Learn how to Learn English, or Anything in the World

Sometimes it’s just not about how much we do but about how precise we are while doing so. We dare to say that this rule applies to every field. It doesn’t matter what you are doing, what you are studying, etc. you just need to learn to use your tools effectively. For example, when you are learning how to play an instrument, we need to focus on technique, theory and improvisation. A good recommendation for musicians is to record themselves playing, so that they can play their performance over and over again, to spot the weaknesses and work on them. Improvising and never stopping to listening what you do can be fun, especially because you always play the same scales, so you are in your comfort area. However, what happens when you find yourself in a situation where you have to adjust to new sounds, chords, styles, etc.? This is exactly where the importance of focusing on your weaknesses lies on.

          Something similar happens when you are learning languages. For example, when seeking to learn English Cairns students try to be as responsible for their learning as possible. They will get to a point where learning depends on them. Until that moment, they count on native English speaking trainers that are able to explain the cultural nuances behind the technical aspects of the language. If you know you have a grammar weakness but are fluent talking, you shouldn’t just keep doing what’s easy for you and nothing else. Doing what we know how to do might make us feel pleased, however, we will only be fulfilled once we have a good command of every aspect in our learning.

          CEO of Language Trainers Alexis Sheldon recommends that students learn to use certain tools outside the classroom in order to complement their language lessons. For example, social networks like Facebook or Twitter can put you in touch with native speakers of the language you aim to learn. This is a great idea especially if your next goal is learning the slang used in different countries, and also if you are good at theory but have a hard time applying what you’ve learnt to daily life.

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Types of Reading

Today we will discuss about types of reading. Actually there are many types of reading,  but today we will discuss about extensive and intensive reading.

1.      Extensive Reading

There have been conflicting definitions of the term “extensive reading.” (Hedge, 2003, p. 202) Some use it to refer to describe “skimming and scanning activities,” others associate it to quantity of material. Hafiz and Tudor state that:

the pedagogical value attributed to extensive reading is based on the assumption that exposing learners to large quantities of meaningful and interesting L2 material will, in the long run, produce a beneficial effect on the learners’ command of the L2. (1989, p. 5)

 Inspired by Krashen’s Input Hypothesis, researchers have shown renewed interest in  extensive reading in recent years. This is seen most clearly in various trends adopted by ELT institutions. Students are urged to read independently by using the resources within their reach (Hedge, 2003, p. 200-201). Besides, there has been a growing interest in researching the value of extensive reading. Hafiz and Tudor (1989) conducted a three-month extensive reading programme as an extra activity. The subjects were Pakistani ESL learners in a UK school and  146 their parents were manual workers with limited formal education. The results showed a marked improvement in the performance of the experimental subjects, especially in terms of their writing skills. The subjects’ progress in writing skills may be due in part to “exposure to a range of lexical, syntactic, and textual features in the reading materials” as well as the nature of “the pleasure-oriented extensive reading.” (Hafiz & Tudor, p. 8)

Hedge believes that extensive reading varies according to students’ motivation and school resources. A well-motivated and trained teacher will be able to choose suitable handouts or activities books for the students. The Reading Teacher journal, for example, publishes a list (Appendix A) every November of over 300 newly published books for children and adolescents that have been reviewed and recommended by teachers.

Hedge (2003) also states that since extensive reading helps in developing reading ability, it should be built into an EFL/ESL programmes provided the selected texts are “authentic” – i.e. “not written for language learners and published in the original language” (p. 218)- and “graded”. Teachers with EFL/ESL learners at low levels can either use “pedagogic” or “adapted” texts. Moreover, extensive reading enables learners to achieve their independency by reading either in class or at home, through sustained silent reading (SSR). Carrell and Eisterhold (1983) argue that SSR activity can be effective in helping learners become self-directed agents seeking meaning provided an SSR program is “based on student-selected texts so that the students will be interested in what they are reading. Students select their own reading texts with respect to content, level of difficulty, and length.” (p. 567)

2.      Intensive Reading

In intensive (or creative) reading, students usually read a page to explore the meaning and to be acquainted with writing mechanisms. Hedge argues that it is “only through more extensive reading that learners can gain substantial practice in operating these strategies more independently on a range of materials.” (ibid, p. 202) These strategies can be either text-related or learner-related: the former includes an awareness of text organization, while the latter includes strategies like linguistic, schematic, and metacognitive strategies. Hafiz and Tudor (1989) differentiate between extensive and intensive reading:

