English Language Didactics

UNT – Facultad de Filosofía y Letras

1er Parcial – May 26, 2016

English Language Didactics

Name: ______

SOURCE A:

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Let us now turn our attention to the teaching of grammar in line with the traditional methodology. Tharp, in his article ‘Modern Foreign Languages,’ introduces us to this issue by pointing out that the “emphasis was placed on the formal side of the language” (Tharp 49). After analysing the way people speak, the professionals came to the conclusion articulated by Broughton at al in their book Teaching English as a Foreign Language that “the actual choice of words and their arrangement is new virtually every time we produce an utterance ([with] a very small list of exceptions). [...] The only way to explain the process of making new sentences by analogy involves the notion of observing the regularities (rules, patterns, structure) underlying them and working out how to operate them to generate new sentences” (Broughton 45). Richards adds that “it was assumed that language learning meant building up a large repertoire of sentences and grammatical patterns and learning to produce these accurately and quickly in the appropriate situation” (Richards 6).

Based on the above mentioned opinions is “the traditional view that the English language consisted of a battery of grammatical rules and a vocabulary book” (Broughton 39). On the basis of this conclusion, the traditional methodology arose. In his book The ELT Curriculum, Ronald V. White highlights the consequences of handling the language in this grammar governed way. He reminds us that traditional methodology does not present the language as a means of communication. Rather, this approach to teaching conceives “language [as] a body of esteemed information to be learned, with an emphasis on intellectual rigor” (White 8). Briefly, the traditional approach shows language primarily from the rule-governed point of view and concentrates on the knowledge of grammar and items of vocabulary. It is supposed that a person who knows the rules and the lexis is able to understand and speak the target language.

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Source: Boumová, Bc. Viera (2008). Traditional vs Modern Teaching Methods: Advantages and Disadvantages of each – Master’s Diploma Thesis. Masaryk University Faculty of Arts.

Extracted May 26, 2016

SOURCE B:

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Integrating semantic and formal syllabuses

In discussions of communicative teaching, a good deal of confusion is caused by invalid generalizations. For instance, people often talk as if language courses had much the same shape at all levels from beginners' to advanced. In fact, the relative importance of the various syllabuses, and especially of the grammar component, varies crucially with level. It is fashionable to criticize old-style courses for being excessively concerned with teaching structure, and there is certainly some truth in the criticism. But it really applies only to lower-level courses (where grammar must in any case get a good deal of attention, even if this can easily go too far). At more advanced levels language textbooks have rarely given very much space to grammar: more typical concerns have traditionally been vocabulary-building, the teaching of reading and writing skills, literature and other

'cultural' matters, and the encouragement of discussion.

Equally, the role of' ‘grammar' in language courses is often discussed as if 'grammar' were one homogeneous kind of thing. In fact, 'grammar' is an umbrella term for a large number of separate or loosely related language systems, which are so varied in nature that it is pointless to talk as if they should all be approached in the same way. How we integrate the teaching of structure and meaning will depend to a great extent on the particular language items involved. Some structural points present difficulties of form as well as meaning (for example interrogative and negative structures; comparison of adjectives; word order in phrasal verbs). As I have already suggested, it may be best to deal with such problems of form before students do communicative work on notions or functions in which they will have to mix these structures with others. Other grammar points are less problematic, and can be taught simultaneously with work on a relevant notion or function. (For instance, students might learn to use can in the context of a lesson on offering, or requesting, or talking about ability, ease and difficulty.) Some functions and notions may be expressible entirely through structures which are already known: if students have learnt imperatives and simple (clauses, and if they can make basic co-ordinate sentences, then they are already in a position to give warnings. Yet other functions and notions are expressed mainly through lexis, with no special grammatical considerations of any importance (for instance greeting, leave-taking, thanking, speed, size). How we organize a given lesson will therefore depend very much on the specific point we want to teach. A good language course is likely to include lessons which concentrate on particular structures, lessons which deal with areas of vocabulary, lessons on functions, situation-based lessons, pronunciation lessons, lessons on productive and receptive skills, and several other kinds of component. Many lessons will deal with more than one of these things at the same time. Designing a language course involves reconciling a large number of different and often conflicting priorities, and it is of little use to take one aspect of the language (structures, notions/functions, or anything else) and to use this systematically as a framework for the whole of one's teaching.

