The Ten Year Master Plan for a Trilingual Sri Lanka
(Previously published in The Island/3rd December 2010)
The 10 year National Master Plan for a Trilingual Sri Lanka (2011-2020) to be launched as a presidential initiative is going to be a massive implementation-oriented language management exercise, probably the most ambitious ever of its kind. A survey carried out by an independent research organization for the Public Survey and Research Unit of the Presidential Secretariat has revealed a clear perception among Sri Lanka’s major ethnic communities of the desirability of a three language system for strengthening national harmony. This is a good trend that should be encouraged and exploited, for the success of any language planning enterprise will ultimately depend on its acceptance by the people.
The Coordinator of the programme, Senior Presidential Advisor Mr Sunimal Fernando, describes the language dimension of the ethnic issue as a chronic wound that has been left untouched in the wishful hope that it would heal by itself in the course of time, for fear of causing pain to the afflicted by probing in it in an attempt to effect a permanent cure. From that perspective, the current undertaking is a bold attempt to bring about a change in the status quo in Sri Lanka’s language planning arena, which, it is hoped, will eventually enhance the prospects of peaceful coexistence among its diverse communities, while opening new vistas of national development. As Professor Rajiva Wijesinghe MP stated in Parliament during the Budget debate recently, “…. multilingualism … is the part of the human resources development that this government alone had the courage to embark on…” (His speech was featured in The Island/28th Monday, November 2010).
Language Planning is a professional activity which is subsumed under Applied Linguistics. It basically involves the participation of three kinds of “language professionals”: politicians, lawyers, and language specialists. These three categories of persons are language professionals in the sense that they use language, in their careers, in a distinctive way, as a weapon, a medium, or an object of study respectively. Language planning is concerned with decision-making about the status, content, teaching and use of languages, especially in volatile contexts where they come into contact, or even to into conflict, involving different groups of people, and where policies and laws must be formulated and implemented. Language planning, therefore, comprises a gamut of activities, which can be broadly grouped into three types: status planning, corpus planning, and acquisition planning.
Status planning is about the determination of the status or standing of a language in relation to other languages in a multilingual society. So it refers to language planning at the macro-sociolinguistic level. Status planning involves decisions about the selection, and the functional allocation or reallocation of a language or language variety (that is, deciding which language/variety should be used for which function, purpose, etc.). In our situation, status planning assumes a conspicuous inter-language character as it involves three distinct languages, in addition to its nature as an intra-language activity when applied to dialects/varieties of a single language. Decisions about which language or language variety should be made a national or official language, or a medium of education, or a link language etc., come within the purview of status planning. Deliberate governmental participation in policy making in this activity is often the case.
Corpus planning is not essentially connected with a corpus (i.e. a computerized collection of language data in the form of written texts and transcripts of recorded speech) though it may use corpora as tools in the process. This is language planning at the micro-sociolinguistic level. It involves selecting and codifying norms in a language, as when it writes grammars, or standardizes spelling, etc.
Acquisition planning is the type of language planning in which a government intervenes in order to influence the status, literacy, distribution, etc. of a language through education. Though nongovernmental organizations may sometimes carry out acquisition planning, government involvement in the process is more common. It is this type of language planning which we are most concerned with on the ten year trilingual master plan.
There are usually five stages to language planning. Accordingly, the proposed trilingual project will involve 1) selection (choosing the standard forms of the three languages), 2) codification (compiling the basic grammars, dictionaries, and textbooks to establish the standard varieties), 3) elaboration (developing these varieties for use in different domains of community life, and encouraging the production of literature written in the standard forms), 4) implementation (the government encouraging the use of the languages), and 5) acceptance (the majority of the population agreeing to use all the three languages in appropriate situations, and to recognize them as a normal part of their social and national identity).
Serious study of language planning as an academic concept started in the 1960’s. Harvard University professor Einar Haugen (1906-1994) is regarded as the pioneer of modern language planning. His 1966 book “Language Conflict and Language Planning, the Case of Modern Norwegian” is still a source of reference for language planners. Our involvement with language planning (though probably it was not described as such at the time) predated the advent of the linguistics of language planning by at least two decades. The change of the medium of education (from English to native tongues) along with the introduction of free education in the mid-1940’s may perhaps be described as a case of acquisition planning because of its connection with education. 1956 marked a watershed in language management. The various amendments brought to the Official Languages Policy under the present Presidential Constitution (1978) since its inception to date represent phases of status planning which have constitutionally guaranteed parity of status to Sinhala and Tamil as national and official languages, while English is recognized as the link language. According to the Official Languages Policy, a person is entitled to be educated through the medium of either of the National Languages; recently, English has rejoined Sinhala and Tamil languages as a medium of education; both Sinhala and Tamil are the languages of administration throughout Sri Lanka; the maintenance of public records and the transaction of business in public institutions are done in Sinhala in all the provinces of Sri Lanka other than the Northern and Eastern Provinces where Tamil shall be used; however, the Sinhala or Tamil linguistic minorities of the Northern and Eastern Provinces, or of all the other Provinces respectively are enabled to have their business attended to through the medium of their own native language, or another language of their choice; the language of legislation and that of the courts, too, are both Sinhala and Tamil; all laws and subordinate legislation are enacted or made and published in Sinhala and Tamil, together with a translation in English. When citizens feel that their language-related rights are being violated, there is provision for legal redress.
If constitutionally and legally there is no room for any citizen to suffer discrimination on the basis of language or ethnicity, then why is that there appears to be a persistent (though usually unexpressed) impression that ethnic harmony is going to remain as much a chimera as ever into the foreseeable future?