In intensive reading activities learners are in the main exposed to relatively short texts which are used either to exemplify specific aspects of the lexical, syntactic or discoursal system of the L2, or to provide the basis for targeted reading strategy practice; the goal of extensive reading, on the other hand, is to ‘flood’ learners with large quantities of L2 input with few or possibly no specific tasks to perform on this material. (p. 5)

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Strategies for Collaborative Teaching

What is collaboration? Friend and Cook explain interpersonal collaboration as “a style for direct interaction between at least two coequal parties voluntarily engaged in shared decision making as they work toward a common goal” (1996, 6). Collaboration describes how people work together rather than what they do. It is a dynamic, interactive process among equal partners who strive together to reach excellence. In the 21st century, educators’ overarching common goal is increasing achievement for all learners.

Collaboration can happen in the planning, implementation, and assessment stages of teaching. It begins with planning the partnership itself. In formal collaborations, collaborators must schedule time to meet. Ideally, they preview the lesson ideas to each other in advance of the meeting so that planning can be more focused. Each person can then bring possible goals and objectives to the meeting, along with ideas for curriculum integration, instructional strategies, student grouping arrangements, and potential resources. In the planning process, educators establish shared goals and specific learning outcomes for students as well as assessment tools to evaluate student achievement. They discuss students’ background knowledge, prior learning experiences, and skill development and determine what resources will best meet learners’ needs. Educators decide on one or more coteaching approaches, assign responsibilities for particular aspects of the lesson, and schedule teaching time based on the needs of students and the requirements of the learning tasks. They may set up another meeting before teaching the lesson and schedule a follow-up time to coassess student work and to evaluate the lesson itself.

The goals and objectives are the most important sections on classroom-library collaborative planning forms. While negotiating the best way for the teacher-librarian to coteach curriculum standards and to integrate information literacy skills, the “backward planning” framework (Wiggins and McTighe 1998) charges educators with knowing where they are going before they begin determining instructional strategies and resources. This planning model is centered on student outcomes.

Many teacher-librarian resources provide sample collaborative planning forms. The software program Impact! Documenting the LMC Program for Accountability (Miller 1998) combines both advanced planning and lesson plan support. It also helps teacher-librarians create reports that graphically and statistically document their contributions to the school’s academic goals.

During lesson implementation, collaborators can assume different coteaching roles. In Interactions: Collaboration Skills for School Professionals, Friend and Cook describe various coteaching approaches (1996, 47–50). Figure 1-2 shows possible coteaching configurations. Depending on the lesson, the students’ prior knowledge and skill development, the expertise of the educators, and their level of trust, collaborators can assume one or more of these roles during a lesson or unit of instruction. 

Team teaching requires careful planning, respect for each educator’s style, and ultimately a shared belief in the value that this level of risk taking can offer students and educators themselves. Teacher-librarians, working within a supportive learning community, must develop interpersonal skills as well as teaching expertise that can allow team teaching to flourish.

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Similarities between Comprehension in Listening and Reading

Today I would like posting about comprehension and its similarities between comprehension in listening and Reading. There are striking similarities between the comprehension processes involved in listening and reading, as summarized in Table 3.1. Listening involves learning how to make “reasonable interpretations” of an oral text (Brown & Yule, 1983, p. 57), whereas reading involves the same process for a written text. There are other similarities as well. Listening comprehension is the knowledge of language that includes all of the content of a language—its vocabulary, syntax, meanings—that can be borne by the oral text alone, whereas literacy situates all of that language content within a written system. Oracy acts as the bridge between a natural language process, which is listening, and an unnatural process, which is reading.

All of us learn to listen in our native language, and the habit of listening comprehension becomes automatic and unconscious by the time we begin school. Once we become literate, we only reference our listening vocabulary when we are trying to retrieve something specific, such as a new or tricky word we are trying to spell, understand, or decode.

