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BRAZ-TESOL
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jun’2006
ISSN 1516-182X
> 10th Braz-Tesol
National Convention
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Convention Center
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Brasília in July!
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20th Anniversary Celebrations!
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contents
editorial
Articles
Dear BRAZ-TESOL colleague,
4
Questioning the lexical approach - part 2
When we announced on the March cover that
> Ron Martinez
8
14
you should “get ready for an exciting new year”,
Generating student motivation
celebrating its 20th anniversary, which makes the
Seven ways of making classroom language
2006 National Convention all the more special.
learning difficult - part 2
If you haven’t registered, there’s still time. Access
> Dick Allwright
18
we really meant it! As you know, BRAZ-TESOL is
> Michael Rost
Speaking: just do it?
> Christiane Khatchadourian
www.braztesol.org.br and sign up now! Some
of the most renowned speakers in our field will
be there.
One of these speakers has actually contributed
The 10th National Braz-Tesol Convention
a piece to the June issue of the newsletter.
12
I’m talking about Ron
Register now!
Martinez and the
second part of the
Questioning the Lexical
Approach FAQ, in
which he discusses
what it really means
to teach lexically.
Drawing on some of
the issues raised by
BRAZ-TESOL NEWSLETTER, ISSN 1516-182X, is a quarterly
publication of BRAZ-TESOL, the professional organization of
Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages in Brazil.
It is distributed free of charge to individual and institutional
members of BRAZ-TESOL.
Ron, Christiane
BRAZ-TESOL GENERAL COUNCIL
time we treated speaking as a skill its own right.
Executive Board President Bob Carrington
1st Vice-president Marcelo Barros
2nd Vice-president Luiz Otávio de Barros Souza
Secretary Maria do Socorro Guimarães
Treasurer Albina Escobar
This issue also features the second installment of
Advisory Council Albina Escobar, Ana Falcão, Anna Szabo, Bob Lewis,
Carmen Lucas, Daniel Martins, Donald Occhiuzzo,
Maria Nilce Pontes, Nadia Sarkis, Piri Szabo,
Sara Walker, Vera Bradford, Vilma Sampaio de Oliveira
Academic Committee: Isabela Villas Boas, Inez Woortmann and Paulo Kol
Organizing Committee: Sara Walker, Mariza Troncoso, Marcelo Elias
and Shaun Dowling
Graphic Design and Desktop Publishing
Claudia Ranzini | Prata Design Gráfico
BRAZ-TESOL represents over 3,000 teachers of English in Brazil.
For membership information, please contact BRAZ-TESOL Membership Committee:
Av. 9 de Julho, 3166 - Jardins - São Paulo - SP CEP 01406-900
Phone/Fax: +55 (11) 3559-8782 / E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: www.braztesol.org.br
BRAZ-TESOL
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3
Khatchadourian, in
Speaking: Just Do It?, considers the role of spoken
discourse in the classroom and argues that it’s
Dick Allwright’s Seven Ways of Making Language
Learning Difficult and Michael Rost’s ideas for
Generating Student Motivation, both of which
underscore the importance of the affective aspects
of language learning.
I hope you enjoy the articles and the new layout
of our 20th anniversary edition. Feel free to drop
us a line at [email protected]
with your comments, questions and suggestions.
Thank you for your support over the years.
See you in Brasilia!
Luiz Otávio Barros
Newsletter Editor
article
by Ron Martinez
S PE
Questioning the
Lexical Approach
In this article, Ron Martinez continues
his discussion of the tenets of the
Lexical Approach, based on some of
the queries and comments made in
his Orkut community.
I would like to teach using a Lexical Approach,
but the schedule and book I use don’t allow for
any “variation” from the syllabus/schedule.
I think one of the main Lexical Approach precepts
is getting students to start noticing lexis, particularly
chunks of language, or at least to see vocabulary as
more than individual words. I think this can take up
just a few extra seconds per lesson, therefore making
your situation an adaptable one. For example, let’s
say you’re teaching a lesson on food items (probably
within the context of “countable vs. uncountable
nouns”!) Instead of just teaching “milk,” “cheese,”
BRAZ-TESOL
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4
part 2
ER
AK
CONVE
IO
NT N
“water” and “eggs” on their own, how
about eliciting a few collocates (“____
went sour,” “grated ____,” “a glass of
_____,” etc.) Such lexical exploration
takes just seconds, in fact. However, the
tricky part might be the homework/
recycling/quizzing etc. part of those
chunks which were noticed and even
recorded. In other words, the re-focusing of the input might be trickier with a highly
restrictive and institutionalized lesson planning/
revision/testing system. So there may be a dilemma
there. One solution is to actually incorporate that
revision into subsequent activities, input and
output-oriented alike. It takes a little more planning,
but the payoff is worth it, I think. For more ideas
on how you can take “baby steps” to incorporate
the Lexical Approach into even the tightest of
syllabuses, have a look at Teaching Collocation and
Implementing the Lexical Approach (both published by
Thomson).
What is the role of teacher’s spoken output in the
Lexical Approach?
cognizance of metalanguage, methodic anecdotes,
etc.) must be at least as important as the quality of
the textbook. This is an area that – unlike the point
above regarding the teacher’s level of tolerance of
what is “acceptable” learner output – is actually
workable and trainable, as long as the teacher’s level
of fluency is of a high level of proficiency. In other
words, the highest level of quality input should
theoretically come from a teacher that will not
speak unnaturally slowly, not unnaturally grade his
language, and not be afraid to use all the useful features of discourse that he uses in everyday English,
and at the same time know how to separate useful,
natural language from “idiolect.” To do otherwise is
nothing less than a disservice to the students.
As Lewis writes, “Teachers tend to accept, and even
praise, well-formed sentences which are possible, but
implausible or unnatural.” This is one of the most
difficult areas to prepare teachers for, and, unfortunately for non-native speakers of English (and even
native speakers who have lived outside their native
lands for extended time periods), it’s something
native speakers are generally better at monitoring.
