Effective Teaching of Modern Languages

C.A. Wringe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317885948
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book outines the aims listed in the National Criteria for Modern Languages, which appears in all GCSE language syllabuses. It examines the changes these have brought about in course and lesson planning and content, and the teaching of the various language skills. Detailed descriptions of teaching techniques are provided and each chapter contains a further reading list to help both established and trainee teachers review and develop their classroom practice.

CHAPTER 1

Defining the task

In the field of management a distinction is sometimes drawn between efficiency – doing whatever one has decided to do well – and effectiveness, which is a matter of choosing the right thing to do in the first place (Drucker 1967: 1–5). To an extent, the dichotomy is a false one for there is little purpose in choosing appropriate long-term goals if we are muddled and inefficient in our attempts to achieve them. In examining how the tasks of language teaching may most effectively be approached, however, it is well to begin by considering what we should be attempting to achieve before passing to the question of how this is to be done. Unlike some earlier so-called revolutions in language teaching, perhaps, those changes of approach which have most recently taken place provide not only for an array of new classroom techniques but also propose a number of aims which some existing language teachers will find unfamiliar in their emphasis and disturbing in their consequences.

The General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) National Criteria for French, which are explicitly intended to apply to other languages as well, set out seven aims which, with appropriate modification, appear at the head of all modern language syllabuses. These have been arrived at after intensive consultation with teachers themselves as well as with Her Majesty’s Inspectorate (HMI), local authority language advisers, teacher educators, language teaching associations and other interested parties. They are:

1. to develop the ability to use French effectively for purposes of practical communication,

2. to form a sound base of the skills, language and attitudes required for further study, work and leisure,

3. to offer insights into the culture and civilisation of French-speaking countries,

4. to develop an awareness of the nature of language and language learning,

5. to provide enjoyment and intellectual stimulation,

6. to encourage positive attitudes to foreign language learning and to speakers of foreign languages and a sympathetic approach to other cultures and civilisations,

7. to promote learning skills of more general application (e.g. analysis, memorising, drawing of inferences).

(DES, 1985: 1)

A number of other desirable aims may be derived both from the National Criteria themselves and from the authoritative HMI publication Modern Foreign Languages to 16 (DES 1987a: 1–5). These include:

(a) developing a capacity for understanding the unfamiliar by taking pupils out of the familiar environment which is pervaded by English and allowing them to explore the lifestyle and culture of other lands through the medium of their languages;

(b) promoting social interaction within and beyond the classroom (including interaction with speakers of the foreign language);

(c) improving personal and social skills by learning to communicate, cooperating and contributing in class, considering the views of others and having to adjust to different social conventions.

The recent indication that a foreign language is to be studied by all pupils up to age 16 (DES 1987b: 7) also implies that effective language teaching must engage and be relevant to pupils of all abilities throughout the five years of secondary education. Developments in education generally also suggest that effective teaching approaches in the future will be those that entail active cooperative learning by pupils of a wide range of ability (SEC 1986: 7).

COMMUNICATING IN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE

That the purpose of learning a modern foreign language is to communicate with those who speak it is no new insight. Other reasons have been given in the past, especially by those who hoped that French and German would come to replace Greek and Latin in the curriculum. But more recently even the most traditional language teachers have regarded communication as their ultimate, if not their immediate, goal. Indeed, the suggestion is sometimes made (Nicholls 1984: 261–9) that so wide and various are the possible interpretations of the term ‘communicative’ that it may serve as little more than a perfunctory slogan. Yet recent changes in both the aims and the methods of foreign language teaching turn precisely on the distinction between what is and what is not a communicative approach to language teaching.

COMMUNICATIVE AND NON-COMMUNICATIVE APPROACHES

Until very recently it was more or less universally assumed by language teachers that their first priority was to ensure that their pupils should be able to produce and understand the main structures of the language and a consensually agreed range of vocabulary. Teaching methods used – learning vocabulary and paradigms, translating sentences and passages, filling in gaps, questions designed to ‘force’ the use of certain structures and so on – were all, intended to achieve this purpose. The controversies that raged among modern linguists essentially concerned the question of which methods were more efficient at producing more or less agreed ends. It was supposed that someone who possessed a thorough mastery of the structures of the language and a supply of relevant vocabulary would be able to use it for the purposes of communication, should the need arise.

