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ARS AETERNA

Creativity and Cultural Awareness in Foreign Language Teaching

Vol.4, No.1 / 2012

Constantine the Philosopher University Faculty of Arts

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Názov/TitleARS AETERNA - Creativity and Cultural Awareness in Foreign Language Teaching

Vydavateľ/PublisherUniverzita Konštantína Filozofa v NitreFilozofická fakultaŠtefánikova 67, 949 74 NitraTel.: + 421 37 64 08 455E-mail: kangl@ukf.sk

Adresa redakcie/Office AddressFilozofická fakulta Univerzity Konštantína Filozofa v NitreDekanát FF UKFŠtefánikova 67, 949 74 NitraTel.: +421 37 6408 444E-mail: dekanatff@ukf.sk

Šéfredaktor/Editor in ChiefMgr. Alena Smiešková, PhD.

Zostavovateľ čísla/Editorial assistant: PhDr. Mária Kiššová, PhD.

Redakčná rada/Board of ReviewersProf. Bernd Herzogenrath (Germany)Doc. PhDr. Michal Peprník, PhD. (Czech Republic)Doc. PhDr. Anton Pokrivčák, PhD. (Slovak Republic)Mgr. Petr Kopal, PhD. (Czech Republic)Mgr. Simona Hevešiová, PhD. (Slovak Republic)PhDr. Mária Kiššová, PhD. (Slovak Republic)

Redakčná úprava/sub-editorIng. Matúš Šiška, PhDr. Mária Kiššová, PhD.

Jazyková úprava/ProofreadingMarcos Perez

Náklad/Copies: 50

Počet strán/Pages144

ISSN: 1337-9291Evidenčné číslo: EV 2821/08

(c) 2012Univerzita Konštantína Filozofa v Nitre

This issue was supported by KEGA 039UKF-4/2012: Vyučovanie súčasných anglofónnych literatúr ako prostriedok posilňovania kreatívneho a kritického myslenia.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

On Creativity and Cultural Awareness in Foreign Language TeachingJana Harťanská

Developing Intercultural Competence as Part of Translator TrainingElena Ciprianová

Cyber-literature, Micro-stories and Their ExploitationXavier Frías Conde - Alfonso López

On the Importance of Systematic Cultural Studies for Future Language ProfessionalsJaroslav Marcin - Božena Velebná

More Drama! The Importance of Dramatic Tension in Scripted Dialogues for Language Learners Barbora Müller Dočkalová

Can Ælfric’s Grammar and Glossary as a Unique Old English Textbook Be an Inspiration for Teaching Languages even in the 21st Century?Helena Polehlová

Nonverbal Communication and English Language TeachingOlga Ruda

Re-framing Humanistic English Language Teaching in Shifting SandsStephen Slater

English by ArtKarolína Štefanová

Moderné technológie a rozvíjanie komunikačných a digitálnych kompetencií žiakovEva Tandlichová

Diagnostic Teaching: An Innovative Language Teaching MethodTsafi Timor

Reviews

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On Creativity and Cultural Awareness in Foreign Language Teaching

Jana Harťanská

We all live in a time of permanent change, and hectic turbulence in all fields of human activity. We all live in a world characterised by the rapid development of more and more sophisticated technologies that are having an impact on our jobs whatever we do for a living. The world as we knew it a decade ago has undoubtedly changed and, especially, has got smaller: the way we communicate, the way we work and look for work, travel for a job, education or fun, the way we are getting more and more used to migration in search of a better life and are forced to become more self-confident and better professionals in order to succeed in a competitive world full of various struggles, economic and moral crises and eternal hopes for a better and peaceful life – all these are significant features of the current time. The external world always changes, but the internal world, the human mind, soul, abilities of man, as well as the essence and principles of humanity are everlasting and unchangeable.The profession of teacher of every type, and at every school level, has always belonged to those who regard humanism and its principles almost as a “commandment”, a natural component of civilised life, a gift, a means through which a learner intellectually and morally grows and matures, and

develops their skills and abilities. Each competent foreign language teacher has to prepare the young generation for the competitive world so that their learners can succeed in their professional life as fully as possible. Together with their learners they enable international communication and harmonious coexistence between nations on this planet, making it more meaningful and human. They are challenged to find and use appropriate and effective teaching methods, forms and techniques to motivate their learners and help them to acquire the foreign language that in future will enrich their lives as well as the lives of those they will communicate and work with.This special issue of the journal Ars Aeterna is devoted to the ideas, opinions and experience of foreign language teachers as presented in their talks and papers at the First International Conference combined with workshops under the title Humanistic Foreign Language Teaching and Learning I; Innovative methods and approaches at the Faculty of Arts of Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, Slovak Republic on 14 – 15 September, 2012. These enthusiastic professionals from many countries of the world share their current research results, innovative ideas, opinions and experience in the

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field of theory related to the teaching of foreign languages and in the analysis of conceptual representations of humanity in teaching literature and cultural studies The reader can find answers to questions dealing with communicative principles in FLT, creativity of learners, innovative approaches and techniques to learners with various needs and wants, motivation, and using literature and drama in both formal and informal education.

The authors believe that the publication will become an inspiring source of ideas and impulses for all those who are concerned with these issues, but mainly, of course, for foreign language teacher trainers and practising teachers whose aim it is to educate communicatively competent users of a foreign language in a modern, humanistic way.

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Developing Intercultural Competence as Part of Translator Training

The translator’s role has been widened to include mediation between the source and target language culture. Therefore, developing intercultural competence has become a must in translator training. The article focuses on the definitions of key components of intercultural competence and presents some basic principles that guide this long-term process

Abstract:

Introduction

Elena Ciprianová

Elena Ciprianová is an assistant professor at the Department of English and American Studies, Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra. She teaches courses in English Morphology, British Studies, Sociolinguistics, and Text Linguistics. Her principal research interests encompass issues related to intercultural communication and integration of cultural content into foreign language teaching.

Over the last few years, translation has been described as a cultural transfer (Snell-Hornby, 2006) or as a unique form of intercultural communication (Rakšányiová 2005), (Gromová - Müglová 2005). This cultural focus in the field of translation studies has been enhanced by the implementation of the functional approach to translation (Vermeer 2000). In the skopos theory, equivalence between the source and the target text is not of primary importance since the determining factors in translation are the purpose of the text in the target culture and the expectations of the receiver. The production of a functionally adequate translation for the prospective target

text reader requires that the translator must be able to act as a cultural mediator (Hatim-Mason 1990), (Katan 1999). B. Hatim and I. Mason (1990) explain that the mediating role of the translator entails mediation between incompatible cultural systems as well as finding a satisfactory way of dealing with disparities. In order to fulfil that role successfully, the translator must become a specialist who possesses background knowledge and skills that enable him or her to understand and bridge differences between the source and target culture. Therefore, as J. Rakšányiová (2005) and other translation scholars (for example, Katan 1999) rightly point out, the

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Intercultural communication and the notion of “culture“

At the very basic level, intercultural communication may be defined very simply as communication between members of two cultures. The term is most commonly associated with international communication between two national groups (for example, Americans, French, British, Germans, Slovaks), while the multilingual and multicultural nature of all countries remains hidden. So, the simplicity of the term “intercultural” is misleading because the concept of intercultural communication is a complex one. The term includes several types of communication; interracial communication between biologically similar people, interethnic communication between minorities (people of the same ethnic origin), intracultural communication between groups within society (subcultures based on gender, age, class, occupation, religion, or disability who share certain thought and behaviour patterns) (Samovar - Porter 1991). The socialisation process into a group involves individual experiences and interactions with various social institutions that shape a unique personal identity. As a result, every interpersonal communication can be considered to be intercultural. An obvious

question arises here: which concept of culture is relevant to intercultural training? The classic, all-embracing definition of culture as a “complex whole”, formulated by the nineteenth century British anthropologist E. Tylor, or the exhaustive surveys of definitions produced by A.L. Kroeber and C. Kluckhohn (1952) are certainly illuminating, although not very useful for the purposes of current intercultural training. Neither is the traditional humanistic view of culture as an expression of spiritual values reflected in art, literature, and philosophy applicable. More recent semiotic and above all cognitive approaches to the study of culture have become relevant to the practice of intercultural training. Among the most widely used anthropological models of culture belong those based on the works of C. Geertz (1973), G. Hofstede (1991), and E. T. Hall (1976). The focus of symbolic anthropology represented by C. Geertz, an American cultural anthropologist, has been on the study of culture as a system of meanings and symbols that emerge in social interaction. As C. Geertz explains: “The concept of culture I espouse ... is essentially a semiotic one. Believing... that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he

study of intercultural communication has to be incorporated into translator training courses. This is necessary for any foreign language students, but particularly for students of English,

since with the global spread of this language the importance of “cultural baggage” has increased enormously (Crystal, 2009, p. 45).

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himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretative one in search of meaning” (1973, p. 5). The word “web” metaphorically stands for culture consisting of verbal and nonverbal symbols (words, signs, rituals, customs) through the analysis of which we learn about culturally-conditioned models of reality and behaviour. C. Geertz links the research of culture to language and context since symbols play a crucial role in human communication. He observes that a person in the process of acquiring his/her cultural identity learns how to use language appropriately in situations. Geertz perceives the ability to talk and behave in accordance with specific culture patterns as part of the process of ‘becoming human’ (1973, p. 53).

Another prominent anthropologist, G. Hofstede, influenced by cognitive anthropology, describes cultures as ‘mental programs’ (1991 p. 4). In his opinion, culture represents learned shared knowledge, a mental model for organising and interpreting experience. G. Hofstede is also well-known for his research on dimensions of cultural variability (power distance, collectivism, individualism, femininity, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance), which has been used for years as a general framework in intercultural training. Particularly, the second dimension (individualism - collectivism) has proved to be a very efficient tool for interpreting cultural differences.

Finally, it is E. T. Hall’s theory of contexting and the silent language

that has provided an important guiding orientation for understanding the way cultures function. E. T. Hall, who laid the basis of intercultural communication as an interdisciplinary academic subject, noticed that the mass of information (text) that is made explicit within communication varies from one culture to another. According to Hall, cultures are classified in terms of a preferred structuring of messages; communication in high-context cultures (for example, Asian, Arab and Latin American countries) tends to be indirect; less information is transmitted in the message itself. It is expected that meaning will be inferred more from the context, that is, from the setting and background information than from the text. In contrast, low-context communication, which prevails in the U.S., Australia, Canada and some European countries (such as Great Britain, Denmark, Sweden), is characterised by explicitness, directness and information expressed clearly in the message. In addition to verbal communication, E.T. Hall turned his attention to another hidden dimension of culture – to nonverbal messages that serve as contextual signals and help us not only to express but also interpret meanings in communication.

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The concept of intercultural competence

Generally speaking, intercultural (communicative) competence refers to a set of skills, knowledge, and attitudes. The main aim of developing intercultural competence in the field of intercultural training is achieving appropriate and effective interpersonal communication, that is, an expected outcome between members of different cultures (Imahori – Lanigan 1989). M. J. Collier (1989) identifies four major approaches to the definition of intercultural competence: ethnography of speaking, the cognitive, behavioural skills, and the cultural identity approach. The ethnography of speaking studies the ways and norms of communicating in diverse communities. Ethnographers search for answers to questions about the kind of knowledge and skills needed to communicate appropriately and how these are acquired in a particular community. M. Saville-Troike (2003), drawing on the foundational work of D. Hymes (1972), defines cultural competence as extending: “to both knowledge and expectations of who may or may not speak in certain settings, when to speak and when to remain silent, to whom one may speak, how one may talk to persons of different statuses and roles, what nonverbal behaviours are appropriate in various contexts, what the routines for turn-taking are in conversation, how to ask for and give information, how to request, how to offer or decline assistance... – in short, everything involving the use of language and other communicative modalities in particular social settings”

(Saville-Troike, 2003, p. 18). Saville-Troike views communicative competence as part of a very broadly defined notion of cultural competence because interpreting the symbolic meanings of communicative conduct requires some knowledge of the cultural context in which it is anchored. Although translators are not to be trained as ethnographers of native speaking communities, awareness of the close connection between meaning, cultural identity and situational factors as well as an emphasis on the receptive dimension of communicative competence makes this approach relevant to prospective translators whose task is first to decode the source text in the context of the source culture and then create a frame of interpretation for the reader in the target culture.

The second approach to intercultural competence, called the cognitive, emphasises understanding cultural variability. The frameworks developed by G. Hofstede or E.T. Hall are widely used. Both culture-specific and culture-general knowledge are seen as key components of intercultural competence. Cognitively based models of competence have become the most influential in the field of translator training (Katan 1999). Learning about the source-culture frames and schemas and about other cultural dimensions of the communication process plays an important role in developing translator competence.

On the other hand, representatives of behavioural skills approaches, (for example, B.D. Ruben 1988) focus on

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It has been already stated that intercultural competence is one of the translator’s main subcompetences. The developing of source-text and target-text processing skills in translator training (Hatim – Mason 1997) cannot be separated from acquiring some culture-specific knowledge and raising awareness of factors that influence the process of intercultural communication in general. J. Rakšányiová (2005, p. 14) claims that intercultural competence, defined as an ability to receive and interpret signals from the source culture and transfer them into the target culture signal system, is the highest competence among other competencies the translator

should possess (language, pragmatic, discourse and strategic competence). Similarly, D. Kelly (2005) lists cultural and intercultural competence as one of the core competences. She describes translator competence as a combination of communicative and textual competence, cultural and intercultural competence, subject area competence, psycho-physiological competence, interpersonal competence and strategic competence. All these components are mutually related and interdependent. According to Kelly, cultural and intercultural competence includes not only encyclopaedic knowledge of history, geography, or institutions but

learning practical culture-general skills and adopting positive attitudes needed in face-to-face communication with foreigners.

The last of the above mentioned approaches, the cultural identity approach advocated by M.J. Collier and M. Thomas (Collier - Thomas 1988), is also primarily aimed at performance, which means improving abilities to negotiate meanings and adjusting one’s rules of communicative behaviour to a particular setting and participants. In translator training the cultural identity approach can be inspiring for two reasons. First, it is based on the existence of multiple and fluid cultural identities, which is in contrast to the static and homogenous perception of culture as a national label. Second, this dynamic view of a cultural identity draws the translator’s attention

to the fact that the source-text producer, the translator, and the target-text receiver identities are reflected in the construction and interpretation of textual meanings. In order to make sense of the source text, the translator must be aware of the differences in background knowledge of the source culture and target culture members. Their presupposition pools (Brown - Yule, 1983, p. 79), which include common knowledge of certain situations, objects, people, events, ideologies and conventions, differ. The translator necessarily perceives the text from the double perspective, that of the source-text addressee and the target-text audience. Much information is not verbalised because the source-text producer assumes that it is part of the source-text reader’s presupposition pool, but it may be unknown to the target-text receivers.

Intercultural competence at the core of translator training

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“...also and more particularly, values, myths, perceptions, beliefs, behaviours and textual representations of these. Awareness of issues of intercultural

communication and translation as a special form thereof is also included.” (Kelly, 2005, p. 32)

At the early stage of the training process students are usually unaware that their world views, perceptions (including ethnocentrism and stereotypes), values, attitudes and behaviour in communicative situations are culturally conditioned. Their interpretation of verbal and nonverbal messages is filtered by their own cultures as “...one of the functions of culture is to provide a highly selective screen between man and the outside world. In its many forms culture designates what we pay attention to and what we ignore. ” (Hall, 1976, p. 85) Therefore, students should be encouraged first to reflect on their own cultural identities. Only when they realise the complexity of their own culture will they be better prepared to identify how culture is brought implicitly to the source text by its producer, who often relies on the shared, transmitted system of meanings of his/her culture group, their expectations and knowledge of verbal

and nonverbal contextualisation cues that create the frame of reference for the reader.

Culture, in its broadest sense, can manifest itself in the source text in many different ways. To provide an exhaustive list of cultural manifestations is beyond the scope of this paper, but we will demonstrate a few examples.

When a new text is created, the writer inevitably draws on some prior texts. The texts may be related horizontally (contain direct references to other texts) or vertically (mixing conventions and styles) (Johnstone 2002). Previous texts are reshaped and transformed to fulfil new communicative needs in particular contexts. The repetition of prior texts is an important aspect of cultural identity and meaning-construction. For this reason, the translator carrying out the source-text analysis must be able to recognise explicit as well as implicit intertextual relations.

The main aims of developing intercultural competence of translation trainees can be summarised as follows:

• raising cultural self-awareness • raising cross-cultural awareness• understanding the relationship between language, culture and thought• understanding cultural similarities and differences in communication styles• understanding the role of situational and cultural context (how meanings are

constructed and negotiated by discourse participants)• understanding culture-specific textual and discourse conventions• adopting pluralistic perspective and openness to other cultures• developing analytical and study skills to examine the process of intercultural

communication.

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The source language vocabulary is also culture-bound. It contains various culture-specific words and phrases. For example, P. Newmark identifies five categories of cultural words: ecology (flora, fauna, winds, hills), material culture (food, clothes, houses, transport), social culture (work, leisure), organisations, customs, activities, procedures, concepts (political, administrative, religious, artistic terms), gestures and habits (Newmark, 1995, p. 95-96). Every language is used as a tool for representing and classifying the reality of a speech community. The most important cultural differences include words that have no lexical equivalents in the target language (for example, pie in Slovak) or words with a different semantic structure in the source and the target language (for example, hand, foot, finger).

Metaphors, idioms and proverbs constitute another area of language-use that is based on cultural representation of reality and values. Many collocations have metaphorical meanings that are motivated by shared mental image schemas. For example, in English the concept of cowardice is symbolised by the yellow colour, in Slovak this conceptualisation is absent. To be yellow is associated with looking unhealthy. Although absence of conceptual structures arising from universal experience is quite rare, the translator will encounter a plethora of differences between the source and the target language in linguistic realisations of conceptual metaphors (Schäffner 2004).

In class, students should be encouraged to explore cultural and situational factors that act upon communication, they should learn how to compare and

contrast dominant cultural values and perceptions, examine genre conventions, and solve a variety of translation problems related to differences between the source and target culture. Intercultural learning in the translator training programmes must not be limited to an ineffective transmission of facts, a static body of knowledge, but oriented more towards developing students’ cognitive abilities, their understanding of cultural phenomena, and improving their analytical and problem-solving skills. At the same time, it is vitally important to avoid oversimplification and overgeneralisation while discussing intercultural issues, in order not to foster stereotypes of the “Self” and the “Other”.

In conclusion, developing translator intercultural competence is a gradual process. It requires maintaining a careful balance between content and process learning. The ultimate outcome of intercultural training should be a translator who becomes not only in terms of accumulated knowledge about other cultures but primarily in terms of skills and attitudes that he or she adopts and applies effectively to translation situations.

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Works cited:

» Baker, M., 1992. In Other Words. A Coursebook on Translation. London and New York: Routledge.

» Brown, G. – Yule, G., 1983. Discourse Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. » Collier, M.J. – Thomas, M. Cultural Identity: An Interpretative Perspective. In: Kim, Y., Gudykunst, W. (eds.), 1988. Theories in Intercultural Communication. Newbury: Sage, pp.99-120.

» Collier, M.J. Cultural and Intercultural Communication Competence: Current Approaches and Directions for Future Research. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 1989, vol.13, no.3, pp.287-302.

» Crystal, D., 2009. The Future of Englishes. London and New York: Routledge. » Geertz,C. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. Selected Essays by Clifford Geertz. New York: BasicBooks.

» Gromová E. – Müglová, D., 2005. Kultúra – Interkulturalita – Translácia. Nitra: Univerzita Konštantína Filozofa.

» Hall, E.T., 1976. Beyond Culture. New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday. » Hofstede, G., 1991. Culture and Organizations: Software of the Mind. London: McGraw-Hill Book Company.

» Hatim, B. – Mason, I., 1997. The Translator as Communicator. London and New York: Routledge.

» Hatim, B. – Mason, I., 1990. Discourse and the Translator. London: Longman. » Hymes, D. On communicative competence. In: Pride J.B., Holmes, J. (eds.), 1972. Sociolinguistics: selected readings. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, pp.269-293.

» Imahori, T.T. – Lanigan, M.L. Relational Model of Intercultural Communication Competence. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 1989, vol.13, no.3, pp.269-286.

» Johnstone, B., 2002. Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. » Katan, D., 1999. Translating Cultures: An introduction for Translators, Interpreters and Mediators. Brooklands: St. Jerome Publishing.

» Kelly, D., 2005. A Handbook for Translator Trainers. Manchester: St. Jerome. » Kroeber, A.L. – Kluckhohn, C., 1952. Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Museum.

» Lakoff, G. – Johnson, M., 2003. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

» Newmark, P., 1995. A Textbook of Translation. New York, London: Prentice Hall Europe. » Rakšányiová, J., 2005. Preklad ako interkultúrna komunikácia. Bratislava: AnaPress. » Ruben, G. The Study of Cross-Cultural Competence: Traditions and Contemporary Issues. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 1989, vol.13, no.3, pp.229-240.

» Samovar, L.A. - Porter, R.E., 1991. Communication Between Cultures. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

» Saville-Troike M., 2003. The Ethnography of Communication: An Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.

» Schäffner, Ch. Metaphor and translation: some implications of a cognitive approach. Journal of Pragmatics, 2004, vol.36, Issue 7, pp.1253-1269.

» Snell-Hornby, M., 2006. The Turns of Translation Studies. Amsterdam/Philadelphia:John Benjamins Publishing Company.

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Elena Ciprianová, PhD.Department of English and American Studies Constantine the Philosopher University Štefánikova 67949 01 NitraSlovakiaeciprianova@ukf.sk

» Tannen, D. – Wallet, C. Interactive frames and knowledge schemas in interaction: examples from a medical examination/interview. In: Jaworski, A., Coupland, N. (eds.) 1999. The Discourse Reader. London, New York, pp.346-366.

» Trosborg, A., 2002. Discourse Analysis as Part of Translator Training. In: Ch. Schäffner (ed.): The Role of Discourse Analysis for Translation and in Translator Training. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp. 9- 52.

» Vermeer, H.J. Skopos and commission in translational action. In: Venuti, L. (ed.), 2000. The Translation Studies Reader. London: Routledge, pp. 221-232.

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Cyber-literature, Micro-stories and Their Exploitation

This paper argues that micro-literature, in its different versions, can be very fertile ground for teaching both literature and language. As very short literature, micro pieces allow for very versatile teaching, ranging from intensive reading and writing during class-time to blended learning supported by web applications, especially weblogs and social networks. In what follows, will we will first look at different forms of micro-literature, as well as the concept of cyber-literature. We will then give suggestions of how (cyber) micro-literature can be exploited in class and report a real classroom experience with Spanish teacher training students.

Abstract:

Xavier Frías Conde - Alfonso López

Xavier Frías Conde, Doctor of Romance Philology, works at the Spanish UNED, where he teaches Romance languages and linguistics. He is also a writer, deeply committed to cyber-literature. He began to write micro-stories in 2008. Besides this, he collaborates with the Catalan Lectorate of Charles University in Prague. As a writer, he has published more than two dozen literary works in several languages.

Alfonso López, CES Don Bosco (Spain) A.L. holds a Bacherlor of Arts degree from Concordia University (Montreal, Canada), a PhD from Universidad Complutense de Madrid, and a CELTA from Cambridge University. He works at CES Don Bosco Education College (Madrid) as a teacher trainer, and coordinates the bilingual (English-Spanish) degree programmes. His main areas of interest are contemporary English literature and, more recently, teaching methodology in bilingual environments and programmes. He publishes micro-literature in Spanish and English online, at www.microcuentos.org.

In order to discuss contemporary literature, it is necessary to establish the different ways in which literature can be delivered to readers; indeed, it is necessary to refer to the different

mediums it can take nowadays, since paper books are not the sole vehicle for literature, especially since the rapid proliferation of the Internet.

1. The concepts of micro-literature, cyber-literature and others

1.1. The vehicle: the internet

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The graphic reflects then the greater or lesser possibilities of format exchange, as well as the costs, the diffusion and some other items.

All of these formats can be exchangeable. This means that a literary text created in one of them can be exported to another one, but not in a proportional, balanced way in both

directions, since trends and fluency are different, as is represented in the following graphic, which shows the different relationships between the three literary supports:

1. Conventional Literature is traditional literature whose vehicle is paper.2. Digital Literature doesn’t have paper as its vehicle, but electronic devices,

such as e-readers, tablets, notebooks, etc.3. Cyber-literature, published just on the net, so that texts are to be found just

online, where its main but not only vehicle is the blog.

It is then necessary to make a clear difference between three very important concepts:

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1.2. Cyber-literature

Let’s then concentrate on cyber-literature, given that all the experiences we are going to refer to have the Internet as their main medium, though not the only one. Since it is quite a modern phenomenon, it will require some explanations about its main features and typology, even if we will

only discuss its shortest forms.The vast majority of cyber-literature

texts are short, yet it is possible to find novels, but certainly the Internet is not the best place to house a novel. Therefore these short forms of cyber-literature can be split into three main branches:

The preferred format of publishing these and other genres is blogs, to which we will also devote a part of our paper.

Therefore a question immediately arises: What makes cyber-literature so

successful? Due to its own nature, it is possible to set a few features that may help to explain why CyL has spread so much during the last decade. Let’s mention the ten main items that characterise CyL:

As previously mentioned, blogs are the main vehicle supporting cyber-literature and micro-fiction. The fact of being user-friendly means has facilitated its rapid expansion and favoured its choice as the most popular means to publish micro-stories. This is not the place where to

define what a blog is, but it is necessary to make a clear difference between literary and not-literary blogs. The first ones have, obviously, a literary purpose to either promote literary creation or deal with literary matters (criticism, advertisement, etc.).

1. Micro-fiction: with extremely short narrations (we will deal with it later on)2. Micro-poetry, with aphorisms and haikus, among other forms.3. Micro-drama, with very short dramatic texts, kinds of role-play, often even

monologues.

1. Worldwide access. Texts can be accessed from anywhere around the world.2. Immediate update. Authors can include any changes or modifications.3. Immediate re-edition of contents.4. Its briefness. Short texts are easily read on the screen. Long texts are not.5. Frequent lack of a quality filter. This promotes self-edition.6. Writers become publishers. This supposes a fully home-made literature.7. Sites become a kind of magazine (blog), with an irregular periodicity.8. A Creative Commons Licence is often added. Authors who try to provide their

edition task with a little bit of formality include this kind of licence.9. Writers and readers may interact10. It’s virtually free for both authors and readers.

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1.3. Micro-fiction and Cyber-literature

The kind of literature we are working with could really be defined as cyber-micro-fiction, so that the double reference to the Internet and the length of the texts is clearly reflected in this way.

This genre is also known under other names, among them flash fiction in the English speaking countries, but we do not find it too accurate.

Unlike cyber-micro-fiction, micro-fiction has existed since the very beginnings of written literature. Aesop’s fables are an early sample of micro-fiction. The genre continued, in other forms, in the medieval exempla and reached the 20th century, where it was usually deemed as a minor form of literature. Major authors such as Kafka, Hemingway or Borges cultivated it.

However, the birth of the Internet enabled a renewed version of this kind of literature, which adapted itself to the needs of most citizens sunk in the frenzy of modern lifestyles, in which time is scarce and everybody is always in a hurry. In fact, micro-fiction is

evolving, currently as cyber-micro-fiction. Thus any attempt to enclose it within academic criteria is still useless, since it is still too early to try to tag and dissect its multiple manifestations.

It was born some ten years ago, so it is impossible to foresee how it will

These are a few samples of micro-stories by the aforementioned authors:

Franz Kafka

Ernest Hemingway

Augusto Monterroso

We have only worked with the first type of the aforementioned blogs.

Blogs function as a kind of e-magazine furnished with posts. The success of a

blog can be measured by the number of visits, which involves the active commitment of the author.

We will now move on to look at genre.

“Alas,” said the mouse, “the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into.”

“You only need to change your direction,” said the cat, and ate it up.

For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn.

Cuando despertó, el dinosauro todavía estaba allí.

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evolve even if it will survive in its present forms; the only certainty is that it is spreading quickly throughout the Internet and it is even jumping into paper books, where it is only micro-fiction.

Regarding the length of the texts, there are different proposals of classification, since not all the writings are of the same length, and the matter of how many words a story has, does matter here:

Once we have introduced the literary raw material, the next step consists of exploiting it in our language lessons.

For the last six years, we have been using (cyber)micro-fiction as an excellent complement to our L2 lessons. Even some colleagues, encouraged by our positive experience, have proved it in other academic levels, the results being more than satisfactory.

Both micro-fiction and cyber-micro-fiction have allowed us to make our students read in spite of the well known lack of interest and motivation

for reading that exists especially among high-school students.

Therefore, (cyber)micro-fiction has been a good tool to elicit both reading and writing, because students finally get motivated to create their own micro-stories. The use of (cyber)micro-fiction is not only positive for L2, but also for L1, but here we will just focus on its exploitation in L2 lessons.

Our reasons to choose (cyber)micro-fiction instead of other types of texts can be summarised as follows:

1. Mini-story: up to one-page long2. Micro-story: up to 150 words3. Nano-story: up to 140 characters (based on Twitter system)

1. These kinds of texts tend to be rather motivating.2. They are easily reachable.3. They are suitable for both children’s and adult literature.4. They offer a great number of possibilities for exploitation.5. Basically, the length of the texts makes them much more suitable to be

exploited in L2 lessons, especially with beginners, but not only them.

Only the nano-story standard is clearly established; as for the rest, their total length is under discussion.

2. Working with (cyber)micro-fiction

2.1. Why use (cyber)micro-fiction

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Regarding the target students, it favours the autonomy of beginners, especially among younger students. If the texts are correctly adapted, they can be worked with by students of all ages, from primary school to adult. As was previously mentioned, micro-

fiction has been used by primary-school colleagues, though our own experience rather relates to higher-education students. Students feel much more motivated to read, since they can understand the texts much more easily.

Micro-fiction does not require an internet connection, which in certain cases might be impossible. Even so, surfing the net is one of the motivations to work with micro-fiction, mainly if

our students are teenagers.

Therefore, it is possible to access texts from different sources, in which case the formats may vary:

It is obvious that there are dozens of different approaches and likelihoods in exploiting any text didactically. What we are going to show in a brief way is the process scheduled by us in the last few years, which follows an input-output pattern involving the four skills (reading, writing, speaking and listening)

The input phase involves principally reading, listening and speaking, while the output phase involves mainly

writing. This division cannot be taken too strictly and is just an option among many others.

Writing can certainly also be used in the first phase, as well as the other three options in the second phase, but we have decided to distribute the skills according to the previous syllabus, though we are aware that this procedure is not the only option, not even the best one. That means that writing can certainly be used in the input phase, as

1. Online texts: usually taken from blogs. They just need to be printed.2. Projected texts (with a projector): presented as slide-presentations. In

this case it is the teacher who must prepare the material. Slides also offer the chance to include sound, i.e., it can be even become an audio-book. Presentations can also be uploaded.

3. Booklets: texts are handed out in a home-made edition. In fact, slides can also be printed in order to create a booklet. With younger students this allows us to make up a kind of home-made booklet including illustrations – which can just be photographs taken from the Internet.

2.2. Formats and sources of micro-fiction for class use

2.3. Suggestions in using (cyber)micro-fiction didactically

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well as speaking, reading and listening can be used in the output phase.

Our proposal of input activities is

focused on two different phases: Skills Exploitation and Linguistic Exploitation.

Our proposal for output activities aims to be an attempt to elicit a relatively literary creation process, but we do not intend our students to become real writers; however, we do present the writing process as an opportunity for fun, so students are asked to create their own texts, which is why writing plays a crucial role in this last phase.

The creative process requires the writing of a set of texts, not just one. The length is to be decided by the

teacher depending on their students’ background (knowledge, level, motivation, abilities, age, etc.).

The formats to be used are the same ones we have been dealing with above: blogs, slides and booklets. Students over 16 can be invited to open their own blog.

With competent students it is also possible to make Flash-format books by signing up to the website of Issuu.com. Illustrations with pictures or photos are

For the skills exploitation, the steps to follow are these:

For the linguistic exploitation activities, there are many options to work with the texts in class, all of them perfectly known:

1. Presentation and hand-out of the texts

2. Group work

• Online texts should be read out of the classroom, unless the teacher considers it better to read them in class (especially if working with primary-school students)

• Slides can be read aloud in class but students should have a printed copy available.

• Booklets can also be read at home.

• After-reading speaking activities.• After-reading written activities (questionnaires).

1. Activities focusing on vocabulary2. Drills3. Gap-fills4. Activities focusing on grammar5. Drills6. Rewriting7. Dramatisation (role-play) if possible, since not all texts are

suitable to be performed.

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Students are offered wordless pictures in order to create their story. The process can proceed through a dialogue with the teacher and/or among the students about what they see in the picture and how they interpret it. The goal is to elicit a story. These two pictures were used with university students to inspire them to create a story based on what they saw (see the pictures in the appendix at the end)

In this case, the story has already been told; it does have a plot, but the words are missing. That is precisely what the students have to do, transform a pictorial story into a written one (see the comic strip that was used for that purpose, also included in the appendix)

Students are now offered a real piece of news taken from a newspaper or magazine (even from the Internet). It is recommended to choose hilarious events. The following article is genuine and was used to motivate the transformation of journalistic writing into a literary micro-story1.

also welcome, since the artistic side of the activity is much more important than it seems. Moreover, micro-stories

will be periodically written, several times throughout the school year, not just once or twice during the course.