Inevitably, and I include myself in this statement,
over-exposure to the learners’ L1 and its patterns of
interference in the L2 will lead to a kind of desensitization of what the teacher hears as “strange.” This
problem arises especially in monolingual classrooms.
If it’s hard for me to still notice it when students say
things like “I don’t like industrialized foods” or
How far should a teacher take learner autonomy
“There’s a good self-service in this shopping” imagine
with students under the Lexical Approach? How
for a non-native. Not that such “mistakes” are so bad
do we measure it?
for Brazilians talking to other
Not too long ago, teacher
Brazilians, or even Brazilians talking
trainers and MA language
to other South Americans, but the
teaching methodology proproblem arises when it’s a Brazilian
fessors around the world
The Lexical Approach,
talking to a Japanese, or a Brazilian
would confidently recite the
lexical lessons involve
talking to an Arab. That little mental
axiom that the teacher must
a lot of noticing and
red flag that pops up in a teacher’s
have a kind of "hands-off"
head and reads “That doesn’t sound
approach to teaching. This
note-taking. It’s all
right” is paramount to teacher outplatitude sounds nice enough,
about awarenessput awareness. That said, I also think
but is ultimately flawed without
raising and learner
that natives (especially) can go to the
further analysis.
training
aimed
at
extreme, overcorrecting perfectly
First of all, I do agree that
natural English just because it doesthe teacher's ultimate goal is
getting students to be
n’t sound like London English or
to make himself redundant.
lexically ligados.
New York English. The implications
There is not one successful
for all this are profound. For the
language learner I know that
Lexical Approach to be effective,
learned only inside the classschools truly need to hire teachers who are very well
room, only with teacher-fronted input. However, I do
informed speakers of English, even expert users of
not think that this means teachers should simply
the language. I realize that this is not entirely realisrevert to The Silent Way!
tic in Brazil, but I’m talking about the ideal here.
I think that learner autonomy for practical teaching
The same holds true for the teacher’s output in
purposes means that we strive to train students to
class. In the book “The Lexical Approach,” Lewis
independently fish out useful lexis whether they're
quotes Stephen Krashen:
watching a movie, reading a book, surfing the Net,
listening to the radio or admiring someone's graffiti
When we just talk to our students, if they understand,
on the back of the bathroom door of a public
we are not only giving a language lesson, we may
restroom. It is this kind of autonomy that the
be giving the best possible language lesson since we
Lexical Approach advocates, not the kind where we
will be supplying input for acquisition.
just "give the students stuff to do in pairs and small
groups." As is mentioned again and again in the
So, to further complicate matters, students will
book The Lexical Approach, lexical lessons involve a
potentially learn more from the teacher’s comprehenlot of noticing and note-taking. It's all about awaresible input than even the coursebook! That means
ness-raising and learner training aimed at getting
that the quality of the teacher’s output in class (i.e.
students to be lexically ligados. And though this
lexical range, lexical selection, conscious recycling,
BRAZ-TESOL
newsletter
5
training is perhaps best carried out Socratically,
there will inevitably be some dependence from the
student in order to get this process going: dependence
on the teacher to help orient their attention,
dependence on the syllabus to some kind of scope
and sequence (and sense of progress), dependence
on the teacher to validate correct assertions and
hypotheses testing, dependence on the teacher to
at least assist in choosing input – wherever that
input may come from.
So I guess the best way I can answer your question is this: The limit for the teacher in terms of
transferring the onus of learning to students lies
within the fine line between that which is helpful
to the student and that which is just plain stupid.
There's that old Chinese proverb:
“Give a man a fish and he will eat for one day.
Teach a man to fish, and he will eat for a lifetime."
OK, yes, I agree that in the classroom it's rather
pointless just to hand out "fish." But the Chinese
adage doesn't reveal what involves teaching a man
to fish. I think it means you must at least choose
the proper tools and equipment and be familiar
with their use and know good places to go fishing.
Continuing with the metaphor, if the fishing
instructor simply took the student out to the lake
and said, "Now fish," that's not autonomy, because
BRAZ-TESOL
newsletter
6
the student will not be able to do it by himself (or
might be able to, but mostly by accident). If the
teacher says, "Now fish," and then watches the
student try, and intervenes where helpful, the
student will probably learn and eventually become
autonomous, but it may take a long time. Not only
that, without a model, the student will only learn
that which arises from his own trial and error.
Likewise, if the fishing instructor says, "Now, watch
me fish," the student might never learn anything.
But the student would probably benefit from the
fishing instructor saying, "Notice how I bait this
hook, notice how I cast this line." Then he should
hand over the rod and say, "Now you try." There's
where autonomy begins. But the fishing instructor's
role will not end there. At least initially, he'll need
to help guide the student to know where to catch
the best fish, to help him to identify a good catch,
and what to do with it after it's caught.
And in terms of "how do we measure," I think we
can't and we don't, at least quantitatively. One of
the most sobering realizations I've had as a teacher
is that, after I say goodbye to a student at the end of
a semester or course, I may never know if she will
carry on and eventually reach her fluency goals. Not
only that, even if I did see that person again twenty
years later and she is speaking better than me, I will
never know if I had anything at all to do with that
success. Teaching, then, I believe, is a truly altruistic
endeavor if one embraces that reality. The rewards
come from the means, and not the end. Perhaps this
is why there is often not enough autonomy in the
classroom and too much emphasis on seeing evidence of learning. Teachers want to taste the fruits
of their labor, but that fruit doesn't belong to the
teacher any more than the apple on a tree belongs
to the air, rain, sunshine and soil. That fruit, I
believe, is for the student to enjoy all by herself.
I think there’s a culture-clash between what
students expect in traditional classrooms and the
kind of autonomy the Lexical Approach advocates.
