Documentos de Académico
Documentos de Profesional
Documentos de Cultura
TEACHING
ENGLISH
as a Foreign
Language
A Guide for Professionals
ISBN 83-01-14498-X
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
Teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) as strategic behaviour. The role
of professional knowledge
Contents
9 Contents
10
Contents
11 Contents
INTRODUCTION
his book is intended as a textbook for courses in teaching English as a foreign language within the framework of our educational system. Focus on English as a foreign language may be contrasted with teaching foreign languages in general,
which has an imposingly vast literature. English as a foreign language should be distinguished from English as a second language since a second language is studied as well
as learned in the community which uses it. Unlike in the case of a foreign language,
learning is not confined to the classroom process, but significantly enhanced by environmental input and interaction. English has a status of a world language as well as
a leading foreign language taught in Poland. It is studied for a wide variety of purposes, ranging from communicating with native speakers of British, American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand English to international communication with native
speakers of other languages, such as Dutch, Spanish, or German.
The book aspires to be representative of the fundamental issues, but cannot be
exhaustive. Its focus is on the background and origin of our teaching strategies and activities, as well as their function, but not on textbook, curriculum and syllabus design, or
standardized testing, which are vital, but specialized aspects of foreign language teaching and, more often than not, are covered in separate courses. The book looks at the
evolution and refinement of our ideas about foreign language teaching and their
increasing anchoring in our notions of language learning. The focus is on two complementary facets of language use, comprehension and production, divided into four language skills to highlight issues of developing control of the language code. Teaching is
considered to be a form of strategic behaviour which involves diagnosing the teaching
problem and selecting/designing the appropriate solution. Teaching strategies are presented as basic categories with a potential for adjustment and modification. The teacher
should regard them as options to choose from in real classroom conditions according to
his or her diagnosis of the current didactic situation and the learners' needs.
The book's advantage is that in one volume we cover key topics in teaching English as a foreign language reflecting recent developments in the field, especially the idea
of foreign language learning as verbal communication including its underlying mental
14
Introduction
processes. Each of these topics may be treated as a point of departure for a much more
detailed and extensive study. At the same time it provides a point of departure for much
more specific issues, which result from these fundamental considerations to be developed in the next volume. The main emphasis is clearly on the teaching aspect of the
whole process, types of activities, criteria of their grading as well as their specific functions. It is not intended as an overview of research exploring language learning, or
Second Language Acquisition Research, or research methods in the field of second language acquisition. Nevertheless, every attempt is made to link teaching principles to
our current understanding of language use and learning in verbal communication.
The book is addressed to a qualified teacher of English as a foreign language or
a teacher trainee, such as a BA or an MA student of English at a philology department,
an applied linguistics institute, or a teacher training college. It is taken into account that
the students take many specialized courses in linguistics and literature which constitute
their degree programme. As a result, they develop extensive background knowledge in
the British and American language and culture and are capable of integrating it with
the field of teaching English as a foreign language. For this reason, the textbook aims
to provide teaching principles with rational justifications rather than arbitrary tips or
recipes. My principal goal here is to systematize techniques and strategies of teaching
English and address the question of why and how they can be used in developing various areas of communicative ability in English. This is the reason why the word 'professional' is used in the title. The book is addressed to a (prospective) professional with
considerable background knowledge, determined to understand reasons for his or her
actions while teaching. This professional must be able to identify, diagnose and solve
numerous problems and make various decisions in the classroom. Such a person will
not benefit from too local or arbitrary advice. Teacher education must indeed foster the
understanding of foreign language learning and teaching as well as the abilities to
diagnose classroom situations, make reasonable choices, as well as adjust and evaluate.
Teachers' creativity, a most precious human resource which must not be ignored, can
truly blossom only on such solid professional foundations rather than as a substitute
for them, as some academics and practitioners maintain.
The key question is who can be considered a professional. In general terms, this
is someone educated or trained with a considerable skill and experience in a given
activity, especially the main activity for which one receives pay, as opposed to just
a hobby or pastime. Such a person can demonstrate professionalism in the sense of
high quality and standards of performance. A profession is an occupation or vocation
requiring extended training and advanced study in a specialized field whereas a professional is a specialist whose predispositions have been developed by extended education and training.
Foreign language teaching witnesses a paradox, however: language learning,
including mother tongue and subsequent languages, can happen naturally, without
any deliberate activity on the part of a 'teacher' provided certain conditions are met:
the learner is fairly young, and there is unrestricted exposure and contact with the language. However, the process is hard to replicate or evoke in the educational context
when the learner is slightly older and contact hours are limited. The intricate nature of
foreign language learning justifies the involvement of professionals, which is to say,
people who understand the working of the process to the point that they can deliber-
15 Introduction
ately cultivate it in the educational setting. What should such a professional know apart
from being a fluent speaker of the source and target languages of the learner, as well
as a trained linguist and an expert in culture? What is the difference between a professionally trained teacher and a non-professional? Ideally, a professional is someone
who can make sense of foreign language learning in the classroom, in other words, can
understand the process. It is then feasible to adjust teaching procedures to the language
learners, taking into account their age, needs and interests. A professional can guide
and assist the learners in the process of language learning in terms of both content and
strategy and provide them with feedback about their progress. A professional teacher
has a clear orientation in the complex and vast domain of the target language and culture. In other words, he or she can address and cope with a genuinely complex and
extensive task.
A non-professional, on the other hand, does not benefit from such a map because
he or she has not been educated in this domain. It is fairly easy for him or her to get
lost in the complex problem space and become preoccupied with one set of activities
or techniques as universal, i.e. all-purpose solutions and forget about the others, or
unnecessarily discard some techniques for inadequate reasons. Error correction may be
used to illustrate such a case: a teacher may discard error correction as anachronistic to
be in line with the recommendations of Communicative Language Teaching, whereas it
is not only anachronistic in terms of our understanding of verbal communication, but
against the teacher's professional role expectations to leave errors uncorrected.
This state of orientation is necessary for the professional teacher to do his job well,
if not to say at all. It is also absolutely necessary for him or her to establish his professional role in the classroom, which, regardless all the other claims, is the role of the
leader. The teacher is a leader in the educational process, if we understand 'the leader'
as someone who has a vision for the future and a way of convincing others to work
toward this goal. What a good and honest leader needs is not only the vision, but realistic and rational understanding of what it takes to accomplish it. In the case of foreign
language teachers, this 'vision' is tantamount to a clear idea of what it takes to learn
a foreign language in the conditions afforded by the educational institutions characteristic of our culture. The clarity and practicality of the idea is relative to the level of education and specialized training. Anyone can act as a foreign language teacher once in
a while, for a while, but sustaining the long-term process of foreign language learning
on a mass scale calls for professionals with solid, i.e. rational foundations in the field.
Professionals have specialized knowledge of the field at their disposal, they are
aware of the tradition in the field so as not to reinvent the wheel and to critically evaluate old and new ideas in their context. In other words, they have a mental map of
what it takes to learn and use a foreign language in the educational context, a map
which systematizes various options and strategies. As a result, they can be methodical,
i.e. systematic, about their work. Both the professional and the non-professional teachers may believe in variety, but only the professional can link techniques or tasks to certain aspects of language learning and use to determine their function in the long run.
Although both let themselves be guided by intuition, the professional can also deal
with a host of rational questions, such as why, how, for what purpose, with what effect,
under what conditions certain teaching procedures can be implemented. Whether
a truly satisfactory state of professionalism can be accomplished or not is another mat-
16
Introduction
ter, but it is certainly worth trying because teaching and learning English as a foreign
language is done on a mass scale.
A professional is a rationalist who knows enough about his domain to demystify
it. If one can answer the 'wh' questions listed above, the magic of language learning is
gone. Is this state welcome? I think it is if we want to be paid for our work in the educational system. The numerous puzzles which still remain are challenging enough and
undoubtedly there is still plenty of room for employing our creativity.
Three sources of information are relevant to an educated teacher: one is professional knowledge on teaching English as a foreign language, the second is the real
world in which we live and communicate, and the third is our careful insight and observation of the foreign language classroom with its learners, treated both as individuals
and a group. On the basis of these three sources of knowledge the teacher may start
diagnosing his problems and making decisions in the foreign language classroom. This
is challenging and demands creative, strategic thinking. The purpose of this textbook is
to outline key elements of background knowledge on teaching English as a foreign language to be tapped as one of the three sources of information in our professional activity. The word 'guide' used in the title indicates that the book introduces some information, but cannot be a substitute for 'being there' - in the classroom - where the
teacher can gradually learn about his or her educational institution, the structure of the
courses being taught, the coursebooks to be used, as well as develop the idea about
his or her specific group of individual learners, their personalities and needs. No guide,
let alone one volume, can replace first-hand experience and the teacher's continuous
education. It is clear to me, however, that the degree to which any textbook on methods and strategies of teaching English as a foreign language can be considered practical does not depend on its abundance of ready tips and directives, but on the degree
to which it helps to understand the complexity of foreign language learning and teaching, i.e. make sense of it. We badly need a map of the problem, the available options,
criteria for choosing them, and the strategies of adjusting teaching to the learner and
his or her needs.
PART ONE
19
guage equals the description of language as presented in grammars and dictionaries, which is the material used in a particular teaching method.
As pointed out by Richards and Rodgers (1986), the Grammar Translation
Method, called the Prussian Method in the United States, is the effect of the influence of Latin on a) the way the vernacular languages were supposed to be taught;
and b) the goals for which Latin was taught, i.e. literacy and understanding of the
classics rather than practical goals. The Grammar Translation Method provided
what was expected from an educated person: the ability to read and understand
the classics, and recite the rules of grammar or proverbs. Among the proponents
of this method are: Johann Seidenstrcker, Karl Pltz, H.S. Ollendorf, and
Johann Meidinger.
The key to learning the foreign language was the knowledge of its grammar,
especially in the form of memorized rules learned by heart and accompanied by
various declensions and conjugations. The Grammar Translation Method assumed
a fairly good knowledge of the native grammar which was used as a point of reference. This kind of knowledge had special value: it provided mental gymnastics
for the intellect. Rules, i.e. explanations about the regularities in the occurrence
of language forms, were presented first and various examples followed; this form
of presentation is called deductive.
The main form of activity in the class was translation from the target to the
native language and vice versa. The unit of the material for translation, as well as
for the whole method, was the sentence. Some sentences, for example proverbs,
were learned by heart. The two forms of translation, from and into the target language, were performed both orally and in writing. The learner's native language
had an important role to play: it was used as the medium of instruction, first and
foremost for talking about the target grammar as well as in translation activities.
The teaching material contained classical texts which were to be read and
subjected to grammatical analysis. Reading was emphasized, but the reading matter was neither contemporary nor communicatively useful. Accuracy was emphasized, but it referred primarily to archaic forms.
Vocabulary items were presented in the form of bilingual lists to be memorized. Verbatim (word-for-word) learning had an important role to play in this
method.
The various proponents of 'grammaticalism' in the nineteenth century advocated the inductive approach in teaching grammar, i.e. inferring the rules from
examples, which would be either texts or sentences in the target language. Literary
texts of the classics turned out to be too complicated for this purpose, so, to overcome this difficulty, Seidenstrcker succeeded in writing a text based on simple
sentences containing most of the grammatical features of the language (1811).
This innovation was taken up by Ahn, and later by Ollendorf. As Titone (1968)
points out, their method was based on constructing artificial sentences to illustrate a rule. The outcome was characteristically boring and dry material, hard to
remember for being far from idiomatic and real, and, ironically, completely useless in real life. Titone (1968:28) provides the following examples quoted from
20
Sweet, which have become a laughing stock in the literature on foreign language
teaching:
The cat of my aunt is more treacherous than the dog of your uncle.
We speak about your cousin, and your cousin Amelia is loved by her uncle and her aunt.
My sons have bought the mirrors of the duke.
Horses are taller than tigers.
Seidenstrcker's disconnected sentences especially constructed for teaching
grammar were turned into a principle by Karl Pltz (1819-1881), who was an
influential figure in foreign language teaching in Europe long after his death. His
method was divided into two parts: (1) rules and paradigms, and (2) sentences for
translation from and into the target language. Throughout the nineteenth century, language teaching in schools followed Pltz's techniques. It was a matter of
using the first language to acquire the second, rote learning of grammar rules, putting grammatical labels on words, and applying the rules by translating sentences.
The Grammar Translation Method dominated foreign language teaching in
the nineteenth century. Because of the activities it proposed and the emphasis on
the written language, the method was appropriate for becoming skilled in grammatical analysis and reading. Needless to say, in the meantime the needs and
expectations toward language learning changed rather dramatically and the
method came under attack for its obsolete procedures and materials.
21
tematic at first, but at the turn of the twentieth century it began to follow a more
definite set of principles: emphasis on the spoken language, the use of phonetic
notation, presenting the meaning through pictures, gestures/dramatization and
objects (realia), inductive learning of grammar, and the use of contemporary texts
about everyday life and high culture of the foreign country.
The Gouin Series. Franois Gouin, a Frenchman, published his book on the art of
foreign language teaching about 1880, in which he added a new element to foreign
language instruction, namely physical activity. The book was written in French and
translated into many languages to exert great influence in Germany, Great Britain,
and the United States. His ideas resulted from his own frustrations and failures to
learn German from grammar books, dictionaries and rules as well as inspired by
observations of his son's playful activities coupled with the boy's verbal commentary
on what was going on. As a result, Gouin developed his own method of foreign language teaching. The pivot of his method was the verb in a sentence. He created teaching
units which were series of connected sentences built around an activity broken down
into minute stages, each expressed in a sentence. In this way, the sentence reflected
a logical sequence of events. Teaching consisted of saying these sentences and performing their meaning. The sentences were to be presented and explained by the
teacher, with the native language used for the purpose, and later practised by the
learners, first in speech then in writing. Characteristically of his method, the learners
were saying the sentences while performing what they meant. What is known as the
Gouin Series became standard procedure in the Direct Method.
His key idea was learning through the senses, play and activity in familiar everyday situations. As pointed out by Mackey (1965), foreign language learning in this
way would take 900 hours. Spoken language was stressed in that the presentation of
the material, explanation and practice had to be oral first and written later. The
vocabulary component related to the activities amounted to 8,000 words and was
grouped around five topics: home, society, nature, science, occupations (Mackey,
1965). A sample list is quoted after Howatt (1984:163):
The maid chops a log of wood
The maid goes and seeks her hatchet,
the maid takes a log of wood,
the maid draws near to the chopping-block,
the maid kneels down near the chopping block,
the maid places the block of wood upright upon this block.
The maid raises her hatchet,
the maid brings down her hatchet,
the hatchet cleaves the air,
the blade strikes the wood,
the blade buries itself inside the wood,
the blade cleaves the wood,
the two pieces fall to the ground.
The maid picks up these pieces,
the maid chops them again and again to the size desired,
the maid stands up again,
the maid carries back the hatchet to its place.
In this way, the sentences in a cycle can be practised and remembered more easily
because a) the material is logically linked and b) dramatization is linked to the verbal
material. Key processes are association of the learning material, imitation of the sen-
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23
reading when their pronunciation was correct. The orthography was misleading
in developing proper pronunciation and so was its use as the notation for pronunciation. As a result, phonetic transcription was introduced to teaching English
and French. Oral techniques included question-and-answer activities, retelling,
and summarizing to stimulate the learners to use the new material. The medium
of communication in the classroom was the foreign language while the native language was reserved solely for providing the meaning of some vocabulary items.
Teachers of the Reform Movement were non-native speakers of the target language. Howatt (1984:173) states: 'The Reform Movement consisted of non-native
teachers who accepted the basic sense of the monolingual principle, but did not
see any advantage in an extremist view.'
The principle of the connected text was well accepted. The law of association was recognized by the newly emerging science of psychology, whereas the
learning material consisting of absurd, disconnected sentences illustrating points
of grammar was strongly criticized. To be learned, the material had to be internally connected to allow associations. Translation was discouraged for fear of
undesirable associations between the native and the foreign language preventing
the development of the language to be learned. The text was treated as the material for learning rules of grammar inductively, rather than the illustration of the
rules already learned. Many authors suggested learning grammar after the text's
presentation.
The contrast between inductive and deductive learning of grammar rules
should be clear by now. Induction is the reasoning operation in which we draw
conclusions from the particular to the general. In the case of language learning,
this means progressing from sample sentences in which certain forms appear to
a generalization about forms and their context, expressed in the form of a rule
(a statement about the principle governing the occurrence of the form). Deduction
is a reverse process in which we start with the generalization and make inferences
regarding the specific instances of the rule. In the case of learning grammar, this
starts with the presentation of a grammar rule, which is subsequently illustrated
with various sample sentences.
24
'Direct' comes from the absence of any mediating role of grammar, translation, or
dictionary. Language learning is a natural ability of humans and can be done intuitively provided there are opportunities for interaction or conversation, in other
words, to quote Howatt (1984:193): 'someone to talk to, something to talk about,
and a desire to understand and make yourself understood. Interaction is at the
heart of natural language acquisition, or conversation, as Lambert Saveur called
it when he initiated the revival of interest that led eventually to the direct
method.' Locke stated that the most appropriate and efficient way to a language is
by conversation and practice rather than rules of grammar.
As has been mentioned above, the source of inspiration for the Direct and
Natural Methods often came from various informal observations of children playing with their mother tongue and the effortless way in which they were able to
master it without explicit instruction in grammar. The use of such methods was
certainly prevalent in those families, not necessarily only aristocratic, who could
afford to have their children educated at home with a live-in tutor, a native speaker
of the language, most often French, but also English and German. The principle
of the Direct Method was learning the language in situational context, linking
new words to their meaning, e.g. naming objects in the environment, stressing
oral work, introducing writing to consolidate oral work, listening practice (short
lectures about interesting topics), inductive learning of grammar from texts, and
graded reading.
One of the representatives of the Natural Method is Heinrich Pestalozzi
(1746-1827), who lived and worked in Switzerland and is still considered to be an
important figure in the history of education. His 'object lessons' involved learning foreign language vocabulary items through naming the respective objects as
well as commenting on them and building all kinds of sentences with them. However, Howatt (1984) points out critically that it is hard to envisage what happens
in the method once the teacher runs out of objects to be used and the learners are
ready for more complex material. He adds that in fact it is hard to envisage the
method beyond the intermediate level. Another representative of this movement
was Gottlieb Henness in Germany, who used Pestalozzis technique to teach standard German to speakers of other dialects, established his own language school
and added French as a foreign language. He emigrated to the United States and
met Lambert Sauveur (1826-1907), with whom he collaborated to open a school
in Boston. Its programme was quite intensive: a hundred hours of intensive
instruction, two hours a day, five days a week for four and a half months. In 1874,
Sauveur wrote An Introduction to the Teaching of Living Languages without Grammar
or Dictionary. The most important element of the method was the dialogue of the
teacher with the students, naming various classroom objects, stress on oral work
and written material used mainly to consolidate oral work, delayed at least by
a month. He did not use the native language so the learners had to understand the
material on the basis of situational clues. Error correction was not used. Sauveur
realized that there was a difference between earnest questions, through which the
teacher genuinely seeks information, and other questions which are asked merely
25
for the sake of language practice. He stressed the role of context, for example, the
need to ask questions so that one would give rise to another because this continuity would guide the learners in the process of understanding.
An important figure in the commercial implementation of the Direct
Method was Maximillian Berlitz (1852-1921), who opened his first language
school in Providence, Rhode Island, making foreign language learning available
through the Direct Method in the United States and Europe. The need for learning the spoken language was so strong at that time that his schools mushroomed
in Europe and America. He also wrote textbooks and reference grammars for his
method. The teachers he employed were all native speakers of the target language
and under no circumstances was the student's native language allowed to be used
in the classroom. The emphasis was on oral work with everyday phrases and
vocabulary, on intensive practice, ample use of the question-and-answer technique
and delayed introduction of grammatical explanations. The Berlitz Method was
quite systematic and replicable. Berlitz himself was proud that the courses in various places were coordinated in such a way that a student leaving school in one
city could continue in another.
Critics of the Direct Method stressed that it was insufficiently focused on
grammatical accuracy and systematicity and that it put high demands on the
teachers' language proficiency and energy resources. However, the Direct Method
addressed the practical needs of language learners (Richards and Rodgers, 1986).
Below is a list of its characteristic features:
1. The emphasis in this method was on speaking and listening.
2. Correct pronunciation was of primary importance.
3. The main forms of activity were oral, especially dialogues and question-and
answer exchanges.
4. New material was first introduced orally.
5. Vocabulary was chosen on the basis of its practicality and its meaning was
demonstrated directly, with the use of objects, pictures and gestures.
6. Grammar of the target language was taught inductively in a variety of oral
activities.
In most general terms, the characteristic tenets of the Direct Method
responsible for its name centre on using language rather than talking about it.
More specifically, instead of explanation, these tenets stress interaction and focus
on the learner's active involvement, as well as practice, the primacy of speech over
writing, the role of the natural pace of speaking and the use of connected text.
One of the specialists who recognized the limitations of the Direct Method
was Henry Sweet. He postulated the need for the teaching method to have a sound
and systematic linguistic basis. As a result, he saw a way to combine the Direct
Method, especially its emphasis on language learning from text and conversation
where language was arbitrary with the formal focus on grammar rules of the
Grammar Translation Method where language was logically organized, on condition that the study of grammar be made more practical and linked to meaningful
material.
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27
naturally. The approach stresses the need for the learner to be exposed to authentic material and to really link the forms to their exact meaning. Understanding the
material is the key to language learning.
Harold Palmer (1877-1947), a British applied linguist, had an enormous impact on
the field of foreign language teaching, especially teaching English as a foreign language (Howatt, 1984), in that he was able to logically derive the principles of foreign
language teaching from linguistics (phonetics, grammar, lexicology), psychology (the
laws of memory) and pedagogy (the role of concretization in teaching) (Titone, 1984).
Palmer began his career as a teacher of English as a foreign language in Belgium. He
also collaborated with Daniel Jones and was offered a job as a lecturer on foreign language teaching to foreign language teachers. During that time he took a keen interest
in foreign language teaching in general and developed many innovative ideas about
his field which were published in The Scientific Study and Teaching of Languages,
1917. This is the book in which he, unlike Berlitz, takes a balanced view toward translation, especially as an exact device to semanticize the meaning of unknown words.
Considering the complexity of language, Palmer argues for a multiple line of
approach in language teaching, tapping all our capacities. Moreover, the key figure in
the learning process is the learner, especially his language proficiency, abilities and
incentive to learn. His general principles include: 'ears before eyes', 'reception before
production', 'oral repetition before reading', 'immediate memory before prolonged
memory', 'chorus work before individual work', 'drill work before free work', 'equal
attention to the four skills', 'learning by heart', as well as the emphasis on concreteness of the material and the interest factor. His other publications from this period
include The Oral Method of Teaching Languages and The Principles of Language Study,
1921. In the latter, he made a distinction between the spontaneous and the studiai
capacities of the learner, which, in current terms, correspond to the communicative
and cognitive aspects of language processes. Practical language learning is contingent
both in direct contact with the language, frequent listening practice and repetition,
and conversation as well as the purely theoretical work of the intellect. In 1923 he was
appointed director of the Institute for Research in English Teaching in Tokyo. The
Institute was an Anglo-American undertaking with the aim of organizing annual conferences as well as disseminating professional information among teachers of English
in Japan. During that time he was developing and advocating the Oral Method of
teaching English as a foreign language, which, unfortunately, did not suit the traditional culture of a typical Japanese classroom. At the same time, he was also keenly
interested in the criteria of frequency for vocabulary selection and produced various
lists of most frequently used words for teaching English as a foreign language. This
interest was reflected in his publication from 1932 called The Grading and Simplifying
of Literary Material. In addition to the above, he was a brilliant phonetician as testified
by his 1922 publication of English Intonation. In 1924 he wrote A Grammar of Spoken
English, on a strictly phonetic basis, aimed at advanced learners and teachers of English,
which is considered to be the first large-scale description of standard spoken English
for pedagogical purposes (Howatt, 1984). A year later, in 1925, he and his daughter
Dorothe produced English Through Actions, a set of classroom materials, especially
drills, which systematically linked language learning to various activities, often
likened to Gouin's ideas. He returned to Britain in 1936 to collaborate with Michael
West as well as to act as a British Council Adviser on matters of teaching English
oversees. As pointed out by Howatt (1984), Palmer was instrumental in turning the
field of foreign language teaching into a full-fledged profession, which is now called
applied linguistics.
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29
according to this observation. For example, if we explain to the learner that the
third person singular of the verb in the simple present tense must have either the
-s or -es ending, the learner will understand and learn this principle as an idea
expressed in a sentence, but not as the ability to implement the principle in the act
of speaking. In order to accomplish the latter, the learner must have numerous, if
not endless, opportunities to practise the use of third person singular simple present sentences in meaningful contexts. Observing language to notice regularities in
the use of forms as in linguistic description is a cognitive operation not to be mistaken for the act of producing an utterance in the same language as a communicative operation. Unfortunately, the two aspects used to be regarded as if they had
been one and the same operation: grammar rules used to be erroneously identified
with the material for producing utterances. It is now recognized that they possess
their distinct specificity and that each of them taps different and specialized
knowledge sources in our mind. Rules are fed by metalinguistic or metalingual
knowledge which comes from reasoning, while speech production - by largely
automatized procedural knowledge which comes from practice. Explicit rule presentation cannot function as a substitute for communicative language practice, but
it can provide the learner with useful guidance about the forms to make communicative language practice more effective. It does not matter whether we emphasize
the inductive or deductive strategy for rule presentation, as long as the illustrative
material is meaningful and there are plenty of opportunities for communicative
practice distributed in time. For these reasons, the explicit teaching of grammar
cannot be expected to provide the learner with the key to language. The key to foreign language learning is its use in meaningful practice and interaction.
Considering the communicative goals of foreign language teaching, rule
presentation and learning is no longer a leading activity, the core of a teaching
method. Instead, its status is reduced to one of many form-focused techniques of
'teaching grammar' and fostering accuracy with the function to intensify the
benefits of communicative language practice. Additionally, there are two important conditions attached to this limited use of explicit rule presentation: 1) the
learner must be cognitively ready to deal with the abstract information about language, which is to say, be at least at the developmental stage of formal operations,
around the age of 12-14; and 2) the rule must be relevant to the learner, i.e. refer
to utterances in the discourse of communication.
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31
native language as a precise semanticizing device. To semanticize means 'to convey the meaning of a given unit' (Titone, 1968). When the teacher provides the
translation of a term or phrase, the learner can instantly understand it, i.e. link the
form to its meaning, commit the item to memory, and move on to a more demanding part of the task. In the context of teaching English as a foreign language, we
resort to translation into the native language when it is hard to convey the meaning of a given word or phrase with the help of other, direct or monolingual strategies, such as using a picture or pointing to the object to visualize the meaning,
presenting a definition, a paraphrase, or examples of sentences with the given
item, etc. Characteristically, hard-to-explain words happen to be abstract nouns,
first and foremost technical terms. Translating them into the native language by
the teacher helps to avoid any ambiguity incurred by other, monolingual or direct
strategies. On the other hand, asking the learner to translate an item into Polish
enables the teacher to check that he or she understands the item correctly and may
be quite useful in the case of so-called false friends, such as manifestation - manifestacja. In both cases of semantizing (by the teacher and by the learner) the learner's precise understanding of the material in the target language is given priority
over the fact that for a minute or two the learner is deprived of the target language
input and/or practice. Further uses of translation are connected with presentation,
practice, testing, and feedback purposes, as contrastive as well as elicitation
devices. Presenting two sentences, in English and Polish, with the same meaning
may help to contrast the formal devices used in English and Polish. Such a contrast may - to some extent - raise the learner's awareness of the distinctions
between Polish and English syntax and counteract interference of Polish and English. With the help of the native language elicitation the teacher may check the
extent to which the learner has mastered some specific teaching point in grammar
or vocabulary. Translation into the native language by the teacher is a way of providing feedback and belongs to error correction techniques: when the learner produces an utterance which the teacher thinks does not express the learner's intended meaning accurately, an instantaneous translation into Polish will help the
learner to notice the mismatch and modify the utterance.
However, Wilkins (1974:82) makes an important and interesting reservation
about the function of translation in semanticizing the meaning of a word, which
is worth quoting here:
In fact, one can question whether one can ever 'know the meaning of a word', since further
experience of its use will always add something more to its meaning. This is particularly the
case if we consider the polysemic nature of many lexical items. Translation tends to conceal
polysemy, by encouraging reliance on one-for-one equivalences between languages. The short-term advantages of translation have to be weighed against some longer-term problems that
dependence on translation may cause.
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learner's native language is a resource which can be tapped under specific didactic circumstances, but, like salt, should be used with moderation. My impressionistic estimate would be not more than 2 percent of the class time.
1. An eminent Polish linguist, professor Ludwik Zabrocki, stated in his lectures and talks for foreign
language teachers that there are in fact two essential methods of foreign language teaching, the
grammar method and the text method, whereas all the others can be treated as their variations to be
located somewhere between the main two. Do you think that this idea is tenable? Why? Why not?
2. Henry Sweet saw a way to combine a) the Direct Method, especially its emphasis on language learning from text and conversation, where language was arbitrary, with b) the formal focus on grammar
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rules of the Grammar Translation Method, where language was logically organized, on condition
that the study of grammar be made more practical and linked to meaningful material. Can you
explain this idea? Is it valid nowadays? Why? Why not?
3. Can you justify the role of phonetics in teaching English as a foreign language to Polish students?
4. What is your own view on the role of grammar in teaching English as a foreign language to Polish
students? Which points from section 1.6. do you accept and which not?
5. What is your own point of view on the role of translation in teaching English to Polish learners? Can
you find some specific examples when translation into Polish seems indispensable? Can you find an
example of translating from Polish to English which is necessary in teaching English to Polish learners?
Further reading
Howatt, A. P R., 1984. A History of English Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kelly, L. G., 1969. 25 Centuries of Language Teaching. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House.
Titone, R., 1968. Teaching Foreign Languages. A Historical Sketch. Washington: Georgetown
University Press.
PART TWO
Characteristic features of this period include: a) clear practical goals of foreign language learning, language learning for communication; b) communication understood as direct, oral, face-to-face interaction, and not just writing; c) the practical
goals justified by the rapid changes in the communication and transportation systems, especially fast means of transportation such as the plane and the automobile,
and d) further growth of the mass media, especially radio and television, as well as
film and the press. Robert Lado (1964:3) succinctly summarizes these changes:
We are witnessing in our time the greatest changes in the history of language learning - changes
that reach into every aspect of this time-honoured field of study. Formerly known by a few as
a mark of education, languages are now studied by people from all walks of life. More languages are studied than ever before, and methods of learning are changing radically. The goals
of the past, usually limited to contact with selected items of literature, have broadened to
include spoken communication with and understanding of native speakers on the widest range
of human interests.
What characterizes this period in the development of foreign language teaching is the growing sophistication of the field. This results from the recognition of
the complexity of foreign language teaching as an activity as well as the realization
that its academic foundations must be refined further to deal with this very complex task. Two strong tendencies characterize the ideological climate of the field in
the post-war period: a search for solid scientific basis for foreign language teaching in the more advanced disciplines of linguistics and psychology, and converting
these foundations into the best and most efficient method of foreign language
teaching.
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A method, which emanates from the approach, is concerned with an orderly presentation of language to students and is influenced by a number of factors,
such as the relationship between the learners' mother tongue and the target language, the goals of the course, the students' age and proficiency level, as well as
their cultural background. It is accompanied by an especially written textbook
and other materials. The last term is technique (Anthony, 1964:66):
A technique is implementational - that which actually takes place in the classroom. It is a particular trick, stratagem, or contrivance used to accomplish an immediate objective. Techniques
must be consistent with a method and therefore in harmony with an approach as well.
What the learners experience in the class as well as what the observers notice are
techniques of foreign language teaching.
The above explanations of the three central terms are significant because
they codify the relationship of the field of foreign language teaching, including
English as a foreign language, with the scientific disciplines of linguistics and
psychology: they are the authoritative source disciplines to provide assumptions
on the nature of language and language learning.
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In such hierarchical arrangements, phonemic units are subordinated to morphemic units, and these in turn make up phrases, clauses, and sentences.
Franz Boas (1858-1942) at Columbia University explored American Indian
languages which had no written tradition or history. He emphasized that each language is so unique that it calls for its own method of synchronic analysis (Handbook of American Indian Languages). Edward Sapir (1884-1939) was a student of
Boas' who became well-known for his ideas on cultural relativity developed in
collaboration with Benjamin L. Whorf. He was preoccupied with the influence of
culture on the use of language patterns which speakers have in their minds and
thus made a contribution to the development of anthropological linguistics.
Leonard Bloomfield (1877-1949) of Yale University, a prominent figure in American structuralism, was significantly influenced by behaviourist psychology.
Bloomfield accepted the determining role of the environment in human behaviour and the necessity to use objective criteria in its analysis. As a result, he
became a leading advocate of antimentalism, which rejects psychological criteria in
linguistics. One of the sources of criticism of traditional grammar was that it was
based on the subjective and imprecise psychological criteria for distinguishing
parts of speech. Within the accepted methodology, Bloomfield chose to concentrate his investigations on the formal aspect of language, especially the distribution of the system's units in texts, rather than to tackle meaning.
Structural linguists introduced definitions of parts of speech which were
based on their sentence position and used the descriptive method called immediate constituent analysis (IC analysis) to capture and diagrammatically present
the most elementary syntactic units and relationship in the sentence.
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books are withheld from the students for about 4 to 6 weeks to allow good pronunciation habits to be formed and to prevent any interference from the written language (in the case of English, its especially intricate spelling system);
also at the course level, we have what is called the retardation of reading and
writing until solid mastery of the material in speaking is established, which in
fact means deemphasis of reading and writing; the underlying principle is that
once the learner has learned the material orally, it will be available in the written skills; however, transfer of practice from the oral to the written skills does
take place unconditionally; finally, there is a characteristic strategy for a reading lesson once reading is introduced: a typical reading lesson is organized to
incorporate as much listening and speaking as possible: the text is treated as
an opportunity to consolidate grammatical material which has been practised
orally; the text is first introduced as oral summary with some explanations by
the teacher and followed by his/her comprehension questions; reading aloud is
an important part of the reading lesson.
The status of pronunciation; great care is attached to the development of accurate, possibly native-like pronunciation, through exercises with native pronunciation models for imitation and articulatory instructions, as well as practice in
discrimination between the target language phonemes, such as i:/ in bean/bin in
English, or native and target language phonemes, such as kot in Polish and
caught in English, stressed and unstressed syllables in a word, drills in rhythm
at the level of clauses and sentences focusing on the pronunciation of strong and
week forms, and on intonation patterns.
Language is a set of habits reflects behaviourist preoccupations with the
almost reflex-like aspects of human behaviour as well as the ease with which
native speakers use their language. A habit can be explained as an act which is performed repeatedly and does not require effort or reflection. This is precisely the
aspect of language use by competent speakers which is admired by the audiolingualists and recommended as the route to language learning. In conjunction with
the structural linguistic interest in patterns of speech, this leads to an idea that to
know a language means to have routinized a sufficient (vast but finite) number of
sentence patters. This view produces a potent effect in foreign language teaching:
habits are mastered through overlearning, imitation, chorus repetition, pattern
drill or pattern practice of all sorts, and mimicry and memorization. These
activities are expected to develop fluency in speaking. Hestitation or reflection are
counterproductive and should be avoided. Overlearning refers to practice continued beyond the point of mastery and implies numerous repetitions. Bloomfield
(1942:12) states that 'language learning is overlearning: anything else is of no use.'
Imitation, which is a synonym of mimicry in this case, is an activity which
requires the learner to replicate or 'echo' the stimulus in exactly the same way in
which it is presented, i.e. without any modifications. Chorus repetition enables
learners to practise some new material within the security of the group; an uncertain advantage of this form of repetition is that while the learners practise simultaneously, the teacher has no way of monitoring them individually. The essence of
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behaviour. A method is a conception of how to take the learner from the initial to the
target state. Several features characterize audiolingualism at this level:
1. Criteria for the syllabus. The most important consideration is how the learning
process is understood to advance. The Audiolingual Method is based on the
structural syllabus which reflects the view that the learner's progress is a matter of mastering the subsequent points in grammar in their linear arrangement.
In contrast to the traditional approaches (for example, the Grammar Translation Approach), these criteria are improved because they are derived from
structural linguistic description, which is free from the flaws of traditional
grammar. The initial tendency on the part of audiolingualists to camouflage
grammar in inductive teaching and avoid the use of the native language are
later replaced by its more overt treatment, such as grammatical explanations in
the native language. The unit of the material to be taught is carved out and
labelled with the help of structural criteria (the simple present tense, modal
verbs, the passive voice, etc.). Although isolated sentences are still present in
drills and pattern practice, more emphasis is put on the context in which
grammatical forms are used.
2. The view of the learner. The learner is treated as a plastic globe to be moulded
by the teacher, which means that the success of the process of teaching is primarily in the teacher's hands. If he or she is able to orchestrate the activities
properly and conduct them at a brisk pace, the effects in the form of the desired
target behaviour should emerge. The Audiolingual Method is teacher-dominated, as reflected in classroom activities, it is guided by, and centred on, the
teacher. The learner is expected to be 'active', but this involvement is synonymous with mechanical behaviour.
3. The view of learning. As has been pointed out above, learning is viewed as
a mechanical rather than mental process (Chastain, 1976). The best route to fluent language use, i.e. habit formation and association, is the learner's observable
activity: imitation, repetition, drill, chorus work, pronunciation practice, dialogue recitation, etc. When the learners are silent during the class, nothing
worthwhile seems to happen in the learning process; practice is the key to language learning. Learning is understood as a uniform process which is not in any
serious way influenced by the individual; instead, learning is largely determined by teaching. However, later developments in the field of foreign language teaching undermine this conviction and lead to the question: does
language teaching indeed cause language learning?
4. The treatment of grammar. Grammar is the core of the language learning
process, it underlies the structure of the material to be learned, even though it
is gradually contextualized and practised in communicative activities. As has
been said, lessons in the Audiolingual Method are centred on the selected
points of grammar, which is also reflected in the list of contents of various
audiolingual textbooks. To take the first conditional as an example, it is first
introduced in a pattern practice unit, both written and recorded for listening,
then it is contextualized in a dialogue, and finally consolidated in a text. The
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learners practise various examples in less and less controlled exercises to reach
the stage of communicative activities. At the same time, grammatical information is not presented explicitly in the form of rules. As Chastain (1976:110)
clarifies, 'The new linguistic approach recognizes that the first-language learner is not aware of the rules he is applying. Therefore, the second language
should be practised, not studied. The learner should learn by analogy, i.e. by
recognition of identical elements in recurring patterns, not by analysis of grammar per se.' As has been mentioned, however, the treatment of grammar and the
native language evolves during the time of the implementation of this method.
