MAURICIO JATIVA Teach Meaningful Language & Use it EFFECTIVELY .

The first and most important principle is that learners (of all ages) need to be exposed to and engage in meaningful and communicative language use. This is the case no matter what skills are being taught, but in the case of my English Language Teaching Approach, I have focused on teaching the receptive skill of listening and the productive skill of speaking.

What makes language meaningful is two-fold:

1.      It needs to be language that the student can relate to and use in his/her daily life and current situation.

2.     It needs to personalize at some point. Consider the following question. Does an elementary-age student needs to learn the language used in a job interview? Of course not (yet).  This language would be completely meaningless to the student at this stage of his/her life.

On the other hand, the elementary-age student certainly does need to understand the words for various school and art supplies, as he/she will often need to use these words to accomplish personal goals, such as asking for permission to sharpen a pencil. So, meaningful language use is simply age and situationally-appropriate language instruction that the student can put to use in his/her life.

Communicative language use is nearly inseparable from meaningful language. To be communicative, language must be used to communicate meaning from one individual to another. Obviously, when language is meaningful to a student, he/she is bound to use it to communicate, whether that is by speaking, listening and responding, writing, or reading and understanding.

However, what often happens in a language classroom is that the instruction stops before the student gets the opportunity to communicate with the language just taught. Then, when the student walks out the door, the lesson is more likely to be forgotten than learned, unless the student gets a chance to apply the language to his/her life i.e., use it to communicate with someone outside the classroom. For students living in non-English speaking countries, this is difficult to impossible. Hence, the even more critical need for communicative language activities to be done within the language classroom.