Try to think of getting them to "ownership"
of learning rather than autonomy. As I mentioned
earlier, autonomy can even be counterproductive
if not led to in a helpful way. What I suggest is
that, through you and what you do inside the classroom, you do little things to demonstrate how
they, your students, can also design their own
learning programs.
For example, students invariably directly or
indirectly, during class time, want to know how to
say certain things in English. This is a magic
Comments on the article? Drop us a line at [email protected]
moment. Sometimes the focus of the lesson is
"food" or "the weather", and suddenly Marcelo
wants to know how to say "saia justa" in English.
You are then in a saia justa yourself because you
know you have to continue your lesson and that
this query has nothing at all to do with the syllabus. On the other hand, it is a genuine question,
something that student really wanted to know. His
mind is ready for it at that moment. For whatever
reason, his schema has been switched on to that
channel, and is ready to be fed. Not only that, it's
very likely everyone else in the classroom will be on
the edge of their seats wanting to know. So do you
ignore that opportunity? NO! You run with it. You
say "Well, do you think it's literal? How do you say
'saia' in English? OK, and what about 'justa'?
Alright, so do you think it's 'tight skirt' in English?
That's right, it's not. But the concept, what's called
'the metaphor' also applies. How do you say 'justo'
again, with that meaning? Correct: 'tight'. So, in
English, people say 'He's in a tight spot.' You can
also say, 'He's in a bind..." etc. etc.
And you write all of that on the board. Not only
that, you take that and at the end of the day you
write it down, and even review it at the beginning
of the next class with the other stuff you review.
(You do review, right?) If you do that every class,
consciously or unconsciously, the students will
begin to realize, “Hey, what we say matters. We can
influence our course, our learning. We can shape
what we want to learn.” Ownership then begins.
But then the best part comes, the real payoff,
when you integrate those "incidental" items into a
test, quiz or midterm. They see that all that lexis
they've built up over the semester has amounted to
hundreds of items, and that the sum of these lexical items has contributed greatly to their overall
fluency. So, without ever mentioning autonomy or
even giving them an out-of-class assignment,
you've shown them the rewards of taking charge of
one's own learning. That hunger, that habit, just
might linger on till after the course is over, and
then you've created autonomy.
That's just one example of what you can do that
won't break with the cultural problems you mention (which in fact are not exclusive to Brazil, but
characteristic of learning the world over, basically).
References
LEWIS, M. (1993) The Lexical Approach: The State of
ELT and a Way Forward. Thomson Learning
LEWIS, M. (1997) Implementing The Lexical Approach:
Putting Theory into Practice. Thomson Learning
LEWIS, M. (2000) Teaching Collocation: Further
Developments in the Lexical Approach.
Thomson Learning
NATTINGER, J. and DECARRICO, J. (1992) Lexical Phrases
and Language Teaching. Oxford University Press
SCHMITT, N. (2004) Formulaic Sequences. John
Benjamins Publishing Company
MCCARTHY, M. (1998) Spoken Language & Applied
Linguistics. Cambridge University Press
Ron Martinez is the author of several books, including
Conversation Lessons (Thomson), Taboos and Issues
(Thomson), Como Dizer Tudo em Inglês (Campus) and
Como Dizer Tudo em Inglês Avançado (Campus), published
this year. In the 1990s, he worked closely with Michael Lewis
in developing some of the earliest teaching materials based
on Lexical Approach principles.
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If you enjoyed this article, don’t miss
Ron Martinez’s BRAZ-TESOL workshops:
“Words and More Words, from Beginner to
Advanced” and “Well, so, anyway, this
workshop is about, like, discourse markers”.
See you in Brasilia!
BRAZ-TESOL
newsletter
7
For information, please contact the
World Learning-Brazil office in São Paulo.
article
by Michael Rost
Generating Student
Motivation
In this article, Michael Rost addresses
the ubiquitowus – and yet elusive – issue
of motivation.
Motivation has been called the “neglected heart” of
language teaching. As teachers we often forget that
all of our learning activities are filtered through our
students’ motivation. In this sense, students control
the flow of the classroom. Without student motivation, there is no pulse, there is no life in the class.
When we learn to incorporate direct approaches to
generating student motivation in our teaching, we
will become happier and more successful teachers.
Why is motivation so important in EFL?
The issue of motivation, particularly in EFL settings,
is so important that other considerations about
teaching methodology seem to pale in comparison.
It is important to think about motivation as the
essence of language teaching because of the stark
realities of learning English for most of our students.
All of the conditions that we know contribute to successful second language acquisition are lacking in
most EFL contexts: there just isn’t enough English
BRAZ-TESOL
newsletter
8
input in the environment, there probably aren’t enough opportunities for
interaction with English speakers, there
usually aren’t enough strong role models promoting the learning of English,
and there may not be widespread
enough social acceptance for the idea of becoming
proficient in English. Because of these adverse conditions, a learner has to extraordinary motivation in
order to succeed at learning English!
What does the research on motivation tell us?
The research on motivation defines motivation is an
orientation toward a goal. (This orientation may be
positive, negative, or ambivalent.) Motivation provides a source of energy that is responsible for why
learners decide to make an effort, how long they are
willing to sustain an activity, how hard they are
going to pursue it, and how connected they feel to
the activity.
Because igniting and sustaining a source of positive
energy is so vital to ultimate success, everything the
teacher does in the language classroom has two goals.
One is, of course, to further language development,
and the other is to generate motivation for continued
learning. Much of the research on motivation has
confirmed the fundamental principle of causality:
motivation affects effort, effort affects results, positive
results lead to an increase in ability. What this
suggests, of course, is that by improving students’
motivation we are actually amplifying their ability
in the language and fueling their ability to learn.
What specific approaches can teachers take to
generate motivation?