5. The treatment of error. The Audiolingual Method is said to be characterized by
a pathological fear of errors which result from interference and lead to incorrect
habits. Errors can be prevented when the material is presented in small steps to
avoid too much difficulty. The learner is expected to proceed through a series
of practice sessions in carefully controlled steps, so that errors have no chance
to appear. The cost of this strategy of error avoidance is that the activities resulting from the rigid criteria of simplicity are rather uninteresting. Valdman
(1971:171) comments:
in the audiolingual approach emphasis is placed on
accuracy and well-formedness, with the acceptance of the risk that, in early
stages of instruction, at least, students will manipulate utterances relatively
devoid of content.'
6. Classroom work format. Most of the audiolingual teaching is teacher-fronted:
the learners are seated as an audience and have no eye-contact among themselves; they all face the teacher who has the central position in the class. This
arrangement is also referred to as lock-step instruction and it seems natural in
a teacher-dominated method. Activities range from individual to whole group
(chorus) practice. Some memorized dialogues are presented by pairs of students
in front of the rest of the students. Individual question and answer exchanges
between the teacher and the learners are used frequently while working on the
reading passage and checking homework.
2.3.3. Characteristic techniques
A selection:
1. PATTERN DRILL:
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Drills may follow various modifications, such as expansion, replacement, completion, transformation, rejoinder, substitution, etc.
2. PATTERN PRACTICE:
Mrs Wilson: I'd like you to do some shopping for me, Susan.
Susan: All right, Mother, I will.
Mrs Wilson: I'd like you to buy some coffee.
Susan: All right, Mother, I will.
3. EXERCISES:
Oral
I. A: What do you want me to do?
B: I want you to help me with my maths.
a) Make questions and answers according to the above model; use the following cues to replace the
expressions in italics :
ring X
send a parcel to X
talk to X
pack my (you, X's) suitcase
b) Do the same exercise changing 'you' to 'X' in the questions and T, 'me', to (he (she) \ 'him (her)'
in the answers:
Written
I. Write what Mrs Wilson said to different persons named in the exercise.
Example: Mrs Wilson: I'd like you to do some shopping for me, Susan.
1. Mrs Wilson:
, John.
2. Mrs Wilson:
, Robert.
3. Mrs Wilson:
., Peter.
4. etc
II. Ask questions and answer them as in the example:
Mrs Wilson: You must collect Robert's jacket from the cleaner's, Susan.
What does Mrs Wilson want Susan to do?
She wants her to collect Robert's jacket from the cleaner's.
1. Susan: You must back me up at the meeting of the Editorial Committee, Betty.
2. Paul's mother: You must drop some of your clubs, Paul.
3. Mrs Groom: You must help me with the housework, Betty.
4. etc.
III. Rewrite the following as in the example :
Mrs Wilson: Robert will probably be late for lunch.
Mrs Wilson expects Robert to be late for lunch.
1. Mrs Wilson: Aunt Helen will probably give up her job soon.
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its single component but the integration of all of the components in fractions of
seconds. Fluent speakers perform all these operations with ease, but their skill is
the effect of practice and expertise, accomplished by painstaking attempts, filled
with hesitations and effort. The benefits of drill sessions, on the other hand,
materialize as improved pronunciation at best, but they cannot accelerate the
development of the speaking skill. Drill may be recommended as a form of
rhythm and pronunciation practice which helps the learner to consolidate the
articulatory operations involved in producing phonemes at the level of clauses.
This is qualitatively different from using drill to master the grammatical system
of the target language.
As for the second point, regarding the position of drill versus other components of a communicative activity, it is not at all clear that the former should be
the first element, i.e. that it should come before communicative language use.
Oiler argues (1973:42):
It was apparently because of the assumption of language as a self-contained system that Nelson
Brooks (1964) and Rand Morton (I960, 1966) argued that manipulative skills should be
acquired through pattern drills which in themselves were not related to communicative activity. Morton went so far as to insist that the acquisition of manipulative skills had to precede
expressive use. That is to say that syntactic and phonological structures are best acquired by
drill apart from their instrumental use. In an experiment designed to test the relative effectiveness of presenting structures apart from communicative activity and within active communication, Oiler and Obrecht (1968) showed that exactly the reverse is true. The mechanical manipulation of structures is best learned in the context of communication [emphasis - M.D.].
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With each repetition round there should be some gains, either in fluency or accuracy, in the strength of the memory trace, or all of the above. It is nothing else but
a way of preparing for performance by trying things out. To sum up, repetition is
not a way to master syntax but it certainly helps to consolidate the material if used
in non-trivial tasks and to strengthen the memory trace of the material being
learned.
Topics and review questions
1. Arrange a drill session of about 10-12 sentences to be conducted by one of the students. Read the
sentence to be repeated clearly and give the learners a sign to repeat. If they do not coordinate their
chorus, do the same sentence again. The pace of this activity should be rather brisk. What are your
impressions from participating in it (as a student, and as a teacher)? What have you learned? What
can you remember? What is the plan/sequence of the material that you have practised? What would
have to be changed for you to remember the material better?
2. Would you as a beginner like to be taught a foreign language with the pre-reading period in the
beginning of the course? Why? Why not? What problems can be prevented by the implementation
of such an introduction to the course in a foreign language and which ones cannot?
3. What weaknesses do you see in practising language material which is predominantly of sentence
length, not longer?
4. Do you as a learner of English ever learn materials almost by heart (verbatim)? Now or in the past?
What kind, if at all? If not, why not?
5. Do you agree with the view that the Audiolingual Method is more appropriate for children than
adults? Is it appropriate for children at all?
Further reading
Chastain, K., 1971. The Development of Modern Language Skills. Theory to Practice. Philadelphia: CCD.
Chastain, K., 1976. Developing Second Language Skills: Theory to Practice. USA: Rand McNally
Publishing Company.
Komorowska, H., 1975. Nauczanie gramatyki jzyka obcego a interferencja. Warszawa: WSiP
Richards, J. C., and T. S. Rodgers, 1986. Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rivers, W. M., 1964. The Psychologist and the Foreign Language Teacher. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Rivers, W. M., 1968. Teaching Foreign Language Skills. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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54
Ausubel (1968) begins his outline of the theory of meaningful learning with
the concept of cognitive structure, which refers to the hierarchical organization
of our mental representations. It consists of knowledge domains organized according to their levels of generality and criterial attributes and is used to store new
information in the form of concepts and propositions. The key to success in learning is the learner's ability to link the new information to the relevant position in
the cognitive structure. Ausubel distinguishes between reception and discovery
learning. During reception learning the information to be learned is presented in
a complete form, whereas discovery learning requires the learner to generate/compute the missing information before he or she can incorporate it in memory. The
next important set of terms is rote and meaningful learning. While learning in
a rote manner, the learner commits the material to memory verbatim, trying to
store it mechanically, without perceiving any logical links or extracting the ideas
independently of their verbal expression. It is another matter that some materials
may be potentially meaningful, but are learned verbatim; others may not even be
potentially meaningful, such as an arbitrary list of disconnected words, for example. Meaningful learning, on the other hand, delves beyond the surface to fulfil
three conditions:
1. The meaningful learning set. The learner must be predisposed to learn in
a meaningful way, which is to say, seek the logical links and organization in the
material to be learned; the learner who has no confidence in this type of learning, or, for reasons of anxiety, prefers to resort to the mechanical verbatim
strategy, may turn a potentially meaningful learning task into a rote one.
2. Potentially meaningful learning material. The learning material must contain
some sensible ideas and it must be organized logically, for example, according
to some criteria, so that the learning task can be related in a substantive
(non-verbatim, non-arbitrary) way to the learner's present knowledge represented in his or her cognitive structure.
3. The logical meaning must become psychological. The learner must perceive
the logical meaning in the text and incorporate it in a substantive way to his or
her knowledge store so that the objective meaning is converted into psychological meaning, as subjectively experienced by the learner.
The advantages of meaningful learning are considerable: the material is
stored longer, it is better retrievable and available for use in subsequent learning
tasks. Moreover, each meaningful-learning episode enhances the development of
the learner's cognitive structure and his or her skills in the acquisition of knowledge.
Another classical figure in cognitive psychology is Jemore S. Bruner, whose
main works include The Process of Education and Beyond the Information Given.
Together with George Miller, he founded the Center for Cognitive Studies at Har-
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trasts. There are several important differences between the traditional Grammar
Translation Method and its modernized cognitive version, however. The modernized version derives grammar material from the up-to-date linguistic description,
TGG; it has communicative aims and makes use of contemporary reading materials; it aims to develop the four language skills in a balanced way rather than
mainly reading and writing; and rule presentation is used to complement the
functional language practice.
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materials, who could incorporate the results of contrastive analysis into the textbooks to emphasize the danger zones with more learning materials. The Cognitive
Code Learning theorists believed that the differences between the native and target language were helpful in identifying the target language system by explicitly
differentiating it from the mother tongue (e.g. deliberately contrasting in special
activities). Carroll (1966:102) states: 'According to the cognitive-code learning
theory, ... the differences between the native language and the target language
should be carefully explained to the student, so that he may acquire conscious
control of the target language patterns.'
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in the subsequent lessons and the current state of the learner's cognitive structure. Marton (1978) explains that in the case of the new material, the appropriate element in the cognitive structure had to be built first by introducing more
general and abstract categories to help the learner to subsume the new, more
detailed information meaningfully. A synthesis of a fairly broad grammatical
problem was to provide the learner with some orientation in the material to be
learned in detail, in individual lessons, and in conjunction with practice sessions. Such a strategy of 'mental scaffolding' could be implemented to introduce the system of tenses in English starting with a general presentation of such
concepts as tense and time, the past, present and future, the aspect, the forms
and the functions of the English tenses and some similarities and differences
between Polish and English in this respect. Such an introduction, accompanied
by a chart of the tenses, should not be mistaken with 'having taught' the subject, but merely having prepared the learners for the task of learning/practising
the tenses meaningfully in the subsequent course of study. However, this strategy can reasonably be addressed only to a fairly sophisticated mature learner who
is capable of processing all the metalingual information contained in the organizers, which is to say, a learner around 14 or more years of age.
The use of advance organizers has its strengths and weaknesses which
brings us to the following conclusion: their presence increases metalanguage
talk during the foreign language lesson, but they enhance the organization of
the material to be learned, which is equal to its better learning and retention.
The degree to which advance organizers can be effectively implemented seems
to depend on the kind of language course and the learners' needs and interests.
6. The treatment of error. There are no theoretical reasons to maintain the audiolingual pathological fear of error which will turn into a habit so it has to be prevented at all cost. Unlike in the Audiolingual Method, error is accepted as part
of the learning process. There is an incorporated risk of making mistakes since
the tasks designed for the learner are non-trivial and challenging, e.g. problem
solving. The occurrence of error may be a signal for some explicit information
about the language, analysis of the error and remedial teaching. Sources of
errors are no longer linked to native language interference but to the developmental processes internal to target language learning, (cf the notion of Interlanguage, see p. 86).
7. Classroom work format is not revolutionized, but more time is devoted to individual rather than chorus activities. Question and answer exchanges are quite
common between the students and the teacher. Individual activities, such as
silent reading, call for working on one's own, whereas discussions and debates
bring in elements of group activity.
8. Techniques include: grammar presentation, both inductive and deductive,
and practice; crosslinguistic comparisons, a comparison of sentences illus-
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trating more flexible Polish word order with the less flexible English word
order; grammar exercises with rationalization of choices (the students provide reasons why a given form is chosen; often used to teach the function of
tenses in English); transformation exercises, such as changing active sentences into passive, the affirmative into the negative, singular into plural,
reported speech into direct speech; problem solving activities; silent reading;
learning new vocabulary with explicit analysis and definitions, both in the
native and target language; oral as well as written compositions (for example
opinion paper, for and against format, narrative, and argumentative writing);
discussions and debates.
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danger that the analysis of grammar and talking about the language will take
precedence over language practice and use, leading to less-than-fluent speaking
ability.
Not all the information in language use can and should be analysed. Intentional learning in language is responsible only for a segment of all the knowledge
that is acquired. There is also a considerable proportion of the material to be learned
through incidental learning, that is through use with attention focused on communicative goals. Just as a pattern drill cannot guarantee learning the required amount
of material for productive language use, the explicit language study of rules cannot
guarantee acquiring the right material for language use. Most of the material is
picked up from the meaningful input incidentally.
Some information, especially language forms - both grammatical and lexical - in language, is arbitrary so it cannot be learned according to the principles
of meaningful learning; this is to say that rote learning cannot be entirely excluded from the foreign language classroom.
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and the processes of language learning are cognitive by definition. Cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics provide a view of the mental make-up of the language learner and the processes which take place during language use and learning. The interest in the cognitive aspects of human functioning has spilled over to
linguistics (cognitive grammar) and Second Language Acquisition Research (cognitive SLA theory). There is also a cognitive conception of verbal communication
as human information processing developed for foreign language didactics
(Dakowska, 2003).
The Cognitive Method has been modified and extended to incorporate the
concept of verbal communication and the advances of Second Language Acquisition Research, as well as the accumulated professional knowledge of classroom
foreign language teaching. The explicit teaching of grammar is not viewed as the
route or the key to language, but as a strategy facilitating foreign language practice and providing intellectual control and orientation in the functioning of language as a communicative tool (in presentation as well as practice and feedback).
Teaching about the language is not limited to the syntactical system but expands
to various aspects of verbal communication as a whole.
Topics and review questions
1. Think of the possibilities of implementing the principles of the Cognitive Method to teaching English grammar to Polish liceum students in the following areas:
a) introducing the present perfect tense (its functions and form) with an advance organizer;
b) explaining the rules for question formation in English, making a graphic illustration, and
providing practice;
c) teaching the forms and functions of the passive voice (one tense would be enough) with the
use of contrastive examples in Polish and English.
2. Using the grid below, compare the Audiolingual and the Cognitive Methods.
The Audiolingual Method
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Further reading
Chastain, K., 1971. The Development of Modern Language Skills. Theory to Practice. Philadelphia: CCD.
Chastain, K., 1976. Developing Second Language Skills: Theory to Practice. USA: Rand McNally
Publishing Company.
Komorowska, H., 1975. Nauczanie gramatyki jzyka obcego a interferencja. Warszawa: WSiP
Marton, W., 1978. Dydaktyka jzyka obcego w szkole redniej. Podejcie kognitywne. Warszawa: PWN.
Rivers, W. M., 1964. The Psychologist and the Foreign Language Teacher. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Rivers, W. M., 1968. Teaching Foreign Language Skills. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
6666
Method, there were problems with demonstrating the superiority of one over the
other. Stevick (1974), for example, points out that method A is a logical contradiction of method B; if the assumptions of method A are justified, then method
B should not be effective. Yet teachers achieve comparable results with both methods. Inconclusive evidence derived from empirical research led to skepticism
regarding the feasibility of discovering a universal method of teaching foreign languages (cf Baczerowski, 1979; Marton, 1975; Strevens, 1977; Wilkins, 1974). In
general, the search for a teaching method ceased to be regarded as the main goal
for foreign language teaching because the goal turned out to be beyond our reach.
A critical discussion of various specific issues disclosed certain discrepancies
between the assumptions underlying the approaches and methods and their practical guidelines for teaching. According to some authors, practical recommendations of the available methods had little to do with the underlying theoretical
principles (Carroll, 1971; Livingstone, 1962). Hanzeli (1967), for instance, saw no
reason to think that the teaching sequence of skills should reflect the linguistic
sequence. He said that the sequence of audiolingual skills is a case of linguists
speaking outside their domain; these reasons can be pragmatic or psychological,
but not linguistic. Saporta (1966) was of the opinion that when converted into an
educational goal, the primacy of speech paid the most superficial lip service to linguistics. Marton (1975, 1976) pointed out that such linguistic terms as generation,
rule, and transformation taken over from the science of linguistics to the field of
teaching became didactic mutations which largely distorted their original technical meaning. Transformation, a linguistic device to capture the relationship
between syntactical forms, was treated as a new name for fairly old-fashioned exercises in which learners practise sentence conversion from singular into plural, or
affirmative into interrogative sentences, or passive into active, etc. These are just
a few examples to illustrate the growing awareness among the specialists that
although methods are said to be derived from their linguistic and psychological
assumptions, there is no consistent link between them and the resulting teaching
recommendations. This gradually led to the loosening up of the bonds with the
source disciplines, which could be welcomed as a sign of growth, if not to say maturation, of the field of foreign language teaching. The source disciplines were
gradually losing their status of the sole fountain of wisdom.
Skepticism as to the feasibility of designing a universal method of teaching
together with the growing criticism of the existing ones led to relocating the energies of specialists in the field to new pursuits, such as the eclectic orientation, the
alternative methods, the foreign language learner and language learning rather
than teaching.
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According to Stern (1975:47), 'the alternatives that the methods fanatism has
put before us are, in fact, not genuine choices because to do justice to the complexities of language, we may well have to grasp both sides of the alternative.' Wilkins
(1976) stated that there is no one method of teaching. Spolsky (1966) voiced his lack
of confidence in methods by saying that the results obtained in teaching might have
been in spite of the method that was used as well as because of it. Strevens (1977)
found the idea of a single best method intuitively unsatisfactory. Baczerowski
(1975) observed that the typical method which consisted of five slogans derived from
the source disciplines was limited because it emphasized some elements only and
neglected the others. Many specialists saw the promise in, and the need of, combining the available methods (cf Carroll, 1971; Chastain, 1971; Finocchiaro, 1974,
1975; Pfeiffer, 1979; Stevick, 1974; Wardhaugh, 1975; Zabrocki, 1979). According to
the eclectic orientation, the methods which had been designed as mutually contradictory, could be integrated into a more inclusive approach because each had its own
merits. Moreover, this integrated solution would do justice to the complexities of the
phenomenon of language. The theoretical compromise was worth the benefit of
a more comprehensive system for the process of teaching. An eclectic method was
expected to involve a combination of the audiolingual and cognitive techniques
selected from the point of view of the age of the learner, his or her proficiency level,
the learner's needs and the nature of the material to be taught. The eclectic orientation demonstrated that what was practically sound in foreign language teaching did
not have to result from a commitment to one school in linguistics or psychology.
Contrastively, it had to embrace more than just a narrow view of language and language learning, resulting from a few slogans.
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'melody' of the language. The students are allowed to work at their own pace. The
complete set of materials includes:
a set of coloured wooden rods,
a set of wall charts containing vocabulary,
a pointer,
Fidel, a phonic code chart,
tapes or discs,
drawings and pictures with worksheets,
transparencies and some more worksheets,
texts, a book of stories,
worksheets on language,
three anthologies,
films.
The role of the teacher is to help the learners to discover 'the spirit of the language', which can be done on the basis of the study of the language melody and
structure, breathing requirements for that language, as well as the literature and
philosophy of the group which uses it. He says (page 22): 'Surrender to the melody
of a language, as to music, will bring to our unconscious all of the spirit of language that has been stored in the melody ... Surrender is a technique for learning
languages.' Vocabulary learning is also a route to the spirit of the language and can
be divided into functional, semi-luxury and luxury items. As the learners work on
the language under the teacher's silent guidance, they are encouraged to develop
their inner criteria for correctness, as represented in the native speakers' statements. These criteria can be fostered by the learners' reflection and reasoning
about their speech. However, the route to perfection requires several approximations before the goal is attained.
The initial lessons focus on the rod and its various colors with the teacher
providing the required words or sentences and instructing the learners non-verbally to produce them. The native language of the learners is used very rarely, if
at all. The learning material is fairly traditional and carefully graded to help the
teacher to retain control over the learning process. Each unit is focused on the
material which treats language as an object of learning rather than a functional
tool. Instructions given by the teacher with the help of the pointer lead to reproducing words or sentences or performing the activities expressed in the imperative sentences, for example 'Take a blue rod and a green rod and give her the blue
one and give him the green one' (Gattegno, 1972:42). Attempts are made to give
the learners the opportunity to associate signs with their meaning, but based on
the criterion of the reason for saying things, verbal communication in the current sense of the word does not take place. The stimulus for speaking comes in
the prevalent form of gestures or motions of the pointer toward the classroom
visuals, such as rods or charts. Pronunciation practice is carried out with very
limited modelling provided by the teacher, but once the learners produce the
given phonemes or words, the teacher uses the pointer and gestures to provide
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feedback and instruct the learners to modify their production to match the target. Vocabulary material, presented in over ten wall charts, is graded - first
according to the grammatical categories, and later - according to topics. While
working on vocabulary, the teacher uses ad hoc drawings, transparencies, films
and television programmes, texts, worksheets and anthologies. The texts are prepared for classroom purposes and do not aspire to imitate authentic materials.
Their purpose is to extend the learners' vocabulary and 'to analyse it for the language it contains or what would be generated from it by analogy, alterations, and
so on.' (page 67). The teacher introduces the words by saying them and writing
them down, a very old-fashioned technique indeed. The activities involved are
predominantly manipulative/metalingual and include classifying words according to categories, making sentences with one or more words from a list, making
as many sentences as possible according to the instructions, describing an object
in the picture, etc. One of the activities calls for sentence elaboration: make the
following sentence longer without altering its meaning 'I am cold'. The most
advanced stage in which anthologies are used is aimed at developing literary
awareness in the foreign language as well as the appreciation of style and art.
Translation is not forbidden and may even be used before text appreciation activities. Gattegno points out that the consolidation of the material takes place
while the learners are asleep.
By way of evaluation, the method seems to be anachronistic, non-professional, paradoxical and dogmatic. It involves the paradox of preventing the
teacher from speaking to the learners where, in fact, unlike the code of rods and
pointers, the teacher's speech is a marvellous source of input for the learners and
a perfectly natural way to communicate. Moreover, the learners are not supposed
to ask questions. The choice of the focus of the initial lessons, the rod, is quite
arbitrary. 'Spare the rod', one would like to say. Gattegno establishes a very artificial system for giving instructions to learners to perform manipulative activities
at word and sentence level where the use of the target language could have been
the source of input. The name of the method itself is an oxymoron: language
learning, especially of its communicative social aspect, is noisy rather than silent
and it is counterproductive to prevent the teacher from a completely instinctive
urge to speak to the learners. If followed rigorously, the Silent Way kills the natural
form of interaction between the teacher and the students. It is non-professional
because it looks at language in a very old-fashioned way mainly as an object of reasoning rather than a tool of communication. Gattegno introduces a whole system
of non-linguistic associations (colours and phonemes) which are useless outside the
class. It is arbitrary and impractical because the reasons for using the colour rods,
charts and the pointer come from teaching content subjects, not from considering
the specificity of language use and learning. It is dogmatic because it is based on
the inaccurate claim that language develops almost entirely from within.
The question to be posed now is: which element of the Silent Way seems
worthy of being retained in contemporary language teaching which relies on noisy
language input and interaction in the foreign language classroom as well as the use
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of phonetic transcription and verbal articulatory instructions in teaching pronunciation? I must admit that there is place for the teacher's silence at a specific point
in foreign language practice: it is the responsibility of the teacher to control the
student-teacher speaking ratio to give students practice opportunities. The
teacher indeed may have a reason to remain silent when the learners present their
tasks, which is not to say that during the preparation for these tasks he or she must
be silent all along. The teacher's duty is first of all to make sure that the learners
have the necessary resources to cope with the task. This aspect of foreign language
teaching is not mentioned in the Silent Way. Another instance of useful silence on
the teacher's part is the so called 'wait time' given to the learner who is working
hard to come up with his/her answer to the teacher's question or problem. This
kind of silence shows the teacher's patience and creates an opportunity for the
learner to complete the task without any interruptions rather than to opt out.
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The pace of the lesson is fairly fast. The students do not say a word. Also
when a written handout with the commands covered so far is distributed, the
learners do not say anything or read aloud. Asher stresses that comprehension
must precede speaking and that a necessary time gap must be observed before the
learners are ready to produce. His method is categorized among the comprehension approaches to language teaching.
The assumptions underlying Asher's method can be traced back to the work
by Palmer and Palmer English Through Actions, who emphasize the desirable link
in learning between language use and physical activity, especially performing the
teacher's commands by children. Asher is of the opinion that the memory traces
of the material learned through a combination of language and action activates
both the left and the right hemispheres and remain stronger (Richards and
Rodgers, 1986). He expects transfer of skills from listening to speaking, reading,
and writing. Asher does not accept the criticism that in his method the semantic
content is limited to certain kinds of physical activity because this may be eliminated with some ingenuity as in the following instructions (Asher, 1982:64):
Marie, pick up the picture of the ugly man and put it next to the picture of the government
building!
Gregory, find the picture of the beautiful woman with green eyes, long black hair and wearing
a sun hat that has red stripes. When you find the picture, show it to the class and describe the
woman.
It seems that the more advanced the course gets the more typical and traditional
the activities become and the role of the imperative is diminished.
To evaluate TPR - a second language method - from the perspective of the
needs of a foreign language learner is not easy because in the case of the latter the
process of language learning is organized in the classroom in view of the paucity
or complete absence of the environmental input. Even then TPR seems to attach
such an importance only to the imperative, neglecting the whole array of grammatical constructions, and to focus on the link only between language and physical action, which rightly reflects one but by no means all aspects of whole-person
involvement in language use and learning. Children certainly link language learning with motor activity, but this connection dominates language acquisition merely in the first, sensorimotor stage, according to the Piagetan terminology. Even
then, however, the link is more complex and multiaspectual than Asher would
have it. Most often children utter words or phrases and perform the activity at the
same time. They also reach a defiance (negation) stage when they make it a rule
not to follow orders. Moreover, Asher's view conveniently overlooks the more
advanced stages of development in which verbal learning plays an increasingly
important and autonomous role. As a result, we see a case of reductionism in
action: the whole communicative potential of language is reduced to the use of the
imperative, whereas the connection between the whole person and language use
and learning - only to the association between understanding imperatives and per-
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ing background music and musical rhythm is coordinated with the presentation
of the material.
There are two key terms in Suggestopedia: desuggestion, i.e. unblocking
the memory of unwanted information, and suggestion, which means filling memory with desirable information. An important source of the success of Suggestopedia is connected with the teacher, whose self-confidence, acting ability, air of
authority as well as absolute trust in the method must have a strong positive
impact on the learners. The learners accept the teacher's authority as they
progress from the state of infantilization to autonomy. At the same time, the
teacher monitors the learners' progress and tactfully deals with errors.
The method aims at conversational proficiency in a foreign language and the
acquisition of as many as 2,000 lexical items, 60 percent of which are learned productively. A typical course is short and intensive with students living in the special compound where the course is held: it lasts 24 to 30 days, four classes a day,
six days a week with limited amounts of homework (by permission). On the basis
of a language test, the students are assigned to appropriate groups where they
assume fictitious target language identities. They are required to refrain from
smoking or drinking during the course. Each group consists of twelve students,
six men and six women. To create a pleasant atmosphere, the classrooms are nicely decorated with comfortable reclining chairs arranged in a semi-circle, soft
lights and background music to help the learners unblock during language learning. There are ten units of the material which must be meaningful and interesting, with a central dialogue in each, a vocabulary list with translation into the
native language and grammatical explanations. The role of translation is to guarantee that the students understand the material. The syllabus is based on structural criteria and the activities are fairly traditional: grammatical explanations,
translation, vocabulary lists with native language translation, listening to the
teacher's reading, imitation, memorization, role-play, dramatization, dialogue
modification, songs and games, etc.
On day one, the dialogue is first presented in the written form with a parallel translation into the native language which is used for reference and rather
briefly. The teacher reads the dialogue three times, each time in a very special way,
with varying tone, volume and intonation and pauses between reading. The readings are accompanied by background music whereupon the students are asked to
breathe deeply. The timing for breathing is the following (Bancroft, 1983): Bulgarian translation (2 seconds); foreign language phrase (4 seconds) - now the students retain their breath for 4 seconds which is thought to promote concentration;
pause (2 seconds). At this stage the learning process is the most intensive. However, in contrast to the claims that it is 50 times quicker, the American experiments demonstrated that the results were only 2.5 times faster (Bancroft, 1983).
The teacher modulates his voice together with the music while the learners first
follow the text in the written form after which they close their books and their
eyes and listen. Bancroft (1983:107) states that: 'The succession of baroque slow
movements contributes to the state of relaxation and meditation (the 'alpha state')
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procedures. Curran (1976) builds his approach on the conviction that a nonthreatening counselling relationship between the teacher and the learner is
the perfect context for whole-person learning. He emphasizes that the teacher, or
rather the knower, should have some basic training in counselling. The learner is
treated as a client whose insecurities connected with the process of language learning and/or with not knowing enough of it should be treated by the counsellor in
a warm, reassuring way. The knower must give up his questioning manner and
generate an unconditionally positive attitude as well as deep understanding of the
learner's state.
An important acronym supplementing these ideas is SARD (Curran, 1976),
which comes from the first letters of the following words: SECURITY, ATTENTION - AGGRESSION, RETENTION - REFLECTION, and DISCRIMINATION. Security stresses that the entire learning experience depends on the
teacher's and learner's state of willing openness, which can be achieved when they
are freed of insecurities. Attention is the element connected with boredom and
guilt which we experience when - as children - we do not comply when told to
pay attention. However, we must accept the fact that our attention fades away so
we must use varied tasks to prevent boredom. Learner-aggression is essential to
constructive learning; like children, adults learn aggressively to assert their
knowledge. Retention and reflection accompany the final stage of absorbing
knowledge which is to become the learner's very own. Discrimination is necessary
in mastering the sounds of the language, as well as the meaning of words and their
grammatical usage.
A group of students/clients of 6-12 are seated in a semi-circle to enable eye
contact. There may be one or more counsellors assigned to the group. The main
form of activity is speaking produced by individual members of the group, but the
method may also be used for teaching composition writing. A traditional syllabus
is not used as the method largely depends on the learners' choice of topic to talk
about at a given time. First, the students think about what to say, and later they
express the idea they have come up with in their native language. The counsellor
listens to the native version and converts it into the target language, phrase by
phrase. These phrases are often recorded on a tape recorder and used as input in
subsequent work. The material may also be written on the board, transcribed and
elaborated further. The students move from fairly simple first attempts to more
and more engaging topics, relying less and less on their counsellor. Richards and
Rodgers (1986) list the following activities typical of counselling learning: translation of the native language utterance into the target language with the student
repeating the target version, group work devoted to discussions, preparation of
a topic or a summary, recording of the conversations in the target language, transcription of the conversation for the sake of practice and analysis, grammatical
and lexical analysis of the material, sharing reflections and feelings connected
with the classes, listening to the teacher's monologue and free conversation. Stevick (1976) points out that error corrections are made in a matter-of-fact manner,
that is on the whole supportive, whereas the free conversations which take place
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after the first 30 hours have all the attributes of animated communication between
interested equals.
In a way reminiscent of Lozanov's Suggestopedia, Curran considers the
process of the learner's development in terms of individual human growth, i.e. as
ontogenetic development. In stage 1, the learner is completely dependent on the
knower and tries to develop a new self in the target language. Stage 2 is the time for
the learner to achieve a measure of independence by using some expressions and
phrases. In stage 3, the learner begins to understand the others directly in the target
language and tries to use as little help from the knower as possible. Stage 4 is similar to adolescence in that the learner is now focused on moving beyond the basics in
the target language. Stage 5 is the time of independence in terms of grammatical
accuracy and style. The learner may now become a counsellor to other learners.
The whole-person approach, according to Curran (1976), is about taking
a person's intellect, volition, and instincts into account and centring the process
of language learning on the deeply caring relationship between the participants in
order to eliminate the sources of anxiety. However, Stevick (1976:93) points out
that there may be an alternative source of anxiety which Curran does not seem to
take into consideration: '...the anxiety that, in terms of one's career needs or lifetime goals, one is wasting one's time with poor method, inappropriate content,
and so on.' Although the whole-person approach to the learner is highly commendable, if not indispensable, it is not, by itself, a sufficient solution to the
teaching problems. The whole-person approach is an essential component of a foreign language learning process in addition to, not instead of, the rational procedures required by the unique material being learned, i.e. the foreign language.
A candid evaluation of Counselling Learning from the point of view of this guide
for professionals would be that it is a technique, or an element of a technique, in
fact, rather than a comprehensive method. The really attractive part of its procedures is that, on a regular basis, the learners have an opportunity to decide what
to say and are provided with the linguistic resources to express their own communicative intention in the target language. This aspect of Curran's method is not
new and can be recommended to any teacher who wants learners to have some
communicative freedom in practising the target language. However, the strategy
can and should be easily implemented without accepting the method wholesale.
Moreover, the language resources given to the learner to help him or her lexicalize
the communicative intention need not necessarily take the form of native/target
language translation, although, admittedly, this may happen.
In view of the absence of the syllabus and structure of the course, especially
the input for learning, Curran's method can be classified as one of the many lexicalization techniques to be used in foreign language speaking activities. The
method's weakness certainly is the fact that the learners are always burdened with
the responsibility to come up with an idea to speak about, considering the fact that
there are well-known alternatives: they may be prepared for a conversation in
a very stimulating way, such as by reading about the subject which is new to them.
The most unacceptable aspect of the method is the implied view of foreign lan-
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1. Do you agree with the idea that an eclectic combination is better for the purposes of teaching English
as a foreign language than the Audiolingual or the Cognitive Methods applied in their pure form?
2. When in terms of the learner's age and level should we introduce phonetic transcription to teaching
English as a foreign language? Is it justified to introduce some other, perhaps simplified, notation
systems in place of phonetic transcription? Why? Why not?
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3. Many specialists see the origins of TPR in the Gouin Series as well as Palmer's ideas (English
Through Actions). What are their common features? What are the benefits of linking language use to
actions and acting things out as you perform the activity?
4. What do you think about the use of background music in Suggestopedia? Would it disturb you or
help you to concentrate? Would you be irritated by the choice of music if it were different from your
favourite kind?
5. List the most important features of the four alternative methods using the grid below.
TPR
Suggestopedia
Community
Language
Learning
Further reading
Bowen, D., H. Madsen, and A. Hilferty, 1985. TESOL. Techniques and Procedures. Cambridge,
Mass.: Newbury House.
Oiler, J. W., and P A. Richard-Amato (eds.), 1983. Methods that Work. A Smorgasbord of Ideas for
Language Teachers. Boston: Heinle.
Richards, J. C., and T. S. Rodgers, 1986. Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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It is likely that language teaching will continue to be a child of fashion in linguistics and psychology until the time it becomes an autonomous discipline which uses these related sciences
instead of being used by them. To become autonomous, it will, like any other science, have to
weave its own net, so as to fish out from the oceans of human experience and natural phenomena only the elements it needs, ignoring the rest... For the problems of language teaching are
central neither to psychology nor to linguistics. Neither science is equipped to solve the problems of language teaching.
The authors see the limitations of the notion of language and its implied
focus on form and stress the concept of language use and the centrality of language learning instead. This position implies the relevance of psycholinguistics,
which 'emphasizes the human being as a user of language' (Stern, 1973:18). Like
many other authors, Stern stresses 'the intricate relationship between language
and meaning, between language and thought and emotion, between language and
culture' (Stern, 1973:24-25). Oiler (1973a) is of the opinion that a theory of second
language learning with aspirations to adequacy cannot disregard the communicative function of language. This perspective requires researchers to bring together
the linguistic and extralinguistic information involved in language use. In contrast to the view of language as a self-contained system, pragmatics is interested in
the study of the relationships between linguistic forms to contexts, in other words,
in what language users do with language signs and how they use language signs to
send and receive messages. Language use is linked to psycholinguistic concerns
regarding the encoding and decoding of messages, i.e. language production and
comprehension, as well as perception and memory. In the same volume, Macnamara (1973) suggests that in child language learning, the need to communicate is
the decisive factor. Children first determine the meaning which the speaker is trying to convey and only later work out the relationship between meaning and the
expression they have heard. He states (1973:59): 'the infant uses meaning as a clue
to language, rather than language as a clue to meaning.' Meaning is of paramount
importance; it comes from the child's need to understand and express himself or
herself. As for the tasks of the source disciplines, his view is the following
(1973:64):
'One of the main tasks of linguistics and psycholinguistics is to make a systematic assault on the language learning device which is so remarkable in man. At
present we know nothing of it in detail. We do, however, know that it is essentially geared to human thought and to its communication. It does not seem to function
at all well unless the learner is vitally engaged in the act of communicating.'
Kennedy (1973) adds that instead of having a rich linguistic environment, the language learner 'is fed intravenously'. The first responsibility of specialists is not to
hinder language learning, and the next is to subordinate language teaching to language learning. Dykstra and Nunes (1973) argue that the teaching programme must
be structured to match the specific individual characteristics of language learners
and it should be developed and evaluated in the context of purposeful communication. 'Communication', Dykstra and Nunes (1973:287) point out '... emphasizes
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purpose and meaning in a social context. It emphasizes the individual in his environment. It emphasizes the use of language, not first of all the forms of language,
which are important certainly, but exclusive emphasis on them constitutes an
inadequate educational opportunity.' All the authors stress that language must be
thought of primarily as a tool of interpersonal communication (Spolsky, 1973;
Upshur, 1973; Oiler, 1973b; Tucker and Lambert, 1973; O'Doherty, 1973).
Language learning is regarded as a natural process governed by its own laws.
Richards (1973:107) evaluates the traditional view of language learning as completely inaccurate: 'Many current teaching practices', he says, 'are based on the
notion that the learner will photographically reproduce anything that is given to
him, and that if he doesn't, it is hardly the business of the teacher or textbook
writer.' The focus is on what the teacher did and what materials were used but not
on the learning strategies that the learners are developing. It may be the case,
however, that learning strategies are fairly independent of the available methods
used for teaching. The learner is not wholly dependent on the teacher for what
he or she learns: the language cannot be taught but must be learned.
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rote learning ability is the ability to store and recall partly arbitrary language
material accurately and assign associations between sounds and meaning, and
retain them.
inductive language learning ability is the ability to infer regularities from language material, identify patterns of relationships involving meaning and grammatical form.
