A number of studies have compared using error codes with other types of written CF. cit.) reported that a group of learners of L2 German that received correction using error codes improv[r]
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(6)Contents
ELT Journal Volume 63 Number April 2009
Articles
Rod Ellis A typology of written corrective feedback types 97
Alan Waters A guide to Methodologia: past, present, and future 108
Troy McConachy Raising sociocultural awareness through contextual analysis: some tools for teachers 116
Gregory L Friedman Learner-created lexical databases using web-based source material 126
Simon Mumford An analysis of spoken grammar: the case for production 137
E´va Ille´s What makes a coursebook series stand the test of time? 145
Lakhana Prapaisit de Segovia and Debra M Hardison
Implementing education reform: EFL teachers’ perspectives 154
Readers respond
Luke Prodromou Swan’s way (a response to Michael Swan) 163
Yun Zhang Discussing the Extended Writing Project 167 Key concepts in ELT
Christian Abello-Contesse
Age and the critical period hypothesis 170 Reviews
Jeremy Harmer Doing Task-Based Teachingby D Willis and J Willisand Tasks in Second Language Learningby V Samuda and M Bygate 173
Alan Waters Trainer Developmentby T Wright and R Bolitho 176
Joărgen Tholin Learner and Teacher Autonomy: Concepts, Realities, and Responses
by T Lamb and H Reinders (eds.) 179
Javanshir Shibliyev and
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Ilkay Gilanlıog˘lu
Language Testing and Assessment: An Advanced Resource Book
by G Fulcher and F Davidson 181
Luke Prodromou Teacher Cognition and Language Educationby S Borg 183
Rod Bolitho Reflective Language Teaching: From Research to Practice
by T.S.C Farrell 186
Ivor Timmis Conversation in Context: A Corpus-Driven Approachby C Ruehlemann 188 Websites for the language teacher
Diana Eastment The moving image 191 IATEFL 194
Please visitELTJournal’swebsite at
(7)A typology of written corrective feedback types
Rod Ellis
As a basis for a systematic approach to investigating the effects of written corrective feedback, this article presents a typology of the different types available to teachers and researchers The typology distinguishes two sets of options relating to (1) strategies for providing feedback ( for example, direct, indirect, or metalinguistic feedback) and (2) the students’ response to the feedback ( for example, revision required, attention to correction only required) Each option is illustrated and relevant research examined
Introduction How teachers correct second language (L2) students’ writing is a topic that
has attracted enormous interest from researchers and teachers alike However, as a recent review of feedback on L2 students’ writing (Hyland and Hyland 2006) makes clear, despite all the research there are still no clear answers to the questions researchers have addressed Hyland and Hyland observed:
while feedback is a central aspect of L2 writing programs across the world, the research literature has not been equivocally positive about its role in L2 development, and teachers often have a sense they are not making use of its full potential (p 83)
Guenette (2007) pointed out that one of the reasons for the uncertainty lies in the failure to design corrective feedback (CF) studies that systematically investigate different types of written CF and control for external variables that are likely to impact on how effective the CF is One way forward, then, might be for researchers and teachers to systematically identify the various options available for correcting students’ writing as a basis for both designing future studies and for pedagogical decision making
In this article I would like to make a start on this agenda by examining the various options (both familiar and less familiar) for correcting students’ written work I will focus on just one kind of correction—the correction of linguistic errors—and consider studies that have examined the different options by way of illustrating how they have been investigated and the limitations in the research to date I will argue that identifying the options in a systematic way is essential for both determining whether written CF is effective and, if it is, what kind of CF is most effective
A typology of options for correcting
linguistic errors
(8)studies of written feedback (for example, Robb, Ross, and Shortreed 1986; Chandler 2003; Ferris 2006)
A basic distinction needs to be made between the options involved in (1) the teacher’s provision of CF and (2) the students’ response to this feedback Clearly, CF can only have an impact if students attend to it Thus, any account of CF must consider both aspects
Type of CF Description Studies
A Strategies for providing CF
1 Direct CF The teacher provides the student with the correct form
e.g Lalande (1982) and Robbet al
(1986)
2 Indirect CF The teacher indicates that an error exists but does not provide the correction
a Indicating+locating the error
This takes the form of underlining and use of cursors to show omissions in the student’s text
Various studies have employed indirect correction of this kind (e.g Ferris and Roberts 2001; Chandler 2003)
b Indication only This takes the form of an indication in the margin that an error or errors have taken place in a line of text
Fewer studies have employed this method (e.g Robbet al.1986)
3 Metalinguistic CF The teacher provides some kind of metalinguistic clue as to the nature of the error
a Use of error code Teacher writes codes in the margin (e.g ww¼wrong word; art¼article)
Various studies have examined the effects of using error codes
(e.g Lalande 1982; Ferris and Roberts 2001; Chandler 2003)
b Brief grammatical descriptions
Teacher numbers errors in text and writes a grammatical description for each numbered error at the bottom of the text
Sheen (2007) compared the effects of direct CF and direct CF+
metalinguistic CF
4 The focus of the feedback
This concerns whether the teacher attempts to correct all (or most) of the students’ errors or selects one or two specific types of errors to correct This distinction can be applied to each of the above options
Most studies have investigated unfocused CF (e.g Chandler 2003; Ferris 2006) Sheen (2007), drawing on traditions inS L Astudies of CF, investigated focused CF
a Unfocused CF Unfocused CF is extensive
b Focused CF Focused CF is intensive
5 Electronic feedback The teacher indicates an error and provides a hyperlink to a concordance file that provides examples of correct usage
Milton (2006)
6 Reformulation This consists of a native speaker’s reworking of the students’ entire text to make the language seem as native-like as possible while keeping the content of the original intact
(9)Strategies for providing CF
Five basic strategies for providing written CF can be identified, with a number of options associated with some of them
1 Direct CF
In the case ofdirect CFthe teacher provides the student with the correct form As Ferris (op cit.) notes, this can take a number of different forms—crossing out an unnecessary word, phrase, or morpheme, inserting a missing word or morpheme, and writing the correct form above or near to the erroneous form Example illustrates direct correction
a a the
A dog stole bone from butcher He escaped with having bone When the dog was over a a saw a
going through bridge over the river he found dog in the river
EX AMPLE1
Direct CF has the advantage that it provides learners with explicit guidance about how to correct their errors This is clearly desirable if learners not know what the correct form is (i.e are not capable of self-correcting the error) Ferris and Roberts (2001) suggest direct CF is probably better than indirect CF with student writers of low levels of proficiency However, a disadvantage is that it requires minimal processing on the part of the learner and thus, although it might help them to produce the correct form when they revise their writing, it may not contribute to long-term learning However, a recent study by Sheen (2007) suggests that direct CF can be effective in promoting acquisition of specific grammatical features
B Students’ response to feedback
For feedback to work for either redrafting or language learning, learners need to attend to the corrections Various alternatives exist for achieving this
1 Revision required A number of studies have examined the effect of requiring students to edit their errors (e.g Ferris and Roberts 2001; Chandler 2003) Sheen (2007) asked students to study corrections
2No revisions required
a Students asked to study corrections
A number of studies have examined what students when just given back their text with revisions (e.g Sachs and Polio 2007)
b Students just given back corrected text
No study has systematically investigated different approaches to revision
table1
(10)2 Indirect CF
Indirect CF involves indicating that the student has made an error without actually correcting it This can be done by underlining the errors or using cursors to show omissions in the student’s text (as in the example below) or by placing a cross in the margin next to the line containing the error In effect, this involves deciding whether or not to show the precise location of the error
A dog stole X bone from X butcher He escaped with XhavingX X bone When the dog was going XthroughX X bridge over XtheX river he found X dog in the river X¼missing word
X X¼wrong word
EX AMPLE2
As already noted, indirect feedback is often preferred to direct feedback on the grounds that it caters to ‘guided learning and problem solving’ (Lalande 1982) and encourages students to reflect about linguistic forms For these reasons, it is considered more likely to lead to long-term learning (Ferris and Roberts op cit.) The results of studies that have investigated this claim, however, are very mixed Some studies (for example, Lalande op cit.) suggest that indirect feedback is indeed more effective in enabling students to correct their errors but others (for example, Ferris and Roberts’ own study) found no difference between direct and indirect CF No study to date has compared the effects of these two indirect types of CF on whether they have any effect on accuracy in new pieces of writing
In accordance with the general line of argument by Ferris and Roberts, it might be claimed that indirect feedback where the exact location of errors is not shown might be more effective than indirect feedback where the location of the errors is shown (as illustrated in Example 2) as students would have to engage in deeper processing Robbet al.(op cit.) investigated four types of feedback including direct feedback and indirect feedback where the number of errors was given in each line of text They reported no significant difference Lee (1997), however, specifically compared the two types of indirect correction and found that learners were better able to correct errors that were indicated and located than errors that were just indicated by a check in the margin However, Lee did not consider long-term gains
3 Metalinguistic CF2
(11)should there be a single category for ‘articles’ (as in the examples below) or should there be separate categories for ‘definite’ and ‘indefinite articles’? Most of the error codes used in research and language pedagogy employ relatively broad categories
A number of studies have compared using error codes with other types of written CF Lalande (op cit.) reported that a group of learners of L2 German that received correction using error codes improved in accuracy in subsequent writing whereas a group receiving direct correction made more errors However, the difference between the two groups was not statistically significant Robbet al.(op cit.) included an error codes treatment in their study but found it no more effective than any of the other three types of CF they investigated (i.e direct feedback and two kinds of indirect feedback) Ferris (op cit.) reported that error codes helped students to improve their accuracy over time in only two of the four categories of error she
investigated Longitudinal comparisons between the number of errors in students’ first and fourth compositions showed improvement in total errors and verb errors but not in noun errors, article errors, lexical errors, or sentence errors Ferris and Roberts (op cit.) found that error codes did assist the students to self-edit their writing but no more so than indirect feedback Overall, then, there is very limited evidence to show that error codes help writers to achieve greater accuracy over time and it would also seem that they are no more effective than other types of CF in assisting self-editing
art art WW art
A dog stole bone from butcher He escaped with having bone When the dog was prep art art
going through bridge over the river he found dog in the river
EX AMPLE3
Art x 3; WW A dog stole bone from butcher He escaped with having bone Prep.; art When the dog was going through bridge over the river he Art found dog in the river
EX AMPLE4
(12)(1) (2) (3)
A dog stole bone from butcher He escaped with having bone When the dog was
(4) (5) (6)
going through bridge over the river he found dog in the river
(1), (2), (5), and (6)—you need ‘a’ before the noun when a person or thing is mentioned for the first time
(3)—you need ‘the’ before the noun when the person or thing has been mentioned previously
(4)—you need ‘over’ when you go across the surface of something; you use ‘through’ when you go inside something (e.g ‘go through the forest’)
EX AMPLE5
4 Focused versus unfocused CF
Teachers can elect to correct all of the students’ errors, in which case the CF is unfocused Alternatively they can select specific error types for correction For example, in the above examples the teacher could have chosen to correct just article errors The distinction between unfocused and focused CF applies to all of the previously discussed options
Processing corrections is likely to be more difficult in unfocused CF as the learner is required to attend to a variety of errors and thus is unlikely to be able to reflect much on each error In this respect, focused CF may prove more effective as the learner is able to examine multiple corrections of a single error and thus obtain the rich evidence they need to both
understand why what they wrote was erroneous and to acquire the correct form If learning is dependent on attention to form, then it is reasonable to assume that the more intensive the attention, the more likely the correction is to lead to learning Focused metalinguistic CF may be especially helpful in this respect as it promotes not just attention but also understanding of the nature of the error However, unfocused CF has the advantage of addressing a range of errors, so while it might not be as effective in assisting learners to acquire specific features as focused CF in the short term, it may prove superior in the long run
The bulk of the CF studies completed to date have investigated unfocused CF In Sheen’s study (op cit), the CF was of the focused kind (i.e it addressed errors in the use of articles for first and second mention) and, as already noted, that proved effective in promoting more accurate language use of this feature However, to date, there have been no studies comparing the relative effects of focused and unfocused CF This is clearly a distinction in need of further study
5 Electronic feedback
(13)a form of feedback I am concerned only with the latter here Electronic resources provide learners with the means where they can appropriate the usage of more experienced writers
Milton (2006) describes an approach based on a software program called Mark My Words This provides teachers with an electronic store of approximately 100 recurrent lexico-grammatical and style errors that he found occurred frequently in the writing of Chinese students The store also provides a brief comment on each error and with links to resources showing the correct form The program enables the teacher to use the electronic store to insert brief metalinguistic comments into a student’s text The text is then returned to the student who then consults the electronic resources to compare his/her usage with that illustrated in the samples of language made available This assists the student to self-correct The same program also generates an error log for each piece of writing, thus drawing students’ attention to recurrent linguistic problems Milton does not report a study of the effectiveness of this method of correcting student errors but provides anecdotal evidence that it can work He describes receiving a ten-page document from a student, identifying 100 errors usingMark My Words, and then asking the student to consult the electronic resources and revise the text himself Milton reported that the student’s revisions were successful There are some obvious advantages to this option One is that it removes the need for the teacher to be the arbiter of what constitutes a correct form Teachers’ intuitions about grammatical correctness are often fallible; arguably, a usage-based approach is more reliable It can also be argued that the key to effective error correction is identifying the learner’s textual intention While the approach advocated by Milton still lays the onus on the teacher to identify errors, it allows the learners to locate the corrections that are most appropriate for their own textual intentions and so encourages student independence
6 Reformulation
The final option we will consider is similar to the use of concordances in that it aims to provide learners with a resource that they can use to correct their errors but places the responsibility for the final decision about whether and how to correct on the students themselves
(14)Sachs and Polio (2007) report an interesting study that compared reformulation with direct error correction The main difference between these two options was ‘a matter of presentation and task demands and was not related to the kinds of errors that were corrected’ The difference in presentation is illustrated in the example below
Original version: As he was jogging, his tammy was shaked Reformulation: As he was jogging, his tummy was shaking
tummy shaking Error correction: As he was jogging his tammy was shaked
EX AMPLE6 (from Sachs and Polio 2007: 78)
The students were shown their reformulated/corrected stories and asked to study them for 20 minutes and take notes if they wanted Then, one day later, they were given a clean sheet of paper and asked to revise their stories but without access to either the reformulated/corrected texts or the notes they had taken Both the groups that received reformulation and corrections outperformed the control group However, the corrections group produced more accurate revisions than the reformulation group As Sachs and Polio point out, reformulation is a technique that is not restricted to assisting students with their surface level linguistic errors; it is also designed to draw attention to higher order stylistic and organizational errors Thus, their study should not be used to dismiss the use of reformulation as a technique for teaching written composition Nevertheless, it would seem from this study that it does not constitute the most effective way of assisting students to eliminate linguistic errors when they revise
The student’s response to the feedback
An essential feature of CF is how the student responds to the corrections provided The various options are also shown in Table
The student’s response frequently takes the form of revision of the initial draft—an important stage in process writing Much of the research that has investigated written CF (for example, Ferris and Roberts op cit.) has centred on whether students are able to make use of the feedback they receive when they revise
(15)Label Description
Error corrected Error corrected per teacher’s marking Incorrect change Change was made but incorrect
No change No response to the correction was apparent Deleted text Student deleted marked text rather than attempting
correction
Substitution, correct Student invented a correction that was not suggested by the teacher’s marking
Substitution, incorrect Student incorrectly made a change that was not suggested by teacher’s marking
Teacher-induced error Incomplete or misleading teacher marking caused by student error
Averted erroneous teacher marking
Student corrected error despite incomplete or erroneous teacher marking
table2
Student revision analysis categories (from Ferris 2006)
This study (along with a number of others) suggests that CF is effective in helping students to eliminate errors in redrafts of their writing However, from the perspective of L2 learning, such research is of limited interest, as Truscott (1996) pointed out, as showing that CF helps students to correct their errors in second drafts tells us nothing about whether they are able to use them in new pieces of writing
Revision can also be viewed aspartof written CF (i.e as another option) That is to say, students may or may not be given the opportunity to revise their writing following one of the other types of feedback It then becomes possible to investigate whether providing the opportunity to revise assists learning Chandler (op cit.) compared indirect CF plus the opportunity to revise with indirect CF where there was no opportunity to revise Chandler reported that accuracy improved from the first to the fifth piece of writing significantly more in the group that was required to correct their errors than in the group that just received indication of their errors Also, this increase in accuracy was not accompanied by any decrease in fluency Chandler noted that ‘what seems to be a crucial factor .is having the students something with the error correction besides simply receiving it’ (p 293) However, this study had no control group and thus did not address whether revising errors leads to acquisition of the correct forms
(16)linguistic corrections In this longitudinal study, the pupils became less accurate in a number of grammatical areas over time!
The question of whether to require students to simply attend to the corrections or to revise based on them raises an interesting theoretical issue Is it the additional ‘input’ that the corrections afford or the ‘output’ that occurs when students revise that is important for learning? Guenette (op cit.) argued that students ‘have to notice the feedback and be given ample opportunities to apply the corrections’ (p 52) But students may succeed in noticing corrections even if they are not required to revise their writing Here again there is no research that has addressed this issue
Using the typology There is an obvious need for carefully designed studies to further investigate
the effects of written CF in general and of different types of CF A typology such as the one outlined in this article provides a classification of one of the key variables in written CF studies—the type of CF It makes it possible for researchers to conduct research that systematically examines the effect of distinct types and combinations of CF Of course the type of CF is only one of several variables influencing the effectiveness of written CF Other variables identified by Guenette (op cit.) are the nature of the population being studied (in particular the nature of their L2 proficiency), the nature of the writing activities that the students undertake, the kinds of errors that are corrected, and whether or not there is any incentive for the students to write accurately
The typology is not only valuable for the design of experimental studies It can also assist descriptive research Such research examines such issues as how teachers carry out CF and how students respond to corrections While descriptive studies are typically data-driven, they can benefit from examining to what extent the categories in the typology accurately reflect actual practice They can also serve to refine the categories
Like Guenette, I want to emphasize that there is no ‘corrective feedback recipe’ Given the complexity of CF, it is unlikely that even better designed studies will provide clear-cut answers to the kinds of questions raised in the Introduction to this article The search for the ‘best’ way to written CF may in fact be fundamentally mistaken if it is accepted that CF needs to take account of the specific institutional, classroom, and task contexts As Hyland and Hyland (op cit.) commented ‘it may be .that what is effective feedback for one student in one setting is less so in another’ (p 88) Indeed, a sociocultural perspective on CF would emphasize the need to adjust the type of feedback offered to learners to suit their stage of development although how this can be achieved practically remains unclear in the case of writtenCF where there is often limited opportunity to negotiate the feedback with individual learners
(17)teachers with a basis for examining the options and for systematically experimenting with them in their own teaching
Revised version received December 2007 Notes
1 I have chosen to focus on the teacher’s role in CF Thus, I have not included in my typology options involving peer feedback This should not be construed as suggesting that teacher feedback is to be preferred to peer feedback
2 There is an obvious difference between simply indicating an error (how I have chosen to define indirect CF) and providing students with metalinguistic information about their errors Lumping ‘indicating errors’ and ‘error codes’ into a single category, as some researchers have done, is misleading and unhelpful
References
Chandler, J.2003 ‘The efficacy of various kinds of error feedback for improvement in the accuracy and fluency of L2 student writing’.Journal of Second Language Writing12: 267–96
Cohen, A.1989 ‘Reformulation: A technique for providing advanced feedback in writing’.Guidelines
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Fazio, L.2001 ‘The effect of corrections and commentaries on the journal writing accuracy of minority- and majority-language students’.Journal of Second Language Writing10: 235–49
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Ferris, D R.andB Roberts.2001 ‘Error feedback in L2 writing classes: How explicit does it need to be?’
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learners’ acquisition of articles’.T E S O LQuarterly
41: 255–83
Truscott, J.1996 ‘The case against grammar correction in L2 writing classes’.Language Learning
46: 327–69
Ur, P.1996.A Course in Language Teaching Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
The author
Rod Ellisis Professor in the Department of Applied Language Studies and Linguistics, University of Auckland, where he teaches postgraduate courses on second language acquisition and task-based teaching He is also Visiting Professor at Shanghai International Studies University His books include
Understanding Second Language Acquisition(B A A L
prize 1986) andThe Study of Second Language Acquisition(Duke of Edinburgh prize 1995) His recent books includeTask-Based Learning and Teaching(2003) and (with Gary Barkhuizen)
Analyzing Learner Language(2005) He has also published several English language textbooks, includingImpact Grammar(Pearson: Longman) He is the editor of the journalLanguage Teaching Research
(18)A guide to Methodologia: past, present, and future
Alan Waters
The island of Methodologia lies at the heart of theE LTworld It is here that classroom teaching skills are devised, tested, and popularized However, manyE LT
practitioners are familiar only with the parts of the island where they grew up, even though there is much to be gained from an appreciation of the culture and history of Methodologia as a whole In this way, for example, it is possible to reach a better understanding of the factors behind the development of the teaching traditions associated with one’s own region Such knowledge can also contribute to greater awareness of how these techniques might be integrated with different traditions from other parts of the island This article therefore provides a brief introduction to some of the chief characteristics of present-day Methodologia, by first of all saying a little about its overall features and then each of its main cities and regions It also hints at possible future developments
‘To see a World in a Grain of Sand .’Blake: Auguries of Innocence ‘Be not afeared The isle is full of noises .’Shakespeare: The Tempest
Introduction Methodologia is an island in theE LTarchipelago, surrounded by the Sea of
T E S O L It is inhabited chiefly by large numbers of teachers and learners of
EFL, who have migrated to it from all over the world However, although each of these waves of settlers is familiar with its own part of the island, very few of them have visited the rest of it, and so they are often somewhat confused about its overall geography The turbulent nature of its recent history has also left many feeling rather disoriented This brief illustrated guide to the island has been provided in order to try to solve these problems It should be noted, however, that not all of the features of Methodologia can be covered in the amount of space available Readers seeking further information are therefore advised to consult the relevant volume in a travel book series such asLonely Planet, or browse the Methodologia Tourism Board website at www.visitmethodologia.com
Overall features First, a few overall features of the island’s climate, geography, and so on As
can be seen in Figure below, a cold north-easterly airstream blows a steady succession of innovations across the landscape To the north-west, frequent monsoons full of theory-bearing rain clouds feed the source of the River Akademika, which runs through the country from north to south, fertilizing the leafy groves of the Lernasentrd Country Park and providing an 108 E LTJournal Volume 63/2 April 2009; doi:10.1093/elt/ccn037
ª
(19)important artery for the cities of Tee-Be-El and Methodsville, before eventually emptying its waters into the Gulf ofE I L–EL F(English as an International Language–English as a Lingua Franca) This ample supply of moisture is also responsible for another of the chief features of the island, its dense terminological jungle, pictured to the south-west though, it should be noted, prevalent everywhere The climate is also strongly affected by neighbouring islands such as Kurrikula and Korsbukia, and, in particular, the shoreline is subject to powerful waves of backwash from Examinia In terms of human habitation, there are two principal cities: Methodsville, the ancient capital, and the more recently established metropolis of Tee-Be-El In addition, the island has several regions, each with one or more figure
(20)settlements The latter all have strong associations with their respective regions, as will be described in later parts of this guide As already mentioned, there is also a centrally located country park, named after the teaching idea that has dominated Methodologia in recent times, and more will likewise be said about this feature in what follows Finally, the island is particularly notable for the widespread presence, throughout its length and breadth, of a variety of educational institutions, since teaching is, of course, the staple of the Methodologian economy The many classrooms which these institutions house are an ideal environment for the development and manufacture of the wide variety of teaching techniques for which the nation is justly famous
Main cities and regions
Having described some of its overall features, our tour of the island now continues by saying a little about the principal attractions of each of its main cities and regions, thereby also showing how they have contributed to the unique way of life that characterizes present-day Methodologia (The numbers refer to the map in Figure 1.)
