.

FOLIOm.

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J (’ it r n a I o f l li e

M a tc r i a I s

D e v clop in c ii t

A s s o c i a t i o u

1 Volume 4 111 .1 t S ll .1

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To(io 4. lJuly 1997

In this Issue:

Jan BellM.I.A. de Cambiasso Bibiana Christensen Peter Donovan Rod EllisCristina T. de Grondona WhiteRoger GowerJeremy HarmerEmily LitesClaudia MoiFelicity O’DellPhilip ProwseLaura RenartAlison RiceJoanne RoxburghBaimei ShuSusan StempleskiBrian TomlinsonGraciela M. de ZabaletaWeiyou Zhang

'

[Mln

m a t s d a

MATERIALSDEVELOPMENTASSOCIATIONchairBrian Tomlinson

- .

-

MA in L21\N /* a

MaterialsDevelopmentiu^°

' This course• offers an experiential approach relating

practice to theory and theory to practice• focuses on the development of the

participants knowledge, awareness and skillst with the opportunity tok • develop original research

^k • relate the course to on-going

materials projects• experience the process of L2 publishing

• test new commercially produced

materials• develop multi-media and text

course materialmake conference presentations

This one year I

taught MA for M

EFL/ESL I

teachers,

writers and

publishers

covers all aspects

of materials

development and

relevant areas of

applied linguistics

im

ii

Fori

further

details

please

contact:

Brian Tomlinson (MA L2)

University of Luton

75 Castle Street, Luton

Bedfordshire, England LUI 3AJ

Tel:+44 1582 489041

Fax:+44 1582 489014

Bycom^^l

£d to excellence in education and research —

r

MATS ©A IFdJfilVolume 4/1 July 1997

(CaDintteniitts tHhi® MM®itCristina Banfi

This issue of Folio grew out of the enthusi- Welcome from the Chair Brian Tomlinson 2 asm demonstrated by presenters and participantsThe Future Perfect? Brian Tomlinson

Seeing Double: MATSDA and MWISAlison RiceOptions In Form-Focussed InstructionRod EllisFrom Teaching to Writing - Principles

and Process Roger Gower & Jan Bell Piloting Course Materials for PublicationPeter Donovan

From the Editor Cristina Banfi 1

2 at the 8th MATSDA conference in Dublin in January, 1997. The quality of the presentations and discussion on the theme of “New Direc-

4 tions in Materials Development” was such that the need to publish the material and distribute it

4 via Folio became immediately evident. This valu­able collection of work is the result.

:

j 0 This issue includes contributions from a num­ber of materials writers, publishers and teachers from different parts of the world, a reflection of

13 the varied backgrounds of participants at the con-Procedures for the Evaluation of In-House ference. The articles cover a wide range of ar- EAP Textbooks Joanne Roxburgh 15 eas, from the theoretical and research-oriented,Can AGE Meet The Needs? Baimei Shu 18 to those concerning the practical aspects of ma-Getting Started In Video Materials: terials desi8n 311(1 Publication. The topics dis-

^ _ f cussed cover areas as varied as designing mate-An Author’s Experience Susan Stempleski 23 . , r . , , . . ... , ,r ' rials for teacher training; writing coursebooks;What’s in a Word? Some Thoughts on designing materials based on videos, songs orWriting Vocabulary Exercises vocabulary; designing materials for English forFelicity O'Dell 25 Academic Purposes or for Business languageProject Work to Integrate Business English Caching, etc. Several common threads underlie Skills Emily Lites 27 the contributions, such as the crucial importanceReading Rock Poetry in the EFL Class of PilotinS’ Redback and evaluation in the ma- Claudia Moi 28 terials design process and the need to provideHow To Write Readers Philip Prowse 32 choice for teachers and students.^ . a* j r rr oo I would like to thank all contributors for theirClassrooms m My Mind Jeremy Harmer 33“Believe It or Not!” Interdisciplinary Project WorkCristina T. de Grondona White, Graciela M. De Zabaleta, M.I.A. de Cambiasso

infinite patience particularly concerning the long distance communications that were required to get this issue of Folio to successful completion.

This editorial is far too short to provide a35 detailed introduction to what is in store for the D^fficu?t^l^iiye'ct1*n^r^ent*na:^n^r0n*Ca^ reac*er °f this issue, so, without further ado, I

Bibiana Christensen, Laura Renartwould like to encourage you to read on and en-

36 joy a veritable materials development feast!A Strong Cultural Component In EFL Mate­rials Weiyou Zhang 3g Cristina S. Banfi,

Queens’ College, Cambridge, CB3 9ET, UK.cristina@ling.ucl.ac.uk

Folio 4/1 Page 1

in December 1996 by Brian Tomlinson andWsHgcdim© ffirawm QMiiirBrian Tomlinson

was runHitomi Masuhara for university lecturers at the Na­tional University of Vietnam in Hanoi. The Work­shop was run as a joint University of Luton/MATSDA enterprise and was sponsored by the University of Luton, by Heinemann and by an award from the En­glish Speaking Union.

The Workshop was considered to be successful by the participants in terms of developing awareness of principles of learning and teaching foreign lan­guages, of facilitating the production of quality ma­terials for students at the National University and of

f- 7

Welcome to another issue of FOLIO and to the news that we are still continuing to expand our mem­bership, that we are spreading out to more and more countries and that we are managing to bring together more and more people and ideas.

REPORT ON MATSDA ACTIVITIESThe 8th MATSDA Conference - New Directionsin Materials Development

The 8th MATSDA Conference was held at Trin­ity Institute in Dublin on January 24th and 25th.The theme was New Directions and many interesting sug­gestions for change were put forward both by pre­senters and by participants.

The Conference was considered to be a great suc­cess by the 120 participants from Argentina, Chile, China, Ethiopia, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Namibia, Turkey, UK, Uruguay and the USA who enjoyed sessions from:

Dave Allan Shu Bamei Peter Donovan Roger Gower Grethe Hansen

establishing potentially fruitful contacts between Viet­nam and the University of Luton, and between Viet­nam and MATSDA.The MATSDA Committee

The MATSDA AGM was held on Saturday, Janu­ary 25th during the Dublin Conference and the fol­lowing committee members were confirmed for 1997:

- Brian TomlinsonChair- Alan Battersby- Steve Williams- Mertxe Martinez- Cristina Banfi- Louise Hepper- Richard Law (British Council Representative) -Sue Parker- Diane Schmitt- Charles Shields- Rhiannon Williams

SecretaryTreasurerFOLIO EditorMemberMemberMember

Claudia Moi Uwe Pohl Philip Prowse Joanne Roxbuigh Brian Tomlinson Zhang Weijou Jane Willis

MemberMemberMemberMember

Michael Hoey Mike McCarthy

Hitomi MasuharaEverybody agreed that Dublin was an excellent

place to hold such a conference and that the conviv­ial atmosphere contributed positively to the quality of the sessions.

We are extremely grateful to Jim Feiguson, Chief Executive of ACELS for helping us to organise this conference in Ireland and to ACELS and Cambridge University Press for providing sponsorship for the Conference. We are also extremely grateful to the presenters and the participants for being so enthusi­astic, active and congenial.The MATSDA Book

The 3rd University of Luton/MATSDA Research Conference

The Conference was held at the Faculty of Hu­manities (Castle St. Campus) of the University of Luton on Saturday, June 28th from 10.00 to 16.00. The theme of the Conference was Research for L2 Materials Development

i

FUTURE MATSDA ACTIVITIES MATSDA Materials Writing Workshop

Brian Tomlinson and Hitomi Masuhara ran afour-day MATSDA workshop for teachers of EnglishThe Dublin Conference was held (rather prematurely

as it turns out) to celebrate the publication of a book in the Seychelles at the end of May and they will be on materials development written by contributors to runn*n§ a similar workshop in Botswana later in the MATSDA conferences. The book will now be pub- ^ear' ^ese workshops have been made possible by lished as: awards from the English Speaking Union and the

assistance from the British Council.The 9th MATSDA Conference

Tomlinson, B. (ed.) (1997) Materials Develop­ment in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cam­bridge University Press. The ^th MATSDA Conference will be held inIt should be available in the bookshops in Octo- nort^ °f England in September 1997. Arrange-

ber 1997. ments are still taking place but it is planned to hold athree day event which will include a one day followThe Vietnam Workshop

A four day Materials Development Workshop UP mater*a^s writing workshop. The Conference will

Page 2 Folio 4/1

be advertised as soon as arrangements are completed More cooperation between teachers, but you can also request information by contacting writers and publishers (especially Brian Tomlinson at the address below: outside the UK). 4

More focus on international EnglishBrian Tomlinson, Chair of M ATSDA, Faculty of Humani- and culture, ties, Univ. of Luton, 75 Castle St., Luton LU1 3AJ, UK.Tel: 01582 489041; Fax: 01582 489014.

3More adaptable self-access materials. 3 More systematic trialling of materials. 2 More reflection of learning research in materials. 2

irilacB IFm&mip® IPfcirff©©^

Brian TomlinsonA move away from the centrality of grammar.Better testing materials.Better teacher training materials.More photocopiable material.More use made of authentic material. 2

2222At the 8th MATSDA Conference in Dublin in

January 1997 I asked the audience at the final ple­nary what they would like to see happen in the next ten years in EFL published materials. The audience consisted of teachers, researchers and writers from Argentina, Chile, China, Ethiopia, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Namibia, Turkey, UK, Uru­guay and the USA.

Thirty nine members of the audience accepted my invitation to hand in their three wishes for the future of EFL publishing. Those wishes which re­ceived two or more mentions were as follows:

Number of Mentions

In addition there were 43 wishes which only re­ceived one mention each.

The most noticeable commonality amongst those wishes which received the most mentions was the plea for more open-endedness. The audience wanted more choice, more flexibility, more variety and they wanted the learners to be given more opportunities to engage their minds and their imaginations. But maybe the MATSDA audience is unrepresentative and maybe most teachers do want the closed, gram­mar-centred materials which are currently on offer. Interest ingly though, none of the 117 wishes of the audience coincided with what EFL publishers are pro­viding us with in 1997. For example, despite what the Introduction to New Headway Intermediate (Soars and Soars, 1996) tells us that we want, nobody wanted more grammar, more focus on accuracy, more prac­tice activities or shorter reading texts. And nobody wanted the centrality of grammar, the short texts, the closed activities, the safe topics, the lack of choice, variety and flexibility and the invariable unit format which the new Lifelines Pre-Intermediate (Hutchinson, 1997) has just offered us.

What do you think? What would you like to see happen in EFL publishing in the next ten years? We would be happy to publish your letters and/or to add your three wishes to those recorded above.

If you are interested in contributing to the debate about what teachers want publishers to do, write to: Brian Tomlinson, Chair of MATSDA, Faculty of Humanities, University of Luton, 75 Castle St., Luton LU1 3AJ (Fax: 01582 489014).

!

i

I

Wish

More localisation of materials.More application of current research into spoken discourse.Greater choice for learners & teachers of routes, tasks &leaming styles. More resource books of texts, tasks etc. for teachers to choose from.More motivating/provocative texts and topics (‘real issues’ rather than ‘bland texts’).More variety of authors, materials, styles and formats.More encouragement of imaginative, intelligent, open ended responses (especially at lower levels).More use of practising teachers as textbook writers.Imaginative use of new technology (especially the Internet).CD ROM ‘Coursebooks’.More flexible/adaptable materials. More useful teachers’ books (i.e. with useful suggestions for teacher adaptations).The publishers to listen more to what teachers want.Cheaper materials.

9

7

6

5

5

5

5

5

444

ReferencesHutchinson, T. (1997) Lifelines Pre-Intermediate. Oxford:

Oxford University Press.Soars, L. and Soars, J. (1996) New Headway Intermedi­

ate. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

4

44

Folio 4/1 Page 3

MATSDA announcement for a conference in a 14th century inn in Lancashire. How could Chicago or Orlando compete? But, could I justify a trip to Eu­rope for only a few days? My qualms had worn off by the time Dublin was announced. I doubt that MWIS will ever be able to compete on venue - Geor­gian mansions are scarce in my country - but we share

ESL materials writers in the USA generally work so many of the same concerns in our desire to make in isolation As far as I know, no masters program for our students and fellow teachers hves ncher through writing L2 materials exists in the States: most writ- the materials we write. I am del.g e o be a mem-

formal training, and start by adapting ber of both organizations, and encourage all of youclasses. As to do the same.

S®©tosg ID)©uaM©2

MI ATS ID) A sinto MtWHSAlison Rice

Hunter College, CUNY

ers have noteaching materials created for their

ly use coursebooks, and have little knowledge of their popularity outside of our borders, our market Alison Rice is “supplementary” textbooks: readers, conversation or listening books, and, for those brave enough to face the giants, grammars. Isolation continues even after acceptance of a proposal. Since the mergers of many small companies into huge conglomerates, most of us have little developmental input from publish-

- they say that supplementary texts don’t justify the cost. Freelancers copy edit the completed manu­script, and off it goes to production.

MWIS (Materials Writers Interest Section), a Introduction small part of the International TESOL organization, was started in 1985 to combat the loneliness and frus- tempts to intervene in the process of interlanguage tration many of us felt. We wanted a support group: development by inducing learners to give focal at- people to advise us on how to get a great idea turned tention to specific forms (and the meanings they re- into a book, on the business aspects of publishing alize) in order to learn them. Form-focussed instruc- (although discussion of issues such as contracts and tion, then, requires learners to act as ‘learners’ rather royalties is not part of our charter), and on issues such than as ‘users’ and contrasts with ‘meaning-focussed as political correctness and cultural sensitivity. From instruction’, which requires learners to give focal at- the start, members included both writers and pub- tention to message conveyance and to act primarily lishers: this was a collaborative, not a combative group. What we arrived at, after several years of lob­bying for official status in TESOL, was an incred-

ownwe rare arice@shiva.hunter.cuny.edu

(©iptxtoms to litoirim-

IF®(ei3iiss©dl tostomcedtooaRod Ellis

Temple University, Philadelphiaers

The term ‘form-focussed instruction’ refers to at-

as ‘users’.The study of form-focussed instruction has been

motivated by both theoretical concerns (e.g. the ex­tent to which interlanguage development is driven by internal mental processes or by factors external to the learner) and by pedagogical questions. Early fo­cus-on-form studies (e.g. Pienemann 1984; Ellis 1984) were primarily concerned with finding out whether form-focussed instruction ‘worked’ (i-e- whether it enabled learners to acquire the structures they had been taught). These early studies did not distinguish among different kinds of form-focussed instruction. Instead, they tended to treat ‘focus-on- form’ as a generic phenomenon to be contrasted with

ibly warm, generous group of materials developers at all stages of their careers. Not all of us are pub­lished authors - just wanting to be involved in mate­rials development is sufficient reason for member­ship. Our first move was to create a Dial-a-Writer/Dial-an-Editor network for in-group use.

Nowadays, e-mail advice has largely supplanted the telephone. This is not surprising in a group that has grown from under 100 members to 500 primary members, and over 2000 secondary members. Mem­bership is truly international-one past Chair is Uru­guayan, another Australian. We meet once a year at ‘f uTESOL, but learn from each other through a twice- rocus-°n-meaning’ • In retrospect, this early researcn yearly newsletter, and a column several times a year 7™' ^er^aPs’ United value to teachers, who view in TESOL Matters (the bimonthly organ of TESOL) form'focussed instruction as a highly differentiated and, of course, presentations at the national conven- Phenomenon- Subsequently, however, researchers tion. ave turned their attention to another question - ‘What

I had thought belonging to MWIS was sufficient °f form"focussed instruction works best?’“until, while surfing the net some time ago I spotted a Whl°h accords more closely, I think, with the teacher’s

perspective. It is this question that I will be con-

Page 4 Folio 4/1

E

cemed with here.One way of characterizing differences in instruc­

tion is in terms of ‘options’. Stem (1992) sees the identification of options as a way of proceeding be­yond the concept of method, which is now generally recognized as too crude a concept on which to base either research or teaching. One set of options Stern considers is what he refers to as teaching strategies’. My goal is to identify

ber of such strategies for form-focussed instruction based on what is known about how learners acquire an L2. In other words, I want to try to identify in­structional options that have some psycholinguistic validity.

form-focussed instruction can intervene in the pro­cess of interlanguage development. In the case of [A] instruction is directed at input. That is, attempts are made to contrive texts, oral or written, in such a way that learners are induced to ‘notice’ specific tar­get features as they try to comprehend the texts. Fol­lowing VanPatten (1993), I refer to this option as ‘structured input’. [B] involves attempts to develop learners’ explicit understanding of L2 rules - to learn about a linguistic feature. I refer to this option as ‘explicit instruction’. [C] is the option most gener­ally associated with fomi-focussed teaching; it en­tails creating opportunities for learners to practice producing a specific target structure. My label for it is ‘production-practice’. The final option, [D], in­volves the provision of feedback demonstrating to learners when they have failed to use a structure cor­rectly in their production. This supplies learners with negative rather than positive evidence regarding tar­get language structures. I refer to this option as ‘nega­tive feedback’.

Two general points are in order. The first is that form-focussed lessons typically involve combinations of these options. For example, explicit instruction, production-practice and negative feedback are often combined. This makes good sense from the teacher’s point of view as it optimizes the potential effect of the instruction. However, as we will shortly see, it is impossible to determine which particular option is responsible for any learning which is found to have taken place. The goal of current form-focussed re­search is to identify as precisely as possible the inde­pendent variables in L2 acquisition.

The second general point is to emphasize that these four options that I have identified constitute ‘macro-options’. Each one can be broken down into more delicate ‘micro-options’. For example, there are many ways of delivering ‘production-practice’ depending on whether the pedagogic aim is to care­fully control learners’ output or to provide opportu­nities for relatively free production using the targeted structure. Planning a form-focussed lesson involves not only deciding what macro-options to use but also choosing particular micro-options. Researchers, too, have to take decisions about what micro-options to include in their ‘treatments’. The problem, here, is that while the choice of macro-options is theoreti­cally motivated (as suggested by the computational model), there is often no explicit theoretical basis for distinguishing micro-options. Such options have a pedagogical status but no obvious psycholinguistic justification.

I would now like to show you some sample teach­ing materials for each of the four macro-options. I have also chosen one study to illustrate the kind of

a num-

A computational model of L2 acquisitionThe particular model of L2 acquisition with

which I have chosen to work is derived from a com­putational metaphor. There are, of course, other mod­els, based on other metaphors, which doubtlessly suggest other instructional options. However, the computational metaphor is currently dominant in SLA. According to this metaphor, L2 learners are viewed as intelligent machines that process input in a mental ‘black box’. This contains wired-in or pre­viously acquired mechanisms which enable learners to internalize new knowledge for use in output tasks.

The particular computational model I have been working with is shown in Figure 1 (next page). A basic distinction is made between explicit L2 knowl­edge (i.e. knowledge about grammar) and implicit L2 knowledge (i.e. the kind of unconscious knowl­edge of grammar used in everyday communication). The learner’s interlanguage system is comprised of implicit knowledge. Explicit L2 knowledge consti­tutes a completely separate system of knowledge. Learners notice, probably consciously, grammatical features in the input, thus creating intake (i.e. the fea­tures enter short-term memory). If the learner is de­velopmental ly ready, intaken features are incorpo­rated into the interlanguage system. Otherwise they are forgotten or possibly shunted into explicit knowl­edge. Explicit knowledge may also convert directly into implicit knowledge but only if the learner is de- velopmentally ready. However, explicit knowledge may facilitate interlanguage development indirectly by helping learners to notice features in the input and also to notice the gap between intaken features and the learner’s existing implicit knowledge, thus pro­moting the restructuring of interlanguage. This model, then, sees implicit L2 knowledge as primary and explicit knowledge as secondary.

