Advanced Level Learners

Objectives for teaching listening and reading to advanced learners of English

[A] Definition of objectives for LISTENING at ADVANCED LEVEL (taken from B. Carroll, British Council):

See the English Speaking Union Framework by Brendan Carrol & Richard West (1989). Contains performance scales for different LEVELS and SKILLS - therefore good for specifying objectives and defining standards in lesson planning, syllabus or test design.

1. SIZE [Large]: Can understand a lecture, talk or extended dialogue, a conversation, a set of instructions, a documentary film, a commentary or radio/TV news, can use telephone well.

SIZE : BBC English Magazine, Video "Airport"
2. COMPLEXITY [High]: Can cope with several major points, each with subsidiaries. Can cope with noise, gaps and irrelevances and if speaker not seen. Appreciate detail and use of discourse markers

COMPLEXITY: Tony Hancock's "Blood Donor"; "Listening Comprehension & Note-taking" Jordan
3. RANGE [Wide]: Can handle a wide range of forms, tones, skills and functions presented orally, discussions on articles from newspapers, current affairs, humanities, editorial comment

RANGE: Try with Panorama programme, BBC English Magazine Current Affairs, Interviews outside; outside speakers
4.

SPEED [Normal]: Can keep up with normal lecture at conversation speed

5. FLEXIBILITY [Good]: Can cope with varied rates of delivery, types of voice, variety of accents; switches in topic or interpolations.

FLEXIBILITY: Try with audio-cassette recordings from English Accents and Dialects by Hughes and Trudgill (Edward Arnold 1979) or from International English - A Guide to Varieties of Standard English by Trudgill and Hannah (Edward Arnold 1982). The BBC released a long playing record: English with an Accent, though you should have enough foreign accents in your school if you are learning English in a multilingual class. I believe the BBC also released an LP: English with a Dialect.
6. ACCURACY [Good]: Can interpret accurately lexical and grammatical usage and the meaning of variations of tone and stress pattern

7. APPROPRIACY [Good]: Understands features of contemporary British style; many colloquialisms and idioms; the more widely used slang and regional expressions.

APPROPRIACY: Try with Alf Garnett, Eastenders or Coronation Street
8. INDEPENDENCE [High] Only needs reference sources for unusual or special terms; may query speaker in obscure or confusing presentation and uses such reference effectively.

9. REPETITION [Little]

No need to ask for repetition in ordinary topics presented under normal conditions at normal speed.
10. HESITATION [Normal]:

Understands coherent presentation, but hesitation by speaker may be as confusing as it is to a native speaker.

[B] Definition of objectives for READING from John Munby's Communicative Syllabus Design.

1. Script
2. Inference/Deduction (Cloze)
3. Explicit & Implied information
4. Sentence relations between parts of text
5. Reference / Discourse markers (nominalization, synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, derivatives, logical cohesion
6. Reader experience
7. Main idea & supporting detail, ranking, sorting into propositional content (note-taking from reading, precis & summary)
8. Extracting salient points
9. Basic reference skills (skimming and scanning, jumbled paragraphs)

[C] Advanced learners can be categorized in terms of:

* examinations
* educational backgrounds
* balance of different skills
* What are their targets?
* Will they have to write essays, letters, reports, messages, instructions?
* Will they need to attend conferences, give lectures?

The importance of Stylistic and Functional Analyses in teaching at advanced levels

Stylistic Analysis

See (below) Investigating English Style by David Crystal and Derek Davy for a linguistic model which will allow you to analyse as special variety of English.

Advanced level learners often find themselves in positions of employment where English is important and where much is expected from them. Language school teachers will normally have the competence to help these learners with general aspects of register (e.g. politeness; appropriate forms of address), but will not necessarily know much about professional varieties of English.

Native speaker entering new work environments would need time to adjust to new language needs within their own cultures. English teachers are no exception.

A probable shortcoming of many of the expensive 1:1 courses offered in UK language schools is that teachers do not normally have more than a weekend's preparation time to gather materials appropriate to the varieties of English needed by their next clients and to familiarize themselves with new professional registers.

A teacher can prepare for these demands by spending some of their training in investigating English Style: e.g. the languages of advertising, marketing, banking, finance, economics, religion, literature, science, engineering, nursing, medicine, public administration, politics, air traffic control, tourism, hotel reception & hospitality, news, television, computing, telephony etc.

To learn a new professional register requires considerably more than a knowledge of new words. Stylistic Analysis looks at every level of language: phonetic (e.g. alliteration is important to politicians, advertisers and marketing executives), phonological, graphetic (e.g. lay-out in important in news and TV graphics departments), graphological, morphological, syntactic, grammatical, semantic and pragmatic.

Teachers are unlikely to have done much formal stylistic analysis unless they have chosen it as an option e.g. on a Masters Degree Course in Applied Linguistics.

Investigating English Style by David Crystal and Derek Davy

This work provides a model which linguists have been using from the late 1960s to describe special varieties of English, giving attention to phonology and syntax as well as lexis. The authors are aware of functional critera, though language courses based on notional functional criteria mainly follow the publication of D. A. Wilkins' "Notional Syllabuses" in 1976. However, Crystal and Davy's model of analysis continues to be very useful.

Describing Language by David Graddol, Jenny Cheshire and Joan Swann

The chapters of this book, which is useful across many social sciences, include the nature of language, the sounds of language, sentence and word structure, meaning, writing systems, face-to-face interaction and discourse and text. I covered these areas in some detail in an MA course in Second Language Learning and Teaching, ten years before this useful book was available. Professor Jenny Cheshire supervised my MA thesis, which was a stylistic analysis of the language of political party election manifestos. More recently, learners in UK Secondary Schools have been challenged with the task of textual or stylistic analysis as part of their English language project work. Previously, A-level English more commonly involved the study of English Literature rather than language. "Describing Language" provides a valuable resource, which makes linguistic description more accessible to Secondary as well as Higher Education. There has long been talk of bringing language awareness into the Secondary School curriculum, but there has been a shortage of really good materials on linguistic description. This title has helped to fill the gap.

Functional Analysis

See (below) John Munby's Communicative Syllabus Design to see what expensive language schools would have time to do in an ideal world.

In addition to LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS, familiarity with both general and specific varieties of English requires considerable FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS.

Language schools get round this by making time in some 1:1 courses for NEEDS ANALYSIS. Part of this is often getting the learner to explain the roles which he or she has to perform using English.

The well-travelled ESP teacher, who has had many different postings, may be able to cover the generalities of a 'Sales' or 'Credit Control' department.

A few companies recruit their own English language teachers directly. If teachers remain in such postings for a second year, they will then have the opportunity to get down to specific language registers and to prepare their lesson materials according to the needs of the workplace.

Too often, companies use local language schools to supply their teachers, paying well for staff who are often underpaid by their employers. This system is advantageous should a teacher fall ill or need to be substituted quickly, but does not provide the settled position which would motivate a teacher to make themselves a specialist in a particular workplace.

Communicative Syllabus Design by John L. Munby.

John Munby's model (dating from the 1970s) for specifying syllabus design may look like overkill, but the book is a milestone in the history of ESP teaching and it certainly illustrates all the factors at play in situations where special varieties of language are used.

Further tools for functional analysis

Threshold Level 1990: Modern Languages

Waystage 1990: Council of Europe

"Threshold Level" and "Waystage" are the syllabus specifications set by the Council of Europe for modern language courses at the intermediate level and pre- intermediate levels respectively. Both sets of guidelines have been used by experts (e.g. linguists at the University of Reading in Berkshire!) who are called upon to help large companies and ministries of education in the design of their language curriculums. The needs analysis checklists provided in "Threshold" and "Waystage" are probably easier to work with than John Munby's very detailed procedures. Threshold and Waystage were last updated in 1990, which means that they are due for further revision in the light of developments such as Internet access (access to authentic texts on countless topics) and better communication technology (improved access to audio and video). "Communicative Syllabus Design", "Threshold" and "Waystage" are very good documents to have available when designing any special language syllabus. Search engines, available now to both teachers and learners, can locate masses of text, audio and video. However, needs analysis checklists have an important part to play in determining suitable search strings. To use a familiar analogy, digital TV owners now enjoy a choice of countless broadcast channels. The onus is no longer on quantity, but on quality.

Goals and strategies in teaching beginners & elementary learners

Teaching Beginners
(from a talk by Robert O'Neill circa 1980 post publication of "Kernel One")

Goals can be classified by TYPE and STATUS. See "Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives"

TYPE

1. Cognitive
2. Affective
3. Psycho-Motor

STATUS

1. Long term
2. Mid term
3. Short term.

Many basic mistakes are made by teachers because they do not pay enough attention to Affective Goals and they fail to distinguish sufficiently in their own teaching and analysis of other people's teaching and materials between long/mid/short term goals.

Strategies: Expository

1. Explaining
2. Focussing
3. Problem-setting
4. Exemplification
5. Correcting and
6. Model-Giving
7. Summarising.

Strategies: Eliciting

1. Questions
2. Drilling
3. Role-Simulation
4. Repetition
5. Recall
6. Modelling
7. Silence

Strategies: Integrative

1. Linking lesson-segments to lessons
2. Linking lesson-segments to blocks of lessons
3. Linking blocks of lessons to overall goals
4. Establishing rapport with the class
5. Establishing rapport and interaction between members of the class.


TEACHING BEGINNERS: with reference to Robert O'Neill's Kernel One 1978 Longman SB 51925 X TB 51926 8

Two basically different approaches to teaching beginners:

Approach One:

1. Select simple structures and vocabulary
2. Move from one step to the next slowly and carefully
3. emphasize accuracy throughout.

Approach Two:

1. Select only according to strict functional criteria
2. Present & practise variety of structures and lexis in one lesson
3. Emphasize fluency rather than accuracy.

Staged Progression (Kernel One):

1. What's your name? My name is..
2. What time is it? (1-6 o'clock)
3. What's his/her name?
4. What time is it? (7-12 o'clock)
5. Is/isn't a city/country ... is/isn't a big/small country ... is in ...
6. He/she is in ... Is he/she in..? Yes/No is/isn't
7. .. is a big/small country/city
8. Are you in..? Yes, I am/ No, I'm not.
9. He/She is from.....
10. Where's ...from?
11. Where are you from? I'm from..
12. Are you from..? Yes, I am. No, I'm not.
13. ... is near... It's a town/city
14. He/She has got a bike/ small/big car.
15. What about you? I've got a...
16. I haven't got a.. He/She hasn't got a
17. Have you got a Has he got a phone/flat/house/bike?
18. Numbers 12-100.

