Based on text 2, an adapted forum discussion, answer question below.

Teaching with no books

Dianne Bell

I have started teaching in a language school suggesting no books to teach except for some magazines. These show the framework what should be worked on, for example, countability and that’s it. When it was offered I accepted the job easily because it seemed challenging and at the same time simple but now I’m out of reliable materials. Please help me out in what ways I can find materials for all the suggested frameworks. 

Comments

Mila Junior and Senior Teacher

Posted on 02/22/2015

What exactly are you supposed to be teaching (i.e., conversation, grammar, business English, etc.)? Can you give more examples of the “frameworks”? If there are no books or resources, it sounds like the school wants you to do conversation classes. These can be easy to prepare if you tell the students to come prepared with a topic to discuss. Then, you can assist them with keeping a conversation going, asking questions, giving opinions, etc.

Flore

Secondary Teacher

Posted on 01/07/2015

 Hi, I think it really does depend on the students and the level you are teaching to. I have found a lot of online resources are useful, especially news articles. If you just type in “Free online English lessons” or something similar you are bound to find resources. I had to teach like that once. They give you a book with a list of what you should be teaching in each lesson but nothing else. The teacher has to make the lesson up out of thin air each time, and it’s pretty time-consuming. 

Jake

Science Educator

Posted on 11/22/2015

There are so many other resources out there for teachers to use, online and off, that teaching without textbooks is becoming more and more acceptable including websites, iPod lectures and field trips — that will encourage you to toss out your textbooks. Before you can toss out the textbook and replace it with technology tools, you’ll need to understand how your students — whatever their age — respond to and work with technology.

(Adapted from https://www.englishclub.com/)

Text I

CLT or a task-based approach is not a panacea to language teaching. There are numerous challenges to making communicative language teaching happen. These issues have to do with the choice of content, context, specific skill areas (e.g., vocabulary, grammar, etc.), and particular learning tasks that determine a curriculum. 

These choices are tightly linked to questions about what it means to ―know‖ a language, to be proficient in a language, and what communicative abilities entail. While the literature on language teaching has attempted to provide answers to such questions, there are no universally accepted standards. The proficiency and standards movements have attempted to provide some guidelines, but they often remain broad in learner performance descriptions. This ultimately makes assessment of individual learners‘ communicative ability challenging, and it essentially leaves judgment of learner progress up to the teachers. 

Communicative abilities cannot be simply categorized as speaking, listening, reading, or writing skills, as it was done in a traditional four skills approach. For example, when two people talk to each other, the process normally involves speaking and listening skills as well as active communicative strategies such as asking for clarification and adjusting language to make each other understood. The endeavor to teach languages in a way that encompasses all skills, based on an interactive view of language behavior, has posed many challenges on how to go about integrating the four skills effectively in a daily and long-term curriculum. 

The teaching of proficiency and communicative-based skills raises the question not only about content but also about the choice of learning tasks or best teaching practices. CLT does not promote one standardized method or curriculum, but is eclectic in its approach. Being eclectic means it promotes the best or most effective techniques or methodologies. At the same time, the choice of techniques and learning tasks is not an arbitrary decision, but is firmly grounded in principles of learning as they are motivated by research in second language acquisition (SLA) and educational psychology. Learning what constitutes effective ways of learning and teaching initially requires intensive training and in the long run staying in touch with current SLA research findings. 

As a last point, the quality of CLT also often depends on the quality of teaching materials. Unfortunately, only in the most commonly taught languages—such as English, Spanish, French, and German—does an abundance of materials exist to support the development of communicative language abilities over a wide range of skills.

(Source: <http://www.pearsonhighered.com/samplechapter/0131579061.pdf> )