1 Methodsville Our journey begins, appropriately, in the historical capital, Methodsville Among the major sites of interest in the older parts of this city are the monuments to methods such as grammar translation, audiolingualism, and so on It was the creation of these impressive structures that originally led to the rise of Methodsville—indeed, for many years, to all intents and purposes Methodsville and Methodologia were seen to be one and the same The largest and most important part of the present-day city is occupied by the Kommunikatavia sector Its sprawling environs along the banks of the River Akademika encompass a wide range of different architectural styles, reflecting the varying traditions of the many citizens who have been attracted to this part of the city from all over the world However, within it, two main districts can be identified, firstly, Weak (by far the larger of the two), where a ‘learning to communicate’ orientation prevails, and, secondly, Strong, where a ‘communicating to learn’ view dominates (for a more detailed guide to these and all the other main features of Methodsville, see Richards and Rodgers 2001)
Because of its varied composition, the inhabitants of Kommunikatavia tend to see their part of the city as having the structure of an approach, rather than a method As a result, there have been conflicting views about whether the enclave of Kommunikatavia is truly in keeping with the traditions of a city historically built from methods Methodsville has therefore been diagnosed as suffering from the ‘Post-Method Condition’ (Kumaravadivelu 1994), a kind of identity crisis This has caused some Methodologians to question whether it is still the rightful capital, or even if it ever was One response to this malaise has been the establishment of the neighbouring city of Tee-Be-El, which will be visited later First of all, however, it is important to journey through some of the less-explored hinterlands of Methodologia, in order to gain a better understanding of the true diversity of its customs and people Institutionia The western region of Institutionia is therefore our next destination This
(21)former, who hail fromBritain,NorthAmerica, andAustralasia, practise the customs of private-sector language-teaching institutions, such as plentiful peer work On the other hand, those living in the latter are strongly influenced by the traditions oftertiary,secondary, andprimary state-sector language-teaching institutions, and tend to favour, for example, whole-class teaching Although the population of Tesepia is far larger than that of its sister town, Banaia regards itself as the regional capital, because of its prestigious academic connections However, despite extensive marketing efforts, the citizens of Tesepia have generally remained stubbornly resistant to ‘Bana-ware’, and mostly prefer to use other, more familiar techniques, which they feel are better suited to the cultural conditions prevailing in Tesepia
3 Ideologia We journey next to the north-western province of Ideologia, which, as chronicled in Clark (1987), consists of three major centres of population, each of them renowned for its particular philosophy of education The first of these—Klassika Humanista—was founded by e´migre´s from the grammar translation district of Methodsville They see the purpose of education as preparation for life, and feel that teaching should therefore concentrate on general intellectual development, such as knowledge of the rules of grammar, of cultural information, and so on The
second—Rekonstruktiona—was established by migrants from the Weak sector of Kommunikatavia They see education as being primarily to with nation building, and therefore emphasize the importance for teaching of clear goals and practical relevance, based on thorough needs analyses The third major centre is Progressiva, populated mainly by those who have close family connections with residents of the Strong sub-district of
Kommunikatavia They view education as mainly to with developing the potential of the individual, and thus set great store by the use of process syllabuses, learning strategies, and the like
However, although the three cities can be distinguished in these ways, in practice modern communications and increased travel opportunities have meant that many Methodologians, including the citizens of each of these centres, have adopted methods of teaching which are based on the amalgam of the three traditions That said, there is nevertheless a tendency for the influential community of academics among the island’s population to be seen much more frequently in the restaurants and nightclubs of Progressiva and Rekonstruktiona than Klassika Humanista, in contrast to the majority of teachers, who generally prefer the sights and sounds of the latter Slaia This observation leads us conveniently to our next destination, the
(22)As a result, the Fofians’ belief that grammar can best be learnt in a ‘just in time’ rather than a pre-planned manner (as assumed by Fofsians) has spread widely throughout the parts of Methodologia where the River Akademika flows with greatest force, lending support, in particular, to the growth of the Lernasentrd Country Park and the city of Tee-Be-El However, rumour has it that, unable to reconcile their widespread use of set syllabuses and published teaching materials with the new approach, the displaced Fofsians have taken to the hills, where they have continued to practise the old Fofsia ways in the privacy of their remote and secluded classrooms, and much of the rest of Methodologia likewise appears to remain relatively unaffected by the revolutionary changes at Fofia
5 The Lernasentrd Country Park
Our tour of Methodologia now takes us away from its hinterlands and to the centrally located Lernasentrd Country Park (for a more detailed guide to this feature, see for example Nunan 1999) Here, making extensive use of the abundant supplies of natural materials which flourish on the shores of the River Akademika as it winds its way through the scenic landscape, highly trained teachers-as-facilitators encourage learners to take up the many opportunities for learning offered by the Park’s rich, authentic
surroundings However, on closer inspection, as reported in, for example, O’Neill (1991), it is not unusual to find learners somewhat puzzled and frustrated by the refusal of their facilitators to actually teach them Equally, some of the facilitators have themselves reportedly been disappointed to find that their learners, given the chance to negotiate their curricula, have chosen to focus on subject matter of questionable educational value, while showing little interest in more important aspects of learning (Hutchinson 2002) For these reasons, the Park remains unfrequented by most Methodologians, despite attempts by the inhabitants of Ivoria Towers—who have responsibility for the Park’s overall care and management—to popularize it
6 Tee-Be-El Just downstream from the Park lies another of Methodologia’s principal features, the futuristic city of Tee-Be-El As mentioned earlier, this gleaming, forward-looking metropolis was founded by refugees from Methodsville, mostly from the Strong district of Kommunikatavia, who, dissatisfied with the climate created by the post-method condition, and trusting to research from Ivoria Towers on how problem-solving communication tasks can provide necessary and sufficient conditions for language learning, decided to build a city of their own (see for example Willis 1996)
(23)from self-sufficient for language learning purposes, due to the lack of facilities for learners to get sufficient exercise involving language structures and the like To make it function better, thus, plans for extensive
modifications to the original design have been proposed, with some pointing out that, in such a form, it would be more appropriate for the city to be renamed Tee-Ess-El, standing for task-supported learning (see for example Ellis 2003: 28–30)
7 Autonomia Finally, as far as this necessarily brief and selective tour goes, we journey to the south-eastern corner of the island, to the somewhat remote and secluded region of Autonomia The inhabitants of Methodologia have always regarded this province as representing something of an ideal, since it is seen as the home of the self-sufficient, independent learner whose fashioning is the ultimate goal of the many and varied teaching techniques for which the island is so well-known However, so far-off and little visited is this part of Methodologia that many teachers are not sure whether the learners it is claimed to be home to even actually exist, especially as their own often show such few signs of autonomous behaviour themselves They also find that promoting learner independence is frequently hampered by the presence of many classroom management ‘monkeys’ (Waters 1998), that is, illegitimate burdens of responsibility These doubts are compounded by the reports from the few that have visited it of the somewhat deserted feel of the regional capital, Celph-Axessia, a seaside resort full of independent learning opportunities—something of a sad decline from its glory days in the 1980s, when it was one of the destinations of choice
However, some have argued (for example Littlewood 1999) that Autonomia, far from becoming a backwater, has been quietly undergoing an important cultural transformation, and that the replacement by its population of a ‘proactive’ concept of autonomy (in which both the goals and processes of learning are determined solely by the learner) with a ‘reactive’ one (in which the goals of learning are determined by, for example, the teacher, but the learning process remains autonomous) makes it much easier for other Methodologians to see how the products of Autonomia can be used in classrooms in their own parts of the island Spratt, Humphreys, and Chan (2002) have also usefully shown that learners not need to first of all be sent to the Autonomia region to try to make them independent, but, rather, are much more likely to become interested in travelling there if they first of all encounter successful and enjoyable learning experiences in classrooms throughout the other main parts of the island
Future plans Lastly, having said something about the history and current state of
Methodologia, what about its future? As we have seen, a sizeable section of the island’s population feels somewhat disenchanted with a number of its present-day features Some of them have therefore decided to remedy this situation by drawing up a plan for replacing the existing capital with a new metropolis, to be named ‘Integrationia’ To guide its development, the following design principles have been formulated
(24)a number of the principal attractions of Methodsville Therefore, rather than simply pulling them down, the plan allows for such features to be preserved and incorporated into the fabric of the new city
Fitness for purpose Secondly, the designers likewise feel it is essential for the accustomed way of life of the majority of Methodologians to be reflected in the provision of accommodation and other amenities in the future capital Thus, rather than shaping these aspects in the image of the living conditions and predilections prevailing in Ivoria Towers, as has been the tendency in many recent Methodologian redevelopment projects, it is believed that they should instead be designed in the first instance on the basis of a careful study and appreciation of the preferred styles of architecture, domestic arrangements, customs, habits, and so on of the average citizen of Methodologia
Forward-looking Thirdly, at the same time, it is felt that some of the benefits that can accrue from the modern developments in various parts of Methodologia should also be incorporated into the design Thus, following the example of the Lernasentrd Country Park and the rehabilitation of the learner autonomy ideal, it is argued that there should be plentiful scope within the new metropolis for green spaces which provide the leisure opportunities needed for creativity, fun, enjoyment, and the independent lifestyle that appeals to many of the younger generation of Methodologians in particular Similarly, it is envisaged that by borrowing ideas from Tee-Be-El and Fofia, rather than a monotonous street plan consisting only of block after block of uniform structures and decontextualized lexical items, frequent ‘communication centres’ should also be constructed Citizens will be able to meet regularly in these locations to discuss solutions to problems, at the same time being provided with feedback on how to improve their knowledge of the surrounding network of structures and vocabulary
In short, by following such guidelines, the designers hope that the new metropolis will be characterized by trading on equal terms with all the main regions of Methodologia, and as a consequence, the best of what each has to offer can be used to fashion a teaching ideal
Envoi As should by now be clear, Methodologia has a rich cultural heritage and, as
a result of increased modernization, is at an exciting historical crossroads It therefore offers a wealth of interesting teaching ideas Choosing wisely among them, however, can be somewhat daunting It is hoped that this brief guide, by attempting to provide an enhanced understanding of the island’s past, present, and possible future development, will help to make this selection process better informed and therefore sounder
Final revised version received March 2008 References
Carless, D.2002 ‘Implementing task-based learning with young learners’.E LTJournal56/4: 389–96
Clark, J L.1987.Curriculum Renewal in School Foreign Language Learning Oxford: Oxford University Press
(25)presented at the 22nd Annual ThailandT E S O L
Convention Bangkok, Thailand
Kumaravadivelu, B.1994 ‘The postmethod condition: (E)merging strategies for second/foreign language teaching’.T ES O LQuarterly28/1: 27–48 Littlewood, W.1999 ‘Defining and developing autonomy in East Asian contexts’.Applied Linguistics
20/1: 71–94
Long, M.1991 ‘Focus on form: a design feature in language teaching methodology’ in K de Bot, R Ginsberg, and C Kramsch (eds.).Foreign Language Research in Cross-Cultural Perspective Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins Nunan, D.1999.Second Language Teaching and Learning Boston, MA: Heinle and Heinle O’Neill, R.1991 ‘The plausible myth of learner-centredness: or the importance of doing ordinary things well’.ELTJournal45/4: 293–304
Richards, J C.andT S Rodgers.2001.Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching New York: Cambridge University Press
Spratt, M., G Humphreys,andV Chan.2002 ‘Autonomy and motivation: which comes first?’
Language Teaching Research6/3: 245–66
Swan, M.2005 ‘Legislation by hypothesis: the case of task-based instruction’.Applied Linguistics26/3: 376–401
Waters, A.1998 ‘Managing monkeys in theE LT
classroom’.E LTJournal52/1: 11–18
Willis, J.1996 ‘A flexible framework for task-based learning’ in D Willis and J Willis (eds.).Challenge and Change in Language Teaching Oxford: Macmillan Heinemann
The author
Alan Watersis a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University, England He has taughtE F Lin Sierra Leone, Kuwait, and the UK and trained teachers in Thailand, the UK, Hong Kong, and several other parts of the world He has published a number of books and articles on a range ofE LTtopics His main research interests are language-teaching
methodology, teacher learning, and curriculum innovation
(26)Raising sociocultural awareness through contextual analysis: some tools for teachers
Troy McConachy
Despite long-standing recognition of the importance of sociocultural context in meaning making, criticisms have been levelled at communicative language teaching (CLT) for failing to effectively address this at the level of classroom practice In fact, it has been argued that the wayC LTpresents content reveals a fundamentally reductionist view of communication This paper uses examples of dialogues from theNew Interchangeseries to briefly illustrate what can be considered a typical shortcoming of many modern commercial English language textbooks: the neglect of the place of sociocultural context in dialogues and dialogue-related activities This paper shows two ways in which this neglect is manifested and then suggests some concrete ways that teachers can use the
SPEA KINGmodel developed by Hymes (1972) to increase their awareness of elements of sociocultural context and also develop analytical questions for learners
Introduction Over 35 years have passed since Hymes (1972) coined the term
‘communicative competence’ in recognition of the inadequacy of the Chomskyan notion of linguistic competence Since this time, much theorizing has taken place about the social nature of language, such as the ways in which different social groups use language to manage and structure their daily lives (Duranti 1997) A number of researchers have outlined further models of communicative competence that have gone on to become widely recognized by language teachers The highly influential model provided by Canale and Swain (1980), as well as the more recent model provided by Bachman (1990), share one point; recognition of the fact that being competent in a language, whether first or subsequent, means a lot more than simply knowing how to form syntactically accurate sentences Despite such recognition, it has been suggested that modern teaching methods, even those labelled as ‘communicative’, are still failing to adequately address the sociocultural aspects of language and the complexities of language in use (Corbett 2003)
Context inC LT The importance of context in linguistic communication has been
recognized for decades and it is now a truism that no linguistic utterance can be definitively understood without referring to the social and
communicative context in which it was uttered (Goodwin and Duranti 116 E LTJournal Volume 63/2 April 2009; doi:10.1093/elt/ccn018
ª
(27)1992) With the advent of CLT, this realization can be said to have affected pedagogy to the extent that presenting input in a manner that is ‘authentic’, or based on ‘real-world situations’ became a priority However, it has been argued that the emphasis on ‘real-world situations’ and ‘doing things with language’ inCLThas led to a reductionist view of
communication (Corbett op cit.; Kraus 2003) It is reductionist in the sense that inCLTcommunication is often seen as a process of bridging an information gap, and communicative competence the ‘capacity to fit appropriate language to specific transactions’ (Byram 1990: 18) To be sure, the ability to ‘do’ things with language is important and deserves
pedagogical attention It is a problem, however, when language functions are presented without due attention to the sociocultural dimensions of language in use Learners need to be aware that the particular language forms that speakers choose to ‘get things done’ reflect not only their identities but also a broad range of sociocultural variables, such as their relationship to the interlocutor, and wider social structures Unless learners are specifically made aware of aspects pertaining to the social nature of language use, there is the danger that a learner will apply his or her native interactional norms, which may be inappropriate (Liddicoat 2005) Context in
commercial English language textbooks
A transactional orientation to language is clearly evident when examining the way that language functions are presented in dialogues in many commercial language textbooks In this section, I will illustrate what I see as two major shortcomings For this purpose, I will provide samples of dialogues from theNew Interchangeseries by Richards, Hull, and Proctor (1998a,b) Although many textbooks contain similar problems, this series was chosen simply due to its prevalence in the context where I work Sample 1:
James This has got to stop! Another Friday night without a date! What can I do?
Mike What about looking through the personal ads in the newspaper? James Actually, I’ve tried that But the people you meet are always
different from what you expect
Mike Well, why don’t you join a dating service? A friend of mine met his wife that way
James That’s not a bad idea
Mike Also, it might be a good idea to check out singles’ night at the bookstore
James Yeah If I don’t find a date, at least I might find a good book! (Taken fromNew Interchange(1998b), Student’s Book 3: 57)
(28)not come with an introduction containing explicit information as to the identities of the speakers, their relationship to each other, or their location In the above dialogue, the pedagogical goal is clearly to show how
suggestions can be made: however, the absence of explicit contextual information makes it seem as though the logic of suggestions and the discourse that goes along with it will be plain and transparent for learners everywhere
The second major shortcoming of this dialogue is that on top of the lack of explicit contextual information, there is also a lack of learning activities based on the dialogue that could encourage learners to analyse the language used in terms of sociocultural context InNew Interchange, some dialogues are followed by a number of questions that learners can answer by listening to a continuation of the conversation from the dialogue Unfortunately, the focus of these questions also reveals a reductionist orientation to the act of comprehension Sample below shows another dialogue with questions Sample 2:
Chris So, what did you this weekend Kate?
Kate Oh, Diane and I went for a drive in the country on Saturday Chris That sounds nice Where did you go?
Kate We drove to the lake and had a picnic We had a great time! How about you? Did you anything special?
Chris Not really? I just worked on my car all day
Kate That old thing! Why don’t you just buy a new one? Chris But then what would I every weekend?
Listen to Kate talk about her activities on Sunday
1 What did she do?
2 Where did she go?
(29)relationships between people rather than simply the filling of an information gap
Turning the tide Teaching contextual aspects of language use is something that can present
difficulty for many language teachers, particularly those without a heightened awareness of the communicative parameters of the target language: aside from the typical aspects of language such as grammar and lexis, it is not clear what should be taught (Barraja-Rohan 2000) What is needed is for language teachers to increase their own awareness of the ways in which context affects the choice of language forms and unfolding interaction in a language sample such as a dialogue Based on this heightened awareness, teachers will be in a better position to design comprehension questions that focus not only on the skill of locating information but also on the skill of analysing language use in reflection of sociocultural context In order for teachers to be able to teach the importance of sociocultural context, it may be helpful to have a model that can be used as a reference point I would like to suggest one in the next section
A framework for teacher reference
‘S P E A K I N G’ is a mnemonic which was developed by Hymes (1974) to represent his framework for the analysis of language in context Each letter ofS P E A K I N Gstands for an aspect of context which is thought to influence the construction and interpretation of meaning Due to its mnemonic nature and relatively transparent components, I believe it can be useful to language teachers in two main ways Firstly, it provides a framework for increasing teachers’ awareness of sociocultural factors of language use Secondly, the components can be used as a framework for generating a range of questions for learners that encourage consideration of the role of context in meaning making
In Table below I lay out the components of theS P E A K I N Gframework with a rationale statement to explain why these aspects of context are important for language teachers and learners to think about In Table I also list questions for each component that could be used to assist teachers to become aware of the socioculturally significant dimensions of communication in a textbook dialogue or sample of natural language Developing
questions for learners
In the next section, I show teachers can move from using theS P EA K I N G
framework to identify relevant sociocultural factors in a dialogue to generating a range of analytical questions to raise the sociocultural awareness of learners
(30)practice before a teacher improves his or her ability As far as the wording of questions is concerned, there are many possibilities that will depend on the types of learners and the relevant pedagogical goal Below I will outline four different question types that, on the basis of experience, I consider to be particularly useful and easy to apply
1 Language-based questions
I use this term as these questions begin with some language from the dialogue, based on which learners speculate on possible meanings and interactional functions in context For example, based on the use of the discourse marker ‘I see’ in a dialogue, the following questions could be formulated:
n What does ‘I see’ mean?
Or
n Why does person X say ‘I see’?
2 Function-based questions
I call these function-based questions as rather than quoting language from the dialogue, these questions use metalanguage which describes
table1
Components of the
(31)the potential interactional or social function of an utterance in the dialogue The use of metalanguage encourages learners to look for forms that might be used to accomplish particular functions These questions are useful for helping learners see language use in terms of interactional and social functions first, and then focus on forms second This can be particularly useful when the teacher wants to prescribe an interpretation of an utterance, or draw learners’ attention to an obvious interactional norm An example of a function-based question based on ‘I see’ might be as follows:
n In the dialogue, where does speaker X show ‘understanding’?
Or
n Where does speaker X show ‘interest’?
table2
(32)3 Comparative questions
Comparative questions encourage learners to compare an aspect of interaction or sociocultural relationship noticed in the dialogue/s they are using with that of their native culture The process of reflecting on aspects of interaction in one’s native culture is argued to be an effective way to help learners come to see the hidden interactional norms of their own language, and to be able to objectively contrast these vis-a`-vis the target language (Liddicoat op cit.) For example, in the case of a dialogue which contains the speech act of apologizing, the following questions could be asked:
n In your culture people apologize like this? n Does everyone apologize like this?
n What other ways are there to apologize in your culture? n How you feel about the style of apologies in this dialogue?
4 General speculative questions
General speculative questions are ‘Why you think .?’ questions which are versatile in that they can be formed in regards to any type of question when the teacher would like to emphasize that the learners’ job is to give their own interpretations, rather than search for a correct answer
Examples:
n How old you think the speakers are?
n Why you think the man refused the invitation?
Application In this section I will provide concrete examples of questions that I have
developed based on my understanding ofS P E A K I N Gthat could be applied when using one of the sample dialogues fromNew Interchangequoted earlier There is a certain amount of overlap among the questions; these are simply examples to demonstrate the different ways that questions could be formulated
Dialogue
James This has got to stop! Another Friday night without a date! What can I do?
Mike What about looking through the personal ads in the newspaper? James Actually, I’ve tried that But the people you meet are always
different from what you expect
Mike Well, why don’t you join a dating service? A friend of mine met his wife that way
James That’s not a bad idea
Mike Also, it might be a good idea to check out singles’ night at the bookstore
(33)Setting:
Where you think James and Mike are having this conversation? Why? Where you think wouldn’t be a good place to have this conversation? Why?
In James’ culture, you think many people go on dates on Fridays? Why?
When people usually go on dates in your culture? Participants:
Do you think Mike and James are good friends? Why? How old you think they are? Why?
Do you think Mike is married or has a partner? Why? Ends:
Why you think James started this conversation? Do you think Mike wants to help him? Why? Act sequence:
How many different ‘suggestions’ did Mike make? What is their order? How did James feel about each ‘suggestion’? Why you think this? Why did James say ‘actually’?
In the conversation, where does Mike show ‘agreement’? Key:
How does James feel at the start of the conversation? Why you think this?
Instrumentalities:
Is the language in this conversation casual or polite? Show an example Norms of interaction:
How does Mike accept or reject the suggestions? Why you think he chose these forms?
Genre:
What sort of conversation is this?
