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twowheel
Joined: 03 Jul 2015
Posts: 753
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 Posted: Fri Jul 10, 2015 10:41 am Post subject: Scott Thornbury Books |
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I just ordered several books written by Scott Thornbury:
An A-Z of ELT
How to Teach Speaking
How to Teach Grammar
Beyond the Sentence: Introducing Sentence Discourse (Methodology)
About Language: Tasks for Teachers of English (Cambridge Teacher Training and Development)
I anticipate that reading these will be an excellent endeavor.
twowheel |
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mitsui
Joined: 10 Jun 2007
Posts: 1562
Location: Kawasaki
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| Posted: Sat Jul 11, 2015 8:36 am Post subject: |
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I have heard him talk in Tokyo.
I like his approach.
He is old school, and likes teaching without technology.
Another book he has is Teaching Unplugged.
He was working at the New School in New York and he has his own website. |
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twowheel
Joined: 03 Jul 2015
Posts: 753
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| Posted: Sat Jul 11, 2015 12:53 pm Post subject: |
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Yeah, he definitely has done a lot in/for the field of TESOL.
To be honest I haven't given his work much attention, so I am going to change that and peruse the aforementioned titles this fall--should be good reading that will give me a lot of great ideas for my teaching.
twowheel |
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LongShiKong
Joined: 28 May 2007
Posts: 1082
Location: China
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| Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2015 11:07 am Post subject: Re: Scott Thornbury Books |
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| twowheel wrote: |
| I anticipate that reading these will be an excellent endeavor. |
I can see why he appeals to you.  |
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twowheel
Joined: 03 Jul 2015
Posts: 753
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| Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2016 1:50 pm Post subject: Re: Scott Thornbury Books |
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| LongShiKong wrote: |
| twowheel wrote: |
| I anticipate that reading these will be an excellent endeavor. |
I can see why he appeals to you. |
Oh! 
A year later and I have put these books to good use. Good stuff. Recommended.
twowheel |
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MotherF
Joined: 07 Jun 2010
Posts: 1450
Location: 17�48'N 97�46'W
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| Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2016 8:04 pm Post subject: |
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| mitsui wrote: |
He is old school, and likes teaching without technology.
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OLD SCHOOL???
Old school is materials heavy, using technology is often nouveau old school, in my opinion. |
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LongShiKong
Joined: 28 May 2007
Posts: 1082
Location: China
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| Posted: Sat Jun 04, 2016 4:48 pm Post subject: Re: Scott Thornbury Books |
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| twowheel wrote: |
| LongShiKong wrote: |
| twowheel wrote: |
| I anticipate that reading these will be an excellent endeavor. |
I can see why he appeals to you. |
Oh! |
Perhaps I should've clarified the response. While Thornbury has contributed much to ELT, even he seems to recognize the folly of too enthusiastically embracing the new (as this talk with fellow CLT pioneer and author J. Harmer reveals) while seemingly* discrediting the old:
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In the USA, the direct method ingested behaviourist theory and metamorphosed into audiolingualism. In the UK and Europe it became the
fairly short-lived situational approach, but its core principle, the exclusive use of the target language, survives as an article of faith amongst many teachers to this day.
---from pg. 66 of Thornbury's An A-Z of ELT
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Based on this 1947 description, does it seem to you that as with the Direct Method, "the core principle" of the Situation Method is "the exclusive use of the target language"? I was quite surprised when a friend shared this with me a few years ago:
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It is the situation, then, which is of dominating importance to the beginner in a language. How is he to find a situation or situations of such a nature as to help him in foreign language study while he is still in the homeland, and without the natural and compelling situations which arise about one at every moment when in the foreign country? It must be admitted that nothing one can do at home can ever equal or even approach that foreign experience. For all that, something can be done. It is this: create in one's mind situations which will approximate to those likely to be experienced. This opens the way to many extremely interesting possibilities in both the teaching and learning of a language.
We have already (page 23) referred to the 'Wordcount' as the first rough guide to the material which has , to be learnt. Later, we set out this material (pages 105-128) together with a guide to the bare minimum of grammar necessary to make the material 'work'. The beginner must limit his studies within the bounds of this material until it is mastered.
In so doing, he will be concentrating upon the language material which experience shows will best enable him to deal with the commonest 'situations' in everyday life. All that must be done is to work out for himself in his own mind situation after situation, beginning with the simplest and, .. as the material is learnt, advancing by stages towards the less simple. With the limited amount of material here provided, it is astonishing the range of situations and ideas which can be dealt with.