These are some similarities comprehension in listening and reading;

1. Both require active construction of meaning, with interaction between the text (oral or written) and the person.
2. For both reading and listening, text is remembered as the “gist,” not the exact words.
3. Both listening and reading require phonological awareness.
4. Both the reading and listening processes benefit from larger vocabularies.
5. Reading and listening comprehension require having the concept of word (as a unit of meaning which can be manipulated).
6. English has many similar-looking and similar-sounding words, and these can be confusing.
7. Longer words are harder to store, retain, and retrieve from memory.
8. When context is stripped away, comprehension becomes much more difficult.
9. Automaticity facilitates the ability to construct meaning for both listening and reading, and this can be developed.
10. Learners need to become familiar with different genres and what can be expected from the structure of the genres.
11. Listening or reading tasks vary according to different purposes, different texts, and different contexts.
12. Both intensive and extensive practice are needed to improve listening and reading levels.
13. Both listening and reading require knowledge of English syntax patterns in order to make good guesses about what is coming next.

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How Word Recognition Occurs in English

How word recognition occurs can be something difficult to be explain. Here I would like sharing about how word recognition occurs especially in English to readers. To read English words, we learn to match sounds, or phonemes, with letters, or graphemes. When we learn to read English words, we learn to perform Learning to Read, Write, and Spell 65 several steps very rapidly. First, we identify the first letter(s) of the word and try to find a matching phoneme. Then, working left to right, we match the rest of the graphemes and phonemes of the word. Holding the sounds in our working memory, we recombine them to form a mental representation that we attempt to match with a word from our listening vocabulary.

Once that lightning-fast process has occurred, we can access its meaning. Of course, if we are reading out loud, there are additional steps needed in order to pronounce the words. Accessing and recognizing individual words is called word recognition, and recognizing the sound and meaning of words across connected text is what we call decoding. There are two broad categories of words in English: those with easy-to-match phonemes and graphemes, called decodable words, and those that have to be memorized as a whole, called sight words. Decoding and sight-word recognition are the primary word-attack skills used for English word recognition. There are good reasons that English words are taught through both decoding and memorization.

On the other hand, when we write to represent words in written form, which is sometimes called recoding, we retrieve the word from our listening vocabulary and try to write the letters that represent the sounds of the word, proceeding in order from left to right. We also learn to write some English words not by matching them with the sounds, but from sheer rote memorization. Like decoding, recoding words in English can proceed in two possible ways, by putting letters in order, or by learning how to write some words “by heart,” without breaking them apart. Although some of the shortest and most common words are sight words, overall the great majority of English words are decodable, and learning to decode is unavoidable in order to read and write in English.

Put another way, when learners decode English words, they start with the letter symbols and match them with the sounds, and when they write English words, they start with the sounds and match them with the letter symbols. No matter which end we start from, both processes involve matching the English sound and letter symbol combinations. The skill of matching sounds and letter symbols is called phonics. Phonics knowledge requires a good understanding of how the English sound and writing systems map onto each other. In order to help learners develop the phonics skill, teachers need to understand how the phonemes and graphemes of English work together in the English writing system. The teacher also needs to appreciate how the orthographies of ELLs’ first languages resemble and differ from English and how that affects learning to read.

For a native speaker of English, the process of learning to read and write words usually begins before or in kindergarten and continues until it is in place by third grade. This is a lengthy and often laborious process, and must be cemented into place before the focus of reading changes from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.” Learners of English as a new language need to go through this process just like native speakers, but it might take place at any age or grade level, depending on when ELLs begin to learn English as a new language. Phonics skills are critical to cracking the code for reading English and must be accounted for in any comprehensive instructional program. As Calderon (2006) nicely summarizes, “Whatever the grade level, teachers with ELLs will eventually have students who need instruction in these basic skills, before they can comprehend a text” (p. 131).

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Become a Savvy Teacher

One of the most exciting aspects of teaching is that every day offers new ways to learn and grow. Although you can never be completely prepared for every possible question or event, your positive attitude, strong professionalism, and communication techniques will carry you far. Next year, as you reflect back on this one, total amazement at the wonder of working with young minds will energize you for another magical adventure. Here are some tips to keep in mind to help you become a savvy teacher from the outset.

Professionalism. Always be professional in your attitude, behavior, clothing selection, and overall appearance and cleanliness. Regardless of the size of the school where you teach, in a village or a city, students and parents are looking to you as a positive role model.

Advance preparation. Always be prepared with lessons that enrich, backup materials that support the lesson, and understanding of all the learners in your care. No student wants to fail. Students are counting on their teacher to make a difference in their learning now and forever.

Advice. Seek help and advice from colleagues to ensure that students succeed. Colleagues can help you improve lessons, assessments, and learning, and learn the “secrets” of the job. It is essential to learn as much about teaching as quickly as possible. Find a trusted colleague to support you as you begin your career.