Writing requires training. It is not possible to write without having previously practised how to write stories, which is much more than putting words together respecting the grammar rules of a given language.

Paradoxically younger students usually need less training than adults in order to break up writing. What

writers call inspiration can come at any moment; for that reason our students ought to be ready to pick up their pen or their computer to embark on writing.

That is why, when dealing with grown-ups, it is convenient to propose a kind of warm-up activity that will eventually allow them to create more easily. We have selected just three.

2.4. Before creating, warm-up

1. Write a story from a picture

2. Interpret the vignettes

3. Rewriting

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Taiwanese woman to marry herselfA Taiwanese woman has decided to marry herself in an elaborate

ceremony due to a lack of potential suitors.Chen Wei-yih said her mother had insisted on a groom at first but

later jumped aboard the solo marriage plan Photo: GETTY4:41PM BST 22 Oct 201094 CommentsChen Wei-yih has posed for a set of photos in a flowing white dress,

enlisted a wedding planner and rented a banquet hall for a marriage celebration with 30 friends.

Uninspired by the men she’s met but facing social pressure to get married, the 30-year-old office worker from Taipei will hold the reception next month.

«Age thirty is a prime period for me. My work and experience are in good shape, but I haven’t found a partner, so what can I do?» Chen said.

«It’s not that I’m anti-marriage. I just hope that I can express a different idea within the bounds of a tradition.»

Her £3,600 wedding comes after online publicity campaign.

Once the teacher deems it is time to start writing, so that the required training period has been successfully carried out, the inspiration material

must be confronted again. It is really tough to motivate students to write when they decide they don’t want to, but humour is always our ally.

It is certainly quite difficult to motivate the creation of stories, even when they are so short. Besides, techniques vary according to the students’ age. For younger students Rodari’s techniques (Rodari 1973) can turn out to be quite suitable, yet these may also work with adults by simply introducing the necessary modifications, so that they don’t look like too childish.

It is really complicated to cause the human brain to trigger the invention of stories, but the genius of Rodari

has collected very basic techniques that have been used by hundreds of writers and teachers to let ideas flow. We have just selected a few of them, in this case mainly young student-centred techniques (for primary-school).

2.5. Some techniques to help students create micro-stories

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1. The fantastic binomial

2. “What would happen if...?”

3. The arbitrary prefix

4. The funny mistake

The fantastic binomial is the confrontation of two ideas, concepts, object, features or people with no apparent relationship. Optionally two opposites can be joined to provoke inspiration (for example what about a vegetarian lion? Or a giant gnome? Or a two-eyed Cyclops? Try by using some of this:

This technique brings up an impossible hypothesis to which students should give an imaginative answer by means of a story. These are some ideas:

This is a good way to exploit linguistic mistakes. Grammar mistakes allow the firing of the imagination.

As we have previously remarked, these techniques can also be used with teenagers and adults, but with all the appropriate changes regarding vocabulary, circumstances and so on.

Or even pronunciation mistakes:

The starting point is the existence of real forms, such as washing-machine, vending-machine, so that the proposal might turn around a new concept such as a yawning-machine. Similarly with real prefixes: underword (as underworld), e- plant (as e-mail or e-book).

• Frying-pan <> modem• Shark <> tickle• Pen <> liar

• 3-star hotel > 3-hotel star• Work clothes > working clothes (understood as clothes that work for themselves)

• I think > I sink

• What would happen if Santa Claus were fined for exceeding the speed limit and his sleigh were confiscated?

• What would happen if you could paint smiles on people’s faces?

• What would happen if suddenly the moon had hiccups?

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3. A specific proposal to use (cyber)micro-fiction with university students

3.1. Micro-fiction in the classroom

3.2. Background

As outlined above, both length and compatibility with online applications make micro-fiction an ideal genre for use in the classroom, whether in primary, secondary or higher education settings. In terms of the latter, reading and writing micro-pieces may be used in a gamut of courses, including language (both mother-tongue and foreign) and literature (Collie 1987). In what follows we will describe a teaching

experience that relied heavily on micro-fiction as part of a course on reading and creative writing, taught to Spanish teacher training undergraduates. By sharing this experience, we hope to show how micro-fiction reading and writing exercises can help to develop foreign language skills and, perhaps no less important, contribute to students’ cognitive development and critical thinking.

This teaching experience took place at CES Don Bosco, an independent teacher training college affiliated to Universidad Complutense de Madrid. The course, entitled Reading and Creative Writing, is an elective course offered in year two of a Bachelor’s Degree in Teacher Training, Primary Education. It is taught in English to students who are following a bilingual stream, meaning that around

50% of their credit load is taught in English. Like in other courses in the programme, it is expected that students will improve their level of English while (and through) studying course content, so the teaching relies on many principles and strategies inspired from FL teaching methodology and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) (Coyle 2010).

Given this background, the course had three types of aim:a) Content aims, related mainly to literary criticism and creative writing skills, e.g. To re-flect on the strategies and literary devices that build up successful pieces of fiction.b) FL language aims, e.g. To help develop intensive reading skills.c) Aims related to the development of teaching skills, e.g. To raise awareness of strate-gies of teacher feedback to written tasks: responding, correction codes, focusing, etc.

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3.3. Integrating micro-literature into class-work

3.3.1. A debut in literary criticism

3.3.2. Creative writing and publication

When planning the course, we took into account the lessons of a pilot experience that had been run with English literature students the year before, a description of which has been published elsewhere.

2Even if only three weeks of class-work were devoted to micro-literature, some of the lessons learned suggested that it would be a good idea to turn that pilot experience into the core component of another course.

One of those important lessons had

been that, while students need to acquire a critical lexicon in order to discuss and critique works of fiction meaningfully, such a conceptual framework should not be imposed or “taught” but, rather, arrived at inductively by students. The reason is that most students tend to see literary discussion (not to mention creative writing) as something alien to them, and hence it is of crucial importance that they see the point in the judgments they are asked to make.

The first step of the process, then, was to set a number of readings from the different online sources, mainly online literary journals and author weblogs3. After making sure they understood the texts, the task students had to tackle was apparently simple: deciding whether they liked the story or not, and, whatever the case, trying to decide what made each story work.

Individual answers to this question, supplemented by subsequent class discussion, led the class to cooperatively create a simple but comprehensive

critical checklist of literary virtues that a micro-text could display. This list would serve as an aid for literary criticism of subsequent readings, from other reputed writers to pieces written by peers in a later stage of the course4.

Moreover, the checklist was reassessed and edited to include additional categories based on further experiences reading micro-pieces, as well as after an intensive reading activity on Camille Renshaw’s classic essay The Essentials of Microfiction.

The second stage of the process involved having students create, edit and publish micro-pieces. It is here that the original pilot project turned into a fuller task-based unit, where

students’ learning would take place through and around an authentic project, namely, the creation and use of literary journals using weblog applications.

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The main aim of this project was to encourage team-work, editing processes and have students publish a meaningful and authentic record of the different activities that took place in class.

We will now take a quick look at some of these processes and activities, emphasising how they served as occasions for FL skills development.

a) Brainstorming and Drafting.

Most of the pieces produced were individual, although there was a team-writing activity. The creative writing was structured around different “calls for stories”, which in turn specified different themes and, most importantly, word-count. For instance, the first set of stories were produced following topics and word-count suggested by a writing prompt published in e-journal nanofiction.org, in this case, “people in a witness relocation program”. Later stories were written on topics proposed by the teacher or agreed on by the class.

b) Peer-conference workshops

On specific dates, sessions would be devoted to oral interviews where students would be asked to respond to their peers’ work. This was done in quite a structured way, by having students fill in a conference record form, both as authors and as respondents5.

This was one of the students’ preferred class activities, as it allowed them to get to read a good number of pieces written by their peers and receive suggestions on how to improve their own work.

From the instructor’s perspective, these workshops were one of the moments in the course where the benefits of working on micro instead of longer fiction became clearer, as 1.5 hours of class-work proved more than sufficient time for three or four interviews and whole-class feedback at the end. And such variety helped – not only did students not get distracted or bored, but they had more opportunities of sharing their stories and applying their reading and critical skills on others.

From a linguistic perspective, peer conference workshops provided an excellent occasion for fluency development, as interviews had to take place in English and students would constantly utilise a number of language functions such as criticising politely, making suggestions, asking for clarification, or encouraging.

c) Publication

Once students had several written and edited pieces, they were asked to publish them on their group weblog. This stage of the project took place mainly outside the classroom, although some guidance was given in class as to how to utilise weblog applications, mainly blogger.com.

As has been suggested above, the rationale behind this task was to make it as authentic as possible. Students were not simply creating an online record of their work for their instructor to grade them, they were creating an online literary journal to share their stories with their classmates and external readers. As such, they were encouraged

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to devote time and thinking to issues ofi) Style: title, sub-title, background

design and visuals.ii) Readability: colour, font size, etc.iii) Functionality: labels to classify

stories according to their author or subgenre.

Again, from a teacher’s perspective, this stage of the project was very rewarding, as most student groups tried hard at personalising their blogs’ appearance and making them as readable and visually attractive as they could. (See appendix 2)

Furthermore, blog design and publication also helped to address the specific needs of students who think in visual ways or are especially prone to creativity.

d) Comments

As a follow-up task, students were asked to read and comment on stories published in other online journals. This was done by using the comments functionality of Blogger.

This task helped to reinforce understanding of the critical categories discussed, as well as increasing students’ exposure to more texts – this time published by their peers.

e) Portfolio interview

In the field of ESOL, some language level exams apply a portfolio approach to assessing writing skills and using students’ written work as a springboard for discussion in the oral assessment. Our idea when planning this part of the course was to mirror such an approach, and hence provide students with practice in defending a published portfolio and answering questions in a semi-formal setting. Due to the high number of students in class, the original plan had to be simplified and, as a result, students were interviewed in groups, although they still had to make mini (2 min) presentations on the theme, “what I have learnt in the creative writing stage of this course”.

Even if most of the learning activities were structured around the project that has been described in the above section, other activities and resources were used, either as “drills” to help students in their writing processes or as activities designed to help students reflect on the possible uses of creative writing in the Primary classroom.

a) Group brainstorms as warming-up activities.

Often as a way of waking students up

(quite literally, as sessions always took place early in the morning) and allowing for late-comers, the class would begin with short group brainstorms on very specific tasks. On several occasions, students were asked to propose

3.4. Other activities

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metaphors or similes to illustrate daily scenarios. Other times, they would be shown images or even short videos as “text starts” and were asked to speculate on what they saw or what the story behind (or after) could be. Here, some language support was given to help students utilise appropriate expressions for speculating, such as modal verbs and expressions of probability (e.g. “That could be… / I guess that’s…./ He must have….)

b) Interaction with a wider community

One of the most quoted principles of CLIL is the focus on “Community”. In this course, students were encouraged to see their work in the course as part of a wider, real-life community in several ways. One day, Xavier Frías, writer and blogger and co-author of this paper, was invited to join the class to briefly lecture on micro-literature and discuss some of his fiction with students. Students were generally

excited to meet a “real” writer whose fiction they had enjoyed and discussed in class.

Moreover, even after the course had finished, some of the students helped the college’s Language Department organise a micro-story competition. Among other tasks, they were entrusted with the responsibility of shortlisting the best 10 submissions.

In both cases, students were able to see that reading and creative writing need not be a high-brow quasi-mystical activity, but that it can contribute to strengthen communal links, for instance, in a school.

c) Essay-writing.

Finally, students received training in essay-writing skills in English, and had to write an essay entitled “my process of writing”, in which they had to describe on their individual writing processes, from brainstorming and focusing to editing and publishing.

In previous sections we have highlighted the many benefits of engaging students in reading and creative writing using micro-literature, especially in the framework of meaningful project-work. However, as in other cases of task-based instruction, care must be taken to adequately plan language aims, especially those involving grammar structures or functional language. In our specific experience, there was a general lack of

grammatical control and accuracy in many publications and, especially in written comments on peer work. This is clearly an area of improvement, which could also be pursued collaboratively, for instance, by having students self- and peer-correct their language use more carefully via correction codes.

3.5. Suggestions for improvement

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To conclude this paper, we would like to insist on the idea that (cyber)micro-fiction is interesting in itself, as a brand-new literary movement, but also because of its multiple didactic possibilities. We have already been working with very short texts in our L2 classes for several years, so we can assert that the use of these materials will assist students in the learning of foreign languages. Do not forget that our younger students belong to the so-called digital generation and these kinds of texts are not alien to them.

As we hope to have shown, micro-literature can be an exciting and highly versatile resource for teaching a foreign

language (especially English) and developing cognitive skills in students in a variety of subject-areas in the humanities. Furthermore, the close relationship of this literary genre with the new technologies and, especially, the Internet, make it ideal for transmitting to students a passion for reading and storytelling that is traditional in its spirit but new in its language. And, whatever the scenarios, humanistic approaches to education cannot fail to speak to students in a language they can understand.

4. Conclusion

3.6. Benefits of using micro-fiction

1. Micro-fiction makes it easier to expose students to significant variety. And variety is important when studying literature, as authors get things right in very different ways.

2. Micro-pieces are an extremely flexible teaching material. You can use them in class for intensive reading activities. You can set their reading for homework and even busy mature students will find the time and energy to read them.

3. Micro-stories are ideal as a non-intimidating first adult experience in creative writing.

4. As has been discussed in the first section of this paper, micro-literature feels very much at home on the Internet, computer screens and even mobile phones (especially nano-fiction), which is where people do most of their reading nowadays.

5. This very short genre allows for realistic team-writing and peer-editing activities, re-quiring little or no homework.

6. Having students publish in blogs (individually or group managed) fosters creativity and caters to students with a visual learning style.

We will now summarise the main benefits of using micro-fiction in teaching, especially in literature, creative writing and EFL courses.

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Reference blogs

» Alquisa www.alqisa.blogspot.com

» Fracaso de microcuentos http://www.microcuentos.org

» Microstorias www.eonaviego.blogspot.com

» NANO Fiction http://nanofiction.org

» Přiběhy na padesat slov http://pribehynapadesatslov.cz/

» Slonek http://slonek.blogspot.com

» Staccato Fiction http://staccatofiction.com

» 140 Letras http://140.zip.net/

Endnotes:

1 Taken from Daily Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/taiwan/8080685/Taiwanese-woman-to-marry-herself.html [02-Oct.-2012]

2 In a previous paper (López, 2011), one of the authors of this text presented an experience that highlighted the benefits of reading and writing micro-fiction as a first step for developing students’ literary criticism skills.

3 Some of these sources include online journals staccatofiction.com, nanofiction.org, or Xavier Frías’s weblog slonek.blogspot.com. [02-Oct. 2012]

4 One of the earlier versions of the checklist can be seen here, http://microfictionces.blogspot.com.es/2011/09/micro-fiction-assessment-checklist.html [02-Oct.-2012]

5 The idea of the conference record is borrowed from Hollie Park’s Teaching Flash Fiction http://lilt.ilstu.edu/rlbroad/teaching/studentpubs/writegooder/park.pdf [02-Oct.-2012].

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Appendix

1. Pictures

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2. Blogs

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Xavier Frías Condexfrias@flog.uned.esFacultad de Filología, UNEDC/ Senda del Rey 728040- Madrid(Spain)

Alfonso Lópezalopez@cesdonbosco.comCES Don Bosco (UCM)C/ María Auxiliadora 928040-Madrid(Spain)

Works cited:

» Collie, J. and Slater, S., 1987. Literature in the Language Classroom. A Recource Book of Ideas and Activities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

» Coyle,D., Hood,P. & Marsh, D., 2010. Content and Language Integrated Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

» Duff, A. & Maley, A., 2007. Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. » Frías Conde, X. 2010. A relación entre a literature e a internet nos inicios do século XXI nas

literatures ibéricas: o caso da microficción. In: Revista de lenguas y literaturas catalana, gallega y vasca [online]., 2010, vol.15, pp. 77-87. Available at: http://e-spacio.uned.es/fez/view.php?pid=bibliuned:Llcgv-2010-vol.15-05.

» Lagmanovich, D. 2006. La extrema brevedad: microrrelatos de una y dos líneas”, In: Espéculo 32, 2006 [cit June 28, 2012] Available at: http://www.ucm.es/info/especulo/numero32/exbreve.html.

» López, A. 2011. Learning to Read, Learning to Write: An Experience in Using Microfiction with Spanish EFL Teacher Trainees In: ICERI Proceedings. IATED.

» Renshaw, C. 1998. The Essentials of Microfiction, In: Pif Magazine, June 1998. http://www.pifmagazine.com/1998/06/the-essentials-of-microfiction/.

» Rodari, G., 1973. Grammatica della fantasia, Einaudi: Torino. » Sharma, P. & Barrett, B., 2007. Blended Learning. Using technology in and beyond the

language classroom. Oxford: Macmillan.

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On the Importance of Systematic Cultural Studies for Future Language Professionals

Education of future language professionals in the Czech-Slovak geographical context has typically entailed a focus on the linguistic and literary aspects of the English language, as well as the methodology of teaching English as a foreign language or acquiring translating/interpreting skills. What has largely been missing from the overall picture is the role played by culture. As our paper argues, systematic cultural studies are a much needed, albeit little explored, component of the required minimum future language professionals need to be equipped with. In order to prove this point, the paper explores the nature of the language-culture relationship and the notion of systematic cultural studies. In this way, the paper makes a clear case for a greater inclusion of cultural studies in college/university English curricula as an interdisciplinary component that puts language in its proper extralinguistic context.

Abstract:

Jaroslav Marcin - Božena Velebná

Education is an ever-changing field, under a constant process of adaptation and adjustment in order to reflect modern trends and developments, the burning issues of the day, as well as the latest state of expertise and experience. What follows from this is that any

question raised needs to be answered again and again by each generation, and every topic that falls within its scope needs to be explored repeatedly, with constant re-evaluation of what has been achieved so far. Thus, no question is ever answered once and for all and there is

Jaroslav Marcin studied English and aesthetics at Presov University where he received his master’s degree in 2003, followed by a PhD. in linguistics in 2010. He has been Assistant Professor of American Studies at the Pavol Jozef Safarik University in Kosice since 2006, with American mass media as well as American religious history as his keen research interests. He is currently also pursuing a Master of Arts in Christian Ministry at Abilene Christian University. His other interests include his wife and two daughters, singing, writing, and general merriment.

Božena Velebná studied British and American Studies at Prešov University and later at P.J. Šafárik University in Košice, where she has been teaching courses in British history, art and culture since 2006. Apart from academic inquiry she enjoys opera and is a follower of the intellectual legacy of Jara Cimrman.

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not a single issue that can be considered exploited to the fullest extent possible.

As educators we would like to explore in this paper the importance of systematic cultural studies for future language professionals: the whys, whats and hows. For the last six years, we have been teaching university courses on American and British culture (respectively) as part of our British and American Studies programme, trying to get our students to understand why studying culture is important for their future as language professionalsi and how they can successfully approach the subject of intercultural (or cross-cultural) communication. This paper is both a reflection on the theory and praxis as we know it and a look forward, seeking to address the challenges we find ourselves faced with.

Having come from the background of the Slovak system of education, we have often seen the bias of Slovak universities towards “foreign language and literature” programmes, thus leaving cultural studies somewhat trailing behind as a complementary, non-essential component. Sometimes people mistook cultural trivia for cultural studies; at other times we have seen efforts to discuss British or American culture without any comparison to our native culture; we have also heard judgments of one or the other culture disguised as cultural studies. Worse still, we have found a striking lack of system in this field. This all suggests that certain things need to be set straight so that educators and students alike can appreciate the benefits of cultural studies.

Until the second half of the twentieth century, cultural studies were virtually non-existent, especially as part of communication degrees. Anthropology had established itself as a field of academic inquiry, as too had linguistics; the two, however, maintained a cautious, safe distance. When intercultural communication finally emerged as a separate discipline, it remained just that: a research field disconnected from the study of language, or more precisely said, disconnected from language education, so that at the close of the twentieth century Fantini was able to write: “Although the fields of language education and intercultural

communication have both made important strides during the past quarter of a century, they have often wandered alone, along separate paths” (1997, p. ix).

Perhaps what kept the two at such distance was a pervading structuralist tendency in social sciences to artificially mark out a compact territory for scholarly research that would be containable and analysable, though at the same time disconnected from its historical ties and wider context, including overlaps with other academic disciplines. Nevertheless, as later scholars understood, these man-imposed borders needed to be

The Whys

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crossed in order to fully comprehend the complexities of real life, including foreign language education and communication that respect cultural differences and overcome cultural barriers.

The first thing such an approach necessitates is an understanding of the close relationship between language and culture. Although earlier on both linguists and language educators treated language as discrete from culture, the truth is that in interpersonal communication the two are in fact so inseparable that some scholars have actually suggested the term linguaculture to refrain from speaking of one without referring to the other (Fantini, 1997, p. 12). While this term does justice to culture by bringing it into the foreground, it, at the same time, conceals the dominance of culture (in relationship to language) as well as the fact that language is only one of the many facets of a cultureii. For our purposes, the best illustration of the relation is as simple as:

Language <—> Culturewhere language and culture mutually

influence each other, and thus both also affect human communication.

The way that language affects culture is usually more obvious at first glance: people are born in a society where a language is spoken and they acquire this language, and the matrix of the world it creates (Branson and Martinez, 2011, p. 115). The language they acquire from their early days becomes their key to interpreting and (mis)understanding the world around them. It becomes their ready-made means of sorting the

realities we experience (Murphy, 2006, p. 30). For this reason, people learn to see things differently through the prism of their language, as reflected in the Sapir-Whorfian hypothesis and its observation of language determinism and relativity.

However, culture has a converse impact on language: language is first and foremost a cultural product—it reacts to and reflects the needs of any given culture (Murphy, 2006, p. 39). Changes in the world around us, in our socio-political context and in our everyday circumstances, necessitate that our language adapt itself. Thus, not only are new words introduced into language, but also old words are endowed with fresh meanings and connotations that will help shape the way future generations come to see the world. Therefore, an understanding of the culture is critical for a proper grasp of the language. Otherwise, language learners are at risk of becoming merely “fluent fools”, likely to get into all sorts of trouble because both they themselves and others overestimate their ability. They may be invited into complicated social situations where they cannot understand the events deeply enough to avoid giving or taking offense. Eventually, fluent fools may develop negative opinions of the native speakers whose language they understand but whose basic beliefs and values continue to elude them. (Bennett,1997, p. 16)

For this reason, those of us involved in language education simply need to equip our students with an essential grasp of the language’s cultural background through systematic cultural studies.

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The Whats

We might be tempted at this stage to skip ahead into the hows; however, the proper order of things requires that we first answer the essential question of the whats. This calls for a look into what cultural studies is and what it is not; what we mean by systematic cultural studies; what the focus of cultural studies should be in educating future language professionals; and what this kind of systematic study entails. Without clarifying any (and each) of these, the subsequent discussion of the hows bears very little value, as it is not grounded in a sound view of the discipline and its usefulness for our students. Let us, then, take a look at the questions raised above.

The reason cultural studies can be a very tricky discipline to tackle is because the notion of culture is very broad, and therefore somewhat vague and elusive. A variety of things can be disguised as cultural studies, none of which might actually prove useful to a future language professional. The starting point for it is the notion of culture, which in and of itself is rather difficult to contain. It can be defined in a scholarly way as “a system of knowledge, a composite of the cognitive systems more or less shared by members of society” (Keesing, 1979, p. 15; emphasis in original). Alternately, culture can be defined figuratively (and quite tellingly) as:

It is apparent that, as beneficial as these definitions or metaphors defining culture might be, because they shed light on the subject of culture itself, they also leave us at a loss as to how culture should be studied, especially in a way relevant for future language professionals. Two things that need to be done, then, are: narrowing down

the scope of culture to reflect the needs of those studying it; and, providing a logically organised and structured system that will ease the newcomer’s transition into cultural studies. Only in this way will it be possible to introduce such a challenging subject to future language professionals, providing them with a theoretical framework

- an environment that seems natural, especially if it is the only one we know;- a lens, something we see through without realising it is not the only way of seeing; … - a set of codes, like writing, which is artificial but comes to be second nature; … - a cage that is there and not there, like a mime artist pretending to be inside a glass; …- a womb, within which one feels perfectly at home, not knowing there are other worlds; … - an ever-present horizon, beyond which one cannot see (Gallagher, 2003, pp. 10-11).

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with which to approach it and without overwhelming them with useless information.

That brings us to the essential question: what is cultural studies? And, no less importantly: what is it not? To answer these questions, let us first look at the latter. To be sure, cultural studies is not about the learning and memorisation of isolated facts, disconnected dates, place names, and other meaningless trivia, which bear no value of their own and do not help us understand what lies at the heart of one culture or another. Similarly, cultural studies is not about judging the culture of another nation or group of people, as judgments are typically founded on stereotypes and misrepresentations that cultural studies should seek to eliminate. Finally, cultural studies is not about giving definitive answers but rather providing the students with tools they can use to further explore any given culture, including one’s own. In fact, cultural studies, especially as part of the training of future language professionals, needs to include a comparative aspect because a foreign culture is best studied in contrast (or in parallel) with one’s own.

Although it is fairly easy to recognise what cultural studies is not, it is all the more difficult to grasp what it actually is. Writing in 1994, Kerl observed:

Cultural studies is, at the moment, a very elastic term. Within foreign language learning it may be synonymous with ‘civilisation’. But this, in turn, is often seen as analogous to Landeskunde or ‘area studies’. Yet, most ‘area studies’ courses at British

Universities focus on the socio-political and economic aspects of a country and would not describe themselves as cultural. Outside mainstream language learning, cultural studies is dominated by cultural theory, drawing on Marxist and neo Marxist traditions and literature. (p. 12)

We are convinced that even today, in 2012, cultural studies remains an elastic term to say the least. That, however, does not mean there is but very little substance to it, or that it is merely a supplement to language education. In the above paper, for instance, Kerl also identifies the relationship between the context and discourses as the central point of cultural studies (1994, p. 21). This understanding then requires, first of all, a clarification of the context before students enter phase 2—studying the relationship between the context and discourses. It also requires that what we provide our students with is an insight into the mind of a native speaker of the language and his/her culture.

In order to equip future language professionals with this much-needed insight, we propose systematic cultural studiesiii, i.e. a field exploring the culture(s) of the relevant areas in a systematic way, utilising a theoretical framework which can be re-used by students when encountering any other culture, creating some sort of matrix into which facts of life and ways of approaching the world around us can be fitted, in order to create a more complex window into the culture studied. This approach should be somewhat similar to anthropological/

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ethnographic research, but only to the point to which it remains relevant for future language professionals. It should bring to scrutiny the notion of a monolithic culture (as often perceived by an outsider), addressing thus the

stereotypes and myths perpetuated in popular lore, while upholding the true common traits binding different cultures with shared history or geographic space.

Anyone approaching the subject of systematic cultural studies is bound to ask themselves at some point: how do we go about it? Is it, for instance, helpful if we have had previous experience with the culture(s) in question? Are we missing out on something if we have not? The truth is it really depends. On the one hand, personal experience can make it much easier to relate to some of the cultural traits discussed in class; it can, however, also mean one has more deeply ingrained prejudices (positive or negative) with regard to this culture. Lack of personal experience, on the other hand, might make some concepts more difficult to grasp; at the same time, it might mean a mind more open to exploring and seeing another culture for what it really is. Thus, both personal experience and

lack of personal experience can pose a challenge in some areas, while proving an advantage in others.

Systematic cultural studies should, therefore, make it clear from the start that it attempts at once an emic and an etic point of view—the former requiring us to take the position of an outsider who spots the patterns, and the latter which considers specific expressions of these patterns as seen by an insider, thus allowing for both patterns and idiosyncrasies, rules as well as exceptions to these rules. For optimum results, this strategy should be applied comparatively—it should be used to study a foreign culture in comparison (or contrast) with a language learner’s native culture. The following goals can then be used to illustrate what cultural studies should really be aimed at:

The Hows

- Interest: The student shows curiosity about another culture … and empathy toward its members.- Who: the student recognises that role expectations and other social variables … affect the way people speak and behave.- What: the student realises that effective communication requires discovering the culturally conditioned images that are evoked in the minds of the people when they think, act, and react to the world around them.- Where and when: the student recognises that situational variables and conventions shape behaviour in important ways.- Why: the student understands that people generally act the way they do because they are using options their society allows…

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Having said this, let us take a closer look at how systematic cultural studies functions within the British and American Studies programme offered at our department.

The programme itself consists of three strands or branches—the traditionally taught linguistics and literature, as well as cultural studies as the third tier. Here, our primary focus is the United Kingdom and the United States of America—the former as a major historical influence throughout the modern history of Western civilisation, and the latter as a significant cultural force in the most recent decades, especially due to the exports of American pop culture. This does not mean other cultures cannot be a part of the programme—quite the contrary, they should be present to some extent—however, the weight of the programme rests primarily on these two components and their comparison with our native (Slovak) culture.

Further, students get acquainted with each culture (British and American) in an introductory course, exploring primarily the topics of its geography, demographics, government, society, mass media, education, religion and arts. For either culture, there exist follow-up courses on its history, political institutions, social institutions, the mass media, and arts and culture. There are also additional (optional)

courses on a variety of related topics, e.g. regional cultures in the UK, Irish studies or indeed globalisation. The idea is to pay proper attention to cultural studies and to create a system similar to the study of linguistics or literature, where the essentials are introduced before more complex issues can be addressed through specialised courses.

Quite certainly, careful coordination is required for optimising the courses and their interconnectedness, and we cannot say that the system is set up as efficiently as possible yet. However, we do seek ways to further cooperate in harmonising the content of individual courses so as to maximise learner benefit and to ensure that our students understand the relevance of this material for their future as language professionals. Even as we continue to develop strategies to do so, there are a number of other challenges we find ourselves faced with along the way, of which the most pressing is the lack of relevant research methodology, especially when compared to the existing methodology in both linguistics and literature studies, perhaps due to the fact that systematic cultural studies is still a relatively new field within our cultural region.

And, naturally, there is a number of disclaimers that come with cultural studies: every educator can (and does)

- Exploration: the student can evaluate a generalisation about a given culture in terms of the amount of evidence substantiating it and has the skills needed to locate and organise the information about a culture from the library, the mass media, people, and personal observation. (Seelye, 1997, p. 25)

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bring their own (positive or negative) prejudices, which can in turn affect the students’ perceptions; and as we are trying to erase old stereotypes and dispel myths and false generalisations, we might be, at the same time, producing new ones that will continue to live in our students’ minds. The only foolproof strategy, then, is to teach our students to combine critical thinking and careful observation while applying the essential framework we have provided them with. In this way they will not

only become competent intercultural communicators, but will also be equipped to apply the same approach to the study of any other culture in today’s diversified, multicultural world. Finally, the manner in which we choose to go about cultural studies will in itself become a mirror of our own culture as “[t]he way one country develops its studies on other foreign countries is much more representative of its own idiosyncrasies than of those it purports to unravel” (Poirier, 1994, p. 45).

Endnotes:

i For the purposes of this paper language professionals will be defined as those (including—but not limited to—language teachers and translators/interpreters) who will use foreign language as a tool in an intercultural (or cross-cultural) environment, rather than using the language as an end in itself (as a theoretical linguist might).

ii Other facets of culture include other systems of symbols, including gestures and proximity, as well as the culture’s political and social institutions and its collective memory.

iii For the sake of terminological clarity, it would be helpful to draw a clear line between the terms area studies, cultural studies and even civilisation, which are commonly used when referring to this portion of most university programmes that is neither linguistics nor literature. However, most scholars seem to be using them interchangeably, sometimes pointing out, as quoted earlier, that the term area studies is a somewhat broader one, providing students with the context necessary for their study of British and American culture. In our geographical and cultural context, where students have no or very limited prior knowledge of this context, these two concepts seem inseparable. The ultimate aim being the understanding of culture rather than simply learning the cultural context, it seems more logical to use the term cultural studies. Moreover, whole programmes can be considered area studies, covering the language, literature and culture of the area and having corresponding names e.g. British and American Studies.

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Works cited:

» Bennett, M. J. 1997. “How Not to Be a Fluent Fool: Understanding the Cultural Dimension of Language.” In: Fantini, A. E. (ed.). New Ways in Teaching Culture. Alexandria, VA: TESOL, pp. 16-21.

» Branson, M. L. and J. F. Martínez. 2011. Churches, Cultures and Leadership. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic.

» Fantini, A. E. 1997. “Foreword.” In: Fantini, A. E. (ed.). New Ways in Teaching Culture. Alexandria, VA: TESOL, pp. ix-x.

» Fantini, A. E. 1997. “Language: Its Cultural and Intercultural Dimensions.” In: Fantini, A. E. (ed.). New Ways in Teaching Culture. Alexandria, VA: TESOL, pp. 3-15.

» Gallagher, M. P. 2003. Clashing Symbols: An Introduction to Faith and Culture. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.

» Keesing, R. M. 1979. “Linguistic Knowledge and Cultural Knowledge.” In American Anthropologist, New Series, March 1979, Vol. 81, No. 1, pp. 14-36.

