Epreuve sur dossier :

You will find here a set of four lectures on the recent history of Language Teaching, which should serve as useful background to your work. I will not be giving these lectures in Capes class ; it is material that you should work on for yourself . Reference will be made to it from time to time.

You will also find a short bibliography - a fuller one can be found by going to the 'Didactics' Page - use the link at the top of this one.

During the year we will be looking at how to read, use and work from the kinds of documents that are presented to candidates during the exam. Bearing in mind that the theme of 'citizenship' will run throughout the course, we will look at :

• Learning and Acquisition

  Stephen Krashen - following Chomsky - claims that the Grammar of a FL is cannot really be learned - but must be acquired. What does he mean by this distinction, and how useful is it to the language-teacher? How do people learn a FL?

• Communicative approaches to language teaching

  Over the last twenty years or so, the key-word in Language teaching has been 'communication'. We will need to ask what is meant by this term, how it is applied to language-learning and in particular what it means in the context of schooling. (See Lecture 4 below)

• Functional language and Locutional Grammar

  While Structural linguists look at grammar as a set of abstract rules underlying the formation of correct sentences, Functional grammarians (see this note) are above all interested in how people use language as a tool. Is 'Locutional Grammar' a form of Functional Grammar?

• The Spiral Curriculum

  We learn a language - as we learn other things - through a constant reviewing and deepening of what we already know. The Spiral Curriculum (see this note)- a term associated with the American cognitive psychologist, Jerome Bruner - is founded upon this insight.

• The Four Skills : see this note
  1. Listening

     Listening to someone speaking is a complex skill ; we need to hear and recognize the sounds, hear and recognize the structures and the words and derive meaning from them. The language-teacher must always be aware of how the larger meaning depends upon the smaller details.

  2. Speaking

     Speaking in class is difficult enough even in the mother-tongue. We expect children to participate regularly during language lessons - how can we encourage them to do so in such a way that they feel implicated in what they say, and speak to learn?

  3. Reading

     Reading is both a skill that needs to be acquired and an enormous aid to learning ; the regular reader gains both in vocabulary and in structures or the target language. But many children in both the primary and the secondary schools already have difficulty reading the mother-tongue. How can we help them further along the road to literacy in language classes? What should they be reading, and how should they be reading it? And how can teachers deal with the inevitable interference between the written and the spoken language?

  4. Writing

     Writing is the most difficult of the four skills to master fully. But as we move up the school system, it becomes more and more important. What kinds of writing do we need to work on, and how should we present them?

• Teaching and learning grammar

  Whether pupils learn or acquire grammar, it seems that it is most efficacious if they do it for themselves. How can we show pupils how to think about language, and how to draw conclusions about structure from the language they hear and read?

• Teaching and learning the lexicon

  While learning lists of words may be a good strategy for some students, it will only work if the vocabulary is integrated into the lexicon (see this note). How can we help pupils acquire a full, rich, working mastery of a sizeable and usable lexicon?

• Teaching and learning culture

  To communicate with people from another culture, we need to have absorbed enough of the cultural background to be able to follow a normal conversation - that is, we need to have acquired a minimal set of 'cultural benchmarks' (see this note). How can we help pupils do this without ceding to either 'sociologism' or 'anecdotalism'?

• Evaluation

  We cannot help pupils progress if we do not have a clear idea of what they already know. We need to keep track of how well they are doing - and so do they. Moreover, our job demands that we should be able to render an account of the level of mastery of our pupils as measured against some external standard. How can we - how should we - test and evaluate?

The first three classes are intended to give an overview of the theoretical bases which inform the thinking behind the Official Instructions. The following classes will be based upon reading and exploiting the kinds of documents that are used in the Capes exam. Students will be expected to prepare for the classes by working on the documents, and individual students will be called upon to develop their analyses of the documents to their classmates.

Lectures :

1. Lecture 1 : Les IO. - Pioneers in Language Teaching - Comenius & Gouin.
2. Lecture 2 : Three Methods : G/T, the Direct Method & the Audio-Lingual Approach.
3. Lecture 3 : Guberian & SGAV - and on to the Communicative Approaches.
4. Lecture 4 : Communicative Approaches.

Bibliography :

1. Baudry, Agnès, Danièle Sold, Philippe Willaume, '16 Projets Pédagogiques de Lycée ; de la réflexion à la mise en oeuvure', C.R.D.P. Strasbourg, 1991.
2. Beguin, Nicole & Christine Garcia, 'La Séquence Didactique en Anglais', Bertrand-Lacoste, CRDP Midi-Pyrénées
3. Bérard, Evelyne, 'L'Approche communicative ; Théorie et pratiques', CLE International, 1991.
4. Cossu, Yvonne, 'L'Enseignement de l'Anglais : Préparation au CAPES et au CAPLP2', 2e édition, Nathan Université, 1996.
5. Harmer, Jeremy, 'The Practice of English Language Teaching', 2e edition, Longman Handbooks for Language Teachers.
6. Julié, Kathleen, 'Enseigner L'Anglais', Hachette, 1994.
7. Quivy, Mireille & Claire Tardieu, 'Réussir l'épreuve sur dossier au C.A.P.E.S', ellipses, 1995.