Certainly some gifted individuals learned to communicate in a foreign language by such means, but few even of the relatively narrow stratum of those with whom language teaching was attempted, ever acquired the ability or confidence to do so.

It is not denied that some of the above methods may sometimes have a valid part to play in language learning. It is a fundamental assumption of a communicative approach, however, that most pupils will best learn to communicate in the foreign language if they spend a good part of their learning time in activities which as closely as possible resemble the act of communicating in a situation they are likely to encounter.

COMMUNICATIVE SYLLABUSES

A first and obvious distinction between communicative and non-communicative approaches to language teaching is to be seen in the way in which syllabuses and courses of study are conceived and set out. In former times, if syllabuses had been spelled out with any precision, which usually they were not, it would have been in terms of structure and lexis, e.g. pupils needed to know the imperfect, but not the subjunctive, the past historic for recognition purposes only, the external and visible parts of the body but not the internal organs (except the heart and lungs), and so on.

The content of textbooks was invariably listed in terms of grammatical structures covered with, perhaps, chapter titles indicating areas of vocabulary and idiom likely to be encountered.

Communicative syllabuses, by contrast, are spelled out in terms of competences, things pupils are supposed to be able to do with language.

These so-called language functions have been widely listed as:

1. Giving and seeking factual information.

2. Expressing and finding out about intellectual attitudes.

3. Expressing judgements and evaluations.

4. Getting things done.

5. Socialising.

These broad language functions’ have been subdivided. For example, ‘getting things done’ includes among other things:

(a) suggesting a course of action;

(b) offering to do something;

(c) asking others to do something;

(d) asking permission to do something;

(e) saying that something is/is not obligatory;

(f) expressing want or desire, and so on.

(Van Ek 1976: 19–21)

Further specificity may be provided by stating the settings in which those tasks are to be carried out, and in relation to which topics.

Thus, in a restaurant setting, in relation to the topic ‘food and drink’ it may, for example, be specified that candidates should be able to:

Attract the waiter’s attention.

Order a drink or a snack.

Order a meal.

Ask for a particular fixed price menu.

Say how many there are in the group.

Ask for a table for a certain number.

Ask the cost of dishes and drinks … etc.

(NEA 1987: 23)

The process of defining language tasks and the settings in which they are to be performed may, indeed, be carried to considerable lengths (Munby 1978: 116–32).

If some language syllabuses also propose minimal lists of structures and vocabulary which candidates need to know in relation to the four language skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing at the basic and higher levels (see NEA 1987: 64–129) the learning of these is not to be regarded as an end in itself but as a means to the end of performing the specified language tasks.

The practice of spelling out objectives in terms of specific things the pupil is supposed to be able to do comes to us not only from developments in general pedagogy (see, e.g. Perrott 1982: 12–15) but also from recent developments in applied linguistics. It has been increasingly realised, especially in the teaching of English as a foreign language but also elsewhere, that the language required for vocational purposes is often fairly specific. Attempts have, in consequence, been made to analyse the particular language requirements of various occupations as well as to define a more general ‘threshold level’ of competences which all speakers of the language must possess if they are to be functionally viable (see e.g. Jupp and Hodlin 1975; Van Ek 1976: 1–9).

AUTHENTIC TASKS

In a communicative language course the tasks which pupils are taught to perform and the topics and settings to which they relate are characteristically those which might reasonably be expected to confront them in some possible real-life situation. Role-play tasks are typically those in which the English pupil has to deal with a foreign host family, or shopkeeper or official. Reading and listening tasks at an elementary level include public notices and announcements providing information needed by the traveller. Later, more extensive materials for the practice of these skills are those which English teenagers might conceivably read or listen to for interest or information, rather than simply to improve their knowledge of the language. Teachers and course-writers also expend some ingenuity in devising situations in which an English person might need to write lists, messages or letters in the foreign language.

Some Level I graded test syllabuses are specifically defined in terms of situations likely to confront the pupils on a visit to the country with their parents, and higher levels in terms of likely requirements on visits of a more independent kind. We may, however, also imagine authentic situations in which, either now or in the future, pupils may be called upon to deal with a foreign visitor to Britain in the latter’s own language.

