A PERSPECTIVE ON SECOND LANGUAGE TEACHING

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CHAPTER 3  A PERSPECTIVE ON SECOND LANGUAGE TEACHING

INTRODUCTION

The main concern of this study, viz. determining the criteria for developing materials in order to develop the proficiency in Afrikaans of Grade 12 additional language learners, is tied up with the question of the kind of language teaching necessary to achieve that proficiency.
This chapter sets out to review a number of traditional approaches in language teaching to serve as background, before considering the current orthodoxy, viz. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), along with its practical implementations. The purpose of reflecting on the history of Communicative Language Teaching is that it may provide insight into its different directions and interpretations. This chapter also sets out to identify four directions in CLT identified in the literature, their characteristics, and how each contributes or fails to contribute to language learning goals. In addition, this literature review will reflect upon a number of controversies in and responses to current issues in language teaching.
A brief survey of a number of language teaching concepts, namely ‘method’, ‘approach’, ‘style’ and ‘technique’ will be undertaken first, in order to understand their fundamental nature, and to establish some of the concepts appropriate to the context of this study.

APPROACH AND METHOD

The study of teaching methods and procedures in language teaching has always been a central feature of applied linguistic discussions, and various attempts have been made, for example, to clarify the relationship between the concepts of ‘approach’ and ‘method’.
What is a method and when is it an approach? A method of language teaching is defined by Weideman (2001: 1), as “a style of instruction that expresses the professional commitment of the teacher in support of an assumption of how language is learned”. Brown (1994: 48), following Richards & Rodgers (1986), defines a method as an umbrella term for the specification and interrelation of theory and practice. An approach defines assumptions, beliefs, and theories about the nature of language and language learning. Designs specify the relationship of those theories to classroom materials and activities. Procedures are the techniques and practices that are derived from one’s approach and design.
In line with Brown’s definition, the term ‘approach’ will in this study refer to the underlying assumptions, beliefs, and theories of second language and second language learning. The term ‘method’ is then viewed as the expression of beliefs about language learning, and ‘method’ and ‘style’ will be used as synonyms. The concept ‘techniques’ includes a wide variety of language procedures in the form of tasks, exercises, activities, or devices used in the language classroom to achieve the lesson and learning objectives.
A number of traditional approaches to language teaching are reviewed next, since, as we shall note below, these provide a background for the discussion of Communicative Language Teaching.

TRADITIONAL APPROACHES

The term ‘traditional’ approaches is often used to refer to various methods of language teaching. Table 3.1 below gives a brief overview of the three ‘traditional’ methods, namely the Grammar-translation method, the Direct method, and the Audio-lingual method, and what they entail.
The oldest of the ‘traditional’ approaches being referred to here is the Grammar- translation method, which, as its name indicates, focuses on translation, especially translation into and from the target language (cf. Richards & Rodgers, 1986: 3-5; Weideman, 2002a: 10-15). Memory plays a very important role here, because the learner needs to memorise vocabulary lists and word formation. In the Grammar- translation method the emphasis is on writing and reading, and speaking and listening skills are generally disregarded. According to Weideman (2002a: 15), the restricted view taken by the Grammar-translation method is probably the reason why it was replaced by methods that emphasised all four skills. Brown (1994: 53) states that the Grammar-translation method “does virtually nothing to enhance a student’s communicative ability in the language”.
As seen in Table 3.1, in contrast to the Grammar-translation method, no translation is allowed in the Direct method. Instead, the importance of conversation or ‘oral’  practice is highlighted. The emphasis is thus no longer on reading and writing, but on speaking and listening. Usually ‘oral’ communication comprises a short talk or speech about a certain topic and therefore it entails very little, or no interaction or communication between the learners (cf. Weideman, 2002a: 16-19). The Direct method also relies on memory, as well as on association between form and meaning (cf. Richards & Rodgers, 1986: 9-12).
The Audio-lingual method (ALM) is “linked to behaviourist psychology” in its orientation (Weideman, 2002a: 20), and a prominent technical feature is the use of repetition. Drilling grammatical structures forms the backbone of the Audio-lingual method. Language is viewed as a habit, and language learning is thus seen as the learning of a set of habits. Repetition is necessary as reinforcement and to assist in forming habits (Richards & Rodgers, 1986: 49-52; Weideman, 2002a: 20-25). To master a language, the learner must acquire a “set of appropriate language stimulus response chains” (Richards & Rodgers, 1986: 50). Although the Audio-lingual method focuses on a mastery of all four skills, the emphasis is firstly on listening, then speaking, reading and writing, and in that order. Materials in the form of teacher’s guides, learners’ books and audiotapes generally support this kind of language teaching. Even today, materials based on audio-lingual principles are still widely used.
Over time, the popularity of the Audio-lingual method has declined, as, amongst other things, practitioners found that learners are unable to use the skills taught in the real world outside the classroom. Furthermore, many learners found Audio-lingual study methods boring and unsatisfying (Richards & Rodgers, 1986: 59). Indeed, as Brown (1994: 74) remarks, the ‘traditional’ methods are an interesting if not insightful contribution to our professional repertoire, but few practitioners look to any one of them, or their predecessors, for a final answer on how to teach a foreign language.
By the end of the 1970s a new trend in language teaching came to the fore, and is generally captured in the term Communicative Language Teaching.

COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING

The communicative approach to language teaching, or Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), came into fashion at least in part as a “reaction against traditional methods” (Weideman, 2002a: 28). Communicative Language Teaching can be justified with reference to a theory of language as communication and is best considered an approach rather than a method (Richards & Rodgers, 1986: 66; Lewis, 1999: 49). Necessarily, the history of the communicative approach to language teaching needs to be reflected upon to gain a better understanding of why this  approach is “today probably regarded as the reigning orthodoxy in language teaching” (Weideman, 2002a: 28). That it is the orthodoxy is not in doubt. In the recent literature, Wesche and Skehan (2002: 227) comment that over the past twenty-five years CLT was characterised as the most interesting development in language teaching, but has “continually had to measure itself with evidence”. Therefore, researchers and teachers should acknowledge that CLT is “not a panacea that can achieve success whatever the circumstances” (Wesche and Skehan, 2002: 227). Rather, it entails proper teacher training, as well as prudent introduction, implementation, and adaptation to specific situations.
The origins of Communicative Language Teaching are to be found in the mid-1960s, when British applied linguists began to question the theoretical assumptions underlying Situational Language Teaching (Richards & Rodgers, 1986: 64). This was partly in response to the criticism of the American linguist, Noam Chomsky, on structural linguistics, as well as the fact that they saw the need to “focus in language teaching on communicative proficiency rather than on mere mastery of structures” (Richards & Rodgers, 1986: 64).
The work of the Council of Europe, the contributions of Wilkins, Widdowson, Brumfit, Johnson, and other British linguists to the communicative approach to language teaching, and the speed with which it gained ground among British language teaching specialists, gave the approach prominence nationally and internationally. It became known as the Communicative Approach, or Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) (Richards & Rodgers, 1986: 65).
Weideman (2002a: 43) indicates that as an approach, CLT “remains one that stimulates the pedagogical imagination and tolerates far more idiosyncrasies than a more rigorously defined method would”. CLT does, however, not form one monolithic whole, but is a broad church that has various directions and interpretations. Before we examine the interpretations of CLT in section 3.5, however, let us first consider the theory of language as communication that is frequently used to justify CLT.