From my point of view, a number of answers can be suggested to explain such a pessimistic view. But here I will only write about what I consider the most immediate one among the different causes of the apparent malaise: our failure to implement fully the Official Languages Policy at the grassroots administrative level, where ordinary citizens transact business with the state/government. This failure has a simple cause, and that is the fact that a considerable number of government servants lack acceptable proficiency in more than one language. However, this is a situation that successive governments have been trying to remedy through language training programmes.
The trilingual initiative of the government is a timely one in this context. The idea is to turn Sri Lanka into a trilingual nation within the next ten years. The current peaceful atmosphere, and the growing popular awareness of the usefulness of the scheme would encourage the architects of the plan to hold out hope that it will succeed if properly implemented.
The successful completion of the ten year plan will depend on a number of factors. The commitment of those who are entrusted with the tasks involved in the five stages of the language planning enterprise will be foremost. Hardly less important will be the purposeful mobilization and exemplary professionalism of the educational authorities including teachers. The positive response of the target population is the next essential condition. Here the most important ingredient will be motivation. The students must be made to see a legitimate reason for undergoing the hassle of learning three languages where one or at the most two would appear to be sufficient. In addition to convincing them of the necessity of an English knowledge for a decent education, it will be necessary to inculcate them with an attitude of mutual respect and fellow feeling among the different communities.
In working towards that goal, the colonial origin of the language or ethnic problem should not be overlooked, nor a myth substituted instead. 1956 was not the beginning of our troubles, rather it was the successful conclusion of one stage of our emergence from the incubus of imperial domination, as later 1972 was. During their occupation the imperialists sought to strengthen and perpetuate their predatory stranglehold on our diverse nation by deliberately dividing it along ethnic lines. The privileged status that they conferred on sections of the population which had embraced the English language and the Christian religion was not to the advantage or the liking of the dispossessed masses of all communities. However, even among the privileged who enjoyed imperial patronage there was discrimination against representatives of the majority ethnic community paralleled by preferential treatment meted out to those of the minorities. Since the emancipation of the downtrodden of all the communities ushering in democratic rule meant the end of the perks and privileges that they were enjoying under the occupiers, naturally those elements were opposed to the fulfilment of the legitimate aspirations of the majority. We must come to terms with this past instead of demonising the majority community and blaming them for every problem that the country faces. Mutual hatred and recrimination fed by myths will take us nowhere.
Before independence, the ordinary masses belonging to all communities suffered as third class citizens in their own country except the thin upper crust of the population that collaborated with them. The supremacy of English and the undue privileged status of the small minority (the so-called elite) which benefited from that lingering colonial afterglow was significantly attenuated, if not completely eliminated, by the changes introduced in 1956. The real or perceived linguistic anomalies following from ‘Sinhala only’ (which was no worse than ‘English only’ in multilingual America or ‘Hindi only’ in multilingual India as ‘national’ languages) have been constitutionally resolved since. Today we live in a country where we are all equal citizens, enjoying the same linguistic and other rights. Just as we share equal rights, we must shoulder equal responsibilities.
It is said that divisive tendencies based on the language issue eventually led to the separatist terror which ravaged the country for thirty years. We have now successfully put behind us both of those problems. If the language problem put us in trouble in the past, this time around a trebly powerful language factor has come to our help. We are on the threshold of a new era of national unity and economic development, neither of which is possible without the other. No more propitious time has ever emerged for such a bright prospect for development since Independence. The key to economic and social advancement is a developed human resource base, for which high quality education is a sine qua non. The three language treasure that we have inherited or acquired must be utilized to the full for human resource development in pushing for the goal of Sri Lanka being eventually hailed as the Wonder of Asia.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Friday, January 14, 2011
Technology-mediated Language Teaching
Technology-mediated Language Teaching
(First published in The Island/Friday 26th November 2010)
Any teaching-learning situation involves a dynamic interrelationship between three components: the learner, the subject, and the teacher. The role of the teacher in this relationship is to initiate and maintain effective learner engagement with the subject. Pedagogy is about how this can be done efficiently. A handy tool that modern teachers can use in their teaching is found in the form of Information and Communications Technology (ICT).
Incidentally, the word ‘pedagogy’ has an interesting etymology: According to the Chambers Dictionary, it derives from ‘pedagogue’, (‘teacher’), which itself entered the English language partly through French and Latin from the Greek ‘paidagogos’ (‘a slave who led a boy to school’). Considering the ‘slaving’ (working hard, usually for someone else) that conscientious teaching involves today, ‘pedagogy’ is an appropriate term for a teacher’s strategic role in the instruction process. The technology tool has the potential to ease a teacher’s burden considerably. But, how does this apply to an English language teaching situation?
Each English teacher, whether a novice or an expert, confronts a unique set of pupils in a unique setting (place, time and circumstances), and faces the unavoidable challenge of determining their own classroom practice to suit the pupils. A novice teacher may be required to rely on their own (perhaps totally uninformed) devices or, luckily, on guidance where it is available, while an expert practitioner usually draws on personal knowledge and experience in doing this.
A teacher’s classroom practice consists of the specific teaching and learning activities that are designed. Individual decisions about these are based on the teacher’s ideas, beliefs, or assumptions about the nature of language, and the psychology of language learning on the one hand, and on the other, on their knowledge of English, and their understanding of the pupils’ learning styles. In other words, a teacher’s understanding of how learners learn English in terms of a particular pedagogic ideology will determine their decisions about the overall classroom procedure to be adopted.
According to available information, already about 84% of the households in Sri Lanka enjoy the electricity facility; computer literacy is at 30%, and is fast spreading; English and IT are being promoted as related subjects. (The level of computer literacy that is required in the English language classroom is not high, and is limited.) In this context, using ICT would prove a popular strategy for enhancing language teaching and learning. This shouldn’t be interpreted as a proposal to provide a few computers for each class, and hand over all the teaching to them while the teachers sit back and idle. ICT will only be a tool. It will be used sometimes for part of a lesson with one group of students, while the others are engaged with other activities. ICT use in the class can also be expected to train the pupils to do self-access work with a computer at home.