Attitude, communication, and interaction. No matter what the day brings, remain positive. Even on the toughest days, students are counting on you. You will find a way to reach and teach every child. It is also possible to have a cordial relationship even with the most trying parent or colleague. Make open-house evenings, parent–teacher conferences, and other special events opportunities for stakeholders to learn about you and your expectations and for you to learn about them. Continue to learn and grow by taking at least one or two classes per year; attending professional conferences, seminars, or workshops; and joining an education-based organization, especially one with excellent publications. Other ideas include subscribing to at least one education-based periodical, teaching or team-teaching a class/workshop for colleagues, and collaborating with teachers you trust and who will make you better at the job.

Teaching writing and reading
The Prcesss of education
Writing Fiction
Teaching Grammar
Teacher's grammar
Educational Research
Technique and Principle in Language Teaching
Teaching the Four Language Skills
Academic Writing
Tourism Dictionary
Richard's Book

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Setting a Framework for Knowledge

Setting a framework for knowledge is a very important component in teaching and learning process. Learning is an active, constructive, contextual process. New knowledge is acquired in relation to previous knowledge; information becomes meaningful when it is presented and acquired in some type of framework. From a learning - centered perspective, your task as an instructor is to interact with students in ways that enable them to acquire new information, practice new skills, reconfigure what they already know, and recognize what they have learned (B. G. Davis, 1993).

A learning - centered approach has subtle but profound implications for you as a teacher. It asks that you think carefully about your teaching philosophy, what it means to be an educated person in your discipline or field, how your course relates to disciplinary and interdisciplinary programs of study, and your intentions and purposes for producing and assessing learning. It asks that you think through the implications of your preferred teaching style; the decisions you make about teaching strategies and forms of assessment; and the ways that students ’ diverse needs, interests, and purposes can influence all those choices.

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Children and Adult Language Acquisition

Children and adult have a different ability in learning a foreign language. The difference between child and adult ability in learning a foreign language has been researched by some experts and  teachers. What factors are influencing ability in foreign language acquisition? How can a foreign language be acquired fast? And some similar questions about child versus adult language acquisition have been answered by experts in their researches about critical age language learning.

A number of years ago, language teachers and researchers believed in a critical period for language learning (Scovel, 1988). That period was said to end with brain lateralization (early theorists posited age five as the time of lateralization; the theory was later amended to suggest that this occurs during the teenage years).

Brain lateralization refers to the brain’s finalizing the location of the functions that will be accomplished in either the right or left hemisphere – or cross-laterally. Before lateralization, functions can be picked up by the other hemisphere, e.g. speech, which is generally a left-hemisphere function, can be taken over by the right hemisphere when the left is damaged in a young child. After lateralization, this cannot happen. Lateralization is also considered to be responsible for the finalization of the range of sounds that a person can hear or learn and an explanation for why children generally acquire foreign languages without an accent and most adults have a moderate to severe accent when they speak.

Children have also been said to have a Language Acquisition Device (LAD), or “black box,” in their heads (Chomsky, 1998). This LAD is envisioned as an unseen, uncharted part(s) of the brain (or perhaps just a manner of synaptic functioning) that allows children to acquire the structure and words of a language without conscious effort. After childhood, the LAD seems to cease functioning, although the authors have heard of some instances of adults reporting LAD-type activity and at least one of us has experienced it personally as an older adult.

The fact is that in childhood language acquisition, whether a native language or a foreign language, is closely associated with a developing mind (Golinkoff and Hirsh-Pasek, 2000), whereas adult acquisition of language is associated with a developed mind.

Contrary to these earlier suggestions, the role of age in language acquisition is a very disputed aspect of language learning theory. Some adults have been able to do everything a child does – pronouncewords with a native accent, learn language in context, and the like (Birdsong, 1999; Leaver, 2003a). Moreover, a cognitive advantage has been found for adults – knowing one language and its lexicogrammatical system can sometimes create impediments through its influence on a learner’s expectations of how another language will work, but a good grasp of the systems behind one’s native language can also provide the learner with basic linguistic categories that are useful in learning a second language. Often, too, the learning is faster because of this cognitive advantage (Schleppegrell, 1987).

Reference

Betty Lou Leaver et al. (2005). Achieving Success in Second Language Acquisition. New York : Cambridge University Press

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Language as self-expression

This article was posted to continue my previous posting. It was about Language and Communication. This article is about Language as self-expression.

