English Language Teaching in its Social Context

~ (1~ (1984a)~ (1984b)~ (1984)THE SOCIAL CONTEXT FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING 1411516The more explicit involvement of learners is considered in Breen (1983), whilst syllabusplanning through shared decision making is discussed in Breen (1 984).This implies that my proposals for the researcher may also be directly relevant to theteaching-learning process itself. If the culture of the group is explicitly mobilised forsharing decisions and for reflective investigation, then the generalisability of what maybe derived from that classroom may seem to be undermined. But more may be gainedfrom participatory research than might be lost. We have failed, as yet, to discover actualrelationships between the classroom situation and language learning. We simply do notknow what the classroom contributes to the developmental process. Research whichimplies that phenomena unique to classrooms must be the contributions to learningwhich only classrooms can offer is trapped in its own circularity. Objective investigations- through discourse analysis or the quantification of selected variables of classroom life,for example - represent little more than a researcher’s inferencing and, thereby, remainonly relativcly objective.Yet we cling onto a faith in the chasteness of neutral impartialitywhich is assumed to be synonymous with non-participant data collection and analysis.Validity of classroom data and its interpretation demands direct teacher-learnerintervention in the research process, whilst the researcher can facilitate their explorationby contributing rigourous and established research methods and criteria.Sapir (1 949: 97), my emphasis.ReferencesAllwright, R.L. (1982) Interactive workfor input in the language classroom. Keynote paper at theSecond Language Research Forum, Los Angeles.983) ‘Classroom-centered research on language teaching and learning: A briefhistorical overview’ TESOL Quarterly 17: 191-204.‘The importance of interaction in classroom language learning’ Applied Linguistics5: 156-71.Making sense of classroom instruction. Presentation at the Symposium onClassroom-centred Research, AILA 7th World Congress, Brussels.Bailey, K., Long, M.H. and Peck, S. (eds) (1984) Second language acquisition studies. Rowley,MA: Newbury House.Beattie, J. (1964) Other cultures: Aims, methods and achievements in social anthropology. London:Routledge and Kegan Paul.Berger, P. and Luckmann,T. (1966) The social construction ofreality. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Bonamy, D. (1984) ‘Perceptions of saliency in a language classroom’. Unpublished M.A. thesis.University of Lancaster.Breen, M.P. (1982) ‘Authenticity in the language classroom’. Bulletin ofthe Canadian AssociationofApplied Linguistics (ACLA) 4: 7-23.~- (1983) ‘How would we recognise a communicative classroom?’, in B. Coffey (ed.) Teachertraining and the curriculum, pp. 132-54. London:The British Council.‘Process syllabuses for the language classroom’, in C.J. Brumfit (ed.) GeneralEnglish syllabus design, pp. 47-60. Oxford: Pergamon Press/The British Council.Cherchalli, S. (1984) Asking learners about language learning. Presentation at the Symposium onClassroom Research, University of Lancaster.Cicourel, A.V. (1973) Cognitive sociology. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Cohen, A.D. and Hosenfeld, C. (1981) ‘Some uses of mentalistic data in second languageresearch’. Language Learning 31 : 285-3 13.Cohen, L. and Manion, L. (1981) Perspectives on classrooms and schools. London: Holt, Rinehartand Winston.