Do people in your culture have this type of conversation often? Tips for using the
questions
(34)which needs to be taken into consideration when allocating time for learning tasks
Reacting to learners’ interpretations
It is necessary to recognize that we cannot always expect knowledge about sociocultural aspects of language use to be as explicable or quantifiable as grammar and lexis As the focus of these questions is interpretive, there is necessarily a multiplicity of possible answers While some questions may be designed to lead learners to a particular interpretation of language, others are simply speculative In this case, the aim is not to elicit some kind of predetermined ‘correct’ answer but rather to develop meta-awareness concerning the fact that sociocultural context is important in language use In this case, the processes that learners go through, and the skills that are developed when involved in analysing language use, can also be considered important
Possible criticisms It is possible that some will object to using dialogues at all to raise
sociocultural awareness due to the fact that dialogues not always mirror ‘the way language is really used’ (Seedhouse 2004) Undoubtedly, some dialogues are more natural than others The process of constructing dialogues based on what research tells us about how people communicate needs to be ongoing However, it does not seem logical to wait until perfect dialogues are achieved before we finally turn our learners’ heads towards context It is important to work creatively with the educational resources we have now to achieve a high quality of learning In any case, dialogues, or even samples of authentic data, should not be viewed as ‘perfect’ samples of language use, due to the fact that any communication is inherently ambiguous and variable (Scollon and Wong-Scollon 1995) Consequently, learners should not simply approach language as a thing to be remembered, but as a thing to be examined Any language use in a dialogue is nothing more than something thatmight be saidin a particular situation It is not necessary to have perfect samples of communication as the imperfect nature of communication can now become a topic of speculation and discussion
Conclusion In this paper I have argued that teachers may need to increase their own
awareness of the general importance of sociocultural context as
a determinant of language use This is important so that teachers are no longer limited to simply teaching the ‘cleaner’ aspects of syntax and lexicon As long as teachers and students only see dialogues in terms of how they illustrate grammar usage, there is a waste of learning potential The
(35)References
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Byram, M.1990 ‘Teaching culture and language: towards an integrated model’ in D Buttjes and M Byram (eds.).Mediating Languages and Cultures Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters
Canale, M.andM Swain.1980 ‘Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing’.Applied Linguistics1/1: 1–47 Corbett, J.2003.An Intercultural Approach to English Language Teaching Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters
Duranti, A.1997.Linguistic Anthropology Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Goodwin, C.andA Duranti.1992 ‘Rethinking context: an introduction’ in A Duranti and C Goodwin (eds.).Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Hymes, D.1972 ‘On communicative competence’ in J B Pride and J Holmes (eds.).Sociolinguistics Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books Hymes, D.1974.Foundations in Sociolinguistics: An Ethnographic Approach Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press
Kraus, H.2003 ‘Creating histories and spaces of meaningful use: towards a framework of foreign
language teaching with an emphasis on culture, epistemology and ethical pedagogy’ Unpublished Doctoral dissertation, University of Canberra Liddicoat, A J.2005 ‘Teaching languages for intercultural communication’ in D Cunningham and A Hatoss (eds.).An International Perspective on Language Policies, Practices and Proficiencies Belgrave, Australia:F I PLV
Richards, J., J Hull,andS Proctor.1998a.New Interchange: English for International Communication (Student’s Book 1) Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press
Richards, J., J Hull,andS Proctor.1998b.New Interchange: English for International Communication (Student’s Book 3) Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press
Scollon, R.andS Wong-Scollon.1995.Intercultural Communication Oxford: Blackwell
Seedhouse, P.2004.The Interactional Architecture of the Language Classroom: A Conversation Analysis Perspective Oxford: Blackwell Publishing
The author
Troy McConachyholds an MA (Applied Linguistics) from the University of New England, Australia He is currently conducting his doctoral research on intercultural language teaching through the Research Centre for Languages and Cultures at the University of South Australia He also lectures on English and intercultural communication at Rikkyo University, Tokyo
(36)Learner-created lexical databases using web-based source material
Gregory L Friedman
The use of authentic text has been argued to increase learner awareness of lexical form, function, and meaning ( for example, Willis 1990; Johns 1994) The Web provides ready-made material and tools for both learner-centred reading and vocabulary tasks This study reports on the results of a project in which Japanese universityE F Lstudents made use of the Web as a living corpus to investigate the specific contexts and collocative properties of lexis Using an online database, students created a communal dictionary composed of lexis and example sentences culled from web sources, along with examples of their own devising The language database was then used to facilitate peer teaching of lexis Work produced indicates that learners paid attention to lexical form, function, and meaning when composing
Introduction One of the roles language instructors traditionally play in assisting
vocabulary learning is that of arbiter Teachers and textbook writers commonly preselect lexis they have reason to believe is appropriate for a target group in terms of level, frequency of use in native texts or speech, or necessity for a specialized field Instructors also generally have control over the material that students read Certainly, there is sound pedagogical reasoning behind such dependence on the teacher Learners often lack information on factors such as frequency, while instructors usually have access to a wide range of levels and types of texts, such that they are able to fine-tune their selections to their students’ needs, interests, and abilities Yet language learners benefit from having access to authentic
texts—such as newspaper or magazine articles and fiction at native-speaker level—that provide the opportunity to encounter lexis in a natural, rather than artificial context Use of such material allows learners to gain an understanding of how lexis functions in real-world environments (Willis 1993; Johns 1994) As Willis notes:
The use of authentic text makes it likely that not only structure and necessary choice but also the typical behaviour of words and phrases will be captured and .highlighted for the learner
(ibid.: 92)
One problem, of course, with using such texts is their inherent difficulty, marked as they are by syntactic and lexical complexity, as well as a high 126 E LTJournal Volume 63/2 April 2009; doi:10.1093/elt/ccn022
ª
(37)frequency of culture-specific references Learners may quickly lose confidence when presented with such texts If, however, learners are allowed to actually choose for themselves texts that are of personal or professional relevance, they may be more willing to engage with authentic material Student choice is one way to maximizeintrinsicmotivation (Skehan 1991) in which both ‘learners’ particular interests and the extent to which they feel personally involved in learning activities’ are key (Ellis 1994: 76) Furthermore, when learners themselves select words to learn that are of interest to them—in particular words that will help them understand a text that they are personally interested in—motivation for vocabulary learning may be enhanced Involvement in both text and vocabulary selection can thus effectively ‘arouse and harness the learner’s curiosity’ (Willis 1993: 92) towards the ultimate aim of increasing his or her understanding and command of L2 lexis
The project Setting and participants
The project reported on in this paper was carried out in a class comprising second and third year university students whose English proficiency level ranged from intermediate to high intermediate according to the placement criteria of the institution The course,Internet English, is required for some majors Though some students came with prior interest in and facility with using the Web, many were relative web novices
Computers and internet access were available for all students in the classroom As part of the course, students were involved in a variety of internet-based tasks requiring the reading of web text These included participation in English language web discussion forums of their own choosing, summarizing information found on web pages in oral
presentations, finding information for both student-created and instructor-created quizzes, and discussion of favourite websites with others in the class
Engaging with challenging content
Students in the class often encountered passages that they found
challenging due to the presence of unfamiliar lexis Reading strategies such as the use of contextual clues to supply meaning or simply reading for gist were not always sufficient; students expressed a desire to better understand what they read Some students tried using electronic English–Japanese dictionaries to help them through challenging passages While perhaps effective to some degree, this tactic did not allow for any opportunity to acquire new vocabulary Rather than simply take for granted a certain level of frustration and the rapid meeting and forgetting of new lexis, it seemed desirable to make the presence of many new words into an opportunity rather than an annoyance In response, an ongoing Class Dictionary project was begun, with the students in control of the lexis to be included and responsible for correctly pinpointing definitions, finding collocations, and writing example sentences
(38)increase their vocabulary Taking into account both sides of this issue, I thought it best to have my students engage with web pages first in information-gathering tasks before they began to use the Web to seek new lexical knowledge as well Gleaning lexis was presented as an endeavour undertaken only to serve the primary purpose of web text, the gathering of knowledge
The presence of the Web as an integral part of the course offered a way for students to deepen their understanding of lexical items by seeking other examples, much as professional linguists in using corpora to pinpoint nuances of native speaker usage, such as topical association and collocation Robb (2003), in a study of variation in collocation among different web domains, notes some drawbacks to the use of the Web as a corpus—for example, the inability to search for categories of words or to obtain reliable frequency counts He posits against these, however, the Web’s size, accessibility, and the presence of much language that often conforms to norms of spoken usage (such as that found in forums and blogs) as aspects that recommend it to second language study
Process The project comprises six interrelated tasks:
1 Use of web page texts as sources for lexis
2 Use of an online learner dictionary to select proper definitions
3 Exploiting the Web as a searchable corpus to find multiple, in-context examples of lexical items
4 Population of a lexical database featuring learner-chosen lexis and learner-created example sentences
5 Email communication between students and teacher in order to check, correct, and give feedback on database submissions
6 An extension story-writing task, to give learners the opportunity to put new lexis to use
Each of these will be described, with special attention paid both to the scaffolding steps used to acclimate students to choosing definitions and to the use of the Web to broaden the range of example sentences available Scaffolding and
dictionary orientation
Though many JapaneseE F Lstudents own learner dictionaries, their actual facility with using them is often rather limited To assist the students in becoming familiar with the process of using learner dictionaries, some sample lexical items and web page text were chosen in advance Links to these pages were provided in an online worksheet (Appendix 1) These web pages were chosen for their potential general interest to the students in the class, and short sections assigned that the students could read quickly Words were chosen from the text on those pages that the students were not likely to have encountered before Figure shows the text of a selection from Wikipedia’sSpiderman 3page, which formed the basis of the worksheet
figure
(39)A given lexical entry in a dictionary is likely to present learners with the challenge of choosing from a list of several different, nuanced definitions Thus, a controlled-entry approach was used for selecting the words the students would be given to tackle The first two items, ‘bask in’ and ‘seek’, have single definitions; the second item, ‘convict’, features noun and verb forms with a single definition each; and the third, ‘bond’, has noun and verb forms with several definitions for each In this way, the students
progressively tackle increasing levels of definitional ambiguity in order to prepare them for the challenges they will be likely to encounter later.1 The text selection was read aloud while the students read on their
computers, then the students read it again on their own Students’ attention was drawn to the first item, ‘bask in’ The class was asked to work in pairs, using contextual clues to decide what part of speech the item represented and to arrive at a guess of its meaning Students were allowed to use their first language when guessing definitions, with about half choosing to so For the first few items in the text selection, the instructor coached the class in using the online dictionary.2Key features of the dictionary were pointed out, such as the initial separation of items by part of speech, keyword listing of some definitions, pronunciation, and example sentences The instructor went through the definitions with the students, asking them to consider which one made the most sense in the given context For items with multiple parts of speech and/or definitions, the challenge for the students was naturally somewhat greater Hints and information regarding context, affixes, morphology, or collocation were given when necessary Of these, the latter may be the most important in engendering in learners an ecological view of lexis: words not exist in a vacuum, but tend to live next to or near certain other items or types of items
Web as corpus To deepen this ecological appreciation of lexis, Google search was used in
order to gather multiple in-context examples The collocative and associative nature of items was taken advantage of to inform keyword choice when carrying out searches For example, the word ‘installment’ was found on an earlier version of Wikipedia’sSpiderman 3page Students noticed the use of the preposition ‘of ’ following the word in both the web page sentence and the example sentence in the online dictionary A Google search using ‘installment of’ netted ‘fourth installment of the Indiana Jones Adventures’ and ‘you’re reading the 100th installment of Geek to Live’, among others The verb ‘suspect’ was noted to be followed by [+human] items: a name on the original web page example and a third person pronoun in the dictionary example The search keywords ‘suspected’ and ‘him’ netted many instances (Using the simple past form of verbs may tend to give more useable web search results; this point will be discussed further below.)
(40)Beyond content words, functional lexis is of particular value for learners, particularly those enrolled inE APcourses In this case, as well, the Web provides invaluable opportunities for students to become aware of how such lexis is used In a Wikipedia article on the bookUncle Tom’s Cabin, the phrase ‘many of which’ was found:
The book also helped create a number of common stereotypes about Blacks, many of which endure to this day
It was not immediately apparent to most students what the meaning or function of this phrase was A review was given regarding the use of ‘which’ as a relative pronoun referring to the head noun of the preceding noun phrase, yet this could only partially satisfy the class’ understanding A web search provided several examples to clarify how the phrase is used:
India Blocks Several Web Sites, Many of Which Are Blog Homes Scene for scene, Paprika is overflowing with dazzling images, many of which walk that thin line between beautiful and terrifying
The class was asked to try to determine which countable noun was being referenced in each case After engaging with such examples, students were able to create their own example sentences using the phrase
The noodle shop has so many comic books, many of which are boring My teacher teaches lessons, many of which I forget soon
Careful choice of search terms was found to be key in providing useful results for students For phrases and collocative items, more useable samples were found by using quotes and by including all particles, determiners, etc For verbs, using the past tense form in the search terms tended to yield better results (possibly due to the relative contextual clarity present in news stories or personal recountings, both of which often use past tense) The following search results (Figures 2–6) demonstrate the varying degree of contextual support obtained using various search term combinations, in this case for the phrase ‘face a challenge’
figure
Search term:face challenge
figure
Search term: ‘face a challenge’
figure
(41)The results in Figure show the typical ambiguity found when quotes are not used and the article left out The next two searches, using quotes (Figure 3) and then the insertion of the indefinite article (Figure 4) netted slightly better results, though still with enough contextual ambiguity to potentially confuse learners This evidently stems largely from the common use of the present tense in headlines, which by themselves offer little context With the addition of past tense morphology (Figures and 6), the results show clearer contexts within which the phrase can be understood
Populating the database
Once the meaning and collocative properties of a few words had been established, and further online examples found, the next step for the students was to create their own example sentences This personalization step is at the heart of the database project From the point of view of an instructor, it represents a measure of the students’ grasp of form, function, and meaning For learners, it is a key step towards internalization of new lexis The first time it was carried out, the students were given the task of writing an example for the same item: ‘bask in’ After comparing and critiquing one another’s example sentences in small groups, each group chose a sentence to share with the class Finally, the class selected two sentences:
He regretted that he bask in his small success He basked in his glory of the past
These sentences were used to help populate the first entries in the database, giving the class an opportunity to learn how to enter the necessary information For this first time, selected students read out each part required for the database: word, definition, web page sentence(s), and example sentence Another student entered each part as read, while the class viewed the process on their centre monitors (Figure 7) Note that the student’s original sentence was not edited to match probable NS norms, i.e ‘He basked in the glory of his past’ Unless highly ungrammatical or demonstrating a lack of understanding of the lexical item, student sentences were left unedited
figure
Search term:‘faced a challenge’
figure
(42)After the first stage, in which the class worked together on a single piece of web text and a set of preselected items, the students had free rein to choose words when and where they wished, with only a general goal of at least one database entry per week Since the class were working on various web-based tasks on an ongoing basis (for example, reading pages to find information for peer-made quizzes, reading and participating in forums and blogs, preparing presentations based on web research), they had many opportunities to engage in lexical sleuthing in the context of personal-interest, meaning-focused inquiry Figure 8, extracted from the database, shows samples of student-selected lexis and the example sentences they created
communication
Early on, a few entries in the database indicated that students sometimes had trouble selecting the appropriate definition for their chosen item (or perhaps simply did not invest enough effort in choosing among the multiple definitions) or were unable to write a sentence that clearly captured the basic sense of the item To remedy this, the class were instructed to send their entries by email so that the instructor could give feedback (Figure 9) After having two entries approved, a student was given approval to work independently
Extension task In the final weeks of the course, the students were given a story-writing task
to encourage them to make further use of the lexis that they had gathered as a group To maximize the peer teaching opportunity inherent in the class dictionary, they were asked to utilize two of their own database entries while using three contributed by others Before submitting their stories, students had to check the sentences they wrote using other students’ items with the original contributors, who either gave approval or advice
To help the students get their stories underway, a set of links to story-starter idea web pages was posted on the class homepage Once the students embarked upon a story idea that caught their fancy, they seemed to have little trouble finding ways to use new lexis within them Fiction writing allowed imagination to come into play as they built their stories around words or phrases that gave them inspiration (Appendix 2)
Finally, the students uploaded their story documents to our class homepage, where they could be read by all Some students opted to post them on their personal homepages After reading their classmates’ stories, they sent figure
(43)figure
(44)emails with comments to the authors or directly posted comments on their personal homepages
Conclusion Rather than teachers presenting students with texts and vocabulary lists as
a fait accompli, learners can be empowered to choose source material that is of personal interest to them and to choose words and phrases that they find interesting or which help them understand what they want to know The abundance and inexhaustible variety of web text let learners act as lexical sleuths and budding corpus builders, while online tools let them compile their findings for ready reference and peer teaching
Though the method outlined above involved six different online tasks, it is not necessary that the project be carried out in exactly this way Instructors might choose to use any one or all of these tasks, depending on the type of class, the extent to which computer resources may be available, and the instructor’s own philosophy of reading and vocabulary learning For example, it is not necessary that the lexical material come from the Web itself; the items might come from other assigned reading material Learners could also be presented with a specified set of lexis to find on the Web, for example, items from the academic word list Furthermore, the tasks need not be done during class time If no computer resources are available in the classroom, students can carry them out on their own and share their findings with one another in class
figure
(45)This study presented student work produced through tasks that featured specific attributes, such as learner autonomy in choosing lexis to be learnt, collective learning through a database, and creative expression The study does not show whether these aspects can result in long-term retention either of the vocabulary studied or of the study skills used during the tasks (for example, searching for multiple in-context examples in order to understand vocabulary) However, the work demonstrates that students were often able to understand and correctly apply the form, function, and meaning of the lexical items they chose
Final revised version received November 2007 Notes
1 Since the creation of this lesson, changes in the online dictionary have resulted in several definitions being added to the entries for both ‘bask’ and ‘seek’
2 This study made use of the online version of the
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English CD versions of this dictionary also contain a pop-up dictionary window that will appear when any word on web page text is clicked This was used by some students
References
Ellis, R.1994.The Study of Second Language Acquisition Oxford: Oxford University Press Feathers, K.2004.Infotext: Reading and Learning
(Second Edition) Toronto: Pippin Publishing, Ltd Johns, A.1997.Text, Role and Context: Developing Academic Literacies Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Johns, T.andF Davies.1983 ‘Text as a vehicle for information: the classroom use of written texts in teaching reading in a foreign language’.Reading in a Foreign Language1/1: 1–19
Johns, T F.1994 ‘From printout to handout: grammar and vocabulary teaching in the context of data-driven learning’ in T Odlin (ed.).Perspectives on
Pedagogical Grammar Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Robb, T.2003 ‘Google as a quick ‘n dirty corpus tool’
T E S L - E J 7/2 Available at http://tesl-ej.org/ej26/ int.html
Skehan, P.1991 ‘Individual differences in second language learning’.Studies in Second Language Acquisition3/2: 275–98
Willis, J D.1990.The Lexical Syllabus London: Collins Cobuild
Willis, J D.1993 ‘Grammar and lexis: some pedagogical implications’ in J Sinclair, G Fox, and M Hoey (eds.).Techniques of Description London: Routledge
The author
Gregory Friedmancurrently teaches in the Global Japanese Studies programme at Meiji University in Tokyo He holds a Master’s degree in Applied Linguistics from San Diego State University His research interests include task effects on fluency, complexity, and accuracy of learner output, in particular the effect of scenario drama interaction on output modification
Email: gregapan@gmail.com
Appendix
Worksheet (excerpt)
Read the second paragraph of the Wikipedia article about the movie Spiderman
n Notice the wordbasking
1 What kind of word you think it is?
(For example, noun, verb, adjective .) _
2 What preposition comes afterbasking? _
3 What you thinkbasking in his successmeans?
(46)4 Now look up the phrase in the online dictionary, or use your pop-up What is the definition?
5 Now, write your own sentence using this phrase
n Notice the wordseeks
1 What kind of word you think it is?
(For example, noun, verb, adjective, preposition .) _
2 What you thinkseeksmeans?
3 Now look up the word in the online dictionary, or use your pop-up What is the definition?
4 What is the past tense form of this verb? _ Web search!
1 Open a new browser window Go to Google First, search with justseek What kind of examples you see? What are these websites about? What many people seek on the Web? They seek _
2 What is another thing people might seek on the Web?
Think of some ideas with your partner Write three ideas here: _ _ _ Now, search using your ideas In the search window, putseek [your idea] Write a sentence that you find:
Appendix
Story samples
(vocabulary items inbold)
1I heard a scary noise in the closet when I was in bed
The noise came outfrequently I was thinking I should leave my room or open the closet, and Iopted toopen it I was really scared, because when I saw my face reflected in thetransparentwindow, it looked like a ghost! I shouted because of the surprise
Then I thought that I saw something turned up on the floor So Ibrandished my bat Then it hit my room lamp, and I saw thescatteredpiece of broken lamp on the floor
I couldn’t move like afishbowlidol and shaked with fear I decided to leave this room after a short time I was completely forget about broken glass, so I injuredmy foot
2One day of in the life of George Bush
(47)An analysis of spoken grammar: the case for production
Simon Mumford
Corpus-based grammars, notablyCambridge Grammar of English, give explicit information on the forms and use of native-speaker grammar, including spoken grammar Native-speaker norms as a necessary goal in language teaching are contested by supporters of English as a Lingua Franca (E L F); however, this article argues for the inclusion of selected forms for teaching for production based on an analysis of the usefulness of individual forms The forms are analysed in two sections, relating to fluency and appropriacy, since, while every student can benefit from improved fluency, native-speaker appropriacy may not be a need for all The conclusion is that such an analysis strengthens the arguments for teaching many of these forms for production, while acknowledging the case for fluency features is stronger than more context-dependent appropriacy forms It briefly looks at some possibilities for teaching the forms
Introduction Advances in technology have brought a more detailed analysis of
native-speaker language, which has been used as the basis of teaching material, and we have already seen the publication of course books and dictionaries informed by corpora Attention has now been focused on the (native speaker) Spoken Grammar of English (hereafterS G E) This can be defined as those aspects of English which are almost always associated with the spoken language or its written representation, as recorded in new corpus-based grammars, notablyCambridge Grammar of English(Carter and McCarthy 2006) (hereafterC GE) andLongman Grammar of Spoken and Written English(Biberet al.2000) This article examines selectedS G Eforms inC GEand related writings by Carter (1998, 2007) in order to analyse their role in native-speaker speech, and to attempt to establish what the potential benefits to learners of using such forms may be
The analysis and conclusions drawn are set against the significant debate in English Language Teaching (E LT) over whether to use native-speaker norms regarding grammar, or to use some other standard In order to give some background to the debate, I briefly look at three approaches to native-speaker spoken forms as a model for learners The first is that of supporters of World Englishes/English as a Lingua Franca (EL F), which denies any need for specifically native-speaker norms Another position advocates a passive knowledge of these forms for students Finally, an argument for
(48)teaching native-speaker forms for productive use based on student need and interest is set out
The last position, as expressed by Kuo (2006), will be appropriate, this article will argue, for at least some forms ofS GE, becauseC G Ehas now isolated and described the forms, and enabled us to understand their role in speech and, therefore, the advantages for learners We can now pass this information on to learners and help them use the forms, potentially benefiting them in two main ways: firstly, in making their language more fluent and, secondly, more appropriate This distinction is used as the criterion both for the analysis and for the basis of selection of forms for teaching The rationale for this approach is that while it can be argued that native-speaker appropriacy is more applicable to students dealing with native speakers, fluency can be considered a more general need, desirable in any situation
Three approaches to the native-speaker model
The World Englishes/ E L Fapproach
The basis of theE L Fargument is the fact that many students will never come into contact with native speakers Supporters of this view, for example Rajagopalan (2004: 114), argue that in an age when native speakers are no longer the largest group of English speakers, using their norms inELTgives them unwarranted status and precedence, and thus should be avoided These writers argue for an English based on ‘intelligibility’, where the learners’ aim is to speak in a way that can be understood, rather than precisely follow native-speaker norms, with the result that minor
grammatical inaccuracies and some variation in pronunciation are accepted as long as mutual intelligibility is maintained
The passive
knowledge approach
Other writers have suggested that a native-speaker model would in fact be useful to learners One approach that has been suggested includes raising students’ awareness through listening to recordings of native speakers, and using scripts and exercises to help them notice features ofS G E Such a model has been put forward by Timmis (2005: 118), whose research leads him to conclude that ‘a significant number of learners and teachers’ want to sound like native speakers as far as possible, including the use of ‘informal grammar’, and he notes that many others will at least want to understand native-speaker spoken language conventions Despite this, however, he stops short of recommending teaching for production, pointing to lack of rules for use, stating that ‘it is at least questionable whether we want learners to produce these forms at any stage’ (ibid.: 120)
The production approach
However, another view proposes that thereisa need to go beyond this passive knowledge approach, and teach native-speaker norms for production Kuo’s (2006) research reveals that many of her students see native speakers as a desirable model and that, in an increasingly competitive world, merely being ‘intelligible’, being able to make themselves
(49)benefits Furthermore, Kuo (2007) points out that these forms will help learners communicate in a range of situations where native speakers may or may not be present
Analysis of the
features ofS GE
The potential benefits that the students of Kuo and Timmis and many others feel they would gain from native-speaker grammar seem not to have been precisely defined or comprehensively analysed so far The purpose of this article is to understand the role ofS G Eand how these forms could help learners The following analysis ofC G Ereveals how British speakers use certain forms to communicate both fluently and appropriately, and as these two areas, fluency and appropriacy, seem to be the main purposes ofS G E, they are used as criteria for the analysis, which looks at selected features that have a clear relation to learner language and implications for teaching/ learning and testing
Analysis ofS G E fluency features
The forms most likely to be useful to students consist of the following: phrasal chains; simple sentence structure; non-canonical use of some singular and countable/uncountable forms; ellipsis of subjects and auxiliaries; use of declaratives as questions; flexible word order, including headers and tails and fronting of objects; use of lexical chunks, fillers, and placeholders
n Carter and McCarthy (2006: 168) note that in real-time speech
‘utterances are linked .as if in a chain’ rather than built into sentences Thus, unless students can learn to speak in phrasal chains, they will be under a double disadvantage, as they will not only have fewer language resources than more fluent speakers but will also be setting themselves the more difficult goal of speaking in sentences Practice in speaking in phrases rather than sentences could help students produce a greater volume of language, and language which sounds more fluent
n Carter and McCarthy (ibid.: 170) note that native speakers tend to use
coordinating conjunctions (‘and’ and ‘but’) and simple subordinating conjunctions (‘so’ and ‘because’) in real-time communication, and this is the kind of language that students should aim at when producing unplanned speech in situations like oral exams The combination of simple conjunctions and phrasal chains in native-speaker speech suggests that the traditional complex (written) sentence is not natural in spoken language and therefore not a suitable standard to judge students’ speech by
n Native speakers sometimes use ‘ungrammatical’ structures, they are
more likely to say, for example, ‘There’s your pills’ than ‘There are your pills’ in informal situations when indicating location (ibid.: 95) ‘Less children’ (instead of ‘fewer’) is another such form produced by native speakers (ibid.: 103) By eliminating the need to choose between different singular and plural, and countable and uncountable forms, the cognitive load is lightened and fluency made easier If we as teachers insist that students conform to ‘written grammar’ norms while speaking, we may again be making their task more difficult
n Some elliptical forms used by native speakers resemble learners
(50)you like ice-cream?’ However, native speakers frequently omit pronouns and auxiliaries in informal interrogatives (ibid.: 182) Students may, in fact, know the full forms, but, like native speakers, under pressure of real-time conversation, take short cuts, which not interfere with meaning since it is clear from the context
n Declaratives are used for questions by native speakers (ibid.: 533), which,
again, could lead to the phrase ‘You like ice-cream?’ being used as a question As mentioned before, learners often use this as a question form If teachers fail to consider and allow for this, students will again be operating under the same double disadvantage of fewer language resources, yet a harder task in constructing sentences that are ‘grammatically correct’ according to the written language
n Word order is more flexible in spoken language, since speech is
constructed in real time and follows the order of ideas emerging from a speaker, which may override grammar rules (ibid.: 172) Learners’ ‘incorrect’ word order may, of course, show L1 interference or wrong learning, but it could equally reflect thisS GEfeature, and thus, again, language teachers may demand standards of spoken language that native speakers frequently fail to achieve Students may feel less anxious about word order in speech if they understand the cause of these natural inconsistencies
n The use of headers and tails (ibid.: 194), and fronting (ibid.: 779), can also
alter the word order of traditional written grammar, again showing that spoken language is much more flexible than written forms are Using headers may come naturally to some students, because it is often simpler to mention the topic first and then add a comment, as in the following example: ‘That old lady, I really like her’ The fronting of objects in sentences is likely to appeal to students where objects precede other sentence elements in their native language Students may be reassured to know these spoken forms are not necessarily wrong
n Language is repetitive and fluency is increased by the ability to use chunks
such as ‘I see’, ‘I think’, ‘you know’, ‘kind of ’ (ibid.: 828) Drilling may be a solution which would help to make these terms familiar and natural (Carter 2007: 44) Ironically, such mechanical exercises may contribute to fluency, if, as a result, students can use the chunks effectively and automatically
n Pausing and repeating are common, especially at the beginning of
utterances (Carter and McCarthy 2006: 172) Fillers and repetition are natural features of language and could be encouraged, especially as an alternative to silence Students could be shown that the function of a filled pause (‘err’ and ‘um’) is to draw attention to the thought that the speaker is giving to choosing the right words (ibid.: 173) This device is extremely common in the corpus; the fillers ‘um’ and ‘err’ represent the sixteenth and seventeenth most common word forms, respectively, in native-speaker speech (ibid.: 12) Like other word forms, these will need practice in order for them to become automatic
n Native speakers use words such as ‘thingy’ and ‘thingamajig’ to refer
(51)placeholders are usually to describe items that are actually present However, learners could be trained to make use of this feature to substitute for unknown words, whether the referents are present or not This seems preferable to the alternative, which is to define the unnamed item, for example: ‘a thing for opening a bottle with’ Such complex grammatical structures are difficult to produce in real time and are likely to reduce fluency
Analysis ofS G E appropriacy features
Selected appropriacy forms, more likely to be of benefit to students dealing directly with native speakers, consist of Vague Language, two-step
questions, contracted forms of the verb ‘will’,native-speaker chunks such as ‘you know’, and a specific use of ellipsis
n One objection toS G Eis that it is associated with excessive informality, but
this is not always the case Vague Language, for example, is the mark of a skilled user, not an overly relaxed or informal one, according to Carter and McCarthy (op.cit.: 202), and they point out that this language is not linked so much to formality as shared knowledge and group
membership Another function of Vague Language is making the message less direct and, therefore, its absence may result in language that sounds more domineering than the speaker intends (Carter and McCarthy: op.cit.)
n Two-step questions emphasize indirectness (ibid.: 201), and therefore,
presumably, politeness, and are thus important for learners in or going to target language countries This is likely to be especially true of requests, where the directness can be reduced with a pre-question As an example,
C G Ecites ‘Are you going to the match tonight?’ as a pre-question to ‘Do you mind if I tag along?’
