Applying community learning via learning tasks in efl classes

Microsoft Word 09 dinhthiminhien TẠP CHÍ KHOA HỌC VÀ CÔNG NGHỆ ĐẠI HỌC ĐÀ NẴNG SỐ 6(79) 2014 Quyển 2 39 APPLYING COMMUNITY LEARNING VIA LEARNING TASKS IN EFL CLASSES ỨNG DỤNG PHƯƠNG THỨC HỌC CỘNG ĐỒNG[.]

TẠP CHÍ KHOA HỌC VÀ CƠNG NGHỆ ĐẠI HỌC ĐÀ NẴNG - SỐ 6(79).2014 Quyển 39 APPLYING COMMUNITY LEARNING VIA LEARNING TASKS IN EFL CLASSES ỨNG DỤNG PHƯƠNG THỨC HỌC CỘNG ĐỒNG QUA HOẠT ĐỘNG LỚP TẠI CÁC LỚP TIẾNG ANH CHUYÊN NGỮ Dinh Thi Minh Hien The University of Danang, University of Foreign Languages; Email: minhhien02@yahoo.com Abstract - This paper is in the fields of Second Language Acquisition (SLA), task-based learning (TBL), focusing on Community Learning (CL) which is based on the theoretical background of Richard-Amato (1996), Ashworth (1985) and Brown (1994) In light of CL, learning tasks in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classes are somehow similar to daily activities in the real world, or, in other words, the class itself is a miniature of the society in which, via learning tasks, students are seen as citizens who are taking part in various social activities The main focuses of the paper are classroom interaction which pays attention to the learning process, and learners’ communicative competence which lays emphasis on the learner’s language skills The paper provides EFL teachers with many CL tasks that might help them create an effective classroom interaction It also helps EFL students improve their communicative competence that might be beneficial for them to integrate into a global working environment in the future Tóm tắt - Bài viết thuộc lĩnh vực Thụ đắc ngôn ngữ, học ngoại ngữ thông qua hoạt động lớp theo Phương thức học cộng đồng dựa sở lý thuyết Richard-Amato (1996), Ashworth (1985) Brown (1994) Theo quan điểm Học cộng đồng, hoạt động lớp chuyên ngữ Anh gần giống sinh hoạt thường ngày ngồi xã hội, hay nói cách khác, lớp học xã hội thu nhỏ mà qua hoạt động lớp, sinh viên xem công dân tham gia vào sinh hoạt xã hội Bài viết chủ yếu đề cập đến tương tác lớp đặt trọng tâm vào trình học khả giao tiếp sinh viên chủ yếu dựa vào kỹ tiếng Bài viết cung ứng nhiều hoạt động lớp theo Phương thức học cộng đồng giúp giáo viên chuyên tiếng Anh tạo tương tác hiệu lớp học Nó giúp sinh viên chuyên ngữ Anh nâng cao khả giao tiếp giúp ích cho việc thâm nhập vào mơi trường làm việc tồn cầu tương lai Key words - community learning (CL); EFL (English as a Foreign Language); learning tasks; classroom interaction; communicative competence Từ khóa - phương thức học cộng đồng (CL); tiếng Anh môt ngoại ngữ (EFL); hoạt động lớp học; tương tác lớp học; khả giao tiếp tiếng Anh Overview This paper is in the fields of Second Language Acquisition (SLA), task-based learning (TBL), focusing on Community Learning (CL) which is based on the theoretical background of Richard-Amato (1996), Ashworth (1985) and Brown (1994) In light of CL, learning tasks in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classes are somehow similar to daily activities in the real world, or, in other words, the class itself is a miniature of the society in which, via learning tasks, students are seen as citizens who are taking part in various social activities The main focuses of the paper are classroom interaction which pays attention to the learning process, and learners’ communicative competence which lays emphasis on the learner’s language skills The paper provides EFL teachers with many CL tasks that might help them create an effective classroom interaction It also helps EFL students improve their communicative competence that might be beneficial for them to integrate into a global working environment in the future The idea that “No man is an island and neither is a classroom” (Ashworth, 1985) suggests the viewpoint of bringing the real world into education for years, especially in the modern time This sounds more significant when the author stated that “language teaching, in its various forms, benefits society in various ways and to varying degrees” (Ashworth, 1985:3) The relationship between language teachers and the various communities that they serve and that serve them is easily seen through the fact that communities supply a wide range of resources and exercise control over language teaching programs This has been recognized through the roles that communities play in foreign language teaching (FLT) in which communities are seen as beneficiary, as resourse and as control In Community learning (CL), the classroom is thought of as a miniature of the real society, where social interaction takes place, providing the basis of shared experiences which hold members of the group together (Little and Sanders, 1989) All these notions set the meaning of CL apart from ‘co-operative learning’, which simply means a form of learning often taking place inside the classroom through group work or pari work CL, in this view, has a broader and greater significance than people have normally thought of as ‘co-operative’ It became more important when Little and Sanders, in their article “Classroom Community: A Prerequisite for Communication”, asserted its decisive role on authentic communication by “ true communicative language learning requires something far more significant than a shift in classroom management techniques In fact, communication does not actually take place in the classroom unless the language learners are a community” (Little and Sanders, 1989: 277) Sociologically speaking, CL also means learning about the various communities in the real world which serve individuals and which individuals will serve them in their own lives The main focus of this paper is to investigate classrooms as communities for social interaction