Themes and Operations to be distributed throughout the course:

1. Talking about ones job, salary, colleagues
2. Describing ones own flat or house, giving such information as address, telephone number, how to get to where one lives
3. Describing ones own hobbies & interests
4. Getting information from others in reference to three above themes
5. Getting and giving opinions about films, books, clothes, food, other people's behaviour and tastes
6. Family, home and friends (describing relationships, "doing" socialising language)
7. Talking about, buying and ordering food & clothes
8. Making & getting suggestions about what to do, where to go in ones spare time
9. Giving & soliciting advice
10. Giving & getting instructions about how to do things.
11. Describing ones daily habits and routine.
12. Describing other states such as certainty, uncertainty and doubt = expressing such things directly. Describing and inquiring about Cause and Effect in various areas
13. Health, minor illnesses
14. Language associated with travel.

TOPIC: Some examples of typical goals for elementary learners categorised according to status or term.

1. SHORT TERM Teach a few examples of the most frequent questions we use to get information from and about other people's jobs, nationality, where/live
2. MID TERM Building on Wh corpus above, extend outwards to other functions such as inquiring into cause, asking about likes/dislikes. At the same time begin to contrast systematically the difference in construction between simple & progressive Qs.
3. LONG TERM Help the learner towards generative competence in Giving & Getting information about oneself & other people, asking for things, suggesting things, offering & refusing things. Relate these utterances to the structural principles underlying them:
* Tense
* Word Order
* Modality.

This will involve contrasting utterances like -

* Can/Do/Did you (do)?
* Are/Were you (doing)?
* Have you (done) (been ....ing)?

Reading in the Second Language Class

Reading in a second language is not the same as text study

Reading - There is no one method, medium, approach, device or philosphy that holds the key to the process of learning to read.

DEVELOPMENT OF READING SKILLS

1. PRIMARY - The reader must learn to recognise the shape of separate letters, groups of letters and whole words and associate the appropriate sounds with these letters or collection of letters. To achieve this students must respond to SHAPE and ORIENTATION.
2. INTERMEDIATE - At this stage students must have the ability to handle sequences of letters and whole words and larger units of meaning which are essential skills for fluent readers.

ESSAY TITLE: Intermediate pupils who have been taught with the aid of courses based on intensive text study may often believe that reading English is a very different activity from reading in their own native language. Why is this so? What obstacles will it raise to their aquiring better reading skills in English and how would you tackle the problem of improving these skills?

Few people stop to analyse the skills used in the different kinds of reading they do in their native language. Most adult students of EFL are familiar with the Roman Script before they embark on English Language Courses. General coursebooks capitalize on this familiar ground by using written texts as the main vehicle for developing both spoken & written skills.

In the early stages of learning, the main aim is often to present and practise a body of lexis, grammatical forms and language functions. This serves to give students entry points into the new language - a simple core to assist in the communication (reception and expression) of basic concepts such as number, quantity, spatial relationships, time and modal meaning.

Practice of listening, speaking, reading and writing is often limited to the purpose of reinforcing this basic survival kit. It is hardly surprising that this emphasis on intensive text study fails to represent both the English heard & spoken and the English read & written outside the class. The limited treatment of listening and speaking skills is understandable, since face to face oral interaction is very difficult to script.

However, the failure to represent the kinds of reading we really do, given access to print, pictures and diagrams, becomes far less excusable after 200 hours of teaching.

Ideally, within the 200 hours, the simple text study model should make a growing concession to mid and long-term goals. We need to utilize the reading skills already developed in L1. Prolonged exposure to intensive "reading" of grammar/function/lexis/pronunciation study texts implies the neglect of a variety of text-types and the reading skills strategies required in different types of decoding. Language study texts are prose passages or dialogues in which items pre-selected by the course writer have been embedded. Contextualization of this kind provides mainly a pedagogical purpose for reading.

Outside the classroom students in LT environment encounter a variety of situations in which different reading purposes are inherent. The texts they may meet may include record cards, forms, immigration documents, notices, telephone directories, town plans, letters, tickets, timetables, price lists, menus, newspaper headlines and advertisements. The sum of these should activate many different reading strategies. Application of the equivalent reading strategies in L1 (where equivalents exist) will usually involve some form of cultural adaption, for example familiarization with the conventions of layout in LT or perhaps even knowledge of the London Underground system.

The section on "places" from "Reasons for Reading" (Davies & Whitney) gives good illustration of the cultural problems involved when reading for information. It deals with the London A-Z Street Atlas and index. South Gro. N6 - 3D 29 must never be confused with South Gro. E19 2B 32.

Text-types that can usefully be studied to aid in the transfer of reading skills, may include:

* a column of advertisments or a timetable for scanning
* a choice of readers for (i) skimming and (ii) the global activity of reading for pleasure.
* Time Magazine kept on coffee table

Note "Cue For a Drill" and "Task Listening" contain texts suitable for scanning or skimming, including:

1. horoscopes
2. price-lists
3. school reports
4. timetables

Other reading materials planted on coffee table could include:

1. colour brochures for self-catering holidays in rural England with price lists
2. leisure guides for London & the S.East
3. London bus maps
4. illustrated guides to the British Museum and Brighton's Royal Pavilion.
5. Winter Sports holiday brochures for skiing in Austria
6. Guides for the Young Traveller (Adult learners have children of school age who may make visits to countries where English is spoken or needed as a passport to travel)

When I teach English in the surroundings of the UK, I emphasize reading for information. I raid the Tourist Information Centre and the bus companies - maps of the Brighton Transport Area for bus and rail. The purpose behind the reading activity is motivated by both NEED and INTEREST. If an area of shared experience already exists (e.g. knowledge of/Interest in TOPIC), it is far more likely that the reading skills used in L1 will be activated.

Knowledge of topic can be discovered by seeing if students can anticipate the contents of the text from the title or a very brief outline of the subject. One of my worst lessons was centred round a text entitled "Centrifugal Governors" from The Structure of Technical English. The students who had been quite knowledgeable about Heat Treatment of Steel and Welding (since they all worked in a steelworks!) did little more than ask me to explain unknown items of lexis to enable them to understand the individual sentences.

A far better response was drawn from a text comparing life in a Stockholm suburb with life in the wilds of Sweden - few "unkowns" which the students didn't succeed in inferring. Their immediate interest showed that their reading was above sentence level. The rhetorical organisation of their discussion points - contrast and comparison related interestingly to the global content of the text. Unfamiliarity with and lack of interest in the topic seems to ensure that students fall back on the worst of their sentence level reading habits.

The question of why sentence level reading habits exist and the task of replacing them with better more global habits can be further examined with reference to the teacher's role in presenting reading texts. A distinction should be made between classroom procedures for efficient reading comprehension and those used in intensive text study. It is important that most READING TEXTS are SILENTLY READ to give students practice in skimming. This involves extracting salient details while discarding unimportant grammatical content.

Students who feel that reading English involves choral repetition after a model voice which booms "Say After Me" in a jolly British accent, may feel that the teacher who watches them read is not earning his keep. Indeed, teachers often have a sense of not playing their part unless they are conducting a chorus. Choral repetition of a text has two unfortunate effects:

1. Firstly, it gives a definite moment of attention to every word in the sentence. This does not happen in efficient silent reading. The efficient reader repeatedly skips words. Sometimes whole sentences can be anticipated and left unread.
2. Secondly, a person's natural purpose for reading rarely requires that every word or paragraph should be given equal attention or even read. Choral repetition therefore discourages good anticipation and purposeful reading.

In presenting reading texts, we therefore need to give guidelines which will replace sentence-level, text study procedures:

1. ANTICIPATION.
* Use all available clues: accompanying picture, layout, type-face.
* Make guesses about the subject matter, authorship, intented audience and the original context in which the text appeared [SITUATION = Physical Setting + Roles & Status + Feelings/mood/attitude + Shared/Unshared knowledge & experience]. The above model can be used to explore the context for written as well as spoken communication. My students use it mainly for preparing roles in dialogue construction, but the same questions can be asked of a prose text, its author and its audience: What is the role the author adopts in relation to his/her reader? What are the author's feelings towards his/her subject? How much knowledge of the subject does the author assume is shared? These hypotheses can be properly developed in the next stage of presentation.
2. SKIMMING: Check and extend existing hypotheses and make new ones as to the contents.
3. READING: Read more carefully (extending your purpose for reading if further hypotheses are developed). Try to answer the questions you have asked yourself.

To understand the point of these new procedures and to specify more closely the reading skills which my students practise, it may be helpful to refer to the nature of discourse. Both spoken and written communication need not be bounded by individual sentences. The latter rarely occur without both linguistic and situational context. In the encoding and decoding processes, units of language are weighted differently in terms of their contribution to the function and meaning of the spoken utterance or written text as a whole.

The efficient reader therefore relates the ideas that are being presented and manipulated by the writer to one another, to the function of the text and to his own experience of the topic / knowledge of the situation. He or she falls back on a host of reference skills. These include:

* anaphora
* cataphora
* synonymy
* antonymy
* hyponymy
* conparison and
* nominalization.

Together with discourse markers (lexical & grammatical cohesion devices and directional indicators), these help in the active processes of prediction, anticipation and confirmation as well as in the recognition of different levels of generality. We fail to exercise most of the above skills and much of what readers bring to a text, if we remain with or within the sentence. Study at sentence level is a very small part of reading comprehension.

Having correctly presented the reading text, it is wise to try to prevent sentence-level addicts from reaching for dictionaries or demanding instant explanation of unknown items. Interesting material for purposeful reading will probably be authentic. students who are used to structurally graded texts may find the new material frighteningly difficult, particularly if they observe their old procedures. The teacher's pre-questions, detailed comprehension Qs and exercise types may also lead back to sentence level habits unless they are thoughtfully constructed.

It is probably best if the tasks demanded of the students (I.e. exercise types and their content) are suited to the nature of the text. Initial questioning should focus on general function rather than detailed comprehension. Note: Widdowson's "Reading & Thinking In English" - anticipation questions (the ones the students ought to ask themselves!) are planted in the text. I'm not sure how wise it is to guide students' anticipation or 'purpose for reading' to this extent. Another technique is to pre-list 6 or 7 pieces of information. The students are asked which of the items they would expect to find in a text of the given title. They then confirm their hypotheses by reading the text. This is probably preferable to the degree of guidance in Widdowson's Reading & Thinking in English, which to some learners could appear rather condescending, given that the reading skills discussed are ones that my students have fully mastered in their L1. Transfer of skills to LT and practising them in the new language can be achieved without telling students overtly that they are learning reading strategies.

Reading skills are rarely needed in isolation from other activities. Therefore there is ample justification to integrate ones teaching of reading with listening, speaking and writing. Although it is useful to specify reading skills, a broader goal may be to develop and practise study skills in LT (the target language). It has been mentioned how selection of interesting texts can lead fairly directly to discussion of topic. Reading as preparation for a role play or a simulation may draw further on internal resources. The link with dramatic activities draws the practice into the realm of interpretation, raises motivation and increases the possibilities for discussion.

