Previously published in The Island on Wednesday 4, June 2008
I write the following in the national interest as a parent and an educationist with a view to drawing the attention of those concerned to a vital issue in the relevant field. No criticism of individuals or a particular institution is intended. Contrary opinions are welcome.
Instructional materials play a vital role in any language teaching system. They contribute to the organizational aspect of a method or approach along with five other elements in terms of the model of methodological analysis elaborated by Richards and Rodgers in their book Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching (2001. 2nd ed.Cambridge University Press): the general and specific objectives of the particular method or approach, a syllabus model, types of learning and teaching activities, learner roles, and teacher roles.
The role of instructional materials is determined by the primary goal envisaged for them by the designers of the relevant language teaching programme (e.g. to present content, that is, the language items to be taught; practice content; to facilitate interactive communication between learners; or to enable learners to practice content unaided by the teacher, and so on). In fact, a particular design for an instructional system allocates a set of roles to materials. Basically they are meant to support the syllabus, the teacher, and the learners. The syllabus specifies the content choice and organization, that is, selection of language items, and their sequencing and gradation respectively. The instructional materials elaborate these further.
In a functional communicative language teaching context instructional materials are chosen on the basis of their efficacy in promoting interactive communication through the target language among the learners, the operative principle being one of ‘using the language to learn it’ (and not the other around).
Among the wide variety of language teaching materials three types may be described as especially important in such a context: text-based materials (i.e. textbooks generally), task-based materials (e.g. problem-solving tasks, role plays, games, etc.), and realia (things from real life such as real objects, newspaper articles, magazines, maps, posters, advertisements, etc.). All three types are important for the success of a formalized, uniform instructional system like the state English language teaching programme. Of these, however, I feel, textbooks are the most important type of materials since they are evidently the mainstay of the school English language teaching project of Sri Lanka’s Department of Education .
It would not be realistic to expect a textbook, however well made it may be, to fulfill all the various needs in any given language classroom. However, though perfection is not probable, nor even possible, in this matter of coursebook preparation, attempts at such a goal will always pay dividends. As far as Sri Lanka is concerned a drive towards the production of good textbooks for teaching English can receive an impetus from the circumstance indicated in the following paragraph..
In his ‘Language Teaching Methodology’ (1991. Prentice Hall International (UK) Ltd. p. 209) David Nunan refers to the burdensome nature of the creation of materials in foreign language teaching contexts (as opposed to second language teaching contexts) due to the non-availability of authentic source and stimulus material. We enjoy the advantage implied here (i.e. that of an abundance of source and stimulus material) because our English teaching programme is essentially a second language teaching one.
I am not here talking about English medium instruction. My focus is on the teaching of English as a second language, which undoubtedly concerns the interests of the largest proportion of the student population of the country as a whole. A good way to ensure democratic egalitarianism and also to meet the demand for fiscal accountability in the country’s education system is obviously to do everything possible to make a success of teaching English as a second language, not to concentrate too much on a return of the English medium. Bilingualism (i.e., proficiency in English, plus Sinhala or Tamil in our case) rather than monolingualism in English or in one of the native languages, should be our national goal. Only such a policy will allow the general student population (comprising mainly the rural poor) to benefit from a knowledge of English, while enjoying their birthright of receiving an education in their own native language.
(A word about the oft-asserted link between proficiency in English and employability: the truth, I think, is that, in the current scheme of things, it is not a matter of English alone; it’s a problem of English plus ‘class’! Many employers would prefer to employ a person from the ‘elite’ with a smattering of English rather than another from a less privileged section of the society with an excellent command of the language. This, of course, is a serious issue that must be dealt with separately.)
Emphasis on English as a second language, instead of English as the medium of education, will serve two very important ends among others: for one thing, it will save the indigenous languages from the threat of extinction in the face of the dominance exercised by English; for another, it will provide a universally available key to the ever expanding storehouse of human knowledge and culture at the present time, obviating the danger of a constricting insularity among the young.
A second language is a language a person acquires in order to serve some communicative purpose after they have learnt their mother tongue or first language. One’s mother tongue need not necessarily be one’s first language; a person born to Sinhala speaking parents, or growing up as a baby in a Sinhala speaking environment will learn Sinhala as their mother tongue, and later continue to use it as their first language, i.e. the language in which they normally function in education, work, general communication, travel, etc.; in this case Sinhala assumes the roles of that person’s mother tongue, and first language, in other words, their mother tongue and first language are identical; one can also adopt another language than one’s mother tongue as one’s first language, as some Sri Lankans whose mother tongue is either Sinhala or Tamil do by choosing to use English to function in the normal spheres of activity. But we use the description second language to refer to English in a situation where it is available to a person as an additional language in which they can operate in.