Points of interventionFigure 1 also shows a number of points where

Folio 4/1 Page 5

I |C1IB] |D|I A]

EXPLICIT L2 knowledge 1

monitoringnoticing-the7gapnoticing

fINTERLANGUAGE SYSTEM (IMPLICIT L2 KNOWLEDGE)

T OUTPUT---- rINTAKEINPUT

Figure 1: A computational model for L2 acquisition

research that has investigated each of these options. 2. I am bored when someone tells a joke. However, I will make no attempt to provide an ex­haustive account of the relevant research.

3. People who gossip a lot are very irritating.4.1 get irritated with small talk.5. It is interesting to talk about yourself.6. I am interested in people who always talk aboutThe structured-input option

This option entails learners in processing input themselves, that has been specially contrived to induce compre­hension of the target structure. Learners are required to listen to or read texts (consisting of discrete sen- The psycholinguistics rationale for using the struc- tences or continuous discourse) and to indicate their lured input option is that acquisition occurs when understanding of them, for example by carrying out learners attend to the new structure in the input rather

•a command, drawing a picture, ticking a box, indi- than when they try to produce it. It has been hypoth- cating agreement or disagreement. The learners’ re- esized, therefore, that form-focussed instruction may spouses to the input stimuli are non-verbal or mini- prove more effective if it is based on structured-in- mally verbal; they do not involve actually producing put rather than output practice. A number of recent

studies have investigated this.For example, Tanaka (1996) compared the rela-

Here is an example of an ‘interpretation task’ that tive effects of instruction based on input-processing makes use of this option. The target structure is predi- and production-practice. He studied the effects of cate adjectives (e.g. the distinction between ‘boring’ form-focussed instruction on the acquisition of rela- and‘bored’). L2 learners have been observed to con- live clauses by 123 high school students in Japan, fuse these, producing sentences such as ‘*1 am bor- Pre-tests showed that, prior to the instruction, the ing with you’. In this task, the learners have to sim- subjects possessed little knowledge of the particularply indicate whether they agree or disagree with a relative clause structures he focussed on. One group series of statements.

etc.******************************************

'

the structure.

lures anc^werp^hnat 100 °f lhe re,ative clause s,ruc‘containing relative" *° listen ‘° 20 sen,enceS lures depicting ,i C auses ancl draw arrows on pic-der to show tl lc re*erents of each sentence in or-lence. After le subjec^°bject relfitionship in the sen-rect answer 1 Sentence' they were shown thecor-get structure f We^er’ tfley never produced the tar-

nother group was also given an ex-

******* ******************************* *** jj.An Example of a Structured Input Task

Do you agree or disagree with these statements?

1. Quiet people are boring.

Page 6 Folio 4/1

plicil explanation but then engaged in a production task that required them to join two simple sentences using relative clauses. Feedback, including negative feedback, was provided after each sentence. Tanaka used two tests, a comprehension test and a controlled production test, to measure what the subjects had learned. Both tests were administered twice, once five days after the treatment and again two months later. On the comprehension test, the structured in­put group outperformed the production-practice group on both the immediate and delayed post-tests. In fact, the production-practice group showed hardly any improvement on the pre-test. On the production test, both groups showed gains on their pre-test scores. The production-practice group obtained significantly higher scores than the structured-input group on the immediate post-tests but not on the delayed post-test. This study, then, suggests that structured input in con­junction with explicit instruction resulted in learning that was durable and available for use in both com­prehension and production tasks. In contrast, produc­tion-based instruction in conjunction with explicit in­formation resulted in learning which was available for use in production but not in comprehension and which atrophied markedly over time. Tanaka’s study suggests that teaching grammar through structured- input may have advantages over traditional ap­proaches that emphasize production-practice.

my application for a job. Unfortunately, he was involved in a car accident in the morn­ing and rang to cancel the appointment. I made another appointment to see him at 10 o’clock on Friday 21st February. However, when I got to his office, his secretary told me that his wife had died at 2 o’clock in the night and that he was not coming into the office that day. She suggested I reschedule for sometime in March. So I made a third appointment to see Mr. Bean at 1 o’clock on Monday 10th March. This time I actually got to see him. However, he informed me that they had now filled all the vacancies and suggested I contact him again in 1998. I as­sured him that he would not be seeing me in either this or the next century.

2. Write the time phrases into this table

AT IN ONat 3 o’clock

3. Make up a rule to explain when to use ‘at’, ‘in’, and ‘on’ in time expressions.

Fotos and Ellis (1991) reported a study designed to investigate the relative advantages of direct and indirect consciousness-raising. We found that both options resulted in statistically significant gains inExplicit instruction

The principal choice in the delivery of ex- understanding the rule for dative alternation in two plicit instruction is whether to teach explicit rules di- groups of college-level Japanese students. In one rectly or to develop activities that enable learners to group, direct explicit instruction resulted in higher discover the rules for themselves. Direct explicit in- scores on a grammaticality judgement test but in the struction takes the form of verbal explanations of other indirect explicit instruction proved equally ef- grammatical phenomena. Such explanations can be fective. In a more elaborate follow-up study, Fotos oral or written. They can stand by themselves or can (1994) found indirect instruction worked as well as be accompanied by exercises where learners attempt direct instruction in teaching explicit knowledge of to apply the rule they have learned. In indirect ex- three different structures (adverb placement, dative plicit instruction, learners complete ‘consciousness- alternation and relative clauses) to 160 Japanese uni­raising tasks’ where they are provided with data il- versity students, lustrating the workings of a specific grammatical rule.They analyze the data to discover the rule. Here is an indirect option. Inviting learners to discover rules example of a ‘consciousness-raising task’ directed at for themselves may be inherently more interesting to helping learners discover when to use ‘at’, ‘in’ and learners than simply being told them, and therefore, ‘on’ in adverbial phrases. more intrinsically motivating. Also, if the conscious­

ness-raising tasks are performed in groups and the target language is used as the medium for solving the problems they pose, they double up as communi­cative tasks. Learners can as well talk about gram­mar as any other topic.

There are a number of reasons for favoring the

******************************************An Example Of Conscious-Raising Task

1. Underline the time expressions in this passage.

I made an appointment to see Mr. Bean at 3 o’clock on Tuesday 11th February to discuss

Production practiceThe traditional way of teaching grammar is

through production practice. There are a plethora of

Folio 4/1 Page 7

. , tinnrm If the production-practice is directed at a structurewell-established devices for eliciting production ^ ,earners are not yet ready to acquire it is likely t0

creation tasks, where learners are gu.ded into pro reject y J

i, is hoped ,o posh the learner Iron, controlled to to learning an L2. Thus, prodnc.ion-pr.cttee dtrectedtomatie nse of thelarge. suucure. »h“h '“s alre»d^ Pf* ~

Here areexamples of production practice invol.- qnired may lead to greater control over them. In othering text-manipulation and text-creation. words, although production-practtce may not enable

learners to integrate entirely new grammatical struc­tures into their interlanguages, it may help them to use partially-acquired structures more fluently and more accurately. An interesting question, then, is whether production practice based on text-manipu­lation or text-creation is best suited to improving learners’ control over structures. I will briefly con-

*:£***:}:** ************ ************* * *******

Examples of Production-Practice Tasks

A. Text-ManipulationFill in the blanks in these sentences.

aTues- sider a study that has addressed this question.Castagnaro (1991) investigated the effects of two

kinds of production-practice on Japanese college stu- a Saturday dents ability to produce complex noun phrases. A______the control group was given a picture of a kitchen and

simply practised labelling the objects in it. One ex­perimental group took part in a repetition and blank­filling exercise based on the same picture and de­signed to practised complex noun phrases. The sec­ond experimental group was asked to work in pairs producing their own sentences describing the vari­ous kitchen objects. The learners in this group out­performed the learners in both of the other groups in a post-test that measured their ability to produce complex noun phrases.

__ 1944__two o’clock

Mr. Short was born May theday

morning.Mr. Long was bom ______November _

1955 _____five o’clock

afternoon.etc.

B. Text-CreationFind three people who know:• the year they were bom• the day they were born• the time of day they were bom

Complete this table about the three people.

Name Year Day Time Negative feedbackNegative feedback provides learners with evi­

dence that an utterance they have just produced is incorrect. It serves, therefore, to help learners no-

theoretical doubts about the efficacy and ^ their °W" deViant ProdUCtl°nSof production practice. Learners require time to in- Neg^tTvTfeed^rWt pr°dUCtl°nS‘ tegrate new grammatical structures into their with egatlV^.feedback often interlanguage systems. Many structures are devel Pro uction practice. However, there aopmental in nature requiring learners to pass through t believinSthat il may Prove more effe 'pre a series of transitional stages before they arrives P ““ the COntext of activities wh®re|’*the target language rule. It is uncertain whether nrn PrlI™ry focus-on-meaning (i.e. when the ea duction directed at such structures in the course of a ” ^ 0peratlnS Primarily as users rather than lea lesson, or even a series of lessons, can enable learn ^ *** m°re concerned wilh message-exchangers to construct the kind of knowledge needed f ~ nT Wlth grammatical accuracy). Learners are mor communicative on-line production. Furthermor^ lkely’Perhaps, to be receptive to corrections directe learners have their own built-in syllabus, accordirT ^ °Wn freely-Produced sentences. But more to which some structures are acquired before othp ^ ^portantly, corrections provided during the course

0 c°mmunicative activity address the errors learn

1.2.3.

There are

in conjunctionoccurs

Page 8 Folio 4/1

in rn n °n" ine as °PP0Sec^t0 those they make so by means of the production-practice option. Ma- dtl e Sramrnar exercises. Johnson(1988)has terials for teaching grammar in both old and more

e iat earners need to see for themselves what modem course books testifies to this. However, as I as gone wrong, in the operating conditions in which have shown, there are other possible ways of inter- ey went wrong (p. 93). it is possible that only on- vening - by means of structured input, explicit in-

me corrections have any lasting effect (i.e. help leam- struction and negative feedback in the context of com­ers to perform the corrected structures more accu- municative activities. SLA researchers are just be­rate y at a later time). Here is an example of an on- ginning to investigate these options with some prom- ine correction. ising results, particularly where structured input and

negative feedback are concerned. It is, of course, too early to say which option is most effective - in­deed, we may never be able to do so, as different options or different combinations of options may suit different learners. But clearly there is a need for teachers - and materials writers - to experiment with alternative ways of proving a focus-on-form.

******************************************Negative Feedback On-line Correction

A: I bom on 1944.B: Oh, you were born in 1944.C: Yeah, in 1944.**************************j|CjjCj|c,JCj};.J;,jc,|c;}!,|5jjc;jc,jCjj.

Doughty and Varela (1995) carried out an inter- References esting study to investigate the effects of negative feed- Castagnaro, P. (1991) “An experimental study of two back on learners’ communicative output. In this study, 6th-8th grade ESL learners were given nega­tive feedback focussing on the past tense errors they made in oral and written lab reports of scientific ex­periments they had carried out. The feedback took the form of recasting the students sentences in order EUjs, R. (1984) “Can syntax be taught? A study of the to supply them with correct past tense models.

interventional packages to improve student produc­tion for the notion of relative position.” Unpublished paper, Temple University Japan.

Doughty, C. and Varela, E. (1995) “Communicative FonE”Paper given at 1995 Annual A A AL Conference, Long Beach, California.

effects of formal instruction on the acquisition ofWH questions by children.” Applied Linguistics 5: 138-Doughty and Varela report that over a six week pe­

riod the learners subjected to this treatment showed gains both in terms of using more advanced Eubank, L. (1987) “The acquisition of German negation interlanguage past tense forms and in terms of cor­rect target language forms. These gains were evi­dent in both their oral and written lab reports. In contrast, a control group which did not receive the

55.

by formal language learners.” In B. VanPatten, T.Dvorak and J. Lee (eds.). Foreign Language Learn­ing: a Research Perspective. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

Fotos, S. (1994) “Integrating grammar instruction and communicative language use through grammar con­sciousness-raising tasks.” TESOL Quarterly28: 323-

treatment, showed gains only in the use of more ad­vanced interlanguage forms in their written lab re­ports (i.e. there were no overall gains in the use of target forms and no gains in the use of more advanced Fotos, S. and Ellis, R. (1991) “Communicating about gram- interlanguage forms in their oral production). This research, which in many respects serves as a model for the design of focus-on-form studies, demonstrates Johnson, K. (1988) Mistake correction . English Lan-

cn-hn. negative feedback can be effective in ac- ^ “f *-££ JL* * Sw

celeratmg inter anguage eve opmen . Language Acquisition. Oxford: Pergamon.Negative feed-back can be provide in l erent pjenemann, M. (1984) “Psychological constraints on the

ways (i.e. there are many micro-options to consider). teachability of languages.” Studies in Second Lan- For example, the feedback may be implicit as when it takes the form of a confirmation check, or explicit Schmidt, R. (1994) “Deconstructing consciousness in

search of useful definitions for applied linguistics.” In J. Hulstign and R. Schmidt (eds.) Consciousness in Second Language Learning. AILA Review 11.

Stern, H. (1983) Fundamental Concepts of language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Tanaka, Y. (1996) The comprehension and acquisition of relative clauses by Japanese High School students through formal instruction. Unpublished Ed. D dis­sertation, Temple University Japan, Tokyo.

351

mar: A task-based approach.” TESOL Quarterly 25: 605-628

guage Acquisition 6: 186-214.

as when it functions overtly as a correction. Each of these can be broken down into more delicate options. Currently, we know very little about which kind of feedback is most effective, particularly in the contest of on-line communicative language use.

ConclusionTraditionally, when teachers have tried to inter­

in interlanguage development they have donevene

Folio 4/1 Page 9

over the years; we looked at other material - the ‘com- IFirdODm CBIDIuIEIg petition’; we watched lessons and talked to teachers,

rw wtipfWMInn © - informally and in ‘focus group’ format; when pos-(£(0 WUimHU g s.ble we did some teaching at the level to remind

lPIp3nil©3lpQ®S amdl pF<B<B©SS ourselves of classroom realities and to give us a feel^ ^ o ,, 0f What would work and not work; questionnaires

Roger Gowei &Ja were sent out to get the views of teachers in different, ., .T„nA schools and colleges in different countries; and in

This article is a summary of a talk given at the i learned a foreign language at the same

3 . _ , ,, . nfutpw 1 of view Much of this work was done in close col-'global' course senes from the author s point ojuew. , . , , , . ,* laboration with (and in some cases was led by) theLike all published coursebook writers we started publisher. Sometimes we found the research altered

out as teachers. In our case we both then moved into our initial ‘gut feelings; sometimes it didn t. teacher training and one of us also moved into ELT management. We then, separately, started writing 1.2 Planningmaterials for publication while trying to keep direct The next stage, once the go-ahead was given, was links, by teaching and observation, with the class- to plan the first draft: getting our syllabuses/check-

. The more varied and demanding the other roles lists together, agreeing on our topics and texts, and the more difficult this was, particularly regular teach- making basic strategic decisions such as the number, ing. The first serious question then arose when we moved into the intensely-demanding area of ceived by the market and publishers on our sample coursebook writing, with the ‘Matters’ series for adult material. At this stage key questions were thoroughly and young adult learners published by Longman: how discussed, could we maintain some-kind of contact with the 1.2.1 The role of the material

I

room

length and structure of units, based on comments re-

We had always believed, in line with many teach-teachers and students for which we were writing andmake our materials credible and real? We were very ers for whom we were writing, that coursebooks the aware that many published materials suffered from view of some of our potential market, which still the authors being too long out of the classroom. At expected classes to be led by the material and teach- the same time, we knew that many full-time teachers ers to wade through unit by unit covering everything, do not have the time, energy or skills necessary to Sometimes this relationship with the material was an write coursebooks. But there has to be various meet- institutionally-imposed convenience linked to exams; ing points between the two worlds if the materials sometimes it was bred of the feeling of authority are to be right and we had to build them into the given by a coursebook and sometimes it was the re­

sult of teacher insecurity. In its most extreme form, still remember being asked by a Director of Stud­

ies to write to the teachers at her school to say they had our permission to cut out some of the exercises

to if they wanted to! How could we retain our principles. , . a°d not completely exclude less flexible and less

example, the role of texts, our approach to grammar, teacher-empowered situations’?our view of how vocabulary would be taught, the 1.2.2 The structure of the material place of pronunc.at.on, whether we expected the Believing in integrated-skills approaches, how material to be used systemat.cally or more as a flex- could we provide materials that were both integrated 'b e -source These principles mevttably affected the and flexible? And how could we chunk the units into

book and Teachers’ Book. The practical aim at this f h°! d WC assume a lesson t0 be?! Was it to bestage of a project was to produce a rationale for the i^ °f providinS clear semi-independent lessocourse, syllabi or checklists, and sample units for the to ada T'.h “T"3'activities and guidance as t0 h°' |publisher to send out to readers for comment We also 12ir 1:adrs,aba1,„,idpMinglhele„gtha„d„omberof '

To help us with these decisions we drew uDon ^USt °ne element in language proficiency. Wht e j our experience and the beliefs we had accumulated cu lT*16 V'CW of many of our potential users, soni

* believed that the essence of language teachtn0 1

J

different stages of a project.we

1. Getting it together 1.1 Pre-planning/research

Our first job at each level in the series establish our pedagogic principles for that level. For

was

!

