When I was in junior high school, there were always GTM teachers. Without exception, I learned English from them. They usually taught English by GTM and sometimes using ALM. Exam questions are about grammar and translation. If you studied structures and read a lot, then you could get good grade on the tests. So I followed their rules, and the average of my score recorded over 95 points. In my high school days, it also really helped that way. Now I come to think of it, GTM and ALM was really successful for me at that time, because I could get good grade on the tests by memorizing all the things.

Name   : Kelly

Number of words : 745

Essay 1 : Second Language Acquisition

When it comes to standardized tests such as TOEIC, TOEFL, etc., which are called norm-referenced tests, without studying grammar and translation and practicing a lot of expressions through ALM, we cannot get good grades, because the exam questions are all about reading accurately and finding specific information from long passages and dialogues. Long passages and dialogues can be divided into many chunks of expressions. That is called clustering. By learning many phrases and structures, we can understand long passages and dialogues more easily. From my teaching experience and beliefs, studying and memorizing small units of expressions that include grammar is helpful for learning target languages; ‘a bunch of bananas, a piece of cake, a bag of flour, etc.’ they are kind of small grammar units. Just memorizing these phrases can be rote learning. But after memorizing them and practicing them in sentences like ‘I bought two bunches of bananas at the market yesterday.’ is effective way for learning English. This kind of teaching style, I think, is similar to form-focused Instruction. If you ask Koreans “How are you?” and they mostly say “Fine, thank you. And you?”(without thinking, automatically) This is a kind of small units of expressions. After imitating and practicing a lot of authentic expressions, we are beginning to say some words and sentence structures in our spontaneous speech (without thinking). This is a kind of behaviorist perspective.

In norm-referenced tests, each test-taker’s score is interpreted in relation to a mean, median, standard deviation, and/or percentile rank. For large audiences with results quickly disseminated to test-takers. (Teaching by Principles-p.386)

Clustering; we break down speech into smaller groups of words. Clauses are common constituents, but phrases within clauses are even more easily retained for comprehension.

Rote learning – taking in isolated bits and pieces of information that are not connected with one’s existing cognitive structures - has little chance of creating long-term retention. (Teaching by Principles-p.57)

Rod Ellis(1997), The forms of language include the organizational components of language and the systematic rules that govern their structure. (phonological, grammatical, lexical)

Behaviorist perspective is featured as stimulus-response (S-R) theory from B. F. Skinner.(1957)

Studying grammars is also helpful for making friends. For example, if someone asks me “Why don’t we go to see a movie tomorrow?” and if I don’t know much about the grammar then maybe I can say “Oh, I’m afraid I can’t because I will meet one of my friends tomorrow. Sorry.” (even though I’m not intended to reject the proposal but because of previous engagement on my schedule) In that case, lack of grammar knowledge may affect on making friends and consequently we cannot be exposed in real conversation situations afterwards. If someone wants to acquire language proficiency, then he or she has to be in immersion situation. To do that, acquiring grammar knowledge is crucial.

Immersion: All people around him or her speak target language. (Teaching by Principle-p.121)

In my opinion, mixing GTM and ALM is efficient way to teach English in ESL circumstances (especially in Korea). Only one thing, I think it is drawback of GTM, is affective filter aspect. If we focus on the grammar, we naturally do many error correction during lessons. For learners’ position, error correction may cause affective filter. By the definition of Learners, Learners are just people who study something and still at the stage of learning, so don’t be afraid of making errors. Learners need to have some Ambiguity Tolerance especially when learning languages.

Ambiguity Tolerance means a style in which an individual is relatively ill-equipped to withstand or manage a high degree of uncertainty in a linguistic context, and as a result may demand more certainty and structure (Principles of Language Learning and Teaching-p.119)