PowerPoint Presentation

Does native speaker mean white?

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Nicole Osolin

and

Hannah Herrmann

Political Roots of TESOL

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Other Relevant Questions

What purpose does education serve?

Should education replicate hierarchical social structures as they currently exist?

How does language create and maintain institutions, i.e. English as a power language?

What kind of action can individuals take, especially teachers?

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Teaching Methodology

Study of pedagogical practices in the broadest sense

Theory and practice of curriculum instruction

Teaching and learning across the spectrum

Studying all aspects of teaching

Evaluating and assessing student progress

Reflecting back on our own learning

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Prators Three Cornerstones of Methodology

What are the aims of instruction?: student-centered, needs analysis

What is the nature of language? What is the nature of the student(s)?

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A Few Quick Definitions

Approach: Includes philosophy of teaching, along with principles of theories of language teaching and learning

Method: Overall plan for putting the theories into practice

Technique: A specific procedure or step used to accomplish particular objectives

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History of TESOL Methods

Early approaches focused on structure phonological, morphological, and syntactic aspects of English

Ignores sociopolitical and communicative aspects of English

English is the language of [] mental colonization, as children, for example, learn English in American schools and forget their native languages and heritage. Learning of English opens some doors that run contrary to peoples native cultures, even while it opens the doors of educational and economic opportunity. [] As teachers, we need to get to know the many contexts of our students, their histories and realities, so we can provide them with the language to communicate about them. This is a central purpose of dialogic pedagogy. (Wong, 12)

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Grammar Translation Approach[1800s]

Translated sentences

Use of mother language in instruction

The goal of grammar translation is to read classic texts so as to benefit from the mental discipline and intellectual development that result from foreign-language study. (Wong 13)

Structural approach

Teaches recitation and translation, but not language use

Structural approach because the focus is on linguistic structures, including syntax or word order, and morphology or word formation

The structures studied are NOT necessarily related to frequency of use

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Direct Method[1880]

European response to reform the Grammar Translation Method

Teach modern languages differently from classical languages

Structures and emphasis on oral language

Development of International Phonetic Alphabet (Jespersen)

Structural approach, but related to frequency of use in oral language

Does not tie first and second languages so closely together like Grammar Translation

Never dominant in the United States; required that teachers be fluent in the target language and they were not

1886 Dr. Otto Jespersen

Teaching structures of the target language

spoken language is essential to foreign language teaching (Jespersen)

ALSO structural but related to frequency of use in target language, rather than being selected from classical texts

Direct Method never dominant in U.S. but gave way to reading approach

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Reading Method[1930-1940]

Emphasis on reading

No emphasis on grammatical structures or communicative skills and techniques

Students were introduced only to grammar that was needed for reading comprehension (Wong, 15).

Only dominant approach in the U.S. that was not structural in nature

The Coleman Report of 1929 set reading as the major goal for foreign language instruction in the United States based on a number of factors

Few teachers had native-like competency, couldnt use the language without a textbook to help them teach, Coleman report said that students who would never go abroad didnt need to study communicative skills

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Audiolingual Approach[1950-1960]

Army Method used to train military personnel

Inadequacy of Reading Method did not prepare students to speak

Conversational dialogue listening and repetition

mim-mem mimicry and memorization

Based on Behaviorist theories

Minimal pair drills

Instant error correction

My mom learned French this way doing drills, instant correction, etc.- this method was dominant in the U.s.

