王蔷主编的《英语教学法教程》第二版-Unit-1

王蔷主编的《英语教学法教程》
第二版-Unit-1

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.

1.3 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 U.S. 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.

1.4 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 1.1 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 1.1. 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 1.1.

are stage 1 and stage 2 interrelated by a double arrow line?

1. Why

2. Why are practice and reflection connected by a circle?

3. Why is professional competence’ a moving target or horizon,
which professional travel all their professional life but

towards

which is never finally attained?'

4. Where should a TEFL methodology course fill in the model?


1.6 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, i.e. 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.