Professional Documents
Culture Documents
materials for?
R. L. Allwright
The question
What do we want teaching materials
for? is premature
until we establish what there is to be done in teaching and who should
do it. Starting with a unified conception
of language teaching and learning as the management
of language
learning:
this paper proposes a
management
analysis which establishes
a necessarily
limited role for
teaching
materials,
given the great complexity
of the management
problem revealed by the analysis. This leads to a diagnosis of teacher
overload
and
learner
underinvolvement,
with
implications
for
teacher-training
and learner-training.
(Training is probably necessary if
learners
are to become
productively
involved
in managing
their
learning.)
Learner-training
has further implications
for course design
and for teacher-training,
and raises the question of how teachers can
best put their expertise at the disposal of trained' learners. Returning to
materials,
the paper then makes specific suggestions
in support of a
switch of emphasis
from teaching
materials
to 'learning
materials.
Finally
the conclusion
is drawn that questions
of materials
should
generally
be related
to the conception
of the whole
of language
teaching
and learning
as the co-operative
management
of language
learning.
The question
Volume 36/1
October 1981
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The analysis
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do
In considering
into account.
Figure 2 attempts
At least two types need to be distinguished here: goals for oneself and goals
for others. All four points of view represent people or institutions
who
must be expected to have personal goals. Teachers wish to develop their
teaching careers, language teaching institutions want to survive financially
and with enhanced prestige, sponsors want to further their own interests,
and learners, we hope, want to learn the language. The first three, however,
have goals for the learners as well as for themselves. They not only have
goals, they may seek to impose those goals on the learners. Hence:
3 Probability
of conflict
determine GOALS.
1 Input
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nature of classroom events. If, for example, the teacher explains something in the target language, the language of that explanation is available to
be learned. It constitutes potential intake. Similarly, all the things that get
said when errors are being corrected constitute potential intake, as do all
the things said in the target language by other learners.
2 Emergent
content
If we define content as the sum total of what is taught and what is available to be learned, then it becomes clear that content (potential intake) is
not predictable. It is, rather, something that emerges because of the interactive nature of classroom events.
3 Materials may contribute in some way, but cannot determine CONTENT.
Again we find that the role of teaching materials is necessarily limited. Even
what learners learn is in an important way independent
of the materials
used.
This notion of content needs further analysis (see Appendix 1) but here I
can simply indicate four main types of content:
a. The target language itself
b. Subject-matter
content
This may include knowledge about language in general, about target
language culture, literature, etc. In the ESP (English for specific purposes)
context, subject-matter
may be an important part of what is taught, or it
may be simply the carrier of all the language content.
c. Learning strategies
Part of the content of instruction
(both that which is taught and that
available to be learned) may be learning strategies, that is, ways of dealing
with language input to turn it into intake, or means of generating input (see
Seliger, 1980). Although
the learning
of learning
strategies has not,
traditionally,
been an explicit goal of language instruction,
it has become,
recently, much more usual to give it emphasis, as in study skills courses
for foreign students, for example. But all courses, not just those labelled
study skills, could well aim to help learners with learning strategies, as an
obvious part of the management
of learning.
Learners themselves, of
course, may well want to become better language learners. We shall return
to this issue under the heading learner-training
later.
d. Attitudes
It is well accepted that one of the goals of school language instruction is to
improve the attitudes of speakers of different languages to one another.
However seldom this may be achieved, the development
of positive intercultural attitudes remains important, but it is not often discussed as part of
the content of instruction.
Even where attitudes are not being explicitly
taught, however, they are almost certainly available to be learned in any
language classroom, from the teacher and from everyone present. They
include attitudes to learning, of course, and not just language or intercultural attitudes. To summarize, anyone involved in the management
of
language learning has necessarily to deal with attitudes as part of what
learners may learn.
This analysis of CONTENT has pointed to some of the many complexities
involved : enough, I imagine, to reinforce my contention that not too much
can be expected of teaching materials.
Method
Here there are three main issues that have to be attended to (decided, acted
upon, reviewed) in the management
of language learning.
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1 Learning
processes
The fundamental
question is What learning processes should be fostered?
This is clearly central for all concerned, from curriculum developers to the
learners themselves.
2 Activities
The next question is What activities, or what learning tasks, will best
activate the chosen processes, for what elements of content? A less deterministic version of this question might be What activities or learning tasks
will offer a wide choice of learning processes to the learner, in relation to a
wide variety of content options?
This amendment
suggests, I think
correctly, that we can neither predict nor determine learning processes, and
therefore perhaps should not try as hard to do so as we usually do in our
teaching materials.