The notion of motivation is linked to the study of attitudes and motivation
by Lambert and Gardner in Canada in 1972. Their research was conducted in the
framework of social psychology to explore the relationship between attitudes
towards the target language group and learning outcomes in Montreal, a FrenchEnglish bilingual setting. Gardner and Lambert (1972) distinguished two kinds of
motivation: integrative, which is connected with a positive attitude to the target
language group and a desire to become its member, and instrumental, which is
connected with utilitarian goals for language learning, such as obtaining a betterpaid job or possibility of travel. Initially, Lambert and Gardner thought that successful language learning is linked to integrative motivation, but it turned out that
the relationship is much more complex. Certainly, motivation is not a causal factor in language learning. It may be claimed nowadays that the source of motivation is not as important as the fact that it is activated. Equally important is the
concept of intrinsic motivation, which is the energy activated for the purpose of
conducting a given task and bringing it to its completion. Research on motivation
in foreign language learning nowadays focuses not so much on the learners' attitudes towards speech communities of the target language - with English as
a world language - but on the much more specific concept of attentional policy in
various learning tasks, defined by Keller (1983:389) as 'the choices people make
as to what experiences or goals they approach or avoid, and the degree of effort
they will exert in that respect.' It follows that the notion of motivation refers to
the deployment of the cognitive resources by the learner, the degree of effort
and the extent to which it is sustained in the long run. Current interest in motivation is much more classroom-oriented (Drnyei, 2001, 2005), whereas the view
of motivation is much more dynamic. The teacher's responsibility is to raise the
level of motivation and maintain it this way as long as possible.
Forisha-Kovach (1983:124) defines intelligence as 'the ability to learn from
experience, the ability to acquire and retain knowledge, and the ability to respond
quickly and successfully to a new situation.' She stresses that to be considered
intelligent, behaviour must be rational and purposeful, as well as meaningful and
valuable. Two factors have been defined in measures of intelligence: the general
ability known as the 'g' factor and specific abilities known as the 's' factor. Results
of intelligence tests are usually presented as Intelligence Quotient (IQ), which
expresses how a person compares to other members of his or her age group. Average scores are computed for each age group which provide the basis for determining the mental age. The IQ score is computed by dividing the mental age by the
chronological (actual) age of the person and multiplying by 100. The factors that
affect intelligence are both heredity, which imposes a certain ceiling which we
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may or may not reach, and environment, especially differential practice. The role
of intelligence in foreign language learning is increasingly recognized nowadays
in view of the perception of language learning and use as strategic behaviour.
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learning because language learning follows a built-in syllabus, the learner-generated sequence of learning which is not identical with the teacher-generated
sequence. He points out that the learner is using a definite system of language at
every point in his development, although it is not the target language in the developed sense. The learner's errors are evidence of that system and should be distinguished from mistakes, which one can correct oneself; errors are systematic
whereas mistakes are random; errors belong to the realm of competence whereas
mistakes - to performance. Systematic errors of competence reveal the state of the
learner's transitional competence, that is the learner's language knowledge to
date. The significance of learner's errors is in that they point to the way in which
the learner tests his or her hypothesis about the nature of the language s/he is
learning. Corder makes yet another important terminological distinction
between input and intake. Input, controlled by the learner, is what is potentially
available to the learner and intake is what actually goes in. He makes the following, characteristically deep reflection (1967:169):
We have been reminded recently of Von Humbolt's statement that we cannot really teach language, we can only create conditions in which it will develop spontaneously in the mind in its
own way. We shall never improve our ability to create such favourable conditions until we learn
more about the way a learner learns and what his built-in syllabus is. When we do know this
(and the learner's errors will, if systematically studied, tell us something about this) we may
begin to be more critical of our cherished notions. We may be able to allow the learner's innate
strategies to dictate our practice and determine our syllabus; we may learn to adapt ourselves
to his needs rather than impose upon him our preconceptions of how he ought to learn, what
he ought to learn and when he ought to learn it.
To sum up, the most important developments in the field of foreign language
teaching to mark the 'post-methods' era selected for this outline include gradual
emancipation of the field of foreign language teaching from linguistics and psychology with an increasing awareness of its own problems and priorities. The concept of language, which has been central in foreign language teaching so far, gives
way to the concept of language use, i.e. verbal communication with the learner's participation as an individual, to prepare ground for learner-centredness.
The relationship between foreign language teaching and learning is now modified: teaching behaviour must be subordinated to the learning process and
there is an urgent need to find out as much as possible about both the process and
the learner.
Topics and review questions
1. Do you think that there are advantages in developing the field of foreign language teaching as an
autonomous discipline? If so, what are they? What are the problems involved? Is it absolutely necessary, in view of the history of its relationship with the source disciplines?
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2. According to some views, intelligence has a very important role to play in the process of foreign language learning, while according to others this role is minimized. Which view is closer to you? Do
you have any observations in this connection?
3. Since extreme individualization is unnecessary, think of the benefits of group language learning as
opposed to one-to-one instruction. What are the benefits of various interaction possibilities in
a group? What do we learn from our peers? What advantages do we have of different individuals in
a group?
4. Do you think that as a way of individualizing instruction students should be given the opportunities to choose the content of their material? What benefit would you see in this?
5. What does it take to humanize mass instruction? Can you provide some specific examples? What are
the benefits for the outcomes of the language learning process?
6. Summarize the main points regarding Selinker's conception of interlanguage including its definition and the key processes.
7. Corder was criticized for his distinction between errors and mistakes based on a rather vague criterion, namely the fact that in the case of mistakes the learner can correct himself or herself. Do you
see any problems with this criterion?
8. Explain the idea of the built-in syllabus.
Further reading
Arabski, J., 1986. O przyswajaniu jzyka drugiego (obcego). Warszawa: WSiP
Cooper, C., 2002. Individual Differences. London: Edward Arnold.
Corder, P S., 1981. Error Analysis and Interlanguage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Drnyei, Z., 2001. Motivational Strategies in the Language Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press
Drnyei, Z., 2005. The Psychology of the Language Learner. Individual Differences in Second Language Acquisition. Mahwa, New Yersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Larsen-Freeman, D., and M. H. Long, 1991. An Introduction to Research on Second Language
Acquisition. London: Longman.
Oiler, J. W., and J. C. Richards (eds.), 1973. Focus on the Learner. Pragmatic Perspectives for the Language Teacher. Rowley, Mass. : Newbury House.
Schumann, J. H., and N. Stenson (eds.), 1975. New Frontiers in Second Language Learning. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House.
Skehan, P, 1989. Individual Differences in Second Language Learning. London: Edward Arnold.
Stern, H. H., 1983. Fundamental Concepts in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
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addressed. This leads Austin to the conclusion that utterances have more than
meaning, sense, and reference: they have force which is the pivot of his theory.
He distinguishes three kinds of acts connected with speaking: a) locutionary
acts, the acts of saying something referring to things in the world, b) illocutionary acts, which have forces attached to the locutionary acts, such as warning or promise, and c) perlocutionary acts, which evoke some natural condition
or state in people who are affected by them. When we say: 'I am sorry', we perform all of the above acts in that we utter words which have the locutionary
force, we produce a statement which has the illocutionary force of apologizing
to the addressee, and we perform the perlocutionary act of satisfying the
addressee's demands and expectations.
Speech acts are performed according to the conventions accepted by the
given speech community. Therefore, they are relevant from the point of view of
the foreign language learner. Austin's theory of speech acts is in line with the
interests of foreign language specialists who see the need to focus on language
use in the social context. This is stressed by British linguists, most notably by
Firth (1973) in his work from 1930, 1937 reprinted in 1964 Tongues of
Man/Speech, who makes reference to Sweet to point out that language exists only
in the individual; language is part of personality and must be studied in connection with social human nature. This requires looking at language in terms of
social events, i.e. in the context of situation which includes the participants, the
verbal actions of the participants, the non-verbal actions of the participants, the
relevant objects, and the effect of the verbal action. Firth stresses that the meaning of an utterance is a function of the cultural and situational context in which
it occurs. Abercrombie (1973) is among the scholars who stress the role of paralinguistic systems of verbal communication, which are distinguished on the
basis of two criteria: a) that they communicate, and b) that they are part of
a conversational interaction. This considerable interest in body language and
kinesics in also reflected in the Communicative Approach to foreign language
teaching.
Halliday (1973) outlines the uses, which he rather ambiguously calls 'models' (see glossary) of language, acquired by a child in his first language. Adults
develop the idea of language as a tool to communicate something, e.g. expressing
messages, ideas, or thoughts which refer to the real world. But for a child this is
neither the only nor the adequate use of language. The child develops many
other, specialized ideas of language in use in addition to the representational
one:
the instrumental use to get things done;
the regulatory use to control the behaviour of others;
the interactional use (for the interaction between the self and others);
the personal use - to form one's own individuality;
the heuristic use - to explore and understand the environment;
the imaginative function to create one's verbal, fictional, literary environment.
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The setting
The participants
The social roles of the speakers and the addressees or the audience
The purpose
The key
The content
The channel
The two main channels are auditory (speech) and visual (writing)
The parameters of the communicative situation outlined above are equally important to language choices by native as well as non-native speakers, i.e. language
learners. Practising language use in the abstract is impossible; to create sufficient
context for language practice, these parameters must be specified.
In 1980, following Hymes' lead, Canale and Swain published a seminal
paper on the 'Theoretical Bases of Communicative Approaches to Second Language Teaching and Testing' in which the central position in communicative language teaching is assigned to the notion of communication and communicative
competence. They spell out the following guiding principles of a Communicative
Approach:
1. Communicative competence is minimally composed of grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, strategic competence (or communication
strategies) and any teaching programme must provide for its development.
2. A communicative approach must respond to the learner's communicative
needs, both these fixed and permanent as well as transitional and interim.
3. The language learner must have the opportunity to take part in meaningful
communicative interaction with competent speakers of the target language.
4. Active use must be made of the learner's native language skills which are
shared with the target language skills.
5. The primary objective is to provide the learner with the experience and the
opportunity to practise the target language and culture and only with a limited knowledge about the language.
The extensive quote below contains their explanation of the notion of communication relevant to language teaching (1980:29):
In proposing this theoretical framework, we have in mind several general assumptions about
the nature of communication and of a theory of communicative competence. Following Morrow
(1977), we understand communication to be based in sociocultural, interpersonal interaction,
to involve unpredictability and creativity, to take place in a discourse and sociocultural context,
to be purposive behaviour, to be carried out under performance constraints, to involve use of
the authentic (as opposed to text-book contrived) language, and to be judged as successful or
not on the basis of behavioural outcomes. We assume with Candlin (1978) that the relationship
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look at how sentences are used to create discourse. The two factors which make
discourse different from a list of sentences are cohesion and coherence (cf rules
of discourse, Canale and Swain, 1980). The term 'cohesion' is explained as follows
(1978:26):
The notion of cohesion,... refers to the way sentences and parts of sentences combine so as to
ensure that there is propositional development. Usually sentences used communicatively in
discourse do not in themselves express independent propositions: they take on value in relation
to other propositions expressed through other sentences. If we can recognize this relationship
and so are able to associate a sentence, or part of a sentence, with an appropriate value, then we
recognize a sequence of sentences or sentence-parts as constituting cohesive discourse. The difficulty we have in recovering propositional development is a measure of the degree of cohesion
exhibited by a particular discourse.
This task is facilitated if the writer or speaker follows communicative conventions in the arrangement of information and avoids such violations as reordering or unnecessary repetitions. Cohesion is established by means of linguistic
(grammatical and lexical) forms used appropriately to the context and to the purpose of linking the elements in clauses and sentences. These linguistic forms, e.g.
pronouns, articles, tenses, recurrent lexical items or their synonyms, establish ties
within and above the sentences by referring to previous elements (anaphora) and
the following elements (cataphora) in discourse. Pronoun 'it', for example, functions anaphorically in that it copies the element with the same reference into the
subsequent part of discourse. Coherence, on the other hand, is the organization of
discourse into a meaningful whole at the level of propositions. Coherence can be
worked out and reconstructed even when there are some missing links in cohesion. From our current perspective it is more convincing to state, however, that
coherence is not so much the property of the text, but of the mental representation of the reader, and that it is established in the mind of the reader even when
there are no overt markers of coherence (cf Jay, 2003:278). More on cohesive
devices in English, such as substitutions, ellipsis, conjunctions, reiteration, synonymy, hyponymy, see M. Halliday and R. Hasan, 1976. Cohesion in English. London: Longman.
Widdowson's well-known example is (1978:59):
A: That's the phone.
B: I'm in the bath.
A: OK.
In this case we assign a meaningful interpretation to the sentences as a)
a request and b) a factual response to it. Coherence as much as cohesion are discovered or recognized by the reader or listener. 'Meanings do not exist, readymade, in the language itself: they are worked out. We are given linguistic clues to
what propositions are expressed and what illocutionary acts are performed, and on
the basis of these clues we make sense of the sentences' (Widdowson, 1978:31).
When we produce discourse, we try to provide the reader or the listener with as
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many clues as we think necessary, which does not mean that we express everything. It is not even feasible. We make use of ellipsis which is the absence of
explicit verbalization of those elements which, we assume, can be inferred from
our shared knowledge, discourse context, or the context of the situation. The use
of language as discourse is a creative task because the listener or the reader must
compute the meaning from the component elements.
Coherence results from our perception of the match between a given
instance of discourse and our knowledge of how discourse is made. We would now
define coherence as the overall unity of ideas expressed in the discourse (van Dijk
and Kintsch, 1983). Savignon (1983:39) aptly explains the difference between
coherence and cohesion:
Text coherence is the relation of all the sentences or utterances in a text to a single and global
proposition [also called sense, comment - M.D.]. The establishment of global meaning or
topic for a whole passage, conversation, book, etc. is an integral part of both expression and
interpretation and makes possible the understanding of the individual sentences or utterances
included in the text. Local connections or structural links between individual sentences provide
what is sometimes referred to as cohesion, a particular kind of coherence. Some examples of the
formal cohesive devices that are used to connect language with itself [language in the meaning
of discourse elements or entities, comment - M.D.] are pronouns, conjunctions, synonyms,
ellipses, comparisons, or parallel structures. The identification by Halliday and Hasan (1976)
of various cohesive devices used in English is well known, and it has begun to have an influence on text analysis as well as on teaching materials for English as a Second Language (ESL).
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nity, and thereby constitute the rationale for the genre. This rationale shapes the schematic
structure of the discourse and influences the constraints choice of content and style ... In addition to purpose, exemplars of a genre exhibit various patterns of similarity in terms of structure,
style, content and intended audience. If all high probability expectations are realized, the
exemplar will be viewed as prototypical by the parent discourse community.
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lar position'. A more extended explanation comes from the Concise Encyclopedia of
Psychology (Corsini, ed. 1987:991):
Roles are prescribed ways for people to divide the labour of society and to interact with others.
Social roles maintain the social system, and they prevent it from changing. Interpersonal relationships do not simply occur in random fashion, but follow certain social conventions, somewhat similar to a script for a play, Since the stability of society is important, people are carefully
trained and their behaviour is shaped by a process of socialization. To deviate drastically from
one's social role (s) is to invite social sanctions, which can interfere with effective living and the
attainment of one's goals. People continue to learn a variety of roles for various social situations.
Thus a given individual in a lifetime acquires the roles of child, teenager, woman or man, wife
or husband, student, worker, and leader, to mention a few. All of these roles enable the individual to interact with a variety of persons in many social contexts in appropriate ways.
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note): 'The term notional is borrowed from linguistics where grammars based on
semantic criteria are commonly called notional grammars (cf formal grammars where
the criteria used in analysis are formal).' He focuses his attention on the available
criteria for organizing the material of teaching to distinguish two strategies,
synthetic and analytic, to explain them in the following classical quote (Wilkins
1976:2):
A synthetic language strategy is one in which the different parts of language are taught separately and step-by-step so that acquisition is a process of gradual accumulation of the parts until
the whole structure of the language has been built up. In planning the syllabus for such teaching the global language has been broken down probably into an inventory of grammatical structures and into a limited list of lexical items ... At any one time the learner is being exposed to
a deliberately limited sample of language. The language that is mastered in one unit of learning is added to that which has been mastered in the preceding units. The learner's task is to
re-synthesize the language that has been broken down into a large number of smaller pieces
with the aim of making his learning easier. It is only in the final stages of learning that the global
language is re-established in all its structural diversity.
In analytic approaches there is no attempt at this careful linguistic control of the learning
environment. Components of language are not seen as building blocks which have to be progressively accumulated. Much greater variety of linguistic structure is permitted from the
beginning and the learner's task is to approximate his own linguistic behaviour more and more
closely to the global language. Significant linguistic forms can be isolated from the structurally
heterogeneous context in which they occur, so that learning can be focused on important
aspects of the language structure. It is this process which is referred to as analytic. In general,
however, structural considerations are secondary when decisions are being taken about the way
in which the language to which the learner will be exposed is to be selected and organized. The
situational, notional and functional syllabuses ... are analytic in this sense, as are approaches
based on operational definitions.
The criterion for this division clearly comes from the fact that, in the case of
the synthetic strategy, the material of teaching is rationed in terms of linguistic
forms and ordered according to some idea of difficulty. In this way it is piecemeal
and additive, unlike the analytic strategy, which operates on meaningful chunks
of material, i.e. authentic rather than predigested. Synthesis as well as analysis
refer to the mental operations performed by the learner during the process of foreign language teaching. The synthetic strategy is much more prevalent and older
whereas the analytic one is a fairly recent invention. Wilkins has several reservations toward the synthetic strategy, first of all, that language learning is not complete before the entire grammatical syllabus has been mastered. More importantly,
however, this strategy is impractical from the learner's point of view because he or
she must reorganize the knowledge of forms to match various functions since
there is no one-to-one correspondence between functions and forms. For example,
the imperative form may be used to perform various functions, such as an invitation ('Come to my house on Saturday. We'll have a lovely lunch.'), a request ('Give
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me your phone number, I'll call you as soon as I can.'), or an apology ('Forgive
me.'). At the same time, ordering someone to do something, typically associated
with the imperative, can be performed with a variety of forms in addition to the
imperative, such as the affirmative ('I want you to get it for me as soon as possible.'), a question ('Can you get it for me as soon as you can?'), a negative sentence
('You wouldn't, by any chance, get it for me, would you?).
According to Wilkins, situational syllabuses reflect the fact that language
is always used and understood in its social context. Our language needs are also
determined by the social situations which we encounter. In designing situational
syllabus, it is necessary to predict the situations in which the learner will need the
target language and select the material (grammatical forms, lexical material with
special situational terminology), which the learner must learn to cope with linguistically. The significant features of the situation are (predictably) the participants, the setting, the topic and purpose of the encounter, the particular language
activity - receptive or productive, etc. We are familiar with the typical situational
units in various foreign language textbooks, recreated for language teaching purposes, such as 'At the post office', 'At the railway station', 'Booking a hotel room',
'Shopping', 'At a restaurant'. The situational syllabus may not prepare the learner
for unexpected events and language needs, but despite this fact it uses a relevant
criterion for the learner-oriented rather than grammar-oriented programme.
In designing a notional syllabus the question asked is not how speakers use
language to express themselves, but what it is that they communicate through language. The syllabus is then organized in terms of content rather than form, which
is not to say that the form is disregarded. The difference is that the forms are subordinated to the semantic needs of the learner. Such a syllabus can cover all sorts
of functions (semantico-grammatical categories, such as time, frequency, quantity, location), categories of modal meaning (modality, scale of certainty, scale of
commitment, intention) and categories of communicative function (reporting,
predicting, evaluating, persuading, arguing, providing information, agreeing,
expressing personal emotions, such as sympathy, gratitude, flattery, hostility).
The Communicative Approach is a well-known breakthrough in the foreign
language syllabus design: in place of one essential set of criteria derived from linguistic descriptions (schools of linguistics have changed but the conviction has
remained that descriptive linguistics identifies the 'what' of foreign language
teaching), we see a whole myriad of criteria of a different nature: functional,
notional, semantic, negotiational, task-based syllabus which has evolved into
a trend in teaching of its own right, and learner-generated syllabus.
Functional syllabus is based on the categories of communicative function.
Categories of communicative function identify the purposes for which various
forms are used in utterances. Forms refer to the syntactic analysis at the sentence
level. Functions are clearly categories derived from the higher level of communicative interaction, for example talking about yourself, starting a conversation,
making a date, asking for information, answering techniques, getting further
information, requesting, attracting attention, agreeing and refusing, hesitating,
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for example having the invitation accepted, favour granted, complaint heard. In
the classroom, the aim is typically to perform the activity till the end.
These definitions of communication are of paramount importance because
language learning takes place when 'the learner becomes involved in real communication so that he is a user of the language rather than a detached observer who
analyses and rehearses the language for later use' (Stern, 1981; Johnson, 1982).
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enrich language learning, and authentic texts as well as illustrations of all kinds
in the language learning process.
4. Communication is context-embedded, which is to say that when speakers communicate they make use of verbal and non-verbal clues to understand the interlocutor's communicative intention. In face-to-face communication these contextual clues come from the people who communicate and their environment. This
is why video materials are regarded as indispensable in CLT - they show speakers in their environment interacting verbally as well as with the help of body language, facial expressions, and other visual and auditory clues. At the same time,
written messages are accompanied by graphic information (pictures, drawings,
photographs, maps, graphs), which enhances the meaning expressed in the language code; these sources of information are helpful in coming to grips with the
overall message and must be systematically exploited in processing written texts.
5. The unit of the material is based on communicative criteria, such as text (discourse which is a unit of verbal communication) and task. Task is a goal-oriented activity whose purpose is to be accomplished through verbal interaction;
the completion of the task implies more than merely grammatical manipulation; although language forms must be processed successfully, they are used to
accomplish a higher order goal related to communicative language use, such as
performing some communicative function or act; a task may take the form of
a problem solving activity, for which some entry data are provided and a solution is worked out (negotiated) by a group of learners.
6. A typical communicative textbook, which is in fact a set of several specialized
books and recordings, reflects these principles by using multiple criteria for the
selection and arrangement of the teaching content: the main criterion for the
selection of the material is the topic; in addition to it there are skill-oriented
activities followed by pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary activities. The
topics refer to everyday matters and interests as well as popular and mass culture. The graphic layout is as important to language learning as the content.
The student book is colorful and richly illustrated with photographs, pictures,
humorous cartoons, maps, graphs, charts and drawings. Reading passages
resemble texts taken out from authentic sources, such as papers and magazines,
and they are accompanied by meaning-enhancing illustrations. These illustrations, which deliberately highlight the target language culture, aim to encapsulate the target language environment.
7. The most valuable work format is pair and group work. The amount of
teacher-fronted instruction is reduced to allow learner-learner interaction and
to increase the learner speaking time. The learners are no longer involved in the
role of an audience but participants. The groups and pairs formed for the purpose of various activities are not stable.
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Although Littlewood added that this meant acquiring grammatical accuracy as well as communicative effectiveness, the implicit understanding in CLT was
that it was either grammatical accuracy or communicative effectiveness. Since
grammatical accuracy in CLT is neither the focus nor the sufficient attainment for
the language learner, the more obvious choice was communicative effectiveness.
This preference went quite well together with a relative tolerance toward language
error. Arguments against grammatical error correction stressed that if errors occur
during a speaking activity, the teacher's intervention would intimidate the learner and interfere with his or her fluency work. A cure for error could be more practice and learning, so that errors would go away by themselves. The issue of error,
however, which has became a bone of contention among the specialists of foreign
language teaching, seems to be much more complex than that.
The role of culture in CLT. Communicative Language Teaching may not be
the first approach to address the issue of culture in foreign language teaching
(cf Brooks, 1964; Lado, 1957), but it certainly is the first comprehensive one. The
idea underlying CLT is that communication and culture are essentially inseparable. Culture defined as a way of life of a given society permeates all areas of communication and provides contexts for the interpretation of meanings. Hammerly
(1982) divided the cultural 'literacy' necessary in foreign language learning into
factual, behavioural and achievement culture. Factual culture is the background
knowledge about geography and history with its important people shared by educated members of a given society, taken for granted in communication in the form
of references, allusions, or metaphors. Behavioural culture refers to various expected forms of behaviour in verbal and non-verbal interactions, including the knowledge of typical scenarios for social events, values and attitudes, which imposes
structure and predictability on social encounters. Achievement culture is the information about the accomplishments of artists, scientists, and other outstanding
individuals who have contributed to the cultural heritage of the target language
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community. This classification is significant from the point of view of foreign language learning because it points to qualitative differences between practising culturally appropriate rituals of behaviour in social encounters, such as: the conversational etiquette and other conventions, studying the mentality of target language
speakers, i.e. the world of ideas, concepts, symbols, values, metaphors, attitudes,
and norms that the target language group lives by and implies (also infers) in communication, and acquiring knowledge about the most appreciated cultural products of the target language community. Each kind of knowledge requires special
materials and practice. Communicative textbooks implement this preoccupation
with target language culture especially as to the choice of cultural topics for reading passages, so that the learners can learn about important people and places, as
well as monuments and masterpieces, richly illustrated with graphic material.
Communicative textbooks seem to have evolved in this regard and have broadened
the spectrum of cultural information. For one thing, they tend to highlight the
native culture of the language learner, i.e. the source culture, as well as the target
culture, secondly, they no longer focus on Great Britain and the United States, but
include Australia or New Zealand, and finally, they aim at what may be called
a polycultural perspective in that they include information on various other countries, places, monuments and people in distant regions of the world.
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WRITING: letter writing, personal letters, letters of application, letters of complaint, letters to the editor or to an agony aunt, writing advertisements or
leaflets, tourist brochures, memos, instructions, compositions, opinion papers.
Let us now look more closely at six of these activities: structured dialogue,
jig-saw reading, role-play, simulation, drama and project.
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6.4.3. Role-play
Role-play is an essential part of language practice in CLT. Based on their
individual role description on a special cue card, students interact with their
partners to accomplish a communicative objective. This information gap
activity helps the learners to expand their communicative competence to areas
exceeding their natural role of a foreign language learner and prepare for other
socially and communicatively useful situations. It is pointed out (cf Porter
Ladousse, 1997) that playing various adult roles has an important developmental function in the socialization of children. It is also significant that in role-play
the learners can hide their brittle ego behind the faade of the assumed role, if
necessary. Practising various roles often goes together with practising various
categories of communicative function, such as inviting, apologizing, explaining, convincing, reprimanding, denying, arguing, which are contextualized in
some typical situations. The essential prop in a role-play activity is a set of cue
cards, each containing specific information addressed to a given participant.
The participants receive their instructions with the description of their role and
their goal to be accomplished in the activity. The point of such a procedure is to
create an information gap in which the participants understand the situation
and the roles of other participants, but they cannot predict their strategies of
dealing with them. The cue cards outline the situation and create the need for
the learners to interact verbally in order to achieve their communicative goal.
When this has been accomplished, the activity can be concluded. Role-play
activities are appropriate for pair and group work; the learners who have practised their roles in groups or pairs may be called upon to perform their activity
in front of the whole class. The teacher's task is to monitor role-play activities
in pairs and groups not to allow too much time, which would slow down the
pace of the lesson, and to prevent extensive use of the native language during the
stage of preparation, which is considered to be the main disadvantage of group
and pair work.
Considering the fact that there is a goal to be accomplished, role-play is
a good example of a task. Porter Ladousse (1997) calls it a low input - high output task, because the teacher's presentation and instructions are fairly limited,
whereas the discourse generated in this activity, if it works, is ample and unpredictable. The learners study the constraints of the situation, the role, and the goal
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to be accomplished in order to put the ideas into their own words. The proportion
between low input - high output may be altered to high input - high output, if we
wish to introduce new lexical material which can be practised during the activity.
Needless to say, role-play itself is an opportunity to practise and consolidate,
through speaking and listening, the knowledge that the learners already have. The
main didactic advantage of this activity is that the interlocutors compose this verbal exchange in real time as opposed to retrieving some ready (memorized) material from their long-term memory.
Following the activity in groups and its presentation in front of the class, the
teacher may wrap it up by providing feedback on any of its relevant aspects,
including error correction.
Further reading
Livingstone, L., 1983. Role-play in Language Learning. Harlow: Longman.
Porter Ladousse, G. E, 1997. Role Play. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
6.4.4. Drama
A characteristic communicative activity which makes use of role-play is drama. It
has been used in various functions in education, psychotherapy and speech (Stern
1983:208):
The objectives of using drama are different for each of these disciplines ... In child development, creative dramatics encourages the maturation and growth of creative capacity, with particular reference to verbal skills. Psychodrama helps restore a patient's mental health and trains
individuals for new social roles. Speech therapy employs drama to help patients achieve and
regain normal speech behaviour and patterns.
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Further reading
Maley, A., and A. Duff, 1978. Drama Techniques in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Holden, S., 1981. Drama in Language Teaching. Harlow: Longman.
Porter Ladousse, G. P, 1997. Role Play. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rinvoluccri, M., 1984. Gramar Games. Cognitive, affective and drama activities for ESL Students.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
6.4.5. Simulation
The difference between role-plays and simulations is a matter of degree: simulations consist of roles, but they are more complex and longer. In simulations
learners are usually invited to participate in an invented social conflict, which
resembles a real life event. Simulation is a leading communicative activity, but
by no means limited to the foreign language classroom; it is extensively used in
military and business training. Quitman Troyka and Nudelmann (1975:vi) write:
Simulation-games originated years ago with the so-called 'Pentagon war games'. Like war
games, simulation games for the classroom are replications of a real environment. Social scientists have adopted simulation-games to the classroom to teach not only content such as political
science and economics, but also the underlying human, social considerations that help shape
decision making.
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the same role, the core of the activity, i.e. the negotiation round during which students act out their roles to accomplish the goal according to the established strategy, and the follow-up activities, which may include a news report of the conflict,
an interview, an article for a newspaper, etc. Depending on its complexity and the
students' proficiency level, a simulation activity may take as little time as one class
or as much as two weeks.
The advantage of a simulation activity is that the learners study the ample
input materials to visualize the communicative situation and learn some useful
lexical material, they assume their roles which have communicative goals ascribed
to them and establish their own strategy to accomplish the goal in the conflict. As
they do this, they make use of their knowledge of the world, especially their social
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knowledge, to act out their role as realistically as possible. The teacher may wish
to have each student in the group assigned to a given role take turns at acting out
the simulation activity, which can make the acting out stage a little monotonous.
An alternative would be to stage the simulation simultaneously in the groups and
have only one group perform for the rest of the class, or assign more roles for the
follow-up activities.
Participating in simulation activities may turn out to be a lasting experience
for many students. When asked what activity in their courses in English as a foreign language they remembered best, my English language majors answered:
a simulation game about an environmental issue that they participated in. To justify such an evaluation we may list its real life qualities: rich situational context,
extended meaningful materials (sustained discourse), emotional involvement of
the participants in the conflict situation, mobilizing their language resources to be
able to accomplish the negotiation task, and its open-ended character.
Further reading
Jones, K., 1982. Simulations in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jones, L., 1983. Eight Simulations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Quitman Troyka, L., and J. Nudelmann, 1975. Taking Action. Writing, Reading, Speaking, and Listening through Simulation Games. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,: Prentice Hall.
6.4.6. Project
Another instance of a complex communicative group activity is project work,
highly recommended by the core curriculum. Topics for projects may range from
general to specific, for example a school magazine, an opinion poll on pocket
money (how much students get and how they spend it), cruelty to animals in the
zoo or the circus, cultural monuments in your region, tourist attractions in your
town, a pen-pal project between pupils in different countries. Various content subjects in the educational system make use of this form of work, not to mention real
life projects in various fields of our professional life. Foreign language projects are
different from other communicative activities in that they are conducted outside
the confines of the classroom, in the field, as well as within it. My rather informal
way of characterizing it, so that it would stand out among other communicative
activities, is that project work sends a group of learners on a fact-finding mission. In contrast to simulations, which highlight some social conflicts, projects
can be viewed as research-oriented tasks since students study and integrate various sources of information in order to expand their knowledge of the topic they
have agreed to work on. They consult encyclopedias, books, leaflets, brochures,
magazines, reports, Internet sources, etc. both inside and outside the classroom.
This is the aspect responsible for the 'fact-finding' part of my characteristics.
Another interesting point about this activity is that the border between the edu-
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cational institution and the outside world is deliberately eliminated. Project work
sends the learners outside the class, not only to the library or the Internet
resources, but into the street, to various firms, tourist spots and institutions to
practise language use in the natural social environment. Alternatively, students
invite targeted representatives of various outside institutions to visit the classroom
or launch a correspondence exchange with a partner school abroad. The point of
the project in the foreign language context is to facilitate the learners' contacts with
native speakers who could be helpful from the point of view of the topic.
Each project leads to a tangible outcome of the students' work, a product,
such as a school magazine, an article, an interview, a brochure, a tourist information booklet, an advertisement, an exhibition, results of an opinion poll, a fact file,
or a bulletin board. Haines (1989) mentions a scrapbook collection of writing and
pictures, figures and statistics, a classroom display, a newspaper, a radio or video
programme. The finished product is a source of immense satisfaction for the
learners and the teacher alike because it gives them a sense of achievement.
Certainly, projects provide an all-round learning experience: they link English to other curriculum subjects as well as to the outside world, and they require
learners to integrate a spectrum of skills, that would be not only linguistic, such
as designing, illustrating, taking pictures, drawing, and handling equipment, for
example cameras, cassette or video recorders (Haines, 1989; Fried Booth, 2002).
They encourage the students to use various communication skills, such as negotiating the form and content of the tasks, planning, gathering and synthesizing
information, observing, interviewing, problem solving, group discussion, and oral
and written reporting (Hedge, 2000).
Regarding the stages of implementing the project, Fried Booth (2002:6) states:
A project moves through three stages: beginning in the classroom, moving out into the world,
and returning to the classroom. At each of these three stages, the teacher will be working with
the students, not directing them but acting as counsellor and consultant - and, in this way,
enabling them to take a project of their own devising out of the classroom into the world.
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in their required coordination, which promotes collaborative learning. The materials which are studied for the project are meaningful, authentic, and informative,
which helps to leave a lasting memory trace and develop in-depth knowledge of
the topic. These advantages seem to outweigh such disadvantages as its rather
demanding nature, the fact that it is time-consuming and involves problems typical in any form of group work, such as the use of Polish and the inevitably unequal
work shared by the students involved.
Further reading
Fried Booth, D., 2000. Project Work. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Haines, S., 1989. Projects. Edinburgh: Nelson.
Henry, J., 1994. Teaching Through Projects. London: Kogan Page Limited.
Hutchinson, T., 1991. Introduction to Project Work. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Philips, D., and S. Burwood, 1999. Projects with Young Learners. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Reibe, R., and N. Vidal, 1993. Project Work. London: Macmillan Heinemann.
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tive belief that students cannot transfer normal communication skills from their
mother tongue; they know what to say but have problems with saying it in English. He also makes critical comments about the communicative criteria for syllabus design. There is no real dichotomy between the structural and functional syllabus because both criteria are needed; what should be strengthened is the role of
the lexical syllabus with idioms and conventional expressions. He says (1990:89):
T h e real issue is not which syllabus to put first; it is how to integrate eight or so
syllabuses (functional, notional, situational, topic, phonological, lexical, structural, skills) into a sensible teaching programme.' Despite the fact that CLT has enormously improved our teaching strategies, it is too rigid with reference to some
useful language teaching activities, such as teaching grammar, drill-like practice
or translation. He defends some forms of practice which, although remote from
target behaviour, are nevertheless essential in foreign language learning because
they help the learners to acquire the mechanical basis of communicative skills.
'A boy who takes up the violin may dream of one day playing the Beethoven violin
concerto to a packed concert hall. But if he is to realize this aim, he is likely to
spend much of his time in the intervening years working alone doing very
'uncommunicative' things: playing scales, practising studies, improving his bowing technique, gaining a mastery of positional playing, and so on (Swan, 1990:93).'
Drill-like activities are truly necessary in foreign language learning; problems
begin when all learning is reduced to them.
His next point is the information gap principle, which is a sign of progress
in foreign language teaching if used 'intelligently', as he puts it. However, it is
very easy to abuse the principle to create artificial activities of no interest or educational value to the learner and fairly distant from real communication. My own
(M.D.) example of such an activity would be 'Julia Evans Job Application Forms'
from Jeremy Harmer's The Practice of English Language Teaching, London: Longman 1991, pages 99 and 100. The activity consists of two gapped texts, a letter of
application from Julia Evans and her application form. Various items of her personal data deleted from one part can be found in the other. The task of the pair of
learners, who are given one form each, is to ask each other questions to find out
the information missing in his or her form from the partner to be able to complete
it. My reservation about the communicative value of this activity, which is a perfect case of the information gap principle in operation, is that it is unrealistic and
impractical because the learners perform a purely artificial task in purely artificial
roles. The language output of the activity is also modest: it elicits short questions
and laconic answers. In real life, people go through whole job application scenarios starting with job advertisements, preparing documents, writing a letter of
application, receiving an invitation for a job interview, preparing for it strategically, choosing the right clothes to wear, taking the role of the applicant in the job
interview, and receiving the response. It is hard to decide where in the authentic
job application scenario the activity in question would fit. As input material
preparing the learner for the situation of applying for a job it is irrelevant because
there is no real role assignment in it and the activity is not structured as a real life
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process, or its part. It cannot be defended on the grounds that it may develop language skills, either. For a comprehension activity, the material is incomplete
(gapped) and therefore unsuitable as input for processing or as a discourse model.
As a production activity it is too easy because it is purely manipulative: the learners merely reshuffle the items of the information given in various places. There
seems to be a clear discrepancy between the map of real communication and the
spectrum of activities generated by the information gap principle.
I could not agree more with the point about the importance of the natural as
opposed to the artificial information gap which Swan makes (1990:94):
Perhaps no classroom exercises can completely achieve the spontaneity and naturalness of real
exchanges, but there are certainly more realistic and interesting ways of organizing information
gap work than by working with 'imposed' information of this kind. Each individual in a class
possesses a vast private store of knowledge, opinions and experience; and each individual has
an imagination which is capable of creating whole scenarios at a moment's notice ... If student
X can be persuaded to communicate some of these things to student Y - and this is not very
difficult to arrange - then we have a basis for genuinely rich and productive language practice.
In many contemporary language courses, communication of this 'personal' kind seems to be
seriously under-exploited ... Role play and simulation are all very well in their places, but there
are times when the same language practice can take place more interestingly and more directly
if the students are simply asked to talk about themselves.
Swan also argues for a place of not only authentic but also didactically modified or prepared texts which illustrate selected aspects of language use. These specially written texts or dialogues are usually looked down upon in CLT for being
unnatural and lacking discourse features of natural texts. In his view, there is
nothing wrong in including specially prepared texts in language teaching materials since some control of language input is necessary and such texts are highly
efficient in this regard.
To sum up this critical evaluation, it seems clear that Swan has a set of valid
arguments, which point to the existing weaknesses within the Communicative
Approach, but which do not undermine its overall value. In fact, these arguments
help to refine and improve the early version of the approach to make it more suitable to the needs of foreign language learners. On the basis of my own critical evaluation of CLT (Dakowska, 1996, 2003), I would like to point out further reservations
which can pave the way to a more comprehensive current approach to teaching
English as a foreign language presented in the chapters to come.