» Kerl, D. 1994. “The Case of Landeskunde: A Vicious Circle?” In: Byram, M. (ed.). Culture and Language Learning in Higher Education. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp. 5-18

» Murphy, R. F. 2006. Úvod do kulturní a sociální antropologie. Praha: Sociologické nakladatelství.

» Poirier, F. 1994. “Documentary Analysis in Civilisation Studies: The French Approach.” In: Byram, M. (ed.). Culture and Language Learning in Higher Education. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp. 45-51.

» Seelye, H. N. 1997. “Cultural Goals for Achieving Intercultural Communicative Competence.” In: Fantini, A. E. (ed.). New Ways in Teaching Culture. Alexandria, VA: TESOL, pp. 22-27.

Mgr. Jaroslav Marcin, PhD.Mgr. Božena Velebná, PhD.Department of British and American StudiesFaculty of ArtsPavol Jozef Šafárik UniversityKošiceSlovakiajaroslav.marcin@upjs.skbozena.velebna@upjs.sk

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More Drama! The Importance of Dramatic Tension in Scripted Dialogues for Language Learners

Dramatic tension is an essential component of all captivating dialogues written for theatre. It is what causes the excitement of watching and performing made-up stories of made-up characters. This paper aims to draw attention to dramatic tension in dialogues written for language learners. Acting out pre-scripted dialogues is one of the few drama techniques that can be considered a commonly established practice in foreign language learning and teaching. However, not all textbook dialogues that are supposed to be acted out allow for real, exciting drama work. This article argues for more dramatic quality in dialogues for language learners, exploring the possibility of dramatic tension as a crucial factor influencing the effectiveness of script-based work in the language classroom.

Abstract:

Barbora Müller Dočkalová

Barbora Müller Dočkalová teaches ELT methodology at the Faculty of Education, Charles University Prague. She is the founder and director of Jeviště, a small language school that specialises in teaching languages through drama and theatre. She writes musical plays for English learners. She organises festivals for schools and drama workshops for language teachers. In 2007, her method act and speak® was adopted by Základní škola Marjánka (a primary school in Prague) and incorporated into its curriculum, and since then Barbora has worked there, teaching and developing drama-based teaching materials for young learners.

Introduction

In real life, most of us avoid getting into tense situations. If we find ourselves in a conversation that may lead to conflict, many of us experience it as unpleasant and tend to withdraw from it or look for compromises to stop the threat. We do not deliberately seek out uncomfortable or awkward interactions

with other people, and we stay away from situations in which something important could be at stake for us, or in which something could happen to us. However, when we go to see a play or a film, we naturally expect something to happen to the invented characters. We would hardly pay money to sit in a

“Something ought to be happening between the people conversing.” (Turco, 2004, p. 175)

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theatre for two hours and watch happy people live happy lives full of happy smiles in complete harmony. No one would buy a ticket to a play in which some characters would talk merely to exchange information about what they like to eat, what they are wearing, or what their favourite animals are. There are no such plays, and if there were, no actors would audition for them. We humans expect and want something to be happening between the fictitious characters as they speak, and as soon as we cannot sense that “something” in their words or behind them, we tend to lose interest in the conversation. In order to keep us “hooked”, there must be some action on stage, and the action must be held together by dramatic tension. Dramatic tension ensures the thrill we get out of participating in made-up interactions of invented characters, whether we participate as spectators, or as actors. Drama is not possible without tension (Davies, 2011, p. 3).

In foreign language classrooms, students are sometimes encouraged to act out pre-scripted dialogues. Instructions to act out a conversation, a comic or a sketch have started appearing more frequently even in some mass-produced teaching materials. This is good news: it proves that the value of drama for language learning is becoming widely recognised. However, the dialogues that the students are supposed to act out are not always ideal for staging. In comparison to the “real fiction” that students read, watch, think about, talk about, and (in the case of children) re-play in their free

time, textbook stories seem mild, with not enough drive in the characters to accomplish something, with not enough urgency and effort to reach their goals and overcome obstacles. Sometimes it feels as if there were no other reason for the existence of the stories and dialogues besides the language lessons they teach. If there is not a strong reason for a story to exist, then it makes little sense for the learners to enter it and attempt to identify with its characters. Dialogues to be acted out must be dialogues whose meaning would be justified even after removing the language learning aspect. They must have the power to attract the students and make them genuinely care about the characters and what happens to them. The characters must have a reason to talk that goes beyond practising vocabulary or sentence structures, and something must be happening between them in that very moment. There must be dramatic tension, and the students must feel the vibrations of it.

Almost ten years have passed since Manfred Schewe (1993) presented a substantial and detailed argument for bringing more dramatic quality to textbook dialogues for language learners. Even though there has clearly been some improvement over the years, when looking through English teaching materials distributed to or made in the Czech Republic, it is still rare to find a book with plenty of dramatically charged dialogues and well-plotted stories. This is especially true of textbooks for young learners. It is my goal in this paper to argue for more drama in textbook dialogues once again, and especially to

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highlight the importance of dramatic tension as the main, magnetic force that can pull the students out of their seats before the teacher even asks them to ‘act out the story’.

I first came across the term dramatic tension in a writing class. However, I soon started transferring the knowledge into my teaching, deliberately inserting dramatic tension into my original scripts for English learners as well as into tasks and exercises. Based on many years of experience since then, I find that being aware of dramatic tension, its power, and ways of creating it can be extremely useful for teachers, authors

of teaching materials, and for others involved in foreign language teaching. In the first section of this article, I briefly review the reasons for staging pre-scripted dialogues in the foreign language classroom. The following two sections look at the substance and types of dramatic tension as defined by drama and theatre specialists, as well as at ways of creating it. In the last section, I formulate arguments for the importance of dramatic tension in dialogues for language learners, and I illustrate them by some of my observations of the effect it has on the learning process.

In the past few decades, the use of drama in foreign language teaching has made a visible move from the methodological periphery towards the centre. An increasing number of reports from various corners of the world bring new evidence of the positive effects drama can have on many different aspects of language learning1. New scientific papers as well as practical handbooks are published every year, diploma theses and dissertations on the topic are successfully defended, drama courses are offered to future language teachers at many universities, and there are new conferences, workshops, and other platforms for sharing experience2. The effectiveness of using drama in language learning is not easy to measure, and it is still possible to meet teachers, as well as students or parents of young students,

who do not respect dramatic play as a means of real learning. However, drama is in alignment with many principles of effective language learning that are considered increasingly important at the present time, such as learning by doing, holistic learning, cooperative learning, autonomous learning, learning in meaningful contexts, or learning with the use of imagination and creativity, and it is therefore gaining a much better status than it used to have in the past. This development is reflected in teaching materials: drama techniques are now more often included into textbooks, and they can even be encountered in textbooks aimed at preparing students for standardised exams3.

One of the well-known ways of using drama in language learning is working with scripts: acting out dialogues in the classroom, rehearsing short skits and

Acting out scripted dialogues in the foreign language classroom

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showing them to small audiences, or even involving students in larger play productions. In such activities, linguistic competence goes hand-in-hand with performance: the students are learning about the language, but at the same time they are gaining experience with using it. (Bilbrough, 2007, p. 107) “All real-life language use is a form of performance. … We use language to perform ourselves – to make public our own unique identity. We do this by using a common language and making it our own. We take other people’s words and we recycle them for our own situation-specific purposes. In this sense, language production is an endless process of borrowing, adapting, rehearsing and performing.” (Ibid.) In order to give language learners an opportunity to develop their language performance, it is necessary, apart from helping them with learning the language itself, to help them consciously include their bodies and voices into language production, and assist them in developing their stage presence, as well as the use of space. (Cf. Schewe 2011)

Memorising and performing pre-scripted lines is not always considered as valuable as other, less controlled drama approaches. According to Kao and O’Neill, class work that involves producing pre-scripted dialogues falls into the category of closed and controlled drama approaches. The problem of such accuracy-oriented drama exercises is twofold: the dialogues do not provide enough context, and they are too predictable. Students engaging in scripted dramatic performances discover that such activities “bear little relationship to the

kind of verbal interactions that occur in the real world.” (Kao and O’Neill, 1998, pp. 5-6)

While it is true that using memorised lines on stage does not teach the students to generate language in authentic communication situations, scripted dialogues can help the students to internalise short stretches of speech that they remember as whole, ready-made units. This saves them the effort of creating each sentence word by word, and it speeds up their communication. Research shows that fluency in speech is dependent, among other factors, on the learner’s capacity to store those lexical ‘chunks’. (Cf. Bilbrough, 2007, p. 91) Acting out dialogues and scenes is effective for the internalisation of chunks as it involves the students holistically in the learning process: it does not only appeal to their linguistic intelligence, but to several other types of human intelligences as named by Gardner (1993, cited in Schewe, 2002, pp. 74-75): bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence, musical intelligence, spatial intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, and intrapersonal intelligence. Having experienced performing a certain dialogue with specific gestures, intonation, rhythm, pace, volume, positioning and movement, all this after repeating it several or many times in the process of rehearsing, thinking about and discussing the underlining story and the motives of the characters, and achieving the result by communication and cooperation with others, provides many channels through which the chunks can naturally flow to the learner’s mental lexicon and get anchored there strongly.

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There are more advantages to acting out and performing scenes and dialogues. It gives the students a clear goal to work towards. They are not learning certain words or phrases because they might need them one day, but rather because they will be presenting them shortly. This, together with the feeling of success after their performance, increases their motivation for learning the language. Staging small performances is also, especially in the case of young learners, a highly enjoyable activity, and students tend to commit to it fully and responsibly. Stepping out of one’s self and acting in a role allows the students to collect a great variety of experiences that they may not encounter in real life, and it adds to their motivation and confidence of using the foreign language. Also, if the scripts are well written and stimulate

imagination, they can be used to engage the learners in less controlled activities. They can function as improvisation starters, the students can discuss the characters and their past or future, they can create continuations of the scenes, and, if the dialogues allow it, the students themselves can make up contexts for them.

All the above benefits are, however, not automatically present any time the students pick up a scripted dialogue and start acting it out. There is one condition that must be fulfilled: the students must be interested in the dialogue. The story of the dialogue must be intriguing for them. They must feel it calling to them, calling them to its world; they must be excited about the chance to enter it and experience it. This can be achieved when the dialogue contains dramatic tension.

There are many angles from which various authors look at dramatic tension. Those who are mainly concerned with writing, here Egri (2004), Iglasias (2005), Kempton (2004), Noble (1999), Rosenfeld (2008), and Truby (2008) look for ways of creating tension in the story itself: for them, it must arise from within the invented characters and their worlds. Those who are concerned with acting and directing, here Hauser and Reich (2003) and O’Toole and Haseman (1988), look for tension in the dramatic text and work with it creatively on stage, using their bodies and voices, for example through

movement, or rhythm of speech. People involved in improvisational theatre, here O’Toole and Haseman (1988) and Spolin (1983) need both of the above-mentioned points of view to create quality dramatic stories in front of the eyes of the audience. Those who are concerned with drama in education, here Heathcote (1984, 2010) and Kao and O’Neill (1998), look for ways of creating real, or almost real, tension between the participants, both to make them submerge deeply into exploring the subject matter as players and to satisfy the spectator within themselves (Heathcote, 2010. p. 8), for they are

Dramatic tension

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their own audience. All of the views will be combined below in order to reach a better understanding of dramatic tension as an influential factor for language learning.

While there does not seem to be a single definition of dramatic tension, most authors who write about it agree on its key role in drama. O’Toole and Haseman (1988, p. 17) define dramatic tension as the force that drives drama, and they stress its importance among other elements of drama: “In some ways it is the hardest element of drama to grasp, because you cannot see it or touch it, you can only feel it; yet it is the most important element, and no drama exists without it – it must be created, and it can easily be lost”. Kao and O’Neill (1998, p. 28), too, consider dramatic tension highly important, calling it “a key quality in drama, whether improvised or scripted” and “an essential structural principle in generating dramatic worlds” that “provides a dynamic for the action”. Tension is a crucial element in every scene even in prose (Rosenfeld, 2008, p. 87); “the very reason for watching” theatre (Hauser and Reich, 2003, p. 61), “the key to effective dialogue” (Kempton, 2004, p. 134).

The term dramatic tension is closely related to several other terms from literary theory, mainly conflict and suspense, and opinions on their relationships differ. In the past, many writers used the terms tension and conflict synonymously (Bundy, 1999, p. 42), and some still do, as can be seen in the work of Noble (1994, p. 6), who explains conflict as “the essence of

story development” and lists tension among other names for the same meaning. Conflict, in this sense, does not mean an open argument or a direct confrontation, but rather a clash of interests, or “a tendency towards contradiction.” (States, cited in Bundy, 1999, p. 51) Since in the everyday use of the word, even heated arguments and fights are sometimes referred to as conflicts, I prefer to distinguish tension from conflict. I agree with Spolin (1983, p. 42), for whom conflict is only one of the possible resolutions of tension, and it is not necessary to have conflict in every scene; an agreement can release tension just as well. Rosenfeld (2008, p. 87) defines dramatic tension as “the potential for conflict to happen in a scene”. Heathcote also stresses the fact that tension can be of a subtle nature: “Tension is not a matter of huge terrifying events such as earthquakes, mutinies, armies and on; it is more a matter of finding a lever from within the situation which is capable of laying on pressure, in the way that sore places can develop on the skin as a result of abrasion. This has the effect of making the most hackneyed situations spring into new focus and create new awarenesses.” (Heathcote, 1984, p. 34)

The closest bond seems to be between the terms tension and suspense. Styan (1963) includes the two terms under a single heading in his glossary. For Iglesias, tension is a variation of suspense, and its main distinctive feature is “prolonging anticipation of outcome”, or, in other words, delaying relief (Iglesias, 2005, p. 95). However, for the purpose of this paper, dramatic

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tension must be distinguished from suspense even more. Suspense is generally connected to uncertainty about the outcome of a situation. According to psychologists’ account of the term, in order to experience suspense, we must fear a bad outcome, hope for a good outcome, and we must be in a state of uncertainty about which way the situation is going to turn out (Smuts, 2009, p. 2). For example, when we watch Atreyu in The Neverending Story approach the first gate, we hope the eyes of the sphinx will stay closed, we fear they will open, and we do not know which is going to happen. Strangely, when we watch the film again, we know that the eyes are going to open; we even know Atreyu is going to survive, and yet we still feel strong emotions. Smuts examines four different theories that attempt to explain this “paradox of suspense”, but all of them are problematic (Smuts, 2009, p. 9). In my opinion, there is no paradox of suspense, as what we are feeling on the second viewing on the film is not suspense, but rather tension. On the first viewing, the tension is mixed with suspense, but once we know what is going to happen, we still want to watch the scene, just for the excitement of it. Dramatic tension is what makes us want to see the same films again and again, and what energises actors when they repeat the same dialogue for the fiftieth time. This is also why dramatic tension is so important for language learners.

An important condition that characterises dramatic tension is the relevance to the present moment, to

the here and now. “People in drama are now, here, and under pressure to act in situations. That is the tension of dramas.” (Heathcote, 1984, p. 129) When two characters talk on stage, everything they say, even if they have to mention past events that happen to other people, must be directly connected to the tension of the present moment on stage. “We’re excited by the present because that’s where our lives pulse, and breathe.” (Noble, 1994, p. 14)

It has been said that dramatic tension is essentially important for any drama, and that it is not identical either with conflict, or with suspense, and also that it has to do with the immediacy of the moment. It remains to define what dramatic tension is. As stated earlier in the passage quoted from O’Toole and Haseman, finding an exact definition is not easy. Is it a force, a pressure, a potential for a conflict, an emotion, or just a mysterious “something” that must be a part of the drama world so that “participants truly can experience those ‘frissons’ which the self-spectator within the active doer deserves” (Heathcote, 2010, p. 8)? A fitting comparison can be found in Bundy (1999, p. 41): “Dramatic tension (like electricity) has no concrete substance. In the same way that the glow of a light bulb indicates that an electrical current is flowing, so emotional engagement in drama indicates the presence of dramatic tension.” I have often experienced the electricity, charging and connecting all the people in the classroom. Most recently, a group of difficult fifth-graders whom I had always had trouble managing left the classroom with yells

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of surprise, satisfaction, and joy after rehearsing a dramatically tense scene. Dramatic tension in pretend situations is, unlike in the real world, entertaining, inspiring, and satisfying. For the purpose of script-based language teaching, it can be defined as the power

of a pre-scripted dialogue to generate productive excitement in learners. The excitement must be strong enough to make the students want to enter a dialogue and explore it to the full. The next section looks into types of dramatic tension and ways of creating it.

O’Toole and Haseman (1988, pp. 18-31) identify four main ways of creating and intensifying dramatic tension: the tension of the task, the tension of relationships, the tension of surprise and the tension of mystery. The tension of the task increases when the hero’s challenge becomes more difficult and more important (but at the same time remains enjoyable for the players). Tension of relationships is one of the most frequent sources of tension, and it can originate from misunderstandings, intimacy, dilemmas, conflicts, or through rituals (for example ceremonies that add importance to the actions). The tension of surprise is both the excitement caused by something happening suddenly, for example if an unknown person arrives and brings astonishing news, and by waiting for something shocking to happen, for example when a death sentence is confirmed. The tension of mystery appears when there is something unknown that the characters must discover.

Of course, tension cannot be created out of thin air. First of all, there must be characters: the human context (O’Toole and Haseman, 1988, p. 3). A story must belong to someone, and that person

must be relevant to the spectators. That can only be achieved if the person needs something and wants something. Giving a character a need and a desire belongs to the basics of writing. Egri (2004, pp. 192-193) insists that without the essential need, the character has no reason to be on stage: “It is pointless to write about a person who doesn’t know what he wants, or wants something only half-heartedly. Even if a person knows what he wants, but has no internal and external necessity to achieve this desire immediately, that character will be a liability to your play. … There must be something at stake – something pressingly important.” Truby (2007, p. 43) also emphasises the importance of the hero’s desire, which comes from the hero’s basic weakness and need: at the start of the story, something is missing from his/her life, and he/she must decide to do something to change the situation. Only when the audience understand the hero’s desire can they get on the “train” with him/her, and participate in pursuing the goal.

In stories for language learners, particularly young ones, there is a general deficit of character weaknesses and strong desires. Textbook characters

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rarely have a serious weakness; on the contrary, many of them seem to be almost perfect. Consequently, they cannot have strong desires, and often, they do not have desires at all. It is then quite difficult for the learners to identify with the characters. They accept them, they find them entertaining, but they do not think about them too much. Cameron (2001, p. 162) points out that many texts presented as stories in course books for young learners are in fact no stories at all, for they often lack a plot. “Instead of setting up a problem and working towards its resolution, the characters just move through a sequence of activities. Teachers should not assume that such non-stories will capture children’s imagination in the same way that stories can do.”

In theatre, whenever a character appears on stage, he/she has a job to do, which is connected to the major desire. It may be a big job, like saving someone’s life, or a small one, like trying to leave from a party, but there must be a goal to accomplish in every little scene. If the hero’s main desire is strong enough, tension can be naturally generated within individual situations. For example, the character who wants to leave from a party may want to do so because he has just realised he is in love with a woman who is not there. He wants to be with her (his desire). He wants to tell her about his feelings, but before that, he must manage to leave from the party. He must get to the door (his goal in the particular scene). Knowing what his desire is and what he is trying to accomplish in the scene, it is easy to create tension. The tension

of the task can be intensified by making the task of getting to the door extremely important. For example, the woman of his life is at the airport, just about to board a plane and leave the country for good. The tension of the task can be further intensified by making it difficult. The hero may not be able to interrupt someone who is talking to him. He may not be able to get through a crowd of dancing people, who start to dance around him. Finally, when he is only a few steps from the door, he may accidentally knock over a vase. The hostess may say that it does not matter and she may start cleaning up the mess, but one of the glass chips cuts her hand and she starts bleeding. The hero cannot leave now. We can create the tension of relationships if the hostess happens to be our hero’s boss at work, whose attention he had always fought for. We can add the tension of surprise: as he is trying to dress her wound, she kisses him. This also deepens the tension of relationships by creating a dilemma for him. We can further intensify the tension of the task if we hear the boarding announcement at the airport. And so on. All this is, of course, an exaggerated example full of clichés. Nevertheless, it shows how important it is to have a desire in order to create tension. If the same character wanted to leave from the party only because he would be tired, none of the above events would be of any significance, and there would be no tension at all.

The knowledge of how to create desire and tension may seem difficult to transfer to dialogues for language learners. A course-book author does

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not have the creative freedom that fiction writers have; on the contrary, he/she must construct the stories to fit in with the teaching plan of the book, shaping them according to the space that is available for them, and he/she must operate with the predetermined language that the stories are supposed to introduce, practise and recycle. On the other hand, textbook stories that contain dramatic tension exist. The constant rivalry of two neighbouring detectives, Smart Alec and Sweet Sue, in the Project series4, is a good example. I am convinced that it is possible to create tension within the limits of a language course book, even for young learners. For example, in a unit centered on the theme of pets in a textbook for children, a desire could be created if one of the child characters desperately wanted a pet. This desire would have to spring from the character’s weakness and need. The character might be a girl who longs for

admiration (her need). She may be very competitive, and she may tend to boast in front of her classmates (her weakness). When they talk about pets at school, she may lie to her classmates about having a special pet, for example an iguana, at home. The classmates may want to come to her house to see it. They want to come tomorrow. She must get an iguana today, no matter what (the desire).

Such a story could easily contain the same language material that other units on pets usually cover. For example, if the students were supposed to learn to describe pets, there could be a scene at the beginning in which the girl lies about having an iguana, and the classmates push her to say what it looks like, asking tricky questions about the details. If the language goals included expressing likes and dislikes, then there could be a scene in which the girl, pursuing her goal, initiates a conversation about pets with her mother:

GIRL: Mum?MUM: Yes?GIRL: Do you like iguanas?MUM: No, not very much. Why?GIRL: Oh, nothing.(After a while)GIRL: Mum?MUM: Yes, dear?GIRL: Can I have a pet?MUM: No. GIRL: Why?MUM: I don’t like pets.GIRL: All pets?MUM: Well, I like cats.GIRL: Do you like dogs?MUM: Sarah, I am busy.(After a while)

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GIRL: Mum?MUM: Sarah, please! What is it now?GIRL: I want an iguana. MUM: No. I don’t like pets, and I don’t like iguanas. Now please leave me alone.

The language goals would determine the details of the plot. However, no matter what the plot would turn out to be, it would always be easy to create tension, because the girl has a strong desire. For example, she might take all her saved pocket money, go to a pet shop, buy an iguana, and bring it home secretly. The parents could hear her, confront her, and ask her to take the animal back to the shop. The very ending could stay open. Acting out the story in a group, adding an original ending, presenting it and watching presentations of other groups would surely be a more engaging activity

than acting out a relaxed conversation about pets between happy textbook characters. Performing the line Do you like dogs? in the dialogue suggested above would be a different experience from performing the same line in small talk. The scene in the pet shop would be different from simple role plays about shopping. The desire and the tension fill even the most ordinary expressions with special meanings. This extra value should not be missing from language classrooms. In the next section, the significance of dramatic tension for language learners will be examined.

In defining process drama, Kao and O’Neill (1998, p. 25) say that dramatic tension distinguishes process drama from simple role plays. In a similar way, it can be said that dramatic tension distinguishes acting out dramatic dialogues from attempting to act out non-dramatic dialogues. Schewe (1993, p. 143) makes a clear distinction between dramatic and non-dramatic dialogues, and as one of the two distinctive features he names precisely tension: “Dramatic dialogues contain blank spaces and they are imbued with tension that can arise from the relationship between the speakers…, or

that can be built up through a constraint that is consciously imposed on the situation...” (my translation).

The more dramatic tension there is in a dialogue, the more potential there is for action, and the easier it is to act out the scene. Acting out a non-dramatic dialogue results in a static performance into which physical action must be added artificially. Such a process is too strenuous for language learners, most of whom are not professional actors. Moreover, if there is no dramatic tension to draw the students in, there is no motivation to repeat the dialogue many times and expand effort on thinking up

The importance of dramatic tension in dialogues for language learners

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action. A dramatic dialogue, on the other hand, inspires physical action immediately, and it is usually enjoyable for the students to repeat the dialogue several times. A brief description of a concrete experience will follow below.

For my first drama project with primary school children in 2000, I wrote a sweet but completely non-dramatic story. A boy called Jim sets out on a quest to find a magic spring he has heard of in his grandmother’s stories. Whoever drinks the magic liquid will start laughing, and Jim wants to bring some of it to his parents who are too busy to give their attention to him. On his way, he first runs into his friend Winston, tells him about the plan and invites him to go with him, but Winston does not believe in elves and goes to play football. Winston’s little sister tries to persuade Jim to take her with, but he refuses, saying she is too small. Next, Jim walks into the woods and meets elves, who tell him the spring is dry. The magic juice used to be made by them in a secret cave, and the main ingredient was human laughter that they used to collect into special pouches in places where people got together. Since people laugh less and less these days, it is too demanding to collect their laughter, and the elves have given up on keeping the magic spring running. Jim offers to help. With all the pouches from the elves, he goes back to his village, and together with Winston’s sister, they put on funny masks and collect laughter among people (the audience). They help the elves mix the magic drink, and they bring a jug full of it back to the grandmother and Jim’s

parents, who drink from it and start laughing.

The play was done at a primary school in an afternoon club attended by children aged 8 – 11, and it ended with a performance for parents. We had home-made props and scenery, the elves looked cute, there were nice songs and rhymes in the play, there were some funny moments, and the whole project was done with such enthusiasm on all sides that it was bound to be a positive experience for everyone, no matter what. Nevertheless, the project had many beginners’ flaws, which I will not list here as I thoroughly analysed them in my diploma thesis (Dočkalová 2003). Rather, I will focus on one of the problems, which is relevant for the purpose of this paper: the absence of dramatic tension in the script.

Looking at the synopsis, it is possible to see places from which dramatic tension could have been generated, but it was not. Out of the four main types of tension outlined by O’Toole and Haseman (1988), not a single one was developed enough to make the spectators within the children truly care for the characters. There was a task, but it was neither difficult, nor important: when an obstacle appeared, Jim knew immediately what to do, and throughout his entire journey, he had nothing to lose. There was not much tension of relationships, even though Jim’s parents and Winston made an opening for it. All the other characters were almost entirely nice to each other. There was no tension of mystery when Jim walked into the forest and almost no surprise when the first elf appeared.

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Here is an example of a dialogue of Jim and Winston:

WINSTON: Hi! Where are you going with that jug?JIM: Come with me. I’m going to look for the Magic Spring.WINSTON: Magic Spring?JIM: Yes. It’s a special place in the mountains. If you drink from the spring, you start laughing and you can’t stop.WINSTON: Rubbish.JIM: It’s true! There are small elves who make the magic drink. My granny told me everything about them, even their names.WINSTON: The names of the elves?JIM: Yes. There are Ben, Andrew, Charlie, Kate... Come and you will see.WINSTON: These are tales for babies. I’m going to play football today.

As the script shows, there was almost no tension, and this is also why the scene was difficult to rehearse. The boys had nothing to do. They met, they talked, and then they separated again. The boy who played Winston had a football and was kicking it at the beginning and at the end, which he enjoyed very much, but that was all. Apart from Jim raising his voice once, there was no acting involved, and there was not much connection between the language and the body. The boys were saying the lines without looking into the book, but there had been no process of internalising them: they were engaged in what Ahart (2001, p. 59) calls “memorized-reading-aloud”. As it was difficult to create action to go with the lines, it was also difficult for the children to remember them. Instead of memorising their parts in a creative process, they learned them at home with their parents, detached from the situation.

The second draft of the story, which I wrote three years later, starts with a fight between Jim and his number one enemy, Winston, on the classroom floor. The teacher comes in and they jump

apart. The teacher starts to investigate the conflict. It turns out that Winston had been making fun of Jim for believing in elves. During the interrogation, Jim throws himself at Winston again and ends up with a torn sleeve. The teacher punishes them both by making them write on the blackboard the sentence I won’t fight with Jim/Winston a hundred times. The boys sigh and start writing. After a few seconds, Jim stops writing and maintains that elves exist, as his grandmother had seen one with her own eyes. The teacher takes sides with Winston, first kindly explaining to Jim that elves really do not exist, but quickly losing her temper. She tears the chalk out of his hand, writes Elves don’t exist! on the blackboard, hands Jim his notebook, and asks him to copy the sentence at home a thousand times.

The scene uses the same ideas as were presented in the first draft, but it is packed with tension: the tension between the boys, the tension between the boys and the teacher, the tension between what Jim wants to do (finish the fight, convince everyone that he is right) and what is expected of him in

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the situation (stay quiet). I have put on the new version of the play (with small modifications each time) with three different groups of children at different schools, and the process was highly enjoyable each time, with many ideas and suggestions of what to do on stage from the children themselves. For the first scene, one group came up with a nice idea: once the teacher writes Elves don’t exist! on the blackboard and turns to Jim, Winston creeps behind her and adds more exclamation marks on the board. The same group decided that the boys will not notice the teacher when she first comes in, and only when she slams the class register on her desk and stands there, arms akimbo, do they jump up. In this more creative process of staging the play, lines were being memoried during the action of rehearsing, and in complete connection with body. The children enjoyed entering the same scenes again and again because they enjoyed experiencing the tension, and the spectators within them enjoyed watching.

As opposed to less controlled drama-based methods, working with scripted scenes provides a relatively safe access to drama worlds even for teachers who do not consider themselves inventive, who feel too shy to step in a role themselves, or who are complete beginners in using

drama, as was my case in 2000. It is therefore understandable that script-based work may, still for some time, remain one of the few generally known drama approaches. However, the fact that sketches and short plays are more often included in textbooks does not always mean that the students who work with them will learn holistically and experience other advantages that true dramatic work offers. My project from 2000 is only one case of many. Products of processes of staging non-dramatic pieces similar to the one I described, with children standing in front of the audience and saying their lines with no connection to their bodies and emotions, can still be seen on many stages. In order for the students to benefit more from participating in drama, to nurture their imagination and creativity, and to involve them holistically, it is absolutely necessary to fill textbooks with more dramatic tension. We must get drama into textbooks and make it so stimulating that even an untrained teacher, along with the students themselves, will know instantly what to do with it. When the students are emotionally engaged in the fictional worlds created in the textbooks, then acting out dialogues from them will approach true learning through drama.

Drama offers a bottomless well of possibilities for the foreign language classroom, but acting out dialogues may for a long time be one of the few approaches experienced by most

language students. In order to make that experience representative of drama, the dialogues that the students work with should bear at least some dramatic quality. In this paper it was my aim

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to highlight a basic quality of drama, dramatic tension, as a crucial factor influencing the value of working with scripted dialogues. I have supported my claims by arguments from literature and by describing my own experience. Two remarks should be made at the end. Firstly, even though I consider dramatic tension essential for foreign language teaching dialogues, I do not claim it to be the one and only key to writing effective dialogues and scripts for language learners. In order to write a script that is valuable for language learners, many other criteria must be fulfilled that have to do with building up the characters,

structuring the play, designing individual lines, and more. Secondly, this paper does not answer the main question that a language teacher asks: to what extent would dramatic tension in scripted dialogues prove to increase the effectiveness of the learning itself. The next step in exploring the significance of dramatic tension for language learning is looking for evidence from the students. I have already started working on that part, and I intend to continue in the future. Having experienced the effect of dramatic tension in the classroom, it is my goal, or perhaps even a desire, to investigate its potential to the full.

Works cited:

Endnotes:1 To follow the current development in the field, see for example Scenario, the online

journal for drama and theatre in foreign and second language education (http://scenario.ucc.ie).

2 In the Czech Republic, see for example the regular events Divadlo jazyků (www.divadlojazyku.cz), Class in Action (www.beartheatre.com), or Festivadlo (www.festivadlo.cz).

3 For example, the Cambridge series Kid’s Box that systematically prepares children for the Cambridge Young Learners English tests includes acting out stories.

4 The story starts in Part 3 of Tom Hutchinson’s Project Third Edition, Oxford UP.

» Ahart, J., 2001. The Director’s Eye : A comprehensive textbook for directors and actors. Colorado Springs: Meriwether Publishing.

» Bilbrough, N., 2007. Dialogue activities : Exploring spoken interaction in the language class. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

» Bundy, P., 1999. Dramatic Tension : Towards an Understanding of ‘Tension of Intimacy’. Ph. D. thesis, Brisbane: Griffith University. Available at: <http://www4.gu.edu.au:8080/adt-root/uploads/approved/adt-QGU20070402.161308/public/02Main.pdf>.

» Cameron, L., 2001. Teaching Languages to young Learners. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. » Davies, C., 2011. 7 Ways to Increase Tension in Drama : How You Can Use Tension to Grab

the Attention of Your Students. An unpublished e-book. Retrieved from: <http://www.bamboozletheatre.co.uk/store/products/7-ways-to-increase-tension-in-drama>.

» Dočkalová, B., 2003. Drama project with a mixed ability group. Unpublished MA thesis, Prague: Pedagogická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy.

» Egri, L., 2004. The Art of Dramatic Writing : its basis in the creative interpretation of human motives. New York: Touchstone.

