Ladies and Gentlemen:
It is an honour and privilege to address this gathering of experts in language teaching from the perspective of the Third World in general and Pakistan in particular. I wish to raise a number of issues for thought and discussion in this Keynote Lecture:
• What are the concerns of the language teacher in an ESP context in a service industry like the aviation industry?
• What do we know about the learner and the learning styles he/she may have to facilitate the learning process?
• Is there something in the nature of the English language that we must take notice of something so important that if we fail to notice it, we will have failed in some fundamental way in our delivery of the language?
I propose to answer these questions and suggest some directions for the future.
Let me at the outset say that the trends in the Aviation Industry we are seeing are moving in the direction of a greater use and, shall I say, dominion of the English language in our part of the world. On a visit in the rural part of Sindh in Pakistan, I was surprised to roadside shack which catered tea and drinks with a huge Dish Antenna on its roof. The hotel owner regretted he had no cold drinks, and added: “Sir, I sold the freezer to buy the Dish!” One may not agree with the choice, but the dominion of the Language seems to be firmly in place.
THE CIRCLES OF CONTEXT
As I delineate the teacher’s dilemma I would like to share with you some profound insights of a thinker on language and colonization: Dr Braj Kachru of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne. Kachru argues, and I think does so with telling impact: that there are three circles of English language teaching. The inner circle is the group of countries that may be called BANA: Britain, Australia, New Zealand, America: by the last is meant the North American continent, which includes Canada. Here the English language is the dominant culture: and consequently the needs of the learners in these countries are demonstrably different. Then there is the outer circle: these are countries which passed through a period of colonial influence and became independent after the Second World War. These Asian and African countries have a legacy that for good or ill, has had a lasting impact. The English language is seen as a language of upward mobility, with its roots in the commerce, trade law and education systems of the respective countries.
Examples are India, Pakistan, Nigeria and others. And lastly there is the expanding circle: these are obviously countries where a strong tradition of English learning and teaching is only a recent phenomenon. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, and China are some examples.
The issues of language teaching can at once be seen as flowing from the implications of the above descriptions. A teacher from the inner circle, in the outer circle will obviously have to deal with a different set of challenges than a teacher in the expanding circle. To put it more concretely: a native speaker teaching in Pakistan will find a different response from that in, say, Iran. These points are connected to the circles of Kachru.
Let us see then the special problems faced by a teacher who has learned her English with a heavy bias on literature, and particularly Anglo-Saxon literature at that, who has studied the details of Dickens and Hardy and Wordsworth and has to deal with the highly specific needs of the stewardesses who must learn to ask: ‘”What would you like for your main course, Sir?”
I see three problems that are endemic and will suggest some ideas for a Conference like this one to deliberate on.
Sound and Sense: What is the place of speaking in a context such as ours?
Time and Tense: To what detail of grammar should we go in the teaching?
Competence and Performance: following Dell Haymes, to what extent can politeness, body language, i.e. the pragmatics of discourse, be taught?
Briefly, I would suggest:
1. Speaking must be taught, deliberately, overtly and consciously. It is too risky to be left to be picked up over the TV programme, on the Dish. The students who come to us need explicit guidance: and as adults they may not be able to say that they do so. In my workshop tomorrow we will look at some strategies for doing this in a challenging manner.
2. The issue of time and tense is a vexed problem in the English language and while a full discussion is not possible here the grammar translation method usually used by most teachers does not help much either. The teaching of tenses by means of isolated sentences, and transformation exercises in which learners turn sentences of one form into another for no particular reason, is such a staple use of classroom time that even the most ardent critics of the Communicative Approach see some basis of interest in the real life use suggested there.
3. Continuing the debate of Methodologies, the Communicative Approach versus the more traditional methods, the issues of appropriacy, correctness, contextualization remain. Just how much cultural baggage is necessary in the language class? Should we deal with the cultural norms as a necessary nuisance that just happen to be sticking like burrs on the sheep’s skin, or do we get involved into debates about superior cultures? Of course the way I have phrased this itself betrays a bias but the question must be addressed by the teacher on a daily basis.
This brings us to the second issue for today.
THE LEADER
• What do we know about the learner and the learning styles he/she may have to facilitate the learning process?
The answer from research into learning styles across various age groups shows some promising insights. We now know (Naiman, Frohlich, Stern and Todesco: The Good Language Learner; Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 1978) that the following characteristics are typical of adults who have learned a second, third and even a fourth language successfully.
