learning and teaching was primarily. In language teaching
grammar was used for sentence understanding, for example, same sentences but with
different meanings. Grammar was the base for writing and speaking the second language.

3. Then, grammar became into second position, language in use was first with the
communicative competence. Fluency and accuracy were themain goal of learning and
teaching.
Later, the lack of grammar in students make teachers realize they had to put grammar into
their language classes, so grammar was put in the language class context in a balanced
way with speaking.
B. What have been the main problems of Communicative Approaches, regarding
grammar?
The learning of language was main focus on the speaking skill, while grammar was not as
important as speaking. This caused serious grammar problems in students; they were not
developing that skill, only speaking was important.