1. Communicativists are so preoccupied with opposing meaningless drills and the
structural syllabus that they do not define their notion of communication specifically enough to make a distinction between communication as an essential
property of the human being which is universal and constitutive, i.e. does not
have to be taught, and verbal communication in L1, L2, L3, where a special code
must be learned for each. What is to be learned in the foreign language classroom
is not communication, but the L2 code as a tool of verbal communication.
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2. Information gap in the sense of a factual information gap is an unrealistic criterion of communication. In reality, it is neither possible nor necessary to
establish with any degree of certainty when we are dealing with an information
gap, and where it is actually located for speaker A and speaker B. Human communicative encounters serve so many different purposes, such as bonding, making contracts, agreements, acknowledging, admitting, confirming, etc. that an
information gap may seem to exist from the point of view of speaker A, but not
speaker B; it may be spotted in one area of communication by speaker A, and
in a completely different area by speaker B. Speaker A may have the intention
to provide speaker B with a piece of news that s/he thinks speaker B has not
heard of, and, out of politeness, speaker B may pretend to treat it as new
although s/he has known all along. No factual information gap in human encounters does not yet mean that no real communication takes place. In such
encounters, the relationship component as well as the history of previous contacts
and bonding between the participants play a characteristically important role.
3. From the point of view of the learner, the novelty, and, therefore, the educational gap (Marton, 1987) is not only located in being told a new fact or being
provided with a piece of news, although they are certainly vital; the information
novelty is elsewhere: in the conventions and norms that the target language
speakers follow, in the lexical material they use, in the morphosyntactic forms
and grammar rules they apply, in the choice of topics for a given situation, the
content they express, the taboos they respect, and the values they cherish. The
notion of information is much more elementary than the factual information
gap: it may refer to forms of various kind, phonemic, graphemic, morphological, lexical, at sentence and discourse level, most of which will be new to the foreign language learner.
4. CLT should be criticized whenever it sets a higher value on communicative
effectiveness than morphosyntactic accuracy and when it rejects, in the initial
decade since its inception, the explicit teaching of grammar and error correction.
Communicativists are right to point out that in order to learn syntax, we do not
have to practise it in nonsensical examples because we will not remember them
anyway. However, any neglect of accuracy and form-oriented strategies goes
against the grain of the essential nature of language as a system of signs. The
material of learning must indeed be meaningful and communicatively relevant
to begin with, but this does not preclude learning the signs, especially their
forms and combinatorial principles, exactly and precisely, with all the required
contrasts and oppositions. To reconstruct this system, the learner needs not
only discourse input but also form-focused activities, accuracy and precision
training, as well as feedback on error. The point is to know the forms and be able
to use them in the context of a situation. Contrary to the audiolingual belief,
forms cannot be learned outside their context, but once they occur in a meaningful and communicative environment, they must be perfected. Acquiring formal
accuracy is advantageous because in communication it guarantees a level of
redundancy in the message which is comfortable to the interlocutor. If this level
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is reduced by the learner's liberties with the language system, the process of
communication may come to a halt. Who wants to be able to communicate only
with oneself? On the other hand, real communicative effectiveness is hard to
predict in the classroom setting because it depends on various factors, for example on the status of the interlocutors and their willingness to cooperate toward
a common goal. We cannot predict the learner's chances of communicative
effectiveness on the basis of classroom simulations for various human reasons,
such as negative attitudes, prejudice, or avoidance which underlie human communicative behaviour.
5. As regards error correction, the argument that errors should not be corrected
because they would not disappear anyway is illogical. The question is not
whether or not errors should be corrected, but when and how they should be corrected, and what is the ideal proportion between error correction and other forms
of feedback. Good teaching practices must include error prevention and feedback
on error, although even then errors may persist, i.e. a) take time to disappear;
b) disappear in some areas of the system faster than in others; and c) in the case
of some learners more easily than in others. There is no reason to expect all errors
to disappear by themselves or to consider feedback information, both positive
and negative, as unnecessary to an intelligent learning organism. Accuracy and
precision are a definite value in our culture, especially in communication and
education, and cannot be discarded on the grounds that they are hard to attain,
or that they take time to develop in the foreign language classroom.
6. Learning theory is certainly not a strong point of Communicative Language
Teaching. Indeed, there is no denying that participating in communicative
tasks and using meaningful materials support foreign language learning. A vast
area of knowledge which comes from psycholinguistic research on comprehension and production as well as acquiring foreign language pronunciation,
grammar and vocabulary has not been fully or systematically exploited. Neither
the strong nor the weak version of CLT seems to do justice to the complexities
of the learning process underlying the development of foreign language skills
and accuracy. Although CLT may be adjusted to various age groups and levels,
it is a fairly universal conception reflecting the underlying static and abstract
notion of communicative competence, indifferent to time or the growing and
developing human subject. In other words, it is not explicitly adjusted (which
is not to say, intuitively adjusted) to the learner's stage of cognitive, social, and
emotional development, or to the learner's foreign language proficiency level.
This weakness may be observed in a random selection of roles in the numerous
role-play activities. One and the same exercise may involve roles for which the
learners are socially and communicatively quite ready and roles for which they
have hardly any experience and coping potential. The use of games is recommended on the grounds that they provide a rewarding and enjoyable learning
experience. In CLT, however, their type and amount is not adjusted to the learner's developmental stage and needs, nor do they reflect the kind of authentic
games and their proportion to other activities used by people of their age group
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different age groups and proficiency levels. When we outline the current scene in
teaching English as a foreign language, however, CLT will not be presented as
the final word in the development of foreign language teaching. What the field
of teaching English as a foreign language needs can be expressed as the following
tendencies:
a much deeper and broader notion of verbal communication than the one
underlying CLT;
a much more systematic incorporation of our cognitive processes in verbal communication;
a very serious treatment of learner-centredness and a whole-person approach;
a revised notion of foreign language learning and teaching, which results from
the above considerations.
1. What in your view are the reasons for error correction? What are the constraints on error correction? What criteria should be used?
2. What are the most appropriate activities to be conducted as pair work? Provide examples. What is
your attitude to pair work and group work based on your own experience? Do you like the fact that
in group work you must compromise (adjust) your individual ideas for the sake of the group task.
3. Do you find sufficient guidelines in CLT for teaching pronunciation?
4. What may be the problems connected with using multiple choice questions as the main reading
comprehension check?
5. What is your own view of the strengths and weaknesses of CLT? Use the grid below, if necessary.
Communicative Language Teaching
1.
2.
criteria of communication
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
error correction
10.
work format
11.
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The field of foreign language teaching has undergone an evolution from fairly
modest beginnings when its rational underpinnings were just emerging into a professional discipline with fairly well-developed scientific foundations. The purpose
of this chapter is to outline the current framework for the field of teaching English
as a foreign language, which is the background of the more specific issues discussed in the subsequent chapters. The following questions will be addressed:
1. What are the sources of orientation and reference which can replace the arbitrary solutions to the problems of the field of foreign language teaching?
2. What changes have taken place as regards the central issues in the field, such as
the view of the learner, the process of language learning and teaching, and the
status of the teaching method?
3. Are we anywhere nearer making sense of language learning, i.e. understanding
the process so that it can be taught in the classroom?
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guage learning cannot be identified with descriptive linguistic procedures. Language learning is a natural process which has its own specificity and it takes place
in the human mind. This means that the learner makes use of his or her human
information processing system. Thanks to its functioning, the learner acquires the
ability to comprehend and produce discourse in communicative encounters. In
addition to this, and depending on the age, the learner can make use of his or her
reasoning processes to reflect on various aspects of verbal communication and
the language code.
For our purposes, we have the following points of orientation:
verbal communication: comprehension and production with the auditory and
written codes;
human information processing with its subsystems (perception, attention,
memory, anticipation, retrospection, planning, monitoring, feedback, controlled and automatic processes;
our reasoning processes to reflect upon verbal communication, especially the
language code.
Not only do verbal communication and reasoning share one location in our
information processing system, but they also tap their shared information pool:
when we interact communicatively, we at the same time store the information
from such experience. This fact qualifies it as cognition, or learning. When we
have learned something, e.g. some content subject matter or skill, we have
enriched our necessary mental representations to be activated in communicative
encounters.
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strategic in that the speakers make what - under the circumstances - seem to be
optimal choices. Strategic behaviour is characterized by evaluating one's resources
in view of the goal to choose a plan which seems optimal in the given context. At
the same time, the participants use feedback information about the results of
their communicative decisions. Feedback provides speakers with the knowledge
of the effects of their communicative behaviour and facilitates communicative
goal-oriented adjustments.
Verbal communication is an open system deeply integrated with other information systems that we use in interaction. As has been pointed out above, discourse is deeply embedded in its various contexts so that its comprehension must
resort to numerous, not only linguistic, knowledge sources. This is but one aspect
of the openness. The next important consideration is that the participants of
a communicative event are involved in it with their entire persons, their bodies
and minds. Speakers process not only linguistic clues, i.e. discourse, but paralinguistic and non-linguistic clues about their interlocutors, such as ethnic background, sex, age, physical appearance, style of dress, body language, facial expressions, voice pitch, as well as all the relevant environmental clues. These clues
enable us to determine the role and the status of our interlocutor, which significantly influences the flow of communication. The participants' personal characteristics, including their intelligence, resourcefulness, imagination and the ability
to visualize, anxiety level, assertiveness, self-esteem, also play an important
part in a communicative act as they influence mutual attitudes and the emotional
relationship between the individuals involved.
Verbal behaviour is intricately linked to non-verbal behaviour, i.e. discourse is linked to human activity, which can be illustrated with reference to
social scenarios and scripted communicative behaviour. In such cases verbal and
non-verbal activities are interwoven, although one may also occur without the
other. An example of such interconnectedness is a wedding ceremony and a wedding reception in Polish culture, in which certain verbal and non-verbal rituals
appear in a predictable order and most of them, though not all, require both language use and action.
Verbal communication is an abstract term for what in real life is a whole
array of natural varieties. In real life, we encounter verbal communication as
instances, or categories, of communicative situations characteristic of our culture,
which has already been signalled by the notion of discourse genres. These natural
instances or categories may be subdivided on the basis of the number of people
involved and the degree of intimacy between them. We can, therefore, distinguish
interpersonal (informal between individuals), public (formal with an auditorium)
and mass communication (with an auditorium and limited, delayed feedback).
These types cross-sect with the criterion of domains of verbal communication,
such as home, school, the neighbourhood, entertainment, sports, health, food,
shopping, travel, education, religion, fine arts, politics, law, etc. The significance of
these distinctions for the foreign language learner is related to the fact that each
case is a natural category with its topics, terminology, norms, conventions and see-
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narios. Knowing these norms, conventions and scenarios reduces the level of
unpredictability of the situation by providing the speaker with a highly desirable
set of expectations (orientation), which facilitate verbal communication.
This view of verbal communication has several important implications for
teaching foreign languages. For one thing, the whole point of verbal interaction,
the ultimate reason why it happens, is to understand (reconstruct) the intention
of the interlocutor. Meaning and sense are of paramount importance as the essential objective for people to do it. From the point of view of the sender, the psycholinguistic processes which take place in our mind in this search for meaning
and sense are discourse comprehension processes, which may be specialized for
spoken and written discourse comprehension. From the point of view of the
sender, the psycholinguistic processes involved are discourse production specialized for spoken and written discourse. Discourse comprehension and production
involve more than linguistic knowledge. They require the use of language skill,
which is understood as the ability to perform various hierarchically arranged
tasks and subtasks in their temporal integration. Some elementary, lower-level
tasks must, therefore, be performed automatically. Automaticity is achieved through
practice. Meaning is not given in a ready form but actively constructed by the
sender, and reconstructed by the addressee with the help of all the available clues.
Speakers make use of all the information they can get, linguistic and non-linguistic alike to carve out their communicative intention through various selections.
The meaning encoded in the verbal form, i.e. discourse, is elaborated upon and
computed by the addressee on the basis of all, not just linguistic clues. Meaning is
deeply determined by the situational context of the communicative act, especially
the relationship and the attitudes of the people involved. Since verbal communication is dynamic, goal-oriented and strategic, it must be classified as a form of
human intelligent (problem solving) behaviour. Its essential point is the search
for meaning and sense.
The fairly condensed characteristics of verbal communication refers to what
in our world is a whole spectrum of specific instances and varieties of communication. This rich map of communication may be systematized for the foreign language teaching purposes with the help of such criteria as domains, i.e. areas of
human activity, including professional and cultural domains, characteristic topics
and content, the setting, i.e., where it takes place, the roles of the participants, discourse types involved, levels of formality, special terminology and other lexical
material, typical speech acts both in spoken and written language, and categories
of communicative function.
Important didactic categories which emerge from this outline include:
natural varieties of communicative situations, meaning and sense, content,
comprehension and production, language as skill, discourse, types of linguistic and other knowledge used in comprehension and production, the constructive nature of comprehension and production, inferencing, ellipsis,
plans, and strategic behaviour (Clark, 1996; Dakowska, 2001, 2003; Littlewood,
1979).
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accuracy, as in Krashen's conception of the Monitor, but to human action, cognition and verbal communication. People observe their own behaviour, especially when they launch a plan which must be overseen to make sure it is properly
implemented and reaches the target. Monitoring is nothing else but making use
of surplus attentional resources to observe our planned, goal-oriented behaviour
to see if it advances in the desired direction. Our monitoring device may focus
on any aspect of communicative behaviour which is relevant at a given time, i.e.
formal accuracy, brevity, factual precision, persuasiveness, etc. Feedback, the
term derived from cybernetics, refers to returning the information about the
results of the system's behaviour into the system's input. Our reactions are controlled by a comparison between the current and target behaviour and the difference is fed back to the system to modify our behaviour until the difference is
eliminated. As a result, feedback dramatically enhances the precision with which
we can hit the target, which is to say, the effectiveness of our behaviour. Thanks
to feedback, our actions may be modified even after launching the plan, while we
are engaged in implementing it. Intelligent organisms make use of feedback all
the time to increase their adaptive potential; however, human beings differ from
machines in that they process feedback actively, either incorporating it or ignoring it completely (Eysenk and Keane, 1995; Carroll, 1986; Dakowska, 2003;
Gleitman, 1981).
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here is no reason why they are the way they are, so their users must know
their form, meaning, arrangements and pragmatic use to identify and produce
them properly. To master the language code for the purposes of verbal communication, a foreign language learner must learn the requisite skills for emitting
(articulating) and receiving (recognizing) the signs, the lexical units and their
sequences, the combinatorial rules to construct and recognize their arrangements,
and the ability to assign forms to meanings (lexicalize) for the role of the sender,
and meanings to forms (semanticize) for the role of the addressee (Dakowska,
2001, 2003).
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1. What is meant by the bottleneck metaphor of attention? Can you explain it? What does it mean to
the language teacher? What does it mean to the language learner?
2. What implications for foreign language teaching result from the fact that the deeper the processing
of information and the more meaningful, the better it is remembered? What does it make you think
of such techniques of reading as skimming and scanning?
3. Compare the notion of the 'Monitor' in Krashen's theory with that of the monitor in our general
cognitive functioning? Which notion is more general? Which is more convincing to you as adequately reflecting our processes?
4. Feedback is essential in modifying our mental representations on the basis of our knowledge of the
results and especially effectiveness of our goal-oriented behaviour. What does it mean for teachers
as far as error correction is concerned? Can we learn a foreign language in the classroom without
error correction?
5. Can you explain the function of anticipation in language learning? How is it used in designing
various activities, especially the warm-up stage?
6. Provide examples for the properties of verbal communication: its dynamic and strategic character,
communicative adjustments that speakers make, and its planful character.
7. What reasoning processes would you find appropriate to use with children of about 10 years of age?
Which processes would be appropriate for adolescents?
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Further reading
Anderson, B. F., 1975. Cognitive Psychology. The Study of Knowing, Learning and Thinking. New
York: Academic Press.
Anderson, J. R., 1980. Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications. New York: Freeman and Co.
Carroll, D., 1986. Psychology of Language. Monterey, California: Brookes/Cole Pubi.
Clark, H. H., 1996. Using Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dakowska, M., 2001. Psycholingwistyczne podstawy dydaktyki jzykw obcych. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.
Dakowska, M., 2003. Current Controversies in Foreign Language Didactics. Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego.
Eysenk, M. W., and M. T. Keane, 1995. Cognitive Psychology. Hove: Psychology Press.
Gleitman, H., 1981. Psychology. New York: W.W. Morton
Hargie, O. D. (ed.), 1997. The Handbook of Communication Skills. London: Routledge.
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for the addressee, both highly demanding decision-making operations, completely different from retrieving ready material from memory.
This active involvement goes hand-in-hand with the view of the learner as
a subject with his or her own locus of control and a sense of agency, understood
as making an impact on the environment and being able to act, i.e. to select behaviour from among various options, in contrast to being an object of someone
else's manipulation.
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The individual's self-concept encompasses his entire person. It is a product of all the physical,
cognitive, social, economic, moral, and emotional factors that have gone into his makeup. The
acquired self-concept is a prerequisite for all subsequent endeavors that the individual may
undertake.... Lacking an adequate self-concept, the individual is reluctant to accept himself or
others. He will also shy away from any and all activities that threaten him.
Ideal self is a vision of what a person would like to be, whereas the real self
is the actual self-image. The closer they are the better adjusted the individual. Too
wide a gap between the ideal and actual self-image may cause damage to the person's self-image and self-esteem. We are living out our self-image. Chastain continues (1976:188):
The child with a positive self-concept accepts himself and is confident of his ability to deal with
others and his environment. The child with a negative self-concept is plagued by feelings of two
inadequacies. First, he is unable to accept himself as a person, seeing himself as being unlovable. Second, he is insecure in his relationships with his surrounding circumstances, feeling
a lack of ability to cope with his situation.... A person handicapped with low self-image has difficulty expressing himself freely, undertaking new and different tasks, and participating in new
and different situations.
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potential, they will give up. They participate when the activity is under their own
control. Students should be encouraged to ask questions and become involved in
open-ended activities. This implies assuming communicative freedom to choose
what to say and some influence on the flow of the activity.
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ren or does s/he want to dominate them? Can the child follow rules of a game,
work in a group?
The emotional development. Can the child control his or her emotions, especially anger and disappointment, and to what extent, or is he or she completely
impulsive?
These questions demonstrate that the connection between the age of the language
learner and the processes of language use and language learning is very strong: age
is an indication where the learner is on the developmental dimension, i.e. where
we can locate him or her on the lifespan axis. Language use and learning have
their own specificity at various points along the lifespan, the most fascinating contrasts provided by foreign language learning by children and adults.
Topics and review questions
1. On the basis of the table below which lists characteristic features of creative students, ego-enhancing strategies of 'good' teachers, and the rights of an assertive person, can you produce a list of characteristics of a teaching programme which would support creativity, self-esteem, and assertiveness?
Are there any cases where you may advance more than one characteristic feature of a person with
one strategy (such as gentle error correction or giving learners opportunities to choose would be useful in promoting all the three characteristics)?
CREATIVITY
openness to experience
internal locus of
evaluation
ability to play with ideas
willingness to take risks
preference for complexity
tolerance for ambiguity
positive self-image
ability to lose oneself in
a task.
EGO-ENHANCING
STRATEGIES
the teacher is sensitive to
each student
s/he promotes student
confidence and participation
in classroom activities
activities are challenging in
terms of thinking and doing
s/he stresses that mistakes
are not tragedies
s/he avoids unreasonable
demands
s/he stimulates the
student's natural curiosity
s/he provides more awards
than punishment.
ASSERTIVENESS
the right to make
autonomous decisions and
take responsibility for them
the right to ask and refuse
favours and expect others to
do the same
the right not to feel guilty for
other people's problems
the right to acknowledge
that you do not understand
something
the right to make mistakes
the right for privacy and
independence
the right to your own opinion
the right to be successful
the right to have your own
judgment of the situation
the right to say no.
2. What is your opinion about the role of creativity in the foreign language learning process?
3. Which points presented in this section do you disagree with? Enumerate and discuss them.
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Further reading
Brown, H. D., 2000. Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. New York: Longman.
Chastain, K., 1971. The Development of Modern Language Skills: Theory to Practice. Philadelphia:
CCD.
Drnyei, Z., 2005. The Psychology of the Language Learner. Individual Differences in Second Language Acquisition. Mahwa, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Williams, M., and R. Burden, 1997. Psychology for Language Teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
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teaching is neither the necessary nor the sufficient condition for language learning.
If properly adjusted to learning, however, teaching may help.
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They do not intimidate children for their mistakes, but command on the
progress they make and take delight in anything new that the child can do.
When they introduce error correction, they use conversational strategies, such
as recasts and reformulations, for example: 'so, would you say' ... plus the corrected version of the child's utterance (Jay, 2003).
The above strategies of interaction play an important function: they encourage the child to participate as well as facilitate the process of comprehension and
storage. Some of them have also been treated as essential attributes of the second
language classroom discourse (Long, 1983, 1996). Teachers implement some or
most of them intuitively or deliberately because they naturally strengthen the
perceptual salience and meaningfulness of the language input for learning and
interaction.
The primary conditions which are indispensable for activating language
learning processes (not just foreign language learning, but any language learning)
are communicative (meaningful) input for observation and comprehension,
communicative interaction consisting of comprehension and production, and
communicative feedback for the learner to approximate the target language
norm. This constant comparison of the environmental data, one's own mental representations, and one's own production and comprehension drive the learning
process toward its goal, approximating native-like mastery of the target language.
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back, as well as abstract thought and reasoning operations which can efficiently
organize language data available to the learner.
Code-related strategies are focused on accuracy and precision in learning this
communication tool. They are concerned with the two modalities in which the
code operates: the visual and the auditory modality, which require their own special cultivation. They are specialized for comprehension (decoding meaning from
graphemic or phonemic form) and production (encoding meaning into graphemic
or phonemic form), as well as for converting one code into the other (transcoding)
to make it a truly functional and precise tool for verbal communication in a foreign language.
Unfortunately, it follows from the above that the teacher no longer possesses the key to the gate of language. The teacher is no longer the intermediary
between the learner and the language. The learner can reconstruct the foreign language system by observing and understanding meaningful communication in the
environment and by participating in verbal communication as a sender and an
addressee. The key is in the learner's hand, but, as one would expect in the educational process, the teacher may be very helpful as a guide and leader who not
only keeps the lock in good working condition but also provides a word of guidance and encouragement as to how to turn the key.
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further categorized and represented in a more abstract form by the learner. Mapping requires some cultivation strategies in receptive activities to make sure that
the input form is stored, and not just meaning.
The next important, but underestimated process is imitation, an act of copying more experienced members of the speech community (Allport, 1985), copying
not so much the meaningless syntactic forms, recommended by the Audiolingual
Approach, but units of meaningful behaviour. This has nothing to do with regarding imitation as a behaviourist-style mechanism of language learning, but rather
as an important route to socialization among human beings, involving the need to
identify oneself with a desirable role model (Wodarski and Matczak, 1992). Wyrwicka (2001) sees imitation as an ability and an instinct observed a few hours after
birth and occurring spontaneously throughout our lifetime. Imitation may be
immediate or deferred (with delay), the latter of which requires the retention of
the whole mental structure of the activity. Mapping from observation as well as
imitation require the learner to structure the incoming information before storage, therefore they should not be dismissed as purely passive. Needless to say, the
role of context is very important in both processes because it imposes structure on
the information to be stored. All in all, imitation is seen as an expression of the
natural human propensity to master new kinds of behaviour, e.g. social roles, by
mirroring the behaviour of others, and may be justified as a tool of expanding our
communicative repertoire.
Modelling is a more complex, advanced form of imitation, which occurs spontaneously in child socialization and learning. The point here is no longer in the
faithful copying of input data, but retaining their important structural characteristics with some modifications. Activities involving modelling allow the learner to
take up a fairly ambitious task and perform it till the end, but contribute only some
of the required operations having the rest of them provided in the model. The teaching process does not have to rely only on spontaneous modelling, as in the natural
processes of language acquisition, but must target and implant certain models especially useful to the learners. To make sense to the learner of a foreign language, the
units for modelling must be related to situationally-embedded discourse.
Practice is absolutely indispensable in foreign language learning. Practice is
not confined to rote learning of meaningless material. It may mean any form of
language activity which prepares learners for real language tasks, but in itself is
far from an authentic task. Practising is performing a given activity for the sake
of consolidating its elements. Unlike in modelling, the stimulus for productive
practice may come in the form of instructions what to do and possibly some elements to be used in the task. Practice may also occur as a self-assigned task. Productive practice in the educational context may come in guided, controlled, or
otherwise contrived forms, with the purpose of rehearsing verbal communication
at an acceptable level of difficulty. Practice is both a natural and typical form of
human behaviour.
Important, but insufficiently appreciated, processes which feed foreign language learning are comprehension and production in the psycholinguistic mean-
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stress on the presentation and practice of grammar at the expense of morphosyntactic accuracy work in productive communicative tasks which demand
focus on form and the incorporation of accuracy feedback on the task;
a limited amount of sustained situationally-embedded discourse, to present
coherence and cohesive devices as well as discourse plans, and to justify grammar forms in the context of communicative language use; providing insufficient opportunities of learning natural, longer components of sustained communicative interaction and communicative (conversational) genres;
poverty of content and intellectual substance adequate for the age group, making it difficult for the learner to engage in critical thinking and creative aspects
of language learning, and relating content to personal experience;
limited opportunities for the learners to participate in communicative interaction in their own identity and with a fair amount of communicative autonomy/freedom of being able to choose what to say, leading to communicative
'alienation' of the learner.
The other fundamental difference between the traditional approaches and methods and the current view of foreign language teaching is that in the former the
descriptive linguistic criteria are used in the syllabus to first focus on forms and
contextualize them in communication later, whereas in the latter the communicative material must be provided first of all because this is the primary input for language learning, whereas focus on form and accuracy work must come later, as
a way of elaborating the meaningful discourse material.
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reserves providing multiple clues for communicative processing: they have extensive cultural knowledge, they know a variety of discourse types, extensive terminology for various domains, prefabricated patterns, constructions, idioms, they
have factual knowledge, including current events, group history, etc. To compensate for the learner's reduced redundancy, foreign language teaching resorts to
such strategies as, for example, providing specific input for the task, which may
refer to form as well as content of what is to come. To help the learner comprehend
utterances, in teaching we must include semanticizing strategies which help to
match meanings to forms when they are not familiar, as well as include feedback
on comprehension. From the point of view of the producer, teaching must
include lexicalization strategies which help the learner to put his meanings into
words under reduced redundancy conditions. In conversational interaction, lexicalization and semantization occur as a variety of interactive comprehension
checks and meaning clarification strategies. Additionally, foreign language
learners must deal with reduced automaticity/fluency (skill) deficits as far as discourse processing is concerned, the remedy for which is task repetition, slowing
down the pace of the task, breaking it into smaller components first, rehearsal
to consolidate elements of the task, and practising its delivery (this means practising a meaningful, learner-generated task), as well as editing strategies.
To sum up, the first responsibility of the teacher is to create primary conditions for foreign language learning, i.e. provide input, interaction opportunities,
and feedback. The next step is to facilitate and catalyze the process of foreign language learning in the educational setting. These strategies refer to various aspects of
verbal communication, as pointed out above. Below are some examples of strategies
related to the components of our cognitive (HIP) system and reasoning processes to
operate on verbal communication material, especially its code, language.
Perception of communicative material may be facilitated by its enhanced
structure or clarity of presentation (loudness), i.e. salience. Limitations of attention may be compensated by the teacher's guidance through the task and specific
instructions, as well as by breaking a complex task into subtasks, as well as repetition of some tasks and unrestricted time on other tasks. Memory processes may
be facilitated by activating relevant schemata and paying attention to the organization of the material to be learned as well as rehearsal, building associations and
elaboration strategies (Eysenk and Keane, 1995). Anticipation may be tapped as
deliberate activation of the task-relevant knowledge (Oiler, 1972), whereas planning deficits may be compensated by presenting relevant models of discourse
plans, while time given to plan can make up for insufficient automaticity in
production (Crookes, 1988). Monitoring may be encouraged by breaking a written
task into two subtasks, drafting and editing, which - in a speaking task - would
have the equivalent of rehearsal and performance; retrospection may be evoked
by a summary after a reading comprehension task, the better to store the information and develop longer discourse plans in memory; the effect of feedback may
be emphasized by various noticing and feedback incorporation strategies (Wenden and Rubin, eds., 1987).
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The efficiency of controlled processes can be enhanced by means of intentional learning with focal attention, analysis, and development of definite declarative representations, the knowledge required in the task; automatic processes can
be developed according to Anderson's conception in three stages: cognitive, associative, and autonomous; automatic processes can be developed through consolidation through practice and repetition (Ellis, 1988; Bygate, 1996); integration of
controlled and automatic processes characterizing the language skill, responsible
for the dynamics of communicative composing, are exactly the same for production as for comprehension: dividing communicative tasks into subtasks, withdrawing communicative time pressure from practice sessions, giving time to focus
on the plan, providing teacher's input for the task (containing lexical, grammatical, cultural information), and preparing for the tasks by accumulating relevant
knowledge sources and rehearsal.
The chapters on language skills outline possible options for the teacher to
choose from rather than ready teaching sequences. They are strategies to be selected when needed in terms of their purpose and function. It is hardly possible that
all of them would be needed at the same time. Most of them are essential categories that can take a variety of forms.
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the level of syntax, must be taken out of the attentional periphery otherwise it
will not be acquired precisely. This refers both to recognition in comprehension
and use in production. The place of syntactic forms in production is such that
they are inserted subconsciously, with the help of what for fluent speakers are
automatic processes; likewise in comprehension, they are also recognized, i.e.
matched with meaning, at the level of subconscious processing. Syntax is
processed fast and with marginal attention. To learn forms well and precisely, we
must have these forms brought to the centre of attention and focused upon, so
that they can be identified, consolidated and mastered automatically in comprehension and production. It is also indispensable in reconstructing the language
code to be able to match the written code with the spoken code, for example by
way of transcoding, i.e. converting spoken discourse into written discourse and
vice versa.
Teaching grammar in the above sense is quite acceptable and useful if it fulfils the following conditions: a) the illustrative material is meaningful, because
meaning justifies the use of form; b) sufficiently contextualized, for example in
a situation, because in this way it can be remembered; and c) practised in discourse not sentence units, because discourse coherence and cohesion organize
forms into an organic whole. To master forms, the learner must, above all, practise
them in the role of the sender and the addressee, practise converting form to
meaning, or meaning to form, rather than convert or transform one form into
another most of the time. Grammar learning tasks, or form-focused tasks, must
not only enrich our declarative/analytical, but procedural knowledge as well.
Since forms must be learned exactly as well as proceduralized, it is essential not to
overlook precision and accuracy strategies in the stage of feedback, which are
a very important aspect of learning the code of verbal communication.
9.7. The origin and role of the foreign language teaching method...
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communication outside the firm with the public, e.g. press conferences, and
with other business partners, e.g. contracts, agreements;
the roles, e.g. managerial, secretarial; HRM, PRR;
topics, such as sales, marketing, human resources, finance strategies, accounting, public relations, production;
types of documents, e.g. memorandum, report, annual report, minutes, newsletter, brochure, advertisement, business plan, proposal, CV, evaluation form,
magazine article, manual, instructions, invoice, letter of intent, contract,
various types of written correspondence, such as e-mail, fax messages, letters,
notices;
speech acts to be practised: e.g. presentation, negotiating contracts, advertising;
professional knowledge to be acquired, technical terms and phrases;
social encounters, polite conversation skills, etc.
All these communicative categories become didactic categories for the
course design and make the programmme advance. Cultivation strategies, if adjusted to the age of the learner, would in no way be different from the usual pool of
feasible strategies used outside the ESP context, with the task as a unit of teaching and learning.
Topics and review questions
Further reading
Dudley-Evans, T., and M. J. St John, 1998. Developments in ESP. A multi-disciplinary approach.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hargie, O., and Ch. Saunders, and D. Dickson, 1994. Social Skills in Interpersonal Communication. Chatham: Routledge.
Hutchinson, T., and A. Walters, 1987. English for Specific Purposes. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Robinson, P, 1980. ESP. Bath: Pergamon Press.
Approximate duration
Prenatal development
Growth
Infancy to toddlerhood
Play
Early childhood
3 till 6 years
Middle childhood
6 till 12 years
Adolescence
12 till 18 years
Adulthood
18 till 60 years
Old age
60 years onwards
From the point of view of foreign language learning and teaching, the most important stages in one's entire lifespan embrace early and middle childhood and adolescence. Early childhood is the time when English as a foreign language is introduced in such institutions as the kindergarten on an optional selective basis. Various
problems of teaching English to children are certainly challenging. The first three
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years of primary school are the time of teaching English within the system of integrated education where English is incorporated into the curriculum at the headmaster's discretion and at parents' expense. In grade four of primary school a course in
a foreign language becomes an obligatory subject. English is a leading foreign language at our schools chosen, on the average, by half of the learners (Ministerstwo
Edukacji Narodowej, O nauczaniu jzykw obcych, 2000). A course in a foreign language which begins in the fourth grade is continued in the gimnazjum, which takes
three years, until pupils are 16. At that point, young learners take up their education
in the secondary school (liceum) which they graduate from after three years of study,
at the age of 19. English courses are offered in their basic and extended form, which
is taken into account in the scope of the matriculation exam. In our educational system, learning English as a foreign language is continued at university, where it is profiled either for general or specific purposes, depending on the course of studies.
Additionally, English courses are offered by private language schools, which cater to
a variety of needs and levels including in-service courses for adults, organized and
financed by the companies as well as individual learners. There is plenty to choose
from in terms of courses preparing for various specialized tests and certificates.
First, I list the developmental landmarks of the stages relevant from the
point of view of foreign language learning and teaching, and next I outline the
characteristic guidelines for teaching strategies.
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of their own activity. Their will, purpose, commitment and intelligence have
a very important role to play. Lifespan development involves changes which are
quantitative, i.e. they refer to the amount of knowledge, as well as qualitative, i.e.
they refer to the levels of organization of knowledge. The amount of knowledge
paves the way for its restructuring and increasing integration.
An important figure in the field of research on the child's cognitive development is
Jean Piaget (1896-1980), an exceptionally creative and prolific Swiss psychologist who
lived and worked in Geneva and produced a comprehensive theory of cognitive development in children, presented in 40 books and 100 articles, based on meticulous observations of his own children. He is considered to be a proponent of an organismic view
of intellectual development, which stresses the child's active role in its own development, and a forerunner of the cognitive revolution in psychology with its focus on mental representation and internal processes. According to Piaget, the core of intelligent
activity is the ability to adapt to the environment. As children explore the world with
their senses, such as sight, hearing, feeling, touching, moving, they develop more complex cognitive structures, known as schmas or schemata. A schema is a mentally
organized pattern of thought or behaviour which helps us to sort out information. Children learn through the processes of assimilation, which incorporates new information
into the existing structures, and accommodation, which uses old schemata to deal with
new information or problems and to achieve equilibrium, a state of balance between the
child and the outside world (Papalia and Olds, 1990)
Piaget divided lifespan development into the following stages (Rebok, 1987):
1. The sensorimotor period from birth until 2 years of age, during which the
child's exploration of the world depends on (immediate) sensory experience and
motor activity; what is reflex-based at first is later transformed into symbolic
processes. The child is unable to discriminate between the self and objects. The
time frame of thought is the present.
2. The pre-operational period from 2 to 7 years of age, when children develop the
ability to use symbols, such as words, concepts and mental images, to stand for
objects and events in the world. These symbols become increasingly complex and
organized, although the child's thought processes are still illogical. The time frame
of thought is immediate past and present.
3. The concrete operational stage, from about 7 till 11 years, is the time when the child
begins to think more systematically and logically, but still in concrete, here-and-now
terms. The time frame of thought is past, present and future.
4. The stage of formal operations from about 11 till 15 years and older enable the
young individual to think both logically and in abstract terms; learners are able to
engage in theorizing and hypothetical thinking and they become more apt at complex problem solving and hypotheses testing. They are able to treat language as an
object of reflection and form metalinguistic knowledge. All time frames are available in thought processes.
It is significant what Piaget pointed out as the principal goal of education: it is to
shape individuals who are creative and inventive, as well as capable of critical evaluation of what they are offered rather than accepting it without question.
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to find the missing element. Papalia and Olds (1990: 202) define intelligence as: 'an
interaction between inherited ability and environmental experience which results
in a person's ability to acquire, retain, and use knowledge; to understand both concrete and abstract concepts; to understand the relationship between objects, events
and ideas and to apply this understanding; and to use all this in solving the problems of everyday life. It is the ability to adapt behaviour in pursuit of a goal.' Intelligence is not fixed; native intelligence is the quality people are born with, but it can
be nurtured by a supportive environment and stimulating experiences.
10.1.1. Gradual emergence of verbal communication
Human development reveals the emergence of verbal communication as a complex cluster of component abilities, or cognitive achievements at various points
along the lifespan.
The aspect of verbal communication
Emerging elements
Reciprocal exchanges, symmetrical behaviour, imitation, body language (smile, facial expression, movement) ability to attract attention, role acquisition,
control over the elements of conversation, forming
one's identity to be able to interact
Learning phonemes and words, symbolization, development of syntax and lexicon, growth of accuracy in
articulation, grammar, and mean utterance length,
metalinguistic knowledge and awareness
Table 10.2. A list of components of verbal communication emerging in childhood and adolescence
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acquire the concept of object permanence which means that people and objects
exist whether they are seen or not. They acquire the concept of causality, which is
the recognition that some events are the necessary and sufficient conditions for
other events to occur. Children develop representational abilities, i.e. the abilities
to map objects into memory with the use of symbols, such as words, as well as the
ability to act out and imagine things. They also begin to coordinate information
from the senses while their behaviour becomes increasingly purposeful. Moreover,
children are able to anticipate events and show curiosity. They often engage in
imitation, especially deferred imitation of adult activities, like their father's shaving. Deferred imitation is an ability to encode and store the mental image of
a given activity and replicate it after a lapse of time. During this stage, at the age
of 2, children begin to use symbols such as words and numbers.
A prime example of the relationship between physical, cognitive and emotional development is play. The kind of play in which children engage is determined by what they can do at the given stage. Play is babies' work. First it is physical, later it becomes more closely connected with intellectual coordination.
10.2.2. Communication
Matczak (1992) rightly points out that the fundamental prerequisite of all the
communicative abilities in children is their discrimination between the self and
the environment, and their realization of their interactive relationship with other
people who receive and respond to children's actions. This is the basis of communicative readiness, which is first implemented as non-verbal behaviour, and later
evolves into verbal communication. At about the age of 18 children start developing mental representations of meaning, which are linked to objects and words
which stand for them, the essence of which is the symbolic process. This may be
treated as the real beginning of language in that the emitted vocalizations are
made up of phonemes, they are intentional and they have meaning. Mental representations enable the child to prepare practical activities by mental consideration
and planning (Matczak, 1992). Emerging intentional behaviour is the beginning
of human intelligence. A child is a thinking individual who is capable of planning
his or her actions as well as a social individual who is able to interact with others.
