Quo Vadis, EFL Teacher Education?

posted by Jürgen Kurtz, Karlsruhe University of Education, Germany

What do we really know about the overall impact and the specific effects of initial EFL teacher education? Much of the current educational policy debate in Germany seems to be based on the intuitively appealing and seemingly plausible, yet premature and unrealistic assumption that a modularized, standardized, more rigidly evaluated and, ultimately, more intensively monitored teacher education program is desirable or necessary for producing better qualified teachers who as a result are better equipped to enhance target language and intercultural learning in EFL classrooms. However, from a scientific perspective, it is by no means clear how teacher education affects individual students and the quality of their teaching in the future. We are only just beginning to understand the complex interplay of the many factors influencing professional teacher development (see, for instance, Terhart 2004).

Teaching English as a foreign language can certainly not be reduced to ‘applied’ or ‘applying’ linguistics and psychology, and initial teacher education is definitely not what many German first semester TEFL students expect or might like it to be, i.e. an educational enterprise reduced to the prescriptive transmission of methodological recipes for teaching the target language.

All this is well-known world-wide. Initial teacher education should not of course aim at the practitioner per se. It aims at the reflective practitioner, seeking to provide an interdisciplinary, theory-driven and research-based array of courses, and – as far as this can be achieved under the given institutional circumstances – an optimal mix of theory and practice. The leitmotif of the reflective practitioner constitutes an enormous challenge though, especially because of students’ experientially-based and often deeply rooted preconceptions of teaching (their subjective theories), which often collide with the scientific theories and research evidence they are confronted with at university. A course of study that would mould a genuinely critical, reflective, innovative young teacher would necessitate an array of interrelated tasks that require time and a gradual professional maturing process that cannot be compartmentalized even further, cut down in breadth and width, and laid in the hands of the technocrats of evaluation and testing. What is now needed is the exact opposite, even if this puts much higher and more subtle demands on the university.

Terhart, Ewald (2004), „Struktur und Organisation der Lehrerbildung in Deutschland.“ [Stucture and Organization of Teacher Education in Germany]. In: Blömeke, S.; Reinhold, P.; Tulodziecki, G. & Wildt, J. (Hrsg.) [Eds.]. Handbuch Lehrerbildung. [Handbook of Teacher Education]. Braunschweig: Westermann, 37-59.

 

A Cognitive Science View on Communicative Language Teaching

posted by Jürgen Kurtz, Karlsruhe University of Education, Germany

From a cognitive science perspective, communicative language teaching (CLT) can be thought of as an ‘idealized cognitive model’ (see Lakoff 2007), which has been interpreted and translated into secondary school EFL syllabuses, textbooks, and everyday classroom practice in a variety of different ways around the world since its introduction in the 1970s. Implementations of CLT in secondary schools usually vary in their subjectively perceived or intersubjectively agreed upon degree of typicality or similarity to its theoretical core assumptions and the set of general learning and teaching principles derived from it (for a brief overview see, for instance, Richards 2005). Some instructional designs, procedures, and forms of classroom interaction appear to bear close resemblance to the theoretical core of the overall CLT framework. It seems to be reasonable to see them as prototypical examples, as highly representative cases or ‘good members’ of the ‘CLT family’ (see Spada 2007). Other ways of instruction appear to share relatively little with the idealized core theory – their family resemblance is considered to be comparatively low. They may therefore be viewed as more or less ‘peripheral family members’ or ‘distant relatives’ only. Yet, excluding these supposedly less representative members from the CLT family entirely is problematic, because they often share a few of the central properties of the abstract prototype, or seem to be motivated by it at least in certain ways.

Judgements as to whether a certain instructional design or practice is or is not to be accepted as a member of the CLT family are notoriously difficult, because they call for ‘reference point reasoning’ (see Rosch 1975), i.e. for categorization of teaching practices relative to a culture, context- and person-independent theoretical prototype. This highly complex process is influenced by a large number of individual and contextual factors such as teacher biography and education, teaching experience and know-how, the specific cultural, institutional and situational context of teaching English as a foreign language, non-native English teachers’ subjective theories and beliefs of how the target language is taught and learned best, the curriculum and the textbook, to name just a few.