n Carter and McCarthy (ibid.: 632) note that ‘will’ and the contraction ‘‘ll’
may now be recognized as two separate forms, and the implication is that learners who use the full form when the contraction would normally be used risk sounding more authoritarian than they may mean to be The Cambridge International Corpus shows that the contracted form is much more common, and can now be regarded as the unmarked spoken form These distinct forms may now need to be taught as separate items, assuming students are in contact with native speakers
n Carter (2007: 43, 44) points out that certain chunks, for example,‘sort of’,
‘you know’ mark native speakers, and those who wish for native-like proficiency should learn these He notes that those who think they not need them or are unable to use them may not be able to represent themselves in the way they would like when interacting with native speakers
n Carter (1998: 49) has previously revealed that, rather than being impolite
or casual, ellipsis is actually more appropriate than full forms in certain situations, giving the example of service encounters where time is limited and full forms would cause unnecessary delay, and thus, irritation among those waiting in queues behind
The case for teaching S G Efor production The case for teaching fluency features
(52)learning is based on a model that is not relevant to them, whereas theE L F
model, it is claimed, suits their needs
Supporters ofE L Fallow, and even seem to encourage ‘ .bypassing redundancy .with a view to maintaining intelligibility’ (Alptekin 2007: 267) ‘Bypassing redundancy’ could be said to reflect what native speakers themselves all the time while speaking, in regard to omitting auxiliaries, and using non-standard grammatical forms in noun–verb concord, for example Spoken language, whether of the native speaker or language learner will inevitably involve deviation from ‘written grammar’; however, the form this deviation takes may be important, since the need to
communicate involves not only intelligibility but also efficiency and economy, i.e fluency Much native-speakerS G Eexists for just this reason, to transmit the message as quickly and efficiently as possible
When faced with this need to deviate from written grammar, students may benefit from a model for guidance Supporters ofE L Fseem not to have produced a specific model, and Maley (2006: 5) questions, even if they had, whether students would accept a ‘reduced version’ of English Kuo (2006) notes that native-speaker forms will be the preferred starting point of many students, since they represent a fuller and more complete view of the language than any learner language corpus This is especially true nowC GE
has made these forms easily accessible and shows exactly what role they play
Learners already benefit from skills training in many areas of English, training which aims to give them strategies similar to those used by native speakers, since these are agreed to be the most efficient There seems to be no good reason why the attitude to training students for efficiency in speaking should be any different to other skills, now we know what these strategies are One example is ellipsis, which in the case of written language, as is well known, has definite rules that learners need to know if they are to write fluently As can now be seen, ellipsis in speaking also has clearly defined rules Students learning these could become better speakers, just as they become better writers by learning written grammar rules, and thus the relevancy to all learners can be demonstrated
The case for teaching appropriacy features
Fluency aspects ofS G Emay prove more generally acceptable to learners than those of appropriacy since they appeal more to learners’ needs for flexibility when dealing with the spoken language Appropriacy features like Vague Language are likely to be more controversial, since they represent forms associated with one particular group of native speakers, and thus, it is claimed, learners who use them will be adopting a false identity
(53)Even with appropriacy, there is a case for looking at features on an individual basis when deciding whether to teach them or not Evisonet al.(2007: 154) note that some Vague Category Markers relate to the ‘shared knowledge of all mature, aware human beings’, while others are ‘more locally constrained and culture-bound’ Thus, the principle of general as opposed to context-dependent usefulness to learners can be applied within the category of appropriacy features itself as well as being a major general distinguishing factor between fluency and appropriacy forms
TeachingS GEforms for production, needless to say, should be done sensitively, especially regarding appropriacy features, and should, as far as possible, take into account learners’ needs and where possible, be negotiated with the students
Some teaching suggestions
It is beyond the scope of this article to put forward a specific programme or methodology for teachingS GE In very general terms, however,
a programme as suggested by Timmis (2005: 199), including noticing tasks (see also Willis and Willis 2007: 142) could be combined with activities aimed at helping students produce the language noticed Current activities, such as role play, speaking and listening activities, and games can be adapted toS G Eteaching (for some practical ideas, see Mumford 2007) Such a programme could either be used in a short stand-alone course for those who were interested in rapidly acquiring the forms, or integrated into a wider English course The long-term development of such material will most likely result from methodologists’ interpretations of researchers’ further findings
Conclusion Cambridge Grammar of Englishis a significant contribution to our
knowledge of English because of size of the corpus used and its detailed analysis We can now see thatS GEconsists of a range of different structural and lexical items with a variety of functions As it is purely descriptive, it is not the purpose ofC G Eto give an indication of whether, which features of, or how this new information should be taught However, it gives new impetus to the productive teaching ofS G Eby collating and codifying it, reducing the force of the objection raised by Timmis (op.cit.: 120) that it is not easy to draw up rules of use for these items
CGEtells us much about native-speaker spoken grammar, both appropriacy and fluency It is the latter which is most likely to benefit students who need to speak fluently in English Without knowledge of and ability to use features such as ellipsis, phrasal chaining, placeholders, headers and tails, and fronting, native speakers would find communication a great deal harder This is the difficulty learners face if denied knowledge of, or prohibited from, using such forms
Appropriacy forms are likely to be more context-dependent and therefore more controversial However, it may be more profitable to examine allS GE
(54)concepts of the general and the culturally specific would seem to be useful
Final revised version received January 2008 References
Alptekin, C.2007 ‘TeachingE L Fas a language in its own right: communication or prescriptivism’.E LT Journal61/3: 267–8
Biber, D., S Johansson, G Leech, S Conrad, and E Finegan.2000.Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English Harlow, UK: Pearson Education Ltd Carter, R.1998 ‘Orders of reality:C AN C O D E, communication, and culture’.E LTJournal52/1: 43–5
Carter, R.2007 ‘What is advanced level vocabulary? The case of chunks and clusters’ in P Davidson, C Coombe, D Lloyd, and D Palfreyman (eds.)
Teaching and Learning Vocabulary in Another Language Dubai:T ES O LArabia
Carter, R.andM McCarthy.2006.Cambridge Grammar of English Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Cutting, J.(ed.) 2007.Vague Language Explored Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan
Evison, J., M McCarthy,andA O’Keeffe.2007 ‘Looking out for love and all the rest of it: Vague Category Markers as shared social space’ in J Cutting (ed.).Vague Language Explored Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan
Kuo, I V.2006 ‘Addressing the issue of teaching English as a Lingua Franca’.ELTJournal60/3: 213–21
Kuo, I V.2007 ‘A response to Cem Alptekin’.E LT Journal61/3: 269–71
Maley, A.2006 ‘Questions of English’.English Teaching Professional46: 4–6
Mumford, S.2007 ‘The grammar of spoken English’.Modern English Teacher16/4: 27–30 Rajagopalan, K.2004 ‘The concept of World English and its implications forE LT ’.E LTJournal58/2: 111–7
Timmis, I.2005 ‘Towards a framework for teaching spoken grammar’.E LTJournal59/2: 117–25 Trappes-Lomax, H.2007 ‘Vague Language as a means of self-protective avoidance: tension management in conference talks’ in J Cutting (ed.)
Vague Language Explored Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan
Willis, D.andJ Willis.2007.Doing Task-based Teaching Oxford: Oxford University Press
The author
Simon Mumfordhas taught for 20 years in Izmir, Turkey, and in the UK He currently teaches academic reading and writing, and works in the Academic Writing Centre at the Izmir University of Economics His professional interests include classroom activity design and he edits the Practical Teaching Ideas column inIATEF LVoices He organizes a voluntary workshop programme for the British Council in Izmir He holds the Aston University MSc.T ES O L
(55)What makes a coursebook series stand the test of time?
E´va Ille´s
Intriguingly, at a time when theE LTmarket is inundated with state-of-the-art coursebooks teaching modern-day English, a 30-year-old series enjoys continuing popularity in some secondary schools in Hungary Why would teachers, several of whom are school-based teacher–mentors in the vanguard of the profession, purposefully choose materials which were published not years but decades ago? This paper attempts to find the reasons for their decision and argues for the importance of pedagogically appropriate texts It confirms the view that it is not necessary for a piece to be written by native speakers for native speakers in order to be authentic in the classroom context The study also suggests that texts which display qualities that works of literature possess can not only successfully engage and motivate learners but stand the test of time as well
Introduction At the instigation of some grammar schools in Hungary, the regional
branch of Oxford University Press requested the publisher to reprint the first two books of theAccess to English1series Of the 2004 print run, 2200 of the 3000 copies of the first book and all of the 3000 copies of the second book were sold by April 2007 (personal communication) Given the plethora of more recent publications, the question arises as to what considerations have led HungarianE LTprofessionals to opt for these age-old books which revolve around the life and adventures of a fictitious character, Arthur Newton, a shy, penniless, young librarian who (in the second book) goes back to college and wins the heart and hand of Mary, a pretty fellow librarian Furthermore, what is the appeal of a series where grammar practice is predominantly drills and reading comprehension tasks consist of questions only? How is it possible that, in this day and age, learners are happy to use books without photos and are willing to read texts which give them little information about the ‘real world’ outside their classroom? The continued popularity ofAccess to Englishinevitably challenges some of our most widely held views of what constitutes effective teaching materials
The role of text What teachers seem to value most aboutAccess to Englishis the amount and
(56)InAccess to English, text plays a central role: each unit begins with a narrative and a related dialogue which provide the thematic context for the exercises and drills that follow In fact, the books offer a commodity which is scarce in
ELTthese days: an excellent storyline made up of a string of well-written, engaging texts
In so doing, the series follows a tradition which had its heyday during the 1970s.Kernel Lessons Intermediatepublished by Longman in 1971, for instance, included very short stories with pictures and an action film-like thriller, ‘The Man Who Escaped’, for extensive reading The story of the manageress of a Bristol shoe shop and a Canadian engineer served as the thread that kept the units inBuilding Strategiestogether Another book published in Hungary in 1976 (Angol nyelvkoănyv I.) was based on a gangster spoof which, like a play within a play, was being watched by a family on television
The stories in these publications provided not only a good read but also offered suitable and stimulating contexts for the learning of grammar, vocabulary, and various functions The present continuous in Episode ofKernel Lessons, for example, serves as a means to describe a scene:
The radio is on in an expensive pub in Soho, in the centre of London Most of the people there are not very interested in the news programme, but one man is His name is Eric Masters He is about 45 and is wearing very expensive clothes He is looking very afraid of something There is another man standing next to him at the bar Masters is asking him a question (p 11)
Since this passage is part of an exciting chase, on approaching the text learners (and the teacher) probably focus on the overall meaning of the paragraph rather than the grammatical structure first The reader would like to know who Eric Masters and the other person are, why Masters is looking afraid, why he is interested in the news and, most importantly, what all this has to with the main character, an escaped prisoner In fact, the passage, like acts of communication outside the classroom, leaves a lot unsaid and forces the learner to engage with the text not only linguistically but cognitively and affectively as well Given the prevailing context of the thriller, readers are made to believe that the primary objective of the paragraph is not to provide examples of the present continuous but to unravel the mystery, to ask questions, and resolve the uncertainties
(57)In contrast, in many coursebooks the text does not go beyond ‘a display of encodings’ (Widdowson 2003: 120) The stories mostly function as demonstrations of particular grammatical structures and not much is left to the imagination The written passages often fail to arouse expectations or trigger off engagement with the text The following example provides an illustration of how the pragmatic potential of a story remains unfulfilled:
1Read the story of John and Moira inAand complete their actual conversation inB
T H E MA R R I A G E PR O P O S A L
AJohn greeted Moira and asked how she was She told him she was fine He said it was great to see her He added that they hadn’t seen each other since Paris She said that she had loved Paris and asked if they could go back next spring John said there was something he had to ask her He told her that he loved her and asked if she would marry him and come to Paris on honeymoon She said that she would and that she loved him too (TheN E WeditionNew Headway Intermediate: 94)
If the tasks that follow focused on the unspoken mysteries of the text, for example, what happened in Paris, where and how John and Moira meet this time, etc., rather than on grammatical exercises (identifying passages in direct/indirect speech and completing the dialogue in indirect speech), students would get involved as genuine readers, and could exploit language in a way they normally outside the classroom
As the following extract from a telephone conversation demonstrates, the romance of Rod and Barbara inBuilding Strategiesis not as undisturbed as that of many characters inE F Lmaterials (Tomlinson, Dat, Masuhara, and Rubdy 2001)
Barbara Rod? It’s me, Barbara Am I ringing at a bad time again? Rod No, no That’s all right Is it something important?
Barbara No, not really It’s just .well, some American friends of mine are here for a few days and they wanted to go for a meal this evening I thought maybe you’d like to come too
Rod Well, that does sound fun, but .er .I’m afraid, I’ve got a bad headache, to tell you the truth, and .(p 57)
Apart from discussing why Rod has declined the invitation, the exchange naturally leads to the practice of invitations and telephone conversations Stories offer ample opportunities for the contextualization of vocabulary as well Students learn about the various parts of cars together with Arthur in Access to Englishwhen he has his first driving lesson:
Mr Taylor Now then Did you ever learn about the controls? Arthur Yes, I did but I think I’ve forgotten them now
Mr Taylor Well, anyway, this is the steering wheel, as you know, and these pedals are—the clutch on the left here, and that’s for your left foot; the middle one’s the foot-brake and the one’s on the right’s the accelerator
(58)By providing a context in which these words and structures would naturally occur, the dialogue obtains a ‘pragmatic point’ (Widdowson 2003: 120) As a result, the text will engage the learners’ knowledge of the world (of cars) as well as demonstrate the appropriate pragmatic use of the new vocabulary as opposed to the sheer display of semantic meaning in, for example, a picture–vocabulary matching activity
Authenticity Even though well-written coursebook stories such as ‘The Man Who
Escaped’ orAccess to Englishengage the learners’ interest and are conducive to learning, the question remains whether their language presents authentic stimuli to the students
If authenticity refers to ‘actually attested language produced by native speakers for a normal communicative purpose’ (Widdowson 1983: 30), then the answer is clearly negative since the texts present a fictional world rather than the sociocultural reality of Britain If, however, the term is used to refer to ‘the communicative activity of the language user, to the engagement of interpretative procedures for making sense, even if these procedures are operating on and with textual data which are not authentic in the first sense’ (Widdowson 1983: 30), the language of these stories, without doubt, qualifies as authentic So even though the texts are not authentic in the most commonly used sense of the word, the kind of language use they give rise to is in that learners authenticate the language for themselves by employing procedures for meaning making and displaying responses which are characteristic of normal communicative behaviour
In the case of well-written stories learners genuinely appropriate the texts: they engage with them on their own terms and often on their own initiative As a result, good scripted texts can successfully achieve a natural end, i.e the pragmatic engagement of learners by using what Widdowson (1983: 31) calls the ‘contrived means’ of inauthentic language In so doing, they challenge one of the basic tenets inELTnowadays, i.e that ‘topics which are real and immediate must command more interest and response from learners then [sic] imaginary, made-up content’ (Cunningsworth 1995: 86)
Pedagogic texts and literature
Of the four above-mentioned 1970s coursebooks, onlyAccess to Englishhas remained widely used One of the reasons for this may be that this series is based exclusively on one story (unlikeBuilding StrategiesandKernel Lessons), and is much better written than the Hungarian publication in which short and simple sentences prevail even at stages where such simplification is unnatural and therefore unnecessary
Since the 1970s, there have been several attempts to revive the storyline, for example, Snapshot,Hotline, Zoom in on Britain and Hungary, etc However, most of them differ fromAccess to Englishin that the stories they contain either provide supplementary materials (for example, to summarize and/or recycle) or focus on the development of one particular skill More recent coursebooks also reflect a trend where the visual stimulus takes precedence over the text As a result, the stories are often presented as comics and the text is reduced to utterances in speech bubbles
(59)resemblance to literary texts Even though Arthur is an English bloke in 1970s Britain, his story poses neither spatial nor temporal constraints on interpretation: no previous knowledge of the era or the place is necessary in order to be able to relate to Arthur’s ‘light-hearted adventures’.Access to Englishrepresents fiction, a make-believe world with its own reality, a timeless existence without topicality Given this attribute, the texts surprisingly often fit the description of a work of art which ‘stands before us as ‘‘reality’’, .we must accept it as it is; we can only approve or reject its reality subjectively Though we cannot interfere with it ( .), it can affect us because it is evocative, its reality is sensuous, .’ (Kira´lyfalvi 1975: 77)
Culture There is no hidden or explicit cultural agenda in Arthur’s story The authors
do not intend to tell students who are not ‘fortunate’ enough to live in the British Isles about the particular way of life there, nor they require learners to make comparisons between Britain and their countries Instead, they focus, as the blurb of the first book of the series also claims, on an individual, on the antics of ‘an amiable if somewhat incompetent junior librarian’ InAccess to English, British culture is embedded in the story and comprises an integral part of Arthur’s self-contained reality which will, given its idiosyncratic nature, be at least partially alien to all its readers It seems that long before the debates on teaching culture, the writers ofAccess to Englishhad successfully adopted the kind of ‘psychological or small-scale interactive models’ which have been advocated by Guest (2002: 157) or Holliday (2005)
Such an approach to culture puts non-native users on the same footing as native speakers Not understanding the mysteries of the Football League, for example, can be put down to a lack of personal interest rather than a gap in the knowledge of British culture Much to the credit of the authors, as in real-life situations, the meanings of culture-specific phrases in the books can be worked out from the context or with the help of the illustrations
Speciality As a result of the exclusion of the culture-specific level, the texts inAccess to
Englishconnect to the universal and individual spheres of interpretation This trait is considered central to art, and is called ‘speciality’ in aesthetics The notion refers to a category which falls between individuality and universality, and mediates between them Speciality thus comprises an area which is a qualitatively new combination of both individuality and universality; ‘it contains both, but it is neither’ (Kira´lyfalvi 1975: 74) When the category of speciality is present, texts can have multiple and often highly idiosyncratic interpretations Widdowson argues for this attribute of literature in similar terms:
What is distinctive about literary texts, ( .), is that they provoke diversity by their very generic design in that they not directlyreferto social and institutionalized versions of reality butrepresentan alternative order that can only be individually apprehended They focus, ( .), not on social contours but on personal meanings
(60)As a consequence, the target audience can remain undefined and may include anybody who happens to come across a text This may be the reason whyAccess to Englishis popular with learners of all ages
Speciality and discarding with the sociocultural layer allow for a less restricted interpretation of the texts inAccess to English Like works of art, Arthur’s story is multifaceted and allows for a myriad of readings It is what the students make of it: a love story, an account of Arthur’s adventures, his transformation from being a hapless loser to a confident young man
Characters InE LTcoursebooks, the characters, fictitious, or real, are often
two-dimensional and static personae who leave little for individual
interpretation or imagination The following example is a case in point: Todd Bridges is only seventeen years old but he is already a successful tennis player He comes from Chicago,U S A, but he travels all over the world playing tennis Last year he played tennis championships in Melbourne, Dubai and Paris
(New Headway Pre-Intermediate: 46)
Todd Bridges may be uninteresting but he is still more credible than the following English teacher from Hungary who does not seem to have grasped the basics of the language she teaches:
Hi, I’m Rita from Debrecen When I was in Britain, I was surprised how conscious people seemed to be of their rights I heard the wordA L R I G H T
over and over again and wondered if it had anything to with rights Why don’t we play around with this phrase a little bit?
(Zoom in on Britain and Hungary: 47)
(61)difficult to know how to respond appropriately Arthur’s mishaps thus can help learners to prepare for unexpected eventualities in the future (personal communication)
In their different ways, learners can relate to the shy librarian and are seldom indifferent In fact, they sometimes become so interested that they continue reading, treating the chapters in the books as if they were chapters in a novel The only drawback of such enthusiasm is that it makes it impossible for the teacher to set the task of prediction
Literary devices Apart from the ever-present authorial voice, theAccess to Englishepisodes
often employ effective devices and techniques borrowed from literature For instance, the passages in the chapters often end in suspense When Arthur’s father, who is a doctor, is called to the scene of an accident and Arthur goes with him, they find the wreck of a car with the driver inside it
Arthur All right .Good Lord! I know that car Policeman What?
Arthur I know that car and I know the driver
Policeman Well, he isn’t anybody from the village Who is he, then? (Starting Out: 69)
Although Arthur recognizes the driver instantly, we only find out who the person is in the following chapter In a similar vein, when Arthur takes part in a television quiz, his landlady’s television breaks down before Arthur appears on the screen:
Mrs Harrison Oh, no! The telly’s gone wrong again Oh what a pity! Now we shan’t know what he’s won until he comes home (Getting On: 77)
For the learners this means that they have to the exercises before they learn whether Arthur’s won in the next chapter unless they take a peep, which they often
Sudden twists also make the stories captivating and enjoyable A picnic on the river ends in the boat breaking free, leaving Arthur and the rest of the party stranded on an island Or, one night, on his way home Arthur loses his house key and climbs up on a ladder to his bedroom window when it turns out, with a little help from the police, that he was trying to get into the wrong house
(62)last action is not captured in words but in a drawing which thus becomes an integral part of the story This stands in strong contrast with the common practice of many coursebooks where the glossy photos usually serve as a selling point rather than a cohesive device
One of the best features of Arthur’s story is humour, which is often exploited where it is most needed When inGetting OnArthur and Mary decide to get married and are about to tell Mary’s parents about it, this is what happens before the scene could get too soppy:
Mrs Stephens Is that you Mary? Oh how nice! You’ve Arthur with you Hello, Arthur
Mary Dad, Mother, we’ve got something to .