Texts describing roles may be interpreted very differently depending on the way the readers adapt themselves to the tasks they have to perform. Role cards will provide clues to character, situation and language but will leave scope for student interpretation. Discussion as to what is salient both within and outside the texts could easily be as useful as the role play itself. Simulations also involve longer reading texts and diagrams representing the main areas of conflict as well as detailed preparation of lexis and language functions (See Heyworth's "The Language of Discussion").

Reading tasks designed to familiarize students with the nature of discourse may not only improve reading speed and efficiency but may also build a bridge between reading and writing. Putting pictures into a satisfactory sequence, matching them with sections from a text which have themselves been taken out of sequence, can focus on the organization of discourse. See jumbled paracgraphs in F. Grellet's "Developing Reading Tasks". To complete this task students will probably need to recognise lexical/thematic cohesion markers, grammatical cohesion markers and other indicators. Removing the visual support will ensure that these recognition skills are developed.

Another way to focus on the rhetorical organisation of reading texts presented to the student is through use of visual aids:

* Labelled diagrams accompanying texts to assist with texts containing difficult technical descriptions or explanations
* Cartoons (political or stongly situational) to help with texts embodying arguments
* Picture series / comic strips to accompany narrative texts. (e.g. picture stories such as 'The man with the flowers')

The same visual aids can be used to challenge students to RECONSTRUCT the descriptions/explanations, arguments, stories ORALLY or through WRITTEN PRECIS. A good visual aid has the virtue of focussing both on the global function of the accompanying text and the important points to be included in any transfer of information.

Activities such as 'reading leading to spoken or written summary', note-taking or transfer of information to a grid or diagram, help to emphasize that as in the learner's L1, reading is an active process. Moreover, a given text is only one possible vehicle for carrying meaning (given information). In native reading we constantly extract and reconstitute information bringing our own personalities and knowledge of audience to bear on its future presentation. Our students should be encouraged to bring their own personalities (feelings, experiences, knowledge) to bear, transferring information from one rhetorical mould to the next to suit their purposes.

The language study input need not block out the purpose for reading I.e. the global function of the text. I have used the Cloze procedure and fill-in exercises to test various grammatical items and forms. However, the completed texts can also be taken a whole.

* My 'on-the-spot reporters' describing the actions and scenery they see around them are not only cueing the Present Continuous. The function of these texts is to encourage students to visit Rottingdean, etc.
* My preposition stencils give a detailed guide to shopping in the Lanes and the Royal Pavilion & Gardens. If students have assembled something then they should have a chance to use it as a whole.
* My stencils read sufficiently naturally to be used for oral or written reconstruction e.g. phone your friend and tell him/her about the Royal Pavilion.

Purely atomistic teaching (e.g. pre-teaching of lexis which could reasonably be inferred or permitting overdependence on dictionaries rather than encouraging learners to guess unknown lexical items) will inevitably lead to inefficient reading. It may be demonstrated to the intermediate student that the purpose for reading is clearly not the comprehension of every word in a text.

Given suitable follow-up tasks (note: complexity of tasks can be varied), authentic texts can also be judiciously selected - ones that bear close resemblance to the natural follow-up we do in L1. The comprehension of authentic reading texts need not prove discouragingly impossible.

Reading

1. Teaching reading NOT the same as text study
2. Reading should be dealt with as an activity separate from text study
3. Not teaching a new skill except with some (new script) - We have to teach students to transfer their reading skills applied in L1 to L2.
4. Culture
5. Students rarely given a chance to read properly in LT and even more rarely given a chance to read for any USEFUL PURPOSE.

Native speakers:

1. Know why they're reading
2. Bring knowledge & interest to the task
3. Read different types of material at different rates with different amounts of attention

Reading techniques

1. Survey the whole text.
2. Identify features which give you a clue to the type, function, style. Fluent readers read in broad phrases skipping unnecessary detail or words that are not vital to meaning.
3. Unconsciously apply skills for guessing meaning from context
4. Confidently ignore large parts of the text.

Information and ideas are often carried by maps, charts or tables which supplement and replace the verbal message.

Elements involved in reading:

1. Recognising conventions of layout/visual/diagramatic input
2. Structuring of inputs into meaningful stretches
3. Reference skills
4. Inference skills - interpretation of inputs.

Teaching L2 reading

Classroom activities: skills needed for reading different texts-types

A. PREDICTION:

1. What is coming next?
2. Anticipation questions (Give title: "Women in Africa". Ask students to anticipate the questions they think the article may answer.
3. Pre-questions focussing on global function / most important aspect
4. Surveying a book using index, chapter, paragraph headings (read topic sentences)
5. Completing sentences: It was a lovely day so/but

B. SKIMMING (Rapid reading for overall gist and to extract specific information)

C. SCANNING (a passage for specific information) - timed activities with specific questions.

D. COHESION The way in which the forms of the language are used to tie ideas together, to build up stretches of text. Cataphora, Anaphora, Logical Connectors, Substitute words (different ways of saying the same thing), Related words

Related words (Lexical sets = collocation), questions about reference words, jumbled sentences, invent paragraph jigsaws (leave out one paragraph), Cloze tests are a good way of testing cohesion links within a text.

E. COHERENCE The way in which arguments are linked and developed in terms of the ideas they convey. See "From Paragraph To Essay". Organisation is * Chronological * Problem/hypothesis *Experiment/conclusion

F. INFERENCE & INTERPRETATION: students apply their knowledge of real world to what is stated as well as what is implied (but not stated).

QUESTIONS TO BE CONSIDERED:

1. What do we teach? CAPITALS. TYPOGRAPHICAL VARIATIONS or HANDWRITING.
2. How are we going to teach them to read? Whole word approach, phonics, I.T.A.?
3. What is learning dependent upon?

Rules to bear in mind when planning the teaching programme:

1. The law of experience: doing something makes it likely we will remember it. First impressions are the most lasting.
2. The law of frequency: the more often we do, the more likely we will remember it.
3. The law of recency: the more recently we have done something the more likely we are to recall it
4. The law of relevance: select lesson content which is relevant to your student's immediate language needs
(This assumes that you have discovered what those needs are, and have the resources to address them).

The teacher's job is to produce an interesting lesson respecting the maturity level of the student. Note: failure of many reading schemes to interest adults.

For a reading scheme with an acceptable maturity-level for teenagers and adults try:
# Graded Readers (Oxford Bookworms) Headwords:
Stage 1: 400 | Stage 2: 700 | Stage 3: 1,000 | Stage 4: 1,400 | Stage 5: 1,800 | Stage 6: 2,500
Beginners-----Elementary-----Pre-intermediate----Intermediate---High Intermediate---Advanced
Useful books on the teaching of reading in English as a second or foreign language

PREDICTION, SKIMMING & SCANNING

Developing Reading Skills by Francoise Grellet (Cambridge University Press 1981)
Teaching Reading Skills in A Foreign Language by Christine Nuttall (Macmillan ELT - 3rd edition: 2005)
Practical Faster Reading: an Intermediate / Advanced Course in Reading and Vocabulary by Gerald and Vivienne Mosback (Cambridge University Press 1976)
Reading in The Language Class by Eddie Williams (Macmillan Educational 1986)
Reading and Thinking in English - Discovering Discourse TB by Tom McArthur (Oxford University Press 1979)

COHESION AND COHERENCE

Developing Reading Skills by Francoise Grellet (Cambridge University Press 1981)
From Paragraph To Essay - Developing Composition Writing by Maurice Imhoof and Herman Hudson (Longman 1975)
Cohesion in English by M.A.K. Halliday and Hassan Ruqaiya (Longman 1976)

INFERENCE AND INTERPRETATION

Reading in a Foreign Language edited by J. Charles Alderson & A. H. Urquhart (Longman 1984)
See especially chapter 3 (Cultural Knowledge and Reading - by Maragaret S. Steffersen and Chitra Joag-Dev) and chapter 12 (Case studies of ninth grade readers - by Carol Hosenfeld)

QUESTIONS TO BE CONSIDERED

For SCRIPT-RELATED ISSUES, see this website's section on basic literacy

For the laws of experience and frequency read the chapters on the behaviourist and cognitive approaches to language learning in
Julian Dakin's The Language Laboratory and Language Learning (Longman 1973). Alternatively, read about the same approaches in
Henry Stern's Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching: Historical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Applied Linguistic Research (Oxford University Press 1983) or consult the relevant chapters in Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching (2nd edition) by Jack Richards and Theodore Rodgers (Cambridge University Press 2001)

For the law of recency, consult books on memory and study skills such as
Tony Buzan's Use Your Head or
The Speed Reading Book: The Revolutionary Approach to Increasing Reading Speed, Comprehension and General Knowledge

For the law of relevance, ESL or ESP curriculum planners should be familiar with works on functional syllabus design:
John Munby's Communicative Syllabus Design: A Sociolinguistic Model for Designing the Content of Purpose-Specific Language Programmes (Cambridge University Press 1981) and T.C. Jupp's and Sue Hodlin's
Industrial English - An Example of Theory and Practice in Functional Language Teaching for Elementary Learners (ELT/ESP) (Macmillan Heinemann ELT; 2nd edition: Dec 1978)
Two more landmark publications in functional syllabus design were the Waystage 1990: Council of Europe Conseil de l'Europe: Council of Europe Conseil De L'Europe and Threshold 1990 syllabus specification, by J.A. Van Ek and J.L.M. Trim (originally published by Pergamon Press in 1979/1980; revised and corrected edition Cambridge University Press 1998).

The Cognitive Approach

The Cognitive Approach (awareness of the rules).

Cognitive theory assumes that responses are also the result of insight and intentional patterning.

Insight can be directed to (a) the concepts behind language i.e. to traditional grammar.
It can also be directed to (b) language as an operation - sets of communicative functions.

A variety of activities practised in new situations will allow assimilation of what has already been learnt or partly learnt. It will also create further situations for which existing language resources are inadequate and must accordingly be modified or extended - "accommodation". This ensures an awareness and a continuing supply of learning goals as well as aiding the motivation of the learner.

Cognitive theory therefore acknowledges the role of mistakes. See Dakin's Novish lesson in which he sets deliberate traps in "The Language Laboratory and Language Learning" by Julian Dakin published by Longman 1973. Dakin: "We must design our lessons and language laboratory tapes so as to invite the learner to make the minimum number of mistakes consonant with, and conducive to, learning new rules. Equally important to the principles underlying the use of "meaningful drills" and also relevant to the role of mistakes in cognotive theory is the association of mentalism with notionalism.
How much cognitive theory do English language teachers need to know?

* Step 1: make your trainees supply examples of all types of "meaningful" and "meaningless" pattern drills exploiting various relationships
* Step 2: allow your trainees to experience what it is like to be in a beginners class in a language outside their current knowledge. The "Novish" simulation makes this possible if time is at a premium.

