How to Fit Reading Into Your Schedule and Actually Finish the Books You Want to Read

Chances are that you've said to yourself, at least once, that you need to read more. Whether you're too busy to read a book or you just have trouble getting attached to one, we have a few tips to help you schedule in your reading so you actually get it done and enjoy it.

The main reason it's difficult to find time to read is because it's one of the few times throughout the day where you can't multitask. With something like television it's easy to get up and walk away, or pound through a few emails during commercial breaks. Reading usually requires more of your attention. Subsequently, the best way to work reading into your schedule is to find those times in the day when you can dedicate the attention needed to reading.

Schedule a Daily Reading Time

  If you can, the easiest way to fit reading into your schedule is the most obvious: schedule in time to read. Of course, this is easier said than done, but it might be more possible than you think if you consider a few times of your day when you're not doing much else. We've talked about the benefit scheduling in 30 minutes a day to learn something new and if you can fit it into your schedule, that's all the time you need to dedicate to reading a day. If a 30 minute block of time is out of the question, use your downtime throughout the day to read. If you get a 15 minute break at work that you usually spend leaning against the water cooler, read instead. The same goes for you lunch, the bathroom, the gym, or even during that awkward time when you're waiting for a dinner to cook. Just make sure you always have the book you're reading with you so you can take advantage of any free time you get throughout the day. If you prefer to read a couple books at once, we've mentioned before that context is everything, so read the same book in the same location each time.

 

Set Up a Special Reading Area with No Distractions

You can do all the scheduling, timing, and book clubs you want, but if you don't have a comfortable place to read without distractions, it's not going to do you any good. This place is different for everyone, but the idea is pretty simple. Find a place where you can get away from your phone, your family, and any other distractions and just read. This may be something like the breakroom at work where you eat lunch, or it might be a specific chair in your house, but the point is to find a place where you're comfortable and can read in peace without dealing thinking about checking your email or cleaning the house.

The idea is to create a place where you can focus and enjoy what you're doing so you can absorb what you're reading. We've shown you before the benefits of thoughtful, active reading, and a good quiet place can make the difference in your enjoyment. After all, it's probably one of the few times in your day when you don't have to try and multitask.

Know When to GIve Up On Books You Hate and Find Books You Love

Sometimes your relationship with a book isn't working out. In that case, it's good to know when you close it up and move along to something you'll actually enjoy. As someone who often has to rely on a lot of "best of" lists to discover new books, I've tried to force myself through giant 800 page epics just because they get critical acclaim or because a friend recommended them. In those cases, I would repeatedly find excuses not to read just because I wasn't into what I was reading. Over time, I've learned to know when to back out and shelf a book for later. Read should be a pleasurable experience and if it's not, find something else to read.

It's also worth noting that finding your niche for books is probably the easiest way to make yourself take the time to read. This means something different to you than anyone else, but tracking down your favorite genres, non-fiction topics, graphic novels, or general interests is a sure-fire way to make sure you actually enjoy your time reading. If you're not sure what you like, the library is your best place to start to find the topics you're interested in. Just don't feel any shame if your favorite genre ends up being a line of steamy romance novels or cheesy hardboiled detective fiction.

 http://lifehacker.com/5902606/how-to-fit-reading-into-your-schedule-and-actually-finish-the-books-you-want-to-read

Produce a summary of the article including what you consider relevant about it

Reading
WHAT TO READ.

Using popular fiction to improve your English

In The power of reading and listening, I emphasized that comprehensible (understandable) input from reading and listening gives us most of our fluency. One of the best sources of comprehensible input is popular fiction – books and stories that people read simply because they enjoy them so much.

Why popular fiction?

There are several good reasons to use popular fiction to improve your English. Popular fiction is a good source of comprehensible input. When we understand what we read or listen to, we acquire new language. We acquire more language when we enjoy what we’re reading so much that we get “lost” in the story. And we acquire more language when we can read easily, without stopping. Popular fiction gives us so many choices that it’s usually easy to find both: the fun and the ease of reading.

Second, popular fiction teaches about culture. Language is more than vocabulary and grammar. A language is an important part of the culture of the people who use it. Language cannot be separated from culture. It’s what the people in a culture use to understand and share their lives, ideas, and beliefs.

