Controlled Versus Open Techniques

Teacher-controlled techniques are more effective in situations which want to optimize student participation, such as university and curricular settings. Not every student feels comfortable in class, nor do they always have the confidence to speak their newly developing language. Nor does every person who is taking the course intend on pursuing the language beyond their requirements. In these situations, a teacher centered lesson can have more positive results when it provides a context and a space for students to develop specific language skills. For instance, warm-up settings, dialogues, drills, translations, and dictations can be effective motivators for internalizing cognitive language structures, and rules. As the book writes, mechanical and teacher-centered procedures are falling out of fashion as effective learning environments, but I do believe they contribute to the foundational "brick laying" of L2 acquisition. On the other hand, student-orientated or open-ended techniques are revealing to help students develop a more natural and communicative form of language acquisition, which promotes improvisation, role-play and other social forms of learning - rather than only focusing on the rigid skeleton of language. These techniques I feel would operate best in focused language environments, in which students arriving to the classroom have a self-motivation (to an extent) of learning a specific language.  Other instances I feel would include primary schools, because children will be exposed to a more positive learning experience in which they get to express themselves in the second language, rather than feel like its a endless pit of thick mud.

However as the book says, there is no perfect continuum that says one method is better than another. Since the balance of keeping language learning engaging with a focus on student input, and keeping language learning productive with focus on instruction is a difficult scale to maintain. With that in mind, gauging individual student learning behaviors, motivators, and goals is key to finding the proper balance between the two. Some classrooms will require more controlled techniques to meet the demands of a curriculum, and/or the student needs. Other classes may have the flexibility to experiment with new and inventive techniques which puts more emphasis on student creativity and natural acquisition of the language.