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The History of English Language Teaching

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Overview of main developments and methodology A bad time to be an English language teacher! English is a minor North European language. Its part of the Germanic branch of the great IndoEuropean family of languages, which includes major Indian languages like Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi as well as most languages in Europe, with the exception of Basque and languages from the UralAltaic group (Hungarian, Finnish, etc). French is the dominant modern language of Europe at this time with: the original lingua franca literally French language! Latin plays an important role in the church. The only people wanting to learn English were traders from Holland and Belgium. The London dialect slowly becomes more dominant and is the basis of Modern English. ESOL came before EFL! England is flooded with Protestant refugees from the continent at the end of the 16th Century. The first language schools were set up during Shakespeares time using a basis of the grammar -translation model, inherited from the teaching of Latin and Greek. Shakespeare, in fact, includes several scenes of English teaching including the famous one where Henry V teaches the French princess parts of the body and corrects her pronunciation of elbow! The grammar - translation method started with the grammar rules and involved lots of translation of complex texts. The aim was to build character and prepare learners to read literature rather than help them communicate. The Direct Method provides a commercialisable package for language teaching Phonetics and Linguistics emerged as university research subjects. From phonetics grew the reform movement. Spoken language was absolutely fundamental. The advocates of this new method recommended that students read and wrote only in phonemic script during the first two years of language instruction. Gramophone records were used to give listening comprehension and pronunciation practice. At the same time, the Direct Method was developed in the United States (originally in the teaching of French) and commercialised worldwide by Berlitz. They shared the Reform Movements rejection of grammar-translation but had a more pragmatic, less theoretical view of language teaching. The teachers were native speakers and the students were immersed in the target language. The method depended on lots of visual aids and oral question and answer practice. Students guessed the grammar rules from examples. By the time of the First World War, there were Direct Method Schools in many town and cities all over the world. James Joyce was one of these early Berlitz teachers in Trieste in 1905. The heyday of Audiolingualism When the USA entered the war, they needed to train huge numbers of staff in languages, including Asian languages, for which courses and programmes didnt even exist. They gave control of the project to linguists, who developed a programme that became known as audio-lingualism. It was based on strong application of structural and behavioural psychology (intensive repetition, using language laboratories, with constant correction). Explanation of the language was very limited because language learning was seen as a motor skill, rather than a cognitive process. The apparent success of this programme led to its adoption in high schools and language schools around the world, though direct method still had a strong hold in private language schools and grammar-translation endured in many secondary schools.

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1970

The Natural Approach Chomskys rejection of structural and behavourist models in the late 1950s stimulated a great deal of new interest and research into language acquisition, which had a great impact on language

1990

teaching in the 1970s and 80s. He proposed that language is reinvented by the child from input using his / her language acquisition device - an ability specific to humans and totally distinct from the kind of universal habit-formation observable throughout the animal kingdom. Research into child language acquisition was the basis of the Natural Approach developed by Stephen Krashen and associates in the 1970s. He suggested that comprehensible input is the necessary and sufficient condition for language acquisition. In other words, we acquire language by understanding messages containing input just above our current competence. Conscious effort - or learning - cannot lead to acquisition, according to his model. The influence of Krashen is felt in the greatly increased receptive skills work in language teaching. The Emergence of CLT At the same time, Communicative Language Learning was developing, influenced by the works of the American Sociolinguist Dell Hymes in the 1960s and applied to language teaching by a group of applied linguists including Henry Widdowson. The theoretical basis was the idea that language ability is not unitary: it consists of a set of interlinked competencies, including linguistic, sociolinguistic, strategic competence. An explanation for the poor performance of learners of English was that they hadnt learnt the full language, concentrating only on linguistic competence, rather than language in use. Communicative language learning began to make its influence felt in the 1980s. The use of authentic texts was increased to encourage learners to develop strategies such as inferring meaning from context. Information gap activities were suggested to encourage students to negotiate meaning. Focus on Functions This broader view of language was also reinforced by a Council of Europe project in the 1970s which led to the establishment of the Threshold Level. Linguists such as D. Wilkins were influenced by the work of the philosophers and sought to categorise the underlying notions and functions expressed by language. The Council of Europe project sought to define the basic communicative ability of a learner in terms of the notions and functions they needed to express, notions such as plurality and pastness and functions such as making a suggestion, asking for information. Influenced by this project, coursebooks from the late 1970s onwards began to specify functions in their syllabus, and the use of realistic contexts and pairwork became more important. Humanistic approaches During this period, a number of humanistic approaches to language learning also emerged, generally following movements in psychology, especially the influence of Rogers. These include the Silent Way, Suggestopaedia, Community Language Learning and NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming). The Silent Way promoted extensive use of mime and has had an impact on teaching younger learners. Suggestopaedia was based on the idea that anxiety is the biggest obstacle to language teaching and uses relaxing music, comfy chairs, etc. to soothe the learner into a receptive state. Task-based learning Task-based learning emerged as a development of Communicative Language Learning.It was proposed that the main target of grammar work should be to raise learners awareness of the language and the differences between their current understanding of the grammar. This meant that grammar work should be more involved with problem-solving. Instead of traditional grammar exercises and drills, it was proposed that language lessons be based around students completing tasks.. For example, they could be asked to complete a reordering task; they then listen to native speakers completing the same task and focus on some of the differences between their performance and the native speakers. Some of the main proponents of this view are Jane Willis, Michael Long and David Nunan. The Lexical Approach The development of huge databases of vocabulary has revolutionised English learners dictionaries over the last ten years. It has also focused attention on lexical items of more than one word and collocation. It was realised that though the average speaker uses a relatively small number of words in everyday communication, they actually use a vast number of lexical items, because these common

