English Language Teaching in its Social Context

172 JACK C. RICHARDSinformation, and construct new concepts” (p. 4). Furthermore, to be functionally proficientin the classroom, the student must be able to utili7e these compctences to perform threemajor functions: (a) to decode and understand both task expectations and new information;(b) to engage appropriately in completing tasks, with high accuracy; and (c) to obtainaccurate feedback with relation to completing tasks accurately (p. 5).In his Significant Bilingual Instructional Features (SBIF) descriptive study, Tikunoff(1 983) collected data to find out how effective teachers in bilingual education programsorganize instruction, structure teaching activities, and enhance student performance ontasks. Teachers were interviewed to determine their instructional philosophies, goals, andthe demands they would structure into class tasks. Teachers were clearly able to specify classtask demands and intended outcomes and to indicate what LEP students had to do to befunctionally proficient. Case studies of teachers were undertaken in which teachers wereobserved during instruction, with three observers collecting data for the teacher and forfour target LEP students. Teachers were interviewed again after instruction.An analysis of data across the case studies revealed a clear linkage between (1) teachers’ability to clearly specify the intent of instruction, and a belief that students couldachieve accuracy in instructional tasks, (2) the organization and delivery of instructionsuch that tasks and institutional demands reflected this intent, requiring intendedstudent responses, and (3) the fidelity of student eonsequences with intendedoutcomes. In other words, teachers were able to describe clearly what instructionwould entail, to operationalize these specifications, and to produce the desired resultsin terms of student performance. (p. 9)This approach to teaching is one in which methodological principles are developed fromstudying the classroom practices and processes actually cmployed by effective teachers.Good teaching is not viewed as something that results from using Method X or MethodY,or something that results from the teacher modifying teaching behaviors to match someexternal sct of rules and principles. Rather, it results from the teacher’s active control andmanagement of the processes of teaching, learning, and communication within the classroomand from an understanding of these processes.The classroom is seen as a place where thereis ongoing and dynamic interaction between the teacher’s instructional goals, learners’purposes, classroom tasks and activities, the teacher’s instructional activities and behaviors,student behaviors in completing assigned tasks, and learning outcomes.In the bilingual classrooms observed in Tikunoff’s study, effective teaching was foundto reflect the degree to which the teacher is able to successfully communicate his or herintentions, maintain students’ engagement in instructional tasks, and monitor students’performance on tasks. In classrooms where different instructional goals are present anddifferent aspects of second language proficiency arc being addressed, the characteristics ofeffective teaching in those settings cannot be inferred merely from reading about thetheoretical principles underlying the method or approach the teacher is supposed to befollowing. Rather, classroom observation of teachers who arc achieving higher-thanpredictedlevels of achievement in their learners, or who are assessed as performing at highlevels of effectiveness according to other criteria, provides the data from which profiles ofeffective teachers in listening, reading, writing, speaking, and other kinds of classes can bedeveloped.