Good language learners find a style of learning that suits them: When they are in a learning situation that they do not lie, they are able to adapt it to their personal needs. They believe they can always learn something, whatever the situation. They also know how they prefer to learn and choose learning situations that are suited to their way of learning.
Good language learners are actively involved in the language learning process: Besides regular language classes, they plan activities that give them a chance to use and learn the language. They know practice is very important. Sometimes they choose an activity because they are already familiar with the ideas. Sometimes they choose activities that help them with their special problems. They also often do things don’t usually do to gain more information about their second language.
Good language learners try to figure out how the language works: They pay attention to pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. They develop good techniques for improving their pronunciation, learning grammar and vocabulary. For example, some learners try to imitate the sounds of the language without using real words. When learning new words, other learners make a picture of the object in their minds. They compare the words in their native language to see how they are different.
Good language learners know that language is used to communicate: They have good techniques to practise listening, speaking, reading, and writing. In the early stages of their language learning, they do not worry about making mistakes. They speak and try to become fluent. They look for opportunities to speak with native speakers.
Good language learners are like good detectives: They are always looking for clues that will help them understand how the language works. They make guess and ask people to correct them if they are wrong. They compare what they say with what others say. They keep a record of what they have learned and think about it.
Good language learners learn to think in the language.
Good language learners realize that language learning is not easy. They try to overcome their feelings of frustration and their lack of confidence.
The teaching implications are fairly obvious: I think there is a very significant point in that the first characteristic that we have noticed of the good learner is that he/she is aware of strategies and we don’t seem to notice that unless our teaching caters to a variety of styles, the very success we wish for the learner will be nullified. Thus the teacher has to be eclectic: a good word which has become overused to mean all sorts of things but it still conveys what I mean.
From the learner the stage is set for us to discuss language.
THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE
Our question was:
• Is there something in the nature of the English language that we must take notice of: something so important that if we fail to notice it, we will have failed in some fundamental way in our delivery of the language?
I believe there are three features of the language that must be separated out for a meaningful discussion.
English is a prepositional language: When Thomas Scovel of the San Francisco State University spoke of this concept we were quite nonplussed. We asked him questions and when he spelled it out we were even more surprised at the obviousness of the idea. He was pointing out a feature of the language that we must have despaired of some of our learners ever getting straight: why is to bring up not bring about or bring forth not bring under. Seeing the vast amount of meaning carried by prepositions which are basically NOT INTERCHANGEABLE, that is each one has unique meanings for unique contexts, the learners problems may well be imagined. It is perhaps not without exaggeration then to say the things that strike most teachers funny and clients/passengers irritating are misused prepositions in phrases of common use.
A speaker of English has to deal with many cultural assumptions. Surely all languages which boast of a universal culture may also be justly proud of their contributions to the world culture, but the English language learner has to deal with much more than grammatical correctness. When we hear an opinion or an idea, we may wish to react to it in a number of ways. We may agree to it, add to it, expand it, disagree with it … any number of possible reactions. Consider the following as means of signaling what we wish to do:
When it comes to that yes but
and another thing well, maybe
all the same actually
consequently anyway
in my case as a matter of fact
to give you an idea to begin with
in the first place ….
The point is not the number of phrases: it is that very few share the grammatical features learners have been taught under the heading of Responding to Ideas! As is obvious, anyone who begins with “When it comes to that…” is going to say something quite different from someone who prefaces forthcoming remarks with: “All the same…” I can still remember the surprise my native speaking teacher had when she found that learners in Pakistan did manage to pick up the proper use of much and many. Being a reflective teacher, she had understood that fact that native speakers take a lot for granted and ought to credit the learners for having achieved the fluency that they do at all.
80% of all prose is only three verb forms:
This brings me to the crux of my paper: the central insight I wish to share with you this morning. Can it be that the frustration of our learners is avoidable? That all the variety of language forms and verb systems we make them learn are perhaps not so helpful because in the real world of English one gets by (or can get by) with so little? Could we perhaps do more with less?
I seriously believe that the answer to all these questions is yes. The research of Dr Patricia McEldowney of the University of Manchester England has shown that the following forms of the verbs account for about 80% of all printed prose.
Instruction stem VO
Description stem+s SVO
Narration sstem+ed SVO
That being so one wonders in what ways can teachers celebrate the relief from the intractable nature of the language reduced to such a quantity that perhaps failing to teach this is a serious lack on our part. To put it more concretely: the time that teachers spend trying to enable the learners to grapple with the unpredictables of language may well be saved if the teachers were to instead spend the time teach the basics and most common functions of the language. The 20% prose where the other functions typically occur are literary writing where the primary purpose is not information but a mood, or a nuance of experience, admittedly the things that are best done in one’s own language first.
