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 DEVELOPMENT OF EFL METHODOLOGY 153<strong>in</strong>dependence and the development of the learner’s own facility to assess correctness. Thesegoals are typical of modern language methodologies; it is the way they are to be achievedthat is unique. The roles of teachers and learners are the key to this.Teachers, although silent much of the time, should be constantly monitor<strong>in</strong>g thelearners as learners’ errors are used to shape future <strong>in</strong>put. Learners are expected to beresponsible for their own learn<strong>in</strong>g, to make their own generalisations from the languagepresented to them and to self-assess their own output. Peer correction is encouraged, solearners are expected to becomc comfortable with each other. It is also thought that learnerscan ‘learn’ what thcy have been exposed to while they are sleep<strong>in</strong>g.Silent Way lessons are characterised by the use of Cuisenaire rods (coloured woodenrods of different lengths), Fidel charts (colour-coded pronunciation charts), vocabularycharts and the fact that the teacher is silent whenever possible. Typically, the teacher willmodel an utterance us<strong>in</strong>g the rods and charts and elicit student responses to it, which theteacher will accept or ask to be rephrased.The Silent Way takes an essentially traditional structural view of language. It does,however, see the spoken language as paramount. Read<strong>in</strong>g and writ<strong>in</strong>g are not explicitlytaught, but are seen to follow from the spoken language.Community <strong>Language</strong> Learn<strong>in</strong>gCommunity <strong>Language</strong> Learn<strong>in</strong>g (CLL) is the name given to a teach<strong>in</strong>g methodologydeveloped by Charles Curran <strong>in</strong> the 1970s based on psychological counsell<strong>in</strong>g techniques(Curran 1972, 1976).The teacher acts as thc ‘counsellor’, and the learners are the ‘clients’.In practice this means that the teacher provides a translation of what the learners wish tosay from their L1 to the target language, thus allow<strong>in</strong>g the learners to <strong>in</strong>teract us<strong>in</strong>g thetarget language. Dialogues developed <strong>in</strong> this way then form the basis for furthcr study.It is a crucial part of the teacher’s job to create an unthreaten<strong>in</strong>g supportive atmospherewith<strong>in</strong> the classroom as this is seen to be crucial for successful learn<strong>in</strong>g. In addition,teacher-learner <strong>in</strong>teraction should not be limited to the exchange of ‘<strong>in</strong>formation’ butshould <strong>in</strong>clude the discussion of the learners’ feel<strong>in</strong>gs about the learn<strong>in</strong>g process. Thisrelationship has been compared to that of a parent help<strong>in</strong>g a child atta<strong>in</strong> greater levels of<strong>in</strong>dependence (Richards and Rogers 1986).The desired outcome of CLL is not only that thc learner should be able to communicate<strong>in</strong> the target language, but also that he/she should learn about his/her own learn<strong>in</strong>g andtake <strong>in</strong>creas<strong>in</strong>g responsibility for it (Larsen-Freeman 1986).Initially CLL was not based on any new theories of language; La Forge, Curran’ssuccessor <strong>in</strong> promot<strong>in</strong>g CLL, saw the learners’ job as be<strong>in</strong>g to master the sound andgrammatical systems of the language (La Forge 1983), which suggests a traditional structuralsyllabus. However, he later went on to suggest a theory of language which sees language asa social process.This seems more consistent with the wider foundations of CLL as it focuseson the <strong>in</strong>teractional nature of language, someth<strong>in</strong>g mentioned earlier by Curran but notexpanded upon.SuggestopediaSuggestopedia, the system espoused by Gcorgi Lozanov, is perhaps the best-knownhumanistic method due to the media <strong>in</strong>terest it attracted and the extent of the claims madeby <strong>its</strong> proponents (Lozanov 1978). It is famous for <strong>its</strong> use of music to create a nonthreaten<strong>in</strong>gatmosphere conducive to learn<strong>in</strong>g.