Judgments concerning the typicality of a specific classroom practice are all the more difficult when the underlying theoretical core assumptions and the basic set of principles of learning and teaching on which this practice is supposedly based are themselves vague. One of the central problems of CLT seems to be that in contrast to some basic everyday cognitive models such as ‘bird’, where many people would say that ‘robin’ is a typical member of the bird family and ‘penguin’ is a less typical member, because birds usually fly, agreement on what is or is not CLT is far more difficult to achieve. The main reason is the elasticity of the overall CLT framework which is relatively fuzzy with regard to the significance and the optimal balance of language form and language use in the learning and teaching process (strong vs. weak version). Furthermore, there are so many different theoretical manifestations of CLT nowadays, for instance TBI (task based instruction) and CBI (content based instruction), that it is difficult for EFL practitioners – and especially for teaching novices – to recognize whether their teaching is in line with the core CLT theoretical framework.

Coming to a better understanding of the complex relationship between theory and practice is vital. According to Larsen-Freeman (1997) this is ‘an area crying for research’ – and this has not changed enough since Larsen-Freeman first recognized the need for further research over ten years ago. Categorization, (proto-)typicality, family resemblance and category membership are central concepts in cognitive science. They could help us gain a more profound knowledge of the complex relationship of CLT in theory and in practice, of how core theoretical concepts in foreign language education are acquired / learned, mentally represented and accessed in practice. This in turn could help to explain the discrepancies which often become visible when CLT is translated into actual everyday classroom action by individual teachers.

Lakoff, George (2007), “Cognitive models and prototype theory”, In: Evans, Vyvyan; Bergen, Benjamin & Zinken, Jörg (Eds.). The Cognitive Linguistics Reader. London & Oakville: Equinox, 130-167.

Larsen-Freeman, Diane (1997), “Chaos / Complexity Science and Second Language Acquisition.” Applied Linguistics, 18/2, 141-165.

Richards, Jack C. (2005), “Communicative Language Teaching Today.”

Rosch, Eleanor (1975), “Cognitive Reference Points.” Cognitive Psychology, 7, 532-547.

Spada, Nina (2007), “Communicative Language Teaching: Current Status and Future Prospects.” In: Cummins, Jim & Davison, Chris (Eds.). International Handbook of English Language Teaching. Part 1. New York: Springer, 271-288.

TEFLSPEAK-G and the Idea of Encouraging Improvised Speech in the EFL Classroom (7)

posted by Jürgen Kurtz, Karlsruhe University of Education, Germany

Improvisational enactments are communicative ‘journeys into the unknown’ (Johnstone 1999: 75), confronting secondary school learners of English as a foreign language with the complex challenges of unpredictable, meandering peer-to-peer interaction in the target language. Contrary to (ultra-)traditional teacher-centered focus on forms-instruction (which is of course a theoretical black and white construct), improvisations seek to enhance spontaneous message-oriented communication, focusing on stretching the learners’ interlanguage, rather than on teaching and adjusting it systematically in preplanned (TEFLSPEAK)-classroom discourse. A number of important and difficult questions concerning the provision of new language material, the treatment of errors, the reduction of speaking anxiety, the teacher’s role, etc. arise from this.

As research has shown, focusing on message-oriented communication in EFL classrooms alone is insufficient to achieve higher / the highest levels of accuracy in target language production. There is a substantial body of evidence in German Fremdsprachendidaktik as well as in international SLA research indicating that periodic attention to the target language system is crucial to ‘push’ learners to greater accuracy. With regard to medium-oriented learning and teaching, Michael H. Long (1997) suggests the following:

“In classroom settings, this is best achieved not by a return to discrete-point grammar teaching, or what I call focus on forms, where classes spend most of their time working on isolated linguistic structures in a sequence predetermined externally by a syllabus designer or textbook writer. Rather, during an otherwise meaning-focused lesson, and using a variety of pedagogic procedures, learners’ attention is briefly shifted to linguistic code features, in context, when students experience problems as they work on communicative tasks, i.e., in a sequence determined by their own internal syllabuses, current processing capacity, and learnability constraints. This is what I call focus on form.”

