Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Todor Shopov
Viseu, 2003
Passagem Editores
ISBN 972-98770-0-9
Contents
Foreword
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7
25
50
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Foreword
This book is written within the framework of the Exchange to Change
Project. We have been trying the find out what the methodological
implications of the awareness resulting from reflective mobility are. Is there
any methodological value added in result of the visiting and welcoming
experiences of language teachers and learners in mobility? Our aim is to
offer some orientation into the general educational concerns of the Project.
The task is formidable. It is the focus of many different lines of exploration.
In his poem Little Gidding, No. 4 of Four Quarters, T. S. Eliot puts it in
this way:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Yet, this is an optimistic book. At some moments in history, professional
spheres are susceptible to important change. We believe that we want and
can cross the threshold of exchange to change and step into the realm of
educational promises fulfilled.
The title indicates our holistic approach to the analysis and synthesis of the
concepts of language, personality, methodology, communication and intercomprehension, etc. This approach emphasizes the priority of the whole over
its parts. We hold that language teaching and learning is a complex
knowledge domain, characterized by network of relationships in a social and
cultural context. In addition, we believe that methodology is an
interdisciplinary field, which cannot be understood in isolation. Our
perspective sees it in terms of its relations to other knowledge domains.
We shall look into a range of issues, which are not only interesting
themselves, but also relevant to the objectives of the Project and, hopefully,
to the Reader. The nature and extent of the relevance is difficult, if not
impossible, to determine a priori. However, the book supplements the
Project Modules and serves as a concise reference material on the theory of
the teaching and learning of modern foreign languages. Methodological
literature is of course extensive, so we shall be pointing out some of the
good books on the topics presented.
We have just mentioned the term foreign language; throughout the book
we shall use it interchangeably with the term second language. Here, we
shall consider them synonymous albeit we realize that they can be easily
distinguished. In the literature, second language usually refers to a target
language that is being taught in the country where it is the dominant
language, whereas foreign language usually refers to a target language that
is being taught in the country where it is not the dominant language.
However, we do not find this distinction quite relevant for the focus of this
book.
A decade ago, N. S. Prabhu, the famous Indian methodologist, pointed out
that language teaching faced three major problems, (1) the measurement of
language competence involves elicitation (in some form) of specific
language behaviour but the relationship between such elicited behaviour and
language competence which manifests itself in natural use is unclear, (2)
given the view that the development of linguistic competence is a holistic
process, there is not enough knowledge available either to identify and
assess different intermediate stages of that development or to relate those
stages to some table of norms which can be said to represent expectations,
and (3) there is, ultimately, no way of attributing with any certainty any
specific piece of learning to any specific teaching: language learning can
take place independently of teaching intentions and it is impossible to tell
what has been learnt because of some teaching, and what in spite of it
(Prabhu 1987, 8). Many things have happened in the field of language
teaching methodology since then. For example, the Common European
Framework of Reference (Council of Europe 1996 and 1998) was published,
European Language Council (http://www.fu-berlin.de/elc) was founded,
European Language Portfolio (Scharer 1999) was launched and so on.
Nonetheless, Prabhus claims are still valid. We shall focus on a range of
questions in the light of modern methodological developments trying to state
the scientific facts. Our own opinion emerges in the discussion now and
then, though. We hope our fortuitous academic bias will be understood.
The book is written in English and our examples come from English but we
do not intend to promote a lingua Adamica restituta. We believe in
plurilingualism and pluriculturalism and our inadequacy is only because of
our teleological prudence. The book is a collaborative effort but the
responsibility of the authors is individual. Maya Pencheva wrote Chapter 1
and Todor Shopov prepared Chapters 2, 3 and 4.
Whole Language, Whole Person: A Handbook of Language Teaching Methodology
1.1.
Cognitive Principles
We shall call the first set of principles cognitive because they relate to
mental, intellectual and psychological faculties in operating with language. It
should be made clear, however, that the three types of principles described
in this chapter, cognitive, social and linguistic principles, do not exist as if in
three watertight compartments but rather spill across each other to make up
the most remarkable ability of man the linguistic ability.
It is no wonder that the achievements of modern cognitive science have
found such a warm and fast response in linguistics. Some of the postulates of
cognitive science today are crucial to our understanding of how language
operates and how we acquire this ability, respectively. Because one of the
most difficult questions in foreign language acquisition and child acquisition
of language is, How is it possible that children at an early age and adults,
late in their life, can master a system of such immense complexity? Is it only
a matter of memory capacity and automatic reproduction or is there
something else that helps us acquire a language?