The functional perspective on language discussed in the last section emphasizes the role of language as a means of achieving pragmatic goals, e.g. reading specialized material in the target language, performing professional or academic tasks, settling in to another country, and so on. Language is not, however, used for only this purpose. It is also the medium by which we build up personal relationships, express our emotions and aspirations, and explore our interests. In other words, language is not simply a tool for achieving specific transactional goals, it is also a means of self-expression.

A functional perspective on language portrays the learner primarily as a social actor and language as a form of social action, which is certainly a valid perspective. Language learners are also, however, individuals in the personal and affective sense of the term, which means that language is also a means of personal and affective expression.

This casts a different light on language and also, on the nature and goals of language teaching. A view of language as a linguistic system says that the goal of language teaching is to help students learn this system. A functional view of language says that the goals of language teaching are defined by what the learner has to do in the language. When language is viewed as self-expression, learning goals are defined by what the learner wishes to express, and this means that each learner has his or her own unique and personal learning agenda. As a consequence, this perspective on language sets objectives which are internal to learners as individuals and relates to the concerns and aspirations of learners as thinking and affective beings. Language in this framework of ideas is a means of personal expression and a tool for personal fulfilment. Self-expression is a fundamental component of language use and the “opening up” of a course to at least some degree of self-expression can help learners find a sense of personal meaningfulness in their language study. Or, to express this negatively, the absence of any scope for self-expression can make students perceive a course as being something “out there” and indifferent to them and to their individual concerns, and thus make it difficult for them to relate to it in a personally meaningful manner.

Moon (2000) summarises some of the important abilities which our pupils are able to make use of in learning a foreign language and which indicate the active nature of their learning: using language creatively, going for meaning, using “chunks” of language, having fun, joining in the action, talking their heads off, feeling at home. Children will only be able to make use of these abilities if we create the right kind of learning environment in which they can draw on them.

This means we need to consider how to:

-         Create a real need and desire to use English.

-         Provide sufficient time for English.

-         Provide exposure to varied and meaningful input with a focus on communication.

-         Provide opportunities for children to experiment with their new language.

-         Provide plenty of opportunities to practise and use the language in different contexts.

-         Create a friendly atmosphere in which children can take risks and enjoy their learning.

-         Provide feedback on learning.

-         Help children notice the underlying pattern in language.

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Language as Doing Things: The functional Perspective

This article is posted to continue my previous posting, it is about Language and Communication. The question “Why do we use language?” seems hardly to require an answer. But, as is often the way with linguistic questions, our everyday familiarity with speech and writing can make it difficult to appreciate the complexity of the skills we have learned. This is particularly so when we try to define the range of functions to which language can be put. Language scholars have identified many functions (“macro-functions”) to which language can be put. Thus

1.  Bühler (1934) distinguishes between

a.   The symptom function, i.e. information pertaining to the speaker.

b.   The symbol function, i.e. information pertaining to the world.

c.   The signal function, i.e. information pertaining to the hearer.

2.  Jakobson (1960) emphasizes different aspects of the speech event:

ASPECT	FUNCTION
addresser	emotive, expressive, affective
addressee	conative
context	referential, cognitive, denotative
message	poetic
contact	phatic, interaction managment
code	metalinguistic

He filled out this model as follows:

The “addresser” sends a “message” to the “addressee”. To be operative the message requires a “context” referred to, seizable by the addressee, and either verbal or capable of being verbalized; a “code” fully, or at least partially, common to the addresser and addressee, enabling both of them to enter and stay in communication.

       

3.  Habermas (1976) in turn conceives of the

a.   Representative function as connected with “the” world.

b.   Expressive function as connected with the “own” world of the speaker.

c.   Interactive function connected with the “shared” world of the communicants.

4.  Halliday (1978) stresses three semantic functions:

a.   The ideational function concerned with the expression of experience; to transmit information between members of societies.

b.   The interpersonal function concerned with the regulation of social relations; to establish, maintain and specify relations between members of societies.

c.   The textual function concerned with structuring the act of speech; to provide texture, the organization of discourse as relevant to the situation.

The definition of the functions of language is elaborated at various points in Halliday’s writings.