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» Hauser, F. and Reich, R., 2006. Notes on directing. London: Atlantic books. » Heathcote, D., 1984. Collected Writings on Education and Drama. Evanston, Illinois:

Northwestern University Press. » Heathcote, D. Productive Tension : A keystone in “Mantle of the Expert” style of

teaching. In: The Journal for drama in education [online]. 2010, vol. 26, no. 1 [ISSN 1476 - 9395], pp. 8-22. Available at: <http://www.mantleoftheexpert.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Jan-101.pdf>.

» Iglesias, K., 2005. Writing for Emotional Impact : Advanced dramatic techniques to attract, engage, and fascinate the reader from beginning to end. Livermore, CA: WingSpan Press.

» Kao, S. and O’Neill, C., 1998. Words into Worlds : Learning a Second Language Through Process Drama. Stamford, CT: Ablex Publishing.

» Kempton, G., 2004. Dialogue : techniques and exercises for crafting effective dialogue. Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer’s Digest Books.

» O’Toole, J. and Haseman, B., 1988. Dramawise : An introduction to GCSE drama. Oxford: Heinemann.

» Noble, W., 1999. Conflict, Action and Suspense. Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer’s Digest Books. » Rosenfeld, J., 2008. Make a scene : crafting a powerful story one scene at a time. Cincinnati,

Ohio: Writer’s Digest Books. » Schewe, M. Annäherung an das Konzept einer performativen Fremdsprachendidaktik. In:

Küppers, A., T. Schmidt, M. Walter (eds.), 2011. Inszenierungen im Fremdsprachenunterricht. Grundlagen, Formen, Perspektiven. Braunschweig: Diesterweg, pp 20-31.

» Schewe, M., 1993. Fremdsprache inszenieren. Zur Fundierung einer dramapädagogischen Lehr- und Lernpraxis. Oldenburg: Didaktisches Zentrum, Universität Oldenburg.

» Schewe, M. Teaching Foreign Language Literature : Tapping the Students’ Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence. In: Bräuer, G. (ed.), 2002. Body and Language. Advances in Foreign and Second Language Pedagogy, Volume 3. Westport: Ablex Publishing, pp.73-93.

» Smuts, A., 2009. The Paradox of Suspense. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available at: <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-suspense/>.

» Spolin, V., 1983. Improvisation for the Theatre. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. » Styan, J., 1963. The Elements of Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. » Truby, J., 2008. The Anatomy of Story : 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller. New

York: Faber and Faber. » Turco, L., 2004. The Book of Dialogue : how to write effective conversation in fiction,

screenplays, drama, and poetry. Hanover: University Press of New England.

Mgr. Barbora Müller Dočkalová Katedra anglického jazyka a literatury Pedagogická fakulta Univerzita Karlova v Praze Česká republika bara.dockalova@jeviste.cz

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Can Ælfric’s Grammar and Glossary as a Unique Old English Textbook Be an Inspiration for Teaching Languages even in the 21st Century?

The aim of this paper is to present the Grammar and Glossary of Ælfric, as a unique Anglo-Saxon handbook of Latin grammar and vocabulary that uses Old English as its medium. The paper analyses sources and methods of Ælfric’s work, ones which reflect his great interest in teaching Latin as a foreign language. His usage of linguistic terminology in Old English is documented in concrete examples. Ælfric’s attempt to make his textbook a comprehensible and demonstrative piece of metalinguistic literature for his students, fulfilling the key criteria for evaluating successful modern textbooks, is consistent with the humanistic approach to teaching.

Abstract:

Helena Polehlová

Helena Polehlová (b. 1974) lectures Historical Development of English at the Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Education, University of Hradec Králové, the Czech Republic. She is a student of doctoral studies of Philology at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University Brno; her field of research is early medieval Anglo-Latin literature, especially hagiography.

To be able to consider the great value and exceptionality of Ælfric’s achievement, it is necessary to introduce his personality and life in the context of the period he lived in. After the period of relative peace in the 7th and 8th centuries, the 9th and 10th centuries saw greater political turmoil: the important Northumbrian monasteries of Lindisfarne and Jarrow were plundered by Norwegian raiders in 793 and 794. There were constant Danish attacks of variable intensity during the last two centuries of the first millennium. Similarly, after the golden age of Latin scholarship in England in the 7th and 8th centuries, knowledge of Latin as the language of the Church and

scholarship in late Anglo-Saxon history was significantly lower. The Benedictine reform movement, which is associated with the tenth century, tried to find solutions to the miserable state of the Church and scholarship in general. The author of Anglo-Saxon England, Sir Frank Stenton, points out its significance: “The Benedictine reformation of the tenth century brought fresh vitality to the whole English church. It opened a new phase of English culture which survived the political catastrophe of the Norman Conquest, and contributed to the distinctive quality of medieval English civilisation. The outstanding feature of this phase was the development of a

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new religious literature in the English language... which was not written for monastic readers.” (Stenton, 1989 (1943), p. 457) Creating new religious literature in the vernacular was an inseparable feature of this reformation movement and it was Ælfric of Eynsham who became the leader of the literary part of the movement.

In the period of struggles and violence it may seem unbelievable that “Ælfric’s life was uneventful” (Stenton, 1989 (1943), p. 458). He was born around the middle of the tenth century in Wessex. Later he became a monk in the Benedictine Old Minster at Winchester where he was taught by St. Æthelwold, who was one of the leaders of the Benedictine reform movement. He must have been a great authority, as Ælfric refers to him as his teacher in the preface to the Grammar. According to another autobiographical note, which does not aim at presenting details of Ælfric’s life in the Grammar, but illustrates the use of pronouns and will be quoted below, Ælfric also studied under Dunstan and was ordained by him. Both Dunstan and Æthelwold, whom Ælfric met as a young monk and who indisputably had a great influence on him, pushed forward reforms of the monastic order in the English Church. Sir Frank Stenton emphasises Dunstan’s position of the leader of the movement: “Through the promotion of monks whom Dunstan had trained the example of his rule at Glastonbury influenced the whole course of the English monastic revival, and it is for this reason above all that he is entitled to be regarded as its leader” (Stenton, 1989 (1943), p. 447). However, after Dunstan became bishop

at Canterbury and one of chief members of the king’s council, the leading role in the reformation was played by bishops Æthelwold of Winchester and Oswald of Worcester.

Ælfric certainly gained some reputation as a scholar at Winchester, for when, in 987, the abbey at Cerne (Cerne Abbas in Dorset) was finished, he was sent by bishop Ælfheah, Æthelwold’s successor, at the request of the chief benefactor of the abbey, the ealdorman Æthelmær the Stout, to teach the Benedictine monks there. Despite being laymen, both Æthelmær and his father Æthelweard, who got involved in translating the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle into Latin, were enlightened patrons of learning, and became Ælfric’s faithful friends. It was also at the request of Æthelmaer that Ælfric left Cerne Abbas and became the abbot of the monastery of Eynsham near Oxford in 1005. There he remained until his death in 1010. Surprisingly, “Ælfric spent a lifetime of study and exposition, undisturbed, or at least undefeated, by the tumult around him” (Stenton, 1989 (1943), p. 396).

Ælfric is best known for his numerous works, both in Latin and in Old English. He is considered to be the most prolific writer of Old English literature. In the view of Peter Hunter Blair, he was “a man comparable both in the quantity of his writings and in the quality of his mind even with Bede himself” (Blair, 2003, p. 357). His works include three series of homilies (edited under the title Catholic Homilies), biblical writings and hagiographical works: the Lives of Saints written in Old English and the Life of Æthelwold written in Latin. Last but not

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least, Ælfric’s pedagogical works must be mentioned. These include the Grammar, Glossary and Colloquy (a handbook of Latin conversation translated into Old English) and the translation of Bede’s De temporibus anni. These were written at Cerne Abbas during the decade 992-1002, when Ælfric was in charge of teaching young people.

The paper is going to focus on the first of these pedagogical works. The full title of the Grammar is Excerptiones de arte grammatica anglice (Excerpts from the Art of Grammar in English). It is an Old English adaptation of an already existing grammar. Under the title Institutiones grammaticae, its author, Priscian, composed a very dense work comprising 18 books in Constantinople in the fifth century, drawing on Donatus’s Ars minor and Ars Maior, works by a Roman grammarian and rhetorician from the fourth century. Ælfric translated Priscian’s grammar from an abridged Latin version of Institutiones grammaticae that was called Excerptiones de Prisciano (Excerpts from Priscian), which is of uncertain, probably Continental, origin. (Law, 1987, p. 52) However, translating was not the only task for Ælfric. Being a good teacher, he had made a careful selection of material as his Grammar was to be used by students of an elementary level in Latin. It was meant to be an introduction to linguistic studies, to phonology, morphology and syntax of Latin. Having worked through the Grammar, students were much better able to understand texts – both Latin and Old English ones. The three handbooks Grammar, Glossary and Colloquy are complementary –

at first students learnt morphology and syntax from his Grammar, then they could go on building up their vocabulary from the Glossary and ended up practising simple dialogues from the Colloquy. As Vivien Law (1987, p. 54) assumes, Ælfric’s main interest, even in the Grammar, lay not in morphology or syntax but in vocabulary.

As mentioned above, the three pedagogical works are complementary and thus cannot be treated separately. Therefore, it is useful to emphasise the unique feature of the Glossary as well. In contrast with other glossaries, the vocabulary of Ælfric’s Glossary is not listed alphabetically but topically: the general introductory part comprises words such as deus omnipotens – god ælmihtig, caelum – heofen, angelus – engel, archangelus – hēahengel, stella – steorra, sol – sunne, luna – mōna, mundus/cosmus – middaneard, tellus/terra – eorðe, mare/aequor – sæ, homo – mann. (Zupitza, 1880, p. 297) The vocabulary of the introductory part ‘copies’ the range of vocabulary of the story of creation in Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament, which was, apart from psalms and hymns, one of the first Latin texts Anglo-Saxon monks had to memorise.

Following topics covered in the Glossary are, for example, parts of the body, members of clergy: propheta – witega, episcopus – lēod bisceop, abbas – abbod oððe fæder, presbiter – mæsseprēost, clericus – prēost, but also cantor – sangere, lector – rædere and the feminine forms cantrix – sangestre and lectrix – rædestre. (Zupitza, 1880, p. 299)

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In the following section Ælfric provides the students with vocabulary concerning members of family and members of society, including various jobs, e.g. rex – cyning, regina – cwēn, princeps – ealdormann, faber – smið, aurifex – goldsmið, argentarius – seolforsmið, rusticus – æcerceorl, piscator – fiscere, venator – hunta, numularius – mynetere, citharista – hearpere, then continues with names of musical instruments, poeta – sceop oððe lēoðwyrhta (poem-maker), mimus – gligmann (minstrel, player). (Zupitza, 1880, pp. 300-302) This selection of vocabulary reflects the importance of the concepts signified by it in everyday life. In the following sections of the Glossary names of animals, trees, and plants are listed.

Now attention should be paid to the Grammar as the key object of our interest. It has been preserved in several manuscripts, however, the only modern edition dates from 1880. It was edited by Julius Zupitza in Berlin. Ælfric’s Grammar holds a special position within the body of linguistic writings: it is the first grammar of Latin using the vernacular as its medium in medieval Europe. Vivien Law expresses clearly the purpose of Ælfric’s work: “Ælfric’s decision to translate a Latin grammar into the vernacular is entirely consistent with the thrust of his life’s work: to provide a body of literature through which the monk or nun with only a scant knowledge of Latin could nonetheless come to comprehend the Christian faith.” (Law, 1987, p. 51) “The very fact that the medium is the mother tongue of the students, rather than the

language they were trying to learn, testifies to an immediate concern with comprehensibility.” (Law, 1987, p. 56)

Two prefaces to the Grammar, a Latin one and an Old English one, express both the motivation for students to study Latin and Ælfric’s own motive for converting a Latin grammar into Old English. In the Old English preface1, he insists on the importance of education for the continuance of literacy and scholarship: Each man who loves wisdom is blessed and the faith is spreading through learning. Where shall all wise teachers come to God’s folk (the English) from? And who can make the faith increase if learning and teachers are not instructed? The servants of God and monks should take care of holy learning in our days so that it does not fade or slacken off just as it did a few years ago when no English priest was able to write or compose an epistle in Latin, until the archbishop Dunstan and bishop Æthelwold re-established this learning in monasteries.2 (Zupitza, 1880, pp. 2-3)

The Latin preface also makes the purpose of Ælfric’s Grammar clear: I, Ælfric, however lacking wisdom, has tried to translate these excerpts from Priscian’s Ars Grammatica ... into your language, young children, so that you could insert both languages, Latin and English, into your young age. I consider this book to be suitable for children without any knowledge, not experienced adults. I know that words may be interpreted in many ways but I follow an easy interpretation because I did not want to make students “oversaturated“. If anybody does not like it, let them say about our interpretation anything they

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want. We are satisfied as we were taught in the school of Æthelwold, a venerable teacher, who had educated a lot of students very well.’ (Zupitza, 1880, pp. 1-2) In the Old English preface he adds: The art of grammar is the key which unlocks the understanding of books. And I thought that this book might help young children learn this art. (Zupitza, 1880, p. 2) Despite using frequent topoi in the prefaces, one can feel Ælfric’s personal interest in increasing literacy and his devotion to his students.

The structure of the Grammar logically develops from explaining the smallest segments of language to giving instruction on more complex structures and thus fulfils one of the criteria for assessing modern textbooks. (Daoud, Celce-Murcia, 1979, pp. 302-307) The first part is devoted to the basis of phonology: the distinction between a voice and a sound (a voice is explained as a clear intelligible sound whereas a sound is mixed and confused, e.g. horsa hnægung (horses’ neighing), or hunda gebeorc (dogs’ barking).

The following topics dealt with in the Grammar are the sound, letter, syllable, and diphthongs. A letter is defined as the smallest written segment which is indivisible. Then sounds are classified into vocales – clypigendlice and consonantes – samod swegende and these are classified into more detailed categories.

The section concerning morphology starts with a survey of parts of speech. The Old English terminology is worth mentioning as the difference between the Old English one and Modern English one can be spotted easily. Moreover, the Grammar is a unique source of technical terms as the Old English ones fell into oblivion after the Norman Conquest. The Old English terminology is a literal translation of the Latin one, generally an element-by-element translation. (Law, 1987, p. 63) Further research needs to be done into the question how much of this terminology was coined by Ælfric and how much of it has its origin in earlier glosses.

Here are some examples of the terminology:

Nomen nama (noun) synderlice – proper nouns: Eadgarus, Æthelwoldus gemænelice – common nouns: rex – cyning, episcopus – bisceopPronomen þæs naman spelgend (substituting for the noun)Verbum word getacnath weorc oððe þrowunge oððe geðafunge (verbs mean work or activity, suffering (passive), help or support Adverbium wordes gefēra (verb’s associate, comrade)Participium dæl nimend (participator)Coniunctio fēging (joining)Praepositio foresetnyss Interiectio betwuxaworpennyss (betwux – between, inter)Adjectivum þa þe beoð geihte to oðrum namum and getācnað oððe herunge oððe tāl(those which are joined together to other nouns and mean either praise or reproach)

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Further attention is paid to the declension of Latin nouns. Ælfric provides a paradigm of each major type within each declension. As the paradigm of the first declension he uses the word hic citharista – þes hearpere, which testifies to the importance of the hearpere in Anglo-Saxon society. Another criterion for evaluating an appropriate textbook, the use of current everyday language (Daoud, Celce-Murcia, 1979, pp. 302-307; Hedge, 2000, p. 369) is fulfilled by using a lot of vocabulary associated with everyday life in the country (herba – gærs, aqua – wæter, pluvia – rēn, semita – paþ, silva – wudu, luna – mōna, stella – steorra, gallina – henn, anca – gōs, columba – culfre, ciconia – storc, vacca – cū), referred to in the Bible (cedrus – cederbēam) or referring to Christian names or other names from the Anglo-Saxon history of the Church (Christus, Ioseph, Iob, Matusalam, episcopus – bisceop, rex – cyning, Beda, Dunstan).

Having explained the declensions of nouns, Ælfric continues with the morphology of pronouns. One quotation could serve as an example of the way Ælfric works with current everyday vocabulary while demonstrating grammatical features: gif þū cwest nū: hwā lærde þē?, þonne cweþe ic: Dūnstān. Hwā hādode þē? Hē mē hādode. (If you were to say: “Who taught you?” I would say: “Dunstan.” “Who ordained you?” “He ordained me.”) (Zupitza, 1880, p. 8)

In the following section the conjugation of verbs is described. Ælfric is explaining the complex Latin system of tenses by

means of Old English inventory: aro – ic erige (I am ploughing), verbero – ic swinge (I am whipping); verberor – ic eom beswungen (I am whipped or I am being whipped), ligor – ic eom gebunden (I am tied up or I am being tied up); amor – ic eom gelufod (I am loved), doceor – ic eom gelæred (I am taught or I am being taught) (Zupitza, 1880, p. 9); sto – ic stande (I am standing), steti – ic stōd (I stood), stabo – ic stande nū rihte oþþe on sumne tīman (I will stand right now or sometimes), stabam – ic stōd (I was standing), steteram – ic stōd gefyrn (I had stood, literally I stood in the past) (Zupitza, 1880, pp. 123-124).

Then the book provides an analysis of adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions and numerals in a similar manner. Interjections are also classified according to the situation they are used in, e. g. haha and hehe are classified as the interjections of laughter in both Latin and Old English: haha and hehe getācnađ hlehter on lēden and on englisc, forđan þe hī bēođ hlichende geclypode (hah and hehe express laughter in Latin as well as in English because they are uttered while laughing) (Zupitza, 1880, p. 279)

At the end of the Grammar the most important linguistic terms are summarised in 30 paragraphs that make a very clearly organised overview of the material, another key feature of a successful textbook, which this Grammar really used to be; there is incontrovertible evidence that “of the twenty-four manuscripts or fragments containing grammatical texts, copied or owned in Anglo-Saxon England, and dating from the end of the tenth

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century or later ... more than half (thirteen) contain Ælfric’s Grammar.” (Law, 1987, p. 63)

To conclude, a quotation from the Old English preface speaks for the Grammar as a whole: it clearly expresses both the student’s and the teacher’s motivation to study and teach: The art of grammar is the key which unlocks the understanding of books. And I thought that this book might help young children learn this art. (Zupitza, 1880, p. 2) Not only does the quotation embody the intrinsic motivation for the student, it also expresses the motivation for the teacher as a facilitator. As stated in the prefaces, the author’s intention was to provide his students with a brief, clearly organised outline of Latin grammar, therefore, a careful selection of material was essential: I know that words may be interpreted in many

ways but I follow an easy interpretation because I did not want to make students “oversaturated“. (Zupitza, 1880, pp.1-2) Ælfric’s attempt to make his textbook a comprehensible and demonstrative piece of metalinguistic literature for his students, fulfilling many of the key criteria for evaluating successful modern textbooks, is consistent with the humanistic approach to teaching.

Although the Grammar is based on earlier existing grammars and thus cannot be considered to be a purely original work, it may still be admired for the innovations of its structure. However long the distance between Ælfric and the teachers of the 21st

century may seem, Ælfric’s sincere devotion to his students and deep concern with increasing literacy should be a great inspiration even for teachers of this century.

Endnotes:1 The Old English preface was published in the Czech translation in Čermák, 2009.2 Extracts from the Old English and Latin prefaces are translated by the author.

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Works cited:

Mgr. Helena PolehlováKatedra anglického jazyka a literatury Pedagogická fakulta, Univerzita Hradec Králové Víta Nejedlého 573, Hradec Králové, Česká republika helena.polehlova@uhk.cz

Primary source: » Zupitza, J., 1880. Ælfrics Grammatik und Glossar. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung.

Secondary literature: » Blair, P. H., 2003. An Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

» Daoud, A.-M.; Celce-Murcia, M. Selecting and evaluating a textbook. In: Celce-Murcia, M.; McIntosh, L. (eds.), 1979. Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language. New York: Newbury House, pp. 302-307.

» Hedge, T., 2000. Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

» Law, V. Anglo-Saxon England: Ælfric´s ‘Excerptiones de arte grammatica anglice.’ In: Histoire Épistémologie Langage, 1987, vol. IX, no. 1, pp. 47-71.

» Stenton, F. M., 1971. Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd edition. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.

» Znojemská, H. Ælfríc z Eynshamu, jeho doba a dílo. In: Čermák, J. (ed.), 2009. Jako když dvoranou proletí pták. Antologie nejstarší anglické poezie a prózy /700-1100/. Praha: Triáda, pp. 546-575

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Nonverbal Communication and English Language Teaching

Nonverbal communication (NVC) has penetrated the various disciplines of linguistics, pragmatics, philosophy, cognitive science, anthropology, sociology and psychology, and a number of subdisciplines have appeared in the last 40 years. The article is concerned with the exploration of different methods and techniques of teaching nonverbal communication (the interpersonal perception task (IPT), miming, drama and role-playing, etc.), as well as with the interaction of the natural nonverbal properties of utterances with linguistic ones, the methods of their research and the limitations and advantages of body language as a means of communicating.

Abstract:

Olga Ruda

Olga Ruda, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English at the Department of English Philology of Ivan Franko National University in L’viv, Ukraine. During winter and summer semesters 2011-2012, she was the scholarship holder of the National Scholarship Programme of the Slovak Republic at the Department of English and American Studies (CPU, Nitra). Recently, she, with co-authors, has published a monograph on ‘Emotion Management in the Reflection of Cross-cultural Investigations’ (2011) and a textbook on ‘Fundamentals of Linguistic Research’ (2011). She translated a book for scouts by М. de Beaumont ‘The Wolf that Never Sleeps: A story of Baden-Powell’ (translation: ‘Вовк, який ніколи не спить: історія Бейден-Поуелла’, 2011).

Since the researchers of body language in the 1950s found that the total impact of a message is about 7 % verbal, 38 % vocal and 55 % nonverbal, and that paralinguistics, proxemics, haptics, oculesics, chronemics, olfactics and vocalics form a part of any culture and language, it seems obvious that we should raise learners’ awareness of nonverbal communication in order to improve their use of the English language, increase confidence and

fluency and help to avoid inter-cultural misunderstandings. In terms of English language teaching and culture skills development, nonverbal clues should not be underestimated when developing both the listening and speaking skills.

Human communication is comple-mented by nonverbal elements. Their presence creates clear images in our mind and produces powerful feelings. The impression produced on the interlocutor by verbal communication

Introduction

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David Crystal pointed out as long ago as 1975 that “the broadest possible view of paralinguistic phenomena, includes under this heading any meaningfully contrastive sound-effect which cannot be described in terms of the segments, or phonemes, in the sound system of a language, but which extends over stretches of utterance at least a syllable in length” (Crystal, 1975, p. 163). Such means of information transmission as acoustic characteristics of voice, pauses, intonation and so on belong to paralinguistics (Levitsky et al., 2006, p. 12).

The traditional view in psychology is that “verbal language communicates ‘cognitive’ meaning, whereas the nonverbal code communicates ‘affective’ meaning, for example, anger, sarcasm, surprise, emphasis, excitement and so on” (Crystal, 1975, p. 165). The timbre of voice effects the interlocutor’s perception of information. The high-

pitched, squeaky voice makes the listener exhausted; the pleasant voice rich in timbre captures positive attention.

A very important role in commu-nication is played by intonation. With its help we can change the meaning of an utterance absolutely drastically. A great deal depends on pauses in speech (Levitsky et al., 2006, p. 12). A speaker of a foreign language who has a perfect command of the sounds but whose phrase pauses are wrong, cannot be properly understood by native listeners. This proves the practical value of paralinguistics and nonverbal communication and suggests teaching these subjects together with the rhythmical division of the chunks of speech (Sukhorolska, Fedorenko, 2009, p. 87). Even if an interlocutor is not speaking, the information is transmitted or is given a chance to conclude what is being hidden behind the silence (Levitsky et al., 2006, p. 12).

The term “kinesics” appeared in the 1950s from the Greek kinēsis ‘motion’ (from kinein ‘to move’) + -ics and is the study of the way in which certain

body movements and gestures serve as a form of nonverbal communication (ODT, 1993). It should also be noted that anthropologists have discovered that

Paralinguistics

Kinesics

is determined by nonverbal symbols. Nonverbal communication is studied by paralinguistics, pragmatics, philosophy, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, anthropology, sociology, communication studies and psychology. M. Knapp and J. Hall define the term “nonverbal” as

commonly used to describe all human communication events that surpass spoken or written words. However, they stress the fact that these nonverbal events and behaviours should be interpreted through verbal symbols (Knapp, Hall, 2009, p. 24).

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the human body has the ability to take nearly one thousand different stable positions, a great many of which have a distinctly expressive communicative function.

Facial expressions and gestures convey information and create a definite implication, showing that language is used to hide one’s thoughts. Sometimes when it is difficult to find the necessary word in spontaneous speech, gestures and face expressions are ready to help (Levitsky et al., 2006, p. 12). For instance, if you are asked to explain the meaning of the notion “the steep rise”, you are sure, while explaining, to use perpendicular hand gestures.

Psychologists, specialists in cross-cultural communication and linguists pay much attention to the importance of facial expressions and gestures in communication, especially because of their national specific nature; as a result a lot of dictionaries of gestures and facial expressions are published (Levitsky et al., 2006, p. 12).

While speaking, a great deal of meaning is conveyed by facial expressions, tone of voice, and movements, stance and postures of the whole body but especially of the hands; these are

collectively known as gestures. The contribution of bodily gestures to the total meaning of a conversation is in part culturally determined and differs in different communities.

Just as there are paralinguistic expressions, such as facial, and bodily gestures integrated with and assisting the communicative function of spoken language, so there are vocally produced noises that cannot be regarded as part of any language, though they help in communication and in the expressions of feeling. These include laughter, shouts and screams of joy, fear, pain, and so forth, and conventional expressions of disgust, triumph, and so on, traditionally spelled “ugh!”, “ha, ha!”, etc., in English. Such non-lexical ejaculations differ in important respects from language: they are much more similar in form and meaning throughout mankind as a whole, in contrast to the great diversity of languages; they are far less arbitrary than most of the lexical components of language; and they are much nearer the cries of animals produced under similar circumstances and, as far as is known, serve similar expressive and communicative purposes (Levitsky et al., 2006, p. 13).

Scholars Mark Costanzo and Dane Archer (1991) have introduced and described the validation of the Interpersonal Perception Task (IPT), an interesting method for studying the process of social perception. The IPT is a videotape consisting of 30

scenes. Each scene is paired with a multiple-choice question about the interaction depicted in the scene. All scenes contain full-channel sequences of unscripted behavior and employ an objective criterion of accurate judgment (Costanzo, Archer, 1991, p. 224). Five

The interpersonal perception task (IPT)

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common types of social interaction are represented: status, intimacy, kinship, competition, and deception. Mark Costanzo and Dane Archer (1991, p. 224) claim that “the IPT challenges viewers to identify the right answer to each question by using the broad range of communication present in each scene (e.g., facial expressions, words, tones of voice, hesitations, eye movements, gestures, personal space, posture, and touching)”. The cues occur simultaneously in the scenes, just as they do in everyday life. D. Archer and M. Constanzo consider the IPT to be both valid and reliable, and their previous research indicates that performance on the task relates to social skills that are important in everyday life (Costanzo, Archer, 1991, p. 224).

To show the importance of the IPT, scholars stress the fact that it can be used to sensitise students to the varieties and importance of different communication channels. “A simple demonstration involves contrasting the usefulness of purely verbal information with the richer cues available in full-channel, namely simultaneous verbal and nonverbal communication. One way to do this is to compare the accuracy of students given only verbal transcripts of IPT scenes (written transcripts are included) with the accuracy of students shown the IPT videotape” (Costanzo, Archer, 1991, p. 224).

Scientists found out that the group using verbal transcripts will be less accurate than the group with access to both verbal and nonverbal cues. Facial expressions, gestures, and other nonverbal behaviours usually occur

along with words and act to change the perceived meaning of words. In many cases, however, nonverbal acts have independent meaning. D. Archer and M. Constanzo (1991) argue that it is easy to use the IPT to demonstrate the power of body language. Proceeding to explain what they mean, they say that scenes can be shown with the audio level on the TV monitor turned off. Students can use the cues they have available (e.g., facial behaviour, gestures, eye contact, touching) to answer these questions. According to M. Constanzo and D. Archer (1991, p. 224), this approach encourages viewers to focus exclusively on nonverbal behaviour – for example, to determine if people are lying, merely by watching (but not hearing) them. It should be noted that teachers or instructors should remind students that playing the videotape silently not only removes verbal cues, but also the important cues found in vocal paralanguage (e.g., pauses, tone of voice, and interruptions). This exercise, in their opinion, also illustrates that verbal cues and vocal paralanguage are especially important for decoding some types of scenes, for instance, deception. After students have tried answering the IPT questions using only visual cues, the scenes can be replayed with the audio (Costanzo, Archer, 1991, p. 224).

Students often have the impression that there are simple dictionaries of nonverbal cues – that specific cues have invariant and unambiguous meanings. To show the importance of the IPT, D. Archer and M. Constanzo claim that the IPT sensitises students to the variety and complexity of verbal and nonverbal

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cues, facilitates classroom discussion and helps students understand the process of interpreting these cues. Scientists suggested that as a teaching device, the IPT highlights the subtlety

and complexity of expressive behaviour and promotes active learning by presenting social interaction in a vivid and involving manner (Constanzo, Archer, 1991, p. 226).

Nonverbal communication (body language, paralinguistics, kinesics) has been a focus of attention for some time in areas such as the refinement of presentation skills, and even as an efficient tool for developing social skills. Methodologists stress the fact that relatively little attention, however, has been given in language teaching to nonverbal communication as a complement to spoken language, though recent trends in neuro linguistic programming regarding mirroring and parallel body language have filtered into current research and practice (Eryilmaz, Darn 2005).

Attempts have been made to prove that nonverbal communication (body language, particularly facial expressions and gestures), eye signals and gaze, territorial and ownership gestures, posture and stance are probably those which learners most need to be aware of in terms of conveying meaning, avoiding intercultural misunder-standings and

fitting in with the target culture. According to D. Eryilmaz and S. Darn (2005), in terms of skills development nonverbal clues should not be underestimated when developing both the listening and speaking skills. Like grammatical structures, nonverbal communication has a form, function and meaning, all of which may vary from language to language and from culture to culture (Eryilmaz, Darn 2005). M. W. Lustig and J.Koester state that “unlike verbal communication systems, however, there are no dictionaries or formal sets of rules to provide a systematic list of the meanings of a culture’s nonverbal code systems. The meanings of nonverbal messages are usually less precise than are those of verbal codes” (Lustig, Koester, 2010, p. 199).

D.Eryilmaz and S.Darn (2005) show that the effective use of nonverbal cues assists in a wide range of classroom practices by adding an extra dimension to the language:

a. reducing unnecessary teacher talking time b. increasing learner participation c. enhancing confidence buildingd. improving listening skills e. reducing fear of silencef. making instructions more comprehensibleg. increasing efficient classroom management

NVC and language teaching techniques

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D.Eryilmaz and S.Darn (2005) are of the opinion that teachers, however, should always remember that the meanings of gestures and other nonverbal cues need to be taught in the same way as the meaning of essential classroom language, also that a number of nonverbal techniques already exist in their repertoire, such as the use of colours and charts. Teachers should make sure that the learners understand their codes, and

teach them to use them themselves. Most of the activities can be carried out either in groups or in pairs. These techniques can be introduced in many different ways, from photographs, clips, movies, drawings to authentic scripts.

According to D.Eryilmaz and S.Darn (2005), relatively few techniques have been suggested for teaching nonverbal communication, but some of their suggestions are:

h. improving classroom atmospherei. improving performance in pair and group activitiesj. enhancing self and peer correctionk. avoiding misunderstandingsl. improving intercultural competence (Darn 2005).

1. Students discuss the meaning of gestures and expressions (either demonstrated by the teacher, from pictures, or from the textbooks). This is particularly effective with multilingual classes.

2. Students mime adjectives of both physical and emotional feelings.

3. Students watch a video clip without sound (the IPT) or analyse given photographs and discuss body language, relationships, emotions and feelings, then write the dialogue.

4. Students act out a dialogue using gesture and expression only.

5. Students make up a dialogue based on mime.6. Students, in pairs, take turns in listening to each other for 30

seconds, using only nonverbal responses (Eryilmaz, Darn 2005). The aim of these techniques is to motivate learners of English to take part in conversations and discussions about things that are either within their experience or that they can speculate about. These tasks enable students to take a personal stand, encourage interpersonal communication, increase learners’ fluency and awareness of the existing nonverbal clues. Group talk about these activities can occur after each task and can bring the group together for a final discussion.

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There are several methods used in the study of English language and communication that help students understand the many approaches to studying nonverbal communication. Some scholars take a nature view and observe the similarities in the behaviours of humans and other animals, for example, the notion of territoriality (human beings as well as animals establish their own territories). However, some scientists take a nurture view and observe how nonverbal communication occurs in groups (for example, the IPT method). Functionalists – L. Hickson, W. Stacks, and N.-J. Moore, focus upon specific functions of nonverbal communication to determine how they work in specific contexts; for instance, it may be used to study different greeting behaviours (Hickson et al., 2004, p. 18).

