Choice and Communicative Language Teaching
Hi everybody,
Well, I'm a first-timer too, as you'll soon be able to tell! I wrote this big long academic-sounding reflection on CLT, which I will paste below... but judging from the other posts, I think something a little less formal may have been more appropriate. Next time!
I'm really excited to be working with all of you, by the way (and to have learned so much about you already, thanks to Douglas' icebreaker)!
Would anybody be interested in presenting on the topic of outreaching to/communicating with the parents and guardians of ESL students? If so, maybe we can pair up!
See y'all on Monday,
Alana
_ _ _ _ _
Before reading Savignon's article, I had never encountered the term CLT (Communicative Language Teaching). Nonetheless, my experiences as a language student, teacher and tutor had left me with a semi-conscious sense that there existed two opposing approaches to language learning. One of these approaches—much like CLT—prioritized real-life communication relevant to the learner's needs and interests; the other focused on error correction and the study of prescriptive grammatical rules. I had intuitively aligned the latter approach with a more authoritarian teaching style, and by extension, with a politically conservative ideology that viewed language students (particularly English learners) as linguistically deficient and in need of reformation by an expert/teacher/colonizer figure. In my binaristic schema of language teaching methods, it followed that the other approach—the one that prioritized communication—was less tied up in the global politics of English language dominance.
It had never occurred to me to question what socio-political factors had caused the communicative approach to gain wider acceptance in recent decades. When I read Savignon's piece, I was fascinated (and disconcerted) to learn that the Japanese government had officially adopted a communicative approach to English instruction in order to "prepare students to cope with the rapidly occurring changes toward a more global society" (Savignon 14)—that is, a society in which using English had become an economic necessity. While CLT emphasizes the "range of options" (19) open to students and teachers, learning to use English (as opposed to studying it in a theoretical, book-oriented way, as an interesting complement to a broad education) is now anything but optional for many people worldwide.
Until recently, I was the coordinator of a free ESL tutoring program for live-in caregivers (people who enter Canada under a special section of the Immigration Act that allows them to apply for landed status after living in their employer's home for two years caring for children, elderly people or adults with disabilities). This tutoring program is offered in partnership with Frontier College, a literacy organization whose mission somewhat resembles CLT: tutors support learning on learners' own terms and in order to meet learners' own goals. Since the caregivers set the agenda for tutoring and choose what areas of English to focus on, I initially felt confident that the program could be an empowering experience for everybody involved. However, as I got more involved in the program, I started noticing that many caregivers' learning needs and goals were largely determined by the unfair demands Canadian society placed on them. For example, many caregivers sought tutors because they needed to prepare for standardized tests in order to enter Canadian college programs, yet many had graduate degrees or other advanced credentials in their countries of origin. Though tutoring was certainly relevant to caregivers' lives and reflected some of their choices, learning English was not really a choice in the first place.
Sometimes, though, caregivers chose to work on personal and artistic self-expression: one woman worked with her tutor to translate her poetry from Slovak into English. Here was a case where using English seemed self-motivated and quite separate from political and economic pressures. To me, one of the most exciting parts of CLT is the component that Savignon calls "My Language is Me: Personal English Language Use." Using a new language for pleasure and creative satisfaction guarantees that CLT's focus on language use cannot be reduced to language utility (in the economic and political sense: the fact that economically and politically advantaged English speakers find it convenient when people around the world can speak their language and thus better cater to their needs).
Well, I'm a first-timer too, as you'll soon be able to tell! I wrote this big long academic-sounding reflection on CLT, which I will paste below... but judging from the other posts, I think something a little less formal may have been more appropriate. Next time!
I'm really excited to be working with all of you, by the way (and to have learned so much about you already, thanks to Douglas' icebreaker)!
Would anybody be interested in presenting on the topic of outreaching to/communicating with the parents and guardians of ESL students? If so, maybe we can pair up!
See y'all on Monday,
Alana
_ _ _ _ _
Before reading Savignon's article, I had never encountered the term CLT (Communicative Language Teaching). Nonetheless, my experiences as a language student, teacher and tutor had left me with a semi-conscious sense that there existed two opposing approaches to language learning. One of these approaches—much like CLT—prioritized real-life communication relevant to the learner's needs and interests; the other focused on error correction and the study of prescriptive grammatical rules. I had intuitively aligned the latter approach with a more authoritarian teaching style, and by extension, with a politically conservative ideology that viewed language students (particularly English learners) as linguistically deficient and in need of reformation by an expert/teacher/colonizer figure. In my binaristic schema of language teaching methods, it followed that the other approach—the one that prioritized communication—was less tied up in the global politics of English language dominance.
It had never occurred to me to question what socio-political factors had caused the communicative approach to gain wider acceptance in recent decades. When I read Savignon's piece, I was fascinated (and disconcerted) to learn that the Japanese government had officially adopted a communicative approach to English instruction in order to "prepare students to cope with the rapidly occurring changes toward a more global society" (Savignon 14)—that is, a society in which using English had become an economic necessity. While CLT emphasizes the "range of options" (19) open to students and teachers, learning to use English (as opposed to studying it in a theoretical, book-oriented way, as an interesting complement to a broad education) is now anything but optional for many people worldwide.
Until recently, I was the coordinator of a free ESL tutoring program for live-in caregivers (people who enter Canada under a special section of the Immigration Act that allows them to apply for landed status after living in their employer's home for two years caring for children, elderly people or adults with disabilities). This tutoring program is offered in partnership with Frontier College, a literacy organization whose mission somewhat resembles CLT: tutors support learning on learners' own terms and in order to meet learners' own goals. Since the caregivers set the agenda for tutoring and choose what areas of English to focus on, I initially felt confident that the program could be an empowering experience for everybody involved. However, as I got more involved in the program, I started noticing that many caregivers' learning needs and goals were largely determined by the unfair demands Canadian society placed on them. For example, many caregivers sought tutors because they needed to prepare for standardized tests in order to enter Canadian college programs, yet many had graduate degrees or other advanced credentials in their countries of origin. Though tutoring was certainly relevant to caregivers' lives and reflected some of their choices, learning English was not really a choice in the first place.
Sometimes, though, caregivers chose to work on personal and artistic self-expression: one woman worked with her tutor to translate her poetry from Slovak into English. Here was a case where using English seemed self-motivated and quite separate from political and economic pressures. To me, one of the most exciting parts of CLT is the component that Savignon calls "My Language is Me: Personal English Language Use." Using a new language for pleasure and creative satisfaction guarantees that CLT's focus on language use cannot be reduced to language utility (in the economic and political sense: the fact that economically and politically advantaged English speakers find it convenient when people around the world can speak their language and thus better cater to their needs).
posted by Alana Chuk at 10:50 PM
1 Comments:
Hmmm...outreaching? So do you mean talking to parents and guardians and suggesting activities they could do with their child to help them learn outside of the classroom? Sounds interesting.
Post a Comment
<< Home