English Language Teaching in its Social Context

6 INTRODUCTIONcould be used by adult sccond language learners at the beginning stages of learning a secondlanguage. Of particular interest in the paper is her exposition of what she and her colleaguesrefer to as the ‘teaching-learning cycle’.We have emphasized the importance to our understanding of sccond language learningof exploring the socio-cultural contexts of learning inside and outside the classroom. Thishas been and is a core theme of many papers in this book.There has, howevcr, been a tacitassumption, though perhaps not so much in the paper by Roberts earlier, that such contextscalled up differentiated, but essentially cooperative learners.That this may not be so, and oftenis not so, is the theme of the two final papers in this second section of the book, those bySuresh Canagarajah and Keith Chick. Both paperr focus on the degree to which externalsocio-cultural factors, and learncrs’ self-perceptions of their identities as learners of English,affect what they do in class, and what they are prepared to do in class, and thus ultimatelyimpinge on their second language learning performance. In particular, the papers identifyprocesses of learners’ resistance, in the case ofcanagarajah, and in the case of Chick, learners’and tcachers’ collusion to frustrate the succcssful implementation of particular methodologiesconsidercd as imported and as culturally alien. Such issues have recently taken on considerableimportance in discussions of the cultural appropriateness of some English languageteaching. Both these papers have another significance, howevcr, one which relates to Ellis’earlier accounts of researching language learning. Thc papers are valuable not only for theirinnovative re-examination of the goals and practices of language teaching, but also for theirclear and detailed accounting of a critical ethnographic research methodology intended tobe revelatory not only of the goings-on of classrooms but more deeply explanatory of theway in which the learning and teaching of English in particular is deeply embedded in thepolitical, social and educational fabric of post-colonial societies. Once again they reinforceour view that the beliefs and ideologies of teachcrs about all aspects of thcir subject-matterand their practice have a profound cffect on the planning and the moment-by-momentdecisions thcy take in class.To rcfcr to these latter as intuitive, or personal, downplays boththeir effect and our capacity to explore thcir underpinnings.That these are dceply engenderedby the social contexualization of learning and teaching, and the educational, social andpolitical contexts of classroom practice can, after reading thcse latter papers, hardly be indoubt.Analysing teaching and learningThe importance of the analysis of the interactions among learners and between learnersand teachers to an understanding of the processes of language learning has been a centralpart of the argument of this book. Exploring these relationships has been both the provinceof researchers as well as of teachers, and several papers in this collection have argued fora closer link between them, given the tendency for both ‘cultures’ to be separate. Part ofthis distancing has been due to the difficulty of making the results of research necessarily anddirectly applicable to changes in classroom practice, or to the design and delivery of innovativeteaching and learning materials. Nonethclcss, there are stutlicr of classroom behaviourwhich can help teachers conceptualize those factors which influence life in classrooms,directed at exploring the dual nature of classroom lessons, as pedagogic and as social events.The paper by Michael Breen, cited above, emphasiyes this social and interactional naturc oflanguage Icarning.Influential in this context is the work of the Russian sociocultural psychologist LevVygotsky. Ccntral tovygotskyb thcories about lcarning is the place accorded to languagc as