The Role of the Textbook in the EFL Classroom (6)

by Jürgen Kurtz, Karlsruhe University of Education, Germany

Here’s another voice in the ongoing debate on the role of the textbook in the EFL classroom – “My Take on the Unplugged/Dogme/Coursebook Debate”  (Dave Dodgson):  

“After a week or so reading some very interesting posts detailing various people’s stances on the ongoing discussion about the usefulness of coursebooks, the merits of an unplugged/dogme approach (assuming those terms can be used interchangeably) and everything in between, I thought I’d pitch in my two pence with some reflections on what I’ve taken from it all. Of course, this discussion has been going on for much longer (and will probably continue for a while yet!) but recent posts on the blogosphere have really got me thinking.” Click here to read more.

AAAL 2011 Annual Conference

Jürgen Kurtz, Karlsruhe University of Education, Germany

The 2011 conference of the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) will be held March 26 – 29 at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers, Chicago, IL. The 2011 AAAL conference will serve as a meeting place for applied linguists to generate ideas, cross disciplinary boundaries, and disseminate research about issues and concerns in language policy, second language acquisition, language pedagogy and assessment, discourse analysis and other areas of applied linguistics.

The submission of abstracts and the refereeing process will be carried out through the AAAL web submission system. Abstracts for all presentation formats should be submitted for blind peer review at:
http://www.aaal.org/aaal2011.

The proposal submission deadline is August 15, 2010.

DGFF Hamburg 2011: Workshop Proposal Accepted

Jürgen Kurtz, Karlsruhe University of Education, Germany

A few weeks ago I submitted a workshop proposal to the DGFF Conference Review / Organizing Committee (i.e. “Enhancing Young Learners’ Developing Concepts of Self and Other in the Primary Foreign Language Classroom”). I am pleased to announce that the proposal has been accepted. I will keep you up to date on all further developments here.

David Crystal: Which ‘English’ Should You Teach Your Students?

Jürgen Kurtz, Karlsruhe University of Education, Germany

David Crystal: How is the Internet Changing Language Today?

Jürgen Kurtz, Karlsruhe University of Education, Germany

David Crystal: Should English be Taught as a ‘Global’ Language?

Jürgen Kurtz, Karlsruhe University of Education, Germany

DGFF Conference 2011 Workshop Proposal

Jürgen Kurtz, Karlsruhe University of Education, Germany

The 24th Biennial Conference 2011 of the German Society for Foreign Language Research (DGFF) will be held September 28 to October 1 at the University of Hamburg, Germany. The conference theme is: Globalization – Migration – Foreign Language Learning and Teaching (Globalisierung – Migration – Fremdsprachenunterricht). The call for papers is not out yet, but the organizers have already issued a call for workshop proposals. I’d like to organize such a workshop (or an international research symposium) focusing on “Enhancing Young Learners’ Developing Concepts of Self and Other in the Primary FL classroom”. Here’s the abstract I have already submitted to the conference organizers – I’m very interested to hear what you think about the overall project:

Enhancing Young Learners’ Developing Concepts of Self and Other in the Primary FL Classroom

Current primary school EFL curricula in Germany (see, for instance, North-Rhine Westphalia 2008) place considerable emphasis on the incorporation of intercultural learning and teaching (fostering language and culture awareness, etc.) into a comprehension-driven, usage-based framework of instruction aimed above all at the development of basic communication skills in ways that are appropriate for children. Culture-sensitive language learning and teaching is thus not (or no longer) conceived of as an aside, but as an integral part of foreign language education in primary schools. However, in view of the current state-of-the-art of foreign language research in this area, the optimism shining through in curricular statements such as the one below may not be entirely warranted. The main reasons for some skepticism might include: a) we still know very little about the intricate mix of ((meta-)cognitive, (meta-)linguistic, affective, sociocultural, moral, etc.) dispositions, abilities and constraints involved in culture-sensitive education in primary EFL classrooms, b) the patchwork of case studies on adequate and fruitful instructional designs and activities (arguably) does not provide a fully reliable basis for the development and implementation of long-term instructional programs as yet, c) the limited amount of time allocated to the teaching of English in primary schools (90 minutes a week in Germany), and d) the fact that FL teacher education in this area (in Germany and, perhaps, elsewhere) is only just beginning to meet the challenges resulting from such a complex endeavor:

„Ausgehend von ihren eigenen Erfahrungen erhalten die Kinder Einblick in fremde Kulturen und Lebensweisen. Sie erkennen dabei Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede zwischen ihrer eigenen Situation und den Lebensumständen anderer. In Gesprächen über die mehrsprachige, multikulturelle Wirklichkeit von Kindern im englischen Sprachraum wird ihnen die kulturelle und sprachliche Vielgestaltigkeit der eigenen Lebenswirklichkeit zunehmend bewusster. Dies stärkt die Entwicklung von Aufgeschlossenheit, Verständnisbereitschaft und Toleranz. Eine wesentliche Voraussetzung für das Verständnis fremder Kulturen und Lebensweisen ist Authentizität. An diesem Anspruch müssen sich Themen, Situationen und vor allem Materialien messen lassen.“ (MSW NRW 2008: 10).