Mr Stephens Look, love, could it wait for a bit? This match is nearly over I’ve been looking forward to it all week
Mrs Stephens Oh, George, really! You and your football I don’t know what you see in it Anyway, Arthur’s here
Mr Stephens Oh hello, Arthur Sit down Oh you idiot! Not you, Arthur, ha-ha Noble, I mean He gave it away
Arthur Oh, it’s the European Cup Winners’ Cup, isn’t it? The semi-final What’s the score? Are we winning? (p 132)
Practical advantages Although theAccess to Englishtexts form a coherent story, Arthur’s
adventures give rise to text types other than dialogue or narrative There are maps, signs, a family tree, extracts from diaries, newspaper articles, and a grade card among many other genres
Unlike coursebooks where reading passages are usually designed with the sole aim of developing reading skills, the texts inAccess to Englishcan be used for a variety of purposes, including discussion, storytelling, role play, or the explicit teaching of productive vocabulary The chapters seem to have the amount of new lexis that can be realistically taught and tested in a primary or secondary school class This feature of the series proves particularly handy in countries where continuous assessment entails regular oral testing In such contexts, teachers can easily set aside five minutes of each lesson to ask one to two learners to summarize or act out an episode, and give marks for their performance
Arthur’s story also lends itself to different writing activities, ranging from controlled to free tasks For instance, dialogues can be transformed into narratives and vice versa The pictures can be described and the narratives/ dialogues can be summarized Learners can also be asked to keep personal diaries on behalf of various characters, or report on what happens in the town where Arthur lives by writing articles for the ‘Middleford Chronicle’
Conclusion Access to Englishseems to have ingredientsELTcoursebooks often lack:
interesting and motivating topic content, the use of fiction, appropriately sized, coherent, and engaging (reading) texts which stimulate the
(63)beneficial, if not essential, for stimulating and pedagogically effective materials It then appears that authors who know how to tell a good story (for example, J K Rowling, who, in fact, taught English in Portugal at one stage of her life (http://www.jkrowling.com)) andE LTexperts who could add the necessary pedagogic components would make up the ‘dream team’ of coursebook writers
Final revised version received November 2007 Note
1 Details of coursebooks mentioned in the article can be found in the Appendix
References
Cunningsworth, A.1995.Choosing your Coursebook Oxford: Macmillan HeinemannE LT
Guest, M.2002 ‘A critical ‘‘checkbook’’ for culture teaching and learning’.E LTJournal56/2: 154–61 Holliday, A.2005.The Struggle to Teach English as an International Language Oxford: Oxford University Press
Kiralyfalvi, B.1975.The Aesthetics of Gyoărgy Luka´cs Princeton/London: Princeton University Press Tomlinson, B., B Dat, Masuhara, H.andR Rubdy 2001 ‘E F Lcourses for adults’.E LTJournal55/1: 80–101
Widdowson, H G.1983.Learning Purpose and Language Use Oxford: Oxford University Press Widdowson, H G.2003.Defining Issues in English Language Teaching Oxford: Oxford University Press Widdowson, H G.2004.Text, Context, Pretext Oxford: Blackwell Publishing
The author
E´va Ille´steaches in the Department of English Applied Linguistics at Eoătvoăs Lorand University, Budapest She holds a PhD inE SO Lfrom the Institute of Education, University of London She has a wide range of experience including teaching
E SO Lin Britain,E F Lin Hungary, as well as teacher training and materials development
Email: evailles@hotmail.com
Appendix Coursebooks mentioned in the article:
Access to English Starting Out.1974 Coles, M and B Lord Oxford: Oxford University Press
Access to English Getting On.1975 Coles, M and B Lord Oxford: Oxford University Press
Angol Nyelvkoănyv I.1976 Czobor, Zs and Gy Horlai Budapest: Tankoănyvkiado
Building Strategies.1979 Abbs, B and I Freebairn Harlow: Longman Hotline Elementary Student’s Book.1991 Hutchinson, T Oxford: Oxford University Press
Kernel Lessons Intermediate.1971 O’Neill, R., R Kingsbury, and T Yeadon London: Longman
New Headway Pre-Intermediate Student’s Book.2000 Soars, L and J Soars Oxford: Oxford University Press
Snapshot Elementary Student’s Book.1998 Abbs, B., I Freebairn, and C Barker Harlow Longman
TheN E WeditionNew Headway Intermediate Student’s Book.2003 Soars, L and J Soars Oxford: Oxford University Press
(64)Implementing education reform:
E F L teachers’ perspectives
Lakhana Prapaisit de Segovia and Debra M Hardison
The National Education Act of 1999 in Thailand mandated a transition from teacher- to learner-centred instruction for all subjects including English This shift was associated with the development of communicative ability in English to meet the needs of globalization The current study investigated the policy behind and implementation of the reform in English teaching following Johnson’s (1989) decision-making framework for a coherent curriculum Several observations of English classes (grades 5–6) revealed no evidence of communicative language use Stimulated recall and interviews with teachers revealed confusion about the reform’s principles and their application Teachers were concerned about their English proficiency, insufficient training, and inadequate resources and
professional support Of the four interviewed supervisors, one felt that the reform’s principles were not suitable for teaching English Findings point to areas of the curriculum in which coherence can be lost during reform
Curriculum reform Broadly defined, the term ‘curriculum’ in education includes ‘all the
relevant decision-making processes of all the participants’ (Johnson 1989: 1) If the decisions made at various stages are consistent and compatible, the curriculum is said to be coherent There are three major sets of constraints on decision making: policy, pragmatic considerations, and participants and their interaction The level of policy consists of (a) decisions involving curriculum planning (for example, policy statements), (b) learning objectives and the means to accomplish them, (c) programme implementation, including teacher training and materials/resources development, and (d) classroom implementation, specifically the actions of the teachers and learners Pragmatic considerations include time and resources The task of the participants is to reconcile policy and pragmatics Using this framework, the current study investigated the coherence of the English language curriculum in Thailand following a recent reform, which was embedded within the context of a larger national education reform We explored how the reform was understood by several teachers of English and supervisors, what means had been provided to achieve the objective, and whether the reform was evident in classroom teaching practices Examining the outcomes is particularly timely because of recent recommendations from a 2006 conference in Thailand, calling for the development of a new 154 E LTJournal Volume 63/2 April 2009; doi:10.1093/elt/ccn024
ª
(65)national language policy and further change in the professional preparation of teachers and curricula (British Council 2006)
In Thailand, education reform began with policy changes in 1996 as part of Educational Development Plan launched by the Ministry of Education (MOE) These were captured later in the National Education Act of 1999 The reform mandated a shift from a teacher-centred mode of instruction to a learner-centred one involving all subjects including English This movement was fuelled, at least in part, by the need to cope with the dynamic process of globalization in which English plays a crucial role For English classes, this meant emphasizing the development of communicative language skills
Communicative language teaching and a learner-centred approach
The relationship between a learner-centred approach in instruction and communicative language teaching (CLT) is an important one In a detailed analysis of theCLTmovement, Jacobs and Farrell (2001) noted that the shift in instruction towardCLTencompassed the move from teacher-centred to learner-centred instruction This can be seen in the greater attention paid to the following:
1 the role of learners in the learning process;
2 the social nature of learning as seen in the use of pair and group work promoting interaction and cooperative learning;
3 the recognition of individual differences among learners;
4 an emphasis on meaning versus rote learning;
5 the presentation of language forms in context;
6 the role of teachers as facilitators of learning through active engagement of learners in the process
A learner-centred environment is designed to provide learners with more autonomy, with the goal of enhancing the learning process through interaction to develop communicative competence Therefore,
communicatively oriented pedagogic tasks involving authentic materials are the mainstay of classroom activity
Nunan (1989) characterizes the underlying philosophy of a learner-centred curriculum as one in which the goals, materials, and implementation are driven by the subjective needs of the learners and their perceptions of the learning process Although a true learner-centred philosophy advocates the development of a variety of curricula to meet these subjective needs, for the practical purposes of curriculum development in reality, learner needs are more objectively generalized The ability to communicate effectively in the target language is the need which has been ascribed to learners in Thailand as part of policy However, learners in some settings where English is a foreign language not consider communicative competence in English to be a viable goal They place greater value on the more familiar teacher-fronted learning environment with activities focused on grammar and memorization (cf McDonough 2004)
English teaching after the reform
(66)school teachers in Thailand reported that they felt inadequately prepared to teach a foreign language They noted insufficient information regarding (a) research on language teaching and learning, (b) transferring theory into practice, (c) designing communicative curricula, (d) identifying students’ needs, (e) diagnosing learning problems, (f) using techniques such as role play and language games, and (g) constructing communicative tests Teachers also reported avoiding the use of English in their classes because of their own low proficiency, language anxiety, and learners’ focus on studying English grammar for exam purposes (Unyakiat 1991)
The curriculum change also specified that teachers were to provide authentic materials and communicative activities (for example, games) and focus on the following skills according to grade level: listening and speaking at the preparatory level (grades 1–2); listening, speaking, reading, writing, and spelling at the literacy level (grades 3–4); and communication in the four skills at the beginner fundamental level (grades 5–6) By grades and 6, students were expected to have learnt enough basic vocabulary and grammar in English to communicate meaningfully on a daily-life topic
MOE, which was the primary agent responsible for curriculum planning, disseminated information to supervisors and teachers through three sources: televised lectures, a one-day conference, and a document The lectures, given in Thai by several scholars, focused on the theory behind the reform They defined a learner-centred approach as a teaching method that allows learners to go through a process of participatory learning Teachers were considered facilitators who no longer provided correct answers to learners because that would constitute a teacher-centred approach The one-day conference was organized by provincial supervisors, one of whom was interviewed for this study At the conference, a teacher trainer demonstrated participatory learning to groups of teachers; however, none of the
demonstrations dealt with English The document,Teaching Methods of a Learner-centred Approach, produced by the Curriculum and Instruction Development Department, emphasized learning activities should be in line with learners’ aptitudes and interests Learners should participate in all stages of learning Three pages were devoted to the concept of a learner-centred approach; the remainder contained a description of various teaching methods There were no examples for specific subjects Only one out of ten schools visited during this study had a copy of this document The study
Objectives
(67)The teaching supervisors
To gain a broader perspective on how teachers were informed about and prepared for this reform, interviews were conducted in Thai with four supervisors responsible for the training of English teachers in the public schools These interviews, which were recorded, focused on how the supervisors conceptualized the reform and the changing role of the classroom teacher The first interview was with the supervisor of English at the Office of National Primary Education He saw the teachers’ redefined roles under the reform as facilitators who encourage learners to seek knowledge on their own and as developers of activities to meet learners’ individual needs He emphasized, ‘teachers not need to take the role of the knower providing the new knowledge of English to learners’, and believed that the one-day conference and lectures were sufficient for teachers to adopt a learner-centred approach to the teaching of English Of the remaining three individuals, one was a supervisor of English at the provincial level and the other two at the district level The provincial supervisor offered a similar definition of a learner-centred approach, focusing on individual learner differences, and the teachers’ role as the designer of materials and activities to meet each learner’s potential The district-level supervisors defined the approach similarly and emphasized learner differences In a learner-centred approach, learners ideally would search for knowledge from a variety of resources (literally translated as ‘learning centres’) suggested in the conference, including interviews with different people, language labs, museums, and libraries Learners would learn by themselves based on their interests However, one of the district supervisors believed that this approach was not suitable for learning English because developing the ability to use the language communicatively required more guidance from the teacher
Teachers and their classes
Teachers of grades and who met the following four criteria were invited to participate in the study: (a) class size of about 30 students to be
representative of public schools, (b) location in a metropolitan area that provided access to information on the reform, (c) knowledge of the reform, and (d) record of participation in someCLTtraining within the previous three years Preliminary classroom observations and interviews were conducted with ten English teachers of grades and from different schools in two major metropolitan areas According to the district supervisor, teachers at this level were trained inCLT, and were the best English teachers in each school, having completed an English major or minor in college
(68)positions were available in the public schools, which were chosen because they enrolled the majority of the children Recent college graduates sometimes found employment in private schools; those with higher language proficiency found more lucrative positions in other fields Among the younger teachers we spoke to, some indicated that they taught other subjects during English class because of their low English proficiency Classroom
observations
Several elements associated withCLTwere initially selected as foci for the classroom observations: (a) patterns of activity (for example, pair work, group work), (b) use of communicative tasks, and (c) quantity and functions of English use Three classes taught by each of the three teachers were observed This process started six to seven weeks before the end of the semester when teachers and students were well acquainted The teachers were not told of the focus of the study The classes were audio-recorded for later reference; the teachers were not comfortable with video recording A small microphone was attached to the teacher’s collar, and a small tape recorder to the waist Two other small recorders were placed among the students The observer also took field notes
Although some evidence ofC LTwas anticipated, over the total of nine observations, there was no teacher–learner or learner–learner
communicative interaction in English Using the transcriptions, the analysis was refocused quantitatively on the relative proportion of English and Thai usage by each teacher, and the speech act functions English served Following Polio and Duff (1994), utterances were considered instances of target language use if Thai did not constitute more than one word within an English phrase or one phrase within a sentence Repetitions and the few minutes of pronunciation drills were excluded Learners’ use of English was analysed in terms of the types of activities in each class in which English was involved in some way and the proportion of class time they represented Across three observations of Teacher A’s class (total of 103 minutes), she produced 702 phrases and sentences, of which 7.5 per cent (53) were in English Further analysis of the English utterances by function revealed that 61 per cent of these involved giving simple commands such as ‘repeat after me’, ‘sit down’, ‘open your book’, and ‘listen’; 23 per cent were questions (primarily ‘do you understand?’); and 16 per cent were English sentences followed by translations or grammar explanations in Thai Individual learners’ utterances in English were limited to 10.5 per cent (11 minutes) of the three observed classes and were repetitions of sentences after the teacher Choral responses in English, also involving repetitions, comprised 21 per cent (22 minutes) of the total class time These were usually repeating words read from a vocabulary list
Teacher B produced 789 phrases and sentences in a total of 94 minutes, of which 25.5 per cent (201) were in English Of these, 41 per cent involved giving simple commands and 22 per cent were questions as described above Reading English sentences—some followed by grammar
(69)the second visit, more English was used; however, the students had difficulty understanding The teacher often repeated a phrase several times, and then provided the Thai translation for comprehension These repetitions were not counted in the analysis There was one attempt at what Teacher B later referred to as group work Students sat together and were told to listen to a taped weather forecast in English, and write what they heard on maps However, there were no clear instructions as to what details to listen for, and the content required pre-listening instruction, which had not been provided The teacher was disappointed that the students could not the task In the third observation, the amount of English was reduced During the three classes, individual learner’s use of English represented per cent (5.5 minutes) and occurred during the second observation Choral repetition of English constituted 16 per cent of the time (15 minutes) and singing (repeating after the teacher) about per cent Most of these choral responses also occurred during the second observation
Across the three observed classes for Teacher C (total of 76 minutes), she produced 552 phrases and sentences, of which 14 per cent (77) were in English Of these, 68 per cent involved giving commands such as those noted earlier, 16 per cent English–Thai translations, 15 per cent asking questions, and a one-minute total physical response (T P R) activity Individual learner responses in English all involved repetitions and represented 46 per cent (35 minutes) of the total time Choral repetitions were per cent (3 minutes) of the time and singing was 18 per cent (14 minutes), the latter involving reading and then singing with the teacher each line of the song written on the board
Stimulated recall with the teachers
After each classroom visit, the observer conducted a stimulated recall session in Thai with the teacher using the audio recording as a reminder of the content of the class These sessions allowed the teachers to comment on any aspect of their classes
Teacher A commented that the students’ reading and writing of English represented a learner-centred approach She stressed that most of her students were interested in grammar rules because these would be covered on school entrance examinations The recording revealed that this teacher corrected all pronunciation errors when students repeated words after her Although she was concerned that correction might discourage them, she felt strongly that mistakes had to be corrected or they would be repeated She stated that she used more Thai than English in class because her students’ comprehension was low
Teacher B indicated she used little English in class because of her low proficiency, lack of confidence, and the students’ limited listening
comprehension skills As she listened to the recordings of the classes, she emphasized that students’ repetition of words and phrases after her was important because it gave them a chance to listen and speak and helped them to memorize She was uncertain as to how to make English more comprehensible for them
(70)remember language patterns She was very disappointed in their lack of comprehension of task instructions, and was concerned that they would be discouraged from speaking English
Interviews with the teachers
Following all recall sessions, interviews were conducted with each teacher in Thai, recorded, transcribed, and translated into English They included questions on their understanding of the reform, its implications for English teaching, and any obstacles they encountered during the transition to a learner-centred approach
When asked how she was told to teach in a learner-centred approach, Teacher A responded as follows:
Teachers were told to stimulate learners’ curiosity in the way that teachers are counselors who advise their learning process, guide learners to learning resources, suggest interesting topics Learners take most responsibility in seeking knowledge But our society is not familiar with this learning culture It is possible to motivate learners to learn such as telling them about the usefulness of English, but it is impossible to tell learners to seek knowledge for themselves in English The approach can be used in teaching English through interaction —group work where learners participate in language activities I first knew about it during my college years
However, Teacher A felt several problems inhibited her from teaching English communicatively, including insufficient time and financial resources to prepare materials, few teaching manuals, and only one or two days of training Some students also lacked interest in English because it was not used outside the classroom She noted that some could not read or write sufficiently in Thai, and this ‘deficiency of mother tongue affects the learning of English as well’
Teacher B described a learner-centred approach as follows:
Learner-centred means teaching what learners want to learn They told us that learners and act on their own and teachers are facilitators If we let learners and act from the beginning of the class, it is the end of the story because they not know what to In the new curriculum, teachers are supposed to speak English to make the students familiar with it If I speak only English, they don’t understand so I speak an English sentence followed by a translation
She emphasized the difficulty in having to provide a foundation in English for her students in grade because they had not received it earlier Additional problems included the lack of English materials, functioning lab equipment, general teaching supplies, and support from the school principal ‘In the school meeting, teachers are not supposed to speak’ Teacher C described the approach in the following way:
In a learner-centred approach, learners are encouraged to seek knowledge from learning resources, and to put knowledge into practice on their own There is no more memorization But we need to give learners
(71)MOEneeds to realize this problem It needs to give better knowledge of how to reform the learning and teaching to teachers before asking them to change They told us to so many things that we don’t think we can work to meet the standards set
Teacher C wanted to improve her English pronunciation, and reiterated the problem of students who not think learning English is useful Academic performance in English was not taken into consideration in passing to the next level
Conclusions The results of this study revealed areas of loss in curriculum coherence
Some of the same issues surrounding English teaching in Thailand have arisen in other Asian contexts (Nunan 2003) These issues include (a) the economic benefits of globalization as the apparent driving force behind English teaching, (b) concern for teachers’ English proficiency and methodological training, and (c) the disconnect between curriculum policy and classroom practice in terms of teaching principles, referred to as the gap between ‘rhetoric and reality’ (Nunan op cit.: 604) In Johnson’s (op cit.) framework, this gap is a loss of coherence ‘Policy statements tend to be utopian’ (Johnson ibid.: 3); therefore, it is not too surprising that the shift from a teacher-centred to a learner-centred approach did not evolve smoothly It required an understanding of the language learning process in order to establish attainable goals and compatible methodology This must be done in view of constraints on achievement including the lack of contact with the target language outside the classroom Programme
implementation involved additional obstacles, including the lack of sufficient teacher training, resources, mentoring support, and the cost of further education for in-service teachers Although the teachers played a major role in the reform, they were an untapped resource in the decision-making process (cf Fullan 1993) The learners’ lack of interest in learning English and perception of its lack of value were not conducive to building a coherent curriculum based on a learner-centred philosophy Other problems such as teacher confidence and a radical timetable for change (a pragmatic constraint) contributed to failure
A look toward the future
(72)colleagues in the same area where perhaps only one teacher is able to attend a workshop or obtain information Changing learners’ perceptions about the lack of usefulness of English is yet another challenge, and related to the focus of school entrance examinations The extent to which changes will ensue from the Council’s recommendations is uncertain, but should be of interest to curriculum participants in a variety of learning environments seeking to undertake reform
Final revised version received December 2007 References
British Council.2006.Future Perfect–English Language Policy for Global Transition Conference Report http://my.britishcouncil.or.th/upload/ future-perfect/statement-of-conference-outcomes.pdf (accessed 18 December 2007) Curtis, A.andL Cheng.2001 ‘Teachers’ self-evaluation of knowledge, skills and personality characteristics needed to manage change’ Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education29/2: 139–52 Fullan, M.1993.Change Forces: Probing the Depth of Educational Reform London: Falmer Press Gass, S.andA Mackey.2000.Stimulated Recall Methodology in Second Language Research Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum
Hayes, D.1995 ‘In-service teacher development: some basic principles’.E LTJournal49/3: 252–61 Jacobs, G M.andT S C Farrell.2001 ‘Paradigm shift: understanding and implementing change in second language education’.T ES L - EJ5/1: 1–16 Johnson, R K.1989 ‘A decision-making framework for the coherent language curriculum’ in
R K Johnson (ed.).The Second Language Curriculum Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
McDonough, K.2004 ‘Learner-learner interaction during pair and small group activities in a ThaiEF L
context’.System32/2: 207–24
Nunan, D.1989 ‘Hidden agendas: the role of the learner in programme implementation’ in
R K Johnson (ed.).The Second Language Curriculum Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Nunan, D.2003 ‘The impact of English as a global language on educational policies and practices in the Asia-Pacific region’.T E S O LQuarterly37/4: 589–613
Polio, C G.andP A Duff.1994 ‘Teachers’ language use in university foreign language classroom: a qualitative analysis of English and target language alternation’.The Modern Language Journal78/3: 313–26
Unyakiat, P.1991 ‘A study of Thai secondary school
E F Lteachers’ perceptions of their preparation to teach English’ Unpublished PhD thesis, The Ohio State University
The authors
Lakhana Prapaisit de Segoviawas affiliated with Prince of Songkla University, Thailand, before becoming Director of the Language Centre at Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Lima, Peru She is involved with teacher education and
development of curricula and materials
Debra Hardisonteaches courses in second language acquisition, research methods, and language teaching at Michigan State University She has published in the area of spoken language processing and production and technology in oral skills development
(73)readers respond
Swan’s way
Luke Prodromou
Michael Swan’s review of my bookEnglish as a Lingua Franca: A Corpus-based Analysis(E LTJournal63/1: 78–81) is an interesting statement of what Swan thinks of bothE L Fand corpus analysis and is a welcome challenge to some of the views I hold: healthy debate can only benefit the teaching profession It was in this spirit that I wrote my book, which is based on research conducted with 42 L2-users from many countries around the world My work was tentative and exploratory and tried to synthesize conflicting views onE L F At the end of the book, I wrote: ‘I hope .the end product is a creative synthesis of differing positions on a range of questions such as the role of corpora, idiomaticity inE L Fand sound teaching practice’
(Prodromou 2008: 257) Above all, in my closing remarks, I repeat a point I make throughout the book against hasty overgeneralizations aboutE L F: ‘it is too early to draw firm conclusions about the performance features of successful users of English as an international language from such a small corpus of language’ (ibid.: 258)
I find if it difficult, therefore, to recognize my book in Swan’s review, in which I am assigned views and convictions I not hold Indeed, at certain points, Swan seriously, and I believe inadvertently, distorts the arguments of the book
In this response, I would like to correct the points in Swan’s article where he gives an inaccurate impression of the actual contents of the book, and also take him up on some of the wider issues he raises concerningE L Fand the use of corpus techniques in the book
1 Throughout my book I refer to the ‘L2-user’ rather than the ‘non-native speaker’ This is a fundamental aspect of the book Swan ignores my use of the term ‘L2-user’ and throughout his text foists on me his own preferred term, the deficit-laden ‘non-native speaker’, for example: ‘Prodromou argues that previous studies have testedN N Ss’ knowledge about idiomaticity ’
As I say in the introduction to the book: ‘I not subscribe to the deficit view of L2-use that the terms ‘‘native’’ and ‘‘non-native’’ are often associated with My preferred terms are ‘‘L1-user’’ and ‘‘L2-user’’’ (Prodromou op.cit.: xiv) Swan is, of course, entitled to his own point of view and is free to continue to use the anglo-centric ‘non-native speaker’, but the reader of the review should not be given the impression that I share that view
(74)The difference between the two terms is that my term sees people as agents who make use of the language in their own terms, whereas the negative prefix in ‘non-native speaker’ reinforces the view that non-L1-users are failed ‘native-speakers’ whose English is riddled with errors; the term ‘non-native speaker’ when used without quotation marks casts L2-users in the role of perpetual learners who are forever deviating from ‘native-speaker’ norms Thus, Swan asserts that ‘learner English is not a new subject of study’, but my book is expressly not about learners, it is about ‘proficient’ users Swan’s choice of terms confirms the anglo-centric view he expresses elsewhere in his review thatN N Ss’ English ‘is directly or indirectly derived from one of the several NS models’
2 Swan tells his readers that the non-canonical phrases found in my corpus and listed in my book are given as examples of grammatically accurate and creative uses of English by L2-users This is not the case I not present these phrases either as correct (by the norms of Standard English) or as creative uses of language They are given in the book as examples of ‘errors’ in collocation (what I call ‘non-canonical variations’ to avoid a deficit view of the L2-user as constantly in error when compared to L1-users) The point I make is that on a grammatical level, proficient L2-users make virtually no ‘errors’ in the traditional anglo-centric sense of ‘native-speaker norms’ butdodeviate a great deal from these ‘norms’ on the level of phraseology These phrases (‘back in my head’ instead of ‘at the back of my mind’, etc.) are not presented as examples of creativity and I say so before and after the table in question: ‘there, are, however, 40 non-canonical versions of idiomatic phraseology .’ (ibid.: 221) and ‘why is creative idiomaticity such a rare occurrence in L2 and why are colourful idioms and other multi-word units error-prone?’ (ibid.: 222)
The whole point of my argument is that proficient L2-users make few ‘errors’ (in Swan’s sense, not mine) in the realm of grammar but make ‘errors’ in the realm of phraseology
3 Swan tells his readers that I look only at two formulae in my book: ‘sort of’ and ‘you see’ Not so
The whole point of my thesis is that these two-word formulae are extended idiomatic units that form clusters with their collocates: thus, in the book, I analyse or refer to the following lexical items: ‘thing’, ‘stuff’, ‘like’, ‘you know’, ‘just’ (pp 130–8), ‘yeah’, ‘but’, ‘well’, ‘because’ (pp 180–7)
I point out throughout the book that much of the meaning of phrases such as ‘sort of’ and ‘you see’ lies in their collocates and the pragmatic intentions they express, not in their discrete dictionary meanings This is why the book looks at more than just these two formulaic items
I also devote the longest chapter in the book to colourful idioms of the ‘raining cats and dogs’ variety and report on my survey of the prepositional verb ‘bump into’ (conducted with 400 teachers)
(75)All I can say is that every one of the 12 chapters tackles aspects ofE L F
(idiomaticity, conversation, fluency, culture, corpora, quantitative data, qualitative analysis, and pedagogic implications) as readers will discover after even a cursory glance at the book
5 Swan does not seem to understand the sense in which I use the term ‘sociocultural’ He clearly assumes it is a synonym of ‘cultural’ and, as a result, distorts my argument
The term refers to the work of Vygotsky, Bakhtin, Lantolf, and others and centres around the view that language is emergent and takes the shape it does as a result of the pressure of interaction in particular contexts In practice, this means that lexical items (and grammar) cannot be understood in terms of their isolated dictionary entries (or as entries in grammar reference books) but as clusters of items, with ever-changing meanings, depending on the previous uses to which the items have been put, the way they combine with other items and on the previous knowledge and present intentions of the interlocutors This is a far cry from Swan’s assumption that ‘sociocultural’ refers to ‘the culture of a specific speech community’ and the breathtakingly simplistic assertion that some formulaic language is ‘culturally neutral’ (p 79) The distortion of my position flows from this misconception of a fundamental theoretical concept which I explain at some length in Chapter of the book
6 Swan bemoans the ‘lack of quantitative treatment’ of the data in my corpus but Chapter is all quantitative data and the qualitative analysis in subsequent chapters always begins from such data
Unlike much of the work on language that appears in theE LTpress, I have taken the trouble to collect 200,000 words of spoken English in
25 countries which I subject to frequency counts and comparative percentage differences in L1- and L2-user conversation Figures—and the tendencies they suggest—are always my starting point for analysis I not merely give my opinion, based on ‘native-speaker’ intuition, as this is notoriously unreliable Yet, this is precisely what Swan claims he can when, with enviable self-confidence, he says he could gain the same insights as my corpus analysis through his intuition of collocation (‘it is just what naturally happens’) Swan’s own explanation of why learners and L2-users have difficulty with collocations is that ‘there are so many of them’ This is a somewhat vacuous statement as there are many individual lexical items in the English language, too, but they are clearly easier to learn than idiomatic and formulaic collocations
(76)An indication of why Swan’s review is really Swan’s view ofE L Fand not a balanced reflection of my book is the fact that the whole of the last section of his review (20 per cent of the whole text) is his personal peroration onE L F
and pedagogy that makes no reference to the arguments of my book at all This ‘conclusion’ to his review seems to be a response (in absentia) to the work of otherE L Fscholars, who seeE L Fas a variety of English, which I not Nothing in Swan’s last page is a response to issues raised in my book, which is a critique of the mainstream concept ofEL Fand in that respect is in agreement with much of what Swan says in his conclusion
Reference
Jenkins, J.2007.English as a Lingua Franca: Attitude and Identity Oxford: Oxford University Press Prodromou, L.2008.English as a Lingua Franca: A Corpus-based Analysis London: Continuum
The author
Luke Prodromouis a freelance teacher, teacher trainer, and materials writer based in Greece He has worked for the British Council and a variety of private institutions in Greece, Spain, and the UK He has writtenDealing with Difficulties(Delta, with L Clandfield), winner of the Ben Warren Prize, an
English Speaking Union award and nominated for a British Council Elton Award for Innovation in English Language Teaching for 2007 He is also co-author ofAttitude(for adults) andSmash(for young learners—both Macmillan) He has an MA in Shakespeare Studies (Birmingham University), a Diploma inT E S L(Leeds University), and a PhD from the University of Nottingham His book,
English as a Lingua Franca: A Corpus-based Analysis, was published in 2008 by Continuum He is currently teaching young learners
(77)readers respond
Discussing the Extended Writing Project
Yun Zhang
InE LTJournal62/1, Walker and Pe´rez Rı´u (2008) discuss the Extended Writing Project (E W P) devised by them to resolve the incoherence between a process approach to teaching and assessment through a timed essay The
EWP, as an evaluation mechanism, allows tutors to assess the process as well as the product of students’ writing For theEW P, students are required to write an extended text in four consecutive sections, each of which is read and assessed by their tutor Therefore, through theEWP, students get the chance to draft, revise, and correct a text worth 20 per cent of their course mark (ibid.: 20) Altogether, six stages are involved in the project
TheE W Pis very similar to what I have been doing with my students Unlike their students who are following a 3-year diploma course in tourism, my students are learning English as their major So the topics they are writing about are not restricted to any specific field However, from the experience I have gained in my teaching, I would like to suggest some ways in which theEW Pmight be improved
At Stage of theE W P, students are asked to propose a topic, subject to their tutor’s approval (ibid.: 21) My opinion is that we should either ask students to propose their own topic or let them choose a topic from a list we provide Very often, students are at a loss when they are asked to propose a topic by themselves Providing a topic list can save time and reduce their anxiety At Stage 2, students are required to prepare a preliminary outline for their article (ibid.: 21) I think this stage can be optional An outline may not be helpful if students are asked to write an article like a lyric prose to express their sentiments towards someone, say, a hero In this case, an outline may prevent students from freely expressing their inner feelings
(78)it with their peers before they hand in their draft After reading the drafts, tutors should provide students with their suggestions for improvement Only after following all these steps can an outline be considered to be the final one This process should not be omitted because only a good outline can ensure that the writing process will progress smoothly
At Stage 3, students are asked to hand in the first draft of the first section of their article for correction The description of this stage by Walker and Pe´rez Rı´u tells us that in their practice of theE W P, students hand in their draft for tutor correction immediately after they have completed one section of their article In my own teaching, cold treatment is also involved at this stage Students are usually asked to put their first draft away for some time before they read it again Very often, students can notice the errors they made in their first draft after the cooling-off period Then, they are asked to rewrite their first draft and give the second draft to their peers for proofreading The peer students are asked to note down their suggestions for further revision, and they will gain some points if they a good job Only after that can students hand in their draft This means that what I, the tutor, read is the third draft By the way, proofreading articles written by others can also help students improve their language ability and writing skills because noticing the errors made by others can help students avoid them in their own writing At Stage of theE W P, students, with the help of the feedback from their tutor, redraft the first section of their article, with the focus on the correction of language errors and the improvement of coherence, cohesion, relevance of ideas, and so on After that, they can go on to draft the second section that will be done in the same way as the first (ibid.: 21) Clearly, one of the differences between my teaching and that of Walker and Pe´rez Rı´u is that what my students rewrite at this stage is not the first but, actually, the third draft of the first section Another difference is that I will ask both the writers and their peers to compare the final version with the second and third drafts of each section so that they can notice the differences and learn something from this writing process
At Stage 5, students are required to write the final two sections of their article But this time, Walker and Pe´rez Rı´u offer less explicit feedback with respect to language errors (ibid.: 21) I agree that this will increase students’ independence in the revision of their article But one thing we should is to tell students that they will lose some points if the errors in the drafts of the first two sections recur
The last stage of theEW Pis quite simple and without problems Students simply hand in for grading the final version of the whole article, the bibliography, the drafts, and the comments and suggestions made in the tutorial (ibid.: 22)
(79)more attention, and I think it is these errors that should end up on the error sheet
Another thing to keep in mind is that although we can help students polish their article section by section, sometimes we should let students finish writing an article in one sitting, for example, a lyric prose, as the longer the writing process lasts, the more likely the inspiration will fade Such a piece of writing completed in one session could well fit within the framework of a ‘process’ approach because the writing process has not yet stopped when the first draft of the whole article is finished We can still follow the above steps, and the only difference is that the ideas for the second section are already there to be enhanced before the first section is considered to be in its final form
Final revised version received October 2008 Reference
Walker, R.andC Pe´rez Rı´u.2008 ‘Coherence in the assessment of writing skills’.ELTJournal62/1: 18–28
The author
(80)key concepts in elt
Age and the critical period hypothesis
Christian Abello-Contesse
In the field of second language acquisition (SLA), how specific aspects of learning a non-native language (L2) may be affected by when the process begins is referred to as the ‘age factor’ Because of the way age intersects with a range of social, affective, educational, and experiential variables, clarifying its relationship with learning rate and/or success is a major challenge
There is a popular belief that children as L2 learners are ‘superior’ to adults (Scovel 2000), that is, the younger the learner, the quicker the learning process and the better the outcomes Nevertheless, a closer examination of the ways in which age combines with other variables reveals a more complex picture, with both favourable and unfavourable age-related differences being associated with early- and late-starting L2 learners (Johnstone 2002)
The ‘critical period hypothesis’ (C P H) is a particularly relevant case in point This is the claim that there is, indeed, an optimal period for language acquisition, ending at puberty However, in its original formulation (Lenneberg 1967), evidence for its existence was based on the relearning of impaired L1 skills, rather than the learning of a second language under normal circumstances
Furthermore, although the age factor is an uncontroversial research variable extending from birth to death (Cook 1995), and theC P His a narrowly focused proposal subject to recurrent debate, ironically, it is the latter that tends to dominateSLAdiscussions (Garcı´a Lecumberri and Gallardo 2003), resulting in a number of competing conceptualizations Thus, in the current literature on the subject (Bialystok 1997; Richards and Schmidt 2002; Abello-Contesseet al.2006), references can be found to (i) multiple critical periods (each based on a specific language component, such as age six for L2 phonology), (ii) the non-existence of one or more critical periods for L2 versus L1 acquisition, (iii) a ‘sensitive’ yet not ‘critical’ period, and (iv) a gradual and continual decline from childhood to
adulthood
It therefore needs to be recognized that there is a marked contrast between theCPHas an issue of continuing dispute inSL A, on the one hand, and, on the other, the popular view that it is an invariable ‘law’, equally applicable to any L2 acquisition context or situation In fact, research indicates that age effects of all kinds depend largely on the actual opportunities for learning which are available within overall contexts of L2 acquisition and particular 170 E LTJournal Volume 63/2 April 2009; doi:10.1093/elt/ccn072
ª
(81)learning situations, notably the extent to which initial exposure is substantial and sustained (Lightbown 2000)
Thus, most classroom-based studies have shown not only a lack of direct correlation between an earlier start and more successful/rapid L2
development but also a strong tendency for older children and teenagers to be more efficient learners For example, in research conducted in the context of conventional school programmes, Cenoz (2003) and Mun˜oz (2006) have shown that learners whose exposure to the L2 began at age 11 consistently displayed higher levels of proficiency than those for whom it began at or Furthermore, comparable limitations have been reported for young learners in school settings involving innovative, immersion-type programmes, where exposure to the target language is significantly increased through subject-matter teaching in the L2 (Genesee 1992; Abello-Contesse 2006) In sum, as Harley and Wang (1997) have argued, more mature learners are usually capable of making faster initial progress in acquiring the grammatical and lexical components of an L2 due to their higher level of cognitive development and greater analytical abilities In terms of language pedagogy, it can therefore be concluded that (i) there is no single ‘magic’ age for L2 learning, (ii) both older and younger learners are able to achieve advanced levels of proficiency in an L2, and (iii) the general and specific characteristics of the learning environment are also likely to be variables of equal or greater importance
References
Abello-Contesse, C.2006 ‘Does interaction help or hinder oral L2 development in early English immersion?’ in C Abello-Contesseet al.(eds.) Abello-Contesse, C., R Chaco´n Beltra´n, M D Lo´pez-Jime´nez,andM M Torreblanca-Lo´pez(eds.) 2006
Age in L2 Acquisition and Teaching Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang
Bialystok, E.1997 ‘The structure of age: in search of barriers to second language acquisition’.Second Language Research13/2: 116–37
Cenoz, J.2003 ‘The influence of age on the acquisition of English: general proficiency, attitudes and code-mixing’ in M P Garcı´a Mayo and M L Garcı´a Lecumberri (eds.)