Language and communication milestones in infancy and toddlerhood:
over one month - the child smiles in response to stimulation;
a month and a half - coos, makes long vowel sounds which are not found in the
phonological system of the environment;
6 months - cooing changes into babbling and consonants appear;
8 months - says 'dada' and 'mama' but does not use them as names;
11 months - uses 'dada' and 'mama' as names;
12 months - says gibberish sentences without real words, says one word, imitates phonemes of the language;
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Pre-linguistic communication
This form of communication takes place as the use of vocalizations without words
or grammar. Its first form, crying, is 'an innate form of communication that in
newborns and infants expresses a need for attention or a strong emotion; the basic
infant's cries include the rhythmic cry of need, the angry cry, the cry of pain, and
the cry of frustration' (Papalia and Olds, 1990:248). Babies whose cries bring relief
gain confidence fast, so they cry less and less. Smiling is another form of non-linguistic communication which is innate and begins as a reflex only involving the
lower facial muscles, but soon becomes social and engages the muscles around the
eyes. Smiling begins to express pleasure and trust, as well as the recognition of the
caregiver, especially his or her face. Laughter also appears and becomes quite common at that time; it is used to relieve tension at times. A 'conversation' as early as
at the age of 8 months may take the form of imitative exchanges between the
mother and child in which both parties take great delight in producing the same
vocalizations which form symmetrical conversation-like turn-taking patterns. In
the second half of the first year, children accidentally imitate phonemes, but later
they imitate them deliberately.
Pre-linguistic communication makes use of body language, i.e. gestures as
well as facial expressions, which show a wide range of emotions and needs which
children cannot express verbally. Children learn how to get their parent's attention,
which functions as an important factor in their development. According to Jay
(2003), infants begin to use gestures when they are 8 months old. Whether or not
they are intentional may be determined on the basis of the following properties:
effort to get the adult's attention, persistence, i.e. repetition of the gesture until
there is a desired action from the adult, and using alternative strategies, such as
crying. This intentional use of gestures is an instance of the child's goal-oriented
behaviour. When the gestures which children make up are not interpreted by their
parents, they drop them. Around 10 months of age children develop protoimperatives, the ability to use gestures to obtain objects, as well as protodeclaratives, the
ability to draw the adult's attention to an object. Joint attention which results from
this effort forms the basis of communication. Researchers have found that the more
effort put into joint attention, the faster the development of language (Jay, 2003).
Children are able to use some gestures and movement in the symbolic function, for
example to represent a horse or a dog. Papalia and Olds (1990) point out that these
gestures are quite significant indicators of their cognitive development: they show
that children understand that objects have names and that symbols can be used to
refer to the things and happenings in everyday life even before speech.
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Linguistic communication
Holophrases are children's utterances which consist of one word that conveys
a thought used by children between 12 to 18 months, the most common of which
are names of things. Holophrases perform various functions, such as naming
things, events, or attributes, making requests, replying, etc. Children learn the
words which are important to them. 'All-gone' in English is used frequently to
denote disappearance or absence of something. The first sentences are composed
of two words: they are based on pivot grammar: open class words and pivot class
words. The average length of children's utterances grows steadily. In the beginning, the articles, modal verbs or suffixes, such as plural markers, are missing,
producing the effect of telegraphic speech. Telegraphic speech can be characterized as consisting of three morphemes per utterance, expressing a thought but
not containing complex grammar. Later, children start using overgeneralization
which points to their use of rules in language learning, for example 'goed'. They
also simplify: 'no drink' which may have several communicative functions. However, they understand grammatical relations even though they cannot express
them yet.
Motherese is child-directed speech which has various features of adjustment already mentioned, such as slower pace, clear, slightly exaggerated pronunciation, simple and short constructions, here-and-now reference, numerous repetitions, etc. Children learn such social skills as getting the attention of adults,
using adults as resources, and showing affection and hostility, planning activities
and carrying them out. As they learn to understand language, they become actors,
reactors and interactors; they learn to make their own choices and decisions, and
to follow their own interests. Their expression of will is the use of negation, which
shows their drive toward autonomy, i.e. self-determination, and away from control
by others. The children's sense of self develops dynamically, which slowly brings
about such correlates as: a) self-awareness, i.e. the ability to recognize one's own
actions, emotions, states and abilities; b) social referencing, i.e. seeking out
another person's understanding of an ambiguous situation, and c) self-regulation,
i.e. control of behaviour to conform to social expectations.
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muscle development allows them to control writing utensils and handle some
sedentary activities and a more structured day at school better. Children also show
a considerable gain in eye-hand muscle control and coordination as well as hand
preference. This is the time of artistic development; preferred activities include
drawing. According to Papalia and Olds (1990), children's self-taught drawings
can be arranged into developmental stages reflecting the maturation of the brain:
scribbles (by the age of 2, based on lines), shapes (about 3 years of age, basic shapes
and geometrical figures), designs (at the age of 3, shapes are combined into more
complex configurations), and pictures (between 4 and 5, more representational).
Their cognitive development falls into Piaget's pre-operational stage (2-7
years). At that time, children use logic and symbols but are not capable of abstract
thought. Symbolic function is understood as the ability to have one thing represent another, or, better still, to use mental representations to which children have
ascribed meanings. Symbolic function is observed in language, symbolic play, in
which one thing stands for something else, in deferred imitation and in children's drawings in which shapes are made to stand for something rather than
merely be the marks left by a pen or pencil. They grasp the meaning of some entities and their functions, which makes the world more predictable and orderly. At
that time, most children are characterized by egocentrism, which is the inability
to consider another person's point of view, or see things from another
person's perspective. It is unthinkable to children that other people do not think
the same way they do. But in some familiar situations, children seem to be able to
show empathy, i.e. the ability to put oneself into another person's position and feel
the way s/he would. Intellectually, what characterizes them is centring, focusing on
only one aspect of the situation, as opposed to the later achievement of decentring,
i.e. thinking of several aspects of the situation at the same time. Instead, they can
move from one aspect of the situation onto the next. Children's thinking at the stage
of concrete operations involves no abstract reasoning, but they can also group items
and classify them into single-category and two-category groupings.
The development of memory in this period is still in progress in that recognition, i.e. correctly identifying a stimulus as something known, is better than
recall, i.e. the ability to reproduce material from memory, but it improves around
the ages 2-5. Memory in early childhood is not yet deliberate in the sense that
children are not able to commit facts to memory; instead, they remember the
events which have made an impression on them. The elementary form of organization of the material in memory is the narrative, which is the effect of chronological coding and which feeds the autobiographical (episodic) memory. This
basic form of discourse organization is universal in different cultures and appears
as songs, stories, epics, and myths. An important aspect of education in this period is story time, the time to read or tell stories to children. This stimulates their
imagination as well as language development.
Social interactions play an important role in remembering: when adults talk
to children about various events, their coding of the events in memory is better than
in the case of events which have not been verbally labelled. Personality also influ-
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ences the intellectual development of a child. Papalia and Olds (1990) state that the
child who is curious, alert, and assertive will learn the most from the environment.
A child who is creative and has initiative, i.e. is ready to expend energy and sustained effort in pursuit of goals, is bound to interact with others more. Sociable and
assertive children seek adult attention more than other children. A child who is passive and withdrawn will naturally learn less because s/he avoids contacts.
The best way for parents, as well as teachers, to foster their children's development is to be warm, loving, accepting and encouraging so they can explore and
express themselves, for example by asking open-ended questions. Children
respond by being creative and interested in various new situations. It is significant
that television, which becomes important at the time, may stifle the children's development by preventing them from taking up activities which require
sustained effort and creative imagination.
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It is important at that time to give the child opportunities to practise and show
interest and support for all the early attempts at participating in adult conversations, such as wait time, and plenty of stimulating questions.
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principles to concrete situations and to solve problems; they can classify objects,
arrange them according to some feature, deal with numbers, understand concepts
of time and space, distinguish between fantasy and reality, and understand the
principle of conservation (that the amount of liquid does not change as a result of
placing it in a different container). Middle childhood is the time of developing
moral judgment.
The progress from egocentric to moral thinking takes several stages:
age 4-6 - The child is egocentric and judges from his point of view considering
it to be the only possible one.
age 6-8 - Children realize that other people may interpret the situation differently, they realize the importance of intention or motive of a given action.
age 8-10 - Children develop the awareness that other people realize that they
have a different point of view.
age 10-12 - Children can imagine a third person's perspective taking several
points of view into account.
adolescence and later - Complex ideas of various aspects of the situation are
possible. Some dilemmas and rival values are taken into consideration simultaneously.
Middle childhood is characterized by an increase in the ability for intentional cognitive operations, i.e. learning, which positively influences attentional
control, task completion, memory processes, as well as speaking. Practical activities and cognitive operations begin to diverge and specialize.
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ing regular, everyday activities, such as thematic play, drawing, conversations with
adults, and bed-time monologues, which are functional equivalents of strategic
behaviour: they help to consolidate information in memory although their overall
aim is different from committing an item to memory. Memory strategies, which
are intentional (deliberate) activities aimed at remembering, include: naming,
rehearsal, categorization, elaboration, and using external memory. Naming
(Jagodziska, 2003) is an elementary memory strategy which involves putting verbal labels on various stimuli and repeating names. As has already been mentioned,
rehearsal is repetition of an item to keep it in working memory and improve its
memory trace; most children engage in rehearsal spontaneously from first grade
on. Categorization is the process of organizing (chunking, clustering) the material
into related groups, which reduces the amount of information to be learned.
Adults engage in categorization automatically while children start doing this
around the age of ten or eleven. Elaboration is the strategy of adding more information to the item to be learned in order to strengthen the associations between
the new and the old, e.g. constructing a story, using some illustrative situation or
an explanation, employing imagery, etc. Papalia and Olds (1990) stress that children at that age remember information better when someone else has made the
elaboration for them. This is just one example of the role of adults in helping children to expand their knowledge. External aids include writing things down, making lists, or placing an item where it stands out and cannot be missed. As children
use these strategies, they process the information to be committed to memory:
repeat and explain it, compare with previous knowledge, and reorder it in various
ways. Strategies are understood as intentional activities taken up with memory
goals in mind. While using them the child demonstrates the ability of intentional
learning in an early form as well as the knowledge of the activity to be chosen for
this purpose.
The development of memory in middle childhood is characterized by the
increase in the pace and effectiveness of information processing, which enable the
child to use more complex processes, such as building extensive associations and
organizing information hierarchically. These processes demand greater cognitive resources in terms of working memory capacity and knowledge structures.
The quality of the information coding also increases as a result of the ability of the
child to consider a greater number of features. Memory development is stimulated
by the development of speech which strengthens the semantic coding of information. The development of speech allows the use of more extensive verbal memory
strategies, such as summarizing events, making stories, sharing memories with
other people. The narrative form of information coding becomes fairly important
at the time (Jagodziska, 2003).
Metamemory is the awareness of our own memory processes which develops during middle childhood. At the beginning of this period, children begin to
understand the nature of learning, remembering and forgetting, as well as their
own abilities in this area. The development of metamemory is a function of the
growth of general (world) knowledge represented in the child's mind, which in
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turn enables the child to learn new information by relating it to what s/he already
knows, which is to say, learn it more effectively.
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form of metacommunicative knowledge, which grows throughout middle childhood. At the same time, the ability to monitor their own comprehension
processes grows, but the ability to understand instructions well should not be
taken for granted. According to Sinclair (1986), there is also a gradual, but significant increase in metalinguistic knowledge, which emerges in the form of such
abilities as:
segmenting utterances into smaller units, i.e. phonemes, syllables, and words;
accuracy judgments;
self-correction;
awareness of word meanings including polysemy;
perception of verbal ambiguity including puns.
Sinclair (1986) defines metalinguistic knowledge as information resulting
from making language the object of reflection and reasoning processes, which may
focus separately on form and meaning, and on the relationships between the two
aspects. These processes lead to categorized, i.e. abstract knowledge about the language, in addition to, and following the acquisition of the ability to use language
in communication. Although there is a considerable degree of overlap between
metacommunicative and metalinguistic knowledge, two separate terms can be
defended on the grounds that each has a specific focus: the former stresses meaningful interaction in a sociocultural context and its norms, whereas the latter - the
cognitive, i.e. reasoning insights into the language code. The growth of metalinguistic knowledge culminates at the time of formal operations, such as the ability
to understand and formulate rules about language forms, their meanings and
functions.
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10.5. Adolescence
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and the release of aggression and tension. Peer group becomes increasingly important, but children still look to parents for support, affirmation and affection. This
is the time of forming intimate friendships and bonds with peers, i.e. members of
the same age group. A peer group helps children to form opinions about themselves on the basis of how others see them. A peer group and its system of values
help children to free themselves from the influence of their parents to form independent judgments. A group may also influence individuals to the point of acting
against their better judgment, seen in various instances of peer pressure and conformity.
Training in social skills includes carrying a conversation, sharing information about oneself, showing interest in others by asking questions, giving help,
suggestions, invitations, and advice. These social graces can be developed and
when they are, they positively influence our social position and popularity, as well
as the intensity of interaction with others. However, when we address children as
group members we should not take their comprehension processes for granted; we
should monitor their accuracy by asking questions and other strategies, such as
individual checks.
10.5. Adolescence
According to Forisha-Kovach (1983), adolescence means 'growing into maturity'.
Puberty is the time of reaching sexual maturity, whereas pubescence is the process
of reaching it. Adolescence is the peak of intellectual functions which require flexibility and coordination, but measures of intelligence which require learning and
organization of material show a continued development throughout life. Young
individuals grow increasingly independent of parents while a peer group and its
norms of behaviour gain importance. A peer group is the context in which adolescents try to establish their identity. Identity can be understood as the internalization of values, having one's own standards and making one's own choices.
Adolescent peer groups are composed of cliques of several members with more
intimate ties, and crowds, i.e. larger groups based on social activity. In early adolescence these groups are composed of members of the same sex, later by members
of both sexes. Adolescents are susceptible to peer pressure at that time, although
parental influence is continued.
Forisha-Kovach (1983) lists the following developmental tasks for adolescence:
accepting one's physical appearance;
achieving more mature relationships with peers of both sexes;
achieving a masculine or feminine social role;
achieving emotional independence from parents and other adults;
preparing for a professional career;
preparing for marriage and family life;
learning socially responsible behaviour;
acquiring a set of values and ethical system - developing an ideology.
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10.5. Adolescence
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many nuances of an issue and argue. They also have a tendency toward self-consciousness, self-centredness, the conviction that they are special and are not subject to natural laws that govern the rest of the world. Teenagers tend to think that
they are magically protected from harm. When they develop a more mature way
of thinking, they gain better contact with their own identities, as well as the ability to form adult relationships, and find a place in society. Adolescence is the time
when young people consider alternatives for themselves; at that stage in life their
opportunities are vast and they have wide choices at their disposal. From all the
available possibilities, adolescents must choose one which will suit their current
life and future expectations. The connecting thread between one's current activities and future expectations is commitment, which lends stability and energy
investment to our endeavours. The central experience for teenagers is the high
school leading to a choice of career. Forisha-Kovach (1983:185) persistently stresses the role of culture in the process of coming of age:
The set of assumptions an adolescent makes forms the basis for what we call the orientation to
the world. The orientation of an individual encompasses the values, attitudes, and beliefs that
an individual has about what is important. The values people hold and the beliefs which guide
their behaviour will help them make the choices they confront in their life. These values do not
simply emerge in adolescence; rather, they are the products of both an individual's personal
history and his or her cultural experience. Values, attitudes, and beliefs - what they are and how
they are acquired - form the basis in moral development.
A value may be defined as putting more weight on some and not other qualities or goals, or states of existence, seeing them as preferable to their alternatives.
A person's value system may be treated as an acquired system of rules or principles for making choices and resolving conflicts. Values may refer to our way of
conduct or goals to accomplish.
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tory within a given setting. In achieving an identity one finds oneself in society.'
(Forischa-Kovach 1983:30). She adds that the most important context of growing
up is culture which 'provides the setting in which individuals grow up and live
out their lives. Furthermore, they provide values and expectations against which
individuals come to know themselves.' (page 45). Sexual identity in differences
between males and females that arise from socialization (social attitudes and practices) first as peer groups and friendships and gradually as heterosexual groups
and couples. Friendships tend to be closer and more intense in adolescence than
in other periods.
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and often repeated so that the material can be recycled for the sake of better learning. This is not yet a good time to engage children in highly structured tasks,
a form of goal-oriented activity, but certainly activities with a purpose, such as
making various objects which can be displayed for parents to see and which will
bring the teacher's praise, are highly motivating.
Middle childhood is the school period. It is the time of developmental
accomplishments making school education possible, such as the increasing attention span, emergence of intentional learning and memory prestrategies, with
motor energy giving way to cognitive energy, which enables the child to concentrate and participate in a planned, goal-oriented undertaking, i.e. task, for a certain amount of time. In middle childhood, verbal learning begins to play an
increasingly important role, although direct learning through experience (observation and participation) is still helpful and relevant. Longer attention span and
intentional learning are also integrated with the ability of the child to follow
instructions and take feedback information from the teacher. The development of
memory makes it possible to organize the information better and in a more lasting way. The child is highly receptive to foreign language input and is now able
to learn vaster amounts of the material in a more lasting way with fewer repetitions than in early childhood. Discourse genres which are suitable for children in
this age group are no longer connected with very young children's literature, but
rather with popular authentic materials on general culture which can develop
knowledge of the world at a level acceptable to the child. Their developing sense
of humour and metalinguistic awareness makes it possible to include a wide spectrum of discourse genres, including literature. Topics of interest embrace sports,
celebrities, computers and their uses, geography, pop culture, especially pop
music, hobbies, travel, science fiction literature and fantasy, movies, etc. This is
the time when creativity still remains fairly vivid while critical thinking emerges
as a fairly important aspect of classroom activities. Children may benefit from
guided imagery and writing tasks which help them to organize their ideas. Their
growing social competence makes it possible to practise various conversation
skills and functions of language. The level of metalinguistic awareness enables the
teacher to introduce some grammatical terminology and form-focused activities,
which do not yet make use of grammar rules, but highlight forms and accuracy
principles.
Peak cognitive development at adolescence makes it possible for the
teacher to introduce a wide spectrum of materials and activities, without constantly keeping in mind the developmental constraints which were so significant
in the previous periods. A wide scope of interests, potent memory strategies, the
ability to organize information hierarchically and think in highly abstract terms,
with tendencies to generalize and theorize, curiosity about the language as a tool
and hunger for metalinguistic information to help the learner order this complex
domain all sound like properties of a perfect learner. Non-trivial teaching content,
for example regarding social issues and explicit grammar instruction are helpful,
if not to say absolutely necessary in most cases of language learners. However, this
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is also the time when peer group, ego development and sexual identity become
very important, certainly more important than the teacher and the grades for
most, except the most academically-oriented learners. Considering the fact that
learners have reached cognitive maturity, but do not yet have to devote most of
their working hours to full-time jobs, the effects of teaching and learning may be
more than satisfactory.
1. What are the main achievements in communicative abilities in early childhood, and in middle
childhood?
2. What justification do we have for using motor activities in teaching a foreign language to children
of pre-school age? What are the main differences between TPR and the above outline as far as recommendations for motor activities for children are concerned?
3. What justification do we have for using music, songs and chants? Arts and crafts? Discuss.
4. What justification do we have for using games in teaching children of pre-school age?
5. Can adolescent learners be taught grammar explicitly? Why?
6. Can young children be taught grammar explicitly? Why? Why not? If not, what activities can be
used to promote accuracy?
Further reading
Biehler, R. F., and J. Snowman, 1982. Psychology Applied to Teaching. Boston: Houghton Miffin
Company
Jagodziska, M., 2003. Rozwj pamici w dziecistwie. Gdask: Gdaskie Wydawnictwo Psychologiczne.
Jay, T. B., 2003. The Psychology of Language. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Newbury House.
Papalia, D. E., and S. W. Olds, 1990. A Child's World. Infancy Through Adolescence. New York:
McGraw-Hill, Inc.
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It is not true that most written language is rather formal and organized,
whereas the spoken one is informal and spontaneous. Such an evaluation (cf Ur
1991, for example) can be done more fairly in the context of specific situations of
language use. We can certainly find very formal cases of spoken language with
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very careful pronunciation and lexical selection, such as for instance the Sejm
committee hearings on Rywingate, broadcast on our TV. At the same time,
instances of very informal and casual written communication, such as e-mail correspondence between close friends or other personal notes, are quite abundant.
Nevertheless, there are essential differences between speech and writing related to
temporal constraints, intensity of interaction, and the role of prosodic elements
which pose special challenges to the foreign language learner.
The graphemic form of discourse consists of discrete elements (graphemes,
words, clauses, sentences, paragraphs, etc.) with clear visual representation and
boundaries, whereas in speaking we must cope with co-articulation, overlap of different speakers, unfinished sentences, changes of sentence plans in the middle,
abbreviated forms, and other reductions. Speech boundaries can be detected at the
level of phrases, clauses, and turns. Listening comprehension takes place under
temporal fluency constraints in the sense that the listener is pressed for time:
either he or she can manage to process the material within his or her attention
span, i.e. the limits of his or her working memory, or it will fade away. In reading
comprehension, on the other hand, we are, to a large extent, able to control the
pace of the task and review the material of processing, if necessary, moving our
eyes back and forth, or even up and down the page (this refers to Polish learners
of English and the left to right linearity of our graphemic system). The listener
may sometimes, but not always, influence the pace of the task by negotiating it
with the speaker, or ask clarification questions, where appropriate. We must realize,
however, that in our culture not all the communicative face-to-face encounters
allow such negotiations to a degree which would satisfy a foreign language learner. Nor is this possible in taking auditory input from mass communication, such
as the media, unless we record the material in one form or another. When we can
see the speaker, we process a considerable amount of visual clues, both verbal,
para-verbal, and non-verbal, such as body language, facial expressions, appearance,
environmental clues, in addition to prosodie features which organize discourse
into structure and assign importance to its elements. In the case of writing, the
burden of assigning the structural description and hierarchical organization of
elements rests with the reader.
From the foreign language learners' point of view, this short life of the auditory stimulus is the most tricky part of listening comprehension. Since time constraint is so significant, the role of procedural representations underlying the automaticity necessary in discourse processing is also prominent. Foreign language
learners have not yet developed the basis for automaticity in language use.
This means that in the initial and intermediate stages of the learning process, they
perform language processing operations more slowly, in a more controlled manner,
than skilled language users. Listening activities in their case present a real challenge and may be a source of considerable stress. However, without active participation in listening comprehension practice, they will not be able to develop the
necessary automaticity and its underlying procedural representations to reach
a comfortable or almost native-speaker level. It is not by accident that recordings
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of passages and conversations on cassette are so frequently used in the foreign language classroom because they overcome the main drawback of authentic face-to-face
oral communication: their input is relatively more permanent and can be repeated.
There is no way to circumvent auditory practice in developing listening
comprehension ability. The auditory input is an essential source of data for our
echoic memory which stores information on pronunciation, including rhythm,
stress and intonation, and auditory models of linking words into clauses. This
aspect is of primary importance in the case of English as a foreign language in
which the phonemic form is in no faithful relationship with the graphemic form.
The two forms require deliberate effort to learn each and match both with each
other. Especially the stressed and unstressed syllable unit of the English language, the foot, requires the Polish learner to restructure the native language attitude to pronunciation. To give a simple example, the pronunciation of the Polish
word komfort consists of two accented syllables, whereas the pronunciation of the
English word comfort consist of one accented and one reduced syllable /'kmft/.
This restructuring takes time and effort, yet is communicatively highly adaptive
and therefore absolutely indispensable.
It seems reasonable for the E F L learner at the beginner and early intermediate level, on some occasions, to be exposed to both the graphemic and the
phonemic forms of the same discourse because they complement and mutually
define each other. The written code with its permanence and precision of representation of the message (punctuation, word boundaries, what in the auditory
code would be strong and weak forms, including suffixes, prefixes, is represented
as explicit, unreduced form) is an important source of information to the language
learner, who must reconstruct the system precisely. In the written message, the
morphosyntactic forms are simply more salient than the same morphosyntactic
forms would have been in the spoken version of the same message. The auditory
message, on the other hand, is an integrated, prosodically structured form which
the learner must acquire to be understood in spoken communication. Since the
learner's aim is to reconstruct the language system, his or her contact and matching both forms of discourse will enhance the precision of this system's mental representation in the learner's mind. It would seem justified, therefore, to use such
elements in skills development as the written transcript to 'put the dot over the i'
in a listening comprehension task, or to read a written passage aloud to specify its
correct pronunciation for the language learner. Such a traditional activity as dictation could also be defended on the grounds that it offers a valuable opportunity
for the teacher to get access to the learner's phonemic discrimination ability as he
or she transcodes speech into writing. Transcoding activities, which require the
learner to convert the spoken discourse into the written form, or vice versa, draw
his or her attention to the language forms in the context of discourse, a highly
educational foreign language learning experience with focus on the language code,
and a source of feedback information about language learning for the teacher.
Needless to say, they are options to be used when and if they are needed (for an
example of a problem, see 13.6.).
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Focus on the language code in developing the four skills demands the following cultivation strategies:
Developing listening comprehension puts a demand on the teacher to help the
learner reach the stage of precision in discerning the forms in the spoken message first and foremost by means of transcoding.
Developing reading comprehension requires the teacher to help the learner
reach the stage of integration of the forms on the written page, for example as
listening or reading aloud, also a form of transcoding.
Developing speaking means, on the part of the teacher, helping the learner to
reach the stage of precision in expressing himself or herself by means of processing and incorporation of feedback on accuracy, including error correction,
on the part of the learner.
Developing the writing skill requires the teacher to help the learner reach the
level of morphosyntactic precision by means of organization and editing
processes which integrate these forms in line with discourse coherence and
cohesion principles.
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approaches stress the role of discourse in stimulating the processes of comprehension and language learning. Acquiring grammar is very important indeed, but
grammar cannot be learned functionally and productively merely by way of seeing certain forms condensed in a reading passage. Certainly new forms may be
perceived and stored in the context of meaningful authentic-looking input, but
above all they must be further defined, made precise and automatized in a special
form, and in accuracy-oriented as well as fluency-oriented activities and tasks.
They do not have to recur in the text to be noticeable because it conflicts with its
coherence and cohesion. Focus on form in comprehension and accuracy work in
production do not require the learner to deal with mutilated reading passages consisting of nonsensical system sentences. Focus on form takes specialized activities
involving the learner beyond perception and comprehension and into production.
Since foreign language discourse materials must be adjusted to the foreign
language learners' level, there is no practical utility in following the principle that
they be derived from native-to-native speaker communication. If we followed
such a criterion of authenticity rigorously, we would find it hard to adjust them to
the learners' needs, background knowledge and proficiency level. Native speakers
of any language share vast areas of common background knowledge (also called
'common ground', cf Clark, 1996), which results from their group membership.
A foreign language learner is not yet a member of this group and his knowledge
may be shared with native speakers to a much more limited degree. Moreover, as
we recall from the process of first language acquisition in children, message
adjustment to the language acquirer plays a vital role: it is a way of coordinating
communicative efforts with the learner. The most significant property of texts from
the point of view of foreign language learning and teaching is that to be relevant to
the language learner, they must fulfil the purpose for which they are constructed:
model communicative discourse with all its relevant communicative parameters. As
long as this condition is met, i.e. the text is meaningful and situationally-embedded,
the authorship and origin of the text are of secondary importance.
A profound question is: are the foreign language classroom and the 'real
world' two worlds apart? Not, if we regard our educational system as an integral
part of our culture. Children and adolescents spend an enormous amount of their
lives in school, where they grow and establish themselves as individuals. The goal
of education is to transmit culture, including knowledge and skills, to the young
generation. School is a place where this transmission is supposed to take place in
sheltered conditions, which is to say, in a safe environment, a hothouse for learning; regrettably, we know that is often not the case, but this is the problem of our
world as much as our educational system. To learn about our history, we do not
want the young generation to experience the past wars, but to read about them.
A considerable amount of learning in the educational system is verbal rather than
derived from direct experience, but this is in line with the learner's propensity for
verbal learning at a certain developmental stage. Much of education comes from
simulated or second-hand experience, and this is precisely the quintessential
nature of education: it gives the young generation the advantage of being knowl-
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edgeable and prepared ahead of the relevant experience outside the educational
context without having to deal with the real-life consequences of error. This property does not make education is any sense unreal, or contrasted with the 'real'
world. At this point, I am not even trying to address the difficult issue of educating the young generation for a future that we cannot predict because it only makes
the matters more complex.
With these reservations in mind, a foreign language classroom is a part of
the real world as much as anything else. Effectiveness of the educational process
comes from strengthening the links between the outside world and the classroom,
with real learners in a real institution, and, where possible, opening rather than
maintaining their rigid borders. This can be done in a variety of ways, but first
and foremost by making the activities in the foreign language classroom practical
and relevant to verbal communication in general, i.e. in the outside world.
What implications does it have for the notion of authentic tasks in the educational context? As has been pointed out by the proponents of CLT, there are
instances of real/authentic communication in the classroom: they refer to teacherlearner exchanges about everyday organizational matters, the 'housekeeping' business of the course and school activities. But these exchanges are marginal in terms
of the time they take. The real question is what properties should the mainstream
didactic tasks have in the foreign language classroom to be practical and relevant
to the foreign language learner? Certainly they must present verbal communication in its wide array of varieties and important structural properties which have
been outlined in section 7.1., at the same time adjusted to the learner's language
level. The ultimately 'authentic tasks', although absolutely necessary, model the
target behaviour which in the case of language learners is the final product of
learning. On their way to this target they must also be engaged in intermediate
tasks properly adjusted to their current stage of development, that is, to their current proficiency and knowledge level. If these adjustments are based on relevant
language learning and communicative criteria, for example, on the stages of skill
development, or derived from natural conversational adjustments made by speakers
of the target language, they naturally enhance the language learner's coping
potential in the task at hand. Both types of tasks, intermediate (adjusted to the
learner's le;vel) and authentic (modelling target-like communication) are necessary throughout the learning process: they are adjusted on the basis of relevant
addressee-related criteria. In sum, while it is inevitable that all classroom tasks
are didactic by definition, the real point is: are these didactic tasks that we engage
the learners in relevant and conducive to the language learning process. Like food,
an 'authentic' task which is not addressed to the given learner may be equally
irrelevant to him or her at a certain stage as a finely-tuned didactic task - relevant
for a reason. It is our job to single out such language learning criteria.
Below is a task in which you are asked to analyse a text, a didactic text
because it is in a book of practice tests, in order to determine the extent to which
it also fulfils the criteria for an authentic text, i.e. generated solely for communicative purposes.
186
Source: Roy Kingsbury, Felicity O'Dell, Guy Wellman, 1991. Longman Practice Exams for CAE. London: Longman, page 7.
187
5. What kind of references to cultural knowledge do we find in the text? Do these references prevent
you from understanding the text, or can you guess their meaning from the context?
6. Do you find any individual features in these letters, any stylistic devices, such as metaphor or irony?
7. What strategies for arguing their point do the writers use? Are they effective?
8. What reference to popular culture do you see in the title? What function does it have?
9. What information do we find in the drawing? What strategy to present his or her point does the
author of the drawing use? What purpose does it serve as an orientation device before reading?
10. Can you relate to the content of the text and use your personal experience to bring to bear on the
reading process? Are you capable of evaluating critically the ideas expressed or referred to in the
text? Can you form an attitude or opinion in this connection?
11. Do you think this text is authentic (taken from an English language magazine?) or not? Why? Is it
relevant as language learning material at the upper-intermediate or advanced stage? Why?
12. Do you enjoy reading such texts in magazines yourself? Why? Why not?
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requisite knowledge, the associative stage during which connections are built
between the necessary steps or operations, and the autonomous stage, when the
automaticity is developed for the whole operation. Such an operation is relatively
independent of our attentional resources. Each stage has a specificity of its own.
But it also means that in order to acquire a language skill, the learner must be
involved in practising commensurate operations, i.e. operations of a comparable
degree of complexity. The question arises how this relationship can be estimated.
Probably by referring to skill hierarchy, and the types and number of decisions
that the speaker makes in communicative situations. We may ponder about the
typical communicative exercise: how many of the essential communicative decisions are made by the learner and which decisions in a given task have already
been made for him?
1. Does the learner make the decision as to what to say?
2. Does he choose the perspective and style (tone) of his utterance?
3. Does he select the plan of the utterance and sentence constructions?
4. Does he decide on the lexical material to insert into his utterance (syntagmatic)
plan?
5. Does he or she integrate these operations within the time constraints of communicative fluency?
6. Does he himself monitor his utterance and edit for accuracy?
7. Does he himself evaluate its communicative effectiveness?
If all these decisions are made by the learner himself under the communicative
time pressure, we can safely assume that indeed language skill is involved and
practised. Even if only a proportion of these decisions are in the learner's hands,
the task is probably controlled or intermediate, but conducive to skill learning. If,
however, it is much more elementary, such as sentence repetition, form manipulation, or filling in the gap in a sentence, not even a continuous text, it may be
completely irrelevant to acquiring language skill because of qualitative differences
in the practice involved. Naturally, this does not mean that it is useless for other
purposes.
It is significant in discussing stages of learning a given skill to consider differences between experts and novices. Novices are characterized by the fact that
their utterances are laconic, much shorter than those of the experts, they are much
less fluent than the experts in that they take more time to produce or comprehend
an utterance, they do not demonstrate the same level of certainty as the experts as
far as their accuracy is concerned, and finally, they make many more errors.
Experts speak much more correctly, following target-language norms, as well as
fluently; they develop their utterances more fully than the novices, so they are
longer, more complete, whereas their certainty as to their accuracy is stronger
(Levelt, 1978, 1989). These differences demonstrate that skill acquisition has several dimensions. The first dimension is: acquiring the variety of language forms,
including the lexical and syntactic material, to enable the learner to express the
ideas adequately to their meaning and context; the second one is the linear (syntagmatic) dimension of this material, such as discourse plans and schemata,
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which enable the learner to build fully developed discourse; the third dimension
is the growing awareness of these forms which enables the learner to control their
use in agreement with the rules of the system and monitor his or her accuracy, and
the fourth one is the ability to integrate all the operations in time which enables
the learner to perform the task fluently. These observations lead to the following
interdependencies which may be helpful in adjusting the level of task difficulty to
the learners' current level:
the length of the task
the shorter the task the easier and less tiring it should be (the
problem of sustained discourse)
the more input for the task is provided for the learner, the easier the task (e.g. the use of external sources or 'pre-teaching the
material for the task')
the more opportunities to break the task into subtasks and then
integrate, the easier the task (e.g. rehearsal stage before performing the task, separate editing stage)
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4. Can we use this idea as a practical criterion in teaching English as a foreign language?
5. Choose an activity from an English textbook and try to modify its difficulty according to the criteria
of skill?
Further reading
Littlewood, D., 1984. Foreign and Second Language Learning: Language Acquisition Research and
its Implication for the Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Skehan, P, 1998. A Cognitive Approach to Language Learning. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
McDonough, S., 1995. Strategy and Skill in a Foreign Language. London: Edward Arnold.
Rost, M., 1990. Listening in Language Learning. London: Longman.
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nowadays that reading is a highly interactive process. Interaction is understood as the mutual influence of the participants of a communicative event on
each other. The writer influences the reader by his or her message and vice
versa, the reader reconstructs the ideas from the reading material depending on
his or her own knowledge and experience, as well as the environment in which
reading takes place. Teaching reading in a foreign language must be treated as
an integral part of a communicative event, which takes into account the whole
communicative situation (the purpose, the topic, the roles of the participants,
the place, the type of communicative exchange, the discourse genre, etc.).
Naturally, such a view of developing the foreign language reading skill
emphasizes the role of various sources of information in addition to the language
(graphemic) form of the text. These sources can be located in: a) the text, b) its
environment (Does it come from a popular magazine, a website, a scientific publication, an official document?) and c) the reader's memory.
(a) The printed page contains the text in the form of sentences, most typically
organized into paragraphs and sections, with typography indicating the role of
elements in the text, and illustrations emphasizing the ideas with visual clues.
These sources of information reflect the structure and organization of the text,
and facilitate our search for the meaning and sense which the writer is trying to
convey.
(b) The environment surrounding the text, its whole situational context, helps us
to determine the nature of the communicative event, discourse genre and its
feasible category of communicative intention, understood as the purpose for
which the text has been written. For example, it is the situational context which
leads us to discard various advertisements arriving in our mail, but makes us very
careful and attentive while reading instructions how to open an e-mail account
on-line.
(c) The most significant source of information is in the reader's memory: his or
her knowledge of the target language, but also knowledge of the native and other
foreign languages, factual knowledge of the topic and other background knowledge, knowledge of the writer and previous reading episodes, knowledge of discourse genres, etc. These knowledge types help to assign the structure and meaning to language forms in the discourse under processing.
The above knowledge sources (L1, L2, L3, factual/background and communicative knowledge) must be activated by the reader interpreting the text as a message with communicative intention.
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sources in the reader's memory, especially concepts and schemata relevant to the
task at hand. Bottom-up processes are initiated and dominated by the textual
information on the printed page; the text form, also referred to as the stimulus
structure, is said to define the intention extracted from the passage. The top-down
ones operate on various knowledge sources in the reader's mind to narrow down
the reader's expectations towards the text to be comprehended. While developing
the reading skill in a foreign language, we cannot afford to ignore either of these
two closely related, indispensable poles of the learner's processing of written
materials. What we can do is to stimulate their interaction and make use of their
specific advantages. For example, bottom-up processes are usually stressed during
intensive reading activities, which treat the text first and foremost as language
learning material, whereas top-down processes may be stressed to activate the
learner's coping potential before a difficult reading task in an attempt to demonstrate to the learner that many clues can be used to narrow down the scope of his
or her search for meaning.
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Studying the text more than once, exact semantization (feedback from the teacher)
Perceiving elements of the text in structural relations, main ideas, supporting ideas,
literal vs. figurative meaning
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and the communicative environment of the text. At this stage the comprehender
is trying to reconstruct the communicative intention of the writer, which is not
available in a ready form. Interpretations of different learners may vary, contributing to an interesting information gap in the classroom.