Page 10 Folio 4/1

g mmar teaching. So the questions of how much students 2-4 hours a week in a non-native speaker grammar should be presented; what of type gram- environment. (There was a real dichotomy between mar would be focused on, formal or pragmatic; how the two groups when it came to Listening texts.) And it should be described, whether in terms of a rule ofthumb or accurate , how it should be taught, whether cus on skill development and/or language awareness? it should be analytic or inductive; how it should be 1.2.7 Writing/speakingpractised; how it should be revised and recycled; all Were we to focus on ‘process approaches’ when ecame key questions. many 0f our users would find them difficult, both in.2.4 Vocabulary terms of the time they have with a class and their

Vocabulary was another key area. What type of own teaching skills? Were we to provide teacher train- vocabulary should we choose and how much vocabu- ing support in the Teachers’ Book? And how could lary should we focus on? Should it be topic based we provide communicative, information-gap activi- and/or form based? Should it be linked to text? How ties within the constraints of a coursebook and at the much work should we include on collocation? How same time cater for the often more mechanical needs far should we link vocabulary learning to use? How of examinations? What writing tasks should be in the could we balance the teachers’ interests, who often coursebook and what should be in the Workbook and wanted something more interesting than the same old Teachers’ Book? topic areas; and students needs, which were often day- to-day and practical and sometimes exam-linked?1.2.5 Pronunciation

how ‘authentic’ should the texts be? Should we fo-

These were all questions which had to be resolved before or while writing the first draft. Inevitably we found ourselves up against the basic question: how

What was to be our strategy with pronunciation? far do we try and impose our own principles on po- Should we integrate pronunciation work into listen- tential users and hope to change their current prac- ing activities or provide discrete practice? What could tice and how far do we give teachers and students we do that was really effective at a particular level? what they say they want. Of course our publishers Were we simply pandering to a teacher view that stu- also had views on this and we cannot deny modify- dents like ‘ pron. work’, yet knowing full well that it ing our pedagogic beliefs in order to meet perceived would never make any difference to student profi- ‘market needs’ - or, to put it less sinisterly, in order to

meet the realities of different situations to the ones we were most familiar. ^ Whether this is a good or

Then there was the question of topic. Should each bad thing is an open question. Do courses based only unit be topic-based to provide coherence and on market-research succeed? - isn’t a vital ingredi- generativeness but then, isn’t a single topic boring? ent for success, even for materials which claim to be And what kind of topics should we choose - the same based on the needs of the market, the pedagogic prin- old topics which students like but perhaps with a dif- ciples of the authors? But we feel that broadly we ferent slant, or something new to stimulate tired teach- can live with our consciences and that while com­ers? And then of course we came up against the old promising we didn’t ‘sell out.’^ chestnut in materials writing: how controversial could

topics get without losing our potential users? 2. Making it right Particularly the real-world topics of sex, drugs, 2.1 Pilot edition homelessness, politics, death, religion - classic near- taboo topics in coursebooks.

ciency?1.2.6 Topics/texts

our

For the first level in the series we did a complete pilot, for other levels we did partial piloting, a couple

And topic links to text. At some levels shouldn’t of units only. Issues concerning piloting have been the units be text-led? What should guide our choice raised elsewhere4 and, in common with many other of text? Should they contain a generative topic that coursebook writers we have talked to, many scepti- students would relate to and get them speaking? cal questions were raised by us.Should it reveal an interesting use of language that 1. What does the process actually show you?That hasn’t been taught or should it be seen as an opportu- a few individuals in their context like the material nity to recycle grammar and vocabulary? What ‘tone’ and can use the activities or not? And how do you and feel should the text have, given the expected age know that it’s the material that succeeded/failed and of our users - serious or light? How long and how not the teacher, the students or the general context difficult should the texts be? We had always assumed within which they are working? It’s difficult to evalu- a guiding principle of ‘Comprehensible Input +1’, ate feedback sometimes if you don’t know the teach- but it wasn’t easy to decide what that was when some ers and their context well and you don’t have the op- UK teachers saw their students 10+ hours a week in portunity to talk to them.

saw their 2. Some students and teachers are put off by thenative-speaker environment and othersa

Folio 4/1 Page 11

teachers from countries we were not very familiar with and who were less experienced and perhaps more ‘typical’.

Do readers need to be anonymous, if so why? And if so, are they ‘real’ teachers or are they Direc­tors of Studies and people influential in choosing ma­terials? The authors need to know.

How far will readers really engage with the ma­terial if they are not being paid very much to do it? and, will they merely give it a quick read through?

If they have to fill out a long questionnaire will it put them off doing it? But how else, other than ques­tionnaires, can you get some readers to focus on key issues and not just improve your rubrics?

And as with piloting, how do you evaluate the feedback? We decided that there needed to be two categories of readers: one we called our ‘inner sanc­tum’, the other our ‘outer sanctum’. Our ‘inner sanc­tum’ were teachers and trainers we knew, respected and could meet to talk things through with. They be­came close collaborators on the project. Our ‘outer sanctum’ were readers who represented the diversity of potential users, the ‘silent majority’ (to quote our publisher).

Nevertheless, while we were sometimes heavily influenced by our readers, it has to be said that we found it very difficult to weigh often totally contra­dictory points of view and bring them into some kind of relation with our own beliefs. And also, as with trialling, key areas that materials writers are aware of, such as unit structure, syllabus and questions of pedagogic principle, seemed to be of far less interest to a teacher than a good text or a good activity.

But it has to be said that at the level of activity we have had some marvellous readers - and some who say not only that this won’t/didn’t work but “why don’t you do this instead?”

quality of the pilot materials they are piloting, such as the lack of colour, and this can affect the feed­back.

3. Since most piloting is voluntary, you usually get the keenest teachers agreeing to do it and often in wanting to please the publisher they give over­positive feedback - even if they are not getting paid.

4. Writers often don’t get any real feedback on the key issues of pedagogic principles, syllabus and unit structure, regardless of whether you send out questionnaires to provoke responses in these areas. Teachers tend to focus more on whether activities work or not.

5. We so dramatically changed the material after our very first pilot, and only partly on the basis of what the piloters said, that if we were being thor­ough the redraft should also have been piloted. How often can that happen?

6. The time it takes to go through the piloting process can increase the length of project-time dra­matically. If a draft of the whole course is piloted, this process will often take a year, and then the writ­ers have got to re-write it, which can be a matter of months. Authors have been known to wait six years from the beginning of a project before they see any royalties, and that’s assuming the course sells, and who pays the bills while all this is going on? Ad­vances may be forthcoming, but in educational pub­lishing they are notoriously ungenerous.

We’re not saying that piloting is a waste of time and money - it isn’t: all feedback is useful and pro­vokes discussion; it provides good writing experi­ence for the writers before they go ‘live,’ and it of­fers the publishers opportunities to ‘involve the mar­ket’ in the production process so that, hopefully, the market develops allegiance to the materials. It’s just that, in our view, some key decisions have to be made if you are to get the best feedback. For example, can the piloters not be anonymous, can the authors talk to them, can they see the materials being taught, can they shape the questions that need to be asked in ques­tionnaires, and so on? It has to be said that not all of these we resolved satisfactorily for ourselves.

2.3 Working with othersAt this stage, there were other things going

The designers were thinking about and drafting de­signs; discussions were had with the publisher on most of the fundamental issues of content and length and Audio-Visual departments were made aware of a recording policy, such as on the balance of authentic and studio recordings, the inclusion of off-air mate­rial and so on.

Also a decision was taken as to who was to write the Workbook and Teachers’ Book. If it’s else, who was it to be, how close had they been to the project, and how far did we, the main authors, get involved in planning, shaping and amending the ma­terial that they would write. We tried both writing these parts of the course ourselves and working with someone else. There are definite benefits in bringing

on.

etc.;

2.2 ReadersReaders are usually teachers or Directors of Stud­

ies who look closely through the material, imagine it being used in their context, and write a report as to its suitability. Good reports are likely to be both gen­eral and specific in their comments.

Readers, in our view are very important, but again questions need to be asked. Can the authors choose the readers as well as the publisher? In our experience it was always important to hear from teachers we knew and respected, as well as from

someone

Page 12 Folio 4/1

in a fresh source of ideas but no one can deny that there are practical problems. In our experience it worked because our third writer had been a long-ti friend, professional colleague and close ‘inner-sanc­tum’ reader on earlier levels in the series.

which you are illustrating your pedagogic talk. You are required to do promotional tours in a number of countries, to talk to both teachers and publishers rep­resentatives. But how far all these affect eventual sales is a matter of debate and the subject of a different discussion. We did it and also enjoyed it - up to a point. However, it was sometimes very difficult to wax creative about elementary level teaching when all your thoughts and energies were engaged in writ­ing advanced level materials.

me

3. Making it fitSome materials writers seem to write for the page

with one eye on the classroom; others (like us) write for the classroom with one eye on the page. This not a question of policy but more our instinctive way of working, and it caused us problems because often we overwrote and our material didn’t fit. This in­volved cutting all or parts of exercises, which made some of our material seem bitty. We also sacrificed some key pedagogic areas which users later com­plained had been left out. There is a publisher’s view that the cutting stage is highly creative (a bit like ed­iting a film). While understanding the idea, it never felt like that! That is one of the reasons why configu­ration (number and length of units) was to us, and still is, a key issue.

BThen there is the relative importance given to design - should all the artwork be functional, how big should it be, how much white space should there be for it not to feel off-puttingly cramped. If some­thing has to be cut should it be an exercise or some artwork when design was crucial in determining the ‘feel’ of the course.

There is also the frequent discrepancy between what a designer calls a well-designed book and what a teacher regards as a well-designed book. We can’t pretend the decisions that were made, either driven by us or our publishers, were always the right ones. Sometimes they were, some we regretted.

There are frequently other issues that came up which link to our needing to be ‘global’: will this design be suitable for that country? will that market need more explicit rubrics? Shouldn’t there be more up-front teaching approaches for that country, so why don’t we cut back on the group work? And so on.

Finally, when it comes to making it fit there are things to decide about what you will put into your ‘end-matter’: tapescripts? a pronunciation chart? a list of irregular verbs? a word list? If so, why and how will they be used? Not all users wanted the same things. For example, some said they didn’t want tapescripts in the Students’ Book; others said they were essential.

was

EndnotesThe word ‘global’ is a slight misnomer - no coursebook

is ever global, not even Headway,: It simply aims to catch a particular market sector in several (but is never success­ful in all) countries.^ Andy Hopkins raised the question of top-down ap­

proaches in “Revolutions in ELT Materials?.’’ In Folio 1/2 Nov. 1994.^ The issue is discussed more fully in Bell, J. and R. Gower “Writing course materials for the world: a great compro­mise?’’ In Directions in L2 Materials Development (to be published in 1997 by Cambridge University Press.4 See Peter Donovan, Piloting course materials for publi­cation (this issue)

1

!

Roger Gower Addison Wesley Longman Edinburgh Gate Harlow, Essex CM20 2JE

HU® Mug Miaidcgirfi-siHs ffcDir ]pisiM3(EaiM®ia

Peter Donovan

Cambridge University Press

This article is a summary of a presentation given at the MATSDA Conference in Dublin in January 1997, and is

based on a more extensive paper to be published in Tomlinson (ed) Materials Development in Second

Language Teaching by Cambridge University Press at the end of 1997.

Anyone who has ever designed an exercise or task for a class, used, and then modified it for re-use in the light of the results, can be said to have piloted that material. Piloting goes on all the time in teach­ing situations, in a range of formal and less formal settings. Piloting of materials ultimately destined for publication, however, requires a more formally struc­tured process.

Typically, pre-publication piloting involves a physical distance between the producer and the user; a production phase for the materials (pilot copies of

4. Making it sellIt goes without saying that authors are required

to attend conferences to provide ‘soft’ promotion talks, where you may or may not be allowed to men­tion in an up-front way the name of the materials with

Folio 4/1 Page 13

r They will then be able to judge the pilot materials according to such a subjective schema, and these views can be usefully discussed. Ability in term tests and summative assessment at the end of the course

sometimes be taken into account, but the role of the materials in the process of learning can valuably be assessed subjectively.

In addition to a general feel for the effectiveness of the materials, piloting can reveal much about the detail of the material in use. If the approach is inno­vative, has it been implemented in practical terms which are accessible to teachers and learners? Can they follow what is required of them? Is the content and its treatment genuinely interesting and motivat­ing? Is the material organised into suitable and real­istic chunks of lessons, sections, units, etc.? Does it require undue amounts of preparation and resource­fulness from the teacher? Does it fit the hours avail­able? Is there a suitable sense of progress and achieve­ment for learners, teachers, parents, and for any ex­ternal validation required?

Piloting is essentially a human, interactive and affective process, and the results may not be wholly objective or ‘scientific’. The process can involve many variables. Substantial quantities of materials have to be shipped to various locations; if they do not arrive in time or in good shape, the pilot may not get underway in that place. Teachers change or are reassigned classes, and the teacher who commits to piloting may not be able to carry it out. In private adult teaching, the composition and interests of groups may not be known until the learners actually arrive in class, and the pilot materials may not be suitable for them. Increasingly in primary and ondary education, parents are involved in the selec­tion of materials, and a consultation phase may be necessary before the piloting is agreed. Goodwill and commitment from the piloting institution and indi­vidual teachers are essential: with a wide range of suitable and attractive published material already available, changing to untried and untested material in pre-publication black and white format is not nec­essarily attractive. It has to be the process that has attractions, as well as a willingness to participate in a relationship which will have benefits for future us­ers, and a hope that it will also benefit the original pilot group.

Given that the piloting process consumes time and resources, and requires the involvement of a wide range of teachers and students, what are the advan­tages and disadvantages? Why does Cambridge Uni­versity Press, at least, continue to pilot materials a significant scale?Advantages include:

confirmation (or not) that the materials fit the

print and audio materials); and time for the whole process to be set up, the materials used, and the re­sults sent back and the implications considered and implemented. Piloting materials before publication, therefore, adds time and costs to a project, as well as requiring an outlay of resources.

The scale of the operation can vary according to the type of publication, from piloting a few units with a limited number of classes, to producing complete levels of a main course for use in a laige number of classes in various locations throughout the world. Some piloting may be done of more final material, at a Iate-ish proof stage, when some modification can be made before publication in the light of reactions. However, the most useful piloting, and the type car­ried out by Cambridge University Press in develop­ing its ELT materials, is after the first draft of the materials when changes on whatever scale required are still possible. Clearly, this procedure has impli­cations for the length of the development process, and time has to be built into schedules not only for the piloting phase but also for subsequent revisions. Experience of piloting course materials, especially those for market sectors the publisher may not have existing experience of, is that fundamental aspects of the course sometimes have to be revised: length, organisation, order and content of syllabus, etc. There may, therefore, need to be major changes as well as fine tuning of content, debugging of exercises, mak­ing instructions clearer, and so on.

Reactions to piloted material are most widely col­lected by means of written questionnaires. These re­quire careful construction, to elicit the required in­formation, and detailed (and time-consuming) com­pilation and analysis of the results. However, equally or more important are face-to-face interviews with teachers, and class observation. It is here that the more qualitative aspects of the process can be probed more fully - likes, dislikes, preferences, suggestions, ques­tions, comparisons with other material, and so on - particularly when they are conducted by editors with a detailed knowledge of the materials, and by the authors.

i

can

1

:

sec-

Perhaps the most difficult overall question to get firm feedback on is: ‘Do the materials enable stu­dents to learn effectively?’. Often, comparison is made of learners’ progress against that made when using other material. In a large-scale pilot, it might be possible to have some classes using the pilot ma­terial and other classes using their existing material. Comparisons can then be made across the groups. More usually, teachers have a sense of where they expect their learners to be in terms of overall ability, acquisition of items, coverage of the syllabus, skills development and so on at certain points in the course.

on

Page 14 Folio 4/1

'

audience in terms of overall level, approach, con- which enables us to continue this process. This gives tent, length, pace, syllabus, etc. us and our users the satisfaction of knowing that whende-bugging of individual tasks, instructions, etc. our materials are published they have benefited not

• getting concrete answers to general questions - only from piloting, but often from substantial revi-how will users respond to new approaches, what sion which would not have been possible had the trends are users ready to follow, how far can materials gone straight to press. Our view is that we materials design break out of current patterns, have a responsibility to innovate in our publishing, etc. Piloting can actually lessen the risks involved in such

• maintaining a close relationship with between the a stance, resulting in a realistic blend of innovation producers and users of our material - authors and within acceptable and workable publishing formats, editors, and teachers, learners, and schools test­ing the market, particularly when entering a new Peter Donovan, Publishing Director ELT

Cambridge University Press Edinburgh Building

We will typically carry out much larger piloting “idg^CB^RU, UK.

pdonovan@sun l .cup.cam.ac.uk CUP on the Web: http://www.cup.cam.ac.uk/

sector.

schemes in sectors where we have less experienceof the needs of users, creating some degree of advance publicity and awareness of forthcoming develop­ments in our markets, and especially a word-of-mouth effect.

IPM)(CUUDHJME§ MM

TOE EVAILUJATODN (DIFm-ihkmjsib eaip toot-

IB<D<D]&S

Some of these advantages will imply certain dis­advantages or risks, in particular:• added costs in the development process time

added to the development• schedule security - disclosing our developments

before publication• not being ‘first in’ with new publications• dependence on the quality of the feedback, which

may be affected by a number of practical vari­ables in the process

• results reflect how ‘typical’ the pilot situations are, and often it is the less typical and more privi-leged institutions which put themselves forward L Textbook Project at BUSEL (Bilkent Univer- for piloting

• piloting can over-expose materials, so that by the

Joanne Roxburgh

Member of the Bilkent University

School of English Language textbook group

sity School of English Language)Bilkent University is a private English-medium

time they are published they may be over-famil- university in Ankara, Turkey. Students entering theuniversity take an in-house English language profi-

• some high-profile institutions may be frequently ciency test - the COPE exam. Those students who approached by the same range of publishers anx- do not pass examination take full-time intensive ious for their involvement, leading to a ‘pilot fa-

iar to some users

courses in English at BUSEL (Bilkent University School of English Language) for a minimum of one semester and a maximum of two years.

weigh the disadvantages and problems, and we have j teaching aim at BUSEL is to prepare stu- a commitment to continuing piloting on varying &S * .fir acidties by improving their English scales with different types of material in future. The ™ ,StU ^ S1 ,S* ^rom l^e filings of a student needs impact on costs is one which we are willing to bear ?qq7S1S u^ted throughout the faculties in 1992- in the interests of producing materials which have • a S,-1 S~ aSe sy1Ia^us was designed specify-been effectively trialled and revised before publica- 108 j t,VCS t0 be covered at each level.tion, and the time required for this has to be built into RI TapT • / a text ook project was established inthe development process. In this we am Mulling onr EAPcouSbortVSLT.^ySSS^ function as a university press, committed to serving ^ t , T T ’ h 1. oojectives.the needs of education and learning, and able to rec- 3 C’ 6 PpCr ntermediate textbook has been

oncile the commercial requirement of obtaining a re- at thjs jeve| turn on our development investment with a timescale

tigue’ syndrome.

The CUP view is that the benefits of piloting out-

i

ij!

published and is being used with mainstream students

The textbook project team consists of six BUSEL

Folio 4/1 Page 15 ;

K

4. Pre-Publication Evaluation - PilotingThe purpose of this piloting was to determine that

the materials we had designed were appropriate for our situation. That is, we wanted to see if they were:• at the right level of our students• appropriate for the level objectives specified in

the syllabus• appropriate for the age, cultural and educational

backgrounds of the students• appropriate for use by all of the teaching body

After specifying this as our purpose, our next de­cision regarded who would participate in the pilot­ing procedures.

Students were selected who were typical of the target level, although there were variations across the classes in terms of their levels of English, study skills, motivation, and awareness of the principles behind the design of the materials.

Teachers were also selected from those who were already teaching at the target level and who were therefore familiar with the level objectives in the syl­labus. Among the teachers there was a range of back­grounds and teaching experience although we did not use teachers who were in their first year of teaching. We made a particular effort to achieve a balance be­tween native and non-native speaker teachers.

Observation played an important role in this evaluation. The observers were the materials writers themselves together with members of BUSEL’s Teacher Training Unit and the Assistant Director of the school. All of the observers had experience in conducting observations. However, the members of the textbook team were given additional training sions by the Teacher Training Unit to address the type of observation appropriate for evaluating materials - focused on the materials and the students rather than on the teacher.