Trainers of English language teachers can achieve practical coverage of cognitive learning theory by reviewing the history of language teaching, especially the period in the mid 20th century when "meaningful drills" were being advocated and the shortcomings of "meaningless drills" were being highlighted. Although drilling and rote learning became subject to considerable prejudice in some educational circles in the late 20th century, no language learner will proceed very far without recognition of language structure and nobody will succeed in learning much without practice and repetition. Knowledge of the "types of drill" which the accomplished language teacher or informed computer learning program can employ provide a full toolkit for anybody responsible for learning and teaching. A fuller examination of drills is therefore contained below.

Another ploy often used by teacher trainers is to put trainee teachers into the situations encountered by language learners. This is often done through demonstrations where new languages (of which trainees have no knowledge) are presented. As homework (especially on MA Courses where "Reflective Learning" features as a component) students are often required to learn new languages (and alphabets!) to a basic level. It is hoped that they will be reminded of the problems, especially the conceptual ones. Often, there is not enough time to do this on short teacher training courses. However, there is a famous chapter which trainees can read where the experience of learning a new language is simulated. This is Julian Dakin's introduction to "Novish" [ a fictitious language designed especially to simulate conditions experienced in real language learning situations ]. The chapter appears in "The Language Laboratory and Language Learning". This is possibly the best book ever written on language learning - the reference in the title to the language laboratory reflects a technology in fashion in the 1960s and 1970s and does not detract from the book's main treatise on language learning. The chapter on Novish is also reproduced in The Edinburgh Course of Applied Linguistics [ a four volume publication which may be easier to find than Dakin's book in second hand bookshops].
What are the principle drawbacks of mechanical or controlled drills and the ways of overcoming them?

The aim of language practice drills is to train learners to talk and to help them master the basic structural patterns of the target language. As a method of language practice, drills are difficult to reconcile when the language becomes "meaningless".
The drawbacks of meaningless drills:

1. lack of context
2. failure to offer learner an element of discrimination or choice
3. failure to give rise to naturalistic speech
4. they fail grammatically in many instances.

Lack of context results from behaviourist principle of focussing uniquely on form: the one-step-at-a-time approach which attempts to forestall mistakes. Unique focus on form may succeed in the controlled environment, but the benefits of structural learning may not be transferred into the real environment. Drills attempting to forestall mistakes show only positive instances of what can be done. Negative instances are not given. The meaning conveyed by an utterance (e.g. I'm not going) is a matter of the function of the sentence as a whole in the larger context in which it occurs. A sentence does more than communicate information. It performs a role both in relation to other utterances that have been produced and as part of the interactive process involving the participants.

Without this wider context, drills run the risk of overgeneralisation. They may cause as opposed to correct mistakes. The absence of an element of choice within a drill undermines the semantico-grammatical category of communicative function from which conceptual meaning is derived, thus inhibiting the learning process. When the only changes are vocabulary items controlled by prompts i.e. when drills embody invariant structural patterns, the given structures may just as well be represented by the sounds TUM and TE. [ Julian Dakin 1973 ]
Meaningful drills

In order to qualify as "meaningful", a drill must provide:

1. A context for the utterance it contains - without context, there is a risk of over-generalization. [ As put by D.A. Wilkins ] "The meaning conveyed by an utterance is a matter of the function of the sentence (utterance) as a whole in the larger context in which it occurs.
2. It should give rise to naturalistic language
3. It should allow the learner some element of choice or discrimination.

Arguments for drills
Track record and variety of exercise-types

There have been many successful courses which have been largely dependent on drills. An early example was the Minimal Language Acquisition Programme, designed by Charles Fries and Richard Lado. A later example was "Streamline Departures" [Oxford 1979], a UK English course book with a remarkable long shelf life, though the orginal method recommended in the Teacher's Book depended on many of the following drill-types.

1. Substitution drills merely require the learner to substitute in the previous response the word provided or embedded in the next prompt. The stimulus to which the response is trained is therefore the prompt taken in conjunction with the previous response. The prompts signal the internal changes and the series of responses set the pattern. For the teacher who sees the need for isolation and practice of mechanical production of sentences to improve learners' command of structure or pronunciation.
2. Mutation drills require systematic changes in the form of words provided in the prompt before a substitution is made. They may therefore be useful in practising inflection of verbs or nouns, agreements between such constituents in the sentence as subject and verb, adjective and noun (in French & Spanish) and case endings.
3. Transformation drills may embody the changes outlined above but also require at least the option of a change in word order, the addition or deletion of grammatical constituents and may exact the alternation of grammatical pairs. They can accordingly practise changes from affirmative to negative, changes in voice from active to passive, changes in mood, from indicative to interrogative to imperative to subjunctive and changes in sentence-type from simple to compound or complex. A further use of Transformation Drills is in the process of word derivation.
4. Application relationships (relationships of reference) prompted by pictures, sound effects or knowledge of the world.
5. Collocation relationships between vocabulary items in a sentence (involving any or all of its constituents) prompted by cue words or whole sentences. The relationship is exclusively verbal and responses depend on a knowledge of lexical inter-dependencies.
6. Implication relationships between sentences prompted by whole sentences and requiring the substitution of synonyms, hyponyms, antonyms, converse terms or consequences in place of their antecedents. S a word or words R its/their counterpart.
7. Consequence, Hypnonmy and Antonym Drills - S: This is a wonderful book. R: Good, I'd like to read it. S: This is a fantastic record. S: Good, I'd like to hear it. R: Felicity is a very nice girl S: Good I'd like to meet her.
8. Synonymy Drills

The role of repetition - a principle of both behaviourist and cognitive theories of learning

Regardless of preferences for behaviourist or cognitive, most teachers would find a place for repetition (for purposes of practice & consolidation), comparison (differentiation through minimal pairs or paired grammatical forms). Depending on their nature and scope, drills may EITHER elicit sequences of unrelated sentences from the learner OR build up something which begins to look like connected spoken prose. Given sufficient definition of aims and the avoidance of monotony, artificiality and inefficiency, drills must surely contribute to language learning by virtue of their many useful applications.
The use of drills at different levels of language proficiency:

1. Drills are likely to be useful at elementary level or in the "practice phase" of a lesson where limitation of the learning goal is desirable.
2. Drills are likely to be useful at the intermediate level where practice, revison and checking of learning is particularly important.
3. Drills are likely to be useful at the advanced level to diagnose and iron out a particular difficulty.

Drills may be tried with the whole class or used on an individual basis, perhaps for remedial purposes. The limitations of drills are clearly matched by useful possibilities.
Julian Dakin's use of drills in introducing us to Novish [an imaginary language]
a practical demonstration of language learning supported by Cognitive theory

Dakin's introduction to Novish (The Language Laboratory & Language Learning Longman 1973) is hardly a programme which invites "the minimum number of mistakes consonant with, and conducive to, learning new rules." Indeed, he readily admits that he was going deliberately out of his way to trap us.

The Novish structures, which contain the conceptual difficulties, perform such basic functions as identification and verification of class (N.B. whether a thing grows or not is of great social & cultural importance to native Novish speakers).

The behaviourist could not realistically avoid the "sademane" / "sadegru" distinction through selection or careful grading.

Dakin forces us into traps by including problem-solving in the drills he presents in his programme for learning Novish. Our mistakes very often derive from lack of conceptual awareness and failure to grasp important semantic criteria. However, Novish children make the same mistakes! The conversion of "rule" to speaking habit is likely to be a slower more conscious process in the case of L2 learners!
How important is it to understand the underlying rule for each step?

Under Skinner's model of language behaviour formed through the application of "habits", consciousness of underlying rules is not of any importance.

Chomsky's conception of language as "rule-governed" would imply that we must at the very least allow our students to induce the rules.

Carroll defines "rule" as "simply a formal, usually vebal, statement of the conditions under which something is expected to occur or not to occur under certain sanctions." He adds that it is a construct in some sense independent of actual behaviour.

Carroll illustrates this claim by citing the fact that people can speak a language without any conscious knowledge or application of the rules that underlie their language.
The importance of semantics conceptual awareness as a structurally-based basic language programme unfolds

Novish Frame 2 six different objects. "Sademane" is apparently used to define them. Insufficient knowledge of Novish to allow many L2 analogies, so we are tempted to measure each new item using L1 concepts as a gauge.

Novish Frame 3 introduces a refinement. Correct form is "Sademanena gal". However, the underlying rule is less important since a Novish speaker would probably understand our meaning if we said "Sademanena gal".

Novish Frame 6 introduces the use of "Sademane" in a question. It is noticeable that "Sademane" or "Sademanena" is replaced by "Sadestil" when verification is given.

At this stage, we think we know what is being verified just as we think we know what is being asked, but we are already on dangerous ground.

From this point, conceptual awareness of the distinction which Novish speakers make between things that grow and things that don't becomes increasingly important.

Novish Frame 9. The learner will quickly recognise "sadegru" as a second word he will sometimes have to use (as opposed to "sademane") in giving confirmation. Dakin has deliberately selected nouns which will lead to a false distinction: objects v people.

Whether it is justifiable for a teacher to lead his students into a trap and then to mystify them with "Ye sadegru opl" is a question in its own right.
At what stage should a teacher make learners aware of the rules rather than trying to trap them?

Clearly the proper distinction is one of some importance and any mystification should certainly not be prolonged beyond the point where Ss recognise that they have something new to learn.

To depend on "mim-mem" techniques to somehow unconsciously teach this distinction is clearly ludicrous.

It is widely recognised that learning language purely by imitation and repetition is uneconomical and that if each new speech pattern had to be learnt by imitation the task would be endless.

The catalogue of things which grow and don't grow is enormous and the structure under consideration is of fundamental importance and seems likely to allow further creation by analogy. Therefore in frames 9-12 the underlying rule must be realised.
The dangers of over-generalizing when forming new rules

Novish Frames 13 & 14 at first sight seem to be analogous to language concepts with which we are familiar. "Nu sadegru poi, sadestil tavl!" would appear to mean "No, it isn't a boy, it's a table.

Little do we suspect that the first phrase indicates that the table "doesn't grow like a boy".

We cannot develop a sound basis for further analogy until we have encountered steps 15 & 16.

Novish Frames 15 & 16. Here we learn that in comparing and contrasting different objects or people Novish speakers are vitally concerned with difference or even similarity of class as well as difference in identity.

The words "Ye" or "Nu" are applied essentially to class likenesses and differences and not to precise definition of what an object or person is or is not.

I can imagine many potential misunderstandings in situations where English speakers might use or take "Ye" to indicate a particular identity when what a Novish speaker understands is common membership of a certain group:

Q: Ki ku sademane? A: Ye sadegru ku, sadegru Margaret Thatcher!
Can language learning proceed without conceptual awareness and knowledge of culture?