A number of initiatives in SLA research over the
past decade have helped clarify our understanding
of motivation and the specific psychological and
behavioral components of motivation that we as
teachers can influence. In preparing for teaching
classes on TESOL methodology, I have read the
work of researchers such as Gardner and Lambert,
Deci and Ryan, Crookes and Schmidt, Williams and
Burdon, Dornyei and Skehan, and Czikzenmiyahli
in order to synthesize an approach to generating
learner motivation in EFL settings. We can identify
three levels or layers of motivation in language
learning that are “operational”, or accessible to
direct influence by the teacher. To the extent that a
teacher can tap into any or all of these layers, he or
she is more likely to become a “motivating” teacher.
21
The first layer of motivation: finding your passion
The first layer, the most central core of motivation,
is what might be called “finding your passion”. I
would argue that all successful learning – not only
language learning – is somehow connected to a
learner’s passion. Passion, in this sense, means a
person’s central goals in life, the things the learner
cares about most, the things that move him or her
emotionally. I don’t mean that a learner needs
to become passionate about learning English in
order to succeed. Rather, the learner needs to find a
way to connect English learning to his or her real
passion in life.
The teacher can help learners to bring their passion
into the classroom in several ways. One is by introducing “hot elements” in the classroom – music,
movies, fads, current topics, personalities, games and
so on – in order to trigger learners’ real interests. The
teacher can then use these triggers to build a class
culture. If we introduce, or if we allow the learners
themselves to bring in, samples of current songs,
clippings of famous people, photos or video clips,
we invite greater engagement in the classroom.
Another way of helping learners “find their passion” is by organizing class activities around the
theme of self expression. There are a number of
approaches here: personalized tasks, idea journals,
BRAZ-TESOL
newsletter
9
Applications are now being accepted for the
BRAZ-TESOL / SIT Scholarship
Earn a Master of Arts in Teaching (ESOL)
at SIT in the United States.
Visit us at the
BRAZ-TESOL Convention in July - stand #48
Programs begin late June and late August
For complete information, please consult:
www.worldlearning/brazil
Inquire: [email protected]
[email protected]
speaking circles, interactive questionnaires. When
learners realize that the content of the class is their
personal lives, and that the teacher responds to them
as people, not just as language learners, we invite a
deeper level of commitment, and motivation, from
the learners.
A third way of generating passion is through the
psychological principle of “immediacy” – using
yourself as a model of enthusiasm and motivation
for learning!
classroom. The ideas are endless: direct students to
quality language learning websites (or build your
own, as many teachers have done), make available
quality audio, video, and multimedia learning
sources, develop a small library of accessible readers
and supplementary materials and self-access
quizzes, worksheets and games. Spending classroom time to help students select, share, and evaluate their out of class work with English is just as
important as covering a lesson in the textbook.
Helping students “change their reality” means
moving them toward seeing language learning in a
different way. It means helping them take simple,
self-directed steps to make choices about learning.
The first step is the most important, because it’s the
one that can ignite this layer of motivation.
The third layer of motivation: connecting to
learning activities
The second layer of motivation:
changing your reality
The second layer of motivation is what I called
“changing your reality.” In virtually every language
learning setting, but particularly in EFL settings,
learners cannot make and sustain sufficient
progress in the L2 because they do not receive
enough instruction, not nearly enough attention in
class, not nearly enough input or meaningful interaction or opportunities for serious output. Some
studies in language immersion have estimated that
a typical learner needs a minimum of 4 hours a
week of quality contact with a language in order to
make progress. Even if this estimate is not true for
all learners, it is clear to most EFL teachers that
learners need more language instruction than we
can provide in our classrooms. Learners need more
quality instruction – input, interaction, and opportunities for meaningful output – not only to make
progress, but in order to maintain a sufficiently
strong connection to the language and to build
their own motivation for learning.
In my own language teaching and in my materials development, I now consider it a major part of
my job to help students find opportunities for
engaging learning tasks outside the classroom.
Helping learners find quality “homework” is essential in order to maintain quality learning in the
BRAZ-TESOL
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10
The third layer of motivation is what I call
“connecting to learning activities.” Connecting
refers to the engagement of intention, attention,
and memory in the activity itself. All teachers want
their students to connect with the learning activities we prepare, yet we often fail to take concrete
steps that will lead to better connection. Here are a
few “connecting principles” that I try to employ in
my own teaching materials, such as WorldView:
• Use personalized warm ups to lead into an activity.
This creates relevance – an essential condition for
memory to work effectively. Aim to get all students
involved in the warm up.
• Make each learning activity as vivid and tangible
as possible. Use provocative topics. Include visual
aids (pictures, charts) and tangible references
(game boards, index cards) to engage students
attention. Provide variety in your learning activities so that students can try out different learning
styles (interpersonal, kinesthetic, musical, etc.).
• Make sure that each learner is involved, so that
everyone has an intention in every activity.
Assign roles in pair and group activities. Monitor
as closely as you can to be sure that each student,
especially the shyer and weaker ones, remain
active. It’s important to have everyone on board.
• Include inductive learning in your lesson. Be sure
that students have an opportunity to discover
things on their own – grammar points, pragmatic
patterns, new vocabulary. Give students a chance
to reflect. It’s always easier to teach deductively
through direct presentations, but discovery learning
is more meaningful and more permanent.
• Provide feedback on all levels of language progress.
Progress in language involves more than just
gradual mastery of grammar and vocabulary.
Give feedback on elements of performance that
affect students’ motivation: their success in an
activity and their level of engagement.
Conclusion: Becoming a “motivating teacher”
A great deal of research has been done in the area
of motivation, and why it is so fundamental
to second language learning. The underlying
issues related to motivation are complex, but it is
clear that every person’s motivation to learn is
flexible rather than fixed. As teachers, we can
directly influence our students’ motivation about
learning English.
The “three layers of motivation” is one way of
conceptualizing how a teacher can influence each
student. If we can make progress with our students in each of these layers, we can become
more motivating teachers and bring “the heart of
language teaching” into our classrooms.
References
BURDON, R. and WILLIAMS, M. 1998. Language learners’
perceptions of supportive classroom environments.
