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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SAFE-TALI< 237junior primary schools. They also found that there was also a very large gap between thishypothesised optimal competence and the level of competence students actually reached.They estimated, for example, that the vocabulary requirements <strong>in</strong> <strong>English</strong> <strong>in</strong>creased by1000% <strong>in</strong> the fourth year of school<strong>in</strong>g. They calculated that a student who had learntoptimally from the ESL materials <strong>in</strong> the junior primary phase might have encountered notmore than half the vocabulary, and might have been unfamiliar with syntactic elements <strong>in</strong>up to 60% of sentences <strong>in</strong> science textbooks used <strong>in</strong> the fourth year of school<strong>in</strong>g. Moreoverthey might have been so ignorant of the conventions of expository writ<strong>in</strong>g as to experiencewhat is referred to as ‘register shock’ when read<strong>in</strong>g those texts.As a consequence, the fourth year of school<strong>in</strong>g was a time of trauma for both teachersand students; a trauma reflected <strong>in</strong> the high drop-out rate <strong>in</strong> black schools at the end of thatyear (64, 100 or 8.9% of the total outflow <strong>in</strong> 1987 accord<strong>in</strong>g to the SAIRR Report1988 /89). The researchers found that the effect of those conditions was what they termed‘the loss of mean<strong>in</strong>g’. ‘The children are likely to be alienated by what they have to learn,and only dimly perceive the implications and l<strong>in</strong>kages between the concepts they arepresented with’ (MacDonald 1990: 141). Faced with these odds, teachers tended to resortto provid<strong>in</strong>g notes that the students were required to memorise. This gave the impressionof real learn<strong>in</strong>g tak<strong>in</strong>g place, but as MacDonald (1 990: 143) po<strong>in</strong>ts out, the students oftenlearnt what they did not understand, and were usually unable to use what they had learntbecause this mode of education did not allow the <strong>in</strong>tegration of new <strong>in</strong>formation with whathad been learnt before.A re<strong>in</strong>terpretation: safe-talk as the outcome of collusion betweenteachers and studentsReexam<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>g my micro-ethnographic analysis of the episode <strong>in</strong> a mathematics lesson <strong>in</strong> aKwaZulu classroom, I was struck by the similarity between MacDonald’s account of theteachers’ response to the trauma experienced <strong>in</strong> the early years of senior primary school<strong>in</strong>gand my <strong>in</strong>terpretation of the <strong>in</strong>teractional behaviour <strong>in</strong> the episode as ‘safe-talk’.My th<strong>in</strong>k<strong>in</strong>g was also strongly <strong>in</strong>fluenced by two studies that attempt to trace therelationship between the structure of classroom discourse and the macro context <strong>in</strong> whichit occurs, <strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g the ideologies that are promoted <strong>in</strong> them. In the first of these studies,Coll<strong>in</strong>s (1 987) argues that the ideology of ability group<strong>in</strong>g promoted <strong>in</strong> school systems <strong>in</strong>the United States leads students <strong>in</strong> low ability groups and their teachers to socialise oneanother <strong>in</strong>to systematic departures from the norms of classroom discourse. Behaviourconsistent with these ‘emergent’ norms (see Mchan 1979: 90) <strong>in</strong>terferes with the read<strong>in</strong>gpractice which members of these groups so badly need. Coll<strong>in</strong>s argues, further, that theideology of prescriptivism also promoted <strong>in</strong> the United States school system results <strong>in</strong>evaluation be<strong>in</strong>g made on the basis of cultural background rathcr than on academic aptitude.This leads to the systematic exclusion of m<strong>in</strong>ority students from opportunities to learn andpractise forms of literary discourse.In the second of these studies, McDcrmott and Tylbor (1 987) analyse an episode <strong>in</strong>which teachers and students do <strong>in</strong>teractional work to make the illiteracy of one of thestudents, Rosa, not noticeable. In the process Rosa does not get a turn to practise herread<strong>in</strong>g. They show that while evaluation is constantly tak<strong>in</strong>g place, teachers and studentscollude <strong>in</strong> evaluat<strong>in</strong>g overtly only when the evaluation is positive, while, at the same time,mak<strong>in</strong>g covert, unspoken, negative evaluations. Such collusion hides the unpleasant fact thatschool<strong>in</strong>g is structured <strong>in</strong> such a way as to provide access to opportunities for learn<strong>in</strong>g forsome students and to denv it to others.