3 Activity management
The third basic question is How can we manage these activities (set up
group work, run simulations,
etc.) so that they are maximally profitable?
(i.e. minimizing
the management
risks discussed in Allwright, 1978): for
example, who will work best with whom, how long can be allowed for any
particular activity. Such questions may be the subject of suggestions in
teaching materials, but detailed local decisions are clearly beyond the scope
of publications.
Again we come up against the fact that teaching materials are necessarily
limited in scope. They can, and do, contribute
to the management
of
language learning, but cannot possibly cope with many of the important
decisions facing the managers working in their various situations.
Guidance
I am using the term guidance to refer to all those things that can be
expected to help people understand what they are doing and how well they
are doing it. The scope of the term thus ranges from the provision of a fullscale grammatical
explanation,
to the mere nod from a teacher to signify
acceptance of a learners pronunciation.
It also covers, of course, guidance
about method (e.g. instructions
for a simulation) as well as about content,
and guidance about appropriate
standards of attainment.
These are major
issues in the management
of language learning, involving decisions, for
example, about the most helpful type of explanation
to offer for given
aspects of the language, and about the type of error treatment that will help
an individual learner.
Clearly, in the circumstances,
there is again a limit to what teaching
materials can be expected to do for us.
This analysis has quite deliberately been presented without raising the
important question of who should do what. That we can cover in the next
section. Meanwhile, the analysis should have reinforced any doubts there
might have been about the viability of teacher-proof
teaching materials!
The whole business of the management
of language learning is far too
complex to be satisfactorily catered for by a pre-packaged
set of decisions
embodied in teaching materials. This is obvious if we recognize that, while
teaching materials may embody decisions, they cannot themselves undertake the
action and the review phases of the management
process. Of course very few
writers actually claim that their teaching materials can do everything, but a
surprising number do state that their materials are entirely suitable for the
learner working neither with a teacher nor with fellow learners, and this
implies strong claims for what the materials can do. In turn it suggests a
possible need for a learners guide to language learning, of which more
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later. Meanwhile,
the main point
learning is inevitably complex.
Implications
Implications
learner-training
of language
So far I have delayed answering the question in my title and have preferred instead to consider a more fundamental
question: What is there to
be done in the management
of language learning? In this section I shall
deal with implications
for teacher-training,
then with those for what I will
call learner-training,
and finally with implications
for materials
themselves.
for
for
teacher-training
Implications
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what adaptations
might be possible on either side. For example, a person
who wished to get much more writing practice than was allowed for in the
timetable was invited to use Private Consultation
Time (described below)
for this purpose. From these workshops and interviews we hope learners
emerge with a clearer idea of what they want from the course and how to
get it (within our necessarily imposed future-oriented
scheme). On the
other hand, we tutors emerge ready to meet and take decisions about
grouping the learners, assigning tutors to groups and planning
the first
lessons. One of the course-members
(the one chosen to be studentrepresentative)
is present at our meeting to help in the important decisionmaking.2
The second essential element in our course-planning
was to find a
course-structure
that would offer us and the learners a framework which
was clear enough to satisfy our need for order, and yet which would be
flexible enough to take into account the fact that we would not know much
about our learners needs until the course-members
actually assembled.
The structure we developed consisted of three main timetabled elements :
1. Class Time.
2. Self-Access Time.
3. Private Consultation
Time.
(There was a fourth element, the writing workshop, which was important in
its own right but less importantly structurally; see below.)
These three elements were given equal time (90 minutes each in a 6 x 45
minute timetable) in the order in which they are listed above. To meet the
demand for writing work and simultaneously
to reduce the demand at any
one time on the self-access facilities, the Self-Access Time alternated daily
with a writing workshop, so that half the participants
(25 to 30 people)
worked on their writing while the remainder used the self-access facilities.
These comprised four rooms : a listening centre, a communication
room,
a language workroom,
and a reading/writing
room. (The self-access
facilities were also available at untimetabled
times in the early afternoons
and throughout
the evenings and weekends.) There were also social activities each evening, if only films to watch.
The three timetabled elements were allotted equal time to reflect their
equal potential,
and also to avoid the implications
of the usual bias in
favour of class time. The intention was that the three modes of learning
should complement
and feed into each other. Class Time was therefore
used not only for familiar language learning activities but also as a training
ground for decision-making.
(For example, learners were asked as part of
their homework to study in groups available textbooks and select appropriate exercises to propose for use in class.) In this way Class Time was used
to help learners learn how to make best use of Self-Access Time. Individual
or small-group problems that could not be appropriately
dealt with in class
could be dealt with by the learners in Self-Access Time, or in Private
Consultation
Time, when time could be booked for private discussions
with the tutors. Our monitoring
of what learners chose to do in Self-Access
Time and of what sorts of problems they brought to us in the Private Consultation Time fed into our decisions about the best ways of spending Class
Time. It was particularly interesting that often the learners brought learning
problems rather than language problems to these Private Consultations.