Cook, V.1995 ‘Multicompetence and effects of age’ in D Singleton and Z Lengyel (eds.).The Age Factor in Second Language Acquisition Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters Ltd
Garcı´a Lecumberri, M L.andF Gallardo.2003 ‘English FL sounds in school learners of different ages’ in M P Garcı´a Mayo and M L Garcı´a Lecumberri (eds.)
Garcı´aMayo, M P.andM L Garcı´a Lecumberri(eds.) 2003.Age and Acquisition of English as a Foreign Language Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters Ltd Genesee, F.1992 ‘Pedagogical implications of second language immersion’ in F Etxeberria and
J Arzamendi (eds.).Bilinguăismo y Adquisicion de Segundas Lenguas Bilbao, Spain: Servicio Editorial de la Universidad del Paı´s Vasco
Harley, B.andW Wang.1997 ‘The critical period hypothesis: where are we now?’ in A M B de Groot and J F Kroll (eds.).Tutorials in Bilingualism Psycholinguistic Perspectives Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Johnstone, R.2002 ‘Addressing ‘‘the age factor’’: some implications for language policy’ Council of Europe, Strasbourg: Available at: http://www.coe int/t/dg4/linguistic/source/JohnstoneEN.pdf Lenneberg, E H.1967.Biological Foundations of Language New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc Lightbown, P.2000 ‘ClassroomSLAresearch and second language teaching’.Applied Linguistics21/4: 431–62
Mun˜oz, C.2006 ‘TheB AFproject: research on the effects of age on foreign language acquisition’ in C Abello-Contesseet al.(eds.)
Richards, J C.andR Schmidt.2002.Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics London: Longman
(82)The author
Dr Christian Abello-Contesseis an Associate Professor at the University of Seville, Spain, where he teaches undergraduate courses in
ELTmethodology and psycholinguistics and graduate seminars inS L A, bilingualism,
and bilingual education He has published numerous journal articles and book chapters on L2 learning and teaching and has taught at several universities in Chile, Spain, and the United States
(83)Reviews
Doing Task-Based Teaching
D Willis and J Willis
Oxford University Press 2007, 294 pp., £18
isbn978 19 442210
Tasks in Second Language Learning
V Samuda and M Bygate
Palgrave Macmillan 2007, 312 pp., £19.99
isbn814 0391 1872
What are we to make of based learning and task-based teaching (T B L/T B T)? Its advocates promote its efficacy with fervour, but not everyone shares their enthusiasm for, as Samuda and Bygate point out, ‘Tasks have been an element in second language teaching and research for over 30 years, and yet their use continues to invite controversy’ (p 1) Perhaps this has something to with the fact that despite some of the dramatic claims for the superiority ofTB L
over more traditional form-focused teaching, there is little classroom-based research evidence to prove or disprove such claims Will the two books under review help to resolve the controversy in any way and, speaking personally, will they help this reviewer to arrive at a more informed evaluation ofT B L’s efficacy?
Before trying to answer these two questions, it is worth describing what these two books contain and what, if anything should command a reader’s attention
The first thing to say about the books under review is that they are very different animals Whereas Willis and Willis devote slightly less than two-and-a-half pages to the topic of ‘second language acquisition research andT B T’, Samuda and Bygate devote more than two thirds of their book to opinion and research into tasks, and only some 35 pages to the way in which tasks have been (and are being) implemented in a pedagogic context Willis and Willis, on the other hand—and as the title of their book suggests—focus on tasks and task-based teaching in the classroom
and, as such, aim to offer teachers insights and procedures to help them become fully fledgedTB L
practitioners
The great strength ofDoing Task-Based Teachingis the inclusion of many examples of tasks and task sequences from a large group of teachers around the world For example, in Canada, Sandee Thompson tweaks a ‘directions’ task with her lower intermediate students; at Yale University, Alicia van Altena gets her students on a ‘Spanish in the media’ course to design a radio programme based on two views of Fidel’s Cuba and, in Japan, Jason Moser runs an activity sequence talking about animals and pets and relishes the advantages of task repetition
Doing Task-Based Teachingis divided into ten chapters which address themes such as the basis of task-based approaches, task-based sequences in the classroom, listing, sorting, classifying, matching, problem solving, projects, and storytelling There are chapters on language focus and form focus, on the task-based classroom and the real world, on adapting and refining tasks, designing a task-based syllabus, and on how to integrateT B Twith coursebooks and other frequently asked questions Along the way, in a chapter called ‘Tasks based on written and spoken texts’, there is a fabulous array of reading activities, including prediction and language-based tasks, sometimes focused on meaning and sometimes focused on form Although the chapter is less generous in its attention to spoken text, the detailed descriptions of reading sequences are exemplary, and I would urge you to look at them I feel similarly positive about the listing, sorting, classifying (and many other) activities on offer here I would want any teacher to have access to knowledge about them Helpfully, the authors offer mind maps showing the different options (activities) available for the treatment of a topic There is an excellent discussion of task parameters (i.e things you have to decide when designing a task) and a convincing (but short) defence of tasks in mixed ability groups In other words, this book is packed with good activities and useful advice
(84)The great strength ofTasks in Second Language Learningis that not only are modern tasks set in their historical context but also that Samuda and Bygate take us on an extended tour of research undertaken so far, before pointing us to possible research in the future Along the way, they take time out to look at some applications ofT B Lin pedagogic contexts Thus, in the seven chapters that make up ‘Part 1: Background’, we learn about the work of Dewey (the great-grandfather of holistic and experiential learning) and Kirkpatrick on projects (in the second decade of the twentieth century) Bruner discusses learning transfer in the 1960s, and in the 1970s, Freinet writes about purposeful learning while Freire suggests a four-phase process of participatory curriculum development When, in Chapter 4, Samuda and Bygate discuss tasks in second language pedagogy, they reference the work of Swales and Van Lier in the 1990s and Leun in 2001 In Chapter 5, they call on Candlin, Long, Prabhu, Skehan, Ellis, Bereiter, and Scardamalia to help them define a pedagogic task (an issue we will return to later) In Chapter 8, the authors look in detail at eight pieces of research into pedagogic tasks, and in Chapter 9, they discuss how task-based learning has been used and incorporated into second language teaching and learning by looking especially (but not only) at the widely quoted Bangalore project, Long and Crookes’ ‘no language seeding’ proposals, and at Jane Willis’ 1996A Framework for Task-Based Learning.Tasks in Second Language Learningends with a wonderfully useful list of suggestions for future research and a list of resources for anyone interested in pursuing tasks further Throughout the book, the authors are keen to pin down research issues and problems and to suggest ways out of them because one of their aims is to explore why tasks are controversial and ‘to consider what people to make tasks educative or uneducative, why this can happen, and what the alternatives might be’ (p 1)
And so back to my original question, which is essentially about whetherT B Lworks and why I, or any other teacher, should be involved in it In my opinion, an awful lot hangs on what a task actually is Willis and Willis are less than helpful here True they offer ‘criteria’ for tasks, but ‘these criteria will not provide us with a watertightdefinitionof what constitutes a task .’(p 13) Instead they quote, admiringly, Skehan’s suggestion that ‘some of the time it may be difficult to decide whether an activity merits the label ‘‘task’’ since the two underlying characteristics, avoidance of specific structures and engagement with worthwhile meaning, are matters of degree, rather than being categorical’ As I read this, I found myself thinking that in a book which is written for
‘teachers who want to get a better understanding of how task-based teaching works in practice’ (p xiii) and which is devoted to the superiority of such practices, a lack of willingness to pin down exactly what is on offer is less than totally persuasive As far as I can see a task in the world of Willis and Willis is a kind of more or less communicative activity with more or less of a focus on language I have absolutely no objection to communicative activities of course (how could I?), but if I cannot be sure whether or not they aretasks—the central building blocks, after all, of this whole way of looking at teaching and learning—it makes it quite difficult to evaluate what is going on
Samuda and Bygate, however, not duck the definition issue in the same way After considerable discussion of how people have tried to define tasks, they come up with their own reasoned version which is ‘A task is a holistic activity which engages language use in order to achieve some non-linguistic outcome while meeting a linguistic challenge, with the overall aim of promoting language learning through process or product or both’ (p 69) This sounds better, though you may still feel, as I do, that it leaves the whole issue of exactly where attention to language form fits in somewhat open
A marked feature of Willis and Willis is to suggest that task-based teaching, if I understand this correctly, is any kind of teaching which involves tasks This allows them to categorize lessons and programmes which have some kind of task-based activity in a longer procedure as ‘task based’ For example, they describe how one of their teacher informants ‘coordinated the introduction ofT B Linto his program’ (p 182) This sounds great, especially the contention that when teachers are all doing the same thing they have a lot they can share and talk about It sounds like a terrific piece of work But (and I think this is really important in a discussion ofTB L) ‘lesson planning meant figuring out how to use the task and then build a sequence around it’ (p 182) What worries me here is an elision between what Samuda and Bygate characterize as task-basedlearning and teaching as opposed to task-supportedlearning and teaching If
T B Lis, in reality, task-supported learning, we can say
(85)language form was opportunistic rather than part of task design
Of course, this fault-line runs through all discussions of task-based teaching Whereas the work of people like Nunan (2004) seems to suggest that it is okay to teach language first and then use it to perform a task later, other versions suggest the opposite: task first, language later That is what I thought Jane Willis was advocating in her framework book (Willis 1996) Now I am not so sure
InDoing Task-Based Teaching, the authors are keen to stress that ‘form should be subordinated to meaning and, for this reason, should come after, rather than before a task’ (p 18) They base this on a passionately argued section in which they say that if students learn a form and then try and use it meaningfully they will fail because ‘it is very difficult to concentrate on what we are going to say and at the same time onhowwe are going to say it’ (p 17) After all, they point out, it takes language a long time to develop and the first treatment will not lead to mastery (nor will correction by the way, which inexplicably gets less than a page in this book because it is not ‘nearly as effective as we would like to think’ [p 122]) This development process is presumably why so much practice and review—and activities such as role-play, projects, etc.—are built into modern lesson sequences And these are exactly the kind of activities which are so abundantly provided in their book But remember that they insist that form focus comes after, not before a task How then, we categorize a stage where ‘there is likely to be a focus on language, especially on lexis—words and phrases—at the beginning when the teacher is priming or setting up the task sequence’ (p 113)? Indeed, many of the activities on show here have language study at all sorts of different stages (both pre-, inter-, and post-task in my judgement), and while this seems completely unexceptionable, it does not appear to justify the claim that something essentiallydifferentis going on Of course, this quandary is not new In their summary of the Bangalore project, Samuda and Bygate focus on the intense discussion it generated about whether the teacher-led pre-task stage was a form of covert teaching or not—and further whether the success of the project was more the result of teacher and student enthusiasm rather than for any real pedagogic reason Furthermore, why is it necessarily better for language to be met in a meaning-focused task rather than overtly in pre-task form-focused activities? If language takes time to develop, perhaps, it will take that time however it is first encountered Moreover trying to get the form and the meaning right at the same time is just as
problematic whichever way you come to it, I would have thought!
And so my reaction to reading these two books is a hugely reinforced ambivalence aboutT B Land a great excitement about the directions in which future research might help me to understand it Samuda and Bygate have laid the ground out here with admirable clarity and engagement and provoked a host of (good) questions about what happens when people engage in experiential tasks Willis and Willis, on the other hand, have made it less easy for me to sign up as a fully fledged disciple of task-based learning and teaching, even though they have offered me a range of interesting and enjoyable activities Despite reading these two titles then, I still find myself in sympathy with Littlewood’s (2004) suggestion that ‘the main common denominator of communicative and task-based approaches in their various forms is that, even when they use form-focused procedures, they are alwaysorientedtowards communication’ (pp 325–6) Er, well yes! And anyway, there is one big elephant clomping around in this particular room, namely whether an approach to language learning which depends on tasks is appropriate for all kinds of learners Bygate and Samuda discuss learner difference in the strategies they adopt for performing tasks, and that is an area well worth researching, but neither they nor Willis and Willis are able to address the issue of whetherT B L always wins out over more traditional form-focused teaching, and whether it does this for all students, even those who need the comfort of analysis or who want to depend on their ‘considerable intellects’ (Pinker 1994: 29) Perhaps, then, Ur (2006) is right when she suggests that in, say, a state school with only three or four lessons a week, communicative tasks (sic) are a ‘necessary
added(my italics) component of a structured, language-based syllabus and methodology’ (p 3) For I know, after all, that language teaching which does not give students a chance to use language in meaning-focused activities is not the kind of language teaching I want to be involved in, and in that I am confident that all four authors would agree with me But in the meantime, my ambivalence remains because, as Samuda and Bygate point out, ‘ .until classroom-based studies become a mainstream for research in this field, the pedagogical use of learning tasks will never be properly researched .’ (p 191) or, we might add, properly evaluated
References
(86)Nunan, D.2004.Task-Based Learning and Teaching Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Pinker, S.1994.The Language Instinct: The New Science of Language and Mind London: Penguin
Ur, P.2006 ‘A different ball game: contrasting contexts and methodologies’ Unpublished article based on a talk given at theIAT EF LConference in Harrogate, April 2006
Willis, J.1996.A Framework for Task-Based Learning Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd
The reviewer
Jeremy Harmerteaches on the MA/T ES O Lat the New School, New York, and is the author (and co-author) of various books on methodology and classroom materials These includeThe Practice of English Language Teaching,How to Teach English, and
How to Teach Writing(Pearson Education Ltd) and
Just Right(Marshall CavendishE LT) He is the general editor of theHow Toseries
Email: jeremy.harmer@btinternet.com
(87)Trainer Development
T Wright and R Bolitho
http://www.lulu.com 2007, 254 pp., £15.95
isbn978 84753 232
How can teacher training best be conducted?Trainer Developmentattempts to provide one set of answers to this important question However, in doing so, it also raises a number of additional questions, as will be seen
The book is intended to provide an entre´e into the thinking and practice the authors have developed as a result of their many years of designing and running a wide variety of project-related and postgraduate degree teacher and trainer training courses at the University College of St Mark and St John (popularly known as ‘Marjons’), in southwest England These programmes, it should be noted, have typically involved individuals and groups coming to Marjons from their normal places of work in other parts of the world, in order to undergo a full-time, primarily ‘course-based’ form of in-service training
As the authors explain, the book is ‘an attempt to put three-dimensional, lived experience down in words,
and to unpick some of the issues underlying the experience It is offered in the belief that the sharing of practice is a key element in professional learning’ (p 2) Thus, in Chapter (‘Inside a training course’), we are taken directly into the inner workings of one of the authors’ training programmes, as it unfolded at the training room level Some of the features which distinguish the rest of the book are also present here Thus, there is a very ‘up-front’ focus on describing and explaining the training procedures involved, so that readers wishing to know what the training approach means in practical terms are provided with plenty of the necessary detail Also, starting in this way, with discussion of underlying theory being postponed until the following chapter, mirrors the bottom-up order of events used in the training methodology being advocated—one of experiential activity first, theory later—and this is therefore a book which actually practises what it preaches!