Let us begin with some long established postulates of foreign language
acquisition and see what cognitive theory has to say about them.
(1) Automaticity of Acquisition
No one can dispute the fact that children acquire a foreign language quickly
and successfully. This ease is commonly attributed to childrens ability to
acquire language structures automatically and subconsciously, that is,
without actually analyzing the forms of language themselves. They appear to
learn languages without thinking about them. This has been called by B.
McLaughlin automatic processing (McLaughlin 1990). In order to operate
with the incredible complexity of language both children and adult learners
do not process language unit by unit but employ operations in which
language structures and forms (words, affixes, endings, word order,
grammatical rules, etc.) are peripheral. The Principle of Automaticity, as
stated above, aims at an automatic processing of a relatively unlimited
number of language forms. Overanalyzing language, thinking too much
about its forms tend to impede the acquisition process. This leads to the
recommendation to teachers to focus on the use of language and its
functional aspects. But focus on use and functionality presupposes
Whole Language, Whole Person: A Handbook of Language Teaching Methodology
and experiencing one thing in terms of another. The first thing is called
Target Domain (what we want to express) and the second one is called
Source Domain (by means of which we express the first). We can use, as an
example, the way we conceive of time in our everyday life. Let us have the
following linguistic expressions:
You are wasting my time.
This gadget will save you hours.
How do you spend your time?
That flat tyre will cost me an hour.
Im running out of time.
The central postulate of cognitive science is that metaphorical transfer is not
just a matter of language, of mere words. Human thought processes are
largely metaphorical. Metaphor means metaphorical concepts. And these are
specifically structured. If we generalize the examples above, we come up
with the metaphor /TIME IS MONEY/. This metaphor entails the treatment
of time as a limited resource and a valuable commodity. The examples
demonstrate one type of metaphorical transfer structural metaphor.
On the more linguistic side of the problem, when metaphorical concepts
become lexicalized, they help a variety of people understand what the
concepts mean. In other words, they have a certain didactic role. Metaphors
in computer terminology, for example, aid users speaking different
languages but using English to understand and remember new concepts. At
the same time they allow users to associate unfamiliar concepts with old
ones, thereby helping to palliate technostress. User friendliness of
computer metaphorical terms can be illustrated by the numerous examples
found in the vocabulary of user interfaces e.g. desktop, wallpaper, and
menu, to mention just a few. It appears that conceptual domains are shaped
by several themes. The domain of the Internet features several conceptual
themes. Most of these are based on the functions that the Internet is
perceived to have: (1) helping people move across vast distances; (2)
facilitate communication; and (3) send and store data. The following
metaphorical domains can present these themes:
1. Transportation
Whole Language, Whole Person: A Handbook of Language Teaching Methodology
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vs.
Down
happy
Im feeling up.
Im in high spirits.
Thinking about her gives me a lift.
sad
Im down today.
My spirits sank.
Im depressed.
good health
He is in top shape.
He is at the peak of health.
sickness
He fell ill.
He came down with a
flue.
be subject to control
He is my social inferior.
He is under my control.
high status
Hes climbing the social ladder fast.
low status
He is at the bottom of the
social hierarchy.
virtue
He is an upstanding citizen.
She is high-minded.
depravity
I wouldnt stoop to that.
Thats beneath me.
rational
His arguments rose above emotions.
emotional
Discussion fell to the
emotional level.
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/LIFE IS A PLAY/
13
/LIFE IS A FLUID/
/LIFE IS LIGHT/
<
/DEATH IS DARKNESS/
/DEATH IS DEPARTURE/
<
/LIFE IS A JOURNEY/
/DEATH IS SLEEP/REST/
<
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Mother is the one who feeds and cares for the baby.
(iv)Marriage
Mother is the one who is married to the childs father.
(v)Genealogical
Mother is the closest female relative.
(vi) Housewife
Mothers stay at home and care for the family.
Sub-models (i), (iii), and (iv) form the core of the concept. They build the
stereotype image of a mother. Sub-models (i), (ii), and (v) describe what a
mother is objectively (biologically). And (i), (ii), (iii), and (iv) describe
what a mother normally is, i.e. the prototypical mother. This prototype
remains stable cross-culturally. All six sub-models describe the ideal
mother. This ideal changes historically and across cultures.
