ESL/EFL prescriptivists

[metal56]

The majority of ESL/EFL teachers are, necessarily, prescriptivists.

True or false?

[Stephen Jones]

True

[lolwhites]

All teachers are prescriptivists, but some teachers are more prescriptivist than others.

[Buddhaheart]

I would say almost all of us.

Curiously, I only managed to find the word “prescriptivist” in Dictionary Online - Yahoo Education, not Cambridge Dictionaries or Merriam Webster Online!?

Try “generativist”. None of the above lists it!! Would you accept this word as an opposite of "prescriptivist"?

[Jimbobob]

I'd have to agree with lolwhites wholeheartedly

I would say almost all of us.

Curiously, I only managed to find the word “prescriptivist” in Dictionary Online - Yahoo Education, not Cambridge Dictionaries or Merriam Webster Online!?

Try “generativist”. None of the above lists it!! Would you accept this word as an opposite of "prescriptivist"?

the opposite would be descriptivist.

[jotham]

And probably because descriptionists describes the speech of native speakers and assume they don't make mistakes once they reach some magic age (perhaps after six years of age — or eighteen?) They only inform us of data; they don't necessarily teach native speakers how to speak, as that would assume native speakers actually make mistakes, or that one set of data is superior or inferior to another set — which is anathema to the scientist. Non-native speakers, however, make the same mistakes as our five-year-olds, and additional mistakes that carry though from their own language, but scientists can't describe any phenomena as mistakes like the teacher can. And it wouldn't be helpful to native or non-native speakers to include this descriptive data (whether or not it be inferior) in the corpus or even recycle it back in the classroom for non-natives. It might be helpful to illustrate non-native common errors of what not to do. But this is a method that prescriptionists ordinarily use — for non-native and native speakers.

[metal56]

<Try “generativist”. None of the above lists it!! Would you accept this word as an opposite of "prescriptivist"?>

Nope, "descriptivist" works fine there.

[metal56]

All teachers are prescriptivists, but some teachers are more prescriptivist than others.

Why all?

[fluffyhamster]

All teachers are prescriptivists, but some teachers are more prescriptivist than others.

Why all?

Um, because they're having to teach something, possibly?

And what would a 'descriptivist' teacher be doing? Presenting every last possibility? Doubt if their students would have the time to spare. Or maybe they could just present any old thing or variant at random in a valiant attempt to cover at least some of the bases that more prescriptivist (i.e. standard) accounts would neglect. (Still, I could be being silly here, eh, maybe an all-encompassing description - were it possible - wouldn't entail that vast an increase in the teaching/learning burden).

Hope you don't mind me asking, metal, but what sort of hat are you wearing when you ask this sort of question, idealist or realist (or...)?

[Anuradha Chepur]

I would say prescriptive descriptivists.

[metal56]

Hope you don't mind me asking, metal, but what sort of hat are you wearing when you ask this sort of question, idealist or realist (or...)?

Boratist.

And what would a 'descriptivist' teacher be doing?

Not making principled decisions.

[fluffyhamster]

And what would a 'descriptivist' teacher be doing?

Not making principled decisions.

I'm not sure if there would be that many people who'd want to be making unprincipled decisions; and even if they themselves in "fact" could, could they easily "sell" that line of teaching?

[metal56]

I'm not sure if there would be that many people who'd want to be making unprincipled decisions; and even if they themselves in "fact" could, could they easily "sell" that line of teaching?

One would hope not. Of course, it may be useful to make flexibly principled decision about what is to be taught. I mean, the students might also want to have their say as to what constitutes a good/useful learning program at any given time.

Still, I think David Crystal's advice below is important, and not always taken into account by language planners.

"Nothing is to be gained by mixing up the descriptive stage of the enquiry, where prescriptivism is out of place, and the intervention or planning stage, where it is essential."

[fluffyhamster]

But most teachers don't start out by thinking 'I will prescribe this and proscribe that, even though I know full well that my recommendations are in conflict with the data available to me'; no, what they do, for reasons of practicality (which is obviously linked to student needs), is select what appears to be the most in-demand and therefore profitable variety of English to teach (lucky them if they are native speakers of a core variety, where differences are minimal), and then find a good descriptive grammar of that variety to refer to (and like I say, a lot of it will overlap with whatever other variety). Do teachers really have time to study more than this, even if they felt an inexplicably pressing need to? (FWIW, I myself do sometimes try to read potted accounts of worldwide varieties e.g. Singaporean, or more recently , Indian English).

Note that 'profitable' there does not necessarily mean 'prescriptivist' (as in the latter term's ties with status and power), at least not as far as its native speakers of all stations are concerned, judging by their spontaneous everyday usage.

[metal56]

All teachers are prescriptivists, but some teachers are more prescriptivist than others.

And some are what David Crystal calls "old" prescriptivists and other are what he terms "new" prescriptivists.

The "old" pedagogical prescriptivists' prescriptions "bore little resemblance to the facts of usage, and seemed to fly in the face of those facts" (Crystal, 1998).