In addition, Long (1997) states that “[…] focus on form refers only to those form-focused activities that arise during, and embedded in, meaning-based lessons; they are not scheduled in advance, as is the case with focus on forms, but occur incidentally as a function of the interaction of learners with the subject matter or tasks that constitute the learners’ and their teacher’s predominant focus.”

This (strong) interpretation of the communicative approach to learning and teaching foreign/second languages is compelling – at least in theory. Nevertheless, in everyday EFL classroom practice it is highly difficult for teachers to manage the complex interplay between meaning-focused and form-focused communication and to find the right timing for form-oriented classroom discourse.

Target language ‘problems’ occurring in minimally guided, meandering learner talk-in-interaction can be anticipated by teachers to a very limited extent only. Therefore, proactive medium-oriented communication (focus on form: explicit and/or implicit, direct and/or indirect, inductive/deductive) and reactive medium-oriented communication need to be combined with message-oriented communication (focus on the negotiation of meaning) in an iterative (!!!) way. Higher levels of fluency, complexity, accuracy and contextual appropriateness in the target language cannot be achieved through improvisational activities alone, as the following (condensed) transcript shows (13-14 year-old 7th grade middle school (Realschule) learners of English as a foreign language in Germany; after about two years of traditional, predominantly frontal textbook-based instruction):

[...]
T:   So what are your favorite hobbies, Sebastian?
S₁: I like to play computer games
S₂: What do you play .. I mean .. which games?
S₁: Yes.. I play Tetris
S₃: Is the play interesting?
S₄: not play .. it must be games
S₃: OK .. the games .. are they interesting
S₁: Tetris is funny
S₄: Have you .. ähm .. do you play Doom II too?
S₁: No .. I don’t know the game
S₅: What do you do by this game?
S₁: Do you mean Tetris?
S₅: Yes, Tetris
S₁: Well, I must .. I must put little .. (looking for assistance)
S₆: Stones
S₁: Yes I must put little stones down … in eine Reihe [in one row]
S₇: Is the game easy or difficult?
S₁: It’s more easy
S₈: Which stage .. oder so [or so] .. do you play the game
T:   You mean level .. don’t you .. go on
S₁: Yes .. level … which level? … level twelve
S₃: Is the level twelve easy for you?
S₁: It’s not easy .. well, it’s difficult .. because it’s too fast
S₉: How many levels are in the game?
S₁: fifteen
S₁₀: It gives more levels
T: There are more levels
S₁: Well, I don’t know
S₁₁: Where do you play Tetris?
S₁: In my room
[...]

Attempting to prepare learners for improvised target-language speaking through direct or indirect (grammar) instruction is paradoxical. In order for learners to act as “creative designers of meaning” (Swann & Maybin 2007; see part five of the TEFLSPEAK-series), they need to be provided with thematically relevant lexical target language material before and immediately after an improvisation (not just single words, but potentially useful phrases or lexico-grammatical chunks gathered from an appropriate corpus). In order to enhance the accuracy of speech production, they need to be given adequate feedback, including corrective feedback on substantial errors. Thus focus on form / focus on meaning is not an either-or, but a more-or-less decision, depending on the individual learner or group of learners.

More to come next week.
 
Johnstone, Keith (1999). Impro for storytellers. New York: Routledge.

AILA 2008 Research Symposium

posted by Jürgen Kurtz, Karlsruhe University of Education, Germany

The 15th World Congress of Applied Linguistics will be held in Essen, Germany from August 24 to 29, 2008. The conference theme is “Multilingualism: Challenges and Opportunities.” The congress is organised by the German Association of Applied Linguistics (GAL e.V.), the University of Duisburg-Essen, Congress Centre Essen (CCE), and further partners.

On behalf of the German Society for Foreign Language Research (DGFF), Prof. Dr. Karin Aguado (University of Kassel, Germany) and I will be co-chairing a full three-hour research symposium which is scheduled for Tuesday, August 26, 16:00-19:00.

The symposium is intended as a forum for dissemination and discussion of current empirical research on foreign/second language learning and teaching in Germany. Its main objective is to present the breadth and diversity of large-scale, medium-scale and small-scale quantitative and qualitative research in this area to an international audience of experts.