If you want to be able to say that you know a language, you must know something about the people who use the language. You need to know what they talk about and how they talk in different situations.

Reading and listening to popular fiction is one of the best ways to get to know the people who use the language you’re learning. And as you begin to know them, it’s easy to begin to imagine yourself becoming a part of that group.

Finally, I want to repeat something I said in The power of reading and listening. Popular fiction – in printed books, e-books, and audio books – is better than watching television and movies for language development. Why? Popular fiction is full of language. That may seem like an obvious, perhaps even a silly statement. But take a moment to think about it. When we watch a movie or television program, we listen to the dialogue, the conversation between characters. But we see the location and the action. The only language we hear is what the characters say to each other. But when we read a book or story, we read the dialogue and we read the writer’s description of the location and the action. We receive more language, more comprehensible input, than we do when we watch a movie or television program. And we learn how to describe people, actions, objects, and ideas.

Think of it this way. When we watch a movie or a television program, it’s like having a language snack. When we read a book or story, it’s like sitting down to a full language meal, plus dessert!

What you should read

When my students ask me what they should read, I usually answer with a question: What do you like to read? This is the first, and perhaps most important, question to answer. This is reading for pleasure, for fun. Many of my students have read and enjoyed English books that have been translated into their languages. Often, one of those would be a good place to start.

Popular authors

What can you do if you’re not familiar with American authors? Here is a list of popular authors that my students and I have enjoyed or that I have heard about from other teachers. Each author’s name is linked to his or her web site.

Finding and choosing authors and books

If you have the name of an author that you might be interested in, try this: Do a Google search with the name of the author and the word “excerpt”. Your search results will include books by the author and pages that have excerpts, usually one chapter, from the book. Your search should look like this:

• John Grisham excerpt

You can do the same if you have the title of a book that you have heard about. Do a Google search with “the title of the book” in quotation marks and the word “excerpt.” Google will give you web pages that have excerpts from the book. Your search should look like this:

• “Memories of Midnight” excerpt

Print books, e-books, or audiobooks?

Yes! All of them are good sources of popular fiction. Some of my students have read books and listened to them at the same time. If you want to do that, be sure that you get an unabridged audiobook. Unabridged means complete; something that is abridged has been shortened.

I hope you enjoy your journey into popular fiction, wherever it takes you! And I hope you discover the power of reading – and listening – to improve your English!

- See more at: http://successfulenglish.com/2010/01/using-popular-fiction-to-improve-your-english/#sthash.h38QbKvj.dpuf

After reading the article, answer the following questions:

1. Why is fiction recommended? 
2. Have you ever considered reading "fiction"? Why?
3. Have you chosen one author in particular? 
4. What would you prefer print books, e-books or audio books? Why?
5. When are you planning to start with your first book?

Reading:
Things about literature

Defenders of literature usually attempt to justify it in one of two ways. Some follow a utilitarian approach and contend that reading does us good, makes us more intelligent and teaches us things we would have otherwise never known. Others prefer an ethical-moral argument and conceive of literature as a path to turning readers into better human beings. Let us revisit these positions in our attempt to determine why literature matters.

Literature is good for you

I recently started an undergraduate class that focused on Brazilian novels in English translation by asking students why they read literature. Their improvised answers amounted to a catalogue of the most salient points on the "literature-is-good-for-you" side of the debate. Unsurprisingly, students were unanimous in saying that reading literature was crucial for their education (after all, they were sitting in a literature class and were most likely eager to be in the good graces of the professor).

Many students believed that reading would give them a better command of the language and improve their competence as writers. Several commented that the textual analysis and interpretation skills they acquired by reading and discussing works of literature would be useful in other fields of study and in their future professional lives. A few also mentioned that literature offered them insights into other cultures and epochs, in this particular case, 19th and 20th-century Brazilian society. In short, students thought that literature was good for them in that it honed their interpretive, argumentative and critical thinking skills and broadened their knowledge.

At a time when literature is forced to compete with other forms of entertainment, arguments such as the ones my students vocalised have become common currency. Literature advocates stress that, in reading, we combine pleasure with learning and therefore make the most of the time allotted to relaxation in our busy schedules. But if literature is nothing more than a way to acquire skills and knowledge, could it not be replaced, say, by documentaries or by educational videogames?