----
The whole point is this: One should waste no time in the first stage by learning material outside that required for common situations. What it all amounts to is that language must be 'a mode of action and not an instrument of reflection '-to quote the words used by Malinowski for language in its primitive uses. 'Language', he says, 'functions as a link in concerted human activity, as a piece of human behaviour.'
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It is the later stages in language learning which are the most difficult, though they too have their difficulties. When all is said, we must first be able to get along, and this first phase in learning (and in teaching) is full of dangerous difficulties, in the sense that the learner may easily become so tired of the whole business that every scrap of 'urge to learn' is banished, a stiff psychological barrier is set up-one afterwards difficult to remove and he never afterwards becomes any sort of linguist. The number of times this happens is appalling. Children, boys and girls, and adults also are started or start learning a language. They may be keen to begin with; or at least not unwilling. If that first stage is not gently and at the same time, skilfully dealt with, the results are either bad or completely futile. We see them around us: men and women who have 'learnt French at school' and are yet incapable of anything approaching the fluency and simple competence achieved by Man Friday. It is largely because they have never learnt the trick of thinking in the
foreign language; in that first stage and they have never learnt to think in the language because far less importance is attached to thinking than to learning rules.
---How to Learn a Language by Charles Duff, University of London, 1947
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I'll give Thornbury the benefit of the doubt (of not having read this either) but I think you'll agree that authors and/or their publishers often exaggerate their claim to originality.
Thoughts anyone? |
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123Loto
Joined: 14 Aug 2006
Posts: 160
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| Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2016 5:48 am Post subject: |
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That's a fantastic quote, thanks! You should post your ideas to Scott directly here:
https://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/
I'm pretty sure he'll find your insight fascinating! Good luck! |
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fluffyhamster
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 3292
Location: UK > China > Japan > UK again
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| Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2016 9:50 am Post subject: |
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Sorry LSK, in what ways is Thornbury being too unoriginal or misrepresenting the situational approach in his take on (its use of) the direct method? And what do you think he is unaware of in the Duff stuff you've quoted? It isn't at all clear to me.
All that Duff seems to really be saying is that 'situations' are (were) of no small importance in the thus unsurprisingly-named situational approach. Well, duh. How does any of that preclude or demote the use also of the direct method? I really don't follow your logic. Writers can place different emphases without contradicting each other in the slightest. You seem to be reading between the lines far too much. Plus that quoted bit is obviously only a selection or selections from a wider book. If you'd said 'I've searched this whole book and can find no mention of anything called or even sounding like the direct method, in fact Duff, just like Thornbury, isn't that opposed to translation', then you'd perhaps have a point. Assuming of course that Duff was the first and last word on the situational approach (which I'm not sure he was).
I could understand if one attempted to tie Duff's stuff in to any behaviourism > audiolingualism aspects, given Duff's choice of words and phrases such as 'common situations, 'in the first stage...a mode of action and not an instrument of reflection', 'human behaviour', 'first be able to get along', and 'simple competence', but again, Thornbury's article seems to be concerned with the direct method first and foremost, and just mentions a bit of incidental history in passing, merely to springboard off of. I wouldn't get too hung up on such things (unless they're glaring errors, which these likely aren't).
To be honest I think you're too often looking for supposed oversights, omissions or errors that even a cursory reading of whatever quotation "in question" will not readily support. But by all means make contact with Mr T and tell us how it goes LOL. |
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LongShiKong
Joined: 28 May 2007
Posts: 1082
Location: China
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| Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2016 5:55 am Post subject: |
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| 123Loto wrote: |
That's a fantastic quote, thanks! |
You're welcome! If I win the 'Loto' (he responds), I'll let you know. 
| fluffyhamster wrote: |
| Sorry LSK, in what ways is Thornbury being too unoriginal or misrepresenting the situational approach in his take on (its use of) the direct method? And what do you think he is unaware of in the Duff stuff you've quoted? It isn't at all clear to me. |
Forgive me, Fluff. I should be the one apologizing... again! 
| fluffyhamster wrote: |
| In fact, I'm not even sure that you appreciate that the main thing Thornbury is surely adressing there is any ban on the use of translation/L1. |
I guess what seemed implicit to me in what I quoted didn't to you because I failed to mention to whom the book was addressed:
| Duff, in his book, wrote: |
| This book is, however, not primarily addressed to teachers; they may nevertheless find it stimulating. It is addressed to language learners, potential language learners, and primarily to beginners. It is possible that absolute beginners will reap most benefits from it. That, at all events, is the writer's hope. |
From what I understand of the Direct Method, grammar and lexis is taught inductively through contextualized target language presentation without resorting to L1. It's therefore hard to imagine how an 'absolute beginner' studying on their own could avoid translation/L1 when advised to start with a 'Wordcount' (high frequency word list) "together with a guide to the bare minimum of grammar necessary to make the [situation] material 'work'."
| fluffyhamster wrote: |
| If you'd said ... the author recommends a fair bit of translation', then you'd perhaps have a point. |
Well, how about this:
| Duff, in his book, wrote: |
My idea about reading-matter for learners of a foreign language is that, by the time they have mastered Foundation Material, they should already have started to read what native writers of the language have written for their own readers. Not made-up stuff for the foreign learner-none of this, however good it may seem, should ever be touched after the very elementary stage.