The symposium will have three main sessions. Each session will be scheduled for a one-hour time slot. The individual sessions will be facilitated by renowned scholars as well as early career researchers and devoted to the following issues (arranged in the following order):

Current Research on Teaching and Learning Foreign/Second Languages in Germany

Session 1
Prof. Dr. Günter M.J. Nold (University of Dortmund, Germany) (60 minutes)

Sociopragmatic and grammatical awareness – findings from the DESI project

DESI (German-English-Student-Assessment-International), a large-scale assessment study commissioned by the German federal board of education, was designed and implemented by an interdisciplinary consortium of applied linguists and educational researchers. Two of the tests in the test battery that was developed were sociopragmatic and grammatical awareness tests (N=11.000; ninth grade students). The empirical results of these tests will be discussed both with an emphasis on theories of language awareness raising and on questions related to theories of second language acquisition in the fields of sociopragmatic and grammatical development.

Session 2
Prof. Dr. Marita Schocker-von Ditfurth (Freiburg University of Education, Germany) / Prof. Dr. Michael K. Legutke (University of Giessen, Germany) (60 minutes)

Task-based language learning in EFL classrooms

Research on task-based language learning has been running strong for 20 years now, but has been dominated by a psycholinguistic research paradigm for a long time. While some of these research findings have been important in terms of learning about the mental processes involved in second language acquisition, they were largely focused on isolated tasks of individual, usually adult learners, and therefore did not take into account the complexity of the contextual factors that influence learning in the foreign language classroom. The presentation focuses on the complex issues that arise when researching the methodological implementation of a task-based approach on the classroom level as well as on the level of teacher education.

Session 3
Prof. Dr. Grit Mehlhorn (University of Leipzig, Germany) (30 minutes)

Learning a foreign pronunciation – evidence from individual pronunciation coaching

Individual learner coaching focusing on pronunciation can reveal interesting insights in individual language acquisition processes. This talk reports the results of a longitudinal study with foreign students at a German university. It will be shown that the following factors influence the learner’s progress: first, an individual diagnosis of the deviations in the target pronunciation; second, an increase of the learner’s consciousness with respect to the foreign pronunciation and the choice of individual learning strategies; and third, permanent feedback on learning progress. These factors lead to an increased self-reflection on the part of the learners regarding their learning process, language awareness, and they also serve to foster learner autonomy.

Sevilen Demirkaya M.A. & Nazan Gültekin M.A. (University of Bielefeld, Germany) (30 minutes)

MIKI – Research of the pre-school language support program for ethnic minority children in Bielefeld, Germany

Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, this project focuses on examining the second language development of ethnic minority children who participate in a support program at the pre-school level.

 

TEFLSPEAK-G and the Idea of Encouraging Improvised Speech in the EFL Classroom (6)

posted by Jürgen Kurtz, Karlsruhe University of Education, Germany

Improvisations are task-driven learning opportunities (Lerngelegenheiten; Hartmut von Hentig 1993) designed to stimulate spontaneous peer interaction in the target language. The focus is on the natural reciprocity of comprehension and production in communication, on the functional and collaborative practice of the target language in flexible learning environments, on ‘transformation of participation’ rather than on (measurable) ‚outcome‘ and individuals‘ possessions of concepts and skills (see Rogoff 1998).

In order to accomplish an improvisation task, learners need to do more than process target language input and produce output. (The computer metaphor of learning is inadequate to capture the psychosocial complexity of negotiated interaction in secondary school EFL classrooms). Nevertheless, viewed from a purely psycholinguistic perspective, there is supportive evidence that improvised speaking is necessary and beneficial, and that spontaneous negotiation of meaning in increasingly less scripted target language (peer) interaction can contribute to improving ‘language processing abilities’. As Legenhausen (1999) states, “Transfer from code-focused exercises to free communicative practice is not as successful as envisaged by designers of traditional language courses. Traditionally taught learners heavily rely on a limited number of memorized and/or automatized structures, which then act as ‘islands of reliability’ in communicative interactions. … Deliberate instruction of forms does not ensure their accessibility and use in communicative situations. … In order for learners to fully exploit their language processing abilities, they need to be given ample opportunity for experimenting with linguistic forms in authentic communicative situations.”