Language Learning Journal, 17, 29-32.
CROOKES, G. and SCHMIDT, R. 1991. Motivation: reopening
the research agenda. Language Learning, 41, 469-512.
CSIKSZENTMIHALYI, M. 1997. Finding Flow: The Psychology
of Engagement with Everyday Life. New York: Basic
Books http://www.harpercollins.com
DORNYEI, Z. and SKEHAN, P. 2003. Individual differences
in second language learning. In: DOUGHTY, C. and
LONG, M. (Eds.) The handbook of second language
acquisition. Oxford: Blackwell.
GARDNER, R. TREMBLAY, P., and MASGORET, A-M. 1997.
Toward a full model of second language learning:
An empirical investigation. Modern Language
Journal, 81, 344-62.
RYAN, R. and DECI, E. 2000. Self-determination theory
and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation,
social development, and well-being. American
Psychologist, 55, 68-78.
Dr. Michael Rost has been active in teaching and teacher
training for over 20 years. He has taught in West Africa,
Japan, Southeast Asia, England and the U.S. He specializes in
oral language development and learner strategies, and has a
particular interest in links between self-access learning and the
classroom. He has written several articles and books on teacher
training, including Teaching and Researching Listening
(Longman, 2002). Michael Rost is Series Editor of WorldView,
the new 4-level adult series from Longman. He is also principal
author of the multimedia course Longman English.
BRAZ-TESOL
newsletter
11
ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL PROGRAMS
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For information about these and other SIT programs offered in
the U.S. or in Brazil, contact the World Learning — Brazil office
in Sao Paulo.
The 10th National
BRAZ-TESOL
Convention
The President and National Board have
great pleasure in inviting you to attend the
BRAZ-TESOL 20th Anniversary Convention
in Brasília from July 8th to 11th.
>
The 20% discount price of R$240 has
been extended to June 30th.
Register now!
Ulysses Guimarães
Convention Center >
the very first BRAZ-TESOL National Convention in Curitiba in July of that year.
Did you know that…? Dick Allwright was President of TESOL in 1988, and attended
article
by Dick Allwright
Seven ways of making
classroom language
learning difficult
part 2
In the March issue, Dick Allwright discussed three ways in which
we unintentionally hinder, rather than help, language learning:
frustrating, confusing and spoonfeeding learners. In the second
part of his thought-provoking article, he examines another four
capital sins of language teaching.
Time-wasting
Time-wasting is difficult to discuss, because it is so
ubiquitous. The main problem is to know whether
or not there is anything to say about it other than
the obvious point that all the other ways of making
classroom language learning difficult, in practice,
constitute wastes of time, time that could be better
spent some other way. There are some examples of
time-wasting, however, that stand apart as simple
cases, and which we should work hard to avoid. For
example, if I plan to play a CD in class but fail to set
it up so that I can quickly locate the portion I wish
to use, then I am liable to waste some of my learners'
time although they may not feel frustrated, confused,
or spoonfed by the delay. Such simple wastes of
time, though often understandable, are for the most
part inexcusable simply because they represent lack of
care in preparation. Of course, when I do eventually
find the right place on the CD I may still waste my
learners' time because I have chosen something that
is inappropriate (and which probably frustrates,
confuses and/or spoonfeeds different members of the
class). Another pure case of time-wasting might arise,
when, as sometimes happens (in university settings
in particular, probably), learners are used as guineapigs for extensive new proficiency tests, for example.
Such activities may not represent a total waste of
time, but they can come close to it, and they may
well provide excellent circumstances for the next
two problems to be examined here: demoralization
and anxiety-breeding
Demoralising learners
It is easy to make classroom language learning difficult by demoralising learners. Classroom language
risks being a demoralising experience for some class
members simply because, in the nature of things,
they are likely to compare themselves unfavourably
with other people in the class. This is an inevitable
risk of grouping people in classes. Some people will
become demoralised, not on account of unfavourable
comparisons with others, but on account of their
own private feelings that they are unable to match
their aspirations, that they are not learning as quickly,
BRAZ-TESOL
newsletter
15
or retaining things as permanently as they had
expected. A third possibility, and one often occurring, is that some learners will become demoralised
on account of the treatment they receive in class,
both from the teacher and from fellow-learners. For
example, it is common for some class members to get
left out during any period of oral practice. This may
happen by choice, or it may happen because the
teacher is trying to save a shy person say, from public
embarrassment. Shy people, however, may interpret
the thoughtfulness as wilful neglect, and basically as
evidence that they cannot be trusted to produce an
acceptable answer. This thought alone is potentially
demoralising to them, and is likely to lead to such
learners lowering their expectations of success. This
in turn will itself make future success less likely (given
what we know about the effect of aspiration levels on
performance) and thus contribute to increasing
demoralisation. Classrooms provide many other
opportunities for demoralising experiences, as only a
few moments of classroom observation will show.
The difficulty is to know how to approach the
problem of minimising the risk.
One possibility is to work for a classroom atmosphere that replaces competition with collaboration, since it is in a competitive atmosphere that
invidious person-to-person comparisons are likely to
be most evident. If the collaborative atmosphere
involves small group work, then this can give the
shy person an opportunity to participate without
too much risk of public embarrassment. Another
possibility is to look for ways learners can set their
own goals (and their own aspiration levels) in the
light of their own reasons for language learning.
Where this can be done, comparisons with other
learners may become largely irrelevant, and, in
addition, the amount of thought required of learners to set their own goals is likely to mean more realistic aspiration levels, and, therefore, less risk of
demoralisation from that source as well.
Again, worries about which teaching method to
use seem less relevant than worries about people
management and about course structure – the different formats for learning that we offer our learners.
The management of language learning seems a better term for what we are talking about than "language teaching".