If you can find a bilingual reader-one which provides the original text of an easy author in the language you are studying, plus a close English translation thereof--this is the best starting-point for the sort of reading likely to do most good in every way. It is, perhaps, better that original and translation should be on opposite pages of the reader for the one thing above all others which this reading practice must do is to make you think and worry out meanings for yourself as much as possible---only using the translation afterwards either to check what you have done or to help you over otherwise unnegotiable obstacles. It is easier to cover your
'key' when it is printed on the opposite page. For the early stage of some languages, an interlinear translation may be found better-though there is really not much in this to render it superior to the translation en regard.
Language learners would be well advised not to overlook the admirable and inexpensive bilingual texts of the New Testament and Gospels---original in one column, translation in the one beside it---published by the British and Foreign Bible Society. The New Testament is for the most part written in a close approximation to Foundation Material--or, at all events, in a style so simple, direct and pure that it is ideal for language study. The narrative parts and parables arc specially valuable and nobody, whatever his views on religion may be, can say that they are dull and uninteresting.
Whatever the choice of the bilingual material may be, the learner is advised to stick to it until he finds that he rarely has to fall back on the 'key' to help him out. This must be the only test and, until it has been passed, the bilingual texts must be the; principal reading-matter of the student.
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However, in line with his high regard for the Direct Method, the author's preference for input is visual (film, TV) and auditory (gramophone).
| fluffyhamster wrote: |
| Assuming of course that Duff was the first and last word on the approach. |
Well, here's what he says:
| Duff wrote: |
| The book is based on about forty years of practical experience of learning and using languages, as well as my experience as a Lecturer at the Institute of Education, London University, where for a time it was my work to teach teachers-all of them graduates-the principles of language teaching. |
So, was Duff ignorant of contemporary thought in (E)LT or was he a maverick willfully challenging his Situational Approach contemporaries' denouncement of L1/translation as impractical by writing his own Method manifesto so late (20+ yrs) in the game in the guise of a book purportedly for beginners? It's a fascinating historical question, don't you think? No one else refers to it as a 'Method'.
| Duff wrote: |
| I feel that it is so important that I am almost prepared to go as far as to say that what I call here the 'Situation Method' if properly used should be the best of all methods for learning a language, whether one's own or a foreign one. |
For inspiring the name "Situation", Duff appears to credit a B. Malinowski article written 20 years previous:
| Duff, initially quoting Malinowski, wrote: |
"Each verbal statement by a human being has the aim and function of expressing some thought or feeling actual at that moment and in that situation, and necessary for some reason or other to be made known to another person or persons-in order either to serve purposes of common action, or to establish ties of purely social communion ...."
The importance of this statement is that it represents fairly accurately just what the beginner should learn in the first stage of his studies of any language. He must learn to deal with common situations. How should he learn to deal with common situations? The answer is clear: by living in them..
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Intriguingly, in his 2001 Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching, J.C. Richards had this to say:
| Quote: |
One of the most active proponents of the Oral Approach in the 1960s was the Australian George Pittman. Pittman and his colleagues were responsible for developing an influential set of teaching materials based on the Situational Approach which were widely used in Australia, New Guinea, and the Pacific territories. Most Pacific territories continue to use the so-called Tate materials, developed by Pittman's colleague Gloria Tate. Pittman was also responsible for the situationally-based materials developed by the Commonwealth Office of Education in Sydney, Australia, used in the English programs for immigrants in Australia. These were published for worldwide use in 1965 as the series Situational English. Materials by Alexander and other leading British textbook writers also reflected the principles of Situational Language Teaching as they had evolved over a 20-year period. The main characteristics of the approach were as follows:
1. Language teaching begins with the spoken language. Material is taught orally before it is presented in written form.
2. The target language is the language of the classroom.
3. New language points are introduced and practiced orally.
4. Vocabulary selection procedures are followed to ensure that an essential general service vocabulary is covered.
5. Items of grammar aggregated following the principle that simple forms
should be taught before complex ones.
