Vol 08 No 3 TESL Reporter

              TESL
teaching english as
vol 8 no 3
a

second language
laie thnafi hww t i af
spring 1975

lanetta i TEACHINGQECO ND LANGUAGE LANGTTA S UCO
A CLASSROOM ExercCsSE OR AN LASSRO M e XER i Ie9 d
9

a C i IVIT 9 ActTvityY

9

FOR

by lachman

A

interaction

khubchandani
with the attention focused on one idealized variety the standard norm of that language today enormous progress has been claimed in the production of textbooks at all levels from pictionaries and conversad tional cuttout books to individually u ou programmed kits which teachers are finding highly superior to a conventional textbook in individualized instructional programs teaching is not solely confined to a classroom or a language laboratory but the innsrructtor e i stt uc o adjusts his role as a learning coordinator guiding and tracking the student through a varied sequence of activities and learning environments but compared to the energy time and money spent on learning second and foreign languages in the literate world one finds little satisfaction among instructors and pupils regarding the levels of proficilenng ie cy acquired in these languages the present programs seem to be operating in a vicious circle of selecting teaching and curricular materials and then assessing the proficiency of pupils on the basis of the same material in

in recent decades many advances have been made in instruction strategies eg innovations in training language teachers preparing more effective aids manuals tapes films etc based on linguistic research

CONTENIN
second language teaching A classroom exercise or an activity for interaction by lachman M khubchanddanippage Kh chan ani ag e valuing an ESL activity by Donma iilyiin d or n a l y n
1 I

page 4

A daily dozeenA dozen items from doz n a the honolulu daily to start off warm up the ESL class page 6 by jason alter

workshops in fiji
TESOL convention report by michael E foley william K gallagher

page 8

page

12

page 2

TESL reporter

language as a social activity gets its meaning by the context in which it is used A living language without this kind of meaning can be regarded as a myth of the present language teaching classroom programs whether conducted through a reading based system inherited through the classical language teaching tradition or through an oral aural system regard classroom extended to language laboratory as the sole reservoir of language learning the target language is taught as an exercise or as a preparation for eventual utilization goals but having no immediate reinforcement plans whatsoever outside the classroom which makes learners task rather strenuous e and intensely motivated khubchandani 1967

rational and reflexive demands of language there is now more understanding among educationists that teaching and learning are not mirror images of one another
linguists and language teaching experts have to know more about the actual processes by which a learner internalizes the experiences in a second or a foreign language classroom teaching does not fully envisage the difficulties encountered by a language learner in functioning through that language in second and foreign language teaching teachers and text materials pay sole attention to the explicit unambiguous overt manife station through language such rationalized use of language is only one of the sociolinguistic variables in actual speech activity A native speakers use of speech in natural environments is an integral activity relevant to the context and purpose of verbalization his actual discourse gets modulated on a scale of rational and reflexive extremes this reflexive use of language is characterized by implicit regulation depending on identity pressures suggestion inference and covert
design

of view whereas speech as a living phenomena is mapped on the prevailing extra linguistic context and it is very much a fact in which participants are involved pe son much more actively in inter perrsonal situations and rather passively in mass media contexts interaction strategies language laboratories have been provided for getting to grips with the raw material in a foreign speech but the laboratory still retains the classroom flavor of exercise in the sense that no communicative task is actually accomplished through speech for this purpose a real language laboratory is the interaction opportunities in controlled but challenging situations where a second language is confronted as an integral meaningful activity hence in the total structure of a second language learning system it is essential to coordinate between instruction strategies teacher with classroom and laboratory aids graded and and interaction strategies controlled interaction programs where attention is focused on event rather than on expression khubchandani professor of indian linguistics at zagreb el dow university yugoslavia is a senior fedlow at the east west center university of hawaii author of many works concerning sociolinguistics and language teaching problems in developing nations he is chairman of the adolpne quettellet work e h Que e group for language ttatistics research st s oc o ngu committee on Sociiolliinguiistics

dr lachman

M

1

for a better understanding of the speech
phenomena within a broad behavioral framework it may be useful to make clear distinction between speech as an integral activity in a society and language as an ideal norm khubchandani 1973 one of the major shortcomings of the current state of affairs in most of the second language teaching programs is their exclusive concern with the teaching of language as an ideal and thus shelving aside the norm un t ioaI n characteristics of the funccitonal1 differentiation as prevailing among the native speakers of that language and of grassroots folk

exercise in language teaching remains an end in itself no communicative task is actually performed only rehearsals are conducted for eventual confrontation with unknown audiences it is acquired as an artifact in which speakers and listeners remain detached and uninvolved from the communication point

the classroom

spring 1975
multlitininglual as found among plural mu l l gua ism illiterate societies ie acquiring non sstandard ta ndard speech forms from actual usage as an integral activity most language experts do recognize the importance of experience in foreign environments for effective control of a foreign language but they assume that a sustained exposure to a language exercise through native informants and tapes sufficiently equips pupils for eventual activity through that language in performing skills eg swimming driving such an assumption would be questioned seriously it is rather crucial in the total learning system to regard proficiency in a foreign language closer to the requirements of performing skills rather than treating it as a course of study an average person acquiring a second language other than his native speech by functioning through speech events in natural environments gains proficiency in the linguistic component of speech along with the sensibility of handling the network of options in that speech conditioned by the pressures of propriety identity cultural values and demands on verbalization without much directed effort and learning strains on his part which are otherwise experienced when learning a foreign language in a formal way an adequate learning system must also utilize the strategies of linguistic competence component and of performance awareness sensibility component simultaneously and not leave the later component to the a ed subsequent sttagge ie entering into the af e r f activity stage aatir the successful completion of the exercise stage

page 3

the competence active or mere passive of functioning in that language ie exercising options depending on sociolinguistic variables and not according to the norms of the target language many contrastive studies tend to treat the issue of language transfer positive or negative in a rather straitjacket manner starting with the presumption that all types of interference from the source language are unacceptable in the target language behavior whereas in everyday life reality one notices ea no such clearrcut dichotomy of acceptable versus unacceptable utterances in a language certain deviations from the norm could be more appropriate purposeful amusing socially neutral marked pejorative ambiguous hazardous unintelligible etc in specific situational contexts it therefore becomes crucial to have an adequate knowledge of sociolinguistic variables of a region or of a speech community in establishing a hierarchy of difficulty as encountered by a learner due to his inhibitions of the source language and attitudes towards the target language we need to examine the pedagogical aspects of language learning in a sociolinguistic perspective to project the complex task of integrating the language exercise techniques of classroom with the h fl f i speech activity in everyday liife reality through interactional strategies controlled and graded on the basis apf behaviorally f defined utilization goals khubchandani lachman M 1967 education policy for a multilingual society comments on the education commission report 1966 education quarterly new delhi january issue also in LM khub1968 chandani ed linguistics and language planning in india special issue c of the deacan college postgraduate & research institute bulletin poona khubchandani lachman M 1973 an overview on sociolinguistics workshop on social stratification and language sociolinguistic newsbehavior simla letter ix2 boulder also in LM khubchandani ed language and plural society simla indian institute of advanced study forthcoming

communication in second language communication is a two sided activity for an effective control over a non nattive n na language it is necessary to provide opportunities for performing graded communicative tasks and create confidence among the participants through the successes achieved in limited transactions without the interference of direct monitoring merely providing prompting where necessary in second language and foreign language learning situations a learner aims at acquiring