Another widespread argument made in defence of literature points to its ability to turn readers into better human beings. Those who espouse this view postulate the existence of an intrinsic - though rather mysterious - link between enjoying good poetry or classical novels and making the right moral decisions. Yet, the apology of literature on ethical and moral grounds has been contested at least since Ancient Greece. To be sure, for Aristotle, literature, and especially tragedy, made us morally better, in that it purged us of negative emotions and impulses in a process known as catharsis. However, Plato, Aristotle's teacher, was of a different opinion. He thought that poets and the fake images of reality they spun in their texts were noxious to society, so much so that he unceremoniously banished them from his ideal city.

What does literature have to say for itself on this matter? How have writers depicted the effects of their craft? Seen through the eyes of its own creators, literature has been judged rather harshly.
For instance, in Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes' 17th-century opus magnum, literature neither makes you good nor is it good for you. In fact, Quixote goes mad from reading too many of the chivalric novels popular at the time and from trying to emulate the deeds described in these writings. More than two centuries later, Gustave Flaubert's most famous heroine, Emma Bovary, is driven to adultery and later suicide, partly due to the negative influence of romantic novels, where she read about handsome lovers and a glamorous lifestyle that contrasted starkly with the dullness of her own existence.

Reading has myriad effects

But if literature does not necessarily make you good and is certainly not the only form of entertainment that is good for you, what is it really for? Does literature still matter and, if so, why?
The problem with most arguments in the debate about reading is that they posit literature as an instrument used to achieve a certain goal: either the good of the individual (it is good for you) or the good of society (it makes you good). Leaving aside the issue of deciding whether what makes you good is not, ultimately, good for you, a more fundamental question arises: why does literature need to be defended at all?

The anxiety to justify literature is symptomatic of our age, when all activities should have an easily identifiable objective. The difficulty with literature, as well as with music or the fine arts, is that it has no recognisable purpose or, in Immanuel Kant's elegant formulation, it embodies "purposiveness without purpose". Reading certainly has myriad effects, but it is difficult to pinpoint exactly how it influences each person and harder still to translate this impact in terms of quantifiable gains.

Literature breaks the continuum of the everyday and makes us stop and think. The linguistic experimentation that is the hallmark of the literary estranges us from the most commonplace of tools, our language, while the fictional elements of novels, plays and poems offer us a glimpse into a reality that is not our own. In doing so, reading affords us an essentially human of experience: the realisation that what is does not necessarily need to be, that things can be different and that another world is possible. The struggle with or the embrace of a work of literature shapes our hopes and fears, dreams and ambitions. Literature matters, ultimately, because it makes us who we are.

Info taken from the web page http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/04/201341564843772137.html

After reading this, let me know. What do you think about literature? 

English teaching methods (2)

Silent way:

The Silent Way is a language teaching method created by Caleb Gattegno that makes extensive use of silence as a teaching technique. It is not usually considered a mainstream method in language education. It was first introduced in Gattegno’s book Teaching Foreign Languages in Schools: The Silent Way in 1963. Gattegno was skeptical of the mainstream language education of the time, and conceived of the method as a special case of his general theories of education. The method emphasizes the autonomy of the learner; the teacher’s role is to monitor the students’ efforts, and the students are encouraged to have an active role in learning the language. Pronunciation is seen as fundamental; beginning students start their study with pronunciation, and much time is spent practicing it each lesson. Evaluation is carried out by observation, and the teacher may never set a formal test. The teacher uses silence for multiple purposes in the Silent Way. It is used to focus students’ attention, to elicit student responses, and to encourage them to correct their own errors. Even though teachers are often silent, they are still active; they will commonly use techniques such as mouthing words and using hand gestures to help the students with their pronunciation. Teachers will also encourage students to help their peers.