6. Reading and writing are introduced once a sufficient lexical and grammatical basis is established.
It was the third principle that became a key feature of the approach in the 1960s, and it was then that the term situational was used increasingly in referring to the Oral Approach. Hornby himself used the term the Situational Approach in the title of an influential series of articles published in English Language Teaching in 1950. Later, the terms Structural/Situational Approach and Situational Language Teaching came into common usage. To avoid further confusion, we will use the term Situational Language Teaching (SLT) to include the Structural-Situational and Oral approaches. |
I wonder where Hornby picked up the term if not from Duff's book published 3 years earlier. Richards gives no evidence the term even existed before WWII as the following quote suggests but perhaps it's because he's not from the UK or EU. I don't see any discrepancy between these 6 characteristics and Duff's 'Method', even #2. Does "in the classroom" not imply L1 is accepted as an aid to self-study. Duff went on to write books for beginners of several languages which I can't imagine being exclusively in L2 or Duff renouncing his 'Method' as obsolete.
| Quote: |
There are a number of reviews of the various approaches and methods of the mid to end of the 20th century (see Celce-Murcia, 2001; Howatt, 1997; Larsen-Freeman, 2000; Richards & Rodgers, 2001; Stern, 1983). These include the Oral-Situational Approach in England from the 1920s; various structural/behavioral approaches such as the Audiolingual Approach in the United States from World War II; the functional approaches of the 1970s...
--from the Handbook of Research in 2nd Language Teaching & Learning (c) 2005
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If the Situational Approach really did originate in the '20s, then I wouldn't exactly call it short-lived, would you? Here in Beijing, 50 yrs after publication, Alexander's books with Chinese translation still command more shelf space than all other foreign-published coursebooks combined.
| fluffyhamster wrote: |
| But by all means make contact with Mr T and tell us how it goes LOL. |
I'll try but as I've said, expecting a response from profs or authors is not LOL but like a LOTTO. I have more luck getting replies from CEOs. |
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fluffyhamster
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 3292
Location: UK > China > Japan > UK again
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| Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2016 5:38 pm Post subject: |
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I thought it was so obvious it was written for the possibly independent learner that I cut the following from my earlier post:
| Quote: |
| "Bonus": And Duff seems more a "teach yourself" sort of book anyway, so the (student) reader would be having to do a lot of the thinking (and selection, possible implicit contrasting of the languages, etc) that a teacher and/or actual L2 textbook would otherwise have anticipated and "done" for (if "unavoidably" not always quite "with") the student. It's essentially explaining the methodology to presumably the non-teacher, and possibly inviting one to become one's own teacher using roughly those methods and any derived "understanding". That to me seems a quite separate process from whatever communication would then actually take place in at least the target language (rather than in the L1[s]) - not that Thornbury for one would seem opposed to any translation, indeed, that would appear to be the implicit if not whole point in that quote taken from his A-Z of ELT, what with his calling the direct method 'an article of faith' no less. It's only the resolute monolingualism of most native English teachers that makes that article of faith seem necessary, and this rather than Duff's independent, solo F(non-English)LL is surely the context in which the SA was developed, hence the general and perceived "need" for the direct method within it. |
People can thus disagree or dispense with any central tenets of a methodology, when they have good-enough reasons or skills to do so.
It is also clear from the further bits you've now quoted that Duff recommends translation only as a last resort: "the one thing above all others which this reading practice must do is to make you think and worry out meanings for yourself as much as possible---only using the translation afterwards either to check what you have done or to help you over otherwise unnegotiable obstacles." Why not bold that bit?
Regarding that Richards & Rodgers quote, again, you may be reading it wrong, putting the emphasis in the wrong place. It could just as well be 'The target language is the language of the classroom'. "Hard to say", given that it isn't that great a sentence generally. And being the antimethod wag that I am I'd ask who in their right mind would want to learn (have as a target) just the language of the classroom LOL. Again, I think you are trying to impose meanings that the text may well not support. And why do you want the Direct Method to not be a historical cornerstone of many methods/"approaches"? Do you not like the method or are you simply trying to prove some authors wrong via some minor technicality of "unclear" writing? Have they really expressed things so badly or got it all so wrong? Again, Thornbury is that way > ROFL. You will probably find out more about Hornby etc in Howatt's A History of English Language Teaching (I'll try to take a quick look a bit later). I have no idea (certainly can't recall) if as your 2005 source states the O-SA dates from as early as the 1920s (let's face it, this stuff usually gets briefer mention than other methods), but the DM has pretty early roots.