On the basis of CL viewpoint, communities are conssidered as beneficiary, resource and control for the purpose of language planning or syllabus development 1.1 The Community As Beneficiary Being regarded beneficiary (Ashworth, 1985: 3), individuals as well as communities might benefit from education in general, and from language teaching programs in particular “Formal education plays a substantial role in 40 assistint people to build worthwhile lives and to contribute to society It has, therefore, both a personal and a social relevance: It serves individuals and the community” (Ashworth, 1985: 28) Nowadays, no nation can stay isolated from the world around The same thing is true in Vietnam, a member of the international community EFL teachers in Vietnam have recognized that the students who are struggling with English in their classes today may tommorrow be leaders in trade, politics, religion, education, science or technology EFL programs in Vietnam begin in primary school to through college and university The objectives of these programs vary according to the students’ ability and aims as well as the short- and long-term goals of the community or nation So far this has been a matter of consideration in Vietnam FLT is the key to thoughtful behaviour and to good personal relationships among people of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds It opens the door to various vocations, and to great literature It helps produce reflective citizenry In other words, language teaching programs are seen as a response to individual and community needs The benefits that the individual derive from language programs are a sense of self-worth, of personal identity, and a good attitude towards speakers of other languages He might have broader cultural horizons, fluency and literacy in two languages while still remaining the first language Language programs help the individual with his intellectual development as he shifts from one language to another, give him an equal opportunity for a sound and enriched education They provide him with chances to enter the workforce, the social, religious or political life of the community or with wider carreer posibilities With language programs, community might profit a language-proficient workforce, a succesful integration of new comers into the community and an educated citizenry who contribute to and participate in the life of the community through their ability to use the target language It is also through language programs that the community benefits from the public validation of particular languages and cultures, public acknowledgment of the linguistic make-up of the community and greater tolerance and appreciation of other languages and cultures results in a greater harmony in the community In short, the nation, through language programs, benefit from it an ability to govern and to offer offices to its citizens through language they understand, to compete in international trade market The nation also benefit from language programs the capacity to access to the findings of science and technology published in other languages and to engage in dialogues with other nations (Ashworth, 1985: 29-30) English programs, therefore, are of great help in terms of gaining profit from increased industrialization through knowledge of modern science and technology, and above all, national unity 1.2 The Community As Resource While the community is regarded as beneficiary of what goes on in educational institutions, it is also their primary Dinh Thi Minh Hien resource The community provides a wide range of human and material resources, which is of great help for these language institutions to accomplish their objectives In recent years, there has been a considerable support for having students intergrate into the community to serve it and to learn from it, and conversely for having teachers from the community bring their knowledge and skills into the classroom As a result, the role of the teacher has changed from that of the omniscent to that of facilitator of learning, which has resulted in bringing the community and its students closer together through the use of community resources In fact, a community is more than just a group of people It may be an ideology, a relationship, a function, a purpose, a situation, an event or something that binds its members together Ashworth stated that a community may be a social, political, economic or administrative unit; or it may be an ideological, ecological or linguistic unit It may be enclosed by narrow or broad geographic boundaries A community may be a formal, legal, long-lasting unit or an informal, ad hoc, short-term unit Interaction may occur horizontally among peers or vertically through a hierarchy Cohesion between members of the group may be very tight or very close” (Ashworth, 1985: 32-3) The benefits which communities receive from education are enormous Community involvement in educational issues can strengthen the ties between educational institutions and citizens, helping them to develop jointly a better understanding of problems and solutions, binding them together with a sense of purpose Formal education plays a substancial role in assisting people to build worthwhile lives and to contribute to society (Ashworth, 1985: 37) Community involvement should, therefore, be a matter of concern in public education in general, and language teaching, in particular Teachers planning to use community resources can format their tasks as follows: (i) conduct a survey of the community by personal visits, telephone calls, or questionnaires; (ii) contact those whose services may meet the learning needs of the students; (iii) build up a network of people knowledgeable about particular resources in the community