Thus, we operate with several images. The most important are the stereotype
and the ideal. Very often they have separate linguistic expressions. Thus in
English we distinguish between the biological and the ideal father. We can
normally ask
Who is the childs father?
but not
*Who is the childs daddy?
because the ideal implies caring for the family and being married to the
childs mother. In the mother concept the biological and the social are
inseparable. All deviations from the model are interpreted as highly marked,
i.e. exceptions from the ideal. For that reason they are consistently marked
linguistically:
stepmother
surrogate mother
foster mother
adoptive mother
donor mother
biological mother
We can summarize all metaphorical models into a small number of Basic
Models:
/GENERAL IS SPECIFIC/
Whole Language, Whole Person: A Handbook of Language Teaching Methodology
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/ABSTRACT IS CONCRETE/
/TIME IS SPACE/
/SOCIAL IS NATURAL/
/MENTAL IS PHYSICAL/
How can we apply these principles, mechanisms and models in teaching a
language and teaching about language? We can do that in a number of ways:
I. On the diachronic level
There is a marked parallelism between current English metaphors and
models of semantic change. Living metaphors and semantic change are
related and mutually reinforcing. This explains the commonality of such
metaphors in the Indo-European languages through time. By using cognitive
models we can explain but also teach the established one-way directions of
semantic change. For example, Indo-European languages follow consistently
certain metaphorical transfers:
e.g.
e.g.
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e.g.
This is the most productive metaphor with Mental state verbs in English.
The manipulation with ideas is seen as holding, touching, moving, uniting,
separating, arranging, and re-ordering them, like physical objects.
e.g.
e.g.
e.g.
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Notice also the use of spatial prepositions both with Speech act and
Mental activity verbs:
e.g. talk
think
about
over
walk
go
This shows that we conceive of a speech act as a distance between the two
communicating parties, a route along which ideas=objects can travel or be
exchanged. This is a replica of the model of Physical action verbs, with
their regular contrast between to and at prepositions:
e.g.
throw to
at
talk to
at
shout to
at
hot temper
warm friendship
boil with indignation
burn with emotion
simmer with anger
be in a stew.
cold person
our friendship has cooled
take it cool
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give.
There are a number of immediate questions that arise. Is this rule of
auxiliation due to pure coincidence; does it result from geographic or
genetic closeness of languages; or could this be the reflection of some
fundamental cognitive principle that gets actualized in linguistic structure?
We can postulate that this process of auxiliation is the reflection of a basic
principle in human conceptualization, namely that abstract notions are
conceptualized by means of a limited number of concrete basic concepts.
We can make an even stronger claim that lexical sources for grammatization
in general involve notions basic to human experience (bodily and social) that
provide central reference points.
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and its categories, which are a reflection of our way of life and the
environment, give particular shape to our way of thinking. That is, speaking
a particular language, you are also a particular linguistic self. As human
beings learn a foreign language, they also develop a new mode of thinking
and acting they enter a new identity. But this new language ego,
intertwined with the new language itself, can create a sense of uncertainty,
defensiveness, even humiliation, and raise inhibitions. Learners can feel this
because the arsenals of their native-language egos may be suddenly useless
in developing a second self.
The foreign language teacher is the major factor in the formation of this
second self. His choice of techniques needs to be cognitively challenging
to achieve the accommodation of the learner to his new world. If the
student is learning the foreign language in the milieu of the country where it
is spoken, then he is likely to experience an identity crisis. To avoid this
the teacher must create appropriate natural situations for the learner so
that he can practice his new identity.
Let us take one ordinary example learning to write compositions in
English. Students whose teachers urge them to reduce the number of times
they use the pronoun I in their essays (or, conversely, encourage the use of
I) may be surprised to discover that in some cultures this grammatical
choice has profound cultural and even political connotations. A Chinese
student is taught to use always we instead of I lest he give the
impression of being selfish and individualistic. Starting to study English he
required to imagine looking at the world with his head upside down and to
invent a new English self that could use the pronoun I. Learning to write
an essay in English is not an isolated classroom activity, but a social and
cultural experience. Learning the rules of English essay writing is, to a
certain extent, learning the values of Anglo-American society. Writing
essays in English, a Chinese student has to reprogram his mind, to
redefine some of the basic concepts and values that he had about himself,
about society.
