1. Do adults and children learn an L2 in the same way? What if any are the differences?
In my opinion children and adults don't learn L2 in the same way. Children have the capacity to learn many things at the same time and they are not afraid of making mistakes. If children play with a foreign child they normally find the way to speak with him, thay use words or simple sentences or just gestures at the beginning. Later they can exchange longer sentences and express their opinions. Most of the adults wouldn't dare to speak a word.
2. Can we teach a language or do people learn a language? What if any is the difference?
I think that people learn the language through good teaching practices. If you happen to be a teacher who likes teaching about the language , the children are going to learn about the language. Children need to learn L2 as a communicative tool which is inserted in a communicative situation.
3. How is language to be learned and sequenced in your current teaching context or place of work?
In my school we have textbooks and we follow the topics according to the units. Each unit has a sequence and each year the students have a different number of book according to the name of the book.
4. What if anything can we learn from looking at past methodologies?
Past methodologies resembled the events and studies they had at that time. I think that they were not wrong to teach languages the way they did. Teaching and learning foreign languages without being able to use the words in real situations is the most difficult part of the learning process.Nowadays, teachers use different approaches and I think that we take some details from each of them.
I think it's important to take the best of each approach to produce new learnings, I agree with you, also I think that for adults it's harder to speak. Do your students enjoy learning english following the topics of the book? Are they according to their interests? Or do they learn anyway because they know that english is a tool for the future?
ReplyDeleteI like Carmen's questions. What do you think Johanna?
ReplyDeleteIn general, topics in the texbooks are chosen according to their interests. Like in everything not all of them are always happy with the contents but they try to learn anyway. Due to their ages only some of them realise the importance of English for their future. Most of them use the things they learn to understand songs, films and perhaps websites.
ReplyDelete