I believe that research most
definitely impacts teaching practices today. To start, we are taking numerous
classes that are teaching us how to hopefully become a great educator. Within those
classes, we use textbooks that include evidence from various sources and
researchers. If this is how we are taught in order to prepare for the
profession, then obviously research is something that certainly impacts
teaching today. We get the majority of our teaching practices that we will use
from information that is presented to us, often from research that has
occurred. A reason that research is imperative is Second Language Acquisition
teaching is because as stated by Brown and Lee (2015) “new findings and new
approaches demand reconceptualization” (pg. 67). With that being said, as time
passes, practices and the skills used to learn evolve. It can be found that
people do not teach nor learn in the exact same way as they did 50 years ago.
Fifty years from now will probably be very different from now as well. As
future teachers, we must remember to be lifelong learners. We should constantly
read research-based articles and books to ensure we are implementing both new
and old techniques to help our students learn the most effectively that they
possibly can.
It is crucial for anybody within
the profession of Second Language Acquisition to use research, as well as have
researchers who investigate how a second, foreign or additional language is
best learned. According to Brown (2014), due to the last few decades of
research, a complex storehouse of information in regards to Second Language
Acquisition has been produced (pg. 66). Although it is impossible to know
EVERYTHING about anything, this newfound research can greatly help not only
future teachers, but current teachers as well. I have seen many students who
have entered an English Second Language class, and failed because of the
teaching practices that ensued throughout the school year. That is not to say
that it is the teacher’s fault, they may have just been using the only
techniques they know. With the access to the abundant amount of research on
Second Language Acquisition, that same teacher has an opportunity to improve
and/or adjust their teaching practices to hopefully improve the following year.
When I took my foreign language
classes throughout middle school and high school, I was taught using both the
grammar-translation method as well as the communicative language teaching (CLT)
approach. I think that both methods worked for me, but I could be a little
biased being that I had some prior knowledge of Spanish before I took the
class. In regards to the communicative language teaching approach, it is an
approach that goes “beyond the merely grammatical elements of communication
into the social, cultural, and pragmatic features of language (Brown & Lee,
2015, pg. 31).” I think this approach is
crucial in the success of the students that are learning the second or foreign
language. In the book, Brown and Lee (2015) state that CLT-based classroom
practices focus on reaching the learners intrinsically to aide them in reaching
their fullest potential (pg. 31). There is so much research in regards to how
important reaching the students intrinsically, and through the use of the CLT
approach, there should be an abundance of positive results shown.