L. Hickson, W. Stacks, and N.J. Moore use a functional approach to nonverbal communication, combined with teaching students how to apply what they learn about the functions of nonverbal communication. The students should try to work with everyone in the group and with the teacher on a

personal level, and try to maintain a relaxed and friendly atmosphere in the auditorium. This approach, they believe, will allow students to see how nonverbal communication functions in interactions with other individuals and will allow them to use the functional approach themselves. To develop such a view, they must first learn in much more detail what constitutes nonverbal communication, its subcodes or channels, and its functions (Hickson et al., 2004, p. 18).

Scholars L. Hickson, W. Stacks, and N.J. Moore agree that it is best to examine the subcodes, those different component parts of the overall nonverbal code, as dimensions of five areas: touch and space, physical appearance, gestures, vocalics, and covert body/temporal communication (or those nonverbal issues that are not seen or heard). They maintain that these five areas, each with its own appropriate subareas, constitute nonverbal communication (Hickson et al., 2004, p. 18).

According to R.Adler and G.Rodman (2006, p. 153), nonverbal communication has several important characteristics:

1. NVC is always present when people encounter one another and in many situations where they aren’t physically present.

2. NVC has great value in conveying information about others, and much of that information isn’t something others intentionally want to reveal.

3. NVC is especially useful in suggesting how your interlocutors feel about you and the conversation, relationship, etc.

4. Nonverbal messages are much more ambiguous than verbal communication.

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R. Adler and G. Rodman have defined four nonverbal functions, when compared to verbal ones: 1. NVC can repeat, complement, and accent spoken words. 2. Sometimes NVC can substitute for speech. 3. NVC can regulate spoken conversation. 4. NVC can contradict spoken words, or even deceive others (Adler, Rodman 2006, p. 153).

In N.Peachey’s opinion, nonverbal communication can play a key role in helping to establishing rapport with the students. It also has an important role in turn taking during conversation. Among a group of students, a speaker will often make eye contact with the person he or she wants a response from. Someone who wants to enter or interject in a conversation will catch the eye of the person speaking to indicate that they want to interrupt, and equally someone who no longer wants to listen will avoid eye contact (Peachey 2005). If teacher stresses the importance of NVC and analyses some nonverbal messages then students have a chance of having interesting and challenging conversations as part of their English learning experience.

Posture and stance can convey a whole range of attitudes, from interest or the lack of it, to degrees of respect or subordination, because speakers often use posture to punctuate what they are saying, shifting forward in their seat or leaning in towards their interlocutor to punctuate an important point, or

slumping back to indicate that they have finished making a point (Peachey 2005).

Gesture can often replace verbal communication. It can accentuate our message as well as form part of punctuation with head nods and hand movements, which relate to the stress, rhythm and tempo of the sentences. Speakers who use their hands a lot often let them drop at the end of a sentence. Heads often nod down when words in sentences are stressed (Peachey 2005). N.Peachey also stresses the fact that “many students, especially when listening to a second language, focus so heavily on hearing and understanding ‘the words’ people are saying that they suffer from a form of cognitive overload. There is just too much incoming verbal information for them to process and they miss many of these subtler nonverbal messages” (Peachey 2005).

Methodologist N. Peachey (2005) points out that when teachers deal with listening in class, they use the recorded text on audio tape or CD, and so visual factors in the communication are underestimated in the students’ second language development. They stress that one of the most useful mediums for successful learning of ESL is video and particularly video without the sound. N. Peachey (2005) proposes five different tasks to use in the auditorium depending on the type of clip being shown, for example:

5. Although much nonverbal communication is universal, culture as well as some other factors do shape the way we express ourselves and understand others.

6. Gender also plays a role in the way we communicate.

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1. Play the clip through and get students to speculate about the relationships of the people in the scene.

a) Who is emotionally closest or involved with which other characters? b) What’s the relationship between characters? c) Who is feeling angry? d) What is each person feeling or thinking? Students can predict what they think characters are talking about or even

what they are saying. 2. The teacher can transcribe the script for the clips she/he uses and can ask

students to try to act out the scene using the script before they hear it. Just let them watch first and think about what the character they have to play is likely to be thinking or feeling. This gets the students attempting to interpret their body language and express it through the way they read the script.

3. Do cultural comparisons using a scene from the target culture with a similar scene on a video from their own culture, for instance, meeting friends in a cafe or restaurant. Ask students to look for differences in the way they interact:

a) Do they touch when they meet? b) How close do they sit when they talk? c) Do they touch whilst talking? d) Do they make eye contact? e) Do they openly express any emotions? 4. Teacher can find parallel clips, then watch a clip from the target culture and

their own and ask students to list the differences. 5. Teacher can prepare two ‘false’ scripts for a scene. These can be slight

variations on the authentic one. Then ask students to watch the clip silently and decide which of the scripts is the correct one (Peachey 2005).

1. Identify at least three significant differences between nonverbal practices in two cultures or cocultures (e.g., ethnic, age, or socioeconomic groups) within your own society.

2. Describe the potential difficulties that could arise out of the differing nonverbal practices when members from the cultural groups interact. Are there any ways of avoiding these difficulties?

3. Describe the advantages that might come from differing cultural nonverbal practices. How might people from diverse backgrounds profit by encountering one another’s customs and norms? (Lustig, Koester, 2010, p. 181).

In order to discuss intercultural nonverbal communication, M. Lustig and J. Koester (2010), propose the following three tasks for the students:

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Correction of language during these conversations should only be done in case of a serious misunderstanding; otherwise, the teacher can disturb the flow of the activities.

Body language plays or NVC plays a key role, especially at the sub-

conscious level, in communication and an awareness of it and how it can vary from culture to culture, and also it can be particularly important in helping students to develop their ability to understand language in a real environment (Peachey 2005).

Teachers’ and students’ reflections about the importance of NVC in ELT depict those widespread in the scientific community, namely from willingness to learn and teach it to rejection. However, teaching about nonverbal communication is not an easy task because the precision and complexity of verbal and nonverbal behavior are difficult to convey during lectures and seminars (Costanzo, Archer, 1991, p. 223). One of the main goals of English teachers should be to educate students about verbal and nonverbal properties of the foreign language, its culture and speakers, and the expected contexts and aims of its use. In addition, students

must confront the interpersonal impact of NVC. Nonverbal communication is not simply a set of gestures, mimics, etc. that one must differentiate to get his/her message across, and it is not merely equipment necessary for success in public or in the auditorium, rather it is innate and characteristic of every human being no matter what language he or she speaks. Future teachers should know nonverbal systems of signs in order to understand them and to use nonverbal elements along with verbal ones with much effect, deploying obtained knowledge in their pedagogical work.

Conclusion

Works cited:

» Adler R. B., Rodman G. 2006. Understanding Human Communication. 9th ed. New York, Oxford: OUP.

» Costanzo M., Archer D. 1991. A Method for Teaching about Verbal and Nonverbal Communication. In Teaching of Psychology. Vol. 18, no. 4, December, p. 223 - 226.

» Crystal D. 1975. Paralinguistics. In: J. Benthall & T. Polhemus (eds), The body as a medium of expression. London: Institute of Contemporary Arts. p. 162-74.

» Darn S. 2005. Aspects of Nonverbal Communication. In: The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. XI, no. 2, February. Available at: http://iteslj.org/Articles/Darn-Nonverbal/ (Accessed 10 July, 2012).

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Olga Ruda Department of English Philology Faculty of Foreign Languages Ivan Franko national University in L‘viv L‘viv, Ukraineemail: olharu@yahoo.ca

» Eryilmaz Dilek, Darn Steve. 2005. A Nonverbal Communication Lesson. In: CELTA Course, Izmir University of Economics, July. Available at: http://sfl.ieu.edu.tr/docs/tdu/publications/A%20Nonverbal%20Communication%20Lesson%20%5BLesson%20Plan%20Version%5D%20%28Dilek%20Eryilmaz,%20Steve%20Darn%29.pdf (Accessed 10 July, 2012).

» Hickson, L. M. III, Stacks, W. D., Moore, N.-J. 2004. Nonverbal Communication: Studies and Applications. 4 th Edition. Los Angeles: Roxbury Publishing Company P.O.

» Knapp, M. L., Hall, J.A. 2009. Nonverbal Communication in Human Interaction. Wadsworth: Cengage Learning.

» Levitsky A.E., Slavova L.L., Borisenko N.D. 2006. Linguistics. Kyiv: Znannya Ukrainy. » The Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus. 1993. Ed. S.Tulloch. Oxford. (ODT) » Lustig, M. W, Koester J. 2010. InterculturaI Competence: Interpersonal Communication across Cultures. 6th ed. Pearson.

» Peachey N. 2005. Listening to Body Language. In: BBC British Council Teaching English. June. Available online at: www.teachingenglish.org.uk/articles/listening-body-language

» Sukhorolska S.M., Fedorenko O.I. 2009. Methods of Linguistic Analysis. Lviv: Intelekt-Zakhid.

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Re-Framing Humanistic English Language Teaching in Shifting Sands

Stephen Slater

Stephen Slater is an Anglo-Australian. Educated in the United Kingdom, he was formerly Associate Director, Centre of Applied Linguistics, University of South Australia, Adelaide, and Professor, English Communication, Heian Jogakuin University, Osaka, Japan. He is now a freelance language materials writer and publisher but continues to teach at the Centre for English Language in the University of South Australia, and at the Adelaide campus of University College London (UCL). Stephen has had numerous ELT books published, mostly by Cambridge University Press, including Literature in the Language Classroom, and Short Stories for the Creative Language Classroom (both with Dr. Joanne Collie). He first visited Slovakia in the 1980s, as Director of British Council short, in-service programs for Slovak teachers of English.

How do language teachers view their situation and that of their learners these days in schools, colleges, and in societies across the many countries of the world? Are they feeling increasingly empowered, autonomous, respected and in control of their professional destiny? Or, are they struggling to deal with the increasing demands placed upon them, and struggling to shape and articulate their true voice, and be listened to, or even heard? Are learners in schools and colleges being provided with opportunities to learn languages, not just in terms of grammatical, lexical and communicative mastery but also as part of developing their own understanding of their lived social experiences, and as part of identifying and evaluating some of the social forces and values that underpin their

use of language, and the potential of these both to constrain and guide their lives? Are they becoming socially aware through language, or simply competing for better grades, and being prepared for the demands of the workforce?

Significant questions such as these motivated the writing of this paper. In essence, the sections that follow are a preliminary attempt to persuade the reader to reconsider what being ‘humanistic’ in language teaching might involve at this point in time—the first portion of the 21st century. The discussion is seeking both to build on the vital contributions of the humanistic approaches of the past, and to recalibrate them in the context of key social changes, which have shifted, and continue to shift the professional and social sands. The first section of

Introduction

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the paper looks very briefly at just a few features of humanistic language teaching in the 1970s and ‘80s, and attendant criticisms. Next, the need for a reframing of humanistic language teaching is justified in terms of major social, economic and technological changes that have taken place since those ‘heyday’ humanistic times. It will be suggested that the depth of these social changes no longer makes it appropriate for language teachers, even in those privileged and wealthy societies where, for example, English is the first language, to ignore or merely take as a given the broader social contexts in which they work. Instead, it seems timely for language teachers to engage actively and deeply with the social impact of such changes on their own working lives and to draw on this engagement when shaping the language

lessons they share with their learners. The third section illustrates how these social and economic changes are affecting at least some working language teachers, and draws on a sociological agenda to sharpen consideration of the social context of teaching. Next, the paper outlines what a reframing of humanistic approaches might involve intellectually in terms of the ideas of humanistic sociologists, particularly the notion of an active, sociological imagination. The final section briefly identifies and discusses some ways in which classroom teaching might embrace a sociological imagination as part of further humanising language learning and teaching. The conclusion tries to sum up this very ambitious, preliminary journey. First then, let’s turn the clock back…

The notion of humanistic language teaching has been around in one form or another for many centuries, but according to Herron (1983) the impetus for the arrival of humanistic principles in the 1960s and ‘70s came from a mixture of events like race riots, student rebellion, and the Vietnam war, all of which fostered a sense that schools were also responsible for psychological wellbeing. At the same time methods such as audiolingualism were being experienced as too mechanical (Herron, 1983, p. 539).

Today’s graduate teachers may have, at the very least, some passing

acquaintance with the methods and principles of innovators such as Lozanov, Curran and Gattegno. These figures are sometimes grouped together in broad discussions of humanistic methods, even though it could be argued that each of their methods is very different. Stevick, one of the key proponents of humanistic language teaching, discusses these methods in detail (Stevick 1981, 1990, 1996). Both Gattegno’s Silent Way and Curran’s Community Language Learning, he opines, emphasise human uniqueness, human freedom and the human dignity of the learner (Stevick, 1990, p.131).

Humanistic language teaching in the 1970s and ‘80s

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Extending the discussion, he also recognises a humanistic component in the Communicative Approach, which, he says, lies in “..the human emphasis…on the relationship…between discourse and life” in which there is “..a high premium on…genuineness.” (Stevick, 1990, p.134).

Another beacon in the annals of humanistic approaches is Gertrude Moskowitz. For her, humanistic education is closely linked to personal growth, and humanistic psychology (Moskowitz 1978). She gives this detailed description of humanistic classroom activities:

“…humanistic activities deal with developing a more positive self-image, recognizing one’s strengths, seeing the good in others, developing satisfying relationships, becoming aware of one’s feelings and values, discovering oneself, and having a positive outlook on life. We can think of these as food for the soul, nourishing, replenishing, enhancing us at the deep inner levels of ourselves” (Moskowitz, 1994, p. 5). Moskowitz (1982, 1994) acknowledges, too, the importance of self disclosure, the reduction of the learner’s anxiety, the influence of Rogerian notions of authentic self realisation, and the importance of sharing significant personal disclosure as a way to increase empathy, and transcend superficiality.

Across the Atlantic, English language teachers in the UK, hungry for innovative and creative ‘humanistic’ classroom activities in the communicative heydays were drawn to the books of teachers such as Rinvolucri and Morgan. Although focusing more on the collation of lively and unusual classroom ideas

rather than on over-theorising about them, in the introductions to various of their popular, practical books these authors were indicating in the 1980s their wish for students to “…explore new parts of their experience through the foreign language”, and to help this they “..have tried to find exercises that are new, unexpected, and in a sense, strange” (Morgan and Rinvolucri, 1986, p. 7 ). In another book the same two writers emphasise the need to involve “..the learner’s affective, emotional responses…”, and that this can “..help to reduce the foreignness of the medium and make the foreign words feel closer, more from within the speaker” (Morgan and Rinvolucri, 1988, p. 10) By this time, in the late ‘80s, however, there was a note of caution as they acknowledged the need for trust when using activities involving self disclosure (Morgan and Rinvolucri, 1988, p. 11). In a more recent publication, Rinvolucri (2002) seems to have retained his signature word ‘humanising’, but has modified the description of what that might mean to include Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), and multiple intelligences. It would seem then that the idea for him has progressively become a portmanteau of different creative influences somehow accommodated under the generous umbrella notion of ‘humanistic’.

Naturally enough, the humanistic approaches and their sometimes very personal, classroom activities of the 1970s and ‘80s attracted criticism. In one, now classic article (Brumfit 1982) it was suggested that humanistic activities were bordering on therapy, and the

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fragility of the boundaries between private and public domains were questioned. For Brumfit, it seemed more important to accept students as they were rather than seek to assist their personal growth or discover their inner secrets. He went so far as to say that humanistic teaching attracted those who were against rational, analytical argument (Brumfit, 1982, p. 17). Maley (1983) was critical of humanism in language teaching for having created quasi-religious gurus actively recruiting teacher-followers who then abandoned other ways of teaching and no longer thought for themselves. Also in the 1980s another exploration (Herron 1983) of whether the foreign language teacher is a humanist enabled the author to hit several nails of her own doubt firmly on the head. Herron’s view was that humanistic goals are difficult to establish in a language program (Herron, 1983, p. 540), and that prospects of success are not clear when a language teacher takes over the task of personality and psychological adjustment (Herron, 1983, p. 542). She went on to suggest that the traditional curriculum becomes neglected and extracting personal information from students may be unwarranted (Herron, 1983, p. 543) Her final call was for teachers to return to teaching ‘language’, and warning that the teachers’ responsibility is to the student’s perception of and use of language (Herron, 1983, p.545) A decade or so later, Gadd (1994) branded those humanistic approaches in language teaching influenced by thinkers such as Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow

as ‘romantic humanism’ (Gadd, 1994, p. 224) because of their attempts to nurture the inner self of the learner. He proceeded to argue that only a pragmatic form of humanistic teaching is acceptable since it offers greater potential for the linguistic and cognitive development of students. He supported his call for pragmatism by contrasting process writing and genre writing—the faults of the former being its encouragement of writing for individual satisfaction, with the benefits of the latter resting in its fulfilment of practical, social functions.

It would be eminently possible, along with others (Arnold 1998, Stevick 1990, Pennycook 2001) to take issue with many of these counter views in terms of, for example, whether it is possible under any circumstances to teach just ‘language’ in any isolated sense, or whether humanistic teachers can so summarily be dismissed as incapable of rational thought. Equally, it would be possible to wrestle with the very nature of the expression ‘humanistic’ in order to tease out a fuller understanding of how it has been applied. The main goal here, however, is simply to extract some core features from this very brief background discussion. Basically, it would seem that the so-called humanistic approaches especially of the 1970s and ‘80s were a product of their times in focusing attention on the psychological accompaniments to learning, and in inviting feelings and personal authenticity to be part of the language learning process such that some sort of personal growth or awareness might be a positive byproduct. The fact that they

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evoked criticism indicates, minimally, that they were significant enough to cause a strong response, even if as a result they became a little more defensive of their creative flights of fancy, and failed to become a core part of teaching in many classroom settings. At the very least, they breathed colour, connection and openness into many language classrooms, and encouraged creative and innovative energy in language materials writing, especially during what were already the fresh and innovative times of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). One further observation is that the expression

‘humanistic’ was used as a blanket term, had many interpretations and was applied unsystematically, making it very difficult to pin down with any precision what it represented across the breadth of its practice. Perhaps that was inherent in its sense of creative, open-ended exploration of learning. However, one aspect that HLT seems not to have emphasized or embraced fully within its development at that time was the nature and impact of the society in which its classroom approaches and activities were situated—its social contexts. It is this to which the next section turns.

It is clearly an impossible task to characterise in any thoroughgoing sense the dominant features of what might be called ‘macro’ and ‘micro’ social life today. Each country, each city and town within each country, each language school and classroom within each city and town, each teacher and learner within each classroom would yield very different accounts and descriptions of language teaching and learning and the social conditions in which they take place. Yet it is an important aim of this paper to try to paint a selective backdrop of some major social trends and changes which seem to justify a reframing of humanistic approaches in language teaching.

First then, neoliberalism, Setting aside the claims that it is now a tired and overused blanket notion (Clarke

2008) the rise and dominance of neoliberalism, or more specifically, neoliberal economic policies and practices, since the 1980s seems undeniable (Bourdieu 1998, Navarro 1998, Steger and Roy 2010). Carrying assumptions of the free market economy’s invisible hand in perfectly achieving competitive balance, without government interference and without the burden of moral prejudgment, neoliberalist policies have proliferated globally. The consequent diminution of the state’s role has opened up the free market to areas where it traditionally had restricted access, at least in European countries—education, and health, for example. According to one analysis, (Steger and Roy, 2010, p.11) neoliberalism has three dimensions—it is an ideology, a mode of governance,

Why is a reframing of Humanistic Language Teaching necessary?

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and a policy package. They evoke its symbolic power when they say, “The codifiers of neoliberalism …saturate the public discourse with idealised images of a consumerist, free market world. Skilfully interacting with the media to sell their preferred version of a single global marketplace to the public, they portray globalising markets in a positive light as an indispensable tool for the realization of a better world.” (Steger and Roy, 2010, p.11)

In terms of governance, a neoliberal approach encourages the bureaucratic to become entrepreneurial, to the extent that government workers no longer serve and protect the ‘public good’ but are self-interested agents of monetary success in slimmed-down state enterprises, where citizens become ‘clients’ and administrators develop an entrepreneurial spirit. (Steger and Roy, 2010, p.13). The public policies of neoliberalism include the wish to privatize state-owned enterprises and reduce social services, instal work ‘flexibility’, weaken unionisation in the name of productivity and remove controls on global finance. The impact of neoliberalism has been profound across the globe since the 1980s. Bourdieu (1998) captures one key social effect—job insecurity, to which market-led economics gives rise. He notes that casualized workers suffer “…a blow to their capacity to project themselves into the future, which is the pre-condition for all so-called rational conducts…” (Bourdieu, 1998, p. 83). He concludes that greater competition for work involves a destruction of the

values that produce solidarity and humanity (Bourdieu, 1998, p. 84)

An important debate arising out of neoliberalist expansion concerns the morality of free market economics (Mulgan 2009, Sandel 2012). Sandel confronts this debate head-on. Amidst a world of what he calls, ‘market triumphalism’ (Sandel, 2012, p. 6), in which almost anything can be bought and sold, he pleads for deep, public debate of the moral limits of markets. As markets and commerce change the character of the goods they touch, it becomes important to ask where markets do and do not belong. He uses many, everyday examples to stimulate this moral debate, including a number from the sphere of education, ranging from the discreet buying and selling of college admission (Sandel, 2012, p. 109) to payment for passing school tests, and the payment of children for reading a book (Sandel, 2012, p. 60). He comes to this conclusion, “This is the lesson of the last three decades. The era of market triumphalism has coincided with a time when public discourse has been largely empty of moral and spiritual substance” (Sandel, 2012, p. 202). He ends with this poignant question, “The question of markets is really a question of how we want to live together. Do we want a society where everything is up for sale?” (Sandel, 2012, p. 203).

The global advance of electronic technology, with its myriad, button-triggered choices and instant interconnectedness is another key social change to affect education in the past 20-30 years (Phelps et al. 2011). The rapid development of electronic

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technologies—the personal computer, the internet, social networking sites, e-publishing, kindles, mobile phones and other hand-held devices, and the many applications and learning software that have accompanied innovations in the hardware—has transformed and continues to transform the social and also cognitive landscape. The current generation of high school children in many countries has grown up knowing only a world surrounded by all these devices; as a result, they feel comfortable assuming personal control of electronic choice, social networking and other screen-based styles of interaction available to them. Ominously, the French cultural philosopher, Paul Virilio (2000) captures some conceptual implications of this technology when he says, “…what is being revealed here are the beginnings of the ‘end of the space’ of a small planet held in suspension in the electronic ether of our modern means of telecommunication”. (Virilio, 2000, p.13).

In his consideration of telecommu-nications, Virilio has helped to focus attention not just on the collapse of traditional notions of space but also on the effect of electronic technology on changing perceptions of time and by implication, on the experience of speed of life. He uses the term ‘dromology’ to capture this idea (Virilio 2006). He sees increasing speed as being accompanied by an erosion of freedom and pointedly observes, “With this false day produced by the illumination of telecommunications, an artificial sun rises, an emergency lighting system

which ushers in a new time—world time in which the simultaneity of actions should soon gain precedence over their successive character”. (Virilio, 2000, p. 13). Using the example of work, he cites ‘zero-hour’ work contracts to show how even part-time work is being transformed into domestic servility with the assistance of mobile phones. In the zero contract, whenever the company needs a worker, it just calls, and the worker comes running. (Virilio, 2000, p. 67).

It is certainly the case that Virilio is less than sanguine about the world of telecommunications, employing the term ‘globalitarian’ (Virilio, 2000, p. 15) to signal the over-exposure of persons, their behaviour, actions and inner reactions to these devices. As he comments, “The smaller the world becomes as a result of the relativistic effect of telecommunications, the more violently situations are concertinaed, with the risk of an economic and social crash that would merely be the extension of the visual crash of this ‘market of the visible”. (Virilio, 2000, p. 67). This notion of the ‘concertina-ing’ of space and time may well reverberate for language teachers in terms of their students’ concentration levels, the constant interruption by mobile phones into conventional face-to-face relationships, the impact of such developments on coherence of social contact and on depth of social engagement, the constant superficial exchanges and textual features characteristic of SMS and social network sites, and the primacy of visual imagery over text.

The domain of marketing can offer the

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world of education some admittedly, over-generalised insights into the nature of ‘Generation Z’ as they are sometimes stereotypically labelled—those born between the mid-1990s to the early 2000s. According to Wood (2011), ‘Gen Z’ consumers are driven by four trends—innovation, especially in their constant thirst for newer, smaller, better technological devices; convenience, enshrined in products, messaging, or other consumer options that enable communicative ‘butterflying’, while saving time and making acquisition easier; a need for security in uncertain economic times, and finally, escapism (to imagined or idealised worlds) through the media of games, movies and music. It is left to language teacher-readers to reflect on how relevant such depictions are within the context of their language classrooms, in terms of the curricula they are called upon to deliver, the modes of delivery available to them, the ways in which time is divided up and allocated for this delivery, and, whether these time patterns and modes of delivery fit the ways in which their electronic-savvy students engage in social interaction, or perceive and conduct themselves within each time-framed lesson.

At a more down-to-earth level, the

connection between economics and electronic technology in the domain of education is becoming clearer. Chandler (2012) points to the increasing attraction of free online learning resources in the USA, as educational budgets become ever-tighter. Sales of textbooks in the US have dropped by three quarters of a billion dollars between 2008-2011 as free digital textbooks have started to appear. The rise of online resources is also helping a teachers’ movement to standardize and pool resources linked to national testing and national standards (Chandler, 2012, p. 6).

To summarise, it is being suggested that deep social changes such as, but not exclusively, the under-contested spread of neoliberal economic policies, the proliferation of electronic communication technologies, changing perceptions and experiences of time and space, and the sense of acceleration in daily life are no longer confinable intellectually to the world outside the language classroom. They need to be invited in more wholeheartedly to energise moral debates about language teaching, and, more specifically, to generate a reframing of the content of humanistic language teaching.

A common response to attempts to freight in considerations from one intellectual domain to another is what might be called ‘pragmatic

reductionism’—the appeal to practicality, as voiced by Herron (1983) when reminding language teachers that their main task is to teach language

Exploring the relevance of these social and economic changes to lan-guage teachers

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(Herron, 1983, p. 545). This truism is difficult to counter, of course, but seems to imply that it is reasonable to seal pedagogical concerns off from the social contexts (local, organizational, national, even global) in which they are situated. It seems that the voices of English Language teaching, particularly inside the developed worlds of Europe, North America and Australasia, have spent more of their time describing language activities and language learning but less time discussing the broader social and cultural contexts within which teachers conduct lessons, or what the language they use, or the language and content offered in textbooks, represents politically or culturally. The psychological emphasis of the humanistic approaches of the 1970s and ‘80s did little to change this. The same, however, cannot be said for some applied linguists such as Pennycook (2001) whose exploration of critical applied linguistics notes that a “...central element of critical applied linguistics is a way of exploring language in social contexts that goes beyond correlations between language and society and instead raises more critical questions to do with access, power, disparity, desire, difference and resistance...and on historical understanding of how social relations came to be the way they are” (Pennycook, 2001, p.6). He, too, draws on Bourdieu’s notions of cultural and economic capital to explore how schools reproduce patterns of domination (Pennycook, 2001, p. 123) Other writers (Canagarajah 1993, Fairclough 1989, 1992, Giroux and McLaren 1989, Holliday 1994, Phillipson 1992) in

rather different ways also foreground issues of cultural and political domination, or resistance to them, and thus the centrality of social context. This section will attempt to persuade the reader that the under-involvement of openly, sociological perspectives within humanistic language teaching is a crucial form of malnourishment in terms of pedagogical relevance, even within those countries where English is the dominant and home language.

Although the English language industry in many countries has long had a substantial private sector, there are clear signs (Bourdieu 1998, 1999) that the neoliberal intensification of free market principles has penetrated many social agencies like public schools, universities and hospitals, which in many countries were previously protected by state control and public funding In the context of Australia, Crichton (2010) has shown how the language of commerce powerfully alters the professional environment in which language teaching takes place, even in the private sector. He explores this in terms of the type of the language and conceptual change that becomes dominant in educational agencies such as private language schools. He terms this the ‘discourse of commercialization’ (Crichton, 2010, p. 3). Once commercial language and values operate more significantly within schools, tensions arise as competition and commercial pressure intensify and compromise the actions of teachers and students. Courses become viewed more as goods for consumption, and education becomes part of economic

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utility. Teachers come under pressure to harmonise pedagogic and commercial interests. while at the same time facing job insecurity, and loss of professional identity. Sarangi and Roberts (cited in Crichton, 2010, p. 59) suggest that the professional workplace in today’s society is a location characterised by social struggle, emanating from the conflict between the contrasting perspectives of the professional

educator and of those who administer organizational systems.

The teachers in Crichton’s study kept diaries which give voice to the dilemmas caused by this conflicting cocktail of commercial and educational values, impinging uncomfortably and sometimes impossibly upon their working lives. Their diary voices, deliberately reproduced at length here, are poignant:

“..this school employs a big majority of relatively inexperienced teachers, and they do not teach, as I did when I was inexperienced, a limited number of hours. I remember that I started by teaching two days a week and feeling swamped even by that. Now those teachers teach more than any of the experienced teachers… these teachers are often confused and exhausted”. (Crichton, 2010, p. 77)

“A lesson I had collaborated on with another teacher was vetoed by the Head Teacher. Reasoning was that it was too sensitive from a marketing perspective. The topic was in response to a student request…..Another teacher is crying in the staff room at the moment, She has been censored or chastised for using video material concerning Pauline Hanson1…..”. (Crichton, 2010, p. 79)

“..of course there is the strange phenomenon that the more experienced the teacher, the less likely they are to actually teach………While often telling people how important teaching standards are, most of these people would rather have their wisdom teeth drawn than go into the classroom. Since management is happy to countenance this, it must mean they believe that these people contribute more to the wellbeing of the company by not teaching. Not teaching is a sign of status, and sometimes you hear people say ‘only a teacher”. (Crichton, 2010, p. 80)

“ I also know some teachers who work on through a cold or flu because they don’t want to be a ‘bother’ to their education manager……I suppose it comes back to a point I made earlier about people being/feeling rather insecure about their jobs and not wanting to rock the boat – although the denial of sick leave through what (amounts to) emotional blackmail is completely unacceptable”. (Crichton, 2010, p. 77).

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The significance of including and giving prominence to these teachers’ voices is not in trying to claim that they are unusual, neither is it in trying to suggest some general truths about language teaching worldwide—they are, after all, examples from a single, private language school setting in Australia, and they are the diary voices of only a few teachers. The significance, rather, lies in suggesting the importance of the social context of meaning at both macro- and micro- levels to any discussion of language teaching and learning. In the reality of the teaching day, a language activity is not in a humanistic, pedagogical bubble, operating principally at the level of psychological and personal enhancement of students and teachers, but is part of a site of complex and vital social struggles of many kinds, from obsolescence and devaluation of professional practice (Bourdieu 1991) to other ways in which certain kinds of social, linguistic and cultural capital become dominated and devalued in the course of processes such as the commercialization of discourse. Again, each reader who is also a teacher, or an educator, is invited to ponder the applicability of these social processes within their own working contexts and to reflect on whether, and if so, how, they create and, historically, have come to create divisiveness and domination in terms of professional identity. It seems important finally to relate such reflections to consideration of the professional and ethical values that guide classroom practice.

Another study (Fulcher 2009) has documented the deprofessionalisation process affecting English language

professionals, this time within the university sector in the UK. Based on his evidence, Fulcher warns that in a challenging economic environment, universities see English language studies as a commercial activity for generating fees, not for initiation of staff into an academic community. He says there is clear evidence of a de-professionalisation in employment practices, and that the temptation, on economic grounds, to outsource English language operations to commercial organisations will speed up this trend (Fulcher, 2009, p. 134). Most of his teacher-respondents reported with a single voice that there was no encouragement to do research, and that staff were expected to teach as many hours as could be fitted into the working week (Fulcher, 2009, p. 136).

Anecdotally, language teachers in many teaching contexts often voice their struggle with insufficient time—lack of time to prepare classes because of pressure to teach additional classes, perform extra administrative tasks, pressure to demonstrate outcomes of learning within narrowing time frames, pressure to complete evaluations of their own performance or their learners’ ratings, pressure to implement curricula which seem either to be imposed with insufficient teacher input, or changed even before they have been adjusted to or refined sufficiently on the basis of experience gained from their implementation.

Individual language teacher-readers can judge to what extent their own professional status is being eroded within their own contexts. Clearly there

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will be wide variation, but teacher deprofessionalisation seems to lead to an erosion of the teacher’s capacity to protect and have authority over their own chosen and agreed set of values and practices based on their own knowledge, experience and training. Bourdieu (1991) through his concepts of linguistic habitus and linguistic capital illustrates how language use involves constant competition in a linguistic ‘market’ through which powerful language styles can function as linguistic capital (illustrated by self assurance) while dominating other styles in symbolically subtle ways, yielding surrender and silence. As he says, “Speakers lacking the legitimate competence are de facto excluded from the social domains in which this competence is required, or are condemned to silence” (Bourdieu, 1991, p.55) It is surely germane to apply this type of sociological analysis to the position of the teaching profession and to teachers who may be struggling to resist the pressure to be silent under the pressure of the linguistic capital of other domains such as the bureaucratic, particularly in its financial or administrative guises.

