Job Discussion Forums

[daniel_hayes]

Does anyone else get the feeling that EFL has maybe developed too much, become too infected by behavioural models and advanced psychological studies?

Many of my students want to do more basic grammatical stuff. Structures, how to put together sentences and the use of tenses. But in my job, like in so may others', we have to work the students through the text book. Of course we can do our own thing sometimes, but we also need to cover the book.

And the books often seem to be more about conversation and usage, rather skipping over the grammatical and vocabulary areas. Does anyone else get that feeling, and if so, what do you do about it?

[spiral78]

There just aren't any general answers, just as there are no 'typical' students or classes or teachers in our field. When you're talking about a profession that operates worldwide across almost every culture and context, it's simply not possible to make blanket statements about anything, really!

So I wouldn't condemn either the communicative method (however one might define that!) or research in the field (I participate in that to some degree, and am totally aware that what I do is by no means applicable in a wide range of contexts).

I'd agree that lots of the published books and many schools these days (and for the past decade at least) tend to aim more towards fluency than function.


And, sure, some students are more interested in and comfortable with the study of functions; it fits better with their expectations of what teaching and learning should be, gives them some reliable structure, and their progress is more easily discernable.

In many situations, a mix of function and fluency is probably the best way to go. In your case, I wouldn't hesitate to supplement the 'communication' aims in the book with structure study and/or review, unless the institution strongly disagrees!

[Glenski]

What country and what kind of school do you work at? Makes a difference sometimes, too.

[Sashadroogie]

The cynical would say that methodology has advanced far beyond many working teachers. In my opinion though, I do not see any binary opposition to teaching language structure and aiding communication in the classroom. It is not either or. Even with a course book.

[Cool Teacher]

In Japan lot sof students do a lot fo grammar and then it means they sometimes need some help doing the communication stuff. Maybe some students like doing lots of grammar because they expect that from learning the language as if leanring the language and learning the grammar is the same. Of course, many teachers and others have very strong opinions. My opinion is that some students who are good at grammar don't have the cahnce to speak so much and they are afraid to because they don't want to make grammar mistakes so they don't speak grammar but that means they don't learn to speak and they don't practice.

[coledavis]

"Does anyone else get the feeling that EFL has maybe developed too much, become too infected by behavioural models and advanced psychological studies?"
No, I certainly don't.
Firstly, I do not equate 'communicative methods' with the above. The communicative approach, while actually rather useful on the whole, is nevertheless a ragbag of ideas and practices but is not particularly influenced by behavoural models and 'advanced' psychological studies.

Secondly, as far as behavioural models are concerned, I'm not sure I understand what you mean. To generalise: If you mean the use of positive reinforcement (operant conditioning) from Skinner's radical behaviourism, then that is seen in some rather useful work relating to class control by rewards and, where appropriate, ignoring some negative behaviours. If you mean the force of association (classical conditioning, cf Watson), then that is used in some techniques for vocabulary acquisition and maintenance. If you mean social modelling (cf Bandura), then possibly some other techniques may be relevant. But these don't generally mean communicative methods.

Thirdly, it depends on what you mean by advanced psychological studies. Call me a bit old school, but I think very basic studies are quite useful. However, if you mean up to date psycholinguistic studies, there are a lot related to vocabulary acquisition that are rather useful. Sadly, however, few are in fact used.

What we do see a lot of, however, are pseudo- , popular or discredited psychological notions. NLP. Learning styles. Multiple intelligences. And many wackier ones.

[Sashadroogie]

[coledavis]

EXTERMINATE!

[spiral78]

Learning styles and multiple intelligence clearly fascinate some people in the field, but it's basically impossible to take such things into account in real-life classrooms to any great degree. About all we can really take away from this is to be sure we vary activities, task types, and input media.

Exterminate the whackos who suggest we should test each student in any given class to determine his/her preferred learning style - and then cater to it somehow!!

[Sashadroogie]

That and get the condescendingly pigeon-holed Musthapha to run around the classroom sticking little post-it notes on every available nook and cranny 'because he's a kinaesthitic learner.'

[Cool Teacher]

[santi84]

There are just too many teaching contexts to say what is the right approach. Here in Quebec, you have a 95% francophone population which requires minimal bilingualism outside of Montreal and fluent bilingualism inside Montreal. I've never dealt with someone who needed to read or write English well. Spoken English (and the "traditional" communicative approach) is really the only thing that matters, with the exception of a small population who wants to attend an English-language university or a small sub-set of professional careers.

Back in British Columbia, the majority of ESL learners needed to be able to order a pizza on the phone or were international students who needed to attend university courses without needing to speak much. So, while the communicative approach would have been perfect for the first group, it wasn't really what was most important to the second, despite a pervasive western belief that (verbal) communication is king.

[Sashadroogie]

[coledavis]

[daniel_hayes]

I have some relevant experience, as a language learner and teacher. I'm learning a foreign language whilst earning my dough by teaching English. I have found that variation is key, both for teachers and students ----- to keep lessons fresh and keep the brains active.

But I now see why students sometimes get frustrated with endless conversation-type activities with small chunks of grammar thrown in, often after the task.

I try and pre-teach vocabulary and relevant grammar, but I also have duty to teach the course-book. Students always want to finish the damn book, right?

I think I will try and develop my own small grammatical brain-storm like the vocab and phrases.

Interesting points though. So do you feel we are kind of in a post-modern stage of language teaching? Or are we still at the height of Modernism, and someone needs to come in and change everything?!