Students should be given the chance to share the concepts of their target language. To deny them of what they are ready for, is to overlook what Chomsky recognised as the "creative aspect" of language use. Such a denial would serve to discourage creation by analogy, to kill the spirit of enquiry and to isolate the learner from a knowledge of the utterances which represent his achievements.
Classroom techniques: practical problems in (cognitive) learning and teaching:

1. Could a particular class understand rules of the complexity of Dakin's for Novish and if they couldn't, what should the teacher do?
2. To what extent can the teacher organise the examples for things so that the class can infer from them the "rule" without explicit explanation?
3. How can the teacher be sure that a class or a particular learner has actually inferred correctly?

Parallels between Dakin's rules for Novish and the rules which elementary learners of English need to know

Not all rules met in elementary English classes are so complex as those of Novish. Many things in English are much easier to work out from examples than this, and so might not need such "rules".

There are still a number of things that do appear to require explicit explanation, such as "mass" and "unit" nouns, the contrast between Present Perfect and Past, etc.
Did all behaviourists imagine that language learning could proceed without formulations of rules?

Sophisticated behaviourists like Fries [ in "Language Learning" ] did not suppose that the mind was a mechanism of habits, and no more. Fries merely argued that, given that it was very sophisticated and subtle, the human mind was capable of inferring underlying rules if the examples were well-chosen. Fries thought that the best way to infer underlying rules was through practice (of the pattern drill type) supported by judicious explanation of rules at times. Read Fries' own introduction to English Pattern Practices.
Bibliography:

1. The Language Laboratory and Language Learning by Julian Dakin (Longman 1973)
2. "Teaching Oral English." by Donn Byrne (Longman)
3. Best "meaningful drills" ever published: "Kernel Lessons Plus" Laboratory Drills/Tapescript Longman Group Ltd (c) Eurozentren 1974
These are set at the higher intermediate level. Superb use of situational context: e.g. Unit 10: law court as setting in which to practise Third Conditional forms.
4. Most comprehensive series of mainly "meaningful" drills: Streamline Departures Speechwork (elementary level);
Streamline Connections Speechwork (pre-intermediate to intermediate);
Streamline Destinations Speechwork (intermediate to higher intermediate).
These materials, published in the UK by Oxford Univesity Press in the 1980s, were widely used over a period of almost twenty years.
5. Key Figures in the history of drills include: a) Harold E Palmer, b) Charles Fries and Richard Lado "English Pattern Practice" c) Comenius.
6. History of theory - a) Skinner and Watson [See: B.F. Skinner's "Verbal Behaviour" 1957]
b) See intro to "Correct Your English" B Mendelssohn & J.W. Palmer Longman 1940
7. A History of ELT (second edition) - 1400 to the present, by A.P.R.Howatt with H.G.Widdowson (OUP)

The behaviourist approach

Audiolingualism (drilling as habit formation) and structuralism in language learning and teaching
Meaningless drills - the drawbacks

Choice (by the learner) of vocabulary is needed to permit individual control over the meaning of the information conveyed. When not permitted there's a danger that all that is being practised is pronunciation. Drills which lean heavily on automatic responses without reference to appropriate contexts may give rise to little or no naturalistic speech.
[ Question set by David Jones on RSA Course in Stockholm 1981 ]
Sample answer:

1. The artificiality of the stimulus (in drills) may give rise to a kind of "structurespeech"; which is marked by lack of interaction in a real sense. No information is conveyed which is not already known.
2. The content presented by "meaningless drills" may teach learners that listening is a waste of time. Only hearing is required to complete meaningless drills. Language learning may be presented as a tedious process.
3. Behaviourists unapologetically set out to minimize the role of understanding in order to focus attention on structure. e.g. Don't worry about the meaning of these minimal pairs (watch wash; batch bash). I want you to get your tongue round the sounds.
4. When using "meaningless drills" e.g. minimal pairs for pronunciation, teachers should remember to convince learners of the importance of phonology, stress and intonation or any other features of language systems which might be isolated from meaning for the purpose of practice. Students should be given the rationale behind any attempt to focus atomistically on some feature of paragraph, sentence or word. e.g. Watching v Washing the TV. Awkward consonant clusters or diphthongs. Communication often fails at motor skill level (e.g. poor pronunciation of certain phonemes)
5. These drawbacks can be avoided by selecting a high proportion of "meaningful drills". Reject drills with anachronistic vocabulary items such as "ducks", "geese" & "sheep". These might have worked during the Agrarian revolution. Drills should contain a large proportion of vocabulary which meets learners' communicative needs. Good illustration (picture reference prompts) allows for application relationships. See the drills included in the "Streamline Departures Speechwork" series. For the most part, these have meaningful context. Implication relationships are well exploited: S: Joe Freezer is strong. R: but Tim Lyons is _____ . Substitution, Mutation and Transformation should not be discarded as a means of practising known lexis in different patterns. Streamline selects and presents the lexis carefully before practising the patterns.

Meaningful drills - the potential

Robert O' Neill is the author of some of the best language laboratory drills that have ever been constructed. The quality of these practice exercises depends on a clear understanding of the purposes which can be served by various types of drills and sensitivity to situational context and naturalistic conditions in their presentation. Moreover, learners using these "meaningful drills" are required to make choices i.e. to display conceptual awareness and a grasp of meaning by discriminating between different responses.

Robert O' Neill's success with the Kernel series [ see "Kernel Lessons Plus" Laboratory Drills/Tapescript Longman Group Ltd (c) Eurozentren 1974] stems from his interest is in both the generative function of language (TG Kernels) and the personal / creative use. The following steps are important in the provision of good meaningful driils:

1. Step 1 is contextualization - presenting a pattern in a context which suggests a basic use for that pattern.
2. Step 2 is to ensure through comprehension Qs on the short introductory texts that Ss actually understand the basic features of the context.
3. Step 3 Kernel Analysis K1 I object to something. K2 I share my room with the children. K3 I object to sharing my room with the children. The learner is fully prepared to manipulate the pattern as part of a drill.
4. Step 4 is to provide more K2s: i.e. the drill: You are an au-pair girl. You don't like your work. You have to clean the toilets… so you say: I object to cleaning the toilets. S You scrub the floors R… S You look after the baby. R… S You wash his nappies.

Far from being a collection of fragments with no reference to one another, Robert O Neill's prompts follow a series. The drill has something of the continuity of a real collection of utterances. It is centred both around a structural pattern & the function of complaining.

Tansfer: You are unhappy with your job. Tell your boss some of the things you object to doing. Learner supplies 50% of vocabulary through adding this phase.

Other landmark materials offering learners important opportunities to get their tongues round English syntax were provided by Shiona Harkness, John Eastwood, Duncan Shoebridge and L.G. Giggins. The virtue of Shoebridge & Giggins' book is that ONE COPY ONLY is required for the teacher. The learners actually speak. Far too much grammar is practised passively these days using materials which require no more than reading and writing + use of Answer Keys to check written exercise formats. The landmark drilling materials are:

Cue for a Drill by Shiona Harness and John Eastwood [0xford 1976]

Even if you only manage to get hold of a single copy of this book, suitable for practice at elementary to intermediate levels, it provides excellent examples of cues [pictures, menus, timetables - documents with an authentic feel to them although the authors have sensibly simplified them to make oral practice more accessible] which you could draw on the board for your learners to see. The cues are tied to areas of syntax and grammar such as verb tenses and adverb formation from adjectives. This book poses a fair challenge for learners and succeeds in its purpose i.e. practising grammar orally.

Tense Drills by Duncan Shoebridge and L.G. Giggins [Longman 1970]

This material demonstrates coalface experience of syntax, classroom dynamics [learner participation] and the related practice opportunities. You'll have everybody speaking to everybody else in every permutation and combination, providing you have enough participants to make up speakers A, B, C, D and E. It's a class resource as opposed to a One-to-One teaching material. It is intended for use at intermediate levels and draws upon practice of syntax to cover many useful lexical items e.g. What does a greengrocer do? A greengrocer sells fruit and vegetables. What does a pilot do? A pilot flies planes.
Conclusion

Although we are forced to be atomistic during some of the stages of our teaching, these stages need to be related to others where students attempt to arrive at the end-product. In this context drills can succeed. However, if drills become ends in themselves, students may never find out what it really is to communicate in another language. There are more examples of "meaningful drills" in Donn Byrne's "Teaching Oral English".
The theoretical background to pattern drill:

1. Behaviourist view: D. Starch 1915: "Apparently imitation and repetition of correct expression are far more efficacious in forming correct habits than grammatical knowledge." [ Some Experimental Data on the Value of Studying Foreign Languages ]
2. B.F. Skinner's "Verbal Behaviour" 1957: Skinner assumes that behaviour is the total of conditioned and associated responses. Learning depends on the frequency with which the responses are repeated, consistent reinforcement by suitably rewarding correct responses and on careful sequencing of Stimulus-Response bonds so as to minimize the chance of mistakes. Programming into easily assimilable and minimal steps allows control and conditioning of responses and building them into a behaviour pattern.
3. Associated with behaviourism and equally responsible for the kind of language syllabuses much in evidence in the 1960s is the theory of structural linguistics. Leonard Bloomfield in his book "Language" 1933 is preoccupied with form and not with meaning or function.
4. Behaviourism, Structuralism and reiteration of the fact that learners learn to speak L2 by speaking it have contributed in particular to the design of Audiolingual Courses.
5. The Audio-Lingual Method advocates "mimicry-memorization" in pattern drills in which the role of understanding is minimized as much as possible. The major emphasis is on the mechanical production of the utterance as a language form and in the development of automatic responses of the desired nature - i.e. good habits. Julian Dakin [in "The Language Laboratory and Language Learning" Longman 1973] coined the phrase "meaningless drills" to describe pattern practice of the kind inspired by the above ideas.
6. A History of ELT (second edition) - 1400 to the present, by A.P.R.Howatt with H.G.Widdowson (OUP)

CLT and the Task-based Syllabus

Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom by David Nunan CUP 1989

Appendix C Page 196 contains graded activities for the four macroskills: listening, speaking & oral interaction, reading & writing (for each of seven levels).

Checklist for evaluating and developing Communicative Tasks Page 135.

Task: a piece of classroom work which involves students in comprehending, manipulating, producing or interacting in the target language (LT) while their attention is mainly on MEANING rather than FORM.

THE COMPONENTS OF A TASK:

1. GOALS
2. INPUT
3. ACTIVITIES
4. TEACHER ROLE
5. LEARNER ROLE
6. SETTINGS

These are amplified in David Nunan's book, which has sold very well according to the Amazon on-line book ratings.

The starting point for task design should be the goals and objectives which are set out in the syllabus or curriculum guidelines which underpin the teaching programme.

The next step is selecting or creating input for Ss to work with. The use of authentic input is a central characteristic of communicative tasks. Where possible, it is desirable to build up a "bank" of data.

Texts, audio or video recordings can be classified and filed under topics or themes (e.g. Work/Jobs; Holidays; Future Plans; The Media), and provide a ready-made resource to be drawn on when designing tasks.