Moving briefly to a broader theo-retical level, within applied linguistics, Kumaravadivelu (2002), in his discussion of macro-teaching strategies as part of the ‘post-methodic’ era—a period in which particular language teaching methods no longer dominate, also includes at least a passing nod to the strategic, operational importance of

‘social relevance’ (Kumaravadivelu, 2002, p.17) by which he means sensitivity to the societal, political, economic and educational environment in which EFL learning and teaching takes place. But, somewhat concealed within his multi-faceted strategic taxonomy ‘social relevance’ seems not to be developed more fully nor its impact clarified within individual classroom practice.

To summarise, this section has argued that within the domain of language teaching, broad social changes, particularly those emanating from neoliberal practices, and the discourses to which these give rise, have profound relevance to the professional status and practices of language teachers and to their learners’ perceptions inside the classroom. Further, it has been implied that the explanatory apparatus that sociological perspectives provide has a relevance both in terms of helping language teachers to understand more deeply and coherently the processes acting upon their professional lives, and also in augmenting and reframing the notion of humanistic language teaching to embrace more deliberately the potential offered by humanistic sociology to elevate the importance of moral debate about social betterment, and also to affirm the relevance of current social issues within the language curriculum, and thus in the language classroom. It is to this potential, that the next sections turn.

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In this section the ideas of three humanistic sociologists will be drawn on briefly to argue that language teaching can fruitfully incorporate humanistic sociology and a ‘sociological imagination’ in order to reframe its traditional emphasis on psychologically-driven, humanistic language learning activities.

Sociology has a long and varied history. Throughout its development it has been heavily influenced by various strands of philosophy in its attempt to grapple with the ontological issues embedded in attempts to construct and characterise social realities (Marshall and Scott eds, 2009, p 719). Humanistic sociology is one of the directions in which the field has evolved. As Dubois and Wright suggest, “For the humanistic sociologist, sociology is the study of how to make a better world. The key commitment is that people matter…..the conversation of humanistic sociology is……a conversation about values”. (Dubois and Wright, 2002, p. 5) Its search is for “… a shared agreement about how to create a better world”. (Dubois and Wright, 2002, p. 5). It seems important to emphasise that ‘values’ here are seen more as broader social values, rather than just personal values guiding individual behaviour and choice. In other words, the emphasis is firmly moved to embrace the whole gamut of the social sphere. Key sociological thinkers who might be comfortable being labelled ‘humanistic’

include: C. Wright Mills, Peter Berger, especially his classic text, ‘Invitation to Sociology’ (Berger 1973), and perhaps, with apologies, even Pierre Bourdieu! All of these sociologists carry a moral and political agenda in the sense of seeking a society with less exploitation, oppression and injustice. Their commitment was to understanding wider social structures and social processes through the prism of human experience. The ensuing exploration, however, will draw first on a more recent humanist writer.

Richard Sennett is an eminent and currently active humanistic sociologist. In a recent paper (Sennett 2011) he draws on the work of Spinoza, Burckhardt and Pico to identify some of the values that inform his humanism. He points out the importance of open-ended, informal cooperation as a pathway to the experiencing of difference between individuals in an enriched way. He emphasises the value of ‘voice’ and long-term, life narratives in helping individuals to hold together fragmentary, personal experiences in terms of human rather than mechanical complexity, and the need for distance from the immediate situation to develop such voice. He contrasts this with features of the current technologically-driven version of modern capitalism which threaten such values. The emphasis on short-term economic activity and short-term work, global markets, and deregulation of people’s time all challenge continuity.

Reframing language teaching to embrace humanistic sociological imagination

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Work, to take just one area of life he discusses, moves from being a career in the sense of a well laid out pathway, to a ‘job’ in the Chaucerian sense of a “…lump of something…that could be moved around indiscriminately from place to place…” (Sennett, 2011, p. 23) As society’s technical conditions become more complex, paradoxically, he argues, the human is ‘dethroned’ (Sennett, 2011, p.28) and social relationships become cruder and more simplistic, and speed undermines depth in communication. He summarises his position when he says, “Offices and streets become inhumane when rigidity, utility, and competition rule; they become humane when they promote informal, open-ended, and cooperative interactions”. (Sennett, 2011, p. 27). And the value to language teaching of this expression of humanistic sociology? It would seem that the centrality of voice, cooperation, and issues like loss of continuity and superficiality are fruitful ideas and values for language teachers to debate, and also to apply, not only to explorations of their own professional situation but also to the shaping and development of classroom content and activities.

Another sociologist strongly associated with a humanistic approach is C. Wright Mills, who brought to prominence the idea of ‘the sociological imagination’ in his book of the same name (Mills 1959). For Mills, the sociological imagination points to a style of analysis and social questioning across shifting perspectives. It is “…the capacity to range from the most impersonal and remote transformations to the most intimate

features of the human self—and to see the relations between the two”. (Mills, 1959, p. 7). It is constantly prompted by “…the urge to know the social and historical meaning of the individual in the society…”, whereby humans try “..to grasp what is going on in the world, and to understand what is happening in themselves as minute points of the intersections of biography and history within society”. (Mills, 1959, p. 7) It proceeds from the realisation that the things we do are shaped by our values, and the way people around us act. It is the attempt to understand how social outcomes are produced by the interplay of all these forces that characterises the sociological imagination.

The sociological imagination operates a key distinction between personal troubles and public issues (Mills, 1959, p. 8), where troubles concern those private, limited areas of social life of which an individual is directly and personally aware. Issues, by contrast, are public matters in which values, and wellbeing, cherished by publics are felt to be threatened and need to be debated. An issue, in fact, often involves a crisis in institutional arrangements. Mills, too, uses the example of unemployment, to characterise a personal trouble as a situation in which only one person is unemployed in a city of 100,000. By contrast, a country of 50 million employees, with 15 million unemployed represents an issue, the solution to which is beyond the range of the individual (Mills, 1959, p. 9). For much of the time he believes governments tend to cloak, or to present such public issues as private troubles, choosing to

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see inability to find work as an individual deficit, rather than an outcome of structural or political arrangements. For Mills, the work of the social scientist involves clarifying “…contemporary uneasiness and indifference” (Mills, 1959, p. 13).

Also integral to applying sociological imagination is the use of playfulness especially with regard to exploring the synonyms of words or phrases used to characterise social issues, and being willing to both trust and show scepticism towards one’s own experience (Mills, 1959, p. 212). The sociological imagination holds great potential in terms of how the language teacher approaches the topics and issues used as content for language or culture lessons, especially in terms of the constant movement from personal experience to the situation in the wider society, and through the medium of language, the constant application of enquiry and curiosity to social issues and the use of imagination both to build working understandings of social issues and to deepen discussion of values.

Finally, the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu already referred to in this paper, also offers a humanistic connection. The range, profundity and social penetration of his sociological concepts, particularly habitus, symbolic violence, cultural and social capital have furnished sociology, and other fields, with a means to analyse and understand the hidden processes of symbolic domination and the importance of perceptions of social class (Wacquant 2007) Moreover, in his later writings Bourdieu (1998, 1999) resolutely

sought to prevent abuses of power and to encourage resistance to all the subtle forms of symbolic domination embedded in particular lifestyles and the value of the forms of capital they command, which harden the structures of inequality. One long-time collaborator suggests that, for Bourdieu, “… the ultimate spring of conduct is the thirst for dignity, which society alone can quench” (Wacquant, 2007, p. 266).

There seems potential value in Bourdieu’s concepts within language teaching. Firstly, as Halasz and Kaufman (2008) suggest, Bourdieu’s sociology encourages reflection by teachers on how social practices are structured in schools and classrooms in terms of dominant practices and the level and types of capital possessed by different actors. In another way, Bourdieu’s ideas provide analytical options for understanding inequality and how it operates in societies, and offer a useful framework with which to generate ideas and debate on values in a language classroom seeking to apply a humanistic, sociological perspective.

To summarise, the value of humanistic sociology to language teachers lies in its potential to elevate to a central position consideration of social values, and its application of a sociological imagination and social analysis to move to and from macro- to micro- consideration of social issues like inequality. In a narrow sense, these additional frames of reference can aid deeper understanding of ongoing changes in language teachers’ professional standing. More importantly they can help frame the moral and ethical debate about the

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values that the teaching of English internationally inevitably reflects and imparts (Pennycook 2003 p. 352). Finally a sociological imagination can energise the content of language

curricula and classroom activities in fresh and relevant ways. It is to the latter, practical considerations that this article will finally direct its focus.

As busy professionals, often with increasing demands being placed upon them, language teachers, curriculum specialists, and language materials writers might well be dismissing the previous sections as mere ‘talk’, and starting to think about more pressing considerations like, ‘What shall I do with my class tomorrow?” To win such readers over there have to be clear links to classroom practice in terms of the proposed reframing of humanistic language teaching.

First, even at the risk of overkill, it is worth repeating that language teaching is never a value- or politically neutral activity (Brown 1994, Bartoleme 1994, Pennycook 2001, 2003). All textbooks, classroom activities, patterns of organisation in schools, divisions of time are based on choices ultimately linked to values, and reflect economic, linguistic and authority structures which at best negotiate, or at worst impose any choices that are made (Slater 1997). It can also be mentioned in passing that Mills’ concept of the sociological imagination continues to inspire the teaching of sociology. Hoffmann (2006) and Hironimus-Wendt and Wallace (2009) draw on this tradition in the

service of teaching social responsibility, and in using the students’ locality to enable, through video, the relating of sociological concepts to the context of their own lives. More pertinent to this paper is the claim by Halasz and Kaufman (2008) that a sociological imagination and sociological knowledge have significance in most pedagogical contexts, particularly in terms of encouraging constant reflection on social actions and understanding social process through key sociological ideas, such as those of Bourdieu, particularly linguistic capital and symbolic violence (Halasz and Kaufman, 2008, pp. 211-212)

It should be said, too, that there are already English language teachers working in ways that embrace both a moral position and a humanistic sociological one. What is being proposed in this paper is therefore, not ‘out of the blue’ but rather a call to marshall existing practices around a sociologically humanistic and imaginative banner. In an interesting, recent example of sociological imagination in action in the language classroom, Templer and Tonawanik (2011) outline their use of creative, interior monologuing

Applying humanistic sociological imagination in the language classroom

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techniques to empathise with poor children in Pakistan, using video as their springboard. Clearly connected to the traditions of critical pedagogy, the authors aims include a wish for their students to consider and express themselves in terms of social issues linked to values like equity and social justice.

Another English language professional (Mullamaa 2011), extols the motivational and learning advantages of ICT (Information and Communications Technology), especially in blended learning where ICT is used alongside conventional classroom work. At the same time, however, she invokes an overt values agenda, suggesting that the immediacy of information of ICT helps teenage students’ to shape and express opinions on important social topics as part of shaping the society they live in and building trust with one another. She recognises that students of foreign languages are important windows to and from their own society and culture. (Mullama 2011).

Given the growing reality of ICT in language learning contexts it is possible to imagine a more fully developed network of transnational language ICT-based projects stemming from a humanistic sociological imagination. Students, might for example, be given a basic question such as, ‘What would make my village/town/city/society a better place?’ and engage in cooperative activities of language exchange in English with similar students in other countries, based on research into local social issues or social achievements, discussions of the social processes that

may have produced these, and of how conditions might be improved. From multiple exchanges across countries and cultures, discussions of social values would evolve naturally with the added energy of real language exchange and cross-cultural awareness. For countries which are less well-known internationally, this would be a great opportunity to educate others whilst building a greater social awareness of their own societies, through the medium of the target language. This would seem more vital and relevant than the sometimes anodyne, textbook units which often describe locality in terms of famous places elsewhere, in a sort of diluted, global, factual fashion. The all-important study of grammar could be woven into such local projects, rather than being decontextualised or de-localised.

It is interesting to note here that one of the key champions of creativity in language classrooms, Maley (2008), uses the notion of ‘artistry’ as a unifying concept to bind the rich world of humanistic and other approaches and to draw them more into the mainstream. He, too, views project work and autonomous learning as key platforms for artistry in the classroom. He alludes to the liberationist pedagogical tradition of Freire, but seems to avoid affirming any clear moral, or political component in his discussion. Omission, however, sometimes implies an unstated position. Taking for granted the social, cultural and political processes and conditions in which language teaching artistry is situated, and not including them in a fuller picture of the classroom

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as a complex site of social and political enquiry and struggle, intimately linked to teachers’ and students’ lives, values and cultural capital, seems to sidestep a fundamental area of relevance.

If the above practical examples may have assumed learners in locations of privilege, in other words learners situated in locations within their societies of relative social and economic advantage, contrast this with Bartoleme (1994), who in the context of the teaching of socio-economically less advantaged migrant students, calls for a humanizing pedagogy to create learning environments which “… incorporate student language and life experiences” (Bartoleme, 1994, p. 178). She emphasizes the importance of both content and classroom relationships to her notion of ‘humanizing’ when she says, “A number of possibilities exist for preparing students to deal with the greater society’s unfairness and inequality that range from engaging in explicit discussions with students about their experiences, to more indirect ways (that nevertheless require a teacher who is politically clear), such as creating democratic learning environments where students become accustomed to being treated as competent and able individuals” (Bartoleme, 1994, p. 175). Bartoleme, in a different teaching context, is suggesting that a sociological imagination and political awareness can energise the learning of language in order to assist social transformation from an initial position of social disadvantage. It is this paper‘s contention that a sociological, humanistic approach has similar

potential for building social awareness and shaping social values even within classroom locations of social privilege. Social transformation is not the sole preserve of disempowered minority cultural groups.

It is possible to imagine other ways of bringing exploration of social issues to the foreground humanistically inside a language curriculum. For example, the primacy and relevance of local, social research could be aided by making the question form a stronger pivot of a grammar syllabus, especially at higher levels of language ability. Locally-based projects designed to develop a range of skills in the target language could be shaped via a series of questions, seeking to build curiosity about, and pursue explanations of, local issues. A simple example of targeted question building around a single social issue (for the purpose of this example, the issue of ‘poverty’) might proceed via brainstorming to shape questions like these: What could ‘I am poor’ mean in your neighbourhood, and in your country today? Why are there poor people in your city? Where are they? How many are there? How do they manage? Why have they become poor? Where are their families? Who helps them? How healthy are they? Whose responsibility is it to deal with this state of affairs? What do local politicians think about this issue? How important an issue is it to people in your city? What are your own views in terms of this issue and how did they form? Are there poor people in your family, or in your street? How well do you know the story of how they became poor? What is

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your local (and national) government’s position on poverty? What is happening with the issue of world poverty? Is poverty lessening or worsening globally? Clearly questions connected to curiosity, building motivation to know more and to seek explanations to social and moral issues which are significant locally, nationally and globally can be a highly fruitful way of energising language acquisition and applying sociological imagination.

A social research or ‘questioning’ style of language learning supports not only a spirit of discovery, but also adds immediacy, local relevance, opportunity for cooperative and creative learning, development of thinking skills, and reflection on values, all fuelled by the energy of entering the unknown. It offers opportunities for sharing and organizing findings, reporting findings, adding to local knowledge, perhaps even having an actual impact on local issues. It offers scope not just for developing skills in a foreign language but for moving between the home and the target language, hence applying language skills flexibly and authentically. Of interest here is ‘The Q Book’ (Rinvolucri and Morgan 1988) mentioned earlier, which sowed valuable seeds for the primacy of interrogatives in encouraging personal empowerment and values clarification, but opted for a disparate variety of innovative ideas and activities rather than more coherent, humanistic sociological themes linked to learners’ exploration of their social lives and social issues, within their own local and national contexts.

If at this point some teacher–readers

are still saying to themselves, ‘Nice ideas in theory, maybe, but we have to teach the prescribed textbook and prepare students for crucial exams…’, then it could be suggested that there is still room to apply a sociological imagination in more limited ways, even within a heavily prescribed and time-pressured curriculum. This might be achieved by trying to add local relevance to any textbook-driven classroom discussions, by building materials for grammar practice which draw on local, social issues and the social values they reflect, by seeking opportunities within textbook units to stimulate and exploit curiosity and build deeper understanding about local, social issues while also relating them to and comparing them with the world outside, and to the historical circumstances that produced them. Again, the same, or other teachers, might still be saying, ‘This is all very well, but my job is teaching language not teaching sociology’. Again, a key response to this would be to suggest that teaching language about nothing is never an option. Language is always about something. It seems imperative, especially in an era when conventional face-to-face teaching is competing with the electronic world for the attention of students, to motivate students with content that arouses their curiosity and interest, and to cultivate that interest in ways that reflect the immediacy and relevance of students’ lives, and which incorporate any tools, electronic or otherwise, which aid the pursuit of deeper, social understanding and gradual development of thinking skills

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and moral values, and finally, which encourage and value face-to-face cooperation and debate that transcend shallowness. The door is never closed on some level of humanistic, sociological contribution to language learning, unless the teacher refuses to open it, or the school or ministry refuses to provide a key.

As has been indicated in earlier sections of this paper, some current philosophers and humanistic sociologists are negative towards ICT technologies, at least at the broad level of their social effects. This paper takes a more realistic position by suggesting that the motivational and empowerment benefits of ICT especially to younger learners (Passey and Rogers 2004) should be used to build motivation while language is being learned, especially as ICT is woven so heavily into the daily worlds of the younger generation. The key issue is not the use of ICT per se, but disciplined, classroom project or activity design and time allocation, clear learning purpose, clear cooperative and learning gains, and critical reflection on its use. The integration of ICT should involve discovering how best to use the technologies, and at the same time should provide pathways to depth and coherence of language and content understanding, not as an easy option for accumulating a disparate mass of information, or for easy access to visual displays.

To summarise briefly, in contrast to the notion of humanistic language teaching which emphasised personal development and which mirrored the voyage into the individual’s personal world that blossomed especially in the 1970s and 80s, the need now, under pressure of profound and rapid social change is to understand oneself as a social being inside the labyrinth of interconnected yet uncertain global, national and local social contexts and issues, and to learn how to manage one’s life within uncertainty—uncertainty that is often perceived as complex and confusing. As social traditions recede and social life risks becoming more atomised, ironically, the individual, particularly our language students, need to build, through sociological imagination, social interpretations which provide assistance in managing their lives with a growing sense of self direction and understanding. It matters not whether this understanding is true in any ontological sense, but it does matter that it affords learners distance from which to evaluate and make good life judgments and choices, and to develop an ethical sense of a better society—in other words, to grow hope in their future. This cannot be achieved within the language classroom alone, of course, but the language classroom should play its part.

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This preliminary paper has taken a wide-ranging approach to its task. It has addressed itself to English and other language teaching professionals everywhere, but in the full realisation that the widely differing cultural contexts of language teaching will yield a huge range of reactions, both negative and positive. At core, it is the promotion of debate that is its key goal. Basically, its thesis has been that the psychologically-centred humanistic approaches of the 1970s and ‘80s, though still powerful today in unlocking creative and innovative approaches to classroom work and language learning, need to be reframed and expanded to include a more humanistic, sociological imagination. The reasons for this stem from the nature of social change, particularly the dominance since the 1980s of neoliberal economic policies and practices, their spread into educational settings, and their tendency to deprofessionalise language practitioners.

The use of sociological imagination to move to and fro between macro- and micro- analysis and interpretation of the social patterns and social processes that have produced this loss of status may help teachers to resist its further spread. The development and use of

a discourse for characterising loss of professional status could also be an important spur to resistance and to a rebuilding of the professional respect and growth merited by many skilled and hardworking language teachers. At a classroom level, a sociological humanistic approach can help language teachers, in cooperation with their students, to foreground discussion of social issues and values, and imaginings of a better society locally, nationally or internationally (without prescribing or prejudging exactly what ‘better’ might mean), as part of energising content-relevant language learning and debate in the context and unavoidable reality of an electronically inter-connected social world—a world seemingly of growing convenience and possibility yet of unsettling uncertainty and insecurity, experienced amidst concertinaed perceptions of time. Although having clear connections to critical pedagogy, humanistic sociology places emphasis on the need for vigorous social debate, rather than on a pre-existing, political direction or predetermined social outcomes. Its trust is in the wish of humans to value, demand and pursue dignity, a notion that unites both the psychological and sociological aspects of humanistic language teaching.

Conclusion

Endnotes:1 Pauline Hanson is a controversial, right-wing, independent politician in Australia whose

political platform was built on being anti-immigration and nationalistic.

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» Navarro, V. 1998. “Neoliberalism, „Globalization,“ Unemployment, Inequalities, and the Welfare State.” International Journal of Health Services vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 607-682

» Passey, D. & C. Rogers 2004. “The Motivational Effect of ICT on Pupils”. Research Report No. 523, Department for Educational Research, University of Lancaster. Available at: http://tinyurl.com/6k2q9at

» Pennycook, A. 1994 The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language. Harlow: Longman

» Pennycook, A. 2001. Critical Applied Linguistics: a Critical Introduction. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates

» Pennycook, A. and S. Coutand-Martin 2003. “Teaching English as a Missionary Language.” Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education. vol. 24, no. 3, pp 337-353

» Phelps, R, Graham A., and T. Watts 2011. “Acknowledging the Complexity and Diversity of Historical and Cultural ICT Professional Learning Practices in Schools.” Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education. vol. 39, issue 1, pp 47-63

» Phillipson, R. 1992. Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press » Rinvolucri, M. 2002. Humanising Your Coursebook. Peaslake: Delta Publishing » Sandel, M. J. 2012. What Money Can’t Buy. New York: Farrar Strauss and Giroux » Sarangi, S. and C. Roberts 1999. “The Dynamics of Interactional and Institutional Orders in Work-related Settings.” In S Sarangi and C Roberts (eds.) Talk, Work and Institutional Order: Discourse in Medical, Mediation and Management Settings, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter

» Sennett, R. 2011. “Humanism.” The Hedgehog Review. vol. 13, no. 2, pp 21-30 » Slater, S. R. 1997. “Critical Values in English Language Teaching.” BrazTESOL Newsletter, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 13-19

» Steger, M. B. and R. K. Roy 2010. Neoliberalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press

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» Stevick, E. W. 1981. Teaching Languages: A Way and Ways, Boston: Newbury House » Stevick, E. W. 1990. Humanism in language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press » Stevick, E. W. 1996. Memory Meaning and Method. Independence: Heinle ELT » Templer, B and P. Tonawanik 2011. “Honing Critical Social Imagination Through a Curriculum of Social Empathy.” Humanising Language Teaching. vol. 13, no. 4 Available at:http://www.hltmag.co.uk/index.htm

» Virilio, P. 2000. The Information Bomb. New York: Verso Books » Virilio, P. 2006. Speed and Politics, Los Angeles: Semiotext(e) » Wacquant, L. 2007. “Pierre Bourdieu”. In Key Sociological Thinkers, R. Stone (ed.) pp. 261-277 Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan

» Wilson, D. N. 2003. “The Future of Comparative and International Education in a Globalised World.” International Review of Education vol. 49, issue 1, pp.15-33

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Stephen Slater4 Chalk Place, Torrens ParkSouth Australia 5062 Steve.Slater@unisa.edu.au

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English by Art

English by Art is an approach to language learning via artistic experience. It is based on the current approach of practical aesthetics combined with language acquisition which provides the environment where one component supports the other, and together they increase the effectiveness of the learning process. The aim is in leading students’ attention to the artwork (characters and their personalities, settings, motives, plots, etc.) and to gain interiorisation through perception, interpretation, connotations and empathy. Students then tend to focus on the extralinguistic context, therefore the communication remains real, and more can be achieved. Although English by Art may seem to be a conversational approach, it can also be used to teach and practise structures. These are unique courses designed for adults to help them to develop knowledge about art: visual, literature, theatre, music, film; vocabulary (specific and general); communication (gained via interpretation); empathy; social skills; imagination, creativity and fantasy. This work deals with the aims and principles, specifications and basic methodical suggestions of English by Art, an adherent of practical aesthetics. Moreover, examples of particular lessons are included

Abstract:

Karolína Štefanová

Karolína Štefanová finished her studies with a Master’s in the pedagogy of English language and literature and Aesthetics (2011) at CPU in Nitra. Having worked for various language schools in Bratislava for more than four years, she has developed a technique of ESL teaching for adults called English by Art. She has founded an institute for these courses and currently is both teaching and managing.

English by Art is an approach to language learning via art experience. It is based on current trends in Slovak aesthetics’ methodology - the approach of Practical Aesthetics. A combination of one’s own experience with art and

with learning language into one entity provides an environment where one component supports the other, and together they increase the effectiveness of the learning process.

Introduction

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Practical Aesthetics as an inspiration

Aims and principles of English by Art

The approach of Practical Aesthetics has been developed at the Institute of Literary and Artistic Communication at CPU in Nitra. As a contrast to our (Slovak) pragmatic school system, it prioritizes the humanistic approach to learning. Besides, more and more people are starting to feel the constant alienation caused by the “pressure of technical civilization,” and thus we need “aesthetic and emotional experiences as a protection against them.” (Žilková et al., 2009, p.11)

This approach is based on the model of aesthetic communication where creativity and perception, art and the non-artistic aesthetic, and interpretation, influence one another as equal components which are innate to every person; however, it is heterogeneous in its quality (Ibid. p.12). People have nowadays forgotten or suppressed their abilities to perceive. We spend our days as never-ending, continuous hunts for money, careers and strive to catch a glimpse of happiness in our faster lives. This relegation started in the 19th century and it is still increasing because “The position of religion and art has been occupied by hollow abstractions: essential values of the human world, such as art, beauty,

tragedy, democracy, individual, they all have lost their deep human content, and to a man without them are left only their names, instead of deep experience of freedom.” (Mistrík, 2008, p. 31) We believe that the renewal of the ability to perceive is vital for improving the quality of our spirits. English by Art is an alternative to pragmatic approaches of language acquisition that cultivate mainly linguistic competencies. Thus, via interpretation, perception and creativity, EQ is expanded. This process is possible through intense insight into characters, their feelings, plot, motifs and all the other aspects of a particular piece of art.

Practical Aesthetics has been designed for teenagers, as a primary and grammar schools subject; therefore, by its correct application goals such as creativity, empathy and artistic taste can be achieved with younger members of our society. The older might then lose the opportunity to encounter a different attitude. English by Art satisfies this gap by adding higher value to language learning. We must adjust the syllabus to our purposes, adjust focus and methodology to our needs as well as to the age of students but mostly we have to focus on our main goal - language acquisition.

The main aim of Practical Aesthetics is “to help the pupil to understand artistic and aesthetic phenomena as an inevitable element of their life which is

present in avoiding obstacles, getting to know themselves and the environment in which they live.” (Žilková et al., 2009, p. 17) But this aim is secondary

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Specifications for teachers and students

to us - even though still important. The main aim is language acquisition gained by leading students’ attention to an artwork and interiorisation of situations, thoughts, feelings through perception, interpretation, connotations, empathy. Students then tend to focus

on extralinguistic context; therefore, communication remains more real than with the usage of model situations. Moreover, with increasing creativity and involvement they gain fluency and are easy to set straight.

Requirements for teachers are pleasant – to have a knowledge of art and language; to be creative and fond of art and life as well as their expressions; to have the ability and enough experience to combine various styles, metatexts or techniques; and to adjust to the situation.

There seems to be only two requirements for students: an ambition to learn a new language and an interest in arts. English by Art seems to have the advantage of a self-imposed choice of an adult person, but harder times ahead as we fulfil two goals at once – improvement of language and

Some of specific aims of English by Art and Practical Aesthetics overlap:To learn to perceive an aesthetic situation;To gain artistic experience;To familiarise with the fountainhead of artistic experience;To learn how to interpret this experience and value it;To express one’s opinion and continue its cultivation. (Ibid., p. 17)

As well as with didactical aims where both approaches are focused on a student’s character:

To support sensibility and flexibility of perceiving;To cultivate creativity, to get a new and untraditional view of the world which helps to solve everyday problems;To develop taste and value orientation, as well as critical thinking and perceiving;

To develop social skills. (Ibid., p. 18)

Language aims are additional:To gain the ability of conversation in the target language;To lose the fear of being embarrassed;To practise and improve language skills;To gain fluency.

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perception. Furthermore, children are usually more creative and open to new possibilities than adults, and sometimes it may be quite perplexing to get adults to change their casual way of thinking, but reward is in the opening of new views on the world and learning a language at the same moment. When students have any problems, the teacher must provide them with all the necessary supportive

sources – explanation, showing images of particular phenomena or drawing a mind-map of the relationships.

Recommendation for settingProviding students (and the teacher

as well) with a comfortable surrounding and a pleasant snack brings a relaxed atmosphere where concentration on the artwork becomes natural, as the setting seems to fulfil the same preferences.

Semantically, we perceive inter-pretation as “the execution of artwork in artistic material. Its author is an interpreter who is considered to be an accepted artist;” says the aesthetic dictionary, and moreover, “a model is considered to be the potential state of an artwork, interpretation its real state.” The second meaning of this word is “theoretical interpretation as semantic, cultural and historical explication of an artwork.” (Mistrík, 2007, p.101) English by Art deals with both of them, but fulfils none precisely at the same time. Students become interpreters but not artists, they explain the artwork but not theoretically. Its principal technique is therefore considered to be an interpretational method which is oriented to the deep insight of the artistic experience. This method basically explains how our experiences are expressed. (Žilková et al., 2009, p. 21)

The other head technique is considered to be play. Play in this sense is some kind of model situation which provides different possibilities, a different reality; it is accompanied by a feeling

of differentness; its base is dialogism realised as a request and a response and therefore activates students. Moreover, as Practical Aesthetics claims: “play itself is an aim, therefore processuality becomes significant, an accent to the actuality of being and importance of every moment of a human’s life which seems to be unrepeatable, always new and worthy of our sensibility and concentration.” (Ibid., p. 19) Even more natural seem wordplay: “Language literally plays with us.” (Mistrík, 2008, p. 33) Thanks to the involvement, students can achieve comprehensibility and fluency even without noticing. When considering recommendations for the classroom setting, we assume that since “play is an activity which is bounded: it is restricted by time and space borders and these are set in advance,” (Callois, 1992, p. 1) an impressive setting and sitting anticipates the quality of the experience.

Although English by Art seems to be simply a conversational approach, it can be also used to teach and practise structures. Morphological

Techniques

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Lesson planning

and syntactical aspects can be taught at particular levels and topics which are set according to students’ level of English. At the beginning, there is a focus on visual art, simple texts and easy songs which are combined with direct methods. At this level students are not able to express their artistic experience but can be lead to awareness of their subjective feelings, as well as of objective facts such as name or style of the author. English by Art therefore also becomes educative in terms of

general knowledge about art.i Later on, focus is widened to more difficult pieces of music, texts and short videos/movies, the approach becomes more intertextual. More difficult structures are involved in the learning process of reaching the upper-intermediate and advanced levels, where novels, theatre plays and movies are combined.

This work is focused on intermediate level and above, and shows examples of lesson planning.

This syllabus serves as a pattern for intermediate, upper-intermediate or advanced students, but it shows also traces of the whole approach. Therefore, by modification to particular needs any lesson can be prepared, whether considering either grammatical or vocabulary aspects or focuses on manner. The particular item being trained is up to the teacher, therefore at every lesson we can practise the target aspects.

Great Stories in Paintings

In this course teacher and students are going to focus on mythological, biblical or other well-known stories, their visual and other adaptations. We are going to pass into history and bring heroes of ancient times to our world and see what happens. To invite them here, we must at first know them well. If students are dealing with any kinds of obstacles, our rich cultural history provides examples

of other people experiencing the same. By an outer view we gain distance from ourselves and the problem as well.

While planning lessons for great stories in paintings we always have to be familiar with the personalities of our students, their needs and interests, sometimes also their religious orientation and degree of openness. Furthermore, age and life experience are very significant, as each of the stories solves a different kind of social and/or individual problem. We are going to deal with the same topic for a certain number of lessons, hence the topic must be interesting for our students. Therefore, it is vital to set themes which are offered by particular artworks in advance and adjust our choice according to students’ current life experiences.

The following steps can be used in a different order, can overlap or some of them can be omitted, but these basics must be still preserved:

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• From modern to older ones• Intertexuality as the means of artwork’s conjunction• Part of one’s own creation as the last step

After some of the following lessons examples of certain topics are attached in the endnotesii.

a) Brainstorming Naming and sharing the first impressions of the piece of art. Practice: expressing of one’s own feelingsb) Description Laical painting description – just to state what we see in the picture. Practice: present continuous; colours, clothes, setting; prepositions of placec) Oppositions Provide students with a set of opposite adjectives or nouns and let them choose the more suitable one from each pair. Practice: the ability to decide and explain decisionsd) Division Let students divide the painting according to their preferences and then compare these parts. Practice: comparison, superlativese) Contrast The previous activity leads us to this step – to name the main contrasts. Practice: explanationsf) Thinking up Now is the time to get back to the results of the introductory brainstorming and with their help to develop students’ own way of perception of the artwork. Practice: creativity, fantasy; relative clauses; adjectives of character; present simple, present perfect, past simple and continuous and other aspects of language At this point it is very necessary to note down students’ thoughts, which will help us later on.

This lesson consists of the following steps:

To elicit students’ interest teacher shows them a painting which does not display the story or characters precisely. If they know immediately everything that is depicted, they might be less creative. The best case is when

the students either do not know the story or remember only very little of it. If they remember a little, tell them not to focus on their previous knowledge this lesson. Make them as creative as possible.

