Good morning, afternoon, evening,
we are deeply convinced that a language, more than a subject is behaviour and that it is relevant the way we do something, the majority of times even more than what we actually do.
Furthermore, remember that what works with children works with adults too ( Professor Simon Sweeney, University of Leeds, Cambridge Days 2004, Pisa).
Considering that each one of us can produce personal reflections, innovative methodologies and teaching can be charachterized and developed. The same for pupils and students, who can conceive and make their own strategies become operative, thus supporting the teachers' effort to also make them grow in their personality.
This is a page for whoever is interested in the teaching/learning field. Very soon we will upload worksheets for teachers to reply to, intended to make teaching more effective, trying to show how and where, according to our experience, a teacher with some insights can support students' language acquisition.
There are then a few key words we are briefly going to contribute comprehending: technique, method, methodology, curriculum.
Technique is the way you work to obtain results. In the teaching/learning field a technique can be for example the strategy you adopt to draw pupils' attention. The technique can be isolated from a conceptual reference, from methods and methodology.
Method is the set of procedures adopted to articulate and organize the variables intervening in the learning/teaching process. Differently from the technique, the method presumes an adoption of a plan for your activity, showing how you operate to manage all the variables intervening in the process.
There are two different meanings for methodology: the first is the epistemological reflection on the nature and structure of methods, evaluating their principles apt to organize all the variables. The second means a didactical procedure so to be assimilated to the method. According to some scholars, methodology is deepen than method, meaning referring to philosophical, pedagogical principles, including personal ones.
Hence methodology can be the fruit of personal reflections and experience. Distinguishing the two terms, a method is a set of procedures, a specific way to implement pupils/students' learning, whereas a methodology is a set of philosophical approaches adopted to stimulate students' learning.
Curriculum too can have two different meanings: the first refers to the general knowledge about the nature and structure of the teaching practice. The second refers to the planning of a course of studies, referring to the operative choices adopted to make teaching functional and effective.
It can be meant differently according to the cultural contexts. In Anglo-Saxon countries it is signified by sperimentation and research, in Italy it is meant as a speculative approach to justify the educational proposals. Here, with curriculum we mean the didactical planning, the process showing procedures, techniques, methodology, principles to refer to.
All these terms are correlated and subtend a superordinate dimension. Developing a methodology means referring to a method and one or more techniques; a technique can be singled out with no conceptual reference; curriculum is a superior set since it can involve more than one method; method is the didactic of a segment of a discipline. There is interdipendence among these terms.
To define a method, techniques have to be indicated, to define a curriculum, methods, methodology and techniques have to be showed as a reference in the execution of the didactic activity.
We will appreciate anybody's contribution to make our profession more effective and functional so to have a new generation of bi/multilingual people.
Anna - Coordinator