Nunan contends that one should work from the data to the teaching/learning objectives, rather than the other way round - i.e. it is better to derive communicative activities and other exercises such as grammatical manipulation exercises, from input, rather than say, deciding to teach a particular item, and then creating a text to exemplify the target feature or item.

While understanding Nunan's emphasis, I believe we should work both ways round. After all, Nunan concedes that the starting point for task design is the goals and objectives. The latter should guide us in our selection of data.

Written versus spoken English- feature analysis

EXAM TITLE: What are the differences between Written English and (a) Spoken Prose (b) Conversation?
Written English

It is first necessary to define what sort of Written English. Semi-formal Written English is in one sense less and in another sense more redundant than the spoken forms of the language.

Repetitions and duplications are usually avoided to a greater extent than in conversation, though a semi-formal style may still render some examples.

Intonation contours, stress patterns, junctures (transition and boundary features) and tone of voice are absent in Written English. But spelling, word boundaries and punctuation are present.
Spoken Prose

Spoken prose may consist of a speech, a sermon, a taped report or a radio broadcast scripted in advance and in the form of a monologue. It may be read or recited almost anywhere, but the speaker may equally be within visual contact of an audience.

It is not created spontaneously in the same way as Conversation is born, but the speaker may nevertheless make conscious or incidental use of expressive features such as tone of voice, gesture and facial expression.
Conversation

Because of its spontaneous creation, Conversation can be related more closely to the extra-lingual context and the responses of the listeners.

Speakers may be prompted to vary the speed of speech within segments, to lengthen pauses and to repeat words or add modifications according to the apparent degree of comprehension or momentary inattention on the part of listeners.

Conversation usually involves more than one party actively taking part and having the possibility to interrupt. It therefore tends to be more intimate and more personally relevant than other spoken forms.

Applying the criteria set out by Joos in "The Five Clocks", the description of "casual style" and "consultative style" help to illustrate some of the characteristics of Conversation in the most likely contexts in which it can occur.

When the dialogue involves family or close friends (usually "casual style"), little or no information is given which is not known to the participants. Well-known formulae are used with great frequency.

When the conversation involves strangers (usually "consultative" style) all necessary background information is supplied and more elaborate politeness procedures are added to the well-known formulae for requests, questions, orders, suggestions and acknowl

In such situations where there is a large information gap and a need to be explicit through the language, a rarer but more formal style of language may be witnessed, bridging the gap between certain aspects of Conversation and Spoken Prose.
Analysis of sample of conversation - not transcribed on this page

With reference to the sample of conversation given, the style of language (on Joos' scale) could be described as "casual". Although questions are asked, they are for the most part rhetorical in so far as they perform a social function.

They do not relate to much of an information gap. The generation of utterances is largely dependent on either the extra-linguistic situation or the preceding contribution.

Rupert offers very little in response to Malcolm's assertions about the funniness of the play. Malcolm therefore feels obliged to modify each of his preceding remarks.

First he asserts that the play was "terribly funny", then that it was "really pretty funny"; this is reduced to "bits of it were quite funny". Desperate for Rupert's accord, he finally decides that it "wasn't all that good".

Accomplished playwrights pay considerable attention to the psycholinguistic features of Conversation, to provide insights into their Characters. Similarly, most major novelists recognise the importance of dialogue.

Prose on its own, whether spoken or written, is a blunt instrument for most of their purposes.
Linguistic features of [ spoken ] English conversation

Studies of the pronunciation of ordinary spoken English using transcripts of real-life conversations reveal the following characteristics:

(a) Loss of initial or final consonants e.g. the funnies(t) thing I've … isn'(t) it. (b) Assimilation of consonants c) Vowel reduction e.g. once (i)n a while (d) Combinations of a b and c, (e) Coalescence e.g. Let me ge(t you a) drink, what do you want? (f) Close juncture between words in rhythm groups e.g. I don't think it's all that good. Have a good lunch. Celia darling. It's really pretty funny.

Continuous flow of sound produced by the physical linking of one word to the next within the phrases.

Strong contrast is often made in conversation between heavy and weak stresses. Syllables which unsergo the process of reduction inherent in this contrast can be rendered obscure, indeterminate or even non-existent.

Grammatical and lexical material may disappear e.g. Oh, it does you good [ (to have a good) laugh once in a while,] doesn't it. I haven't laughed at anything so much for a long time (Highly stressed syllables).

Since Conversation isn't scripted in advance, it rarely uses the width of vocabulary and the complicated structures which are normally associated with written English or more formal styles of the language.

The act of conversation sets its own challenges which include establishing contact with the intended listener(s) and filling in time while preparing a context for segments of the utterance containing a properly organised message.

These functions are served through Conversation Tags and fillers, exclamations, expletives, hesitations and even longer formulae e.g. isn't it? My golly I think I mean You know, don't you?

In many conversations where agreable noise-making is called upon to fulfil a social function, it is often possible to retreat from the creative challenge or the mental discipline needed to say anything of substance.

At times when we want to relax our minds as well as on the occasions when we need more time to organise our thoughts we tend to fall back on lines we have rehearsed over and over again.

These include the idioms, colloquial clichés and polite formulae which are much in evidence in utterances between friends e.g. the funniest thing I've ever seen, terribly funny (colloquial clichés); mind you; have a good laugh (idioms)

Word length in Conversation is generally shorter than in other forms of spoken English. As speakers, most of us have greater familiarity with words of one or two syllables.

Conversation is usually made up of simple phrasal and compound verbs and the limited vocabulary used to serve the basic functions of agreement, offering, acceptance, greeting, request-making, stating & modifying beliefs, questioning & responding.

These areas are well-rehearsed and it is customary to use an unintimidating vocabulary.

The creative challenge of conversation often fails to result in syntactically perfect sentences. In this sense, sentences are not always simple. They are sometimes loose, awkward or vague. It is not easy to use the notion of "sentence".

Complete utterances in Conversation may be phrases which would be regarded as fragmentary in writing or spoken prose. There is often considerable use of contractions e.g. Haven't seen you for years. Err, Malcolm; Celia. Err, gin & tonic please.

Note that when two people are being introduced to one another, the context of "Err Malcolm; Celia." is provided by physical gesture and facial expression.

As sentences, conversational utterances are often "mixed" or "stringy" in syntactic form and omission of words is fairly common. Hesitations, self-interruptions, repetitions & false starts leave their mark on what may aptly be called a series of segments.

e.g. Well, I mean - I mean bits of it are - bits of it are quite funny aren't they. I mean bits of it. You know, don't you.

The arrangement of words gives more play to the intonation patterns of Spoken English. Instead of saying " Do you like it?" Rupert remarks: "You like it, do you?"

Utterances are constructerd so as to make way for exclamations and question tags. Malcolm's heavy use of Tune 1 "it's funny, isn't it" elicits strong agreement, at least from Charles. Rupert's heavy use of Tune 2 raises a note of discord which disturbs M.

The characteristics which differentiate Conversation from Spoken Prose or semi-formal Written English mostly relate to the nature of the interaction (i.e.It's not monologue), the need to produce and organise spontaneously & the social functions it serves.

Yet a knowledge of where sounds are articulated in the mouth coupled with signals as to the directions in which speech organs are moving and whether to expect "voiced" or "voiceless" stops, will help the non-native speaker develop similar listening skills

It is not difficult for teachers to demonstrate the relatively short vowel and voiceless stop in the word "seat" and to compare them with the longer vowel and voiced stop in the word "seed".

Indirect as well as direct procedures can be practised in identifying voiceless and voiced consonant sounds.

In this context, learners will both appreciate how simplification comes about and develop sufficient sensitivity to the sound of "informal English" to overcome the obstacles which features such as elision & assimilation present to the non-native listener.
Materials to study and practise the features of conversational English

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Models of Language Teaching and Learning

Language instructors at the university level in the United States are often in one of three situations:

*

They are language instructors with experience teaching in their countries of origin, but little or no training in the teaching approaches commonly used in the United States
*

They are professionals in other fields who are native speakers of the language, but are not trained as teachers
* They are graduate students who have extensive knowledge of language, literature, and culture, but are not trained as language teachers

These instructors often must begin their work in the classroom with little or no guidance to help them appreciate which methods work, how, and why. In response, they may fall back on an outdated model for understanding language teaching and language learning.

Older model: Language learning is a product of transmission. Teacher transmits knowledge. Learner is recipient.

This teacher-centered model views the teacher as active and the student as fundamentally passive. The teacher is responsible for transmitting all of the information to the students. The teacher talks; the students listen and absorb (or take a nap).

The teacher-centered model may be attractive to new language instructors for several reasons:

*

It is the method by which they were taught
*

It makes sense: The teacher should be the focus of the classroom, since the teacher knows the language and the students do not
*

It requires relatively little preparation: All the teacher needs to do is present the material outlined in the appropriate chapter of the book
*

It requires relatively little thought about student or student activities: All student listen to the same (teacher) presentation, then do related exercises

However, experienced language instructors who reflect on their teaching practice have observed that the teacher-centered model has two major drawbacks:

*

It involves only a minority of students in actual language learning
*

It gives students knowledge about the language, but does not necessarily enable them to use it for purposes that interest them

To overcome these drawbacks, language teaching professionals in the United States and elsewhere have adopted a different model of teaching and learning.

Newer model: Language learning is a process of discovery. Learner develops ability to use the language for specific communication purposes. Teacher models language use and facilitates students' development of language skills.

In this learner-centered model, both student and teacher are active participants who share responsibility for the student's learning. Instructor and students work together to identify how students expect to use the language. The instructor models correct and appropriate language use, and students then use the language themselves in practice activities that simulate real communication situations. The active, joint engagement of students and teacher leads to a dynamic classroom environment in which teaching and learning become rewarding and enjoyable.

Language instructors who have never experienced learner-centered instruction can find it daunting in several ways.

*

It requires more preparation time: Instructors must consider students' language learning goals, identify classroom activities that will connect those with the material presented in the textbook, and find appropriate real-world materials to accompany them
*

It is mysterious: It's not clear what, exactly, an instructor does to make a classroom learner centered
*

It feels like it isn't going to work: When students first are invited to participate actively, they may be slow to get started as they assess the tasks and figure out classroom dynamics
*

It feels chaotic: Once student start working in small groups, the classroom becomes noisy and the instructor must be comfortable with the idea that students may make mistakes that are not heard and corrected
*

It sounds like a bad idea: The phrase "learner centered" makes it sound as though the instructor is not in control of the classroom

This final point is an important one. In fact, in an effective learner-centered classroom, the instructor has planned the content of all activities, has set time limits on them, and has set them in the context of instructor-modeled language use. The instructor is not always the center of attention, but is still in control of students' learning activities.

This site is designed to help new language instructors become comfortable with learner-centered instruction and put it into practice in their classrooms. The pages on Teaching Goals and Methods, Planning a Lesson, and Motivating Learners provide guidelines and examples for putting learner-centered instruction into practice. The pages on Teaching Grammar, Teaching Listening, Teaching Speaking, and Teaching Reading illustrate learner-centered instruction in relation to each of these modalities.