Anxiety-breeding
We can and do make classroom learning difficult by
breeding anxiety in our learners. We breed anxiety in
a number of ways, but anxiety-breeding is probably
most closely and most frequently related to our
work as unintentional demoralisers. Some degree of
anxiety may- of course be useful if by that we mean
the sort of anxiety that is virtually synonymous
with alertness, with paying close attention to what
is going on, perhaps out a fear of missing something important. Greater degrees of anxiety will be
debilitating, making effective concentration more
rather than less difficult. The mere fear of demoralising experiences such as those illustrated above
may itself be debilitating, to the extent that it
seriously interferes with learning. Even undramatic
instances may have significant effects. Consider, for
example, the learners who are willing to speak in
class (unlike the shy learners referred to previously),
but for whom public performance is sufficiently
worrying so that when they ask the teacher a question the answer gets lost somehow. Other more
relaxed people in the class can listen to both question and answer and learn from them, but for the
questioner the relief that follows the successful posing of the question gets in the way of paying attention to the answer. If this happens often enough the
previously willing enquirer may eventually prefer to
live in the hope that other people will ask the right
question. That is not very likely to happen, however,
and the net result will most likely be even less effective learning in general (since there is one person
less to ask questions that the others might learn
from listening to). To combat the causes of anxiety
we need to work to establish mutual trust between
us and our learners, and among our learners. Again
we are led to the notion of collaboration rather than
competition as the key, and so to learning structure
and management techniques that are likely to foster
a collaborative atmosphere. Once again methods (as
traditionally conceived-for example, in terms of
Audio-Lingualism and cognitive Codism) seem to
be of very limited relevance to our problems.
Dependence-breeding
The seventh way we have of making classroom language learning difficult is to breed dependence in
our learners.Dependence-breeding is in many ways
the most interesting and yet perhaps the most elusive of the risks facing language learners. The basic
issue is the contention that learners deserve to be
given a chance to learn to be independent learners,
so that they can continue to learn effectively even
after we have stopped teaching them. By independent learner I do not mean the sort of learner who
will learn without any outside assistance, but the
sort of learner who will know how best to exploit
all the learning possibilities and learning resources
that are available (and even perhaps begin to create
them where they do not yet exist). It may seem odd
to suggest that we teachers should do anything that
even begins to risk jeopardising our security of
employment, but pedagogically, at least, it would
be even more odd, surely, to suggest that it is a
good idea for teachers to teach in a way that perpetuates (perhaps even strengthens) their learners'
dependence on them. From this point of view independence-breeding is an indispensible part of
responsible teaching (see Allwright, 1978) and
clearly not just in language teaching. It is arguable,
though probably not provable, that the much
lamented failure of learners to perform in real-life
as well as they do in the classroom is to be attriBRAZ-TESOL
newsletter
16
buted less to insufficient overlearning (as the
audio-linguists interpreted the problem) than to
insufficient independence-breeding. It is difficult
enough to do anyway, out in the "real" world, the
things that we have learned to do in the relative (in
spite of its anxiety-breeding potential) security of
the classroom. It will be even more difficult if, as a
learner, you have been led to believe that you naturally need teacher to "hold your hand".
The obvious problem is that any measures to
promote a healthy independence run the risk of
allowing learners to go astray, both linguistically
and pedagogically. They also run the risk of making
it look as if the teacher is abdicating major responsibilities (for a fuller discussion see Allwright, 1978,
again). In essence this is no different from the parentchild relationship, where we hope we will be strong
enough as parents to allow our children enough
room to develop as independent people by making
their own mistakes and learning from them in a
context that is generally supportive. It is perhaps as
irresponsible to breed dependence in one's children
as it is to leave them to fend for themselves entirely.
As teachers we need to find an approach that will
help our learners develop linguistic and pedagogic
independence from us, and at the same time,
assuming our linguistic and pedagogic expertise
does remain greater than theirs, allows us to keep
the role of experts, first of all because it is we who
are training them to be independent (not just
allowing them to be), and secondly because healthily independent people need experts to consult.
This gives us a picture of the ideal teacher as both
an independence trainer and as a linguistic and
pedagogic consultant or expert. To train for independence without expertise is at least as harmful (if
it develops the wilfully independent person who is
incapable of seeing the value of another's expertise)
as it is to do what we more often do, train for
expertise without independence.
about the management of interpersonal relationships in the classroom, and about the provision of
learning structures to facilitate both interpersonal
relationships and individual learning.
The contention of this article is that we can
derive a basic set of such global principles by
thinking about the seven ways in which we
typically make classroom language learning more
difficult than it need be. Thinking about such
things may be more productive than putting our
energies into thinking about the questions that
have traditionally concerned language teaching
methodologists. By focusing on such issues we are
at last beginning to ask some of the right
questions, and that by experimenting we are
beginning to find some promising local answers.
References
ALLWRIGHT, R.L., 1978, "Abdication and Responsibility in
Language Teaching", Studies in Second Language
Acquisition, 11/1:105-121.
ALLWRIGHT, R.L., 1982, "Perceiving and Pursuing
Learners' Needs". In GEDDES and STURTRIDGE (eds.),
Individualisation, Modern English Publications:24-31.
CATHCART, R.L., & OLSEN, J.W.B., 1976, "Teachers' and
Students' Preferences for Correction of Classroom
Conversation Errors". In FANSELOW and CRYMES (eds.),
On TESOL 1976, TESOL, Washington:41-53.
CURRAN, C.A., 1976, Counselling-Learning in Second
Languages, Illinois: Apple River Press.
GATTEGNO, C., 1976, The Common Sense of Teaching
Foreign Languages, New York: Educational Solutions.
KRASHEN, S.D., 1982, Principles and Practice in Second
Language Acquisition, Oxford: Pergamon Press.
PRABHU, N.S., 1980, "Theoretical Background to the
Bangalore Project". In New Approaches to Teaching
English, Regional Institute of English Bulletin,
Bangalore, no 4(1):19-26.
STEVICK, E.W., 1976, Memory, Meaning and Method,
Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House.