For
example,
they wanted advice on how to deal with a listening
comprehension
problem
after they had exhausted listening comprehension
materials in our listening centre.
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Halfway through
the course we interviewed
the learners again to
discover whether they felt that their learning priorities (in terms either of
language or of learning
strategies) had changed, whether they found
current course activities profitable, and whether they felt the course was
helping or hindering in any way their pursuance of their priorities. Thus we
continued to involve learners in the decision-making,
the action based on
those decisions (although we tutors accepted the greater share of responsibility for the organization
and implementation
with respect to class time
and to the course as a whole) and in the reviewing of both decisions and
action. We were asking the learners to monitor continuously
and evaluate
before taking more decisions. The mid-course review did all this in a relatively formal way, but the decision-action-review
cycle was of course more
often handled informally, whenever tutors and learners discussed the selection of materials during Self-Access Time, for example. 3
The third essential task in our planning was to think ahead to possible
follow-up activities. We could not hope to make our future-oriented
course credible if we gave the future no thought ourselves. In practice,
however, there was little we, as visiting tutors, could directly plan. We
could only hope to persuade the Polish Academy of Science and the British
Council of the potential value of making provision for learners who might
be ready to make much greater demands on their facilities and supporting
services. No persuasion was in fact needed, and it is good to be able to
report progress in the development
of year-round
self-access facilities and
the creation of an English club for Polish Academy scientists wishing to
continue their learning of English in a non-class setting.4 With more money
more could be done, of course, particularly
for learners away from the
main centres. We have also evolved a follow-up questionnaire
(distributed
several months after the end of the course) to help us find out what learners
themselves are doing to build on the three-week course, and to get their
advice for future courses and follow-up activities.
This Polish Academy of Science course has been described at some
length (though still very sketchily) to reinforce the point that learnertraining is a concept with implications
that go well beyond the classroom.
Of particular importance, I believe, are the implications
for course structure, since without such changes learner-training
may ultimately
lack
credibility. Also of obvious importance,
however, are the implications for
teacher-training,
to which I will now return.
Further
implications
for teacher-training
Learner-training
is not going to be done well by teachers who believe that,
since only they have the necessary expertise, only they can be allowed a
responsible role in the management
of language learning. Teachers need to
be trained to help learners develop their expertise as learners. Apart from
the practical problems this involves, there is also the problem of what the
teacher is to do with whatever pegagogic expertise he or she already has.
How can we put our expertise in the business of language learning at the
disposal of the learners, so that it is neither imposed upon the learners nor
devalued by them (in their new-found
independence)?
We call teachers
masters rather than servants, and yet, in the best traditions of domestic
service, it is servants who have the expertise, as cooks or valets, and so on,
and their problem is identical to the teachers problem as I have outlined
it: how to make their expertise available without imposing it (because that
would be presumptuous),
and without having it devalued (because then
they would not get the rewards their expertise merited). It may help, then,
What do we want teaching materials for?
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In the type of language learning described above, we are not going to want,
I suggest, materials that pre-empt many of the decisions learners might be
trained to make for themselves. We are going to need leaning materials
rather than teaching materials.
The most obvious and radical form for learning materials to take
would be that of a learners guide to language learning. It is difficult to find
many examples in publishers lists at the time of writing, although there is
work in progress. The research so far is by no means conclusive, but any
such guide could profit from the work of Rubin, and of Naiman and his
colleagues (see Rubin, 1975, and Naiman et al, 1977), on the characteristics of the good language learner. One possibility would be a guide to
independent
language learning, for learners without teachers. Such a
guide could include advice on how to establish ones priorities, advice on
the most productive ways of exploiting native speakers and other useful
people (like off-duty teachers), and also advice on the sorts of exercises a
learner might devise for personal use, or perhaps for use with friends. It is
too early to know what problems there might be in writing such a guide
(although we can predict some, of course) but that should not prevent us
from exploring the concept.
An alternative
learners
guide might be produced
for classroom
language learning. Such a guide could include much of the same material
as for independent
learners, but would focus on how to exploit the classroom as a language learning situation without making it more difficult for
other learners to do the same, and without antagonizing
the teacher; on
how to make full use of the teachers expertise without becoming
dependent upon it, and on how to develop your own expertise as a learner.
At its simplest this may involve suggesting the sorts of things learners might
do to obtain repetitions or clarifications of things said in the classroom.