Today, ICT is in common use, particularly in administration and business spheres. There is no important office, shop, bank, hospital, factory, or firm that doesn’t use it. Not using ICT where the routine work involves communicating and computing would be deemed primitive. School children would love innovations that put them in contact with modern technology which is now a normal feature everywhere else. English language learners do not enjoy being left behind in this general movement towards technological modernity. Young people will quickly embrace ICT integration into English language instruction because it is trendy, in addition to being attractive in other ways.
If ICT use can be ‘normalized’ in our schools (in the sense that the computer becomes as normal a feature in every classroom as the black- or whiteboard has been to date), then it will prove to be an effective leveller between urban and rural schools. The need to attend expensive urban centres for educational support will be greatly reduced for rural students, because they will be able to access the necessary sources of information online. We already have a number of government and private sector-sponsored online education programmes. Technology-based education in Sri Lanka has a promising future. (Ref. my column for 27th August and 3rd September 2010)
In terms of pedagogy, the two most important advantages of technology-based English language instruction will be: 1) it will be highly motivational, and 2) it will create a highly productive context for effective language learning. Of these, the second advantage may be elaborated thus: ICT provides multimodal interaction, that is, communicative activities involving all the four skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing; it will allow differentiated instruction, which is a strategy in which students of mixed ability levels are helped to proceed at their own rates while learning the same concepts; ICT also encourages autonomous learning. The first advantage, the valuable motivational factor, is due to the novelty and the variety that modern technology constantly brings into the language learning experience.
Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) first appeared in the early 1980’s. CALL programmes required learners to respond to cues on the computer screen, and involved tasks such as matching sentence halves, filling in gapped texts, and doing multiple-choice activities. CALL materials of the present day are more sophisticated than these. Access to ICT has enabled both teachers and students to go beyond the use of computer programmes to the use of the Internet and web-based resources. In view of this, the term Technology Enhanced Language Learning (TELL) was coined in the 1990’s. In an attempt to reflect the growing possibilities offered by the Internet and ICT, other terms have been suggested to replace CALL and TELL such as Web-enhanced Language Learning (WELL), Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL). Since the use of the computer remains relevant to all of these, experts in the field still prefer to stick to the original term, namely, CALL.
Teachers can use CALL materials prepared by the authorities, or those that they compile by themselves in an institution. The Internet offers a wide variety of CALL materials. These can be used to supplement a course that is already being delivered. The language teaching professionals who develop such materials subscribe to a particular philosophy. For example, assumptions about the three components of a teaching-learning situation mentioned at the beginning of this essay are implicit in most CALL materials. One assumption is that, in order to become independent learners, students need teachers to guide them in choosing what to learn and how to learn it, and the specific language (that is, the style of English: formal, informal, etc.) that they should focus on. An assumption relating to the subject (English) is that the English language represents a variety of styles that serve different purposes. For instance, the language needed to ask someone you know for a favour differs in grammar and vocabulary from that needed to request a similar favour from a stranger or a social superior. Teachers guide pupils not only by selecting appropriate materials, but by structuring the activities for learning, and for monitoring their progress; teacher guidance helps the learners to continue learning English and to expand their knowledge of the language.
It is now generally accepted that second language learners learn a language by specific stages, as Tony Erben et al (Teaching English Language Learners through Technology. Routledge, 2009) point out. Teachers can’t force it on them all at once. Learners will acquire new language structures only when they are cognitively and psychologically ready to do so. For example, learners listen and respond non-verbally to simple commands, and become able to say short formulaic structures such as “yes”, “no”, “Good morning”, “Thank you”, and develop a receptive vocabulary of a few hundred words, before they begin to manage one or two-word answers or short utterances. These two phases of language acquisition represent the first two of four such stages that Krashen and Terrel (1983) described (viz. preproduction, and early production stages; the other two are the speech emergence stage, and the intermediate fluency stage). Incidentally, according to Tony Erben and his co-authors, in spite of there being various other taxonomies (ways of classifying and naming) to categorize stages of language development, many education systems in the US adopt the four-tier model proposed by Krashen and Terrel that I have just mentioned. Later researchers (e.g. Pienemann, 1989, 2007) have confirmed that there is an immutable language acquisition order.
A teacher cannot alter this natural process. But they can definitely quicken the pace of language development. The multimodal resources made available through ICT are an ideal way for activating the natural phases of second language acquisition. Technology enables the teacher to create an ‘acquisition-rich classroom’ via interactive pedagogic activities. The authors of the above-mentioned book summarize ‘useful research generalizations’ provided by Ellis (2005) among others into five principles for generating such an acquisition-rich language learning environment.
The first of these is that the English language learners should be provided with many opportunities to read, to write, to listen to and to discuss oral and written English texts expressed in a variety of ways. This involves not only the ability to listen to a spoken text or read a written text, and learn what is there to learn, but also the ability to communicate the information acquired to another person (who wants to learn it ). Academic literacy is today defined as the ability to use speaking, listening, reading, writing, and critical thinking to learn what they want to learn, and to communicate or demonstrate that learning to others who need it.
The second principle is that the learners need to focus their attention on patterns of English language structure. To become efficient communicators, they must learn the language structures that help them express themselves clearly, and the rules that govern the appropriateness of language for a particular context. The assumption that there is a natural order or sequence of language acquisition implies that grammatical structures emerge in the communicative utterances of the learners in a fixed, regular order. The teacher’s responsibility is to create a language-rich environment which induces them to use grammar relevant to the acquisition stage they have reached.
