Brown Chapter 3 and article

First thing that Brown talks about in chapter three is differences between practice and theory. According to Brown, practitioner and theorist are very similar. Then, this chapter talks about different approaches and instructions. The first approach is communicative language teaching (CLT). According to Brown, CLT has three issues; “authenticity, acceptability and adaptability.” CLT is way of teaching to teach all components of communicative competence. In my opinion, CLT is a good approach for students who struggle with communicative language. Many ELL students know grammatical rule. However, they struggle when they have to talk in their target language. During CLT approach, the students can learn BICS and CALP. The next approach is Task Based Language Teaching (TBLT). TBLT teaches the students how to solve communication problems. I believe TBLT is more focused on CALP than BICS. Third approach is Learner-Centered Instruction. Learner-Centered Instruction focuses on the students’ needs and goals of targeted language. Then, there are cooperative learning and interactive learning. Cooperative learning involved Learner-Centered Instruction characteristics. Instead of individuals who achieve goals, cooperative learning is the students need to work with groups to achieve goal. Interactive learning is approach that when the learners interact with each other through orally and written, their communicative abilities will developed. Next approach is whole language education. Whole language education is to teach four skills which are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Also, whole language education believe that teachers need to teach students not only language but teach social, political or economic problem. Last approach is content based instruction (CBI). CBI is when the teacher teaches the targeted language based on the content. When I read this chapter, there are good approaches/instructions. However, there was one thought came into my mind. Is there any good instruction or bad instruction? Is there a perfect instruction to teach students? I believe that all instructions have disadvantages and advantages.

The article talks about disadvantages and advantages of CLT and TBLT. When I was reading this article, I kept thinking which approach is better. However, this worry just gave me a headache. When I was in ESL, I don’t think my teacher used only CLT or TBLT. I think she used mixture of these two approaches. I think as future teacher, we need to use different approaches to adapt for the students. However, if we use too much methods, I feel like it will confuse the students.