of interest to students; and (iv) notify the community of the kind of resource needed of a particular group of students and hope for a good response (Ashworth, 1985: 41) To meet the gap between the classroom and the communities, Ashworth (1985: 42) suggests that teachers may focus on the following topics: (i) Community services; (ii) Consumer education; (iii) Employment; (iv) Family life; (v) Other cultures; (vi) Health; (vii) Law; (viii) Recreation; (ix) education; (x) Politics; and (xi) History Additionally, to support teachers with community-oriented teaching, Ashworth suggests some learning tasks such as: (i) Volunteers, (ii) Colleagues, (iii) Guest speakers, (iv) Relia, (v) Field trips, (vi) Student-community contact, and (vii) Local communities 1.3 The Community As Control Community as control over language teaching “ lies with those who have the power to decide who will teach TẠP CHÍ KHOA HỌC VÀ CƠNG NGHỆ ĐẠI HỌC ĐÀ NẴNG - SỐ 6(79).2014 Quyển which language to whom, when, where, and for how long ” (Ashworth, 1985: 68) However, since no two classrooms and no two communities are exactly identical, the degree of control that individual teachers can exercise over their teaching situations varies considerably The answers to the functions implied in the above italic terms relate to the three major components in any language teaching classroom: students, teachers and curriculum/program These can be seen in the following illustration as a triangle with constant interactions among the components Student Teacher Curriculum/Program Figure Three components needed for a CL language program (Ashworth, 1985:68) Language teachers have different degrees of control over the details which make up the characteristics of the three components: they have no control over students’ socio-economic status, some control over their working conditions and total control over the choice of textbooks It is necessary for teachers to be aware of those areas over which they can exercise with control and those areas where the control lies with other components As for teachers, they use their knowledge, their skills, their personal qualities and their professionalism to exert control These can be seen through the nature and extent of their preservice and inservice training; their competency to plan and organize learning; the role they assume in the classroom: whether it be facilitator, lecturer, co-learner Language teachers also exercise control over students through the effectiveness of their lesson preparation; their personal qualities; the respect they draw from their colleagues and from the community; their working conditions; their attitude towards their job, emplyer, and profession; their access to professional journals and their active participation in a teachers’ organization (Ashworth, 1985: 71) As far as syllabus and program are concerned, the degree of control that teacher can exercise are the goals of the program, the theoretical modal on which the syllabus is based, the design of the syllabus, the linguistic and cultural content, and the method and techniques used in the classroom They should also take into account the degree of emphasis placed on each of the four skills, the availability of materials, the length of the program, the size of the class, and the range of the ability levels and ages within the class (Ashworth, 1985: 72) It can be said that the three components that make up CL are (i) the knowledge that students need to know about the various communities around, (ii) the co-operatve attitude of students in their learning process which can be seen through communicative interaction, and (iii) the empathy that students need to be developed in terms of 41 Humanism The classroom itself is considered as a miniature society a small community indeed, where students are seen as citizens of that society Results of the Experimental Study The main focus of the experimental study was on the distribution of unit acts across the individual student In general, the results collected from the observed classes suggested a very positive prospect for a CL trend The unit acts achieved through real-life, co-operative task types such as Interviewing, Art-based tasks, Relaxation-based tasks, Student-community contact were much higher than those of pedagogic and non-co-operative task types (Topic discussion, Individual presentation, Realia-based tasks) The results also proved that small groups and closed tasks produced more meaningful negotiation work than large groups and open tasks This was also true for the two-way tasks over one-way tasks, the planned over the unplanned, and the covergent over the divergent tasks A generalization that could be drawn from these experimental classes was that real-life and co-operative task types could elicit more language negotiation work, more feedback, more incoporation However, the results revealed that not only the characteristics of the task types could decide the success of the teaching but also, in terms of classroom management the grouping, the form of learning could partly contribute to the success of the lesson Table A taxonomy of the task-types for the study Co-operative tasks A1/C1 Co-operative presentation Co-operative tasks A2/C2 Studentcommunity contact Topic discussion Problemsolving Co-operative tasks A3/C3 Multimediabased task Information rearranging Decision marking Realia-based task Jigsaw Idea exchange Interviewing Role play / Simulation Peer tutoring Negotiating Survey Discovering Questionnaire Consensus reaching Strip story Planning Vocabularybased talk Opinion poll Non cooperative tasks B1/D1 Individual presentation Non cooperative tasks B2/D2 Studentcommunity contact Topic Information referring Gap activities Information Written work