For a set of learner-centered instruction techniques, see Guidelines for Instruction in Teaching Goals and Methods.

Resources: What Language Teaching Is

Beretta, A. (1991). Theory construction in SLA: Complementarity and opposition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 13 (4), 493-511.

Brown, D. (1994). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Regents.

Chamot, A.U. (1995). The teacher's voice: Action research in your classroom. ERIC/CLL News Bulletin, 18 (2).

Doff, A. (1988). Teach English: A training course for teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Harmer, J. (1991). The practice of English language teaching. London: Longman.

Kramsch, C. (1993). Context and culture in language teaching. New York: Oxford University Press.

Kramsch, C. (1995). Embracing conflict versus achieving consensus in foreign language education. ADFL Bulletin, 26(3), 6-12.

Lightbown, P., & Spada, N. (1992). How languages are learned. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Richards, J., & Lockhart, C. (1994). Reflective teaching in second language classrooms. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Rivers, W. (1988). Teaching French: A practical guide. Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company.

Sandrock, P. (1995). Foreign language education at the crossroads: Bringing coherence to the journey of a lifetime. In R. Donato & R. M. Terry (Eds.), Foreign language learning: The journey of a lifetime (pp. 167-188).

Schön, D. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York: Basic Books.

Seldin, P. (1991). The teaching portfolio: A practical guide to improved performance and promotion/tenure decisions. Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing.

Wallace, M. J. (1991). Training foreign language teachers: A reflective approach. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Language education

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Language education is the teaching and learning of a language. It can include improving a learner's mastery of her or his native language, but the term is more commonly used with regard to second language acquisition, which means the learning of a foreign or second language and which is the topic of this article. Some scholars differentiate between acquisition and learning. Language education is a branch of applied linguistics.

[edit] Need for language education

People need to learn a second language because of globalisation, connections are becoming inevitable among nations, states and organisations which creates a huge need for knowing another language or more multilingualism. The uses of common languages are in areas such as; in trade, tourism international relations between governments, technology, media and science. Therefore, many countries such as Japan (Kubota, 1998) and China (Kirkpatrick & Zhichang, 2002) create education policies to teach at least one foreign language in primary and secondary school level. However, some countries such as India, Singapore, Malaysia and Philippines make a second official language in their governing system. However, according to Gao (2010) many Chinese people are giving enormous importance to foreign language learning especially learning English Language.
[edit] History of foreign language education
[edit] Ancient to medieval period

Although the need to learn foreign languages is almost as old as human history itself, the origins of modern language education are in the study and teaching of Latin in the 17th century. Latin had for many centuries been the dominant language of education, commerce, religion, and government in much of the Western world, but it was displaced by French, Italian, and English by the end of the 16th century. John Amos Comenius was one of many people who tried to reverse this trend. He composed a complete course for learning Latin, covering the entire school curriculum, culminating in his Opera Didactica Omnia, 1657.

In this work, Comenius also outlined his theory of language acquisition. He is one of the first theorists to write systematically about how languages are learned and about pedagogical methodology for language acquisition. He held that language acquisition must be allied with sensation and experience. Teaching must be oral. The schoolroom should have models of things, and failing that, pictures of them. As a result, he also published the world's first illustrated children's book, Orbis Sensualim Pictus. The study of Latin diminished from the study of a living language to be used in the real world to a subject in the school curriculum. Such decline brought about a new justification for its study. It was then claimed that its study developed intellectual abilities, and the study of Latin grammar became an end in and of itself.

"Grammar schools" from the 16th to 18th centuries focused on teaching the grammatical aspects of Classical Latin. Advanced students continued grammar study with the addition of rhetoric.[1]
[edit] 18th century

The study of modern languages did not become part of the curriculum of European schools until the 18th century. Based on the purely academic study of Latin, students of modern languages did much of the same exercises, studying grammatical rules and translating abstract sentences. Oral work was minimal, and students were instead required to memorise grammatical rules and apply these to decode written texts in the target language. This tradition-inspired method became known as the 'grammar-translation method'.[1]
[edit] 19th–20th century
Globe icon.
The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. (November 2010)
Henry Sweet was a key figure in establishing the applied linguistics tradition in language teaching

Innovation in foreign language teaching began in the 19th century and became very rapid in the 20th century. It led to a number of different and sometimes conflicting methods, each trying to be a major improvement over the previous or contemporary methods. The earliest applied linguists included Jean Manesca, Heinrich Gottfried Ollendorff (1803–1865), Henry Sweet (1845–1912), Otto Jespersen (1860–1943), and Harold Palmer (1877–1949). They worked on setting language teaching principles and approaches based on linguistic and psychological theories, but they left many of the specific practical details for others to devise.[1]

Those looking at the history of foreign-language education in the 20th century and the methods of teaching (such as those related below) might be tempted to think that it is a history of failure. Very few students in U.S. universities who have a foreign language as a major manage to reach something called "minimum professional proficiency". Even the "reading knowledge" required for a PhD degree is comparable only to what second-year language students read and only very few researchers who are native English speakers can read and assess information written in languages other than English. Even a number of famous linguists are monolingual.[2]

However, anecdotal evidence for successful second or foreign language learning is easy to find, leading to a discrepancy between these cases and the failure of most language programs, which helps make the research of second language acquisition emotionally charged. Older methods and approaches such as the grammar translation method or the direct method are dismissed and even ridiculed as newer methods and approaches are invented and promoted as the only and complete solution to the problem of the high failure rates of foreign language students.

Most books on language teaching list the various methods that have been used in the past, often ending with the author's new method. These new methods are usually presented as coming only from the author's mind, as the authors generally give no credence to what was done before and do not explain how it relates to the new method. For example, descriptive linguists[who?] seem to claim unhesitatingly that there were no scientifically-based language teaching methods before their work (which led to the audio-lingual method developed for the U.S. Army in World War II). However, there is significant evidence to the contrary. It is also often inferred or even stated that older methods were completely ineffective or have died out completely when even the oldest methods are still used (e.g. the Berlitz version of the direct method). One reason for this situation is that proponents of new methods have been so sure that their ideas are so new and so correct that they could not conceive that the older ones have enough validity to cause controversy. This was in turn caused by emphasis on new scientific advances, which has tended to blind researchers to precedents in older work.[2](p. 5)

There have been two major branches in the field of language learning; the empirical and theoretical, and these have almost completely separate histories, with each gaining ground over the other at one point in time or another. Examples of researchers on the empiricist side are Jesperson, Palmer, and Leonard Bloomfield, who promote mimicry and memorization with pattern drills. These methods follow from the basic empiricist position that language acquisition basically results from habits formed by conditioning and drilling. In its most extreme form, language learning is seen as basically the same as any other learning in any other species, human language being essentially the same as communication behaviors seen in other species.

On the theoretical side are, for example, Francois Gouin, M.D. Berlitz, and Elime de Sauzé, whose rationalist theories of language acquisition dovetail with linguistic work done by Noam Chomsky and others. These have led to a wider variety of teaching methods ranging from the grammar-translation method to Gouin's "series method" to the direct methods of Berlitz and de Sauzé. With these methods, students generate original and meaningful sentences to gain a functional knowledge of the rules of grammar. This follows from the rationalist position that man is born to think and that language use is a uniquely human trait impossible in other species. Given that human languages share many common traits, the idea is that humans share a universal grammar which is built into our brain structure. This allows us to create sentences that we have never heard before but that can still be immediately understood by anyone who understands the specific language being spoken. The rivalry of the two camps is intense, with little communication or cooperation between them.[2]
[edit] Methods of teaching foreign languages
Main article: Methods of teaching foreign languages

Language education may take place as a general school subject or in a specialized language school. There are many methods of teaching languages. Some have fallen into relative obscurity and others are widely used; still others have a small following, but offer useful insights.

While sometimes confused, the terms "approach", "method" and "technique" are hierarchical concepts. An approach is a set of correlative assumptions about the nature of language and language learning, but does not involve procedure or provide any details about how such assumptions should translate into the classroom setting. Such can be related to second language acquisition theory.

There are three principal views at this level:

1. The structural view treats language as a system of structurally related elements to code meaning (e.g. grammar).
2. The functional view sees language as a vehicle to express or accomplish a certain function, such as requesting something.
3. The interactive view sees language as a vehicle for the creation and maintenance of social relations, focusing on patterns of moves, acts, negotiation and interaction found in conversational exchanges. This view has been fairly dominant since the 1980s.[1]

Examples of structural methods are grammar translation and the audio-lingual method. Examples of functional methods include the oral approach / situational language teaching. Examples of interactive methods include the direct method, the series method, communicative language teaching, language immersion, the proprioceptive language learning method, the Silent Way, Suggestopedia, the Natural Approach, Total Physical Response, Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling and Dogme language teaching.

A method is a plan for presenting the language material to be learned and should be based upon a selected approach. In order for an approach to be translated into a method, an instructional system must be designed considering the objectives of the teaching/learning, how the content is to be selected and organized, the types of tasks to be performed, the roles of students and the roles of teachers. A technique is a very specific, concrete stratagem or trick designed to accomplish an immediate objective. Such are derived from the controlling method, and less-directly, with the approach.[1]
[edit] Learning strategies
[edit] Code switching
Main article: Code-switching

Code switching, that is, changing between languages at some point in a sentence or utterance, is a commonly used communication strategy among language learners and bilinguals. While traditional methods of formal instruction often discourage code switching, students, especially those placed in a language immersion situation, often use it. If viewed as a learning strategy, wherein the student uses the target language as much as possible but reverts to their native language for any element of an utterance that they are unable to produce in the target language (as, e.g., in Wolfgang Butzkamm's concept of enlightened monolingualism), then it has the advantages that it encourages fluency development and motivation and a sense of accomplishment by enabling the student to discuss topics of interest to him or her early in the learning process—before requisite vocabulary has been memorized. It is particularly effective for students whose native language is English, due to the high probability of a simple English word or short phrase being understood by the conversational partner.
[edit] Blended learning
Main article: Blended learning

Blended learning combines face-to-face teaching with distance education, frequently electronic, either computer-based or web-based. It has been a major growth point in the ELT (English Language Teaching) industry over the last ten years.

Some people, though, use the phrase 'Blended Learning' to refer to learning taking place while the focus is on other activities. For example, playing a card game that requires calling for cards may allow blended learning of numbers (1 to 10).
[edit] Skills teaching

When talking about language skills, the four basic ones are: listening, speaking, reading and writing. However, other, more socially-based skills have been identified more recently such as summarizing, describing, narrating etc. In addition, more general learning skills such as study skills and knowing how one learns have been applied to language classrooms.[3]

In the 1970s and 1980s the four basic skills were generally taught in isolation in a very rigid order, such as listening before speaking. However, since then, it has been recognized that we generally use more than one skill at a time, leading to more integrated exercises.[3] Speaking is a skill that often is underrepresented in the traditional classroom. This could be due to the fact that it is considered a less-academic skills than writing, is transient and improvised (thus harder to assess and teach through rote imitation).

