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After Krashen,
Reboot
Leverett, T. (2008, Feb.). Communicative theory rocks the late
20th century. Unpublished manuscript. Available:
http://www.siu.edu/~cesl/teachers/pd/k2me1.html.
Part of a series of essays on Krashen and language learning, not
published formally yet, but working toward that general goal. This one
is really a kind of introduction, though it is not the first written.
For the entire series, go here
Communicative theory rocks the late 20th century
When I entered my graduate school with the intention of being an esl/efl
teacher, the communicative revolution was in full swing. Having studied
the Russian revolution only a couple of year earlier, I winced at the
term "revolution," picturing Bakhunin, Trotsky and other victims of the
tyranny of a revolution's dogma and fanaticism, all while dutifully
taking in the theory that graduate school had to offer. The teaching
world that I jumped into, after graduating, was indeed even more
dogmatic than graduate school itself, where questioning of the
prevailing theory was at least accepted, if not encouraged.
Communicative theory had arrived in around 1970 and had overthrown the
prevailing focus on grammar and translation methods. It focused on the
strategies and skills involved in oral interaction, and was introduced
with the following explanation: fourteen years of grammar training meant
nothing, if a learner was unable to produce a reasonable answer to the
question, "How's it going?", which was in fact quite common in those
days as a greeting. Communicative theory taught us that teachers had to
be aware of the nuances of oral interaction, so that we could prepare
our students for the day-to-day scenarios that they were likely to find
themselves in; they had to be able to order food in a restaurant, tell a
taxi driver where they were going, etc. And in fact we learned how to
teach these things in the classroom, and were even expected to do so.
At the time, though I was still mulling over the theoretical
underpinnings of the theory, I had to admit that at its core it clearly
had some merit. Asia, where a huge number of English language learners
were actively involved in the process of learning, had fallen into
regarding language as a science, much like mathematics, to be taught by
intellectual professors who understood complex rules and arcane facts;
in fact, English classes in most parts of Asia were still taught in the
native language, and involved very little actual use of the language;
therefore, such learners as the one above, unable to answer the simplest
questions of oral interaction, but quite versed in arcane grammar and
vocabulary, were quite common.
The problem was brought home to me early in my first year of teaching,
when a Korean learner approached me and tried to tell me that he really
wanted to be fluent, and he would like to know how. Unfortunately the
word "fluent" contained all of the difficult sounds for Korean learners,
and his sentence came out more like "I want to be 'pruhnt', which he of
course repeated several times unsuccessfully. Our frustration bubbled
over, but the incident pointed out that all of his years of training had
failed to give him several crucial aspects of fluency: the ability to
say it in more than one way; the ability to go back, and reproduce the
more difficult sounds, more slowly and carefully; even the ability to
spell it out quickly, avoiding the difficult discomfort of communicating
nothing but frustration.
At one time while I was teaching I heard that the majority of
communicative teachers had survived and even thrived in the earlier
methods; had in fact learned a language, gone to a country, found
themselves lacking, and decided that the methods of learning had been at
fault. This was in fact true of me; I had learned Spanish in high
school, gone to Mexico, and found that I had to start at the beginning
with the basics of oral interaction. I think that was assumed about
learning language; people often said that they'd learned some language
for a few years, and then found it very difficult to actually use it;
almost as if they had no choice but to go to the place, be frustrated
for a while, and just make their way in the darkness until they could
begin to use some of the grammar and vocabulary that they had picked up
in their lessons. Communicative theory said that this face-to-face
spadework was an integral part of the language learning process, and
therefore had to be taught right away, preferably in the first classroom
lessons.
Krashen provided some, though not all, of the theoretical underpinnings
of communicative theory, and his name was used often in those days, both
in my graduate classrooms and in my first years of teaching. A number
of things that he had written clearly resonated with teachers in the
field, to the point that it was very difficult to question anything he
said. For example, the distinction between acquisition and learning was
something that classroom teachers had noticed for years, and that was
immediately apparent to me, as a teacher, after just months of serious
full-time teaching. Another concept that resonated strongly was that of
I + 1; teachers knew almost instinctively, after a while, when speaking
went over a student's head; it was also clearly obvious that speech
right at their level, and a little harder, was best for their
acquisition. Without getting into the difficulty of proving these, or
the mechanics of his other hypotheses, I'll only say here that he was
considered in high regard, and his insights into language learning were
almost universally accepted and enthusiastically followed.