1990s to the present

words enter into a multitude of collocations (heavy traffic) and fixed expressions of many kinds (At the end of the day, get to grips with). It was suggested that, although it is possible to generate sentences from an underlying system of rules (as Chomsky and other linguists had suggested), in fact, because of our limited processing capacity and the repetitiveness of much communication, we actually use blocks of language which are stored as whole phrases in our mental lexicon. The Lexical Approach, developed by Michael Lewis and others, suggests that we should no longer separate vocabulary and grammar, but instead, help learners understand and use the chunks of language they need. Diversity in EFL Coursebook writers of the mid-1990s have responded to task-based learning and the lexical approach by providing many more vocabulary exercises, especially collocation (eg Hot verbs in every unit of Cutting Edge) and communicative tasks either between units (in Cutting Edge) or photocopiable games in the teachers books. In many ways, however, these coursebooks are evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, as the underlying grammatical syllabus and many of the exercise types would not be out of place in a 1970s coursebook. The contexts in which English language is taught have become increasingly diversified. There has been a huge growth in demand for primary level English courses. Similarly, Business English and English for Academic Purposes have grown substantially. Various countries have increased English language teaching throughout the school system from 8 years old upwards. There has been increased demand for teacher training and development and a growth in the number of professional organisations, conferences, academic journals and magazines for teachers, including many webbased sources. During the 1990s there was also an explosion in the number of universities offering Masters Courses in Applied Linguistics. Increased research and the difficulty of finding convincing evidence for theories and practices of language teaching has made most theorists cautious in recommending the best method. However, there is general agreement that the complexity of language and learning means that simplistic models of the past, such as Direct Method and variations of audiolingualism, which still dominate the field, have no theoretical justification.

Some Recommendations for further reading The Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (Ronald Carter and David Nunan eds) CUP 2001 This book contains 30 chapters on key issues, each of which is written by a world-renowned authority on the subject. It is a review of the state-of-the-art in Applied Linguistics. Its a serious book - the bibliography contains over a thousand references! One warning: it wont answer your questions, but it may give you some more you hadnt thought of!

Classroom Second Language Development (Prentice Hall 1988) Rod Ellis One of a number of clear and comprehensive books by Rod Ellis on the implications of applied linguistics for classroom language teaching. Teaching Languages: A Way and Ways (Newbury House 1980) / Success with Foreign Languages (Prentice Hall 1988) Earl Stevick Stevick was an intensely personal, open-minded and philosophical writer on language teaching and learning. How to teach Grammar / How to teach Vocabulary (CUP 1999) Scott Thornbury A comprehensive and practical guide to theory and classroom implications. Also see his website: www.english-unplugged.com for some vigorous debate about materials-free teaching. Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching (CUP 2001) J. Richards and T. Rodgers An updated version of their summary of language teaching methodology, including a brief history and an overview of the current situation. A History of English Language Teaching (OUP 1984) A. Howatt The only general history of our subject, recently reprinted. Challenge and Change in Language Teaching (Heinemann) J. and D. Willis eds An overview of attempts to apply research and theories from applied linguistics to classroom teaching. Contains concise summaries of the lexical approach and task-based learning. Words in the Mind (Blackwell 1994) J. Aitchison A very readable introduction to psycholinguistics Vocabulary (CUP 2001) Norbert Schmitt An overview of current theories and research How languages are learned (OUP 1993) Patsy Lightbown and Nancy Spada A readable introduction to language acquisition Language Myths (Penguin 1998) L. Bauer and P. Trudgill A very readable investigation of commonly-held beliefs about language, such as Some languages are harder than others and Women talk too much.

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