The difficulties with such learning materials as commercial publications
might be considerable,
if we aimed them primarily at the captive learner
(who, by definition, has not chosen to study a language) in our state school
systems. It would seem more sensible to aim them at the non-captive
learner, the sort of learner who, in Britain, might buy a teach-yourself
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Summary and
conclusions
October
1980
Notes
c.
1 This is based on a paper presented at the Fourteenth TESOL Convention, San Francisco, 1980.
2 See also related work at CRAPEL (Nancy, France)
and at the School for International
Training
(Brattleboro, Vermont).
3 Anyone who knows anything about teaching will
know that reality cannot possibly have been so neat.
It was not so neat, but this brief account, for all its
References
over-simplification
of what was organizationally
very complex, will perhaps indicate what we were
trying to do, and what we to some extent succeeded
in doing. There are numerous practical problems
involved in the introduction of such a course structure. We think we sorted out a lot of them, but
many remain unsolved.
See Ruth Hoks Some thoughts on study circles and
their potential for language teaching in TESOL
Quarterly, March 1980.
At the same time, those who cannot make radical
structural changes should not be discouraged from
trying piecemeal reforms and finding ways of
making them credible to their learners.
Swans Kaleidoscope and Spectrum come first to mind.
Of special interest are:
a. the issue of ELT Documents devoted to Games,
Simulations and Role-Playing ( 1977/l) ;
Games
in
Programme ;
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Language
Language
Learning,
Teaching
and Bilingual
Education.
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point
management
analysis
A. Goals
Materials may or may not embody a fixed set of aims
and objectives. Some materials serve highly specific
aims and are difficult to use for other purposes. Other
materials are much more flexible and consist of ideas
that can be exploited for a variety of purposes. The
teaching, whether helped by the materials or not, must
reflect the relative weightings assigned to the aims, and
also attend to the sequencing of objectives.
1 Long-term aims.
2 Short-term objectives.
3 Relative weightings.
4 Sequencing.
B. Content
What we teach is of course the language but this
needs a lot of further analysis, because we may also
want to teach (and/or learners may want to learn)
features of target language discourse, and features of
the target culture. Also we may include subject-matter
from other disciplines
(as in ESP). Some of the
subject-matter
we use may be there just to carry the
language practice, and not to be learned (e.g. conversation topics, or the content of drill items).
5 Target language content.
6 Target discourse content.
7 Target cultural content.
8 Target subject-matter
content.
9 Carrier content.
What we teach may also include selected learning
strategies and techniques, because we may want our
learners to be better leaners after whatever course we
are giving them, so that they can carry on learning
effectively, perhaps even without a teacher.
10 Target learning strategies to be developed.
11 Target learning techniques to be developed.
What we teach may also include attitudes, in the sense
that we would hope our learners would develop
positive attitudes towards both their current learning
and their future use and learning of the target
language, etc.
12 Target attitudes.
Lastly, after selection, matters of weighting, of timing,
and of sequencing have to be attended to.
13 Assignment
of weightings
to all elements
of
content.
14 Assignment of time to all elements of content.
15 Sequencing.
C. Method
Determining how all the various elements of content
are to be learned is obviously a complex matter and
involves thinking about the learning processes to be
employed, the activities or tasks that will draw upon
those processes, and about how to relate content, in all
its complexity,
to the activities or tasks. Then the
actual performance
of the activities or tasks has itself
to be thought about: the amount of time needed, the
nature of the groupings, etc.
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16 Selection
of learning
processes
to be employed/exploited.
17 Selection of learning activities/tasks
to be employed/exploited.
18 Allocation of time.
19 Allocation of people.
20 Allocation of space.
21 Sequencing.
D. Guidance
Guidance refers to information
about the goals of
the course, the target content, and about the learners
mastery of it all. It will also cover instructions about
learning activities and tasks.
22 Explanations/descriptions
of goals, all types of
content, and of learning activities/tasks.
23 Cues/hints to draw attention to criteria1 features of
target content.
24 Immediate yes/no feedback (knowledge of results).
25 Evaluations of learner progress (including tests).
26 The timing of 22-25 (exactly when to do what).
27 The setting of standards of performance
for all
aspects of target content,
and for classroom
behaviour in general.
Appendix two
Learning activity/strategy/technique
What do you actually do in order to learn?
How often do you do it?
How much do you enjoy/like doing it?
How much does it help you?
How good/efficient are you at doing it?
Are you getting the most out of the
activity?
FrequencyEnjoymentUsefulnessEfficiency-
The author
NeedFrequencylmportance-
Proficiency required-
Proficiency nowConfidence-
For example:
You may need to be able to write scientific papers in
English. Perhaps this does not happen very often
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