General Conclusion
It should be clear by now that I believe such issues to
be considerably more important than the usual controversies between rival methods of language teaching. They are issues that ignore the traditional problem of the selection, sequencing and grading of
course content, and yet at the same time seem much
more directly related to the profitable achievement
of our learners. They are issues that prompt thought
Dick Allwright teaches applied linguistics at Lancaster
University, England. An enthusiast for observational classroom
research in the 1970s and early 1980s, he has shifted in recent
years to develop, under the heading of “Exploratory Practice”,
the notion of participant research in the language classroom.
He has published widely, including two books: Observation in
the Language Classroom, Longman, 1988 and (with Kathi Bailey)
Focus on the Language Classroom, CUP, 1991.
Email: [email protected]
Comments on the article? Drop us a line at [email protected]
BRAZ-TESOL
newsletter
17
article
by Christiane
Khatchadourian
Speaking: just
do it?
In this article, Christiane Khatchadourian
argues that we should approach the skill of
speaking more systematically.
his checklist of the knowledge-base that is required
After long, well-deserved summer holidays, you go
for day-to-day speaking, most of which are menback to the classroom to meet the students you're
tioned by Brown. However, Thorbury emphasises the
going to spend the next term with. After a round of
elements that help the speaker convey the impresthose needs analysis questionnaires, you find out
sion of fluent speech, which include the use of:
once again that most of them are worried about
• simple linkers: and, but, so
improving their speaking skills. Regardless of age
• formulaic chunks, including time and place
or level, they ask for more “conversation” in the
adverbials: the end of the day, that particular shop
classroom, and however hard you try to maximise
• discourse markers: I mean, anyway
learners’ opportunities to speak, they never seem to
• fillers: um, uh
perceive them as effective in helping them reach
• vagueness expressions: something like that, that stuff
their ultimate goal, which is, after all, to speak
• standard backchannel devices: Really? You’re kidding!
English. So what is it that is missing to bridge the
• Intonation to break up the flow of speech into
gap between their expectations and regular classmeaningful units
room procedures?
This quick overview is certainly enough to
In an attempt to answer this question, I tried to
demonstrate how much is going on while we are
look at my own practice in a critical way and analyse
speaking.
Consequently,
how I had been tackling speaking
simply providing opportuskills with my groups. The outcome
nities for learners to speak in
was not very uplifting, I have to
the classroom may not be
admit. My tendency was to treat
Simply providing
enough to help them master
speaking mostly as a by-product of
opportunities for
this skill. It is probably necwork on other skills, when brainlearners
to
speak
in
essary to go a step further
storming ideas for writing, practising
and explicitly work on the
grammar, doing pre-listening activithe classroom may
elements mentioned above.
ties, post-reading discussions and so
not be enough to help
Although it is not possible
on. Coursebooks could also be misthem
master
this
skill
to work on each and every
leading, as many of them label as
one of them every time stuspeaking any kind of activity in
dents are required to talk, I
which students need to open their
am convinced it is impormouths. Therefore, oral drills, protant to address those issues consistently throughout
nunciation work, repeating dialogues, you name it,
the course so that some skills work can be done
become “speaking activities”. As a result, rarely is
regarding speaking.
speaking approached as a skill in its own right and
How have these considerations affected my
students are more often than not left to their own
teaching? Well, in the old days, I would probably
devices to cope with it. No wonder they become
use a debate as a means to brainstorm ideas for an
frustrated.
argumentative writing piece students would proAnd come to think of it, speaking is an extremely
duce later on, so not much attention would be
complex skill. Brown, in Teaching by Principle,
given to how students would perform, as the main
breaks it up in no fewer than fourteen microskills,
goal was to get ideas for a composition. Now I
grouped under four umbrella terms, as follows:
might still use the debate for the same purpose, but
1. Grammatical competence, which includes lanI tend to take the opportunity to explicitly work on
guage structures, vocabulary and pronunciation
some features of the spoken language.
2. Discourse competence, which encompasses
Here are some suggestions on how to go about it:
applying the rules of coherence, cohesion and
referencing
3. Sociolinguistic competence, which means
Raising awareness
knowing what is socially and culturally expected,
It aims at helping students notice what speaking
including a sense of appropriacy, interaction
English fluently entails.
rules and non-verbal responses
It is important for them to perceive that fluency is
4. Strategic Competence, which entails an ability
not synonymous with speed and, rather than trying
to compensate for imperfect knowledge.
to speak fast, it is crucial to learn to buy planning
Thornbury, in his article Awareness, appropriation
time and deal with hesitation in order to sound
and autonomy, enumerates as many as eleven items in
both fluent and natural.
BRAZ-TESOL
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19
compare their ideas to the original passage,
which can generate very fruitful discussion on
what is natural to say.
Brainstorming ideas
Many times it is difficult for learners to speak
because they have to struggle with both the content
and the form of what they want to say. Brainstorming ideas in advance can provide some scaffolding and allow more room for the learners to
focus on the language needed to express them.
Whichever kind of group dynamics you choose
for this stage, it is helpful to:
1. Have a debriefing session at the end to share
and clarify ideas.
2. Discuss the possible connections between the
ideas that have come up. For instance, if students have produced a “for and against” list of
arguments, which of the pros could be a counter
argument for any of the cons? If they brainstormed questions for an interview, what is the
best order for them to be asked?
Practising useful chunks
Ideally a listening passage of the same genre of the
proposed speaking task would be analysed, but if this
is difficult to get, any authentic discussion you can
get hold of will do, provided it features elements that
would be useful for the learners in their final speaking task. You might start with a regular pre-listening
activity, followed by comprehension questions. Then,
to help students notice how the speakers manage to
keep the conversation going, you can:
1. Divide the learners in small groups and assign
each group one of these headings: agreeing, disagreeing, interrupting, hesitating, buying planning time, introducing a new topic, giving
examples, etc. Needless to say, the headings will
be chosen according to the final task and the
elements each listening passage contains. They
listen to the passage again, and write down any
chunks of language used to perform the function in their heading. After checking with the
whole group, you might want to elicit from
students other ways of expressing each idea.
