Training the Foreign Language Teacher for Individualization

Howard B. Altman
2019 IALLT Journal of Language Learning Technologies  
In much of the literature which has appeared in FL journals on the subject of individualization, it is obvious that the role and functions of the foreign language teacher in an individualized classroom require a new look at the processes of FL teacher preparation. Two observations may be made at once. (1) The success of an individualized foreign language program seems intimately linked not only to what the teacher does, but more importantly to how he does it. (2) What the teacher does in an
more » ... vidualized program, and how he does it, are frequently quite at odds with what conventional FL teacher education programs have trained him to do. I do not wish to convey the impression that the various components of FL teacher preparation, on which we as a profession have insisted so vigorously, are now obsolete, ir:effectual, superfiu01.:s. Quite the contrary! Perhaps more today than ever before, the foreign language teacher needs genuine language proficiency, needs an overseas experience, needs "methods" training, exposure to the insights of linguistics, psychology, and cultural anthropology, and, above all, opportunities for meaningful contact with the "real world" of tho foreign language classroom in the schools. But the whole of the successful foreign language teacher in both individualized and "traditional" classrooms, has always been equal to more than the sum of these parts.
doi:10.17161/iallt.v6i4.8838 fatcat:kcd2pyog2bfhff72sthuiyo5ta