The teacher’s expressive abilities.
“A good teacher is a good actor” say some methodologists of language teaching.
A teacher with deprived articulation, speech imperfection, or a tremendously feeble, monotonous voice will never be able to give his learners and sufficient language representation. Presentation of dialogues and new words requires not a little of the actor’s abilities and interpretative faculties. These capabilities give the impression to be simultaneous with wide-ranging linguistic aptitude. The teacher’s expressive abilities are also significant in maintaining classroom discipline. The predicament of discipline is particularly significant throughout lessons in foreign languages for the reason that of the extraordinary character of these lessons. They necessitate strict order and perfect stillness if the material is to be presented free of distortions, while they can only be flourishing if the learners are continuously encouraged to speak and possibly ridicule themselves in an endeavour to imitate strange, unknown sounds. It is the teacher’s immense task to weigh the equilibrium between free, noisy disorder and bashful silence of the frightened learners.
The teacher’s teaching load.
Superlatively a teacher should not teach more than four forty-five-minute periods a day if his presentation is to be effectual. There is scarcely anything to be done to develop the circumstances in this area whenever the situation calls for enhancement providing there is shortage of qualified teachers. It is, however, constructive to keep in mind that a commencement teacher devotes more time to the preparation of each lecture than to the lecture itself. Contemporary methods of teaching necessitate marvellous endeavour on the part of the teacher in the preparation of the tutorial as well as during the tutorial itself.
1. Individual learner’s differences in the teaching second language.
It is probable to differentiate the following aptitudes determining accomplishment in language
learning:
a) memory,
b) imitative ability,
c)
intelligence,
d) personality; and
e) general linguistic capacity.
Memory.
Memory distance may differ from learner to learner to a considerable extent. With different learners, one of three types of memory may preponderate. These types are auditive memory, visual memory and motor memory. Students with a predominating auditive memory are probable to develop the phonic skills supplementary effortlessly than the graphic ones. Learners with a predominating visual memory may find it easier to develop the graphic skills. The teacher must be responsive to those differences to ensure the realization of the principle of the priority of the phonic over graphic skills. The learners with short memory span may have trouble with all four skills. Motor memory will facilitate the development of the articulator basis of phonic and graphic type (correct pronunciation and good spelling). It will also reinforce the development of the four skills.
Imitative ability.
Imitative ability is severely connected with motor memory and manifests itself in a capability to differentiate, imitate, and reproduce foreign sounds. Tone-deaf learners on one hand, and lispers and stutterers on the other, will have enormous, sometimes overwhelming, difficulties in learning the appropriate articulator basis of the foreign language. However, it is reassuring to know that people who stutter or exhibit some other speech defects in their native language (e.g. disability to articulate proper Polish /r/) may be free of those difficulties in a foreign language.
Intelligence.
Intelligence is dissimilar from wide-ranging linguistic capability. Intelligence as manifested in language learning may be semantic or structural. Semantic intelligence facilitates avaricious and learning meanings, while structural intelligence enables the learner to arrange and coordinate forms. Reading materials must be adapted to the level of intellectual development of the learners.