As the name already suggests, the method is built upon the hypothesis that inside the classroom the teacher should be as silent as possible, whereas the students/learners should be encouraged to produce as much language as possible, participate actively in class and in this way become autonomous learners. Silence is regarded as the best instrument for learning in the classroom, because “in silence students concentrate on the task to be accomplished and the potential means for its accomplishment” (Richards & Rodgers 2001: 83). The techniques of the Silent Way “made it possible for the teacher to say less and less as the lessons advanced, while the pupils were saying more and more and using their own inner criteria developed in this approach” (Gattegno 1972: preamble). In general, there are three basic theories on which Gattegno’s work is founded: 1. Learning is regarded as a “problem-solving, creative, discovering activity”(Richards & Rodgers 2001: 81), in which the learner rather acts and participates actively than just being passive and doing nothing but listening to the teacher. If the learner is involved directly, he automatically benefits from the so called “discovery learning”. 2. The use of special physical objects such as colored wooden rods or color -coded wall charts facilitates learning. These physical objects “provide physical foci for student learning and also create memorable images to facilitate student recall” (Richards & Rodgers 2001: 81). 3. Learning is facilitated by involving the learners and letting them solve problems on their own with the help of the provided materials. 

In this method, there are particular diffirentiated roles: 

Teacher Roles: The Silent Way is not a teacher- centred approach. While the teacher uses mainly gestures and facial expressions to address the learners, his/her main task is the teaching of the language by letting the students test out grammatical forms, etc. and getting out of their way, so that they can discover these things on their own.

Learner Roles: The learners are expected to participate in class actively. They should be willing to make mistakes, to test out the basic language elements via the usage of the materials provided and generally be highly motivated. As a learner, it is important not to get frustrated in case the Silent Way lesson sometimes may be a little tricky and the meaning of the materials is not always clear at first sight. Therefore, it is important to be able and willing to think in a rather abstract way so that the meaning of the provided material can be detected.

http://ratnaditanaya.wordpress.com/2012/06/30/teaching-method-silent-way/

Suggestopedia

Often considered to be the strangest of the so-called "humanistic approaches", suggestopedia was originally developed in the 1970s by the Bulgarian educator Georgi Lozanov. Extravagant claims were initially made for the approach with Lozanov himself declaring that memorization in learning through suggestopedia would be accelerated by up to 25 times over that in conventional learning methods. The approach attracted both wild enthusiasm in some quarters and open scorn in others. On balance, it is probably fair to say that suggestopedia has had its day but also that certain elements of the approach survive in today’s good practice. The approach was based on the power of suggestion in learning, the notion being that positive suggestion would make the learner more receptive and, in turn, stimulate learning. Lozanov holds that a relaxed but focused state is the optimum state for learning. In order to create this relaxed state in the learner and to promote positive suggestion, suggestopedia makes use of music, a comfortable and relaxing environment, and a relationship between the teacher and the student that is akin to the parent-child relationship. Music, in particular, is central to the approach. Unlike other methods and approaches, there is no apparent theory of language in suggestopedia and no obvious order in which items of language are presented.

The original form of suggestopedia presented by Lozanov consisted of the use of extended dialogues, often several pages in length, accompanied by vocabulary lists and observations on grammatical points. Typically these dialogues would be read aloud to the students to the accompaniment of music. The most formal of these readings, known as the "concert reading", would typically employ a memorable piece of classical music such as a Beethoven symphony. This would not be in the form of background music but would be the main focus of the reading, with the teacher’s voice acting as a counterpoint to the music. Thus the "concert reading" could be seen as a kind of pleasurable event, with the learners free to focus on the music, the text or a combination of the two. The rhythm and intonation of the reading would be exaggerated in order to fit in with the rhythm of the music.

A second, less formal reading would employ a lighter, less striking piece of music, such as a piece of Baroque music, and this would take a less prominent role. During both types of reading, the learners would sit in comfortable seats, armchairs rather than classroom chairs, in a suitably stimulating environment in terms of décor and lighting. After the readings of these long dialogues to the accompaniment of music, the teacher would then make use of the dialogues for more conventional language work. In theory at least, large chunks of the dialogues would be internalized by the learners during the readings due both to the relaxed and receptive state of the learners and to the positive suggestion created by the music. There is, however, little evidence to support the extravagant claims of success. The more obvious criticisms lie in the fact that many people find classical music irritating rather than stimulating (to some cultures Western music may sound discordant), the length of the dialogues and the lack of a coherent theory of language may serve to confuse rather than to motivate, and, for purely logistic reasons, the provision of comfortable armchairs and a relaxing environment will probably be beyond the means of most educational establishments. In addition the idea of a teacher reading a long (and often clearly inauthentic) dialogue aloud, with exaggerated rhythm and intonation, to the accompaniment of Beethoven or Mozart may well seem ridiculous to many people.

