王蔷主编的《英语教学法教程》第二版-unit1

Unit 1 Language and Language Learning

Aims of the unit

In this unit we will discuss some general matters about language learning
and teaching. We are going to discuss five questions on particular:
1. How do we learn language
2. What are the common views on language
3. What are the common views on language learning
4. What are the qualities of a good language teacher
5. How can one become a good language teacher

1.1 How do we learn languages
Mach of human behavior is influenced by their experiences. The way
language teachers teach in the classroom is to some extent influenced by
the way they learned languages. This is especially true in foreign
language teaching. Before we discuss language learning theories, let us
first reflect on our own language learning experience.

Task 1
Below is a list of interview questions on how people learn a foreign
language. In the first column, write down your own responses. Then
interview three other students in your class and enter their responses
in the other columns. Discuss your findings in group of 4 and draw some
conclusion.
You ST1 ST2 ST3
1. How many foreign languages can you speak so far

2. When did you start learning the foreign

language(s)
3. How do you feel about learning a foreign language

4. What difficulties have you experienced in

learning
5. Which skill do you find more difficult to learn

6. Have you focused on knowledge or skills Why
7. Why do you learn the foreign language(s)





















8. Do you consider yourself a successful learner

Why
9. What are your most common learning activities

10. Do you like the way you learned the foreign

language(s)







From the above task, you may have found that 1) people started learning
a foreign language at different ages; 2) people have different experiences
in learning a foreign language, some find it easy, some find it difficult;
3) people learn languages for different reasons; 4) people learn languages
in different ways; 5) people have different understandings about language
learning; 6) people have different capacities in language learning; 7)
learning can be affected by the way it is taught; 8) learning is affected
by the degree of success one is expected to achieve; and more. Thus the
challenge confronting language teaching is how teaching methodology can
ensure successful learning by all the learners who have more differences
than the commonality.

1.2 views on language

The question that all approaches to language teaching should answer is,
‘what is language’ The answer to this question is the basis for syllabus
designs, teaching methodology, teaching and assessment procedures in the
classroom. Different views on language generate different teaching
methodologies.

Task 2
Work in group of 4. Brainstorm possible answer to the question: what is
language When you are ready, join another group and share your ideas.


To give a concise definition of language has always been difficult for
linguists and philogists. Although there has been an enormous amount of
research in language in the past century, no authoritative answer has been
given to ‘what is language’ rather, people have settle down to talk about
views of language, seemingly allowing for or accepting different theories
for the moment. However, language teachers clearly need to know generally
what sort of entity they are dealing with and how the particular language
they are teaching fits into that entity (Brown, 1994a). for sample
definition of ‘language’ , please refer to Appendix 1.

Structural view
The structural view of language sees language as a linguistic system made
up of various subsystems (Larsen-Freeman & Long, 1991): the sound system
(phonology); the discrete units of meaning produced by sound combinations
(morphology), and the system of combining units of meaning for

communication (syntax). Each language has a finite number of such
structural items. To learn a language means to learn these structural
items so as to be able to understand and produce language. When this
structural view of language was combined with the stimulus-response
principles of behaviorist psychology, the audio-lingual approach to
language learning emerged.


Functional view
In the 1960s, British linguists developed a system of categories based
on the communicative needs of the learner (Johnson and Marrow, 1981) and
proposed a syllabus based on communicative functions. The functional view
not only sees languages as a linguistic system but also a means for doing
things. Most of our day-to-day language use involves functional
activities: offering, suggesting, advising, apologizing, etc. therefore,
learners learn a language in order to be able to do with it. In order to
perform functions, learners need to know how to combine the grammatical
rules and the vocabulary to express notions that perform the functions.
Examples of notions are the concept of present, past and future time, the
expressions of certainty and possibility, the roles of agents,
instruments with a sentence, and special relationships between people and
objects.

Interactional view
The interactional view considers language to be a communicative tool,
whose main use is to build up and maintain social relations between people.
Therefore, learners not only need to know the grammar and vocabulary of
the language but as importantly they need to know the rules for using them

in a whole range of communicative contexts.