Relaxationbased task Art-based task Non cooperative tasks B3/D3 Multimediabased task Relaxation- 42 Dinh Thi Minh Hien referring discussion based task Individual project Problemsolving Art-based task Information rearranging Story telling Decision marking Idea exchange Realia-based task Interviewing Debates Survey Discovering Questionnaire Planning Vocabularybased talk Written work Notes: A1: Pedagogic cooperative shared tasks C1: Real-life cooperative shared tasks A2: Pedagogic cooperative experience tasks C2: Real-life cooperative experience tasks A3: Pedagogic cooperative guided tasks C3: Real-life cooperative guided tasks B1: Pedagogic non-cooperative independent tasks D1: Real-life non-cooperative independent tasks B2: Pedagogic non-cooperative experience tasks D2: Real-life non-cooperative experience tasks B3: Pedagogic non-cooperative guided tasks D3: Real-life non-cooperative guided tasks Evaluation In Vietnam, what has FLT been viewed in terms of CL? A sociological perspective can be considered as particularly important here, firstly, for the analysis of global context of language teaching and learning in modern time, and secondly, for second or foreign language planning The concept of “community” has something to with global context in FLT In other words, language itself must be treated in a global context Additionally, since languages are taught and learnt to establish contact and communication, it is necessary to relate language to community Moreover, learners must make contact with the various communities everyday in their life; therefore, knowing about the cultures and communities of other countries is obviously helpful for them To achieve these goals, language teaching can be looked upon as a bridge to make a connection between classroom and society Nowadays, globalization and other sciences have played a major role in foreign language pedagogy, influencing the quality of language programs in language teaching It is believed that language teachers as well as educational policy makers have become aware of this and have boldly moved into the global science area These developments are still relatively new in Vietnam To some extent CL, which is based on the foundation of globalization and sociolinguistics, meets the needs for the development of the society And this is why CL becomes an urgent need in education in Vietnam Suggestions In terms of CL, interaction plays an important role in FLT Semantically, messages learners receive via interaction are the product of negotiation, of give-and-take as they attempt to communicate (Brown, 1994; RichardAmato, 1996) Results from the experimental study proves that students in a CL classroom interact more than in a conventional classroom All the task types in the pedagogic and real-life cooperative categories can be used for CL (A1, A2, A3, C1, C2 and C3) In addition, the following learning tasks might be of great significance if used in EFL classes in terms of CL At the elementary level: Everyday problems (Klippel, 1987), Volunteers, Realia (Ashworth, 1989) At the intermediate level: What would happen if ? Ageless, Qualities, What is being advertised, Futures, Consequences, Alternatives (Klippel, 1987), Telephone Friendships, The Local Business Community (Strevens, 1987), Survey (Ashworth, 1989) At the advanced level: Drama, Projects (Brown, 1994), PMI, Viewpoints (Klippel, 1987), Local Communities (Ashworth, 1985), Local Communities (Ashworth, 1985), Open-ended Scenarios, World Citizen Description (Shoemaker, 1989) At all levels: Brainstorming (Brown, 1994), Guarantees, Personalities, Lifestyle, Aims in Life (Klippel, 1987), National Cultural Agencies (Strevens, 1987), Field Trips, Establish Public Relations, Guess Speaker, That Was the Year That Was, Student-community Contact (Ashworth, 1989), Let’s Go Shopping (Shoemaker, 1989) REFERENCES [1] Ashworth, M (1985), Beyond Methodology, Cambridge University Press [2] Brown, H D (1994), Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy Prentice Hall Regents [3] Brooks, E & Fox, L (1995), Making Peace: A Reading/Writing/Thinking/Text on Global Community New York: St Martin’s [4] Gibbs, J (1994), Tribes: A New Way of Learning Together Santa Rosa: Center Source [5] Kelley, P K (1994), Team Decision Making Techniques The United States of America Richard Chang Associates, Inc [6] Klippel, F (1987), Keep Talking: Communicative Fluency Activities for Language Teaching Cambridge University Press [7] Little, G & Sara L S (1989), Classroom Community: A Prerequisite for Communication Foreign Language Annuals 22 (1989): 277- 81 [8] Moss, R F (April, 1992), What Are the Benefits of Cooperative Learning in Content-Based Instruction? The CATESOL journal [9] Peterson, R (1992), Life in a Crowded Place: Making a Learning Community Portsmouth NH: Heinemann [10] Richard-Amato, P A (1996), Making It Happen: Interaction in the Second Langauge Classroom: From Theory to Practice Longman [11] Shoemaker, C L & Shoemaker, F F (1989), Interactive Techniques for the ESL Classroom Newbury House (The Board of Editors received the paper on 17/02/2014, its review was completed on 21/03/2014) ... 42 Dinh Thi Minh Hien referring discussion based task Individual project Problemsolving Art-based task Information rearranging Story telling Decision marking Idea exchange Realia-based task Interviewing... around The same thing is true in Vietnam, a member of the international community EFL teachers in Vietnam have recognized that the students who are struggling with English in their classes today... of language teaching and learning in modern time, and secondly, for second or foreign language planning The concept of ? ?community? ?? has something to with global context in FLT In other words, language