ESSAY

TECHNIQUES, THE ROAD TO LEARNING LANGUAGES

In the field of education an important concept to consider (and focus on), are the techniques,

comes from the Greek  τέχνη tékhnē which means protocols that aims to get a certain result.Taking to account this definition,  we can define techniques like a tools that help the teacher to achieve the different objectives proposed in the class along with the students, it allows for the proper and optimal development of class themes, or in our case the use and learning of the language; It is all due to the interactional activities, P.P.P (presentation, practice, and production) and GAP, each of these techniques use different methodologies that allow a better development of learning (in this case) of foreign languages.

The Interactional activities are very important during the process of learning a language because they have as one of their main objectives the positioning of the learner in a situation that allows him to train to be able to communicate in the 'real world'. These techniques take into account the role of the teacher as the person who provides knowledge in order that the student has an effective communication, as well as being a guide in the process that with the help of a communicative method seeks that the student can have social interaction.

The learning-centered provides a broader vision of the interactional activities, since it shows them from 3 important points, the first one: Interaction as a textual activity, which focuses on understanding the message and its content, for this it provides certain activities such as open dialogue, open sentence, among others; the second: Interaction as an interpersonal activity, seeks to allow the learner to maintain conversations and social relationships through activities such as : role-play, dialogues, among others; and, the third: Interaction as an Ideational activity, in which the students tell their own experiences and discuss about them. Finally, this technique focused on the interaction of the students allows them to appropriate the language and learn to communicate effectively inside and outside the classroom.

The P.P.P.P must be taken into account in order to have a good development of the class because these seek that the student not only learns the language but also knows how to develop it in a context. In order to better understand this process, each one will be explained and given an example.

First of all, when the teaching process begins, the presentation plays an important role, because this is where the student is involved in the language through the teacher who presents the language through a context, makes the subject known and explains to his pupils what they will do; Example, The teacher present the ordinal numbers by means of instructions on how to assemble a closet. Second we find the practice, that is indispensable, here the teacher reinforces the knowledge with activities that allow the Learner to learn how to use the language, become familiar with it and can have better mastery of the L2, Returning to the example of the ordinal numbers, here the student will do activities in which he will practice the use of the numbers in English. And finally the production is the final result that you have after the process that was carried out, where it is shown that you have a command of the language and know how to apply in different contexts. In the example of the numbers, the student at this point can present a recipe, using the ordinals to present it.

Learning-centered Supports what Prabhu (1987) proposes, it includes Information-gap, Reasoning-gap, and Opinion-gap activities in order to engage the students in the communicative interaction. We talk about information-gap when the student has to transmit information to another. It means that students should work in pairs in order to pass the information between them verbally to resolve a task. Reasoning-gap refers to the student will be able to infer, deduce, reason and perceive about a specific situation, an example to get this, would be in a group of students who has a determinate situation what is given by the teacher so that the students can discuss the topic and choose the best option for a given purpose.. Finally, we have Opinion gap which the main idea is student can express his preference, feeling or attitude, it is more focus on the emotional part of the student, here the student will be able to give his own point of view on a controversial issue. All that with the purpose to help the student find the correct way to express his thoughts, his message, his feeling effectively and interact with others in a specific context.

As a conclusion it is important to mention how those techniques are focused on provide the students not just knowledge related to the grammar or linguistic forms of the language, but also sociolinguistic, semantic and syntactic knowledge in order that student can have an effective communication in different contexts. Also in the learning process is too important the practice because it reinforces the previous knowledge in order to have a good learning result that will allow the student to operate in different contexts.