English Language Teaching in its Social Context

BEYOND METHODS 171taking breaks, lining up, distributing books, homework, and making arrangements for futureevents. Students in Teacher B’s class, however, are actively involved in reading for only55% of the lesson. Not surprisingly, studies of time-on-task have found that the more timestudents spend studying content, the better they learn it. In one study (Stallings andKaskowitz 1974), the students with the highest levels of achievement in a reading programwere spending about 50% more time actively engaged in reading activities than the childrenwith the lowest achievement gains. Good teaching is hence said to be task oriented. Effectiveteachers also monitor performance on tasks, providing feedback on how well tasks havebeen completed.GroupingA related dimension of effective teachng is the groupinj of learners to carry out instructionaltasks, and the relation between grouping arrangement and achievement. An effective teacherunderstands how different kinds of grouping (such as seat work, pair work, discussion,reading circle, or lecture) can impede or promote learning. Webb (1 980) found that themiddle-ability child suffers a loss of achievement, while the low-ability child shows somegains in achievement in mixed-ability groups, compared with what would be expectedif both were in uniform-ability groups. Tikunoff (1985) cites Good and Marshall’s findingson groupings.Good and Marshall (1984) found that students in low-ability reading groups in theearly grades received very little challenge, thus perceiving of themselves as unable toread. In addition, a long-range result of interacting most frequently with only otherstudents of low-ability in such groups was an inability to respond to the demands ofmore complex instructional activities. Ironically, Good pointed out that the verystrategy used to presumably help low-ability youngsters with their reading problems- pull-out programs in which teachers worked with small groups of these studentsoutside the regular classroom ~ exacerbated the problem. Demands in the specialreading groups were very different from those in the regular classroom and at a muchlower level of complexity, so low-ability students were not learning to respond tohigh level demands that would help them participate competently in their regularclassrooms. (p. 56)The research findings suggest therefore that effective teaching depends on such factorsas time-on-task, feedback, grouping and task decisions, classroom management, andstructuring. Although the concept of effective teaching evolved from studies of contentteaching,Tikunoff’s (1 98 3) major study of effective teaching in bilingual education programshas examined the extent to which it also applies to other contexts, such as bilingual andESL classrooms.Ejective teaching in hilingual classroomsTikunoff (1983) suggests that three kinds of competence are needed for the studentof limited English proficiency (LEP): participative competence, the ability “to respondappropriately to class demands and the procedural rules for accomplishing them” (p. 4);interactional competence, the ability “to respond both to classroom rules of discourse and socialrules of discourse, interacting appropriately with peers and adults while accomplishing classtasks” (p. 4); and academic competence, the ability “to acquire new skills, assimilate new