Theory of language as communication

A common characteristic of all the directions in Communicative Language Teaching that will be discussed below is the claim that they have a theory of language as communication as their common starting point. All of CLT can probably be related to Hymes’s (1971) definition of communicative competence. According to Richards & Rodgers (1986: 69), this kind of language teaching aims to develop ‘communicative competence’ – the term adopted by Hymes “to contrast a communicative view of language and Chomsky’s theory of competence”. In this respect, Habermas (1970: 138; 147) views ‘communicative competence’ as “mastery of an ideal speech situation”. According to Weideman (2002a: 29), ‘communicative competence’ and its influence is currently more prominent in language teaching than any other linguistic notion. Various teaching methods have developed under the label of CLT, and these methods suggest that communicative competence can be acquired by using “language as medium rather than studying it as an object” (Byran, 2003: 69). The advantage of this principle is that it narrows the gap between classrooms and the real world.
Over the last twenty years ‘communication’ has indeed been the catchword of language teaching. Cook (1996: 149) is correct in arguing that communication entails having “something to communicate” and that learning language means that the learner practices communication within the classroom – “the learner learns to talk to people by actually talking to them”. Language teaching that aims at communication has made us notice the inadequacies of previous approaches: learners who totally master the content of an audio-lingual course, for example, would still lack the ability to function in a real-life situation (Cook, 1996: 183). This is a practical weakness of ALM, and might explain, as we have noted above, why it was abandoned in favour of a communicative approach. As the emphasis in CLT is on meaningful communication in the classroom, Brown (1994: 77) takes the view that… we are trying to get our learners to develop linguistic fluency, not just the accuracy that has so consumed our historical journey. We are equipping our students with tools for generating unrehearsed language performance ‘out there’ when they leave the womb of our classrooms. We are looking at learners as partners in a cooperative venture. And our classroom practices seek to draw on whatever intrinsically sparks learners to reach their fullest potential.
The kind of interaction that is referred to above, of course, gives a powerful rationale for using CLT in additional language learning and teaching. Also of importance to us is the distinction between a restrictive view and an open perspective on language and language learning and teaching made by Weideman (2003: 38) that we briefly turn to.

1 INTRODUCTION AND ORIENTATION
1.1 Background
1.2 Factors motivating and initiating this research
1.2.1 Why is Afrikaans being taught as an additional language?
1.2.2 The learners’ proficiency in Afrikaans
1.2.3 Second or additional language acquisition and learning
1.2.4 Factors influencing the learning situation
1.2.5 Principles of current approaches to teaching a second language
1.2.6 Developing appropriate and relevant learning material
1.3 Aim
1.4 Objectives
1.5 Value of the research
1.6 Defining concepts
1.6.1 Additional language
1.6.2 Proficiency
1.6.3 Learners
1.6.4 Criteria for the development of materials
1.6.5 Materials
1.6.6 Developing materials
1.7 Hypotheses
1.8 Constraints
1.8.1 Time constraints
1.8.2 Limited physical space available for instruction
1.9 Framework of this study
2. METHODOLOGY
2.1 Introduction
2.2 The research process
2.3 Exploratory research
2.3.1 Assessment of learners’ proficiency in Afrikaans
2.4 Action research
2.4.1 Action research in the classroom setting
2.4.2 The stages of action research
2.4.3 Data collection techniques
2.4.3.1 Questionnaires
2.4.3.2 Interviews
2.4.3.3 Diary
2.4.3.4 Tape- and video recordings
3 A PERSPECTIVE ON SECOND LANGUAGE TEACHING
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Approach and method
3.3 Traditional approaches
3.4 Communicative language teaching
3.4.1 Theory of language as communication
3.4.2 Information gap technique
3.4.2.1 Jigsaw tasks
3.4.2.2 Reasoning-gap tasks
3.4.3 Active participation of learners
3.5 Interpretations of CLT
3.5.1 Authentic texts
3.5.2 Communicative language teaching: the mainstream
3.5.3 Psychological emphases
3.5.4 Natural approach
3.5.4.1 The Affective Filter hypothesis
3.5.4.2 The Total Physical Response technique
3.6 Conclusion
4 FACTORS INFLUENCING SECOND LANGUAGE TEACHING AND LEARNING
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Factors influencing the learning situation
4.3 Learner
4.3.1 Personality
4.4 Educational context
4.5 Social context
4.6 Attitudes and motivation
4.7 Opportunities for learning
4.8 Conclusion
5 DESIGN CRITERIA FOR MATERIALS DEVELOPMENT
5.1 Introduction
5.2 The need for materials development
5.3 Materials development
5.4 The process of materials writing
5.5 Design considerations
5.6 Conclusion
6 IMPLEMENTATION OF DEVELOPED MATERIALS
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Learning environment
6.3 Implementation of materials
6.4 Action research cycle
6.5 Conclusion
7 REFLECTION ON THE INTERVENTION PROGRAMME
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Educational context
7.3 Affective variables
7.4 Social context
7.5 Attitude change
7.6 Improvement of proficiency levels
7.7 Conclusion
8 A REDESIGNED SET OF MATERIALS
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Planning of the redesigned set of materials
8.3 The impact of the new curriculum on the study
8.4 Additional considerations
8.5 Presenting the redesigned materials
8.6 Conclusion
9 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Summary of the research process
9.3 Observations and recommendations
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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