Regarding Malinowski, I'd be more inclined to plot the line through (J.R.) Firth and the "London School" than Duff, as Firth's use of the concept of 'context of situation' helped pave the way to no small amount of work on co-text, collocations, (computerized) corpus linguistics, lexicogrammar etc. Stuff of current and I think more abiding interest, rather than an unavoidably receding footnote in LT history.
www.lel.ed.ac.uk/homes/patrick/firth.pdf
Last edited by fluffyhamster on Thu Jun 16, 2016 7:54 am; edited 5 times in total |
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LongShiKong
Joined: 28 May 2007
Posts: 1082
Location: China
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| Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2016 6:32 pm Post subject: |
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| fluffyhamster wrote: |
Do you not like the method or are you simply trying to prove some authors wrong via some minor technicality of "unclear" writing? |
Is this the gist of what you have to say? |
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fluffyhamster
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 3292
Location: UK > China > Japan > UK again
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| Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2016 7:51 pm Post subject: |
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I believe I tried to say a little more than just that and not dismiss your views entirely out of hand, but yes, that's mainly what I'm getting from your posts. Sorry. If others care to comment and engage more with you and/or set me straight then I'm all ears, but I don't think I'm misreading the quotes you've supplied. And at least I've given you more of a response than just 'Fantastic quote!' or 'Thornbury will find your insights fascinating!'. (Why is it fantastic and what would Mr T find so fascinating? Aside from your use of bold font, that is ).
Essentially Thornbury and Duff aren't too dogmatic, and in that sense, I don't think there can be any disagreement that "indirect" methods such as translation are indeed permissible, at least in moderation. The point you seem to be missing however is that there are and always have been inflexible method merchants out there, or certainly the methods pure and unsullied and in the abstract to possibly adhere to or argue "for", and that Thornbury is simply laying "that" out so he can run counter to "it". As for whether he has misrepresented the (O-)SA, who knows, but the stuff you've supplied is far from a smoking gun. Most people probably have better things to do than point all these things out to you. 
Anyway, just thought in closing that you'd be interested in this bit from the 'language teaching' entry of McArthur's Oxford Companion to the English Language:
| Quote: |
The structural approach and the audio-visual method. The American audio-lingual method differed considerably from two European approaches with similar names: (1) The British structural approach of Harold E. Palmer and Michael West in the 1920-30s, which augmented the direct method with graded grammatical structures, word lists, and readers. [(2) The French...audio-visual method..... Although it appeared to be the ALM with illustrations, the French method was technological, not ideological.]
The situational approach. Almost from the start of the Reform Movement, practitioners used conversation readers in their teaching, often with texts in phonetic script, such as E.T True and Otto Jespersen, Spoken English (1891) and H. Palmer and F.G. Blandford, Everyday Sentences in Spoken English (1922). In the 1960s-70s, many textbooks took such a practical approach further, grouping their teaching units around situational themes such as At the Hairdresser and The Post Office. The dialogues and narratives in the text derived from these settings, and teachers were expected to produce appropriate material to support action-based language use within the situation defined by the chosen topic. The strength of the approach was language appropriate to a situation, but its weakness, the difficulty of generalizing what is learned, led to it its being used more in collaboration with other procedures than in its pure form. |
On the basis of that it might be better to call it the Locational Approach LOL. I went to the PO to buy some stamps. I had a perm at the hairdresser's. And then there's the fabled Argument Clinic.    |
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LongShiKong
Joined: 28 May 2007
Posts: 1082
Location: China
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| Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2016 3:19 am Post subject: |
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I didn't even bother reading past the first line of your post. I'll let others decide for themselves but the following statement from your previous post explains why. It appears to me to be psychological projection on your part---it says more about you than it does me. As a result, you don't seem to be contributing much to the thread.
[quote="LongShiKong"]
| fluffyhamster wrote: |
Do you not like the method or are you simply trying to prove some authors wrong via some minor technicality of "unclear" writing? |
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fluffyhamster
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 3292
Location: UK > China > Japan > UK again
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| Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2016 3:50 am Post subject: |
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| I'm one of the very few people on these forums who's ever really engaged with you, LSK (despite your at times casting a number of far worse, indeed completely unwarranted, aspersions in my direction, and putting no end of words into mouths both here on the forums and also with apparently every author you read), and the question I asked was surely not that unreasonable, given that whatever conclusions you're trying to reach don't seem to follow (IMHO). Face it, this isn't much of a thread, and your lengthy quotes are serving little real purpose. Anyway, and needless to say, I shan't be bothering to reply to any of your always rather marginal queries in future, I can assure you. Good luck with your never-ending quest to find or project meanings where there aren't any, and with convincing others to have more patience for it. |
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