The third principle says that the language learners need to be given classroom time to use their English productively. This is based on the assumption that the interaction that takes place when second language learners, engaged in talk with their colleagues, ‘negotiate’ for meaning. That is, conversation is not usually a straightforward matter of exchanging ready-made pieces of information between the interlocutors; the messages get clarified, or even modified, the meaning more defined through questioning, agreeing with what is said but with reservations, or totally disagreeing, or asking for clarifications, and so on; this is supported by other forms of feedback including non-verbal clues such as facial expressions revealing incomprehension, confusion, or disagreement, etc; thus meaning is newly created in the course of a ‘negotiating’ process. Interaction through such negotiation for meaning is assumed to facilitate language learning. In the domain of second language acquisition (SLA) theory, this is known as the interaction hypothesis, which has been primarily developed by M. Long (1996, 2006). The availability of input of the right quality and quantity, together with provision for output (i.e. opportunities for using the second language) advances language development.
According to the fourth principle, students need to be given the opportunities to spot their errors, and to correct them. Teachers should encourage learners to reflect on their language, on ‘correct’ forms of language. This must happen at least in the English classroom. For most of the time that children spend at school, they engage in activities which focus on their understanding of subject matter; rarely do they have an opportunity to notice the contribution language makes towards communicating the content of the lessons clearly without misrepresenting it. Wrong grammar is a problem where there is a need for clarity and precision of presentation. It is only when students are aware of this, and make a conscious effort to discover their errors, and correct them that they can become efficient communicators. Teachers should help them in this. Ideally, every teacher must be a language teacher.
The fifth and final principle in our list is based on all that preceded. It advises the teacher to design activities that maximize interaction among the learners in English. Students’ active involvement in linguistic communication in the class is the main factor that ensures successful language learning.
The five principles delineated above provide parameters for a curriculum that addresses the language acquisition needs of the learners. Sensitivity to the four stages of language development should be an essential feature of such a curriculum.
Of course, technology can be used in English teaching within the classroom without having to constantly go online. For example, teachers and learners can work offline with pre-downloaded instruction materials, or with such materials photocopied, which would be safer in places where there are frequent power and connectivity breakdown problems.
(First published in The Island/Friday 26th November 2010)
Any teaching-learning situation involves a dynamic interrelationship between three components: the learner, the subject, and the teacher. The role of the teacher in this relationship is to initiate and maintain effective learner engagement with the subject. Pedagogy is about how this can be done efficiently. A handy tool that modern teachers can use in their teaching is found in the form of Information and Communications Technology (ICT).
Incidentally, the word ‘pedagogy’ has an interesting etymology: According to the Chambers Dictionary, it derives from ‘pedagogue’, (‘teacher’), which itself entered the English language partly through French and Latin from the Greek ‘paidagogos’ (‘a slave who led a boy to school’). Considering the ‘slaving’ (working hard, usually for someone else) that conscientious teaching involves today, ‘pedagogy’ is an appropriate term for a teacher’s strategic role in the instruction process. The technology tool has the potential to ease a teacher’s burden considerably. But, how does this apply to an English language teaching situation?
Each English teacher, whether a novice or an expert, confronts a unique set of pupils in a unique setting (place, time and circumstances), and faces the unavoidable challenge of determining their own classroom practice to suit the pupils. A novice teacher may be required to rely on their own (perhaps totally uninformed) devices or, luckily, on guidance where it is available, while an expert practitioner usually draws on personal knowledge and experience in doing this.
A teacher’s classroom practice consists of the specific teaching and learning activities that are designed. Individual decisions about these are based on the teacher’s ideas, beliefs, or assumptions about the nature of language, and the psychology of language learning on the one hand, and on the other, on their knowledge of English, and their understanding of the pupils’ learning styles. In other words, a teacher’s understanding of how learners learn English in terms of a particular pedagogic ideology will determine their decisions about the overall classroom procedure to be adopted.
According to available information, already about 84% of the households in Sri Lanka enjoy the electricity facility; computer literacy is at 30%, and is fast spreading; English and IT are being promoted as related subjects. (The level of computer literacy that is required in the English language classroom is not high, and is limited.) In this context, using ICT would prove a popular strategy for enhancing language teaching and learning. This shouldn’t be interpreted as a proposal to provide a few computers for each class, and hand over all the teaching to them while the teachers sit back and idle. ICT will only be a tool. It will be used sometimes for part of a lesson with one group of students, while the others are engaged with other activities. ICT use in the class can also be expected to train the pupils to do self-access work with a computer at home.
Today, ICT is in common use, particularly in administration and business spheres. There is no important office, shop, bank, hospital, factory, or firm that doesn’t use it. Not using ICT where the routine work involves communicating and computing would be deemed primitive. School children would love innovations that put them in contact with modern technology which is now a normal feature everywhere else. English language learners do not enjoy being left behind in this general movement towards technological modernity. Young people will quickly embrace ICT integration into English language instruction because it is trendy, in addition to being attractive in other ways.
If ICT use can be ‘normalized’ in our schools (in the sense that the computer becomes as normal a feature in every classroom as the black- or whiteboard has been to date), then it will prove to be an effective leveller between urban and rural schools. The need to attend expensive urban centres for educational support will be greatly reduced for rural students, because they will be able to access the necessary sources of information online. We already have a number of government and private sector-sponsored online education programmes. Technology-based education in Sri Lanka has a promising future. (Ref. my column for 27th August and 3rd September 2010)
In terms of pedagogy, the two most important advantages of technology-based English language instruction will be: 1) it will be highly motivational, and 2) it will create a highly productive context for effective language learning. Of these, the second advantage may be elaborated thus: ICT provides multimodal interaction, that is, communicative activities involving all the four skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing; it will allow differentiated instruction, which is a strategy in which students of mixed ability levels are helped to proceed at their own rates while learning the same concepts; ICT also encourages autonomous learning. The first advantage, the valuable motivational factor, is due to the novelty and the variety that modern technology constantly brings into the language learning experience.
Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) first appeared in the early 1980’s. CALL programmes required learners to respond to cues on the computer screen, and involved tasks such as matching sentence halves, filling in gapped texts, and doing multiple-choice activities. CALL materials of the present day are more sophisticated than these. Access to ICT has enabled both teachers and students to go beyond the use of computer programmes to the use of the Internet and web-based resources. In view of this, the term Technology Enhanced Language Learning (TELL) was coined in the 1990’s. In an attempt to reflect the growing possibilities offered by the Internet and ICT, other terms have been suggested to replace CALL and TELL such as Web-enhanced Language Learning (WELL), Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL). Since the use of the computer remains relevant to all of these, experts in the field still prefer to stick to the original term, namely, CALL.
Teachers can use CALL materials prepared by the authorities, or those that they compile by themselves in an institution. The Internet offers a wide variety of CALL materials. These can be used to supplement a course that is already being delivered. The language teaching professionals who develop such materials subscribe to a particular philosophy. For example, assumptions about the three components of a teaching-learning situation mentioned at the beginning of this essay are implicit in most CALL materials. One assumption is that, in order to become independent learners, students need teachers to guide them in choosing what to learn and how to learn it, and the specific language (that is, the style of English: formal, informal, etc.) that they should focus on. An assumption relating to the subject (English) is that the English language represents a variety of styles that serve different purposes. For instance, the language needed to ask someone you know for a favour differs in grammar and vocabulary from that needed to request a similar favour from a stranger or a social superior. Teachers guide pupils not only by selecting appropriate materials, but by structuring the activities for learning, and for monitoring their progress; teacher guidance helps the learners to continue learning English and to expand their knowledge of the language.
It is now generally accepted that second language learners learn a language by specific stages, as Tony Erben et al (Teaching English Language Learners through Technology. Routledge, 2009) point out. Teachers can’t force it on them all at once. Learners will acquire new language structures only when they are cognitively and psychologically ready to do so. For example, learners listen and respond non-verbally to simple commands, and become able to say short formulaic structures such as “yes”, “no”, “Good morning”, “Thank you”, and develop a receptive vocabulary of a few hundred words, before they begin to manage one or two-word answers or short utterances. These two phases of language acquisition represent the first two of four such stages that Krashen and Terrel (1983) described (viz. preproduction, and early production stages; the other two are the speech emergence stage, and the intermediate fluency stage). Incidentally, according to Tony Erben and his co-authors, in spite of there being various other taxonomies (ways of classifying and naming) to categorize stages of language development, many education systems in the US adopt the four-tier model proposed by Krashen and Terrel that I have just mentioned. Later researchers (e.g. Pienemann, 1989, 2007) have confirmed that there is an immutable language acquisition order.
A teacher cannot alter this natural process. But they can definitely quicken the pace of language development. The multimodal resources made available through ICT are an ideal way for activating the natural phases of second language acquisition. Technology enables the teacher to create an ‘acquisition-rich classroom’ via interactive pedagogic activities. The authors of the above-mentioned book summarize ‘useful research generalizations’ provided by Ellis (2005) among others into five principles for generating such an acquisition-rich language learning environment.
The first of these is that the English language learners should be provided with many opportunities to read, to write, to listen to and to discuss oral and written English texts expressed in a variety of ways. This involves not only the ability to listen to a spoken text or read a written text, and learn what is there to learn, but also the ability to communicate the information acquired to another person (who wants to learn it ). Academic literacy is today defined as the ability to use speaking, listening, reading, writing, and critical thinking to learn what they want to learn, and to communicate or demonstrate that learning to others who need it.
The second principle is that the learners need to focus their attention on patterns of English language structure. To become efficient communicators, they must learn the language structures that help them express themselves clearly, and the rules that govern the appropriateness of language for a particular context. The assumption that there is a natural order or sequence of language acquisition implies that grammatical structures emerge in the communicative utterances of the learners in a fixed, regular order. The teacher’s responsibility is to create a language-rich environment which induces them to use grammar relevant to the acquisition stage they have reached.
The third principle says that the language learners need to be given classroom time to use their English productively. This is based on the assumption that the interaction that takes place when second language learners, engaged in talk with their colleagues, ‘negotiate’ for meaning. That is, conversation is not usually a straightforward matter of exchanging ready-made pieces of information between the interlocutors; the messages get clarified, or even modified, the meaning more defined through questioning, agreeing with what is said but with reservations, or totally disagreeing, or asking for clarifications, and so on; this is supported by other forms of feedback including non-verbal clues such as facial expressions revealing incomprehension, confusion, or disagreement, etc; thus meaning is newly created in the course of a ‘negotiating’ process. Interaction through such negotiation for meaning is assumed to facilitate language learning. In the domain of second language acquisition (SLA) theory, this is known as the interaction hypothesis, which has been primarily developed by M. Long (1996, 2006). The availability of input of the right quality and quantity, together with provision for output (i.e. opportunities for using the second language) advances language development.
According to the fourth principle, students need to be given the opportunities to spot their errors, and to correct them. Teachers should encourage learners to reflect on their language, on ‘correct’ forms of language. This must happen at least in the English classroom. For most of the time that children spend at school, they engage in activities which focus on their understanding of subject matter; rarely do they have an opportunity to notice the contribution language makes towards communicating the content of the lessons clearly without misrepresenting it. Wrong grammar is a problem where there is a need for clarity and precision of presentation. It is only when students are aware of this, and make a conscious effort to discover their errors, and correct them that they can become efficient communicators. Teachers should help them in this. Ideally, every teacher must be a language teacher.
The fifth and final principle in our list is based on all that preceded. It advises the teacher to design activities that maximize interaction among the learners in English. Students’ active involvement in linguistic communication in the class is the main factor that ensures successful language learning.
