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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218 A. SURESH CANAGARAJAH(c)(d)(e)(f)(g)(h)(i)(j)Teacher: Army? What makes you say that?Shanthi: He is wear<strong>in</strong>g a uniform.Teacher: Well. . . Indran?Indran: He is <strong>in</strong> the hospital. . . . He is seated on a bed.Teacher: But what about the bars? . . . Don’t you see the bars? He is actually <strong>in</strong>prison.Shanthi: Okay, but he is wear<strong>in</strong>g good clothes. He is wear<strong>in</strong>g shoes.Indran: And he is said to bc go<strong>in</strong>g to the library and hav<strong>in</strong>g regular meals. . . . Andhe is seated alone <strong>in</strong> the room.Teacher: (Expla<strong>in</strong>s <strong>in</strong> detail the difference between prison life <strong>in</strong> Sri Lanka and theUS.)The students’ image of prison life as overcrowded, dirty, and more repressive (basedon Sri Lankan conditions) <strong>in</strong>terferes with their <strong>in</strong>terpretation. The other situations visuallyrepresented, such as an orchestra play<strong>in</strong>g, air travel, department store shopp<strong>in</strong>g, andapartment liv<strong>in</strong>g, also confused the students. Such cultural estrangement created anadditional layer of problems to the l<strong>in</strong>guistic ones students were already confronted with.Other tensions <strong>in</strong> the course resulted from the styles of learn<strong>in</strong>g desired by the students.The students seemed uncomfortable with a collaborative approach to learn<strong>in</strong>g whenever itwas encouraged. Because the textbook specified pairwork occasionally, and I myself wantedto create more l<strong>in</strong>guistic <strong>in</strong>teraction among students, I <strong>in</strong>sisted that the desks be arranged <strong>in</strong>a circle. But before each class, the students rearranged the desks <strong>in</strong>to a traditional lecturcroomformat, with the teacher’s desk <strong>in</strong> front of the room and their own <strong>in</strong> hori7ontal rows.Thus, students m<strong>in</strong>imi7ed <strong>in</strong>teraction among themselves and failed to take <strong>in</strong>itiative <strong>in</strong> theflow of classroom discourse. As the conversation cited above suggests, typical <strong>in</strong>teractionsfollow the features of traditional teacher-centered classroom discourse (see Mehan, 1985;Stubbs, 1976), <strong>in</strong> which the teacher regulates and dom<strong>in</strong>ates talk. Turn tak<strong>in</strong>g follows thetripartite Structure of Question (see Turn a above), Answer (Turn b), and Evaluation(Turn c); such sequences follow <strong>in</strong> c-tlx, e-f-g.Turns for students arc assigned by the teacher(seeTurns a and e); for each s<strong>in</strong>gle turn by the student, the teacher takes two, thus dom<strong>in</strong>at<strong>in</strong>gthe quantity of talk. The questions asked are display questions for which the teacher alreadyknows the answer. In a quite atypical move here, Shanthi and Indran attempt to contradictthe teacher’s explanation; significantly, these were not framed as questions but simply as casualasides. It was only Supendran who asked for clarifications or challenged my explanations moreexplicitly. For most of the time, the rest preferred to sit, pen <strong>in</strong> hand, and write down whateverwas on the board or simply listen to the teacher’s lccture (as <strong>in</strong>Turn j). Ironically, one of theglosses above an <strong>in</strong>teractive pair-work exercise said, “This is a job for the jobless.”Accompany<strong>in</strong>g this desire for teacher-centered learn<strong>in</strong>g, students made learn<strong>in</strong>g aproduct rather than process. Students expected to be provided with the abstract forms andrules of language deductively or prescriptively for them to store <strong>in</strong> memory rather than to<strong>in</strong>ductively formulate the rules for themselves through active use of the language <strong>in</strong>communicative <strong>in</strong>teractions. Disregard<strong>in</strong>g activities, students demanded notes. Whenevercharts or grammatical paradigms were presented, the students eagerly wrote them down.They demanded more written work rather than speech or listen<strong>in</strong>g exercises because theyfelt that they could reta<strong>in</strong> it for personal study and revision before tests. My diary recordsmuch time taken <strong>in</strong> discuss<strong>in</strong>g the importance of“use rather than rules.”But the slogan failedto create changes <strong>in</strong> their attitude. Gradually students noted my practice of reserv<strong>in</strong>g the2-hr classes for activities and 1 -hr slots for the more overtly grammar-oriented sectionsof the textbook and attended the latter while cutt<strong>in</strong>g the former.