The third level of comprehension, which is relevant in foreign language
teaching, is evaluation of the communicative intention from the point of view of
our own values, convictions and ideas about the topic. At this stage we act in the
capacity of the addressee, not just the decoder of the text. The addressee is in
a reciprocal relationship to the writer, responding to the intention and switching
to the role of the sender/writer herself. Evaluation seems to be the most subjective
of the three stages, but this is no reason for concern, provided the previous stages
have been completed satisfactorily. This subjectivity reflects the fundamental
nature of human communication.
The above enumeration is not intended to suggest that we proceed through
these stages in a rigid order, or that developing reading comprehension must
always involve explicit and exhaustive work at each stage. It merely outlines the
scope of the comprehension problem. After all, the extent to which we decide to
emphasize or highlight the given level depends on the learners, their reading
experience, previous activities and the text itself. In the light of this information
and the analysis of the text, we simply make strategic selections of relevant
aspects of comprehension to focus upon. Nor is it implied that the teacher is
always supposed to present the information to the learner. A much more preferable strategy would take the form of interaction between the teacher and the
learners, in which the learners are actively involved in monitoring their comprehension processes, asking questions, identifying unknown items and searching for
or inferring their meaning.
Interactive strategies for semanticizing the meaning of unknown words
include the following options:
The learners are asked to identify the items in the text whose meaning they do not
know.
The teacher provides the meaning of the items identified by the students, asks
their peers to provide the meaning, encourages lexical inferencing (informed
guessing) of selected items and later provides positive feedback for the given
item, encourages the use of the dictionary as well as provides positive feedback
for the information found by the learners there.
The teacher asks questions to make sure that what he or she predicts as problematic segments of the text are semanticized accurately by the learners .
The teacher asks students to translate selected segments (such as a clause) into
Polish, or provides translation herself, to make sure semantization is accurate.
This helps to eliminate incorrect semantization of so-called 'false friends' and
justifies a highly controlled use of the native language (1 percent of the total
class time would be my rough estimate).
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Source: R. Kinsbury, F. O'Dell and G. Wellman, 1995. CAE Advantage. London: Longman, pages 6-7.
Semanticizing
Looking at the text Food fraud down under in Example 12.1., select the elements in the text which
require special treatment in the light of the idea of interactive semantization between the teacher and
the learners. Try to find one suitable example for each point mentioned.
The learners are asked to identify the items in the text whose meaning they do not know. They may
have chosen the following words: fraud, down under, cohesive, clich, tucked, meticulous, vaunted,
precipitate, minute. How would you decide to explain them? Which of these items are suitable for
being explained by the teacher? What would you say to explain them (provide the exact wording of
the explanation)? Which can be guessed by the learners from the context? Which should be checked
in the dictionary? Do you see any text segment/phrase which should be translated into Polish? Would
the sentence 'The cat was out of the bag' be suitable for this purpose or not? Why? Why not?
Interpretation
Looking at the text Food fraud down under in Example 12.1., find clues to the communicative intention. What is the main idea of the text (Is it contained in any of the sentences?) and which are the
supporting ideas? He describes a series of images with a purpose. What is this purpose? How do the
parts of the text contribute to the presentation of the writer's point? What is the role of the title of the
text? Do you find any metaphors or comparisons (similes) in the passage? What is their function?
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Evaluation
Looking at the text in example 12.1 try to assume the position of the addressee of Ustinov's message and
respond to it in the light of your own ideas about it, as well as your knowledge of the topic and personal
experience. Are you convinced by his idea and his illustrations? Do you agree with his point? Can you find
some examples from your experience to argue for or against this idea? Is this a positive phenomenon or not?
Asking questions
Having analysed the text from the point of view of the three levels of comprehension, formulate questions which you could ask your students if you wanted to target and stimulate each comprehension level
in an increasing order of complexity, from semanticizing to evaluation.
1. Semanticizing - questions which guide the learner toward literal comprehension at the level of phrases
and sentences.
2. Interpretation questions - reconstructing the writer's intention by linking the ideas expressed in the text
into a coherent whole. Global understanding and the integration of ideas are necessary at this point.
3. Evaluation questions - responding to and evaluating the writer's intention from the point of view of
the addressee, especially his or her convictions, background knowledge and values. A critical evaluation should be sought.
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with his impressions from a trip. The addressee is a native speaker of English who
will immediately recognize the genre and reconstruct the cross-cultural references
in the article. The text has its individual, personal style not devoid of humour and
is composed of vivid images to provide light reading for relaxation. To reconstruct
the communicative intention, the reader must regard these images and episodes
as a line of examples which serve to illustrate the point that the world has shrunk,
which is to say that we see recurrent cultural elements everywhere, regardless of
our location. This idea can easily be linked to the learner's experience as a traveller
and observer of his or her own changing environment as well as evaluated and
elaborated from this point of view.
The language learning potential of the text (i.e. the language material to be
retained in the learner's memory) is inseparable from the communicative potential, the only difference being that the stress in the activities and tasks connected
with the language learning potential would be on cognitive elaboration and retention (storing) of the language material and the factual information which it contains. Strategies tapping the language learning potential of the text would have to
stimulate the commitment of the material to permanent memory. In order to
appreciate the language learning potential, the teacher must analyse the text from
the point of view of the following considerations:
What is the factual and cultural information to be learned from this text?
In connection with the topic domain, what kind of terms, vocabulary items,
lexical phrases and expressions can be learned from the text? Which topic
vocabulary should be elaborated upon?
What is the text structure: the component parts that make up its introduction,
development and conclusion? How are they ordered and integrated? What are
the main points and supporting details?
What are the linguistic exponents of the text's organization?
Can they be identified and extracted as containers for similar ideas to be used
productively by the learner in a parallel writing task?
What natural activities can be used to retain this material in memory and practise it in production?
Following such an analysis, the teacher realizes the nature of the reading
material at hand and can make the appropriate teaching decisions regarding the
selections and focus of his or her classroom activities, naturally integrated with the
text to benefit the language development of the student. For example, it is important to identify the natural plan of the text to decide where to break the text into
parts, if necessary, and to group vocabulary items of interest to the learners into
categories pertaining to city landscape and architecture, restaurants and cuisine,
people's appearance and characteristics, etc. Another language learning aspect of
the text would be the role of the various geographical names and their location as
well as the cross-linguistic references used to create a humorous effect. The learner's attention may be drawn to the writing technique which consists of using irony
and exaggeration as well as vivid details in sketching fairly effective images in
order to make the point that exotic, distant places are losing their local colour.
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Source: Jon Naunton, 1990. Think First Certificate. London: Longman, pages 154-155.
The two aspects of the above analysis are intimately connected in that the
deeper the level of comprehension of the material, the more accurate and lasting
its storage. The better the storage of the given communicative episode, the more
useful it is for being transferred for use in other communicative episodes. The
benefits of analysing the text from these two largely overlapping points of view are
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3. What genre is it? How is it organized, planned? What is the main point and the supporting ideas?
5. Is the text logically organized? Are the arguments convincing? Is the analysis of the
material convincing? What is the effect of
our critical reading of the material?
7. What would be the students' natural response to the message in the text (agree/disagree, evaluate, write an answer, present
their own view)? What productive tasks
would be natural to follow reading?
Table 12.2. Questions referring to the communicative and language learning potential of the text
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tation from this knowledge in various communicative encounters. From the point
of view of language learning, focus on the text form and plan is essential in storage and subsequent retrieval of ample, and sometimes complex, information in
our memory. Knowledge of these plans increases the predictability of subsequent
reading tasks in various communicative situations. In this way it performs an
important facilitating function in the process of language learning.
This task is to be performed by the teacher prior to designing a reading activity. Working on your own,
ask the two sets of questions regarding the communicative and language learning potential with reference to The Melting Pot provided in Table 12.2.
List your answers to compare them with ideas from other students in your class.
What tasks can be suggested to personalize the text content? Do you have any
other suggestions in connection with analysing the communicative and language
learning potential of the text that have not been mentioned?
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: These answers may vary, but the students should not overlook the
fact that the topic area of the text is migration, and more specifically emigration from Europe to the
United States between 1815 and 1914. The topic is treated at the level of popular sociology and culture, appropriate for a foreign language texbook. The main point that the author addresses are the
reasons why people left their homelands (the push factors) on the one hand and the reasons why
they wanted to settle down in the US (the pull factors). The push and the pull factors organize the
whole text so that the plan of the text may be expressed as noun phrases naming these factors (land
hunger, poverty, physical hunger, e.g. potato famine, avoiding conscription, religious persecution,
versus promise of land, the demand for settlers and workers in the West, prospects of factory jobs,
religious freedom). It would also be meaningful to establish the link between the text and its title.
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nicative intention of the author, one of the natural strategies to eliminate excessive
difficulty in reading tasks is to supply the student with the relevant knowledge
which he or she may not yet have, but which will prove useful in the reading comprehension task, i.e. provide input for the task. As a result, the learner may be
able to complete the task and gain the indispensable reading experience without
becoming demotivated or frustrated.
Sample techniques aimed at supplying factual knowledge:
A lecturette given by the teacher - a short speech (about 3 to 5 minutes) containing relevant factual information about a key concept or fact mentioned in
the reading passage. This technique is especially useful in providing learners
with the cultural input necessary to understand the reading passage.
A lecturette prepared by a student or a team of students and presented to the
class before reading. This technique may be an integral part of a bigger project
prepared by the learners.
Brainstorming, recalling and sharing information or thinking aloud about the
topic of the text. Learners take part in this activity spontaneously and volunteer
information. As they do this, they learn from each other and become primed for
the information to come from the text.
Guided classroom conversation on the topic of the text - the teacher prepares
a set of questions to elicit information from the learners on a more systematic
basis than in brainstorming. Learners become aware of what they already know
and systematize this information before they can use it for the purpose of reading comprehension.
Using external resources, such as books or the Internet - the learners are asked
to find some information on text-related concepts and terms to be shared with
other students and used while reading as more meaningful elaborations.
Providing factual information
Think of possible activities aimed at supplying factual information before reading The Melting Pot. Below
are some suggestions of options to choose from with no intention to suggest that all of them should be
used in one lesson.
1. Provide ah example of a lecturette explaining the concept of the 'melting pot' used with reference
to American society.
2. How would you conduct a brainstorming session of about five minutes on the concept of the 'melting pot'?
3. How would you conduct a classroom conversation on the notion of the 'melting pot'? What questions
would you ask to guide your students? Would you compare this idea with the notion of the 'salad bowl',
also used with reference to American ethnic diversity? Do you see any use for intercultural comparisons?
4. How would you conduct a classroom conversation on the topic of emigration and its personal significance? Would you refer to any films with this motif or family experiences of the students?
5. How would you prepare classroom conversation on the concepts related to a) the key push factors,
such as land hunger, poverty, avoiding conscription, religious persecutions, and b) the pull factors,
such as the promise of land, prospects of factory jobs, settling in the West, and religious tolerance?
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6. Ask students to find additional information about the potato famine in Ireland, the collapse of the
economy in Italy in the 1860s, the Pilgrim Fathers, persecutions of Russian Jews, the Old World, the
New World, the Promised Land in its metaphorical meaning.
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understand in their Shakespearian context. The word 'momentous' in the third line
of the second paragraph of The Melting Pot is not a simple or frequent adjective, but
is almost self-explanatory in the context in which it is used.
From the point of view of our memory processes, teaching some items before
the students read the text is justified in the case of vocabulary systems, for example terms which belong to a given semantic field or topic domain, in other words,
which are part of the terminology of the text. In the case of Food fraud down under,
these would be all the culture-related items used to exemplify the main idea that
the world has shrunk; in the case of The Melting Pot, lexis grouping the political,
social, religious reasons for emigration. Such networks or categories should even
be extended and elaborated with additional items provided by the teacher or students during class work to easily find their way to our memory store because of
their semantic connections.
Providing meaning for unknown vocabulary in context may take the form of
interactive work between the teacher and the students during the stage of semantization, discussed above. At this point the learner is familiar with the context and
can fit new meanings into the model of the situation that he or she is visually
reconstructing in the mind. On the other hand, 'pre-teaching' vocabulary is artificial and puts the initial emphasis on the cognitive rather than the communicative nature of the reading task. To make the learner curious about the reading
material, it is more appropriate to initially emphasize the communicative and/or
informative nature of the task, and most important of all, the content of the passage and deal with the learning (cognitive) aspect thereafter.
Strategies used to clarify meanings of unknown words in the text may also
be systematized according to the kind of information they make use of, such as
L1, L2, metalingual (definitions) and visual (non-lingual) information:
lingual strategies: expressing meaning in the target language, here English,
providing examples, illustrative situations, synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms,
paraphrasing;
interlingual strategies: providing native language equivalents, in this case, the
Polish translation of the English item in focus;
metalingual strategies: providing a definition of a given item in the target language; definitions, especially at the elementary stage of learning may be given
in the native language of the learner, as well. Definitions are said to be cognitively difficult to understand and formulate; they may be saved for the more
advanced stage;
non-lingual strategies: gesture, picture, mime, pointing at objects or their drawings, etc.
The choice of strategy depends on the nature of the lexical item. Some of
them, e.g. terms for abstract concepts, must be translated into the learner's native
language for reasons of precision. However, during the reading process, we must
keep in mind the need to engage the learner as actively as possible in monitoring
his or her comprehension, identifying unknown items, actively looking for their
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ical stress; appropriate contrast between syllables is part of the 'correct pronunciation' of a word. Beyond these conventions stress can be used to fill communicative functions.' These are precisely the reasons why the way in which the learner
reads a given text aloud provides the teacher with useful information about the
learner's comprehension processes at the level of recognition, segmentation,
structuring and semantization. The teacher may provide feedback and help the
learner with pronunciation and prosody to make it congruent with the structure
and meaning of the text. This form of activity is not conducive to deep comprehension because the learner's resources are directed to transforming the material
from the written to the spoken code, here called transcoding. As a result, the
learner's attention is focused on the language forms.
Extensive reading is different from intensive reading with regard to the
pace of the activity and the size of the material. While intensive reading is connected with a more in-depth study and analysis of a relatively limited amount of
text as well as the use of external resources to supplement the learner's knowledge
dficits, extensive reading is fairly fast and based on the comprehension strategies
available to the learner at the moment. The learner does not use external sources
of information during this rather fluent process, but derives considerable orientation from the vast contexts within by the passage. Extensive reading has the
advantage of the quantity of input at the expense of the processing precision.
Intensive reading, on the other hand, can lead to precision, but at the expense of
the slower pace of the task. Both kinds of reading should be used in foreign language teaching because they complement each other: one kind provides positive
transfer to the other.
Intensive reading
Extensive reading
Size of the material: shorter passage, often a segment of a larger whole, selected by the author
of the programme.
Pace of the task: fairly fast pace of reading, typical of communicative fluency. Learner knowledge deficits are compensated by the ample
context, and the task is mostly performed as an
individual activity, a form of self-teaching.
Benefits: significant source of cultural and factual knowledge and incidental vocabulary
acquisition, performs important motivational
function, enhances communicative autonomy.
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Extensive reading should be cultivated in the sense of: encouraged, guided, provided for, stimulated, rewarded, by the foreign language teacher for the following
reasons:
it has an important educational value; being well-read, both in the native and
foreign language, is a trademark of an educated person;
extensive reading is an invaluable source of cultural and language input; it
enhances the learner's confidence and communicative autonomy;
it is a natural communicative process in its pure form: it is motivated by content curiosity, it is not disturbed by the teacher's interference, it is done for
pleasure and relaxation. As a result, it is ultimately rewarding for the learner.
Skimming is used to get a general idea of the nature of the text (Brown, 1994).
For this purpose the reader makes use of important structural clues in the text, such
as its appearance, the title, list of contents, abstracts, subtitles, topic sentences, illustrations, conclusions, where applicable. Skimming is helpful in our decisionmaking processes, for example when we try to make up our mind which recent article on learner autonomy to copy for our research, which Mediterranean cookery book
to buy, or which article to read carefully in the newly purchased Time Magazine. In
the classroom setting, skimming is valued for the general orientation that the learner derives from this initial contact and is usually followed by a more careful study of
the material. While reading the text more thoroughly, the learner can perceive and
process parts of the text in their functional relationships to the whole.
Scanning 'involves searching rapidly through a text to find a specific point
of information, for example, the relevant times on a timetable, items in a directory, or key points in an academic text.' (Hedge, 2000: 195). Effective scanning is an
important sub-ability in reading comprehension; it presupposes that we know
where to look for the relevant information and thus strengthens our study skills.
On a more general note, it should be emphasized that skimming and scanning are by no means the leading reading processes, as many communicative textbooks would lead us to believe. If they are used regularly as the main intensive
reading tasks, they will become the main reading comprehension abilities developed by the learners. In everyday communication, however, they play a much
more marginal role and should not overshadow deep comprehension, critical
reading, and language learning from the written input.
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Source: Sue O'Connell, 2004. Focus on Advanced English CAE. London: Longman, page 41.
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ing, conduct the reading session according to the current ideology that it is
a guessing game, and follow it with various related, mostly productive activities
which encourage the learner to use the knowledge acquired through reading.
(A similar, though not exactly the same point is made by Hedge, 2000).
Breaking a reading lesson into these three stages seems to be quite appropriate in view of the nature of reading and the language learners' special needs.
The pre-reading stage performs the function of an introduction to the reading
task with some anticipation or input strategies aimed at facilitating the reading
comprehension process under reduced redundancy conditions, i.e. in view of the
language learner's knowledge and skill deficits. The reading stage provides an
opportunity to process the form and content of the passage to accomplish the
three levels of discourse comprehension and retain the vital information. The
third, follow-up stage is the time to consolidate the information from discourse
and respond to the intention, i.e. communicatively interact with the author in
the role of a sender. This encourages the learner to practise productive skills
closely related to the receptive input from the text, most typically remaining mentally within the same communicative situation as the discourse that has been read.
1. Analyse the text Time-eaters and what you can do about them in example
12.3. and decide on the communicative and learning potential by answering the
questions related to the teacher's analysis of the text, part 12.4. and table 12.3.
As we recall, the most important points to consider before designing reading
tasks are the communicative situation, text type, especially its plan, relationship
of the content to the learner's knowledge of the world and experience, and
topic-related vocabulary.
2. The purpose of the analysis is to bring the text back to life as a communicative
event which involves the interaction between the writer and the addressee. The
resulting activities should naturally result from the nature of the text and the
communicative situation which it evokes and enhance both the communicative
and the learning potential inherent in the text.
3. As has been said, while designing the reading task, the teacher streamlines the
whole activity into three stages:
a) the pre-reading stage;
b) the reading stage;
c) the follow-up activities.
The purpose of the pre-reading stage is to mentally prepare the learner for the
reading task to facilitate the experience. Following the earlier considerations on the
nature of the reading process and the sources of the learner's difficulties, prereading is the stage to arouse curiosity for the content of the passage, as much as to
enhance the learner's coping potential for the task at hand by tapping various relevant sources of information: the text and its presentation, the context, if applicable,
and the learner's knowledge. At this point, I must disagree with the idea that the
learner should be made to predict or guess as much of the text content as possible.
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211
Design a reading lesson for text 3. Time-eaters and what you can do about them. Try to incorporate
your own ideas in addition to the suggestions provided as well as to vary the activities in your lesson, so
that if you choose classroom conversation for the pre-reading stage, your follow-up activity is not a yet
another classroom speaking task.
Design a reading lesson for text 2. The Melting Pot. Try to focus on the vocabulary and personalization
of content and inviting the learner's opinions and sharing experience. Follow the principle of variety of
skills involved as well as work formats, individual, pair, and group work.
Design a reading lesson for text 1. Food fraud down under. What are the criteria of a good, wellintegrated introductory activity? Can you select such an activity for this text? Make sure it is not an activity in its own right, competing with the reading itself or taking the learner's attention in a different direction, away from the reading task.
In the long run, reading tasks based on these principles and developed in
line with the creative propensities of the teacher should enable the learner to do
the following:
read with deep comprehension, critically, and with insight;
process the text with a view to its structure and organization, especially its coherence and cohesion;
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recognize larger rhetorical parts, figurative language, and other stylistic devices;
bring all the relevant knowledge sources to the task at hand;
distinguish between fact and opinion, main point and example, irony and sarcasm;
make use of all the clues, verbal and non-verbal alike, to become oriented with
the nature and meaning of the text;
infer the meaning of some unfamiliar words from the context, but use a dictionary where necessary for feedback information;
infer the information which is not expressed explicitly;
read interactively, i.e. evaluate the writer's intention and respond to it;
monitor his or her own comprehension process and check for accuracy in comprehension.
Further reading
Day, R., and J. Bumford, 1998. Extensive Reading in Second Language Classroom. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Hedge, T., 2000. Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nation, P, 1997. The language learning benefits of extensive reading. Language Teacher 21,13-16.
Nunan, D., 1993. Introducing Discourse Analysis. London: Penguin.
Nuttall, C., 1996. Reading Skills in a Foreign Language. New Edition. London: Heinemann.
Renandya, W. A., and G. M. Jacobs, 2002. Extensive reading: why aren't we all doing it? In: J. C.
Richards and W. A. Renandya (eds.), Methodology in Language Teaching. An Anthology of
Current Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 295-302.
Ur, P, 1991. A Course in Language Teaching. Practice and Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wallace, C., 1992. Reading. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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tual clues, but the role of the learner is confined to being a member of an audience, a listener or a viewer, rather than a directly involved participant in interpersonal communication. The message is most probably neither targeted at the
learner as an individual, nor adjusted to his or her needs and abilities. The learner comprehends this input, but does not at the time interact with the sender to
construct output. He or she is merely an observer, rather than a sender and an
addressee. But even in this limited role the learner benefits from the opportunity
to process monologue and dialogue discourse (interaction) models and learn cultural and language information, especially from the opportunity to pick up plentiful lexical material in its auditory form. This form of input affords extensive
listening, whose advantages resemble those of extensive reading. Although the
learner in not personally involved as a participant in communicative interaction,
the benefits in terms of traces recorded in echoic memory cannot be underestimated. But this form of input alone is not sufficient in foreign language learning.
This is why - for the purposes of foreign language learning - it is advisable to
stimulate the learner to interact with the sender at least mentally, if not in person,
by formulating an opinion, or criticism, or any other response in line with the
third level of comprehension (see 12.4.).
As has been pointed out, the first type of input which presents instances of
verbal communication but is not addressed at the learner personally is treated as
an interaction model and can be replicated with various modifications, or even verbatim. Foreign language learners vastly expand their classroom experience by taking over native or fluent speakers' communicative behaviour as models to be recreated, i.e. acted out in the classroom. This is no different from parallel writing tasks,
which imitate communicatively important structural features of written discourse
models. The recordings (conversations, situational dialogues, service encounters,
exchanges illustrating the use of various functions of English, etc.) which can be
found in large quantities in our EFL textbooks may safely be used as input for
communication, i.e. input for comprehension, as well as a model of communicative
interaction to be recreated with a varying degree of fidelity. Although these recordings are far from ideal material, they perform a useful function in this way.
13.1.2. The learner as an addressee
A more interaction-conducive form of input processed by the learner in the foreign
language classroom is provided by the teacher and other group members, or visitors,
when they target, i.e. address and adjust, their utterances to the learners and engage
them in conversation. Such input demands from the learners acting both in the role
of addressees as well as senders. Even when the learners are not speaking at the time,
they must, at least mentally, prepare for taking their turn and for constructing utterances. Interpersonal communication in which the learners participate as subjects is
essential in learning how to cope with the ongoing conversational demands, how to
monitor and clarify comprehension problems, how to make oneself understood and
process feedback from the communicative encounters. In conjunction with the
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learner's participation and involvement, auditory input provides vast experience for
language learning, consisting, among other things, of procedural representations
required in the skillful execution of language tasks as well as pragmatic knowledge.
It is not surprising that teachers who demonstrate good communication abilities are
recognized as outstanding in our field (cf Chastain, 1971; Moskovitz, 1976; Stern,
1992). Such form of auditory input is processed for the purposes of comprehension
and interaction, i.e. conversation. The essential condition for language learning
from such an input is fulfiled as participating in interaction.
13.1.3. Input for pronunciation
Auditory input is also the essential material for the learner to master the pronunciation of the English language in communication, i.e. in production and comprehension rather than in isolated words. In production, learners must be able to articulate
the phonemes automatically as they construct discourse, while in comprehension,
they must be able to discriminate them subconsciously as they decode the incoming discourse. The most significant contribution of the auditory input to language
learning is that it is the only source of data for reconstructing the spoken code of the
English language with its distinctive phonemic entities, their rhythm, intonation
and other temporal constraints. If we cannot observe speakers of the target language
modelling verbal communication in the spoken form, we are unable to discern the
components of this system and the way they are used, which means that we are
unable to interact with the use of the spoken language ourselves. Auditory input
brought into the language class acts as a surrogate natural spoken English environment which is so indispensable in first, second, and foreign language acquisition.
Hedge (2000:240) compiled a list of differences between spontaneous informal talk and recordings for English learners. It seems that the artificial qualities
listed here are inevitable in the materials at beginner and intermediate-level, but
not higher.
Spontaneous informal talk
Table 13. 1. Difference between spontaneous informal talk and recordings for English language learners
(source: Hedge 2000: 240)
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217
- M.D.].' For the Polish learner of English, the task is to learn the stress-timed
system taking the syllable-timed system as a highly automatized point of departure. This requires practice and effort to restructure (unlearn and relearn) the
existing knowledge both at the level of discrimination in listening comprehension
and at the level of articulation (emission) in speaking.
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Cashier (laughs): I thought you were asking about Chuck. I heard: 'Is Chuck OK' and I don't know
any Chuck. Yes, check's OK.
Customer (also laughs and writes a check for the amount shown on the register).
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tions from the very beginning of their English course, their perceived level of difficulty of listening comprehension tasks at different stages of the learning process
would have been tolerable. Listening tasks would not be treated as a reason for
concern, as they in fact are (Ur, 1991). Listening comprehension tasks are perceived as a source of considerable anxiety among Polish learners of English, second only to speaking activities (ebrowska, 2005). The roots of the problem are to
be found in the scarce and irregular practice of listening tasks in the foreign language classroom with the resulting underdeveloped auditory (echoic) memory
representations for spoken discourse in English. Without experience and vast
auditory (echoic) memory representations there is no basis in the form of procedural and declarative representations for the activation and development of the
listening comprehension skill. For this reason, it is mandatory that the learners
face the challenge of processing spoken discourse from the beginning of the
course. Practice and experience in sufficient quantities will lead to improving listening comprehension and the development of the listening skill. Why, then, do
so many teachers fall into the trap of focusing on the written language neglecting
listening input and practice? The answer to this question has little to do with the
transient nature of the auditory message because with recorded materials we have
given the spoken message a relative degree of permanence and possibility of repetition. The answer relates to the uncomfortable clash between the following
factors: a) temporal constraints imposed on the listener to process the auditory
stimulus within a certain fluency span, and b) the foreign language learner's insufficiently developed automaticity to do the task so quickly. Since the learner is constrained by his learning stage to perform processing tasks slower than the skilled
speaker/listener is, it is natural that he or she feels more comfortable with the written code, which is much more malleable to the slower pace of processing. The only
remedy is more practice in the form of intensive listening. Faster action will be
possible with further temporal integration of the component sub-tasks and the
development of the requisite procedural representations.
When they are talking about their listening comprehension problems, Polish
learners of English complain about the fact that listening activities are too long for
them, which also means, stressful and tiring, and that not only is it hard for them
to discern what the speakers are saying, but to keep pace with them for some time.
Listening material is too fast and one round of listening is not enough for them.
In their opinion, a remedy for these difficulties would be to have plenty of intensive listening comprehension tasks as well as having the opportunity to choose
materials and control the running of the tape to suit their individual needs. As we
recall, intensive listening practice is based on the same principles of grading task
difficulty in skill development as those used in intensive reading comprehension
tasks:
the length of the task is a factor: the shorter the task, the easier it is for the
learner to complete it;
the pace of the task is a factor: the faster the task, the more difficult it is for the
learner; suspending the fluency requirement makes the task easier;
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the amount of input is a factor: the more material is presented to the learner for
the sake of the task, the easier it should be to complete it because comprehension difficulty is a function of the balance between the given and the new;
task complexity is a factor: if the task is first broken down into sub-tasks, it is
easier for the learner to perform the whole of it.
To sum up, for many Polish learners of English as a foreign language the
solution to listening comprehension deficits include: a) adjusting the listening
tasks to the learners' proficiency level because in this way they will be more likely
to accept them than to opt out, and b) maintaining a consistent listening practice
regimen, because only thanks to processing the listening input will the learners
internalize the requisite vast auditory memory representations. If the adjustments
lead to tasks which are too simplified or too elementary for the taste of some communicative purists, they may be defended on the grounds that a) they are merely
stepping stones to the target-like, i.e. fluent, listening skill (fluency develops
through integration of sub-skills), and b) they are an inevitable intermediate stage
to target-like extensive listening.
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cial case of the above type of interaction; a related activity is to make a drawing
in response to instructions, e.g. drawing routes, shapes or pictures (cf dictation
drawing p. 223).
Ticking off items in the list. The learners must comprehend the listening passage with specific clues in order to tick off respective items in their materials.
True/false judgment. The learners are asked to demonstrate their comprehension by judging the sentences provided as either true or false according to the
content of the passage for listening.
Cloze. The learners listen to a passage and fill in the blank spaces in the written version of the same text provided for them. It is up to the teacher to decide
how much of the original text should be left out and whether only words or
whole sentences can be eliminated.
Answering comprehension questions. Comprehension questions may be
given orally or in the written form, which makes it easier for the learner to follow the task. Their essential character and levels of cognitive difficulty are no
different than questions for reading comprehension.
Interesting activities may be built around authentic materials, such as stories,
anecdotes, songs, feature films, or theatre plays recorded on the video. Ur (1991)
points out that these materials are suitable for designing activities with no overt
response, for example listening to stories (story time is especially enjoyable to
children) or anecdotes; the learners will usually enjoy such an activity if the material is suitable and their body language will disclose their degree of understanding.
The same can be done with songs and films. It seems however, that possibilities
are much more numerous.
1. Stories may be treated as material for listening, followed by some comprehension
work and material in the story may be used for acting it out, a story continuation task, retelling from another perspective, summarizing, and many others.
2. Songs are in vogue nowadays as material for language teaching, which makes
material for developing listening comprehension. Songs may be used in a listening activity, for singing along, as cultural input, and for interpretation and
discussion. A typical activity which accompanies a song in communicative textbooks nowadays is a gapped text of the song the learners are asked to listen to.
Although this task is almost mandatory with a song-based activity, the value of
such a comprehension check is questionable. If the purpose of the activity is to
comprehend the song, the learners are in fact distracted in it by having to focus
on the task of reconstructing the missing lines. Songs often have interesting
poetic lyrics worth concentrating upon, so more meaning-oriented comprehension work would be advisable. Moreover, the use of tapescript in its complete
rather than gapped form, may be helpful in reconstructing the exact form of the
text, which is necessary comprehension before discussing the sense of the song
(see 13.7. on the function of tapescript in developing listening comprehension).
Songs, especially the traditional ones, connected with special holidays or other
social occasions, are presented as cultural input as well as listening comprehension material. In these cases, additional cultural commentary is needed as
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well as learning to sing the song, if possible. Needless to say, songs and chants
are 'staple food' in teaching children. It is widely recognized that language
material, especially vocabulary, presented with its melody - in the form of
a song - is much more memorable than other forms of vocabulary presentation
(cf Wach, 2003).
3. Feature films and other recorded programmes, if adjusted to learners' proficiency level, may provide valuable material for listening comprehension, discussion, evaluation. Situational clues and body language are useful clues which
compensate the learner's listening comprehension deficits. Where available,
tapescript may also be used as feedback and for clarification purposes. Watching such programmes is motivating to students because they can participate in
target language media culture. Whenever the use of video is involved, many
authors recommend such activities as silent viewing to predict what the speakers are saying, but they seem to me to be a waste of time and in conflict with
deep processing for meaning that can be activated on the basis of the linguistic
and paralinguistic material on the recording.
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on the basis of his or her processing of the auditory clues and transcode, i.e. convert the representation of the phonemic into the graphemic code. The written version of the text reflects quite precisely the way in which s/he processes the auditory input.
Original text
Restaurant manager:
Well, what can we do? I can't have half a dozen extra waiters standing around every day on the off
chance we'll have a sudden rush, can I? These franchises are very tightly financed, we have to keep
our costs right down or we can't operate. People complain enough already at the prices we have to
charge, and if that means queues when there's been some sort of hold-up, there's not much we can
do about it. I mean, contingency plans would mean staff on standby and as I say, we're not making
the sort of profits that'd let us do that, are we now?
A dictation taken by an intermediate learner
Restaurant manager:
I can't have a dozen waiters, standing around everyday, on the of chance, will have a sudden rush.
Can I? This franchisers are very titly financed. We have to keep are costs write down, or we can
operate. People complain enough or ready at the price we have to charge. It that means couse when
there is been some sort of hold up, there is not much to we can do about it. I mean contingexxx
plans would mean stuff or stand by, and I say were not make in the sort of profits. That would lead
us to that are we now.
Source: L. Hashemi, 1997. CAE Practice Exams Part 2. CUR test 3, paper 4, section D, page 136.
The learner's mistakes provide insight into his or her processing because they
reflect:
the way s/he segments the stimulus material into clauses,
represents grammatical relationships within clauses,
reconstructs individual content words,
reconstructs the unaccented grammar morphemes attached to words,
and the way s/he discriminates and codes the phonemic-graphemic correspondences.
This is the reason why feedback on such tasks is highly educational and absolutely necessary, especially at the initial stages of foreign language learning. Although
at a later stage of language learning dictation may have a rather marginal role to
play, one cannot deny that it is a useful elementary and intermediate form-focused
activity to be used with those learners who have auditory discrimination problems, or with learners who have not practised auditory discrimination tasks sufficiently for their general language level. This activity supports communicative
abilities, without being a communicative activity itself. It provides the teacher
with precise feedback on the learner's auditory discrimination processes.
Dictation drawing. This activity makes use of the material which contains
some spatial information, for example a description of a room or a route in a map.
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The text is read out to the students twice and the learners try to understand the
text content and visualize it. On this basis they draw the plan of the room or the
route on the map. This material activates the learners' auditory comprehension,
visualization ability, and the ability to convert the mental model into a drawing.
The activity is quite well-known in the field of foreign language teaching from the
Communicative Approach. Hedge (2000:248) presents a variation on this theme
based on White (1998), namely an activity called: describe rooms from stories, in
which students are asked to make a drawing on the basis of a description from
a literary work as well as discuss various ideas connected with the characters in
the story considerably contextualizing the information that they work on. The
task may be followed by a segment from a feature film made on the basis of the
story or novel presented to the students so that they can compare their vision with
that of the film director's.
Dictogloss is described by Nunan (1991) as a listening activity which involves individual note-taking, and collaboration in groups to reconstruct the text
on the basis of the notes they have. It is not a dictation because the learners take
down bits and pieces of information, and not the text verbatim. Feedback is provided on the text reconstruction which the students have done in a group, not
individually. For the sake of consistency, Nunan says, it is better to play a recording than to read the text. The stages are as follows:
preparation - asking questions, discussing some visual material, vocabulary, etc.
and dividing students into appropriate groups;
listening to the text - learners listen to the recording twice, the first time for the
general idea of the text, the second time to make notes;
reconstruction - the learners pool their notes together and without any additional input from the teacher at this time, they produce their collective version
of the passage;
analysis and correction - the teacher may provide feedback to groups of students and the corrected versions may be copied and distributed to the other
groups. Possibilities are numerous, depending on the learners' preferences and
the teaching material.
Summary writing. When the learner is warned that a summary will be
required after listening, his or her attention will be focused not only on comprehension of the passage, but also on retention of the verbal form. This particular
task guides the learner's attention to concentrate on what is required. It may be
advisable to give the instructions, play the material once or twice, depending on
the circumstances, and ask the learners to start writing. But if they experience difficulty in recalling the relevant information, the teacher may play the tape yet
again. A successful summary should be proportional to the original material and
it should reflect the structure of the original. By reading the summary, the teacher
may evaluate the learner's comprehension and retention processes and decide on
the amount and type of feedback needed. This activity builds the foundations for
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226
Peter Whitehead: Let's start with sulphur dioxide which causes acid rain. I thought the government was
doing something about that.
Frances Kelly: Well, they are but slowly. Sulphur dioxide emissions from power stations are still going
on and the resulting acid rain is killing off fishes and plant life in lakes and destroying the forests. And
we in Britain are among the worst culprits when it comes to this kind of pollution.
Peter Whitehead: What are the other pollutants?
Frances Kelly: Carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. Carbon monoxide, which is mostly produced by
motor vehicles can, even in small doses, cause sickness and a slowing of the reflexes and there is strong
evidence that it has an effect on the growth of children.
Peter Whitehead: And carbon dioxide?
Frances Kelly: Well, in a way this is the least dangerous of the pollutants we've mentioned but in the
long term it may be the most damaging.
Peter Whitehead: Why?
Frances Kelly: There is clear evidence that the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the main
cause of the Greenhouse effect. This will have dreadful results like the melting of the polar ice caps and
subsequent flooding in the lower-lying areas.
Peter Whitehead: So what you're saying is that the increased amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is making it warmer.
Frances Kelly: Yes, that's right and the results will be catastrophic.
Peter Whitehead: And what should we be doing about this?
Frances Kelly: Frankly, the government has got to impose far stricter controls on the emissions and bring
in tough legislation to deal with the problem.
Peter Whitehead: Frances Kelly, thank you very much.
Frances Kelly: Thank you.
Peter Whitehead: After the news we hope to be talking to the Minister for the Environment, Patrick Hilliard...
Source: The text of the recorded listening is taken from Jon Naunton, 1990. Think First Certificate. London: Longman, unit 7, The Natural World, page 77.
At first sight, we notice that the text presents three pollutants, their sources
and negative effects on us and our environment. It is a suitable example of listening material for a comprehension activity in which learners show their understanding of the main ideas by filling a grid (Rost, 1990). The information used in
the table must reflect the structure of the comprehension material.
The pollutant
The source
Sulphur dioxide
Carbon monoxide
Carbon dioxide
Table 13.2. Filling a grid after listening to the interview with Frances Kelly
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intonation, uses the voice pitch and accompanies speaking with body language,
facial expressions, and other non-verbal and para-verbal clues enables a competent
listener to decode the message without a deep analysis of the morphosyntactic
forms. The most important semantic information may be extracted on the basis of
the accented content words in context. Syntactic information does not have a significant role unless there are alternative interpretations of meaning. Native or
very fluent speakers can afford not to be preoccupied with reduced and unaccented forms in the spoken discourse because, if necessary, they can easily reconstruct
(reinstate) these forms on the basis of their auditory mental representations anyway. For foreign language learners, however, the forms are not readily available
from their mental representation. The learners find it frustrating to process a listening passage because the speakers' clues are reduced and therefore insufficient
for them to reconstruct the forms on the basis of the incoming information. When
they infer the meaning and still feel that they are not sure about the precise syntactic forms used by the speakers, they may be shown the tapescript as a kind of
feedback on form at the end of the listening task, after they have made the effort
to understand the meaning on the basis of the available information and the
teacher's input. Matching the graphic representation of the listening passage with
the recording helps learners to improve the precision of its mental representation.
