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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LANGUAGE FOR TEACHING A LANGUAGE 251They comment that ‘direct translation was comparatively rare; the general effect was of aspirall<strong>in</strong>g and apparently haphazard recycl<strong>in</strong>g of content, which on closer exam<strong>in</strong>ationproved to be more organised than it appeared.’ (1 987, p 106). The implication here is thatsuch teachers are pursu<strong>in</strong>g the familiar task of guid<strong>in</strong>g children’s understand<strong>in</strong>g ofcurriculum content through language, but us<strong>in</strong>g special bil<strong>in</strong>gual techniques to do so.An <strong>in</strong>terest<strong>in</strong>g study of code-switch<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> bil<strong>in</strong>gual classrooms <strong>in</strong> Malta was carried outby Anto<strong>in</strong>ette Camilleri (1 994). She showed that code-switch<strong>in</strong>g was used as a teach<strong>in</strong>gtechnique by teachers <strong>in</strong> a variety of ways. Look for example at these two extracts from thetalk of a teacher <strong>in</strong> a secondary school lesson about the production and use of wool, andbased on a textbook written <strong>in</strong> <strong>English</strong>. The teacher beg<strong>in</strong>s by read<strong>in</strong>g part of the text (Atranslation oftalk <strong>in</strong> Maltese is given <strong>in</strong> the right hand column)Sequence 7:WoolExtract 1England Australia New Zealand andArgent<strong>in</strong>a are the best producers of wooldawk l-aktar li gfiandhom farms li jrabbu n-nagfiaggfios-suf 0. K. Englandtgfiiduli m<strong>in</strong>n licma post Englandgfiandhom Scotland magfiruJ<strong>in</strong> tantgfiall-wool u gersijict tagfihom O.K.Extract 2wool issa it does not crease but it has to bewashed with care issa d<strong>in</strong> importantima gfiidtilkomx illi jekk ikolli nara xagfira jewsufa wafida under the microscope ghandhaqisha fiaJno scales tal. fiuta issa jekk ma nafislux sewwa dawk 1-iscales jitgfiaqqdu go xulx<strong>in</strong>u <strong>in</strong>dafifi gersi daqshekk 801- wash<strong>in</strong>g’mach<strong>in</strong>e u nofiorgu daqshekk gfiax jixxr<strong>in</strong>kjaliu jitgfiaqqad kolluthey have the largest number of farmsand the largest number of sheep for woolO.K. England where <strong>in</strong> England we reallymean Scotland they are very well-knownfor their woollen productsnow this is important didn’t I tell you thatif I had a look at a s<strong>in</strong>gle hair or fibreit has many scales which if not washedproperly get entangled and I put a jerseythis size <strong>in</strong>to the wash<strong>in</strong>g mach<strong>in</strong>e and itcomes out this size because it shr<strong>in</strong>ks andgcts entangled(Adapted from Camilleri, 1994)Camilleri notes that the first extract shows the teacher us<strong>in</strong>g the switch from <strong>English</strong> toMaltese to expand or ampltfv the po<strong>in</strong>t be<strong>in</strong>g made, rather than simply repeat it <strong>in</strong>translation. In the second extract, she expla<strong>in</strong>s the <strong>English</strong> statement <strong>in</strong> Maltese, aga<strong>in</strong>avoid<strong>in</strong>g direct translation. Camilleri comments that the lesson therefore is a particular k<strong>in</strong>dof literacy event, <strong>in</strong> which these are ‘two parallel discourses ~ the written one <strong>in</strong> <strong>English</strong>,the spoken one <strong>in</strong> Maltese’ (p 12).Studies of code-switch<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> classrooms have revealed a variety of patterns of bil<strong>in</strong>gualuse (Martyn-Jones, 1995). For example, Zentella (1981) observed and recorded events <strong>in</strong>two bil<strong>in</strong>gual classes <strong>in</strong> NewYork schools, one a first grade class (<strong>in</strong> which the children wereabout six years old) and the other a sixth grade (<strong>in</strong> which the average age would be about12). The pupils and tcachers were all native Spanish speakers, of Puerto Rican orig<strong>in</strong>, butthe official medium for classroom education was <strong>English</strong>. One of the focuses of her analysisof teacher-pupil <strong>in</strong>teractions was IRF sequences. Both Spanish and <strong>English</strong> were actually