These three views present an ever wider view of language. The structural
view limits knowing a language to knowing its structural rules and
vocabulary. The communicative or notional-functional view adds the need
to know how to use the rules and vocabulary to do whatever it is one wants
to do. The interactional view says that to know how to do what you want
to do involves also knowing whether it is appropriate to do, and where,
when and how it is appropriate to do it. In order to know this, you have
to study the patterns and rules of language above the sentence level to
learn how language is used in different speech contexts.

The understanding of the nature of language may provide the basis for a
particular teaching method (Richard and Rodgers, 1986), but more
importantly, it is closely related to the understanding of language
learning. If language is considered to have a finite number of structural
items, learning the language probably means learning these items. If
language is more than just a system of structures, it is more importantly
a tool then to learn the language learning. If language is more than just
a system of structures, it is more importantly a tool, then to learn the
language means to use it, rather than just study what it is and how it
is formed. The next section discusses some current theories about language
learning.

Views on Language learning and learning in general
A language learning theory underlying an approach or method usually
answers two questions; 1) What are the psycholinguistic and cognitive
processes involved in language learning 2) What are the conditions that

need to be met in order for these learning processes to be activated

Task3
Work in groups of 4. Brainstorm the answers to the two questions stated
above.
When you are ready, join another group and share your ideas.


Although these two questions have never been satisfactorily answered, a
vast amount of research has been done from all aspects. The research can
be broadly divided into process-oriented theories and condition-oriented
theories. Process-oriented theories are concerned with how the mind
organizes new information such as habit formation, induction, making
inference, hypothesis testing and generalization. Condition- oriented
theories emphasize the nature of the human and physical context in which
language learning takes place, such as the number of students, the kind
of input learners receive, and the atmosphere. Some researchers attempt
to formulate teaching approaches directly from these theories. For
example, the Natural Approach, Total Physical Response, and the Silent
Way are based on one or more dimensions of processes and conditions. At
this level, it is too early to formulate a specific approach, because some
aspects are still too vague, for example, what is done in these processes.

Behaviorist theory
The behaviorist theory of language learning was initiated by behavioural
psychologist Skinner, who applied Watson and Raynor’s theory of

conditioning to the way human acquire language (Harmer, 1983). Based on
their experiments, Watson and Raynor formulated a stimulus-response
theory of psychology. In this theory all complex forms of
behavior—motions, habits and such—are seen as composed of simple
muscular and glandular elements that can be observed and measured. They
claimed that emotional reactions are learned in much the same way as other
skills. The key point of the theory of conditioning is that ‘you can train
an animal to do anything (within reason) if you follow a certain procedure
which has three major stages,
stimulus, response, and reinforcement
’
(Harmer, 1983:30).

Based on the theory of conditioning, Skinner suggested that language is
also a form of behavior. It can be learned the same way as an animal is
trained to respond to stimuli. This theory of learning is referred to as
behaviorism, which was adopted for some time by the language teaching
profession, particularly in the . One influential result is the
audio-lingual method, which involves endless’ listen and repeat’
drilling activities. The idea of this method is that language is learned
by constant repetition and the reinforcement of the teacher. Mistakes were
immediately corrected, and correct utterances were immediately praised.
This method is still used in many parts of the world today.

Cognitive theory
The term cognitivism is often used loosely to describe methods in which
students are asked to think rather than simply repeat. It seems to be
largely the result of Noam Chomsky’s reaction to Skinner’s behaviorist
theory, which led to the revival of structural linguistics. The key point

of Chomsky’s theory is reflected in his most famous question: if all
language is a learned behavior, how can a child produce a sentence that
never been said by others before

According to Chomsky, language is not a form of behavior, it is an
intricate rule-based system and a large part of language acquisition is
the learning of this system. There are a finite number of grammatical rules
in the system and with a knowledge of these an infinite number of sentences
can be produced. A language learner acquires language competence which
enables him to produce language.

Though Chomsky’s theory is not directly applied in language teaching,
it has had a great impact on the profession. One influential idea is that
students should be allowed to create their own sentences based on their
understanding of certain rules. This idea is clearly in opposition to the
audio-lingual method.