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Source: Swan, Michael (1985). ‘A critical look at the Communicative Approach (2)’ ELT Journal Volume 39/2

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Global English teaching and the ELT profession

I have proposed that English language teaching, like globalization itself, does not need to be seen to bring only negative consequences. This is not to deny that English language teaching agencies, in particular some international publishers, have sometimes quite explicitly taken a market view of English language teaching as a commodity. There is some justification for the view expressed by Phillipson and SkuttnabKangas (1999) that Eastern Europe has become the new postcolonial world... Asked to comment on recent English language teaching projects in Eastern and Central Europe Widdowson talks of there being ‘rather too much of people coming in from the ourside “bringing in the good news” with scant knowledge of local traditions of scholarship and education’ (Widdowson, quoted in Thomas 1999; 125). However, our resistance as language teachers need not be to the teaching of the language itself so much as to the grosser kinds of cultural and linguistic imperialism which continues to characterize some ELT discourse and practices. The reductive thrust of this, as argued above, fails to make available to learners an English which can serve the ‘writing back’ or ‘talking back’ function of critique. The answer, however, is not to throw in the towel but to do th job better, whether as language teachers or as teacher educators.

If we accept the need to deal with the realities of the globalization of English in the broad ways outlined above, what more specific implications arise in terms of the kinds of second language learners we teach in different contexts and the way we might draw on, adapt or reject prevailing methodologies and materials?

One effect of a general ideological preference for specificity and localization is the identification of subgroups of learners, the development of specific competencies of the kinds noted by Said [that restrict “communication to immediate, utilitarian contexts, such as learning the language to work for airlines or banks,” i.e. English consigned to “the level of a technical language stripped of expressive and aesthetic characteristics and denuded of any critical or self/conscious dimension. You learned English to use computers, respond to orders… decipher manifests and so forth. That was all.”], and a consequent proliferation of specialist fields in ELT: ESP, EAP and, particularly in British ELT discourse, the long-standing division between EFL and ESL While EFL/ESL divide makes sense in school contexts, where children of immigrant or refugee families are receiving their schooling through the medium of English rather than learning it as a subject in the curriculum, in some adult learning contexts in Britain the value of the distinction is more dubious. Is it based on outdated and essentialist assumptions that there are two clearly defined groups: one being short-stay students, mainly from European countries, and the second, refugees or asylum seekers who are judged to have different educational needs, even though these same students may in an earlier era have found themselves in the EFL ‘European’ group. In a recent study of one London Further Education college, Cooke (2000) found that the so-called ESL learners are currently likely to be asylum seekers or refugees from many parts of the world. They are assumed, in many instances quite wrongly, to have low educational levels and consequently judged to have literacy problems. Moreover, their supposed literacy needs are addressed with competence-based instruction and assessment a clear example of Street’s autonomous literacy pedagogy at work. The EFL ‘European’ group in the same college study with a standard global text-book, which is reductive in a different way, offering what we might call the three Ds view of consumerist EFL culture, dinner parties, dieting and dating, and reflecting the preoccupations of the textbook writers rather than their likely readers. Indeed, as Gray also notes, one of the ironies of the so-called ‘global’ textbook is its typically narrow and parochial discourse. Consequently neither the group designated ‘EFL’ nor that designated ‘ESL’ is offered quality English language teaching provision, which, I am arguing here, is educationally demanding, rooted in literate language and designed to prepare students for longer term and relatively unpredictable needs as continuing learners and users of English.

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Source: Wallace, Catherine (2002). ‘Local literacies and global literacy.’ Chapter 6 in Globalization and Language Teaching. D. Block and D. Cameron Eds. London: Routledge p.108-109.