This interdisciplinary workshop / research symposium is intended to address and illuminate some fundamental aspects of intercultural education in primary FL classrooms, seeking to bridge theory and practice as far as possible. i.e.:

a) The concept of (the aspects of) intercultural communicative competence to be targeted in primary FL classrooms (openness towards other cultures, transcultural curiosity, ability to adopt a different perspective?); as Kramsch (2008: 24) points out, “In Europe, researchers stress education for citizenship and moral responsibility in the multicultural societies of Europe, they emphasize democratic debate, tolerance of the Other and reflection of the Self. In the U.S., advocates of intercultural competence stress individual learner development and community spirit, participation and task-based collaboration.”

b) The significance of acculturation and enculturation in today’s primary school FL classrooms (focusing on aspects of migration, pluriculturalism and plurilingualism).

c) The sociology and psychology of child language development (focusing on the child’s developing (meta-)cognitive, (meta-)linguistic, affective, social and moral capacities).

d) The implications of current research for creating curricula and for implementing convincing and successful instructional programs and classroom practices, in the primary FL classroom as well as in (pre-service) FL teacher education.

Envisioned concept of the workshop / research symposium: brief statements/presentations, plenary debate; workshop languages: English and German

References:

Kramsch, Claire (2008). The intercultural yesterday and today: Political perspectives. In Renate Schulz & ErwinTschirner (Eds.) Communicating across Borders: Developing Intercultural Competence in German as a Foreign Language. Munich: iudicium, 2008, 5-27.

MSW NRW (2008). Lehrplan Englisch für die Grundschulen des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen. Available online.

Error Correction in Speaking – The Fun Way

posted by Jürgen Kurtz, Karlsruhe University of Education, Germany

In the following video, Herbert Puchta looks at a fun way of correcting one of the most fequently occuring errors in German EFL classrooms: the missing third person singular -s in the simple present tense (as in: he *want more juice).

German teachers of English as a foreign language are regularly confronted with learners’ utterances like ”*He go to  school”‘, etc. – although the German 3rd person requires a suffigated form as well: ”Er geht in die Schule”. In fact, the German inflectional system for the simple present tense is far more complex than the English, which only requires a suffix -s in the third person singular. To cope with this problem, German teachers very often use a ‘slogan’ that makes the underlying SV-agreement explicit: ”He, she, it, dass -s muss mit.” (He, she, it, the -s must fit.) (roughly translated). But this is not really effective. Student learn the slogan by heart, but continue to produce the error. I was wondering how this can be explained (failure in morph rule-learning; or in rote memory / mental lexicon; or in teaching practices; or …?). Any ideas and suggestions?

Here are some expert views on this (via The Linguist List / the  world’s largest online linguistic ressource):

Aug-4-2003:

“I suppose perhaps it is natural that when you come to English from a more highly conjugated language like German, the overall impression is ”forget about verb endings”, and one goes too far and forgets even what English has got – a case of overgeneralizing, which is a very usual kind of learning error.”

Prof. G.R. Sampson MA PhD MBCS (Professor of Natural Language Computing; School of Cognitive & Computing Sciences; University of Sussex)

***

“I dont know what kind of a fancy Education College label one might want to hang on this but there is no alternative in learning inflectional morphemes of another – or of one’s own for that matter – language other than practice. One can understand it systematically and intellectually but that’s like understanding how a piano works. It doesn’t mean you can play Poulenc. – For English there is the added fact that it is only in the third person singular that the agreement-tense suffix occurs. It’s  he/she/it write-s versus everybody else write. Moreover, it probably doesn’t help that in nouns, an -s suffix is plural rather than singular.

Joseph F Foster (Associate Professor of Anthropology &Director of Undergraduate Studies; University of Cincinnati, Ohio)

***

“The problem for learners of English, native or not, is that, as you point out, the only inflection that occurs in the present tense for most English verbs is the one for the 3rd person singular. It turns out that this language situation is actually more complex for the learner than one in which all persons and number have a unique inflection. Researchers investigating language acquisition have found that for languages in which inflections always appear, native-speaking children make no errors, but for a language such as English, learning the one exception to the ”no inflection” rule turns out to be difficult from a cognitive linguistic perspective. I am certain that the same problem exists for people learning English as a second or foreign language.

Marilyn N. Silva (Professor/Chair; Department of English; California State University, Hayward).

Future EFL Teachers’ Conceptions of Grammar Instruction

posted by Jürgen Kurtz, Karlsruhe University of Education, Germany

Two days ago, I asked my students to briefly outline what they consider to be important in teaching grammar in a ‘communicative’ EFL classroom environment. One group of students created the following mind map:

(click on image to enlarge)

I think it is quite interesting to see that the students seem to be aware (perhaps not more than that) of some of the most intensively discussed problems associated with grammar instruction in communicative EFL classrooms, i.e.: CLT – approach or method?; acquisition-learning, competence-performance, contextualization, focus on meaning / form / forms, explicit-implicit and inductive-deductive learning, the necessity to integrate learners’ prior knowledge, introducing vs. practicing grammar, error correction, cultural implications of teaching grammar, etc.

However, as Larsen-Freeman (1997) pointed out many years ago, knowing/thinking and doing is not one and the same thing (and, furthermore, that this is an area crying for research).

This is why I regularly embed practice-oriented activities in my seminars; analyzing EFL textbooks used in the past and at present (to my mind, both is necessary and important); discussing examples of good practice documented on video (e.g. Siebold 2004), encouraging students to simulate sequences of grammar-oriented EFL lessons (including micro-teaching sessions, etc.). I also try to connect the seminar to the obligatory teaching practicum (if possible), etc.

Any comments or suggestions?

Larsen-Freeman, Diane (1997). “Chaos/Complexity Science and Second Language Acquisition”. Applied Linguistics, 18, 2, 141-156.

Siebold, Jörg (2004). Let’s Talk. Lehrtechniken. Berlin: Cornelsen (including DVD-videos).