We have a substantial number of people who have opted to use English as their first language, though their mother tongue is one of the native languages. Yet the vast majority of us who have acquired a knowledge of English use it as a second language, which means that many of us enjoy the privilege of choosing between our own native tongue and English as our first language in specific situations. (This could confuse the reader a little. There won’t be any confusion if we grasp the point that labels such as mother tongue, first language, second language, and many other similar epithets cannot be permanently fixed to any particular language; the badge only refers to the way any language is used in a particular situation; it is like the same man changing his identity as son, brother, husband, father, or grandfather in relation to different members of his family.)
For a relatively small number of Sri Lankan citizens English is their native/mother tongue; for many more it is their first language. However, for the largest number of Sri Lankans who have anything to do with English it is a second language. Therefore the state English language teaching programme must be geared (as it already is) to teaching the language as a second language for it to be relevant to the widest national interest.
The successful running of the second language teaching programme is, as is well known, hampered by the paucity of resources, especially in the suburban and rural schools, which account for over 90% of the 10,000 strong school system. There are dedicated English teachers with a very good knowledge of their subject and an excellent professional record. Unfortunately, the Department of Education doesn’t have enough of them. The majority of the teachers are poorly trained, and possess only a low level of proficiency in English. Audiovisuals (pictures, charts, maps, audio- and video- players, OHP’s, etc) are not uniformly available in the majority of schools. Technological innovations such as computer software and internet facilities are an absolute rarity. This lack of resources, both human and material, precludes the creation of the basic classroom environment that is essential for stimulating communicative language use among the learners of English.
In this state of resource scarcity the most generally available instructional material is the English textbook. The textbooks are required to compensate for the poor quality of teachers and also for the shortage of other resources. The English textbooks are required to perform a teacher education function, in addition to its more central function of promoting language learning among the students through its communicative use. Much, therefore, is naturally expected of the English textbooks that are produced for use in schools. And ensuring that they maintain a high enough level of excellence is of great concern for educationists, and the general public.
If the English textbooks are to serve the expected ends they must meet a number of criteria ( which, incidentally, are applicable to other instructional materials as well). And these criteria are based on the very fundamental assumption that the textbooks will be efficient tools in the hands of teachers and learners only in so far as they carry a high potential of promoting creative interaction between them, and of triggering, in the process, plenty of communicative language use in the English language classroom and outside of it.
First, they must be based on a thorough knowledge of the students for whom they are meant, an empathetic understanding of their social and cultural background, their emotional and educational needs and expectations, a grasp of their attitude to the task of learning English, and an appreciation of their vision of what they could achieve by a mastery of English as a second language. The employment of mostly local textbook writers (and probably others with a similar outlook on the local scene) may be seen as an attempt to fulfill this need.
A good textbook does not neglect the affective side of the teaching-learning process. It, along with other instructional materials, contributes towards the creation of a safe, friendly and cooperative learning environment that is conducive to meaningful interaction among the learners through the communicative use of the target language. The various language practice activities are of the kind that generates confidence in the learners, and a relaxed classroom atmosphere.
It would be so compiled that the explicit focus would be on the content or subject-matter of each unit, that is, information about some topic that generally appeals to the students; the language that is being presented becomes almost an unnoticed tool in their collaborative interaction or engagement with the text. The various tasks set engage the learners’ creativity; they give the students a legitimate reason to use the language they are learning. Such a textbook provides for the use of audiovisuals and realia for eliciting language from the students.
This kind of creative response from the teachers and students can be expected only if the textbook is based on a consistent ideology or philosophy of teaching and learning, as well as a clear view of the nature of human language. Every activity that is designed, every decision that is implied regarding the selection, sequencing, and gradation, and the intensity of coverage of language items, should be explainable in terms of this rationale.
Yet another criterion that should be observed in the production of a textbook is to ensure that the activities designed integrate all the four major language skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing, and that they cater for all cognitive strategies, i.e. those that involve thinking, or knowing (strategies that, for example, enable the students to understand the rules of grammar implicit in a piece of language); the activities set need to involve problem-solving, and reflection (careful thought) using the target language.
Since the main purpose of a language teaching textbook is to bring about sufficient practice in the communicative use of the relevant language, the linguistic ‘input’ ( the language that is presented by the teacher) and the ‘output’ (the language that is produced by the learners) ‘should be correct, natural and standard’ in terms of the core elements of currently accepted global usage.