Chapter (‘A framework for training’) provides the theoretical rationale for the training approach exemplified in the first chapter and throughout the rest of the book Partly by means of a very expressive extended metaphor, in which life experiences are likened to a lake—‘an organic body of thoughts .in circulation, the water constantly in motion, although the depths remain fairly static’ (p 23)—it is argued that training programmes should desirably consist of sequences of activities involving an experience-reviewing-making sense-planning for action learning cycle (p 33), an extension of the experiential learning model described in Kolb (1984)
However, although the authors have clearly been able to apply this framework in their own training situation, there is no discussion of to what extent it can also work equally well in other situations, where the main training variables—such as whether it is ‘residential’, the amount of time available, the ratio of trainers to participants, the knowledge and expertise of the trainers, the degree of heterogeneity of the participants, their sociocultural learning style preferences, their levels of experience (pre- versus in-service) and of language knowledge, and so on—are different There is, thus, the possibility of it being seen, paradoxically, as something of a theory-driven, top-down, one-size-fits-all model This problem is compounded by the way that both Chapters and 11, which provide the most extensive descriptions of the authors’ approach, focus on only Marjons-based trainer training illustrations
(88)with the main orientation of the training philosophy, each of these chapters consists of, first, a series of sample activities, and then, second, an ‘issues and processes’ section, in which underlying principles and other matters are discussed All of them also include two other very welcome features, namely (1) the use of quotations from course participants’ feedback to illustrate their responses to the various activities and (2) an open and honest discussion of some of the difficulties the authors have encountered in putting their training approach into practice Chapter (‘Working with groups in training’) is based on the belief that ‘[f]or the duration of the course a learning community, a social group with a life of its own, is formed; the quality of the eventual outcome of the course will to a considerable extent be forged in the interactions between the members of the learning group’ (p 34) In the authors’ approach, thus, initial priority is given to this aspect of the training and illustrated accordingly via a series of sample ‘team-building’ activities However, in many training situations, it might be the case that there is insufficient time for such exercises, over and above those focusing on training ‘input’ Also, it may in any case be possible for the necessary group dynamic to be just as readily established by appropriate handling of the latter, for example, through the use of interactive tasks, thereby not only saving time but creating a more integrated approach, as well as possibly matching some participants’ initial expectations more closely (more of which below) Chapter (‘Working with participants’ experience’) is based on the notion that ‘the previous experience which participants bring into a course is of central significance to the ensuing learning process’ (p 64) To their credit, in discussing some of the ‘issues and processes’ involved in this area of training, the authors acknowledge that ‘[p]articipants often express misgivings about ‘‘dredging up the past’’ or taking part in self-awareness activities’ (p 81), but they argue that, in overall terms, the approach is nevertheless justified However, rather than making participants’ existing knowledge a central and separate focus of the early stages of the course, here also there might be a case for ‘folding’ this element into the ongoing ‘main business’ instead In this way, participants’ prior conceptions about how they may prefer to learn might be met at least halfway, thus, perhaps, lessening initial resistance, and thereby also, quite possibly, better facilitating group dynamics and participants’ willingness to bring prior experiences to bear
Chapter (‘New and shared experiences in training’) focuses on activities for introducing course
participants to training content which attempts to extend their existing knowledge One example uses a particularly inventive procedure for video
observation of teaching, involving the participants in roleplaying the teacher, a supervisor, and an ‘outsider’ (p 87) In this and similar ways, thus, the activities here involve a strongly inductive, ‘deep end’ approach, which, though, with characteristic honesty, the authors admit does not suit all participants (p 89) Their response to this problem appears to be to adopt a rational–empirical strategy, i.e to attempt to ensure that the underlying rationale for the training methodology is properly understood (p 90) Nevertheless, it seems possible that, here also, a more ‘normative re-educative’ approach, whereby, in the first instance, participants’ preconceptions are engaged with on their own terms, might be helpful Chapter (‘The awareness-raising process and its consequences’) is based on the belief that
‘[i]ncreased awareness is probably the first step on the way to change in professional behaviour’ (p 95) However, while the authors acknowledge there is a risk that trainees who are not accustomed to wearing their hearts on their sleeves in the way the activities frequently demand may feel discomfited, the causes of this problem are largely attributed to misperceptions on the part of the participants, and, at the end of the chapter, the matter is ultimately left unresolved: ‘We not claim to have answers in this delicate area—it is perhaps one of the greatest challenges we face in our own development to cope with uncertainty, difficulty and challenges and more when participants are affected by awareness raising’ (p 109) Such frankness is, of course, highly commendable, but the implication would seem to be that, in this respect too, some aspects of the training approach might be rethought along lines of the kind indicated earlier
(89)Chapter (‘Creating meaning: new learning’) is concerned with introducing course participants to readings in the professional literature The activities here are intended to ensure that trainees approach this task in such a way that they, rather than the readings, have the ‘upper hand’, a strategy encapsulated in the maxim ‘DO andT H IN K
F I R S T—RE AD LATE R’ (p 152) Nevertheless, there
is the danger here, perhaps, of adopting an over-protective attitude towards trainees’ exposure to ‘outside’ ideas, thereby only reconfirming—rather than truly extending—their existing understandings Chapter (‘Planning for action’) addresses the important issue of preparing trainees for post-course re-entry into the world of work However, while the illustrative activities seem perfectly reasonable as far as they go, the way in which this aspect of training can be meaningfully undertaken within the implied context, i.e with respect to a training programme only loosely connected with the educational settings the participants will be going on to, does not seem to be acknowledged and problematized in the way that it might
Chapter 10 (‘Feedback, assessment and evaluation in training’) concerns itself with some of the ways participants can be enabled to provide evidence of their learning and to provide feedback to trainers about the quality of their learning experiences In discussing the former, a distinction is made between ‘professional’ versus ‘academic’ assignments, and the view expressed that the former are more ‘productive and relevant for trainees’ (p 174) However, professional documents, such as
curriculum proposals or teacher training programme outlines, all too often lack some of the qualities of good academic writing, such as a well-developed, balanced set of arguments, informed by relevant research and theorizing, properly illustrated in terms of relevant practical examples, and there is therefore the risk of creating a false dichotomy here
With respect to the latter aspect (participant feedback), various alternatives to the standard fare are discussed, such as the potential value of post-rather than end-of-course summative feedback (p 177), and the possibility of group-led evaluation (p 178), in which participants devise the evaluation criteria and provide the trainers with a summary While commendable in being, on the face of it, more participant-centred, such techniques are not without their attendant practical disadvantages as well, and while some of these are discussed, others might have been mentioned as well
Chapter 11 (‘Inside a training course 2’), as already indicated, is something of a companion piece to Chapter and contains a similar wealth of practical detail and related discussion about the unfolding of a component in one of the trainer training
programmes the authors have been involved in On the other hand, there is no coverage here or anywhere else in the book of the superordinate issues and procedures involved in the selection, sequencing, and integration of such components in order to form an overall training programme design, in the manner provided by, for example, Wallace (1991: chap 9) Perhaps this is more than can be asked of a book that already provides so much, but, given the authors’ extensive experience of programme design, such a section would have been a very valuable addition
Chapter 12 (‘Developing as a trainer’) considers some of the main areas of knowledge and skill needed by trainers, illustrated, warts and all, via the professional dilemmas the authors have and continue to frequently encounter The essence of developing as a trainer is seen to lie in ‘who we are, rather than what we do’ (p 234) While this is undoubtedly true, such a conclusion does appear to rather downplay the role of programmes of the kind the book is concerned with, in building on and extending participants’ innate potential to be effective trainers
(90)despite the generic nature of its title, this is really a book about a particular training approach, and its chief value therefore resides in the very detailed, down-to-earth guidance it provides for trainers with like-minded views working in similar
situations Much can be learnt by others as well, but it will be important for them to take to heart the authors’ commendable advice to ‘engage with it critically’ (p 2)
References
Freeman, D.andJ C Richards.(eds.) 1996.Teacher Learning in Language Teaching Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press
Hayes, D A.(ed.) 1997.In-Service Teacher Development: International Perspectives Hemel Hempstead, UK: Prentice Hall
Kolb, D A.1984.Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall
Richards, J C.1998.Beyond Training: Perspectives on Language Teacher Education Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Wallace, M J.1991.Training Foreign Language Teachers: A Reflective Approach Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
The reviewer
Alan Watersis a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University, UK He has taughtE F Lin Sierra Leone, Kuwait, and the UK and trained teachers in Thailand, the UK, Hong Kong, and several other parts of the world He has published a number of books and articles on a range ofE LTtopics His main research interests are in language teaching methodology, teacher learning, and curriculum innovation
Email: a.waters@lancaster.ac.uk
(91)Learner and Teacher Autonomy: Concepts, Realities, and Responses
T Lamb and H Reinders (eds.)
AILAApplied Linguistics Series 1,
John Benjamins Publishing Company 2008, 286 pp.,e99.00 US$ 134.00
isbn978 90 272 0517
A I L A, the International Association of Applied
Linguistics, has initiated a publication series with
books, anthologies, and monographs in applied linguistics The ambition of the series is to show and cover the diversity within the field An exciting and commendable initiative! For my part, it is particularly interesting that the first volume in the series is an anthology which deals with and problematizes the concepts of learner autonomy and teacher autonomy The articles in the book have, furthermore, developed in an innovative way They are based on papers that were presented at theA I L AWorld Congress in Singapore 2002 Short versions of the articles were then published on the Web where members of a mailing list were invited to comment upon them The comments and the discussion that took place were accessible to the authors when they wrote their final versions The articles were then compiled by the editors, Terry Lamb and Hayo Reinders, intoLearner and Teacher Autonomy: Concepts, Realities, and Responses They have chosen to include the concept of teacher autonomy as there has been no previous discussion of what happens to the teacher and the teacher’s role when and if language learning becomes increasingly autonomous The focus here is both on teachers’ freedom to redirect their teaching towards self-directed learning and on how their own experiences as autonomous language learners can give character to the teaching that they themselves carry out
To review an anthology is a special task; the ‘typical’ reader of an anthology will, naturally, not read the book from cover to cover as I have done You browse and blend, read that which gets your attention, and leave other things In spite of this, I find that the book works excellently when read at one sitting There is a rhythm in the book with one article, in most cases, naturally leading on to the next Also, in a volume of research articles it is not always easy to see common traits One often needs help to evaluate things, draw conclusions, and see the way ahead In this volume, one of the editors, Terry Lamb, provides both a prefatory and introductory text and
(92)what he calls the dynamic interrelational space The volume contains many articles with the point of departure in teacher training; Richard Smith and Sultan Erdogan give definitions of the special position of student teachers (right between ‘teacher’ and ‘student’) and discuss and exemplify what implications this should have on teacher training Sara Cotterall and David Crabbe give insights into how learners reflect on different errors and error types in their own language learning Penny Hacker and Gary Barkhuizen use diary entries from teachers active in their profession to get insights into how teachers formulate theories about language learning In their article, Hayo Reinders and Marilyn Lewis test a model for assessing learner’s material from how well it works for self-directed learning Vieira, Barbosa, Paiva, and Fernandes speak of the need for learner autonomy and teacher autonomy to develop in interplay, using the concept of tandem
I will select five articles that I personally found particularly rewarding Phil Benson begins the volume with an article that gives an excellent outline of the different attempts that have been made to define the concept of autonomy He does this through adopting different perspectives on the concepts, the teachers’ and the learners’ perspectives, which naturally may be completely different Benson argues for the notions of ‘autonomy in life’ and ‘personal autonomy’ (p 16) but says, at the same time, that the concepts need to be positioned and put into perspective His starting point is, among other things, his own experience as a learner of Cantonese which he uses to claim that the teacher’s perspective often has to with ‘tak[ing] control of the
institutional and classroom learning arrangements within the curricula’, while the learner ‘primarily is concerned with learning in a much broader sense in the life beyond the classroom’ (p 15)
He´le`ne Martinez’ starting point is two student teachers and their subjective and personal theories about the concept of learner autonomy In a very interesting and inspiring way, and through comparing the students’ ideas against more conventional definitions of the concept and established theories, she succeeds in finding ways which may be productive in further developing the concept She integrates this into a discussion around the practical changes that need to materialize in teacher training, as well as what future research is required
In her article, Christine Siqueira Nicolaides also provides a comprehensive analysis, principally of two student teachers who, despite having diametrically different opinions as to how teacher training should
be conducted, are both critical of the training that is offered One of them wants to see much more steering and teacher-controlled education, the other is more anarchical and fundamentally uninterested in organized learning or in personally participating in the training group in order to, for example, help fellow students Yet, both agree that it is the teacher who ‘is the one who knows the best ways to learn’ (p 158) and that the students’ possibilities for making decisions about learning should be restricted to applications outside the classroom Basing her studies on these students, Nicolaides reconstructs the concept of learner autonomy
Many articles, thus, take as their point of departure teacher training and future language teachers Jonathan Shaw’s article is a welcome interruption He describes language learning at the Asian Institute of Technology, where the students for the most part are technicians and engineers studying at Master’s level For them, language is a tool and they not at all have the same motivation to develop pedagogically or devote much time to things that will not pay off with results Shaw shows how a mode of working which sets out from each learner’s individual needs and which will not let itself be controlled by external organization, for example, a schedule, may be both meaningful and effective He argues that the development of learner autonomy has to take into account the context of the learning situation and that a key factor is always cooperation and dialogue between the teachers working together Barbara Sinclair reports from the course
development of a Master’s programme in learner autonomy for overseas students of English at the University of Nottingham The programme is developed by means of a continuous dialogue between teachers and students, through formal and informal evaluations Sinclair means that the concepts of learner and teacher autonomy here interact and are integrated Both the course lecturers and the participants (and hopefully their pupils) take part in different forms of self-directed learning at the same time, as this is also self-directed professional development and, thus, teacher autonomy Sinclair also provides a really well written and perceptive background to the concept pair learner–teacher autonomy
(93)I would like to see a greater variety as most language learning does not take place in universities but in compulsory school and upper secondary school classrooms How will students who their teacher training shortly before becoming practising teachers act in the classroom situation? How does the learner autonomy–teacher autonomy relation turn out when working with young learners? A matter that is not touched upon is whether the autonomous learner or autonomous teacher becomes more efficient in their learning Several of the writers of these articles touch on the problem that it might be difficult to convince students to work with learner autonomy The most effective way to get students and teachers to make changes in their practice is, probably, a convincing argument showing that the autonomous learner is also more successful in his or her learning and/or that there are positive effects from developing a new attitude to language learning I am convinced that these positive effects both exist and are possible to quantify, but another type of research on learner– teacher autonomy must develop parallel to the one outlined in this volume: qualitative research where only a small number of learners are studied through, for example, interviews, observations, or diary entries It is important research, offering some valuable and meaningful knowledge about language learners, but I believe that this must be supplemented by more quantitative research where larger groups of learners and teachers who have worked with learner– teacher autonomy are compared to learners and teachers who have worked more traditionally, both in the form of attitude surveys and knowledge
assessments
My overall opinion is, however, thatLearner and Teacher Autonomy: Concepts, Realities, and Responses
is sound, rewarding, and interesting While reading it, I learnt new things, I was given reason to reflect on certain matters, and in some cases my own opinions were confirmed The book is recommended to all those interested in research and development work in the area of learner–teacher autonomy
The reviewer
Joărgen Tholinis Vice Rector and Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at the University of Bora˚s in Sweden He teaches on the Teacher Training Programme and on in-service training courses For 20 years, he has worked on the development of self-directed learning in English teaching in compulsory education and he has reported on his experiences in books, articles, and at conferences
Email: Jorgen.Tholin@hb.se
(94)Language Testing and Assessment: An Advanced Resource Book
G Fulcher and F Davidson
Routledge 2007, xx+403 pp., £19.99
isbn978 415 33947
Testing and assessment have been challenging areas which have sparked a great deal of controversy This might be one of the reasons why so many books have been written in these areas Emphasis has been placed on various aspects of testing and assessment: classroom evaluation (Gronlund 1976), the principles and procedures of test construction (Valette 1977), theory and practice of testing and statistical concepts (Henning 1987), the stages of test construction, test techniques, and the principles of testing (Hughes 1989), guidance on test writing, administering, and scoring at a practical level (Heaton 1990),
communicative language testing (Weir 1990), practical approaches in using authentic assessment (O’Malley and Pierce 1996), and fundamental principles of assessment (Brown 2004)
Even this brief look at the literature may imply that there is no need for another book on testing and assessment as the market is already saturated But the book under consideration disproves this assumption as it differs in many ways from those mentioned above
The book has a unique structural pattern Moreover, Fulcher and Davidson address issues regarding testing and assessment through a new approach labelled ‘effect driven’ It is essentially driven by the impact it might have on people and institutions involved As the focus is on the outcome and on the view that ‘test design and development is about
doing, creatingandresearching’ (p xx), it adopts a pragmatic view of testing The new approach is also claimed to weave together testing practice, theory, ethics, and philosophy
As a comprehensive resource book, it addresses a wide audience including undergraduates and postgraduates on language, applied linguistics, and communication studies programmes as well as teachers and researchers in professional
(95)for projects The authors also provide a glossary of key terms at the end of the book As an additional resource to the book, there is a website http:// www.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415339476 which the reader may visit for further activities, practice, additional reading, and ideas for projects Section A addresses the following issues: (a) validity, (b) classroom assessment, (c) constructs and models, (d) test specifications and designs, (e) writing items and tasks, (f) prototypes, prototyping, and field tests, (g) scoring language tests and assessments, (h) administration and training, (i) fairness, ethics, and standards, and (j) arguments and evidence in test validation and use
Unlike other titles in this area, this book begins with the concept of validity as central in testing and assessment, taking a historical approach, and tracing the changes in the concept of validity It is approached from a philosophical perspective, specifically a positivist one Regarding the role of validity theory in a philosophical plain, the writers find the relationship between theory and evidence sometimes unclear as theory is always evolving, and new evidence is continually collected This might be one of the reasons why statistics, widely used in testing and evaluation, ‘is not always clear in a larger picture of developing theories of language acquisition and testing’ (p.11)
According to the authors, validity has become one of the central enterprises in psychological, educational, and language testing and considers the social and political factors in designing tests and using test scores (p 22)
One of the issues considered in Section A concerns constructs and models Special emphasis is placed on certain models developed by Canale and Swain (1980), Bachman (1990), and Celce-Murcia, Doărnyei, and Thurrell (1995) The writers treat these constantly evolving models as sources of potential constructs for specific testing purposes
The authors also present the general concept of test specifications and place special emphasis on such subtopics as planning in test authoring, guiding language versus sampling, congruence, reverse engineering, and archetypes, etc Moreover, the authors consider the process of item and task writing as part of the iterative process of writing test specifications, draw on the paradigm of evidence-centred design (E C D), and look at a particular methodology in test design According to the authors, ‘one of the most common mistakes made in language testing is for the test writer to begin the
process by writing a set of items or tasks that are intuitively felt to be relevant to the test takers’ (p 62) Among the issues that Section A considers are the study of washback and test administration within the
E CDdelivery models The authors believe that the former is concerned with the political use of tests to implement changes in classrooms that are seen as improvements by governments Concerning the latter, the writers object to placing test administration ‘under the catch-all term of ‘‘test practicality’’, but not treated in any detail, even if its centrality to questions of validity has been recognized’ (p 137) The authors also address the issue of ethics and fairness and link them to the concept of professionalism
Section A of the book opens and closes with the same topic: validity But in Unit A10, the topic is considered from a slightly different angle: arguments and evidence in test validation and use The writers treat validation as an ongoing process that continues throughout the life of a test
Section B provides extracts from various articles and books with the aim of giving further insights into the concepts introduced in the previous section Among the chosen extracts are the ‘seminal’ papers by Cronbach and Meehl (1955) on construct validity, and Kane (1992) on test validation, pioneer studies by Alderson and Wall (1993) on the concept of washback and Hamp-Lyons (1991) on rating scales, and finally an ‘extremely influential’ paper by Canale and Swain (1980) on testing and teaching of languages Section C—‘Exploration’—seems to be the most challenging one since it aims to help readers to apply the accumulated knowledge on testing and
assessment in realizing various student-centred activities in the form of both individual and group project work In fact, topics presented in this section provide the reader with the opportunity to synthesize the ideas discussed in the previous two sections We believe that the book, which combines theory with practice, will no doubt be of interest to the language teaching and testing community since it has certain outstanding features
(96)research projects Besides, all three sections are interwoven through cross-referencing which helps the reader to perceive the book as a whole This carefully tailored journey from one section into another with built-in amenities makes the book a pedagogically solid one
Another strength of the book is that it uses literary characters and draws analogies from various fields of science and everyday life, making the language of the book vivid and explanations meaningful
Furthermore, the book deals with topics like test administration for disabled people, professionalism, and democracy in language testing
Though they are insignificant, the book does have some flaws For instance, there are typos like the word ‘tropical’ instead of ‘topical’ (p 46) Also, the writers have missed the publication year of some books (see pp 25, 149) Perhaps, a noteworthy point of criticism is that the book could be rather challenging for undergraduate students due to their lack of teaching experience and background knowledge of certain concepts However, these by no means decrease the value of the book
All in all,Language Testing and Assessment: An Advanced Resource Bookmakes a great contribution to the field of testing and assessment and
therefore would be an invaluable resource for a wide audience including students, language teachers and/ or test designers, administrators, as well as researchers
References
Alderson, J C.andD Wall.1993 ‘Does washback exist?’Applied Linguistics14/2: 115–29
Bachman, L F.1990.Fundamental Considerations in Language Testing Oxford: Oxford University Press
Brown, H D.2004.Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom Practices New York: Longman
Canale, M.andM Swain.1980 ‘Theoretical basis of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing.Applied Linguistics1/1: 147
Celce-Murcia, M., Z Doărnyei,andS Thurrell.1995 ‘Communicative competence: a pedagogically motivated model with content specifications’.Issues in Applied Linguistics6/2: 5–35
Cronbach, L J.andP E Meehl.1955 ‘Construct validity in psychological tests’.Psychological Bulletin
52: 281–302
Gronlund, N E.1976.Measurement and Evaluation in Teaching(3rd edn.) New York: Macmillan Publishing
Hamp-Lyons, L.1991 ‘Scoring procedures forE S L
contexts’ in L Hamp-Lyons (ed.).Assessing Second
Language Writing in Academic Context Norwood, NJ: Ablex
Heaton, J B.1990.Writing English Language Tests
(new edition) London: Longman
Henning, G.1987.A Guide to Language Testing: Development, Evaluation, Research Boston: Heinle and Heinle Publishers
Hughes, A.1989.Testing for Language Teachers Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Kane, M T.1992 ‘An argument-based approach to validity’.Psychological Bulletin112/3: 527–35
O’Malley, J M.andL V Pierce.1996.Authentic Assessment for English Language Learners: Practical Approaches for Teachers New York: Longman
Valette, R M.1977.Modern Language Testing(2nd edn.) New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc
Weir, C J.1990.Communicative Language Testing Hemel Hempstead, UK: Prentice Hall
The reviewers
Javanshir Shibliyevis an Assistant Professor of the
E LTDepartment, Eastern Mediterranean University, North Cyprus He has taught both language support and subject matter courses at various universities in Azerbaijan and North Cyprus His research interests are testing and assessment, materials development, sociolinguistics, and language policy
Email: javanshir.shibliyev@emu.edu.tr
_
Ilkay Gilanlıog˘luis Vice-Chair of theE LTDepartment, Eastern Mediterranean University, North Cyprus He has taughtE F L/E S Pcourses at the Middle East Technical University, Turkey He did his PhD in Applied Linguistics at the Institute of Education, University of London His academic interests include materials development, testing and assessment, language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics
Email: ilkay.gilanlioglu@emu.edu.tr
(97)Teacher Cognition and Language Education
S Borg
Continuum 2008, 320 pp., £24.99
isbn978 8470 6333
While second language acquisition (S L A) has been thoroughly researched, much less research has been conducted into whatsecond language teaching
(98)goes on inside teachers’ heads It is, however, a book that also reminds us of how what goes on inside teachers’ heads is inextricably tied to what goes on outside their heads, in the social and educational context in which teaching takes place It is a fascinating, if somewhat demanding, read
Teacher Cognition and Language Educationbrings together research into teacher cognition fromELT
and beyond The book, a substantial volume of over 300 pages, will be an invaluable handbook for researchers in the field, teacher educators, and curriculum designers Although not specifically targeted at classroom teachers, it is a mine of information for those seeking to enhance their knowledge of classroom practice
The term ‘teacher cognition’ refers to what teachers know and think and how this affects their behaviour, especially insofar as it relates to what happens in the classroom Much of what we think we ‘know’ about language teaching is based on anecdotal evidence or the work of inspirational educators InELT, if not in general education, very littleempiricalwork has been done on how teachers think and behave The work of Schoăn (1983), Richards and Lockhart (1994), and Wallace (1991) has encouraged a more reflective approach to teacher education A small but important body of empirical work has also now accumulated on teacher cognition, though scattered as this work is in academic journals it is difficult for non-specialists to get access to it Indeed, Borg’s book is not the easiest of texts, but it has abundant insights for the classroom practitioner; in this review, I will focus on this practical aspect of the book
InTeacher Cognition and Language Education, Simon Borg does three things: first, he provides an exhaustive summary of the research into teacher cognition, with a particular focus on language education; second, he analyses the significance of this research to language teaching; and third, he describes and evaluates the various research methods which have been applied to studies of teacher cognition Thus, in Part of the book, Borg reviews, in impressive detail, the research into the cognition of pre-service, novice, and experienced teachers, with separate chapters on the teaching of grammar, reading, and writing Some of this work refers to the teaching of English as a second or foreign language but much of it is drawn from teaching and teacher education in general
In Part 2, Borg describes—again in great detail—a variety of research methods which have been applied in the investigation of teacher cognition
The book concludes with a very useful summary of the main insights uncovered in the main body of the book and the description of a framework for the future study of teacher cognition The book has a wide scope and, apart from the specific insights into foreign language teaching it reports on, it helps putELTinto a broader context of teacher education across the curriculum I will now go on to give a summary of the contents of the book, chapter-by-chapter, and round off with an example of what I personally found most useful in the book
Chapter puts the study of language teacher cognition in its historical context by describing the origins of teacher cognition research in general education The research brings out the two-way interaction between teacher thinking and practice but also the importance of context in shaping what teachers think, feel, and For example, Borg describes research which foregrounds the
importance to teacher effectiveness of the knowledge we have of our students (such as their classroom behaviour, ability, and background) in combination with the teacher’s practical pedagogic knowledge (pp.11–13) The evidence suggests that teachers transform the knowledge they acquire in pre-service education programmes through a combination of information processing, practical knowledge, and interaction with pedagogical content Teacher cognition is, thus, described as an often tacit, personally held practical system of mental
constructions, resulting from a complex, interactive process involving subjective and objective factors It is a dynamic, interactive process, which is defined and refined on the basis of educational and professional experiences throughout teachers’ lives (p 35) Chapter focuses on research conducted in the context of pre-service teacher education It examines the impact of pre-service education programmes on teachers’ thoughts and beliefs but also on what teachers actually in the classroom The contradiction between what, on the one hand, teacherssaythey in class or what theybelieveabout teaching, and on the other hand, what theyactually
(99)systems and experience, between beliefs and practice, reappears in this chapter
Chapter is particularly rich in insights In this chapter, Borg looks at teacher cognition research with reference to in-service teachers The chapter focuses on how teachers’ beliefs and knowledge shape their classroom practice and how in turn these beliefs are shaped by contextual constraints The beliefs of teachers regarding mainstream approaches, such as the communicative approach, are explored through teacher narratives; these narratives highlight the degree to which teacher cognition is socially situated—it is influenced by the emotions aroused when teachers reflect on the relationship between what they believe in principle and what is feasible in practice ‘Almost all teachers reported using communicative activities such as role-play games, survey, group-work, simulations; unfortunately, these things were rarely observed’ (p 97: quoted from Sato and Kleinsasser 1999: 509–10) Teacher narratives also bring out the influence of teachers’ early experiences on what they believe and how they behave in the classroom The outcome of all these factors is the contradiction identified earlier between what teachers say they and what they actually
Chapters and review the literature on two subjects in the curriculum which have received particular attention in teacher cognition research: the teaching of grammar and the teaching of literacy skills (reading and writing) Interestingly, as Borg points out, research into teachers’ beliefs regarding grammar teaching emanates mostly fromE F L/E S Lcontexts while research into teacher cognition and reading has been conducted in the context of mother tongue teaching
In the chapter on the teaching of grammar, we discover that research suggests that ‘non-native teachers’ significantly better on explicit grammar awareness than their ‘native-speaker counterparts’ (p 112) Another fascinating piece of data is the incongruence between students’ beliefs and teachers’ beliefs regarding the need to correct errors: while 94 per cent of learners believe teachers should correct their errors in class, only 48 per cent of teachers agreed with them that errors should be corrected A similar discrepancy in the views of learners and teachers is reported in the case of the ‘formal teaching of grammar’, with the students once again more strongly in favour of traditional grammar teaching than their more communicatively oriented teachers ‘These mismatches between teacher and student views about the role of formal instruction and error correction’, speculates Borg, ‘may impinge
negatively on student motivation’ (p 115) In response to this danger of demotivation, some teachers may engage in grammar teaching ‘not because they think it enhances language acquisition but because they feel it is something their students expect’ (p 124) The way context shapes teacher attitudes and actions is clearly complex and full of contradictions Another example of the constraining power of the classroom environment on teacher cognition is the way the teaching of writing skills has been influenced by an apparently unrelated issue such as discipline and classroom management (p 151) A process approach to writing, for example, is desirable in theory but often makes prohibitive demands on the teacher in terms of classroom control and the ability to motivate learners This insight has profound implications for the feasibility of many forward-looking and learner-centred
methodologies which are not often fully explored in teacher training courses or optimistic teachers’ handbooks!
