Revista simpozionului Eficienta si calitate in educatie 2018 Revista simpozionului | Page 64

THE FLIPPED PARADIGM
Victoria Șerban, Colegiul Național „Gheorghe Lazăr” Sibiu
Abstract: The teaching environment nowadays is faced with a wealth of opportunities and an unprecedented
flexibility of methods and contents. This, coupled with the demands of the technological era and the variety
of our students’ needs and wants, has made the job of the language teacher more challenging yet
undoubtedly rewarding. The article will discuss some of the trends in teaching English nowadays such as the
flipped classroom, CLIL, the use of infographics and TED talks, offering some practical tips on how to vary
the methods and materials so as to personalise the classes and increase students’ motivation for learning,
thus preparing them for the demands of the future society and for lifelong learning.
Key words: flipped classroom, infographics, CLIL, creativity, TED talks
The history of English methodology has seen a lot of major changes from grammar-
translation theories through the direct and audio-lingual methods to the communicative
approach, suggestopedia, task or content-based learning, TPR, NLP or the lexical
approach. The latest years have been no different when it comes to the ongoing debate as
to which methods work best in teaching and learning a foreign language. So, what is
different now? Is it just the debate concerning the massive introduction of technology?
How has the paradigm changed this time? The answer is quite simple yet disturbing: there
is no paradigm anymore or rather the paradigm is ANYTHING THAT WORKS.
We might say that we live in the age of supposition as there are no longer theories written
in stone. The key words today are hard and soft to include everything there is in terms of
skills or methods. Native teachers are no longer regarded as experts or the pinnacle of
knowledge. What is important to build rather than teach is adaptability, flexibility and
creativity. No easy task, however, when we are still confronted with students wanting and
needing to pass exams. So, how do we do that? Here, again, there is no longer one recipe
with easy-to-follow steps. We simply, even though not quite simple, have to see what
works and what doesn’t with our students.
To take this a step further, we might argue that variety is another key element we should
consider in developing our teaching practices: the variety of our students’ personalities,
intelligences and learning styles, which can only require a variety of teaching methods we
should employ. This adds to the fact that living in a fast-paced society has led to our
students’ and, why not, to our own feeling of inadequacy when faced with stagnant or
routine learning tasks.
Since no recipes can be offered in such a context, here are some ideas being discussed in
the present English teaching environment of how to vary our classes so as to meet the
demands and challenges of the moment:
The flipped classroom is a relatively new concept that introduces a reversal in the
teaching methods, with the students dealing with the instructional content at home while
the activities that traditionally represent the students’ homework are done in class, the
teacher clarifying any problems or difficult concepts. This process involves students using
computers at home, which enhances their digital literacy. It has been argued that one
major advantage of this approach is the fact that students do not get frustrated when faced
with difficult homework because the teacher is present in class to support and help them.
They also take responsibility for their own learning, gain a deeper understanding of the
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