More recent textbooks stress the importance of students working with other students in pairs and groups, sometimes the entire class. Pair and group work give opportunities for more students to participate more actively. However, supervision of pairs and groups is important to make sure everyone participates as equally as possible. Such activities also provide opportunities for peer teaching, where weaker learners can find support from stronger classmates.[3]
[edit] Language education by region
[edit] Europe
[edit] Foreign language education

1995 European Commission’s White Paper "Teaching and learning – Towards the learning society", stated that "upon completing initial training, everyone should be proficient in two Community foreign languages". The Lisbon Summit of 2000 defined languages as one of the five key skills.

In fact, even in 1974, at least one foreign language was compulsory in all but two European member states Ireland and the United Kingdom (apart from Scotland). By 1998 nearly all pupils in Europe studied at least one foreign language as part of their compulsory education, the only exception being the Republic of Ireland, where primary and secondary schoolchildren learn both Irish and English, but neither is considered a foreign language although a third European language is also taught. Pupils in upper secondary education learn at least two foreign languages in Belgium's Flemish community, France, Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Greece, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia and Slovakia.

On average in Europe, at the start of foreign language teaching, pupils have lessons for three to four hours a week. Compulsory lessons in a foreign language normally start at the end of primary school or the start of secondary school. In Luxembourg, Norway, Italy and Malta, however, the first foreign language starts at age six, in Sweden at age seven and in Belgium's Flemish community at age 10. About half of the EU's primary school pupils learn a foreign language.

English is the language taught most often at lower secondary level in the EU. There, 93% of children learn English. At upper secondary level, English is even more widely taught. French is taught at lower secondary level in all EU countries except Slovenia. A total of 33% of European Union pupils learn French at this level. At upper secondary level the figure drops slightly to 28%. German is taught in nearly all EU countries. A total of 13% of pupils in the European Union learn German in lower secondary education, and 20% learn it at an upper secondary level.

Despite the high rate of foreign language teaching in schools, the number of adults claiming to speak a foreign language is generally lower than might be expected. This is particularly true of native English speakers: in 2004 a British survey[which?] showed that only one in 10 UK workers could speak a foreign language. Less than 5% could count to 20 in a second language, for example. 80% said they could work abroad anyway, because "everyone speaks English." In 2001, a European Commission survey[which?] found that 65.9% of people in the UK spoke only their native tongue.

Since the 1990s, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages has tried to standardize the learning of languages across Europe (one of the first results being UNIcert).
[edit] Bilingual education
Main article: Bilingual education

In some countries, learners have lessons taken entirely in a foreign language: for example, more than half of European countries with a minority or regional language community use partial immersion to teach both the minority and the state language.

In the 1960s and 1970s, some central and eastern European countries created a system of bilingual schools for well-performing pupils. Subjects other than languages were taught in a foreign language. In the 1990s this system was opened to all pupils in general education, although some countries still make candidates sit an entrance exam. At the same time, Belgium's French community, France, the Netherlands, Austria and Finland also started bilingual schooling schemes. Germany meanwhile had established some bilingual schools in the late 1960s.
[edit] United States
Main article: Language education in the United States

In most school systems, foreign language is taken in high school, with many schools requiring one to three years of foreign language in order to graduate. In some school systems, foreign language is also taught during middle school, and recently, many elementary schools have begun teaching foreign languages as well. However, foreign language immersion programs are growing in popularity, making it possible for elementary school children to begin serious development of a second language.

In late 2009 the Center for Applied Linguistics completed an extensive survey documenting foreign language study in the United States [1]. The most popular language is Spanish, due to the large number of recent Spanish-speaking immigrants to the United States (see Spanish in the United States). According to this survey, in 2008 88% of language programs in elementary schools taught Spanish, compared to 93% in secondary schools. Other languages taught in U.S. high schools in 2008, in descending order of frequency, were French, German, Latin, Mandarin Chinese, American Sign Language, Italian, and Japanese. During the Cold War, the United States government pushed for Russian education, and some schools still maintain their Russian programs [2]. Other languages recently gaining popularity include Arabic.
[edit] Australia

Prior to European colonisation, there were hundreds of Aboriginal languages, taught in a traditional way. The arrival of a substantial number of Irish in the first English convict ships meant that European Australia was not ever truly monolingual. When the gold rushes of the 1850s trebled the white population, it brought many more Welsh speakers, who had their own language newspapers through to the 1870s, but the absence of language education meant that these Celtic languages never flourished.

Waves of European migration after World War II brought "community languages," sometimes with schools. However, from 1788 until modern times it was generally expected that immigrants would learn English and abandon their first language (Clyne, 1997). The wave of multicultural policies since the 1970s has softened aspects of these attitudes.

In 1982 a bipartisan committee of Australian parliamentarians was appointed and identified a number of guiding principles that would support a National Policy on Languages (NPL). Its trend was towards bilingualism in all Australians, for reasons of fairness, diversity and economics.

In the 1990s the Australian Languages and Literacy Policy (ALLP) was introduced, building on the NPL, with extra attention being given to the economic motivations of second language learning. A distinction became drawn between priority languages and community languages. The ten priority languages identified were Mandarin, French, German, Modern Greek, Indonesian, Japanese, Italian, Korean, Spanish and Aboriginal languages.

However, Australia's federal system meant that the NPL and ALLP direction was really an overall policy from above without much engagement from the states and territories. The NALSAS strategy united Australian Government policy with that of the states and territories. It focused on four targeted languages: Mandarin, Indonesian, Japanese and Korean. This would be integrated into studies of Society and Environment, English and Arts.

By 2000, the top ten languages enrolled in the final high school year were, in descending order: Japanese, French, German, Chinese, Indonesian, Italian, Greek, Vietnamese, Spanish and Arabic. In 2002, only about 10% of Year 12 included at least one Language Other Than English (LOTE) among their course choices.
[edit] Japan
Main article: Eikaiwa
[edit] Language study holidays
See also: Language school

An increasing number of people are now combining holidays with language study in the native country. This enables the student to experience the target culture by meeting local people. Such a holiday often combines formal lessons, cultural excursions, leisure activities, and a homestay, perhaps with time to travel in the country afterwards. Language study holidays are popular across Europe and Asia due to the ease of transportation and variety of nearby countries. These holidays have become increasingly more popular in Central and South America in such countries as Guatemala, Ecuador and Peru.

With the increasing prevalence of international business transactions, it is now important to have multiple languages at one's disposal. This is also evident in businesses outsourcing their departments to Eastern Europe.[citation needed]
[edit] Language education on the Internet

The Internet has emerged as a powerful medium to teach and learn foreign languages. Websites that provide language education on the Internet may be broadly classified under 3 categories:

1. Language exchange websites
2. Language portals
3. Virtual online schools
4. Support websites

[edit] Language exchange websites

Language exchange facilitates language learning by placing users with complementary language skills in contact with each other. For instance, User A is a native Spanish speaker and wants to learn English; User B is a native English speaker and wants to learn Spanish. Language exchange websites essentially treat knowledge of a language as a commodity, and provide a market like environment for the commodity to be exchanged. Users typically contact each other via text chat, voice-over-IP, or email.

Language exchanges have also been viewed as a helpful tool to aid language learning at language schools. Language exchanges tend to benefit oral proficiency, fluency, colloquial vocabulary acquisition, and vernacular usage, rather than formal grammar or writing skills.
[edit] Portals that provide language content

There are a number of Internet portals that offer language content, some in interactive form. Content typically includes phrases with translation in multiple languages, text to speech engines (TTS), learning activities such as quizzes or puzzles based on language concepts. While some of this content is free, a large fraction of the content on offer is available for a fee, especially where the content is tailored to the needs of language tests such as TOEFL, for the United States.

In general, language education on the Internet provides a good supplement to real world language schooling. However, the commercial nature of the Internet, including pop-up and occasionally irrelevant text or banner ads might be seen as a distraction from a good learning experience.
[edit] Virtual world-based language schools

These are schools operating online in MMOs and virtual worlds. Unlike other language education on the Internet, virtual world schools are usually designed as an alternative to physical schools. In 2005, the virtual world Second Life started to be used for foreign language tuition, sometimes with entire businesses being developed.[4][5]

Foreign language English has gained an online presence, with several schools operating entirely online, and the British Council which has focused on the Teen Grid. In addition, Spain’s language and cultural institute Instituto Cervantes has an "island" on Second Life. A list of educational projects (including some language schools) in Second Life can be found on the second life Educational wiki, or the SimTeach site.
[edit] Minority language education
[edit] Minority language education policy

The principle policy arguments in favor of promoting minority language education are the need for multilingual workforces, intellectual and cultural benefits and greater inclusion in global information society.[6] Access to education in a minority language is also seen as a human right as granted by the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and the UN Human Rights Committee.[7] Bilingual Education has been implemented in many countries including the United States, in order to promote both the use and appreciation of the minority language, as well as the majority language concerned.[8]
[edit] Materials and e-learning for minority language education

Suitable resources for teaching and learning minority languages can be difficult to find and access, which has led to calls for the increased development of materials for minority language teaching. The internet offers opportunities to access a wider range of texts, audios and videos.[9] Language learning 2.0 (the use of web 2.0 tools for language education)[10] offers opportunities for material development for lesser-taught languages and to bring together geographically dispersed teachers and learners.

References

1. ^ a b c d e Richards, Jack C.; Theodore S. Rodgers (2001). Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-00843-3.
2. ^ a b c Diller, Karl Conrad (1978). The Language Teaching Controversy. Rowley, Massachusetts: Newbury House. ISBN 912066-22-9.
3. ^ a b c Holden, Susan; Mickey Rodgers (1998). English language teaching. Mexico City: DELTI. ISBN 968-6820-12-4.
4. ^ Dorveaux, Xavier (15 July 2007). "Apprendre une langue dans un monde virtuel". Le Monde. http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0,36-935560,0.html. Retrieved 15 July 2007.
5. ^ Dorveaux, Xavier (15 July 2007). "Study and teach in Second Life". iT's Magazines. http://www.its-teachers.com/destinations/second_life/second_life03.asp. Retrieved 15 July 2007.
6. ^ Sachdev, I; McPake, J (2008). "Community Languages in Higher Education: Towards realising the potential". Routes into Languages. pp. 76. http://www.routesintolanguages.ac.uk/community. Retrieved 26 June 2009.
7. ^ de Varennes, Fernand (2004). "The right to education and minority language". EUMAP: EU Monitoring and Advocacy Program Online Journal. http://www.eumap.org/journal/features/2004/minority_education/edminlang. Retrieved 26 June 2009. [dead link]
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