An Introduction to Foreign Language Learning and Teaching

Keith Johnson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351213844
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Bildungstheorie & -praxis

An Introduction to Foreign Language Learning and Teaching provides an engaging, student-friendly guide to the field of foreign language learning and teaching. Aimed at students with no background in the area and taking a task-based approach, this book:

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• introduces the theoretical and practical aspects of both learning and teaching;
• provides discussion and workshop activities throughout each chapter of the book, along with further reading and reflection tasks;
• deals with classroom- and task-based teaching, and covers lesson planning and testing, making the book suitable for use on practical training courses;
• analyses different learning styles and suggests strategies to improve language acquisition;
• includes examples from foreign language learning in Russian, French, and German, as well as English;
• is accompanied by a brand new companion website at www.routledge.com/cw/johnson, which contains additional material, exercises, and weblinks.

Written by an experienced teacher and author, An Introduction to Foreign Language Learning and Teaching is essential reading for students beginning their study in the area, as well as teachers in training and those already working in the field.

Part I

Background

1

Five learners and five methods

1.1Introduction

B1.1Boxes, boxes, boxes

This book is full of boxes, so perhaps it should start with one. The boxes often contain points to think about, or activities to do. Here are some things to think about before you start to read the book.

In Chapter 13 (Sections 13.3.3 and 13.3.4) we will see that tapping a person’s expectations before they read something is a useful technique for improving reading skills. To experience this process, you are invited to think about the content of this book before you read it. Look first of all just at the book’s title (not the contents page). What areas do you expect the book to cover? What is it going to be about? Then look at the contents page and see whether your expectations seem correct.

Is it clear from the contents page how the book is organized? And do the chapter titles clearly indicate what each chapter is about? If not, try to guess, and check whether your guess is right by skimming through the chapter itself.

Now consider what you already know about the subjects of this book – language learning and teaching. Look at each chapter title and consider the same thing – what you already know about it. Finally, what parts of the book do you expect to be particularly interesting for you? And less interesting? Why?

Now read on …

According to one estimate¹ there are about a billion people in the world today learning English as a foreign language. A billion is a thousand million – a phenomenally large number of people! If you add to this the number of individuals who are learning foreign languages other than English – Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, German, French, and many others – then you realize just how many people on the planet are engaged in the process of foreign language learning.

Why the quite phenomenal expenditure of human energy in this direction? Why on earth do people bother to learn foreign languages on such a grand scale? In this chapter we shall think about some of the reasons why they do it, how successful they are at it, and some of the ways in which they may be taught. A major theme of the chapter will be variety. There are, we shall find, many different reasons for learning, many different degrees of success, and many different ways of teaching.

1.2Why do people learn foreign languages?

B1.2Reasons for learning

Before we look at other people, try to answer the Why Question for yourself and for friends. First consider your own language learning experiences, and ask yourself what your motives for learning were. Make a list of these. If you were obliged to learn, think what the motives of those who obliged you were. When you have thought about yourself, consider other people you know.

Think finally about the world beyond your immediate environment. Write a list of what you imagine to be the main motives for people worldwide learning foreign languages. As you read on, note how many of the reasons on your list are discussed below.

In order to answer the Why Question, and to appreciate the variety of answers it may receive, we will focus on five individuals involved in foreign language learning. They have been chosen to reveal some of the common motivations learners have.

Learner number one is Lilian Rivera. She lives in Santiago, the capital city of Chile. She has a bachelor’s degree in business studies from a local university, and she wants to do a master’s degree overseas. She has applied to universities in Britain, the United States and Australia, and there is the chance that she may receive some scholarship money. But all the universities require her to take an internationally recognized English test before she is offered a place, and her score on the test must be very high.² It is now January, and Lilian’s test is in June. She does not enjoy language learning at all, but her situation explains very well why so very many of her daily waking hours are spent in the (for her) tedious business of improving her English.

Mike is an Australian, and his reason for learning Japanese could not be more different from Lilian’s reason for learning English. Mike has just got married to Junko, a Japanese girl he met in Sydney, where she was, among other things, following an English language course – yet more language learning! Mike has never been to Japan and does not speak Japanese at the moment. But both these things must change. In the summer the two of them plan to visit Junko’s parents in Kyoto, and neither of her parents speaks English. Hence Mike is at present as intensely engaged in foreign language learning as Lilian is.