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Cognitive Revolution

Chomsky language as a creative and cognitive process

Rejection of behaviorist theories and structural linguistics

Difference between competence and performance

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Communicative Approach[1970]

Use of target language

Usage: the learners ability to demonstrate his or her knowledge of the properties of formal linguistic rules

Use: the learners ability to apply knowledge of linguistic rules in effective communication

Development of both competence and performance

Use of role-playing (using language in simulated contexts rather than practicing repetition)

Shift from structural to functional

Canale and Swain (1980): Communicative competence is composed of grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse, and strategic competencies

Usage is the learners ability to demonstrate his or her knowledge of the properties of formal linguistic rules, but use is the learners ability to apply knowledge of linguistic rules in effective communication Communicative language teachers were interested in the latter communicative approach shifted emphasis from structural to functional perspectives on language influenced by the work of Del Hymes (later)

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Del Hymes (1974)

Coined the term communicative competence

Seven themes that are relevant to communicative competence:

Linguistic theory as theory of language, entailing the organization of speech

Foundations of theory and methodology as entailing questions of function

Speech communities as organizations of ways of speaking

Competence of personal ability (not just grammatical knowledge)

Performance as accomplishment and responsibility and investment (not just psycholinguistic processing)

Languages as what their users have made of them

Liberte, egalite, and fraternite of speech as something achieved in social life

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Natural Approach[1980]

Incorporation of first-language acquisition studies in the teaching of a second language

Silent period (21 hours of silence)

Low affective filter so that students are not so worried about making mistakes

Krashen and [i + 1]

Silent period first 21 hours of instruction, students didnt speak put this into a classroom context for the first month, the students would not produce language. Krashen had explained that this was helpful for babies and then students are more motivated because they feel less forced affective filter if its high and students are worried about making mistakes, they will not naturally acquire the language so easily

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Whole Language and Language Arts Methods [1990-2000]

TESOL has been influenced by first-language education

Audiolingual approach sequenced four skills listening, speaking, reading, writing

Whole Language methods add in readers and writers workshops and journal writing

Stresses importance of biliterate development

Definition of biliterate; Do you have L2 students do the same thing as L1 students or not?

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Anthropological Linguistics

homework methodology vs. fieldwork linguistics

In fieldwork linguistics, linguists dont study what people say they know about language but what they actually do

Concerned with meaning in USE

In both EFL and ESL contexts as teachers we need to be aware of unconscious linguistic stereotypes that may affect our attitudes, assessment, and expectations towards students from poor and working class families who may speak rural, village, or other dialects not valued as the educated standard. (Wong)

Field linguists such as Elinor Ochs (1988) tell us that it was not possible to merely tell their linguistic informants to be themselves in trying to get samples f informal as opposed to more formal registers. Sociolinguists need to observe, hypothesize, and work with a variety of informants within various cultural, economic, and social roles to be able to recognize kinship patterns and characterize various registers of language from polite to informal, or how language is gendered.

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BaKHtins Dialogism

Theorist writing in the Soviet Union

Beginning in the 1920s

Focus of theories: Dialogue

Language, from speech to writing, always a dialogue

The Dialogic Imagination: hybrid nature of language; context over text

A literary work carries on a continual dialogue with other literary works

To make an utterance: Appropriate the words of others and populate them with ones own intention

**www.colorado.edu

So What Does This Mean for TESOL?

Dialogic Approach linked with sociolinguists and anthropological linguists (Halliday)

Social context and meaning are critical

Two forces operating in language:

1. centripetal forces: unify and centralize

2. centrifugal, stratifying forces: social and historical heteroglossia

Heteroglossia: Distinct varieties within a single linguistic code

The aim of the dialogic pedagogy is to support the inclusion of voices of those who have traditionally been excluded from academic discourse (Wong 35)

Features of Dialogic Pedagogy

Learning in Community: interaction of multiple voices, unending dialogue

Problem Posing: dont just follow the syllabus; inquiry and exploration; student reflection on learning

Learning by Doing: actual communication; speaking; sharing work; working together

Knowledge for Whom: aim of instruction for the students; how do we include all?

If language education is to actualize the ideals of the French revolution for liberte, egalite, fraternite (and one might add sisterhood and racial and economic equality) it must be seen as an ongoing project, a work in progress or social practice, requiring ongoing analysis, reflection, and further transformation.

(Wong 23)