Educational Language Teaching Tools

Simple language teaching tools are available for free; others require purchase.

Language teaching is in many ways a difficult proposition. Children who take foreign language courses are often still learning the specifics of their own language while at the same time attempting to master a second tongue. Adults have less natural propensity to learn foreign languages than do children and are often entrenched in linguistic habits. Educational language teaching tools such as textbooks and audio visual aids help structure lessons and engage students throughout the lesson.

Textbook

Though textbooks are heavy and cumbersome, they can also prove indispensable educational language teaching tools. Textbooks are structured in such a manner that each lesson leads logically into the next. This structure helps students retain knowledge while expanding upon it. Teacher editions of textbooks include lesson plan tips and hints as well as activities for individual students and the class pertaining to the lesson. Visual aids such as drawings and comic strips help students reading textbooks relate concepts to real world usage and activities encourage learning through repetition. Some textbooks come equipped with audio activities and materials.

Audio Visual Aids

Audio visual educational language teaching tools help students learn languages associatively and in real world situations. Audio aids such as CDs offer students the opportunity to hear native speakers and associate the written language with its spoken counterpart. This proves especially useful for languages such as Japanese and Arabic that do not use the Roman alphabet.

Visual language teaching tools include drawings, photographs, comic strips and videos. Drawings and photographs help students associate words with objects while videos place language in a real context that creates automatic associations and helps students internalize concepts and vocabulary. Transitioning from written to spoken language can prove difficult; audio and visual tools ease that transition.

Flashcards

Flashcards are a simple and effective way for students to learn vocabulary, grammar and writing systems. By writing the foreign language word or grammar point on one side of a flashcard and the native language equivalent on the other side, students can be tested individually or in groups. With writing systems such as Japanese, which employs two syllabaries and a full compliment of Chinese characters--or Kanji--students can learn each of the language's 100 syllables by writing the Japanese on one side and the student's native language equivalent on the other side.

Websites

Websites combine a number of methods used by other educational language teaching tools. The multimedia nature of the web allows sites to host static imagery and written lessons and activities like those found in textbooks, as well as audio and visual tools such as language videos and listening activities. Language learning websites also have flashcard activities and interactive games that students can use individually or in groups. The only drawback to language learning websites is that there are many of them online, and not many of them are reliable organizations.

Games and Activities

Games and activities are important language teaching tools, particularly for young learners. Such tools will engage students more thoroughly in a lesson while helping them remember the content more completely. Many languages have songs that accompany certain grammar points. For instance, the "Te" form in Japanese can be taught through the "Te Form Song," and so on and so forth.

Games like Scrabble can be used to help students with advanced vocabularies think in a second language, and foreign language editions of popular games like Monopoly help students learn new vocabulary and grammar through familiar context.

Student Interest Tools

Student interest tools are ones that learners of a language introduce to the lesson. For instance, if a group of students expresses a strong interest in film or music, movies or songs in the language those students are learning can be used as tools.

After watching films or listening to songs in a foreign language, students can discuss the content of the film or song, or even write a script for a short film or lyrics for a song in the foreign language they are studying.

Students without advanced skills can use photographs as a starting point. For instance, each student can be asked to bring in photographs of a person he or she admires--an athlete, musician, family member, etc. Students then create complete sentences in a foreign language regarding the photo, such as: "This is my father. His name is Diego. He is a lawyer."

References

• Teaching Ideas: Foreign Languages
• ESL Monkeys: Language Learning Tools
• Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and Learning: Michaël Byram: 2000
• Columbia University: The Japanese Language
• Speedanki: Kanji and Vocabulary Flashcards
• Ohio State University: Tips to Select a New Foreign Language Textbook Series