We piloted the materials over two separate weeks. The first half of the book was piloted at the begin­ning of the course and the later units were piloted at the end. This decision was taken so that we had time to gather and analyse the data as well as to enable decisions to be made regarding further action that would be taken. It also allowed time for reports to be prepared to give feedback to the participants and other interested parties within the school. Further­more, it took into account the differences in level and objectives from the beginning until the end of the book.

teachers who each commit four days a week to the project. It was decided to choose writers from the teaching body so that they would all be familiar with the teaching situation and also to promote ownership of the textbook. After a five week training course at Reading University, the team started writing the first materials.2. Role of Evaluation in Materials Design

For any writer, evaluation can play an important role in the design and implementation of materials. However, this is especially true for new writers. In the textbook project group, therefore, we are particu­larly interested in formative evaluation and have de­signed two such evaluation procedures:• pre-publication evaluation, and• post-publication evaluation

At the very start of the project, we decided that piloting would be a central part of the material de­sign process. This pre-publication evaluation is clearly formative as it has a direct impact on the ma­terials themselves and also provides us with feed­back on our approach to materials writing.

After the publication of the first textbook of the series, we decided to evaluate again. Despite the fact that this is post-publication evaluation, it is still for­mative in that, in the short term it is informing our writing of the next books of the series, and is also highlighting areas where teachers need further train­ing and support. A decision was also taken not to publish the teachers’ book, so that it can be revised from course to course, taking into account any issues which arise from this evaluation. In the longer term, feedback obtained from this evaluation will be taken into account when the materials in the students’ book are revised for the second edition.

After the completion of the project there will be a summative evaluation, looking at the impact of the textbook series. However, this will be extrinsic and will not influence the writing of the materials.

1

jjjr

ses-

3. Factors Influencing the Design of the Evalua­tion Procedures

As with all evaluations, in designing our proce­dures we have made decisions as to why we are evalu­ating, who we are evaluating for, what we are evalu­ating, who is carrying out the evaluations, how to collect the data, how to analyse it, how to respond to the findings, and how to communicate effectively with everybody throughout. When we were making these decisions we took into account our knowledge of the users of our books, time and resource con­straints, and attempts to achieve objectivity whilst at the same time getting the most valuable information we could.

The decision to pilot the whole book over only two weeks necessitated the decision to pilot the text­book in chunks rather than as a whole.

The disadvantages for us of piloting the whole book was that greater time would have been taken up with the piloting and that our response to the feed-

Page 16 Folio 4/1

back would not have been immediate. We also had was useful, we found that the qualitative data, espe- o consi er that there would have been pirating im- daily the data obtained through observations,

plications if the book was made widely available prior the most informative.t0 ^publication. Because of the usefulness of observation for the

ere were, however, certain disadvantages in- materials’ writers in terms of seeing the materials in volved in piloting in chunks. The most important action, in the piloting of the second textbook we have being that it would be difficult to get feedback on the tried to ensure that the materials writers observe their cohesiveness of the whole book and that there would be no feedback

was

own materials. Although there was a greater risk of on the progression of objectives observer bias, it was felt that the benefits outweighed

through the units. This proved quite a major draw- any costs, back for us. We had all had experience writing indi­vidual materials, but this was the first time that we 5. Post-Publication Evaluation had written a cohesive course of materials. After the publication of the first book, we de-

instruments for collecting data were prepared by cided to carry out another evaluation. As new writ- the textbook team after a consideration of the fol­lowing:• the existing BUSEL criteria for materials

selection

ers, we wanted to evaluate our approach and certain features which would be common to other books.

Having decided to evaluate the book post-publi­cation, there were again decisions to be made in de-

• literature pertaining to current trends in piloting signing the procedure. These decisions specified whowe were evaluating for, who the evaluators were, what

i

• the level of awareness of our students• other piloting schemes we were evaluating, how the evaluation would be • advice from an external expert (Gill Stutridge of carried out and how that data would be analysed and

responded to.We were of course evaluating for ourselves, but

we were also evaluating for:the future users - both teachers and students

iReading University)Quantitative data was collected from the students

using the following instruments:• ‘Daily checklist (students)’ which were com- •

pleted at the end of each day• ‘Weekly checklists (students)’ which were com­

pleted at the end of each week This data was then collated and analysed in per-

• the teacher trainers - who will train teachers on how to use the book

• curriculum team - who will assess how well the book meets the syllabus requirements and how well it realises the syllabus objectives in terms of sequencing, grading, prioritising and method­ologythe institution as a whole - including the man­agement teamThe evaluators themselves were the textbook

centages.Qualitative data was obtained through structured

interviews with the teachers and through observa­tions. In addition, with the agreement of the class • teachers, certain lessons were video recorded which proved particularly useful for lessons in which the main aim was speaking. This data was of course more project members and the current users - both teach- difficult to analyse. We analysed it by writing it up ers and students. A monitoring group was also formed and highlighting the main points.

After analysing the data, a piloting report waspiled so that the results could be made available teachers, a curriculum representative and a teacher

to the participants and a record of the data and find- trainer, ings kept. Copies of the report were made available to all the participants. As this became quite an ex­tensive document, a summary of the report was also ing potentially problematic.

news- • writing - has the input helped writing? - have the tutorials been successful?

• note-taking - What strategies have students de-

to discuss issues arising on a fortnightly basis. It consists of a member of the textbook team, selected

com

In deciding what we were evaluating, we chose to focus on the following areas which we saw a be-

prepared and published in the BUSEL weekly letter to inform the whole school of the results of thepiloting process.

veloped?EVta‘i0n f t1h7r0CedUfre, f . • vocabulary - What strategies have students ac-We found p.lotmg essential for improving the ma- quired for selecting and recording vocabulary"tenals. Changes were made to the top.cs, to texts, to • teachability - What has the effect been nn Lactivities and to the teachers’ notes. Piloting gave us culture of the organisation? H

a greater awareness of our target users both students Quantitative data was collected from both teach-and teachers. Although all the feedback we obtained ers and students through questionnaires and analy-

Folio 4/1 Page 17

r Cana ACT tilto©

N©®oils?sis of student work throughout the course. This analysed using appropriate statistical tests.

Qualitative data was also collected from struc­tured interviews with randomly selected students and teachers. It was decided that we would conduct these interviews in small groups, partly because of timeconstraints and partly to encourage discussion. As ~with the pre-publication qualitative data, the feed- Ever s.nce Engltsh has been taught m China, En- back we received in this way was collated and the glish major students m teachers colleges and urn- main points highlighted. versities have been using textbooks compiled for

An evaluation report is being prepared and will English majors in general universities whose studentsto be interpreters and translators.. This is not a

was

Baimei ShuCentral China Normal University

be made available to the participants. Executive sum­maries of the reports will also be made available satisfying phenomenon because students in teachers through the school’s weekly newsletter. universities have different needs, they will be teach-

are

ers of English at various levels. They need not only Evaluation of the procedure to learn the English language but also occupational

Post-publication evaluation was useful for us as skills, i.e., the ability to teach English.Therefore there it allowed us to consider the package as a whole. This exists an urgent need for a textbook which provides was the first time that we had considered the cohe- both language training and teacher training. Against siveness of the whole book, in terms of level and pro- this background the English Department of Central gression through the syllabus objectives. We gath- China Normal University joined hands with the Brit- ered information on the impact that the book was having on the institution and on student progress University as the adviser, and started a project in 1995

to write a series of textbooks: Advanced General

ish Council, with Mr. Brian Tomlinson from Luton

through the levels.As a result of data collected, more guidance to English (AGE), to meet the needs.

The target audience of AGE is the 3rd and 4ththe students is being given in the writing strand and the vocabulary strand of the next textbook in the se- year students in teachers’ universities in China. These ries (intermediate), teacher trainers are also giving students have learnt English for eight years: six years support workshops to teachers about certain aspects in middle school and two years in university. They related to EAP, changes are being fed into the next have reached a level of upper intermediate to ad- edition of the teacher’s book and a list of suggested vanced, with a vocabulary of about 5000 words and changes is being made to feed into the next edition a basic knowledge of English grammar. In terms of of the textbook. the four skills, they can communicate fairly fluently

on everyday topics. What they need at this stage is further development in communicative competence6. The Role of Evaluation in Textbook Design

As we were able to define our target audiences’ and some professional preparation for their future needs, it was useful for us to assess, through evalua- teaching job. tion, how far we were meeting those needs. Without evaluation, we found ourselves writing materials Syllabus without considering how they would work in prac­tice with our students and teachers. Evaluation forces of cultural, communicative and semantic syllabuses us to consider the age, cultural and educational back- (Stern, H.H. 1992). The aim is to expose the target grounds of our students. We have had to make cer- students to modern language in real use, to develop tain compromises in our materials so that they are their cultural awareness, language awareness and

appropriate for the expectations, existing learn- communicative ability. As future teachers of English, ing strategies and learning styles of the students and they need to be aware of the cultural differences be- also adaptable to the teaching styles and methods of tween their language and the taiget language, they teaching body. need to communicate by using the language they

Another very important role of evaluation for us learning in and out of the classroom, apart from other was that it promotes ownership of the textbook purposes, i.e., they need to know what to use, how to throughout the institution. Teachers and students have use it, and why they should use it in a certain way been able to give feedback which has influenced the Therefore our textbook should, implicitly or explic- fmal product. itly, incorporate ways of teaching, for the students’

future English teaching is largely modelled on how roxburgh@ctp.bilkent.edu.tr he learnt English from his textbooks and on how his

The syllabus for this textbook series is a mixture

more

are

Joanne Roxburgh

Page 18 Folio 4/1

teachers taught him. That’s why, apart from cultural awareness activities, language awareness activities and communicative tasks, we maintain well-used teaching techniques such as “paraphrasing”. It is a skill a teacher needs in order to help students’ prehension. He should have, at his disposal, ways of expressing the same idea in different ways. It is an ability of communicating with their students, of mak­ing themselves understood.

We don’t require students to understand every word, as traditional intensive reading does. We be­lieve that long-term acquisition is facilitated by ma­terial which is only partially understood (Lewis, M. 1993) and what is most important is language read­ing experience. Writing forms an integral part of the skills area and communicative writing tasks are de­signed at various stages. For example, at the reading stage, students are required to write down the inter­pretation of certain utterances, and, at the post-read­ing stage, they are asked to write down their home coming experience and feelings after they have been away for some time.

In addition to this “skills development” section, the other major section is “language study”. This sec­tion aims at detailed comprehension of the text through studying semantic aspects. We maintain that one can’t learn what one does not understand. How­ever this learning is learner-centred. For some words, students are asked to deduce their meaning from the cotext and the context and write down their interpre­tation. For other less-easy-to-deduce ones, students have to march the words with their possible explana­tions as they are used in the text. For those words and expressions which are often used in daily com­munication and need to be learned to use by students, we supply sentences which provide necessary con­text for their use and students have to complete them by choosing words or expressions from the text. For difficult sentences, students will be required to ex­plain them in different ways. In this process of “lan­guage study”, the students are asked to explore the texts by themselves, instead of getting direct expla­nations from the teacher. They are required to de­duce, infer meaning from the context, they have to supply answers by exploring the text, they have to find out how the text is presented, how the message is sent, in what way, what is the effect of doing some­thing in a certain way ... Our purpose is to help stu­dents make maximal sense from minimal resources (see Appendix)

com-

Overall structureThere are four books in this series: from book

five to book eight. In skills areas AGE tries to look after speaking, reading and writing (listening is not included to the following reasons: 1) there is a sepa­rate listening course at this stage of learning; 2) there are only six teaching hours in a week for this course, therefore not enough time for listening activities, which will take up more time than other activities; 3) physical conditions are not good enough for listen­ing activities in an ordinary classroom. Speaking is incorporated because there are not enough oral ele­ments in traditional textbooks for advanced students, and there are no oral classes in the senior years. To keep up oral practice which is usually neglected in the curriculum, and by students at this stage, we pay special attention to oral activities. For example, be­fore reading an article about Australia, the students are asked to share any information that they know about Australia with their group members, and, after reading, they are required to discuss whether they agree with the writer’s ideas and opinions.

Reading is the essential part in this textbook se­ries. The main body is task-based reading activities: from experimental reading to study reading (Tomlinson, B. 1997) from general reading to close reading. This is to train different reading skills and achieve different comprehension. Let’s again take the text about Australia for an example. After pre-read­ing activities, we ask thestudents to read and share the writer’s experience, then we ask them about their general reaction to the text. Then we put forward points for the students to keep in mind and they read the text again, this could be either skimming or scan­ning. The students are then asked to list things they have learnt from the text and this helps to enhance their cultural awareness. After this experimental read­ing which is closer to real life language use, we sub­ject the students to studial reading. They have to de­duce the writer’s attitude or opinions of some state­ments by referring to the context in the text, and they have to find by what way the writer achieved her vivid depiction of Australia and its people. This studial reading could help develop students’ reading skills as well as language awareness.

somePrinciples and rationale

A. Materials selection1. Texts should be authentic language use of modern English, a true reflection of how English is used for real communication.2. Texts must cover a wide variety of subject matter, on universal and timeless topics, preferably related to the learners’ personal experiences, and be inter­esting to read.3. They should cover a variety of discourse types, like oral, written, narrative, argument, exposition, description and so on.

h

Folio 4/1 Page 19

I4. Texts should be of different types and for different centred.purposes. Both experimental and studial reading, 3. change from knowledge to skill. Knowledge in- extensive reading and intensive reading should be volves answers and explanations and is necessary in catered for; materials where the students are explic- language teaching, but not sufficient. What matters itly not expected to understand every word should is not what you know, but what you can do. Know- be an integral part of the course. ing” a language is important for students, the ability

to use it is life-enhancing.4. change from sentence to text: Naturally occurring

1. Tasks and processes, rather than exercises and prod- language is never merely a sequence of sentence, ucts, a re emphasised. We try to use real tasks which What is more important for our students is the coher­

ence and cohesion of a text. If we concentrate on the

B. Methodology

necessitate communication.2. Teaching and learning is mainly task-based, with sentence as the basic unit of language, we could not students doing most of the learning through tasks, probably hope to develop our students’ language This aims at developing students’ responsibilities for awareness, thus unable to develop their communica- their own learning and fostering autonomy or inde- tive competence.pendence for the benefit of the future learning and 5. change from product to process: Traditional text­

books in China follow a formula of “text read ing3. Reading should be experiential first, then studial, —> comprehension questions —> formal exercises”, for experiential reading is closer to real life reading. All the students do is reading, checking comprehen- In natural language we read and re-read, check for sion and learning language points by heart. The em- particular information in a text we read earlier in de- phasis is on product. Now we try to shift our empha- tail, etc. Therefore, we should make it clear to stu- sis to process, a process of questioning, exploration, dents that reading is not a matter of plodding page by actively doing tasks with the language and commu- page, always doing the same things. Reading could nicating ideas and opinions. It is a process of active be done for different purposes and in different ways. learning which will foster independence of teaching4. Formal exercises are useful in focusing the atten- and learning, tion and checking factual knowledge. Though we still need formal exercises, the emphasis should be on authenticity in language tasks and process-focused activities or tasks, for example, the solution of a prob- activities should ensure successful language learn- lem, winning of a game, completion of a table, ere- ing and teaching. But can AGE meet the needs of ation of a wallnewspaper, etc. In the real world lan- student teachers in China? We still have to wait and guage is always instrumental; this intrinsic nature of see. The true test of theory is in practice, language should be reflected in classroom activities.5. If comprehension is hampered and grammar analy- Referencessis could facilitate comprehension, we should make Lewjs> M. (1993) The Lexical Approach Language. Teach­

ing Publications.

teaching.

We hope this careful selection of text materials,

reference to grammar. Here we allow teachers’ choices in dealing with the language problems Stem, HH-(\992) Issues and options in Language Teach-

8• Oxford: Oxford University Press.Tomlinson, B. (1996) “Choices” MATSDA Folio, Vol. 3/

(Tomlinson, B. 1996).1.

Change of mind-setWriting or accepting a new textbook with an

eclectic syllabus is first a problem of changing one’s Baimei Shu is an associate professor at the English De­mind set. In writing this textbook series, we have tried partment of Central China Normal University People’s to make five changes: Republic of China. Shu has been a teacher of English for1. change from answers to questions: Instead of pro- twenty years and now is working on the joint-project of viding ready-made answers to students, we try to tex,t>ook writing and is one of the writers.make students find answers by referring to the text,or encourage them to raise questions. We believe that Appendix - Sample text and activities answers block, while questions create (Lewis, M.1993). Real developmental learning comes from Text; Australia - The Mythological Crucible questioning. This was my first trip abroad. I was in a dazed2. change from explanation to exploration: Explana- stale* a ^ew days before I had been certain of tions are a kind of answer, often teacher-centred. who } was- Alas, I was about to understand, just as Exploration are a kind of question and a kind of pro- Aborigines had understood for some time, that the

— exploration is learning-based and student- Power to describe rests with the powerful It was inAmerica, and later in England, that I learnt what

Tomlinson, B. (1997) “Reading Forever”

cess

Page 20 Folio 4/1

Australia was—an outpost, a colony, terra incognita. I discovered that in Australia the moon was upside down, and water went down the plughole the wrong way. I discovered that Europe and America were a long way from Australia, but that Australia long way from anywhere. So far, in fact, that few people knew about it except that it was populated by sun-tanned men who wore corks on their hats, that kangaroos delivered the mail, and that people spoke surprisingly good English. Australians sang ‘Waltz­ing Matilda’ all the time and weren’t very bright. It came as something of a shock to me. People looked at me suspiciously and announced that I didn’t sound like an Australian, presumably because I didn’t say, ‘Ow ya goin’, spawt?’4But I am an Australian,’ I would say reasonably, 'Ergo, this is how Australians sound.’

Since then I have been wandering the globe, re­turning home for long stretches, only to find the itch­ing in my feet uncomfortable. They say this instinct for travel is a cultural traits, an atavistic sense that

dry grass, fresh, clean dust, ocean- captured me like tendrils, anchored me down, and I knew that I was home. I could see the familiar shape of banksias sil­houetted against the sky. The moon was bulging and golden, only distantly related to that icy, pale, dimin­ished, inverted creature of the northern hemisphere. And there was Orion, diving down, as he should, to­wards the horizon, not leaping up out of it. And with the sensual recognition of home came a soothing of some inner disturbance that I had not been aware of.

notwas a

ActivitiesSkills development

Pre-readingI. What do you know about Australia? Work in groups

and collect as much information as possible about the country and its people. You may follow the list below:- geographical location- history- people- culture

I

we have been marooned on a desert island, far, far from home. Whatever it is, it presents me with a prob­lem — where do I belong? Do I live in England and holiday in Australia, or do I live in Australia and holi­day in England? (Would anyone with a sound mind choose to holiday in England?) My excuse for my defection to London in that my work takes me there. It is much easier to write books when it is raining, when the sun doesn’t beckon you outside, when friends don’t drop by at all hours of the day and night to say things like ‘Oh, come on, let’s go to the beach/ Doyle’s seafood restaurant/party/film/play/Kinsella’s supper club/outbush/for a picnic/down the coast/sail­ing—you can always work tomorrow.’ In London people tend to leave you alone to get on with it, be­cause they are getting on with it themselves. They ring you up in advance before dropping in. In Lon­don, work takes precedence over having a good time. Down there, it’s not only the moon that’s upside down.

etc.II. Think about any homecoming you have experi­

enced after having been away from some time. What feelings did you experience on seeing the old familiar faces and places again?

i

Reading:I. Read the text about Australia, then discuss the fol­

lowing questions with your partner:1. What do you like most about this passage?2. What strikes you most about Australia?3. What’s your general impression of the Austra­

lians’ life and character?II. With the following points in mind, read the text

again, the answer the questions:1. The writer’s reaction to her country on returning

home.2. The difference between Australia and Britain.3. The writer’s general impression of her country.