The five principles delineated above provide parameters for a curriculum that addresses the language acquisition needs of the learners. Sensitivity to the four stages of language development should be an essential feature of such a curriculum.
Of course, technology can be used in English teaching within the classroom without having to constantly go online. For example, teachers and learners can work offline with pre-downloaded instruction materials, or with such materials photocopied, which would be safer in places where there are frequent power and connectivity breakdown problems.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Teaching Language through Literature
Teaching Language through Literature
(First published in The Island/Friday 12th November, 2010)
Children love to play with language. Toddlers sometimes coin their own non-sense musical phrases and enjoy singing them repeatedly. Older children play games in which singing is an essential accompaniment to physical movements. They like to listen to stories and relate ones which they already know or which they make up. Children display a natural dramatic talent. They enjoy reciting poetry. The love of using their language creatively for the sheer joy of it is natural to humans, and is at the root of the creation of, and the engagement with, literature. This situation can be exploited to promote the learning of English as a second language by including a literary element in the English curriculum from the beginning.
Some educators in the past rejected the use of literary texts as ‘drill materials’ for the development of the four basic language skills on the grounds that in such a situation students would learn neither language nor literature sufficiently well. Therefore they preferred to defer the introduction of literature to a later stage when the students would be expected to have gained enough mastery of the language to respond to literature without difficulty. However, with the communicative language teaching approach steadily gaining currency, and the ‘drill’ aspect of language practice becoming less emphasized, this attitude changed. Today it is normal to incorporate literary pieces in English language textbooks.
Literature provides interesting language practice materials. It affords a chance for the learners to be aware of the creative possibilities of language that enable them to communicate ideas and states of mind beyond the merely routine, utilitarian level. Behind its apparent triviality, literature hides that which makes us human in a profound sense. It has its birth in the human passion for creating beautiful forms by drawing on the resources of language, such as the sound and sense of words, rhythm, rhyme, etc. Words are the raw material that literary artists shape into formal beauty. There is pleasure in creating literature, and in reacting to it. In spite of the pleasure element that literature is ordinarily associated with, it is nevertheless serious business, for it is concerned with intensely felt experience. Through its formal beauty literature helps us to reflect on the deeply sorrowful aspect of our existence (bereavement, betrayal, loss, and endless other eventualities) which all humans share, and just as well, to celebrate the most cherished things in life (love, marriage, birth of a baby, fulfilment of hopes, discovery of beauty, and the rest). In the end, we experience the “serene joy” of coming to terms with the bitter-sweet nature of our existence. Thus literature increases our capacity for making sense of our world, for expressing it, and for sharing it with our fellow humans, which enriches our humanity.
In literature, therefore, language is used for exploring a level of experience that goes beyond the merely physical to encompass our emotional life in which we actually ‘live’, in the sense that we are concerned with such things as the ultimate meaning, the frustrations and the fulfilments, and the agonies and the ecstasies of our existence, and above all with the ultimate joy of living in the face of these contradictions. It is not that these abstract notions about the value of literature should be conveyed to the students verbally; in reality, it would be after many years of familiarity with literature that generalisations such as those come within their powers of comprehension. But children have an instinctive fascination with the mysterious power of language to transport them to a different plane of experience.
Literature usually involves four forms: essay, poetry, fiction, and drama; but now we also include film in this list. Though both drama and film are primarily for watching, the manuscripts of plays and the shooting scripts of films can be read and enjoyed as literature. All these literary forms represent language being used for interpreting the world of experience, and communicating it to others through the engagement of their aesthetic sense (= ability to enjoy things of beauty).
The prevalent communicative language teaching principles would suggest that literature is an easily exploitable resource for language instruction. The great potential of literature as a context for pleasurable as well as useful language practice lies in its intrinsic appeal to youthful creativity, its inclusion of all the four basic language skills and more, and its wide scope for collaborative engagement among the students, in addition to individual interaction with the texts.
My comments here relate to the teaching of English as a second language to Sri Lankan students. Of course, no such thing as teaching the language exclusively through literature is intended. Literature is viewed here as one important way of using language. Language teaching and learning should involve more than literature. The important thing is that when specimens of literature are presented as components of an English teaching course they should be subordinated to the actual purpose of using literature in that situation, which is providing an interesting context for authentic language use. But the value of the texts as literature should not be discounted. Otherwise, there will be no difference between the other forms of texts included in the same course and the literature pieces in their treatment, rendering the latter redundant.
However, it is obvious that we cannot initiate our students to all the intricacies of the literary experience from the word go, although its essence is nascent in the crudest form of their contact with literature. Just as an insistence on perfect grammar, pronunciation, and accent, etc tends to frighten students out of a purposeful attempt to learn English, so a perceptibly rigid concern on the part of teachers to deal with literary texts exclusively as literature will kill the second language learners’ interest in them. What the teachers can exploit, particularly at the beginning level, is literature’s appeal to the children’s native love of using language creatively for the pleasure it generates.
In the language teaching context, therefore, the value of literature lies in its potential for providing a context for authentic linguistic communication in a unique aspect of language use. Creative literature uses language for exploring the world of imagination, thought, and values, as distinct from using it to deal with merely factual and utilitarian information. The usual English language textbooks contain a few examples of literature such as simple poems, short stories, extracts from longer fiction, or drama, and essays among a majority of non-literary texts. The way that student interaction with non-literary texts is stage-managed (that is, the way non-literary texts are taught, in traditional terms) is not suitable for stimulating interaction with literary texts.
The sort of literature presented to students for engagement and enjoyment should be graded according to their age and their level of attainment in English language proficiency. Thus at the primary level, singing nursery rhymes would be a good introduction to the literary experience through the delightful music of the words, and the visual images that the rhymes conjure. Children may be given the opportunity to draw pictures to illustrate their songs as an additional activity.
