methodologies for teaching English

Authors Avatar

Methodologies for teaching English

Methodologies used for teaching English to students of other careers and for teaching English as a foreign at the Western Multidisciplinary Campus of the National University of El Salvador

Teaching has always been an evolutionary challenge for the educative community. Both teachers and students have to look for the most adequate strategy to transmit and to achieve knowledge.  For example: English classes taught to students of other careers use the traditional translation method. And it makes students loose interest about the language. Classes taught to foreign students maintain them dynamically involved in the learning process. That’s why; technical English teachers think that it is difficult to apply different methodologies when teaching this kind of English but there is a variety of methods from foreign that can be used in their fields.

Technical English teaching styles are limited in methodologies. Students who have learned this kind of English for their careers can not make use of it in a free way as foreign students do because they have not learned it with a variety of wide objectives. When technical English students face the necessity of using the language in any situation, they feel frustrated since they are not able to connect their ideas for creating a complete thought.  The uses that persons give to this kind of English are restricted to nouns, auxiliaries, commands, names, etc. that can be used at working time just to identify important things related with their major.  There is when they realized that all the methods used for teachers can give a variety of results not just those that they got.

When teaching English to other careers, the main objective of each class is to learn how to translate sentences. The class is based on techniques that help students understand the verbs that will be used to translate each sentence that will be provided. On the contrary of English taught as a foreign, the whole class is explain in Spanish, and it consists in explanation time (one hour) about the tense and practice time (one hour). The main tool used by technical students is the Spanish-English Dictionary in which they look for the words to build the sentences in Spanish. Technical English students groups are huge; they are formed by around 90 students, and the assessment at the time of practice is not easy for the teacher because he/she can’t deal with all the students at the same time. Even thought there are many activities that are developed at the time of teaching technical English, translation is the main activity that must be reached by teachers

        Every activity must make students feel interested in the English learning process. Even though they seem to be easy, the students must have a background in order to get a better result. When teachers what to get attention and interest from their students. They have to consider the alternatives they like to use such as exercises and word searches. First, exercises are based on the written form, they practice since their class begins. They get familiar with the auxiliary verbs and new words they use at the moment they translate. If they do not get the specific meaning, they use synonyms or words that are related with the topic. Then, they use word searches. This activity can vary since the teachers’s creativity because they can use crossword puzzles or even scramble sentences. The main clue for this is to use those words that the teacher wants students to know for making classes easy and a little bit different. Technical English students are able to apply these in their daily life at their courses. So any activity used at the classroom is going to make the class more attractive and interesting.

Join now!

As it has been said in previous paragraphs, practices and written tests are an essential part of the learning process for technical English students. Practices on the topics are developed inside the classroom with the help of a dictionary. In this way students can be prepared for the written test and also, they can gain some points for their final grade if they solve and give back the practice to the teacher before the class finishes. Written tests are similar to the practices that are solved inside the classroom. Written exams consist in 10 to 20 sentences that must ...

This is a preview of the whole essay