In instilling the need to teach basic strategic competence in oral
interactions to students, the communicative revolution actually added to
the teacher's load, because, basically, students could not be convinced
that grammatical accuracy was not important. Communicative theorists
were more than willing to take that time away from arcane grammatical
explanation, pointing out that teacher's time spent this way was
pointless, given the circumstances. Still, teachers would set up
conversational situations, get students practicing using English, only
to have students stop them to ask for explanations of grammatical points
that came up. My bosses at the time directed me NOT to spend my time
explaining grammar, and in fact expected me to explain to students that
this was not the point, that rather they should just get to the business
of speaking, and not worry so much about it. It was not so much that
grammar was not important, it was more that if excessive concern about
right/wrong was to impede basic communication, then it really was in the
way (the concern, not the bad grammar), and the student's approach had
to be corrected. These students, it was felt, must be able to carry on
basic conversations, and if they were too hung up on being "right," then
they would never be able to produce anything. And in fact we teachers
saw this a lot.
I had one colleague who explained that when he was asked for grammatical
explanation, he simply refused to give it. He would tell his students,
"Nobody ever gave me grammatical explanation when I was a child, and I
still became fluent, by listening and speaking at every opportunity; you
should do the same." His comment reflected what I felt was a common
misperception: that second language learning was the same as first
language learning. A better restatement of communicative theory was
that it was natural, as was first language learning, and would follow
its own natural process, given the right input and right attention given
to it by the learner. I don't think Krashen, or other communicative
theorists, ever maintained that the two were the same. Nevertheless,
many teachers took their teaching to at least imply that.
As a product of communicative theory education I dutifully set out to
correct this problem. I put my students in pairs and groups; I got them
speaking at every opportunity; I became a "facilitator" instead of a
fount of grammatical wisdom or an encyclopedia of arcane vocabulary
usage. In the back of my mind I worried that, if I were only a
facilitator, then I could be replaced by a person who was much more
adept at social coordinating and, in fact, who would not have to even be
fluent in English. In fact I was much more interested in the process of
grammatical acquisition, and noticed that students' persistent questions
and badgering on the subject seemed to be a natural part of the process,
even when they accepted the philosophical underpinnings of the oral
interaction activities that we were doing, and focused on their oral
production abilities.
In fact there was resistance to the communicative model, and to the oral
interviews that our program had set up as progress evaluations, totally
scrapping grammar exams such as the TOEFL which would more accurately
get at their sophistication in understanding the interaction of
grammatical rules. Students were not happy to find out that the years,
in many cases twelve, fourteen, or more, of studying grammar were next
to worthless in this situation, and that they were assigned to the
bottom level on the basis of being unable to respond fluidly to a stream
of native-speaker inquiries into their general well-being. This
resistance became organized and generated its own research, in time, but
while I was teaching, it was little more than grumbling on the part of
those who placed at the bottom; not only my native-speaking bosses, but
also the university and the company who employed it, all considered
communicative theory to be the prevailing theory of the day, and set up
the curriculum accordingly.
One problem that I noticed immediately was that there was a shortage of
materials that really catered to what we were teaching. How exactly do
you teach someone to become more comfortable in personal conversations
with other English speakers? We watched a lot of videos; we spoke often
in small groups (and students watched carefully how native speakers
interacted, both with them and with each other); but, when they were in
pairs with each other, they were often unable to pick up skills that
made them appear to be more fluent in oral interaction skills. Rules of
intonation, word stress, and discourse were rarely written in ways that
made it possible to teach them; there were very few textbooks that took
communicative theory and systematically led students through a process
of becoming more comfortable in personal conversations. This has
certainly changed by now, but, nevertheless, the skills involved in
mastering intonation, word stress and discourse have proven very
slippery and difficult to pin down in textbook form.
My experience in the heart of the communicative revolution raised more
questions for me than provided answers; I never, even for a moment,
bought communicative theory hook line and sinker, yet was fascinated by
the conflicts that arose as a part of the process of incorporating it
into daily teaching regimen. The first question had to do with the role
of grammatical explanation in teaching adults. As I stated earlier, the
questions were persistent, sincere and natural, even for learners who
understood and agreed with the communicative methodology. How were we
to handle these? I myself just answered them the best I could, and
moved on; I tried to discern whether that was a point of learning for
the student, or whether there was any noticeable progress with that
grammatical structure, after the question had been asked.