Thus, in a study of a child learning his mother tongue, he used a framework of seven initial functions:

a.   Instrumental (“I want”): satisfying material needs.

b.   Regulatory (“do as I tell you”): controlling the behaviour of others.

c.   Interactional (“me and you”): getting along with other people.

d.   Personal (“here I come”): identifying and expressing the self.

e.   Heuristic (“tell me why”): exploring the world around and inside one.

f.    Imaginative (“let’s pretend”): creating a world of one’s own.

g.   Informative (“I’ve got something to tell you”): communicating new information.

These are arranged in the order in which they appeared from 9 months onwards, before the child had a recognizable linguistic system. Halliday speaks of there being several meanings in each function. Learning the mother tongue is interpreted as progressive mastery of a number of basic functions of language and the building up of a “meaning potential” in respect of each.

5.  Hymes (1962), following Jakobson, 1960) proposes seven “broad types” of functions which language in use serves:

a.   Expressive / emotive.

b.   Directive / conative / persuasive.

c.   Poetic.

d.   Contact (physical or psychological).

e.   Metalinguistic (focusing on meaning).

f.    Referential.

g.   Contextual / situational.

He argues that these seven functions correspond, in general terms, to various factors to which speakers attend in speech situations. Appropriate language may depend on different combinations of:

a.   Sender.

b.   Receiver.

c.   Message form.

d.   Channel (e.g. speech versus writing).

e.   Code (e.g. dialect, language or jargon).

f.    Topic.

g.   Setting or situation.

Generalising over speech events, he abstracts the roles of addressor (sender) and addressee (receiver). The addressor is the speaker or writer who produces the utterance. The addressee is the hearer or reader who is the recipient of the utterance. Knowledge of the addressor in a given communicative event makes it possible for the analyst to imagine what that particular person is going to say. Knowledge of his addressee constrains the analyst’s expectations even further. Thus, if you know that the speaker is the prime minister or the departmental secretary or your family doctor or your mother, and you know that the speaker is speaking to a colleague or his bank manager or a small child, you will have different expectations of the sort of language which will be produced, both with respect to form and to content. If you know, further, what is being talked about, Hymes’ category of topic, your expectations will be further constrained. If then you have information about the setting, both in terms of where the event is situated in place and time, and in terms of the physical relations of the interactants with respect to posture and gesture and facial expression, your expectations will be still further limited.

The remaining features of context which Hymes discusses (in 1964) include large-scale features like channel (how is contact between the participants in the event being maintained – by speech, writing, signing), code (what language, or dialect, or style of language is being used), message-form (what form is intended – chat, debate, sermon, fairy-tale, etc.) and event (the nature of the communicative event within which a genre may be embedded – thus a sermon or prayer may be part of the larger event, a church service). In later recensions Hymes adds other features, for example key (which involves evaluation – was it a good sermon, a pathetic explanation?, etc.), and purpose (what did the participants intend should come about as a result of the communicative event).

Hymes’ theory of communicative competence (1972) played an important role in introducing a new perspective on language into reflection on language teaching. Hymes situates language in its social context as the medium by which members of a speech community express concepts, perceptions, and values which have significance to them as members of this community. Language, then, can only be understood within the framework of the meaning structures of the relevant speech community, and the study of language therefore needs to operate within a sociological and sociocultural framework. This implies that the teaching of language needs to accommodate this dimension of meaning and enable learners to operate effectively within the relevant speech community. According to Hymes the rules of appropriacy linking forms to contextual features were not simply to be grafted on to grammatical competence, but were to be acquired simultaneously with it.

This perspective on language underpinned work on notional / functional syllabuses (Wilkins, 1976; Finocchiaro and Brumfit, 1983) and the communicative approach to language teaching (Widdowson, 1978). As a result of this line of reflection, language came to be seen as social action and the social or functional uses which learners were to make of the language became the starting point for the development of learning programmes. Communicative language teaching (CLT) arose out of this perspective on language and, on this basis, set out to develop an approach to teaching whose goal was to enable students to use the language in one or more socially defined contexts. In this view, language learners are social actors whose learning goals are defined by the contexts in which they will be required to use the language and the messages they will wish to convey in these contexts.

Wilkins (1976) proposed a notional or semantic approach which would reflect the behavioural needs of learners, would take the communicative facts of language into account from the beginning, without losing sight of grammatical and situational factors, and would attempt to set out what the learner might want to do and to say through language.