Rule number one in English composition writing is: Be yourself. But
writing many Is is only the beginning of the process of redefining oneself.
By such a redefinition is meant not only the change of how one envisioned
oneself, but also a change in how he perceived the world. The Chinese
student gradually creates his new English Self.
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accent at all is to hold an unlit pipe in your mouth, to mutter between your
teeth and finish your sentences with the question: isnt it? People will not
understand much, but they are accustomed to that and they will get the most
excellent impression.
The most successful attempts to put on a highly cultured air have been
on the polysyllabic line. Many foreigners, who have learned Latin and Greek
in school, discover with amazement and satisfaction that the English
language has absorbed a huge amount of ancient Greek and Latin
expressions, and they realize that (a) it is much easier to learn these
expressions than the much simpler English words; (b) that these words are as
a rule interminably long and make a simply superb impression when talking
to the greengrocer
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do this it has set up various levels of description. These levels bear such
familiar names as syntax, morphology, phonology and phonetics, lexis and
semantics, pragmatics, etc.
The study of language is beset by the difficulty that it deals with something
utterly familiar. Everybody knows about language, because they use it all
the time. The problem of studying phenomena like language is to separate it
from ourselves, to achieve a psychic distance (Chomsky 1968).
Perhaps the most cogent criticism of traditional language teaching with its
insistence on correctness, the rules of grammar, and its limited objectives, is
that it lacked the socio-cultural dimension. Little thought seems to have been
given to the notion of appropriateness, to the way that language behaviour is
responsive to differing social situations. It is one of the great values of
modern language teaching that it adopts a more social approach to language,
and it is concerned with the problems of its communicative function.
The relevance of the linguistic approach to language teaching is too obvious
to need much discussion here. One point must be mentioned, however.
Modern teachers of language are actually teaching their students not only the
language but also about language. Modern linguistics requires that a
grammar should accord with a native speakers intuitions about language.
This formulates a new goal for linguistic theory. Now linguists describe
what native speakers conceive to be the nature of their language. The
emphasis has shifted from the nature of language data to the nature of the
human capacity, which makes it possible to produce the language data.
Some linguists, Chomsky among them, would claim that the objectives of
the linguistic study of language have always implicitly been the
characterization of the internalized set of rules by a speaker-hearer (and
learner) when he uses language. Such linguists do not study what people do
when they speak and understand language, but seek to discover the rules
underlying this performance. This is what Chomsky calls competence
(1966a, 9): "A distinction must be made between what the speaker of a
language knows implicitly (what we may call his competence) and what he
does (his performance). A grammar, in the traditional view, is an account of
competence".
The speakers competence, then, can be characterized as a set of rules for
producing and understanding sentences in a language. The grammar of a
language, thus, in its linguistic sense, is a characterization of the native
Whole Language, Whole Person: A Handbook of Language Teaching Methodology
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aspects of language, from phonology (if a language has nasal vowels, it will
have non-nasal vowels) to word meanings (if a language has a word for
purple, it will also have a word for red; if a language has a word for leg,
it will also have a word for arm).
The knowledge of the existence of language universals may save some
procedures of comparison between the mother tongue and the foreign
language taught. In the second place, it can be part of the teaching material
(mostly implicitly) and the methods of explanation.
(3) Linguistics in Structuring the Syllabus
A finished syllabus (cf. Chapter 4) is the overall plan for the learning
process. It must specify what components must be available, or learned by a
certain time line; what is the most efficient sequence in which they are
learned; what items can be learned simultaneously; what items are already
known.
The structure of language is a system of systems, or a network of
interrelated categories, no part of which is wholly independent or wholly
dependent upon another. In language, nothing is learned completely until
everything is learned. If this is so, then no simple linear sequence for a
syllabus is appropriate. A logical solution to this problem seems to be a
cyclic, or spiral, structure, which requires the learner to return time and
again to some aspects of language structure, language process, or domain of
language use. Language learning is not just cumulative, it is an integrative
process. In Chapter 4, we shall offer a new approach to syllabus/curriculum
design.
