Andrew Littlejohn, Institute of Education, University of London, UK
"Perhaps the greatest of all
pedagogical fallacies is the notion that a person learns only the
particular thing he is studying at the time."
(Dewey, 1938)
I think it is fair to say that during most of its history, English language teaching has been mainly concerned with the ‘syllabus’, that is, with determining what areas of language need to be taught and learned. Whilst the ‘syllabus’ plays a very important role, my principal aim in this article is to suggest that one can also look beyond this to the language learning experience itself and identify other kinds of learning outcomes from classroom work. I will show how one can analyse language learning tasks so that the nature of potential ‘non-language-learning’ learning outcomes can be identified. Consideration of these learning outcomes, I will argue, is important in analysing how far classroom practice may actually reflect our long terms aims in language education, particularly in the context of school education.
We may begin with a simple but useful division of aspects of
classroom work into two main areas: ‘content’ and
‘methodology’. Content refers to the ‘what’
of language teaching and learning. In this, one common
subdivision is to speak of ‘learning content’ - the
knowledge it is hoped the students will take away with them, and
‘carrier content’ - that which is used to present or
‘carry’ the learning content. Thus, for example, the
learning content of ‘the past simple tense’ may be
presented to students through a carrier content text about the
life of a famous person. ‘Methodology’, the second
major aspect, relates to ‘how’ the language is being
learned - broadly, who does what, with whom in the classroom.
Thus, methodology is concerned with how teachers and students
interact with each other, and the kinds of mental and social
processes in which they involved. Whether, for example, they are
working alone or in pairs, whether they are required to work
things out for themselves or to apply given rules, the extent of
support they receive, and so on, all belong to the realm of
methodology.
We can sum this up as follows:
Typically, language learning is seen principally in terms of the acquisition of language learning content and language skills, and methodology and carrier content are viewed as relevant only in so far as they facilitate the learning of the language. A wider, curriculum focus, however, views the total language learning experience as potentially contributing to the educational development of the student. Both content and methodology can therefore be seen as important in their own right, each potentially offering their own ‘learning opportunities’. Thus, for example, the experience of engaging in a grammar problem-solving exercise may involve a learning outcome in addition to knowledge of the grammar point upon which it focuses, or content which is intended simply as a ‘carrier’ may actually function as learning content for some students. It is in this light, then, that one can understand the quote from Dewey with which I opened this article. With this in mind, I would like now to turn to how we may begin to analyse the additional learning opportunities which may be offered by different types of tasks.
The two main aspects of the language curriculum enable us to
pose some key questions which we can use to analyse any language
learning task. These relate directly to the areas of methodology
and content as explained above.
1 What are the students required to do?
- what role are the students to take in classroom discourse?
- what mental operation are they to use?
2 With what content?
- what is the nature of the content: fiction, fact, language
commentary?
- where does it come from? From the teacher, the students, or
within the task itself?
Taken together, these questions form a means of investigating
what may be available for learning from any particular task. Let
me take two examples to show how this analysis works, one fairly
commonly found in school language textbooks, and the other less
commonly so.
‘Listen and repeat’ type exercises form a substantial part of most language teaching procedures, particularly with beginning level students. They are useful in getting students familiar with the sounds of the language and enabling them to begin to see themselves as speakers of the foreign language. They also, it is often argued, form a means of internalising the language. If we apply the questions listed above, however, we can see that there are many other things going on at the time. Let me take a concrete, and fairly typical, example suitable for elementary students of English.
Shop assistant: Can I help you?
Man: Yes, I’d like two pounds of apples please.
Shop assistant: Certainly, sir. Two pounds of apples. Here you
are.
Anything else?
Man: Yes, please. Can I have a pound of bananas?
Shop assistant: Of course. Anything else?
Man: No, thanks? How much is that?
Shop assistant: That’s one pound fifty, please.
Man: Here you are.
Shop assistant: Thanks. Good-bye.
Man: Bye!
What is the student required to do?
In this example we can see that the students are simply called
upon to respond to the stimulus of the recording by repeating
exactly what they hear. The language they are to produce is
provided entirely by the task and they are not required to
initiate any ‘new’ language themselves. The task
provides, then, a kind of ‘script’ for what is to
happen in the classroom. For as long as it takes to do the task,
the actions of both the teacher and the students are largely
predetermined. The roles proposed by the task are thus
essentially passive ones - to manage the tape recorder and
monitor student output on the part of the teacher and simply to
respond by repeating on the part of the students. In terms of
mental operation, i.e. what is required to happen inside the
students’ head, we can see that the main requirement is for
a ‘low level’ operation of holding something in
short-term memory and then producing it almost immediately.
With what content?
In the particular example given above, we can see that the
students are working with content which is entirely fictional in
nature. They are not expected to interact with the text for the
message it contains but simply for the forms and phrases it
exemplifies. The context of a man in a shop, then, is simply a
‘carrier’ for the learning content of functional
phrases for shopping. We can also see that all of the content
with which the students are to work comes from the task itself.
They themselves are not required to contribute anything, either
from their imagination or from the repertoire of language which
they have already acquired.