Learner number three is an Indian girl whose name is Jasmine. She lives in Chennai (formerly Madras), the capital city of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Her native language is Tamil. The foreign language she is learning is another Indian language, though a very different one from Tamil. It is Hindi, considered a national language of India. In India many diverse, mutually unintelligible languages are spoken, and there is the need for one tongue to be spoken by all; the phrase lingua franca describes such a language, used as a means of communication between speakers of other languages. Jasmine wants to continue living and working in Chennai, but the job she has in mind will involve communication with Indians throughout the subcontinent. This is why she is learning Hindi.

Wai Mun Ching is from Hong Kong and her first language is Cantonese. Since Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997, she (like many other Hong Kong citizens) has wanted to learn Standard Mandarin Chinese (called Putonghua), spoken as a lingua franca throughout China. The reason she wants to learn this language is so that she will feel more integrated with the country she is now a part of. Though some people refer to Cantonese and Mandarin as ‘dialects’ of the same language, they are in fact very different, and Wai Mun does not find learning Mandarin easy at all. But this does not bother her; she is very well motivated, and can indeed get quite lyrical on the topic – she really does regard Mandarin as opening a window onto a somewhat new and very meaningful culture for her.

Anna Vecsey is a scientist who works for a research institute attached to a university in Budapest, Hungary. She studied English at school, but her English is poor, and she is constantly made aware of her need to improve it. This awareness is particularly strong at the moment because her institute is about to host an international conference. The delegates will come from all over the world, and the language of communication will be English. Papers at the conference will be delivered in English, chat over coffee will be in English, and there is unlikely to be any respite even over dinner, where English will be spoken. English, English, English. As a consequence, Anna Vecsey has signed up for a language improvement course at a local private language school.

These five characters illustrate some of the many reasons why people take time to learn a foreign language in today’s world. The reasons are indeed various. Lilian is learning English in Chile for study purposes. Mike is busy with Japanese in Australia to integrate himself within his wife’s culture, while Wai Mun in Hong Kong is learning Mandarin to strengthen her own cultural identity. Jasmine learns Hindi in India for purposes of intranational communication (that is, with people from within her country), and Anna in Hungary learns English to facilitate international communication (with people from other countries).

1.3The multilingual world

It is not in fact difficult to understand the importance of foreign language learning in today’s world. As the planet becomes smaller, and the means for moving round it easier, so it has become more multicultural and multilingual. Not so long ago we used to be able to talk of nation states which could be associated with single languages – in France they spoke French, in Germany German, and so on. But it is no longer like that. Take a country like Australia. Clyne (1991) plots the immigration patterns into Australia since the Second World War. In the 1950s came the Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, Croats, Slovenians and Ukrainians. Then there were Germans from Eastern Europe, and refugees from Greece in 1967, from Hungary following the Soviet intervention in Hungary in 1956 and from Czechoslovakia in 1968. The list really could be expanded very considerably, still talking about the same period – British, Maltese, Cypriots, Dutch, Germans, Italians, Yugoslavs, Lebanese, Turks, Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodians. Clyne (1991) gives some revealing details of various censuses on language use in Australia. The 1986 Census, for example, looks at languages used in the home, state by state. No fewer than 63 languages are listed, and in fact some of these are language families (‘Aboriginal languages’ are grouped together, for example). All this means that a stroll down a main street in any major Australian city is likely to be an informal introduction to the languages of the world. You are certainly not going to hear just English, the one language traditionally associated with Australia. The same is true of the United States, another country where it is a common perception that just English is spoken. But the United States, like Australia and much of the rest of the world, is far from monolingual. Today’s world is truly multilingual.

B1.3Multilingual places and people

Perhaps you live in a place where many different languages are spoken. Or if not, perhaps you have visited such a place. If so, list the languages that are spoken, and where possible explain how they have come to be used there. Perhaps there have been many recent immigrants? Or have different ethnic groups always lived in the place? Or are there many tourists from specific countries?

Do you know any individuals who regularly use more than one language in everyday life? What languages do they use? When, and why?

In a multilingual world,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of contents
• Author’s acknowledgements
• Publisher’s acknowledgements
• Abbreviations and acronyms
• Introduction
• Part I Background
• Part II Learning
• Part III Teaching
• References
• Index