The major problem that faces us in syllabus organisation is whether to take
the formal criteria as dominant, leaving alternative ways of expressing the
same idea to some other part of the syllabus, or to base our grouping on
semantic criteria. The teaching of modal verbs is a perfect example of the
dilemma. Should we bring all alternative ways of expressing necessity,
obligation, possibility and probability, etc. together into separate single
units? In other words, are we going to regard modal verbs, or alternatively
the expression of obligation, as a syllabus item?
There is no simple answer to this problem. The more we take account of
semantic considerations, the more evident it becomes that the relationship
Whole Language, Whole Person: A Handbook of Language Teaching Methodology
30
between meaning and surface form is a complex and indirect one. At the
time when less attention was paid to the whole problem of meaning, and
language learning was thought of as a matter of acquiring the ability to
produce automatically sentence patterns, it was logical (or was it?) to
group materials in a syllabus on the basis of superficial formal criteria. But
with the increasing emphasis on language learning as training the learner in
communication, the relevance of semantic criteria in organising the
linguistic material increases. We are now trying to classify the linguistic
material in terms of more abstract semantic categories as time, deixis,
modality, aspectuality, futurity, possession, quantification, causation, etc.
We have seen that the systematic interconnectedness of language makes it
unrealistic to think of any item as teachable or learnable in isolation. We
should consider an item in a more general way, i.e. as a process, or as some
grammatical category, such as tense or number.
(a) The syntactic syllabus
Nowadays, descriptions of language give us a relatively satisfactory account
of the structure of the system to be learned, that is, a characterisation of the
formation rules of the language. But we are concerned with more than this
in language teaching we are concerned with performance ability. There are
some general types of syntactic processes, such as nominalisation,
relativisation or thematisation, passivisation, interrogativisation, negation,
which could be regarded as items of performance ability in a syllabus.
Linguistically speaking, all these involve performing certain operations.
(b) The morphological syllabus
The most frequent claim for the appropriate application of sequencing,
otherwise denied in principle, is made at the level of morphology. For
example, the verb "to have" and "to be" are used as auxiliaries in the
formation of perfect or progressive aspect. Most logically, we must present
and teach these verbs before introducing the formation of these aspectual
forms. This seems a good argument until we specify what we mean by
'teaching' the verbs to have and to be. Learning a verb involves not only
discovering the relations in enters into with nominals, whether it is transitive
or copulative, but also learning the morphological system together with their
associated meanings: time, duration, completion, frequency, etc. The
learning of something must surely involve the ability to use it acceptably, i.e.
Whole Language, Whole Person: A Handbook of Language Teaching Methodology
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metaphors are strongly memorable. This is due to the fact that they furnish
conceptually rich, image-evoking conceptualisations. Metaphorical vehicles
facilitate memory to the extent that they evoke vivid mental images. One
question that is central to language learning is whether the occurrence of
imagery with metaphor is simply epiphenomenal to its comprehension or a
key element in understanding and memorising the meaning. Various
empirical studies on the communicative function of metaphor suggest a
number of possibilities about the positive influence of metaphor on learning.
In the next chapter, we shall look at the development of language teaching
methods in the twentieth century.
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The first half of the century was dominated by the teaching method, which is
known as Direct Language Teaching or Direct Method (DM). It emerged as
a result of the language education reform movement at the end of the
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nineteenth century and was prominent until the middle of the twentieth
century.
At the beginning of the century, the DM became the only officially approved
method for the teaching of modern foreign languages in France through a
decree of the French Minister of Public Instruction (1902). The term, which
was used in the decree, was "methode directe". The method was soon
established in many European countries and was used with enthusiasm by its
proponents. Some of the commercial ventures in the area were very
successful and became quite popular. For example, in 1878, the German
born Maximilian Delphinus Berlitz opened his first language school in
Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.A. Today, Berlitz Languages Inc.
(www.berlitz.com/free) is still thriving.
Direct Method is of course only a general term, which covers a range of
different teaching methods. We shall mention two of them, which have been
influencing language methodology to present. In 1923, Harold Palmer
developed his Oral Method to be adapted some fifty years later in the
innovative approaches of the 1970s as the Total Physical Response Method
(Asher 1977, 1982). The second one, Michael Wests Reading Method, was
designed in 1926. And only two years ago, Stephen Krashen revived it in the
method, which he named the Easy Way (1997).
The basic premise of the DM is that a second language should be taught by
making a direct connection in the mind of the learner between what he
thinks and what he says. In other words, no use is made of the learner's own
language. Thus, the target language becomes both the aim and the means of
the teaching and learning process. The following list sums up eight salient
features of direct language teaching:
Teaching is executed orally through the medium of the target language.