Although people are pretty much still in the dark as to what language is
and how language is learned, it is believed that general knowledge about
language and language learning will help language teachers do a better
job.

Constructivist theory
The constructivist theory believes that learning is a process in which
the learner constructs meaning based on hisher own experiences and what
heshe already knows. Although constructivist theory was not developed
for the understanding of language learning, it is widely applicable to
learning in general. It is believed that education is used to develop the

mind, not just to rote recall what is learned. John Dewey provided a
foundation for constructivism. He believed that teaching should be built
based on what learners already knew and engage learners in learning
activities. Teachers need to design environments and interact with
learners to foster inventive, creative, critical learners. Therefore,
teachers must balance an understanding of the habits, characteristics as
well as personalities of individual learners with an understanding of the
means of arousing learner’s interests and curiosity for learning
(Archambault, 1964).

Socio- constructivist theory
Similar to constructivist theory, socio-constructivist theory
represented by Vygotsky (1978) emphasizes interaction and engagement with
the target language in a social context based on the concept of ‘Zone
of Proximal Development’ (ZPD) and scaffolding. In other words, learning
is best achieved through the dynamic interaction between the teacher and
the learner and between learners. With the teacher’s scaffolding through
questions and explanations, or with a more capable peer’s support, the
learner can move to a higher level of understanding and extend hisher
skills and knowledge and knowledge to the fullest potential.

What makes a good language teacher
Some people with an excellent command of a foreign language may not be
able to teach the language well while others with a general command of
the language can teach it very effectively. What do you think might account
for this phenomenon

Task 4

Work in groups. Reflect on your own learning experience from early school
years to the university. Have you had an excellent English teacher Try
to identify as many qualities as possible of your best English teacher(s).
Note down all the qualities that you think are important for a good English
teacher.


It is clear that whether someone can become a good foreign language teacher
does not solely depend on hisher command of the language. There are a
variety of elements that contributes to the qualities of a good language
teacher. These elements can be categorized into three groups: ethic
devotion, professional qualities and personal styles (Parrot, 1993).

Task 5
Ethic devotion, professional qualities and personal styles jointly
contribute to the making of a good English teacher. All the adjectives
in the box below could be used to characterize these three aspects.

1. Work in groups of 4 and decide which adjectives describe ethic devotion,
which describe personal styles and which describe professional
qualities. Please write your answers on a separate piece of paper.
2. Add any adjectives to the list which describe further qualities that
you feel are missing.
3. These adjectives are intended to describe positive qualities or styles.
Do you feel that any of them could have a negative side as well If yes,
in what way For example, an authoritative teacher may make the students

feel assured, but may also make the student less free to disagree with
himher.

kind dynamic authoritative
hardworking
creative patient well- informed fair
resourceful attentive warm-hearted
reflective
well-prepared flexible intuitive
accurate enthusiastic humorous
caring disciplined professionally-trained
(Adapted from
Tasks for Language Teachers
, Martin Parrot,
1993)

From the above activities we can see that a good English teacher should
have ethic devotion, certain desirable personal styles, and more
importantly, he or she should have necessary professional qualities.
These three aspects constitute the professional competence of a good
English teacher. A person who has a good command of English is not
necessarily a good teacher because he has only one of the elements of
professional competence.

It is assumed that all responsible English teachers have ethic devotion,
and they are supposed to make their personal styles compatible with
their work. These two aspects, which are beyond the scope of this book,
can be achieved as long as the teacher himselfherself has the
willingness to do so.

A question that many teachers often ask is: I like my job, and I love
the students, but how can I become a good English teacher Our answer
is that they need professional competence, which we are going to discuss
in the next section.

1.5 How can one become a good language teacher
The most important and most difficult part of the making of a good language
teacher is the development of professional competence, which is the state
or quality of being adequately qualified for the profession, and armed
with a specific range of skills, strategies, knowledge, and ability.