Questions:1. Does the writer like travelling?2. Does she know definitely where she belongs?3. Does she think that everything goes normally in Australia like everywhere else?4. What’s her deeper understanding of Australia and its people compared with other countries?5. What does she see, hear, smell and feel on re­turning home?6. Do you experience thing in the same way or not? Which senses are the most important to you?

III. With the help of the context, try to deduce the writer’s attitude and opinions from the following

1/ In early 1987 I came back after being away for

two years, feeling that I had missed out on whatever the events were that had given Australia its present shape. Coming home again was like wading into

vegetable soup. As if the molecules were hav­ing too pleasant and easy a time of it to bother with all that nervous jumping around. I got used to it soon enough, as my own molecules got the hang of it and

slow, vacant smile began to take the place of the perennial cold-country pout. ‘What’s your hurry

te?’ asked me the man who stamped my passport. It is always through the sense of smell that I first

recognise a place—recognise its claim on me. The minute I stepped out into the night a tangle of smells-

warm

a

ma

Folio 4/1 Page 21

ii

$1 The authority to call an emergency meeting

.............. the president.(= The president

wanyZ W3S 3 '°nS f7 W7 ^ “"f eS7Tt h-2. Would anyone with a sound mind choose to holi- 3. What a beautiful p.cture of peace! The goats h,ghday in England (L5, Pa. 2) UP in the mo“ntains......... V....... ' jhe Snow3. Down there, it’s not only the moon that’s upside (= formed a dark shape against a light background)down. (L13, Pa. 2) 4.<Tve never used a word Processor before!”4. “What’s your hurry, mate?” (L6, Pa. 3)

extracts and write your interpretations beside them.

“Don’t worry—you’ll soon (= to learn how to do something, specially if it is not obvious or simple)

Now we’re divorced. You have no ............................... me. (= right to any of my

it.

Post-reading ^I. Do you agree with the writer that everything is

upside down in Australia? Discuss in your groups.II. The text is loaded with information and rich in

cultural implications. List those things you have learned from the text and see if you now under­stand Australia better.

III. Suppose you are away from home for a long time, e.g. studying in a university, or serving in the army, working in another city, etc. How would you feel on returning home? Would you feel like a stranger? Would you feel like a stranger? Would you feel uncertain about your identity? Write to your friend about your thoughts on returning home.

money)IV. To describe how she felt on returning home, the

writer used words of senses to share with the read­ers her experiences. List those words of senses from paragraphs 3 and 4 which describe:

a. what she could seeb. what she could feelc. what she could smell

V. The writer depicted Australians as a carefree people. She managed to achieve this apart from the facts she presented, by using two techniques. What are they? Find examples in the text to support your answer.

VI. To give a vivid description of her experience and feeling on returning home the writer used a num­ber of rhetorical devices. Find examples in the text and put them in their appropriate category, then discuss their effects:

metaphors:similes:personification:

VII. Suppose you are going to use this text in a middle school English classroom. However some of the language is a bit difficult for your students. Ex­plain the following sentences using your own words so that your students can understand them:1 •... returning home for long stretches, only to find

the itching in my feet uncomfortable (Ls 1-2, Pa.

•:

Language Study

I. Guess the meaning of the following words by re­ferring to the cotext and context and write down your interpretation beside them. Then check your work by looking up these words in a dictionary:

plughole beckon Orion

L5, Pa. 1 L8, Pa. 2 L6, Pa. 4

II. Match the words with the possible explanations as they are used in the text:

perennial a small settlement in a foreign try or distant part of a country which is used for trading or military purposes

coun

2)defection 2. As if the molecules were having too pleasant

and easy a time of it to bother with all that ner­vous jumping around. (Ls 3-4, Pa. 3)

3. ...as my own molecules got the hang slow, vacant smile began to take the place o perennial cold-country pout. (Ls. 4-6, Pa*

constant, everlasting or perpetual

outpost escape, desertionComplete the sentences with the correct form of

words or expressions from the list below. Th quired meaning is suggested at the tence.

of it and ain.e re­

end of the sen-

maroon get the hang of be silhouetted against rest with

claim ontake precedence over

Page 22 Folio 4/1

GETTIN G STARTED IN

VIDEO MATERIALS

DEVELO PMENT:

ONE AUTHOR'S EXPE-

RIENG E

ment process. By contrast, writing the actual activi­ties was a snap, primarily to present language, comprehensibility of spoken dialogue was a major concern. Breaking Away acceptably met all six of the following criteria for comprehensibility:1. High degree of visual supportThe film frequently offers visual clues (facial expres­sions, gestures, props, and settings) to what the char­acters are talking about.2. Clarity of soundThe nonlinguistic elements on the soundtrack (e.g., music, sound effects, and background noise) do not distract the viewer.3. Relatively low density of languageWhile there is an adequate amount of dialogue to exploit for language comprehension, the film does not contain any overly “talky” scenes.4. Clarity and speech deliveryThe characters speak naturally but slowly enough to be understood, and their accents are not distracting.5. Language contentThe dialogue contains interesting and useful collo­quial vocabulary (e.g..sorority, fraternity, flunk/pass a test, dorm) as well as examples of grammatical structures and language functions that are suitable for presentation at the proficiency level the class.6. Language levelThe level of difficulty of language in the film is ap­propriate to the class. The dialogue can be understood without the teacher having to spend an inordinate time on explanation.(For a more in-depth discussion of criteria for select­ing video materials, see Arcario, 1992.)In addition to meeting criteria that affect comprehen­sibility, the film was particularly appropriate for my students, young adults studying ESL in an intensive pre-university program in the U.S., for the following reasons:

Because I was using the film

Susan Stempleski

First Encounters with VideoThe first time I had the opportunity to use video

in my teaching was in 1983. The far-sighted director of the program in which I was teaching, the Hunter College International English Language Institute in New York City, recognized the potential of video (a medium which at the time was not used by any ESL teacher I knew) and purchased a video player and monitor for the institute. Along with the hardware, she obtained a copy of the only American ELT video series commercially available at the time: Follow Me to San Francisco (Caden & Griffin, 1981), a soap opera based on the adventures of Tom Williams, an ingenuous eighteen-year-old who goes to San Fran­cisco to visit his older sister. As one who thinks vi­sually and who is always anxious to try out alterna­tive teaching material, I started to experiment with the institute’s new hardware and the software. After using the video series for a couple of eight-week terms, and having some degree of success (if student comments in class and on evaluation forms can be trusted), I became even more adventuresome and foolhardy. I decided to try my hand at designing my own video-based materials.

lifv

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Forays into Video Materials DevelopmentI began with feature film and developed a six­

teen-hour listening comprehension and conversation course for high intermediate ESL students based on Breaking Away, a warm and funny movie about four inseparable teenagers growing up in Indiana. I di­vided the 101 -minute film into eight segments (which just happened to equal the number of two-hour classes allotted to the elective course in which I planned to

the film). The episodes varied from 12 to 15 min­utes in length, and for each episode I created a more or less regular series of previewing, viewing, and postviewing activities, all of which had a strong bias toward comprehension-type tasks. Because I wanted

tudents to be able to study the film dialogue on

r • The film featured young characters with whom the students could readily identify.

• The students could also relate to the central prob­lem of the film: finding one’s direction in life.

• The film is useful for its cultural insights. As a genuine piece of modem Americana (which is ironic when we consider that neither the writer nor the director of the film is an American), Breaking Away presents a tender, unpretentious picture of growing up unprivileged in middle America.Imperfect though it may have been, the course

was an instant hit with students. They were delighted to work with the “real thing”, and in this case the “real thing” carried the double-bonus of an Oscar- winning screenplay by Steve Tesich (himself a

use

my stheir own and in detail, and since, to the best of my knowledge, no transcript of the film dialogue available, I decided to transcribe the entire film script myself. This was by far the most time-consuming and frustrating part of the whole materials develop-

was

Folio 4/1 Page 23

i

coursebooks meant to accompany a particular video or series of videos.

The video-based print materials I have developed vary in content and form but fall into two basic cat­egories. The first consists of materials which, like the Breaking Away materials, center around authen­tic video material, such as feature films, documenta-

speaker of English as a second language) and direc- or tion by Peter Yates. In every way, Breaking Away proved to be an excellent choice for a first experi­ment with video materials development.

Further DevelopmentsOne year after introducing the film to my stu-

dents for the first time, I presented an overview of ries, and actual broadcast television news footage, the Breaking Away materials at the 19th Annual In- For lack of a better term, I use the word “authentic” ternational Convention of TESOL in 1985 in New to mean designed for showing to a native-speaker York City. Luck was on my side. As a result of that audience. (In some senses, the pace, repetition, and presentation (and much to my surprise), I was imme- density of dialogue in film and television drama can diately (right there in the room where I had just fin- be quite different from authentic dialogue in real ished making my presentation) approached by a rep- life.) Working with such material presents a number resentative of the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) of challenges to the materials developer. The fol- and invited by to make a lecture tour of Turkey in lowing is a summary of what for me have been the which I would use the Breaking Away materials as a most challenging aspects of working with authentic model for teachers to use to develop their own video- video:based lessons. This was the first of more than 20 • The topics and situations are not always geared

to learners’ interests and ability. Sometimes I have had to view hours of tape to locate just a few minutes of appropriate material.Authentic material in its entirety is nearly always too long for viewing in a single lesson. A 30- minute situation comedy, for example, can only be used for broad comprehension. To adequately exploit an entire feature film usually takes sev­eral weeks of classroom work. For detailed com-

USIA-sponsored lecture tours which have taken me (and my video materials) all over the world. A few years after that first tour, USIA procured the rights to duplicate the video of Breaking Away and to make it • available to English teachers around the world, and I was contracted to prepare the accompanying view­ing guide (Stempleski, 1988). Prior to producing the guide for Breaking Away, I had already gone on to develop a series of viewing guides (Stempleski, 1986; 1987; 1987a; & 1987b) based on four films in the award-winning film series “The American Short Story” broadcast by the Public Broadcasting System of the U.S.

prehension work, I have found it most useful to select and focus on appropriate short sequences. However, deciding exactly where these se­quences will begin and end can be an extremely time-consuming process.

• While news programs can be extremely interest­ing to both students and teachers, the headline stories are usually interesting only once— the day they are first broadcast. In the materials I have developed around broadcast television news footage (Stempleski, 1993; 1994), I avoided us­ing such stories and focused instead on “special reports” (e.g., “A Look at European Mass Tran­sit”) and biographical features (e.g., Marjory Douglas, 98-Year-Old Environmentalist”) which have a longer classroom life.

And After That...Since those early days I have continued to work

with video and to create video-based language teach­ing materials for my English as a second language classes, as well as for broadcast television, govern­ment agencies in the U.S. and abroad, and educa­tional publishers. The materials have been designed for a wide range of learners of English as a second or foreign language: from beginning to advanced lev­els, from primary school pupils to university level students, for adult learners studying English for busi­ness and other career fields to teacher trainees par­ticipating in seminars on American culture and lit­erature. Some materials are intended for use in a

(

The second category consists of materials based on videos produced specifically for use in the learn-

classroom; others are designed for adult learners ing and teaching of English as a second or foreign working at home without a teacher. Sometimes I have language. ELT-specific videos such as Hello America worked alone; at other times I have been part of a (Breyer et al, 1992)and That’s English! (Tomalin & team of two to a dozen or more authors. On occasion. , Stempleski, 1993), present carefully graded languageI have been involved in the actual scripting, casting, material geared to the interests of language learners, or directing of video productions, but most of my Because they are designed with the L2 learner in video-related work has focused on the writing of an- mind, working with such videos is usually much ciUary materials, such as viewing guides, workbooks, easier than working with authentic material, and their

Page 24 Folio 4/1

materials fnr 1™ i ’ r,1CU ar ^ w^en designing Susan Stempleski trains teachers in the MA Program in select' 1 eve classes, is obvious. While TESOL at Columbia University and teaches English as a

ion is a ways a big and time-consuming issue second language at the Hunter College International En­in wor ing with authentic video material, the mate- Language Institute in New York City. She is Seriesrials developer working with ELT-specific videos can, Editor °ftlle ABC News Intermediate ESLVideo Library in a relatively short space of time, preview sequences and co~autfwr (witfl Bcur>' Tomalin) of Video in Action.design viewing activities and develop language ex­ercises to fit a variety of student needs and different classroom situations.

Susan Stempleski can be contacted at Hunter College IELI,10th floor East, 695 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10021, USA.Email: SStempleski@worldnet.att.netLooking Ahead

Whether you choose to work with authentic video or ELT-specific video, the field of video materials development is an exciting and varied one, especially as we enter the new age of interactive multimedia. WQarfs finn & waDirdlf l§(Dim©With the spread of video equipment and audiovisual ^(DUllgMS WlPlMlEljg resources into educational institutions, the use of n n avideo is now commonplace in developed countries, ©aUDUIlllaUry PCBQS©®and is becoming more common in the developing Felicity O ’Dellworld. Good video materials can serve as a valuable Eurocentrepedagogical aid, for both classroom and home-study.The ultimate goal of the video materials developer is to motivate learners by providing them with materi­als to stretch their imagination and enhance their lan­guage learning.

When I was a teenager, I dreamt of becoming a novelist, a kind of cross between Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Unfortunately, I have never been able to think of a plot - quite apart from any other defi­ciencies of style. Practice test books and vocabulary materials for EFL students may not be the stuff that inspires teenagers to dreams of emulation but I can

ReferencesArcario, P. (1992). “Criteria for selecting video materi­

als.” In S. Stempleski & P Arcario (Eds.), Video in Second Language Teaching: Using, Selecting, and at least earn enough from them to keep up my supply

of fat novels to read.Producing Video for the Class worn (pp. 109-121). Alexandria, VA: Teachers of English to Speakers of I must admit to finding vocabulary exercises in

particular very satisfying to write. Glamour and gram­mar may share their etymology but for me vocabu-

Other Languages.Breaking Away (1979). New York: CBS/Fox Video.Breyer, P., Huizenga, J., Kimbrough, V., Morgan, J., and has for m0re of the glamorous than any verb form

Stempleski, S. (1992).Hello America: Books 1-12.Danbury, CT: Grolier.

Caden, J. and Griffin, S. (1981). Follow Me to San Fran­cisco. New York: Longman & BBB English byTele-

or other structure that I have encountered. I do not think I am alone in getting a certain thrill out of know­ing that assassin and hashish are related, and, is there not a kind of magic in discovering that the first syl-

Stempleski, S. (1986). A Viewing Guide for " Bernice Bobs hbles of pyjamas and pedestrians share their Indo- Her Hair". Washington, DC: U.S. Information European roots?Agency (U.S.I.A.).

Stempleski, S. (1987). A Viewing Guide for "I'm a Fool".Washington, DC: U.S.I.A.

The potential scope for vocabulary materials is one of their attractions. There is such a lot to a word.An exercise can be concerned just with a word’s de-

Stempleski, S. (1987a). A Viewing Guide for “Soldier's notation, for example, asking students to label draw- Horne". Washington, DC: U.S. Information Agency. jngS> perhapS> or 10 match objects with their func-

Stempleski, S. (1987b). A Viewing Guide for “The Dis­placed Person". Washington, DC: U.S.I.A.

Stempleski, S. (1988). A Viewing Guide for “Breaking Away". Washington,DC: U.S.I.A.

Stempleski, S. (1993). Focus on the Environment.Englewood Cliffs, NJ:Prentice Hall Regents.

Stempleski, S. (1994). EarthWatch. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:Prentice Hall Regents.

Tomalin, B. & Stempleski, S. (\993).That’s English!: Book by asking questions like:1 Madrid: Spanish Ministry of Education and Sci-

tions.Or it can deal with a word’s pronunciation as in:Choose the odd one out:love, cove, doveplough, bough, thoughand so onOr it can focus on a word’s various connotations

What would be the first meanings to come to mind for these words for the different professionsence & BBC English.

Folio 4/1 Page 25

characteristic of a particular register from a given text. Music magazines aimed at the teenage market are a good printed source of up-to-date extremely collo­quial style. A good discussion of the kinds of words that tend to have equivalent colloquial or slang forms

easily emerge from such an exercise. Register does not, of course, have to be limited to a consider­ation of the basic formal - informal / colloquial con­tinuum. Side branches of register - taboo language, tabloidese, euphemisms, the vocabulary of political correctness or advertising and so on - are fascinating issues for most students with an interest in language.

Then again vocabulary exercises can home in on word formation asking students, for example, to list all the words they can think of with, say, the root advise or use and to make sure that they can explain how each of the words they list could be used. Alter­natively, the focus can be on affixes - perhaps by ask­ing to guess the meaning of unfamiliar words by look­ing at the prefix and / or suffix involved. For example,

Explain the meaning of the underlined words:That word is untranslatable.That newspaper is very pro-green in its approach.Teachers are overworked and underpaid.Vocabulary exercises can even have a slight

grammar tinge to them with a focus on, say, words with irregular plurals, nouns that can be either count­able or uncountable, nouns that have only a plural form or exercises can concentrate on what preposi­tions are required by particular lexical items and so on and so forth.

In other words, there is an awful lot in a word, and the writer preparing vocabulary exercises has a range of angles to approach any taiget set of items from.

listed?bug - zoologists, computer programmers, doc­tors, spiesdrill - dentists, road-builders, soldiers, languageteachersand so on.Or connotation can be explored from more of a

sociolinguistic perspective by asking students to write footnotes to explain references in modem journalis­tic or fiction texts to such things as Number Ten, Mystic Meg, taking silk, Marks and Sparks, all those expressions with sociocultural associations that are likely to be opaque even to native speakers of a dif­ferent variety of English.

Polysemy can be the focus of many different kinds of exercises, of course. Another favourite type is to ask students to identify which one word fits the gaps in all of a set of sentences, such as the follow­ing:1. I can smell gas. Don’t2. Did her resemblance to Madonna3. The work force voted to go on.....

had not had a pay rise for five years.

can

a match just now...... you too?because they

■

Oroff home soon.1. It’s getting late. We’d better

2. If you just told her the truth, it would hermind at rest.

3. He bought his son an electric train first birthday.

on his1

Homophones provide another fruitful area of English vocabulary for exercises to explore. A simple exercise can ask students to find all the examples of homophones in a text they have read. This can be safely done with any text as so many of the more common words in English are homophones - in this short paragraph you have at least ten - for / fore / four; to / two/ too; find /fined; all / awl; in / inn; read / red; be / bee; done / dun; so / sew / sow; you / ewe. It is helpful to use the IPA symbols for exercises on homophones, asking students, for instance, to write out in normal orthography homophones in sentences which are written in IPA, for example:

They are planning to /sait/ the new hospital at the edge of the town.Or vocabulary exercises can deal with colloca­

tions perhaps in a matching exercise or by giving stu­dents tasks like the following:

Write down ten adjectives that are often used to describe a person’s eyes.