Teachers should be either native speakers or extremely fluent in the target
language.
Grammar is taught inductively by situation.
Concrete vocabulary is taught in context through ostensive definition and
pictures.
Abstract vocabulary is taught through association of ideas.
Language skills are ordered in a natural way: listening, speaking,
reading and writing.
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The next stage of development started with the decade of 1940 to 1950 and
continued until the mid-seventies. Language teachers and the general public
were dissatisfied with the methodological theory and practice of the previous
era. For example, Leonard Bloomfield (1942) stated, Often enough the
student, after two, three, or four years of instruction, cannot really use the
language he has been studying. In 1943, The American Army initiated the
Army Specialized Training Program (hence, "Army Method") to teach
intensive language courses that focused on aural/oral skills. The revolution
in language teaching of that period created a new methodological ideology,
which came to be known in the late fifties as the Audio-lingual Method
(ALM). According to the U.S. Army Language School in California, 1300
hours are sufficient for an adult to attain near-native competence in
Vietnamese (Burke, quoted in Reich 1986).
Two major scientific theories were applied as methodological principles:
linguistic structuralism (e.g. Bloomfield 1933) and psychological neobehaviorism (e.g. Skinner 1957). The proponents of the ALM believed that
language learning was a process of habit formation in which the student
over-learned carefully sequenced lists of set phrases or "base sentences".
Whole Language, Whole Person: A Handbook of Language Teaching Methodology
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passiveness. They listen to the dialogues being read aloud with varying
intonations and a coordination of sound and printed word or illustration. The
students are expected to read the texts at home cursorily once before going
to bed and again before getting up in the morning (Lozanov 1972).
In Charles Currans method (1976), Community Language Learning,
learners become members of a community - their fellow learners and the
teacher - and learn through interacting with the members of that community.
The teacher considers learners as whole persons with intellect, feelings,
instincts and a desire to learn. The teacher also recognizes that learning can
be threatening. By understanding and accepting students fears, the teacher
helps students feel secure and overcome their fears. The syllabus used is
learner-generated, in that students choose what they want to learn to say in
the target language. Learning is linked to a set of practices granting
consensual validation in which mutual warmth and a positive evaluation
of the other persons worth develops between the teacher and the learner
(Curran 1976).
James Ashers Total Physical Response (1977) places primary importance
on listening comprehension, emulating the early stages of native language
acquisition, and then moving to speaking, reading and writing. Asher (1977)
claims that the brain and nervous system are biologically programmed to
acquire language in a particular sequence and in a particular mode. The
sequence is listening before speaking and the mode is to synchronize
language with the individuals body. Students practice their comprehension
by acting out commands issued by the teacher. Activities, including games
and skits, are designed to be fun and to allow students to assume active
learning roles.
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countries" (Trim 1980, 5). It marks the appearance of a new approach, the
so-called Communicative Language Teaching or the Communicative
Approach (CA). John Trim (1980, 5), Director of the Modern Languages
Project, writes, "the Threshold Level is remarkable for the systematic way in
which the language behavior appropriate to the defined target audience is
specified in its various interrelated parameters".
Since then, the Threshold Level documents for many European languages
have been published, e.g., in alphabetical order, the threshold levels for
French, Un Niveau Seuil (1976), for German, Kontaktschwelle. Deutsch als
Fremdsprache (1981), for Spanish, Un nivel umbral (1981), for Portuguese,
Nivel Limiar (1988), etc. Information on those documents is available on the
web-site: (http://book.coe.fr/lang). On the European level, the most recent work
in this area is the document of the Council of Europe entitled A Common
European Framework of Reference for Language Learning and Teaching
(publicly accessible on the web-site: http://culture.coe.fr/lang). We shall return
to it in Section 4.4.
