system volume 17 issue 2 1989 [doi 10.1016_0346-251x(89)90046-8] scarbrough, david -- teach english

8/17/2019 System Volume 17 Issue 2 1989 [Doi 10.1016_0346-251X(89)90046-8] Scarbrough, David -- Teach English

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Sysrem Vol. 17 No. 2 pp. 284-286 1989

Pergamon Press plc. Printed in Great Britain

DOFF ADRIAN Teach English

A Training Course for Teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press in association with The British Council), 1988. Trainer’s Handbook 286

pp., f7.50; Teacher’s Workbook 139 pp., f4.95.

There is a key section in Adrian Doff’s Introduction to this set of materials which is worth

quoting in full.

Most people involved in teacher education are aware of the existence of two separate worlds.

One is the world of native-speaker teachers and teacher trainers, who work in small, flexible

classes with adequate resources and who are mainly responsible for developing new ideas in

methodology. The other is the world of most other teachers, who work in large classes to a

set syllabus, and who attempt to apply the new methodology to their own teaching. It is the

great difference between these two worlds that accounts for the failure of much teacher training;

they are differences not only in resources and physical conditions, but also in underlying

assumptions e.g. about language, about learning, about the teacher’s role) and in degree of

freedom e.g. freedom to experiment, to create material, to approach class relationships in

a new way).

P. 8)

It is just one of the merits of this training course that the nature of the world in which

the great majority of teachers work is fully recognized and understood. Accordingly, the

material is designed specifically for those who:

teach in large, inflexible classes with few resources;

follow a set syllabus and textbook, and have little control over course content or choice of

materials;

are not native speakers of English;

have little time available for lesson planning or preparation.

This air of realism about the context in which the materials are likely to be used would

be welcome enough, but the really good news is that which is actually put before the

prospective trainees amounts to a remarkably sustained stream of excellent practical advice,

presented in a form that should serve as a model for language teaching methodology courses.

Adrian Doff demonstrates an admirable ability to give the teacher trainer very precise

instructions as to how to carry out the training sessions while allowing the trainees to exercise

their own initiative in developing personal solutions to teaching problems. With its emphasis

on activity and participation it is a set of materials to be worked through rather than a

book to be read and one of the stated aims of the course is to provide material that can

be used by relatively inexperienced teacher trainers or even “self-help” groups of teachers.

Whatever the context, the core of the material is contained in the Trainer’s Handbook.

It is there that the essential wisdom and structure is to be found. The Teacher’s Workbook

contains the “raw material” used in the training sessions.

There is considerable guidance for the trainer, but he or she is counselled in the Introduction

“not to impose his or her own ideas too rigidly and to accept different points of view”

p. 3). This may give an impression of a training session as an unfocussed free-for-all, but

each unit in the course is so well structured and contains so much good practical teaching

advice that the aim of deepening understanding and awareness of methodological

possibilities stands a very good chance of being achieved.


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85

There is no fixed format for the units. The organization of the activities stands as a good

example of what might be called the “dynamic”

approach to course organization as

compared with the more traditional “static” approach in which there is a regularly recurring

programme of lecture followed by fixed discussion groups and seminars. In the “dynamic”

approach employed here each theme is dealt with as seems most appropriate for the content

matter, combining short presentations from the trainer NOT lectures), whole-group and

small-group discussions-with or without some sort of stimulus material-demonstrations

by the trainer, small-group work or pairwork to answer questions or construct examples

of materials and lesson planning. A special feature of each unit is a self-assessment exercise

in which the trainee teachers are invited to reflect on a lesson they teach following work

on a particular unit in order to consider to what extent they have made use of any new

ideas or to what extent their consideration of the topic influenced how they taught the lesson.

Trainees who successfully complete a course based on these materials will have had a good

grounding in a methodology that lays a well-balanced emphasis on communication. The

methods and techniques included in the material

“are intended to represent a common

core, drawing on what is of value both in traditional and in more recent approaches” p. 9).

For once, a claim for balance is justified. The author places appropriate value on structure

tables and controlled writing exercises as well as stressing the importance of meaning in

exercises and encouraging the use of groupwork and free role play.

The material is full of simple but essential advice and covers a very wide range of basic

language teaching topics including all the skills and most aspects of required technique.

