Chief Ankama
9 April 2008
analysis
Windhoek — I once upon a time watched a class of English second language (ESL) in session. This was Ms Holms‚ level 1 ESL class at the English Language Center with 13 learners in attendance.
I had spoken to her some months ago to grant me permission to attend some of her lessons if she would not mind.
I came in class before her and as usual learners were still coming in one by one until there were about 13. Learners portrayed a blend of diverse L1 backgrounds and different cultural representation.
Ms Holms hurriedly came in with a couple of books on top of one or two files and a tape recorder and put them on the teacher's table. Without saying hello to the class, she proceeded to one of the learners sitting in a second group of four from the class entrance and started conversing.
I did not bother to capture the content of their talk but I could understand that the learner was talking about her previous homework.
The class had a parliamentary seating arrangement with learners sitting singly or in pairs, while the class conduct ranged between formal and semi-formal. Some learners sometimes resorted to their own languages (maybe their L1s) when talking to the teacher. I do not know whether they do this deliberately or not. The lesson started off with a recap on individual homework between the teacher and individual learners.
Classroom process accor-ding to Allwright (1983 in Ellis 1994) views language lesson as socially constructed events‚ trying to understand how they take place - illuminative rather than hypothesis testing.
Taking the Ellis style this observation moves from a general nature of L2 classroom discourse towards different aspects of classroom interaction (page 573).
The classroom atmosphere looked unpredictable and interactionally varied.
The teacher first was called by one elderly female learner of Chinese origin seated beside me. Although the conversation was quite difficult for me to follow, I deduced it was about the homework the learner should have done before coming to class.
The learner showed the homework to the teacher and shook her head, looking at the teacher's face. The learner knew a significant number of L2 vocabulary but had some problems constructing sentences or with pronunciation.
The teacher equally had a problem to coherently maintain their conversation.
However in this case both the teacher and learner applied gestures, facial expressions and hands to facilitate communication.
"To home? I...I, to you - to you, I-mmhh ... I.. my thank you to you." This learner was responding to the offer given to her by the teacher that because she did not complete all work, she may do that at home again and submit at a later date.
The learner went on to explain why she did not finish: "I don't, don't - (with pauses), (understand? - The teacher aided her with a question) - receive? The learner went on putting her case (hopefully she could not remember the word).
The teacher again: "Didn't you receive my e-mail?"The same learner then replied: "Yes, in Monday send e-mail to you." Whereupon the teacher responded: "Don't worry I'll send you another e-mail on Monday."
This learner while talking to the teacher, she was using a little machine like a laptop, of the size of or slightly bigger than a PDA.
I could hear when she spoke to her male neighbour that she was looking for some English words in Chinese. In fact later I realized the learner was using a Chinese-English electronic pocket dictionary to check on words meanings first in her mother tongue (a Chinese language) as translated into English. She would use these words correctly or wrongly to communicate.
Many times the teacher intercepted learners before they said what they had to say, aiding them to find or say words (sometimes making them conclude ideas they did not mean).
It is however worth mentioning that there was no communication breakdown due to interactional problems in the class.
The non-verbal strategies
I witnessed unlimited collaboration among learners as they worked in groups or in pairs. They helped each other in answering questions, although some spoke in their vernaculars among themselves and sometimes to the teachers.
I do not know however, if the languages they resorted to sometimes when they spoke to each other or to the teacher individually are known among some of them as L1 or just individually known and used spontaneously when one got stuck with what to say in English.
I cannot also tell if the teacher understood what was meant if communicated to in a word/phrase other than English. Well, the teacher knows the class better I believe, as she is always with them.
Even though teachers do their lesson plans in advance, eventually they activate classroom interaction‚ which according to Ellis (1994, p. 574) provides learners with opportunities to encounter input or to practice the L2.
The engagement of Ms Holms into discussions with the elderly female learner mentioned in paragraph two validates that indeed it is true interaction (usually not pre-planned) creates in the learners a state of receptivity‚ interpreted as an active openness, a willingness to encounter the language and the culture‚ (Ibid).
The learner referred to earlier, despite L2 difficulty, was willing to experience/practise it. Both the teacher and the learner went to an extent of using their hands to mime gestures or facial expressions reinforcing their verbal utterances. The learner sometimes employed clues to communicate, e.g.:
L: "teacher, homework?"
T: "Yes, what is wrong with your homework?"
L: "I do but me no finish."
This was an invitation to the teacher to discuss homework related problems.
Before the class activities started, the teacher used pictures and acted some phrases as she explained some unknown words to the learners.
Another male learner asking meanings of words used L1 both to fellow learners and to the teacher. Sometimes when the teacher did not understand what a learner wanted to say, she simply giggled.
There were times when she spoke slowly, stressing or rephrasing the learners' questions.
The homework re-cap exercise involved learners talking to each other and at the same time they had a chance to individually talk to the teacher. Part of the homework was based on individual learner performance and language ability.
he actual lesson started off with the announcement by the teacher that they were going to learn about the present continuous tense, followed by questions on what learners know about the topic and few examples about the fill-in exercises on present continuous tense.
Here individual learners interacted with the teacher, asking questions or responding to the teacher's questions.
Prior to the exercise, she used pictures probably to ease learners' understanding of the tasks.
As pairs went on with the exercises, the teacher walked through the class observing how the learners were doing.
Learners asked questions sometimes, for instance, one learner: "What gaining mean?" The teacher had to use the chalkboard to illustrate by drawing a thin and a fat person and by using hands and words, e.g. "gaining weight".
Teacher talk
What was mostly evident in the class was the Ellis teaching exchange structure which he says has three phases involving the initiating move, a responding move and a follow-up move - the IRF.