Task 6
Work in pairs and discuss how one can become a professionally competent
teacher of English. For example, we have to develop our English
proficiency first and also we may need to learn from experienced teachers
through observations. What else can you think of Make a list and then pool
all your ideas together to find out about your common beliefs.

A language teacher’s professional competence is much more difficult than
a driver’s skill to handle a car, and is more complicated than a
student’s competence of speaking foreign language. It involves more
factors and longer learning time, and may never be finished.

Some people think teaching is a craft; that is, a novice teacher can learn
the profession by imitating the experts’ techniques, just like an
apprentice. Others hold the view that teaching is an applied science,
based on scientific knowledge and experimentation. By making a compromise
between these two views, Wallace (1991) uses a “reflective model” to

demonstrate the development of professional competence. The following
model is an adapted version to illustrate the process of becoming a
professionally competent teacher.

Figure Teacher’s professional development
(Adapted from Wallace, 1991:15)

From the above model, we can see the development of professional
competence for a language teacher involves Stage 1, Stage 2 and Goal. The
first stage is language development. All English teachers are supposed
to have a sound command of English. As language is the subject matter for
language teachers and also because language is always changing, language
development can never come to an end.

The second stage is the most crucial stage and it is more complicated
because it involves three sub-stages: learning, practice, and reflection.
The learning stage is actually the purposeful preparation that a language
teacher normally receives before heshe starts the practice of teaching.

This preparation can include:

1. learning from others’ experiences (empirical knowledge gained
through reading and observations)
2. learning the received knowledge (language learning theories,
educational psychology, language teaching methodology, etc.)
3. learning from one’s own experiences as a learner

Both experiential knowledge (others’ and one’s own) and received
knowledge are useful when a teacher goes to practice. This is the
combination of ‘craft’ and ‘applied science’ knowledge. The learning
stage is followed by practice. The term ‘practice’ can be used in two
senses. In one sense, it is a short period of time assigned to do teaching
practice as part of one’s pre- service education, usually under the
supervision of instructors. This practice is also called pseudo practice.
The other sense of ‘practice’ is the real classroom teaching that a
teacher undertakes after heshe finishes formal education.

Teachers benefit from practice if they keep on reflecting on what they
have been doing (Stanely, 1999). It should be noted that teachers reflect
on their work not only after they finish a certain period of practice,
but also while they are doing the practice.

When the would-be teachers(trainees) are doing pseudo practice, they are
often trying out ideas that they have learned in a methodology class.
Therefore, they are likely to reflect on how well a certain idea or
technique works and often their instructors may require them to do so.
The pseudo practice is beneficial only if the student teachers take

reflections seriously. The most difficult thing is to keep on reflecting
on one’s work when one moves on to real classroom teaching.

Ideally, a teacher should be able to attain hisher professional
competence after some period of practice and reflection as shown in Figure .
However, professional competence as an ultimate goal does not seem to have
an end. With the ever- deepening of our understanding of teaching and
learning, and with the ever changing needs of the society, of education,
of students, and of the teaching requirements, one must keep on learning,
practicing and reflecting. Actually professional competence is’ a moving
target or horizon, towards which professionals travel all their
professional life but which is never finally attained ‘. (Wallace,
1991:58)

Task 7
Work in groups. Discuss possible answers to the following questions in
relation to the model presented in Figure .

1. Why are stage 1 and stage 2 interrelated by a double arrow line


2. Why are practice and reflection connected by a circle


3. Why is professional competence’ a moving target or horizon,

towards which professional travel all their professional life but



An overview of the book
This second edition of A Course in English Language Teaching has allowed
us the opportunity to expand the original 14 units into 18 in order to
include topics reflecting the recent development in English language
teaching both at home and abroad, to revisit a number of areas, to expand

an clarify points that we felt were not sufficiently clear in the first
edition, and to improve the pedagogical usefulness of the text.

Overall, the book aims at introducing practical methods to teachers of
English as a foreign language with some basic theories presented in the
first two units. It is hoped that classroom teachers or would-be teachers
will not simply copy or imitate what are suggested but be able to choose
or adapt with an understanding of why.

