Form-Focused Instruction & Vocabulary

This week I preferred the HDB reading to the MCM reading because it touched on many general issues about grammar, while still keeping it simple. I agreed with both of the readings, but it seems like the MCM reading would be most useful when teaching advanced English learners. I especially liked the Grammar Techniques section of the HDB reading because I believe that tailoring our teaching methods to our students' learning styles is very important. HDB only included 5 grammar techniques, but they seem to be very basic and effective which is important when a teacher hasn't had much teaching experience because then they don't confuse their students with lessons that try to fit too much information into a short time slot. The 5 grammar techniques that HDB mentioned were charts, objects, maps and drawings, dialogues, and other written texts. Most of these 5 techniques take various learning styles into consideration, but the 5 techniques also cover the 4 skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening) which makes these techniques more well rounded.

Since I preferred the HDB text that doesn't mean that I didn't get anything out of the MCM text. Actually I learned a lot of new information and I also think that has a lot to do with why I preferred the HDB text. Since I learned more new information I had to just take it in, while when I read the HDB text I was able to compare it to other information and make an more educated opinion about it. Oddly enough I think this is somewhat similar to how some students approach vocabulary in their L2. If there is too much new information and not enough old information to reinforce what they've already learned then much of what is being taught isn't acquired by the learner. I think that this week we were able to find a good balance in the readings between new and old information. 

On a quick side note I liked when it was mentioned that, "words are not chosen in isolation, but rather, can have ramifications some distance away from their actual placement in the discourse" (MCM 295). I think that this is a very important idea to keep in mind when discussing vocabulary because many of the words that we choose to use often have more to do with the context of the discourse than with the words themselves (but there are also exceptions to this of course).