 |
| Source: David Crystal's Cambridge Encyclopedia |
Challenging
Myths
Simplicity of
English is one of the most pervasive myths about a language – that grammar is
needed for writing but not for speech (David Crystal, 2000). The reality can be
seen in the three kilos of paper comprising A Comprehensive Grammar of the
English Language written by Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik (1985).
"Flexible" is undoubtedly a better attribute for English than
"simple" – though, of course, flexibility must be learnt and rules
observed if one wants not only to make oneself understood, that is, to express
ideas, feelings and emotions, but also to impress, in contexts in which all of
the cultural connotations may at any one time endanger comprehension and make
us question the validity of the resulting meaning.
Quite a few
concepts have been mentioned above – grammar, flexibility, rules, express, impress –
and all of them pivot, in various ways, around the ideas of form and meaning.
Language
Schools all over the world assume disparity in students’ interactional
competence as inherent. But there is more to it than learning styles, or the multiple
intelligence theory: outstanding among various factors is the limited
amount of time, which has, even in the case of a 120-hour course, a twofold
impact on chances of success: on the one hand, it unavoidably conditions the
choice of learning priorities; on the other hand, it is, from a
psycholinguistic perspective, the only vehicle for long-term memory storage of
input – always out of step with intake, and heralding every academic year as a
challenge for students and teachers alike.
Every course
is seen as a fresh start, yet if the teacher’s clear aim is to help students
extend their knowledge and skills within the 120 hours of an academic year, his
or her first undertaking at the outset of the acquisition process must be how
to make the correct predictions about what learners have available to them in
terms of knowledge sources and learning procedures.
 |
| Source: Google Images |
When it comes
to considering what approach should form the basis of the language teaching
curriculum, teachers need to be able to sort out the information at their disposal
as they make pedagogical decisions. Contrastive analysis, so-called invariant
word order of acquisition of morphemes, the theory that learners should just be
exposed to, rather than be taught, the language – no matter what the finding,
the question arises, “What does this mean for the classroom teacher?” Applying
a theory to the classroom does not necessarily mean that earlier, now frowned
upon theories are not applicable. Repetition, drills, memorization of
dialogues, feedback translation – all have their potential usefulness and
represent as many resources for the teacher in need to admit that what learners
do naturally cannot necessarily be induced in a classroom context (Larsen
Freeman, 2000).
The language classroom has been and should continue to be the
social setting for fruitful interaction,
an ever-novel, enriching event for both teachers and learners in
which educational theory, linguistic principle and practical intuition can
intersect not only for our hypotheses
to be tested and accepted, rejected or modified, but also to provide the
students with the most efficient means of improvement possible and so enable
them to do what they cannot do on their own, or at least not so efficiently.
So it is
altogether legitimate to ask how much the grammar the students tailor for
themselves represents an account of the
Grammar in the picture above, since expanding their language system
requires building up a picture of the whole language while using it freely.
Freedom of choice to say what they mean to say takes for granted that learners
will find a way of encoding the meanings they need and so attain fluency, yet in their constant attempts
to make the target language an effective instrument of communication, they use
strategies which they employ in their own language and in so doing they adjust
the language they are learning (Willis, 1990). In response to the demand placed
upon them, they exploit the language learning resources in a way that distorts
the formal code (Halliday, 1979), a situation which clashes systematically with
the form-focused enterprise of the
teacher in his or her endeavour to attain accuracy
through presentation, practice, production and exposure.
Therefore,
without that permanent urge to know more, learners' stagnation in interlanguage
is likely to occur, and this would simply stifle any attempts on behalf of the
teacher to contribute, by his or her initiatives, to their progress.