Many scholars have contributed to the development of the CA. For example,
Dell Hymes introduced the construct of communicative competence in his
famous paper, On Communicative Competence (1971). He explores the
influence of the social context in which a language is learnt on the linguistic
competence, which the individual attains. Hymes claims that a normal child
acquires knowledge of sentences, not only as grammatical, but also as
appropriate. He or she acquires competence as to when to speak, when not,
and as to what to talk about with whom, when, where, in what manner. In
short, a child becomes able to accomplish a repertoire of speech acts, to take
part in speech events, and to evaluate their accomplishment by others
(1971, 269). In the cited paper, he asks his famous four questions of
communication culture:
1. Whether (and to what degree) something is formally possible;
2. Whether (and to what degree something is feasible in virtue of the means
of implementation available;
3.Whether (and to what degree) something is appropriate (adequate, happy,
successful) in relation to a context in which it is used and evaluated;
4. Whether (and to what degree) something is in fact done, actually
performed, and what its doing entails. (Hymes 1971, 281)
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All that facilitated the development of the theory and practice of language
teaching giving it a strong impetus.
Today, numerous methodology textbooks expound on the nature of
communicative language teaching. All the work that has been done on the
CA has led to the evolvement of two quite distinct orientations: a weak
version and a strong version of the method. Anthony Howatt (1984, 279)
holds that if the former could be described as learning to use the target
language, the latter entails using [the target language] to learn it. The weak
version advances the claim that communicative syllabi and teaching
materials should provide the learner with opportunities to acquire
communicative competence necessary and sufficient to be used in actual
communication. This idea is the basis for the unfolding of a whole new field
of study in language teaching methodology, referred to as communicative
syllabus design, which we shall discuss separately. Howatt (1984, 280)
writes that language teaching requires a closer study of the language itself
and a return to the traditional concept that utterances carried meaning in
themselves and expressed the meanings and the intentions of the speakers
and writers who created them.
The strong version of the CA, on the other hand, has given rise to the
planning and implementation of realistic communicative tasks, which give
44
the learner a chance to acquire the target language itself while using it. The
proponents of the strong version did not go to the radical solution of
deschooling language learning altogether but they advocated real
communication within the language classroom. If the teacher shows genuine
interest in the concerns and activities of the students, and if the students can
talk to each other and share their thoughts and feelings, real communication
is likely to occur.
The CA stresses the need to teach communicative competence, i.e. the
ability to use the target language effectively and appropriately, as opposed to
linguistic competence. Thus, language functions are emphasized over
language forms. Students usually work in small groups on communicative
activities, during which they receive practice in negotiating meaning.
Authentic teaching materials are used. Opportunities are provided for the
students to deal with unrehearsed situations under the guidance, not control,
of the teacher. The teachers role changes from being the sage on the stage
to becoming a guide on the side (Mowrer 1996). Ken Goodman
(Goodman et al. 1991) expands on this idea, suggesting four roles for
teachers: (1) kid-watchers, who observe the students, watching for signs of
growth, need and potential, (2) mediators, who offer guidance, support and
resources for learning, (3) liberators, who help students take ownership of
their own learning, and finally, (4) initiators, who rely on their professional
knowledge and creativity to create exciting learning environments.
The following list sums up eight salient features of communicative language
teaching:
Communicative competence is the desired goal (learning to use).
Minimum general intelligibility is sought in the teaching of
pronunciation.
Use of the native language and translation is accepted where feasible.
Fluency is emphasized over accuracy.
Students cooperate in the classroom, using the language in unrehearsed
contexts (using to learn).
Systematic attention is paid to functional as well as structural aspects of
language.
Drilling occurs peripherally.
Discourse is at the center of attention.
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
Students brainstorm an idea for a while and then all teams pair up and
interview each other.
Pairs Check. Teams break into two sets of pairs each of which works on a
worksheet. One student is the problem solver and the other one is the coach.
The coach helps and checks his or her partners work. After a while, the
teams reunite and the pairs on the team compare answers. If the team
disagrees, they ask the teacher to help them. If the team agrees on the
answer, they do a team handshake. Pairs Check is a particularly good
structure for practicing new skills.
Numbered Heads Together. This is a four-step cooperative structure, which
can be used with any language teaching content and at various places in a
lesson:
(1) Students number off,
(2) Teacher asks a question,
(3) Heads together,
(4) Teacher calls a number.
Each student on a team has a different number. He or she will answer to that
number when it is called. The teacher formulates a question as a directive,
e.g. Make sure everyone on your team can The students put their heads
together and discuss the question until everyone knows the answer. After a
while, the teacher will call a number at random and the students with that
number raise their hands to be called upon, as in the traditional classroom.
