The Ministry of Higher and Secondary Education of the Republic of Uzbekistan The Uzbekistan State World Languages University English Faculty II department of Methods of Teaching English

A2 level English skills in detail

Direct/Traditional, Teacher-Centered

The direct or traditional method of teaching has long been the standard model. In this method, the teacher acts as an anchor, hitting all the points of a specific lesson, while students listen and respond to the lecture. It is the teacher’s responsibility in this model to keep the student’s attention and convey the main learning points of the lesson.

One of the most important part of this level is vocabulary

• Educators know how important vocabulary instruction is for our students. As one of the five core components of reading instruction, vocabulary is essential in helping teach students how to read. The National Reading Panel (2000) explains that the core components of reading instruction include phonemic awareness, phonics and word study, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Vocabulary encompasses the words students must know to access background knowledge, express ideas, and communicate effectively. Vocabulary instruction is important for students of all levels and students should add 2,000 to 3,000 new words annually to their reading vocabularies (Beck, McKeown & Kucan, 2002) because there is a robust relationship between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension.

Vocabulary is critical to a child’s success for these reasons:

• Vocabulary growth is directly related to school achievement
• The size of a child’s vocabulary in kindergarten predicts the ability to learn to read
• Vocabulary helps children to think and learn about the world
• Expanding a child’s knowledge of words provides unlimited access to new information

Theme-based learning strategies for speaking topics

• To teach speaking holistically and comprehensively, it is valuable for teachers to be knowledgeable about what speaking competence involves and how different aspects of speaking competence relate to each other. Johnson (1996, p. 155) describes speaking as a “combinatorial skill” that “involves doing various things at the same time”. Figure 1 below presents a model of second language speaking competence that comprises knowledge of language and discourse, core speaking skills, and communication and discourse strategies. Learning to speak in a second language involves increasing the ability to use these components in order to produce spoken language in a fluent, accurate and socially appropriate way, within the constraints of a speaker’s cognitive processing.