Let us consider the situation from a different perspective. I quote a scenario which though originally written for Greece, applies well enough to Pakistan and I dare say many of you will find echoes with your own contexts. It may help to remember that the situation fits the circles of Context I spelled out in detail above.
In the great Greek paperchase for qualifications, English is something you must acquire, as the language of foreign intervention it is something you must distrust; in the snob value attached to things from abroad, it is an object of desire; at school it gets in the way of more prestigious lessons like Greek and maths. As the language of Shakespeare, it is something one vaguely admires. In Greece, memories of deprivation in a village with no electricity make manual work a mark of poverty and failure: a foreign language may not open doors to a white collar job, a permanent civil service post, but it certainly opens a window on to a better social position. (Promodou, 1988:25)
Her we can see the Expanding Circle context working itself out. A couple of notes on the italicized words: the first one is acquire not learn. If Krashen’s distinctions are valid, (and they are) notice the strange irony of it. Learning is a formal process: acquisition is not: learning is a designed, systematic activity, acquisition is not: and here the learner is supposed to acquire the language in an Expanding Circle Country! The other words I have marked are distrust, desire and admire: observe that they are mutually contradictory and such ambivalence can hardly help the learning process.
What’s the connection? How does this relate to the 80% / 20% divide of English prose just posited above? The answer is simple: the issue is information. The raw material of teaching is information, and English has three modes of ‘packaging’ it. Once we see that all textbooks of Avionics, say, and aviation, and all encyclopedias, newspapers, magazines, sales brochures, hotel advertisements, pamphlets, memos, reports, letters in short, 80% of prose that we deal with is information then information becomes the basic currency of teaching. The spotlight on the “fantasy of the functional/grammatical syllabus” is off.
CONCLUSION
What do we do then? How do we reach out to all the young people out there whose need for English is so high at both personal and professional levels that their self concept seems to be bound in it? From all the above I offer the following insights from the many years of experiences of teaching English as a second and Foreign language to teachers and children all over the country.
1. Consider the whole person. We must allow the whole person of the student whatever age to have a place in our classrooms. To quote Prodomou (1988) again:
But we often behave as if our students, on entering our little EFL world, change: change utterly into little John Smiths and Janet Smiths; that, coming to learn English, they leave their three dimensional humanity outside and enter the plastic world of EFL textbooks; textbooks where language is safe and innocent, and does not say or do anything. (Italics in the original)
As all teachers know, they do not change like that and the closing of minds is achieved at great costs.
2. Take time to grow. How often have we as teachers tried out something new without any ostensible reason (such as a promotion or an inspector’s visit) to do so? I think the commonest reason for teacher burnout is the sheer staleness of our classroom activities, the ‘trusted tedium of the well tried’ as a friend put it. We must be aware of the new thinking in classroom dynamics, in cooperative learning and in classroom discourse so that a certain freshness keeps going into all our work.
3. Andragogy is not pedagogy. Adults learn differently from children so a little attention to the “creature comforts” of classrooms: good chairs, ventilation, (some arrangements for food … all these things are important to signify a degree of care. At a higher plane: I would like to offer for your consideration the concept of multiple presentations. Graham Low (1989:142) points out that:
adult learners on vocationally-oriented courses often prefer to get a general
overview of an event before working with the details.
This has implications for the classroom. We should try to the students/clients/pilots know what we are going to do, and when we finish the session, recap so that they have a sense of ‘completion’ (if not progress!)
One last thought: English has been learned by people of all countries, all ages, all cultures, in almost all climates. There is nothing about it for anyone to believe that one is incapable of learning it. Let’s get on with it … and with apologies to Charles DeGaulle, I will rephrase what he said about war: “English is too important to be left to the English speaking people!”
Thank you.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ellis, R. (1985) Understanding Second Language Acquisition
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Hadfield, Jill Classroom Dynamics
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Hymes, D. (1972) ‘On Communicative Competence’ in J. Pride and
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Kachru, B.B. (ed.) (1982) The Other Tongue: English Across Cultures
Urbana Illinois: University of Illinois Press
Kagan, Spencer (1993) Cooperative Learning: Teachers Resource
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Low, G. (1989) ‘Appropriate Design: The Internal Organization of
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