This is not to say, however, that certain elements of the approach cannot be taken and incorporated into the more eclectic approach to language teaching widely in evidence today. The use of music both in the background and as an accompaniment to certain activities can be motivating and relaxing. Attention to factors such as décor, lighting and furniture is surely not a bad thing. Dialogues too have their uses. Perhaps most importantly of all the ideas, creating conditions in which learners are alert and receptive can only have a positive effect on motivation. Whether these conditions are best created by the use of classical music and the reading of dialogues is open to questions but there is no doubt that suggestopedia has raised some interesting questions in the areas of both learning and memory.

http://www.onestopenglish.com/support/methodology/teaching-approaches/teaching-approaches-what-is-suggestopedia/146499.article

Total physical response (TPR)

Originally developed by James Asher, an American professor of psychology, in the 1960s, Total Physical Response (TPR) is based on the theory that the memory is enhanced through association with physical movement. It is also closely associated with theories of mother tongue language acquisition in very young children, where they respond physically to parental commands, such as "Pick it up" and "Put it down". TPR as an approach to teaching a second language is based, first and foremost, on listening and this is linked to physical actions which are designed to reinforce comprehension of particular basic items. A typical TPR activity might contain instructions such as "Walk to the door", "Open the door", "Sit down" and "Give Maria your dictionary". The students are required to carry out the instructions by physically performing the activities. Given a supportive classroom environment, there is little doubt that such activities can be both motivating and fun, and it is also likely that with even a fairly limited amount of repetition basic instructions such as these could be assimilated by the learners, even if they were unable to reproduce them accurately themselves.

The above examples, however, also illustrate some of the potential weaknesses inherent in the approach. Firstly, from a purely practical point of view, it is highly unlikely that even the most skilled and inventive teacher could sustain a lesson stage involving commands and physical responses for more than a few minutes before the activity became repetitious for the learners, although the use of situational role-play could provide a range of contexts for practising a wider range of lexis. Secondly, it is fairly difficult to give instructions without using imperatives, so the language input is basically restricted to this single form. Thirdly, it is quite difficult to see how this approach could extend beyond beginner level. Fourthly, the relevance of some of the language used in TPR activities to real-world learner needs is questionable. Finally, moving from the listening and responding stage to oral production might be workable in a small group of learners but it would appear to be problematic when applied to a class of 30 students, for example.

In defence of the approach, however, it should be emphasized that it was never intended by its early proponents that it should extend beyond beginner level. (In theory it might be possible to develop it by making the instructions lexically more complex (for example, "Pick up the toothpaste and unscrew the cap"), but this does seem to be stretching the point somewhat). In addition, a course designed around TPR principles would not be expected to follow a TPR syllabus exclusively, and Asher himself suggested that TPR should be used in association with other methods and techniques. In terms of the theoretical basis of the approach, the idea of listening preceding production and learners only being required to speak when they are ready to do so closely resembles elements of Stephen Krashen’s Natural Approach. Short TPR activities, used judiciously and integrated with other activities can be both highly motivating and linguistically purposeful. Careful choice of useful and communicative language at beginner level can make TPR activities entirely valid. Many learners respond well to kinesthetic activities and they can genuinely serve as a memory aid. A lot of classroom warmers and games are based, consciously or unconsciously, on TPR principles. As with other "fringe" methods, however, wholesale adoption of this approach, to the total exclusion of any other, would probably not be sustainable for very long.

http://www.onestopenglish.com/support/methodology/teaching-approaches/teaching-approaches-total-physical-response/146503.article

English teaching methods

Grammar translation: 

... it was felt that translation itself was an academic exercise rather than one which would actually help learners to use language, and an overt focus on grammar was to learn about the target language rather than to learn it. As with many other methods and approaches, Grammar Translation tended to be referred to in the past tense as if it no longer existed and had died out to be replaced world-wide by the fun and motivation of the communicative classroom. If we examine the principal features of Grammar Translation, however, we will see that not only has it not disappeared but that many of its characteristics have been central to language teaching throughout the ages and are still valid today.

