About This Course
S-01b: Communicative English Language Teaching (Interplay of Learning and Materials) focuses on building on the classroom practices and possibilities studied in S-01a and delves into the principles of language teaching. Brown, Richards, Cook, Murcia-Olshtain and Kumaravadivelu are some of the theorists referred to in the course.
Unit 1: New Possibilities for English Language Teaching
The unit aims to enable teachers to reflect and plan their teaching to cater to a range of practices and strategies and to include an array of resources such as technology as a tool for language learning. In this unit, teachers achieve a discriminated view of language teaching as they are introduced to a vocabulary that would help them reflect on their teaching practices and change them as needed. The teachers will further develop their ability to evaluate the effectiveness of the principles of language learning and teaching in the sample lessons given through videos and readings and weigh them against other conventional and innovative practices.
Possibilities for virtual and blended classrooms aligned to NEP 2020 and principles of language learning as expounded upon by Brown, Richards, Harmer, Kumaravadivelu among others.
Implementation: Drawing upon their own implementation experience and further explorations, teachers would construct activities based on select principles and review each other’s micro-lessons that could be shared, uploaded and reviewed online.
Unit 2: Resources for Language Learning and Teaching
In this unit, teachers will engage in exploration of materials outside the prescribed ones to review materials and design tasks based on best practices for using that technology to aid self-paced self-learning and make explicit in their classrooms the ‘learning to learn’ processes. Teachers would access and analyse ICTs available in language learning such as digital dictionaries, Duolingo, Elevate, Hangman, Memrise, and Synonymy and website offerings such as CLIx English, Pratham Storyweaver, BBC Languages, CEQUE and TESS India. Teachers will as part of their CoP share activities and analyses and review each other’s artefacts and reflections.
This unit will equip teachers to adapt sourced materials and create new ones tailored to their learners’ and classroom contexts.
Implementation: Teachers will be given a set of language topics/objectives. They will select one objective and adapt or create a material to achieve the given objective. Post creating the material, teachers can use the material in the classroom and document the use of the materials in their classrooms.
