English Language Teaching in its Social Context
English Language Teaching in its Social Context
English Language Teaching in its Social Context
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THE SOCIAL CONTEXT FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING 123event with the aim of <strong>in</strong>fluenc<strong>in</strong>g psychological development. The teacher is obligedcont<strong>in</strong>ually to <strong>in</strong>tegrate the learn<strong>in</strong>g experiences of <strong>in</strong>dividuals with the collective andcommunal activities of a group of which, unlike the researcher, he is not an outsider. Theresearcher enters the classroom when a genu<strong>in</strong>e sociocognitive experiment is already wellunder way. In evaluat<strong>in</strong>g the f<strong>in</strong>d<strong>in</strong>gs of research, because of abstraction from the daily lifeof the class, we need to discover and make clear for ourselves the particular perceptions of aclassroom which we, as researchers, hold either before we enter it or subsequent to thecollection of our data. It is a truism of social anthropology that no human social <strong>in</strong>stitutionsor relationships can be adequately understood unless account is taken of the expectations,values, and beliefs that they engage. This is no less true of the <strong>in</strong>stitution of research. Thedef<strong>in</strong>ition of the classroom situation that we hold will <strong>in</strong>fluence how we perceive theclassroom group and how we might act with<strong>in</strong> it, and this is as unavoidable for the researcheras it is for a teacher or a learner. One of the paradoxes of research is to challenge taken-forgrantedbeliefs whilst, at the same time, cl<strong>in</strong>g<strong>in</strong>g to beliefs which susta<strong>in</strong> the rescarchendeavour. Belief allows the researcher (and many teachers and learners) to take for grantedthe capacity of a classroom to metamorphose <strong>in</strong>structional <strong>in</strong>puts <strong>in</strong>to learn<strong>in</strong>g outcomes.Is there psychological proof for this relationship between teach<strong>in</strong>g and learn<strong>in</strong>g, or is it abelief susta<strong>in</strong>ed primarily by the social purpose that we <strong>in</strong>vest <strong>in</strong> a gather<strong>in</strong>g of teacher andtaught?Can we detect particular def<strong>in</strong>itions of the classroom situation with<strong>in</strong> current languagelearn<strong>in</strong>g research? What metaphors for a classroom are available to us as researchers atpresent? I wish to explore two metaphors for the classroom that emerge from two recentand <strong>in</strong>fluential rcscarch traditions. I am conscious that there may be as many metaphorsfor the classroom as there are researchers <strong>in</strong> language learn<strong>in</strong>g. But I have to be brief and Iam encouraged to generalise here by the tendency of researchers to seek security aroundparticular dom<strong>in</strong>ant paradigms or ways of see<strong>in</strong>g. ’ One prevail<strong>in</strong>g metaphor is the classroomas experimental laboratory, and another, more recently emergent, is the classroom asdiscourse. I will briefly explore both.The classroom as experimental laboratoryWe are encouraged to regard the classroom as experimental laboratory by the area of theoryand research known as Second <strong>Language</strong> Acquisition (SLA). Its tradition can be traced backto studies <strong>in</strong> first language acquisition, through <strong>in</strong>vestigation of the natural order ofacquisition of certa<strong>in</strong> grammatical morphemes, through the comprehensive theoricsof Krashen, and up to the recent flower<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> the identification of learner strategies fromretrospective accounts offered by <strong>in</strong>dividual learners - either verbally or with<strong>in</strong> learn<strong>in</strong>gdiaries. The primary function of the language classroom as implied or sometimes directlyrecommended by SLA research is that the learner, by be<strong>in</strong>g placed <strong>in</strong> a classroom, can beexposed to a certa<strong>in</strong> k<strong>in</strong>d of l<strong>in</strong>guistic <strong>in</strong>put which may be shown to correlate with certa<strong>in</strong>desirable learn<strong>in</strong>g outcomes. Here, the value and purpose of the classroom is <strong>its</strong> potentialto provide l<strong>in</strong>guistic data that are f<strong>in</strong>ely tuned for the efficient process<strong>in</strong>g of new knowledge;classrooms can wash learners with optimal <strong>in</strong>put. Researchers’ more recent <strong>in</strong>ferences fromlearners’ accounts of their own strategies encourage us to deduce further that the classroomis a place <strong>in</strong> which we might re<strong>in</strong>force good language-learn<strong>in</strong>g strategies so that the <strong>in</strong>putbecomes unavoidably optimal. As thc ma<strong>in</strong>stream of SLA rcsearch rests on the assumptionthat the comprehension of <strong>in</strong>put is the catalyst of language development, it implies arole for the teacher that is delimited yet complex. In essence, either the teacher must