1.) Elicitation

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At this point, it is vital to choose a text version which slightly surpasses students’ language abilities. The best way is to divide the text into shorter parts which are read one by one. The text can be read silently or aloud, but after each section simplification follows. Simplification involves re-writing of difficult vocabulary, tropes and figures and other artistic or linguistic items

by students themselves. Only if they cannot find the equivalent does the teacher help. When a particular part is simplified, we proceed to questions. Simplification is a need that keeps students in a relaxed mode when using the target language. As they now do not have to bother with vocabulary, they gain fluency and focus on the topic. iv

Now the importance of notes from the first lesson is revealed. Return back to the painting and lead your students to explain and compare them. What part of the story is depicted in the picture? Then hand them the notes of their

previous decisions. Has the opinion of students changed? If the picture is more complex (the more complex the more possibilities) the answer is not easy and clear, so try to encourage them to be creative and find all the layers.

Students watch different adaptations of the same story. When there is a feature-film adaptation watch it first and in a separate lesson, compare with the pretext, and following with short videos is then only optional.Usually the adaptations of mythological or Biblical topics can be found as animations on www.youtube.com. Choose a variety of them, not to present

only different kinds of story processing but also different kinds of animation.After each video explain to students how the particular technique is done and ask questions such as:Is the story the same or different to the original one? What exactly is different? What is missing? What is added? Do you like this kind of animation?

Students are shown different metatexts of the same topic. A selection of

examples serves as a demonstration of various styles, techniques, approaches.

2.) Text reading and its simplification

3.) Text and painting comparison

4.) Adaptations

5.) Other paintings of the same topic, characters

g) Naming Creation of the students’ own name for the painting. Only after your students have given a name to the painting tell them the real one, you can accompany some information about the author. iii

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Scenes can differ and so they will enrich students’ view of the whole story. At this point students get familiarised with different styles and their representatives, so try to select a variety of them.Usually the adaptations of mythological or Biblical topics can be found as animations on www.youtube.com. Choose a variety of them, not to present only different kinds of story

processing but also different kinds of animation.After each video explain to students how the particular technique is done and ask questions such as:Is the story the same or different to the original one? What exactly is different? What is missing? What is added? Do you like this kind of animation?

This step is possible only if there is an even amount of students. Each of the pair chooses a figure, and together they set the setting and situation. After that, all sounds except laughter are forbidden. On the same sheet of paper which they

successively hand one to another they start a dialogue suitable to the set features and pretext. Students practise both their creativity and writing skills. The teacher can set a tense or mood.

Choose the main character and create his profile. Set some kind of a court constituted from students who judge deeds, executions of the character. At this point students practise conditional sentences. Ask them questions such as: What kind of person is he? Why did the character execute what he did? What were his motives? What else could he

do? Is he guilty? How could he remedy his deeds? What would happen if ...?In this step a profile of a character is going to be created because you need to know him well to bring him to our world. If time and students’ preferences allow, we can also create a new portrait of the character. (drawing, painting, photo, collage)

Probably, allusions to all ancient stories can be found in newer literature. Sometimes similar topics are also found. While uncovering them we can perceive many different experiences, connected either to our personal life or to the artwork (pretext). Moreover, if these are set at the first lesson as long-term homework, novels

are also used. For weaker students, simplified versions are provided. Watching movies does not require any preparation but a longer lesson, better to say the longest; the most optimal alternative is to finish the movie, have a break and refreshment and to continue with the dialogical lesson. Again, we can catch a glimpse of spontaneity and

6.) Silent dialogue

7.) Character profile

8.) Allusions in action

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English by Art is an approach that brings new attitudes, provides students with the possibility to access language acquisition, subtilisation of their inner life, improvement of interpersonal relationships and procurement of some artistic knowledge. This work deals with Practical Aesthetics as the source

of inspiration for English by Art, with its aims and principles, specifications and basic methodical suggestions; moreover, examples of particular lessons are included. We hope that this approach contributes to humanistic approaches to language acquisition and enriches their range positively.

I would like to thank the Institute of Literary and Artistic Communication and the people there for helping their students to find a different point

of view, a view through the looking glass. A second thanks - similar in its magnitude, go to Prof. Erich Mistrík for his guidance.

As this is always the last part, we know the character quite well now, we must consider the setting. By replacing them to our present reality we gain the connection of past tradition with the present and with a student’s own life, surrounding and reality. This link contributes to an awareness of particular current phenomena around us. Focusing on current situations and

problems that bother students brings the feeling of involvement that helps people to care about their environment. Training of all the tenses is possible in this step; furthermore, relative clauses, articles and actually all features of the language are involved. But the teacher has to be aware of all students’ language needs and requirements. vi

9.) Inviting the character

use it as starting material for the next lesson, as students will come with time

and experience distance. v

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

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Endnotes:

i Here are some of suggestions for vocabulary and morphological phenomena that can be taught at elementary levels:portraits, visual art with people:o Vocabulary: Adjectives of appearance, character; Family; Jobs; Free time activities /

holidays; Clothes; Parts of bodyo Grammar: Present tenses; Possessive adjectives and pronouns; Adverbs; Comparative

adjectives; Future still-life paintings, landscapes:o Vocabulary: Food and drink; Weather; Animals and plants; Housing and furniture;

Means of transport, directions, cardinal pointso Grammar: Countable, uncountable nouns; Some, any, none; Prepositions of place

ii NARCISSUS MYTHo Issues:

Relationship to one’s appearance and self; Relationships to the others; Position of a person within a world / understanding of world

o Needs:Modern painting: David Revoy: Echo and NarcissusThe original myth of Echo and NarcissusDali: Methamorphosis of Narcissus + a poem to this workOscar Wilde: Picture of Dorian Gray

Lesson syllabus:1. Modern painting 2. Text reading & simplification 3. Text & painting comparison: add more pics + traditional 4. The Picture of Dorian Gray / text interpretation 5. The Picture of Dorian Gray & Dali’s Methamorphosis of Narcissus 6. Narcissism & the modern world (narcissists and media/ internet exhibitionism);

Modern people as Narcissus: facebook, plastic surgery, adjusting photos, blogs etc.

7. Narcissus in 2012 in Slovakia – new myth creation DAEDALUS & ICARUS • Issues:

Relationship to the authorities; Relationship to enemies; The issue of conscience• Needs:

Modern painting: Susan Seddon Boulet: Daedalus & IcarusThe myth of Daidalos and IcarusYoutube animationsMore visual adaptations of different stylesFilm Pink Floyd: The Wall

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Lesson syllabus:1. Modern painting 2. Text reading & simplification 3. Text & painting comparison: add more pics + traditional 4. Dialogue 5. Video adaptations, animation 6. Different images and court 7. Current trends and issues in architecture, exterior design and public space8. Daedalus here and now9. Pink Floyd: The Wall and final discussion

iii Narcissus the first lessonUse the painting of David Revoy: Echo and Narcissus:

Pre-teach vocabulary: reflection, image, tram, ear-phones, blurredBRAINSTORMING: What comes to your mind when you see this painting? Is the painting negative or positive for you?DESCRIBING: What can we see in the picture? Describe it!OPPOSITIONS: Choose only one from the pair that suits this painting the most:

Old / new Old / young Open / close Continuous / discontinuous Aesthetic / pragmatic Tension / calm Comic / tragic Subjective / objectiveEmotional / rational Social / individual High / low Childish / matureHistoric / modern Passive / active Dynamic /static Positive / negativeDark / lightFor more see Plesník et. al. Tezaurus estetických výrazových kvalít (2008)

DIVISION: If you could divide this painting, how would you do it? How many parts into? What criteria would you use? What is similar? What is different?CONTRAST: Where is the contrast?THINKING UP: Who are the people? Where are they travelling to? Do they know each other? What is their relationship? What are they thinking about?

WOMAN: Use as many adjectives to describe her appearance as possible! Look closely at her! What is she listening to? What is she reading? What’s her job? What kind of person is she? Use as many adjectives to describe her character as

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possible!MAN: Use as many adjectives to describe his appearance as possible! What is he doing? Is he looking at himself or not? Why is he looking at himself? Is he handsome? Does he like his appearance or not? Use as many adjectives to describe his character as possible!BOTH: Is she looking at him as well? Does she like him?

NAMING: Make up the name for this painting! One word or expression.

iv Narcissus the second lesson: Use the text by Thomas Bullfinch: Echo and Narcissus, the text can be found at: http://thanasis.com/echo.htmAfter each paragraph simplify the text and talk about it. First part: Explain that:• The Oxford dictionary justifies “nymph” as a mythological spirit of nature imagined as

a beautiful maiden inhabiting rivers, woods, or other locations. You may also display some paintings of nymphs.

• In Roman mythology Diana refers to the Greek Artemis and she is the goddess of hunting, the moon and giving birth; Juno is the counterpart of the Greek goddess Hera. The goddess Hera ruled over the heavens and the Earth, responsible for every aspect of existence, including the seasons and the weather, she was the wife of Zeus who had plenty of affairs with other goddesses, women and nymphs.

You may also display images of both goddesses.Pre-teach the word “curse” , and ask questions such as:

What sound effect do we use the word echo for? Who was Echo in mythology? What did Hera/Juno curse her for and how?Second part: Ask questions such as:Whom did Echo meet? What was he doing? What happened between them? What happened to her then? Why didn’t Narcissus want Echo to have him?Third part: Then ask the last question again and continue with the longest part.Fourth part: Ask questions such as:How did the goddess curse Narcissus? What did he see in the fountain? Why did the reflection flee at the touch? What did he do then?Fifth part: Ask questions such as:

Why did Narcissus die? What did he see in the Stygian river? What did Echo do and why? What flower did the nymphs find?

v Allusions: Narcissus and The Portrait of Dorian GraySimilar themes: Daedalus and Icarus and Pink Floyd: The Wall

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» Bullfinch, T.: Echo and Narcissus. [cit. 2012-06-14] Available at: <http://thanasis.com/echo.htm >

» Callois, R. 1992. Struktura a klasifikace her. In: Analogon, vol. 3., no. 6, pp. 1 – 6 » Malíčková M. a kol., 2009. Estetika pre vysoké školy. Nitra: Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Konštantína Filozofa v Nitre.

» Mistrík, E. – Sejčová Ľ., 2008. Dobrý život a kult tela. Bratislava: Album. » Mistrík, E., 2007. Estetický slovník. Bratislava: Iris. » Plesník Ľ. a kol., 2008. Tezaurus estetických výrazových kvalít. Nitra: Ústav literárnej a umeleckej komunikácie Filozofickej fakulty Univerzity Konštantína Filozofa

» Režná M. a kol., 2011. Praktická estetika 3. Nitra: Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Konštantína Filozofa v Nitre.

» Žilková M. a kol., 2009. Praktická estetika. Nitra: Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Konštantína Filozofa v Nitre.

» Žilková M. a kol., 2009. Olympiáda tvorivosti. Nitra: Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Konštantína Filozofa v Nitre.

» Žilková M. – Zeleňáková H. - Režná M., 2011. Praktická estetika 5. Nitra: Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Konštantína Filozofa v Nitre.

Picture: » Revoy, D.: “Echo and Narcissus” [cit. 2012-06-14] Available at: <http://w3.coh.arizona.edu/classes/christed/clas353/paper%202%20topics.html >

Works cited:

Mgr. Karolína ŠtefanováNábrežie armádneho generála Ludvíka Svobodu 20, Bratislava. karolina@englishbyart.sk

vi Here is an example of the hero Daedalus in Bratislava nowadays:Daedalus comes to Bratislava to work as an architect for J&T, he is supposed to build special cyclepaths with many twists and turns to enclose cyclists stuck behind Petržalka and hence to prevent them cycling in front of the Riverpark. He succeeds and therefore fewer and fewer cyclists – and therefore citizens – are seen in the centre. J &T know that Daedalus possesses a special type of bike that can find its way home, so he can lead the people back to the town where they are together able to bring the autocracy of cars down, so they imprison him atop the UFO restaurant. Daedallus gathers shoelaces to make a bungee rope, he jumps and lands on a piece of polystyrene and flees to Budapest.

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Moderné technológie a rozvíjanie komunikačných a digitálnych kompetencií žiakov

Komunikačné a digitálne kompetencie sa stávajú neoddeliteľnou súčasťou osvojovania cudzích jazykov. Ich rozvíjanie a zdokonaľovanie podporuje efektívnu prácu s cudzím jazykom. V príspevku sa autorka sústredí na interpretáciu a kľúčové charakteristiky komunikačných a digitálnych kompetencií. Opierať sa bude nielen o Spoločný referenčný rámec pre jazyky, ale aj o výsledky výskumu v tejto oblasti na Slovensku. V snahe skĺbiť teoretické východiská s konkrétnou aplikáciu bude autorka ilustrovať možnosti pre prácu v cudzojazyčnej triede prezentáciou výstupu z medzinárodného projektu Socrates Comenius 2.1 502769-LLP-1-2009-1-ES-COMENIUS-CMP.

Abstrakt

Eva Tandlichová

Prof. Eva Tandlichová, PhD is a full professor and EFL teacher trainer at Comenius University Faculty of Arts in Bratislava, Slovakia. Her career has also included close cooperation with the British Council, Tesol (USA), IATEFL (GB) and State Pedagogic Institute and Ministry of Education in Bratislava. She has supervised a number of PhD students who are successful in their careers. Prof. E. Tandlichová has published many articles, dozens of books on EFLT methodology and several course-book sets for non-native learners of English. She has been invited for several lecturing tours at universities in Europe and the USA.

V úvode by som chcela podotknúť, že otázkou kompetencií, ktoré tu s nami sú už niekoľko desaťročí, ale aj tými, ktoré definovať si vyžaduje súčasnosť, sa zaoberajú filológovia a didaktici cudzojazyčného vyučovania a nielen u nás. V roku 2009 sme spolu s PhDr. Š. Dugovičovou, PhD. a doc. RNDr. B. Brestenskou, PhD. vstúpili do trojročného medzinárodného projektu, v ktorom je spolu s nami ďalších päť európskych univerzít, pod názvom An integral teacher training for

developing digital and communicative competences and subject content learning at schools, financovaný Lifelong Learning Programme pod číslom 502769-LLP-1-2009-1-ES-COMENIUS-CMP, 2009-2012. Hlavným cieľom tohto projektu je výchova budúcich učiteľov pomocou osobitnej metódy, ktorá integruje vedomosti z daného predmetu, digitálnu a komunikačnú kompetenciu, a tak prispieva k zmene pohľadu na výučbu daného predmetu. Výstupom tohto projektu je špecifikácia

Úvod

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1. Všeobecné, alebo aj kľúčové kompetencie

didaktických postupov pri integrácii a inkorporovaní vedomostí z daného predmetu, digitálnej a komunikačnej kompetencie zapojením digitálnych nástrojov; tvorba materiálov v tom zmysle, že každý partner vytvorí CD, ktoré bude obsahovať dva moduly (jeden v materinskom jazyku a jeden v angličtine). V týchto moduloch budú prezentované didaktické aktivity a metodické odporúčania pre študentov - budúcich učiteľov, aby ich vedeli využiť pri vyučovaní, ale aj pre cvičných učiteľov v školách; ako aj podpora mobility študentov – budúcich učiteľov s cieľom posilniť ich interkultúrny obzor a posilniť účinok projektu.

Výstupom slovenských partnerov je DVD Ropné škvrny – prípravné

cvičenia pre videokonferenciu a DVD, ktoré prináša aktivity rozvíjajúce komunikačné a digitálne kompetencie. Vzhľadom na to, aby boli tieto aktivity efektívne, bolo potrebné zaoberať sa na jednej starne VLE (Virtual Learning Environment), v ktorom sa rozvíjajú digitálne kompetencie a na strane druhej definovať, vymedziť pojem a precizovať jeho interpretáciu vo vyučovacom procese, a to nielen v cudzojazyčnom vyučovaní, ale aj vo vyučovaní prírodovedných predmetov. Ide najmä o to, aby sme si uvedomili potrebu porozumieť postaveniu kľúčových a špecificky komunikačných kompetencií pre efektívne osvojenie cudzieho jazyka, ale možno aj napríklad digitálnych kompetencií.

„Všeobecné kompetencie sú tie, ktoré nie sú charakteristické pre jazyk, ale ktoré sú nevyhnutné pre rôzne činnosti, vrátane jazykových“ (Pedagogická dokumentácia 2009, s. 41).

Vzhľadom na to možno asi súhlasiť s Turekom, že „kľúčové kompetencie sú najdôležitejšie z množiny kompetencií, pretože (...) umožnia jedincovi úspešne sa vyrovnať s rýchlymi zmenami v práci, osobnom i spoločenskom živote“ (Turek, 2009, s. 2). Inak povedané, osvojenie si kľúčových kompetencií (čo je dlhodobý celoživotný proces)umožní jedincovi začleniť sa do (pracovného) činnostného procesu, v ktorom bude podľa potreby a okolností meniť svoje správanie a konanie,

bude schopný vyberať a selektovať vhodné alternatívy správania, ale bude ochotný rozširovať si vedomosti a zručnosti, a tak spájať už známe skôr nadobudnuté vedomosti a zručnosti s novými. Domnievam sa, že nakoľko je osvojovanie kompetencií longitudinálny proces, teda nie jednoaktová záležitosť, je potrebné položiť dobré základy pre efektívnosť tohto procesu na základnej škole komplexne, teda vo všetkých vyučovaných predmetoch, inkluzíve cudzích jazykov. Pomôcť tak pospájať „jednoaktovky“ do dlhodobo fungujúcej životnej scény, na ktorej si jedinec upevňuje svoje miesto a fungovanie.

Pokúsim sa teraz venovať pozornosť všeobecným kompetenciám ako ich

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chápeme so zreteľom na fungovanie jednotlivca v súčasnom svete. Všeobecné kompetencie sú postavené na nasledovných pilieroch:

- deklaratívne vedomosti: t.j. poznatky o svete, ktoré sú výsledkom spoznávania sveta okolo nás od malička, cez školskú dochádzku až do dospelosti; t.j. sociokultúrne poznatky o spoločnosti a kultúre, tradíciách, zvyklostiach, interpersonálnych vzťahoch, hodnotách a postojoch; t.j. interkultúrne povedomie, ktoré pomáha vnímať inú kultúru cez perspek- tívu vlastnej kultúry a chápať potrebu tolerancie k inakosti kultúr;- zručnosti a know-how, t.j. sociálne zručnosti, ktorých ovládanie umožňuje jedincovi konať v každodenných situáciách, pracovných i voľno časových aktivitách v súlade so zaužívanými konvenciami a zvyklosťami spojených s fungovaním;- schopnosť učiť sa, t.j. vnímať a aktívne pôsobiť v nových situáciách, a tak využívať a spájať prv nadobudnuté vedomosti s novou skúsenosťou;- študijné zručnosti, t.j. schopnosť efektívne využívať možnosti štúdia so zreteľom na individuálne štýly učenia sa a stratégie učenia;- heuristické zručnosti, t.j. schopnosť učiaceho sa vyrovnať sa s novou učebnou situáciou a vedieť zapojiť do riešenia aj iné kompetencie. Ak je žiak schopný ich uplatňovať v praxi, tak vie prijať novú skúsenosť a schopnosť využívať ďalšie kompetencie v špecifických situáciách učenia sa; hľadať, pochopiť a v prípade potreby odovzdávať nové informácie; využívať informačno- komunikačné technológie a médiá. Napríklad vo výučbe cudzích jazykov môže využívať informácie a rôzne údaje z internetu, vie si vybrať tie, ktoré potrebuje pre riešenie úlohy, vie pracovať s textom, ktorý nájde na internete, vie tieto informácie spracovať a oboznámiť s nimi ostatných, a pod.

Z vyššie uvedeného v podstate vyplýva, že všeobecné (kľúčové) kompetencie by mali byť súčasťou vyučovacieho procesu, pretože pomocou nich sa žiak pripravuje pre život, ale úspech tohto procesu závisí podľa mňa od toho do akej

miery sa bude realizovať v tvorivých činnostiach, kde aktivitu prevezme žiak za predpokladu, že činnosti budú rešpektovať jeho mentálnu vyspelosť, osobnostné predpoklady, motiváciu a pripravenosť.

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Väčšina odborníkov (inkluzívne SERR) sa zhodne v tom, že jazykovú kompetenciu treba chápať vo všetkých jej zložkách, t. j. v prieniku lexikálnych, fonologických, syntaktických vedomostí a zručnosti a ďalších dimenzií jazyka ako systému, bez ohľadu na sociolingvistickú hodnotu jeho variácií a pragmatické funkcie rozličných spôsobov jeho používania. Autori SERR (2001) však upozorňujú aj na to, že „každý jazyk sa neustále vyvíja“, a tak je jazykový systém v neustálom pohybe. Na druhej strane, ak berieme do úvahy žiaka základnej školy je nevyhnutné do určitej miery limitovať tento jazykový systém so zreteľom na jeho psycho - motorický vývoj. Naznačuje to aj Harťanská, keď tvrdí, že „z lingvistického hľadiska sa na základnej škole kladie dôraz na rozvíjanie rečovo-analytických schopností, jazykového citu, sluchu, pamäti, podnecovanie myšlienkovej a rečovej tvorivosti. (Harťanská, 2004, s. 21). Podľa L. Cameronovej (a v podstate aj v súlade s našou pedagogickou dokumentáciou pre úrovne A1) kľúčovou zložkou osvojovania jazykovej kompetencie je budovanie slovnej zásoby, ale aj gramatiky. „Children will ask what a particular word means, or how to say a word in the foreign language, and, in learning to read, the word is a key unit in building up skills and knowledge“ (Cameron, 2009, s. 73).

V priebehu tohto procesu si žiak uvedomuje akou komplexnou jednot-

kou slovo je, pretože má svoju hovorenú a písanú formu (v angličtine odlišnú od hovorenej) a sémantický obsah čiže význam, pretože niečo pomenúva, označuje. Presvedčenie, že čím viac žiak prichádza do styku so slovami v odlišných situáciách, tým lepšie si ich zapamätá, nie je nič nové. Dôkladné osvojenie slova (izolovane i v kontexte), teda jeho uchovanie v dlhodobej pamäti, je kľúčové pre zvládnutie lexikálnej kompetencie ako súčasti lingvistickej kompetencie, a to využitím rôznych foriem a metód práce s jazykom vo výučbe: aktivity zamerané na zapamätávanie, počúvanie a predvedenie slova/slovného spojenia, počúvanie a nakreslenie počutého slova, či slovné hry, a pod.

Podľa Cameronovej prístup k osvojovaniu nových slov má u žiakov svoj vývoj. Kým malí žiaci si osvojujú slová skôr v kolokáciách, starší žiaci sú skôr schopní pochopiť vzťahy medzi slovami a využiť paradigmatickú organizáciu slov a významov, a tak pochopia úlohu „content words and grammar words“. (Cameron, 2009, str. 74) Tu je vhodné upozorniť na vyššie uvedené rešpektovanie a pochopenie rol učebných štýlov a stratégií u malých žiakov.

Správne osvojenie slovnej zásoby je stavebným kameňom osvojovania cudzieho jazyka, avšak bez ovládania gramatiky, ktorá spája tento stavený kameň do pevného a správne kódovaného cudzojazyčného diskurzu,

2. Komunikačné jazykové kompetencie

2.1 Lingvistická kompetencia

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to jednoducho nie je možné: „(...) grammar is necessary to express precise meanings in discourse; grammar ties closely into vocabulary in learning and using the foreign language; grammar learning can involve the learning of chunks of language; talking about something meaningful with the child can be a useful way to

introduce new grammar; grammar can be taught without technical labels (Cameron, 2009, s. 98). Inými slovami Cameron upozorňuje, že nestačí naučiť žiakov osvojiť si slovnú zásobu, ale plynulo prejsť ku gramatike, a to prostredníctvom vhodného kontextu a neformálnymi metódami.

Sociolingvistická kompetencia sa vzťahuje na sociokultúrne podmienky používania jazyka. Svojou citlivosťou voči spoločenských konvenciám (pravidlá zdvorilosti, normy, ktorými sa riadia vzťahy medzi generáciami, pohlaviami, triedami a sociálnymi skupinami, jazyková kodifikácia určitých základných rituálov v živote komunity) sociolingvistická zložka výrazne ovplyvňuje celú jazykovú

komunikáciu medzi predstaviteľmi rozličných kultúr, hoci sa často stáva, že účastníci komunikácie si jej vplyv vôbec nemusia uvedomovať. Ide o ukazovatele spoločenských vzťahov, zdvorilostné frázy, ustálené spojenia, ale u mladších žiakov sa jedná o nadviazanie základnej spoločenskej konverzácie tak, že žiak použije tie najjednoduchšie spôsoby vyjadrenia pomocou jednoduchej slovnej zásoby a gramatických štruktúr.

2.2 Sociolingvistická kompetencia

2.3 Pragmatická kompetencia

Pragmatická kompetencia sa zaoberá funkčným využitím lingvistických zdrojov (tvorenie jazykových funkcií a rečových aktov), vychádzajúc zo scenára zaužívaných noriem a tradícií cudzieho jazyka. Zaoberá sa, napríklad aj zvládnutím jazykových prejavov, ich súdržnosťou a vnútorným usporiadaním či identifikáciou typov textov a ich štruktúrou. U mladších žiakov na úrovni A1 sa interpretuje v tom, že dokážu spájať slová alebo skupiny slov

pomocou najzákladnejších lineárnych spojovacích výrazov a dokážu zvládnuť veľmi krátke izolované a väčšinou naučené výpovede. Na úrovni A2 žiak rozvíja túto pragmatickú kompetenciu a dokáže sformulovať svoje myšlienky v súlade s vyžadovanou stratégiou; jazykové prostriedky vie funkčne využívať na získanie informácií, na jednoduché vyjadrenie odmietnutia, túžby, záujmu, prekvapenia, strachu a pod.; dokáže naplniť interakciu

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3. Digitálne kompetencie

V tomto kontexte treba ešte pripomenúť niekoľko dôležitých schopností, ktoré umožňuje IKT rozvíjať:

- interaktívnej tabule, ako dominantnej technológie pre prezentovanie a výmenu informácií (ďalšie: dištančné EVO, LMS, sociálne siete...);- internetu, ako dominantnej technológie pre zisťovanie informácií (ďalšie: blogovanie, podcasty, videocasty, IT streaming, IPTV, DVB televízia, offline zdroje); - hlasovacieho systému, čo je dominantnou technológiou pre rozvíjanie myšlienok a experimentovanie (alternatívy k hlasovaciemu systému: mobily, PC, wifi, hybridy, PDA) (Brestenská, Dugovičová, Comenius projekt intTT 2011).

- využitie údajov a informácií pre ďalšie spracovanie;- hľadanie týchto údajov a ich triedenie;- skúmanie a organizovanie;- rozvíjanie kritického myslenia prostredníctvom analýzy a automatizácie, modelovania a monitorovania výsledkov bádania;- výmenu informácií v komunikácii, prezentovanie výsledkov prieskumu a hľadania;- schopnosť na základe nových poznatkov a zručností hodnotiť a modifikovať svoj progres v práci s informáciami.

V súčasnosti sú tieto kompetencie, ale hlavne ich nadobudnutie a rozvíjanie, neoddeliteľné od vyučovacieho procesu; stali sa ony aj súčasťou nášho projektu. Vo

vzájomnej spolupráci s Doc. B. Brestenskou a Dr. Š. Dugovičovou sme sa sústredili na východisko pre využívanie a rozvíjanie týchto kompetencií prostredníctvom

Využitie IKT umožní zapojenie ďalších foriem a metód práce do vyučovacieho procesu: workshopy, vzájomné učenie, tvorivé písanie, riadený výskum/prieskum, rozvíjanie kritického myslenia a seba-hodnotenia. V cudzojazyčnom

vyučovaní je využitie IKT významnou, ale nie absolútnou pomôckou pre učiteľa. Je výhodné pre samostatnú prácu žiakov pri upevňovaní vedomostí a zručností, ale aj vhodné pre partnerskú spoluprácu na riešení najmä týchto úloh:

pomocou jednoduchého textu; dokáže začať, udržať i ukončiť krátky rozhovor;

dokáže používať vhodné konektory na spájanie viet do väčších celkov.

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- využívanie údajov a informácií,- hľadanie a triedenie týchto informácií a dát,- sledovanie vytýčeného cieľa,- prezentovanie zistení a výsledkov. (podľa Brestenská, Dugovičová 2011)

- podpora učiteľom,- spestrenie vyučovacej hodiny,- zmena vzťahu vyučovania a učenia sa,- motivácia pre efektívnejšie osvojovanie cudzieho jazyka,- ponuka pre žiakov učiť sa inak aj prostredníctvom alternatívnych foriem a metód práce pri získavaní informácií,- podpora kritického myslenia, samostatnej i skupinovej práce,- sprístupnenie širokej škály textov pre žiakov, - naučiť žiakov analyzovať tieto texty a pracovať s nimi,- umožniť žiakom plánovať a pracovať s textom pri zapojení rôznych stratégií pre efektívnejšie čítanie, písanie, ale aj počúvanie s porozumením a hovorenie,- umožniť žiakom naučiť sa upravovať daný text, modifikovať svoju prácu v procese riešenia úlohy a zapojením osvojených prezentačných zručností sprístupniť svoje zistenia ostatným.

Vzhľadom na vyššie uvedené sa domnievam, že pre výučbu anglického jazyka možno zefektívniť pomocou IKT už na základnej škole. Uvedieme niekoľko možností:

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Záver

V tomto príspevku uvádzame len niekoľko príkladov z vyššie spomínaného DVD, ktorými chceme podporiť vyššie spomínané.C. Vocabulary game.

Let’s play Hangman.Click on the letter. Identify the word which is behind it. If you are wrong more parts of the gallows will appear. If the hangman is complete, you have lost. A B C D E F G H I J K LM N O P R S T U V W XY Z Example: C A R

3b. Listen and write words you hear in the space provided. Pay attention to correct spelling.elephant, tourist, teacher, married, friendly, interesting, hair, beautiful, coffee, ruler

V závere by som sa chcela vrátiť k východisku tohto príspevku, .t.j. k výstupu intTT Projektu Comenius. DVD má študentskú na učiteľskú časť, teda je určené pre žiakov a pre nielen skúsených učiteľov. Vo verzii pre učiteľa sú uvedené aj metodické odporúčania pre budúceho učiteľa aj začínajúceho učiteľa. Takto koncipované DVD má slúžiť aj pri pregraduálnej príprave učiteľov anglického jazyka a prírodovedných predmetov. Materiál, ktorý tieto DVD prinášajú je koncipovaný tak, aby otvoril cestu k využívaniu digitálnych technológii a zároveň rozvíjal aj ostatné komunikačné a prezentačné kompetencie.

DVD, ktoré je predmetom tohto príspevku je interaktívne a zároveň využíva VLE, teda virtuálne výučbové prostredie na rozvíjanie aj digitálnych kompetencií. IKT je možno vo výučbe využiť na rozvíjanie nielen digitálnych,

ale aj komunikačných kompetencií a tých kompetencií, ktoré sú potrebné pre porozumenie obsahu predmetu. V našom prípade sme sa zamerali na tie kľúčové gramatické a lexikálne javy, ktoré sú predmetom výučby anglického jazyka na úrovni A1. Vložili sme ich do desiatich tematických okruhov, kde sme zohľadnili aj potrebu rozvíjania kultúrneho povedomia a sociokultúrneho kontextu anglického jazyka cez aktivity súvisiace s anglicky hovoriacimi krajinami. Možno ich využiť nielen pri príprave budúcich učiteľov, ale aj naprieč kurikulom. Zdroje, ktoré sme vyvinuli v rámci intTT projektu poskytujú príklady aktivít, ktoré integrujú rozvoj spomínaných kompetencií a navyše poskytujú priestor pre rozvoj stratégií aj vyučovania, učenia sa a osvojovania cudzieho jazyka, hodnotenia a sebahodnotenia v priestore IKT.

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10 Vocabulary booster

1. Are the words correctly organised? Click on the word and drag it to the group where it belongs.

CLOTHES SCHOOL AIDS SPORTS FRUIT JOBSChalk basketball rugby skirt pineapplePear blueberry pilot shirt blackboardTrousers compasses cleaner peach volleyballDentist rubber handball socks actor 3.Tongue-twisters. Read and listen to the following tongue-twisters. Then try to repeat them out loud and as fast as possible.

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!Can you can a can as a canner can can a can?Any noise annoys an oyster but a noisy noise annoys an oyster more.Sheena leads, Sheila needs.A big bug bit the little beetle but the little beetle bit the big bug back.If you understand, say “understand”.If you don’t understand, say “don’t understand”.But if you understand and say “don’t understand”.How do I understand that you understand? Understand!

English-speaking countries

NOTE: Go to Wikipedia and find the information you need in this exercise. Complete the fact file about Great Britain.

Location:Capital city:Countries included:Currency:Form of government:Famous universities:

Self-reflection Send an email to your teacher or your parents saying what you can do after having done this section.

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Bibliografia:

» Brestenská, B., 2011. Projekt Socrates Comenius 2.1 502769-LLP-1-2009-1-ES-COMENIUS-CMP, DVD ENGLISH ACTIVITIES.

» Cameron, L., 2009. Teaching Languages to Young Learners. Cambridge: CUP, ISBN 978-0-521-77434-5.

» Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Cambridge: CUP 2001. » ISBN 0-521-80313-6 » Dugovičová, Š., 2011. Projekt Socrates Comenius 2.1 502769-LLP-1-2009-1-ES-COMENIUS-CMP, DVD ENGLISH ACTIVITIES.