Co-op Co-op. The emphasis in this structure is on bringing out and
nourishing the natural intelligence, creativeness and expressiveness of
students. In Co-op Co-op, the structure indicates that we value the interests
and abilities of the students. This cooperative language learning structure has
ten steps:
57
58
59
60
4.1. Constructivism
Constructivism is a theory of leaning and instruction that emphasizes the
real-world complexity and ill-structuredness of many knowledge domains
(Spiro et al. 1992, 57). Constructivist view of cognition contends that
learning is a process of personal interpretation of experience and
construction of knowledge. Constructivists adopt the notion of Wittgenstein
Whole Language, Whole Person: A Handbook of Language Teaching Methodology
61
62
Transmission Orientation:
Language Decomposed,
Knowledge Inert,
Learning Hierarchical internalization from simple to complex.
Critical Orientation:
Language Meaningful,
Knowledge Catalytic,
Learning Joint interactive construction through critical inquiry within the
zone of proximal development.
63
64
The authors wrote, The series assumes that students have already
completed a basic course in English and that they have some knowledge of
their specialist subject. This course is therefore intended for students []
who already know how to handle the common English sentence patterns and
who need to learn how these sentences are used in scientific writing to
convey information (op. cit.). The course had a great success because the
approach adopted was new.
Peter Strevens outlined the new orientations in the teaching of English and
of any language for that matter in the mid-seventies. Some ten years before,
he had published one of the most successful audio-lingual textbooks, English
901 (see Section 1.2.). The times had changed though. Strevens argued,
Broadly defined, ESP courses are those in which the aims and the content
are determined, principally or wholly, not by criteria of general education
(as when English is a foreign language subject in school) but by functional
and practical English language requirements of the learner (Strevens 1977,
90). This was certainly new a quarter of a century ago but today we find the
conjecture rather misleading.
It seems to us, at this junction, that the methodological opposition of
general purposes to specific purposes in language teaching is inadequate
and inappropriate. We do not think that the aims and the content are
determined a priori by any criteria. They cannot be precompiled or
prepackaged. We can discern two arguments in the literature to support this
strong claim. One refers to the fact that language teaching is a complex
process characterized by network of relationships in a social and cultural
context and the other to the idea that language teaching is an ill-structured
knowledge domain. We claim that a holistic approach, which emphasizes
the priority of the whole over its parts, can solve the problem of curriculum
design.
In that respect, an improvement on the theory of curriculum design has been
offered by Rand Spiro and his colleagues at the University of Illinois in their
theory of Random Access Instruction (Spiro et al. 1992). We shall discuss
this theory in the next section.
65
66
Complex and ill-structured domains have two properties: (a) each case or
example of knowledge application typically involves the simultaneous
interactive involvement of multiple, wide-application conceptual structures
(multiple schemas, perspectives, organizational principles and so on), each
of which is individually complex (i.e. the domain involves concept- and
case-complexity); and (b) the pattern of conceptual incidence and interaction
varies substantially across cases nominally of the same type (i.e. the domain
involves across-case irregularity) (Spiro et al. 1992, 60). For example, basic
grammar is well structured, while the process of applying grammar rules in
real-world communication is ill structured.
Random Access Instruction can be represented by the metaphor of a
rhizome, spreading in all directions. It was first used by Gilles Deleuze and
Felix Guattari in the book On the Line as a method of organizing
information (quoted in Burbules 1997). Seppo Tella uses it to describe open
learning environments based on a communal educational value system. He
maintains that it [rhizome] transmits the idea of something growing,
something developing, yet it gives ample scope for individual action and
decision-making and suggests that a rhizome is a rhizome is a rhizome
(Tella et al. 1998, 132). Nicholas Burbules (1997, 3) holds that Each
particular step or link within a rhizomatic whole can be conceived as a line
between two points, but the overall pattern is not linear, because there is no
beginning and end, no center and periphery, to be traced.
Random Access Instruction is a rhizomatic system. It can be applied in the
design of nonlinear learning environments, which we shall present in the
next section.
67
68
69
Personal
domain
Pragmati
c
compone
nt
Receptio
n
Linguisti
c
compone
nt
Educatio
nal
domain
Socioling
uistic
compone
nt
Productio
n
Empty
because
model is
open
Public
domain
Interactio
n
Occupati
onal
domain
Mediatio
n
Figure 3: The KSH curriculum model, including the nodes and links of
communicative language competence, language activities, domains, etc.
70
71
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