The Grammar Translation method embraces a wide range of approaches but, broadly speaking, foreign language study is seen as a mental discipline, the goal of which may be to read literature in its original form or simply to be a form of intellectual development. The basic approach is to analyze and study the grammatical rules of the language, usually in an order roughly matching the traditional order of the grammar of Latin, and then to practise manipulating grammatical structures through the means of translation both into and from the mother tongue. The method is very much based on the written word and texts are widely in evidence. A typical approach would be to present the rules of a particular item of grammar, illustrate its use by including the item several times in a text, and practise using the item through writing sentences and translating it into the mother tongue. The text is often accompanied by a vocabulary list consisting of new lexical items used in the text together with the mother tongue translation. Accurate use of language items is central to this approach.

Generally speaking, the medium of instruction is the mother tongue, which is used to explain conceptual problems and to discuss the use of a particular grammatical structure. It all sounds rather dull but it can be argued that the Grammar Translation method has over the years had a remarkable success. Millions of people have successfully learnt foreign languages to a high degree of proficiency and, in numerous cases, without any contact whatsoever with native speakers of the language (as was the case in the former Soviet Union, for example). There are certain types of learner who respond very positively to a grammatical syllabus as it can give them both a set of clear objectives and a clear sense of achievement. Other learners need the security of the mother tongue and the opportunity to relate grammatical structures to mother tongue equivalents. Above all, this type of approach can give learners a basic foundation upon which they can then build their communicative skills.

Applied wholesale of course, it can also be boring for many learners and a quick look at foreign language course books from the 1950s and 1960s, for example, will soon reveal the non-communicative nature of the language used. Using the more enlightened principles of the Communicative Approach, however, and combining these with the systematic approach of Grammar Translation, may well be the perfect combination for many learners. On the one hand they have motivating communicative activities that help to promote their fluency and, on the other, they gradually acquire a sound and accurate basis in the grammar of the language. This combined approach is reflected in many of the EFL course books currently being published and, amongst other things, suggests that the Grammar Translation method, far from being dead, is very much alive and kicking as we enter the 21st century. Without a sound knowledge of the grammatical basis of the language it can be argued that the learner is in possession of nothing more than a selection of communicative phrases which are perfectly adequate for basic communication but which will be found wanting when the learner is required to perform any kind of sophisticated linguistic task. 

http://www.onestopenglish.com/support/methodology/teaching-approaches/teaching-approaches-the-grammar-translation-method/146493.article

Direct method

The direct method of teaching was developed around 1900 in Germany and France. It is sometimes called the natural method because the aim is to teach students in a similar way that they acquire their first language. It came as a response to the shortfalls of the grammar-translation method, which works to teach grammar and translate vocabulary from the native language of the student.

Therefore, the grammar-translation method relies heavily on the written language, whereas the direct method places the emphasis on both listening and speaking. Although the direct method isn’t limited to teaching foreign language, it is however, often used for this purpose. In fact, you can see evidence of it being used in many English classrooms around the world today. The aim of this method for teaching English is to immerse the students in English, the teacher would use realia, visual aids and demonstrations to teach English to students.

The teacher would in this instance focus on repetitive patterns of teaching with grammar being taught inductively. This means that the rules of grammar are not taught directly, instead students would learn to change different parts of the sentence. For example, “I go to school”, the word go could be changed for other verbs like walk, run, jog, drive, etc.

The direct method of learning English is fairly simple. In consists, primarily, of just five parts.

• Show – The student is shown something so that they understand the word. For example, they might be shown realia or other visual aids such as flash cards for nouns. The teacher might use gestures to explain verbs, and so on.
• Say – The teacher verbally presents the word or sentence, taking care to pronounce the word correctly.
• Try – The student then tries to repeat what the teacher is saying.
• Mould – The teacher corrects the students and ensures that they are pronouncing words correctly.
• Repeat – Finally, the students repeat the word a number of times. Here the teacher uses a number of methods for repetition, including group repetition, single student repetition and other activities designed to get the students to repeat the word.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jReX7qKU2yc

Audio-lingual method

The Audio-Lingual method of teaching  had its origins during World War II when it became known as the Army Method.  It is also called the Aural oral approach. It is based on the structural view of  language and the behaviorist theory of language learning.

