William Thomas Littlewood

• Hong Kong Baptist University

This paper proposes a framework to guide us in designing and implementing our classroom language pedagogy. It is based on three major principles which the teacher can keep constantly in mind: that the learners need to be engaged, that the language needs to be memorized, and that learning needs to move toward communicative competence. Each principle...

This study combined collaborative tasks with qualitative research procedures in order to explore what factors students had experienced as demotivating in their English learning and their suggestions for remedying them. It was conducted with an intact class of 40 advanced learners of English (mostly future teachers) following a Masters course. In th...

In its early days, CLT was widely promoted as suitable for all contexts, but many questions have since been raised about what it really means and what versions of it (if any) are suited to specific learning situations. Experiences in Asia, where educational traditions and current realities often contrast strongly with those where CLT originated, ha...

In developing strategies for increasing learner involvement, a key factor is the extent to which these strategies are compatible with learners’ own expectations and preferences. In order to explore this factor, tertiary students in four Asian countries were asked (in an online survey designed on the basis of exploratory interviews) to give their co...

A feature of language teaching in recent decades has been the development of process-oriented approaches. This orientation towards processes encourages us to facilitate learner choice and individual development. However, it is challenged by the current educational climate, which prioritizes accountability and assessment. In this situation, a new pe...

For many decades, foreign language teaching has been dominated by the principle that teachers should use only the target language (TL) and avoid using the mother tongue (L1) except as a last resort. However, reports show that teachers make extensive use of the L1. This paper illustrates this discrepancy and considers some main reasons for it. It su...

A common stereotype of Chinese learners is that they are reluctant to participate in classroom interaction and prefer to learn passively. However, a survey indicated that most tertiary English learners in Mainland China and Hong Kong wish to participate actively in exploring knowledge and hold positive attitudes towards working in groups. In a late...

This feature provides a critical reappraisal of a well-known book that was published some time ago, in order to assess how far it is still relevant to current thinking.

IntroductionProcesses of Second Language LearningSequences of DevelopmentThe Effects of Classroom InstructionTheories of Second Language LearningConclusion

As educators and governments in East Asia aim to increase the number of people in their population who can communicate effectively in English, national policies and syllabuses have moved increasingly towards various versions of communicative language teaching (CLT) and task-based language teaching (TBLT). This paper reviews, on the basis of publish...

This paper explores the sociolinguistic awareness in English of tertiary level students in Hong Kong and Wuhan (Mainland China). The language data consisted of specific instances when a native speaker presenter made changes, in the course of oral delivery, to the written text of a conference paper that she had prepared in advance. Matched pairs of...

This article first addresses the question of what tasks are. It suggests that rather than accept the common ‘communicative’ definition, we should return to a broader definition and then focus on key dimensions that distinguish (from the learner’s perspective) different types of task, notably degrees of task-involvement and degrees of focus on form...

In Hong Kong, as in many countries, a central element in teachers' innovatory experimentation in the classroom is interactive learning. In itself, of course, 'interactive learning' is a broad term: learning may take place through any form of interaction between a person's current conception of some aspect of the world and an alternative conception...

This paper is organised around a number of episodes in intercultural communication in which there is some degree of mismatch between the intentions and interpretations of the interlocutors. Three concepts are used to illuminate the nature of these mismatches: the concept of common ground, the principle of indexicality and the concept of cultural mo...

In recent years researchers have developed a range of perspectives for conceptualizing the influences of culture on thinking and behaving. Three perspectives which are of special potential relevance to language teaching are the following: the distinction between collectivism and individualism; different perceptions of power and authority; and diffe...

Autonomy in language learning is sometimes presented as a Western concept unsuited to contexts, such as those in East Asia, which have different educational traditions. This paper argues that this view is unfounded but that we need to match the different aspects of autonomy with the characteristics and needs of learners in specific contexts. First...

Discusses schema theory in relation to the language classroom. Argues that as teachers themselves are former learners, the schemata they have developed both inside and outside the classroom will provide them assumptions about how people learn. (Author/VWL)

Teachers sometimes comment on East Asian students' reluctance to adopt active speech roles in classrooms. In two large-scale surveys conducted at the University of Hong Kong, however, students gave no evidence of such reluctance. They expressed a liking for communicative work at school and a preference for university classes in which students do mo...

This article examines the components that make up autonomy in language learning. At the core of the notion of autonomy are the learners' ability and willingness to make choices independently. In foreign language learning contexts, we are concerned mainly with helping learners to make and carry out choices in three domains: communication, learning a...

As a basis for making pedagogical decisions within a learner-based framework, teachers need information about the experiences and perceptions which learners bring to the classroom. This article reports and discusses some of the information gathered by the LEAP Project at the University of Hong Kong about the English learning experiences, proficienc...

This article presents the results of a small-scale study which investigated the re-emergence of German production in a bilingual child. In the period preceding the study, the child had received ample exposure to German input but used almost exclusively English in her productive performance. It was found that, when a change of environment made it ne...

There is often a tension in education between the need to teach pre-determined skills required for social life and the wish to facilitate individual growth towards self-fulfilment. In intercultural communication there is often a similar tension between externally-determined conventions and individual self-expression. The adoption of unfamiliar exte...

Reimpresión en 2001 Incluye bibliografía e índice

Three processes are suggested to account for linguistic change at the interpersonal level. The first is the creation of a partly stable, partly dynamic frame of reference, against which lexical items become endowed with semantic features unique to a situation or group. The second is the negotiation of the social category to which the communication...

"Gastarbeiterdeutsch" includes varieties of German spoken by the many foreign workers employed in low-paid, less desirable jobs in Germany. It is characterized by reduction and simplification of syntactic and semantic forms. Study of this dialect reveals patterns of natural language acquisition necessary for communication, useful in classroom Germa...

Describes classroom language as used in teaching an FL, recognizing it as belonging to an artificial rather than a real-life situation; this fact must be kept in mind and "the game played" in the classroom. Examples are given. (IFS/WGA)

This article explores the relationship of literature to foreign language teaching. Five levels or perspectives are defined for literary works and their place in language instruction is defined. The five levels also provide criteria for the selection of appropriate texts. (CLK)

Foreign language performance in the classroom is generally evaluated according to its grammatical accuracy. This procedure conflicts with the actual prerequisites of communication and with the acquisition of language in natural situations, as well as imposing objectives which many learners cannot approach. More could be achieved with a communicatio...

In Volume 4 of this journal, Littlewood (1999) presented selected interim results from a study of students' preferred modes of learning in eight East Asian countries and three European countries. The present paper gives further results and statistical analyses from that and a continuing study. These confirm that in all the countries surveyed, most...

In the course of learning, students develop complex networks of mental schemata which influence how they perceive their learning. It is therefore important to explore their perceptions and preferences, as a prerequisite to understanding their needs and providing an appropriate learning environment. This paper reports on the findings of a survey of...

Traducción de: Communicativa Language Teaching

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