At the same time, the amount of contribution that they make towards the real purpose of the lesson – linguistic development – should be the determinant criterion in the selection and assignment of learning tasks. For example, what useful purpose will learning and singing nursery rhymes serve apart from the delightfulness of the activity itself? It will serve to teach the children the pronunciation of English sounds; when they memorise the verses, they remember some chunks of English which they can repeat later in appropriate contexts, and this would increase their familiarity with English, and also give them a sense of confidence about their ability to learn the language. It would also be good for students to be asked to compose their own poems.
There are other criteria to be taken into consideration in the selection of samples of English literature for the English curriculum.
Since our real focus is teaching English as a second language, and not teaching English literature for its own sake, the specimens chosen should necessarily exemplify contemporary English, English from around the world as well as what we are familiar with in Sri Lanka. English literature is being produced in many countries and cultures, and there is an inexhaustible literary commonwealth for curriculum makers to draw on. So there probably is no vacancy for Chaucer or Shakespeare in an English language course book except in a modernised version. Selections may be from any number of English using countries around the world including our own.
The selections should be appropriate for the age, the interests, the proficiency level and the cultural background of the students. The literariness of the texts can be increasingly emphasized as the students’ language proficiency grows. Since unconventional use of language is normal in literature, especially in poetry, sophisticated literary texts are not suitable for beginning language students. These should be introduced at the higher levels where the learners know what the conventional forms are well enough to identify deliberate deviations from the norm that writers use to create special literary effects.
The purpose of including literature in the English curriculum is to exploit the potential it has for generating interesting classroom interaction and discussion in the language. A story, a poem, an essay, or a piece of drama can lead to lively discussion among the students, when it is well handled by a knowledgeable teacher. Usually, there are two kinds of questions that are asked to guide the students: specific and general. To illustrate these, I’ll refer to James Thurber’s (1894-1961) short humorous essay “The Moth and the Star”. If teacher guidance is limited to asking such specific comprehension questions as “Who did the young moth tell about his love of the star?”, “What was her reply?”, “What did she ask him to set his heart on instead?”, or “Was his father happy about the moth’s behaviour?” etc, these will get ready answers from the students, but lead to limited classroom discussion. An exclusive general question like “Whose point of view, in your opinion, is the author supportive of, the young moth’s or his parents’?” should naturally invite a variety of responses, and hence create more discussion, but may be a bit too challenging for the majority of the students to tackle. (Readers may visit my literature blog heli29.wordpress.com for the text of Thurber’s essay) A more sensible approach would be to first ensure the students’ understanding of the facts of the story through specific questioning, and then to enable them grasp what interesting point of view or argument or theme the separate facts build up to.
If, for the sake of asserting our common humanity, we want English to bring the peoples of the world to us, and to take us to them across all kinds of cultural, political, social, and other barriers, reading English literature from around the world and adding our own share to the ever expanding literary commonwealth will prove the surest way to do that. By incorporating good specimens of English literature in the second language textbook materials for developing language facility through maximising communication and interaction among the students in the literary use of the language, we can take our first steps towards that lofty ideal.
(First published in The Island/Friday 12th November, 2010)
Children love to play with language. Toddlers sometimes coin their own non-sense musical phrases and enjoy singing them repeatedly. Older children play games in which singing is an essential accompaniment to physical movements. They like to listen to stories and relate ones which they already know or which they make up. Children display a natural dramatic talent. They enjoy reciting poetry. The love of using their language creatively for the sheer joy of it is natural to humans, and is at the root of the creation of, and the engagement with, literature. This situation can be exploited to promote the learning of English as a second language by including a literary element in the English curriculum from the beginning.
Some educators in the past rejected the use of literary texts as ‘drill materials’ for the development of the four basic language skills on the grounds that in such a situation students would learn neither language nor literature sufficiently well. Therefore they preferred to defer the introduction of literature to a later stage when the students would be expected to have gained enough mastery of the language to respond to literature without difficulty. However, with the communicative language teaching approach steadily gaining currency, and the ‘drill’ aspect of language practice becoming less emphasized, this attitude changed. Today it is normal to incorporate literary pieces in English language textbooks.
Literature provides interesting language practice materials. It affords a chance for the learners to be aware of the creative possibilities of language that enable them to communicate ideas and states of mind beyond the merely routine, utilitarian level. Behind its apparent triviality, literature hides that which makes us human in a profound sense. It has its birth in the human passion for creating beautiful forms by drawing on the resources of language, such as the sound and sense of words, rhythm, rhyme, etc. Words are the raw material that literary artists shape into formal beauty. There is pleasure in creating literature, and in reacting to it. In spite of the pleasure element that literature is ordinarily associated with, it is nevertheless serious business, for it is concerned with intensely felt experience. Through its formal beauty literature helps us to reflect on the deeply sorrowful aspect of our existence (bereavement, betrayal, loss, and endless other eventualities) which all humans share, and just as well, to celebrate the most cherished things in life (love, marriage, birth of a baby, fulfilment of hopes, discovery of beauty, and the rest). In the end, we experience the “serene joy” of coming to terms with the bitter-sweet nature of our existence. Thus literature increases our capacity for making sense of our world, for expressing it, and for sharing it with our fellow humans, which enriches our humanity.
In literature, therefore, language is used for exploring a level of experience that goes beyond the merely physical to encompass our emotional life in which we actually ‘live’, in the sense that we are concerned with such things as the ultimate meaning, the frustrations and the fulfilments, and the agonies and the ecstasies of our existence, and above all with the ultimate joy of living in the face of these contradictions. It is not that these abstract notions about the value of literature should be conveyed to the students verbally; in reality, it would be after many years of familiarity with literature that generalisations such as those come within their powers of comprehension. But children have an instinctive fascination with the mysterious power of language to transport them to a different plane of experience.