In order to set out what people might want to do and to say through language, Wilkins drew upon Austin’s (1962) speech act theory. This suggested that in addition to conceptual meaning all utterances have an illocutionary value which embodies the speaker’s intention. Sometimes we express our intention directly, (for example, “I congratulate you”), but more often, as Searle (1975) pointed out, we tend to do this indirectly, for example, when we use a question about someone’s ability (“Can you speak a little louder”) to serve as a request for action. This highlights the fact that we do not use an interrogative form, for example, uniquely to ask for information, or a declarative form simply for giving information. There is no simple one-to-one relationship between particular forms and the illocutionary values that should be attached to them. Values must be interpreted in the light of the context in which the forms occur.

“Pragmatic competences”, another component of communicative competence, refer to this knowledge and skills. As defined by the Council of Europe (2001), they are concerned with the functional use of linguistic resources (production of language functions, speech acts), drawing on scenarios or scripts of interactional exchanges. It also concerns the mastery of discourse, cohesion and coherence, the identification of text types and forms, irony, and parody. For this component even more than the linguistic component, it is hardly necessary to stress the major impact of interactions and cultural environments in which such abilities are constructed.

The sources will be published in my last posting about language and communication

READ MORE Ą Language as Doing Things: The functional Perspective

Language and Communication

Current pedagogic approaches to modern foreign languages (MFL) teaching focus on communicative competence, which simply means to equip the learner with the knowledge, skills and interpersonal strategies they need effectively to be able to communicate with speakers of the language in question.

          Many different perspectives on the nature of language, a “complex phenomenon” as Cunningsworth (1995) comments, can be found both in the theoretical literature and in the coursebooks and materials we use. These perspectives may in certain cases be stated explicitly, while in others they may remain implicit. In either case, however, they are present and influence how the language is presented to students and which aspects of it are selected for study.

          On the other hand, “communication” has become a buzz word and an umbrella term which is applied to almost any approach to MFL teaching and learning nowadays. That is why it is important to be clear about its concept and implications

“There are rules of use without which the rules of grammar would be useless”, wrote the sociolinguist D. Hymes in 1972. This marks a before and an after in language teaching. Up to then, language had been seen as made up of phonology, grammar and vocabulary, analysed as separate entities, without much attention being paid to the “appropriate” use of the language in real everyday situations. That is one of the reasons why the methods used produced grammatically competent students but only too often “communicatively incompetent” ones.

The growth of the communicative approach in the 1970s emphasised that language is a tool for achieving communicative goals, and not simply a linguistic system in its own right. At the same time, language is a system, and mastering this system (or parts of it at least) is a meaningful form of communication. A coherent approach to language teaching therefore calls for choices to be made about all these aspects.

That is why this section centres around four main visions of the nature of language as proposed by Tudor (2001), all of them having to do with language as communication:

-         Language as a linguistic system.

-         Language from a functional perspective.

-         Language as self-expression.

-         Language as culture and ideology.

Other perspectives exist, and this section does not claim to provide a comprehensive overview of all theories of language, but simply to examine some of the more frequent ways of seeing language which teachers are likely to encounter in the daily practice of teaching.

Now, we will not give you all of them, but only two first. You may read the third and the fourth one in the next posting

1. Language as a linguistic system

The language system comprises three main elements: phonology, vocabulary and grammar. They are part of linguistic competences, which is one of the components of communicative language competence. Following the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, published by the Council of Europe in 2001, they include lexical, phonological, syntactical knowledge and skills and other dimensions of language as system, independently of the sociolinguistic value of its variations and the pragmatic function of its realisations. This component relates not only to the range and quality of knowledge (e.g. in terms of phonetic distinctions made or the extent and precision of vocabulary) but also to cognitive organisation and the way this knowledge is stored (e.g. the various associative networks in which the speaker places a lexical item) and to its accessibility (activation, recall and availability). Knowledge may be conscious and readily expressible or may not (e.g. once again in relation to mastery of a phonetic system). Its organisation and accessibility will vary from one individual to another and vary also within the same individual (e.g. for a plurilingual person depending on the varieties inherent in his or her plurilingual competence). It can also be held that the cognitive organisation of vocabulary and the storing of expressions, etc., depend, amongst other things, on the cultural features of the community or communities in which the individual has been socialised and where his or her learning has occurred. 

Read my next posting about language from a functional perspective, language as self-expression, language as culture and ideology.

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READ MORE Ą Language and Communication