Teaching Strategy - THINK rather than MEMORIZE

[Niko]

Creating the right class atmosphere is REALLY essential in getting your students motivated and achieve their goals in language proficiency.

The principal job of a language program is to create a rich and varied learning environment such that the students can efficiently generate and test hypotheses through purposeful language use. In-class activities should emphasize contextually meaningful tasks and problems rather than pattern rehearsal, communication strategy rather than recitation. There is little gain in just memorizing stock phrases.

Language learning is not best viewed as simply a linear, additive process with each well-defined learning task sequenced nearly from beginning to end in a planned syllabus. We shouldn't attempt to hold the student responsible for master of all the content of all the materials of the course - or even for a large portion of it. To do so will seriously compromise the richness of the learning environment.

Get your students to THINK rather than MEMORIZE.