Педагогические науки / 5. Современные методы преподавания

Semenchenko T.  A.

Kharkov National Pedagogical University named by G. S. Skovoroda, Ukraine

Language teacher education strategies in Australian pedagogy

Higher teacher education in Australia aims to enable the university graduates being credited with novel and adaptive thinking, high motivation, cross-cultural competency, professional engagement and ethics. Therefore, Australian pedagogy mainly develops the active learning and cooperative learning strategies.

Australian educators, along with problem-based learning strategies, widely use at lectures the following active learning techniques [1]:

1. Before the delivery of the main contents of the lecture the lecturer provides the students with a number of the lecture related statements. Either in groups of four or individually the students are supposed to determine the relevancy of these statements. Then the students share their assumptions with the lecturer and group-mates. By means of this the teacher triggers students’ active listening and thinking, as the students have already got the questions to which they would seek the answers. The final discussion of the students’ assumptions, namely the right answers to them, is undertaken upon the lecturer’s guide in the end of the following lecture or at the next seminar / tutorial on the topic in question.

2. «Scripted Cooperation» presupposes the students’ pair work, where one of them is to be a listener, whereas the second one functions as a speaker. Having listened to the definite part of a lecture, the student-speaker retells the lecture’s contents to the student-listener. Meanwhile, the student-listener is encouraged to complement, clarify or correct the partner’s speech. This type of activity is advised to be held every 20 minutes, with the change of roles and partners.

3. One-minute written answer. In the end of the lecture the students briefly answer one of the following questions: 1) what can be inferred from the lecture; 2) which point needs further consideration; 3) the most daunting question of the lecture.

In spite of the fact that Australian educators skillfully implement in prac a wide range of interactive teaching methods, such as fishbowl, jigsaw, snowball, brainstorming, buzz-group work, pair work, there is a bigger emphasis on dramatization, i. e., role-plays and debates [2]. The role-plays and the debates are mainly used at the tutorials.

Role-plays are held in the following way. The tutor picks two or four students for the role-play, having being designed by the tutor beforehand. Then the participants read out the role-play, meanwhile the rest of the group are supposed to analyze the role-play’s contents, determine its key points and the aspects that need further discussion or tutor’s clarification. For the next tutorial the students in groups of three or four are assigned to prepare the similar role-play on the given topic. The quality of the topic reveal is assessed by the tutor and the students.

For instance, at the tutorial on Educational Psychology students prepare a comparative analysis of two or three learning theories and show the ways of their practical usage in teaching by means of role-playing the discussion between the “followers” of the mentioned theories. At Languages Teaching tutorial students discuss the pros and cons of the various types of the assessment tasks trying on the images of the assessment tasks. Working on the topic “Grammatical categories of nouns” students may reveal the nature and the scope of the categories of a number and a case by via living into the role of a Case or a Number and disputing on level of their significance.

Debates intend to teach the students to defend their stances with the help of firm underpinnings. So, the tutor announces the topic for the debates, the students join into groups of four and within each group split into pairs, which will support opposite stances. Then they each pair has 10 minutes to make a list of arguments to support the chosen statement. As soon as the groups are ready, the tutor encourages the pairs of students to commence the debate. The students may discuss the advantages and disadvantages of lectures and tutorials as forms of classes, formative and summative assessment, foreign language teaching methods etc. Besides, the tutor can offer the following topics for the debates: “If the teacher ever needs to be an animator”, “Should we use the native language while learning the foreign one?” etc.

A great deal of attention is paid in Australia to students’ individual work, namely non-compulsory individual work. Essentially, this kind of activity aims to facilitate students’ professional growth. In terms of language teacher education individual work helps 1) to increase and maintain the students’ foreign language level and 2) to develop pedagogical skills. The teacher’s role in here is to show the students the importance of this kind of activity and outline the most efficient ways of handling it.

Within Australian pedagogy, for instance at the University of Sydney, BEd/BArts (Languages) students are involved in the following assignments:

1. Out of class chat in foreign language. Once or twice a week during the whole studying year in their free time the students, that learn the same foreign language, join in the university premises to discuss current issues or other topics in foreign language.

2. Communication with native speakers via email.

3. Participation in conferences, exhibitions, social events being held in foreign language that is learned by the students.

4. Alive communication with native speakers of the languages which are learned. Students have the opportunity to accomplish this task owing to a great number of immigrants and places of amusement run by foreigners.

5. Foreign language learning which deals both with teaching individual private students an teaching at schools or other educational establishments.

References

1. Peat M. Current trends in interactive teaching and student-centered learning\ M. Peat, I. Johnston, University of Sydney, Australia, 2006. – Available online at: http://science.uniserve.edu.au/courses/sciedwshops/peatjohn2.pdf

2. Tutor Training. Professional development online. University of Melbourne. University of Sydney. – Available online at: http://tutortraining.econ.usyd.edu.au/index.html.