The use of tapescript in this function must have a positive influence on the quality, i.e. precision and certainty, of the reconstructed system. To conclude, a tapescript may occasionally be used as a feedback device at the end of a listening task
when the learner is still developing his or her auditory comprehension and/or
when the text is rather difficult, but this does not make it an obligatory or regular
feature of listening tasks.
It seems that the above situation, in which foreign language learners receive
the tapescript of the text they have been listening to, is in a way comparable to
a dictation task.
228
well a general art course and got interested in photography, then decided to do graphics and photography and er went to university, did three years and changed my mind yet again, specialized in typography and that was it, that was my training.
Interviewer: What do you like about being a designer?
Sally: Creating, I think. Um I don't think that there are any parts of my job that I don't like. I like the
challenge, the -, of taking something that most people wouldn't want to look at and making it something that's attractive, into something that's attractive. Um the creation side. Problem-solving.
Interviewer: Could you give us an example of a problem-solving situation?
Sally: Being given several pages of manuscripts and being - and a brief, for instance, the market, um,
and having to produce something that would be suitable for the market. Um maybe making lots of bits
fit one page. Making the decisions to which bits shouldn't be on there.
Interviewer: What don't you like about being a designer. There must be something.
Sally: When I have to open artwork - i.e. when I receive artwork in the post and it is an illustration I've
paid several hundred pounds for and I open the package and when I first take the wrapping off and see
if it's any good or if I've actually wasted all the money ... It's quite nerve-racking.
Interviewer: Being a designer must be quite tense at times because you're having to meet tight deadlines perhaps. Are there any situations you'd like to tell us about?
Sally: Er yes, I'd say I was quite tense at the moment because I'm going on holiday next week so I've
actually got three week's work to do in no time at all, you know, not allowed for in any schedule and
er the book I ' m working on at the moment is such a high priority title that there is no excuse whatsoever for any work not getting done on time. So I'm actually coming in at half past eight and leaving the
building when the alarm goes at eight and in between times running from job to job and that's quite
stressful, not being able to take any lunch-break and chasing up other people and waiting for them to
give me work which is overdue and then being expected to actually make that time up as well as working in advance of when I should be working.
Interviewer: Being a designer sounds like quite a highly pressurized job. How do you keep smiling?
Sally: I love it. I love it, as I said originally, just creating and making things, and I think I work quite well
under pressure anyhow, so although I find it traumatic at the time, when the book actually arrives on
my desk and it's a good product and I think that it's it looks good and interesting and it's going to be
successful, it's going to make money, it's going to sell, I get a buzz out of it.
Source: Roy Kinsbury, Felicity O'Dell, and Guy Wellman, 1991. Longman Practice Exams for the CAE.
London: Longman, exam two, section C, pages 29-30.
Having analysed the material, which seems suitable for upper intermediate
or advanced learners, from these two overlapping perspectives, the teacher notices
that the interview contains some interesting, but non-technical information about
the job of a book designer, its positive and negative aspects, and that the learners
may relate to this account through their own or their parents' professional experience, or their professional plans, as well through such concepts as stress or creativity or what makes a book attractive to buy, etc. They may have many ideas
about this or other professions to talk about to personalize the content and elaborate on the ideas from the text. The plan of the interview is fairly transparent as
the interviewer asks questions referring to the job responsibilities, Sally's personal
route to choosing this profession, as well its good and bad sides.
On the basis of this analysis, it is possible to outline the following options
for the three essential stages of the listening task:
1. The warm-up or introductory stage. The purpose of the introductory stage in
listening comprehension is to stimulate the learner's curiosity in the subject
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5. Can the students relate to this communicative situation and the message? Can they bring
their personal experience to bear on this listening material?
Table 13.3. Analysis of the material to identify its communicative and language learning potential
230
dividing the material for listening into segments to give learners the possibility of intermissions to talk about some language points such as the vocabulary/expressions, to elicit explanations from the teacher, etc. The teacher has
a clear idea where such naturally dividing lines may be found in the discourse.
choosing the most appropriate form of comprehension check from among the
available possibilities (questions, multiple choice, true/false, a grid, a retelling
or summarizing activity, note-taking, etc.)
focusing on the discourse plan to identify the main ideas and the supporting
examples and details;
other options?
3. The follow-up stage serves the purpose of providing the learner with opportunities to internalize and personalize, or even visualize the content of the material for listening a little further, elaborate on any aspect of the material and
respond to it as a sender or replicate the material as a communicative model for
production. The options include:
responding to the ideas in the interview from the learner's personal perspective
to answer the questions regarding the job: What do you think of...?, Do you
like...?, Would you like...?, What kind of person is Sally, do you think? How do
you imagine her appearance? What kind of clothes does she wear? Do you think
you work well under pressure? What makes a book attractive to you? What
makes you buy a book? Why do you think the creativity involved in the job is
so important and motivating?
elaborating on the lexical material in the passage from the point of view of the
following criteria: the content domain (terminology connected with book
designing, expanding knowledge in this content domain), the importance of the
concept in the text (here: the concept of creativity and stress; what do they
mean to you, what is their role in one's profession? etc.); elaborating on the
topic of what makes a book attractive, a short oral composition with an example prepared by each student (suitable as homework);
responding to the material as a sender: what is your response to this interview,
what is your opinion of the ideas expressed, what questions would you ask
Sally?
as for using the material as a model for production, options include: imitating
the interview with Sally in a slightly abbreviated form to practise communicative
behaviour under 'sheltered conditions'; parallel interview on a topic related to
one's job but more personalized, including the students' choices of content, but
with informal phrases from the listening material;
any other options?
Keeping in mind the criteria for the analysis of the text from the point of
view of its communicative and language learning potential, it seems clear that the
choice of the specific strategy for each of the three stages cannot be arbitrary. It
must result from the character of the material at hand. With an interview such as
the above some options seem to be quite natural while others are impractical. The
only thing that remains for the teacher to do is to coordinate his or her choices at
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each stage within the whole task, so as to avoid monotony and maximize variety
within a) the available options for each stage and b) within the important didactic categories to keep in mind (discourse genres, planning, content and culture
learning, lexis, accuracy, skill learning, fluency, working memory work, etc.).
Having considered all of the above, how would you plan the listening task
based on: An interview with Sally, a book designer?
Further reading
Anderson, A., and T. Lynch, 1988. Listening. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Brown, J., 1990. Listening to Spoken English. London: Longman.
Rost, M., 1990. Listening in Language Learning. London: Longman.
Rost, M., 1991. Listening in Action. Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall International.
Rost, M., 1994. Introducing Listening. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Underwood, M., 1989. Teaching Listening. London: Longman.
Ur, P, 1984. Teaching Listening Comprehension. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
White, G., 1998. Listening. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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and debates, drama and games, projects, and many other information gap
activities. Admittedly, the abundance and variety of tasks for the development of
the speaking skill in CLT is a very rich pool of resources for the practising teacher
to choose from also nowadays. However, it would be a mistake to consider the
contribution of Communicative Language Teaching as the final word in matters of
developing foreign language skills, especially speaking, because of the narrow view
of communication underlying CLT. In fact, the weaknesses of CLT in this regard
amounts to its: a) insufficient recognition of the complexity of speaking as a psycholinguistic operation, as well as b) its emphasis on the information gap criterion
for communicative practice which sometimes leads to artificial or quite impractical
speaking tasks (see 6.4 on CLT and its critical evaluation). In addition to the above,
c) the problem of morphosyntactic accuracy in CLT makes the whole conception of
how to develop the EFL speaking skill rather incomplete. These issues, i.e. psycholinguistic complexity of speaking, realism of didactic tasks and the problem of
building accuracy into the speaking skill, will be addressed in this chapter.
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relevant situations in some depth than to cover many only superficially because
the learner must have sufficient material to reconstruct the typological features
of these instances.
2. Participants are involved in the act of communication with their entire personalities, they process verbal as well as non-verbal information from the environment, they activate all their relevant background knowledge sources represented
in their minds, and they adjust their message to the addressee, based on the
image of the addressee that they have formed. Communicative encounters have
their content and relationship components, and sometimes one aspect may
dominate the whole encounter. The speakers' knowledge and experience enable
them to make instantaneous communicative decisions required by the communicative act. All of the above direct our attention to the need of vast experience
and extensive background knowledge in speaking to provide mental options to
choose from.
3. The quintessential (constitutive) feature of verbal communication is the occurrence of communicative intention in the speaker's mind. Forging communicative intention may, on one occasion, be a highly constructive and demanding
act or an automatic and casual act on another. Communicative intention is the
meaning and sense that the speaker wants to encode and convey to the
addressee to enable him or her to reconstruct it, in other words, to be understood. The speaker's production must contain a sufficient amount of sufficiently accurate clues for the addressee to understand, interpret, and evaluate it. The
speaker is involved in integrating hierarchically arranged choices from intention, through planning, lexical insertion, integration, monitoring to articulation. These choices must be coordinated and executed in fractions of seconds to
keep pace with the communicative fluency demands of the task. The role of
morphosyntactic accuracy is very important: it helps the speaker to be understood, which is to say, it functions as an adjustment, listener-friendly strategy of
helping the addressee to reconstruct the meaning. Whether it is sufficient by
itself is another matter. Problems with reconstructing the meaning may be
deeper than the morphosyntactic level.
To sum up, the difficulty of the speaking skill results from:
the need to perform numerous hierarchical operations, especially at the level of
communicative intention; first and foremost, deciding what to say;
the need to integrate these operations in fractions of seconds to keep pace
with the demands of communicative fluency;
the need to do this primarily in the working memory and relying primarily on
our internal (mental) auditory representations.
The links between speaking and the remaining skills are very strong. The auditory code imposes the same temporal constraints in speaking as it does in listening
comprehension. Moreover, listening comprehension may be used as a way of providing the learner with input for the productive task (i.e. as a source of receptive
knowledge), and considerably facilitate speaking at the same time. Reading may
function as a source of extensive input for speaking. Writing, the other productive
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skill, on the other hand, is helpful during speaking practice as external memory
i.e. a way of recording information for the spoken task, a kind of mnemonics.
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236
ticipate in the joint project of conversing, which is the effect of socialization in all
communities, and doing this in a given ethnic language with the use of appropriate language forms. When we teach English as a foreign language, we do not teach
learners how to take turns, as Ur would see it, but we teach learners how to use
English language exponents for turn-taking and its conversational etiquette.
Clark (1996) calls conversation a joint project, a collaborative effort which
requires the coordinated activity of two or more people in the same way as a dance
does. How can a foreign language learner acquire the art of weaving the thread of
conversational discourse in English? By learning its structure and components,
such as how to open and close a conversation, how to take turns, how to complement the adjacency pairs. Jay (2003:290) comments: 'The unfolding structure of
a conversation depends on the participants' goals, shared background knowledge
and what new information needs to be added to that shared information to achieve
the goals.' Participants in conversations have their own personal identities and
feelings as well as personal roles. They also have their professional roles and identities. An important concept in the structure of conversation is common ground,
which refers to mutual shared beliefs as well as knowledge that we can assume
is available to other members of the group. This concept resembles the notion
of information culture proposed by Hammerly (Hammerly, 1982; see 6.3.1.).
Common ground is a dynamic construct which emerges in social encounters
depending on the circumstances and situations. It is a set of cultural elements,
such as: stereotypes, prejudices, attitudes, values, norms, metaphors, taboos, and
presuppositions, which play a very important role in constructing a conversation.
However, this knowledge cannot be acquired in any other way than by group
membership.
In a conversation, new elements are added to the participants' common
ground. Participants in a conversation must be able to open it according to the situation and the level of formality, conduct it, regulate its flow, monitor their own
comprehension, engage in various speech acts and functions, and close it according to the politeness etiquette. Adjacency pairs (Schegloff and Sacks, 1973) are
two symmetrical and matching elements, which are intended to constitute an exchange between two speakers: e.g. greeting - greeting, compliment - a word of
acknowledgement, invitation - acceptance, question - answer, etc. Clark (1996)
calls them minimal joint projects. Adjacency pairs, speech acts and functions of
English, such as requesting, asking for information, agreeing, refusing, asking for
permission, giving reasons, making suggestions, etc. are building blocks of a conversation. In addition to these, speakers use various discourse genres, such as stories and other narrative accounts, jokes, anecdotes, personal information, impressions, convictions, opinions, recommendations, etc. as construction material to
develop in this social enterprise.
An important aspect of the structure of conversation is turn-taking. Usually
in a conversation, one person talks and others listen, waiting for their turn (too
idealistic?). Participants usually follow three simple implicit turn-taking rules
(Jay, 2003):
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Anxiety is a serious problem not only from the point of view of the learner's negative feelings connected with speaking in a foreign language, but first of
all, from the point of view of the internal working of the language learning
process, especially the unproductive use of our cognitive energy on worry, instead
of the task (see 5.3.3.). In most cases, anxiety produces avoidance behaviour,
either in the form of physical absence in the class, truancy, or in the form of attentional withdrawal from participating in the communicative activities in the classroom. Teachers are familiar with such symptoms of the learners' avoidance as
silence, no eye contact with the teacher, choosing seats away from him or her.
Anxiety may also surface as nervousness, excessive laughter, or even muscle tension leading to headaches. One problem leads to others, such as insufficient participation in speaking tasks, which quite naturally leads to limited practice and
facility in various aspects of the speaking skill. As a result, the learners make
hardly any progress to help them gain greater confidence in speaking based on
growing competence.
The teacher's job is to deal with the learner's anxiety to the point at which
the learner can approach the language speaking tasks rather than avoid them.
This is a very complex goal, but one of the most important and difficult ones in
the entire learning process. It is complex because the success of the undertaking
does not depend on one, but on a constellation of factors. It is difficult because the
right balance of these factors can be easily upset and the teacher, just because he
or she recognizes the weight of anxiety, may easily fall into the trap of insufficiently challenging his foreign language students.
This constellation of factors begins with clear instructions before the task,
which learners, including the anxious majority, can understand while the teacher
makes sure this is the case. The learners may find it easier to accept a task if they
make a choice of the topic or otherwise participate in defining its overall character. Moreover, the teacher should avoid stereotyping students as good or bad, but
evaluate them on the individual case-by-case basis and continue to have high
expectations about each of them. Having high expectations does not mean 'unrealistic' expectations. It is quite the opposite. Clear criteria, withholding formal
grades while practising speaking and the gentle treatment of errors are essential.
Speaking activities should be frequent and informal, including personal questions about everyday matters. To relieve tension, the teacher may use a very old
and effective strategy of smiling and using wit and humour, which are known to
be foolproof in stressful situations. Learners should not be allowed to laugh at
their peers when they make mistakes in speaking the foreign language. Learners
admit to preferring pair work and imitative work as a form of preparation before
speaking as well as reading aloud and plenty of receptive input and being given
advance warning, to be able to prepare at home, even in the written form. It is
also important to have patience and give learners some wait time to put their
ideas together before answering the teacher's question. Most learners will start
cooperating in the speaking tasks only after they have become familiar with and
accustomed to this feature of the EFL lesson. It also seems important to show gen-
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uine interest in what the learners are saying, i.e. focus on the content and meaning of the speaking activity and avoid unnecessary metatalk about its form and
purpose, which unnecessarily emphasizes the superficiality of the classroom
exchange.
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many other students, it may be starting from scratch, i.e. learning those psychological and social feats to make up for their limited experience, as well as foreign
language material to add to this budding communicative structure. The development of accuracy goes from laconic to fully developed sentences in discourse, from
lack of accuracy to accuracy built into the skill, from lack of certainty to certainty as to these forms, and from lack of fluency to fluency in production. Some
learners who must develop both articulacy in general and in their foreign language happen to suffer from foreign language speaking anxiety; unfortunately,
they are the most likely candidates, because they have a reason to be concerned
about their speaking ability. For the teacher who has a difficult task at hand the
following are some suggestions.
The most important obligation of the foreign language teacher as regards
developing foreign language articulacy and the speaking skill is to chat with the
students i.e. regularly, systematically, and informally have brief, 5 to 10-minute
classroom conversations, with them. Chatting is a natural social activity which
serves the purpose of bonding, establishing rapport and communicating good
intentions, paving the way for the subsequent business of the lesson and joint
activity (Richards, 1990; Richards and Renandya, 2002). Once incorporated into
classroom procedures in a manner controlled by the teacher, chatting performs
important didactic functions: it is a conversation model for the learners to
observe and a way to pave the way for the language activities to come. Chats must
be regular because they are the essential case of language use at its best - for genuine communicative purposes. They usually cover a wide spectrum of communicative topics and conversational components together with the vocabulary
material needed. Chatting with the students may involve subjects of personal
interest, current events, hobbies, recent TV programmes, cinema, food, health,
trips, money, clothes, pets, celebrities, books, sports, etc., talked about from the
learners' personal perspective. The benefits of such chats are the same in the class
as of chatting outside the class: the teacher and the students gradually get to know
each other as individuals, they find out more about each other as real people,
depending on how much they wish to disclose. Chatting is interesting and spontaneous, since it activates on-line speech production processes. It is motivating for
the students because they are recognized as individuals and the content concerns
them. They can personalize their knowledge, which makes it memorable (Hedge,
2000), and learn how to contribute to a conversation, first by observing the
teacher, and next by participating themselves. The teacher may focus on one element of a conversation and build a more formal task on its basis; he or she may
give advance warning to the learners to prepare a short oral composition about
a topic and present it in class; the teacher may prompt planning strategies for
these (short, informal, 3-5 sentences) oral compositions and first ask students who
volunteer. Later, to secure even participation, the teacher may control turn-taking
more rigorously, or assign students formally to take a turn, and even assign some
roles, such as of a person who wraps up the conversation.
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To make sure that all the learners will have something to 'take out' from
such a lesson, the teacher may ask the learners to write a short note containing the
ideas which he or she has/has not expressed in class, or which occurred to him or
her as the others were speaking. When the learners submit their written homework (a paragraph, half a page), which should not be hard to write after their exposure to classroom input, the teacher may provide each student with highly individualized written feedback without the other students witnessing it. It is clearly
time-consuming to read and mark/correct all the written samples from the students, but a most valuable learning experience for the learners. Being asked to
write down what they choose and have practised in speaking helps the students to
organize and consolidate the language material in discourse form. Additionally,
the learners receive individualized feedback from the teacher. The problem with
the teacher's time needed to do this should be solved depending on the teacher's
resources, that is, in answer to the question: how many papers from all of my students can I take home and read each semester? The rest may be corrected on the
chance basis or in the classroom, by glancing at selected written pieces at each lesson. All of the written work may be submitted as a portfolio during or at the end
of the course. Even five such short written works in a semester would make a difference to the development of the individual learner's articulacy in general, and
the speaking ability in English as a foreign language in particular. In this way,
learners gain experience in how to take turns, how to develop a topic, and how to
build sustained discourse. Topics and ideas for chatting with students may be categorized as follows (partly based on Stern, 1992:191):
Personal
information
Name, address, home town, neighbourhood, house you live in, attractions
in your home town, places to visit, your favourite area, others.
Daily life
Routines, events of the year, activities, personal calendar, shopping, housework, health, food, organizing daily chores, TV programmes, important
cultural event, etc.
Family
Parents, grandparents, siblings, marital status, plans for the future, family
history, biographical reminiscences, pets, visits from relatives, problems
with relatives.
School
Information about school, aspirations for the future, opinion about the
school, problems at school, friends, peers, favourite activities, clubs, sports.
Personal
interests
Fine arts, music, literature, sports and games, hobbies, leisure activities,
fitness, travel, tourism, sightseeing, others.
Beliefs and
opinions
The next obligation of the EFL teacher is to have regular and well-designed
speaking tasks in addition to chatting with the students in their real identities.
These tasks may require various identities and roles, both assumed and real. The
main criterion of well-designed tasks is that they are specific enough for the
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learner to avoid uncertainty as to what to do in the task and what to say in the
communicative situation outlined in the task. The first problem can be eliminated by clear instructions with some quiet time given for their comprehension and
comprehension cheks from the teachers (Hedge, 2000), illustrated with an example or even translated into Polish, if absolutely necessary. The other problem can
be eliminated by providing enough contextual information to the learner to help
him or her visualize the role and goal to be accomplished, with possibilities to
define the missing links on the basis of the learner's knowledge, if necessary.
Many tasks cause anxiety because they are vague, ill-defined, non-descript, or
hard to visualize. We could defend them on the grounds that they stimulate creative thinking, and such an argument is well-taken. However, it is even easier to
develop creativity in clear and well-designed tasks. Asking some basic questions
regarding the communicative situation may be helpful: Is the learner acting in his
own or some assumed identity? Is the situation sufficiently clear? If not, how can
it be made more specific? Sometimes a model or an initial stimulus given by the
teacher may be helpful. The teacher might say: 'If I were given such a task,
I would start by focusing on the magazine I like reading and choose a specific section ...', or: 'How would you start a conversation with a stranger on a train?' In
most tasks in which learners participate in assumed identities (assumed roles),
learners must visualize the situations which provide context for their oral discourse. If they can anchor their mental processes in the situational model, mental
energy will be channelled to speech production rather than worry. It also helps if the
teacher not only reviews the clarity of the instructions, but also estimates the output of such a task, i.e. the amount of discourse that would be generated. The level
of specificity would always increase with more contextual information and input for
the task generated for the occasion, because more ideas (propositions) would be
available to the learner to choose from.
The third obligation of the EFL teacher, when it comes to speaking is to
grade the difficulty of the speaking tasks on the basis of their psycholinguistic
components: the content (communicative intention, what to say), the plan (linearization level) of the utterance, and the verbalization (execution and monitoring)
stage of production. This can be done by focusing on the component parts of
speaking in isolation. Such an approach to grading would specifically facilitate the
aspect of speaking connected with the integration of several operations in time.
Without the necessary automaticity, the learner would find it hard to perform
these sub-skills in temporal integration.
A facilitating strategy might include gathering information about the topic or
role to facilitate the choice of communicative intention and planning.
Time given to plan takes the pressure off the speaking task allowing the learner to recall information relevant to the utterance and to organize it in a linear
manner appropriate for the discourse format (Foster, 1996).
Rehearsal is the segment of the speaking task when the learner is able to put
his or her utterance together and deliver it in a 'rough copy', before presenting it
in an improved version the second time. Benefits of rehearsal include some oppor-
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tunity to try out integrating the operations necessary for the completion of the
task, leading to an increase in fluency, and incorporating feedback. In typical
classroom conditions, this stage of the task usually takes place as pair work. An
additional benefit of rehearsal is that the next round of the task is always a repetition, which benefits both fluency and accuracy (Bygate, 1996, 2001). If we have
doubts about error correction during speaking and in front of the class, rehearsal
is an ideal time to build accuracy into the task, and subsequently into the speaking skill.
Written preparation is also a form of facilitating a speaking task: the content
and plan is available in the written form, and the learner's available attention is
directed to the appropriate rendition of the material. If there is an audience to
address, the delivery itself may be hard enough. As we can see, the function of
writing in this case is reduced to mnemonics, external memory rather than a skill
in its own right.
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ers will find it easier to participate if they have practised this form of communication on many occasions and if they have some rehearsed material in their working memory (a joke, an anecdote, a story, an opinion, a film review, a recommendation, a personal question, a biographical episode, a recipe, a piece of news to
share, a piece of gossip, etc.). Practising social conversation may be linked to other
activities and other skills to secure even participation, preparation, and feedback
incorporation.
Telephone conversation as well as electronically mediated chat should be
practised for its routine expressions and typical scenario of the exchange and adjacency pairs between the parties. Since visual information is not available or rather
limited (e.g. icons), the speakers must manage to convey their ideas as precisely as
they can. They differ depending on the fact whether the participants know each
other or whether they are strangers. Telephone conversations may be devoted to
various forms of practice, such as for example service transactions, giving instructions, explaining how to do something, describing an object, etc.
An interview involves two roles, one of which, the interviewee, is more
demanding in terms of factual information and the use of sustained discourse. An
interview requires some serious preparation on both sides in the form of research
and the choice of interesting questions, based on an opinion poll among the peers,
as well as analysing some native speaker interviews to evaluate the questions, the
information elicited, interest in the interviewee and listening ability. Often, interviews are integral segments of more complex activities, such as simulations or
projects. Students may stage interviews involving assumed identities, preferably
of their choice, or real people invited as guests.
Discussion is a form of verbal interaction between two or more people with
the purpose of looking at a certain issue from different points of view or aspects. On
many occasions, the teacher's or textbook writer's instruction 'Discuss X or Y' simply means - talk about it or analyse it. However, to have a successful discussion in
a foreign language classroom, we must include the following considerations:
the topic must be potentially substantive and controversial to warrant looking
at it from different angles;
the learners must have some influence on the choice of the topic; in this way they
exercise their right to communicative autonomy; when they do, they are more
likely to be involved in the preparation for and participation in the activity;
the learners must be interested in the topic sufficiently to see the many aspects
of the issue involved, and they must be knowledgeable enough to discuss it, i.e.
have the factual information to use in their arguments; this state may be accomplished by long- or short-term preparation: studying sources (the Internet,
media, library) or processing teacher or peer input;
they must have some idea of the events to come and their turn-taking schedule to
orient them in the activity; practice first in groups or pairs is certainly helpful.
Discussion may be staged in open-class or panel form, with a more formal role
assignment. It seems to be a naturally promising activity for adolescent learners at the intermediate level and above.
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Debate is more formal than discussion in that the issues to be discussed are
usually debated from two opposing points of view, with points of view ascribed
to members of each debating team, but also with points being developed in
answer to the opponents as they emerge during the activity. Arguments must be
thoughtful and well-prepared to be convincing and logical. At the end of the
activity, the issue may be put to the vote (Ur, 1991) so that members of the debating teams can decide what they think regardless of their assigned debating task.
(A side remark that I feel tempted to make at this point is that membership in
a debating club is a popular form of perfecting American students' articulacy in
their native language).
To conclude, the most characteristic features of the current approach to the
enormous endeavour of developing the speaking skill include the following
aspects: long-term investment in speaking, stressing the communicative situation as context of the speaking task, curbing anxiety and keeping the communicative channel in good working condition, and learning component parts
of a more complex whole. Long-term investment in the speaking skill is quite
natural first of all because it takes time to develop any skill, especially such a complex language skill as speaking. It takes time to do the required working memory
practice, to learn sustained discourse strategies and communicative content. To
make sense to the learner, practising the speaking skill must be contextualized in
a communicative situation, with a clear role, discourse genre, plan and purpose.
Information processed in this way will be practical and therefore remembered.
Curbing anxiety is hard, but not impossible, if we establish a certain code of conduct in the class, especially during speaking, which stresses that the foreign language classroom is a place to learn, rather than to show off. The best remedy for
anxiety is regular, moderately difficult practice and observation, as well as fair
and objective evaluation on the part of the teacher communicated to the learner
individually rather than on the class forum, with a tendency to encouragement
rather than negativity.
The condition of the communicative channel in the foreign language classroom is as vital to the foreign language learning process as the condition of our
blood vessels to our oxygen supply. The first obligation of the teacher is to go out
of his or her way to make sure that the learners understand what is going on during the lesson. This is the minimum requirement of communication. Alienation
(not paying attention, opting out, avoidance) comes from not caring what is going
on and not trying to understand. This kills communication in its initial stages to
seriously prevent the learner from subsequent participation and learning. Secondly, assumed identities and fancy roles are all very nice and the reasons why teachers use them in class are quite convincing. However, we must also understand that
they are not the sole vehicle for the development of the speaking skill. Our most
important focus and resource in the classroom are real learners in their real identities. For the purposes of verbal communication, this resource is vital because all
communicative relationships, including teacher/learner relationships, thrive on
mutual attention. To tap this cognitive energy, we must relate to each other first
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and foremost as real people, as individuals. This is the springboard for further
communicative exploits, especially in speaking, which requires the learner to send
out, i.e. emit messages, not just receive them. Assumed identities may be helpful
in supporting the growth of the learners' communicative repertoire or to hide
their own identity, if necessary. Often, what we call 'roles' are simply tasks with
functions to be performed. It may be useful, once in a while, to ask oneself the
question: why am I asking the student to take this role rather than act things out
in his or her own identity?
Further reading
Bygate, M., 1987. Speaking. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Byrne, D., 1986. Teaching Oral English. London: Longman
Byrne, D., 1987. Techniques for Classroom Interaction. London: Longman.
Carter, R. A., and M. J. McCarthy, 1997. Exploring Spoken English. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Drnyei, Z., and S. Thurrell, 1992. Conversations and Dialogues in Action. New York: Prentice
Hall.
Klippel, F., 1984. Keep Talking. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nolasco, A., and L. Arthur, 1987. Conversation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pattison, P, 1987. Developing Communication Skills. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Underhill, N., 1987. Testing Spoken English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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49
nately for them, the Polish and the English alphabetical systems are typologically similar.
In a communicative situation, the difficulty in writing results from the
number of simultaneous decisions that a writer must make on the level of content
and form, especially planning, organizing, and expressing ideas in a sufficiently
explicit way to make them comprehensible to the reader essentially on the basis
of graphemic clues. Illustrations, for example pictures, drawings, photographs,
charts, tables, graphs of various kinds, used in written communication, have
a much more modest function in conveying the meaning of the written text in
comparison with the rich semanticization available to the listener from non-verbal and prosodie clues in speaking. Nevertheless, speaking and writing share
important similarities characteristic of language production: both involve hierarchical decisions in content, planning and lexical insertion with syntactic adjustments i.e. based on subordinated sub-skills which must be integrated to produce
linear discourse.
Flower and Hayes (1980) accurately describe the dynamics of composing as
juggling constraints. Although the act of writing, on most occasions, is not influenced by such time limitations as speaking, the fact that the message must be wellorganized and explicit for the reader to understand makes it sufficiently complicated as a skill in its own right. The essence of writing (Eysenk and Keane, 1995)
concerns selections at the level of content, based on the knowledge of the topic
which we recall or generate for the task, the level of planning the discourse while
verbalizing our ideas with the use of lexical elements and constructions, editing
i.e. improving as we go along, and writing the revised version in the sense of putting it down with incorporated improvements. Hardly ever do these operations
occur in isolation, especially if we use electronic word processing. Most writers
(Hedge, 2000; Zamel, 1982) perform these operations recursively, over and over
again, rereading and revising simultaneously, while introducing considerable
changes, generating new or eliminating old ideas from the text. They strategically concentrate on the parts of the task which demand attention at the moment.
These characteristics indicate the essentially dynamic, constructive and strategic
nature of our communicative processes in general, writing included.
It clearly follows from the above that writing in the sense of written communication, especially in its mature forms, consists of the thought component,
composing element, and coding this information into language form. The thought
component is implemented through content: propositions and ideas, facts and
evidence supported by reasoning e.g. arguments and other forms of logical substantiation; composing is implemented as planning, organization, and mutual
adjustments within discourse to make up a balanced whole with satisfactory relationships between parts, and accents and contrasts as desired by the author to
achieve his or her communicative goal, and coding into language form is connected with activating the requisite verbal material from memory and integrating
it by means of syntactic devices to express the designated meaning according to
the author's intention and in the form of coherent and cohesive discourse.
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As stressed by Flower and Hayes (1980), the writer must juggle several mental operations: recalling relevant information, planning, inferring, visualizing the
addressee, introducing new ideas, adding supporting details as they read, modifying their plan to incorporate new evidence, testing their view of the addressee
against the discourse they have written, modifying their perspective of the information presented to suit the image of the addressee, summarizing, emphasizing,
perfecting rhetorical devices, etc. To coordinate this complex task, writers usually
produce multiple drafts, and, unlike foreign language learners, they do not regard
the first draft as the finished product, but as the material to start working on. Multiple drafting and redrafting are the norm rather than the exception with native
speakers and other proficient writers in English.
Keeping in mind the recursive, dynamic, and strategic nature of the act of
on-line writing, we may still distinguish, for analytical purposes, the following
most important construction stages in writing a piece of discourse (Eysenk and
Keane, 1995), which are not to be automatically taken as a teaching sequence
(Hedge, 2000; Ur, 1991):
identifying communicative intention in the context of the situation;
planning the arrangement of the ideas and the rhetorical strategies;
inserting the lexical material, both single elements and phrases coordinating
these elements to fit the whole (syntactic adjustments, coherence and cohesion);
executing the task in the sense of rough drafting;
editing, i.e. incorporating feedback information by inserting it into the earlier
draft.
The last stage, the stage of incorporating the feedback information, is the result
either of processing feedback from some external readers or from the writers' own
reading as they assume the role of addressees of their own writing (Levelt, 1989).
The clarity of discourse is enhanced by a clearly formulated goal, clear structure,
coherence and cohesion, conventional discourse devices which are used to organize it and signalled to the reader, as well as subtitles and typographical devices to
accentuate text hierarchy and plan (Nunan, 1991).
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mulated much more exact and better coordinated plans than the less knowledgeable ones, not only demonstrating greater awareness of the available options of
developing their piece, but also greater awareness of the addressee. The more
skilled authors maintain that the best route to improving their writing is perfecting their planning strategy. This is, indeed, the stage which absorbs more of their
attention in comparison to writing itself, and certainly more than the planning
stage in the case of the less skilled writers. When it comes to editing discourse,
experts go deeply into its global structure sometimes modifying it to put the
addressee into perspective, whereas the less skilled writers perform editing operations fairly fast and they consider smaller units. This result may be interpreted as
the effect of the author not yet having sufficiently automatized lower-level
processes. They absorb the writer's attention preventing him or her from moving
up, to the higher-level structures. It is significant from the point of view of foreign
language teaching that while editing, experts were able to trace and correct 74 percent of their own errors, improving the overall comprehensibility of the text,
whereas the less skilled writers - only 42 percent of errors. This result is meaningful because in debating the question of editing and error correction in foreign
language writing, we must not forget that there is a proficiency barrier to successful error correction of the learners' own writing. Successful editing is not only the
question of the learner's good will, but language ability leading us to the conclusion that the less proficient the learner, the more important the teacher's role at
that stage of improving the written work.
Hedge (2000:328) lists the following features that good writers demonstrate,
which nicely wraps up our outline so far:
1. They have something to say as well as a sense of purpose.
2. They have a sense of the audience.
3. They control the development of their ideas, giving them a sense of direction.
4. They can organize their content clearly and in a logical manner.
5. They can use language conventions, such as grammar and spelling, to develop
sentence structure.
6. They link ideas and demonstrate a range of vocabulary.
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2. The stages of process writing reflect the act of writing, which in the case of the
written language can be spread over time to facilitate coping with a complex
undertaking. The stages reflect the growth of a task.
Regarding the learning process, in their influential book from 1978, Rivers
and Temperley (1978:265) provided a list of stages in learning how to write in
a foreign language, which accurately outlined the scope of the problem from the
perspective of the 1970s:
writing down (learning the conventions of the code),
writing the language (learning the potential of the code),
production (practising the construction of fluent expressive sentences and paragraphs),
expressive writing (using the code for purposive communication).
The list reflects the progression in learning how to write from the mechanics of
handwriting to sentences, to paragraphs and to communication. Although these
stages must have been completed for the writer to achieve a certain level of proficiency, nowadays, especially in CLT and in more recent conceptions, they are no
longer considered to be such clear-cut distinct entities or episodes in the learning
process as they used to be in the past decades. A much more dynamic and integrative view of these stages is dominant in which communicative context would
be used for the learner to perform even an elementary task, and various ways of
facilitating writing would not prevent the learner from constructing a meaningful
message quite early in the learning process. The categories which are taken into
account in grading writing activities include:
the cognitive difficulty of the task; other things being equal, immediate
experience and everyday content would be easier to write about than abstract
content which activates formal thought processes; the narrative, i.e. events
coded chronologically is considered to be the elementary form of organization
which would present the least cognitive difficulty to the learner (Littlewood,
1979);
the length of the task; other things being equal, the longer the task the more
complex it would be; this concerns the hierarchy of ideas and planning
strategies involved; in a way similar to the receptive tasks, we may always
seek the facilitation effect by segmenting a bigger task into smaller components;
the resources needed for the task; the information pool needed to do the task
can be available to the learner internally as his or her own knowledge representations, externally as available resources to be consulted for the task, time permitting, and the immediate input presented as context of the task;
the time available to the learner; the task will always be more difficult when
there is a time limit, which means that the learner must work at a certain designated pace and may not be able to consult the external resources. In fact, to be
communicatively fit and to survive in our culture, we must be able to perform
written tasks within certain reasonable time limits; written tasks cannot take
forever.
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Letter writing
The Golden Fork Restaurant
After seeing an advert for a local restaurant, you and your friend Tony went there last Friday but
it was an expensive and disappointing evening. You've described the experience in a letter to a
friend.
Read the restaurant advertisement, restaurant bill and the extract from the letter and then, u s i n g
the information carefully, write the letter described in the instructions on page 34.
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Dear Pat,
You asked how Tony's birthday celebration went. Well, after a lot of discussion and
consulting various restaurant guides, we saw an advert for a place called the
Golden Fork which looked interesting and had had good reviews. All I can say is
it's not a good idea to believe everything you read!
When we arrived we were the only ones there - hardly a good sign! The place was
absolutely freezing - maybe they didn't think it was worth wasting money on
heating for just the two of us - but anyway we had to keep our coats on throughout. The menu looked quite promising, actually, but they were completely out of
lobster which was our first choice. The waiter was pretty scruffy and off-hand and
we got the distinct impression he was more interested in getting back to the
kitchen where it was warmer! In the end, I had a steak which was as tough as old
boots, with peas which were obviously tinned. Tony had some vegetarian dish
which they'd obviously heated up in the microwave but not for long enough
because it was lukewarm.
The bill was the last straw! It was enormous - they'd charged extra for bread
(which we didn't eat), and included a service charge of 20%, would you believe it?
In the end we just paid the bill and went, we were too miserable to make a fuss.
Thinking about it later, though, and looking at what it says in their advert, we've
decided to write and complain in the strongest terms. If they don't give us our
money back, we're going to write to each and every one of those restaurant guides
and put them in the picture!
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This particular material comes from a book of practice tests for CAE and consists
of parts, each of which is to highlight some aspect of the communicative situation
essential for writing a letter of complaint. The first set consists of a) an advertising leaflet which tries to attract customers with the restaurant's specialties and b)
a bill from the same restaurant. The next material is an excerpt from a personal
letter, describing a very disappointing and expensive evening at the Golden Fork
Restaurant. The task is to assume the perspective of this customer and write a letter of complaint to the manager.