I enjoy preparing vocabulary materials not just because of the variety that you can spice them with but also because it is usually possible to make the most straightforward of exercise into a kind of game or puzzle or other fun activity. Crosswords can be used, for instance, as a diverting way of matching word and meaning or word and IPA pronunciation. Anagrams can make a picture labelling exercise into a game, and a wordsearch can be an entertaining way of presenting a lexical set. Mario Rinvolucri’s Word- building Dominoes is a wonderful way of working on word formation. Using jokes based on puns and humorously ambiguous newspaper headlines can be an enjoyable way to deal with polysemy and homo­phones.

even

/

Or Games can be oral rather than based on the printed page. Students can be instructed to work out what word is pinned on their back by asking yes / no questions. They can sit in a circle and play the ten­nis-elbow-foot game. They can play old favourites

Write down all the verbs you can think of that the chairperson of a meeting does.Or vocabulary work can focus on register by,for

example asking students to identify vocabulary items

Page 26 Folio 4/1

like Twenty Questions and Kim’s Game. All such games - and many other more original ones - can be exploited to focus

WdDfflk to TTnnto-a

graft© EmgQMhSUQs

Emily Lites

any lexical items recently worked on. Although some wonderful grammar- based games have been devised by some of the more creative EFL materials writers like Mario Rinvolucri and Paul Davis, grammar does

on

not seem to me to lend itself quite so easily to fun as vocabulary does.

Another reason why I like working with vocabu­lary materials is that it is very easy to let the materi­als become more personally appropriate for any in­dividual learners. Students can be asked to select which particular words they feel they personally need to learn; they can be asked to group the items they are learning in any way that makes sense to them individually; they can be asked to use those words in sentences that have a meaning in their own individual context. I like asking students to make up exercises of the same types as ones outlined above. Why not have students construct their own gapped sentences for polysemous words, for example, or think up ad­ditional odd one out sets for pronunciation work.They can be encouraged to bring to class their own selec-

Offering English language instruction in an En­glish-speaking country has the obvious advantage of providing a rich environment for the learner in which natural uses of language abound. In addition to the work done in classes, the language learner has only to step outside the classroom to find opportunities seeking language training for their managers to send them abroad for instruction.

When contact assignments done for business En­glish classes can expand communication opportuni­ties between language learners and native speakers in the local business community, we extend learners’ benefit further. In these situations, learners gain not only in terms of language development but also by becoming more attuned to the local business culture. A recent special program for an international corpo­rate client at the Economic Institute in Boulder, Colo­rado, USA provided an opportunity to investigate how classroom work could be extended through an inte­grative effort of all classes in the program.

The learners’ task was to conduct company re­search on a local, publicly traded business. By work­ing with a publicly traded company, learners had ac­cess to the financial information that is made public after being filed with the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission (SEC). There was no need to try to ob­tain the financials for the selected companies since they were readily available. By choosing a local com­pany, our participants could interview executives and key staff members at their place of business. The lo­cal business community rose to the occasion by con­tributing considerable time and effort to this project work.

tion of text employing a particular register, an ex­ample of tabloid style from a popular newspaper, for instance, or an illustration of the language of adver­tising from a magazine. It seems to me that such semi-individualised activities make vocabulary workmore meaningful to students with, as a consequence, a positive effect on the learning process. With gram-

it may also be possible to individualise work to degree but it is not as straightforward as with

mar somevocabulary materials - it is not usually appropriate, for instance, to ask students to select which grammar structures they feel they want to learn.

Of course, not everything is straightforward when preparing vocabulary materials. For me, the first main problem isiwhich vocabulary itemsis it most appro­priate to focus on from the abundance of the English lexicon. More significant, perhaps, is the second fun­damental problem: it is relatively easy to present and to test vocabulary - but how can our materials help students work on their free production of those items? Such problems are, of course, of a different order from those faced by Karenina or Raskolnikov but they are quite enough for a middle-aged TEFL-er and I should welcome any guidance on how to solve them.

The company research projects were done in pairs. Program participants had as much latitude as pos­sible in selecting a partner with similar business in­terests and a type of business to examine. With a great many high-tech companies in the community, Boul­der provides a good match for the many international high-tech managers our program serves. A portion of the project work was handled during each of the four classes participants were enrolled in. In the con­text of their oral skills class, the project was coordi­nated and logistical details ironed out. In this class, participants had time to find out about common busi­ness interests, pair up with someone whose interests coincided, exchanged initial research about local companies, and decide together on several compa-

Felicity O’Dell, Eurocentre,62 Bateman Street, Cambridge,odelI@cityscape.co.uk

Folio 4/1 Page 27

skills and vocabulary that coincided naturally each individual’s interests in their capacity as a contribu­

tes that would be good options. With these choices made, calls were made to these businesses to see whether they were willing to accommodate a short tor to the project work, and a broader understanding interview with our international participants. Then it of business culture and practices in the United States, was the participants’ turn to telephone the company An area for future consideration is how programs contact and set up an interview time. How much more in non-English-speaking countries can find ways to natural a culminating activity to our textbook chap- extend class work beyond the boundaries of the class- ter on telephoning to make arrangements than the room. The Internet holds great promise for EFL pro- activity suggested in our textbook! grams because of its facility in providing authentic

A second class focusing on reading and discus- input to learners in no matter what their setting. Notonly is there an enormous amount of “print materi-sion of various business topics was the base for ori­

entation to company research. Within the context of als” having to do with business on the Net news this class, participants became familiar with local stories, company and demographic statistics, reports, community library and the university library. Home- research findings, financial reports there are also work assignments in this class would sometimes take possibilities for listening activities with audio and the form of finding and reading articles about the video as technology and access to this technology selected businesses. The local public library is a advances, wealth of information about local business becauseof the collection of press clippings from local news­papers and magazines which are collected and orga- grams at the Economics Institute, University of Colorado, nized in hanging file folders by company name. Par- USA, where she teaches, designs curriculum and courses, ticipants were also encouraged to become familiar directs programs, and writes business English materials

for international corporate clients and pre-MBA candidates. She is active in professional organizations, presently serv­ing as Chair of TESOL’s Materials Writers Interest Sec­tion and has recently joined the editorial board of English for Specific Purposes: An International Journal

Emily Lites is the Director of Business English Pro-

with research tools at the university library which they could access internationally such as Lexus Nexus.

i

The presentation skills course was the focus of discussions and interim presentations detailing progress made in researching the companies. In this course participants furthered their Internet research, roleplayed telephone conversations and interviews, and prepared a final presentation reporting their find­ings. Using presentation software, participants worked together to organize a coherent oral report on the local company selected.

The final class which integrated the project work

2

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While the teaching of language and literature to was a course in business writing. This course dealt teenage students tends to be dominated by a time- with aspects of the project which were to be in writ- honoured text-centered canon, a parallel system de- ten form. Once Institute personnel had made initial velops side by side with school literature and its re­arrangements, participants wrote letters of introduc- strictions and prejudices as to what can or should be tion to company contacts. After telephone contact and read: a literary system with its own laws of produc- one or more interviews with company executives, par- tion, reception and distribution, its own criteria as to ticipants wrote letters of thanks. Research, site visits what should be included or excluded (Bombini: 1989, or tours, and one or more interviews with key com- 21) (1). In it, the concepts of “text’’ and “reading” pany personnel built up participants’ knowledge about are stretched to include not only texts of non-con- the business selected, and they culminated their ef- ventional circulation (underground magazines, the forts in writing a company report. production of adolescent writers) but also graffiti,

The participants in this program reacted positively comics, computer games, video, etc., thus advocat- to the project work. Although they were challenged ing a strong synergy between text culture and image by the interactions necessitated by the activity, they culture. For a number of years now, rock lyrics have were motivated because it was an authentic activity formed a significant part within the corpus of this which had them working with authentic materials, alternative system; yet, they do not form a propor- The project work integrated the skill areas of the dif- tionally significant part within the selection of mate- ferent courses and tied together the goals and objec- rial made by contemporary literature and language tives of the program. Participants went home with teachers.research tools that can be used in their home country, Although we, foreign language teachers, very often

Page 28 Folio 4/1

make use of song lyrics in our language classes (es­pecially for the development of listening comprehen­sion skills and for the sake of motivation), we do not normally select them for textual analysis and even more seldom do we “read them as literature”. How­ever, many teachers are worried about how to get their teenage students interested in textual analysis and about how to teach English literature to students who have to face technical difficulties in texts whose rel­evance to their lives they do not always see - and all this in a foreign language!

By rejecting the media and looking down on their contents as if they were all equally mediocre, educa­tors run the risk of contributing once again to widen­ing the gap between “school” and “real life”. On de­fending “textual literacy” against its enemies (forms no longer dependent on print technology) they may inadvertently be neglecting the auditory and visual literacy the new times demand.This article is based upon the assumption that the lyrics of rock songs make up a highly representative corpus within the literature of the second half of the XXth century, particularly of literature written in English. After all,

“there is no such thing as literary language...[ it is] impossible to isolate any single or special property of language which is exclusive to a lit­erary work. It does not mean we deny that lan­guage is used in ways which can be distinguished as literary ... it may be more productive for us to talk about language and literariness rather than “literary language” ... what is literary is a matter of relative degree, with some textual features of language signalling a greater literariness than others.” (Brumfit and Carter: 1986, 6 & 10) (2) It is my contention that there is room in our lan­

guage classes for such unconventional literary mate­rials, even it they are considered “literature with a small 1,” (McRae: 1991)(3), as well as for Literature traditionally understood as such.

“In conventional discourse you can anticipate, you can take shortcuts... Now you can’t do that with literature... because you’ve got to find the evidence, as it were, which is representative of some new reality. So with literary discourse the actual procedures for making sense are much

in evidence. You’ve got to employ inter­pretation procedures in a way which isn’t required of you in the normal reading process. If you want to develop these procedural abilities to make sense of discourse, then literature has a place.”

1983, as quoted in Brumfit &

guage awareness- is a crucial factor in the develop­ment of language learning abilities. The use of vi­sual and verbal texts, characterized by their literariness, or by the use of representational language as opposed to a purely referential one (McRae: 1991, 3), can help our students succeed in this respect. Where referential language, informs, representational language involves: “the use of purely referential materials limits the learner’s imaginative involvement with the target language and leads to a one-dimen­sional learning achievement.” (5)The reading of rock lyrics as texts of literary value in the EFL classroom can provide students with the nec­essary tools to face more unfamiliar texts and will surely get them interested in other forms of literature whose relevance and complexity they will then be better equipped to appreciate. While this does not mean that rock lyrics are to be considered merely a means to an end (i.e., a shortcut into “serious” Lit­erature), welcoming “alternative” literary forms does not mean denying more “traditional” or “accepted” forms either. Likewise, listening to songs and watch­ing videos critically should not be interpreted as a way of underestimating books: the approach, rather, involves integrating all forms and media into a more broad-minded whole.

Rock and Literature

Literature in rockBy this we mean poems set to music or lyrics

which are hypertexts of previous literary works. “Hypertexts” is used here as is done by Gerard Genette in his book Palimpsestes (1962) (6), where he studies the relationships between one text and another, whether explicit or secret. He calls this Transtextuality . Within transtextual relationships, Genette defines hypertextuality as “the relationship that links text B (the Hypertext) to a previous text A (the Hypotext) in a way which is not a mere com­mentary. B transforms A without necessarily quoting from A or making explicit allusions to it”.Examples of hypertexts are:* Kate Bush, “Wuthering Heights”, after the hom­onymous novel by Emily Bronte* Rick Wakeman, “1984”, after the novel by George Orwell* Iron Maiden, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, based on the poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge* Alan Parson’s Project, “Extraordinary Narrations” , hypertexts of stories by Edgar Allan Poe

These works enrich the discussion of the hypotexts and easily bring up the question of the texts’ relevance to students’ lives.

i

more

(Widdowson,Carter: 1986, 13) (4)Such training in deciphering the communication,

mmunication -in short, lan-in grasping its status as co

Folio 4/1 Page 29

l!

bination with music. And among them there’s shout-Rock as literature , ... ......Even when not related to literary works, rock ing, the primeval scream, which, as in tribal rites,

lyrics themselves can be considered poems. Tradi- channels aggressiveness, brings singers and listen- tionally, the lyrics of popular songs in our century ers together and allows them to identify as members were meant to communicate a verbal message which of a community. What’s more, this use of the word was easy to understand and in whose decodification as sound awakening a plurality of meanings in the music was not an obstacle. They respected what active mind of the reader, this return to the primitive Eduardo Romano (1990)(7) calls the ‘intelligibility and the oneiric, inscribes rock lyrics within a literary threshold”. In this respect, these songs contrasted tradition which goes back to Romanticism and goes sharply with nursery rhymes, ritual songs and folk- through Symbolism and nonsense poetry into the lore in general, where the phonological associations avant-garde forms of literary modernism, triggered off by the lexical elements had always been

important than the expression of what words Rock Poetry in the EFL ClassroomIn an electronically interconnected world, play-

It is rock’ n’ roll which, in the 50’s, will radically ing the role of reader involves interpreting the words change this state of affairs by going back to primi- we see in print or on a screen, decoding the sounds tive singing. Think of Bill Halley’s “Rock Around we hear (“live” or through different media), making the Clock”: short onomatopoeic words form a me- sense out of the increasingly faster, often fragmen- chanical enumeration; the singer’s voice is but an- tary succession of images we watch. Rock record- other instalment. People all over the world can rec- ings and video clips are highly accessible examples ognize the words, identify with them and hum or even of that world which can be brought to the classroom sing them, no matter how elementary their knowl- to integrate activities aiming at auditory, textual and edge of English, because words are just one more visual literacy, especially if social and geographical instalment contributing to the whole, regardless of circumstances offer students few opportunities to their dictionary meaning. Words have liberated them- come into contact with this “multimedia” reality or selves from the duty of meaning something precise to consider it critically (Garza: 1994, 110)( 10). Be- and concrete -which has always been the case in po- sides, they can prove to be a useful tool to present

the EFL student with authentic instances of a textual

,

moremean in every-day language.

etry.The Beatles knew this, and humming, mumbling subculture within the culture whose language he is

and shouting form as important a part of their lyrics learning and encourage him to compare it to his own. as do the still clearly intelligible words. John Lennon Failure to interpret cultural clues within a text (and pointed out in an interview that all his songs were this includes what is heard and watched) can prevent born out of playing with words freely, so that words comprehension as much as or even more than a lim- somelimes make sense and sometimes don’t. In the ited command of the structural and lexical aspects of first press report that appeared on the group, Bob the language.Wooler, the disc jockey at the Liverpool Tavern Club, In short, rock poems are: wrote: “I think the Beatles are No. 1 because they * highly motivating resurrected original style rock’n’roll music, the ori- * relevant to students, livesgins of which are to be found in American negro sing- * a potential bridge leading to more serious (i.e. “con- ers... Here again, in the Beatles, was the stuff that secrated”) literature screams are made of. Here was the excitement -both a source of highly accessible authentic reading and physical and aural- that symbolised the rebellion of listening material and, in the case of the video-clip, youth ... (quoted in Wicke, 1990)(8). a way to integrate activities aiming at visual literacy

This tendency became stronger and stronger. The approach to such texts in the language class- Today, as we all know, it is hardly possible to tran- room can be summarized as follows- scribe the lyrics of the songs our students bring to * the focus is on what language can do, hmhliahting class. This fact is so widely accepted, even among its expressive and poetic functions; thus the text is a native speakers of the language in question, that com- means, not an end in itself pact discs are accompanied by a printed transcrip­tion of the song lyrics.

* text (whether verbal or non-verbal) is a step-EduardoRomano (1990)(9) refers to this phenomenon ('which need^m1^^^^^1^^61013 reSp0nSCS

as the RETRIBALIZATION OF THE WORD, a re- * the teacher does not provide “model interpreta- tum to its ritual power: it s the listener who builds up tions”: s/he contributes to making different levels of his own internal lyrics by means of the babbling, reading transaction possible the humming and the words he hears and their com- * it is exploitation of the text rather than traditional

Page 30 Folio 4/1

USSSSsr * - l»-as well as cultural awareness * the approach is intertextual and intercultural, en-couraging a fluid transaction between each reader and ^ " ^enette, G. (1962). Palimpestos, La literatura enthe text, each reader and other readers, the text and seSlmdo grado. Madrid, Taurus (1989) [my translation] other texts, the L2 culture and the learners culture ? " Roman0, E’ “PaIabra y cancion” , Medios,

!^rsng-s,one and ihe “<s) pr°;p ' Sociology. Cambridge: C.U.P.. 9 - Romano, E. Op. cit.

Designing rock-based materials 10- Garza, T.J. “Beyond MTV: Music Videos as ForeignHere is a short selection of songs whose “tex- Language Texts”, The Journal of the Imagination in Lan-

ture” has yielded rewarding results in my classes:“The Times They Are A’changing”“All Along the Watchtower”“Piano Man”

O.U.P.

4 - Brumfit, CJ. & Carter, R.A. (1986). Op. cit. 5-McRae,J. (1991). Op.cit.

guage Learning Jersey City State College, N.J.,\bl. II, 1994Bob Dylan,11- “Day by Day with Roland Barthes” in Blonsky (1985) On Signs.Billy Joel,

Supertramp, Pink Floyd, Cat Stevens, Genesis,The Police, Queen,

“The Logical Song”“Another Brick in the Wall” “Father and Son”“Land of Confusion”“Russians”“Bohemian Rhapsody”“The Show Must Go On” “Straight to my Heart” “Fragile” “Moon over Bourbon Street” “Another Day in Paradise”“ The Universal” “End of a Century

Additional BibliographyBarthes, R (1970). S / Z. Paris: Editions du Seuil. 5YZ

(1976). Translated by Richard Miller. N.Y.: Hill and Wang.

Ferradas Moi, C. (1994). Rock Poetry in the Creative Lan­guage Classroom. Buenos Aires: DL Books.

Ferradas Moi, C. (1994). “Rock Poetry: the Literature our Students Listen To” The Journal of the Imagination in Language Learning, Jersey City State College, N.J.,Vol. II, 1994

Friedlander, P. (1996). Rock and Roll - a Social History. Oxford and Colorado: Westview Press.

Sting,

Phil Collins,Blur,

Heylin, C. (Ed.) (1992). The Penguin Book of Rock & Roll Writing. London: Penguin.These songs can be used at any level, from pre-

intermediate to advanced, if the teacher suits the task Longhurst, B. (1995). Popular Music and Society. Cam­bridge: Polity Press.to the learner (rather than viceversa), bearing in mind

the students interests and maturity. Activities should Pulverness.A. (1996). “Outside Looking In:Teaching Lit-a™ a, encouraging a dialogue across cul.ures a, boih = —ends of the transaction, the reader s first encounter Reyno|ds s (1990) out _ The raptUKS of rockwith the text (whose linguistic and cultural other- Serpent’s Tail: London.ness” he will need to come to terms with) and the Rosenblatt, L.M. (1988) “Writing and Reading: The Trans- final (written) production of a response to the text (a actional Theory”, technical report No. 416, Washing-hypertext of the rock poem which marks a crucial ton D.C.: Office of Educational Research and Im-step in the process of appropriation). Take, for ex­ample, the interior monologues that my EFL students Suleiman, S. & Crossman, I. (eds.) (1980). The Reader in in Buenos Aires wrote for each of the lonely, frus- the Text. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, trated characters in “Piano Man”. This creative re- Todorov,T.(1984).M^7^/irm, The Dialogical Prin- sponse to the text led to an intertextual readng of a ; % MediJerica . Form> c„.famous old tango, “Cafetin de Buenos Aires , and to

comparative description of the bars one can find in Buenos Aires today. As Roland Barthes categorically expressed it: “no doubt that is what reading is: re­writing the text of the work within the text of our * Tenured Lecturer in English Literature at the Instituto

de Ensenanza Superior en Lenguas Vivas “Juan Ramon Ferndndez” (Buenos Aires, Argentina)* co-director of theT.S.ELIOT Bilingual Studies Centre,

provement.

and Consequence of Mass Communication.BQlmonl,a California: Wadsworth Publishing Co.