This happened mostly throughout the class where the teacher asked individual learners to respond to questions taking the Teacher-Learner-Teacher (TLT) style. Not all interactions followed the IRF format though, but, some would be similar to the example in 1 (a, b, c) LTL while others would feature TL or LT order.
According to Ellis (1994, p. 583), teachers modify their speech when addressing L2 learners in the classroom in a number of ways and also that they are sensitive to their learners' general proficiency level.
Ms Holms maintained a well-balanced learner and teacher talk in her class. She was more of a facilitator.
She would speak when giving instructions, e.g. "Now you are going to do the following activities in pairs. If you have any question let me know", or "One person will be A and one person B" were not necessarily meant for the less target language proficient, but rather for the maintenance of orderly communication in the classroom (Ibid).
However, there were cases when the teacher modified her communication style towards individual learners, e.g. one learner asked a question: "What gaining mean?" To answer this grammatically incorrect question, she deliberately slowed down and stressed the response. She also at times rephrased questions and learner utterances. I am unable to tell exactly when she does it, because it varies from time to time.
A lot of teacher-learner interaction was unstructured and spontaneous. Apart from over exaggerated pronunciation, she either repeated the learner's utterance or indirectly corrected learner's mistakes, e.g. Learner: "What meaning gaining?" Ms Holms: "What does gaining mean?" posing the question to the whole class. This, for me, looked like one of the various ways the teacher used learners' error treatment, i.e. to directly or indirectly feed back the learners as individuals when they make spoken errors or after their pair work. This was done both during pair work and in plenary session.
Negotiation of meaning
Quite interesting to note is the way the interactants offered chances to each other. Speakers always accorded each other a chance to talk even if it meant being intercepted by another. The technical order of turn-taking in that class puzzled me - there was no guiding rule and the teacher seemed unbothered by learners' spontaneity in interaction.
There was cohesion and mutual understanding in the class even during pair work where two-by-two discussions were taking place simultaneously. The class appeared to have aligned itself to the explicit turn taking rather than rigidity as per Ellis (p. 580).
This makes it perhaps true that the nature of classroom discourse will depend on the roles the participants adopt, the nature of the learning tasks, and the kind of knowledge that is targeted (Kramsch 1985 in Ellis).
There was no tension observed and learners were open to experience L2 without fear of making mistakes and in many instances they tried self correction or corrected one another when they worked in pairs.
I should be careful here not to exaggerate negotiation of meaning having taken place explicitly, especially during learner-teacher or teacher-learner interaction, e.g. between an elderly female learner and the teacher.
Ellis writes that there is no clear evidence that the extent to which learners participate productively in the classroom affects their rate of development (p. 592). Although there are some studies, according to Ellis alleging that quantity of interactional modification found in the negotiation of meaning are important both for comprehension and acquisition, there is a criticism levelled against that notion that they ignore important qualitative differences in the way meaning is negotiated (p. 597).
Teacher questions
According to the framework of Van Lier‚ (1982: 1988 in Ellis 1994, p. 578), there are four types of classroom interactions: type one is similar to what I described at the beginning of this paper, where the teacher controls neither topic nor activity but rather individual learner control.
Type two is where the teacher controls the topic and not the activity, such as giving of instructions and announcement as seen in my discussions on non-verbal strategies section.
Type three the teacher is said to be in control of both topic and activity: (refer to the pair work as in the fill-in, the listening and complete activities).
The fourth type is where the teacher controls the activity and not the topic, a free type of activity where learners practise and manipulate the language to their advantage. Van Lier's framework featured prominently in the lesson I observed and throughout, the teacher used the wh-questions mostly, e.g.
When do we use the present tense?
What is the other use?
Who's taking care of the babe?
What American behaviour is strange to you?
Why are they doing that?
Which actions are rude?
What does rude mean, etc.
Although these were among the many questions she asked, most are as a result of the lesson goals as Ellis puts it; that one reason for the prevalence of questioning is undoubtedly the control which it gives the teacher over the discourse.
Many questions followed the IRF format as seen in the first two sets in this section and evolved around factual and reasoning. I cannot recall open questions and social questions being asked (p. 587).
Conclusion
To be honest, it would be difficult for me to give a balanced informed evaluation of the class I observed due to two main reasons.
The teacher knew my observation schedule some days in advance and she might have done some changes or special arrangements.
Observing one lesson is just not enough for one to make conclusions.
In spite of this short ESL lesson observation, credit should be given when and where it is due. There is no doubt the class was alive, the ongoing interactions be it teacher or learner initiated or learner versus learner.
Spontaneity among learners to question, to assist peers during pair work and the self correction when realizing mistakes during speaking are a plus to their learning whether intrinsically or extrinsically motivated.
There is now evidence according to Ellis (p. 602) that learners can learn naturally‚ in a communicative classroom setting.
Studies showed that a higher number of elementary learners of L2 Spanish have acquired the necessary skills in the correct construction of questions without provision of explicit instruction (Ibid).
Success also depends on a number of factors, e.g. the Lightbown (1992 in Ellis 194, p. 603) study on Canadian French children, shows that those learners who used listening tapes and written were much better off in English than those who were teacher guided in a traditional method.
One other attribute to successful or unsuccessful language learning, Ellis says, is not the classroom per se, but it lies within learners' general inability to utilize all the information available to them in the input.
It is in this relation that I would like to agree and conclude with Ellis' statement that the methodologies that have been used to date all have their limitations.
Probably the future lies in careful longitudinal studies that focus on both specific classroom behaviours and individual learners, and which make use of both observational and introspective data (607).
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