The Audiolingual Approach to language teaching  has a lot of similarities with the Direct Method. Both were considered as a reaction against the shortcomings of the Grammar Translation method, both reject the use of the mother tongue and both stress that speaking and listening competences preceded reading and writing competences. But there are also some differences. The direct method highlighted the teaching of vocabulary while the audiolingual approach focus on grammar drills. 

The objective of the audiolingual method is accurate pronunciation and grammar, the ability to respond quickly and accurately in speech situations and knowledge of sufficient vocabulary to use with grammar patterns. Particular emphasis was laid on mastering the building blocks of language and learning the rules for combining them. It was believed that learning structure, or grammar was the starting point for the student. Here are some characteristics of the method:

• language learning is habit-formation,
• mistakes are bad and should be avoided, as they are considered bad habits,
• language skills are learned more effectively if they are presented orally first, then in written form,
• analogy is a better foundation for language learning than analysis,
• the meanings of words can be learned only in a linguistic and cultural context.

The main activities include reading aloud dialogues, repetitions of model sentences, and drilling. Key structures from the dialogue serve as the basis for pattern drills of different kinds. Lessons in the classroom focus on the correct imitation of the teacher by the students. Not only are the students expected to produce the correct output, but attention is also paid to correct pronunciation. Although correct grammar is expected in usage, no explicit grammatical instruction is given. It is taught inductively.  Furthermore, the target language is the only language to be used in the classroom. 

http://www.myenglishpages.com/blog/the-audiolingual-approach/

Inglés y relaciones

Cultural Relations and Policies

(1st class )

Cultural relations may be defined as interactions, both direct and indirect, among two or more cultures. Direct interactions include physical encounters with people and objects of another culture. Indirect relations are more subtle, involving such things as a person's ideas and prejudices about another people, or cross-national influences in philosophy, literature, music, art, and fashion. When cultural interactions deal with such matters as officially sponsored exchange programs or dissemination of books and movies, they may be called cultural policies. But not all cultural relations are cultural policies; there are vast areas of cultural interactions that have nothing or little to do with governmental initiatives... each country has its own cultural identity in that it is defined by people who share certain traditions, memories, and ways of life. In this sense, all international relations are intercultural relations... People's attitudes and policies toward, any foreign country are conditioned by the historical and cultural outlooks of the two countries. Insofar as no two nations are completely identical, any discussion of foreign affairs must start with the assumption that we are analyzing two societies of different traditions as well as two entities embodying distinct sets of interests.

This is a different approach to the study of foreign affairs from the usual interpretations that stress military, security, trade, and other issues that affect a country's "interests." In terms of such factors, nations are more or less interchangeable. Balance-of-power considerations, for instance, have a logic of their own irrespective of the cultural identity of a given actor, as do commercial interests or national security arrangements. In a "realist" perspective, international affairs are comprehended in the framework of the interplay of national interests, and while each nation determines its own interests, all countries are similar in that they are all said to be driven by, or to pursue, considerations of their interests.

Cultural relations, in contrast, are both narrower and broader than the interaction of national interests. Instead of power, security, or economic considerations, cultural affairs are products of intangible factors such as a nation's ideas, opinions, moods, and tastes. Symbols, words, and gestures that reflect its people's thought and behavior patterns comprise their cultural vocabulary in terms of which they relate themselves to other peoples. Not so much a realistic ("rational") appraisal of national interests as a "symbolic" definition of a people's identity determines how they may respond to the rest of the world. In this regard, there are as many cultural relations as there are national cultures, and nothing as vague as "national interests" suffices to account for them. At the same time, cultural relations are also broader than the interplay of national interests in that they include cross-national interactions such as emigration and immigration, tourism, educational exchange, missionary and philanthropic activities, and various movements to promote human rights or the protection of the natural environment. These are cultural phenomena in that they cannot be reduced to security or economic considerations and deal with the interrelationships of individuals and groups across national boundaries.

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