The topics are not organized according to any obvious sequence and the user is encouraged

to “dip in” where appropriate. The material is helpfully cross-referenced, however, and

careful reading of the introductions to each unit could help a prospective user to decide

an appropriate form of sequencing. The practical units are interspersed with four

“Background Texts” on “Reading”, “Structures and Functions”, “Learning a Language”

and “Preparing for Communication”.

These are short, but somewhat more theoretical

reading texts and are designed to provoke useful discussion among the course participants.

Every unit is accompanied by references to sources of further reading in the relevant topic.

Every individual teacher trainer who uses this material will want to put his or her emphasis

differently from that of the author from time to time, but that is entirely in keeping with

the recommended approach. have some difficulty in accepting Reading and Listening

as “stages of a lesson” Unit 8) and while the unit on Classroom Tests Unit 22) contains

a great deal of typically good, practical advice, I feel it is, perhaps, the one section of

the course that will produce somewhat superficial results. None of this, however, dims

my admiration for what Adrian Doff has achieved in this set of material. It reflects in

its approach the essential elements of communicative language teaching by providing the

trainer with the means of control while allowing a high degree of initiative to remain with

the trainees, and the relationship between “Teacher” and “Learners” in this course is one

of co-operation in the mutual exploration of ideas and solutions. Such an approach implies

an attitude to education and training, let alone to language teaching, that is by no means

universal. The idea that trainee teachers should be encouraged to think for themselves is

still a novel one in many parts of the world. This course could, however, be a valuable

ally for those many ELT trainers who fly off to more or less exotic portions of the globe

with at least one of their objectives being that of subverting local education systems by

introducing ideas about student-centred learning and freedom of action for classroom

teachers. Any inexperienced teacher trainer who followed this Trainer’s Handbook to the

letter could not fail to have some beneficial effect on his or her trainees, and the experienced

course leaders who typically consider themselves self-sufficient in training material-and


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proudly lug it all round the world in cardboard boxes, milk crates or cabin trunks-will

find

Teach English

a refreshing and salutory source of ideas and might even find they can

leave the cabin trunk behind next time.

Department of Language Studies

City of London Polytechnic

Old Castle Street

London El 7NT

United Kingdom

David Scarbrough

Sys tem Vo l . 17, No. 2. pp. 286-288, 1989

Pergamon Press pk. Printed in Great Britain

OMAGGIO, ALICE C.,

Teaching Language in Context. Proficiency oriented Instruction.

Boston: Heinle and Heinle Publishers, Inc., 1986, 479 pp.

For quite some time the foreign language teaching profession has lacked an extensive and

comprehensive treatment of methodology which incorporates more recent findings in

learning theory, psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology, and integrates them into

modern foreign language teaching theory. Alice Omaggio claims that her book “Teaching

Language in Context” gives such a treatment, and on the whole this claim is justified.

In her preface, the author defines the purpose of her book in the following words: “It

does not propose yet another revolutionary theory of language acquisition or promote new

methodologies. Rather, it seeks to extract from our rich heritage of resources and practices

those elements that seem most sound and to suggest a way to organize that knowledge

and expertise so we can maximize opportunities for the development of proficiency among

our students” pp. xi, xii). As an obviously experienced practitioner and imaginative teacher,

she states, in addition, that her approach is only one among a variety of possible models

which can be developed on the basis of our knowledge of language teaching and learning.

The central idea behind Omaggio’s approach is that language teaching should be proficiency-

oriented, i.e. all methodology should aim at building up and improving the learner’s

proficiency in the L2. According to the author, proficiency should be seen as intimately

related to what has been called “communicative competence” in linguistics and

sociolinguistics. Her view on communicative competence is very similar to the one expressed

by Canale/Swain, who use the term in referring to “both underlying

knowledge

about

language and communicative language use and

skill

” Omaggio, p. 8). In Omaggio’s

concept of proficiency the basic notions of this definition are made more precise: the term

proficiency “includes specifications about the

levels

of competence attained in terms of

the

functions

performed, the con t e x t s in which the language user can function, and the

accuracy

with which the language is used” p. 8). The author is of the opinion that this

notion of proficiency provides a secure basis for the development of a proficiency-oriented

approach in classroom second language teaching.

system volume 17 issue 2 1989 [doi 10.1016_0346-251x(89)90046-8] scarbrough, david -- teach english

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