Claudia Ferradas Moi

lives”(U)*

ReferencesBombini, G. (1989). La trama de los textos, pmblemas ganfield, Buenos Aires

ensehanza de la literatura. Buenos Aires: El ^educational representative for N.I.LJE.( Norwich Insti-1-de la2-'Brumfit! C.J. & Carter, R.A. (1986). Literature and tute for Language Education, UK)

Folio 4/1 Page 31

like this : GENRE - CHARACTER-SITUATION - PLACE -EVENT. In other words, think of a genre which readers will be familiar with (either through

Notes from a workshop at the FAAPI confer- reading or through TV and video). Examples include:ence Tucumdn, Argentina September 1996

InlflDW "IT® Wfffitt®Philip Prowse

ThrillerDisaster Travel Fantasy

Historical Horror

DetectiveAdventure Romance Science Fiction

Key Ideas1. The importance of schemas (assumptions of

facts, including ‘default facts’ which are never men­tioned - usually cultural). There are personal schemas, H°w to Proceeci ....general ones about the world, and ones related to Think of a character, the kind that appears in your GENRE. These operate at text level and are crucial chosen genre. Place the character in a situation, some to comprehension. kind of Problem or opportunity. Choose the place,

2. This leads on to the overall shape of the plot, the physical location. Then think of an event that thecharacter participates in. And let the story begin...the number and roles of characters, and the extent to

which reading is facilitated by plot structure and char- This way of writing is for those who want to find out acter type which the reader is likely to recognise. This what happens to the character and who write the story places the reader in a familiar landscape where she is *n order to do so. The advantage of this making it up

likely to be able to predict in which direction as y°u S° al°ng method is that you can, of course, she will go. Reading within a familiar genre reduces S° back an<^ plan* pl°t trails and introduce clues and the load of new information which the reader is pro-

more

characters when the need arises.cessing increasing both speed and accuracy.

3. Paragraph and sentence level information Cultural setting control and careful attention to anaphora prevent overload and facilitate reading forward, without con- The readers do not have to have direct personal ex- tinuous looking back to see who or what is referred perience of the setting but must know what to ex­

pect. Thus a western/cowboy story will draw on a lot 4. Ease and meaning : reading creates readers °f background knowledge from TV and film west-

and easy reading creates good readers. The myth of ems, while a story set in Africa in the First World exact meaning is fostered by use of dictionaries and War will be much more demanding and therefore dif- glossaries. Words are not clearly defined in general ficult. The setting does not need to be in Britain or and have meanings that change. The acquisition of ^e USA or an English-speaking country as long as meaning is a process of successive approximation, the readers will be aware of the cultural givens, or Meaning-getting is enhanced by careful they are explained as part of the story (e.g. the prob- contextualisation of new lexis, use of illustration, and lems a westerner living in Tibet would face).

Pastiche can be very successful. Consider taking a modern classic and writing a sequel.

The cultural setting of the story is paramount.

to.

repetition of new lexis.

The Writing ProcessThe look on the page

Processing large chunks of text is more difficult As a teacher, decide on your level and think of a in a new language than short paragraphs. Use dia-

class you know or have recently taught at that level, logue as much as possible.Use them as your reference point, not just for lan­guage, but also for content. Later, if you are lucky, non-writers of readers! you may be able to try the material out with the ac-

Before starting

Tips from Raymond Chandler and other great

Always leave a chapter or page unfinished so that when you start again you are right in the thick of it and not staring at a blank page. 1,000 words a day is a good aim. “If in doubt, have a man with a gun come in the door...” (or some other dra­matic event).

tual class, or a similar one.Getting started

It is recognised that much good modern fiction defies genre, creating its own contexts and values.However, the learner of English as a reader is helped by as many reference points as possible (see Schemas above). There is a conflict here between the poten- PhiliP Prowsetially good story which defies genre, and one within P0 Box

Cambridge CB3 9PW. UK.Using genre a successful way to start is to move Phi,ipProwse@compuserve. com

a genre.

Page 32 Folio 4/1

OassffqDa&miDs M My MM to certain technology, does that change any of your underlying beliefs about methodology or merely affect matters of detail? How should writers react when national syllabuses flatly contradict their own strongly-held conclusions?2

You can, of course, narrow down the size of the classroom in your mind with the right kind of research and piloting. With the appropriate level of collabora­tion you can bring it more carefully into focus, try­ing to balance your impulse to innovate against the pressure to conform. It’s an uneasy situation to be in, but as you search in your brain for the virtual reality of the classrooms you are working for, you do end up, more or less successfully, adjusting the picture until you (think you) know where you stand.

cess

Jeremy Harmer

How it all startsSome people become materials writers

reer move. Others (most of us, perhaps) start by pre­paring material for our own class because we’re dis­satisfied with what’s available. If we’re lucky, what we’re putting together will suit us, our students, and the class next door. Maybe every teacher in the school (at the right level) will use it. Maybe it will catch on in the region; in the country; perhaps, even the mate­rial could be global?1 And then, a few years on, writ­ing becomes the main thing we do.

What classroom do we write for?The question that interests me - that interests all

of us, I suspect - is what classrooms people write for. What mental image of a teacher and students do I have in my mind when I sit down in front of this screen and start to put topics and procedures together? Is it my own group of students, used to my way of working and organising and, crucially, having their own identity as a group? Is it classrooms of my col­leagues or ones I’ve been told about? Perhaps it’s that secondary school in Hammamatsu where the teacher talked for 45 minutes while the students re­mained completely still. Or is it that almost improb­ably male group of cement engineers in Madrid or the fifteen young students in a multi-national class at that British language school whose proximity to an ongoing intensive RSA Diploma gives them constant (relentless?) exposure to every kind of new and ex­citing methodology around?

And when writers decide which classrooms they are writing for - or what combination of classroom realities they are thinking of - what then? When they

actually doing it, the writing thing, on their own, they have to have a general picture in their mind, full of sights and feelings, student and teacher reactions, a perception of a physical space with incomingrays or fluorescent light.

Perhaps, then, a fruitful area for materials writ- might be to try and get inside their own heads

and see what kind of classroom exists there (see ‘A worry for the worriers’ below) and how, once you start imposing various constraints uponthe writing, that classroom changes. What is your classroom’s cultural and physical location? What kinds of virtual students are there in it - in terms of gender, age, reli­gion, sex, socio-economic and motivational levels? What kind of teachers work there? Who are they employed by? When, for example, you find that the classrooms you are writing for do or do not have ac-

as a ca-

Refracted classrooms and amoebasThe problem becomes considerably more acute

when writing material for teacher training - books that have a chance of being used (you hope) in the heart of British ELT as well as by people in North America, Europe, Latin America and the Far East. Now you’re dealing with a series of overlapping class­rooms. There’s the training site itself. How will the materials be used and/or referred to in that place? What traditions will the trainees be coming from and - crucially - what realities are they likely to work in (that’s if you and they know, of course). Especially with books designed for pre-service training, how do you deal with the fact that (alongside the trainers) your book will help to create the classrooms in their minds, moulding the picture they refer to when they sit at home preparing for the next assignment or an­ticipating their first job at the end of it.

The classroom in my mind now becomes re­fracted, amoeba-like as it splits and reproduces until it is filled with quicktime video clips of all those classes and teachers I have come across. There’s con­fusion there, of course, but also a tremendous confi­dence that there are things whichthey all share.There are beliefs about teaching and learning which apply to all of them even if the details vary considerably. And, if that is the case, it leads onto the formulation of six guiding principles which, for me, underpin the writing of methodology books for use in teacher train-

are

sun

ersing.

Six principles Principle 1:

have a statement of general principles. It is impor­tant to state general principles so that the users of the book, wherever they are, know what kind of class­rooms you have in your mind. That way they can filter what you have written through their own men­tal or physical realities. General principles need to

Methodology books should

Folio 4/1 Page 33

;•

successful and appropriate without it - especially in the area of methodology where ideas are paramount - but that is a chancy thing. Piloting provokes a whole

of reactions the writer has frequently not an-

include your view on what teachers and teaching means, what learners and learning are.

A model needs to havePrinciple 2:generalisability. The models you propose have to fit into the construction of classrooms in many other different minds, so that they are applicable in many

situations than just the one you are close to at

rangeticipated: we may find out that what we intended has been completely unsuccessful. When you get tions from trainees on whom the material is being tested saying things like ‘a few good points sur­rounded by waffle’ or ‘We felt that the chapter was good, but patronising because it has too much infor­mation and goes into too much detail5 you know you have to make changes! And when you do you should take it back to them or - if that’s not possible - take it to someone else to see if the changes have worked. Not all piloting is good piloting, of course. Some people do it more conscientiously than others. But at least you don’t have to rely exclusively on the classrooms of just a few reporters’ minds to provoke you into making changes.

In the end, when you compare books for students and books for teachers (trainees) the issues look re­markably similar. Whatever position you start from (the classroom in your mind or the one in front of you), you still have to consider other ones out there and work on materialsthat will be appropriate for them. That forces you to generalise (to some extent) beyond your own limited vision and suggests that you should be aware of alternatives and be able to point them out. And crucially you need to trial meth­odology material just as you do with student-based books.

reac-

morethe moment. This is what has lead me3 to the En- gage-Study-Activate paradigm (three elements that almost always need to be present in any language teaching sequence) which are ordered in different ways depending upon whether teachers and students have chosen one of three kinds of sequence (StraightArrows, Boomerang, or Patchwork).

There ought to be alterna­tives. A methodology book needs to give examples of what is proposed, but also needs to offer alterna­tives, different pathways that can be followed. Per­haps the topic of the example isn’t quite right. Maybe the procedure outlined in the book isn’t suitable for the classroom in someone else’s mind. Offer a vari-

Principle 3:

ant.Methodology books should. Principle 4:

give spaces for people to think. They need to pro­voke their readers/users into agreeing, disagreeing and/or expanding on what they read. That’s what they are there for. They should be a springboard for a trainee’s development, not a manual to be slavishly followed. This may lead you to provide tasks in your book (as many methodology writers now do) either embedded in the text or as a separate section of the book to tease out issues and opinions chapter by chap­ter (myown preferred option). Training tasks are a way of reaching out to all the other classrooms in all the users’ minds. More than that, for pre-service train­ees, they help to create that mental construct which will inform the decisions they are starting to take about how to teach.

A worry for the worriersThe classroom in my mind is the one I write for,

whether or not it happens to be the actual class I am teaching at the present time. In all sorts of conscious and unconscious ways I am guided by what goes on there, what is possible there, how the teachers and students behave in there and how much I like what I am seeing. Like every other ELT writer around, it is that classroom in which I change and form my un­derlying beliefs (I think). Which can be a big worry - if you’re the worrying kind.

Arrgyris and Schon (quoted in Williams and Bur­den 1997) suggested that is it hardly ever the case that people act consistently in accordance with their expressed (or ‘espoused’) beliefs, in other words, teachers may say they believe one thing, but their actions suggest they believe something completely different, at least some of the time. What about us writers? How faithful are we to the classrooms in our own minds - let alone the real ones out there in their myriad and beautiful diversity? How far do we practise what we preach? What does it take to change a writer s beliefs? Ouch! Anyone got a research grant

Principle 5:various stages. Getting good reports is as vital for methodology books as it is for course materials. Read­ers pick holes in what you are saying. They chal­lenge some of your assumptions and point out logi­cal flaws that you haven’t spotted. They can and should assess the style you are writing in and see how well it plays. Above all they will be able to measure what they are reading against the classrooms in their minds - whether full of students or trainees or both. And it is vital that the readers should not only be people with similar backgrounds, jobs and profes­sional experiences as you,4 but also include trainers and/or trainees whose backgrounds are significantly different.

Principle 6:real piloting. Of course it is possible for books to be

Real reporting is needed at

There is no substitute for

Page 34 Folio 4/1

!

spare?ReferenceWilliams, M. & R. Burden (1997) Psychology for Lan Ianguage’ Grammar, Phonetics, History, Lit

guage Teachers. Cambridge Language Teacher Li- tUrC' ^ Methodol°gy as separate subjects as well brary. Cambridge: Cambridge University P— aS a Pracdcum-

For that purpose they take intensive advanced En-era-

ress.We decided to make Language I and II and Pho­

nology I and II converge into a project where the stu-1. People have predicted the death of the global coursebook den*s could experience the integration of the fields for the last twenty years, a prophecy that might well bring connected with Ianguage learning. The project was a a smile to the authors of Headway, Look Ahead, Interne- thread that ran through a whole academic year and chate Matters^ amongst others - not to mention American brought together two groups of students from first English texts like Interchange and general reference books like English Grammar in Use.2. Like many colleagues I have talked to, this has hap­pened to me on at least two occasions, and the contortions » which it has provoked have made some decisions very dif­ficult to justify.3. This paradigm - and the issues raised in this short dis- the PurPose of the ProJect: working in groups to pro-cussion - arise from the writing of How to Teach English. duce first a series of newspaper articles in which the Addison-Wesley Longman (Forthcoming) stories were retold to the readers as real items of news4. What Roger Gower has called ‘Inner sanctumTeport- published day after day as the conflict developed. In

this part of the project students adapted the texts to5. These are two quotes from among a significant amount fit the style of serious or sensationalist papers. Then of pilot feedback from a group of pre-service trainees another group wrote a TV script for a Believe it or whose robust response to an early draft of a book stopped f\j0i show and finally, the Language II and Phonol- me from making a complete fool of myself (I hope)!

Endnotes

and second year. Students of Language I, in their Reading Comprehension classes, considered differ­ent stories. “The Monkey’s Paw,” by W.W. Jacobs, The Coffin,” an Irish folk tale, and “Kid in a Bin,”

by Robert Carter, were picked as the best choice for

ers (see Gower & Bell, this issue)

ogy II groups produced the programme by shooting a four-segment video which consisted of: a presenta­tion, a series of interviews, some commercials and a close. The time allocated to each stage of the project was two hours a week for six weeks. The students, after having done similar exercises in class, were free to transform the material by engaging in decision­taking and planning; research of specific vocabulary areas (technical, health and advertising) and writing the scripts for the TV show. As course goals for Lan­guage II emphasize students’ further development and extension of communication skills in particular, oral fluency, the students pursued the discussion of top­ics and dramatization in-role.

Simultaneously, these activities were backed up This article describes an interdisciplinary project, jn phonology II by focusing upon the aspects of pro-

“Believe it or Not!”, carried out by teachers and stu- nunciation dealt with in Phonology I and discrimi- dents at teacher training college in a joint learning nating the characteristics of spoken discourse. The experience. Its aim was to have the students produce students learnt to interpret the different situations in a video which showed the intersection of language the light of the peculiarities that arose from the func- learning. tion of roles - dominance claimed by age, social stan-

We are three experienced teachers of English <jards, education and culture, and they carried into Language, and Phonology working at Escuela Su- their performance the convergent and divergent as- perior en Lenguas Vivas “J.F. Kennedy” in Buenos pects which characterize the oral form.Aires, Argentina. Our college specializes in the train- Given the characteristics of this cooperativeing of prospective elementary school teachers of learning method, the students were responsible for Spanish and EFL. The Entrance requirements of the an maj0r decisions. The only pre-established rules

secondary school diploma and a Cam- were “talk in English at all times,” and “suggest bridge FCE passing level. Over a two year period changes and account for your choices.” Within the students, whose LI is Spanish, must acquire profi- confines of these rules the students devised their own ciency in the written and oral use of the English lan- working methods and procedures. At this point, most guage together with a sound academic background. Socio-cultural aspects of language learning

Jeremy Harmer kan47@dial.pipex.com

M. (Dir McDdP

HMcgircfcefiipQfiMifj

IPir(Drj]©(£il WdDirlkCristina T. de Grondona White,

Graciela M. de Zabaleta, & M.I.A. de

Cambiasso

course are a

were m-

Folio 4/1 Page 35

... work iaUahter tenets we followed or the truths we shared and had volved; instances of creativity, hara-woi , 0 made us agree in the first place were not verbalized,and fun were present. he Thjs was not necessary since we shared a tacit knowl-

The next step was the actual pro uc ^ edge derived from experience, a similar background video which comprised relhearsals, c: o‘ and common beliefs as to what was desirable andtumes and make-up, and the use o b worthwhile in a teaching experience of this kind. Yet

came more^notivatedTself-assored'and independent. ™aki„g ^pUclt — ^The horizontal and vertical integration of tndtvtdu-

conMlrrd'ttSivXtoTedTmong atndenK oped and appreciating the resulting product, we have ",™ne“ "d he chanc to develop his/her own pc come to realize how beef,a,1 .1 ,s now to put pen

to discover wha, each on, cottld contribute to paper, to make tactt knowledge come to the surfaceand to share this experience with our peers. Severalteachers theorising together shape culture.”

'

again the power of exploring one’s practice. After evaluating how the entire process devel-

once

tential,the project and finally, to perform effectively andsuccessfully. On the other hand, the teachers role was to encourage participation, to support the dynam- (Holly, 1989) ics of group work and to provide the necessary feed­back and assessment at different moments during the References

Bialystok, E.(1993) Communication Strategies. Oxford: Blackwell.

experience.We would like to highlight the significance this

experience had for second year students who, at the time, were encountering their first pre-service teach­ing lessons in primary school. The experience gained through the project increased the students’ effective command of oral language and enabled them to per­form more naturally and confidently thus decreasing the level of tension natural to this new situation. Fur-

Underhill, A. (1994) Sound Foundations. London: Heinemann, 1994.

Brown, G. and G. Yule (1983) Teaching the Spoken Lan­guage. Cambridge: CUP.

Brazil, D, M. Coulthard and C. Johns (1961) Discourse Intonation and Language Teaching. Harlow, Essex: Longman.

Jacobs, W.W. (n/d) “The Monkey’s Paw.” In: A Pocketthermore, the students’ performance improved as well as their ability to communicate successfully. On the Glassie, H. (ed.) (1985) “The Coffin.” In: The Penguin other hand, the teachers’ role was to encourage par­ticipation, to support the dynamics of group work and Jones, N. (ed). (1989) “Kid in a Bin.” In: Contemporary

Stories 2. Oxford Literary Resources.Holly, M. L. (1989) “Reflective writing and the Spirit of

Inquiry.” Cambridge Journal of Education Vol. 19,

Book of Short Stories. Square Press.

Book of Irish Folktales. Penguin.

to provide the necessary feedback and assessment at different moments during the experience.

We would like to highlight the significance this experience had for second year students who, at the time, were encountering their first pre-service teach­ing lessons in primary school. The experience gained MIA de Camt)iasso through the project increased the students’ effective command of oral language and enabled them to per­form more naturally and confidently thus decreasing the level of tension natural to this new situation. Fur­thermore, the students’ performance improved as well as their ability to communicate.