A second question involved the rest of Krashen's theories, and their
relation to Chomskian linguistics. I had been much less impressed with
Chomsky than with Krashen in graduate school, and, upon becoming a
teacher, had found Krashen's ideas much more practical on a daily basis.
But, and this is the central question of this series of writings: where
had Chomsky gone wrong? Where was Krashen mistaken? In the ensuing
years, Krashen was scorned by acquisitionists; his theories vague and
unprovable; Chomsky, however, still sits on a lofty perch, with few
detractors. I respect each for changing their fields dramatically and
permanently, but have yet to pin down what aspects of their theories are
most misguided, and to what degree, if at all.
A third question involved the tricky relationship between culture and
language, and the role of cultural imperialism in the teaching of
language. When moving away from grammar and vocabulary and toward the
skills involved in oral interaction, the line between culture and
language becomes less distinct. Intonation- that's language, but rules
of discourse? My colleagues made no apology, and just said (for the most
part): language and culture are indistinguishable, if you want one, you
have to accept the other, and learn them together. This was not so much
a problem abroad, where both language and culture were in short supply,
and were considered exotic, but upon return to the US, where many
international students wanted and needed the language, but were very
wary of the culture, seeing some of what they considered moral depravity
that went along with it. The question remains: is there a line? Can
language be learned without culture? Does a set of cultural assumptions
underlie a language such that one cannot have and use one, without at
least adapting the other, temporarily?
A fourth question involved the primacy of oral interaction in mastery of
a language, and in a language in general. It was standard theory, at
the time, that face-to-face fluency was a necessary first step of
language learning; that one had to get some basic listening, basic
fluency on a sentence level and basic response ability before one could
expect to be a good writer, for example, or move to complex readings.
Along with this philosophy was acceptance of the "Silent Period" theory,
which said that second language learners, like young children, should
not be expected to produce anything at the beginning of their language
training, since their first task was basic understanding, and in
particular listening. Needless to say this further enforced the general
misperception that first and second language learning were the same.
When I got back to the US, it also proved impractical, as adult rank
beginners who were actually in the US to study English rarely had the
luxury of going even a week without actually having to say anything, let
alone read basic signs like exit, no smoking, etc. The question has in
my mind been muddied by several developments and observations. The
first is that detailed research on languages of the deaf have revealed
that oral interaction is not a necessary foundation of language
development. Second, some learners are so profoundly visually-oriented
that they cannot understand words unless they can see them, or at least
relate what they hear to what they can see in their minds. And finally,
all of the culture is changing toward use of writing-based, online chat,
almost as if the roles of oral and written languages are being
exchanged. Written language is used more often between strangers; is
more likely to develop dialectically, is more likely to be used in
isolated environments where it can change and develop; is more likely to
show shortened forms that change their character due to extensive use in
particular environments. Is it possible that languages can start with
written forms? Is it possible that, regardless of the history of
mankind and its languages, language can start its development in the
writing realm, and then become oral?
(Feb. 2008)
bibliography
Leverett, T. (2006a, Aug.). This is your class
on weblogs. Teaching English with Technology 6, 3. IATEFL
Poland Computer SIG Publication.
http://www.iatefl.org.pl/call/j_tech25.htm#cla. Accessed 3-07.
Leverett, T. (2006b, Aug.). Three ways to
integrate weblogging into your writing classes. Teaching English
with Technology 6, 3. IATEFL Poland Computer SIG Publication.
http://www.iatefl.org.pl/call/j_tech25.htm#way.
Leverett, T. (2006c). Daring to enter
the blogosphere. Includes This is your
program: This is your program on weblogs; This is your
class: This is your class on weblogs; and This is your
brain: This is your brain on weblogs. Prog. Admin. IS, Paper, TESOL
Convention, Tampa, FL, Mar.
Leverett, T. (2005). One teacher's
perspective on weblogs in a curriculum, from Leverett & Montgomerie,
Teaching teachers
to use and teach with weblogs, Internet Fair, CALL-IS, TESOL 2005,
San Antonio, March.
[ CESL ][cesl students' weblogs ][ cesl teachers' weblog ][ Tom Leverett's weblog ][ This is your brain:
this is your brain on weblogs ]
 Page maintained
by
Thomas
Leverett, CESL, SIUC
Photo above (Leap of Faith) by Kurt Larsen.
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