» Harťanská, J., 2004. Vyučovanie anglického jazyka na 1. stupni základnej školy. Nitra: UKF. » Pedagogická dokumentácia z anglického jazyka. Úroveň A1. 2009. ŠPÚ Bratislava. ISBN 978-80-89225-67-5.

» Turek, I., 2009. K problematike kľúčových kompetencií. Najlepší spôsob ako sa učiť, je niečo robiť. In: Manažment školy v praxi, 12, 2009.

Summary

The author of this paper deals with current buzz words: communicative and digital competences. Both phenomena have been analysed in the Common European Framework for Languages and its authors highlighted their importance in foreign-language teaching and learning. The author of this paper focused her attention on communicative and digital competence not only because of their significance for learners’ foreign language acquisition and life-long use, but also because these phenomena were focused on in her international Socrates Comenius. An integral teacher training for developing digital and communicative competences and subject content learning at schools, financed by the Lifelong Learning Programme number 502769-LLP-1-2009-1-ES-COMENIUS-CMP, 2009-2012. Digital and communicative competences have been identified as key competences for Life Long Learning

(LLL) and are closely related to subject content learning, personal and professional development in modern societies. Moreover, acquiring good digital and communicative competences is needed for all areas of employment and should be developed in compulsory education. The resources presented in the CDs (English Activities and Ropné škvrny) are designed to help teachers learn to use interactive web technologies in education. They are mainly intended for teachers in pre-service training (or Initial Teacher Training) but are also useful for the professional development of practising teachers and for providers of courses for professional development. The technologies concerned include video conferencing and virtual learning environments (VLE). The nature of these technologies is that they not only provide for the dissemination of information, but also facilitate the sharing of responses and contributions of many users of the

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systems involved. The paper starts with the analysis of general competences which include, namely: declarative knowledge; skills and know-how; ‘existential’ competence; ability to learn, heuristic skills. This analysis follows through communicative competences, i.e. linguistic, sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences. As for the digital competences, the author mentioned the general facts about the ICT: Internet – dominant technology for information searching; voting system – dominant technology for developing ideas and experimenting; interactive board – dominant technology for presenting and information exchange. Then she highlighted the digital competences useful for teaching and learning foreign languages. The expectation is that pupils will have been taught all nine key concepts of ICT capability in their ICT lessons. This provides the foundation for the four ICT key concepts that are

particularly significant for English, which are: using data and information sources, searching and selecting, fitness for purpose and refining and presenting information. The author and her co-partners are also convinced that ICT can raise standards in English language because it can support teachers, improve lesson design, improve the teaching-learning process, motivate pupils, provide opportunities for them to learn in alternative and challenging ways; using a wide range of sources of information and techniques may support critical thinking, individual and collaborative work ICT allow pupils access to a wide range of texts and show how to manipulate them through a variety of strategies; working with texts will subsequently improve writing skills, as well as speaking and listening and help pupils to refine and present their ideas more effectively and in different ways.

Prof. PhDr. Tandlichová Eva, CSc. Univerzita Komenského Filozofická fakulta KAA Bratislava tandlichova@fphil.uniba.sk

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Diagnostic Teaching: An Innovative Language Teaching Method

The article focuses on a unique method for teaching EFL for pupils who demonstrate language and learning difficulties. The principles underlying this method are: 1. A holistic view of the pupil; 2. Teacher’s responsibility for identification of needs and intervention; 3. A dynamic view of assessments as an ongoing process; 4. Planning Individual teaching on the basis of the diagnosis. This method has been adapted by the author to the EFL context in an academic course which is part of English Language Education Training. The student-teachers learn to diagnose the language difficulties of students in EFL classes and build intervention programmes for them without being formal diagnosticians. They learn to build a pupil’s profile in the context of neuro-developmental skills, but at the same time relate to the environmental contexts of the pupil. The cyclic model of this method involves identification of needs, design of intervention programme, re-examination of needs and re-adaptation of teaching to the new evolving profile.

Abstract

Tsafi Timor

Dr. Tsafi Timor is a lecturer in the Kibbutzim College of Education (Tel-Aviv, Israel) in the Departments of English Language Education and the Program for Postgraduate Diploma in Education. Her research interests are teacher education and pedagogy, language education, and the inclusion of students with learning disabilities in mainstream education. Tsafi is also a psycho-educational diagnostician of learning disabilities, with a special expertise in learning disabilities in EFL.

Teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) need to contend with heterogeneous classes containing 40 students. Naturally, students demonstrate different levels of IQ and a wide scope of language aptitudes. The Gaussian curve (Bell-Shaped Curve) advocates that 14% of the population are “probably less than others” and 2% are “definitely less than others”, whereas

another 14% are «probably more than others» and another 2% are «definitely more than others». This means that 6-7 students in any mainstream class are below or far below the average, and about the same number is higher than the average. Students who pertain to the 14-16% at the low end might suffer from low IQ, social-emotional problems, low motivation, behavioral problems,

Introduction

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lack of learning strategies, learning disabilities, cultural differences, poor instruction, or sensory deficits. However, since the Act of “Integration of Students with Special Educational Needs in Mainstream Education” was introduced in Israel in 2002, the number of students with difficulties and special needs has increased drastically in mainstream classes, creating new challenges for all teachers, but particularly to teachers of foreign languages. The question whether or to what extent teachers should respond to the diverse needs of students is not any more at teachers’ discretion. Moreover,

the new reality has «converted» all mainstream teachers to “teachers of special education”, even though their training is not oriented towards special education and they lack the knowledge or skills to identify special needs. That is why it seems to be imperative that EFL teachers acquire tools for the diagnosis of difficulties. This will enable them to meet the new challenges and become effective teachers. It is equally important that teachers will be able to respond to those students who are higher than the average and even those diagnosed as gifted students.

Indeed, today’s classes are typified by academic diversity (Darling-Hammond, Wise, & Klein 1999). Tomlinson, Brighton, Hertberg, Callahan, Moon, Brimijoin, Conover, & Reynolds (2003) claim that homogeneity by virtue of chronological age is only a myth, whereas, in fact, students may underachieve for a complex array of reasons such as preferred modes of learning and varying interests. Despite these differences, the current school

reform movement and inclusion policies focus on the equality of opportunity, and emphasise the need to adjust materials and facilitate access to the curriculum to all students (Ainscow & Miles 2008; Timor & Burton 2007; Timor & Burton 2006). However, the first step towards differentiating instruction should be to acquire the skills and knowledge to identify diverse needs and to create the learning profile of students.

The teaching approach of EFL teachers-diagnosticians which is presented in this article relies on the following theories: Ecological-Neuropsychological Models, Response to Intervention models (RTI) for assessment and intervention,

Curriculum-Based Assessments (CBA), Profile Analysis Interpretive Method.

The Ecological-Neuropsychological Perspective (D’Amato et al. 2005) views students’ profiles as dynamic with great potential for change rather

Heterogeneous Classes: A New Reality

Prevailing Theories for Assessment

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than hindered by the chronicity and permanence of their learning problems. The ecological approach examines the interaction between person variables (brain-functions, IQ, biogenetic factors, perceptions) and environmental variables (opportunities to learn, socio-economic factors, health care, etc.). Therefore, knowledge about the student is formed by understanding brain-behaviour relationship but also psychosocial-environmental factors and informal sources (student, peers, teachers, parents, community members). The main purpose of the assessment is to develop interventions rather than to identify pathologies or for placement purposes, as in the case of the traditional neuropsychological model (the deficit model). The novelties of the ecological model are numerous: the assessor is not a «know-all» and does not have all the solutions; it is strength-based and focuses on what the child can do (strengths) rather than what he/she cannot do (needs); it focuses on psycho-educational intervention which may include teaching, changes in the environment, changes of attitudes of significant others towards the child, work on the child’s perceptions towards himself; thus, it is a dynamic approach. It aims at getting a holistic picture of the child and examines the child within the systems of his life, such as family, school, culture and community;

Response to Intervention (RTI) assessment is an interactive approach to psychological or psycho-educational assessment that embeds intervention within the assessment procedure. Thus, effective instruction is always

followed by monitoring of the student’s response to the instructional plan (Figure 1). The result of a useful process of assessment and intervention leads to help close discrepancies between student performance and classroom expectations (Barnett, Daly, Jones & Lentz 2004). The RTI contradicts the traditional psychological evaluation approach, which is usually based on one-point-in-time-assessment, and fails to link assessments to an ongoing intervention planning with regard to at-risk children and children with disabilities (Reschly &Ysseldyke 2002). RTI models have shifted the focus from psychometric criteria to behaviours in natural settings as a basis for planning intervention The RTI model functions as a multi-tiered intervention model (Tilly 2003). In Tier 1, quality instruction is provided to all students; In Tier 2, approximately 15% of all students are recommended for individualised educational support because of poor performance; a small percentage of students who fail to demonstrate improvement as a result of Tier 2 are referred to Tier 3 for intensive treatment and subsequently they are classified as learning disabled because of lack of progress (Fuchs, Mock, Morgan & Young 2003). Despite the controversies between the two approaches, Hale, Kaufman, Naglieri, and Kavale (2006) have suggested a methodology which incorporates the best aspects of both approaches.

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Figure 1: Cycle of Assessment (Livock, 2006)

Below is an example of the use of RTI for the improvement of reading in EFL:

1. Identification of a difficulty: the student is an inefficient reader in English;2. Gathering information: from the student and his parents about his reading habits, from his Hebrew teacher, his performance in tests, observations in EFL class;3. Identification of main areas of concern: decoding skills, vowel sounds, consonant blends, pronunciation, intonation;4. Setting specific teaching objectives: e.g. Improve decoding skills; teach phonetic rules;5. Monitoring: in what skills has the student demonstrated improvement?6. Identification of a new difficulty: reading comprehension.

Curriculum-Based Assessments (CBA) have become a frequently used set of tools in the assessment of student academic functioning and achievement (Hintze, Christ, & Methe 2006). CBA can be defined as any set of measurement activities that uses “direct observation and recording of a student’s perfor-mance in the local curriculum as a basis for gathering information to make instructional decisions” (Deno, 1987, p. 41). However, Fuchs & Deno (1991)

differentiate between two approaches to CBA: a more general approach whose purpose is to evaluate students’ proficiency with regard to one particular aspect of the curriculum, e.g. spelling of words across a broad spectrum of skills (blends, vowel sounds, suffixes, irregular words, diagraphs, etc.). The second approach which is the most prevailing of CBA, breaks down the global curricular outcomes into a set of specific sub-skills (criterion-referenced

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1. Phonetic coding: sound-symbol associations;2. Grammatical sensitivity: the ability to recognise grammatical structures in sentences;3. Inductive language learning ability: the ability to infer the rules governing a set of language materials;4. Rote-learning ability: the ability to learn effectively and rapidly associations between sounds and meanings and to retain these associations;

items), which measure the student performance. These data are then set as short-term instructional objectives (e.g. words ending with a silent e).

Profile Analysis Interpretive Method: Huang, Bardos & D’Amato (2009) have examined composite profile analysis using the cognitive assessment system, and found 10 profiles within general education, and 12 profiles among individuals with learning disabilities.

They support the belief that revealing cognitive processing patterns among individuals enhances understanding of how they learn. In addition to the global scores obtained in Intelligence Tests, an intra-individual profile analysis introduces the unique pattern of an individual learner in terms of strengths and weaknesses by a careful examination of all subtests (Kaufman & Lichtenberger 2000).

Existing literature on FL aptitude indicates a variety of topics to be included in building predictors of FL success or failure. The MLAT (Modern Language Aptitude Test), which was first introduced by Carroll and Sapon in 1959 (Carrol & Sapon 2000), is the most widely used aptitude instrument. It also has a MLAT-E version which can be used

for younger students in elementary school (grades 3 through 6). By using a “fake” FL and English grammar to measure FL aptitude, it predicts how well, relative to other individuals, an individual can learn a foreign language in a given amount of time and under given conditions. The authors identified 4 factors predictive of FL learning:

Another test is Pimsleur Language Aptitude Battery (PLAB 1968), which includes verbal intelligence, auditory skills and motivation. The main

advantage of this test over the MLAT is that it includes the measurement of motivation, which is known to affect FL learning.

Testing Language Aptitude

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The Process of Developing EFL Teachers-Diagnosticians

The group of 52 EFL student-teachers are 4th-year students, most of whom are already teaching (45) and a much smaller number (7) is doing practice teaching with a master teacher in class. In the final task of the course they were asked to choose a student from their class, preferably a student who experiences difficulties, conduct a diagnosis of this student, build the student’s EFL profile and subsequently suggest an

intervention programme. The task was conducted gradually throughout the semester, when the student-teachers had to implement each test taught and exercised during the course with their individual student. In this part the student-teachers are referred to as teachers-diagnosticians. The process of assessment in EFL relies on the theories for assessment which are depicted above, and includes the following parts:

Part 1: Intake Phase:

collection of information via interviews with parents, homeroom teacher, subject teachers, and the student as well as via observations. This phase aims at creating a rapport between the student and teacher, and sets the basis for the long journey they are about to start. Thus, the teacher can get a rounded picture from all the settings the child belongs to rather than be limited to EFL classes.

Part 2: Assessing EFL Language Areas:

Expressive Language: the teacher-diagnostician investigates the ability of his student to put thoughts into words and to use language for the purpose of communication. This ability can be tested by presenting a set of pictures to the student and asking him to depict what he sees orally, or alternatively asking him to produce a written paragraph on the chain of pictures. Either way, the student has to produce a language combination of his own. Receptive Language: the teacher-diagnostician investigates the ability of his student to understand language. This ability can be tested by presenting to the student a set of instructions and verifying understanding, or by reading comprehension tasks. Reading: While testing reading, the teacher-diagnostician investigates two levels: starting off with the basic elements of decoding, and moving on to reading comprehension. The following sub-tests are used to test reading:

- Letter recognition: names and sounds. - Letter/sound association: long and short vowel sounds, consonants, consonant blends. Understanding that orthography represents phonology. - Knowledge of phonetic rules which are necessary for deciphering (e.g. when ‘ay’ appears at the end of a word it says the long ‘a’ sound).

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Writing: While testing writing, the teacher-diagnostician investigates two levels: starting off with the mechanics of writing and moving on to test how content and ideas are conveyed in writing. The following sub-tests are used to test writing:

The examination of reading and writing abilities include an observation of the process and not only the measurement of the outcome. For example, while testing reading aloud the teacher-diagnostician needs to observe whether the student corrects his mistakes and uses self-monitoring, whether he finds it difficult to trace the line, whether he keeps omitting certain letters or mistaking them for others, and whether the confusion is on auditory or visual ground. Finally, the teacher observes the student’s “reading behaviors” and documents them. While testing writing, the teacher needs to observe whether the student can copy a whole phrase or whether he copies each word separately. In addition, the teacher observes his “writing behaviors” and notes down verbal reactions to the writing tasks.

- Vocabulary: decoding and meaning of sight words; the ability to recognise commonly used words globally without the need to decipher them every time they appear in print.- Reading a text aloud: fluency, speed, accuracy, pronunciation and intonation.- Silent reading: speed and comprehension.- Reading behaviours: the student’s dominant behaviours while reading (motivated? bored? confident? relaxed? easily distracted?)

- Letter-sound association: ability to write letters when called by name; understanding that orthography represents phonology.- Spelling: knowledge of spelling rules, consistency in mistakes, sight words.- Writing speed: measured in copying, in dictations, and in free writing.- Spatial organisation: spaces between letters and words, margins, keeping to the line, consistency in font size. - Handwriting: legibility, malformation of letters, font size, cursive and print writing.- Copying from the board and from a book: accuracy, ability to copy chunks of words;- Directionality: confusion between “at-risk” letters (f, t; p q; b d; w m; u n); letters reversals, mirror writing. This aspect is particularly difficult for speakers of Hebrew as Hebrew is written from right to left- Writing conventions: differentiation between upper & lower case letters, use of capitalisation & punctuation.- Writing style: ability to express ideas and produce coherent sentences with an adequate level of vocabulary. - Writing behavior: the student’s dominant behaviors in writing tasks (relaxed? nervous? motivated? fluent? hesitant?).

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Part 3: Documentation and Presentation of the Findings

During the assessment, the student-teacher acts as a diagnostician. They are involved in the process and observe their student’s behaviours and reactions. They document massively and submit their written comments as appendices to their final task. The findings are presented in separate tables for each language area introduced in Part 2. An example of findings of sub-tests within the area of writing can be seen in Table 1.

Part 4: Creating Students’ Language Profile

In this part of the process the teacher-diagnostician categorises the findings from the previous section in a table which presents the student’s profile, with emphasis on areas of strengths and areas that need strengthening. An example of sub-tests within the area of reading can be seen in Table 2. This is done separately for each language area introduced in part 2. This leads in to the next step in which the teacher-diagnostician has to decide on teaching objectives, as the profile indicates clearly the areas which need reinforcement.

Table 1Example of Presentation of Findings

Area Tested: Writing Findings

Writing conventions confuses b,B; D, d; e,E; Puts commas in wrong places; Uses capitalisation appropriately;

Free Writing appropriate register, use of basic tenses, coherent writing, limited ideas

Writing behaviors keeps complaining, unmotivated, gets tired easily

- Phonological skills: the examination of phonological skills consists of analysis and synthesis of common words into phonemes. This task is conducted orally while disregarding spelling. For example: /k/ /a/ /t/ says ‘cat’; Similarly, ‘eggs’ is segmented to /e/ /g/ /z/. In earlier grades the requirement can be restricted to syllable-level. - Auditory discrimination: the examination of auditory skills is conducted via differentiation between similar sounding pairs of phonemes and words. For example, b,p; p,f; m, n; f, th; ga, ja; pit, pet; lass, lath; map, nap; pool, tool; pit, kit; vie, thy; bum, bun;

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Part 5: Deciding on an Intervention/Instruction Plan

Once the collection of findings in all the language areas is over and the student’s profile is ready, the teacher-diagnostician needs to decide on an intervention plan with regard to EFL. The intervention plan includes teaching objectives as well as behavioural objectives. The clear, operational and attainable teaching objectives which are set need to be prioritised and scheduled. Of course, any intervention plan is always subject to teacher’s monitoring and to re-assessment of the student’s needs in the future. Thus, if the student demonstrates improvement as a result of teaching, the teacher moves on to the next objective. The behavioural objectives are set on the basis of the student’s performance in class as well reading and writing behaviours. Below are examples of an intervention plan which consists of six teaching goals and one behavioural goal:

Table 2Example of Student’s Profile in Sub-tests of Reading

1. The student will increase his sight-word vocabulary through reading and dictations. 2. The student will work on improving his expressive oral skills, by participating more often in class discussions. 3. The student will monitor his written work before submission. 4. The student will differentiate in writing between «at-risk» letters, e.g. ‘b’ and ‘d’; ‘ p’ and ‘q’.5. The student will exercise ‘gh’ saying /f/ in sight words’ e.g. ‘enough’.6. The student will exercise reading words with the silent /gh/ e.g. ‘thought’, ‘taught’. 7. The student will speak in class only after he gets the teacher’s permission.

Area Tested: Reading Sub-Tests Sub-Tests

Points of Strength Points for Strengthening

Letter names

Sight words:

Reading behavior:

recognises 23 out of 26 letters by name and 20 letters by sound;

reads fluently monosyl-labic words (cat, dog, boy);

feels confident, corrects himself;

does not recognise the sound of the letters h, w, y, e, j, x;

cannot decode multisyllabic words e.g. “university” “beautiful”

hesitates/ makes guesses;

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Conclusion

The diagnostic approach to EFL teaching appears to be advantageous with respect to EFL teaching practices. It is proactive in the sense that teachers can identify difficulties before the vicious cycle of failure becomes permanent; it is student-centred and focuses on an individual student’s profile; it is dynamic and cyclic and does not rely on a one-point-in-time assessment, but rather on

an ongoing assessment and instruction process; it meets the student where he stands in terms of readiness to learn EFL, background, interests, profile, and current knowledge; the student is in the foreground while the curriculum is in the background. Thus, the diagnosis-intervention process allows the teacher to facilitate full access to the curriculum to students who experience difficulties.

Works cited:

» Ainscow, M. & Miles, S. Making education for all inclusive: Where next? In Prospects, 2008, vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 15-34.

» Barnett, D. W., Daly, III, E. J., Jones, K. M. and Lentz, F. E. Response to Intervention: » Empirically Based Special Service Decisions From Single-Case Designs of Increasing and

Decreasing Intensity, In Journal of Special Education, 2004, no. 38, pp. 66-79. » Carroll, J., & Sapon, S. ,2000. Modern Language Aptitude Test (MLAT): Manual. San Antonio,

TX,: Psychological Corp. (Republished by Second Language Testing, Inc., www. 21ti.com). » D’Amato, R. C., Crepeau-Hobson, F., Huang, L. V., and Geil, M. Ecological Neuropsychology:

An Alternative to the Deficit Model for Conceptualizing and Serving Students with Learning Disabilities. In Neuropsychology Review, 2005, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 97-103.

» Darling-Hammond, L., Wise, A., & Klein, S. ,1999. A license to teach: raising standards or teaching. San-Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

» Deno, S.L. Curriculum-based measurement. In Teaching Exceptional Children, 1987.vol. 20, p. 41.

» Fuchs, D., Mock, D., Morgan, P., & Young, C. Responsiveness-to-intervention: Definition, evidence, and implications for the learning disabilities construct. In Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 2003, vol. 18, pp. 157-171.

» Fuchs, L.S., & Deno, S.L. Paradigmatic distinctions between instructionally relevant measurement models. In Exceptional Children, 1991, vol. 57, pp. 488–500.

» Hale, J. B., Kaufman, A., Naglieri, J. A., & Kavale, K. A. Implementation of IDEA: Integration response to intervention and cognitive assessment methods. In Psychology in the Schools, 2006, vol. 43, pp. 753-770.

» Hintze, J. M., Theodore, T. J. Christ, Methe, S. A. Curriculum-based assessment, In Psychology in the Schools, 2006, vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 45-56.

» Huang, L V., Bardos, A. N., & D‘Amato, R. C.. Identifying students with Learning Disabilities: Composite Profile Analysis using the cognitive assessment system. In Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 2010, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 19-30.

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» Kaufman, A. S., & Lichtenberger, E. O. ,2000. Essentials of WIC-III and WPPSI- assessment. New York: John Wiley.

» Livock, P. (2006) Livock, C. A. Alternative schooling programs for at risk youth : three case studies. [QUT Thesis]

» Pimsleur, P. Language aptitude testing. In A. Davies (ed.) 1968, Language testing symposium: A psycholinguistic approach, pp. 98-106. London: Oxford University Press.

» Reschly, D. J., & Ysseldyke, J. E. Paradigm shift: The past is not the future. In A. Thomas, & J. Grimes (eds.), 2002. Best practices in school psychology IV, pp. 3-20. Bethesda, MD: The National Association of School Psychologists.

» Tilly, W. D., III, 2003. How many tiers are needed for successful prevention and early intervention? Heart-land Area Education Agency’s evolution from four to three tiers. Paper presented at the National Research Center on Learning Disabilities Responsiveness-to –intervention Symposium, Kansas City, MO.

» Timor, T. & Burton, N., 2006. School culture and climate in the context of inclusion of students with learning disabilities in mainstream secondary schools in Tel-Aviv,Israel. In International Journal of Inclusive Education, 2006, vol. 10, no. 6, pp. 495-510.

» Timor, T., and Burton, N.. Physical Inclusion yet Curriculum Exclusion? School Staff Perceptions of the Curriculum for Students with Learning Disabilities in Mainstream Secondary Schools in Tel Aviv, Israel, Electronic Journal for Inclusive Education, Winter/Spring 2007, volume. 2, no. 1,pp. 1-17 (article 7).

» Tomlinson, C. A., Brighton, C., Hertberg, H., Callahan, C. M., Moon, T. R., Brimijoin, K., Conover, L. A., & Reynolds, T. Differentiating Instruction in Response to Student Readiness, Interest, and Learning Profile in Academically Diverse Classrooms: A Review of Literature, In Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 2003, vol. 27, no. 2/3, pp. 119-145.

Tsafi Timor5 Anderson Street Tel-AvivIsrael 69107tsafit@bezeqint.net

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Raising Intercultural Awareness in Translator Training

Reviewed by Mária Kiššová

Elena Ciprianová – Martin Mačura – Michal Vančo: Interkultúrne dimenzie prekladu (Intercultural Dimensions of Translation). Nitra: UKF, 2012. ISBN 978-80-558-0095-0

Interkultúrne dimenzie prekladu (Intercultural Dimensions of Translation) is a practical course-book for students of translation studies. As the title suggests, the authors focus mainly on the intercultural reception of a translated text. They claim that in order to be an efficient translator, one must be equally aware of one’s own cultural background as well as of the culture of the translated text. This awareness can be developed only through the intense practice that should be included in a translator’s training. Ciprianová, Mačura and Vančo use an elective approach in their selection of texts, which also reflects their professional orientation and specialisation. The course-book thus makes use of discourse analysis, sociolinguistics and intercultural communication and its scope is based on Reiss’s typology of texts. In order to provide students with some background, the authors introduce significant terms related to the extratextual and intratextual factors of communication; they discuss the relation between the text and its cultural context and specific linguistic peculiarities which are connected with cultural awareness. The publication is divided into three

practical parts: centred specifically on informative, appellative and expressive texts. Activities included in the course-book are interdisciplinary and they are based on work with authentic texts in English (advertisements, newspaper articles, excerpts from literary works, etc.). Questions and tasks addressed to students focus on the juxtaposition of cultural artefacts and aim at the achievement of a complex development of students’ critical thinking. The publication inspires and motivates students to think about strategies and procedures and tries to show that the intercultural dimension of translation must be taken into account even in today’s globalised world, where cultural differences seem to be disappearing.

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How to Teach Efficient and Persuasive Communication

Reviewed by Mária Kiššová

Pavol Burcl: Professional English for Marketing Communication and Advertising. Volume I. Nitra: UKF, 2012. ISBN 978-80-558-0082-0

As Pavol Burcl explains in the introduction, the course-book Professional English for Marketing Communication and Advertising. Volume I. is aimed – first and foremost - at university students of marketing communication. The author makes use of his practice in teaching business and professional English at an academic level and this publication is based on his long-standing experience. The tasks, exercises and questions in the course-book had already been tested and proved efficient. Due to this reason also, his decision to prepare a complete set of useful tasks in a single volume is a very practical idea. The course-book is divided into ten major parts and includes chapters such as Finding the Customer, Marketing Tools, Presentation Skills and Doing Business and Negotiating. Burcl’s attempt is to provide students with a wide range of ideas and issues that feature in marketing communication discourse. The structure and the content of the course book imply how complex such discourse is. In order to be efficient and persuasive, one has to know, understand and reflect upon a spectrum of factors; including linguistic and extra-linguistic means of communication, presentation skills, psychological background and

cultural awareness. Pavol Burcl’s course book is student-friendly and offers several thought-provoking topics which students are likely to be interested in (e.g. conspiracy theories). Each part of the course-book finishes with questions for students that are reflective and also suggest some potential “dangers” and problems in professional communication. Professional English for Marketing Communication and Advertising. Volume I. can be used as a practical guide for students interested in or studying marketing communication but a few parts of the publication have relevance for a wider audience of students; for all who realise the significance of communication skills on the job market today and who would like to practise and improve their language skills and enhance their personal and professional preparation for their future specialised work.

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Subtitling Professionally: A Guide to More than SubtitlesMiroslav Pošta: Titulkujeme profesionálně [Subtitling Professionally]. Praha: Miroslav Pošta – Apostrof, 2011.

Reviewed by Emília Janecová

The publication by researcher and skilled subtitling practitioner Miroslav Pošta, Subtitling Professionally, is the very first publication engaging in subtitling practice in the context of the Czech Republic. The publication focuses on chosen aspects of audiovisual translation and subtitling and approaches the topics in a comprehensible and accessible way. As there’s no parallel to Pošta’s publication in the Slovak Republic either, it could well help and inspire a readership of researchers, scholars and practitioners of audiovisual translation and subtitling.

Miroslav Pošta approaches the subject from a practical point of view, neglecting the traditional theoretical standpoints regarding audiovisual translation as such and focusing on the analysis of particular situations related to translation and the elaboration of subtitles. The publication thus provides a survey of the particular aspects of subtitling in the 21st century concerning the professional, social, legislative and economic status of audiovisual translators in the Czech Republic and also within the wider European context. Subtitling Professionally unequivocally provides beneficial advice not only for training but also experienced translators. It deals with the peculiarities

of translation for subtitles, covering all phases of their elaboration – translation of dialogues, condensation of the text, timing, and significant formal and linguistic conventions within specific types of audiovisual works (film, drama, opera, etc.). These are later expanded upon in a section of interviews with distinguished practitioners from the field of audiovisual translation, such as Dana Hábová, Jiří Josek, Zuzana Josková, Andrea Svobodová and the Slovak fansubber known as Larelay.

The contribution of the publication might be seen in numerous ways. Firstly, being a pioneer publication of its type, it collects the knowledge on main aspects of audiovisual translation and subtitling and supplements the traditional theory with up-to-date information. Secondly, it introduces the most current practical issues related not only to the translation and elaboration of subtitles themselves but also particular profession-related problems and situations, which may be useful for both novice and experienced translator alike. Moreover, the book could be used as teaching and study material, not only for translation studies specialisations but also for teaching programmes using subtitling as a new method of foreign language teaching.

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Ulpan is Her Name

Reviewed by Gulnara Dossybayeva

Gabit Musrepov: Улпан ее имя. (Ulpan is her name), Nitra: UKF, 2012.

The life of Kazakh women and their fight for positions in society has been long and difficult and sometimes even dramatic. As Gabit Musrepov shows in his book Улпан ее имя (Ulpan is Her Name), women have had to face many difficulties – the immense influence of old traditions, conservatism, unwillingness to accept new and modern, human greediness, inhumanity and cruelty.

The book focuses on the period between the late 19th and early 20th century in a Kazakh village in the north of Kazakhstan. It starts with the description of a very influential man at that time, whose name was Esenei and who was in his sixties. He was among the richest and most famous people in the region of northern Kazakhstan. He owned thousands of horses which was the main indicator of prosperity and wealth at that time. Kazakh people lived a nomadic way of life then, they moved within the huge territory of Kazakhstan from one place to another in search of better grassland for their numerous horses. Esenei had many luxurious portable houses, which were called юрта (yurta). They were easily constructed, warm in winter and cool in the hot summer. Kazakhs carried them by horse-drawn cart.

He was rich and many poor people from the same clan lived and worked

for him. But he was not only rich, he was also clever and wise and, of course, he had many enemies, envious persons, and only a few reliable and faithful friends. He had only one dream – to have an heir, because two of his sons had died in one day, and his wife had stopped giving birth to children 20 years previously. And at that time a wealthy Kazakh man could have up to four wives, but he had to provide for all of them.

The following chapters of the book Улпан ее имя (Ulpan is Her Name) depict his meeting the heroine of the book, Ulpan. She was only 18, cheerful, sincere and generous. And he fell in love with her. She was the very woman he had dreamed about, because his first wife was cold and slanderous and after their two sons had died they separated. He had been living alone for seven years and tried not to see his first wife. He was busy with his business, entertainments and fighting with enemies for power and wealth. But a problem appeared. A strange Kazakh custom, as the author says, somebody had already asked for Ulpan’s hand in marriage when she was a child and paid a lot of money to her parents. The author in the following chapters presents the events connected with the attempts of Esenei to win the heroine’s heart and to liquidate her

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loveless groom. Esenei was generous; he tried to win her attention and he won; she fell in love with him.

The following chapters of the book focus on Ulpan’s new life and on her new status. The author presents the wider context and also mentions Ulpan’s perception of a rich and unknown life: a road, Russian houses, European clothes, Russian so-called “баня”, carriages… the author describes her attempts to implant all these innovations in the life of her clan.

Subsequent pages are devoted to their mutual life: she was tender and powerful, naughty and stubborn with him “My tiger, my guy”. And Esenei, who was pleased with his wealth, his inexhaustible love of power, had the arrogant behaviour of a hero; he was happy. Further chapters present events in their life: the birth of a daughter, happiness. But suddenly Esenei became paralysed because his brother hit him with a heavy stick. For many years he was paralysed and Ulpan became the head of the whole clan with a lot of wealth.

Later chapters present her life, and how she could manage the whole clan. She helped all members of the clan in those hungry and difficult times. She gave them food, clothes and supported all poor members of her clan. And they respected her. The last chapters are about her husband’s death, her daughter’s unhappy marriage and her daughter’s death, her son-in-law’s betrayal and her life in a small house for poor relatives. Her son-in-law drove her out from her rich house. She stayed alone, in poverty. No hopes, no dreams. And she made a decision. She used a poison that she had

picked out from her paralysed husband.Gabit Musrepov’s book shows that

women faced a lot of happiness and a lot of difficulties. She was so progressive in those years. She was the very first woman who opened and implemented innovations in the hard Kazakh life of that time. Her life was dramatic and full of tragedy, and at the same time even now people remember those events. And the author showed Ulpan’s son-in-law in loneliness; his sons had left him, they died in poverty and Ulpan’s big house was left abandoned. This is the example of the confirmation of the old proverb that evil is punished. And it really is so.