As teachers, the collaborative project work al­lowed us the opportunity of sharing professional en­richment through peer cooperation and curricular in­tegration. When we first started discussing the project, we must admit, we immediately agreed about the steps to be followed, the quality and characteristics of the texts chosen, and the pedagogical value of the project as a whole. The students

Number 1

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Laura Renart

^earn a language in its country of origin! has were active partici- forever been an attractive statement to promote stud-

pants, who supported and assessed their peers, were ies abr°ad, though a rather difficult enterprise for our myoived in a learning process, took risks, and were locaI market. If schools in Argentina wanted to sen-SKf'SK?Cient andCuTTllVe'These Werea11 desir- 0USly take UP this international activity, they would able behaviours which the project stressed and en- firstly be faced with a basic obstacle: materials cre- hanced. However, the linguistic and methodological ated for ‘be specific needs of the public in Argentina

IS hard to fmd. Materials for the teaching of SpanishPage 36 Folio 4/1

reach our country much less easily than they do other countries, and they are mainly produced in Spain and the United States. Teachers work with practically existent material, but how about them?

There is an additional problem to the one already mentioned: there is no Teachers’Training College for the Teaching of Spanish as a Second Language. Prac­tising teachers come from a variety of diverse back­grounds that do not always ensure proficient teach­ing. Some of the possibilities include: teachers of En­glish, French or Italian who have adapted their meth­odology to the teaching of a second language, i.e. Spanish; translators of English who take up teach­ing; and teachers of Spanish who have learnt a for­eign language and who have the capacity and, at times, the necessary imagination to adapt to teach­ing what they learnt as students. On the whole, expe­rience and good will seem to be the common denomi­nator throughout. On the other hand, it is true that results are not always ideal and it must be admitted that students can tell the difference. The most bitter criticism has to do with the lack of satisfactory gram­matical explanations. Lack of training and method­ology cannot easily be hidden.

Teaching your own language is not an easy task. One of the most noticeable difficulties that Spanish speakers may encounter when tackling teaching has to do with the grading and selecting of material. Teachers learn to do this along with the creation of their own material. A quick glimpse at the newspa­per allows a skilled teacher to determine who that article could be used with, and what grammatical point could be stressed. Besides, in most of the cases, selection can also be done more easily because teach-

share a second common language with their stu­dents: English. Having a shared language allows for better understanding between teacher and student and it can be resorted to if any difficulty comes up or if it is needed in the case of the language of instructions.

Secondly, giving grammatical explanations be a thorny issue. Teachers are required to provide academic definitions of such items as the use of the Preterite and Imperfect tenses of the Indicative Mode, both expressed with the English Simple Past, when they only have the empirical knowledge of their first language. Knowing which are the greatest difficul­ties for, say, English speakers learning Spanish makes all the difference. It takes some time until the teacher detects the common problems. A few examples of what teachers need to understand are: the need to avoid the use of “can” in the teaching of verb tenses since the translation of “could” in Spanish may be realised in conditionals, Preterite or Imperfect of the Indicative, or the eternally complex use of the Sub­junctive- the use of different words that translate into

just one English word, for example - “to be” prises ser , ‘ estar” and “haber”; the ambiguous of saber/conocer (to know) and the particularly tricky prepositions “para/por” frequently simplified by the parallel “for/to”.

Graduate teachers from the Profesorado de Castellano, Literaturay Latin (TeacherTraining Col­lege specialised in Spanish, Literature and Latin) would have to study Grammar from a different per­spective to be able to teach their own language to foreign students. There are aspects of our language that are taken for granted in some traditional gram­mars, in which there are no explaining chapters es­pecially designed for non-native students. The ap­parent reason for this fact is the absence of the com­municative approach, opposed to traditionally struc­tural methods. Besides, publishers may not be aware that there is a wide public to be pleased. The learner of Spanish as a foreign language has gained impor­tance in the last years and there are still several needs to be met. Teachers may need further backing to ex­plain the lexical uses of the verb “to know.” No na­tive Spanish speaker would ever confuse the follow­ing statements: “*Se a tu hermano” for “Conozco a tu hermano”, originated by the polisemic translation of the verb “to know” in English - to know a person or a country and to know about an event, a learning discipline or to have the necessary information, for example.

Some old books of Spanish for foreigners can still be found in Argentina. These books are dated, but they have been revised and edited several times, and they can be a great help for teachers to know which are the difficulties for English speakers learn­ing Spanish. These books are widely sold and con­sequently, there is a great demand for them. Since they were published so long ago, they do not seem to have absorbed the advances of methodology. For example, no context is incorporated; only sentences that help practise agreement, verbs, pronouns and so on, but that definitely does not prepare students to acquire use of the language or fluency in their com­munication. Lately, books of Spanish as a foreign language have been making use of dialogues, exer­cises and cassettes but have surprisingly left out nar­rative or journalistic texts. The approach has been changed, but usage is still more significant than use in the material available.

It should be pointed out that teachers in impor­tant schools in Latin America, such as the School of Language of Costa Rica, or even Cuernavaca, Mexico, use their own material prepared for specific courses. We wonder why this is so; if we want to risk an answer it could be that the existing material is extremely local in its regional uses of Spanish and,

corn-casenon-

ers

can

Folio 4/1 Page 37

consequently, cannot be adapted to Latin America due (O^UH0

to mh MffltetrWs

ment add to the list of obstacles the teacher has to Weiyou Zhangface. Compared to the availability of English and Centrai China Normal University French material, Spanish seems to be lagging behind although the potential market is growing rapidly

So then, what do Argentinian teachers of Span- leagues gave a short presentation at the Pilgrims Clos- ish do when they cannot find suitable material?They ing Staff Training Workshop about our on-going text- resort to their imagination: they can take textbooks book writing project for advanced Chinese learners of other languages and adapt exercises, they can take of teachers colleges and universities. All the partici- newspapers and magazines and carefully examine the pants were experienced ELT/EFL teachers, teacher level of difficulty the texts have. Articles may be used trainers and materials writers. During the presenta-

or reading comprehension, they tion, we showed them part of one text in Book 6 to- also trigger oral production or set the basis for gram- gether with some of the typical activities. We let them matical analysis and rules. Since teachers work mostly do the activities as ‘students and then respond as both with authentic material, both written or recorded, get- ‘students’ and language professionals. They came up ting the right beginner level activities seems to be with two opposing views about the material. Some

said the materials was ‘too culturally loaded, and too

On December 19, 1996, I and one of my col-

in class for oral

the hardest part.What is left to do now will require a lot of work, difficult’ and one mentioned that there was a place in

We have set off to write a beginner course of Spanish the text which he himself was not quite sure of. Oth- that would attract a multilingual public with a vari- ers argued that the material was ‘culturally challeng- ety of language suitable for communication in dif- ing, but interesting and engaging, and appropriate.’ ferent Spanish speaking countries. Unlike many other The argument brought up two questions: Should EFL publications, we are using only the taiget language text-books of advanced level contain a heavy cul- in the design of rubrics and the teacher’s manual. Our tural element? What would be the optimum compo- main objective is to create an attractive and learner- nent of culture in a course book? In the rest of this friendly book that would encourage students to com- article I am going to make an attempt to give an an- municate as quickly as possible and to interact in swer.Spanish in every day situations.OK. We’ll let you know next year. Why bother with culture?

There should be no disagreement as to the inter- Bibiana Ibarra Iraegui de Christensen is a teacher of Span- relationship between language and culture. Language ish, Literature and Latin. She has focused her work on is part of the culture and reflects the culture; and the adults, especially diplomats, foreign teachers and execu- culture, on the other hand, influences the use of lan-tives. She has worked at the British Embassy and various guage. A people’s language is saturated with the cul- companies since 1990. Bibiana directs “Speak Spanish” ture of the people. The learning of the language is and tailors special courses for foreign officials in Buenos unquestionably accompanied by the learning of the

culture. As Malinowski (1923) pointed out ‘The study of any language spoken by a people who live under

Laura Renart is a teacher trainer specialised in Linguistics conditions different from our own and possess a dif- and Phonetics. She has wide experience in the children fercnt culture must be carried out in conjunction with and teenage classroom and co-directs “TSEliot Bilingual astudy of their culture and their environment’ (quoted Studies” in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Laura is also Oral *n ^tern 1983). This idea was confirmed by Brown Examiner for the University of Cambridge and a NILE (198°) ‘second language learning is often second Educational Consultant in Argentina..She can be contacted cu*ture learning.’ Language use is always socio-cul- at: T.S. ELiot, L.N.Alem 1380, (1828) Banfield, Buenos Rurally conditioned. Without a good knowledge of Aires, Argentina (relaura@seek.com.ar). tlie culture in question, a learner can hardly hope to

learn the language and use it in a native-like manner.A classic example from Chinese context is con­

cerned with the mundane situation when people meet and greet each other. In Chinese culture, apart from - occasional How are you? (which in Chinese is a statement rather than an interrogative form), the com-

Aires, Argentina. (bibi@interserver.com.ar)

an

Page 38 Folio 4/1

i

and IX“a «Th= wT,d T‘ 'ime EFL “d writers .ha. heavilyThen, is nothing wrong with the linguist° l,2Z delTbM™ “'“"S f°' EFL S""

’’unaramaMi’’' “eT h^t" Cl,i"a' But l'“y slr°nSl» against inclusion of loo much cultutal ele- nan Tfh SP? g countries- k is ment in the materials, which, they are afraid, mighta amst their social and cultural norms. These utter- prove offending and provoke ill-feelings, thus reduc-ances encoded as greetings in Chinese are decoded ing prospective buyers and market. A good strategy in English as invitation in the first case and ‘nose- is to use materials written about learners’ own cul- p°king in the second. At best, the response would ture because learners are familiar with the culture and e o, but why or Why should I tell you? It’s none find them easier. What’s more, there is no danger of

of your business.’ Worse still, it could lead to exas- causing offence. This practice, I believe does not help peration. The point suggested by the example is that the acculturation of the taiget culture. It is true that it is far from enough to learn only the linguistic forms, there are people who write professionally for inter- and learners should make all efforts to acquire the national users. Most of the EFL materials, however, socio-cultural features accompanying them.

Forms are culturally based, and meanings even more culturally determined. Take some random of choosing culturally stimulating materials which examples. IRA is nothing but a short form for some- would suit their purposes, thing to a non-native speaker; to English people it is usually associated with bombing and terror. Tea is a ation: 1) culturally explicit and 2) culturally implicit, hot drink made with tea leaves to Chinese, but a drink Culturally explicit materials are authentic texts (not made with tea bags to English and afternoon tea still written for educational purposes, and written by na- means the same to Chinese with only a time differ- tive speakers) which have an obvious cultural sub- ence but a light afternoon meal consisting of tea, ject matter, covering such areas as customs and hab- bread, cakes, etc. to English people. Candle light, lit- its, family life and value systems, for instance ‘mar- erally, is one means of lightning as a replacement of riage,’ ‘leisure and hobby,’ ‘education,’ ‘family life,’ electricity or when there is a blackout, but ‘a meal etc. Each topic has a focal cultural theme. The lan- under candle light’ may give a romantic association guage in these texts is used as a medium to describe to many English couple and lovers. Even a familiar and explain the themes. Culturally implicit word like weekend can have different meanings. In materials,on the other hand, do not have a prominent Britain, no one would have any other thought than cultural theme. They are usually about subtle inter- Saturday and Sunday plus Friday evening’ but to personal relations, feelings and emotions, social val- Chinese before May 1995, it only meant ‘Sunday plus ues and philosophical ideas. Such texts are usually

go on and on. Be- literature, including stories, poems, and drama.Culturally explicit texts are largely expository in

style, having an interesting topic, easy to process and appropriate for teaching culture. From the teacher’s

The examples I have just mentioned indicatethat point of view it is easy to devise activities and gener- acculturation is of no small importance in the pro- ate discussion. Culturally implicit texts are mostly cess of language learning. Many scholars and lan- literary writings, linguistically more difficult, thus guage practitioners have become well aware of this, requiring critical reading or reading between the lines. For example, Nelson Books advocated a strong cul- Their cultural content is not clearly explained but im- tural component early in the 1960s. Since then there plied throughout. Such texts need deeper processing have appeared cultural syllabuses and a variety of and often prove more challenging. However, these schemes of learning the culture, such as Cultural texts are more readable, the language is more Capsules (Taylor et al 1961), which provides cultural colourful, and closer to the language in everyday use. information and Cultural Assimilator (Fiedler et al For example, in any story there are unavoidably dia- 1971) which emphasises cultural problem-solving, logues between characters (however unrealistic), But such schemes were attempts of separate cultural which can expose learners to informal language use: rnurses As a language teachei; I feel a strong need elliptical utterances, slang, swear words, popular idi- fnr a heavy cultural component within the language oms, humour, sarcasm, etc. In a word, it is the lan-

in the text materials and activities as well. guage to express emotions and feelings.What remains in between is culturally neutral ma­

terials, which cover academic writings and English for science and technology, ‘communicative language

mon

reasons, areare

are actually written for specific target audiences. So are writers under such circumstances should feel no guilt

There are two types of materials for consider-

Saturday evening.’ This list cause of the cultural differences, many foreign Ieam-

of English innocently make mistakes in a cul-

can

erstural sense.

i

course:

What materials are appropriateThere seems to be a general concern among na-

Folio 4/1 Page 39

!

iu- i

oblem for school teachers. For years boys had been

no more than 20 bg culturally oriented- t ^ tQ ,ook rather foolish, and clearly that was, there should be a ba - b ^ exercise.

P (From “Hairstyle” in Tribes by Desmond Morris and Peter Marsh, 1988)

80 percent or more Among culturally loaded texts ance between the implicit and explicit with the pen­dulum hopefully swinging towards the implicit atmore advanced stages.

IIWhat activities are desirable? rApart from language awareness and skills devel- They were fussing over Ahmad now - Hassan’s

opment activities, it is advisable to include deliber- mother added food to his plate and said, “You won’tately cultural awareness activities. In other words, a get anything this good for a long time. Hassan keptcertain proportion of activities should be devised to leaning over and squeezing his arm affectionately.help the learner understand and grasp the culture Ahmad’s cousins glanced at him with adoring eyes -through language work. For example, if the subject particularly Soosan, a pretty fourteen-year-old girl,matter of the text is about ‘leisure and hobbies,’ there who had a crush on him. And Mohsen, a year youngermay be activities which engage learners in Finding than he and going to the same high school, alwaysout what the people of the taiget culture usually do looked up to him as if he were an older brother. Thenas leisure, what typical leisure activities and hobbies why weren’t they as deeply upset as I am? she feltthe people of the target culture do, what activities really apart from everyone. The she thought, I haveand hobbies are appropriate for what types of people, never been like all the others around me. When sheor what age groups. Then there should be activities and her three sisters were growing up, she was theto make learners compare the target culture with their one, and the only one among them, who said,own. Such activities will not only rouse learners’ in- “Mother, why can’t I go to the university?” “Univer-terest in the cultural content, but may motivate and sity? How does that help you in diapering a baby?”encourage them to use language creatively while “Mother, why do some people die young?” “How do

I know, am I God?” And then she was the only oneFor culturally implicit materials, there should be who had resisted marrying the man selected for her.

(From “departure” in War after War Edited byNancy J. Peters, 1989)

doing the activities.

activities to help learners react to the events involv­ing the characters, or to the reactions of the charac­ters. They should also be led to sense and find outthe cultural assumptions in the text. Again compari- It is obvious that Extract I belongs to the cu ^ son can be made so as to encourage them to think ally explicit where the cultural signal hairsty whether the same situation could happen in the discussed in clear terms. The authors talk abou learner’s culture, whether their own would react the identities that long hair and skinheads represent, same way the characters did and how the learners symbolic meanings and social values. Everything i themselves would react, meanwhile, learners should on the surface. For this text, activities can be design^ be made aware of the sort of language used in that to help the learner to find cultural facts and encour- context to express particular feelings. The following age them to discuss whether each exists in their ow^ are sample texts of the two cultural types. culture, whether the same phenomena have the sm

social values, or how the same attitudes and va^u ^ are transmitted in their own culture in relation toI

b“- ass“™ •» around the world have Z many cultures ' ct'ce not because it prevents the sn '° th‘s prac' plicit however> belongs to the culturally im-r 3 siS"al ^ ‘heir bwlvT^? °f ,ice ba‘ be- lsrara extract from a story told from the point

ali rgf as a Br'tish working-chssT'k0 Sklnheads to the ° a 40"year old mother, whose son is going ST disencha"tment %! "be fussing v°e Paragraph is about a scene of fa*-

-s--ente‘ They a,so> of course, pos'eT^'"^ for WayS diffe*nt members of the family show

style.

to the

an e***Ta$sing ^^ection;e» status and education in their soci-

jPage 40 Folio 4/1

ety;To Find out more about MATS DA,4) marriage arrangement.

The most important cultural assumption is that P^ase contact: women are not supposed to receive higher education, their major role is to bring up children, and their marriages are often arranged by their parents. For this text there may be two types of activities: one type to encourage learners to extract the cultural

Brian Tomlinson, Chair of MATS DA,

Faculty of Humanities, University of Luton,

75 Castle St.,Luton LU1 3AJ, United Kingdom.

Tel: 44-(0) 1582-489041

Fax: 44-(0) 1582-489014

i

messagesfrom the text and the other to involve them in talking about their personal reactions, especially to women’s role in the society under discussion and in their own culture.

i

My argument thus far is that text materials for advanced students should be culturally oriented and make cultural learning an integral part of the general goal of language learning. It is the materials writer’s responsibility to ensure a heavy cultural load in the materials so that the language learner will not only study language but be made aware of ‘language IN culture’ and ‘culture IN language’ (stern 1983:206). COntciCtl ReferencesBrown, H.D. (1980) “Learning a second culture” In J.M.

Valdes.

To subscribe to MATSDA, please

Alan Battersby, Secrretary of MATSDA,

20 Victoria St.,Fiedler, F.E., Mitchell, T. andTriandis, H.C. (1971) “The culture assimilator: an approach to cross-cultural train­ing” Journal of Applied Psychology 55:95-102.

Stern, H.H. (1983) Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching Cambridge: CUP.

Stern, H.H. (1992) Issues and Options in Language Teach­ing (eds.) P. Allan and B. Harley. Cambridge: CUP.

Taylor, H.D. and Sorenson, J.L. (1961) “Culture Capsules"Modern Language Journal45: 350-4

Valdes, J.M. (1986) Cultural Bound. Cambridge: CUP.Weiyou Zhang is associate professor, vice-dean of the T0 Send Contributions tO FOLIO, English Department and co-ordinator of BC-China text­book-writing project. Address: English Department, Cen­tral China Normal University, Wuhan 430079, PR. China.

Ely,Cambs CB7 4BL, United Kingdom.

Tel: 44-(0) 1223-664857

please contact:Mertxe Martinez,Editor of FOLIO,

Faculty of Humanities,

University of Luton,75 Castle St.,

Luton LU1 3AJ,United Kingdom.

Fax: 44-(0) 1582-489014

mertxe.martinez@luton.ac.uk

The MATSDA Web Page can be

found at:

"7'.„ /wr/VJ.rjr r*«A*rS to **twA C.ufrtstW. http://www.luton.ac.uk/MATSDA

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