TAXONOMY OF TECHNIQUES
Taken fromTeaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy H. Douglas Brown, 2001Pearson-Longman
A comprehensive taxonomy of common techniques for language teaching, adapted from Crookes and Chaudron (1991), is found in Table 9.1. Notice that three broad categories aroused: controlled, semi controlled, and free. Bearing in mind the somewhat slippery concept of control referred to above, you may be able to gain a broad picture, from this taxonomy, of arrange of classroom language-teaching techniques. In the chapters that follow, many of these techniques will be discussed with examples and analysis.
CONTROLLED TECHNIQUES
1. Warm-up: Mimes, dance, songs, jokes, play. This activity gets the students stimulated, relaxed, motivated, attentive, or otherwise engaged and ready for the lesson. It does not necessarily involve use of the target language.
2. Setting: Focusing on lesson topic. Teacher directs attention to the topic by verbal or nonverbal evocation of the context relevant to the lesson by questioning or miming or picture presentation, possibly by tape recording of situations and people.
3. Organizational: Structuring of lesson or class activities includes disciplinary action, organization of class furniture and seating, general procedures for class interaction and performance, structure and purpose of lesson, etc.
4. Content explanation: Grammatical, phonological, lexical (vocabulary), sociolinguistic, pragmatic, or any other aspects of language.
5. Role-play demonstration: Selected students or teacher illustrate the procedure(s) to be applied in the lesson segment to follow. It includes brief illustration of language or other content to be incorporated.
6. Dialogue/Narrative presentation: Reading or listening passage presented for passive reception. No implication of student production or other identification of specific target forms or functions (students may be asked to "understand").
7. Dialogue/Narrative recitation: Reciting a previously known or prepared text, either in unison or individually.
8. Reading aloud: Reading directly from a given text.
9. Checking: Teacher either circulating or guiding the correction of students' work, providing feedback as an activity rather than within another activity.
10. Question-answer, display: Activity involving prompting of student responses by means of display questions (¡.e., teacher or questioner already knows the response or has a very limited set of expectations for the appropriate response). Distinguished from referential questions by the likelihood of the questioner’s knowing the response and the speaker’s being aware of that fact.
11. Drill: Typical language activity involving fixed patterns of teacher prompting and student responding, usually with repetition, substitution, and other mechanical alterations. Typically with little meaning attached.
12. Translation: Student or teacher provision of L1 or L2 translations of given text.
13. Dictation: Student writing down orally presented text.
14. Copying: Student writing down text presented visually.
15. Identification: Student picking out and producing/labeling or otherwise identifying a specific target form, function, definition, or other lesson-related item.
16. Recognition: Student identifying forms, as in identification (i.e., checking off items, drawing symbols, rearranging pictures), but without a verbal response.
17. Review: Teacher-led review of previous week/month/or other period as a formal summary and type of test of student recall performance.
18. Testing: Formal testing procedures to evaluate student progress.
19. Meaningful drill: Drill activity involving responses with meaningful choices, as in reference to different information. Distinguished from information exchange by the regulated sequence and general form of responses.