Literature usually involves four forms: essay, poetry, fiction, and drama; but now we also include film in this list. Though both drama and film are primarily for watching, the manuscripts of plays and the shooting scripts of films can be read and enjoyed as literature. All these literary forms represent language being used for interpreting the world of experience, and communicating it to others through the engagement of their aesthetic sense (= ability to enjoy things of beauty).
The prevalent communicative language teaching principles would suggest that literature is an easily exploitable resource for language instruction. The great potential of literature as a context for pleasurable as well as useful language practice lies in its intrinsic appeal to youthful creativity, its inclusion of all the four basic language skills and more, and its wide scope for collaborative engagement among the students, in addition to individual interaction with the texts.
My comments here relate to the teaching of English as a second language to Sri Lankan students. Of course, no such thing as teaching the language exclusively through literature is intended. Literature is viewed here as one important way of using language. Language teaching and learning should involve more than literature. The important thing is that when specimens of literature are presented as components of an English teaching course they should be subordinated to the actual purpose of using literature in that situation, which is providing an interesting context for authentic language use. But the value of the texts as literature should not be discounted. Otherwise, there will be no difference between the other forms of texts included in the same course and the literature pieces in their treatment, rendering the latter redundant.
However, it is obvious that we cannot initiate our students to all the intricacies of the literary experience from the word go, although its essence is nascent in the crudest form of their contact with literature. Just as an insistence on perfect grammar, pronunciation, and accent, etc tends to frighten students out of a purposeful attempt to learn English, so a perceptibly rigid concern on the part of teachers to deal with literary texts exclusively as literature will kill the second language learners’ interest in them. What the teachers can exploit, particularly at the beginning level, is literature’s appeal to the children’s native love of using language creatively for the pleasure it generates.
In the language teaching context, therefore, the value of literature lies in its potential for providing a context for authentic linguistic communication in a unique aspect of language use. Creative literature uses language for exploring the world of imagination, thought, and values, as distinct from using it to deal with merely factual and utilitarian information. The usual English language textbooks contain a few examples of literature such as simple poems, short stories, extracts from longer fiction, or drama, and essays among a majority of non-literary texts. The way that student interaction with non-literary texts is stage-managed (that is, the way non-literary texts are taught, in traditional terms) is not suitable for stimulating interaction with literary texts.
The sort of literature presented to students for engagement and enjoyment should be graded according to their age and their level of attainment in English language proficiency. Thus at the primary level, singing nursery rhymes would be a good introduction to the literary experience through the delightful music of the words, and the visual images that the rhymes conjure. Children may be given the opportunity to draw pictures to illustrate their songs as an additional activity.
At the same time, the amount of contribution that they make towards the real purpose of the lesson – linguistic development – should be the determinant criterion in the selection and assignment of learning tasks. For example, what useful purpose will learning and singing nursery rhymes serve apart from the delightfulness of the activity itself? It will serve to teach the children the pronunciation of English sounds; when they memorise the verses, they remember some chunks of English which they can repeat later in appropriate contexts, and this would increase their familiarity with English, and also give them a sense of confidence about their ability to learn the language. It would also be good for students to be asked to compose their own poems.
There are other criteria to be taken into consideration in the selection of samples of English literature for the English curriculum.
Since our real focus is teaching English as a second language, and not teaching English literature for its own sake, the specimens chosen should necessarily exemplify contemporary English, English from around the world as well as what we are familiar with in Sri Lanka. English literature is being produced in many countries and cultures, and there is an inexhaustible literary commonwealth for curriculum makers to draw on. So there probably is no vacancy for Chaucer or Shakespeare in an English language course book except in a modernised version. Selections may be from any number of English using countries around the world including our own.
The selections should be appropriate for the age, the interests, the proficiency level and the cultural background of the students. The literariness of the texts can be increasingly emphasized as the students’ language proficiency grows. Since unconventional use of language is normal in literature, especially in poetry, sophisticated literary texts are not suitable for beginning language students. These should be introduced at the higher levels where the learners know what the conventional forms are well enough to identify deliberate deviations from the norm that writers use to create special literary effects.
The purpose of including literature in the English curriculum is to exploit the potential it has for generating interesting classroom interaction and discussion in the language. A story, a poem, an essay, or a piece of drama can lead to lively discussion among the students, when it is well handled by a knowledgeable teacher. Usually, there are two kinds of questions that are asked to guide the students: specific and general. To illustrate these, I’ll refer to James Thurber’s (1894-1961) short humorous essay “The Moth and the Star”. If teacher guidance is limited to asking such specific comprehension questions as “Who did the young moth tell about his love of the star?”, “What was her reply?”, “What did she ask him to set his heart on instead?”, or “Was his father happy about the moth’s behaviour?” etc, these will get ready answers from the students, but lead to limited classroom discussion. An exclusive general question like “Whose point of view, in your opinion, is the author supportive of, the young moth’s or his parents’?” should naturally invite a variety of responses, and hence create more discussion, but may be a bit too challenging for the majority of the students to tackle. (Readers may visit my literature blog heli29.wordpress.com for the text of Thurber’s essay) A more sensible approach would be to first ensure the students’ understanding of the facts of the story through specific questioning, and then to enable them grasp what interesting point of view or argument or theme the separate facts build up to.
If, for the sake of asserting our common humanity, we want English to bring the peoples of the world to us, and to take us to them across all kinds of cultural, political, social, and other barriers, reading English literature from around the world and adding our own share to the ever expanding literary commonwealth will prove the surest way to do that. By incorporating good specimens of English literature in the second language textbook materials for developing language facility through maximising communication and interaction among the students in the literary use of the language, we can take our first steps towards that lofty ideal.
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