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Lighten up: A reply to Angeles Clemente
... When it did that, it brought applied linguistics into disrepute, firstly by talking about the very human activity of teaching in de-humanised terms ('input', 'output', 'monitors' etc.) and secondly by trampling over the accumulated wisdom of teachers, presuming to know better, and pushing aside as ill-informed the kind of classroom savvy, which the craft model had understood so well, and recommending on the back of its 'science' some "crazy" things (to use Chomsky's word again)-no use of the first language, no translation, no error correction no explanation of rules and so on and so forth. "Language teaching" as Scott Thornbury (2001) neatly put it "was at risk of being taken over by men in white coats". Though SLA has more recently redressed some of these excesses by taking a more social turn (Block 2003) and considering the extent of its pedagogic applicability (Ellis and Shintani 2013), there is still a good deal to redress. ...
The first part of this paper considers approaches to teacher education for EFL developed during the 1960s-1990s, drawing upon two sources: the taxonomy of three approaches proposed by Wallace (1991) and personal reminiscence. It discusses each of Wallace's approaches in turn: craft, 'applied science', and reflective practice.The second part considers whether these approaches are adequate models for teacher education now. I suggest that while they are still relevant, they are also too inward looking for contemporary needs.They need to be supplemented with a more outward looking approach, in which teachers are prepared to engage with four aspects of the contemporary context: new communication technologies, the new global linguistic landscape, the relationship between English and learners' own languages, and the rival political views of English language learning as promoting either a global neoliberal agenda or a global civil society.
... b) The division of applied linguists and language practitioners into two distinct, and at times hostile, bodies (for a discussion of this issue, see Strevens 1980;van Lier 1984;Allwright & Bailey 1991;Shaw 1992;Hopkins & Nettle 1994;Cook 1998;Judd 1999;Lightbown 2000;Clemente 2001;Thornbury 2001aThornbury , 2001bWiddowson 2003) leads to what Clarke (1994) calls a 'dysfunctional discourse'. ...
This article reviews some of the wide-ranging issues and research surrounding authentic materials and authenticity in foreign language learning. After a brief historical overview and a discussion of some of the definitional ambiguities associated with authenticity, the paper goes on to discuss four important areas of concern: i) the gap between authentic and textbook discourse; ii) the English-as-a-world-language debate; iii) authenticity and motivation; iv) text difficulty and task design and their effects on language acquisition. The article concludes by examining some of the reasons behind resistance to change in curriculum and materials design and possible future directions.
The research described in this thesis reports on a 10-month quantitative/qualitative classroom-based study, carried out at a Japanese university, investigating the potential of authentic materials to develop learners’ communicative competence. It was hypothesised that the ‘richer’ input provided by authentic materials, combined with appropriate awareness-raising activities, would be better able to develop a range of communicative competencies in learners (linguistic, pragmalinguistic, sociopragmatic, strategic and discourse competences).
Ninety-two 2nd year English major students, of similar proficiency levels, were assigned to either a control or experimental group for the period of the trial. The control group received input from two textbooks commonly used in Japanese universities, while the experimental group received input from authentic materials (films, documentaries, ‘reality shows’, TV comedies, web-based sources, home-produced video of native speakers, songs, novels and newspaper articles), designed to allow students to ‘notice’ features of the discourse which could help them develop some aspect of their communicative competence. The hypothesis was tested with a batch of eight pre/postcourse measures, designed to tap into different aspects of learners’ communicative competence or language skills: a) Listening; b) Pronunciation; c) ‘C’-Test; d) Grammar; e) Vocabulary; f) Discourse completion task (DCT); g) IELTS oral interview; h) Student-student role-play. These were supported with qualitative results from learners’ diaries, case-study interviews with subjects from both groups and transcripts of classroom interaction.
Univariate analysis of the pre/post-course tests, using ANCOVA, indicated statistically significant differences between the two treatment groups, with the experimental group out-performing the control group in five of the eight communicative competence measures. The qualitative results of the trial helped to account for these differences in performance, suggesting that the authentic materials, and their associated tasks, allowed learners to notice a wider range of discourse features than those generally available in textbook input. They also indicated a clear preference in the experimental group for authentic materials over textbooks, suggesting that learners found them more interesting, varied and challenging, and better able to meet their perceived future language needs. Finally, the qualitative results demonstrated that, for learners, social goals often override instructional goals in the classroom, suggesting that classroom-based research benefits from both an emic and etic perspective in order to fully account for results.
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