Vol 03 No 3 TESL Reporter

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teaching english as a second language
vol i
3

no

3

laie lc

hawaii

spring 1970

what are your answers teachers
by yao shen
A skill which insightful teachers strive to cultivate is what poet john keats called

ESL

negative capability negative capability enables a man to have imaginative and objective insight into the minds of other men keats could be referring to the speculative faculties of negative capability when he says in hyperion

which english is not the speech of the community one way to help realize this negative capability is to ask such teachers directly about the specific uncertainties that plague them two factors however often impede this a lack of occasions on which to ask such teachers and the teachers unwillingness to voice their problems

there grew A power within me of enormous ken to see as a god sees and take the depth of things as numbly as the outward eye can size and shape pervade

and the from korea invitations philippines to consult on language teaching provided an appropriate opportunity to seek out some of the problems in the minds of

teachers of english as a second language in a community in which english is the native
language frequently wonder what could be
shen is professor in the department of english at the university of hawaii an author of over 70 publications in eight different countries and a previous contributor to this journal dr shen was invited by ewh a comans Uniiveristy in c h woman u n sooul to lecture on TESL and by the e0u lanaguag e study centera philippine normal a nquag college to serve as ford foundation consultant in linguistics and language teaching summer 1969
miss yao

what answers ESL teachers by yao shen by yao she page

CaOoNTENTS re y ur

1

disjunctive or by alice pack the schwa by lurline H coltharp classroom use of language

am A mouth by george hunt yes no questions and the
1 I

page 3 page 6 page 8 page 11

within the minds of their fellow teachers na v who are non nattiive speakers of english and who teach english in an environment in

records by ernst peutl

page 2
such teachers in their respective non nattive na english speaking communities since lectures are only one direction communication a question answer session following each lecture brought forth some of the problems those who did not wish to speak up wrote out their questions without furnishing personal identification and turned them in for discussion such a technique increased the output of questions both in quantity and in variety by minimizing the inhibition of the participants inhibition often is the primary cause of non vocall reactions voca assistant professor alice pack the editor of this journal was of the opinion that information in he questions could be advantageously shared by other interested ESL teachers to identify convergent and divergent problems to weigh emphasis on various problems and to devise possible solutions lectures and discussions took place in seoul manila and quezon city cottabato in Co a mindanao participants were mainly high school english teachers others included professors of english literature and english language language teachers other than english and administrators from deans of graduate schools to kindergarten principals subjects requested to be dealt with varied from detailed matters of pronunciation to transformational grammar language testing writing composition and the latest theories in language acquisition the most frequently raised question have been edited in style only and grouped into the following nine areas no oral questions with the exception of one are included as there were so many of them the exception which is included here occurred time after time but did not appear once among the written questions other than that in general the oral questions touched the same areas as those of the written ones A how important is proper pronunciation when the majority of students do not have the opportunities to use thein r u english in communities in which english is their native language 1 I to what extent should teachers tolerate poor pronunciation 2 isnt it bad for a small group of

4

TESL reporter own pronunciation of english for local communication would you be against the idea that dialectally different groups should

keep

B

pronunciation of english so that others can identify each as name of dialect english if as some recent socio linguists say most adult native speakers of english produce ungrammatical sentences then should we also teach ungrammatical sentences 1 I which group of adults are they referring to
2

their respective local

C

ungrammatical sentences 3 which kind of ungrammatical sentences should we teach 4 do transformational grammarians consider the kind of ungrammatical sentences referred to here as grammatical ungrammatical or agrammatical how useful is transformational grammar in teaching english as a second language 1 I in what way can transformational

what do they mean by

grammar

speakers of engliish when neither ng the teachers nor the students have the native intuition called for in

benefit

non nattiive n na ve

working
grammar
2

with transformational

why are

some

3

4

transformational grammar when no transformational grammarian has as yet analyzed a single language it seems that transformational grammarians are getting farther and farther apart among themselves what is the cause of this phenomenon dont they have common ground to work on what is chomsky doing nowadays d no c has he forsaken his floc k or is he r changing his mind again the way he did between syntactic structures and aspects

teache trainers buying and selling

language

5

why

3

pronunciation to be jeeped at by the r large majority who have poor pronunciation should each dialectal group keep its

students who have

good

grammarians speak so unkindly of the structuralists when at the same time they use a fantastic amount of the research results of the structuralists right and left continued on page 8

do

transformational