The same principle of accuracy applies to the cultural information provided about Sri Lanka, and other countries where English is used. Evidently this cultural aspect is more complex today than it was in the past. Before the emergence of English as a widespread international language and the advent of communicative language teaching it was usually considered necessary for foreign learners of English to be familiar with the culture of the native users of the language, i.e. particularly, the British and the Americans. But today in many countries around the world those who want to learn English are required not only to experience their own native cultures, but also to comprehend a composite ‘world’ culture through English, as members of one global linguistic community (the majority using it as a second language).
But it is good to remember that our ideologies regarding teaching and learning English are still, more or less, dominated by western attitudes. Developing theories and practices that amalgamate better with the truly liberal, cosmopolitan, humane, age-old local culture (which is traditionally misunderstood and misrepresented by the culturally uprooted few who choose to believe that English is still their exclusive patrimony) is a necessity that is yet to be addressed. Our choice of materials, the ways they are presented and practiced, assumptions about what is culturally acceptable, for example, in the matter of student-teacher relationships, ideas about the importance of a knowledge of English among the students, their parents, and the general public – all these are interrelated, and need to be recognized as such.
Having said this, however, it is my conviction that ultimately there is an essential condition that must be fulfilled for the successful and efficient learning of a language (as stated earlier): an abundance of meaningful use of the target language both in the classroom and outside it, accompanied by a steady development of the learners’ cognitive abilities. And the textbooks that are intended to be the mainspring of the whole machinery of the English language teaching programme must be composed of material that provides for that kind of language use catering to an essentially varied population of learners.
Students differ in their interests, levels of motivation, rates of progress, and attitudes towards learning English. Usually teachers are asked to teach mixed-ability groups. A textbook must give them (teachers) sufficient flexibility to deal with these differences. The subject-matter content and the activities based on them should appeal to a variety of students. The difficulty level of the tasks should be so varied as to allow even the weakest students to tackle at least some of them with confidence; but the general level of difficulty should be slightly above the level of achievement expected of any particular (school) grade.
Creation of textbook materials is a very exacting job, to say the least, with so many complicated issues to be looked into. This is easier said than done. Yes, it is difficult, but not impossible.
The textbooks that we need had better be authored by local specialists (or foreigners with comparable empathy with, and understanding of, the Sri Lankan community) in view of the pragmatic assumption that meaningful use of the target language is the surest way to learn a language. Using English for meaningful communication refers to the process by which the learners perceive, interpret and construct their own typical experiences through English.
There were in the past very competent writers of English language teaching textbooks. Mr W.H.Samaranayake was one of the best. His ‘English with a Smile’ series written around the time of Independence was wonderfully responsive to the contemporary political and social transition that was sweeping the country. For this reason his textbooks were far superior (for Sri Lanka) to the adapted versions of foreign textbooks normally used at that time. And, in fact, nothing as good has been produced to date since textbook-writing was ‘indigenized’ in the late sixties. (Obviously, Samaranayake’s books would not stand comparison with the best modern ELT textbooks that someone of the present generation might produce; they are excellent in terms of traditional principles of textbook writing obtaining at that time, and they demonstrate the high levels of creativity achievable in that endeavour in the changed local context today.)
True, Mr Samaranayake was much less encumbered by the mass of bewilderingly complicated and convoluted theories about language, and language pedagogy, among numerous other issues that textbook compilers must contend with nowadays. But, as a textbook writer he was not totally free from challenges. One such challenge was to make English intelligible to students from outside the privileged classes. He met those challenges successfully. There is no doubt that he kept abreast of contemporary trends and developments in the field of language teaching. He was a master of the English language, and he knew his students and his country. He made use of good specimens of writing from native and foreign authors dealing with Sri Lankan themes, which made his books appealing to the students they were intended for. Mr Samaranayake’s books were, and still are, eminently teachable, too. The ‘English with a Smile’ series, though outside the official textbook system, is popular even today in this country.
At the time Mr Samaranayake created his English textbooks the ‘reproduction’ view of language learning (i.e. rote learning) had not yet been seriously challenged, and the more creative view of language learning as ‘problem-solving’ was still a few decades ahead in the future. Yet, the language tasks he devised were imaginative enough to engage the students’ thinking power.
Of course, I am not advocating a return to ‘English with a Smile’. But it would be useful to appreciate why the series has become a classic in textbook writing history.
I wonder whether at least a few of the English textbooks used in Sri Lankan schools today could claim such a high level of excellence (as Mr Samaranayake’s) as teaching materials. This is something worth investigating for reasons that need not be reiterated.
Rohana R. Wasala
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