The task is interesting because the plentiful input is not provided in a ready
form. The learner must first select the relevant data from the information provided to subsequently integrate it and supplement the missing elements from his
or her own knowledge store. A considerable part of this task relies on comprehension processes and a deep understanding of the instructions to realize what the
learner already knows. The task format requires the learner not to lose sight of the
goal to be accomplished and adjust the writing procedures accordingly, rather
than process globally all of the information given. The advertisement and the bill
are relevant as sources of information only to the extent to which they can be useful in the letter of complaint, which must emphasize the mismatch between what
the leaflet promises and what the restaurant delivers, as described in the personal
letter. The personal letter, on the other hand, is a rich source of data, but not
everything in it is relevant to the rather formal and condensed letter of complaint
to be written. Selection criteria for the relevant information result from the conventional entities for the letter of complaint: reason for writing, date and place of
the event, failures in categories with the necessary details, action demanded and
a threat of reaction, if not satisfied. Some of my students, who were asked to do
this task, included the fact that it was their wedding anniversary, which was irrelevant to the main point altogether.
Having established the relevant pool of facts and failures to deliver what was
promised, the learners were supposed to activate the conventional plan for a letter
of complaint providing the information in a reader (manager) friendly way and
rephrasing it in a slightly more formal style. The relative ease or difficulty of the
task depends on whether or not the learners know the conventional plan for a letter of complaint and whether or not the transformation of the informal into more
formal style is accessible to them on the basis of what they know. All in all, the
students who did the task for me evaluated it as interesting and practical, even if
they were never to write such a letter in the future, because it was practical, which
means, it invited them to enter a communicative situation and to act within its
constraints and parameters.
Narrative writing embraces a variety of tasks, such as stories, summaries of
films or novels, comic strips, events, biographies, personal episodes, worst memories, best memories, excursions, etc. The level of difficulty may vary, depending
on the needs of the students. For the beginner and the intermediate student, this
form of organizing discourse is a most valuable practice in the use of tenses in
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This sample is a draft submitted as homework and it is quoted here to illustrate not only the language and comprehensibility problems, especially the tenses,
which an intermediate learner faces while producing a seemingly simple film
summary, but first and foremost the need for feedback and the editing stage still
to be added to the task. Leaving the task in the form as presented above does not
make up a complete learning experience, and those specialists who claim that
error correction is unnecessary and harmful to the learner's ego should rest
assured that the quality of writing as presented above hurts not the learner's ego,
but the teacher's reputation as a professional. What kind of teacher would
leave the learner at this stage of ignorance? What would the communicative benefits be to the leaner if he or she did? Certainly, the context of the task is the
appropriate framework to process and incorporate feedback. The benefits of providing feedback to this task are considerable because the learner can improve his
or her control of the grammatical system in a practical, task-related, contextualized way.
Book report or book review. This task format may also be used with reference to
other genres. Essential considerations in such a task is a model for writing and
balanced proportions between the summary part and the evaluation part. The
level of difficulty may vary quite considerably depending on the material in focus
and grading criteria. Leaving the choice of the book to the learner may increase
258
the attractiveness of the task, but the point of the task very often is to check
whether the learner has read the assignment.
Description. Descriptive tasks may range from fairly straightforward to quite creative. The most important point is the organization of a description to orient the
reader, for example conduct the description from the centre to the background,
from the left to the right, from the bottom to the top, or in a clockwise direction,
etc. Descriptions may be realistic, for example, picturing the view you can see
through the window now, including the construction crane in front of you, or
imaginary or fantastic, refer to people and places, works of art such as paintings or
monuments, and depending on the caliber of the writer, they may also be fascinating to read. A form of description quite popular in CLT includes describing
processes; such a form of chronology naturally organizes discourse into a coherent
whole and demands coordinated tense and vocabulary use. Natural plans always
provide useful memory support in language tasks because they are available in the
learner's mind without being coded in an ethnic language.
Creative writing, such as poems, stories, plays. These tasks may seem too difficult to some learners and cause stress, but if elected by those learners who feel they
can give them a try, they may be highly rewarding and motivating. The point of
such tasks is not only to stimulate creativity in language use, but also enhance the
process of visualization and imagination, i.e. thinking in pictures, with or without
the use of background music. Limited language resources need not prevent learners from constructing imaginative or funny stories or poems filled with emotions
with fresh and exciting metaphors. As we recall, creativity reduces stress and may
be promoted in the classroom with any age group, not only just children, who are
naturally creative. Long-term investment in creative tasks comes from teaching
culture, especially literature, and using various literary forms, such as poems, as
material for discussion and interpretation.
259
there is no need or obligation to introduce process writing when the learners are
not proficient enough to handle such a challenge, or when their needs do not justify such activities. Ur (1990) points out what in her view is a disadvantage of
process writing, namely that it is time-consuming, which is a misunderstanding.
If a task can be done faster, there is no need to launch the whole elaborate procedure of process writing. If, however, the task is worth doing with the learners, but
its complexity warrants the process approach, there is in fact no other way out but
to invest the necessary time. Most typical contexts for the process approach to
writing would be academic and professional settings.
The key stages of process writing reflect the act of producing an extended complex piece of discourse, and they are not vastly different from the components of
speaking. The only difference is that speaking is usually done under temporary constraints. Keeping in mind the fact that writers produce discourse, strategically and
recursively, we have nevertheless distinguished the following components (see 14.2.):
deciding on the content of the piece of writing;
planning the piece of writing;
producing a rough draft;
editing and redrafting while incorporating feedback and modifications.
Once we have a relatively complex topic which cannot be developed overnight, we
plan to spend time in and out of class to focus on each stage and provide the learner with feedback and opportunities to discuss the outcomes with their peers.
Decisions in the realm of content of process writing may be enhanced by classroom conversation, brainstorming, peer input, graphic visualization of the problem,
using resources and conducting opinion polls, generating creative ideas, interviewing people/consulting experts, using illustrative materials from books or films.
Planning may be conducted as a classroom writing task with one collective
plan being written on the board, or as planning options which learners may note
down to use for inspiration or as their actual material. The teacher may provide
guidance and feedback at this stage once the learner does have a clear view how to
organize his or her piece. At this point, emphasis may be placed on the fact that
the piece of writing must be clear to the reader.
The stage of drafting and editing is discussed in various sources from the
point of view of the question whether or not the teacher should correct errors and
whether peer editing is a useful strategy. This is precisely the stage when error
correction and other forms of revision should be done and incorporated to
improve the quality of the final copy.
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stimulate thinking on a given topic, or in joint projects when the responsibility for the product is evenly distributed among peers. Peer correction of written
work, however, which is common in the first language context, is not justified
in the process of foreign language learning, and writing in particular, other than
as a time-saving device (Hedge, 2000; Ur, 1991; Raimes, 2002). As a time-saving
device, however, it is just as good as asking your fellow patient in line to a doctor's appointment to diagnose your illness and prescribe your medicines. We
know that useful exchanges happen in the doctor's waiting room, but people
wait to see the doctor anyway. It is an integral part of the teacher's professional
role to help the learner eliminate language imperfections in his or her work.
Peers cannot be responsible for the teacher's professional role nor do they have
sufficient language tools to do that in the context of foreign language learning.
2. Since error correction is necessary as part of feedback which pushes the language learning process forward, it would be useful to point out that editing
a written task, especially produced in process writing, is the most opportune
moment to do it. These are the reasons:
The feedback is provided in a private way, on the written work that only the
learner concerned gets to see. When the teacher sees the need to publicly discuss a segment of the text as relevant to the rest of the class, he or she can do
this anonymously; nobody's ego is hurt while everybody can learn some useful
information;
Unlike speaking, writing has the advantage of giving permanence to language
utterances so, in addition to producing the piece, we can also reflect on it to
focus on forms and process related feedback, as well as reason about forms in
order to learn them better;
Writing is the appropriate context for processing feedback on form because
forms in the graphemic code are represented explicitly, as opposed to their
reduced representation (unaccented pronunciation) in speaking; what we process fast and automatically in on-line speaking and listening can now be taken
out of our attentional periphery and made precise to be automatized in the
target-like form.
Editing and improvements on the drafts are a natural activity for native speakers and even for highly accomplished writers; the better the writer the deeper
the editing; if learners do not wish to benefit from this natural stage of writing,
this means that they, not the teachers, are the ones to change their attitudes. We
know very well that good language learners pay attention to form and edit their
writing very carefully as they gratefully, which is not to say uncritically, incorporate their teacher's ideas; weaker learners, on the other hand, treat the editing stage in a rather nonchalant manner, sometimes trying to educate the
teacher to change his or her point of view rather than to modify their own. I call
such learners defensive learners; they do not come to the educational process
to change because they think of themselves as finished products. Unfortunately for them, this is a deeply misconceived idea of the role of the learner and the
role of the educational process.
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Errors in foreign language production are quite natural because of the unpredictability of verbal communication; when we see some imperfections in students' writing, the problem is not that the students are wrong; the students are
not yet 100 percent right. So the task of the teacher is to add - not to correct but to add the necessary input to help the learner come closer, i.e. approximate
the target language norm in this particular task. Writing accurately can only be
learned while receiving error corrections on written tasks. There is no other
way to learn productive accuracy. It is a natural and normal part of language
learning. At the same time, expecting the teacher to perform error correction
tactfully and effectively should not be considered as asking too much of a professional.
A productive task is the ideal context in which accuracy in syntactic forms can
be polished; expecting that all errors will disappear as a result of such corrections is unrealistic; acquiring morphosyntactic accuracy is a painstaking
process, yet the only natural unit of the material for this process to operate is
the task rather than sentence-based grammar exercise (see section 15.).
The written work of our students is time-consuming to read and correct,
a problem that must be solved strategically, and it does not involve direct, face-to-face
communication. Nevertheless, it is a very useful multipurpose form of language
practice for the learner, who is encouraged to perform the task individually, using
all the communicative freedom he needs. S/he then receives individualized feedback on this task. This form of teacher-learner interaction is a significant way of
intensifying interaction and the learner's participation.
1. What are the similarities and differences between speaking and writing? What are they in the area
of rehearsal and editing?
2. How do the differences in speaking and writing influence the choice of error correction strategies?
3. Do you see any value in such intermediate activities as so-called paragraph writing? If so, what are they?
4. Think of a topic of a written task (about five paragraphs or less, if you wish) which would involve
learners in writing about their native culture. What would its topic be? How would you present it?
What instructions would you give? How would you get the learners started?
5. What would in your view be a suitable topic for a task in process writing for a group of upper-intermediate or advanced students? What resources would you need? What stages would you have and
how much time for each of them would you consider suitable?
6. What is your opinion about peer input and peer correction?
7. Do you agree or disagree with the points regarding error correction at the end of the chapter? What
other considerations have not been mentioned? What is your personal opinion in this regard?
8. How can the teacher tell the difference between the learner who just does not try hard enough or
does not take enough time to write an acceptable written piece and the learner who has done his or
her best, and yet made some errors?
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264
Conclusions
and representation. Our interactions are species and language specific: they have
a recognizable structure and partly predictable flow. Our interactions involve us as
whole human beings, together with our emotions and personalities as well as intellect. Language learning, including foreign language learning, runs on human
resources: time and intellectual (cognitive) energy on both the side of the learner
as well as the teacher. We need time because language, the tool of communicative
interactions, is a vast and extremely complex problem space while we are limited
by our attentional capacity at a given time. We need intellectual or cognitive energy because language learning is cognitive work. Its form depends on what is available at a given stage of our lifespan development i.e. the form is different for
children, who rely on play supplemented by motor activity, than for the adults,
who are able to engage in focused, sustained study.
Teaching English as a foreign language at the dawn of the 21st century is in
a fascinating state because, after turmoil and agitation, it has finally hit the ground,
which is to say, it has finally, after who-knows-how-many-centuries, conceptually
targeted real people in the real world: it now deals with learners communicating
in the target language not with grammars floating around in search of their speakers. From the point of view of the practice of teaching, this ideological difference
is a fundamental transformation. As has been pointed out on numerous occasions
in this outline, a teaching approach which is aimed at imparting the grammar of
the target language, English for that matter, creates many hurdles for the learner:
sentence-length practice materials, artificial texts for reading, scattered underdeveloped content, focus on accuracy at the stages of presentation, practice and contextualization rather than in comprehension and production with specific code-related
feedback procedures, cluttering of the communicative channel in the foreign language classroom with activities to which the learners cannot personally relate, so
they become alienated, excessive use of indigestible, or certainly unmemorable,
metatalk and strong borders between the classroom and the 'real' world.
Good language learners will learn the foreign language no matter what, despite
the teacher or the inadequate method, but this is not the point. A child will learn
a foreign language if we start early enough and give him or her plenty of time, but
this is not the point, either. The point is to recreate the primary and secondary conditions for foreign language learning in the classroom, i.e. to create sheltered environment for a language learning hothouse. What are the advantages, including
economic advantages, of growing plants and vegetables in a hothouse? That we
are not constrained by the outside climate and can harvest the benefits, including
economic gains, of our own expertise. If we know enough about human learning
and communicative interactions, we should be able to recreate the conditions for
foreign language learning in the school environment. But, admittedly, our ideas on
how to go about doing it have changed dramatically over the last decades.
What are the implications of this situation for the professionals in the field of
teaching? The first one is what we have known forever: that the process of foreign
language teaching is a resource-demanding undertaking. Since the learning operations result from the involvement and participation of the learner and the teacher,
Conclusions
265
266
Conclusions
use. The role of the teacher as a leader implies that the learners process the necessary information themselves under his or her supportive guidance. If the
teacher declines to provide this expert guidance, including objective evaluation of
the learner's progress and corrective feedback, he or she will make the whole task
more difficult to the learner. In many circumstances the learner is viewed as a client
and the teacher as a service provider. This role arrangement, though deceptively
attractive, has its hidden trap: in the market economy to which this role assignment
clearly alludes, such factors as quality criteria and competition are also at play, so
professionals are more likely to survive anyway.
Having justified the role of background knowledge as the foundations for the
professional activity of an EFL teacher, anyone will admit that the problem space
is vast and one set of answers evokes a host of further issues, so one volume cannot do justice to the job of introducing a professional to its meanders.
To be continued...
Brainstorming. Oyster (2000) explains the concept of brainstorming as a technical term used in stimulating creativity in group processes, for example before
group projects in companies. The purpose of the first stage in brainstorming is to
generate as many creative ideas as possible without concern for their evaluation.
Critical judgment is actively suspended because it is the number and variety of
ideas that matter. The next stage is a more critical selection or even synthesis of
these creative ideas to provide a suitable solution to the problem at hand. In foreign language didactics, however, the term 'brainstorming' seems to be used much
more freely to refer to any classroom conversation during which learners recall
and share relevant information, especially before reading a text, i.e. as part of
a warm-up activity.
Clarification of meaning is understood as a conversational exchange in which the
listener diagnoses a problem in his comprehension and requests clarification,
whereas the speaker complies with this request and provides a repair (Rost,
1990:119). Long uses the term 'negotiation of meaning' for such an event and
attributes it an important function in second language acquisition. If taken literally rather than metaphorically, however, the word 'negotiation' refers to situations when speakers reach a compromise, meet half-way in their goals or plans, for
example while negotiating terms of agreement or contract. In a conversation, both
parties have the same goal, to understand each other's utterances so the meaning
is not subject to negotiation. If it were, a speaker would have to make a compromise in his intended meaning e.g. change it. Instead, the speaker provides further
comprehension clues to the listener while all the time sticking to his original communicative intention. As a result, meaning is subject to clarification, not negotiation. A suitable example of negotiation of meaning would be a situation in which
a group of scholars get together to write a letter to the organizers of an up-coming
international conference to let them know that they are not happy with their
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Additional terms
choice of key-note speakers. As they are trying to formulate the letter, they negotiate the ideas to be included, for example: 'should we suggest our own candidates?' This case is far apart from clarification of meaning, when one party has
a hard time comprehending the message of the other and received additional
clues. Needless to say, clear understanding of meaning does have an important
role to play in foreign language learning because it plays a very important role in
verbal communication.
Classroom conversation versus chatting with students. On several occasions in
connection with warm-up before reading, the idea of classroom conversation
appears to denote a communicative format: the teacher faces all the students and
turn-taking is available both to volunteers and to the speakers nominated by the
teacher. The content of classroom conversation is another matter. When classroom conversation is devoted to everyday topics of personal interest with the
social purpose of paving the way to the main 'business' of the lesson, it performs
the function of chatting with the students, which is a perfectly natural communicative act.
Cognitive schemata can be understood as internally represented structures,
images, models, or plans which reflect reality: actual, real, hypothetical, fictional,
past, present or future, and which mediate our information processing: comprehension, storage and use. To be of use in specific and unique situations of information processing, they must be abstract, have a degree of generality (universality,
or adaptability). Abstract quality comes from focusing on some relevant properties and disregarding others. Abstraction and universality go together. Schemata
are adjusted, modified and reconstructed actively to suit the concrete information
being processed.
Comprehension versus understanding. When we wish to understand non-verbal
information, we try to make sense of the situation or find the underlying propositional coherence in the ideas presented. When we comprehend discourse, however,
we must first decode language by way of assigning meaning to verbal forms,
deducing the meaning of unfamiliar items, inferring information not explicitly
stated by way of bridging inferences, recognize discourse coherence and cohesion
markers, in other words we must decode language to identify propositions as well
as make sense of them, i.e. find the underlying links between them. At the stage
of decoding language, users experience difficulties connected both with the specific code in which the discourse is communicated (auditory comprehension as
different from reading comprehension) and the 'core' (universal, essential, shared)
comprehension problems connected with communing to terms with propositions,
their structure and mutual relationship, regardless of the code.
Comprehension as a process of building a mental model of the situation. Jay
(2003:273) explains: 'Text comprehension is a strategic and constructive process
Additional terms
269
whereby the reader uses information in the text as cues to the structure of the
events, images, and inferences drawn from the text. One of the major issues in discourse comprehension concerns the need for a situational representation, in addition to a representation of the text itself. During the discourse comprehension
process, readers actively construct a mental model of what they are processing
(Johnson-Laird, 1983; van Dijk and Kintsch, 1983). The comprehension of the
text depends not only on a mental representation of the text but also on a mental
representation of the situation described by the text... The mental model becomes
a rich global representation based on reasoning that goes beyond the mere parsing and comprehension of sentences. A mental model is under continuous construction and revision as incoming information and inferences about the text are
processed.'
Critical reading. According to Hedge (2000:199): 'Those who advocate the development of critical reading skills as part of reading curriculum argue that the ability to read critically depends on an awareness of how elements of language can be
manipulated by writers, and that language learners need to build this awareness.
Critical reading pedagogy requires close scrutiny of the language in order to see
what the writer means by the text. There is a particular concern in the case of
younger learners, that such 'language awareness' should be an important educational goal, and as legitimate to second language as to first language education.'
Inferential reasoning is one of the central processes in reading comprehension.
Jay (2003:275) states that 'it is a concept central to the mental work needed to construct a model of the text. Inferences are used to make bridges from one proposition
to another. They are part of the active constructive process of comprehension.' What
from the point of view of the comprehender is inferencing or bridging would, from
the producer's perspective, be considered to be ellipsis.
Interactional encounters versus transactional encounters. It is common to
speak of transactional encounters when informational content plays an important
role (e.g. service encounters) and interactional encounters - when the relational
component is dominant, as during social, polite conversation (Brown and Yule,
1983). In my framework, interaction is the most fundamental and constitutive feature of verbal communication. These terms, however, imply that transactional
encounters are not interactive, and yet they are. In my view, an interactional speaking situation is tautological. The solution to this terminological predicament is to
distinguish transactional encounters (service encounters) as a special kind of
interaction rather than juxtapose them to interactional encounters.
Lexical inferencing is a problem solving procedure to compute the meaning of an
unknown word in context. The learner must diagnose what part of speech the
word is, recognize its components, such as prefix, root, suffix, recall knowledge of
other languages to bring to bear on the problem solving task, look at the immedi-
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Additional terms
ate and broader context to get clues as to what could reasonably be used to fill the
existing gap in meaning, refer to general or technical knowledge to fill the existing gap, visualize the situation and draw conclusions from this discourse model as
to the feasible solution, use some content or cultural schemata to fill the existing
gap. The meaning which is inferred should be checked for accuracy.
Meaning versus proposition versus content versus knowledge versus sense. In
order to clarify possible ambiguity resulting from frequent use of the above terms,
let me point out that for the purposes of this work on teaching English as a foreign
language, the term 'meaning' is treated as the opposite of 'form', the term 'proposition' is regarded as a mental, semantic sentence, in which concepts in various
relations form ideas. On the verbal level, i.e. on the level of utterance these relations are conveyed by syntactic means. 'Content' also refers to meaning, but it
presupposes networks of propositions and their hierarchies in various human
domains. It seems appropriate to me to think of content as the factual (semantic)
information in discourse, which, when considered from the point of view of
human mental representation, can be called 'knowledge'. 'Sense' is perceived
when a given set of propositions are mentally organized into a coherent (logical)
whole. If discourse makes sense to us, it means that we have been able to reconstruct its propositions and structure them into a system. (As we know, system is
a well-organized (hierarchical) whole (arrangement) which consists of elements in
mutual relations; a system is more than a sum of its parts).
Model is a term which has two meanings in foreign language teaching, both referring to the relationship of correspondence between two elements, the representation and the entity being represented. The first meaning of the term 'model'
refers to the fact that our understanding of some phenomenon may be represented in a given form. In this sense we may speak of models of comprehension, discourse processing, top-down and bottom-up models, etc. A model represents our
understanding of the phenomenon in a concise way and in this way performs an
important heuristic function. The other meaning also refers to a correspondence
between two entities in that one entity is a form of replication (imitation) of the
other from the point of view of essential structural attributes. Much of language
learning involves modelling, if not imitating, target language communicative
events and behaviours. The main task for the language learner is to be able to
retain essential structural attributes of these events and behaviors and adjust them
to the situation at hand. These communicative situational models may be present
in the classroom as immediate stimulus material before a given activity or mentally present in the minds of the participants as cognitive representations of relevant structures of behaviour. Such is the nature of target language learning that
we develop models of communicative behaviour which we try to approximate.
Multiple-choice questions. Rost (1990:132) explains: 'Closed tasks, such as written multiple-choice tests (m/c), differ from summarizing tasks in that the listener
Additional terms
271
is given a new text (i.e. the written test) and is asked to integrate a representation
of the first text (i.e. the lecture text) with this text. This contribution of this new
text is often overlooked when m/c tests are used as measures of 'listening comprehension'. (The term 'comprehension' is used here to refer to a restricted concept
of understanding: identifying propositions in a text.) ... Individual items on
m/c tests may be considered as selected probes of text representation rather than
indications of the listener's understanding of the overall text. However, correct
responses on probe test items do not necessarily indicate text understanding,
either. Because of chance factors on m/c tests, all subjects, even those who did not
hear the lecture text (e.g. who were not present at the lecture), will obtain some
correct answers. 'Test wiseness' (i.e. the comprehension of the 'test as a text') will
contribute further to some subjects obtaining correct answers.' For the above reasons it seems dangerous to use multiple-choice questions systematically, as a leading form of comprehension check, which a majority of textbook writers would like
teachers to do.
Participants and non-participants (or overhearers) in communication are distinguished following Goffman (1976). 'Participants can be divided into speakers,
addressees, and side participants, who are not anticipated to answer the speaker. Overhearers include two roles, bystanders and eavesdroppers. Bystanders are
recognized as present and have access to what the speaker says. Eavesdroppers
have access to what the speaker is saying, but are not fully recognized as present'
(Jay, 2003:298).
Pragmatics is an area of linguistics which deals with the relations of signs to
interpreters. According to Morris, it is what people do with signs.
Problem solving is a reasoning operation for which there is a missing link in the
initial information set. Matczak (1992) mentions three stages of problem solving:
1) defining the problem, i.e. diagnosing the missing element in its context; 2)
defining the information needed to solve the problem and sorting out the available information relevant to its solution; 3) generating the missing information as
well as evaluating the utility of the solution. The more mature the learner, the
more solutions he or she is able to come up with.
A schema (pl schemas or schemata) is explained as 'a mental framework used to
organize meaningful material on the basis of prior experience with an event or
a social situation. The schema guides our understanding of the global outline of the
story on which the particular details of propositions are hung. Rather than building
a text structure from scratch, schemas function as control structures to ensure the
operation of the appropriate context-sensitive construction rules for the text' (Jay,
2003:282). He adds: 'Schemas are culturally constructed, and they affect our understanding as well as our memory for a story. The relevant schema also guides the production of discourse as in a conversation or a storytelling episode.'
272
Additional terms
Scripts are also mental structures which guide our information processing, but
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events that unfold chronologically in a particular setting under particular circumstances, for example a restaurant script.
System-sentences versus text-sentences is a distinction made by Lyons 1977.
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(Brown and Yule, 1983:23). Text-sentences are grammatical units of language use
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viewed as products. The process view would be focused on the comprehension
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accuracy, 19, 25, 29, 42, 45, 51, 52, 78, 105, 106,
118, 119, 120, 131,147, 149, 151,153,154, 160,
170, 173, 177, 183, 184, 188, 189,212,231,232,
233, 241, 244, 260, 264, 270
addressee/sender, 91, 93, 97, 124, 125, 127, 130,
132, 133,135, 136,138, 141, 144, 145, 147, 149,
150, 151,154,155, 179, 180, 185, 190, 192, 193,
194,196,197, 199,209,210,214,217,228,230,
232, 233, 234, 240, 250, 251, 252, 255
addressing teaching to the learner, 86, 189
adjacency pairs, 236, 244, 245
adjustments, communicative, 126, 137, 149
adolescence, 78, 157, 158, 160, 167, 173-176, 177
advance organizers, 60, 61
alienation of the learner, 151, 246
alternative methods, 35, 65, 66, 67-79
analogy, 38, 45, 70, 133
analysis/synthesis, 18, 19, 20, 38, 39, 43, 45, 59,
61, 62, 63, 77, 90, 92, 94, 96, 99-100,133, 153,
167, 193, 194, 196, 197,198, 199,202,206,209,
224, 227, 228, 230, 267
anticipation, 128, 129, 130, 146, 152, 209, 220
antimentalism, 39
anxiety, 54, 75, 76, 78, 79, 110, 126, 136, 140, 210,
219, 229, 238-239, 241, 243, 246
approach/avoidance behaviour, 136, 239
articulacy, 240, 241, 242, 246
attention, 60,63,77,92,97,99, 100, 124, 125, 128,
130, 133, 136,141,146, 147, 152, 153,160, 162,
163, 165, 167, 176, 177, 180, 181, 182,206,211,
220, 224, 225, 226, 233, 244, 246, 247, 250
attentional periphery, 154, 260
Audiolingual Approach 38, 39, 40, 45, 47, 60, 62,
148
284
Index
culture, 15,22,26,27,30,39,43,55,58,60,76,98,
102, 103 104, 106-107, 119, 125, 126, 130, 138,
146, 155,158, 160,164, 175, 176, 177,181, 184,
200, 212, 222, 231, 263
debate, 53, 61, 62, 96, 107, 232, 237, 246, 248
deduction, deductive, 19, 23, 42, 56, 57, 61, 62,
133,134
defensive learners, 260
definition, 31, 39, 59, 62, 64, 99, 103, 204, 205,
211
describing, 70, 102, 145, 165, 176, 25, 258
dictation, 28, 107, 182, 222, 223, 224, 227
dictation drawing, 107, 221, 223-224
dictogloss, 224
Direct Method, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 32
discourse type/genre, 96-97, 126, 127, 152, 155,
177, 191, 193, 199,202,206,210,212,213,231,
234, 236, 244, 246, 252
discourse, spoken, written, 107, 127, 149, 154,
179, 179-183
discussion, 77, 114, 207, 211, 221, 222, 231, 245,
246, 258, 259
domain terminology, 193, 199
double articulation, 132
drama, 28, 108, 110, 166
drill, 27,28,44,45,46,47,49-50, 51,63, 100, 116,
117, 187,213
Index
factual information, 102, 105, 192, 197, 201, 205,
234, 235, 245, 252
feedback, 31, 38, 47, 53, 64, 68, 70, 84, 85, 101,
102, 110, 114, 118, 119,120, 124,126, 128, 129,
130,131,141,143, 146,149,150,152, 153, 160,
177, 179, 182, 183,187,190, 193, 194,205,206,
212,214,218,222,223,224,225,227,242,244,
248, 250, 257, 259, 260, 261, 264, 265
focus on form, 81, 144, 151, 184, 260
follow-up, 111, 112, 113, 207, 209, 211, 221, 230
foreign language aptitude, 82
functions of English, 108, 214, 231
games, 74, 111, 119, 120, 141, 155, 166, 171, 176,
220, 232, 242, 244
generalization, 23, 133
Gestalt psychology, 53
gifted children, 171
grammar, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27,
28, 29, 31, 32, 38, 39,42, 44, 45, 49, 55, 56, 57,
58, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 92, 94, 99, 102, 103, 105,
106, 116, 118, 119,120, 133, 150, 151, 153,154,
160, 162, 163,164, 177, 183,184,213,223,251,
261, 264, 272
Grammar Translation Method, 18, 19, 20, 22, 25,
28, 29, 47, 56, 57, 183
grammaticalism, 19
graphemic/phonemic code, 180, 223, 260
graphemic/phonemic representation, 82, 118, 149,
223
group work, 77, 103, 104, 109, 115, 120, 202, 211
guided imagery, 169, 177
GUME project, 62
285
holophrases, 163
humour, 170-171, 239
ideal method, 65-66
identity, 55, 132, 137, 141,151, 158, 160, 166,173,
175, 176, 178, 243, 247
idiosyncratic dialect, 86
imitation, 18, 21, 38, 41, 42, 44, 49, 50-51, 68, 74,
75, 148, 150, 160, 161, 164, 176, 213, 222, 270
immediate constituent analysis, 39
individualizing foreign language instruction, 59,
65, 84
induction, inductive, 19,21,22,23, 24, 25, 29,42,
44, 62, 83, 133, 134
inferring, inferencing, 19, 42, 55, 96, 125, 133,
134, 137, 194, 205, 250, 268, 269-270
286
Index
language use, 13, 14, 17, 41, 42, 44, 47, 49, 50, 56,
57, 58, 60, 63, 64, 70, 72, 73, 81, 85, 87, 89, 90,
91,93,94,97, 104, 105, 107, 114, 126, 128, 131,
142, 143, 180, 181, 187, 202, 241, 258, 272
Latin, 17, 18, 42
law of effect, 37
lecturette, 201
lifespan development, 159
literacy, 19, 106, 240, 248
long-term investment in speaking, 234-235
low-input/high-input task, 109, 110
narrative, 22, 26, 62, 164, 168, 176, 202, 236, 244,
248, 253, 256
Natural Method, 20, 24, 26, 28, 32
networks of propositions 234, 270
non-professional teacher, 15, 16, 265
non-verbal communication, non-verbal behaviour, 38, 126
normative grammar, 42
note-taking, 48, 107, 225, 230, 235
Index
process writing, 248, 252, 253, 258-259, 260
production, 13, 27, 29, 30, 63, 70, 73, 81, 86, 94,
117,119, 124,127,129, 130, 137, 138, 144, 145,
146, 147, 148-149, 150, 152, 153, 154, 156,
179, 180, 184,197,199,215,229,230,233,234,
243, 249, 260, 264
professional role of the teacher, 15, 141, 151, 260,
265
professional teacher, 14, 15, 16, 79, 263, 265, 266
project, project work, 107, 108,113-115,201,220,
232, 236, 245, 260, 267
Prussian Method, 19
random list of words, 203
rationalist view of language, 56
reading aloud, 41, 60, 183, 205-206, 239
reading comprehension, 120, 152, 171, 183,
190-191, 192, 193-196, 194, 200-203, 201,
202,203,205,206,207,209,210,217,219,221,
234, 235, 252, 268, 269
Reading Method, 26
reading, intensive, extensive, 192, 206-207, 214,
219,234
realia, 21, 103
reasoning, 23, 29, 53, 60, 69, 70, 82, 123, 124, 125,
130,133,134, 146,147, 149,150,151, 152, 154,
159, 160, 164, 169, 170, 171, 249,252,269, 271
reception/discovery learning, 54
reduced certainty/uncertainty, 94, 97, 102
Reform Movement, 22, 23
rehearsal, 51, 129, 152, 153, 168, 189, 243, 244
reinforcement, 37, 38
repetition, 26, 27, 41, 44, 49, 51-52, 95, 129, 152,
153, 162, 163, 168, 177, 187, 188, 206, 218,
219, 222
retrospection, 124, 128, 129, 130, 146, 152
role, ascribed, achieved, 97-98
role-play, 74, 103, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 117,
119, 141,231,244
rote learning, 20, 42, 63, 83, 148
rule, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 28, 29, 32, 42, 45, 55, 57,
58, 60, 72, 86, 92, 94, 95, 105, 111, 133, 142,
163, 165, 166, 160, 177, 189, 236, 238, 271
salience, salient, 145, 146, 152, 176, 182
second language, 13, 17, 32, 4, 71, 72, 76, 81, 82,
86, 92, 96, 146, 153, 267, 269
Second Language Acquisition Research, 14, 64,
86-87
self-concept, 138, 139, 172, 174
self-esteem, 110, 126, 136, 138-141, 170, 172, 174
287
288
Index
202,203,204,205,209,211,212,216,217,218,
219,220,221,222,223,225,227,228,229,231,
232,233,234,235,238,239,241,242,243,244,
246,247,248,249,250,252,253,256,257,258,
259, 260, 261, 263, 266, 269, 270
teaching method, 17, 19, 25, 39, 40,47,48,65,66,
84, 120, 154, 155, 231
technique, 14, 15, 16, 20, 23,24, 25, 31, 36, 37, 39,
43, 45-46, 47, 56, 58, 61, 62, 69 70, 73, 78, 85,
89, 100, 102, 107-115, 116, 120, 169, 201, 202,
205,211,212, 225, 248
text,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,28,29,30,32,
39, 41, 42, 44, 54, 58, 69, 70, 74, 75, 95, 97,
103,104, 107, 108, 115, 116, 117, 120, 150, 180,
183,184, 189, 191, 192, 193, 196,197, 198, 199,
200,201,202,203,204,205,206,207,209,210,
211,212,216,221,223,224,227,228,229,230,
234,235,249,250,260,264,267,268,269,271,
272
toddlerhood, 157, 158, 160, 161
Total Physical Response, 71-73, 220
transformation exercises, 56, 62
Transformational Generative Theory, 55
Transformational Generative Grammar (TGG),
55, 56, 57
translation, 19, 20, 23, 24, 27, 28, 29-32, 44, 47,
57, 70, 74, 77, 78, 116, 193, 194, 204
value, 19, 23 26, 30, 51, 60, 63, 79, 84, 85, 95, 103,
106, 107,116, 117,118, 119, 120,132, 137, 139,
167,170,171, 173, 174,175, 176,194, 196,207,
221, 236, 242
verbal communication, 14, 15, 22, 63, 64, 69, 74,
85,87,91,98, 104, 117, 121, 123, 124, 125,126,
127,128, 129, 130,131,132,133, 134,135,136,
138, 140, 141,143, 143, 145,146, 147, 148,149,
150, 151, 152, 154, 155,160,161, 179,180, 185,
190,210,213,214,215,217,232,233,234,246,
252, 269, 263, 268, 269
verbal learning, 72, 177, 184
verbatim, 19, 42, 54, 108, 144, 176, 214, 222, 224,
235
Abercrombie, D., 91
Ahn, F., 19, 20
Allport, G. W., 51, 148
Altman, H. B., 84
Anderson, A., 231
Anderson, B. F., 135
Anderson, J. R., 135, 153, 187
Anthony E. M., 36
Arabski, J., 88
Arndt, V., 262
Arnold, J., 75
Arthur, L., 247
Asher, J., 71, 72, 73
Austin, J. L., 90,91
Ausubel, D., 48, 53, 54, 55, 63
290
Name index
Name index
Manis, M., 53
Mansfield, P, 140
Marcel, C., 20
Marckwardt, A. H., 60
Marshall, M. E., 37
Marton, W., 53, 61, 65, 66, 118,122
Matczak, A., 133, 148, 161, 165, 167, 172, 271
Mattocks, A. L., 139
McCarthy, M. J., 247
McDonough, S., 190
Meidinger, J., 19
Miller G. A., 54
Montaigne, 18
Morris, C. W., 271
Morrow, K. E., 90, 93, 101, 102
Morton, R., 50
Moskovitz, G., 215
Moulton, W. G., 40
Mueller, T. H., 62
Munby, J., 97
Nagy, W., 203
Nation, P, 212
Naunton, J., 97, 112, 198, 225
Ncki, Z., 232
Neisser, U., 53
Newmark, L., 32
Nolasco, A., 247
Nudelmann, J., 111, 113
Nunan, D., 212, 213, 224, 250
Nunes, S. S., 81
Nuttal, C., 210, 212
291
Pattison, P, 247
Pestalozzi, H., 24
Pfeiffer, F., 67
Philips, D., 115
Piaget, J., 72, 159, 164, 166, 174
Pimsleur, P, 82
Pltz, K., 19, 20
Porter Ladousse, G. P, 109, 110, 111
Prator, C., 65, 67
Prendergast, T., 20
Quitman Troyka, L., 111,113
Raimes, A., 260, 262
Rebok, G. W., 51, 128, 145, 159
Reibe, R., 115
Reibel, D. A., 32
Reinking, J. A., 262
Renandya, W. A., 212, 241
Richard-Amato, P A., 80
Richards, J. C., 19,20,25,39,52,72,73,77,80,82,
88, 103,122, 212, 241
Rinvoluccri, M., 111
Rivers, W., 253
Rivers, W. M., 40, 52,65,122
Robinson, P, 156
Rogers, C., 84
Rodgers, T. S., 19, 20, 25, 39, 52, 72, 73, 77, 80,
103,122
Rossner, R., 115,122
Rost, M., 180, 183, 190, 205, 216, 217, 218, 225,
226, 231, 237, 238, 267, 270
Rubin, J., 152
Runco, M. A., 138
Sacks, H., 236
Sapir, E., 39
Sapon, S., 82
Saporta, S., 66
Saunders, Ch., 156
Saveur, L., 24
Savignon, S., 90, 96, 97,101, 102
Schegloff, E. A., 236
Scherer, G.A. C., 47
Schmidt, R., 136
Schumann, J. H., 88
Scovel, 75
Seidenstrcker, J., 19, 20, 183
Seliger, H., 42
Selinker, L., 86
292
Name index