The MLEC subscribes to the teaching of communicative competence, but grounds instructional materials in useful grammatical explanations to aid memorization and to solidify what is learned through the communicative competence method. In addition, the center strongly believes in and applies best practices of authentic teaching and assessment, i.e. learning and assessment through actual situations that the learners would experience outside of instruction. For this reason, the MLEC’s authentic learning materials provide opportunities for practicing reading, listening, speaking, vocabulary-building, as well as integrated tasks, all while learning about Macedonian culture through popular games, music, and movies.

The sequence of presentation of materials is based on pedagogical best practices such as Benjamin Bloom's taxonomy of learning domains, Robert Gagne's cognitive domains of learning and events of instruction, Stephen Krashen's efficient comprehensible input, and others. Therefore, the lessons are designed to engage the learners by incorporating all three learning domains: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. Each lesson begins with a contextual illustration of the object of the lesson, which is connected to the presentation of new material and reinforced through more contextual examples and exercises to provide the learner with an opportunity to apply what is learned. Feedback is provided immediately to prevent fossilization of incorrect information. The new material is presented according to the formula i+1, where i is the current knowledge of the learner and 1 is the increment by which new material is presented. This formula also enhances retention and transfer of material, since the material builds upon itself, requiring the learner to recall previously learned material.

We invite you to put our pedagogical approach to the test and explore our materials by Getting Started!