2. Use the transcript to erase the chunks you want
to pinpoint, and give out the gapped copies.
First students try to come up with possible ways
of completing the text, then listen again to
BRAZ-TESOL
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20
The content here may vary greatly, depending on
the proposed speaking task, but the central idea is
to equip learners with formulaic language that can
be readily used in a variety of situations.
In order to provide more controlled practice
before asking learners to try these chunks out in the
final speaking task you can:
1. Divide the class in groups of three or four, and
give each group two sets of slips of paper – one
with the chunks to be practised, the other with
topics for discussion. They take one slip with a
topic for the group and each student picks one
slip with a chunk. They can only stop talking
about this topic when everybody has managed
to use the chunk on their slip of paper.
2. Give out prompts of a short dialogue in which
the chunks to be practised are missing. Give
learners some time to think about how they
could use the chunks, but don’t let them write
anything. When students feel ready, they perform the dialogue using the prompts and adding
the chunks where appropriate. At the end, have
a debriefing session to discuss how the chunks
were used and how natural they sounded.
Often neglected in course books, intonation is
extremely important to make yourself understood
and its wrong use can lead to communication
breakdown. Helping students notice the effect of
intonation on meaning, and providing them with
opportunities to practise this feature can bring considerable improvement to their performance.
1. Shadow Reading
Best done with a short part of the listening passage, it is a good way to help learners pick up
rhythm and intonation. At the first stage, they
can just listen and mark the pauses. When the
teacher plays it again, they speak along, trying
to imitate the speakers on the recording. This
can be done as many times as necessary for the
learners to gain confidence. You can slowly
turn down the volume until only the students
can be heard.
2. Rising X Falling Intonation
Especially useful when the final task involves
asking questions, this kind of work can also
provide an opportunity for learners to notice
how intonation can change the meaning of
what is being said.
Allowing time for planning
Although one might argue that under real operating
conditions there is no time to plan what you are
going to say, I believe that in the classroom time for
planning should be allowed - especially when
learners are to perform challenging speaking tasks,
and would like to experiment with language that is
new to them.
Providing feedback
Without feedback on their oral production, it is
hard for learners to perceive their progress, but this
might be quite a challenge for the teacher, particularly when dealing with bigger groups. One possible
way out is to concentrate on a few students at a
time, but this can also be done from peer to peer.
Instead of pairs, you can group in trios and have
them take turns in monitoring the others’ performance. If you choose to do so, remember it is
essential to guide them, providing questions for
them to answer or points for them to focus on to
ensure their feedback goes beyond superficial comments. Here is a sample set of questions:
1. Have the speakers managed to express their
opinions clearly?
2. Were their arguments illustrated by examples,
their own experience, etc.?
3. Have they used some of the… (lexical items/
linkers/ fillers/ backchannel devices) previously
practised?
4. What was their interaction like?
One aspect to consider when designing these questions are the features previously worked on in class.
BRAZ-TESOL
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21
I always find it more productive to concentrate feedback on issues that have been recently pointed out,
so that the lesson “comes full circle”, as it were.
The procedures mentioned above are just some of
the ways in which speaking can be dealt with in the
classroom. I have felt, however, that they do make
all the difference, for they seem to improve the
learners’ perception that they are actually being
taught how to speak, which is, after all, one of their
main expectations.
References:
BROWN, H. DOUGLAS Teaching by Principle: an interactive
approach to language pedagogy. Prentice Hall
Regents, 1994
THORNBURY, SCOTT Awareness, appropriation and
autonomy. English Teaching Professional Issue 40,
2005
Christiane Khatchadourian holds a BA from USP and a RSA/
Cambridge Certificate. She’s an experienced teacher, teacher
educator, Cambridge examiner and materials writer. She
worked for the Cultura Inglesa São Paulo from 1990 to 2005,
where she taught students of all levels, ran training sessions
and helped in the e-learning department. She’s currently
based in Maringá, Paraná. Email: [email protected]
EVENT AND SPEAKER
CITY AND VENUE
CONTACT INFORMATION
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Teaching children and the
internet? A perfect combination,
with Cristina Cesar (OUP).
São Paulo: Livraria Martins Fontes
Helena Theodoro
[email protected]
11 3082 8042
Relationship and rapport – the
key to effective teaching and
learning, with Jack Scholes.
São Paulo: Centro Brasileiro
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23
Workshop with Jack Scholes, title
TBA.
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Alameda Jaú 1742, Jardins
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11 3082 8042
30
Criatividade no ensino de
idiomas, with Maria de Fátima
Pereira de Almeida.
São Paulo: Livraria Martins Fontes
Helena Theodoro
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June Teaching Sparkles
(for members and new members
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Recife (Pernambuco Regional
Chapter)
Venue TBA
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31st Alumni TEFL conference
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ELT Calendar
Date
June
19
30
Alameda Jaú 1742, Jardins
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11 2126-7505
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4-7
Rua Brasiliense 65
8 - 11
BRAZ-TESOL
10th National Convention
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Brasília: Centro de Convenções
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BRAZ-TESOL Central Office
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13 - 15
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Porto Alegre: PUCRS
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14 – 15
III ACINE Convention
Inspiration, Innovation,
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staff of North Eastern Culturas
Ingelesas)
Maceió
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Call for papers:
Deadline 20/05/06
18 - 21
US Studies Seminar
The Role Languages Play in US
History and Literature
(For University teachers of
American studies/literature)
Campinas, SP
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20
Workshop with Gracia Cuoco
Title TBA
São Paulo: Centro Brasileiro
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Cecília Barata
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11 2126-7505
Rio de Janeiro, RJ
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24 - 26
IBEU’s 62nd Seminar
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