More to come (for instance on task rehearsal and feedback, the teacher’s role, etc.). Stay tuned.

Hentig, Hartmut von (1993). Die Schule neu denken. München: Hanser.

Legenhausen, Lienhard (1999), “The emergence and use of grammatical structures in conversational interactions – comparing traditional and autonomous learners. In: Mißler, Bettina & Multhaup, Uwe (Eds.). The Construction of Knowledge, Learner Autonomy and Related Issues in Foreign Language Learning. Essays in Honour of Dieter Wolff. Tübingen: Stauffenberg, 27-40.

Rogoff, Barbara (1998), „Cognition as a collaborative process.“ In: Damon, William (Ed.). Handbook of Child Psychology. Fifth edition. Volume II: Cognition, Perception, and Language. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 679-744.

The Mother Tongue Taboo or Taking the Dogma out of Foreign Language Methodology

posted by Wolfgang Butzkamm, Aachen University (RWTH), Germany 

In many Asian countries pressures are rising on English teachers to teach through English only. In Europe, the issue is still being debated, with peaks in the early 1900s when a group of Parisian radicals officially enforced the direct method for more than a decade, and again in the 1970s, when foreign-language-only audiovisual coursebooks were made available. Whether the foreign language should be the sole medium of instruction is thus more than an academic dispute. Millions of learners and their teachers are affected. Official target-language-only policies, though inspired by the best of motives, are irresponsible because the baby is thrown out with the bathwater. So:

Should we conduct lessons through the foreign language? My answer is an unequivocal yes. Does this mean the exclusion of the mother tongue from the classroom? The answer is an equally unequivocal no. The solution to this paradox is the sandwich-technique:

• French teacher of English: “What’s the matter? Qu’y a-t-il? What’s the matter?”
• German teacher of English: “You’ve skipped a line. Du hast eine Zeile übersprungen. You’ve skipped a line. Or: “I mean the second last word. Das vorletzte Wort. The second last word.”

This technique of sandwiching the translation of an unknown expression can be carried out very discreetly in the tone of an aside or sometimes even whispering. It should be a central technique of any foreign language teacher as it is the quickest way to make authentic classroom communication possible: statement in L2, restatement in L1, and again in L2. The supportive use of the mother tongue is indispensable because of the improvisational nature of much of classroom talk where participants come up with unforeseen problems and teachers are caught unawares and unprepared and must react in an unrehearsed, yet natural manner. The language required is often more complex and beyond the language taught concurrently in the coursebook. That’s why mother tongue aids make it easier to conduct whole lessons in the foreign language and can promote more authentic, message-oriented communication than might be found in lessons where they are avoided. Pupils gain confidence and, paradoxically, become less dependent on their L1.

Foreign language teaching theory needs to make a complete turnabout and accept that the mother tongue is the greatest asset a talking child brings to the classroom. It is also the single most important teaching aid.

Treacherous Quicksand: Quality Measurement in Foreign Language Education

posted by Jürgen Kurtz, Karlsruhe University of Education, Germany

While working on a new publication, I came across the following statement by H.G. Widdowson (1990: 1): “The effectiveness of teaching cannot be equated with its rational accountability.” This made me think again about what good quality management and quality assurance in foreign language learning and teaching – including the (fuzzy) concept of accountability – is all about. To my mind, it is essential to avoid simplistic equations between standardized tests / test scores and teacher / foreign language teaching quality on the one hand, and between individual test results and the outcome of foreign language and intercultural learning on the other. Equations like these are grossly inadequate to address the complex challenge of improving the quality of learning and teaching in foreign language classrooms. Instead of encouraging practitioners to take a fresh look at their teaching (stimulating, for instance, in-service training), I think they rather contribute to fixing the status quo (and a teaching to the test mentality), i.e. to ensuring stagnation.

Foreign language education in the 21st century is more than skills-based instruction (which does not make it easier at all; see my personal view of foreign language education in Germany on this blog). It embraces language (including literature) and culture as a whole, and it is this educational whole which matters. It cannot be captured by standardized (especially discrete-point) testing.

Accountability? “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.“ (William Shakespeare). This leaves many questions open to discussion. What do you personally think about all this?

Widdowson, Henry G. (1990). Aspects of Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.