Chapters 6–9 change gear as Borg looks at research methodologies rather than the outcome of the research, though in these chapters the reader will find a large number of insights into the rationale and effectiveness of classroom practice Borg examines the following research methods: self-report instruments (questionnaires, scenario rating, tests), verbal commentaries (interviews, think-aloud protocols), observation, and reflective writing (journals, autobiographical accounts, retrospective accounts, and concept mapping) He points out what these methods have achieved, what they have neglected, and what they still have to offer the ongoing exploration of teacher cognition
In his final chapter, Borg revisits the salient issues which his book has described: the nature of language teacher cognition, the relationship between
language teachers’ cognition and classroom practices, the impact of context on language teachers’ cognitions and practices, and the nature of expertise in teaching
Borg ends the book with a consideration of the divergence betweenS L A studies and teacher cognition He argues for the need to bring these two lines of inquiry closer together so thatS L Aand ‘S LT’ can inform each other.S L Aneeds to show a greater awareness of the complexities of what teachers and the impact of teacher cognition on learning outcomes: ‘rather than calling for eitherS L A
(100)ultimately more productive to combine the expertise of both parties’ (p 288)
One of the most intriguing of the themes developed in the book is the nature of expertise in language teaching I would like to end my review by drawing on the useful topic index provided at the back of the book in order to trace the insights into teacher expertise running throughout the book
What does Borg’s meticulous account of the research tell us about the nature of effective teaching? Expert teachers:
npossess knowledge derived from the classroom nare familiar with typical student behaviours nuse their knowledge to make predictions about
what might happen in the classroom
nhave more fully developed schemata of teaching on
which to base their practical classroom decisions: ‘they know a lot about their students even before they meet them’ (p 40)
npay more attention to language issues than novice
teachers (who worry more about classroom management)
nlearn to automatize the routines associated with
managing the class; this skill leaves them free to focus on content
nimprovise more than novice teachers—they make
greater use of interactive decision-making as a source of their ‘improvisational performance’ (p 102)
nbuild on students’ difficulties nnotice errors and classify them nmaintain active student involvement nhave a clear language learning focus nintegrate skills
nare able to articulate their pedagogic principles and
make conscious decisions
ninternalize theory and link theory to practice
It emerges from this summary of the research that expertise in language teaching is a complex, dynamic process, involving constant engagement,
exploration, and experimentation It is an integration of formal and experiential knowledge which enables the expert practitioner to envisage the learning potential of students in context; an expert teacher is both technically skilled and emotionally intelligent Expertise is certainly not synonymous with experience
These insights into expertise in language teaching are what this reviewer found most useful in Simon Borg’s book But the book as a whole will offer much more to different readers; it is a rich source of what we know, empirically, about what teachers think and
References
Richards, J C.andC Lockhart.1994.Reflective Teaching in Second Language Classrooms Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Sato, K.andR C Kleinsasser.1999 ‘Communicative language teaching (C LT): practical understandings
Modern Language Journal83/4: 494517
Schoăn, D.1983.The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action New York: Basic Books
Wallace, M.1991.Training Foreign Language Teachers: A Reflective Approach Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
The reviewer
Luke Prodromouis a freelance teacher, teacher trainer, and materials writer based in Greece He has worked for the British Council and a variety of private institutions in Greece, Spain, and the UK He has writtenDealing with Difficulties(Delta, with L Clandfield), winner of the Ben Warren Prize, an English-Speaking Union award, and nominated for a British Council Elton Award for Innovation in English Language Teaching for 2007 He is also co-author ofAttitude(for adults) andSmash(for young learners—both Macmillan) He has an MA in Shakespeare Studies (Birmingham University), a Diploma inT ES L(Leeds University), and a PhD from the University of Nottingham His book,English as a Lingua Franca: A Corpus-based Analysis, was published in 2008 by Continuum He is currently teaching young learners
Email: lukep@otenet.gr
(101)Reflective Language Teaching: From Research to Practice
T S C Farrell
Continuum 2007, 202 pp., £19.99
isbn978 8264 9658
(102)Reflective Language Teachingis a book unique in existence because it presents up-to-date research on reflective language teaching and also presents case studies, most of which have been conducted by this author in collaboration with other language teachers, that illustrate topics covered in each chapter (p vi)
This is quite a claim but it does provide a yardstick against which to assess the book’s value to potential readers It also hints at the approach taken to chapter design, which is based on a template leading from an introduction to research findings, followed by one or more case studies, a section entitled ‘From research to practice’, questions to reflect on, a conclusion followed, rather oddly, by a so-called ‘Chapter scenario’ and finally another set of questions While the template lends structure to the book, it also becomes repetitive and predictable and does not always make for a smooth read
There are 14 chapters in all, starting from a general overview of reflective language teaching, and covering a variety of angles on reflection ranging from well-established reflective tools such as teachers’ narratives and journals to collaborative relationships such as critical friendships and teacher development groups, all the way through to a concluding chapter on professional development Interestingly, and unusually for an author based in North America, Farrell draws on both American and British sources in his references to literature in the field This has the welcome effect of broadening the perspectives he offers his readers Yet, as I made my way through the chapters, I began to see the book as something of a curate’s egg: good in parts
Let me start with the good Farrell covers a lot of useful ground in the book and a number of the case studies are very convincing In Chapter 7, for example, the case studies on ‘Classroom Communication’ include carefully transcribed passages of classroom discourse which go a long way towards illustrating his points about the prevalent pattern of classroom questioning (teacher initiates–learner responds– teacher evaluates response) and ways in which teachers can become aware of and review their own classroom communication patterns The case study in Chapter acknowledges, usefully for the reader after the plethora of guilt-inducing literature (for example, Bailey 1990, Jarvis 1992) on diaries and journals, that not every teacher is positively disposed towards writing as a means of reflection The chapters on ‘Critical Friendships’ and ‘Concept Mapping’ both have value, the former for its coverage of peer coaching and team teaching as triggers to reflection and the latter for its reference to understanding where
a teacher or a trainee group is starting from as a basis for assessing progress and developing conceptual thinking in a training course Almost all the other chapters have useful insights, and there is much for an experienced and critical reader to glean from the book, but the insights tend to come piecemeal, and there is a lack of overall coherence about the author’s view of his topic, which means that it cannot really be regarded as the kind of authoritative overview of the field which he seems to be claiming in his preface
This last point is best illustrated by reference to Chapter in which he sets out his understanding of reflective practice and the different stages and processes involved in reflection He draws heavily and at some length on Schoăns (1983) distinction between reflection-in-action and ‘reflection-on-action’,adding to this the forward looking dimension of ‘reflection-for-action’ (Killon and Todnew 1991) These three categories, which are so valuable as a way of conceptualizing reflection, are then blithely ignored for the whole of the rest of the book, leaving me regretting the opportunities missed to support the reader’s understanding by showing how they work in practice through the case studies and chapter scenarios I also found it disappointing that Farrell makes no reference to the recursive and cyclical nature of reflection as a process and that he makes no use of the various versions of experiential learning cycles (for example, Kolb 1984) that would have helped the reader to locate the stages involved in reflection both visually and conceptually
(103)that each chapter could have ended with the ‘Conclusion’ (Is that not what conclusions are meant to do?) rather than meandering on through a ‘Chapter Scenario’ and yet another set of questions to reflect on, neither of which seem to add a great deal to the reader’s understanding
The final chapter also turned out to be something of an anticlimax, with, for my taste, a rather over-structured view of the place of reflection in the process of professional development This would have been a golden opportunity to pull everything together and to locate reflection in the context of lifelong learning, with both individual and group-centred dimensions, to see reflection as a way of being professional rather than a compartmentalized activity to be fitted into available time slots in a busy schedule I agree with Farrell’s point that not everyone is a born reflector and that reflection for some is a learnt behaviour, but for me it is also a habit which, once acquired, becomes integral to a teacher’s professional persona Wallace’s (1991) work pointed the way to stimulating reflective practice on pre-service teacher education courses, a dimension which Farrell devotes little attention to, even in his chapter on Classroom Observation, and for me, this also represents a missed opportunity to add overall coherence to the book
Finally, a note on language and on editing and proofing In the early chapters, there are several examples of awkward written expression, faulty punctuation, and spelling mistakes The author’s tone also slips occasionally into ‘shoulding’ and ‘musting’ at the reader, which verges on the patronizing and is a turn-off for any professional Is not all this part of the service that publishers are supposed to provide to authors in return for their lion’s share of income from a book? A stronger editorial hand would have helped Farrell to avoid these traps and consequently to make a better impression on the reader
References
Bailey, K.1990 ‘The use of diary studies in teacher education programs’ in J C Richards and D Nunan (eds.).Second Language Teacher Education
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Jarvis, J.1992 ‘Using diaries for teacher reflection on in-service courses’.E LTJournal46/2: 133–43
Killon, J.andG Todnew.1991 ‘A process of personal theory building’.Educational Leadership48/6: 14–6
Kolb, D A.1984.Experiential Learning Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall
Schoăn, D.1983.The Reflective Practitioner How Professionals Think in Action New York: Basic Books
Wallace, M.1991.Training Foreign Language Teachers: A Reflective Approach Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
The reviewer
Rod Bolithois currently Academic Director at Norwich Institute for Language Education and has been training English language teachers and trainers for over 25 years He has been consultant to many overseas projects, most recently in Austria, Croatia, Romania, and Uzbekistan He is co-author (with Tony Wright) ofTrainer Developmentand (with Brian Tomlinson) ofDiscover English He also editsFolio, the journal of the Materials Development Association
Email: rodbol44@yahoo.co.uk
(104)Conversation in Context: A Corpus-Driven Approach
C Ruehlemann
Continuum 2007, 246 pp., £74.18
isbn0826497136
Christoph Ruehlemann’s book navigates a clear and engaging course through what McCarthy colourfully describes in the preface (p ix) as ‘the murky waters of ‘‘performance’’ data, where grammar, lexis,
phonology and paralinguistics collide .’ The voyage is never less than interesting and often fascinating Two main aims are set out for the book in the Introduction:
1 To contribute toE F Lteaching by narrowing the gap between ‘school’ English and ‘authentic conversation’
2 To test what the author calls ‘the adaptedness hypothesis’: ‘ .the hypothesis that a situation-based description of conversation can show how conversational language is adapted to certain needs arising from specific types of constraints on speakers in conversational situation’ (p 2)
(105)language analysis It might seem that the importance of conversation does not need to be stressed toE F L
practitioners, but there is some truth in my view in Hugh Dellar’s (personal communication) parody of
E F Lcoursebooks which take learners directly from
transactional dialogues to earnest debates about capital punishment without experiencing social conversation in between The second chapter deals concisely with the research methodology and the details of the spoken component of the British National Corpus (B N C) on which the research is based
Chapter lays the foundation for ‘the adaptedness hypothesis’ The author describes in detail the five conditions under which conversation takes place:
nshared context nco-construction ndiscourse management nreal-time processing nrelation management
Here I would express one of my few quibbles with the book: the author refers consistently to these conditions as ‘constraints’, but as his own examples later show, shared context and co-construction offer opportunities to speakers as well as constraints Ruehlemann’s key argument, however, is that it is in the light of these conditions (or constraints) that conversational grammar is best understood from a functional point of view Ruehlemann makes two important points at this stage which are consistently and clearly reinforced in the remainder of the book:
1 The five conditions are interdependent so it is likely that a particular feature of conversational grammar will be explicable in relation to more than one of the conditions
2 Relation management needs are the dominant goal of conversation
The five subsequent chapters deal with each of the conditions above in turn, highlighting selected features of conversational grammar which seem particularly well adapted to that particular condition Chapter 4, then, deals with shared context
phenomena Ruehlemann points to deictic forms (references to person, time, or place which are relative to the situation in which the utterance takes place) as an example of shared context phenomena and notes the high frequency of the deictic personal pronouns ‘I’ and ‘You’ in conversation This in itself is unsurprising What is of more interest is
Ruehlemann’s argument that among the reasons for the frequency of ‘I’ and ‘You’ in conversation are their frequency in discourse markers such as ‘I mean’ and
‘You know’ and the frequent repetition of ‘I’ in utterance-initial position In other words, in line with the adaptedness hypothesis, the frequency can be related to shared context and also to discourse management needs and real-time processing needs The analysis of laughter in conversation in this chapter reinforces the motif of the multifunctionality of features of conversation and produces some of the intriguing descriptive insights which are an attractive feature of the book: ‘The typical ‘‘laugher’’ in British conversation .seems to be a young, female, white-collar worker’ (p 86)
In Chapter 5, Ruehlemann turns to co-construction phenomena Among the examples he gives are co-constructed tags and co-co-constructed utterances I have seen co-constructed tags described elsewhere as reply questions, so an example might be useful:
A:I’ve just read a brilliant review by Ivor Timmis
B:Have you?
Co-constructed utterances meanwhile involve the expansion or completion of one speaker’s utterance by another as in:
A:I’ve just read a brilliant piece by Ivor Timmis
B:Which is a rarity
Here again, Ruehlemann is concerned to stress the multifunctional aspect of such devices, arguing that co-constructed tags ‘play a dual role as turn-yielders, responding to the co-constructive need to encourage speaker change, and as backchannels, encouraging the main speaker to carry on’ (p 93) Co-constructed utterances have the dual function of strengthening discourse coherence and establishing ‘bonds of communion’
Discourse management phenomena are the focus of Chapter Reported speech (or ‘discourse
presentation’ in Ruehlemann’s terms) in
conversation is one of the features to come under the microscope here Ruehlemann’s first observation is that discourse presentation in conversation is normally carried out in direct mode In terms of the adaptedness hypothesis, discourse presentation is then related to real-time processing needs—it obviates the need for the grammatical changes required by indirect mode—and to relational needs: it allows for a vivid reconstruction of the scene It is no surprise to find ‘like’, so ubiquitous both as
(106)conversation, in this case noting the ‘remarkable versatility .for the lemma like as a whole’ (p 150) and arguing that this versatility applies to ‘be+like’ too (for example, ‘I was like, ‘‘Oh my God!’’’) Chapter brings real-time processing phenomena into focus Ruehlemann highlights initially the dual role of silent and filled pauses: they help us to cope with real-time pressures but can also be ‘deployed in the service of turn and information management’ (p 161) He then goes on to argue that there are two basic strategies for ‘reducing processing cost’: phonological reduction and grammatical reduction The frequent use of ‘there is’+plural noun phrase is one example cited of this kind of reductionism, but Ruehlemann really goes to town on the case of ‘I says’ to report speech This analysis is particularly interesting as the non-judgemental approach of the author leads to interesting and objective descriptive insights of a form which is non-standard and socially marked Ruehlemann notes (p 172) that ‘ .I saysis used as a reporting clause in presentations of
extendedexchanges involving frequent switches between the presenter’s and a displaced speaker’s utterances Upon closer inspection of contexts, it becomes clear that many of these extended exchanges tend to reveal a point–counterpoint nature, that is, utterances are typically short and speaker standpoints often diverge’ The use of ‘I says’ allows the speaker, then, to maintain the vividness of the present form when reporting the conversation without the need to change the vowel sound or the verb ending when switching between third person and first person While the analysis is most interesting, it leaves unasked and unanswered the question of why, if the form is so well adapted to the conditions of speech, it isnotcommon to most speakers
Relation management phenomena, which are the focus of Chapter 8, provide more of the quirky insights which leaven the text In a discussion of familiarizers and endearments in theB N C(p 186), we learn that ‘almost half of all occurrences ofbaby
were notsaidin conversation butsungas the speakers
were singing along to popular music’ Two narrative devices are closely analysed in this chapter: the use of historic present and introductory ‘this’ in oral narratives as in, for example, ‘This man walks into a pub .’ The use of introductory ‘this’ for a referent not previously mentioned in the conversation is particularly interesting in terms of ‘the adaptedness hypothesis’ Not only does it draw the listener into the story but it also signals the key players in the ensuing narrative The chapter also includes an interesting analysis of third person ‘don’t’ as in ‘he don’t like it’ Here again, the non-judgemental approach permits an objective analysis and the author concludes that the form is particularly common with volitional verbs ‘like’ and ‘want’
In the conclusion, Ruehlemann argues that the balance of probabilities is strongly in favour of his adaptedness hypothesis and expresses the hope that the descriptive approach he has adopted can help free
theE F Lworld from the misconception that speech is
an inferior form of writing and an inferior form to writing The conclusion is reasonable and the hope is well founded What is beyond doubt is that the book will be of value to anyone with an interest in spoken language Ruehlemann synthesizes a huge amount of descriptive work on spoken language in a coherent, accessible, and often engaging manner; he also gives valuable guidance to areas which have potential for further research Personally, this book reinvigorated my long-standing interest in the teaching and description of spoken language
The reviewer
Ivor Timmisis Reader inELTat Leeds Metropolitan University where he teaches on the MA inE LTand Materials Development course and supervises PhD students His main research interests are in the relevance of corpus findings forELT, with a particular interest in the teaching and description of spoken language
Email: i.timmis@leedsmet.ac.uk
(107)w e b s i t e s f o r t h e l a n g u a g e t e a c h e r
The moving image
Diana Eastment
Cinema The Internet is packed with resources for the cinema and films Most
teachers will be familiar with theInternet Movie Database(I M D B), which has been the first point of call for almost 20 years, and in terms of depth and breadth of coverage remains unbeatable Though ideal for the movie buff, it can be over-complex to use with students, however, especially as you have to register to get the full range of informationI M D Boffers For classroom use, a better choice might beAllMovie.com It is more limited in scope but is much easier to use
As far as film reviews are concerned, the two most prominent sites are Rotten TomatoesandMetacritic Both are ‘aggregators’, sites which collect reviews from a variety of sources, rate films, and provide a user-friendly interface Rotten Tomatoes is the more comprehensive and includes reviews from outside theU S A; Metacritic is punchier but more provincial and is limited to films which have come out in the last 20 years or so
For an excellent overview of the film resources available, take a look at Ambrose Heron’sMost Useful Movie Websites He lists over 100 key sites, in categories such as news, general information, reviews, blogs, podcasts, etc But what about the films and videos themselves? Where does one go to find original material?
Source material One of the Internet’s most important resources is theInternet Archive The
Archive hosts thousands of audio recordings and has a collection of over a million books, articles, and other texts; but of particular interest is the Moving Image Archive This is a seriously large collection: 1,200 cartoons and animations, over 3,000 full-length movies, plus ‘ephemeral films’, open source movies, and non-English language material What makes this such an important resource for teachers, other than its sheer size, is the fact that the material is not just available for viewing over the Web, but can be downloaded
At the opposite end of the spectrum is the Bafta ‘60 Seconds of Fame’ site This archives the entries of a recent competition to produce a film exactly 60 seconds long There are a few hundred films; but it is worth having a look at the overall winner and the regional winners They have the same sort of appeal as the ‘mini saga’: the tightly defined format produces some work of real depth and imagination
(108)The best-known resource for videos is of courseYouTube With its millions of clips, it eclipses in terms of quantity anything else on the Web The problem is, though, that the quality sometimes leaves a lot to be desired There is certainly good language learning material on YouTube, but tracking it down can be a chore This is where sites such asExpert VillageorVideoJug come into their own Both aim to provide short, factual videos, mostly of the ‘how to’ variety Expert Village (which boasts over 130,000 videos)
features mainly Americans, many of whom are non-professional presenters and have a tendency to babble VideoJug has a less amateur feel to it and usefully includes the scripts for almost all the material You cannot read the text as you watch the video, but at least it is there to refer to VideoJug has expanded greatly in the past two years Unfortunately, some of its new categories (Love and Sex is a good example) will not be suitable in all situations, and it is unlikely that you would wish to give your students unfettered access
A good deal of effort has gone into setting upYappr It has been designed as a social networking site: students around the world chat to each other, find interesting video material on YouTube, and submit it to the folks at Yappr, who then provide subtitles and support materials for ‘the community’ There are hundreds of videos, sorted according to language difficulty The only real problem for me is that the subtitles are in fact ‘side titles’, in a large box to the right of the video window Perhaps, it is simply something that you get used to
Less satisfactory isLingual.Net The site has the tagline ‘Learn English through Movies’, but has no full-length films Instead, there are trailers, mini documentaries, advertisements, etc., with most of the material limited to only a few minutes Moreover, the material tends to be rather dull when compared with what is available on Yappr Lingual.Net promotes its ‘tri-view method’, but this is no more than watching without subtitles, watching with subtitles, and then watching and answering a few comprehension
questions
Also worth a mention are the UK government’sPublic Information Films They cover the period from 1945 to 2006 and deal with such topics as smoking, pedestrian crossings, why we should pay income tax, and how to vote at a General Election They provide a fascinating social insight and are short enough to make good teaching material All of them come with a transcript, plus background notes, and a timeline And most are very entertaining
Exploiting online video
There is a useful article by Delina Moobin on exploiting online video at the British Council’sTeaching Englishsite The article points out some pros and cons and lists some mainstream sources for video material, including the
(109)TheI M DB http://us.imdb.com Allmovie.com http://www.allmovie.com Rotten Tomatoes http://www.rottentomatoes.com Metacritic http://www.metacritic.com The Most Useful Movie Websites 2.0 http://www.filmdetail.com/
archives/2008/05/12/the-most-useful-movie-websites-20/ The Internet Archive:
Moving Image Archive
http://www.archive.org/ details/movies
Bafta 60 Seconds of Fame http://www1.orange.co.uk/ 60secondsoffame/home/ YouTube http://www.youtube.com Expert Village http://www.expertvillage.com VideoJug http://www.videojug.com Yappr http://en.yappr.com Lingual.Net http://www.lingual.net The National Archives: Public
Information Films
http://www.nationalarchives gov.uk/films
Teaching English: online video forELT http://www.teachingenglish.org uk/think/articles/online-video-elt Teacher Training Videos http://www.teachertrainingvideos
com
Diana Eastmentis author ofThe Internet andE LT(Summertown Publishing) and co-author (with Scott Windeatt and David Hardisty) ofThe Internet(Oxford University Press) She is currently freelancing in Cambridge
(110)New appointments
At the International Conference in Cardiff, IATEFL, Hebert Puchta took over from Marion Williams as President of IATEFL Many of you will know Herbert from his tireless travelling round the world, and IATEFL is extremely fortunate that he has agreed to share some of his busy schedule with us As the Incoming Vice-President over the last year, he has already learnt how the Association works, and now he takes over for two years as President We look forward to benefiting from his extensive professional insights and great personal skills
At the same time, Marion Williams stepped down as President and becomes Outgoing Vice-President Although she still has one more year to provide invaluable guidance to the Association, being President can sometimes be a rather ‘thankless task’, so this is a good opportunity to correct that impression and to thank her profusely for her commitment to IATEFL
IATEFL Special Interest Groups
IATEFL’s Special Interest Groups (SIGs) play an important part in the overall activities, organizing events around the world as well as producing newsletters with state-of-the-art articles in their various specialist fields
The SIGS include: Business English, English for Specific Purposes, English for Speakers of Other Languages, Global Issues, Learner Autonomy, Learning Technologies, Literature, Media and Cultural Studies, Pronunciation, Research, Teacher
Development, Teacher Training and Education, Testing, Evaluation, and Assessment, and Young Learners
As part of your membership subscription, you are enrolled in a SIG of your choice, but others can be added at a modest extra cost If you would like to add another SIG to your membership before your renewal date, please contact the head office (see below for details)
Conference Selections
For those members who are unable to attend the International Conference, the Conference Selections provide an invaluable record of many of the papers, talks, and workshops But there is one aspect which deserves a round of applause: the speed at which the papers are collected, edited, designed, and published By the end of June after the conference, the presenters submit the 750-word reports of their talks, the editor and editorial team then take over, and by early in the following year, all members receive their copy This would be impressive even in a mainstream publisher, but especially so for an association whose core activity is not publishing
The last three Conference Selections have been edited by Briony Beaven Her conscientious work is not only visible in the content of the publications but also in their contribution to the profile of professionalism which IATEFL wishes to project
As the appointment of the editor of Conference Selections lasts for four years and four issues, the Cardiff 2009 Conference Selections, which members will receive early in 2010, will be Briony’s last While it is not yet appropriate to say goodbye and thank you to Briony, it is a good opportunity to draw attention to a very successful example of the benefits which IATEFL can offer its members
Associates 2009
No space to talk about the Associates’ activities, but as of January 2009, there are 78 Associates of IATEFL around the world, a fact which emphasizes IATEFL’s international mission
Simon Greenall
IATEFL, Darwin College, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NY, UK
Tel:+44 (0)1227 824430 Fax:+44 (0)1227 824431
Email: generalenquiries@iatefl.org Website: www.iatefl.org
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/access_purchase/developing_countries.html http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org http://www.niche-publications.co.uk www.visitmethodologia.com. http://tesl-ej.org/ej26/int.html. (http://www.jkrowling.com)) http://my.britishcouncil.or.th/upload/ future-perfect/statement-of-conference-outcomes.pdf http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/source/JohnstoneEN.pdf http://www.lulu.com http://www.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415339476 http://us.imdb.com http://www.allmovie.com http://www.rottentomatoes.com http://www.metacritic.com http://www.filmdetail.com/ archives/2008/05/12/the-most-useful-movie-websites-20/ http://www.archive.org/details/movies http://www1.orange.co.uk/60secondsoffame/home/ http://www.youtube.com http://www.expertvillage.com http://www.videojug.com http://en.yappr.com http://www.lingual.net http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/films http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/online-video-elt http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com www.iatefl.org