English Language Teaching in its Social Context

290 ASSIA SLIMANIMethodUptakeThe procedure developed to collect the learners’ claims about uptake was to distributc aquestionnaire or ‘Uptake Recall Chart’ at the end of every observed lesson, askinginformants to relate, in terms of grammar, words and expressions, pronunciation andspelling, and in as much detail as possible what points they recalled in the events that hadjust preceded (see Appendix 1 in this chapter for the original layout of the Uptake RecallChart). After approximately three hours (before too much had happened to them, but afterenough had happened to counter immediate recency and primacy effects), each learner waspresented with his own uptake recall chart accompanied this timc with an ‘UptakeIdentification Probe’ (see Appendix 2 in this chapter for the Uptake Identification Probe).This is another questionnaire asking the participants to annotate their uptake recall chartsby clearly dissociating the items they believed they had actually learned in that particularlesson from those they had already seen with other teachers or the same teacher on previousoccasions. In this way, I gave thc data the strongest possible chance of being relatable tospecific interactions in the lesson by asking learners to commit themselves to the things theybelieved they had encountered and learned for the first time from the preceding events. Thethree-hour delay allowed the participants to add, if possible, to their first list of items, butabove all, it was estimated that the delay allowed time for the learners to absorb what theythought they had learned from today’s lesson.Both instruments, the Uptake Recall Charts and the Uptakc Identification Probes, werepresented in French, a language with which the researcher and all the learners were familiar.Learning opportunitiesOnce uptaken items have been identified, it is necessary to locate them in the relevantinteractive events of the lesson in which they occurred. Learners were observed two hoursa week during the first six weeks of the term. To carry out the classroom observationprocedure a high quality audio-recording of class sessions was crucial to allow the tracingof uptake in the learning opportunities which arose in the 1essons.The latter needed to havea good number of instances of interactive work which could be closely studied in an attcmptto understand what made learners claim uptake in those particular instances. A monologuewhere the teacher would be holding the floor during the entire lesson would not have suitedthe needs of the study. However, a relative lack of interaction seems to be a characteristicof lectures rather than language classes where a fair amount of interactive work generallytakes place.It was felt that the amount of interaction occurring during lessons depended also onthe learncrs’ ability level and the subjcct studied. To produce the right conditions for theproject, it was assumed that the teaching of grammar to low intermediate or advancedbeginners would offer the most suitable atmosphere. A weak as opposed to a strong groupof students might tend to seek more learning opportunities and pay extra attention to whatgoes on in the classroom in order to improve their languagc command. It is noted that thesubjects of this study were particularly motivated to master the second IanguagcThey wereexpected to take their tcchnical subjects in English at the end of an intensive languageprogramme which served as the setting for this data collection.Grammar lessons were chosen because discrete points are frequcntly dealt with in suchlessons and it is relatively easy to find out what has become of items in the learners’ uptakelist. Moreover, it was assumed that it was simpler for thc learner to pick up discrete points,