‘Combining knowledge’ types of exercises are exercises which require students to draw on knowledge that they already have and to relate it to something new. We can see one example of this in the following task. Apart from one or two vocabulary items, the task would also be suitable at an elementary level of English.
1.1 Why do we have rain? Why are there winds? Tell the class
what you think.
1.2 Work in a group of four. Two of you choose text A and two of
you choose text B. Put the pieces of information in the correct
places. Then, in your language, tell the other pair what your
text says.
The ground becomes warm. The water becomes vapour. The air rises.
The warm cloud becomes water again. It rains!
Applying the curriculum questions to this task, a rather
different picture emerges.
What is the student required to do?
We can see that in this type of exercise, more demands are placed
on the student. In the first place, they are asked to draw on
what they already know about how winds and rain happen, making
use of what they have covered in other school subjects. This is
proposed as a discussion type activity, so there is to be an
interchange of ideas amongst members of the class They then have
to work in small groups, with pairs within each group drawing on
their knowledge of weather processes and their knowledge of
English in order to complete the diagrams. Once they have done
this, they then have to reformulate this in their own language in
order to explain it to the other pair in the group. The task,
then, requires three kinds of knowledge: knowledge of the topic
(weather processes), knowledge of English, and knowledge of their
own language. Predominantly, the task puts the students in a
position where they are expected to initiate the use of language.
This is clearly seen in the first step where they discuss what
they already know, but it is also true in the later stages where
they are asked to explain the diagram in their own words.
With what content?
In contrast to the frequent use of fiction, content in this task
is factual and cross-curricular, drawing on a topic covered
elsewhere in the school curriculum. More importantly, however, is
the question of where this content has come from. Although the
task sets the initial questions, the details of the answers come
first entirely from the students themselves. They then approach
the second part of the task with their own knowledge in mind in
order to make sense of the diagram. There is thus an interaction
between the content supplied by the task and the content supplied
by the students themselves.
As the analysis above has made clear, each of the tasks is
complex in its own way, each one suggesting certain types of
classroom and mental processes. From the discussion earlier, we
can see that these processes may each contribute to what the
students learn. In both cases, students are interacting with and
learning the foreign language. The question is, however, what
other things may they be learning at the same time?
In Example A, the listen and repeat exercise, we saw how the
students are placed in a predominantly ‘respond’
position where they were simply to repeat the dialogue on the
tape. Potentially, this process will carry messages to students
about how they are to behave in the classroom and what role they
are to have in relation to learning. This message is underlined
by the fact that the students themselves contribute nothing to
the content of the task - everything is provided, such that one
can expect more or less identical events to unfold in the
classroom, regardless of who the students are (assuming, of
course, that the task is completed as the instructions suggest).
Additionally, we can see that the content of the task is largely
to be viewed as ‘disposable’. Students are not expected
to retain the details of the man’s shopping list, only the
language he used.
Example B presents quite a different picture. Here the students
have a much more active and interactive role in learning. They
are to draw on what they already know and are required to provide
some of the content for the task themselves. The message to
students is thus a very different one. The students are viewed as
essential ingredients in the successful completion of the task.
We can thus expect varying classroom events to unfold, depending
on the participants involved. The content of the task, also, is
to be viewed differently. Although the main focus is on learning
and using English, knowledge of weather processes is an important
aim in the task. There is no ‘carrier content’, since
the students are to learn both the language and about weather
processes at the same time.
The essential point I am arguing here is that these experiences
may potentially have their own learning outcomes. Tasks suggest
particular classroom roles and these may have the effect of
training students to see themselves in particular ways in
relation to learning. They also draw upon varying mental
processes and thus may (or may not) contribute to the general
cognitive development of the students. They may (or may not) also
offer content for learning in addition to the foreign language,
and thus develop the students general educational background.
The suggestion that there is more learning going on in a
language classroom than simply the learning of the foreign
language, is a very important one. It places a very great
responsibility on course designers and teachers to reflect on the
kind of experiences they are offering students and to consider
how these relate to the students’ general educational
development. If particular kinds of classroom roles, mental
processes and types of content are continually being offered to
students then we may worry that we are not capitalising on the
possibilities of language teaching and that we are unwittingly
training students to behave and to view themselves in particular
ways. You can gain a useful insight into this by simply listing
what you think are three or four of the most common exercises
which students do in your classroom, and then analyse each one in
terms of the four questions listed earlier. If similar answers
come from each type of exercise then you will gain a general
impression of the kinds of learning opportunities which are being
offered to students.
I have avoided in this brief article explicitly stating what
types of exercises I favour. It should be fairly obvious to the
reader, however, that my argument reveals a preference for more
open-ended, interactive tasks which place students in a stronger
‘initiate’ role in using English, which draw on their
own personal knowledge and which stimulate cognitive development.
Tasks which draw on knowledge learnt in other school subjects,
tasks which require imagination and problem-solving,
‘creative’ writing tasks and so on, all fall into this
category. There is no doubt that there is a very important place
for repetitive, ‘respond’ tasks in language learning,
but, as I hope my argument has made clear, if these predominate
then we run certain risks in terms of the overall educational
development of the students.
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