Among some hard-line reformers of foreign language teaching, ‘authenticity’, like ‘communication’ has become something of a slogan word. Some teachers, in consequence have come to feel sheepish or even apologetic about the often highly necessary precommunicative presentation and rehearsal of new language intended for later communicative use, or the employment of materials specially created or edited for teaching purposes. Such feelings are entirely out of place. The only test of valid practice is whether it provides the best means of enabling pupils to communicate successfully or respond appropriately to written and spoken messages in the language in real life. Frequent use of communicative activities and authentic materials in the classroom will certainly be highly conducive to this end. But it is absurd and doctrinaire to rule out other activities and the use of other materials on occasions when these are, in fact, the most economical and effective means available for promoting pupils’ learning.

STANDARDS OF ACCEPTABILITY

For many teachers accustomed to marking pupils’ work on the basis of ‘one mark off per mistake’ the most troubling feature of the current approach to foreign language teaching lies in the change of emphasis in the standards of acceptability according to which pupils’ efforts are to be appraised. Though GCSE syllabuses continue to allocate marks for accuracy, at least at higher levels, it is stressed that this is to be considered in relation to its ability to facilitate or impede communication (see, e.g. NEA 1987: 130–9). In all cases a proportion of the marks for a given task is set aside for language which would effectively communicate the required message to a sympathetic native speaker however many errors it may contain. The requirements of a communicative approach are no less rigorous than those operating in traditional days when every error was penalised, though they may place greater demands of judgement on those applying them.

Suppose that pupils are asked to write a letter in French to a hotel containing the following points:

1. Say your family would like to book a double room for your parents and a single room for yourself and your grandmother.

2. Ask the price.

3. Say you would like a room on the ground floor for your grand-mother if possible.

4. Say you hope to arrive around 8.30 p.m. on the first evening.

In former times candidates would probably have been given less precise instructions regarding the content of their letter, but would have been required to write it in a given number of words. Penalties for missing out part of the message would have been relatively light provided the minimum number of words was achieved. Wrong genders for prix and chambre would certainly be penalised and the wrong gender for grand-mère being a ‘gross’ error would probably count double.

In a communicative approach, relatively little depends on Granny’s gender and a masculine article or possessive would be regarded as a harmless slip of no great significance. The same applies to other minor errors which would not interfere with comprehension, though an accumulation of these might reasonably be thought a distraction which would interfere with the message. Any incoherence, omission or ambiguity likely to lead to one of the four parts of the message not being understood, however, would result in marks for that section being lost, even if the words used were correct French and the grammatical phrases correctly constructed.

In this regard, the penalty might be more severe than in more traditional times when such failure might simply count for ‘one mark off’ just like any other. It should be added that the sympathetic native recipient of the letter does not have to be a thought-reader, nor does he have to know enough English to be able to guess what the English writer is trying to say. Des chambres cingles would therefore cause him some puzzlement and enquiries about une salle (as opposed to une chambre) au rez-de-chaussee might well be misunderstood. Reference to sales doubles on whatever floor (a brave attempt in traditional terms) might be expected to strain sympathy to breaking-point.

THE FOUR LANGUAGE SKILLS

A characteristic of the communicative approach as it is currently understood in the English secondary-school context is the equal weighting given to the three language skills of listening, speaking and reading, and also to that of writing in the case of pupils for whom that aim is thought appropriate. It might seem that regarding all four as equally important is somewhat arbitrary, for arguments may certainly be given for regarding some as more important than others. Such arguments, however, are invariably inconclusive and the present situation is certainly more defensible than earlier ones in which productive writing received a major allocation of the marks and reading compehension had to be supplemented by the skill of translating into literary English.

It is an open question whether regarding the four language skills as equally important entails devoting an equal amount of time to teaching them at all stages. In the early weeks one may wish (cf. Page 1986: 9) to control the material introduced fairly closely and work over everything fairly inten...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Editor’s preface
• Author’s Preface
• Acknowledgement
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Defining the task
• 2 Planning
• 3 The receptive skills: listening and reading
• 4 Speaking
• 5 Writing
• 6 Questioning
• 7 Differentiaton in years 1–5
• 8 Language teaching 16–19
• 9 Using aids and technology
• Bibliography
• Index