Unit 1 serves as an introduction for setting the scene for this methodology
course. It discusses issues concerning views on language and language
learning or learning in general with the belief that such views will affect
teachers’ways of teaching and thus learners’ ways of learning. The
qualities of a good language teacher is also discussed in order to raise
the participants’ awareness of what is required for a good English
teacher.

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and Task-based Language Teaching
(TBLT) have been the most influential language teaching approaches in the
past two decades and they have proven to be effective in a variety of
language teaching contexts. In Unit 2 we introduce the basic principles
of CLT and activities followed by an introduction to task-based approach.
It is intended that most of the methods that we introduce in the remaining
units will, to some extent, follow a communicative approach and task-based
language teaching.

Unit 3 is a new unit which focuses on the new National English Curriculum.
It begins with a brief overview of the history of English language teaching

in China followed by tasks and discussions on the goals, objectives, and
design of the new English curriculum and ends with discussions on the
challenges facing teachers today.

We have arranged lesson planning and classroom management as the next two
units of the book- Unit 4 and Unit 5 respectively. With regard to these
two units, the new edition has replaced some previous lesson plan samples
and added some relevant issues, . giving effective instructions, asking
effective questions, and dealing with students’ errors in the classroom.
To have these two parts in the early units, our intention is that the reader
will use what is covered in these two parts in the early units, our
intention is that the reader will use what is covered in these two units
to design mini classroom activities for the teaching of knowledge and
skills that come in later units.

Like the first edition of the book, Units 6, 7 and 8 focus on the teaching
of language components, that is, the teaching of pronunciation, grammar,
and vocabulary, while Units 9, 10, 11, 12 focus on the teaching of four
skills of language, namely, listening, speaking, reading and writing,
with Unit 13 discussing the integration of the four skills. Some new
examples and new points are added to all these units in the new edition.
It should be noted that neither the language components nor the language
skills are taught in an isolated fashion. We present the teaching of these
language components and skills in separate units so that there is a clearer
focus of discussion. In classroom teaching, we hope teachers will be able
to integrate all areas.

Unit 14 is about moral education. This is a new unit aiming at raising

teachers’ awareness of the scope available for moral education in
language teaching so that teachers will be able to create opportunities
and use relevant materials and activities to help students form positive
social values towards life and work.

Unit 15 deals with language assessment. We have avoided ‘testing’ and
‘examination’ as our unit title because we believe ‘assessment’ is
a broader concept. In this unit we focus on classroom assessment rather
than standard tests. Research evidence shows that classroom-based
assessment provides a better evaluation of what the students have achieved
during the course of study.

Units 16 and 17 are also new units. Unit 16 is about learner differences
and learner training. As the purpose of teaching is for learning to take
place, learners will need to play a major role in the learning process.
We think as teachers we need to understand learners and the differences
among them so that appropriate methods and techniques can be selected or
designed to cater for learner needs. Also, we teach in order not to teach.
In this sense, we need to help learners develop awareness of different
learning strategies and learn to take responsibility for their own
learning . Unit 17 focuses on using and creating resources. It discusses
how to use the available resources as well as how to explore hidden
resources for teaching and learning.

Unit 18 introduces the reader to the most basic things in the evaluation,
selection and adaptation of textbooks used in language teaching and
learning. In the future, classroom teachers will have to take more
responsibility and be given more autonomy in selecting and adopting ELT

textbooks for their students.


Throughout the book, we provide a number of tasks for each unit. The tasks
usually follow a discussion and are aimed at providing the reader with
opportunities to relate theory to practice. Most of the tasks are
open-ended, that is, they do not have fixed answers or solutions.
Sometimes, discussions following the task provide the authors’ further
comments. Occasionally, some tasks seem to need more ‘concrete’
solutions. In that case, we remove the solutions to Appendix 1 at the back
of the book. We intend that users of the book should solve the problems
themselves before referring to the authors’ suggested solutions.

Most of the tasks involve group work or pair work. If the book is used
in class, we consider it very important for students to work in pairs or
groups so that they can share knowledge and experience. Individual readers
may find it inconvenient to perform the task. We suggest that they discuss
the problems with their colleagues wherever possible.